text:
Satara (city)

Satara (ISO: Sātārā) is a city located in the Satara District of Maharashtra state of India, near the confluence of the river Krishna and its tributary, the Venna. The city was established in the 16th century and was the seat of the Chhatrapati of the Maratha Kingdom, Shahu I.

It is the headquarters of Satara Tehsil, as well as the Satara District. The city gets its name from the seven forts (Sat-Tara) which are around the city. The city is known as a Soldier's city as well as Pensioner's city. The city had a population of 179,147 in 2011.

History
The first known Muslim ruling of the Deccan took place in 1296. In 1636, the Nizam Shahi dynasty came to an end. In 1663, Shivaji conquered Parali and Satara fort. After the death of Shivaji, Shahu, heir apparent to the Maratha Kingdom, was captured by Mughals when he was only seven years old. He remained their prisoner till the death of his father in 1700.

The Dowager Maharani Tarabai proclaimed his younger half-brother, and her son, Shahu Sambhaji as Chhatrapati Maharaj under her regency. Mughals released Shahu under certain preconditions in 1707, so that Marathas would face an internal war for the throne. Shahu returned to the Maratha Kingdom and claimed his inheritance.

Aurangzeb's son Muhammad Azam Shah conquered Satara fort Ajinkyatara after a 6-month siege, later won by Parshuram Pratinidhi in 1706. In 1708, Chattrapati Shahu, the son of Chattrapati Sambhaji, was crowned at the Satara fort. The direct descendants of Shivaji continue to live in Satara. Chattrapati Udayanraje Bhonsle is the 13th descendant of Shivaji.

A shadow government was established during Quit India movement in Satara.

Modern history
In 2023, a communal clash in Satara's Pusesavali village stemming from a social media post led to one death and nineteen injuries. The victim, Nurul Hasan, was reportedly unconnected to the social media posts in question.

Geography

Satara is located at 17.68°N, 73.98°W. It lies in the Satara District. Satara city is surrounded by seven mountains. Satara lies on the slope of Ajinkyatara fort. It lies on the western side of the Deccan Plateau. Pune (110 KM), Sangli (121 KM), Kolhapur (122 KM) and Solapur (263 KM) are the main cities close to Satara. The city is surrounded by the tehsils of Koregaon on the West, Karad (51 KM) and Patan on the South, Jawali on the East and Wai on the North.

National Highway 48 (formerly National Highway 4) passes through Satara, between Karad and Khandala. Kaas Plateau, a valley of flowers, is situated 25 km away from Satara.

The Satara District experiences earthquakes of minor magnitudes. the epicenter of these earthquakes are scattered in Patan Taluka.

Satara is famous for the Kaas Plateau, Thoseghar, and a lot of natural sites present in the vicinity of the city. Kass Plateau has been awarded as a UNESCO's World Heritage Site (WHS). In the monsoon months, the Kaas Pathar, as it is locally known, transforms into a wildflower wonderland. More particularly so in September when vivid shades of pink balsams, yellow Smithia flowers, and blue utricularias carpet the vast grasslands. It’s a must-visit for serious botanists, amateur photographers to witness the spectrum of Western Ghats monsoon montane grasslands flora, some of which are rare and endangered.

Climate
Satara city has a tropical wet and dry climate (Köppen climate classification: Aw) that is influenced by the relatively high altitude and mountains surrounding the city. Summers are more hot than the winters. Satara city receives rainfall from 900 mm to 1,500 mm depending on the strength of the monsoon.

Demographics
As of 2011 India census, Satara had a population of 120,079; 61,129 are males while 59,066 are females, thus males constituted 52% of the population and females 48%. Satara has an average literacy rate of 80%, higher than the national average of 74%: male literacy is 84%, and female literacy is 76%. In Satara, 10% of the population is under 6 years of age. Marathi is the native and most widely spoken language. Hindi is spoken by 1.5% of the population.

Maharashtra state's sex ratio is 883 girls per 1000 boys, and Satara fares worse still at 881, in spite of the high level of literacy.

The population of Satara has crossed the municipal limits and actual urban agglomerate population 326,765. The city is surrounded with census towns viz. Pratikash B. Karanje, Khed, Godoli and Vilaspur. These census towns are considered as suburban of Satara city.

The nod for Satara city, limit expansion was given by Devendra Fadnavis then chief minister of Maharashtra on 16 September 2019. The matter was pending for 40 years. The city's border will be extended to NH4 towards east, to Ajinkyatara on the south, the whole region south to Venna River, Shahupuri, Sambhajinagar, Vilaspur and Dare Budruk grampanchayats will become a part of Satara city.

Government and politics
Satara city falls under Satara Lok Sabha constituency, represented by MP Udayanraje Bhosale from the Bharatiya Janata Party. The city also elects an MLA from the Satara Vidhan Sabha constituency, represented by BJP's Shivendrasinh Abhayasinh Bhosale.

Civic administration
Satara is a Municipal Council city in district of Satara, Maharashtra. Satara Municipal Council, with population of about 1.2 lakh is Satara sub district's only municipal council located in Satara sub district of Satara district in the state Maharashtra in India. Total geographical area of Satara municipal council is 8 square km. Population density of the city is 14748 persons per square km.

The Satara city is divided into 39 wards for which elections are held every 5 years. Among them Satara Ward No 19 is the most populous ward with population of 4691 and Satara Ward No 23 is the least populous ward with population of 2206.

Civic utilities
Water from the Kaas lake is supplied to Satara city for drinking purposes. Maharashtra Jeevan Pradhikaran supplies water to Satara city. 19 MLD is supplied, but because of water leakage during transmission, only 17.2 MLD gets supplied effectively.

Satara Municipal Council is responsible for providing sanitation and solid waste management services in the city, through private contractors. 70 MT/day of solid waste is generated per day. 18 Mt/ day is disposed off through composting. 8.17 sq km of the city, covering 20972 households, are covered under door to door collection.

12.8 MLD of sewage is generated in the city. Satara Municipal Council has plans to construct an STP of 17.5 MLD capacity.

The Maharashtra Right to Public Service Act, 2015 is a revolutionary Act. Citizens can get complete information regarding which services are available under this Act by accessing either the mobile app RTS Maharashtra or ‘Aaple Sarkar’ Web Portal. Citizens can even apply online for availing these services.

Economy
Sugarcane is the single biggest crop of Satara along with turmeric and ginger. The Satara district has around 302 banks. The per capita of Satara district is nearly 1.2 times the state average. The British had, during the pre-Independence period started a variety of industries in Satara for Menthol and soap manufacturing in 1905. Bigger industries for copper were started in 1922. After independence, the whole district was stagnant in industrial growth. From 1950-60, industrial growth restarted and the manufacture of jaggery was started in the Satara Tehsil area. There is tanning industry in Satara city. It existed during the British rule, and after independence, the Maharashtra government established a modern tanning center in 1957.

Tourism
The famous tourist points near Satara city are:
 * Ajinkyatara Fort (अजिंक्यतारा किल्ला)
 * Jarandeshwar Hanuman - Satara Koregaon Road
 * Sajjangad Fort (सज्जनगड किल्ला)
 * Kaas Plateau – Called "Valley of flowers of Maharashtra" which is also a World Heritage Site
 * Baramotichi Vihir Step well, near Limb village which is about 16 km from Satara
 * Thoseghar Waterfall
 * Yewateshwar
 * Bamnoli
 * Dhom Dam
 * Raje Baksavar Peer Saaheb Dargha (Khatgun)
 * Chaphal (Shree Ram Mandir, Near Umbraj)

A sunset view from Naryan Maharaj Math, Bamnoli The fort's historical significance is due to the Battle of Pratapgad, which took place here on 10 November 1659, between Chatrapti Shivaji and Bijapur Sultanate general Afzal Khan. Killing of Afzal Khan by Chatrapati Shivaji was followed by decisive Maratha victory over the Bijapur army.
 * Paratapgad located 75 km North West of Satara
 * Panchgani located 50 km from Satara. Panchgani, called Paachgani (पाचगणी in Marathi), is a hill station and municipal council in Satara district.

Places to visit
Satara is located at the foot of the famous Ajinkyatara fort and on Kas plateau / Flower plateau, now a World Natural Heritage site. Satara has two palaces in the heart of the city, the Old Palace (Juna Rajwada) and the New Palace (Nava Rajwada) adjoining each other. The Old Palace was built around 300 years ago, and the New Palace was built about 200 years ago.

Satara has a unique statue of Shivaji standing near a cannon, at Powai Naka. Generally, statues of Shivaji depict him riding a horse.

Thoseghar Waterfalls, around 20 km west of Satara, is one of the best monsoon tourist places in the Western Ghats. People come from all over Maharashtra to visit the falls, especially during the monsoon season between July and October. Vajrai Waterfall, India's highest waterfall, is around 22 km from Satara. Sajjangad Fort is around 15 km from Satara.

Satara hosts the Satara Half Hill Marathon each year. In 2015, they entered the Guinness World Records book for Most People in a Mountain Run (Single Mountain) with 2,618 runners.

Apshinge Military is a small village in Satara district. At least one member of every family in the village has served or is serving in the armed forces. The British government installed a memorial in the village to recognize the 46 soldiers who died in World War I.

Food
Satara is known for its sweet: Kandi pedha. Kandi pedha is prepared using whole milk from nearby villages. Kandi pedha has a unique flavor and a lower sugar content than other Indian sweets.

Education
Satara is well known for Sainik School, Satara - The first among the chains of Sainik Schools established in the country on 23 June 1961 under the Ministry of Defence. Satara has base of Rayat education institutes. Yashavantrao Chavan Institute of Science is one of the famous institute from District. Rayat Shikshan Sanstha's Karmaveer Bhaurao Patil college of engineering, Satara is the oldest engineering college in Satara city. Government Medical college start from year 2022. GMC (Government Medical College) Satara has first batch in the year 2022, it is located near the Civil Hospital Satara

 * KSD Shanbhag Vidyalaya (1990)
 * Government Medical College (2022)

Notable people

 * Hari Makaji Naik
 * Jagannath Raoji Chitnis
 * Sai Bhosale
 * Yashwantrao Chavan
 * Tanaji Malusare
 * Rani of Jhansi
 * Jyotirao Phule
 * Bhaurao Patil
 * Krantisinha Nana Patil
 * Khashaba Dadasaheb Jadhav
 * Udayanraje Bhosale
 * Narendra Dabholkar
 * Shivendra Raje Bhosale
 * Sayaji Shinde
 * Lalita Babar
 * Sharad Pawar
 * Shahir Sable

Road links
Satara is about 250 km from Mumbai on National Highway 48 (via Mumbai Pune Expressway and PB road) and 110 km away from Pune. A bypass on Highway 48 was constructed to avoid traffic congestion in the city. National Highway 965D connects Kedgaon, Supe, Morgaon, Nira, Lonand, Wathar up to Satara. National Highway 548C starts from Satara. Satara-Akluj-Latur Highway connects Satara to Latur. It passes through Koregaon, Pusegaon, Mhaswad, Akluj, Tembhurni and Murud. It will also be a 4 lane highway, work is going to start soon. State Highway 58 connects Satara with Mahabaleshwar and Solapur. Satara Mahad Bankot is a newly declared national highway connecting Satara to the Konkan region.

