title: Town

text: In Arizona, the terms "town" and "city" are largely interchangeable. A community may incorporate under either a town or a city organization with no regard to population or other restrictions according to Arizona law (see Arizona Revised Statutes, Title 9). Cities may function under slightly differing governmental systems, such as the option to organize a district system for city governments, but largely retain the same powers as towns. Arizona law also allows for the consolidation of neighboring towns and the unification of a city and a town, but makes no provision for the joining of two adjacent cities.


title: Town

text: In California, the words "town" and "city" are synonymous by law (see Cal. Govt. Code Secs. 34500–34504). There are two types of cities in California: charter and general law. Cities organized as charter cities derive their authority from a charter that they draft and file with the state, and which, among other things, states the municipality's name as "City of (Name)" or "Town of (Name)." Government Code Sections 34500–34504 applies to cities organized as general law cities, which differ from charter cities in that they do not have charters but instead operate with the powers conferred them by the pertinent sections of the Government Code. Like charter cities, general law cities may incorporate as "City of (Name)" or "Town of (Name)."


title: Town

text: Some cities change what they are referred to as. The sign in front of the municipal offices in Los Gatos, California, for example, reads "City of Los Gatos", but the words engraved on the building above the front entrance when the city hall was built read "Town of Los Gatos." There are also signs at the municipal corporation limit, some of which welcome visitors to the "City of Los Gatos" while older, adjacent signs welcome people to the "Town of Los Gatos." Meanwhile, the village does not exist in California as a municipal corporation. Instead, the word "town" is commonly used to indicate any unincorporated community that might otherwise be known as an unincorporated village. Additionally, some people may still use the word "town" as shorthand for "township", which is not an incorporated municipality but an administrative division of a county.


title: Town

text: The Hawaiian Island of Oahu has various communities that may be referred to as towns. However, the entire island is lumped as a single incorporated city, the City and County of Honolulu. The towns on Oahu are merely unincorporated census-designated places.


title: Town

text: In Illinois, the word "town" has been used both to denote a subdivision of a county called a township, and to denote a form of municipality similar to a village, in that it is generally governed by a president and trustees rather than a mayor. In some areas a town may be incorporated legally as a village (meaning it has at large trustees) or a city (meaning it has aldermen from districts) and absorb the duties of the township it is coterminous with (maintenance of birth records, certain welfare items). Evanston, Berwyn and Cicero are examples of towns in this manner. Under the current Illinois Municipal Code, an incorporated or unincorporated town may choose to incorporate as a city or as a village, but other forms of incorporation are no longer allowed.


title: Town

text: In Louisiana a town is defined as being a municipal government having a population of 1,001 to 4,999 inhabitants.


title: Town

text: While a town is generally considered a smaller entity than a city, the two terms are legally interchangeable in Maryland. The only exception is the independent city of Baltimore, which is a special case, as it was created by the Constitution of Maryland.


title: Town

text: In Nevada, a town has a form of government, but is not considered to be incorporated. It generally provides a limited range of services, such as land use planning and recreation, while leaving most services to the county. Many communities have found this "semi-incorporated" status attractive; the state has only 20 incorporated cities, and towns as large as Paradise (186,020 in 2000 Census), home of the Las Vegas Strip. Most county seats are also towns, not cities.


title: Town

text: In the six New England states, a town is the most prevalent minor civil division, and in most cases, are a more important form of government than the county. In Connecticut, Rhode Island and seven out of fourteen counties in Massachusetts, in fact, counties only exist as boundaries for state services and chambers of commerce at most, and have no independent legal functions. In New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, counties function at a limited scope, and are still not as important in northern New England as they are outside of the northeast. In all six states, towns perform functions that in most states would be county functions. The defining feature of a New England town, as opposed to a city, is that a town meeting and a board of selectmen serve as the main form of government for a town, while cities are run by a mayor and a city council. For example, Brookline, Massachusetts is a town, even though it is fairly urban, because of its form of government. In the three southern New England states, the entire land area is divided into towns and cities, while the three northern states have small areas that are unincorporated. In Vermont and New Hampshire, the population of these areas is practically nonexistent, while in Maine, unincorporated areas make up roughly half of the state’s area but only one percent of the state’s population.


title: Town

text: Though the U.S. Census Bureau defines New England towns as "minor civil divisions" for statistical purposes, all New England towns are municipal corporations equivalent to cities in all legal respects, except for form of government. For statistical purposes, the Census Bureau uses census-designated places for the built-up population centers within towns, though these have no legal or social recognition for residents of those towns. Similarly, the Census Bureau uses a special designation for urban areas within New England, the New England city and town area, instead of the metropolitan statistical area it uses in the rest of the country.


title: Town

text: A "town" in the context of New Jersey local government refers to one of five types and one of eleven forms of municipal government. While "town" is often used as a shorthand to refer to a township, the two are not the same. The Town Act of 1895 allowed any municipality or area with a population exceeding 5,000 to become a Town through a petition and referendum process. Under the 1895 Act, a newly incorporated town was divided into at least three wards, with two councilmen per ward serving staggered two-year terms, and one councilman at large, who also served a two-year term. The councilman at large served as chairman of the town council. The Town Act of 1988 completely revised the town form of government and applied to all towns incorporated under the Town Act of 1895 and to those incorporated by a special charter granted by the Legislature prior to 1875.


title: Town

text: Under the 1988 Act, the mayor is also the councilman at large, serving a term of two years, unless increased to three years by a petition and referendum process. The council under the Town Act of 1988 consists of eight members serving staggered two-year terms with two elected from each of four wards. One council member from each ward is up for election each year. Towns with different structures predating the 1988 Act may retain those features unless changed by a petition and referendum process. Two new provisions were added in 1991 to the statutes governing towns, First, a petition and referendum process was created whereby the voters can require that the mayor and town council be elected to four-year terms of office. The second new provision defines the election procedure in towns with wards. The mayor in a town chairs the town council and heads the municipal government. The mayor may both vote on legislation before council and veto ordinances. A veto may be overridden by a vote of two-thirds of all the members of the council. The council may enact an ordinance to delegate all or a portion of the executive responsibilities of the town to a municipal administrator. Fifteen New Jersey municipalities currently have a type of town, nine of which operate under the town form of government.


title: Town

text: In New York, a town is a division of the county that possesses home rule powers, but generally with fewer functions than towns in New England. A town provides a closer level of governance than its enclosing county, providing almost all municipal services to unincorporated communities, called hamlets, and selected services to incorporated areas, called villages. In New York, a town typically contains a number of such hamlets and villages. However, due to their independent nature, incorporated villages may exist in two towns or even two counties (example: Almond (village), New York). Everyone in New York who does not live in a city or Indian reservation lives in a town and possibly in one of the town's hamlets or villages. New York City and Geneva are the only two cities that span county boundaries. The only part of Geneva in Seneca County is water; each of the boroughs of New York City is a county.


title: Town

text: In North Carolina, all cities, towns, and villages are incorporated as municipalities. According to the North Carolina League of Municipalities, there is no legal distinction among a city, town, or village—it is a matter of preference of the local government. Some North Carolina cities have populations as small as 1,000 residents, while some towns, such as Cary, have populations of greater than 100,000.


title: Town

text: In Oklahoma, according to the state's municipal code, "city" means a municipality which has incorporated as a city in accordance with the laws of the state, whereas "town" means a municipality which has incorporated as a town in accordance with the laws of the state, and "municipality" means any incorporated city or town. The term "village" is not defined or used in the act. Any community of people residing in compact form may become incorporated as a town; however, if the resident population is one thousand or more, a town or community of people residing in compact form may become incorporated as a city.


title: Town

text: In Pennsylvania, the incorporated divisions are townships, boroughs, and cities, of which boroughs are equivalent to towns (example: State College is a borough). However, one borough is incorporated as a town: Bloomsburg.


title: Town

text: In Texas, although some municipalities refer to themselves as "towns" or "villages" (to market themselves as an attractive place to live), these names have no specific designation in Texas law; legally all incorporated places are considered cities.


title: Town

text: In Utah, the legal use of the terms "town" and "city" is based on population. A municipality with a population of 1,000 or more is a city, while less than 1,000 is a town. In addition, cities are divided into five separate classes based on the population.


title: Town

text: In Virginia, a town is an incorporated municipality similar to a city (though with a smaller required minimum population). But while cities are by Virginia law independent of counties, towns are contained within counties.


title: Town

text: A town in the state of Washington is a municipality that has a population of less than 1,500 at incorporation, however an existing town can reorganize as a code city. Town government authority is limited relative to cities, the other main classification of municipalities in the state. , most municipalities in Washington are cities. (See List of towns in Washington.)


title: Town

text: Wisconsin has towns which are areas outside of incorporated cities and villages. These towns retain the name of the civil township from which they evolved and are often the same name as a neighboring city. Some towns, especially those in urban areas, have services similar to those of incorporated cities, such as police departments. These towns will, from time to time, incorporate into cities, such as Fox Crossing in 2016 from the former town of Menasha. Often this is to protect against being annexed into neighboring cities and villages.


title: Town

text: A Wyoming statute indicates towns are incorporated municipalities with populations of less than 4,000. Municipalities of 4,000 or more residents are considered "first-class cities".


title: Town

text: In Vietnam, a district-level town () is the second subdivision, below a province () or municipality (). A commune-level town () a third-level (commune-level) subdivision, below a district ().


title: Burt Jenner

text: Burton William Jenner (born September 6, 1978) is an American businessman, owner of West LA Dogs, and a professional off-road racing driver. He is the eldest son of television personality and Olympic gold medalist Caitlyn Jenner and her first wife Chrystie Scott.


