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fadd6ba312a6448e0cfe1091ed9d6523 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lady-Ottoline-Violet-Anne-Morrell | Lady Ottoline Morrell | Lady Ottoline Morrell
Lady Ottoline Morrell, née Cavendish-bentinck, (born June 16, 1873, London—died April 21, 1938, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, Eng.), hostess and patron of the arts who brought together some of the most important writers and artists of her day. A woman of marked individuality and discernment, she was often the first to recognize a talent and assist its possessor—although not a few such relationships ended in quarrels.
The daughter of a general, she broke with her conventionally upper class background as she formed her circle of artists and intellectuals, which included, among others, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, Aldous Huxley, Bertrand Russell, and Augustus John. She and her husband, Philip Edward Morrell, Liberal member of Parliament, lived in London from 1902 until 1913, when they settled at Garsington Manor, Oxfordshire. Their home became a refuge for conscientious objectors during World War I, since the Morrells were pacifists. They lived in the Bloomsbury district of London from 1924. A collection of her writings, Ottoline, was edited by R. Gathorne-Hardy in 1963, as was Ottoline at Garsington: Memoirs 1915–18 (1974).
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78047151d35de850dffd07efc36231da | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lady-Penelope-Rich | Lady Penelope Rich | Lady Penelope Rich
Lady Penelope Rich, née Penelope Devereux, (born 1562?—died 1607), English noblewoman who was the “Stella” of Sir Philip Sidney’s love poems Astrophel and Stella (1591).
She was the daughter of Walter Devereux, 1st Earl of Essex. From an early age she was expected to be a likely wife for Sidney, but after her father’s death her guardian, Henry Hastings, 3rd Earl of Huntingdon, arranged her marriage in 1581 to Robert Rich, 3rd Baron Rich (afterward Earl of Warwick). The marriage was unhappy from the start, and Sidney continued to have an emotional attachment to her until his death in 1586. Sidney celebrated her charms and his affection for her in the series of sonnets collected in Astrophel and Stella.
Though married and the mother of seven children, she became the mistress of Charles Blount, 8th Lord Mountjoy, in about 1590; they had five children. Her husband abandoned her in 1601 after her brother, Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, was executed for plotting a revolt against Queen Elizabeth, and she thenceforth lived openly with Mountjoy (afterward Earl of Devonshire), marrying him in 1605 after having obtained a divorce from her first husband.
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6197ddad1c89a0e7f3ce4c180141caeb | https://www.britannica.com/biography/LaFayette-Curry-Baker | LaFayette Curry Baker | LaFayette Curry Baker
LaFayette Curry Baker, (born Oct. 13, 1826, Stafford, N.Y., U.S.—died July 3, 1868, Philadelphia, Pa.), chief of the U.S. Federal Detective Police during the American Civil War and director of Union intelligence and counterintelligence operations.
In 1848 Baker left his home in Michigan, where the family had moved when he was a child, and worked at a variety of occupations in the West. In 1856 he joined the San Francisco Vigilance Command (known as the Vigilantes), a group of self-appointed police whose operations were characterized by arbitrariness and lack of due process. In the next four years he was often employed in an undercover capacity and became adept at techniques of deception and disguise. When the Civil War broke out in 1861, he went to Washington, D.C., and offered his services to General Winfield Scott. Sent to reconnoitre the Richmond, Va., area, he was arrested as a spy but escaped while Confederate president Jefferson Davis sought to determine the validity of the charge.
Baker later worked as a detective in the War Department, the State Department, and the Post Office before succeeding Allan Pinkerton as head of the federal secret service in November 1862. Baker soon penetrated every area of the military and the civil government of the Union as well as the Confederacy, using hundreds of agents and detectives deployed in two forces whose members were unknown to each other.
Baker adopted the motto “Death to Traitors” for himself and his service. He maintained a headquarters and a prison in the Old Capitol building, where he detained many citizens on flimsy evidence or mere suspicion and subjected them to intensive interrogation to extract confessions and information. In 1863 he raised a battalion of cavalry, officially known as the 1st District of Columbia Cavalry but more widely called Baker’s Rangers. The unit was used primarily as a counter-guerrilla force against J.S. Mosby and his raiders and was expanded to a full regiment before the war was over.
In 1864 Baker personally uncovered a major fraud in the Treasury Department; broke up the “Northwest Conspiracy,” a plan by Confederate terrorists to carry the war to the cities of the North by arson and other means; and uncovered acts of trading with the enemy by prominent Union officials. After Lincoln was assassinated in April 1865, Baker personally planned and managed the pursuit and capture of John Wilkes Booth and his accomplice, D.E. Herold. Baker was accused of negligence in Lincoln’s death but, in fact, had no direct responsibility for the president’s protection and was on duty in New York when the assassination occurred. His quick response won him a long-sought promotion to brigadier general.
After the Civil War Baker continued his police and intelligence activities, paying particular attention to a large trade in pardons for former Confederates that reached into the White House. Baker, whose disdain for due process frequently left him open to political attack, eventually resigned his post, and his secret service was disbanded when Congress refused it further funding. Baker later testified at Johnson’s impeachment trial, making sensational but undocumented charges against the president. In 1867 he published History of the United States Secret Service.
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25015ba3c36df2d98790c5b97c6adc94 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laimdota-Straujuma | Laimdota Straujuma | Laimdota Straujuma
A new government headed by Laimdota Straujuma, who had served as minister of agriculture in the Dombrovskis administration, was endorsed by a parliamentary vote of confidence later that month.
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61a3f1b276d1a8b0de377c3f3a0b9ba6 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lakshmi-Mittal | Lakshmi Mittal | Lakshmi Mittal
Lakshmi Mittal, in full Lakshmi Narayan Mittal, (born June 15, 1950, Sadulpur, Rajasthan, India), Indian businessman who was CEO (2006– ) of ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steelmaking company.
In the 1960s Mittal’s family moved to Calcutta (Kolkata), where his father operated a steel mill. Mittal worked at the mill while studying science at St. Xavier’s College. After graduating (1970) he served as a trainee at the mill, and in 1976 he opened his own steel mill in Indonesia. He spent more than a decade learning how to run it efficiently. In 1989 Mittal purchased the beleaguered state-owned steel works in Trinidad and Tobago, which had been losing huge sums of money. A year later that facility had doubled its output and had become profitable. He used a similar formula for success in a series of acquisitions all around the world, purchasing failing (mostly state-run) outfits and sending in special management teams to reorganize the businesses.
Mittal’s business philosophy emphasized consolidation in an industry that had become weak and fragmented. Although demand for steel remained high, smaller steel companies had been unable to strike competitive deals with their major clients, notably automakers and appliance manufacturers. Mittal’s company, however, controlled about 40 percent of the American market for the flat-rolled steel used to make cars, which allowed the giant steelmaker to negotiate more favourable prices. In 2004 Mittal merged his companies, Ispat International and LNM Holdings, and acquired Ohio-based International Steel Group. The newly created company, Mittal Steel Co. NV, emerged from the deal as the world’s largest steelmaker. Two years later Mittal oversaw another merger when Mittal Steel joined with Arcelor to form ArcelorMittal.
Mittal, who was sometimes described as being media shy, often made news for his notable expenditures, including a record £70 million ($128 million) for a 12-bedroom home in London and an estimated $60 million for his daughter’s 2004 wedding in Paris. His donation of £125,000 (about $180,000) to the Labour Party in 2001 created controversy when it was learned that Prime Minister Tony Blair had helped Mittal purchase a steel company in Romania even though Mittal’s firms backed a U.S. tariff opposed by British steel producers.
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506259afb6905178d1b8d79a4889d66c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lamar-Alexander | Lamar Alexander | Lamar Alexander
Lamar Alexander, (born July 3, 1940, Maryville, Tennessee, U.S.), American politician who was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 2002 and began representing Tennessee the following year. He previously served as governor of the state (1979–87).
A seventh-generation Tennessean, Alexander was born in Maryville, the son of a schoolteacher and elementary school principal. In 1962 he received a bachelor’s degree in Latin American studies from Vanderbilt University. After earning a law degree (1965) from New York University, he served as a clerk to the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. He then was an assistant to U.S. Sen. Howard Baker and served in the administration of Pres. Richard Nixon, working as the assistant to the president’s executive assistant. In 1969 Alexander married Honey Buhler, and the couple later had four children. He returned to Tennessee the following year to manage the gubernatorial campaign of Winfield Dunn, the first Republican to win that office in half a century. Alexander then cofounded (1972) a law firm in Nashville.
In 1974 Alexander launched his own bid for governor. However, his campaign suffered from his association with Nixon, who resigned in August of that year because of the Watergate scandal, and Alexander ultimately lost the election. In 1978 he again ran and this time won. During his two terms (1979–87) as governor, Alexander was noted for implementing education reforms and for promoting business in the state. After leaving office, he cofounded (1987) a chain of children’s day-care centres. He also briefly lived in Australia before becoming president of the University of Tennessee system in 1988. He left that post in 1991 to serve as secretary of education in the administration of U.S. Pres. George H.W. Bush.
Alexander made unsuccessful bids to become the Republican Party’s presidential candidate in 1996 and 2000. In 2002 he ran for the U.S. Senate and won with 54 percent of the vote, becoming the first Tennessean to have been elected both governor and U.S. senator.
After entering the Senate in 2003, Alexander became known as a moderate to conservative Republican with a reputation for bipartisanship. He was particularly interested in education issues but increasingly took a states’ rights view of educational standards. He later wrote the Every Student Succeeds Act (2015), which revised No Child Left Behind (2001) to give states more control in issues relating to public education. Alexander also assumed a strong leadership position on energy issues. From 2008 to 2012 he was chair of the Senate Republican Conference, the third-ranking Republican position in that chamber. He later supported filibuster reform, notably proposing that it be banned for nominations to the Supreme Court and to other key positions within the federal government. In 2015 he became chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee. In that role he was a key figure in talks concerning the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010; PPACA). Although he supported a failed effort to repeal and replace the legislation in 2017, later that year he was involved in a bipartisan attempt to bolster the PPACA. In 2018 Alexander announced that he would not seek reelection in 2020.
Alexander wrote several books, including Six Months Off: An American Family’s Australian Adventure (1988) and Lamar Alexander’s Little Plaid Book (1998), in which he discussed running for office and encouraged public service.
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d5c3287a19381b61eb0188bfb0a8abbd | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lamar-Hunt | Lamar Hunt | Lamar Hunt
The Texans were owned by Lamar Hunt, who—after having been rebuked in his earlier attempt to purchase the NFL’s Chicago Cardinals—initiated the founding of the AFL by organizing other prospective NFL owners who had been turned down by the established league. Hunt hired Hank Stram to serve as the Texans’…
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0f89ff838cf1c688f65b5b7e4da05493 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lambert-of-Hersfeld | Lambert Of Hersfeld | Lambert Of Hersfeld
Lambert Of Hersfeld, (born 1025—died c. 1088), chronicler who assembled a valuable source for the history of 11th-century Germany.
Educated in Bamberg, Lambert joined the Benedictine convent of Hersfeld in March 1058 and was ordained the following fall, traveling to the Holy Land the same year. He moved to the Abbey of Hasungen in 1077, helping to initiate its acceptance of the reforms of the Benedictines’ Cluniac order in 1081.
His Annales Hersveldenses (first published in 1525) were written about 1077–79, covering the period from the Creation to 1077. An erudite scholar, he used as historical and rhetorical models the works of the Roman historians Livy, Sallust, and Suetonius. His coverage of the period from Genesis to 1040 is brief and primarily a compilation of other sources, but the description of events from 1040 to 1077 is highly detailed and based on the annals of the Hersfeld abbey as well as information from other sources and personal experience. Thus, the Annales are valuable as documentation of ecclesiastical and political developments in 11th-century Germany, particularly on the relations between the state and the papacy (though criticized for their pro-papal bias). They are also valued for their literary elegance and as a primary source on the relations between Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII.
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33da410734b56691e3512d3ab42da7c2 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lamberto-Dini | Lamberto Dini | Lamberto Dini
…head the government, this time Lamberto Dini, the former chief executive of the Bank of Italy and previously Berlusconi’s treasury minister. In January 1995 Dini formed a government of nonpolitical “technocrats,” supported by the Northern League and by the left-wing parties in parliament (the losers in the 1994 elections). This…
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146592ca4e488a3ce423381553a0da2a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lamine-Gueye | Lamine Guèye | Lamine Guèye
Lamine Guèye, (born 1891, Médine, French Sudan—died June 10, 1968, Dakar, Senegal), one of the most important Senegalese politicians before that country gained independence.
As early as World War I, Guèye made radical demands for genuine assimilation of Africans into French culture and institutions. In the early 1920s he became the first African lawyer from French West Africa to study in Paris. After serving as mayor of Saint-Louis, Senegal, for a brief time in the mid-1920s, he was sent by the French to the Indian Ocean island of Réunion as a judge and remained there until 1933. In 1934 and 1936 he ran (and was defeated) for deputy to the French National Assembly. Also in 1936 he became political director of the new Senegalese branch of the French Socialist Party.
After World War II Guèye and his protégé Léopold Senghor were elected to the French National Assembly (1945) and reelected the following year. Guèye also became mayor of Dakar, a post he held until 1961. Senghor, however, turned to the rural masses for a broader base of support and left the Socialists in 1948 to form his own party, which rapidly became dominant in Senegalese politics. Guèye, appealing mainly to a limited electorate of urban professional bourgeoisie, lost his National Assembly seat in the 1951 elections and was never again a threat to Senghor’s leadership. Finally in 1958 he joined Senghor’s new party, the Union Progressiste Sénégalaise, and in 1959 was elected president of the Senegalese Legislative (later National) Assembly, where he remained until his death.
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f9fc1d3c5e7f1182dc287be3e3f56cfa | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lance-Mackey | Lance Mackey | Lance Mackey
Lance Mackey, (born 1970, Alaska, U.S.), American sled-dog racer who was the first person to win four consecutive Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Races (2007–10).
Mackey, the son of champion musher Dick Mackey, grew up in Alaska, where he was exposed to dogsled racing from an early age. When he was a toddler, his father helped found the Iditarod Trail Seppala Memorial Race (later named the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race), which stretched about 1,100 miles (1, 770 km) between the Alaskan cities of Anchorage and Nome. The event became the sport’s foremost competition. Mackey was one of four brothers who raced from childhood and who would eventually compete in the Iditarod. His father and eldest brother, Rick, won the Iditarod in 1978 and 1983, respectively.
Lance Mackey’s own experience as a musher began, as he put it, “at birth.” Prior to entering the Iditarod, Mackey competed between 1985 and 1988 in the Jr. Iditarod Sled Dog Race, an event established in 1978 as a training ground for eventual participants in the Iditarod. His best finish in the youth race was fourth place, in 1988. In 2001 he entered his first Iditarod and placed 36th out of 57 finishers. That same year he was diagnosed with throat cancer. After undergoing successful surgery and radiation treatments, Mackey entered the 2002 Iditarod, still using a feeding tube. His compromised health forced him to quit halfway through the race, and he took the following year off to recover. In honour of his medical struggles and eventual return to competition, Mackey named his kennel the Comeback Kennel.
Mackey returned to the Iditarod in 2004 and finished in 24th place. While continuing to compete each year in that race, he also began contending in the Yukon Quest, a 1,000-mile (1,609-km) dogsled race from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Whitehorse, Yukon, Can. He placed first every year from 2005, when he was a race rookie, to 2008, making him the first four-time winner of the event. Going into the 2007 Iditarod, Mackey had never placed higher than seventh, but that year marked his first Iditarod victory. He also became the first musher to win both the Yukon Quest and the Iditarod in the same year. He repeated that accomplishment in 2008, when he again achieved a first-place finish in both races. With his victory in the 2009 Iditarod, Mackey joined Susan Butcher and Doug Swingley as the only mushers to have won the event three consecutive times. On March 16, 2010, with a race time of less than nine days (a personal best for Mackey), he became the first person to win the Iditarod four times in a row.
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b9ae1b9dd9c90f6e1064760394736842 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lancelot-Brown | Lancelot Brown | Lancelot Brown
Lancelot Brown, byname Capability Brown, (baptized Aug. 30, 1716, Kirkharle, Northumberland, Eng.—died Feb. 6, 1783, London), the foremost English master of garden design, whose works were characterized by their natural, unplanned appearance.
Brown was born in Kirkharle, in northern England, likely in 1716. He might have been born the previous year, but the only existing records are those documenting his baptism in 1716. Beginning work as a gardener’s boy in Northumberland, in 1742 Brown obtained a post at Stowe, Buckinghamshire, one of the most talked of gardens of the day. His duties included showing the grounds to visitors, thus giving him a chance to make himself known to the nobility who were to be his clients. For some years he worked at Stowe under the broad direction of the landscape architect William Kent. After Kent’s death, he set up as a garden designer and by 1753 was the leading “improver of grounds” in England. His first achievement was a lake at Wakefield Lodge for the Duke of Grafton; it was so successful that he was summoned to alter the park of the famous Blenheim Palace at Woodstock. There he created the masterly lakes beside the architect John Vanbrugh’s bridge and almost totally erased the earlier geometric plantations. His practice led him into architecture in order to ensure the unity of his designs, and he became a competent architect in the classical mode of the day.
The means that Brown used were natural: he employed neither carved stone nor architectural shapes but limited himself to turf; mirrors of still water; a few species of trees used singly, in clumps, or in loose belts; and the undulations of the ground. With these he made simple harmonious patterns without obvious symmetry. These elements are well illustrated in the park and lake at Petworth House in West Sussex, which Brown landscaped over the years from about 1751 to 1757.
Brown’s style is often thought of as the antithesis of the style of André Le Nôtre, designer of the splendid formal gardens of Versailles, France, because Brown made use of the nature of the ground whereas Le Nôtre imposed an architectural pattern on nature. Nevertheless, they had in common an eye for proportion and a noble sense of scale, and both linked their creations with the outside world. Brown’s designs were adapted to the society he served, which was totally unlike the authoritarian regime of the 17th-century monarchies. English gentlemen did not maintain courts; they lived privately on their country estates and liked to see their domains from their windows and to ride about them. Brown’s nickname arose from his habit of saying that a place had “capabilities.” By the time he died, he was rich and honoured and had “improved” a greater acreage of ground than any landscape architect had done before.
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b60df6fa6182335fb76304f5e42ecdec | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lancelot-Thomas-Hogben | Lancelot Thomas Hogben | Lancelot Thomas Hogben
Lancelot Thomas Hogben, (born December 9, 1895, Portsmouth, England—died August 22, 1975), English zoologist, geneticist, medical statistician, and linguist, known especially for his many contributions to the study of social biology.
Hogben’s birth was premature by two months, an event that convinced his evangelical family that he should become a medical missionary after his “miracle” survival. (He later described himself as the son of “poor but intellectually dishonest parents.”) In 1905 the Hogben family moved to London, where Lancelot attended public schools and, at age 17, won a scholarship for disadvantaged youths to attend Trinity College, Cambridge. (In later years, Hogben would defend such programs against the British eugenicists, such as Leonard Darwin, son of Charles Darwin and president of the 1912 First International Congress of Eugenics, who publicly claimed that the poor were genetically inferior and that spending for their education was a waste of public funds.) By the time Hogben took up his scholarship in 1913, he had graduated from the University of London. At Cambridge, Hogben became a member of the socialist Fabian Society and was generally uncomfortable with the typical upper-class students at the school.
By the time World War I began in 1914, Hogben had fulfilled all the requirements for a science degree with the exception of residency, which could be fulfilled through military service. At first he volunteered for noncombat duty with a Quaker organization, but, when military conscription was enacted in 1916, Hogben was inspired by the public pacifist statements of mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell and refused further service on conscientious grounds. Hogben was given a three-month prison sentence after he refused to submit to a medical examination or to make an appeal based on religious convictions.
After his discharge from prison, Hogben worked as a journalist until he obtained a position in 1917 as a lecturer in zoology at Birbeck College, University of London. At that time he met and soon married Enid Charles, a mathematician, feminist, socialist, and organizer for the trade union movement. In 1918 Hogben accepted a position at Imperial College in London, where he furthered his mathematical education and published a series of papers on cytology that earned him a D.Sc. (Doctor of Science, an advanced postdoctoral degree) from the University of London in 1921.
Hogben’s cytology research led him to accept an offer to join the Animal Breeding Research Laboratory in Edinburgh, Scotland. Once there, he cofounded (with J.B.S. Haldane, Julian Huxley, and F.A.E. Crew) the Journal of Experimental Biology and the Society for Experimental Biology, with financial backing from novelist H.G. Wells. In 1925 Hogben accepted a professorship in medical zoology at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His experience with teaching students scientific names led to an interest in linguistics and to his creation of an artificial language, Interglossa. (In 1943 Hogben edited The Loom of Language, by Frederick Bodmer, which includes a description of Interglossa.) In 1927 Hogben accepted a chair in zoology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. His lectures at the school led to his publication of Principles of Evolutionary Biology (1927). Off campus, Hogben gave biology lectures to school teachers and out of these experiences wrote Mathematics for the Millions (1936) and Science for the Citizen (1938) in order to disseminate fundamental mathematical and scientific ideas to a broader audience. Always active for social causes, in Dangerous Thoughts (1939) he wrote of his resistance to the racist (pre-apartheid) policies in South Africa, where he admitted “coloured” students to his classes and home. Hogben’s discomfort with the racism in South Africa led him to accept a position in 1930 at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, which had just created a new chair in social biology. During the 1930s Hogben helped find academic positions for many Jews seeking to escape persecution in Germany. Dangerous Thoughts also includes a scathing indictment of his homeland:
In 1936 Hogben was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 1937 he became the Regius Professor of Natural History at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. In 1940 Hogben was in Norway lecturing on the absurdities of the racist ideology of the Nazi Party when Germany invaded the country. Unable to return directly to Great Britain, he traveled across the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian Railroad, by ship to Japan, and finally by ship across the Pacific to reach San Francisco. He taught for one semester at the University of Wisconsin, where one of his sons was enrolled, before returning to Aberdeen in 1941. In 1942 he accepted a position as a professor of zoology at the University of Birmingham. In 1943, following his recovery from thyroid surgery, Hogben worked for Crew on medical statistics related to the treatment of soldiers. Hogben’s demonstration that indiscriminate use of antibiotics was leading to resistant strains induced the British Medical Association to found the British Journal of Social Medicine, with Hogben as the first editor, in order to spread the news.
