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the 2001 season🚨Super Bowl XXXVI was an American football game between the National Football Conference (NFC) champion St. Louis Rams and the American Football Conference (AFC) champion New England Patriots to decide the National Football League (NFL) champion for the 2001 season. The Patriots defeated the Rams by the score of 20ÿ17. It was New England's first Super Bowl championship, and the franchise's first league championship of any kind, having suffered two previous losses.[a] The game was also notable for snapping the AFC East's long streak of not being able to win a Super Bowl championship, as the division's teams had lost eight Super Bowls in total (prior to the Patriots victory in XXXVI). The game was played at the Louisiana Superdome in New Orleans, on February 3, 2002. Following the September 11 attacks earlier in the season, the NFL postponed a week of regular season games and moved the league's playoff schedule back. As a result, Super Bowl XXXVI was rescheduled from the original date of January 27 to February 3, becoming the first Super Bowl played in February. The pregame ceremonies and the halftime show headlined by the Irish rock band U2 honored the victims of the September 11 attacks. Due to heightened security measures following the terrorist attacks, this was the first Super Bowl designated as a National Special Security Event (NSSE) by the Office of Homeland Security (OHS). The OHS later established the practice of naming each subsequent Super Bowl an NSSE. This game marked the Rams' third Super Bowl appearance in franchise history and the second in three seasons. St. Louis posted an NFL-best 14ÿ2 regular season record, led by quarterback Kurt Warner and "The Greatest Show on Turf" offense. The Patriots clinched their third Super Bowl berth after posting an 11ÿ5 regular season record, led by second-year quarterback Tom Brady and a defense that ended the regular season ranked sixth in scoring. Although the Rams out-gained the Patriots 427ÿ267 in total yards, New England built a 17ÿ3 third-quarter lead off of three St. Louis turnovers. After a holding penalty in the fourth quarter negated a Patriots fumble return for a touchdown, Warner scored a 2-yard touchdown run and threw a 26-yard touchdown pass to tie the game, 17ÿ17 with 1:30 remaining. Without any timeouts, Brady led his team down the field to set up kicker Adam Vinatieri's game-winning 48-yard field goal as time expired. Brady, who completed 16 of 27 passes for 145 yards and a touchdown, was named Super Bowl MVP. After their Super Bowl-winning 1999 season, the Rams offense again dominated the league in 2000, leading the NFL in passing, scoring, and total yards. However, the Rams had one of the worst defenses in the league, ranking last in points allowed (471). This, along with injury problems and a coaching change from Super Bowl winning coach Dick Vermeil, who left the team to Mike Martz, caused the Rams to slip to a 10ÿ6 record in 2000. The season ended with a disappointing loss to the New Orleans Saints in the wild card round of the playoffs. After signing several new defensive players in the off-season, and hiring new defensive coordinator Lovie Smith, the Rams finished the 2001 season with the NFL's best regular season record at 14ÿ2. They led the league in both total offensive yards (6,930) and scoring (503). This was the Rams' third consecutive season with over 500 points, an NFL record. On defense, they only allowed 271 points, improving their 31st ranking in 2000 to 7th in 2001. The Rams' 1999ÿ2001 offense, nicknamed "The Greatest Show on Turf", is widely considered one of the best in NFL history. The team possessed an incredible amount of offensive talent at nearly every position. In 2001, quarterback Kurt Warner was awarded his second NFL Most Valuable Player Award after throwing for 4,830 yards and 36 touchdowns, with 22 interceptions, and earned a league high 101.4 passer rating. Wide receivers Torry Holt and Isaac Bruce each amassed over 1,100 receiving yards, combining for 142 receptions, 2,469 yards, and 13 touchdowns. Wide receiver Ricky Proehl caught 40 passes for 563 yards and 5 touchdowns. Tight end Ernie Conwell caught 38 passes for 431 yards and 4 touchdowns. Wide receiver Az-Zahir Hakim caught 39 passes for 374 yards, and added another 333 yards returning punts. Running back Marshall Faulk won NFL Offensive Player of the Year Award for the third year in a row in 2001. He rushed for 1,382 yards, caught 83 passes for 765 yards, scored 21 touchdowns, and became the first NFL player ever to gain more than 2,000 combined rushing and receiving yards for 4 consecutive seasons. Running back Trung Canidate was also a major contributor, rushing for 441 yards, catching 17 passes for 154 yards, returning kickoffs for 748 yards, and scoring 6 touchdowns. The Rams offensive line was led by guard Adam Timmerman and offensive tackle Orlando Pace, who was selected to the Pro Bowl for the third consecutive year. The Rams also had a solid defense, ranking third in the league in fewest yards allowed (4,733). The line was anchored by Pro Bowl defensive end Leonard Little, who led the team with 14.5 sacks and recovered a fumble, and defensive end Grant Wistrom, who recorded 9 sacks, 2 interceptions, and 1 fumble recovery. The Rams linebackers unit were led by London Fletcher, who had 4.5 sacks, 2 interceptions, and 4 forced fumbles. St. Louis also had an outstanding secondary, led by Dr Bly (6 interceptions, 150 return yards, and 2 touchdowns), Pro Bowl selection Aeneas Williams (4 interceptions, 69 return yards, 2 touchdowns), and Dexter McCleon (4 interceptions, 66 yards). The Patriots' chances for a Super Bowl appearance seemed bleak shortly after the season had begun. Before the season even started, quarterbacks coach Dick Rehbein died of a heart attack at the age of 45. The Patriots, coached by Bill Belichick, lost their first two games. In the second loss, at home to the New York Jets, starting quarterback Drew Bledsoe suffered a sheared blood vessel on a hit by Jets linebacker Mo Lewis that caused him to miss several weeks. His replacement was second-year quarterback Tom Brady, a sixth-round draft pick who had thrown only 3 passes in 2000. Also, midway through the season, wide receiver Terry Glenn, the team's leading receiver in 2000, was benched due to off-the-field problems. He had been suspended for the first four games for failing a drug test and after serving it he played in just four more before injuries and disputes with the coaching staff caused Belichick to deactivate him for good.[4][5] Upon assuming the role of starting quarterback, Brady enjoyed immediate success in the regular season, leading New England to an 11ÿ5 record. He completed 63.9 percent of his passes for 2,843 yards and 18 touchdowns with 12 interceptions and was selected to the Pro Bowl. Veteran Pro Bowl wide receiver Troy Brown was the main receiving threat, recording 101 receptions for 1,199 yards and 5 touchdowns, while also adding another 413 yards and 2 touchdowns returning punts. His 14.2 yards per punt return average led the NFL. Wide receiver David Patten also was productive, catching 51 passes for 749 yards and 4 touchdowns. Running back Antowain Smith provided the team with a stable running game, rushing for 1,157 yards, catching 19 passes for 192 yards, and scoring 13 touchdowns. New England was outstanding on defense as well. Up front, linemen Bobby Hamilton (7 sacks, 1 fumble recovery) and rookie Richard Seymour excelled at pressuring quarterbacks and stuffing the run. Behind them, the Patriots had three outstanding linebackers: Mike Vrabel (2 interceptions, 3 sacks), Willie McGinest (5 sacks), and Tedy Bruschi (2 interceptions). The secondary also featured outstanding talent such as defensive back Otis Smith, who led the team with 5 interceptions for 181 yards and 2 touchdowns. Cornerback Ty Law intercepted 3 passes, returning them for 91 yards and 2 touchdowns. Safety Lawyer Milloy had 2 interceptions during the season, and was selected along with Law to represent the New England defense in the Pro Bowl. The defense ended the season ranked 6th in scoring, but 24th in total yards allowed. During the 2001 regular season, the Patriots hosted the Rams in a nationally televised ESPN Sunday night game on November 18. Although the Patriots jumped out to an early lead, a critical turnover before the end of the first half that led to a Rams score proved costly. In the second half, the Rams wore New England down and won 24ÿ17. The Rams lost four of their defensive players with injuries. The Patriots' physical play led Rams coach Mike Martz to say after the game that the Patriots were "a Super Bowlÿcaliber team."[6] After the loss, the Patriots dropped to 5ÿ5, but did not lose again the rest of the season to clinch a first-round bye in the AFC playoffs. Coincidentally, this was the third straight time that the New England Patriots' Super Bowl appearance was hosted in New Orleans. The Patriots did not appear in a Super Bowl hosted by another city until the team played in Super Bowl XXXVIII two years later in Houston, Texas. They joined the Dallas Cowboys as the only teams to play three different Super Bowls in one stadium. The Cowboys played three at the old Miami Orange Bowl in the 1970s. The Rams began their postseason run with a 45ÿ17 win over the Green Bay Packers in the divisional round. Expected to be a close shootout between Warner and Packers quarterback Brett Favre, the Rams defense dominated the Packers by intercepting a playoff record 6 passes from Favre and returning 3 of them for touchdowns. The Rams offense also racked up 24 points on 2 touchdown passes by Warner, a touchdown run by Faulk, and a field goal by Jeff Wilkins, helping St. Louis put the game away by the end of the third quarter. One week later, the Rams advanced to the Super Bowl with a 29ÿ24 win over the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship Game. Philadelphia managed to build a 17ÿ13 halftime lead, but St. Louis scored 16 consecutive second half points (2 touchdown runs by Faulk and a Wilkins field goal) to earn the win, limiting the Eagles to only one touchdown pass in the second half. Warner finished the game with 22 of 33 pass completions for 212 yards and a touchdown, with no interceptions, while Faulk rushed for 159 yards and 2 touchdowns. In the AFC, the Patriots defeated the Oakland Raiders 16ÿ13 during a raging New England snowstorm in the last game ever played at Foxboro Stadium. The signature moment of the game was a controversial ruling by referee Walt Coleman in the fourth quarter that caused this game to be commonly known as the "Tuck Rule Game." While the Patriots possessed the ball, trailing the Raiders 13ÿ10 with under two minutes left in regulation and no time outs, Brady was sacked by defensive back Charles Woodson, and appeared to fumble the ball. The fumble was recovered by Raiders linebacker Greg Biekert, presumably ending the game with a Raiders victory. After reviewing the play using instant replay, Coleman reversed the call on the field pursuant to the "tuck rule", where a loose ball is ruled an incomplete pass if lost while "tucking" the ball. Most of the controversy centered on whether Brady was still trying to tuck the ball away when he lost control. Brady then led his team to the Raiders 27-yard line, where kicker Adam Vinatieri made a 45-yard field goal which barely cleared the crossbar to send the game into overtime. The Patriots won the toss in overtime and won on another Vinatieri field goal from 23 yards; per the overtime rules in place at that time. Oakland's offense never regained possession. In the AFC Championship Game, the Patriots traveled to Heinz Field to face the Pittsburgh Steelers, who were coming off a 27ÿ10 win over the previous season's Super Bowl champion Baltimore Ravens. New England scored first with a 55-yard punt return touchdown by Brown, but in the second quarter, Brady was knocked out of the game with a sprained ankle. He was replaced by Bledsoe in Bledsoe's first game action since being injured in September. Upon entering the game, Bledsoe quickly moved the Patriots down the field and threw an 11-yard touchdown pass to Patten to give the Patriots a 14ÿ3 halftime lead. Early in the second half, the Steelers moved from their own 32 to the New England 16, where they lined up for a field goal by Kris Brown. However, Brandon Mitchell blocked the kick, Brown picked up the ball at the 40 and ran 11 yards before lateraling to Antwan Harris, who took it 49 yards for a touchdown that made the score 21ÿ3. But Pittsburgh scored two third-quarter touchdowns to make the score 21ÿ17. The Patriots ended the comeback attempt by scoring a field goal in the fourth quarter and intercepting 2 passes from Steelers quarterback Kordell Stewart in the final 3 minutes of the game. New Orleans had been preparing for Super Bowl XXXVI ever since the city was awarded the game on October 28, 1998 during the NFL's meetings in Kansas City, Missouri, beating out San Diego as host city.[7] However, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks led the league to postpone its September 16 games and play them a week after the scheduled conclusion of the regular season. This caused the playoffs and Super Bowl to be delayed by one week. Rescheduling Super Bowl XXXVI from January 27 to February 3 proved extraordinarily difficult. In addition to rescheduling the game itself, all related events and activities had to be accommodated. This marked the first time in NFL history that the Super Bowl was played in the month of February; all subsequent Super Bowls (excluding Super Bowl XXXVII) after that have been played in February. Historically, the NFL made allowance for an open weekend between the Conference Championship games and the Super Bowl. However, there wasn't one scheduled for 2001, due to the NFL's decision beginning in the 1999 season to move the opening week of games to the weekend after Labor Day. Because the date of the Super Bowl had been set through 2003, the bye week prior to the Super Bowl did not return until 2004. The NFL and New Orleans officials worked diligently to put together a deal to reschedule the game. The league considered a number of options, including shortening the regular season, shortening the playoffs, condensing the three playoff rounds in two weeks, and moving the game to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. It was eventually decided to make every effort to maintain a full regular season and playoff, and push the Super Bowl back to February 3. Also, due to the Super Bowl being sent back a week, the first week of New Orleans Mardi Gras parades rolled one week earlier than normal. One of the most significant logistical challenges was accommodating the National Automobile Dealers Association (NADA) Convention, which was originally slated to occupy the Superdome on February 3. On October 3, 2001, the NFL announced its intentions to hold the game on February 3, even though no agreement had been reached with NADA. Several weeks later, the three parties came to an accord in which the NADA agreed to move its convention date to the original Super Bowl week in exchange for financial and other considerations, including promotional spots shown during selected regular season NFL games. This agreement permitted the NFL to move the game back to February 3, and allowed for a full standard playoff tournament. Initially, the original logo for Super Bowl XXXVI had a style that reflected the host city, and was distributed on some memorabilia items during 2001. However, after the 9/11 attacks, a new logo reflecting American pride was designed. It featured the shape of the 48 contiguous states and the American flag colors of red, white, and blue.[8] Janet Jackson was originally scheduled to perform during the Halftime Show, but allowed U2 to perform to tribute the events of September 11.[9][10] This was the final Super Bowl played on the old-style AstroTurf. From 2000 to 2005, NFL stadiums phased out the short-pile AstroTurf in favor of natural grass or other, newer artificial surfaces which closely simulate grass, like FieldTurf. Prior to Super Bowl XXXVI, Superdome officials considered installing natural grass for the game. The proposed installation method was comparable to what had been used at the Silverdome during the 1994 FIFA World Cup, and at Giants Stadium from 2000 to 2002. The plan called for large trays of grass to be grown and cultivated outdoors, then brought inside the dome and placed on the field for the game. In the end, cost and quality concerns prompted stadium and league officials to abandon the project. The Rams were entering as 14 point favorites. This was partly because Rams quarterback Kurt Warner statistically had his best year of his career, with a quarterback rating of 101.4, a 68.7 percent completion rate, and threw for 4,830 yards. Many had believed that the Patriots' Cinderella story was simply a fluke, especially after beating the veteran Oakland Raiders in a controversial playoff game in which a recovered fumble by the Raiders was reversed by the tuck rule. There had been speculation on whether longtime starter Drew Bledsoe might start the game. As stated above, Bledsoe replaced an injured Brady against the Steelers in the AFC Championship game. Eventually, though, Brady was named starter. The game was broadcast in the United States by Fox; the telecast was presented in a 480p enhanced-definition widescreen format marketed as "Fox Widescreen". While promoted as having better quality than standard-definition, and being the first U.S. sporting event produced in a widescreen format with the same production as the main feed for standard-definition viewers (rather than using a separate production for the widescreen feed), it was not true high definition, but still matched the aspect ratio of HDTV sets.[11][12] The game was called by play-by-play announcer Pat Summerall and color commentator John Madden. Pam Oliver and Ron Pitts served as sideline reporters. This was Summerall's 26th and final Super Bowl broadcast on television or radio. It was also the eighth and final Super Bowl telecast (and final NFL telecast of any kind) for the Summerall and Madden announcing team. The two had become the NFL's most famous broadcast duo since they were paired together in 1981 on CBS. After this game, Summerall retired from broadcasting and Madden moved to ABC. As a result, Madden was the first person to announce Super Bowls on different networks in consecutive years when he called Super Bowl XXXVII on ABC with Al Michaels. James Brown hosted all the events with help from his fellow Fox NFL Sunday cast members Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and Cris Collinsworth. Jillian Barberie served as the weather and entertainment reporter during the pre-game show. Memorable television commercials that aired during the game included Sony Pictures' trailer for Spider-Man, Budweiser's "Picking a Card", and Super Bowl Ad Meter commercial of the year winners Bud Light "Satin Sheets." The best commercial of the year from Adbowl M&M's "Chocolate on our Pillow or Hotel Check In" and EA Sports' Madden NFL 2002 which aired during the game three days after Madden NFL 2002 start selling in Japan by Electronic Arts Square. Before the game, an ensemble of singers featured Barry Manilow, Yolanda Adams, James Ingram, Wynonna Judd, and Patti LaBelle performing Manilow's song "Let Freedom Ring." In a video segment, past and present NFL players read excerpts from the Declaration of Independence, which has become a part of all subsequent Super Bowls carried by Fox Sports. Super Bowls XXXIX, XLII, and XLV used different active and former players (and a player's widow) reading the Declaration for each version. Former U.S. presidents Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush, and Bill Clinton appeared in another videotaped segment and recited some of the speeches by Abraham Lincoln. Because Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer's disease, his wife Nancy appeared on the segment in place of him. Singers Mary J. Blige and Marc Anthony, along with the Boston Pops Orchestra, performed "America the Beautiful". Paul McCartney then sang his post-9/11 song "Freedom". Afterwards, singer Mariah Carey, accompanied by the Boston Pops Orchestra, performed the national anthem. George H. W. Bush became the first president, past or present, to participate in a Super Bowl coin toss in person (Ronald Reagan participated in the Super Bowl XIX coin toss via satellite from the White House in 1985). Bush was joined by former Dallas Cowboys Hall of Fame quarterback Roger Staubach. Staubach played at the United States Naval Academy and was the Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl VI, which was played 30 years prior at New Orleans' Tulane Stadium. As was customary at the time, the Rams' individual offensive starters were introduced first, as the Rams were considered the visitors. However, when it came time to introduce the Patriots' starters, Pat Summerall, making the public address announcement, revealed that the Patriots chose "to be introduced as a team." According to David Halberstam's book, The Education of a Coach, Belichick was given a choice by the NFL to introduce either the offense or defense. Belichick chose neither, asking that the team be introduced all at once in the spirit of unity. Although this was initially rejected by the NFL, Belichick held his ground and the NFL honored his request. The full team introduction demonstrated solidarity, and struck a chord with the audience in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. Beginning with the next Super Bowl game, both Super Bowl participants are introduced collectively as a team, a precedent which has continued. The halftime show featured a three-song set from Irish rock band U2, who had just completed their successful Elevation Tour. After a rendition of "Beautiful Day", the band played "MLK" and "Where the Streets Have No Name" as the names of the victims from the September 11 attacks were projected onto a sheet behind the stage. While singing "Where the Streets Have No Name", the group's lead singer Bono replaced the lyrics "take shelter from the poison rain" with "dance in the Louisiana rain", "high on a desert plain" with "where there's no sorrow or pain", and the final line "it's all I can do" with "it's all we can do". At the conclusion of the song, Bono opened his jacket to reveal an American flag printed into the lining. U2's halftime show captivated the audience as a poignant tribute to those who had been lost in the attacks. In 2009, SI.com ranked it as the best halftime show in Super Bowl history,[13] while it was rated the second-greatest by Askmen.com.[14] Janet Jackson was originally selected to perform at the Halftime Show, but she instead allowed U2 to perform a tribute to the events of September 11 and due to traveling concerns following the tragedy.[9][10] She performed again for the Super Bowl halftime two years later, when her highly controversial Super Bowl Halftime Show performance incident occurred. The Rams scored first midway through the first quarter, with quarterback Kurt Warner completing 6-of-7 passes for 43 yards on a 48-yard, 10-play drive to set up a 50-yard field goal by kicker Jeff Wilkins. At the time, the field goal was the third longest in Super Bowl history. While the rest of the quarter was scoreless, the Patriots were stifling the typically high powered Rams offense by playing physical man coverage with the Rams receivers, forcing them into long drives that would end in punts or field goal attempts. Early in the second quarter, the Rams drove to New England's 34-yard line, but Warner threw an incompletion on third down, and Wilkins' subsequent 52-yard field goal attempt sailed wide left. With 8:49 left in the second quarter, a blitz by linebacker Mike Vrabel led Warner to be intercepted by Patriots defensive back Ty Law on a pass that was intended for wide receiver Isaac Bruce, Law then scored on a 47-yard return to give the Patriots a 7ÿ3 lead. With less than two minutes left in the first half, Warner completed a pass to receiver Ricky Proehl at the Rams 40-yard line, but New England defensive back Antwan Harris tackled him, and forced a fumble which was recovered by Patriots defensive back Terrell Buckley. Patriots quarterback Tom Brady started off the Patriots drive with a 16-yard completion to Troy Brown and finished it with an 8-yard touchdown pass to receiver David Patten with 31 seconds left in the half. By halftime, New England owned a surprising 14ÿ3 lead. It was the first time in the entire 2001 season that the Rams fell behind by more than eight points in a game. The Patriots received the opening kickoff of the second half, but could only reach the St. Louis 43-yard line before being forced to punt. Aided by a 20-yard reception by wide receiver Az-Zahir Hakim, a 22-yard reception by Bruce, and a defensive pass interference penalty on Patriots defensive back Otis Smith, the Rams advanced to the New England 41-yard line. However, on the next play, Vrabel and defensive lineman Richard Seymour sacked Warner for a 9-yard loss. Warner then threw 2 consecutive incomplete passes, which resulted in the Rams punting. Later in the third quarter, Smith intercepted a pass intended for Rams wide receiver Torry Holt after Holt slipped while coming off the line of scrimmage, and returned the ball 30 yards to the Rams 33-yard line. Though St. Louis' defense did not give up a touchdown to the Patriots, kicker Adam Vinatieri made a 37-yard field goal to increase New England's lead to 17ÿ3. The Rams responded by driving to the Patriots' 3-yard line on their ensuing drive. On fourth-and-goal, the Rams attempted to score a touchdown. Warner went back to pass and finding no one open scrambled to his right trying to run the ball in for a touchdown. Warner fumbled the ball while being tackled by linebacker Roman Phifer, which was recovered by defensive back Tebucky Jones who returned it 97 yards for a touchdown that would have increased the Patriots lead to 23ÿ3. However, the play was nullified by a holding penalty on linebacker Willie McGinest, who illegally hugged Rams running back Marshall Faulk and prevented him from becoming an eligible receiver. This gave the Rams a first down on the 1-yard line. On second down, Warner scored on a 2-yard touchdown run to cut the Patriots' lead to 17ÿ10. After Warner's touchdown, the Rams defense forced the Patriots to a three-and-out. St. Louis then drove from own 7-yard line to the New England 36-yard line, aided by a 30-yard reception by Proehl. However, McGinest sacked Warner for a 16-yard loss on second down, pushing the Rams back to their 46-yard line. St. Louis punted after Warner's third down pass was incomplete. The Rams forced New England to another three-and-out, and got the ball back on their own 45-yard line with 1:51 left in the game. Warner threw three consecutive completions: an 18-yard pass to Hakim, an 11-yard one to wide receiver Yo Murphy, and finally a 26-yard touchdown completion to Proehl that tied the game 17ÿ17 with 1:30 left in the fourth quarter. The Patriots had no timeouts left for their ensuing drive, which led Fox color commentator John Madden to initially suggest that the Patriots should run out the clock and attempt to win in overtime. Instead, New England attempted to get the winning score in regulation on the final drive. Bill Belichick conferred with offensive coordinator Charlie Weis and they agreed to go for it. Belichick later stated, "With a quarterback like Brady, going for the win is not that dangerous, because he's not going to make a mistake." Brady opened the drive with three dump-off completions to running back J. R. Redmond, who got out of bounds on the last one and moved the ball to their 41-yard line with 33 seconds left. At this point, Madden admitted on the air that he now liked what the Patriots were doing. After an incomplete pass, Brady completed a 23-yard pass underneath the Rams' zone defense to wide receiver Troy Brown--who also got out of bounds--and followed it up with a 6-yard completion to tight end Jermaine Wiggins to advance to the Rams' 30-yard line. Brady then spiked the ball with seven seconds left, which set up Vinatieri's 48-yard field goal attempt. Vinatieri's game-winning kick was successful, marking the first time in Super Bowl history that a game was won by a score on the final play.[15] at Louisiana Superdome, New Orleans, Louisiana Warner finished the game with 28 completions out of 44 passes for 365 yards, 1 touchdown, and 2 interceptions, and rushed 3 times for 6 yards and a touchdown. Warner's 365 passing yards were the second highest total in Super Bowl history behind his own record of 414 yards set in Super Bowl XXXIV. Hakim was the top receiver of the game with 5 catches for 90 yards, and also rushed once for 5 yards. Faulk led the team with 76 rushing yards, and also caught 4 passes for 54 yards. Patriots running back Antowain Smith was the top rusher of the game with 92 yards, and caught a pass for 4 yards. Troy Brown was the Patriots leading receiver with 6 catches for 89 yards. Brown also had a 15-yard kickoff return, and a 4-yard punt return, which gave him 108 total yards. Although the Rams outgained the Patriots 427ÿ267 in total yards, New England forced three turnovers that were converted into 17 points. The Patriots, on the other hand, committed no turnovers. Sources: NFL.com Super Bowl XXXVI, Super Bowl XXXVI Play Finder NE, Super Bowl XXXVI Play Finder StL 1Completions/attempts 2Carries 3Long gain 4Receptions 5Times targeted The following records were set in Super Bowl XXXVI, according to the official NFL.com boxscore,[17] the 2016 NFL Record & Fact Book[18] and the ProFootball reference.com game summary.[19] Records Tied Source:[20] Hall of Fame ? Four hours after the game ended, Tom Brady visited Bill Belichick's hotel room where, as per team rules, he had to get his coach's permission to miss the team flight and instead travel to Disney World in Orlando. Belichick gave him a perplexed look, and after a few seconds of dead silence, responded, "Of course you can go. How many times do you win the Super Bowl?"[15] The Patriots finished the 2002 NFL season 9-7, missing the playoffs. But they went on to win Super Bowl XXXVIII, Super Bowl XXXIX, thus winning three Super Bowls in four years. Then, they won their fourth and fifth Super Bowls (Super Bowl XLIX and Super Bowl LI) a decade after their third. Brady also won three more Super Bowl MVP awards in Super Bowl XXXVIII, Super Bowl XLIX, and Super Bowl LI, making him the only player to be named Super Bowl MVP four times. Super Bowl XXXVI later became part of the wider 2007 New England Patriots videotaping controversy, also known as "Spygate". In addition to other videotaping allegations, the Boston Herald reported, citing an unnamed source, that the Patriots had also taped the Rams' walkthrough practice prior to the game.[21] After further investigations, the league determined that no tape of the Rams' Super Bowl walkthrough was made,[22] and the Herald later issued an apology in 2008 for their article about the alleged walkthrough tape.[23] Nevertheless, the Patriots finished the 2007 regular season with a perfect 16ÿ0 record, but failed to record an undefeated 19ÿ0 championship season after losing Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants. And at the conclusion of the 2015 NFL season, the Patriots held the NFL's best record since Spygate, compiling a 96-32 record from 2008 to 2015.[24] Bill Simmons, who watched the game live at the Superdome, in his postgame column[25] The Patriots' win in this Super Bowl, beyond just serving as a springboard to four more championships, also became the starting point for a decade of success in Boston sports, with the city's teams winning seven championships in the four major North American sports leagues (the NFL, the NBA, the NHL and MLB), including at least one in each league. Over the next fifteen years, in addition to the Patriots' four additional Super Bowls: Following the Bruins winning the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals, Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy ranked all seven championships from the past decade and ranked the Patriots winning Super Bowl XXXVI as the second-greatest Boston sports championship of the decade behind only the Red Sox winning the 2004 World Series.[26] Beginning with the Rams' appearance in Super Bowl XXXVI, 10 different NFC teams appeared in the Super Bowl over the next 10 years. This trend was broken when the New York Giants earned a trip to Super Bowl XLVI after participating in Super Bowl XLII four years earlier. (The Giants defeated the Patriots in both games.) The loss signaled the beginning of the end of The Greatest Show on Turf era. The Rams finished with a 7-9 record the following year and have won only one playoff game since, following the 2004 season. Kurt Warner suffered a concussion on opening day in 2003, and was later demoted to backup quarterback for the rest of that season. He then signed with the New York Giants in 2004 as a caretaker quarterback, eventually losing the starting job to rookie quarterback Eli Manning. Warner later joined the Arizona Cardinals in 2005 and eventually led that team to an appearance in Super Bowl XLIII following the 2008 season. Super Bowl XXXVI ended up being the last Super Bowl that the Rams participated while based in St. Louis; they relocated back to Los Angeles in 2016.

