title: Virajpet

text: For elections to the Lok Sabha, Virajpet falls under the Mysore constituency. Prior to revision of the constituencies by the Delimitation commission in 2008, the town came under Mangalore constituency. For elections to the State Legislative Assembly, the town falls under the constituency that, apart from the town, includes the surrounding villages, and sends one member to the assembly.


title: Virajpet

text: The nearest railway stations are Thalassery and Kannur in Kerala, at a distance of 80 km each. K R Nagar ,Hassan and Mysore are other nearest Railway stations in Karnataka, at a distance of 138 km and 105 km respectively.


title: Virajpet

text: The nearest airports are Kannur International Airport in Kerala and Mangalore International Airport. Kannur International Airport is at a distance of 59 km from Virajpet and Mangalore International Airport is at a distance of 172 km from Virajpet. Iritty in Kerala is the nearest town and it is about 41 km away from here. There are frequent bus services operated by KSRTC as well as Kerala RTC.


title: Frankfurter Würstchen

text: A Frankfurter Würstchen (Frankfurt sausage) is a thin parboiled sausage in a casing of sheep's intestine. The flavor is acquired by a method of low temperature smoking. For consumption, occasionally Frankfurters are not cooked; they are heated in hot water for only about eight minutes to prevent the skin from bursting. From time to time they are cooked on a propane or charcoal grill. They are traditionally served with bread, mustard, horseradish and/or potato salad.


title: Frankfurter Würstchen

text: Meat sausages as a Frankfurt speciality are already mentioned in medieval sources, often served during the Imperial coronation ceremonies at the Römerberg. Smoked "Frankfurter Würstchen" have protected geographical status in Germany since about 1860. Since 1929, the indication is only allowed to be used for sausages that are produced in the Frankfurt area, mainly in Neu-Isenburg and Dreieich.


title: Frankfurter Würstchen

text: Originally, Frankfurters were made without nitrite curing salt. After the special ageing and smoking methods, the sausages, now of a golden colour, are put into wooden boxes with small sheet of parchment paper between layers. Therefore, the traditional sausages have a square cross-section, but there are a few exceptions where the sausage is round.


title: Frankfurter Würstchen

text: Outside Germany, "frankfurter" is a common designation for boiled sausages, such as North American hot dog sausages, which are called "Wiener Würstchen" (Vienna sausages) in Germany. In Austria, Vienna sausages are called "Frankfurter Würstl" as they allegedly were brought to Vienna by Johann Georg Lahner (1772–1845), a butcher trained in Frankfurt, who in 1805 began to produce sausages from a mixture of pork and beef.


title: Valeria (2020 TV series)

text: Valeria is a Spanish comedy-drama streaming television series developed by María López Castaño for Netflix, based on the novel series "En los zapatos de Valeria" by Elísabet Benavent. It stars Diana Gómez, Silma López, Paula Malia, Teresa Riott, Maxi Iglesias and Ibrahim Al Shami. The first season premiered on 8 May 2020. On 12 June 2020, the series was renewed for a second season. The second season was released on 13 August 2021. In October 2021, Netflix reported that "Valeria" was renewed for a third and final season.


title: Valeria (2020 TV series)

text: Set in Madrid, the plot revolves around Valeria, a writer who feels that something is missing in her marriage and writing.


title: Valeria (2020 TV series)

text: "Valeria" is an adaptation of the novel series "En los zapatos de Valeria", written by from 2013 to 2015. Produced by , the first season was written by María López Castaño, Aurora Gracià, Almudena Ocaña and Fernanda Eguiarte; whereas Inma Torrente and Nely Reguera were charged with the direction of the episodes. Benjamín Alfonso had been cast for the role of Víctor in pre-production but he was eventually replaced by Maxi Iglesias. Filming took place in 2019 primarily in Madrid. A film set in Fuenlabrada was used for indoor shooting locations, including Valeria's residence. It was released on Netflix on 8 May 2020.


title: Valeria (2020 TV series)

text: On 12 June 2020, Netflix announced that the series was renewed for a second season, a report that was already leaked weeks before the show's release. Also produced by Plano a Plano, season 2 was written by Marina Pérez and Montaña Marchena and directed by Inma Torrente and Laura M. Campos. Netflix set its release date for 13 August 2021. In October 2021, Netflix reported that "Valeria" was renewed for a third and final season.


title: Pokémon: Advanced Challenge

text: Pokémon: Advanced Challenge is the seventh season of "Pokémon" and the second season of Pokémon the Series: Ruby and Sapphire, known in Japan as . It originally aired in Japan from September 4, 2003, to September 2, 2004, on TV Tokyo, and in the United States from September 11, 2004, to September 10, 2005, on Kids' WB.


title: Pokémon: Advanced Challenge

text: Set in the fictional Hoenn region, the season follows the adventures of the ten-year-old Pokémon trainer Ash Ketchum, and his electric mouse partner Pikachu as they collect Gym Badges so they can compete in the Hoenn League competition. Along the way, they are joined by Brock, the leader of the Pewter City Gym, and the Pokémon coordinator May and her brother, Max, as May competes in Pokémon Contests with the aim of earning Ribbons so she can enter the Hoenn Grand Festival.


title: Pokémon: Advanced Challenge

text: The Japanese opening songs are "Advance Adventure" (アドバンスアドベンチャー, Adobansu Adobenchā) by GARDEN for 30 episodes, and "Challenger!!" (チャレンジャー！！, Charenjā!!) by Rika Matsumoto for 22 episodes. The ending songs are "Polka O Dolka" (ポルカ・オ・ドルカ, Poruka O Doruka) by Inuko Inuyama and Nolsol Chorus Group for 4 episodes, Toshiko Ezaki performed "Because the Sky is There" (そこに空があるから, Soko ni Sora ga Aru Kara) for 7 episodes, and "Smile" (スマイル, Sumairu) for 42 episodes, "Full of Summer!!" (いっぱいスーマ!!, Ippai Sumā!!) by Naomi Tamura and Himawari Chorus for 8 episodes, "Smile" (スマイル, Sumairu) by Toshiko Ezaki for 1 episode, and the English opening song is "This Dream" by David Rolfe. A shortened version is used as the end credit song.


title: Pokémon: Advanced Challenge

text: Viz Media and Warner Home Video later released "Pokémon: Advanced Challenge – The Complete Collection" on DVD on December 5, 2017.


title: Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?!

text: Misato Kurihara, a genius girl who couldn't make any friends due to her exceptional abilities, is killed after being run over while protecting a young girl. Offered the chance to be reborn into a fantasy world, Misato asks that she simply be reincarnated with average abilities. After she regains her memory of her old life, she discovers that "average" in this new world takes into account the power of the absolute strongest and the absolute weakest magical creatures, resulting in her physical and magical abilities being 6,800 times stronger than that of a typical human. The magic used in this world is effected by nanomachines created by a more advanced civilization; the project was eventually abandoned, however, and the world's civilization has regressed and since stagnated as a result.


text: Reborn as the noble Adele von Ascham, her life takes a sharp turn at the age of eight, when her mother and her grandfather are assassinated by her conniving father, who then marries his mistress and then begins favoring his other daughter. By the age of ten, Adele is sent off to the prestigious Eckland Academy, where she makes the first friends in her two lives. However, when she uses her tremendous magical abilities to save a boy from being beaten by the royal princess' escort and passes herself off as the mortal vessel of a god, the resulting attention towards her person forces her to flee to another kingdom. Attending Hunter's Prep School and forming a team with her classmates Mavis, Reina, and Pauline, Adele tries her best to live her life as normally as possible, which does not prove to be an easy feat.


text: FUNA began serializing the story as a web novel on the user-generated novel publishing website Shōsetsuka ni Narō on January 14, 2016. , 492 chapters of the web novel have been published.


text: The series was acquired for print publication by Earth Star Entertainment, who published the first light novel, with illustrations by Itsuki Akata, in May 2016 under their Earth Star Novel imprint. Seven Seas Entertainment announced on September 11, 2017 that they had licensed the series. Additionally, a spin-off light novel written by Kousuke Akai has also been released.


text: A manga adaptation with art by Neko Mint began serialization online on Earth Star Entertainment's "Comic Earth Star" website on August 5, 2016. Seven Seas announced on September 11, 2017 that they had licensed the manga. A spin-off manga titled "Didn't I Say to Make My Abilities Average in the Next Life?! Everyday Misadventures!" began serialization in "Comic Earth Star" in July 2019. In April 2020, Seven Seas Entertainment announced their license to the spin-off manga.


text: An anime adaptation was announced via Twitter on February 26, 2018. The anime, later confirmed to be a television series, is directed by Masahiko Ohta, written by Takashi Aoshima, and animated by Project No.9, with Sō Watanabe as character designer and Yasuhiro Misawa as music composer. The series aired from October 7 to December 23, 2019 on AT-X, Tokyo MX, BS11, TVA, and ABC. Azumi Waki, Sora Tokui, Fumiko Uchimura, and Masumi Tazawa performed the series' opening theme song "Smile Skill=Sukisukiskill", while Waki performed the series' ending theme song "Genzai ↑ Banzai ↑". The series is streamed by Crunchyroll worldwide outside of Asia. The anime covers the first four volumes of the novel series.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Henning Georg Mankell (; 3February 19485October 2015) was a Swedish crime writer, children's author, and dramatist, best known for a series of mystery novels starring his most noted creation, Inspector Kurt Wallander. He also wrote a number of plays and screenplays for television.