Bus links
Private and government state transport buses are available from Borivali, Dadar, Mumbai Central, and Thane to Satara.

Air links
Pune Airport is the nearest airport.

Railways
Satara railway station lies on the Pune-Miraj line of the Central Railways and is administered by the Pune Railway Division. The station is situated near Mahuli about 0.7 km from the Satara bus stand on the Satara Pandharpur road. Satara is On Route from Mumbai to Miraj, Sangli, Kolhapur, and Bangalore (some trains). Sahyadri Express, Koyna Express, Mahalaxmi Express, Maharashtra Express, Goa Express are daily trains that have stops at Satara.
 * Railway Time Table Satara

 * Towards Miraj / Karad

 * Towards Pune

title: Satara (city)


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Scoffworthy

 * a. Never heard this term used.
 * b. Wikipedia is not a dictionary.
 * c. Badly written.

Deb 12:01, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * DDDS: Delete dictdef/slang. Geogre 13:12, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete slang dicdef. -- Cyrius|✎ 19:24, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Slang dicdef delete. Bacchiad 21:36, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * Dictdef delete slang. Dpbsmith 02:19, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)
 * I've heard it. Delete dicdef.    — Chameleon Main/Talk/Images 11:41, 24 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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


text:
O:XML

o:XML is an open source, dynamically typed, general-purpose object-oriented programming language based on XML-syntax. It has threads, exception handling, regular expressions and namespaces. Additionally o:XML has an expression language very similar to XPath that allows functions to be invoked on nodes and node sets.

title: O:XML


text:
User talk:TakuyaMurata/orphan images

Great pictures you have here! Kokiri 12:04, 23 Jul 2004 (UTC)

title: User talk:TakuyaMurata/orphan images


text:
Harry Price

Harry Price (17 January 1881 – 29 March 1948) was a British psychic researcher and author, who gained public prominence for his investigations into psychical phenomena and exposing fraudulent spiritualist mediums. He is best known for his well-publicised investigation of the purportedly haunted Borley Rectory in Essex, England.

Early life
Although Price claimed his birth was in Shropshire he was actually born in London in Red Lion Square on the site of the South Place Ethical Society's Conway Hall. He was educated in New Cross, first at Waller Road Infants School and then Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham Boys School. At 15, Price founded the Carlton Dramatic Society and wrote plays, including a drama, about his early experience with a poltergeist which he said took place at a haunted manor house in Shropshire.

According to Richard Morris, in his biography Harry Price: The Psychic Detective (2006), Price came to the attention of the press when he claimed an early interest in space-telegraphy. He set up a receiver and transmitter between Telegraph Hill, Lewisham and St Peter's Church Brockley and captured a spark on a photographic plate. This, though, was nothing more than Price writing a press release saying he had performed the experiment, as nothing was verified. The young Price also had an avid interest in coin collecting and wrote several articles for The Askean, the magazine for Haberdashers' School. In his autobiography, Search for Truth, written between 1941 and 1942, Price claimed he was involved with archaeological excavations in Greenwich Park, London, but, in earlier writings on Greenwich, he denied any such involvement.

From around May 1908 Price continued his interest in archaeology at Pulborough, Sussex, where he had moved prior to marrying Constance Mary Knight that August. As well as working as a salesman for paper merchants Edward Saunders & Sons, he wrote for two local Sussex newspapers: the West Sussex Gazette and the Southern Weekly News in which he related his remarkable propensity for discovering 'clean' antiquities. One of these, a 'silver' ingot (discovered by Richard Morris to be housed in Price's collection of artefacts at Senate House, University of London and made of base materials) was stamped around the time of the last Roman emperor Honorius. A few years later, another celebrated Sussex archaeologist, Charles Dawson, found a brick at Pevensey Fort in Sussex, which was purportedly made in Honorius' time. In 1910 Professor E. J Haverfield of Oxford University, the country's foremost expert on Roman history and a Fellow of the Royal Academy, declared the ingot to be a fake. A report for the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries (number 23, pages 121–9) in the same year reported that: "'... the double axe type of silver ingot was well known and dated from late Imperial times but the one recovered from Sussex was an inferior copy of one found at the Tower of London, with alterations to give it an air of authenticity. Both the shape and lettering betrayed its origin.'"

Interest in magic and conjuring
In his autobiography, Search for Truth, Price said the "Great Sequah" in Shrewsbury was "entirely responsible for shaping much of my life's work", and led to him acquiring the first volume of what would become the Harry Price Library, Price later became an expert amateur conjurer, joined the Magic Circle in 1922 and maintained a lifelong interest in stage magic and conjuring. His expertise in sleight-of-hand and magic tricks stood him in good stead for what would become his all consuming passion, the investigation of paranormal phenomena.

The psychical researcher Eric Dingwall and Price re-published an anonymous work written by a former medium entitled Revelations of a Spirit Medium (1922) which exposed the tricks of mediumship and the fraudulent methods of producing "spirit hands". Originally all the copies of the book were bought up by spiritualists and deliberately destroyed.

Psychical research

Price joined the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1920 and because of his knowledge in conjuring had debunked fraudulent mediums but in direct contrast to other magicians, Price endorsed some mediums that he believed were genuine. Price's first major success in psychical research came in 1922 when he exposed the 'spirit' photographer William Hope. In the same year he travelled to Germany together with Eric Dingwall and investigated Willi Schneider at the home of Baron Albert von Schrenck-Notzing in Munich. In 1923, Price exposed the medium Jan Guzyk, according to Price the "man was clever, especially with his feet, which were almost as useful to him as his hands in producing phenomena."

Price wrote that the photographs depicting the ectoplasm of the medium Eva Carrière taken with Schrenck-Notzing looked artificial and two-dimensional, as if made from cardboard and newspaper portraits, and that there were no scientific controls as both her hands were free. In 1920 Carrière was investigated by psychical researchers in London. An analysis of her ectoplasm revealed it to be made of chewed paper. She was also investigated in 1922 and the result of the tests were negative. In 1925, Price investigated Maria Silbert and caught her using her feet and toes to move objects in the séance room. He also investigated the "direct voice" mediumship of George Valiantine in London. In the séance Valiantine claimed to have contacted the "spirit" of the composer Luigi Arditi, speaking in Italian. Price wrote down every word that was attributed to Arditi and they were found to be word-for-word matches in an Italian phrase-book.

Price formed an organisation in 1925 called the National Laboratory of Psychical Research as a rival to the Society for Psychical Research. Price had a number of disputes with the SPR, most notably over the mediumship of Rudi Schneider. Price paid mediums to test them-the SPR criticised Price and disagreed about paying mediums for testing.

Price made a formal offer to the University of London to equip and endow a Department of Psychical Research, and to loan the equipment of the National Laboratory and its library. The University of London Board of Studies in Psychology responded positively to this proposal. In 1934, the National Laboratory of Psychical Research, which held Price's collection, was reconstituted as the University of London Council for Psychical Investigation with C. E. M. Joad as chairman and with Price as Honorary Secretary and editor, although it was not an official body of the university. In the meantime, in 1927 Price joined the Ghost Club, of which he remained a member until it (temporarily) closed in 1936.

In 1927, Price claimed that he had come into possession of Joanna Southcott's box, and arranged to have it opened in the presence of one reluctant prelate (the Bishop of Grantham, not a diocesan bishop but a suffragan of the Diocese of Lincoln): it was found to contain only a few oddments and unimportant papers, among them a lottery ticket and a horse-pistol. His claims to have had the true box have been disputed by historians and by followers of Southcott. Price exposed Frederick Tansley Munnings, who claimed to produce the independent "spirit" voices of Julius Caesar, Dan Leno, Hawley Harvey Crippen and King Henry VIII. Price invented and used a piece of apparatus known as a voice control recorder and proved that all the voices were those of Munnings. In 1928, Munnings admitted fraud and sold his confessions to a Sunday newspaper.

Price was friends with other debunkers of fraudulent mediums including Harry Houdini and the journalist Ernest Palmer.

In 1933, Frank Decker was investigated by Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. Under strict scientific controls that Price contrived, Decker failed to produce any phenomena at all. Price's psychical research continued with investigations into Karachi's Indian rope trick and the fire-walking abilities of Kuda Bux in 1935. He was also involved in the formation of the National Film Library (British Film Institute) becoming its first chairman (until 1941) and was a founding member of the Shakespeare Film Society. In 1936, Price broadcast from a supposedly haunted manor house in Meopham, Kent for the BBC and published The Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter and The Haunting of Cashen's Gap. This year also saw the transfer of Price's library on permanent loan to the University of London (see external links below), followed shortly by the laboratory and investigative equipment. In 1937, he conducted further televised experiments into fire-walking with Ahmed Hussain at Carshalton and Alexandra Palace, and also rented Borley Rectory for one year. The following year, Price re-established the Ghost Club, with himself as chairman, modernising it and changing it from a spiritualist association to a group of more or less open-minded sceptics that gathered to discuss paranormal topics. He was also the first to admit women to the club.

In the same year, Price conducted experiments with Rahman Bey who was "buried alive" in Carshalton. He also drafted a Bill for the regulation of psychic practitioners. In 1939, he organised a national telepathic test in the periodical John O'London's Weekly. During the 1940s, Price concentrated on writing and the works The Most Haunted House in England, Poltergeist Over England and The End of Borley Rectory were all published.

William Hope
On 4 February 1922, Price with James Seymour, Eric Dingwall and William Marriott had proven the spirit photographer William Hope was a fraud during tests at the British College of Psychic Science. Price wrote in his SPR report "William Hope has been found guilty of deliberately substituting his own plates for those of a sitter ... It implies that the medium brings to the sitting a duplicate slide and faked plates for fraudulent purposes."

