title: Selim I

text: During his reign as governor of Trabzon Selim had earned a great reputation among his military men for his confrontations with the Safavids, slave raids and campaign in the Caucasus against Georgia. Selim defeated a Safavid army in 1505, when Shah Ismail’s brother led a 3,000-strong Safavid army against Selim, Selim routed the army, massacred many and seized their arms and munitions. In 1507 he defeated the Safavids again in the Battle of Erzincan, after Shah Ismail marched through Ottoman lands to attack the Dulkadirids Selim attacked Erzincan and defeated a Safavid army sent against him by Shah Ismail. The following year he invaded the Caucasus, he subdued western Georgia, brought Imereti and Guria under Ottoman domination and seized a large number of slaves. In 1510 he defeated the Safavids again in the Campaign of Trabzon.


title: Selim I

text: By 1512 Şehzade Ahmed was the favorite candidate to succeed his father. Bayezid, who was reluctant to continue his rule over the empire, announced Ahmet as heir apparent to the throne. Angered by this announcement, Selim rebelled, and while he lost the first battle against his father's forces, Selim ultimately dethroned his father. Selim commanded 30,000 men, whereas his father led 40,000. Selim only escaped with 3,000 men. This marked the first time that an Ottoman prince openly rebelled against his father with an army of his own. Selim ordered the exile of Bayezid to a distant "sanjak", Dimetoka (in the north-east of present-day Greece). Bayezid died immediately thereafter. Selim put his brothers (Şehzade Ahmet and Şehzade Korkut) and nephews to death upon his accession. His nephew Şehzade Murad, son of the legal heir to the throne Şehzade Ahmet, fled to the neighboring Safavid Empire after his expected support failed to materialize. This fratricidal policy was motivated by bouts of civil strife that had been sparked by the antagonism between Selim's father and his uncle, Cem Sultan, and between Selim himself and his brother Ahmet.


title: Selim I

text: After many centuries of calm, the Alevi population was active while Selim I was the sultan, and they seem to have been backed by the Qizilbash of Iran.


title: Selim I

text: One of Selim's first challenges as Sultan involved the growing tension between the Ottoman Empire and the Safavid Empire led by Shah Ismail, who had recently brought the Safavids to power and had switched the Persian state religion from Sunni Islam to adherence to the Twelver branch of Shia Islam. By 1510 Ismail had conquered the whole of Iran and Azerbaijan, southern Dagestan (with its important city of Derbent), Mesopotamia, Armenia, Khorasan, Eastern Anatolia, and had made the Georgian kingdoms of Kartli and Kakheti his vassals. He was a great threat to his Sunni Muslim neighbors to the west. In 1511 Ismail had supported a pro-Shia/Safavid uprising in Anatolia, the Şahkulu Rebellion.


title: Selim I

text: Early in his reign, Selim created a list of all Shiites ages 7 to 70 in a number of central Anatolian cities including Tokat, Sivas and Amasya. As Selim marched through these cities, his forces rounded up and executed all the Shiites they could find. Most of them were beheaded. The massacre was the largest in Ottoman history, until the end of the 19th century.


title: Selim I

text: In 1514 Selim I attacked Ismail's kingdom to stop the spread of Shiism into Ottoman dominions. Selim and Ismā'il had exchanged a series of belligerent letters prior to the attack. On his march to face Ismā'il, Selim had 50,000 Alevis massacred, seeing them as enemies of the Ottoman Empire. Selim I defeated Ismā'il at the Battle of Chaldiran in 1514. Ismā'il's army was more mobile and his soldiers better prepared, but the Ottomans prevailed due in large part to their efficient modern army, possession of artillery, black powder and muskets. Ismā'il was wounded and almost captured in battle, and Selim I entered the Iranian capital of Tabriz in triumph on 5 September, but did not linger. The Battle of Chaldiran was of historical significance: the reluctance of Shah Ismail to accept the advantages of modern firearms and the importance of artillery proved decisive. After the battle, Selim, referring to Ismail, stated that his adversary was: "Always drunk to the point of losing his mind and totally neglectful of the affairs of the state".


title: Selim I

text: Selim then conquered the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt, defeating the Mamluk Egyptians first at the Battle of Marj Dabiq (24 August 1516), and then at the Battle of Ridanieh (22 January 1517). This led to the Ottoman annexation of the entire sultanate, from Syria and Palestine in Sham, to Hejaz and Tihamah in the Arabian Peninsula, and ultimately Egypt itself. This permitted Selim to extend Ottoman power to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, hitherto under Egyptian rule. Rather than style himself the "Ḥākimü'l-Ḥaremeyn", or "The Ruler of The Two Holy Cities", he accepted the more pious title "Ḫādimü'l-Ḥaremeyn", or "The Servant of The Two Holy Cities".


title: Selim I

text: The last Abbasid caliph, al-Mutawakkil III, was residing in Cairo as a Mamluk puppet at the time of the Ottoman conquest. He was subsequently sent into exile in Istanbul. In the eighteenth century, a story emerged claiming that he had officially transferred his title to the Caliphate to Selim at the time of the conquest. In fact, Selim did not make any claim to exercise the sacred authority of the office of caliph, and the notion of an official transfer was a later invention.


title: Selim I

text: After conquering Damascus in 1516, Selim ordered the restoration of the tomb of Ibn Arabi (d. 1240), a famous Sufi master who was highly revered among Ottoman Sufis.


title: Selim I

text: A planned campaign westward was cut short when Selim was overwhelmed by sickness and subsequently died in the ninth year of his reign aged 49. Officially, it is said that Selim succumbed to a mistreated carbuncle. Some historians, however, suggest that he died of cancer or that his physician poisoned him. Other historians have noted that Selim's death coincided with a period of plague in the empire, and have added that several sources imply that Selim himself suffered from the disease.


title: Selim I

text: On 22 September 1520 Sultan Selim I's eight-year reign came to an end. Selim died and was brought to Istanbul, so he could be buried in Yavuz Selim Mosque which Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent commissioned in loving memory of his father. Sultan Selim I had conquered and unified the Islamic holy lands. Protecting the lands in Europe, he gave priority to the East, as he believed the real danger came from there.


title: Selim I

text: By most accounts, Selim had a fiery temper and had very high expectations of those below him. Several of his viziers were executed for various reasons. A famous anecdote relates how another vizier playfully asked the Sultan for some preliminary notice of his doom so that he might have time to put his affairs in order. The Sultan laughed and replied that indeed he had been thinking of having the vizier killed, but had no one fit to take his place, otherwise he would gladly oblige. A popular Ottoman curse was, "May you be a vizier of Selim's," as a reference to the number of viziers he had executed.


title: Selim I

text: Selim was one of the Empire's most successful and respected rulers, being energetic and hardworking. During his short eight years of ruling, he accomplished momentous success. Despite the length of his reign, many historians agree that Selim prepared the Ottoman Empire to reach its zenith under the reign of his son and successor, Suleiman the Magnificent.


title: Selim I

text: Selim was also a distinguished poet who wrote both Turkish and Persian verse under the nickname "Mahlas Selimi"; collections of his Persian poetry are extant today.


title: Selim I

text: While marching into Persia in 1514, Selim's troops suffered from the scorched-earth tactics of Shah Ismail. The Sultan hoped to lure Ismail into an open battle before his troops starved to death, and began writing insulting letters to the Shah, accusing him of cowardice:


title: Selim I

text: Ismail responded to Selim's third message, quoted above, by having an envoy deliver a letter accompanied by a box of opium. The Shah's letter insultingly implied that Selim's prose was the work of an unqualified writer on drugs. Selim was enraged by the Shah's denigration of his literary talent and ordered the Persian envoy to be torn to pieces.


title: Selim I

text: Outside of their military conflicts, Selim I and Shah Ismail clashed on the economic front as well. Opposed to Shah Ismail's adherence to the Shia sect of Islam (contrasting his Sunni beliefs), Selim I and his father before him "did not really accept his basic political and religious legitimacy," beginning the portrayal of the Safavids in Ottoman chronicles as "kuffar". After the Battle of Chaldiran, Selim I's minimal tolerance for Shah Ismail disintegrated, and he began a short era of closed borders with the Safavid Empire.


title: Selim I

text: Selim I wanted to use the Ottoman Empire's central location to completely cut the ties between Shah Ismail's Safavid Empire and the rest of the world. Even though the raw materials for important Ottoman silk production at that time came from Persia rather than developed within the Ottoman Empire itself, he imposed a strict embargo on Iranian silk in an attempt to collapse their economy. For a short amount of time, the silk resources were imported via the Mamluk territory of Aleppo, but by 1517, Selim I had conquered the Mamluk state and the trade fully came to a standstill. So strict was this embargo that, "merchants who had been incautious enough not to immediately leave Ottoman territory when war was declared had their goods taken away and were imprisoned," and to emphasize frontier security, sancaks along the border between the two empires were given exclusively to Sunnis and those who did not have any relationship with the Safavid-sympathizing Kızılbaş. Iranian merchants were barred from entering the borders of the Ottoman Empire under Selim I. Shah Ismail received revenue via customs duties, therefore after the war to demonstrate his commitment to their thorny rivalry, Selim I halted trade with the Safavids—even at the expense of his empire's own silk industry and citizens.


title: Selim I

text: This embargo and closed borders policy was reversed quickly by his son Suleyman I after Selim I's death in 1520.