Bill Klein, a businessman🚨The Little Couple is an American reality television series on TLC that debuted May 26, 2009.[1] The series features Bill Klein, a businessman, and Dr. Jennifer Arnold, a neonatologist, who both have skeletal dysplasia. Arnold is 96.5?cm (3'2") and Klein 122?cm (4 feet) tall. They moved from New York City, after Jen completed her pediatric residency and masters of medical education at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The show begins with the couple having just moved to Houston, Texas, where the series has documented the customized building of their home and attempts to have a child. Arnold is a neonatologist[2] who works at the Texas Children's Hospital, and Klein is a medical supplies and telemarketing businessman.[3][4] They were originally introduced in a one-hour TLC special, Little People: Just Married. Season 1 of the show premiered on May 26, 2009. Season 2 premiered on October 27, 2009. On February 22, 2010, TLC renewed The Little Couple for a third season consisting of 20 episodes.[5] The mid-season finale aired after 9 episodes on July 27, 2010, and season 3 returned on October 12, 2010. It was announced on Facebook that the show would be returning for its 4th season on May 31, 2011.[6] Again, the season was split, with the second half of season 4 premiering on September 27, 2011. In February 2012, Klein opened Rocky&Maggie in Rice Village Houston.[7][8][9][10] named after their pets Chihuahua Rocky and rescue mutt terrier Maggie. Arnold's mother Judy manages the store.[11] Season 5 began on March 20, 2012, and follows Klein and Arnold as they move into their custom-built dream home and launch a brand-new business.[12][13] In March 2013, they adopted their son, Will, from Hohhot, China. The adoption of their son, who also has dwarfism, is featured in Season 5.[14] On October 15, 2013, they adopted a daughter, Zoey, also a little person, from Delhi, India. The series went into an hiatus on June 4, 2013,[15] and returned on August 13, 2013.[16] In December 2013, Arnold revealed that she was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, stage 4 choriocarcinoma, due to a non-viable pregnancy she had suffered in September 2013. She allowed the cameras to document her struggle.[17][18] Season 6 premiered on March 4, 2014.[19] It features Zoey's adoption, Arnold's cancer treatment, Will's fourth birthday, baptisms, the holiday season, and Arnold's 40th birthday.[19] The new season of The Little Couple premiered on September 19, 2017.

biometric passport (also known as an e-passport, ePassport or a digital passport)🚨A biometric passport (also known as an e-passport, ePassport or a digital passport) is a traditional passport that has an embedded electronic microprocessor chip which contains biometric information that can be used to authenticate the identity of passport holder. It uses contactless smart card technology, including a microprocessor chip (computer chip) and antenna (for both power to the chip and communication) embedded in the front or back cover, or center page, of the passport. The passport's critical information is both printed on the data page of the passport and stored in the chip. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is used to authenticate the data stored electronically in the passport chip making it expensive and difficult to forge when all security mechanisms are fully and correctly implemented. Many countries are moving towards the issue of biometric passports. As of December 2008, 60 countries were issuing such passports,[1] and this number was 96 as of 5 April 2017.[citation needed] The currently standardized biometrics used for this type of identification system are facial recognition, fingerprint recognition, and iris recognition. These were adopted after assessment of several different kinds of biometrics including retinal scan. Document and chip characteristics are documented in the International Civil Aviation Organization's (ICAO) Doc 9303.[2] The ICAO defines the biometric file formats and communication protocols to be used in passports. Only the digital image (usually in JPEG or JPEG2000 format) of each biometric feature is actually stored in the chip. The comparison of biometric features is performed outside the passport chip by electronic border control systems (e-borders). To store biometric data on the contactless chip, it includes a minimum of 32 kilobytes of EEPROM storage memory, and runs on an interface in accordance with the ISO/IEC 14443 international standard, amongst others. These standards intend interoperability between different countries and different manufacturers of passport books. Some national identity cards (for example in the Netherlands, Albania and Brazil) are fully ICAO9303 compliant biometric travel documents; however others, such as the United States Passport Card, are not. Biometric passports have protection mechanisms to avoid and/or detect attacks: To assure interoperability and functionality of the security mechanisms listed above, ICAO and German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) have specified several test cases. These test specifications are updated with every new protocol and are covering details starting from the paper used and ending in the chip that is included.[6] Since the introduction of biometric passports several attacks have been presented and demonstrated. Privacy proponents in many countries question and protest the lack of information about exactly what the passports' chip will contain, and whether they impact civil liberties. The main problem they point out is that data on the passports can be transferred with wireless RFID technology, which can become a major vulnerability. Although this could allow ID-check computers to obtain a person's information without a physical connection, it may also allow anyone with the necessary equipment to perform the same task. If the personal information and passport numbers on the chip are not encrypted, the information might wind up in the wrong hands. On 15 December 2006, the BBC published an article[23] on the British ePassport, citing the above stories and adding that: and adding that the Future of Identity in the Information Society (FIDIS) network's research team (a body of IT security experts funded by the European Union) has "also come out against the ePassport scheme... [stating that] European governments have forced a document on its people that dramatically decreases security and increases the risk of identity theft."[24] Most security measures are designed against untrusted citizens (the "provers"), but the scientific security community recently also addressed the threats from untrustworthy verifiers, such as corrupt governmental organizations, or nations using poorly implemented, unsecure electronic systems.[25] New cryptographic solutions such as private biometrics are being proposed to mitigate threats of mass theft of identity. These are under scientific study, but not yet implemented in biometric passports. It was planned that, except for Denmark, Ireland and the UK, EU passports would have digital imaging and fingerprint scan biometrics placed on their RFID chips.[26] This combination of biometrics aims to create an unrivaled level of security and protection against fraudulent identification papers. Technical specifications for the new passports have been established by the European Commission.[27] The specifications are binding for the Schengen agreement parties, i.e. the EU countries, except Ireland and the UK, and three of the four European Free Trade Association countries ÿ Iceland, Norway and Switzerland.[28] These countries are obliged to implement machine readable facial images in the passports by 28 August 2006, and fingerprints by 29 June 2009.[citation needed] The European Data Protection Supervisor has stated that the current legal framework fails to "address all the possible and relevant issues triggered by the inherent imperfections of biometric systems".[29] Currently, the British and Irish biometric passports only use a digital image and not fingerprinting. German passports printed after 1 November 2007 contain two fingerprints, one from each hand, in addition to a digital photograph. Romanian passports will also contain two fingerprints, one from each hand. The Netherlands also takes fingerprints and is the only EU member that plans to store these fingerprints centrally.[30] According to EU requirements, only nations that are signatories to the Schengen acquis are required to add fingerprint biometrics.[31] In the EU nations, passport prices will be Ireland: Biometric passport booklets have been available since 16 October 2006, and Biometric passport cards since October 2015. 32-page passport booklets are priced at ?80, 66-page booklets at ?110, both valid for 10 years. For children aged between 3 and 18 years the price is ?26.50 and the passport booklets are valid for 5 years. Infants' passport booklets for those under 3 years cost ?16 and expire 3 years after issue. Irish biometric passport cards are only available to adults of 18 years and over who already have an Irish passport booklet and cost ?35. They expire on the same date as the holder's Irish passport booklet or 5 years after issue, whichever is the shorter period. (Ireland is not a signatory to the Schengen Acquis and has no obligation or plans to implement fingerprint biometrics) The Albanian biometric passport has been available since May 2009, costs 6000 Lek? (?50) and is valid for 10 years. The microchip contains ten fingerprints, the bearer's photo and all the data written on the passport. Algerian biometric passports were introduced on 5 January 2012 with a validity of 10 years for adults. On 15 June 2012, the government announced the availability of a new biometric passport at a cost of 400 pesos, valid for 10 years[60] In July 2012 Armenia introduced two new identity documents to replace ordinary passports of Armenian citizens. One of the documents ÿ ID card with electronic signature and other personal data, is used locally within the country, and the biometric passport with an electronic chip is used for traveling abroad. Electronic chip of biometric passport contains digital images of fingerprints, photo and electronic signature of the passport holder. The passport will be valid for 10 years.[61][62][63] Biometric Australian passports were introduced in October 2005. A microchip contains the same personal information that is on the colour photo page of the ePassport, including a digitized photograph. SmartGates have been installed in Australian airports to allow Australian ePassport holders and ePassport holders of several other countries to clear immigration controls more rapidly, and facial recognition technology has been installed at immigration gates.[64] Biometric Azerbaijan passports were introduced in September 2013. Biometric passports include information about the passport holder's facial features, as well as finger and palm prints. Each passport will also include a personal identification number. The program covers the development of the appropriate legislative framework and information systems to ensure information security. Bangladesh introduced biometric passports in April 2010 and costs BDT3450. All traditional non-MR passports must be withdrawn from circulation by November 2015. Available since 15 October 2009 and costing 50 KM (?25.65). Valid 10 years for adults and 5 years for younger than 18. Produced by Bundesdruckerei. On 1 June 2010 Bosnia and Herzegovina issued its first EAC passport. Botswana began to issue biometric e-passports to its citizens on 8 March 2010.[65][66] Brazil started issuing ICAO compliant passports in December 2006. However just in December 2010 it began to issue passports with microchips, first in the capital Braslia and Gois state. Since the end of January 2011 this last is available to be issued all over Brazil. It is valid for 5 years for adults and costs R$156.07 (approximately ?80).[67] In December 2014, the Federal Police Department extended the validity of the document, from five to ten years.[68] The Bruneian biometric passport was introduced on 17 February 2007. It was produced by German printer Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) following the Visa Waiver Program's requirements. The Bruneian ePassport has the same functions as the other biometric passports.[69] Cambodia began to issue biometric passports to its citizens on 17 July 2014. The cost for a 5-year passport, issued only to children aged five and under, is 80 USD; while the 10-year passport, issued to all people older than five, costs 100 USD.[70] All Canadian passports issued on or after 1 July 2013 have been ePassports containing an electronic chip encoded with the bearer's name, gender, and date and place of birth and a digital portrait of their face.[71] Cape Verde started to issue biometric passports on 26 January 2016. The cost of a biometric passport is 50 euros with a processing time of 30 days. It is noted that the scheme will gradually expand to Cape Verdean diplomatic missions in Boston and Lisbon in the future.[72] Chile introduced new biometric passports and national ID cards on 2 September 2013. The newly designed passport booklet has a validity of 5 years.[73] On 30 January 2011, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People's Republic of China launched a trial issuance of e-passports for public affairs. The face, fingerprint and other biometric features of the passport holder will be digitalized and stored in pre-installed contactless smart chip in the passport.[74][75] On 1 July 2011, the Ministry began issuing biometric passports to all individuals conducting public affairs work overseas on behalf of the Chinese government.[76] Ordinary biometric passports have been introduced by the Ministry of Public Security starting from 15 May 2012.[77] The cost of a passport is 200 CNY (approximately US$31) for first-time applicants in China and 220 CNY (or US$35) for renewals and passports issued abroad. Effective from July 1, 2017, cost of a biometric ordinary passport is reduced to 160 CNY (approximately US 24) for both first-time applicants and renewal.[78] As of April 2017, China had issued over 100 million biometric ordinary passports.[79] The Colombian foreign ministry announced that, starting 1 September 2015, new biometric passports will be issued. The only visible change will be that ordinary Colombian passports will now carry the standard biometric symbol () at the bottom of the front cover of the booklet.[80] the cost of the passport is COP 163.000 (approx. USD 56).[81] In the Dominican Republic, biometric passports began to be issued in May 2004. However the Dominican biometric passports do not carry the "chip inside" symbol . In January 2010, the cost of the passport was 1,250 DOP, about 35ÿ40 USD at that date. The Egyptian Government has, from 5 February 2007, introduced the electronic Passport (e-Passport) and electronic Document of Identity for Visa Purposes (e-Doc/I) which are compliant with the standard of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). Digital data including holder's personal data and facial image will be contained in the contactless chip embedded in the back cover of e-Passport and e-Doc/I.[citation needed] Available since 21 August 2006. Available since 23 January 2014. The Gabonese biometric passports carry the "chip inside" symbol ().[82] Available since 1 March 2010 and costing GHS?50.00ÿ100.00 for adults and children. The passports contain several other technological characteristics other than biometric technology. However the Ghanaian biometric passports do not carry the "chip inside" symbol (), which is mandatory for ICAO-standard electronic passports. In 2006, the Immigration Department announced that Unihub Limited (a PCCW subsidiary company heading a consortium of suppliers, including Keycorp) had won the tender to provide the technology to produce biometric passports. In February 2007, the first biometric passport was introduced. The cover of the new biometric passport remains essentially the same as that of previous versions, with the addition of the "electronic passport" logo at the bottom. However, the design of the inner pages has changed substantially. The design conforms with the document design recommendations of the International Civil Aviation Organization. The new ePassport featured in the 2008 Stockholm Challenge Event and was a finalist for the Stockholm Challenge Award in the Public Administration categeory. The Hong Kong SAR ePassport design was praised on account of the "multiple state-of-the-art technologies [which] are seamlessly integrated in the sophisticated Electronic Passport System (e-Passport System)".[83] The cost for a HKSAR passport is HK$370 (or US$48) for a 32-page passport and HK$460 (or US$59) for a 48-page passport.[84] Available since 23 May 2006 and costing ISK5100 (ISK1900 for under 18 and over 67). India has recently initiated first phase deployment of Biometric e-Passport for Diplomatic passport holders in India and abroad. The new passports have been designed indigenously by the Central Passport Organization, the India Security Press, Nashik and IIT Kanpur. The passport contains a security chip with personal data and digital images. Initially, the new passports will have a 64KB chip with a photograph of passport holder and subsequently include the holder's fingerprint(s). The biometric passport has been tested with passport readers abroad and is noted to have a 4-second response time ÿ less than that of a US Passport (10 seconds). The passport need not be carried in a metal jacket for security reasons as it first needs to be passed through a reader, after which generates access keys to unlock the chip data for reader access.[85] India has also given out a contract to Tata Consultancy Services for issuing e-passports through passport seva kendra. India plans to open 77 such centers across the country to issue these passports. On 25 June 2008 Indian Passport Authority issued first e-passport to the then President of India, Pratibha Patil. The e-passport is under the first phase of deployment and will be initially restricted to diplomatic passport holders. It is expected to be made available to ordinary citizens from 2017 onwards[86] Indonesia started issuing e-Passports on 26 January 2011. The passport costs Rp655,000 (US$66) for the 48-page valid for 5 years, and Rp405,000 (USD41) for the 24-page passport valid for 5 years.[87] Iran started issuing biometric diplomatic and service passports in July 2007. Ordinary biometric passports began to be issued on 20 February 2011. The cost of a new passport was approximately US$37 (IRR1,125,000) .[88] Starting February 1, 2010 the Iraqi Ministry of Interior introduced new electronic system to issue the new A series biometric passports in contract with the German SAFE ID Solutions, the new series is a machine-readable biometric passport available to the public which cost 25,000 dinars or about USD20.[89] On October 16, 2006, the Minister of Foreign Affairs presented the first biometric passports. Since July 2013, the Israeli Ministry of the Interior has been issuing biometric passports for those citizens who wish to receive them. For a 2-year pilot period under the Biometric Database Law, this was optional. As of August 2013, any passport expiring in more than 2 years can be replaced with a biometric one upon request, free of charge. Passports expiring within 2 years will be charged the full fee. The program review that was supposed to be concluded in 2015 was postponed by order of the Minister of the Interior to a later date, due to the controversy regarding the creation of the Biometric Database rather than storing the biometric data only within the passport's chip, as is the practice in many other countries. Since 2015, the pilot period has been extended until 2017. In May 2017, the pilot period ended. Newly issued passports are required to be biometric.[90] To obtain a biometric passport, an applicant must appear in an Interior Ministry office "to be photographed by the special camera which records information such as facial bone structure, distance between one's eyes, ears to eyes and ratio of facial features one from another. One will also be fingerprinted and all this information will be contained in the new high-tech electronic passport."[91] The Japanese government started issuing biometric passports in March 2006. With this, Japan has met requirements under the US Visa Waiver Program which calls for countries to roll out their biometric passports before 26 October 2006. Kazakhstan introduced biometric passport in 2009. In May 2011, the Ministry of Interior of the Republic of Kosovo announced that biometric passports would be issued in the summer of 2011 after the winning firm is chosen and awarded the production of the passports.[92] The first biometric passports were issued in October 2011. In March 2017, the Ministry of Interior of the State of Kuwait began issuing biometric passports. The Interior Minisry announced that by late 2018 older non-biometric passports will no longer be valid for use. In September 2016, the Ministry of Foreign Affair of Laos has announced that the biometric passports will roll out after 30 June 2016 The Lebanese Directorate General of General Security (La S?ret Gnrale) started issuing biometric passports as of August 1, 2016. All new Lebanese passports (Passeport de la rpublique Libanaise) issued are biometric passports and machine-readable contain a contactless smart RFID chip embedded inside the bottom of the front cover under the word "PASSEPORT." The French state-run printing firm, Imprimerie Nationale, carries on the official printing works of both the Lebanese and French governments.[93] Date of introduction is uncertain. However, the enabling statute was tabled in November 2016.[94] Applications for electronic passports and electronic travel permits have been started and processed since 1 September 2009. Available since 2 April 2007 and costs 1500 MKD or c. ?22. The passport is available since 2014 and costs 110,000 Ariary. Since September 2014, it is mandatory for Malagasy citizens to depart the country with a biometric passport.[95] Malaysia was the first country in the world to issue biometric passports in 1998, after a local company, IRIS Corporation, developed the technology. Malaysia is however not a member of the Visa Waiver Program (VWP) and its first biometric passport did not conform to the same standards as the VWP biometric document because the Malaysian biometric passport was issued several years ahead of the VWP requirement. The difference lies in the storage of fingerprint template instead of fingerprint image in the chip, the rest of the technologies are the same. Also the biometric passport was designed to be read only if the receiving country has the authorization from the Malaysian Immigration Department.[citation needed] Malaysia started issuing ICAO compliant passports from February 2010. Malaysia used to issue passports with validity for 2 years and 5 years, but the passport with 2 years validity was withdrawn since Jan, 2015. The pricing for a Malaysian passport are RM 200 with 5 years validity, RM100 for senior citizens, children below 12, Haj pilgrims, and students below 21 and studying abroad is RM100 and is free for disabled citizens. Maldives started rolling out its new ePassport to its citizens on 26 July 2006. The new passport follows a completely new design, and features the passport holders facial and fingerprint information as biometric identifiers. A 32-page Ordinary passport will cost Rf350, while a 64-page Ordinary passport will cost Rf600. Children under the age of 10 years and people applying for passports through diplomatic missions abroad will be issued with a 32-page non-electronic Ordinary passport, which will cost Rf250. Since 2005 the SMOM diplomatic and service passports include biometric features and are compliant with ICAO standards. The Moldovan biometric passport is available from 1 January 2008. The new Moldovan biometric passport costs approximately 760 MDL (?45)[96] and is obligatory from 1 January 2011. The passport of the Republic of Moldova with biometric data contains a chip which holds digital information, including the holder's signature, as well as the traditional information. It is valid for 7 years (for persons over 7) and 4 years (for persons less than 7) respectively. It was introduced as a request of European Union to safeguard the borders between the E.U. and Republic of Moldova. The Montenegrin biometric passport was introduced in 2008. It costs approximately ?40. The Mongolian ministry of interior stated that first biometric passport will be issue at the end of 2016. The issuance of the biometric passports was launched 6 May 2011.[97] It costs 115.68 US Dollar for issuance and is valid for five years only. The Moroccan biometric passport was introduced in 2008. In December 2009, early limited trials have been extended, and the biometric passport is available from 25 September 2009 to all Moroccan citizens holders of an electronic identity card.[98] It costs 300DH (approximately ?27). Mozambique started to issue biometric passports in September 2014. The issuance of such passports was suspended 40 days later but was resumed in February 2015.[99] Introduced in November 2005, like Australia and the USA, New Zealand is using the facial biometric identifier. There are two identifying factors: the small symbol on the front cover indicating that an electronic chip has been embedded in the passport, and the polycarbonate leaf in the front (version 2009) of the book inside which the chip is located. Like Australia, New Zealand has installed SmartGates into airports to allow New Zealand ePassport and ePassport holders of 4 other countries (Australia, Canada, UK, and US) to clear immigration controls more rapidly, and facial recognition technology has been installed at immigration gates. The cost is NZ$140 (when applying in person) or NZ$124.50 (when applying onlineavailable only if already holding a passport) for adults, NZ$81.70 for children, which were valid for five years if issued before December 2015. However, in 2015 the New Zealand government approved for the reinstatement of a 10-year validity period for passports, with all passports issued after December 2015 being valid for 10 years. Nigeria is currently one of the few nations in Africa that issues biometric passports, and has done it since 2007.The harmonized ECOWAS Smart electronic passport issued by the Nigerian Immigrations Service is powered by biometric technology in tandem with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) specifications for international travels. Travellers' data captured in the biometric passport can be accessed instantly and read by any security agent from any spot of the globe through an integrated network of systems configured and linked to a centrally-coordinated passport data bank managed by the Nigerian Immigrations Service. The introduction of biometric passports to Norway began in 2005 and supplied by Setec, costing NOK?450 for adults, or c. ?50, NOK 270 for children. In 2007 the Norwegian government launched a multi-modal biometric enrolment system supplied by Motorola. Motorola's new system enabled multiple public agencies to digitally capture and store fingerprints, 2D facial images and signatures for passports and visas.[100] The Norwegian biometrics company IDEX ASA has begun development of electronic ID cards (eID) with fingerprint security technology for use throughout the EU.[101] Oman has started issuing biometric passports and replacing older passports, since the end of 2014. [102] In 2004, Pakistan became one of the first countries in the world to issue the biometric passports, which are compliant with ICAO standards and dubbed Multi-biometric e-Passports, however they do not carry the "chip inside" symbol (), which is mandatory for ICAO-standard electronic passports. As of 2012, Pakistan has adopted the Multi-biometric e-Passport that is now compliant with ICAO standards. [103] In May 2016, Pakistan interior minister launched the project officially and promised that ePassports would be available fully in 2017 for citizens.[104] Panama has issued biometric passports since 2014. The cost of the passport went up from $50 to $100, and the inside contains images of recent government projects. On 21 February 2016, the Superintendencia Nacional de Migraciones announced that the first Peruvian biometric passports would be delivered by 26 February 2016.[105][106] The first passport was issued for Peruvian opera singer Juan Diego Fl܇rez. It will feature a new cover, along with several security improvements, in order to be exempted for visas for the Schengen Area.[107] It will cost PEN98.50, approximately USD28, making it the cheapest passport in Latin America.[108] On 11 August 2009, the first biometric passport was issued to then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The new e-passport has various security features, including a hidden encoded image; an ultra-thin, holographic laminate; and a tamper-proof electronic microchip and is priced at around ?950.[109][110] On 20 April 2008, Qatar started issuing biometric passports which are ICAO compliant. A Qatari passport costs QR200.[111] Russian biometric passports were introduced in 2006. As of 2015[update], they cost 3500 rubles (approximately USD50) and use printed data, photo and fingerprints and are BAC-encrypted.[112] Biometric passports issued after 1 March 2010 are valid for 10 years. Russian biometric passports are currently issued within Russia and in all of its consulates. From 1 January 2015, the Government of Russia has issued passports which contain fingerprints. On 21 June 2006, Saudi Arabia started issuing biometric passports which are ICAO compliant. A Saudi Arabian passport costs SR150.[citation needed] Available since 7 July 2008, and cost 3.600 RSD or approximately ?32.[113] (Aged 3 or less a Serbian passport is valid for 3 years, aged 3 to 14 it is valid for 5 years, otherwise passport remain valid for 10 years.) The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA)[114] of Singapore introduced the Singapore biometric passport (BioPass) on 15 August 2006. With this, Singapore has met requirements under the US Visa Waiver Program which calls for countries to roll out their biometric passports before 26 October 2006.[115] The pricing for a Singaporean passport are, 70 SGD if applied via online, mail or ICA deposit box and 80 SGD if applied via Singapore Overseas Mission and Singaporean passports are valid for 5 years. The new "e-passport" of Somalia was introduced and approved by the nation's Transitional Federal Government on 10 October 2006. It costs $100 USD to apply for Somalis living inside of Somalia, and $150 USD for Somalis living abroad. Somalia is now the first country on the African continent to have introduced the "e-passport".[116] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade of South Korea started issuing biometric passports to its citizens on 25 August 2008. The cost is fixed to 55,000 Won or 55 US Dollars, and the validity of ordinary passport is 10 years.[117] The Republic of South Sudan started issuing internationally recognized electronic passports in January 2012.[118] The passports were officially launched by the President Salva Kiir Mayardit on 3 January 2012 in a ceremony in Juba.[119] The new passport will be valid for five years.[120] Biometric passports were first issued in Slovakia in 2008. The latest version was issued in 2014 and contains a contactless chip in the biodata card that meets ICAO specifications.[121] From the 10 August 2015, the Department of Immigration and Emigration Sri Lanka has begun issuing ICAO compliant biometric passports to the public. As at October 2016, all new passports require both thumbs to be scanned and a digital facial mapping photograph be taken during the issuing process.[122] The Republic of the Sudan started issuing electronic passports to citizens in May 2009. The new electronic passport will be issued in three categories. The citizen's passport (ordinary passport) will be issued to ordinary citizens and will contain 48 pages. Business men/women who need to travel often will have a commercial passport that will contain 64 pages. Smaller passports that contain 32 pages only will be issued to children. The microprocessor chip will contain the holder's information. Cost to obtain a new passport will be SDG250 (approximately USD100), SDG200 for students and SDG100 for kids. The validity of the citizen's passport will be five years, or seven years for the commercial passport.[123] The Swiss biometric passport has been available since 4 September 2006. By a narrow majority of 50.14%, Swiss voters decided in May 2009 to accept the introduction of a biometric passport.[124] Since 1 March 2010, all issued passports are biometric, containing a photograph and two fingerprints recorded electronically.[125] The costs are CHF 140.00 for adults and CHF 60.00 for children (?18 years old).[126] The Taiwanese biometric passport has been available since 29 December 2008. It costs NT$1,600 for an ordinary passport with either 3, 5 or 10 years validity.[127] Taiwanese Central Engraving and Printing Plant prints passports for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Taiwan for several decades. During this period, the passport has been redesigned various times. The current e-passport (or known as biometric passport) is fitted with RFID technology that facilitates Taiwanese passport immigration clearances worldwide. Biometric passports will be issued in Tajikistan from 1 February 2010. On 27 August 2009, Tajik Ministry of Foreign Affairs and German Muhlbauer signed a contract on purchase of blank biometric passports and appropriate equipment for Tajikistan.[128] The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand[129] introduced the first biometric passport for Diplomats and Government officials on 26 May 2005. From 1 June 2005, a limited quantity of 100 passports a day was issued for Thai citizens, however, on 1 August 2005 a full operational service was installed and Thailand became the first country in Asia to issue an ICAO compliant biometric passport.[130] In August 2009, Togo became one of the first African countries to introduce biometric passports. The price of the passport was then set at 30,000 CFA Francs for Togolese residing in Togo. For Togolese residing abroad, the price varies. The Tunisia ministry of interior stated that it will start issuing biometric passports at the end of year 2016. Turkish passports which are compatible with European Union standards have been available since 1 June 2010.[131] Colours of the new biometric passports have also been changed. Accordingly, regular passports; claret red, special passports; bottle green and diplomatic passports wrap black colours.[132] Most recently[when?] Turkish Minister of the State announced that the government is printing the new passports at government minting office since the private contractor failed to deliver. The current[when?] cost of issuing a 10-year passport in Turkey is TRY620.60 (approximately US$215).[133][134] Turkmenistan became the first country in ex-USSR, in mid-Asia region to issue an ICAO-compliant biometric passport. The passport is available since 10 July 2008.[135] According to law, Ukraine was supposed to issue biometric passports and identity cards on 1 January 2013.[136] However, they did not become available until two years later in January 2015 and are fully compatible with European Union standards.[citation needed] The UAE ministry of interior stated that it would start issuing Emirati biometric passports at the end of 2010.[137] The biometric version of the U.S. passport (sometimes referred to as an electronic passport) has descriptive data and a digitized passport photo on its contactless chips, and does not have fingerprint information placed onto the contactless chip. However, the chip is large enough (64 kilobytes) for inclusion of biometric identifiers. The U.S. Department of State first issued these passports in 2006, and since August 2007 issues biometric passports only. Non-biometric passports are valid until their expiration dates.[138] Although a system able to perform a facial-recognition match between the bearer and his or her image stored on the contactless chip is desired[citation needed], it is unclear when such a system will be deployed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security at its ports of entry.[139] A high level of security became a priority for the United States after the attacks of 11 September 2001. High security required cracking down on counterfeit passports. In October 2004, the production stages of this high-tech passport commenced as the U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO) issued awards to the top bidders of the program. The awards totaled to roughly $1,000,000 for startup, development, and testing. The driving force of the initiative is the U.S. Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act of 2002 (also known as the "Border Security Act"), which states that such smartcard identity cards will be able to replace visas. As for foreigners travelling to the U.S., if they wish to enter U.S. visa-free under the Visa Waiver Program (VWP), they are now required to possess machine-readable passports that comply with international standards. Additionally, for travellers holding a valid passport issued on or after 26 October 2006, such a passport must be a biometric passport if used to enter the U.S. visa-free under the VWP. The Uruguayan Ministry of the Interior started to issue biometric passports to Uruguayan citizens on 16 October 2015. The new passport complies with the standards set forth by the Visa Waiver Program of the United States.[140] In Uzbekistan, 23 June 2009 Islam Karimov issued a Presidential Decree[141] "On measures to further improve the passport system in the Republic of Uzbekistan." On 29 December 2009 the President of Uzbekistan signed a decree to change the dates for a phased exchange of populations existing passport to the biometric passport. In accordance with this decree, biometric passports will be phased in, beginning with 1 January 2011. In the first phase, the biometric passport will be issued to employees of ministries, departments and agencies of the republic, individuals who travel abroad or outside the country, as well as citizens who receive a passport in connection with the achievement of a certain age or for other grounds provided by law. The second phase will be for the rest of the population who will be able to get new passports for the period from 2012 to 2015. Issued after July 2007, Venezuela was the first Latin American country issuing passports including RFID chips along other major security improvements. The chip has photo and fingerprints data.[142] Introduced in June 2017.[143] ICAO passport standards and related materials: Open source and free tools: 1 B) The Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey are not part of the European Union, but Manxmen and Channel Islanders are citizens of the European Union; the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey, and Manxmen and Channel Islanders themselves (unless they qualify and apply for recognition of a change in status), are however excluded from the benefits of the Four Freedoms of the European Union. 1 C) The Government of the United Kingdom also issue passports to British nationals who are not British citizens with the right of abode in the United Kingdom and who are also not otherwise citizens of the European Union. 2 Non-EU country that has open border with Schengen Area. 3 Russia is a transcontinental country in Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. The vast majority of its population (80%) lives in European Russia, therefore Russia as a whole is included as a European country here. 4 Turkey is a transcontinental country in the Middle East and Southeast Europe. Turkey has a small part of its territory (3%) in Southeast Europe called Turkish Thrace. 5 Azerbaijan and Georgia (Abkhazia; South Ossetia) are transcontinental countries. Both have a small part of their territories in the European part of the Caucasus. 6 Kazakhstan is a transcontinental country. Kazakhstan has a small part of its territories located west of the Urals in Eastern Europe. 7 Armenia (Artsakh) and Cyprus (Northern Cyprus) are entirely in Southwest Asia but having socio-political connections with Europe. 8 Egypt is a transcontinental country in North Africa and Western Asia. Egypt has a small part of its territory in Western Asia called Sinai Peninsula. 9 Partially recognized. 10 Not recognized by any other state. 11 Special administrative regions of China