title: Henning Mankell

text: He was a left-wing social critic and activist. In his books and plays he constantly highlighted social inequality issues and injustices in Sweden and abroad. In 2010, Mankell was on board one of the ships in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla that was boarded by Israeli commandos. He was below deck on the MV Mavi Marmara when nine civilians were killed in international waters.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Mankell shared his time between Sweden and countries in Africa, mostly Mozambique where he started a theatre. He made considerable donations to charity organizations, mostly connected to Africa.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Mankell's grandfather, also named Henning Mankell, lived from 1868 to 1930 and was a composer. Mankell was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1948. His father Ivar was a lawyer who divorced his mother when Mankell was one year old. He and an older sister lived with his father for most of their childhood. The family first lived in Sveg, Härjedalen in northern Sweden, where Mankell's father was a district judge. In the biography on Mankell's website, he describes this time when they lived in a flat above the court as one of the happiest in his life. In Sveg, a museum was built in his honour during his lifetime.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Later, when Mankell was thirteen, the family moved to Borås, Västergötland on the Swedish west coast near Gothenburg. After three years he dropped out of school and went to Paris when he was 16. Shortly afterwards he joined the merchant marine, working on a cargo ship and he "loved the ship's decent hard-working community". In 1966, he returned to Paris to become a writer. He took part in the student uprising of 1968. He later returned to work as a stagehand in Stockholm. At the age of 20, he had already started as author at Riksteatern in Stockholm. In the following years he collaborated with several theatres in Sweden. His first play, "The Amusement Park" dealt with Swedish colonialism in South America. In 1973, he published "The Stone Blaster", a novel about the Swedish labour movement. He used the proceeds from the novel to travel to Guinea-Bissau. Africa would later become a second home to him, and he spent a big part of his life there. When his success as a writer made it possible, he founded and ran a theatre in Mozambique.


title: Henning Mankell

text: From 1991 to 2013, Mankell wrote the books which made him famous worldwide, the Kurt Wallender mystery novels. Wallender was a fictional detective living in Ystad in southern Sweden, who supervised a squad of detectives in solving murders, some of which were bizarre. As they worked to catch a killer who had to be stopped before he could kill again, the team often worked late into the nights in a heightened atmosphere of tension and crisis. Wallender's thoughts and worries about his daughter, his health, his lack of friends and a social life, his worries about Swedish society, shared his mental life with his many concerns and worries about the case he was working. There were ten books in the series. They were translated into many languages and sold millions of copies worldwide. The series gave Mankell the freedom and wherewithal to pursue other projects which interested him.


title: Henning Mankell

text: After living in Zambia and other African countries, Mankell was invited from 1986 onward to become the artistic director of Teatro Avenida in Maputo, Mozambique. He subsequently spent extended periods in Maputo working with the theatre and as a writer. He built his own publishing house, "Leopard Förlag", in order to support young talented writers from Africa and Sweden. His novel "Chronicler of the Winds", published in Sweden as "Comédie infantil" in 1995, reflects African problems and is based on African storytelling. On 12June 2008, he was awarded an honorary Doctorate from the University of St Andrews in Scotland "in recognition of his major contribution to literature and to the practical exercise of conscience".


title: Henning Mankell

text: Around 2008, Mankell developed two original stories for the German police series "Tatort". Actor Axel Milberg, who portrays Inspector Klaus Borowski, had asked Mankell to contribute to the show when they were promoting "The Man from Beijing" audiobook, a project that Milberg had worked on. The episodes were scheduled to broadcast in Germany in 2010. In 2010, Mankell was set to work on a screenplay for Sveriges Television about his father-in-law, movie and theatre director Ingmar Bergman, on a series produced in four one-hour episodes. Mankell pitched the project to Sveriges Television and production was planned for 2011.


title: Henning Mankell

text: At the time of his death, Mankell had written over 40 novels that had sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Mankell was married four times and had four sons, Thomas, Marius, Morten and Jon, by different relationships. In 1998 he married Eva Bergman, daughter of film director Ingmar Bergman.


title: Henning Mankell

text: In January 2014, Mankell announced that he had been diagnosed with lung cancer and throat cancer. In May 2014, he reported that treatments had worked well and he was getting better.


title: Henning Mankell

text: He wrote a series of articles inspired by his wife Eva, describing his situation, how it felt to be diagnosed, how it felt to be supported, how it felt to wait, and after his first chemotherapy at Sahlgrenska University Hospital about the importance of cancer research. Three weeks before his death he wrote about what happens to people's identity when they are stricken by a serious illness. His last post was published posthumously 6 October.


title: Henning Mankell

text: In his youth Mankell was a left-wing political activist and participated in the Protests of 1968 in Sweden, protesting against, among other things, the Vietnam War, the Portuguese Colonial War, and the apartheid regime in South Africa. Furthermore, he got involved with "Folket i Bild/Kulturfront" which focused on cultural policy studies. In the 1970s, Mankell moved from Sweden to Norway and lived with a Norwegian woman who was a member of the Maoist Workers' Communist Party. He took an active part in their activities but did not join the party.


title: Henning Mankell

text: In 2002, Mankell gave financial support by buying stocks for 50,000 NOK in the Norwegian left-wing newspaper "Klassekampen". In 2009, Mankell was a guest at the Palestine Festival of Literature. He said he had seen "repetition of the despicable apartheid system that once treated Africans and coloured as second-class citizens in their own country". He found a resemblance between the Israeli West Bank barrier and the Berlin Wall: "The wall that is currently dividing the country will prevent future attacks, in short term. In the end, it will face the same destiny as the wall that once divided Berlin did." Considering the environment the Palestinian people live in, he continued: "Is it strange that some of them in pure desperation, when they cannot see any other way out, decide to become suicide bombers? Not really? Maybe it is strange that there are not more of them."


title: Henning Mankell

text: Mankell stated in an interview with "Haaretz" that he did not support Hezbollah. In Mankell's opinion the state of Israel should not have a future as a two-state solution and this "will not be the end of the historical occupation". He said he did not encounter antisemitism during his journey, just "hatred against the occupants that is completely normal and understandable", and said that "to keep these two things separate is crucial".


title: Henning Mankell

text: In 2010, Henning Mankell was on board the "MS Sofia", one of the boats which took part in the flotilla which tried to break the Israeli embargo of the Gaza strip. Following the Israel Defense Forces' boarding of the flotilla on the morning of 31May 2010, Mankell was deported to Sweden. He subsequently called for global sanctions against Israel. In 2010 it was reported that he was considering halting Hebrew translations of his books. In June 2011, Mankell stated in an article in the Israeli newspaper "Haaretz" that he had never considered preventing his books from being translated into Hebrew, and that unidentified persons had stolen his identity to make this false claim.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Mankell was supposed to be one of twenty Swedish participants in "Freedom Flotilla II" which never took place. It was originally scheduled to sail to Gaza in June 2011.


title: Henning Mankell

text: In 2007, Henning Mankell donated 15 million Swedish crowns (about 1.5 million euros) to SOS Children's Villages for a children's village in Chimoio in western Mozambique. Mankell donated vast amounts of money to charitable organizations such as SOS Children's Villages and Hand in Hand, a collection of independent organizations.


title: Henning Mankell

text: In the 1980s, Mankell visited United Nations refugee camps in Mozambique and later accompanied UN High Commissioner Sadako Ogata to refugee camps in South Africa. In 2013, he visited Congolese refugees in Uganda. He wrote on the plight of refugees and after his death his website asked for donations in his name to the UN Commission on Refugees.


title: Henning Mankell

text: The theme for short stories submitted to the inaugural Festival Fim do Caminho Literary Prize, "Crime in Mozambique", was chosen in homage to Mankell.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Kurt Wallander is a fictional police inspector living and working in Ystad, Sweden. In the novels, he solves shocking murders with his colleagues. The novels have an underlying question: "What went wrong with Swedish society?"


title: Henning Mankell

text: The series has won many awards, including the German Crime Prize and the British 2001 CWA Gold Dagger for "Sidetracked" (1995).


title: Henning Mankell

text: The ninth book, "The Pyramid" (1999), is a prequel about Wallander's past, covering the time until just before the start of "Faceless Killers" (1991). It includes a collection of five novellas:


title: Henning Mankell

text: Ten years after "The Pyramid", Mankell published another Wallander novel, "The Troubled Man" (2009), which he said would definitely be the last in the series.


title: Henning Mankell

text: Linda is the daughter of Kurt Wallander, who follows in his footsteps as a police officer. Mankell began an intended trilogy of novels with her as the protagonist. However, following the suicide of Johanna Sällström, the actress playing the character at the time in the Swedish TV series, Mankell was so distraught that he decided to abandon the series after only the first novel.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford is a town in the county of Kent, England. It lies on the River Great Stour at the southern or scarp edge of the North Downs, about southeast of central London and northwest of Folkestone by road. In the 2011 census, it had a population of 74,204. The name comes from the Old English "æscet", indicating a ford near a clump of ash trees. It has been a market town since the Middle Ages, and a regular market continues to be held.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: St Mary's Parish Church has been a local landmark since the 13th century, and expanded in the 15th. Today, the church functions in a dual role as a centre for worship and entertainment.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The arrival of the railways from the mid 19th century onwards, created a significant source of employment contributing to the town's growth as a rail hub at the centre of five distinct railway lines. The high speed rail line (HS1 High Speed 1) between London and the Channel Tunnel passes through Ashford's International Railway Station thus linking the town to Paris and other European destinations. The M20 motorway connects Ashford to the Channel Tunnel, the national motorway network (via the M25 Motorway) and to London (via the A20).


