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Thomas Nuttall

Thomas Nuttall (5 January 1786 – 10 September 1859) was an English botanist and zoologist who lived and worked in America from 1808 until 1841.

Nuttall was born in the village of Long Preston, near Settle in the West Riding of Yorkshire and spent some years as an apprentice printer in England. Soon after going to the United States he met professor Benjamin Smith Barton in Philadelphia. Barton encouraged his strong interest in natural history.

Early explorations in the United States
In 1810 he travelled to the Great Lakes and in 1811 travelled on the Astor Expedition led by William Price Hunt on behalf of John Jacob Astor up the Missouri River. Nuttall was accompanied by the English botanist John Bradbury, who was collecting plants on behalf of Liverpool botanical gardens. Nuttall and Bradbury left the party at the trading post with the Arikara Indians in South Dakota, and continued farther upriver with Ramsay Crooks. In August they returned to the Arikara post and joined Manuel Lisa's group on a return to St. Louis.

Although Lewis and Clark had travelled this way previously, many of their specimens had been lost. Therefore, many of the plants collected by Nuttall on this trip were unknown to science. The imminent war between Britain and America caused him to return to London via New Orleans. In London he spent time organising his large plant collection and discussing his experiences with other scientists.

Return to the US after the War of 1812; activities and major works (1815-1841)
In 1815, he returned to America and after spending some more time collecting published The Genera of North American Plants (1818). In 1817, Nuttall was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. From 1818 to 1820, he travelled along the Arkansas and Red Rivers, returning to Philadelphia and publishing his Journal of Travels Into the Arkansas Territory During the Year 1819 (1821). He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1823. In 1825, he became curator of the botanical gardens at Harvard University. He published his Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada (1832 and 1834).

In 1834, he resigned his post and set off west again on an expedition led by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, this time accompanied by the naturalist John Kirk Townsend. They travelled through Kansas, Wyoming, and Utah, and then down the Snake River to the Columbia. Nuttall then sailed across the Pacific Ocean to the Hawaiian Islands in December. He returned in the spring of 1835 and spent the next year botanizing in the Pacific Northwest, an area already covered by David Douglas. On the Pacific coast, Nuttall heard of the ship Alert leaving San Diego in May 1836, bound for Boston. It is here that he encounters Richard Henry Dana Jr., a former student of his at Harvard who had set sail from Boston on a two-year voyage to the California coast at about the same time Nuttall had begun his expedition. Dana writes in his memoir, Two Years Before the Mast (1840), of his amazement at seeing his old professor "strolling about San Diego beach, in a sailor's pea jacket, with a wide straw hat, and barefooted, with his trousers rolled up to his knees, picking up stones and shells." Nuttall was taken on the Alert as a passenger along with many of his flora and fauna specimens, which he brought back to Boston to be cataloged and preserved for posterity. Dana writes that though the professor spent much of the voyage in his cabin, he had some occasions to speak with Nuttall about his botanizing while Dana was at the helm of the ship "on a calm night" and was amused to hear his fellow shipmates refer to Nuttall as "Old Curious" for all the curiosities he conveyed on board. Once around the Horn, some of the sights on the trip through the South Atlantic prompted Nuttall to emerge from his quarters: upon sighting Isla de los Estados off the tip of Cape Horn, Nuttall told the Captain of the Alert that he would have liked to explore that place; and Nuttall also enjoyed the sight of dolphins swimming near the ship.

From 1836 until 1841, Nuttall worked at the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia. During this time he made contributions to the Flora of North America being prepared by Asa Gray and John Torrey. The death of his uncle then required Nuttall to return to England. By terms of his uncle's will, to inherit the property, Nuttall had to remain in England for nine months of each year. His North American Sylva: Trees not described by F. A. Michaux, which was the first book to include all the trees of North America, was finished just before he left the US in December 1841.

Later
From 1842 until his death in 1859 Nuttall lived at Nutgrove Hall in St Helens, Lancashire, built by printer Jonas Nuttall in 1810. Nuttall is buried at Christ Church in the nearby village of Eccleston.

List of selected publications

 * Nuttall, T. 1817. Observations on the genus Eriogonum, and the natural order Polygoneae of Jussieu. Part 1. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1(2), 24–31. (BHL link)
 * Nuttall, T. 1817. Observations on the genus Eriogonum, and the natural order Polygoneae of Jussieu. Part 2. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1(3), 33–37. (BHL link)
 * Nuttall, T. 1817. An account of two new genera of plants, and of a species of Tillaea and Limosella, recently discovered on the banks of the Delaware, in the vicinity of Philadelphia. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1(6), 111–123. (Read September 16, 1817) (BHL link)
 * Nuttall, T. 1817. Description of Collinsia, a new genus of plants. Journal of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia 1(6), 189–192. (BHL link)

Named after him
The World Register of Marine Species lists 44 marine genera and species named after him with the epithet nuttalli. Various plants and birds were named after Nuttall, including Nuttall's woodpecker Dryobates nuttallii by his friend William Gambel, and yellow-billed magpie Pica nuttalli and common poorwill Phalaenoptilus nuttallii by John James Audubon. He is also commemorated in the Pacific dogwood Cornus nuttallii, Nuttall's larkspur Delphinium nuttallianum, Nuttall's oak Quercus texana, the catclaw briar Mimosa nuttallii, Nuttall's violet Viola nuttallii, Nuttall's saltbush Atriplex nuttallii, Nuttall's rayless goldenrod Bigelowia nuttallii, and other plants.

The Nuttall Ornithological Club of Cambridge, Massachusetts, is named after him.

title: Thomas Nuttall


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Arthur Helps

Sir Arthur Helps (10 July 1813 – 7 March 1875) was an English writer and dean of the Privy Council. He was a Cambridge Apostle and an early advocate of animal rights.

Biography
The youngest son of London merchant Thomas Helps, Arthur Helps was born in Streatham in South London.

He was educated at Eton and at Trinity College, Cambridge, coming out thirty-first wrangler in the mathematical tripos in 1835. He was recognized by the ablest of his contemporaries there as a man of superior gifts, and likely to make his mark in later life. As a member of the "Conversazione Society", better known as the Cambridge Apostles, a society established in 1820 for the purposes of discussion on social and literary questions by a few young men attracted to each other by a common taste for literature and speculation, he was associated with Charles Buller, Frederick Maurice, Richard Chenevix Trench, Monckton Milnes, Arthur Hallam and Alfred Tennyson.

Soon after leaving the university, Arthur Helps became private secretary to Thomas Spring Rice (afterwards Lord Monteagle), then Chancellor of the Exchequer. This appointment he filled until 1839, when he went to Ireland as private secretary to Lord Morpeth (afterwards Earl of Carlisle), Chief Secretary for Ireland. In the meanwhile (28 October 1836) Helps had married Bessy Fuller, daughter of Captain Edward Fuller and Elizabeth Blennerhassett. Bessy's maternal grandfather, Rev. John Blennerhassett of Tralee, County Kerry, was the cousin of Harman Blennerhassett.

He was one of the commissioners for the settlement of various claims relating to the Gunboat War dating as far back as 1807. In retaliation for the bombardment of Copenhagen, the Danish government had impounded British goods in warehouses, and merchant ships with their cargoes. Although the seizure of goods on land had been settled soon afterwards, the ship-owners were still fruitlessly pursuing their claims for compensation from the British Government as late as 1861. However, with the fall of the Melbourne administration (1841) Helps' official experience closed for a period of nearly twenty years. He bought the Vernon Hill estate near Bishops Waltham, Hampshire, and a private income allowed him to turn to writing books and plays, which he dictated to an amanuensis.

He was not, however, forgotten by his political friends. He possessed admirable tact and sagacity; his fitness for official life was unmistakable, and in 1860 he was appointed Clerk of the Privy Council on the recommendation of Lord Granville. This appointment brought him into personal communication with The Queen and The Prince Consort, both of whom came to regard him with confidence and respect. In 1864 he received the honorary degree of DCL from Oxford University.

In 1862 he established the Bishops Waltham Clay Company for the manufacture of bricks and terracotta. He was also involved with the Bishops Waltham Railway Company, set up to link the brickworks (and the town) with the main London-Southampton line. However, profits were small and he faced competition from the Staffordshire Potteries. Helps also financed the Coke and Gas works which lit the town from 1864.

Helps was also affected by the banking panic of 1866, caused by the failure of Overend, Gurney and Company. It had invested heavily in long-term railway stocks rather than holding cash reserves. The brickworks went into liquidation in 1867, and Helps had to sell the Vernon Hill estate. Queen Victoria in a personal gesture (he had edited a volume of Prince Albert's speeches in 1862) offered him a grace and favour residence in Kew Gardens. He lived for the rest of his life in Queen Charlotte's Cottage, near the main gates.

He was made a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1871 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in the following year. He died of pleurisy on 7 March 1875.

Animal rights
Helps was an early advocate of animal rights and was concerned about animal cruelty. He authored Some Talk About Animals and Their Masters in 1873. The book is notable for extending rights even to insects. Edward Nicholson dedicated his book Rights of an Animal (1879) to Helps.

Writings
His first literary effort, Thoughts in the Cloister and the Crowd (1835), was a series of aphorisms upon life, character, politics and manners. One of these aphorisms is quoted by John Stuart Mill in On Liberty, Chapter Two: "The Deep slumber of decided opinion."

His Essays written in the Intervals of Business had appeared in 1841, and his Claims of Labour, an Essay on the Duties of the Employers to the Employed, in 1844. Two plays, King Henry the Second, an Historical Drama, and Catherine Douglas, a Tragedy, published in 1843, have no particular merit. Neither in these, nor in his only other dramatic effort, Oulita the Serf (1858) did he show any real qualifications as a playwright.

Helps possessed, however, enough dramatic power to give life and individuality to the dialogues with which he enlivened many of his other books. In his Friends in Council, a Series of Readings and Discourse thereon (1847-1859), Helps varied his presentment of social and moral problems by dialogues between imaginary personages, who, under the names of Milverton, Ellesmere and Dunsford, grew to be almost as real to Helps's readers as they certainly became to himself. The book was very popular, and the same expedient was resorted to in Conversations on War and General Culture, published in 1871. The familiar speakers, with others added, also appeared in his Realmah (1868) and in the best of its author's later works, Talk About Animals and Their Masters (1873).

