title: IdeaPad

text: The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 is a hybrid laptop/tablet Windows RT based computer released in late 2012. The Yoga 11 and Yoga 13 computers both get their names from their unique design that enables the devices to rotate their screen backwards to become tablet devices. According to "PC Pro", "The hybrid design is immensely flexible. Prop the Yoga 11 up in 'tent mode', and the touchscreen can be angled just so. Lay the keyboard facing the desk, and the screen can be tilted back and forth while sturdy-feeling hinges keep the display from flopping backwards. Fold the screen all the way back, and hidden magnets hold it clamped shut against the underside, transforming it into a tablet." The Yoga 11 has slim chassis with a matte orange exterior finish and an all-black interior that weighs 2.79 pounds. It has a full-size QWERTY keyboard. According to "TechRadar", the "large, well-cushioned keys offer a far better experience than Microsoft Surface, and there's a large trackpad as well."


title: IdeaPad

text: The Yoga 11 is powered by a quad-core Nvidia Tegra 3 that runs at a maximum clockspeed of 1.3 GHz and features an integrated graphics processor. The Tegra 3 is also found in numerous Android-based tablets. 2 GB of RAM comes standard. This relatively small amount of RAM is sufficient due to the reduced memory requirements of Windows RT applications. The Yoga 11 is sold with solid-state drives in 32 GB and 64 GB capacities. The Yoga 11 runs the Windows RT operating system. Microsoft Office 2013 ships pre-installed. Like all Windows RT devices, the Yoga 11 cannot run software designed for earlier versions of Windows, only apps designed for the new Metro interface are compatible. The Yoga 11 has an 11.6-inch glossy screen that makes use of IPS technology and runs at a resolution of 1366×768. The screen has a maximum brightness of only 344 nits, but has a measured contrast ratio of 1,146:1. There two USB 2.0 ports, an SD card reader, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and a standard HDMI output. There is a built-in 720P webcam.


title: IdeaPad

text: In its review "TechRadar" stated, "The Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 is a stylish, lightweight and durable laptop that neatly doubles as a tablet. At 11 inches, it's portable and thin enough to be used in tablet form, but like its bigger brother, having the keys on the reverse affecting your grip makes it far from ideal.If you're looking for a laptop form factor for work, which doubles as a tablet for basic apps and sofa surfing, then the Yoga 11 is worth serious consideration, although we'd advise you to head to your nearest PC superstore to give it the once over. It's not for everyone, and we'd primarily recommend it to someone looking for a small Windows 8 laptop who doesn't want to miss out on enjoying all the touchscreen goodness that Windows 8 has to offer."


title: IdeaPad

text: The IdeaPad Yoga 11S is a compact ultralight hybrid notebook/tablet computer scheduled for release in 2013. Like the Yoga 13 and the Yoga 11 the Yoga 11S gets its name from its ability to take on various form factors due to its screen being mounted on a special two-way hinge. The Yoga 11S runs the full version of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system. The Yoga 11s will ship in the United States in June 2013 with a starting price of $799.


title: IdeaPad

text: Like other models in the IdeaPad Yoga line, the Yoga 11S has a convertible form factor. Its screen can flip into a range of positions that allow it to serve as a regular laptop and tablet device as well as being able to function in "tent mode" and "stand mode." Like the Yoga 11, the 11S will be available in silver and clementine orange. The Yoga 11S can be configured with processors as powerful as Intel's "Ivy Bridge" Core i7 processor, will support up to a 256 GB SSD, and can hold as much as 8 GB of RAM. The Yoga 11S has an 11.6" display with available options for resolutions of 1366×768 pixels and 1600×900 pixels.


title: IdeaPad

text: "CNET" writes, "The 11-inch Yoga – Lenovo's clever laptop/tablet hybrid – had a great physical design, but ran the lame Windows RT operating system. The 13-inch Yoga ran full Windows 8, but was a bit too large for tablet duties. The upcoming Yoga 11S may be the "just right" marriage of the two: the smaller and lighter 11-inch chassis, but running full Windows 8 – while still keeping the unique folding design."


title: IdeaPad

text: The IdeaPad Yoga Tablet is an Android tablet with a multi-mode device with a rear kickstand designed to allow it to be placed upright for viewing videos and other media or tilted for easier text entry. The Yoga Tablet has a round battery that can last as long as 18 hours. It comes in models with 10-inch and 8-inch screens. Internal storage varies from 16 gigabytes to 32 gigabytes.


title: IdeaPad

text: An upgraded version was added in February 2014, called Lenovo Yoga Tablet 10 HD+, which featured a Full HD display and a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.


title: IdeaPad

text: Currently the combined Ideapad Yoga line has been discontinued, and Lenovo Yoga brand is now an actual self-standing product line.


title: IdeaPad

text: The Lenovo Miix was a series of multi-mode computing devices that function as both a tablet and a notebook computer. The Miix line started with simple Miix branding, in 2015 - 20** called as "IdeaPad Miix", and then again rebranded to simply "Miix" in 20**, following to discontinuation in 20**.


title: IdeaPad

text: The first laptop in Lenovo's netbook IdeaPad S Series was scheduled for launch in September 2008 but was delayed, with an estimated release date indicated as November. Ultimately, the laptop was released in September in China, but in October in the United States.


title: IdeaPad

text: S series line starts with a S10 laptop, low-cost, Intel Atom powered 10.2 inch subnotebook. Couple of further S-series laptops gets an Atom CPU, but, once Atom line was discontinued, main line of lightweight S series laptops switches to a low-power AMD A-series, Intel Celeron, Pentium and low-cost versions of Y-series CPUs.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Elizabethan literature refers to bodies of work produced during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1558–1603), and is one of the most splendid ages of English literature. In addition to drama and the theatre, it saw a flowering of poetry, with new forms like the sonnet, the Spenserian stanza, and dramatic blank verse, as well as prose, including historical chronicles, pamphlets, and the first English novels. Major writers include William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, Christopher Marlowe, Richard Hooker, Ben Jonson, Philip Sidney, and Thomas Kyd.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Elizabeth I presided over a vigorous culture that saw notable accomplishments in the arts, voyages of discovery, the "Elizabethan Settlement" that created the Church of England, and the defeat of military threats from Spain.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: During her reign, a London-centred culture, both courtly and popular, produced great poetry and drama. English playwrights combined the influence of the Medieval theatre with the Renaissance's rediscovery of the Roman dramatists, Seneca, for tragedy, and Plautus and Terence, for comedy. Italy was an important source for Renaissance ideas in England and the linguist and lexicographer John Florio (1553–1625), whose father was Italian, a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, who had furthermore brought much of the Italian language and culture to England. He also translated the works of Montaigne from French into English.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Two of the most important Elizabethan prose writers were John Lyly (1553 or 1554 – 1606) and Thomas Nashe (November 1567 – c. 1601). Lyly is an English writer, poet, dramatist, playwright, and politician, best known for his books "Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit" (1578) and "Euphues and His England" (1580). Lyly's mannered literary style, originating in his first books, is known as "euphuism". Lyly must also be considered and remembered as a primary influence on the plays of William Shakespeare, and in particular the romantic comedies. Lyly's play "Love's Metamorphosis" is a large influence on "Love's Labour's Lost", and "Gallathea" is a possible source for other plays. Nashe is considered the greatest of the English Elizabethan pamphleteers. He was a playwright, poet, and satirist, who is best known for his novel "The Unfortunate Traveller".


title: Elizabethan literature

text: George Puttenham (1529–1590) was a 16th-century English writer and literary critic. He is generally considered to be the author of the influential handbook on poetry and rhetoric, "The Arte of English Poesie" (1589).


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Italian literature was an important influence on the poetry of Thomas Wyatt (1503–42), one of the earliest English Renaissance poets. He was responsible for many innovations in English poetry, and alongside Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1516/1517–47) introduced the sonnet from Italy into England in the early 16th century. Wyatt's professed object was to experiment with the English tongue, to civilise it, to raise its powers to those of its neighbours. While a significant amount of his literary output consists of translations and imitations of sonnets by the Italian poet Petrarch, he also wrote sonnets of his own. Wyatt took subject matter from Petrarch's sonnets, but his rhyme schemes make a significant departure. Petrarch's sonnets consist of an "octave", rhyming "abba abba", followed, after a turn (volta) in the sense, by a sestet with various rhyme schemes, however his poems never ended in a rhyming couplet. Wyatt employs the Petrarchan octave, but his most common sestet scheme is "cddc ee". This marks the beginnings of English sonnet with 3 quatrains and a closing couplet.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: In the later 16th century, English poetry was characterised by elaboration of language and extensive allusion to classical myths. The most important poets of this era include Edmund Spenser and Sir Philip Sidney. Elizabeth herself, a product of Renaissance humanism, produced occasional poems such as "On Monsieur’s Departure" and "The Doubt of Future Foes".


