title: Great Zimbabwe

text: In mid-1929 Gertrude Caton Thompson concluded, after a twelve-day visit of a three-person team and the digging of several trenches, that the site was indeed created by Bantu. She had first sunk three test pits into what had been refuse heaps on the upper terraces of the hill complex, producing a mix of unremarkable pottery and ironwork. She then moved to the Conical Tower and tried to dig under the tower, arguing that the ground there would be undisturbed, but nothing was revealed. Some further test trenches were then put down outside the lower Great Enclosure and in the Valley Ruins, which unearthed domestic ironwork, glass beads, and a gold bracelet. Caton Thompson immediately announced her Bantu origin theory to a meeting of the British Association in Johannesburg. Caton Thompson's claim was not immediately favoured, although it had strong support among some scientific archaeologists due to her modern methods. Her most important contribution was in helping to confirm the theory of a medieval origin for the masonry work of the 14th and 15th centuries. By 1931, she had modified her Bantu theory somewhat, allowing for a possible Arabian influence for the towers through the imitation of buildings or art seen at coastal Arabian trading cities.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: Since the 1950s, there has been consensus among archaeologists as to the African origins of Great Zimbabwe. Artefacts and radiocarbon dating indicate settlement in at least the 5th century, with continuous settlement of Great Zimbabwe between the 12th and 15th centuries and the bulk of the finds from the 15th century. The radiocarbon evidence is a suite of 28 measurements, for which all but the first four, from the early days of the use of that method and now viewed as inaccurate, support the 12th-to-15th-centuries chronology. In the 1970s, a beam that produced some of the anomalous dates in 1952 was reanalysed and gave a 14th-century date. Dated finds such as Chinese, Persian and Syrian artefacts also support the 12th- and 15th-century dates.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: Archaeologists generally agree that the builders probably spoke one of the Shona languages, based upon evidence of pottery, oral traditions and anthropology and were probably descended from the Gokomere culture. The Gokomere culture, an eastern Bantu subgroup, existed in the area from around 200 AD and flourished from 500 AD to about 800 AD. Archaeological evidence indicates that it constitutes an early phase of the Great Zimbabwe culture. The Gokomere culture likely gave rise to both the modern Mashona people, an ethnic cluster comprising distinct sub-ethnic groups such as the local Karanga clan and the Rozwi culture, which originated as several Shona states. Gokomere peoples were probably also related to certain nearby early Bantu groups like the Mapungubwe civilisation of neighbouring North eastern South Africa, which is believed to have been an early Venda-speaking culture, and to the nearby Sotho.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: More recent archaeological work has been carried out by Peter Garlake, who has produced the comprehensive descriptions of the site, David Beach and Thomas Huffman, who have worked on the chronology and development of Great Zimbabwe and Gilbert Pwiti, who has published extensively on trade links. Today, the most recent consensus appears to attribute the construction of Great Zimbabwe to the Shona people. Some evidence also suggests an early influence from the probably Venda-speaking peoples of the Mapungubwe civilization.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: Damage to the ruins has taken place throughout the last century. The removal of gold and artefacts in amateurist diggings by early colonial antiquarians caused widespread damage, notably diggings by Richard Nicklin Hall. More extensive damage was caused by the mining of some of the ruins for gold. Reconstruction attempts since 1980 caused further damage, leading to alienation of the local communities from the site. Another source of damage to the ruins has been due to the site being open to visitors with many cases of people climbing the walls, walking over archaeological deposits, and the over-use of certain paths all have had major impacts on the structures at the site. These are in conjunction with damages due to the natural weathering that occurs over time due to vegetation growth, the foundations settling, and erosion from the weather.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: Martin Hall writes that the history of Iron Age research south of the Zambezi shows the prevalent influence of colonial ideologies, both in the earliest speculations about the nature of the African past and in the adaptations that have been made to contemporary archaeological methodologies. Preben Kaarsholm writes that both colonial and black nationalist groups invoked Great Zimbabwe's past to support their vision of the country's present, through the media of popular history and of fiction. Examples of such popular history include Alexander Wilmot's "Monomotapa (Rhodesia)" and Ken Mufuka's "Dzimbahwe: Life and Politics in the Golden Age"; examples from fiction include Wilbur Smith's "The Sunbird" and Stanlake Samkange's "Year of the Uprising".


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: When white colonialists like Cecil Rhodes first saw the ruins, they saw them as a sign of the great riches that the area would yield to its new masters. Pikirayi and Kaarsholm suggest that this presentation of Great Zimbabwe was partly intended to encourage settlement and investment in the area. Gertrude Caton-Thompson recognised that the builders were indigenous Africans, but she characterised the site as the "product of an infantile mind" built by a subjugated society. The official line in Rhodesia during the 1960s and 1970s was that the structures were built by non-blacks. Archaeologists who disputed the official statement were censored by the government. According to Paul Sinclair, interviewed for "None But Ourselves":


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: This suppression of archaeology culminated in the departure from the country of prominent archaeologists of Great Zimbabwe, including Peter Garlake, Senior Inspector of Monuments for Rhodesia, and Roger Summers of the National Museum.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: To black nationalist groups, Great Zimbabwe became an important symbol of achievement by Africans: reclaiming its history was a major aim for those seeking majority rule. In 1980 the new internationally recognised independent country was renamed for the site, and its famous soapstone bird carvings were retained from the Rhodesian flag and Coat of Arms as a national symbol and depicted in the new Zimbabwean flag. After the creation of the modern state of Zimbabwe in 1980, Great Zimbabwe has been employed to mirror and legitimise shifting policies of the ruling regime. At first it was argued that it represented a form of pre-colonial "African socialism" and later the focus shifted to stressing the natural evolution of an accumulation of wealth and power within a ruling elite. An example of the former is Ken Mufuka's booklet, although the work has been heavily criticised. A tower of the Great Zimbabwe is also depicted on the coat of arms of Zimbabwe.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: Some of the carvings had been taken from Great Zimbabwe around 1890 and sold to Cecil Rhodes, who was intrigued and had copies made which he gave to friends. Most of the carvings have now been returned to Zimbabwe, but one remains at Rhodes' old home, Groote Schuur, in Cape Town.


title: Great Zimbabwe

text: In the early 21st century, the government of Zimbabwe endorsed the creation of a university in the vicinity of the ruins. This university is an arts and culture based university which draws from the rich history of the monuments. The university main site is near the monuments with other campuses in the City centre and Mashava. The campuses include Herbet Chitepo Law School, Robert Mugabe School of Education, Gary Magadzire School of Agriculture and Natural Science, Simon Muzenda School of Arts, and Munhumutapa School of Commerce.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Patricia Ann Ramsey (née Paugh; December 29, 1956 – June 24, 2006) was an American beauty pageant winner who won the Miss West Virginia Pageant at age 20 in 1977. She was best known as the mother of JonBenét Ramsey, a six-year-old child beauty pageant queen who was found dead in her family's home in Boulder, Colorado, on December 26, 1996.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Ramsey was born in Parkersburg, West Virginia, the daughter of Nedra Ellen Ann (née Rymer) and Donald Ray Paugh, an engineer and manager at Union Carbide. She graduated from Parkersburg High School in 1975. She attended West Virginia University, where she belonged to the Alpha Xi Delta sorority, and from which she graduated with a B.A. in journalism in 1978.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: She won the Miss West Virginia beauty title in 1977. Her sister, Pamela Ellen Paugh, won the Miss West Virginia title at age 24 in 1980.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Patsy was 23 when she married businessman John Ramsey on November 5, 1980. He had three children from his first marriage to Lucinda Pasch from 1966 to 1978, which had ended in divorce. Patsy and John's son, Burke Ramsey, was born on January 27, 1987. She gave birth to their second child, daughter JonBenét, on August 6, 1990, in Atlanta. The family moved to Boulder, Colorado in 1991 for her husband's business. Starting from when her daughter was young, Patsy entered her in children's beauty contests, and she won some titles before the age of six.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Her daughter JonBenét disappeared on the morning after Christmas Day 1996. A lengthy ransom note claimed that she had been kidnapped, demanding $118,000 for her return; Patsy reported finding this note at the foot of the stairs. Seven hours after Patsy contacted authorities, JonBenét's body was found in an isolated area of the Ramseys' basement. She had been killed by strangulation and a blow to the head. After the homicide of JonBenét was discovered, Boulder law enforcement officials declared that Patsy and her husband were "under an umbrella of suspicion" because of their possible involvement in the crime. The couple spent the next 10 years defending themselves against the allegations by insisting that an intruder killed their daughter.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: A grand jury voted in 1999 to indict the parents of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey on charges of child abuse resulting in death, but Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter did not sign the indictment. Multiple sources, including members of the grand jury, have confirmed to the "Daily Camera" that Hunter refused to sign the indictment because he did not think there was sufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: At around the same time, Lou Smit, a homicide detective who had been brought in to solve the case, opined that the Ramseys had been unfairly targeted, and that an intruder was likely responsible for the murder and its staging.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: On July 9, 2008—nearly 12 years after their daughter's death and two years after Patsy's death—the Boulder District Attorney cleared John Ramsey and his late wife of any wrongdoing in their daughter's death. The decision was based on new DNA evidence that was collected from JonBenét's clothing, which belonged to an unidentified male not part of the family. This particular type of DNA analysis did not exist at the time of the killing. Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy said new DNA tests point to an "unexplained third party" as possibly responsible for the killing. Modern "touch DNA" suggests that a male of Hispanic origin (per updates on DNA and DNA found under JonBenét's fingernails two weeks after the murder, which Hunter had access to) left traces on two separate clothing articles: the undergarment panties and leggings. The official exoneration was done against normal practice, and the Boulder police have still not cleared them. (Mark Beckner, retired Boulder Chief of Police, has claimed that Mary Lacy had always strongly believed that a mother could not possibly be responsible for the death of her daughter in that fashion (and so sought to exonerate Ramsey), and that the trace DNA found on JonBenét's underwear (believed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to be either sweat or saliva) was in such minute quantities (nanograms) that it could have come from the clothing's manufacturing process.)


