title: Contras

text: According to the National Security Archive, Oliver North had been in contact with Manuel Noriega, the military leader of Panama later convicted on drug charges, whom he personally met. The issue of drug money and its importance in funding the Nicaraguan conflict was the subject of various reports and publications. The contras were funded by drug trafficking, of which the United States was aware. Senator John Kerry's 1988 Committee on Foreign Relations report on Contra drug links concluded that "senior U.S. policy makers were not immune to the idea that drug money was a perfect solution to the Contras' funding problems".


title: Contras

text: The Reagan administration's support for the Contras continued to stir controversy well into the 1990s. In August 1996, "San Jose Mercury News" reporter Gary Webb published a series titled "Dark Alliance", alleging that the contras contributed to the rise of crack cocaine in California.


title: Contras

text: Gary Webb's career as a journalist was subsequently discredited by the leading U.S. papers, "The New York Times", the Washington Post, and the "Los Angeles Times". An internal CIA report, entitled, "Managing a Nightmare", shows the agency used "a ground base of already productive relations with journalists" to help counter what it called "a genuine public relations crisis." In the 1980s, Douglas Farah worked as a journalist, covering the civil wars in Central America for the Washington Post. According to Farah, while it was common knowledge that the Contras were involved in cocaine trafficking, the editors of the Washington Post refused to take it seriously:


title: Contras

text: If you're talking about our intelligence community tolerating — if not promoting — drugs to pay for black ops, it's rather an uncomfortable thing to do when you're an establishment paper like the Post. If you were going to be directly rubbing up against the government, they wanted it more solid than it could probably ever be done.


title: Contras

text: An investigation by the United States Department of Justice also stated that their "review did not substantiate the main allegations stated and implied in the "Mercury News" articles." Regarding the specific charges towards the CIA, the DOJ wrote "the implication that the drug trafficking by the individuals discussed in the "Mercury News" articles was connected to the CIA was also not supported by the facts." The CIA also investigated and rejected the allegations.


title: Contras

text: During the time the US Congress blocked funding for the contras, the Reagan government engaged in a campaign to alter public opinion and change the vote in Congress on contra aid. For this purpose, the NSC established an interagency working group, which in turn coordinated the Office of Public Diplomacy for Latin America and the Caribbean (managed by Otto Reich), which conducted the campaign. The S/LPD produced and widely disseminated a variety of pro-contra publications, arranged speeches and press conferences. It also disseminated "white propaganda"—pro-contra newspaper articles by paid consultants who did not disclose their connection to the Reagan administration.


title: Contras

text: On top of that, Oliver North helped Carl Channell's tax-exempt organization, the National Endowment for the Preservation of Liberty, to raise $10 million, by arranging numerous briefings for groups of potential contributors at the premises of the White House and by facilitating private visits and photo sessions with President Reagan for major contributors. Channell in turn, used part of that money to run a series of television advertisements directed at home districts of Congressmen considered swing votes on contra aid. Out of the $10 million raised, more than $1 million was spent on pro-contra publicity.


title: Contras

text: In 1984 the Sandinista government filed a suit in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against the United States ("Nicaragua v. United States"), which resulted in a 1986 judgment against the United States. The ICJ held that the U.S. had violated international law by supporting the contras in their rebellion against the Nicaraguan government and by mining Nicaragua's harbors. Regarding the alleged human rights violations by the contras, however, the ICJ took the view that the United States could be held accountable for them only if it would have been proven that the U.S. had effective control of the contra operations resulting in these alleged violations. Nevertheless, the ICJ found that the U.S. encouraged acts contrary to general principles of humanitarian law by producing the manual "Psychological Operations in Guerrilla Warfare (Operaciones sicológicas en guerra de guerrillas") and disseminating it to the contras. The manual, amongst other things, advised on how to rationalize killings of civilians and recommended to hire professional killers for specific selective tasks.


title: Contras

text: The United States, which did not participate in the merits phase of the proceedings, maintained that the ICJ's power did not supersede the Constitution of the United States and argued that the court did not seriously consider the Nicaraguan role in El Salvador, while it accused Nicaragua of actively supporting armed groups there, specifically in the form of supply of arms. The ICJ had found that evidence of a responsibility of the Nicaraguan government in this matter was insufficient. The U.S. argument was affirmed, however, by the dissenting opinion of ICJ member U.S. Judge Schwebel, who concluded that in supporting the contras, the United States acted lawfully in collective self-defence in El Salvador's support. The U.S. blocked enforcement of the ICJ judgment by the United Nations Security Council and thereby prevented Nicaragua from obtaining any actual compensation. The Nicaraguan government finally withdrew the complaint from the court in September 1992 (under the later, post-FSLN, government of Violeta Chamorro), following a repeal of the law requiring the country to seek compensation.


title: Contras

text: Human Rights Watch released a report on the situation in 1989, which stated: "[The] contras were major and systematic violators of the most basic standards of the laws of armed conflict, including by launching indiscriminate attacks on civilians, selectively murdering non-combatants, and mistreating prisoners."


title: Contras

text: In his affidavit to the World Court, former contra Edgar Chamorro testified that "The CIA did not discourage such tactics. To the contrary, the Agency severely criticized me when I admitted to the press that the FDN had regularly kidnapped and executed agrarian reform workers and civilians. We were told that the only way to defeat the Sandinistas was to ...kill, kidnap, rob and torture".


title: Contras

text: Contra leader Adolfo Calero denied that his forces deliberately targeted civilians: "What they call a cooperative is also a troop concentration full of armed people. We are not killing civilians. We are fighting armed people and returning fire when fire is directed at us."


title: Contras

text: Several articles were published by U.S. press, including by "The Wall Street Journal" and "The New Republic", accusing Americas Watch and other bodies of ideological bias and unreliable reporting. The articles alleged that Americas Watch gave too much credence to alleged Contra abuses and systematically tried to discredit Nicaraguan human rights groups such as the Permanent Commission on Human Rights, which blamed the most human rights abuses on the Sandinistas.


title: Contras

text: Human Rights Watch, the umbrella organization of Americas Watch, replied to these allegations: "Almost invariably, U.S. pronouncements on human rights exaggerated and distorted the real human rights violations of the Sandinista regime, and exculpated those of the U.S.-supported insurgents, known as the contras ... The Bush administration is responsible for these abuses, not only because the contras are, for all practical purposes, a U.S. force, but also because the Bush administration has continued to minimize and deny these violations, and has refused to investigate them seriously."


title: Contras

text: By 1986 the contras were besieged by charges of corruption, human-rights abuses, and military ineptitude. A much-vaunted early 1986 offensive never materialized, and Contra forces were largely reduced to isolated acts of terrorism. In October 1987, however, the contras staged a successful attack in southern Nicaragua. Then on 21 December 1987, the FDN launched attacks at Bonanza, Siuna, and Rosita in Zelaya province, resulting in heavy fighting. ARDE Frente Sur attacked at El Almendro and along the Rama road. These large-scale raids mainly became possible as the contras were able to use U.S.-provided Redeye missiles against Sandinista Mi-24 helicopter gunships, which had been supplied by the Soviets. Nevertheless, the Contras remained tenuously encamped within Honduras and were not able to hold Nicaraguan territory.


title: Contras

text: There were isolated protests among the population against the draft implemented by the Sandinista government, which even resulted in full-blown street clashes in Masaya in 1988. However, a June 1988 survey in Managua showed the Sandinista government still enjoyed strong support but that support had declined since 1984. Three times as many people identified with the Sandinistas (28%) than with all the opposition parties put together (9%); 59% did not identify with any political party. Of those polled, 85% opposed any further US aid to the Contras; 40% believed the Sandinista government to be democratic, while 48% believed it to be not democratic. People identified the war as the largest problem but were less likely to blame it for economic problems compared to a December 1986 poll; 19% blamed the war and US blockade as the main cause of economic problems while 10% blamed the government. Political opposition groups were splintered and the Contras began to experience defections, although United States aid maintained them as a viable military force.


title: Contras

text: After a cutoff in U.S. military support, and with both sides facing international pressure to bring an end to the conflict, the contras agreed to negotiations with the FSLN. With the help of five Central American Presidents, including Ortega, the sides agreed that a voluntary demobilization of the contras should start in early December 1989. They chose this date to facilitate free and fair elections in Nicaragua in February 1990 (even though the Reagan administration had pushed for a delay of contra disbandment).


title: Contras

text: In the resulting February 1990 elections, Violeta Chamorro and her party the UNO won an upset victory of 55% to 41% over Daniel Ortega. Opinion polls leading up to the elections divided along partisan lines, with 10 of 17 polls analyzed in a contemporary study predicting an UNO victory while seven predicted the Sandinistas would retain power.


