title: Garuda

text: In Buddhism, the Garuda (Sanskrit; Pāli: ) are enormous predatory birds with a wingspan of 330 yojanas. They are described as beings with intelligence and social organization. They are also sometimes known as (Sanskrit; Pāli: ), meaning "well-winged, having good wings". Like the Nāgas, they combine the characteristics of animals and divine beings, and may be considered to be among the lowest of the devas. The Garudas have kings and cities, and at least some of them have the magical power of changing into human form when they wish to have dealings with people. On some occasions Garuda kings have had romances with human women in this form. Their dwellings are in groves of the "simbalī", or silk-cotton tree.


title: Garuda

text: The Garuda are enemies to the nāga, a race of intelligent serpent- or dragon-like beings, whom they hunt. The Garudas at one time caught the nāgas by seizing them by their heads; but the nāgas learned that by swallowing large stones, they could make themselves too heavy to be carried by the Garudas, wearing them out and killing them from exhaustion. This secret was divulged to one of the Garudas by the ascetic Karambiya, who taught him how to seize a nāga by the tail and force him to vomit up his stone (Pandara Jātaka, J.518).


title: Garuda

text: The Garudas were among the beings appointed by Śakra to guard Mount Sumeru and the heaven from the attacks of the asuras.


title: Garuda

text: In the Maha-samaya Sutta (Digha Nikaya 20), the Buddha is shown making temporary peace between the Nagas and the Garudas.


title: Garuda

text: In the Qing dynasty fiction "The Story of Yue Fei" (1684), Garuda sits at the head of the Buddha's throne. But when a celestial bat (an embodiment of the Aquarius constellation) flatulates during the Buddha's expounding of the Lotus Sutra, Garuda kills her and is exiled from paradise. He is later reborn as Song dynasty General Yue Fei. The bat is reborn as Lady Wang, wife of the traitor Prime Minister Qin Hui, and is instrumental in formulating the "Eastern Window" plot that leads to Yue's eventual political execution. "The Story of Yue Fei" plays on the legendary animosity between Garuda and the Nagas when the celestial bird-born Yue Fei defeats a magic serpent who transforms into the unearthly spear he uses throughout his military career. Literary critic C. T. Hsia explains the reason why Qian Cai, the book's author, linked Yue with Garuda is because of the homology in their Chinese names. Yue Fei's courtesy name is Pengju (). A Peng () is a giant mythological bird likened to the Middle Eastern Roc. Garuda's Chinese name is Great Peng, the Golden-Winged Illumination King ().


title: Garuda

text: The Garuda is a yaksha or guardian for Shantinatha in Jain iconography and mythology. Jain iconography shows Garuda as a human figure with wings and a strand-circle.


title: Garuda

text: In India and the rest of Southeast Asia the eagle symbolism is represented by Garuda, a large bird with eagle-like features that appears in both Hindu and Buddhist epic as the vahana (vehicle) of the god Vishnu. Garuda became the national emblem of Thailand and Indonesia; Thailand's Garuda is rendered in a more traditional anthropomorphic style, while that of Indonesia is rendered in heraldic style with traits similar to the real Javan hawk-eagle.


title: Garuda

text: Indonesia uses the Garuda in a form called the "Garuda Pancasila" as its national symbol. It is somewhat intertwined with the concept of the Phoenix. The Garuda Pancasila is coloured black or gilded, symbolizing both the greatness of the nation and the "elang Jawa" (Javan hawk-eagle "Nisaetus bartelsi"). The black color represents nature. There are 17 feathers on each wing, 8 on the lower tail, 19 on the upper tail and 45 on the neck, which together make up the date 17 August 1945, when Indonesia proclaimed its independence. The shield it carries bears the motto "Panca Sila", which symbolizes self-defense and protection in struggle.


title: Garuda

text: Thailand uses the Garuda () as its national symbol, known as the "Phra Khrut Pha", meaning "Garuda, the vehicle (of Vishnu)," also used as the symbol of royalty. It adorns the banknote of their currency - the Baht - as well.


title: Garuda

text: The Electronic Attack Squadron 134 (VAQ-134) of the United States Navy is named after and uses the Garuda Insignia.


title: Loris Karius

text: Loris Sven Karius (born 22 June 1993) is a German professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Premier League club Newcastle United.


title: Loris Karius

text: Born in Biberach, Karius began his career with Stuttgart before moving to Manchester City in 2009. After two years in Manchester City's youth system, he returned to Germany with Mainz 05. He established himself as first-choice goalkeeper for the Bundesliga side before transferring to Liverpool in 2016 for a fee of £4.75 million. He represented Germany at youth level.


title: Loris Karius

text: Karius was born in Biberach, Baden-Württemberg to Christine and Harald Karius. Harald intended for his son to become a motocross rider, but Loris' grandfather, Karl, encouraged him to focus on football.


title: Loris Karius

text: Karius attended Pestalozzi-Gymnasium Biberach until his move to England in 2009 where he was then privately tutored.


title: Loris Karius

text: Karius played for local team SG Mettenberg and SSV Ulm 1846 before joining VfB Stuttgart, where he rose through the youth ranks and appeared for the German under-16 national team against Macedonia in September 2008.


title: Loris Karius

text: Manchester City invited Karius and his family to England after watching him in Germany's under-16 game against Azerbaijan, and completed his signing on 1 July 2009. Karius played for the under-18 and the under-21 Manchester City teams, but did not make a senior appearance during his time in Manchester.


title: Loris Karius

text: Manchester City loaned Karius to Mainz 05 in August 2011, where he played for Mainz 05's reserve team, Mainz 05 II, in the Regionalliga. On 11 January 2012, the move was made permanent with Karius committing himself to a two-year deal with an option for a third year that would extend his contract to June 2015.


title: Loris Karius

text: He made his Mainz 05 debut on 1 December 2012 in a Bundesliga match against Hannover 96 when he was substituted for Shawn Parker after goalkeeper Christian Wetklo had been sent off, which, aged 19 years and 5 months, made Karius the youngest goalkeeper ever to play in the Bundesliga for Mainz. He made no further appearances in the 2012–13 season, but established himself as first-choice goalkeeper in the 2013–14 season and on 12 January 2015 signed a three-year contract extension.


title: Loris Karius

text: Karius was ever-present in the 2015–16 season, keeping nine clean sheets, saving two penalties and being voted the second-best goalkeeper in the league in a poll of 235 fellow Bundesliga players, ranking behind only Manuel Neuer.


title: Loris Karius

text: On 24 May 2016, Karius signed with Liverpool for a fee of £4.75 million on a five-year deal. He was given the number 1 jersey.


title: Loris Karius

text: He made his debut in a 3–0 EFL Cup win over Derby County on 20 September 2016. He played his first Premier League match against Hull City, which ended in a 5–1 victory for the Reds, on 24 September. He kept his first Premier League clean sheet on 17 October in a 0–0 draw with rivals Manchester United. On 24 October 2016, Jürgen Klopp confirmed that Karius was Liverpool's first-choice goalkeeper, ahead of Simon Mignolet. After two sub-par performances in early December, which included spilling Lewis Cook's tame shot into the path of Nathan Aké to tap home into an empty net to give Bournemouth a 4–3 win, Karius was dropped from the starting eleven. Regarding this decision, Klopp stated he wanted to take Karius "out the firing line," and that "Karius is a young goalkeeper. He will bounce back."


title: Loris Karius

text: In the 2018 Champions League quarter-final 2nd leg at Manchester City, with the aggregate scoreline at 3–1 to Liverpool, Karius was involved in a controversial incident when he failed to clear a cross into the penalty area, punching the ball downward which ricocheted off teammate James Milner and into the path of Man City winger Leroy Sané who scored, only for the linesman to give offside. In the Champions League semi-final home leg against AS Roma, with the scoreline at 0–0, Karius let Aleksandar Kolarov's shot go through his hands with the ball then hitting the crossbar, before Liverpool went on to win 5–2. In the away game in Rome, Karius was involved in controversy when he came rushing out of his goal and brought down Edin Džeko inside the penalty area, but instead of a penalty and red card the linesman gave offside in what "The Telegraph" called "an extremely tight call". Minutes later Karius parried a Roma shot into the path of Džeko which levelled the score for Roma at 2–2, before the game finished 4–2 to Roma and 7–6 to Liverpool on aggregate.


title: Loris Karius

text: Karius started for Liverpool against Real Madrid in the 2018 UEFA Champions League Final which Liverpool lost 3–1. He was deemed at fault for two of the goals that Liverpool conceded, the first and third: the first when his throw was blocked by Karim Benzema and deflected into the net; the second when he mishandled Gareth Bale's 40-yard strike.


title: Loris Karius

text: After the match, he wept and tearfully apologised to Liverpool fans who remained in the stands. He also stated that his mistakes "lost the team the final". After the match, Karius received online death threats, mainly on Twitter, which prompted Merseyside Police to launch an investigation. Five days later, Karius underwent an examination at Massachusetts General Hospital. Medics concluded he had suffered a concussion from an elbow to his head, reportedly from Sergio Ramos just minutes before his first mistake. Doctors, however, did not pinpoint the exact moment he was concussed. According to doctor Ross Zafonte, it was possible the concussion affected his performance. Later, on 6 July, at the start of pre season, Klopp stated that Karius was "100% influenced by his concussion", leading to his errors, with Klopp saying "We don't use it as an excuse, we use it as an explanation. For me, it's 100% the explanation [for his performance]. He was influenced by that knock – that is 100%".


title: Loris Karius

text: In July 2018, Liverpool broke the world transfer fee record for a goalkeeper when they signed Alisson for an initial fee of €62.5 million (£56m), potentially rising to €72 million (£66.8 million) with performance-based bonuses. The signing effectively relegated Karius to a backup role.


title: Loris Karius

text: On 25 August 2018, Karius joined Turkish club Beşiktaş on a two-year loan move. On 8 December 2018, he made several world class saves against Alanyaspor in a scoreless draw.


title: Loris Karius

text: In March 2019, he sought legal action against Beşiktaş for back payment of four months' wages which he alleged the club had failed to pay him. On 4 May 2020, Karius terminated his contract with the Turkish outfit due to continuing issues regarding unpaid wages and after completing the majority of the two years agreed.


