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Tyson Foods

Tyson Foods, Inc. is an American multinational corporation based in Springdale, Arkansas that operates in the food industry. The company is the world's second-largest processor and marketer of chicken, beef, and pork after JBS S.A. It annually exports the largest percentage of beef out of the United States. Together with its subsidiaries, it operates major food brands, including Jimmy Dean, Hillshire Farm, Ball Park, Wright Brand, Aidells, and State Fair. Tyson Foods ranked No. 79 in the 2020 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.

Tyson Foods has been involved in a number of controversies related to the environment, animal welfare, and the welfare of their own employees. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tyson Foods was accused by some employees of failing to implement certain recommended protections, including physical distancing measures, plexiglass barriers and wearing of face masks. Multiple lawsuits have been filed against the company, alleging gross and willful negligence for the spread of COVID-19 at their plants.

Profile
The company was established by John W. Tyson in 1935. It expanded during World War II, when chicken was not included in foods that were rationed by the federal government. As of 2019, the company employs 141,000 people, including 122,000 in the United States. Tyson's locations are concentrated in the Midwest and South, with 16 locations in Arkansas, 11 in Texas, 9 in Iowa, and the remainder mostly in the eastern U.S., including Tennessee.

Tyson produces about one-fifth of the beef, chicken, and pork sold in the United States. It is one of the largest U.S. marketers of chicken, beef and pork to retail grocers, broad line foodservice distributors and national fast food and full-service restaurant chains; fresh beef and pork; frozen and fully cooked chicken, beef and pork products; case-ready beef and pork; supermarket deli chicken products; meat toppings for the pizza industry and retail frozen pizza; club store chicken, beef and pork; ground beef and flour tortillas. It supplies Yum! Brands chains that use chicken, including KFC and Taco Bell, as well as McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, Walmart, Kroger, IGA, Beef O'Brady's, small restaurant businesses, and prisons.

The company makes a wide variety of animal-based, prepared foods and plant-based products at its 123 food processing plants. It produces many different products, including Buffalo wings, boneless Buffalo wings, chicken nuggets, and tenders. Its plants slaughter approximately 155,000 cattle, 461,000 pigs, and 45,000,000 chickens every week. Their largest meat packing facility is their beef production plant in Dakota City, Nebraska. Other plants include feed mills, hatcheries, farms and tanneries.

In 2019, the company entered the plant protein category with their Raised & Rooted brand. The brand initially included vegetarian nuggets as well as burgers with a blend of beef and pea protein, then expanded to include tenders. In 2020 Tyson discontinued the burger and removed egg whites from the nuggets, announcing that the Raised & Rooted brand would be free of animal products moving forward. In 2021, the company launched two vegetarian patty breakfast sandwiches under its Jimmy Dean brand.

On June 13, 2024, Tyson Foods heir John R. Tyson, who has served as the company's chief financial officer (CFO), would be suspended from the company following his second alcohol related arrest.

Acquisitions and investments
In 2001, Tyson Foods acquired IBP, Inc., the largest beef packer and number two pork processor in the United States., for US$3.2 billion in cash and stock. Along with its purchase of IBP, it also acquired the naming rights to an event center in Sioux City, Iowa. Tyson has also acquired such companies as Hudson Foods Company, Garrett poultry, Washington Creamery, Franz Foods, Prospect Farms, Krispy Kitchens, Ocoma Foods, Cassady Broiler, Vantress Pedigree, Wilson Foods, Honeybear Foods, Mexican Original, Valmac Industries, Heritage Valley, Lane Poultry, Cobb-Vantress, Holly Farms, Wright Brand Foods, Inc. and Don Julio Foods. On May 29, 2014, the company announced a $6.13 billion cash offer to acquire all the shares in Hillshire Brands, two days after a $6.4 billion cash and shares bid for Hillshire by Pilgrim's Corp. In June 2014, Tyson won the bidding war against Pilgrim's Pride, agreeing to buy the maker of Jimmy Dean sausage and Ball Park hot dogs for $8.5 billion. On July 28, 2014, the company said it would sell its Mexican and Brazilian poultry businesses to JBS S.A. for $575 million and use the proceeds to pay down debt from its pending $7.7 billion purchase of Hillshire Brands Co.