In 1947 Hogben’s wife finally returned from Canada, where she had stayed throughout the war. The couple had trouble reuniting, however; they soon separated and then divorced in 1957 so that Hogben could marry Sarah Evans, a Welsh schoolteacher and political activist. Hogben retired from Birmingham in 1961, but he came out of retirement in 1963 at the invitation of Cheddi Jagan, premier of British Guiana (now Guyana), to become the vice chancellor of a new University of Guiana. He helped raise funds for the new school before retiring again in 1964. After retiring to Wales, Hogben continued his linguistic research, publishing The Vocabulary of Science (1969), before his health began to deteriorate.
Hogben’s other publications include A Short Life of Alfred Russel Wallace (1918), Exiles of the Snow, and Other Poems (1918), Comparative Physiology (1926), Principles of Animal Biology (1940), An Introduction to Mathematical Genetics (1946), and Mathematics in the Making (1961). His autobiography, Lancelot Hogben: Scientific Humanist (1998), was edited and published posthumously by his son Adrian Hogben and daughter-in-law Anne Hogben. A chapter from Mathematics for the Millions, “Mathematics, the Mirror of Civilization,” is included in Encyclopædia Britannica’s Gateway to the Great Books (1963).
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12ce396ee7941626c17f346a8ab43c81 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lanfranc | Lanfranc | Lanfranc
Lanfranc, (born c. 1005, Pavia, Lombardy—died May 28, 1089, Canterbury, Kent, Eng.), Italian Benedictine who, as archbishop of Canterbury (1070–89) and trusted counsellor of William the Conqueror, was largely responsible for the excellent church–state relations of William’s reign after the Norman Conquest of England.
Originally a lawyer, Lanfranc won a reputation as a teacher at a school he established at Avranches, Normandy (1039–42). He then entered the Benedictine monastery at Bec, where, after three years of seclusion, he became prior and resumed teaching. He was at first an opponent of the marriage of William of Normandy to Matilda of Flanders (1053), but he and William were later reconciled and thereafter maintained a relationship of mutual respect. William made Lanfranc first abbot of St. Stephen’s at Caen (c. 1063) and after the Conquest nominated him to the see of Canterbury as soon as the incumbent, Stigand, was deposed.
Lanfranc embarked upon a successful reform and reorganization of the English Church. Although a firm supporter of papal sovereignty, he assisted William in maintaining the fullest possible independence for the English Church. At the same time he protected the church from royal and other secular influence. His concern for the separate responsibilities and prerogatives of state and church shaped a memorable ordinance that divided the ecclesiastical from the secular courts (c. 1076). His policy, in accord with that of the King, was to replace native English bishops with Normans, but he remained on friendly terms with Wulfstan of Worcester, the last of the Anglo-Saxon prelates. Perhaps his greatest service to the King was his detection in 1075 of the conspiracy formed against him by the earls of Norfolk and Hereford. On the death of the Conqueror in 1087, Lanfranc secured the succession for William II Rufus, inducing the English militia to support him against the partisans of his elder brother, Robert II Curthose, Duke of Normandy.
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6ea56627fecb508264b40e18cf0c3a6a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laozi | Laozi | Laozi
Laozi, (Chinese: “Master Lao” or “Old Master”) original name (Wade-Giles) Li Er, deified as Lao Jun, Tai Shang Lao-Jun, or Tai Shang Xuanyuan Huangdi, also called Lao Dun or Lao Dan, (flourished 6th century bce, China), the first philosopher of Chinese Daoism and the alleged author of the Daodejing, a primary Daoist writing. Modern scholars discount the possibility that the Daodejing was written by only one person but readily acknowledge the influence of Daoism on the development of Buddhism. Laozi is venerated as a philosopher by Confucians and as a saint or god in popular religion and was worshipped as an imperial ancestor during the Tang dynasty (618–907). (See also Daoism.)
Despite his historical importance, Laozi remains an obscure figure. The principal source of information about his life is a biography in the Shiji (“Records of the Historian”) by Sima Qian. This historian, who wrote in about 100 bce, had little solid information concerning the philosopher. He says that Laozi was a native of Quren, a village in the district of Hu in the state of Chu, which corresponds to the modern Luyi in the eastern part of Henan province. His family name was Li, his proper name Er, his appellation Dan. He was appointed to the office of shi at the royal court of the Zhou dynasty (c. 1046–256 bce). Shi today means “historian,” but in ancient China the shi were scholars specializing in matters such as astrology and divination and were in charge of sacred books.
After noting the civil status of Laozi, the historian proceeds to relate a celebrated but questionable meeting of the old Daoist with the younger Confucius (551–479 bce). The story has been much discussed by the scholars; it is mentioned elsewhere, but the sources are so inconsistent and contradictory that the meeting seems a mere legend. During the supposed interview, Laozi blamed Confucius for his pride and ambition, and Confucius was so impressed with Laozi that he compared him to a dragon that rises to the sky, riding on the winds and clouds.
No less legendary is a voyage of Laozi to the west. Realizing that the Zhou dynasty was on the decline, the philosopher departed and came to the Xiangu pass, which was the entrance to the state of Qin. Yinxi, the legendary guardian of the pass (guanling), begged him to write a book for him. Thereupon, Laozi wrote a book in two sections of 5,000 characters, in which he set down his ideas about the Dao (literally “Way”) and the de (its “virtue”): the Daodejing. Then he left, and “nobody knows what has become of him,” says Sima Qian.
After the account of the journey of Laozi and of the redaction of the book, Sima Qian alludes to other persons with whom Laozi was sometimes identified. One was Lao Laizi, a Daoist contemporary of Confucius; another was a great astrologer named Dan. Sima Qian adds, “Maybe Laozi has lived one hundred and fifty years, some say more than two hundred years.” Since the ancient Chinese believed that superior men could live very long, it is natural that the Daoists credited their master with an uncommon longevity, but this is perhaps a rather late tradition because Zhuangzi, the Daoist sage of the 4th century bce, still speaks of the death of Laozi without emphasizing an unusual longevity.
To explain why the life of Laozi is so shrouded in obscurity, Sima Qian says that he was a gentleman recluse whose doctrine consisted in nonaction, the cultivation of a state of inner calm, and purity of mind. Indeed, throughout the whole history of China, there have always been recluses who shunned worldly life. The author (or authors) of the Daodejing was probably a person of this kind who left no trace of his life.
The question of whether there was a historical Laozi has been raised by many scholars, but it is rather an idle one. The Daodejing, as we have it, cannot be the work of a single author; some of its sayings may date from the time of Confucius; others are certainly later; and a version of the text has been recovered in an archaeological find at Guodian that dates to before 300 bce. Owing to these facts, some scholars have assigned the authorship of the Daodejing to the astrologer Dan; while others, giving credit to a genealogy of the descendants of the philosopher, which is related in the biography by Sima Qian, try to place the life of Lao Dan at the end of the 4th century bce. But this genealogy can hardly be considered as historical. It proves only that at the time of Sima Qian a certain Li family (see above) pretended to be descended from the Daoist sage; it does not give a basis for ascertaining the existence of the latter. The name Laozi seems to represent a certain type of sage rather than an individual.
Beyond the biography in the Shiji and sporadic mentions in other old books, several hagiographies were written from the 2nd century ce onward. These are interesting for the history of the formation of religious Daoism. During the Eastern, or Later, Han dynasty (25–220 ce), Laozi had already become a mythical figure who was worshipped by the people and occasionally by an emperor. Later, in religious circles, he became the Lord Lao (Lao Jun), revealer of sacred texts and saviour of mankind. There were several stories about his birth, one of which was influenced by the legend of the miraculous birth of Buddha. Laozi’s mother is said to have borne him 72 years in her womb and he to have entered the world through her left flank. One legend gives an explanation of his family name, Li: the baby came to light at the foot of a plum tree (li) and decided that li (“plum”) should be his surname. Two legends were particularly important in the creed of the Daoists. According to the first, the Lao Jun was believed to have adopted different personalities throughout history and to have come down to the earth several times to instruct the rulers in the Daoist doctrine. The second legend developed from the story of Laozi’s journey to the west. In this account the Buddha was thought to be none other than Laozi himself. During the 3rd century ce an apocryphal book was fabricated on this theme with a view to combating Buddhist propaganda. This book, the Laozi huhuajing (“Laozi’s Conversion of the Barbarians”), in which Buddhism was presented as an inferior kind of Daoism, was often condemned by the Chinese imperial authorities.
Laozi has never ceased to be generally respected in all circles in China. To the Confucians he was a venerated philosopher; to the people he was a saint or a god; and to the Daoists he was an emanation of the Dao and one of their greatest divinities.
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a6b319d27be82aad16455981b22994f4 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larisa-Semyonovna-Latynina | Larisa Semyonovna Latynina | Larisa Semyonovna Latynina
Larisa Semyonovna Latynina, (born December 27, 1934, Kherson, Ukraine, U.S.S.R.), Soviet gymnast who was the first woman athlete to win nine Olympic gold medals and was one of the most decorated competitors in the history of the Games.
At the 1956 Games in Melbourne, Australia, Latynina, who was educated at the Kiev State Institute of Physical Culture, won the women’s competition in the combined exercises, the vault, and the floor exercise (in which she tied for first place). At the 1960 Olympics in Rome she again placed first in the combined and the floor exercise, and in Tokyo in 1964 she captured her third consecutive gold medal in the floor exercise.
Latynina also won gold medals as a member of the Soviet Union’s six-member women’s gymnastics team in 1956, 1960, and 1964. In addition, she was awarded five silver and four bronze medals in those three Games. Her record of 18 career Olympic medals stood until 2012, when it was surpassed by American swimmer Michael Phelps. After she retired from competition, Latynina was a teacher and national senior coach and was active in the planning of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
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35c221128cc4d8b5a0227fdf97334851 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larry-Adler | Larry Adler | Larry Adler
Larry Adler, byname of Lawrence Cecil Adler, (born February 10, 1914, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—died August 7, 2001, London, England), American harmonica player generally considered to be responsible for the elevation of the mouth organ to concert status in the world of classical music.
Adler’s family was not particularly musical, but their observance of Orthodox Judaism provided access to religious music. By age 10 Adler was the youngest cantor in Baltimore, although unhappy in school. By feigning a nervous breakdown, he convinced his parents to let him enroll in the Peabody Conservatory of Music, but he was soon dismissed as untalented. The rebuff made him even more determined. At age 11, without his parents’ consent, Adler ordered a piano for their home, which he then persuaded them to accept. He also began playing the mouth organ. Unable to read music, he listened assiduously, buying records and concert tickets with money earned by selling magazines.
In 1927 Adler won the Maryland National Harmonica Championship, playing a Beethoven minuet. The following year in New York City he accompanied early motion-picture cartoons and performed vaudeville routines dressed as a vagabond. He had played in both musicals and motion pictures before he was invited to play with an orchestra. His solo debut took place in 1939 with the symphony orchestra of Sydney, Australia. Adler did not learn to read music until 1940, when the French composer Jean Berger wrote a harmonica concerto for him. Ralph Vaughan Williams, Darius Milhaud, and others also wrote musical scores for Adler. Accused of communist sympathies and blacklisted during the ascendancy of U.S. Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy, Adler was unable to find work and took up residence in England.
Adler wrote musical scores for motion pictures and television and also wrote several books, including How I Play (1937) and Larry Adler’s Own Arrangements (1960). His autobiography, It Ain’t Necessarily So, was published in 1987.
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eb44ce8ce0e359b1912c8a33d8bd424b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larry-Csonka | Larry Csonka | Larry Csonka
Larry Csonka, byname of Lawrence Richard Csonka, (born Dec. 25, 1946, Stow, Ohio, U.S.), American gridiron football player who won two Super Bowls (1973, 1974) playing for the Miami Dolphins of the National Football League (NFL) and was named Most Valuable Player of Super Bowl VIII.
Csonka was an All-American fullback at Syracuse University, where he was noted for his straight-ahead power. He was chosen by the Dolphins with the eighth selection of the 1968 NFL draft, and he was immediately thrust into the team’s starting lineup. In each of three consecutive years (1971–73) he rushed for more than 1,000 yards, and in 1972 he was a mainstay in the Dolphin’s perfect 17–0 season. After moving to the short-lived World Football League in 1975, Csonka returned to the NFL to play for the New York Giants from 1976 to 1978 before finishing his career with the Dolphins in 1979. Csonka was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1987.
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70daa8fc3a78390b70db4564d1a7d8a3 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larry-Fine | Larry Fine | Larry Fine
May 4, 1975, Los Angeles), Larry Fine (original name Louis Feinberg; b. October 5, 1902, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania—d. January 24, 1975, Woodland Hills, California), Curly Howard (original name Jerome Horwitz; b. October 22, 1903, New York City—d. January 18, 1952, San Gabriel, California), Joe Besser (b. August 12, 1907, St. Louis,…
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c7ca5282b8d699b52d69815660796629 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larry-McMurtry | Larry McMurtry | Larry McMurtry
Larry McMurtry, in full Larry Jeff McMurtry, (born June 3, 1936, Wichita Falls, Texas, U.S.), prolific American writer noted for his novels set on the frontier, in contemporary small towns, and in increasingly urbanized and industrial areas of Texas.
McMurtry was educated at North Texas State College (now University; B.A., 1958) and Rice University (M.A., 1960). He was an instructor at Texas Christian University (1961–62), a lecturer in English and creative writing at Rice University (1963–69), and a visiting professor at George Mason College (1970) and American University (1970–71). In 1971 McMurtry opened a shop specializing in rare books in Washington, D.C. He also opened a bookstore in his hometown of Archer City, Texas, in 1988 and began the process of remaking the town into a “book town,” eventually requiring four storefronts to house all the volumes he had added. In 1999 he purchased the inventory of the last large independent bookseller in Fort Worth, Texas. That purchase added some 70,000 titles to McMurtry’s store. However, in 2012 he held a massive auction that sold off some 300,000 titles.
McMurtry’s first novel, Horseman, Pass By (1961; filmed as Hud, 1963), is set in the Texas ranching country. The isolation and claustrophobia of small-town life are examined in The Last Picture Show (1966; film 1971); McMurtry received an Academy Award for the screenplay. The novel was the first in a series that he continued with Texasville (1987), Duane’s Depressed (1999), When the Light Goes (2007), and Rhino Ranch (2009). McMurtry’s frontier epic, Lonesome Dove (1985; television miniseries 1989), won a Pulitzer Prize in 1986. A sequel, Streets of Laredo, appeared in 1993; Dead Man’s Walk (1995) and Comanche Moon (1997) are prequels. Urban Houstonians are featured in Moving On (1970), All My Friends Are Going to Be Strangers (1972), and Terms of Endearment (1975; film 1983).
McMurtry’s other novels include Leaving Cheyenne (1963; filmed as Lovin’ Molly, 1974), Cadillac Jack (1982), The Desert Rose (1983), Buffalo Girls (1990; television miniseries 1995), The Evening Star (1992; film 1996), Zeke and Ned (1997), Sin Killer (2002), Loop Group (2004), and The Last Kind Words Saloon (2014). With Diana Ossana he won an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay for Brokeback Mountain (2005), based on E. Annie Proulx’s short story of the same name.
McMurtry wrote prolifically on nonfictional subjects as well. In a Narrow Grave: Essays on Texas (1968) was a collection of ruminations on the unique character and evolving demography of his home state. Sacagawea’s Nickname: Essays on the American West (2001) contained a broad range of meditations on Western figures and concepts. He chronicled some of the savage episodes that occurred during the period of American Western expansion in Oh What a Slaughter: Massacres in the American West, 1846–1890 (2005). The Colonel and Little Missie: Buffalo Bill, Annie Oakley, and the Beginnings of Superstardom in America (2005) traced the history of William F. Cody’s Wild West show. McMurtry also wrote the biographies Crazy Horse (1999), about the Sioux chief Crazy Horse, and Custer (2012), about ill-fated Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.
McMurtry related aspects of his own life in Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen: Reflections on Sixty and Beyond (1999), Books: A Memoir (2008), Roads: Driving America’s Great Highways (2000), Paradise (2002), Literary Life: A Second Memoir (2009), and Hollywood: A Third Memoir (2010).
He was awarded the National Humanities Medal by U.S. Pres. Barack Obama in 2015.
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54a2b9440e7bca33a61e8d680c7d57ef | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Larry-Wall | Larry Wall | Larry Wall
…1987 American programmer and linguist Larry Wall first released Perl 1.0 for computers running the UNIX operating system. This first version was an intuitive, easily coded language for scanning, extracting, and printing information from text files; in addition, Perl could handle many system management tasks. Perl, which has sometimes been…
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2778123ab2703f7e53a1e812ff5a3392 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lars-Johan-Wictor-Gyllensten | Lars Gyllensten | Lars Gyllensten
Lars Gyllensten, in full Lars Johan Wictor Gyllensten, (born Nov. 12, 1921, Stockholm, Swed.—died May 25, 2006, Solna), Swedish intellectual, professor of histology, poet, and prolific philosophical novelist.
Gyllensten was reared and educated in Stockholm. He earned a medical degree (1953) at Karolinska Institute, where he later served as a professor of medicine (1955–73). In 1966 he was elected to the Swedish Academy, an organization that awards various literary honours, including the Nobel Prize for Literature. Two years later he was appointed to the Nobel Committee for Literature, and in 1977 he was made permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy. In 1989, however, he chose to become an inactive member of the academy after it failed to protest Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s call for the death of Salman Rushdie, whose Satanic Verses (1988) had been denounced as blasphemous by Muslims. Gyllensten also served as chairman (1987–93) of the Board of the Nobel Foundation.
Gyllensten’s principal theme in his novels is the subjective and relative nature of man’s perception of truth. He reaches the conclusion that absolute skepticism is the necessary basis for experience and knowledge. This theme is developed in Barnabok (1952; “Children’s Book”) against the background of a gradually dissolving marriage. In its sequel, Senilia (1956), the aging process has a similar function in relation to its main character, but this time the inner monologue finds a positive resolution. Sokrates död (1960; “The Death of Socrates”) is a historical novel set in 5th-century-bc Athens. In Lotus i Hades (1966; “Lotus in Hades”) a religious, mystical solution emerges, as in Diarium spirituale (1968; “Spiritual Diary”) and Grottan i öknen (1973; “The Cave in the Desert”). He explores an ideologically bankrupt world in such novels as Moderna myter (1949; “Modern Myths”) and Kains memoarer (1963; The Testament of Cain, 1967).
Other works by Gyllensten include Det blå skeppet (1950; “The Blue Ship”), Carnivora (1953), Senatorn (1958; “The Senator”), Baklängesminnen (1978; “Memories in Reverse”), and Ljuset ur skuggornas värld (1995; “The Light from the World of Shadows”). He also wrote more than 40 monographs on embryology. His memoir, Minnen, bara minnen (“Memories, Only Memories”), was published in 2000.
Gyllensten received a number of honours. The Swedish Foundation for the Promotion of Literature gave him its annual award in 1972, and three years later he was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
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cc715d499d44c6714ce929727a154671 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lars-Onsager | Lars Onsager | Lars Onsager
Lars Onsager, (born Nov. 27, 1903, Kristiania [now Oslo], Nor.—died Oct. 5, 1976, Coral Gables, Fla., U.S.), Norwegian-born American chemist whose development of a general theory of irreversible chemical processes gained him the 1968 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.
His early work in statistical mechanics attracted the attention of the Dutch chemist Peter Debye, under whose direction Onsager studied at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zürich (1926–28). He then went to the United States and taught at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and Brown University, Providence, R.I. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1935. He had joined the faculty of Yale in 1933 and became professor of theoretical chemistry there in 1945.
Onsager’s first achievement was to modify (1925) the Debye-Hückel theory of electrolytic dissociation, which describes the motions of ions in solution, to take into account Brownian movement. He received the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work in nonequilibrium thermodynamics, which applied the laws of thermodynamics to systems that are not in equilibrium—i.e., to systems in which differences in temperature, pressure, or other factors exist. Onsager also was able to formulate a general mathematical expression about the behaviour of nonreversible chemical processes that has been described as the “fourth law of thermodynamics.”
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e15844f16a4033315d324d5db90aa8b1 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lars-Porsena | Lars Porsena | Lars Porsena
…conquest by the Etruscan king Lars Porsena. According to the legend, Mucius volunteered to assassinate Porsena, who was besieging Rome, but killed his victim’s attendant by mistake. Brought before the Etruscan royal tribunal, he declared that he was one of 300 noble youths who had sworn to take the king’s…
…the Etruscan city of Clusium, Lars Porsenna. The city was gallantly defended by Horatius Cocles, who sacrificed his life in defense of the bridge across the Tiber, and Mucius Scaevola, who attempted to assassinate Porsenna in his own camp. When arrested before accomplishing the deed, he demonstrated his courage by…
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d60101b146d584ee0b14d45dcf18bc90 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lars-Sonck | Lars Sonck | Lars Sonck
…the Helsinki railway station, and Lars Sonck, whose churches in Helsinki and Tampere are particularly notable. Finnish women were also early innovators as architects, including Wiwi Lönn and Signe Hornborg, the latter one of the first formally trained female architects in the world.
In Finland, Lars Sonck worked in an Arts and Crafts Gothic style reminiscent of the work of the American Henry Hobson Richardson—e.g., his Tampere Cathedral (1902–07) and Telephone Exchange, Helsinki (1905).
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68be448b99b0ef60a8ff1e4d38d92b20 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lars-Wivallius | Lars Wivallius | Lars Wivallius
Lars Wivallius, (born 1605, Wivalla, Sweden—died April 6, 1669, Stockholm), Swedish poet and adventurer, whose lyrics show a feeling for the beauties of nature new to Swedish poetry in his time.
Wivallius studied at Uppsala and in 1625 left Sweden to travel in Germany, France, Italy, and England. Frequently posing as a nobleman, he swindled his way across Europe and was imprisoned for a time in Nürnberg, Germany. Back in Sweden (1629), or rather the then-Danish border province of Skåne, he succeeded by false pretenses in marrying the daughter of a nobleman but was found out. He escaped but was arrested in Stockholm, where, in 1634, he was sentenced and deported to Kajaneborg, northern Finland, where he spent seven years of severe hardship. Subsequently he became an advocate in Stockholm.