Price secretly marked Hope's photographic plates, and provided him with a packet of additional plates that had been covertly etched with the brand image of the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Ltd. in the knowledge that the logo would be transferred to any images created with them. Unaware that Price had tampered with his supplies, Hope then attempted to produce a number of Spirit photographs. Although Hope produced several images of alleged spirits, none of his materials contained the Imperial Dry Plate Co. Ltd logo, or the marks that Price had put on Hope's original equipment, showing that he had exchanged prepared materials containing fake spirit images for the provided materials.

Price later re-published the Society's experiment in a pamphlet of his own called Cold Light on Spiritualistic "Phenomena" – An Experiment with the Crewe Circle. Due to the exposure of Hope and other fraudulent spiritualists, Arthur Conan Doyle led a mass resignation of eighty-four members of the Society for Psychical Research, as they believed the Society was opposed to spiritualism. Doyle threatened to have Price evicted from his laboratory and claimed if he persisted to write "sewage" about spiritualists, he would meet the same fate as Houdini. Doyle and other spiritualists attacked Price and tried for years to have Price take his pamphlet out of circulation. Price wrote "Arthur Conan Doyle and his friends abused me for years for exposing Hope."

Eileen Garrett
On 7 October 1930 it was claimed by spiritualists that Eileen J. Garrett made contact with the spirit of Herbert Carmichael Irwin at a séance held with Price at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research two days after the R101 disaster, while attempting to contact the then recently deceased Arthur Conan Doyle, and discussed possible causes of the accident. The event "attracted worldwide attention", thanks to the presence of a reporter. Major Oliver Villiers, a friend of Brancker, Scott, Irwin, Colmore and others aboard the airship, participated in further séances with Garrett, at which he claimed to have contacted both Irwin and other victims. Price did not come to any definite conclusion about Garrett and the séances:

"It is not my intention to discuss if the medium were really controlled by the discarnate entity of Irwin, or whether the utterances emanated from her subconscious mind or those of the sitters. 'Spirit' or 'trance personality' would be equally interesting explanations – and equally remarkable. There is no real evidence for either hypothesis.  But it is not my intention to discuss hypotheses, but rather to put on record the detailed account of a remarkably interesting and thought-provoking experiment."

Garrett's claims have since been questioned. The magician John Booth analysed the mediumship of Garrett and the paranormal claims of R101 and considered her to be a fraud. According to Booth Garrett's notes and writings show she followed the building of the R101 and she may have been given aircraft blueprints by a technician from the airdrome. However, the researcher Melvin Harris who studied the case wrote no secret accomplice was needed as the information described in Garrett's séances were "either commonplace, easily absorbed bits and pieces, or plain gobbledegook. The so-called secret information just doesn't exist."

Rudi Schneider
In the 1920s and early 1930s Price investigated the medium Rudi Schneider in a number of experiments conducted at the National Laboratory of Psychical Research. Schneider claimed he could levitate objects but according to Price a photograph taken on 28 April 1932 showed that Schneider had managed to free his arm to move a handkerchief from the table. After this, many scientists considered Schneider to be exposed as a fraud. Price wrote that the findings of the other experiments should be revised due to the evidence showing how Schneider could free himself from the controls.

After Price had exposed Schneider, various scientists, such as Karl Przibram and the magician Henry Evans, wrote to Price telling him that they agreed that Schneider would evade control during his séances and congratulated Price on the success of unmasking the fraud. In opposition, SPR members who were highly critical of Price, supported Schneider's mediumship and promoted a conspiracy theory that Price had hoaxed the photograph. SPR member Anita Gregory claimed Price had deliberately faked the photograph to discredit SPR research and ruin Schneider's reputation. However, a photographic expert testified that the photograph was genuine. SPR member John L. Randall reviewed the Price and Schneider case and came to the conclusion that the photograph was genuine and that Price had caught Schneider in fraud.

Helen Duncan

In 1931, the National Laboratory of Psychical Research took on its most illustrious case. £50 was paid to the medium Helen Duncan so that she could be examined under scientific conditions. Price was sceptical of Duncan and had her perform a number of test séances. She was suspected of swallowing cheesecloth which was then regurgitated as "ectoplasm". Price had proven through analysis of a sample of ectoplasm produced by Duncan, that it was made of cheesecloth. Duncan reacted violently at attempts to X-ray her, running from the laboratory and making a scene in the street, where her husband had to restrain her, destroying the controlled nature of the test. Price wrote that Duncan had given her fake ectoplasm to her husband to hide. The ectoplasm of Duncan in another test was analysed by psychical researchers and reported to be made from egg white. According to Price:

"The sight of half-a-dozen men, each with a pair of scissors waiting for the word, was amusing. It came and we all jumped. One of the doctors got hold of the stuff and secured a piece. The medium screamed and the rest of the 'teleplasm' went down her throat. This time it wasn't cheese-cloth. It proved to be paper, soaked in white of egg, and folded into a flattened tube ... Could anything be more infantile than a group of grown-up men wasting time, money, and energy on the antics of a fat female crook."

Price wrote up the case in Leaves from a Psychist's Case Book (1933) in a chapter called "The Cheese-Cloth Worshippers". In his report Price published photographs of Duncan in his laboratory that revealed fake ectoplasm made from cheesecloth, rubber gloves and cut-out heads from magazine covers which she pretended to her audience were spirits. Following the report written by Price, Duncan's former maid Mary McGinlay confessed in detail to having aided Duncan in her mediumship tricks, and Duncan's husband admitted the ectoplasm materialisations to be the result of regurgitation. Later Duncan was caught cheating again pretending to be a spirit in the séance room. During Duncan's famous trial in 1944, Price gave his results as evidence for the prosecution. This time Duncan and her travelling companions, Frances Brown, Ernest and Elizabeth Homer were prosecuted and convicted. Duncan was jailed for nine months, Brown for four months and the Homers were bound over.

Brocken experiment
In 1932, Price travelled to Mount Brocken in Germany with C. E. M. Joad and members of the National Laboratory to conduct a 'black magic' experiment in connection with the centenary of Goethe. The "Bloksberg Tryst", involving the transformation of a goat into a young man by the invocation of a maiden, Ura Bohn (better known as the film actress Gloria Gordon, 1881–1962), produced a great deal of publicity but not the magical transformation. Price claimed he carried out the experiment "if only to prove the fallacy of transcendental magic."

Gef
In July 1935 Price and his friend Richard Lambert went to the Isle of Man to investigate the alleged case of Gef the talking mongoose and produced the book The Haunting of Cashen's Gap (1936). In the book they avoided saying that they believed the story but were careful to report it as though with an open mind. The book reports how a hair from the alleged mongoose was sent to Julian Huxley who then sent it to naturalist F. Martin Duncan who identified it as a dog hair. Price suspected the hair belonged to the Irving's sheepdog, Mona.

Price asked Reginald Pocock of the Natural History Museum to evaluate pawprints allegedly made by Gef in plasticine together with an impression of his supposed tooth marks. Pocock could not match them to any known animal, though he conceded that one of them might have been "conceivably made by a dog". He did state that none of the markings had been made by a mongoose.

Price visited the Irvings and observed double walls of wooden panelling covering the interior rooms of the old stone farmhouse which featured considerable interior air space between stone and wood walls that "makes the whole house one great speaking-tube, with walls like soundingboards. By speaking into one of the many apertures in the panels, it should be possible to convey the voice to various parts of the house." According to Richard Wiseman "Price and Lambert were less than enthusiastic about the case, concluding that only the most credulous of individuals would be impressed with the evidence for Gef."

The diaries of James Irving, along with reports about the case, are in Harry Price's archives in the Senate House Library, University of London.

Borley Rectory

Price was most famous for his investigation into the Borley Rectory, Essex. The building became known as "the most haunted house in England" after Price published a book about it in 1940. He documented a series of alleged hauntings from the time the rectory was built in 1863. He lived in the rectory from May 1937 to May 1938 and wrote of his experiences in the book.

The psychical researcher John L. Randall wrote there was direct evidence of "dirty tricks" played upon Price by members of the SPR. On 9 October 1931, a past president of the SPR, William Henry Salter, visited the Borley Rectory in an attempt to persuade the Rector Lionel Foyster to sever his links with Price and work with the SPR instead. After Price's death in 1948 Eric Dingwall, Kathleen M. Goldney, and Trevor H. Hall, three members of the Society for Psychical Research, two of whom had been Price's most loyal associates, investigated his claims about Borley. Their findings were published in a 1956 book, The Haunting of Borley Rectory, which concluded Price had fraudulently produced some of the phenomena.

The "Borley Report", as the SPR study has become known, stated that many of the phenomena were either faked or due to natural causes such as rats and the strange acoustics attributed to the odd shape of the house. In their conclusion, Dingwall, Goldney, and Hall wrote "when analysed, the evidence for haunting and poltergeist activity for each and every period appears to diminish in force and finally to vanish away." Terence Hines wrote "Mrs. Marianne Foyster, wife of the Rev. Lionel Foyster who lived at the rectory from 1930 to 1935, was actively engaged in fraudulently creating [haunted] phenomena. Price himself "salted the mine" and faked several phenomena while he was at the rectory."

Robert Hastings was one of the few SPR researchers to defend Price. Price's literary executor Paul Tabori and Peter Underwood have also defended Price against accusations of fraud. A similar approach was made by Ivan Banks in 1996. Michael Coleman in an SPR report in 1997 wrote Price's defenders are unable to rebut the criticisms convincingly.

Price's investigation of Borley was the subject of a 2013 best selling novel by Neil Spring, titled The Ghost Hunters. This novel was subsequently adapted for television as Harry Price: Ghost Hunter, starring Rafe Spall, Cara Theobold and Richie Campbell.

Rosalie
Price claimed to have attended a private séance on 15 December 1937 in which a small six-year-old girl called Rosalie appeared. Price wrote he controlled the room by placing starch powder over the floor, locking the door and taping the windows before the séance. However, the identity of the sitters, or the locality where the séance was held was not revealed due to the alleged request of the mother of the child. During the séance Price claimed a small girl emerged, she spoke and he took her pulse. Price was suspicious that the supposed spirit of the child was no different than a human being but after the séance had finished the starch powder was undisturbed and none of the seals had been removed on the window. Price was convinced no one had entered the room via door or window during the séance. Price's Fifty Years of Psychical Research (1939) describes his experiences at the sitting and includes a diagram of the séance room.

