title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Bayern coach Ottmar Hitzfeld announced his team's line-up for the final two full days ahead of the match. Injuries also impacted on his selections, with French left-back Bixente Lizarazu and Brazilian forward Élber having suffered season-ending knee injuries. Élber's absence resulted in Bayern playing a three-man attack of Basler, Jancker and Zickler, while Lizarazu was replaced on the left flank by Michael Tarnat playing in a wing-back role opposite Markus Babbel on the right. Babbel was originally intended to play a man-marking role on Giggs, with his defensive abilities earning him selection ahead of the more attack-minded Thomas Strunz; however, this was nullified by Giggs' selection on the right wing, where he would play against Tarnat. The Bayern defence was anchored around sweeper Matthäus, who played behind Thomas Linke and Ghana international Samuel Kuffour – the only non-German in the Bayern side (by comparison, Manchester United had four Englishmen in their team); Linke and Kuffour's partnership at centre-back meant club captain Thomas Helmer had to settle for a place on the bench. Effenberg and Jens Jeremies played in central midfield for Bayern, with Jeremies man-marking Beckham.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Six minutes into the match, Johnsen fouled Bayern striker Jancker just outside the area, and Basler placed a low free kick around the United wall to score the first goal, as Schmeichel was caught flat-footed. Although they were now a goal down, United began to dominate possession, but failed to create any clear-cut chances. The Bayern defence remained strong and well-organised, as Cole found out when his close-range effort was quickly closed down by three defenders. As Bayern began to look increasingly dangerous on the counter-attack than their opponents did in possession, Jancker repeatedly tested the United back four with a number of clever runs, some of which were flagged offside.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Cole once again found himself with a chance in the Bayern box, but goalkeeper Kahn hurried out of his goal to punch the ball to safety. At the other end, Basler came close with another free kick before Zickler sent a shot just wide from the edge of the box. As half-time approached, United winger Giggs, playing out of position on the right, sent a weak header towards Kahn from a Cole cross, but that was as close as they were to come to a goal in the first half.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: The German team started the second half in a more positive mood, with Jancker forcing a save from Schmeichel within a minute after the restart. Basler was proving to be Bayern's most dangerous player, first firing a 30-yard shot towards goal and then setting up a header for Babbel, who missed the ball entirely. United put together an attack when, after a healthy period of possession, Giggs crossed towards Blomqvist, who could only knock the ball over the bar after a desperate stretch. Another chance for Basler prompted Ferguson to bring on Sheringham. Hitzfeld responded with a substitution of his own, bringing on Mehmet Scholl, who immediately set up Effenberg for a long-range shot that went narrowly wide. Schmeichel kept his side in the game when tipping another Effenberg shot over the bar after 75 minutes. Scholl then almost scored from a delicate 20-yard chip after a run from Basler, but the ball bounced back off the post and into Schmeichel's arms. With the game seemingly drifting away from the English side, Ferguson introduced Solskjær with 10 minutes remaining. The substitute immediately forced Kahn into a diving save with a header; it was the closest United had come to scoring all game. A minute later, Bayern missed a chance to secure the trophy, when an overhead kick from Jancker came off the crossbar. As the game crept into the last five minutes, United's two substitutes forced Kahn into more saves, firstly through a Sheringham volley and then from another Solskjær header.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: United won a corner just as the fourth official indicated three minutes of injury time, and with so little time left for an equaliser, Schmeichel ventured up to Bayern's penalty area. Beckham flighted the corner in just over Schmeichel's head, Yorke put the ball back towards the crowded area, and after Fink failed to clear sufficiently, the ball arrived at the feet of Giggs on the edge of the area. His right-footed snap-shot was weak and poorly struck, but it went straight to Sheringham, who swiped at the shot with his right foot, and nestled the ball in the bottom corner of the net. The goal was timed at 36 seconds into injury time. It looked as if, having been behind for most of the match, United had forced extra time.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Less than 30 seconds after the subsequent kick-off, United forced another corner, but Schmeichel stayed in his penalty area this time, under instruction from Ferguson. Beckham again swung the corner in, finding the head of Sheringham, who nodded the ball down across the face of goal. Solskjær reacted fastest, stuck out a foot and poked the ball into the roof of the Bayern goal for United to take the lead with just 43 seconds of the three minutes of injury time to play. Solskjær celebrated by sliding on his knees, mimicking Basler's earlier celebration, before quickly being mobbed by the United players, substitutes and coaching staff. Schmeichel, in his own penalty area, cartwheeled with glee.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: The game restarted, but many Bayern players were overwhelmed with despair, virtually unable to continue and needed the assistance of referee Collina to drag themselves off the ground. They were stunned to have lost a game they had thought won just minutes before (several celebratory flares had already been ignited by the Bayern fans moments before United equalised, and ribbons in the club's colours had already been secured to the trophy itself in preparation for the presentation ceremony). United held onto their lead to record their second European Cup title, and at the final whistle, referee Collina described the cheers from the fans as being like a "lion's roar". Kuffour broke down in tears after the game, beating the floor in despair, and Jancker collapsed in anguish. Matthäus had captained Bayern in the 1987 European Cup Final and lost in similar circumstances to two late Porto goals. He had been substituted with 10 minutes remaining, with victory seemingly assured.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: The game's ending was so unexpected that UEFA President Lennart Johansson had left his seat in the stands before Sheringham's equaliser to make his way down to the pitch to present the European Cup trophy, which was already decorated with Bayern ribbons. When emerging from the tunnel at the final whistle, he was stunned, and he later said: "I can't believe it. The winners are crying and the losers are dancing." When the two teams went to collect their medals, Matthäus received his runner-up medal but removed it from his neck almost immediately. He never won the competition as a player, having moved to play in the United States for the MetroStars in March 2000, the year before Bayern next won the European Cup in 2001. Matthäus later commented that "it was not the best team that won but the luckiest". As captain of Manchester United, Schmeichel should have received his medal last, but instead he went up first before having to return to the back of the queue with Ferguson; the pair then lifted the trophy together, surrounded by the rest of Manchester United's players, including May, who climbed the presentation podium to a position of prominence in the celebration photographs.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Staying true to his word from earlier in the season, the match was Schmeichel's last in a Manchester United shirt, and a month later he signed for Portuguese club Sporting CP. He spent two seasons in Portugal before returning to England for spells with Aston Villa and Manchester City. It was also Blomqvist's last competitive appearance for the club. After playing in all four matches of the club's pre-season tour of Australia and China in July 1999, he suffered a succession of knee injuries that ruled him out of competitive action for the next two seasons. He made two more appearances for the first team during the 2000–01 pre-season campaign, as well as three matches for the reserves in September and October 2001, before a free transfer to Everton in November that year. For Bayern Munich, substitutes Helmer and Ali Daei left the club in the summer of 1999; Helmer moved to England to play for Sunderland, while Daei remained in Germany with Hertha BSC.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Bayern president Franz Beckenbauer recognised that it was a loss of concentration in the last few minutes that led to his side's defeat: "That was the cruellest defeat possible because victory was so close. We already had victory in the bag and there were only a few seconds to go. But those few seconds were enough for Manchester [United] to get back into the game. We were playing well in the last 20 minutes and should have been able to hold on to victory. But in the end, Manchester deservedly won." Manager Hitzfeld seemed more stunned by the result in his reaction: "I feel so sorry for my team because they were so close to winning this match but they have lost. It's really difficult to digest and this is inconceivable for us but then this is what football is all about. Normally when the opposition equalise you are expecting extra-time and it was a shock to our team when they scored the winner two minutes later. It could take days or even weeks to recover from this but I must say that Manchester are great champions."


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: In winning the trophy, Manchester United became the first English team to be crowned European champions since the Heysel Stadium disaster ban in 1985, which had resulted in English clubs being excluded from UEFA competitions for five years, and also the first team to achieve the treble of the Premier League, FA Cup, and European Cup in the same season. It was the first time the treble had been won since PSV Eindhoven in 1988; it would not be won again until Barcelona beat Manchester United 10 years later in the 2009 UEFA Champions League Final. After becoming the first manager of an English club to achieve this honour, Ferguson was made a Knight Bachelor on 12 June 1999 in recognition of his services to football, as well as a bonus from the club reported to be in the region of £350,000 (the players received bonuses of £150,000 each). In a post-match interview with ITV's Gary Newbon, Ferguson provided a succinct summary of the game: "Football, eh? Bloody hell". After the treble was secured, much debate arose among English football fans as to whether the 1999 Manchester United team was the greatest club side ever, alongside past European Cup-winning teams. It was such a significant achievement for an English football club that Prime Minister Tony Blair took the time to watch part of the match and congratulate Manchester United from the opening of the new National Assembly for Wales in Cardiff.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Manchester United became the first team to win the European Cup or Champions League without being the champions of Europe or champions of their country the preceding season. They had finished second behind Arsenal in the 1997–98 FA Premier League, but had qualified through UEFA's expanded 24-team format, which had been introduced a season earlier. Had Bayern won the cup, they would have become the first team to achieve this feat, having also finished second in the Bundesliga to Kaiserslautern the season before. While Manchester United finished the season as treble champions, Bayern ultimately lost the DFB-Pokal final to Werder Bremen, which meant they finished the season with the Bundesliga title as their only silverware.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Manchester United received £2 million in prize money from UEFA for winning the competition, on top of the £10 million they had already won just for reaching the final; by comparison, Bayern Munich received £1.6 million for finishing as runners-up. Manchester United also received another financial boost in the form of an increase in the share price of their parent company on the London Stock Exchange; following the match, the price rose from 187 pence per share to 190 pence; however, this was still around 50p less than the shares were trading for earlier in the season during the attempted buyout of the club by BSkyB.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Manchester United planned an open-top bus tour of the city of Manchester the day after the game, at which they would parade their three trophies for an expected 700,000 people lining the streets between Sale and the city centre. The parade culminated with a reception at the Manchester Arena, for which 17,500 tickets were made available at £3 each; proceeds went to Ferguson's testimonial fund. Greater Manchester Police later estimated that the actual number of people who attended the parade was around 500,000.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: In the United Kingdom, the final was broadcast by ITV Sport with commentary provided by Clive Tyldesley and Ron Atkinson. The broadcast attracted an average of 15.5 million viewers, with a peak audience of 18.8 million at 21:30, just as Manchester United scored their two goals. The climax of the game was voted as the fourth-greatest sporting moment ever by Channel 4 viewers in a 2002 poll. In Germany, the match was shown on RTL Television, and was seen by an average of 13.59 million people over the course of the broadcast. In Spain, the match was shown on TVE.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: On 26 May 2019, Manchester United hosted a reunion match against a Bayern Munich Legends team to mark the 20th anniversary of winning the treble and to raise money for the Manchester United Foundation. Most of the Manchester United squad from the 1998–99 season returned for the match, with the exception of Giggs, who was on coaching duty with the Wales national team. Despite not having been with Manchester United during the 1998–99 season, Karel Poborský, Mikaël Silvestre and Louis Saha completed the squad as regular participants in Manchester United Legends matches. Ferguson returned to manage the side, six years after his retirement from full-time management, joined by his 1999 assistant Steve McClaren and former club captain Bryan Robson as head coach. The Bayern squad featured six players who appeared in the 1999 final – Babbel, Kuffour, Effenberg, Matthäus, Jancker and Fink – as well as striker Élber, who missed the original match through injury.