title: Contras

text: Possible explanations include that the Nicaraguan people were disenchanted with the Ortega government as well as the fact that already in November 1989, the White House had announced that the economic embargo against Nicaragua would continue unless Violeta Chamorro won. Also, there had been reports of intimidation from the side of the contras, with a Canadian observer mission claiming that 42 people were killed by the contras in "election violence" in October 1989. Sandinistas were also accused of intimidation and abuses during the election campaign. According to the Puebla Institute, by mid-December 1989, seven opposition leaders had been murdered, 12 had disappeared, 20 had been arrested, and 30 others assaulted. In late January 1990, the OAS observer team reported that “a convoy of troops attacked four truckloads of UNO sympathizers with bayonets and rifle butts, threatening to kill them." This led many commentators to conclude that Nicaraguans voted against the Sandinistas out of fear of a continuation of the contra war and economic deprivation.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: Ibrahima Konaté (born 25 May 1999) is a French professional footballer who plays as a centre-back for Premier League club Liverpool and the France national team.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: Starting off with Sochaux, Konaté moved to RB Leipzig in 2017. After four years with the club, Liverpool signed him in 2021 for a fee of £36 million. He won the EFL Cup and FA Cup in his first season.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: Ibrahima Konaté was born on 25 May 1999 in Paris. He grew up on a council estate in the 11th arrondissement of Paris and is the second youngest of eight children born to parents from Mali.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: He is a Muslim. Outside of football, Konaté is a fan of anime and manga, citing "Attack on Titan" as his favourite series.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: Konaté grew up in the 11th arrondissement of Paris and played as a teen for Paris FC youth teams. When he was 14, he left for Sochaux and joined their boarding academy at the age of 15. He started his career as a striker before moving to the defence.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: Konaté made his professional debut for Sochaux in a 1–0 Ligue 2 loss to Auxerre on 7 February 2017, at the age of 16.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: After a successful debut season, with 12 games and 1 goal in half a season, Konaté joined RB Leipzig in the Bundesliga on 12 June 2017 on a five-year contract by free transfer. Konaté scored his first Leipzig goal in a 4–0 win against Fortuna Düsseldorf.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: On 28 May 2021, Liverpool announced that they had reached an agreement with RB Leipzig to acquire Konaté on 1 July, pending international clearance and a work permit being granted. The club had already agreed personal terms with the player in April, and triggered his release clause of approximately £36 million in May 2021. On 18 September, Konaté made his Premier League debut, starting alongside Virgil van Dijk, and kept a clean sheet in a 3–0 victory against Crystal Palace. He made his second start of the season partnering Virgil van Dijk in the first North-West Derby of the season, in which Liverpool beat Manchester United 5–0. It was the heaviest defeat inflicted on United by Liverpool since 1895 and the heaviest defeat United had suffered without scoring in since 1955. Konaté won plaudits from fans for how he handled star players like Cristiano Ronaldo and Bruno Fernandes and also featured in Garth Crooks' team of the week, with Crooks saying, "No frills or skills but he does use his power and strength to maximum effect. This was shown in match against Manchester United, Mason Greenwood, Cristiano Ronaldo and Marcus Rashford hardly had a kick."


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: On 5 April 2022, Konaté scored his first goal for Liverpool, a header in a 3–1 away win against Benfica in the UEFA Champions League quarter-final first leg.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: Konaté received his first call-up to the senior France national team on 4 June 2022 for the UEFA Nations League, replacing Raphaël Varane due to injury. He made his full international debut on 10 June in a 1–1 draw against Austria. On 9 November, Konaté was included in Didier Deschamps's squad for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, where he helped France reach the final.


title: Ibrahima Konaté

text: Konaté has been compared to Virgil van Dijk due to his positional play, tackling, pace and strength. Guido Schafer said that: "he is tall, fast, good technique and he is a little bit of Virgil van Dijk. He has very high-class potential. He is a great athlete, he has good speed and there are no silly tackles - he is an intelligent player." Konaté is also well known for his passing and strength in the air.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Enrico Fermi (; 29 September 1901 – 28 November 1954) was an Italian (later naturalized American) physicist and the creator of the world's first nuclear reactor, the Chicago Pile-1. He has been called the "architect of the nuclear age" and the "architect of the atomic bomb". He was one of very few physicists to excel in both theoretical physics and experimental physics. Fermi was awarded the 1938 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on induced radioactivity by neutron bombardment and for the discovery of transuranium elements. With his colleagues, Fermi filed several patents related to the use of nuclear power, all of which were taken over by the US government. He made significant contributions to the development of statistical mechanics, quantum theory, and nuclear and particle physics.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi's first major contribution involved the field of statistical mechanics. After Wolfgang Pauli formulated his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi followed with a paper in which he applied the principle to an ideal gas, employing a statistical formulation now known as Fermi–Dirac statistics. Today, particles that obey the exclusion principle are called "fermions". Pauli later postulated the existence of an uncharged invisible particle emitted along with an electron during beta decay, to satisfy the law of conservation of energy. Fermi took up this idea, developing a model that incorporated the postulated particle, which he named the "neutrino". His theory, later referred to as Fermi's interaction and now called weak interaction, described one of the four fundamental interactions in nature. Through experiments inducing radioactivity with the recently discovered neutron, Fermi discovered that slow neutrons were more easily captured by atomic nuclei than fast ones, and he developed the Fermi age equation to describe this. After bombarding thorium and uranium with slow neutrons, he concluded that he had created new elements. Although he was awarded the Nobel Prize for this discovery, the new elements were later revealed to be nuclear fission products.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi left Italy in 1938 to escape new Italian racial laws that affected his Jewish wife, Laura Capon. He emigrated to the United States, where he worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. Fermi led the team at the University of Chicago that designed and built Chicago Pile-1, which went critical on 2 December 1942, demonstrating the first human-created, self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. He was on hand when the X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, went critical in 1943, and when the B Reactor at the Hanford Site did so the next year. At Los Alamos, he headed F Division, part of which worked on Edward Teller's thermonuclear "Super" bomb. He was present at the Trinity test on 16 July 1945, where he used his Fermi method to estimate the bomb's yield.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: After the war, Fermi served under J. Robert Oppenheimer on the General Advisory Committee, which advised the Atomic Energy Commission on nuclear matters. After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, he strongly opposed the development of a hydrogen bomb on both moral and technical grounds. He was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at the 1954 hearing that resulted in the denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance. Fermi did important work in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons, and he speculated that cosmic rays arose when material was accelerated by magnetic fields in interstellar space. Many awards, concepts, and institutions are named after Fermi, including the Enrico Fermi Award, the Enrico Fermi Institute, the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, and the synthetic element fermium, making him one of 16 scientists who have elements named after them. Fermi tutored or directly influenced no fewer than eight young researchers who went on to win Nobel Prizes.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Enrico Fermi was born in Rome, Italy, on 29 September 1901. He was the third child of Alberto Fermi, a division head in the Ministry of Railways, and Ida de Gattis, an elementary school teacher. His sister, Maria, was two years older, his brother Giulio a year older. After the two boys were sent to a rural community to be wet nursed, Enrico rejoined his family in Rome when he was two and a half. Although he was baptized a Roman Catholic in accordance with his grandparents' wishes, his family was not particularly religious; Enrico was an agnostic throughout his adult life. As a young boy, he shared the same interests as his brother Giulio, building electric motors and playing with electrical and mechanical toys. Giulio died during an operation on a throat abscess in 1915 and Maria died in an airplane crash near Milan in 1959.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: At a local market in Campo de' Fiori Fermi found a physics book, the 900-page "Elementorum physicae mathematicae". Written in Latin by Jesuit Father , a professor at the Collegio Romano, it presented mathematics, classical mechanics, astronomy, optics, and acoustics as they were understood at the time of its 1840 publication. With a scientifically inclined friend, Enrico Persico, Fermi pursued projects such as building gyroscopes and measuring the acceleration of Earth's gravity.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In 1914, Fermi, who used to often meet with his father in front of the office after work, met a colleague of his father called Adolfo Amidei, who would walk part of the way home with Alberto. Enrico had learned that Adolfo was interested in mathematics and physics and took the opportunity to ask Adolfo a question about geometry. Adolfo understood that the young Fermi was referring to projective geometry and then proceeded to give him a book on the subject written by Theodor Reye. Two months later, Fermi returned the book, having solved all the problems proposed at the end of the book, some of which Adolfo considered difficult. Upon verifying this, Adolfo felt that Fermi was "a prodigy, at least with respect to geometry", and further mentored the boy, providing him with more books on physics and mathematics. Adolfo noted that Fermi had a very good memory and thus could return the books after having read them because he could remember their content very well.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi graduated from high school in July 1918, having skipped the third year entirely. At Amidei's urging, Fermi learned German to be able to read the many scientific papers that were published in that language at the time, and he applied to the "Scuola Normale Superiore" in Pisa. Amidei felt that the Scuola would provide better conditions for Fermi's development than the Sapienza University of Rome could at the time. Having lost one son, Fermi's parents only reluctantly allowed him to live in the school's lodgings away from Rome for four years. Fermi took first place in the difficult entrance exam, which included an essay on the theme of "Specific characteristics of Sounds"; the 17-year-old Fermi chose to use Fourier analysis to derive and solve the partial differential equation for a vibrating rod, and after interviewing Fermi the examiner declared he would become an outstanding physicist.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: At the "Scuola Normale Superiore", Fermi played pranks with fellow student Franco Rasetti; the two became close friends and collaborators. Fermi was advised by Luigi Puccianti, director of the physics laboratory, who said there was little he could teach Fermi and often asked Fermi to teach him something instead. Fermi's knowledge of quantum physics was such that Puccianti asked him to organize seminars on the topic. During this time Fermi learned tensor calculus, a technique key to general relativity. Fermi initially chose mathematics as his major, but soon switched to physics. He remained largely self-taught, studying general relativity, quantum mechanics, and atomic physics.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In September 1920, Fermi was admitted to the Physics department. Since there were only three students in the department—Fermi, Rasetti, and Nello Carrara—Puccianti let them freely use the laboratory for whatever purposes they chose. Fermi decided that they should research X-ray crystallography, and the three worked to produce a Laue photograph—an X-ray photograph of a crystal. During 1921, his third year at the university, Fermi published his first scientific works in the Italian journal "Nuovo Cimento". The first was entitled "On the dynamics of a rigid system of electrical charges in translational motion" ('). A sign of things to come was that the mass was expressed as a tensor—a mathematical construct commonly used to describe something moving and changing in three-dimensional space. In classical mechanics, mass is a scalar quantity, but in relativity, it changes with velocity. The second paper was "On the electrostatics of a uniform gravitational field of electromagnetic charges and on the weight of electromagnetic charges" ('). Using general relativity, Fermi showed that a charge has a weight equal to U/c, where U was the electrostatic energy of the system, and c is the speed of light.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The first paper seemed to point out a contradiction between the electrodynamic theory and the relativistic one concerning the calculation of the electromagnetic masses, as the former predicted a value of 4/3 U/c. Fermi addressed this the next year in a paper "Concerning a contradiction between electrodynamic and the relativistic theory of electromagnetic mass" in which he showed that the apparent contradiction was a consequence of relativity. This paper was sufficiently well-regarded that it was translated into German and published in the German scientific journal "Physikalische Zeitschrift" in 1922. That year, Fermi submitted his article "On the phenomena occurring near a world line" (') to the Italian journal '. In this article he examined the Principle of Equivalence, and introduced the so-called "Fermi coordinates". He proved that on a world line close to the timeline, space behaves as if it were a Euclidean space.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi submitted his thesis, "A theorem on probability and some of its applications" (""), to the "Scuola Normale Superiore" in July 1922, and received his laurea at the unusually young age of 20. The thesis was on X-ray diffraction images. Theoretical physics was not yet considered a discipline in Italy, and the only thesis that would have been accepted was experimental physics. For this reason, Italian physicists were slow in embracing the new ideas like relativity coming from Germany. Since Fermi was quite at home in the lab doing experimental work, this did not pose insurmountable problems for him.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: While writing the appendix for the Italian edition of the book "Fundamentals of Einstein Relativity" by August Kopff in 1923, Fermi was the first to point out that hidden inside the Einstein equation () was an enormous amount of nuclear potential energy to be exploited. "It does not seem possible, at least in the near future", he wrote, "to find a way to release these dreadful amounts of energy—which is all to the good because the first effect of an explosion of such a dreadful amount of energy would be to smash into smithereens the physicist who had the misfortune to find a way to do it."