Eric Dingwall and Trevor Hall wrote the Rosalie séance was fictitious and Price had lied about the whole affair but had based some of the details on the description of the house from a sitting he attended at a much earlier time in Brockley, South London where he used to live. K. M. Goldney who had criticised Price over his investigation into Borley Rectory wrote after the morning of the Rosalie sitting she found Price "shaken to the core by his experience." Goldney believed Price had told the truth about the séance and informed the Two Worlds spiritualist weekly newspaper that she believed the Rosalie sitting to be genuine.

In 1985, Peter Underwood published a photograph of part of an anonymous letter that was sent to the SPR member David Cohen in the 1960s which claimed to be from a séance sitter who attended the séance. The letter confessed to having impersonated the Rosalie child in the sitting by the request of the father who had owed the mother of the child money. In 2017, Paul Adams published details of the location of the Rosalie seance and identities of the family involved.

Reception
Psychologist and sceptic Richard Wiseman has praised Price for his work in debunking fraudulent mediums and investigating paranormal claims. According to Wiseman "Price devoted the scientific study to weird stuff ... that both delighted the world's media and infuriated believers and sceptics alike." The stage magician and scientific sceptic James Randi wrote Price accomplished some valuable and genuine research but lived "a strange mixture of fact and fraud."

Psychical researcher Renée Haynes described Price as "one of the most fascinating and storm-provoking figures in psychical research." Science writer Mary Roach in her book Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife (2010) favourably mentioned Price's methods and research in debunking the fraudulent medium Helen Duncan.

Several biographies have been written about Price. Paul Tabori's biography (1974) is generally sympathetic. Historian Trevor H. Hall's (1978) is much more critical. The latest biography by Richard Morris (2006) is also critical, concluding that Price should best be remembered as a "supreme bluffer, a hedonistic con man, a terrific raconteur, a great conjuror, a gifted writer and a wonderful eccentric."

Death and legacy
Price experienced a massive heart attack at his home in Pulborough, West Sussex and died almost instantly on 29 March 1948.

His archives were deposited with the University of London between 1976 and 1978 by his widow. They include his correspondence, drafts of his publications, papers relating to libel cases, reports on his investigations, press cuttings and photographs. His collection of magic books and periodicals is held at Senate House Library, part of the University of London and is called the Harry Price Library of Magical Literature. The collection, which includes 13,000 items, was established by a bequest from his estate in 1948.

In popular media
Price has been depicted in documentary and dramatic works, including the following:
 * Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers, episode 13, "Strange Powers: The Verdict." (1985)
 * Harry Price: Ghost Hunter, a 2005 documentary by Sky television, presented by Tom Baker.
 * Harry Price: Ghost Hunter, a 2015 drama broadcast on ITV 1 starring Rafe Spall as Price.
 * Borley Rectory, a 2017 animated documentary featuring Jonathan Rigby as the voice of Price.
 * The Ghosts of Borley Rectory, a 2021 feature film starring Toby Wynn-Davies as Price.
 * Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose, a 2023 feature film which features Christopher Lloyd as Price.

Published works

 * Revelations of a Spirit Medium, with Eric Dingwall, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co. Ltd, London, 1922.
 * Cold Light on Spiritualistic "Phenomena" – An Experiment with the Crewe Circle, Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1922.
 * Stella C. An Account of Some Original Experiments in Psychical Research, Hurst & Blackett, 1925.
 * Rudi Schneider: A Scientific Examination of his Mediumship, Methuen & Co., London, 1930.
 * Leaves from a Psychist's Case Book, Victor Gollancz, London, 1933.
 * Confessions of a Ghost-Hunter, Putnam & Co., 1936.
 * The Haunting of Cashen's Gap: A Modern "Miracle" Investigated – with R.S. Lambert, Methuen & Co., 1936.
 * Fifty Years of Psychical Research: A Critical Survey Longmans, Green & Co., 1939.
 * The Most Haunted House in England: Ten Years' Investigation of Borley Rectory, Longmans, Green & Co., 1940.
 * Search for Truth: My Life for Psychical Research, Collins, 1942.
 * Poltergeist Over England: Three Centuries of Mischievous Ghosts, Country Life, 1945.
 * The End of Borley Rectory, Harrap & Co., 1946.
 * The End of Borley Rectory, Harrap & Co., 1946.

title: Harry Price


text:
Murraya

Murraya is a genus of flowering plants in the citrus family, Rutaceae. It is distributed in Asia, Australia, and the Pacific Islands. The center of diversity is in southern China and Southeast Asia. When broadly circumscribed, the genus has about 17 species. A narrower circumscription contains only eight species, others being placed in Bergera and Merrillia.

Description
Plants in the genus Murraya are shrubs or trees with pinnate leaves arranged alternately, usually glandular, aromatic, and leathery to membranous in texture. The leaflets vary in shape and have smooth or toothed edges. The inflorescence is a panicle, cyme, or small raceme of flowers growing at the ends of branches or in the leaf axils; some flowers are solitary. The fragrant flowers have 4 or 5 sepals and white petals and up to 10 straight stamens. The fruit is a fleshy berry with pulp but without the juice vesicles present in some related fruits. It is up to 1.3 cm long and orange, red, or black.

Taxonomy
The genus Murraya was first formally described in 1771 by Carl Linnaeus in Mantissa Plantarum Altera from an unpublished description by Johann Gerhard König. The genus name commemorates the 18th-century German-Swedish herbal doctor Johan Andreas Murray, a student of Linnaeus. In 1986, Paul P.-H. But and co-authors separated off some species of Murraya as M. sect. Bergera based on chemical evidence. Evidence from pollen morphology and multiple molecular phylogenetic studies showed that when broadly circumscribed, Murraya was not monophyletic, and treating M. sect. Bergera as the separate genus Bergera has widespread support.

Murraya is in the subfamily Aurantioideae, which also includes the genus Citrus. It is in the tribe Clauseneae.

Species list
Studies have repeatedly shown that two sections into which Murraya has been divided, M. sect. Murraya and M. sect. Bergera, should be treated as separate genera. Murraya sensu stricto was revised in 2021, with eight species being accepted: Species that have been placed in Murraya sect. Bergera belong in Bergera, although, names for many have not been published. Further species still accepted in Murraya by Plants of the World Online are:
 * Murraya alata Drake – China Southeast, Hainan, Vietnam
 * Murraya elongata A.DC. ex Hook.f. – Myanmar
 * Murraya glenieii Thwaites ex Oliv. – Sri Lanka
 * Murraya lucida (G.Forst.) Mabb. – Vanuatu
 * Murraya omphalocarpa Hayata
 * Murraya paniculata (L.) Jack – Tropical Asia to Vanuatu and Australia
 * Murraya sumatrana Roxb.
 * Murraya zollingeri (Tanaka) F.J.Mou
 * Murraya caloxylon Ridl. – Malayasia, Thailand; synonym of Merrillia caloxylon
 * Murraya crenulata (Turcz.) Oliv. – Taiwan (Lan Yü) to Malesia and SW. Pacific; placed in M. sect. Bergera
 * Murraya cyclopensis Astuti & Rugayah – W. New Guinea
 * Murraya euchrestifolia Hayata – China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan; placed in M. sect. Bergera
 * Murraya exotica L. – China South-Central, China Southeast, Hainan, Taiwan
 * Murraya glabra (Guillaumin) Swingle – Vietnam
 * Murraya heptaphylla Span. – Lesser Sunda Islands (Timor)
 * Murraya koenigii (L.) Spreng. – Indian Subcontinent to China (S. Yunnan, Guangdong) and Indo-China, S. Hainan; synonym of Bergera koenigii
 * Murraya kwangsiensis (C.C.Huang) C.C.Huang – China (SE. Yunnan, W. & SW. Guangxi); placed in M. sect. Bergera
 * Murraya macrophylla (C.C.Huang) F.J.Mou & D.X.Zhang – China
 * Murraya microphylla (Merr. & Chun) Swingle – China (Guangdong), Hainan; placed in M. sect. Bergera
 * Murraya tetramera C.C.Huang – China (SE. Yunnan, W. Guangxi); placed in M. sect. Bergera

Uses
Murraya species are used in landscaping. Some species can be grafted onto citrus rootstocks. Species have been used in traditional medicine, with various parts of the plants used to treat fever, pain, and dysentery. M. paniculata has been used to induce labor. It has been used in Cuba for painful inflammatory conditions.

In Myanmar, Murraya species are used to make thanaka, a cosmetic paste that is typically applied onto the face.

Chemistry
Compounds isolated from Murraya include many types of coumarins and alkaloids. The novel alkaloid yuehchukene was found in M. paniculata, and it has since been isolated from other Murraya. It is found in red-fruited species with larger petals, but not in black-fruited species with smaller petals. Some species also contain the carbazole girinimbine.

Spelling competition
In July 2021, 14-year old Zaila Avant-garde of Harvey, Louisiana, won the final of the 2021 Scripps National Spelling Bee by correctly spelling the word "Murraya", and was the first African American to win the 96-year-old event.

title: Murraya


text:
Walter Wager

Walter Herman Wager (September 4, 1924 – July 11, 2004) was an American crime and espionage-thriller novelist and former editor-in-chief of Playbill magazine. The movie Telefon, starring Charles Bronson, was inspired by his novel of the same name. His book 58 Minutes was adapted into Die Hard 2, starring Bruce Willis.

Education and career
Walter Wager was born in The Bronx, New York City, the son of a doctor and a nurse who had emigrated from the Russian Empire. A 1944 graduate of Columbia College, where he was a member of the Philolexian Society, he went on to a Harvard Law School degree three years later. Passing the bar exams but choosing not to practice, he went on to receive a master's degree in aviation law from Chicago's Northwestern University in 1949, while also serving as an editor of the Journal of Air Law and Commerce, then based in that city.

Afterward, he spent a year at the Sorbonne, in Paris, as a Fulbright Fellow. He spent a year in Israel as an aviation-law consultant for the Israeli Department of Civil Aviation, helping to negotiate a treaty on air space and working out of Lydda Airport in Tel Aviv. In 1952, he returned to New York City, where he worked for the United Nations, editing documents.

Shortly afterward, Wager segued into writing and producing radio and television documentaries for CBS and NBC, and the United States Information Agency, while also beginning a side career as a freelance writer for magazines including Playbill and Show. Under the pseudonym John Tiger, he wrote the paperback original Death Hits the Jackpot (Avon #605) for Avon Books, the fifth publisher he contacted; published in 1954, it paid him $3,000. He recalled in 2000, "I had a friend at a paperback publishing house. I like mystery stories so I thought I could sell this kind of prose." For several years he worked as a freelance writer.

