Clifford Odets

Clifford Odets (July 18, 1906 – August 14, 1963) was an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. In the mid-1930s he was widely seen as the potential successor to Nobel Prize–winning playwright Eugene O'Neill, as O'Neill began to withdraw from Broadway's commercial pressures and increasing critical backlash. From January 1935 Odets' socially relevant dramas were extremely influential, particularly for the remainder of the Great Depression. His works inspired the next several generations of playwrights, including Arthur Miller, Paddy Chayefsky, Neil Simon, and David Mamet. After the production of his play "Clash by Night" in the 1941–'42 season, Odets focused his energies primarily on film projects, remaining in Hollywood for the next seven years. He returned to New York in 1948 for five and a half years, during which time he produced three more Broadway plays, only one of which was a success. His prominence was eventually eclipsed by Miller, Tennessee Williams, and in the early- to mid-1950s, by William Inge.
Early life.
Odets was born in Philadelphia to Louis J. Odets (born Leib Gorodetsky) and Pearl Geisinger, Russian- and Romanian-Jewish immigrants, and was raised in Philadelphia and the Bronx, New York. He dropped out of high school after two years to become an actor and a writer.
Career.
Theatre.
Odets pursued acting with great passion and ingenuity. At the age of 19 he struck out on his own, billing himself as "The Rover Reciter." Under this moniker he participated in talent contests and procured bookings as a radio elocutionist. He appeared in several plays with Harry Kemp's Poet's Theatre on the Lower East Side. Odets was among America's first real disc jockeys at about this time, at radio station WBNY and others in Manhattan, where he would play records and ad lib commentary. He also functioned as a drama critic, allowing him free entry to Broadway and downtown shows. In this capacity he saw the 1926 Broadway production of Seán O'Casey's "Juno and the Paycock." O'Casey's work would prove to be a powerful influence on Odets as a playwright.
In the early 1920s, Odets spent four summers as a dramatics counselor at Jewish camps in the Catskills and the Poconos. He toured extensively with stock companies, in particular Philadelphia's popular Mae Desmond Company, playing a large variety of character roles at their theater in Chester, Pennsylvania. His first Broadway break came in 1929 when he was cast in two small roles and as understudy to the young Spencer Tracy in "Conflict" by Warren F. Lawrence. Odets landed his first job with the prestigious Theatre Guild in the fall of 1929 as an extra. He acted in small roles in a number of Theatre Guild productions between 1929 and 1931. It was at the Guild that he befriended the casting director, Cheryl Crawford. Crawford suggested that Harold Clurman, then a play reader for the Guild, invite Odets to a meeting to discuss new theater concepts they were developing with Lee Strasberg. Though initially bewildered by the concept of acting as an art, Odets was nonetheless mesmerized by Clurman's talks and became the last actor chosen for the Group Theatre's first summer of rehearsals in June 1931 at Brookfield Center in Connecticut, thus becoming a founding member of the company.
The Group Theatre proved to be one of the most influential companies in the history of the American stage. They were the first to base their work on an acting technique new to the United States, devised by the Russian actor and director Constantin Stanislavski. It was further developed by Group Theatre director Lee Strasberg and became known as The Method or Method Acting.
From the start, Odets was relegated to small roles and understudying his Group colleagues. He understudied lead actor Luther Adler in the Group's production of John Howard Lawson's "Success Story" during the 1932-33 season. Much to Odets' frustration, Adler never missed a performance, but he gained much knowledge of the playwriting craft by standing in the wings and listening to the play. Odets credited Lawson with giving him an understanding of the potential theatrical power of colloquial language. With time on his hands and at Clurman's urging he began to try his own hand at writing plays.
Odets' earliest plays were an autobiographical piece entitled "910 Eden Street", and one about his hero, Beethoven, with the working title "Victory." Clurman dismissed both as juvenilia but encouraged his friend to continue writing, while steering him towards familiar milieus. In late 1932, Odets began writing a play about a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx, initially called "I Got the Blues". He worked diligently on this play, sharing drafts of it with Clurman and promising parts to his fellow actors – often the same parts. While at Green Mansions, their 1933 summer rehearsal venue in Warrensburg, New York, the Group performed Act II of the play, soon to be retitled "Awake and Sing!", for other camp residents. The audience was enthusiastic but the Group's leadership, Lee Strasberg in particular, was still, at this point, opposed to producing it.
Until his debut as a playwright, Odets continued to train as an actor with the Group at their various summer rehearsal headquarters in the Connecticut countryside and upstate New York. In addition to Brookfield Center and Green Mansions, these venues included Dover Furnace in Dutchess County (1932) and a large house in the Catskill village of Ellenville (1934). The Group spent the summer of 1936 at Pine Brook Country Club in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Their final summer retreat was at Lake Grove, in Smithtown, New York, in 1939. Odets' Group training under Strasberg's tutelage was essential to his development as a playwright. He stated in an interview late in life that "My chief influence as a playwright was the Group Theatre acting company, and being a member of that company ... And you can see the Group Theatre acting technique crept right into the plays."
Odets became the first Method-trained playwright with his first produced play, the one-act "Waiting for Lefty", on January 6, 1935 at the former Civic Repertory Theatre on Fourteenth Street in New York City. The occasion was a benefit performance for "New Theatre Magazine". Like Lawson, a member of the Communist Party, Odets was by this time influenced by Marxism and his plays became increasingly political. "Waiting for Lefty" was inspired by the 1934 New York City taxi strike and is written in the format of a minstrel show. A one-act play, it is composed of interconnected scenes depicting social and economic dilemmas of workers in various fields. The focus alternates between a union meeting of taxi drivers and vignettes from the workers' difficult and oppressed lives. A young medical intern falls victim to anti-Semitism; a laboratory assistant's job is threatened if he refuses to comply with orders to spy on a colleague; couples are thwarted in marriage and torn apart by the hopelessness of economic conditions caused by the Depression. The climax is a defiant call for the taxi drivers' union to strike, which brought the entire opening night audience to its feet. The play does not require a proscenium stage and can therefore be performed in any acting space, including union meeting halls and on the street. "Waiting for Lefty"'s unexpectedly wild success brought Odets international fame, though its strong pro-union bent caused it to be banned in many towns and cities in the United States. It was produced by a number of left-wing theaters in Britain, Australia, and other English-speaking countries, and has been widely translated.
"Awake and Sing!", finally produced by the Group Theatre in February 1935 following the popular success of "Waiting for Lefty", is generally regarded as Odets' masterpiece. It has been cited as "the earliest quintessential Jewish play outside the Yiddish theatre." The play concerns the Berger family who struggle to maintain some respectability and self-esteem in the Longwood section of the Bronx while grappling with the anxiety produced by economic collapse. Odets' choice of opening the play in medias res, his dialogue style, its blatant bias towards the working class, and the fact that it was the first play on Broadway to focus entirely on a Jewish family distinguish "Awake and Sing!" from other full-length plays produced on Broadway during this time.
Odets became the Group's signature playwright with the debuts of "Waiting for Lefty" and "Awake and Sing!" and his reputation is inextricably connected with the Group Theatre.
The two 1935 one-acts "Waiting for Lefty" and the anti-Nazi "Till the Day I Die," along with a number of other works by various playwrights produced by the Group Theatre, are harsh criticisms of profiteers and exploitative economic systems during the Great Depression. They have been dismissed by some critics as left-wing propaganda. More commonly, however, "Waiting for Lefty" is considered iconic in the agitprop genre and the piece is widely translated and anthologized and continues to be popular. Odets asserted that all of his plays deal with the human spirit persevering in the face of any opponent, whether or not the characters are depicted as struggling with the capitalist system. The highly successful "Golden Boy" (1937) portrays a young man torn between artistic and material fulfillment. Ironically, it was the Group Theatre's biggest commercial success. From "Golden Boy" on, Odets' work focused more on the dynamics of interpersonal relationships as affected by the moral dilemmas of individual characters. In 1938 the Group presented "Rocket to the Moon", a psychological play that explores the failure of human beings to fulfill their creative potential. Leftist critics rebuked Odets for abandoning his formerly overt political stance and the play was only modestly successful. The playwright George S. Kaufman queried, "Odets, where is thy sting?" Nonetheless, "Rocket to the Moon" garnered enough attention to place Odets on the cover of "Time" in December 1938.
"Rocket to the Moon" was followed by "Night Music" (1940) and "Clash by Night" (1941), neither of which were successful. Except for his adaptation of Konstantin Simonov's play "The Russian People" in the 1942–1943 season, Odets did not have another Broadway production until 1949. "The Big Knife" is an allegory about the damaging effects of fame and money on the character of the artist; it also alludes indirectly to the politics of the early Cold War period. The play's harsh critique of Hollywood mores was interpreted as ingratitude on the part of Odets, who had by this time made a significant amount of money writing films. It ran only three months and lost money at the box office.
Odets' 1950 play, "The Country Girl" focuses on the effects of alcohol abuse on creativity and marital relations. It was a critical and box office success and was later adapted for a film starring Bing Crosby and Grace Kelly. Both actors earned Academy Award nominations for their performances. Kelly won the Best Actress award for her work in the film, and screenwriter George Seaton received an Oscar for his adaptation. Odets' last play was produced on Broadway in 1954. "The Flowering Peach" was the preferred choice of the Pulitzer Prize jury in 1955, but under pressure from Joseph Pulitzer Jr., the prize instead was given to Tennessee Williams for "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", which the jury had considered the weakest of the five shortlisted nominees.
Hollywood.