Mjuli or Majoli🚨Mjuli or Majoli (pron: ?m???l?) (Assamese: ??????, Assamese pronunciation:?[mazuli])[1] is a river island in the Brahmaputra River, Assam, India and the 1st island district of the country.[2] The island had a total area of 1,250 square kilometres (483?sq?mi) at the beginning of the 20th century,[3] but having lost significantly to erosion it had an area of only 352 square kilometres (136?sq?mi) in 2014.[4] Majuli has shrunk as the river surrounding it has grown.[5] However it is recognised by Guinness Book of World Records as World's Largest River Island.[6] The island is formed by the Brahmaputra river in the south and the Kherkutia Xuti, an anabranch of the Brahmaputra, joined by the Subansiri River in the north. Mjuli island is accessible by ferries from the city of Jorhat. The island is about 300ÿ400 kilometres (186ÿ249?mi) east from the state's largest city Guwahati. It was formed due to course changes by the river Brahmaputra and its tributaries, mainly the Lohit. Mjuli is the abode of the Assamese neo-Vaishnavite culture.[7] Originally, the island was a long, narrow piece of land called Majoli (land in the middle of two parallel rivers) that had the Brahmaputra flowing in the north and the Burhidihing flowing in the south, till they met at Lakhu. Frequent earthquakes in the period 1661ÿ1696 set the stage for a catastrophic flood in 1750 that continued for 15 days, which is mentioned in historical texts and reflected in folklore. As a result of this flood, the Brahmaputra split into two branches one flowing along the original channel and the other flowing along the Burhidihing channel and the Mjuli island was formed. The Burhidihing's point of confluence moved 190?km east and the southern channel which was the Burhidihing became the Burhi Xuti. The northern channel, which was previously the Brahmaputra, became the Luit Xuti. In due course, the flow in the Luit Xuti decreased, and it came to be known as the Kherkutia Xuti; and the Burhi Xuti expanded via erosion to become the main Brahmaputra River. The locals speak in the Assamese, Mising languages mainly.Few of them speak in the Deori language as well. Reference regarding the early existence of Majuli is found in Yogini Tranta that Chutiya king Ratnadhajpal founded his capital in Ratanpur. which is now in the east from kamalabari.[8] It was known as Ratnapur at that time. Mjuli has been the cultural capital of Assamese civilisation since the 16th century; based on written records describing the visit of Srimanta Sankardeva a 16th-century social reformer. Sankardeva, a pioneer of the medieval-age neo-Vaishnavite movement, preached a monotheist form of Hinduism called Vaishnavism and established monasteries and hermitages known as satra on the islet. The island soon became the leading center of Vaishavinism with the establishment of these satras. After the arrival of the British, Majuli was under the rule of the British until India gained independence in 1947. It is one of world's biggest river islands. The main industry is agriculture, with paddy being the chief crop. Mjuli has a rich and diverse agricultural tradition, with as many as 100 varieties of rice grown, all without pesticides or artificial fertilisers.[citation needed] Fishing is also among the main industry after agriculture. Among the fascinating arrays of rice produced are the Komal Saul, a unique type that can be eaten after immersing the grains in warm water for 15 minutes and usually eaten as a breakfast cereal; the bao dhan, that grows under water and is harvested after ten months; and the Bora saul, a sticky brown rice used to make the traditional cake with fish is known as pitha. Fishing, dairying, pottery, handloom and boat-making are other important economic activities.[9] Handloom is a major occupation among the distaff population of the villages. Although largely a non-commercial occupation, it keeps many of the inhabitants occupied. Weaving is exquisite and intricate with the use of a variety of colours and textures of cotton and silk, especially Muga silk. On November 4, 2017, Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal launched 647 schemes with a total financial outlay of Rs. 24.57 crore to boost Majulis development. The population of Majuli comprises of the tribals, non-tribals and the scheduled castes.The tribal communities include the Misings, the Deoris and the Sonowal Kacharis.The scheduled castes include the Kaivartas, the Brittial Banias etc.The non-tribal communities includes Koch, Kalitas, Ahoms, Chutiyas, Keot, Yogis etc.The Mising community has the largest population in the island who immigrated from Arunachal Pradesh to Majuli centuries ago . Languages spoken are Mising, Assamese, and Deori. The island has 144 villages with a population of over 150,000 and a density of 300 individuals per square km. Ferry service which operates six times a day connects Majuli to Jorhat city. Night super buses ply between Guwahti to Majuli via Lakhimpur. Despite inherent drawbacks faced, modernism has touched this island, with the setting up of medical centers and educational institutions. Housing, too, has segued from traditional bamboo and mud construction to ones made of concrete. The heart of all villages is the Namghar, where villagers episodically gather to sing and pray and to perform religious drama. It is the most important public place for the villagers. After the rituals are complete, villagers decide on issues concerning the village such as auctioning of fishing rights, what to do with money raised, and other topics of significance to the community as a whole. The inhabitants are expert navigators by boat; their expertise is most visible during the monsoon season when they navigate the turbulent waters of the Brahmaputra. The festival of Ali aye ligang is celebrated during mid-February with great pomp and show. It is celebrated for five days starting from second Wednesday of February till the next week. Local dishes like purang apin (rice wrapped in special leaves), apong (rice beer) and dishes made of pork, fish and chickens are served. Traditional Mising dance Gumrag Soman is performed in every village worshiping the almighty Donyi polo (mother sun and father moon) asking for good year of harvest. Other festivals like Christmas is celebrated by the majority Christians of Mising tribe in upper Majuli where Jengraimukh village is the epicentre of Christians. Majuli has been the cultural capital and the cradle of Assamese civilization for the past 500 years. The satras set up preserve antiques like weapons, utensils, jewellery and other items of cultural significance. Pottery is made in Mjuli from beaten clay and burnt in driftwood fired kilns in the same mode carried out by the peoples of the ancient Harrappan Civilisation. Sociologists have stressed the preservation of these unique peoples, whose culture and dance forms are untouched by modernism. The hand-loom work of these tribes is internationally famous. Virtually every person on the island is involved in the three-day long raas festival, depicting the life of Krishna. People from hundreds of kilometers away come to celebrate this festival including a number of expatriate members of community. The satras have honed certain art and craft traditions, which can now be found only here. In Natun Samuguri Satra for example, one can still find the craft of mask-making; and in the Kamalabari Satra the finest boats are made. The island has been the hub of Assamese neo-Vaishnavite culture, initiated around 15th century by the revered Assamese saint Srimanta Sankardeva and his disciple Madhavdeva. Many Satras or monasteries constructed by the saint still survive and represent the colourful Assamese culture. The saint took refuge in Mjuli and spent a couple of months at Beloguri in West Mjuli, which was a place of grandeur for the historic and auspicious, 'Manikanchan Sanjog' between Shankardeva and Madhavdeva, this was the first satra in Mjuli. After the "Manikanchan Sanjog", sixty five satras were set up. However, today only twenty-two of the original sixty-five are operational. Sixty-five out of the six hundred and sixty-five original satras in Assam were situated in Mjuli. Mur nam Majuli The main surviving Satras (Satra) are: Kamalabari Satra Dakhinpat Satra Pooja at Dakhinpat Satra From one of the satras Aauniati satra gate A wetland, Mjuli is a hotspot for flora and fauna, harbouring many rare and endangered avifauna species including migratory birds that arrive in the winter season. Among the birds seen here are the greater adjutant stork, pelican, Siberian crane and the whistling teal. After dark wild geese and ducks fly in flocks to distant destinations. The island is almost pollution free owing to the lack of polluting industries and factories and also the chronic rainfall. The island is under threat due to the extensive soil erosion on its banks. The reason for this magnitude in erosion is the large embankments built in neighbouring towns upriver to prevent erosion during the monsoon season when the river distends its banks. The upshot is a backlash of the tempestuous Brahmaputra's fury on the islet, eroding most of the area. According to reports, in 1853, the total area of Mjuli was 1,150?km2 and about 33% of this landmass has been eroded in the latter half of 20th century. Since 1991, over 35 villages have been washed away. Surveys show that in 15ÿ20 years from now, Mjuli would cease to exist. To save the island, the Union Government of India has sanctioned ? 250 crores (US $55 million) for the protection of the island. The water resource department & The Brahmaputra Board are struggling to solve the erosion problem of this island for the last three decade but without much success. Recently it was suggested that a four-lane highway protected by concrete mat along the southern boundary of Majuli and excavation of river bed of the Brahmaputra River, only can solve the problem. The project also includes two flood gates for the Kherkatia suti which is a tributary of the Brahmaputra. The Brahmaputra River Restoration Project is yet to be implemented by the government. However, a nomination has been sent to the UNESCO for the declaration of Mjuli to be as a world heritage site.[10] Local environmental activist Jadav Payeng has planted a 550 hectare forest, known as Molai Forest to combat erosion on the island. Much of the island was barren sandbars that were vulnerable to erosion, but thanks to Payeng's afforestation, has become a lush forest. The forest has become habitat for animals including elephants, tigers, deer, and vultures.[11] Mjuli is 20?km from Jorhat. One can take the bus or a hired taxi to the Nimati Steamer Ghat from where ferry services ply. The distance takes over three hours to cover, with three bus rides and two ferry rides. On the north bank is the river Subansiri and on the south bank, the mighty Brahmaputra has excided the island from the main land. Lakhimpur town is to the north and Golaghat is to its southwest. The town of Sibsagar is on the southeast and Jorhat is to the south. On the extreme east is Dibrugarh District. The southern part of the island is a bird lover's paradise. The best time to visit is between November to March as the weather and wildlife view is satisfactory. There are three locales for birdwatching: .Sakuli Beel, near Kamalabari. .Magurmari Beel, Dakhinpaat Satra. .Verki Beel, near Kamalabari. Alimur Bamun Goan LP School ===Schools=== Alimur Bamun Goan LP School ===Schools=== Majuli (Vidhan Sabha constituency) falls under the 99 constituency of legislative assembly of Assam. It is a reserved seat for the Scheduled tribes (ST). It is under jurisdiction of Mising Autonomous Council having three constituencies. Rajiv Lochan Pegu [2001-2006 & 2006-2011, 2011- 2016] was MLA (Member of legislative assembly) from Mjuli in Assam Assembly until 2016. He was bearing the portfolio of Minister of State (Ind.), Water Resources Dev., WPT & BC, in the Government of Assam. Sarbananda Sonowal won constituency in Assam Legislative Assembly election, 2016 and presently chief minister of assam.[12][3][2] Mjuli is one of the 9 assembly segments of Lakhimpur Lok Sabha constituency. At present Sarbananda Sonowal (2014-) is the MP (Member of Parliament) from Bharatiya Janata Party. He is currently the Chief Minister of Assam.[13] Ribhaba Bharali - Future of Brahmaputra & Majuli Published in Amar Assam a daily news paper in Nov2012. & Brahmaputra River Restoration Project Published in Assamese Pratidin & Amar Assam in October 2012 & Restoration of Majuli published on Assamese Pratidin in June 2013.