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford has been marked out for growth in several Government plans from the 1960s onwards. In the 1970s, the construction of a controversial four lane ring road together with the multi-storey Charter House building led to the destruction of significant parts of the old town although some areas were spared and preserved. Other changes in the last 40 years include the construction of the County Square shopping centre, the redevelopment of the Templer Barracks at Repton Park, the Finberry estate to the southeast, and the award-winning Ashford Designer Outlet.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: There has been evidence of human habitation around Ashford since the Iron Age, with a barrow dated to 1500 BC on what is now Barrow Hill. Two axes from the Lower Paleolithic period have been found near Ashford. During the construction of the Park Farm estate in the late 1990s, excavation produced tools from the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic period dating back to the 7th millennium BC. A number of other Mesolithic tools were discovered during construction of the Channel Tunnel Rail Link through Ashford.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In Roman Britain, iron ore was mined in the Weald and transported to Ashford where two ironworks processed the ore into a workable metal. Archaeological studies have postulated the existence of a Roman settlement to the north of the current centre, roughly at the junction of Albert Road and Wall Road.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The present town originates from an original settlement established in 893 AD by inhabitants escaping a Danish Viking raid, who were granted land by a Saxon Lord for their resistance. The name comes from the Old English "æscet", indicating a ford near a clump of ash trees. At the time of the Domesday Book of 1086 it was still known by its original Saxon name of "Essetesford" (or "Eshetisford", "Esselesford", "Asshatisforde", "Essheford"). The manor was owned by Hugh de Montfort, Constable of England and companion of William the Conqueror, and had a church, two mills and a value of 150 shillings (£7.50) at the time. One of the earliest houses in the area still in existence is Lake House at Eastwell Park to the north of the town, which contains the grave of Richard Plantagenet.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford's importance as an agricultural and market town grew in the 13th century, and in 1243, King Henry III granted the town a charter to hold a market for livestock. The pottery industry expanded in the 13th and 14th centuries, with the main works based at what is now Potter's Corner, a few miles west of the town centre. Later evidence from examining waste suggests that production was on a large scale. The Kent Archaeological society have discovered sandy ware at this location dating from around 1125 – 1250.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Jack Cade, who led the a rebellion against corrupt Royal officials in 1450, may have had links to Ashford. In William Shakespeare's "Henry VI, Part 2", Cade converses with "Dick, the Butcher from Ashford".


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In the 16th and 17th centuries, Ashford became known for nonconformism. A local resident, John Brown, was executed for heresy in 1517, and may have inspired the later namesake of the song "John Brown's Body". Thomas Smythe acquired the manor of Ashford as dowry from Queen Elizabeth I in the mid-16th century, and is buried in the parish church.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Dr John Wallis, the internationally recognised mathematician and one of Isaac Newton's main tutors was born in Ashford in 1616, but moved to Tenterden in 1625 to avoid the plague. He was a promising student, and subsequently graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: By the 1780s, local farmers had begun to hold informal market days, and advertised the town's ideal location between London, Chatham and the Kent Coast. The market was held in the High Street until 1856, when local farmers and businessmen relocated to Elwick Road and formed a market company that is the oldest surviving registered company in England and Wales. There is still a regular street market in the town, but the market company relocated outside Ashford town centre after part of the 19th-century site was demolished to make way for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link. It is still used by around 5,000 farmers.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Army first established a presence in Ashford in 1797 when it built a garrison on Barrow Hill, and storerooms along what is now Magazine Road. The military presence was scaled back during the 19th century, though the town was still considered strategically important in the event of an invasion. The Territorial Army established a presence in Ashford in 1910.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: During World War I, Ashford's importance as a transport hub and its location between the continent and London made it a target for aerial bombing. A bomb fell on the railway works on 25 March 1917, killing 61 people, In the late 1920s an Ordnance Depot was established at Ashford; it remained in use until 1996. The town was a target in the Battle of Britain during World War II, including an attack on 15 September 1940. During the latter war ultimately 94 civilians were lost to enemy action in the Urban District.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Joint Services School of Intelligence was based at Templer Barracks to the west of town. Robert Runcie, later to become the Archbishop of Canterbury, was stationed at Ashford during the war while Prince Andrew, Duke of York attended a course here in 1982 while he was stationed in the Royal Navy. The barracks closed in 1997 to build the Channel Tunnel Rail Link, and the site was sold to developers in 2002, Repton Manor House, in the centre of the barracks, is a Grade II listed building and remains intact.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford has been associated with the German town Bad Münstereifel since the 20th century. British forces occupied the town in 1919 under the command of Major J Goode, following the end of the war. Goode subsequently formed close friendships with some Bad Münstereifel residents. John Wiles, Major Goode's brother in law, later became mayor of New Romney in 1946, and subsequently arranged a visit to the Rhineland with Winston Churchill. Wiles arranged several other exchange visits between British and German families, at a time where travel between the two countries was rare. He was declared an honorary citizen of Bad Münstereifel in 1961, which led to the two towns being formally twinned in 1964. Bad Münstereifel was twinned with the French town of Fougères, Brittany two years later, which led to a twinning with Ashford in 1984.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: During the early and mid-20th century, print and media became a noted industry in Ashford. The Headley Brothers, a printing services company, was founded in 1881 and by the mid-1950s printed and exported over 2 million books. The business closed in 2017 and the factory was demolished two years later. The Letraset company set up an arts material factory in Ashford in the 1960s. It closed in 2013, following the decline of Letraset and the company's decision to relocate works abroad.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Little is left of the old Ashford town centre, apart from a cluster of medieval half-timbered buildings in Middle Row and around the churchyard in the town centre. A number of old buildings were removed to make way for the controversial ring road around the centre, including four public houses. Further demolition was required to build Charter House, an eight-story office building for Charter Consolidated, that opened in 1975. Charter subsequently moved back to London in 1985, and the building is now being converted into flats, though progress stalled owing to the discovery of asbestos. Charter compensated for the demolition by funding a restoration scheme on North Street, preserving several historic buildings. The borough council operated from a row of houses in Elwick Road, until the civic centre was opened by the Duchess of Kent on 8 December 1983.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: To accommodate a growing population in the area, the Finberry estate began construction in 2013. It is a site to the southeast of the town centre, which opened various houses, workspaces and shops in a series of phases through the remainder of the decade. It is planned to cater for 1,180 homes. The development also includes plans for a pub and shops.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: A large factor in Ashford's recent redevelopment has been Ashford Borough Council's 'Big 8' strategy. This centred on eight major projects designed to add cultural and economic value to the town. The first proposed was the Commercial Quarter near the station, which opened in 2018, and the second was a new junction 10A of the M20 motorway. The first of the housing projects to make progress was Chilmington Green, a 5,750-house development near Ashford's suburbs. A primary school is set to be built as part of the residential development, with planning permission granted in 2022.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The first of the Big 8 projects to be fully completed was a new campus for Ashford College, moving from Jemmett Road. The building works on the Elwick Road site cost £16 million, and was completed in 2017. A leisure complex, Elwick Place, opened in 2018 with a Picturehouse cinema. The Designer Outlet was redeveloped in a £90 million expansion project. An expansion of the Jasmin Vardimon Company is also planned.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The motto of Ashford Borough Council is ""With stronger faith"", taken from "To Lucasta, Going to the Warres", a poem by the 17th-century poet Richard Lovelace who came from the borough. The relevant verse is :


