title: Vader (band)

text: Vader was formed in 1983, the same year as the very first death metal pioneers Possessed and Death. However, at this time Vader was a heavy/speed metal band, later evolving into thrash metal and then finally death metal for the band's first demo, "Live in Decay", in 1986. Vader released another demo, "Necrolust", in 1989, but it was not until the band's third demo, "Morbid Reich", in 1990, that Vader gained international attention. "Morbid Reich" sold nearly 10,000 copies, making it one of the most sold metal demos ever. This success earned the group a contract with Earache Records. The songs from "Morbid Reich" would appear later on Vader's full-length debut album in 1992, "The Ultimate Incantation".


title: Vader (band)

text: Due to communication breakdowns, the contract with Earache was terminated and the release of "Sothis" and "", both in 1994, had to be released on different labels. In the meantime, Vader toured relentlessly, and in 1995, the band signed a contract with Impact Records. Vader then released "De Profundis", "Future of the Past", and "Black to the Blind". Then, Hammerheart Records re-released two early demos, "Necrolust" and "Morbid Reich", as the compilation "Reborn in Chaos". In August 1998, Vader released "Live in Japan". Vader also recorded the "Kingdom" EP and a VHS video entitled "Vision and Voice" around this time; both were released in December. In October 1998, Vader opened for Slayer during a show in Poland. At the end of 1998, Vader signed a contract to Metal Blade Records.


title: Vader (band)

text: Vader spent most of 1999 touring. In March, Vader embarked on their first headlining US tour, the International Extreme Music Festival 1999, and in May Vader played at Metalmania. In June, the band went on another European tour, and the rest of the summer was filled with numerous appearances at festivals in Central Europe. Vader concluded touring by embarking on a European tour with thrash metal band Testament.


title: Vader (band)

text: In November and December 1999, Vader recorded the album "Litany", which was released in March 2000, and recorded a music video for the song "Cold Demons," which appeared on a special-edition digipack. The release of the album was also supported by live shows, including April's No Mercy Festival 2000, and in June, the band embarked on a 30-date European tour with Vital Remains, Fleshcrawl, and The Crown.


title: Vader (band)

text: In April 2001, Vader released the EP "Reign Forever World", featuring re-recorded songs, cover songs, and live tracks. The band promoted the album intensively, touring Poland, Russia and Ukraine, and again in the US. In September 2001, they did another European tour with Cryptopsy, Dying Fetus, Catastrophic, and several other bands. This was followed by ten Polish appearances as part of the Thrash'em All Festival 2001, along with Krisiun, Behemoth and several Polish death metal and black metal bands.


title: Vader (band)

text: In 2002, Vader released "Revelations", and toured England, Scotland, and Ireland during the No Mercy Festival's dates. In May, the band released its first DVD, "More Vision and the Voice". In 2004, the band started recording "The Beast". Recording sessions for the album were postponed in May due to an accident which injured the drummer, Doc. He was replaced with Daray from the Polish band Vesania. Recording was finished in mid-July, and to support the album, the band toured again, appearing at over 170 concerts. The Europe-wide tour saw Vader's first trip to the Balkans. The most important gig of 2004 was at the Silesian Stadium in Chorzów, where the band opened for Metallica in front of 50,000 people.


title: Vader (band)

text: In March 2005, long-time drummer, Doc, left the band due to struggling with alcoholism. Five months later, he died unexpectedly from heart failure. He was 34 years old.


title: Vader (band)

text: In 2008, Novy decided to leave Vader after five years; Marcin Rygiel (ex-Decapitated) replaced him on bass for the U.S. Summer Slaughter Tour 2008. Reyash would join as a permanent bassist later in the year.


title: Vader (band)

text: In 2009, Vader's eighth album, "Necropolis", was released via Nuclear Blast Records. The album was recorded at Hertz studios in Bialystok, Poland with the Wieslawski Bros. In 2011, Vader released another album, entitled "Welcome to the Morbid Reich".


title: Vader (band)

text: In December 2013, Vader entered the studio to record their then-upcoming tenth album, titled "Tibi et Igni", for an early 2014 release. On 7 March 2014, the band finished recording the album, which was released on 30 May by Nuclear Blast. Their next album, "The Empire", was released on 4 November 2016. The band toured for nearly two years in support of "The Empire", including headlining a US tour (with support from Internal Bleeding, Sacrificial Slaughter, Voices of Ruin and Micawber) in May and June 2017, and supporting Testament and Annihilator on the European "Brotherhood of the Snake" tour in March and April 2018.


title: Vader (band)

text: The band released an extended play titled "Thy Messenger" on 31 May 2019 through Nuclear Blast. Their newest full-length album, "Solitude in Madness", was released on 1 May 2020. As of January 2022, according to Piotr "Peter" Wiwczarek, Vader has begun recording new music for their next album. In March 2022, it was announced drummer James Stewart had departed the band a month prior and was replaced by Michał Andrzejczyk.


title: Vader (band)

text: The name of American rock band Eagles of Death Metal was influenced by Vader. When a friend was trying to introduce Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme to the death metal genre, he played Vader's music. Homme called them "The Eagles of death metal." After hearing this phrase, he wondered what a cross between the Eagles and a death metal band would sound like. Afterwards, the phrase became the name of his band.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta is a city in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia, Canada, as part of Greater Vancouver. Located on the Fraser Lowland south of Fraser River's south arm, it is bordered by the city of Richmond on the Lulu Island to the north, New Westminster to the northeast, Surrey to the east, the Boundary Bay and the American pene-exclave Point Roberts to the south, and the Strait of Georgia to the west.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Encompassing the nearby Annacis Island, Deas Island and Westham Island, Delta is mostly rural and officially composed of three distinct communities: North Delta, Ladner and Tsawwassen.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Prior to European settlement, Delta's flatlands and coastal shores were inhabited by the Tsawwassen First Nation of the Coast Salish. The land was first sighted by Europeans in 1791, when Spanish explorer Lieutenant Francisco de Eliza mistook the area for an island and named it "Isla de Cepeda". The first European settler in Delta was James Kennedy who pre-empted 135 acres in what later became Annieville in February 1860. Thomas and William Ladner, began farming the area named after them in 1868. Farming and fishing helped the community grow quickly over the next few decades. In 1879, the area was incorporated as a municipality, named "the Corporation of Delta", and the village of Ladner was made as its administrative centre.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Due to its geography, Delta was a relatively isolated community. The completion of the George Massey Tunnel in 1959 linking Ladner to Richmond and Vancouver along with the opening, in 1960, of the Tsawwassen Ferry Terminal and the Highway 99 being rerouted from the King George Highway in Surrey in 1962 to a new route through Delta, ended Delta's isolation and resulted in a massive 400% population growth over the next 20 years. The 1986 completion of the Alex Fraser Bridge connecting North Delta to New Westminster and Vancouver also helped Delta's growth.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: On 22 September 2017, at the request of Delta's council, the Government of British Columbia changed the name and classification of the Corporation of Delta to the City of Delta.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, Delta had a population of 108,455 living in 38,058 of its 39,736 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 102,238. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: In 2011, the median age was 42.8 years old, which is slightly higher than the national median age at 40.6 years old. There were 35,781 private dwellings with an occupancy rate of 97.1%. According to the 2011 National Household Survey, the median value of a dwelling in Delta is $562,181 which is significantly higher than the national average at $280,552. The median household income (after-taxes) in Delta is $71,590, quite higher than the national average at $54,089.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: As of 2021, Delta's population is 108,455. About 45% of Delta's population are visible minorities, of which there are approximately 28,000 South Asian Canadians, 9,700 Chinese Canadians, and 3,700 Filipino Canadians. There are also about 3,180 Indigenous peoples or 3% of the total population, some from Tsawwassen First Nation, who still hold a fraction of their former traditional territories; the Tsawwassen Lands at the mouth of the Fraser River, which are shared with the Hwlitsum First Nation from the Gulf Islands. Forming over one-quarter (26.1%) of the population, Delta has the fourth largest municipal South Asian population in British Columbia after neighbouring Vancouver, Surrey and Abbotsford.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta is located south of Vancouver and north of the Canada–US border at Peace Arch, Surrey. It is bordered by water on three sides: The Fraser River to the north, the Georgia Strait to the west and Boundary Bay to the south. At , Delta is the largest municipality in the GVRD; the second largest is its neighbour to the east, Surrey, at .


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta's flat, fertile land has made it one of the most important agricultural areas in Greater Vancouver. The Agricultural Land Reserve regulations preserve most of this land for agricultural use, preventing its conversion to suburban housing. North Delta is also home to the Burns Bog, of natural wetlands that are important for wildlife.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta includes Annacis Island, an industrial island reached via the Alex Fraser Bridge, which connects Delta with Richmond and New Westminster. Delta also includes a peninsula on the east side of the Fraser River at Delta's northern city limits, which is only accessible via Surrey.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta is known for its relatively dry and sunny climate compared with other locations in Metro Vancouver. For example, it receives nearly 40% less precipitation than downtown Vancouver and less than half of that of North Vancouver. It has a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen "Csb") with cooler summers and milder winters than other areas on the Canada–U.S. border, and features some of the mildest winters and lowest diurnal temperature variation in Canada.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta is governed by the Delta City Council, led by a Mayor and six Councillors, elected for four-year terms, and there is also an elected school board. The current mayor is George Harvie. Unlike most communities in Canada, but like Vancouver and Richmond, Delta has a system of locally based election slates such as TriDelta, IDEA, One Delta, Delta Residents Association, Delta Connect, DIVA, Independents Working For You, and Achieving For Delta.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: In the House of Commons of Canada, Delta is part of the Delta electoral district. As of the 2015 Federal general election, Delta's seat is held by Carla Qualtrough of the Liberal Party. In the 2017 Provincial general election, the North Delta seat went to Ravi Kahlon of the British Columbia New Democratic Party while the South Delta seat went to Ian Paton of the British Columbia Liberal Party.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Former Delta mayor Lois Jackson served from 1999 to 2018 and since 1973 has had a seat on Delta Council. Jackson was elected to council again in 2018.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta is the westernmost community served by Fraser Health Authority which operates Delta Hospital in Ladner and also funds home and community care. The Delta Hospice Society operates a facility near to the hospital.