In April 2017, Tyson announced plans to acquire AdvancePierre Foods Holdings, a supplier of packaged sandwiches, for approximately $3.2 billion. The acquisition was completed on June 7, 2017.

In November 2017, Tyson Foods bought the Philadelphia-based cheesesteak company Original Philly Holdings.

In May 2018, Tyson announced the acquisition of American Proteins, Inc. and AMPRO Products, Inc. for approximately $850 million.

On June 1, 2018, Tyson announced that it would sell the Sara Lee, Van's, Chef Pierre and Bistro Collection brands to Kohlberg & Company. The sale was completed on August 1. What is now known as Sara Lee Frozen Bakery will be based in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois.

In mid-2018, Tyson Foods agreed to acquire the organic chicken and chicken-sausage brand Smart Chicken and parent company Tecumseh Poultry.

On August 9, 2018, Tyson announced that it would sell its pizza crust business, including TNT Crust, to Austin-based Peak Rock Capital, who completed the acquisition on September 4.

On August 20, 2018, Tyson announced its intent to acquire food supplier Keystone Foods from Marfrig. Tyson announced it had completed the acquisition on November 30, 2018.

On February 7, 2019, Tyson Foods reached an agreement to acquire the European and Thai businesses of Brazilian food company BRF. The acquisition was completed on June 3, 2019.

On January 10, 2020, Tyson Foods announced that it sold its Golden Island jerky business to Jack Link's.

On May 15, 2021, Tyson Foods announced that it was selling its pet treats business, including True Chews, Nudges and Top Chews, to General Mills for $1.2 billion. The sale was completed on July 7, 2021.

In March 2024, it was announced Tyson Foods had sold its broiler processing plant, hatchery and feed mill in Dexter, Missouri to the American fresh egg producer, Cal-Maine Foods for an undisclosed amount.

Meat alternatives and clean meat
In 2016, Tyson Foods bought a 5% stake in the meat alternative company Beyond Meat, becoming the first major meat producer to invest in a meat alternative company. Tyson made an additional investment in Beyond Meat in 2017. In 2019, Tyson sold its stake in advance of Beyond Meat's initial public offering, with CEO Noel White saying Tyson intended to develop its own meat alternatives.

In early 2018, Tyson, through its venture capital arm Tyson Ventures, funded clean meat (cultured meat) research with an investment in California-based Memphis Meats. The same year, Tyson Ventures also invested $2.2 million in Israel-based clean meat company Future Meat.

Former CEO Tom Hayes said that Tyson's investments in clean meat and meat alternatives "might seem counterintuitive", but they are part of an effort to meet future consumer demand in a sustainable way.

Insects
In 2023, Tyson announced an investment in Protix, a company which raises insects to feed to pets and to non-human animals intended for human consumption.

Corporate charity
Since 2000, Tyson Foods has donated millions of dollars in cash to help non-profit organizations across the country. Forbes named Tyson Foods the second most proportionally generous company for its donations in 2007, totaling 1.6 percent ($8 million) of its annual operating income. Tyson initiated the KNOW Hunger campaign in early 2011 to raise awareness of hunger in the United States. After the Joplin, Missouri tornado of 2011, Tyson sent 77,000 pounds of food to the city. It also sent 100,000 pounds of food to the communities along the Gulf of Mexico after the April 20, 2010, oil spill. Tyson has supported "Little Free Pantries," and has partnered with the Chicago Urban League for educational programs on misconceptions about SNAP (food stamp) benefits. Tyson "pledged to invest $50 million by 2020 in various efforts to fight food insecurity" in 2015. The company exceeded that goal, with contributions of over $60 million to start the year 2020.

Tyson Foods has made political donations to both major parties.

Research and development
In 2007, Tyson created the Tyson Discovery Center, a 100,000 sqft R&D center at their headquarters in Springdale, Arkansas, to work on new products and better packaging. They later opened a second Discovery Center in Downers Grove, Illinois.

As of 2017, Tyson has about 300 employees in R&D.