title: Loris Karius

text: On 28 September 2020, Karius was loaned to German side Union Berlin for the 2020–21 season. On 22 December 2020, Karius made his debut in a 3–2 defeat against SC Paderborn in the German DFB Pokal. On 13 February 2021, he made his first start in the Bundesliga for Union Berlin in a goalless draw against Schalke.


title: Loris Karius

text: In July 2021, Karius returned to Liverpool. However, manager Jürgen Klopp stated in January 2022 that Karius would not be included in the squad; he made no further official appearances for the club until the end of his contract. It was confirmed in June that Karius would leave the club when his contract expired at the end of the month.


title: Loris Karius

text: Karius represented Germany at all youth levels from under-16 onward, but his appearances were limited due to competition from other goalkeepers.


title: Mamdouh Elssbiay

text: Mamdouh Mohammed Hassan Elssbiay (; born 16 September 1984), better known as Big Ramy, is an Egyptian IFBB professional bodybuilder. He is a two time Mr. Olympia champion wininng the titles in 2020 and 2021.


title: Mamdouh Elssbiay

text: He was born in Al-Sebea near Baltim city in Burullus district, Kafr El Sheikh Governorate. He worked as a fisherman, where he went to Kuwait, before he started to train professionally. He is currently married to two women. His second marriage in December 2021 occurred without the knowledge of his first wife, who subsequently found out through the media.


title: Mamdouh Elssbiay

text: Elssbiay earned his pro card by winning the overall title at the 2012 Amateur Olympia in Kuwait City, just three years after he started training. In 2010, Elssbiay joined Oxygen Gym in Kuwait. By 2011, he weighed 200 lbs, and when he stepped on the 2012 Amateur Olympia Kuwait stage, he weighed in at 286 lbs and was declared the champion. In 2013, Elssbiay made his IFBB Pro-debut at the New York Pro, which he won. In 2020, Elssbiay won the Mr. Olympia.


title: Mamdouh Elssbiay

text: In October 2020, he tested positive for COVID-19, which prevented him from participating in the 2020 Europa Pro Bodybuilding Championships.


title: Mamdouh Elssbiay

text: He lost his title to Hadi Choopan in 2022 after a poor showing at the Mr Olympia competition, where he fell to 5th position.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is a chemical element with the symbol Co and atomic number 27. As with nickel, cobalt is found in the Earth's crust only in a chemically combined form, save for small deposits found in alloys of natural meteoric iron. The free element, produced by reductive smelting, is a hard, lustrous, silver-gray metal.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt-based blue pigments (cobalt blue) have been used since ancient times for jewelry and paints, and to impart a distinctive blue tint to glass, but the color was for a long time thought to be due to the known metal bismuth. Miners had long used the name "kobold ore" (German for "goblin ore") for some of the blue-pigment-producing minerals; they were so named because they were poor in known metals, and gave poisonous arsenic-containing fumes when smelted. In 1735, such ores were found to be reducible to a new metal (the first discovered since ancient times), and this was ultimately named for the "kobold".


title: Cobalt

text: Today, some cobalt is produced specifically from one of a number of metallic-lustered ores, such as cobaltite (CoAsS). The element is, however, more usually produced as a by-product of copper and nickel mining. The Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Zambia yields most of the global cobalt production. World production in 2016 was (according to Natural Resources Canada), and the DRC alone accounted for more than 50%.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is primarily used in lithium-ion batteries, and in the manufacture of magnetic, wear-resistant and high-strength alloys. The compounds cobalt silicate and cobalt(II) aluminate (CoAlO, cobalt blue) give a distinctive deep blue color to glass, ceramics, inks, paints and varnishes. Cobalt occurs naturally as only one stable isotope, cobalt-59. Cobalt-60 is a commercially important radioisotope, used as a radioactive tracer and for the production of high-energy gamma rays.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is the active center of a group of coenzymes called cobalamins. Vitamin B, the best-known example of the type, is an essential vitamin for all animals. Cobalt in inorganic form is also a micronutrient for bacteria, algae, and fungi.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is a ferromagnetic metal with a specific gravity of 8.9. The Curie temperature is and the magnetic moment is 1.6–1.7 Bohr magnetons per atom. Cobalt has a relative permeability two-thirds that of iron. Metallic cobalt occurs as two crystallographic structures: hcp and fcc. The ideal transition temperature between the hcp and fcc structures is , but in practice the energy difference between them is so small that random intergrowth of the two is common.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is a weakly reducing metal that is protected from oxidation by a passivating oxide film. It is attacked by halogens and sulfur. Heating in oxygen produces CoO which loses oxygen at to give the monoxide CoO. The metal reacts with fluorine (F) at 520 K to give CoF; with chlorine (Cl), bromine (Br) and iodine (I), producing equivalent binary halides. It does not react with hydrogen gas (H) or nitrogen gas (N) even when heated, but it does react with boron, carbon, phosphorus, arsenic and sulfur. At ordinary temperatures, it reacts slowly with mineral acids, and very slowly with moist, but not with dry, air.


title: Cobalt

text: Common oxidation states of cobalt include +2 and +3, although compounds with oxidation states ranging from −3 to +5 are also known. A common oxidation state for simple compounds is +2 (cobalt(II)). These salts form the pink-colored metal aquo complex in water. Addition of chloride gives the intensely blue . In a borax bead flame test, cobalt shows deep blue in both oxidizing and reducing flames.


title: Cobalt

text: Several oxides of cobalt are known. Green cobalt(II) oxide (CoO) has rocksalt structure. It is readily oxidized with water and oxygen to brown cobalt(III) hydroxide (Co(OH)). At temperatures of 600–700 °C, CoO oxidizes to the blue cobalt(II,III) oxide (CoO), which has a spinel structure. Black cobalt(III) oxide (CoO) is also known. Cobalt oxides are antiferromagnetic at low temperature: CoO (Néel temperature 291 K) and CoO (Néel temperature: 40 K), which is analogous to magnetite (FeO), with a mixture of +2 and +3 oxidation states.


title: Cobalt

text: The principal chalcogenides of cobalt include the black cobalt(II) sulfides, CoS, which adopts a pyrite-like structure, and cobalt(III) sulfide (CoS).


title: Cobalt

text: Four dihalides of cobalt(II) are known: cobalt(II) fluoride (CoF, pink), cobalt(II) chloride (CoCl, blue), cobalt(II) bromide (CoBr, green), cobalt(II) iodide (CoI, blue-black). These halides exist in anhydrous and hydrated forms. Whereas the anhydrous dichloride is blue, the hydrate is red.


title: Cobalt

text: The reduction potential for the reaction + e → is +1.92 V, beyond that for chlorine to chloride, +1.36 V. Consequently, cobalt(III) chloride would spontaneously reduce to cobalt(II) chloride and chlorine. Because the reduction potential for fluorine to fluoride is so high, +2.87 V, cobalt(III) fluoride is one of the few simple stable cobalt(III) compounds. Cobalt(III) fluoride, which is used in some fluorination reactions, reacts vigorously with water.


title: Cobalt

text: As for all metals, molecular compounds and polyatomic ions of cobalt are classified as coordination complexes, that is, molecules or ions that contain cobalt linked to one or more ligands. These can be combinations of a potentially infinite variety of molecules and ions, such as:


title: Cobalt

text: These attached groups affect the stability of oxidation states of the cobalt atoms, according to general principles of electronegativity and of the hardness–softness. For example, Co complexes tend to have ammine ligands. Because phosphorus is softer than nitrogen, phosphine ligands tend to feature the softer Co and Co, an example being tris(triphenylphosphine)cobalt(I) chloride (). The more electronegative (and harder) oxide and fluoride can stabilize Co and Co derivatives, e.g. caesium hexafluorocobaltate(IV) (CsCoF) and potassium percobaltate (KCoO).


title: Cobalt

text: Alfred Werner, a Nobel-prize winning pioneer in coordination chemistry, worked with compounds of empirical formula . One of the isomers determined was cobalt(III) hexammine chloride. This coordination complex, a typical Werner-type complex, consists of a central cobalt atom coordinated by six ammine orthogonal ligands and three chloride counteranions. Using chelating ethylenediamine ligands in place of ammonia gives tris(ethylenediamine)cobalt(III) (), which was one of the first coordination complexes to be resolved into optical isomers. The complex exists in the right- and left-handed forms of a "three-bladed propeller". This complex was first isolated by Werner as yellow-gold needle-like crystals.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobaltocene is a structural analog to ferrocene, with cobalt in place of iron. Cobaltocene is much more sensitive to oxidation than ferrocene. Cobalt carbonyl (Co(CO)) is a catalyst in carbonylation and hydrosilylation reactions. Vitamin B (see below) is an organometallic compound found in nature and is the only vitamin that contains a metal atom. An example of an alkylcobalt complex in the otherwise uncommon +4 oxidation state of cobalt is the homoleptic complex tetrakis(1-norbornyl)cobalt(IV) (Co(1-norb)), a transition metal-alkyl complex that is notable for its resistance to β-hydrogen elimination, in accord with Bredt's rule. The cobalt(III) and cobalt(V) complexes and are also known.


title: Cobalt

text: Co is the only stable cobalt isotope and the only isotope that exists naturally on Earth. Twenty-two radioisotopes have been characterized: the most stable, Co, has a half-life of 5.2714 years; Co has a half-life of 271.8 days; Co has a half-life of 77.27 days; and Co has a half-life of 70.86 days. All the other radioactive isotopes of cobalt have half-lives shorter than 18 hours, and in most cases shorter than 1 second. This element also has 4 meta states, all of which have half-lives shorter than 15 minutes.


title: Cobalt

text: The isotopes of cobalt range in atomic weight from 50 u (Co) to 73 u (Co). The primary decay mode for isotopes with atomic mass unit values less than that of the only stable isotope, Co, is electron capture and the primary mode of decay in isotopes with atomic mass greater than 59 atomic mass units is beta decay. The primary decay products below Co are element 26 (iron) isotopes; above that the decay products are element 28 (nickel) isotopes.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt compounds have been used for centuries to impart a rich blue color to glass, glazes, and ceramics. Cobalt has been detected in Egyptian sculpture, Persian jewelry from the third millennium BC, in the ruins of Pompeii, destroyed in 79 AD, and in China, dating from the Tang dynasty (618–907 AD) and the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 AD).