title: Selim I

text: Babur's early relations with the Ottomans were poor because Selim I provided Babur's rival Ubaydullah Khan with powerful matchlocks and cannons. In 1507, when ordered to accept Selim I as his rightful suzerain, Babur refused and gathered Qizilbash servicemen in order to counter the forces of Ubaydullah Khan during the Battle of Ghazdewan in 1512. In 1513, Selim I reconciled with Babur (fearing that he would join the Safavids), dispatched Ustad Ali Quli and Mustafa Rumi, and many other Ottoman Turks, in order to assist Babur in his conquests; this particular assistance proved to be the basis of future Mughal-Ottoman relations. From them, he also adopted the tactic of using matchlocks and cannons in field (rather than only in sieges), which would give him an important advantage in India.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash is a racket-and-ball sport played by two or four players in a four-walled court with a small, hollow, rubber ball. The players alternate in striking the ball with their rackets onto the playable surfaces of the four walls of the court. The objective of the game is to hit the ball in such a way that the opponent is not able to play a valid return. There are about 20 million people who play squash regularly world-wide in over 185 countries. The governing body of Squash, the World Squash Federation (WSF), is recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), but the sport is not part of the Olympic Games, despite a number of applications. Supporters continue to lobby for its incorporation in a future Olympic program. The Professional Squash Association (PSA) organizes the pro tour.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash has its origins in the older game of rackets which was played in London's prisons in the 19th century. Later, around 1830, boys at Harrow School noticed that a punctured ball, which "squashed" on impact with the wall, offered more variety to the game. The game spread to other schools. The first courts built at Harrow were dangerous because they were near water pipes, buttresses, chimneys, and ledges. Natural rubber was the preferred material for the ball. Students modified their rackets to have a smaller reach and improve their ability to play in these cramped conditions. In 1864, the school built four outside courts.


title: Squash (sport)

text: In the 20th century the game increased in popularity with various schools, clubs and private individuals building squash courts, but with no set dimensions. The first squash court in North America was at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, in 1884. In 1904 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the earliest national association of squash in the world, the United States Squash Racquets Association, now known as U.S. Squash, was formed. In April 1907, the Tennis, Rackets & Fives Association of Queens, New York, which regulated those three sports (fives being a similar sport using hands instead of a racket), established a subcommittee to set standards for squash. In 1912, the association published rules for "squash", combining aspects of these three sports.


title: Squash (sport)

text: In 1912, the RMS "Titanic" had a squash court in first class, available for 50 cents ($15.36 in 2022 terms). The 1st-Class Squash Court was situated on G-Deck. The Spectators Viewing Gallery was one level higher, on F-Deck. Passengers could use the court for one hour unless others were waiting.


title: Squash (sport)

text: In 1923, the Royal Automobile Club hosted a meeting to further discuss the rules and regulations. Five years later, the Squash Rackets Association, now known as England Squash, was formed to set standards for the game in Great Britain and internationally.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The 1980s witnessed a period of restructuring and consolidation. The Cambridge rackets factory was forced to close in face of the move to graphite rackets, and production was moved to the Far East. Customization of squash rackets has grown over the years as well. There are custom variations on racket head shape, racket balance, and racket weight. The most common racket variation for international singles squash is a teardrop (closed throat) head shape, even balance, and racket weight of 130g. For hardball doubles, the most common variation is an open throat head shape, even balance, and racket weight of 140g.


title: Squash (sport)

text: There are several variations of squash played across the world, although the international version of the sport has become the dominant form. In the United States, a variant of squash known as hardball was traditionally played with a harder ball and different sized courts. Hardball squash has lost much of its popularity in North America (in favor of the international version). There is doubles squash a variant played by four players. There is also a tennis-like variation of squash known as squash tennis. Finally, racketball, a similar sport, is also played in the United States.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash rackets have maximum dimensions of 686 mm (27.0 in) long and 215 mm (8.5 in) wide, with a maximum strung area of 500 square centimeters (77.5 sq in). The permitted maximum weight is , but most have a weight between 90 and 150 grams (3–5.3 oz.). The strings of the racket usually have a tension of 25–30 pounds.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash balls are between 39.5 and 40.5 mm in diameter, and weigh 23 to 25 grams. They are made with two pieces of rubber compound, glued together to form a hollow sphere and buffed to a matte finish. Different balls are provided for varying temperature and atmospheric conditions and standards of play: more experienced players use slow balls that have less bounce than those used by less experienced players (slower balls tend to "die" in court corners, rather than "standing up" to allow easier shots). Squash balls must be hit dozens of times to warm them up at the beginning of a session; cold squash balls have very little bounce. Small colored dots on the ball indicate its dynamic level (bounciness).


title: Squash (sport)

text: The "double-yellow dot" ball, introduced in 2000, is the competition standard, replacing the earlier "yellow-dot" ball. There is also an "orange dot" ball for use at high altitudes. The recognized colors are:


title: Squash (sport)

text: Some ball manufacturers such as Dunlop use a different method of grading balls based on experience. They still have the equivalent dot rating, but are named to help choose a ball that is appropriate for one's skill level. The four different ball types are Intro (Blue dot, 140% of Pro bounce), Progress (Red dot, 120% of Pro bounce), Competition (single yellow dot, 110% of Pro bounce) and Pro (double yellow dot).


title: Squash (sport)

text: Many squash venues mandate the use of shoes with non-marking tread and eye protection. Some associations require that all juniors and doubles players must wear eye protection. The National Institutes of Health recommends wearing goggles with polycarbonate lenses.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The squash court is a playing surface surrounded by four walls. The court surface contains a front line separating the front and back of the court and a half court line, separating the left and right sides of the back portion of the court, creating three 'boxes': the front half, the back left quarter and the back right quarter. Both the back two boxes contain smaller service boxes.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The court's four walls are divided into a front wall, two side walls, and a back wall. An 'out line' runs along the top of the front wall, descending along the side walls to the back wall. The bottom line of the front wall marks the top of the 'tin', a half meter-high metal area. The middle line of the front wall is the service line. The dimensions of the court are:


title: Squash (sport)

text: North American hardball doubles courts are larger than international singles courts because of a hard ball that has a much faster pace. With double the number of players, the doubles court needs to be significantly bigger than a singles court. The doubles court should measure 25 feet wide by 45 feet long and have a ceiling height of at least 24 feet but preferably 26.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The players spin a racket to decide who serves first. This player starts the first rally by electing to serve from either the left or right service box. For a legal serve, one of the server's feet must be in the service box, not touching any part of the service box lines, as the player strikes the ball. After being struck by the racket, the ball must strike the front wall above the service line and below the out line and land in the opposite back quarter court. The receiving player can choose to volley a serve after it has hit the front wall. If the server wins the point, the two players switch sides for the following point. If the server loses the point, the opponent then serves, and can serve from either box.


title: Squash (sport)

text: After the serve, the players take turns hitting the ball against the front wall, above the tin and below the out line. The ball may strike the side or back walls at any time, as long as it hits below the out line. It must not hit the floor after hitting the racket and before hitting the front wall. A ball landing on either the out line or the line along the top of the tin is considered to be out. After the ball hits the front wall, it is allowed to bounce once on the floor (and any number of times against the side or back walls) before a player must return it. Players may move anywhere around the court but accidental or deliberate obstruction of the other player's movements is forbidden and could result in a let or a stroke. Players typically return to the centre of the court after making a shot, as it is the optimal position in the court to receive the opponent's shot. The centre of the court is typically referred to as "the T", named after the shape of the floor lines.


title: Squash (sport)

text: A key strategy in squash is known as "dominating the T" (the intersection of the red lines near the centre of the court, shaped like the letter "T", where the player is in the best position to retrieve the opponent's next shot). Skilled players will return a shot, and then move back toward the "T" before playing the next shot. From this position, the player can quickly access any part of the court to retrieve the opponent's next shot with a minimum of movement and possibly maximising the movement required by the opponent to answer the returned shot.


title: Squash (sport)

text: A common tactic is to hit the ball straight up the side walls to the back corners; this is the basic squash shot, referred to as a "rail," straight drive, wall, or "length". After hitting this shot, the player will then move to the centre of the court near the "T" to be well placed to retrieve the opponent's return. Attacking with soft or "short" shots to the front corners (referred to as "drop shots") causes the opponent to cover more of the court and may result in an outright winner. Boasts or angle shots are deliberately struck off one of the side walls before the ball reaches the front. They are used for deception and again to cause the opponent to cover more of the court. Rear wall shots float to the front either straight or diagonally drawing the opponent to the front. Advantageous tactical shots are available in response to a weak return by the opponent if stretched, the majority of the court being free to the striker.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Rallies between experienced players may involve 30 or more shots and therefore a very high premium is placed on fitness, both aerobic and anaerobic. As players become more skilled and, in particular, better able to retrieve shots, points often become a war of attrition. At higher levels of the game, the fitter player has a major advantage.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The ability to change the direction of the ball at the last instant is also a tactic used to unbalance the opponent. Expert players can anticipate the opponent's shot a few tenths of a second before the average player, giving them a chance to react sooner.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Interference and obstruction are an inevitable aspect of squash, since two players are confined within a shared space. Generally, the rules entitle players to a direct straight line access to the ball, room for a reasonable swing and an unobstructed shot to any part of the front wall. When interference occurs, a player may appeal for a "let" and the referee (or the players themselves if there is no official) then interprets the extent of the interference. The referee may allow a let and the players then replay the point, or award a "stroke" to the appealing player (meaning that he is declared the winner of that point) depending on the degree of interference, whether the interfering player made an adequate effort to avoid interfering, and whether the player interfered with was likely to have hit a winning shot had the interference not occurred. An exception occurs when the interfering player is directly in the path of the other player's swing, effectively preventing the swing, in which case a stroke is always awarded.


title: Squash (sport)

text: When it is deemed that there has been little or no interference, the rules provide that no let is to be allowed in the interests of continuity of play and the discouraging of spurious appeals for lets. Because of the subjectivity in interpreting the nature and magnitude of interference, awarding (or withholding) of lets and strokes is often controversial.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Interference also occurs when a player's shot hits their opponent prior to hitting the front wall. If the ball was travelling towards the side wall when it hit the opponent, or if it had already hit the side wall and was travelling directly to the front wall, it is usually a let. However, it is a stroke to the player who hit the ball if the ball was travelling straight to the front wall when the ball hit the opponent, without having first hit the side wall. Generally after a player has been hit by the ball, both players stand still; if the struck player is standing directly in front of the player who hit the ball he loses the stroke; if he is not straight in front, a let is played. If it is deemed that the player who is striking the ball is deliberately trying to hit his opponent, they will lose the stroke. An exception occurs when the player hitting the ball has "turned", i.e., letting the ball pass them on one side, but then hitting it on the other side as it came off the back wall. In these cases, the stroke goes to the player who was hit by the ball.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The referee is usually a certified position issued by the club or assigned squash league. Any conflict or interference is dealt with by the referee. The referee may also take away points or games due to improper etiquette regarding conduct or rules. The referee is also usually responsible for the scoring of games. Three referees are usually used in professional tournaments. The Central referee has responsibility to call the score and make decisions with the two side referees.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Games are played according to point-a-rally scoring (PARS) to 11 points. PARS is almost universally preferred by the game's top professionals, and is the current official scoring system for all levels of professional squash tournaments. In PARS, the winner of a rally receives a point, regardless of whether they were the server or returner. Games are played to 11 and must be won by two points. That is, if the score reaches 10–10, play continues until one player wins by two points. Competition matches are usually played to "best-of-five" games (i.e. the first player to win three games).


