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Marek Belka

Marek Marian Belka (born 9 January 1952 in Lódź) is a Polish professor of economics and politician who has served as Prime Minister of Poland and Finance Minister of Poland in two governments. He is a former Director of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) European Department and former Head of Narodowy Bank Polski (National Bank of Poland). He has served as a Member of the European Parliament (MEP) since July 2019.

In 1978–1979 and 1985–1986 he did scientific internships at Columbia University and University of Chicago, and in 1990 - London School of Economics. From 1986, he was associated with Institute of Economics of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He published over 100 scientific papers devoted mainly to money theory and anti-inflation policy in developing countries. He specializes in applied economics and contemporary economic thought. He is also a member of the Committee of Economic Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

He held a number of important public functions in the country and abroad. In 1990 he became an advisor and consultant at Ministry of Finance, followed by the Ministry of Ownership Transformations and the Central Planning Office. In the years 1994–1996 he was the vice-chairman of the Council of Socio-Economic Strategy at the Council of Ministers, and then economic advisor to the President of the Republic of Poland Aleksander Kwaśniewski. In 1996 he became a consultant at World Bank. He was twice the Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland and the Minister of Finance: in 1997 in the Cabinet of Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz and in 2001–2002 in the Cabinet of Leszek Miller. In 2004–2005 he served as Prime Minister and the chairman of the Committee for European Integration. In 2005 he held the office of the Minister of Sport in his own government.

From 2006 he served as the executive secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), and from November 2008 the director of the European Department International Monetary Fund. Previously, he was also the head of the coalition Council for International Coordination in Iraq (2003), and then the director of economic policy in the Provisional Coalition Authority in Iraq, where he answered, among others for currency reform, creation of a new banking system and supervision of the economy (2003-2004).

He was appointed president of the National Bank of Poland. He took office on 11 June 2010 and ended his term on 21 June 2016. In January 2011, he was elected for a three-year term (extended for another three years in 2014) to Steering Committee European Systemic Risk Board. Belka ran for and was elected an MEP at the 2019 European Parliament election. He has been appointed the vice-president of the S&D Group.

Early life and education
Belka graduated from the Socio-Economic Department of the University of Łódź in 1972 and later studied on scholarships at Columbia University, University of Chicago and London School of Economics. He holds an M.A. in economics of foreign trade and a PhD in economics from the University of Łódź; his thesis was on US anti-inflationary policy. He became a professor in 1994.

Early career
From 1990 until 1996 Belka worked as consultant for the Ministry of Finance of the Republic of Poland and the World Bank. He served as Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance in 1997 and from 2001 to 2002; and as an economic consultant of the President of the Republic of Poland in the meantime. He also served as Adviser to the three successive Prime Ministers of Albania – Fatos Nano, Pandeli Majko and Ilir Meta – from 1997 to 2001.

Later, Belka worked as an advisor to JP Morgan for Central and Eastern Europe from 2002 to 2003. In 2003 he was responsible for economic policy in the interim Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq.

Career in national politics
Belka was active in the Polish Students' Association and the Polish Socialist Youth Union. From 1973 to 1990 he was a member of the Polish United Workers' Party. In the 1980s he was the first secretary of the Polish United Workers' Party at the University of Łódź.

Belka was designated Prime Minister of Poland by President Aleksander Kwaśniewski on 29 May 2004 and sworn into office the next 8 August. He failed to receive the required parliamentary support on 14 August, but on 11 September he was designated again. On 24 October he finally managed to receive enough support in the Sejm – the Lower House of Polish Parliament – winning a vote of confidence by a majority of 235 votes to 215.

Belka joined the new liberal Democratic Party - demokraci.pl in May 2005, but failed to win a seat in Łódź in the 2005 elections. Also in 2005, he was a candidate for the post of OECD Secretary General, but lost to José Ángel Gurría.

Career in international organizations
From 2006 to 2008, Belka served as Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Europe (ECE).

In 2007, Belka was proposed by Poland as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but the European Union (EU) finally decided to advance former French minister Dominique Strauss-Kahn's candidacy.

On 15 July 2008, Strauss-Kahn named Belka as Director of the IMF's European Department, a position Belka took up on 1 November 2008. In this capacity, he led the fund's response to the global economic crisis in Europe.

President of the National Bank of Poland, 2010–2016
On 27 May 2010 Belka was nominated as the next President of the National Bank of Poland by Acting President Bronisław Komorowski. On 10 June 2010, he was approved by the Parliament (253 votes in favor; 184 against) as Head of National Bank of Poland.

In June 2014, the Polish magazine Wprost published a series of transcripts of secret recordings involving senior Polish government officials, including one in which Belka discussed the forthcoming 2015 election with the interior minister Bartłomiej Sienkiewicz. Belka said he would not resign over the remarks he is alleged to have made. The secret recordings were believed to have been made in one or more restaurants in the capital, Warsaw, and thought to date back as far as Summer 2013.

In 2016, news media reported that Belka was considering taking up the role of the head of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). He was also a member of the Eminent Persons Group on Global Financial Governance, which was established by the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors for the period from 2017 to 2018.

Member of the European Parliament, 2019-present
In the 2019 European Parliament election Belka was elected as the MEP for the Łódź constituency. In Parliament, he has since been serving on the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. In 2020, he also joined the Subcommittee on Tax Matters.

In addition to his committee assignments, Belka is a member of the delegation for relations with the United States. He is also a member of the URBAN Intergroup.

International organizations

 * European Investment Bank (EIB), Member of the Appointment Advisory Committee (since 2017)
 * European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB), Member of the Steering Committee (2011-2016)
 * European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), Ex-Officio Member of the Board of Governors (2010-2016)
 * Joint World Bank-IMF Development Committee, Chairman (2011-2015)
 * European Bank Coordination Initiative (EBCI, Vienna Initiative 2), Chairman of the Steering Committee (2013-2016)

Corporate boards

 * Echo Polska Properties, Independent Member of the Board of Directors (since 2016)
 * Bank Millennium, Member of the Supervisory Board (2002-2004)
 * LOT Polish Airlines, Chairman of the Board of Directors (2002-2003)

Non-profit organizations

 * Berggruen Institute, Member of the Council for the Future of Europe
 * Museum Berggruen, Member of the International Council
 * Trilateral Commission, Member of the European Group
 * Polish-American Freedom Foundation, Member of the Board of Directors (2000-2010)

Recognition
Belka received an Honorary Doctorate from Heriot-Watt University in 2006.

Belka is an Honorary Member of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation. In October 2013 he was elected into the Polish Economy Hall of Fame.

Personal life
Belka is married and has two children. The family lives in Łódź.

title: Marek Belka


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X'Trapolis

The X'Trapolis (also stylized as X'TRAPOLIS) is a series of multiple unit trains designed and built by Alstom. The trains have high floors, and are available in both single- and double-deck configurations. They are typically powered by an external electrical source, but may also be powered by batteries, hydrogen or diesel-electric power units.

Current

 * X'Trapolis Duplex – Réseau Express Régional (Paris, France)
 * Locally designated MI 2N;
 * "Altéo" for line A, introduced 1997.
 * "Eole" for line E, introduced 1998. Soon to be replaced by the X'Trapolis Cityduplex.
 * Locally designated MI 09 for line A, introduced 2011.
 * X'Trapolis 100 – Metro Trains Melbourne (Victoria, Australia) and Valparaíso Metro (Chile). Melbourne version introduced in 2002 and Valparaíso version introduced in 2005.
 * X'Trapolis Modular – Valparaíso Metro and Metrotrén (Rancagua Express and Nos Express – Santiago) (all Chile), introduced 2015. Similar to Civia units used on the Renfe Cercanías (Spain).
 * X'Trapolis Mega – Metrorail (South Africa), introduced 2017.
 * Transperth C-series – Transperth (Perth, Western Australia), introduced 2024.
 * X'Trapolis Tsíimin K'áak for Tren Maya (Mexico)

Future

 * X'Trapolis Cityduplex (aka RER NG) – RER (Paris), expected to enter service in 2023. Set to replace the MI 2N "Eole".
 * X'Trapolis 2.0 – Metro Trains Melbourne (Victoria, Australia), expected to enter service in 2024.
 * X'Trapolis Ireland – DART (Dublin, Ireland), expected to be delivered in 2024 and enter service in 2025. 13 units will be battery-electric.

Cancelled

 * X'trapolis UK – Design offered on 15 September 2009 for the Thameslink rolling stock programme. Bid subsequently withdrawn on 22 October of the same year.

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

title: X'Trapolis


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Mwezi IV of Burundi

King Mwami Mwezi IV Gisabo Bikata-Bijoga (c. 1840–1908) was the last independent ruler of Burundi before its colonization by the German Empire.

Biography
He ascended to the throne in 1850 after succeeding his father. Ntare IV Rutaganzwa Rugamba who was the King of Burundi until 1850. Mwezi IV would continue to reign up until his death in 1908, when he would be succeeded by his son Mutaga IV Mbikije. In his position as king of Burundi, he was seen as the ‘Father’ of the Nation, a figure seen as more religious than political, who was revered as a mystical figure. Mwezi was one of the younger sons of Ntare, he came to power under the regency of his older brother, and there was some question of his own parentage. This would end up leading to a struggle with his older brothers in order to retain his claim to kingship. During the more than fifty-year reign of King Mwezi IV, a four-tiered system of administration emerged in order to help govern the country of Burundi more effectively. A central area around the Muramvya Province was under the direct control of the king; an area under the administration of his sons or brothers, which was most closely allied to him; a broad area further east and south that was administered by Batare chiefs, who were descendants of Ntare IV of Burundi: and a final zone that covered the west and northwestern areas of the country and was under the administration of other, mostly Hutu authorities. This method of leadership ended up in multiple revolts in attempts to overthrow Mwezi Gisabo, with the principal actors in these revolts often being the sons and grandsons of Ndivyariye, an older brother of Mwezi Gisabo. The issue of governance in Burundi concerned the ways in which the society was governed and how it was presently governed, the distribution of the contested authority and resources in the society, and most importantly to what level of degree were the political leaders seen as a legitimate leader with authority in the eyes of Burundian society. The sources of power in Burundi had always been authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible psychological and ideological factors, and material resources and sanctions, and when legitimacy of a leader did not exist or was thrown into doubt, the result was political turmoil and social unrest. Mwezi IV was forced to control a number of new forms of political intrusion that threatened to undermine his power as king and his control over Burundi. He was forced to deal with attacks by African actors from the east (such as Mirambo), as well as threats from the commercial power associated with the east coast Swahili networks, and direct European intervention in his country. In 1884 he led the Burundian army in battle against slave traders led by Rumaliza along the Kivu-Tanganyika road, inflicting a major defeat upon his opponents and stopping their incursion into Burundi.