A long essay on slavery in the first series of Friends in Council was subsequently elaborated into a work in two volumes published in 1848 and 1852, called The Conquerors of the New World and their Bondsmen. Helps went to Spain in 1847 to examine the numerous manuscripts bearing upon his subject at Madrid. The fruits of these researches were embodied in a historical work based upon his Conquerors of the New World, and called The Spanish Conquest in America, and its Relation to the History of Slavery and the Government of Colonies (4 vols, 1855, 1857-1861). But in spite of his scrupulous efforts after accuracy, the success of the book was marred by its obtrusively moral purpose and its discursive character.

The Life of Las Casas, the Apostle of the Indians (1868), The Life of Columbus (1869), The Life of Pizarro (1869), and The Life of Hernando Cortrés (1871), when extracted from the work and published separately, proved successful. Besides the books which have been already mentioned he wrote: Organization in Daily Life, an Essay (1862), Casimir Maremma (1870), Brevia, Short Essays and Aphorisms (1871), Thoughts upon Government (1872), Life and Labors of Mr Thomas Brassey (1872), Iras de Biron (1874), Social Pressure (1875).

After the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria turned to Helps to prepare an appreciation of her husband's life and character. In his introduction to the collection (1862) of the Prince Consort's speeches and addresses Helps adequately fulfilled his task. Some years afterwards he edited and wrote a preface to the Queen's Leaves from a Journal of our Life in the Highlands (1868).

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Arthur Helps


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John Torrey

John Torrey (August 15, 1796 – March 10, 1873) was an American botanist, chemist, and physician. Throughout much of his career, he was a teacher of chemistry, often at multiple universities, while he also pursued botanical work, focusing on the flora of North America. His most renowned works include studies of the New York flora, the Mexican Boundary, the Pacific railroad surveys, and the uncompleted Flora of North America.

Biography
Torrey was born in New York City, the second child of Capt. William and Margaret (née Nichols) Torrey. He showed a fondness for mechanics, and at one time planned to become a machinist. When he was 15 or 16, his father received an appointment to the state prison at Greenwich Village, New York, where he was tutored by Amos Eaton, then a prisoner and later a pioneer of natural history studies in America. He thus learned the elements of botany and something of mineralogy and chemistry. In 1815 he began studying medicine with Wright Post, and qualified in 1818. He opened a medical practice in New York City, while devoting his leisure to botany and other scientific pursuits.

In 1817, he became one of the founders of the New York Lyceum of Natural History (now the New York Academy of Science), and one of his first contributions to this body was his Catalogue of Plants growing spontaneously within Thirty Miles of the City of New York (Albany, 1819). Its publication gained for him the recognition of foreign and native botanists. In 1824 he issued the only volume of his Flora of the Northern and Middle States. This used John Lindley's system of classifying flora, a way of classifying that was not commonly used in the United States.

He found the medical profession uncongenial, and on August 5, 1824, he entered the United States Army as an assistant surgeon and became acting professor of chemistry and geology at West Point military academy. Three years later, he became professor of chemistry and botany in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, New York (the medical school of Columbia University), where he stayed until 1855, when he was made professor emeritus. He was also professor of chemistry at Princeton 1830–1854, and of chemistry, mineralogy, and botany at the University of the City of New York 1832/3. He resigned from his Army position on August 31, 1828. In 1835, he was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.

In 1836 he was appointed botanist to the state of New York and produced his Flora of that state in 1843; while from 1838 to 1843 he carried on the publication of the earlier portions of Flora of North America, with the assistance of his pupil, Asa Gray. From 1853 he was chief assayer to the United States assay office in New York City when that office was established, but he continued to take an interest in botanical teaching until his death. He was frequently consulted by the treasury department on matters pertaining to the coinage and currency, and was sent on special missions at various times to visit the different mints. He was elected an Associate Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1856.

In 1856, Torrey was chosen a trustee of Columbia College, and in 1860, having presented the college with his herbarium, numbering about 50,000 specimens, he was made emeritus professor of chemistry and botany. On the consolidation of the College of Physicians and Surgeons with Columbia in 1860, he was chosen one of its trustees. His advice was frequently sought on scientific subjects by various corporations.

He was the first president of the Torrey Botanical Club in 1873. Besides being the last surviving charter member of the Lyceum of Natural History, he held its vice presidency for several years, and was president in 1824–26 and 1838, holding the same office in the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1855, and he was one of the original members of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States, being named as such by act of the United States Congress in 1863. The degree of A.M. was conferred on him by Yale in 1823, and that of LL.D. by Amherst in 1845.

Torrey died at his home in New York City on March 10, 1873; he was buried in the family plot at Long Hill Cemetery, Stirling, New Jersey.

Private life
Torrey married Eliza Shaw on April 20, 1824; they had three daughters and a son, Herbert, who became United States Assayer.

Publications
Torrey's earliest publications in the American Journal of Science are on mineralogy. In 1820, he undertook the examination of the plants that had been collected around the headwaters of the Mississippi by David B. Douglass. During the same year, he received the collections made by Edwin James while with the expedition that was sent out to the Rocky Mountains under Major Stephen H. Long. His report was the earliest treatise of its kind in the United States that was arranged on the natural system. Torrey, in the meantime, had planned A Flora of the Northern and Middle United States, or a Systematic Arrangement and Description of all the Plants heretofore discovered in the United States North of Virginia, and in 1824 began its publication in parts, but it was soon suspended owing to the general adoption of the natural system of Antoine Laurent de Jussieu in place of that of Carl Linnaeus. In 1836, on the organization of the geological survey of New York, he was appointed botanist, and required to prepare a flora of the state. His report, consisting of two quarto volumes, was issued in 1843, and was for a long time the most comprehensive for any state in the United States. In 1838, he began with Asa Gray The Flora of North America, which was issued in numbers irregularly until 1843, when they had completed the Compositae, but new botanical material accumulated at such a rapid rate that it was deemed best to discontinue it.

Subsequently, Torrey published reports on the plants that were collected by John C. Frémont in the expedition to the Rocky Mountains (1845), those gathered by Major William H. Emory on his reconnaissance from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to San Diego, California (1848), the specimens secured by Captain Howard Stansbury on his expedition to the Great Salt Lake of Utah (1852), the plants collected by John C. Frémont in California (1853), those brought back from the Red River of Louisiana by Captain Randolph B. Marcy (1853), and the botany of Captain Lorenzo Sitgreaves's expedition to the Zuni and Colorado Rivers (1854), also memoirs on the botany of the various expeditions for the purpose of determining the most practicable route for a Pacific Railroad (1855–1860).

He reported on the Botany of the Mexican Boundary Survey (1859), that of the expedition upon the Colorado River under Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives (1861), and, in association with Asa Gray, the botanical collections of the Wilkes exploring expedition. The last was in his hands at the time of his death, its publication having been delayed by the Civil War.

His bibliography is extensive, including contributions on botanical subjects to scientific periodicals and to the transactions of the societies of which he was a member.

Legacy

Torrey's name is commemorated in the small coniferous genus Torreya, found in North America, China and Japan. Some species within this genus include:
 * T. taxifolia, a native of Florida, is known as the Florida torreya or stinking-cedar.
 * T. californica, also known as California nutmeg or California torreya (although not closely related to true nutmeg).
 * T. nucifera, a coniferous tree native to southern Japan and to South Korea's Jeju Island
 * T. grandis, a conifer endemic to eastern and south-eastern China.

P. torreyana an endangered species from southern California, is also named after the botanist. Torrey first described the carnivorous plant Darlingtonia californica, which he named after his friend Dr. William Darlington. Torrey Canyon in Ventura County, California, was named for him, as was Torreys Peak in Colorado, near Grays Peak, named after his pupil and friend Asa Gray.

A bronze bas-relief portrait of Torrey is mounted in the main building of the Lamont–Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, a former site of Dr. Torrey's summer home. A similar portrait is owned by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In 2017, the Torrey Botanical Society, started by colleagues of John Torrey, celebrated its 150th birthday. It is the oldest botanical society in the Americas.

Torreys Peak, a fourteen thousand foot mountain in Colorado, was named for Torrey.

Additional publications online

 * Botanic contributions relating to the flora of western North America [by] Gray, Engelmann, Torrey [and] Frémont (1843–53)
 * A compendium of the flora of the northern and middle states, containing generic and specific descriptions of all the plants, exclusive of the cryptogamia, hitherto found in the United States, north of the Potomac (1826)
 * A flora of North America :containing abridged descriptions of all the known indigenous and naturalized plants growing north of Mexico, arranged according to the natural system by John Torrey and Asa Gray (1838–1843) Two volumes.
 * An introduction to the natural system of botany (1831) With John Lindley.
 * On the Darlingtonia californica, a new pitcher-plant from northern California by John Torrey (1853)
 * Report on the United States and Mexican boundary survey: made under the direction of the secretary of the Interior by William H. Emory, major First Cavalry, and United States commissioner (1857–1859) Part 1 / Part 2 Torrey et al.

title: John Torrey


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Vladimir Voronin

Vladimir Voronin (born Vladimir Bujeniță, 25 May 1941) is a Moldovan politician. He was the third President of Moldova from 2001 until 2009 and has been the leader of the Party of Communists of Moldova (PCRM) since 1994. He was Europe's first democratically elected communist party head of state after the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc.

Family and education
Vladimir Voronin was born as Vladimir Bujeniță in the village of Corjova, located that time in the Romanian-administered Transnistria Governorate. Although Voronin is a lifelong communist who pursued unfriendly policies towards Romania at various times during the 2000s, his grandfather Isidor Sârbu was an anticommunist fighter in Romania after 1944. Voronin's mother, Pelagheia Bujeniță, died on 2 July 2005. His biological father, Nicolae Bujeniță, died during World War II. Voronin was raised by his step-father, Nikolai Voronin, an ethnic Russian and a communist activist.

Voronin graduated from the Cooperation Tekhnikum (Kooperativny tekhnikum) of Chișinău (1961), the All-Union Institute for Food Industry (1971), the Academy of Social Sciences of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (1983), and the Academy of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Soviet Union (1991). Voronin's CV states he is an economist, engineer, political science graduate, and jurist by education.