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash can also be played with different scoring systems such as PARS to 15, traditional English or Hand-In-Hand-Out (HiHo) scoring to 9, or RAM scoring (see below). Players often experience PARS and Hi-Ho as requiring different tactics and player attributes.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Point-a-rally scoring to 15 was used for the World Championships between 1989 and 2003. PARS to 15, with the tiebreak being two clear points (as per standard PARS) from 14–14, was used in many amateur leagues because PARS to 11 was considered too short. This system fell out of favor in 2004 when the Professional Squash Association (PSA) decided to switch to PARS to 11. Games were considered to last too long and the winner would usually be the fitter player, not necessarily the better player.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Known as English or hand-in-hand-out scoring, under this system, if the server wins a rally, they receive a point, while if the returner wins rally, only the service changes (i.e., the ball goes "hand-out") and no point is given. The first player to reach nine points wins the game. However, if the score reaches 8–8, the player who was first to reach eight decides whether the game will be played to nine, as before (called "set one"), or to 10 (called "set two"). This scoring system was formerly preferred in Britain, and also among countries with traditional British ties, such as Australia, Canada, Pakistan, South Africa, India and Sri Lanka.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The RAM scoring system is a proposed new scoring system created by former World Champion, Ramy Ashour and co-founded by Osama Khalifa. This consists of playing a best of five games. Each game is three minutes long; however, this only refers to the three minutes in play. The 'downtime' in between the end of a rally and a serve is not counted. Once the time is up, the clock stops, and the leading player needs to win a final point. If the player who is behind wins the point the game continues until the trailing player catches up and wins one more point than the initially leading player.


title: Squash (sport)

text: For example, Player one is leading 5–3 and the clock stops. Player two wins the next two points and the score is 5–5. Whoever wins the next point wins the game. This is called sudden death. If the score is 0–0 when the clock stops the clock is reset and the game restarts. For Let Calls the clock reverts to the start time of that point. Further rules include that there must be a referee and a time keeper to make this match official. Players have two minutes of rest between games, and all other standard PSA and WSF rules apply.


title: Squash (sport)

text: In 2004, the Professional Squash Association (PSA) decided to switch to PARS 11. This decision was ratified in 2009 when the World Squash Federation confirmed the switch to the PARS 11 scoring system. Since that time, almost all professional and league games have been played according to PARS to 11. One of the reasons for switching to PARS was that long, taxing matches became less frequent and promoters could more easily predict match and session length. Gawain Briars, who served as the Executive Director of the Professional Squash Association when the body decided to switch to PARS in 2004 hoped that PARS would make the "professional game more exciting to watch, [and] then more people will become involved in the game and our chances of Olympic entry may be enhanced."


title: Squash (sport)

text: One of the problems with English or Hi-Ho scoring is that games often last longer as players continually win service before losing service to the other player without the score being affected. Consequently, the winner is more often than not the fitter athlete. Moreover, English or Hi-Ho scoring can encourage players to play defensively with the aim of wearing down one's opponent before winning by virtue of one's fitness. Such exhausting, defensive play can affect player's prospects in knock-out tournaments and does not make for riveting TV. In English or Hi-Ho, one player might win by 9–0 despite the opponent having repeatedly won service, but without converting that service into actual points.


title: Squash (sport)

text: For the World Championships: HiHo to 9 was used until 1988; PARS to 15 from 1989 to 2003; and PARS to 11 from 2004. For the British Open: HiHo to 9 was used until 1994; PARS to 15 from 1995 to 2003; and PARS to 11 from 2004.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The WSF's decision to switch to PARS 11 proved controversial in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth where games were usually played according to English or Hi-Ho. When the Veterans Squash Rackets Club of Great Britain surveyed their members in 2012, they found that 80% of their members were against switching from HiHo to PARS. President Philip Ayton argued that PARS would "kill the essence of the game." Ayton was particularly concerned that the "great comebacks" that characterised English or Hi-Ho when "the player who is down in a game can still attack when in hand serving" would disappear as PARS fostered an "ultra-defensive attitude, because every rally counts the same."


title: Squash (sport)

text: Jahangir Khan has countered that PARS actually made the game far more attacking, but diminished the psychological aspect of the game: "With the nine points scoring system, matches were more mental and physical and could go longer, but now with the 11-point system, every rally counts, and even if you go behind you can still recover. That makes it a lot more attacking." Maj Madan, one of the game's top referees, similarly stated that PARS had "destroyed the fitness element and, more importantly, the cerebral magic of the…game." His comments were unearthed when an email chain of referees discussing the problem of shorter and shorter squash matches was leaked in 2011.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash provides an excellent cardiovascular workout. Players can expend approximately 600 to 1,000 food calories (3,000 to 4,000 kJ) every hour playing squash according to English or Hi-Ho scoring. The sport also provides a good upper and lower body workout by exercising both the legs in running around the court and the arms and torso in swinging the racket. In 2003, "Forbes" rated squash as the number one healthiest sport to play. However, one study has implicated squash as a cause of possible fatal cardiac arrhythmia and argued that squash is an inappropriate form of exercise for older men with heart disease.


title: Squash (sport)

text: According to the World Squash Federation, there are about 50,000 squash courts in the world, with 188 countries and territories having at least one court. England had the greatest number at 8,500. The other countries with more than 1,000 courts, in descending order by number were Germany, Egypt, the United States of America, Australia, South Africa, Canada, Malaysia, France, the Netherlands, and Spain. Today, The United States has the fastest growing squash participation. There are an estimated 20 million squash players worldwide.


title: Squash (sport)

text: As of November 2019, there were players from eighteen countries in the top fifty of the men's world rankings, with Egypt dominating with fifteen players, six of whom were in the top ten, including ranks one through four. Similarly, the women's world rankings featured players from sixteen countries, again led by Egypt taking thirteen spots of the top fifty, whilst holding spots one through four in the world.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The men's and women's Professional Squash Association tour, men's rankings and women's rankings are run by the Professional Squash Association (PSA).


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash has been featured regularly at the multi-sport events of the Commonwealth Games and Asian Games since 1998. Squash is also a regular sport at the Pan American Games since 1995. Squash players and associations have lobbied for many years for the sport to be accepted into the Olympic Games, with no success as of 2021. Squash narrowly missed being instated for the 2012 London Games and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games (missed out again as the IOC assembly decided to add golf and rugby sevens to the Olympic programme). Squash also was not selected as an event in the 2020 Olympic Games. At the 125th IOC Session in Buenos Aires, the IOC voted for Wrestling instead of Squash or Baseball/Softball. The usual reason cited for the failure of the sport to be adopted for Olympic competition is that it is difficult for spectators to follow the action, especially via television. Previous world number one Peter Nicol stated that he believed squash had a "very realistic chance" of being added to the list of Olympic sports for the 2016 Olympic Games, but it ultimately lost out to golf and rugby sevens.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Squash was accepted as a demonstration sport for the 2018 Summer Youth Olympics. The World Squash Federation hopes that this inclusion will create a strong bid for a potential inclusion at the 2024 Summer Olympics.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The (British) Squash Rackets Association (now known as England Squash) conducted its first British Open championship for men in December 1930, using a "challenge" system. Charles Read was designated champion in 1930, but he was beaten in home and away matches by Don Butcher, who was then recorded as the champion for 1931. The championship continues to this day, but it has been conducted with a "knockout" format since 1947.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The women's championship started in 1921, and it has been dominated by relatively few players: Joyce Cave, Nancy Cave, Cecily Fenwick (England) in the 1920s; Margot Lumb and Susan Noel (England) in the 1930s; Janet Morgan (England) in the 1950s; Heather McKay (Australia) in the 1960s and 1970s; Vicki Cardwell (Australia) and Susan Devoy (New Zealand) in the 1980s; Michelle Martin and Sarah Fitz-Gerald (Australia) in the 1990s; and Nicol David (Malaysia) in the 2000s.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The Men's British Open has similarly been dominated by relatively few players: F.D. Amr Bey (Egypt) in the 1930s; Mahmoud Karim (Egypt) in the 1940s; brothers Hashim Khan and Azam Khan (Pakistan) in the 1950s and 1960s; Jonah Barrington (Great Britain and Ireland) and Geoff Hunt (Australia) in the 1960s and 1970s, Jahangir Khan (Pakistan) 1980s ; Jansher Khan (Pakistan) in the 1990s and more recently, David Palmer and Nick Matthew.


title: Squash (sport)

text: The World Open professional championship was inaugurated in 1976 and serves as the main competition today. Jansher Khan holds the record of winning eight World titles followed by Jahangir Khan with six, Geoff Hunt & Amr Shabana four, Nick Matthew & Ramy Ashour three. The women's record is held by Nicol David with eight wins followed by Sarah Fitzgerald five, Susan Devoy four, and Michelle Martin three.


title: Squash (sport)

text: Heather McKay remained undefeated in competitive matches for 19 years (between 1962 and 1981) and won sixteen consecutive British Open titles between 1962 and 1977.


title: Zach Bryan

text: Bryan was born in Japan while his family was deployed in the Navy overseas, but grew up in Oologah, Oklahoma. He is the son of Dewayne Bryan and Annette DeAnn (Mullen) Bryan, and has a sister, Mackenzie. Continuing a family tradition, Bryan was an active-duty member of the U.S. Navy. He used his spare time to write music for his enjoyment.