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Edmund Spenser (c. 1552–99) was one of the most important poets of this period, author of "The Faerie Queene" (1590 and 1596), an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. Another major figure, Sir Philip Sidney (1554–86), was an English poet, courtier and soldier, and is remembered as one of the most prominent figures of the Elizabethan Age. His works include "Astrophel and Stella", "An Apology for Poetry", and "The Countess of Pembroke's Arcadia". Poems intended to be set to music as songs, such as by Thomas Campion (1567–1620), became popular as printed literature was disseminated more widely in households. "See English Madrigal School".


title: Elizabethan literature

text: While the canon of Renaissance English poetry of the 16th century has always been in some form of flux, it is only towards the late 20th century that concerted efforts were made to challenge the canon. Questions that once did not even have to be made, such as where to put the limitations of periods, what geographical areas to include, what genres to include, what writers and what kinds of writers to include, are now central.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: The central figures of the Elizabethan canon are Edmund Spenser, Sir Philip Sidney, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson. There have been few attempts to change this long established list because the cultural importance of these five is so great that even re-evaluations on grounds of literary merit has not dared to dislodge them from the curriculum. Edmund Spenser, for example, had a significant influence on 17th-century poetry and was the primary English influence on John Milton.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: In the 18th century, interest in Elizabethan poetry was rekindled through the scholarship of Thomas Warton and others.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: The Lake Poets and other Romantics, at the beginning of the 19th century, were well-read in Renaissance poetry. However, the canon of Renaissance poetry was formed only in the Victorian period, with anthologies like Palgrave's "Golden Treasury". A fairly representative idea of the "Victorian canon" is also given by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's "Oxford Book of English Verse" (1919). The poems from this period are largely songs and apart from the major names, one sees the two pioneers Sir Thomas Wyatt and the Earl of Surrey, and a scattering of poems by other writers of the period. However, the authors of many poems are anonymous. Some poems, such as Thomas Sackville's Induction to the "Mirror for Magistrates", were highly regarded (and therefore "in the canon") but they were omitted from the anthology as non-lyric.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: In the 20th century T. S. Eliot's many essays on Elizabethan subjects were mainly concerned with Elizabethan theatre, but he also attempted to bring back long-forgotten poets to general attention, like Sir John Davies, whose cause he championed in an article in "The Times Literary Supplement" in 1926 (republished in "On Poetry and Poets" in 1957).


title: Elizabethan literature

text: In 1939, American critic Yvor Winters suggested an alternative canon of Elizabethan poetry, in which he excluded the famous representatives of the Petrarchan school of poetry, represented by Sir Philip Sidney and Edmund Spenser. Instead, he focused on the "native or plain-style" "anti-Petrarchan" movement, which he claimed had been overlooked and undervalued. The most underrated member of this movement he deems to have been George Gascoigne (1525–1577), who "deserves to be ranked...among the six or seven greatest lyric poets of the century, and perhaps higher". Other members were Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618), Thomas Nashe (1567–1601), Barnabe Googe (1540–1594), and George Turberville (1540–1610). Winters characterized such "anti-Petrarchan" poems as having "broad, simple, and obvious" themes that border on "proverbial" as well as a restrained, aphoristic style; such a poet would "stat[e] his matter as economically as possible, and not, as are the Petrarchans, in the pleasures of rhetoric for its own sake".


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Both Eliot and Winters were very much in favour of the established canon. Towards the end of the 20th century, however, the established canon was criticized, especially by those who wished to expand it to include, for example, more women writers.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: The Italian Renaissance had rediscovered the ancient Greek and Roman theatre. This revival of interest was instrumental in the development of the new drama, which was then beginning to make apart from the old mystery and miracle plays of the Middle Ages. The Italians were inspired by Seneca (a major tragic playwright and philosopher, the tutor of Nero) and by Plautus (whose comic clichés, especially that of the boasting soldier, had a powerful influence during the Renaissance and thereafter). However, the Italian tragedies embraced a principle contrary to Seneca's ethics: showing blood and violence on the stage. In Seneca's plays such scenes were only acted by the characters.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: During the reign of Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and then James I (1603–25), in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, a London-centred culture, that was both courtly and popular, produced great poetry and drama. The English playwrights were intrigued by the Italian model: a conspicuous community of Italian actors had settled in London. The linguist and lexicographer John Florio (1553–1625), whose father was Italian, was a royal language tutor at the Court of James I, and a possible friend and influence on William Shakespeare, had brought much of the Italian language and culture to England. He was also the translator of Montaigne into English. The earliest Elizabethan plays include "Gorboduc" (1561), by Sackville and Norton, and Thomas Kyd's (1558–94) revenge tragedy "The Spanish Tragedy" (1592). Highly popular and influential in its time, "The Spanish Tragedy" established a new genre in English literature theatre, the revenge play or revenge tragedy. Its plot contains several violent murders and includes as one of its characters a personification of Revenge. "The Spanish Tragedy" was often referred to, or parodied, in works written by other Elizabethan playwrights, including William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Christopher Marlowe. Many elements of "The Spanish Tragedy," such as the play-within-a-play used to trap a murderer and a ghost intent on vengeance, appear in Shakespeare's "Hamlet." Thomas Kyd is frequently proposed as the author of the hypothetical "Ur-Hamlet" that may have been one of Shakespeare's primary sources for "Hamlet".


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Jane Lumley (1537–1578) was the first person to translate Euripides into English. Her translation of "Iphigeneia at Aulis" is the first known dramatic work by a woman in English.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: William Shakespeare (1564–1616) stands out in this period both as a poet and playwright. Shakespeare wrote plays in a variety of genres, including histories, tragedies, comedies and the late romances, or tragicomedies. His early classical and Italianate comedies, like "A Comedy of Errors", containing tight double plots and precise comic sequences, give way in the mid-1590s to the romantic atmosphere of his greatest comedies, "A Midsummer Night's Dream", "Much Ado About Nothing", "As You Like It", and "Twelfth Night". After the lyrical "Richard II", written almost entirely in verse, Shakespeare introduced prose comedy into the histories of the late 1590s, "Henry IV, parts 1" and "2", and "Henry V". This period begins and ends with two tragedies: "Romeo and Juliet", and "Julius Caesar", based on Sir Thomas North's 1579 translation of Plutarch's "Parallel Lives", which introduced a new kind of drama.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Shakespeare's career continued into the Jacobean period, and in the early 17th century Shakespeare wrote the so-called "problem plays", "Measure for Measure", "Troilus and Cressida", and "All's Well That Ends Well", as well as a number of his best known tragedies, including "Hamlet", "Othello", "Macbeth", "King Lear" and "Anthony and Cleopatra". The plots of Shakespeare's tragedies often hinge on such fatal errors or flaws, which overturn order and destroy the hero and those he loves. In his final period, Shakespeare turned to romance or tragicomedy and completed three more major plays: "Cymbeline", "The Winter's Tale" and "The Tempest", as well as the collaboration, "Pericles, Prince of Tyre". Less bleak than the tragedies, these four plays are graver in tone than the comedies of the 1590s, but they end with reconciliation and the forgiveness of potentially tragic errors. Shakespeare collaborated on two further surviving plays, "Henry VIII" and "The Two Noble Kinsmen", probably with John Fletcher.


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Marlowe's (1564–1593) subject matter is different from Shakespeare's as it focuses more on the moral drama of the Renaissance man than any other thing. Drawing on German folklore, Marlowe introduced the story of Faust to England in his play "Doctor Faustus" (c. 1592), about a scientist and magician who, obsessed by the thirst of knowledge and the desire to push man's technological power to its limits, sells his soul to the Devil. "Faustus" makes use of "the dramatic framework of the morality plays in its presentation of a story of temptation, fall, and damnation, and its free use of morality figures such as the good angel and the bad angel and the seven deadly sins, along with the devils Lucifer and Mephistopheles."


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Thomas Dekker (c. 1570–1632) was, between 1598 and 1602, involved in about forty plays, usually in collaboration. He is particularly remembered for "The Shoemaker's Holiday" (1599), a work where he appears to be the sole author. Dekker is noted for his "realistic portrayal of daily London life" and for "his sympathy for the poor and oppressed".


title: Elizabethan literature

text: Robert Greene (c. 1558–1592) was another popular dramatist but he is now best known for a posthumous pamphlet attributed to him, "Greenes, Groats-worth of Witte, bought with a million of Repentance", widely believed to contain an attack on William Shakespeare.


title: Sathyaa

text: Sathyaa is a 1988 Indian Tamil-language gangster film directed and co-written by Suresh Krissna in his directorial debut. Produced by Kamal Haasan, the film stars him and Amala, with Rajesh, Janagaraj, Bahadoor and Kitty in supporting roles. A remake of the 1985 Hindi film "Arjun", it revolves around an unemployed youth who cannot tolerate injustice in his community.


title: Sathyaa

text: "Sathyaa" was released on 29 January 1988. The film was a commercial success, running for over 150 days in theatres, it become one of the highest grossing tamil film of the year and Kitty won the Cinema Express Award for Best Villain Actor. A spiritual successor, "Dha Dha 87", was released in 2019.


title: Sathyaa

text: Sathyamurthy "Sathyaa" is an unemployed youth who does not tolerate injustice anywhere. He stays with his father Rajarathnam Mudaliar, who is the sole breadwinner for his family despite his elderly age, stepmother, and stepsister Sudha. One day, Sathyaa beats a group of rogues who are thrashing a tea vendor for not paying extortion money. These ruffians are the henchmen of a local goon named Rangan, who works for the local MLA Mariappa. With this incident, Sathya's life changes as he invokes Rangan's wrath. In retribution, Rangan and his men humiliate Sudha in public, forcing Sathya to thrash Rangan and destroy his bar. Sathya falls in love with Geetha Nair, a Malayali woman who works as a salesperson in a cloth shop, and begins to grab public attention, as he and his friends start taking the law into their own hands, thrashing anyone who tries to break the law. Mariappa also learns about Sathyaa and thinks that he is working for his arch-rival Dhandapani, a social reformer.


title: Sathyaa

text: Mariappa orders that Sathyaa and his friends be eliminated. Mariappa's gang attacks and kills Sathya's friend Sundar, in full public view. Though Sathyaa tries his best, no one comes forward to give witness to the murder out of fear, and the murderers are soon released due to lack of evidence. An enraged Sathyaa thrashes the murderers on their release and is arrested, but is released on bail by Dhandapani. Sathyaa's family disowns him for his activities, following which he is approached by Dhandapani, who convinces him to move to his own house and work for him. With Dhandapani's help, he manages to get Sudha married to her boyfriend, who is the local police inspector, saves the marriage of his other stepsister by paying the dowry of , and also ensuring that his father's employer treats his father with respect. Finally, Dhandapani tells Sathyaa to get some secret files and documents against Mariappa, which can be used to expose him in public. Risking his life, Sathyaa gets a hold of the files.