Two years later, he published a second Avon paperback, Operation Intrigue, under the name Walter Herman. From 1963 to 1996, Wager was editor-in-chief of Playbill magazine, and from 1966 to 1978 as editor of ASCAP Today, the magazine of the music-licensing organization the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers; he later became ASCAP's public-relations director. He held a similar position at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut in the early 1990s, until his retirement in 1993. He also did public relations for organizations including the Juilliard School, the Mann Music Center, and the Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center.

Wager was a member of the board of directors of the Mystery Writers of America, and its secretary beginning in 2001.

Personal life
Wager married Sylvia Leonard (d. 1989), a fellow American student he met at the Sorbonne, in 1951 in Paris. The two had a daughter, Lisa, before the marriage ended in divorce. He married second wife Winifred McIvor Wage in 1975.

A resident of Manhattan's Upper West Side, he died of complications of brain cancer in 2004, at the assisted-living facility Amsterdam House in Manhattan.

Books
Wager was best known as an author of crime and espionage thrillers. His novel Viper Three (Macmillan, 1971) was released as Twilight's Last Gleaming, with Burt Lancaster and Richard Widmark, in 1977. That same year, his spy novel Telefon (Macmillan, 1975) was adapted as the same-name movie starring Charles Bronson and Lee Remick. Wager's airport-based thriller 58 Minutes (1987) became the basis for the 1990 action film Die Hard 2, starring Bruce Willis. Additionally, Wager wrote a number of original novels in the 1960s under the pseudonym "John Tiger" that were based on the TV series I Spy and Mission: Impossible. He also wrote the farce My Side, by King Kong as Told to Walter Wager, published by Macmillan in 1976.

His series Blue Leader, Blue Moon, and Blue Murder featured tough Beverly Hills private detective Alison Gordon. As one of several writers using the pseudonym Lee Davis Willoughby, Wager also wrote the historical novels The Wildcatters and The Caribbeans.

title: Walter Wager


text:
Talk:Mariawald Abbey

my 1st translation! be kind in your critique!THx

contested statement removed

 * [As of 206 the abbey operated] under abbot Bruno Gooskens.

Please do not return this information to the article without a citation.-- Birgitte SB  20:06, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Mariawald Abbey. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070724023326/http://www.kloster-mariawald.de/view.php?nid=53 to http://www.kloster-mariawald.de/view.php?nid=53
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20090222135844/http://www.ocso.org/HTM/net/drcty_m.htm to http://www.ocso.org/HTM/net/drcty_m.htm
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20070724023453/http://www.kloster-mariawald.de/view.php?nid=52 to http://www.kloster-mariawald.de/view.php?nid=52

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 15:10, 2 June 2017 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mariawald Abbey


text:
Qalqilya

Qalqilya or Qalqiliya (قلقيلية) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank which serves as the administrative center of the Qalqilya Governorate. In the 2017 census, the city had a population of 51,683. Qalqilya is surrounded by the Israeli West Bank wall, with a narrow gap in the east controlled by the Israeli military and a tunnel to the Palestinian town of Hableh. Qalqilya is under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority (as part of Area A), while remaining under Israeli military occupation. Oranges are a major part of the city's economy.

Etymology
Qalqilya was known as Calecailes in the Roman period, and Calcelie in the Frankish sources from the early Medieval times. The word "Qalqilya" might be derived from a Canaanite term which means "rounded stones or hills". According to E.H. Palmer, the name came from "a type of pomegranate", or "gurgling of water".

History
The vicinity of Qalqilya has been populated since prehistoric times, as attested to by the discovery of prehistoric flint tools.

Ottoman period
In 1596, Qalqilya appeared in Ottoman tax registers (transliterated as Qalqili) as a village in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Bani Sa'b in the Liwa of Nablus. It had a population of 13 Muslim households and paid a total of 3,910 akçe in taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, and goats or beehives.

In 1838, Edward Robinson noted Kulakilieh as a village in Beni Sa'ab district, west of Nablus.

In 1870, Victor Guérin said it was a village with 200 inhabitants. In 1870/1871 (1288 AH), an Ottoman census listed the village in the nahiya (sub-district) of Bani Sa'b.

In 1882, Qalqilya was described as "A large somewhat straggling village, with cisterns to the north and a pool on the south-west. The houses are badly built." In 1883 some moved there from nearby Baqat al-Hatab, and in 1909 a municipal council to administer Qalqilya was established.

British Mandate period

In the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Qalqilya had a population of 2,803 (2,794 Muslims and 9 Christians), increasing in the 1931 census to 3,867 (3,855 Muslims and 12 Christians), in a total of 796 houses.

In the 1938 statistics the population is listed at 4,503 (including 4 Jews). In the 1945 statistics the population of Qalqilya was 5,850 (5,840 Muslims and 10 Christians ), who owned 27,915 dunams of land according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 3701 dunams were for citrus and bananas, 3,232 were plantations and irrigable land, 16,197 used for cereals, while 273 dunams were built-up (urban) land.

1948 War
In the wake of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, and after the 1949 Armistice Agreements, Qalqilya came under Jordanian rule. During the war, many inhabitants from nearby villages, including Kafr Saba, Abu Kishk, Miska, Biyar 'Adas and Shaykh Muwannis fled to Qalqilya as refugees.

Following the battle of the nearby Arab village of Kafr Saba, the residents of Qalqilya fled and later returned with the arrival of the Jordanian Arab Legion and the Iraqi expeditionary force, except for some 2,000 upper-class residents who moved to Nablus. The main reason for the partial return was the difficult economic situation in the front-line town and the inability to access the crop fields.

Jordanian period
The area was annexed by Jordan in 1950. On the night of 10 October 1956 the Israeli army launched a raid against Qalqilya police station in response to a Jordanian attack on Israeli bus, among other incidents. The attack was ordered by Moshe Dayan and involved several thousand soldiers. During the fighting a paratroop company was surrounded by Jordanian troops and escaped under close air-cover from four Israeli Air Force aircraft. Eighteen Israelis and between 70 and 90 Jordanians were killed in the operation.

In 1961, the population of Qalqilya was 11,401.

Post 1967

Since the Six-Day War in 1967, Qalqilya has been under Israeli occupation. Later that year, dozens of its inhabitants were evicted by Israel to Jordan, and at least 850 buildings were razed. In his memoirs, Moshe Dayan described the destruction as a "punishment" that was designed to chase the inhabitants away contrary to the government policy. The villagers were eventually allowed to return and the reconstruction of damaged houses was financed by the military authorities. In September 1967, a census found 8,922 persons, of whom 1,837 were originally from Israeli territory.

As part of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), control of Qalqilya was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on 17 December 1995.

In 2003, the Israeli West Bank barrier was built, encircling the town and separating it from agricultural lands on the other side of the wall.

In November 2015, Israel arrested what it alleged to be a network of 24 Hamas militants active in the city.

On 20 October 2017, the municipality of Qalqilya named a street after Saddam Hussein and erected a memorial with his likeness. The monument was unveiled at a ceremony attended by the Qalqilya District Governor Rafi Rawajba and two other Palestinian officials. It bears the slogan "Saddam Hussein – The Master of the Martyrs in Our Age".

On 19 June 2022, a 53-year-old Palestinian was shot and killed by Israeli forces as he sought to cross the Israeli West Bank barrier, which encircles Qalqilya. According to the IDF, he damaged the security fence in an attempt to cross into Israeli territory. It’s unclear whether he was armed.

On 22 June 2024, a 60-year-old Israeli citizen was shot dead in Qalqilya by local residents. The victim, from Petah Tikva, regularly bought vegetables in the city. Following the shooting, his car was set on fire, and his personal documents were taken. This incident was the third in Qalqilya within 48 hours, following another attack on Thursday, where a 70-year-old Israeli was killed, and the elimination of two Islamic Jihad operatives who planned an attack.

Geography
Qalqilya is located in the northwestern West Bank, straddling the border with Israel. It is 16 kilometers southwest of the Palestinian city of Tulkarm, and the nearest localities are the Arab-Israeli city of Tira and the Palestinian hamlet of 'Arab al-Ramadin al-Shamali to the northeast, the Palestinian village of Nabi Ilyas to the east, the Palestinian hamlets 'Arab Abu Farda and 'Arab ar-Ramadin al-Janubi and the Israeli settlement of Alfei Menashe to the southwest, and the Palestinian village Habla and Arab-Israeli town of Jaljuliya to the south. It contains the point in the West Bank closest to the Mediterranean Sea, with about 14 km to the coast at Shefayim.

Qalqilya has an average elevation of 57 meters above sea level. The average annual rainfall 587.4 millimeters and the average annual temperature is 19 degrees Celsius.

Demographics
The 1997 census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) recorded Qalqilya's population to be 22,168. The majority of the inhabitants (69.8%) were Palestinian refugees or their descendants. In the 2007 census, Qalqilya's population was 41,739 (50.9% male and (49.1% female)). The number of registered households was 7,866. In the 2017 census, Qalqiliya's population was 51,683.

Government
Hamas won the 2006 municipal elections in Qalqiliya and one of its members, Wajih Qawas, became mayor, although he was incarcerated by Israel for much of his term. On 12 September 2009, the PNA dismissed Qawas for allowing Qalqiliya's debt to grow unchecked, failing to attract international funding for city projects and ignoring orders by the Palestinian government. Qawas, however, viewed his dismissal as a result of the ongoing feud between Hamas, which dominates the PNA in the Gaza Strip and Fatah, which dominates the PNA in the West Bank. Human rights groups criticized Qawas's dismissal, condemning the intervention by the central Palestinian authorities in the affairs of an elected official. During the 2012 municipal elections, Fatah member Othman Dawood was elected mayor.

Economy
Between 1967 and 1995 almost 80 percent of Qalqilya's labor force worked for Israeli companies or industries in the construction and agriculture sectors. The remaining 20% engaged in trade and commerce, marketing across the Green Line. According to a field survey taken by the Applied Research Institute-Jerusalem (ARIJ), 45% of Qalqilya's working population was employed by government, 25% worked in agriculture, 15% worked in trade and commerce, 10% worked in industry and 5% worked in Israeli labor. In 2012, the unemployment rate was 22%, with those most affected formerly employed in agriculture, trade and services. Qalqilya is particularly known for its citrus crop and of its total of 10,252 dunams of land, (of which 5,930 are arable) 1802 dunams (about 17.6% of the city's land and over 30% of its arable land) are planted with citrus trees. Other major crops are olives and vegetables. Local industries include the manufacture of foodstuffs, olive oil, dairy products, soap, glass, stone, marble and building materials, in addition to the manufacture of wood, and mineral water companies.