title: Burt Jenner

text: Jenner was born on September 6, 1978 to Chrystie Scott ( Crownover) and Olympic decathlete Caitlyn Jenner. Burt is named after Caitlyn's brother, who was killed in a car accident. He has one full-sister, Casey. His parents divorced in 1981. His parent Caitlyn later remarried twice, and Burt gained half-siblings Brandon Jenner, Brody Jenner, Kendall Jenner, and Kylie Jenner. His step-siblings included members of the Kardashian family through Caitlyn's marriage to Kris Jenner. Jenner has said that after Caitlyn remarried they had a strained relationship, as she was not always present. He blamed Kris Jenner for changing his relationship with Caitlyn, but later apologized and now speaks with her regularly. He has stated that he and his sister, Casey, were not invited to participate in "Keeping Up with the Kardashians". Jenner later appeared on four episodes of "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" and one episode of "Call Me Cait".


title: Burt Jenner

text: In the 1980s, Burt's parent, Caitlyn Jenner raced professionally for Jack Roush in the International Motor Sports Association. Burt grew up watching Caitlyn race and developed his own love for racing. Caitlyn introduced him to go-karts at age seven, which quickly replaced downhill skiing as his favorite sport.


title: Burt Jenner

text: In his early 30s, Jenner was broke when he decided to become a dog walker. Jenner was a pit bull advocate, and because of his comfort in working with pit bulls, he began to attract clients who wanted him to assist them in socializing their dogs. Jenner began illegally housing his clients' dogs when they were away, at one point hosting seventy-three dogs over a Christmas holiday out of his two-bedroom cottage. After winning $100,000 on season two of "Octane Academy", the largest amount of money Jenner had ever earned, he invested it in a legitimate dog boarding business, which he called "West LA Dogs". West LA Dogs is located in a 14,000 square foot facility. Not wanting to ask his parent Caitlyn to co-sign the lease, Jenner used his entire $100,000 winnings as a down payment for the facility and began living at the facility with his girlfriend, Valerie Patalo. It was profitable eighteen months later. West LA Dogs provides organic food, and owners can pay for their dog to stay in private suites with human beds and flat-screen TVs.


title: Burt Jenner

text: When he was sixteen, his parent Caitlyn gave him an old racing kart. Jenner unsuccessfully attempted to start a career through attending racing schools, including Skip Barber Racing. In 2011, Jenner watched the first season of "Octane Academy", a racing competition show by Ford Performance, and realized he could beat all of the contestants on the show. Later, Burt went to audition for the show at the California Speedway. He waited in line for nine hours and was one of the last people to audition. After his audition, Jenner was chosen for the show and was later the winner of season two of "Octane Academy", earning $100,000, which he put toward his business, West LA Dogs. In August 2013, Burt and his parent Caitlyn raced alongside each other in the Lamborghini Super Trofeo Series.


title: Burt Jenner

text: Jenner is sponsored by Gladiator Tires. In 2014, Jenner raced in five Stadium Super Trucks events, placing third in Las Vegas during his final event of 2014. His third place win in Las Vegas was his first podium finish of his career. He participated in the 2014 Baja 1000 alongside his parent, Caitlyn Jenner. They competed as part of Potts Racing Team, driving a customized trophy truck. After crashing their truck three times, they pulled out of the race.


title: Burt Jenner

text: In 2015, Jenner placed in four events, with three wins. His first win of 2015 was in St. Petersburg, Florida. In May 2015, Jenner won the SPEED Energy Formula Off-Road Series truck race on Belle Isle. Jenner also received the trophy for the overall winner for the three-race weekend.


title: Burt Jenner

text: In 2016, Jenner finished first in the second race of the season opener at the Adelaide Street Circuit in Australia. During the race, Matt Mingay nearly landed on Jenner during a rollover, but Jenner went on to win the race.


title: Burt Jenner

text: In April 2017, Jenner joined AF Racing, making his debut for the team in the Red Bull Global Rallycross Lites in Memphis. In the first round of the Rallycross Lites, Jenner placed 10th. After completing eight places, Jenner was disqualified.


title: Burt Jenner

text: In the X Games Austin 2014, Jenner placed 13th in TRK Racing. Jenner qualified second for the X Games Austin 2015 and was on the front row. Early in the race, another driver spun him out, and Jenner could not make up the lost time. Jenner placed sixth in the 2015 games.


title: Burt Jenner

text: Jenner has three kids with his girlfriend, Valerie Pitalo. His first son, Bodhi Burton Jenner, was born in July 2016. Jenner has a vacation home near Lake Tahoe. Jenner has been homeless twice. Jenner once volunteered to spend a week in an L.A. County jail because he could not afford $15,000 in accumulated traffic fines. He is a supporter of the LGBT community and defended his parent Caitlyn Jenner during her transition, and made an appearance on Caitlyn's Diane Sawyer interview.


title: Arte

text: Arte (; ' ('), sometimes stylized in lowercase or uppercase in its logo) is a European public service channel dedicated to culture.


title: Arte

text: It is made up of three separate companies: the Strasbourg-based European Economic Interest Grouping ARTE, plus two member companies acting as editorial and programme production centres, ARTE France in Paris (formerly known as La Sept) and ARTE Deutschland in Baden-Baden (a subsidiary of the two main public German TV networks ARD and ZDF).


title: Arte

text: As an international joint venture (an EEIG), its programmes focus on audiences in both countries. Because of this, the channel has two audio tracks and two subtitle tracks, one each in French and German.


title: Arte

text: 80% of Arte's programming is provided by its French and German subsidiaries, each making half of the programmes. The remainder is provided by the European subsidiary and the channel's European partners. Selected programmes are available with English, Spanish, Polish and Italian subtitles online.


title: Arte

text: In January 2021, Bruno Patino, President of ARTE France, became President of Arte GEIE whilst Peter Weber, Head of Legal Affairs at ZDF, became Vice President. In the same year, the chairmanship of the General Assembly of ARTE GEIE was taken by Tom Buhrow, President of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR) and Chairman of the German association of public broadcasters ARD. Nicolas Seydoux, President of Gaumont, became Vice-Chairman.


title: Arte

text: Arte was initiated as a symbol of Franco-German friendship and had been championed since 1988 by French President François Mitterrand and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. It came to fruition on 2 October 1990, when an Interstate Treaty was signed between France and the German Länder.


title: Arte

text: Arte began transmissions in 1992, filling frequencies left unused by the demise of La Cinq, the first French commercial television network (created in 1986). The opening night on 30 May 1992 was broadcast live from the Strasbourg Opera House.


title: Arte

text: Arte started as an evening-only service. In the daytime, its frequencies were shared with other channels. A public channel called "Télé Emploi" occupied the French frequencies for about a month in 1994, before the start of La Cinquième ("now France 5") in December that year. For viewers in Germany, Arte was assigned a frequency on the Astra 1D satellite in late 1994, and it was eventually shared with Nickelodeon Germany, later replaced by the new public children's channel Kinderkanal.


title: Arte

text: In 1996, it started offering an afternoon schedule with reruns for viewers on digital satellite and digital cable. A "proper" afternoon schedule with programmes between 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. was introduced on 6 January 2001. The channel eventually got its own analogue frequency on the Astra satellites.


title: Arte

text: Arte has been broadcasting 24/7 since 2005. In 2007 the online catch-up service ARTE+7 was launched and offers free access to a broad range of programs within seven days of their original transmission.


title: Arte

text: In October 2020, Arte marked 30 years since the signing of its founding treaty between France and Germany.


title: Arte

text: ARTE programmes are available with multi-channel audio: all programmes are broadcast in French and German. In addition, whenever possible the original version is offered with French and German subtitles and the hearing or visually impaired may get subtitles or audio description. Since 2015 a selection of programmes have been available online which include English and Spanish subtitles. Polish was to follow in late 2016.


title: Arte

text: The channel is widely available in Europe. Both the German and the French versions can be received in nearly all of Europe via satellite Astra1 (19, 2° East) and the French version is also available via Hot Bird (13° East). ARTE is also relayed by all cable networks in Germany and France. It is also available on numerous cable networks in Austria, Belgium, Finland, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.


title: Arte

text: Arte has been broadcast since 2008 in HD in Germany and France. Like the national channels of their own respective countries, the German HDTVversion of ARTE broadcasts in 720p50, while the French one broadcasts in 1080i25. Broadcasting Center Europe (BCE), a subsidiary of RTL Group and located in Luxembourg (formerly known as CLT-UFA and before its merger with UFA, the Compagnie Luxembourgeoise de Télédiffusion), provides most of the technical services for Arte.


title: Arte

text: In April 2016 Arte co-produced, (with Astra satellite owner, SES) a live Ultra-high-definition television broadcast of the Le Corsaire ballet from the Vienna State Opera. The programme was transmitted free-to-air on the UHD1 demonstration channel from the Astra 19.2°E satellites.


title: Arte

text: In July 2016, the Italian public broadcaster RAI Com signed a partnership agreement with Arte to collaborate on coproductions and programme acquisitions.


title: Arte

text: In November 2016, the Irish public television RTÉ signed a partnership agreement with Arte to produce programmes related to arts, culture and history as well as web content for ARTE Concert and ARTE in English. Arte also has agreements with Yle (Finnish public broadcasting) and Film Fund Luxembourg (a national fund that supports Luxembourgish audiovisual productions).


title: Arte

text: Arte programmes can be streamed live or watched on catch-up TV for at least 7 and up to 700 days on the arte.tv platform and on ARTE Concert.


title: Arte

text: In Africa, Arte is broadcast via satellite, cable, MMDS and ADSL in many other countries, via the digital service CanalSat Horizons.