title: Sathyaa

text: Sathyaa later comes to know that Dhandapani is a corrupt man and double-crosser who used the evidence against Mariappa to join hands with him and contest the upcoming election in his place, and none of the evidence collected has been published anywhere. Sathyaa also finds out that his services are no longer needed by Dhandapani, and he is thrown out of his house. Enraged and betrayed, Sathyaa barges into a political meeting where Mariappa and Dhandapani are present and tries to expose Dhandapani, but is forced out and thrashed by the workers of Mariappa's party. Few days later, Sathyaa sneaks into Dhandapani's house and takes the file containing evidence of both Mariappa's and Dhandapani's illegal activities. While on the run from Dhandapani's henchmen, Sathyaa gets shot and seriously injured, but manages to survive and is hospitalised. After regaining consciousness, Sathyaa learns that the evidence against Mariappa and Dhandapani is destroyed as he used the file as a shield against the gunshots. Sathyaa escapes from the hospital, confronts Mariappa and Dhandapani and kills them both.


title: Sathyaa

text: "Sathyaa" is a remake of the 1985 Hindi film "Arjun". It marked the directorial debut of Suresh Krissna who earlier assisted K. Balachander. Krissna avoided creating a shot-for-shot remake of "Arjun"; according to him, "we took only basic theme from the original and worked on it". Kitty, who played one of the antagonists, had his voice dubbed by S. P. Balasubrahmanyam. The film was dedicated to M. G. Ramachandran, to whom Kamal Haasan considered it as "Guru Dakshina".


title: Sathyaa

text: "Sathyaa" is basically the story of one man, who wants to make a difference and ends up becoming a henchman to a political leader who has his own agenda. The film is an effective commentary on the sorry state of such unemployed youngsters and the resulting unwilling choices they have to make to earn money. It clearly shows us how the youth, in their time of need, become willing toys in the hands of the people with the money to hire them.


title: Sathyaa

text: The soundtrack was composed by Ilaiyaraaja, and lyrics were penned by Vaali. The song "Valayosai" was initially intended for Ilaiyaraaja's studio album "How to Name It?". It had been composed, but not recorded, and was included in "Sathyaa" at Haasan's insistence. After learning that Lata Mangeshkar would be visiting Madras to sing for another project, Haasan asked Krissna if she could also sing for "Sathyaa". Krissna agreed, and the song was "Valayosai". As Mangeshkar did not know Tamil, Balasubrahmanyam helped her with diction. The song is set in Sindhu Bhairavi, a Carnatic raga.


title: Sathyaa

text: "Sathyaa" was released on 29 January 1988. Angela Joseph of "Screen" called "Sathyaa" "another gem in [Haasan's] mission for good cinema and acting. By shrewdly intertwining commercial ingredients with a good story and brilliant acting, Kamal is propagating love and appreciation for good cinema among the masses". Kitty won the Cinema Express Award for Best Villain Actor.


title: Sathyaa

text: Haasan's looks as Sathyaa became a rage among the public. The 2017 film "Sathya" was titled after the 1988 film after its lead actor Sibi Sathyaraj got permission from Haasan. A spiritual successor to "Sathyaa", "Dha Dha 87", was released in 2019, and featured Janagaraj reprising his role.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: Bernadette Therese Nolan (17 October 1960 – 4 July 2013) was an Irish actress, singer and television personality, formerly lead vocalist of the girl group the Nolans. She was the second youngest of sisters Anne, Denise, Maureen, Linda and Coleen. From the age of two, she was brought up in Blackpool, Lancashire, England.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: The Nolans began in 1974 and went on to have seven UK Top 20 hits, including "I'm in the Mood for Dancing" (1979), "Gotta Pull Myself Together" (1980) and "Attention to Me" (1981). They won the 1981 Tokyo Music Festival with "Sexy Music". She left the group in 1995 to become an actress. On television, she had roles in the Channel 4 soap opera "Brookside" from 2000 to 2002 and the ITV police drama "The Bill" from 2002 to 2005, while her numerous roles in stage musicals included Mrs. Johnstone in "Blood Brothers" (1998–2000), Hannah Owens in "" (2008–2009) and Mama Morton in "Chicago" (2012). She was also a member of the Nolans line-up that reformed for a successful tour of the UK and Ireland in 2009. She died from breast cancer in July 2013.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: Born in Dublin in 1960, Nolan's parents were Tommy and Maureen Nolan. The Nolan family moved from Dublin to Blackpool in 1962 and began performing as the Singing Nolans.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: In 1974, the sisters formed the Nolan Sisters, later shortened to the Nolans, and made their TV debut that year on Cliff Richard's show, "It's Cliff Richard". In 1975, they supported Frank Sinatra on his European tour. In 1979, they released their biggest hit "I'm in the Mood for Dancing", which reached number three in the UK and was the first of seven top twenty hits. The others, with Bernie Nolan usually singing lead vocals, were "Don't Make Waves", (1980) "Gotta Pull Myself Together" (1980), "Who's Gonna Rock You" (1980), "Attention to Me" (1981), "Chemistry" (1981) and "Don't Love Me Too Hard" (1982). The Nolans sold millions of recordings worldwide, particularly in Japan where they sold over nine million albums and won the 1981 Tokyo Music Festival with the song "Sexy Music". Bernie also composed songs during this time, when she wrote two tracks for their 1982 album "Portrait". In 1991, they won of the 33rd Japan Record Awards for Cover version of Japanese pops.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: Nolan first acted as a cast member on the BBC Saturday morning children's show "On the Waterfront". Critics positively reviewed her gift for comedy. The Nolan sisters and their music were a running gag on the show, and she was joined by her sisters for a musical performance during at least one episode. She left the group in 1995 to concentrate on her own acting career, which began with her 1993 performance in the stage play, "The Devil Rides Out". She played Mrs. Johnstone in Willy Russell's "Blood Brothers" in the UK tour for over two years. She was the first of four Nolan sisters to have played the role, being followed by Denise, Linda and then Maureen. For this, the sisters earned a place in the Guinness Book of Records as the most siblings to play the same role at different times in a professional production.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: In 2000, Nolan joined the cast of Channel 4's soap opera "Brookside" as Diane Murray after being noticed by Paul Marquess whilst starring in "Blood Brothers". She left in 2002 to play Sheelagh Murphy in ITV's police drama series "The Bill", which she starred in until 2005.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: In 2006, Nolan took part in Channel 4's series "The Games". Her stint on the game was to raise money for charity, including Alzheimer's and children's charities. In 2007, she starred in the play "Mum's the Word", playing the character 'Robin' which she reprised in the 2008 tour (alongside her sister, Maureen who played Jill) and once again in 2010. During the summer season of 2007, she appeared at the Blackpool North Pier Theatre in her own production, Soap Queens (And Kings!)".


title: Bernie Nolan

text: In 2008, Nolan appeared in the UK touring production of "Flashdance the Musical" for over a year, playing Hannah Owens. In January and February 2010, she participated in the ITV celebrity reality television programme "Popstar to Operastar", reaching the final, where she lost to Darius Campbell. In 2012, she appeared as Mama Morton, in the UK tour of the musical "Chicago".


title: Bernie Nolan

text: Nolan released the single "Macushla" in 2004 with the proceeds going to charity. It peaked at No. 38 in the UK Singles Chart in March 2004. Regarding this release, Lorraine Kelly wrote: "I wouldn't have expected anything else from one of the hardest working women in showbiz". In 2005 she released her debut solo album "All By Myself". The album consists mainly of power ballads, including the song "Better Place", written by Nolan's husband in memory of their daughter, Kate, who was stillborn in 1998. In 2009, four of the Nolan sisters, Bernie, Coleen, Linda and Maureen, reformed for a successful 23 date tour of the UK and Ireland. To coincide with the tour, they released an album, "I'm in the Mood Again", which reached No.22 in the UK Album Charts.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: Bernie Nolan married drummer Steve Doneathy in 1996, in Lancashire. The couple lived in St Anne's on Sea, Lancashire, and then in Weybridge, Surrey. She gave birth to their daughter Kate in 1998, who was stillborn and another daughter, Erin in 1999, who was 14 years old when Bernie died in 2013. Bernie had previously been in a relationship with Bradley Walsh.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: On 23 April 2010, it was announced that Nolan was suffering from breast cancer. In October 2010, she stated that she was cancer-free after having undergone chemotherapy and a mastectomy, and was taking herceptin. In February 2012, she announced that she was no longer taking cancer treatment drugs, and was completely free of cancer. At the end of October 2012, Nolan announced that the cancer had returned and had metastasised to her brain, lungs, liver and bones. Anne and Linda Nolan suffered from the disease in 2000 and 2006, respectively; both recovered.


title: Bernie Nolan

text: Nolan died in her sleep, at her home in Surrey, on 4 July 2013, aged 52. Nolan's funeral service was held on 17 July 2013 at the Grand Theatre, Blackpool and she was later cremated at Carleton Crematorium. Her ashes were then buried alongside those of her stillborn daughter.


title: Illy

text: Illycaffè S.p.A. (branded and stylised as illy) is an Italian coffee company specializing in espresso, headquartered in Trieste. Illy markets its coffee globally in silver and red pressurized, oxygen-free cans; operates a network of cafes on shopping streets, in museums, and in airports; and, since 2009, has marketed a line of coffee-flavored energy drinks as "illy issimo".


title: Illy

text: Either as whole beans or ground coffee, Illy offers medium, dark, and decaffeinated roast variations; as well as single-origin arabica variations, as available; each from Brazil, Guatemala, Ethiopia, Colombia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Tanzania or India. Seasonally, the company offers Idillyum, a low-caffeine arabica grown in El Salvador. The company packages coffee as whole beans, pre-ground coffee, ESE pods, and iperEspresso capsules.


title: Illy

text: Illy was founded in 1933 by Francesco Illy, remains family-controlled and employs about 2700+ employees (2015). 2016 revenues totalled €460 million, and in late 2019, Illycaffee sought to expand into the United States market, offering a 20% stake in the company to potential investors.