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: In October 2016, new forensic analysis with more refined technique revealed that the original DNA deposits contain genetic markers from two persons other than the victim herself. They have never been identified through any government databases.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Several defamation lawsuits have proceeded through the courts since JonBenét's death. Lin Wood was the plaintiff's lead attorney for John and Patsy Ramsey and for their son, Burke, and has prosecuted defamation claims on their behalf against St. Martin's Press, Time, Inc., The Fox News Channel, American Media, Inc., "Star", "The Globe", Court TV and "The New York Post". John and Patsy Ramsey were also sued in two separate defamation lawsuits arising from the publication of their book, "The Death Of Innocence", brought by two individuals named in the book as having been investigated by Boulder police as suspects in JonBenét's death. The Ramseys were defended in those lawsuits by Lin Wood and three other Atlanta attorneys, James C. Rawls, Eric P. Schroeder, and S. Derek Bauer, who obtained dismissal of both lawsuits. In an in-depth decision, U.S. District Court Judge Julie Carnes ruled that "abundant evidence" in the homicide case pointed to an intruder having committed the crime, while "virtually no evidence" implicated the Ramseys.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Patsy Ramsey was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer in 1993, aged 36. After treatment, she was in remission for nine years until a recurrence in 2002.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Patsy Ramsey died from ovarian cancer at age 49 on June 24, 2006. She died at her father's house with her husband by her side. Ramsey is buried at St. James Episcopal Cemetery in Marietta, Georgia, next to JonBenét.


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: Ramsey was portrayed by Alex Borstein, opposite Michael McDonald as her husband, in two "MADtv" sketches; by Marg Helgenberger in the 2000 miniseries "Perfect Murder, Perfect Town"; and by soap opera actress Judi Evans in the 2000 TV movie "". Melora Hardin voiced her in the "Family Guy" episode, "Brian Wallows and Peter's Swallows".


title: Patsy Ramsey

text: She was portrayed in the 2001 "South Park" episode, "Butters' Very Own Episode". The episode strongly implied that Patsy Ramsey and her husband were responsible for the death of JonBenét. In a 2011 interview, "South Park" creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone stated that they regretted how the Ramseys were portrayed in the episode.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: BeamNG.drive is a vehicle simulation video game developed and published by Bremen-based video game developer BeamNG GmbH. The game features soft-body physics, which simulates realistic handling and damage to vehicles. The game was initially released as a tech demo on 3 August 2013 along with paid access to an alpha, and was made available on Steam Early Access for Microsoft Windows on 29 May 2015.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: In 2011, some "Rigs of Rods" developers gathered and decided to improve upon the open-source software with a new product. BeamNG opened its website, beamng.com, on 8 May 2012 to deliver news of the game's development. On 28 May 2012, BeamNG released a YouTube video entitled "Revolutionary soft-body physics in CryEngine3," featuring the vehicle deformation technology. Originally, "BeamNG.drive" was to be based on CryEngine 3, but its use in a driving game uncovered numerous bugs, leading development to be rolled over to Torque 3D.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: A free tech demo was released on 3 August 2013 along with paid access to an alpha test through FastSpring. The tech demo featured only one vehicle and one map, while the first available alpha release contained five vehicles and six maps. The game was placed on an open vote on Steam Greenlight on 12 February 2014 and was greenlit eight days later. On 29 May 2015, the game was released to Steam Early Access.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: On 15 June 2018, BeamNG announced a partnership with Camshaft Software, Developers of "Automation", revealing the addition of an exporter feature that allows players to export vehicles made within "Automation" as fully driveable vehicles in "BeamNG.drive".


title: BeamNG.drive

text: On 25 April 2022, BeamNG announced they were ceasing development of the 32-bit branch as of alpha release 0.25. They stated that less than 0.5% of players were using the 32-bit version and the decision to end development for it will allow the developers to take full advantage of newer technologies.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: "BeamNG.drive" features various gameplay modes and scenarios such as campaigns and a time trial mode, aside from free mode. Campaigns are collections of small scenarios on specific themes (races, chases, stunts, etc...), whereas in time trials, the player selects a vehicle, a level, a route, and competes against their own best time. In free roam, players can explore and experiment with levels, allowing them to operate, place, and manipulate objects and vehicles within the level, but also change environmental properties such as gravity and wind. Players can utilize various objects ranging from road barriers to weapons like cannons, to inflict damage on their vehicles.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: The game implements soft-body physics to control both vehicle dynamics and collisions between objects and vehicles.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: "BeamNG.drive" uses a real-time soft-body physics structure to simulate its vehicles. Algorithms have been written for the physics equations to be carried out. It relies heavily on coding in Lua, and uses packets of local data using the Lua network system while the game is running. The game's engine constantly calculates physics equations and problems in real-time during gameplay.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: Vehicles in the game consist of a soft-body node-beam structure similar to those in "Rigs of Rods". The physics engine simulates a network of interconnected nodes and beams, which combine to form an invisible skeleton of a vehicle with realistic weights and masses. In terms of soft-body physics, vehicles realistically flex and deform as stresses to the skeleton, such as impacts from collisions, are applied. Aside from body deformation, various other types of damage are simulated such as degraded engine, detached doors and shattered windows. If a vehicle is severely damaged, the engine may fail, rendering the vehicle unusable; additionally, the vehicle will also fail from overloading the driveshaft, clutch, and other important components that can result in catastrophic failure to the vehicle. Also, tires can be blown out and fuel tanks may explode after an excessive amount of collisions or a direct hit on the rear of the vehicle.


title: BeamNG.drive

text: Jack Stewart of BBC mentioned that "BeamNG.drive" "has received interest from the film industry to model vehicle stunts so that they can be prototyped and tested exhaustively – but cheaply – before a stunt driver smashes up a car on set." Polygon's Nick Robinson lauded the game's simulated physics and user-created content support, leading him to create a 38-episode video series for Polygon, "Car Boys", in which he and Griffin McElroy spotlighted new "BeamNG.drive" content each week. Automobile magazine praised the game for its diverse selection of vehicles and its realistic crash physics, saying that "the IIHS has nothing on BeamNG.drive."