Garment Center developer Mack Kanner🚨The Wyndham New Yorker Hotel is a historic hotel located at 481 Eighth Avenue in New York City, United States. The 43-story Art Deco hotel, opened 1930, is a 1,083-room, mid-priced hotel located in Manhattan's Garment District and Hell's Kitchen areas, near Pennsylvania Station, Madison Square Garden, Times Square, and the Empire State Building. The 1-million-square-foot (93,000-square-metre) building offers two restaurants and approximately 33,000 square feet (3,100?m2) of conference space.[1] Since re-opening as a hotel in 1994, it has undergone approximately $100 million in capital improvements, including lobby and room renovations and infrastructure modernization. The Unification Church purchased the building in 1975, and since 2014, it has been part of the Wyndham Hotels & Resorts chain. Due to its noticeable marquee and proximity to the Empire State Building, it makes appearances in many films and is the backdrop for TV-studio reports and interviews broadcast worldwide from New York by BBC News. The New Yorker Hotel was built by Garment Center developer Mack Kanner. When the project was announced in 1928, the Sugarman and Berger designed building was planned to be 38 stories, at an estimated cost of $8 million.[2][3] However, when it was completed in 1929, the building had grown to 43 stories, at a final cost of $22.5 million and contained 2,500 rooms, making it the city's largest for many years.[4][5] Hotel management pioneer Ralph Hitz was selected as its first manager, eventually becoming president of the National Hotel Management Company. An early ad for the building boasted that the hotel's "bell boys were 'as snappy-looking as West Pointers'" and "that it had a radio in every room with a choice of four stations".[6] It was a New Yorker bellboy, Johnny Roventini, who served as tobacco company Philip Morris' pitchman for twenty years, making famous their "Call for Philip Morris" advertising campaign.[7] The hotel opened on January 2, 1930.[8] Much like its contemporaries, the Empire State Building (1931) and the Chrysler Building (1930), the New Yorker was designed in the Art Deco style which was popular in the 1920s and 1930s. In his book New York 1930 Robert A. M. Stern said the "New Yorker's virtually unornamented facades consisted of alternating vertical bands of warm gray brick and windows, yielding an impression of boldly modeled masses. This was furthered by the deep-cut light courts, which produced a powerful play of light and shade that was enhanced by dramatic lighting at night".[9] In addition to the ballrooms there were ten private dining "salons" and five restaurants employing 35 master cooks.[5] The barber shop was one of the largest in the world with 42 chairs and 20 manicurists.[5] There were 95 switchboard operators and 150 laundry staff washing as many as 350,000 pieces daily.[5][6] Throughout the 1940s and 1950s, the hotel was among New York's most fashionable. The New York Observer noted that in the building's heyday, "actors, celebrities, athletes, politicians, mobsters, the shady and the luminousthe entire Brooklyn Dodgers roster during the glory seasonswould stalk the bars and ballrooms, or romp upstairs";[1] It hosted many popular Big Bands, such as Benny Goodman and Tommy Dorsey,[10] while notable figures such as Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford and Fidel Castro stayed there. Inventor Nikola Tesla spent the last ten years of his life in near-seclusion in Suite 3327, where he died, largely devoting his time to feeding pigeons while occasionally meeting dignitaries.[8][11] In later years, Muhammad Ali would recuperate there after his March 1971 fight against Joe Frazier at the Garden.[1][8] Notwithstanding its early success, New York's changing economy and demographics caused the building to slowly decline and, as a result, its ownership changed several times. It was purchased by Hilton Hotels in 1953 for $12.5 million and following an antitrust suit by the federal government, was sold just three years later, in 1956, for $20 million to Massaglia Hotels.[12][13] In 1959, Massaglia sold the hotel to an investment syndicate known as New York Towers Ltd., which went bankrupt, allowing Hilton to reacquire the building in 1967.[14] By the time Hilton reacquired the hotel, the pronounced decline in New York's fortunes, coupled with the construction of new, more modern hotels, caused the New Yorker to become unprofitable. As a result, Hilton closed the hotel in April 1972.[10] Initially left vacant, several proposals were made for the building, including redevelopment as a low-income housing development, and a hospital.[10] Ultimately, in 1975, it was purchased by the Unification Church of the United States for $5.6 million. The church converted much of the building for use by its members.[15] When it was built, the New Yorker Hotel had coal-fired steam boilers and generators sufficient to produce more than 2,200 kilowatts of direct current electric power. At the time, this was the largest private power plant in the United States. The hotel's own direct current generators were still in use during the Northeast Blackout of 1965, but by the late 1960s the hotel's power system had been modernized to alternating current.[8][16] In a dedication ceremony held on September 25, 2008, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) named the New Yorker Hotel's direct current power plant a Milestone in Electrical Engineering. A bronze plaque commemorating the achievement was presented to the hotel by IEEE. In 1994, the Unification Church elected to convert a portion of the building to use as a hotel again and the New Yorker Hotel Management Company took over operation of the building. It began the largest renovation project in the New Yorker's nearly 65-year history, completed in 1999, with $20 million in capital improvements.[17] The hotel joined the Ramada chain in 2000. In 2005, the hotel's management began the process of replacing the New Yorker's famous sign, which hadn't been lit since 1967 and was in badly need of repair. The sign was completely replaced by an energy efficient LED sign that was installed in time to celebrate the hotel's 75th Anniversary. A 75th Anniversary celebratory event was held at the hotel on December 8, 2005, where the new sign was officially switched on for the first time by Dr.Charles Yang, President of the New Yorker Hotel Management Company, Kevin H. Smith, the hotel's General Manager, Alan Ostroff, of the Cornell University School of Hotel Management, Jean Cummins, singer with the hotel's house band in the 1930s and Patricia Hitz-Bradshaw, granddaughter of Ralph Hitz, the hotel's first General Manager.[18][19] In August 2007, the hotel began a second capital improvement program, which was completed in February 2009 at a final cost of $70 million. These improvements increased the number of guest rooms available from 178 in 1994 to 912, located on floors 19 through 40.[20][21] The renovation project was designed by Stonehill & Taylor Architects.[21] Interior improvements included room restructuring and augmentation (now called "Metro" and "City View" rooms). Other improvements included a refurbished front entrance, lobby redesign, foyer reconstruction, and ballroom renovations. The hotel also expanded its Wi-Fi and PDA support, and added high-definition flat-screen televisions in all rooms. In addition, individual room air-conditioning units were replaced with modern centralized heating and cooling systems throughout the entire hotel. In 2009, conference room space was added to the hotel through the conversion of a defunct Manufacturer's Hanover Bank branch in the hotel, bringing the total meeting space to just over 33,000 square feet (3,100?m2), in two ballrooms and twelve conference rooms. The New Yorker Hotel joined the Wyndham Hotels chain in March 2014.[22] Wyndham has undertaken additional upgrades to the hotel, including lobby and restaurant renovations, to attract more business travelers in anticipation of the massive Hudson Yards Redevelopment Project to the west.[23] Coordinates: 404510N 735938W? / ?40.75278N 73.99389W? / 40.75278; -73.99389

two to seven🚨A standing rib roast, also known as prime rib, is a cut of beef from the primal rib, one of the nine primal cuts of beef. While the entire rib section comprises ribs six through 12, a standing rib roast may contain anywhere from two to seven ribs. It is most often roasted "standing" on the rib bones so that the meat does not touch the pan. An alternative cut removes the top end of the ribs for easier carving. Rib eye steaks are cut from a standing rib, boned with most of the fat and lesser muscles removed. While often referred to as "prime rib", the USDA does not require the cut to be derived from USDA Prime grade beef.[1] A slice of standing rib roast will include portions of the so-called "eye" of the rib, as well as the outer, fat-marbled muscle (spinalis dorsi) known as the "lip" or "cap". The traditional preparation for a standing rib roast is to rub the outside of the roast with salt and seasonings and slow-roast with dry heat. It also may be grilled.

1,233🚨The acre-foot is a unit of volume commonly used in the United States in reference to large-scale water resources, such as reservoirs, aqueducts, canals, sewer flow capacity, irrigation water,[1] and river flows. As the name suggests, an acre-foot is defined as the volume of one acre of surface area to a depth of one foot. Since an acre is defined as a chain by a furlong (i.e. 66?ft G?660?ft or 20.12?m G?201.17?m), an acre-foot is 43,560 cubic feet (1,233?m3). There are two definitions of an acre-foot (differing by about 0.0006%), depending on whether the "foot" used is an "international foot" or a "U.S. survey foot". As a rule of thumb in U.S. water management, one acre-foot is taken to be the planned water usage of a suburban family household, annually.[2] In some areas of the desert Southwest, where water conservation is followed and often enforced, a typical family uses only about 0.25 acre-foot of water per year.[3] One acre-foot/year is approximately 893 gallons (3.38 m3) per day. The acre-foot (or more specifically the time rate unit of acre-foot per year) has been used historically in the U.S. in many water-management agreements, for example the Colorado River Compact, which divides 15 million acre-feet (MAF) per year (586 m3/s) among seven western U.S. states. Water reservoir capacities in the U.S. are commonly given in thousands of acre-feet, abbreviated TAF. Elsewhere in the world, where the metric system is in common use, water volumes can be expressed in either cubic metres (as in flow rates of cubic metres/second, or "cumecs") or, for water usage, storage or irrigation volumes, in kilolitres (kL = 1 cubic metre), megalitres (ML = 1,000 cubic metres), or gigalitres (GL = 1,000,000 cubic metres). One acre-foot is approximately equivalent to 1.233 megalitres and 1,233 kilolitres. Large bodies of water may be measured in cubic kilometres (1,000,000,000 m3, or 1000 GL), with 1000 TAF or 1 million acre-feet approximately equalling 1.233 km3.

"a spirit staying with you after its death and haunting you until you actually wish that the spirit were gone because it won't leave you alone."🚨"My Immortal" is a song by American rock band Evanescence from their debut studio album, Fallen (2003). It was released by Wind-up Records on December 8, 2003, as the third single from the album. The song was written by guitarist Ben Moody, lead singer Amy Lee and keyboardist David Hodges, and it was produced by Moody and Dave Fortman. Various versions of "My Immortal" were recorded; one of them was included on the demo album Origin (2000) and another on the EP release Mystary (2003). The version originally appearing on Origin was later included on Fallen, featuring piano with backing strings. The version of the song released as a single was dubbed the "band version" because of the complete band's performance of the bridge and final chorus of the song. "My Immortal" is a piano power ballad with a slow tempo. Lyrically, it talks about "a spirit staying with you after its death and haunting you until you actually wish that the spirit were gone because it won't leave you alone."[1] Critical reception towards the song was positive, with critics complimenting its piano melody. In 2005 it received a nomination for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 47th Grammy Awards. The song was also commercially successful, peaking within the top ten in more than ten countries. It also peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped the charts in Canada, Greece and the US Adult Pop Songs chart. The single was certified gold in the United States, and platinum in Australia. An accompanying music video directed by David Mould was filmed entirely in black-and-white in Gothic Quarter, Barcelona, on October 10, 2003. The video shows Lee sitting and singing on various locations, but never touching the ground. Shots of Moody are also shown but he is never together with his band or Lee. The video was nominated in the category for Best Rock Video at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards. The song was performed by the band during their three concert tours: the Fallen Tour (2003), The Open Door Tour (2007) and the Evanescence Tour (2011ÿ12). It was also performed live during some of their television appearances and award ceremonies such as the Billboard Music Awards. -Amy Lee talking about "My Immortal" and its conception.[2] The song was written by Ben Moody, Amy Lee and David Hodges and produced by Moody and Dave Fortman; it was the fourth song to be written for Evanescence.[3][1] Amy Lee's vocals and the piano parts of the song were recorded in NRG Recording Studios, California.[4] The drums, bass and electric guitars were recorded at The Steakhouse Studio in North Hollywood. "My Immortal" was mixed by Dave Fortman at Conway Recording Studios in North Hollywood while it was mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound in New York City.[4] The orchestral parts in the song were arranged by the composer Graeme Revell.[4] The first known recording of "My Immortal" was made for the band's self-titled EP, which solely featured Lee's vocals accompanied by a piano, and slightly different lyrics. The song was cut from the EP before it was released.[5] In 2000, the song was re-recorded for the band's demo album, Origin, which contains a rearranged piano melody and lyrics, including the bridge added by Lee.[6] It was again recorded for the band's debut full-length debut studio album, Fallen where the vocals of the demo version (that were recorded by Lee at 18 years old) were accompanied by slightly different instrumentation.[1] It is also featured on the band's 2003 EP, Mystary, which is much more similar to the band version.[7] Wind-up Records preferred the Origin version, which is why the exact vocals recorded from 2000 are again included in the song's album version.[2] The version that was recorded and released as a single is moderately alternative to that of the album version, and is often referred to as the "band version" because of the additional band performing the bridge and final chorus of the song. The later pressings of Fallen contain the single version (or "band version") of "My Immortal" as a hidden track.[8] Lee expressed some dissatisfaction with the early versions of the song saying, "It's not even a real piano. And the sound quality is bad because we had to break into the studio to record it late at night when no one was around because we couldn't afford a real session."[2] "My Immortal" is a piano[9][10] and power ballad[11] written in the key of A major.[12] It was described as a "goth-meets-pop" song.[13] According to the sheet music published by Alfred Music Publishing on the website Musicnotes.com, the song is set in common time and performed in slow and free tempo of 80 beats per minute. Lee's vocal range for the song runs from the low musical note of A3 to the high note of C?5.[14] Her vocals are accompanied by a simple piano.[11] Adrien Begrand of PopMatters concluded that in "My Immortal", Lee is "doing her McLachlan/Tori Amos schtick".[15] The song was also compared with some of Enya's material.[16] The lyrics of the song refer to a spirit that haunts the memory of a grieving loved one.[2] Similar to several other songs written by Moody, the lyrics of the song are based on a short story he had previously written.[1] According to Lee, it was "Ben [Moody]'s song."[17] Moody said that the song talks about "a spirit staying with you after its death and haunting you until you actually wish that the spirit were gone because it won't leave you alone."[1] He also stated in the booklet of Fallen that he dedicated the song to his grandfather, Bill Holcomb.[1] In "My Immortal", Lee expresses her feelings through the line, "Though you're still with me / I've been alone all along."[18] A writer for IGN said that "'My Immortal' is a song of pain and despair caused by the loss of a family member or very close friend and how it drove her [Lee] to the edge of insanity."[18] The song received critical acclaim from music critics. Kirk Miller of Rolling Stone said that "'My Immortal' lets Lee wail about her personal demons over simple piano and some symphonic dressings it's a power ballad that P.O.D. and Tori Amos fans could both appreciate."[11] Chris Harris of the same publication found it to be a "song that's become something of an Alanis Morissette-like battle hymn for her [Lee's] goth disciples over the last few years."[19] Richard Harrington of The Washington Post called "My Immortal" a "majestic" song that helped the band win a Grammy Award.[20] Blair R. Fischer from MTV News described the song as a "delicate, heartfelt ballad".[16] IGN's Ed Thompson concluded that "My Immortal" was "one of the first and best songs Evanescence ever wrote".[21] Jordan Reimer, a writer of The Daily Princetonian found a "haunting beauty" in the song.[22] In 2005 the band was nominated in the category for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals at the 47th Grammy Awards for the song.[23][24] A less positive review was written for The Guardian by Tom Reynolds, where he put the song at number 24 on his list "Sad songs say so much". Talking about the composition and the meaning of the song, he wrote that the song was a "whimpering post-breakup tune in which lead singer Amy Lee pitifully mourns the end of a relationship over a piano accompaniment that sounds like Pachelbel after the Prozac wore off", and that it "closely follows the 'quantum tragedy paradigm': the shorter the time two people spent together as a couple, the more overwrought the song is that describes their break-up."[25] The song is considered the band's second most successful single of all time, generally peaking within the top 20 of more than 10 countries internationally. On the chart issue dated April 10, 2004, "My Immortal" peaked at number seven on the Billboard Hot 100,[26] while on the Pop Songs chart it peaked at number two on March 27, 2004.[27] It reached number 19 on the Adult Contemporary chart as well.[28] On February 17, 2009, "My Immortal" was certified Gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for selling more than 500,000 copies in the United States.[29] The song managed to top the charts of Canada, Greece and Billboard's Adult Pop Songs in the United States.[30][31][32] It also helped Fallen to move from number nine to number three on the Billboard 200 chart, selling another 69.000 copies.[33][34] On the Billboard's Radio Songs chart, the song peaked at number seven on April 10, 2004.[35] Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems placed the song at number six on the list of most played radio songs in 2004 with 317,577 spins.[36] On the Australian Singles Chart, "My Immortal" debuted at number four on January 25, 2004, which became its peak position.[37] For three more weeks, it stayed at that position. The next eight weeks, it remained in the top ten of the chart,[38] and it was last seen at number 44 for the week of June 13, 2004.[39] The single was certified platinum by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) for shipment of 70,000 copies in that country.[40] On New Zealand's RIANZ chart, the song debuted at number 49 on December 19, 2003. On January 25, it jumped 27 positions from number 34 to number 7. It fell to number eight the next week, then rose up to number two on February 8, blocked from the top position by Baby Bash's "Suga Suga".[41] The next week, it fell to number nine, then spent three more non-consecutive weeks in the top ten. May 10 was its last week inside the top 50, appearing at number 32.[42] On December 14, 2003, "My Immortal" debuted at number seven on the UK Singles Chart which later also became its peak position.[43] On February 15, 2004 the song dropped out of the top 100. It later re-entered at number 84 on July 13, 2008.[44] After spending several weeks on different positions on the UK Rock Chart, on August 21, 2011, it peaked at number one.[45] The next week, "My Immortal" moved to number two being replaced by the band's single "What You Want" (2011),[45] and one week later it returned at number one on the chart.[45] That achievement helped the song re-enter on the UK Singles Chart at number 81 on August 21, 2011 and at number 89 on October 16, 2011.[44] The song also charted on Ireland's IRMA chart, but was significantly less successful, reaching only number 20 and staying in the chart for six weeks.[46] A music video directed by David Mould was filmed entirely in black-and-white in Pla?a de Sant Felip Neri, Gothic Quarter (Barri Gtic), Barcelona on October 10, 2003.[2][47] Lee described the place of the filming during an interview with MTV News: "We did it in a cool, old area of town.[...] We shot some of it at this scenic point, and there was a rooftop where you could see Barcelona below. It was really neat."[2] The version of the song used on the video is different from the one off the record, with the band entering the song at the end of the bridge and a string arrangement by David Campbell. Evanescence wanted the band version to be on the album as well, but "the label was stuck on the demo and wouldn't let us use the version we really wanted.[...] We fought back and forth about it and finally we gave in, but we were all so angry about it."[2] The video was filmed two weeks before Ben Moody's departure from the band.[47] Amy Lee admitted that the visuals in the video were "striking in retrospect", but added that the similarities between what was filmed and Moody's departure were coincidental: "We shot it in Barcelona about a week before Ben left the band unexpectedly. I think none of us knew, including him, that he was going anywhere. And when we got the video back and watched it, it was right after he had left. And it's bizarre how much the video is about that. We all sat there with goose bumps, like, 'Holy crap. We've got to watch that again.'"[48] In an interview with the British magazine Rock Sound, Lee further explained the concept which was related with his departure: "You know what? When you see the video it's really amazing. Obviously we filmed it before this [Ben Moody's departure] happened and it's amazing irony, how much it makes sense. We're all separated and wandering the streets looking like it's the day after a funeral, with Ben in a suit and bare feet, and I'm never touching the ground. I'm sitting on a phone booth or lying on a car, to hint that I'm dead, that I'm singing from the dead. It's all about separation. It's almost like the director knew what was going to happen, but he can't have known. It's just one of those fate things."[49] The music video for "My Immortal" begins with Lee sitting on a fountain. Her legs and arms are covered with bandage as she puts them in the water. She is wearing a long white dress and is seen walking around the fountain, surrounded by children and other people that appear to be unaware or indifferent to her presence and wearabouts. Shots of Moody follow, who appears to be sullen and withdrawn. He is wearing a suit and his feet are bare. His shoulders sag and his head slumps forward as he delicately plays piano, and he later picks up his jacket as if he is about to leave. When the bridge starts, the band is shot performing in one room while Moody is in another, playing on the piano. Throughout the video, Lee is never filmed on ground level. She walks along the ledge of a fountain, sits in a tree and sings lying on top of a building. She also lies atop scaffolding and on the hood of a car surrounded with leaves. The video for the song was nominated in the category for Best Rock Video at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards.[50][51][52] According to Jon Wiederhorn from MTV News, the shots of the video are "evocative and artistic, resembling a cross between a foreign film and a Chanel advertisement."[2] Joe D'Angelo of MTV News said that Lee's disconnection in the video shows a "distressed and emotionally wrought heroine."[53] Rob Sheffield of Rolling Stone praised the video saying that Lee looked like a "teen-misery titan" and that she "tiptoed through a marble castle of pain".[54] He also concluded that she could have borrowed the dress from Stevie Nicks.[54] During an interview with Spin in 2011 Lee said that it was weird for her to watch the old videos of the band including the one for "My Immortal". She explained, "Just watching our oldest videos, it's weird. I definitely remember watching 'My Immortal,' like, 'That was not some dream where it was really somebody else.' I've totally had a couple of those moments. It's cool."[55] Evanescence performed the song at the 2004 Billboard Music Awards on December 8, 2004.[56] The band was joined by an eight-piece string section during the performance and a stage backdrop of knotted, decaying trees were placed on stage in order to showcase the "powerful vocals" by Amy Lee as stated by a writer of Billboard.[56] The band additionally performed the song at Late Show with David Letterman in March 2004.[57] The band performed "My Immortal" during various stops of their first Fallen Tour (2003).[16][58][59] "My Immortal" was the closing song of the concerts, and Lee performed it after asking the fans "Just promise not to fall asleep."[58] A live version of the song from the performance at Le Znith, Paris is featured on their first live album, Anywhere but Home (2004).[60][61][62] Johnny Loftus of AllMusic praised the live version saying that Lee takes a "softer approach" while performing "My Immortal" and added that it "becomes a singalong moment for 5,000 souls".[63] "My Immortal" was also part of the set list during the band's second tour, called The Open Door Tour (2007) in support of their second studio album The Open Door (2006).[64][65][66] Evanescence also played the song live at their secret New York City gig which took place on November 4, 2009[19] and during the 2011 Rock in Rio festival on October 2, 2011.[67] The song was later added on the set list of their third worldwide tour in support of their third self-titled studio album, the Evanescence Tour (2011-12).[68][69] The band also performed the song as part of the set list of their tour taking place in the US and Europe in 2016 and 2017.[70] "My Immortal" was featured on the soundtrack Daredevil: The Album from the movie Daredevil (2003) along with "Bring Me to Life".[15][71] The song has been used during several television episodes. It featured during the Smallville season three episode "Memoria". Lucy Walsh, a contestant of the show Rock the Cradle, covered the song during the fifth episode, "Judge's Picks".[72] Dancer Hampton Williams performed to this song during his audition for the season 9 premiere of So You Think You Can Dance, broadcast on May 24, 2012, where he received a standing ovation,[73][74] and in season 11 the song accompanied a performance by the top seven women, choreographed by Mandy Moore and broadcast on July 30, 2014, that earned similar reviews. An arrangement of the song inspired by Gregorian chant was covered by the group Gregorian on their 2004 album The Dark Side.[75] In 2013, violinist Lindsey Stirling recorded an instrumental version of "My Immortal" for the Target edition of her first self-titled studio album.[76] In July 2013 it was uploaded to her personal channel on YouTube along with an accompanying performance video and it was released to the iTunes Store on October 1, 2013.[77] The following year, Andrea Begley covered "My Immortal" for her debut studio album The Message. Robert Copsey of Digital Spy wrote that the cover "range[s] from the excruciating to the offensively inoffensive".[78] Teenage classical vocalist Jackie Evancho covered "My Immortal" in 2014 on her fifth full-length album, Awakening, as a bonus track for Japanese fans.[79] Credits are adapted from the liner notes of Fallen.[1][3] *sales figures based on certification alone ^shipments figures based on certification alone