Early career
He began working in 1961 as the head of a bakery in the town of Criuleni. From 1966 until 1971, Voronin held the offices of vice-director of the bread factory in Criuleni and head of the bread factory in Dubăsari.

After 1971, he was active in the state administration of the Moldavian SSR, being in turn a member of the Dubăsari and Ungheni township executive committees, of the Ungheni District Executive Committee, and, starting 1983, inspector and vice-director of the Organization Section of the Central Committee of the Moldavian branch of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In 1985, he was appointed head of section in the Council of Ministers of the Moldavian SSR. Between 1985 and 1989, Voronin served as first secretary of the Bender City Committee of the Communist Party. Between 1988 and 1990, he held the office of the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Moldovan SSR. In this capacity he advocated against the use of force to quell anti-Soviet popular demonstrations on 7 and 10 November 1989, a regretful reference to which he made when addressing the country on TV on 8 April 2009 after anti-government protests were quelled by the police. Voronin was also a member of the Supreme Soviet of the Moldavian SSR of 10th and 11th legislatures.

In 1993, Voronin became the co-president of the Organizational Committee for the creation of the Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova (PCRM). He played a central role in reviving the Communist Party after it was banned in 1991–1993. In 1994 he was elected President of the PCRM. He was a candidate for the post of President of the now-independent Republic of Moldova at the 1996 elections. In the parliamentary election in March 1998, Vladimir Voronin was elected as a Member of Parliament. He then served as member of its Permanent Bureau and as president of the PCRM's parliamentary faction, which held 40 of 101 seats.

Voronin was nominated as Prime Minister of Moldova by President Petru Lucinschi in late 1999, but the nomination was unsuccessful because Voronin did not have enough support in parliament. In the parliamentary election in February 2001, he was again elected as a Member of Parliament.

First mandate

The PCRM won 50.07% of the vote and 71 of the 101 seats in the February 2001 parliamentary election; by this time the constitution had been changed to provide for election of the President through the Parliament rather than popular vote. In March the PCRM's Central Committee nominated Voronin as its presidential candidate at a plenum, and on 4 April 2001 Voronin was elected as President by the Parliament. Of the 89 deputies participating in the vote, 71 voted for Voronin, 15 voted for Dumitru Braghiş, and three voted for Valerian Cristea. He was sworn in at a ceremony in Chişinău on 7 April 2001. The Constitutional Court ruled that the President could also lead a political party, and Voronin was re-elected as the PCRM's leader.

Voronin maintained his commitment to the reduction of Moldova's chronic poverty by allocating more resources to social safety net items such as health, education, and increasing pensions and salaries. These measures helped to maintain support for his government, but Moldova still remained the poorest country in Europe throughout his presidency, with around 38% of GDP coming from remittances of Moldovans working abroad (2008). Voronin's tenure as President was marked by fluctuating relations with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

From January to April 2002, opposition forces organized large demonstrations in protest against several controversial government proposals, including expanded use of the Russian language in schools, and plans for its designation as a second official language. While the demonstrations were tense at times, the government did not use force and ultimately agreed to mediation by the Council of Europe.

In 2003, Voronin's government backtracked over signing a Russian-proposed federalization settlement with the breakaway region of Transnistria (Kozak memorandum). On the same year, Voronin claimed that "Romania has remained the only empire in Europe, consisting of Moldavia, Dobruja and Transylvania", provoking a diplomatic conflict with Romania and the President of Romania Ion Iliescu. In 2004, Voronin branded the leadership of Transnistria "a transnational criminal group", and ordered an economic blockade of Transnistria after its authorities closed several Romanian-speaking schools.

Second mandate
In the parliamentary election in March 2005, the PCRM received 46.1% of the vote and won 56 seats in the 101-member Parliament — more than enough for the 51-vote minimum required to remain in government, but short of the 61 votes necessary to elect a president. However, President Voronin received the necessary support from the Christian Democratic People's Party, the Democratic and Social Liberal factions, after he promised to deliver on needed reforms and Euro-Atlantic integration for the country. (The latter two factions broke away from the Electoral Bloc "Moldova Democrată" following the election, leaving the Our Moldova Alliance (AMN) of the former Mayor of Chişinău Serafim Urechean as the second-largest party in Parliament, with 26 seats.) In the presidential election held in Parliament on 4 April 2005, Voronin was re-elected with 75 votes; another candidate, Gheorghe Duca, received one vote, and two votes were invalid.

Political agenda during tenure
The declared main goals of his political agenda were:
 * Closer ties with the Russian Federation and "integration in Europe"; solving the Transnistria conflict; EU cooperation (and membership if possible); strong opposition to NATO membership; independence, as opposed to a unification with Romania.

Events of 2009 and resignation
After the parliamentary election held on 5 April 2009, the PCRM won 49.48% of the vote and 60 seats, one seat too few to elect a President. Voronin was elected Speaker of the Parliament and retained the Presidency of Moldova with an interim status. The police crackdown of the civil unrest in April 2009 antagonized the society, and the communists were unable to secure one additional vote out of the 41 MPs from the three opposition parties; a snap parliamentary election was necessary.

In the snap parliamentary election in July 2009, the PCRM won 44.69% of the vote, which is more votes than any other individual party, and gained 48 seats, but it lost its parliamentary majority to a coalition of opposition parties which has 53 seats. However, the opposition also failed to obtain enough seats to elect a President, thereby producing more uncertainty. Voronin announced on 2 September 2009 that he intended to resign, saying that his position as acting President had become "ambiguous and doubtful". He resigned on 11 September 2009. The President sent a letter to Parliament confirming his intention to resign. Mihai Ghimpu succeeded Voronin as acting president until a proper President could be elected.

Post-presidential years
The pro-Western parliamentary majority on 29 December 2009 blocked Voronin's election to Moldova's permanent delegation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg. In February 2010, Vladimir Voronin and his wife returned the diplomatic passports which they were keeping illegally.

According to the last opinion polls carried out in 2019 regarding the most popular politicians of the Republic of Moldova, Vladimir Voronin is ranked on the seventh position among the top of politicians which enjoyed the highest trust of Moldovans and according to some other polls he is ranked at the eighth position.

Political views
Voronin identifies himself as a left-wing politician, he is strongly conservative on social issues. He is against immigration and he rejects the building of mosques in Moldova, as well as LGBT rights. His remarks towards the African-born activist John Onoje ("They [the ruling parties] brought here a Negro, who'd just climbed down from a tree, and now he's doing politics for them.") are still regarded as controversial.

Despite the fact that his grandfather Isidor Sârbu emigrated to Romania, Voronin considers Moldovans and Romanians two different ethnic groups. Some of his declarations were considered anti-Romanian.

Personal life
Vladimir Voronin is married to Taisia Mihailovna Voronina (a Ukrainian) and has two children, a son Oleg and a daughter Valentina. She works as a kindergarten manager, They were married on 12 October 1962, while he was still working in Criuleni. He has the military rank of Major General from the former USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs (equivalent of NATO OF-6 Brigadier General – see Ranks and insignia of the Soviet military and Ranks and insignia of NATO). Some argue that he also holds Russian citizenship in addition to citizenship of the Republic of Moldova, because he used to receive a pension as a former Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs employee, from the time he lived as a private citizen in Moscow in 1991–1993. His son, Oleg Voronin, is arguably the richest businessman in Moldova. His daughter is a physician, but unlike Oleg not a public figure. On 19 February 2010, Voronin told journalists that the questioning of his son is an attempt of revenge against his family by the current authorities. Oleg is suspected of fiscal evasion and money laundering.

Honours and awards

 * Knight Grand Cross of the Grand Order of King Tomislav ("For outstanding contribution to the development and improvement of relations between the Republic of Croatia and the Republic of Moldova and the promotion of the European idea and the project of European integration.", 21 March 2007)
 * Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise I degree (24 May 2006)
 * Order of the Holy Blessed Governor Stefan cel Mare I degree (Orthodox Church of Moldova, 25 May 2006)
 * Order of the Savior (13 June 2007)
 * Grand Order of King Tomislav (Croatia, 17 February 2009)
 * Order of the "Stara Planina" (Bulgaria, 12 March 2009)
 * Order of the Cross of the Holy Sepulcher (Jerusalem Orthodox Church, 23 June 2009)
 * Order of Holy Prince Daniel of Moscow (Russian Orthodox Church, 10 October 2011)

title: Vladimir Voronin


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Billy Koch

William Christopher Koch (born December 14, 1974) is an American former Major League Baseball relief pitcher. He was born in Rockville Centre, New York and went to West Babylon High School.

He debuted in the majors with the Toronto Blue Jays and last pitched in MLB with the Florida Marlins in 2004.

Baseball career
Koch played college baseball for Clemson University from 1994 to 1996. He was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays in the first round (fourth pick) of the 1996 amateur draft and made his debut in 1999. He made an instant impression by regularly hitting 100 MPH with his fastball.

Koch won a bronze medal with the United States national baseball team at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

He was groomed for the role of closer, and had mixed success at the role over the next three seasons. While he was regarded as one of the most dominating pitchers in the league when he was at his best, at times he battled with his control and composure on the mound. Nevertheless, he continued to post improving save numbers (31, 33 and 36) from 1999 to 2001.

On December 7, 2001, the Blue Jays, now under new management, traded Koch to the Oakland Athletics for Eric Hinske and Justin Miller. The trade ended up working out for both teams, as Eric Hinske statistically outperformed Koch in his first season with the Jays while Oakland proved to be a good fit for closer Koch. He saved 44 games in 2002 while posting a 3.27 ERA and 93 strikeouts in 93$2⁄3$ innings as well as earning 11 wins, becoming the first pitcher in major league history to earn 10 wins and 40 saves in one season. He won the Rolaids Relief Man Award based on his statistical performance that year. Koch, however, gave up a critical ninth-inning home run to Minnesota's A. J. Pierzynski in the deciding game of the A's first-round playoff series. That outing would turn out to be the turning point in Koch's career.