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: The "Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique" operates one Francophone primary school in that city: "école du Bois-joli".


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: Delta has many minor sports teams in ice hockey, soccer, football, field hockey, baseball, softball, field lacrosse and box lacrosse. Over 160 young people play ringette in Delta. The Delta Ringette Association has 13 teams in 2005. Notable professional sports players from Delta are Jeff Francis (MLB), James Paxton (MLB), Justin Morneau (MLB), Brent Seabrook (NHL), Troy Brouwer (NHL) and Mitch Berger (NFL).


title: Delta, British Columbia

text: The Delta Triathlon is also a very popular event, selling out each year in April. The event takes place in Ladner from the Ladner Leisure Centre. Over 500 participants take part, including many from the local South Delta Triathlon Club.


title: Ray Baker (actor)

text: Ray Baker (born July 9, 1948) is an American theater, television and film actor. Baker was born in Omaha, Nebraska. He is a long time character actor with over 100 credits on television and film. Baker is credited either as Ray or Raymond. He grew up in Denver, Colorado and graduated from Denver University, before moving to New York and living and working there for twenty years. Baker appeared on and off Broadway and in regional theatre. He currently lives in Los Angeles, is married to actress and playwright Colleen Dodson, and continues working in theatre, movies, and television.


title: Ray Baker (actor)

text: Baker married fellow actor Patricia Richardson in 1982. They had three children together: Henry Richardson Baker (born on February 22, 1985), and twins Roxanne Elizabeth Baker and Joe Castle Baker (born on January 3, 1991), before they divorced in 1995. He married another actress, Colleen Dodson-Baker, in 1997.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: In mathematics and physics, the Poincaré recurrence theorem states that certain dynamical systems will, after a sufficiently long but finite time, return to a state arbitrarily close to (for continuous state systems), or exactly the same as (for discrete state systems), their initial state.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: The Poincaré recurrence time is the length of time elapsed until the recurrence. This time may vary greatly depending on the exact initial state and required degree of closeness. The result applies to isolated mechanical systems subject to some constraints, e.g., all particles must be bound to a finite volume. The theorem is commonly discussed in the context of ergodic theory, dynamical systems and statistical mechanics. Systems to which the Poincaré recurrence theorem applies are called conservative systems.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: The theorem is named after Henri Poincaré, who discussed it in 1890 and proved by Constantin Carathéodory using measure theory in 1919.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: Any dynamical system defined by an ordinary differential equation determines a flow map "f" mapping phase space on itself. The system is said to be volume-preserving if the volume of a set in phase space is invariant under the flow. For instance, all Hamiltonian systems are volume-preserving because of Liouville's theorem. The theorem is then: If a flow preserves volume and has only bounded orbits, then, for each open set, any orbit that intersects this open set intersects it infinitely often.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: Imagine any finite starting volume formula_1 of the phase space and to follow its path under the dynamics of the system. The volume evolves through a "phase tube" in the phase space, keeping its size constant. Assuming a finite phase space, after some number of steps formula_2 the phase tube must intersect itself. This means that at least a finite fraction formula_3 of the starting volume is recurring.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: Now, consider the size of the non-returning portion formula_4 of the starting phase volume – that portion that never returns to the starting volume. Using the principle just discussed in the last paragraph, we know that if the non-returning portion is finite, then a finite part formula_5 of it must return after formula_6 steps. But that would be a contradiction, since in a number formula_7lcmformula_8 of step, both formula_3 and formula_5 would be returning, against the hypothesis that only formula_3 was. Thus, the non-returning portion of the starting volume cannot be the empty set, i.e. all formula_1 is recurring after some number of steps.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: For any formula_15, the set of those points formula_16 of formula_17 for which there exists formula_18 such that formula_19 for all formula_20 has zero measure.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: In other words, almost every point of formula_17 returns to formula_17. In fact, almost every point returns infinitely often; "i.e."


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: If formula_24 is a second-countable Hausdorff space and formula_25 contains the Borel sigma-algebra, then the set of recurrent points of formula_26 has full measure. That is, almost every point is recurrent.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: More generally, the theorem applies to conservative systems, and not just to measure-preserving dynamical systems. Roughly speaking, one can say that conservative systems are precisely those to which the recurrence theorem applies.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: For time-independent quantum mechanical systems with discrete energy eigenstates, a similar theorem holds. For every formula_27 and formula_28 there exists a time "T" larger than formula_29, such that formula_30, where formula_31 denotes the state vector of the system at time "t".


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: where the formula_33 are the energy eigenvalues (we use natural units, so formula_34 ), and the formula_35 are the energy eigenstates. The squared norm of the difference of the state vector at time "formula_36" and time zero, can be written as:


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: which can be made arbitrarily small by increasing "N", as the summation formula_39, being the squared norm of the initial state, converges to 1.


title: Poincaré recurrence theorem

text: can be made arbitrarily small for specific choices of the time "T", according to the following construction. Choose an arbitrary formula_41, and then choose "T" such that there are integers formula_42 that satisfies


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: Sloboda Ukraine (literally: Borderland of free frontier guards; ), or Slobozhanshchyna (, ), is a historical region, now located in Northeastern Ukraine and Southwestern Russia. It developed and flourished in the 17th and 18th centuries on the southwestern frontier of the Tsardom of Russia. In 1765, it was converted into the Sloboda Ukraine Governorate.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: The name derives from the term "sloboda" for a colonial settlement free of tax obligations, and the word "ukraine" in its original sense of "borderland". The etymology of the word Ukraine is seen this way among Russian, Ukrainian and Western historians such as Orest Subtelny, Paul Magocsi, Omeljan Pritsak, Mykhailo Hrushevskyi, Ivan Ohiyenko, Petro Tolochko and others. It is supported by the Encyclopedia of Ukraine and the Etymological dictionary of the Ukrainian language.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: The territory of historic Sloboda Ukraine corresponds to the territory of the present-day Ukrainian oblast (province) of Kharkiv (in its entirety), and parts of the Sumy, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblasts, as well as parts of the Belgorod, Kursk, and Voronezh Oblasts of Russia.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: Until 16th century the land, like all lands between Don and Vistula rivers, belonged to Lithuanian ethnic groups and were a Lithuanian homeland , and in at least 14-16th centuries this territory and lands up until Don river were a part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Russia gained control over the territory as the result of conquests against the Grand Duchy of Lithuania during the Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars in the 16th century.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: According to Russian and Ukrainian sources of the 16th-17th centuries, the region was initially part of the Russian state, which encouraged the settlement of this territory for defensive purposes. It was first colonised by the Russians in the first half of the 16th century and became part of a defense line used against Tatar raiding. A second wave of colonisation came in the 1620–1630s, largely in the form of Ukrainian Cossack regiments, who were allowed to settle there in order to help protect the territory against the Tatars.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: The Cossacks who arrived in Sloboda Ukraine were under the sovereignty of Russian tsars and their military chancellery and were registered in Russian military service. A great number of Ukrainian refugees arrived from Poland-Lithuania after the rebellion of 1637-1638 and received generous resettlement subsidies from the Russian government. For decades, Ukrainian cossacks were crossing the border into southern Russia to gather livestock, but many of them were also entering for banditry, so that Russia had to build a new garrison town on the Boguchar River in an attempt to defend the land from Ukrainian bands and resettled many of the Ukrainian refugees at Valuyki, Korocha, Voronezh and as far as Kozlov.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: Crimean Tatars and Nogai Tatars traditionally used the sparsely inhabited area of the Wild Fields on the south border of Russia immediately south of Severia to launch annual raids into the Russian territories along the Muravsky Trail and Izyum Trail. In 1591, a Tatar raid reached the Moscow region, forcing the Russian government to build new forts of Belgorod and Oskol in 1593, Yelets in 1592, Kromy in 1595, Kursk in 1597, Tsarev-Borisov and Valuyki in 1600. Tsarev-Borisov, named after Tsar Boris I, was the oldest settlement in Sloboda Ukraine.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: During those raids regions near Ryazan and along Oka River suffered the most. With the Russian territorial expansion south and east into the lands of modern Sloboda Ukraine and mid-Volga River the conflict intensified. Sometime between 1580s and 1640s the "Belgorod Defense Line" with number of fortifications, moats, and forts was constructed in Sloboda Ukraine, providing security to the region. After a number of Russo-Crimean Wars, the Russian monarchs started to encourage the settlement of the region by Cossacks who acted as a sort of frontier guard force against the raids of the Tatars.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: Apart from the Cossacks, the settlers included peasants and townspeople from Right and Left-bank Ukraine, divided by the Treaty of Andrusovo in 1667. The name "Sloboda Ukraine" derives from the word "sloboda", a Slavic term meaning "freedom" (or "liberty)", and also the name of a type of settlement. The Tsar would free the settlers of a "sloboda" from the obligation of paying taxes and fees for a certain period of time, which proved very enticing for settlers. By the end of the 18th century, settlers occupied 523 slobodas ("slobody") in Sloboda Ukraine.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: From 1650 to 1765, the territory referred to as Sloboda Ukraine became increasingly organized according to Cossack military custom, similar to that of the Zaporozhian Host and Don Host. The relocated cossacks became known as Sloboda Cossacks. There were five regimental districts ("polky") of Sloboda Cossacks, named after the towns of their sustained deployment, and subdivided into company districts ("sotni"). Regional centers included Ostrogozhsk, Kharkiv, Okhtyrka, Sumy, and Izyum, while the Sloboda Ukraine Cossack capital was located in Sumy until 1743.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: The administration of Catherine the Great disbanded the regiments of Slobozhanshchina and abolished Cossack privileges by the decree of July 28, 1765. The semiautonomous region became a province called Sloboda Ukraine Governorate ("Slobodsko-Ukrainskaya guberniya"). Saint Petersburg replaced the regimental administrations with Russian hussar regiments, and granted Cossack higher ranks ("starshinas") officership and nobility ("dvoryanstvo"). In 1780, the governorate was transformed into the Kharkov Viceroyalty ("namestnichestvo") which existed until the end of 1796, when it was again renamed into Sloboda Ukrainian Governorate. Each administrative reform involved territorial changes.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: In 1835, the province of Sloboda Ukraine was abolished, ceding most of its territory to the new Kharkov Governorate, and some to Voronezh and Kursk, which came under the Little Russian General Governorship of Left-bank Ukraine.