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt has been used to color glass since the Bronze Age. The excavation of the Uluburun shipwreck yielded an ingot of blue glass, cast during the 14th century BC. Blue glass from Egypt was either colored with copper, iron, or cobalt. The oldest cobalt-colored glass is from the eighteenth dynasty of Egypt (1550–1292 BC). The source for the cobalt the Egyptians used is not known.


title: Cobalt

text: The word "cobalt" is derived from the German "", from "kobold" meaning "goblin", a superstitious term used for the ore of cobalt by miners. The first attempts to smelt those ores for copper or silver failed, yielding simply powder (cobalt(II) oxide) instead. Because the primary ores of cobalt always contain arsenic, smelting the ore oxidized the arsenic into the highly toxic and volatile arsenic oxide, adding to the notoriety of the ore.


title: Cobalt

text: Swedish chemist Georg Brandt (1694–1768) is credited with discovering cobalt circa 1735, showing it to be a previously unknown element, distinct from bismuth and other traditional metals. Brandt called it a new "semi-metal". He showed that compounds of cobalt metal were the source of the blue color in glass, which previously had been attributed to the bismuth found with cobalt. Cobalt became the first metal to be discovered since the pre-historical period. All other known metals (iron, copper, silver, gold, zinc, mercury, tin, lead and bismuth) had no recorded discoverers.


title: Cobalt

text: During the 19th century, a significant part of the world's production of cobalt blue (a pigment made with cobalt compounds and alumina) and smalt (cobalt glass powdered for use for pigment purposes in ceramics and painting) was carried out at the Norwegian Blaafarveværket. The first mines for the production of smalt in the 16th century were located in Norway, Sweden, Saxony and Hungary. With the discovery of cobalt ore in New Caledonia in 1864, the mining of cobalt in Europe declined. With the discovery of ore deposits in Ontario, Canada in 1904 and the discovery of even larger deposits in the Katanga Province in the Congo in 1914, the mining operations shifted again. When the Shaba conflict started in 1978, the copper mines of Katanga Province nearly stopped production. The impact on the world cobalt economy from this conflict was smaller than expected: cobalt is a rare metal, the pigment is highly toxic, and the industry had already established effective ways for recycling cobalt materials. In some cases, industry was able to change to cobalt-free alternatives.


title: Cobalt

text: In 1938, John Livingood and Glenn T. Seaborg discovered the radioisotope cobalt-60. This isotope was famously used at Columbia University in the 1950s to establish parity violation in radioactive beta decay.


title: Cobalt

text: After World War II, the US wanted to guarantee the supply of cobalt ore for military uses (as the Germans had been doing) and prospected for cobalt within the U.S. border. An adequate supply of the ore was found in Idaho near Blackbird canyon in the side of a mountain. The firm Calera Mining Company started production at the site.


title: Cobalt

text: It has been argued that cobalt will be one of the main objects of geopolitical competition in a world running on renewable energy and dependent on batteries, but this perspective has also been criticised for underestimating the power of economic incentives for expanded production.


title: Cobalt

text: The stable form of cobalt is produced in supernovae through the r-process. It comprises 0.0029% of the Earth's crust. Free cobalt (the native metal) is not found on Earth because of the oxygen in the atmosphere and the chlorine in the ocean. Both are abundant enough in the upper layers of the Earth's crust to prevent native metal cobalt from forming. Except as recently delivered in meteoric iron, pure cobalt in native metal form is unknown on Earth. The element has a medium abundance but natural compounds of cobalt are numerous and small amounts of cobalt compounds are found in most rocks, soils, plants, and animals.


title: Cobalt

text: In nature, cobalt is frequently associated with nickel. Both are characteristic components of meteoric iron, though cobalt is much less abundant in iron meteorites than nickel. As with nickel, cobalt in meteoric iron alloys may have been well enough protected from oxygen and moisture to remain as the free (but alloyed) metal, though neither element is seen in that form in the ancient terrestrial crust.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt in compound form occurs in copper and nickel minerals. It is the major metallic component that combines with sulfur and arsenic in the sulfidic cobaltite (CoAsS), safflorite (CoAs), glaucodot (), and skutterudite (CoAs) minerals. The mineral cattierite is similar to pyrite and occurs together with vaesite in the copper deposits of Katanga Province. When it reaches the atmosphere, weathering occurs; the sulfide minerals oxidize and form pink erythrite ("cobalt glance": Co(AsO)·8HO) and spherocobaltite (CoCO).


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is also a constituent of tobacco smoke. The tobacco plant readily absorbs and accumulates heavy metals like cobalt from the surrounding soil in its leaves. These are subsequently inhaled during tobacco smoking.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is a trace metal involved in photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation detected in most ocean basins and is a limiting micronutrient for phytoplankton and cyanobacteria. The Co-containing complex cobalamin is only synthesized by cyanobacteria and a few archaea, so dissolved cobalt concentrations are low in the upper ocean. Like Mn and Fe, Co has a hybrid profile of biological uptake by phytoplankton via photosynthesis in the upper ocean and scavenging in the deep ocean, although most scavenging is limited by complex organic ligands. Co is recycled in the ocean by decaying organic matter that sinks below the upper ocean, although most is scavenged by oxidizing bacteria.


title: Cobalt

text: Sources of cobalt for many ocean bodies include rivers and terrestrial runoff with some input from hydrothermal vents. In the deep ocean, cobalt sources are found lying on top of seamounts (which can be large or small) where ocean currents sweep the ocean floor to clear sediment over the span of millions of years allowing them to form as ferromanganese crusts. Although limited mapping of the seafloor has been done, preliminary investigation indicates that there is a large amount of these cobalt-rich crusts located in the Clarion Clipperton Zone, an area garnering increasing interest for deep sea mining ventures due to the mineral-rich environment within its domain. Anthropogenic input contributes as a non-natural source but in very low amounts. Dissolved cobalt (dCo) concentrations across oceans are controlled primarily by reservoirs where dissolved oxygen concentrations are low. The complex biochemical cycling of cobalt in the ocean is still not fully understood, but patterns of higher concentrations have been found in areas of low oxygen such as the Oxygen Minimum Zone (OMZ) in the Southern Atlantic Ocean.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is considered toxic for marine environments at high concentrations. Safe concentrations fall around 18 μg/L in marine waters for plankton such as diatoms.


title: Cobalt

text: The main ores of cobalt are cobaltite, erythrite, glaucodot and skutterudite (see above), but most cobalt is obtained by reducing the cobalt by-products of nickel and copper mining and smelting.


title: Cobalt

text: Since cobalt is generally produced as a by-product, the supply of cobalt depends to a great extent on the economic feasibility of copper and nickel mining in a given market. Demand for cobalt was projected to grow 6% in 2017.


title: Cobalt

text: Primary cobalt deposits are rare, such as those occurring in hydrothermal deposits, associated with ultramafic rocks, typified by the Bou-Azzer district of Morocco. At such locations, cobalt ores are mined exclusively, albeit at a lower concentration, and thus require more downstream processing for cobalt extraction.


title: Cobalt

text: Several methods exist to separate cobalt from copper and nickel, depending on the concentration of cobalt and the exact composition of the used ore. One method is froth flotation, in which surfactants bind to ore components, leading to an enrichment of cobalt ores. Subsequent roasting converts the ores to cobalt sulfate, and the copper and the iron are oxidized to the oxide. Leaching with water extracts the sulfate together with the arsenates. The residues are further leached with sulfuric acid, yielding a solution of copper sulfate. Cobalt can also be leached from the slag of copper smelting.


title: Cobalt

text: The products of the above-mentioned processes are transformed into the cobalt oxide (CoO). This oxide is reduced to metal by the aluminothermic reaction or reduction with carbon in a blast furnace.


title: Cobalt

text: The United States Geological Survey estimates world reserves of cobalt at 7,100,000 metric tons. The Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) currently produces 63% of the world's cobalt. This market share may reach 73% by 2025 if planned expansions by mining producers like Glencore Plc take place as expected. But by 2030, global demand could be 47 times more than it was in 2017, Bloomberg New Energy Finance has estimated.


title: Cobalt

text: Changes that Congo made to mining laws in 2002 attracted new investments in Congolese copper and cobalt projects. Glencore's Mutanda Mine shipped 24,500 tons of cobalt in 2016, 40% of Congo DRC's output and nearly a quarter of global production. After oversupply, Glencore closed Mutanda for two years in late 2019. Glencore's Katanga Mining project is resuming as well and should produce 300,000 tons of copper and 20,000 tons of cobalt by 2019, according to Glencore.


title: Cobalt

text: After hitting near-decade highs in early 2018 above US$100,000 per tonne, prices for cobalt used in the global electric battery supply chain slipped by 45% in the following 2 years. With the upsurge in Electric (EV) vehicle demand in 2020 and early 2021, cobalt prices rose to US$54,000 per tonne by March 2021.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is ranked as a critical mineral by the United States, Japan, Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom and the European Union.


title: Cobalt

text: In 2005, the top producer of cobalt was the copper deposits in the Democratic Republic of the Congo's Katanga Province. Formerly Shaba province, the area had almost 40% of global reserves, reported the British Geological Survey in 2009.


title: Cobalt

text: Artisanal mining supplied 17% to 40% of the DRC production. Some 100,000 cobalt miners in Congo DRC use hand tools to dig hundreds of feet, with little planning and fewer safety measures, say workers and government and NGO officials, as well as "The Washington Post" reporters' observations on visits to isolated mines. The lack of safety precautions frequently causes injuries or death. Mining pollutes the vicinity and exposes local wildlife and indigenous communities to toxic metals thought to cause birth defects and breathing difficulties, according to health officials.


