title: Dési Bouterse

text: Bouterse is a controversial figure, held responsible by some for numerous human rights violations committed during his military rule in the 1980s. Most notable were the December murders in 1982. He was prosecuted for the murders, and a trial was initiated, but the National Assembly extended amnesty to him in 2012. After the trial was forced to continue, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison on 29 November 2019. He is also suspected of having directed the Moiwana massacre in 1986 during the civil war by the Maroons, led by his former bodyguard, Ronnie Brunswijk.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 16 July 1999, Bouterse was sentenced "in absentia" in the Netherlands to 11 years' imprisonment after being convicted of trafficking of cocaine. Bouterse always maintained his innocence. He claimed the star witness in the case, Patrick van Loon, was bribed by the Dutch government. According to the United States diplomatic cables leak released in 2011, Bouterse was active in the drug trade until 2006. Europol has issued a warrant for his arrest. At that time, he could not be arrested in Suriname, because he was still president. As he was convicted of the drug offense before his election in 2010 as head of state, he risks arrest if he leaves Suriname.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Bouterse was born on 13 October 1945 in Domburg, located in Suriname's Wanica District. He was born in a Multiracial family of Amerindian, African, Dutch, French, and Chinese ancestry. As a young boy he moved from Domburg to the capital Paramaribo, where he was raised by an aunt. He attended St. Jozefschool (a boarding school) and later the "Middelbare Handelsschool" (roughly equivalent to junior secondary general education), which he did not finish.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: In 1968, Bouterse moved to the Netherlands, where he was conscripted into the armed forces of the Netherlands ("Nederlandse Krijgsmacht"). After completing his military service, he signed up to train as a non-commissioned officer at the "Koninklijke Militaire School" in Weert. In this period, Bouterse became known as an athlete, and he was chosen as head of the basketball team.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: In 1970, Bouterse married Ingrid Figueira, whom he had known as a teenager in Suriname. They had two children: Peggy and Dino. Shortly after the marriage, Bouterse was assigned to the Dutch military base in Seedorf, Germany.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 11 November 1975, Bouterse returned with his family to Suriname after it gained independence from the Netherlands. He wanted to help establish the Surinamese army. In 1979, Bouterse accepted a request by Roy Horb to become chairman of a new Surinamese military union (union BoMiKa; "Bond voor Militair Kader").


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 25 February 1980, Bouterse, Horb, and fourteen other sergeants overthrew the Henck Arron government with a violent military coup d'état, now known as the Sergeants Coup. The sergeants who accomplished this coup were known as the "Groep van zestien" (Group of Sixteen). Bouterse was the leader of the "Groep van zestien." After the coup, he became chairman of the National Military Council of Suriname and as such the "de facto" dictator of Suriname. From then until 1988, Bouterse was the power behind puppet presidents installed by him.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The military takeover, which was widely supported by the population, was officially aimed at fighting corruption and unemployment (which at the time affected 18 per cent of the working population), and at restoring order in public affairs. However, "the political plans were vague, no ideological discussions had taken place in preparation for the coup," notes historian Rosemarijn Hoefte.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On the day of the coup, Bouterse's soldiers shot and burned down the Central Police Station of Suriname. The remains of this building now form the "monument of the Revolution". Annually, on 25 February, the coup is commemorated.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The military dictatorship imposed an evening curfew, and curtailed freedom of press (only one newspaper, "de Ware Tijd", was allowed to continue publishing, but they were subject to heavy censorship). In 1985 it banned political parties and restricted freedom of assembly. It was characterized by a high level of government corruption and the summary executions of political opponents. After the December murders of fifteen opponents in 1982, Bouterse closed the University of Suriname.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: He established diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, Cuba and North Korea, but his regime did not show any Communist orientation. The Netherlands suspended development aid to its former colony, destabilizing the Surinamese economy. At the same time, the fall in bauxite prices, Suriname's main export, accentuated the economic crisis. The regime was quickly confronted with several uprisings, sometimes led by part of the army, sometimes by civilians. In 1983, in the wake of the U.S. invasion of Grenada, Suriname drew closer to Washington and expelled Cuban diplomats, perhaps for fear of U.S. aggression.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 7 and 8 December 1982, fifteen prominent Surinamese men who had criticized Bouterse's military dictatorship or were connected with the coup d'état attempt on 11 March 1982, were brought to Fort Zeelandia (then Bouterse's headquarters), where they were tortured and shot dead. These killings are known as the December murders.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 10 December 1982 Bouterse stated on STVS television channel that 15 arrested "suspects who were plotting to overthrow the government later in December were shot dead while trying to flee Fort Zeelandia". Years later Bouterse said that he was not present at the killings. In 2000 he stated that the decision for these killings was made by the commander of the battalion, Paul Bhagwandas, who died in 1996. Bouterse accepted political responsibility as leader, but still denied any direct involvement.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The trials for the December murders did not take place in Suriname until 30 November 2007. Among the 25 indicted suspects, Bouterse is the chief figure. Since the trial began, Bouterse never went to court. In an interview with "Al Jazeera" in 2009, Bouterse said that the trial was being used by his political opponents to prevent him from running for office again and for their own political gain. In April 2012, two months before the verdict in the trial was expected, Bouterse's party member Andre Misiekaba said, during a debate in the Surinamese parliament, that: "The December Murders trial is a political trial which has the purpose to eliminate Bouterse from the political arena and therefore the Amnesty Act is needed."


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 1 February 2012, Ruben Rozendaal, one of the military suspects, announced in local media that it was time for him to come forward with the truth about the December Murders because he wanted to clear his name before he died: he was suffering from a severe kidney disease, and the doctors had told him he did not have much time left to live. After consulting with his lawyer, Rozendaal decided to withdraw the testimony he had given in 2010. After the last suspects and witnesses in the December Murders case were heard, the court-martial decided to hear Rozendaal again, and this hearing was set for 23 March 2012.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 19 March, five members of Bouterse's political party "Megacombinatie" and one member of Paul Somohardjo's party "Pertjajah Luhur" proposed a law in the parliament which in effect would grant amnesty for the suspects in the December Murders, including Dési Bouterse. The amnesty law would also cause immediate termination of the trial. The parliamentary voting was to be held on 23 March, the same day Ruben Rozendaal testified in court that Bouterse personally killed two of the fifteen men: union leader Cyrill Daal and military member Soerindre Rambocus. That day there was no quorum in the parliament, and the voting did not continue.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 4 April 2012, after three days of debate, the Assembly passed the amnesty law with 28 votes in favor and 12 votes opposed. The political parties Nieuw Suriname and BEP, both members of Bouterse's coalition, left the room when the voting started because they "did not believe that they should support a law which is being opposed by a large part of the Surinamese community." The chair of the Surinamese parliament, Jennifer Simons, who is also a member of Bouterse's party, voted for the law.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The controversial law granted amnesty to Bouterse and the 24 other suspects. This could also mean that the ongoing December Murders trial will face an immediate stop.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 13 April 2012, the public prosecutor in the December Murders trial formulated the demanded sentence against five suspects, including the main suspect, Bouterse. His defense lawyer, Irwin Kanhai, requested that the trial would be declared moot because of the amnesty law. On 11 May 2012, the court decided whether the trial would continue or not.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Edgar Ritfeld, one of the 25 suspects, said that he did not want amnesty because he knows he is innocent. He wanted the trial to be continued so that his innocence could be proven. Ruben Rozendaal and Wim Carbiere, both suspects, also asked for continuation of the trial.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The controversial amnesty law was protested both nationally and internationally. Organizations such as the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights condemned the law and urged the Surinamese judges and the Public Prosecutor's Office to continue the trial. On 19 April 2012, Human Rights Watch demanded an immediate retraction of the law.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: After passage of the amnesty law, the Netherlands immediately stopped the 20 million euro aid set aside for Suriname. President Bouterse was unmoved by this decision, saying, "I never asked you for 20 million euros. We have economic reserves of almost 800 million dollars". The Dutch Labour Party and the then ruling People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) believed that this sanction was not enough. They called for more penalties such as economic sanctions, expulsion of the Surinamese ambassador (who is the daughter of MP Rashied Doekhi, one of the 28 MPs who voted in favour of the law), and a ban on European travel for all the Surinamese parliamentarians who voted for the amnesty law. Dutch minister of foreign affairs Uri Rosenthal did not agree with these requests.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 8 April 2012, the Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte said it was "indigestible" that amnesty was granted to the suspects in this stage of the trial (the amnesty law was passed two months before the verdict in the trial).