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The council's coat of arms uses gold to symbolise richness, three sprigs of ash tree representing former council areas, and a lion to commemorate nearby Tenterden as one of the Cinque Ports.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: By road, Ashford is about southeast of central London, southeast of Maidstone, and northwest of Folkestone. The town lies at the intersection of two valleys in Kent – the south edge of the North Downs and the valley of the River Stour, at the confluence of the Great Stour and East Stour rivers. This made it an ideal place for a settlement. The Borough of Ashford lies on the eastern edge of the ancient forest of "Andredsweald" or "Anderida". This originally stretched as far west as Hampshire and formed the basis from which the Weald is formed.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The original town of Ashford, like many other settlements, has outgrown its original size and has combined with smaller villages in a conurbation. Clockwise these villages include Bockhanger, Kennington, Willesborough, Sevington, Singleton and Great Chart. In addition, housing estates have been built in the open spaces amongst Bybrook, Godinton, Kingsnorth, Park Farm and Stanhope.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In 1727, an underground fire was reported in nearby Hinxhill, while an earthquake struck the town on 1 June 1756. The 2007 Kent earthquake, which registered 4.3 on the Richter magnitude scale, was felt in Ashford, though its effects were greatest in Folkestone.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford gets around of rain a year, though the town generally has less rainfall than areas closer to the North Downs. The area around the Stour, particularly south of the station, is prone to flooding, which means it has been generally uninhabited. Recent development has been possible by putting foundations on concrete stilts.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The 2011 census revealed that the borough of Ashford saw the largest population growth in Kent, with records showing a 14.6% rise to 118,000 inhabitants. Ashford has been targeted as a key area for population development since the 1960s. In 1959, the London County Council negotiated 5000 new homes to be built in Ashford as overspill from London, which created most of what is now South Ashford and Kennington. The Buchanan Report, published in 1967, identified Ashford as a major town for growth. In 2001, Ashford was identified as one of four key areas for expansion in South East England. Subsequently, the Ashford's Future Company was set up to support a mix of publicly and privately funded projects in the town.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The soup manufacturer Batchelors became a significant employer in Ashford when they opened a £2.5m factory in Willesborough, east of the town centre, in 1957. A substantial proportion of Batchelors staff moved from their main production unit in Sheffield to Ashford. The factory is now owned by Premier Foods. Proprietary Perfumes Ltd (PPL), a division of Unilever opened a fragrance and flavour factory and research laboratory next door to the Batchelors factory in 1962. It was subsequently renamed as Quest International and purchased by Givaudan in 2007.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The wholesale frozen food firm Brake Brothers was established in 1957. Initially based at nearby Lenham, it later moved to Ashford and expanded. The current European headquarters are in Eureka Park to the north of the town.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In 2017, the Kent-based Curious Brewing constructed a factory on a brownfield site adjacent to Ashford International station in 2017 after a £1.7m crowdfunded cash investment. It opened in May 2019. The train operating company Southeastern partnered with Curious, and advertise the brewery around Ashford International station.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In 2004 Regional Planning Guidance set out plans to invest £2.5m in Ashford, including a targets of 31,000 new homes and 28,000 new jobs in the area. In 2005 a Channel 4 poll ranked Ashford the fourth-best place to live in the United Kingdom. However, the formation of the coalition government in 2010 saw regional planning targets scrapped, along with growth area status. Ashford has continued to develop, with new homes planned for urban areas such as Repton Park, Park Farm, Singleton and Chilmington, and planning permission granted for a new £25m college campus. The extension of Victoria Road has created new development space in Ashford, though plans to build a Morrisons supermarket here were scrapped in May 2014.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In 2012, Ashford Borough Council predicted there would be a net gain of 620 jobs per year. The increase in the town's commercial importance, as well as its strategic location, is witnessed by the number of industry, business and retail parks in the town. These include Waterbrook Park, where there is dedicated space for HGV parking, Eureka Science and Business Park, including manufacturing sites and office complexes; and Orbital Park, the market's current location, which has a regular boot fair.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Three modern shopping centres are located in the town. Park Mall opened in 1985 on the former Folkestone Glass Works site and is now managed by Ashford Borough Council, as part of its strategy to regenerate the town centre. The town's main shopping centre is County Square, which was built over Hempsted Street and connecting roads, opening in 1973 as the Tufton Centre. In 1989, the centre was renamed to County Square and refurbished by CIN Properties, who added a glass roof. In 2008, the centre was expanded to include 50,000 sq ft of new retail space including a Debenhams store. Outside the town centre is the Ashford Designer Outlet designed by Richard Rogers, which attracts around 3 million customers a year. The centre has won industry awards for Retail Destination of the Year and Best Shopping Venue and has been praised by the British Parking Association for its range of facilities, cleanliness and lack of crime. From 2018 the centre underwent a 100,000 sq. ft expansion, including 40 new stores and a new food piazza. Part of this expansion was the installation of Europe's largest living wall, comprising more than 120,000 plants. The expansion was formally opened in November 2019. A Waitrose store opened in November 2009 on the former Templar Barracks site, followed by a John Lewis store in November 2013. The Debenhams store closed in January 2020, while the John Lewis store closed in March 2021.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In 2014, Ashford Borough Council launched AshfordFor, an inward investment campaign, which has helped support the town's growth. Developers agreeing to invest in the town include Quinn Estates, GRE Assets, U+I and Stanhope. In 2014, Ashford Borough Council launched loveashford.com, a website designed to promote new businesses in the town centre as part of the Portas Pilot scheme, which encourages regeneration of town high streets in decline. Brandon Lewis, High Streets Minister said he would "encourage all businesses in Ashford to sign up and be part of this excellent opportunity to boost their trade in the town centre."


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford now has the oldest surviving St John Ambulance unit. John Furley, founder of the association, was born in Ashford. He established the British Red Cross Society in 1868, gaining support from the Duke of Edinburgh via a royal admiral living at Eastwell Park, close to the town.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Grosvenor Sanatorium opened in 1915 to help patients with tuberculosis, and could cater for 110 male patients, and 78 female. The philosopher Simone Weil lived in Ashford after escaping from France during World War II. She felt guilty about leaving French people behind in suffering and did not eat well. She subsequently contracted tuberculosis and was moved to the sanatorium where she died in 1943. A section of the old Ashford Bypass is now named Simone Weil Avenue, while the sanatorium subsequently became the Ashford Police Training Centre.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford Hospital opened to the west of town on 3 August 1928, replacing a smaller 19th century building in town. It has more recently been used as a health centre and retirement home but plans to redevelop it into a local health unit were cancelled in 2012. The main building was threatened with demolition, but saved in 2015, with plans to turn it into accommodation.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The main hospital in Ashford is William Harvey Hospital, in nearby Willesborough. It is named after William Harvey, the doctor who discovered the blood circulatory system. The hospital was built because the government decided the old hospital would be too small for demand as Ashford grew, and looked for a 30-acre site that could have a hospital built on a budget of £7–8 million. Work started on building the hospital in 1973 and it was commissioned in 1977, opening in 1979.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In the 17th century, a free grammar school was founded here; it was built on the churchyard's west side, and remained there until 1846, now used as a museum. The church has been Grade I listed since 1951.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: A Mk. IV tank built in Lincoln and used in World War I was presented to the town on 1 August 1919 to thank the townsfolk for their war efforts. It is situated in St Georges Square near the town centre. For some years, electricity provider Seeboard fitted an electricity substation inside the tank, but this has now been removed; the substation is cited as the reason the tank was not reclaimed during World War II for its metal to be used, as happened with other tanks gifted to municipalities. A protective cover was built over the tank in 1988.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: H.S. Pledge & Sons Ltd built two flour mills in Ashford, and became an important employer in the town. The first opened on Victoria Road in 1890 while the second opened on East Hill in 1901. The mills closed in 1972 and were both partially destroyed by subsequent fires. The East Hill Mill fire occurred in 1974, but the main six-storey tower block survived. It was used as a nightclub until 2014, when the nearby Ashford School, which acquired the building in 2011, decided not to renew the lease. The Victoria Mills were almost completely destroyed by a fire in September 1984, and the remainder of the building had to be demolished.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Corn Exchange, situated at the junction of Bank Street and Elwick Road, opened on 3 December 1861. As the name implies, it was originally used for trade, but during the early 20th century its role expanded to cover dinners, dances and trade shows. The building was extended to improve capacity in the 1930s. It was demolished in 1963.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Ashford Green Corridor is a linear park alongside the two main rivers through the town, which is protected from development by lying on the main flood plain. Most of the area covered by the park has been marked by Ashford Borough Council as a nature reserve. This area includes Victoria Park, which lies to the immediate south of the town centre and the railway. It includes an ornate fountain first shown at the 2nd International Exhibition in London in 1862, and presented to the park by George Harper on 24 July 1912. The Coningbrook Lakes Country Park opened on a former quarry site to the northeast of town in 2015.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford's main library originally opened in 1966 on a war-damaged site on Church Road. In 2010, the building was redeveloped to house Ashford Gateway Plus, which provides local council services in addition to the library itself. Other attractions near the town include Ashford Borough Museum, Godinton House and Gardens and the New Mill at Willesborough, which is Grade II listed.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The first cinema in Ashford was The Picture Palace on Tufton Street, followed by the Odeon on Lower High Street, which opened in 1936 and closed in 1976. The current main cinema in Ashford is a 12 screen theatre in Eureka Leisure Park to the north of town. In 2013, Ashford Borough Council announced plans to build a new cinema in the town, using vacant land off Elwick Road. Construction of the six-screen Picturehouse cinema (along with a 58-room Travelodge hotel) began in May 2017 and was opened in December 2018.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford station was established when the South Eastern Railway's London to Dover line opened between 1842 and 1845, and the company established its locomotive works in the town. A line to Canterbury opened in 1846, followed by the Marshlink Line to Hastings in 1851 and a line to Maidstone in 1884, which was served by until 31 December 1898. The railway community had its own village containing shops, schools, pubs and bathhouse. It was first known as Alfred, but later renamed Newtown. By 1864, there were 3000 people living around the railway line. The railway works declined in use from the 1960 onwards, finally closing in 1982.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Ashford International station opened by British Rail with the Channel Tunnel in 1994. It now serves Eurostar trains on High Speed 1, with trains to London, Lille, Brussels and Paris and connections to the rest of Europe. In 1999, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link was approved, which involved an extensive upgrade of the railways around Ashford. A trench between and was dug near the station to house the new line, a new tunnel was dug at Westwell Leacon, and a 19th-century level crossing near South Willesborough, the last remaining one between London and Folkestone, was removed.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: From 2007 to 2009, services to Brussels were withdrawn due to the opening of Ebbsfleet International railway station, but were restored after a petition. Since December 2009, domestic train services run along this route, reducing journey times to London from 88 to about 38 minutes. However, the international services were suspended in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Eurostar have announced they are unlikely to be resumed until 2025.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: In Roman Britain, what is now Ashford was the meeting point of two main roads. One led from London to Lympne ("Lemanis"), the other from the Weald, through Canterbury ("Durovernum") and ending at the port of Richborough ("Rutupiae"). Ashford was one of the towns in Kent to become a hub when the roads were turnpiked in the second half of the 18th century.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford's first bypass was opened on 19 July 1957 by the then Minister of Transport, Harold Watkinson. The main road through Ashford is now the M20, which opened in stages between 1981 and 1991. Junctions 9, 10 and 10A serve the town. The other main roads are the A28 to Canterbury, the A2070 to Romney Marsh and Rye and the A251 to Faversham.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Ashford Ring Road was completed in November 1974 around the town centre in an attempt to relieve congestion, though part of it involved demolition of existing properties and part of the old market. It initially opened as one way, but was converted back into a two-way operation in 2007, at a total cost of £14m, so the town centre could expand and accommodate more people. The two-way route incorporates the first shared space scheme in the country. An art installation, Lost O, curated by the artist Michael Pinsky, was created as part of this redevelopment but confused drivers. A new junction on the M20, 10A, opened in 2019 as part of the council's Big 8 proposals.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Operation Stack is a traffic management system on the M20 through and near Ashford, which allows HGVs to queue for the Channel Tunnel and the Port of Dover when there is bad weather or industrial action. The scheme is controversial as it involves closing the entire eastbound motorway to through traffic. In 2013, Kent County Council sought funding to build a dedicated lorry park in Ashford.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Stagecoach in East Kent provide bus services around the town. Most services include access from the station to the Designer Outlet. Out of town buses serve neighbouring towns, including Canterbury, Tenterden, Maidstone and Folkestone.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Until 1974, Ashford was served by Lympne Airport, with commercial services to Beauvais, The airport at Lydd, designated London Ashford Airport and approximately south of Ashford, had regular flights to Le Touquet in France until 2018. It now operates charter flights by Lydd Air. London Gatwick Airport, the nearest fully international airport is from Ashford.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The National Cycle Network, a network of cycle routes in the United Kingdom, includes two routes through Ashford. These are NCR 17 from Rochester to Hythe and NCR 18 from Canterbury to Tunbridge Wells. The Stour Valley Walk also follows the main river, connecting Ashford with Lenham and Canterbury, and links with other long distance footpaths in this part of Kent.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford has twelve primary schools two grammar schools, three secondary schools and a college. The Norton Knatchbull School was founded in Ashford around 1630 as a free grammar school by its namesake, Sir Norton Knatchbull. The school continued to be led and funded by Knatchbull's family due to a stipulation in his will in 1636. It was known simply as Ashford Grammar School until 1980. The original school was based next to the church in the town centre, but has moved several times. By the 20th century it had moved to its present location on Hythe Road. The current school premises were built in the late 1990s. The corresponding grammar school for girls is Highworth Grammar School for Girls to the west of town. It opened as the County School for Girls in 1908, before moving to its current premises on Maidstone Road in 1928. There is also a private independent school, Ashford School on East Hill, which was founded in 1898. For much of its history, it has only allowed girls, though boys started to be admitted in 2006.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Recent schools to open in Ashford include Repton Manor Primary School, built on the former Templar Barracks, which opened in September 2012 the Goat Lees Community Primary School, which opened in September 2013 and Finberry Primary School which opened in 2017. In addition to the grammar schools, there are a number of other secondary schools, including those catering for special needs. Ashford College was originally located on Henwood, to the east of town; a new college building was constructed in the town centre, and opened in September 2017.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: St Mary's parish church lies in the town centre. Parts of it date from the 13th century, including a brass of the first rector, Robert de Derby. John Fogge supervised substantial changes to the church in the late 15th century, including creating the tower and raising the roof. He was buried in the church and a memorial window is dedicated to him.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: On 7 October 2010, the church was reordered by the Bishop of Dover, Trevor Willmott, to improve its dual function as both a place of worship and an arts centre and performance space for up to 350 people, in a similar style to Union Chapel, Islington. Around £1.7m was spent improving the venue, of which £1.2m was provided by European Union funding through the Green Renovation Cluster programme. Acts that have since appeared at the church include the Lightning Seeds, Tim Burgess, Gaz Coombes and Turin Brakes.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford United Football Club is based at the Homelands, about south of the town centre. The club was formed in 1891 as Ashford United but was renamed to Ashford Railway Works in 1909 before settling on the name "Town" in 1930. The club was reformed in 2011 after financial difficulties, including the resignation of owner Tony Betteridge and became known once more as "United". The club was promoted to the Southern League Premier Division in the 1986–87 season and best FA Cup performance was the second round in the 1996–97 season.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford has a local youth football team, South Ashford Football Club. The club formed in 2007 and caters for players from 4 to 21 years of age.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Julie Rose Stadium is an athletics stadium in nearby Willesborough. It opened in 1997 and was named after the local middle-distance runner Julie Rose, who was killed in a plane crash in 1985. The stadium is part funded by the National Lottery. It is home to Ashford Athletics Club, and has held several international events. It can accommodate up to 800 people.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: The Stour Centre, managed on behalf of Ashford Borough Council by Ashford Leisure Trust, is located in a park near the railway station and provides a range of recreational and leisure services including several pools, water slides, gyms and athletic facilities.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford Rugby Football Club was formed in 1885. The club plays at Kinneys Field, near the Canterbury Road. The club's 1st XV play in London Division 3 South East.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford has an archery club which provides archery teaching to adults and children over 10. The club runs an annual UK Record Status Portsmouth tournament.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford Hockey Club is based at Ball Lane, Kennington and was formed in 1898. Ashford also has several cricket clubs, including Great Chart Cricket Club, which celebrated their 150th Anniversary in 2006.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford's local commercial radio station was KMFM Ashford. The Ashford studios hosted both local and networked programmes for KMFM stations until the county-wide amalgamation of all network output The town is also served by other county wide stations BBC Radio Kent, Heart South and Gold. Ashford also has its own community radio station Radio Ashford 107.1 FM. This started broadcasting in May 2011 and includes programmes from the Ashford Hospital Broadcasting Service, Ashford's hospital radio station, which has been operating in Ashford since 1971.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Ashford has had several newspapers, some of which are still in production. The "Kent Messenger" in Ashford was established in the 19th century, with main offices on the High Street. It remained in operation until the 1970s. There are currently three local newspapers being produced – the "Kentish Express", published by the KM Group; "yourashford", published by KOS Media; and the "Ashford Herald", which has been published by Kent Regional News and Media since July 2009.