Though unscrupulous and antisocial, Wivallius was full of gaiety in his youth. Of his many ballads, written mainly in prison, the best are those inspired by longing for freedom (for example, “Ack libertas, tu ädla tingh,” which was written about 1632 and translates as “Ah, Liberty, Thou Noble Thing”) and love of nature (most notably the majestic “Klagovisa över denna torra och kalla vår” [1642; “Dirge over This Dry and Cold Spring”], in which the poet laments the season that he encountered upon his release from Kajaneborg).
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44fa9cd2d07e91750b7662414f858a93 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lascelles-Abercrombie | Lascelles Abercrombie | Lascelles Abercrombie
Lascelles Abercrombie, (born Jan. 9, 1881, Ashton upon Mersey, Cheshire, Eng.—died Oct. 27, 1938, London), poet and critic who was associated with Georgian poetry.
He was educated at Malvern College, Worcestershire, and Owens College, Manchester, after which he became a journalist and began to write poetry. His first book, Interludes and Poems (1908), was followed by Mary and the Bramble (1910), a dramatic poem—Deborah—and Emblems of Love (1912), and the prose work Speculative Dialogues (1913). All were marked by lyric power, lucidity, love of natural beauty, and mysticism.
After World War I, in which he served as a munitions examiner, Abercrombie was appointed to the first lectureship in poetry at the University of Liverpool. As professor of English literature at Leeds (1922–29) and London (1929–35) and as reader in English literature at the University of Oxford (1935–38), he showed keen critical and philosophical powers. His critical works include An Essay Towards a Theory of Art (1922) and Poetry, Its Music and Meaning (1932). Collected Poems (1930) was followed by his most mature poetic work, The Sale of St. Thomas (1931), a poetic drama.
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a41a059a66a5179f2fcf240462a0e872 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lasgush-Poradeci | Lasgush Poradeci | Lasgush Poradeci
…Albanian literature is the poet Lasgush Poradeci (pseudonym of Llazar Gusho, of which Lasgush is a contraction). Breaking with tradition and conventions, he introduced a new genre with his lyrical poetry, which is tinged with mystical overtones. Writers in post-World War II Albania laboured under state-imposed guidelines summed up by…
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6699741cd04fd472bea1fab5c090c1c6 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laszlo-Bardossy | László Bárdossy | László Bárdossy
László Bárdossy, (born Dec. 10, 1890, Szombathely, Hung.—died Jan. 10, 1946, Budapest), Hungarian politician who played a key role in bringing his country into World War II as an ally of Germany.
After completing his legal studies in 1913, Bárdossy entered the Hungarian civil service. In 1924 he became director of the press department of the Foreign Ministry; in 1930 he was appointed secretary at the embassy in London; and in 1934 he was made ambassador to Romania. Hungary’s head of state, Admiral Miklós Horthy, made him foreign minister early in 1941. In December 1940 Hungary had concluded a treaty of “eternal friendship” with Yugoslavia. Adolf Hitler’s demand for Hungarian help in an invasion of Yugoslavia and the support he enjoyed in Hungarian political circles drove the prime minister, Pál, Gróf (count) Teleki, to suicide in April 1941. His successor was Bárdossy.
In the hope of regaining the Délvidék (a former Hungarian territory that had become part of Yugoslavia after the Treaty of Trianon [1920]), Bárdossy allowed German troops to cross Hungary. After Croatia seceded from Yugoslavia, Bárdossy, with Horthy’s agreement, formed an alliance with Germany and joined its attack on Yugoslavia. On June 22 Germany attacked the Soviet Union. Four days later aircraft with Soviet insignia bombed the town of Kassa (Košice), reannexed from Slovakia by Hungary after the first Vienna Deliberation (1939). The Soviet government denied any involvement, and the circumstances of this incident remain unclear; however, using it as a pretext, on June 27 Bárdossy declared war on the Soviet Union. On December 11 Hungary also declared war on the United States. At the beginning of 1942 Bárdossy gave orders for the Second Hungarian Army to be sent to the Russian front. Bárdossy also promulgated the notorious Third Jewish Law, which banned marriages between Christians and Jews.
Bárdossy’s view that the Axis powers would win the war was not shared by Horthy, who dismissed him in March 1942. Bárdossy then continued his pro-German politics as president of the United Commercial League. On Nov. 13, 1945, a People’s Court in Budapest convicted him of war crimes, for which he was executed.
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c57e58919efb0f1ad77b48752d05c9ce | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laszlo-Moholy-Nagy | László Moholy-Nagy | László Moholy-Nagy
László Moholy-Nagy, (born July 20, 1895, Bácsborsód, Hungary—died November 24, 1946, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.), Hungarian-born American painter, sculptor, photographer, designer, theorist, and art teacher, whose vision of a nonrepresentational art consisting of pure visual fundamentals—colour, texture, light, and equilibrium of forms—was immensely influential in both the fine and applied arts in the mid-20th century. He is also known for his original approach to art education.
Moholy-Nagy studied law in Budapest and served in World War I. He began to paint in 1917. After joining the poetry circle of Endre Ady, he published Cubist-influenced woodcuts in the Hungarian avant-garde journal Ma (“Today”). In 1921 he went to Berlin, where from 1923 to 1929 he headed the metal workshop of the famous avant-garde school of design known as the Bauhaus. With the German architect Walter Gropius, director of the Bauhaus from 1919 to 1928, Moholy-Nagy edited the 14 publications known as the Bauhausbook series. During his Bauhaus years Moholy-Nagy developed the theories of art education for which he is known. He created a widely accepted curriculum that focused on developing students’ natural visual gifts instead of teaching them specialized skills. His dictum was: “Everybody is talented.” At the Bauhaus itself, fine-arts training was abolished in favour of “designing the whole man.”
As a painter and photographer Moholy-Nagy worked predominantly with light. He experimented with photograms, images composed by placing objects directly on light-sensitive paper, and he constructed “light-space modulators,” oil paintings on transparent or polished surfaces that included mobile light effects.
After he left the Bauhaus in 1929, Moholy-Nagy became involved in stage design and filmmaking. Fleeing from Nazi Germany in 1934, he went to Amsterdam and London, and in 1937 he moved to Chicago to organize the New Bauhaus (later the Institute of Design of the Illinois Institute of Technology), the first American school based on the Bauhaus program.
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80ca6e0a33bb28104ec41486d0b38fe5 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laura-de-Force-Gordon | Laura de Force Gordon | Laura de Force Gordon
Laura de Force Gordon, née Laura de Force, (born Aug. 17, 1838, North East, Pa., U.S.—died April 5, 1907, Lodi, Calif.), American lawyer, editor, and reformer, one of the first women in the American West to speak and campaign for women’s rights, who also pioneered in professions normally reserved for men.
Laura de Force attended local schools in her hometown. In 1862 she married Charles H. Gordon (later divorced). They lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, during the American Civil War and traveled west to Nevada in 1867. In 1870 they settled in Mokelumne (later Lodi), California.
Laura Gordon had for some years given occasional public lectures, and the trip west by wagon shortly became one of her topics. In February 1868 she delivered in San Francisco a call for equal rights for women, one of the first such public appeals to be made in the West. She lectured on woman suffrage throughout the region and in 1870 contributed materially to the founding of the California Woman Suffrage Society, serving as president in 1877 and again from 1884 to 1894. In 1871 she was nominated for the state Senate by her local Independence Party.
In 1873 Gordon became editor of the woman’s department of the Narrow Gauge, a semiweekly paper published in Stockton, California. Later, in September 1873, she began publishing and editing the Stockton Weekly Leader. Her editorial ability—and the novelty of having a woman editor—made the paper an immediate success, and in May 1874 it became a daily. The following year she moved the paper to Sacramento, where it appeared as the Weekly Leader; she sold it a year later. From 1875 to 1878 she edited the Oakland Daily Democrat. In 1877 she published The Great Geysers of California and How to Reach Them.
While covering the 1877–78 session of the state legislature for her paper and for the Sacramento Bee, Gordon lobbied effectively on behalf of a bill drafted by Clara S. Foltz that would admit women to the practice of law in California. Later in 1878 she applied for admission to the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco, but she and Foltz, who also had applied, were denied admission, whereupon they instituted a suit against the school. They argued their case jointly in district court and in the fall of 1879 before the state Supreme Court and won. Gordon had meanwhile been reading law privately, and in December 1879 she and Foltz were the second and third women admitted to the California bar. Gordon practiced in San Francisco for five years and then moved to Stockton. She won an impressive reputation at the bar, notably—and remarkably—as a criminal lawyer; a number of her successful defenses in murder cases were widely discussed. In February 1885 she was admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court.
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bd463e2394430f2400cf2d4239df273e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laura-Gilpin | Laura Gilpin | Laura Gilpin
Laura Gilpin, (born April 22, 1891, Colorado Springs, Colo., U.S.—died Nov. 30, 1979, Santa Fe, N.M.), American photographer noted for her images of the landscape and native peoples of the American Southwest.
On the advice of photographer Gertrude Käsebier, Gilpin went to New York City in 1916 to study at the Clarence H. White School of Photography (1916–18). In her early work Gilpin practiced the Pictorialist style, which imitates the effects of painting. Returning to Colorado in 1922, she turned to commercial work, mainly architectural photography and portraiture. She also published guidebooks, providing both images and text. From 1942 to 1945 she worked as the chief photographer for Boeing Airlines in Wichita, Kan., and from 1946 to 1968 she photographed the Navajo people, documenting their way of life in her eloquent platinum (and sometimes silver) prints. This project culminated in the publication of The Enduring Navaho (1968). Gilpin next traveled to New Mexico, where she photographed Pueblo Indians and the Canyon de Chelly region, near Santa Fe. Among her books of photographs are The Pueblos (1941), Temples in Yucatan (1948), and The Rio Grande (1949).
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2873715de841b3f51195857706d90058 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurence-E-Myers | Laurence E. Myers | Laurence E. Myers
Laurence E. Myers, byname Lon Myers, (born Feb. 16, 1858, Richmond, Va., U.S.—died Feb. 15, 1899), American all-around runner who set records in every race from the 50-yard dash to the mile run. He competed for the Manhattan Athletic Club.
In 1880 Myers was Amateur Athletic Union champion in the 100-yard, 220-yard, 440-yard, and 880-yard races, and he repeated for all but the last in 1881. In 1884 he won the 220-yard, 440-yard, and 880-yard championships. His best times were: 100-yard race, 10 sec; 220-yard race, 22.6 sec; 440-yard race, 48.6 sec; 880-yard race, 1 min 55.4 sec; and 1-mile race, 4 min 27.6 sec. He turned professional in 1885.
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925ca9568246689ddf8a59031fd633b8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurence-Minot | Laurence Minot | Laurence Minot
Laurence Minot, (flourished 1333–52), English author of 11 battle songs, preserved in an early 15th-century manuscript, first published by the antiquarian Joseph Ritson in 1795 as Poems on Interesting Events in the Reign of King Edward III. Minot’s poems were evidently written contemporaneously with the events they describe; the first celebrates the English triumph over the Scots at Halidon Hill (1333) and the last the capture of the French fiefdom Guines (1352). Nothing is known of Minot’s life, but he probably accompanied Edward on some of his campaigns. The poems are vigorously, if somewhat crudely, written in heavily alliterated rhyming verse.
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c5b8c7e882070ad4ffdfc8c7f0d97e53 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurence-Sheriff | Laurence Sheriff | Laurence Sheriff
…for boys in 1567 by Laurence Sheriff, a local resident, and was endowed with sundry estates, including Sheriff’s own house. The school flourished under the headship of Thomas Arnold between 1828 and 1842 and became, under his rule, a model of the British public school for following generations. It was…
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e5cee58a47d8069c2024354b07ba63c2 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurence-Sterne/Works | Works. | Works.
Sterne’s Tristram Shandy was published in nine slim volumes (released in five installments) from 1759 to 1767. In it the narrator, Tristram, sets out to do the impossible—to tell the story of his life. He begins with the story of his conception—an innocent remark of his mother upsetting his father’s concentration and causing poor Tristram to be conceived a weakling. To understand that, Tristram must then explain John Locke’s principle of the association of ideas. This, in turn, embroils him in a discussion of his parents’ marriage contract, his Uncle Toby, Parson Yorick, the midwife, and Dr. Slop. He has so much to tell that he does not get himself born until the third volume. Finally reality dawns upon Tristram: it takes more time to tell the story of his life than it does to live it; he can never catch himself.
At one level Tristram Shandy is a satire upon intellectual pride. Walter Shandy thinks he can beget and rear the perfect child, yet Tristram is misconceived, misbaptized, miseducated, and circumcised by a falling window sash. He grows to manhood an impotent weakling whose only hope of transcending death is to tell the story of himself and his family. Finally, Tristram turns to the sweet, funny story of his Uncle Toby’s amours with the Widow Wadman, concluding the novel at a point in time years before Tristram was born. A hilarious, often ribald novel, Tristram Shandy nevertheless makes a serious comment on the isolation of people from each other caused by the inadequacies of language and describes the breaking-through of isolation by impulsive gestures of sympathy and love. A second great theme of the novel is that of time—the discrepancy between clock time and time as sensed, the impinging of the past upon the present, the awareness that a joyous life inexorably leads to death. Modern commentators regard Tristram Shandy as the ancestor of psychological and stream-of-consciousness fiction.
Sterne’s second and last novel, A Sentimental Journey, is the story of Yorick’s travels through France; Sterne did not live to complete the part on Italy. He called it a “sentimental” journey because the point of travel was not to see sights or visit art collections, but to make meaningful contact with people. Yorick succeeds, but in every adventure, his ego or inappropriate desires and impulses get in the way of “sentimental commerce.” The result is a light-hearted comedy of moral sentiments. A Sentimental Journey was translated into many languages, but the translations tended to lose the comedy and emphasize the sentiments. Abroad Sterne became the “high priest of sentimentalism,” and as such had a profound impact upon continental letters in the second half of the 18th century.
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4f3b2623cd6dfb22fdd33812aa36cc42 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurens-Hammond | Laurens Hammond | Laurens Hammond
Laurens Hammond, (born Jan. 11, 1895, Evanston, Ill., U.S.—died July 1, 1973, Cornwall, Conn.), American businessman and inventor of the electronic keyboard instrument known as the Hammond organ.
Hammond’s early education took place in Europe, where the family had moved in 1898. Returning to the United States, Hammond attended Cornell University where he received a degree (1916) in mechanical engineering. In 1920, while employed as an engineer for a Detroit automobile concern, he worked privately on a variety of original devices, eventually inventing a soundless clock by enclosing the spring motor in a soundproof box. Selling the marketing rights for his clock, Hammond quit his job and devoted all his efforts to experimentation. He soon developed a synchronous motor that revolved in phase with the 60-cycle electric alternating current then becoming standard. It became the heart of both the Hammond clock and the Hammond organ.
In 1928 he perfected his electric clock and founded the Hammond Clock Company; the company name was changed to the Hammond Instrument Company in 1937, later (1953) becoming the Hammond Organ Company. Although he was not a musician, Hammond became fascinated early in 1933 with the sounds emanating from the phonograph turntables in his laboratory. He and his engineers began to explore the possibilities of producing conventional musical tones by electric synthesis. By the end of 1934 he had designed and built an instrument with 91 small tonewheel generators (rotated by means of his synchronous motor), with harmonic drawbars placed above the keyboard to permit the mixture of millions of different tones. The advertised claims for the Hammond organ were disputed by the manufacturers of traditional pipe organs, and a complaint was made to the Federal Trade Commission in 1937; the commission decided in Hammond’s favour. His later inventions included the Solovox (1940), an attachment to the piano keyboard designed to enable the amateur player to augment the melody with organ-like or orchestral sounds, and the chord organ (1950), on which chords are produced simply by touching a panel button.
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f9f3630763fb4bf30f511fd4ed61a807 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laurens-Jan-van-der-Post | Sir Laurens Jan van der Post | Sir Laurens Jan van der Post
…collaboration with Laurens Van Der Post and the iconoclastic poet Roy Campbell, he founded a magazine called Voorslag (“Whiplash”) with which he intended to excoriate South African racist society. Public outrage silenced the journal, and Plomer and Campbell left the country.
Laurens van der Post, in his novel In a Province (1934), dealt with the African-coming-to-town theme.
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539a07c5a3445ddba9dec11933abe746 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lautaro-Mapuche-leader | Lautaro | Lautaro
Lautaro, (born before 1535—died April 29, 1557, Mataquito, Chile), Mapuche Indian who led the native uprising against the Spanish conquerors in south-central Chile from 1553 to 1557.
Lautaro was probably born in northern Chile; according to tradition, during his boyhood he was captured by the Spanish and forced to serve as a groom in the stables of the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia. Escaping southward into Araucanian Indian country soon after Valdivia began conquering it in 1550, Lautaro joined the Araucanians, unified their tribal organization, and with their chief, Caupolicán, led them in battle, further improving on the shrewd tactics and stratagems by which they had often defeated the Spaniards.
In a battle in December 1553, near Tucapel, Lautaro captured Valdivia; he executed him the next month. Lautaro himself was killed in a battle at the Mataquito River in 1557. The Araucanians continued their resistance, and the region was not finally pacified until the 1880s.
Now regarded by Chileans as a national hero, Lautaro is a protagonist of the epic poem La Araucana (1569–89), written by Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga, one of Valdivia’s officers.
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b380621b09ddd56428e2e1d8b5da6955 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/LaVerne-Andrews | LaVerne Andrews | LaVerne Andrews
The sisters were LaVerne Sofia Andrews (b. July 6, 1911, Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.—d. May 8, 1967, Brentwood, California), Maxene Angelyn Andrews (b. January 3, 1916, Minneapolis—d. October 21, 1995, Boston, Massachusetts), and Patricia Marie (“Patty”) Andrews (b. February 16, 1918, Minneapolis—d. January 30, 2013, Los Angeles, California).
…singing with her elder sisters, LaVerne and Maxene. Patty, a soprano singer, was given the lead parts, and her sisters sang harmony. The trio performed around Minneapolis before joining Larry Rich’s troupe on the vaudeville circuit in the early 1930s. After their vaudeville run ended in 1932, the sisters continued…
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3f4c0914991d15e38f8f8fe2df1c4f98 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lawamon | Lawamon | Lawamon
Lawamon, also spelled Layamon or Laghamon, (flourished 12th century), early Middle English poet, author of the romance-chronicle the Brut (c. 1200), one of the most notable English poems of the 12th century. It is the first work in English to treat of the “matter of Britain”—i.e., the legends surrounding Arthur and the knights of the Round Table—and was written at a time when English was nearly eclipsed by French and Latin as a literary language.
Lawamon describes himself as a priest living at Arley Kings in Worcestershire. His source was the Roman de Brut by Wace, an Anglo-Norman verse adaptation of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain. In about 16,000 long alliterative lines (often broken into short couplets by rhyme), the Brut relates the legendary history of Britain from the landing of Brutus, great-grandson of the Trojan Aeneas, to the final Saxon victory over the Britons in 689. One-third of the poem deals with Arthurian matter, but Lawamon’s is not a high chivalric treatment: mass war is the staple, with Arthur the splendid war leader of Germanic tradition.
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d18ae9794af56719855dfbd6309b6a11 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lawan-Babuje | Lawan Babuje | Lawan Babuje
About 1825, however, Lawan Babuje, the Bade mai (“ruler”), found the tribute too high, organized a pan-Bade federation, built the walled town of Gorgoram (27 miles southwest of Gashua) as his capital, and declared Bedde’s independence from both the Fulani and the Kanuri. Mai Alhaji, his son and…
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03ea745623c32edb99db35b0933b634d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lawrence-Ferlinghetti | Lawrence Ferlinghetti | Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in full Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti, (born March 24, 1919, Yonkers, New York, U.S.—died February 22, 2021, San Francisco, California), American poet, one of the founders of the Beat movement in San Francisco in the mid-1950s. His City Lights bookshop was an early gathering place of the Beats, and the publishing arm of City Lights was the first to print the Beats’ books of poetry.
Ferlinghetti’s father died shortly before Lawrence was born, his mother was placed in a mental hospital, and a female relative took him to France, where he spent most of his childhood. Later they lived on a Long Island, New York, estate on which she was employed as a governess. Ferlinghetti was a U.S. naval officer during World War II, and he received a B.A. at the University of North Carolina, an M.A. at Columbia University, and a doctorate at the Sorbonne in 1951.
In 1951 Ferlinghetti settled in San Francisco, and in 1953 he opened the City Lights Pocket Book Shop, which quickly became a gathering place for the city’s literary avant-garde. In 1955 Ferlinghetti’s new City Lights press published his verse collection Pictures of the Gone World, which was the first paperback volume of the Pocket Poets series. Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems (1956) was originally published as the fourth volume in the series. City Lights Books printed other works by Ginsberg as well as books by Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Denise Levertov, William Burroughs, William Carlos Williams, and foreign authors.
Ferlinghetti’s own lucid, good-natured, witty verse was written in a conversational style and was designed to be read aloud; it was popular in coffeehouses and campus auditoriums and struck a responsive chord in disaffected youth. His collection A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), with its notable verse “Autobiography,” became the largest-selling book by any living American poet in the second half of the 20th century. The long poem Tentative Description of a Dinner Given to Promote the Impeachment of President Eisenhower (1958) was also popular. Ferlinghetti’s later poems continued to be politically oriented, as such titles as One Thousand Fearful Words for Fidel Castro (1961), Where Is Vietnam (1965), Tyrannus Nix? (1969), and Who Are We Now? (1976) suggest. Retrospective collections of his poems were published as Endless Life (1981) and These Are My Rivers (1995). In 1988 Ferlinghetti published a short novel, Love in the Days of Rage, about a romance during the student revolution in France in 1968.