title: Sloboda Ukraine

text: After the establishment of the Soviet Union Sloboda Ukraine was divided between the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SFSR. The early 1930s forced end to Ukrainization in the parts of Sloboda Ukraine located in the Russian SFSR led to a massive decline of reported Ukrainians in these regions in the 1937 Soviet Census compared to the 1926 First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union. The Ukrainian SSR reorganized their part of the region several times before establishing the borders of present-day Kharkiv Oblast in 1932.


title: Judith Miller

text: Judith Miller (born January 2, 1948) is an American journalist and commentator known for her coverage of Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) program both before and after the 2003 invasion, which was later discovered to have been based on inaccurate information from the intelligence community. She worked in "The New York Times" Washington bureau before joining Fox News in 2008.


title: Judith Miller

text: Miller co-wrote a book "", which became a top "New York Times" best seller shortly after she became a victim of a hoax anthrax letter at the time of the 2001 anthrax attacks.


title: Judith Miller

text: "The New York Times" determined that several stories she wrote about Iraq were inaccurate, and she was forced to resign from the paper in 2005. According to commentator Ken Silverstein, Miller's Iraq reporting "effectively ended her career as a respectable journalist". Miller defended her reporting, stating "My job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of "The New York Times" what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal." She published a memoir, "The Story: A Reporter's Journey", in April 2015.


title: Judith Miller

text: Miller was involved in the Plame Affair, where Valerie Plame was outed as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) spy by Richard Armitage after her husband published a "New York Times" op-ed casting doubts on claims that Saddam Hussein sought to purchase uranium from Africa. Miller spent 85 days in jail for refusing to reveal that her source in the Plame Affair was Scooter Libby. Later, she contributed to the conservative Fox News Channel and "Newsmax", and was a fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute.


title: Judith Miller

text: Miller was born in New York City. Her Russian-born father, Bill Miller, was Jewish. He owned the "Riviera" night club in New Jersey and later operated several casinos in Las Vegas.


title: Judith Miller

text: Bill Miller was known for booking iconic Las Vegas performers. His biggest success was getting Elvis Presley to return to Las Vegas after initially being an unsuccessful booking. Her mother was a "pretty Irish Catholic showgirl."


title: Judith Miller

text: Miller attended Ohio State University, where she was a member of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University in 1969 and received a master's degree in public affairs from Princeton University's School of Public and International Affairs. Early in her career at "The New York Times" bureau in Washington, D.C. she dated one of the newspaper's other reporters (and future investment banker) Steven Rattner. In 1993, she married Jason Epstein, an editor and publisher.


title: Judith Miller

text: Judith Miller is the half-sister of Jimmy Miller who was a record producer for many classic rock bands of the 1960s through to the 1990s including the Rolling Stones, Traffic and Cream.


title: Judith Miller

text: During Miller's tenure at "The New York Times", she was a member of the team that won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting, for its 2001 coverage of global terrorism before and after the September 11 attacks. She and James Risen received the award and one of the cited articles appeared under her byline.


title: Judith Miller

text: Her writing during this period was criticised by Middle-east scholar Edward Said for evincing an anti-Islamic bias. In his book "Covering Islam" Said stated that Miller's book "God Has Ninety-Nine Names" "is like a textbook of the inadequacies and distortions of media coverage of Islam." He criticised her poor grasp of Arabic, saying that "nearly every time she tries to impress us with her ability to say a phrase or two in Arabic she unerringly gets it wrong... They are the crude mistakes committed by a foreigner who neither has care nor... respect for her subject." He concluded Miller fears and dislikes Lebanon, hates Syria, laughs at Libya, dismisses Sudan, feels sorry for and a little alarmed by Egypt and is repulsed by Saudi Arabia. She hasn't bothered to learn the language and is relentlessly only concerned with the dangers of Islamic militancy, which, I would hazard a guess, accounts for less than 5 percent of the billion-strong Islamic world. However, Miller asserted that in the wake of the September 11 attacks she argued that militant Islamism of the type represented by Al Qaeda had peaked and was fading into insignificance.


title: Judith Miller

text: On October 12, 2001, Miller opened an anthrax hoax letter mailed to her "New York Times" office. The 2001 anthrax attacks had begun occurring in the wake of the September 11 attacks in 2001, with anthrax-laced letters sent to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, and the "New York Post", all in New York City, as well as the "National Enquirer" in Boca Raton, Florida. Two additional letters (with a higher grade of anthrax) were sent on October 9, 2001, to Senators Tom Daschle and Patrick Leahy in Washington.


title: Judith Miller

text: Miller was the only major U.S. media reporter, and "The New York Times" the only major U.S. media organization, to be victimized by a fake anthrax letter in the fall of 2001. Miller had reported extensively on the subject of biological threats and had co-authored, with Stephen Engelberg and William Broad, a book on bio-terrorism, "", which was published on October 2, 2001. Miller co-authored an article on Pentagon plans to develop a more potent version of weaponized anthrax, "U.S. Germ Warfare Research Pushes Treaty Limits", published in "The New York Times" on September 4, 2001, weeks before the first anthrax mailings.


title: Judith Miller

text: Shortly after the September 11 attacks, the U.S. government was considering adding the Holy Land Foundation to a list of organizations with suspected links to terrorism and was planning to search the premises of the organization. The information about the impending raid was given to Miller by a confidential source. On December 3, 2001, Miller telephoned the Holy Land Foundation for comment, and "The New York Times" published an article in the late edition papers and on its website that day. The next day, the government searched HLF's offices. These occurrences led to a lawsuit brought by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, with prosecutors claiming that Miller and her colleague Philip Shenon had queried this Islamic charity, and another, in ways that made them aware of the planned searches.


title: Judith Miller

text: At "The New York Times", Miller wrote on security issues, particularly about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. Many of these stories later turned out to have been based upon faulty information. (One of her stories that was not disproved reported that inspectors in Iraq "saw nothing to prompt a war.")


title: Judith Miller

text: On September 8, 2002, Miller and her "Times" colleague Michael R. Gordon reported the interception of "aluminum tubes" bound for Iraq. Her front-page story quoted unnamed "American officials" and "American intelligence experts" who said the tubes were intended to be used to enrich nuclear material, and cited unnamed "Bush administration officials" who said that, in recent months, Iraq had "stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and [had] embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb". Miller added that


title: Judith Miller

text: Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war.


title: Judith Miller

text: Shortly after Miller's article was published, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld appeared on television and pointed to Miller's story in support of their position. As summarized by "The New York Review of Books", "in the following months, the tubes would become a key prop in the administration's case for war, and the "Times" played a critical part in legitimizing it." Miller later said of the controversy


title: Judith Miller

text: [M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of "The New York Times" what the government thought about Iraq's arsenal.


title: Judith Miller

text: In an April 21, 2003 article, Miller, ostensibly on the basis of statements from the military unit in which she was embedded, reported claims allegedly made by an Iraqi scientist that Iraq had kept biological and chemical weapons until "right before the invasion." This report was covered extensively in the press. Miller went on "The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" and stated:


title: Judith Miller

text: Well, I think they found something more than a smoking gun. What they've found is a silver bullet in the form of a person, an Iraqi individual, a scientist, as we've called him, who really worked on the programs, who knows them firsthand, and who has led MET Alpha people to some pretty startling conclusions.


title: Judith Miller

text: There was strong internal dissent amongst other "Times" reporters regarding publication of the inflammatory, unsourced accusations, however, and that the military were allowed to censor it before it appeared. A week after it appeared, one "Times" insider called Miller's piece "wacky-assed" and complained there were "real questions about it and why it was on page 1."


title: Judith Miller

text: On May 26, 2003, Howard Kurtz of "The Washington Post" reported on a Miller internal email sent to John Burns, the "Times" Baghdad bureau chief. In it she admitted her source regarding the alleged WMDs, according to Seymour Hersh writing for "The New Yorker", was none other than Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, which alleges Pentagon officials passed on to Miller, despite the Central Intelligence Agency disagreeing with its content. Her "Times" editor, Andrew Rosenthal, criticized Kurtz for its release.


title: Judith Miller

text: A year later, on May 26, 2004, a week after the U.S. government apparently severed ties with Chalabi, a "Times" editorial acknowledged that some of the paper's coverage in the run-up to the war had relied too heavily on Chalabi and other Iraqi exiles, who were bent on regime change. The editorial also expressed "regret" that "information that was controversial [was] allowed to stand unchallenged." However, the editorial explicitly rejected "blame on individual reporters."


title: Judith Miller

text: On May 27, 2004, the day after the "Times" "mea culpa", James C. Moore quoted Miller in an article in "Salon":


title: Judith Miller

text: You know what, ... I was proved fucking right. That's what happened. People who disagreed with me were saying, 'There she goes again.' But I was proved fucking right."


title: Judith Miller

text: The statement about being "proved ... right" was in relation to another Miller story, wherein she had written trailers found in Iraq had been shown to be mobile weapons labs. However that claim, too, was subsequently refuted as false.