title: Arte

text: Many French-language Arte programmes are also broadcast in Canada on the Ici ARTV cable channel, the majority-owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (85%) and Arte itself (15%). The Australian Special Broadcasting Service translates many Arte programmes into English for broadcast on its own television network and overseas.


title: Arte

text: Arte usually has more viewers in France than in Germany. In 2015, its share of overall viewing was about 2.2% in France and about 1% in Germany. Before cable and satellite became widely used in France, Arte was available to almost everyone as one of six analogue terrestrial channels. The other five channels were not direct competitors to Arte. In Germany, widespread cable and satellite penetration meant the vast majority of German households had access to about three dozen channels, including several from public broadcasters with content similar to that seen on Arte. Arte's market share in France diminished since the introduction of digital terrestrial services. In Germany, it has been more or less flat.


title: Arte

text: arte.tv is the channel's streaming service. It is accessible from browsers and Arte apps for smartphones and smart TVs. Arte. tv programmes are organised by theme or genre. They include feature films, documentaries and documentary cinema covering topics such as social affairs, the arts, history, nature and science, series, short and TV films, music and theatre performances, magazine shows, reportage and news, and web-based formats.


title: Arte

text: Arte's first digital effort was called ARTE+7, launched in September 2007. Initial it was a catch-up service, allowing viewers to watch ARTE programmes up to seven days after they were broadcast on television. arte.tv has also been available for streaming in Germany and France since 2012. Most programmes can be streamed from 5 am on the morning of broadcast and remain available on replay for up to 90 days, sometimes longer. Some programmes are made available online ahead of transmission. Most of arte.tv now consists of web-only content.


title: Arte

text: ARTE Extra is a new feature, launched in HbbTV in 2020. Arte Extra provides four “smart playlists” related to different topics such as society, discovery and music which are put together from programmes available on arte.tv. The playlists can be accessed by pushing the red button on the remote control.


title: Arte

text: An annual Arte film festival takes place online in December. It promotes the European film d’auteur scene and presents films of young directors accessible in 45 European countries in ten different languages. Each month, the "ArteKino Selection" offers one film available in six languages on arte.tv.


title: Arte

text: Since November 2015 Arte has been making selected programme content – above all documentaries, magazines and live arts – available online with English and Spanish subtitles. Since November 2016 a selection of programmes have featured Polish subtitles. Italian subtitles have been provided since June 2018. This online service is co-funded by the European Commission, enabling 70% of Europeans to watch ARTE in their native language.


title: Arte

text: ARTE Concert (known until 2014 as Arte Live Web) streams a selection of new and recent stage performances. These might be Arte co-productions or recordings by partners, including major venues and independent companies, festivals, and autonomous artists, producers and websites. Genres covered include opera, rock music, theatre, chamber music, jazz and electronic music. Apart from plays and concerts, it also offers backstage reports, exclusive interviews with performers and key figures at various festivals, and extracts from dress rehearsals. The livestreaming platform United We Stream was launched in 2020 in response to the closure of venues due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Every day DJs and concerts are streamed live from empty clubs to audiences around the world in partnership with a wide range of performers. ARTE Concert streams more than 900 live shows and replays a year.


title: Arte

text: In 2018, Arte launched its online opera season. As part of ARTE Concert, it provides access to new opera productions from various European opera houses by live stream or video on demand in six different languages via subtitles. The 2020/2021 opera season featured 21 opera houses from 12 European countries with both classic and contemporary productions.


title: Arte

text: In 2009, "ARTE Concert" (formerly Arte Live Web) was launched, an online platform providing live broadcasts of festivals and concerts. In 2017, the arte.tv platform absorbed the themed platforms "ARTE Creative", "ARTE Future", "ARTE Info" and "ARTE Cinema", which previously were separate units. "ARTE Concert" is still organised as a separate brand integrated into Arte's online architecture.


title: Arte

text: In the course of the channel's history, Arte productions and coproductions have received a number of important film awards, including several Oscars, Palmes d’Or (Cannes Film Festival), Golden Bears, Golden Lions, Golden Leopards, César Awards for Best Film and Best Documentary Film as well as Lolas in gold for the best film and the best documentary.


title: Arte

text: In 2016, PRIX EUROPA awarded Arte the "Lifetime Achievement Award" "in honour of extraordinary achievements in the European media world".


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat (stylised as bell¿ngcat) is a Netherlands-based investigative journalism group that specialises in fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT). It was founded by British journalist and former blogger Eliot Higgins in July 2014. Bellingcat publishes the findings of both professional and citizen journalist investigations into war zones, human rights abuses, and the criminal underworld. The site's contributors also publish guides to their techniques, as well as case studies.


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat began as an investigation into the use of weapons in the Syrian Civil War. Its reports on the Russo-Ukrainian War (including the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17), the El Junquito raid, the Yemeni Civil War, the Skripal poisoning, and the killing of civilians by the Cameroon Armed Forces have attracted international attention.


title: Bellingcat

text: The name derives from the idiom "belling the cat", which comes from a medieval fable about mice who discuss how to make a cat harmless. One mouse suggests hooking a bell around the cat's neck, making it unable to move without being heard. All the mice support the idea, but none is willing to do it. In Higgins' 2021 memoir "We Are Bellingcat", he wrote that "That was it: our name and our mission. Belling the cats."


title: Bellingcat

text: Eliot Higgins' interest in OSINT began in 2011, when he was arguing in comments of "The Guardian" and found out that it is possible to verify videos with satellite imagery. In March 2012, he started a blog under the pseudonym "Brown Moses", named after a song by Frank Zappa, through which he published his research into video footage of the Syrian Civil War. He looked at hundreds of short clips on the Internet, localised them, and examined details of the weapons used. As a result, Higgins demonstrated that the Syrian regime was using cluster munitions and chemical weapons. In 2013, Higgins linked the chemical attack in Ghouta (the Ghouta chemical attack) to Bashar al-Assad.


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat's first major investigation, done mainly by volunteers without external funding, was the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17) in 2014. Their conclusion that Russia was responsible was later confirmed by the Dutch-led international joint investigation team (JIT), which found in a report dated 25 May 2018 that the downing of MH17 was initiated by the Russian military. In other investigations using Google Earth, volunteer investigators working with Bellingcat said that they had discovered the coordinates of an Islamic State training camp, as well as the site where an American journalist was killed.


title: Bellingcat

text: Kristyan Benedict, an Amnesty International campaign manager, told "The New Yorker" in 2013 that many organisations had analysts but that Higgins was faster than many established investigation teams.


title: Bellingcat

text: Higgins launched the Bellingcat platform (in its beta version) on 14 July 2014, raised £50k of private donations in the following month through the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, and performed additional crowdfunding in 2017. Half of funding comes from grants and donations, the other half from running workshops training people in the art of open-source investigations.


title: Bellingcat

text: Since 2018 the Bellingcat website is operated by the Dutch . ("tr. Bellingcat Foundation"). Bellingcat has received grants from Civitates-EU, the Brenninkmeijer family philanthropy, Adessium Foundation, National Endowment for Democracy (NED), PAX for Peace, Open Society Foundation (OSF), the Dutch Postcode Lottery, the Digital News Initiative, Zandstorm CV and Sigrid Rausing Trust. Higgins has said much of the grant money does not directly fund investigations and is used for support services such as document translations and training. The organisation publishes guides on how to analyse data and how to create reports, such as "How to Scrape Interactive Geospatial Data" and "How to Identify Burnt Villages by Satellite Imagery".


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat received a €500,000 cash prize from the Nationale Postcode Loterij of The Netherlands; it used these funds to open a new office in The Hague in 2019.


title: Bellingcat

text: The Bellingcat website also lists the in kind support in the form of 'software access and platform resources' from the software firms Datayo, Hunchly, Maltego, Mapbox, Planet, RiskIQ, and Vizlegal.


title: Bellingcat

text: Higgins told Polygraph.info that grants from the NED and OSF pay for Bellingcat programmes to help journalists and researchers in their investigations. He said that "Most our funding from grants covers stuff that isn't related to investigating anything Russia related."


title: Bellingcat

text: According to the "i" newspaper, Bellingcat is notable for its transparency, as Bellingcat investigative reports describe "how they found out the story and which techniques they used".


title: Bellingcat

text: As of approximately 2019, the organisation had sixteen full-time staff plus Higgins, and at least 60 contributors. Its office was previously located in Leicester; however in 2018, Bellingcat shifted its main office to Amsterdam, in the Netherlands as a result of the impending Brexit and concerns over staff recruitment and mobility. Since 2021, Bellingcat has also had a presence in a new Investigative Commons centre in Berlin, Germany.


title: Bellingcat

text: As reported in "Foreign Policy", one of the unintended consequences of open-source intelligence outlets such as Bellingcat (and others) is that it gives the US intelligence community freedom to discuss Russian intelligence operations publicly without revealing their own sources or methods.


title: Bellingcat

text: On 8 October 2021, Bellingcat was designated as a "foreign agent" in Russia. On 15 July 2022, it was banned in Russia alongside its partner "The Insider", which is headquartered in Latvia. Following this restriction, any Russian citizen who aids Bellingcat or "The Insider" may face criminal prosecution; they would also be restricted from citing their publications. The office of the Prosecutor-General of Russia said that they were banned due to "posing a threat to the security of the Russian Federation". Higgins responded to the ban by stating, "Bellingcat has no legal, financial or staff presence (in Russia), so it's unclear how Russia expects to enforce this."


title: Bellingcat

text: On 21 December 2016, Bellingcat published a report which analysed cross-border Russian artillery attacks against Ukrainian government troops and in support of pro-Russian separatists in the summer of 2014.


title: Bellingcat

text: On 17 July 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17, a passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members died after the Boeing 777 was hit by a burst of "high-energy objects".