title: 1999 UEFA Champions League Final

text: Manchester United won the match 5–0. Solskjær, who had been appointed as manager of Manchester United in December 2018, opened the scoring in the fifth minute, having come on for Cole in the first minute of the match due to Cole's continued struggle with kidney trouble. Yorke made it 2–0 on the half-hour mark, before second-half goals from Butt, Saha and Beckham completed the scoring. The match was played in front of 61,175 spectators and raised £1.5 million for the Manchester United Foundation.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: The Last Unicorn is a 1982 American animated fantasy film about a unicorn who, upon learning that she is the last of her species on Earth, goes on a quest to find out what has happened to others of her kind. Based on the 1968 novel "The Last Unicorn" written by Peter S. Beagle, who also wrote the film's screenplay, the film was directed and produced by Arthur Rankin Jr. and Jules Bass. It was produced by Rankin/Bass Productions for ITC Entertainment and animated by Topcraft.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: The film includes the voices of Alan Arkin, Jeff Bridges, Mia Farrow, Angela Lansbury, and Christopher Lee. The soundtrack was composed and arranged by Jimmy Webb, and songs were performed by the group America and the London Symphony Orchestra, with additional vocals provided by Lucy Mitchell. The film grossed $6.5 million in the United States.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: A female unicorn learns from two hunters and a butterfly that she is the last of her kind since a malevolent entity called the Red Bull has herded unicorns to the ends of the earth. The Unicorn journeys to find them.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: The Unicorn is captured by the witch Mommy Fortuna and displayed in her Midnight Carnival. Most of the attractions are normal animals enhanced by illusions to appear as mythical beasts. Fortuna uses a spell to create another horn on the unicorn's head, as the carnival visitors cannot see her real form. Fortuna keeps the immortal harpy Celaeno captive as well, deeming the risk secondary to the deed's prestige. The unicorn is befriended by Schmendrick, an incompetent magician in the service of Mommy Fortuna. With the help of Schmendrick, the Unicorn escapes, in the process freeing Celaeno, who kills Fortuna. The Unicorn and Schmendrick gain a second traveling companion with Molly Grue, the careworn lover of Captain Cully (the disappointing reality behind the myth of "Robin Hood").


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: When the Unicorn nears the seaside castle of King Haggard, keeper of the Red Bull, she encounters the beast, a monstrous fire elemental. Before she can be captured, Schmendrick uses his unpredictable magic, transforming her into a woman. The Red Bull loses interest in her and departs, but the Unicorn is shocked by the sensation of mortality. Schmendrick promises to return her to normal after the quest is complete.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: Schmendrick, Molly Grue, and the now-human Unicorn proceed to the castle. Haggard is at first unwelcoming. Schmendrick introduces the Unicorn as Lady Amalthea, and requests that they become members of Haggard's court, only to be told that the only occupants of the castle are Haggard, his adopted son Prince Lír and four ancient men-at-arms. Haggard consents to lodge the trio, replacing his more competent wizard, Mabruk, with Schmendrick, and setting Molly Grue to work in his scullery. Mabruk leaves after recognizing "Amalthea" for what she truly is, jeering that by allowing her into his castle Haggard has invited his doom. Due to her new human emotions, Amalthea begins forgetting her true self and falls in love with Prince Lír, and considers abandoning her quest in favor of mortal love. Haggard confronts Amalthea, hinting at the location of the unicorns, yet from the waning magic in her eyes, has doubts regarding his suspicions that she is more than she seems.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: Molly finally learns the location of the Red Bull's lair from the castle's cat. Molly, Schmendrick, and Amalthea are joined by Lír as they enter the bull's den, and are trapped there by Haggard. Schmendrick explains to Lír what they are looking for and reveals Amalthea's true identity. Lír declares that he loves her anyway. This makes Amalthea want to abandon the quest and marry Lír, but Lír dissuades her. The Red Bull appears, no longer deceived by Amalthea's human form, and chases after her. Schmendrick turns Amalthea back into the Unicorn, but she is unwilling to leave Lír's side. The Bull begins driving her toward the ocean just as he had driven the other unicorns. Lír tries defending her, but is killed by the Bull. Enraged, the Unicorn turns on the Bull and forces him into the sea. Carried on the incoming tides, the missing hundreds of unicorns emerge from the raging sea. With their release, Haggard's castle collapses into the sea, and Haggard, watching all from the battlements, falls to his death.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: On the beach, the Unicorn magically revives Lír before she leaves him. Schmendrick assures Lír he gained much by winning the love of a unicorn, even if he is now alone. The Unicorn later says goodbye to Schmendrick, who laments he wronged her by burdening her with regret and the taint of mortality, which could make her unable to properly rejoin her kind. She disagrees about the importance of his actions, as they had helped restore unicorns to the world and made her experience regret and love. Schmendrick and Molly watch the Unicorn depart for her forest home.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: Peter S. Beagle stated that there had been interest in creating a film based on the book early on. Those who expressed interest included Lee Mendelson and Bill Melendez of the "Peanuts" television specials, though Beagle had been convinced by one of their partners' wives that they were "not good enough", as well as former 20th Century Fox animator Les Goldman. At the time, Beagle believed that "animated was the only way to go" with regard to the film, and had never thought of making it into a live-action film. Arthur Rankin, Jr. and Jules Bass' New York-based production company, Rankin/Bass Productions, had been the last studio that the film's associate producer, Michael Chase Walker, approached, and Beagle was "horrified" when he was informed that they had made a deal with Walker. Beagle stated that he has "…come to feel that the film is actually a good deal more than I had originally credited", and went on to say "There is some lovely design work – the Japanese artists who did the concepts and coloring were very good. And the voice actors do a superb job in bringing my characters to life…"


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: While Rankin/Bass provided the film's dialogue and story based on Beagle's work, the animation was done at Topcraft in Tokyo, Japan, headed by former Toei Animation employee Toru Hara, with Masaki Iizuka being in charge of the production. The studio, which previously animated "Frosty's Winter Wonderland" (1976), "The Hobbit" (1977), "The Stingiest Man in Town" (1978), "The Return of the King" (1980) and other cel-animated projects from Rankin/Bass, would later be hired by Hayao Miyazaki to work on "Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind", and their core members eventually went on to form Studio Ghibli. According to Beagle, the final film ended up being "remarkably close" to his original script, although one scene at the end involving an encounter with a princess was "animated but eventually cut."


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: The musical score and the songs were composed and arranged by Jimmy Webb, and performed by the group America and the London Symphony Orchestra, with additional vocals provided by Lucy Mitchell. "The Last Unicorn" soundtrack was recorded at De Lane Lea Studios in Wembley, England in 1982. The album was released in Germany in 1983 by Virgin Records, but has not been released in the United States; it includes the film score's symphonic pieces. In his review for AllMusic, James Christopher Monger called it, "an appropriately somber and sentimental blend of fairy tale motifs and dark, Wagnerian cues".


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: U.S. distribution rights were sold to Jensen Farley when Universal Pictures, who were due to release Associated Film Distribution's product (including ITC) in the United States, were not keen on the film.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: "The Last Unicorn" premiered in 648 theaters in the United States on November 19, 1982, and earned $2,250,000 on its opening weekend. It grossed a total of $6,455,330 in the U.S. and Canada.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: The first U.S. DVD, released by Family Home Entertainment on March 16, 2004, was made from poor-quality pan-and-scan masters. The company's owner, Lionsgate, later licensed the German video masters and audio mix and came up with a "25th Anniversary Edition" DVD which was released in North America on February 6, 2007. It has audio and visual quality superior to the original U.S. release, and is in 16:9 widescreen format, but has several swear words edited out, and as a result of being taken from PAL masters, plays 4% faster than the original film, resulting in a slightly higher audio pitch than normal. The new DVD edition includes a featurette with an interview with the author, as well as a set-top game, image gallery, and the original theatrical trailer. As of October 2011, over 2,500,000 copies of the DVD have been sold. A Blu-ray edition of the film was released by Lionsgate on February 22, 2011; this release was sourced from a new transfer of the theatrical cut of the film, thus restoring the swearing and correcting the PAL speed-up issue, though the 25th Anniversary Edition was still included as an option on this release.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: On June 9, 2015, Shout! Factory released new Blu-ray and DVD versions of "The Last Unicorn" entitled "The Enchanted Edition". This edition was transferred from a new widescreen 2K digital master, and includes the original uncensored audio as well as a commentary track with Peter S. Beagle, associate producer Michael Chase Walker, tour producer Connor Freff Cochran, and Conlan Press team members; highlights from the Worldwide Screening Tour; a new "True Magic: The Story of the Last Unicorn" featurette; animated storyboards; and the original theatrical trailer.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: In the United Kingdom, ITV Studios Global Entertainment hold complete ownership of the film via their acquisition of ITC's entire feature film library, not including those released by Embassy Pictures, which are held by StudioCanal. Since 2009, ITV have been responsible for all home media releases of "The Last Unicorn".


