title: Eraser (film)

text: Director Chuck Russell and star Arnold Schwarzenegger were originally working on another project together when "Eraser" was brought to their attention. Russell was excited about the possibilities the film could bring between actor and the character: "I see Arnold the way a lot of people do – as a mythic, bigger-than-life character – and that's who Kruger is. The character and the scenario are based firmly in reality, but I liked the mythic proportions of this man with a strong sense of duty, a strong sense of honor, who will literally do anything to protect a noble witness. I was excited about doing a film that had heroic proportions." Producer Arnold Kopelson was also keen to cast Schwarzenegger in the role of "The Eraser", having talked with the actor about working on projects before. Vanessa Williams would be cast as the lead female character, Lee Cullen, the key witness Eraser must protect. Williams came to the attention of the Kopelsons when Maria Shriver, the wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, suggested her for the role. To play the character of DeGuerin (Kruger's mentor and the main sociopathic antagonist), the filmmakers wanted an actor who could "convey intelligence, skill and magnetism – a more mature version of the Kruger character", they would cast James Caan in this role. Before Caan was officially cast, Jonathan Pryce was also considered for the role. The screenplay was initially the work of Tony Puryear, who had a background in advertising and rap videos. Writers Walon Green and Michael S. Chernuchin had previously worked together on the television drama "Law & Order". Extensive, uncredited rewrites were made by Frank Darabont and William Wisher Jr. (""). Additional rewrites were made by John Milius as a favor to Schwarzenegger.


title: Eraser (film)

text: The "rail-gun" featured in the film as a key plot device, Schwarzenegger talks on the subject: "We paid a lot of attention to making the audience feel the danger of this weapon, that anyone can be outside of your house, looking right through the walls. It really leaves you nowhere to hide," he explains. "But, on top of that, we show the sophistication of the weapon in a lot of fun ways: you not only see through a building, you see a person's skeleton and even their heart beating inside. There are some great visual effects there."


title: Eraser (film)

text: "Eraser" began principal photography in New York City, locations would include The Harlem Rail Yard in the South Bronx, Central Park's Sheep Meadow and Chinatown. Following shooting in New York production moved to Washington D.C. For the action sequence which takes place in the Reptile House of New York City Zoo, interiors were built on the soundstages of the Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California. The screenplay went through numerous drafts with some of the most prominent screenwriters in the business, with a great deal of uncredited script-doctoring work being done by Graham Yost and William Wisher.


title: Eraser (film)

text: One of the most demanding action sequences in the film featured the character of Kruger forced to flee from a jet speeding through the skies at per hour. Speaking about this scene, director Russell says: "These things are jigsaw puzzle pieces not only within shooting sequence but within each shot. You had elements that were live action, elements that were miniature, sometimes computer-generated, and they're all married together in the final processing." Some of the physical stunts were performed by Schwarzenegger himself. For the "aerial" stunt Arnold was required to fall in vertical descent and perform a back flip in mid-flight. The shot took seven takes to get right. In the final film, Kruger appears to drop along the length of the fuselage and past the flaming engine of the jet thanks to inventive camera angles and special effects.


title: Eraser (film)

text: The original name of the Cyrez corporations was "Cyrex". However, Cyrix, a microprocessor corporation and rival of Intel, protested. The name was then changed digitally in any scenes where the name appeared in a fairly costly process for the time, and dialogue redubbed. Some instances of the "Cyrex" logo are still visible in the finished film.


title: Eraser (film)

text: "Eraser" had an opening weekend of $24.5 million in the United States during the summer season of 1996, staying ahead of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". The final US gross was $101.2 million and final worldwide gross was $242.3 million. "Eraser" was a commercial success in the Philippines, grossing more at the local box office than "Twister", "", and "The Rock". The film also had the largest opening for a Warner Bros. film in Malaysia, holding that record for six years until 2002 when it was given to "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets".


title: Eraser (film)

text: Based on 53 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an overall approval rating of 42% and an average score of 5.1/10. The site's consensus reads: ""Eraser"s shoot-'em-up action might show off some cutting edge weaponry, but its rote story is embarrassingly obsolete". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 56 out of 100 based on reviews from 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Eraser (film)

text: A more positive review came from Roger Ebert, who gave the film 3 stars out of a possible 4. He wrote that there were so many plot holes that "it helps to have a short attention span", but that "Eraser" is nonetheless "actually good action fun, with spectacular stunts and special effects" and a spirited performance from Williams "running and jumping and fighting and shooting and kicking and screaming and being tied to chairs and smuggling computer discs and looking great."


title: Eraser (film)

text: In September 2021, a sequel, which became a remake of the film instead, was announced to be in development with Dominic Sherwood in the lead role. The film co-stars Jacky Lai, and the supporting cast includes McKinley Belcher III and Eddie Ramos. It was filmed secretly in mid-2021, for release through Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. The film was released theatrically in Germany on March 31, 2022, and on Digital, Blu-ray & DVD in United States on June 7, 2022. It will later be available for streaming on HBO Max in fall 2022.


title: Biological warfare

text: Biological warfare, also known as germ warfare, is the use of biological toxins or infectious agents such as bacteria, viruses, insects, and fungi with the intent to kill, harm or incapacitate humans, animals or plants as an act of war. Biological weapons (often termed "bio-weapons", "biological threat agents", or "bio-agents") are living organisms or replicating entities ( "i.e." viruses, which are not universally considered "alive"). Entomological (insect) warfare is a subtype of biological warfare.


title: Biological warfare

text: Offensive biological warfare is prohibited under customary international humanitarian law and several international treaties. In particular, the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) bans the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Therefore, the use of biological agents in armed conflict is a war crime. In contrast, defensive biological research for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes is not prohibited by the BWC.


title: Biological warfare

text: Biological warfare is distinct from warfare involving other types of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), including nuclear warfare, chemical warfare, and radiological warfare. None of these are considered conventional weapons, which are deployed primarily for their explosive, kinetic, or incendiary potential.


title: Biological warfare

text: Biological weapons may be employed in various ways to gain a strategic or tactical advantage over the enemy, either by threats or by actual deployments. Like some chemical weapons, biological weapons may also be useful as area denial weapons. These agents may be lethal or non-lethal, and may be targeted against a single individual, a group of people, or even an entire population. They may be developed, acquired, stockpiled or deployed by nation states or by non-national groups. In the latter case, or if a nation-state uses it clandestinely, it may also be considered bioterrorism.


title: Biological warfare

text: Biological warfare and chemical warfare overlap to an extent, as the use of toxins produced by some living organisms is considered under the provisions of both the BWC and the Chemical Weapons Convention. Toxins and psychochemical weapons are often referred to as "midspectrum agents". Unlike bioweapons, these midspectrum agents do not reproduce in their host and are typically characterized by shorter incubation periods.


title: Biological warfare

text: A biological attack could conceivably result in large numbers of civilian casualties and cause severe disruption to economic and societal infrastructure.


title: Biological warfare

text: A nation or group that can pose a credible threat of mass casualty has the ability to alter the terms under which other nations or groups interact with it. When indexed to weapon mass and cost of development and storage, biological weapons possess destructive potential and loss of life far in excess of nuclear, chemical or conventional weapons. Accordingly, biological agents are potentially useful as strategic deterrents, in addition to their utility as offensive weapons on the battlefield.


title: Biological warfare

text: As a tactical weapon for military use, a significant problem with biological warfare is that it would take days to be effective, and therefore might not immediately stop an opposing force. Some biological agents (smallpox, pneumonic plague) have the capability of person-to-person transmission via aerosolized respiratory droplets. This feature can be undesirable, as the agent(s) may be transmitted by this mechanism to unintended populations, including neutral or even friendly forces. Worse still, such a weapon could "escape" the laboratory where it was developed, even if there was no intent to use it – for example by infecting a researcher who then transmits it to the outside world before realizing that they were infected. Several cases are known of researchers becoming infected and dying of Ebola, which they had been working with in the lab (though nobody else was infected in those cases) – while there is no evidence that their work was directed towards biological warfare, it demonstrates the potential for accidental infection even of careful researchers fully aware of the dangers. While containment of biological warfare is less of a concern for certain criminal or terrorist organizations, it remains a significant concern for the military and civilian populations of virtually all nations.


title: Biological warfare

text: Rudimentary forms of biological warfare have been practiced since antiquity. The earliest documented incident of the intention to use biological weapons is recorded in Hittite texts of 1500–1200 BCE, in which victims of tularemia were driven into enemy lands, causing an epidemic. The Assyrians poisoned enemy wells with the fungus ergot, though with unknown results. Scythian archers dipped their arrows and Roman soldiers their swords into excrements and cadavers – victims were commonly infected by tetanus as result. In 1346, the bodies of Mongol warriors of the Golden Horde who had died of plague were thrown over the walls of the besieged Crimean city of Kaffa. Specialists disagree about whether this operation was responsible for the spread of the Black Death into Europe, Near East and North Africa, resulting in the deaths of approximately 25 million Europeans.


title: Biological warfare

text: Biological agents were extensively used in many parts of Africa from the sixteenth century AD, most of the time in the form of poisoned arrows, or powder spread on the war front as well as poisoning of horses and water supply of the enemy forces. In Borgu, there were specific mixtures to kill, hypnotize, make the enemy bold, and to act as an antidote against the poison of the enemy as well. The creation of biologicals was reserved for a specific and professional class of medicine-men.