title: Bellingcat

text: In a press conference, Russian officials said Ukrainian forces had destroyed the flight and presented radar data, expert testimony and a satellite image. The radar data that showed another aircraft in the vicinity of MH17 was debunked as falling debris from MH17 by experts. A man claiming to be a Spanish air traffic controller in Kyiv stated in interviews that two Ukrainian fighter jets followed the Malaysian plane. The Spanish embassy later said that there was no Spanish air traffic controller at either of Kyiv's airports. The satellite image showed an aircraft firing on the airliner but Bellingcat exposed the photo as a composite of Google images, with the Malaysian airline logo even being misplaced.


title: Bellingcat

text: On 9 November 2014, the Bellingcat MH17 investigation team published a report titled "MH17: Source of the Separatists' Buk". Based on evidence from open sources, primarily social media, the report links a Buk missile launcher that was filmed and photographed in eastern Ukraine on 17 July to the downing of the MH17 flight. The report, which included photographs and maps, details the movements of the Buk in eastern Ukraine on 17 July, evidence that the Buk originated from the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Rocket Brigade in Kursk, Russia, along with a convoy headed towards the Ukrainian border, and the activity of the vehicles seen in the same convoy after 17 July. The Dutch-led international joint investigation team later made similar findings. The head of the Netherlands' National Crime Squad said they officially concluded that the missile that shot down MH17 "is from the 53rd anti-aircraft missile brigade from Kursk in the Russian Federation".


title: Bellingcat

text: In June 2015, Bellingcat published evidence that Russia had used Adobe Photoshop to manipulate satellite images of the MH17 disaster. Image forensics expert Jens Kriese of Germany said that Bellingcat's report used invalid methods to reach its conclusion. In a follow-up report, Bellingcat published crowdfunded satellite imagery and further analysis that supported their claim.


title: Bellingcat

text: A December 2017 article published by Bellingcat cited a quote from the 2017 British Intelligence and Security Committee report in which a British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) source had stated "we know beyond any reasonable doubt that the Russian military supplied and subsequently recovered the missile launcher" which shot down MH17.


title: Bellingcat

text: In July 2019, Bellingcat released a six part podcast series, produced by Novel, taking an in-depth look at their investigation.


title: Bellingcat

text: Beginning in March 2011 after political protests turned violent, the Syrian Civil War has been an ongoing conflict between the Syrian Arab Republic, Syrian Opposition, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and other combatants. Bellingcat reports primarily analyse the factions at war, and what weapons and armour they utilise, as well as news that would normally go unreported by the mainstream media. Bellingcat utilises a network of contributors who specialise in open source and social media investigation, and creates guides and case studies so others may learn to do the same.


title: Bellingcat

text: In April 2014, Bellingcat published evidence of chemical weapons being used on Syrian civilians, including children. Collecting and analysing video footage from local sources which apparently showed parts of chlorine cylinders, Higgins said that while the contents of the cylinders could not be verified "the injuries depicted in the videos all appear to be consistent with chemical exposure".


title: Bellingcat

text: In June 2016, Bellingcat published an article showing that cluster munitions were being used against the New Syrian Army. Bellingcat provided photographic evidence from first-hand sources that the munitions used were identical to those used by the Russian military.


title: Bellingcat

text: In February 2017, Bellingcat published an article detailing how rudimentary drones were being used by ISIL to drop explosives onto opposition targets. Analysing footage from Twitter and other social media platforms, it was discovered that the drones were dropping modified 40 mm grenades.


title: Bellingcat

text: In September 2016, Bellingcat released a fact-checking article in response to Russia denying the bombing of hospitals in Syria. The article analysed footage from YouTube and images from Facebook, cross-referencing them with areas that were confirmed to be attacked by Russian forces. The article reported that the hospital in question was within the area under Russian attack, although Russia denies these claims.


title: Bellingcat

text: In March 2017, Bellingcat published an investigative report on the bombing of a mosque in Aleppo that killed over 50 civilians. The article included photographs of the remnants of the bomb used, and showed that the piece was identical to that of similar bombs used by the US military.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2019 and 2020, Bellingcat published reports on the OPCW findings on the Douma chemical attack, which took place in spring 2018.


title: Bellingcat

text: In May 2018, in partnership with Forensic Architecture and Venezuelan journalists, Bellingcat collected, timed, and located nearly 70 pieces of evidence related to the El Junquito raid, including videos, photographs, leaked audio of police radio communications and official statements, asking for more material to determine if rebel police officer Óscar Pérez and his companions were victims of extrajudicial killings.


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat published that in the 2018 Hajjah Governorate airstrike by the Saudi Arabian–led coalition the bomb was made by the American company Raytheon.


title: Bellingcat

text: In November 2018, Bellingcat published the results of an investigation on Houthi broadcasts through their affiliated Almasirah news channel concerning missile attacks targeted against two airports in the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi International Airport and Dubai International Airport. The investigation report concluded that "It is highly likely that a Houthi-led drone attack did not take place in Abu Dhabi or Dubai". According to the report, the claims of the attacks constituted a propaganda effort and followed "propaganda pattern" claims by the Houthi leaders.


title: Bellingcat

text: Following RT's interview with the suspects of the 4 March 2018 Sergei Skripal poisoning case, Bellingcat published the suspects' passport data showing inconsistencies in the official story, and possible links to the Russian secret service. The Russian foreign ministry rejected the report and stated that Bellingcat had ties to western intelligence. It noted Bellingcat's access to a not publicly available Russian database. Two men had been seen and pinpointed as likely to have carried out the attack; Bellingcat said it had identified one of the suspects as decorated GRU colonel Anatoliy Chepiga. The other suspect was identified as GRU colonel Alexander Mishkin. In June 2019 Bellingcat reported that major-general Denis Sergeyev had travelled to London as "Sergei Fedotov", and appeared to have commanded the operation, making and receiving many telephone calls with a single Russian "ghost phone" without an IMEI. Bellingcat analysed position data from Sergeyev's phone to trace his movements in London, following its successfully gaining access to travel, passport, and motoring databases for the suspects.


title: Bellingcat

text: A report in "The Guardian" stated that "Bellingcat has frequently sparred with Russian military and diplomatic officials, who have claimed without evidence that Bellingcat fabricates evidence and is a front for foreign intelligence services". Russian media have said that Bellingcat is funded by the U.S. government to undermine Russia and other NATO adversaries.


title: Bellingcat

text: Following the Christchurch mosque shootings of 15 March 2019, Bellingcat published what the "Columbia Journalism Review" referred to as "a comprehensive and contextualized report on the motives and movements of the Christchurch killer". In an online posting, Tarrant repeats a variety of "white genocide" talking points, and says his murder of several dozen Muslims is because they are "invaders" outbreeding the white race. Robert Evans refers to the manifesto as shitposting, defined as "the act of throwing out huge amounts of content, most of it ironic, low-quality trolling, for the purpose of provoking an emotional reaction in less Internet-savvy viewers".


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat assisted the BBC's "Africa Eye" investigation into the killing of two women and their children by members of the Cameroonian Armed Forces. This followed the appearance of a video on social media in July 2018, initially dismissed as "fake news" by the government of Cameroon before later acknowledging that 7 soldiers had been arrested for the massacre. As a result of this investigation, the US withdrew $17 million in funding for the Cameroonian Armed Forces and the European Parliament passed a resolution condemning "torture, forced disappearances, extrajudicial killings perpetrated by governmental forces".


title: Bellingcat

text: After Ukraine International Airlines Flight 752 crashed shortly after take-off from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport in Iran on 8 January 2020, Bellingcat, in cooperation with "The New York Times", used open-source videos to determine that most likely Iran shot down the aeroplane with a surface-to-air missile.


title: Bellingcat

text: On 15 October 2020, a video surfaced of two captured Armenians being executed by Azerbaijani soldiers; Bellingcat analysed the videos and concluded that the footage was real and that both executed were Armenian combatants captured by Azerbaijani forces between 9 and 15 October 2020 and later executed.


title: Bellingcat

text: In December 2020, Bellingcat published an investigation detailing how the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) unit specialised in the use of chemical agents had been tailing opposition leader Alexei Navalny since the moment he announced his plans in 2017 to run in presidential elections, and had agents near his location Tomsk in Siberia when he was poisoned with the military-type Novichok nerve agent in August 2020. They also suggested similar patterns in the actions of the same undercover agents during an earlier visit by Navalny and his wife to Kaliningrad, when she fell ill with symptoms similar to those of his later poisoning. Navalny's assessment is that in Kaliningrad the agents had tried to poison him, but his wife received the Novichok by mistake. The investigation was published on 14 December, revealing the names of both the direct perpetrators of the poisoning and the assassination attempt from the FSB.


title: Bellingcat

text: The 2022 documentary film "Navalny" features Bulgarian Bellingcat journalist Christo Grozev uncovering the details of a plot that indicates the involvement of Putin.


title: Bellingcat

text: According to later investigations, the same team of FSB officers has poisoned several other people in Russia, including opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza and writer and poet Dmitry Bykov.


title: Bellingcat

text: During the Tigray War that started in November 2020 in the Tigray Region of Ethiopia, Bellingcat, together with "BBC News Africa Eye" and "Newsy", published a geolocation analysis of five videos of what appeared to be an extrajudicial execution of 15–73 Tigrayans by soldiers of the Ethiopian National Defense Force speaking Amharic, one of the main national languages. The victims were thrown off the edge of an escarpment after being shot. The date appeared to be mid-January 2021 and the location was found by Bellingcat and the other investigators to be near the village of Mahbere Dego, about south of Aksum, where the Aksum massacre, one of the main massacres of the Tigray War, had earlier been carried out by the Eritrean Defence Forces, mainly during 28–29 November 2020.