title: Judith Miller

text: It was alleged later in "Editor & Publisher" that, while Miller's reporting "frequently [did] not meet published "Times" standards", she was not sanctioned and was given a relatively free rein, because she consistently delivered frequent front-page scoops for the paper by "cultivating top-ranking sources."


title: Judith Miller

text: In 2005, facing federal court proceedings for refusing to divulge a source in the Plame affair criminal investigation, Miller spent 85 days in jail in Alexandria, Va. (where French terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was also held). After her release, the "Times"' Public Editor Byron Calame wrote:


title: Judith Miller

text: Ms. Miller may still be best known for her role in a series of "Times" articles in 2002 and 2003 that strongly suggested Saddam Hussein already had or was acquiring an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction ... Many of those articles turned out to be inaccurate ... [T]he problems facing her inside and outside the newsroom will make it difficult for her to return to the paper as a reporter.


title: Judith Miller

text: Two weeks later, Miller negotiated a private severance package with "Times" publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger Jr. She contested Calame's claims about her reporting and gave no ground in defending her work. She cited "difficulty" in performing her job effectively after having become "an integral part of the stories [she] was sent to cover."


title: Judith Miller

text: In a 2018 interview with "The Intercept", James Risen defended Miller by saying that there was a "systemic problem at the paper" in regards to reporting about the existence of WMD's. He said the paper wanted "stories about the existence of WMD" rather than "skeptical stories".


title: Judith Miller

text: On October 1, 2004, federal Judge Thomas F. Hogan found Miller in contempt of court for refusing to appear before a federal grand jury, which was investigating who had leaked to reporters the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative. Miller did not write an article about the subject at the time of the leak, but others did, notably Robert Novak, spurring the investigation. Judge Hogan sentenced her to 18 months in jail, but stayed the sentence while her appeal proceeded. On February 15, 2005, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously upheld Judge Hogan's ruling. On June 17, 2005, the US Supreme Court declined to hear the case. On July 6, 2005, Judge Hogan ordered Miller to serve her sentence at "a suitable jail within the metropolitan area of the District of Columbia". She was taken to Alexandria City Jail on July 7, 2005.


title: Judith Miller

text: In a separate case, Federal Judge Robert W. Sweet ruled on February 24, 2005, that Miller was not required to reveal who in the government leaked word of an impending raid to her. Patrick Fitzgerald, the same prosecutor who had had Miller jailed in the Plame case, argued that Miller's calls to groups suspected of funding terrorists had tipped them off to the raid and allowed them time to destroy evidence. Fitzgerald wanted Miller's phone records to confirm the time of the tip and determine who had leaked the information to Miller in the first place. Judge Sweet held that because Fitzgerald could not demonstrate in advance that the phone records would provide the information he sought the prosecutor's needs were outweighed by a 'reporter's privilege' to keep sources confidential. On August 1, 2006, a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Judge Sweet's decision, holding 2–1 that federal prosecutors could inspect the telephone records of Miller and Philip Shenon. Judge Ralph K. Winter, Jr. wrote: "No grand jury can make an informed decision to pursue the investigation further, much less to indict or not indict, without the reporters' evidence".


title: Judith Miller

text: Prior to her jailing for civil contempt, Miller's lawyers argued that it was pointless to imprison her because she would never talk or reveal confidential sources. Under such circumstances, argued her lawyers, jail term would be "merely punitive" and would serve no purpose. Arguing that Miller should be confined to her home and could forego Internet access and cellphone use, Miller's lawyers suggested that "impairing her unrestricted ability to do her job as an investigative journalist ... would present the strictest form of coercion to her". Failing that, Miller's lawyers asked that she be sent to a women's facility in Danbury, Connecticut, nearer to "Ms. Miller's 76-year-old husband", retired book publisher Jason Epstein, who lived in New York City, and whose state of health was the subject of a confidential medical report filed by Miller's attorneys. Upon being jailed, the Times reported on July 7, 2005, that Miller had purchased a cockapoo puppy to keep her husband company during her absence.


title: Judith Miller

text: On September 17, 2005, "The Washington Post" reported that Miller had received a "parade of prominent government and media officials" during her first 11 weeks in prison, including visits by former U.S. Republican Senator Bob Dole, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, and John R. Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. After her release on September 29, 2005, Miller agreed to disclose to the grand jury the identity of her source, Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff.


title: Judith Miller

text: On Tuesday, January 30, 2007, Miller took the stand as a witness for the prosecution against Lewis Libby. Miller discussed three conversations she had had with Libby in June and July 2003, including the meeting on June 23, 2003. In her first appearance before the grand jury, Miller said she could not remember. According to "The New York Times", when asked if Libby discussed Valerie Plame, Miller responded in the affirmative, "adding that Libby had said Wilson worked at the agency's (C.I.A.) division that dealt with limiting the proliferation of unconventional weapons". The trial resulted in guilty verdicts against Libby.


title: Judith Miller

text: In July 2005, several months prior to her October 2005 resignation from "The New York Times", Miller was jailed for contempt of court for refusing to testify before a federal grand jury investigating a leak naming Valerie Plame as a CIA officer. While Miller never wrote about Plame, she was believed to be in possession of evidence relevant to the leak investigation. According to a subpoena, Miller met with an unnamed government official, later revealed to be I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff, on July 8, 2003. Plame's CIA identity was divulged publicly in a column by conservative political commentator Robert Novak on July 14, 2003. Novak's source was revealed to have not been Libby, but Richard Armitage of the Department of State.


title: Judith Miller

text: On July 16, 2005, "The Washington Post" reported that Miller could face criminal contempt charges, which could have extended her jail time six months beyond the four months then anticipated. The "Post" suggested that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was particularly interested in hearing Miller's version of her encounter with Libby. Filings by Fitzgerald reportedly alleged that Miller's defiance of the court constituted a crime. On September 29, 2005, after spending 85 days in jail, Miller was released following a telephone call with Libby. He had reconfirmed the release of confidentiality. Under oath, Miller was questioned by Fitzgerald before a federal grand jury the following day, September 30, 2005, but was not relieved of contempt charges until after testifying again on October 12, 2005.


title: Judith Miller

text: For her second grand jury appearance, Miller produced a notebook from a previously undisclosed meeting with Libby on June 23, 2003. This was several weeks "before" Joseph Wilson's "New York Times" editorial was published. This belied the theory that Libby was retaliating against Wilson for his "Times" editorial. According to Miller's notes from that earlier meeting, Libby disclosed that Joseph Wilson's wife was a CIA employee involved in her husband's trip to Niger. Miller's notebook from her July 8, 2003, meeting with Libby contains the name "Valerie Flame [sic]". This reference occurred six days before Novak published Plame's name and unmasked her as a CIA operative.


title: Judith Miller

text: Miller's grand jury account was the basis for her last article in "The New York Times". The newspaper published Miller's first-person account, "My Four Hours Testifying in the Federal Grand Jury Room", on October 16, 2005. Miller said she could not remember who gave her the name "Valerie Plame" but she was sure it didn't come from Libby.


title: Judith Miller

text: Miller testified as a witness on January 30, 2007, at the trial of Scooter Libby, which began in January 2007. The trial ended on March 6, 2007, with Libby's conviction on four of five counts, though none of the counts had to do with actually revealing Plame's name to the media.


title: Judith Miller

text: Since leaving "The New York Times", Miller has continued her work as a writer in Manhattan and has contributed several op-ed pieces to "The Wall Street Journal". On May 16, 2006, she summarized her investigations on U.S. foreign policy regarding Libya's dismantling of its weapons programs in an essay published in two parts.


title: Judith Miller

text: On May 17, 2006, NavySEALs.com and MediaChannel.org published an exclusive interview with Miller in which she detailed how the attack on the USS "Cole" led her to investigate Al-Qaeda and, in July 2001, to her receiving information from a top-level White House source concerning top-secret NSA signals intelligence (SIGINT) about an impending Al-Qaeda attack, possibly against the continental United States. Two months later, on September 11, Miller and her editor at the "Times", Stephen Engelberg, both regretted not writing that story.


title: Judith Miller

text: On September 7, 2007, she was hired as an adjunct fellow of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a neo-conservative free-market think tank. Her duties included being a contributing editor for the organization's publication, "City Journal". On October 20, 2008, Fox News announced that it had hired Miller.


title: Judith Miller

text: As of 2018, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has also been a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, and has served on a prestigious National Academy of Sciences panel examining how best to expand of the work of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which since 1991 has sought to stop the spread of WMD material and expertise from the former Soviet Union. She lectures frequently on the Middle East, Islam, terrorism, biological and chemical weapons, as well as other national security topics.


title: Judith Miller

text: On April 3, 2015, "The Wall Street Journal" published an op-ed piece by Miller in which she defended her comportment during the lead-up to the war in Iraq, as well as the Bush administration's stance and decisions regarding the war. "Officials [of the Bush administration] didn't lie, and I wasn't fed a line," she wrote. Miller acknowledged that "there was no shortage of mistakes about Iraq, and I made my share of them. The newsworthy claims of some of my prewar WMD stories were wrong", but rejected the notion that "I took America to war in Iraq. It was all me", which according to her "continue[d] to have believers".


title: Judith Miller

text: Critics subsequently wrote that "Miller's war reporting was disastrously wrong, and now she's trying desperately to spin it all away,". Valerie Plame commented that while "no one is crediting [Miller] with starting the Iraq war," and she was "not actually on the team that took us into the biggest, most tragic US foreign policy debacle ever..., [Miller's] attempt to re-write history is both pathetic and self-serving."


title: Judith Miller

text: "The Guardian" wrote that "in arguing that Bush was a victim of faulty intelligence analysis, Miller ignores extensive reporting showing that the Bush administration was making plans for an Iraq invasion "before" the advent of intelligence used to justify it."