title: Ashford, Kent

text: Russell Hoban repurposed Ashford as "Bernt Arse" in his 1980, post apocalyptic novel "Riddley Walker". Wye became "How"; Dover, "Do It Over", and Canterbury, "Cambry".


title: Stan Love (basketball)

text: Stanley S. Love (born April 9, 1949) is an American former professional basketball player. He is the father of basketball player Kevin Love and the younger brother of Beach Boys member Mike Love. During the late 1970s, Stan was also employed as a bodyguard, trainer, and assistant to band member Brian Wilson, the Loves' cousin.


title: Stan Love (basketball)

text: Love grew up in Baldwin Hills in West Los Angeles and was the fourth of six children to Milt, a union sheet metal worker, and Glee Love, a singer. His older brother is Mike Love. Mike, along with their cousins Brian, Carl, and Dennis Wilson, later formed the Beach Boys.


title: Stan Love (basketball)

text: A 6'9" forward, Love graduated from Morningside High School (where he was a center in his senior year), Inglewood, California, then played collegiately for the Oregon Ducks from 1968 to 1971.


title: Stan Love (basketball)

text: Love was the 9th pick in the 1971 NBA draft, chosen by the Baltimore Bullets. He was also selected by the Dallas Chaparrals in the 1971 ABA Draft. He had also been selected in the 1970 ABA Draft by the Texas Chaparrals while still an underclassman.


title: Stan Love (basketball)

text: Love had a four-year professional career with Baltimore, the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association, and the San Antonio Spurs, then of the American Basketball Association. He retired from the sport in 1975, with per-game averages of 6.6 points (on 0.440 FG and 0.751 FT), 3.9 rebounds and 2.5 fouls for 14.7 minutes in 239 career games.


title: Stan Love (basketball)

text: In the late 1970s, Love, alongside professional model Rocky Pamplin, was employed as a full-time "keeper" to Brian Wilson, hired in an effort to make Brian more productive for The Beach Boys, often by physical force. In 1982, Love and Pamplin were fined $750 and placed on six months' probation for a home invasion and assault on Dennis Wilson In 1990, Love filed a petition to be appointed as Brian Wilson's conservator, partly resulting in the court-ordered severing of personal and financial ties between Wilson and his therapist Eugene Landy in 1991.


title: Stan Love (basketball)

text: Love married in 1986. He is the father of NBA champion Kevin Love, currently a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Love currently resides in Lake Oswego, Oregon.


title: International mobile subscriber identity

text: The international mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) is a number that uniquely identifies every user of a cellular network. It is stored as a field and is sent by the mobile device to the network. It is also used for acquiring other details of the mobile in the home location register (HLR) or as locally copied in the visitor location register. To prevent eavesdroppers from identifying and tracking the subscriber on the radio interface, the IMSI is sent as rarely as possible and a randomly-generated TMSI is sent instead.


text: The IMSI is used in "any" mobile network that interconnects with other networks. For GSM, UMTS and LTE networks, this number was provisioned in the SIM card and for cdmaOne and CDMA2000 networks, in the phone directly or in the R-UIM card (the CDMA equivalent of the SIM card). Both cards have been superseded by the UICC.


text: An IMSI is usually presented as a 15-digit number but can be shorter. For example, MTN South Africa's old IMSIs that are still in use in the market are 14 digits long. The first 3 digits represent the mobile country code (MCC), which is followed by the mobile network code (MNC), either 2-digit (European standard) or 3-digit (North American standard). The length of the MNC depends on the value of the MCC, and it is recommended that the length is uniform within a MCC area. The remaining digits are the mobile subscription identification number (MSIN) within the network's customer base, usually 9 to 10 digits long, depending on the length of the MNC.


text: IMSIs can sometimes be mistaken for the ICCID (E.118), which is the identifier for the physical SIM card itself (or now the virtual SIM card if it is an eSIM). The IMSI lives as part of the profile (or one of several profiles if the SIM and operator support multi-IMSI SIMs) on the SIM/ICCID.


text: IMSI analysis is the process of examining a subscriber's IMSI to identify the network the IMSI belongs to, and whether subscribers from that network may use a given network (if they are not local subscribers, this requires a roaming agreement).


text: If the subscriber is not from the provider's network, the IMSI must be converted to a Global Title, which can then be used for accessing the subscriber's data in the remote HLR. This is mainly important for international mobile roaming. Outside North America, the IMSI is converted to the Mobile Global Title (MGT) format, standard E.214, which is similar to an E.164 number. E.214 provides a method to convert the IMSI into a number that can be used for routing to international SS7 switches. E.214 can be interpreted as implying that there are two separate stages of conversion; first determine the MCC and convert to E.164 country calling code then determine MNC and convert to national network code for the carrier's network. But this process is not used in practice and the GSM numbering authority has clearly stated that a one-stage process is used .