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat reported on an information operation in Indonesia targeting the West Papuan independence movement with pro-Indonesian government content. BBC journalist Benjamin Strick wrote that "The campaign, fuelled by a network of bot accounts on Twitter, expands to Instagram, Facebook and YouTube." In April 2020, Twitter removed propaganda accounts linked to the government of Indonesia.


title: Bellingcat

text: Bellingcat has also reported on the attack on the United States Capitol by Trump supporters of 6 January 2021, as well as the fatal shooting of Ashli Babbitt, who took part in the attack. It has reported on Babbitt and the influence of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, which they liken to the process of radicalization.


title: Bellingcat

text: During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Bellingcat wrote about several findings of cluster munition in Ukraine. The organisation also collects evidence of war crimes against civilians in Ukraine. In particular, it includes information about the airstrike of the Drama Theater and maternity hospital in Mariupol. Bellingcat's website maintains a page that contains eyewitness footage, as well as reports from various information resources (mainly social networks).


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2021, Bellingcat launched an investigation of Maria Adela Kuhlfeldt Rivera, a supposed jewellery designer from Peru. In 2005, Maria Adela had filed an application to be inscribed into the country's citizen database. Due to lack of proof of actual birth in Peru, the application was denied and her identity was marked as unknown. Bellingcat interviewed various acquaintances of Maria, who told them the cover identity. A girl left behind by her mother on a holiday to the Soviet Union for the 1980 Summer Olympics, although those living near to her childhood address in Moscow report never having heard of her. In addition to this, researches noticed a similarity between Maria Adela's Russian passport and that of other GRU agents. As an executive member of the Lions Club in Naples, she came in contact with many officers and officials from NATO. With the use of facial recognition software, Maria Adela was identified as Olga Kolobova, a spy of the GRU.


title: Bellingcat

text: In the "New York Review of Books", Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, digital journalism lecturer at the University of Stirling, states that Bellingcat has had an influence on how legacy journalism outlets and research institutions conduct open-source investigations:Bellingcat's successes have encouraged investment in open-source research capability by much larger and long-established media institutions (such as "The New York Times" Visual Investigations), human rights organisations (Amnesty's Digital Verification Corps; Human Rights Watch's soon-to-be-launched OSINT unit), think tanks (the Atlantic Council's DFR Lab), and academic institutions (Berkeley's Human Rights Investigations Lab). Mentioning "large gaps in foreign coverage" due to reduced newsroom budgets, Ahmad says that in today's digital context, newsrooms have become convinced that "sending journalists abroad is a fool's errand".


title: Bellingcat

text: The Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism, the Poynter Institute, and other scholars of journalism have recommended Bellingcat guides on how to conduct open-source investigations to journalists and to journalism students.


title: Bellingcat

text: According to "Foreign Policy", the work of Bellingcat was valuable to the United States Intelligence Community because Bellingcat's "transparency about their investigative process also makes it difficult to refute and harder for Russia to dodge responsibility". For U.S. intelligence, there has always been a dilemma between delineating Russian responsibility for wrongdoing while not jeopardizing sources and methods; Bellingcat's transparent process makes it unnecessary for U.S. intelligence to delineate Russian wrongdoing. Daniel Hoffman, a former CIA chief of station, stated that "The greatest value of Bellingcat is that we can then go to the Russians and then say, there you go." Daniel Fried, a retired diplomat who served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under former President George W. Bush, said that "The advantage of having Bellingcat doing it is that you don't have to have a sources-and-methods debate within your government."


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2015, Eliot Higgins and Bellingcat received the special prize of the Hanns-Joachim-Friedrichs-Award.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2017, Bellingcat-member won the European Press Prize Innovation Award for a detailed reconstruction of the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt in a Bellingcat article titled "The Turkish Coup through the Eyes of its Plotters".


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2019, Christo Grozev and his team received the Investigative Reporting Award from the European Press Prize for identifying the two men who allegedly poisoned Sergei and Yulia Skripal.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2019, Bellingcat and Newsy received Scripps Howard Award for "Innovation" in investigative journalism that sheds light on international conflict.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2019, Bellingcat podcast on Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was awarded Political Studies Association Award for Political Podcast of the Year.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2020, Bellingcat and Newsy were nominated for News & Documentary Emmy Award in the category Outstanding New Approaches: Current News.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2020, Bellingcat won Audio and Radio Industry Awards Bronze for Best Factual Series and Silver for Best Independent Podcast for Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 podcast.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2018 the documentary film "" was released. The film explores Bellingcat's investigative journalism work, including the Skripal poisoning and the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shootdown.


title: Bellingcat

text: In 2022, Daniel Roher directed "Navalny", a documentary about the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, his poisoning and struggle with the authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin. A joint investigation between Bellingcat and "The Insider", in cooperation with "Der Spiegel" and CNN, has discovered voluminous telecom and travel data that implicates Russia's Federal Security Service in the poisoning of Navalny, ordered by the highest echelons of the Russian government. Christo Grozev, who served as the primary researcher for Bellingcat, is one of the protagonists in the documentary, and the investigation itself is а primary storyline in it.


title: Bellingcat

text: The film won the Festival Favorite Award and the Audience Award for the U.S. Documentary Competition at the Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered on 25 January 2022.


title: Bellingcat

text: Elliot Higgins' 2021 book "We Are Bellingcat" documents the creation and the work of the organisation.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: On the night of 1 July 2002, BAL Bashkirian Airlines Flight 2937, a Tupolev Tu-154 passenger jet, and DHL International Aviation ME Flight 611, a Boeing 757 cargo jet, collided in midair over Überlingen, a southern German town on Lake Constance, near the Swiss border. All of the passengers and crew aboard both planes were killed, resulting in a total death toll of 71.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The official investigation by the German Federal Bureau of Aircraft Accident Investigation () (BFU) identified the main cause of the collision to be a number of shortcomings on the part of the Swiss air traffic controller (ATC) service in charge of the sector involved, as well as ambiguities in the procedures regarding the use of the traffic collision avoidance system (TCAS) on board.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: A year and a half after the crash, on 24 February 2004, Peter Nielsen, the air traffic controller on duty at the time of the collision, was murdered in an apparent act of revenge by Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian citizen whose wife and two children had been killed in the accident.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Flight BTC2937 was a chartered flight from Moscow, Russia, to Barcelona, Spain, carrying 60 passengers and nine crew. Forty-six of the passengers were Russian schoolchildren from the city of Ufa, in Bashkortostan, on a school trip organised by the local UNESCO committee to the Costa Daurada beach area of Catalonia. Most of the parents of the children were high-ranking officials in Bashkortostan. One of the fathers was the head of the local UNESCO committee. They travelled on an overnight train to Moscow and arrived on 29 June, then, as their driver accidentally took them to the wrong airport, they missed their original flight. They remained there until 1 July in order to find the arranged charter flight. Flight 2937 departed at Moscow Domodedovo Airport at 22:48 Moscow Time (18:48 UTC) bound for Barcelona International Airport (now Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat Airport).


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The aircraft, a 1995-built Tupolev Tu-154M registered as first delivered to BAL Bashkirian Airlines until 1998 before being sold to Transeuropean Airlines. The aircraft was once again sold to Shaheen Air in 1999 before being returned to BAL Bashkirian Airlines in January 2002. The flight was piloted by an experienced Russian crew: 52-year-old Captain Alexander Mikhailovich Gross () and 40-year-old First Officer Oleg Pavlovich Grigoriev (). The captain had more than 12,000 flight hours (including 4,918 hours on the Tu-154) to his credit. Grigoriev, the chief pilot of Bashkirian Airlines, had 8,500 hours of flying experience (with 4,317 hours on the Tu-154) and his task was to evaluate Captain Gross's performance throughout the flight.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Forty-one-year-old Murat Akhatovich Itkulov (), a seasoned pilot with close to 7,900 flight hours (with 4,181 of them on the Tu-154), who was normally the first officer, did not officially serve on duty, because this was the captain's assessment flight; 50-year-old Sergei Gennadyevich Kharlov (), a flight navigator with approximately 13,000 flight hours (including 6,421 hours on the Tu-154), and 37-year-old Flight Engineer Oleg Irikovich Valeev (), who had almost 4,200 flight hours (all of which were on the Tu-154), joined the three pilots in the cockpit.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: DHL International Aviation ME Flight 611, a Boeing 757-23APF cargo aircraft built in 1990 and first delivered to Zambia Airways as before being sold to Gulf Air as in late 1993. It was then sold to SNAS Aviation in 1996 under the same registration. The aircraft was then sold to European Air Transport as in 2000 until 2002 before being sold once again to DHL International as . The flight was being flown by two Bahrain-based pilots, 47-year-old British Captain Paul Phillips and 34-year-old Canadian First Officer Brant Campioni. Both pilots were very experienced — Phillips had logged close to 12,000 flight hours (including 4,145 hours on the Boeing 757) and Campioni had accumulated more than 6,600 flight hours, with 176 of them on the Boeing 757. At the time of the accident, the aircraft was en route from Bahrain International Airport in Manama, Bahrain to Brussels Airport in Brussels, Belgium with a stop at Orio al Serio Airport in Bergamo, Italy, and departed Bergamo at 23:06 CEST (21:06 UTC).