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Richard John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan (born 18 December 1934 – disappeared 8 November 1974, declared dead 3 February 2016), commonly known as Lord Lucan, was a British peer who disappeared after being suspected of murder. He was an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, the eldest son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, and Kaitlin Dawson. Lucan was an evacuee during the Second World War but returned to attend Eton College, and served with the Coldstream Guards in West Germany from 1953 to 1955. Having developed a taste for gambling, he played backgammon and bridge, and was an early member of the exclusive group of rich British gamblers at the Clermont Club. Lucan's losses often exceeded his winnings, yet he left his job at a London-based merchant bank and became a professional gambler. He was known as Lord Bingham from April 1949 until January 1964, during his father's lifetime.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan was considered for the role of James Bond in the cinematic adaptations of Ian Fleming's novels. He was known for his expensive tastes; he raced power boats and drove an Aston Martin. In 1963, Lucan married Veronica Duncan, with whom he had three children. The couple moved home to 46 Lower Belgrave Street in Belgravia in 1967, paying £17,500 for the house. After the marriage collapsed in late 1972, he moved out to a nearby property. A bitter custody battle ensued, which Lucan eventually lost. Apparently obsessed with regaining custody of the children, Lucan began to spy on his wife and record their telephone conversations. This fixation, combined with mounting legal expenses and gambling losses, had a dramatic effect on Lucan's life and personal finances.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: On the evening of 7 November 1974, Sandra Rivett, the nanny of Lucan's children, was bludgeoned to death in the kitchen of the Lucan family home. Lady Lucan was also attacked after going to investigate Rivett's whereabouts. She identified Lord Lucan as her assailant. Lucan had, by then, driven to visit a friend in Uckfield, East Sussex. Lucan then telephoned his mother and asked her to collect his children, saying there had been an incident at the family home; he also penned a letter. His car was later found abandoned in Newhaven, its interior stained with blood and its boot containing a piece of bandaged lead pipe similar to one found at the crime scene. By the time the police issued a warrant for his arrest a few days later, Lucan had vanished. At the inquest into Rivett's death, held in June 1975, the jury returned a verdict naming Lucan as her killer.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: There has been continuing interest in Lucan's fate, with hundreds of alleged sightings being reported in various countries around the world, none of which has been substantiated. Despite a police investigation and widespread press coverage, Lucan has never been found. He was presumed dead in chambers on 11 December 1992, and was declared legally dead in October 1999. Finally, in 2016, a death certificate was issued, allowing his titles to be inherited by his son George.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Richard John Bingham was born on 18 December 1934 at 19 Bentinck Street, Marylebone, London, the second child and elder son of George Bingham, 6th Earl of Lucan, an Anglo-Irish peer, and his wife Kaitlin Elizabeth Anne Dawson. A blood clot found in his mother's lung forced her to remain in a nursing home, so John, as he became known, was initially cared for by the family's nurserymaid, Lucy Sellers. Aged three years, John attended a pre-prep school in Tite Street with his elder sister Jane. In 1939, with the Second World War approaching, the two were taken to the relative safety of Wales.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: In 1940, joined by their younger siblings Sally and Hugh, the Lucan children travelled to Toronto in Canada, moving shortly thereafter to Mount Kisco, New York, United States. They stayed for five years with multi-millionairess Marcia Brady Tucker. John was enrolled at The Harvey School and spent summer holidays away from his siblings at a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: While in the US, John and his siblings lived in grandeur and wanted for nothing, but on their return to England in February 1945 they were faced with the stark realities of wartime Britain. Rationing was still in force, their former home at Cheyne Walk had been bombed, and the family's house at 22 Eaton Square had had its windows blown out. Despite the family's noble ancestry, the 6th Earl and his wife were agnostics and socialists who preferred a more austere existence than that offered by Tucker, an extremely wealthy Christian. For a time, John suffered nightmares and was taken to a psychotherapist. As an adult he remained an agnostic, but ensured that his children attended Sunday school, preferring to give them a traditional childhood.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: At Eton College, John developed a taste for gambling. He supplemented his pocket money with income from bookmaking, placing his earnings into a "secret" bank account, and regularly left the school's grounds to attend horse races. According to his mother, John's academic record was "far from creditable", but he became captain of Roe's House before leaving in 1953 to undertake his National Service. He became a second lieutenant in his father's regiment, the Coldstream Guards, and was stationed mainly in Krefeld, West Germany. While there, he also became a keen poker player.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: On leaving the British Army in 1954, Lucan joined William Brandt's Sons and Co., a London-based merchant bank, on an annual salary of £500. In 1960 he met Stephen Raphael, a rich stockbroker who was a skilled backgammon player. They holidayed together in the Bahamas, went water-skiing, and played golf, backgammon and poker. Lucan became a regular gambler and an early member of John Aspinall's Clermont gaming club, located in Berkeley Square.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan often won at games of skill like backgammon and bridge, but he also accumulated huge losses. On one occasion Lucan lost £8,000, or about two-thirds of the money he received annually from various family trusts. On another disastrous night at a casino he lost £10,000. His uncle by marriage, stockbroker John Bevan, helped him to pay that particular debt, and Lucan repaid his uncle two years later.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan left Brandt's around 1960, shortly after he had won £26,000 playing chemin de fer. A colleague had been promoted before him, leading Lucan to leave his job in protest, saying, "Why should I work in a bank, when I can earn a year's money in one single night at the tables?" Lucan travelled to the US, where he played golf, raced power boats, and drove his Aston Martin around the West Coast. He also visited his elder sister Jane and his former guardian, Marcia Tucker. On his return to England he moved out of his parents' home in St John's Wood and into a flat in Park Crescent.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan met his future wife, Veronica Duncan, early in 1963. She was born in 1937 to Major Charles Moorhouse Duncan and his wife, Thelma. Veronica's father had died in a car accident when she was young, after which the family moved to South Africa. Her mother remarried, and her family returned to England, where her new stepfather became manager of a hotel in Guildford. With her sister, Christina, she was educated at St Swithun's School, Winchester.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: After displaying a talent for art Veronica went on to study at an art college in Bournemouth. The two sisters later shared a flat in London, where Veronica worked as a model and later as a secretary. Christina's marriage to the wealthy William Shand Kydd (half-brother to Peter Shand Kydd, stepfather to Diana Spencer, later Princess of Wales) introduced her to London high society, and it was at a golf-club function in the country that Veronica and Lucan first met.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: News of their engagement appeared in "The Times" and "The Daily Telegraph" newspapers on 14 October 1963, and the two were married at Holy Trinity Church, Brompton, on 20 November. After a ceremony attended by Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone (one of whose ladies-in-waiting had been a relative of Lady Lucan), but few other prominent members of high society, the couple honeymooned in Europe, travelling first class on the Orient Express. Lucan's already embattled finances were given a welcome boost by his father, who provided him with a marriage settlement designed to finance a larger family home and any future additions to the Lucan family. Lucan repaid some of his creditors and purchased 46 Lower Belgrave Street in Belgravia, redecorating it to suit Veronica's tastes.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Two months after the wedding, on 21 January 1964, Lucan's father died of a stroke. In addition to a reputed £250,000 inheritance, Lucan acquired his father's titles: Earl of Lucan; Baron Lucan of Castlebar; Baron Bingham of Melcombe Bingham and Baronet Bingham of Castlebar. His wife became the Countess of Lucan.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Following the 1964 birth of their first daughter, Frances, from early in 1965 they employed a nanny, Lillian Jenkins, to look after her. Lucan tried to teach Veronica about gambling and traditional pursuits like hunting, shooting, and fishing. He bought her golf lessons; she later gave up the sport.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan's daily routine consisted of breakfast at 9:00 am, coffee, dealing with the morning's letters, reading the newspapers, and playing the piano. He sometimes jogged in the park and took his Doberman Pinscher for walks. Lunch at the Clermont Club was followed by afternoon games of backgammon. Returning home to change into black tie, the earl typically spent the remainder of the day at the Clermont, gambling into the early hours, watched sometimes by Veronica. In 1956, while still working at Brandt's, he had written of his desire to have "£2m in the bank", claiming that "motor-cars, yachts, expensive holidays, and security for the future would give myself and a lot of other people a lot of pleasure".


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan was described by his friends as a shy and taciturn man, but with his tall stature, "luxuriant guardsman's moustache," and masculine pursuits, his exploits made him popular. His profligacy extended to hiring private aircraft to take his friends to the races, asking a car dealer he knew to source an Aston Martin drophead coupé, drinking expensive Russian vodka and racing power boats. In September 1966 he unsuccessfully screen tested for a part in "Woman Times Seven", prompting him to decline a later offer from film producer Albert R. Broccoli to screen test him for the role of James Bond.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: As a professional gambler, Lucan was a skilled player, once rated amongst the world's top 10 backgammon competitors. He won the St James's Club tournament and was champion of the west coast of America. He gained the moniker "Lucky" Lucan, but his losses easily outweighed his winnings, and in reality he was anything but lucky. Lucan had interests in thoroughbred horses; in 1968 he paid more in race entry fees than he received in winnings. Despite some arguments over money, Veronica remained largely ignorant of his losses, retaining the use of accounts at Savile Row tailors and various Knightsbridge shops.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Following the births of George and Camilla, Veronica suffered post-natal depression. Lucan became increasingly involved in her mental well-being, and in 1971 took her for treatment at a psychiatric clinic in Hampstead, where she refused to be admitted. Instead, she agreed to home visits from a psychiatrist and a course of antidepressants. In July 1972 the family holidayed in Monte Carlo, but Veronica quickly returned to England, leaving Lucan with their two elder children. The combined pressures of maintaining their finances, the costs of Lucan's gambling addiction, and Veronica's weakened mental condition took their toll on the marriage; two weeks after a strained family Christmas in 1972, Lucan moved into a small property in Eaton Row.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Some months later Lucan moved again, to a larger rented flat in nearby Elizabeth Street. Despite an early attempt by his wife at reconciliation, by that point all Lucan wanted from the marriage was custody of his children. In an effort to demonstrate that Veronica was unfit to look after them, Lucan began to spy on his family (his car was regularly seen parked in Lower Belgrave Street), later employing private detectives to perform the same task. He also canvassed doctors, who explained that his wife had not "gone mad", but was suffering from depression and anxiety.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan told his friends that nobody would work for Veronica – she had sacked Jenkins, the children's long-term nanny, in December 1972. Of the series of nannies employed in the house, one, 26-year-old Stefanja Sawicka, was told by Veronica that Lucan had hit her with a cane and had, on one occasion, pushed her down the stairs. The countess apparently feared for her safety and told Sawicka not to be surprised "if he kills me one day."


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Sawicka's time at the Lucan household ended late in March 1973. While with two of the children near Grosvenor Place, she was confronted by Lucan and two private detectives. They told her that the children had been made wards of court and that she must release them into his custody, which she did. Frances was collected from school later in the day. Veronica applied to the court to have the children returned, but concerned about the case's complexity, the judge set a date for the hearing three months ahead, for June 1973.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: To defend herself against Lucan's claims about her mental state, Veronica booked herself a four-day stay at the Priory Clinic in Roehampton. While it was acknowledged that she still required some psychiatric support, the doctors reported that there was no indication that she was mentally ill. Lucan's case depended upon Veronica being unable to care for the children, but at the hearing he was instead forced to defend his own behaviour toward her. After several weeks of witnesses and protracted arguments "in camera", on the advice of his lawyers he conceded the case. Unimpressed by Lucan's character, Mr Justice Rees awarded custody to Veronica. The earl was allowed access every other weekend.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Thus began a bitter dispute between the couple, involving many of their friends and Veronica's own sister. Lucan again began to watch his wife's movements. He recorded some of their telephone conversations with a small Sony tape recorder and played excerpts to any friends prepared to listen; he also told themand his bank managerthat Veronica had been "spending money like water". Lucan continued to pay her £40 a week and may have cancelled their regular food order with Harrods. He delayed payment to the milkman andknowing that Veronica was required by the court to employ a live-in nannythe childcare agency. With no income of her own, Veronica took a part-time job in a local hospital.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: A temporary nanny, Elizabeth Murphy, was befriended by Lucan, who bought her drinks and asked her for information on his wife. He instructed his detective agency to investigate Murphy, looking for evidence that she was failing in her duty of care to his children. This they found; he dispensed with the detective agency's services when they presented him with bills amounting to several hundred pounds. Murphy was later hospitalised with cancer. Another temporary nanny, Christabel Martin, reported strange telephone calls to the house, some with heavy breathing and some from a man asking for non-existent people. Following a series of temporary nannies, Sandra Rivett started work in late 1974.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Losing the court case proved devastating for Lucan. It had cost him an estimated £20,000, and by late 1974 his financial position was dire. As he drank more heavily and started chain-smoking, his friends began to worry. In drunken conversations with some of them, including Aspinall and his mother Lady Osborne, Lucan discussed murdering his wife. Greville Howard later gave a statement to the police describing how Lucan had talked of how killing his wife might save him from bankruptcy, how her body might be disposed of in the Solent and how he "would never be caught".