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The amnesty law was later overturned by a court ruling, and in November 2019 the military court convicted Bouterse to 20 years imprisonment for the December killings. On 22 January 2020, Bouterse appeared before the court, in military uniform, to appeal this decision.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The Suriname Guerrilla War (1986–1990), also known as a civil war, was between the Surinamese military regime, headed by Dési Bouterse, and the Surinamese Liberation Army, a guerrilla Maroon group better known as the Jungle Commando, led by Bouterse's former bodyguard Ronnie Brunswijk. On 29 November 1986, members of the national military massacred at least 39 villagers of Moiwana, Brunswijk's home village, killing mostly women and children. The soldiers also burned down the village dwellings, including Brunswijk's house. The survivors fled as refugees with hundreds of other inland inhabitants across the Marowijne River to neighbouring French Guiana.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The human rights organisation 'Moiwana '86' has committed itself to achieving justice with regard to this event. It is seeking to hold military officers and the government as responsible for the massacre.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Herman Gooding, a chief inspector of the police, was assassinated in August 1990 during his investigation of the massacre. Reportedly he was forced out of his car near Fort Zeelandia and shot in the head. His body was left outside the office of Desi Bouterse. Other police investigators fled the country for safety, stalling the progress of the investigation.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The government has stated that it is still continuing its investigation of the massacre. It claimed that prospective witnesses had either moved, died, or were uncooperative. It has also said that an investigation of the murder of Herman Gooding was continuing.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: In August 2005, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ordered Suriname to pay US$3 million in compensation to 130 survivors of the massacre, and to establish a US$1.2 million fund for the development of Moiwana. The Inter-American Court of Human rights has judged that the responsible persons have to be prosecuted and punished; however, previous governments, including Bouterse's government, have failed to do so.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Later in 1985, the government lifted the ban on opposition parties, beginning a transition to civilian rule. A new constitution was overwhelmingly approved in a 30 September 1987 referendum. Elections were held two months later, and Ramsewak Shankar, an opponent of Bouterse, was elected president in January 1988.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: However, Bouterse retained much power as army commander. He scuttled a number of government efforts to negotiate with the Jungle Commando, and a number of Bouterse's opponents were murdered or disappeared. Matters came to a head when Bouterse was detained at Schiphol Airport while returning to Suriname on a personal trip to Ghana and Switzerland. Angered that Shankar, who happened to be on the same flight to Amsterdam, didn't protest, Bouterse resigned as army commander. The following day, Ivan Graanoogst, who was serving as acting army commander, called Shankar and forced his resignation. By all accounts, however, Bouterse was the mastermind of what became known as the Telephone Coup. A year later, new elections were held that returned the country to civilian rule.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 16 July 1999, Bouterse was convicted "in absentia" in the Netherlands to 11 years in prison for trafficking 474 kilograms of cocaine. Bouterse always proclaimed his innocence. He claimed that the star witness in his case, Patrick van Loon, was bribed by the Dutch government. Bouterse is believed by law enforcement officials to have been the leader of the so-called "Suri kartel", which is held responsible for the trafficking and smuggling of large amounts of cocaine from Suriname and Brazil into Europe (especially into the Netherlands) in the 1980s and 90s.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Since 1999 Europol has maintained an international warrant for his arrest. According to the "United Nations Convention against illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances", since Bouterse was convicted before his election as head of state in 2010, he has no immunity under international law. This was confirmed by various specialists in international law.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: In April 2012, Ruben Rozendaal, former fellow soldier of Bouterse and also a suspect in the December 1982 murders, said that in the 1980s and early 1990s, Bouterse supplied the FARC of Colombia with weapons in exchange for cocaine. A 2006 document from the American embassy reported a possible connection between Bouterse and the FARC.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Bouterse's son Dino Bouterse was sentenced in 2005 to eight years' imprisonment in a Surinamese court for narcotics trafficking, weapons trafficking, and theft of luxury vehicles. He was released early for good behavior. The government's counter-terrorism department appointed him to a senior role.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 29 August 2013, Dino was arrested by the U.S. government's Drug Enforcement Administration in Panama while traveling on a diplomatic passport. He was extradited to the United States and taken to New York City. He was prosecuted and in March 2015, he was sentenced to a 16-year prison term on convictions of drug smuggling and trying to help Hezbollah set up a base in Suriname. In a letter, Dino Bouterse insisted he had no terrorist leanings and was motivated only to make several million dollars. Bouterse was arrested after an elaborate international sting in which he was recorded meeting in Greece and Panama with DEA operatives posing as Hezbollah and Mexican drug traffickers.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: After the return of democratic government, led in succession by Ronald Venetiaan, Jules Wijdenbosch, and Venetiaan again, Bouterse tried repeatedly to return to power through elections. In the 2010 Surinamese legislative election, Bouterse and his coalition, the Mega Combination ("Mega Combinatie") became the biggest party in Suriname, gaining 23 of the 51 seats in the parliament. The coalition failed to gain an absolute majority in the parliament by three seats (the half of 50 plus 1 was needed). In order to secure the votes necessary to become president, Bouterse cooperated with the party of his former opponent, Ronnie Brunswijk, which had 7 seats; and the Peoples Alliance party ("Volks Alliantie") of Paul Somohardjo (6 seats), who had left the ruling New Front party before the election.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 19 July 2010, Bouterse was elected as President of Suriname with 36 of the 51 votes; he assumed office on 12 August 2010. His running mate Robert Ameerali became Vice President of Suriname.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: During his presidency Dési Bouterse introduced universal health care, free school meals, a minimum wage and a national pension scheme.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The first minister of Spatial Planning Martinus Sastroredjo (KTPI) had been relieved of his duties at the end of 2010 due to his life partner asking for a piece of land with the help of a ministry official. He was succeeded by Simon Martosatiman, also a member of the political party KTPI. The second minister to leave office due to personal reasons was Miss Wonnie Boedhoe, the first minister of Finance & Planning of this cabinet.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: By the end of April 2011, several ministers had been dismissed due to political changes in the cabinet. They included Paul Abena (Sport- & Youth Affairs), Martin Misiedjan (Justice & Police), Celsius Waterberg (Public Health), Linus Diko (Regional Development), and Simon Martosatiman. The ministers Raymond Sapoen, Michael Miskin and Ginmardo Kromosoeto were assigned to new posts. In addition to the newly formed cabinet, two deputy ministers were installed. Mahinder Gopie had served as the secretary of the president and was made the deputy minister of Regional Development. Abigail Lie A Kwie, a loyalist of Pertjajah Luhur chairman Paul Somohardjo, started as the deputy minister of Public Works & Traffic, but was moved in October 2012 to the ministry of Agriculture.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The president's four top advisors are Jules Wijdenbosch, who handles the country's administrative and constitutional affairs; Errol Alibux, who advises the president about foreign affairs and international laws; Eddy Jozefzoon, who deals with the country's social and educational issues; and Andy Rusland, who oversees the nation's economy. The president appointed Cliffton Limburg as his press secretary and cabinet's spokesman; he was a propagandist for Bouterse and a talkshow host. Bouterse installed Gillmore Hoefdraad, a former International Monetary Fund (IMF) official, as the new governor of the Central Bank of Suriname.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: After the 2015 Surinamese legislative election, Bouterse's NDP won 26 seats; he was reelected unopposed on 14 July 2015.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: On 23 June 2020, Bouterse announced that he did not want to take his seat in the National Assembly even though he had been elected in the 2020 Surinamese general election. As such, Soewarto Moestadja, who was on seventh place on the NDP list, had become eligible for taking the seat in the National Assembly. Moestadja, being the oldest member, chaired the first meeting of the Assembly. Bouterse was not a candidate for the presidency in the 2020 elections, and as no other candidates other than Chan Santokhi had been nominated by the deadline of 8 July 2020 at 15:00 (UTC−3), Santokhi was elected as his successor on 13 July in an uncontested election. Bouterse announced his retirement from politics on 16 July 2020.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: After his inauguration as president, Bouterse immediately honoured the nine surviving conspirators, who together with him had conducted the violent 1980 Surinamese coup d'état; he awarded them the Grand Cordon of the Honorary Order of the Yellow Star, the highest honor of Suriname. This action was met with international outrage, all nine (and Bouterse) having been involved with the December murders.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: After becoming president, Bouterse designated 25 February, the anniversary of the coup d'état, as a national holiday. Former president Ronald Venetiaan has said that 25 February should not be a holiday, but a national day of mourning.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: In December 2011, President Bouterse granted a pardon to his foster son Romano Meriba, who in 2005 was convicted to 15 years' imprisonment for the 2002 murder and robbery of a Chinese trader. Meriba was also convicted for throwing a hand grenade at the house of the Dutch ambassador. Judge Valstein-Montnor ruled that the evidence proved that Meriba tried to commit a robbery at the ambassador's house similar to that of the trader. After it was prevented by guards from the Dutch embassy, Meriba threw a hand grenade from a car at the ambassador's residence.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: The pardon was controversial, as it is the first time a Surinamese President has pardoned someone convicted of murder and robbery. "People that have committed such heavy offends should not get a pardon" said former justice minister Chan Santokhi. "Besides, the requirement that a thorough investigation must be conducted and that the decision should be based on the advice by the judge who passed the sentence was ignored." Bouterse's staff said that Meriba's status as the foster son of President Bouterse was not part of the decision, and that there were strong legal arguments for the pardon. According to rumors, after Meriba was released from jail, he was hired by the heavily armed Counter Terror Unit (CTU). Dino Bouterse, son of President Bouterse, was appointed to head this unit.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Bouterse has hired other convicts. His delegation that visited a South American summit had two members besides Bouterse who had criminal drug records: former military Etienne Boerenveen and Hans Jannasch. "Such people now circulate around the state power", said Ronald Venetiaan, former president of Suriname.


title: Dési Bouterse

text: Meriba was arrested again on 23 March 2012 in Paramaribo on charges of assaulting a citizen and police officer the night before in a nightclub. He was not long held in police custody because the complaint was retracted the following day.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: "Dom" Ferdinand II (Portuguese: "Fernando II") (29 October 1816 – 15 December 1885) was a German prince of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha-Koháry, and King of Portugal "jure uxoris" as the husband of Queen Maria II, from the birth of their first son in 1837 to her death in 1853.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: In keeping with Portuguese law, only after the birth of his son in 1837 did he acquire the title of king. Ferdinand's reign came to an end with the death of his wife in 1853, but he served as regent for his son and successor, King Pedro V, until 1855.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: He retained the style and title of king even after the death of Maria II and her succession by their children Pedro V and then Luís I. His sons were kings regnants, while Ferdinand himself was a king-father during their reigns.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: Born Ferdinand August Franz Anton in Vienna, he was the eldest son of Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and his wife Princess Maria Antonia Koháry de Csábrág et Szitnya, heiress to the House of Koháry. The younger Ferdinand grew up in several places: the family estates in modern-day Slovakia, the imperial court of Austria, and Germany. He was a nephew of King Leopold I of Belgium, and thus a first cousin to Leopold II of Belgium and Empress Carlota of Mexico, as well as Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her husband Prince Albert. In 1826, his title changed from Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld to Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, following the re-arrangement of the Saxon duchies.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: According to Portuguese law, the husband of a queen regnant could only be titled king after the birth of an heir from that marriage; this was the reason Maria II's first husband, Auguste de Beauharnais, Duke of Leuchtenberg, never acquired the title of king. After the birth of their eldest son and heir, the future Pedro V of Portugal, Ferdinand was proclaimed King Dom Fernando II.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: Although it was Maria who reigned by right, the royal couple formed an effective team during their joint reign, with Ferdinand reigning by himself during his wife's pregnancies.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: Eventually, Maria II died as a result of the birth of their eleventh child, and Ferdinand II's reign ended. However, he would assume the regency of Portugal from 1853 to 1855, during the minority of his son King Pedro V.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: Ferdinand was an intelligent and artistically minded man with modern and liberal ideas. He was adept at etching, pottery and painting aquarelles. He was the president of the Royal Academy of Sciences and the Arts, Lord Protector of the University of Coimbra and Grand-Master of the Rosicrucians.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: In 1838, he acquired the former Hieronymite monastery of Our Lady of Pena, which had been built by King Manuel I in 1511 on the top of the hill above Sintra and had been left unoccupied since 1834, when the religious orders were suppressed in Portugal. The monastery consisted of the cloister and its outbuildings, the chapel, the sacristy and the bell tower, which today form the northern section of the Pena National Palace (the "Old Palace").