title: Biological warfare

text: During the French and Indian War, in June 1763 a group of Native Americans laid siege to British-held Fort Pitt. The commander of Fort Pitt, Simeon Ecuyer, ordered his men to take smallpox-infested blankets from the infirmary and give it to a Lenape delegation during the siege. A reported outbreak that began the spring before left as many as one hundred Native Americans dead in Ohio Country from 1763 to 1764. It is not clear whether the smallpox was a result of the Fort Pitt incident or the virus was already present among the Delaware people as outbreaks happened on their own every dozen or so years and the delegates were met again later and seemingly had not contracted smallpox. During the American Revolutionary War, Continental Army officer George Washington mentioned to the Continental Congress that he had heard a rumor from a sailor that his opponent during the Siege of Boston, General William Howe, had deliberately sent civilians out of the city in the hopes of spreading the ongoing smallpox epidemic to American lines; Washington, remaining unconvinced, wrote that he "could hardly give credit to" the claim. Washington had already inoculated his soldiers, diminishing the effect of the epidemic. Some historians have claimed that a detachment of the Corps of Royal Marines stationed in New South Wales, Australia deliberately used smallpox there in 1789. Dr Seth Carus states: "Ultimately, we have a strong circumstantial case supporting the theory that someone deliberately introduced smallpox in the Aboriginal population."


title: Biological warfare

text: By 1900 the germ theory and advances in bacteriology brought a new level of sophistication to the techniques for possible use of bio-agents in war. Biological sabotage in the form of anthrax and glanders was undertaken on behalf of the Imperial German government during World War I (1914–1918), with indifferent results. The Geneva Protocol of 1925 prohibited the use of chemical and biological weapons.


title: Biological warfare

text: With the onset of World War II, the Ministry of Supply in the United Kingdom established a biological warfare program at Porton Down, headed by the microbiologist Paul Fildes. The research was championed by Winston Churchill and soon tularemia, anthrax, brucellosis, and botulism toxins had been effectively weaponized. In particular, Gruinard Island in Scotland, was contaminated with anthrax during a series of extensive tests for the next 56 years. Although the UK never offensively used the biological weapons it developed, its program was the first to successfully weaponize a variety of deadly pathogens and bring them into industrial production. Other nations, notably France and Japan, had begun their own biological weapons programs.


title: Biological warfare

text: When the United States entered the war, Allied resources were pooled at the request of the British. The U.S. then established a large research program and industrial complex at Fort Detrick, Maryland in 1942 under the direction of George W. Merck. The biological and chemical weapons developed during that period were tested at the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Soon there were facilities for the mass production of anthrax spores, brucellosis, and botulism toxins, although the war was over before these weapons could be of much operational use.


title: Biological warfare

text: The most notorious program of the period was run by the secret Imperial Japanese Army Unit 731 during the war, based at Pingfan in Manchuria and commanded by Lieutenant General Shirō Ishii. This biological warfare research unit conducted often fatal human experiments on prisoners, and produced biological weapons for combat use. Although the Japanese effort lacked the technological sophistication of the American or British programs, it far outstripped them in its widespread application and indiscriminate brutality. Biological weapons were used against Chinese soldiers and civilians in several military campaigns. In 1940, the Japanese Army Air Force bombed Ningbo with ceramic bombs full of fleas carrying the bubonic plague. Many of these operations were ineffective due to inefficient delivery systems, although up to 400,000 people may have died. During the Zhejiang-Jiangxi Campaign in 1942, around 1,700 Japanese troops died out of a total 10,000 Japanese soldiers who fell ill with disease when their own biological weapons attack rebounded on their own forces.


title: Biological warfare

text: During the final months of World War II, Japan planned to use plague as a biological weapon against U.S. civilians in San Diego, California, during Operation Cherry Blossoms at Night. The plan was set to launch on 22 September 1945, but it was not executed because of Japan's surrender on 15 August 1945.


title: Biological warfare

text: In Britain, the 1950s saw the weaponization of plague, brucellosis, tularemia and later equine encephalomyelitis and vaccinia viruses, but the programme was unilaterally cancelled in 1956. The United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories weaponized anthrax, tularemia, brucellosis, Q-fever and others.


title: Biological warfare

text: In 1969, US President Richard Nixon decided to unilaterally terminate the offensive biological weapons program of the US, allowing only scientific research for defensive measures. This decision increased the momentum of the negotiations for a ban on biological warfare, which took place from 1969 to 1972 in the United Nation's Conference of the Committee on Disarmament in Geneva. These negotiations resulted in the Biological Weapons Convention, which was opened for signature on 10 April 1972 and entered into force on 26 March 1975 after its ratification by 22 states.


title: Biological warfare

text: Despite being a party and depositary to the BWC, the Soviet Union continued and expanded its massive offensive biological weapons program, under the leadership of the allegedly civilian institution Biopreparat. The Soviet Union attracted international suspicion after the 1979 Sverdlovsk anthrax leak killed approximately 65 to 100 people.


title: Biological warfare

text: International restrictions on biological warfare began with the 1925 Geneva Protocol, which prohibits the use but not the possession or development of biological and chemical weapons. Upon ratification of the Geneva Protocol, several countries made reservations regarding its applicability and use in retaliation. Due to these reservations, it was in practice a "no-first-use" agreement only.


title: Biological warfare

text: The 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) supplements the Geneva Protocol by prohibiting the development, production, acquisition, transfer, stockpiling and use of biological weapons. Having entered into force on 26 March 1975, the BWC was the first multilateral disarmament treaty to ban the production of an entire category of weapons of mass destruction. As of March 2021, 183 states have become party to the treaty. The BWC is considered to have established a strong global norm against biological weapons, which is reflected in the treaty's preamble, stating that the use of biological weapons would be "repugnant to the conscience of mankind". The BWC's effectiveness has been limited due to insufficient institutional support and the absence of any formal verification regime to monitor compliance.


title: Biological warfare

text: In 1985, the Australia Group was established, a multilateral export control regime of 43 countries aiming to prevent the proliferation of chemical and biological weapons.


title: Biological warfare

text: In 2004, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1540, which obligates all UN Member States to develop and enforce appropriate legal and regulatory measures against the proliferation of chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and their means of delivery, in particular, to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to non-state actors.


title: Biological warfare

text: Biological weapons are difficult to detect, economical and easy to use, making them appealing to terrorists. The cost of a biological weapon is estimated to be about 0.05 percent the cost of a conventional weapon in order to produce similar numbers of mass casualties per kilometer square. Moreover, their production is very easy as common technology can be used to produce biological warfare agents, like that used in production of vaccines, foods, spray devices, beverages and antibiotics. A major factor in biological warfare that attracts terrorists is that they can easily escape before the government agencies or secret agencies have even started their investigation. This is because the potential organism has an incubation period of 3 to 7 days, after which the results begin to appear, thereby giving terrorists a lead.


title: Biological warfare

text: A technique called Clustered, Regularly Interspaced, Short Palindromic Repeat (CRISPR-Cas9) is now so cheap and widely available that scientists fear that amateurs will start experimenting with them. In this technique, a DNA sequence is cut off and replaced with a new sequence, e.g. one that codes for a particular protein, with the intent of modifying an organism's traits. Concerns have emerged regarding do-it-yourself biology research organizations due to their associated risk that a rogue amateur DIY researcher could attempt to develop dangerous bioweapons using genome editing technology.


title: Biological warfare

text: In 2002, when CNN went through Al-Qaeda's (AQ's) experiments with crude poisons, they found out that AQ had begun planning ricin and cyanide attacks with the help of a loose association of terrorist cells. The associates had infiltrated many countries like Turkey, Italy, Spain, France and others. In 2015, to combat the threat of bioterrorism, a National Blueprint for Biodefense was issued by the Blue-Ribbon Study Panel on Biodefense. Also, 233 potential exposures of select biological agents outside of the primary barriers of the biocontainment in the US were described by the annual report of the Federal Select Agent Program.


title: Biological warfare

text: Though a verification system can reduce bioterrorism, an employee, or a lone terrorist having adequate knowledge of a bio-technology company's facilities, can cause potential danger by utilizing, without proper oversight and supervision, that company's resources. Moreover, it has been found that about 95% of accidents that have occurred due to low security have been done by employees or those who had a security clearance.


title: Biological warfare

text: Entomological warfare (EW) is a type of biological warfare that uses insects to attack the enemy. The concept has existed for centuries and research and development have continued into the modern era. EW has been used in battle by Japan and several other nations have developed and been accused of using an entomological warfare program. EW may employ insects in a direct attack or as vectors to deliver a biological agent, such as plague. Essentially, EW exists in three varieties. One type of EW involves infecting insects with a pathogen and then dispersing the insects over target areas. The insects then act as a vector, infecting any person or animal they might bite. Another type of EW is a direct insect attack against crops; the insect may not be infected with any pathogen but instead represents a threat to agriculture. The final method uses uninfected insects, such as bees or wasps, to directly attack the enemy.


title: Biological warfare

text: Theoretically, novel approaches in biotechnology, such as synthetic biology could be used in the future to design novel types of biological warfare agents.


title: Biological warfare

text: Most of the biosecurity concerns in synthetic biology are focused on the role of DNA synthesis and the risk of producing genetic material of lethal viruses (e.g. 1918 Spanish flu, polio) in the lab. Recently, the CRISPR/Cas system has emerged as a promising technique for gene editing. It was hailed by The Washington Post as "the most important innovation in the synthetic biology space in nearly 30 years." While other methods take months or years to edit gene sequences, CRISPR speeds that time up to weeks. Due to its ease of use and accessibility, it has raised a number of ethical concerns, especially surrounding its use in the biohacking space.


title: Biological warfare

text: Ideal characteristics of a biological agent to be used as a weapon against humans are high infectivity, high virulence, non-availability of vaccines and availability of an effective and efficient delivery system. Stability of the weaponized agent (the ability of the agent to retain its infectivity and virulence after a prolonged period of storage) may also be desirable, particularly for military applications, and the ease of creating one is often considered. Control of the spread of the agent may be another desired characteristic.


title: Biological warfare

text: The primary difficulty is not the production of the biological agent, as many biological agents used in weapons can be manufactured relatively quickly, cheaply and easily. Rather, it is the weaponization, storage, and delivery in an effective vehicle to a vulnerable target that pose significant problems.