title: Judith Miller

text: Others focused on what they termed as factual inaccuracies, such as Miller's claim that "Hans Blix, the former chief of the international weapons inspectors, bears some responsibility [for the war]" because he "told the U.N. in January 2003 that despite America's ultimatum, Saddam was still not complying fully with his U.N. pledges." Her critics pointed out that, although Blix indeed reported that "Iraq wasn't fully compliant," he also reported that Iraq was "largely cooperative with regard to process," and, subsequently, "made it abundantly clear, in an interview published in "The New York Times", that nothing he'd seen at the time justified war," an interview taken by Miller herself.


title: Judith Miller

text: In April 2015, Miller published "The Story: A Reporter's Journey", a memoir that focused largely on her reporting during the second Gulf War. Her former colleague Neil Lewis characterized most of the reviews as "unreservedly critical". Writing in "The New York Times", former "Los Angeles Times" reporter Terry McDermott wrote that although "this is not a score-settling book", he found it "sad and flawed". Ιn "The Washington Post", Erik Wemple wrote that the book's "dynamic" of "Judy Miller against the world" lends her book an aspect that is "both depressing and desperate". A review in "The Columbia Journalism Review" called the book "less a memoir than an apologia and an assault". In "The Daily Beast", Lloyd Grove characterized Miller's work as "self-pitying". Criticizing Miller's failure to fully take responsibility for the flaws in her reporting, Matt Taibbi wrote in "Rolling Stone": "Most of "The Story" is a tale of dog after scheming dog eating Miller's homework. ... Mostly, she just had a lot of rotten luck. Or at least, that's how it reads. It's a sweeping, epic non-apology. Every bad thing Miller has ever been accused of turns out to be wrong or taken out of context, according to her."


title: The Moving Finger

text: The Moving Finger is a detective novel by British writer Agatha Christie, first published in the USA by Dodd, Mead and Company in July 1942 and in the UK by the Collins Crime Club in June 1943. The US edition retailed at $2.00 and the UK edition at seven shillings and sixpence.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The Burtons, brother and sister, arrive in the small town (or village) of Lymstock in Devon, and soon receive an anonymous letter accusing them of being lovers, not siblings. They are not the only ones in the village to receive such letters. A prominent resident is found dead with one such letter found next to her. This novel features the elderly detective Miss Marple in a relatively minor role, "a little old lady sleuth who doesn't seem to do much". She enters the story in the final quarter of the book, in a handful of scenes, after the police have failed to solve the crime.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The novel was well received when it was published: "Agatha Christie is at it again, lifting the lid off delphiniums and weaving the scarlet warp all over the pastel pouffe." One reviewer noted that Miss Marple "sets the stage for the final exposure of the murderer." Another said this was "One of the few times Christie gives short measure, and none the worse for that." The male narrator was both praised and panned.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The book takes its name from quatrain 51 of Edward FitzGerald's translation of the "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám":


title: The Moving Finger

text: The poem, in turn, refers to Belshazzar's feast as related in the Book of Daniel, where the expression "the writing on the wall" originated.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The title shows in the story figuratively and literally. The anonymous letters point blame from one town resident to another. The police detective determines that the envelopes were all "typed by someone using one finger" to avoid a recognisable 'touch'.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Jerry and Joanna Burton, a brother and sister from London, take up residence in a house owned by Miss Barton near the quiet town of Lymstock for the last phase of Jerry's recovery from injuries suffered in a plane crash. Shortly after moving in and meeting their neighbours, they receive an anonymous letter which makes the false accusation that the pair are lovers, not siblings.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The Burtons quickly learn that such poison pen letters have been received by many in the town. Despite the letters containing false accusations, many recipients are upset by them and fear something worse may happen. Mrs Symmington, the local solicitor's wife, is found dead after receiving a letter stating that her husband, was not the father of her second son. Her body is discovered with the letter, a glass containing potassium cyanide, and a torn scrap of paper that reads, "I can't go on."


title: The Moving Finger

text: While the inquest rules that her death was suicide, the police begin a hunt for the anonymous letter writer. An inspector arrives from Scotland Yard to help with the investigation. He concludes that the letter writer is a middle-aged woman among the prominent citizens of Lymstock. Mrs Symmington's daughter by a previous marriage, Megan Hunter, an awkward, frumpy 20-year-old, stays with the Burtons for a few days after losing her mother.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The Burtons' housekeeper, Partridge, receives a call from Agnes, the Symmingtons' maidservant, who is distraught and seeks advice. Agnes fails to arrive for their planned meeting; nor is she found at the Symmingtons' when Jerry calls in the evening to check on her. The following day, her body is discovered by Megan in the under-stairs cupboard at the Symington house.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Progress in the murder investigation is slow until the Reverend's wife, Mrs. Dane Calthrop, invites Miss Marple to investigate. Jerry conveys many facts about the case to her from his observations, and tells her some of his ideas on why Agnes was killed. Meanwhile, Elsie Holland, the governess for the Symmington boys, receives an anonymous letter. The police observe Aimée Griffith, sister of the local doctor Owen Griffith, typing the address on the same typewriter used for all the previous letters, and arrest her for writing the letter.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Heading to London to see his doctor, Jerry impulsively takes Megan along with him and takes her to Joanna's dressmaker for a complete makeover. He realises he has fallen in love with Megan. When they return to Lymstock, Jerry asks Megan to marry him; she turns him down. He asks Mr Symmington for his permission to pursue Megan. Miss Marple advises Jerry to leave Megan alone for a day, as she has a task for her.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Megan blackmails her stepfather later that evening, implying that she has proof that he killed Mrs. Symmington. Mr. Symmington coolly pays her an initial instalment of money while not admitting his guilt. Later in the night, after giving Megan a sleeping drug, he attempts to murder her by putting her head in the gas oven. Jerry and the police are lying in wait for him. Jerry rescues Megan, and Symmington confesses. The police arrest him for murdering his wife and Agnes.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Miss Marple, knowing human nature, reveals that she knew all along that the letters were a diversion, and not written by a local woman, because none contained true accusations - something locals would be sure to gossip about. Only one person benefited from Mrs Symmington's death: her husband. He is in love with the beautiful Elsie Holland. Planning his wife's murder, he modelled the letters on those in a past case known to him from his legal practice. The police theory about who wrote them was completely wrong. The one letter that Symmington did not write was the one to Elsie; Aimée Griffith, who had been in love with Symmington for years, wrote that. Knowing it would be hard to prove Symington's guilt, Miss Marple devised the scheme to expose him, enlisting Megan to provoke him to attempt to kill her.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Following the successful conclusion of the investigation, Megan realises that she does love Jerry. Jerry buys Miss Barton's house for them. His sister Joanna marries Owen Griffith and also stays in Lymstock. Meanwhile, Emily Barton and Aimée Griffith go on a cruise together.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Maurice Willson Disher in "The Times Literary Supplement" of 19 June 1943 was mostly positive, starting, "Beyond all doubt the puzzle in "The Moving Finger" is fit for experts" and continued "The author is generous with her clues. Anyone ought to be able to read her secret with half an eye – if the other one-and-a-half did not get in the way. There has rarely been a detective story so likely to create an epidemic of self indulgent kicks." However, some reservations were expressed: "Having expended so much energy on her riddle, the author cannot altogether be blamed for neglecting the other side of her story. It would grip more if Jerry Burton, who tells it, was more credible. He is an airman who has crashed and walks with the aid of two sticks. That he should make a lightning recovery is all to the good, but why, in between dashing downstairs two at a time and lugging a girl into a railway carriage by main force, should he complain that it hurts to drive a car? And why, since he is as masculine in sex as the sons of King Gama does he think in this style, "The tea was china and delicious and there were plates of sandwiches and thin bread and butter and a quantity of little cakes"? Nor does it help verisimilitude that a bawling young female gawk should become an elegant beauty in less than a day."


title: The Moving Finger

text: Maurice Richardson in "The Observer" wrote: "An atmosphere of perpetual, after-breakfast well-being; sherry parties in a country town where nobody is quite what he seems; difficult slouching daughters with carefully concealed coltish charm; crazy spinsters, of course; and adulterous solicitors. Agatha Christie is at it again, lifting the lid off delphiniums and weaving the scarlet warp all over the pastel pouffe." And he concluded, "Probably you will call Mrs Christie's double bluff, but this will only increase your pleasure."


title: The Moving Finger

text: An unnamed reviewer in the "Toronto Daily Star" of 7 November 1942 said, ""The Moving Finger" has for a jacket design a picture of a finger pointing out one suspect after another and that's the way it is with the reader as chapter after chapter of the mystery story unfolds. It is not one of [Christie's] stories about her famous French detective, Hercule Poirot, having instead Miss Marple, a little old lady sleuth who doesn't seem to do much but who sets the stage for the final exposure of the murderer."


title: The Moving Finger

text: The writer and critic Robert Barnard wrote "Poison pen in Mayhem Parva, inevitably leading to murder. A good and varied cast list, some humour, and stronger than usual romantic interest of an ugly-duckling-into-swan type. One of the few times Christie gives short measure, and none the worse for that."


title: The Moving Finger

text: In the "Binge!" article of "Entertainment Weekly" of December 2014 – January 2015, the writers picked "The Moving Finger" as a Christie favourite on the list of the "Nine Great Christie Novels".


title: The Moving Finger

text: "The Moving Finger" was first adapted for television by the BBC in two episodes with Joan Hickson in the series "Miss Marple". It first aired on 21 and 22 February 1985. The adaptation is generally faithful to the novel, apart from combining the characters of Agnes and Beatrice and bringing Miss Marple into the story far sooner than the novel does.


title: The Moving Finger

text: A second television adaptation was made with Geraldine McEwan as Miss Marple in the TV series, "Agatha Christie's Marple" and was filmed in Chilham, Kent. It first aired on 12 February 2006. This adaptation changes the personality of Jerry. The story is set a little later than in the novel, as mentioned in a review of the episode: "Miss Marple, observing the tragic effects of these missives on relationships and reputations, is practically in the background in this story, watching closely as a nihilistic young man (James D'Arcy) comes out of his cynical, alcohol-laced haze to investigate the source of so much misery." and is "set shortly after World War II."