On December 3, 2002, he was once again traded, this time to the Chicago White Sox along with two minor leaguers for Keith Foulke, Mark Johnson, Joe Valentine and cash, but was unable to replicate the successes he had experienced with Toronto or Oakland. Due to wild inconsistency on the mound, Jerry Manuel removed Koch from the role of closer, relegating him to middle relief. Koch finished the season with a disappointing 11 saves and a high 5.77 ERA.

His troubles continued in 2004. He was once again tried in the role of closer, but saved only 8 games in 24 games played, compiling an ERA of 5.40. He was traded to the Florida Marlins in June for Wilson Valdez, a minor-league second baseman who it was assumed would replace Luis Castillo before the latter signed a four-year contract to remain with Florida. Koch fared better in Florida than he did in Chicago, with a 1–2 record and a 3.51 ERA in 23 games as a setup man for Armando Benítez.

Following the 2004 season he was signed to a 1-year contract by his original team, the Toronto Blue Jays, though the team released him during spring training and an angry Koch announced he would not attempt to sign with another team, so that the Blue Jays would be on the hook for 'every penny' of his $950,000 salary. He has not played baseball professionally since then.

Koch was featured in the film Moneyball in 2011 as the A's primary closer for their record breaking 20 game winning streak.

title: Billy Koch


text:
VF

Vf or VF may stand for:

Arts and entertainment

 * Virtua Fighter, a series of fighting games by Sega
 * Variable fighter, in the Macross manga series

Businesses and organizations

 * VF Corporation, a clothing company
 * Valuair, an airline based in Singapore, IATA code VF
 * Vodafone Group, a telecommunications group based in the UK
 * Vodafone UK, its UK consumer subsidiary
 * Vaterländische Front, a former Austrian political party
 * Värmlands Folkblad, a Swedish-language daily newspaper
 * VinFast, an automobile manufacturer from Vietnam

Biology and medicine

 * Ventricular fibrillation, a cardiac arrhythmia
 * Visual field
 * Vocal fold

Other uses in science, technology, and mathematics

 * Forward Voltage of a diode
 * Vector field, in mathematics
 * Final velocity (vf) in physics
 * Voice Frequency (300–3000 Hz)
 * a radio call sign format used in Canada to denote low-power broadcast transmitters, usually but not always exempt from conventional broadcast licensing

Other uses

 * Squadron (aviation), in military aviation
 * VF, Fighting Squadron, United States Navy acronym
 * Vicar Forane, or Dean (Christianity)
 * Video floppy, an analog floppy diskette format to store still images

title: VF


text:
Guido de Marco

Guido de Marco (22 July 1931 – 12 August 2010) was a Maltese politician, who served as the sixth president of Malta from 1999 to 2004. A noted statesman and lawmaker, de Marco also served as Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Interior, Justice, and Minister for Foreign Affairs.

He was elected President of the 45th session of the United Nations General Assembly in 1990, and Chairman of the Commonwealth Foundation in 2004. A renowned criminal lawyer, he defended some of the landmark cases in Malta during the 1980s. His sudden death in 2010 shocked the nation and prompted three days of national mourning and a state funeral.

Early life and family
Guido de Marco was born in Valletta to Emanuele and Giovanna (née Raniolo) de Marco. He was educated at St. Joseph High School, St. Aloysius' College and the University of Malta. He obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy, Economics and Italian in 1952, becoming a Doctor of Laws in 1955.

De Marco and his future wife, Violet Saliba, met as students. He proposed to her on February 5, 1951, as he walked her home from Valletta to Pietà. De Marco and Violet Saliba married in 1956; the couple had three children: Giannella, Fiorella and Mario. Mario, who served as parliamentary secretary for tourism at the time of his father's death, said he was a family man who devoted time to his children and grandchildren.

Political career

In 1962, de Marco resigned his position at the Attorney General's Office, entering the political arena - later to contest a general election. The successful criminal lawyer would henceforth dedicate much of his life to the Nationalist and Maltese cause. He became a lecturer, and later a professor of criminal law at the University of Malta.

His political career began with his election to the House of Representatives in 1966. He was returned to Parliament at every general election he contested up to 1998. He was appointed secretary general of the Nationalist party in 1972 and became the party's deputy leader in 1977. He was elected as a representative at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe of 1967, remaining a member for almost twenty years. During his career as Minister for the Interior and Justice, De Marco's efforts led to the integration into domestic law of important international conventions, particularly the European Convention on Human Rights. As Minister for the Interior, he pioneered the reforms and modernisations in the Police Force, being instrumental in the founding of the Police Academy.

As Minister for Foreign Affairs he submitted Malta's application for membership of the European Communities. It was one of his first acts as Minister for Foreign Affairs, occurring on 16 July 1990. He was a major player in the consolidation of Malta's contributions to international organisations, including the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the Council of Europe and the Commonwealth of Nations. In 1990 he also served as President of the United Nations General Assembly.

Presidency
On 4 April 1999, de Marco was appointed President of Malta. He led his country into the European Union in 2004.

He became an honorary doctor at St. Petersburg State University in 2004 "for achievements in science and politics, in particular, for his efforts to integrate Malta into the EU."

Declining health and death
On 5 August 2010, de Marco underwent an angioplasty to widen an obstructed heart artery. The intervention developed complications which led him to a critical, but stable condition. A series of medical bulletins were issued immediately by the medical team at Mater Dei Hospital, stating that De Marco was responding to treatment and showing signs of improvement. His condition continued to improve by the hour, to the extent of being taken off life-support machines. Five days later he was discharged from Mater Dei Hospital, but monitored closely by the medical team.

On 12 August 2010, de Marco gave an interview with Maltese newspaper The Times of Malta, in which he said: "When I came round from the coma I no longer felt I was going to die. I felt I was going to remain. I'm here to stay ... for now at least."

However, in the afternoon, de Marco was rushed to Mater Dei Hospital once more, after collapsing in his home in Sliema. He died at the hospital. The news of his death shocked the nation, which was at the moment relieved with the previous improvement in his condition. The government declared three days of national mourning. A state funeral was held on Monday, August 16, 2010.

Messages of solidarity and expressions of sorrow were issued immediately by the President of the Republic, the Nationalist Party, the Labour Party, as well as from other entities and the diplomatic corps. The Maltese prime minister Lawrence Gonzi, interrupted his vacation to return to the island. Gonzi declared that "Malta lost one of the most prominent politicians in recent times. He was fundamental for the country's independence, contributed to strengthening democracy, served very important roles in strengthening our country's international relations and occupied important roles in the United Nations. His Presidency has united the country." Opposition leader Joseph Muscat called the death "a national loss." Edward Fenech Adami, De Marco's successor as President of Malta, was said to be "shaken" by the news, hailing De Marco as "a protagonist in the past forty to fifty years of Maltese history." Fenech Adami's successor, George Abela, President of Malta at the time of de Marco's death, added that "Academically, [Guido de Marco] definitely excelled," calling him a "jovial person...[who]...sang along throughout the recent Joseph Calleja concert." Abela expressed his condolences personally to the De Marco family at Mater Dei Hospital. Tributes flowed into Malta from abroad. President of the European Parliament Jerzy Buzek called him "a highly respected politician and statesman ... who was deeply respected all over Europe." Former Libyan ambassador to Malta Saad Elshlmani said "On a personal level he was more than just a friend," adding that "people in the Middle East will remember him for his great attachment to the issues of tolerance, cooperation and friendship." United States ambassador Douglas Kmiec also issued a statement: "His tenure as President of the United Nations General Assembly, and his skill and perseverance in guiding Malta to EU membership are great tributes to his statesmanship."

His funeral took place on 16 August 2010, attended by dignitaries, including Kuwaiti Prime Minister Nasser Mohammed Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, the widow of Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, Suha Arafat, Italian Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs, Vincenzo Scotti, and several ambassadors.

National honours

 * 🇲🇹 Malta : Companion of Honour of the National Order of Merit by right as a President of Malta

Foreign honours

 * 🇪🇪 Estonia : Collar of the Order of the White Star
 * 🇪🇪 Estonia : Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana
 * 🇱🇻 Latvia : Order of the Three Stars, 1st Class
 * 🇪🇸 Spain : Order of Isabella the Catholic, Grand Cross

title: Guido de Marco


text:
Charles Buller

Charles Buller (6 August 1806 – 29 November 1848) was a British barrister, politician and reformer.

Background and education
Born in Calcutta, British India, Buller was the son of Charles Buller (1774–1848), a member of a well-known Cornish family, and Barbara Isabella Kirkpatrick, daughter of General William Kirkpatrick, considered an exceptionally talented woman. His younger brother was Sir Arthur William Buller. He was educated at Harrow, then privately in Edinburgh by Thomas Carlyle, and afterwards at Trinity College, Cambridge, gaining his BA in 1828. He had been admitted to Lincoln's Inn in 1824, and became a barrister in 1831.

Political career
Before this date, however, Buller had succeeded his father as Member of Parliament for West Looe. After the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832 and the consequent disenfranchisement of this borough, he was returned to Parliament for Liskeard, a seat he retained until he died.

An eager reformer and a friend of John Stuart Mill, Buller voted for the Great Reform Bill, favoured other progressive measures, and presided over the committee on the state of the records and the one appointed to inquire into the state of election law in Ireland in 1836. In the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1837, he went to Canada in 1838 with Lord Durham as private secretary, and served in the second session of the Special Council of Lower Canada. For a long time, it was believed that Buller wrote Lord Durham's famous Report on the Affairs of British North America. However, this is now denied by several authorities, among them being Durham's biographer, Stuart J Reid, who mentions that Buller described this statement as a groundless assertion in an article which he wrote for the Edinburgh Review. Nevertheless, it is quite possible that the Report was largely drafted by Buller, and it almost certainly bears traces of his influence. He also wrote A Sketch of Lord Durham's mission to Canada, which was never printed. He returned with Durham to England in the same year. Buller and Sir William Molesworth were associated with Edward Gibbon Wakefield and his schemes for colonising South Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Buller was briefly Secretary to the Board of Control under Lord Melbourne during 1841. After practising as a barrister, he was made Judge Advocate General by Lord John Russell in 1846, and became the first President of the Poor Law Board the following year.