title: Biological warfare

text: For example, "Bacillus anthracis" is considered an effective agent for several reasons. First, it forms hardy spores, perfect for dispersal aerosols. Second, this organism is not considered transmissible from person to person, and thus rarely if ever causes secondary infections. A pulmonary anthrax infection starts with ordinary influenza-like symptoms and progresses to a lethal hemorrhagic mediastinitis within 3–7 days, with a fatality rate that is 90% or higher in untreated patients. Finally, friendly personnel and civilians can be protected with suitable antibiotics.


title: Biological warfare

text: Agents considered for weaponization, or known to be weaponized, include bacteria such as "Bacillus anthracis", "Brucella" spp., "Burkholderia mallei", "Burkholderia pseudomallei", "Chlamydophila psittaci", "Coxiella burnetii", "Francisella tularensis", some of the Rickettsiaceae (especially "Rickettsia prowazekii" and "Rickettsia rickettsii"), "Shigella" spp., "Vibrio cholerae", and "Yersinia pestis". Many viral agents have been studied and/or weaponized, including some of the Bunyaviridae (especially Rift Valley fever virus), Ebolavirus, many of the Flaviviridae (especially Japanese encephalitis virus), Machupo virus, Coronaviruses (especially SARS-Cov-2 that causes COVID-19), Marburg virus, Variola virus, and yellow fever virus. Fungal agents that have been studied include "Coccidioides" spp.


title: Biological warfare

text: Toxins that can be used as weapons include ricin, staphylococcal enterotoxin B, botulinum toxin, saxitoxin, and many mycotoxins. These toxins and the organisms that produce them are sometimes referred to as select agents. In the United States, their possession, use, and transfer are regulated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Select Agent Program.


title: Biological warfare

text: The former US biological warfare program categorized its weaponized anti-personnel bio-agents as either Lethal Agents ("Bacillus anthracis", "Francisella tularensis", Botulinum toxin) or Incapacitating Agents ("Brucella suis", "Coxiella burnetii", Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus, Staphylococcal enterotoxin B).


title: Biological warfare

text: The United States developed an anti-crop capability during the Cold War that used plant diseases (bioherbicides, or mycoherbicides) for destroying enemy agriculture. Biological weapons also target fisheries as well as water-based vegetation. It was believed that the destruction of enemy agriculture on a strategic scale could thwart Sino-Soviet aggression in a general war. Diseases such as wheat blast and rice blast were weaponized in aerial spray tanks and cluster bombs for delivery to enemy watersheds in agricultural regions to initiate epiphytotic (epidemics among plants). On the other hand, some sources report that these agents were "stockpiled" but never "weaponized". When the United States renounced its offensive biological warfare program in 1969 and 1970, the vast majority of its biological arsenal was composed of these plant diseases. Enterotoxins and Mycotoxins were not affected by Nixon's order.


title: Biological warfare

text: Though herbicides are chemicals, they are often grouped with biological warfare and chemical warfare because they may work in a similar manner as biotoxins or bioregulators. The Army Biological Laboratory tested each agent and the Army's Technical Escort Unit was responsible for the transport of all chemical, biological, radiological (nuclear) materials.


title: Biological warfare

text: Biological warfare can also specifically target plants to destroy crops or defoliate vegetation. The United States and Britain discovered plant growth regulators (i.e., herbicides) during the Second World War, which were then used by the UK in the counterinsurgency operations of the Malayan Emergency. Inspired by the use in Malaysia, the US military effort in the Vietnam War included a mass dispersal of a variety of herbicides, famously Agent Orange, with the aim of destroying farmland and defoliating forests used as cover by the Viet Cong. Sri Lanka deployed military defoliants in its prosecution of the Eelam War against Tamil insurgents.


title: Biological warfare

text: During World War I, German saboteurs used anthrax and glanders to sicken cavalry horses in U.S. and France, sheep in Romania, and livestock in Argentina intended for the Entente forces. One of these German saboteurs was Anton Dilger. Also, Germany itself became a victim of similar attacks – horses bound for Germany were infected with Burkholderia by French operatives in Switzerland.


title: Biological warfare

text: During World War II, the U.S. and Canada secretly investigated the use of rinderpest, a highly lethal disease of cattle, as a bioweapon.


title: Biological warfare

text: In the 1980s Soviet Ministry of Agriculture had successfully developed variants of foot-and-mouth disease, and rinderpest against cows, African swine fever for pigs, and psittacosis to kill the chicken. These agents were prepared to spray them down from tanks attached to airplanes over hundreds of miles. The secret program was code-named "Ecology".


title: Biological warfare

text: During the Mau Mau Uprising in 1952, the poisonous latex of the African milk bush was used to kill cattle.


title: Biological warfare

text: In 2010 at The Meeting of the States Parties to the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bacteriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and Their Destruction in Geneva


title: Biological warfare

text: the sanitary epidemiological reconnaissance was suggested as well-tested means for enhancing the monitoring of infections and parasitic agents, for the practical implementation of the International Health Regulations (2005). The aim was to prevent and minimize the consequences of natural outbreaks of dangerous infectious diseases as well as the threat of alleged use of biological weapons against BTWC States Parties.


title: Biological warfare

text: Many countries require their active-duty military personnel to get vaccinated for certain diseases that may potentially be used as a bioweapon such as anthrax.


title: Biological warfare

text: It is important to note that most classical and modern biological weapons' pathogens can be obtained from a plant or an animal which is naturally infected.


title: Biological warfare

text: In the largest biological weapons accident known—the anthrax outbreak in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg) in the Soviet Union in 1979—sheep became ill with anthrax as far as 200 kilometers from the release point of the organism from a military facility in the southeastern portion of the city and still off-limits to visitors today, (see Sverdlovsk Anthrax leak).


title: Biological warfare

text: Thus, a robust surveillance system involving human clinicians and veterinarians may identify a bioweapons attack early in the course of an epidemic, permitting the prophylaxis of disease in the vast majority of people (and/or animals) exposed but not yet ill.


title: Biological warfare

text: For example, in the case of anthrax, it is likely that by 24–36 hours after an attack, some small percentage of individuals (those with the compromised immune system or who had received a large dose of the organism due to proximity to the release point) will become ill with classical symptoms and signs (including a virtually unique chest X-ray finding, often recognized by public health officials if they receive timely reports). The incubation period for humans is estimated to be about 11.8 days to 12.1 days. This suggested period is the first model that is independently consistent with data from the largest known human outbreak. These projections refine previous estimates of the distribution of early-onset cases after a release and support a recommended 60-day course of prophylactic antibiotic treatment for individuals exposed to low doses of anthrax. By making these data available to local public health officials in real time, most models of anthrax epidemics indicate that more than 80% of an exposed population can receive antibiotic treatment before becoming symptomatic, and thus avoid the moderately high mortality of the disease.


title: Biological warfare

text: The goal of biodefense is to integrate the sustained efforts of the national and homeland security, medical, public health, intelligence, diplomatic, and law enforcement communities. Health care providers and public health officers are among the first lines of defense. In some countries private, local, and provincial (state) capabilities are being augmented by and coordinated with federal assets, to provide layered defenses against biological weapon attacks. During the first Gulf War the United Nations activated a biological and chemical response team, Task Force Scorpio, to respond to any potential use of weapons of mass destruction on civilians.


title: Biological warfare

text: The traditional approach toward protecting agriculture, food, and water: focusing on the natural or unintentional introduction of a disease is being strengthened by focused efforts to address current and anticipated future biological weapons threats that may be deliberate, multiple, and repetitive.


title: Biological warfare

text: The growing threat of biowarfare agents and bioterrorism has led to the development of specific field tools that perform on-the-spot analysis and identification of encountered suspect materials. One such technology, being developed by researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), employs a "sandwich immunoassay", in which fluorescent dye-labeled antibodies aimed at specific pathogens are attached to silver and gold nanowires.


title: Biological warfare

text: In the Netherlands, the company TNO has designed Bioaerosol Single Particle Recognition eQuipment (BiosparQ). This system would be implemented into the national response plan for bioweapon attacks in the Netherlands.


title: Biological warfare

text: Researchers at Ben Gurion University in Israel are developing a different device called the BioPen, essentially a "Lab-in-a-Pen", which can detect known biological agents in under 20 minutes using an adaptation of the ELISA, a similar widely employed immunological technique, that in this case incorporates fiber optics.


title: José Andrés

text: José Ramón Andrés Puerta (born 13 July 1969) is a Spanish chef, and founder of World Central Kitchen (WCK), a non-profit devoted to providing meals in the wake of natural disasters. A Spanish-born and raised cook, he is often credited with bringing the small plates dining concept to America. He owns restaurants in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Miami Beach, Orlando, Chicago, and New York City.


title: José Andrés

text: He was awarded a 2015 National Humanities Medal at a 2016 White House ceremony for his work with World Central Kitchen. In addition, he has received honorary doctorates from Georgetown University, George Washington University, Harvard University, and Tufts University.


title: José Andrés

text: Andrés family moved to Catalonia when he was 6. He enrolled in culinary school in Barcelona at the age of 15, and when he needed to complete his Spanish military service at age 18, he was assigned to cook for an admiral. He met Ferran Adrià in Barcelona, and he worked three years at El Bulli, from 1988 to 1990. In December 1990, he was fired by Adrià and decided to move to the United States.


title: José Andrés

text: At the age of 21, Andrés arrived in New York City with $50 (), to cook in midtown Manhattan at an outpost of a popular Spanish restaurant, "Eldorado Petit". During his time in New York, he also staged servings at "The Quilted Giraffe".


title: José Andrés

text: In 1993, he was hired to lead the kitchen at "Jaleo", a new tapas restaurant in Washington, D.C. In subsequent years, he helped the owners of "Jaleo" to open more restaurants: "Cafe Atlantico", "Zaytinya" and "Oyamel", along with two more "Jaleo" outposts.


title: José Andrés

text: In 2003, Andrés started "minibar"a restaurant space within a larger restaurantat a six-seat counter within "Cafe Atlantico". "minibar" is devoted to serving the most creative Andrés plates, and reservations would fill up a month in advance.