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: Ferdinand began by making repairs to the former monastery, which, according to the historical sources of that time, was in poor condition. He refurbished the whole of the upper floor, replacing the fourteen cells used by the monks with larger-sized rooms and covering them with the vaulted ceilings that can still be seen today. In 1843, the king decided to enlarge the palace by building a new wing (the New Palace) with even larger rooms (one of them being the Great Hall), ending in a circular tower next to the new kitchens. The building work was directed by the Baron von Eschwege, a wild architectural fantasy in an eclectic style full of symbolism that could be compared with the castle Neuschwanstein of King Ludwig II of Bavaria. The palace was built in such a way as to be visible from any point in the park, which consists of a forest and luxuriant gardens with over five hundred different species of trees originating from the four corners of the earth. Ferdinand would spend his last years in this castle with his second wife, receiving the greatest artists of his time.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: In 1836 Ferdinand married Queen Maria II of Portugal. Eleven children were born to the royal couple before Maria died of complications due to childbirth in 1853. Ferdinand was destined to outlive eight of his eleven children. In late 1861, an attack of cholera or typhoid fever struck the royal family and Ferdinand suffered the tragedy of witnessing the death of three of his five surviving sons.


title: Ferdinand II of Portugal

text: Later in his life, Ferdinand married again in Lisbon on 10 June 1869 to actress Elisa Hensler (Neuchâtel, 22 May 1836 – Lisbon, Coração de Jesus, 21 May 1929). Just before the marriage, she was styled "Gräfin" (Countess) von Edla by Ferdinand's cousin Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The couple had no children.


title: One true church

text: The expression "one true church" refers to an ecclesiological position asserting that Jesus gave his authority in the Great Commission solely to a particular visible Christian institutional church—what is commonly called a denomination. This view is maintained by the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox communion, the Assyrian Church of the East, the Ancient Church of the East, the Christian Churches/Churches of Christ, the Churches of Christ, and the Lutheran Churches, as well as certain Baptists. Each of them maintains that their own specific institutional church (denomination) exclusively represents the one and only original church. The claim to the title of the "one true church" relates to the first of the Four Marks of the Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed: "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church". As such, it also relates to claims of both catholicity and apostolic succession: asserting inheritance of the spiritual, ecclesiastical and sacramental authority and responsibility that Jesus Christ gave to the apostles.


title: One true church

text: The concept of schism somewhat moderates the competing claims between some churches – one can potentially repair schism, since they are striving for the same goal. For example, the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches each regard the other as schismatic and at very least heterodox, if not heretical.


title: One true church

text: Many Mainline Protestants regard all baptized Christians as members of a spiritual— not institutional— "Christian Church" regardless of their differing beliefs; this belief is sometimes referred to by the theological term "invisible church". Some Anglicans of Anglo-Catholic churchmanship espouse a version of branch theory which teaches that the true Christian Church comprises Anglican, Eastern Orthodox, Old Catholic, Oriental Orthodox, Scandinavian Lutheran, Moravian, Persian, and Roman Catholic branches.


title: One true church

text: Other denominations, such as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church) also claim inheritance of the authority and responsibility that Jesus Christ conferred on the apostles. Other groups, such as Iglesia ni Cristo, believe in a last-messenger doctrine, where no such succession takes place. The Seventh-day Adventist Church regards itself to be the one true church in the sense of being a faithful remnant.


title: One true church

text: The Roman Catholic Church teaches that Christ founded only "one true Church", and that this one true Church is the Catholic Church with the Roman pontiff as its supreme, infallible head and locus of communion. From this follows that it regards itself as "the universal sacrament of salvation for the human race" and the "only true religion".


title: One true church

text: According to the "Catechism of the Catholic Church", Catholic ecclesiology professes the Catholic Church to be the "sole Church of Christ" – i.e., the one true church defined as "one, holy, catholic, and apostolic" in the Four Marks of the Church in the Nicene Creed. The Council of Nicea (AD 325) originally formulated this teaching and ratified the Nicene Creed. The church teaches that only the Catholic Church was founded by Jesus Christ, who appointed the Twelve Apostles to continue his work as the Church's earliest bishops. Catholic belief holds that the Church "is the continuing presence of Jesus on earth", and that all duly-consecrated bishops have a lineal succession from the apostles. In particular, the Bishop of Rome (the Pope), is considered the successor to the apostle Simon Peter, from whom the Pope derives his supremacy over the Church. The 1943 papal encyclical "Mystici corporis Christi" further describes the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ. Thus the Catholic Church holds that "the one Church of Christ which in the Creed is professed as one, holy, catholic and apostolic ... This Church constituted and organized in the world as a society, subsists in the Catholic Church, which is governed by the successor of Peter and by the Bishops in communion with him." In "Humani Generis", Pope Pius XII declared that "the Mystical Body of Christ and the Roman Catholic Church are one and the same thing." The Second Vatican Council repeated this teaching, stating in the Decree on the Eastern Churches: "The Holy Catholic Church, which is the Mystical Body of Christ, is made up of the faithful who are organically united in the Holy Spirit by the same faith, the same sacraments and the same government."


title: One true church

text: In responding to some questions regarding the doctrine of the Church concerning itself, the Vatican's Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith stated, ""Clarius dicendum esset veram Ecclesiam esse solam Ecclesiam catholicam romanam..."" ("It should be said more clearly that the Roman Catholic Church alone is the true Church..") And it also clarified that the term "subsistit in" used in reference to the Church in the Second Vatican Council's 1964 decree "Lumen gentium" "indicates the full identity of the Church of Christ with the Catholic Church".


title: One true church

text: The 1215 Fourth Lateran Council declared that: "There is one universal Church of the faithful, outside of which there is absolutely no salvation", a statement of what is known as the doctrine of "extra Ecclesiam nulla salus".


title: One true church

text: In the encyclical "Mortalium animos" of 6 January 1928, Pope Pius XI wrote that "in this one Church of Christ no man can be or remain who does not accept, recognize and obey the authority and supremacy of Peter and his legitimate successors" and quoted the statement of Lactantius: "The Catholic Church is alone in keeping the true worship. This is the fount of truth, this the house of Faith, this the temple of God: if any man enter not here, or if any man go forth from it, he is a stranger to the hope of life and salvation." Accordingly, the Second Vatican Council of 1962–1965 declared: "Whosoever, [...] knowing that the Catholic Church was made necessary by Christ, would refuse to enter or to remain in it, could not be saved. In the same document, the Council continued: "The Church recognizes that in many ways she is linked with those who, being baptized, are honored with the name of Christian, though they do not profess the faith in its entirety or do not preserve unity of communion with the successor of Peter." And in a decree on ecumenism, "Unitatis redintegratio", it stated: "Catholics must gladly acknowledge and esteem the truly Christian endowments from our common heritage which are to be found among our separated brethren. It is right and salutary to recognise the riches of Christ and virtuous works in the lives of others who are bearing witness to Christ, sometimes even to the shedding of their blood. For God is always wonderful in His works and worthy of all praise."


title: One true church

text: The Catholic Church teaches that the fullness of the "means of salvation" exists only in the Catholic Church, but the church acknowledges that the Holy Spirit can make use of ecclesial communities separated from itself to "impel towards Catholic unity" and thus bring people to salvation in the Catholic Church ultimately. It teaches that anyone who is saved is saved through the Catholic Church but that people can be saved "ex voto" and by pre-baptismal martyrdom as well as when conditions of invincible ignorance are present, although invincible ignorance in itself is not a means of salvation.


title: One true church

text: Roman Catholic theology regards formal schismatics as outside the church, understanding by "formal schismatics" "persons who, knowing the true nature of the Church, have personally and deliberately committed the sin of schism". The situation, for instance, of those who have been brought up from childhood within a group not in communion with Rome, and who are acting in good faith and have maintained almost the entirety of the orthodox faith, differs. This nuanced view applies especially to the churches of Eastern Christianity, more particularly still to the Eastern Orthodox Church, though doctrinal impediments still remain, such as disagreement over the primacy of the Roman See, papal infallibility, the nature of Purgatory, indulgences, the Immaculate Conception, and a few other important doctrines.


title: One true church

text: The Eastern Orthodox Church (officially the "Orthodox Catholic Church") identifies its confederative communion of Orthodox churches as the "One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church" of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and applies this title in conciliar and other official documents, for instance, in the Constantinople synods held in 1836 and 1838 and in correspondence with Pope Pius IX (r. 1846–1878) and with Pope Leo XIII (r. 1878–1903).


title: One true church

text: The Lutheran Church views itself as the "main trunk of the historical Christian Tree" founded by Christ and the Apostles, holding that during the Reformation, the Church of Rome fell away. The Augsburg Confession found within the Book of Concord, a compendium of belief of the Lutheran Churches, teaches that "the faith as confessed by Luther and his followers is nothing new, but the true Catholic faith, and that their churches represent the true catholic or universal church". When the Lutherans presented the Augsburg Confession to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor in 1530, they believe to have "showed that each article of faith and practice was true first of all to Holy Scripture, and then also to the teaching of the church fathers and the councils".