The immediate success of Odets's early plays attracted the attention of Hollywood producers. He first went to Hollywood in early 1936 to write for the screen as well as the stage. From this point on he would spend most of his life in Hollywood. His initial intention was to make money to help subsidize the Group Theatre's run of his late-1935 play "Paradise Lost" over which the critics were divided, and to help him fulfill his own financial obligations. His first screenplay was produced by Paramount and directed by Lewis Milestone. Starring Gary Cooper and Madeleine Carroll, "The General Died at Dawn" (1936) received some positive reviews, though Frank Nugent of the "New York Times" reiterated Kaufman's barb in his article's title.
Like most screenwriters of the time, Odets worked within the studio system until the advent of independent production in the 1950s. Thus Odets would often write drafts for films such as "Rhapsody in Blue" and "It's a Wonderful Life" that were handed off to another screenwriter or team for further development. Odets declined to be credited for many of the films on which he worked. He did, however, accept full credit as both screenwriter and director for "None but the Lonely Heart" (1944), adapted from the novel by Richard Llewellyn and produced by RKO. The film starred Cary Grant, Ethel Barrymore (who won an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress), Barry Fitzgerald, and Jane Wyatt.
Odets wrote the 1957 screenplay for "Sweet Smell of Success", based on the novelette and a first draft by Ernest Lehman and produced by the independent company Hecht-Hill-Lancaster. Starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis, this film noir depicts the underbelly of the newspaper world. The character of J.J. Hunsecker, played by Lancaster, was voted the 35th most despicable villain in 100 years of film by the American Film Institute. Odets directed one other film, for which he also wrote the screenplay, "The Story on Page One" (1959).
Four of Odets' plays – "Golden Boy", "Clash by Night", "The Big Knife" and "The Country Girl" – have been made into films, though Odets did not write the screenplays.
Style.
Odets' dramatic style is distinguished by a kind of poetic, metaphor-laden street talk. Arthur Miller observed that, with Odets' first plays, "For the very first time in America, language itself ... marked a playwright as unique." Odets' use of local urban speech patterns reflects the influence of Seán O'Casey, another socialist playwright with proletarian concerns. Other hallmarks of Odets' style are his humanistic point of view, and his way of dropping the audience right into the conflict with little or no introduction. Often character is more important than plot, reflecting the influence of Anton Chekhov.
House Committee on Un-American Activities.
The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HCUA; more commonly, HUAC) initiated its Hollywood Investigation in October 1947. The House Committee was investigating possible subversive communist influences in Hollywood and inevitably subpoenaed Odets in April 1952. He first testified in executive session, and on May 19 and 20 he again testified, this time in public hearing.
He had belonged to the Communist Party for less than a year, between 1934 and 1935, but continued to sponsor many left-wing, progressive groups, some of which were suspected as communist fronts. He cooperated with the Committee to the extent that he responded to their questions and reiterated names of Communist Party members who had been previously cited by his friend and former Group colleague, Elia Kazan. Prior to Kazan's final testimony in April 1952, they had agreed to name each other. Odets thereby avoided overt blacklisting though the Committee did not thank him for his testimony, an omission generally construed as signifying their displeasure. He also found it increasingly difficult to garner film assignments. The negative reactions to his testimony confused him as he did not consider himself a cooperative witness. A partial transcript of Odets' testimony can be found in Eric Bentley's "Thirty Years of Treason".
Odets was tormented by public reaction to his testimony for the rest of his life. In his autobiography, Kazan recalls incidents of Odets being accosted in New York City streets and snubbed in Hollywood restaurants after his HUAC appearance. His productivity markedly declined after the event; he finished only one play and, while he advised other filmmakers such as his friend Nicholas Ray and was sporadically hired as a script-doctor, he managed to produce only one entire screenplay of his own, along with his rewrite of Ernest Lehman's "Sweet Smell of Success" for the production team of Hecht-Hill-Lancaster.
Later years.
In the early 1960s, Odets contracted to write four of a proposed total of 13 teleplays for "The Richard Boone Show", NBC's new dramatic anthology born of a plan for televised repertory theater. He also acted as script supervisor. Two of Odets's finished scripts were aired posthumously: "Big Mitch" (December 10, 1963), and "The Mafia Man" (January 7, 1964). Odets also worked on the libretto for a projected musical version of "Golden Boy". He died before the project came to fruition. Playwright William Gibson, a former student of Odets' when he taught at the Actors Studio, completed the play's book.
Though many obituaries lamented his work in Hollywood and considered him someone who had not lived up to his promise, director Elia Kazan understood it differently. "The tragedy of our times in the theatre is the tragedy of Clifford Odets," Kazan began, before defending his late friend against the accusations of failure that had appeared in his obituaries. "His plan, he said, was to . . . come back to New York and get [some new] plays on. They’d be, he assured me, the best plays of his life. . . .Cliff wasn't 'shot.' . . . The mind and talent were alive in the man."
Personal life.
Odets married actress Luise Rainer in January 1937, just months before she won her first of two consecutive Academy Awards for Best Actress. They divorced in May 1940. He married actress Bette Grayson in 1943, and the couple had two children: Nora, born in 1945, and Walt Whitman, born in 1947. Odets and Grayson divorced in 1951. Nora Odets died at Long Beach, Long Island in 2008; Walt Odets became a clinical psychologist, author, and photographer residing in Berkeley, California.
Odets also had relationships with actresses Frances Farmer, Kim Stanley and Fay Wray.
Death.
Odets had long been suffering from gastrointestinal distress and on July 23, 1963 was admitted to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles to undergo treatment for stomach ulcers. During surgery, doctors discovered that he had metastatic stomach cancer. He received bedside visits from such movie and theater friends as Marlon Brando, Lee Strasberg and Paula Strasberg, Jean Renoir and his wife Dido, Elia Kazan, Harold Clurman, Shirley MacLaine, and Danny Kaye. Renoir dedicated a chapter of his autobiography to his close friendship with Odets. On August 14, 1963, Odets died of stomach cancer at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital at the age of 57.
Odets's ashes were interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale in Glendale, California.
Legacy.
Odets is regarded as one of the American theater's most important playwrights. According to Arthur Miller, "An Odets play was awaited like news hot off the press, as though through him we would know what to think of ourselves and our prospects." Marian Seldes wrote that "Paddy Chayefsky, who felt competitive with Odets, told an interviewer 'There isn't a writer of my generation, especially a New York writer, who doesn't owe his very breath–his entire attitude toward theatre–to Odets.'"
"Golden Boy" was made into a 1939 film and became the basis for a 1964 musical of the same name. "The Flowering Peach" became the basis for the 1970 Broadway musical "Two by Two", which starred Danny Kaye. Odets's screenplay for "Sweet Smell of Success" became the basis for the 2002 musical of the same name starring John Lithgow.
Lincoln Center celebrated the centennial of Odets's birth with their 2006 production of "Awake and Sing!", directed by Bartlett Sher. It won that year's Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play and sparked an ongoing revival of interest in Odets's work. Another centennial production, "Rocket to the Moon", directed by Daniel Fish, was produced by Long Wharf Theater. American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts produced "Paradise Lost" in 2010, also directed by Daniel Fish. "Golden Boy" was produced by Lincoln Center with Bartlett Sher again directing. It opened on December 5, 2012 to enthusiastic reviews, subsequently garnering 8 Tony Award nominations. John Lahr declared "In this distinguished, almost symphonic production, Sher and Lincoln Center have done a great thing: they have put Odets finally and forever in the pantheon, where he belongs."
Odets's early, more left-wing plays, such as "Waiting for Lefty", "Awake and Sing!," and "Paradise Lost," have enjoyed numerous revivals since the 2008 economic crash. The Roundabout Theatre Company presented the first revival of Odets's 1949 play, "The Big Knife", in the Spring of 2013 at the American Airlines Theatre in New York, with Doug Hughes directing Bobby Cannavale in the lead role of Charlie Castle. The role was originated by Odets's former Group Theatre colleague, John Garfield. The National Asian American Theatre Company (NAATCO) mounted a highly acclaimed production of "Awake and Sing!" in September 2013 with an all-Asian cast. Performed in a small downtown theatre space in New York's Soho area, the limited run played to sold-out houses. According to "New York Times" reviewer Anita Gates, "the production easily makes the point that ethnicity is transcended by the humanity of frightened, imperfect people facing unpleasant realities." NAATCO was invited by the Public Theater to revive the all-Asian production under their auspices in the summer of 2015.
Joel and Ethan Coen's 1990 film "Barton Fink" contains a number of indirect visual and historical references to Odets's personal appearance, background and career. A minor character in the 1982 film "Diner" speaks only lines from Odets' screenplay for "Sweet Smell of Success". The Odets character was played by Jeffrey DeMunn in the film "Frances", and by John Heard in the 1983 biography "Will There Be A Morning?", both about Frances Farmer.
Odets's name is mentioned in an episode of the television series "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip", "The Wrap Party." The episode's subplot dealt with The Hollywood Ten.
Odets was the subject of a psycho-biography by psychoanalyst Margaret Brenman-Gibson, wife of playwright William Gibson: "Clifford Odets – American Playwright – The Years from 1906–1940". It was one component of an umbrella project undertaken by Brenman-Gibson on the subject of creativity. The biography was intended to be a three-volume work, with the second and third volumes to cover the final 23 years of Odets's life. Brenman-Gibson died in 2004, leaving the project unfinished. A full-length biography of Odets is in progress with the cooperation of the Odets Estate, to be published by Random House Doubleday Knopf.
Apart from Brenman-Gibson's work, six critical biographies have appeared by the following authors: R. Baird Shuman (1962); Edward Murray (1968); Michael Mendelsohn (1969); Gerald Weales (1971); Harold Cantor (1978); and Christopher J. Herr (2003).
Clifford Odets was named a member of the American Theater Hall of Fame.