title: José Andrés

text: As his restaurants in America enjoyed success, Andrés became more famous in his native Spain, starring in his own cooking show, "Vamos a Cocinar", which debuted in 2005. He also published his first book, "Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America", in 2005.


title: José Andrés

text: In 2006, he partnered with Robert Wilder to form ThinkFoodGroup, making Andrés a co-owner in his restaurants. Together, they opened more restaurants in Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Puerto Rico.


title: José Andrés

text: Beginning in the fall of 2010, Andrés taught a culinary physics course at Harvard University with Ferran Adrià. In May 2012, Andrés was named dean of Spanish Studies at The International Culinary Center, where he and Colman Andrews developed a curriculum in traditional and modern Spanish cuisine, which debuted in February 2013. On October 29th, 2012, he announced he was heading back to the classroom, and would teach his first course on how food shapes civilization at George Washington University.


title: José Andrés

text: Andrés planned to open a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, in 2016. After Donald Trump made disparaging comments about undocumented Mexican immigrants in June 2015, Andrés withdrew from the contract with the Trump Organization, which then sued him. Andrés counter-sued, and the parties reached a settlement in April 2017. Andrés remains an outspoken critic of Trump.


title: José Andrés

text: In response to the 2010 Haiti earthquake, Andrés formed World Central Kitchen, which provides healthy food to families and individuals touched by disasters. Since it was founded, the NGO has organized meals in the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Zambia, Peru, Cuba, Uganda, Cambodia, and in Poland on the border of Ukraine. It has provided aid and meals in the United States and Puerto Rico and has helped during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States.


title: José Andrés

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, José Andrés announced that he was going to donate a part of $100-million Courage and Civility Award given to him by Jeff Bezos to address the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.


title: José Andrés

text: Andrés is married to Patricia "Tichi" Fernández de la Cruz and has three daughters; they live in Bethesda, Maryland, United States. He met his wife while they were both living in Washington, DC; she is originally from Cadiz, Andalucía


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Three Kings is a 1999 American black comedy war film written and directed by David O. Russell from a story by John Ridley. It stars George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg, Ice Cube, and Spike Jonze as four American soldiers on a gold heist that takes place during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq against Saddam Hussein following the end of the Gulf War.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: The film was released on October 1, 1999, in the United States. It received critical acclaim and was a box office success, grossing $107 million on its $48 million budget.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Following the end of the Persian Gulf War, U.S. soldiers are sent over to tie up loose ends. The soldiers are bored from the lack of action and throw parties at night. Major Archie Gates, a U.S. Army Special Forces soldier, is trading sex for stories with a journalist, Cathy Daitch, when he is interrupted by Adriana Cruz, the television reporter he is assigned to escort.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: While disarming and searching an Iraqi officer, U.S. Army Reserve Sergeant First Class Troy Barlow, his best friend Private First Class Conrad Vig, and their unit find a map in the officer's rectum. Troy goes to Staff Sergeant Chief Elgin to help translate the map. Major Gates appears, after tracking down a lead from Adriana. Archie convinces them that the document is a map of bunkers near Karbala, containing gold bullion stolen from Kuwait, which they decide to steal in turn. To keep Adriana off his back, Gates sends Specialist Walter Wogeman to aid her on a false lead.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: They set off the next day and, among other goods plundered from Kuwait, find the gold, and stumble on the interrogation of Amir Abdullah. As they are leaving, Amir's wife pleads with them not to abandon the anti-Saddam dissidents, but she is executed by the Iraqi Republican Guard. The group decides to free the Iraqi prisoners, triggering a firefight. They pull out just as Iraqi reinforcements arrive, and as they try to evade a CS gas attack, they blunder into a minefield and get separated. Iraqi soldiers capture Troy while a group of rebels rescue the other Americans and take them to their underground hideout. There, Conrad, Chief and Archie agree to help the rebels and their families reach the Iranian border, after they rescue Troy.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Troy gets taken back to the bunker, and is thrown in a room full of Kuwaiti cell phones. He manages to call his wife on a MicroTAC and tells her to report his location to his local Army Reserve unit. His call is cut short when he is dragged to an interrogation room where he is interrogated by Iraqi Captain Saïd.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: The Americans and the rebels go to a band of Iraqi Army deserters, who are persuaded to sell them luxury cars stolen from Kuwait. The cars are outfitted as Saddam's entourage, in a ruse to scare away the bunker's defenders. After storming the bunker, they free Troy, who spares Saïd, and find more Shi'ite dissidents held in a dungeon. A few of the soldiers who ran away return, and shoot Conrad and Troy. Conrad dies; Troy's lung is punctured, but he survives.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Archie radios Walter and Adriana and arranges transport, while the hapless officers in the camp try to locate the trio after getting the message from Troy's wife. Each of the rebels is given a bar of gold and the rest is buried as they wait for the transport to arrive. The convoy goes to the Iranian border, where the three Americans intend to escort the rebels across to protect them from the Iraqi soldiers guarding the crossing; American officers arrive and stop the group, however, arresting the trio while the rebels are recaptured. Archie offers the buried gold to the American officers in exchange for letting the refugees through. The commanding officer acquiesces to assisting the rebels get into Iran, but still states that charges (of being absent without leave and disobeying orders by contradicting American post-war policy) and courts-martial will be convened against Archie, Troy, and Chief Elgin.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: As an epilogue, the film states that the three surviving soldiers (Archie, Troy, and Chief Elgin) are cleared of the charges and honorably discharged, thanks to Adriana's reporting. The epilogue goes on to show that Archie goes to work as a military adviser for Hollywood action films, Chief leaves his airport job to work with Archie, and Troy returns to his wife and baby to run his own carpet store. The stolen gold was returned to Kuwait, which claimed that some was missing, implying that the rebels managed to keep the gold they had been given.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: "Three Kings" was filmed in the deserts of Casa Grande, Arizona, California and Mexico, with many of the extras played by actual Iraqi refugees. According to Russell, two of the cast members had "personally defaced 300 murals of Saddam." After one of the military advisers to the film died during production, Russell said the death was "perhaps due to chemicals he was exposed to in the Gulf."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Former stand-up comic John Ridley had originally written the screenplay, then titled "Spoils of War", as an experiment to see how fast he could write and sell a film. The writing took him seven days, and Warner Bros. bought the script 18 days later. When the studio showed a list of their purchased scripts to Russell, the one-sentence description of "Spoils of War", "heist set in the Gulf War", appealed to him. Although Russell claimed he never read Ridley's script, so as not "to pollute my own idea", he admits that "John gets credit where it's due. The germ of the idea that I took was his." Ridley maintains that Russell shut him out of the process, saying "I never heard a word while he was shooting the movie. Never saw any of the script changes. And then finally, a year later, I get a copy of the script, and my name isn't even on it." Although Warner Bros. worked out a deal to give Ridley a "story by" credit, Ridley remains unhappy with the experience, and has blocked Russell's efforts to publish the "Three Kings" screenplay in book form.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Russell penned the script with several actors in mind. Although Spike Jonze had never acted in a film before, Russell wrote the part of Conrad Vig specifically for him, and the two practised Conrad's Southern accent over the phone while Jonze directed his first feature film, "Being John Malkovich". Although Russell had to convince a wary Warner Bros. to cast an inexperienced actor in such a large role, he eventually won out. Russell said Jonze's lack of previous acting work was beneficial to the film, citing the "chaos that a nonactor brings to the set...he really shakes things up."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Co-star George Clooney also expressed initial reservations about the choice of Jonze. "It's always worrisome when somebody says, 'I got a friend,' and you've never heard of them. But within five minutes of meeting Spike, you just go, 'Oh, he's perfect for the part.'"