title: Cobalt

text: Human rights activists have alleged, and investigative journalism reported confirmation, that child labor is used in mining cobalt from African artisanal mines. This revelation prompted cell phone maker Apple Inc., on March 3, 2017, to stop buying ore from suppliers such as Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt who source from artisanal mines in the DRC, and begin using only suppliers that are verified to meet its workplace standards.


title: Cobalt

text: There is a push globally by the EU and major car manufacturers (OEM) for global production of cobalt to be sourced and produced sustainably, responsibly and traceability of the supply chain. Mining companies are adopting and practising ESG initiatives in line with OECD Guidance and putting in place evidence of zero to low carbon footprint activities in the supply chain production of Lithium-ion batteries. These initiatives are already taking place with major mining companies, Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining companies (ASM). Car manufacturers and battery manufacturer supply chains Tesla, VW, BMW, BASF, Glencore are participating in several initiatives, such as the Responsible Cobalt Initiative and Cobalt for Development study. In 2018 BMW Group in partnership with BASF, Samsung SDI and Samsung Electronics have launched a pilot project in the DRC over one pilot mine, to improve conditions and address challenges for artisanal miners and the surrounding communities.


title: Cobalt

text: The political and ethnic dynamics of the region have in the past caused outbreaks of violence and years of armed conflict and displaced populations. This instability affected the price of cobalt and also created perverse incentives for the combatants in the First and Second Congo Wars to prolong the fighting, since access to diamond mines and other valuable resources helped to finance their military goals—which frequently amounted to genocide—and also enriched the fighters themselves. While DR Congo has in the 2010s not recently been invaded by neighboring military forces, some of the richest mineral deposits adjoin areas where Tutsis and Hutus still frequently clash, unrest continues although on a smaller scale and refugees still flee outbreaks of violence.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt extracted from small Congolese artisanal mining endeavors in 2007 supplied a single Chinese company, Congo DongFang International Mining. A subsidiary of Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, one of the world's largest cobalt producers, Congo DongFang supplied cobalt to some of the world's largest battery manufacturers, who produced batteries for ubiquitous products like the Apple iPhones. Because of accused labour violations and environmental concerns, LG Chem subsequently audited Congo DongFang in accordance with OECD guidelines. LG Chem, which also produces battery materials for car companies, imposed a code of conduct on all suppliers that it inspects.


title: Cobalt

text: The Mukondo Mountain project, operated by the Central African Mining and Exploration Company (CAMEC) in Katanga Province, may be the richest cobalt reserve in the world. It produced an estimated one-third of the total global cobalt production in 2008. In July 2009, CAMEC announced a long-term agreement to deliver its entire annual production of cobalt concentrate from Mukondo Mountain to Zhejiang Galico Cobalt & Nickel Materials of China.


title: Cobalt

text: In February 2018, global asset management firm AllianceBernstein defined the DRC as economically "the Saudi Arabia of the electric vehicle age", due to its cobalt resources, as essential to the lithium-ion batteries that drive electric vehicles.


title: Cobalt

text: On March 9, 2018, President Joseph Kabila updated the 2002 mining code, increasing royalty charges and declaring cobalt and coltan "strategic metals".


title: Cobalt

text: In December 2019, International Rights Advocates, a human rights NGO, filed a landmark lawsuit against Apple, Tesla, Dell, Microsoft and Google company Alphabet for "knowingly benefiting from and aiding and abetting the cruel and brutal use of young children" in mining cobalt. The companies in question denied their involvement in child labour.


title: Cobalt

text: In 2017, some exploration companies were planning to survey old silver and cobalt mines in the area of Cobalt, Ontario where significant deposits are believed to lie.


title: Cobalt

text: Canada's Sherritt International processes cobalt ores in nickel deposits from the Moa mines in Cuba, and the island has several others mines in Mayari, Camaguey, and Pinar del Rio. Continued investments by Sherritt International in Cuban nickel and cobalt production while acquiring mining rights for 17–20 years made the communist country third for cobalt reserves in 2019, before Canada itself.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt has been used in the production of high-performance alloys. It is also used in some rechargeable batteries.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt-based superalloys have historically consumed most of the cobalt produced. The temperature stability of these alloys makes them suitable for turbine blades for gas turbines and aircraft jet engines, although nickel-based single-crystal alloys surpass them in performance. Cobalt-based alloys are also corrosion- and wear-resistant, making them, like titanium, useful for making orthopedic implants that don't wear down over time. The development of wear-resistant cobalt alloys started in the first decade of the 20th century with the stellite alloys, containing chromium with varying quantities of tungsten and carbon. Alloys with chromium and tungsten carbides are very hard and wear-resistant. Special cobalt-chromium-molybdenum alloys like Vitallium are used for prosthetic parts (hip and knee replacements). Cobalt alloys are also used for dental prosthetics as a useful substitute for nickel, which may be allergenic. Some high-speed steels also contain cobalt for increased heat and wear resistance. The special alloys of aluminium, nickel, cobalt and iron, known as Alnico, and of samarium and cobalt (samarium-cobalt magnet) are used in permanent magnets. It is also alloyed with 95% platinum for jewelry, yielding an alloy suitable for fine casting, which is also slightly magnetic.


title: Cobalt

text: Lithium cobalt oxide (LiCoO) is widely used in lithium-ion battery cathodes. The material is composed of cobalt oxide layers with the lithium intercalated. During discharge ("i.e." when not actively being charged), the lithium is released as lithium ions. Nickel-cadmium (NiCd) and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries also include cobalt to improve the oxidation of nickel in the battery.


title: Cobalt

text: Transparency Market Research estimated the global lithium-ion battery market at $30 billion in 2015 and predicted an increase to over US$75 billion by 2024.


title: Cobalt

text: Although in 2018 most cobalt in batteries was used in a mobile device, a more recent application for cobalt is rechargeable batteries for electric cars. This industry has increased five-fold in its demand for cobalt, which makes it urgent to find new raw materials in more stable areas of the world. Demand is expected to continue or increase as the prevalence of electric vehicles increases. Exploration in 2016–2017 included the area around Cobalt, Ontario, an area where many silver mines ceased operation decades ago. Cobalt for electric vehicles increased 81% from the first half of 2018 to 7,200 tonnes in the first half of 2019, for a battery capacity of 46.3 GWh. The future of electric cars may depend on deep-sea mining, since cobalt is abundant in rocks on the seabed.


title: Cobalt

text: Since child and slave labor have been repeatedly reported in cobalt mining, primarily in the artisanal mines of DR Congo, technology companies seeking an ethical supply chain have faced shortages of this raw material and the price of cobalt metal reached a nine-year high in October 2017, more than US$30 a pound, versus US$10 in late 2015. After oversupply, the price dropped to a more normal $15 in 2019. As a reaction to the issues with artisanal cobalt mining in DR Congo a number of cobalt suppliers and their customers have formed the "Fair Cobalt Alliance" (FCA) which aims to end the use of child labor and to improve the working conditions of cobalt mining and processing in the DR Congo. Members of FCA include Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, Sono Motors, the "Responsible Cobalt Initiative", Fairphone, Glencore and Tesla, Inc.


title: Cobalt

text: Research is being conducted by the European Union on the possibility to eliminate cobalt requirements in lithium-ion battery production. As of August 2020 battery makers have gradually reduced the cathode cobalt content from 1/3 (NMC 111) to 2/10 (NMC 442) to currently 1/10 (NMC 811) and have also introduced the cobalt free LFP cathode into the battery packs of electric cars such as the Tesla Model 3. In September 2020, Tesla outlined their plans to make their own, cobalt-free battery cells.


title: Cobalt

text: Several cobalt compounds are oxidation catalysts. Cobalt acetate is used to convert xylene to terephthalic acid, the precursor of the bulk polymer polyethylene terephthalate. Typical catalysts are the cobalt carboxylates (known as cobalt soaps). They are also used in paints, varnishes, and inks as "drying agents" through the oxidation of drying oils. The same carboxylates are used to improve the adhesion between steel and rubber in steel-belted radial tires. In addition they are used as accelerators in polyester resin systems.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt-based catalysts are used in reactions involving carbon monoxide. Cobalt is also a catalyst in the Fischer–Tropsch process for the hydrogenation of carbon monoxide into liquid fuels. Hydroformylation of alkenes often uses cobalt octacarbonyl as a catalyst,


title: Cobalt

text: The hydrodesulfurization of petroleum uses a catalyst derived from cobalt and molybdenum. This process helps to clean petroleum of sulfur impurities that interfere with the refining of liquid fuels.


title: Cobalt

text: Before the 19th century, cobalt was predominantly used as a pigment. It has been used since the Middle Ages to make smalt, a blue-colored glass. Smalt is produced by melting a mixture of roasted mineral smaltite, quartz and potassium carbonate, which yields a dark blue silicate glass, which is finely ground after the production. Smalt was widely used to color glass and as pigment for paintings. In 1780, Sven Rinman discovered cobalt green, and in 1802 Louis Jacques Thénard discovered cobalt blue. Cobalt pigments such as cobalt blue (cobalt aluminate), cerulean blue (cobalt(II) stannate), various hues of cobalt green (a mixture of cobalt(II) oxide and zinc oxide), and cobalt violet (cobalt phosphate) are used as artist's pigments because of their superior chromatic stability.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt-60 (Co-60 or Co) is useful as a gamma-ray source because it can be produced in predictable amounts with high activity by bombarding cobalt with neutrons. It produces gamma rays with energies of 1.17 and 1.33 MeV.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is used in external beam radiotherapy, sterilization of medical supplies and medical waste, radiation treatment of foods for sterilization (cold pasteurization), industrial radiography (e.g. weld integrity radiographs), density measurements (e.g. concrete density measurements), and tank fill height switches. The metal has the unfortunate property of producing a fine dust, causing problems with radiation protection. Cobalt from radiotherapy machines has been a serious hazard when not discarded properly, and one of the worst radiation contamination accidents in North America occurred in 1984, when a discarded radiotherapy unit containing cobalt-60 was mistakenly disassembled in a junkyard in Juarez, Mexico.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt-60 has a radioactive half-life of 5.27 years. Loss of potency requires periodic replacement of the source in radiotherapy and is one reason why cobalt machines have been largely replaced by linear accelerators in modern radiation therapy. Cobalt-57 (Co-57 or Co) is a cobalt radioisotope most often used in medical tests, as a radiolabel for vitamin B uptake, and for the Schilling test. Cobalt-57 is used as a source in Mössbauer spectroscopy and is one of several possible sources in X-ray fluorescence devices.