Robert Lees

Robert Lees (July 10, 1912 – June 13, 2004) was an American television and film screenwriter. Lees was best known for writing comedy, including several Abbott and Costello films.
Life and career.
Born in San Francisco, California, Lees graduated from Lowell High School in 1929. He started in show business as a dancer before becoming a writer for MGM Studios, where he was paired with writer Frederic Rinaldo. Their first screenplay was for the 1936 short film, "The Perfect Set-Up". The short film was the first in the "Crime Does Not Pay" series. The series, which was produced by MGM in the 1930s and 1940s, were based on real life crime cases. Lees and Rinaldo continued to work on comedy shorts including, "A Night At The Movies", starring Robert Benchley, and "Penny Wisdom". The duo also worked on the 1937 films, "Decathlon Champions" and "Candid Cameramaniacs" from the Pete Smith Specialty series. In 1939, Lees and Rinaldo were nominated for an Academy Award for the 1939 biographical short film, "Prophet Without Honor".
After completing the comedy short "An Hour For Lunch", in 1939, Lees and Rinaldo moved on to feature-length films with the 1940 drama, "Street Of Memories". The pair worked on the sci-fi/horror films, "The Invisible Woman" and "The Black Cat". In 1941, they wrote their first comedy for Abbott and Costello entitled, "Hold That Ghost". In the following years, Lees and Rinaldo would go on to write six more movies for the comedy duo, namely, "Hit the Ice", "Buck Privates Come Home", "The Wistful Widow Of Wagon Gap", "Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein", "Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man", and "Comin' Round the Mountain" (1951). In 1952, an unused treatment they wrote for a service comedy at Paramount around 1943 was later adapted as "Jumping Jacks" for another comic duo, Martin and Lewis.
In the early 1950s, Lees' career was virtually destroyed when he was put on the Hollywood blacklist by movie studio bosses during the McCarthy Era for alleged Communist activities. As a result of his blacklisting, he had associates submit manuscripts to the studios under the pseudonym "J. E. Selby." Lees also wrote pseudonymously for the British television series, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" during the blacklist. At age 91 he declared that the speech he delivered in 1951 to the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities was the best thing he ever wrote.
Retirement.
After retiring from screenwriting in 1983 and becoming associated with sexologist Helen Colton, who would become his girlfriend to the end of his life, he became active in atheist and humanist circles, sometimes speaking at events.
Murder.
On June 13, 2004, sometime around 11 a.m., Keven Lee Graff, a 27-year-old homeless man, broke into Lees' home. Graff attacked the 91-year-old Lees and decapitated him. Graff then left the home, carrying Lees's severed head, and broke into a neighboring house. The occupant of the home was a 69-year-old retired doctor, Morley Engleson. Graff then attacked and killed Engleson, who was on the telephone making a plane reservation. The Southwest Airlines ticketing agent heard the attack and phoned police. Before police could arrive, Graff stole Engleson's 2001 Mercedes-Benz and left the scene.
During a search through Engleson's house, police discovered Lees' severed head lying on a bed. Lees' longtime girlfriend, Helen Colton, discovered Lees' headless body, covered by blankets, in his bedroom some five hours later when she arrived to pick Lees up for an event at the Academy headquarters in Beverly Hills.
The following day, Graff caught the attention of security guards at the gates of Paramount Pictures when he began behaving erratically; talking to himself and yelling at passing cars. One security guard identified Graff from a picture that was shown on a televised news conference about the double murders, and phoned police.
When questioned about the crimes, Graff claimed that a man on the streets of Hollywood gave him methamphetamine and Ecstasy the night before the murders claiming he had no memory of committing the murders.
In February 2008, Graff, under a plea bargain, pleaded guilty to ten felonies for the murders of Lees and Engelson. Under the plea agreement, Graff received two consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.


Worker-consumer hybrid

A Worker-consumer hybrid cooperative is, as the name implies, a mix of the two more common forms of cooperatives, the worker cooperative and the consumer cooperative. In this type of cooperative the power is divided between the workers and consumers. This could for example the cooperative's board of directors, where the consumers and workers would elect a given number of people to the board each.
An example of such a cooperative is Eroski, a part of the Spanish Mondragon Corporation group which operates supermarkets and petrol stations around the whole nation and in particular in the Basque country from where the company originates.
Worker-consumer cooperatives are forms of multi-stakeholder cooperatives.


The Magic Clown

The Magic Clown is an NBC TV series which ran from 1949 to 1954. The final NBC broadcast was on June 27, 1954. The show then moved to WABD where it stayed until 1958. After that, it was renamed "Bonomo, The Magic Clown" and was broadcast on WNTA from September 29, 1958 to July 24, 1959. The show was sponsored by Bonomo Turkish Taffy. Josh Norris, who used the stage name "Zovella", was the first Magic Clown, and went on to a successful career as a full-time magician.
Premise.
The show featured a clown, at first referred to only as "The Magic Clown," but later renamed Bonomo after the show's sponsor, performing magic tricks, sometimes with the help of his puppet Laffy.
The show was created by Tico Bonomo, grandson of the founder of the Bonomo Turkish Taffy company, specifically as a vehicle to sell candy. As a result, each episode featured constant plugs for the sponsor, and some consider this show to be an early infomercial.
Development of the show took more than a year; fresh out of Syracuse University, Bonomo went to work creating "The Magic Clown". In a 1994 interview, Bonomo recalled the hard work that went into the program: "I spent the summer of 1948 with writers and producers and an advertising agency," recalls Bonomo. "Those days I worked a seven-day week. The program was on Sundays so I was at NBC every single Sunday at 8 a.m. and we were on the air at 11:30 a.m."
Cast.
The action of the program centered around its eponymous host. Tico Bonomo said that finding a host wasn't easy. "You can't teach clowns to do magic, you have to have a magician and turn him into a clown. And, believe me, it's tough teaching a good magician to put on white face and act like a clown."
The first "Magic Clown" was known only by his stage name, Zovella, and hosted the program from its inception in 1949 until 1952. At that time, a comedian named Richard DuBois took over, serving even after the show was cancelled by NBC and moved to DuMont-owned WABD, until 1958, when the show moved to Newark, NJ based WNTA.
The WNTA run was hosted by comedian, mimic, cartoonist, and puppeteer Doug Anderson, with assistance from his wife, former model Gayle Anderson. The couple added new segments to the show, including informational pieces and in-studio interviews as the show expanded from a weekly to a weekday basis. The Andersons, however, choked at the amount of creative control the sponsor had over the show, and the show was cancelled after only one year on WNTA.
A short-lived revival of the program, produced in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, was created for syndication in 1970. The Magic Clown was performed in this version by now-famous magician turned skeptic/atheist James Randi (aka "The Amazing Randi").
Reception.
The show was well received by young audiences in both New York and New Jersey, although there is no record of how it was received nationally. Most modern reviews have panned the show, with some calling it "unintentionally hilarious". However, a reviewer at the Internet Archive called it "delightful".
Tico Bonomo claimed that the show was responsible for greatly increasing sales of Turkish Taffy. "Introducing our candy on television allowed us to take a product like Turkish Taffy, which was one that you had to fight for distribution, and make it a big success."
Episode status.
As with much of NBC's daytime programming of the 1950s, few episodes exist of "The Magic Clown" today. One episode appears on a DVD box set by Shout! Factory, while two episodes appear on a DVD by Shokus Video and in the Mill Creek DVD set "Classic Game Shows & More". Much of the surviving content from the series has lapsed into the public domain.
Archivist Ira Gallen is known to have several episodes in his collection.


Francis Edward Faragoh

Francis Edward Faragoh (October 16, 1898 – July 25, 1966) was an American screenwriter. He wrote for 20 films between 1929 and 1947. He was nominated for an Academy Award in 1931 for Best Writing, Adaptation for "Little Caesar". He was born in Budapest, Hungary and died in Oakland, California from a heart attack.


AI Global Media

A.I. Global Media Limited (AI) is a British organiser of a range of vanity awards and publisher of online magazines. The winners of these awards are invited to purchase publicity in the company's online magazines, and other marketing material such as trophies and logos. The company was founded in 2010 and is based in Staffordshire. The company is under the control of Blakenhall Media Limited since 2016.
History and financials.
The company was incorporated in October 2010 and is registered in Burton upon Trent, Staffordshire. For the year ended 31 December 2016 the company made a profit of £768,998 (2015, £548,141) and had net assets on its balance sheet of £551,867 (2015, £448,705). The average number of people employed during the year was 73 (2015, 26). The company's issued share capital is £1.
For the year ended 31 December 2017, the company had net assets on its balance sheet of £6,639. The average number of people employed during the year was 87. No profit and loss account was included within its accounts but the 2016 profit was restated as £411,165, down from £768,998, relating to bad debts and expenditure moved to the revenue account which had been treated as capital expenditure in the original accounts.
In August 2018, the Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint against AI Global Media to the effect that in two marketing emails they had implied an award had been given after a "meticulous and extensive" selection process involving significant voting by third parties, when in fact it appeared nominees were selected indiscriminately in bulk, large numbers of nominees could win awards not least because the categories for the awards were selected with a view to making as many awards as possible, and there were not a significant number of third-party votes. They also found that the first of these emails had misleadingly represented itself as being a legitimate email about an awards process not a marketing communication; they also noted that "Build", the Al magazine in question, "did very little to promote the award winners who had not purchased the advertising packages".
Awards.
AI Global Media produce a range of awards, the highly specific categorisation of which has been commented on by the New Zealand Law Society who gave the example of "Dental Law Firm of the Year – UK", while Capcora was awarded "Best Real Asset Advisory Boutique Germany", and a small accountancy firm won "Accountant of the Year – Essex". In 2017, V12, a footwear manufacturer, won two awards, including "Most Outstanding Oil and Gas Safety Footwear Provider" at the AI Global Excellence Awards.
For the Wealth & Finance International Awards 2016, AccountingWeb commented, "I have no idea why they think anyone would be gullible enough to hand over money", noting the choice of offers from the "Cutting-Edge Package" at £300, to the "Elite Package" at £1400, which includes a trophy and a double-page article/ad in "Wealth & Finance International" magazine.
Their awards include the Acquisition International M&A Awards, the AI Global Excellence Awards, the AI Hedge Fund Awards, the Banking Excellence Awards, the Build Magazine Awards, the Influential Businesswoman Awards, the North American Excellence Awards, the TMT Media Awards, the Wealth & Finance International Alternative Investment Awards, and the Wealth & Finance International Awards.
Magazines.
AI Global Media publish a number of online magazines using the issuu platform and hosted on their own servers:


Edison Disc Record

The Edison Diamond Disc Record is a type of phonograph record marketed by Thomas A. Edison, Inc. on their Edison Record label from 1912 to 1929. They were named Diamond Discs because the matching Edison Disc Phonograph was fitted with a permanent conical diamond stylus for playing them. Diamond Discs were incompatible with lateral-groove disc record players, e.g. the Victor Victrola, the disposable steel needles of which would damage them while extracting hardly any sound. Uniquely, they are just under  in () thick.
Edison had previously made only phonograph cylinders but decided to add a disc format to the product line because of the increasingly dominant market share of the shellac disc records (later called 78s because of their typical rotational speed in revolutions per minute) made by competitors such as the Victor Talking Machine Company. Victor and most other makers recorded and played sound by a lateral or side-to-side motion of the stylus in the record groove, while in the Edison system the motion was vertical or up-and-down, known as vertical recording, as used for cylinder records. An Edison Disc Phonograph is distinguished by the diaphragm of the reproducer being parallel to the surface of the record. The diaphragm of a reproducer used for playing lateral records is at a right angle to the surface.
In the late summer and early fall of 1929 Edison also briefly produced a high-quality series of thin electrically recorded lateral-cut "Needle Type" disc records for use on standard record players.
Historical background.
The record industry began in 1889 with some very-small-scale production of professionally recorded wax cylinder records. At first, costly wet-cell-powered, electric-motor-driven machines were needed to play them, and the customer base consisted solely of entrepreneurs with money-making nickel-in-the-slot phonographs in arcades, taverns, and other public places. Soon, some affluent individuals who could afford expensive toys were customers, too. By the late 1890s, relatively inexpensive spring-motor-driven phonographs were available and becoming a fixture in middle-class homes. The record industry boomed. At the same time, the Berliner Gramophone Company was marketing the first crude disc records, which were simpler and cheaper to manufacture, less bulky to store, much less fragile, and could play louder than contemporary wax cylinders, although they were of markedly inferior sound quality. Their quality was soon greatly improved, and by about 1910 the cylinder was clearly losing this early format war. In 1912, Thomas Edison, who had previously made only cylinders, entered the disc market with his Diamond Disc Phonograph system, which was incompatible with other makers' disc records and players.
Unusual characteristics.
Like cylinder records, the sound in a Diamond Disc's groove was recorded by the vertical method, as variations in the depth of the groove cut. At that time, with the notable exception of Pathé Records, which used yet another incompatible format, a disc's groove was normally of constant depth and modulated laterally, side-to-side. The vertical format demanded a perfectly flat surface for best results, so Edison made his Diamond Discs almost one-quarter of an inch (6 mm) thick. They consisted of a thin coating of a phenolic resin virtually identical to Bakelite on a core of compressed wood flour, later also china clay, lampblack for color, all in a rabbit-hide glue binder. With very rare exceptions, all were about ten inches in diameter, but they used a finer groove pitch (150 threads per inch, or "TPI") and could play longer than lateral ten-inch records—up to minutes per side.
Among their advantages over the competition, they were played with a permanent conical diamond stylus, while lateral-cut records were played with a ten-for-a-penny steel needle that quickly wore to fit the groove contour and was meant to be replaced after one use. A feed screw mechanism inside the Phonograph moved the reproducer across the record at the required rate, relieving the groove of that work and thus reducing record wear. This design was in response to the patent held by the Victor Talking Machine Company that states that the groove of the record itself is what propelled the reproducer across the surface of the record via the needle. The playing speed for Diamond Discs was specified at exactly 80 revolutions per minute, at a time when other makers' recording speeds had not been standardized and could be as slow as 70 rpm or even faster than 80 rpm, but were typically somewhere around 76 rpm, leaving users who cared about correct pitch to adjust the playback speed for each record until it sounded right. Above all, there was, and still is, general agreement that the Diamond Disc system produced the clearest, most 'present' sound of any non-electronic disc recording technology.
Although Victor's Victrolas and similar record players could not play Diamond Discs (at best, only very faint sound would be heard, while the crude steel needle seriously damaged the groove) and Edison Diamond Disc Phonographs could not play Victor or other lateral-cut discs, third-party suppliers came up with adapters, such as the Kent adapter, to defeat this incompatibility, but typically with less than optimal sound quality. The Brunswick Ultona, the Sonora, and the expensive "Duo-Vox" phonograph made by the piano manufacturer Bush and Lane were the only non-Edison machines that came from the factory equipped to play Diamond Discs as well as Victor and other 'needle-type' records, along with Pathé's sapphire ball stylus hill-and-dale format that used a vertical groove that was U-shaped in cross-section. Edison discouraged all such alternatives by cautioning on some of the record sleeves: "This Re-Creation should not be played on any instrument except the Edison Diamond Disc Phonograph and with the Edison Diamond Disc Reproducer, and we decline responsibility for any damage that may occur to it if this warning is ignored." The very good reason for such discouragement was that Diamond Disc grooves were too narrow and fragile to propel a soundbox across a record surface, as lateral machines did; Edison's precise mechanical feed system on the Disc Phonograph for its weighted "floating" reproducer replaced that stress on its records.
Rise and fall.
Diamond Discs enjoyed their greatest commercial success from the mid-1910s to the early 1920s, with sales peaking in 1920. Although they arguably had better audio fidelity, they were more expensive than, and incompatible with, other makers' products and ultimately failed in the marketplace. Not least among the factors contributing to their downfall was Thomas Edison's insistence on imposing his own musical tastes on the catalog. As an elderly man who favored old-fashioned "heart" songs and had various idiosyncratic preferences about performance practices, he was increasingly out of touch with most of the record-buying public as the Jazz Age of the 1920s got underway. It was not until mid-decade that he reluctantly ceded control to his sons.
In 1926, an attempt at reviving interest in Edison records was made by introducing a long-playing Diamond Disc which still rotated at 80 rpm but tripled the standard groove pitch to 450 threads per inch by using an ultra-fine groove, achieving a playing time of 24 minutes per 10-inch disc (12 on each side) and 40 minutes per 12-inch disc (these were the only 12-inch Diamond Discs ever sold to the public). A special reproducer and modified feed screw mechanism were required to play them. There were problems with skipping, groove wall breakdown, overall low volume (about 40% of that of the regular Diamond Discs), and a failure to exploit the format by releasing a limited number of discs. Only 14 different Edison Long Play discs were issued before they were discontinued.
In August 1927, electrical recording began, making Edison the last major record company to adopt it, over two years after Victor Records, Columbia Records, and Brunswick Records had converted from acoustical recording. Sales continued to drop, however, and although Edison Diamond Discs were available from dealers until the company left the record business in late October 1929, the last vertically cut direct masters were recorded in the early summer of that year. Priority had been redirected to introducing a new line of Edison lateral or so-called Needle Type thin shellac records, compatible with ordinary record players, but although their audio quality was excellent this concession to commercial reality came too late to prevent the demise of the Edison Phonograph and Records Division just one day before the 1929 stock market crash.