There were some Burundian figures that allied themselves with the German colonial empire in exchange for their help seizing King Mwezi. The powerful individuals that betrayed their king were to be rewarded with important or prominent administrative positions that had political power of their own, the most prominent of these being Inanga Maconco. Maconco was originally the son-in-law of Mwezi, who became an early ally to him after marrying one of Mwezi's daughters. After she died, Maconco allied himself with the German forces as they sought to capture Mwezi, and in exchange the Germans promised him a prominent administrative position. However, he was arrested and hanged by the Germans after he was accused of stealing a gun. The German forces along with some of the Burundi that had allied themselves with the Europeans, including Maconco, drove Mwezi from his compound and were able to force him into an agreement. The contents of this 1890 agreement were that King Mwezi be forced to recognize German authority, respect the presence of foreign missionaries, and accept the administrative authority of German allies (such as those who betrayed him like Maconco) in certain areas. However, in exchange for this, the Germans would support Mwezi as the continued King of Burundi. The year 1890 would also see the country of Burundi, along with Rwanda and Tanganyika, become part of the German East Africa. Although this occurred under the reign of Mwezi, the German Protectorate of East Africa was a short-lived venture for the Germans, as they ended up losing all of their colonies, Burundi included, as one of the consequences resulting from World War I.

title: Mwezi IV of Burundi


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Xenoglossy

Xenoglossy, also written xenoglossia  and sometimes also known as xenolalia, is the supposedly paranormal phenomenon in which a person is allegedly able to speak, write or understand a foreign language that they could not have acquired by natural means. The term derives from the Ancient Greek xenos (ξένος), "foreigner" and glōssa (γλῶσσα), "tongue" or "language". The term xenoglossy was first used by French parapsychologist Charles Richet in 1905. Accounts of xenoglossy are found in the New Testament, and contemporary claims have been made by parapsychologists and reincarnation researchers such as Ian Stevenson. Doubts have been expressed that xenoglossy is an actual phenomenon, and there is no scientifically admissible evidence supporting any of the alleged instances of xenoglossy.

Two types of xenoglossy are distinguished. Recitative xenoglossy is the use of an unacquired language incomprehensibly, while responsive xenoglossy refers to the ability to intelligibly employ the unlearned language as if already acquired.

Christianity
This phenomenon is mentioned in Acts of the Apostles chapter 2 at Pentecost, when the first disciples of Jesus Christ, gathered together, numbering one hundred and twenty, and of the tongues of fire landed on each of them, formalizing the coming of the Spirit in an episode of inspired communication that allows the disciples to express themselves in languages other than Galilean and to be understood by strangers. Several accounts of miraculous abilities of some people to read, write, speak or understand a foreign language as mentioned in the Bible have been related in similar Christian accounts in the Middle Ages. Similar claims were also made by some Pentecostal theologians in 1901.

Spiritualism
Claims of mediums speaking foreign languages were made by Spiritualists in the 19th century. More recent claims of xenoglossy have come from reincarnation researchers who have alleged that individuals were able to recall a language spoken in a past life. Some reports of xenoglossy have surfaced in the popular press, such as Czech speedway rider Matěj Kůs who in September 2007 supposedly awoke after a crash and was able to converse in perfect English; however press reports of his fluency in English were based entirely on anecdotal stories told by his Czech teammates. Xenoglossy has been claimed to have occurred during exorcisms.

Ian Stevenson
Canadian parapsychologist and psychiatrist at the University of Virginia Ian Stevenson claimed there were a handful of cases that suggested evidence of xenoglossy. These included two where a subject under hypnosis could allegedly converse with people speaking the foreign language, instead of merely being able to recite foreign words. Sarah Thomason, a linguist at the University of Michigan, reanalyzed these cases, concluding that "the linguistic evidence is too weak to provide support for the claims of xenoglossy".
 * When Stevenson investigated an American housewife known as "T. E" who exhibited the male personality of a Swedish farmer named "Jensen Jacoby" while under hypnosis, he reported that the subject was able to converse in Swedish, albeit not fluently. However, Thomason's reanalysis concluded that "Jensen" could not convincingly be claimed to speak Swedish; writing that though "Jensen" had a total vocabulary of about 100 words, "this is not very impressive when compared with the thousands of words known by any native speaker of any natural language, even taking into account the limited contexts in which Jensen spoke Swedish." Thomason found that "Jensen" gave no complex sentences, mostly giving one or two word answers, and concluded, "[Stevenson's] demonstration that there was no fraud in the case is convincing, but his claim that Jensen had the capacity to speak Swedish is not." Linguist William Samarin drew the same conclusion as Thomason.
 * Stevenson investigated another American woman named Dolores Jay who exhibited the personality of a German teenage girl named "Gretchen" while hypnotized. He claimed that the subject was able to converse in German. Thomason's reanalysis, while acknowledging that the evidence against fraud was convincing, concluded that "Gretchen" could not converse fluently in German and that her speech was largely the repetition of German questions with different intonation, or utterances of one or two words. Thomason found that the German vocabulary of "Gretchen" was "minute" and her pronunciation was "spotty", adding that Dolores Jay had some previous exposure to German in TV programs and had looked at a German book.

William J. Samarin, a linguist from the University of Toronto, argues that Stevenson interacted with linguists in a selective and unprofessional manner, noting that Stevenson corresponded with one linguist for a period of six years "without raising any discussion about the kinds of thing that linguists would need to know," and that most of Stevenson's collaborators were "fellow believers" in the paranormal.

In a review of Stevenson's Unlearned Language: New Studies in Xenoglossy (1984), William Frawley wrote that Stevenson was too uncritically accepting of a paranormal interpretation of the cases. In one case, a female subject could only answer yes-or-no questions in German, which Frawley found unimpressive. In another, the female subject could speak Bengali with poor pronunciation. Frawley noted that she was raised in the language of Marathi (related to Bengali), had studied Sanskrit from which both Marathi and Bengali derive, and was living in a town with thousands of Bengalis. He concluded: "Stevenson does not consider enough linguistic evidence in these cases to warrant his metaphysics."

Psychologist David Lester evaluated Stevenson's cases and wrote the subjects made grammatical mistakes, mispronounced words, and did not show a wide vocabulary of words in foreign language; he thus concluded that they cannot be considered evidence for xenoglossy.

Alfred Hulme
In the early 20th century, Alfred Hulme, a self-proclaimed Egyptologist, investigated a young girl named Ivy Carter Beaumont (also known as "Rosemary") from Blackpool, England, who claimed to be under the influence of the personality of a Babylonian princess. Hulme was convinced she spoke in an ancient Egyptian dialect. However, according to linguist Karen Stollznow, "Several scholars examined the data independently and concluded that Hulme's analyses were grossly inaccurate. Hulme had confused Middle Egyptian and Late Egyptian" and likely "falsified many results."

Eberhardt Gmelin
In 1791 Eberhardt Gmelin, a German physician often credited with discovering dissociative identity disorder, published a report entitled Materialien für die Anthropologie, in which he described a case of a 20-year-old German woman from the town of Stuttgart who would "exchange" her personality for that of a French aristocrat. During these "French" states, as Gmelin termed them, she was able to speak French perfectly, despite never having visited a francophone country or been taught the language, and speak her own native tongue, German, with a French accent. However, this cannot be accepted as an example of xenoglossy, as the woman had probably picked up bits of the language from aristocratic refugees who had arrived at Stuttgart in 1789, the beginning of the French Revolution.

Explanations
Most cases of recitative xenoglossy have been interpreted as instances of cryptomnesia, where memories of a language acquired earlier in life re-enter the consciousness in certain exceptional circumstances.

title: Xenoglossy


text:
St James's Theatre

The St James's Theatre was in King Street, St James's, London. It opened in 1835 and was demolished in 1957. The theatre was conceived by and built for a popular singer, John Braham; it lost money and after three seasons he retired. A succession of managements over the next forty years also failed to make it a commercial success, and the St James's acquired a reputation as an unlucky theatre. It was not until 1879–1888, under the management of the actors John Hare and Madge and W. H. Kendal that the theatre began to prosper.

The Hare-Kendal management was succeeded, after brief and disastrous attempts by other lessees, by that of the actor-manager George Alexander, who was in charge from 1891 until his death in 1918. Under Alexander the house gained a reputation for programming that was adventurous without going too far for the tastes of London society. Among the plays he presented were Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), and A.W.Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray (1893).

After Alexander's death the theatre came under the control of a succession of managements. Among the long-running productions were The Last of Mrs Cheyney (1925), Interference (1927), The Late Christopher Bean (1933) and Ladies in Retirement (1939). In January 1950 Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh took over the management of the theatre. Their successes included Venus Observed (1950) and for the 1951 Festival of Britain season Caesar and Cleopatra and Antony and Cleopatra.

In 1954 Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables began a run of 726 performances, the longest in the history of the St James's. During the run it emerged that a property developer had acquired the freehold of the theatre and obtained the requisite legal authority to knock it down and replace it with an office block. Despite widespread protests the theatre closed in July 1957 and was demolished in December of that year.

Background and construction
In 1878 Old and New London commented that the St James's Theatre owed its existence "to one of those unaccountable infatuations which stake the earnings of a lifetime upon a hazardous speculation". John Braham, a veteran operatic star, planned a theatre in the fashionable St James's area, on a site in King Street, bounded by Crown Passage to the west, Angel Court to the east and buildings in Pall Mall to the south. A hotel called Nerot's had stood there since the 17th century but was by now abandoned and decaying. To generate income, the façade would incorporate one or two shops. Building and opening the theatre were not straightforward. The Theatres Trust comments that Braham quarrelled regularly with his architect, Samuel Beazley, and other professional advisers and contractors. He also faced difficulties in obtaining the necessary licence to open a theatre; the management of the nearby Theatre Royal, Haymarket opposed it, as did other interested parties. The licence was issued by the Lord Chamberlain on the instructions of William IV, but Braham continued to encounter opposition from rivals.