The Qalqilya Zoo, established in 1986, is currently the only zoo in the West Bank and in the State of Palestine, and, according to its owner, is the city's single-largest employer. It serves as one of Qalqilya's main attractions. The zoo houses 170 animals and works closely with zoologists from the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo and the Ramat Gan Safari. The only factory for prosthetic limbs in the northern West Bank is in Qalqilya.

Souqs
In Qalqilya there are many markets, including:

 * Souq Abu Amsha (سوق أبو عمشة)
 * Souq Shaheen (سوق شاهين)
 * Souq Abu Jaber (سوق أبو جابر)
 * Souq Beshara (سوق بشارة)
 * Souq Uthman (سوق عثمان)
 * Souq Um Tareq (سوق أم طارق)
 * Souq Abu Aisha (سوق أبو عيشة)

Land usage and the barrier
Of the city's total area of 10,252 dunams, 3,027 were built-up areas, 266 were used for industrial purposes, 2,894 were planted with permanent crops, 419 were used for greenhouses, 274 for livestock ranges, 2,343 others were classified as arable, and 283 dunams were occupied by the West Bank barrier. Nearly all of Qalqilya's urban area is under Palestinian civil jurisdiction and Israeli military control (Area B), while 64.7% of the city's municipal territory, mostly agricultural lands and open spaces, is under Israeli civil and military control (Area C).

Israel's construction of the barrier began in 2002 and isolates Qalqilya from the north, west, south, and half of its eastern side, leaving a corridor in the east connecting it with smaller Palestinian villages and hamlets. Israel states its construction of the wall is for security purposes, particularly to prevent infiltration by Palestinian militants into Israel as had occurred during the Second Intifada. The Palestinians state that the barrier is meant to annex Palestinian lands (since the wall often juts deep into Palestinian territory) and control the movement of Palestinians. The barrier has negatively affected Qalqilya's economy, particularly the commercial and trade sectors, because it has separated the city from nearby Palestinian localities and bordering Arab towns in Israel, which contributed about 40% of the city's income prior to the barrier's completion. The barrier has also separated 1,836 dunams of mostly agricultural lands and open spaces within Qalqilya's jurisdiction from the city proper. Social relations between Qalqilya's inhabitants and those of other Palestinian cities have also been hindered by the barrier.

Education
According to the 2007 PCBS census, 95.3% of the inhabitants over the age of 10 were literate. About 75% of the illiterate population were women. The town has 21 public schools, four private schools, three schools managed by UNRWA and 13 kindergartens. All schools are overseen by the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education. As of 2012, there were 12,286 residents enrolled in school, with 660 teaching staff. In 2007, 10.5% of the population had graduated from an institution of higher education, while 15.7% had completed secondary education, 27.5% preparatory education, 27.4% elementary education and 13.8% had no formal education. There are two colleges in the city: the Ad Da'wa Islamic College established in 1978 and a campus of the Al-Quds Open University established in 1998.

Culture
There are charities, recreational and cultural clubs, Qalqilya TV, and a radio station (Radio Nagham). In the Qalqilya governorate, the NGO Cultural Forum Society (جمعية منتدى المثقفين الخيرية) played a role in publicizing the residents' economic and political problems due to the occupation, the wall, and settlements.

International relations
Qalqilya is twinned with:
 * 🇩🇪 Mülheim, friendship.

Notable people

 * Bahaa Al-Din Dawood Bin Ismail Al-Qalqili, a scholar of the eighth century AH who taught in Aleppo and died in the year 780 AH, according to the book '"Fragments of Gold in News from Gold'' by Ibn General Shihab al-Din al-Hanbali al-Dimashqi
 * Abu Ali Iyad, Fatah field commander in Jordan and Syria
 * Najm al-Din Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Qalqili, a scholar born in Qalqilya who moved to Al-Quds Al-Sharif as a child and later went Cairo to study at Al-Azhar University. In Egypt he compiled his book Ghani al-Murayd to know perfection and intonation, completed in 882 AH
 * Khair al-Din Abu al-Khair Ahmad bin Shihab al-Din Ahmad bin Muhammad al-Qalqili, a reciter of Quran (died in 89 AH)
 * Sheikh Mustafa Sabry (1870–1957), a religious orator (khatib خطيب) and reformer
 * Ibrahim Ahmed Al-Shanti (Qalqilya, 1927–Amman, 2018), a writer and journalist
 * Hashem El-Seba (1912–1957), a Palestinian militant
 * Muayad Afaneh, (born 1975), prepared an analytical paper on the political, economic and social situation of Qalqilya Governorate

title: Qalqilya


text:
Shakambhari

Shakambhari (Sanskrit: शाकम्भरी, IAST: Śākambharī), also referred to as Shatakshi, is a goddess of nourishment. She is regarded to be an incarnation of Mahadevi, and identified with both Lakshmi and Durga in Hinduism. After the malevolent asura Durgamasura deprived the earth of nourishment by causing the sages to forget the Vedas, the goddess appeared to offer human beings and devas sufficient fruits and vegetables to restore their strength.

Etymology
The word śākaṃbharī means 'she who bears vegetables'. The word is derived from two words- śāka (Sanskrit: शाक) which means 'vegetable/vegan food' and bharī (Sanskrit: भरी) which means 'holder/bearer/wearer' which is ultimately derived from the root word bhṛ (Sanskrit: भृ) which means 'to bear/to wear/to nourish'.

Legend
After the asura Durgamasura sought to plunge the earth in drought and scarcity, a century of suffering endured on earth, when the sages finally remembered the goddess Lakshmi after the asura had made them forget about the Vedas, she appeared upon the worlds in a dark-hued blue form, casting her hundred eyes on the sages. When the sages extolled and chanted the hymns of Ishvari, the four-handed goddess appeared bearing a lotus, arrows, a great bow, and vegetables, fruits, flower, and roots. According to the Devi Bhagavata Purana, seeing the misery of the people, she showered incessant tears from her eyes, streaming into rivers, and offering medicines. Lakshmi shares her deed with Indra in the Lakshmi Tantra: "O Sakra, men will then extol me as the hundred-eyed (deity) and I shall nourish the whole world with wonderful life-sustaining plants issuing from my own body and filled with (my essence: dvistaih). Then, Vasava, the gods will worship me as Sakambhari (the embodiment of vegetation)."

Temple
There is the main temple in Badami, Karnataka.There are many various temples of Shakambhari Devi including one of the ancient temples in Saharanpur utter Pradesh among the mountain range as it is most famous and visited by devotees after Vaishno Devi apart from that there is another major temple which is situated in Rajasthan near at Sambhar Lake Town jheel, a huge ground of dry salt lake. Shakambhari is worshiped as the ninth number among the nine deities in Navaratri after the beginning of Vaishno Devi.

title: Shakambhari


text:
Tulkarm

Tulkarm or Tulkarem (طولكرم, Ṭūlkarm) is a Palestinian city in the West Bank, the capital of the Tulkarm Governorate of the State of Palestine. The Israeli city of Netanya is to the west, and the Palestinian cities of Nablus and Jenin to the east. According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, in 2017 Tulkarm had a population of 64,532. Tulkarm is under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority.

Etymology
The Canaanite name, which survived through to Roman times, was Birat Sorqa ('well of the chosen vine'), The Arabic name translates as "length of vinyard" but is a distortion of the Aramaic name Tur Karma ("mount of the vineyard") which was used for Tulkarm by the Crusaders and by the mediaeval Samaritan inhabitants.

History
It has been suggested that Tulkarm is Birat Soreqah, a place mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud. It has also been identified with Tur Kerem.

Ayyubid and Mamluk periods
During the Ayyubid era, after the Muslim reconquest of Palestine under Sultan Saladin in 1187, the first families to settle in Tulkarm were from the Kurdish clan of Zaydan. A military group, the Zaydan were dispatched to the Wadi al-Sha'ir area, which includes Tulkarm, by Saladin to buttress the defense of the western approaches of Muslim-held Palestine from the Crusaders who dominated the coastal area.

The Zaydan would come to politically dominate Tulkarm and the vicinity until the early 17th century. Around 1230, during the late Ayyubid period, a group of Arabs from southern Palestine immigrated to Tulkarm. They had originally migrated to Palestine from Arabia many generations prior and had become semi-nomadic farmers and grazers. Among the Arab families were the Fuqaha clan, who were considered ashraf (related to the Islamic prophet Muhammad) and served as the "ulama" (religious scholars) of the village.

During the Ayyubid, and later the Mamluk era (1260–1517), the majority of Tulkarm's lands were made part of a waqf ("religious trust") to support the al-Farisiyya Madrasa, an Islamic religious school in Jerusalem, located north of the Masjid Al-Aqsa compound. Two-thirds of the village's farmlands were confirmed as part of this trust in 1354 by the deputy-governor of Damascus, Faris al-Din al-Baki. During Mamluk rule another wave of Arab immigrants arrived in Tulkarm from North Africa and nearby Nablus. They largely engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, supplying hides to leather merchants in the coastal villages, retaken from the Crusaders in the second half of the 13th century.

Ottoman era
Tulkarm was incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1517. Afterward, Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (r. 1520–66) transferred Tulkarm's waqf to the al-Jawhariyya Madrasa (Commons), located in the Muslim Quarter, northwest of the al-Aqsa Mosque. Under this arrangement, Tulkarm's inhabitants paid a third of their harvest as a tax towards the waqf, called qasm. At the time of the waqf's reassignment, the population of the village was estimated at 522 (95 households) and the qasm consisted of eight carats of wheat and three carats of barley. The town's elite families administered the trust, which enabled them to reach higher social and economic status. The population increased through intermarriage with families fleeing violent feuds between the various clans of Jabal Nablus. By 1548, the population had grown significantly to 189 households or roughly 1,040 persons.

In 1596 Tulkarm appeared in Ottoman tax registers as being in the nahiya (subdistrict) of Qaqun, which was a part of the sanjak (district) of Nablus. The largest village in the nahiya, Tulkarm had a population of 176 Muslim households (roughly 968 persons) and paid taxes on wheat, barley, summer crops, olives, goats, beehives and a press for olives or grapes. During this early period of Ottoman rule, there were five neighborhoods (pl. harat) centered around the Shaykh Ali al-Jazri al-Mughrabi Mosque, today referred to simply as the "Old Mosque". The population was overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim, and most residents were fellahin (peasants who worked the land.) The elite families during that time were the Zaydan and the Lajjun-based Tarabay, the latter belonging to the Bani Harith tribe. Because of the decentralized nature of the Ottoman state, these families and their successors in later centuries ruled the area with a high degree of autonomy. The Zaydan had particular authority over Tulkarm, being appointed as the mutassalim (tax collectors or enforcers) on behalf of the central authorities.