CEOs

 * John W. Tyson, the founder, was CEO from 1935 until his death in 1967.
 * Don Tyson, CEO and chairman (1967 to 1991).
 * Leland Tollett (1991 until 1998).
 * John H. Tyson (1999 to 2006).
 * Richard L. Bond (2006 until January 7, 2009). His position was filled by temporarily by Leland Tollett.
 * Donnie Smith (November 2009 to December 2016). In November 2016, the company announced Smith would be succeeded at the turn of the year by company president Tom Hayes.
 * Tom Hayes (January 2017-September 2018).
 * Noel White (October 2018-October 3, 2020, beginning of the 2021 fiscal year).
 * Dean Banks, former Alphabet executive (October 2020- June 2021). He received a $1.2 million salary and received a $5 million bonus to move to northwest Arkansas by December 2020 or not voluntarily resign by the end of 2021 fiscal year. On June 2, 2021, President and CEO Dean Banks resigned for family reasons.
 * Donnie King, the former Chief Operating Officer (COO), served as president and CEO beginning February 2021 and is still in office. An alumnus of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, he had worked at Tyson for 36 years, beginning in 1982. King was scheduled to receive a $1.2 million salary with stock options of $750,000 and restricted stock of $750,000.

Environmental record
Tyson Foods has been responsible for numerous instances of environmental damage. Tyson is the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the global food industry. According to the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Tyson is among the largest single sources of greenhouse gases in the world, when the whole process of rearing animals for slaughter (such as producing feed for the animals and using agriculture chemicals) is considered.

Tyson has been involved in several lawsuits related to air and water pollution. In June 2003, the company admitted to illegally dumping untreated wastewater from its poultry processing plant near Sedalia, Missouri, from 1998 to 2001. The company pleaded guilty to 20 felony violations of the federal Clean Water Act. According to a Department of Justice attorney, the dumping had continued even after the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation searched the plant in 1999. As part of the plea agreement, the company agreed to pay $7.5 million in fines: $5.5 million to the federal government, $1 million to the state of Missouri, and $1 million to the Missouri Natural Resources Protection Fund. The company also agreed to hire an outside consultant to perform an environmental audit, and institute an "enhanced environmental management system" at the Sedalia plant. At the same time, Tyson also settled a case filed by the Missouri attorney general's office related to the same illegal dumping.

In 2002, three residents of Western Kentucky, together with the Sierra Club, filed a lawsuit concerning the discharge of dangerous quantities of ammonia from Tyson's Western Kentucky factories. Tyson settled the suit in January 2005, agreeing to spend $500,000 to mitigate and monitor the ammonia levels.

In 2004, Tyson was one of six poultry companies to pay a $7.3 million settlement fee to the city of Tulsa, Oklahoma, to settle charges that the use of chicken waste as fertilizer had created phosphorus pollution in Tulsa's main drinking water sources.

In 2005, Tyson settled a $500,000 lawsuit related to air pollution in Kentucky.

Tyson's processing plants generate a vast supply of animal fats. In late 2006, the company created a business unit called Tyson Renewable Energy to examine ways of commercializing the use of this leftover material by converting it into biofuels. The unit also examined the potential use of poultry litter to generate energy and other products.

Tyson's 2010 Sustainability Report said that it had reduced water use by 7.6 percent between October 2004 and 2009, and reduced wastewater related permit exceedances by 5.4 percent during 2007–2009. However, the company reported a 51.9 percent increase in violation notices related to wastewater, storm water, and drinking water. The company reduced landfill solid waste by 12.5 percent during 2008–2009.

As of 2010, six of Tyson Foods' wastewater treatment facilities capture biogas via enclosed anaerobic lagoons. Four of the systems use the biogas as an alternative fuel to natural gas; during 2008–2009, the four facilities used 1.8 billion cubic feet of biogas, replacing 1.3 billion cubic feet of natural gas and saving the company approximately $9.1 million.

According to Tyson's 2012 Sustainability Report, the company reduced total water use by 4.7 percent during 2011–2012, but normalized water use increased 1 percent over the same period. Through conservation efforts and closures, the company reduced water use by 10.9 percent between October 2004 and 2012. During 2010–2012, Tyson Foods reduced wastewater related permit exceedances by 48 percent and notices of violations by 86 percent. Tyson reduced greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 8 percent during 2010–2011, and the company cut 145 million truck miles via lightweight equipment purchases, packaging improvements, and use of rail transport.