title: Illy

text: Illy was founded by Hungarian Francesco Illy (Illy Ferenc in Hungarian), born in Temesvár in the Austria-Hungary Empire, what is now Timișoara, Romania. Illy later moved to Trieste during World War I as an officer in the army. After the war, he remained in Trieste, which had recently come under Italian rule, and in 1933 set up a cocoa and coffee business, eventually concentrating on coffee. Focusing his interest on espresso, in 1935, Illy invented the first automatic coffee machine which substituted pressurized water for steam, marketed as the "illetta", the predecessor of contemporary espresso machines.


title: Illy

text: Illy developed a packaging system to preserve coffee, where coffee-filled cans are pressurized with nitrogen, to prevent oxidation. Illy coffee was soon marketed outside the Trieste area and was eventually marketed throughout Italy.


title: Illy

text: After World War II, control of the company passed to Ernesto Illy (1925–2008), the son of the founder, who started a research laboratory that would ultimately develop numerous inventions and patents. As a scientist and researcher, Ernesto Illy established cooperative agreements with universities and research centers and promoted coffee globally.


title: Illy

text: Ernesto's son Andrea Illy is currently the company chairman, and Andrea's sister Anna Illy and brothers Francesco Illy and Riccardo Illy are on the board of directors. Illy coffee is available globally, with price differences reflecting global tariffs.


title: Illy

text: In 1999, Illy established the University of Coffee, "Unicaffe," in Naples to support education, research and innovation related to coffee. The University was later moved to company offices in Trieste; the "Unicaffe" network currently has 27 branches worldwide.


title: Illy

text: Illycaffè S.p.A. markets coffee-related products in approximately 140 countries worldwide. The Illy Group is made up of several companies located in North America, France, Germany, Spain and Benelux. The group employs approximately 800 people in these locations.


title: Illy

text: Since the end of the 1980s, illy has purchased its green (raw) coffee beans directly from source countries, rather than the international commodities markets. The company exclusively purchases coffee of the arabica species, in particular from Brazil, the largest producer worldwide, but also from Colombia, India, and countries in Africa and Central America. Illy's "Università del caffè" ("University of Coffee") offers free training for growers. In Brazil, a nine-month program (one week per month) includes 360 hours of lectures. Illy buys between 10% and 30% of coffee produced by growers trained at the University of Coffee at a premium price, but does not require that the growers enter into an exclusive contract with the company.


title: Illy

text: Illy was the world's first company to receive the Responsible Supply Chain Process (RSCP) certification of sustainability awarded by the Det Norske Veritas (DNV).


title: Illy

text: From 2004 to 2012, illycaffè funded the Ernesto Illy Trieste Science Prize to recognize scientific researchers from the developing world, in collaboration with The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS). Illy was featured in the 2006 documentary "Black Gold", in reference to its marketing of coffee from Ethiopia.


title: Illy

text: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal in June 2021, chairman Andrea Illy expressed interest in expanding the company's presence in the United States, the largest coffee market in the world. He noted branding as one of the main focuses in breaking into the market, as well as strengthening the company's distribution network both online and in larger retailers such as hotels, restaurants, and cafes.


title: Illy

text: Illy coffees are blended from arabica beans from multiple sources. The grounds are packaged in steel canisters and pressurized with an inert gas rather than air.


title: Illy

text: On 22 May 2009, in partnership with The Coca-Cola Company, illy launched a line of coffee-flavoured energy drinks marketed as "illy issimo". In 2009, AirTran Airways began serving the beverage to passengers, which has since been available in five flavors: caffè, caffè no sugar, cappuccino, latte macchiato, and mochaccino.


title: Illy

text: In 1992, Francesco Illy, Andrea Illy's brother, launched "The Illy Art Collection" to collaborate with well-known artists and designers outside the coffee industry, producing artwork for the company's cups; develop company-branded coffee machines and create specialized advertising photography. Robert Rauschenberg, Francis Ford Coppola, David Byrne, Jeff Koons, Yoko Ono and James Rosenquist (designer of illy's original logo) as well as architects Matteo Thun and Luca Trazzi have contributed coffee cup artwork. In 2006, the project extended to Illy's coffee cans. Current versions of the latest cups and other promotional pieces are marketed on the company's website, and the collection is featured in a company gallery.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: HMS "Duncan" is the sixth and last of the Type 45 or "Daring"-class air-defence destroyers built for the Royal Navy and launched in 2010. "Duncan" is named after Adam Duncan, 1st Viscount Duncan (1 July 1731 – 4 August 1804), who defeated the Dutch fleet at the Battle of Camperdown on 11 October 1797. The destroyer has served in the Mediterranean, Black, and Caribbean Seas, and in 2019 was deployed to the Persian Gulf in response to increased tensions with Iran in the region.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: In 2014, the Royal Navy website stated that "Duncan" would be the first Type 45 destroyer to be armed with the Harpoon antiship missile system. On 2 March 2015, "Duncan" left Portsmouth armed with Harpoon antiship missiles.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: "Duncan"s construction began at the BAE Systems Naval Ships (now part of BAE Systems Surface Ships) yards at Govan and Scotstoun on the River Clyde in 2006. She was launched from Govan on 11 October 2010, on the 213th anniversary of the Battle of Camperdown.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: "Duncan", the sixth and last Type 45 destroyer, was commissioned on 26 September 2013. She entered service on 30 December 2013, four months ahead of schedule, after a period of trials and training.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: On 2 March 2015, "Duncan" left HMNB Portsmouth on her maiden deployment to the Mediterranean Sea and Middle East. On 7 July 2015, "Duncan" joined up with the U.S. Navy Carrier Strike Group Twelve to strike the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: In April 2016, HMS "Duncan" was one of several Royal Navy ships exercising with the French Navy in Exercise Griffin Strike. In October 2016, "Duncan", escorted by the frigate , was dispatched by the Ministry of Defence to intercept and "man-mark" a fleet of Russian Navy vessels, including their flagship , which was passing through the English Channel on its way to Syria. In November, while sailing off the coast of England, "Duncan" suffered a total propulsion failure and was towed back to Plymouth.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: "Duncan" sailed from Portsmouth in June 2017 to assume the role of flagship of NATO's Standing Maritime Naval Group 2 (SNMG2), operating in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean. "Duncan" was due to be relieved in September 2017 by on her final deployment, but "Ocean" was redeployed to the Caribbean Sea to provide relief to British Overseas Territories in the region in the wake of Hurricane Irma. "Duncan" was instead relieved by , which was berthed in Gibraltar en route to the Persian Gulf to relieve . "Duncan" returned to Portsmouth on 22 September 2017.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: She resumed NATO duties in January 2018, visiting Mediterranean and Black Sea ports such as Constanța, Souda Bay, and Split, and again took command of SNMG2, returning to Portsmouth on 13 July 2018. In November and December 2018, "Duncan" featured on the Channel 5 television documentary "Warship: Life at Sea", which captured everyday life on board the vessel during her NATO deployment earlier that year, including confrontations with Russian warships and aircraft, including the "Admiral Essen". On the programme, the ship's crew frequently claimed that "Duncan" can detect a "tennis ball-sized object moving at three times the speed of sound, from over 100 miles away."


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: In December 2018, "Duncan" was announced to be affiliated with the town of Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast.


title: HMS Duncan (D37)

text: In July 2019, "Duncan" visited Odessa harbour in Ukraine. On 12 July 2019, she was ordered to the Persian Gulf in response to threats against British shipping by Iran. On arrival, she joined with the frigate in protecting cargo vessels and oil tankers. In September 2019, "Duncan" returned to her home base at Portsmouth for a refit. As of July 2021, Duncan’s refit was complete and she was back at sea by May 2022.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Jennifer Ann Kirkman (born August 28, 1974) is an American stand-up comedian and screenwriter, podcaster, and actress. She is known for her regular appearances as a round-table panelist on "Chelsea Lately" for 70 episodes from 2008 to 2014.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Jen Kirkman was also a guest on "@midnight", as well as for her appearances on the Funny or Die sketch series "Drunk History", and its continuation television series on Comedy Central.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Her first three comedy albums released are "Self Help" (2006), "Hail to the Freaks" (2011) and "I'm Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine)" (2016), the latter also serving as her debut stand-up feature for Netflix. Her second stand-up feature, "Just Keep Livin'?", premiered in January 2017 and was released as an album in November 2018. Her debut book, "I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids", was published in April 2013, and became a "New York Times" bestseller.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Kirkman was born in Needham, Massachusetts on August 28, 1974, and is the youngest of three sisters. She is of German, Polish, French-Canadian and English heritage.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Kirkman performs stand-up comedy in Los Angeles, California, appearing regularly at the Hollywood Improv, The Laugh Factory, Largo and The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre. She has performed with comedians Maria Bamford, Greg Behrendt, Mike Birbiglia and Chelsea Handler. In 2009 and 2010, she performed as part of the "Comedians of Chelsea Lately". In 2009, "Entertainment Weekly" named her one of the "Top 12 Rising Stars in Comedy," and in May 2010, both "MSN" and "The Huffington Post" named her one of the top comedians to follow on social networking service Twitter.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Kirkman produces "No Fun", her own weekly podcast (previously titled "I Seem Fun" and "Having Funlessness"), and has made several appearances on The Crabfeast podcast, which is hosted by comedians Jay Larson and Ryan Sickler. She also appeared regularly on the monthly "Pod F. Tompkast" podcast with Paul F. Tompkins, on which he referred to her by the nickname 'Southie'.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: In 2006, Kirkman released her debut comedy album, "Self Help," through AST Records. Her second album, "Hail to the Freaks", was recorded live at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre on December 11, 2010. It was released on May 17, 2011 with a bonus disk of additional material, and peaked at #13 on the "Billboard" Top Comedy Albums chart.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Kirkman was a narrator on two episodes of the Funny or Die-produced series "Drunk History" on HBO, which received the jury prize for "Best Short Film" at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. Though it is often questioned, she "was" actually drunk for both episodes. She has made guest appearances on several American television talk shows, including "Conan", "The View", and "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert", and has performed on "The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson", "Late Friday", "Premium Blend", "@midnight" and "Special Sauce". In 2007, she appeared as a cast member on the short-lived sketch comedy show "Acceptable.TV" on VH1. She has also made regular voice-over appearances on the Adult Swim series "Home Movies" and the political satire animated series "SuperNews!" on Current TV. In 2009, she wrote two episodes of the Disney Channel animated series "Phineas and Ferb".