title: One true church

text: Many Baptists, who uphold the doctrine of Baptist successionism (also known as Landmarkism), "argue that their history can be traced across the centuries to New Testament times" and "claim that Baptists have represented the true church" that "has been, present in every period of history". These Baptists maintain that those who held their views throughout history, including the "Montanists, Novatians, Patarenes, Bogomils, Paulicians, Arnoldists, Henricians, Albigenses, and Waldenses", were persecuted for their faith, a belief that these Baptists maintain to be "grand distinguishing mark of the true church". In the introduction of "The Trail of Blood", a Baptist text that explicates the doctrine of Baptist succession, Clarence Walker states that "The history of Baptists, he discovered, was written in blood. They were the hated people of the Dark Ages. Their preachers and people were put into prison and untold numbers were put to death." J. M. Carroll, the author of the said text "The Trail of Blood", also appeals to historian Johann Lorenz von Mosheim, who stated "Before the rise of Luther and Calvin, there lay secreted in almost all the countries of Europe persons who adhered tenaciously to the principles of modern Dutch Baptists." Walter B. Shurden, the founding executive director of the Center for Baptist Studies at Mercer University, writes that the theology of Landmarkism, which he states is integral of the history of the Southern Baptist Convention, upholds the ideas that "Only Baptist churches can trace their lineage in uninterrupted fashion back to the New Testament, and only Baptist churches therefore are true churches." In addition Shurden writes that Baptists who uphold successionism believe that "only a true church-that is, a Baptist church-can legitimately celebrate the ordinances of baptism and the Lord's Supper. Any celebration of these ordinances by non-Baptists is invalid."


title: One true church

text: Baptists who uphold this ecclesiology also do not characterize themselves as being a Protestant church due to their belief that "they did not descend from those churches that broke away in protest from the church of Rome. Rather, they had enjoyed a continuous historical existence from the time of the very first church in the New Testament days." These views are generally no longer widely held in the Southern Baptist Convention although they are still taught by some Southern Baptist Churches and many independent Baptist churches, Primitive Baptists (Reformed Baptists), and some "congregations affiliated with the American Baptist Association."


title: One true church

text: The Amish, as with other Anabaptist Christians, believe that "the established church became corrupt, ineffectual, and displeasing to God." The Amish believe that the true church is pure and separate from the world:


title: One true church

text: The Holdeman Mennonites teach that their Church of God in Christ is the one true church. Anabaptist theologian Donald Kraybill writes:


title: One true church

text: As described in the tract "The Glory of the True Church" by Francis Howgill, the Religious Society of Friends traditionally believed that after the Apostolic Era, the "true Church fled into the wilderness" and "the false Church came into visibility". George Fox and his followers "believed that they were called to carry out the true reformation, to restore apostolic Christianity, and to make a fresh beginning". As such, "The Quaker community was the one true Church, and consequently those converted by Quaker preaching were expected to join it." Among some Quakers, there became a "shift from being the one and only True Church to being a part of the True Church" and so "marriage with non-Quakers became accepted by many in the Quaker community", though "they still had to marry within the Meeting House, as well as gain approbation."


title: One true church

text: Methodists affirm belief in "the one true Church, Apostolic and Universal", viewing their Churches as constituting a "privileged branch of this true church". With regard to the position of Methodism within Christendom, the founder of the movement "John Wesley once noted that what God had achieved in the development of Methodism was no mere human endeavor but the work of God. As such it would be preserved by God so long as history remained." Calling it "the grand depositum" of the Methodist faith, Wesley specifically taught that the propagation of the doctrine of entire sanctification was the reason that God raised up the Methodists in the world.


title: One true church

text: Restorationism is a broad category of churches, originating during the Second Great Awakening, that characterize themselves as a return to very early Christianity after the true faith was lost in a Great Apostasy. Prominent among these groups are the Christian churches and churches of Christ, the Churches of Christ (Stone-Campbell movement), the Christadelphians, and the Latter Day Saint movement (Mormonism). The idea of "restoration" was a popular theme of the time of the founding of these branches, and developed an independent expression in both. In the Stone-Campbell movement, the idea of restoration was combined with Enlightenment rationalism, "precluding emotionalism, spiritualism, or any other phenomena that could not be sustained by rational appeals to the biblical text."


title: One true church

text: The Seventh-Day Adventist Church (SDA Church) holds itself to be the one true church. It specifically teaches that "it is the 'final remnant' of His true church [spanning] the centuries". Seventh-day Adventist eschatology promulgates the idea that in the end times, there will be a "growing opposition between the 'true' church and the 'apostate' church." According to Seventh-day Adventist theology, these apostates are referred to as "Babylon", which they state is an amalgam of religions (including other Christian denominations) that worship on Sunday rather than the Lord's Sabbath, Saturday (Read Exodus 20:8–11). The SDA Church, in their view, "has drawn substantially on the biblical text, especially the books of Daniel and Revelation, to argue for its own status as the true remnant church which has a divine commission both to exist and to preach its apocalyptic message to the world at large."


title: One true church

text: Some small epsicopal church groups, such as the "Workers and Friends", represent themselves as nondenominational and hold all other churches to be false.


title: One true church

text: In 1830, Joseph Smith established the Church of Christ in the belief that it was a restoration of original Christianity. In 1831 he declared it to be "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth". Smith later reported in some versions of his First Vision in his teenage years, Jesus had told him that all churches that then existed "were all wrong; [and] that all their creeds were an abomination in his sight". The Latter Day Saints combined their religion with "the spirit of nineteenth-century Romanticism" and, as a result, "never sought to recover the forms and structures of the ancient church as ends in themselves" but "sought to restore the golden age, recorded in both Old Testament and New Testament, when God broke into human history and communed directly with humankind."


title: One true church

text: The predominant organization within the movement is the LDS Church, which continues to teach that it is "the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth". The church teaches that all people who achieve the highest level of salvation must be baptized by one who holds the proper authority to perform such an ordinance; however, those who missed that opportunity in their lifetime may be included through a proxy baptism for the dead, in which a church member is baptized on their behalf inside a temple.


title: One true church

text: Most other Latter Day Saint churches claim to be the rightful continuation or successor of the church Smith established and therefore claim to be the one true church. However, the Community of Christ, the second-largest Latter Day Saint church, has recently de-emphasized this belief in favor of a position that the Community of Christ "is part of the whole body of Christ". The church's canonized Doctrine and Covenants continues to contain the declaration that the church is the "only true and living church".


title: One true church

text: The "Iglesia ni Cristo" (INC) a Philippine-based Christian religion, like other restorationist groups, professes that it is the one church founded by Jesus. Adherents hold that the "Iglesia ni Cristo" ("Church of Christ" in Tagalog) is the only true church of Jesus Christ as restored through a human instrument ("sugo") Felix Manalo. The church recognizes Jesus Christ as the founder of the Christian Church. Meanwhile, its reestablishment is seen as the signal for the end of days. They believe that the church was apostatized by the 1st or 4th century due to false teachings. The INC says that this apostate church is the Roman Catholic Church.


title: One true church

text: Members believe that the "Iglesia ni Cristo" is the fulfillment of the passage above. Based from their doctrines, "ends of the earth" pertains to the time the true church would be restored from apostasy and "east" refers to the Philippines where the "Church of Christ" would be founded. The INC teaches that its members constitute the "elect of God" and there is no salvation outside the INC. Faith alone is insufficient for salvation. The "Iglesia ni Cristo" says that the official name of the true church is "Church of Christ". The two passages often cited by INC to support this are Romans 16:16 "Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you" and the George Lamsa translation of : "Take heed therefore ... to feed the church of Christ which he has purchased with his blood."


title: Whipping boy

text: A whipping boy was a boy educated alongside a prince (or boy monarch) in early modern Europe, who supposedly received corporal punishment for the prince's transgressions in his presence. The prince was not punished himself because his royal status exceeded that of his tutor; seeing a friend punished would provide an equivalent motivation not to repeat the offence. An archaic proverb which captures a similar idea is "to beat a dog before a lion." Whipping was a common punishment of tutors at that time. There is little contemporary evidence for the existence of whipping boys, and evidence that some princes were indeed whipped by their tutors, although Nicholas Orme suggests that nobles might have been beaten less often than other pupils. Some historians regard whipping boys as entirely mythical; others suggest they applied only in the case of a boy king, protected by divine right, and not to mere princes.


title: Whipping boy

text: In Renaissance humanism, Erasmus' treatises "The Education of a Christian Prince" (1516) and "Declamatio de pueris statim ac liberaliter instituendis" (1530) mention the inappropriateness of physical chastisement of princes, but do not mention proxy punishment. Hartley Coleridge wrote in 1852, "to be flogged by proxy was the exclusive privilege of royal blood. ... It was much coveted for the children of the poorer gentry, as the first step in the ladder of preferment." John Gough Nichols wrote in 1857, "the whole matter is somewhat legendary, and though certain vicarious or rather minatory punishments may have been occasionally adopted, it does not seem likely that any one individual among the King's schoolfellows should have been uniformly selected, whether he were in fault or not, as the victim or scape-goat of the royal misdemeanours".


title: Whipping boy

text: In current English, a "whipping boy" is a metaphor which may have a similar meaning to scapegoat, fall guy, or sacrificial lamb; alternatively it may mean a perennial loser, a victim of group bullying or someone who is unfairly blamed for the actions of others.


title: Whipping boy

text: An adult example often included in discussions of whipping boys is provided by the French Catholic prelates Arnaud d'Ossat (1537–1604) and Jacques Davy Duperron (1556–1618), who were symbolically whipped by Pope Clement VIII in 1593 in proxy expiation on behalf of Henry IV of France (1553–1610), who had renounced Protestantism.