In 2013, Tyson paid nearly $4 million in fines due to eight separate incidents between 2006 and 2010 where it accidentally released anhydrous ammonia, an extremely hazardous substance which causes chemical-type burns. These releases killed at least one worker and injured nearly a dozen others.

In Newsweek 2017 "green ranking", an environmental performance assessment of the largest public companies, Tyson Foods ranked number 223 in the U.S. and number 312 in the world.

Tyson Foods worked with the World Resources Institute to set a goal for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 30 percent by 2030. The plan was accepted by the Science Based Targets initiative, a coalition of companies working to limit carbon emissions based on the goals of the Paris Agreement.

According to Tyson's 2019 Sustainability Report, the company was on track to meet most of its sustainability goals and had decreased water use by 6.8 percent since 2015. Tyson Foods joined the United Nations Global Compact in 2019, and the report also states that the company has goals similar to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.

Environmental groups have blamed Tyson for polluting the Illinois River with poultry litter. A company spokesperson said the litter belongs to independent contract farmers and not to Tyson. To address the problem of poultry litter in watersheds, Tyson and four other poultry companies formed the non-profit organization BMPs in 2004. Tyson says that the organization has helped to move more than 1 million tons of poultry litter out of the Illinois River watershed, redistributing the litter to less nutrient-dense areas.

In 2019, the Environmental Integrity Project identified Tyson as being a major discharger of pollution to waterways in East Texas. The high volumes of blood, urine, feces, and feathers discharged into East Texas rivers and lakes contribute to declining oxygen levels in the water, which endanger local animals, fish and habitat. The Environmental Integrity Project found that the Tyson plant in East Texas violated its Clean Water Act permit a dozen times over 2016–2017.

In 2019, wastewater from a Tyson plant in Alabama polluted rivers and killed approximately 175,000 fish. The state of Alabama sued Tyson over the incident the following year.

Also in 2019, Tyson Foods partnered with the Environmental Defense Fund to help farmers reduce nitrogen and erosion across 2 million acres of corn fields in the Midwestern United States and Pennsylvania. The same year, a Tyson building in Springdale, Arkansas, won a LEED silver certification for environmentally friendly design.

As of January 2020, Tyson Foods' land stewardship and sustainable farming program had enrolled approximately 400,000 acres of corn, and planned to support improved environmental practices on 2 million acres of corn by the end of 2020.

In 2020, Tyson Foods partnered with the nonprofit organization Proforest to complete a deforestation risk assessment, which concluded that approximately 94 percent of the company's land footprint is at low risk of being associated with deforestation. To address the remainder found to be at risk, in November the company announced a Forest Protection Standard focused on reducing deforestation risk in supply chains of cattle and beef, soy, palm oil, pulp, paper and packaging.

In 2020, Tyson Foods received a SmartWay Excellence Award from the Environmental Protection Agency, recognizing "top shipping (retailers and manufacturers) and logistics company partners for superior environmental performance".

In 2020, it was reported that Tyson Foods uses 4.89 million acres of land for soybeans and 5.2 billion acres of corn for providing feed for their 6 million cows, 22 million hogs, and 2 billion chickens. A study by the Union of Concerned Scientists in 2018 found that only 5% (408,000 acres) of their land has been enrolled in sustainable practices. This is set to change though as Tyson sets their net zero gas house emissions by 2050. The farm land and fertilizer also have an effect on the environment as potent nitrous oxide is being released. For every one of Tyson's 10.1 million acres, fertilizer is being used which can increase the pounds of nitrous oxide per acre in a year from 0.5 to 3 depending on how much fertilizer is being used. Tyson can easily reduce their emissions by 2050 by starting to use less fertilizer and being more precise with their fertilizing.