A Far Rockaway of the Heart, a sequel to A Coney Island of the Mind, appeared in 1997. Two years later he published What Is Poetry?, a book of prose poetry, which was followed by the collection How to Paint Sunlight (2001) and Americus: Part I (2004), a history of the United States in verse. In Poetry as Insurgent Art (2007), a volume of prose poems, he exhorted a return to the firebrand political poetics of the Beat generation. Time of Useful Consciousness (2012) contains poems analyzing the state of contemporary culture. Some of his meditations on travel were collected as Writing Across the Landscape: Travel Journals 1960–2010 (2015), and a number of his exchanges with Ginsberg were published as I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career: The Selected Correspondence of Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg, 1955–1997 (2015). Shortly before his 100th birthday, Ferlinghetti published the autobiographical novel Little Boy (2019).
From 1998 to 2000 Ferlinghetti was poet laureate of San Francisco.
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71bc6801d98b5a9c2e667cede0b69fd8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lawrence-Tibbett | Lawrence Tibbett | Lawrence Tibbett
Lawrence Tibbett, Tibbett originally spelled Tibbet, (born Nov. 16, 1896, Bakersfield, Calif., U.S.—died July 15, 1960, New York City), American baritone renowned for his success in both opera and motion pictures.
Tibbett began his performing career as an actor and church singer in Los Angeles, where he studied voice with Basil Ruysdael. In 1923, after moving to New York City and beginning vocal study with Frank La Forge, he made his operatic debut at the Metropolitan Opera as Lovitsky in Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov. His first major success came in 1925 at the Metropolitan, when he played Ford in Giuseppe Verdi’s Falstaff. His performance completely overshadowed that of Antonio Scotti, the well-known Italian baritone, who was playing the title role. Over the next several years he sang most of the leading baritone roles at the Metropolitan, continuing with the company for 27 seasons. He was also a popular figure in early talking films and on radio, and he produced the first operas on television.
Tibbett sang in the premiere performances of several native American operas at the Metropolitan, creating the title role in Louis Gruenberg’s The Emperor Jones (the first world premiere to be broadcast live from the Metropolitan) in 1933, Eadgar in Deems Taylor’s The King’s Henchman (1927) and Colonel Ibbetson in Taylor’s Peter Ibbetson (1931), and Wrestling Bradford in Howard Hanson’s Merry Mount (1934). He also played Guido in the first Metropolitan performance of Richard Hageman’s Caponsacchi (1937) and created the title role in Sir Eugene Goossens’ Don Juan de Mañara at Covent Garden, London, in that same year. Films in which he appeared include The Rogue Song, New Moon, The Southerner, and Cuban Love Song. He also did considerable work in radio and recording. He appeared at the Metropolitan for the last time in 1950 in the role of Ivan in Mussorgsky’s Khovanschina, and his last stage appearance was in the musical comedy Fanny on Broadway in 1956. Tibbett’s autobiography, The Glory Road, was published in 1933.
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0371a61c463e9faa668f9abe7bb9bedf | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lawrence-Weiner | Lawrence Weiner | Lawrence Weiner
Lawrence Weiner, (born February 10, 1942, Bronx, New York, U.S.), American conceptual artist best known for his text-based installations and radical definitions of art. He is considered a central figure in the foundation of the conceptual art movement of the 1960s.
Weiner grew up in the South Bronx and attended New York public schools. He dropped out of college during his first year and traveled throughout North America, taking on a series of jobs—primarily manual labour—and beginning to make paintings. His first noted work, Cratering Pieces (1960), however, was a sculptural and earth-based experiment. Working without permission, Weiner detonated a series of explosives in a California state park, the results of which he declared to be sculptures. That type of antiestablishment creativity set the stage for his career in radicalism. About that time Weiner also began working on the Propeller paintings (1960–65), which were inspired by the test patterns that appeared on the television screen at night when there was no programming. He used whatever kind of paint he could find—commercial enamel, aluminum, gouache.
Weiner began exhibiting at the Seth Siegelaub Contemporary Art gallery in New York City in 1964. In 1968, for an out-of-state exhibition organized by Siegelaub that also included works by Carl Andre and Robert Barry, Weiner installed what he saw as an unobtrusive work titled Hay, Mesh, String in a courtyard between two buildings at Windham College in Vermont. The work consisted of stakes connected by a grid of twine demarcating a rectangle. The students cut down the twine instead of walking around the piece when they found it to be in the way, at which point Weiner realized he could have been even less obtrusive by simply describing the work in language rather than constructing it. He renamed it A Series of Stakes Set in the Ground at Regular Intervals to Form a Rectangle—Twine Strung from Stake to Stake to Demark a Grid—a Rectangle Removed from This Rectangle (1968).
That experience prompted a tremendous shift in Weiner’s work and triggered his fundamental premise that it did not matter whether a work of art was produced or not. That same year Siegelaub published the artist’s landmark book, Statements, a collection of 24 typewritten processes to follow in making a work of art. The book, which sold for $1.95 at Siegelaub’s gallery, had no illustrations, and some of the works described had not been produced. Weiner wrote the descriptions by using the past participle, making the words definitive but not directive (or imperative), such as “A sheet of brown paper of arbitrary width and length of twice that width with a removal of the same proportions glued to the floor.”
A primary motivating factor behind Weiner’s work was the desire to make it accessible, without needing to buy a ticket or understand a secret visual language. He contended that language reaches a broader audience, and situating language in contexts outside traditional art-viewing settings, such as art museums, furthers that reach. Thus, he began creating works consisting of words and sentences or sentence fragments that he displayed in public spaces, books, films, and other accessible media, sidelining the cultural institutions that might deter broad and diverse viewership. His 1969 Statement of Intent reads as follows:
In his statement, Weiner asserted that a work of art could remain conceptual—in language form—or it could be created if so desired. The maker need not be an artist, and there was no “right way” to do it. Those three points guided Weiner’s work and egalitarian philosophy toward art making and art viewing throughout his career.
Weiner’s phrases, most of which he set in Franklin Gothic Extra Condensed font, tended to consist of processes, constructions, materials, and the results of carrying out a process. For example, Many Colored Objects Placed Side by Side to Form a Row of Many Colored Objects (1982) states the process and its result. Some Limestone Some Sandstone Enclosed for Some Reason (1993), on the other hand, focuses on the physical materials of the work’s context, the site of a disused weighbridge outside a former carpet factory. Some of Weiner’s phrases are unique to one site, whereas others may be repeated or installed in multiple places—in a public space, on a gallery wall, in a book—each context carrying with it a different meaning and experience for the reader. In 2000 the Public Art Fund in New York City commissioned Weiner to create manhole covers in collaboration with Con Edison and to integrate them into the landscape of Lower Manhattan. He had 19 covers manufactured with the phrase “In Direct Line with Another & the Next” cast on them, a reference to the city’s grid.
Weiner’s philosophies and work influenced many artists, including Jenny Holzer, Barbara Kruger, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and Liam Gillick, with whom he collaborated. Among his many honours were two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts (1976, 1983) and a Guggenheim fellowship (1994).
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11f47205549b2adb6f4894979959e600 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lazar-Moiseyevich-Kaganovich | Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich | Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich
Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, (born November 10 [November 22, New Style], 1893, Kabany, near Kiev, Ukraine, Russian Empire—died July 25, 1991, Moscow, Russia, U.S.S.R.), Soviet Communist Party leader and supporter of Joseph Stalin.
As a young Jewish shoemaker, Kaganovich became involved in the Bolshevik wing of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (in 1911) and in 1920 was made head of the Soviet government of Tashkent. His success in consolidating Soviet rule in Turkestan brought him to the attention of Stalin, who put him in charge of supervising the activities of local party organizations and, in 1924, of party patronage. Because his work in the latter capacity helped Stalin to defeat his political rivals and because he was a capable organizer and administrator, Kaganovich rose quickly in the party administration and by 1930 was a full member of the Politburo. He was one of the small group of Stalin’s top advisers pushing for very high rates of collectivization after 1929. As head of the Moscow regional party organization (1930–35), he brought it firmly under Stalin’s control. During this period he was also instrumental in the construction of the Moscow subway and the distribution of heavy farm equipment to shore up the failing collective system.
Within the Politburo, Kaganovich and V.M. Molotov led the opposition to Sergey M. Kirov’s proposed concessions to the peasantry and to his attempts to relax the harshness of Stalin’s control. They formed the core of Stalin’s “post-Purge” Politburo. From this time through the end of Stalin’s administration, Kaganovich was largely responsible for the heavy industry in the Soviet Union. He was appointed people’s commissar (i.e., minister) of transport (1935), heavy industry (1937), fuel industry (1939), and petroleum industry (1939). He became a deputy premier in 1938 and a member of Stalin’s State Defense Committee in World War II. Kaganovich and the writer Ilya Ehrenburg were conspicuously spared in Stalin’s postwar campaign of persecution against the Jews.
Under Nikita Khrushchev, Kaganovich was given largely administrative posts supervising industrial affairs. He opposed Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization and joined the unsuccessful attempt to depose him (June 1957), as a result of which he lost all his government and party offices and was reportedly given a minor administrative post. In 1964 the Soviet government announced that Kaganovich had earlier been expelled from the party.
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0122a7e6a2b613a597d4f1daacacbbc6 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lazarus | Lazarus | Lazarus
Lazarus is also the name given by the Gospel According to Luke (16:19–31) to the beggar in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It is the only proper name attached to a character in the parables of Jesus.
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fe7c4b2f2f76674adbff05f8e2621f36 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Le-Duan | Le Duan | Le Duan
Le Duan, also called Le Dung, (born April 7, 1908, Quang Tri province [now Binh Tri Thien province], Vietnam—died July 10, 1986, Hanoi), Vietnamese communist politician.
Le Duan was a founding member of the Indochina Communist Party in 1930. Twice imprisoned by the French, he joined the Viet Minh, Ho Chi Minh’s anti-French communist-led front, and attained an influential position on the Central Committee of Ho’s new Republic of Vietnam in Hanoi in 1945. After Vietnam’s division in 1954, Le Duan was put in charge of establishing an underground Communist Party organization in South Vietnam. He thus oversaw the creation in 1962 of the People’s Revolutionary Party, a crucial component of the National Liberation Front.
Upon Ho’s death in 1969, Le Duan, as first secretary to the Vietnam Worker’s Party, assumed party leadership—a position that he retained after the party’s reorganization as the Vietnamese Communist Party in 1976. At that time, his official title became secretary-general. After the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, Le Duan led the party through a difficult period that witnessed the formal reunification of Vietnam, the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, and the country’s break with China and the expulsion of much of its ethnic Chinese community. Vietnam under Le Duan entered into a close alliance with the Soviet Union and became a member of Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance).
Though adept at party organizing and at mobilizing human resources in pursuit of victory during the Vietnam War, Le Duan proved less pragmatic afterward as a maker of peacetime economic and foreign policy.
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54c41d9106f759042ef6876bf3a0d670 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leandro-Bassano | Leandro Bassano | Leandro Bassano
…Francesco the Younger (1549–92) and Leandro (1557–1622) were important in the continuity of the workshop; many Bassano paintings are the product of a family collaboration. Francesco the Younger had a predilection for the rural scenes begun by his father, and he developed this aspect of the workshop. He was entrusted…
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e9d7c8ed65a4e57454f6b43595d4c36c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lebna-Denegel | Lebna Denegel | Lebna Denegel
In 1528 Emperor Lebna Denegel was defeated at the battle of Shimbra Kure, and the Muslims pushed northward into the central highlands, destroying settlements, churches, and monasteries. In 1541 the Portuguese, whose interests in the Red Sea were imperiled by Muslim power, sent 400 musketeers to train the…
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7190056dafc2e7cda947ad0f24404443 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Konitz | Lee Konitz | Lee Konitz
Lee Konitz, (born October 13, 1927, Chicago, Illinois, U.S.—died April 15, 2020, New York, New York), American jazz musician, a leading figure in cool jazz and one of the most distinctive alto saxophonists.
Konitz attended Roosevelt University in Chicago and played alto saxophone in the Claude Thornhill band (1947–48), before settling in New York City. Influenced by pianist Lennie Tristano, he developed his mature style and in 1948–50 played in the two seminal cool jazz projects, the Miles Davis “Birth of the Cool” nonet and the Lennie Tristano sextet. After spending a year in the Stan Kenton big band (1952–53), Konitz began a uniquely varied freelance career. He performed often with bop musicians and, in especially rewarding reunions, with Tristano and others of the Tristano circle, such as pianist Sal Mosca and tenor saxophonist Warne Marsh. Apart from appearing in conventional jazz ensembles, he played in duet and solo settings and in his own nonet, which he organized sporadically in the 1970s and 1980s.
Early in his career, Konitz played with an uninflected, vibratoless tone, in contrast to the dominant Charlie Parker alto saxophone style; in time his sound became more expressive without sacrificing its essential clarity. Above all else he was a melodic improviser, who originally played long, often even-noted lines with capricious accents, and who grew steadily to conceive in more varied phrasing. Noted for his frequent harmonic daring, he participated in rare free jazz events, including a free improvisation festival organized by guitarist Derek Bailey in London in 1987. He was an important influence on West Coast alto saxophonists, and he intermittently performed on other woodwinds as well.
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55e489e406b84f1d4e20b767e9522ce7 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Krasner | Lee Krasner | Lee Krasner
Lee Krasner, original name Lenore Krassner, (born October 27, 1908, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died June 19, 1984, New York City), American painter recognized for her unique contribution to Abstract Expressionism.
Krasner was the sixth of seven children of Jewish emigrants from Odessa, Russia (now Ukraine). When she was 13 she decided to become an artist and was admitted on her second application to Washington Irving High School, the only public high school in New York City at that time that offered women professional art training. After graduation she studied first at the Women’s Art School of Cooper Union and then, in her early 20s, at the National Academy of Design, both in New York.
The New Deal’s Federal Art Project enabled Krasner to work full-time as an artist from 1934 to 1943. During that time she studied with the hugely influential German painter Hans Hofmann, who exposed her to Pablo Picasso’s use of form in Synthetic Cubism as well as Henri Matisse’s use of colour and outline. Synthesizing these European influences, Krasner developed her own style of geometric abstraction, which she grounded in floral motifs and rhythmic gesture. In 1940 she began exhibiting her work with that of other American abstract artists. Her forceful personality and passion for painting soon brought her to the centre of the New York art world, a largely male arena that was in the midst of a period of intense ideological ferment.
In 1942 Krasner met the painter Jackson Pollock, whose work was being exhibited along with hers at an important show in a New York gallery. She was struck by the power of his work, and the two artists became friends. After their 1945 marriage the couple moved to a farm in East Hampton, New York, where they were to produce a large body of work. Each artist influenced the other to some extent. In 1946 she began her Little Image paintings, a tightly focused series of works in which her use of dots and drips of paint were inspired by Pollock’s “drip paintings” of the period. In these and her collages of the early 1950s, Krasner often worked on a small scale, which separated her work from that of the other Abstract Expressionists. Her work was also unique in terms of her commitment (in varying degrees) to maintaining some figuration—usually patterns from nature and sometimes calligraphic elements such as Hebrew letters—and a cerebral sense of control, in contrast to the less-controlled automatism being practiced by her contemporaries. In the years after Pollock’s death in an automobile accident in 1956, however, she created a series of enormous paintings filled with thick, expressive strokes of umbre paint that abandoned figuration and instead presented raw energy, perhaps in an attempt to express her overwhelming sense of grief. In the 1960s and ’70s, Krasner continued her trademark explorations of colour and graceful, rhythmic form in paintings and collages, building upon the passion of her large-scale abstraction but also returning to her love of hard-edged figurative elements and a certain amount of cerebral control.
For the first 25 years after Pollock’s death, Krasner’s reputation was eclipsed by his, partly because of her tireless advocacy of his work during his life and after his death. This perception changed when a 1981 show in New York, “Krasner/Pollock: A Working Relationship,” helped demonstrate that she was both his artistic partner and a significant artist in her own right. A major retrospective of her work held at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1983 further solidified her reputation. Her work is included in the collections of the world’s major museums, and a major touring retrospective ended January 2001 at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
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827328f00f7db831ad3421f36040b774 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Scratch-Perry | Lee “Scratch” Perry | Lee “Scratch” Perry
Lee “Scratch” Perry, byname of Rainford Hugh Perry, (born March 28, 1936, Kendal, Jamaica), Jamaican producer, songwriter, singer, and disc jockey who helped reshape reggae music. He was among the first Jamaican producer-musicians to use the studio as an instrument, and he pioneered the reggae instrumental form known as dub, in which sections of a rhythm track were removed and others emphasized through echo, distortion, repetition, and backward tape looping.
Perry’s debut recording in the early 1960s, “The Chicken Scratch,” earned him his nickname. At Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One in Kingston, he produced hits for reggae singers such as Justin Hines and Delroy Wilson as well as recording his own material. After scoring an instrumental hit with “The Upsetter” in the late 1960s, he named his label and band after it and played an important part in the early success of Jamaica’s biggest group, the Wailers (including Bob Marley and Peter Tosh). But his greatest innovations came after he built Black Ark studio behind his home in Kingston in 1974. He began experimenting with drum machines and space-age studio effects that would usher in the dub era and influence production techniques in reggae, hip-hop, and rock for decades afterward. A legendary eccentric, he was known to blow marijuana smoke on his finished master tapes to give them the proper “vibe,” and he reportedly burned down Black Ark in 1980.
Perry’s increasingly avant-garde albums continued to win critical praise well into the 21st century. Jamaican E.T. (2002) won the Grammy Award for best reggae album, and The End of an American Dream (2007), Repentance (2008), Revelation (2010), and Back on the Controls (2014) were all nominated in that category.
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99eed1966d55c03d2b66bb5284ba5d21 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Shubert | Lee Shubert | Lee Shubert
…oldest of the brothers was Lee (originally Levi) Shubert (b. March 15, 1875, Russia—d. Dec. 25, 1953, New York, N.Y., U.S.). Sam S. Shubert (b. 1879, Russia—d. May 12, 1905, Harrisburg, Pa., U.S.) was the middle brother, and Jacob J. (or Jake) Shubert (b. Aug. 15, 1880, Russia—d. Dec. 26,…
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8809a3b0293976477389289a83925b24 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lee-Teng-hui | Lee Teng-hui | Lee Teng-hui
Lee Teng-hui, (born January 15, 1923, near Tan-shui, Taiwan—died July 30, 2020, Taipei), first Taiwan-born president of the Republic of China (Taiwan; 1988–2000).
Lee attended Kyōto University in Japan and National Taiwan University (B.A., 1948) and studied agricultural economics in the United States at Iowa State University (M.A., 1953) and Cornell University (Ph.D., 1968). While a professor of economics at National Taiwan and National Chengchi universities (1958–78), he was a member of Taiwan’s Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction. During this period Lee contributed much to Taiwan’s agricultural development, promoting farmers’ associations, irrigation systems, and agricultural mechanization and supporting the Agricultural Development Act, which balanced agricultural and industrial development.
In 1978 Lee was elected mayor of Taipei, and he later served as governor of Taiwan province (1981–84) before becoming vice president under Chiang Ching-kuo in 1984. After Chiang’s death in 1988, Lee became president of Taiwan and acting chairman of the ruling party, the Kuomintang (KMT). His election to the KMT post later in the year further strengthened his position, and in 1990 he was reelected president by an overwhelming majority of members of the National Assembly. In 1996 Lee won Taiwan’s first direct popular presidential election.
As president Lee worked to democratize Taiwan’s political system. He favoured a policy of “flexible diplomacy” in dealing with the People’s Republic of China, and he eased restrictions on travel to that country and on trade. China, however, was wary of Lee, believing that he supported an independent Taiwan. In 1995 China suspended talks with Taiwan after Lee made an unofficial visit to the United States. Though communications resumed in 1998, tensions between China and Taiwan continued, particularly after Lee announced in 1999 that contacts between China and Taiwan should be on the basis of “special state-to-state relations”—which effectively moved Taiwan closer to independence.
Lee retired when his term ended in 2000, and the KMT lost power for the first time in Taiwan’s history. He later came under investigation for corruption and in June 2011 was charged with embezzling millions of dollars of government funds while in office. Lee was acquitted in 2013, and the ruling was upheld by the High Court the following year.
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ee9d6691b83e8349ad7f7189496028cd | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lei-Jun | Lei Jun | Lei Jun
Lei Jun, (born December 16, 1969, Xiantao, Hubei province, China), Chinese business executive who was a cofounder (2010) of electronics maker Xiaomi Corp.; he also served as chairman and CEO.
Lei attended Wuhan University, from which he graduated (1991) with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. In 1992 he joined the Beijing-based software company Kingsoft Corp., and by 1998 he had risen to become its CEO. He helped transform Kingsoft from a struggling company focused primarily on word-processing programs into a financially stable firm with products that also included video games and computer security software. In 2007 he led Kingsoft through its initial public offering (IPO), which raised nearly $100 million when the company was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He left Kingsoft shortly after the IPO (though he later rejoined its board of directors), and for the next few years he led a venture capital fund.
In April 2010 Lei founded Xiaomi Corp. with several partners, including former Google executive Lin Bin. While the company sold various electronics, it was especially focused on smartphones. By concentrating on online rather than brick-and-mortar sales and by eschewing costly advertising in favour of interacting with customers directly through social media, Xiaomi was able to significantly undersell its competitors and thrive in the Chinese market. By 2014 the company’s valuation at more than $46 billion had made it the most-valuable tech startup in the world. In April of that year, Xiaomi demonstrated the power of its brand when it sold 2.1 million smartphones online within just 12 hours, setting a world record for the most mobile phones sold on one online platform in a single day, and by the end of 2014 Xiaomi had surpassed Samsung to become China’s leading smartphone vendor.
In an effort to continue Xiaomi’s growth, Lei increasingly looked for opportunities to expand beyond China. In July 2014 the company began selling smartphones in India, which Lei described as Xiaomi’s “most important market after China,” and in May 2015 Xiaomi launched an online marketplace for customers in the United States and Europe, although initially it offered only computer accessories and fitness devices rather than its smartphones. Under Lei’s guidance, Xiaomi became the world’s third largest smartphone manufacturer—behind only Samsung Electronics and Apple Inc.—in 2014, and Lei himself was widely known as the “Steve Jobs of China.” In 2018 he oversaw the company’s IPO, which raised about $3 billion when it was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
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c01e80a27b6cc670193fb41d599c693c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leiber-and-Stoller | Leiber and Stoller | Leiber and Stoller
Leiber and Stoller, American songwriters and record producers. Jerry Leiber (in full Jerome Leiber; b. April 25, 1933, Baltimore, Maryland, U.S.—d. August 22, 2011, Los Angeles, California) and Mike Stoller (in full Michael Stoller; b. March 13, 1933, Belle Harbor, New York, U.S.), working primarily for Atlantic Records, were perhaps the most successful writers and producers of the 1950s.