title: Whipping boy

text: Samuel Rowley's 1604 play "When You See Me You Know Me" depicts the childhood of the future Edward VI. When he skips class to play tennis, Edward "Ned" Browne is sent to the chapel to be whipped by the master of children. Cranmer says, "Since he was whipped thus for the prince's faults. / His grace hath got more knowledge in a month. / Than he attained in a year before, / For still the fearful boy, to save his breech, / Doth hourly haunt him, wheresoe'er he goes." The prince persuades king Henry VIII to knight Ned: "the poor gentleman was pitifully wounded in the back parts, as may appear by the scar, if his knightship would but untruss there". Ned hopes the tutors will refrain from whipping a knight, to which the fool retorts, "If they do, he shall make thee a lord, and then they dare not." This work may have helped the idea of a whipping boy to take root.


title: Whipping boy

text: John Donne alluded to proxy whipping in a sermon he preached in 1628: "Sometimes, when the children of great persons offend at school, another person is whipped for them, and that affects them, and works upon a good nature; but if that person should take physic for them in a sickness, it would do them no good: God's corrections upon others may work by way of example upon thee; but because thou art sick for physic, take it thyself." The earliest attestation of the word "whipping boy" in the "Oxford English Dictionary" is from a 1647 Bible commentary by John Trapp on : "Those Presbyters that sin publikely ... and those who were convicted by two or three witnesses ...: Rebuke before all, yet not as if they were whipping boyes".


title: Whipping boy

text: In Book V of "Gil Blas" (1715) by Alain-René Lesage, when the Marquis of Leganez forbids his son's tutors from beating him, Don Raphael is flogged in his stead: "a most ingenious device, by which to keep this troublesome young lordling in awe, without trenching on his foolish father's injunctions". "The Fortunes of Nigel" (1822) by Walter Scott describes Malagrowther, the fictional whipping boy of the young James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England): "Under the stern rule, indeed, of George Buchanan, who did not approve of the vicarious mode of punishment, James bore the penance of his own faults, and Mungo Malagrowther enjoyed a sinecure; but James's other pedagogue, Master Patrick Young, went more ceremoniously to work, and appalled the very soul of the youthful King by the floggings which he bestowed on the whipping-boy, when the royal task was not suitably performed." In Mark Twain's 1881 novel, "The Prince and the Pauper", the pauper's masquerade as Edward VI is aided by information from the prince's whipping boy, son and namesake of the late Sir Humphrey Marlow, a "Head Lieutenant" in Henry VIII's Household. Twain wrote, "James I. and Charles II. had whipping-boys, when they were little fellows, to take their punishment for them when they fell short in their lessons; so I have ventured to furnish my small prince with one, for my own purposes."


title: Whipping boy

text: "The Whipping Boy" by Sid Fleischman, which won the 1987 Newbery Medal for children's books, tells of the brattish Prince Horace who learns humility on an adventure with his whipping boy, a rat-catcher named Jemmy. In George R. R. Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire", published from 1991, the characters Tommen Baratheon and Joffrey Baratheon have a whipping boy named Pate. In David Belbin's 2002 children's novel "Boy King", Barnaby FitzPatrick is whipped by John Cheke for teaching Edward VI swear-words; when Edward protests that nobody has whipping boys any more, Cheke says "the Duke of Richmond had one". Cheke relents from giving FitzPatrick the whipping owed to Edward. Sarah Ruhl's 2016 play "Scenes from Court Life, or The Whipping Boy and His Prince" includes whipping boys in its depictions of Charles I and Charles II of England.


title: Whipping boy

text: Some accounts of modern slavery include instances of slaves punished for the offences of a master's child. In 19th-century southern China, among slave boys as study companions to candidates for the imperial examinations, one example was noted by James L. Watson. In Alex Tizon's 2017 nonfiction essay "My Family's Slave", the author's mother recounts a 1940s incident in which, caught in a lie, she made Lola, the titular servant, receive the punishment of 12 lashes of her father's belt. Biram Dah Abeid has alleged that slaves in Mauritania are used as or whipping boys.


title: Butalbital

text: Butalbital is a barbiturate with an intermediate duration of action. Butalbital is often combined with other medications, such as paracetamol (acetaminophen) or aspirin, for the treatment of pain and headache. The various formulations combined with codeine are FDA-approved for the treatment of tension headaches. Butalbital has the same chemical formula as talbutal but a different structure—one that presents as 5-allyl-5-isobutylbarbituric acid.


title: Butalbital

text: There are specific treatments which are appropriate for targeting migraines and headaches. Butalbital is not recommended as a first-line treatment because it impairs alertness, brings risk of dependence and addiction, and increases the risk that episodic headaches will become chronic. When other treatments are unavailable or ineffective, butalbital may be appropriate if the patient can be monitored to prevent the development of chronic headache.


title: Butalbital

text: Side effects for any psychoactive drug are difficult to predict, though butalbital is usually well tolerated. Commonly reported side effects for butalbital, some of which tend to subside with continued use, include:


title: Butalbital

text: Rare side-effects include Stevens–Johnson syndrome, an adverse reaction to barbiturates, and anaphylaxis.


title: Butalbital

text: The risk and severity of all side effects is greatly increased when butalbital (or butalbital-containing medications) are combined with other sedatives (ex. ethanol, opiates, benzodiazepines, antihistamines). In particular, butalbital, especially when combined with other sedatives (e.g. opioids), can cause life-threatening respiratory depression and death. Inhibitors of the hepatic enzyme CYP3A4 may also increase the risk, severity, and duration of side effects, many drugs inhibit this enzyme as do some foods such as grapefruit and the blood orange. Taking butalbital-based medications with some other drugs may also increase the side effects of the other medication.


title: Butalbital

text: Butalbital can cause dependence or addiction. Mixing with alcohol, benzodiazepines, and other CNS-depressants increases the risk of intoxication, increases respiratory depression, and increases liver toxicity when in combination with paracetamol (acetaminophen). Use of butalbital and alcohol, benzodiazepines, and other CNS-depressants can contribute to coma, and in extreme cases, fatality.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: Luc Richard Mbah a Moute ( ; born 9 September 1986) is a Cameroonian former professional basketball player who last played for the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Mbah a Moute also plays for the Cameroon national team.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: Mbah a Moute attended Montverde Academy in Florida from 2001 to 2005, where he was coached by Kevin Sutton. Soon, he would be Westwood-bound to play for Ben Howland and UCLA.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: As a freshman in 2005–06, Mbah a Moute led the Pac-10 Champion Bruins in rebounding. Mbah a Moute led or tied for the lead for the Bruins in rebounding in 27 regular-season games. In the NCAA tournament, Mbah a Moute scored the winning layup at the end of a comeback win over Gonzaga in the Sweet 16. Mbah a Moute also posted 17 points, 9 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1 assist in a Final Four victory over LSU. For the year, Mbah a Moute averaged 8.9 points and 8.1 rebounds, and he was named Pac-10 Freshman of the Year.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: He became something of a cult phenomenon among the UCLA faithful. Along with fellow Cameroonian Alfred Aboya, the dynamic duo sparked the "Cameroon Crazies" (a take-off of Duke's "Cameron Crazies" fans) section, along with an enormously popular T-shirt which read "Moute Kicks Boute". Mbah a Moute himself became known as The Fresh Prince, after the television show of the same name.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: His mother, Goufane a Ziem Agnes Bertine, and his father, Camille Moute à Bidias, had never seen him play for UCLA until they came from Cameroon to attend the Final Four of the 2008 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. During the 2008 season, his team had a record of 35–4 and won their third straight Pac-10 title and made their third straight NCAA Final Four.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: Mbah a Moute ended his UCLA career with an honorable mention All-Pac-10, honorable mention Pac-10 All-Defensive Team selection and a fifth-place finish in scoring (8.8 ppg). He is ranked the No. 15 rebounder with a total of 775 rebounds.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: Mbah a Moute became the first player to start in three straight Final Fours at UCLA in 34 years. Bill Walton, Jamaal Wilkes, and Greg Lee (1972–74) were the last players at UCLA, and Andre Hutson and Charlie Bell of Michigan State (1999–2001) were the last to do so.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: Mbah a Moute gave up his final year of college eligibility at UCLA to enter the 2008 NBA draft, in which he was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 37th overall pick. Mbah a Moute got off to a quick start with the Bucks and quickly became a fan favorite. His strong play, especially on defense, led to him overtaking Charlie Villanueva as the Bucks' starting power forward only nine games into the season. In his second game as a starter, Mbah a Moute posted career highs of 19 points and 17 rebounds in a 101–96 victory over the Memphis Grizzlies. Bucks head coach Scott Skiles and general manager John Hammond both praised Mbah a Moute's defensive skills.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: After the 2010–11 season, Mbah a Moute became a restricted free agent. On 10 December 2011, he received a four-year, $18.7 million offer sheet from the Denver Nuggets. Three days later, the Bucks matched the offer sheet, re-signing Mbah a Moute.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: On 23 August 2014, a three-team trade was completed, involving the Timberwolves, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the Philadelphia 76ers. As part of the deal, Mbah a Moute and teammate Alexey Shved were traded to the Sixers, along with a 2015 first round draft pick from Cleveland. The Cavaliers received Kevin Love from Minnesota, whereas the Wolves received Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett from Cleveland and Thaddeus Young from Philadelphia.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: On 14 July 2015, Mbah a Moute signed with the Sacramento Kings once again. However, two days later, his contract was voided by the Kings after he failed his physical examination. Mbah a Moute felt he was mistreated by the Kings and filed grievance against the team. He later passed a medical test in order to compete for Team Africa at the 2015 NBA Africa exhibition game on 1 August.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: On 25 September 2015, Mbah a Moute signed with the Los Angeles Clippers. Midway through the 2015–16 season, the Clippers placed Mbah a Moute in the starting lineup.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: On 8 July 2016, Mbah a Moute re-signed with the Clippers. On 21 April 2017, in Game 3 of the Clippers' first-round playoff series against the Utah Jazz, Mbah a Moute scored a career playoff-high 15 points to help the Clippers win 111–106, taking a 2–1 lead in the series. The Clippers went on to lose the series to the Jazz in seven games.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: On 19 July 2017, Mbah a Moute signed with the Houston Rockets. On 22 November 2017, in a 125–95 win against the Denver Nuggets, Mbah a Moute finished with a plus-minus of +57, the highest in an NBA game in 20 years. He was a perfect 5-of-5 shooting for 13 points in 26 minutes, during which the Rockets outscored the Nuggets 93–36. On 14 December 2017, he was ruled out for two to three weeks with a shoulder injury. Mbah a Moute dislocated his shoulder for a second time on 10 April 2018, in a 105–99 win over the Los Angeles Lakers. He subsequently missed the first round of the playoffs.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: On 19 July 2018, Mbah a Moute signed with the Los Angeles Clippers, returning to the franchise for a second stint. He appeared in just four games for the Clippers in 2018–19 after injuring his left knee in a game against the New Orleans Pelicans on 23 October 2018. He initially underwent various non-surgical treatment options before ultimately undergoing a partial medial meniscectomy on his left knee, with medial femoral condyle chondroplasty, on 28 March 2019. He was subsequently waived by the Clippers on 7 April.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: Mbah a Moute is a prince in the village of Bia Messe in the district of Bafia (near Yaoundé), as he is a son of the elected village chief, Camille Mouté à Bidias. His father is a high-ranking government official, managing the National Employment Fund of Cameroon, a training and job-placement national agency. Mbah a Moute is the twin brother of Emmanuel Bidias a Moute, who played basketball for Texas State University. His younger brother, Roger Moute a Bidias, is a basketball player for the California Golden Bears. Luc Mbah a Moute married Aurelie Van Assche on February 15, 2020, in Yaounde their hometown.