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan borrowed £4,000 from his mother and asked Tucker for a loan of £100,000. Having no luck there, he wrote to Tucker's son, explaining how he wished to "buy" his children from Veronica; the money was not forthcoming. He turned to his friends and acquaintances, asking anyone plausible to loan him money to fund his gambling addiction. The financier James Goldsmith guaranteed a £5,000 overdraft for him, which for years remained unpaid.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan also applied to the discreet Edgware Trust. On request, he supplied details of his income, which was apparently around £12,000 a year from various family trusts. Lucan was required to provide a surety and received only £3,000 of the £5,000 he asked for. Much to their managers' consternation, his four bank accounts were overdrawn; Coutts, £2,841; Lloyds, £4,379; National Westminster, £1,290; Midland, £5,667. Even though by then he was playing for much lower stakes than had previously been the case, Lucan's gambling remained completely out of control. Ranson (1994) estimates that between September and October 1974 alone, the earl ran up debts of around £50,000. Taki Theodoracopulos, who recalled Lucan as a close friend for more than a decade, lent him £3,000 in cash three nights before the murder.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Despite these problems, from late October 1974 Lucan's demeanour appeared to change for the better. His best man, John Wilbraham, remarked that Lucan's apparent obsession over regaining his children had diminished. While having dinner with his mother he cast aside talk of his family problems and turned instead to politics. On 6 November he met his uncle John Bevan, apparently in good spirits. Later that day he met 21-year-old Charlotte Andrina Colquhoun, who said that "he seemed very happy, just his usual self, and there was nothing to suggest that he was worried or depressed". He also dined at the Clermont with racing driver Graham Hill.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: At the time, casinos could open only between 2:00 pm and 4:00 am, so Lucan often gambled into the early hours of the morning. He took tablets to deal with his insomnia and therefore usually awoke around lunchtime. On 7 November though, he broke routine and called his solicitor early in the morning, and at 10:30 am took a call from Colquhoun. They arranged to eat at the Clermont at about 3:00 pm, but Lucan failed to appear. Colquhoun drove past the Clermont and Ladbroke clubs, and past Elizabeth Street, but could not find Lucan's car anywhere. Lucan also failed to arrive for his 1:00 pm lunch appointment with artist Dominic Elwes and banker Daniel Meinertzhagen, again at the Clermont.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: At 4:00 pm Lucan called at a chemist's on Lower Belgrave Street, close to Veronica's home, and asked the pharmacist there to identify a small capsule. It turned out to be Limbitrol 5, a drug for the treatment of anxiety and depression. Lucan had apparently made several similar visits since he separated from his wife; he never told the pharmacist where he got the drugs. At 4:45 pm he called a friend, literary agent Michael Hicks-Beach, and between 6:30 pm and 7:00 pm met with him at his flat on Elizabeth Street. Lucan wanted his help with an article on gambling he had been asked to write for an Oxford University magazine.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan drove Hicks-Beach home at about 8:00 pm, not in his Mercedes-Benz, but in "an old, dark, and scruffy Ford", possibly a Ford Corsair he borrowed from Michael Stoop several weeks earlier. At 8:30 pm he called the Clermont to check on a reservation for dinner with Greville Howard and friends. Howard had called him at 5:15 pm and asked if he wished to come to the theatre, but Lucan had declined and made the alternative suggestion to meet at the Clermont at 11:00 pm. He failed to arrive and did not answer his telephone when called.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Sandra Eleanor Rivett was born on 16 September 1945, the third child of Albert and Eunice Hensby. The family moved to Australia when she was two years old, but returned in 1955. Sandra was a popular child, described at school as "intelligent, although she does not excel academically". She worked for six months as an apprentice hairdresser before taking a job as a secretary in Croydon.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: After a failed romance, Sandra became a voluntary patient at a mental hospital near Redhill, Surrey, where she was treated for depression. She became engaged to a builder named John and took a job as a children's nanny for a doctor in Croydon. On 13 March 1964, she gave birth to a boy named Stephen, but, as her relationship with John was failing, she returned home to live with her parents and considered giving the baby up for adoption. Her parents took on the responsibility and adopted him in May 1965.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Sandra later worked at a home for the elderly before moving to Portsmouth to stay with her older sister. While there she met Roger Rivett; the two married on 10 June 1967 in Croydon. Roger was serving as a Royal Navy able seaman and later worked as a loader for British Road Services, while Sandra worked part-time at Reedham Orphanage in Purley. In mid-1973 he took a job on an Esso tanker, returning to their flat in Kenley a few months later, by which time Sandra was employed by a cigarette company in Croydon.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The marriage collapsed in May 1974 when, suspicious of Sandra's movements while he was away, Roger went to live with his parents. She was by then listed on the books of a Belgravia domestic agency and had been caring for an elderly couple in that district. A few weeks later she began to work for the Lucans.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Sandra normally went out with her boyfriend, John Hankins, on Thursday nights, but had changed her night off and had seen him the previous day. The two last spoke on the telephone at about 8:00 pm on 7 November. After putting the younger children to bed, at about 8:55 pm she asked Veronica if she would like a cup of tea, before heading downstairs to the basement kitchen to make one. As she entered the room, Sandra was bludgeoned to death with a piece of bandaged lead pipe. Her killer then placed her body into a canvas mailbag. Meanwhile, wondering what had delayed her nanny, Lady Lucan descended from the first floor to see what had happened. She called to Rivett from the top of the basement stairs and was herself attacked. As she screamed for her life, her attacker told her to "shut up."