J. Christopher Burch

J. Christopher Burch (born March 28, 1953) is the founder and CEO of Burch Creative Capital, a firm based in New York City that manages venture investments and brand development, and co-founder of Tory Burch LLC. He became a billionaire in 2012, with "Forbes" magazine's profile of him in its annual "The World's Billionaires" stating that the 2012 valuation of Burch's majority stake in C. Wonder pushed his net worth over the ten figure mark. In addition to his personal investments, he was an investor with Guggenheim Partners.
Early life.
Burch was raised in Wayne, Pennsylvania, in a middle-class family. His mother Robin Sinkler, an Episcopalian, was from a Philadelphia Main Line family and his father, John Walter Burch, a Roman Catholic, was one of 10 children born to a middle-class Baltimore family. His father owned a distributor of mining equipment and supplies. Burch attended Tilton School, an independent college preparatory school in Tilton, New Hampshire. He graduated from Tilton in 1972, and later attended Ithaca College.
Career.
Fashion industry.
In 1976, while an undergraduate at Ithaca College, Burch and his brother Robert started Eagle's Eye apparel with a $2,000 investment, buying sweaters for $10 each and selling them for $15. Burch decided to find a factory to produce a new brand of "preppy" sweaters so that he could sell them door-to-door on campus. His operation soon expanded to other campuses, and, eventually, to retail stores. Over the next decade, the company expanded to $140 million in sales and a national distribution footprint, including more than 50 of its own retail stores. The company was partially sold to Swire Group, in 1989, and entirely, in 1998 in a deal that valued the brand at $60 million.
In 2004, Burch helped his then wife to launch the Tory Burch fashion label, and served as co-Chairman of the company. He also owned 28.3%, selling half of it in December 2012, as the company was estimated to be worth $3.5 billion. He then established J. Christopher Capital LLC in 2008, later renamed Burch Creative Capital. The company was developed to incubate his new brands and to manage his investments. In 2011, he launched C. Wonder, an apparel, accessories and home decor retailer. In July 2015 the C. Wonder brand was purchased by Xcel Brands.
Real estate.
In 2004, Burch partnered with architect Philippe Starck and hotelier Alan Faena to develop the Faena Hotel+Universe in Buenos Aires. The investment into the building, first built in 1902 as a grain storage facility, was in excess of $100 million. In 2014 he once again invested in the real estate developer's projects after purchasing a condo in Faena House, a South Beach development.
In 2005, Burch purchased a luxury home in Southampton, New York for $14 million, and sold the home for $25 million four months later after renovating the property. Burch then founded J.B. Christopher, a supplier of construction materials to real estate developers, in 2006. In 2011, Burch and his partner Austin Hearst completed the development of a $19 million luxury home developments in Nantucket, Massachusetts. In 2012 he acquired a townhouse in the West Village for $11 million after he had been previously renting it. He subsequently undertook a renovation project that was left unfinished before the property was once again put on the market.
In 2013, Burch purchased the Nihiwatu resort on the island of Sumba, a 27 villa estate resort near Bali.
Other investments.
In 1993, Burch was a producer for the feature-length romantic comedy film "Watch It", directed by Tom Flynn, which received a favorable review from the "New York Times". He was one of the earliest investors in the Internet IPO for Internet Capital Group, and has made several investments in telecommunications, including Aliph and Powermat. He was also an investor in the online office retailer Poppin. In a partnership with James McBride, he acquired Nihiwatu Resort on the Indonesian island of Sumba in 2013. After a $30 million investment, the pair opened the resort in 2015 under the name Nihi. In 2014, he invested in BaubleBar, leading an investment round of $10 million. That year he also partnered with Ellen DeGeneres to launch her lifestyles collection E.D.
Personal life.
In 1982, Burch married Susan Cole in an Episcopal ceremony. They had three children, all daughters: Alexandra "Pookie" (b. 1985), Elizabeth "Izzie" (b. 1986), and Louisa "Weezie" (b. 1989). In 1996, he married the fashion designer Tory Robinson with whom he had three children, all sons: twins Henry and Nicholas (b. 1997) and Sawyer (b. 2001). They divorced in 2006.
Burch was on the board of the Rothman Institute Orthopedic Foundation. He is a past president of The Pierre Hotel Co-op Board, and a past board member of Guggenheim Partners, and The Continuum Group. In 2013, Burch donated $1.3 million to his alma mater, Tilton School, and was on the school's Board of Trustees from 1982-1985.


Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology

The Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology (; commonly referred as GIKI), is a private research university located in Topi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in Pakistan. The institute has a campus that is located in the vicinity of Swabi District.
Founded by former President of Pakistan Ghulam Ishaq Khan in 1993, since its establishment, the institute has consistently attracted the country's most influential scientists such as Abdul Qadeer Khan, Asghar Qadir, and Shaukat Hameed Khan, who played a role in elevating the institute as one of world's finest science and engineering college. GIKI is known to be a competitive institution with a low acceptance rate requiring students to show extraordinary academic excellence and capabilities with strong financial footing to be accommodated. GIK is one of the top institutions ranked by the Higher Education Commission (HEC).
History.
The GIK Institute is a private educational institution, named after former bureaucrat and former President of Pakistan Ghulam Ishaq Khan. The project was delegated to Pakistani scientist, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, who was one of the founding members of the institute and was once registered as an associate professor of physics. The genesis of the Institute can be traced back to the early 1950s when Mr. Ghulam Ishaq Khan (late) became acutely aware of Pakistan's dependence on foreign expertise and imported technology. Out of his frequent interaction with the foreign and local experts emerged the idea that a center of excellence in engineering sciences and production technology ought to be established in the country, a center whose standards of education are comparable to those of its counterparts in the advanced countries. The transformation of this idea into a practical proposition took place in December 1985 when the Benevolent Community Care and Infaq Foundation donated Rs. 50 million for setting up an institute in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa for promotion of science and technology.
Major founding donors include Nouman Benevolent Community Care, Infaq Foundation, Chiniot Anjuman-e-Islamia, Dawood Group of Industries, and the Government of the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa which has donated land at Topi.
A milestone in the evolution of the institute was the registration in June, 1988 of its parent body, namely, Society for the Promotion of Engineering Sciences and Technology in Pakistan (SOPREST). Mr. Ghulam Ishaq Khan (late), then the President of the country, was elected the President of the Society for life and Mr. H. U. Beg was appointed its Honorary Executive Director and Mr. Samiullah Marwat the first full-time Secretary.
The task of conceiving and formulating the basic form and features of the institute was entrusted to a group of eminent scientists and engineers. These professionals started transformation of the dream into reality at a galloping pace. The civil works at the campus site were started in early 1990. An interim office of the institute was set up in August 1992 where senior professionals with outstanding backgrounds worked in a cohesive group to evolve the educational aims and philosophy of the institute, its curricula and details of state-of-the-art equipment for its laboratories and workshops.
In March 1993 an "Ordinance" was promulgated by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (Provincial) Government for the establishment of the Institute under the umbrella of SOPREST, and the first batch of students was inducted the same year in October. Since an Ordinance has a limited life, it was ratified through an "Act" by the Provincial Assembly in July 1994.
The Institute symbolizes the immense altruism and concern for collective welfare that exists in the private sector. It is the first privately funded institute of its kind in the country and dedicated to bringing our engineering education at par with the advanced countries. The tuition fee has to be in consonance with the high cost of education. However, what the students are charged hardly covers the annual expenditure. Total capital outlay of the institute to-date on historical cost basis works out to more than Rs. 2.5 billion for which funds were mobilized from diverse sources including a major donation of Rs. 750 million from Infaq Foundation and land measuring donated by the Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In 1998, the Clinton Administration sanctioned the GIKI for alleged unspecified involvement in nuclear or missile activities.
Location.
The university is situated beside the river Indus in the mountains of Tarbela and Gadoon-Amazai, in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa near the town of Topi and in proximity to the lakes of Tarbela Dam (world's largest earth-filled dam) and Ghazi.
Its campus is in the mountains of Tarbela and Gadoon-Amazai, and is a residential campus with accommodation for students.
Clock tower.
Clock Tower, (Landmark of Ghulam Ishaq Khan, aka LOGIK in short), is located in Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Topi, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. Amidst all the picturesque buildings of the institute stands erect the Clock Tower in all its glory. The clock tower can be seen from almost everywhere in the institute and has clocks on all four of its sides. It is the tallest structure in the area visible for many miles, and it provides a view of Tarbela Dam and the surrounding areas of Topi. It unites the institute on one time, and the student community is particularly fond of it.
Admission.
Admission to the university is based on the entry test. For BS programs, the syllabus for GIK Institute Admissions Test comprises Physics, Mathematics and English based on Pakistan's Intermediate level syllabus. Eligibility criteria for admission to the university is at least 60% marks in physics and mathematics in FSc or Grade C in A levels. Entry test for the university is very competitive as a large number of prospective students compete for a limited number of seats.
Rankings.
The institute has been ranked number one in Pakistan, 30th internationally by The Times Higher Education in its World University Impact Rankings 2021.
Faculties and Departments.
Faculty of Engineering Sciences.
The Faculty offers a 4-year degree program leading to Bachelor of Science in Engineering Sciences which encompasses some of the modern fields of engineering such as:
The faculty also offers MS and PHD degree programs in applied mathematics and applied physics.
Faculty of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.
The Faculty offers courses leading to Bachelor's (BS) in computer engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and computer science. It also offers Master's (MS) and Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) Degrees in Computer System Engineering.
It offers four year BS degree program in Electrical Engineering with following specializations:
Thrust Areas:
Bs in Artificial Intelligence partnered By Huawei.
On July 6, 2020, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences & Technology partnered with Huawei to launch a Bachelor of Science program in Artificial Intelligence.
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering.
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences & Technology aspires to produce technically sound and professionally mature Mechanical Engineers to cater our National needs in the 21st century. We seek to enrich our educational and research programs, and ultimately society, through service. The Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at GIK has a well-balanced and modern curricula designed both for the professional and the R&D / research engineer. Drawing on all classical disciplines such as mechanics and materials, drawing/drafting, thermal and fluid sciences, design and control. Curricula also reflect the latest advances in Finite Element Methods, Computational Fluid Dynamics, Computer Aided Design and Drafting (CADD), Numerical Control Machines and Energy Management. Modern labs, workshops and demonstration facilities complement the futuristic curricula. The center of Energy and Environment studies (CEES) has already gained national and international exposure through its various workshops and conferences. The Centre for Manufacturing Productivity and Technology Transfer (CMPT) is a multidisciplinary research / R&D Centre aimed at bridging the gap between industry and academia, especially in manufacturing domain. Anticipating the technological scenario of the 21st century, the faculty provides an enjoyable and exciting academic experience.
Faculty of Materials and Chemical Engineering.
The Faculty offers two 4-year bachelor's degree programs licensed by the PEC detailing basic principles & mathematics of process operations in the first two years. Third & final year deal with the advanced level of the field closely selected to cope the industrial requirements. Materials Engineering degree program is focused towards understanding of
materials, their processing and characteristics. Chemical Engineering program deals with understanding of chemical engineering principles and their use in the industrial processing of various chemicals.
Materials Engineering program offers following specialization streams:
Faculty of Management Sciences and Humanities.
Degree program at undergraduate level has started from 2013.
This Faculty offers 4 year BS Management Science degree with specialization in:
International Advisory Board.
The advisory board consists of scientists, engineers and academicians who are monitoring the institute's standard of education and research. It comprises faculty members from Kansas State University, Kyoto University, McGill University, University of Florida, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and other institutions.
Labs and facilities.
High Performance Computing Cluster.
HPC platform has been donated to GIK Institute by Directorate of Science and Technology (DoST) KPK Pakistan. It is a compute intensive platform and has the following hardware components:
Agha Hasan Abedi (AHA) Auditorium.
The Agha Hasan Abedi (AHA) Auditorium is named after Agha Hasan Abedi.
The Incubator.
GIK Institute established its own startup Incubator in 2014. With aim to motivate entrepreneurial skills among the students. Incubator will provide facilities and technical assistance, working space and other services to incubate the startup initiatives by the participants. It will also help them get venture capitalists to convert their fledgling startups into mature ones.
GIK incubator got a funding of Rupees 10 cores (100 million) from Directorate of Science and Technology, Ministry of ST & IT, Govt of Khyber Pakhtunkhuwa. The grant is given in order to develop Entrepreneurship via Establishment and Strengthening of Technology Incubation center.