title: Zach Bryan

text: Bryan started uploading his music to YouTube in 2017, with his friends recording him performing using his iPhone. One of his songs, "Heading South," eventually went viral.


title: Zach Bryan

text: His debut album, "DeAnn", was dedicated to his late mother and released on August 24, 2019. It was written in two months and recorded with his friends in a Florida Airbnb. A second album, "Elisabeth", was released on May 8, 2020. He recorded the album in a repurposed barn behind his home in Washington.


title: Zach Bryan

text: On April 10, 2021, Bryan made his Grand Ole Opry debut. He later signed a deal with Warner Records to release his music.


title: Zach Bryan

text: On October 14, 2021, Bryan announced that the U.S. Navy honorably discharged him after eight years of service to pursue his career in music just ahead of his nationwide Fall 2021 "Ain't For Tamin' Tour."


title: Zach Bryan

text: On January 25, 2022, Bryan announced that he would release his major-label debut—a triple album, "American Heartbreak," on May 20, 2022. It debuted at number five on the US "Billboard" 200 with over 70,000 album-equivalent units, marking Bryan's debut on the chart and the biggest first week for a country album in 2022.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: "The Cask of Amontillado" (sometimes spelled "The Casque of Amontillado" ) is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in the November 1846 issue of "Godey's Lady's Book". The story, set in an unnamed Italian city at carnival time in an unspecified year, is about a man taking fatal revenge on a friend who, he believes, has insulted him. Like several of Poe's stories, and in keeping with the 19th-century fascination with the subject, the narrative revolves around a person being buried alive – in this case, by immurement. As in "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart", Poe conveys the story from the murderer's perspective.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Montresor invites Fortunato to sample amontillado that he has just purchased without proving its authenticity. Fortunato follows him into the Montresor family vaults, which also serve as catacombs. For unknown reasons, Montresor seeks revenge upon Fortunato and is actually luring him into a trap. At the end of the story, the narrator reveals that 50 years have passed since he took revenge and Fortunato's body has not been disturbed.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Scholars have noted that Montresor's reasons for revenge are unclear and that he may simply be insane. However, Poe also leaves clues that Montresor has lost his family's prior status and blames Fortunato. Further, Fortunato is depicted as an expert on wine, which Montresor exploits in his plot, but he does not display the type of respect towards alcohol expected of such experts. Poe may have been inspired to write the story by his own real-life desire for revenge against contemporary literary rivals. The story has been frequently adapted in multiple forms since its original publication.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: The story's narrator, Montresor, tells an unspecified person, who knows him very well, of the day he took his revenge on Fortunato (Italian for "the fortunate one"), a fellow nobleman. Angry over numerous injuries and some unspecified insult, Montresor plots to murder his "friend" during Carnival, while the man is drunk, dizzy, and wearing a jester's motley.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Montresor lures Fortunato into a private wine-tasting excursion by telling him he has obtained a pipe (about 130 gallons, or 492 litres) of what he believes to be a rare vintage of amontillado. He proposes obtaining confirmation of the pipe's contents by inviting a fellow wine aficionado, Luchesi, for a private tasting. Montresor knows Fortunato will not be able to resist demonstrating his discerning palate for wine and will insist that he taste the amontillado rather than Luchesi who, as he claims, "cannot tell Amontillado from Sherry". Fortunato goes with Montresor to the wine cellars of the latter's palazzo, where they wander in the catacombs. Montresor offers wine (first Médoc, then De Grave) to Fortunato in order to keep him inebriated. Montresor warns Fortunato, who has a bad cough, of the dampness, and suggests they go back, but Fortunato insists on continuing, claiming that he "shall not die of a cough". During their walk, Montresor mentions his family coat of arms: a golden foot in a blue background crushing a snake whose fangs are embedded in the foot's heel, with the motto Nemo me impune lacessit ("No one provokes me with impunity").


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: At one point, Fortunato makes an elaborate, grotesque gesture with an upraised wine bottle. When Montresor appears not to recognize the gesture, Fortunato asks, "You are not of the masons?" Montresor says he is, and when Fortunato, disbelieving, requests a sign, Montresor displays a trowel he had been hiding. When they come to a niche, Montresor tells his victim that the Amontillado is within. Fortunato enters drunk and unsuspecting and therefore, does not resist as Montresor quickly chains him to the wall. Montresor then declares that, since Fortunato won't go back, Montresor must "positively leave" him there.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Montresor reveals brick and mortar, previously hidden among the bones nearby, and proceeds to wall up the niche using his trowel, entombing his friend alive. At first, Fortunato, who sobers up faster than Montresor anticipated, shakes the chains, trying to escape. Fortunato then screams for help, but Montresor mocks his cries, knowing nobody can hear them. Fortunato laughs weakly and tries to pretend that he is the subject of a joke and that people will be waiting for him (including the Lady Fortunato). As Montresor finishes the topmost row of stones, Fortunato wails, "For the love of God, Montresor!" to which Montresor replies, "Yes, for the love of God!" He listens for a reply but hears only the jester's bells ringing. Before placing the last stone, he drops a burning torch through the gap. He claims that he feels sick at heart, but dismisses this reaction as an effect of the dampness of the catacombs.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: In the last few sentences, Montresor reveals that 50 years later, Fortunato's body still hangs from its chains in the niche where he left it. The murderer concludes: In pace requiescat! ("May he rest in peace!").


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: "The Cask of Amontillado" was first published in the November 1846 issue of "Godey's Lady's Book", which was, at the time, the most popular periodical in America. The story was only published one additional time during Poe's life, in the November 14, 1846 "New England Weekly Review".


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Although the subject matter of Poe's story is a murder, "The Cask of Amontillado" is not a tale of detection like "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" or "The Purloined Letter"; there is no investigation of Montresor's crime and the criminal himself explains how he committed the murder. The mystery in "The Cask of Amontillado" is in Montresor's motive for murder. Without a detective in the story, it is up to the reader to solve the mystery. From the beginning of the story, it is made clear that Montresor has exaggerated his grievances towards Fortunato. The reader is led to assume that much like his exaggerated grievances, the punishment he chooses will represent what he believes is equal justice, and in turn, going to the extreme.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Montresor never specifies his motive beyond the vague "thousand injuries" and "when he ventured upon insult" to which he refers. Some context is provided, including Montresor's observation that his family once was great (but no longer so), and Fortunato's belittling remarks about Montresor's exclusion from Freemasonry. Many commentators conclude that, lacking significant reason, Montresor must be insane, though even this is questionable because of the intricate details of the plot.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: There is also evidence that Montresor is almost as clueless about his motive for revenge as his victim. In his recounting of the murder, Montresor notes, "A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong". After Fortunato is chained to the wall and nearly entombed alive, Montresor merely mocks and mimics him, rather than disclosing to Fortunato the reasons behind his exacting revenge. Montresor may not have been entirely certain of the exact nature of the insults for which he expected Fortunato to atone.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Additional scrutiny into the vague injuries and insults may have to do with a simple matter of Montresor's pride and not any specific words from Fortunato. Montresor comes from an established family. His house had once been noble and respected, but has fallen slightly in status. Fortunato, as his name would seem to indicate, has been blessed with good fortune and wealth and is, therefore, viewed as unrefined by Montresor; however, this lack of refinement has not stopped Fortunato from surpassing Montresor in society, which could very well be the "insult" motive for Montresor's revenge.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: There is indication that Montresor blames his unhappiness and loss of respect and dignity within society on Fortunato. It is easy to ascertain that Fortunato is a Freemason, while Montresor is not, which could be the source of Fortunato's recent ascension into upper class society. Montresor even imparts this blame to Fortunato when he states, "You are rich, respected, admired, beloved; you are happy, as once I was". This interchanging of fortunes is a suggestion that, since the names Montresor and Fortunato mirror one another, there is a psychological reciprocal identification between victim and executioner. This identification reciprocity is further suggested when one takes into consideration that Montresor entombs Fortunato in the Montresor family catacombs rather than dispatching him elsewhere in the city amidst the chaos of the Carnival. It is with this converging of the two characters that one is able to see the larger symbolism of the Montresor crest – the foot steps on the serpent while the serpent forever has his fangs embedded in the heel.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Upon further investigation into the true nature of character, double meaning can be derived from the Montresor crest. It is the position of Montresor to view himself as the owner of the righteous foot that is crushing the insolent Fortunato serpent and his "thousand injuries" that progress into insult. A more allegoric meaning of Poe's places the actors in reverse. The blind oaf Fortunato has unintentionally stepped upon the snake in the grass – the sneaky and cunning Montresor – who, as a reward for this accidental bruising, sinks his fangs deep into the heel of his offender, forever linking them in a form of mutual existence.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Though Fortunato is presented as a connoisseur of fine wine, his actions in the story make that assumption questionable. For example, Fortunato comments on another nobleman being unable to distinguish amontillado from sherry when amontillado is in fact a type of sherry, and treats De Grave, an expensive French wine, with very little regard by drinking it in a single gulp. A true wine connoisseur would never sample wine while intoxicated and it is implied within the story that Fortunato is merely an alcoholic. Under this interpretation, Fortunato might have deserved to be buried alive for wasting a bottle of fine wine.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Immurement, a form of imprisonment, usually for life, in which a person is placed within an enclosed space with no exit, is featured in several other works by Poe, including "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Premature Burial", "The Black Cat", and "Berenice".