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: The part of Archie Gates was originally planned for Clint Eastwood, but Russell decided to rewrite it as a younger character. George Clooney eventually saw a copy of the script and was "blown away" by it. When he heard the part was being re-written, he jumped at the chance to get involved. At this point in Clooney's career, he was best-known for his role as the handsome Dr. Doug Ross on the popular television drama "ER". Clooney was ready to pursue a role in film. Unfortunately, Russell seemed unwilling to cast Clooney in the role. Persistent, Clooney sent a humorously self-deprecating letter signed "George Clooney, TV actor" to Russell asking for the part, and showed up at Russell's New York City apartment to plead his case. Russell still wasn't satisfied that Clooney could portray the character. He instead convinced Nicolas Cage to play the role. However, when Cage became unavailable after being cast in Martin Scorsese's "Bringing Out the Dead", Russell gave the part to Clooney. Russell later stated that Clooney "was meant to play the part."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Much to the chagrin of Warner Bros., Russell decided to use a number of experimental cinematic techniques in the film. Handheld cameras and Steadicam shots were used to give the film a journalistic feel. Russell shot a majority of the film on Ektachrome transparency stock that was cross-processed in colour negative chemicals, to reproduce "the odd colour of the newspaper images [of the Gulf War]." Though the process produced a unique quality and look to the film, it was exceedingly unreliable to develop, and many film labs would not provide insurance for the transparency stock if it did not develop properly. Russell feared that the scenes would need to be reshot until finally a lab was found that would develop the transparency stock in the negative chemicals. The opening was shot on conventional negative stock and bleach bypassed to give a deep black and high contrast look. Some interior shots were also filmed on conventional negative stock and processed normally. Russell also credited the realism of the firefights to the film's cinematographer, Newton Thomas Sigel, who had shot several documentaries on South American civil wars, saying "he knew what it was like to be in that kind of world."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: All of the explosions in the movie were filmed in one shot, as opposed to a typical film where each would have been covered by multiple cameras. Russell explained, "to me that's more real. The car's blowing up on this guy, and we just park the camera. Of course the producer says, 'we gotta run three cameras!' But if I cut three ways, then it just looks like an action picture." Russell also had the Foley department tone down the sounds of gunfire, saying he didn't want to "Bruce Willis-ize" the film." One frequently noted shot in the film is an image of a bullet piercing a number of internal organs, releasing bile into the abdominal cavity, used when Gates is describing sepsis as the effect of a gunshot wound. This internal camera is again used when SFC Barlow is shot in the torso and his chest begins to fill with air, crushing his lung. Both of these scenes were inspired by Russell asking an emergency room doctor friend "What's the weirdest wound you've ever seen?" It also erupted a minor controversy, when Russell began to joke around that the gunshots were fired into a real corpse; a statement everyone vehemently denied later.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: The film's production process was particularly difficult for Russell, who was taking a variety of risks with what was a $42 million studio film. At the time it was made, Warner Bros. had not financed an auteur film in many years, and executives were hesitant to put such money in the hands of filmmakers who were used to working independently. The film's political overtones also worried the studio, especially with conflict still occurring in the Middle East. As a result, Warner Bros. gave Russell a number of limitations. The shooting schedule was reduced to only 68 days instead of the 80 Russell had initially asked for. The studio wanted the budget lowered to $35 million. Executives were also asking for the removal of more violent scenes, such as the exploding cow and the shooting of an Iraqi woman. Russell was also forced to sign a legal document requiring that scenes containing pedophilia accusations against Michael Jackson be removed from the film.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: The shoot took place in Arizona during October. The crew were unused to the improvisational, on-the-fly directing style that Russell implemented. Rather than preparing organized shot lists, Russell preferred to use ideas as they came to him, often asking for longer hours. Early on, some of the crew began to feel a dislike for these methods and Russell along with them. Clooney noted that "there's an element of David that was in way over his head... he was vulnerable and selfish, and it would manifest itself in a lot of yelling." When Russell's frustration led to outbursts, Clooney took it upon himself to defend crew members and extras, leading to increased tensions. When an extra had an epileptic seizure on set, Clooney ran to his aid while Russell apparently remained indifferent. Afterward, Clooney criticized Russell for ignoring the incident, though Russell later stated that he was busy setting up a shot some yards away from the extra and was not aware that the extra had suffered a seizure. Another on-set conflict between the two arose while shooting footage on a Humvee with a camera mounted to it. Clooney recalls Russell yelling at the driver to drive faster. Clooney then approached the director, telling him to "knock it off". Russell remembers the incident differently: "The camera broke, we were losing the day and I was upset about that. So I jumped off the truck and I was like, 'Fuck!' I was just kicking the dirt and everything like that. And then George had this big thing about defending the driver, whom I hadn't really said anything to." During the shoot, Clooney was exhausted as he was still shooting "ER" in Los Angeles three days a week, while working on "Three Kings" the other four.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Regardless, Clooney was determined to stay with the role and remained loyal to the script. He helped convince executives to support certain aspects of the film (such as the exploding cow scene) even after he was urged to drop out of production, as his contract called for his compensation with or without his decision to stay in the film. After a number of arguments, Clooney wrote Russell a letter that criticized Russell's behavior in a last attempt to make peace between the two, days before another fight broke out during the filming of the movie's finale. In it, the three lead characters attempt to escort Iraqi rebels across the border to Iran. There were a number of actors and extras in the scene, as well as other elements such as helicopters flying overhead and landing in the center of the location. The fight began after an extra was having difficulty throwing Ice Cube's character to the ground. After a number of takes, Russell came to the extra and put him through the motions of the action. Some individuals present on the set during the incident state that Russell was simply showing the extra how to convincingly act in the scene. However, Clooney and others thought that Russell had violently thrown the extra to the ground. Clooney recalls: "We were trying to get a shot and then he went berserk. He went nuts on an extra." Clooney approached Russell and began criticizing him again, coming to the extra's defense. The two began shouting at one another before getting into a physical fight. Second assistant director Paul Bernard was so fed up that he put down his camera and walked off the set, effectively quitting. Clooney concludes, "Will I work with David ever again? Absolutely not. Never. Do I think he's tremendously talented and do I think he should be nominated for Oscars? Yeah." Russell offered a different view, saying, "We're both passionate guys who are the two biggest authorities on the set," and maintained that the two continue to be friends. Ice Cube felt the conflict helped the film, saying, "It kind of kicked the set into a different gear where everybody was focused and we finished strong. I wouldn't mind if the director and the star got into an argument on all of my movies."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Though the fight was initially kept under wraps, both Russell and Clooney eventually gave official statements saying that the argument had blown over and neither harbored any ill will towards the other. However, Clooney continued to describe the event in later interviews, as well as in the cover story of the October 2003 issue of "Vanity Fair", in which he states: "I would not stand for him humiliating and yelling and screaming at crew members, who weren't allowed to defend themselves. I don't believe in it and it makes me crazy. So my job was then to humiliate the people who were doing the humiliating." Executive producer and production manager Gregory Goodman later stated of Clooney's comments in the media, "It doesn't reflect well on [Clooney]. It's like some stupid sandbox quarrel." In early 2012, Clooney indicated that he and Russell had mended their relationship, saying, "We made a really, really great film, and we had a really rough time together, but it's a case of both of us getting older. I really do appreciate the work he continues to do, and I think he appreciates what I'm trying to do."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: "Three Kings" received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 94% "Certified Fresh" rating, based on 128 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Three Kings" successfully blends elements of action, drama, and comedy into a thoughtful, exciting movie on the Gulf War." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 82 out of 100, based on 34 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: Peter Bradshaw says, "A strange flavour, but this is an enjoyable and intelligent action film." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film four stars out of four, and said that ""Three Kings" is one of the most surprising and exciting movies I've seen this year" and that the film is a "weird masterpiece, a screw-loose war picture that sends action and humor crashing head-on into each other and spinning off into political anger." Jeff Greenfield of CNN said, "This is a keeper". David Edelstein for "The New York Times" said, "It remains the most caustic anti-war movie of this generation."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: The director's commentary of the film reveals that then-incumbent President Bill Clinton liked the film so much that he had it screened for his staff, friends, and advisors at the White House.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: In "" Matthew Alford calls Three Kings "an unusual ideological product on Hollywood terms, which begins to break down the official history of the Gulf War [...but nevertheless...] suggests that the problems of Iraq can be solved, and only solved, by the application of US force." He observes that Russell "sheepishly indicated Three Kings' ideological consistency with the 2003 Iraq War" when Russell met George W. Bush in 1999 and said he was making a film that would question his father's legacy in Iraq. Alford quotes Bush as responding to Russell, "Then I guess I'm going to have to finish the job, aren't I?"


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: The film opened at number two at the United States box office for the weekend with a gross of $15,847,636, behind "Double Jeopardy" second weekend gross of $17 million. Exit polls suggested the film played to an older audience than anticipated. The film grossed $60,652,036 in the United States and Canada and $47.1 million internationally, for a worldwide total of $107.8 million.


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: In 2004, Warner Bros., feeling the film had become relevant again due to the Iraq War, decided to re-release it in theaters and on DVD. Having no additional footage to add, Russell instead shot "Soldiers Pay", a short documentary about the Iraq War, to accompany the film. Taking its name from William Faulkner's first novel of the same name about an airman's return home in World War I's aftermath, Russell said the documentary examined "both sides of the war, people who feel good about the war, who believe in the mission, people who feel bad."


title: Three Kings (1999 film)

text: While making the documentary, Russell spoke with both Iraqis and U.S. troops. Asked how the Iraqis he had interviewed felt about the war, Russell said:


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Fabrizio Moretti (born June 2, 1980) is a Brazilian-American musician and visual artist best known as the drummer for American rock band The Strokes, with whom he has released six studio albums since 2001. A collaborative artist, he has been part of a series of groups since the mid-2000s, most notably the Brazilian-American band Little Joy, which released one album in 2008, and the experimental pop collective Machinegum, which he has led since 2018. Throughout his career, Moretti has worked on a variety of art projects which span the mediums of drawing, sculpture, and installation and performance art.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Moretti was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Stefano, an Italian nuclear engineer, and Ana Moretti, a Brazilian. He was raised with his older brother, Leo Moretti. Moretti and his family moved to New York City when he was three years old for his father's career; they planned to live there for only three years, but ended up staying for seventeen before returning to Brazil. Speaking on identity during his young adulthood in New York, Moretti said, "I didn't feel like a Brazilian, I didn't feel like an Italian, and I certainly didn't feel like an American. So I was walking around trying to find my identity through New York City."