Personal life
Buller died in office in London in November 1848, aged 42. He never married. He was considered a very talented man, witty, popular and generous, and is described by Carlyle as "the genialest radical I have ever met". Among his intimate friends were Grote, Thackeray, Monckton Milnes and Lady Ashburton. A bust of Buller is in Westminster Abbey, and another was unveiled at Liskeard in 1905. He left behind him, so Charles Greville says, a memory cherished for his delightful social qualities and a vast credit for undeveloped powers.

title: Charles Buller


text:
Talk:Sahel Africa

I find it hard to find rainfall data for the Sahel "belt". Homepages I've looked at usually covers West-Africa or the western part of the Sahel, and is usually conserned with the deviation from the normal rather than stating what the normal is.

The 150-500 mm numbers I found at http://www.1uptravel.com/country-guide-study/sudan/sudan158.html

Although it is not a very scientific source, the numbers correlates with my general impression.

According to this page: http://web.idrc.ca/en/ev-43109-201-1-DO_TOPIC.html

it should be 60-150 mm and according to this file: http://ag.arizona.edu/OALS/oals/alrsgp/ARL565/Desertificationlec.pdf

it should be between 200 and 400 mm. --dittaeva

title: Talk:Sahel Africa


text:
Discrete geometry

Discrete geometry and combinatorial geometry are branches of geometry that study combinatorial properties and constructive methods of discrete geometric objects. Most questions in discrete geometry involve finite or discrete sets of basic geometric objects, such as points, lines, planes, circles, spheres, polygons, and so forth. The subject focuses on the combinatorial properties of these objects, such as how they intersect one another, or how they may be arranged to cover a larger object.

Discrete geometry has a large overlap with convex geometry and computational geometry, and is closely related to subjects such as finite geometry, combinatorial optimization, digital geometry, discrete differential geometry, geometric graph theory, toric geometry, and combinatorial topology.

History
Although polyhedra and tessellations had been studied for many years by people such as Kepler and Cauchy, modern discrete geometry has its origins in the late 19th century. Early topics studied were: the density of circle packings by Thue, projective configurations by Reye and Steinitz, the geometry of numbers by Minkowski, and map colourings by Tait, Heawood, and Hadwiger.

László Fejes Tóth, H.S.M. Coxeter, and Paul Erdős laid the foundations of discrete geometry.

Polyhedra and polytopes
A polytope is a geometric object with flat sides, which exists in any general number of dimensions. A polygon is a polytope in two dimensions, a polyhedron in three dimensions, and so on in higher dimensions (such as a 4-polytope in four dimensions). Some theories further generalize the idea to include such objects as unbounded polytopes (apeirotopes and tessellations), and abstract polytopes.

The following are some of the aspects of polytopes studied in discrete geometry:
 * Polyhedral combinatorics
 * Lattice polytopes
 * Ehrhart polynomials
 * Pick's theorem
 * Hirsch conjecture
 * Opaque set

Packings, coverings and tilings
Packings, coverings, and tilings are all ways of arranging uniform objects (typically circles, spheres, or tiles) in a regular way on a surface or manifold.

A sphere packing is an arrangement of non-overlapping spheres within a containing space. The spheres considered are usually all of identical size, and the space is usually three-dimensional Euclidean space. However, sphere packing problems can be generalised to consider unequal spheres, n-dimensional Euclidean space (where the problem becomes circle packing in two dimensions, or hypersphere packing in higher dimensions) or to non-Euclidean spaces such as hyperbolic space.

A tessellation of a flat surface is the tiling of a plane using one or more geometric shapes, called tiles, with no overlaps and no gaps. In mathematics, tessellations can be generalized to higher dimensions.

Specific topics in this area include:
 * Circle packings
 * Sphere packings
 * Kepler conjecture
 * Quasicrystals
 * Aperiodic tilings
 * Periodic graph
 * Finite subdivision rules

Structural rigidity and flexibility

Structural rigidity is a combinatorial theory for predicting the flexibility of ensembles formed by rigid bodies connected by flexible linkages or hinges.

Topics in this area include:
 * Cauchy's theorem
 * Flexible polyhedra

Incidence structures

Incidence structures generalize planes (such as affine, projective, and Möbius planes) as can be seen from their axiomatic definitions. Incidence structures also generalize the higher-dimensional analogs and the finite structures are sometimes called finite geometries.

Formally, an incidence structure is a triple
 * $$C=(P,L,I).\,$$

where P is a set of "points", L is a set of "lines" and $$I \subseteq P \times L$$ is the incidence relation. The elements of $$I$$ are called flags. If
 * $$(p,l) \in I,$$

we say that point p "lies on" line $$l$$.

Topics in this area include:
 * Configurations
 * Line arrangements
 * Hyperplane arrangements
 * Buildings

Oriented matroids
An oriented matroid is a mathematical structure that abstracts the properties of directed graphs and of arrangements of vectors in a vector space over an ordered field (particularly for partially ordered vector spaces). In comparison, an ordinary (i.e., non-oriented) matroid abstracts the dependence properties that are common both to graphs, which are not necessarily directed, and to arrangements of vectors over fields, which are not necessarily ordered.

Geometric graph theory
A geometric graph is a graph in which the vertices or edges are associated with geometric objects. Examples include Euclidean graphs, the 1-skeleton of a polyhedron or polytope, unit disk graphs, and visibility graphs.

Topics in this area include:
 * Graph drawing
 * Polyhedral graphs
 * Random geometric graphs
 * Voronoi diagrams and Delaunay triangulations

Simplicial complexes
A simplicial complex is a topological space of a certain kind, constructed by "gluing together" points, line segments, triangles, and their n-dimensional counterparts (see illustration). Simplicial complexes should not be confused with the more abstract notion of a simplicial set appearing in modern simplicial homotopy theory. The purely combinatorial counterpart to a simplicial complex is an abstract simplicial complex. See also random geometric complexes.

Topological combinatorics
The discipline of combinatorial topology used combinatorial concepts in topology and in the early 20th century this turned into the field of algebraic topology.

In 1978, the situation was reversed – methods from algebraic topology were used to solve a problem in combinatorics – when László Lovász proved the Kneser conjecture, thus beginning the new study of topological combinatorics. Lovász's proof used the Borsuk-Ulam theorem and this theorem retains a prominent role in this new field. This theorem has many equivalent versions and analogs and has been used in the study of fair division problems.

Topics in this area include:
 * Sperner's lemma
 * Regular maps

Lattices and discrete groups
A discrete group is a group G equipped with the discrete topology. With this topology, G becomes a topological group. A discrete subgroup of a topological group G is a subgroup H whose relative topology is the discrete one. For example, the integers, Z, form a discrete subgroup of the reals, R (with the standard metric topology), but the rational numbers, Q, do not.

A lattice in a locally compact topological group is a discrete subgroup with the property that the quotient space has finite invariant measure. In the special case of subgroups of Rn, this amounts to the usual geometric notion of a lattice, and both the algebraic structure of lattices and the geometry of the totality of all lattices are relatively well understood. Deep results of Borel, Harish-Chandra, Mostow, Tamagawa, M. S. Raghunathan, Margulis, Zimmer obtained from the 1950s through the 1970s provided examples and generalized much of the theory to the setting of nilpotent Lie groups and semisimple algebraic groups over a local field. In the 1990s, Bass and Lubotzky initiated the study of tree lattices, which remains an active research area.

Topics in this area include:
 * Reflection groups
 * Triangle groups

Digital geometry
Digital geometry deals with discrete sets (usually discrete point sets) considered to be digitized models or images of objects of the 2D or 3D Euclidean space.

Simply put, digitizing is replacing an object by a discrete set of its points. The images we see on the TV screen, the raster display of a computer, or in newspapers are in fact digital images.

Its main application areas are computer graphics and image analysis.

Discrete differential geometry
Discrete differential geometry is the study of discrete counterparts of notions in differential geometry. Instead of smooth curves and surfaces, there are polygons, meshes, and simplicial complexes. It is used in the study of computer graphics and topological combinatorics.

Topics in this area include:

 * Discrete Laplace operator
 * Discrete exterior calculus
 * Discrete calculus
 * Discrete Morse theory
 * Topological combinatorics
 * Spectral shape analysis
 * Analysis on fractals

title: Discrete geometry


text:
User talk:Jahs

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them;

 * How to edit a page
 * How to write a great article
 * Naming conventions
 * Manual of Style

If you have any questions, see the help pages, add a question to the village pump or ask me on my talk page. I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian!

Tip: you can sign your name with ~

snoyes 20:59, 3 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Hello! -- Jahs 00:55, 4 Dec 2003 (UTC)

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If you have any questions please see Help:Image page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 14:40, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

File:Chawton-Austen-House.jpg still missing description details
Dear uploader: The media file you uploaded as File:Chawton-Austen-House.jpg is still missing description details after an extended period and/or other details on its image description page.

This information is IMPORTANT so please try add this information if possible, or seek assistance.

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If you have any questions please see Help:Image page. Thank you. Sfan00 IMG (talk) 10:17, 23 November 2009 (UTC)

title: User talk:Jahs


text:
Shamil Basayev

Shamil Salmanovich Basayev (Салман ВоӀ Шамиль; Salman Voj Şamil; Шамиль Салманович Басаев; 14 January 1965 – 10 July 2006), also known by his kunya "Abu Idris", was a Chechen guerilla leader who served as a senior military commander in the breakaway Chechen Republic of Ichkeria. He held the rank of brigadier general in the Armed Forces of Ichkeria, and was posthumously declared generalissimo. As a military commander in the separatist armed forces of Chechnya, one of his most notable battles was the separatist recapture of Grozny in 1996, which he personally planned and commanded together with Aslan Maskhadov. He also masterminded several of the worst terrorist attacks that occurred in Russia.

Starting as a field commander in the Transcaucasus, Basayev led guerrilla campaigns against Russian forces for years, as well as launching mass-hostage takings of civilians, with his goal being the withdrawal of Russian soldiers from Chechnya. From 1997 to 1998, he also served as the vice-prime minister of the breakaway state in Aslan Maskhadov's government. Beginning in 2003, Basayev used the nom de guerre and title of "Emir Abdullah Shamil Abu-Idris". As Basayev's ruthless reputation gained notoriety, he became well revered among his peers and eventually became the highest ranking Chechen military commander and was considered the undisputed leader of the Chechen insurgency as well as being the overall senior leader of all other Chechen rebel factions.