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: An apocryphal legend holds that the inspiration for "The Cask of Amontillado" came from a story Poe had heard at Castle Island (South Boston), Massachusetts, when he was a private stationed at Fort Independence in 1827. According to this legend, he saw a monument to Lieutenant Robert Massie. Historically, Massie had been killed in a sword duel on Christmas Day 1817 by Lieutenant Gustavus Drane, following a dispute during a card game. The legend states other soldiers then took revenge on Drane by getting him drunk, luring him into the dungeon, chaining him to a wall, and sealing him in a vault. This version of Drane's demise is false; Drane was courtmartialled for the killing and acquitted, and lived until 1846. A report of a skeleton discovered on the island may be a confused remembering of Poe's major source, Joel Headley's "A Man Built in a Wall", which recounts the author's seeing an immured skeleton in the wall of a church in Italy. Headley's story includes details very similar to "The Cask of Amontillado"; in addition to walling an enemy into a hidden niche, the story details the careful placement of the bricks, the motive of revenge, and the victim's agonized moaning. Poe may have also seen similar themes in Honoré de Balzac's "La Grande Bretèche" ("Democratic Review", November 1843) or his friend George Lippard's "The Quaker City, or The Monks of Monk Hall" (1845). Poe may have borrowed Montresor's family motto "Nemo me impune lacessit" from James Fenimore Cooper, who used the line in "The Last of the Mohicans" (1826).


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Poe wrote his tale, however, as a response to his personal rival Thomas Dunn English. Poe and English had several confrontations, usually revolving around literary caricatures of one another. Poe thought that one of English's writings went a bit too far, and successfully sued the other man's editors at the "New York Mirror" for libel in 1846. That year, English published a revenge-based novel called "1844, or, The Power of the S.F." Its plot was convoluted and difficult to follow, but made references to secret societies and ultimately had a main theme of revenge. It included a character named Marmaduke Hammerhead, the famous author of "The Black Crow", who uses phrases like "Nevermore" and "lost Lenore", referring to Poe's poem "The Raven". This parody of Poe was depicted as a drunkard, liar, and an abusive lover.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Poe responded with "The Cask of Amontillado", using very specific references to English's novel. In Poe's story, for example, Fortunato makes reference to the secret society of Masons, similar to the secret society in "1844", and even makes a gesture similar to one portrayed in "1844" (it was a signal of distress). English had also used an image of a token with a hawk grasping a snake in its claws, similar to Montresor's coat of arms bearing a foot stomping on a snake – though in this image, the snake is biting the heel. In fact, much of the scene of "The Cask of Amontillado" comes from a scene in "1844" that takes place in a subterranean vault. In the end, then, it is Poe who "punishes with impunity" by not taking credit for his own literary revenge and by crafting a concise tale (as opposed to a novel) with a singular effect, as he had suggested in his essay "The Philosophy of Composition".


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Poe may have also been inspired, at least in part, by the Washingtonian movement, a fellowship that promoted temperance. The group was made up of reformed drinkers who tried to scare people into abstaining from alcohol. Poe may have made a promise to join the movement in 1843 after a bout of drinking with the hopes of gaining a political appointment. "The Cask of Amontillado" then may be a "dark temperance tale", meant to shock people into realizing the dangers of drinking.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Poe scholar Richard P. Benton has stated his belief that "Poe's protagonist is an Englished version of the French Montrésor" and has argued forcefully that Poe's model for Montresor "was Claude de Bourdeille, comte de Montrésor (Count of Montrésor), the 17th-century political conspirator in the entourage of King Louis XIII's weak-willed brother, Gaston d'Orléans". The "noted intriguer and memoir-writer" was first linked to "The Cask of Amontillado" by Poe scholar Burton R. Pollin.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Further inspiration for the method of Fortunato's murder comes from the fear of live burial. During the time period of this short story some coffins were given methods of alerting the outside in the event of live entombment. Items such as bells tied to the limbs of a corpse to signal the outside were not uncommon. This theme is evident in Fortunato's costume of a jester with bells upon his hat, and his situation of live entombment within the catacombs.


title: The Cask of Amontillado

text: Poe may have known bricklaying through personal experience. Many periods in Poe's life lack significant biographical details, including what he did after leaving the "Southern Literary Messenger" in 1837. Poe biographer John H. Ingram wrote to Sarah Helen Whitman that someone named "Allen" said that Poe worked "in the brickyard 'late in the fall of 1834'". This source has been identified as Robert T. P. Allen, a fellow West Point student during Poe's time there.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: Dale Carnegie (; spelled Carnagey until c. 1922; November 24, 1888 – November 1, 1955) was an American writer and lecturer, and the developer of courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills. Born into poverty on a farm in Missouri, he was the author of "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (1936), a bestseller that remains popular today. He also wrote "How to Stop Worrying and Start Living" (1948), "Lincoln the Unknown" (1932), and several other books.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: One of the core ideas in his books is that it is possible to change other people's behavior by changing one's behavior towards them.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: Dale Carnegie was born November 24, 1888, on a farm in Maryville, Missouri. He was the second son of farmers Amanda Elizabeth Harbison (1858-1939) and her husband James William Carnagey (1852–1941). Carnegie grew up around Bedison, Missouri, southeast of Maryville and attended rural Rose Hill and Harmony one room schools. Carnegie would develop a longstanding friendship with another Maryville author, Homer Croy.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: In 1904, at age 16, his family moved to a farm in Warrensburg, Missouri. As a youth, he enjoyed speaking in public and joined his school's debate team. Carnegie said he had to get up at 3 a.m. to feed the pigs and milk his parents' cows before going to school. During high school, he grew interested in the speeches at the various Chautauqua assemblies. He completed his high school education in 1906.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: His first job after college was selling correspondence courses to ranchers. He moved on to selling bacon, soap, and lard for Armour & Company. He was successful to the point of making his sales territory of South Omaha, Nebraska, the national leader for the firm.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: After saving $500, Dale Carnegie quit sales in 1911 in order to pursue a lifelong dream of becoming a Chautauqua lecturer. He ended up instead attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, but found little success as an actor, though it is written that he played the role of Dr. Hartley in a road show of "Polly of the Circus". When the production ended, he returned to New York, living at the YMCA on 125th Street. There he got the idea to teach public speaking, and he persuaded the YMCA manager to allow him to instruct a class in return for 80% of the net proceeds. In his first session, he had run out of material. Improvising, he suggested that students speak about "something that made them angry", and discovered that the technique made speakers unafraid to address a public audience. From this 1912 debut, the Dale Carnegie Course evolved. Carnegie had tapped into the average American's desire to have more self-confidence, and by 1914, he was earning $500 (about $ today) every week.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: During World War I he served in the U.S. Army spending the time at Camp Upton. His draft card noted he had filed for conscientious objector status and had a loss of a forefinger.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: By 1916, Dale conducted a sold out lecture at Carnegie Hall, which influenced his decision in 1919 to change the spelling of his last name in honor of the steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie, and easier for others to remember. Carnegie's first collection of his writings was "Public Speaking: a Practical Course for Business Men" (1926), later entitled "Public Speaking and Influencing Men in Business" (1932). In 1936, Simon & Schuster published "How to Win Friends and Influence People". The book was a bestseller from its debut. By the time of Carnegie's death, the book had sold five million copies in 31 languages, and there had been 450,000 graduates of his Dale Carnegie Institute. It has been stated in the book that he had critiqued over 150,000 speeches in his participation in the adult education movement of the time.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: On November 5, 1944, he married his former secretary, Dorothy Price Vanderpool (1913–1998), who also had been divorced. Vanderpool had a daughter Rosemary, from her first marriage. She and Carnegie had a daughter Donna Dale. Dorothy ran the Carnegie company following Dale's death.


title: Dale Carnegie

text: Carnegie died of Hodgkin's disease on November 1, 1955, at his home in Forest Hills, New York. He was buried in the Belton, Cass County, Missouri, cemetery.


title: Consigliere

text: Consigliere ( , ; plural ) is a position within the leadership structure of the Sicilian, Calabrian, and Italian-American Mafia. The word was popularized in English by the novel "The Godfather" (1969) and its film adaptation. In the novel, a consigliere is an advisor or counselor to the boss, with the additional responsibility of representing the boss in important meetings both within the boss's crime family and with other crime families.


title: Consigliere

text: The consigliere is a close, trusted friend and confidant, the mob's version of an elder statesman. They are an advisor to the boss in a Mafia crime family, and sometimes is their "right-hand man". By the very nature of the job, a consigliere is one of the few in the family who can argue with the boss, and is often tasked with challenging the boss when needed, to ensure subsequent plans are foolproof. In some depictions, he is devoid of ambition and dispenses disinterested advice. This passive image of the consigliere does not correspond with what little is known of real-life consiglieri.


title: Consigliere

text: The boss, underboss, and consigliere constitute the top three positions and a three-man ruling panel, or "administration". The Genovese crime family are credited with inventing the rank of messaggero, who is tasked with serving as a liaison among the other American Mafia families.


title: Consigliere

text: In Italian, "consigliere" means "advisor" or "counselor" and is still a common title for members of city councils in Italy and Switzerland. It is derived from the Latin "consiliarius" (advisor) and "consilium" (advice). The terminology of the American Mafia is taken from that of the Sicilian Mafia, and suggests that an analogy is intended to imitate the court of a medieval Italian principality. For example, Venice was led by a "doge" ("duke") and a "consigliere ducale" (advisor to the doge).


title: Consigliere

text: An underboss will normally move up to boss when the position becomes vacant, so his position is equivalent to that of an heir to the throne. Consigliere, meanwhile, is analogous to chief minister or chancellor. In the novel "The Godfather" the word is spelled "consigliori". In the films, it is clearly pronounced "consigliere". Joe Bonanno explains in his book "A Man of Honor" that a consigliere is more the voice or representative of the soldiers of the family, and that he may help to mediate in or resolve disputes on behalf of the lower echelons of the family.


title: Consigliere

text: Joe Valachi mentions a mysterious "Sandino" arbitrating disputes as the Genovese family consigliere in the 1940s. Consiglieri in more recent times have tended to take a more active role in family affairs. In 1971, Colombo family consigliere Joseph Yacovelli directed a murder campaign against renegade Colombo family soldier Joseph "Crazy Joe" Gallo. Two decades later, another Colombo consigliere, Carmine Sessa, led a hit team that attempted to assassinate the acting boss, Victor Orena.


title: Consigliere

text: Frank Bompensiero was appointed consigliere of the Los Angeles crime family in 1976, only to be murdered in a public phone booth in February 1977. His boss had promoted Bompensiero so as to induce him to let his guard down. Electronic surveillance in 1979 recorded New England Mafia boss Raymond L.S. Patriarca talking about appointing his consigliere, so the position need not be chosen as a result of a consensus-seeking process.


title: Consigliere

text: When New Jersey consigliere Stefano "Steve the Truck Driver" Vitabile discovered in 1992 that his family's underboss, John "Johnny Boy" D'Amato, was bisexual, he ordered him killed. Paul Gulino, a drug dealer and associate of the Bonanno crime family, was murdered in 1993 after he allegedly "put hands" on his family's consigliere Anthony Spero.


title: Consigliere

text: James Ida, the current Genovese consigliere, has been serving a life sentence since 1996. Dominick Cirillo is the family's acting consigliere. Joseph Corozzo is the current Gambino consigliere, while Anthony Rabito is consigliere for the Bonanno crime family. As these examples illustrate, modern consiglieri are generally former soldiers and capos, not outside advisors.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: The Ghost of Kyiv (, ) is the nickname given to a mythical MiG-29 Fulcrum flying ace credited with shooting down six Russian planes over Kyiv during the Kyiv offensive on 24 February 2022. Various reports, including the Security Service of Ukraine, made similar claims. The Ghost of Kyiv has been credited as a morale booster for Ukrainians and as a narrative for Ukraine's success during the Russo-Ukrainian War. Two months after the spread, the Ukrainian Air Force acknowledged that he was a myth, and warned people not to "neglect the basic rules of information hygiene" and to "check the sources of information, before spreading it".