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Most notably, Kirkman was a staff writer and round-table regular on E!'s "Chelsea Lately". On June 3, 2010, she announced she would be leaving "Chelsea Lately" to join the writing staff for "Perfect Couples", a romantic situation comedy which premiered as a mid-season replacement on NBC on January 20, 2011. She continued to make occasional round-table appearances on "Chelsea Lately", beginning in late 2010. "Perfect Couples" was removed from the NBC schedule on March 11, 2011, and Kirkman returned to the writing staff of "Chelsea Lately" in April 2011. In 2011, she began making regular appearances on the second season of "After Lately".


title: Jen Kirkman

text: In November 2013, "Deadline" reported that FX had landed a script deal to "Jen," a half-hour sitcom executive produced, written by and starring Kirkman. The series, set in Boston, Massachusetts, centered on a recently divorced a woman in her mid-30s. The project was backed by Borderline Amazing Productions, with executive producers Chelsea Handler, Tom Brunelle and Brad Wollack.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: In May 2015, she released her stand-up feature on Netflix, "I'm Gonna Die Alone (And I Feel Fine)." Her second stand-up feature for Netflix, "Just Keep Livin'?," premiered on January 3, 2017.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: In 2017 and 2018, Kirkman contributed to the first two seasons of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" as a writer, consultant, and producer, providing many of the jokes for the main character's stand-up routines. The series, created by Amy Sherman-Palladino for Amazon, is "loosely based on the concept of Joan Rivers' career."


title: Jen Kirkman

text: On October 11, 2017, it was reported that ABC had started development on "The Mighty Quinn", a television series written by Kirkman and produced by Julie Anne Robinson. The half-hour comedy series focuses on "39-year-old Quinn, who, after getting dumped by her boyfriend on Christmas Day, takes a year off from dating to find herself."


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Kirkman's first book, "I Can Barely Take Care of Myself: Tales From a Happy Life Without Kids", was published in hardcover on April 16, 2013, and was listed on "The New York Times" Non-Fiction Best Seller list. In late 2013, she signed her second book deal with Simon & Schuster, a follow-up to her best-selling debut. Her second book, "I Know What I'm Doing and Other Lies I Tell Myself: Dispatches from a Life Under Construction," was published in April 2016. She also has several published essays, which have been included in "Rejected: Tales of the Failed, Dumped & Canceled" and "Bad Sex: We Did It So You Don't Have To".


title: Jen Kirkman

text: In 2001, Kirkman founded "Girlcomic.net" with fellow comedian Becky Donohue. The website featured interviews with comedians such as Joy Behar, Margaret Cho, Sue Murphy, Amy Poehler and Sarah Silverman. On the intention of the website, Kirkman stated that the "one thing about feeling like there are still threads of sexism is women can get discouraged and we wanted [to encourage] girls to write funny stories and we wanted to interview famous female comics to let their stories get out. It was meant to be positive and cool and we included men on the site too." Regular updates to the website ceased in 2003, and the domain was ultimately closed in 2006.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: In 2021, Kirkman joined "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" as a stand-up consultant for the jokes told by the character of Midge Maisel.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: Kirkman has cited Joan Rivers, Howard Stern, Roseanne Barr, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock and David Spade as having an influence on her sense of humor.


title: Jen Kirkman

text: As an eight-year-old, she would sneak over to a friend's house to watch Sam Kinison and George Carlin comedy specials on HBO. "[Kinison] was a big thing for me," she said. "Someone is yelling, I'm not in trouble, and it's "funny"." She has cited Morrissey as perhaps her greatest influence, and although she is "nothing like him," his ability "to say morbid things with a sense of humor is now in my DNA."


title: Jen Kirkman

text: On August 21, 2009, Kirkman married writer/director Neil Mahoney in a private ceremony at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts. On the August 25, 2011 episode of "Chelsea Lately", she revealed she was no longer married.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: The climate of Iceland is subpolar oceanic (Köppen climate classification "Cfc") near the southern coastal area and tundra (Köppen "ET") inland in the highlands. The island lies in the path of the North Atlantic Current, which makes its climate more temperate than would be expected for its latitude just south of the Arctic Circle. This effect is aided by the Irminger Current, which also helps to moderate the island's temperature. The weather in Iceland is notoriously variable.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: The aurora borealis is often visible at night during the winter. The midnight sun can be experienced in summer on the island of Grímsey off the north coast; the remainder of the country, since it lies just south of the polar circle, experiences a twilight period during which the sun sets briefly, but still has around two weeks of continuous daylight during the summer.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: The Icelandic winter is relatively mild for its latitude, owing to maritime influence and proximity to the warm currents of the North Atlantic Gyre. The southerly lowlands of the island average around in winter, while the north averages around . The lowest temperatures in the northern part of the island range from around . The lowest temperature on record is .


title: Climate of Iceland

text: The average July temperature in the southern part of the island is . Warm summer days can reach . The highest temperature recorded was in the Eastern fjords in 1939. Annual average sunshine hours in Reykjavík are around 1300, which is similar to towns in Scotland and Ireland.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: Iceland, especially inland and during winter, is frequently subject to abrupt and dramatic changes in weather that can sharply reduce visibility, as well as rapidly increasing wind speed and precipitation, and shift temperature.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: Generally, wind speeds tend to be higher in the highlands, but topographical features can aggravate winds and cause strong gusts in lowland areas. Wind speed in the lowlands reaches on 10–20 days per year, but on upwards of 50 days per year in places in the highlands. The strongest measured 10-minute sustained wind speed is and the strongest gust . Heavy dust storms can be generated by strong glacial winds, and can be very strong. Up to of material can be in motion per transect per hour. These storms are very frequent in the early summer in the arid highland areas north of the Vatnajökull glacier.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: Thunderstorms are extremely rare for any specific location in Iceland, with fewer than five storms per year in the southern part of the island. They are most common in early or late summer. They can be caused by warm air masses coming up from Europe, or deep lows from the southwest in wintertime. Lightning can usually be observed in connection with ash plumes erupting from the island's volcanoes. Vortices, sometimes on the scale of tornadoes, also occur with volcanic eruptions. Landspouts and waterspouts are occasionally observed. Classic mesocyclone derived tornadoes (i.e. forming from supercells) are very rare, but have been observed. Any of these do occasionally cause damage, although the sparse population further reduces the probability of detection and the hazard.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: There is a persistent area of low pressure near Iceland known as the Icelandic Low, found between Iceland and Greenland. This area affects the amount of air brought into the Arctic to the east, and the amount coming out of the Arctic to the west. It is part of a greater pressure system known as the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO).


title: Climate of Iceland

text: 750 square kilometers of Iceland’s glacier ice has melted since the year 2000. Iceland’s annual CO emissions and per capita CO emissions rose from 1950 to 2018, but both metrics have been on the decline since 2018. A majority of Iceland’s CO emissions come from oil.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: Most Icelandic glaciers began retreating in the late 1800s, but current modeling studies suggest that glaciers would lose a quarter of their volume in the next hundred years with just a 1°C rise in global temperatures. The models also predict that glaciers could lose sixty percent of their volume if global temperatures rise by 2°C. At this rate, only small ice caps will remain after two hundred years. Some models predict Iceland's glacial mass will shrink a third by 2100.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: Iceland’s retreating glaciers have global and local consequences. Melting of Iceland’s glaciers could raise sea levels by a centimeter, which could lead to erosion and flooding worldwide. Locally, glacial recession could cause crustal uplift, which could disrupt buildings. Some places in Iceland have already seen the crust rise at a rate of 40 millimeters per year.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: Okjokull is a glacier in Iceland that melted in 2014. Okjokull is Iceland's first glacier to have melted due to climate change.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: Geologists estimate that Okjokull covered about 6 square miles in the late 1800s, but slowly shrunk until it officially lost its glacier status in 2014. When it "died", the 800 year old glacier's name was changed from Okjokull to Ok. Okjokull was pronounced dead in part due to its decrease in area, but also due to its inability to flow; a body of ice must be able to move to be defined as a glacier. “Jokull” means glacier in Icelandic, so this suffix was removed accordingly.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: In 2018, a documentary called "Not Ok" was released by Rice University anthropologists four years after its death. In 2019, roughly one hundred people held a funeral for Okjokull. Iceland’s prime minister at the time, Katrin Jakobsdottir, was among the attendees.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: At the funeral, one high school student read a poem and a commemorative plaque, titled "A letter to the future," was placed on a boulder. As of 2022, this plaque was the only one commemorating a glacier lost to climate change. The plaque warned future readers that all of Iceland's glaciers would soon "follow the same path" as Okjokull.


title: Climate of Iceland

text: In an effort to combat the effects climate change has on Iceland’s glaciers, Iceland has worked to make its electricity completely sustainable. As of 2015, nearly all of its electricity comes from renewable energy. Thirteen percent of the country’s electricity comes from geothermal energy—which also heats ninety percent of Iceland’s homes— and the rest comes from hydropower.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Audrey Marie Hilley (née Frazier; June 4, 1933 – February 26, 1987) was an American murderer. Her life and crime spree are the subjects of the 1991 telefilm "Wife, Mother, Murderer".