title: The Moving Finger

text: A third adaptation came as part of the French television series "Les Petits Meurtres d'Agatha Christie". The episode aired in 2009.


title: The Moving Finger

text: A radio adaptation was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in May 2001 in the "Saturday Play" slot, starring June Whitfield as Miss Marple.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The work is dedicated to Christie's friends, the artist Mary Winifrid Smith and her husband Sidney Smith, an Assyriologist:


title: The Moving Finger

text: The novel's first true publication was the US serialisation in "Collier's Weekly" in eight instalments from 28 March (Volume 109, Number 13) to 16 May 1942 (Volume 109, Number 20) with illustrations by Mario Cooper.


title: The Moving Finger

text: The UK serialisation was as an abridged version in six parts in "Woman's Pictorial" from 17 October (Volume 44, Number 1136) to 21 November 1942 (Volume 44, Number 1141) under the slightly shorter title of "Moving Finger". All six instalments were illustrated by Alfred Sindall.


title: The Moving Finger

text: This novel is one of two to differ significantly in American editions (the other being "Three Act Tragedy"), both hardcover and paperback. Most American editions of "The Moving Finger" have been abridged by about 9000 words to remove sections of chapters, and strongly resemble the "Collier's" serialisation which, mindful of the need to bring the magazine reader into the story quickly, begins without the leisurely introduction to the narrator's back-story that is present in the British edition, and lacks much of the characterisation throughout.


title: The Moving Finger

text: Christie admitted that this book was one of her favourites, stating, "I find that another [book] I am really pleased with is "The Moving Finger". It is a great test to re-read what one has written some seventeen or eighteen years before. One's view changes. Some do not stand the test of time, others do."


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Roman Osipovich Jakobson (; October 11, 1896 – July 18, 1982) was a Russian-American linguist and literary theorist.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: A pioneer of structural linguistics, Jakobson was one of the most celebrated and influential linguists of the twentieth century. With Nikolai Trubetzkoy, he developed revolutionary new techniques for the analysis of linguistic sound systems, in effect founding the modern discipline of phonology. Jakobson went on to extend similar principles and techniques to the study of other aspects of language such as syntax, morphology and semantics. He made numerous contributions to Slavic linguistics, most notably two studies of Russian case and an analysis of the categories of the Russian verb. Drawing on insights from C. S. Peirce's semiotics, as well as from communication theory and cybernetics, he proposed methods for the investigation of poetry, music, the visual arts, and cinema.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Through his decisive influence on Claude Lévi-Strauss and Roland Barthes, among others, Jakobson became a pivotal figure in the adaptation of structural analysis to disciplines beyond linguistics, including philosophy, anthropology, and literary theory; his development of the approach pioneered by Ferdinand de Saussure, known as "structuralism", became a major post-war intellectual movement in Europe and the United States. Meanwhile, though the influence of structuralism declined during the 1970s, Jakobson's work has continued to receive attention in linguistic anthropology, especially through the ethnography of communication developed by Dell Hymes and the semiotics of culture developed by Jakobson's former student Michael Silverstein. Jakobson's concept of underlying linguistic universals, particularly his celebrated theory of distinctive features, decisively influenced the early thinking of Noam Chomsky, who became the dominant figure in theoretical linguistics during the second half of the twentieth century.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Jakobson was born in the Russian Empire on 11 October 1896 to well-to-do parents of Jewish descent, the industrialist Osip Jakobson and chemist Anna Volpert Jakobson, and he developed a fascination with language at a very young age. He studied at the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages and then at the Historical-Philological Faculty of Moscow University. As a student he was a leading figure of the Moscow Linguistic Circle and took part in Moscow's active world of avant-garde art and poetry; he was especially interested in Russian Futurism, the Russian incarnation of Italian Futurism. Under the pseudonym 'Aliagrov', he published books of zaum poetry and befriended the Futurists Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kazimir Malevich, Aleksei Kruchyonykh and others. It was the poetry of his contemporaries that partly inspired him to become a linguist.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: The linguistics of the time was overwhelmingly neogrammarian and insisted that the only scientific study of language was to study the history and development of words across time (the diachronic approach, in Saussure's terms). Jakobson, on the other hand, had come into contact with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, and developed an approach focused on the way in which language's structure served its basic function (synchronic approach) – to communicate information between speakers. Jakobson was also well known for his critique of the emergence of sound in film. Jakobson received a master's degree from Moscow University in 1918.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Although he was initially an enthusiastic supporter of the Bolshevik revolution, Jakobson soon became disillusioned as his early hopes for an explosion of creativity in the arts fell victim to increasing state conservatism and hostility. He left Moscow for Prague in 1920, where he worked as a member of the Soviet diplomatic mission while continuing with his doctoral studies. Living in Czechoslovakia meant that Jakobson was physically close to the linguist who would be his most important collaborator during the 1920s and 1930s, Prince Nikolai Trubetzkoy, who fled Russia at the time of the Revolution and took up a chair at Vienna in 1922. In 1926 the Prague school of linguistic theory was established by the professor of English at Charles University, Vilém Mathesius, with Jakobson as a founding member and a prime intellectual force (other members included Nikolai Trubetzkoy, René Wellek and Jan Mukařovský). Jakobson immersed himself in both the academic and cultural life of pre-World War II Czechoslovakia and established close relationships with a number of Czech poets and literary figures. Jakobson received his Ph.D. from Charles University in 1930. He became a professor at Masaryk University in Brno in 1933. He also made an impression on Czech academics with his studies of Czech verse.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Roman Jakobson proposed the Atlas Linguarum Europae in the late 1930s, but World War II disrupted this plan and it laid dormant until being revived by Mario Alinei in 1965.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Jakobson escaped from Prague in early March 1939 via Berlin for Denmark, where he was associated with the Copenhagen linguistic circle, and such intellectuals as Louis Hjelmslev. He fled to Norway on 1 September 1939, and in 1940 walked across the border to Sweden, where he continued his work at the Karolinska Hospital (with works on aphasia and language competence). When Swedish colleagues feared a possible German occupation, he managed to leave on a cargo ship, together with Ernst Cassirer (the former rector of Hamburg University) to New York City in 1941 to become part of the wider community of intellectual émigrés who fled there.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: In New York, he began teaching at The New School, still closely associated with the Czech émigré community during that period. At the École libre des hautes études, a sort of Francophone university-in-exile, he met and collaborated with Claude Lévi-Strauss, who would also become a key exponent of structuralism. He also made the acquaintance of many American linguists and anthropologists, such as Franz Boas, Benjamin Whorf, and Leonard Bloomfield. When the American authorities considered "repatriating" him to Europe, it was Franz Boas who actually saved his life. After the war, he became a consultant to the International Auxiliary Language Association, which would present Interlingua in 1951.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: In 1949 Jakobson moved to Harvard University, where he remained until his retirement in 1967. His universalizing structuralist theory of phonology, based on a markedness hierarchy of distinctive features, achieved its canonical exposition in a book published in the United States in 1951, jointly authored by Roman Jakobson, C. Gunnar Fant and Morris Halle. In the same year, Jakobson's theory of 'distinctive features' made a profound impression on the thinking of young Noam Chomsky, in this way also influencing generative linguistics. He was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1960.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: In his last decade, Jakobson maintained an office at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was an honorary Professor Emeritus. In the early 1960s Jakobson shifted his emphasis to a more comprehensive view of language and began writing about communication sciences as a whole. He converted to Eastern Orthodox Christianity in 1975.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Jakobson died in Cambridge, Massachusetts on 18 July 1982. His widow died in 1986. His first wife, who was born in 1908, died in 2000.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: According to Jakobson's own personal reminiscences, the most decisive stage in the development of his thinking was the period of revolutionary anticipation and upheaval in Russia between 1912 and 1920, when, as a young student, he fell under the spell of the celebrated Russian futurist wordsmith and linguistic thinker Velimir Khlebnikov.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Offering a slightly different picture, the preface to the second edition of "The Sound Shape of Language" argues that this book represents the fourth stage in "Jakobson's quest to uncover the function and structure of sound in language." The first stage was roughly the 1920s to 1930s where he collaborated with Trubetzkoy, in which they developed the concept of the phoneme, and elucidated the structure of phonological systems. The second stage, from roughly the late 1930s to the 1940s, during which he developed the notion that "binary distinctive features" were the foundational element in language, and that such distinctiveness is "mere otherness" or differentiation. In the third stage in Jakobson's work, from the 1950s to 1960s, he worked with the acoustician C. Gunnar Fant and Morris Halle (a student of Jakobson's) to consider the acoustic aspects of distinctive features.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Influenced by the Organon-Model by Karl Bühler, Jakobson distinguishes six communication functions, each associated with a dimension or factor of the communication process [n.b. – Elements from Bühler's theory appear in the diagram below in yellow and pink, Jakobson's elaborations in blue]:


title: Roman Jakobson

text: One of the six functions is always the dominant function in a text and usually related to the type of text. In poetry, the dominant function is the poetic function: the focus is on the message itself. The true hallmark of poetry is according to Jakobson "the projection of the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection to the axis of combination". Very broadly speaking, it implies that poetry successfully combines and integrates form and function, that poetry turns the poetry of grammar into the grammar of poetry, so to speak. Jakobson's theory of communicative functions was first published in "Closing Statements: Linguistics and Poetics" (in Thomas A. Sebeok, "Style In Language", Cambridge Massachusetts, MIT Press, 1960, pp. 350–377). Despite its wide adoption, the six-functions model has been criticized for lacking specific interest in the "play function" of language that, according to an early review by Georges Mounin, is "not enough studied in general by linguistics researchers".