title: Luc Mbah a Moute

text: Mbah a Moute helped discover Cameroonian center Joel Embiid, the third overall pick in the 2014 NBA draft and eventual teammate on the Philadelphia 76ers. He also helped discover another Cameroonian player, power forward Pascal Siakam, the 27th pick in the 2016 NBA draft. and NBA G-League 2017-18 Defensive Player of the Year Landry Nnoko.


title: Gigantosaurus

text: Gigantosaurus () is a dubious genus of sauropod dinosaur from the Late Jurassic Kimmeridge Clay Formation of England. The type species, "Gigantosaurus megalonyx", was named and described by Harry Govier Seeley in 1869. Its syntype series consists of several separately discovered sauropod bones found in Cambridgeshire, including two caudal (tail) vertebrae (CAMSM J.29477 and CAMSM J.29478), the distal end of a tibia (CAMSM J.29483), a cast of the right radius (CAMSM J.29482), a cast of phalanx (CAMSM J.29479) and an osteoderm (CAMSM J.29481). It was synonymised to "Ornithopsis humerocristatus" by Richard Lydekker in 1888 and to "Pelorosaurus" by Friedrich von Huene in 1909. Today it is considered a "nomen dubium".


title: Gigantosaurus

text: Because of these references Eberhard Fraas incorrectly assumed in 1908 the name was available for other species and he used it, despite it being preoccupied, for African material totally unrelated to the British finds. As a result, the name "Gigantosaurus" factored into the convoluted taxonomic history of the African dinosaurs "Barosaurus", "Tornieria", and "Janenschia". A discussion of this can be found in the main "Tornieria" article.


title: Tech noir

text: Tech-noir (also known as cyber noir, future noir and science fiction noir) is a hybrid genre of fiction, particularly film, combining film noir and science fiction, epitomized by Ridley Scott's "Blade Runner" (1982) and James Cameron's "The Terminator" (1984). The tech-noir presents "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality."


title: Tech noir

text: Cameron coined the term in "The Terminator", using it as the name of a nightclub, but also to invoke associations with both the film noir genre and with futuristic sci-fi.


title: Tech noir

text: The word "noir", from "film noir", is the French term (literally "black film" or "dark film") for American black-and-white films of the 1940s and 1950s, which always seemed to be set at night in an urban landscape, with a suitably dark subject-matter, although the treatment is often sexy and glamorous as well as stylised and violent. The genre was informed by a slew of crime novels, with Raymond Chandler's "The Big Sleep" and "Farewell, My Lovely" being notable examples. Being often typified by crime thrillers with a private detective hero and a succession of attractive, deadly heroines, the classic noir style may also be called "detective noir".


title: Tech noir

text: From this derive various related and subverted terms, such as neo-noir (resurgence of the form in 1960s and 1970s America); the Cold War noir (exploiting the tension and paranoia of the nuclear age); blaxploitation films, which some called black noir; Nordic noir, set in the stark landscape and apparently bland social environment of the Scandinavian countries, yet revealing a dark legacy of cruel misogyny, brutal sexual repression, and murder. From the same source comes cyber noir, also called tech noir, which may deal with intrigues and criminal enterprises in either the real world of computers and high technology, or in the virtual landscapes of a techno-generated underworld - and sometimes both.


title: Tech noir

text: Beginning in the 1960s, the most significant trend in film noir crossovers or hybrids has involved science fiction. In Jean-Luc Godard's "Alphaville" (1965), Lemmy Caution is the name of the old-school private eye in the city of tomorrow. "The Groundstar Conspiracy" (1972) centers on another implacable investigator and an amnesiac named Welles. "Soylent Green" (1973), the first major American example, portrays a dystopian, near-future world via a self-evidently noir detection plot; starring Charlton Heston (the lead in "Touch of Evil"), it also features classic noir standbys Joseph Cotten, Edward G. Robinson, and Whit Bissell. The movie was directed by Richard Fleischer, who two decades before had directed several strong B noirs, including "Armored Car Robbery" (1950) and "The Narrow Margin" (1952).


title: Tech noir

text: Cyber noir, also called tech noir, deals either with dark shenanigans in the world of computers and hi-tech supernerds; or the virtual landscapes of a techno-generated underworld; or both. The term is a portmanteau that describes the conjunction of technology and science fiction: cyber- as in cyberpunk and -noir as film noir.


title: Tech noir

text: The related cyberpunk genre itself is another portmanteau: cyber- being the prefix used in cybernetics, the study of communication and control in living organisms, machines and organisations, although usually understood as the interface of man and machine; from Greek κυβερνήτης kubernétes, a helmsman. This, combined with punk, originally African-American slang for a young male prostitute, latterly an outsider in society, then the target and subject of punk music and subculture, where the keyword is alienation.


title: Tech noir

text: The cynical and stylish perspective of classic film noir had a formative effect on the cyberpunk genre of science fiction that emerged in the early 1980s. The movie most directly influential on cyberpunk was "Blade Runner" (1982), directed by Ridley Scott, which pays clear and evocative homage to the classic noir mode throughout the film. (Scott would subsequently direct the 1987 noir crime melodrama "Someone to Watch Over Me".)


title: Tech noir

text: Strong elements of tech-noir also feature in Terry Gilliam's "dystopian satire" "Brazil" (1985) and "The City of Lost Children" (1995), one of two "Gilliamesque" films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro that were influenced by Gilliam's work in general and by "Brazil" in particular (the other one being "Delicatessen"). Scholar Jamaluddin Bin Aziz has observed how "the shadow of Philip Marlowe lingers on" in such other "future noir" films as "12 Monkeys" (Gilliam, 1995), "Dark City" (1998), and "Minority Report" (2002). The hero is subject to investigation in "Gattaca" (1997), which fuses film noir motifs with a scenario indebted to "Brave New World". "The Thirteenth Floor" (1999), like "Blade Runner", is an explicit homage to classic noir, in this case involving speculations about virtual reality. Science fiction, noir, and animation are brought together in the Japanese films "Ghost in the Shell" (1995) and "" (2004), both directed by Mamoru Oshii, and in films such as France's "Renaissance" (2006) and the Disney sequel "" (2010) from America.


title: Squalane

text: Squalane is a hydrocarbon derived by hydrogenation of squalene. In contrast to squalene, due to the complete saturation of squalane, it is not subject to auto-oxidation. This fact, coupled with lower costs associated with squalane, make it desirable in cosmetics manufacturing, where it is used as an emollient and moisturizer. The hydrogenation of squalene to produce squalane was first reported in 1916.


title: Squalane

text: Squalene was traditionally sourced from the livers of sharks, with approximately 3000 required to produce one ton of squalane. Due to environmental concerns, other sources such as olive oil, rice and sugar cane have been commercialized, and as of 2014 have been supplying about 40% of the industry total. In manufacturing, farnesene is produced from fermentation of sugarcane sugars using genetically modified "Saccharomyces cerevisiae" yeast strains. Farnesene is then dimerized to isosqualene and then hydrogenated to squalane.


title: Squalane

text: Squalane was introduced as an emollient in the 1950s. The unsaturated form squalene is produced in human sebum and the livers of sharks. Squalane has low acute toxicity and is not a significant human skin irritant or sensitizer.


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: The Cure is the twelfth studio album by English rock band of the same name, released in June 2004 by Geffen Records. The album was entirely produced by American producer Ross Robinson and spawned the single "The End of the World".


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: "The Cure" was coproduced by Cure frontman Robert Smith and Ross Robinson, who had worked with bands such as Korn, Limp Bizkit, Slipknot, At the Drive-In, Glassjaw and the Blood Brothers. This may explain why the songs on the album are heavier than previous material by the band. Smith described the record as "Cure heavy", as opposed to "new-metal heavy".


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: According to the liner notes, the entire album was recorded live in the studio. According to Smith, the official track listing includes the closing "Going Nowhere", which was excluded from North American pressings.


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: Demos of three songs recorded during the album's sessions, titled "A Boy I Never Knew", "Please Come Home" and "Strum", have leaked as MP3 files. Smith explained:


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: The artwork was designed by Smith's nephews and nieces: children who were unaware that their drawings were to be put on the album. The drawings were supposed to be of a 'good dream' and a 'bad dream' from each niece and nephew. Smith compiled the best drawings on the album and then produced it.


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: "The Cure" is the first record by the band released by producer Ross Robinson's I Am label, with whom the Cure signed a three-album deal. To promote the album, the band appeared at several festivals in Europe and the United States in spring 2004. They also premièred the song "The End of the World" on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno". In the summer of 2004, the band launched the festival, where they performed shows across the United States with a number of bands who have been inspired by the Cure, including Mogwai, Interpol and Muse. The band then performed in Mexico, followed by additional festivals and televised performances in Europe, culminating with the end of 2004. By the end of the year, every song from "The Cure" had been performed live by the band.