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Audrey Marie Frazier was born on June 4, 1933 in the Blue Mountain area of Anniston, Alabama to Lucille (née Meads) and Huey Frazier. She married Frank Hilley on May 8, 1951; they had two children, Mike and Carol. Despite Frank's well-paying job and Marie's secretarial employment, the couple had little money set aside in savings due to Frazier's excessive spending habits, leading to friction in the marriage. Unknown to Frank, his wife frequently engaged in sex with her bosses in exchange for money or superior performance evaluations. Frank began suffering from a mysterious illness, as did his son Mike, but Mike's symptoms which his doctors attributed to stomach flu abruptly stopped when he moved away to attend a seminary.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: In 1975, after returning home early due to his illness, Frank found Marie in bed with her boss. Frank turned to Mike, then an ordained minister living in Atlanta, for advice. In May 1975, a short time after a visit from Mike, Frank visited his doctor complaining of nausea and tenderness in his abdomen, being diagnosed with a viral stomach ache. The condition persisted and he was admitted to a hospital, where tests indicated a malfunction of the liver and doctors diagnosed infectious hepatitis. He died early in the morning of May 25.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Frank's autopsy, performed with his wife's permission, revealed swelling of the kidneys and lungs, bilateral pneumonia, and inflammation of the stomach. Because the symptoms closely resembled those of hepatitis, that was listed as Frank's cause of death and no further tests were conducted. Frank had maintained a moderate life insurance policy, secretly taken out by Marie at the time of his initial illness, that she redeemed for $31,140.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Three years later, Marie took out a $25,000 life insurance policy on her daughter Carol; a $25,000 accidental death rider took effect in August 1978. Within a few months, Carol began experiencing trouble with nausea and was admitted to the emergency room several times. A year after filing the insurance policy on her daughter, Marie gave Carol an injection that she claimed would alleviate the nausea. However, the symptoms only worsened, with Carol's enduring numbness in her extremities. After medical tests found no disease, Carol's physician, fearing the symptoms were psychosomatic, had her undergo psychiatric testing at Birmingham, Alabama's Carraway Methodist Hospital. There, Carol secretly received two more injections from her mother, who warned her not to tell others about the shots.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: A month after Carol was admitted to the hospital, her physician said she was suffering from malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies, adding that he suspected heavy metal poisoning was to blame for the symptoms. Panicking, Marie had Carol discharged from the hospital that afternoon. The following day, Carol was admitted to the University of Alabama Hospital. Coincidentally, Marie was arrested for passing bad checks; they were written to the insurance company that insured Carol's life, causing that policy to lapse. University physicians concentrated their investigation on the possibility of heavy metal poisoning, noting that Carol's hands and feet were numb, she had nerve palsy causing foot drop, and she had lost most of her deep tendon reflexes.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Physicians noticed Aldrich-Mees' lines on Carol's nails. Forensic tests on samples of her hair were conducted by the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences on October 3, 1979, revealing arsenic levels ranging from over 100 times the normal level close to the scalp to zero times the normal level at the end of the hair shaft. This indicated that Carol had been given increasingly larger doses of arsenic over a period of four to eight months. That same day, Frank Hilley's body was exhumed, and upon examination, showed between 10 times and 100 times the normal level of arsenic. It was concluded that both Frank and Carol had suffered from chronic arsenic poisoning, with Frank's poisoning being fatal.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Marie was incarcerated on her bad check charges when she was arrested on October 9 for the attempted murder of her daughter. The police in Anniston, Alabama found a vial in her purse, tests of which revealed the presence of arsenic. Two weeks later, Frank Hilley's sister found a jar of rat poison which contained 1.4–1.5% arsenic. On November 9, Marie was released on bail, after which she registered at a local motel under an assumed name and disappeared. While a note was left behind indicating that she "might have been kidnapped," Marie was listed as a fugitive.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: On November 19, a burglary occurred at the home of Marie's aunt. The occupant's car had been stolen as well as some clothes and an overnight bag. Investigators found a note in the house reading "Do not call police. We will burn you out if you do. We found what we wanted and will not bother you again."


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: On January 11, 1980, she was indicted in absentia for her husband's murder. Subsequently, investigators found that both her mother and her mother-in-law, Carrie Hilley, had significant, but not fatal, traces of arsenic in their systems when they died. The remains of Sonya Marcelle Gibson, an eleven-year-old friend of Carol Hilley's who had died of indeterminate causes in 1974, were also exhumed and examined, but were found to contain only a "normal" amount of arsenic. Gibson was one of the many neighborhood children who had fallen ill after drinking beverages that they had been given during visits to the Hilley household. Two police officers who had been dispatched to look into a disturbance that Marie had called 911 about also reported coming down with nausea and stomach cramps after drinking coffee that Marie had offered them.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Although police and the FBI launched a massive manhunt, Marie Hilley remained a fugitive for a little more than three years.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Marie first travelled to Florida, where she met a man named John Greenleaf Homan III. She was using the name Robbi Hannon. They lived together for more than a year before she married Homan on May 29, 1981, and took his last name. The couple moved to New Hampshire. She frequently talked about her imaginary twin sister "Teri", who supposedly lived in Texas.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Late in the summer of 1982, she left New Hampshire, telling her husband that she needed to attend to family business and to see some doctors about an illness. During this time she travelled to Texas and Florida, using the alias Teri Martin.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: During the trip, using the alias Teri Martin, she called John Homan and informed him that Robbi Homan had died in Texas but there was no need for him to come to Texas because the body had been donated to medical science. After getting to know "Teri" over the phone, Homan expressed interest in meeting her. She agreed, saying he needed to put "Robbi's" death behind them.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: On November 1982, after changing her hair color and losing weight, Marie returned to New Hampshire and met John Homan, posing as Teri Martin, his “deceased” wife's sister.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: An obituary for Robbi Homan appeared in a New Hampshire newspaper, but aroused suspicion when police were unable to verify any of the information it contained. John Homan's coworkers also had suspicions about his new "sister-in-law" and were concerned defalcation may have been at play. A New Hampshire state police detective surmised that the woman living as Teri Martin was Robbi Homan and had staged her death. The concerned coworkers and Homan's boss discovered that Medical Research Institute of Texas, where "Robbi's" body was handed over for study, was nonexistent, as was the church that eulogized her death. While Homan's workplace was audited and no embezzlement found, authorities still believed that "Teri Martin" was possibly a fugitive bank robber named Carol Manning (later disproven) or wanted on other outstanding charges. In the meantime, "Teri" had taken a secretarial job in nearby Brattleboro, Vermont and was arrested. While being interrogated by Vermont state troopers, she confessed that she was wanted in Alabama on bad check charges and her true name was Audrey Marie Hilley. Contact with Alabama state police confirmed this, and she was also wanted for far more serious charges. She promptly was extradited to Alabama to stand trial.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: She was quickly convicted and sentenced to life in prison for her husband's murder and 20 years for attempting to kill her daughter.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: Audrey Marie Hilley Homan began serving her sentence in 1983 at Tutweiler Women's Institute, a medium-security prison. Her clerical career had gotten her often assigned to doing paperwork, and she was considered a quiet, model prisoner. This good behavior earned her several one-day passes from the prison, from all of which she returned on schedule.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: In February 1987, she was given a three-day pass to visit her husband John Homan, who had moved to Anniston to be near his wife. They spent a day at an Anniston motel, and when Homan left for a few hours, she disappeared, leaving behind a note for Homan asking his forgiveness. Homan promptly alerted police. Her escape prompted an inquiry into Alabama's furlough policy.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: This time, she was not missing for long. Four days after she vanished from the motel, she apparently had been crawling around in the woods, her body was drenched by four days of frequent rain, and it exposed to temperatures that dropped to around freezing. She stumbled on the back porch of a house owned by an Anniston woman, who had known her from elementary school. It was likely she had sought help from this schoolfriend, but the woman failed to recognize her after not seeing her in years, and after seeing Hilley's haggard state, the woman alerted police believing it to be a transient woman in need of immediate help. Anniston police then summoned paramedics.


title: Audrey Marie Hilley

text: The EMTs who examined Marie Hilley determined she had hypothermia and took her to a nearby hospital for treatment. While she was being transported to the hospital, she suffered a heart attack and died.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Anti-corruption (or anticorruption) comprises activities that oppose or inhibit corruption. Just as corruption takes many forms, anti-corruption efforts vary in scope and in strategy. A general distinction between preventive and reactive measures is sometimes drawn. In such framework, investigative authorities and their attempts to unveil corrupt practices would be considered reactive, while education on the negative impact of corruption, or firm-internal compliance programs are classified as the former.