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: , the film has rating on Rotten Tomatoes from reviews. The site's critical consensus reads: ""The Last Unicorn" lacks the fluid animation to truly sparkle as an animated epic, but offbeat characters and an affecting storytelling make it one of a kind for the true believers."


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: In a "New York Times" review, Janet Maslin called "The Last Unicorn" "an unusual children's film in many respects, the chief one being that it is unusually good [... and which] features a cast that would do any live-action film proud, a visual style noticeably different from that of other children's fare, and a story filled with genuine sweetness and mystery." Regarding the ending she said, "no one of any age will be immune to the sentiment of the film's final moments, which really are unexpectedly touching and memorable".


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: Todd McCarthy in "Variety" praised the script and voice acting but was unimpressed by the film's animation. "However vapid the unicorn may appear to the eye, Mia Farrow's voice brings an almost moving plaintive quality to the character. For an actress to register so strongly on voice alone is a rare accomplishment." The review also praised the vocal talents of Arkin, Lee, and Frees.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: Colin Greenland reviewed "The Last Unicorn" for "Imagine" magazine, and stated that "Beagle has kept all the good bits, including the jokes, the smart, wry dialogue, and many bursts of brilliant imagination, here captured in stylish special effects: the attack of the Red Bull, all made of fire; the binding of all the lost unicorns into the foam of the sea."


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: The Ridley Scott's cult classic "Legend" (1985) shares several commonalities with "The Last Unicorn", including a red horned antagonist.


title: The Last Unicorn (film)

text: Beagle himself called the film "magnificent" in comparison to "J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings", for which he also wrote the screenplay.


title: Somali language

text: Somali (Latin script: ; Wadaad: ; Osmanya: 𐒖𐒍 𐒈𐒝𐒑𐒛𐒐𐒘 ) is an Afroasiatic language belonging to the Cushitic branch. It is spoken as a mother tongue by Somalis in Greater Somalia and the Somali diaspora. Somali is an official language in Somalia and Ethiopia, and a national language in Djibouti as well as in northeastern Kenya. The Somali language is written officially with the Latin alphabet although the Arabic alphabet and several Somali scripts like Osmanya, Kaddare and the Borama script are informally used.


title: Somali language

text: Somali is classified within the Cushitic branch of the Afroasiatic family, specifically, Lowland East Cushitic in addition to Afar and Saho. Somali is the best-documented of the Cushitic languages, with academic studies of the language dating back to the late 19th century.


title: Somali language

text: The Somali language is spoken in Somali inhabited areas of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Yemen and by members of the Somali diaspora. It is also spoken as an adoptive language by a few ethnic minority groups and individuals in Somali majority regions.


title: Somali language

text: As of 2019, there were approximately 21.8 million speakers of Somali, spread in Greater Somalia of which around 7.8 million resided in Somalia. The language is spoken by an estimated 95% of the country's inhabitants, and also by a majority of the population in Djibouti.


title: Somali language

text: Following the start of the Somali Civil War in the early 1990s, the Somali-speaking diaspora increased in size, with newer Somali speech communities forming in parts of the Middle East, North America and Europe.


title: Somali language

text: Constitutionally, Somali and Arabic are the two official languages of Somalia. Somali has been an official national language since January 1973, when the Supreme Revolutionary Council (SRC) declared it the Somali Democratic Republic's primary language of administration and education. Somali was thereafter established as the main language of academic instruction in forms 1 through 4, following preparatory work by the government-appointed Somali Language Committee. It later expanded to include all 12 forms in 1979. In 1972, the SRC adopted a Latin orthography as the official national alphabet over several other writing scripts that were then in use. Concurrently, the Italian-language daily newspaper "Stella d'Ottobre" ("The October Star") was nationalized, renamed to "Xiddigta Oktoobar", and began publishing in Somali. The state-run Radio Mogadishu has also broadcast in Somali since 1943. Additionally, other state-run public networks like Somaliland National TV, regional public networks such as Puntland TV and Radio and, as well as Eastern Television Network and Horn Cable Television, among other private broadcasters, air programs in Somali.


title: Somali language

text: Somali is recognized as an official working language in the Somali Region of Ethiopia. Although it is not an official language of Djibouti, it constitutes a major national language there. Somali is used in television and radio broadcasts, with the government-operated Radio Djibouti transmitting programs in the language from 1943 onwards.


title: Somali language

text: The Kenya Broadcasting Corporation also broadcasts in the Somali language in its Iftin FM Programmes. The language is spoken in the Somali territories within North Eastern Kenya, namely Wajir County, Garissa County and Mandera County.


title: Somali language

text: The Somali language is regulated by the Regional Somali Language Academy, an intergovernmental institution established in June 2013 in Djibouti City by the governments of Djibouti, Somalia and Ethiopia. It is officially mandated with preserving the Somali language.


title: Somali language

text: Somali linguistic varieties are broadly divided into three main groups: Northern, Benadir and Maay. Northern Somali (or Nsom) forms the basis for Standard Somali. It is spoken by more than 85% of the entire Somali population, with its speech area stretching from Djibouti,Somali Region of Ethiopia, Northern Frontier District to most parts of Somalia This widespread modern distribution is a result of a long series of southward population movements over the past ten centuries from the Gulf of Aden littoral. Lamberti subdivides Northern Somali into three dialects: Northern Somali proper (spoken in the northwest; he describes this dialect as Northern Somali in the proper sense), the Darod group (spoken in the northeast and along the eastern Ethiopia frontier; greatest number of speakers overall), and the Lower Juba group (spoken by northern Somali settlers in the southern riverine areas).


title: Somali language

text: Benadir (also known as Coastal Somali) is spoken on the central Indian Ocean seaboard, including Mogadishu. It forms a relatively smaller group. The dialect is fairly mutually intelligible with Northern Somali.


title: Somali language

text: There are other languages that are spoken in Somalia which are not necessarily Afsoomali. They may be a mixture of the Somali languages and other indigenous languages. Such a language is Maay which is principally spoken by the Digil and Mirifle (Rahanweyn or Sab) clans in the southern regions of Somalia. Its speech area extends from the southwestern border with Ethiopia to a region close to the coastal strip between Mogadishu and Kismayo, including the city of Baidoa. Maay is not mutually comprehensible with Northern Somali, and it differs in sentence structure and phonology. It is also not generally used in education or media. However, Maay speakers often use Standard Somali as a lingua franca, which is learned via mass communications, internal migration and urbanization.


title: Somali language

text: Maay is not closely related with the Somali language in sentence structure and phonology is spoken by Jiddu, Dabarre, Garre and Tunni varieties that are also spoken by smaller Rahanweyn communities. Collectively, these languages present similarities with Oromo that are not found in mainstream Somali. Chief among these is the lack of pharyngeal sounds in the Rahanweyn/Digil and Mirifle languages, features which by contrast typify Somali but are not Somali. Although in the past frequently classified as dialects of Somali, more recent research by the linguist Mohamed Diriye Abdullahi has shown that these varieties, including Maay, constitute separate Cushitic languages.


title: Somali language

text: The degree of divergence is comparable to that between Spanish and Portuguese. Of the Digil varieties, Jiddu is the most incomprehensible to Benadir and Northern speakers. Despite these linguistic differences, Somali speakers collectively view themselves as speaking a common language.


title: Somali language

text: These assumptions however has been contested by a more recent study by Deqa Hassan that tested the mutual intelligibility between Af-Maay and Af-Maxaa speakers (Northern Somali).


title: Somali language

text: The study found that Af-Maay is partially mutually intelligible to Af-Maxaa (Northern Speakers) and that intelligibility increases with increased understanding of Standard Somali, which implies understanding of standard Somali (Northern Somali) increases the chance of understanding Af-Maay. This accounts for the most significant linguistic factor that ties both language variations together. Furthermore, Af-Maay is categorized as a Type 5 dialect for the overlapping common cultural history it shares with Af Maxaa speakers which explains its somewhat mutual intelligibility.


title: Somali language

text: Somali has five vowel articulations that all contrast murmured and harsh voice as well as vowel length. There is little change in vowel quality when the vowel is lengthened. Each vowel has a harmonic counterpart, and every vowel within a harmonic group (which notably can be larger than a word in Somali) must harmonize with the other vowels. The Somali orthography, however, does not distinguish between the two harmonic variants of each vowel.


title: Somali language

text: The consonants often weaken to intervocalically. The retroflex plosive may have an implosive quality for some speakers, and intervocalically it can be realized as the flap . Some speakers produce with epiglottal trilling. is often epiglottalized.