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: "The Cure" was first released in Japan on 25 June 2004. It was then released in the UK and Europe on 28 June and then in the US the day after. It debuted at No. 7 in the United States, selling 91,000 copies in its first week of release, and No. 8 in the United Kingdom.


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: Initial pressings included a bonus DVD containing a documentary of the conception of three songs from the album, titled "Making 'The Cure"'.


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: Critical response to "The Cure" has been generally positive. Metacritic calculated the weighted average score given to "The Cure" at 75 out of 100. Adam Sweeting of "The Guardian" described it as a "masterful performance all round", highlighting the songs "The End of the World", "Going Nowhere", "Anniversary" and "The Promise". Rob Fitzpatrick of "NME" described it as "startling from the first listen. " Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone" wrote "it's the grooviest thing, it's a perfect dream", and pointed out the album's highlights as being "Before Three", "Lost" and "(I Don't Know What's Going) On". While stating that "as with Prince on "Musicology", Smith allows the Cure's current lineup to become his own tribute band", David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly" nonetheless concluded that the "newly-vibrant music looks back lovingly as well on a time when Cure songs managed to combine a throbbing, oingo-boingo springiness with the depressive angst of suburban-basement isolation".


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: AllMusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine was mixed in his review of "The Cure", qualifying it as "the type of record that sits on the shelves of diehard fans, only occasionally making its way on the stereo". Andy Greenwald of "Blender" felt that the band "come off more than ever like a caricature", writing: "There are a few breaks of sunlight, including the single 'The End of the World' and 'Taking Off', a strummy echo of 1992's chart-topping "Wish". After that, it's right back into the abyss." "The Independent"s Andy Gill panned the album as being "just as stunted musically as emotionally, the bleak chordings and grey washes barely differing throughout, whatever an individual song's outlook."


title: The Cure (The Cure album)

text: All lyrics written by Robert Smith; all music by the Cure (Smith, Perry Bamonte, Simon Gallup, Jason Cooper and Roger O'Donnell).


title: RT-23 Molodets

text: The RT-23 Molodets (, lit. "brave man" or "fine fellow"; NATO reporting name: SS-24 Scalpel) was a cold-launched, three-stage, solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile developed and produced before 1991 by the Yuzhnoye Design Bureau in Dnipro, Ukraine (then part of the Soviet Union). It came in silo- and rail-based variants, and was armed with 10 MIRV warheads (GRAU index: "15Ф444") of 550 kt yield. All missiles were decommissioned by 2005 in accordance with the START II.


title: RT-23 Molodets

text: The missile and rail-based missile complex – or (, lit. ""Combat Rail-based Missile Complex"") – were developed by the brothers Vladimir and as chief engineers in Yuzhnoye Design Bureau and Design Bureau for Special Machine-Building respectively. It was the culmination of a major Soviet effort to develop a solid-propellant ICBM with multiple basing modes which was initiated in 1969. As addition to the silo- and rail-based versions, a road-mobile version was considered but eventually rejected. The new missile was to replace the older liquid-fueled UR-100N which were entirely silo-based. Its United States counterpart was the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison, which was never deployed.


title: RT-23 Molodets

text: The missile was tested through the 1980s and was deployed in 1987. A typical "BZhRK" consisted of three modified M62-class locomotives (designated "DM62"; were not different in appearance) and seventeen railcars: a camouflaged tank with diesel fuel and lubricants reserve, three 3-car autonomous launching modules (a launch support systems car, a car with an erectable RT-23 launcher and a launcher command post car), a regiment command post car, a communications systems car, a main diesel generator car, a provision storage car with refrigerators and water tanks, a dining car and two separate living compartment cars for officers and enlisted personnel. All the railcars were camouflaged as either refrigerated vans or passenger cars. The lead locomotive was driven by three Railway Troops officers with good knowledge of a patrolling route, while the two others were operated by enlisted personnel. The train was able to cruise at speed of and launch the missiles at any point of the route on any Soviet rail line, which was made possible by implementation of the special mechanism for short-circuiting and diverting the overhead line (). Shortly after ejection by the powder pressure accumulator, at a height of 20–30 m, the missile would incline itself, so that the first-stage exhaust would not damage or overturn the railcar launcher, and then ignite the first-stage engine. The rail-based missile incorporated an inflatable nose cone as a means of length reduction for accommodation in a refrigerator car, while the silo-based variant was equipped with a more robust folding nose cone, since it was expected to be operated in a much harsher preemptive nuclear strike environment. In order to prevent damage to the railroad tracks caused by high weight of the launching car with a missile (>200 tons), the special three-car coupling system was developed for the launching modules, allowing for even weight distribution between neighboring cars. The missile train was able to function autonomously for up to 28 days.


title: RT-23 Molodets

text: In order to evaluate effects of a nearby nuclear explosion on the missile complex, on 27 February 1991, in Plesetsk, the "Sdvig" (, lit. "Shift") experiment was conducted, upon which a pile of 100,000 TM-57 anti-tank mines was detonated with the yield of 1,000 tons of TNT at a distance of 850 and 450 meters from the two separate groups of railcar launching and command modules. The experiment showed that, despite moderate damage to the railcars, the complexes were still able to conduct simulated missile launches (the computer system of one of them required a reboot). The level of acoustic pressure in the command modules, however, "exceeded 150 dB" and "would have resulted in a 20-minutes hearing loss" for the personnel. Prior to that, in 1988, at Semipalatinsk Test Site, the rail-based complex took part in the "Siyanie" (, lit. "Shining") and "Groza" (, lit. "Thunderstorm") experiments, meant to evaluate its EMP and lightning protection effectiveness.


title: RT-23 Molodets

text: According to US Defense Department, as of September 1991, production of the RT-23 had ended with approximately 90 missiles deployed. Its production facilities were located in Ukraine, and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the production of the missile was halted. The 46 silo-based missiles located in Ukraine were deactivated by mid-1996 and put into storage awaiting a decision on a feasible disposal method, while their warheads were sent to Russia for dismantlement. In 1998–2001, all Ukrainian RT-23 missiles were dismantled and 45 out of 46 RT-23 silos exploded, with one of them left intact for exhibition purposes. A total of 46 missiles remained in service by April 1997 with the Strategic Missile Forces (10 silo- and 36 rail-based). The remaining 10 silo-based missiles in Russia were deactivated and sent for dismantlement in 2001, and their silos were modified for Topol-M complexes. After 2000, the rail-based missiles were also gradually withdrawn from service, with the remaining 15 decommissioned in August 2005. In that same year, Nikolay Solovtsov, then commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, officially announced retirement of the RT-23 rail-based complex. The last RT-23 ICBM in Russia was eliminated in April 2008.


title: RT-23 Molodets

text: Its successor, BZhRK Barguzin, was reportedly under development for the Strategic Missile Forces (RVSN), but in 2017 it was announced the project had been frozen due to insufficient funding.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: Transportation Safety and System Stabilization Act (49 USC 40101), shortly after 9/11 to compensate the victims of the attack (or their families) in exchange for their agreement not to sue the airline corporations involved. Kenneth Feinberg was appointed by Attorney General John Ashcroft to be special master of the fund. He developed the regulations governing the administration of the fund and administered all aspects of the program. Legislation authorizes the fund to disburse a maximum of $7.375 billion, including operational and administrative costs, of U.S. government funds.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: Feinberg was responsible for making the decisions on how much each family of a victim would receive. Feinberg had to estimate how much each victim would have earned in a full lifetime. If a family accepted the offer, it was not possible to appeal. Families unhappy with the offer were able to appeal in a nonadversarial, informal hearing to present their case however they wanted. Feinberg personally presided over more than 900 of the 1,600 hearings. At the end of the process $7 billion was awarded to 97% of the families. A non-negotiable clause in the acceptance papers for the settlements was that the families were to never file suit against the airlines for any lack of security or otherwise unsafe procedures.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: A stumbling block to settlements was the fact that many of the World Trade Center victims were highly compensated financial professionals. Families of these victims felt the compensation offers were too low, and, had a court considered their case on an individual basis, they would have been awarded much higher amounts. This concern had to be balanced against the time, complications, and risks of pursuing an individual case, and the real possibility that the airlines and their insurers could be bankrupted before being able to pay the claim.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: This is a separate fund from the similarly named September 11th Fund, and from the World Trade Center Captive Insurance Company.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: In his book titled "What is Life Worth?", Feinberg described the eight-part plan which was applied to approaching the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund (see Publications section below).


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (i) Identify someone with sufficient and exceptionally broad experience in mass tort action mediation, litigation, and settlement, which Feinberg possessed through his previous personal experience as a political activist and his work in the Agent Orange compensation settlement.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (ii) To support and follow the unprecedented law of Congress for the proportional compensation of victims based on estimated loss from future earnings as a key legislated criterion. Hire a full staff of accountants and attorneys to track and service each claim individually.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (iii) Accumulate all the reports and applications, along with counter-claims to gauge and initiate the direct compensation process. How the compensation fund worked was in detail substantially different from the Agent Orange mass tort litigation case.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (iv) The place of informed discretion in compensating claimants under the formula of keeping the domain of compensation (p47 of Feinberg's book) under the rule of thumb that 85% of the money should not go to 15% of the 'richest' claimant families, under the principle of "narrow the gap" between the largest and the smallest compensations paid to claimants.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (v) With a mind to the future, the process of the program should be maintained and serviced as a precedent for future courts to defend in future compensation cases as needed. The actions taken should be uniform in their approach.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (vi) There would be "no substitute for hard work and legal craftsmanship" of rigorous intellectual honesty.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (vii) The support of Edward Kennedy would be recognized throughout the process whom Feinberg knew since 1975 (p7-8).