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Jakobson's three principal ideas in linguistics play a major role in the field to this day: linguistic typology, markedness, and linguistic universals. The three concepts are tightly intertwined: typology is the classification of languages in terms of shared grammatical features (as opposed to shared origin), markedness is (very roughly) a study of how certain forms of grammatical organization are more "optimized" than others, and linguistic universals is the study of the general features of languages in the world. He also influenced Nicolas Ruwet's paradigmatic analysis.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Jakobson has also influenced Friedemann Schulz von Thun's four sides model, as well as Michael Silverstein's metapragmatics, Dell Hymes's ethnography of communication and ethnopoetics, the psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, and philosophy of Giorgio Agamben.


title: Roman Jakobson

text: Jakobson's legacy among researchers specializing in Slavics, and especially Slavic linguistics in North America, has been enormous, for example, Olga Yokoyama.


title: Dead End Kids

text: The Dead End Kids were a group of young actors from New York City who appeared in Sidney Kingsley's Broadway play "Dead End" in 1935. In 1937, producer Samuel Goldwyn brought all of them to Hollywood and turned the play into a film. They proved to be so popular that they continued to make movies under various monikers, including the Little Tough Guys, the East Side Kids, and the Bowery Boys, until 1958.


title: Dead End Kids

text: In 1934, Sidney Kingsley wrote a play about a group of children growing up on the streets of New York City. Fourteen children were hired to play various roles in the play, including Billy Halop (Tommy), Bobby Jordan (Angel), Huntz Hall (Dippy), Charles Duncan (Spit), Bernard Punsly (Milty), Gabriel Dell (T.B.), and Leo and David Gorcey (Second Avenue Boys). Duncan left for a role in another play before opening night, and was replaced by Leo, his understudy. Leo had been a plumber's assistant and was originally recruited by his brother David to audition for the play.


title: Dead End Kids

text: The play opened at the Belasco Theatre on October 28, 1935, and ran for two years, totaling 684 performances. Samuel Goldwyn and director William Wyler saw the play and decided to turn it into a film. They paid $165,000 for the rights to the film and began auditioning actors in Los Angeles. Failing to find actors who could convey the emotions they saw in the play, Goldwyn and Wyler had six of the original Kids (Halop, Jordan, Hall, Punsly, Dell, and Leo Gorcey) brought from New York City to Hollywood for the film. The Kids were all signed to two-year contracts, allowing for possible future films, and began working on the 1937 United Artists' film, "Dead End".


title: Dead End Kids

text: The actual name of the gang of boys in "Dead End" is written in chalk on the wall shown throughout the movie. It reads: "East 53rd Place Gang Members Only".


title: Dead End Kids

text: During production, the boys ran wild around the studio, destroying property, including a truck that they crashed into a sound stage. Goldwyn chose not to use them again and sold their contract to Warner Bros.


title: Dead End Kids

text: Warner Bros. had initially attempted to rename them the "Crime School Kids" through advertisements for their first two films produced there, starting with "Crime School" (1937), to disassociate them from their previous studio's film, and promote their own. In 1938, they made their only color appearance in a short film, "Swingtime in the Movies", and were referred to as that name. This was all in vain, though, as the name never caught on, and they remained the Dead End Kids.


title: Dead End Kids

text: At Warner Bros., the Dead End Kids made six films, including "Angels with Dirty Faces", with some of the top actors in Hollywood, including James Cagney, Humphrey Bogart, John Garfield, Pat O'Brien, and Ronald Reagan. The last one was in 1939, when they were released from their contracts owing to more antics on the studio lot.


title: Dead End Kids

text: In 1938 Universal Pictures made an imitation Dead End Kids drama, "Little Tough Guy". Leo Gorcey and Bobby Jordan remained under contract to Warners, so Universal hired the remaining four Dead End Kids. The film proved successful enough for Universal to launch a "Little Tough Guys" series in 1939, but by this time the original gang members were not available, so Universal filled the roles with other Hollywood juveniles (including future series perennials David Gorcey and Billy Benedict). Eventually all of the original Dead End Kids except Leo Gorcey joined the Universal series, which became known as "The Dead End Kids and the Little Tough Guys." The final Universal film was "Keep 'Em Slugging" (1943) with Bobby Jordan in the leading role.


title: Dead End Kids

text: Producer Sam Katzman, releasing through Monogram Pictures, began his own tough-kid series, beginning with the 1940 film "East Side Kids". As was the case at Universal, none of the original Dead End Kids was available, so Katzman hired six juveniles to fill the roles. For the second film, Katzman engaged Bobby Jordan and Leo Gorcey, along with David Gorcey and Our Gang alumni "Sunshine" Sammy Morrison and Donald Haines. In 1941 Huntz Hall and Gabriel Dell joined the series, now known as "The East Side Kids", followed in 1943 by Billy Benedict.


title: Dead End Kids

text: In 1946, Bobby Jordan, Huntz Hall, and Leo Gorcey, working with Jordan's agent Jan Grippo, revamped The East Side Kids, renaming them "The Bowery Boys". These films followed a more established formula, with each member playing the same character steadily. During the series's freshman year, the gang was Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, Gabriel Dell, Billy Benedict, and David Gorcey. Jordan left the series in 1947, followed by Dell in 1950, Benedict in 1951, and Leo Gorcey in 1956. Only Huntz Hall and David Gorcey remained from the original gang, with Stanley Clements stepping into the role of Hall's sidekick. In all, 48 Bowery Boys films were made, ending with 1958's "In the Money". During the series Hall and Dell did a nightclub act together. Gorcey and Hall reteamed on the film "Second Fiddle to a Steel Guitar" then finally, in "The Phynx".


title: Dead End Kids

text: The various teams that began life as "The Dead End Kids" made 89 films and three serials for four different studios during their 21-year-long film career. The team was awarded a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame that can be found at the corner of La Brea and Hollywood.


title: Dead End Kids

text: One notable aspect of the group's history is their transition from stark drama to comedy. When they began, in "Dead End" and their other early films, their characters were serious, gritty, genuinely menacing young hoodlums. But, by the height of their career, their movies were comedies, with the Kids depicted as low-class but basically harmless, likable teens – comic caricatures of their former selves.


title: Dead End Kids

text: The original play has had two revivals. A 1978 adaptation played at the Quigh Theatre in New York, N.Y. and another in 2005 at the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. In 2022, a musical adaptation of the play was produced as a concept album available for digital download. The adaptation was written by Neil Fishman (music), Harvey Edelman (lyrics), and Peter C. Palame (book) and published by Sammy Smile Music LLC.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: The 1994 New York gubernatorial election was an election for the state governorship held on November 8, 1994. Incumbent Democratic Governor Mario Cuomo ran for a fourth term, but was defeated by Republican George Pataki in an upset victory. Pataki had previously been described by the "New York Daily News" as "a little-known Republican state senator." The conservative "New York Post", on the other hand, attributed the result to how "Voters had grown tired of the 12-year incumbent Cuomo and his liberalism."