title: Somali language

text: The language has five basic vowels. Each has a front and back variation as well as long or short versions. This gives a distinct 20 pure vowel sounds. It also exhibits three tones: high, low and falling. Vowels harmonize within a harmonic group, so all vowels within the group must either be front or back. The Somali orthography does not distinguish between the front and back variants of vowels, however, as there are few minimal pairs.


title: Somali language

text: The syllable structure of Somali is (C)V(C). Root morphemes usually have a mono- or di-syllabic structure.


title: Somali language

text: Pitch is phonemic in Somali, but it is debated whether Somali is a pitch accent or tonal language. Andrzejewski (1954) posits that Somali is a tonal language, whereas Banti (1988) suggests that it is a pitch accent language.


title: Somali language

text: Lexical prominence in Somali can be classified under a pitch accent system, in which there is one high-tone mora per word.


title: Somali language

text: The tone system distinguishes both grammatical and lexical differences. Differences include numbers singular and plural (a grammatical distinction), and masculine and feminine genders (a grammatical and sometimes also lexical distinction). One example is "inán" ('girl') versus "ínan" ('boy'). This reflects a tonal pattern that codes grammatical gender, such as "dameér" ('female donkey') versus "daméer" ('male donkey').


title: Somali language

text: The question of the tone system in Somali has been debated for decades. The modern consensus is as follows.


title: Somali language

text: In Somali, the tone-bearing unit is the mora rather than the vowel of the syllable. A long vowel or a diphthong consists of two morae and can bear two tones. Each mora is defined as being of high or low tone. Only one high tone occurs per word and this must be on the final or penultimate mora. Particles do not have a high tone. (These include prepositions, clitic pronouns for subject and object, impersonal subject pronouns and focus markers.) There are therefore three possible "accentual patterns" in word roots.


title: Somali language

text: Stress is connected with tone. The high tone has strong stress; the falling tone has less stress and the low tone has no stress.


title: Somali language

text: Clusters of two consonants do not occur word-initially or word-finally, i.e., they only occur at syllable boundaries. The following consonants can be geminate: /b/, /d/, /ɖ/, /ɡ/, /ɢ/, /m/, /n/, /r/ and /l/. The following cannot be geminate: /t/, /k/ and the fricatives.


title: Somali language

text: Two vowels cannot occur together at syllable boundaries. Epenthetic consonants, e.g. [j] and [ʔ], are therefore inserted.


title: Somali language

text: Somali is an agglutinative language, and also shows properties of inflection. Affixes mark many grammatical meanings, including aspect, tense and case.


title: Somali language

text: Somali has an old prefixal verbal inflection restricted to four common verbs, with all other verbs undergoing inflection by more obvious suffixation. This general pattern is similar to the stem alternation that typifies Cairene Arabic.


title: Somali language

text: Changes in pitch are used for grammatical rather than lexical purposes. This includes distinctions of gender, number and case. In some cases, these distinctions are marked by tone alone (e.g. "Ínan", "boy"; "inán", "girl").


title: Somali language

text: Somali has two sets of pronouns: independent (substantive, emphatic) pronouns and clitic (verbal) pronouns. The independent pronouns behave grammatically as nouns, and normally occur with the suffixed article -ka/-ta (e.g. "adiga", "you"). This article may be omitted after a conjunction or focus word. For example, "adna" meaning "and you..." (from "adi"-"na"). Clitic pronouns are attached to the verb and do not take nominal morphology. Somali marks clusivity in the first person plural pronouns; this is also found in a number of other East Cushitic languages, such as Rendille and Dhaasanac.


title: Somali language

text: As in various other Afro-Asiatic languages, Somali is characterized by polarity of gender, whereby plural nouns usually take the opposite gender agreement of their singular forms. For example, the plural of the masculine noun "dibi" ("bull") is formed by converting it into feminine "dibi". Somali is unusual among the world's languages in that the object is unmarked for case while the subject is marked, though this feature is found in other Cushitic languages such as Oromo.


title: Somali language

text: Somali is a subject–object–verb (SOV) language. It is largely head final, with postpositions and with obliques preceding verbs. These are common features of the Cushitic and Semitic Afroasiatic languages spoken in the Horn region (e.g. Amharic). However, Somali noun phrases are head-initial, whereby the noun precedes its modifying adjective. This pattern of general head-finality with head-initial noun phrases is also found in other Cushitic languages (e.g. Oromo), but not generally in Ethiopian Semitic languages.


title: Somali language

text: Somali uses three focus markers: "baa", "ayaa" and "waxa(a)", which generally mark new information or contrastive emphasis. "Baa" and "ayaa" require the focused element to occur preverbally, while "waxa(a)" may be used following the verb.


title: Somali language

text: Somali loanwords can be divided into those derived from other Afroasiatic languages (mainly Arabic), and those of Indo-European extraction (mainly Italian).


title: Somali language

text: Somali's main lexical borrowings come from Arabic, and are estimated to constitute about 20% of the language's vocabulary. This is a legacy of the Somali people's extensive social, cultural, commercial and religious links and contacts with nearby populations in the Arabian peninsula. Arabic loanwords are most commonly used in religious, administrative and education-related speech (e.g. "aamiin" for "faith in God"), though they are also present in other areas (e.g. "kubbad-da", "ball"). Soravia (1994) noted a total of 1,436 Arabic loanwords in Agostini a.o. 1985, a prominent 40,000-entry Somali dictionary. Most of the terms consisted of commonly used nouns. These lexical borrowings may have been more extensive in the past since a few words that Zaborski (1967:122) observed in the older literature were absent in Agostini's later work. In addition, the majority of personal names are derived from Arabic.


title: Somali language

text: The Somali language also contains a few Indo-European loanwords that were retained from the colonial period. Most of these lexical borrowings come from English and Italian and are used to describe new objects or modern concepts (e.g. "telefishen-ka", "television"; "raadia-ha", "radio"). There are as well 300 directly Romance loans, such as "garawati" for "tie" (from the Italian "").


title: Somali language

text: Indeed, the most used loanwords from the Italian are "ciao" as a friendly salute, "dimuqraadi" from Italian "democratico" (democratic), "mikroskoob" from "microscopio” (microscope), "Jalaato" from "gelato" (ice cream), "baasto" from "pasta" (pasta), "bataate" from "patate" (potato), "bistoolad" from "pistol" (pistol), "fiyoore" from "fiore" (flower) and "injinyeer" from "ingegnere" (engineer). Somalis call their calendar months as Soon, soonfur, siditaal, carafa...but these changed recently. Furthermore, all the months in Somali language are now loaned words from the Italian, like "Febraayo" that comes from "febbraio" (February).


title: Somali language

text: Additionally, Somali contains lexical terms from Persian, Urdu and Hindi that were acquired through historical trade with communities in the Near East and South Asia (e.g. "khiyaar" "cucumber" from "khiyār" ). Other loan words have also displaced their native synonyms in some dialects (e.g. "jabaati" "a type of flat bread" from Hindi: चपाती "chapāti" displacing "sabaayad)." Some of these words were also borrowed indirectly via Arabic.


title: Somali language

text: As part of a broader governmental effort of linguistic purism in the Somali language, the past few decades have seen a push in Somalia toward replacement of loanwords in general with their Somali equivalents or neologisms. To this end, the Supreme Revolutionary Council during its tenure officially prohibited the borrowing and use of English and Italian terms.


title: Somali language

text: Archaeological excavations and research in Somalia uncovered ancient inscriptions in a distinct writing system. In an 1878 report to the Royal Geographical Society of Great Britain, scientist Johann Maria Hildebrandt noted upon visiting the area that "we know from ancient authors that these districts, at present so desert, were formerly populous and civilised[...] I also discovered ancient ruins and rock-inscriptions both in pictures and characters[...] These have hitherto not been deciphered." According to the 1974 report for Ministry of Information and National Guidance, this script represents the earliest written attestation of Somali.


title: Somali language

text: Much more recently, Somali archaeologist Sada Mire has published ancient inscriptions found throughout Somaliland. As much for much of Somali linguistic history the language was not widely used for literature, Dr. Mire's publications however prove that writing as a technology was not foreign nor scarce in the region. These piece of writing are from the Semitic Himyarite and Sabaean languages that were largely spoken in what is modern day Yemen —"there is an extensive and ancient relationship between the people and cultures of both sides of the Red Sea coast" Mire posits. Yet, while many more such ancient inscriptions are yet to be found or analyzed, many have been "bulldozed by developers, as the Ministry of Tourism could not buy the land or stop the destruction".


title: Somali language

text: Besides Ahmed's Latin script, other orthographies that have been used for centuries for writing the Somali language include the long-established Arabic script and Wadaad writing. According to Bogumił Andrzejewski, this usage was limited to Somali clerics and their associates, as sheikhs preferred to write in the liturgical Arabic language. Various such historical manuscripts in Somali nonetheless exist, which mainly consist of Islamic poems (qasidas), recitations and chants. Among these texts are the Somali poems by Sheikh Uways and Sheikh Ismaaciil Faarah. The rest of the existing historical literature in Somali principally consists of translations of documents from Arabic.


title: Somali language

text: Since then a number of writing systems have been used for transcribing the Somali language. Of these, the Somali Latin alphabet, officially adopted in 1972, is the most widely used and recognised as official orthography of the state. The script was developed by a number of leading scholars of Somali, including Musa Haji Ismail Galal, B. W. Andrzejewski and Shire Jama Ahmed specifically for transcribing the Somali language, and uses all letters of the English Latin alphabet except "p", "v" and "z". There are no diacritics or other special characters except the use of the apostrophe for the glottal stop, which does not occur word-initially. There are three consonant digraphs: DH, KH and SH. Tone is not marked, and front and back vowels are not distinguished.