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lady Lucan later claimed at that moment to have recognised her husband's voice. The two apparently continued to fight; she bit his fingers, and when he threw her face down to the carpet, managed to turn around and squeeze his testicles, causing him to release his grip on her throat and give up the fight. When she asked where Rivett was, Lucan was at first evasive, but eventually admitted to having killed her. Terrified, Lady Lucan told him she could help him escape if only he would remain at the house for a few days, to allow her injuries to heal.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan walked upstairs and sent his daughter to bed, then went into one of the bedrooms. When Veronica entered to lie on the bed, he told her to put towels down first to avoid staining the bedding. Lucan asked her if she had any barbiturates and went to the bathroom to get a wet towel, supposedly to clean Veronica's face. Lady Lucan realised her husband would be unable to hear her from the bathroom and made her escape, running outside to a nearby public house, the Plumbers Arms.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan may have arrived at the Chester Square home of Madelaine Florman (mother of one of Frances's school friends) sometime between 10:00 pm and 10:30 pm. Alone in the house, Florman ignored the door, but shortly afterwards she received an incoherent telephone call and put the receiver down. Bloodstains, which after forensic examination were found to be a mixture of blood groups A and B, were later discovered on her doorstep. Lucan certainly called his mother between 10:30 pm and 11:00 pm and asked her to collect the children from Lower Belgrave Street. According to the dowager countess, he spoke of a "terrible catastrophe" at his wife's home. He told her that he had been driving past the house when he saw Veronica fighting with a man in the basement. He had entered the property and found his wife screaming.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The location from which Lucan made this call, and possibly the call to Florman, remains unknown. The police forced their way into Lady Lucan's home and discovered Rivett's body before his wife was taken by ambulance to St George's Hospital. Lucan drove the Ford Corsair to Uckfield, East Sussex, to visit his friends, the Maxwell-Scotts. Susan Maxwell-Scott's meeting with Lucan was his last confirmed sighting.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: By the time Detective Chief Superintendent Roy Ranson arrived at Lower Belgrave Street early on 8 November, the divisional surgeon had pronounced Rivett dead, and forensic officers and photographers had been called to the property. Other than the front door, which the first two officers on the scene had kicked in, there was no sign of a forced entry. A bloodstained towel was found in Veronica's first-floor bedroom. The area around the top of the basement staircase was heavily bloodstained.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: A bloodstained lead pipe lay on the floor. Pictures hanging from the staircase walls were askew and a metal banister rail was damaged. At the foot of the stairs, two cups and saucers lay in a pool of blood. Rivett's arm protruded from the canvas sack, which lay in a slowly expanding pool of blood. The light fitting at the bottom of the stairs was missing its bulb; one was noted nearby, on a chair. Blood was also found on various leaves in the adjoining rear garden.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Officers also searched 5 Eaton Row, into which Lucan had moved early in 1973, interviewed his mother, whom he had called to take the children to her home in St John's Wood, and searched his last address at 72a Elizabeth Street. Nothing untoward was found; on the bed, a suit and shirt lay alongside a book on Greek shipping millionaires, and Lucan's wallet, car keys, money, driving licence, handkerchief and spectacles were on a bedside table. His passport was in a drawer and his blue Mercedes-Benz parked outside, its engine cold and its battery flat.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Ranson then visited Lady Lucan at St George's Hospital. Although heavily sedated, she was able to describe what had happened to her. A police officer was left to guard her should her assailant return. Rivett's body was taken to the mortuary, and a search was undertaken of all local basement areas and gardens, skips and open spaces.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: After removing her corpse from the canvas sack and beginning the post mortem examination, pathologist Keith Simpson told Ranson he was certain that Rivett had been killed before her body was placed in the sack, and that in his opinion the lead pipe found at the scene could be the murder weapon. Her estranged husband, Roger, had an alibi for the night concerned and was eliminated from police inquiries. Other male friends and boyfriends were questioned and discounted as suspects. Rivett's parents confirmed that she had a good working relationship with Lady Lucan and was extremely fond of the children. Meanwhile, Lucan had yet to make an appearance, and so his description was circulated to police forces across the country. Newspapers and television stations were told only that Lucan was wanted by the police for questioning.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Hours earlier, Lucan had again called his mother, at about 12:30 am. He told her that he would be in touch later that day, but declined to speak with the police constable who had accompanied her to her flat; instead, he said he would call the police later that morning. Ranson discovered that Lucan had travelled to Uckfield when he was called by Ian Maxwell-Scott, who told him that Lucan had arrived at his home a few hours after the murder and spoken with his wife, Susan. While there, the earl had written two letters to his brother-in-law, Bill Shand Kydd, and posted them to his London address. Maxwell-Scott also called Shand Kydd at his country house near Leighton Buzzard and told him about the letters, prompting the latter to immediately drive to London to collect them. After reading them, and noting that they were bloodstained, he took them to Ranson.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: When asked why she did not immediately inform the police of Lucan's presence, Susan said she had not seen any newspapers or television news, or listened to any radio broadcasts, that might have warned her of the importance of his visit. Meanwhile, Lucan's children were taken by their aunt, Lady Sarah Gibbs, to her home in Guilsborough, Northamptonshire, where they would remain for several weeks. On the day Lady Lucan was discharged from hospital, a High Court hearing confirmed that the children could return to live with her. Repeated press intrusions later forced the family to move to a friend's home in Plymouth.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The Ford Corsair that Lucan had been seen driving, and whose details had the previous day been circulated across the country, was found on 10 November in Norman Road, Newhaven, about from Uckfield. In its boot was a piece of lead pipe covered in surgical tape and a full bottle of vodka. The car was removed for forensic examination. Later statements from two witnesses suggest that it was parked there sometime between 5:00 am and 8:00 am on the morning of 8 November. Its owner, Michael Stoop, also received a letter from Lucan, delivered to his club, the St James's. However, Stoop threw the envelope away and it was therefore not possible to check its postmark to see from where it had been sent.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Ranson suspected a suicide, but a thorough search of Newhaven Downs was judged impossible. A partial search was made using tracker dogs, but all that was found were the skeletal remains of a judge who had disappeared years earlier. Police divers searched the harbour, and a partial search using infrared photography was undertaken the following year, to no avail. A warrant for Lucan's arrest, to answer charges of murdering Sandra Rivett and attempting to murder his wife, was issued on 12 November. Descriptions of his appearance, already issued to police forces across the UK, were then issued to Interpol.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The scientific examination of the lead pipes found at the murder scene and in the Corsair's boot revealed traces of blood on the pipe from 46 Lower Belgrave Street. This proved to be a mixture of Lady Lucan's (blood group A) and Rivett's (B) blood. Hair belonging to Lady Lucan was also found on that pipe, but none belonging to Rivett. The pipe found inside the Corsair had neither blood nor hair on it. Home Office scientists were unable to prove conclusively that both pipes were cut from the same, longer, piece of piping, although they thought it likely.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The tape wrapped around both was similar, but those too could not be conclusively linked. The letters written to Kydd were stained with blood considered to be from both women. The letter to Stoop had no blood on it, but it was later proven that the paper it was written on had been torn from a writing pad found in the Corsair's boot.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: An examination of the blood stains found inside 46 Lower Belgrave Street demonstrated that Rivett had been attacked in the basement kitchen, while Lady Lucan had been attacked at the top of the basement stairs. The blood stains found inside the Corsair were of the AB blood group; the report concluded that this might have been a mixture of blood from both women. Hair similar to Lady Lucan's was also found inside the car.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: By the afternoon of 8 November, the newspapers' early editions carried photographs of the Lucans across their front pages, accompanied by headlines like "Body in sack ... countess runs out screaming", and "Belgravia murder – earl sought". A meeting that day at the Clermont, between Aspinall, Meinertzhagen, Kydd, Elwes, Charles Benson, and Stephen Raphael became the cause of much press speculation. Meinertzhagen and Raphael later insisted that the gathering was just a rational discussion between concerned friends, keen to share anything they knew about what had happened, but the relationship between the Metropolitan Police and Lucan's social circle was strained; some officers complained that an "Eton mafia" worked against them.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Susan Maxwell-Scott refused to add to her statement, and when Aspinall's mother, Lady Osborne, was asked if she could help locate Lucan's body, she replied, "The last I heard of him, he was being fed to the tigers at my son's zoo", prompting the police to search the house and the animal cages there. Police searched 14 country houses and estates, including Holkham Hall and Warwick Castle, to no avail.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Amidst concerns expressed by the Labour MP Marcus Lipton that some people were "being a bit snooty" with the police, Benson wrote a letter to the editor to "The Times" asking him to either identify those people or "kindly withdraw his remarks". To its cost, the satirical magazine "Private Eye" accused Goldsmith of being at the Clermont meeting, when he was actually in Ireland. Elwes went to see Lady Lucan in hospital and was reportedly deeply shocked both by her appearance and her statement, "Who's the mad one now?" Elwes was apparently unhappy at some of the negative press coverage of the countess, and was later ostracised by his friends for his part in an article critical of Lucan, which appeared in "The Sunday Times Magazine". He committed suicide in September 1975.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Rivett's case made headlines around the world. Within days of the murder, newspapers reported on Lady Lucan's statement to the police, with claims that she had pretended to collude with her husband to ensure her safety. In January 1975 Lady Lucan gave an exclusive interview to the "Daily Express". She also appeared in a murder reconstruction in the same newspaper, complete with posed photographs taken inside the house.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The inquest into Sandra Rivett's death opened on 13 November 1974 and was led by the coroner for inner west London, Gavin Thurston. Two witnesses were called to the courtroom, which was packed with reporters; Roger Rivett, who confirmed that he had identified his wife's body, and the pathologist Keith Simpson, who confirmed that Rivett had died from being hit on the head with a blunt instrument. At Ranson's request, the hearing was then adjourned. Further adjournments were made on 11 December 1974 and 10 March 1975, before a full inquest was scheduled for 16 June 1975.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The hearing began with introductions from various legal representatives, including a lawyer hired for Lucan by his mother. Thurston introduced the jury to the case and explained their duties. He had selected 33 witnesses to be called over the following few days, including Lady Lucan, who each day wore a dark coat and white headscarf. Thurston questioned her on her relationship with Lucan, her marriage, her financial affairs, her employment of Rivett and what had happened on the night of the attack.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The dowager countess's Queen's Counsel attempted to ask Lady Lucan about the nature of their relationship or if she hated her husband, but Thurston ruled his line of questioning inadmissible. Woman Detective Constable Sally Blower, who had taken a statement from Lady Frances Lucan on 20 November 1974, read the young girl's words to the court. Frances had heard a scream, and a few minutes later had watched as her mother (blood on her face) and father had entered the room. Her mother had then sent her to bed. She later heard her father calling for her mother, asking where she was, and watched as he left the bathroom and walked downstairs. She also described how Rivett did not normally work on Thursday nights.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The landlord of the Plumbers Arms pub described how Lady Lucan had entered his bar covered "head to toe in blood" before she fell into "a state of shock". He claimed that she shouted, "Help me, help me, I've just escaped from being murdered!" and, "My children, my children, he's murdered my nanny!" Simpson outlined his post-mortem examination, concluding that death was caused by "blunt head injuries" and "inhalation of blood". He confirmed that the lead pipe found at the scene was most likely responsible for Rivett's injuries; some, to the left eye and mouth, he thought more likely to have been caused by punches from a clenched fist.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The last person to confirm seeing Lucan alive, Susan Maxwell-Scott, told the court that the earl looked "dishevelled", and his hair "a little ruffled". His trousers had a damp patch on the right hip. Lucan had told her that he was walking or passing by the Lower Belgrave Street residence when he saw Veronica being attacked by a man. He let himself in but slipped in a pool of blood at the bottom of the stairs. He told Maxwell-Scott that the attacker ran off, and that Veronica was "very hysterical" and accused him of having hired a hitman to kill her.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Once the hearing had ended, Thurston made a summary of the evidence presented and told the jury their options. At 11:45 am, their foreman announced "Murder by Lord Lucan". Lucan became the first member of the House of Lords to be named a murderer since 1760, when Laurence Shirley, 4th Earl Ferrers, was hanged for killing his bailiff. He was also the last person to be committed by a coroner to the Crown Court for unlawful killing; the coroner's power to do so was removed by the Criminal Law Act 1977.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Rivett's body, which had been held for several weeks following the murder, was released to her family and cremated at Croydon crematorium on 18 December 1974. A police spokesman cited Lady Lucan's desire not to upset the family as a reason for her non-attendance at the cremation.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan's friends and family were critical of the inquest, which they felt offered a one-sided view of events. His mother told reporters that it did not serve "any useful purpose at all". Veronica's sister, Christina, said that she felt "great sadness and sorrow" at the verdict. Susan Maxwell-Scott continued to press the earl's claims of innocence and claimed to feel "awfully sorry" for the countess.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: However, as Lucan remained absent, his description of "a traumatic night of unbelievable coincidence" came only from the letters he authored and the people he spoke with soon after Rivett's murder. While his fingerprints were not found at the scene, his assertions make no provision for the lead pipe discovered in the boot of the Corsair, the claims by some that he discussed murdering his wife, or the lack of a viable suspect for the man he claimed to have seen fighting her. No sign of a forced entry was found, and officers attempting to demonstrate that Lucan could have seen into the basement kitchen, from the street, could only do so by stooping low to the pavement.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The light in the basement of 46 Lower Belgrave Street was not working, making it even more difficult to see into the room; its lightbulb (which was tested and found to be in working order) was found removed from its holder and left lying on a chair. Furthermore, Lady Lucan claimed not to have entered the basement that night, contradicting the earl's version of events; his wife's account is supported by the forensic examination made of the blood splashes and stains around the property.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Some traces of Lady Lucan's blood were found in the basement, the rear garden and on the canvas sack used to store Rivett's body; this may have been due to contamination at the scene. The man Lucan claimed to have seen could not have left through the basement's front door as it was locked, and the rear door led to a walled garden through which no trace of an escape was found. No signs that the man left by the ground level front door were discovered, and no witnesses reported seeing any such person near 46 Lower Belgrave Street.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: In contrast to his defenders, the national press were almost unanimous in their condemnation of Lucan. Their leader-writers ignored the threat of libel and identified him as Rivett's killer.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: As Lucan's bankruptcy proceeded, in August 1975 his creditors were informed that the missing earl had unsecured debts of £45,000 and preferential liabilities for £1,326. His assets were estimated at £22,632. The family silver was sold in March 1976 for around £30,000. His remaining debts were repaid by the Lucan family trust in the years immediately following his disappearance.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan's family was granted probate over his estate in 1999, but no death certificate was issued, and his heir, George Bingham, was refused permission to take his father's title and seat in the House of Lords. Following the passage of the Presumption of Death Act 2013, Bingham began a new attempt to have his father declared dead, which proved successful in a High Court hearing at the Rolls Building on 3 February 2016. He therefore inherited his father's title, becoming the 8th Earl of Lucan.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: The last confirmed sighting of Lucan was at about 1:15 am on 8 November 1974 as he exited the driveway of the Maxwell-Scott property in Stoop's Ford Corsair, and his ultimate fate remains a mystery. Ranson initially claimed that Lucan had "done the honourable thing" and "fallen on his own sword", a view repeated by many of Lucan's friends, including Aspinall, who said that he believed that the earl was guilty of Rivett's murder and that he had committed suicide by scuttling his motorboat and jumping into the English Channel with a stone tied to his body. Lady Lucan, who died by suicide in 2017, believed that her husband had killed himself "like the nobleman he was".