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In 1923–1924, Fermi spent a semester studying under Max Born at the University of Göttingen, where he met Werner Heisenberg and Pascual Jordan. Fermi then studied in Leiden with Paul Ehrenfest from September to December 1924 on a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation obtained through the intercession of the mathematician Vito Volterra. Here Fermi met Hendrik Lorentz and Albert Einstein, and became friends with Samuel Goudsmit and Jan Tinbergen. From January 1925 to late 1926, Fermi taught mathematical physics and theoretical mechanics at the University of Florence, where he teamed up with Rasetti to conduct a series of experiments on the effects of magnetic fields on mercury vapor. He also participated in seminars at the Sapienza University of Rome, giving lectures on quantum mechanics and solid state physics. While giving lectures on the new quantum mechanics based on the remarkable accuracy of predictions of the Schrödinger equation, Fermi would often say, "It has no business to fit so well!"


title: Enrico Fermi

text: After Wolfgang Pauli announced his exclusion principle in 1925, Fermi responded with a paper "On the quantization of the perfect monoatomic gas" ("), in which he applied the exclusion principle to an ideal gas. The paper was especially notable for Fermi's statistical formulation, which describes the distribution of particles in systems of many identical particles that obey the exclusion principle. This was independently developed soon after by the British physicist Paul Dirac, who also showed how it was related to the Bose–Einstein statistics. Accordingly, it is now known as Fermi–Dirac statistics. After Dirac, particles that obey the exclusion principle are today called "fermions", while those that do not are called "bosons".


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Professorships in Italy were granted by competition (") for a vacant chair, the applicants being rated on their publications by a committee of professors. Fermi applied for a chair of mathematical physics at the University of Cagliari on Sardinia, but was narrowly passed over in favor of Giovanni Giorgi. In 1926, at the age of 24, he applied for a professorship at the Sapienza University of Rome. This was a new chair, one of the first three in theoretical physics in Italy, that had been created by the Minister of Education at the urging of Professor Orso Mario Corbino, who was the university's professor of experimental physics, the Director of the Institute of Physics, and a member of Benito Mussolini's cabinet. Corbino, who also chaired the selection committee, hoped that the new chair would raise the standard and reputation of physics in Italy. The committee chose Fermi ahead of Enrico Persico and Aldo Pontremoli, and Corbino helped Fermi recruit his team, which was soon joined by notable students such as Edoardo Amaldi, Bruno Pontecorvo, Ettore Majorana and Emilio Segrè, and by Franco Rasetti, whom Fermi had appointed as his assistant. They soon nicknamed the "Via Panisperna boys" after the street where the Institute of Physics was located.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi married Laura Capon, a science student at the university, on 19 July 1928. They had two children: Nella, born in January 1931, and Giulio, born in February 1936. On 18 March 1929, Fermi was appointed a member of the Royal Academy of Italy by Mussolini, and on 27 April he joined the Fascist Party. He later opposed Fascism when the 1938 racial laws were promulgated by Mussolini in order to bring Italian Fascism ideologically closer to German Nazism. These laws threatened Laura, who was Jewish, and put many of Fermi's research assistants out of work.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: During their time in Rome, Fermi and his group made important contributions to many practical and theoretical aspects of physics. In 1928, he published his "Introduction to Atomic Physics" (""), which provided Italian university students with an up-to-date and accessible text. Fermi also conducted public lectures and wrote popular articles for scientists and teachers in order to spread knowledge of the new physics as widely as possible. Part of his teaching method was to gather his colleagues and graduate students together at the end of the day and go over a problem, often from his own research. A sign of success was that foreign students now began to come to Italy. The most notable of these was the German physicist Hans Bethe, who came to Rome as a Rockefeller Foundation fellow, and collaborated with Fermi on a 1932 paper "On the Interaction between Two Electrons" ().


title: Enrico Fermi

text: At this time, physicists were puzzled by beta decay, in which an electron was emitted from the atomic nucleus. To satisfy the law of conservation of energy, Pauli postulated the existence of an invisible particle with no charge and little or no mass that was also emitted at the same time. Fermi took up this idea, which he developed in a tentative paper in 1933, and then a longer paper the next year that incorporated the postulated particle, which Fermi called a "neutrino". His theory, later referred to as Fermi's interaction, and still later as the theory of the weak interaction, described one of the four fundamental forces of nature. The neutrino was detected after his death, and his interaction theory showed why it was so difficult to detect. When he submitted his paper to the British journal "Nature", that journal's editor turned it down because it contained speculations which were "too remote from physical reality to be of interest to readers". Thus Fermi saw the theory published in Italian and German before it was published in English.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In January 1934, Irène Joliot-Curie and Frédéric Joliot announced that they had bombarded elements with alpha particles and induced radioactivity in them. By March, Fermi's assistant Gian-Carlo Wick had provided a theoretical explanation using Fermi's theory of beta decay. Fermi decided to switch to experimental physics, using the neutron, which James Chadwick had discovered in 1932. In March 1934, Fermi wanted to see if he could induce radioactivity with Rasetti's polonium-beryllium neutron source. Neutrons had no electric charge, and so would not be deflected by the positively charged nucleus. This meant that they needed much less energy to penetrate the nucleus than charged particles, and so would not require a particle accelerator, which the Via Panisperna boys did not have.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi had the idea to resort to replacing the polonium-beryllium neutron source with a radon-beryllium one, which he created by filling a glass bulb with beryllium powder, evacuating the air, and then adding 50 mCi of radon gas, supplied by Giulio Cesare Trabacchi. This created a much stronger neutron source, the effectiveness of which declined with the 3.8-day half-life of radon. He knew that this source would also emit gamma rays, but, on the basis of his theory, he believed that this would not affect the results of the experiment. He started by bombarding platinum, an element with a high atomic number that was readily available, without success. He turned to aluminium, which emitted an alpha particle and produced sodium, which then decayed into magnesium by beta particle emission. He tried lead, without success, and then fluorine in the form of calcium fluoride, which emitted an alpha particle and produced nitrogen, decaying into oxygen by beta particle emission. In all, he induced radioactivity in 22 different elements. Fermi rapidly reported the discovery of neutron-induced radioactivity in the Italian journal "La Ricerca Scientifica" on 25 March 1934.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The natural radioactivity of thorium and uranium made it hard to determine what was happening when these elements were bombarded with neutrons but, after correctly eliminating the presence of elements lighter than uranium but heavier than lead, Fermi concluded that they had created new elements, which he called hesperium and ausonium. The chemist Ida Noddack suggested that some of the experiments could have produced lighter elements than lead rather than new, heavier elements. Her suggestion was not taken seriously at the time because her team had not carried out any experiments with uranium or built the theoretical basis for this possibility. At that time, fission was thought to be improbable if not impossible on theoretical grounds. While physicists expected elements with higher atomic numbers to form from neutron bombardment of lighter elements, nobody expected neutrons to have enough energy to split a heavier atom into two light element fragments in the manner that Noddack suggested.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The Via Panisperna boys also noticed some unexplained effects. The experiment seemed to work better on a wooden table than a marble tabletop. Fermi remembered that Joliot-Curie and Chadwick had noted that paraffin wax was effective at slowing neutrons, so he decided to try that. When neutrons were passed through paraffin wax, they induced a hundred times as much radioactivity in silver compared with when it was bombarded without the paraffin. Fermi guessed that this was due to the hydrogen atoms in the paraffin. Those in wood similarly explained the difference between the wooden and the marble tabletops. This was confirmed by repeating the effect with water. He concluded that collisions with hydrogen atoms slowed the neutrons. The lower the atomic number of the nucleus it collides with, the more energy a neutron loses per collision, and therefore the fewer collisions that are required to slow a neutron down by a given amount. Fermi realised that this induced more radioactivity because slow neutrons were more easily captured than fast ones. He developed a diffusion equation to describe this, which became known as the Fermi age equation.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In 1938, Fermi received the Nobel Prize in Physics at the age of 37 for his "demonstrations of the existence of new radioactive elements produced by neutron irradiation, and for his related discovery of nuclear reactions brought about by slow neutrons". After Fermi received the prize in Stockholm, he did not return home to Italy but rather continued to New York City with his family in December 1938, where they applied for permanent residency. The decision to move to America and become US citizens was due primarily to the racial laws in Italy.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi arrived in New York City on 2 January 1939. He was immediately offered positions at five universities, and accepted one at Columbia University, where he had already given summer lectures in 1936. He received the news that in December 1938, the German chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann had detected the element barium after bombarding uranium with neutrons, which Lise Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch correctly interpreted as the result of nuclear fission. Frisch confirmed this experimentally on 13 January 1939. The news of Meitner and Frisch's interpretation of Hahn and Strassmann's discovery crossed the Atlantic with Niels Bohr, who was to lecture at Princeton University. Isidor Isaac Rabi and Willis Lamb, two Columbia University physicists working at Princeton, found out about it and carried it back to Columbia. Rabi said he told Enrico Fermi, but Fermi later gave the credit to Lamb:


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Noddack was proven right after all. Fermi had dismissed the possibility of fission on the basis of his calculations, but he had not taken into account the binding energy that would appear when a nuclide with an odd number of neutrons absorbed an extra neutron. For Fermi, the news came as a profound embarrassment, as the transuranic elements that he had partly been awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering had not been transuranic elements at all, but fission products. He added a footnote to this effect to his Nobel Prize acceptance speech.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The scientists at Columbia decided that they should try to detect the energy released in the nuclear fission of uranium when bombarded by neutrons. On 25 January 1939, in the basement of Pupin Hall at Columbia, an experimental team including Fermi conducted the first nuclear fission experiment in the United States. The other members of the team were Herbert L. Anderson, Eugene T. Booth, John R. Dunning, G. Norris Glasoe, and Francis G. Slack. The next day, the Fifth Washington Conference on Theoretical Physics began in Washington, D.C. under the joint auspices of George Washington University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington. There, the news on nuclear fission was spread even further, fostering many more experimental demonstrations.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: French scientists Hans von Halban, Lew Kowarski, and Frédéric Joliot-Curie had demonstrated that uranium bombarded by neutrons emitted more neutrons than it absorbed, suggesting the possibility of a chain reaction. Fermi and Anderson did so too a few weeks later. Leó Szilárd obtained of uranium oxide from Canadian radium producer Eldorado Gold Mines Limited, allowing Fermi and Anderson to conduct experiments with fission on a much larger scale. Fermi and Szilárd collaborated on a design of a device to achieve a self-sustaining nuclear reaction—a nuclear reactor. Owing to the rate of absorption of neutrons by the hydrogen in water, it was unlikely that a self-sustaining reaction could be achieved with natural uranium and water as a neutron moderator. Fermi suggested, based on his work with neutrons, that the reaction could be achieved with uranium oxide blocks and graphite as a moderator instead of water. This would reduce the neutron capture rate, and in theory make a self-sustaining chain reaction possible. Szilárd came up with a workable design: a pile of uranium oxide blocks interspersed with graphite bricks. Szilárd, Anderson, and Fermi published a paper on "Neutron Production in Uranium". But their work habits and personalities were different, and Fermi had trouble working with Szilárd.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi was among the first to warn military leaders about the potential impact of nuclear energy, giving a lecture on the subject at the Navy Department on 18 March 1939. The response fell short of what he had hoped for, although the Navy agreed to provide $1,500 towards further research at Columbia. Later that year, Szilárd, Eugene Wigner, and Edward Teller sent the letter signed by Einstein to US president Franklin D. Roosevelt, warning that Nazi Germany was likely to build an atomic bomb. In response, Roosevelt formed the Advisory Committee on Uranium to investigate the matter.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The Advisory Committee on Uranium provided money for Fermi to buy graphite, and he built a pile of graphite bricks on the seventh floor of the Pupin Hall laboratory. By August 1941, he had six tons of uranium oxide and thirty tons of graphite, which he used to build a still larger pile in Schermerhorn Hall at Columbia.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The S-1 Section of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, as the Advisory Committee on Uranium was now known, met on 18 December 1941, with the US now engaged in World War II, making its work urgent. Most of the effort sponsored by the committee had been directed at producing enriched uranium, but Committee member Arthur Compton determined that a feasible alternative was plutonium, which could be mass-produced in nuclear reactors by the end of 1944. He decided to concentrate the plutonium work at the University of Chicago. Fermi reluctantly moved, and his team became part of the new Metallurgical Laboratory there.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The possible results of a self-sustaining nuclear reaction were unknown, so it seemed inadvisable to build the first nuclear reactor on the University of Chicago campus in the middle of the city. Compton found a location in the Argonne Woods Forest Preserve, about from Chicago. Stone & Webster was contracted to develop the site, but the work was halted by an industrial dispute. Fermi then persuaded Compton that he could build the reactor in the squash court under the stands of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. Construction of the pile began on 6 November 1942, and Chicago Pile-1 went critical on 2 December. The shape of the pile was intended to be roughly spherical, but as work proceeded Fermi calculated that criticality could be achieved without finishing the entire pile as planned.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: This experiment was a landmark in the quest for energy, and it was typical of Fermi's approach. Every step was carefully planned, every calculation was meticulously done. When the first self-sustained nuclear chain reaction was achieved, Compton made a coded phone call to James B. Conant, the chairman of the National Defense Research Committee.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: To continue the research where it would not pose a public health hazard, the reactor was disassembled and moved to the Argonne Woods site. There Fermi directed experiments on nuclear reactions, reveling in the opportunities provided by the reactor's abundant production of free neutrons. The laboratory soon branched out from physics and engineering into using the reactor for biological and medical research. Initially, Argonne was run by Fermi as part of the University of Chicago, but it became a separate entity with Fermi as its director in May 1944.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: When the air-cooled X-10 Graphite Reactor at Oak Ridge went critical on 4 November 1943, Fermi was on hand just in case something went wrong. The technicians woke him early so that he could see it happen. Getting X-10 operational was another milestone in the plutonium project. It provided data on reactor design, training for DuPont staff in reactor operation, and produced the first small quantities of reactor-bred plutonium. Fermi became an American citizen in July 1944, the earliest date the law allowed.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In September 1944, Fermi inserted the first uranium fuel slug into the B Reactor at the Hanford Site, the production reactor designed to breed plutonium in large quantities. Like X-10, it had been designed by Fermi's team at the Metallurgical Laboratory and built by DuPont, but it was much larger and was water-cooled. Over the next few days, 838 tubes were loaded, and the reactor went critical. Shortly after midnight on 27 September, the operators began to withdraw the control rods to initiate production. At first, all appeared to be well, but around 03:00, the power level started to drop and by 06:30 the reactor had shut down completely. The Army and DuPont turned to Fermi's team for answers. The cooling water was investigated to see if there was a leak or contamination. The next day the reactor suddenly started up again, only to shut down once more a few hours later. The problem was traced to neutron poisoning from xenon-135 or Xe-135, a fission product with a half-life of 9.1 to 9.4 hours. Fermi and John Wheeler both deduced that Xe-135 was responsible for absorbing neutrons in the reactor, thereby sabotaging the fission process. Fermi was recommended by colleague Emilio Segrè to ask Chien-Shiung Wu, as she prepared a printed draft on this topic to be published by the Physical Review. Upon reading the draft, Fermi and the scientists confirmed their suspicions: Xe-135 indeed absorbed neutrons, in fact it had a huge neutron cross-section. DuPont had deviated from the Metallurgical Laboratory's original design in which the reactor had 1,500 tubes arranged in a circle, and had added 504 tubes to fill in the corners. The scientists had originally considered this over-engineering a waste of time and money, but Fermi realized that if all 2,004 tubes were loaded, the reactor could reach the required power level and efficiently produce plutonium.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In April 1943, Fermi raised with Robert Oppenheimer the possibility of using the radioactive byproducts from enrichment to contaminate the German food supply. The background was fear that the German atomic bomb project was already at an advanced stage, and Fermi was also skeptical at the time that an atomic bomb could be developed quickly enough. Oppenheimer discussed the "promising" proposal with Edward Teller, who suggested the use of strontium-90. James B. Conant and Leslie Groves were also briefed, but Oppenheimer wanted to proceed with the plan only if enough food could be contaminated with the weapon to kill half a million people.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In mid-1944, Oppenheimer persuaded Fermi to join his Project Y at Los Alamos, New Mexico. Arriving in September, Fermi was appointed an associate director of the laboratory, with broad responsibility for nuclear and theoretical physics, and was placed in charge of F Division, which was named after him. F Division had four branches: F-1 Super and General Theory under Teller, which investigated the "Super" (thermonuclear) bomb; F-2 Water Boiler under L. D. P. King, which looked after the "water boiler" aqueous homogeneous research reactor; F-3 Super Experimentation under Egon Bretscher; and F-4 Fission Studies under Anderson. Fermi observed the Trinity test on 16 July 1945 and conducted an experiment to estimate the bomb's yield by dropping strips of paper into the blast wave. He paced off the distance they were blown by the explosion, and calculated the yield as ten kilotons of TNT; the actual yield was about 18.6 kilotons.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Along with Oppenheimer, Compton, and Ernest Lawrence, Fermi was part of the scientific panel that advised the Interim Committee on target selection. The panel agreed with the committee that atomic bombs would be used without warning against an industrial target. Like others at the Los Alamos Laboratory, Fermi found out about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki from the public address system in the technical area. Fermi did not believe that atomic bombs would deter nations from starting wars, nor did he think that the time was ripe for world government. He therefore did not join the Association of Los Alamos Scientists.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi became the Charles H. Swift Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago on 1 July 1945, although he did not depart the Los Alamos Laboratory with his family until 31 December 1945. He was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1945. The Metallurgical Laboratory became the Argonne National Laboratory on 1 July 1946, the first of the national laboratories established by the Manhattan Project. The short distance between Chicago and Argonne allowed Fermi to work at both places. At Argonne he continued experimental physics, investigating neutron scattering with Leona Marshall. He also discussed theoretical physics with Maria Mayer, helping her develop insights into spin–orbit coupling that would lead to her receiving the Nobel Prize.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: The Manhattan Project was replaced by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) on 1 January 1947. Fermi served on the AEC General Advisory Committee, an influential scientific committee chaired by Robert Oppenheimer. He also liked to spend a few weeks of each year at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he collaborated with Nicholas Metropolis, and with John von Neumann on Rayleigh–Taylor instability, the science of what occurs at the border between two fluids of different densities.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: After the detonation of the first Soviet fission bomb in August 1949, Fermi, along with Isidor Rabi, wrote a strongly worded report for the committee, opposing the development of a hydrogen bomb on moral and technical grounds. Nonetheless, Fermi continued to participate in work on the hydrogen bomb at Los Alamos as a consultant. Along with Stanislaw Ulam, he calculated that not only would the amount of tritium needed for Teller's model of a thermonuclear weapon be prohibitive, but a fusion reaction could still not be assured to propagate even with this large quantity of tritium. Fermi was among the scientists who testified on Oppenheimer's behalf at the Oppenheimer security hearing in 1954 that resulted in denial of Oppenheimer's security clearance.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: In his later years, Fermi continued teaching at the University of Chicago, where he was a founder of what later became the Enrico Fermi Institute. His PhD students in the postwar period included Owen Chamberlain, Geoffrey Chew, Jerome Friedman, Marvin Goldberger, Tsung-Dao Lee, Arthur Rosenfeld and Sam Treiman. Jack Steinberger was a graduate student, and Mildred Dresselhaus was highly influenced by Fermi during the year she overlapped with him as a PhD student. Fermi conducted important research in particle physics, especially related to pions and muons. He made the first predictions of pion-nucleon resonance, relying on statistical methods, since he reasoned that exact answers were not required when the theory was wrong anyway. In a paper coauthored with Chen Ning Yang, he speculated that pions might actually be composite particles. The idea was elaborated by Shoichi Sakata. It has since been supplanted by the quark model, in which the pion is made up of quarks, which completed Fermi's model, and vindicated his approach.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi wrote a paper "On the Origin of Cosmic Radiation" in which he proposed that cosmic rays arose through material being accelerated by magnetic fields in interstellar space, which led to a difference of opinion with Teller. Fermi examined the issues surrounding magnetic fields in the arms of a spiral galaxy. He mused about what is now referred to as the "Fermi paradox": the contradiction between the presumed probability of the existence of extraterrestrial life and the fact that contact has not been made.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Toward the end of his life, Fermi questioned his faith in society at large to make wise choices about nuclear technology. He said:


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi underwent what was called an "exploratory" operation in Billings Memorial Hospital in October 1954, after which he returned home. Fifty days later he died of inoperable stomach cancer in his home in Chicago. He was 53. Fermi suspected working near the nuclear pile involved great risk but he pressed on because the benefits outweighed the risks to his personal safety. Two of his graduate student assistants working near the pile also died of cancer.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: A memorial service was held at the University of Chicago chapel, where colleagues Samuel K. Allison, Emilio Segrè, and Herbert L. Anderson spoke to mourn the loss of one of the world's "most brilliant and productive physicists." His body was interred at Oak Woods Cemetery where a private graveside service for the immediate family took place presided by a Lutheran chaplain.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi received numerous awards in recognition of his achievements, including the Matteucci Medal in 1926, the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1938, the Hughes Medal in 1942, the Franklin Medal in 1947, and the Rumford Prize in 1953. He was awarded the Medal for Merit in 1946 for his contribution to the Manhattan Project. Fermi was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1950. The Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence, known as the "Temple of Italian Glories" for its many graves of artists, scientists and prominent figures in Italian history, has a plaque commemorating Fermi. In 1999, "Time" named Fermi on its list of the top 100 persons of the twentieth century. Fermi was widely regarded as an unusual case of a 20th-century physicist who excelled both theoretically and experimentally. Chemist and novelist C. P. Snow wrote, "if Fermi had been born a few years earlier, one could well imagine him discovering Rutherford's atomic nucleus, and then developing Bohr's theory of the hydrogen atom. If this sounds like hyperbole, anything about Fermi is likely to sound like hyperbole".


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi was known as an inspiring teacher and was noted for his attention to detail, simplicity, and careful preparation of his lectures. Later, his lecture notes were transcribed into books. His papers and notebooks are today in the University of Chicago. Victor Weisskopf noted how Fermi "always managed to find the simplest and most direct approach, with the minimum of complication and sophistication." He disliked complicated theories, and while he had great mathematical ability, he would never use it when the job could be done much more simply. He was famous for getting quick and accurate answers to problems that would stump other people. Later on, his method of getting approximate and quick answers through back-of-the-envelope calculations became informally known as the "Fermi method", and is widely taught.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Fermi was fond of pointing out that when Alessandro Volta was working in his laboratory, Volta had no idea where the study of electricity would lead. Fermi is generally remembered for his work on nuclear power and nuclear weapons, especially the creation of the first nuclear reactor, and the development of the first atomic and hydrogen bombs. His scientific work has stood the test of time. This includes his theory of beta decay, his work with non-linear systems, his discovery of the effects of slow neutrons, his study of pion-nucleon collisions, and his Fermi–Dirac statistics. His speculation that a pion was not a fundamental particle pointed the way towards the study of quarks and leptons.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Many things bear Fermi's name. These include the Fermilab particle accelerator and physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, which was renamed in his honor in 1974, and the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, which was named after him in 2008, in recognition of his work on cosmic rays. Three nuclear reactor installations have been named after him: the Fermi 1 and Fermi 2 nuclear power plants in Newport, Michigan, the Enrico Fermi Nuclear Power Plant at Trino Vercellese in Italy, and the RA-1 Enrico Fermi research reactor in Argentina. A synthetic element isolated from the debris of the 1952 Ivy Mike nuclear test was named fermium, in honor of Fermi's contributions to the scientific community. This makes him one of 16 scientists who have elements named after them.


title: Enrico Fermi

text: Since 1956, the United States Atomic Energy Commission has named its highest honor, the Fermi Award, after him. Recipients of the award have included Otto Hahn, Robert Oppenheimer, Edward Teller and Hans Bethe.


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: Shooter is an American drama television series based on the 2007 film of the same name and the first three novels in the Bob Lee Swagger series by Stephen Hunter. The show stars Ryan Phillippe in the lead role of Swagger, a retired United States Marine Corps Scout Sniper from MARSOC living in seclusion who is coaxed back into action after learning of a plot to kill the President. USA Network picked up the pilot in August 2015 and ordered the series in February 2016.


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: The series was originally set to premiere on July 19, 2016, but it was postponed to July 26 due to the July 7 Dallas police officer shootings. USA pulled it entirely after the Baton Rouge police officer shootings on July 17. On October 3, 2016, USA announced that the new premiere date for "Shooter" would be November 15, 2016. On December 19, 2016, the series was renewed for a second season that premiered on July 18, 2017. On December 4, 2017, the series was renewed for a third season.


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: On August 15, 2018, USA Network canceled "Shooter" after three seasons, and its final episode aired on September 13, 2018.


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: On July 6, 2016, while filming a scene at Agua Dulce Airpark, actor Tom Sizemore accidentally ran over a stuntman. Sizemore was supposed to enter the Cadillac Escalade and stay there until the scene ended, but the stunt coordinator told him to pull out, not realizing that the stuntman was behind him.


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: On July 26, 2017, the second-season episode order was cut back from the planned ten episodes to the eight episodes already filmed after Ryan Phillippe broke his leg on July 16, 2017, in an incident unrelated to the series.


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: About the cancellation, Omar Epps said: “That was all backdoor politics. It had nothing to do with the numbers. Me and Ryan [Phillippe] had a great time. We were like kids in a candy store. We used to laugh every day we showed up to work, like, 'We're kids again!' We just get to run and jump, push, punch. You know, stuff that little boys do. It was like playing in the playground in the sandbox. I had a great, great time on that show. I have a lot of respect for John Hlavin, who's a showrunner on there. And like I said, Ryan and I got cool and had a great time on that show. That was just the backdoor politics.“


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: "Shooter" aired on Thursdays at 10:00pm on USA Network. The episodes are approximately 43 minutes, and are broadcast in both high- and standard definition. In addition, the streaming service Netflix started to broadcast the series in certain regions worldwide, the first season weekly on November 15, 2016, with a one-day delay with respect to the original United States broadcast.


title: Shooter (TV series)

text: "Shooter" received mixed reviews from critics. On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 47% based on 17 reviews, with an average rating of 5.75/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Ryan Phillippe's efforts aren't enough to salvage "Shooter", a tedious, under-developed drama that lacks an original voice or perspective." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating, the series has a score 60 out of 100, based on 11 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: ' (The Ring of the Nibelung), WWV 86, is a cycle of four German-language epic music dramas composed by Richard Wagner. The works are based loosely on characters from Germanic heroic legend, namely Norse legendary sagas and the "Nibelungenlied". The composer termed the cycle a "Bühnenfestspiel" (stage festival play), structured in three days preceded by a ("preliminary evening"). It is often referred to as the Ring" cycle, Wagner's "Ring, or simply The Ring""'.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Wagner wrote the libretto and music over the course of about twenty-six years, from 1848 to 1874. The four parts that constitute the "Ring" cycle are, in sequence:


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Individual works of the sequence are often performed separately, and indeed the operas contain dialogues that mention events in the previous operas, so that a viewer could watch any of them without having watched the previous parts and still understand the plot. However, Wagner intended them to be performed in series. The first performance as a cycle opened the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876, beginning with "Das Rheingold" on 13 August and ending with "Götterdämmerung" on 17 August. Opera stage director Anthony Freud stated that "Der Ring des Nibelungen" "marks the high-water mark of our art form, the most massive challenge any opera company can undertake."


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Wagner's title is most literally rendered in English as "The Ring of the Nibelung". The Nibelung of the title is the dwarf Alberich, and the ring in question is the one he fashions from the Rhine Gold. The title therefore denotes "Alberich's Ring".