He ordered the Budyonnovsk hospital raid in 1995, the Beslan school siege in 2004, and was responsible for numerous attacks on security forces in and around Chechnya. He also masterminded the 2002 Moscow theater hostage crisis and the 2004 Russian aircraft bombings. ABC News described him as "one of the most-wanted terrorists in the world". Despite his aura, journalist Tom de Waal described him as "almost unassuming in the flesh", being "of medium height, with a bushy beard and high forehead worthy of a Moscow intellectual, and a quiet voice."

Basayev was killed in a truck explosion during an arms deal in July 2006. Forensic evidence suggests that his death was caused when a landmine he was examining exploded, but Russian officials have also claimed that one of the Kamaz trucks used was booby-trapped and detonated to destroy the arms shipment, also killing Basayev.

Family history
Shamil Basayev was born in the village of Dyshne-Vedeno, near Vedeno, in south-eastern Chechnya, in 1965 to Chechen parents from the Belghatoy teip. He was named after Imam Shamil, the third imam of Chechnya and Dagestan and one of the leaders of anti-Russian Chechen-Avar forces in the Caucasian War.

His family is said to have had a long history of involvement in Chechen resistance to foreign occupation, especially Russian rule.

In the 14th century an ancestor fought Timur, a great-great-great-grandfather served as Imam Shamil's deputy and died fighting the Czar, while a great-grandfather died fighting the Bolsheviks. His grandfather fought for the abortive attempt to create a breakaway North Caucasian Emirate after the Russian Revolution.

The Basayevs, along with most of the rest of the Chechen population, had been deported to Kazakhstan during World War II in an act of ethnic cleansing on the orders of the NKVD leader Lavrenti Beria. They were only allowed to return when the deportation order was lifted by Nikita Khrushchev in 1957.

Early life and education
Basayev, an avid football player, graduated from school in Dyshne-Vedeno in 1982, aged 17, and spent the next two years in the Soviet military serving as a firefighter. For the next four years, he worked at the Aksaiisky state farm in the Volgograd region of southern Russia before moving to Moscow. He reportedly attempted to enroll in the law school of the Moscow State University but failed, and instead entered the Moscow Engineering Institute of Land Management in 1987. However, he was expelled for poor grades in 1988. He subsequently worked as a computer salesman in Moscow, in partnership with a local Chechen businessman, Supyan Taramov. Ironically, the two men ended up on opposite sides in the Chechen wars, during which Taramov sponsored a pro-Russian Chechen militia (Sobaka magazine's dossier on Basayev reported that Taramov apparently equipped or "outfitted" this group of pro-Russian Chechens; they were also known as "Shamil Hunters").

Personal life
Basayev had four wives, a Chechen woman who was killed in the 1990s, an Abkhaz woman he met while fighting against Georgia, and a Cossack he was said to have married on Valentine's Day, 2005. A fourth secret wife, Elina Ersenoyeva, was apparently forced to marry Basayev under threat of her two brothers' lives, and subsequently hid the identity of her husband from her friends and family. Following revelations about the marriage, Elina was abducted in November 2006, four months after the death of Basayev, allegedly by the Kadyrovtsy ("pro-Kremlin" Chechen forces). She has never been found.

In May 1995, eleven members of Basayev's family were killed in a Russian air raid including his mother, his two children and a brother and sister. He also lost his home in the same attack, becoming the first Chechen who took revenge outside Chechen lands, in the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis.

He lost a leg in 2000 during the Second Chechen War.

His younger brother, Shirvani Basayev, who fought the Russians alongside him, is now living in exile in Turkey.

Early militant activities
When some hardline members of Soviet government attempted to stage a coup d'état in August 1991, Basayev allegedly joined supporters of Russian President Boris Yeltsin on the barricades around the Russian White House in central Moscow, armed with hand grenades.

A few months later, in November 1991, the Chechen nationalist leader Dzhokhar Dudayev unilaterally declared independence from the newly formed Russian Federation. In response, Yeltsin announced a state of emergency and dispatched troops to the border of Chechnya. It was then that Basayev began his long career as an insurgent—seeking to draw international attention to the crisis. Basayev, Lom-Ali Chachayev, and the group's leader, Said-Ali Satuyev, a former airline pilot suffering from schizophrenia, hijacked an Aeroflot Tu-154 plane, en route from Mineralnye Vody in Russia to Ankara on 9 November 1991, and threatened to blow up the aircraft unless the state of emergency was lifted. The hijacking was resolved peacefully in Turkey, with the plane and passengers being allowed to return safely and the hijackers given safe passage back to Chechnya.

Nagorno-Karabakh conflict
Basayev moved to Azerbaijan in 1992, where he assisted Azerbaijani forces in their unsuccessful war against Armenian fighters in the enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh. He was said to have led a battalion-strength Chechen contingent. According to Azeri Colonel Azer Rustamov, in 1992, "hundreds of Chechen volunteers rendered us invaluable help in these battles led by Shamil Basayev and Salman Raduyev". Basayev was said to be one of the last fighters to leave Shusha (see Capture of Shusha). He ordered the withdrawal of the Chechen detachments from Karabakh in 1993, stating that they had entered the region for a Jihad, but saw not a single sign of it.

Abkhaz–Georgian conflict
Later in 1992, Basayev traveled to Abkhazia, a breakaway region of Georgia, to assist the local separatist movement against the Georgian government's attempts to regain control of the region. Basayev became the commander-in-chief of the forces of the Confederation of Mountain Peoples of the Caucasus (a volunteer unit of pan-North Caucasian nationalists, people from the North Caucasus). Their involvement was crucial in the Abkhazian war and in October 1993 the Georgian government suffered a decisive military defeat. It was rumored that the volunteers were trained and supplied by some part of the Russian army's GRU military intelligence service. According to The Independent journalist Patrick Cockburn, "cooperation between Mr Basayev and the Russian army is not so surprising as it sounds. In 1992–93 he is widely believed to have received assistance from the GRU when he and his brother Shirvani fought in Abkhazia, a breakaway part of Georgia." No specific evidence was given.

Accusations of being a GRU agent
The Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta reported that Basayev was an agent of GRU, and another publication by journalist Boris Kagarlitsky said that "It is maintained, for example, that Shamil Basayev and his brother Shirvani are long-standing GRU agents, and that all their activities were agreed, not with the radical Islamists, but with the generals sitting in the military intelligence offices. All the details of the attack by Basayev's detachments were supposedly worked out in the summer of 1999 in a villa in the south of France with the participation of Basayev and the Head of the Presidential administration, Aleksandr Voloshin. Furthermore, it is alleged that the explosive materials used were not supplied from secret bases in Chechnya but from GRU stockpiles near Moscow." The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta stated that the Basayev brothers "both recruited as agents by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU) in 1991–92." The Russian newspaper Versiya published a file from the Russian foreign military agency on Basayev and his brother, which stated that "both Chechen terrorists were named as regular agents of the military intelligence organization." In a July 2020 interview, the former Russian Federal Security Service chief Sergei Stepashin admitted that Basayev cooperated with military intelligence while fighting against Georgian government in Abkhazia.

Russian special forces joined with the Chechens under Basayev to attack Georgia. A GRU agent, Anton Surikov, had extensive connections with Basayev. Russian military intelligence had ordered Basayev to support the Abkhaz.

Basayev received direct military training from the GRU since the Abkhaz were backed by Russia. Other Chechens also were trained by the GRU in warfare, many of these Chechens who fought for the Russians in Abkhazia against Georgia had fought for Azerbaijan against Armenia in the First Nagorno-Karabakh War.

The Russians allowed Basayev to travel between Russia and Abkhazia to battle the Georgians.

In an interview with Nezavisimaya Gazeta on March 12, 1996, Basayev denied the information that he was trained on the basis of the Russian 345th Airborne Regiment: “Not a single Chechen studied there, because they were not accepted.”

Representatives of Chechen separatists have always rejected allegations of Basayev's cooperation with Russian intelligence services, calling them a deliberate attempt to discredit Basayev in the eyes of his supporters.

War crimes
According to Paul J. Murphy, "Russian military intelligence turned a blind eye to the 1991 terrorist arrest warrant against Basayev to train him and his detachment in Abkhazia, and the Russians even helped direct Basayev's combat operations" and "long after the war, Basayev praised the professionalism and courage of his Russian trainers in Abkhazia – praise that led some of his enemies in Grozny, even President Maskhadov, to later call him a "longtime GRU agent".

In 1993 Basayev lead the CMPC corps of North Caucasian volunteers, according to allegations made by Georgian tabloids, the volunteers led by him had decapitated Georgian civilians. After an investigation by a commission composed of Russian deputies, as well as a commission led by UNPO lawyer and investigator Michael van Praag, they could not find any proof for such an incident ever taking place. The tabloid in question also admitted in November that they had no proof to confirm that such an incident had taken place.

Allegations of links with Pakistan's ISI
Having already been noticed in Afghanistan, where he fought as a young man, and then in Abkhazia in Georgia, Basayev would further attract the attention of Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, the ISI: under Pakistani command, and after meeting many powerful personalities of the army, including the DG ISI Javed Ashraf Qazi, he would be one of the 1,500-strong Afghan mujahideen contingent which fought the Armenians during the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and in April 1994, the ISI would eventually arrange "a refresher course for Basayev and some of his NCOs in guerrilla warfare and Islamic learning in the Amir Munawid Camp in Khost province in Afghanistan", with Basayev also having further specialized training in Pakistan proper, in cities like Rawalpindi, Peshawar and Muridke, near Lahore. They were also given Stingers, anti-tank rockets and advanced explosives, which would be later used to shoot down Russian combat airplanes and dozens of helicopters. Ultimately, hundreds of Chechens would be trained in Khost, under the ISI as well as the Pakistan-based Islamist outfit Harkat-ul-Ansar, and one of its commanders, Abu Abdullah Jaffa, once in Pakistan's Northern Light Infantry, would work closely with Basayev over the years, as for instance he's supposed to be the one who planned the invasion of Dagestan.