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Pataki's victory was one of the most notable of the 1994 "Republican Revolution" midterm elections, which also ousted Governors in Alabama, New Mexico, and Texas. This is the last time a Governor of New York lost re-election. This would be the last gubernatorial race until 2022 that was decided by a single-digit margin.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Only two candidates announced their intention to challenge incumbent Governor Mario Cuomo in the Democratic primary: Lenora Fulani, who had been the 1990 gubernatorial nominee of the New Alliance Party and its 1988 and 1992 presidential nominee; and Roy Innis, the National Chairman of the Congress of Racial Equality. Ultimately, Innis did not submit petitions. Fulani, however, submitted petitions and made it onto the Democratic primary ballot. Fulani's bid was generally considered a losing effort with no hope of keeping the nomination away from Cuomo. Cuomo refused to debate her, Fulani made it plain that she wished to draw African-American voters away from the Democratic Party, and no elected officials endorsed Fulani except Adam Clayton Powell IV. Fulani was also far outstripped when it came to fundraising. On September 13, 1994, Cuomo handily defeated Fulani.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Initially, most expected U.S. Senator Al D'Amato to be the Republican and Conservative nominee for governor in 1994. D'Amato began what looked like the beginnings of a campaign in September 1993 when he attacked Cuomo's record as governor, claiming that New York had become "the taxasaurus and spendasaurus capital of the nation." However, less than a month later, D'Amato decided not to run; he, correctly, predicted that his party might take control of the U.S. Senate in the 1994 elections, which would make him chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: After considering other potential candidates, D'Amato—in conjunction with State GOP Chairman William Powers—endorsed the candidacy of State Senator George Pataki. Pataki was perceived as a candidate who could garner the support of the party's moderate and conservative factions. Lewis Lehrman, the 1982 gubernatorial nominee who narrowly lost to Cuomo, publicly flirted with a run, but ultimately didn't mount a candidacy.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Former gubernatorial candidate Herbert London declared his candidacy on October 5, 1993. Running on a platform of tax cuts, reductions in state Medicaid and welfare payments and social conservatism, London was critical of both Cuomo and D'Amato. However, London's social conservatism and poor fundraising caused many party leaders to believe that he had no chance of defeating Cuomo.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: On January 4, 1994, Evan Galbraith, a businessman from Manhattan and former ambassador to France under the Reagan Administration, decided to explore a potential gubernatorial bid. (Galbraith had also previously been a candidate for governor in 1990, but a court declared him eligible due to residency issues.) He quickly received endorsements from several notable figures, among them Henry Kissinger and William F. Buckley, Jr. Galbraith was considered by some as an alternative to London, holding similar positions but able to appeal to a larger base of voters. Galbraith formally declared his candidacy on April 29; by this time, however, most conservatives had coalesced around either London or Pataki.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Pataki formally declared his candidacy on March 14, but had been actively preparing for a campaign since the previous fall with the support of D'Amato and Powers. Senate Majority Leader Ralph Marino refused to support his nomination, angry over Pataki's association with "Change – New York" which had worked to prevent Marino's reelection. There was also concern over Pataki's position on the abortion issue, with organizations on both sides of the issue not being satisfied with his "middle-ground" approach.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Former U.S. Representative Bill Green declared his candidacy on March 18, hoping to become the moderate alternative to Pataki and London. Green claimed that he was conservative on fiscal issues while "sensibly compassionate" on social issues. His bid was badly damaged when Michael Long, Chairman of the Conservative Party, indicated that he did not believe that Green could receive Conservative support.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Former State Party Chairman Richard Rosenbaum declared his candidacy on March 23. His platform was very similar to that of Bill Green but went even further, supporting Medicaid-financed abortions and tighter restrictions on guns. He also managed to create a much larger campaign chest of about $1.2 million. Rosenbaum decided against trying for an automatic ballot spot through the convention process; a Republican of the Rockefeller mold, he did not believe he could attain the required 25% of the vote. Instead, Rosenbaum opted to petition his way onto the ballot.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: J. Patrick Barrett, a businessman from Syracuse who was expected to join the race, dropped out on May 20 when he came to the conclusion that he could not obtain the necessary support at the state convention.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: At the Republican convention, Pataki won the overwhelming support of the delegates present. Herbert London, the runner-up, fell short of the 25% showing that he needed to obtain a place on the party's primary ballot.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: London, Galbraith and Green were all initially determined to petition to be on the primary ballot on September 13, but efforts were made to dissuade them from doing so. In return for his support for Pataki, London was nominated for the position of Comptroller. This move allowed Pataki to secure much of London's support within both the Republican and Conservative parties. On May 31, Green withdrew from the race and endorsed Rosenbaum.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: On September 13, Pataki defeated Rosenbaum in the Republican primary by a margin of 75.6–24.4%. Rosenbaum endorsed Pataki the next day.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: The original Libertarian candidate was New York City radio personality Howard Stern, who announced his candidacy for governor on his nationally syndicated radio show on March 22, 1994. Stern ran on a platform of reinstating the death penalty, letting road crews work only at night, staggering highway tolls to prevent traffic jams, and vowing to resign from office as soon as these goals were accomplished. Stern won the party's nomination by a two-thirds majority on the first ballot at their state convention on April 23, 1994.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Stern refused to file the financial disclosures required by law of any party seeking to hold public office. He filed suit against the state of New York, arguing that the applicable law violated his right to privacy and freedom of association. When the court denied his petition for an injunction, Stern called a press conference on August 4, 1994 and withdrew from the race. Robert L. Schulz, a political activist from Queensbury, New York, replaced Stern on the statewide ballot. Stern's running mate, Stan Dworkin of Westchester County, remained on the slate as candidate for lieutenant governor.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: Though early on in the election Cuomo led by as much as ten points, Pataki was eventually able to tie him due to his difficulty in defending his record. Pataki promised to cut income taxes by 25 percent which appealed to voters in an economic downturn.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: One key issue in the election was capital punishment. Cuomo had long been a staunch opponent of the death penalty while Pataki supported it. In the 1980s and early 1990s most New Yorkers supported capital punishment due to high crime rates. Republican ads pointed to the case of Arthur Shawcross, a multiple murderer convicted of manslaughter who was paroled by New York in 1987 and committed additional murders while on release (during the time Cuomo was governor). This revelation caused a significant loss of support for Cuomo.


title: 1994 New York gubernatorial election

text: While the race was very close overall, Pataki won by running up huge margins outside of New York City. Cuomo won only one county outside of the Five Boroughs, Albany County.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Sheikh Ahmed Ismail Hassan Yassin (; 1 January 1937 – 22 March 2004) was a Palestinian politician and imam who founded Hamas, a militant Islamist and Palestinian nationalist organization in the Gaza Strip, in 1987. He served as the organization's spiritual leader after its founding.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Yassin, a quadriplegic who was nearly blind, had been reliant on a wheelchair due to a sporting accident at the age of 12. In 2004, he was killed when an Israeli helicopter gunship fired a missile at him as he was being wheeled from Fajr prayer in Gaza City. The attack, which also killed both of his bodyguards and nine bystanders, was internationally condemned. 200,000 Palestinians attended his funeral procession in Gaza.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Ahmed Yassin was born in al-Jura, a small village near the city of Ashkelon, in the British Mandate of Palestine. His date of birth is not known for certain: according to his Palestinian passport, he was born on 1 January 1929, but he claimed to have actually been born in 1937. His father, Abdullah Yassin, died when he was three years old. Afterward, he became known in his neighborhood as Ahmad Sa'ada after his mother Sa'ada al-Habeel. This was to differentiate him from the children of his father's other three wives. Together, Yassin had four brothers and two sisters. He and his entire family fled to Gaza, settling in al-Shati Camp after his village was ethnically cleansed by the Israel Defense Forces during the 1948 Arab–Israeli War.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Yassin came to Gaza as a refugee. When he was 12, he sustained a severe spinal injury while wrestling his friend Abdullah al-Khatib. His neck was kept in plaster for 45 days. The damage to his spinal cord rendered him a quadraplegic for the rest of his life. Fearing a rift between his family and al-Khatib's, Yassin initially told his family that he sustained his injuries while playing leapfrog during a sports lesson with his school friends on the beach.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Although Yassin applied and attended Al-Azhar University in Cairo, he was unable to pursue his studies there due to his deteriorating health. He was forced to be educated at home where he read widely, particularly on philosophy and on religion, politics, sociology, and economics. His followers believe that his worldly knowledge made him "one of the best speakers in the Gaza Strip." During this time, he began delivering weekly sermons after Friday prayers, drawing large crowds of people.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: After years of unemployment, he got a post as an Arabic language teacher at an elementary school in Rimal, Gaza. Headmaster Mohammad al-Shawa initially had reservations about Yassin, concerning the reception he would receive from the pupils due to his disability. However, according to al-Shawa, Yassin handled them well and his popularity grew, especially among the more scholarly children. His teaching methods reportedly provoked mixed reactions among parents because he encouraged his students to attend the mosque an additional two times a week. Having a regular job gave Yassin financial stability, and he married one of his relatives Halima Yassin in 1960 at the age of 22. The couple had eleven children.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Yassin was actively involved in setting up a Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. In 1973, the Islamic charity Mujama al-Islamiya was established in Gaza by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and the organization was recognized by Israel in 1979. In 1984 he and others were jailed for secretly stockpiling weapons, but in 1985 he was released as part of the Jibril Agreement. In 1987, during the First Intifada, Yassin co-founded Hamas with Abdel Aziz al-Rantissi, originally calling it the "paramilitary wing" of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, and becoming its spiritual leader.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: In 1989, Yassin was arrested by Israel and sentenced to life imprisonment for ordering killings of alleged Palestinian collaborators. In 1997, Yassin was released from Israeli prison as part of an arrangement with Jordan following a failed assassination attempt of Hamas leader Khaled Mashal by the Israeli Mossad in Jordan. Yassin was released in exchange for two Mossad agents who had been arrested by Jordanian authorities, on the condition that he refrained from continuing to call for suicide bombings against Israel. "The New York Times" reported about his poor health at the time: "Sheik Ahmad Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, back home in Gaza after his release by Israel, is so frail he drinks only with help."


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Following his release, Yassin resumed his leadership of Hamas. He immediately repeated his calls for attacks on Israel, using tactics including suicide bombings, thus violating the condition of his release. He also sought to maintain relations with the Palestinian Authority, believing that a clash between the two groups would be harmful to the interests of the Palestinian people. Yassin was intermittently placed under house arrest by the Authority. Each time he was eventually released, often after extended demonstrations by his supporters. Yassin criticized the outcome of the 2003 Aqaba summit. His group initially declared a temporary truce with Israel. However, in July 2003, the truce unravelled after a Hamas suicide bombing of a Jerusalem bus killed 21 people the previous month. Israeli forces killed two Hamas members in retaliation.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: On 6 September 2003, an Israeli Air Force (IAF) F-16 fired several missiles on a building in Gaza City in the Gaza Strip. Yassin was in the building at the time but survived. Israeli officials later confirmed that Yassin was the target of the attack. His injuries were treated at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Yassin responded to the media that "Days will prove that the assassination policy will not finish the Hamas. Hamas leaders wish to be martyrs and are not scared of death. Jihad will continue and the resistance will continue until we have victory, or we will be martyrs."


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Yassin further promised that Hamas would teach Israel an "unforgettable lesson" as a result of the assassination attempt. Yassin made no attempt to guard himself from further attempts on his life or hide his location. Journalists sometimes visited his Gaza address and Yassin maintained a routine daily pattern of activity, including being wheeled every morning to a nearby mosque.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Reem Riyashi's suicide bombing at the Erez crossing on 14 January 2004, which killed four civilians, was believed by the Israeli military to have been directly ordered by Yassin. Yassin suggested that the suicide bomber was fulfilling her "obligation" to make jihad, and Israel's Deputy Defence Minister responded by publicly declaring that Yassin was "marked for death". Yassin denied any involvement in the attack.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: Yassin was a founder and leader of Hamas, which is regarded as a terrorist organization by a number of national governments. Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon characterized Yassin as the "mastermind of Palestinian terror" and a "mass murderer." The Israeli government repeatedly asserted that Yassin was responsible for a number of terrorist attacks, which targeted and killed civilians.


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: The Israeli government said the targeted killing was in response to dozens of suicide attacks by Hamas against Israeli civilians. The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs defended the assassination of Yassin:


title: Ahmed Yassin

text: In his statement Yassin declared that Hamas did target Israeli civilians, but only in direct retaliation for the death of Palestinian civilians. In his thinking this was a necessary tactic to "show the Israelis they could not get away without a price for killing our people." In June 2003, after visiting al-Rantisi in hospital after a failed Israeli missile attack against him, Yassin told reporters: "Israel is targeting Palestinian civilians, so Israeli civilians should be targeted. From now on, all Israeli people are targets." "We got Israel's message. They should now expect the answer."