They became partners as teenagers in Los Angeles; when their “Hound Dog” was recorded by Willie Mae (“Big Mama”) Thornton in 1952, they also became producers. Major success followed with their series of novelty story-songs—including “Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots” (performed by the Cheers), “Young Blood” and “Yakety Yak” (by the Coasters), and “Love Potion No. 9” (by the Clovers)—and with their songs for Elvis Presley movies, including Jailhouse Rock and Love Me Tender. Their early 1960s productions of Ben E. King and the Drifters, including “Stand by Me” and “On Broadway,” were especially influential. In 1964 they established their own label, Red Bird, on which the Shangri-Las recorded. They went on to write for films and theatre; among their last hits, in 1969, was the world-weary “Is That All There Is?” (by Peggy Lee). In 1987 the pair was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
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e5820f1a53a5315e5050b3c04163e5d5 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leif-Ove-Andsnes | Leif Ove Andsnes | Leif Ove Andsnes
Leif Ove Andsnes, (born April 7, 1970, Karmøy, Nor.), Norwegian musician who drew international notice beginning in the 1990s for his lyric approach to music and his varied piano repertoire.
Andsnes was the son of music teachers. Though he studied piano, as a child he was more interested in playing in the school band and on the football (soccer) team, until at age 15 he met Czech pianist Jiri Hlinka, who taught at the Bergen Conservatory. At age 16 Andsnes entered the conservatory and immersed himself in study. His reputation grew quickly and steadily; he won the German Paul Hindemith Prize in 1987, both the Norwegian Music Critics’ Prize and the Robert Levin (Bergen International) Festival Prize in 1988, and the Grieg Prize in 1990.
Andsnes’s broad repertoire included piano works of Norwegian composers (including little-known pieces); large-scale concerti such as those of Johannes Brahms, Sergey Rachmaninoff, Béla Bartók, and Witold Lutosławski; other significant solo piano music; and chamber music, including collaborations with string players (such as German violinist Christian Tetzlaff) and singers (such as British tenor Ian Bostridge). Critics and audiences appreciated the clarity and lyricism of his approach to music. Andsnes was a cofounder of and regular participant in the Risør Chamber Music Festival in eastern Norway, and in 2007 he became a professor at the Norwegian Academy of Music, Oslo. He played a significant role in the 2007 celebrations commemorating the 100th anniversary of the death of the beloved Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg. That year he was also awarded the Peer Gynt Prize, given by the Norwegian Storting (parliament) to individuals in recognition of their contributions in politics, sports, and culture.
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189476fa0c0eadd6079c2b475930df29 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leigh-Matthews | Leigh Matthews | Leigh Matthews
Leigh Matthews, (born March 1, 1952, Frankston, Vic., Austl.), Australian rules football player who was one of the sport’s most formidable figures and was voted the Player of the Century in a 1999 Herald-Sun poll in Australia.
A tenacious forward, “Lethal” Leigh Matthews was legendary for his robust play and extraordinary skills. He played 332 games for the Hawthorn (Vic.) Football Club over three decades (1969–85). He distinguished himself by picking up Hawthorn’s Best First Year Player title (1969), earning eight Best and Fairest (top player) Awards (1971–72, 1974, 1976–78, 1980, 1982), scoring 915 goals (a league record for a rover and seventh highest all-time total), and being part of four league championship teams. His 68 goals in 1975 led the Victorian Football League (from 1989 known as the Australian Football League [AFL]). He captained Hawthorn (1981–85) and Victoria (1980), playing 14 matches for his state.
Matthews enjoyed subsequent success as a coach for the Collingwood (Vic.) Football Club (1986–95), which in 1990 he steered to its first championship since 1958, and for the Brisbane (Queen.) Football Club (from 1999), which he led to consecutive Grand Final (the AFL championship game) victories in 2001, 2002, and 2003. He was the first man to both play in and coach 300 AFL games. In 1997 and 1998 he led the Victorian team to wins in the State of Origin competition (annual matches, held between 1977 and 1999, between teams composed of players representing their home states). In 1996 Matthews was inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame and elevated to Legend status. In 2001 he received the Australian Sports Medal for his contribution to football.
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b5d79a76f2109e5e7396a7e805098f9e | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Len-Deighton | Len Deighton | Len Deighton
Len Deighton, (born Feb. 18, 1929, Marylebone, London, Eng.), English author, journalist, film producer, and a leading writer of spy stories, his best-known being his first, The Ipcress File (1962), an account of deception and betrayal in an espionage agency.
Deighton was educated at the Royal College of Art, London, after service in the Royal Air Force.
In Funeral in Berlin (1964), The Billion Dollar Brain (1966), and An Expensive Place to Die (1967), he continued his blend of espionage and suspense. Like The Ipcress File, these novels centre on an unnamed hero and show Deighton’s craftsmanship, crisp prose style, and mastery of plot. In Only When I Larf (1968), Deighton moved from the subject of spies to confidence tricksters. In the suspense novel Bomber (1970), he treated a misdirected bombing mission of World War II. In 1972, with Close-Up, Deighton abandoned the suspense theme and chose instead to explore Hollywood’s film industry. He returned to the espionage genre in 1974 with Spy Story and a later series of trilogies featuring British intelligence agent Bernard Samson, which include Spy Hook (1988), Spy Line (1989), and Spy Sinker (1990) and Faith (1994), Hope (1995), and Charity (1996). Other novels are SS-GB (1978), XPD (1981), Goodbye, Mickey Mouse (1982), and Winter (1987).
Many of his books were adapted for the screen, including The Ipcress File, Funeral in Berlin, The Billion Dollar Brain, Only When I Larf, and An Expensive Place to Die. Deighton also wrote several historical accounts of World War II (e.g., Blitzkrieg: From the Rise of Hitler to the Fall of Dunkirk [1979]) and a number of cookbooks.
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d3a8dd591b4149fb246ff7bf7918539a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leni-Riefenstahl | Leni Riefenstahl | Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl, original name Berta Helene Amalie Riefenstahl, (born August 22, 1902, Berlin, Germany—died September 8, 2003, Pöcking), German motion-picture director, actress, producer, and photographer who is best known for her documentary films of the 1930s dramatizing the power and pageantry of the Nazi movement.
Riefenstahl studied painting and ballet in Berlin, and from 1923 to 1926 she appeared in dance programs throughout Europe. She began her motion-picture career as an actress in “mountain films”—a type of German film in which nature, especially the mountain landscape, plays an important role—and she eventually became a director in the genre. In 1931 she formed a company, Leni Riefenstahl-Produktion, and the following year wrote, directed, produced, and starred in Das blaue Licht (1932; The Blue Light).
With the support of the Nazi Party, Riefenstahl directed films that extolled the values of physical beauty and Aryan superiority. They include Sieg des Glaubens (1933; Victory of the Faith), a short subject commissioned by Adolf Hitler; Triumph des Willens (1935; Triumph of the Will), an important documentary study of the 1934 Nazi Party convention at Nürnberg that emphasized the unity of the party, introduced the leaders to the German people, and exhibited Nazi power to the world; and Olympische Spiele (1938; Olympia), a two-part film on the Olympic Games of 1936 that was praised for the effectiveness of its studio-created music and sound effects. Riefenstahl’s films were acclaimed for their rich musical scores, for the cinematic beauty of the scenes of dawn, mountains, and rural German life, and for brilliant editing.
Because her films had aided the Nazi cause, Riefenstahl was detained by Allied forces after World War II, and, although she was officially cleared of complicity in Nazi war crimes, she was blacklisted. In 1954 she completed Tiefland (“Lowland”), the production of which had been interrupted by the war, but her career as a filmmaker was effectively over. Die Nuba (The Last of the Nuba), a book of her African photographs, was published in 1973. Much of her later life was devoted to photography, and Korallengärten (1978; Coral Gardens) and Wunder unter Wasser (1990; Wonders Under Water) are collections of her underwater photographs; a documentary on marine life, Impressionen unter Wasser (Impressions Under Water), was released in 2002.
At age 91, Riefenstahl was interviewed for director Ray Müller’s highly praised documentary Die Macht der Bilder: Leni Riefenstahl (1993; The Power of the Image: Leni Riefenstahl, or The Wonderful, Horrible Life of Leni Riefenstahl), in which she reveals herself as an undeniably brilliant woman with profoundly mixed feelings about her association with the Third Reich. Memoiren (1987; A Memoir, or The Sieve of Time: The Memoirs of Leni Riefenstahl) is her autobiography.
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16526ee885da382c3fe77f3a243570fd | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lennart-Carleson | Lennart Carleson | Lennart Carleson
Lennart Carleson, (born March 18, 1928, Stockholm, Swed.), Swedish mathematician and winner of the 2006 Abel Prize “for his profound and seminal contributions to harmonic analysis and the theory of smooth dynamical systems.” These include his work with Swedish mathematician Michael Benedicks in 1991, which gave one of the first rigorous proofs that strange attractors exist in dynamical systems and has important consequences for the study of chaotic behaviour.
Carleson earned a bachelor’s degree (1947), master’s degree (1949), and doctorate (1950) from Uppsala University. He continued postdoctoral work at Harvard University (1950–51) before accepting a lectureship at Uppsala for the following academic year. He moved to the University of Stockholm in 1954 but returned to Uppsala the next year, where he remained until he retired in 1993, although he also held various visiting appointments (such as at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and Stanford University). Carleson was the director of the Mittag-Leffler Institute (1968–84), editor of Acta Mathematica (1956–79), and president of the International Mathematical Union (1978–82). During his presidency, he helped to institute the Nevanlinna Prize to recognize work in theoretical computer science.
Carleson’s most famous work clarified the relationship between a function and its Fourier series representation. These were successfully introduced into mathematics by the French mathematician Joseph Fourier in 1822, when he gave a simple recipe for obtaining the Fourier series of a function and expressed the claim that every function was equal to its Fourier series. As mathematics became more rigorous, this claim seemed more and more doubtful, until in 1926 the Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov showed that there are continuous functions for which the corresponding Fourier series fails to converge anywhere and so is numerically meaningless. However, in 1966 Carleson showed that every function in a large class of functions that includes all continuous functions is equal to its Fourier series except on a set of measure zero. A set of measure zero is one that is negligible for the purposes of integration, and so for many purposes this result showed that, although Fourier’s original claim was wrong, his hopes for the great utility of his ideas was fully justified.
In addition to winning the Abel Prize—awarded by the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in memory of the Norwegian mathematician Niels Henrik Abel—Carleson has won a Leroy Steel Prize (1984), a Wolf Prize for Mathematics (1992), a Lomonosov Gold Medal (2002), and a Sylvester Medal (2003).
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1a26386f3ad2cb0a71af246d2e6ab46d | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lennart-Meri | Lennart Meri | Lennart Meri
Lennart Meri, (born March 29, 1929, Tallinn, Estonia—died March 14, 2006, Tallinn), Estonian scholar and political leader, who was president of Estonia from 1992 to 2001.
His father, Georg Meri, was a man of letters who served newly independent Estonia as a diplomat between World Wars I and II, and consequently Lennart was educated in Berlin, London, and Paris. After the Soviet Union annexed Estonia in 1940, Georg Meri was sent to a labour camp in Moscow and the rest of the family to Siberia. In 1946 the family was reunited in Estonia, which had become a Soviet republic. Lennart Meri received a degree in history and languages from Tartu University in 1953, and he spent much of his professional life documenting the history of the Finno-Ugric peoples in writings and in documentary films. One such film, Linnutee tuuled (1977; “The Winds of the Milky Way”), was banned in the Soviet Union but received excellent reviews for its documentation of rural folkways.
In 1988 Meri founded the Estonian Institute, which promoted Estonian culture through contacts with Western countries. After Estonia’s first free elections in 1990, Meri entered politics when he was named foreign minister. Estonia became independent in 1991, and Meri was appointed ambassador to Finland in 1992. He then ran for president as the head of Isamaa (Fatherland), a nationalist coalition party dedicated to preserving Estonian culture. No candidate received a majority of the votes, and Meri placed second. The parliament, however, was dominated by parties aligned with Isamaa, and it elected him president on October 5, 1992. Although the post was to a large degree ceremonial, he took an active part in Estonian politics and foreign relations. In 1993 he refused to ratify a law requiring Russians who wished to continue living in Estonia to apply for residence permits and to pass an Estonian language test, and in 1994 he forged an agreement with President Boris Yeltsin on the withdrawal of the remaining Russian troops from Estonia. On September 20, 1996, an electoral college of parliament members and local government officials elected him to a second five-year term. Constitutionally barred from seeking a third term, Meri left office in 2001.
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369270587ea9584f2065cffc834a672a | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Lenny-Henry | Lenny Henry | Lenny Henry
Lenny Henry, byname of Sir Lenworth George Henry, (born August 29, 1958, Dudley, West Midlands, England), British comedian, actor, and writer who was one of Britain’s best known and most highly respected comic actors, especially noted for his range of characters. He later added serious acting roles to his repertoire. In addition, Henry cofounded and hosted the British version of Comic Relief.
As a teenager, Henry performed a comedy act in local nightclubs, which led to a successful appearance on the television talent program New Faces when he was 16 years old. The national exposure he gained from that show helped to secure him a role in The Fosters (1976–77), the first British situation comedy with an all-black cast. He followed this stint with a number of short television appearances that varied from Saturday morning children’s shows (Tiswas) to surreal alternative sitcoms (The Young Ones).
In 1984 Henry married fellow comedian Dawn French (whom he would divorce in 2010). That same year he was given his own series by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), The Lenny Henry Show. The program consisted of a mix of stand-up comedy and sketches that featured him playing a number of offbeat catchphrase-spouting characters, routines that quickly became his comedic calling card. Although his impersonations were mostly crowd-pleasing, they also drew criticism for playing up racial stereotypes, and Henry later lamented that some of his roles had been “self-detrimental.” The popular show went through a series of cancellations and relaunches, including a short-lived format change to a pseudositcom during 1987–88. Henry founded his own production company, Crucial Films, in 1991. That same year he attempted to break into Hollywood by starring in the film True Identity, which was both a critical and a commercial flop.
Henry rebounded by returning to the BBC to star in the situation comedy Chef! (1993–96). He was given the Radio and Television Industry Club Award for BBC Personality of the Year in 1993. He took on a purely dramatic role in the BBC production Hope and Glory (1999–2000), which helped lead to varied small parts in films such as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) and MirrorMask (2005). In 2017 Henry played a greengrocer and possible rape suspect in the final season of the crime drama Broadchurch, and three years later he appeared in the opening episodes of the 12th season of Doctor Who.
In 1988 Henry began hosting Comic Relief’s annual telethon (which, like its American counterpart, featured comedians performing to raise money for charity), and he soon became one of the most public faces of that organization’s annual fund-raising Red Nose Day. In 2009 Henry made his stage debut in the lead role of Shakespeare’s Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds. His performance won rave reviews, and the production later transferred to London’s West End theatre district. He also won praise for his performance as Troy Maxson in a 2013 production of August Wilson’s Fences. Henry was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999 and a knight bachelor in 2015.
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ac278ac591086b4599c4161d4714a1e9 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Africanus | Leo Africanus | Leo Africanus
Leo Africanus, Italian Giovanni Leone, original Arabic al-Ḥasan ibn Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Zayyātī or al-Fāsī, (born c. 1485, Granada, Kingdom of Granada [Spain]—died c. 1554, Tunis [now in Tunisia]), traveler whose writings remained for some 400 years one of Europe’s principal sources of information about Islam.
Educated at Fès, in Morocco, Leo Africanus traveled widely as a young man on commercial and diplomatic missions through North Africa and may also have visited the city of Timbuktu (now in Mali) as well as the valley of the Niger River. While in Egypt (1516–17), he ascended the Nile to Aswan. On his voyage homeward through the Mediterranean he was captured by Christian pirates and, because he revealed extraordinary intelligence, was presented as a gift to Pope Leo X. Impressed with his slave’s learning, the pontiff freed him after a year and, having persuaded him to profess Christianity, stood sponsor at his baptism in 1520. As Giovanni Leone (John Leo), the new convert enjoyed favour in scholarly Roman society, learned Latin and Italian, and taught Arabic. Around 1526 he completed his greatest work, Descrittione dell’Africa (1550; A Geographical Historie of Africa, 1600). He eventually returned to North Africa, where he is believed to have died a Muslim.
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329aedb4fa08a845593d265ba4182ed8 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Baeck | Leo Baeck | Leo Baeck
Leo Baeck, (born May 23, 1873, Lissa, Posen, Prussia [now Leszno, Poland]—died November 2, 1956, London, England), Reform rabbi and theologian, the spiritual leader of German Jewry during the Nazi period, and the leading liberal Jewish religious thinker of his time. His magnum opus, The Essence of Judaism, appeared in 1905. His final work, This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence (1955), was written in part while Baeck was in a Nazi concentration camp.
Baeck studied for the rabbinate in Breslau and Berlin, received a Ph.D. in philosophy at the University of Berlin in 1895, and was ordained in 1897 by the progressive Hochschule in Berlin. He immediately displayed his courage and personal independence of thought by being one of the two rabbis within the German Rabbinical Association who refused to condemn the Zionist leader Theodor Herzl (1860–1904) and the First Zionist Congress then meeting in Basel.
Baeck first served as rabbi in Oppeln Silesia (1897–1907) and then in Düsseldorf (1907–12) and finally Berlin (1912–42). In 1901 Baeck challenged the Protestant theologian and church historian Adolf von Harnack (1851–1930), whose lectures on The Essence of Christianity then presented essential original Christianity as a liberal faith that appeared at a unique moment of history and was unrelated to the Jewish religious and cultural tradition. Striving to show the originality of Jesus’ teachings, Harnack denigrated the Pharisees and the Judaism they represented and committed lapses of scholarship singled out by the young Baeck.
Baeck’s own masterpiece, The Essence of Judaism (1905), established him as the leading liberal Jewish theologian. In contrast to Harnack, Baeck stressed the dynamic nature of religion, the ongoing development that is a human response to the categorical “Ought,” the Divine Imperative. The influence of the German Jewish philosopher Hermann Cohen (1842–1918) and Neo-Kantianism (German philosophical movement, 1870–1920) is visible, but behind it stands the ethical rigorism of traditional rabbinic thought. The next edition of this work (1922), greatly expanded, moved on toward Baeck’s “religion of polarity” with its dialectical movement between the “mystery” of the divine presence in life and the “commandment” of the ethical imperative that comes to a person in an encounter with God. Baeck expressed the twofoldness of religious experience in the concept of toladot “generations,” the chain of generations that is Jewish history and that made the Jewish people the vehicle of a continuous revelation that became that people’s mission. “A light to the nations,” it had to teach the revelation by living these teachings. Judaism was seen as the supreme expression of morality, a universal message expressed through the particular existence of Israel.
The dialogue between Christianity and Judaism was brought to greater clarity and intensity by Baeck’s refusal to use evasions in his criticism. Traditional Jews disliked Baeck’s early (1901) claim that Jesus was a profoundly Jewish figure and his view in The Gospel as a Document of Jewish Religious History (1938) that the Gospels belonged with the contemporary works of rabbinical literature. Christians, on the other hand, felt challenged by his definition of Judaism as the “classic” rational faith confronting a “romantic” Christianity of emotion, in his essay “Romantic Religion” (1922). The American philosopher Walter Kaufmann viewed this work as Baeck’s greatest achievement next to The Essence of Judaism. Yet one cannot ignore Baeck’s final work, written in the concentration camp, This People Israel: The Meaning of Jewish Existence (1955), which moves from the essence of an “ism” to the concrete existence of a people and creates an approach to Jewish life that must be set alongside the thought of the great 20th-century Jewish religious philosophers Martin Buber (1878–1965) and Franz Rosenzweig (1886–1929). Its full implications emerge only when the work is placed into the life of the author.
Baeck’s life was his work, revealing his concept of polarity: an army chaplain in World War I, he became a pacifist; a non-Zionist, he became head of the German Keren Hayesod (Foundation Fund for Palestine land purchases). Baeck was the president of the German B’nai B’rith (Sons of the Covenant, the main Jewish fraternal and service organization), he was the chairman of the Rabbinical Association he had once defied, and he taught Midrash (interpretative rabbinical literature) and homiletics at the Berlin Lehranstalt. He was called away from this to preside over the end of the 1,000-year-old German Jewish community.
In 1933 German Jewry’s organizations united in the Reichsvertretung der Juden in Deutschland (National Agency of Jews in Germany) under Leo Baeck and Otto Hirsch (1885–1941), the jurist and community leader who was killed in the Mauthausen concentration camp. Under constant attack, this group took charge of Jewish life in Germany. Millions of dollars were spent annually in clearly defined fields: emigration, economic help, charity, education, and culture. Meanwhile, at the conference table with the Nazis, Baeck and the others battled for time so that lives could be saved. Later critics have felt that all resources should have been focused on emigration, but the extermination camps were inconceivable to the German Jewish community of the 1930s. It planned to survive Adolf Hitler behind ghetto and prison walls—a tragic error of judgment but scarcely avoidable. Negotiating with Nazis always carried dangers of corruption, but Baeck was untouched by this. As late as 1939, he brought a trainload of children to England—and then returned to Germany. In both public and private, his life was a pattern of moral resistance that, after five arrests, brought Baeck to the Theresienstadt (Terezín) concentration camp.
Theresienstadt was a “model” camp, sometimes shown to outsiders. Its inmates were killed by neglect or illness or sent on to the extermination camps. Of the 140,000 Jews sent to Theresienstadt, less than 9,000 survived. The Nazis confused the death of a Rabbi Beck of Moravia with Leo Baeck; the latter became Number 187,894 and, incredibly, survived. Baeck set up classes inside the camp: more than 700 persons would press into a small barracks to listen to lectures on Plato and Kant. This, too, was a way of resistance. There were also Christian inmates whom Baeck served as pastor. Once more, the miasma of evil surrounded him but could not touch him. Critics have said that he was too aloof or too liberal, but the only criticism to be taken seriously deals with Baeck’s decision not to pass on rumours that the “resettlement” trains led to the death camps. The eminent Protestant theologian Paul Tillich (1886–1965), who admired Baeck, asserted that “Baeck should have spoken out…the full existential truth must always be made available.” Baeck, however, thought the helpless victims should not be deprived of the hope keeping many alive.