Serious (TV series)

Serious is an observational documentary series made by the BBC and broadcast as part of their children's programming. It encompasses "Serious Jungle" (2002), "Serious Desert" (2003), "Serious Arctic" (2005), "Serious Amazon" (2006), "Serious Andes" (2007), "Serious Ocean" (2008) and "Serious Explorers" (2011). "Serious Ocean" consisted of ten 30-minute episodes, while each previous series was six 30-minute episodes. In each series a group of eight 12- to 15-year-olds embark on an expedition to an extreme part of the world, in order to help wildlife or assist in environmental projects. The programmes have won numerous awards, among them honours from BAFTA and the Royal Television Society.
So far only "Serious Amazon", "Serious Ocean" and "Serious Andes" have been aired in Australia, on ABC1 and ABC3.
The series has also been shown on Discovery Kids/The Hub, where five complete seasons have been shown. Slovenian television Kanal A has bought the rights to air "Serious Amazon". The show airs Saturdays at 2:10 pm, under the title "Vse o Amazonki" ("All About the Amazon").
The Italian television network RAI in early 2009 aired "Serious Jungle", "Serious Desert", "Serious Arctic", "Serious Amazon", and "Serious Andes".
"Serious Jungle" (2002).
"Serious Jungle" aired in 2002. Chosen from 1,000 applicants, eight adventurers faced a mission to build a feeding platform in the heart of the Borneo jungle, to help return orangutans to the wild (many of them rescued after being illegally kept as pets). They were in the rainforest for three weeks. The "Serious Jungle" eight were accompanied by expedition leaders Bruce Parry and Emma Jay.
Larry gave an interview in 2007, giving advice to those about to apply for "Serious Ocean", as well as some advice for successful applicants.
"Serious Desert" (2003).
"Serious Desert" aired from 20 to 31 October 2003. After 6,500 applications, eight adventurers were chosen to travel to Namibia and try and save the endangered black rhinoceros. They sleep under tarpaulin in the dunes and see black rhinos, but also wildebeest, zebra, springbok, giraffes, jackals, snakes, scorpions and elephants. Filming from 13 April to 5 May 2003, they build a new camel enclosure and finally make an epic fifty mile trek across the Namibian sand dunes to the Skeleton Coast. Returning from the previous series, Bruce Parry and Emma Jay were the expedition leaders who led the team.
Along with Larry from the previous series, Promise was interviewed in 2007, giving her opinion on what it was like to have the cameras following her around on the expedition.
"Serious Arctic" (2005).
"Serious Arctic" aired from 5 February to 6 March 2005. Chosen from 9,000 applicants, eight adventurers flew to Baffin Island, Canada, where they made an attempt to track polar bears across the pack ice, riding on husky sleds, with the season being filmed from 4 to 24 April 2004. Blizzards made the trip a hazard, and they spent most of one week in their tents. "Serious Arctic" was also the most successful "Serious" series picking up five awards. The expedition leaders for this trip were Ben Major and Emma Jay.
"Serious Amazon" (2006).
"Serious Amazon" aired from 25 February to 26 March 2006, and had a then-record of 29,000 12- to 15-year-olds auditioning for a part. The chosen team of eight left for Peru on 9 July 2005, with a mission to help rare uakari monkeys and pink river dolphins caught in illegal fishing nets in the Amazon River. The team of eight removed the illegal fishing nets to leave the dolphins safe, and also built habitats for the bald uakari. The season finished filming on 29 July. The "Serious Amazon" eight were accompanied by expedition leaders Ben Major and Polly Murray.
"Serious Andes" (2007).
"Serious Andes" aired from 4 June to 20 August 2007 and followed eight adventurers who, after being chosen from a then-record 36,000 12-to-15-year-olds, travelled to Ecuador to build an enclosure for spectacled bears. They also set out to climb the Cotopaxi volcano, the youngest team ever to have done so. Only four of the adventurers (Erin, Kylie, Will and Caitlin) were able to conquer the volcano, as the other four adventurers (Sarah, Liam, Matt and Joshua) were unable to do so, with some succumbing to early symptoms of acute mountain sickness. The season was filmed between 12 July and 3 August 2006. The "Serious Andes" eight were again accompanied by leaders Ben Major and Polly Murray. There was also a special episode that featured behind the scenes moments in the making of "Serious Andes", called "Serious Andes: Extra".
"Serious Ocean" (2008).
"Serious Ocean" was filmed in November and December 2007 featuring eight adventurers travelling to the isolated coast of Chile, living on a boat, assisting research into penguins, dolphins and albatrosses before moving on to assist in the survey of Glacier Chloe, the most southerly glacier outside Antarctica. The highlight of the trip, however, was when they sailed around Cape Horn, becoming one of the youngest teams ever to do so. The "Serious Ocean" eight were once again accompanied by expedition leaders Ben Major and Polly Murray. The series was first aired in July 2008.
A book of the series was released during December 2007, entitled "Serious Survival: How to Poo in the Arctic and Other Essential Tips", owing to the success of its broadcasting history. Written by the Series Producer Marshall Corwin, "Serious Survival" was shortlisted for the prestigious Royal Society Junior Science Books Prize.
"Serious Explorers: Livingstone" (2009).
Initially, the next "Serious" series was to be filmed in China, and would have followed the journey of 13th-century explorer, Marco Polo, including joining a camel train in the Taklamakan Desert, climbing mountains, and spending time with local tribes. However, after travelling to the region, due to political unrest Serious Explorers was postponed and the team returned to the UK. The series was later rescheduled to film in Tanzania in Africa at the end of 2009, where the team would follow in the foot steps of explorer David Livingstone.
Applications were accepted through January 2009. Around 900 of the applicants, from over 14,000, had a phone interview before 120 were selected to go to London, Bristol or Manchester for a day of auditions. 16 were selected to go to Wales for a selection weekend until it was cut down to the final 8. However, another contestant was removed for having to undergo an emergency tonsil operation, narrowing down the field to seven. Eventually, seven contestants aged 12–15 (four boys and three girls) were selected to take part in the show. The expedition took place in late 2009, with the intention of broadcasting the series in early 2010.
However, during filming, expedition guide Anton Turner died when he was mauled by an elephant on 30 October 2009, and production was reported to have ceased. Despite this, the series began broadcasting as "Serious Explorers: Livingstone" in early 2011. During the expedition three of the most promising of the seven explorers were chosen to cross the Mbarika mountain range, while the remaining four stayed behind to build an enclosure to fend off lions in a village; in the final episode, having come close to their target, the death of Anton was reported, who had gone out in advance of the day's trek over Mbarika to ensure the walk would be safe. Expedition leader Ben immediately called a halt to the Mbarika trek, and the series ended.
"Serious Explorers: Raleigh" (2011).
In late 2010, CBBC began to look for participants for a new Serious Explorers for production in early 2011 which followed the explorers led by Walter Raleigh sailing from Trinidad and Tobago to Guyana. The applications were cut down from around 12,000 to 300, who were given phone auditions in late October. The next stage was a Skype audition which took place in early November. The Skype audition was a new concept which is currently being trialled. 105 people were picked to go to an audition in Manchester or London on 23 November 2010 (Manchester) and 25 November 2010 (London). 16 children were picked for a final auditions weekend in December, where the final eight were chosen. The final eight started their journey on 31 January 2011.
The series began broadcasting in September 2011 and finished broadcasting in December 2011. There were 10 episodes and 1 special episode called "Serious Survival"
Awards.
The "Serious" show has had a remarkable record for winning awards, with each of the first seven series gaining honours and total awards into double figures. The show has won four BAFTA children's awards in the Factual category: for "Serious Desert" in the 2004 nominations, for "Serious Arctic" in the 2005 nominations, for "Serious Andes" in 2008 and for "Serious Ocean" in 2010. "Serious Amazon" was also nominated in 2006 for the same category. The Royal Television Society has also given the series three awards; Best Children's Programme in 2002 for "Serious Jungle", 2005 for "Serious Arctic" and 2007 for "Serious Andes". In addition, the "Serious Arctic" series won a 2006 Prix Jeunesse International (Children's Jury Prize), along with a Broadcast Award and a Bulldog Award.
"Serious Ocean" won the Maritime Media Award 2008, beating off competition from adult series such as the BBC's "Trawlermen" and Channel 5's "Warship".