title: Anti-corruption

text: The code of Hammurabi (), the Great Edict of Horemheb (), and the Arthasastra (2nd century BC) are among the earliest written proofs of anti-corruption efforts. All of those early texts are condemning bribes in order to influence the decision by civil servants, especially in the judicial sector. During the time of the Roman empire corruption was also inhibited, e.g. by a decree issued by emperor Constantine in 331.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In ancient times, moral principles based on religious beliefs were common, as several major religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and Taoism condemn corrupt conduct in their respective religious texts. The described legal and moral stances were exclusively addressing bribery but were not concerned with other aspects that are considered corruption in the 21st century. Embezzlement, cronyism, nepotism, and other strategies of gaining public assets by office holders were not yet constructed as unlawful or immoral, as positions of power were regarded a personal possession rather than an entrusted function. With the popularization of the concept of public interest and the development of a professional bureaucracy in the 19th century offices became perceived as trusteeships instead of property of the office holder, leading to legislation against and a negative perception of those additional forms of corruption. Especially in diplomacy and for international trade purposes, corruption remained a generally accepted phenomenon of the political and economic life throughout the 19th and big parts of the 20th century.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In the 1990s corruption was increasingly perceived to have a negative impact on economy, democracy, and the rule of law, as was pointed out by Kofi Annan. Those effects claimed by Annan could be proven by a variety of empirical studies, as reported by Juli Bacio Terracino. The increased awareness of corruption was widespread and shared across professional, political, and geographical borders. While an international effort against corruption seemed to be unrealistic during the Cold War, a new discussion on the global impact of corruption became possible, leading to an official condemnation of corruption by governments, companies, and various other stakeholders. The 1990s additionally saw an increase in press freedom, the activism of civil societies, and global communication through an improved communication infrastructure, which paved the way to a more thorough understanding of the global prevalence and negative impact of corruption. In consequence to those developments, international non-governmental organizations (e.g. Transparency International) and inter-governmental organizations and initiatives (e.g. the OECD Working group on bribery) were founded to overcome corruption.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Since the 2000s, the discourse became broader in scope. It became more common to refer to corruption as a violation of human rights, which was also discussed by the responsible international bodies. Besides attempting to find a fitting description for corruption, the integration of corruption into a human rights-framework was also motivated by underlining the importance of corruption and educating people on its costs.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In national and in international legislation, there are laws interpreted as directed against corruption. The laws can stem from resolutions of international organizations, which are implemented by the national governments, who are ratifying those resolutions or be directly issued by the respective national legislative.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Laws against corruption are motivated by similar reasons that are generally motivating the existence of criminal law, as those laws are thought to, on the one hand, bring justice by holding individuals accountable for their wrongdoing, justice can be achieved by sanctioning those corrupted individuals, and potential criminals are deterred by having the consequences of their potential actions demonstrated to them.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Approaching the fight against corruption in an international setting is often seen as preferential over addressing it exclusively in the context of the nation state. The reasons for such preference are multidimensional, ranging from the necessary international cooperation for tracing international corruption scandals, to the binding nature of international treaties, and the loss in relative competitiveness by outlawing an activity that remains legal in other countries.


title: Anti-corruption

text: The OECD Anti-Bribery Convention was the first large scale convention targeting an aspect of corruption, when it came in 1999 into force. Ratifying the convention obliges governments to implement it, which is monitored by the OECD Working Group on Bribery. The convention states that it shall be illegal bribing foreign public officials. The convention is currently signed by 43 countries. The scope of the convention is very limited, as it is only concerned with active bribing. It is hence more reduced than other treaties on restricting corruption, to increase – as the working group's chairman Mark Pieth explained – the influence on its specific target. Empirical research by Nathan Jensen and Edmund Malesky suggests that companies based in countries that ratified the convention, are less likely to pay bribes abroad. The results are not exclusively explainable by the regulatory mechanisms and potential sanctions triggered through this process but are equally influenced by less formal mechanisms, e.g. the peer reviews by officials from other signatories and the potentially resulting influences on the respective country's image. Groups like TI, however, also questioned whether the results of the process are sufficient, especially as a significant number of countries is not actively prosecuting cases of bribery.


title: Anti-corruption

text: 20 years before the OECD convention was ratified, the United Nations discussed a draft for a convention on corruption. The draft on an international agreement on illicit payments proposed in 1979 by the United Nations Economic and Social Council did not gain traction in the General Assembly, and was not pursued further. When the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) presented its draft of the United Nations Convention against Corruption (UNCAC) in 2003, it proved more successful. UNCAC was ratified in 2003 and became effective in 2005. It constitutes an international treaty, currently signed by 186 partners, including 182 member states of the United Nations and four non-state signatories. UNCAC has a broader scope than the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention, as it does not exclusively focus on public officials but includes inter alia corruption in the private sector and non-bribery corruption, like e.g. money laundering and abuse of power. UNCAC also specifies a variety of mechanisms to combat corruption, e.g. international cooperation in detecting and prosecuting corruption, the cancellation of permits, when connected to corrupt behavior, and the protection of whistleblowers. The implementation of UNCAC is monitored by the International Association of Anti-Corruption Authorities (IAACA)


title: Anti-corruption

text: Mark Lawrence Wolf floated in 2012 the idea to launch an International Anti-Corruption Court, as either a part of the already existing International Criminal Court, or as an equivalent to it. The suggestion was widely discussed and endorsed by a variety of NGOs including Global Organization of Parliamentarians Against Corruption (GOPAC), Global Witness, Human Rights Watch, the Integrity Initiatives International (III), and TI. An implementation of the concept is currently not scheduled by any organizations with the authority of conducting such step.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In 2011, the International Anti-Corruption Academy was created as an intergovernmental organization by treaty to teach on anti-corruption topics.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Many other intergovernmental organizations are working on the reduction of corruption without issuing conventions binding for its members after ratification. Organizations that are active in this field include, but are not limited to, the World Bank (such as through its Independent Evaluation Group), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and regional organizations like the Andean Community (within the framework of the ).


title: Anti-corruption

text: The first convention adopted against corruption by a regional organization was the Organization of American States' (OAS) Inter-American Convention Against Corruption (IACAC). The convention, which targeted both active and passive bribing, came into force in 1997. It is currently ratified by all 34 active OAS-Member States.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In 1997 the European Union (EU) adopted the EU Convention against corruption involving officials, which makes it illegal to engage in corrupt activities with officials from the European Union's administrative staff, or with officials from any member state of the EU. It forces the signatories to outlaw both active and passive bribing which involves any aforementioned official. Liability for unlawful actions is extend to the heads of those entities, whose agents were bribing officials.


title: Anti-corruption

text: European states also ratified the Council of Europe's Criminal and Civil Law Convention on Corruption, which were adopted in 1999. The former was an addition extended by passing the Additional Protocol to the Criminal Law Convention on Corruption. The two conventions on criminal law were signed by Belarus and all Council of Europe members, with the exception of Estonia, which abstains from the Additional Protocol. The Criminal Law Convention is currently by 48 States, while the Additional Protocol is signed by 44 countries. Both conventions are aiming at the protection of judicial authorities against the negative impact of corruption.


title: Anti-corruption

text: The convention on Civil Law is currently ratified by 35 countries, all of which are, with the exception of Belarus, members of the Council of Europe. As the name implies, it requires the States Parties to provide remedies for individuals materially harmed by corruption. The individual who was negatively impacted by an act of corruption is entitled to rely on laws to receive compensation from the culprit or the entity represented by the culprit, explicitly including the possibility of compensation from the state, if the corrupt deed was perpetrated by an official. The anti-corruption efforts by the Council of Europe are supervised and supported by the Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO) as its main monitoring organization. Membership to GRECO is open to all countries worldwide and is not conditional on membership at CoE.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Since its launch in 2003, the African Union's Convention on Preventing and Combating Corruption was ratified by 38 States Parties. It represents the consensus of the signatories on minimal standards for combating corruption. The resolution was criticized in the Journal of African Law for disregarding other aspects of the rule of law, like e.g. data protection and the presumption of innocence.


title: Anti-corruption

text: While bribing domestic officials was criminalized in most countries even before the ratification of international conventions and treaties, many national law systems did not recognize bribing foreign officials, or more sophisticated methods of corruption, as illegal. Only after ratifying and implementing above mentioned conventions the illegal character of those offenses was fully recognized. Where legislation existed prior to the ratification of the OECD convention, the implementation resulted in an increased compliance with the legal framework.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Corruption is often addressed by specialized investigative or prosecution authorities, often labelled as anti-corruption agencies (ACA), that are tasked with varying duties and subject to varying degrees of independence from the respective government, regulations, and powers, depending on their role in the architecture of the respective national law enforcement system. One of the earliest precursors of such agencies is the anti-corruption commission of New York City, which was established in 1873. A surge in the numbers of national ACAs can be noted in the last decade of the 20th and the first decade of the 21st century.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In 2019 Armenian Government approved Anti-Corruption Strategy and its implementation plan between 2019 and 2022.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Under this strategy the three main directions will be the prevention of corruption, the corruption crimes investigation, anticorruption education and awareness of the corruption and anticorruption strategy. Even before adoption of Anti-Corruption Strategy and implementation plan, after 2018 Velvet Revolution, number of criminal investigation cases of corruption almost doubled in Armenia. As Prosecutor General's Office issued report says, the number of corruption investigations started by law enforcement agencies in the country during the first half of 2018 is more than double compared with the number of the criminal cases against corruption cases started during the first half of 2017. Out of the 786 cases initiated in the beginning of 2018 - 579 resulted in criminal cases. Starting from the first months of the anticorruption plan implementation, Armenia carried out actions in the fight against corruption - which was mainly directed to improve the investment environment of Armenia, and as a result economic indexes were improved.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Brazil's Anti-Corruption Act (officially "Law No. 12,846" and commonly known as the Clean Company Act") was enacted in 2014 to target corrupt practices among business entities doing business in Brazil. It defines civil and administrative penalties, and provides the possibility of reductions in penalties for cooperation with law enforcement under a written leniency agreement signed and agreed to between the business and the government. This had major implications in Operation Car Wash, and resulted in major agreements such as the Odebrecht–Car Wash plea bargain agreements and the recovery of billions of dollars in fines.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Canada remained one of the last signatories of the OECD-convention on bribery that did not implement its national laws against bribes for foreign officials. While the Corruption of Foreign Public Officials Act (CFPOA) was passed in 1999, it was often not used to prosecute foreign bribery by Canadian companies, as the bill had a provision that the act of bribery had to have a "real and substantial link" with Canada. Such provision was canceled in 2013 by the Bill S-14 (also called Fighting Foreign Corruption Act). Additionally, Bill S-14 banned facilitation payments and increased the possible punishment for violating the CFPOA. An increase in the maximum prison sentence for bribery to 14 years was one of the increases in sanctioning. According to TI's report from 2014, Canada is moderately enforcing the OECD Convention against bribery.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In the wake of economic liberalization, corruption increased in China because anti-corruption laws were insufficiently applied. The anti-corruption campaign that started in 2012, however, changed the relation towards corruption. This campaign led to increased press coverage of the topic and a sharp increase in court cases dedicated to the offense. The campaign was primarily led by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), an internal body of the Communist Party and secondarily by the People's Procuratorate. CCDI cooperated with investigative authorities in several ways, such as passing incriminating material detected by its internal investigation, to prosecutors.