text: In North America, the IMSI is directly converted to an E.212 number with no modification of its value. This can be routed directly on American SS7 networks.


text: After this conversion, SCCP is used to send the message to its final destination. For details, see Global Title Translation.


text: This number has to be converted on the ANSI to ITU boundary. For more details please see Global Title Translation.


text: The Home Network Identity (HNI) is the combination of the MCC and the MNC. This is the number which fully identifies a subscriber's home network. This combination is also known as the PLMN.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Body Cam is a 2020 American police procedural horror film directed by Malik Vitthal, from a screenplay by Nicholas McCarthy and Richmond Riedel and a story by Riedel. The film stars Mary J. Blige, Nat Wolff, David Zayas, David Warshofsky, Demetrius Grosse and Anika Noni Rose.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Originally scheduled for a May 2019 release date, "Body Cam" was pulled from the schedule and was released digitally on May 19, 2020, prior to a video on demand release on June 2, 2020, by Paramount Pictures.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: In Swinton, Louisiana, police officer Kevin Ganning pulls over a green van for not having a license plate. Ganning demands the driver to leave their vehicle. When Ganning notices a bloody rag, he aggressively demands the driver to exit the vehicle. When Ganning points his gun at the driver, the driver exits the vehicle but then suddenly an unknown entity pulls Ganning away.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: 12 hours earlier, Officer Renee Lomito-Smith is being cleared to return to active duty after an altercation with a civilian and is paired with rookie Danny Holledge. They get a call from dispatch where officer Ganning is "failure to respond." Officers Lomito-Smith and Holledge go to investigate Ganning's last known location. Lomito-Smith finds the dash-cam footage in the police car, where she witnesses Ganning was beaten bloody by an unknown entity. They soon find Ganning's lifeless body hanging and call it in. Sergeant Kesper tells them that the footage has been destroyed, long before Lomito-Smith and Holledge had arrived.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Lomito-Smith soon gets a lead, when she recognizes the logo of a hospital from the driver's pants. She is then able to get the identity and home address of the driver, who happens to be Taneesha Branz. She and Holledge arrive at Taneesha's home and find that it's been abandoned. They turn off their bodycams as they enter the house. While checking the home, they find a photo of Taneesha and her son. As they continue to investigate, Holledge leaves quickly when he becomes too scared because of roaches. Officer Lomito-Smith continues to search but unable to find anything leaves. As she goes to exit, she finds that it is locked and as she tries to get out, she becomes aware that she is being watched by an unknown entity. As the entity gets closer to Lomito-Smith with the intent to kill her, Renee breaks the window on the door, escaping the home just in time.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Lomito-Smith investigates Taneesha, upon which she discovers that her son Demarco was killed in a gang shoot out. Elsewhere, Taneesha shops in a grocery’s store late at night where she is immediately harassed by two men in-store. Officers Roberts and Birke spot the green van, notifying dispatch and demanding backup. Lomito-Smith and Holledge answer the call for help and change their route to provide assistance to Roberts and Birke. Birke and Roberts enter the store and question the two men aggressively, despite neither man showing any hostility towards the officers. In a moment of rage, one of the men shoots and kills Birke as he takes Taneesha hostage. As he threatens to kill Taneesha, the dark entity suddenly lifts the man, causing him to let go of Taneesha. He begins firing his gun in fear, killing the store clerk as well as his partner. Taneesha slips out through the back exit during the commotion. Officer Roberts quickly investigates the area where the shooter was, when his body falls down to the ground, beaten. Unable to speak, he points in an attempt to warn Roberts that the entity is behind him. Before Roberts can react, there is a bag placed over his face to suffocate him by the entity. He manages to escape and tried his best to fight the entity but to no avail, he is soon killed.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Officers Lomito-Smith and Holledge arrive at the store but when they enter the store, they find everyone dead. Lomito-Smith investigates in the rear parts of the store, finding no other persons there. She comes across the security camera recordings but as she reviews it, she find that it is unusable. When she goes back into the store, she finds the phone of one of the two men and steals it hoping to find a lead. After returning to the station, she visits the medical examiner to get details about the victims. The medical examiner explains how the body is damaged in the most unusual way but points out that all the victims have had their teeth knocked out. Lomito-Smith pleads with the medical examiner to give her five minutes alone with the bodies. He agrees but tells her that she cannot steal anything or disrupt the bodies, because she is not supposed to be there. She pulls out the phone that she found at the store, unlocking it with the thumbprint of one of the two men. She removes the lock screen option when she's in to prevent the need for another thumbprint. Later that evening, she reviews the video from the phone, noticing the entity behind Taneesha and the man holding her hostage.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Lomito-Smith gets a lead on the origin of the green van, where it was reported stolen. She heads to an unnamed church and questions the Pastor, deducing that the van was never stolen but loaned to Taneesha. The Pastor explains that Taneesha's son, Demarco, was an avid volunteer to many organizations but he was also deaf. When Lomito-Smith asks where Taneesha could possibly be, the Pastor gives a possible location but when she arrives she only finds articles of Demarco's death as well as photos of Officers Ganning, Roberts, Holledge, and Penda. Officer Lomito-Smith happens to see that a camera is watching her. She tries to call Sergeant Kesper, but he does not pick up. She then calls Holledge and tells him that she needs to talk to him face-to-face. He agrees that she can come over in one hour. When Renee arrives at Danny's house, she finds his front door open. She enters the home and searches for him, finding him in the bathroom where he has committed suicide. As she is grief-stricken over finding his body, Renee turns towards the sink, finding a note left to her, saying "I'm Sorry, Danny" as well as a flash drive.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Once she gets back to her vehicle, she inserts the flash drive into her computer. On the drive is Holledge's body cam footage of himself and officers Ganning, Roberts, and Penda during a police stop. It shows where they are yelling at a young man to stop walking as he is suspect. The young man continues walking and then is shot by Penda. Penda and Roberts go to the body. Roberts hands the cell phone to Penda and begins going through the young man's backpack. Penda then realizes the young man is deaf, and it turns out to be Demarco, Taneesha's son. Officer Holledge tries to help him and points out that his teeth came out, but Penda tells Holledge how bad this situation is and how they will face grave consequences. He persuades Holledge that they can handle it, but soon regrets it after Penda suffocates the young man by putting a bag over his head.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: Lomito-Smith calls Sergeant Kesper and arranges a meet up. She meets him at a warehouse and tells him what the four officers did to Demarco but Kesper is already aware of it. He pulls his gun on Renee and tells her that it's best left covered and it will do more harm than good. As she walks inside the building at gun point, Officer Penda gets out of the car and follows behind them. Once inside, Penda demands Renee to hand over the footage. When she declines, Penda shoots her in her abdomen area, into the Kevlar vest. Suddenly, Taneesha arrives out of nowhere and saying to Officer Penda "YOU KILLED MY SON ... DEMARCO... YOU REMEMBER HIM CAUSE HE REMEMBERS YOU." The entity is revealed as the vengeful spirit of Demarco, who then beats up Sergeant Kesper and like the other victims, the end result is Kesper's teeth are knocked out. Renee and Taneesha escape to another part of the warehouse while this is happening. When Penda comes looking for them, Renee shoots him in his right arm. As he continues to threaten, Demarco's spirit attacks him and brutally kills Penda by removing his innards out of his body, raising his body and slamming it down on a large pipe. As Renee stands there ready to confront Demarco, Taneesha comes up and assures her that he will not harm her. After emergency services arrive to the scene and while sitting at the ambulance doors, Renee and Taneesha see both of their sons together, signifying that they have found peace and now able to move on. The news soon covers the corruption on the Swinton police department and Kesper, who survived the attack from Demarco, is found guilty and sent to prison.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: In March 2017, it was announced Richmond Riedel had written the script for the film. In March 2018, it was announced Malik Vitthal would direct the film, with Nicholas McCarthy re-writing the script, and Paramount Pictures distributing. John Ridley had performed script revisions prior to McCarthy's involvement.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: In June 2018, Mary J. Blige joined the cast of the film. In July 2018, Nat Wolff joined the cast. In September 2018, Anika Noni Rose and David Zayas were cast, with filming beginning in New Orleans.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: "Body Cam" was supposed to be released on May 17, 2019 but was pushed back to December 6. On November 12, 2019, Paramount pulled the film from the schedule and it was released digitally on May 19, 2020, prior to a video on demand release on June 2, 2020.


title: Body Cam (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads: "Ambitious yet undercooked, "Body Cam" can't quite connect the dots between its genre thrills and socially aware themes." On Metacritic, the film has an weighted average score of 37 out of 100, based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (), originally published as Imperialism, the Newest Stage of Capitalism (), is a book written by Vladimir Lenin in 1916 and published in 1917. It describes the formation of oligopoly, by the interlacing of bank and industrial capital, in order to create a financial oligarchy, and explains the function of financial capital in generating profits from the exploitation colonialism inherent to imperialism, as the final stage of capitalism. The essay synthesises Lenin's developments of Karl Marx's theories of political economy in "Das Kapital" (1867).


title: Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism

text: In the Prefaces to the essay, Lenin said the First World War (1914–1918) was "an annexationist, predatory, plunderous war" among empires, whose historical and economic background must be studied "to understand and appraise modern war and modern politics". That for capitalism to generate greater profits than the home market can yield, the merging of banks and industrial cartels produces finance capitalism, and the exportation and investment of capital to countries with undeveloped and underdeveloped economies. In turn, that financial behaviour divides the world among monopolist business companies. In colonizing undeveloped countries, business and government will engage in geopolitical conflict over the exploitation of labour of most of the population of the world. Therefore, imperialism is the highest (advanced) stage of capitalism, requiring monopolies to exploit labour and natural resources, and the exportation of finance capital, rather than manufactured goods, to sustain colonialism, which is an integral function of imperialism. Moreover, in the capitalist homeland, the super-profits yielded by the colonial exploitation of a people and their economy permit businessmen to bribe native politicians, labour leaders and the labour aristocracy (upper stratum of the working class) to politically thwart worker revolt (labour strike) and placate the working class.