In the mid-17th-century most members of the Zaydan family, with the exception of the children and the elderly, were killed in a massacre by Tulkarm's inhabitants during Friday prayers. This was in reaction to the Zaydan having forced Tulkarm's residents to harvest and process the village's grains for taxation purposes. Consequently, political power in Tulkarm passed to the Badran clan, while the Fuqaha family took control of administering the "waqf" lands, firmly placing them as the village's religious leaders. The Fuqaha had derived much of their authority from their classification as "ashraf" and their association with the Sufi Rifa'iyya zawiya of the village. The western neighborhood was mostly emptied of Zaydan members and would serve as the main area of settlement for newcomers.

Tulkarm appears on sheet 45 of Jacotin's map drawn up during Napoleon's invasion in 1799, named Toun Karin. Following the adoption of the Ottoman Land Code in 1858, the musha (collective landownership) system was gradually abrogated and residents were required to register their property with the central authorities. The fellahin were wary of registering their names for fear of military conscription by the Ottoman state and instead entrusted various elite clans with the role of landlords, who were in effect absentee owners. This altered the area's social structure, with the Samara, al-Hajj Ibrahim and Hanun clans legally obtaining vast swathes of Tulkarm's lands. Leadership of the town's two main religious establishments were generally supplied by the Kur-based Jayyusi clan and the al-Barqawi clan of Shufa. The Barqawi clan controlled the area around the town in the 19th century.

The 1860s French explorer Victor Guérin visited Tulkarm, which he described as being of "considerable" size, with about 1,000 inhabitants. During this time, the Ottoman authorities granted the village an agricultural plot of land called Ghabat Tulkarm in the former confines of the Forest of Arsur (Ar. Al-Ghaba) in the coastal plain, west of the village. In 1882 the Survey of Western Palestine described Tulkarm as a "long straggling village, on high ground", surrounded by arable land and rock. There were several "good-sized" houses, mainly of stone in the village.

Tulkarm became the administrative center of a new subdistrict (qada') Bani Saʿb-Tulkarm in 1876, later becoming a municipality in 1892. Tulkarm was also appointed a governor, bringing the residents who numbered only a few thousand and who were mostly fellahin, closer to the central government. This elevated status gave Tulkarm precedence over the nearby villages, which at that time also included Qalqilya. Tulkarm's center shifted from the Old Mosque to an empty space in the northwest as the town expanded northward with the construction government buildings, a post office, a school and a hospital in that area. These new services further cemented Tulkarm's role as a focal point for the inhabitants of the area.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Tulkarm and Dhinnaba was one of the villages in which the Hannun family owned extensive estates. The Hannuns fostered close ties with the clans inhabiting the village.

In 1908, the Ottomans turned Tulkarm into a major rail junction on the Hejaz Railway line running up from Egypt and southern Palestine to Haifa and Acre in the northwest, Jerusalem, Nablus and Ramallah to the south, Lebanon to the north, and Syria and Transjordan to the east. The Ottoman Army used Tulkarm as one of their principal bases during the Sinai and Palestine campaign in World War I, and was bombed by British planes carried by HMS Anne. In 1918, it was captured by British forces.

British Mandate era
The British Mandatory administration (192–1947) in Palestine designated Tulkarm as the center of the Tulkarm Subdistrict.

In 1920, a road was constructed to connect the town with Netanya on the coast. In order to cope with a significant increase in population and unorganized infrastructural development since the beginning of the 20th century – a civil planning scheme was designed for Tulkarm and its satellite villages of Dhinnaba, Shuweika and Irtah in 1945. At the time Tulkarm was divided into four main sections, with the bulk of commercial activity concentrated along the north–south and east–west roads. Meanwhile, urban sprawl continued to expand past the northern fringes of the town, which had previously been characterized by green spaces.

Tulkarm and its vicinity played major role as a haven and area for Palestinian Arab rebel activity during the 1936–1939 Arab revolt against British rule in Palestine. General Commander of the Revolt Abd al-Rahim al-Hajj Muhammad hailed from Dhinnaba, today a part of Tulkarm municipality, and led many operations in the town's vicinity.

In the 1945 statistics the population of Tulkarm consisted of 8,090; of whom 7,790 were Muslims, 280 Christian and 20 "other", with a land area of 1,672 dunams (urban) and 32,610 dunams (rural), according to an official land and population survey. Of this, 2,399 dunams were designated for citrus and bananas, 276 plantations and irrigable land, 28,256 for cereals, while 1,492 dunams were built-up areas.

Jordanian rule
During the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, Tulkarm was under the control of the Iraqi Army and later annexed as part of the Jordanian-held West Bank. The 1949 Armistice Agreements between Israel and Jordan left roughly 30,000 dunams of Tulkarm's 32,610 dunams of land, mostly agricultural, in Israeli territory. The loss of these lands caused an exodus of many Tulkarm's residents to Transjordan and abroad for employment, while Tulkarm also saw an influx of Palestinian refugees. This period was also marked by general isolation for Tulkarm, which straddled the armistice line and was caught between Israeli military positions to the west and Jordanian military positions inside the town itself. It was completely cut off from the nearby Arab towns controlled by Israel and had less significant relations with the villages to its east. Its principal economic and social connection was with Nablus.

In 1950, the Tulkarm Camp was established by UNRWA in the city, comprising an area of 0.18 km2. Most of the refugees who resided in the camp came from Jaffa, Caesarea and Haifa. Today it is the second largest Palestinian refugee camp in the West Bank. A period of significant municipal expansion began in Tulkarm after a new civil development scheme was authorized in 1961. As part of this plan, in 1963, the hamlet of Jarrad in the southeast and other lands in the northeast (total of 1.8 square km) were annexed to the city, while the eastern village of Dhinnaba was incorporated into the municipality in 1964, adding another 0.75 km2 of territory. The village of Shuweika to the north and the smaller village of Irtah to the south were annexed in 1967.

Contemporary period
Since the Six-Day War in 1967 Tulkarm has been under Israeli occupation. A military government governed Tulkarm until transfer in 1982 to the Israeli Civil Administration.

During the early months of the First Intifada, 16 May 1989, Muhammad As'ad Fokhah, 50 years old, from Shuweika, died in Megiddo Prison after a three-day hunger strike. Yitzhak Rabin reported to a Member of Knesset that Fokhah died of a heart attack caused by dehydration and that the military investigation found that prison staff had acted in accordance with orders.

In the wake of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), control of Tulkarm was transferred to the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) on 10 December 1995, becoming the third Palestinian city from which Israeli forces withdrew. During the early years of the Second Intifada, Israel temporarily reoccupied Tulkarm. Israeli military administration over Tulkarm ended in 2005, when control of the city was handed back to the PNA. Upon assuming control of the city, the PNA instituted new weapons restrictions limiting militants to a single registered weapon that may not be loaded or carried in public.

On 19 October 2023, the IDF entered the city.

Geography
The city is situated on the western edge of northern West Bank, about 15 km west of Nablus further southwest of Jenin and 15 km east of the Israeli coastal city of Netanya. It is bordered by the 1948 ceasefire line, with Israel's Central and Haifa Districts to the west, and Palestine's Qalqilya and Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorates to the south. Its central location between a plain and a mountain has made it commercially and strategically significant and has had a great impact on its growth. In the past, Tulkarm was a caravan station and a trading center for products from the city's surrounding villages and farms, as well as a point from which armies crossed to Egypt and the Levant (al-Sham).

Tulkarm is at the crossroads of three historically important arteries: A road which runs north from the Latrun area along the edge of the coastal plain to Mount Carmel, Mount Tabor, Mount Gilboa, Nazareth and the Galilee and the Golan Heights, a road which winds northward along the outer tier of hills from the Ajalon valley to the Jezreel Valley, and a road that rises from the Mediterranean Sea at modern-day Netanya east to Nablus. In the past it was a junction of the coastal railroad from north of Haifa to Cairo and a branch of the narrow gauge Hejaz railway to Damascus.

Demographics
According to the 1922 census of Palestine conducted by the British Mandate authorities, Tulkarm had a population of 3,350 (3,109 Muslims, 208 Christians, 23 Jews, eight Samaritans, one Baha'i, and one Druze). At the time of the 1931 census, Tulkarm had a population of 4,827 (4,540 Muslims, 255 Christians, 18 Jews, six Samaritans, and one Druze) with 541 in nearby suburbs (516 Muslims, 15 Jews, and 10 Christians).

The village statistics of 1938 list Tulkarm's population as 5,700 with 629 in nearby suburbs (including 17 Jews). The village statistics of 1945 list the population as 8,090 (7,790 Muslims, 280 Christians, and 20 "other").

The populations of Tulkarm, Dhinnaba, Shuweika and Irtah steadily increased by an average of 2% annually between 1931 and 1961, with a drastic increase after the 1948 War as the area experienced an influx of Palestinian refugees. The Jews presumably left/fled during the war. Following the 1967 War, the population saw a temporary decrease as some residents fled to Jordan. In the 1967 census by the Israel Central Bureau of Statistics the population of Tulkarm city was recorded as 10,255, Tulkarm Camp as 5,020, Dhinnaba as 1,342, Irtah as 925, Shuweika as 2,332 and Khirbet Jarrad as 128, a total of 20,002. Most of the inhabitants were Muslims, although there was a community of 103 Christians according to the census.

In the first census by the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) in 1997, Tulkarm had a population of 33,921 and the Tulkarm Refugee Camp had a population of 5,884. Palestinian refugees made up 31.4% of the city's residents and 94% of the camp's inhabitants. The sex ratio for the city was 50.7% male and 49.3% female. Over half (52.2%) of the city's population was under the age of 20, 44.5% were between the ages of 20 and 64 and 4.1% were over the age of 64. In the 2007 PCBS census Tulkarm's population grew to 51,300 while the camp's increased to 10,641. The sex ratio for the city was 50.3% male and 49.7% female. Today the population is almost entirely Muslim. Prior to Israel's occupation of the city in 1967, there were an estimated 1,000 Christians living in Tulkarm, but roughly half of the community emigrated in the aftermath of the war, while most of the remaining Christians gradually emigrated afterward. There are two Christian families who continue to live in Tulkarm, who are part of the same extended family. There is a Greek Orthodox church in the city dedicated to St. George, built in the early 19th century. The church is active and opens for visitors.