over 19.5 million lines of code🚨The Linux kernel is an open-source monolithic Unix-like computer operating system kernel. The Linux family of operating systems is based on this kernel and deployed on both traditional computer systems such as personal computers and servers, usually in the form of Linux distributions,[9] and on various embedded devices such as routers, wireless access points, PBXes, set-top boxes, FTA receivers, smart TVs, PVRs, and NAS appliances. The Android operating system for tablet computers, smartphones, and smartwatches uses services provided by the Linux kernel to implement its functionality. While the adoption on desktop computers is low, Linux-based operating systems dominate nearly every other segment of computing, from mobile devices to mainframes. As of November?2017[update], all of the world's 500 most powerful supercomputers run Linux.[10] The Linux kernel was conceived and created in 1991 by Linus Torvalds[11] for his personal computer and with no cross-platform intentions, but has since expanded to support a huge array of computer architectures, many more than other operating systems or kernels. Linux rapidly attracted developers and users who adopted it as the kernel for other free software projects, notably the GNU Operating System.[12] The Linux kernel has received contributions from nearly 12,000 programmers from more than 1,200 companies, including some of the largest software and hardware vendors.[13][14] The Linux kernel API, the application programming interface (API) through which user programs interact with the kernel, is meant to be very stable and to not break userspace programs (some programs, such as those with GUIs, rely on other APIs as well). As part of the kernel's functionality, device drivers control the hardware; "mainlined" device drivers are also meant to be very stable. However, the interface between the kernel and loadable kernel modules (LKMs), unlike in many other kernels and operating systems, is not meant to be very stable by design.[15] The Linux kernel, developed by contributors worldwide, is a prominent example of free and open source software,[16] and it's supported up to six years depending on version. Day-to-day development discussions take place on the Linux kernel mailing list (LKML). The Linux kernel is released under the GNU General Public License version 2 (GPLv2),[6][17] with some firmware images released under various non-free licenses.[8] In April 1991, Linus Torvalds, at the time a 21-year-old computer science student at the University of Helsinki, Finland, started working on some simple ideas for an operating system. He started with a task switcher in Intel 80386 assembly language and a terminal driver. On 25 August 1991, Torvalds posted the following to comp.os.minix, a newsgroup on Usenet:[18] I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones. This has been brewing since April, and is starting to get ready. I'd like any feedback on things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat (same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons) among other things). I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work. This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months [...] Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs. It is NOT portable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have?:-(. [...] It's mostly in C, but most people wouldn't call what I write C. It uses every conceivable feature of the 386 I could find, as it was also a project to teach me about the 386. As already mentioned, it uses a MMU, for both paging (not to disk yet) and segmentation. It's the segmentation that makes it REALLY 386 dependent (every task has a 64Mb segment for code & data - max 64 tasks in 4Gb. Anybody who needs more than 64Mb/task - tough cookies). [...] Some of my "C"-files (specifically mm.c) are almost as much assembler as C. [...] Unlike minix, I also happen to LIKE interrupts, so interrupts are handled without trying to hide the reason behind them. After that, many people contributed code to the project. Early on, the MINIX community contributed code and ideas to the Linux kernel. At the time, the GNU Project had created many of the components required for a free operating system, but its own kernel, GNU Hurd, was incomplete and unavailable. The BSD operating system had not yet freed itself from legal encumbrances. Despite the limited functionality of the early versions, Linux rapidly gained developers and users. By September 1991, version 0.01 of the Linux kernel was released on the FTP server (ftp.funet.fi) of the Finnish University and Research Network (FUNET). It had 10,239 lines of code. In October 1991, version 0.02 of the Linux kernel was released.[19] In December 1991, Linux kernel 0.11 was released. This version was the first to be self-hosted as Linux kernel 0.11 could be compiled by a computer running the same kernel version. When Torvalds released version 0.12 in February 1992, he adopted the GNU General Public License (GPL) over his previous self-drafted license, which had not permitted commercial redistribution.[20] On 19 January 1992, the first post to the new newsgroup alt.os.linux was submitted.[21] On 31 March 1992, the newsgroup was renamed comp.os.linux.[22] The X Window System was ported to Linux, so that in March 1992, Linux version 0.95 was the first to be capable of running X. This large jump in version numbers, from 0.1x to 0.9x, resulted from the expectation that version 1.0, without major missing pieces, was imminent. However, this proved to be wrong and from 1993 to early 1994, 15 development versions of version 0.99 appeared. On 14 March 1994, Linux kernel 1.0.0 was released, with 176,250 lines of code. In March 1995, Linux kernel 1.2.0 was released, with 310,950 lines of code. Version 2 of the Linux kernel, released on 9 June 1996, was followed by additional major versions under the version 2 header: Starting in 2004, the release process changed and new kernels started coming out on a regular schedule every 2ÿ3 months, numbered 2.6.0, 2.6.1, up through 2.6.39. On 21 July 2011, Torvalds announced the release of Linux kernel 3.0: "Gone are the 2.6.<bignum> days".[23] The version bump is not about major technological changes when compared to Linux 2.6.39;[24] it marks the kernel's 20th anniversary.[25] The time-based release process remained the same. Version 3.10 of the Linux kernel, released in June 2013, contains 15,803,499 lines of code,[26] while the version 4.1, released in June 2015, has grown to over 19.5 million lines of code contributed by almost 14,000 programmers.[27] The fact that Linux is a monolithic kernel rather than a microkernel was the topic of a debate between Andrew S. Tanenbaum, the creator of MINIX, and Linus Torvalds.[28] The debate, started in 1992 on the Usenet discussion group comp.os.minix, was about Linux and kernel architecture in general.[29] Tanenbaum argued that microkernels were superior to monolithic kernels and that therefore Linux was obsolete. Unlike traditional monolithic kernels, device drivers in Linux are easily configured as loadable kernel modules and are loaded or unloaded while running the system. This subject was revisited on 9 May 2006,[30] and on 12 May 2006 Tanenbaum wrote a position statement.[31] The huge rise in popularity of the Android operating system, which includes the Linux kernel, has made the kernel the most popular choice for mobile devices, rivaling the installed base of all other operating systems.[32][33][34] Including previous years, three billion Android smartphones were estimated to have been sold by the end of 2014. Many consumer routers also use the Linux kernel,[35] as well as a wide variety of other embedded devices, such as smart TVs, set-top boxes, and webcams. Many desktop Linux distributions including the Linux kernel exist, but the usage share of Linux distributions is low in comparison to other operating systems. Initially, Torvalds released Linux under a license which forbade any commercial use.[36] This was changed in version 0.12 by a switch to the GNU General Public License (GPL).[20] This license allows distribution and sale of possibly modified and unmodified versions of Linux but requires that all those copies be released under the same license and be accompanied by the complete corresponding source code. Torvalds has described licensing Linux under the GPL as the "best thing I ever did".[36] The Linux kernel is licensed explicitly only under version 2 of the GPL,[6] without offering the licensee the option to choose "any later version", which is a common GPL extension. There was considerable debate about how easily the license could be changed to use later GPL versions (including version 3), and whether this change is even desirable.[37] Torvalds himself specifically indicated upon the release of version 2.4.0 that his own code is released only under version 2.[38] However, the terms of the GPL state that if no version is specified, then any version may be used,[39] and Alan Cox pointed out that very few other Linux contributors had specified a particular version of the GPL.[40] In September 2006, a survey of 29 key kernel programmers indicated that 28 preferred GPLv2 to the then-current GPLv3 draft. Torvalds commented, "I think a number of outsiders... believed that I personally was just the odd man out, because I've been so publicly not a huge fan of the GPLv3."[41] This group of high-profile kernel developers, including Linus Torvalds, Greg Kroah-Hartman and Andrew Morton, commented on mass media about their objections to the GPLv3.[42] They referred to clauses regarding DRM/tivoization, patents, "additional restrictions" and warned a Balkanisation of the "Open Source Universe" by the GPLv3.[42][43] Linus Torvalds, who decided not to adopt the GPLv3 for the Linux kernel, reiterated his criticism even years later.[44] It is debated whether loadable kernel modules (LKMs) are to be considered derivative works under copyright law, and thereby fall under the terms of the GPL. Torvalds has stated his belief that LKMs using only a limited, "public" subset of the kernel interfaces can sometimes be non-derived works, thus allowing some binary-only drivers and other LKMs that are not licensed under the GPL.[citation needed] A very good example for this is the usage of dma_buf by the proprietary Nvidia graphics drivers. dma_buf is a recent kernel feature (like the rest of the kernel, it is licensed under the GPL) that allows multiple GPUs to quickly copy data into each other's framebuffers.[45] One possible use case would be Nvidia Optimus that pairs a fast GPU with an Intel integrated GPU, where the Nvidia GPU writes into the Intel framebuffer when it is active. But, Nvidia cannot use this infrastructure because it uses a technical means to enforce the rule that it can only be used by LKMs that are also GPL. Alan Cox replied on LKML, rejecting a request from one of their engineers to remove this technical enforcement from the API.[46] Not all Linux kernel contributors agree with this interpretation, however, and even Torvalds agrees that many LKMs are clearly derived works, and indeed he writes that "kernel modules ARE derivative 'by default'".[47] On the other hand, Torvalds has also said that "one gray area in particular is something like a driver that was originally written for another operating system (i.e. clearly not a derived work of Linux in origin). [...] THAT is a gray area, and _that_ is the area where I personally believe that some modules may be considered to not be derived works simply because they weren't designed for Linux and don't depend on any special Linux behaviour."[48] Proprietary graphics drivers, in particular, are heavily discussed. Ultimately, it is likely that such questions can only be resolved by a court. One point of licensing controversy is the use of firmware "binary blobs" in Linux kernel to support several hardware devices. These files are under a variety of licenses, out of which many are restrictive and their exact underlying source code is usually unknown.[8] In 2002, Richard Stallman stated why, in his point of view, such blobs make the Linux kernel partially non-free software, and that distributing Linux kernel "violates the GPL", which requires "complete corresponding source code" to be available.[7] In 2008, Free Software Foundation Latin America started Linux-libre as a project that creates a completely free variant of the Linux kernel without proprietary objects; it is used by certain completely free Linux distributions, such as those endorsed by the Free Software Foundation, while it can also be used on most distributions.[49] On 15 December 2010, the Debian Project announced that the next Debian stable version "6.0 Squeeze" would come with a kernel "stripped of all non-free firmware bits".[50] This policy was continued to be applied in later stable Debian releases. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in the United States and some other countries. This is the result of an incident in which William Della Croce, Jr., who was not involved in the Linux project, trademarked the name and subsequently demanded royalties for its use.[51] Several Linux backers retained legal counsel and filed suit against Della Croce. The issue was settled in August 1997 when the trademark was assigned to Linus Torvalds.[52][53] In early 2007, SCO filed the specific details of the purported copyright infringement. Despite previous claims that SCO was the rightful owner of 1 million lines of code, they specified 326 lines of code, most of which were uncopyrightable.[54] In August 2007, the court in the Novell case ruled that SCO did not actually own the Unix copyrights, to begin with,[55] though the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in August 2009 that the question of who owned the copyright properly remained for a jury to answer.[56] The jury case was decided on 30 March 2010 in Novell's favour.[57] The Linux kernel is a monolithic kernel, supporting true preemptive multitasking (both in user mode and, since the 2.6 series, in kernel mode[58][59]), virtual memory, shared libraries, demand loading, shared copy-on-write executables (via KSM), memory management, the Internet protocol suite, and threading. Device drivers and kernel extensions run in kernel space (ring 0 in many CPU architectures), with full access to the hardware, although some exceptions run in user space, for example, filesystems based on FUSE/CUSE, and parts of UIO.[60][61] The graphics system most people use with Linux does not run within the kernel. Unlike standard monolithic kernels, device drivers are easily configured as modules, and loaded or unloaded while the system is running. Also, unlike standard monolithic kernels, device drivers can be pre-empted under certain conditions; this feature was added to handle hardware interrupts correctly and to better support symmetric multiprocessing.[59] By choice, the Linux kernel has no binary kernel interface.[62] The hardware is also incorporated into the file hierarchy. Device drivers interface to user applications via an entry in the /dev or /sys directories.[63] Process information as well is mapped to the file system through the /proc directory.[63] The Linux kernel is written in the version of the C programming language supported by GCC (which has introduced a number of extensions and changes to standard C), together with a number of short sections of code written in the assembly language (in GCC's "AT&T-style" syntax) of the target architecture. Because of the extensions to C it supports, GCC was for a long time the only compiler capable of correctly building the Linux kernel. GCC is the default compiler for the Linux kernel source. In 2004, Intel claimed to have modified the kernel so that its C compiler was also capable of compiling it.[64] There was another such reported success in 2009, with a modified 2.6.22 version of the kernel.[65][66] Since 2010, effort has been underway to build the Linux kernel with Clang, an alternative compiler for the C language;[67] as of 12 April 2014, the official kernel could almost be compiled by Clang.[68][69] The project dedicated to this effort is named LLVMLinux after the LLVM compiler infrastructure upon which Clang is built.[70] LLVMLinux does not aim to fork either the Linux kernel or the LLVM, therefore it is a meta-project composed of patches that are eventually submitted to the upstream projects. By enabling the Linux kernel to be compiled by Clang that, among other advantages, is known for faster compilation compared with GCC, kernel developers may benefit from a faster workflow due to shorter compilation times.[71] Conformance to standards is a general policy for the Linux kernel's internals. Another rule is that a kernel component is not accepted into the Linux kernel mainline if there is only proprietary user-space software using that component.[citation needed] Source code portability ensures that a C program written by conforming to a standard can be successfully compiled and run on any system that also conforms to the same standard. The relevant standards, aiming to achieve source code portability of programs, that the development of the Linux kernel, the GNU C Library, and associated utilities tries to adhere to, are POSIX and the Single UNIX Specification. The Linux kernel API of the Linux kernel, representing the kernel's system call interface, is composed of the available system calls. Binary portability shall guarantee that any program once compiled for a given hardware platform, can be run in its compiled form on any other hardware platform that conforms to the standard. Binary portability is an essential requirement for the commercial viability of independent software vendor (ISV) applications built for the operating systems based on the Linux kernel. Binary compatibility is much more demanding than source code portability; as of February 2014, the only standard concerning itself with binary compatibility is the Linux Standard Base (LSB). There are a couple of kernel internal APIs utilized between the different subsystems and subsystems of subsystems. Some of them have been kept stable over several releases, others have not. There are no guarantees regarding the in-kernel APIs. Maintainers and contributors are free to augment or change them at any time.[73] Examples of in-kernel APIs include software frameworks/APIs for the following classes of device drivers: Some organizations have strongly supported defining and maintaining of a stable in-kernel ABI over several releases.[citation needed] For example, it would benefit hardware manufacturers which release proprietary kernel modules and distribute binary-only software (e.g. device drivers).[citation needed] However, the Linux kernel developers choose not to maintain a stable in-kernel ABI.[75] This allows Linux kernel development to happen much more quickly.[citation needed] The Linux kernel provides preemptive scheduling under certain conditions. Until kernel version 2.4, only user processes were preemptive, i.e., in addition to time quantum expiration, an execution of current process in user mode would be interrupted if higher dynamic priority processes entered TASK_RUNNING state.[77] Toward 2.6 series of the Linux kernel, an ability to interrupt a task executing kernel code was added, although with that not all sections of the kernel code can be preempted.[78] The Linux kernel contains different scheduler classes.[79] By default the kernel uses a scheduler mechanism called the Completely Fair Scheduler introduced in the 2.6.23 version of the kernel.[80] Internally this default-scheduler class is also known as SCHED_OTHER, but the kernel also contains two POSIX-compliant[81] real-time scheduling classes named SCHED_FIFO (realtime first-in-first-out) and SCHED_RR (realtime round-robin), both of which take precedence over the default class.[79] Through the use of the real-time Linux kernel patch PREEMPT_RT, support for full preemption of critical sections, interrupt handlers, and "interrupt disable" code sequences can be supported.[82] Partial mainline integration of the real-time Linux kernel patch already brought some functionality to the kernel mainline.[83] Preemption improves latency, increases responsiveness, and makes Linux more suitable for desktop and real-time applications. Older versions of the kernel had a so-called big kernel lock for synchronization across the entire kernel, which was finally removed by Arnd Bergmann in 2011.[84] Additional scheduling policy known as SCHED_DEADLINE, implementing the earliest deadline first algorithm (EDF), was added in kernel version 3.14, released on 30 March 2014.[85][86] While not originally designed to be portable,[18][87] Linux is now one of the most widely ported operating system kernels, running on a diverse range of systems from the ARM architecture to IBM z/Architecture mainframe computers. The first port beyond Linux's original 386 architecture was performed on the Motorola 68000 platform by Amiga users, who accomplished this by replacing major parts of the kernel. The modifications to the kernel were so fundamental that Torvalds viewed the Motorola version as a fork and a "Linux-like operating system"[87] rather than as an actual port. It was, however, the impetus that Torvalds needed to lead a major restructure of the kernel code to facilitate porting to competing computing architectures. The first Linux endorsed port was to the DEC Alpha AXP 64-bit platform which was demonstrated at DECUS in May, 1995m[88] supporting both 386 and Alpha in a single source tree.[87] DEC was responsible for supplying the hardware necessary to Torvalds to enable a port of Linux to 64 bits[89] that same year. Linux runs as the main operating system on IBM's Blue Gene and other fastest supercomputers, including the top Chinese one. As of November?2017[update], all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers run some variant of Linux.[10] Linux has also been ported to various handheld devices such as Apple's iPod and iPhone.[90] Some operating systems developed for mobile phones use modified versions of the Linux kernel, including Google Android, Firefox OS, HP webOS, Nokia Maemo and Jolla Sailfish OS.[91][92][93] In Linux, a "panic" is an unrecoverable system error detected by the kernel, as opposed to similar errors detected by user space code. It is possible for kernel code to indicate such a condition by calling the panic function located in the header file sys/system.h. However, most panics are the result of unhandled processor exceptions in kernel code, such as references to invalid memory addresses. These are typically indicative of a bug somewhere in the call chain leading to the panic. They can also indicate a failure of hardware, such as a failed RAM cell or errors in arithmetic functions in the processor caused by a processor bug, overheating/damaged processor, or a soft error. A report of a non-fatal bug in the kernel is called an "oops"; such deviations from correct behavior of the Linux kernel may allow continued operation with compromised reliability.[94] These crash reports are automatically collected and can be sent upstream by various software, such as kerneloops,[95] ABRT (Fedora)[96] and apport (Ubuntu). KernelOops.org collects these reports and publishes statistics on their website.[97] The kernel panic message might not be printed visibly in some conditions, such as when using a graphical desktop. To debug such conditions, other methods such as attaching a serial port console can be used. Rebootless updates can even be applied to the kernel by using live patching technologies such as Ksplice, kpatch and kGraft. Minimalistic foundations for live kernel patching were merged into the Linux kernel mainline in kernel version 4.0, which was released on 12 April 2015. Those foundations, known as livepatch and based primarily on the kernel's ftrace functionality, form a common core capable of supporting hot patching by both kGraft and kpatch, by providing an application programming interface (API) for kernel modules that contain hot patches and an application binary interface (ABI) for the userspace management utilities. However, the common core included into Linux kernel?4.0 supports only the x86 architecture and does not provide any mechanisms for ensuring function-level consistency while the hot patches are applied. As of April?2015[update], there is ongoing work on porting kpatch and kGraft to the common live patching core provided by the Linux kernel mainline.[98][99][100] Computer security is a much-publicized topic in relation to the Linux kernel because a large portion of the kernel bugs present potential security flaws. For example, they may allow for privilege escalation or create denial-of-service attack vectors. Over the years, numerous such flaws were found and fixed in the Linux kernel.[101] New security features are frequently implemented to improve the Linux kernel's security.[102][103] Critics have accused kernel developers of covering up security flaws or at least not announcing them; in 2008, Linus Torvalds responded to this with the following:[104][105] I personally consider security bugs to be just "normal bugs". I don't cover them up, but I also don't have any reason what-so-ever to think it's a good idea to track them and announce them as something special...one reason I refuse to bother with the whole security circus is that I think it glorifiesand thus encouragesthe wrong behavior. It makes "heroes" out of security people, as if the people who don't just fix normal bugs aren't as important. In fact, all the boring normal bugs are way more important, just because there's a lot more of them. I don't think some spectacular security hole should be glorified or cared about as being any more "special" than a random spectacular crash due to bad locking. Linux distributions typically release security updates to fix vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel. Many offer long-term support releases that receive security updates for a certain Linux kernel version for an extended period of time. Version 1.0 of the Linux kernel was released on 14 March 1994.[106] This release of the Linux kernel only supported single-processor i386-based computer systems. Portability became a concern, and so version 1.2 (released 7 March 1995)[107] gained support for computer systems using processors based on the Alpha, SPARC, and MIPS architectures. Version 2.0 was released on 9 June 1996.[108] The series included 41 releases. The major feature of 2.0 was support for symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) and support for more types of processors. Version 2.2, released on 20 January 1999,[109] removed the global spinlock and provided improved SMP support, added support for the m68k and PowerPC architectures, and added new file systems (including read-only support for Microsoft's NTFS).[110] Version 2.4.0, released on 4 January 2001,[111] contained support for ISA Plug and Play, USB, and PC Cards.[112] It also included support for the PA-RISC processor from Hewlett-Packard. Development for 2.4.x changed a bit in that more features were made available throughout the duration of the series, including support for Bluetooth, Logical Volume Manager (LVM) version 1, RAID support, InterMezzo and ext3 file systems. Version 2.6.0 was released on 17 December 2003.[113] The development for 2.6.x changed further towards including new features throughout the duration of the series. Among the changes that have been made in the 2.6 series are: integration of Clinux into the mainline kernel sources, PAE support, support for several new lines of CPUs, integration of Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) into the mainline kernel sources, support for up to 232 users (up from 216), support for up to 229 process IDs (64-bit only, 32-bit arches still limited to 215),[114] substantially increased the number of device types and the number of devices of each type, improved 64-bit support, support for file systems which support file sizes of up to 16 terabytes, in-kernel preemption, support for the Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL), User-mode Linux integration into the mainline kernel sources, SELinux integration into the mainline kernel sources, InfiniBand support, and considerably more. Also notable are the addition of several file systems throughout the 2.6.x releases: FUSE, JFS, XFS, ext4 and more. Details on the history of the 2.6 kernel series can be found in the ChangeLog files on the 2.6 kernel series source code release area of kernel.org.[115] Version 3.0 was released on 22 July 2011.[23] On 30 May 2011, Torvalds announced that the big change was "NOTHING. Absolutely nothing." and asked, "...let's make sure we really make the next release not just an all new shiny number, but a good kernel too."[116] After the expected 6ÿ7 weeks of the development process, it would be released near the 20th anniversary of Linux. In December 2012, Torvalds decided to reduce kernel complexity by removing support for i386 processors, making the 3.7 kernel series the last one still supporting the original processor.[117][118] The same series unified support for the ARM processor.[119] Version 3.11, released on 2 September 2013,[120] adds many new features such as new O_TMPFILE flag for open(2) to reduce temporary file vulnerabilities, experimental AMD Radeon dynamic power management, low-latency network polling, and zswap (compressed swap cache).[121] Version 4.15, released on 28 January 2018[122] including fixes for spectre/meltdown hardware vulnerability affecting Intel x86 microprocessors, IBM POWER processors, and some ARM-based microprocessors. The numbering change from 2.6.39 to 3.0, and from 3.19 to 4.0, involved no meaningful technical differentiation. The major version number was increased to avoid large minor numbers.[23][123] As of 2007, the development of the kernel had shifted from the top 20 most active developers writing 80% of the code to the top 30 writing 30% of the code, with top developers spending more time reviewing changes.[124] Developers can also be categorized by affiliation; in 2007, the top category was unknown while the top corporation was Red Hat with 12% of contributions, and known amateurs at 3.9%.[124] The kernel changes made in year 2007 have been submitted by over 1900 developers, which may be a significant underestimate because developers working in teams usually count as one.[citation needed] It is generally assumed that the community of Linux kernel developers comprises 5000 or 6000 members. Update from the 2016 Linux Kernel Development Report, issued by the Linux Foundation, covering the period from 3.18 (December 2014) to 4.7 (July 2016): About 1500 developers are contributing to each release from about 200-250 companies on average per release. The top 30 developers contributed a little more than 16% of the code. As of companies, the top contributors are Intel (12.9%) and Red Hat (8.0%), the third and fourth places are held by the 'none' (7.7%) and 'unknown' (6.8%) categories. A developer who wants to change the Linux kernel starts with developing and testing that change. Depending on how significant the change is and how many subsystems it modifies that change will either consist of a single patch or of multiple patches. In case of a single subsystem that is maintained by a single maintainer, these patches are sent as e-mails to the maintainer of the subsystem with the appropriate mailing list in Cc. The maintainer and the readers of the mailing list will review the patches and provide feedback. Once the review process has finished the maintainer accepts the patches in his kernel tree. If these changes are bug fixes that are considered important enough a pull request that includes the patches will be sent to Linus within a few days. Otherwise, a pull request will be sent to Linus during the next merge window. The merge window usually lasts two weeks and starts immediately after the release of the previous kernel version[125]. Linus Torvalds has the last word not only over which changes get accepted into the Linux kernel but also over who can become a maintainer. Kernel maintainers keep their role unless they give their role up voluntarily. There are no known examples of kernel maintainers who have been told to step down. Additionally, there are no known examples of a kernel maintainer having been criticized for the style of her or his interactions with developers by Linus. This gives maintainers a significant amount of power. Although the culture in the kernel development community has improved over the years, the kernel development community has a reputation of sometimes being rough[126][127]. Developers who feel treated unfairly can report this to the Linux Foundation's Technical Advisory Board[128]. Some kernel community members disagree with the current discussion culture[129]. Prominent Linux kernel developers are aware that it is important to avoid conflicts between developers[130]. There is no code of conduct for kernel developers since Linus Torvalds does not agree with having such a code[131]. However, a code of conflict exists[132]. There have been several notable conflicts among Linux kernel developers. Examples of such conflicts are: As of 2013[update], the 3.10 release of the Linux kernel had 15,803,499 lines of code. As of 2007, roughly 5% of the code is part of the "core" while 52% is drivers.[124] Instead of a roadmap, there are technical guidelines. Instead of a central resource allocation, there are persons and companies who all have a stake in the further development of the Linux kernel, quite independently from one another: People like Linus Torvalds and I dont plan the kernel evolution. We dont sit there and think up the roadmap for the next two years, then assign resources to the various new features. That's because we dont have any resources. The resources are all owned by the various corporations who use and contribute to Linux, as well as by the various independent contributors out there. It's those people who own the resources who decide... Linux is evolution, not intelligent design! By this statement it is meant that evolution often does odd (and "sub-optimal") things exactly because it does incremental changes which do not break at any point. As a result, any released version of the Linux kernel is fully usable, even if, for example, device drivers do not support all features of the hardware they are written for. The conceptual architecture of the Linux kernel has proved its success, while essential factors for this success were the provision for the organization of developers, and the provision for system extensibility. The Linux kernel's architecture was required to support many independent volunteer developers, which suggested that the system portions that require the most development??hardware device drivers, file systems, and network protocols??be implemented in an extensible fashion. The Linux kernel's architecture chose to make these systems extensible using a data abstraction technique?ÿ each hardware device driver is implemented as a separate module that supports a common interface. In this way, a single developer can add a new device driver, with minimal interaction required with other developers of the Linux kernel. Another important extension to the Linux kernel is the addition of more supported hardware platforms. The architecture of the system supports this extensibility by separating all hardware-specific code into distinct modules within each subsystem. In this way, a small group of developers can implement a port of the Linux kernel to a new hardware architecture by re-implementing only the machine-specific portions of the kernel. The cost to redevelop the Linux kernel version 2.6.0 in a traditional proprietary development setting has been estimated to be US$612 million (?467M, S394M) in 2004 prices using the COCOMO man-month estimation model.[145] In 2006, a study funded by the European Union put the redevelopment cost of kernel version 2.6.8 higher, at ?882M ($1.14bn, S744M).[146] This topic was revisited in October 2008 by Amanda McPherson, Brian Proffitt, and Ron Hale-Evans. Using David A. Wheeler's methodology, they estimated redevelopment of the 2.6.25 kernel now costs $1.3bn (part of a total $10.8bn to redevelop Fedora 9).[147] Again, Garcia-Garcia and Alonso de Magdaleno from University of Oviedo (Spain) estimate that the value annually added to kernel was about ?100M between 2005 and 2007 and ?225M in 2008, it would cost also more than ?1bn (about $1.4bn as of February 2010) to develop in the European Union.[148] As of 7?March?2011[update], using then-current LOC (lines of code) of a 2.6.x Linux kernel and wage numbers with David A. Wheeler's calculations it would cost approximately $3bn (about ?2.2bn) to redevelop the Linux kernel as it keeps getting bigger.[149] As of 2015[update], in the current development scheme, the main branch of development is not a traditional "stable" branch; instead, it incorporates all kinds of changes, including both the latest features, and security and bug fixes. For users who do not want to risk updating to new versions containing code that may not be well tested, a separate set of "stable" branches exist, one for each released version, which are meant for people who just want the security and bug fixes, but not a whole new version. These branches are maintained by the stable team (Greg Kroah-Hartman, Chris Wright, and others). The development model for the 2.6 kernel series was significantly different compared to the 2.5 series. Before the 2.6 series, there was a stable branch (2.4) where only relatively minor and safe changes were merged, and an unstable branch (2.5), where bigger changes and cleanups were allowed. Both of these branches had been maintained by the same set of people, led by Torvalds. This meant that users would always have a well-tested 2.4 version with the latest security and bug fixes to use, though they would have to wait for the features which went into the 2.5 branch. The downside of this was that the "stable" kernel ended up so far behind that it no longer supported recent hardware and lacked needed features. In the late 2.5 kernel series, some maintainers elected to try backporting of their changes to the stable kernel series, which resulted in bugs being introduced into the 2.4 kernel series. The 2.5 branch was then eventually declared stable and renamed to 2.6. But instead of opening an unstable 2.7 branch, the kernel developers decided to continue putting major changes into the 2.6 branch, which would then be released at a pace faster than 2.4.x but slower than 2.5.x. This had the desirable effect of making new features more quickly available and getting more testing of the new code, which was added in smaller batches and easier to test. As a response to the lack of a stable kernel tree where people could coordinate the collection of bug fixes as such, in December 2005 Adrian Bunk announced that he would keep releasing 2.6.16.y kernels when the stable team moved on to 2.6.17.[150][151] He also included some driver updates, making the maintenance of the 2.6.16 series very similar to the old rules for maintenance of a stable series such as 2.4.[152] Since then, the "stable team" had been formed, and it would keep updating kernel versions with bug fixes. In October 2008 Adrian Bunk announced that he will maintain 2.6.27 for a few years as a replacement of 2.6.16.[153] The stable team picked up on the idea and as of 2010[update] they continue to maintain that version and release bug fixes for it, in addition to others.[154] After the change of the development model with 2.6.x, developers continued to want what one might call an unstable kernel tree, one that changes as rapidly as new patches come in. Andrew Morton decided to repurpose his -mm tree from memory management to serve as the destination for all new and experimental code. In September 2007, Morton decided to stop maintaining this tree.[155] In February 2008, Stephen Rothwell created the linux-next tree to serve as a place where patches aimed to be merged during the next development cycle are gathered.[156][157] Several subsystem maintainers also adopted the suffix -next for trees containing code which is meant to be submitted for inclusion in the next release cycle. As of January?2014[update], the in-development version of the Linux kernel is held in an unstable branch named linux-next.[158] Most Linux users run a kernel supplied by their Linux distribution. Some distributions ship the "vanilla" or "stable" kernels. However, several Linux distribution vendors (such as Red Hat and Debian) maintain another set of Linux kernel branches which are integrated into their products. These are usually updated at a slower pace compared to the "vanilla" branch, and they usually include all fixes from the relevant "stable" branch, but at the same time they can also add support for drivers or features which had not been released in the "vanilla" version the distribution vendor started basing their branch from. While Linus Torvalds supervises code changes and releases to the latest kernel versions, he has delegated the maintenance of older versions to other programmers.[159] Major releases as old as 2.0 (officially made obsolete with the kernel 2.2.0 release in January 1999) are maintained as needed, although at a very slow pace. Linux kernel 4.14 has been released and with it long-term support (LTS) increased to 6 year,[160] intending to provide longer support period for Android devices. Versions 2.6.16 and 2.6.27 of the Linux kernel were unofficially supported in a long-term support (LTS) fashion,[168] before a 2011 working group in the Linux Foundation started a formal long-term support initiative.[169][170] The Linux kernel source code used to be maintained without the help of an automated source code management system, mostly because of Linus Torvalds' dislike of centralized SCM systems. In 2002, Linux kernel development switched to BitKeeper, an SCM system which satisfied Torvalds' technical requirements. BitKeeper was made available to Linus and several others free of charge but was not free software, which was a source of controversy. The system did provide some interoperability with free SCM systems such as CVS and Subversion. In April 2005 efforts to reverse-engineer, the BitKeeper system by Andrew Tridgell led BitMover, the company which maintained BitKeeper, to stop supporting the Linux development community. In response, Torvalds and others wrote a new source code control system for the purpose, called Git. The new system was written within weeks, and in two months the first official kernel release was made using Git.[349] Git soon developed into a separate project in its own right and gained widespread adoption. Linux kernel development has used three different version numbering schemes. The first scheme was used in the run-up to version 1.0. The first version of the kernel was 0.01. This was followed by 0.02, 0.03, 0.10, 0.11, 0.12 (the first GPL version), 0.95, 0.96, 0.97, 0.98, 0.99 and then 1.0.[350] From 0.95 on there were many patch releases between versions. After the 1.0 release and prior to version 2.6, the number was composed as "a.b.c", where the number "a" denoted the kernel version, the number "b" denoted the major revision of the kernel, and the number "c" indicated the minor revision of the kernel. The kernel version was changed only when major changes in the code and the concept of the kernel occurred, twice in the history of the kernel: in 1994 (version 1.0) and in 1996 (version 2.0). Version 3.0 was released in 2011, but it was not a major change in kernel concept. The major revision was assigned according to the evenÿodd version numbering scheme. The minor revision had been changed whenever security patches, bug fixes, new features or drivers were implemented in the kernel. In 2004, after version 2.6.0 was released, the kernel developers held several discussions regarding the release and version scheme[351][352] and ultimately Linus Torvalds and others decided that a much shorter "time-based" release cycle would be beneficial. For about seven years, the first two numbers remained "2.6", and the third number was incremented with each new release, which rolled out after two to three months. A fourth number was sometimes added to account for bug and security fixes (only) to the kernel version. The even-odd system of alternation between stable and unstable was gone. Instead, development pre-releases are titled release candidates, which is indicated by appending the suffix '-rc' to the kernel version, followed by an ordinal number. The first use of the fourth number occurred when a grave error, which required immediate fixing, was encountered in 2.6.8's NFS code. However, there were not enough other changes to legitimize the release of a new minor revision (which would have been 2.6.9). So, 2.6.8.1 was released, with the only change being the fix of that error. With 2.6.11, this was adopted as the new official versioning policy. Later it became customary to continuously back-port major bug-fixes and security patches to released kernels and indicate that by updating the fourth number. On 29 May 2011, Linus Torvalds announced[353] that the kernel version would be bumped to 3.0 for the release following 2.6.39, due to the minor version number getting too large and to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Linux. It continued the time-based release practice introduced with 2.6.0, but using the second number; for example, 3.1 would follow 3.0 after a few months. An additional number (now the third number) would be added on when necessary to designate security and bug fixes, as for example with 3.0.18; the Linux community refers to this as "x.y.z" versioning. The major version number was also later raised to 4, for the release following version 3.19.[354][b] In addition to Torvalds' -rc development releases, the version number was sometimes suffixed with letter sequences, such as tip, which were at times the initials of a software developer, indicating another development branch. For example, ck stands for Con Kolivas and ac stands for Alan Cox. Sometimes, the letters are related to the primary development area of the branch the kernel is built from, for example, wl indicates a wireless networking test build. Also, distributors may have their own suffixes with different numbering systems and for back-ports to their enterprise (i.e. stable but older) distribution versions. There are certain variants of the Linux kernel that provide additional functionality but do not belong to the Linux kernel mainline. Such variants of the Linux kernel include Linux-libre, Compute Node Linux, Cooperative Linux, Longene, grsecurity, INK, L4Linux, MkLinux, RTLinux, and User-mode Linux. Some of these variants have been partially merged into the mainline.[355]