Arron Banks

Arron Fraser Andrew Banks (born 1966) is a British businessman and political donor. He is the co-founder (with Richard Tice) of the Leave.EU campaign. Banks was previously one of the largest donors to the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and helped Nigel Farage’s campaign for Britain to leave the EU.
In November 2018 the National Crime Agency opened an investigation into Banks following concerns raised over the source of his funding. In September 2019, the National Crime Agency dropped its investigations into Banks and Leave.EU. The NCA found "no evidence that any criminal offences have been committed."
He has been reported to have had multiple meetings with Russian embassy officials as well as being offered business opportunities in Russia in the run-up to the Brexit referendum. He has denied any wrongdoing and said: "There was no Russian money and no interference of any type." In May 2020, The Electoral Commission, who had referred Banks to the NCA for investigation of these allegations, conceded Banks did not break electoral law during the 2016 EU referendum campaign. Banks said he had been "completely vindicated" after reaching a settlement with the Electoral Commission.
His 2016 book "The Bad Boys of Brexit: Tales of Mischief, Mayhem & Guerrilla Warfare in the EU Referendum Campaign" was ghostwritten by pro-Brexit journalist Isabel Oakeshott.
Banks claimed he was suspended from UKIP in March 2017, but UKIP said his membership had "lapsed earlier in the year".
Early life.
Banks was born in Cheshire, England, and raised by his mother in Basingstoke, Hampshire; his father worked as a sugar plantation manager in various African countries. From the age of 13 he attended a boarding school in Berkshire called Crookham Court, before being expelled for "an accumulation of offences", including the sale of lead stolen from the roofs of school buildings, and "high-spirited bad behaviour". He then attended St Bartholomew's School in Newbury but was expelled again. He returned to Basingstoke, where he sold paintings, vacuum cleaners, and then houses.
Business career.
Banks was offered a junior job at the insurance market of Lloyd's of London. According to "The Guardian", by the age of 27, he was running a division of Norwich Union. The article also claims that he spent a year working for Berkshire Hathaway, the investment company of Warren Buffett. However, in another investigation, both Norwich Union and Warren Buffett reject Banks' claim that he worked for them. Then, from an office above a bakery in Thornbury, Gloucestershire, Banks started a motorcycle insurance broker, Motorcycle Direct, and within a few years the company was big enough to sell for "a few million". He used the money to found Commercial Vehicle Direct about which he says "within a very short period we were the largest van insurance company in the country". Over seven years, along with Australian business partner John Gannon, Banks expanded this business to become Group Direct Limited, and in 2008 the company floated by means of a reverse takeover as Brightside Group. He was its CEO from June 2011 to June 2012, at which time the company was listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM). After Banks was dismissed from the company in 2012, he sold £6m worth of the shares in 2013, and received significantly more when the investment firm AnaCap Financial Partners bought Brightside the following year.
Banks was the chief executive (CEO) of Southern Rock Insurance Company in 2014, which underwrites insurance policies for the website GoSkippy.com, founded by Banks. After Banks' departure, Brightside took legal action against him, alleging he used confidential information in setting up GoSkippy.com six months later. There were also legal actions between Southern Rock and Brightside.
He was previously CEO of AIM-listed Manx Financial Group from April 2008 to February 2009. According to Companies House records, Banks has set up 37 different companies using slight variations of his name. The names used by Banks are Aron Fraser Andrew Banks, Arron Andrew Fraser Banks, Arron Fraser Andrew Banks and Arron Banks. The profiles for the first three names all use the same date of birth but register different lists of companies. When asked by "The Guardian" about this, he declined to answer questions on the topic.
Banks also owns Eldon Insurance, whose CEO Elizabeth Bilney was also in charge at Leave.EU. The company's profits leapt to £16.7m for the first half of 2017 after recording a £284,000 profit in 2015 and a loss of £22,500 in 2016 despite a 40% increase in revenue. Banks said that Eldon's business had been transformed by the same AI technology used in the Brexit campaign. The offshore holding company that controls Eldon Insurance is ICS Risk Solutions, which funds many of Banks' activities and has paid over £77m between 2015 and 2018 to prop up Southern Rock after Gibraltarian regulators found the business to be trading while technically insolvent. As part of an agreement with the regulators Banks resigned his directorships at Eldon in 2013 and Southern Rock in 2014, also accepting a "period of ban or self-exclusion from other insurance directorships".
He also bought Old Down Manor from musician Mike Oldfield, converting it into a wedding venue.
In 2016, the leaked Panama Papers indicated Banks along with Elizabeth Bilney were shareholders of British Virgin Islands company PRI Holdings Limited, which was the sole shareholder of African Strategic Resources Limited. However, a spokesperson for Banks has denied any links to the lawyer named and denies that Banks was involved with the Papers. Banks has stated that he has a controlling interest in a diamond mine in Kimberley, South Africa, and a licence to mine in Lesotho. In July 2018, Banks denied that money paid to a government minister in Lesotho was a bribe; it had been paid to guarantee diamond mining rights in Lesotho. In 2013, Banks paid £65,000 into the private bank account of Thesele Maseribane, then the Basotho minister for women's equality. Banks subsequently covered the £350,000 costs of a political campaign for Maseribane, in 2014, following a military coup in Lesotho.
In January 2015, one estimate of his wealth was £100 million. In November 2017, an estimate of £250 million was mentioned.
Other business associations.
Following intensified media scrutiny after his initial donation to UKIP, it emerged that Banks was involved in mining in southern Africa and had connections to Belize. Banks also has connections to companies based in Gibraltar and the Isle of Man, and close connections with family members of the Belizean Prime Minister. However, following remarks made by "The Thick of It" creator Armando Iannucci on BBC One's "Question Time" programme, Banks denied owning a company in Belize or seeking to avoid UK tax "via any device". Describing the comments as "clearly defamatory", he threatened legal action towards Iannucci if he did not get an apology within a week.
Asked if his companies paid full corporation tax, Banks said: "I paid over £2.5m of income tax last year ... My insurance business, like a lot of them, is based in Gibraltar but I've got UK businesses as well that deal with customers and pay tax like everyone else." One of the UK businesses of which Banks is director, Rock Services Ltd, the name of which refers to The Rock of Gibraltar, had a turnover of £19.7m in 2013 and paid corporation tax of as little as £12,000. The company deducted £19.6m in "administrative expenses", and the main activity appears to be "recharge of goods and services" with Southern Rock Insurance Company. Southern Rock Insurance states on its website that it underwrites policies for the customers of GoSkippy.com, which is run by Banks.
Rock Services and Southern Rock Insurance's ultimate holding company is Rock Holdings Ltd, a company based on the Isle of Man. Banks has also been a "substantial" shareholder in STM Fidecs, of which Leave.EU is a subsidiary; the company claims to be specialising in "international wealth protection", maximising tax efficiencies for entrepreneurs and expatriates and of "structuring international groups, particularly separating and relocating intellectual property and treasury functions to low- or no-tax jurisdictions".
Political career and donations.
Banks was previously a Conservative Party donor but in October 2014 decided to donate £100,000 to UKIP. In response to comments from William Hague that Banks had not been a major Conservative donor in past years, and that Hague had never heard of Banks, Banks increased his donation to £1 million to the UK Independence Party (UKIP), directly referencing Hague's interview as his reasoning. Banks said that he had changed party allegiance because he agrees with UKIP's policies and its view that the European Union "is holding the UK back" because it's a "closed shop for bankrupt countries". Banks has been described as the "leading figure" behind the anti-EU Grassroots Out and Leave.EU, as well as the official Vote Leave campaign.
He signalled his intention to stand for UKIP in the constituency of Thornbury and Yate at the 2015 general election, but the candidate chosen by the party was Russ Martin, who came third. He indicated he would stand in Clacton at the 2017 general election against Douglas Carswell, but later decided otherwise.
Banks claimed in March 2017 that he had been suspended from UKIP; he believed the reason was that he had criticised the leadership. UKIP said, however, that his membership had lapsed before this time.
In May 2018, Banks attended a fundraising event for the Democratic Unionist Party, alongside Nigel Farage, and stated that he would support a bid by Farage to seek office as a DUP candidate after the end of his tenure as Member of the European Parliament in 2019.
In August 2018, it was reported that Banks had applied to join the Conservative Party and had suggested that Leave.EU supporters do the same, with the aim of voting in the party's next leadership election. According to the report, Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU's communications director, who had also applied to join the party, announced that they had received an email welcoming them, but the Conservative Party stated that their applications had not been approved. A Conservative Party spokesman said that welcoming emails were automatic but applications were subsequently reviewed, and theirs had been rejected.
Conservative Party donations.
A spokesman for Nigel Farage said that Banks had funded the Chipping Sodbury office for the South Gloucestershire Conservatives "to the tune of £250,000". However, a Conservative spokesperson said the support was "nothing like the order of magnitude" of sums claimed, and estimated that the donations were "probably around the £22,000 mark".
A UKIP source told "The Guardian" that Banks had also loaned £75,417 to Thornbury and Yate Conservative Party through Panacea Finance (his former company) in September 2007, registered on the Electoral Commission and to be paid back by 2022. However, Companies House records show that Banks resigned from the company in September 2005; therefore it was considered questionable as to whether Banks was controlling the company at the time, or whether he was "using the firm as a 'proxy donor'", according to "The Guardian".
Relationship with Eurosceptic organisations.
In October 2014, Banks donated £1 million to the UK Independence Party and has since raised the equivalent of $11 million for the party. Conservative MP William Hague had called Banks "somebody we haven't heard of" following his defection to UKIP. In response, Banks increased his donation from £100,000 to £1 million, saying: "I woke up this morning intending to give £100,000 to UKIP - then I heard Mr Hague's comment about me being a Mr Nobody. So in light of that I have decided to give £1 million." This donation was one of the largest sums of money ever received by UKIP. Banks also funded Leave.EU by the equivalent of $5 million, and has been seen as the financial backer of the Brexit campaign.
Banks threatened Douglas Carswell with deselection in September 2015 when it emerged that Carswell supported Vote Leave, as opposed to the Leave.EU campaign funded by Banks, describing Carswell as "borderline autistic with mental illness wrapped in", according to "The Huffington Post".
In April 2016, "Private Eye" reported that Leave.EU "is registered at Companies House as Better for the Country Ltd. and controlled by major UKIP donor Arron Banks, after Gibraltar company STM Fidecs Nominees Ltd. transferred its interest to him in August." Banks, along with property investor Richard Tice and media guru Andrew Wigmore, donated £4.3m to the group.
Banks credits the success of Leave.EU to their hiring of Goddard Gunster and their subsequent adoption of "an American-style media approach."
Possibility of "rightwing Momentum".
In September 2016, following Banks' statement that UKIP would be "dead in the water" if Diane James did not become leader, he said that he would leave UKIP if Steven Woolfe was prevented from running for leader and two other senior members remained in the party: "If Neil Hamilton and Douglas Carswell [UKIP's only MP] remain in the party, and the NEC decide that Steven Woolfe cannot run for leader, I will be leaving Ukip".
Banks was sceptical of UKIP under the leadership of Paul Nuttall. Banks said that Leave.EU would continue campaigning as a "rightwing Momentum", ensuring that politicians do not renege on their commitment to leave the EU. Banks has also considered starting and funding a pro-Brexit, nonpartisan citizens' movement called Patriotic Alliance, based on the Five Star Movement, which would target "the 200 worst, most corrupt MPs" for deselection.
Brexit.
Banks said that Britain's EU membership "is like having a first class ticket on the Titanic". He also said that "Economically, remaining in the EU is unsustainable."
Banks said in May 2016 that his strategy during the Brexit campaign was to "bore the electorate into submission", in the hope that a low turnout would favour Brexit.
Banks threatened to sue the official Vote Leave campaign's candidacy as the official spokesperson for the "Leave" vote in the 2016 EU referendum, which may have possibly delayed the vote by two months. However, Banks has since rejected this and stated that he would not pursue a judicial review any further. Banks has also claimed that Vote Leave were lying when they claimed that the UK sends £350 million to the European Union, claiming this does not take into consideration the rebate which the UK receives from the EU, and that the £350 million is not actually sent to the EU headquarters in Brussels.
Following the murder of Jo Cox, Arron Banks commissioned a poll on whether her murder had affected public opinion on voting. Asked whether the wording of the poll was "tasteless", Banks said "I don't think so", adding that: "We were hoping to see what the effect of the event was. That is an interesting point of view, whether it would shift public opinion."
There were questions as to the source of funds he used to support Brexit and in November 2018 this was referred for criminal investigation. Banks denied any wrongdoing and stated that he welcomed the police investigation to put an end to the allegations.
A Channel 4 investigation also appeared to point to the conclusion that Banks' Leave.EU organisation faked migrant footage and photographs of "migrants" assaulting women. The photos were never used, but the fake video went viral. Banks accused Channel 4 News journalists of creating "fake news" themselves.
Post-referendum events.
Following Britain's vote to leave the EU, Banks emailed a note to journalists attacking his critics. Banks described the United Kingdom's parliamentary Electoral Commission as "the legal division of the In campaign" and disagreed with their decision to enlist Vote Leave as the official campaign. Banks' response to the information commissioner, who in 2016 fined the campaign £50,000 for sending more than half a million unsolicited text messages, was a succinct "Whatever". In 2017, Banks viewed the Brexit vote as "a kind of halfhearted revolution" due to the fact that Theresa May, who supported Britain remaining in the EU, would end up betraying those who voted to leave.
In November 2017, the Electoral Commission announced that it was investigating whether election rules were broken during the EU referendum, in donations worth a total of £8.4 million to Leave.EU campaigners made by Banks and by Better for the Country Ltd, a company of which Banks is a registered director.
The National Crime Agency investigated Leave.EU, Banks and Bilney, as well as other individuals and entities, following the referral of material from a second Electoral Commission investigation. The referral was announced amid concerns that Banks was not the true source of £8m donated to Leave.EU. In September 2019 the National Crime Agency said it had found no evidence of criminality after investigating a series of claims against the Brexit campaign group Leave.EU and Arron Banks. The NCA said: "It will therefore take no further action against Mr Banks, Ms Bilney, Better for the Country Ltd or Leave.EU in respect of this specific matter."
Links to Russian officials and Donald Trump campaign.
From September 2015, Banks, along with Andy Wigmore, had multiple meetings with Russian officials posted at the Russian embassy in London. In November 2015, Alexander Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador, introduced Banks to a Russian businessman, which was followed by other business proposals on the part of Russians. Banks was offered a chance to invest in Russian-owned gold or diamond mines; the deal involved funding from a Russian state-owned bank, and was announced 12 days after the Brexit referendum. It is not clear if Banks invested.
For two years, Banks said his only contacts with the Russian government consisted of one "boozy lunch" with the ambassador. After "The Observer" reported that he had had multiple meetings at which he had been offered lucrative business deals, Banks told a parliamentary inquiry into fake news he had had "two or three" meetings. In July 2018 when pressed by "The New York Times", he said there had been a fourth meeting. "The Observer" has seen evidence that suggests his Leave.EU campaign team met with Russian embassy officials as many as 11 times in the run-up to the EU referendum and in the two months beyond.
It has been reported that on 12 November 2016, Arron Banks had a meeting with president-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower and that upon return to London, Banks had lunch with the Russian ambassador where they discussed the Trump visit.
Greta Thunberg.
In August 2019 Banks was criticised by Labour MPs Tonia Antoniazzi and David Lammy after a tweet about the climate change activist Greta Thunberg as she set off on a two-week voyage in a zero carbon yacht. Banks tweeted: "Freak yachting accidents do happen in August". Tanja Bueltmann, founder of the EU Citizens' Champion campaign, also strongly criticised the tweet. Banks responded that he produced the tweet because he enjoys watching outrage, later stating: "Obviously I don't hope she encounters a freak yachting accident. I just enjoy watching the ludicrous tweeter mob following the next outrage."
Websites.
LibLabCon.com.
Banks gave significant funds to LibLabCon.com, a satirical website dedicated to attacking the three major parties. The website included jokes about the treatment of religious people by the Conservatives, claimed Chuka Umunna is "Labour's chief spokesman for tokenism" and described Amnesty International as an organisation which supports "loudmouth idiots chained to a radiator".
Westmonster.
On 19 January 2017 (one day before Donald Trump's inauguration as the 45th President of the United States) Banks launched Westmonster alongside Michael Heaver, former press adviser to Nigel Farage. It is modelled on the right-wing US websites Breitbart News and the Drudge Report and claims to be "pro-Brexit, pro-Farage, pro-Trump, anti-establishment, anti-open borders, anti-corporatism". In the morning of 19 January, Westmonster's Twitter account had gained more than 2,500 followers.
Owners.
The official registered owners of the site are Heaver, who owns 50% of the website and is a daily editor, and Better for the Country Ltd. Better for the Country Ltd is the company that ran Leave.EU (one of two main pro-Brexit campaigns, affiliated to Farage) and is directed by Leave.EU's chief executive, Elizabeth Bilney. Better for the Country Ltd is also registered to the same address as Westmonster.
Early contributors and style.
Westmonster's welcome message stated that the political establishment had "taken one hell of a beating" in 2016, adding that "2017 might just be even bigger". The timing of this launch was seen as sign that the anti-establishment media which helped Trump to gain power was arriving in the UK, according to BBC News' media editor Amol Rajan.
Although primarily a news aggregator website akin to the "Drudge Report", Westmonster does plan to publish original content and enlist the support of celebrities and backbench MPs. Early contributions to the website include a piece written by Nigel Farage stating that the "political establishment" of the United Kingdom had not woken up to European populist movements, as well as articles showing majority British support for a burka ban and criticising "remoaners" for "trying to subvert the will of the people".
Personal life.
At age 21 Banks married his first wife, Caroline, with whom he has two daughters. The marriage lasted ten years.
In 2001 Banks married Russian Ekaterina Paderina, the mother of three more children. Paderina is reported to have received help to remain in the UK from Mike Hancock while he was an MP.
In 2014 Banks reportedly lived in the village of Tockington near Bristol in a house with a "huge" Union flag flying over the front lawn, and owned another house overlooking a game reserve near Pretoria in South Africa.
In 2020, Banks spent six months in Auckland, New Zealand after the country went into lockdown following the coronavirus pandemic. He has previously voiced his support for the leader of the New Zealand First Party, Winston Peters.
In popular culture.
Banks was portrayed by actor Lee Boardman in the 2019 HBO and Channel 4 produced drama entitled "".