title: Anti-corruption

text: The underlying legal regulations for the campaign is rooted in provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law and the criminal law.


title: Anti-corruption

text: From 2003 to 2012, Georgia moved from one of the ten most-corrupt countries based on Corruption Perceptions Index rankings to among the top third for clean government. Anti-corruption reforms implemented by president Mikheil Saakashvili resulted in the firing of all 16,000 traffic police officers in a single day, simplification of government bureaucracy, and university entrance based on standardized exams rather than interviews. Laws in Georgia that deal with corruption include Articles 332–342 of its Criminal Code, the Law of Georgia on the Conflict of Interests and Corruption in Public Service, Money Laundering Law, and Law of Georgia on the Conflict of Interests and Corruption in Public Service (Art. 20). The trajectory of Georgia from highly corrupt to much cleaner governance supports the notion that piecemeal anti-corruption reforms are less effective than anti-corruption initiatives with broad scope.


title: Anti-corruption

text: After signing the OECD-Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials, Japan implemented the Unfair Competition Prevention Act (UCPA) to comply with the convention. The law states that it is illegal to bribe foreign public officials. The individual who was offering the bribes and the company on whose behalf the bribes were offered may face negative consequences. The Company Act also enables the punishment of senior management if the payment was made possible by their negligence. Transparency International criticized Japan in 2014 for not enforcing the law, hence only complying to the convention on paper and providing no consequences to offenders. Nevertheless, a study conducted by Jensen and Malesky in 2017 provides empirical evidence that Japanese companies are less involved in bribery than companies based in other Asian countries that did not sign the convention.


title: Anti-corruption

text: The United Kingdom was a founding member of the OECD working group on bribery and ratified the Anti-Bribery Convention, but faced significant problems in complying to its findings and the convention. It was severely affected by the Al-Yamamah arms deal, in which the British company BAE Systems faced allegations of having bribed members of the Saudi royal family to facilitate an arms deal. British prosecution of BAE Systems was stopped after an intervention by then Prime Minister Tony Blair, which caused the OECD working group to criticize the British anti-corruption laws and investigations.


title: Anti-corruption

text: The UK Bribery Act of 2010 came into force on July 1, 2011, and replaced all former bribery-related laws in the United Kingdom. It is targeting bribery and receiving bribes, both towards national and foreign public officials. Furthermore, it is assigning responsibility to organizations whose employees are engaging in bribing and hence obliges companies to enforce compliance-mechanisms to avoid bribing on their behalf. The Bribery Act goes in many points beyond the US-American FCPA, as it also criminalizes facilitation payments and private sector corruption inter alia. Heimann and Pieth are arguing that British policy makers supported the Bribery Act to overcome the damage in reputation caused by the Al-Yamamah deal. Sappho Xenakis and Kalin Ivanov on the other hand claim that the negative impact on the UK's reputation was very limited.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Transparency International stated in 2014 that the United Kingdom fully complied to the OECD Convention against Bribery.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Already at the foundation of the United States discussions on the possibility of preventing corruption were held, leading to increased awareness for corruption's threads. Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution can be seen as an early anti-corruption law, as it outlawed the acceptance of gifts and other favors from foreign governments and their representatives. Zephyr Teachout argued that giving and receiving presents held an important role in diplomacy but were often seen as potentially dangerous to a politician's integrity. Other early attempts to oppose corruption by law were enacted after the end of World War II. The Bribery and Conflict of Interest Act of 1962 for example regulates the sanctions for bribing national officials, respectively the acceptance of bribes by national officials, and the abuse of power for their personal interest. The Hobbs Act of 1946 is another law frequently applied by US-American prosecutors in anti-corruption cases. Prosecutors are using the act by arguing that the acceptance of benefits for official acts qualifies as an offence against the act. Less frequently laws to prosecute corruption through auxiliary criminal activities include the Mail Fraud Statute and the False Statements Accountability Act.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In 1977, the United States of America adopted the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which criminalized corrupt interactions with foreign officials. Since its implementation, the law served to prosecute domestic and foreign companies, who bribed officials outside of the United States. As no other country implemented a similar law up to the 1990s, US-American companies faced disadvantages for their global operations. In addition to the legal status of corruption abroad, many countries also treated bribes as tax-deductible. Through applying the law to companies with ties to the United States and by working on global conventions against foreign bribery, the government of the US tried to reduce the negative impact of FCPA on US-American companies.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Alongside the FCPA, additional laws were implement that are directly influencing anti-corruption activities. Section 922 of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act for instance extents the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 by a new Section 21F that protects whistleblowers from retaliation and grants them financial awards them when collaborating with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Conway-Hatcher et al. (2013) attributed an increase the number of whistleblowers, who are reporting to SEC, inter alia on corruption incidents to the provision.


title: Anti-corruption

text: The TI's last report on enforcement of the OECD Convention against bribery published in 2014 concluded that the United States are complying with the convention.


title: Anti-corruption

text: In 2011 the American Anti-Corruption Act was drafted, written in part by former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter, with input from dozens of strategists, reformers and constitutional attorneys from across the ideological divide, as a type of model legislation to limit or outlaw practices which contribute to political corruption. The idea was to craft a blueprint law that could be adapted by numerous jurisdictions at the state and local levels that was consistent with the current constitutional structure and that would make it easier to identify and limit political corruption. It is supported by nonprofit nonpartisan reform organizations such as RepresentUs.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Values education is believed to be a possible tool to teach about the negative effects of corruption and to create resilience against acting in a corrupt manner, when the possibility of doing so arises. Another stream of thought on corruption prevention is connected to the economist Robert Klitgaard, who developed an economic theory of corruption that explains the occurrence of corrupt behavior by producing higher gains than the assumed punishment it might provoke. Klitgaard accordingly argues for approaching this rational by increasing the costs of corruption for those involved by making fines more likely and more severe.


title: Anti-corruption

text: As corruption incidences often happen in the interaction between representatives of private sector companies and public officials, a meaningful step against corruption can be taken inside of public administrations. The concept of good governance can accordingly be applied to increase the integrity of administrations, decreasing hence the likelihood that officials will agree on engaging in corrupt behavior. Transparency is one aspect of good governance. Transparency initiatives can help to detect corruption and hold corrupt officials and politicians accountable.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Another aspect of good governance as a tool to combat corruption lies in the creation of trust toward state institutions. Gong Ting and Xiao Hanyu for instance argue that citizens, who have a positive perception of state institutions are more likely to report corruption-related incidents than those, who express lower levels of trust.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Even though sanctions seem to be underwritten by a legal framework, their application often lies outside of a state-sponsored legal system since they are frequently applied by multilateral development banks (MDBs), state agencies, and other organizations, which implement those sanctions not through applying laws, but by relying on their internal bylaws. World Bank, even though reluctant in the 20th century to use sanctions, turned into a major source of this specific kind of applying anti-corruption measures. the involved MDBs are typically applying an administrative process that includes judicial elements, when a suspicion about corruption in regard to the granted projects surfaces. In case of identifying a sanctionable behavior, the respective authority can issue a debarment or milder forms, e.g. mandatory monitoring of the business conduct or the payment of fines.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Excluding companies with a track record of corruption from bidding for contracts, is another form of sanctioning that can be applied by procurement agencies to ensure compliance to external and internal anti-corruption rules. This aspect is of specific importance, as public procurement is both in volume and frequency especially vulnerable for corruption. In addition to setting incentives for companies to comply with anti-corruption standards by threatening their exclusion from future contracts, the internal compliance to anti-corruption rules by the procurement agency has central importance. Such step should according to anti-corruption scholars Adam Graycar and Tim Prenzler include precisely and unambiguously worded rules, a functional protection and support of whistleblowers, and a system that notifies supervisors early about the potential dangers of conflicts of interest or corruption-related incidents.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Michael Johnston, among others, argued that non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and the media can have an efficient influence on the level of corruption. More over, Bertot et al. (2010) extended the list of potentially involved agents of civil society by introducing the notion of decentralized, non-formally organized anti-corruption activism through social media channels.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Taking into consideration that precise and comprehensive definitions of corrupt actions are lacking, the legal perspective is structurally incapable of efficiently ruling out corruption. Combined with a significant variety in national laws, frequently changing regulations, and ambiguously worded laws, it is argued that non-state actors are needed to complement the fight against corruption and structure it in a more holistic way.


title: Anti-corruption

text: An example for a more inclusive approach to combating corruption that goes beyond the framework set by lawmakers and the foremost role taken by representatives of the civil society is the monitoring of governments, politicians, public officials, and others to increase transparency. Other means to this end might include pressure campaigns against certain organizations, institutions, or companies. Investigative journalism is another way of identifying potentially corrupt dealings by officials. Such monitoring is often combined with reporting about it, in order to create publicity for the observed misbehavior. Those mechanisms are hence increasing the price of corrupt acts, by making them public and negatively impacting the image of the involved official. One example for such strategy of combating corruption by exposing corrupt individuals is the Albanian television show "Fiks Fare" that repeatedly reported on corruption by airing segments filmed with hidden cameras, in which officials are accepting bribes.


title: Anti-corruption

text: Another sphere for engagement of civil society is the prevention by educating about the negative consequences of corruption and a strengthening of ethical values opposing corruption. Framing corruption as a moral issue used to be the predominant way of fighting it but lost importance in the 20th century as other approaches became more influential. The biggest organization in the field of civil societal opposition towards corruption is the globally active NGO Transparency International (TI). NGOs are also providing material to educate practitioners on anti-corruption. Examples for such publications are the rules and suggestions provided by the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC), the World Economic Forum (WEF), and TI. Persistent work by civil societal organizations can also go beyond establishing a knowledge about the negative impact of corruption and serve as way to build up political will to prosecute corruption and engage in counter-corruption measures.