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The airspace was controlled from Zürich, Switzerland, by the Swiss federal airspace control Skyguide, less than a few miles south of the German border. Air traffic controller Peter Nielsen, the only controller handling the airspace, was working two workstations at the same time.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: At around 23:20 CEST (21:20 UTC), DHL Flight 611 reported to the area control center responsible for southern German airspace. Nielsen then instructed Flight 611 to climb from flight level 260 () to flight level 320 (). Flight 611 requested permission to continue to flight level 360 (about ) to save fuel. Permission was granted by Nielsen, after which Flight 611 reached the desired altitude at 23:29:50. Meanwhile, Bashkirian Flight 2937 contacted Nielsen at 23:30 at flight level 360. who acknowledged the flight. However, he did not assign a different altitude to either Flight 611 or Flight 2937, meaning that both aircraft were now at the same altitude and on a collision course.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: At 23:34:42 CEST (21:34:42 UTC), less than a minute before the crash, Nielsen realized the danger and contacted Flight 2937, instructing the pilot to descend to flight level 350 () to avoid collision with crossing traffic (Flight 611). Seconds after the crew of Flight 2937 initiated the descent, their TCAS instructed them to climb, while at about the same time the TCAS on Flight 611 instructed the crew of that aircraft to descend. Had both aircraft followed those automated instructions, the collision would not have occurred.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Flight 611's pilots followed the TCAS instructions and initiated a descent, but could not immediately inform Nielsen because the controller was dealing with Flight 2937. About eight seconds before the collision, Flight 611's descent rate was about , not quite as rapid as the range advised by the TCAS. The crew of Flight 2937 disregarded their TCAS instruction to climb, having already commenced a descent as instructed by the controller. Thus, both planes were now descending.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Unaware of the TCAS-issued alerts, Nielsen repeated his instruction to Flight 2937 to descend, giving the crew incorrect information as to the position of the DHL plane (telling them that the plane was to the right when it was in fact to the left).


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Eight seconds before the collision, Flight 2937's crew finally realized their actual position when they gained visual sight of Flight 611 incoming from the left. Flight 611, in response, increased its descent rate. Two seconds before the collision, Flight 2937's pilots finally obeyed the jet's TCAS instruction to climb and attempted to put the aircraft into a climb, but by then, the collision was inevitable.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The two aircraft collided at 23:35:32 CEST (21:35:32 UTC), at almost a right angle at an altitude of , with Flight 611's vertical stabilizer slicing completely through Flight 2937's fuselage just ahead of the wings.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Flight 2937 broke into several pieces, scattering wreckage into the Brachenreute neighborhood over a wide area. The nose section of the aircraft fell vertically, while the tail section with the engines continued, stalled, and fell.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Flight 611, now with 80% of its vertical stabilizer lost, struggled for a further before crashing into a wooded area close to the village of Taisersdorf at a 70° downward angle. Each engine ended up several hundred meters away from the main wreckage, and the tail section was torn from the fuselage by trees just before impact. All 69 people onboard Flight 2937 and both crew members on board Flight 611 died.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Only one ATC, Peter Nielsen of ACC Zurich, was controlling the airspace through which the aircraft were flying. The other controller on duty was resting in another room for the night. This was against Skyguide's regulations, but had been a common practice for years and was known and tolerated by management. Maintenance work was being carried out on the main radar image processing system, which meant that the controllers were forced to use a fallback system.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The ground-based optical collision warning system, which would have alerted the controller to the pending collision about minutes before it happened, had been switched off for maintenance. Nielsen was unaware of this. An aural short-term conflict alert warning system released a warning addressed to workstation RE SUED at 23:35:00 (32 seconds before the collision). This warning was not heard by anyone present at that time, although no error in this system could be found in a subsequent technical audit; however, whether or not this audible warning is functional is not something that is technically logged. Even if Nielsen had heard this warning, at that time finding a useful resolution order by the ATC was impossible.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: All countries involved could add additional "deviating" statements to the official report. Bahrain, Switzerland, and Russia did submit positions that were published with the official report. The deviating statements were published verbatim as an appendix to the report by the BFU investigators.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The statement by Bahrain, the home country of the DHL plane, mostly agrees with the findings of the report. It says that the report should have put less emphasis on the actions of individuals and more on the faults within Skyguide's organisation and management. Bahrain's statement also mentions the lack of crew resource management in the Tupolev's cockpit as a factor in the crash.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Russia states that the Russian pilots were unable to obey the TCAS advisory to climb; the advisory was given when they were already at , while the controller wrongly stated conflicting traffic was above them at . Also, the ATC gave the wrong position of the DHL plane (2 o'clock instead of the actual 10 o'clock). Russia asserts that the DHL crew had a "real possibility" to avoid a collision, since they were able to hear the conversation between the Russian crew and the controller.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Switzerland notes that the Tupolev was about below the flight level ordered by the Swiss controller, and still descending at . The Swiss say that this was also a cause of the accident. Switzerland also requested that the BFU make a formal finding that the TCAS advisories would have been useful if obeyed immediately; the BFU declined to do so.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Nielsen needed medical attention due to traumatic stress caused by the accident. At Skyguide, his former colleagues maintained a vase with a white rose over Nielsen's former workstation. Skyguide, after initially having blamed the Russian pilot for the accident, accepted full responsibility and asked relatives of the victims for forgiveness.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Skyguide paid compensation to the families of the dead children; the compensation amount was about CHF 30,000 ($34,087) to CHF 36,000. The Swiss Federal Court turned down appeals from some relatives for higher compensation in 2011.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: On 27 July 2006, a court in Konstanz decided that Germany should pay compensation to Bashkirian Airlines. The court found that Germany was legally responsible for the actions of Skyguide. The government appealed the ruling, but in late 2013, Bashkirian Airlines and Germany reached a tacit agreement, ending the court case before a decision on the legal issues was reached.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: In another case before the court in Konstanz, Skyguide's liability insurance is suing Bashkirian Airlines for 2.5 million euro in damages. The case was opened in March 2008; the legal questions are expected to be difficult, as the airline has filed for bankruptcy under Russian law.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: A criminal investigation of Skyguide began in May 2004. On 7 August 2006, a Swiss prosecutor filed manslaughter charges against eight employees of Skyguide. The prosecutor called for prison terms up to 15 months if found guilty. The verdict was announced in September 2007. Three of the four managers convicted were given suspended prison terms and the fourth was ordered to pay a fine. Another four Skyguide employees were cleared of any wrongdoing.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Devastated by the death of his wife and two children aboard flight 2937, Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect, held Peter Nielsen personally responsible for their deaths. He tracked down and stabbed Nielsen to death, in the presence of Nielsen's wife and three children, at his home in Kloten, near Zürich, on 24 February 2004. The Swiss police arrested Kaloyev at a local motel shortly afterward, and in 2005, he was sentenced to eight years for manslaughter. However, his sentence was later reduced after a Swiss judge ruled that he had acted with diminished responsibility.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: He was released in November 2007, having spent less than four years in prison, because his mental condition was not sufficiently considered in the initial sentence. In January 2008, he was appointed deputy construction minister of North Ossetia. Kaloyev was treated as a hero back home, and expressed no regret for his actions, instead blaming the murder victim for his own death. In 2016, Kaloyev was awarded the highest state medal by the government, the medal "To the Glory of Ossetia". The medal is awarded for the highest achievements, improving the living conditions of the inhabitants of the region, educating the younger generation, and maintaining law and order.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The accident raised questions as to how pilots must react when they receive conflicting orders from TCAS and ATC. TCAS was a relatively new technology at the time of the accident, having been mandatory in Europe since 2000. When TCAS issues a resolution advisory (RA), the pilot flying should respond immediately by directing attention to RA displays and maneuvering as indicated, unless doing so would jeopardise the safe operation of the flight, or unless the flight crew can assure separation with the help of definitive visual acquisition of the aircraft causing the RA.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: In responding to a TCAS RA that directs a deviation from assigned altitude, the flight crew should communicate with ATC as soon as practicable after responding to the RA. When the RA is removed, the flight crew should advise ATC that they are returning to their previously assigned clearance or should acknowledge any amended clearance issued.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: While TCAS is programmed to assume that both crews will promptly follow the system's instructions, the operations manual did not clearly state that TCAS should always take precedence over any ATC commands. The manual described TCAS as "a backup to the ATC system", which could be wrongly interpreted to mean that ATC instructions have higher priority. This ambiguity was replicated in the Tu-154 Flight Operations Manual, which contained contradictory sections. On the one hand, chapter 8.18.3.4 emphasised the role of ATC and describes TCAS as an "additional aid", while chapter 8.18.3.2 forbade manoeuvers contrary to TCAS. The BFU recommended that this ambiguity should be resolved in favor of obeying TCAS advisories even when these were in conflict with ATC instructions.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: About 17 months before the Bashkirian Airlines-DHL collision, another incident had occurred involving confusion between conflicting TCAS and ATC commands. In 2001, two Japanese airliners nearly collided with each other in Japanese airspace. One of the aircraft had received conflicting orders from TCAS and ATC; one pilot followed the instructions of TCAS, while the other did not. A collision was only averted because one of the pilots made evasive maneuvers based on a visual judgment. The aircraft missed each other by about , and the abrupt maneuver necessary to avert disaster left 100 occupants injured on one aircraft, some seriously. In its report, published 11 days after the Überlingen accident, Japan called on the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) to make it clear that TCAS advisories should always take precedence over ATC instructions. ICAO accepted this recommendation and amended its regulations in November 2003.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Before this accident, a change proposal (CP 112) for the TCAS II system had been issued. This proposal would have created a "reversal" of the original warning – asking the DHL plane to climb and the Tupolev crew to descend. According to an analysis by Eurocontrol, this would have avoided the collision if the DHL crew had received and followed the new instructions and the Tupolev had continued to descend. All TCAS II equipped aircraft have been upgraded to support RA reversal.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: Additionally, an automatic downlink for TCAS, which would have alerted the controller that a TCAS advisory had been issued to the aircraft under his control, and notified him of the nature of that advisory, had not been deployed worldwide at the time of the accident.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: The investigation report contains a number of recommendations concerning TCAS, calling for upgrades and for better training and clearer instructions to the pilots. The TCAS II system was redesigned, with its ambiguous "Adjust Vertical Speed" RA voice command changed to "Level-Off", to increase proper responses from pilots.