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: (viii) Lawsuits were to be discouraged as contrary to the spirit of an enacted Law of Congress legislated to expedite the claim process of victims of September 11th.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: Despite the disputed claim of the "9/11 Commission Report" that the Saudi Arabian government was not involved in the attacks, some 9/11 families sued the Saudi Arabian government in 2016 seeking additional restitution. The lawsuit accuses the Saudis of wrongful death.


title: September 11th Victim Compensation Fund

text: In February 2022, the Joe Biden administration allowed a $3.5 billion fund from the government of Afghanistan to be used by the victims of the 9/11 attacks.


title: Bridget Powers

text: Bridget Powers (born October 11, 1980) is an American pornographic actress with dwarfism. She is often credited as "Bridget the Midget" or with the alternate spelling "Bridget Powerz". Besides her adult work, she has also appeared in many films in either comedic or dramatic roles, such as "Big Money Rustlas", "Tiptoes", and "S.W.A.T."


title: Bridget Powers

text: Powers was born in Boise, Idaho. Her parents divorced when she was one year old, and she had a number of operations between the ages of three and fourteen to correct bowed legs; the results left her with one straight leg and one that points to the left. Powers has to wear a knee brace.


title: Bridget Powers

text: Powers was discovered at a goth nightclub by a man who was working as a make-up artist for a gothic vampire adult movie. She made her first porn film in 1999. By her own count, she appeared in 65 to 70 original films, with compilations bringing that up to over 110. She left the business, as she wished to do condom-only scenes yet many of the male performers would remove the condoms. Disillusioned with the exploitation of the porn film industry, she then set up her own video on demand website.


title: Bridget Powers

text: She was a co-host on Ed Powers' radio show "Bedtime Stories". She is also in a band named Blakkout. In addition to her erotic film roles, she has appeared in several mainstream films, such as "8mm", "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", "S.W.A.T.", "", "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" and independent films such as "Almost Amateur", "Tiptoes", and "Lynsey does Jody 2 – Extreme Edition".


title: Bridget Powers

text: She appeared as herself in the 2002 HBO documentary series "", which explored the lives of the owners, management, staff and customers of the Moonlite BunnyRanch brothel in Mound House, Nevada. As "Bridget the Midget", she was featured in an episode of the History Channel series "Wild West Tech". In 2006, she appeared on an episode of VH1's celebrity reality show, "The Surreal Life". She has also appeared on "The Howard Stern Show" on E! She also played the role of Tink, Sheriff Sugar Wolf's love interest in the 2010 film "Big Money Rustlas".


title: Bridget Powers

text: She has one child. On September 18, 2019, she was arrested and booked into the Clark County Detention Center after stabbing her boyfriend Jesse James in the leg at her home in Las Vegas.


title: Daniel Hugh Kelly

text: Daniel Hugh Kelly (born August 10, 1952) is an American stage, film and television actor. He is best known for his role on the 1980s ABC TV series "Hardcastle and McCormick" (1983–86) as the ex-con Mark "Skid" McCormick, co-starring with actor Brian Keith.


title: Daniel Hugh Kelly

text: The middle of five children, Kelly was born and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where his grandfather and father were police officers/detectives and his mother was a social worker. He attended and graduated from Roselle Catholic High School in 1970. A graduate of St. Vincent College (Latrobe, Pennsylvania) in 1974, he pursued a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at Catholic University (Washington, D.C.) on a full scholarship.


title: Daniel Hugh Kelly

text: Kelly appeared in numerous Off-Broadway and Off-Off-Broadway productions, primarily at The Public Theater and Second Stage Theatre. A product of regional repertory theater, Kelly has been a company member of the Williamstown Theater Festival (Massachusetts), the Folger Theater (DC), Arena Stage (DC), and the Actors Theatre of Louisville among others.


title: Daniel Hugh Kelly

text: He toured with the National Players, the oldest classical touring company in the United States. He starred on Broadway opposite Madeline Kahn's Billie in "Born Yesterday" in 1989, and as Brick opposite Kathleen Turner's Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in 1990. In 2003, he appeared at the Mark Taper Forum (Los Angeles), originating the role of Richard in "Living Out" by Lisa Loomer.


title: Daniel Hugh Kelly

text: Kelly starred on daytime TV in "Ryan's Hope" as Senator Frank Ryan (1978–1981). Aside from "Hardcastle and McCormick", he has starred in such television series as "Chicago Story"; "I Married Dora", "Second Noah", "Ponderosa" and "Walt Disney Presents The 100 Lives of Blackjack Savage" (1991) which he also co-produced. He returned to daytime television on "As the World Turns", playing Col. Winston Mayer (2007–2009). He guest-starred in some television series, such as "Law & Order", "", "", "Memphis Beat", "The West Wing", "", "Supernatural", "Major Crimes, Boston Legal", "Las Vegas" and "Walker, Texas Ranger".


title: Daniel Hugh Kelly

text: He also appeared in miniseries and television movies, such as "Passing Glory", "The Tuskegee Airmen", "Citizen Cohn", "From the Earth to the Moon" and "The Nutcracker", among others. His feature film roles include the 1983 horror film "Cujo", "The Good Son", "The In Crowd", "Chill Factor", "Nowhere to Hide", "Bad Company", "Someone to Watch Over Me", and "".


title: Punta Mita

text: Punta Mita is a private peninsula that is home to the Four Seasons Punta Mita, St. Regis Punta Mita, and 16 sub-communities. Punta Mita is located on the north end of Banderas Bay in the Mexican state of Nayarit, about north of Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco. There is evidence of prehistoric (pre-contact) human settlement in Nayarit. On the Punta Mita peninsula, a hilltop archaeological site known as Careyeros Hill has been dated to c. 800 AD.


title: Punta Mita

text: Punta Mita is surrounded on three sides by nine and a half miles of Pacific Ocean beaches and coves including Litibu Bay.


title: Punta Mita

text: Punta Mita is at the same latitude as the Hawaiian Islands. It is kept comfortable year round by gentle sea breezes, with average summer temperatures around , and during winter months. Because of its mild tropical climate, Punta Mita is a popular vacation spot.


title: Punta Mita

text: In November 2012, several prominent Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and investors who own properties in the area, including Wendell Brown, Mike Maples, Tim Ferriss, and Taro Gold launched a structured mentoring program and early-stage seed fund in partnership with the MITA Institute and Tech Accelerator. The MITA Institute hosts an annual "Tech Talks" conference in Punta Mita, which brings together venture capital and tech leaders from both the U.S. and Mexico.


title: Punta Mita

text: Through his Cascade Investment, Bill Gates acquired the Punta Mita Four Seasons resort and adjacent land for $200 million in 2014, reportedly with the aim of attracting even more technology executives to the region.


title: Punta Mita

text: Casa Tau was the filming location for "Too Hot to Handle", a reality television dating show that was released on Netflix on 17 April 2020.


title: Punta Mita

text: Punta Mita has a tropical wet and dry climate (Köppen "Aw") featuring stable, warm temperatures all year round, with two marked seasons, a dry season from November through May, and a wet season from June through October, during this season hurricanes may threaten the village. UV radiation levels are high all year round, ranging from 7 in January and December, to 11+ between April and September. From mid-May to mid-November the heat and humidity can be uncomfortable in Punta Mita. The most comfortable weather in Punta Mita generally occurs from late December to the end of March.


title: Punta Mita

text: The temperature of the sea is quite stable, with lows of between February – March, and a high of in August - September.


title: Thomas Hitzlsperger

text: Thomas Hitzlsperger (born 5 April 1982) is a German director of football and former footballer who played as a midfielder. In February 2019, he was appointed Head of Sport of VfB Stuttgart and was subsequently promoted to CEO. In March 2022, he stepped down from this position.


title: Thomas Hitzlsperger

text: As a player he spent the early part of his career playing for Aston Villa in England (accompanied by a short loan spell at Chesterfield), before returning to Germany to play for Stuttgart, where he won the Bundesliga in 2007. In 2010, he signed for Italian side Lazio, before moving back to England to join West Ham United later that year. He then had brief spells with Wolfsburg and Everton.


title: Thomas Hitzlsperger

text: Hitzlsperger also represented the Germany national team, earning 52 caps and being selected for the 2006 World Cup and Euro 2008. Following a series of injuries, he retired from football in September 2013. After his retirement, he came out as gay, the highest-profile male footballer in the world to do so.


title: Thomas Hitzlsperger

text: After joining the VfB Forstinning youth team in 1988, Hitzlsperger signed to the Bayern Munich Junior Team, but agreed to leave at the end of the 1999–2000 season.


title: Thomas Hitzlsperger

text: After a short trial with Celtic in August 2000, Hitzlsperger joined Aston Villa on a free youth transfer from Bayern Munich. He made his Aston Villa debut in a 3–0 home defeat to Liverpool on 13 January 2001 as an 84th-minute substitute for Jlloyd Samuel; it was his only appearance during his first season in England.


title: Thomas Hitzlsperger

text: Whilst at Aston Villa, Hitzlsperger was briefly loaned out to Second Division club Chesterfield during the 2001–02 season, making his debut in a 1–0 home win against Kidderminster Harriers in the Football League Trophy second round. On 21 November, his link was extended for another month. In all he made six appearances for the Spireites, five of which were in the league. He was recalled by Aston Villa during the second month of the loan spell however, as the Birmingham club had several players injured or suspended. On 20 April 2002, away to already relegated Leicester City, he hit the post after five minutes, from which Peter Crouch opened the scoring from the rebound; Hitzlsperger later scored his first senior goal in the 2–2 draw, from a solo run.


title: Thomas Hitzlsperger

text: Hitzlsperger moved into the Aston Villa first team following the arrival of new manager Graham Taylor. On 14 December 2002, his last-minute 30-yard strike past Russell Hoult sealed a 2–1 win over rivals West Bromwich Albion. He later played a significant part in the Aston Villa side that finished sixth under David O'Leary, before falling out of favour the following season. Hitzlsperger left Aston Villa as a fan favourite, and stated that he might return to the club when the opportunity comes. He gained the nickname (The Hammer) during his time at Villa Park, due to his powerful left-foot shot from long-range. A fluent speaker of English, he acquired an unusual Brummie-German hybrid accent during his spell at Villa.