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Ranson later changed his view, explaining that he considered it more likely that suicide was far from Lucan's thoughts, that a drowning at sea was implausible, and that the earl had moved to southern Africa. A detective who led a new investigation into Lucan's disappearance 32 years after the murder told the "Telegraph" that "the evidence points towards the fact that Lord Lucan left the country and lived abroad for a number of years". Susan Maxwell-Scott told author John Pearson that Lucan might have been helped out of the country by shadowy underground financiers before being judged too great a risk, killed, and buried in Switzerland. Advertising executive Jeremy Scott proposed a similar theory, as he was familiar with some of the Clermont Set.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: Lucan's disappearance has captivated the public's imagination for decades, with thousands of sightings reported around the world. One of the earliest such sightings occurred shortly after the murder, but it turned out to be British politician John Stonehouse who had attempted to fake his own death. The police travelled to France in June the following year to hunt another lead, to no avail. A sighting in Colombia turned out to be an American businessman.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: John Miller, a bounty hunter who previously kidnapped fugitive train robber Ronnie Biggs, claimed to have captured the earl in 1982 but was later exposed by the "News of the World" as a hoaxer. In 2003, a former Scotland Yard detective thought that he had tracked the earl to Goa, India, but the man whom he traced was actually Barry Halpin, a folk singer from Merseyside. In 2007, reporters in New Zealand interviewed a homeless British expatriate who neighbours claimed was the missing earl.


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: George Bingham responded to claims that the two eldest Lucan children were sent to Gabon in the early 1980s so that their father might secretly watch them "from a distance" and denied ever visiting the country. Lady Lucan dismissed the newspaper claims of sightings as "nonsense", reiterating that her husband "was not the sort of Englishman to cope abroad".


title: John Bingham, 7th Earl of Lucan

text: In 2020, a sighting was reported in Australia; a pensioner living in suburban Brisbane was alleged to be Lord Lucan by Professor Hassan Ugail, a leading computer scientist. Ugail claimed state-of-the-art facial recognition technology had positively identified the elderly man as the missing British aristocrat. The man, who lives in what was described as a Buddhist commune in Brisbane’s outer suburbs, was found by Ms Rivett’s son, Neil Berriman. The elderly man is the same age as Lucan.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Thomas John Brokaw (; born February 6, 1940) is an American retired network television journalist and author. He first served as the co-anchor of "The Today Show" from 1976 to 1981 with Jane Pauley, then as the anchor and managing editor of "NBC Nightly News" for 22 years (1982–2004). At this position he was one of the "Big Three anchors" along with Dan Rather and Peter Jennings. In the previous decade he served as a weekend anchor for the program from 1973 to 1976. He is the only person to have hosted all three major NBC News programs: "The Today Show", "NBC Nightly News", and, briefly, "Meet the Press". He formerly held a special correspondent post for NBC News. He occasionally writes and narrates documentaries for other outlets.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Along with his competitors Peter Jennings at ABC News and Dan Rather at CBS News, Brokaw was one of the "Big Three" U.S. news anchors during the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s. All three hosted their networks' flagship nightly news programs for more than 20 years. They began and retired from their anchor chairs (or died, in Jennings' case) within a year of each other.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Brokaw has also written several books on American history and society in the 20th century. He is the author of "The Greatest Generation" (1998) and other books and the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was awarded to him by President Barack Obama in 2014.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: On January 22, 2021, NBC announced that Brokaw would retire after 55 years at the network, one of the longest standing anchors in the world at the same news network, along with Ecuadorian news anchor Alfonso Espinosa de los Monteros who has been in Ecuavisa since 1967.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Brokaw was born in Webster, South Dakota, the son of Eugenia "Jean" ("née" Conley; 1917–2011), who worked in sales and as a post-office clerk, and Anthony Orville "Red" Brokaw (1912–1982). He was the eldest of their three sons (brothers named William and Michael) and named for his maternal great-grandfather, Thomas Conley.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: His father was a descendant of Huguenot immigrants Bourgon and Catherine ("née" Le Fèvre) Broucard, and his mother was Irish-American, although the origin of the name Brokaw is contested. His paternal great-grandfather, Richard P. Brokaw, founded the town of Bristol, South Dakota, and the Brokaw House, a small hotel and the first structure in Bristol.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Brokaw's father was a construction foreman for the Army Corps of Engineers. He worked at the Black Hills Ordnance Depot (BHOD) and helped construct Fort Randall Dam; his job often required the family to resettle throughout South Dakota during Brokaw's early childhood. The Brokaws lived for short periods in Bristol, Igloo (the small residential community of the BHOD), and Pickstown, before settling in Yankton, where Brokaw attended high school.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: As a high school student attending Yankton Senior High School, Brokaw was governor of South Dakota American Legion Boys State, and in that capacity he accompanied then-South Dakota Governor Joe Foss to New York City for a joint appearance on a TV game show. It was to be the beginning of a long relationship with Foss, whom Brokaw would later feature in his book about World War II veterans, "The Greatest Generation". Brokaw also became an Advisory Board member of the Joe Foss Institute.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Brokaw matriculated at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, Iowa, but dropped out after a year as he apparently failed to keep up in his studies, in his words majoring in "beer and co-eds". In 2010, he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University, and he later donated his papers to the University of Iowa Libraries. He joked that the "honorary degree is especially coveted because it helps to make up for the uneven (to put it mildly) performance of my freshman year." He later transferred to the University of South Dakota, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1964 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: For several years, Brokaw mountain-climbed with the "Do Boys," whose members included Yvon Chouinard and Douglas Tompkins. He owned 53-acres with a home in Pound Ridge, New York, for over two decades.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Brokaw's television career began at KTIV in Sioux City, Iowa followed by stints at KMTV in Omaha, Nebraska, and WSB-TV in Atlanta, In 1966, he joined NBC News, reporting from Los Angeles and anchoring the 11:00 pm news for KNBC. In 1973, NBC made Brokaw White House correspondent, covering the Watergate scandal, and anchor of the Saturday editions of "Nightly News." He became co-host (with Jane Pauley) of NBC's "Today Show" in 1976 and remained in the job until 1981, when he was succeeded by Bryant Gumbel.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: He kept a closely guarded secret for many years, in 2017 Brokaw wrote of having been offered – and having promptly turned down – the press secretary position in the Nixon White House in 1969. While living in California before Nixon made his political comeback, Brokaw had come to know H. R. 'Bob' Haldeman (White House chief of staff and initiator of the offer) as well as Nixon's press secretary, Ron Ziegler, and others members of the White House staff.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In 2019, Brokaw wrote a book entitled, "The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate", about his experiences working as a reporter and experiences as a member of the White House press corps.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: On April 5, 1982, Brokaw began co-anchoring "NBC Nightly News" from New York with Roger Mudd in Washington, succeeding John Chancellor. After a year, NBC News president Reuven Frank concluded that the dual-anchor program was not working and selected Brokaw to be sole anchor. The "NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw" commenced on September 5, 1983. Among other news items, he covered the Challenger disaster, EDSA Revolution, the June Struggle, Loma Prieta earthquake, fall of the Berlin Wall and Hurricane Andrew.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Brokaw scored a major coup when, on November 9, 1989, he was the first English-language broadcast journalist to report the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Brokaw attended a televised press conference organized in East Berlin by Günter Schabowski, press spokesman for East German Politburo, which had just decided to allow its citizens to apply to permanently leave the country through its border with West Germany. When Schabowski was asked when this loosening of regulations would take effect, he glanced through his notes, then said, ""sofort, unverzüglich"" ("immediately, without delay"), touching off a stampede of East Berliners to the Wall. Brokaw had an interview with Schabowski after the press conference, who repeated his "immediately" statement when pressed. Later that evening Brokaw reported from the west side of Brandenburg Gate on this announcement and pandemonium that had broken out in East Berlin because of it.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: As anchor, Brokaw conducted the first one-on-one American television interviews with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Vladimir Putin. He and Katie Couric hosted a prime-time newsmagazine, "Now", that aired from 1993 to 1994 before being folded into the multi-night "Dateline NBC" program.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Also, in 1993, on the first broadcast of "Late Show with David Letterman" on CBS, in response to David Letterman's monologue containing jokes about NBC, Brokaw walked on stage in a surprise cameo (accompanied by Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra playing the "NBC Nightly News" theme). He congratulated Letterman on his new show and wished him well, but also stated he was disappointed and shocked; he subsequently walked over to the man holding the cue cards, took two, and remarked, "These last two jokes are the intellectual property of NBC!", leaving the stage afterwards. Letterman then remarked, "Who would have thought you would ever hear the words 'intellectual property' and 'NBC' in the same sentence?"