Basayev's own account of his activities in Afghanistan and Pakistan is as such, as given in a September 2003 interview to The Globe and Mail:"I was interested in the Afghan experience on the defence engineering constructions, air defense system and mine-explosive works. Therefore, I went first to Peshawar (Pakistan). There, I lived with some Tajiks and through them I agreed for training for 200 Chechens. I sold at home some captured weaponry, seized in June from Labazanov’s band in then Groznyi, took also some money from my acquaintances and transported the first group of 12 people to Afghanistan. There I spent a night in the training camp and in the morning I returned to Karachi to meet the second group. But at the airport they aroused a suspicion because of their number and they didn’t have their passports in their hands. The Russians raised a large noise and in the week they sent us back."

Basayev's role in the First Chechen War

 * 1994–1995

The First Chechen War began when Russian forces invaded Chechnya on 11 December 1994, to depose the government of Dzhokhar Dudayev. With the outbreak of war, Dudayev made Basayev one of the front-line commanders. Basayev took an active role in the resistance, successfully commanding his "Abkhaz Battalion." The unit inflicted major losses on Russian forces in the Battle of Grozny, Chechnya's capital, which lasted from December 1994 to February 1995. Basayev's men were among the last fighters to abandon the city.

After capturing Grozny, the momentum changed in favor of the Russian forces, and by April Chechen forces had been pushed into the mountains with most of their equipment destroyed. Basayev's "Abkhaz Battalion" suffered many casualties, particularly during battles around Vedeno in May and their ranks sank to as low as 200 men, critically low on supplies.
 * 1995

Around this time, Basayev also suffered a personal tragedy. On 3 June 1995, during a Russian air raid on Basayev's hometown of Dyshne-Vedeno, two bombs targeted the home of Basayev's uncle, killing six children, four women as well as his uncle. Basayev's wife, child and his sister Zinaida were among the dead. Twelve additional members of Basayev's family were also seriously wounded in the attack. One of his brothers was also killed in fighting near Vedeno.

In an attempt to force a stop to the Russian advance, some Chechen forces resorted to a series of attacks directed against civilian targets outside the area that they claimed. Basayev led the most infamous such attack, the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis on 14 June 1995, less than two weeks after he lost his family in the air raids. Basayev's large band seized the Budyonnovsk hospital in southern Russia and the 1,600 people inside for a period of several days. At least 129 civilians died and 415 were wounded during the crisis as the Russian special forces repeatedly attempted to free the hostages by force. Although Basayev failed in his principal demand for the removal of Russian forces from Chechnya, he did successfully negotiate a stop to the Russian advance and an initiation of peace talks with the Russian government, saving the Chechen resistance by giving them time to regroup and recover. Basayev and his fighters then returned to Chechnya under cover of human shields.

On 23 November, Basayev announced on the Russian NTV television channel, that four cases of radioactive material had been hidden around Moscow. Russian emergency teams roamed the city with Geiger counters, and located several canisters of caesium, which had been stolen from the Budennovsk hospital by the Chechen militants. The incident has been called "the most important sub-state use of radiological material."

 * 1996

By 1996 Basayev had been promoted to the rank of General and Commander of the Chechen Armed Forces. In July 1996 he was implicated in the death of the rogue Chechen warlord Ruslan Labazanov.

In August 1996, he led a successful operation to retake the Chechen capital Grozny, defeating the Russian garrison of the city. Yeltsin's government finally moved for peace, bringing in former Soviet–Afghan War General Aleksandr Lebed as a negotiator. A peace agreement was concluded between the Chechens and Russians, under which the Chechens acquired de facto independence from Russia.

Interwar period
Basayev stepped down from his military position in December 1996 to run for president in Chechnya's second (and the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria's first and only ever internationally monitored) presidential elections. Basayev came in second place to Aslan Maskhadov, obtaining 23.5% of the votes. Allegedly Basayev found the defeat very painful.

In early 1997 he was appointed deputy Prime Minister of Chechnya by Maskhadov. He briefly served as acting leader of Chechnya during President Maskhadov's trip to the Middle East in 1997. In January 1998 he became the acting head of the Chechen government for a six-month term, after which he resigned. Basayev's appointment was symbolic because it took place on the eve of the celebrations of the 200th anniversary of his renowned namesake. Basayev subsequently reduced the government's administrative departments and abolished several ministries. However, the collection of taxes and the Chechen National Bank's reserves shrank, and theft of petroleum products increased seriously.

Maskhadov worked with Basayev until 1998, when Basayev established a network of military officers, who soon became rival warlords. As Chechnya collapsed into chaos, Basayev's reputation began to plummet as he and others were accused of corruption and involvement in kidnapping; his alliance with Khattab also alienated many Chechens. By early 1998 Basayev emerged as the main political opponent of the Chechen president, who in his opinion was "pushing the republic back to the Russian Federation." On 31 March 1998, Basayev called for the termination of talks with Russia; on 7 July 1998, he sent a letter of resignation from his post as the Chechen Prime Minister. During these years he wrote Book of a Mujahiddeen, an Islamic guerilla manual.

Incursion into Dagestan
In December 1997, after Movladi Udugov's Islamic Nation party had called for Chechnya to annex territories in neighbouring Dagestan, Basayev promised to "liberate" neighbouring Dagestan from its status as "a Russian colony."

According to Alex Goldfarb and Marina Litvinenko's book Death of a Dissident, Kremlin-critic Boris Berezovsky said that he had a conversation with the Chechen Islamist leader Movladi Udugov in 1999, six months before the beginning of fighting in Dagestan. A transcript of the phone conversation between Berezovsky and Udugov was leaked to one of Moscow tabloids on 10 September 1999. Udugov proposed to start the Dagestan war to provoke the Russian response, topple the Chechen president Aslan Maskhadov and establish new Islamic republic of Basayev-Udugov that would be friendly to Russia. Berezovsky asserted that he refused the offer, but "Udugov and Basayev conspired with Stepashin and Putin to provoke a war to topple Maskhadov ... but the agreement was for the Russian army to stop at the Terek River. However, Putin double-crossed the Chechens and started an all-out war."

It was also alleged that Alexander Voloshin, a key figure in the Yeltsin administration, paid Basayev to stage the Dagestan incursion, and that Basayev was working for the Russian GRU at the time. According to the BBC, conspiracy theories are part of the staple diet of Moscow politics.

In August 1999, Basayev and Khattab led a 1,400-strong group of militants in an unsuccessful attempt to aid Dagestani Wahhabists to take over the neighboring Republic of Dagestan and establish an Islamic republic and start an uprising. By the end of the month, Russian forces had managed to repel the invasion.

1999 apartment bombings
In early September, a series of bombings of Russian apartment blocks took place, killing 293 people. Russia quickly blamed the attacks on Chechen militants without any evidence. Basayev, Ibn Al-Khattab and Achemez Gochiyaev were named by Russia as key suspects. Basayev and Khattab denied any involvement in the attacks, with Basayev stating whoever committed them are not human. According to a Russian FSB spokesman, Gochiyaev's group was trained at Chechen militant bases in the towns of Serzhen-Yurt and Urus-Martan, where the explosives were prepared. The group's "technical instructors" were two Arab field commanders, Abu Umar and Abu Djafar, and Al-Khattab was the bombings' brainchild. Two members of Gochiyayev's group that carried out the attacks, Adam Dekkushev and Yusuf Crymshamhalov, have been sentenced to life term each in a special-regime colony. According to FSB, Basayev and Al-Khattab masterminded the attacks. Al-Khattab has been killed, but Gochiyaev remains a fugitive.

Although Basayev and Khattab denied responsibility, the Russian government blamed the Chechen government for allowing Basayev to use Chechnya as a base. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov denied any involvement in the attacks, and offered a crackdown on the renegade warlords, which Russia refused. Commenting on the attacks, Shamil Basayev said: "The latest blast in Moscow is not our work, but the work of the Dagestanis. Russia has been openly terrorizing Dagestan, it encircled three villages in the centre of Dagestan, did not allow women and children to leave." Al-Khattab, who was reportedly close with Basayev, said the attacks were a response to what the Russians had done in Karamakhi and Chabanmakhi, two Dagestani villages where followers of the Wahhabi sect were living until the Russian army bombed them out. A group called the Liberation army of Dagestan claimed responsibility for the apartment bombings.

Second Chechen War
Michael Radu of the Foreign Policy Research Institute said "Basayev managed to radically change the world's perception of the Chechen cause, from that of a small nation resisting victimization by Russian imperialism into another outpost of the global jihad. In the process, he also significantly modified the very nature of Islam in Chechnya and Northern Caucasus, from a traditional mix of syncretism and Sufism into one strongly influenced by Wahhabism and Salafism—especially among the youth. With Wahhabism came expansionism."

Basayev stayed in Grozny for the duration of the siege of the city. His threats of "kamikaze" attacks in Russia were widely dismissed as a bluff.
 * 1999

 * 2000

During the Chechens retreat from Grozny in January 2000 Basayev lost a foot after stepping on a land mine while leading his men through a minefield. The operation to amputate his foot and part of his leg was videotaped by Adam Tepsurgayev and later televised by Russia's NTV network and Reuters, showing his foot being removed by Khassan Baiev using a local anaesthetic while Basayev watched impassively.

Despite this injury, Basayev eluded Russian capture together with other Chechens by hiding in forests and mountains. He welcomed assistance from foreign fighters from Afghanistan and other Islamic countries, encouraging them to join the Chechen cause. He also ordered the execution of nine Russian OMON prisoners on 4 April 2000; the men were killed because the Russians had refused to swap them for Yuri Budanov, an arrested army officer accused of raping and killing an 18-year-old Chechen girl.

 * 2001

According to the US State Department, Basayev trained in Afghanistan in 2001. The US also alleges that Basayev and Khattab sent Chechens to serve in Al-Qaeda's "055" brigade, fighting alongside the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in Afghanistan.

On 2 June 2001, it was reported General Gennady Troshev, then-commander-in-chief of Russian forces in Chechnya, had offered a bounty of one million dollars to anyone who would bring him the head of Basayev.

In August, Basayev commanded a large-scale raid on the Vedensky District. A deputy commander of Russian forces in Chechnya claimed Basayev was wounded in a firefight.