text: Lenin's socio-political analysis of empire as the ultimate stage of capitalism derived from "" (1902) by John A. Hobson, an English economist, and "Finance Capital" ("Das Finanzcapital", 1910) by Rudolf Hilferding, an Austrian Marxist, whose syntheses Lenin applied to the geopolitical circumstances of the First World War, caused by imperial competition among the European empires. Three years earlier, in 1914, Karl Kautsky proposed a theory of capitalist coalition, wherein the imperial powers would unite and subsume their nationalist and economic antagonisms to a system of ultra-imperialism, whereby they would jointly effect the colonialist exploitation of the underdeveloped world. Lenin countered Kautsky by proposing that the balance of power in international relations among the European empires continually changed, thereby disallowing the political unity of ultra-imperialism, and that such political instability motivated competition and conflict, rather than co-operation:


text: The post–War edition of "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" (1920) identified the territorially punitive Russo–German Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (1918) and the Treaty of Versailles (1919) as proofs that empire and hegemony—not nationalism—were the economic motivations for the First World War. In the Preface to the French and German editions of the essay, Lenin proposed that revolt against the capitalist global system would be realised with the "thousand million people" of the colonies and semi-colonies (the weak points of the imperial system), rather than with the urban workers of the industrialised societies of Western Europe. That revolution would extend to the advanced (industrial) capitalist countries from the underdeveloped countries, such as Tsarist Russia, where he and the Bolsheviks had successfully assumed political command of the October Revolution of 1917. In political praxis, Lenin expected to realise the theory of "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism" via the Third International (1919–1943), which he intellectually and politically dominated in the July and August conferences of 1920.


text: In 1916, Lenin wrote "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of the Capitalism", in Zürich, during the January–June period. The essay was first published by Zhizn i Znaniye (Life and Knowledge) Publishers, Petrograd, in mid 1917. After the First World War, he added a new Preface (6 July 1920) for the French and German editions, which was first published in the "Communist International" No. 18 (1921).


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Richard Alan Clarke (born October 27, 1950) is an American national security expert, novelist, and former government official. He served as the Counterterrorism Czar as the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-Terrorism for the United States between 1998 and 2003.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke worked for the State Department during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. In 1992, President George H. W. Bush appointed him to chair the Counter-terrorism Security Group and to a seat on the United States National Security Council. President Bill Clinton retained Clarke and in 1998 promoted him to be the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism, the chief counter-terrorism adviser on the National Security Council. Under President George W. Bush, Clarke initially continued in the same position but no longer had Cabinet-level access. He was later appointed as Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity. Clarke left the Bush administration in 2003.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke came to widespread public attention for his counter-terrorism role in March 2004: He published a memoir about his service in government, "Against All Enemies," appeared on the "60 Minutes" television news magazine, and testified before the 9/11 Commission. In all three cases, Clarke sharply criticized the Bush administration's attitude toward counter-terrorism before the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and its decision afterward to wage war and invade Iraq. Clarke was criticized by some supporters of Bush's decisions.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: After leaving U.S. government, with U.S. government legal approvals, Clarke helped the United Arab Emirates to set up a cyber security unit intended to protect their nation. Years after Clarke left, some components of the program were acquired by a sequence of firms, and it is reported they eventually surveilled women's rights activists, UN diplomats, and FIFA officials.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Richard Clarke was born to a worker in a chocolate factory and a nurse in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1950. He attended the Boston Latin School, where he graduated in 1968. He attended college at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a bachelor's degree in 1972. He had been selected to serve in the Sphinx Senior Society.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: After starting as a management intern at the U.S. Department of Defense and later working as an analyst on European security issues, Clarke went to graduate school. He earned a master's degree in management in 1978 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: In 1973, Clarke began work in the federal government as a management intern in the Department of Defense. He worked in numerous areas of defense while in headquarters.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: From 1979-1985, he worked at the Department of State as a career analyst in the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs. Beginning in 1985, Clarke was appointed by the Ronald Reagan administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence—his first political appointee position as a Republican Party member.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: During the administration of George H. W. Bush, he was appointed as the Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. He coordinated diplomatic efforts to support the 1990–1991 Gulf War and subsequent security arrangements.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Democrat Bill Clinton kept Clarke on in his administration, appointing him in 1998 as National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism for the National Security Council. In this position, he had cabinet-level access to the president.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke continued as counter-terrorism coordinator at the NSC during the first year of the George W. Bush administration, but no longer had access, as the position's scope was reduced. His written recommendations and memos had to go through layers of political appointees above him. In 2001, he was appointed as Special Advisor to the President on cybersecurity and cyberterrorism. He resigned from the Bush administration in early 2003.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: During the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Clarke advised Madeleine Albright, then–US Ambassador to the United Nations, to request the U.N. to withdraw all UN troops from the country. She refused, and permitted Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire to keep a few hundred UN troops; his forces saved tens of thousands from the genocide.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Later Clarke told Samantha Power, "It wasn't in American's national interest. If we had to do the same thing today and I was advising the President, I would advise the same thing." He supervised the writing of PDD-25, a classified Executive Order that established criteria for future U.S. participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations. It also proposed a reduced military and economic role for the United States in Rwanda.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: After Islamists took control in Sudan in a 1989 coup d'état, the United States had adopted a policy of disengagement with the authoritarian regime throughout the 1990s. After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, however, some critics charged that the U.S. should have moderated its policy toward Sudan earlier. The influence of Islamists there waned in the second half of the 1990s, and Sudanese officials began to indicate an interest in accommodating US concerns related to Osama bin Laden. He lived in Sudan until he was expelled in May 1996. (He was later revealed to be the planner of 9/11.)


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Timothy M. Carney, U.S. ambassador to Sudan between September 1995 and November 1997, co-authored an op-ed in 2002 claiming that in 1997, Sudan offered to turn over its intelligence on bin Laden to the USA, but that Susan Rice, as National Security Council (NSC) Africa specialist, together with NSC terrorism specialist Richard A. Clarke, successfully lobbied for continuing to bar U.S. officials, including the CIA and FBI, from engaging with the Khartoum government. Similar allegations (that Susan Rice joined others in missing an opportunity to cooperate with Sudan on counter-terrorism) were made by David Rose, "Vanity Fair" contributing editor, and Richard Miniter, author of "Losing Bin Laden".


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke was involved in supervising the investigation of Ramzi Yousef, one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who had traveled to the United States on an Iraqi passport. Yousef is the nephew of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a senior al-Qaeda member. Many in the Clinton administration and the intelligence community believed Yousef's ties were evidence linking al-Qaeda's activities and the government of Iraq.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: In February 1999, Clarke wrote the Deputy National Security Advisor that a reliable source reported Iraqi officials had met with Bin Laden and may have offered him asylum. Clarke advised against surveillance flights to track bin Laden in Afghanistan: he said that anticipating an attack, "old wily Usama will likely boogie to Baghdad," where he would be impossible to find. That year Clarke told the press in official statements that "Iraqi nerve gas experts" and al-Qaeda were linked to an alleged joint-chemical-weapons-development effort at the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Michael Scheuer is the former chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center at the CIA. Matthew Continetti wrote:


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Scheuer believes that Clarke's risk aversion and politicking negatively impacted the hunt for bin Laden prior to September 11, 2001. Scheuer stated that his unit, codename "Alec," had provided information that could have led to the capture and or killing of Osama bin Laden on ten occasions during the Clinton administration, only to have his recommendations for action turned down by senior intelligence officials, including Clarke.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: In 1996, Clarke entered into a secret pact with Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the UN, Michael Sheehan, and James Rubin, to overthrow U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, who was running unopposed for a second term in the 1996 selection. They dubbed the pact "Operation Orient Express" to reflect their hope "that many nations would join us in doing in the UN head." However, every other member of the Security Council voted for Boutros-Ghali. Despite severe criticism, Clarke and Sheehan prevailed upon President Clinton to resist international pressure and continue the US's solo veto. After four deadlocked meetings of the Security Council, Boutros-Ghali suspended his candidacy. He is the only U.N. Secretary-General ever to be denied a second term by a Security Council member veto.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: The United States fought a four-round veto duel with France, forcing it to back down and accept the selection of US-educated Kofi Annan as the next Secretary-General. In his memoirs, Clarke said that "the entire operation had strengthened Albright's hand in the competition to be Secretary of State in the second Clinton administration."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: On April 8, 2004, Condoleezza Rice was publicly interviewed by the 9/11 investigatory commission. She discussed Clarke and his communications with the Bush administration regarding bin Laden and associated terrorist plots targeting the United States. Clarke had written a memo dated January 25, 2001, to Rice. He urgently requested a meeting of the NSC's Principals Committee to discuss the growing al-Qaeda threat in the greater Middle East, and suggested strategies for combating al-Qaeda that might be adopted by the new Bush administration.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: In his memoir, "Against All Enemies", Clarke wrote that Condoleezza Rice decided that the position of National Coordinator for Counterterrorism should be downgraded. By demoting the office, he believed that the Administration sent a signal to the national security bureaucracy that reduced the salience of terrorism. No longer would Clarke's memos go to the President; instead they had to pass through a chain of command of National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice and her deputy Stephen Hadley, who bounced every one of them back.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Within a week of the inauguration, I wrote to Rice and Hadley asking 'urgently' for a Principals, or Cabinet-level, meeting to review the imminent Al-Qaeda threat. Rice told me that the Principals Committee, which had been the first venue for terrorism policy discussions in the Clinton administration, would not address the issue until it had been 'framed' by the Deputies.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: The National Commission On Terrorist Attacks Upon The United States reported in its eighth public hearing:


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke asked on several occasions for early principals meetings on these issues and was frustrated that no early meeting was scheduled.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: At the first Deputies Committee meeting on terrorism, held in April 2001, Clarke strongly suggested that the U.S. put pressure on both the Taliban and al-Qaeda by arming the Northern Alliance and other groups in Afghanistan. Simultaneously, he said that the US should target bin Laden and his leadership by restoring flights of the MQ-1 Predators. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz responded, "Well, I just don't understand why we are beginning by talking about this one man bin Laden." Clarke replied that he was talking about bin Laden and his network because it posed "an immediate and serious threat to the United States." According to Clarke, Wolfowitz turned to him and said, "You give bin Laden too much credit. He could not do all these things like the 1993 attack on New York, not without a state sponsor. Just because the FBI and CIA have failed to find the linkages does not mean they don't exist."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke wrote in "Against All Enemies" that in the summer of 2001, the intelligence community was convinced of an imminent attack by al-Qaeda, but could not get the attention of the highest levels of the Bush administration.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: At a July 5, 2001, White House gathering of the FAA, the Coast Guard, the FBI, Secret Service and INS, Clarke said that "something really spectacular is going to happen here, and it's going to happen soon."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Appointed in 2001 as Special Advisor to the President on Cybersecurity, Clarke spent his last year in the Bush administration focusing on cybersecurity and the threat of terrorism against the critical infrastructure of the United States. At a security conference in 2002, after citing statistics that indicated that less than 0.0025 percent of corporate revenue on average is spent on information-technology security, Clarke was heard to say, "If you spend more on coffee than on IT security, then you will be hacked. What's more, you deserve to be hacked."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: On March 24, 2004, Clarke testified at the public 9/11 Commission hearings. He initially offered an apology to the families of 9/11 victims and said: "...your government failed you. Those entrusted with protecting you failed you. And I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask, once all the facts are out, for your understanding and for your forgiveness."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke's testimony during the hearings was consistent with his account in his memoir. Clarke said that before and during the 9/11 crisis, many in the administration were distracted from taking action against Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organization because of an existing pre-occupation with Iraq and Saddam Hussein. Clarke wrote that on September 12, 2001, President Bush "testily" asked him and his aides to try to find evidence that Saddam was connected to the terrorist attacks. In response, Clarke wrote a report stating there was no evidence of Iraqi involvement: all relevant agencies, including the FBI and the CIA, signed off on this conclusion. The paper was quickly returned by a deputy with a note saying, "Please update and resubmit." In April 2004, the White House at first denied Clarke's account of meeting with Bush but reversed its denial when others who had been present backed Clarke's version of the events.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Supporting Clarke's claim that intelligence forewarning of attacks had been delivered to the president prior to 9/11, former Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, the sole member of the 9/11 Commission permitted (under an agreement with the Bush administration) to read the President's Daily Brief, said that these had contained "an extraordinary spike" in intelligence warnings of al-Qaeda attacks that had "plateaued at a spike level for months" before 9/11.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Before and after Clarke appeared before the 9/11 Commission, some critics tried to attack his credibility. They impugned his motives, claiming he was a disappointed job-hunter, that he sought publicity, and that he was a political partisan. They charged that he exaggerated perceived failures in the Bush administration's counterterrorism policies while exculpating the former Clinton administration from its perceived shortcomings.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: According to some reports, the White House tried to discredit Clarke in a move described as "shooting the messenger." "The New York Times" economics columnist Paul Krugman was more blunt, calling the attacks on Clarke "a campaign of character assassination."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Some Republicans inside and outside the Bush administration questioned both Clarke's testimony and his tenure during the hearings. Senate Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist took to the Senate floor to make a speech alleging Clarke told "two entirely different stories under oath", pointing to congressional hearing testimony Clarke gave in 2002 and his 9/11 Commission testimony. Frist later speculated to reporters Clarke was trading on his former service as a government insider with access to the nation’s most valuable intelligence to sell a book.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke was criticized for his suggestions in 1999 of intelligence indicating a link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, despite the fact Clarke and others concluded after investigations by 2001 that no link had been established. In "Against All Enemies" Clarke writes, "It is certainly possible that Iraqi agents dangled the possibility of asylum in Iraq before bin Laden at some point when everyone knew that the U.S. was pressuring the Taliban to arrest him. If that dangle happened, bin Laden's accepting asylum clearly did not," (p. 270). In an interview on March 21, 2004, Clarke claimed that "there's absolutely no evidence that Iraq was supporting al-Qaeda, ever." Clarke claimed in his book that this conclusion was understood by the intelligence community at the time of 9/11 and the ensuing months, but top Bush administration officials were preoccupied with finding a link between Iraq and 9/11 in the months that followed the attack, and thus, Clarke argued, the Iraq war distracted attention and resources from the war in Afghanistan and hunt for Osama bin Laden.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Fox News, allegedly with the Administration's consent, identified and released a background briefing that Clarke gave in August 2002, at the Administration's request, to minimize the fallout from a "Time" magazine story about the President's failure to take certain actions before 9/11. In that briefing on behalf of the White House, Clarke stated "there was no plan on Al-Qaeda that was passed from the Clinton administration to the Bush administration," and that after taking office President Bush decided to "add to the existing Clinton strategy and to increase CIA resources, for example, for covert action, fivefold, to go after Al-Qaeda." At the next day's hearing, 9/11 Commission member James Thompson challenged Clarke with the 2002 account, and Clarke explained: "I was asked to make that case to the press. I was a special assistant to the President, and I made the case I was asked to make... I was asked to highlight the positive aspects of what the Administration had done and to minimize the negative aspects of what the Administration had done. And as a special assistant to the President, one is frequently asked to do that kind of thing. I've done it for several Presidents."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Another point of attack was Clarke's role in allowing members of the bin Laden family to fly to Saudi Arabia on September 20, 2001. According to Clarke's statements to the 9/11 Commission, a request was relayed to Clarke from the Saudi embassy to allow the members of the bin Laden family living in the U.S. to fly home. Clarke testified to the commission that he passed this decision in turn to the FBI via Dale Watson, and that the FBI at length sent its approval of the flight to the Interagency Crisis Management Group. However, FBI spokesman John Iannarelli denied that the FBI had a role in approving the flight: "I can say unequivocally that the FBI had no role in facilitating these flights."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke has also exchanged criticism with Michael Scheuer, former chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station at the CIA. When asked to respond to Clarke's claim that Scheuer was "a hothead, a middle manager who really didn't go to any of the cabinet meetings," Scheuer returned the criticism as follows: "I certainly agree with the fact that I didn't go to the cabinet meetings. But I'm certainly also aware that I'm much better informed than Mr. Clarke ever was about the nature of the intelligence that was available against Osama bin Laden and which was consistently denigrated by himself and Mr. Tenet."


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: On March 28, 2004, at the height of the controversy during the 9/11 Commission Hearings, Clarke went on NBC's Sunday morning news show "Meet the Press" and was interviewed by journalist Tim Russert. In responding to and rebutting the criticism, Clarke challenged the Bush administration to declassify the whole record, including closed testimony by Bush administration officials before the Commission.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: As of August 2017, Clarke had been obtaining large amounts of funds, notably $20 million for the Middle East Institute via the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research (ECSSR), an Abu Dhabi-based think tank. The Middle East Institute had been propagating Emirati agendas in Washington and was mentioned in mail leaks of Yousef Al Otaiba, the Emirati ambassador to the US. "The Intercept" reported that Saif Mohamed Al Hajeri, CEO of Tawazun Holding L.L.C., had been sanctioning the money, larger than the annual budget of the Middle East Institute, on orders of Otaiba.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke is currently Chairman of Good Harbor Consulting and Good Harbour International, two strategic planning and corporate risk management firms; an on-air consultant for ABC News, and a contributor to the Good Harbor Report, an online community discussing homeland security, defense, and politics. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Harvard Kennedy School and a faculty affiliate of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He has also published two novels: "The Scorpion's Gate" (2005) and, "Breakpoint" (2007).


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: Clarke wrote an op-ed for "The Washington Post", titled "The Trauma of 9/11 Is No Excuse" (May 31, 2009) harshly critical of other Bush administration officials. Clarke wrote that he had little sympathy for his fellow officials who seemed to want to use the excuse of being traumatized and were caught unaware by Al-Qaeda's attacks on the USA because they are being caught unaware was due to their ignoring clear reports a major attack on U.S. soil was imminent. Clarke particularly singled out former Vice President Dick Cheney and former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: In April 2010, Clarke released his book on "Cyber War". In April 2012, he wrote a "New York Times" op-ed addressing cyber attacks. In stemming cyber attacks carried out by foreign governments and foreign hackers, particularly from China, Clarke opined that the U.S. government should be authorized to "create a major program to grab stolen data leaving the country" in a fashion similar to how the U.S. Department of Homeland Security currently searches for child pornography that crosses America's "virtual borders." Moreover, he suggested that the US president could authorize agencies to scan Internet traffic outside the US and seize sensitive files stolen from within the United States. Clarke then stated that such a policy would not endanger privacy rights through the institution of a privacy advocate, who could stop abuses or any activity that went beyond halting the theft of important files. The op-ed did not offer evidence that finding and blocking files while they are being transmitted is technically feasible.


title: Richard A. Clarke

text: In September 2012, Clarke stated that Middle Eastern governments were likely behind hacking incidents against several banks. During the same year, he endorsed Barack Obama's reelection for President of the United States.