title: Somali language

text: Writing systems developed in the twentieth century include the Osmanya, Borama and Kaddare alphabets, which were invented by Osman Yusuf Kenadid, Abdurahman Sheikh Nuur and Hussein Sheikh Ahmed Kaddare, respectively.


title: Somali language

text: For all number between 11 "kow iyo toban" and 99 "sagaashal iyo sagaal" it is equally correct to switch the placement of the numbers, although larger numbers is some dialects prefer to place the 10s numeral first. For example 25 may both be written as "labaatan iyo shan" and "shan iyo labaatan" (lit. Twenty and Five & Five and Twenty).


title: Minimax

text: Minimax (sometimes MinMax, MM or saddle point) is a decision rule used in artificial intelligence, decision theory, game theory, statistics, and philosophy for "mini"mizing the possible loss for a worst case ("max"imum loss) scenario. When dealing with gains, it is referred to as "maximin" – to maximize the minimum gain. Originally formulated for several-player zero-sum game theory, covering both the cases where players take alternate moves and those where they make simultaneous moves, it has also been extended to more complex games and to general decision-making in the presence of uncertainty.


title: Minimax

text: The maximin value is the highest value that the player can be sure to get without knowing the actions of the other players; equivalently, it is the lowest value the other players can force the player to receive when they know the player's action. Its formal definition is:


title: Minimax

text: Calculating the maximin value of a player is done in a worst-case approach: for each possible action of the player, we check all possible actions of the other players and determine the worst possible combination of actions – the one that gives player the smallest value. Then, we determine which action player can take in order to make sure that this smallest value is the highest possible.


title: Minimax

text: For example, consider the following game for two players, where the first player ("row player") may choose any of three moves, labelled , , or , and the second player ("column" player) may choose either of two moves, or . The result of the combination of both moves is expressed in a payoff table:


title: Minimax

text: (where the first number in each of the cell is the pay-out of the row player and the second number is the pay-out of the column player).


title: Minimax

text: If both players play their respective maximin strategies formula_10, the payoff vector is formula_11.


title: Minimax

text: The minimax value of a player is the smallest value that the other players can force the player to receive, without knowing the player's actions; equivalently, it is the largest value the player can be sure to get when they "know" the actions of the other players. Its formal definition is:


title: Minimax

text: The definition is very similar to that of the maximin value – only the order of the maximum and minimum operators is inverse. In the above example:


title: Minimax

text: Intuitively, in maximin the maximization comes after the minimization, so player tries to maximize their value before knowing what the others will do; in minimax the maximization comes before the minimization, so player is in a much better position – they maximize their value knowing what the others did.


title: Minimax

text: the initial set of outcomes formula_17 depends on both formula_18 and formula_19 We first "marginalize away" formula_20 from formula_21, by maximizing over formula_18 (for every possible value of formula_23) to yield a set of marginal outcomes formula_24 which depends only on formula_19 We then minimize over formula_26 over these outcomes. (Conversely for maximin.)


title: Minimax

text: Although it is always the case that formula_27 and formula_28 the payoff vector resulting from both players playing their minimax strategies, formula_29 in the case of formula_30 or formula_31 in the case of formula_32 cannot similarly be ranked against the payoff vector formula_33 resulting from both players playing their maximin strategy.


title: Minimax

text: For every two-person, zero-sum game with finitely many strategies, there exists a value and a mixed strategy for each player, such that


title: Minimax

text: Equivalently, Player 1's strategy guarantees them a payoff of regardless of Player 2's strategy, and similarly Player 2 can guarantee themselves a payoff of −. The name "minimax" arises because each player minimizes the maximum payoff possible for the other – since the game is zero-sum, they also minimize their own maximum loss (i.e. maximize their minimum payoff).


title: Minimax

text: The following example of a zero-sum game, where A and B make simultaneous moves, illustrates "maximin" solutions. Suppose each player has three choices and consider the payoff matrix for A displayed on the table ("Payoff matrix for player A"). Assume the payoff matrix for B is the same matrix with the signs reversed (i.e. if the choices are A1 and B1 then B pays 3 to A). Then, the maximin choice for A is A2 since the worst possible result is then having to pay 1, while the simple maximin choice for B is B2 since the worst possible result is then no payment. However, this solution is not stable, since if B believes A will choose A2 then B will choose B1 to gain 1; then if A believes B will choose B1 then A will choose A1 to gain 3; and then B will choose B2; and eventually both players will realize the difficulty of making a choice. So a more stable strategy is needed.


title: Minimax

text: Some choices are "dominated" by others and can be eliminated: A will not choose A3 since either A1 or A2 will produce a better result, no matter what B chooses; B will not choose B3 since some mixtures of B1 and B2 will produce a better result, no matter what A chooses.


title: Minimax

text: Player A can avoid having to make an expected payment of more than by choosing A1 with probability and A2 with probability The expected payoff for A would be in case B chose B1 and in case B chose B2. Similarly, B can ensure an expected gain of at least , no matter what A chooses, by using a randomized strategy of choosing B1 with probability and B2 with probability . These mixed minimax strategies cannot be improved and are now stable.


title: Minimax

text: Frequently, in game theory, maximin is distinct from minimax. Minimax is used in zero-sum games to denote minimizing the opponent's maximum payoff. In a zero-sum game, this is identical to minimizing one's own maximum loss, and to maximizing one's own minimum gain.


title: Minimax

text: "Maximin" is a term commonly used for non-zero-sum games to describe the strategy which maximizes one's own minimum payoff. In non-zero-sum games, this is not generally the same as minimizing the opponent's maximum gain, nor the same as the Nash equilibrium strategy.


title: Minimax

text: The minimax values are very important in the theory of repeated games. One of the central theorems in this theory, the folk theorem, relies on the minimax values.


title: Minimax

text: A simple version of the minimax "algorithm", stated below, deals with games such as tic-tac-toe, where each player can win, lose, or draw. If player A "can" win in one move, their best move is that winning move. If player B knows that one move will lead to the situation where player A "can" win in one move, while another move will lead to the situation where player A can, at best, draw, then player B's best move is the one leading to a draw. Late in the game, it's easy to see what the "best" move is. The minimax algorithm helps find the best move, by working backwards from the end of the game. At each step it assumes that player A is trying to maximize the chances of A winning, while on the next turn player B is trying to minimize the chances of A winning (i.e., to maximize B's own chances of winning).


title: Minimax

text: A minimax algorithm is a recursive algorithm for choosing the next move in an n-player game, usually a two-player game. A value is associated with each position or state of the game. This value is computed by means of a position evaluation function and it indicates how good it would be for a player to reach that position. The player then makes the move that maximizes the minimum value of the position resulting from the opponent's possible following moves. If it is A's turn to move, A gives a value to each of their legal moves.


title: Minimax

text: A possible allocation method consists in assigning a certain win for A as +1 and for B as −1. This leads to combinatorial game theory as developed by J.H. Conway. An alternative is using a rule that if the result of a move is an immediate win for A it is assigned positive infinity and if it is an immediate win for B, negative infinity. The value to A of any other move is the minimum of the values resulting from each of B's possible replies. For this reason, A is called the "maximizing player" and B is called the "minimizing player", hence the name "minimax algorithm". The above algorithm will assign a value of positive or negative infinity to any position since the value of every position will be the value of some final winning or losing position. Often this is generally only possible at the very end of complicated games such as chess or go, since it is not computationally feasible to look ahead as far as the completion of the game, except towards the end, and instead, positions are given finite values as estimates of the degree of belief that they will lead to a win for one player or another.


title: Minimax

text: This can be extended if we can supply a heuristic evaluation function which gives values to non-final game states without considering all possible following complete sequences. We can then limit the minimax algorithm to look only at a certain number of moves ahead. This number is called the "look-ahead", measured in "plies". For example, the chess computer Deep Blue (the first one to beat a reigning world champion, Garry Kasparov at that time) looked ahead at least 12 plies, then applied a heuristic evaluation function.


title: Minimax

text: The algorithm can be thought of as exploring the nodes of a "game tree". The "effective branching factor" of the tree is the average number of children of each node (i.e., the average number of legal moves in a position). The number of nodes to be explored usually increases exponentially with the number of plies (it is less than exponential if evaluating forced moves or repeated positions). The number of nodes to be explored for the analysis of a game is therefore approximately the branching factor raised to the power of the number of plies. It is therefore impractical to completely analyze games such as chess using the minimax algorithm.


title: Minimax

text: The performance of the naïve minimax algorithm may be improved dramatically, without affecting the result, by the use of alpha–beta pruning. Other heuristic pruning methods can also be used, but not all of them are guaranteed to give the same result as the unpruned search.


title: Minimax

text: A naïve minimax algorithm may be trivially modified to additionally return an entire Principal Variation along with a minimax score.


title: Minimax

text: The minimax function returns a heuristic value for leaf nodes (terminal nodes and nodes at the maximum search depth). Non-leaf nodes inherit their value from a descendant leaf node. The heuristic value is a score measuring the favorability of the node for the maximizing player. Hence nodes resulting in a favorable outcome, such as a win, for the maximizing player have higher scores than nodes more favorable for the minimizing player. The heuristic value for terminal (game ending) leaf nodes are scores corresponding to win, loss, or draw, for the maximizing player. For non terminal leaf nodes at the maximum search depth, an evaluation function estimates a heuristic value for the node. The quality of this estimate and the search depth determine the quality and accuracy of the final minimax result.


title: Minimax

text: Minimax treats the two players (the maximizing player and the minimizing player) separately in its code. Based on the observation that formula_34 minimax may often be simplified into the negamax algorithm.


title: Minimax

text: Suppose the game being played only has a maximum of two possible moves per player each turn. The algorithm generates the tree on the right, where the circles represent the moves of the player running the algorithm ("maximizing player"), and squares represent the moves of the opponent ("minimizing player"). Because of the limitation of computation resources, as explained above, the tree is limited to a "look-ahead" of 4 moves.