 * 2002

In January 2002, Basayev's father, Salman, was reputedly killed by Russian forces. This has not been independently confirmed. Shamil's younger brother, Shirvani, was reported killed by the Russians in 2000, but is, according to numerous accounts, actually living in exile in Turkey where he is involved in coordination of the activities of the diaspora.

In May, the Russian side declared Basayev "dead".The Russian military had also made several claims about Basayev's alleged death in the past.

Around 2 November 2002, Basayev claimed on a militant website that he was responsible for the Moscow theater hostage crisis (although the siege was led by Movsar Barayev) in which 50 Chechens held about 800 people hostage; Russian forces later stormed the building using gas, killing the Chechens and more than 100 hostages. Basayev also tendered his resignation from all posts in Maskhadov's government apart from the reconnaissance and sabotage battalion. He defended the operation but asked Maskhadov for forgiveness for not informing him of it. The answer to who was behind the hostage taking, however, is not so clear – some dissidents claim, including Alexander Litvinenko, was that the FSB was behind the Moscow theater incident.

On 27 December 2002, Chechen suicide bombers rammed vehicles into the republic's government headquarters in Grozny, bringing down the four-story building and killing about 80 people. Basayev claimed responsibility, published the video of the attack, and said he personally triggered the bombs by remote control.

 * 2003

On 12 May 2003, suicide bombers rammed a truck loaded with explosives into a Russian government compound in Znamenskoye, northern Chechnya, killing 59 people. Two days later a woman got within six feet of Akhmad Kadyrov, the head of the Moscow-appointed Chechen administration, and blew herself up killing herself and 14 people; Kadyrov was unhurt. Basayev claimed responsibility for both attacks; Maskhadov denounced them.

From June until August 2003 Basayev lived in the town of Baksan in nearby Kabardino-Balkaria. Eventually, a skirmish took place between when local policemen came to check the house he was staying in. Basayev escaped the incident.

On 8 August 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell designated Shamil Basayev as a threat to U.S. security and citizens, saying that Basayev "has committed or poses a significant risk of committing, acts of terrorism that threaten the security of U.S. nationals or the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States". In February, the U.S. State Department designated three Chechen groups with links to al-Qaeda, including the Islamic International Peacekeeping Brigade, stating that Osama bin-Laden had sent "substantial" amounts to its founders Basayev and Ibn al-Khattab. The United Nations Security Council also placed Basayev on its official list of terrorists after the U.S. designation.

In late 2003, Basayev claimed responsibility for terrorist bombings in both Moscow and Yessentuki in Stavropol Krai. He said both attacks were carried out by the group operating under his command.

 * 2004

On 9 May 2004, the pro-Russian Chechen President Akhmad Kadyrov was killed in Grozny in a bomb attack for which Basayev later claimed responsibility. That explosion killed at least six people and wounded nearly 60, including the top Russian military commander in Chechnya, who lost his leg; Basayev called it a "small but important victory".

Basayev was accused of commanding the 21 June raid on Nazran in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. In fact, he was shown in a video made of the raid, in which he led a large group of militants. Around 90 people died in this attack, mostly local servicemen and officials of the Russian security forces including the republic's acting interior minister. The Ministry building was burned down.

In September 2004 Basayev claimed responsibility for the Beslan school siege in which over 350 people, most of them children, were killed and hundreds more injured. The Russian government put up a bounty of 300m rubles ($10m) for information leading to his capture. Basayev himself did not participate in the seizure of the school, but claimed to have organized and financed the attack, boasting that the whole operation cost only 8,000 euros. On 17 September 2004, Basayev issued a statement claiming responsibility for the school siege, saying his Riyadus-Salihiin "Martyr Battalion" had carried out this and other attacks. In his message, Basayev described the Beslan massacre as a "terrible tragedy". He blamed it on Russian President Vladimir Putin, stating that by Putin giving the order to storm the school he had destroyed and injured the hostages.

Basayev also claimed responsibility for the attacks against civilians during the previous week, in which a metro station in Moscow was bombed (killing 10 people), and two airliners were blown up by suicide bombers (killing 89 people). Basayev dubbed these attacks "Operation Boomerang". He also said that during the Beslan crisis he offered Putin "independence in exchange for security".

 * 2005

On 3 February 2005, UK's Channel 4 announced that it would air Basayev's interview. In response, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the broadcast could aid terrorists in achieving their goals and demanded that the Government of the United Kingdom call off the broadcast. The British Foreign Office replied that it could not intervene in the affairs of a private TV channel and the interview was aired as scheduled. The same day, Russian media reported that Shamil Basayev had been killed; it was the sixth such report about Basayev's demise since 1999.

In May 2005, Basayev reportedly claimed responsibility for the power outage in Moscow. The BBC reported that the claim for responsibility was made on a web site connected to Basayev, but conflicted with official reports that sabotage was not involved.

Even though Basayev had a $10 million bounty on his head, he gave an interview to Russian journalist Andrei Babitsky in which he described himself as "a bad guy, a bandit, a terrorist ... but what would you call them?", referring to his enemies. Basayev stated each Russian had to feel war's impact before the Chechen war would stop. Basayev asked "Officially, over 40,000 of our children have been killed and tens of thousands mutilated. Is anyone saying anything about that? ... responsibility is with the whole Russian nation, which through its silent approval gives a 'yes'." This interview was broadcast on U.S. television network ABC's Nightline program, to the protest of the Russian government; on 2 August 2005, Moscow banned journalists of the ABC network from working in Russia.

On 23 August 2005, Basayev rejoined the Chechen separatist government, taking the post of first deputy chairman. Later this year Basayev claimed responsibility for a raid on Nalchik, the capital of the Russian republic of Kabardino-Balkaria. The raid occurred on 13 October 2005; Basayev said that he and his "main units" were only in the city for two hours and then left. There were reports that he had died during the raid, but this was contradicted when the separatist website, Kavkaz Center, posted a letter from him.

In March 2006, Prime Minister of Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, claimed that upwards of 3,000 police officers were hunting for Basayev in the southern mountains. On 15 June 2006, Basayev repeated his claim of responsibility for the bombing that killed Akhmad Kadyrov, saying he had paid $50,000 to those who carried out the assassination. He also said he had put a $25,000 bounty on the head of Ramzan, mocking the young Kadyrov in offering the smaller bounty.
 * 2006

On 27 June 2006, Shamil Basayev was appointed by Dokka Umarov as the Vice President of Ichkeria. On 10 July 2006, in his last statement at 1.06 pm Moscow time, Kavkaz Center quoted him as thanking the Mujahideen Shura Council for executing the three captured Russian diplomats in Iraq and calling it "a worthy answer to the murder by Russian terrorists from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation of the Chechen diplomat, ex-president of CRI, Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev".

Death
On 10 July 2006, Basayev was killed near the border of North Ossetia in the village of Ekazhevo, Ingushetia, a republic bordering Chechnya.

According to the Interior Ministry and Prosecutor of Ingushetia, a group of three cars and two KAMAZ trucks (one pulling the other by a rope) gathered at the spot of an unfinished estate on the outskirts of the village in the early morning hours of 10 July. According to a handful of witnesses, men in black uniforms came in and out from the wooded area adjacent to the estate that runs to the border of North Ossetia; the men were carrying boxes, shifting them from one vehicle to another, when a massive explosion occurred.

It is believed that the partially completed estate, which contained empty new buildings, was being used as an insurgent reception and distribution point for large quantities of weapons purchased from abroad. It is also believed that the most "anticipated" part of the incoming shipment was located in the KAMAZ trucks, but because one of them broke down the weaponry had to quickly be transferred into the cars.

Basayev is assumed to have been the main recipient of the arms, and thus in charge of distributing them. With the back tailgate of one of the trucks open, Basayev allegedly asked that a mine be placed on the ground for inspection, at which point it exploded. An Ossetian forensic specialist who examined Basayev's remains stated that, "The man…died of mine-blast injuries. The explosive device was quite powerful…and the victim was in close proximity to the epicenter. Most likely, the bomb lay on the ground, and the victim was bending over it."

Basayev's upper torso was recovered at the epicenter of the blast, while smaller pieces of his remains were scattered over the distance of a mile. Included among the smaller pieces was Basayev's prosthetic lower right leg, which led FSB Director Nikolai Patrushev to confidently assert that Basayev was dead even before positive identification.

Russian officials stated that the explosion was the result of a special targeted killing operation. According to the official version of Basayev's death, the FSB, following him with a drone, spotted his car approach a truck laden with explosives that the FSB had prepared, and by remote control triggered a detonator that the FSB had hidden in the explosives.

Interfax, quoting Ingush Deputy Prime Minister Bashir Aushev, reported that the explosion was a result of a truck bomb detonated next to the convoy by Russian agents. According to a Russian edition of Newsweek, Basayev's death was a result of an FSB operation, whose primary aim was to prevent a planned terrorist attack in Chechnya or Ingushetia the days before the G8 summit in St Petersburg. The Russian ambassador to the UN, Vitaly Churkin, said: "He is a notorious terrorist, and we have very clearly and publicly announced what is going to happen to notorious terrorists who commit heinous crimes of the type Mr. Basayev has been involved in." In February 2014, a Turkish court convicted a Chechen national Ruslan Papaskiri aka Temur Makhauri with the killings of several Chechen separatists on Turkish soil. The pro-Chechen separatist Imkander organization held a press conference claiming that Turkish investigators believed that Makhauri had prepared the explosives laden truck that killed Basayev.

On 29 December 2006, forensic experts positively identified Basayev's remains. On 6 October 2007, Basayev was promoted to the rank of Generalissimo post mortem by Doku Umarov.

Book of a Mujahideen
Basayev wrote a book after the First Chechen War, Book of a Mujahideen. According to the introduction, in March 2003 Basayev obtained a copy of The Manual of the Warrior of Light by Paulo Coelho. He wanted to draw benefits to the Mujahideen from this book and decided to "rewrite most of it, remove some excesses and strengthen all of it with verses (ayats), hadiths and stories from the lives of the disciples." Some sections are specifically about ambush tactics, etc.

In popular culture
Basayev appeared in 2018 Russian movie Decision: Liquidation, played by Ayub Tsingiev.

title: Shamil Basayev