35 days🚨Guernica is a mural-sized oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso completed in June 1937,[2] at his home on Rue des Grands Augustins, in Paris. The painting, which uses a palette of gray, black, and white, is regarded by many art critics as one of the most moving and powerful anti-war paintings in history.[3] Standing at 3.49 meters (11?ft 5?in) tall and 7.76 meters (25?ft 6?in) wide, the large mural shows the suffering of people wrenched by violence and chaos. Prominent in the composition are a gored horse, a bull, and flames. The painting was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italian warplanes at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. Upon completion, Guernica was exhibited at the Spanish display at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (Paris International Exposition) in the 1937 World's Fair in Paris and then at other venues around the world. The touring exhibition was used to raise funds for Spanish war relief.[4] The painting became famous and widely acclaimed, and it helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War. In January 1937, the Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to create a large mural for the Spanish display at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris. At the time, Picasso was living in Paris, where he had been named Honorary Director-in-Exile of the Prado Museum. He had last visited Spain in 1934 and never returned.[5] His initial sketches for the project, on which he worked somewhat dispassionately from January until late April, depicted his perennial theme of the artist's studio.[2] Immediately upon hearing reports of the 26 April bombing of Guernica, the poet Juan Larrea visited Picasso and urged him to make the bombing his subject.[2] However, it was only on 1 May, having read George Steer's eyewitness account of the bombing (originally published in both The Times and The New York Times on 28 April), that he abandoned his initial project and started sketching a series of preliminary drawings for Guernica.[6] Guernica is a town in the province of Biscay in Basque Country. During the Spanish Civil War, it was regarded as the northern bastion of the Republican resistance movement and the center of Basque culture, adding to its significance as a target.[7] The Republican forces were made up of assorted factions (Communists, Socialists, Anarchists and others) with differing goals, but united in their opposition to the Nationalists. The Nationalists, led by General Francisco Franco, sought a return to pre-Republican Spain, based on law, order, and traditional Catholic values.[8] At about 16:30 on Monday, 26 April 1937, warplanes of the German Condor Legion, commanded by Colonel Wolfram von Richthofen, bombed Guernica for about two hours. Germany, at this time led by Hitler, had lent material support to the Nationalists. Later, intense aerial bombardment became a crucial preliminary step in the Blitzkrieg tactic.[9][7] In his journal for 30 April 1937, von Richthofen wrote: When the first Junkers squadron arrived, there was smoke already everywhere (from the VB [VB/88] which had attacked with 3 aircraft); nobody would identify the targets of roads, bridge, and suburb, and so they just dropped everything right into the center. The 250s toppled a number of houses and destroyed the water mains. The incendiaries now could spread and become effective. The materials of the houses: tile roofs, wooden porches, and half-timbering resulted in complete annihilation. Most inhabitants were away because of a holiday; a majority of the rest left town immediately at the beginning [of the bombardment]. A small number perished in shelters that were hit."[10] Other accounts state that the town's inhabitants were in fact congregated in the center of town, as it was market day, and when the bombardment commenced, were unable to escape because the roads were full of debris and the bridges leading out of town had been destroyed. Guernica's location was at a major crossroads 10 kilometers from the front lines and between the front lines and Bilbao, the capital of Bizkaia (Biscay). Any Republican retreat towards Bilbao and any Nationalist advance towards Bilbao had to pass through Guernica. "During 25 April, many of the demoralized (Republican) troops from Marquina fell back on Guernica, which lay 10 kilometers behind the lines."[11] Wolfram von Richthofen's war diary entry for 26 April 1937 states, "K/88 [the Condor Legion bomber force] was targeted at Guernica in order to halt and disrupt the Red withdrawal which has to pass through here." Under the German concept of tactical bombing, areas that were routes of transportation and troop movement were considered to be legitimate military targets, and tactical aircraft tended to operate just outside the range of friendly artillery; in the German mindset, Guernica was thus a major target in support of the Republican offensive. The following day, Richthofen wrote in his war diary, "Guernica burning."[12] The Republican retreat towards Bilbao did pass through Guernica, before and after the bombing, and, as Beevor points out, "At Guernica the communist Rosa Luxemburg Battalion under Major Cristobal held back the nationalists for a time".[12] Guernica was a quiet village. The nearest military target of any consequence was a factory on the outskirts of the town, which manufactured various war products. The factory went through the attack unscathed. Thus, the motivation of the bombing was one of intimidation. Because a majority of the town's men were away, engaged in fighting on behalf of the Republicans, the town at the time of the bombing was populated mostly by women and children.[13] These demographics are reflected in the painting because, as Rudolf Arnheim writes, for Picasso: "The women and children make Guernica the image of innocent, defenseless humanity victimized. Also, women and children have often been presented by Picasso as the very perfection of mankind. An assault on women and children is, in Picasso's view, directed at the core of mankind." Clearly, the Nationalists sought to demoralize the Republicans and the civilian population as a whole by demonstrating their military might on a town that stood for traditional Basque culture and innocent civilians.[7] After the bombing, the work of the Basque and Republican sympathizer and The Times journalist George Steer propelled this event onto the international scene and brought it to Pablo Picasso's attention. Steer's eyewitness account was published on 28 April in both The Times and The New York Times, and on the 29th appeared in L'Humanit, a French Communist daily. Steer wrote: Guernica, the most ancient town of the Basques and the centre of their cultural tradition, was completely destroyed yesterday afternoon by insurgent air raiders. The bombardment of this open town far behind the lines occupied precisely three hours and a quarter, during which a powerful fleet of aeroplanes consisting of three types of German types, Junkers and Heinkel bombers, did not cease unloading on the town bombs weighing from 1,000 lbs. downwards and, it is calculated, more than 3,000 two-pounder aluminium incendiary projectiles. The fighters, meanwhile, plunged low from above the centre of the town to machinegun those of the civilian population who had taken refuge in the fields."[13] While Picasso was living in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II, one German officer allegedly asked him, upon seeing a photo of Guernica in his apartment, "Did you do that?" Picasso responded, "No, you did."[14] The photographer Dora Maarwho had worked with Picasso since mid-1936, photographing his studio and teaching him the technique of cameraless photography[15] documented the stages Guernica went through on its way to completion. Apart from their documentary and publicity value, Maar's photographs "helped Picasso to eschew color and give the work the black-and-white immediacy of a photograph", according to John Richardson.[2] The work was painted using a matte house paint specially formulated at Picasso's request to have the least possible gloss,[2] and the American artist John Ferren assisted him in stretching the monumental canvas.[16] Previously, Picasso had rarely allowed strangers into his studio to watch him work, but he admitted influential visitors to his studio to observe the progress of the painting, believing that the publicity to be gained would help the antifascist cause.[2] As he worked on the mural, Picasso said: "The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death."[17] After 35 days of work, he finished the painting on 4 June 1937.[2] The scene is within a room where, at an open end on the left, a wide-eyed bull stands over a woman grieving over a dead child in her arms. The center is occupied by a horse falling in agony as if it had just been run through by a spear or javelin. The large gaping wound in the horse's side is a major focus of the painting. Under the horse is a dead, apparently dismembered soldier; his hand on a severed arm still grasps a shattered sword from which a flower grows. On the open palm of the dead soldier is a stigma, a symbol of martyrdom derived from the stigmata of Christ. A light bulb blazes in the shape of an evil eye over the suffering horse's head (the bare bulb of the torturer's cell). To the upper right of the horse, a frightened female figure, who seems to be witnessing the scenes before her, appears to have floated into the room through a window. Her arm, also floating in, carries a flame-lit lamp. The lamp is positioned very close to the bulb, and is a symbol of hope, clashing with the lightbulb. From the right, an awe-struck woman staggers towards the center below the floating female figure. She looks up blankly into the blazing light bulb. Daggers that suggest screaming replace the tongues of the bull, grieving woman, and horse. A dove is scribed on the wall behind the bull. Part of its body comprises a crack in the wall through which bright light (hope, or the outside world) can be seen. On the far right, a woman with arms raised in terror is entrapped by fire from above and below; her right hand suggests the shape of an airplane. A dark wall with an open door defines the right end of the mural. Two "hidden" images formed by the horse appear in Guernica: The bull's tail forms the image of a flame with smoke rising from it, seemingly appearing in a window created by the lighter shade of gray surrounding it. Interpretations of Guernica vary widely and contradict one another. This extends, for example, to the mural's two dominant elements: the bull and the horse. Art historian Patricia Failing said, "The bull and the horse are important characters in Spanish culture. Picasso himself certainly used these characters to play many different roles over time. This has made the task of interpreting the specific meaning of the bull and the horse very tough. Their relationship is a kind of ballet that was conceived in a variety of ways throughout Picasso's career." When pressed to explain the elements in Guernica, Picasso said, ...this bull is a bull and this horse is a horse... If you give a meaning to certain things in my paintings it may be very true, but it is not my idea to give this meaning. What ideas and conclusions you have got I obtained too, but instinctively, unconsciously. I make the painting for the painting. I paint the objects for what they are.[18] In The Dream and Lie of Franco, a series of narrative sketches Picasso also created for the World's Fair, Franco is depicted as a monster that first devours his own horse and later does battle with an angry bull. Work on these illustrations began before the bombing of Guernica, and four additional panels were added, three of which relate directly to the Guernica mural. According to scholar Beverly Ray, the following list of interpretations reflects the general consensus of historians: "The shape and posture of the bodies express protest"; "Picasso uses black, white, and grey paint to set a somber mood and express pain and chaos"; "flaming buildings and crumbling walls not only express the destruction of Guernica, but reflect the destructive power of civil war"; "the newspaper print used in the painting reflects how Picasso learned of the massacre"; "The light bulb in the painting represents the sun"; and "The broken sword near the bottom of the painting symbolizes the defeat of the people at the hand of their tormentors".[9] Alejandro Escalona said, "The chaos unfolding seems to happen in closed quarters provoking an intense feeling of oppression. There is no way out of the nightmarish cityscape. The absence of color makes the violent scene developing right before your eyes even more horrifying. The blacks, whites, and grays startle youespecially because you are used to see war images broadcast live and in high-definition right to your living room."[19] In drawing attention to a number of preliminary studies, the so-called primary project,[20] that show an atelier installation incorporating the central triangular shape which reappears in the final version of Guernica, Becht-J?rdens and Wehmeier interpret the painting as a self-referential composition in the tradition of atelier paintings such as Las Meninas by Diego Velzquez. In his chef d'oeuvre, Picasso seems to be trying to define his role and his power as an artist in the face of political power and violence. But far from being a mere political painting, Guernica should be seen as Picassos comment on what art can actually contribute towards the self-assertion that liberates every human being and protects the individual against overwhelming forces such as political crime, war, and death.[21] Guernica was initially exhibited in July 1937 at the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition.[22] The Pavilion, which was financed by the Spanish Republican government at the time of civil war, was built to exhibit the Spanish government's struggle for existence contrary to the Exposition's technology theme. The Pavilion's entrance presented an enormous photographic mural of Republican soldiers accompanied by the slogan: The display of Guernica was accompanied by a poem by Paul luard, and the pavilion displayed The Reaper by Joan Mir܇ and Mercury Fountain by Alexander Calder, both of whom were sympathetic to the Republican cause. At its unveiling at the Paris Exhibition it garnered little attention. The public's reaction to Guernica was mixed.[23] Max Aub, one of the officials in charge of the Spanish pavilion, was compelled to defend the work against a group of Spanish officials who objected to the mural's modernist style and sought to replace it with a more traditional painting that was also commissioned for the exhibition, Madrid 1937 (Black Aeroplanes) by Horacio Ferrer de Morgado.[2] Some Marxist groups criticized Picasso's painting as lacking in political commitment and faulted it for not offering a vision of a better future.[24] In contrast, Morgado's painting was a great success with Spanish Communists and with the public.[2] The art critic Clement Greenberg was also critical of Guernica, but for different reasons.[25] In a later essay, Greenberg termed Guernica "jerky" and "too compressed for its size", and compared it unfavorably to the "magnificently lyrical" The Charnel House (1944ÿ48), a later antiwar painting by Picasso.[26] Among the painting's admirers were the art critic Jean Cassou and the poet Jos Bergamn, both of whom praised the painting as quintessentially Spanish.[27] Michel Leiris perceived in the painting a foreshadowing: "On a black and white canvas that depicts ancient tragedy ... Picasso also writes our letter of doom: all that we love is going to be lost..."[28] Guernica, for which Picasso was paid 200,000 francs for his costs by the Spanish Republican government, was one of the few major paintings that were not sold directly from artist to his exclusive contracted art dealer and friend, Paul Rosenberg.[29] However, after its exhibition Rosenberg organised a four-man extravaganza Scandinavian tour of 118 works by Picasso, Matisse, Braque and Henri Laurens. The main attraction was Guernica, and from January to April 1938 the tour visited Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and G?teborg. In September 1938 the painting travelled to England, exhibited in London's Whitechapel Art Gallery organized by Roland Penrose with Clement Attlee, where it arrived on 30 September 1938, the same day the Munich Agreement was signed by the leaders of the United Kingdom, France, Italy, and Germany. It then travelled onwards to Leeds, Liverpool and in early 1939 Manchester. There, Manchester Foodship For Spain, a group of artists and activists engaged in sending aid to the people of Spain, exhibited the painting in the HE Nunn & Co Ford automobile showroom for two weeks.[30] It then returned briefly to France. After the victory of Francisco Franco in Spain, the painting was sent to the United States to raise funds and support for Spanish refugees. The San Francisco Museum of Art (later SFMOMA) gave the work its first public, free appearance in the United States from 27 August to 19 September 1939. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City then mounted an important Picasso exhibition on 15 November 1939 that remained on view until 7 January 1940, entitled: Picasso: 40 Years of His Art, that was organized by Alfred H. Barr in collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition contained 344 works, including Guernica and its studies.[31] At Picasso's request the safekeeping of the piece was entrusted to the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, as it was Picasso's expressed desire that the painting should not be delivered to Spain until liberty and democracy had been established in the country.[5] Between 1939 and 1952, the painting traveled extensively in the United States; between 1953 and 1956 it was shown in Brazil, at the first-ever Picasso retrospective in Milan, Italy, and then in numerous other major European cities, before returning to MoMA for a retrospective celebrating Picasso's seventy-fifth birthday. It then went on to Chicago and Philadelphia. By this time, concern for the state of the painting resulted in a decision to keep it in one place: a room on MoMA's third floor, where it was accompanied by several of Picasso's preliminary studies and some of Dora Maar's photographs of the work in progress. The studies and photos were often loaned for other exhibitions, but until 1981, Guernica itself remained at MoMA.[5] During the Vietnam War, the room containing the painting became the site of occasional anti-war vigils. These were usually peaceful and uneventful, but on 28 February 1974, Tony Shafraziostensibly protesting Second Lieutenant William Calley's petition for habeas corpus following his indictment and sentencing for the murder of 109 Vietnamese civilians during the My Lai massacredefaced the painting with red spray paint, painting the words "KILL LIES ALL"; the paint was removed with relative ease from the varnished surface.[32] As early as 1968, Franco had expressed an interest in having Guernica come to Spain.[5] However, Picasso refused to allow this until the Spanish people again enjoyed a republic. He later added other conditions, such as the restoration of "public liberties and democratic institutions". Picasso died in 1973. Franco, ten years Picasso's junior, died two years later, in 1975. After Franco's death, Spain was transformed into a democratic constitutional monarchy, ratified by a new constitution in 1978. However, MoMA was reluctant to give up one of its greatest treasures and argued that a monarchy did not represent the republic that had been stipulated in Picasso's will as a condition for the painting's delivery. Under great pressure from a number of observers, MoMA finally ceded the painting to Spain in 1981. The Spanish historian Javier Tusell was one of the negotiators. Upon its arrival in Spain in September 1981,[33] it was first displayed behind bomb-and bullet-proof glass screens[34] at the Cas܇n del Buen Retiro in Madrid in time to celebrate the centenary of Picasso's birth, 25 October.[33] The exhibition was visited by almost a million people in the first year.[35] Since that time there has never been any attempted vandalism or other security threat to the painting. In 1992, the painting was moved from the Museo del Prado to a purpose-built gallery at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, both in Madrid, along with about two dozen preparatory works.[36] This action was controversial in Spain, since Picasso's will stated that the painting should be displayed at the Prado. However, the move was part of a transfer of all of the Prado's collections of art after the early 19th century to other nearby buildings in the city for reasons of space; the Reina Sofa, which houses the capital's national collection of 20th-century art, was the natural place to move it to. At the Reina Sofa, the painting has roughly the same protection as any other work.[37] Basque nationalists have advocated that the picture should be brought to the Basque country,[38] especially after the building of the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum. Officials at the Reina Sofa claim[39] that the canvas is now thought to be too fragile to move. Even the staff of the Guggenheim do not see a permanent transfer of the painting as possible, although the Basque government continues to support the possibility of a temporary exhibition in Bilbao.[37] A full-size tapestry copy of Picasso's Guernica, by Jacqueline de la Baume Drrbach?(Wikidata),[40] is hung at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City at the entrance to the Security Council room. It was displayed first from 1985 to 2009, and returned in 2015. It was commissioned in 1955 by Nelson Rockefeller, since Picasso refused to sell him the original.[41] The tapestry was placed on loan to the United Nations by the Rockefeller estate in 1985.[42] The tapestry is less monochromatic than the original and uses several shades of brown. On 5 February 2003 a large blue curtain was placed to cover this work at the UN, so that it would not be visible in the background when Colin Powell and John Negroponte gave press conferences at the United Nations.[43] On the following day, it was claimed that the curtain was placed there at the request of television news crews, who had complained that the wild lines and screaming figures made for a bad backdrop, and that a horse's hindquarters appeared just above the faces of any speakers. Some diplomats, however, in talks with journalists claimed that the Bush Administration pressured UN officials to cover the tapestry, rather than have it in the background while Powell or other US diplomats argued for war on Iraq.[4] In a critique of the covering, columnist Alejandro Escalona hypothesized that Guernica's "unappealing mnage of mutilated bodies and distorted faces proved to be too strong for articulating to the world why the US was going to war in Iraq", while referring to the work as "an inconvenient masterpiece."[19] On 17 March 2009, Deputy Spokesperson for the Secretary-General Marie Okabe announced that the Guernica tapestry had been moved to a gallery in London in advance of extensive renovations at UN Headquarters. The Guernica tapestry was the showcase piece for the grand reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery. It was located in the 'Guernica room' which was originally part of the old Whitechapel Library.[44] In 2012 the tapestry was on temporary loan to the San Antonio Museum of Art in San Antonio, Texas from the Rockefeller family.[45] It was returned to the UN by March 2015.[46] During the 1970s, it was a symbol for Spaniards of both the end of the Franco regime and of Basque nationalism. The Basque left has repeatedly used imagery from the picture. An example is the organization Etxerat which uses a reversed image of the lamp as its symbol.[47] Guernica has become a universal and powerful symbol warning humanity against the suffering and devastation of war.[19] Moreover, the fact that there are no obvious references to the specific attack has contributed to making its message universal and timeless.[19]