title: Minimax

text: The algorithm evaluates each "leaf node" using a heuristic evaluation function, obtaining the values shown. The moves where the "maximizing player" wins are assigned with positive infinity, while the moves that lead to a win of the "minimizing player" are assigned with negative infinity. At level 3, the algorithm will choose, for each node, the smallest of the "child node" values, and assign it to that same node (e.g. the node on the left will choose the minimum between "10" and "+∞", therefore assigning the value "10" to itself). The next step, in level 2, consists of choosing for each node the largest of the "child node" values. Once again, the values are assigned to each "parent node". The algorithm continues evaluating the maximum and minimum values of the child nodes alternately until it reaches the "root node", where it chooses the move with the largest value (represented in the figure with a blue arrow). This is the move that the player should make in order to "minimize" the "maximum" possible loss.


title: Minimax

text: Minimax theory has been extended to decisions where there is no other player, but where the consequences of decisions depend on unknown facts. For example, deciding to prospect for minerals entails a cost, which will be wasted if the minerals are not present, but will bring major rewards if they are. One approach is to treat this as a game against "nature" (see move by nature), and using a similar mindset as Murphy's law or resistentialism, take an approach which minimizes the maximum expected loss, using the same techniques as in the two-person zero-sum games.


title: Minimax

text: In addition, expectiminimax trees have been developed, for two-player games in which chance (for example, dice) is a factor.


title: Minimax

text: In classical statistical decision theory, we have an estimator formula_35 that is used to estimate a parameter formula_36 We also assume a risk function formula_37 usually specified as the integral of a loss function. In this framework, formula_38 is called minimax if it satisfies


title: Minimax

text: An alternative criterion in the decision theoretic framework is the Bayes estimator in the presence of a prior distribution formula_40 An estimator is Bayes if it minimizes the "average" risk


title: Minimax

text: A key feature of minimax decision making is being non-probabilistic: in contrast to decisions using expected value or expected utility, it makes no assumptions about the probabilities of various outcomes, just scenario analysis of what the possible outcomes are. It is thus robust to changes in the assumptions, in contrast to these other decision techniques. Various extensions of this non-probabilistic approach exist, notably minimax regret and Info-gap decision theory.


title: Minimax

text: Further, minimax only requires ordinal measurement (that outcomes be compared and ranked), not "interval" measurements (that outcomes include "how much better or worse"), and returns ordinal data, using only the modeled outcomes: the conclusion of a minimax analysis is: "this strategy is minimax, as the worst case is (outcome), which is less bad than any other strategy". Compare to expected value analysis, whose conclusion is of the form: "This strategy yields Minimax thus can be used on ordinal data, and can be more transparent.


title: Minimax

text: In philosophy, the term "maximin" is often used in the context of John Rawls's "A Theory of Justice," where he refers to it in the context of The Difference Principle. Rawls defined this principle as the rule which states that social and economic inequalities should be arranged so that "they are to be of the greatest benefit to the least-advantaged members of society".


title: Bet9ja

text: Bet9ja is an online bookmaker company that offers betting on major sporting events operating in Nigeria. Traded under KC Gaming Networks Limited and run by a series of shareholders of multiple nationalities, the website is licensed by the Lagos State Lotteries Board (LSLB) with permission to operate in other parts of Nigeria.


title: Bet9ja

text: Bet9ja.com is the third most-visited website in Nigeria after Google.com and Youtube.com in late April 2020, according to Alexa, a global internet traffic ranking firm. It is also the first most-visited local site in Nigeria and the only Nigerian website in the top 500 most-visited websites globally as of April 2020, according to a recent listing by IABC Africa.


title: Bet9ja

text: Bet9ja was co-founded by Ayo Ojuroye and Kunle Soname who are its CEO and chairman respectively. In 2022,Bet9ja became the official sponsor/partner of the Nigeria Professional Football League.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The 2004 Madrid train bombings (also known in Spain as 11M) were a series of coordinated, nearly simultaneous bombings against the Cercanías commuter train system of Madrid, Spain, on the morning of 11 March 2004—three days before Spain's general elections. The explosions killed 193 people and injured around 2,000. The bombings constituted the deadliest terrorist attack carried out in the history of Spain and the deadliest in Europe since 1988. The official investigation by the Spanish judiciary found that the attacks were directed by al-Qaeda, allegedly as a reaction to Spain's involvement in the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq. Although they had no role in the planning or implementation, the Spanish miners who sold the explosives to the terrorists were also arrested.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Controversy regarding the handling and representation of the bombings by the government arose, with Spain's two main political parties — Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and Partido Popular (PP) — accusing each other of concealing or distorting evidence for electoral reasons. The bombings occurred three days before general elections in which incumbent José María Aznar's PP was defeated. Immediately after the bombing, leaders of the PP claimed evidence indicating the Basque separatist organization ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna) was responsible for the bombings, while the opposition claimed that the PP was trying to prevent the public from knowing it had been an Islamist attack, which would be interpreted as the direct result of Spain's involvement in Iraq, an unpopular war which the government had entered without the approval of the Spanish Parliament.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Following the attacks, there were nationwide demonstrations and protests demanding that the government "tell the truth". The prevailing opinion of political analysts is that the Aznar administration lost the general elections as a result of the handling and representation of the terrorist attacks, rather than because of the bombings per se. Results published in The Review of Economics and Statistics by economist José García Montalvo seem to suggest that indeed the bombings had important electoral impact (turning the electoral outcome against the incumbent People's Party and handing government over to the Socialist Party, PSOE).


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: After 21 months of investigation, judge Juan del Olmo tried Moroccan national Jamal Zougam, among several others, for his participation carrying out the attack. The September 2007 sentence established no known mastermind nor direct al-Qaeda link.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: During the peak of Madrid rush hour on the morning of Thursday, 11 March 2004, ten explosions occurred aboard four commuter trains ("cercanías"). The date, 11th of March, led to the popular abbreviation of the incident as "11-M". All the affected trains were traveling on the same line and in the same direction between Alcalá de Henares and the Atocha station in Madrid. It was later reported that thirteen improvised explosive devices (IEDs) had been placed on the trains. Bomb disposal teams (TEDAX) arriving at the scenes of the explosions detonated two of the remaining three IEDs in controlled explosions, but the third was not found until later in the evening, having been stored inadvertently with luggage taken from one of the trains. The following timeline of events comes from the judicial investigation.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: All four trains had departed the Alcalá de Henares station between 07:01 and 07:14. The explosions took place between 07:37 and 07:40, as described below (all times given are in local time CET, UTC +1):


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: At 08:00, emergency relief workers began arriving at the scenes of the bombings. The police reported numerous victims and spoke of 50 wounded and several dead. By 08:30 the emergency ambulance service, SAMUR (Servicio de Asistencia Municipal de Urgencia y Rescate), had set up a field hospital at the Daoiz y Velarde sports facility. Bystanders and local residents helped relief workers, as hospitals were told to expect the arrival of many casualties. At 08:43, firefighters reported 15 dead at El Pozo. By 09:00, the police had confirmed the death of at least 30 people – 20 at El Pozo and about 10 in Santa Eugenia and Atocha. People combed the city's major hospitals in search of family members who they thought were aboard the trains. There were 193 confirmed dead victims, the last victim dying in 2014 after having been in a coma for 10 years due to one of the Atocha explosions and not having been able to recover from their injuries.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The total number of victims was higher than in any other terrorist attack in Spain, far surpassing the 21 killed and 40 wounded from a 1987 bombing at a Hipercor chain supermarket in Barcelona. On that occasion, responsibility was claimed by ETA. It was Europe's worst terror attack since the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, in December 1988.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: A device composed of 12 kilograms of Goma-2 ECO with a detonator and 136 meters of wire (connected to nothing) was found on the track of a high-speed railway line (AVE) on 2 April. The Spanish judiciary chose not to investigate that incident and the perpetrators remain unknown. The device used in the AVE incident was unable to explode because it lacked an initiation system.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Shortly after the AVE incident, police identified an apartment in Leganés, south of Madrid, as the base of operations for the individuals suspected of being the perpetrators of the Madrid and AVE attacks. The suspected militants, Sarhane Abdelmaji "the Tunisian" and Jamal Ahmidan "the Chinese", were trapped inside the apartment by a police raid on the evening of Saturday 3 April. At 9:03 pm, when the police attempted to breach the premises, the militants committed suicide by setting off explosives, killing themselves and one of the police officers.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Investigators subsequently found that the explosives used in the Leganés explosion were of the same type as those used in the 11 March attacks (though it had not been possible to identify a brand of dynamite from samples taken from the trains) and in the thwarted bombing of the AVE line.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Based on the assumption that the militants killed at Leganés were indeed the individuals responsible for the train bombings, the ensuing investigation focused on how they obtained their estimated 200 kg of explosives. The investigation revealed that they had been bought from a retired miner who still had access to blasting equipment.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: In December 2006, the newspaper "ABC" reported that ETA reminded Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero about 11 March 2004 as an example of what could happen unless the government considered their petitions (in reference to the 2004 electoral swing), although the source also makes it clear that ETA 'had nothing to do' with the attack itself.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: In France, the Vigipirate plan was upgraded to orange level. In Italy, the government declared a state of high alert.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: In December 2004, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero claimed that the PP government erased all of the computer files related to the Madrid bombings, leaving only the documents on paper.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: On 25 March 2005, prosecutor Olga Sánchez asserted that the bombings happened 911 days (exactly 2 and a half years) after the 11 September attacks due to the "highly symbolic and qabbalistic charge for local Al-Qaida groups" of choosing that day. Because 2004 was a leap year, 912 days had elapsed between 11 September 2001 and 11 March 2004.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: On 27 May 2005, the Prüm Convention, implementing "inter alia" the principle of availability which began to be discussed after the Madrid bombings, was signed by Germany, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Austria, and Belgium.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: On 4 January 2007, "El País" reported that Algerian Ouhnane Daoud, who is considered to be the mastermind of the 11-M bombings, has been searching for ways to return to Spain to prepare further attacks, though this has not been confirmed.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: On 17 March 2008, Basel Ghalyoun, Mohamed Almallah Dabas, Abdelillah El-Fadual El-Akil and Raúl González Peña, having been found guilty by the Audiencia Nacional, were released after a Higher Court ruling. This court also verified the release of the Egyptian Rabei Osman al-Sayed.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: On 14 March 2004, Abu Dujana al-Afghani, a purported spokesman for al-Qaeda in Europe, appeared in a videotape claiming responsibility for the attacks.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The Spanish judiciary stated that a loose group of Moroccan, Syrian, and Algerian Muslims and two Guardia Civil and Spanish police informants were suspected of having carried out the attacks. On 11 April 2006, Judge Juan del Olmo charged 29 suspects for their involvement in the train bombings.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: No evidence has been found of al-Qaeda involvement, although an al-Qaeda claim was made the day of the attacks by the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades. U.S. officials note that this group is "notoriously unreliable". In August 2007, al-Qaeda claimed to be "proud" about the Madrid 2004 bombings.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: "The Independent" reported that "Those who invented the new kind of rucksack bomb used in the attacks are said to have been taught in training camps in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, under instruction from members of Morocco's radical Islamist Combat Group."