title: 2002 Überlingen mid-air collision

text: In the U.S. off-Broadway play "My Eyes Went Dark", which opened 7 June 2017 and closed 2 July, playwright and director Matthew Wilkinson tells Kaloyev's story, which featured, among other characters, Declan Conlon as Kaloyev and Thusitha Jayasundera as his wife. It played at 59E59 Theaters in New York City.


title: Major

text: Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators, major is one rank above captain, and one rank below lieutenant colonel. It is considered the most junior of the field officer ranks.


title: Major

text: Majors are typically assigned as specialised executive or operations officers for battalion-sized units of 300 to 1,200 soldiers while in some nations, like Germany, majors are often in command of a company.


title: Major

text: When used in hyphenated or combined fashion, the term can also imply seniority at other levels of rank, including "general-major" or "major general", denoting a low-level general officer, and "sergeant major", denoting the most senior non-commissioned officer (NCO) of a military unit. The term "major" can also be used with a hyphen to denote the leader of a military band such as in pipe-major or drum-major.


title: Major

text: Historically, the rank designation developed in English in the 1640s, taken from French "majeur", in turn a shortening of "sergent-majeur", which at the time designated a higher rank than at present. The term "Mayor" for the head of a municipal government can also be traced to the same French word.


title: Major

text: The rank of major is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures, such as the Pennsylvania State Police, New York State Police, New Jersey State Police, and several others. As with a military major, this rank is most commonly the next rank above captain. The rank is equivalent to an inspector or commander in other large police departments or to the UK rank of superintendent.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: The Shenyang J-15 (Chinese: 歼-15), also known as "Flying Shark" (; NATO reporting name: Flanker-X2, is a Chinese all-weather, twinjet, carrier-based fourth-generation multirole fighter aircraft developed by the Shenyang Aircraft Corporation (SAC) and the 601 Institute, specifically for the People's Liberation Army Naval Air Force (PLANAF) to serve on People's Liberation Army Navy's aircraft carriers.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: An unfinished prototype Su-33, the T-10K-3, was acquired by SAC from Ukraine in 2001 and was said to have been studied extensively and reverse-engineered, with development on the J-15 beginning immediately afterward. While the J-15 appears to be structurally based on the prototype of Su-33, the fighter features indigenous Chinese technologies as well as avionics from the Shenyang J-11B program. In February 2018, discussions about replacing the aircraft appeared in several Chinese media outlets including Xinhua and China's main military newspaper, discussing that it belongs to the 4th- or 4.5-generation fighters. Thus, the J-15 is viewed as an interim carrier-based fighter until a fifth-generation successor enters service, one that may be based on the Chengdu J-20 or Shenyang FC-31.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: China has sought to purchase Su-33s from Russia on several occasions — an unsuccessful offer was made as late as March 2009 — but negotiations collapsed in 2006 after it was discovered that China had developed a modified version of the Sukhoi Su-27SK, designated the Shenyang J-11B, in violation of intellectual property agreements. However, according to Chinese sources, the reason China withdrew from talks was that Russia wanted large payments to re-open Su-33 production lines and insisted on a Chinese purchase of at least 50 Su-33s, about which China was reluctant as it believed the aircraft would become outdated in a few years. China hence decided on an indigenous variant instead of continuing to assemble the J-11, the licensed Chinese version of Su-27.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: The J-15 program was officially started in 2006 to make a copycat version of it. .The first J-15 prototype made its maiden flight on August 31, 2009, believed to be powered by Russian-supplied Saturn AL-31 turbofan engines. Video and still images of the flight were released in July 2010, showing the same basic airframe design as the Su-33.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: On November 25, 2012, the aircraft successfully performed its first takeoff and landing on "Liaoning", China's first operational aircraft carrier.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: In November 2020, "Jane's" reported that SAC had produced at least two prototypes of J-15 fighter aircraft modified for CATOBAR operations, a variant commonly referred to as the J-15T.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: In 2021, military analysts reported that China has worked on an upgraded variant called J-15B, with new avionics, engines, and CATOBAR launch capability. The upgrade variant of J-15 is capable of launching newer PL-10 and PL-15 missiles.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: In November 2022, a production J-15 powered by the Shenyang WS-10, possible the WS-10B, appeared in Chinese media. It was the last indigenous Chinese combat aircraft to replace the AL-31; possibly due to navalisation. According to Chinese observers, compared to the AL-31 the WS-10 had superior safety, reliability, and service life, aspects which are magnified by the constraints of carrier aviation.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: An article in the "China SignPost" believes the J-15 "likely exceeds or matches the aerodynamic capabilities of virtually any fighter aircraft currently operated by regional militaries, with the exception of the U.S. F-22 Raptor", alleging that the J-15 likely possesses a 10% greater thrust-to-weight ratio and 25% lower wing loading than the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. However, one of the authors of that same article described the J-15 in another article as no game changer; the reliance on ski-jump launches and lack of Chinese carrier-based aerial refueling capabilities are believed to greatly reduce its effective combat range. In 2014, it was revealed that the J-15 is capable of aerial refueling, using the UPAZ-1 buddy refueling pod, which can be carried by another J-15. Hu Siyuan of the PLA National Defense University said that "the current weak point of the J-15 is its Russian-made Al-31 engines, which are less powerful than that of the American F-35 fighter".


title: Shenyang J-15

text: The J-15's chief designer, Sun Cong of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, has said that the J-15 could match the F/A-18 in bomb load, combat radius and mobility. However, in a similar statement, he said more work was required on its electronics and combat systems. Rear Admiral Yin Zhuo stated that the aircraft's air combat capabilities were better than that of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. However, he also stated that its ability to attack land and sea targets was slightly inferior to the F/A-18E/F; it is also stated that its electronic equipment meets the standards of those on a fifth-generation fighter.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: On November 25, 2012, Chinese media announced that two J-15s had made successful arrested landings on the aircraft carrier. The first pilot to land on "Liaoning" was named as Dai Mingmeng (戴明盟). Luo Yang, the aircraft's head of production and designer, died the same day. "PLA Daily" newspaper indicated that the first five naval pilots (including Dai) conducted J-15 fighter landings and takeoffs. Test and training program officials confirmed the carrier-borne aircraft and special equipment for the landing flight had gone through strict tests, and fighter jets can be deployed on the carrier.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: In December 2013, Chinese media reported that mass production of J-15s in full operational condition with combat markings had begun.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: In January 2017, the carrier "Liaoning", having returned to the South China Sea after its first deployment into the Western Pacific, conducted a series of take-off and landing drills with its squadron of embarked J-15 fighters.


title: Shenyang J-15

text: In July 2018, Lieutenant General Zhang Honghe of the PLAAF stated that China was developing a new carrier-based aircraft to replace the J-15 due to its three crashes and numerous technical problems. One problem with the aircraft is that it is the heaviest carrier-borne fighter in current operation anywhere, with an empty weight of compared to the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet's 14,600 kg (though it is less than the F-14 Tomcat's weight of 19,800 kg). Weight problems are compounded when operating off "Liaoning", as its STOBAR launch and recovery method further limits payload capacity.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The Acts of the Apostles (, "Práxeis Apostólōn"; ) is the fifth book of the New Testament; it tells of the founding of the Christian Church and the spread of its message to the Roman Empire. It gives an account of the ministry and activity of Christ's apostles in Jerusalem and other regions, after Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Acts and the Gospel of Luke make up a two-part work, Luke–Acts, by the same anonymous author. It is usually dated to around 80–90 AD, although some scholars suggest 90–110. The first part, the Gospel of Luke, tells how God fulfilled his plan for the world's salvation through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Acts continues the story of Christianity in the 1st century, beginning with the ascension of Jesus to Heaven. The early chapters, set in Jerusalem, describe the Day of Pentecost (the coming of the Holy Spirit) and the growth of the church in Jerusalem. Initially, the Jews are receptive to the Christian message, but later they turn against the followers of Jesus. Rejected by the Jews, the message is taken to the Gentiles under the guidance of Paul the Apostle. The later chapters tell of Paul's conversion, his mission in Asia Minor and the Aegean, and finally his imprisonment in Rome, where, as the book ends, he awaits trial.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Luke–Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah of the Jews came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because as a whole Jews rejected it. Luke–Acts can also be seen as a defense of the Jesus movement addressed to the Jews: the bulk of the speeches and sermons in Acts are addressed to Jewish audiences, with the Romans serving as external arbiters on disputes concerning Jewish customs and law. On the one hand, Luke portrays the followers of Jesus as a sect of the Jews, and therefore entitled to legal protection as a recognised religion; on the other, Luke seems unclear as to the future that God intends for Jews and Christians, celebrating the Jewishness of Jesus and his immediate followers, while also stressing how the Jews had rejected the Messiah.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The name "Acts of the Apostles" was first used by Irenaeus in the late 2nd century. It is not known whether this was an existing name for the book or one invented by Irenaeus; it does seem clear that it was not given by the author, as the word "práxeis" (deeds, acts) only appears once in the text (Acts 19:18) and there it does not refer to the apostles but refers to deeds confessed by followers to the apostles.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The Gospel of Luke and Acts make up a two-volume work which scholars call Luke–Acts. Together they account for 27.5% of the New Testament, the largest contribution attributed to a single author, providing the framework for both the Church's liturgical calendar and the historical outline into which later generations have fitted their idea of the story of Jesus and the early church. The author is not named in either volume. According to Church tradition dating from the 2nd century, the author was the "Luke" named as a companion of the apostle Paul in three of the letters attributed to Paul himself; this view is still sometimes advanced, but "a critical consensus emphasizes the countless contradictions between the account in Acts and the authentic Pauline letters." (An example can be seen by comparing Acts's accounts of Paul's conversion (Acts 9:1–31, 22:6–21, and 26:9–23) with Paul's own statement that he remained unknown to Christians in Judea after that event (Galatians 1:17–24).) The author "is an admirer of Paul, but does not share Paul's own view of himself as an apostle; his own theology is considerably different from Paul's on key points and does not represent Paul's own views accurately." He was educated, a man of means, probably urban, and someone who respected manual work, although not a worker himself; this is significant, because more high-brow writers of the time looked down on the artisans and small business people who made up the early church of Paul and were presumably Luke's audience.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The earliest possible date for Luke-Acts is around 62 AD, the time of Paul's imprisonment in Rome, but most scholars date the work to 80–90 AD on the grounds that it uses Mark as a source, looks back on the destruction of Jerusalem, and does not show any awareness of the letters of Paul (which began circulating late in the first century); if it does show awareness of the Pauline epistles, and also of the work of the Jewish historian Josephus, as some believe, then a date in the early 2nd century is possible. The majority scholarly position is that the Lucan author did not know Josephus, and they hypothesise some lost historiographical sources that both Josephus and the author of the Acts of Luke had recourse