The theatre, which cost Braham £28,000, was designed with a neo-classical exterior and a Louis XIV style interior built by the partnership of Grissell and Peto. The frontage was in three bays, three storeys high, with shops in each outer bay. The façade had a four-column Ionic portico, a balustraded balcony and a two-storey loggia topped by a tall sheer attic. The interior was decorated by the Frederick Crace Company of Wigmore Street, London. After the opening, The Times described it in detail:
 * The prevailing colour is a delicate French white. A border of flowers, richly embossed in gold, runs round the dress circle, and has a tasteful and elegant effect. The panels of the boxes in the front of the first circle are ornamented by designs, in the style of Watteau, placed in gilded frames of fanciful workmanship. … The front of the slips and gallery are distinguished by neat gold ornaments, relieved by handsome medallions. The proscenium, which, like that of Covent-garden, is shell-form, is painted in compartments, where the loves and graces are depicted gaily disporting. Two slender fluted Corinthian columns, supported on pedestals of imitative marble, add greatly to the beauty of the stage-boxes. A series of arches, supporting the roof, and sustained by caryatides, runs entirely round the upper part of the theatre. ... The tout ensemble of the house is light and brilliant. It looks like a fairy palace. Then, the two great points which are most important to the comfort of an audience – hearing and seeing – have been sedulously consulted; and, with reference to them, we think that the new theatre takes the lead of all its brethren.

Early years: 1835–1857
The theatre opened on 14 December 1835 with a triple bill consisting of two farces by Gilbert à Beckett and an opera, Agnes Sorel, with music by his wife, Mary Anne à Beckett. This ran for a month before being replaced by one of the few successes of Braham's tenure, another bill containing an operetta – Monsieur Jacques – and a farce, The Strange Gentleman, by "Boz" (Charles Dickens). In April 1836 the first of many visiting French companies played at the theatre, a tradition that endured intermittently throughout the 122-year existence of the St James's. The theatre did not attract the public in the numbers Braham had expected; in addition to its unexciting programmes it was felt to be too far west to appeal to theatregoers. Braham struggled financially and after three seasons he gave up. John Hooper, previously Braham's stage director, ran the theatre for four months in 1839. His programmes included the presentation of performing lions, monkeys, dogs and goats. In November 1839 Alfred Bunn, whom the theatre critic and historian J. C. Trewin called a former "autocrat of Drury Lane and Covent Garden", took over the house, and changed its name to "The Prince's Theatre" in honour of the Prince Consort. Among Bunn's early offerings was a season of German opera, beginning with Der Freischütz. Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort came to two performances during the season, but otherwise Bunn's tenure was undistinguished and unprofitable.

The theatre was dark for most of 1841. In 1842 John Mitchell (1806–1874), a bookseller and founder of the Bond Street Ticket Agency, took over, reverted the name to the original, and ran the St James's for twelve years, with much artistic success but little financial return. He presented French plays with the greatest stars of the Parisian stage, including Rachel, Jeanne Plessy, Virginie Déjazet and Frédérick Lemaître. He also engaged a French opera company, which opened in January 1849 with Le domino noir, and followed with L'ambassadrice, La dame blanche, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Le chalet and many other popular French works. In between French offerings, Mitchell occasionally sub-let the theatre. In 1846, an amateur performance of Ben Jonson's Every Man in his Humour included Dickens playing Captain Bobadil. Mitchell had a fondness for international entertainments, and presented German conjurors, Tyrolean singers, dramatic readings by Fanny Kemble, P. T. Barnum's infant prodigies – Kate and Ellen Bateman, aged eight and six – in scenes from Shakespeare, and, most popular of all, the Ethiopian Serenaders who enthused London about the American-style minstrel shows, a form of entertainment that remained popular for decades.

After Mitchell left, the actress Laura Seymour (1820–1879) ran the theatre for a season in association with Charles Reade, from October 1854 to March 1855. Under Seymour's management the interior was remodelled, replacing the first tier of boxes with the now more fashionable dress circle. Among the few notable aspects of her tenure was the London debut of the comic actor J. L. Toole. The house was once again dark for most of 1856, but in 1857 the theatre returned to royal and public favour when Jacques Offenbach brought his opéra bouffe company from Paris, with a repertoire of nine of his works. This was followed by the Christy Minstrels who played to good houses for two weeks in August 1857 before moving to other venues.

Five managements: 1858–1869
Following this the theatre had a succession of managements. F. B. Chatterton became the lessee for two years from 1858. He presented a season, mainly of Shakespeare, by the popular actor Barry Sullivan, and staged F. C. Burnand's first major play, a burlesque called Dido, which ran for 80 performances. Alfred Wigan, who had been a member of Braham's original company, briefly took over the house in 1860, and was succeeded, equally briefly, by George Vining. Under Frank Matthews, who took over in December 1862, the theatre had its longest-running production thus far: Lady Audley's Secret, which ran for 104 nights. Matthews ended his tenancy in July 1863 and was followed by Benjamin Webster, who mounted a series of revivals and a few new burlesques and extravaganzas, which were financially unsuccessful.

A member of Webster's company, Ruth Herbert, took over in 1864 and ran the theatre until 1868. She attracted much praise for presenting Henry Irving in his first important appearance on a London stage. His performance in Dion Boucicault's Hunted Down in November 1866 caused a sensation. The following month the theatre presented W. S. Gilbert's first burlesque, Dulcamara! or, The Little Duck and the Great Quack, a parody of Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, which ran until Easter the following year. The Herbert management ended in April 1868. The theatre historian W. J. MacQueen-Pope writes:
 * She had done nobly and had earned widespread praise. She had kept the theatre open and had brought at least two young people, both destined for greatness, to the notice of the London public – Henry Irving and Charles Wyndham. But the St James's had lost her a lot of money.

The season after her departure was notable for two Offenbach productions in which Hortense Schneider starred, bringing the Prince of Wales and London society to the theatre in June 1868.

Mrs John Wood; Marie Litton and others: 1869–1878
In 1869 the theatre was taken by Mrs John Wood, whose first production was She Stoops to Conquer, which ran for 160 performances – a long run for the time. It was beaten by La Belle Sauvage which opened in November 1869 and ran for 197 nights. There were successful productions of John Poole's Paul Pry, Fernande (in which Fanny Brough made her London debut), Anne Bracegirdle, and Jenny Lind at Last. The theatre was well patronised and appeared to be finally prospering. But expenses outran receipts, and Wood gave up the management of the theatre in 1871, and went to the US to replenish her funds.

In 1875 another actress, Marie Litton, took the theatre. She had made her name in management, founding and running the Court Theatre, with which Gilbert's works had become closely, and profitably, associated. In one of her productions at the St James's, a work by Gilbert, Tom Cobb, was in a triple-bill with The Zoo, a short comic opera with music by Arthur Sullivan. Another of Litton's productions was a double bill of revivals of Frank Marshall's farce Brighton and William Brough's burlesque Conrad and Medora, in which she co-starred with Henrietta Hodson. When Litton left for another theatre in 1876, first Horace Wigan, and then Mrs John Wood made brief returns to management at the St James's, the latter with some success in The Danischeffs, which ran to good houses for more than 300 performances. She was succeeded by Samuel Hayes, who produced three failures in quick succession and then withdrew.

John Hare and the Kendals: 1879–1888
The owner of the freehold of the theatre, Lord Newry, began to take an active interest in its affairs. He invited the actor John Hare to take over, which he did, in 1879, in partnership with two fellow-actors, Madge Kendal and her husband William. The theatre was again extensively renovated, with new decor by Walter Crane. The Era commented that the new management was in possession of "a house which, for taste and elegance, and comfort, is far in advance of anything the Metropolis has yet been able to boast."

A historian of the St James's, Barry Duncan, heads his chapter on this phase of the theatre's history, "John Hare and the Kendals: Nine Years of Steady Success". For the first time, the theatre's reputation as "unlucky" was steadily defied. The new lessees aimed both to amuse and to improve public taste, and in the view of the theatre historian J. P. Wearing, they achieved their aim, with a successful mixture of French adaptations and original English plays.

Under their management the St James's staged twenty-one plays: seven were new British pieces, eight French adaptations, and the rest were revivals. Their first production on 4 October 1879 was a revival of G. W. Godfrey's The Queen's Shilling. This was followed in December by Tennyson's The Falcon, based on the Decameron, in which Madge Kendal made a considerable successes as Lady Giovanna.

Wearing regards The Money Spinner (1881) as of particular importance to this period of the theatre's history, being the first of several of A. W. Pinero's plays staged there by Hare and the Kendals. It was regarded as daringly unconventional and a risky venture, but it caught on with the public, partly for Hare's character, the "disreputable but delightful old reprobate and card-shark" Baron Croodle. Other plays by Pinero given by the Hare-Kendal management at the St James's were The Squire (1881), The Ironmaster (1884), Mayfair (1885), and The Hobby Horse (1886).

B. C. Stephenson's comedy Impulse (1883) was a considerable success and was revived by public demand two months after the end of its first run. The reception of a rare excursion into Shakespeare, As You Like It (1885), was mixed. Hare's Touchstone was considered by some to be the worst ever seen, whereas Madge Kendal's Rosalind had always been one of her best-loved roles. Among the company in these years the actresses included Fanny Brough, Helen Maud Holt, and the young May Whitty; among their male colleagues were George Alexander, Allan Aynesworth, Albert Chevalier, Henry Kemble, William Terris, Brandon Thomas and Lewis Waller.

In a speech at the end of the final night of the Hare-Kendal management, Kendal commented that they had enjoyed more successes and fewer failures than managements of most theatres. But the St James's reputation for ill-luck was not yet finished.

Rutland Barrington; Lillie Langtry: 1888–1890
In 1888 the comic singer and actor Rutland Barrington became lessee of the theatre. He recruited a talented company, giving Olga Nethersole, Julia Neilson, Allan Aynesworth and Lewis Waller their London debuts, but met financial disaster when his first two – and in the event his only – productions, The Dean's Daughter by Sydney Grundy and Brantinghame Hall by Gilbert, were both complete failures. Barrington lost £4,500, went bankrupt, and surrendered the lease in January 1889. The theatre stayed dark for the rest of the year.