title: Cobalt

text: Nuclear weapon designs could intentionally incorporate Co, some of which would be activated in a nuclear explosion to produce Co. The Co, dispersed as nuclear fallout, is sometimes called a cobalt bomb.


title: Cobalt

text: Cobalt is essential to the metabolism of all animals. It is a key constituent of cobalamin, also known as vitamin B, the primary biological reservoir of cobalt as an ultratrace element. Bacteria in the stomachs of ruminant animals convert cobalt salts into vitamin B, a compound which can only be produced by bacteria or archaea. A minimal presence of cobalt in soils therefore markedly improves the health of grazing animals, and an uptake of 0.20 mg/kg a day is recommended because they have no other source of vitamin B.


title: Cobalt

text: Proteins based on cobalamin use corrin to hold the cobalt. Coenzyme B features a reactive C-Co bond that participates in the reactions. In humans, B has two types of alkyl ligand: methyl and adenosyl. MeB promotes methyl (−CH) group transfers. The adenosyl version of B catalyzes rearrangements in which a hydrogen atom is directly transferred between two adjacent atoms with concomitant exchange of the second substituent, X, which may be a carbon atom with substituents, an oxygen atom of an alcohol, or an amine. Methylmalonyl coenzyme A mutase (MUT) converts MMl-CoA to Su-CoA, an important step in the extraction of energy from proteins and fats.


title: Cobalt

text: Although far less common than other metalloproteins (e.g. those of zinc and iron), other cobaltoproteins are known besides B. These proteins include methionine aminopeptidase 2, an enzyme that occurs in humans and other mammals that does not use the corrin ring of B, but binds cobalt directly. Another non-corrin cobalt enzyme is nitrile hydratase, an enzyme in bacteria that metabolizes nitriles.


title: Cobalt

text: In humans, consumption of cobalt-containing vitamin B meets all needs for cobalt. For cattle and sheep, which meet vitamin B needs via synthesis by resident bacteria in the rumen, there is a function for inorganic cobalt. In the early 20th century, during the development of farming on the North Island Volcanic Plateau of New Zealand, cattle suffered from what was termed "bush sickness". It was discovered that the volcanic soils lacked the cobalt salts essential for the cattle food chain. The "coast disease" of sheep in the Ninety Mile Desert of the Southeast of South Australia in the 1930s was found to originate in nutritional deficiencies of trace elements cobalt and copper. The cobalt deficiency was overcome by the development of "cobalt bullets", dense pellets of cobalt oxide mixed with clay given orally for lodging in the animal's rumen.


title: Cobalt

text: The LD value for soluble cobalt salts has been estimated to be between 150 and 500 mg/kg. In the US, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has designated a permissible exposure limit (PEL) in the workplace as a time-weighted average (TWA) of 0.1 mg/m. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has set a recommended exposure limit (REL) of 0.05 mg/m, time-weighted average. The IDLH (immediately dangerous to life and health) value is 20 mg/m.


title: Cobalt

text: However, chronic cobalt ingestion has caused serious health problems at doses far less than the lethal dose. In 1966, the addition of cobalt compounds to stabilize beer foam in Canada led to a peculiar form of toxin-induced cardiomyopathy, which came to be known as "beer drinker's cardiomyopathy".


title: Cobalt

text: Furthermore, cobalt metal is suspected of causing cancer (i.e., possibly carcinogenic, IARC Group 2B) as per the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) Monographs.


title: Cobalt

text: It causes respiratory problems when inhaled. It also causes skin problems when touched; after nickel and chromium, cobalt is a major cause of contact dermatitis.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Bianca Michelle Devins, also known as Bianca Ahren, was an American teenager from Utica, New York, who was murdered by a male acquaintance, Brandon Andrew Clark, on July 14, 2019. Following a botched suicide attempt, Clark was charged with second-degree murder. He subsequently pleaded guilty to the murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Police reports stated that Devins and Clark were in an intimate relationship, although the two perceived the relationship differently. Devins's sister called Clark a close family friend, though Devins said in a chat log she did not remember his name and had to "search it up" in their Discord chat history before their meeting, whereas others feared he was exploitative. The murder allegedly took place after Clark witnessed Devins kissing another man.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Devins' murder received considerable attention from the press and social media. Initial reports were marred by misinformation. Photos of Devins' corpse were taken by Clark and shared widely online, sparking both mockery and sympathy. Social media companies' responses were subject to criticism, leading to the introduction of legislation. Commentators have discussed the unique nature of the crime and its relation to the structure of social media.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Bianca Michelle Devins (aged 17 upon her death) intended to study psychology at Mohawk Valley Community College in Utica. Her struggles with mental illness, specifically depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder, were a concern for her loved ones. She "had been in and out of the hospital receiving mental health treatment for much of her teen years". Having experienced feelings of isolation, she found refuge in online communities. According to Syracuse newspaper "The Post-Standard", Devins had been dealing with online harassment by incels for at least two years.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: The childhood of Brandon Andrew Clark (born October 6, 1997; 21 at the time he murdered Devins) was subject to dysfunction; he once witnessed his father hold his mother at knifepoint for several hours. Upon meeting Clark, Devins' mother, Kimberly Devins, said he "seemed very nice" and was "polite".


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: It is believed that Clark and Devins met on Instagram in April 2019, after he had begun following her on the social media platform. Police described their friendship as a "personally intimate one", but friends and family said otherwise. Devins told her mother that she had explained to Clark that she did not want to date him, though Kimberly thought that he still "wanted more". One of Devins' sisters called Clark a trusted family friend, but a friend of Devins feared that Clark was exploiting Devins sexually while the two were high. Reportedly, Clark would supply drugs to Devins to entice her to spend time with him.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: On July 13, 2019, Canadian singer Nicole Dollanganger was performing a show in New York City that was attended by Devins, Clark, and a friend of theirs named Alex. Following the show, Clark and Devins returned to Utica. The two engaged in an argument—likely regarding a kiss between Devins and Alex. Eventually, Clark began assaulting her, slicing her neck with a long knife hidden by his seat. Devins died in the early morning hours of July 14. Her body, nearly decapitated, was left in the car, as Clark built a bonfire and listened to the song "Test Drive" by Joji.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: After Devins' death, Clark called numerous family members. His call resembled a suicide note, prompting his family to call 9-1-1. He posted photographs of Devins' body to a Discord server, accompanied by the caption: "sorry fuckers, you're going to have to find somebody else to orbit". Orbiting is the act of following a person online, requesting pictures to other users, and in some cases stalking. A video of the murder was also created. By 7:00am, Discord users had notified the police, who received "numerous" calls, including one from Clark, and made contact with Devins' family. In his call to the dispatcher, Clark said:"My name is Brandon, the victim is Bianca Michelle Devins, I'm not going to stay on the phone for long, because I still need to do the suicide part of the murder-suicide". At the police's arrival, Clark stabbed himself in the neck. He lay across a green tarp concealing Devins' body, and posted more photos online. A suicide note and message were found, the latter reading: "May you never forget me". The next day, police confirmed that the victim was Devins, and charged Clark with second-degree murder.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Having "had the knife and equipment to videotape the killing", authorities reported the possibility that he planned the murder. Police Sgt. Michael Curley believed Clark desired fame. Oneida County assistant district attorney Sarah DeMellier claimed that he gave various explanations for the killing to multiple people. He had made online searches on how to find the carotid artery, how to incapacitate or kill someone, and general searches for choking and hanging.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: A vigil for Devins was held on July 15; her funeral taking place on July 19. Another vigil was held in July 2020. On February 14, 2020, a fashion and art show displaying Devins' work was held. Week-long counseling sessions were offered to Thomas R. Proctor High School students. The Adirondack Bank Center at the Utica Memorial Auditorium was lit up in honor of Devins. Frank Williams, Devins' grandfather, thanked the Utica community for their support.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: The images of Devins' corpse became widely shared on social media such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. They gained traction on the website 4chan, with hundreds of posts praising Clark for committing "another 4chan murder". Users on Incels.co and 8chan were also celebratory. #ripbianca briefly trended on Twitter. Accounts promised to post images of Devins' murder in exchange for likes and follows, and illegitimate fundraising websites sprang up to capitalize on her name and death.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: The initial online discussion of the murder was marred by misinformation and rumors were spread by users. Tweets from prominent Twitter users—one of which was shared over 16,000 times—falsely identified Clark as an incel. Speculation on the crime's nature was "rampant"; users on Twitter, YouTube and Reddit examined Devins' history and sought to explain the murder.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Dr. James Densley, a professor of criminal justice, said that the images could cause trauma in those who viewed them. Her stepfather—who suffered the most harassment—reported having flashbacks. Devins' sister, Olivia, detailed similar results. Kim said that "So many people have been affected by the pictures, scarred for life and suffering from PTSD, unable to erase the image from their mind". Nicole Dollanganger asked that people stop sharing the photos.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Instagram and Facebook removed Clark's account and attempted to stop the photos' spread. Facebook added images of the murder to a digital fingerprint database and blacklisted the hashtag #yesjuliet; the Discord server that Clark utilized was shut down. Users who attempted to report them on Instagram found that they were not considered violations of community guidelines. Instagram's response was met with criticism.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: It was reported that some images stayed on Instagram for as long as four days; Devins' mother Kim claimed that by September the images could still be found on Facebook. Prosecutors in the trial said the images could still be found months later. Olivia reported that nearly two years later, the photos were still being sent to her. Hany Farid, a scholar of digital forensics and image analysis, claimed that Instagram and other companies had the tools to deal with the spread and that their inaction bordered on the criminal—despite a strictly legal perspective saying otherwise.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: By July 15, the story had reached the mainstream and was subsequently reported around the world—likely being the most publicized case of social media documenting a murder. Devins had only 2,000 followers prior to her death, but by July 15, her follower count had risen by 75,000. Initial reports of her murder overstated her online popularity based on the post-mortem number of followers.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Melissa Jeltsen of "HuffPost" recalled that in the immediate aftermath of Devins's death, "Everyone wanted [it] to mean something." "The Post-Standard"'s Elizabeth Doran noted the case was more closely related to "the well-worn story... of abusive male partners". Queenie Wong of CNET and Densley found that the murder demonstrated the problems with how social media responds to violent imagery. The Internet's connection in the murder has been noted by many.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: The crime has been discussed as a case of domestic violence against women caused by toxic masculinity. Misogyny was seen by some as relevant to the context of Devins's death. Evelyn Douek of Harvard University drew parallels between the sharing of photos of Devins to the sharing of videos related to the Christchurch shooting. Others have drawn similar conclusions regarding Christchurch, noting that both men repeated the meme "subscribe to PewDiePie" following the events.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Clark's actions following Devins' death have been interpreted as a demonstration of control, including by her mother. Director of criminology Alison Marganski said that Clark's behavior fit the profile of other violent male offenders and speculated that he felt emasculated and wanted to show his strength.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Clark pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder on July 29, 2019. He was later charged with promoting prison contraband, after corrections officers found a shiv constructed out of a sharpened toothbrush in his cell. According to Kim, he composed a letter to a friend around this time which saw him "bragging" and noting how it felt to kill. This letter, reportedly, explained his motive: "he couldn't handle the thought of her walking out of his life".