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: On 24 February 2022, Russia began a large-scale invasion of Ukraine in an escalation of a pre-existing war between the two countries. During the Kyiv offensive, which began on the first day of the invasion, videos on social media began widely circulating of fighter jets in Ukraine shortly after the invasion started, including claims of a pilot who took down multiple Russian jets. The claim that a MiG-29 pilot nicknamed the "Ghost of Kyiv" who won six air fights in the skies of Kyiv appeared during the first 30 hours of the invasion. The six planes were reported as two Su-35s, two Su-25s, an Su-27, and an enemy MiG-29. If the flying ace had existed, they would have been the first recorded fighter ace of the 21st century.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence claimed that—would the shoot-downs be confirmed—the Ghost of Kyiv could be one of dozens of experienced pilots of military reserve who returned to the Armed Forces of Ukraine after Russia invaded. In a tweet, it referred to the Ghost of Kyiv as "the air avenger". However, Ukrainian commander-in-chief Valerii Zaluzhnyi said he could only confirm a total of six Russian planes downed on the first day of fighting in Ukraine, though there may have been more.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: Former Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko posted a tweet of a photograph of a fighter pilot, falsely claiming it to be the Ghost of Kyiv. The photo was later found to be an unrelated image from a Ministry of Defence post from 2019. On 27 February, the Security Service of Ukraine said in a Facebook post that the Ghost of Kyiv had shot down 10 aircraft. By March 2, official sources had confirmed neither an individual identity nor an official record for the rumored pilot. A day later, however, "The Times" reported that a Ukrainian military source said the pilot was real and was still alive. The Armed Forces of Ukraine posted on Facebook of the purported pilot in his helmet with the visor up, with the caption "Hello, occupier, I'm coming for your soul!".


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: Military.com stated that the Ghost of Kyiv was "almost certainly a myth, albeit an incredibly useful one as Ukraine tries to rally its citizens to resist Russian conquest". "Newsweek" wrote that the Ghost of Kyiv was "very likely not real, but instead, an imaginary hero designed to bolster Ukrainians' morale in the face of the Russian invasion," adding "there is zero evidence the 'Ghost of Kyiv' exists with Ukrainian authorities not confirming their existence".


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: Reexaminations have characterized the Ghost of Kyiv as a part of a larger "information war" to counter the Russian invasion. Despite the Russian military having an advantage in its use of information, Ukraine has defended the country's efforts and may have overtaken them using Russia's lack of success. "Task & Purpose" and "The Times of Israel" have described the Ghost of Kyiv as a narrative part of Ukraine's resistance.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: On 30 April 2022, Ukraine's Air Force Command admitted the mythical status of the Ghost of Kyiv, writing that "The ghost of Kyiv is a superhero-legend, whose character was created by Ukrainians," and that "the #GhostOfKyiv is alive, it embodies the collective spirit of the highly qualified pilots". An anonymous Ukrainian military expert told BBC that it helped "raise morale at a time when people need simple stories", and the Air Force Command also warned people to not "neglect the basic rules of information hygiene" and to "check the sources of information, before spreading it". The statement came after multiple media outlets published stories wrongly identifying Major Stepan Tarabalka as the man behind the moniker. Tarabalka was a real pilot who died on 13 March 2022 during air combat and was posthumously awarded the title Hero of Ukraine.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: In an interview on June 8, addressing the Ghost of Kyiv myth specifically, Ukrainian government advisor Liubov Tsybulska indicated the importance of avoiding the use of disinformation while acknowledging that mistakes may sometimes happen. She emphasized that the Ukrainian government was "capable of having lessons learned" and further expressed the most important thing was that the misinformation was acknowledged and removed.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: Many sources consider the Ghost of Kyiv to be an urban legend or war propaganda, and the pilot's alleged existence has been credited as a major morale boost for the Ukrainian population to bolster optimism during the Russian invasion. The stories were shared by Ukrainians on social media. The Ghost of Kyiv has come to be treated by some as a composite character metaphorically representing the actions of the entire Ukrainian air force.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: Computer-generated footage of the Ghost of Kyiv winning a dogfight was made using the 2013 video game "Digital Combat Simulator" and uploaded by a YouTube user. The uploader stated in the description that the footage was not real and was merely a tribute urging the Ghost of Kyiv, real or fake, to keep fighting. This video was shared by the official Twitter account of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The video subsequently went viral on social media, with Snopes saying that the circulating video was miscaptioned. Separately, comedian Sam Hyde's face was photoshopped onto an American pilot who was killed in a 2018 jet crash in Ukraine, as part of a long-running joke to link Hyde to atrocities. Similar to the Ghost of Kyiv, on 26 February 2022, social media reports emerged of a Ukrainian ground forces soldier dubbed the "Ukrainian Reaper", who supposedly killed over twenty Russian soldiers in combat alone.


title: Ghost of Kyiv

text: "Task & Purpose" argued that while it was highly unlikely there were even six air-to-air takedowns in total, given their rarity in the 21st century and Ukraine's strong missile defense, the Ghost of Kyiv was "real enough" as the spirit of the Ukrainians. Tom Demerly of "The Aviationist" argued that the Ghost of Kyiv is an "example of bizarre distortions ... amplified by the chaos of war".


title: Elder Futhark

text: The Elder Futhark (or Fuþark), also known as the Older Futhark, Old Futhark, or Germanic Futhark, is the oldest form of the runic alphabets. It was a writing system used by Germanic peoples for Northwest Germanic dialects in the Migration Period. Inscriptions are found on artifacts including jewelry, amulets, plateware, tools, and weapons, as well as runestones in Scandinavia, from the 2nd to the 10th centuries.


title: Elder Futhark

text: In Scandinavia, beginning in the late 8th century, the script was simplified to the Younger Futhark, while the Anglo-Saxons and Frisians instead extended it, giving rise to the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. Both the Anglo-Saxon futhorc and the Younger Futhark remained in use during the Early and the High Middle Ages respectively, but knowledge of how to read the Elder Futhark was forgotten until 1865, when it was deciphered by Norwegian scholar Sophus Bugge.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The Elder Futhark (named after the initial phoneme of the first six rune names: F, U, Þ, A, R and K) has 24 runes, often arranged in three groups of eight runes; each group is called an "ætt" (pl. "ættir"). In the following table, each rune is given with its common transliteration:


title: Elder Futhark

text: ï is also transliterated as æ and may have been either a diphthong or a vowel close to or . z was Proto-Germanic , and evolved into Proto-Norse and is also transliterated as ʀ. The remaining transliterations correspond to the IPA symbol of their approximate value.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The earliest known sequential listing of the alphabet dates to 400 AD and is found on the Kylver Stone in Gotland, [ᚠ] and [ᚹ] only partially inscribed but widely authenticated:


title: Elder Futhark

text: Two instances of another early inscription were found on the two Vadstena and Mariedamm bracteates (6th century), showing the division in three ætts, with the positions of ï, p and o, d inverted compared to the Kylver stone:


title: Elder Futhark

text: The Grumpan bracteate presents a listing from 500 which is identical to the one found on the previous bracteates but incomplete:


title: Elder Futhark

text: The Elder Futhark runes are commonly believed to originate in the Old Italic scripts: either a North Italic variant (Etruscan or Raetic alphabets), or the Latin alphabet itself. Derivation from the Greek alphabet via Gothic contact to Byzantine Greek culture was a popular theory in the 19th century, but has been ruled out since the dating of the Vimose inscriptions to the 2nd century (whereas the Goths were in contact with Greek culture only from the early 3rd century). Conversely, the Greek-derived 4th-century Gothic alphabet does have two letters derived from runes, (from Jer j) and (from Uruz u).


title: Elder Futhark

text: The angular shapes of the runes, presumably an adaptation to the incision in wood or metal, are not a Germanic innovation, but a property that is shared with other early alphabets, including the Old Italic ones (compare, for example, the Duenos inscription). The 4th century BC Negau helmet inscription features a Germanic name, "Harigastiz", in a North Etruscan alphabet, and may be a testimony of the earliest contact of Germanic speakers with alphabetic writing. Similarly, the Meldorf inscription of 50 may qualify as "proto-runic" use of the Latin alphabet by Germanic speakers. The Raetic "alphabet of Bolzano" in particular seems to fit the letter shapes well. The spearhead of Kovel, dated to 200 AD, sometimes advanced as evidence of a peculiar Gothic variant of the runic alphabet, bears an inscription "tilarids" that may in fact be in an Old Italic rather than a runic alphabet, running right to left with a "T" and a "D" closer to the Latin or Etruscan than to the Bolzano or runic alphabets. Perhaps an "eclectic" approach can yield the best results for the explanation of the origin of the runes: most shapes of the letters can be accounted for when deriving them from several distinct North Italic writing systems: the p rune has a parallel in the Camunic alphabet, while it has been argued that d derives from the shape of the letter "san" (= ś) in Lepontic where it seems to represent the sound /d/.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The g, a, f, i, t, m and l runes show no variation, and are generally accepted as identical to the Old Italic or Latin letters "X", "A", "F", "I", "T", "M" and "L", respectively. There is also wide agreement that the u, r, k, h, s, b and o runes respectively correspond directly to "V", "R", "C", "H", "S", "B" and "O".