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The cycle is a work of extraordinary scale. A full performance of the cycle takes place over four nights at the opera, with a total playing time of about 15 hours, depending on the conductor's pacing. The first and shortest work, "Das Rheingold", has no interval and is one continuous piece of music typically lasting around two and a half hours, while the final and longest, "Götterdämmerung", takes up to five hours, excluding intervals. The cycle is modelled after ancient Greek dramas that were presented as three tragedies and one satyr play. The "Ring" proper begins with "Die Walküre" and ends with "Götterdämmerung", with "Rheingold" as a prelude. Wagner called "Das Rheingold" a "Vorabend" or "Preliminary Evening", and "Die Walküre", "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung" were subtitled First Day, Second Day and Third Day, respectively, of the trilogy proper.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The scale and scope of the story is epic. It follows the struggles of gods, heroes, and several mythical creatures over the eponymous magic ring that grants domination over the entire world. The drama and intrigue continue through three generations of protagonists, until the final cataclysm at the end of "Götterdämmerung".


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The music of the cycle is thick and richly textured, and grows in complexity as the cycle proceeds. Wagner wrote for an orchestra of gargantuan proportions, including a greatly enlarged brass section with new instruments such as the Wagner tuba, bass trumpet and contrabass trombone. Remarkably, he uses a chorus only relatively briefly, in acts 2 and 3 of "Götterdämmerung", and then mostly of men with just a few women. He eventually had a purpose-built theatre constructed, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, in which to perform this work. The theatre has a special stage that blends the huge orchestra with the singers' voices, allowing them to sing at a natural volume. The result was that the singers did not have to strain themselves vocally during the long performances.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The plot revolves around a magic ring that grants the power to rule the world, forged by the Nibelung dwarf Alberich from gold he stole from the Rhine maidens in the river Rhine. With the assistance of the god Loge, Wotan – the chief of the gods – steals the ring from Alberich, but is forced to hand it over to the giants Fafner and Fasolt in payment for building the home of the gods, Valhalla, or they will take Freia, who provides the gods with the golden apples that keep them young. Wotan's schemes to regain the ring, spanning generations, drive much of the action in the story. His grandson, the mortal Siegfried, wins the ring by slaying Fafner (who slew Fasolt for the ring) – as Wotan intended – but is eventually betrayed and slain as a result of the intrigues of Alberich's son Hagen, who wants the ring for himself. Finally, the Valkyrie Brünnhilde – Siegfried's lover and Wotan's daughter who lost her immortality for defying her father in an attempt to save Siegfried's father Sigmund – returns the ring to the Rhine maidens as she commits suicide on Siegfried's funeral pyre. Hagen is drowned as he attempts to recover the ring. In the process, the gods and Valhalla are destroyed.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Wagner created the story of the "Ring" by fusing elements from many German and Scandinavian myths and folk-tales. The Old Norse "Edda" supplied much of the material for "Das Rheingold", while "Die Walküre" was largely based on the "Völsunga saga". "Siegfried" contains elements from the Eddur, the "Völsunga saga" and "Thidrekssaga". The final "Götterdämmerung" draws from the 12th-century German poem, the "Nibelungenlied", which appears to have been the original inspiration for the "Ring".


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: "The Ring" has been the subject of myriad interpretations. For example, George Bernard Shaw, in "The Perfect Wagnerite", argues for a view of "The Ring" as an essentially socialist critique of industrial society and its abuses. Robert Donington in "Wagner's Ring And Its Symbols" interprets it in terms of Jungian psychology, as an account of the development of unconscious archetypes in the mind, leading towards individuation.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In his earlier operas (up to and including "Lohengrin") Wagner's style had been based, rather than on the Italian style of opera, on the German style as developed by Carl Maria von Weber, with elements of the grand opera style of Giacomo Meyerbeer. However he came to be dissatisfied with such a format as a means of artistic expression. He expressed this clearly in his essay 'A Communication to My Friends', (1851) in which he condemned the majority of modern artists, in painting and in music, as "feminine ... the world of art close fenced from Life, in which Art plays with herself.' Where however the impressions of Life produce an overwhelming 'poetic force', we find the 'masculine, the generative path of Art'.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In accordance with the ideas expressed in his essays of the period 1849–51 (including the "Communication" but also "Opera and Drama" and "The Artwork of the Future"), the four parts of the "Ring" were originally conceived by Wagner to be free of the traditional operatic concepts of aria and operatic chorus. The Wagner scholar Curt von Westernhagen identified three important problems discussed in "Opera and Drama" which were particularly relevant to the "Ring" cycle: the problem of unifying verse stress with melody; the disjunctions caused by formal arias in dramatic structure, and the way in which opera music could be organised on a different basis of organic growth and modulation; and the function of musical motifs in linking elements of the plot whose connections might otherwise be inexplicit. This became known as the leitmotif technique (see below), although Wagner himself did not use this word.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: However, Wagner relaxed some aspects of his self-imposed restrictions somewhat as the work progressed. As George Bernard Shaw sardonically (and slightly unfairly) noted of the last opera "Götterdämmerung":


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: As a significant element in the "Ring" and his subsequent works, Wagner adopted the use of leitmotifs, which are recurring themes or harmonic progressions. They musically denote an action, object, emotion, character, or other subject mentioned in the text or presented onstage. Wagner referred to them in "Opera and Drama" as "guides-to-feeling", describing how they could be used to inform the listener of a musical or dramatic subtext to the action onstage in the same way as a Greek chorus did for the theatre of ancient Greece.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Wagner made significant innovations in orchestration in this work. He wrote for a very large orchestra, using the whole range of instruments used singly or in combination to express the great range of emotion and events of the drama. Wagner even commissioned the production of new instruments, including the Wagner tuba, invented to fill a gap he found between the tone qualities of the horn and the trombone, as well as variations of existing instruments, such as the bass trumpet and a contrabass trombone with a double slide. He also developed the "Wagner bell", enabling the bassoon to reach the low A-natural, whereas normally B-flat is the instrument's lowest note. If such a bell is not to be used, then a contrabassoon should be employed.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: All four parts have a very similar instrumentation. The core ensemble of instruments are one piccolo, three flutes (third doubling second piccolo), three oboes, cor anglais (doubling fourth oboe), three soprano clarinets, one bass clarinet, three bassoons; eight horns (fifth through eight doubling Wagner tubas), three trumpets, one bass trumpet, three tenor trombones, one contrabass trombone (doubling bass trombone), one contrabass tuba; a percussion section with 4 timpani (requiring two players), triangle, cymbals, glockenspiel, tam-tam; six harps and a string section consisting of 16 first and 16 second violins, 12 violas, 12 cellos, and 8 double basses.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: "Das Rheingold" requires one bass drum, one onstage harp and 18 onstage anvils. "Die Walküre" requires one snare drum, one D clarinet (played by the third clarinettist), and an on-stage steerhorn. "Siegfried" requires one onstage cor anglais and one onstage horn. "Götterdämmerung" requires a tenor drum, as well as five onstage horns and four onstage steerhorns, one of them to be blown by Hagen.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Much of the "Ring", especially from "Siegfried" act 3 onwards, cannot be said to be in traditional, clearly defined keys for long stretches, but rather in 'key regions', each of which flows smoothly into the following. This fluidity avoided the musical equivalent of clearly defined musical paragraphs, and assisted Wagner in building the work's huge structures. Tonal indeterminacy was heightened by the increased freedom with which he used dissonance and chromaticism. Chromatically altered chords are used very liberally in the "Ring", and this feature, which is also prominent in "Tristan und Isolde", is often cited as a milestone on the way to Arnold Schoenberg's revolutionary break with the traditional concept of key and his dissolution of consonance as the basis of an organising principle in music.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In summer 1848 Wagner wrote "The Nibelung Myth as Sketch for a Drama", combining the medieval sources previously mentioned into a single narrative, very similar to the plot of the eventual "Ring" cycle, but nevertheless with substantial differences. Later that year he began writing a libretto entitled "Siegfrieds Tod" ("Siegfried's Death"). He was possibly stimulated by a series of articles in the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik", inviting composers to write a 'national opera' based on the Nibelungenlied, a 12th-century High German poem which, since its rediscovery in 1755, had been hailed by the German Romantics as the "German national epic". "Siegfrieds Tod" dealt with the death of Siegfried, the central heroic figure of the Nibelungenlied. The idea had occurred to others – the correspondence of Fanny and Felix Mendelssohn in 1840/41 reveals that they were both outlining scenarios on the subject: Fanny wrote 'The hunt with Siegfried's death provides a splendid finale to the second act'.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: By 1850, Wagner had completed a musical sketch (which he abandoned) for "Siegfrieds Tod". He now felt that he needed a preliminary opera, "Der junge Siegfried" ("The Young Siegfried", later renamed to "Siegfried"), to explain the events in "Siegfrieds Tod", and his verse draft of this was completed in May 1851. By October, he had made the momentous decision to embark on a cycle of four operas, to be played over four nights: "Das Rheingold", "Die Walküre", "Der Junge Siegfried" and "Siegfrieds Tod"; the text for all four parts was completed in December 1852, and privately published in February 1853.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In November 1853, Wagner began the composition draft of "Das Rheingold". Unlike the verses, which were written as it were in reverse order, the music would be composed in the same order as the narrative. Composition proceeded until 1857, when the final score up to the end of act 2 of "Siegfried" was completed. Wagner then laid the work aside for twelve years, during which he wrote "Tristan und Isolde" and "Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg".