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In 1996 Brokaw made the following statement about Richard Jewell's suspected involvement in the 1996 Olympic Park bombing, after which Jewell sued NBC News:


title: Tom Brokaw

text: On September 11, 2001, Brokaw joined Katie Couric and Matt Lauer around 9:30 a.m., following the live attack on the South Tower of the World Trade Center, and continued to anchor all day, until after midnight. Following the collapse of the second tower, Brokaw observed: "This is war. This is a declaration and an execution of an attack on the United States." He continued to anchor coverage to midnight on the following two days. Later that month, a letter containing anthrax was addressed to him as part of the 2001 anthrax attacks. Brokaw was not harmed, but two NBC News employees were infected. In 2008, he testified before the Commission on Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism about the anthrax attacks, publicly discussing his experiences for the first time in a detailed, day-by-day account.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In 2002, NBC announced that Brokaw would retire as anchor of the "NBC Nightly News" following the 2004 Presidential election, to be succeeded by Brian Williams. Brokaw would remain with NBC News in a part-time capacity from that point onwards, serving as an analyst and anchoring and producing documentary programs. Brokaw closed his final "Nightly News" broadcast in front of 15.7 million viewers on NBC on December 1, 2004, by saying:


title: Tom Brokaw

text: By the end of his time as "Nightly News" anchor, Brokaw was regarded as the most popular news personality in the United States. "Nightly News" had moved into first place in the Nielsen ratings in late 1996 and held on to the spot for the remainder of Brokaw's tenure on the program, placing him ahead of ABC's Peter Jennings and "World News Tonight", and CBS's Dan Rather and the "CBS Evening News".


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Along with Jennings and Rather, Brokaw helped usher in the era of the TV news anchor as a lavishly compensated, globe-trotting star in the 1980s. The magnitude of a news event could be measured by whether Brokaw and his counterparts on the other two networks showed up on the scene. Brokaw's retirement in December 2004, followed by Rather's ousting from the "CBS Evening News" in March 2005, and Jennings's death in August 2005, brought that era to a close.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: After leaving the anchor chair, Brokaw remained at NBC as Special Correspondent, providing periodic reports for "Nightly News". He served as an NBC analyst during the 2008 presidential election campaign and moderated the second presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain at Belmont University. He reported documentaries for the Discovery Channel and the History Channel and in 2006 delivered one of the eulogies during the state funeral of former President Gerald R. Ford.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: On June 13, 2008, when NBC interrupted its regular programming to announce the sudden death of NBC News Washington Bureau Chief and "Meet the Press" moderator Tim Russert, Brokaw served as the announcer. A week later, NBC announced that Brokaw would serve as host of "Meet the Press" on an interim basis. He was succeeded by David Gregory in December 2008.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Brokaw serves on the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Rescue Committee and the Mayo Clinic. He is also a member of the Howard University School of Communications Board of Visitors and a trustee of the University of South Dakota, the Norton Simon Museum, the American Museum of Natural History, and the International Rescue Committee. He also provides the voiceover for a University of Iowa advertisement that airs on television during Iowa Hawkeyes athletic events.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In 2011 Brokaw began hosting "The Boys in the Hall", a baseball documentary series for Fox Sports Net.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In December 2012, Brokaw starred in the Mormon Tabernacle Choir's annual Christmas concert, with live audiences of 84,000. The concert, titled "Home for the Holidays", was nationally televised in December 2013.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In April 2014, a new broadcast facility opened on the Universal Studios Hollywood lot, and named in Brokaw's honor as the Brokaw News Center. The facility houses KNBC-TV, Telemundo owned-and-operated station KVEA, and the Los Angeles bureau of NBC News.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In November 2014, President Barack Obama presented Brokaw with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, American's highest civilian honor. He received the honor with the citation, "The chronicler of the Greatest Generation...we celebrate him as one of our nation’s greatest journalists".


title: Tom Brokaw

text: On March 11, 2016, Brokaw gave one of the eulogies for former First Lady Nancy Reagan at her funeral. He spoke about his relationship with both the Reagans as a reporter and later anchor.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: On January 22, 2021, NBC announced Brokaw would retire after 55 years at the network, one of the few news anchors in the world who have spent the longest time on the same news network, along with Ecuadorian news anchor Alfonso Espinosa de los Monteros who has been in Ecuavisa since 1967.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: Since 1962, Brokaw has been married to author Meredith Lynn Auld. They have three daughters: Jennifer, Andrea, and Sarah. Brokaw and his wife spend considerable time at their ranch near Livingston, Montana, which they bought in 1989.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: On September 6, 2012, Brokaw was hospitalized after appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe". He later tweeted that he was "all well" and explained his illness as having accidentally taken half a dose of Ambien in the morning. He was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a treatable but incurable blood cancer, in August 2013 at the Mayo Clinic. Brokaw and his physicians are "very encouraged with his progress". He has continued to work for NBC throughout his treatments. On December 21, 2014, Brokaw announced that his cancer is in full remission. His book "A Lucky Life Interrupted" tells the personal and compelling story of his battle with multiple myeloma.