title: Elder Futhark

text: The runes of uncertain derivation may either be original innovations, or adoptions of otherwise unneeded Latin letters. suggests that all 22 Latin letters of the classical Latin alphabet (1st Century, ignoring marginalized "K") were adopted (þ from "D", z from "Y", ŋ from "Q", w from "P", j from "G", ï from "Z"), with two runes (p and d) left over as original Germanic innovations, but there are conflicting scholarly opinions regarding the e (from "E" ?), n (from "N" ?), þ ("D" ? or Raetic "Θ" ?), w ("Q" or "P" ?), ï and z (both from either "Z" or Latin "Y" ?), ŋ ("Q" ?) and d runes.


title: Elder Futhark

text: Of the 24 runes in the classical futhark row attested from 400 (Kylver stone), ï, p and ŋ are unattested in the earliest inscriptions of c. 175 to 400, while e in this early period mostly takes a Π-shape, its M-shape () gaining prevalence only from the 5th century. Similarly, the s rune may have either three () or four () strokes (and more rarely five or more), and only from the 5th century does the variant with three strokes become prevalent.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The "mature" runes of the 6th to 8th centuries tend to have only three directions of strokes, the vertical and two diagonal directions. Early inscriptions also show horizontal strokes: these appear in the case of e (mentioned above), but also in t, l, ŋ and h.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The general agreement dates the creation of the first runic alphabet to roughly the 1st century. Early estimates include the 1st century BC, and late estimates push the date into the 2nd century. The question is one of estimating the "findless" period separating the script's creation from the Vimose finds of c. 160. If either ï or z indeed derive from Latin "Y" or "Z", as suggested by Odenstedt, the first century BC is ruled out, because these letters were only introduced into the Latin alphabet during the reign of Augustus.


title: Elder Futhark

text: Other scholars are content to assume a findless period of a few decades, pushing the date into the early 2nd century. Pedersen (and with him Odenstedt) suggests a period of development of about a century to account for their assumed derivation of the shapes of þ and j from Latin "D" and "G".


title: Elder Futhark

text: The invention of the script has been ascribed to a single person or a group of people who had come into contact with Roman culture, maybe as mercenaries in the Roman army, or as merchants. The script was clearly designed for epigraphic purposes, but opinions differ in stressing either magical, practical or simply playful (graffiti) aspects. concludes that in its earliest stage, the runic script was an "artificial, playful, not really needed imitation of the Roman script", much like the Germanic bracteates were directly influenced by Roman currency, a view that is accepted by in the light of the very primitive nature of the earliest (2nd to 4th century) inscription corpus.


title: Elder Futhark

text: Each rune most probably had a name, chosen to represent the sound of the rune itself according to the principle of acrophony.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The Old English names of all 24 runes of the Elder Futhark, along with five names of runes unique to the Anglo-Saxon runes, are preserved in the Old English rune poem, compiled in the 7th century. These names are in good agreement with medieval Scandinavian records of the names of the 16 Younger Futhark runes, and to some extent also with those of the letters of the Gothic alphabet (recorded by Alcuin in the 9th century). Therefore, it is assumed that the names go back to the Elder Futhark period, at least to the 5th century. There is no positive evidence that the full row of 24 runes had been completed before the end of the 4th century, but it is likely that at least some runes had their name before that time.


title: Elder Futhark

text: This concerns primarily the runes used magically, especially the Teiwaz and Ansuz runes which are taken to symbolize or invoke deities in sequences such as that on the Lindholm amulet (3rd or 4th century).


title: Elder Futhark

text: Reconstructed names in Common Germanic can easily be given for most runes. Exceptions are the "þ" rune (which is given different names in Anglo-Saxon, Gothic and Scandinavian traditions) and the "z" rune (whose original name is unknown, and preserved only in corrupted form from Old English tradition). The 24 Elder Futhark runes are:


title: Elder Futhark

text: Each rune derived its sound from the first phoneme of the rune's respective name, with the exception of "Ingwaz" and "Algiz": the Proto-Germanic "z" sound of the "Algiz" rune never occurred in a word-initial position. The phoneme acquired an "r"-like quality in Proto-Norse, usually transliterated with ʀ, and finally merged with r in Icelandic, rendering the rune superfluous as a letter. Similarly, the "ng"-sound of the "Ingwaz" rune does not occur word-initially.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The names come from the vocabulary of daily life and mythology, some trivial, some beneficent and some inauspicious:


title: Elder Futhark

text: Old Futhark inscriptions were found on artifacts scattered between the Carpathians and Lappland, with the highest concentration in Denmark. They are usually short inscriptions on jewelry (bracteates, fibulae, belt buckles), utensils (combs, spinning whorls) or weapons (lance tips, seaxes) and were mostly found in graves or bogs.


title: Elder Futhark

text: Words frequently appearing in inscriptions on bracteates with possibly magical significance are alu, laþu and laukaz. While their meaning is unclear, alu has been associated with "ale, intoxicating drink", in a context of ritual drinking, and laukaz with "leek, garlic", in a context of fertility and growth. An example of a longer early inscription is on a 4th-century axe-handle found in Nydam, Jutland: wagagastiz / alu:??hgusikijaz:aiþalataz ("wagagastiz" "wave-guest" could be a personal name, the rest has been read as alu:wihgu sikijaz:aiþalataz with a putative meaning "wave/flame-guest, from a bog, alu, I, oath-sayer consecrate/fight". The obscurity even of emended readings is typical for runic inscriptions that go beyond simple personal names). A term frequently found in early inscriptions is Erilaz, apparently describing a person with knowledge of runes.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The oldest known runic inscription dates to 160 and is found on the Vimose Comb discovered in the bog of Vimose, Funen. The inscription reads harja, either a personal name or an epithet, viz. Proto-Germanic "*harjaz" (PIE "") "warrior", or simply the word for "comb" ("*hārijaz"). Another early inscription is found on the Thorsberg chape (200), probably containing the theonym Ullr.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The typically Scandinavian runestones begin to show the transition to Younger Futhark from the 6th century, with transitional examples like the Björketorp or Stentoften stones. In the early 9th century, both the older and the younger futhark were known and used, which is shown on the Rök runestone where the runemaster used both.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The longest known inscription in the Elder Futhark, and one of the youngest, consists of some 200 characters and is found on the early 8th century Eggjum stone, and may even contain a stanza of Old Norse poetry.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The Caistor-by-Norwich astragalus reading raïhan "deer" is notable as the oldest inscription of the British Isles, dating to 400, the very end of Roman Britain.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The oldest inscriptions (before 500) found on the Continent are divided into two groups, the area of the North Sea coast and Northern Germany (including parts of the Netherlands) associated with the Saxons and Frisians on one hand (part of the "North Germanic "Koine""), and loosely scattered finds from along the Oder to south-eastern Poland, as far as the Carpathian Mountains (e.g. the ring of Pietroassa in Romania), associated with East Germanic peoples. The latter group disappears during the 5th century, the time of contact of the Goths with the Roman Empire and their conversion to Christianity.


title: Elder Futhark

text: In this early period, there is no specifically West Germanic runic tradition. This changes from the early 6th century, and for about one century (520 to 620), an Alamannic "runic province" emerges, with examples on fibulae, weapon parts and belt buckles. As in the East Germanic case, use of runes subsides with Christianization, in the case of the Alamanni in the course of the 7th century.


title: Elder Futhark

text: There are some 350 known Elder Futhark inscriptions with 81 known inscriptions from the South (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) and 267 from Scandinavia. The precise numbers are debatable because of some suspected forgeries, and some disputed inscriptions (identification as "runes" vs. accidental scratches, simple ornaments or Latin letters). 133 Scandinavian inscriptions are on bracteates (compared to 2 from the South), and 65 are on runestones (no Southern example is extant). Southern inscriptions are predominantly on fibulae (43, compared to 15 in Scandinavia). The Scandinavian runestones belong to the later period of the Elder Futhark, and initiate the boom of medieval Younger Futhark stones (with some 6,000 surviving examples). As of 2021, one inscription was found in a settlement associated with Slavs.


title: Elder Futhark

text: Elder Futhark inscriptions were rare, with very few active literati, in relation to the total population, at any time, so that knowledge of the runes was probably an actual "secret" throughout the Migration period. Of 366 lances excavated at Illerup, only 2 bore inscriptions. A similar ratio is estimated for Alemannia, with an estimated 170 excavated graves to every inscription found.


title: Elder Futhark

text: Estimates of the total number of inscriptions produced are based on the "minimal runological estimate" of 40,000 (ten individuals making ten inscriptions per year for four centuries). The actual number was probably considerably higher. The 80 known Southern inscriptions are from some 100,000 known graves. With an estimated total of 50,000,000 graves (based on population density estimates), some 80,000 inscriptions would have been produced in total in the Merovingian South alone (and maybe close to 400,000 in total, so that of the order of 0.1% of the corpus has come down to us), and estimates a population of several hundred active literati throughout the period, with as many as 1,600 during the Alamannic "runic boom" of the 6th century.


title: Elder Futhark

text: The Elder Futhark is encoded in Unicode within the unified Runic range, 16A0–16FF. Among the freely available TrueType fonts that include this range are Junicode and FreeMono.