Lillie Langtry took a year's lease from January 1890. She reopened the house on 24 February, playing Rosalind in a production of As You Like It attended by the Prince and Princess of Wales. She followed this with a melodramatic new play, Esther Sandraz, adapted from the French by Grundy, which played with a curtain-raiser, a musical farce by Burnand and Edward Solomon, The Tiger. Langtry fell ill with pleurisy and had to abandon the season in June. Arthur Bourchier, who had been playing in her company, took on the remainder of the lease, presenting Your Wife, an English version of a French farce, but poor box-office takings forced him to close the piece within a month. The lease was taken up by a French company who presented a season of plays in the latter months of the year. Poor attendance again forced the premature closure of the run.

George Alexander: 1890–1918
In 1891 the actor George Alexander, who had begun a managerial career a year earlier, took a lease of the St James's. He remained in charge there until his death in 1918. He redecorated it and had electric lighting installed. He opened with a double bill of comedies, Sunlight and Shadow and The Gay Lothario. He followed this with The Idler, by Haddon Chambers, a serious drama. It had already been a success in America and ran at the St James's through most of the remainder of the season, which concluded with a costume drama, Moliere, by Walter Frith. When Alexander took over the St James's he had only eleven years' professional experience in the theatre, but the historians J. P. Wearing and A. E. W. Mason both note that he had already reached a firm and enduring managerial policy. He sought to engage the best actors for his company: unlike some star actor-managers he did not wish to be supported by actors whose inferior talent would make the star look better. Among the actresses he engaged for his companies were Lilian Braithwaite, Constance Collier, Kate Cutler, Julia Neilson, Juliette Nesville, Marion Terry and Irene and Violet Vanbrugh. Their male colleagues included Arthur Bourchier, H. V. Esmond, Cyril Maude, Godfrey Tearle and Fred Terry.

Two key features of Alexander's management were his continual support of British playwrights; and his care to avoid alienating his key clientele, the fashionable society audience. The writer Hesketh Pearson commented that Alexander catered to the tastes and foibles of London Society in its theatre-going just as the Savoy Hotel catered to them in restaurant-going.

Within a year of taking over the St James's, Alexander began a mutually beneficial professional association with Oscar Wilde, whose Lady Windermere's Fan he presented in February 1892. The following year he produced Pinero's, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, presented in May 1893. Like Lady Windermere's Fan it featured "a woman with a past", but unlike Wilde's play it ended in tragedy. It was thought daring at the time, but Alexander knew his audiences and kept to what Pearson called his "safe path of correct riskiness". It ran for 227 performances in its first production and was later much revived. The title role was first played by Mrs Patrick Campbell, who made her name in the part.

Between Pinero's play and the work with which Alexander's name has become most closely associated – The Importance of Being Earnest – came Alexander's most conspicuous failure. The celebrated novelist Henry James had written a play, Guy Domville, about a hero who renounces the priesthood to save his family by marrying to produce an heir, but finally reverts to his religious calling. The play had been turned down by one London management, but Alexander took it on and opened it at the St James's on 5 January 1895. It was received politely by those in the more expensive parts of the house and impolitely by those in the cheaper seats. The reviews were unenthusiastic; Alexander kept the play on the bill for a month before turning to Wilde as a more theatrically adept writer.

In February 1895 Alexander presented Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest. The success of the play with audiences and critics was immediate and considerable, but it was short-lived. Within weeks of the premiere Wilde was arrested on a charge of committing homosexual acts and was tried, convicted and imprisoned. The public turned against him, and although Alexander tried to keep the production of the play going by removing the author's name from the playbills, he had to withdraw it after 83 performances. Under Alexander, the St James's did not solely concentrate on drawing-room comedy and society drama. There were costume dramas, including the Ruritanian swashbuckler, The Prisoner of Zenda, which ran for 255 performances; and occasional ventures into Shakespeare, notably As You Like It, with Alexander as Orlando, Julia Neilson as Rosalind and a supporting cast that included C. Aubrey Smith, Bertram Wallis, H. B. Irving, Robert Loraine and H. V. Esmond.

At the end of 1899 Alexander closed the theatre to have it largely reconstructed, producing what The Era called "one of the handsomest temples of the drama in London", while retaining its charm and cosiness. The rebuilding provided increased seating capacity, which enhanced the financial viability of the theatre. The decor was by Percy Macquoid, carried out by the leading London decorators Messrs. Morant and Co. It reopened on 2 February 1900 with a performance of Rupert of Hentzau by Anthony Hope attended by the Prince of Wales. The Manchester Guardian agreed that the redeveloped theatre was "now one of the handsomest in London". Alexander's management continued into the new century, continuing to vary the repertory with, in 1902, a verse drama, Paolo and Francesca, based on an episode in Dante's The Divine Comedy, as well as the theatre's more usual fare such as Pinero's drama His House in Order, an artistic and box-office success, running for 427 performances. In 1909 Alexander successfully revived The Importance of Being Earnest, which ran for 316 performances. In 1913 he sub-let the theatre to Harley Granville Barker for four months. Among the novelties of that season was Bernard Shaw's Androcles and the Lion in 1913.

1918–1939
After Alexander died in 1918, the lease was taken over by Gilbert Miller, an American impresario, who presented his own productions from time to time, but more often sub-let the theatre to other managers. The first was Gertrude Elliott who presented and starred in an American fantasy play, The Eyes of Youth, which ran for 383 performances. After this, Miller went into partnership with the actor Henry Ainley, and in 1920 they presented Julius Caesar, with Ainley as Mark Antony and a cast including Basil Gill, Claude Rains, Milton Rosmer and Lilian Braithwaite, which ran for 83 performances. There followed a succession of society dramas and light comedies including Polly With a Past (1921) in which many future stars appeared, including Helen Haye, Edith Evans and Noël Coward. In 1923 The Green Goddess, a melodrama by William Archer, started a run of 417 performances.

During the 1920s, the St James's staged Christmas seasons of Peter Pan with Peter played by Edna Best (1920 and 1922) and Jean Forbes-Robertson (1929), and Captain Hook by Ainley (1920), Ernest Thesiger (1921), Lyn Harding (1922), and Gerald du Maurier (1929).

In September 1925 du Maurier and Gladys Cooper took a sub-lease of the theatre to present The Last of Mrs Cheyney by Frederick Lonsdale (1925), which ran for 514 performances, until the end of 1926. Interference (1927), a thriller by Roland Pertwee and Harold Dearden, was another big success and ran for 412 performances. It was followed by a flop, S.O.S (1928), notable only for starring Gracie Fields in her first straight part. In 1929, Alfred Lunt made his London debut, starring with his wife Lynn Fontanne in Caprice, presented by C. B. Cochran, a comedy about a man, his two mistresses, and his son by one of them who falls in love with the other.

In the early 1930s there was a succession of failures or minimal successes until 1933, when Emlyn Williams's The Late Christopher Bean ran from May until September of the following year, with Edith Evans, Louise Hampton and Cedric Hardwicke. In 1936 the centenary of the theatre was marked by a lavishly staged adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, designed by Rex Whistler, which ran for nearly a year. It was presented by Miller in association with Max Gordon and starred Celia Johnson and Hugh Williams. Of the later productions during the 1930s only Golden Boy (1938) and Ladies in Retirement (1939) ran for more than 100 performances.

1940–1957
At the outbreak of the Second World War theatres were temporarily closed by government decree. When they were permitted to reopen, a few weeks later, Ladies in Retirement resumed its run until the theatre was hit by a bomb in 1940. It did not reopen until March 1941. A brief season of ballet was followed by a Shakespeare and Ben Jonson season by Donald Wolfit and his company. In mid-1942 Coward's Blithe Spirit transferred from the Piccadilly Theatre; Coward took over the role of Charles Condomine from Cecil Parker prior to taking the play on tour. Wolfit and his company returned at the end of 1942 and played into the following year. Williams's adaptation of A Month in the Country starring Michael Redgrave ran for 313 performances for most of 1943. It was followed by Agatha Christie's Ten Little Niggers, which ran for 260 performances, interrupted when a bomb severely damaged the theatre in February 1944: the production moved temporarily to the Cambridge Theatre, returning in May to complete its run. Of productions of the later 1940s, few made much impression, with the exception of Adventure Story by Terence Rattigan (1949), starring Paul Scofield as Alexander the Great. The reviews were respectful, but the play ran for less than three months.

The critic Ivor Brown thought that Scofield's performance as Alexander, though excellent, owed something to the example of Laurence Olivier. In January 1950 Olivier and his wife Vivien Leigh took over the management of the theatre. They opened with Christopher Fry's new play, Venus Observed, in which Leigh did not appear. In 1951, for the Festival of Britain season, they starred in Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. Duncan observes, "The company was as brilliant as it was enormous." In addition to the Oliviers it included Robert Helpmann, Richard Goolden, Wilfred Hyde White and Peter Cushing among the men, and their female colleagues included Elspeth March, Maxine Audley and Jill Bennett.

Later that year, at Olivier's invitation, the French actors Jean-Louis Barrault and Madeleine Renaud presented a three-week season at the theatre with their own company. This was followed by Orson Welles in the title role of Othello, with Peter Finch as Iago and Gudrun Ure as Desdemona. In 1953 Olivier presented an Italian company headed by Ruggero Ruggeri in plays by Pirandello, and a short French season by the Comédie-Française.

In 1954 Rattigan's play, Separate Tables, began a run of 726 performances, the longest in the history of the St James's. The play starred Margaret Leighton and Eric Portman. During the run of Separate Tables it became known that a property developer had acquired the freehold of the theatre and had obtained the requisite permission from the London County Council (LCC) to demolish the building and replace it with an office block. Leigh and Olivier led a nationwide campaign to try to save the theatre. There were street marches and a protest in the House of Lords. A motion was carried against the Government in that house, but to no avail. The LCC ordered that no further theatres would be demolished in central London without a planned replacement, but neither the national nor the local government would intervene to prevent the destruction of the St James's. After the run of Separate Tables there were five short-lived productions at the theatre, and the final performance there was given on 27 July 1957. In October the interior was stripped; in November the contents of the theatre were auctioned; and in December the demolition team moved in.