Tyson doesn't directly raise their livestock, as they hire private farms, but they are still responsible for the emissions released from their animals and the feed they use. Tyson is responsible for 6 million cows, which burp methane and release approximately 1.2 billion pounds of methane a year. Tyson also raises chickens and pigs, but they have a much smaller effect on the environment. The main greenhouse gas emissions that come from them are in their manure and are very minuscule compared to those of cows. Tyson has made strides to prevent animal waste being sent to landfills, as 6 of their plants have reached gold status, which means 95-99 percent of their waste is not ending up in a landfill.

In 2024, a study by the Union of Concerned Scientists found that between 2018 and 2022 Tyson released 371 million pounds of pollutants, including nitrogen, phosphorus, chloride, oil, and cyanide, from just 41 slaughterhouses and processing plants into local waterways across the United States.

Workers' rights
According to Celeste Monforton, professor of occupational health at George Washington University, 34 employees were injured at 10 Tyson meatpacking plants during January–September 2015, resulting in one amputation per month on average. Reporting on Monforton's findings in 2016, Buzzfeed News said Tyson Foods "recently launched new programs to improve workplace safety communication, awareness and education."

An Oxfam report issued in 2016 cited anonymous employees who stated they were routinely denied bathroom breaks; they wore adult diapers to work in order to get through the day. In 2017, Tyson Foods announced plans to provide regularly scheduled bathroom breaks and training on workers' rights for employees, "give more attention to line speeds at plants", and establish safety councils that involved workers. Additionally, the company announced plans for "hiking wages, publicly sharing results of a third-party audit on worker conditions, increasing benefits to include more vacation and holidays, and expanding existing safety programs".

The plans stem from compliance audits started in 2012 and an occupational safety and health pilot program established in 2015. The announcement was made in conjunction with Oxfam America and United Food and Commercial Workers. By May 2018, hundreds of Tyson Foods workers at 27 plants had participated in the company's Upward Academy education program.

Employment of undocumented immigrants
Tyson Foods was indicted on December 9, 2001, along with six employees, on charges that it conspired to smuggle undocumented immigrants across the Mexican border to work in its processing plants. The 36-count indictment, which was unsealed at Federal District Court in Chattanooga, Tennessee, accused Tyson of arranging to transport undocumented workers across the border and helping them to get counterfeit work papers for jobs at 15 Tyson plants. Prosecutors alleged that the conspiracy to import workers dated back to 1994. Of the six managers who were indicted, two accepted plea bargain deals, and one committed suicide a few months after being charged. In March 2003, a federal jury acquitted Tyson and its managers of having hired illegal immigrants as part of a conspiracy.

In October 2006, a federal judge granted class-action status to a lawsuit brought by Tyson employees who allege that Tyson's practice of hiring illegal immigrants depresses wages 10–30%. The suit further contends that the company violated federal racketeering laws by conspiring with National Council of La Raza and League of United Latin American Countries not to question the employment applications of anyone with a Hispanic surname.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic
As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the United States, officials including the sheriff in Black Hawk County, Iowa criticized Tyson Foods on April 17, 2020, for failing to close a Waterloo, Iowa plant where an outbreak of the disease began. Tyson closed the Waterloo plant on April 22. According to an Associated Press report, the company said the shutdown "would deny a vital market to hog farmers and further disrupt the nation's meat supply". Steve Stouffer, president of the fresh meats division at Tyson Foods, expressed some resistance to universal testing of their workers. "Everybody wants to test meatpacking employees, but nobody is testing the communities around them to show what’s the baseline," Stouffer said, adding "And until we know the baselines, my question has always been: Are we the cause or are we just the victim of our surroundings?" On April 21, Tyson announced the closure of a plant in Center, Texas, which is located in Shelby County, a rural area with a rate of coronavirus infections about four times higher than the state average. A local physician reported that over half of the county's cases were associated with employees of the Tyson facility.

On April 22, Tyson announced the closure of a pork processing plant in Logansport, Indiana. The president of the Indiana Farm Bureau said that the organization is "extremely concerned about the closure of the Tyson pork processing facility. This is a devastating blow to the pork producers who sell hogs to Tyson." On April 23, Tyson announced that a beef processing plant in Wallula, Washington was closing. Tyson executive Steve Stouffer said, "Unfortunately, the closure will mean reduced food supplies and presents problems to farmers who have no place to take their livestock. It’s a complicated situation across the supply chain.