On May 8, 1945, the day before Baeck was to be executed, the Russians liberated Theresienstadt, and Baeck stopped the inmates from killing the guards. He survived for a number of years, settling in England and becoming a British subject; he taught and lectured in Britain and the United States, including a term at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati, Ohio. His final writings, notably Individuum Ineffabile (1948) and This People Israel, continued to express hope in man and the human situation as the area of the revelation. In his life, Baeck summarized the greatness and perhaps also some of the flaws of German Jewry, which placed all of its hopes and commitments in western European civilization. In his teachings Baeck gave perhaps the clearest systematic exposition of liberal Jewish religious thought in the 20th century.
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c0041a2357317fafe98c1ff8cc654c8b | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Castelli | Leo Castelli | Leo Castelli
Leo Castelli, original name Leo Krauss, Krauss also spelled Krausz, (born 1907, Trieste, Austro-Hungarian Empire [now in Italy]—died August 21, 1999, New York, New York, U.S.), art dealer of Hungarian and Italian descent whose promotion of American painters helped contemporary American art gain acceptance in Europe.
Castelli was brought up in an affluent Jewish family in Trieste. During World War I the family moved to Vienna. After the war they moved back to Trieste, which had become part of Italy, and they changed their last name to Castelli, Leo’s mother’s maiden name. After graduating with a law degree from the University of Milan in 1924, he began a career in insurance and banking and moved to Bucharest to take a job at a bank. There Castelli met his first wife, Ileana Schapira, whom he married in 1933 (divorced 1959). With the assistance of his new and very wealthy father-in-law, Castelli and his wife relocated to Paris, where Castelli was assured a banking job. In 1939, again with financial support from his father-in-law, he and his friend, architect and interior designer René Drouin—opened an art gallery that featured Surrealist art and decorative arts. Unfortunately, with the outbreak of World War II, the gallery had to close, and the Castelli family settled in New York City in 1941 as European refugees.
In 1942 Castelli joined the United States Army and was granted U.S. citizenship following the war. In New York Castelli held a job in the textile business as he made a place for himself among New York City’s finest artists and built a large collection of modern and contemporary art. Instead of attempting to represent well-known, successful artists such as the Abstract Expressionists who had been holding court in the New York art scene, Castelli sought to develop talent from its nascency and to discover artists who had yet to become known in the art world. Over the years, Castelli amassed a large network of mentors—among them Museum of Modern Art founding director Alfred H. Barr, Jr., art critic Clement Greenberg, and art historians Leo Steinberg and Robert Rosenblum.
Castelli opened his gallery in 1957 on the fourth floor of his home on East 77th Street in New York City. His early representation of Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg a year later gave his gallery a strong foundation on which to build. His promotion of their work was particularly influential because it spurred the Pop art movement in the United States just as American Expressionism began to wane in influence. By beginning to represent Frank Stella in 1960, Castelli also began to promote and direct the emergence of Minimalism. Castelli’s international reputation received a significant boost when, in 1964, Rauschenberg became the first American artist to win the grand prize at the Venice Biennale. The Leo Castelli Gallery soon became the place in Manhattan to see the newest and best art.
As his gallery expanded, the space became a breeding ground for Pop art, Minimalism, Conceptualism, and Neo-Expressionism. Besides giving Johns, Stella, and Roy Lichtenstein their first solo exhibitions, Castelli soon brought attention to Andy Warhol, Claes Oldenburg, James Rosenquist, Cy Twombly, Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, Bruce Nauman, and Joseph Kosuth, as well. Castelli set himself apart as one of the first American dealers to establish a monthly stipend system with his artists so they could focus on their art.
Castelli introduced American art into European art channels. Because of his cultured European upbringing and his age (he did not open his gallery until he was nearly 50 years old), the established art dealer was able to form valuable ties with curators and collectors abroad, including with his former wife, who had remarried (Michael Sonnabend) and opened the Galerie Ileana Sonnabend in Paris in 1962. Those relationships proved influential for his artists, whose work began to appear in prestigious European art galleries. Castelli skillfully paved the way for American art of the 1960s and ’70s to gain an international audience.
In 1971 Castelli moved the location of his gallery to the downtown Manhattan neighbourhood of Soho, to a building also occupied by the New York branch of the Sonnabend Gallery. Though his business declined, and he lost artists to other, younger dealers, Castelli ran his gallery until he died. In 1999 the Leo Castelli Gallery moved back uptown, down the block from its original location, and it was operated into the 21st century by his widow. In 2007 the full collection of the gallery’s records through 1999 were donated to the Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.
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0355e3f9892984242c439cc5c835652c | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Durocher | Leo Durocher | Leo Durocher
Leo Durocher, in full Leo Ernest Durocher, (born July 27, 1905, West Springfield, Massachusetts, U.S.—died October 7, 1991, Palm Springs, California), American professional baseball player and manager.
Durocher played minor-league baseball for three years before joining the New York Yankees in 1928. He was a superb fielder at shortstop but a mediocre hitter, and he was sold to the Cincinnati Reds in 1930. He was traded to the St. Louis Cardinals in 1933 and was a key player for that team when it won the World Series in 1934.
Durocher was traded to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1937 and became that team’s captain in 1938. He managed the Dodgers in 1939–46 and 1948 (serving as both a player and manager for much of those first two seasons and occasionally thereafter), and he led them to a pennant in 1941. Durocher was suspended for the entire 1947 season because of conduct “detrimental to baseball,” vague charges that related to Durocher’s gambling and fast living. Before his 1947 suspension, however, Durocher managed to quell a clubhouse protest against the newly recruited Jackie Robinson and thereby eased the way for the integration of the Dodgers in that year.
Durocher managed the New York Giants in 1948–55 and led them to two pennants (1951 and 1954) and a World Series win in the latter year. He quit the Giants in 1955 to become a baseball commentator on television but returned as coach of the Dodgers (by then based in Los Angeles) in 1961–64. He then managed the Chicago Cubs in 1966–72 and the Houston Astros in 1972–73. Durocher, who is known for the phrase “Nice guys finish last” (in fact he said, “The nice guys over there are in seventh place”), was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994.
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ed15cc5984a43c7fb37621079735f929 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-II-Roman-emperor | Leo II | Leo II
Leo II, (died Nov. 10, 474), Roman emperor of the East, grandson of Leo I, and son of Zeno. His grandfather, growing ill, felt compelled to name a successor but, deciding that his son-in-law Zeno, an Isaurian, was unpopular, made his grandson co-emperor, as Caesar and then Augustus, at the young age of five (or six). After his grandfather’s death (Feb. 3, 474), Leo II became emperor, and his father was made co-emperor (February 9), but he survived only several months, leaving the throne to Zeno and his mother, Ariadne.
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0b077400d4148e615aa3b7d18a3c0736 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-II-the-Great | Leo II the Great | Leo II the Great
King Leo II of Armenia joined the Crusaders at Cyprus and Acre. Desirous of a royal crown, he approached both pope and emperor, and in 1198, with papal approval, royal insignia were bestowed by Archbishop Conrad of Mainz, in the name of Henry VI. At the…
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e5c6fbabea2761826db6defd7c4496d3 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-III/Legal-and-other-accomplishments | Legal and other accomplishments. | Legal and other accomplishments.
One of Leo’s most important acts was the promulgation, in 726, of the Ecloga, a law code of modest length, which represented a revision of Roman legal practices as embodied in the 6th-century Corpus Juris Civilis (Body of Civil Law) of Emperor Justinian I. Consciously attempting to revise Roman law in accordance with Christian principles, Leo devoted much space in the Ecloga to the regulation of marriage and property rights. Amputation and mutilation often were substitutes in this new code for the former death penalties. Leo provided regular salaries for legal officials to discourage the corrupt custom of offering gifts or bribes to judges and bureaucrats. An important codification of military law, the so-called Soldiers’ Law, is sometimes attributed to Leo, but its true ascription is uncertain.
Other than his sincere predilection for theological topics, Leo’s intellectual interests are unknown. He possessed, doubtless from boyhood, a speaking knowledge of Arabic. Although there is little evidence of intellectual activity during his reign, the earlier charge that he halted higher education in Constantinople by closing an ecclesiastical academy (because of the faculty opposition to Iconoclasm) can no longer be credited with certainty. Similarly, there is little source material on economic or demographic developments during his reign, but the numerous earthquakes doubtless inflicted major damage on towns and the countryside.
Leo was buried in the Church of the Holy Apostles at Constantinople. There is inadequate information on internal history in the last eight years of his reign, but he certainly failed to silence opposition to his Iconoclastic policies; in fact, Iconoclasm divided the empire for another century. He had instilled his Iconoclastic opinions and his grasp for military tactics in his son Constantine V, who ably followed and even intensified the policies of his father. Although Leo’s memory was reviled by those later Byzantines who deplored his Iconoclasm, he was admired, especially in certain military circles, for his forceful and generally successful efforts to strengthen the state.
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764d739e884006011d9423cb0bf56705 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-IV | Leo IV | Leo IV
Leo IV, byname Leo The Khazar, (born Jan. 25, 749—died Sept. 8, 780), Byzantine emperor whose reign marked a transition between the period of Iconoclasm and the restoration of the icons.
Leo became Byzantine emperor in 775 at the death of his father, Constantine V. The following year, at the request of the army and with the support of the Senate and the citizens, Leo’s young son Constantine was crowned coemperor, passing over the caesar Nicephorus, a stepbrother of Leo. The resulting conspiracy in favour of the caesar Nicephorus was, however, suppressed, and the conspirators were exiled.
Leo profited from discord among the Bulgars by granting the Bulgar khan Telerig asylum in Constantinople (776–777) and marrying him to a cousin of his wife Irene. He also conducted three campaigns against the Arabs between 777 and 780.
At the beginning of his reign Leo made no attempt to continue his father’s fierce Iconoclastic policy that forbade the use of icons (religious images). Instead he showed considerable moderation toward the proponents of icons, even appointing them to bishoprics. This action may have resulted from the influence of Irene, who was strongly orthodox. In 780, however, shortly before the close of his reign, he reversed his policy and initiated a persecution of those favouring the use of icons.
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34cea01f0fdbc2b10e7f69c72922ba00 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Postman | Leo Postman | Leo Postman
Allport and Leo Postman offered the generalization that rumour intensity is high when both the interest in an event and its ambiguity are great. The U.S. sociologist Tamotsu Shibutani agreed, contending that rumour abounds when the demand for news is greater than is the supply provided through…
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42cf6ba40622ace06634777f3415c616 | https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leo-Sowerby | Leo Sowerby | Leo Sowerby
Leo Sowerby, (born May 1, 1895, Grand Rapids, Mich., U.S.—died July 7, 1968, Port Clinton, Ohio), composer, organist, and teacher, whose organ and choral works provide a transition between 19th- and 20th-century American church-music styles.
Sowerby studied in Chicago and in Rome as the first American winner of the Prix de Rome. He taught composition and theory at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago from 1925 to 1962 and was organist at St. James Church (now Cathedral) there from 1927 to 1962. He became director in 1962 of the College of Church Musicians in Washington, D.C., where he also was associated with the National Cathedral (Episcopal).
Sowerby combined a fine melodic talent with a use of modern harmonies. His Canticle of the Sun for chorus and orchestra (1944), based on Matthew Arnold’s translation of a canticle by St. Francis, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1946. His orchestral works include tone poems, notably Prairie (1929), and four symphonies (1921, 1927, 1940, and 1947). He also wrote chamber music; concerti for piano, cello, and organ; numerous choral and organ works; and for bandleader Paul Whiteman’s orchestra, two symphonic jazz pieces entitled Synconata (1924) and Monotony (1925).
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189526a42fc54c4338a443273a13e759 | https://www.reuters.com/article/eurozone-banks-italy-badloans-idUSI6N19S00D | Gross bad loans at Italian banks 200 bln euros in May - BoI | Gross bad loans at Italian banks 200 bln euros in May - BoI
By Reuters Staff1 Min Read
MILAN, July 12 (Reuters) - Italian banks in May held 200 billion euros ($222 billion) in loans to borrowers deemed insolvent, slightly up from the previous month, data showed on Monday, as lenders continue to suffer from the fallout of a deep three-year recession.
Bad debts have become the focus of concerns over Italian banks because they tie up precious capital and curb already weak profitability.
The Bank of Italy said in a monthly report that “sofferenze”, the worst kind of bad loans, rose to 199.99 billion euros in gross terms in May from 198.35 billion euros in April. Net of writedowns, their value stood at 84.95 billion euros in May from 83.96 billion euros a month earlier.
Reporting by Valentina Za, editing by Isla BinnieOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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96b8047736efce9aaa9e0b9c4557917d | https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-cambridge-analytica-election-idINKBN1H31CO | Cambridge Analytica whistleblower says Canadian company worked on software to find Republican voters | Cambridge Analytica whistleblower says Canadian company worked on software to find Republican voters
By Reuters Staff2 Min Read
LONDON (Reuters) - A Cambridge Analytica whistleblower said on Tuesday that Canadian company AggregateIQ worked on software called Ripon which was used to identify Republican voters ahead of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
AggregateIQ did not immediately respond to request for comment on the remarks by Christopher Wylie, a whistleblower formerly of British political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
Wylie has previously disclosed how users’ data from Facebook was used by Cambridge Analytica to help elect U.S. President Donald Trump.
Ripon, the town in which the Republican Party was founded in 1854, was the name given to a tool that let a campaign manage its voter database, target specific voters, conduct canvassing, manage fundraising and carry out surveys.
“There’s now tangible proof in the public domain that AIQ actually built Ripon, which is the software that utilised the algorithms from the Facebook data,” Wylie told the British Parliament’s Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
AggregateIQ told Reuters on March 24 that it had never been and is not a part of Cambridge Analytica nor ever entered into a contract with Cambridge Analytica.
It said it works in full compliance within all legal and regulatory requirements and had never knowingly been involved in any illegal activity.
Cambridge Analytica said on Tuesday that it had not shared any of the Facebook profile data procured by a Cambridge academic with AggregateIQ. It said it had not had any communication with AggregateIQ since December 2015.
Reporting by Alistair Smout, Andy Bruce and Eric Auchard, editing by Guy FaulconbridgeOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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104ce1cc9dd9aeab8e92ffb2c25232d7 | https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-cambridge-analytica-ftc/us-ftc-investigating-facebooks-privacy-practices-idUSW1N1Q504R | U.S. FTC investigating Facebook's privacy practices | U.S. FTC investigating Facebook's privacy practices
By Reuters Staff1 Min Read
WASHINGTON, March 26 (Reuters) - The U.S. Federal Trade Commission said on Monday it is conducting an open investigation of Facebook Inc’s privacy practices following the disclosure that 50 million users’ data got into the hands of political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.
Reuters and other media outlets reported last week the FTC is reviewing whether Facebook violated a 2011 consent decree it reached with the authority over its privacy practices, a person briefed on the matter told Reuters. If the FTC finds Facebook violated terms of the consent decree, it has the power to fine the company thousands of dollars a day per violation, which could add up to billions of dollars. “The FTC takes very seriously recent press reports raising substantial concerns about the privacy practices of Facebook. Today, the FTC is confirming that it has an open non-public investigation into these practices,” Tom Pahl, acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement.
Reporting by David Shepardson and Eric Beech Editing by Chizu NomiyamaOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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fc35c6fd534b015ef4d6538ee8afbbce | https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-cryptocurrency-ebay/ebay-exits-facebooks-cryptocurrency-libra-idUSL3N26W3MW | EBay exits Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra | EBay exits Facebook's cryptocurrency Libra
By Reuters Staff1 Min Read
Oct 11 (Reuters) - EBay Inc said on Friday it would exit Facebook Inc’s planned cryptocurrency Libra, joining Paypal.
“We highly respect the vision of the Libra Association; however, eBay has made the decision to not move forward as a founding member,” EBay said in a statement. (Reporting by Munsif Vengattil in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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ac9e037b6fefb189ee0c209e21fda3e2 | https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-germany-idUKL8N2E04ZY | Top German court reimposes data curbs on Facebook | Top German court reimposes data curbs on Facebook
By Ursula Knapp3 Min Read
KARLSRUHE, Germany, June 23 (Reuters) - Facebook must comply with an order by Germany’s antitrust watchdog to curb data collection from users, a top German court ruled on Tuesday, in a setback for the U.S. social network company.
The Federal Court’s interim order, which suspends a decision by a lower court, backs the Federal Cartel Office’s original view that Facebook had abused its market dominance to gather information about users without their consent.
“I’m delighted by this decision,” said cartel office President Andreas Mundt. The ruling showed that “if data are collected and exploited illegally, it should be possible to take antitrust action to prevent the abuse of market power.”
Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Germany has been at the forefront of a global backlash against Facebook, which faces increasing criticism that it is being used to spread political disinformation.
The country’s antitrust watchdog had objected in particular to how Facebook pools data on people from third-party apps - including its own WhatsApp and Instagram - and online tracking of people who do not have accounts via Facebook “like” or “share” buttons.
In its decision, the Federal Court said it did not object to the cartel office’s assertions that Facebook was abusing its market dominance and that the company’s use of data lacked adequate consent on the part of its users.
In its original order in Feb. 2019, the cartel office said Facebook would only be allowed to assign data from WhatsApp or Instagram to its main Facebook app accounts if users consented voluntarily.
Collecting data from third-party websites and assigning it to Facebook would similarly require consent. If such consent is withheld, Facebook would have to substantially restrict its collection and combining of data.
Facebook appealed against the cartel office’s original action, which was suspended by a regional court in Duesseldorf last July. Facebook can continue to press its case in Duesseldorf but must abide by the Federal Court injunction in the meantime. (Reporting by Douglas Busvine. Editing by Jane Merriman)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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34d8ccb6eced269b0c5142ebb4df5622 | https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-instagram-idINKCN1NZ133 | Instagram's new feature allows users to share stories with smaller group | Instagram's new feature allows users to share stories with smaller group
By Paresh Dave, Laharee Chatterjee2 Min Read
Slideshow ( 2 images )
(Reuters) - Facebook Inc’s Instagram said on Friday it launched a new feature dubbed “Close Friends” allowing users to share their stories with a smaller group of people.
The new feature, which will appear on the user’s profile in the side menu enables Instagram’s more than 1 billion users to create a smaller group of friends and share stories exclusively with the group.
“If you’re on someone’s close friends list, you’ll see a green ring around their photo in the Stories tray and a green badge when you’re viewing their stories,” Instagram said in a statement to Reuters.
Facebook has been focusing on Instagram, its fastest-growing revenue generator, as the social networking website’s core platform has come under fire from regulators pushing to improve information safeguards for individual privacy, to combat addiction to social media, and to stop misinformation or fake news.
In October, Instagram appointed long-term insider Adam Mosseri as the head of the photo-sharing app following the high-profile exits of the photo-sharing app’s co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger.
Rival Snap Inc owner of Snapchat, which faces stiff competition from Instagram has been redesigning the app to lure more users and advertisers. Snap also bagged a $250 million investment from Saudi Arabia’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal as it shifted toward a self-serve model for advertisers.
Reporting by Paresh Dave in San Francisco and Laharee Chatterjee in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa ShumakerOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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41b596c6846f75fe767b38a33faedb1d | https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-politics-washington-idINKCN21X073 | Washington AG sues Facebook over political ads | Washington AG sues Facebook over political ads
By Katie Paul3 Min Read
FILE PHOTO: A 3D-printed Facebook logo is seen placed on a keyboard in this illustration taken March 25, 2020. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Washington state’s attorney general filed a second lawsuit against Facebook Inc over political ads on Tuesday, saying the social media giant once again failed to make disclosures required under the state’s campaign finance laws.
Facebook already paid $238,000 in 2018 to resolve a previous dispute over political advertising in Washington state.
The company announced later that year that it would stop accepting political ads related to state or local initiatives in Washington, although it still permitted advertisements around “issues of national importance” targeting people in the state.
In a statement on Tuesday, Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson said that Facebook had continued selling hundreds of ads to at least 171 state political committees since 2018, in violation of its own policy.
Ferguson says the company’s Ad Library, a searchable database aimed at providing transparency around political advertising, provides some information about those ads but does not include details required under Washington law such as the name of the person paying for the ads or their precise cost.
A Facebook spokeswoman said the company aimed to work with authorities in Washington to resolve the dispute.
Social media companies have been sharing more information about political advertising since U.S. intelligence agencies found that Russia targeted American voters with social media content, including ads, to try to influence the 2016 presidential election. Russia has denied the allegations.
Facebook’s Ad Library has been a cornerstone of its efforts to be more transparent about its role in elections, and the company frequently points to it in response to criticism about its decision not to fact-check political ads. But researchers say the database is poorly maintained and fails to provide detailed targeting data.
Competitors Google, Twitter and Snap have launched similar advertising libraries in recent years, while Reddit announced a new such project this week, although other platforms have imposed more stringent rules around misleading information and targeting for political ads.
Reporting by Katie Paul; editing by Jonathan Oatis and Sonya HepinstallOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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4f698bbdabc374452ec388e3e08c8955 | https://www.reuters.com/article/facebook-propaganda-mueller/facebook-gives-election-ad-data-to-u-s-special-counsel-source-idUSL2N1LO01N | Facebook gives election ad data to U.S. special counsel -source | Facebook gives election ad data to U.S. special counsel -source
By Reuters Staff1 Min Read
SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 6 (Reuters) - Facebook Inc has turned over information about U.S. election ads it believes were bought by Russians to Robert Mueller, the special counsel in charge of investigating alleged Russian interference in last year’s election, a source familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.