An office building, St James's House, was built on the site. It incorporated sculptured balcony fronts on each floor above the entrance. Four bas-relief panels by Edward Bainbridge Copnall depicted the heads of Gilbert Miller, George Alexander, Oscar Wilde and the Oliviers. The office building was demolished and a new one built on the site in the 1980s. The panels were moved from the King Street façade to the Angel Court side of the building.

title: St James's Theatre


text:
Talk:Treaties of the European Union

Copyright
That copyright permission doesn't permit modification etc. Morwen 13:30, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Acts and treaties
What is the difference between "acts of accession" and "accession treaty"? Shouldn't we be more consistent and use the same words booth for the headline and the text?

confusing
the charts showing how the treaties work and have evolved are confusing and should be changed to make them more accessable.

Greenland
This page mentions a "Greenland Treaty". Anyone got anything on it?- J Logan t: 14:29, 14 July 2008 (UTC)

 * Nothing special. Allowed Greenland, which entered the EU as part of Denmark, to leave. I'll added a line to the table on it. Blue-Haired Lawyer 20:41, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Treaties on Wikisource
I've put the full current treaties (minus protocols so far) on WikiSource, so now the present treaties can be cited/linked directly to the article; - J.Logan`t : 22:31, 21 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union
 * Consolidated version of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union

Great work! This was really needed. The Harry Potter articles have a standardised reference template system. For instance. We could perhaps make something similar for TEU and TFEU, with links directly to the relevant treaty section on Wikisource? - SSJ ☎ 22:54, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

 * Yes, we could do with that. There is Template:Sourcetext, not sure how it works so no clue how to get to work for us. With the all the subpages though, how do we get it to recognise where all the articles are?- J.Logan`t : 23:01, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers
In the TEU preambule a 1989 Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers is mentioned, but it isn't present in the template of this article that has the Charter of Fundamental Rights and other similar documents. Alinor (talk) 16:06, 27 March 2011 (UTC)

About those treaties in German
There is no direct link to Treaties of the European Union to the German wiki. An article named “Verträge der Europäischen Union” does not exist. But there is
 * for Treaty on European Union Vertrag über die Europäische Union (EU-Vertrag)
 * and for Treaty on the functioning of the European Union Vertrag über die Arbeitsweise der Europäischen Union (AEU-Vertrag)

--Haigst-Mann (talk) 16:30, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

 * Your point being? — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 16:45, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

 * Languages

--Haigst-Mann (talk) 17:26, 16 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Català * Česky  * Dansk
 * Español * Français * 한국어  * Italiano  * Magyar  * Македонски
 * Nederlands * 日本語  * Polski  * Português  * Русский  * Suomi  * Svenska  * 中文

 * German Wikipedia doesn't have an article which corresponds to this one for we can't link to it. On English Wikiepdia we draw a distinction between the original treaties (Treaties of Rome, Maastricht Treaty) and the treaties as they are post-Lisbon (this article). As far as I can see (using Google translate unfortunately), German Wikipedia doesn't follow this convention. And this edit has hardly helped matters. I'd suggest reverting it. Even if the articles don't correspond exactly, they're close enough. — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 18:47, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Protocols on Ireland and the Czech Republic
I thought that these documents might be of interest for this article. The Irish and the Czech Governments want the protocols to be ratified at the same time as the Accession Treaty of Croatia (not Iceland as the article states now). The protocols include the provisions that the European Council has decided about earlier. The European Parliament has called on the European Council to not examine the proposed Czech amendment. Proposed Czech Protocol and proposed Irish Protocol. --Glentamara (talk) 13:04, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I have checked the treaty (e.g. here) and the protocols have evidently not found their way into this accession treaty. Thus it will not happen with croatia. The original (and outdated) text this morning stated: that it would happen in a next accession treaty (croatia or iceland) and because in croatia it didn't happen, I removed that... I do wonder what the present status is! L.tak (talk) 16:47, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

 * I gather the plan is to ratify the protocols at the same time as the Croatian accession treaty instead of as part of that treaty. This page on the website of the European Parliament shows that the consent of the EP not to convene a treaty convention is pending. — Blue-Haired Lawyer t 17:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed that this is going on (so probably should be added to the planned treaties page), but I have problems with the "at the same time"-assumption, as the accession treaty was already signed in 2011 and this one is still in 1st reading at the Europarliament and ratification is already ongoing (at least in NL, the advice of the council of state is already in; and the proposed law is at the parliament committee). Shall we just add that two more changes to "Lisbon" are in procedure (Czech and Irish?) (PS this non-RS blog/site helped a bit: http://www.politics.ie/forum/european-treaty-2012/180074-two-other-european-treaties-2012-a.html) L.tak (talk) 18:32, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I updated to the best of my knowledge, but invite others to see if I have depicted the situation correctly and feel free to adapt/remove! L.tak (talk) 18:21, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

The Czech Protocol has been rejected by the Czech Senate, but the Irish Protocol seems to be on its way to adoption. Shouldn't we have a specific article on this protocol, as it will effectively revise the Treaties? I found the following information on Germany and Belgium: The German Assent Act has been adopted (see here for the parliamentary procedure; search with document number 17/11367). In Belgium, the federal Assent Act has also been adopted and there is information on several federative entity parliaments. For the UK, there already is something here. If some others can add information on other Member States, then perhaps we could get a critical mass to start an article. Sigur (talk) 18:40, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Some changes seem necessary now
I added the European Fiscal Compact to the treaties (I think it can be considered as an amending treaty, if you don't agree, please change it), also placed the Croatian Accession Treaty to the top (since the current ESM treaty was signed later). However, I think there are two more necessary changes, but I don't want to make them unilaterally. First, the content about the EP Protocol should be scrapped as no other treaty in force has a text, and the informations should be included in the chart. Second, as it seems, the ESM 2011 treaty will never enter into force, so it should be erased from the "Future treaties" section and placed into the "Abandoned treaties" one. Also, the ESM 2012 treaty should be called simply ESM treaty. What do you think? Beleszólok (talk) 17:19, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Well done; I'd say; and a few comments on your suggestions:

L.tak (talk) 17:33, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I think the European Fiscal Compact can not be called/considered an amending treaty; as it is made fully outside the structure of the three main conventions (Euratom, TEU, TFEU) and doesn't amend them. However, the way it is implemented now seems ok to me, so no reason to change...
 * what do you mean by EP protocol? This section "Protocol amending the Protocol on Transitional Provisions"? In that case I agree that it gives a bit too much weight. However, we could also keep it as its the last amendment that is in force (until a new one comes into force).
 * ESM 2011 to abandoned; and ESM 2012 to ESM; ok to me
 * Thanks for the support! I was talking about the protocol regarding EP seats. I think it should be clear for readers what it is about, but it can be explained in the chart by using the button to expand the content. In my opinion, the current place does not really fit in the article, it simply remained there after it was ratified. Beleszólok (talk) 18:57, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Also, I have another idea about changing the picture from the current to an actual EU treaty. Any thoughts? Beleszólok (talk) 18:57, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

I finally made all changes proposed above except the picture (I did not want to make changes without discussion), although I ask everyone to revert all changes which are not adequate. Beleszólok (talk) 20:55, 7 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Good job! I think some additional changes can be discussed - should we change "European Fiscal Compact" to the actual treaty name (and move EFU link to the other column, like on the ESM row)? Also, currently the art.136 amendment (that enables the ESM) entry into force date of January 2013 is after the July 2012 ESM date - this seems odd, but I don't know if we have a source for earlier date on this one. Japinderum (talk) 18:39, 10 March 2012 (UTC)
 * The name of the fiscal treaty was discussed on its talk page, I just wanted the name to be common with the original source. However, I think that it is adequate (the Treaty of Lisbon article would be "Treaty of Lisbon amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community" with the original name). As for the dates, you're right, the situation is odd, but the information in the article is correct (http://eutopialaw.com/2012/02/21/responding-to-the-economic-crisis-public-law-in-a-post-lisbon-age/). Beleszólok (talk) 01:08, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Weird and inconsistent indeed (those dates). But the date of 1 Jan 2013 is named explicitly in the treaty proposing the change to the TFEU. I suppose (my personal OR) that something will be done regarding "provisional application"... L.tak (talk) 17:33, 13 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Now we have the ESM entering into force even before all Art.136 notifications. What a mess. It's good that we'll get answers to the date question from the ECJ - Irish court has similar concerns to ours. Japinderum (talk) 12:42, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Amendments by the European Council
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2010:325:0004:0005:EN:PDF http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2011:091:0001:0002:EN:PDF http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:L:2012:204:0131:0131:EN:PDF – Kaihsu (talk)
 * Please sign your posts. One of those is the Art136 amendment, already covered in the article. The other two are St.Barts and Mayotte amendments - these should be mentioned somehow - ideas? Japinderum (talk) 12:40, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Is this list exhaustive? No other missing European Council OCT/OMR changes to the treaties, inter-government conferences, simplified changes, passarelle clauses utilized? Japinderum (talk) 12:48, 2 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I do not know whether this is an exhaustive list, but these are the ones I know about. – Kaihsu (talk) 18:42, 3 October 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm not opposed to mentioning them somewhere, but since they aren't treaties they shouldn't be listed under "Ratified treaties". TDL (talk) 06:14, 18 October 2012 (UTC)
 * Done. Japinderum (talk) 09:52, 20 October 2012 (UTC)

Entry into force for ratifiers only
Conditions for entry into force for ESM and TSCG are such so that can enter into force before all parties have ratified them. That's why I propose keeping the progress bars below their "effective" date (and using first-final date like currently for the signing of the Irish protocol). Japinderum (talk) 13:13, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

unified patent court agreement
The agreement has been added here under eu treaties, while u would argue it should be under "relates" treatues. 1 of the orincipke point of the patent deal was that the court should not be an eu jurisdiction, thus the compromise/workaround was a 'court of the individual countries' partly interpreting eu law (as all courts do in the eu) that is set up by treaty. I therefore propose to move the section to the related treaties section... --L.tak (talk) 08:22, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree with you, but I added it there because at the moment it's just a "signed" treaty and not yet in force. My plan was that like the fiscal compact, we would move it to the "related treaties" as soon as it entered into force.  But I'm not opposed to moving it there immediately if you prefer.  We might have to either create a second table or play around with the table headings though.  TDL (talk) 08:59, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
 * Under the "signed"-header it's ok indeed.. Especially after moving around the sections as you did that makes sense indeed... L.tak (talk) 19:12, 20 February 2013 (UTC)