Climate
The climate of Tulkarm is Mediterranean and subtropical as the area surrounding it, with rainfall limited to the winter. The average temperature in the winter ranges from 8 to 16 C, while the average temperature in the summer ranges from 17 to 30 C. Tulkarm is distinguished by the moderating effect the sea breeze has on its climate because of its location in the mountains. The average temperature does not exceed 27 °C in August, while February's average temperature does not fall below 13.5 °C. Humidity is moderate in summer, about 40-70%, though it rises in winter to between 70 and 85%. Tulkarm receives in excess of 550 mm of rain yearly, which is dispersed and intermittent, characteristic of the Mediterranean Basin.

The rainy season starts in October and continues through May. Between December and February, almost 70% of annual rainfall occurs, while 20% of annual rainfall occurs in October and November. Rain in June and September is rare and comes to negligible amounts. July and August have no rain at all, except for one rainfall of 1.5 mm on July 10, 1995, in Tulkarm city (Tulkarm Agricultural Department). The mean annual rainfall in the city of Tulkarm is 642 mm for the period from 1952 to 1995 (Tulkarm Agricultural Department).

Economy
Prior to the 1948 War, Tulkarm had a major agricultural sector, with grain, olives and fruits, especially watermelons, being the major crops cultivated by in the town's lands.

Education
Palestinian Technical University - Kadoorie which is the sole governmental university in Palestine, was established as an agricultural college in Tulkarem during the British Mandate by an endowment from the Iraqi-born Jewish philanthropist J.S. Kadoorie in 1930 and then became a university in 2007. Other institutions of higher learning include Al-Quds Open University and two campuses of An-Najah National University.

There are seven high schools in Tulkarm, three for girls (al-Adawiah, Jamal Abd al-Nasser, and Al-Khawaja) and three for boys (al-Fadilia, Ihsan Samara, and Adnan Sefareni) and a vocational school for both genders. On September 24, 2016, the PA named a school in Tulkarem after Salah Khalaf. Tulkarem governor Issam Abu Bakr said that the school was named after “martyr Salah Khalaf in order to commemorate the memory of this great national fighter”.

Culture
The traditional costumes of women from Tulkarm were plain, dark-colored gowns with or without embroidery, as most rural women were from the north of Palestine. Today, embroidery is the main source of income for the women of the city. The most popular embroidered images are maps of historic Palestine. The Palestinian dish musakhan is popular in the city. Tulkarm shares many of its cultural features with neighboring Haifa, Jenin, Nablus, Qalqilia, and Jaffa.

A Tulkarm amusement park called Mega Land attracts tens of thousands of visitors on Muslim holidays.

Sports
Tulkarm has 2 semi-professional soccer teams; Thaqafi Tulkarm and Markez Shabab Tulkarm. Both are in the Palestinian League Division One.

Notable people

 * Sanaa Alsarghali
 * Abu Salma (1909–1980)
 * Akram Al-Ashqar, film maker
 * Ekrem Akurgal, Turkish archaeologist born in 1911 in Tulkarm
 * Khaled Abu Toameh, Palestinian Israeli-Arab Muslim journalist
 * Mar'i al-Karmi (1580–1624)
 * Mahmoud Al-Karmi (1889–1939)
 * Hasan Karmi (1905–2007)
 * Abdul-Ghani Al-Karmi (1906–1974)
 * Hilmi Hanoun (1913–2001), long-term mayor of Tulkarm
 * Zuhair Al-Karmi (1921–2009)
 * Ameen Nayfeh, film maker and writer
 * Queen Rania of Jordan
 * Bassam Lotfi (1940-2022)

title: Tulkarm


text: User talk:81.152.96.81

title: User talk:81.152.96.81


text:
Mother Hubbard

Mother Hubbard may refer to:
 * "Old Mother Hubbard", a nursery rhyme
 * Mother Hubbard dress, from the South Seas
 * Mother Hubbard, another name for a camelback steam locomotive

title: Mother Hubbard


text:
Minco

Minco may refer to:
 * Minco, Oklahoma
 * Minco Products, a sensors, heaters and circuit board manufacturer

title: Minco


text:
Highlighter

A highlighter, also called a fluorescent pen, is a type of writing device used to bring attention to sections of text by marking them with a vivid, translucent colour. A typical highlighter is fluorescent yellow, with the color coming from pyranine. Different compounds, such as rhodamines (Rhodamine 6GD, Rhodamine B) are used for other colours.

History
A highlighter is a felt-tip marker filled with transparent fluorescent ink instead of black or opaque ink. The first highlighter was invented by Dr. Frank Honn in 1962 and produced by Carter's Ink Company, using the trademarked name Hi-Liter. Avery Dennison Corporation now owns the brand, having acquired Carter's in 1975.

Styles

Many highlighters come in bright, often fluorescent and vibrant colors. Being fluorescent, highlighter ink glows under black light. The most common color for highlighters is yellow, but they are also found in orange, red, pink, purple, blue, and green varieties. Some yellow highlighters may look greenish in colour to the naked eye. Yellow is the preferred color to use when making a photocopy as it will not produce a shadow on the copy.

Highlighters are available in multiple forms, including some that have a retractable felt tip or an eraser on the end opposite the felt. Other types of highlighters include the trilighter, a triangularly-shaped pen with a different-coloured tip at each corner, and ones that are stackable. There are also some forms of highlighters that have a wax-like quality similar to an oil pastel.

"Dry highlighters" (occasionally called "dry line highlighters") have an applicator that applies a thin strip of highlighter tape (physically similar to audio tape or correction tape) instead of a felt tip. Unlike standard highlighters, they are easily erasable. They are different from "dry mark highlighters", which are sometimes advertised as being useful for highlighting books with thin pages.

"Gel highlighters" contain a gel stick rather than a felt tip. The gel does not bleed through paper or become dried out in the pen as other highlighters' inks may, which renders them useless.

"Liquid Highlighters" in a range of colours are also available, and because they put more ink on a page when highlighting, they make words stand out more than with non-liquid types. Also the fact that more highlighting ink is put on the page with liquid highlighters means that the highlighting ink is much more resistive to fading with age.

"Pastel Highlighters" use pastel dyes instead of fluorescent dyes.

In software
Some word processing software can simulate highlighting by using a technique similar to reverse video on some terminals. Some forms of syntax highlighting may also be displayed in the style of a highlighter pen, with a bright or pastel background to the text. Some web browser extensions also enables users to create digital highlights on websites and online PDFs.

title: Highlighter


text:
Curry tree

The curry tree or Bergera koenigii (syn. Murraya koenigii), is a tropical and sub-tropical tree in the family Rutaceae (the rue family, which includes rue, citrus, and satinwood), native to Asia. The plant is also sometimes called sweet neem, though M. koenigii is in a different family from neem, Azadirachta indica, which is in the related family Meliaceae.

Its leaves, known as curry leaves, also referred to as sweet neem, are used in many dishes in the Indian subcontinent.

Description
It is a small tree, growing 4–6 m) tall, with a trunk up to 40 cm in diameter. The aromatic leaves are pinnate, with 11–21 leaflets, each leaflet 2 – long and 1 – broad. The plant produces small white flowers which can self-pollinate to produce small shiny-black drupes containing a single, large viable seed. The berry pulp is edible, with a sweet flavor.

Distribution and habitat
The tree is native to the Indian subcontinent. Commercial plantations have been established in India, and more recently Australia.

It grows best in well-drained soil that does not dry out, in areas with full sun or partial shade, preferably away from the wind. Growth is more robust when temperatures are at least 18 C.

Etymology and common names
The word "curry" is borrowed from the Tamil word kari (கறி, literally "blackened"), the name of the plant associated with the perceived blackness of the tree's leaves. The records of the leaves being utilized are found in Tamil literature dating back to the 1st and 4th centuries CE. Britain had spice trades with the ancient Tamil region. It was introduced to England in the late 16th century..

The species Bergera koenigii was first published by Carl Linnaeus in Mantissa Plantarum vol.2 on page 563 in 1767. It was formerly known as Murraya koenigii, which was first published in Syst. Veg., ed. 16. 2: 315 in 1825. Some sources still recognise it as the accepted name.

The former generic name, Murraya, derives from Johan Andreas Murray (1740–1791), who studied botany under Carl Linnaeus and became a professor of medicine with an interest in medicinal plants at the University of Göttingen, Germany. The specific name, koenigii, derives from the last name of botanist Johann Gerhard König.

The curry tree is also called curry leaf tree or curry bush, among numerous local names, depending on the country.

Culinary
The fresh leaves are an indispensable part of Indian cuisine and Indian traditional medicines. They are most widely used in southern and west coast Indian cooking, usually fried along with vegetable oil, mustard seeds and chopped onions in the first stage of the preparation. They are also used to make thoran, vada, rasam, and kadhi; additionally, they are often dry-roasted (and then ground) in the preparation of various powdered spice blends (masalas), such as South Indian sambar masala, the main seasoning in the ubiquitous vegetable stew sambar. The curry leaves are also added as flavoring to masala dosa, the South Indian potato-filled crepes, made with a mildly probiotic, fermented lentil and rice batter. The fresh leaves are valued as seasoning in the cuisines of South and Southeast Asia. In Cambodia, curry leaves (ស្លឹកកន្ទ្រោប, slœ̆k kontroap) are roasted and used as an ingredient for samlor machu kroeung. In Java, the leaves are often stewed to flavor gulai. Though available dried, the aroma and flavor are greatly inferior. The oil can be extracted and used to make scented soaps.

The leaves of Murraya koenigii are also used as a herb in Ayurvedic and Siddha medicine in which they are believed to possess anti-disease properties, but there is no high-quality clinical evidence for such effects.

The berries are edible, but the seeds may be toxic to humans.

Propagation
Seeds must be ripe and fresh to plant; dried or shriveled fruits are not viable. The skin must be peeled off, and this is recommended before planting. One can plant the whole fruit, but it is best to remove the pulp before planting in a potting mix that is kept moist but not wet. Stem cuttings can be also used for propagation. In India, it is mainly planted privately, but also cultivated commercially to a small extent.

Chemical constituents
Compounds found in curry tree leaves, stems, bark, and seeds include cinnamaldehyde, and numerous carbazole alkaloids, including mahanimbine, girinimbine, and mahanine.

Nutritionally, the leaves are a rich source of carotenoids, beta-carotene, calcium and iron.

title: Curry tree