The information produced by Facebook included copies of advertisements and data about the buyers of the ads, the source said. (Reporting by Joseph Menn; Writing by David Ingram; Editing by Sandra Maler)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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2dcea1024d02aa1fbf1c78937cdd8b84 | https://www.reuters.com/article/factbox-commodities-blockchain-idINKBN18I14O?edition-redirect=in | FACTBOX - Who's doing what with blockchain in commodities | FACTBOX - Who's doing what with blockchain in commodities
By Reuters Staff4 Min Read
(Reuters) - Many commodity groups, banks and technology companies are seeking to modernise the commodity sector and scrap millions of paper documents through using blockchain, the technology first developed for the crypto-currency bitcoin.
FILE PHOTO: An oil pump jack pumps oil in a field near Calgary, Alberta, Canada July 21, 2014. REUTERS/Todd Korol/File Photo
Below are details of what various firms are doing to roll out blockchain in the commodity sector.
TRADING HOUSES
MERCURIA - Completed a pilot oil trade earlier this year, working with bank ING and Societe Generale, in which a “smart contract” letter of credit was set up on a blockchain while the traditional paper process ran in parallel.
GUNVOR - Had several discussions with banking partners on the topic and “we’re prepared to cooperate going forward”, a spokesman said.
TRAFIGURA - Partnered with IBM and Natixis to put together a platform for U.S. crude oil deals, using IBM’s blockchain technology Hyperledger Fabric.
DREYFUS, CARGILL, OLAM - Members of a blockchain consortium working on a supply chain and trading system for the cotton industry using Hyperledger Fabric.
BANKS
HSBC - Worked with Bank of America Merrill Lynch and the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore last year on a proof of concept regarding replicating a letter of credit on a distributed ledger.
In January, HSBC joined with six other banks to work on a blockchain platform for trade among European small and medium-sized businesses.
BARCLAYS - In September, carried out what the bank billed as the world’s first trade transaction using blockchain along with Israel-based start-up company Wave.
CITIGROUP - Looking at how to use blockchain across all products and the bank has some investments in companies in the sector, but so far nothing unique to commodities was being pursued, executives said in February at a media roundtable.
ING, SOCIETE GENERALE - Worked with Mercuria on blockchain pilot (see above).
STANDARD CHARTERED - Completed a proof of concept along with DBS Bank and Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore using blockchain for trade finance invoicing.
COMMONWEALTH BANK OF AUSTRALIA, WELLS FARGO - In October, completed a blockchain transaction with Brighann Cotton involving a shipment from the United States to China.
ICICI BANK, EMIRATES NBD - The Indian and Middle Eastern banks executed trade finance transactions using technology from EdgeVerve Systems, a unit of Infosys.
TECHNOLOGY GROUPS
BTL - The Canadian-listed firm launched a three-month blockchain pilot in March with European energy companies including Austria’s Wien Energie using its Interbit platform, focusing on the reconciliation process.
WAVE - Israeli start-up with blockchain technology to allow the shipping sector to move from paper to digital bills of lading.
GFT Technologies - The German software group launched a blockchain prototype for the physical commodities sector in January 2016. The firm in discussions with several commodity producers regarding its permissioned model, which uses Ethereum, an open-source blockchain platform.
R3 - A consortium of over 80 financial institutions and regulators, which developed the Corda distributed ledger on an open-source platform.
HYPERLEDGER - An open source blockchain collaboration hosted by the Linux Foundation, aiming to develop open protocols and standards.
Reporting by Eric Onstad; editing by David StampOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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5a4eef4f1a432fd9969e71e96511253a | https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-capitol-giuliani-idUSL2N2L31S2 | Fact Check-Photo of Rudy Giuliani and Jake Angeli is not proof that the storming of the capitol was staged | Fact Check-Photo of Rudy Giuliani and Jake Angeli is not proof that the storming of the capitol was staged
By Reuters Fact Check7 Min Read
Social media users have been sharing a photograph of former President Donald Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and protester Jake Angeli and claiming that this shows they knew each other before the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the Capitol and that the attack was staged. These claims are false.
An example can be seen here .
The description of the post reads: “Jake is friends with Rudy. He’s also a highly woke individual. The whole event on the 6th was staged to confiscate the laptops. ANTIFA did plan to create havoc that day. We knew in advance. Two separate groups. Most of the real violence occurred outside. The majority of inside was staged. It worked. Congress ran through the tunnels. FISA warrants for laptops quietly executed.”
The post does not spell out how the alleged relationship shows that the attack was staged. It appears to suggest there was some sort of plan to stage the chaos at the Capital to distract attention while government agents seized laptops from lawmakers to gather unspecified evidence on them. It also accuses left-wing Antifa protesters of being responsible for most of the actual violence. There is no evidence to support any part of this loose chain of conspiracy theories.
ANGELI AND GIULIANI
According to AZ Central, the protester known as Jake Angeli has been a “fixture at Arizona right-wing political rallies over the past year." In an interview with the news outlet in May 2020 visible here , Angeli spoke in favor of President Donald Trump and his policies. A Reuters Fact Check from Jan. 6 debunking false claims that Angeli belonged to Antifa can be seen here .
Fact-checking website Snopes traced the photograph of the two men back to Angeli’s now-deleted Facebook page archive.is/OdtMn (here). The photograph was taken at a meeting held in Phoenix, Arizona with GOP lawmakers and Giuliani on Nov. 30, 2020 (here ).
Angeli’s post does not suggest a prior relationship between him and Giuliani. The description of Angeli’s Facebook post reads: “I’m at the hearing today in PHX AZ...got to shake Rudy’s hand, and meet the warrior woman Chanel Rion from OAN! What an honor it is to be present for this historic meeting and meet such awesome patriots in the process! HOLD THE LINE PATRIOTS! USA WILL PREVAIL, WE WILL STOP THE STEAL! CUZ AS ALWAYS GOD WINS!”
Albert Watkins, Angeli’s attorney, told Reuters via email that Angeli had no pre-existing relationship with Giuliani. Representatives for Giuliani did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.
STOLEN LAPTOPS
There were reports of missing computers after the raid, but no indication of any official, concerted effort to seize them.
Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat, said on Twitter that a laptop was taken from his office (here and here ). Merkley’s spokesperson told the Associated Press here that the laptop was later recovered at the Capitol and dusted for fingerprints.
CNN reported here that Rep. Jim Clayburn had told reporters that his iPad had been taken during the incident, but it was later recovered and found to have been moved to a secure location by a staffer.
A laptop was stolen from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, but it belonged to a conference room and was used for presentations, according to an aide (here).
The FBI said in a court filing on Jan. 17 that Riley June Williams was seen on video taking “a laptop computer or hard drive” from Pelosi’s office. It is investigating whether she tried to sell the device to Russian intelligence (here).
On Jan. 26, the AP reported Williams’ lawyer saying the laptop had yet to be recovered (here).
ANTIFA
Reuters Fact Check previously debunked the claim that the men who stormed the Capitol were Antifa supporters here and here and that the storming was staged with green screens here .
VERDICT
False. A photograph showing Rudy Giuliani and Jake Angeli is not proof that the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol was staged to confiscate laptops.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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1acee51e40fbfac710f54bcf2f2da1d0 | https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-covid-belgium/fact-check-video-does-not-show-the-belgian-health-minister-faking-his-covid-19-jab-idUSL1N2M03AU | Fact Check-Video does not show the Belgian health minister faking his COVID-19 jab | Fact Check-Video does not show the Belgian health minister faking his COVID-19 jab
By Reuters Fact Check4 Min Read
Social media users have falsely claimed a video shows Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke pretending to receive the coronavirus vaccine to “encourage compliance”. While the clip does show a Flemish minister, it is not Vandenbroucke – nor was the minister supposed to be receiving a vaccine.
Examples of posts sharing the video can be seen here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here). It shows a nurse acting out the process of administering an injection – and she appears to be using a needleless-syringe. One caption accompanying the videos reads: “Belgian health minister pretends to take the vaccine. But there is no needle. Why not?” Another adds: “Cameras flashing. Tons of theatrics. Nothing suspicious about a massive PR program to ensure compliance. A Belgian Health Minister doing ‘his part’ to keep everyone safe.”
One Instagram account claims the lack of needle is a plan to “mock us” as it is “a trademark move of the devil”.
Firstly, the clip does not show Belgian Health Minister Frank Vandenbroucke; it shows Vice Minister-President of the Flemish Government Bart Somers. Secondly, the footage was captured in February during a test run at a vaccination centre.
On Feb. 1, Somers and fifty volunteers took part in a so-called “dry run” at the De Kimpel vaccination centre in Bilzen (here, here). The simulation was set up to unearth logistical issues at the centre ahead of the actual vaccine roll out. The social media clip of Somers was taken from a news report discussing this test run.
On his Facebook page, Somers wrote that the footage (here, here) showed the De Kimpel vaccination centre being “extensively tested” thanks to the dry run. The syringe used on him was not real, he added.
Previous fact checks about the alleged staging of vaccinations can be read (here, here and here).
VERDICT
False. The video shows Bart Somers, the vice minister-president of the Flemish government, during a test run at a vaccination centre. A needless syringe was not used because the minister was taking part in a test ahead of the vaccination rollout.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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a5b14143bacb8f82c7428b3c29063121 | https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-epstein-bones/fact-check-no-evidence-that-childrens-bones-were-found-on-epsteins-island-idUSL1N2LZ1RK | Fact Check-No evidence that children’s bones were found on Epstein’s island | Fact Check-No evidence that children’s bones were found on Epstein’s island
By Reuters Fact Check4 Min Read
Social media users shared posts saying that children’s bones were found on sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s Little St. James Island in the U.S. Virgin Islands. There is, however, no evidence to support this claim.
Examples can be seen here and here .
The text in one post reads: “Bones found of bodies dumped into the sea off Epstein’s snuff Island. They raped, murdered and sacrificed children and people there. Start getting used to the idea. It was a playground for the worlds most powerful who were bored of regular dregs.”
Another post reads: “The bones of CHILDREN have been found on Epstein’s Island. MY QUESTION?? Why isn’t this headlines on EVERY major network?”
Epstein, a financier and convicted sex offender, died Aug. 10, 2019 at age 66 by suicide in a Manhattan jail cell, after pleading not guilty to abusing and trafficking in women and girls in Manhattan and Florida from 2002 to 2005. According to the complaint, Epstein, with help from accomplices, “trafficked, raped, sexually assaulted and held captive” girls and young women at his properties in the Virgin Islands. (here)
One post here includes a screenshot of an article with the headline: “FBI divers recover human bones in waters off Epstein ‘Orgy Island’ as ‘Deep State’ meltdown…” The full article is visible here .
The website and author of the article, “Sorcha Faal”, is described by FactCheck.org, PolitiFact, Snopes and the New Republic as unreliable and using conspiracy theories (here , here , here and here ).
The article describes a “highly classified report” and does not provide evidence to back up the claims made.
The island was raided by the FBI on Aug. 12, 2019, as reported here , here and here , with no mention of the discovery of children’s bones.
Fact checkers Snopes and PolitiFact were also unable to find evidence supporting the claim.
VERDICT
No evidence. The claim that children’s bones were found on Epstein’s Little St. James Island appear to have originated from an article on a website known to spread conspiracy theories.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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24ad34410a4a5dd81fd1ebd63af4b791 | https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-johnson-aborted/fact-check-johnson-johnsons-covid-19-vaccine-does-not-contain-aborted-fetal-cells-idUSL1N2LU1T9 | Fact Check-Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine does not contain aborted fetal cells | Fact Check-Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine does not contain aborted fetal cells
By Reuters Fact Check6 Min Read
Social media users have been sharing posts online that claim the COVID-19 vaccine produced by Johnson & Johnson contains aborted fetal DNA as an ingredient. This claim is false. While the vaccine used lab-replicated fetal cells (known as fetal cell lines) during its production process, the vaccine itself does not contain any fetal cells.
An example post making this claim can be seen here . The text reads: “I don’t know who needs to hear this, but the first ingredient in J+J va((ine [sic] is aborted fetal DNA. This has been today’s racy post. For those of you who stick around, tune in tomorrow for more.”
The U.S. government authorized Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose Janssen COVID-19 vaccine on Feb. 27, 2021, enabling millions more Americans to be vaccinated in the coming weeks and setting the vaccine up for additional approvals around the world (here).
The ingredients of the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine can be seen in a fact sheet by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) here . These are: recombinant, replication-incompetent adenovirus type 26 expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, citric acid monohydrate, trisodium citrate dihydrate, ethanol, 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HBCD), polysorbate-80, sodium chloride.
The list does not include fetal cells or DNA (nor does it contain messenger RNA, like Moderna and Pfizer’s vaccines). Jake Sargent, a representative for Johnson & Johnson, confirmed to Reuters via email that the vaccine does not contain “aborted fetal DNA”.
The Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna vaccines used fetal cell lines in their testing stages. Johnson & Johnson used a human fetal cell line called PER.C6, developed from the retinal cells of an 18-week-old fetus aborted in 1985 in its production and manufacturing stages.
Fetal cell lines (not fetal tissue) are sometimes used in the development, confirmation or production process of making vaccines – including the COVID-19 vaccine ( here , here ).
These fetal cell lines are not taken from recent abortions, but are derived from decades old fetal cells (more detail on this here ). These cells replicate over decades in laboratory settings, thousands of times removed from the original fetus cells, becoming known as fetal cell lines.
None of the finished COVID-19 vaccines used in the U.S. contain actual fetal tissues ( here , here , here and here), so it is not correct to describe them as a component of the vaccine.
For more detail on how the Johnson & Johnson vaccine used PER.C6 cells to create its adenovirus vaccine, see ( here).
Dr Amesh Adalja, infectious disease doctor and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, confirmed to Reuters via email that the vaccine does not contain traces of fetal cell lines. “Though fetal cells are used in the production of the vaccine, they do not remain after the production process,” Adalja explained. “The contents of the vaccine or filtered in a way that removes extraneous material prior to packaging.”
Science Magazine reported here that cells derived from abortions have been used since the 1960s to develop vaccines such as chickenpox, hepatitis A, shingles and rubella, as well as drugs for diseases like cystic fibrosis, hemophilia and rheumatoid arthritis.
The use of aborted fetal cells has been a source of controversy among religious leaders and anti-abortion groups (here).
The Trump administration worked to restrict the use of human fetal cells, although President Donald J. Trump’s antibody treatment after he was infected with COVID-19 was developed this same way, as explained by ABC News here .
On Dec. 21, 2020, the Vatican weighed in, saying that in absence of vaccines made from other sources, it is morally acceptable to receive COVID-19 vaccines that were developed using cell lines from aborted fetuses (here).
VERDICT
Partly false. The COVID-19 vaccine by Johnson & Johnson does not contain aborted fetus cells. It was produced by using cells derived from an aborted fetus in 1985.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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eb03a8001fc3b628a86a47538da84301 | https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-psaki-suez-canal/fact-check-white-house-press-secretarys-firm-not-tied-to-suez-canal-blocking-ship-idUSL1N2LZ23J | Fact Check-White House Press Secretary’s firm not tied to Suez Canal-blocking ship | Fact Check-White House Press Secretary’s firm not tied to Suez Canal-blocking ship
By Reuters Fact Check5 Min Read
Nearly four years before becoming White House Press Secretary under President Joe Biden, long-time Democratic operative Jen Psaki opened a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. Now social media users are using its name, Evergreen Consulting LLC, to suggest a link between Psaki and the Ever Given, a giant container ship that was stranded in Egypt’s Suez Canal for almost a week. The ship’s operator, Evergreen Marine Corp Taiwan Ltd, is an established publicly traded company with no ties to Psaki’s consulting business that Reuters could find.
Photos of Psaki’s business registration with D.C. regulators have been floating around social media to suggest a connection to the Ever Given. While the photo is true, it is being posted with misleading claims.
The registration is visible here .
Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory first made baseless claims linking the 400 m (430 yard) ship to former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, after it was stranded across the single-lane stretch of the Suez Canal for six days at the end of March, blocking more than a hundred vessels. Social media users are now using the coincidence in the name of Psaki’s firm to hint at a link to the White House Press Secretary. Examples are here , here , here
“Well well well, Evergreen Consulting,” reads one post, to which a commenter says “THE PLOT APPEARS TO BE THICKING (sic).” Another says “Jen Psaki and Evergreen are close friends it seems.”
When asked if Psaki’s firm has or had a relationship with Evergreen Marine Ltd., or if Psaki has ever performed consulting work on shipping that involved container ships or haulers, a White House official said “no to both”.
After serving as the White House Communications Director for former President Barack Obama, Psaki moved into the private sector, forming Evergreen in 2017. She also worked for WestExec Advisors and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace before joining Democrat Joe Biden’s transition team after he beat former President Donald Trump, a Republican, in the Nov. 2020 presidential election. She became Press Secretary in 2021 ( here , here , here).
Ethics disclosures from the White House show that Psaki made $580,000 from her private consulting group, and that the company will “remain dormant” during her government service and “no business activity will be conducted.” Psaki also lists being paid as a CNN contributor as well as a communications consultant for Lyft, Jeff Anderson and Associates, the Zero Abuse Project, Center for Humane Technology, AnyVision, Spirit of America, Jeff Zients, Demand Justice and Bryson Gillette ( here , here , here ).
The shipping company, meanwhile, files financial disclosures as a publicly traded company. A review of its quarterly consolidated financial reports going back to the first quarter of 2017 does not show Evergreen Consulting as a related party and does not turn up any transactions with Psaki’s firm (here ).
VERDICT
Misleading. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki established Evergreen Consulting LLC in 2017, but the firm has no ties to Evergreen Marine Corp. Ltd, the operators of the ship that blocked the Suez Canal.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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0e82246538206f88e1595f7bc5dca4eb | https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-purell-toxic/fact-check-purell-does-not-contain-toxic-ingredients-according-to-fda-idUSL1N2M01BB | Fact Check-Purell does not contain toxic ingredients, according to FDA | Fact Check-Purell does not contain toxic ingredients, according to FDA
By Reuters Fact Check3 Min Read
Social media users have been sharing an image of a Purell hand sanitizer on a metal stand that has been damaged at the base. Users are claiming that this is caused by the toxic ingredients in Purell. There is, however, no evidence to support this claim.
Examples can be seen here and here . The text in the image reads: “A picture says a million words. POISON”
The posts do not specify what ingredients it considers toxic.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warns on its website here. against hand sanitizers with ingredients such as methanol and 1-propanol, that can be toxic to humans.
The FDA includes a list of hand sanitizer with toxic ingredients that consumers should not use, which can be found here . It lists ethyl and isopropyl alcohol as acceptable ingredients.
There are various reasons why FDA recommends against use of certain hand sanitizers. These include hand sanitizers containing or made in the same facility as products that contain methanol or 1-propanol, found to have microbial contamination, recalled by the manufacturer or distributor, subpotent (containing less than the required amount of alcohol) or packaged in a container able to be mistaken for food or beverage.
None of Purell’s products are listed among the 232 total entries in the FDA’s list. Purell’s ingredients are available here , with ethyl alcohol at 70% as its active ingredient and isopropyl alcohol among its inactive ingredients.
Samantha Williams, senior director of corporate communications for GOJO (the parent company for Purell), confirmed to Reuters that Purell hand sanitizers do not contain toxic ingredients and that hand sanitizers have been safely used for more than three decades.
The safety data sheets for different Purell products can be found www.gojo.com/en/SDS .
VERDICT
False. Purell does not contain toxic ingredients, according to the FDA.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here .
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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91064c370dce3d9598c81325c111da58 | https://www.reuters.com/article/factcheck-suezcanal-nuclear/fact-check-evergivenis-not-loaded-with-nuclear-weapons-it-is-not-a-ship-specialised-for-such-transportation-and-doing-so-would-be-in-breach-of-an-internationaltreaty-idUSL1N2LZ143 | Fact Check-Ever Given is not loaded with nuclear weapons – it is not a ship specialised for such transportation, and doing so would be in breach of an international treaty | Fact Check-Ever Given is not loaded with nuclear weapons – it is not a ship specialised for such transportation, and doing so would be in breach of an international treaty
By Reuters Fact Check4 Min Read
A social media post has falsely claimed the Ever Given ship that blocked the Suez Canal is carrying nuclear weapons. There is no evidence to support this – and Evergreen Line, the company leasing the boat, told Reuters the allegation is false.
The original post has now been removed from Facebook (here); however, other accounts have shared a screenshot (here , here , here , here). It claims information has been leaked in the Netherlands that the “EVERGREEN was loaded with WEAPONS and NUKES”. Comments left underneath suggest some users believe the claim to be true. “This is getting deep. More tentacles than an octopus. WWIII type stuff,” one person wrote.
The posts were written in response to news on March 23 of the 400 metre-long Ever Given container running aground and blocking the Suez Canal (here). The boat was re-floated on March 29 (here), allowing travel to resume through the passage, which is where around 30% of global container traffic flows annually (here).
Reuters contacted Evergreen Line HQ in Taipei about the claim (www.evergreen-line.com/), which said: “We can categorically deny that any nuclear material or devices were being carried by Ever Given on its voyage that has recently been unfortunately delayed by the incident in the Suez Canal.”
Meanwhile, Nukewatch UK, a network that monitors nuclear weapon convoys across Britain (www.nukewatch.org.uk/about-us/), told Reuters: “The idea that the Ever Given was loaded with nuclear weapons is nonsense. If the suggestion is that some kind of terrorist organisation is using Evergreen to move a nuclear bomb and other munitions, that also seems highly unlikely given how unpredictable container transport now proves to be.”
The organisation explained that states are not allowed to transfer nuclear weapons to each other under the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty (here) and that nuclear weapons moved within a state, or for deployment at a military base abroad, are moved in very specialised transport with high security.
“In the UK, nuclear warheads are moved in 44 tonne lead-lined trucks with lots of security features to protect them from any kind of impact. No country ships them around in ordinary containers,” the spokesperson added. Images of the lead-lined trucks can be viewed on the Nukewatch UK website (here).
VERDICT
False. There is no evidence that the Ever Given ship is carrying nuclear weapons. The company leasing the ship have said the claim is false – and the container ship is not specially equipped to carry such cargo.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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d75c60fba97e917e25b59cb504562362 | https://www.reuters.com/article/far-ma-remus-horizon-idUKL4N2IX1DX | UPDATE 1-Australia's Far gets $159.2 mln buyout offer from Remus Horizons | UPDATE 1-Australia's Far gets $159.2 mln buyout offer from Remus Horizons
By Reuters Staff2 Min Read
(Adds details on the offer, background)
Dec 17 (Reuters) - Oil and gas explorer Far Ltd said on Thursday it received a A$209.6 million ($159.15 mln) all-cash takeover proposal from private investment firm Remus Horizons PCC Ltd.