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: He began playing the drums at age five, playing in a soundproofed closet in his family's Midtown Manhattan apartment, and became more serious during high school. As an adolescent, Moretti attended the Anglo American International School, which later merged with the Dwight School and is where he met fellow band members Nick Valensi and Julian Casablancas. Upon graduating high school, Moretti studied sculpture at SUNY New Paltz before dropping out to focus on his music career with The Strokes.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Moretti began drumming in an informal band with vocalist Casablancas and guitarist Valensi in high school, and continued after the two left Dwight. Later, Nikolai Fraiture joined as the bassist and the band was formed when guitarist Albert Hammond Jr. joined in fall 1998. Their first show as The Strokes was at the Spiral in New York City on September 14, 1999. The band released "The Modern Age" EP in 2001 under Rough Trade Records and was signed for a five-album record deal by RCA Records. The band released six LPs including "Is This It", "Room on Fire", "First Impressions of Earth", "Angles", "Comedown Machine and The New Abnormal" with tours and festival sets in the North America, Europe, South America, East Asia and Australia. Following the completion of their album contract deal with RCA Records in 2013, the band has continued to release new music through Casablancas' Cult Records.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Moretti's drumming style has been called crisp and clean, and having a mature elegance. He has said that he wants to provide a steady, driving force with his playing which resulted in him simplifying his drum kit to a four-piece set up with a hi-hat and ride cymbals. He commonly uses a Ludwig Classic Maple drum kit with Zildjian cymbals and Ahead sticks. Early on, he was known for drumming very hard, often breaking his drums sticks. Early records convey a more simplistic and 'punk' style of playing and recording while later records feature more compressed drums in the style of industrial and dance music.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: In 2007, Moretti joined with Los Hermanos guitarist, singer, songwriter Rodrigo Amarante and Binki Shapiro to form the trio Little Joy, a Los Angeles-based Brazilian/American rock supergroup. Amarante and Moretti had met in 2006, at a festival in Lisbon where both their bands were performing, and the idea came up to start a new musical project unrelated to their respective bands. Little Joy was signed to Rough Trade Records label. Their debut album, produced by Noah Georgeson, was released in 2008.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Since 2018, Moretti has led the New York synth pop band and artist collective Machinegum (stylized machinegum) which both performs and records music and presents gallery installations. The group is composed of Moretti and Ian Devaney (vocalist of Nation of Language), Delicate Steve, Chris Egan, Martin Bonventre, and Erin Victoria Axtel. The group has also collaborated with architect Joseph Vescio and actor/director Justin Bartha in the past.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Machinegum released their debut album "Conduit" in December 2019. Released on Frenchkiss Records, the group later signed to the record label in February 2020.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Outside of his more traditional musical work, Moretti's output often blends musical, performance, and visual art. He has frequently collaborated with musicians Devendra Banhart, Rodrigo Amarante, and New York City contemporaries including his Strokes bandmates. He has contributed songwriting and remixes to other artists and, throughout his career, has deejayed events.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Moretti was part of a project, Megapuss, with Devendra Banhart, Gregory Rogove and Noah Georgeson in 2008. The group released one self-titled album. The following year, Moretti and Banhart collaborated on a project called Permanent Adventure. Moretti played drums for Neon Neon, on their track "Dream Cars", from 2008's "Stainless Style". Moretti also played on Kesha's 2012 song "Only Wanna Dance With You", together with bandmate Julian Casablancas. He co-wrote "Prisoner," from Har Mar Superstar's 2013 album "Bye Bye 17", with Banhart and Amarante. Moretti and Amarante also were part of Banhart's backing band during his 2013 tour which had dates in the US and Europe. Moretti also contributed to Amarante's debut solo album in 2014. In 2015, Moretti remixed Spoon's 2014 track "Inside Out" for the band's remix EP. In 2016, Moretti contributed an Eagles of Death Metal cover for the Play it Forward campaign, supporting aid for the victims of the 2015 Paris attacks; with Beck and Nick Valensi, he covered "I Love You All the Time." Moretti sat-in as drummer for The 8G Band, the house band for Late Night with Seth Meyers, during the second week of April 2016. Moretti played drums on the 2017 track "Indignities” by New York synth-pop band Nation Of Language; he also filled in as bassist on one of the band's tours. In 2018, Moretti contributed the original instrumental song "In Case of Separation" to French conceptual artist Sophie Calle's "tribute" album, "Souris Calle".


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: In 2007, it was announced that Moretti was to executive produce a VH1 series called "Clash of the Music Videos" with then-girlfriend Drew Barrymore. However, the show was never produced.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Moretti is an enthusiastic visual artist and enjoys sculpture and drawing. Since the mid-2000s, he has been contributing his work to various projects. This includes a 2013 art installation for Rag + Bone and showcasing his drawings in New York. He has also worked on artistic project FUZLAB with French cartoonist Luz in 2012; he continued to collaborate with Luz later in the decade, at one point sharing a studio with him in Paris. In 2017, a sculpture of his was included at a show in New York City's Elizabeth Street Garden.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: In December 2019, Moretti collaborated with Italian art dealer Fabrizio Moretti to present the exhibit "Fabrizio Moretti x Fabrizio Moretti In Passing" at Sotheby's in New York City. The latter Moretti curated a collection of Old Master paintings and the former conceptualized the interactive exhibit.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: In December 2021, Moretti designed and built, "Kube," a nine-foot tall installation made of one-way mirror, polished steel and fluorescent lights. Inspired by the work of Yayoi Kusama and Bruce Nauman, Kube was crafted by hand in Brooklyn with the help of welder, Franco V. and artist girlfriend, Gabriella Corey, and was designed to showcase the viewer and the object together as one being repeated ad infinitum. Anish Kapoor's "Mirror (Pagan Gold to Organic Green)", a disc of polished and highly reflective aluminium, is placed inside the Kube. In an interview with Flaunt Magazine, Moretti describes the experience from within the Kube, "The crux of this is that you become part of the art work when you’re in it, as you just experienced. When you’re inside, you can’t see out. It’s almost like the viewer becomes this nebulous being—but outside the box, you can be seen very clearly.” Speaking to LA Times on the concept of the work, Moretti describes, "“The mirror can be a source of vanity,” he says softly. “But it can also be a point of self-reflection, you kind of see yourself outside yourself, one of many perhaps. [Pause.] And being able to see yourself and the relationship you have with the artwork kind of sanctifies that moment — I’m hoping.”"


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: He was born in Brazil and has lived in the United States from a young age, having recently become a citizen of the United States in addition to holding citizenship with his father's country of origin, Italy. Moretti speaks English, Portuguese, Italian, and some French.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: In the 2000s, Moretti was in a highly publicized relationship with actress Drew Barrymore. The two dated intermittently from 2002 to 2007. In 2007, he briefly dated actress Kirsten Dunst. Moretti has become progressively more private since this time. He was later in a four-year relationship with Little Joy bandmate Binki Shapiro. From late 2011 to 2013, actress Kristen Wiig and Moretti dated.


title: Fabrizio Moretti

text: Moretti resides in New York City; he maintains an apartment near Union Square in the East Village, which he first bought in 2003. During the late 2010s, he lived in Paris for some time.


title: AFC Cup

text: The AFC Cup is an annual continental club football competition organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). Under its current rules, the competition is played primarily between clubs from nations that did not receive direct qualifying slots in the top-tier AFC Champions League, based on the AFC Club Competitions Ranking.


title: AFC Cup

text: Al-Kuwait SC and Al-Quwa Al-Jawiya are the most successful clubs in the competition's history, having won three titles each. Clubs from Kuwait have won four titles, making them the most successful nation in the competition. Ever since the inauguration of the competition in 2004, the finalists of each edition have been dominated by clubs from West Asia except for 2011 and 2015 when Uzbekistani team FC Nasaf from Central Asia and Malaysian team Johor Darul Ta'zim from Southeast Asia became champions that respective year.


title: AFC Cup

text: Al-Seeb are the current champions after defeating Kuala Lumpur City in the 2022 final. Since 2021 season the team who won the AFC Cup are granted qualification to in the following season's AFC Champions League qualifying playoffs should they not qualify through their domestic performance.


title: AFC Cup

text: The AFC Cup began in 2004 as a second-tier competition to relate back to the AFC Champions League as 14 countries that had developing status competed in the first competition with 18 teams being nominated. Group A, B, C had West and Central Asian teams while the other two groups had east and South East Asia. The winners and three runners-up would then head to the knock-out stage where it was a random draw in who was going to play. Al-Jaish took the first AFC Cup after they defeated fellow Syrian opponents Al-Wahda on away goals.


title: AFC Cup

text: In 2005, 18 teams competed from nine nations with the nations still being allowed to choose from one or two teams entering. After Syrian teams left the AFC Cup to try at the Champions League for four years, Al-Faisaly defeated Nejmeh in the final. With it, Jordanian teams would win the next two AFC Cup seasons with Bahrain joining the league while Bangladesh was relegated to the AFC President's Cup until the tournament's abolition in 2014.


title: AFC Cup

text: Al-Muharraq would break the trend in 2008 as they competed in the last two-legged final before it headed back into a one-leg system which still runs to this day.


title: AFC Cup

text: Some changes were applied in terms of teams and format for the 2017 AFC Cup. A total of 36 teams participate in the group stage (12 each from West Asia and ASEAN, and 4 each from East Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia). The final will be played as a one-off match.


title: AFC Cup

text: Teams from 27 AFC countries have reached the group stage of the AFC Cup. The allocation of those teams by member country is listed below; asterisks represent occasions where at least one team was eliminated in qualification for the group stage. 34 AFC countries have had teams participate in qualification (including Brunei and Timor-Leste who will make their debuts in 2020), those who have not reached the group stage but have only played in qualification are not bolded.


title: AFC Cup

text: Like the AFC Champions League, the AFC Cup is sponsored by a group of multinational corporations, in contrast to the single main sponsor typically found in national top-flight leagues.


title: JonTron

text: Jonathan Aryan Jafari () (born March 24, 1990), better known by his Internet pseudonym JonTron, is an American YouTuber, comedian, reviewer, and Internet personality. He is best known for his eponymous YouTube web series "JonTron", where he reviews and parodies video games, films and other media.


title: JonTron

text: Jafari is the co-creator and former co-host of the Let's Play webseries "Game Grumps", and co-created the video game entertainment website Normal Boots. , his YouTube channel "JonTronShow" has 6.6 million subscribers and 1.2 billion views.


title: JonTron

text: Jonathan Aryan Jafari was born in Rancho Palos Verdes, California, on March 24, 1990, to Afshin and Irene Jafari. He is of Hungarian descent on his mother's side, and Iranian descent on his father's side. He attended Palos Verdes Peninsula High School from 2004 to 2008, where he met fellow YouTubers Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil, and Barry Kramer, who was also the first editor for "Game Grumps".


title: JonTron

text: Jafari created a Newgrounds account under the name "BirdmanXZ6" in 2003, and uploaded five animations depicting anthropomorphic onions. In 2006, he made a YouTube account under the same name. Jafari uploaded videos on ScrewAttack.com in 2010, reviewing games such as "GoldenEye 007" and at ScrewAttack, he met creator Austin "PeanutButterGamer" Hargrave.