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: By 1869, Wagner was living at Tribschen on Lake Lucerne, sponsored by King Ludwig II of Bavaria. He returned to "Siegfried", and, remarkably, was able to pick up where he left off. In October, he completed the final work in the cycle. He chose the title "Götterdämmerung" instead of "Siegfrieds Tod". In the completed work the gods are destroyed in accordance with the new pessimistic thrust of the cycle, not redeemed as in the more optimistic originally planned ending. Wagner also decided to show onstage the events of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre", which had hitherto only been presented as back-narration in the other two parts. These changes resulted in some discrepancies in the cycle, but these do not diminish the value of the work.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: On King Ludwig's insistence, and over Wagner's objections, "special previews" of "Das Rheingold" and "Die Walküre" were given at the National Theatre in Munich, before the rest of the "Ring". Thus, "Das Rheingold" premiered on 22 September 1869, and "Die Walküre" on 26 June 1870. Wagner subsequently delayed announcing his completion of "Siegfried" to prevent this work also being premiered against his wishes.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Wagner had long desired to have a special festival opera house, designed by himself, for the performance of the "Ring". In 1871, he decided on a location in the Bavarian town of Bayreuth. In 1872, he moved to Bayreuth, and the foundation stone was laid. Wagner would spend the next two years attempting to raise capital for the construction, with scant success; King Ludwig finally rescued the project in 1874 by donating the needed funds. The Bayreuth Festspielhaus opened in 1876 with the first complete performance of the "Ring", which took place from 13 to 17 August.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In 1882, London impresario Alfred Schulz-Curtius organized the first staging in the United Kingdom of the "Ring" cycle, conducted by Anton Seidl and directed by Angelo Neumann.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The first production of the "Ring" in Italy was in Venice (the place where Wagner died), just two months after his 1883 death, at La Fenice.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The first Australasian "Ring" (and "The Mastersingers of Nuremberg") was presented by the Thomas Quinlan company Melbourne and Sydney in 1913.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The "Ring" is a major undertaking for any opera company: staging four interlinked operas requires a huge commitment both artistically and financially; hence, in most opera houses, production of a new "Ring" cycle will happen over a number of years, with one or two operas in the cycle being added each year. The Bayreuth Festival, where the complete cycle is performed most years, is unusual in that a new cycle is almost always created within a single year.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Early productions of the "Ring" cycle stayed close to Wagner's original Bayreuth staging. Trends set at Bayreuth have continued to be influential. Following the closure of the Festspielhaus during the Second World War, the 1950s saw productions by Wagner's grandsons Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner (known as the 'New Bayreuth' style), which emphasised the human aspects of the drama in a more abstract setting.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Perhaps the most famous modern production was the centennial production of 1976, the "Jahrhundertring", directed by Patrice Chéreau and conducted by Pierre Boulez. Set in the industrial revolution, it replaced the depths of the Rhine with a hydroelectric power dam and featured grimy sets populated by men and gods in 19th and 20th century business suits. This drew heavily on the reading of the "Ring" as a revolutionary drama and critique of the modern world, famously expounded by George Bernard Shaw in "The Perfect Wagnerite". Early performances were booed but the audience of 1980 gave it a 45-minute ovation in its final year.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Seattle Opera has created three different productions of the tetralogy: "Ring 1", 1975 to 1984: Originally directed by George London, with designs by John Naccarato following the famous illustrations by Arthur Rackham. It was performed twice each summer, once in German, once in Andrew Porter's English adaptation. Henry Holt conducted all performances. "Ring 2", 1985–1995: Directed by Francois Rochaix, with sets and costumes designed by Robert Israel, lighting by Joan Sullivan, and supertitles (the first ever created for the "Ring") by Sonya Friedman. The production set the action in a world of nineteenth-century theatricality; it was initially controversial in 1985, it sold out its final performances in 1995. Conductors included Armin Jordan ("Die Walküre" in 1985), Manuel Rosenthal (1986), and Hermann Michael (1987, 1991, and 1995). "Ring 3", 2000–2013: the production, which became known as the "Green" "Ring", was in part inspired by the natural beauty of the Pacific Northwest. Directed by Stephen Wadsworth, set designer Thomas Lynch, costume designer Martin Pakledinaz, lighting designer Peter Kaczorowski; Armin Jordan conducted in 2000, Franz Vote in 2001, and Robert Spano in 2005 and 2009. The 2013 performances, conducted by Asher Fisch, were released as a commercial recording on compact disc and on iTunes.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In 2003 the first production of the cycle in Russia in modern times was conducted by Valery Gergiev at the Mariinsky Opera, Saint Petersburg, designed by George Tsypin. The production drew parallels with Ossetian mythology.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The Royal Danish Opera performed a complete "Ring" cycle in May 2006 in its new waterfront home, the Copenhagen Opera House. This version of the "Ring" tells the story from the viewpoint of Brünnhilde and has a distinct feminist angle. For example, in a key scene in "Die Walküre", it is Sieglinde and not Siegmund who manages to pull the sword Nothung out of a tree. At the end of the cycle, Brünnhilde does not die, but instead gives birth to Siegfried's child.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: San Francisco Opera and Washington National Opera began a co-production of a new cycle in 2006 directed by Francesca Zambello. The production uses imagery from various eras of American history and has a feminist and environmentalist viewpoint. Recent performances of this production took place at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington D.C. in April/May 2016, featuring Catherine Foster and Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde, Daniel Brenna as Siegfried, and Alan Held as Wotan.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Los Angeles Opera presented its first "Ring" cycle in 2010 directed by Achim Freyer. Freyer staged an abstract production that was praised by many critics but criticized by some of its own stars. The production featured a raked stage, flying props, screen projections and special effects.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The Metropolitan Opera began a new "Ring" cycle directed by French-Canadian theater director Robert Lepage in 2010. Premiering with "Das Rheingold" on opening night of the 2010/2011 Season conducted by James Levine with Bryn Terfel as Wotan. This was followed by "Die Walküre" in April 2011 starring Deborah Voigt. The 2011/12 season introduced "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung" with Voigt, Terfel, and Jay Hunter Morris before the entire cycle was given in the Spring of 2012 conducted by Fabio Luisi (who stepped in for Levine due to health issues). Lepage's staging was dominated by a 90,000 pound (40 tonne) structure which consisted of 24 identical aluminium planks able to rotate independently on a horizontal axis across the stage, providing level, sloping, angled or moving surfaces facing the audience. Bubbles, falling stones and fire were projected on to these surfaces, linked by computer with the music and movement of the characters. The subsequent HD recordings in 2013 won the Met's orchestra and chorus the Grammy Award for Best Opera Recording for their performance. In 2019, the Metropolitan Opera revived the Lepage staging for the first time since 2013 with Philippe Jordan conducting, Greer Grimsley and Michael Volle rotating as Wotan, and Andreas Schager rotating as Siegfried, and Met homegrown Christine Goerke as Brünnhilde. Lepage's "Machine", as it affectionately became known, underwent major reconfiguration for the revival in order to dampen the creaking that it had produced in the past (to the annoyance of audience members and critics) and to improve its reliability, as it had been known to break down during earlier runs including on the opening night of "Rheingold".


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Opera Australia presented the "Ring" cycle at the State Theatre in Melbourne, Australia, in November 2013, directed by Neil Armfield and conducted by Pietari Inkinen. "Classical Voice America" heralded the production as "one of the best Rings anywhere in a long time." The production was presented again in Melbourne from 21 November to 16 December 2016 starring Lise Lindstrom, Stefan Vinke, Amber Wagner and Jacqueline Dark.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: It is possible to perform "The Ring" with fewer resources than usual. In 1990, the City of Birmingham Touring Opera (now Birmingham Opera Company), presented a two-evening adaptation (by Jonathan Dove) for a limited number of solo singers, each doubling several roles, and 18 orchestral players. This version was subsequently given productions in the USA. A heavily cut-down version (7 hours plus intervals) was performed at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires on 26 November 2012 to mark the 200th anniversary of Wagner's birth.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In a different approach, "Der Ring in Minden" staged the cycle on the small stage of the Stadttheater Minden, beginning in 2015 with "Das Rheingold", followed by the other parts in the succeeding years, and culminating with the complete cycle performed twice in 2019. The stage director was Gerd Heinz, and Frank Beermann conducted the Nordwestdeutsche Philharmonie, playing at the back of the stage. The singers acted in front of the orchestra, making an intimate approach to the dramatic situations possible. The project received international recognition.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Orchestral versions of the "Ring" cycle, summarizing the work in a single movement of an hour or so, have been made by Leopold Stokowski, Lorin Maazel ("Der Ring ohne Worte") (1988) and Henk de Vlieger ("The Ring: an Orchestral Adventure"), (1991).


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: English-Canadian comedian and singer Anna Russell recorded a twenty-two-minute version of the "Ring" for her album "Anna Russell Sings! Again?" in 1953, characterized by camp humour and sharp wit.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: Produced by the Ridiculous Theatrical Company, Charles Ludlam's 1977 play "Der Ring Gott Farblonjet" was a spoof of Wagner's operas. The show received a well-reviewed 1990 revival in New York at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: In 1991, Seattle Opera premiered a musical comedy parody of the Ring Cycle called Das Barbecü, with book and lyrics by Jim Luigs and music by Scott Warrender. It follows the outline of the cycle's plot but shifts the setting to Texas ranch country. It was later produced off-broadway and elsewhere around the world.


title: Der Ring des Nibelungen

text: The German two-part television movie "" (2004, also known as "Ring of the Nibelungs", "Die Nibelungen", "Curse of the Ring" and "Sword of Xanten"), is based in some of the same material Richard Wagner used for his music dramas "Siegfried" and "Götterdämmerung".


title: Bull Terrier

text: The Bull Terrier is a breed of dog in the terrier family. There is also a miniature version of this breed which is officially known as the Miniature Bull Terrier.


title: Bull Terrier

text: The Bull Terrier's most recognizable feature is its head, described as 'egg-shaped head', when viewed from the front; the top of the skull is almost flat. The profile curves gently downwards from the top of the skull to the tip of the nose, which is black and bent downwards at the tip, with well-developed nostrils. The lower jaw is deep and strong. The unique triangular eyes are small, dark, and deep-set. Bull Terriers are the only dogs that have triangular eyes. The body is full and round, with strong, muscular shoulders. The tail is carried horizontally. They are either white, red, fawn, black, brindle, or a combination of these.