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Mohamed Darif, a professor of political science at Hassan II University in Mohammedia, stated in 2004 that the history of the Moroccan Combat Group is directly tied to the rise of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. According to Darif, "Since its inception at the end of the 1990s and until 2001, the role of the organisation was restricted to giving logistic support to al-Qaeda in Morocco, finding its members places to live, providing them with false papers, with the opportunity of marrying Moroccans and with false identities to allow them to travel to Europe. Since 11 September, however, which brought the Kingdom of Morocco in on the side of the fight against terrorism, the organisation switched strategies and opted for terrorist attacks within Morocco itself."


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Scholar Rogelio Alonso said in 2007, "the investigation had uncovered a link between the Madrid suspects and the wider world of al-Qaida". Scott Atran said "There isn't the slightest bit of evidence of any relationship with al-Qaida. We've been looking at it closely for years and we've been briefed by everybody under the sun... and nothing connects them." He provides a detailed timeline that lends credence to this view.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: According to the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, this is the only extremist terrorist act in the history of Europe where international Islamic extremists collaborated with non-Muslims.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar said in 2011 that Abdelhakim Belhadj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and current head of the Tripoli Military Council, was suspected of complicity in the bombings.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Immediate reactions to the attacks in Madrid were the several press conferences held by the Spanish prime minister José María Aznar involving ETA. The Spanish government maintained this theory for two days. Because the bombs were detonated three days before the general elections in Spain, the situation had many political interpretations. The United States also initially believed ETA was responsible, then questioning if Islamic extremists were responsible. Spain's third-largest newspaper, ABC, immediately labelled the attacks as "ETA's bloodiest attack."


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Due to the government theory, statements issued shortly after the Madrid attacks, including from lehendakari Juan José Ibarretxe identified ETA as the prime suspect, but the group, which usually claims responsibility for its actions, denied any involvement. Later evidence strongly pointed to the involvement of extremist Islamist groups, with the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group named as a focus of investigations.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Although ETA has a history of mounting bomb attacks in Madrid, the 11 March attacks exceeded any attack previously attempted by a European organisation. This led some experts to point out that the tactics used were more typical of militant Islamic extremist groups, perhaps with a certain link to al-Qaeda, or maybe to a new generation of ETA activists using al-Qaeda as a role model. Observers also noted that ETA customarily, but not always, issues warnings before its mass bombings and that there had been no warning for this attack. Europol director Jürgen Storbeck commented that the bombings "could have been ETA... But we're dealing with an attack that doesn't correspond to the modus operandi they have adopted up to now".


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Political analysts believe ETA's guilt would have strengthened the PP's chances of being re-elected, as this would have been regarded as the death throes of a terrorist organisation reduced to desperate measures by the strong anti-terrorist policy of the Aznar administration. On the other hand, an Islamic extremist attack would have been perceived as the direct result of Spain's involvement in Iraq, an unpopular war that had not been approved by the Spanish Parliament.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: All of the devices are thought to have been hidden inside backpacks. The police investigated reports of three people in ski masks getting on and off the trains several times at Alcalá de Henares between 7:00 and 7:10. A Renault Kangoo van was found parked outside the station at Alcalá de Henares containing detonators, audio tapes with Qur'anic verses, and cell phones.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The provincial chief of TEDAX (the bomb disposal experts of the Spanish police) declared on 12 July 2004 that damage in the trains could not be caused by dynamite, but by some type of military explosive, like C3 or C4. An unnamed source from the Aznar administration claimed that the explosive used in the attacks had been Titadine (used by ETA, and intercepted on its way to Madrid 11 days before).


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: In March 2007, the TEDAX chief claimed that they knew that the unexploded explosive found in the Kangoo van was Goma-2 ECO the very day of the bombings. He also asserted that "it is impossible to know" the components of the explosives that went off in the trains – though he later asserted that it was dynamite. The Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez replied "I cannot understand" to these assertions.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: A radio report mentioned a plastic explosive called "Special C". However, the government said that the explosive found in an unexploded device, discovered among bags thought to be victims' lost luggage, was the Spanish made Goma-2 ECO. The unexploded device contained of explosive with of nails and screws packed around it as shrapnel. In the aftermath of the attacks, however, the chief coroner alleged that no shrapnel was found in any of the victims.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Goma-2 ECO was never before used by al-Qaeda, but the explosive and the modus operandi were described by "The Independent" as ETA trademarks, although the "Daily Telegraph" came to the opposite conclusion.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Two bombs, one in Atocha and another in El Pozo stations, numbers 11 and 12, were detonated accidentally by the TEDAX. According to the provincial chief of the TEDAX, deactivated rucksacks contained some other type of explosive. The 13th bomb, which was transferred to a police station, contained dynamite, although it did not explode because it was missing two wires connecting the explosives to the detonator. That bomb used a mobile phone (Mitsubishi Trium) as a timer, requiring a SIM card to activate the alarm and thereby detonate. The analysis of the SIM card allowed the police to arrest an alleged perpetrator. On Saturday, 13 March, when three Moroccans and two Pakistani Muslims were arrested for the attacks, it was confirmed that the attacks came from an Islamic group. Only one of the five persons (the Moroccan Jamal Zougam) detained that day was finally prosecuted.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The Guardia Civil developed an extensive action plan to monitor records corresponding with the use of weapons and explosives. There were 166,000 inspections conducted throughout the country between March 2004 and November 2004. About 2,500 violations were discovered and over 3 tons of explosives, 11 kilometers of detonating cord, and over 15,000 detonators were seized.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: On 3 April 2004, in Leganés, south Madrid, four terrorists died in an apparent suicide explosion, killing one Grupo Especial de Operaciones (GEO) (Spanish special police assault unit) police officer and wounding eleven policemen. According to witnesses and media, between five and eight suspects escaped that day.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Security forces carried out a controlled explosion of a suspicious package found near the Atocha station and subsequently deactivated the two undetonated devices on the Téllez train. A third unexploded device was later brought from the station at El Pozo to a police station in Vallecas, and became a central piece of evidence for the investigation. It appears that the El Pozo bomb failed to detonate because a cell-phone alarm used to trigger the bomb was set 12 hours late.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Sectors of the People's Party (PP), and certain media, such as "El Mundo" newspaper and the COPE radio station, continue to support theories relating the attack to a vast conspiracy to remove the governing party from power. Support for the conspiracy was also given by the Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo (AVT), Spain's largest association of victims of terrorism.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: These theories speculate that ETA and members of the security forces and national and foreign (Morocco) secret services were involved in the bombings. Defenders of the claims that ETA participated in some form in the 11 March attacks have affirmed that there is circumstantial evidence linking the Islamic extremists with two ETA members who were detained while driving the outskirts of Madrid in a van containing 500 kg of explosives 11 days before the train bombings. The Madrid judge Coro Cillán is continuing to hear conspiracy theory cases, including one accusing government officials of ordering the scrapping of the bombed train cars in order to destroy evidence.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The public seemed convinced that the Madrid Bombings were a result of the Aznar government's alignment with the U.S. and its invasion of Iraq. The terrorists behind the 11-M attack were somewhat successful because of the election outcome. Before the attack, the incumbent Popular Party led the polls by 5 percent. It is believed that the Popular Party would have won the election if it had not been for the terrorist attack. The Socialist Party, led by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, ended up winning the election by 5%. The Socialist Party had called for the removal of Spanish troops from Iraq during its campaigning. Zapatero promised to remove Spanish troops by 30 June 2004, and the troops were withdrawn a month earlier than expected. Twenty-eight percent of voters said that the bombings influenced their opinions and vote. An estimated 1 million voters switched their vote to the Socialist Party after the Madrid bombings. These voters who switched their votes were no longer willing to support the Popular Party's stance on war policy. The bombings also influenced 1,700,000 citizens to vote who did not plan on originally voting. On the other hand, the terrorist attacks discouraged 300,000 people from voting. Overall, there was a net 4 percent increase in voter turnout.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Judge Juan del Olmo found "local cells of Islamic extremists inspired through the Internet" guilty for the 11 March attacks, not Armed Islamic Group or Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group. These local cells consist of hashish traffickers of Moroccan origin, remotely linked to an al-Qaeda cell that had been already captured. These groups bought the explosives (dynamite Goma-2 ECO) from low-level thieves, police and Guardia Civil informers in Asturias using money from the small-scale drug trafficking.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: According to "El Mundo", "the notes found on the Moroccan informer 'Cartagena' prove that the Police had the leaders of the cell responsible for the 11 March attacks under surveillance." However, none of the notes refer to the preparation of any terrorist attack.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The trial of 29 defendants began on 15 February 2007. According to "El País", "the Court dismantled one by one all conspiracy theories" and demonstrated that any link with or involvement in the bombings by ETA was either misleading or groundless. During the trial the defendants retracted their previous statements and denied any involvement. According to "El Mundo" the questions of "by whom, why, when and where the Madrid train attacks were planned" are still "unanswered", because the alleged masterminds of the attacks were acquitted. "El Mundo" also claimed -among other misgivings- that the Spanish judiciary reached "scientifically unsound" conclusions about the kind of explosives used in the trains, and that no direct al-Qaeda link was found, thus "debunking the key argument of the official version". Anthropologist Scott Atran described the Madrid trial as "a complete farce" pointing out the fact that "There isn't the slightest bit of evidence of any operational relationship with al-Qaida". Instead, "The overwhelming majority of [terrorist cells] in Europe have nothing to do with al-Qaida other than a vague relationship of ideology."