title: JonTron

text: On August 31, 2010, Jafari created a YouTube channel called JonTronShow. He stated that he chose the name "JonTron" because it was "reminiscent of technology" and that the show was originally going to be called "JonTron 2.0". He uploaded a two-part review of the Nintendo 64 version of the game "Daikatana", the first installment in his "JonTron" series. In each episode of "JonTron", Jafari reviews singular games, as well as games of a particular theme, franchise, or genre. He is usually accompanied by his green-cheeked parakeet, Jacques, who speaks with a robotic voice. Jafari usually incorporates elements of sketch comedy into these episodes, to display his reactions to the video game that he is reviewing. According to Jafari, in an episode of the Internet gaming webseries "Game Grumps", Jacques was originally to speak in a stereotypical jive voice, with Jafari's mouth being super-imposed onto the character's face, rather than his eyes glowing red whenever he talked. In his early days, he reviewed video games, showing fondness for Nintendo games and those developed by British game developer Rare mainly the games they made during the 90s, while being very critical of the games made since then like "Star Fox Adventures" and "". Jafari has reviewed numerous video game adaptations of popular franchises, such as "Hercules", "Barbie", "Home Alone", "Star Wars" and "Conan the Barbarian", as well as relatively unknown games for the NES like "Monster Party" and "Takeshi's Challenge". He has also reviewed various unlicensed games, particularly based on the "Pokémon" franchise, as well as the 1997 film "Titanic" and Disney films. In the latter, he observed China as being "farther away from U.S. jurisdiction, and much better at Disney bootlegging" and also remarked on unofficial online games based on the company's films. Jafari occasionally uploads skits, as well as film reviews. For his Halloween Specials, he reviewed the anthology horror television series "Goosebumps" and "Are You Afraid of the Dark?".


title: JonTron

text: According to Jafari, in an episode of "Game Grumps", "JonTron" began achieving notability after a post on Reddit featuring Jafari's review of the Super Nintendo Entertainment System game "DinoCity" reached #1 on the website. In 2011, Jafari created two now-defunct spin-off Let's Play channels. The first, "JonTronStarcraft", has two videos of Jafari playing Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game "StarCraft". The second channel, "JonTronLoL", has four videos of Jafari playing the MOBA game "League of Legends". Both channels have fewer than 25,000 subscribers. JonTronShow reached 1 million subscribers in May 2014.


title: JonTron

text: In 2013 Paul Tamburro of "CraveOnline" said "Mixing a large dollop of offbeat humour with a light sprinkle of insightful commentary, "JonTron"s reviews of games of old have inspired many imitators, but none have proven to be more hilarious." "Time" magazine listed "JonTron" as 2015's seventh most searched Internet meme on Google.


title: JonTron

text: In May 2015, Jafari released a spin-off web series on his YouTube channel titled "JonTron's StarCade", in which he reviews games based on the "Star Wars" franchise. The webseries included cameos from numerous other Internet personalities and actors, such as Egoraptor, Markiplier, Nathan Barnatt, Ross O'Donovan, and Kyle Hebert. The series was produced by Maker Studios, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, and concluded in December 2015, after nine episodes.


title: JonTron

text: Jafari occasionally uploads videos in which he comments on matters that he finds important, which are usually related to gaming. This occurred most recently in 2016, with a video made in response to Blizzard Entertainment shutting down private servers of the massively multiplayer online role-playing game "World of Warcraft". Jafari mostly criticized the shutdown of one of the most popular private servers, Nostalrius, which was a copy of the 1.12 version of the game. Jafari's video helped to raise awareness on this subject, and lead to thousands of signatures on a Change.org petition.


title: JonTron

text: Throughout 2019 and 2020, Jafari has continued to broaden the range of media covered on his show, instead of solely traditional video games. Notable examples of topics are Flex Tape, rapper Soulja Boy's SouljaGame console, actress Gwyneth Paltrow's company Goop and its web series "The Goop Lab", actor Dan Aykroyd's Crystal Head Vodka brand, and the 2007 TV series "Kid Nation".


title: JonTron

text: JonTron is largely credited with public awareness of Flex Tape and Phil Swift, and its transformation into an internet meme. The original video on the subject has received over 66 million views as of October 2021, and the sequel has over 26 million, and features a cameo from Swift himself.


title: JonTron

text: NormalBoots was created in late 2010 by Jafari and Austin "PeanutButterGamer" Hargrave to act as a hub where Jafari and Hargrave could post content and receive advertisement revenue. Soon after its creation, Indie Games Searchlight and Cold Morning joined the group. In June 2011, the YouTube channel Continue? joined, while in August of the same year, Underbelly joined. In October 2011, Cold Morning left, and in June 2012, Underbelly left. However shortly after each departure new YouTubers joined, with The Completionist joining in November 2011, and Did You Know Gaming? joining in July 2012. The site was closed down in November 2012, as Google's AdSense program offered better revenue options for the content creators. Normal Boots was relaunched on January 24, 2014, so that the members could upload videos that weren't "YouTube friendly". Jafari alongside the remaining members of NormalBoots, apart from Indie Games Searchlight, came back, with two new YouTubers joining, ProJared and Satchell Drakes. On May 17, 2017, the group announced that they were going to reconnect due to the creators drifting apart. A new YouTube channel was created to unite the creators. During this time Jafari decided to leave to focus on his own channel but would still remain as a founding member.


title: JonTron

text: Jafari met animator Arin "Egoraptor" Hanson, of whom he had been a fan since the early 2000s, when the latter messaged him on YouTube shortly after his review of "DinoCity" grew popular. The two eventually became close friends, and in July 2012, Jafari and Hanson announced they would be starting a Let's Play series titled "Game Grumps" through videos on both their channels. On July 18 of the same year, Jafari and Hanson uploaded their first serials of "Game Grumps": "Kirby Super Star", "Mega Man 7" and "". On the Game Grumps channel, Jafari and Hanson played games together, typically ones that were retro or nostalgic in style, and commented over them with their own comedic inputs. On June 25, 2013, it was announced that Jafari had left "Game Grumps" in order to focus on "JonTron", and was replaced by Ninja Sex Party singer Dan Avidan on the same day. The announcement was met with backlash by certain fans for its sudden and unexpected announcement without any lead-up, as well as the channel announcing the debut of the spin-off series "Steam Train" on the same day that Jafari's departure was disclosed.


title: JonTron

text: Jafari has collaborated with multiple YouTube channels, including Ethan and Hila Klein's channel h3h3Productions. From October 2015 to August 2016, Hila Klein was a producer for "JonTron". He has made an appearance on James Rolfe's Let's Play series "James & Mike Mondays". He made a cameo appearance in "Angry Video Game Adventures". Jafari was a featured vocalist in an episode of The Gregory Brothers' viral webseries "Songify the News". At the same time, The Gregory Brothers remixed Jafari's review of the bootlegged game, "Titenic", and it was released on iTunes.


title: JonTron

text: Jafari has done voice-over work for "Did You Know Gaming?", covering episodes on "The Legend of Zelda", "Banjo-Kazooie", "Donkey Kong", "Pokémon", "Pikmin", "Animal Crossing", "Dragon Quest", "", and games of Disney franchises. He has covered the development of "Star Wars" for their spin-off series "Did You Know Movies?" on fellow YouTube channel, "The Film Theorists".


title: JonTron

text: In 2013, before his departure from "Game Grumps", Jafari and Hanson appeared in a promotional video produced by Polaris for the Warner Bros. movie "Pacific Rim". Around the same time, Jafari appeared in Ninja Sex Party's music video for "Let's Get This Terrible Party Started", which was directed by Hanson. To promote the 2013 World Series, Jafari appeared in an a cappella cover of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", produced by PepsiCo and musician Mike Tompkins, and uploaded to Maker Studios' Maker Music channel.


title: JonTron

text: In November 2016, Jafari released an album called "Love Is Like Drugs" with The Gregory Brothers, which reached number two on the "Billboard" chart of comedy albums of the week of November 26. Later, on December 2, 2018, he collaborated with pitchman Phil Swift in the video "Flex Tape II: The Flexening".


title: JonTron

text: Jafari played "Banjo-Kazooie" in June 2014 on a Twitch stream, to collect donations for Teach For America's GoFundMe campaign. Jafari stated that if the $25,000 proposed goal was hit, he would reprise a cover of Katy Perry's song "Firework" originally recorded for his 2011 review of "DinoCity". The full version of the cover was uploaded to Jafari's YouTube channel on February 14, 2016.


title: JonTron

text: In 2016, Jafari was featured as a character alongside other NormalBoots collaborators in the dating sim and visual novel "Asagao Academy".


title: JonTron

text: Jafari has provided voice-over work for "A Hat in Time", a video game by Gears for Breakfast. He also recorded voice work for Playtonic Games' 3D platforming video game "Yooka-Laylee", but the content was removed from the game in a day one patch, in light of his controversial statements on race (see ).


title: JonTron

text: In an interview with "Breitbart News", Jafari stated that he voted for Barack Obama both times, and that he supported Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primaries, but has said that he does not identify as conservative or liberal, preferring instead to decide on a case-by-case basis.


title: JonTron

text: Jafari discussed politics on a livestream hosted by Carl Benjamin on January 27, 2017. On March 12 of the same year, Jafari posted a tweet defending a quote from Iowa representative Steve King, who had tweeted in regards to the United States' policy on immigration: "We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies." Jafari defended King's tweet, and later appeared on Twitch streamer Destiny's channel, to explain his views. During this appearance, he said that, "nobody wants to become a minority in their own country", and stressed that he took issue with white people being labeled as racist for wanting to remain a majority. He said that he saw this reaction as hypocritical with how the majorities of other countries are regarded. Over the course of the one-and-a-quarter-hour appearance, he also commented that he had seen statistics that wealthy blacks commit more crimes than poor whites, as well as asking whether the colonization of Africa by European countries was a good thing. Shortly afterwards, many outlets criticized his statements, and specifically questioned his claim about crimes committed by wealthy blacks.