Marketwired

Marketwired was a press release distribution service headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded in 1993 and incorporated in the U.S. in 1999. In 2018, it was merged into GlobeNewswire.
Corporate history.
Marketwired was founded as Internet Wire in October 1994 by PR agency owner Michael Terpin and online marketer Michael Shuler in Los Angeles, California, United States. It received $17.5 million in venture capital in January 2000. The company changed its name to Market Wire in April, 2003, after making a partnership with NASDAQ, where its services would be recommended to listed companies.
In 2000, a former employee of Internet Wire used the service to perpetrate an insider trading scam. He shorted Emulex stock, then published a fraudulent press release reporting problems at Emulex Corporation, which lost 62 percent of its value in morning trading. He was found out by the FBI and sentenced to 44 months in prison.
In 2006, Marketwired (then known as Marketwire) was acquired by CCNMatthews, a 25-year-old news distribution company in Canada. The company adopted the name Marketwire unilaterally. At that point, it was majority-owned by OMERS Private Equity, which manages the private equity activities of OMERS Administration Corporation, a Canadian pension fund. The company's history can be traced back to 1957.
In July 2010, Marketwire acquired Sysomos, a social monitoring and analytics service, offering customers the ability to track their social presence across sites like Facebook and Twitter.
In October 2011, Marketwire filed a lawsuit accusing PR Newswire of trying to steal confidential information and trade secrets, seeking at least $25 million in damages.
In April 2013, Marketwire re-branded, changing its name to Marketwired and introducing the tagline "The power of influence" with an updated logo.
In February 2016, MarketWired was acquired by Nasdaq, Inc.
In January 2018 Nasdaq's public relations business lines were acquired by West Corporation. Marketwired was merged into GlobeNewswire.