Witness protection agreement
Related treaty similar to Prum agreement -, google search for "AGREEMENT ON THE COOPERATION IN THE AREA OF WITNESS PROTECTION" yields the text of the treaty. Art.12 "European Union law shall take precedence", Art.16 "This Agreement shall be open for accession to all Member States of the European Union and other States applying the Schengen acquis." Japinderum (talk) 08:26, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Hmm, we really need to think about the inclusion criteria... What about the Brussels convention (described in Brussels regime) and the Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations 1980; wouldn't they legally be on the same level (especially Rome, as it has all EU countries; and accession is arranged in EU extention agreements)? L.tak (talk) 11:42, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I saw that Slovenia is depositary unfortunately; because I couldn't find their depositary information website yet ;-(.... L.tak (talk) 11:58, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
 * I have searched for "K.3" in the Dutch treaty database, which results in quite a lot of EU-related conventions (see here); in some cases conventions on which the council (by virtue of the text in teh accession treaties) may allow other eu countries to accede) performs the enlargement-formalities... Any ideas about inclusion criteria? L.tak (talk) 13:48, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

Ideas are welcome: should we have a long list here? or make a shorter one? By which inclusion criteria? L.tak (talk) 11:17, 24 June 2013 (UTC)
 * I've thought about this for a while, but I don't have a nice, clean solution. I think the point of the section should be to include de facto EU treaties that are concluded outside the framework of the main treaties for whatever reason.  For starters, I'd say that we should restrict it to agreements which are only open to EU member states.  Otherwise, we'd need to worry about things like the European Economic Area (which is open to EU and European Free Trade Association members), European Union Association Agreements, etc.  That rules out the witness protection agreement.  As for the two conventions you mentioned, I'd question how much they really have to do with the EU, given that they are only applicable to the overseas territories of EU member states, and not the member states themselves (unless I'm mistaken).  Probably the best thing to do is to just follow the sources.  I'm confident we could find sources which describe the 4 treaties we include now as de facto EU treaties.
 * PS: I replaced the redlink for Rome Convention above. If this wasn't the convention you were referring to, feel free to revert.  TDL (talk) 01:04, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

ESM to be restored back into the EU ratified/signed treaties
ESM was moved out of "EU" into the "Related" table, because initially it operated outside of the EU framework - but now, after the implementing Amendment of Article 136 TFEU entered into force ESM should be restored in the EU table. A slight redaction of the footnote after 27 September 2012 can be made to explain that "participants are the 17 Eurozone members". Japinderum (talk) 08:33, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
 * It is still not an EU treaty; but a treaty outside the EU; to which the EU has mandated some of its members (but not "in its name" (as with the Hague convention 1996) nor integrating the agreement of institution in the Union...; in legal role maybe not much different from the Agreement on a Unified Patent Court and the Rome Convention.... L.tak (talk) 11:21, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
 * Agreed with L.tak. The TFEU amendment intentionally did not incorporate the ESM treaty itself into the EU treaties, it merely authorized member states to establish the ESM between themselves outside of the EU framework.  This approach was taken so that the simplified treaty revision procedure could be utilized.  If the ESM had of been incorporated into the EU treaties, this would have increased the competence of the EU, and thus the simplified revision procedure would not have been able to be utilized.  The ammendment was necessary because there was an argument that the existing EU treaties forbid bailouts, so the amendment was designed simply to exempt the ESM from these anti-bailout provisions.  TDL (talk) 18:46, 3 May 2013 (UTC)
 * He is an excellent resource explaining the legal rational for the TFEU ammendment:  TDL (talk) 02:30, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

New treaty - SRF
Agreement on the transfer and mutualisation of contributions to the Single Resolution fund: ratification status, announcement and link to text. Japinderum (talk) 08:49, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * So this isn't formally an EU treaty, but it looks to me like this is worth including as a "related treaty". It has very similar provisions to the fiscal compact declaring that it is open to any EU member state (A13) and incorporating the provisions into the EU treaties in the future (A16).  Any other thoughts?  TDL (talk) 16:37, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Since no one objected, I went ahead and added it. If anyone is interested, I've started European Union banking union as an overview of all the new banking union initiatives.  TDL (talk) 05:48, 31 May 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:Treaties of the European Union


text:
Ntare IV of Burundi

Ntare IV Rutaganzwa Rugamba was the king of Burundi from 1796 to 1850. He was the son of king Mwambutsa I Mbariza.

He achieved the greatest expansion in the history of Burundi, doubling the territory.

title: Ntare IV of Burundi


text:
Mwambutsa I of Burundi

Mwambutsa I Mbariza was the ruler of the Kingdom of Burundi from 1767 to 1796. His only son was Ntare IV Rutaganzwa Rugamba. He succeeded Mwami Mutaga III Senyamwiza Mutamo.

title: Mwambutsa I of Burundi


text:
Mutaga III of Burundi

Mwami Mutaga III Senyamwiza Mutamo was the king of Burundi from 1739 to 1767. He succeeded king Mwezi III Ndagushimiye.

Life
His predecessor as king of Burundi was his father Mwezi III of Burundi.

In Mutaga's life there had been conflicts with Ruanda. Fights that had begun with Burundis expansion northward ended when Mutaga married Rujugira, the daughter of Ruanda's king.

These wars restarted in later years and he died in Butare. Mwambutsa III became his successor.

title: Mutaga III of Burundi


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Santa Isabel

Saint or Santa Isabel, Isabela, or Isabella (Spanish and Portuguese for "Saint Elizabeth") may refer to:

People

 * Elizabeth of Portugal
 * Saint Isabelle of France

Argentina

 * Santa Isabel, Buenos Aires, a settlement in General Alvear Partido
 * Santa Isabel, Córdoba, a neighbourhood in the city of Córdoba
 * Santa Isabel, La Pampa, in the province of La Pampa

Brazil

 * Santa Isabel, Espírito Santo, a town in the state of Espírito Santo
 * Santa Isabel, Goiás, a town in the state of Goiás
 * Santa Isabel, São Paulo, a town in the state of São Paulo
 * Santa Isabel do Rio Negro, in the state of Amazonas
 * Vila Santa Isabel, a neighborhood in Carrão (district of São Paulo)

Cape Verde

 * Santa Isabel (Boa Vista), a parish on the island of Boa Vista and the eponymous church in Sal Rei city

Colombia

 * Santa Isabel (Bogotá), a barrio (neighborhood) in Bogotá
 * Santa Isabel, Tolima, a town in Tolima department
 * Santa Isabel (TransMilenio), a station on Bogotá's TransMilenio mass-transit system
 * Santa Isabel (volcano), a volcano

Cuba

 * Santa Isabel de las Lajas, historical and cultural name of the city of Lajas, Cuba

Ecuador

 * Santa Isabela Island, former name of Isabela Island in the Galapagos

Equatorial Guinea

 * Former name of Malabo, the country's capital
 * Former name of Pico Basilé, highest mountain in Equatorial Guinea

Mexico

 * Santa Isabel, Baja California, a city in the state of Baja California
 * Santa Isabel, Chihuahua, a city in the state of Chihuahua
 * Santa Isabel Municipality, also in Chihuahua
 * Santa Isabel Cholula, in the state of Puebla

Panama

 * Santa Isabel, Colón, a corregimiento (district subdivision) in Santa Isabel District

Philippines

 * Santa Isabel, San Pablo, a barangay (administrative district) of San Pablo, Laguna Province

Portugal

 * Santa Isabel (Lisbon), a former parish, extant from 1741–2012

Solomon Islands

 * Santa Isabel Island, an island in the South Pacific

United States

 * Santa Isabel de Utinahica, a former Spanish mission in the state of Georgia

Puerto Rico

 * Santa Isabel, Puerto Rico, a municipality located on the southern coast

Venezuela

 * Santa Isabel, Trujillo, the shire town of municipality Andrés Bello in Trujillo (state)

Other

 * Santa Isabel languages, spoken in the Solomon Islands
 * Santa Isabel Theater, in Recife, Brazil
 * Santa Isabel (supermarkets) of Chile
 * Santa Isabel (church) in Lisbon, Portugal
 * SS Santa Isabel, a number of ships with this name

title: Santa Isabel


text:
Ntare I of Burundi

Ntare I Kivimira Savuyimba Semunganzashamba Rushatsi Cambarantama was the king of Burundi from 1680 to 1709. He was a legendary descendant of the Ntwero family, and the first king of Burundi.

Ntare established the Sentare, a tribunal of judges to handle property disputes between chiefs. There are any legends describing the creation of the Burundian monarchy. No other source than those legends has confirmed his existence or documented his life.

title: Ntare I of Burundi


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Alexander Volkov (writer)

Alexander Melentyevich Volkov (Александр Мелентьевич Волков ; 14 June 1891 – 3 July 1977) was a Soviet novelist, playwright, university lecturer. He was an author of novels, short stories, plays and poems for children, mostly remembered for the Magic Land series of books, based on L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

Biography
Volkov was born in Ust-Kamenogorsk, Semipalatinsk Oblast, Russian Empire (now Oskemen, Kazakhstan). At the age of 12 he graduated from the Ust-Kamenogorsk town school as valedictorian, where he would later teach. In 1907 he entered the Tomsk Teachers Institute. In 1909 he graduated with right to teach all subjects of the school curriculum, except for the Law of God.

He began to work as a teacher in Ust-Kamenogorsk. Starting in 1910, he worked as a mathematics teacher in the village of Kolyvan. In the 1920s he moved to Yaroslavl, where he worked as a school principal. He graduated in absentia from the mathematical faculty of the Yaroslavl Pedagogical Institute.

In 1929 he moved to Moscow, where he worked as the head teacher of the rabfak. He completed coursework and passed the external examinations at the Physics and Mathematics Faculty of Moscow University in seven months.

Starting in 1931 he worked as teacher, and later as Docent of the Department of Higher Mathematics of the Moscow Institute of Non-Ferrous Metals and Gold.