title: JonTron

text: His comments were followed by a small backlash within his fanbase, with partners noting a minor loss of subscribers. "Kotaku" reported that many of Jafari's longtime fans felt uncomfortable with these views, but still watch his content. Jafari posted a statement on YouTube on March 19, addressing some of his controversial arguments from the stream. On May 18, 2017, it was announced by NormalBoots that after Jafari's comments, he would still play as an honored founder of the group, however he would not play as an active member anymore, and that this was a "mutual understanding", and that he had not been kicked out. In the wake of controversies surrounding NormalBoots member Jared "ProJared" Knabenbauer in May 2019, fellow member Jirard "The Completionist" Khalil claimed in a YouTube comment that Jafari's departure had nothing to do with the controversy surrounding his statements, stating that Jafari felt that he could no longer contribute to the group, due to the extended time it took for him to make videos, and that he had been planning to leave for several months. Khalil also stated that the group made the announcement a few weeks after the controversy, and that they nonetheless chose to make a statement regarding Jafari since certain members, including Khalil and Jafari themselves, were born to immigrant parents. Jafari's controversies were also discussed once more following Knabenbauer's incident.


title: JonTron

text: Jafari recorded voice parts for a minor character in the game "Yooka-Laylee". In response to the controversy, an update was issued the same day as the game's April 2017 release, to remove and replace Jafari's voice. The game was reportedly flooded with requests for refunds following his removal. Jafari was kept as a voice talent in "A Hat in Time", another game which he had been involved in, despite the controversy, which resulted in mixed reaction, with some people claiming to refuse purchasing the game if he was included in the game. In November 2017, Jafari appeared on a podcast with h3h3Productions. While he was featured on the podcast, he spoke further about his statements, stating that he should not have gone into the subjects he went into without any prior preparation, and claiming that while he did not hold any racist views, he wishes people could "[talk] about these things without witch hunting each other".


title: JonTron

text: In July 2013, coinciding with Jafari's departure from "Game Grumps," he announced that he had moved from Los Angeles to New York City. As of 2022, Jafari's Twitter page has listed his location as New England.


title: Prose

text: Prose is a form of written or spoken language that follows the natural flow of speech, uses a language's ordinary grammatical structures, or follows the conventions of formal academic writing. It differs from most traditional poetry, where the form consists of verse (writing in lines) based on rhythmic metre or rhyme. The word "prose" first appears in English in the 14th century. It is derived from the Old French "prose", which in turn originates in the Latin expression "prosa oratio" (literally, straightforward or direct speech).


title: Prose

text: Works of philosophy, history, economics, etc., journalism, and most fiction (an exception is the verse novel), are examples of works written in prose. Developments in twentieth century literature, including free verse, concrete poetry, and prose poetry, have led to the idea of poetry and prose as two ends on a spectrum rather than firmly distinct from each other. The British poet T. S. Eliot noted, whereas "the distinction between verse and prose is clear, the distinction between poetry and prose is obscure."


title: Prose

text: Latin was a major influence on the development of prose in many European countries. Especially important was the great Roman orator Cicero (106 – 43 BC). It was the "lingua franca" among literate Europeans until quite recent times, and the great works of Descartes (1596 – 1650), Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626), and Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) were published in Latin. Among the last important books written primarily in Latin prose were the works of Swedenborg (d. 1772), Linnaeus (d. 1778), Euler (d. 1783), Gauss (d. 1855), and Isaac Newton (d. 1727).


title: Prose

text: Prose usually lacks the more formal metrical structure of the verses found in traditional poetry. It comprises full grammatical sentences (other than in stream of consciousness narrative), and paragraphs, whereas poetry often involves a metrical or rhyming scheme. Some works of prose make use of rhythm and verbal music. Verse is normally more systematic or formulaic, while prose is closer to both ordinary, and conversational speech.


title: Prose

text: In Molière's play "Le Bourgeois gentilhomme" the character Monsieur Jourdain asked for something to be written in neither verse nor prose, to which a philosophy master replies: "there is no other way to express oneself than with prose or verse", for the simple reason that "everything that is not prose is verse, and everything that is not verse is prose".


title: Prose

text: Many types of prose exist, which include those used in works of nonfiction, prose poem, alliterative prose and prose fiction.


title: Cavalry

text: Historically, cavalry (from the French word "cavalerie", itself derived from "cheval" meaning "horse") are soldiers or warriors who fight mounted on horseback. Cavalry were the most mobile of the combat arms, operating as light cavalry in the roles of reconnaissance, screening, and skirmishing in many armies, or as heavy cavalry for decisive shock attacks in other armies. An individual soldier in the cavalry is known by a number of designations depending on era and tactics, such as cavalryman, horseman, trooper, cataphract, knight, hussar, uhlan, mamluk, cuirassier, lancer, dragoon, or horse archer. The designation of "cavalry" was not usually given to any military forces that used other animals for mounts, such as camels or elephants. Infantry who moved on horseback, but dismounted to fight on foot, were known in the early 17th to the early 18th century as "dragoons", a class of mounted infantry which in most armies later evolved into standard cavalry while retaining their historic designation.


title: Cavalry

text: Cavalry had the advantage of improved mobility, and a soldier fighting from horseback also had the advantages of greater height, speed, and inertial mass over an opponent on foot. Another element of horse mounted warfare is the psychological impact a mounted soldier can inflict on an opponent.


title: Cavalry

text: The speed, mobility, and shock value of cavalry was greatly appreciated and exploited in armed forces in the Ancient and Middle Ages; some forces were mostly cavalry, particularly in nomadic societies of Asia, notably the Huns of Attila and the later Mongol armies. In Europe, cavalry became increasingly armoured (heavy), and eventually evolving into the mounted knights of the medieval period. During the 17th century, cavalry in Europe discarded most of its armor, which was ineffective against the muskets and cannons that were coming into common use, and by the mid-18th century armor had mainly fallen into obsolescence, although some regiments retained a small thickened cuirass that offered protection against lances, sabres, and bayonets; including some protection against a shot from distance.


title: Cavalry

text: In the interwar period, while some cavalry still served during World War II (notably in the Red Army, the Mongolian People's Army, the Royal Italian Army, the Romanian Army, the Polish Land Forces, and light reconnaissance units within the Waffen SS) many cavalry units were converted into motorized infantry and mechanized infantry units, or reformed as tank troops. The cavalry tank or cruiser tank was one designed with a speed and purpose beyond that of infantry tanks and would subsequently develop into the main battle tank.


title: Cavalry

text: Most cavalry units that are horse-mounted in modern armies serve in purely ceremonial roles, or as mounted infantry in difficult terrain such as mountains or heavily forested areas. Modern usage of the term generally refers to units performing the role of reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition (analogous to historical light cavalry) or main battle tank units (analogous to historical heavy cavalry).


title: Cavalry

text: Historically, cavalry was divided into light cavalry and heavy cavalry. The differences were their roles in combat, the size of their mounts, and how much armor was worn by the mount and rider.


title: Cavalry

text: Heavy cavalry, such as Byzantine cataphracts and knights of the Early Middle Ages in Europe, were used as shock troops, charging the main body of the enemy at the height of a battle; in many cases their actions decided the outcome of the battle, hence the later term "battle cavalry". Light cavalry, such as horse archers, hussars, and Cossack cavalry, were assigned all the numerous roles that were ill-suited to more narrowly-focused heavy forces. This includes scouting, deterring enemy scouts, foraging, raiding, skirmishing, pursuit of retreating enemy forces, screening of retreating friendly forces, linking separated friendly forces, and countering enemy light forces in all these same roles.


title: Cavalry

text: Light and heavy cavalry roles continued through early modern warfare, but armor was reduced, with light cavalry mostly unarmored. Yet many cavalry units still retained cuirasses and helmets for their protective value against sword and bayonet strikes, and the morale boost these provide to the wearers, despite these giving little protection from firearms. By this time the main difference between light and heavy cavalry was their training; the former was regarded as best suited for harassment and reconnaissance, while the latter was considered best for close-order charges. By the start of the 20th century, as total battlefield firepower increased, all cavalry tended to become dragoons in practice, riding mounted between battles, but dismounting to act as infantry during any battle, even if many retained their unit names that reflected their older cavalry roles.


title: Cavalry

text: With the development of armored warfare, the heavy cavalry role of decisive shock troops had been taken over by armored units employing medium and heavy tanks, and later main battle tanks. Despite horse-born cavalry becoming obsolete, the term "cavalry" is still used, referring in modern times to units continuing to fulfill the traditional light cavalry roles, employing fast armored cars. light tanks, and infantry fighting vehicles instead of horses, while air cavalry employs helicopters.


title: Cavalry

text: Before the Iron Age, the role of cavalry on the battlefield was largely performed by light chariots. The chariot originated with the Sintashta-Petrovka culture in Central Asia and spread by nomadic or semi-nomadic Indo-Iranians. The chariot was quickly adopted by settled peoples both as a military technology and an object of ceremonial status, especially by the pharaohs of the New Kingdom of Egypt from 1550 BC as well as the Assyrian army and Babylonian royalty.


title: Cavalry

text: The power of mobility given by mounted units was recognized early on, but was offset by the difficulty of raising large forces and by the inability of horses (then mostly small) to carry heavy armor. Nonetheless, there are indications that, from the 15th century BC onwards, horseback riding was practiced amongst the military elites of the great states of the ancient Near East, most notably those in Egypt, Assyria, the Hittite Empire, and Mycenaean Greece.


title: Cavalry

text: Cavalry techniques, and the rise of true cavalry, were an innovation of equestrian nomads of the Central Asian and Iranian steppe and pastoralist tribes such as the Iranic Parthians and Sarmatians.


title: Cavalry

text: The photograph above left shows Assyrian cavalry from reliefs of 865–860 BC. At this time, the men had no spurs, saddles, saddle cloths, or stirrups. Fighting from the back of a horse was much more difficult than mere riding. The cavalry acted in pairs; the reins of the mounted archer were controlled by his neighbour's hand. Even at this early time, cavalry used swords, shields, spears, and bows. The sculpture implies two types of cavalry, but this might be a simplification by the artist. Later images of Assyrian cavalry show saddle cloths as primitive saddles, allowing each archer to control his own horse.