title: Tom Brokaw

text: In 2018, Brokaw was accused of unwanted sexual advances toward two women in the 1990s. Brokaw denied the allegations. In response to the allegations, former colleagues Rachel Maddow, Andrea Mitchell, Maria Shriver, Kelly O'Donnell, and 64 others, signed a letter characterizing Brokaw as "a man of tremendous decency and integrity".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) is a United Nations body whose mission is to promote and protect human rights around the world. The Council has 47 members elected for staggered three-year terms on a regional group basis. The headquarters of the Council are at the United Nations Office at Geneva in Switzerland.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Council investigates allegations of breaches of human rights in United Nations member states and addresses thematic human rights issues like freedom of association and assembly, freedom of expression, freedom of belief and religion, women's rights, LGBT rights, and the rights of racial and ethnic minorities.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Council was established by the United Nations General Assembly on 15 March 2006 to replace the United Nations Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR, herein CHR). The Council works closely with the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and engages the United Nations "special procedures". The Council has been strongly criticized for including member countries that engage in human rights abuses.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The members of the General Assembly elect the members who occupy 47 seats of the Human Rights Council. The term of each seat is three years, and no member may occupy a seat for more than two consecutive terms. The previous CHR had a membership of 53 elected by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) through a majority of those present and voting.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The UNHRC holds regular sessions three times a year, in March, June, and September. The UNHRC can decide at any time to hold a special session to address human rights violations and emergencies, at the request of one-third of the member states. , there have been 28 special sessions.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Council consists of 47 members, elected yearly by the General Assembly for staggered three-year terms. Members are selected via the basis of equitable geographic rotation using the United Nations regional grouping system. Members are eligible for re-election for one additional term, after which they must relinquish their seat.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The General Assembly can suspend the rights and privileges of any Council member that it decides has persistently committed gross and systematic violations of human rights during its term of membership. The suspension process requires a two-thirds majority vote by the General Assembly. The resolution establishing the UNHRC states that "when electing members of the Council, Member States shall take into account the contribution of candidates to the promotion and protection of human rights and their voluntary pledges and commitments made thereto", and that "members elected to the Council shall uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Under those provisions, and in response to a recommendation made by the Council's members, on 1 March 2011 the General Assembly voted to suspend Libya's membership in the light of the situation in the country in the wake of Muammar Gaddafi's "violent crackdown on anti-government protestors"; Libya was reinstated as a Council member on 18 November 2011.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 7 April 2022, just days after photographic and video material of the Bucha massacre emerged, the eleventh emergency special session of the General Assembly suspended Russia from the council due to the gross and systematic violations of human rights committed during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Deputy ambassador Gennady Kuzmin said that Russia had withdrawn from the council earlier in the day in expectation of the vote. Russia was the first member of the UN Security Council to be removed from any United Nations body.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: An important component of the Council consists of a periodic review of all 193 UN member states, called the Universal Periodic Review (UPR). The mechanism is based on reports coming from different sources, one of them being contributions from non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Each country's situation will be examined during a three-and-a-half-hour debate.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The first cycle of the UPR took place between 2008 and 2011, the second cycle between 2012 and 2016, and the third cycle began in 2017 and is expected to be completed in 2021.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The General Assembly resolution establishing the Council provided that "the Council shall review its work and functioning five years after its establishment". The main work of the review was undertaken in an Intergovernmental Working Group established by the Council in its Resolution 12/1 of 1 October 2009. The review was finalized in March 2011, by the adoption of an "Outcome" at the Council's 16th session, annexed to Resolution 16/21.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Similar mechanisms exist in other organizations: International Atomic Energy Agency, Council of Europe, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, and the World Trade Organization.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights was the main subsidiary body of the CHR. The Sub-Commission was composed of 26 elected human rights experts whose mandate was to conduct studies on discriminatory practices and to make recommendations to ensure that racial, national, religious, and linguistic minorities are protected by law.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In 2006, the newly created UNHRC assumed responsibility for the Sub-Commission. The Sub-Commission's mandate was extended for one year (to June 2007), but it met for the final time in August 2006. At its final meeting, the Sub-Commission recommended the creation of a Human Rights Consultative Committee to provide advice to the UNHRC.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In September 2007, the UNHRC decided to create an Advisory Committee to provide expert advice with 18 members, distributed as follows: five from African states; five from Asian states; three from Latin American and Caribbean states; three from Western European and other states; and two members from Eastern European states.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The UNHRC complaint procedure was established on 18 June 2007 (by UNHRC Resolution 5/1) for reporting of consistent patterns of gross and reliably attested violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms in any part of the world and under any circumstances.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Chairman of the WGC screens complaints for admissibility. A complaint must be in writing, and cannot be anonymous. Examples provided by the UNHRC of cases that would be considered consistent patterns of gross human rights violations include alleged deterioration of human rights of people belonging to a minority, including forced evictions, racial segregation and substandard living conditions, and alleged degrading situation of prison conditions for both detainees and prison workers, resulting in violence and death of inmates. Individuals, groups, or NGOs can claim to be victims of humans rights violations or that have direct, reliable knowledge of such violations.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Complaints can be regarding any state, regardless of whether it has ratified a particular treaty. Complaints are confidential and the UNHRC will only communicate with the complainant, unless it decides that the complaint will be addressed publicly.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The interaction with the complainant and the UNHRC during the complaints procedure will be on an as-needed basis. UNHRC Resolution 5/1, paragraph 86, emphasizes that the procedure is victims-oriented. Paragraph 106 provides that the complaint procedure shall ensure that complainants are informed of the proceedings at the key stages. The WGC may request further information from complainants or a third party.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Following the initial screening a request for information will be sent to the state concerned, which shall reply within three months of the request being made. WGS will then report to the UNHRC, which will usually be in the form of a draft resolution or decision on the situation referred to in the complaint.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The UNHRC will decide on the measures to take in a confidential manner as needed, but this will occur at least once a year. As a general rule, the period of time between the transmission of the complaint to the state concerned and consideration by the UNHRC shall not exceed 24 months. Those individuals or groups who make a complaint should not publicly state the fact that they have submitted a complaint.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The complaint procedure is not designed to provide remedies in individual cases or to provide compensation to alleged victims.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Due to the confidential manner of the procedure, it is almost impossible to find out what complaints have passed through the procedure and also how effective the procedure is.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: There is a principle of non-duplication, which means that the complaint procedure cannot take up the consideration of a case that is already being dealt with by a special procedure, a treaty body or other United Nations or similar regional complaints procedure in the field of human rights.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On the UNHRC website under the complaints procedure section there is a list of situations referred to the UNHRC under the complaint procedure since 2006. This was only available to the public as of 2014, however generally does not give any details regarding the situations that were under consideration other than the state that was involved.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In some cases the information is slightly more revealing, for example a situation that was listed was the situation of trade unions and human rights defenders in Iraq that was considered in 2012, but the UNHRC decided to discontinue that consideration.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The complaints procedure has been said to be too lenient due to its confidential manner. Some have often questioned the value of the procedure, but 94% of states respond to the complaints raised with them.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The OHCHR receives between 11,000 and 15,000 communications per year. During 2010–11, 1,451 out of 18,000 complaints were submitted for further action by the WGC. The UNHRC considered four complaints in their 19th session in 2012. The majority of the situations that have been considered have since been discontinued.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: History shows that the procedure works almost in a petition like way; if enough complaints are received then the UNHRC is very likely to assign a special rapporteur to the state or to the issue at hand. It has been said that an advantage of the procedure is the confidential manner, which offers the ability to engage with the state concerned through a more [diplomatic] process, which can produce better results than a more adversarial process of public accusation.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The procedure is considered by some a useful tool to have at the disposal on the international community for situations where naming and shaming has proved ineffective. Also another advantage is that a complaint can be made against any state, regardless of whether it has ratified a particular treaty.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Due to the limited information that is provided on the complaints procedure it is hard to make comments on the process itself, the resources it uses versus its effectiveness.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In addition to the UPR, the Complaint Procedure, and the Advisory Committee, the UNHRC's other subsidiary bodies include:


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: "Special procedures" is the general name given to the mechanisms established by the Human Rights Council to gather expert observations and advice on human rights issues in all parts of the world. Special procedures are categorized as either thematic mandates, which focus on major phenomena of human rights abuses worldwide, or country mandates, which report on human rights situations in specific countries or territories. Special procedures can be either individuals (called "special rapporteurs" or "independent experts"), who are intended to be independent experts in a particular area of human rights, or working groups, usually composed of five members (one from each UN region). As of August 2017 there were 44 thematic and 12 country mandates.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The mandates of the special procedures are established and defined by the resolution creating them. Various activities can be undertaken by mandate-holders, including responding to individual complaints, conducting studies, providing advice on technical cooperation, and engaging in promotional activities. Generally the special procedures mandate-holders report to the Council at least once a year on their findings.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Mandate-holders of the special procedures serve in their personal capacity, and do not receive pay for their work. The independent status of the mandate-holders is crucial to be able to fulfill their functions in all impartiality. The OHCHR provides staffing and logistical support to aid each mandate-holders in carrying out their work.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Applicants for Special Procedures mandates are reviewed by a Consultative Group of five countries, one from each region. Following interviews by the Consultative Group, the Group provides a shortlist of candidates to the UNHRC President. Following consultations with the leadership of each regional grouping, the President presents a single candidate to be approved by the Member states of the UNHRC at the session following a new mandate's creation or on the expiration of the term of an existing mandate holder.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Country mandates must be renewed yearly by the UNHRC; thematic mandates must be renewed every three years. Mandate-holders, whether holding a thematic or country-specific mandate, are generally limited to six years of service.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The amendments to the duties of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, passed by the Human Rights Council on 28 March 2008, gave rise to sharp criticism from western countries and human rights NGOs. The additional duty is phrased thus:


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: (quoted from p. 67 in the official draft record of the council). The amendment was proposed by Egypt and Pakistan and passed by 27 votes to 15 against, with three abstentions with the support of other members of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, China, Russia, and Cuba. As a result of the amendment over 20 of the original 53 co-sponsors of the main resolution – to renew the mandate of the Special Rapporteur – withdrew their support, though the resolution was carried by 32 votes to 0, with 15 abstentions. "Inter alia" the delegates from India and Canada protested that the Special Rapporteur now has as his/her duty to report not only infringements of the rights to freedom of expression, but in some cases also employment of the rights, which "turns the special rapporteur's mandate on its head".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Outside the UN, the amendment was criticised by organizations including Reporters Without Borders, Index on Censorship, Human Rights Watch, and the International Humanist and Ethical Union, all of whom share the view that the amendment threatens freedom of expression.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In terms of the finally cast votes, this was far from the most controversial of the 36 resolutions adapted by the 7th session of the Council. The highest dissents concerned combating defamation of religions, with 21 votes for, 10 against, and 14 abstentions (resolution 19, pp. 91–97), and the continued severe condemnation of and appointment of a Special Rapporteur for North Korea, with votes 22–7 and 18 abstentions (resolution 15, pp. 78–80). There were also varying degrees of dissent for most of the various reports criticising Israel; while on the other hand a large number of resolutions were taken unanimously without voting, including the rather severe criticism of Myanmar (resolutions 31 and 32), and the somewhat less severe on Sudan (resolution 16).