In autumn 1997, after five years, their third record, "Static & Silence", was released. It got mixed reviews. "Summertime", the first song on the album, was their most successful song the UK Charts up to that time.
The Sundays took a break after the album "Static & Silence".
Mitigating factor (United States)
When a person commits a capital crime, a mitigating factor is something that might help the person avoid getting the death penalty. ("To mitigate" means "to decrease." A "factor" is something that causes something else. So, in law, a mitigating factor is something that can cause punishment to decrease.)
Mitigating factors do not automatically result in decreased punishment. Judges and juries also think about aggravating factors things that are likely to cause a more severe punishment.
Also, mitigating factors are not an excuse for committing a crime. They may help explain what caused a person to commit a crime, but they do not mean the person did nothing wrong.
In the United States, mitigating factors are very important in death penalty cases. Mitigating factors can help prosecutors decide whether to ask for the death penalty. Also, the United States Supreme Court has ruled several times that judges and juries must think about mitigating factors before deciding on a sentence.
Since 1972, the Supreme Court has tried to make capital punishment in the United States fairer and more consistent. The Court has ruled that state laws cannot say a person "must" get the death penalty if they commit a certain crime, no matter what. To be fair, the Court ruled, each judge or jury has to think about whether an individual defendant deserves the death penalty. As Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun wrote in a 1994 case:
As part of this process, the judge or jury has to think about mitigating factors that might make a less severe punishment fit better.
In "Lockett v. Ohio", , the Court ruled that state laws may not limit what mitigating factors judges and juries can consider. The Court added that mitigating factors should include:
In other words, as legal scholar Jeffrey Kirchmeier explains:
Each state has its own death penalty law. Each law gives a list of capital crimes in the state; aggravating factors that can make person more likely to get the death penalty; and specific mitigating factors. However, the mitigating factors listed in each state law are only examples of possible mitigating factors. Even if a state does not list a certain thing as a mitigating factor, a defendant can still bring up that factor in court.
The United States' federal courts can try people for federal crimes and can sentence them to death. Federal law includes a death penalty law, 18 U.S. Code § 3592. It says that when deciding whether or not to give a defendant the death penalty, the judge or jury must "consider any factor, including these:
While each state law is a little different, most of them list the same mitigating factors as the federal law. Examples of other mitigating factors in some of the states' laws include:
Oklahoma's sentencing law, Code Section OUJI-CR 4-78, just says that mitigating factors are:
Alessandro Moreschi
Alessandro Moreschi (11 November 1858 – 21 April 1922) was a castrato singer of the late 19th century and the only castrato to make solo recordings.
All of Moreschi's recordings were made in Rome in two recording sessions for the Gramophone & Typewriter Company. The first series of recordings were made on 3 and 5 April 1902 by Will and Fred Gaisberg. Eighteen usable sides by the members of the Sistine Chapel Choir were made on wax. Four of them were solos by Moreschi.
Many years later Fred Gaisburg remembered making these historic first recordings in the Vatican: "Selecting a great salon with walls covered with Titians, Raphaels, and Tintorettos, we mounted our grimy machine right in the middle of the floor."
The second set of recordings was made in Rome in April 1904.
Alessandro was a member of the Sistine choir until Easter 1913. He then retired and got a pension after thirty years' service.
In retirement, Moreschi lived in his apartment, a few minutes' walk from the Vatican. He died there at sixty-three, possibly of pneumonia. His funeral mass was a large and public affair in the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso.
Saga
Sagas are stories mostly about ancient Nordic and Germanic life. Some are entirely invented, and some have an historical basis.
They tell about early Viking voyages, the battles that took place during the voyages, about migration to Iceland and of feuds between Icelandic families. They were written in the Old Norse language, mainly in Iceland.
The texts are tales in prose which share some similarities with the epic, often with stanzas or whole poems in alliterative verse embedded in the text, of heroic deeds of days long gone, "tales of worthy men," who were often Vikings, sometimes pagan, sometimes Christian. They are sometimes romanticised and fantastic, but always dealing with human beings one can understand.
The best sagas are recognised as fine literature. "Njál's Saga", or the "Saga of Burnt Njál", is one of the most famous.
In Old English (Anglo-Saxon), Beowulf is a saga written in England, and so is the later Gawain and the Green Knight, written in a West Midlands dialect. These are both works of the imagination, but Layamon's "Brut" (about 1200 AD) is based on English history since the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle".
"The Icelandic sagas are the backbone of all ... literature" from the Nordic countries, says Roy Jacobsen , a translator of Sagas of Icelanders, and author.
Institut aéronautique Jean Mermoz
The Institut aéronautique Jean Mermoz (IAJM) is a French airline pilot school created in 1957. It is in Rungis, Ile-de-France
The school is famous for its aviation books, published in French and also in English since 2016, thanks to a cooperation with the French Civil Aviation University.
The school is member of the International Association of Aviation Personnel Schools and is in partnership with the aerospace university IPSA to offer a double-degree MSc in aviation / airline pilot.
Rosendale Trestle
The Rosendale Trestle is a bridge in Ulster County, New York. It was completed in 1872. It also was a railroad. It is 940 feet.
Least squares
Least squares is the name of a procedure in mathematics, to construct a function from a number of observed values. The basic idea is to construct the function in such a way that the sum of the difference between the observed value and its data point is minimized. Since the difference may go in either direction, the value of the difference is squared, for each value.
Carl Friedrich Gauss said he developed the method in 1795. He used it to recover the lost asteroid 1 Ceres and published it in 1807. He used ideas from Pierre-Simon Laplace. Adrien-Marie Legendre developed the same method independently, in 1805.
Assistance of Counsel Clause
The Assistance of Counsel Clause is a part of the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. It says: "In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right...to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense." This means that anyone being accused of a crime has the right to have a lawyer help defend them. ("Counsel" is a legal word for "lawyer.")
Since the Constitution was written, many questions have come up about what exactly the Assistance of Counsel Clause means. The Supreme Court of the United States has made many decisions to answer these questions. The Court has decided that Americans have five different rights under the Assistance of Counsel Clause:
The Supreme Court case "Brewer v. Williams", , answered the question of when a person's right to a lawyer begins. In this decision, the Court said a person has the right to have a lawyer's help "at or after":
After any of these things happen, a person has the right to a lawyer whenever they are interrogated.