Magic Land series
The first of these books, The Wizard of the Emerald City (Волшебник Изумрудного города), is a loose translation of the first Oz book, with chapters added, altered, or omitted, and some names changed (for example, Dorothy becomes "Ellie", Oz is renamed "Magic Land", and Toto can talk when in Magic Land), and several characters given personal names instead of generic ones. Baum's name is mentioned in the first of Volkov's books, but the publisher paid no royalties to the Baum estate. First published in 1939 in the Soviet Union, the book became quite popular; and in the 1960s Volkov also wrote his own sequels to the story. He liberally borrowed from some of the originals, such as using the "Powder of Life" idea from The Marvelous Land of Oz, but mostly created a divergent universe. From 1963 to 1970, four more books in the series were published, with the sixth and final story published posthumously in 1982. Other authors such as Yuri Kuznetsov, Sergei Sukhinov, and Leonid Vladimirsky (Volkov's original illustrator) have recently written additional sequels in Russian, creating in effect an alternative series of Oz books.

The context and situations found in the Volkov version are notably different from the original Baum version in their political tones. The situations, while still maintaining a childlike clarity of good versus evil, often involve the characters encountering very mature political and ethical decisions. The heroes are repeatedly called upon to defend Magic Land against invasions or topple feudalistic or aristocratic governments to free the populace. Both themes are often found in Soviet sci-fi and adventure literature (see the Strugatsky brothers' novels Hard to be a God and Inhabited Island).

Volkov had faith in the omnipotence of the man-made technique, so the wizardry of his heroes was usually won with the help of various technical inventions (a cannon designed by Charly Black, a mechanical drill, and Tilly-Willy; a super-robot).

Volkov's Magic Land series was translated into many languages and was popular with children all over the Eastern bloc. Volkov's version of Oz seems to be better known than Baum's in some countries, for example in China, in Germany (especially former East Germany), and also in Arab countries such as Syria. In Germany, two authors have written their own set of sequels to Volkov's books.

The books in the series have been translated into English by Peter L. Blystone, and were published by Red Branch Press in three volumes (two books per volume) in 1991, 1993, and 2007. A revised edition of the first two-book volume was published in 2010.

Magic Land books

 * The Wizard of the Emerald City (Волшебник Изумрудного города, 1939)
 * Urfin Joos and his Wooden Soldiers (Урфин Джюс и его деревянные солдаты, 1963)
 * The Seven Underground Kings (Семь подземных королей, 1964)
 * The Fiery God of the Marrans (Огненный бог марранов, 1968)
 * The Yellow Fog (Жёлтый туман, 1970)
 * The Secret of the Deserted Castle (Тайна заброшенного замка, 1975, published in 1982)

Other books

 * Wonderful balloon (The first aeronaut) (1940)
 * The Two Brothers (1950, rewritten in 1961)
 * The Architects (1954)
 * Astern trace (1960)
 * The Wandering (1963) (about childhood and youth of Giordano Bruno)
 * Prisoner of Zargrad (1969)
 * Land and Sky (1972)

title: Alexander Volkov (writer)


text:
Wilhelmine of Prussia, Margravine of Brandenburg-Bayreuth

Princess Friederike Sophie Wilhelmine of Prussia (3 July 1709 – 14 October 1758) was a princess of Prussia (the older sister of Frederick the Great) and a composer. She was the eldest daughter of Frederick William I of Prussia and Sophia Dorothea of Hanover, and a granddaughter of George I of Great Britain. In 1731, she married Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. The baroque buildings and parks built during her tenure shape much of the present appearance of the town of Bayreuth, Germany.

Early life
Born in Berlin, Wilhelmine shared the unhappy childhood of her brother, Frederick the Great, whose friend and confidante she remained all her life, with the exception of one short interval. She was fiercely beaten and abused by her governess during her childhood. Wilhelmine later wrote: "Not a day passed that she [the governess] did not prove upon me the fearful power of her fists." The mistreatment continued until the prince's governess finally said to their mother, who had been oblivious to the abuse, that she would not be surprised if Wilhelmine was eventually beaten until she was crippled. After this, the governess was promptly replaced.

Being the eldest daughter in her family, she was early the target of discussions about political marriages. Her mother, Queen Sophia Dorothea, wished her to marry her nephew Frederick, Prince of Wales, but on the British side there was no inclination to make an offer of marriage except in exchange for substantial concessions that Wilhelmine's father would not accept. The fruitless intrigues carried on by Sophia Dorothea to bring about this match played a large part in Wilhelmine's early life. Her father, on the other hand, preferred a match with the House of Habsburg.

Marriage
After much talk of other matches came to nothing, Wilhelmine was eventually married in 1731 to her Hohenzollern kinsman, Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth. Frederick had been engaged to Wilhelmine's younger sister, Sophie, but at the last moment King Frederick William I decided to replace her with Wilhelmine. The groom was not consulted in this decision.

This marriage was only accepted by Wilhelmine under threats from her father and with a view to lightening her brother's disgrace. It was initially a happy marriage, but was eventually clouded first by limited financial resources and then by a love affair of the future Margrave with Dorothea von Marwitz, whose rise as an official mistress at the court of Bayreuth was bitterly resented by her brother Frederick the Great and caused an estrangement of some three years between him and Wilhelmine.

Margravine

When Wilhelmine's spouse came into his inheritance in 1735, the pair set about making Bayreuth a miniature Versailles. Their building projects included the rebuilding of their summer residence (now part of the Hermitage Museum); the rebuilding of the great Bayreuth opera house; the building of a second, new opera house; the building of a theater; and the reconstruction of the Bayreuth palace. The so-called Bayreuth Rococo style of architecture is renowned even today. The pair also founded the University of Erlangen. All of these ambitious undertakings pushed the court to the verge of bankruptcy.

The margravine made Bayreuth one of the chief intellectual centers of the Holy Roman Empire, surrounding herself with a court of wits and artists that accrued added prestige from the occasional visits of Voltaire and Frederick the Great.

Wilhelmine's brother Frederick granted her an allowance in exchange for troops, following the same procedure with her sisters. With the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, Wilhelmine's interests shifted from dilettantism to diplomacy. Austrian diplomats were trying to influence the court of Bayreuth to take their side against Prussia. In September 1745, during the Silesian war, Wilhelmine met with Maria Theresa of Austria. This almost destroyed her intimate relationship with her brother. In 1750 Wilhelmine visited the Prussian court for several weeks and met famous contemporaries such as Voltaire, Maupertuis and La Mettrie. In June 1754, the siblings met for the last time, after which Frederick swore her his eternal loyalty. She acted as eyes and ears for her brother in southern Germany until her death at Bayreuth on 14 October 1758, the day of Frederick's defeat by the Austrian forces of Leopold Josef Graf Daun at the Battle of Hochkirch. Although Frederick had lost many friends and family to death throughout his life, Wilhelmine's hit him the hardest. He suffered from severe illness for a week following news of Wilhelmine's death and fell into a depression from which he never fully recovered.

On the tenth anniversary of her death, her devastated brother had the Temple of Friendship built at Sanssouci in her memory.

Works

The margravine's memoirs, Memoires de ma vie, written or revised in French between 1748 and her death, are preserved in the Royal Library of Berlin. They were first printed in two forms in 1810: a German translation down to the year 1733 from the firm of Cotta of Tübingen; and a version in French published by Vieweg of Brunswick, and coming down to 1742. There were several subsequent editions, including a German one published at Leipzig in 1908. An English translation was published in Berlin in 1904. For the discussion on the authenticity of these entertaining, though not very trustworthy, memoirs, see G. H. Pertz, Uber die Merkwürdigkeiten der Markgrafin (1851). See also Arvede Barine, Princesses et grandes dames (Paris, 1890); E. E. Cuttell, Wilhelmine, Margravine of Baireuth (London, 2 vols., 1905); ' and R. Fester, Die Bayreuther Schwester Friedrichs des Grossen (Berlin, 1902). Writer William Thackeray recommended the memoirs to "those who are curious about European Court history of the last age".

In addition to her other accomplishments, Wilhelmine was also a gifted composer and supporter of music. She was a lutenist, a student of Sylvius Leopold Weiss, and the employer of Bernhard Joachim Hagen.

Keyboard Concerto in G minor

 * 1) Allego, G minor.
 * 2) Cantabile, B flat major.
 * 3) Gavottes I & II, G minor. Cembalo, Fl, Strings

The obbligato flute part could have been played either by her brother or her husband, as both were flautists (and pupils of Quantz). Each movement takes wing from solid and vigorous openings. There is a stubborn insistence about the first tutti's repeated octave jumps, offset by the buoyancy of its striding sequences. She has a Bach-like flair for phrase extensions, which is also evident in the final gavotte where the solo shadows the orchestra and emerges to take the lead. Some of the ideas in the 34 bar slow movement are more son-of-Bach in style; and in the D minor second gavotte, which serves as a central "trio" to the first, there is a delicate episode of rather French, languishing descents.

Argenore: opera c. 1740. Seven soloists (3 sop., 1 mezzo-sop., 2 alto, 1 baritone or mezzo-sop.), and orchestra (1 flute, 2 oboes, 2 trumpets, strings, continuo). Performed in 1740 for her husband's birthday.

Cavatinen: short songs; voice, strings, harpsichord.

Flute Sonata: flute & keyboard, c. 1730.

Some chamber music still survives.

Issue
Wilhelmine's only child was Elisabeth Fredericka Sophie of Brandenburg-Bayreuth, born on August 30, 1732. Described by Casanova as the most beautiful princess in Germany, she was married to Karl Eugen, Duke of Württemberg, in 1748. She died on 6 April 1780 without surviving children.

Memoirs
An earlier English translation from the French of her memoirs was published in a two volume edition in 1828 by Hunt and Clarke, York St., Covent Garden.

Scribner and Welford published Princess Helena of the United Kingdom's German-to-English translation of Wilhelmine's memoirs in 1887.

In fiction

 * Princess Wilhelmine is the main character of the 1909 historical novel A Gentle Knight of Old Brandenburg by Charles Major.


text:
C-class Melbourne tram

The C-class Melbourne tram is a fleet of three-section Alstom Citadis 202 trams built in La Rochelle, France that operate on the Melbourne tram network. They were the first low-floor trams in Melbourne, being delivered in 2001-2002.

History
To meet a franchise commitment to introduce new trams to replace Z1 and Z2-class trams, 36 three-section Alstom Citadis 202 low-floor trams were purchased by Yarra Trams. They were the first low-floor trams in Melbourne, and the first tram imported for the Melbourne tram system since the 1920s.