Flix Houphou?t-Boigny🚨

Satara district near Patan🚨The Koyna Hydroelectric Project is the largest completed hydroelectric power plant in India.[1] It is a complex project with four dams including the largest dam on the Koyna River, Maharashtra hence the name Koyna Hydroelectric Project. The project site is in Satara district near Patan. The Deshmukhwadi village on which koyna dam is situated is migrated on hill station near to Koyna Dam. The total capacity of the project is 1,960 MW. The project consists of four stages of power generation. All the generators are located in underground powerhouses excavated deep inside the mountains of the Western Ghats. A dam foot powerhouse also contributes to the electricity generation. Due to the project's electricity generating potential the Koyna River is considered as the life line of Maharashtra. The project takes advantage of the height of Western Ghats. Thus a very large hydraulic head is available over a very short distance. In the early 20th century, there was a survey of the Koyna River as a potential hydro-electric source. After the First World War, a hydro-electric project on the Koyna river was investigated by the Tata Group. The 1928 financial crisis caused the project to be shelved. After the independence of India, it was taken over by the Government of Maharashtra. In 1951 Koyna Dam division started to look into the project. The project was approved in 1953 and work commenced in early 1954. The project is composed of four dams with the major contributors being the Koyna Dam and Kolkewadi Dam. The water from Shivasagar reservoir was formed by the Koyna Dam and is used in the 1st, 2nd and 4th stages. This water is drawn from head race tunnels situated below the reservoir. Then it travels through vertical pressure shafts to the underground powerhouses. The discharged water from these stages is collected and stored in Kolkewadi Dam situated near village of Alore. The water is drawn from the penstocks of Kolkewadi Dam to an underground power station in the 3rd stage and then discharged to the Arabian Sea. The electricity generated in all the stages is delivered to the main electrical grid. The project is run by the Maharashtra State Electricity Board. Besides this dam foot powerhouse part of power plant also produces 40?MW through two generating units of 20?MW each, totalling 1960?MW. Details of each stage are given below. The first stage of the project was approved in late 1953 and construction began in early 1954. Initially a two-stage construction was conceived. But the total generation capacity of the two stages was too large for load forecasts of that time. So a time lag of more than 10 years was proposed between the two stages. Within two years thereafter, it came to be noticed that the 10 years time tag between these two stages will not be affordable and to cope up with the power requirements, the two stages should be merged and both the stages should be constructed simultaneously. Hence, it was accepted that the two stages have to be executed as one. The 1st and 2nd stages share same powerhouse with total eight Pelton turbine units. Each of the two stages has four turbines having capacity of 65?MW each for 1st stage and 75?MW each for 2nd stage. The water from Shivasagar reservoir is taken through an intake structure known as Navja tower near village of Navja into the head race tunnel. Then it travels towards the surge tank. It is further divided into four pressure shafts which run vertically downward delivering water to the turbines. Then the water is discharged into the tail race tunnel. A dam foot powerhouse was also constructed which is used to generate electricity by the water which is discharged from the Koyna Dam for irrigation purpose. It has two Francis turbine units of 20?MW each. This powerhouse is run according to the irrigation requirements of the downstream areas. The combined installed capacity of the two stages and the dam foot powerhouse is 600?MW. Initially a weir was proposed to divert the water coming out of tail race tunnel of Stage I and II. But it was later observed that the water still had a hydraulic head of about 120?m which could be used. To use this head, the Kolkewadi Dam was constructed at this location. It forms a balancing reservoir and maintains the head. This dam impounds the tail race water from Stage I and II. This water is drawn through penstocks and electricity is generated by four Francis turbine units with a capacity of 80?MW each. The tail race water from these stages then flows through a channel and joins the Arabian Sea near Chiplun. The installed generating capacity of this stage is 320?MW. Later in the 1980s, the electricity demand of the Maharashtra increased tremendously resulting in inadequate power supply. The Planning Commission accorded approval to Stage IV with installation capacity of 4 G 250 MW. Thus, one more stage called Stage IV was added to power system of Stages I and II, thus converting the Koyna Power Station into a peaking power station complex with load factor of about 18.7%. This scheme also draws water from the existing Shivasagar reservoir same as Stages I and II. A nonconventional intake system was created by piercing the lake from the bottom by blasting the rock plug using dynamite.[4] This double lake tapping process was the first of its kind in Asia.[5] The water in head race tunnel is directly drawn from the reservoir and delivered to the head surge tank. Then four pressure shafts take the water downward vertically. The four huge Francis turbine units of 250?MW each generate electricity and tail race water is taken into the Kolkewadi Dam reservoir through tail race tunnel. A revolutionary gas insulated switchgear system is used in the underground powerhouse of this stage. The installed capacity of this stage alone is 1000?MW. This stage is mostly used to cater for the peak hour demands of the electric grid. To utilise more water from the Shivasagar reservoir, another dam foot powerhouse is being constructed on the left bank of the dam. This powerhouse will employ a pumped storage scheme. Also lake tapping is proposed for the intake system. The impounded water of the Koyna Dam though has submerged a significant amount of rain forest of the Western Ghats, it has helped a lot to the surrounding forest by supplying water all round the year. Hence a wide biodiversity of plants and animals is observed in the evergreen forest surrounding the reservoir area. Koyna Wildlife Sanctuary has dense forests with three major sections, Vasota, Maharkhor and Indavli Met, and the sanctuary is endowed with natural protective boundaries?ÿ Shivasagar Lake on one side, and the slopes of the Western Ghats on both the sides. This protective cover has enabled the emergence of a diverse variety of flora and fauna in the sanctuary. Some of the endangered species of trees found in the sanctuary are Dhup (Boswellia serrata), Euphorbia longan, and Elaeocarpus spp., apart from many other species of trees. The sanctuary has a diverse variety of fauna including tigers and panthers; gaurs and sambars; barking and mouse deer; pythons and cobras; common langurs and Indian giant squirrels. Many species of birds are found in the sanctuary including brown capped woodpecker; Asian fairy bluebird; and crested goshawk. Another attraction of the sanctuary is Vasota Fort which lies deep in the forest and is located at a height of 1,120?m (3,675?ft) above sea level. The legend states that the fort was constructed by Malwa king Raja Bhoja in 1170. When the project work was almost nearing completion, on 10 April 1960, the then Prime Minister of India Pdt. Jawaharlal Nehru visited Koyna Project. To commemorate this event a tablow was unveiled at his gracious hands on the right flank hillock of Koyna Dam. This project came up with an idea of immortalising this place and this event by constructing a beautiful park and naming it as "Nehru Memorial Park". This park is a major attraction for tourists. An upstream side view of dam is visible from this garden. There is an auditorium named 'Yashogatha' (meaning: story of success) which reviles a small element of the tremendous efforts taken by the engineers and workers associated with project. It is one of the most beauty in satara. & success of india. Due to the large rainfall in the hilly region surrounding the reservoir, some beautiful falls are generated in the monsoon season. The largest of them is the Ozarda falls near Navaja village 10?km from Koyna. This is also a major attraction for tourists visiting in monsoon season. Coordinates: 172406N 734508E? / ?17.40167N 73.75222E? / 17.40167; 73.75222

15,900🚨

January 1, 1991🚨The Goods and Services Tax[1][2] (GST) (French: taxe sur les produits et services, TPS) is a multi-level value added tax introduced in Canada on January 1, 1991, by then-Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and his finance minister Michael Wilson. The GST replaced a hidden 13.5% manufacturers' sales tax (MST); Mulroney claimed the GST was implemented because the MST was hindering the manufacturing sector's ability to export competitively. The introduction of the GST was very controversial. The GST rate is 5%, effective January 1, 2008. The Goods and Services Tax is defined in law at Part IX of the Excise Tax Act. GST is levied on supplies of goods or services purchased in Canada and includes most products, except certain politically sensitive essentials such as groceries, residential rent, and medical services, and services such as financial services. Businesses that purchase goods and services that are consumed, used or supplied in the course of their "commercial activities" can claim "input tax credits" subject to prescribed documentation requirements (i.e., when they remit to the Canada Revenue Agency the GST they have collected in any given period of time, they are allowed to deduct the amount of GST they paid during that period). This avoids "cascading" (i.e., the application of the GST on the same good or service several times as it passes from business to business on its way to the final consumer). In this way, the tax is essentially borne by the final consumer. This system is not completely effective, as shown by criminals who defrauded the system by claiming GST input credits for non-existent sales by a fictional company.[3] Exported goods are "zero-rated", while individuals with low incomes can receive a GST rebate calculated in conjunction with their income tax. In 1997, the provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland (now Newfoundland and Labrador) and the Government of Canada merged their respective sales taxes into the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). In all Maritime provinces and Newfoundland and Labrador, the current HST rate is 15%. HST is administered by the Canada Revenue Agency, with revenues divided among participating governments according to a formula. Ontario and British Columbia both harmonized the GST with their provincial sales tax (PST) effective July 1, 2010. However, the British Columbia HST was defeated in an August 2011 mail-in referendum by a 55% majority vote,[4] and was converted to the old GST/PST system effective April 1, 2013. On the same day, Prince Edward Island enacted HST at the rate of 14%.[5] In Ontario, the HST totals 13%, however many of the pre-HST exemptions remain affecting only the provincial portion of the HST (for example, prepared food under $4.00 is not subject to the provincial portion of HST and is only taxed at 5%). On the other hand, some items that were only subjected to the PST are now charged the full HST (i.e., 13%). Although the Government of Ontario has made efforts to provide documentation as to what items are affected and how, this causes some confusion for consumers as they are often not sure what taxes to expect at the checkout. To accommodate these exemptions, many retailers simply display each tax individually as HST 1 and HST 2 (or some variant). The move to HST came about as part of Ontario's 2009 provincial budget.[6] Only three provinces (British Columbia, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan) continue to impose a separate sales tax at the retail level only. Alberta is the exception, not imposing a provincial sales tax. The three territories of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut) do not have territorial sales taxes. The government of Quebec administers both the federal GST and the provincial Quebec Sales Tax (QST). It is the only province to administer the federal tax. The tax is a 5% tax imposed on the supply of goods and services that are purchased in Canada, except certain items that are either "exempt" or "zero-rated": In 1989, the Progressive Conservative government of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney proposed the creation of a national sales tax of 9%. At that time, every province in Canada except Alberta already had its own provincial sales tax imposed at the retail level. The purpose of the national sales tax was to replace the 13.5% Manufacturers' Sales Tax (MST) that the federal government imposed at the wholesale level on manufactured goods. Manufacturers were concerned that the tax hurt their international competitiveness. The GST also replaced the Federal Telecommunications Tax of 11%. Although the GST was promoted as revenue-neutral in relation to the MST, a large proportion of the Canadian population disapproved of the tax. The other parties in Parliament also attacked the idea as did three Progressive Conservative Members of Parliament, David Kilgour, Pat Nowlan, and Alex Kindy, who ended up leaving the Progressive Conservative caucus as a result. The Liberal-dominated Senate refused to pass the tax into law. In an unprecedented move to break the deadlock, Mulroney used a little-known constitutional provision (Section 26 of the Constitution Act, 1867) to increase the number of senators by eight temporarily, thus giving the Progressive Conservatives a majority in the upper chamber. In response, the Opposition launched a filibuster and further delayed the legislation. Despite the tax being lowered to 7% by the time it became enacted, it remained controversial. What the tax covered also caused anger. The Government defended the tax as a replacement for a tax unseen by consumers because it was placed on manufacturers, and in the long run it was posited that removing the MST would make Canada more competitive. Once the MST was replaced with the GST prices did not initially fall by the level some thought appropriate immediately; however, proponents have argued that in Canada's market economy the MST's replacement could only be expected to influence prices over time and not on a stroke. Despite the opposition, the tax came into force on January 1, 1991. A strong Liberal Party majority was elected under the leadership of Jean Chrtien in the 1993 election. The Progressive Conservative Party fared very poorly in that election, winning only two seats. Although the party recovered somewhat in subsequent elections, it remained the smallest party in the House of Commons until it disbanded itself permanently in 2004, and merged with the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party of Canada. During the election campaign, Chrtien promised to repeal the GST, which the Liberals had denounced while they were the Official Opposition, and replace it with a different tax. Instead of repeal, the Chrtien government attempted to restructure the tax and merge it with the provincial sales taxes in each province. They intended to call it the "Blended Sales Tax", but opponents quickly came to derisively call this proposal the "B.S. Tax", and the name was changed to Harmonized Sales Tax before its introduction. However, only three Atlantic provinces (Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador) agreed to go along with this plan, joined by British Columbia and Ontario in 2010, and Prince Edward Island in 2013. British Columbia later repealed the tax. The decision not to abolish or replace the GST caused great controversy. Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) John Nunziata voted against the Liberal government's first budget and was expelled from the party. Heritage Minister Sheila Copps, who had personally promised to oppose the tax, resigned and sought re-election. She was re-elected with ease in the subsequent by-election, as was the Liberal government in the 1997 election. On July 1, 2006, the Government of Canada reduced the tax by 1 percentage point (to 6%), as promised by the Conservative Party in the 2006 election campaign.[7][8][9] They again lowered it to 5%, effective January 1, 2008.[10] This reduction was included in the Final 2007 Budget Implementation Bill (Bill C-28),[11] which received Royal Assent on December 14, 2007. This change has been estimated to have decreased government revenues by approximately $6 billion.[12][13] Opponents of these tax decreases cited that sales taxes target those who spend more and therefore such reductions disproportionately benefit Canadians giving those who have the most and spend the most the largest tax decrease.[8] Much of the reason for the notoriety of the GST in Canada is for reasons of an obscure Constitutional provision. Other countries with a Value Added Tax legislate that posted prices include the tax; thus, consumers are vaguely aware of it but "what they see is what they pay". Canada cannot do this because jurisdiction over most advertising and price-posting is in the domain of the provinces under the Constitution Act, 1867.[14] The provinces have chosen not to require prices to include the GST, similar to their provincial sales taxes. As a result, virtually all prices (except for fuel pump prices, taxi meters and a few other things) are shown "pre-GST", with the tax (or taxes) listed separately.

Clinton🚨

is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan🚨

prepares the new object for use🚨In class-based object-oriented programming, a constructor (abbreviation: ctor) is a special type of subroutine called to create an object. It prepares the new object for use, often accepting arguments that the constructor uses to set required member variables. A constructor resembles an instance method, but it differs from a method in that it has no explicit return type, it is not implicitly inherited and it usually has different rules for scope modifiers. Constructors often have the same name as the declaring class. They have the task of initializing the object's data members and of establishing the invariant of the class, failing if the invariant is invalid. A properly written constructor leaves the resulting object in a valid state. Immutable objects must be initialized in a constructor. Most languages allow overloading the constructor in that there can be more than one constructor for a class, with differing parameters. Some languages take consideration of some special types of constructors. Constructors, which concretely use a single class to create objects and return a new instance of the class, are abstracted by factories, which also create objects but can do so in various ways, using multiple classes or different allocation schemes such as an object pool. Constructors that can take at least one argument are termed as parameterized constructors. For example: When an object is declared in a parameterized constructor, the initial values have to be passed as arguments to the constructor function. The normal way of object declaration may not work. The constructors can be called explicitly or implicitly. The method of calling the constructor implicitly is also called the shorthand method. If the programmer does not supply a constructor for an instantiable class, most languages will provide a default constructor. The behavior of the default constructor is language dependent. It may initialize data members to zero or other same values, or it may do nothing at all. Some languages (Java, C#, VB .NET) will default construct arrays of class types to contain null references. Languages without null references may not allow default construction of arrays of non default constructible objects, or require explicit initialization at the time of the creation (C++): Copy constructors define the actions performed by the compiler when copying class objects. A copy constructor has one formal parameter that is the type of the class (the parameter may be a reference to an object). It is used to create a copy of an existing object of the same class. Even though both classes are the same, it counts as a conversion constructor. While copy constructors are usually abbreviated copy ctor or cctor, they have nothing to do with class constructors used in .NET using the same abbreviation. Conversion constructors provide a means for a compiler to implicitly create an object belonging to one class based on an object of a different type. These constructors are usually invoked implicitly to convert arguments or operands to an appropriate type, but they may also be called explicitly. In C++, move constructors take a value reference to an object of the class, and are used to implement ownership transfer of the parameter object's resources. In Java, C# and VB .NET the constructor creates objects in a special memory structure called heap for reference types. Value types (such as int, double etc.), are created in a sequential structure called stack. VB .NET and C# allow use of new to create objects of value types. However, in those languages even use of new for value types creates objects only on stack. In C++, when constructor is invoked without new the objects are created on stack. When objects are created using new they are created on heap. They must be deleted implicitly by a destructor or explicitly by a call to operator delete. In Java, constructors differ from other methods in that: Java constructors perform the following tasks in the following order: Java permit users to call one constructor in another constructor using this() keyword. But this() must be first statement. [3] Java provides access to the superclass's constructor through the super keyword. A constructor taking zero number of arguments is called a "no-arguments" or "no-arg" constructor.[4] As of ES6, JavaScript has direct constructors like many other programming languages. They are written as such This can be instantiated as such The equivalent of this before ES6, was creating a function that instantiates an object as such This is instantiated the same way as above. In Visual Basic .NET, constructors use a method declaration with the name "New". Example C# constructor: In C#, a static constructor is a static data initializer. Static constructors are also called class constructors. Since the actual method generated has the name .cctor they are often also called "cctors".[5][6] Static constructors allow complex static variable initialization.[7] Static constructors are called implicitly when the class is first accessed. Any call to a class (static or constructor call), triggers the static constructor execution. Static constructors are thread safe and implement a singleton pattern. When used in a generic programming class, static constructors are called at every new generic instantiation one per type. Static variables are instantiated as well. In C++, the name of the constructor is the name of the class. It returns nothing. It can have parameters like any member function. Constructor functions are usually declared in the public section, but can also be declared in the protected and private sections, if the user wants to restrict access to them. The constructor has two parts. First is the initializer list which follows the parameter list and before the method body. It starts with a colon and entries are comma-separated. The initializer list is not required, but offers the opportunity to provide values for data members and avoid separate assignment statements. The initializer list is required if you have const or reference type data members, or members that do not have parameterless constructor logic. Assignments occur according to the order in which data members are declared (even if the order in the initializer list is different).[8] The second part is the body, which is a normal method body enclosed in curly brackets. C++ allows more than one constructor. The other constructors must have different parameters. Additionally constructors which contain parameters which are given default values, must adhere to the restriction that not all parameters are given a default value. This is a situation which only matters if there is a default constructor. The constructor of a base class (or base classes) can also be called by a derived class. Constructor functions are not inherited and their addresses cannot be referenced. When memory allocation is required, the new and delete operators are called implicitly. A copy constructor has a parameter of the same type passed as const reference, for example Vector(const Vector& rhs). If it is not provided explicitly, the compiler uses the copy constructor for each member variable or simply copies values in case of primitive types. The default implementation is not efficient if the class has dynamically allocated members (or handles to other resources), because it can lead to double calls to delete (or double release of resources) upon destruction. Example invocations: On returning objects from functions or passing objects by value, the objects copy constructor will be called implicitly, unless return value optimization applies. C++ implicitly generates a default copy constructor which will call the copy constructors for all base classes and all member variables unless the programmer provides one, explicitly deletes the copy constructor (to prevent cloning) or one of the base classes or member variables copy constructor is deleted or not accessible (private). Most cases calling for a customized copy constructor (e.g. reference counting, deep copy of pointers) also require customizing the destructor and the copy assignment operator. This is commonly referred to as the Rule of three. In F#, a constructor can include any let or do statements defined in a class. let statements define private fields and do statements execute code. Additional constructors can be defined using the new keyword. In Eiffel, the routines which initialize new objects are called creation procedures. Creation procedures have the following traits: Although object creation involves some subtleties,[9] the creation of an attribute with a typical declaration x: T as expressed in a creation instruction create x.make consists of the following sequence of steps: In the first snippet below, class POINT is defined. The procedure make is coded after the keyword feature. The keyword create introduces a list of procedures which can be used to initialize instances. In this case the list includes default_create, a procedure with an empty implementation inherited from class ANY, and the make procedure coded within the class. In the second snippet, a class which is a client to POINT has a declarations my_point_1 and my_point_2 of type POINT. In procedural code, my_point_1 is created as the origin (0.0, 0.0). Because no creation procedure is specified, the procedure default_create inherited from class ANY is used. This line could have been coded create my_point_1.default_create . Only procedures named as creation procedures can be used in an instruction with the create keyword. Next is a creation instruction for my_point_2, providing initial values for the my_point_2's coordinates. The third instruction makes an ordinary instance call to the make procedure to reinitialize the instance attached to my_point_2 with different values. CFML uses a method named 'init' as a constructor method. Cheese.cfc Create instance of a cheese. Since ColdFusion 10,[10] CFML has also supported specifying the name of the constructor method: In Object Pascal, the constructor is similar to a factory method. The only syntactic difference to regular methods is the keyword constructor in front of the name (instead of procedure or function). It can have any name, though the convention is to have Create as prefix, such as in CreateWithFormatting. Creating an instance of a class works like calling a static method of a class: TPerson.Create('Peter'). In Perl programming language version 5, by default, constructors are factory methods, that is, methods that create and return the object, concretely meaning create and return a blessed reference. A typical object is a reference to a hash, though rarely references to other types are used too. By convention the only constructor is named new, though it is allowed to name it otherwise, or to have multiple constructors. For example, a Person class may have a constructor named new as well as a constructor new_from_file which reads a file for Person attributes, and new_from_person which uses another Person object as a template. With the Moose object system for Perl, most of this boilerplate can be left out, a default new is created, attributes can be specified, as well as whether they can be set, reset, or are required. In addition, any extra constructor functionality can be included in a BUILD method which the Moose generated constructor will call, after it has checked the arguments. A BUILDARGS method can be specified to handle constructor arguments not in hashref / key => value form. In both cases the Person class is instiated like this: In PHP version 5 and above, the constructor is a method named __construct() (notice that it's a double underscore), which the keyword new automatically calls after creating the object. It is usually used to automatically perform initializations such as property initializations. Constructors can also accept arguments, in which case, when the new statement is written, you also need to send the constructor arguments for the parameters.[1] In Python, constructors are defined by one or both of __new__ and __init__ methods. A new instance is created by calling the class as if it were a function, which calls the __new__ and __init__ methods. If a constructor method is not defined in the class, the next one found in the class's Method Resolution Order will be called.[11] In the typical case, only the __init__ method need be defined. (The most common exception is for immutable objects.) Classes normally act as factories for new instances of themselves, that is, a class is a callable object (like a function), with the call being the constructor, and calling the class returns an instance of that class. However the __new__ method is permitted to return something other than an instance of the class for specialised purposes. In that case, the __init__ is not invoked.[12] In Ruby, constructors are created by defining a method called initialize. This method is executed to initialize each new instance.