title: Elder Futhark

text: Encoded separately is the "continental" double-barred "h"-rune, . A graphical variant of the "ng"-rune, , is also encoded separately. These two have separate codepoints because they become independent letters in the Anglo-Saxon futhorc. The numerous other graphical variants of Elder Futhark runes are considered glyph variants and not given Unicode codepoints. Similarly, bind runes are considered ligatures and not given Unicode codepoints. The only bind rune that can arguably be rendered as a single Unicode glyph is the i͡ŋ bindrune or "lantern rune", as , the character intended as the Anglo-Saxon Gēr rune.


title: Amber alert

text: An Amber Alert (alternatively styled AMBER alert) or a child abduction emergency alert (SAME code: CAE) is a message distributed by a child abduction alert system to ask the public for help in finding abducted children. The system originated in the United States.


title: Amber alert

text: AMBER is a backronym standing for America's Missing: Broadcast Emergency Response. It was created in reference to Amber Rene Hagerman, a girl who was abducted and later found murdered in 1996. Alternative regional alert names were once used; in Georgia, "Levi's Call" (in memory of Levi Frady); in Hawaii, "Maile Amber Alert" (in memory of Maile Gilbert); in Arkansas, "Morgan Nick Amber Alert" (in memory of Morgan Nick); and in Utah, "Rachael Alert" (in memory of Rachael Runyan).


title: Amber alert

text: In the United States, Amber alerts are distributed via commercial and public radio stations, Internet radio, satellite radio, television stations, text messages, and cable TV by the Emergency Alert System and NOAA Weather Radio (where they are termed "Child Abduction Emergency" or "Amber Alerts"). The alerts are also issued via e-mail, electronic traffic-condition signs, commercial electronic billboards, or through wireless device SMS text messages.


title: Amber alert

text: AMBER Alert has also teamed up with Google, Bing, and Facebook to relay information regarding an AMBER Alert to an ever-growing demographic: AMBER Alerts are automatically displayed if citizens search or use map features on Google or Bing. With the Google Child Alert (also called Google AMBER Alert in some countries), citizens see an AMBER Alert if they search for related information in a particular location where a child has recently been abducted and an alert was issued. This is a component of the AMBER Alert system that is already active in the US (there are also developments in Europe). Those interested in subscribing to receive AMBER Alerts in their area via SMS messages can visit Wireless Amber Alerts, which are offered by law as free messages. In some states, the display scrollboards in front of lottery terminals are also used.


title: Amber alert

text: The decision to declare an AMBER Alert is made by each police organization (in many cases, the state police or highway patrol) that investigates each of the abductions. Public information in an AMBER Alert usually consists of the name and description of the abductee, a description of the suspected abductor, and a description and license plate number of the abductor's vehicle if available.


title: Amber alert

text: The alerts are broadcast using the Emergency Alert System, which had previously been used primarily for weather bulletins, civil emergencies, or national emergencies. In Canada, alerts are broadcast via Alert Ready, a Canadian emergency warning system. Alerts usually contain a description of the child and of the likely abductor. To avoid both false alarms and having alerts ignored as a "wolf cry", the criteria for issuing an alert are rather strict. Each state's or province's AMBER alert plan sets its own criteria for activation, meaning that there are differences between alerting agencies as to which incidents are considered to justify the use of the system. However, the U.S. Department of Justice issues the following "guidance", which most states are said to "adhere closely to" (in the U.S.):


title: Amber alert

text: Many law enforcement agencies have not used #2 as a criterion, resulting in many parental abductions triggering an Amber Alert, where the child is not known or assumed to be at risk of serious injury or death. In 2013, West Virginia passed Skylar's Law to eliminate #1 as a criterion for triggering an Amber Alert.


title: Amber alert

text: It is recommended that AMBER Alert data immediately be entered into the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) National Crime Information Center. Text information describing the circumstances surrounding the abduction of the child should be entered, and the case flagged as child abduction.


title: Amber alert

text: The Royal Canadian Mounted Police's (RCMP) requirements in Canada are nearly identical to the above list, with the exception that the RCMP is notified. One organization might notify the other if there is reason to suspect that the border may be crossed.


title: Amber alert

text: When investigators believe that a child is in danger of being taken across the border to either Canada or Mexico, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, United States Border Patrol and the Canada Border Services Agency are notified and are expected to search every car coming through a border checkpoint. If the child is suspected to be taken to Canada, a Canadian Amber Alert can also be issued, and a pursuit by Canadian authorities usually follows.


title: Amber alert

text: For incidents which do not meet AMBER Alert criteria, the United States Department of Justice developed the Child Abduction Response Teams (CART) program to assist local agencies. This program can be used in all missing children's cases with or without an AMBER alert. CART can also be used to help recover runaway children who are under the age of 18 and in danger. , 225 response teams have been trained in 43 states, as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Canada.


title: Amber alert

text: Amber Rene Hagerman (November 25, 1986 – January 15, 1996) was a nine-year-old girl abducted while riding her bike in Arlington, Texas. Her younger brother, Ricky, had gone home without her because Amber had wanted to stay in the parking lot for a while. When he returned to get her, Ricky found her bicycle without her. A neighbor who had witnessed the abduction called 911.


title: Amber alert

text: On hearing the news, Hagerman's father, Richard, called Marc Klaas, whose daughter, Polly, had been kidnapped and murdered in Petaluma, California, in 1993. Amber's mother, Donna Whitson (now Donna Norris), called the news media and the FBI. They and their neighbors began searching for Amber.


title: Amber alert

text: Four days after her abduction, near midnight, a man walking his dog discovered Amber's naked body in a creek behind an apartment complex with severe laceration wounds to her neck. The site of the discovery was less than five miles (8 km) from where she was abducted. Her murder remains unsolved as of 2022.


title: Amber alert

text: Within days of Amber's death, Donna Whitson was "calling for tougher laws governing kidnappers and sex offenders". Amber's parents soon established People Against Sex Offenders (P.A.S.O.). They collected signatures hoping to force the Texas Legislature into passing more stringent laws to protect children.


title: Amber alert

text: God's Place International Church donated the first office space for the organization, and as the search for Amber's killer continued, P.A.S.O. received almost-daily coverage in local media. Companies donated various office supplies, including computer and Internet service. Congressman Martin Frost, with the help of Marc Klaas, drafted the Amber Hagerman Child Protection Act. Both of Hagerman's parents were present when President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, creating the national sex offender registry. Whitson and Richard Hagerman then began collecting signatures in Texas, which they planned to present to then-Governor George W. Bush as a sign that people wanted more stringent laws for sex offenders.


title: Amber alert

text: In July 1996, Bruce Seybert (whose own daughter was a close friend of Amber) and Richard Hagerman attended a media symposium in Arlington. Although Hagerman had remarks prepared, on the day of the event the organizers asked Seybert to speak instead. In his 20-minute speech, he spoke about efforts that local police could take quickly to help find missing children and how the media could facilitate those efforts. C.J. Wheeler, a reporter from radio station KRLD, approached the Dallas police chief shortly afterward with Seybert's ideas and launched the first ever Amber Alert.


title: Amber alert

text: Whitson testified in front of the U.S. Congress in June 1996, asking legislators to create a nationwide registry of sex offenders. Representative Martin Frost, the Congressman who represents Whitson's district, proposed an "Amber Hagerman Child Protection Act." Among the sections of the bill was one that would create a national sex offender registry.


title: Amber alert

text: Diana Simone, a Texas resident who had been following the news, contacted the KDMX radio station and proposed broadcasts to engage passers-by in helping locate missing children. Her idea was picked up and for the next two years, alerts were made manually to participating radio stations. In 1998, the Child Alert Foundation created the first fully automated Alert Notification System (ANS) to notify surrounding communities when a child was reported missing or abducted. Alerts were sent to radio stations as originally requested but included television stations, surrounding law enforcement agencies, newspapers and local support organizations. These alerts were sent all at once via pagers, faxes, emails, and cell phones with the information immediately posted on the Internet for the general public to view.


title: Amber alert

text: Following the automation of the AMBER Alert with ANS technology created by the Child Alert Foundation, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) expanded its role in 2002 to promote the AMBER Alert, although in 1996 now CEO of the NCMEC declined to come in and further assist the AMBER Alert when asked to by Bruce Seybert and Richard Hagerman and has since worked actively to see alerts distributed using the nation's existing emergency radio and TV response network.


title: Amber alert

text: In October 2000, the United States House of Representatives adopted H.Res. 605 which encouraged communities nationwide to implement the AMBER Plan. In October 2001, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children that had declined to be a part of the Amber Alert in February 1996, launched a campaign to have AMBER Alert systems established nationwide. In February 2002, the Federal Communications Commission officially endorsed the system. In 2002, several children were abducted in cases that drew national attention. One such case, the kidnapping and murder of Samantha Runnion, prompted California to establish an AMBER Alert system on July 24, 2002. According to Senator Dianne Feinstein, in its first month California issued 13 AMBER alerts; 12 of the children were recovered safely and the remaining alert was found to be a misunderstanding.


title: Amber alert

text: By September 2002, 26 states had established AMBER Alert systems that covered all or parts of the state. A bipartisan group of US Senators, led by Kay Bailey Hutchison and Dianne Feinstein, proposed legislation to name an AMBER Alert coordinator in the U.S. Justice Department who could help coordinate state efforts. The bill also provided $25 million in federal matching grants for states to establish AMBER Alert programs and necessary equipment purchases, such as electronic highway signs. A similar bill was sponsored in the U.S. House of Representatives by Jennifer Dunn and Martin Frost. The bill passed the Senate unanimously within a week of its proposal. At an October 2002 conference on missing, exploited, and runaway children, President George W. Bush announced changes to the AMBER Alert system, including the development of a national standard for issuing AMBER Alerts. A similar bill passed the House several weeks later on a 390–24 vote. A related bill finally became law in April 2003.


title: Amber alert

text: The alerts were offered digitally beginning in November 2002, when America Online began a service allowing people to sign up to receive notification via computer, pager, or cell phone. Users of the service enter their ZIP Code, thus allowing the alerts to be targeted to specific geographic regions.


title: Amber alert

text: By 2005, all fifty states had operational programs and today the program operates across state and jurisdictional boundaries. , AMBER Alerts are automatically sent through the Wireless Emergency Alerts (WEA) program.