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: There are two major textual variants of Acts, the Western text-type and the Alexandrian. The oldest complete Alexandrian manuscripts date from the 4th century and the oldest Western ones from the 6th, with fragments and citations going back to the 3rd. Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts. The majority of scholars prefer the Alexandrian (shorter) text-type over the Western as the more authentic, but this same argument would favour the Western over the Alexandrian for the Gospel of Luke, as in that case the Western version is the shorter.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The title "Acts of the Apostles" ("Praxeis Apostolon") would seem to identify it with the genre telling of the deeds and achievements of great men ("praxeis"), but it was not the title given by the author. The anonymous author aligned Luke–Acts to the "narratives" (διήγησις, "diēgēsis") which many others had written, and described his own work as an "orderly account" (ἀκριβῶς καθεξῆς). It lacks exact analogies in Hellenistic or Jewish literature, this makes the emerging consensus of scholars seem to be in clear agreement that Acts is an ancient history of various kinds and that it comes to mix genres, which generates a limitation when making categories, even to the point that it is not possible.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The author may have taken as his model the works of Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who wrote a well-known history of Rome, or the Jewish historian Josephus, author of a history of the Jews. Like them, he anchors his history by dating the birth of the founder (Romulus for Dionysius, Moses for Josephus, Jesus for Luke) and like them he tells how the founder is born from God, taught authoritatively, and appeared to witnesses after death before ascending to heaven. By and large the sources for Acts can only be guessed at, but the author would have had access to the Septuagint (a Greek translation of the Jewish scriptures), the Gospel of Mark, and either the hypothetical collection of "sayings of Jesus" called the Q source or the Gospel of Matthew. He transposed a few incidents from Mark's gospel to the time of the Apostles—for example, the material about "clean" and "unclean" foods in Mark 7 is used in Acts 10, and Mark's account of the accusation that Jesus has attacked the Temple (Mark 14:58) is used in a story about Stephen (Acts 6:14). There are also points of contacts (meaning suggestive parallels but something less than clear evidence) with 1 Peter, the Letter to the Hebrews, and 1 Clement. Other sources can only be inferred from internal evidence—the traditional explanation of the three "we" passages, for example, is that they represent eyewitness accounts. The search for such inferred sources was popular in the 19th century, but by the mid-20th it had largely been abandoned.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Acts was read as a reliable history of the early church well into the post-Reformation era, but by the 17th century biblical scholars began to notice that it was incomplete and tendentious—its picture of a harmonious church is quite at odds with that given by Paul's letters, and it omits important events such as the deaths of both Peter and Paul. The mid-19th-century scholar Ferdinand Baur suggested that the author had re-written history to present a united Peter and Paul and advance a single orthodoxy against the Marcionites (Marcion was a 2nd-century heretic who wished to cut Christianity off entirely from the Jews); Baur continues to have enormous influence, but today there is less interest in determining the historical accuracy of Acts (although this has never died out) than in understanding the author's theological program.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Luke was written to be read aloud to a group of Jesus-followers gathered in a house to share the Lord's supper. The author assumes an educated Greek-speaking audience, but directs his attention to specifically Christian concerns rather than to the Greco-Roman world at large. He begins his gospel with a preface addressed to Theophilus (; "cf." ), informing him of his intention to provide an "ordered account" of events which will lead his reader to "certainty". He did not write in order to provide Theophilus with historical justification—"did it happen?"—but to encourage faith—"what happened, and what does it all mean?"


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Acts (or Luke–Acts) is intended as a work of "edification," meaning "the empirical demonstration that virtue is superior to vice." The work also engages with the question of a Christian's proper relationship with the Roman Empire, the civil power of the day: could a Christian obey God and also Caesar? The answer is ambiguous. The Romans never move against Jesus or his followers unless provoked by the Jews, in the trial scenes the Christian missionaries are always cleared of charges of violating Roman laws, and Acts ends with Paul in Rome proclaiming the Christian message under Roman protection; at the same time, Luke makes clear that the Romans, like all earthly rulers, receive their authority from Satan, while Christ is ruler of the kingdom of God.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Acts has two key structural principles. The first is the geographic movement from Jerusalem, centre of God's Covenantal people, the Jews, to Rome, centre of the Gentile world. This structure reaches back to the author's preceding work, the Gospel of Luke, and is signaled by parallel scenes such as Paul's utterance in Acts 19:21, which echoes Jesus's words in Luke 9:51: Paul has Rome as his destination, as Jesus had Jerusalem. The second key element is the roles of Peter and Paul, the first representing the Jewish Christian church, the second the mission to the Gentiles.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The Gospel of Luke began with a prologue addressed to Theophilus; Acts likewise opens with an address to Theophilus and refers to "my earlier book", almost certainly the gospel.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The apostles and other followers of Jesus meet and elect Matthias to replace Judas as a member of The Twelve. On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends and confers God's power on them, and Peter and John preach to many in Jerusalem and perform healings, casting out of evil spirits, and raising of the dead. The first believers share all property in common, eat in each other's homes, and worship together. At first many Jews follow Christ and are baptized, but the followers of Jesus begin to be increasingly persecuted by other Jews. Stephen is accused of blasphemy and stoned. Stephen's death marks a major turning point: the Jews have rejected the message, and henceforth it will be taken to the Gentiles.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The death of Stephen initiates persecution, and many followers of Jesus leave Jerusalem. The message is taken to the Samaritans, a people rejected by Jews, and to the Gentiles. Saul of Tarsus, one of the Jews who persecuted the followers of Jesus, is converted by a vision to become a follower of Christ (an event which Luke regards as so important that he relates it three times). Peter, directed by a series of visions, preaches to Cornelius the Centurion, a Gentile God-fearer, who becomes a follower of Christ. The Holy Spirit descends on Cornelius and his guests, thus confirming that the message of eternal life in Christ is for all mankind. The Gentile church is established in Antioch (north-western Syria, the third-largest city of the empire), and here Christ's followers are first called Christians.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: The mission to the Gentiles is promoted from Antioch and confirmed at a meeting in Jerusalem between Paul and the leadership of the Jerusalem church. Paul spends the next few years traveling through western Asia Minor and the Aegean, preaching, converting, and founding new churches. On a visit to Jerusalem he is set on by a Jewish mob. Saved by the Roman commander, he is accused by the Jews of being a revolutionary, the "ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes", and imprisoned. Later, Paul asserts his right as a Roman citizen, to be tried in Rome and is sent by sea to Rome, where he spends another two years under house arrest, proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching freely about "the Lord Jesus Christ". Acts ends abruptly without recording the outcome of Paul's legal troubles.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Prior to the 1950s, Luke–Acts was seen as a historical work, written to defend Christianity before the Romans or Paul against his detractors; since then the tendency has been to see the work as primarily theological. Luke's theology is expressed primarily through his overarching plot, the way scenes, themes and characters combine to construct his specific worldview. His "salvation history" stretches from the Creation to the present time of his readers, in three ages: first, the time of "the Law and the Prophets" (Luke 16:16), the period beginning with Genesis and ending with the appearance of John the Baptist (Luke 1:5–3:1); second, the epoch of Jesus, in which the Kingdom of God was preached (Luke 3:2–24:51); and finally the period of the Church, which began when the risen Christ was taken into Heaven, and would end with his second coming.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: Luke–Acts is an attempt to answer a theological problem, namely how the Messiah, promised to the Jews, came to have an overwhelmingly non-Jewish church; the answer it provides, and its central theme, is that the message of Christ was sent to the Gentiles because the Jews rejected it. This theme is introduced in Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus, rejected in Nazareth, recalls that the prophets were rejected by Israel and accepted by Gentiles; at the end of the gospel he commands his disciples to preach his message to all nations, "beginning from Jerusalem." He repeats the command in Acts, telling them to preach "in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the Earth." They then proceed to do so, in the order outlined: first Jerusalem, then Judea and Samaria, then the entire (Roman) world.


title: Acts of the Apostles

text: For Luke, the Holy Spirit is the driving force behind the spread of the Christian message, and he places more emphasis on it than do any of the other evangelists. The Spirit is "poured out" at Pentecost on the first Samaritan and Gentile believers and on disciples who had been baptised only by John the Baptist, each time as a sign of God's approval. The Holy Spirit represents God's power (at his ascension, Jesus tells his followers, "You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you"): through it the disciples are given speech to convert thousands in Jerusalem, forming the first church (the term is used for the first time in Acts 5).