title: Bull Terrier

text: Bull Terriers can be both independent and stubborn and for this reason are not considered suitable for an inexperienced dog owner. A Bull Terrier has an even temperament and is amenable to discipline. Although obstinate, the breed is described by the Bull Terrier Club as particularly good with people. Early socialization will ensure that the dog will get along with other dogs and animals. Their personality is described as courageous, full of spirit, with a fun-loving attitude, a children-loving dog and a perfect family member. Although the breed has been a target of breed-specific legislation, a 2008 study in Germany did not find that Bull Terriers had any significant temperament difference from Golden Retrievers in overall temperament researches.


title: Bull Terrier

text: Deafness occurs in 20.4% of pure white Bull Terriers and 1.3% of colored Bull Terriers, often being difficult to notice at a young age. Many Bull Terriers have a tendency to develop skin allergies. Insect bites, such as those from fleas, and sometimes mosquitoes and mites, can produce a generalised allergic response of hives, rash, and itching. A UK breed survey puts their median lifespan at 10 years and their mean at 9 years (1 s.f., RSE = 13.87% 2 d. p.), with a good number of dogs living to 10–15 years.


title: Bull Terrier

text: At the start of the 19th century, the "bull and terrier" breeds were developed to satisfy the needs for vermin control and animal-based blood sports. The "bull and terriers" were based on the Old English Bulldog (now extinct) and Old English Terriers with possible other terriers. This new breed combined the speed and dexterity of lightly built terriers with the dour tenacity of the Bulldog, which was a poor performer in most combat situations, having been bred almost exclusively for fighting bulls and bears tied to a post. Many breeders began to breed bulldogs with terriers, arguing that such a mixture enhances the quality of fighting. Despite the fact that a cross between a bulldog and a terrier was of high value, very little or nothing was done to preserve the breed in its original form. Due to the lack of breed standards—breeding was for performance, not appearance—the "bull and terrier" eventually divided into the ancestors of "Bull Terriers" and "Staffordshire Bull Terriers", both smaller and easier to handle than the progenitor.


title: Bull Terrier

text: In the mid-19th century, James Hinks started breeding "bull and terriers" with "English White Terriers" (now extinct), looking for a cleaner appearance with better legs and nicer head. In 1862, Hinks entered a dam called "Puss" sired by his white Bulldog called "Madman" into the Bull Terrier Class at the dog show held at the Cremorne Gardens in Chelsea, London. Originally, these dogs did not yet have the now-familiar "egg face", but kept the stop in the skull profile.


title: Bull Terrier

text: The dog was immediately popular and breeding continued, using Dalmatian, Spanish Pointer, and Whippet to increase elegance and agility; and Borzoi and Rough Collie to reduce the stop. Hinks wanted his dogs white, and bred specifically for this. The first modern Bull Terrier is now recognized as "Lord Gladiator", from 1917, being the first dog with no stop at all.


title: Bull Terrier

text: Due to medical problems associated with all-white breeding, Ted Lyon among others began introducing color, using Stafford shire Bull Terriers in the early 20th century. Colored Bull Terriers were recognized as a separate variety (at least by the AKC) in 1936. Brindle is the preferred color, but other colors are welcome.


title: Mike Colter

text: Mike Randal Colter (born August 26, 1976) is an American actor best known for his role as Luke Cage in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, appearing in the streaming television series "Luke Cage" (2016–2018), "The Defenders" (2017), and "Jessica Jones" (2015; 2019). He has also appeared as Lemond Bishop in the television series "The Good Wife" (2010–2015) and "The Good Fight" (2017–present), Malcolm Ward in "Ringer" (2011–2012), Jameson Locke in the "Halo" franchise (2014–2015), Agent J's father in "Men in Black 3", and David Acosta, a former journalist studying to be a Catholic priest in the CBS/Paramount+ series "Evil."


title: Mike Colter

text: Colter was born in Columbia, South Carolina the youngest of four children born to Eddie Lee, Sr. and Freddie Marion (née Mitchell) Colter grew up in St. Matthews, South Carolina. He is a graduate of Calhoun County High School. In his senior high school yearbook, his senior superlative as voted by the class was "most ambitious." Colter spent a year at Benedict College before transferring to the University of South Carolina, receiving a bachelor's degree in theater in 1999. He obtained an MFA degree in acting from the Rutgers University Mason Gross School of the Arts.


title: Mike Colter

text: Colter's first role was in the film "Million Dollar Baby" as boxer Big Willie Little. He also guest starred on "", "", "The Good Wife", "ER", and "The Parkers" as well as several TV movies. He starred in the series "Ringer".


title: Mike Colter

text: In 2012, he was featured in the final act of the film "Men in Black 3", playing agent J's father in the year 1969.


title: Mike Colter

text: In 2014, Colter began portraying the role of Agent Jameson Locke in the "Halo" franchise. Colter starred in the series "Halo: Nightfall" and provided the motion capture for Agent Locke in "", and the voice acting is performed by Ike Amadi. He also co-starred as Luke Cage in "Jessica Jones" on Netflix. The first season was released online on November 20, 2015. This was followed by the character's own series, "Luke Cage", and the first season was released on September 30, 2016. The second season release followed on June 22, 2018. In between the two seasons, Colter also played Luke in "The Defenders". He also starred in the 2018 alien invasion movie "Extinction".


title: Mike Colter

text: Colter was announced as the male lead in the CBS drama pilot, "Evil" as David Acosta, a Catholic seminarian who assesses unexplained phenomena for supernatural or scientific explanations.


title: Mike Colter

text: Colter met his future wife, Iva, at Rutgers University in New Jersey while he was pursuing his Masters and she was working on her PhD. The couple married in 2002. He also confirmed on the September 27, 2016, segment of "The Wendy Williams Show" that he has a daughter with Iva. The couple's second daughter was born in October 2018. Colter is a second cousin of actress Viola Davis. He resides in Los Angeles.


title: Mike Colter

text: In 2019, Colter played for the "home" roster during the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game at the Bojangles' Coliseum in Charlotte, North Carolina. The roster was made up of celebrities with Carolina roots.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: The Italian Job is a 2003 American heist action film directed by F. Gary Gray and starring Mark Wahlberg, Charlize Theron, Edward Norton, Jason Statham, Seth Green, Mos Def and Donald Sutherland. An American remake of the 1969 British film, but with an original story, the plot follows a motley crew of thieves who plan to steal gold from a former associate who double-crossed them. Despite the shared title, the plot and characters of this film differ from those of its source material; Gray described the film as "an homage to the original".


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: Most of the film was shot on location in Venice and Los Angeles, where canals and streets, respectively, were temporarily shut down during principal photography. Distributed by Paramount Pictures, "The Italian Job" was theatrically released in the United States on May 30, 2003, and grossed over $176 million worldwide. Critical response was largely positive, with publications comparing it favorably to the original film while highlighting the action sequences, performances of the cast and humor. A sequel, "The Brazilian Job", was reportedly in development in 2004, but the sequel was subsequently cancelled.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: Professional safecracker John Bridger's team is set to steal $35 million worth of gold bullion from a safe in Venice from Italian gangsters who had stolen it weeks earlier. Professional fixer Charlie Croker, computer expert Lyle or "Napster", wheelman Handsome Rob, inside man Steve, and explosives expert Left Ear comprise the team. Although the heist is successful, Steve double-crosses them as they drive towards Austria with the bullion. With another crew he takes it for himself and kills John. Rob drives the van over the bridge into the water to protect the others, using air tanks from the heist to stay alive. Steve leaves them for dead.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: A year later in Philadelphia, Charlie finds Steve, under a new identity and is laundering the gold through Ukrainian jeweler Yevhen to finance his lavish lifestyle in Los Angeles. Charlie gathers the team, and also recruits John's daughter Stella, a skilled private safe expert, offering her the chance to avenge her father's death. They stake out Steve's mansion, and Stella, disguised as a cable technician, maps out its interior and determines the location of Steve's safe containing the bullion.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: Unaware of Stella's identity, Steve asks her out on a date. The plan is to blow the safe while Steve is away on his supposed date, using three heavily modified Mini Coopers to transport the gold out of the mansion. Supplier Skinny Pete gets the explosives and mechanic Wrench modifies the cars.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: On Steve's last visit to Yevhen, Yevhen accidentally reveals that he knows about the Venice heist. To cover his tracks, Steve kills him. Mashkov, the leader of a Ukrainian crime family and Yehven's cousin, traces the gold back to Skinny Pete via Yevhen's ex-employee Vance.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: On the night of the planned heist, the crew discovers that Steve's neighbors are having a party so they have to abort, as the explosives would draw attention. Stella still has to meet Steve, but inadvertently gives away her identity by using her dad's catchphrase. The team arrives to protect her, and Steve taunts them as he says he still has the upper hand.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: Steve plans to transport the gold to Mexico City by armored car to a private plane from LAX which Napster hears through his tap on his phone. Charlie and his gang make a new plan to steal the gold en route to the airport by hijacking the city's traffic control system, forcing the armored car to a planned spot where they will execute the heist.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: On the day, they are surprised when three armored trucks leave Steve's mansion, but Napster determines which one carries the bullion and manipulates the traffic accordingly. As Steve is monitoring the transport by helicopter, they maneuver the car to the target spot and detonating explosives to drop the part of the road with the car into the subway tunnel below.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: Opening the truck, they find the gold in a different safe from the one that held it before. Struggling initially, Stella cracks it open and they divide the $27 million in gold among the three Coopers. They race from the subway to the LA River and through the city, pursued by Steve's henchmen on motorcycles, with Napster creating a green wave to evade traffic.


title: The Italian Job (2003 film)

text: Stella, Handsome Rob, and Left Ear head to Union Station, while Charlie lures Steve away in his helicopter. Steve tries to kill him by having his helicopter pilot destroy Charlie's Mini Cooper, but the helicopter's tail rotor is damaged, grounding it.