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Though the trial proceeded smoothly in its opening months, 14 of the 29 defendants began a hunger strike in May, protesting against the allegedly "unfair" role of political parties and media in the legal proceedings. Judge Javier Gómez Bermúdez refused to suspend the trial despite the strike, and the hunger strikers ended their fast on 21 May.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: On 31 October 2007, the Audiencia Nacional of Spain handed down its judgements. Of the 28 defendants in the trial, 21 were found guilty on a range of charges from forgery to murder. Two of the defendants were sentenced each to more than 40,000 years in prison.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: In the investigations carried out to find out what went wrong in the security services, many individual negligences and miscoordinations between different branches of the police were found. The group dealing with Islamist extremists was very small and in spite of having carried out some surveillances, they were unable to stop the bombings. Also, some of the criminals involved in the "Little Mafia" who provided the explosives were police informants and had leaked to their case officers some tips that were not followed up on.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Some of the alleged perpetrators of the bombing were reportedly under surveillance by the Spanish police since 2001.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: At the time of the Madrid bombings, Spain was well equipped with internal security structures that were, for the most part, effective in the fight against terrorism. It became evident that there were coordination issues between police forces as well as within each of them. The Interior Ministry focused on correcting these weaknesses. It was Spain's goal to strengthen its police intelligence in order to deal with the risks and threats of international terrorism. This decision for the National Police and the Guardia Civil to strengthen their counter-terrorism services, led to an increase in jobs aimed at preventing and fighting global terrorism. Counter-terrorism services increased its employment by nearly 35% during the legislature. Human resources in external information services, dealing with international terrorism, grew by 72% in the National Police force and 22% in the Guardia Civil.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: The authorship of the bombings remains a controversial issue in Spain. Sectors of the Partido Popular (PP) and some of the PP-friendly media outlets (primarily "El Mundo" and the Libertad Digital radio station) claim that there are inconsistencies and contradictions in the Spanish judicial investigation.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: As Spanish and international investigations continue to claim the unlikeliness of ETA's active implication, these claims have shifted from direct accusations involving the Basque separatist organisation to less specific insinuations and general scepticism.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: Additionally, there is controversy over the events that took place between the bombings and the general elections held three days later.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: In the aftermath of the bombings, there were massive street demonstrations across Spain to protest against the train bombings. The international reaction was also notable, as the scale of the attack became clearer.


title: 2004 Madrid train bombings

text: A memorial service for the victims of this incident was held on 25 March 2004 at the Almudena Cathedral. It was attended by King Juan Carlos I, Queen Sofía, victims' families, and representatives from numerous other countries, including British prime minister Tony Blair, French president Jacques Chirac, German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell.


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matthew James Matheson (born February 7, 1982) is a Canadian chef, restaurateur, and internet personality. He was the executive chef of Parts & Labour, a restaurant located in Toronto, Ontario, which permanently closed on January 1, 2019. Matheson has since started Matty's Patty's Burger Club, a takeout restaurant in Toronto, Canada, which opened in December, 2020. In April 2022, Matheson opened Prime Seafood Palace, which is also located in Toronto. Matheson regularly appeared on Vice's show "Munchies". He previously hosted Viceland's "It's Suppertime!" and "Dead Set on Life".


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matheson was born in Saint John, New Brunswick to engineer Stephen and waitress Joan Matheson. The family lived in Nova Scotia until Matheson turned 11, when they moved to Fort Erie, Ontario. Before moving to Ontario, Matheson had grown up as a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints; however, the family left the church when leaving Nova Scotia. Matheson's grandfather was a restaurateur and former RCMP officer from Prince Edward Island, the family having roots in PEI dating back to the 1700s. His grandfather owned and operated The Blue Goose restaurant in DeSable, where Matty would spend his summers.


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matheson moved to Toronto in 2000 and attended Humber's cooking program. He found he had a talent for butchering meat, and after a short stint on tour as a roadie for his friends' metal band, Matheson continued his culinary career.


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matheson began working at Le Sélect Bistro under chef Rang Nguyen who taught him French culinary techniques. In 2006, Matheson was hired at the restaurant, La Palette.


title: Matty Matheson

text: In 2010, Matheson became executive chef at the new Parts & Labour restaurant. His recognition, along with his outgoing and wild personality, would lead to his appearance on the online show "Munchies" by Vice Media.


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matheson has also appeared on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" where he showed Jimmy Kimmel how to make a "stuffed shell family recipe".


title: Matty Matheson

text: In April 2021, Matheson was signed with Endeavor (formerly William Morris/Endeavor). He also partnered to open a new pop-up restaurant in Toronto called Birria Balam, specializing in the Mexican dish Birria.


title: Matty Matheson

text: In June 2022, Matheson joined the cast and crew of The Bear on Hulu as a producer and guest star, becoming recurring character handyman Niel Fak. He also shares the role of culinary consultant with the sister of show creator Christopher Storer, Courtney. In the same month he opened the Prime Seafood Palace, a venture that he had been working on for the previous six years.


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matheson partnered with Shlomo Buchler to create a pizza restaurant call Maker Pizza with three locations in Toronto, one location in North York and one location in Thornhill..


title: Matty Matheson

text: In March 2020, Matheson and artist Alex 2Tone, co-founder of streetwear brand Born X Raised, started a podcast, titled "Powerful Truth Angels", with producer Jason Nelken.


title: Matty Matheson

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Matheson created a pop-up restaurant called Matty Matheson's Meat + Three, a take on an American meat and three, specializing in American barbecue, in Fort Erie.


title: Matty Matheson

text: In October 2020, Matheson opened another pop-up restaurant in Toronto, a continuation of Matty's Patty's, originally located in Hawaii with a short stint in Shibuya, Japan.


title: Matty Matheson

text: Rizzo's House of Parm, opened in November 2022 in Fort Erie, Ontario, serving old-school Italian food.


title: Matty Matheson

text: On September 29, 2020, Matheson released his second cookbook, "". Matty recorded a series of YouTube videos to coincide with the release of this book.


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matheson married his long-time girlfriend Trish Spencer in 2014. Together, they have three children: MacArthur (born in 2016), Rizzo (born in 2018), and Ozzy (born in 2020).


title: Matty Matheson

text: Matheson has had a history of past substance abuse. Matheson first tried cocaine in 11th grade. His regular use of the drug would lead him to a heart attack at the age of 29. After his heart attack, he quit using drugs and alcohol at the end of 2013. Seven months after becoming sober, Matheson shot his first episode of "Keep It Canada".


title: Sgt. Slaughter

text: Robert Rudolph Remus (born August 27, 1948), best known by his ring name Sgt. Slaughter, is a voice actor and retired American professional wrestler who is currently signed to WWE in the ambassador program.


title: Sgt. Slaughter

text: From the late 1970s to the early 1980s, Slaughter had success in the National Wrestling Alliance, American Wrestling Association, and the World Wrestling Federation. He won the WWF World Heavyweight Championship and headlined WrestleMania VII in 1991. Slaughter also captured the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship twice. He is a WWE Hall of Famer, inducted as part of the class of 2004. As Sgt. Slaughter, Remus became known for his dark sunglasses, his campaign hat, and his Vietnam War-era military fatigues. In the 1980s, an alternate version of the Sgt. Slaughter character was incorporated into the "" toy line as well as its and .


title: Sgt. Slaughter

text: The gimmick of Sgt. Slaughter is that of a former U.S. Marine who fought in the Vietnam War. Remus himself never served in the military. This has caused controversy because, at times, Remus has talked about military service while seeming to be speaking as himself, and not in character.


title: Sgt. Slaughter

text: Remus was born in Detroit, Michigan, and grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He attended Eden Prairie High School in nearby Eden Prairie, where he wrestled and played football.


title: Sgt. Slaughter

text: Sgt. Slaughter held numerous regional titles early in his career and experienced his second major success in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) capturing the NWA World Tag Team Championship with Don Kernodle in 1982. During the late 1970s, Remus worked the American Wrestling Association (AWA) territory under a mask as Super Destroyer Mark II with manager Lord Alfred Hayes, whom he dismissed and replaced with Bobby Heenan, leading to a feud between the two managers with Hayes as the babyface.