The offer values Far at 2.1 Australian cents per share, representing a premium of 90.9% to the company’s shares last closing price of 1.1 Australian cents.
Cash-strapped Far has struggled due to the coronavirus-induced downturn in the oil and gas industry, with the Africa-focused explorer defaulting in June on its contributions to the Sangomar oil project off Senegal’s shore.
The company exited the project in November, agreeing to sell its 15% stake to a unit of India’s ONGC Videsh Ltd for $45 million.
Far said Remus Horizons was willing to hold talks on a loan of up to $50 million from the date of the binding offer to enable the company to meet its funding obligations towards its interest in the Rufisque, Sangomar, and Sangomar Deep project.
Far also said it was seeking clarifications from Remus Horizons on the proposal and had decided to postpone its shareholder meeting scheduled for Dec. 21 to Jan. 21, 2021.
Remus Horizons did not immediately respond to a request for comment. ($1 = 1.3170 Australian dollars) (Reporting by Nikhil Subba in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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d01c91e27f19af0bcf5e5588c0208d09 | https://www.reuters.com/article/fashion-milan/prada-reworks-winter-classics-at-milan-fashion-week-idUSL8N2KV4BE | Prada reworks winter classics at Milan Fashion Week | Prada reworks winter classics at Milan Fashion Week
By Reuters Staff2 Min Read
MILAN (Reuters) - Italian fashion house Prada reworked wardrobe classics for its fall line at Milan Fashion Week on Thursday, with designers Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons saying they were inspired by the idea of change and transformation.
In a video shared online as part of a virtual Milan Fashion Week, models strutted in layered outfits in an array of prints and colours as part of the autumn/winter 2021-2022 collection.
Prada and Simons, who joined the brand as co-creative director last year, presented tight jacquard-knit bodysuits in mixed prints, which were made to appear as second skin.
Navy and grey pinstripe suits were reimagined as jackets with short scrunched sleeves worn with matching skirts with slits or ankle-length trousers.
Models, who walked between rooms with marble or fake fur floors, wore coats in bright colours, adorned in sparkling paillettes or with exaggerated sleeves.
Outerwear included wraps in fake fur, re-nylon and sequins, and large loose bomber jackets. Dresses were loose and in mainly dark colours.
For the evening there were black jumpsuits and long black dresses with printed collars. Colourful gloves had small zip purses on the front.
“In this collection we play with the idea of the classic - we subvert it, we transmutate it,” Prada said in a statement.
“There are many more contrasts in this collection - retro and futuristic, embellished and minimal, sports and elegance - because we are combining them, hybridizing them, creating something that seems new,” Simons added.
Milan Fashion Week, which began on Wednesday and runs until March 1, is a virtual event this season due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Major Italian fashion names such as Giorgio Armani, Dolce & Gabbana and Valentino are sharing videos on a digital platform.
Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; Editing by Janet LawrenceOur Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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54f5bfbbe0f106eeda547619540a7cba | https://www.reuters.com/article/fashion-new-york-idUSL2N1PY027 | New York fashion show to highlight #MeToo movement | New York fashion show to highlight #MeToo movement
By Peter Szekely3 Min Read
NEW YORK, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Inspired by a social media campaign aimed at exposing widespread sexual assault and harassment in U.S. life, a fashion show on Friday will have a #MeToo theme and feature models who share their stories on the runway.
The #MeToo Fashion Show during New York Fashion Week is the brainchild of Myriam Chalek, creative director of American Wardrobe, who wanted to use her label as a platform to benefit women.
“I don’t think this fashion show is going to change things overnight, but if it can be a step further then I guess I’ve done my part. A woman who has been empowered is a woman who is unstoppable,” Chalek told Reuters in an interview.
While the show will feature American Wardrobe fashions, Chalek said the event is nonprofit. The models are victims or survivors of sexual assault and harassment who will tell their stories from the catwalk, she said.
Among them will be Alicia Kozakiewicz, who was abducted in 2002 near her home in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, by a man who had groomed her online, a case that made international headlines as one of the first such kidnappings of the Internet age.
Kozakiewicz, who also is known as Alicia Kozak, is now a motivational speaker.
To highlight abuses in the fashion industry, model Cameron Russell has for the past four months been posting anonymous stories on her Instagram page by fellow models recounting their experiences of sexual assault.
Since October, hundreds of women have accused powerful men in business, politics, media and entertainment of sex abuse, joining the #MeToo social media movement that has shone a light on sexual misconduct across the United States.
In the fashion world, sexual abuse allegations have also come from men.
The New York Times reported last month that more than two dozen male models and assistants who worked with high-powered fashion photographers Bruce Weber and Mario Testino say they were subjected by them to molestation, sexual advances and unnecessary nudity.
Lawyers for both photographers told The Times they denied the allegations, which nevertheless prompted the magazine company Conde Nast to suspend its work with them. Reuters could not independently confirm any of the accusations. (Additioinal reporting by Gina Cherelus; Writing by by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Daniel Wallis)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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dd260d546411c3a80d12553e1da44fe1 | https://www.reuters.com/article/faurecia-results-idINW8N1DX020 | Faurecia sales rise 7.3 pct on strong Asia performance | Faurecia sales rise 7.3 pct on strong Asia performance
By Reuters Staff2 Min Read
PARIS, Oct 12 (Reuters) - French auto parts maker Faurecia said on Thursday quarterly sales rose 7.3 percent as the maker of car seats, exhausts and interiors harnessed strong Asian demand and weathered a North American production slowdown.
Sales excluding passed-on catalytic converter monolith costs rose to 3.79 billion euros ($4.49 billion) in the third quarter, Faurecia said. Excluding the effects of acquisitions and exchange-rate fluctuations, revenue was up 10.7 percent.
Asian sales rose 19.3 percent on a reported basis to 701 million euros, helped in part by the consolidation of a Chinese joint venture with partner Changan. In North America, where Faurecia does about a quarter of its business, revenue fell 6.1 percent as auto production dropped 8.1 percent.
Faurecia reiterated full-year 2017 goals including cash flow above 350 million euros, 7 percent sales growth and an operating margin between 6.6 percent and 7 percent. ($1 = 0.8447 euros) (Reporting by Laurence Frost; editing by Michel Rose)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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c3b218dff066be7caa2aab66950033ee | https://www.reuters.com/article/fbc-arizonastate-southerncalifornia-reca-idUSMTZEAA5YCN8PY20141005 | Arizona State 38, USC 34 | Arizona State 38, USC 34
By 3 Min Read
(Updated: CORRECTING: Arizona State’s rushing yards in Game Notebook.)
No. 24 Arizona State 38, No. 20 USC 34: Mike Bercovici threw for 510 yards and five touchdowns, including a 46-yard score to Jaelen Strong as time expired, as the visiting Sun Devils scored 21 points in the final four minutes to upset the Trojans.
Bercovici completed 27-of-45 passes and Strong made 10 catches for 202 yards and three scores for Arizona State (4-1, 2-1 Pac-12), which had 541 yards of total offense and posted its first win at USC since 1999. D.J. Foster rushed 10 times for 13 yards but caught a 21-yard TD pass with 3:53 left to cut the Sun Devils’ deficit to 27-25.
Cody Kessler was 28-of-45 for 273 yards and rushed for a score while Javorius Allen rushed 29 times for 143 yards and two TDs for USC (3-2, 2-1), which took an early lead on Nelson Agholor’s 53-yard punt return for a touchdown 5:14 into the first quarter. Allen, who added four catches for 86 yards, scored on a 53-yard run to put the Trojans ahead 34-25 with 3:02 remaining.
Bercovici connected with Cameron Smith for a 73-yard score on the Sun Devils’ next play from scrimmage to cut the deficit to 34-32. The Sun Devils forced a punt before Bercovici capped the comeback on the final drive with a 26-yard pass to Gary Chambers and the Hail Mary pass to Strong in the end zone.
Arizona State, which defeated the Trojans 62-41 last season in Tempe, led 15-7 after opening the second quarter with two TD passes from Bercovici to Strong. USC closed the half with 10 straight points as Allen scored on a 1-yard plunge and Andre Heidari booted a 35-yard field goal put the Trojans ahead 17-15 at the break.
GAME NOTEBOOK: Arizona State, which attempted two unsuccessful onside kicks in the final four minutes, burned its final second-half timeout with 2:25 left in the third quarter. … USC lost despite holding the Sun Devils to 31 rushing yards. … RB Justin Davis gained 67 yards on the ground and Agholor made nine catches for 85 yards for the Trojans, who rushed for 220 yards.
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4823b174c721d6cf04363c18539690c5 | https://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUKISL398919?edition-redirect=uk | India starts marathon vote, weak coalition seen | India starts marathon vote, weak coalition seen
By 5 Min Read
* Over 140 million people eligible to vote in first stage
* Election comes at time of economic slowdown
* No party likely to dominate; weak coalitions likely
* Maoist rebels kill five poll officials, 11 police
By Krittivas Mukherjee
VARANASI, India, April 16 (Reuters) - From the snowbound Chinese border to holy Ganges cities, tens of millions of Indians began voting in a month-long election with signs that an unstable coalition may emerge in the middle of an economic slowdown.
The ruling Congress party-led coalition appears to lead against an alliance headed by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), but both may need the support of a host of smaller and unpredictable regional parties to win office.
Maoist rebel violence marred the mostly peaceful vote, with five election officials killed in a landmine blast in Chhattisgarh state. Eleven police were killed across the central and eastern "red belt" where Thursday's election was centred.
The main fear among investors is that the world's largest democratic exercise, involving 714 million voters and hundreds of parties, will lead to the rise of a "Third Front" government of communist and regional groups.
"The signs are the election will lead to a short-lived arrangement," said V. Ravichandar, managing director of Feedback Consulting, which advises multinationals in India. "It will be like Italy, something happens every year or year-and-a-half."
The uncertainty comes as a once-booming India reels from a crunch that has cost millions of jobs. It has ignited fears of political limbo just as India balances needs to help millions of poor with worries over its biggest fiscal gap in two decades.
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For full Indian election coverage click on [ID:nSP480764]
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The government deployed hundreds of thousands of police to protect more than 140 million people who could vote on Thursday in polls that covered some of India's poorest states hit by the four-decade-old Maoist insurgency.
Maoists, who saying they are fighting for the rights of poor farmers, kidnapped eight poll officials in Jharkhand state. In some Maoist-hit areas people did not vote, fearing attacks by the rebels who had threatened to cut off their hands.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described Maoist violence as India's biggest internal security threat. Some 500 civilians and police were killed in insurgent clashes last year.
The outcome of the five-stage election will be known on May 16. India's elections are notoriously hard to predict and polls have been wrong in the past. Exit polls are banned.
A clear win by either of the two main parties could see a rally on India's markets, but the emergence of a weak coalition of regional and communist parties could see stocks fall by as much as 30 percent, market watchers say.
ARRAY OF CASTES
Thursday's election ranged from the snowbound Chinese border to holy towns on the Ganges River.
Some election officials rode elephants to remote polling stations near the Myanmar border. Other ballots were brought by two-day sea trips to the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.
In Varanasi, the northern sacred city on the Ganges River known for its Hindu gurus, many voters arrived on bicycles and bullock carts to cast electronic votes.
Women in saris or burqas, many carrying children, pressed buttons with pictorial symbols of each party, after their fingers were marked with ink to avoid fraud. "India needs many things like jobs for people, homes, water, roads but what is needed first is a stable government", said Sanjay Singh, a college student and a first-time voter.
Ancient caste, religious and ethnic ties will play a huge role in the vote as well as national problems like the slowdown, security fears and local issues from the building of a village water pump to problems of wild elephants trampling on villagers.
The centre-left Congress party is wooing voters with populist measures such as food subsidies in a country were hundreds of millions live below the poverty line.
Singh is Congress's official candidate. But Rahul Gandhi, the 38-year-old scion of India's most powerful family dynasty, has become one of the party's main election cards, criss-crossing the nation in helicopter.
The BJP accuses its main rival of poor governance and being weak on security, after a string of militant attacks last year culminated in a rampage in Mumbai by Islamist gunmen that killed 166 people and escalated tensions with nuclear-armed Pakistan. _______________________________________________________________ _ For pictures, video and blogs, visit:
here
For a graphic of a Reuters' poll on the elections:
here
_______________________________________________________________ _ (Additional reporting by Reuters correspondents throughout India; Writing by Alistair Scrutton; Editing by John Chalmers)
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aea9671767d5f01fef06cf82965977ee | https://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUKLN940022?edition-redirect=uk | Suicide bomber kills 28 in Baghdad-police | Suicide bomber kills 28 in Baghdad-police
By Reuters Staff2 Min Read
(Updates toll)
BAGHDAD, April 23 (Reuters) - A suicide bomber wearing a vest stuffed with explosives blew himself up in a group of police distributing relief supplies in Baghdad on Thursday, killing at least 28 people and wounding 50, Iraqi police said.
The police were helping to pass out aid to Iraqis who had been driven from their homes during the sectarian bloodshed and insurgency unleashed by the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
At least five children were among the dead, police said.
Violence across Iraq has fallen sharply over the past year but insurgents such as al Qaeda still carry out frequent attacks. Suicide bombings are often associated with al Qaeda.
A suicide bomber on Wednesday killed at least five people and wounded 15 inside a mosque in central Iraq, and on Monday, a suicide bomber in a police uniform killed four policemen in northeastern Diyala province. Eight U.S. soldiers were wounded.
Some expect violence to increase as rival political and armed groups position themselves ahead of a national election due to take place at the end of the year. (Editing by Michael Christie)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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8fffebc0f80ab102c1dd0ff34398bebe | https://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSCOL391456 | SCENARIOS-The end of Sri Lanka's quarter-century war | SCENARIOS-The end of Sri Lanka's quarter-century war
By C. Bryson Hull3 Min Read
COLOMBO, May 16 (Reuters) - Sri Lankan troops seized the entire coastline of the Indian Ocean island for the first time since civil war with the Tamil Tiger separatists erupted in 1983, signalling a rapidly approaching conventional victory.
(For the main story, click on [ID:SP465747])
Here are some scenarios of what could happen next:
MILITARY DECLARES VICTORY: No outcome could be more certain. The only question is when. There are more than 50,000 soldiers surrounding fewer than 1,000 hardcore Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters in a coastal speck measuring barely a square km (.5 sq miles), roughly a third of the area of New York's Central Park. Though the LTTE is exceptionally well-armed, they are no match for a military strengthened and custom-built to destroy them.
CIVILIANS KILLED: Of this, there is little doubt. The only question is how many. There are an estimated 50,000 in the sweltering coastal strip, packed in a sea of makeshift tents. The United States and U.N. Security Council has accused the government of indiscriminate shelling and the LTTE of shooting those who try to escape their role as the rebels' human shields. Both deny the accusations. Analysts have warned that the LTTE could carry out a mass suicide attack with the aim of killing hundreds if not thousands of civilians, and then blame it on the military. That could then be used to galvanise the global Tamil diaspora to fund a new war.
THE FATE OF TIGER LEADER PRABHAKARAN: The Tigers and the military say LTTE founder-leader Vellupillai Prabhakaran is in the war zone. But no one has given definitive proof, and Prabhakaran has proved elusive over his three-decade militant career. Vehicles discovered by troops -- a mini-submarine, a long metal chamber thought to be an underwater escape tunnel and aircraft parts -- seem to suggest that Prabhakaran was planning an escape worthy of characters in the action films biographers say he enjoys. Most analysts agree that Prabhakaran, alive or dead, will keep his fate a mystery. The government's best hope is to get his body, dead or alive. Since he is reported to have ordered bodyguards to burn his body if he is near capture, that seems unlikely.
IMF LOAN BLOCKED: Although Washington has raised this as a possibility to pressure Sri Lanka's government, IMF director Dominique Strauss-Kahn's comments on Friday seemed to suggest it would come through soon. [ID:nLF83085] The United States could block the loan, but diplomats say this is unlikely and the U.N. Security Council has said it views using the loan to punish Colombo as unnecessary.
WAR CRIMES INQUIRIES? The United Nations rights chief has backed calls from Britain for an independent inquiry into possible war crimes or violations of humanitarian law. Diplomats have in the past said this is unlikely to happen, given that China and Russia are sympathetic to Sri Lanka's fight against separatists. (Editing by Alex Richardson)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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123b660a8d696a5522110724c588d53b | https://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL5224983 | Kurdish rebel supporters seek a way back to Turkey | Kurdish rebel supporters seek a way back to Turkey
By Tim Cocks, Shamal Aqrawi5 Min Read
* Kurdish PKK supporters want a peace deal with Turkey
* Refugees say ready to go home if rights respected
MAKHMOUR REFUGEE CAMP, Iraq, Sept 9 (Reuters) - Turkey brands them terrorists, but supporters of the rebel Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) exiled in Iraq say all they want is to go home and have their rights as minority Kurds respected.
Makhmour camp, which sprang up a decade ago in a largely Kurdish area of Iraq's Nineveh province, houses 12,000 Kurdish refugees. They fled a war pitting the Turkish military against PKK guerrillas since 1984 that has killed some 40,000 people.
Such camps represent the festering problem Turkey and Iraq must solve if they are to bring lasting stability to a region that is among the world's richest in energy potential, but is plagued by sectarian war, political feuds and cross-border tensions.
Turkey has accused Iraq of failing to stop rebel attacks launched from its north. Iraq's Arab-led government, though keen to improve trade ties with Turkey, is mired in its own dispute with Iraqi Kurds and fears cracking down on the PKK might upset the country's fragile stability after years of war.
Despite Turkey's steps to relax Kurdish policies, the PKK's continuing struggle for an ethnic homeland gives refugees like those in Makhmour little reason to hope they can soon go home.
"The PKK are fighting for Kurdish people's rights," said Mubarak Jubrail, an unemployed 50-year-old. "We dream of going home but until there's a political solution, we can't."
Partly owing to European Union pressure, Turkey has begun to soften its policies towards Kurds after decades of denying their existence as an ethnic group and banning their language.
It has started restoring names of Kurdish villages and may soon allow sermons and university classes to be delivered in the Kurdish tongue. State TV now carries Kurdish broadcasts, although the language is still banned in parliament and in political campaigns.
Improving ties between Ankara and Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region culminated in an unprecedented meeting between Turkish President Abdullah Gul and Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani in Baghdad in March.
For Turks, acknowledging the KRG has been taboo for fear of reigniting Kurdish passions for statehood on Turkish soil.
"THEY HAVE TO CHANGE"
Residents of Makhmour, a settlement of clay homes, satellite dishes and eucalyptus trees, are sceptical of Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's vows to restore cultural rights.
"Turkey can never contemplate another nation inside theirs," said Jubrail. "They want us to be Turkish, as if it's a choice. I was born Kurdish; I can't change. They have to change."
Haji Kachan fled his village in southeast Turkey in 1993 after the Turkish army surrounded and bombed it with mortars and tank shells, killing five fellow villagers, he said. It was punishment for refusing to provide informants on PKK activities.
"We want to go back, but there's nothing left to go back to. So many villages have been destroyed," the 29-year-old teacher said. "We support the PKK because they're standing up for us."
Turkey says it had to evacuate villages infiltrated by PKK militants blamed for killing Turkish troops and citizens. PKK rebels killed six Turkish soldiers in two attacks on Tuesday.
While Turkey drops some restrictions on Kurds, its campaign against the PKK has if anything intensified. Turkish war planes have bombed PKK positions in northern Iraq repeatedly this year. Last year, it launched a ground invasion into northern Iraq.
The United States and European Union, both of which brand the PKK a terrorist group, back Turkey. Makhmour residents want the government to call a ceasefire and start peace talks.
"They have to come to a settlement or this war could go on for 200 years," said camp leader Abdul Karim Ahmed, whose office is adorned by a picture of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan.
This week, Turkey's military ruled out talks with PKK militants. Despite Turkish promises of fair treatment for PKK returnees, Makhmour residents fear arrest if they go home.
"Turkey must accept Kurds as having their own identity," said Ahmed. "Or there'll be no end to this war." (Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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fff18291a0af96eb9caf0ce30e735b3a | https://www.reuters.com/article/featuredCrisis/idUSL9196207 | Peace with Israel possible, says Syria's Assad | Peace with Israel possible, says Syria's Assad
By Reuters Staff3 Min Read
DUBAI, March 9 (Reuters) - Syria President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published on Monday that a peace deal with Israel was possible but that normal relations would only be possible if Israel ended its conflict with the Palestinians.
"There will perhaps be an embassy and formalities, but if you want peace then it has to be comprehensive. We give them the choice between comprehensive peace and a peace agreement which does not have any real value on the ground," al-Assad was quoted as saying in the United Arab Emirates daily al-Khaleej.
"There is a difference between a peace agreement and peace itself. A peace agreement is a piece of paper you sign. This does not mean trade and normal relations, or borders, or otherwise," he said.
"Our people will not accept that, especially since there are half a million Palestinians in our country whose position remains unresolved. It is impossible under these terms to have peace in the natural sense."
Syria and Israel held indirect talks last year under Turkish mediation. Talks focused on the Golan Heights which Israel captured in a 1967 Middle East war and on Syria's relationship with Iran, Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah group.
Syria is demanding that Israel commits to a withdrawal of Israeli troops from the Golan.
The indirect talks, put on hold due to the resignation of the Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in September, were disrupted further after the recent Israeli war in Gaza.
U.S. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said after a meeting with Assad in Damascus last month that Syria was prepared to resume the talks but wanted U.S. participation.
Assad said it was in the Palestinians' interests to coordinate with Damascus over its peace talks with Israel to avoid Israel putting off a resolution with the Palestinians.
"We believe that if Israel signs (a peace agreement) with Syria, Israel will put away the Palestinian question," he said.
Egypt was the first Arab country to sign a peace treaty with Israel but it is often described as a cold peace since relations extend little beyond official government contacts. (Reporting by Asma al-Sharif, editing by Andrew Hammond and Jon Boyle)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
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