the Sinaloa Cartel🚨Mexico: Sinaloa, Sonora, Nayarit, Chihuahua, Durango, Colima, Baja California Sur, Quintana Roo, Michoacan, Latin America: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador United States:Arizona, California, Texas, New Mexico, Illinois, Oregon, Florida, North Carolina, Colorado, New Jersey The Sinaloa Cartel (Spanish: Crtel de Sinaloa)[12] is an international drug trafficking, money laundering, and organized crime syndicate.[13] Established during the mid-1980s,[14] the Sinaloa Cartel is based primarily in the city of Culiacn, Sinaloa,[15] with operations in the Mexican states of Baja California, Durango, Sonora, and Chihuahua.[16][17] The cartel is also known as the Guzmn-Loera Organization and the Pacific Cartel, the latter due to the coast of Mexico from which it originated. The cartel has also been called the Federation and the Blood Alliance.[16][18][19][20] The 'Federation' was partially splintered when the Beltrn-Leyva brothers broke apart from the Sinaloa Cartel.[21] The United States Intelligence Community considers the Sinaloa Cartel "the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world"[22] and in 2011, the Los Angeles Times called it "Mexico's most powerful organized crime group."[23] The Sinaloa Cartel is associated with the label "Golden Triangle", which refers to the states of Sinaloa, Durango, and Chihuahua. The region is a major producer of Mexican opium and marijuana.[21] According to the U.S. Attorney General, the Sinaloa Cartel is responsible for importing into the United States and distributing nearly 200 tons of cocaine and large amounts of heroin between 1990 and 2008.[24] According to the National Drug Intelligence Center, within the U.S. the Sinaloa Cartel is primarily involved in the distribution of cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine, marijuana and MDMA.[25] It is the majority supplier of illicit fentanyl to North America.[26] As of 2017[update], the Sinaloa Cartel is the most active drug cartel involved in smuggling illicit drugs into the United States and trafficking them throughout the United States.[27][26] After the arrest of Guzman, the cartel is now headed by Ismael Zambada Garcia (aka El Mayo) and Guzman's sons, Alfredo Guzman Salazar and Ivan Archivaldo Salazar.[28] Pedro Avils Prez was a pioneer drug lord in the Mexican state of Sinaloa in the late 1960s. He is considered to be the first generation of major Mexican drug smugglers of marijuana who marked the birth of large-scale Mexican drug trafficking.[29] He also pioneered the use of aircraft to smuggle drugs to the United States.[30] Second generation Sinaloan traffickers such as Rafael Caro Quintero, Ernesto Fonseca Carrillo, Miguel ngel Flix Gallardo and Avils Prez' nephew Joaqun 'El Chapo' Guzmn[31] would claim they learned all they knew about 'narcotraficantes' while serving in the Avils organization. Miguel ngel Flix Gallardo, who eventually founded the Guadalajara Cartel, was arrested in 1989 and, while incarcerated, he remained one of Mexico's major traffickers, maintaining contact with his organization via mobile phone until he was transferred to a new maximum security prison in the 1990s. At that point his nephews, the Arellano Flix brothers, left and created their own organization which came to be known as the Tijuana Cartel, while the Sinaloa Cartel continued to be run by former lieutenants Hctor Luis Palma Salazar, Adrin G܇mez Gonzlez and Joaqun Guzmn Loera (El Chapo). The Sinaloa Cartel used to be known as La Alianza de Sangre ("Blood Alliance").[32] When Hctor Luis Palma Salazar (a.k.a. El Gero) was arrested on 23 June 1995, by the Mexican Army, his partner Joaqun Guzmn Loera took leadership of the cartel.[17][33] Guzmn was captured in Guatemala on 9 June 1993, and extradited to Mexico, where he was jailed in a maximum security prison, but on 19 January 2001, Guzmn escaped and resumed his command of the Sinaloa Cartel. Guzmn has two close associates, Ismael Zambada Garca and Ignacio Coronel Villareal.[34][35] Guzman and Zambada became Mexico's top drug kingpins in 2003, after the arrest of their rival Osiel Cardenas of the Gulf Cartel. Another close associate, Javier Torres Flix, was arrested and extradited to the U.S. in December 2006.[36] On 29 July 2010, Ignacio Coronel was killed in a shootout with the Mexican military in Zapopan, Jalisco.[37] Guzman was captured on 22 February 2014 overnight by American and Mexican authorities. On 11 July 2015, he escaped from the Federal Social Readaption Center No. 1, a maximum-security prison in the State of Mexico, through a tunnel in his prison cell. Guzman resumed his command of the Sinaloa Cartel, but on 8 January 2016, Guzman was captured again during a raid on a home in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa.[38] With the arrest of Joaqun Guzmn Loera, Ismael Zambada will most likely assume leadership of the Sinaloa Cartel.[39] The Sinaloa Cartel has a presence in 17 of the 31 Mexican states, with important centers in Mexico City, Tepic, Toluca, Zacatecas, Guadalajara, and most of the state of Sinaloa.[40] The cartel is primarily involved in the smuggling and distribution of Colombian cocaine, Mexican marijuana, methamphetamine and Mexican and Southeast Asian heroin into the United States.[41][42] It is believed that a group known as the Herrera Organization would transport multi-ton quantities of cocaine from South America to Guatemala on behalf of the Sinaloa Cartel. From there it is smuggled north to Mexico and later into the U.S.[43] Other shipments of cocaine are believed to originate in Colombia from Cali and Medelln drug-trafficking groups from which the Sinaloa Cartel handle transportation across the U.S. border to distribution cells in Arizona, California, Illinois, Texas, New York, and Washington state.[16][41][44][45] Before his arrest, Vicente Zambada Niebla ("El Vicentillo"), son of Ismael Zambada Garca ("El Mayo"), played a key role in the Sinaloa Cartel. Vicente Zambada was responsible for coordinating multi-ton cocaine shipments from Central and South American countries, through Mexico, and into the United States for the Sinaloa Cartel. To accomplish this task he used every means available: Boeing 747 cargo aircraft, narco submarines, container ships, go-fast boats, fishing vessels, buses, rail cars, tractor trailers and automobiles. He was arrested by the Mexican Army on 18 March 2009 and extradited on 18 February 2010 to Chicago to face federal charges.[21] In the late 1980s, the United States Drug Enforcement Administration believed the Sinaloa Cartel was the largest drug trafficking organization operating in Mexico.[46] By the mid-1990s, according to one court opinion, it was believed to be the size of the Medelln Cartel during its prime.[46] The Sinaloa Cartel was believed to be linked to the Jurez Cartel in a strategic alliance following the partnership of their rivals, the Gulf Cartel and Tijuana Cartel.[42][46][47] Following the discovery of a tunnel system used to smuggle drugs across the Mexican/US border, the group has been associated with such means of trafficking.[44][48] By 2005, the Beltrn-Leyva brothers, who were formerly aligned with the Sinaloa Cartel, had come to dominate drug trafficking across the border with Arizona. By 2006, the Sinaloa Cartel had eliminated all competition across the 528?km of Arizona border. The Milenio (Michoacan), Jalisco (Guadalajara), Sonora (Sonora), and Colima (Colima) cartels are now branches of the Sinaloa Cartel.[49] At this time the organisation was laundering money at global scale, mainly through British bank HSBC.[50] In January 2008 the cartel allegedly split into a number of warring factions, which is a major cause of the epidemic of drug violence Mexico has seen in the last year.[51] Murders by the cartel often involve beheadings or bodies dissolved in vats of alkali and are sometimes filmed and posted on the Internet as a warning to rival gangs.[52] As of 2013, the Sinaloa Cartel continues to dominate the Sonora-Arizona corridor, which extends for nearly 375 miles. It relies on eight "plaza" bosses, leaders of a specific geographic region along the corridor, to coordinate, direct, and support the flow of narcotics north into the United States. Key cities along the corridor include the Mexicali plaza, San Luis Rio Colorado plaza, Sonoyta plaza, Nogales plaza, and the Agua Prieta plaza. The Tucson and Phoenix, Arizona metropolitan areas are major trans-shipment and distribution points for the cartel in the US.[53] To coordinate operations in the southeast US, Atlanta has emerged as a major distribution center and accounting hub and the presence of the Sinaloa Cartel there has brought ruthless violence to that area.[54] Chicago continues to be a major Sinaloa distribution point for the Midwest, taking advantage of a strong local demand market and convergence of several major interstate systems that offer distribution throughout the US. The cartel also benefited for a long time of easiness in cash transactions and money laundering through banks with presence both in the US and Mexico like HSBC.[55][56][57] In 2013, the Chicago Crime Commission named Joaquin "Chapo" Guzmn "Public Enemy No. 1" of a city Guzmn has never set foot in. He is the only individual to receive the title since Al Capone.[58] The focal point for Sinaloa in Chicago is the city's "Little Village" neighborhood. From this strategic point, the cartel distributes their product at the wholesale level to dozens of local street gangs, as much as 2 metric tons a month, in a city with over 120,000 documented gang members. The Gangster Disciples are one of the local gangs most actively working with the cartel.[59] The Sinaloa Cartel has operations in the Philippines as a trans-shipment point for drugs smuggled into the United States. Since 2013, the cartel has been operating in the Philippines after a raid on a ranch in Lipa, Batangas, according to a statement by Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) director general Arthur Cacdac, and have entered the country without notice.[60] President Rodrigo Duterte further confirmed the presence of the Sinaloa Cartel in the Philippines, saying that the cartel uses the country as a trans-shipment point for drugs smuggled into the United States.[61] The presence of the cartel in the Philippines has worsened the ongoing war between drug lords, drug cartels and the government in that country.[62] On 11 May 2008, Alfonso Gutirrez Loera, cousin of Joaqun "El Chapo" Guzmn Loera, and 5 other drug traffickers were arrested after a shootout with Federal Police officers in Culiacan, Sinaloa. Along with the captured suspects, 16 assault rifles, 3 grenades, 102 magazines and 3,543 ammunition rounds were seized.[63] On 25 February 2009, the U.S. government announced the arrest of 750 members of the Sinaloa Cartel across the U.S. in Operation Xcellerator. They also announced the seizure of more than $59 million in cash and numerous vehicles, planes, and boats.[64][65] In March 2009, the Mexican Government announced the deployment of 1,000 Federal Police officers and 5,000 Mexican Army soldiers to restore order in Ciudad Jurez, which has suffered the highest number of casualties in the country.[66] On 20 August 2009, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) broke up a large Mexican drug operation in Chicago, and uncovered a major distribution network operated by the Flores crew led by twin brothers Margarito and Pedro Flores that operated there. The drug operation allegedly brought 1.5 to 2 tons of cocaine every month to Chicago from Mexico and shipped millions of dollars south of the border. The shipments were mostly bought from the Sinaloa Cartel and at times from the Beltrn-Leyva Cartel, and it is assumed that both cartels threatened the Flores crew with violence if they bought from other rival drug organizations.[67] The Mexican Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) reported the arrest of Jes~s Alfredo Salazar Ramrez, alias "El Mu?eco" or "El Pelos", who was identified as the current lieutenant of the South Pacific Cartel in the state of Sonora. As stated by Sedena, "El Mu?eco" worked as an administrator under Joaqun "El Chapo" Guzmn[68] and is believed to be responsible for the death of the activist Nepomuceno Moreno. Jes~s Alfredo Salazar Ramrez was arrested 1 November 2012 in the municipality of Huixquilucan, by military personnel working with the Mexican Attorney General's office (PGR).[69] "El Mu?eco" is considered to be one of the most important lieutenants of Joaqun Guzmn Loera, evident from his control of the planting, production, and trafficking of drugs in Sonora and in the mountains of Chihuahua, which were sent predominantly to the US. He is linked to various homicides, among them the lawyer Rubn Alejandro Cepeda Leos, who was assassinated 20 December 2011 in the city of Chihuahua, Chihuahua. According to the Sedena he is the assumed assassin of activist Nepomuceno Moreno N~?ez, which occurred 28 November 2011. Nepomuceno Moreno was an activist who sought justice for the disappearance of is son and joined the Mexican Indignados Movement, led by the poet Javier Sicilia. Jos Rodrigo Archiga Gamboa (alias "Chino Antrax") was a high-ranking member of the Sinaloa Cartel.[70] He was a leader and founding member of Los ntrax, an armed squadron formed to protect Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada Garca, founding member of the Sinaloa Cartel. He was arrested 30 December 2013 in the Amsterdam airport Schiphol in the Netherlands, at the petition of the United States of America, and with the help of Interpol arrested him with charges related to drug trafficking. The Sinaloa cartel's loss of partners in Mexico does not appear to have affected its ability to smuggle drugs from South America to the USA. On the contrary, based on seizure reports, the Sinaloa cartel appears to be the most active smuggler of cocaine. The reports also demonstrated the cartels possess the ability to establish operations in previously unknown areas, such as Central America and South America, even as far south as Peru, Paraguay and Argentina. It also appears to be most active in diversifying its export markets; rather than relying solely on U.S. drug consumption, it has made an effort to supply distributors of drugs in Latin American and European countries.[34] On 19 December 2013, the Federal Police of Mexico killed Gonzalo "El Macho Prieto" Inzunza in a gun battle in Puerto Penasco, Sonora. Inzunza was believed to be one of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman's chief cartel leaders. In December 2013, three suspected members of the cartel were arrested in Lipa in Batangas province in the Philippines with 84 kilograms of methamphetamine.[60][71] In February 2014, "El Chapo" Guzmn was arrested. The capture of the Sinaloa Cartel's "El Chapo" Guzmn ignited a fight over the trial's location. Calls for his extradition to the United States started just hours after his arrest. Guzmn also faces federal indictment in several locations including San Diego, New York, and Texas, among other places. On 11 July 2015 "El Chapo" escaped from a maximum security prison, which is his second successful jailbreak from a maximum security facility in 14 years. On 8 January 2016, Guzman was arrested again during a raid on a home in the city of Los Mochis, in Guzman's home state of Sinaloa.[38] Since February 2010, the major cartels have aligned in two factions: one integrated by the Jurez Cartel, Tijuana Cartel and Los Zetas; the other faction integrated by the Gulf Cartel and Sinaloa Cartel.[72] In addition to maintaining its anti-Zetas alliance with the Gulf cartel, Sinaloa in 2011 affiliated itself with the Knights Templar in Michoacan, and to counter Los Zetas in Jalisco state, Sinaloa affiliated itself with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.[73] The Sinaloa Federation has formed alliances with two powerful Chinese Triads, Sun Yee On and the 14K Triad, to acquire the precursor chemicals needed in creating highly-addictive synthetic drugs like Methamphetamines. Operatives like local gangs pick up the chemicals from dropoff points and ship them to hidden labs. The resulting products are shipped to the United States and many South American countries.[74] In 1989, the Sinaloa Cartel dug its first drug tunnel between a house in Agua Prieta, Sonora to a warehouse located in Douglas, Arizona. The 300-foot tunnel was discovered in May, 1990.[75][76] Following the discovery by U.S. Customs and Mexican Federal Police, the Sinaloa Cartel began to focus their smuggling operations towards Tijuana and Otay Mesa, San Diego where it acquired a warehouse in 1992. After the assassination of Cardinal Juan Jes~s Posadas Ocampo and six others at the Guadalajara airport on 24 May 1993,[77] the gunmen boarded a commercial jet. When the jet landed at the Tijuana airport, both police and military units failed to cordon of the aircraft and the gunmen escaped.[78] On 31 May 1993, Mexican federal agents searching for the gunmen found a partially completed 1500-foot tunnel adjacent to the Tijuana airport and crossing under the U.S.-Mexico border to a warehouse on Otay Mesa in San Diego. It was discovered as Mexican and San Diego officials were discussing the creation of a cross-border airport between Tijuana and Otay Mesa which would have undermined the drug tunneling operations in the area (see History of the Cross Border Xpress). The tunnel was described by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in San Diego as the "Taj Mahal" of drug tunnels along the U.S.-Mexico border and was linked to Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzmn.[79][80] It was five times longer than the Agua Prieta-Douglas tunnel and became the first of a series of drug "super tunnels" in Otay Mesa originating in and around the Tijuana airport through the former Ejido Tampico. The "super tunnels" were equipped with power, ventilation and rail tracks to allow the efficient movement of large loads of narcotics across the U.S.-Mexico border. As seen on image 1 Drug tunnel corridors the close proximity of the former Ejido Tampico to the Tijuana airport and U.S.-Mexico border made it an ideal staging area for smuggling operations into the United States.[81][82] The Mexican government's conflict with the former Ejido Tampico dated back to 1970, when they expropriated 320 hectares (790 acres) of the Ejido Tampico to build a new runway and passenger terminal at the Tijuana airport and agreed to pay the displaced ejidatarios (the communal farmers) $1.4 million pesos ($112,000 U.S. dollars in 1970). When the Mexican government failed to indemnify the ejidatarios for their lost farmland, they reoccupied a 79 hectares (200 acres) portion of the Tijuana airport and threatened armed conflict. As shown by image 2 Ejido Tampico, from 1970 to 2000, the occupied land at the Tijuana airport remained relatively undeveloped. In 1999, the Tijuana airport was privatized and became part of a 12 airport network known as Grupo Aeroportuario del Pacfico (Pacific Airport Group). In an attempt to resolve the dispute and remove the ejidatarios from the privatized Tijuana airport, the Mexican government established a value on the expropriated 320 hectares (790 acres) at $1.2 million pesos ($125,560 U.S. dollars in 1999) while the ejidatarios of the former Ejido Tampico taking into account the increase in property values from 1970 to 1999 and the privatization of the Tijuana airport established a commercial value on their lost land at $2.8 billion pesos ($294 million U.S. dollars). In 2002, Mexican President Vicente Fox, who had promised to resolved the issue, also failed.[83] As shown image 2 Ejido Tampico comparison between 2000 and 2006, the ejidatarios then proceeded to commercially develop the 79 hectares (200 acres) area at the Tijuana airport by leasing buildings and parcels to trucking and storage companies. As shown by image 3 Drug Trafficking Tunnel, in 2006 the unpermitted development allowed the building of a 2,400-foot (730-meter) drug "super tunnel" originating from the former Ejido Tampico and adjacent to the Tijuana airport's runway.[84] As prior drug tunnels, it crossed under the U.S.-Mexico border into a warehouse on Otay Mesa in San Diego with the capacity to move multi-ton loads of narcotics.[85][86] Similar to the "Taj Mahal" of drug tunnels discovered on Otay Mesa in 1993,[79] the 2006 drug "super tunnel" was traced back to the Sinaloa Cartel. With unregulated trucking and warehouse operations, the former Ejido Tampico became a major distribution point for narcotics being moved into the United States. In the ensuing years, drug tunnels moving tons of narcotics were detected in and around the Tijuana airport. The former Ejido Tampico also continued to expand its unpermitted development and more drug tunnels were discovered operating within its boundary to warehouses located on Otay Mesa in San Diego, California.[87][88][89][90][91] In 2011, at the westerly end of the Tijuana airport a 1,800-foot (550-meter) drug "super tunnel" was discovered dug under the airport's 10/28 runway[92][93] from a warehouse located 980 feet (300 meters) from Mexico's 12th Military Air Base and 330 feet (100 meters) from a Mexican Federal Police station.[94] As with prior "super tunnels", it was equipped with an elevator and electric rail cars to efficiently ferry narcotics across the U.S.-Mexico border. In December 2016, one month prior Joaqun 'El Chapo' Guzmn Loera's extradition to the U.S.,[95] two "super tunnels", one in operation while the other was under construction, were discovered by Mexican agents adjacent to the Tijuana airport/Ejido Tampico and the Otay Mesa border crossing. Both were associated with the Sinaloa Cartel.[96][97] On 21 June 2017, Joaqun 'El Chapo' Guzmn's "girlfriend" and former legislature of the state of Sinaloa, Lucero Guadalupe Snchez L܇pez, was arrested at the Tijuana airport's Cross Border Xpress by CBP (U.S. Customs and Border Protection) officers as she crossed into the U.S. She was charged with drug conspiracy and money laundering, and had been with Joaqun Guzmn when he escaped capture in 2014.[98] In May 2009, the U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) aired multiple reports alleging that the Mexican federal police and military were working in collusion with the Sinaloa Cartel. In particular, the report claimed the government was helping the Sinaloa Cartel to take control of the Juarez Valley area and destroy other cartels, especially the Juarez Cartel. NPR's reporters interviewed dozens of officials and ordinary people for the journalistic investigation. One report quotes a former Juarez police commander who claimed the entire department was working for the Sinaloa Cartel and helping it to fight other groups. He also claimed that the Sinaloa Cartel had bribed the military. Also quoted was a Mexican reporter who claimed hearing numerous times from the public that the military had been involved in murders.[citation needed] Another source in the story was the U.S. trial of Manuel Fierro-Mendez, an ex-Juarez police captain who admitted to working for the Sinaloa Cartel. He claimed that the Sinaloa Cartel influenced the Mexican government and military in order to gain control of the region. A U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent in the same trial alleged that Fierro-Mendez had contacts with a Mexican military officer. The report also alleged, with support from an anthropologist who studies drug trafficking, that data on the low arrest rate of Sinaloa Cartel members (compared to other groups) was evidence of favoritism on the part of the authorities. A Mexican official denied the allegation of favoritism, and a DEA agent and a political scientist also had alternate explanations for the arrest data.[99] Another report detailed numerous indications of corruption and influence that the cartel has within the Mexican government.[100] In March 2015, BBC TV programme This World broadcast an episode entitled "Secrets of Mexico's Drug War"[101] which reported on the US government's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' Operation Fast and Furious which had allowed licensed firearms dealers to sell weapons to illegal buyers acting on behalf of Mexican drug cartel leaders, in particular the Sinaloa Cartel.[102] The BBC also reported on Vicente Zambada Niebla's claims of immunity from prosecution under a deal between the Mexican and US governments and his claims that the Sinaloa Cartel's leaders had provided US federal agents with information about rival Mexican drug gangs.[103] In the same documentary it is shown that the US Justice Department invoked national security reasons to prevent Humberto Loya Castro, the lawyer of the Sinaloa Syndicate, from being summoned as a witness to the trial against Vicente Zambada Niebla. The Sinaloa Cartel has been waging a war against the Tijuana Cartel (Arellano-Flix Organization) over the Tijuana smuggling route to the border city of San Diego, California. The rivalry between the two cartels dates back to the Miguel ngel Flix Gallardo setup of Palma's family. Flix Gallardo, following his imprisonment, bestowed the Guadalajara Cartel to his nephews in the Tijuana Cartel. On 8 November 1992, Palma struck out against the Tijuana Cartel at a disco club in Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco, where eight Tijuana Cartel members were killed in the shootout, the Arellano-Flix brothers having successfully escaped from the location with the assistance of David "D" Barron, a member of the Logan Heights Gang.[35] In retaliation, the Tijuana Cartel attempted to set up Guzmn at Guadalajara airport on 24 May 1993. In the shootout that followed, six civilians were killed by the hired gunmen from Logan Heights.[35] The dead included Roman Catholic Cardinal Juan Jes~s Posadas Ocampo. The church hierarchy originally believed Posadas was targeted as revenge for his strong stance against the drug trade. However, Mexican officials believe Posadas just happened to be caught in cross fire.[104][105][106] The Cardinal arrived at the airport in a white Mercury Grand Marquis town car, known to be popular amongst drug barons. Barron had received intelligence that Guzmn would be arriving in a white Mercury Grand Marquis town car.[104][105][106] Evidence that runs counter to a mistake theory is that Posadas did not look anything like Guzmn, he was wearing a long black cassock and a large pectoral cross, and he was gunned down from only two feet away.[35] Recently, it is believed that the Tijuana Cartel, or at least a sizable majority of it, has been either absorbed or forced to ally with the Sinaloa Federation, in part due to a former high-ranking Tijuana member called Eduardo Teodoro Garcia Simental, alias "El Teo" or "Tres Letras" allying with the Federation.[107][108][109] Los Negros have been known to employ gangs such as the Mara Salvatrucha to carry out murders and other illegal activities. The group is involved in fighting in the Nuevo Laredo region for control of the drug trafficking corridor.[16][42][110] Following the 2003 arrest of Gulf Cartel leader Osiel Crdenas, it is believed the Sinaloa Cartel moved 200 men into the region to battle the Gulf Cartel for control.[47] The Nuevo Laredo region is an important drug trafficking corridor into Laredo, Texas, where as much as 40% of all Mexican exports pass through into the U.S. Following the 2004 assassination of journalist Roberto Javier Mora Garca from El Ma?ana newspaper, much of the local media has been cautious about their reporting of the fighting. The cartels have pressured reporters to send messages and wage a media war. The drug war has spread to various regions of Mexico, such as Guerrero, Mexico City, Michoacn and Tamaulipas. On 30 August 2010, Villarreal was captured by Mexican Federal Police.[111]