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: On February 10, 2020, before his trial, Clark changed his plea to guilty. His sentencing was scheduled for April 7, but was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. On June 2, he filed a notice to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming his lawyer had failed him. This was denied, as he had admitted to his guilt. His hearing took place on September 30, and a written decision was drawn up on October 30. On March 16, 2021, Clark was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. He has formally expressed remorse for his actions.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Kim Devins, alongside congressman Anthony Brindisi, has called for increased action to be taken by social media companies in regards to graphic content. Instagram reportedly promised to share the results of an audit, requested by Brindisi, by August 2019, although by December, Kim had yet to receive the results. Brindisi has requested that the Federal Trade Commission investigate the case for full accountability.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: On September 21, 2020, Brindisi and the Devins family introduced "Bianca's Law". If passed, all social media platforms with more than $10 million in revenue and over 100,000 monthly users would be required to establish an office dedicated to identifying and removing violent content that violates the platform's moderation standards. Marianne Buttenschon and Joseph Griffo introduced a law that would create criminal and civil penalties for spreading an image of a crime victim with the intent of glorification or harassment. In January 2022, the New York State Assembly passed a version of Bianca's Law, which criminalizes posting or sharing personal images with degradative or abusive intent in some situations.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: Devins started a scholarship in Bianca's name for students pursuing psychology degrees. In early 2020, Bianca's friends and family held "The Bee Gala" to celebrate her life, showcase artwork she had made, and raise funds for the scholarship.


title: Murder of Bianca Devins

text: In July 2021, Devins's family sued the Oneida County District Attorney's Office, accusing them of distribution of child pornography. They had learned from producers of documentaries on the murder that they had received from the district attorney's office footage of Devins' death and of her having sex, as well the contents of her phone which included nude photos. Allegedly, a YouTube blogger was also given these in response to a FOIL request.


title: African National Congress

text: The African National Congress (ANC) is a social-democratic political party in South Africa. A liberation movement known for its opposition to apartheid, it has governed the country since 1994, when the first post-apartheid election installed Nelson Mandela as President of South Africa. Cyril Ramaphosa, the incumbent national President, has served as President of the ANC since 18 December 2017.


title: African National Congress

text: Founded on 8 January 1912 in Bloemfontein as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC), the organisation was formed to agitate, by moderate methods, for the rights of black South Africans. When the National Party government came to power in 1948, the ANC's central purpose became to oppose the new government's policy of institutionalised apartheid. To this end, its methods and means of organisation shifted; its adoption of the techniques of mass politics, and the swelling of its membership, culminated in the Defiance Campaign of civil disobedience in 1952–53. The ANC was banned by the South African government between April 1960 – shortly after the Sharpeville massacre – and February 1990. During this period, despite periodic attempts to revive its domestic political underground, the ANC was forced into exile by increasing state repression, which saw many of its leaders imprisoned on Robben Island. Headquartered in Lusaka, Zambia, the exiled ANC dedicated much of its attention to a campaign of sabotage and guerrilla warfare against the apartheid state, carried out under its military wing, uMkhonto we Sizwe, which was founded in 1961 in partnership with the South African Communist Party (SACP). The ANC was condemned as a terrorist organisation by the governments of South Africa, the United States, and the United Kingdom. However, it positioned itself as a key player in the negotiations to end apartheid, which began in earnest after the ban was repealed in 1990.


title: African National Congress

text: In the post-apartheid era, the ANC continues to identify itself foremost as a liberation movement, although it is also a registered political party. Partly due to its Tripartite Alliance with the SACP and the Congress of South African Trade Unions, it has retained a comfortable electoral majority at the national level and in most provinces, and has provided each of South Africa's five presidents since 1994. South Africa is considered a dominant-party state. However, the ANC's electoral majority has declined consistently since 2004, and in the most recent elections – the 2021 local elections – its share of the national vote dropped below 50% for the first time ever. Over the last decade, the party has been embroiled in a number of controversies, particularly relating to widespread allegations of political corruption among its members.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC was founded as the South African Native National Congress (SANNC) in Bloemfontein on 8 January 1912, and was renamed the African National Congress in 1923. Its founding leaders were John Dube (president), Sol Plaatje (secretary), and Pixley ka Isaka Seme (treasurer), who, like much of the ANC's early membership, were drawn from the conservative, educated, and religious professional classes of black South African society. Around 1920, in a partial shift away from its early focus on the "politics of petitioning", the ANC developed a programme of passive resistance directed primarily at the expansion and entrenchment of pass laws. When Josiah Gumede took over as ANC president in 1927, he advocated for a strategy of mass mobilisation and cooperation with the Communist Party, but was voted out of office in 1930 and replaced with the traditionalist Seme, whose leadership saw the ANC's influence wane.


title: African National Congress

text: In the 1940s, Alfred Bitini Xuma revived some of Gumede's programmes, assisted by a surge in trade union activity and by the formation in 1944 of the left-wing ANC Youth League under a new generation of activists, among them Walter Sisulu, Nelson Mandela, and Oliver Tambo. After the National Party was elected into government in 1948 on a platform of apartheid, entailing the further institutionalisation of racial segregation, this new generation pushed for a Programme of Action which explicitly advocated African nationalism and led the ANC, for the first time, to the sustained use of mass mobilisation techniques like strikes, stay-aways, and boycotts. This culminated in the 1952–53 Defiance Campaign, a campaign of mass civil disobedience organised by the ANC, the Indian Congress, and the coloured Franchise Action Council in protest of six apartheid laws. The ANC's membership swelled. In June 1955, it was one of the groups represented at the multi-racial Congress of the People in Kliptown, Soweto, which ratified the Freedom Charter, from then onwards a fundamental document in the anti-apartheid struggle. The Charter was the basis of the enduring Congress Alliance, but was also used as a pretext to prosecute hundreds of activists, among them most of the ANC's leadership, in the Treason Trial. Before the trial was concluded, the Sharpeville massacre occurred on 21 March 1960. In the aftermath, the ANC was banned by the South African government. It was not unbanned until February 1990, almost three decades later.


title: African National Congress

text: After its banning in April 1960, the ANC was driven underground, a process hastened by a barrage of government banning orders, by an escalation of state repression, and by the imprisonment of senior ANC leaders pursuant to the Rivonia trial and Little Rivonia trial. From around 1963, the ANC effectively abandoned much of even its underground presence inside South Africa and operated almost entirely from its external mission, with headquarters first in Morogoro, Tanzania, and later in Lusaka, Zambia. For the entirety of its time in exile, the ANC was led by Tambo – first "de facto", with president Albert Luthuli under house arrest in Zululand; then in an acting capacity, after Luthuli's death in 1967; and, finally, officially, after a leadership vote in 1985. Also notable about this period was the extremely close relationship between the ANC and the reconstituted South African Communist Party (SACP), which was also in exile.


title: African National Congress

text: In 1961, partly in response to the Sharpeville massacre, leaders of the SACP and the ANC formed a military body, Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK, "Spear of the Nation"), as a vehicle for armed struggle against the apartheid state. Initially, MK was not an official ANC body, nor had it been directly established by the ANC National Executive: it was considered an autonomous organisation, until such time as the ANC formally recognised it as its armed wing in October 1962.


title: African National Congress

text: In the first half of the 1960s, MK was preoccupied with a campaign of sabotage attacks, especially bombings of unoccupied government installations. As the ANC reduced its presence inside South Africa, however, MK cadres were increasingly confined to training camps in Tanzania and neighbouring countries – with such exceptions as the Wankie Campaign, a momentous military failure. In 1969, Tambo was compelled to call the landmark Morogoro Conference to address the grievances of the rank-and-file, articulated by Chris Hani in a memorandum which depicted MK's leadership as corrupt and complacent. Although MK's malaise persisted into the 1970s, conditions for armed struggle soon improved considerably, especially after the Soweto uprising of 1976 in South Africa saw thousands of students – inspired by Black Consciousness ideas – cross the borders to seek military training. MK guerrilla activity inside South Africa increased steadily over this period, with one estimate recording an increase from 23 incidents in 1977 to 136 incidents in 1985. In the latter half of the 1980s, a number of South African civilians were killed in these attacks, a reversal of the ANC's earlier reluctance to incur civilian casualties. Fatal attacks included the 1983 Church Street bombing, the 1985 Amanzimtoti bombing, the 1986 Magoo's Bar bombing, and the 1987 Johannesburg Magistrate's Court bombing. Partly in retaliation, the South African Defence Force increasingly crossed the border to target ANC members and ANC bases, as in the 1981 raid on Maputo, 1983 raid on Maputo, and 1985 raid on Gaborone.