The design was adapted by Alstom for local conditions, with the first four trams arriving at Webb Dock on 10 August 2001. Following fit-out and testing at Preston Workshops, they entered service on 12 October 2001. The last arrived on 25 June 2002 and entered service on 30 August 2002. All C1-class trams initially operated solely on route 109.

Criticisms
The Citadis trams have been criticised by the Australian Rail Tram & Bus Industry Union (RTBU), who claim they have operational problems, including injuries to the drivers relating to design. There were concerns raised in 2011 regarding the rear-vision cameras fitted to the trams. Despite Yarra Trams replacing the cameras a number of times, there were visibility problems at night and in high glare situations. These had been solved by July 2012.

The trams have also been described by the RTBU as "cheap as chips", following allegations that swaying and lateral forces at "speeds above 25 km/h" were causing driver injuries. Yarra Trams responded by stating that they were offering drivers lumbar support, and that track renewal had improved ride quality, reducing sway, while the driver's controls had been changed to avoid wrist injuries.

Tram number 3011 has derailed three times, most recently on Sunday 6 October 2019. Each derailment occurred after a collision with a car. The RTBU has again said the model should be removed from service.

Operation
C-class trams operate on the following routes:
 * 48: Balwyn North - Victoria Harbour Docklands
 * 109: Box Hill - Port Melbourne

title: C-class Melbourne tram


text:
British Gas (disambiguation)

British Gas may refer to:

 * British Gas plc (1987–1997), the former monopoly gas supplier in the United Kingdom
 * Centrica, a multinational utility company founded in 1997, which currently uses the British Gas brand name in the UK
 * BG Group, a global oil and gas company founded in 1997, which currently uses the British Gas brand name outside the UK

title: British Gas (disambiguation)


text:
Suicide gene

In the field of genetics, a suicide gene is a gene that will cause a cell to kill itself through the process of apoptosis (programmed cell death). Activation of a suicide gene can cause death through a variety of pathways, but one important cellular "switch" to induce apoptosis is the p53 protein. Stimulation or introduction (through gene therapy) of suicide genes is a potential way of treating cancer or other proliferative diseases.

Suicide genes form the basis of a strategy for making cancer cells more vulnerable or sensitive to chemotherapy. The approach has been to attach parts of genes expressed in cancer cells to other genes for enzymes not found in mammals that can convert a harmless substance into one that is toxic to the tumor. Most suicide genes mediate this sensitivity by coding for viral or bacterial enzymes that convert an inactive drug into toxic antimetabolites that inhibit the synthesis of nucleic acid. Suicide genes must be introduced into the cells in ways that ensure their uptake and expression by as many cancer cells as possible, while limiting their expression by normal cells. Suicide gene therapy for cancer requires the vector to have the capacity to discriminate between target and non target cells, between the cancer cells and normal cells.

Apoptosis
Cell death can majorly occur by either necrosis or apoptosis. Necrosis occurs when a cell is damaged by an external force, such as poison, a bodily injury, an infection or getting cut off from blood supply. When cells die from necrosis, it's a rather messy affair. The death causes inflammation that can cause further distress of injury within the body. Whereas, apoptosis causes degradation of cellular components without eliciting an inflammatory response.

Many cells undergo programmed cell death, or apoptosis, during fetal development. A form of cell death in which a programmed sequence of events leads to the elimination of cells without releasing harmful substances into the surrounding. Apoptosis plays a crucial role in developing and maintaining the health of the body by eliminating old cells, unnecessary cells, and unhealthy cells. The human body replaces perhaps one million cells per second. When a cell is compelled to commit suicide, proteins called caspases go into action. They break down the cellular components needed for survival, and they spur production of enzymes known as DNase, which destroy the DNA in the nucleus of the cell. The cell shrinks and sends out distress signals, which are answered by macrophages. The macrophages clean away the shrunken cells, leaving no trace, so these cells do not damage surrounding necrotic cells do. Apoptosis is also essential to prenatal development. For example, in embryos, fingers and toes are initially connected to adjacent digits by tissue. The cells of this connecting tissue undergo apoptosis to produce separate digits. In brain development, initially millions of extra neurons are created. The cells that don't form synaptic connections undergo apoptosis. Programmed cell death is also necessary to start the process of menstruation. That's not to say that apoptosis is a perfect process. Rather than dying due to injury, cells that go through apoptosis die in response to signals within the body. When cells recognize viruses and gene mutations, they may induce death to prevent the damage from spreading. Scientist are trying to learn how they can modulate apoptosis, so that they can control which cells live and which undergo programmed cell death. Anti-cancer drugs and radiation, for example, work by triggering apoptosis in diseased cells. Many diseases and disorders are linked with the life and death of cells—increased apoptosis is a characteristic of AIDS, Alzheimer's, and Parkinson's disease, while decreased apoptosis can signal lupus or cancer. Understanding how to regulate apoptosis could be the first step to treating these conditions.

Too little or too much apoptosis can play a role in many diseases. When apoptosis does not work correctly, cells that should be eliminated may persist and become immortal, for example, in cancer and leukemia. when apoptosis works overly well, it kills too many cells and inflicts grave tissue damage. This is the case in strokes and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer's, Huntington's, and Parkinson's disease. Also known as programmed cell death and cell suicide.

Cancer suicide gene therapy
The ultimate goal of cancer therapy is the complete elimination of all cancer cells, while leaving all healthy cells unharmed. One of the most promising therapeutic strategies in this regard is cancer suicide gene therapy (CSGT), which is rapidly progressing into new frontiers. The therapeutic success, in CSGT, is primarily contingent upon precision in delivery of the therapeutic transgenes to the cancer cells only. This is addressed by discovering and targeting unique or / and over-expressed biomarkers displayed on the cancer cells and cancer stem cells. Specificity of cancer therapeutic effects is further enhanced by designing the DNA constructs, which put the therapeutic genes under the control of the cancer cell specific promoters. The delivery of the suicidal genes to the cancer cells involves viral, as well as synthetic vectors, which are guided by cancer specific antibodies and ligands. The delivery options also include engineered stem cells with tropisms towards cancers. Main mechanisms inducing cancer cells' deaths include: transgenic expression of thymidine kinases, cytosine deaminases, intracellular antibodies, telomeraseses, caspases, DNases. Precautions are undertaken to eliminate the risks associated with transgenesis. Progress in genomics and proteomics should help us in identifying the cancer specific biomarkers and metabolic pathways for developing new strategies towards clinical trials of targeted and personalized gene therapy of cancer. By introducing the gene into a malignant tumor, the tumor would reduce in size and possibly disappear completely, provided all the individual cells have received a copy of the gene.

When the DNA sample in the virus is taken from the patient's own healthy cells, the virus does not need to be able to differentiate between cancer cells and healthy ones. In addition, the advantage is that it is also able to prevent metastasis upon the death of a tumor.

As a cancer treatment
One of the challenges of cancer treatment is how to destroy malignant tumors without damaging healthy cells. A new method that shows great promise for accomplishing this employs the use of a suicide gene. A suicide gene is a gene which will cause a cell to kill itself through apoptosis. Suicide gene therapy involves delivery of a gene which codes for a cytotoxic product into tumor cells. This can be achieved by two approaches, indirect gene therapy and direct gene therapy. Indirect gene therapy employs enzyme-activated prodrug, in which the enzyme converts the prodrug to a toxic substance and the gene coding for this enzyme is delivered to the tumor cells. For example, a commonly studied strategy based on transfection of herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-TK) along with administration of ganciclovir (GSV), in which HSK-TK assists in converting GCV to a toxic compound that inhibits DNA synthesis and causes cell death. Whereas, direct gene therapy employs a toxin gene or a gene which has the ability to correct mutated proapoptotic genes, which can in turn induce cell death via apoptosis. For instance, the most researched immunotoxin for cancer therapy is the diphtheria toxin as it inhibits protein synthesis by inactivating elongation factor 2 (EF-2) which in turn inhibits protein translation, Moreover, p53 is identified to be frequently abnormal in human tumors and studies show that restoring function of p53 can cause apoptosis of cancer cells. Suicide gene therapy is not necessarily expected to eliminate the need for chemotherapy and radiation treatment for all cancerous tumors. The damage inflicted upon the tumor cells, however, makes them more susceptible to the chemo or radiation. This approach has already proven effective against prostate and bladder cancers. The application of suicide gene therapy is being expanded to several other forms of cancer as well. Cancer patients often experience depressed immune systems, so they can suffer some side effects of the use of a virus as a delivery agent.

Improved vectors
Suicide gene delivery can be broadly classified into three groups which include viral vectors, synthetic vectors and cell-based vectors. The most efficient vehicles for gene delivery are viral vectors. Widely used viruses for gene therapy include retrovirus, adenovirus (Ads), lentivirus and Aden-associated viruses (AAVs). Non-viral vectors like synthetic vectors were used to combat certain disadvantages of viral vectors like immunogenicity, insertional mutagenesis to name a few. Synthetic vectors refer to use of nanoparticles, like gold nanoparticles, to delivery genes to target cells. Lastly, cell-based vectors employ stem cells as carriers of suicide genes. In the last few years, cell-mediated gene therapy for cancer using mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) was patented.

Bystander effect
The bystander effect (BE) is phenomenon as a result of which it is possible to kill untransfected tumor cells located adjacent to transduced cells in suicide gene therapy. As hundred percent transduction of all tumor cells is very difficult to achieve, BE is critical feature of suicide gene therapy.

Limitations
The drug is supposed to show high specificity towards cancer in order to effective, but studies have shown this to be rarely achieved. Moreover, expression of suicide gene was under control of tumor-specific promoters like human telomerase (hTERT), osteocalcin, carcinoembryonic antigen; however, only hTERT promoter was found to enter clinic trials. This is majorly because of the low transcriptional power of these tumor-specific promoters for suicide gene expression. Additionally, poor accessibility to target cells is an important limitation of suicide gene therapy. Another major hurdle of suicide gene therapy is partial vector specificity to target affected cells. Finally, lack of specific animal models to predict the clinical outcome and other effects of SGT.

Biotechnology
Suicide genes are often utilized in biotechnology to assist in molecular cloning. Vectors incorporate suicide genes for an organism (such as E. coli). The cloning project focuses on replacing the suicide gene by the desired fragment. Selection of vectors carrying the desired fragment is improved since vectors retaining the suicide gene result in cell death.

title: Suicide gene