title: African National Congress

text: During this period, MK activities led the governments of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan to condemn the ANC as a terrorist organisation. In fact, neither the ANC nor Mandela were removed from the U.S. terror watch list until 2008. The animosity of Western regimes was partly explained by the Cold War context, and by the considerable amount of support – both financial and technical – that the ANC received from the Soviet Union.


title: African National Congress

text: From the mid-1980s, as international and internal opposition to apartheid mounted, elements of the ANC began to test the prospects for a negotiated settlement with the South African government, although the prudence of abandoning armed struggle was an extremely controversial topic within the organisation. Following preliminary contact between the ANC and representatives of the state, business, and civil society, President F. W. de Klerk announced in February 1990 that the government would unban the ANC and other banned political organisations, and that Mandela would be released from prison. Some ANC leaders returned to South Africa from exile for so-called "talks about talks", which led in 1990 and 1991 to a series of bilateral accords with the government establishing a mutual commitment to negotiations. Importantly, the Pretoria Minute of August 1990 included a commitment by the ANC to unilaterally suspend its armed struggle. This made possible the multi-party Convention for a Democratic South Africa and later the Multi-Party Negotiating Forum, in which the ANC was regarded as the main representative of the interests of the anti-apartheid movement.


title: African National Congress

text: However, ongoing political violence, which the ANC attributed to a state-sponsored third force, led to recurrent tensions. Most dramatically, after the Boipatong massacre of June 1992, the ANC announced that it was withdrawing from negotiations indefinitely. It faced further casualties in the Bisho massacre, the Shell House massacre, and in other clashes with state forces and supporters of the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). However, once negotiations resumed, they resulted in November 1993 in an interim Constitution, which governed South Africa's first democratic elections on 27 April 1994. In the elections, the ANC won an overwhelming 62.65% majority of the vote. Mandela was elected president and formed a coalition Government of National Unity, which, under the provisions of the interim Constitution, also included the National Party and IFP. The ANC has controlled the national government since then.


title: African National Congress

text: In the post-apartheid era, two significant breakaway groups have been formed by former ANC members. The first is the Congress of the People, founded by Mosiuoa Lekota in 2008 in the aftermath of the Polokwane elective conference, when the ANC declined to re-elect Thabo Mbeki as its president and instead compelled his resignation from the national presidency. The second breakaway is the Economic Freedom Fighters, founded in 2013 after youth leader Julius Malema was expelled from the ANC. Before these, the most important split in the ANC's history occurred in 1959, when Robert Sobukwe led a splinter faction of African nationalists to the new Pan Africanist Congress.


title: African National Congress

text: Under the ANC constitution, every member of the ANC belongs to a local branch, and branch members select the organisation's policies and leaders. They do so primarily by electing delegates to the National Conference, which is currently convened every five years. Between conferences, the organisation is led by its 86-member National Executive Committee, which is elected at each conference. The most senior members of the National Executive Committee are the so-called Top Six officials, the ANC president primary among them. A symmetrical process occurs at the subnational levels: each of the nine provincial executive committees and regional executive committees are elected at provincial and regional elective conferences respectively, also attended by branch delegates; and branch officials are elected at branch general meetings.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC has three leagues: the Women's League, the Youth League and the Veterans' League. Under the ANC constitution, the leagues are autonomous bodies with the scope to devise their own constitutions and policies; for the purpose of national conferences, they are treated somewhat like provinces, with voting delegates and the power to nominate leadership candidates.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC is recognised as the leader of a three-way alliance, known as the Tripartite Alliance, with the SACP and Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). The alliance was formalised in mid-1990, after the ANC was unbanned, but has deeper historical roots: the SACP had worked closely with the ANC in exile, and COSATU had aligned itself with the Freedom Charter and Congress Alliance in 1987. The membership and leadership of the three organisations has traditionally overlapped significantly. The alliance constitutes a "de facto" electoral coalition: the SACP and COSATU do not contest in government elections, but field candidates through the ANC, hold senior positions in the ANC, and influence party policy. However, the SACP, in particular, has frequently threatened to field its own candidates, and in 2017 it did so for the first time, running against the ANC in by-elections in the Metsimaholo municipality, Free State.


title: African National Congress

text: Under South Africa's closed-list proportional representation electoral system, parties have immense power in selecting candidates for legislative bodies. The ANC's internal candidate selection process is overseen by so-called list committees and tends to involve a degree of broad democratic participation, especially at the local level, where ANC branches vote to nominate candidates for the local government elections. Between 2003 and 2008, the ANC also gained a significant number of members through the controversial floor crossing process, which occurred especially at the local level.


title: African National Congress

text: The leaders of the executive in each sphere of government – the president, the provincial premiers, and the mayors – are indirectly elected after each election. In practice, the selection of ANC candidates for these positions is highly centralised, with the ANC caucus voting together to elect a pre-decided candidate. Although the ANC does not always announce whom its caucuses intend to elect, the National Assembly has thus far always elected the ANC president as the national president.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC has adhered to a formal policy of cadre deployment since 1985. In the post-apartheid era, the policy includes but is not exhausted by selection of candidates for elections and government positions: it also entails that the central organisation "deploys" ANC members to various other strategic positions in the party, state, and economy.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC prides itself on being a broad church, and, like many dominant parties, resembles a catch-all party, accommodating a range of ideological tendencies. As Mandela told the "Washington Post" in 1990:The ANC has never been a political party. It was formed as a parliament of the African people. Right from the start, up to now, the ANC is a coalition, if you want, of people of various political affiliations. Some will support free enterprise, others socialism. Some are conservatives, others are liberals. We are united solely by our determination to oppose racial oppression. That is the only thing that unites us. There is no question of ideology as far as the odyssey of the ANC is concerned, because any question approaching ideology would split the organization from top to bottom. Because we have no connection whatsoever except at this one, of our determination to dismantle apartheid. The post-apartheid ANC continues to identify itself foremost as a liberation movement, pursuing "the complete liberation of the country from all forms of discrimination and national oppression". It also continues to claim the Freedom Charter of 1955 as "the basic policy document of the ANC". However, as NEC member Jeremy Cronin noted in 2007, the various broad principles of the Freedom Charter have been given different interpretations, and emphasised to differing extents, by different groups within the organisation. Nonetheless, some basic commonalities are visible in the policy and ideological preferences of the organisation's mainstream.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC is committed to the ideal of non-racialism and to opposing "any form of racial, tribalistic or ethnic exclusivism or chauvinism".


title: African National Congress

text: The 1969 Morogoro Conference committed the ANC to a "national democratic revolution [which] – destroying the existing social and economic relationship – will bring with it a correction of the historical injustices perpetrated against the indigenous majority and thus lay the basis for a new – and deeper internationalist – approach". For the movement's intellectuals, the concept of the National Democratic Revolution (NDR) was a means of reconciling the anti-apartheid and anti-colonial project with a second goal, that of establishing domestic and international socialism – the ANC is a member of the Socialist International, and its close partner the SACP traditionally conceives itself as a vanguard party. Specifically, and as implied by the 1969 document, NDR doctrine entails that the transformation of the domestic political system (national struggle, in Joe Slovo's phrase) is a precondition for a socialist revolution (class struggle). The concept remained important to ANC intellectuals and strategists after the end of apartheid. Indeed, the pursuit of the NDR is one of the primary objectives of the ANC as set out in its constitution. As with the Freedom Charter, the ambiguity of the NDR has allowed it to bear varying interpretations. For example, whereas SACP theorists tend to emphasise the anti-capitalist character of the NDR, some ANC policymakers have construed it as implying the empowerment of the black majority even within a market-capitalist scheme.


title: African National Congress

text: Since 1994, consecutive ANC governments have held a strong preference for a significant degree of state intervention in the economy. The ANC's first comprehensive articulation of its post-apartheid economic policy framework was set out in the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) document of 1994, which became its electoral manifesto and also, under the same name, the flagship policy of Nelson Mandela's government. The RDP aimed both to redress the socioeconomic inequalities created by colonialism and apartheid, and to promote economic growth and development; state intervention was judged a necessary step towards both goals. Specifically, the state was to intervene in the economy through three primary channels: a land reform programme; a degree of economic planning, through industrial and trade policy; and state investments in infrastructure and the provision of basic services, including health and education. Although the RDP was abandoned in 1996, these three channels of state economic intervention have remained mainstays of subsequent ANC policy frameworks.


title: African National Congress

text: In 1996, Mandela's government replaced the RDP with the Growth Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) programme, which was maintained under President Thabo Mbeki, Mandela's successor. GEAR has been characterised as a neoliberal policy, and it was disowned by both COSATU and the SACP. While some analysts viewed Mbeki's economic policy as undertaking the uncomfortable macroeconomic adjustments necessary for long-term growth, others – notably Patrick Bond – viewed it as a reflection of the ANC's failure to implement genuinely radical transformation after 1994. Debate about ANC commitment to redistribution on a socialist scale has continued: in 2013, the country's largest trade union, the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa, withdrew its support for the ANC on the basis that "the working class cannot any longer see the ANC or the SACP as its class allies in any meaningful sense". It is evident, however, that the ANC never embraced free-market capitalism, and continued to favour a mixed economy: even as the debate over GEAR raged, the ANC declared itself (in 2004) a social-democratic party, and it was at that time presiding over phenomenal expansions of its black economic empowerment programme and the system of social grants.


title: African National Congress

text: As its name suggests, the RDP emphasised state-led development – that is, a developmental state – which the ANC has typically been cautious, at least in its rhetoric, to distinguish from the neighbouring concept of a welfare state. In the mid-2000s, during Mbeki's second term, the notion of a developmental state was revived in South African political discourse when the national economy worsened; and the 2007 National Conference whole-heartedly endorsed developmentalism in its policy resolutions, calling for a state "at the centre of a mixed economy... which leads and guides that economy and which intervenes in the interest of the people as a whole". The proposed developmental state was also central to the ANC's campaign in the 2009 elections, and it remains a central pillar of the policy of the current government, which seeks to build a "capable and developmental" state. In this regard, ANC politicians often cite China as an aspirational example. A discussion document ahead of the ANC's 2015 National General Council proposed that:China['s] economic development trajectory remains a leading example of the triumph of humanity over adversity. The exemplary role of the collective leadership of the Communist Party of China in this regard should be a guiding lodestar of our own struggle.


title: African National Congress

text: Towards the end of Jacob Zuma's presidency, an ANC faction aligned to Zuma pioneered a new policy platform referred to as Radical Economic Transformation (RET). Zuma announced the new focus on RET during his February 2017 State of the Nation address, and later that year, explaining that it had been adopted as ANC policy and therefore as government policy, defined it as entailing "fundamental change in the structures, systems, institutions and patterns of ownership and control of the economy, in favour of all South Africans, especially the poor". Arguments for RET were closely associated with the rhetorical concept of white monopoly capital. At the 54th National Conference in 2017, the ANC endorsed a number of policy principles advocated by RET supporters, including their proposal to pursue land expropriation without compensation as a matter of national policy.


title: African National Congress

text: The logo of the ANC incorporates a spear and shield – symbolising the historical and ongoing struggle, armed and otherwise, against colonialism and racial oppression – and a wheel, which is borrowed from the 1955 Congress of the People campaign and therefore symbolises a united and non-racial movement for freedom and equality. The logo uses the same colours as the ANC flag, which comprises three horizontal stripes of equal width in black, green and gold. The black symbolises the native people of South Africa; the green represents the land of South Africa; and the gold represents the country's mineral and other natural wealth. The black, green and gold tricolour also appeared on the flag of the KwaZulu bantustan and appears on the flag of the ANC's rival, the IFP; and all three colours appear in the post-apartheid South African national flag. The Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach used an identical but unrelated flag between 1813 and 1897.


title: African National Congress

text: Since 1996, the ANC Department of Political Education has published the quarterly "Umrabulo" political discussion journal; and "ANC Today", a weekly online newsletter, was launched in 2001 to offset the alleged bias of the press. In addition, since 1972, it has been traditional for the ANC president to publish annually a so-called January 8 Statement: a reflective letter sent to members on 8 January, the anniversary of the organisation's founding. In earlier years, the ANC published a range of periodicals, the most important of which was the monthly journal "Sechaba" (1967–1990), printed in the German Democratic Republic and banned by the apartheid government. The ANC's Radio Freedom also gained a wide audience during apartheid.


title: African National Congress

text: "Amandla ngawethu", or the Sotho variant "Matla ke arona", is a common rallying call at ANC meetings, roughly meaning "power to the people". It is also common for meetings to sing so-called struggle songs, which were sung during anti-apartheid meetings and in MK camps. In the case of at least two of these songs – "Dubula ibhunu" and "Umshini wami" – this has caused controversy in recent years.


title: African National Congress

text: The most prominent corruption case involving the ANC relates to a series of bribes paid to companies involved in the ongoing R55 billion Arms Deal saga, which resulted in a long term jail sentence to then Deputy President Jacob Zuma's legal adviser Schabir Shaik. Zuma, the former South African President, was charged with fraud, bribery and corruption in the Arms Deal, but the charges were subsequently withdrawn by the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa due to their delay in prosecution. The ANC has also been criticised for its subsequent abolition of the Scorpions, the multidisciplinary agency that investigated and prosecuted organised crime and corruption, and was heavily involved in the investigation into Zuma and Shaik. Tony Yengeni, in his position as chief whip of the ANC and head of the Parliaments defence committee has recently been named as being involved in bribing the German company ThyssenKrupp over the purchase of four corvettes for the SANDF.


title: African National Congress

text: Other recent corruption issues include the sexual misconduct and criminal charges of Beaufort West municipal manager Truman Prince, and the Oilgate scandal, in which millions of Rand in funds from a state-owned company were funnelled into ANC coffers.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC has also been accused of using government and civil society to fight its political battles against opposition parties such as the Democratic Alliance. The result has been a number of complaints and allegations that none of the political parties truly represent the interests of the poor. This has resulted in the "No Land! No House! No Vote!" Campaign which became very prominent during elections.


title: African National Congress

text: During an address on 28 October 2021, former president Thabo Mbeki commented on the history of corruption within the ANC. He reflected that Mandela had already warned in 1997 that the ANC was attracting individuals who viewed the party as "a route to power and self-enrichment." He added that the ANC leadership "did not know how to deal with this problem." During a lecture on 10 December, Mbeki reiterated concerns about "careerists" within the party, and stressed the need to "purge itself of such members".


title: African National Congress

text: In late 2011 the ANC was heavily criticised over the passage of the Protection of State Information Bill, which opponents claimed would improperly restrict the freedom of the press. Opposition to the bill included otherwise ANC-aligned groups such as COSATU. Notably, Nelson Mandela and other Nobel laureates Nadine Gordimer, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and F. W. de Klerk have expressed disappointment with the bill for not meeting standards of constitutionality and aspirations for freedom of information and expression.


title: African National Congress

text: The ANC have been criticised for its role in failing to prevent 16 August 2012 massacre of Lonmin miners at Marikana in the North West. Some allege that Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega and Police Minister Nathi Mthethwa may have given the go ahead for the police action against the miners on that day.


title: African National Congress

text: Commissioner Phiyega of the ANC came under further criticism as being insensitive and uncaring when she was caught smiling and laughing during the Farlam Commission's video playback of the 'massacre'. Archbishop Desmond Tutu has announced that he no longer can bring himself to exercise a vote for the ANC as it is no longer the party that he and Nelson Mandela fought for, and that the party has now lost its way, and is in danger of becoming a corrupt entity in power.


title: African National Congress

text: Since at least 2017, the ANC has encountered significant problems related to financial mismanagement. According to a report filed by the former treasurer-general Zweli Mkhize in December 2017, the ANC was technically insolvent as its liabilities exceeded its assets. These problems continued into the second half of 2021. By September 2021, the ANC had reportedly amassed a debt exceeding R200-million, including over R100-million owed to the South African Revenue Service.


title: African National Congress

text: Beginning in May 2021, the ANC failed to pay monthly staff salaries on time. Having gone without pay for three consecutive months, workers planned a strike in late August 2021. In response, the ANC initiated a crowdfunding campaign to raise money for staff salaries. By November 2021, its Cape Town staff was approaching their fourth month without salaries, while medical aid and provident fund contributions had been suspended in various provinces. The party has countered that the Political Party Funding Act, which prohibits anonymous contributions, has dissuaded some donors who previously injected money for salaries.


title: African National Congress

text: In January 2018, then-President Jacob Zuma established the Zondo Commission to investigate allegations of state capture, corruption, and fraud in the public sector. Over the following four years, the Commission heard testimony from over 250 witnesses and collected more than 150,000 pages of evidence. After several extensions, the first part of the final three-part report was published on 4 January 2022.


title: African National Congress

text: The report found that the ANC, including Zuma and his political allies, had benefited from the extensive corruption of state enterprises, including the South African Revenue Service. It also found that the ANC "simply did not care that state entities were in decline during state capture or they slept on the job – or they simply didn't know what to do."


title: African National Congress

text: In March 2022, President Cyril Ramaphosa has faced criticism from opposition parties, public commentators, academics, civil society organisations, and former ANC members for not condemning the invasion; while the ANC youth wing has condemned sanctions against Russia, while denouncing NATO's eastward expansion as "fascistic". Officials representing the ANC Youth League acted as international observers for Russia's controversial referendum to annex Ukrainian territory conquered during the war.


title: 1883 eruption of Krakatoa

text: The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa () in the Sunda Strait occurred from 20 May until 21 October 1883, peaking in the late morning hours of 27 August when over 70% of the island of Krakatoa and its surrounding archipelago were destroyed as it collapsed into a caldera.


title: 1883 eruption of Krakatoa

text: The eruption was one of the deadliest and most destructive volcanic events in recorded history. The explosion was heard away in Perth, Western Australia, and Rodrigues near Mauritius, away. The acoustic pressure wave circled the globe more than three times. At least 36,417 deaths are attributed to the eruption and the tsunamis it created.


title: 1883 eruption of Krakatoa

text: Significant additional effects were also felt around the world in the days and weeks after the volcano's eruption. Additional seismic activity was reported until February 1884, but any reports after October 1883 were dismissed by Rogier Verbeek's subsequent investigation into the eruption.


title: 1883 eruption of Krakatoa

text: In the years before the 1883 eruption, seismic activity around the Krakatoa volcano was intense, with earthquakes felt as far away as Australia. Beginning on 20 May 1883, steam venting began to occur regularly from Perboewatan, the northernmost of the island's three cones. Eruptions of ash reached an estimated altitude of 6 km (20,000 ft) and explosions could be heard in New Batavia (Jakarta) away.


title: 1883 eruption of Krakatoa

text: Eruptions at Krakatoa started again around 16 June, with loud explosions and a thick black cloud covering the islands for five days. On 24 June, a prevailing east wind cleared the cloud, and two ash columns could be seen issuing from Krakatoa. The seat of the eruption is believed to have been a new vent or vents that formed between Perboewatan and Danan. The violence of the ongoing eruptions caused tides in the vicinity to be unusually high, and ships at anchor had to be moored with chains. Earthquakes were felt at Anyer, Banten, and ships began to report large pumice masses to the west in the Indian Ocean.


title: 1883 eruption of Krakatoa

text: In early August, a Dutch topographical engineer, Captain H. J. G. Ferzenaar, investigated the Krakatoa islands. He noted three major ash columns (the newer from Danan), which obscured the western part of the island, and steam plumes from at least eleven other vents, mostly between Danan and Rakata. When he landed, he noted an ash layer about thick, and the destruction of all vegetation, leaving only tree stumps. He advised against any further landings.


title: 1883 eruption of Krakatoa

text: By 25 August, the Krakatoa eruptions intensified. At about 1:00 pm on 26 August, the volcano went into its paroxysmal phase. By 2:00 pm, a black cloud of ash could be seen high. At this point, the eruption was almost continuous and explosions could be heard every ten minutes or so. Ships within of the volcano reported heavy ash fall, with pieces of hot pumice up to in diameter landing on their decks. Between 7:00 pm and 8:00 pm, a small tsunami hit the shores of Java and Sumatra, away.