On April 26, John Tyson, chairman of the board, wrote in the New York Times that "The food supply chain is breaking...There will be limited supply of our products available in grocery stores until we are able to reopen our facilities that are currently closed."

In June 2020, ProPublica reported that well after outbreaks had occurred, Tyson did not implement recommended safety measures to protect its workers, such as physical distancing, plexiglass barriers, and wearing of face masks.

On June 21, the government of China announced that it was suspending imports of chicken from a Tyson factory. The company confirmed that the affected facility was its Berry Street plant in Springdale, Arkansas.

In July 2020, Tyson Foods said it would hire 200 nurses and administrative personnel, and begin administering coronavirus tests at all of its U.S. production facilities, as part of the company's response to the pandemic. Tyson's Chief Executive Noel White said that the company's investment in automation would likely increase in light of the pandemic.

In August 2020, at least 10,261 Tyson workers were confirmed to have COVID-19 (out of a workforce of over 120,000).

In November 2020 a wrongful-death lawsuit previously filed by the family of a Tyson employee, alleging "willful and wanton disregard" for employees' health and safety with regard to COVID-19, was amended with new allegations that a plant manager had organized a betting pool for supervisor and managers to bet on how many employees would be affected with COVID-19.

In November 2020, Tyson suspended multiple top officials and retained the law firm Covington & Burling to conduct an investigation into these allegations. In December 2020, Tyson received the results of the investigation led by former US Attorney General and Covington & Burling partner Eric Holder, and terminated seven of its top managers at the Waterloo, Iowa plant. The Waterloo plant is Tyson's largest pork plant and was the centre of a COVID-19 outbreak that infected more than 1000 Tyson employees, killing six, before spreading into the broader community. Tyson did not publicly disclose the names of those terminated or the detailed findings of the report, but issued a statement saying that those terminated did not represent the company's core values.

In August 2021, Tyson announced that all employees were required to be "fully vaccinated" with COVID-19 vaccines by November. The company offered employees a $200 incentive to get vaccinated. The mandate was suspended on October 31, 2022.

Use of antibiotics
In 2007, Tyson began labeling and advertising its chicken products as "raised without antibiotics". Tyson competitors Perdue Farms and Sanderson Farms sued, claiming that Tyson's claim violated truth-in-advertising/labeling standards. Tyson acknowledged using ionophores in chicken feed. Ionophores are used to control coccidiosis, a parasite common in poultry, and the medication is not used in human medicine. A federal judge ordered Tyson to stop making the "raised without antibiotics" claim by May 15, 2008.

In June 2008, USDA inspectors discovered that Tyson had also been using gentamicin, an antibiotic, in unhatched eggs. USDA spokespeople stated that Tyson had not disclosed the use of this antibiotic to the agency, and they issued a letter informing Tyson that the "raised without antibiotics" claim was not truthful. A Tyson spokesperson acknowledged that the company uses the antibiotic and stated that its use is standard industry practice.

The USDA had originally approved the "raised without antibiotics" label, but withdrew their approval after learning that Tyson used ionophores. Tyson and the USDA compromised on rewording Tyson's slogan as "raised without antibiotics that impact antibiotic resistance in humans", but the USDA later said that Tyson could not use that label either. In June 2008, Tyson agreed to voluntarily remove its "raised without antibiotics" label in future packaging and advertising.

In 2015, Tyson Foods announced plans to stop feeding chickens with antibiotics used in human medicine. In 2017, the company announced plans to stop using antibiotics on chickens for Tyson-branded breasts, nuggets, and wings.

Animal welfare
Tyson Foods has been embroiled in numerous scandals related to animal abuse and cruelty. In response to undercover revelations of animal abuse, Tyson has responded by arguing that the undercover animal rights activists were at fault for the abuse by not actively preventing it.

In 2006, Tyson completed a study to determine whether controlled atmosphere killing, which uses gas to render chickens unconscious before slaughter, could be a more humane practice than conventional electrical stunning. According to Bill Lovette, Tyson's senior group vice president of poultry and prepared foods, the study found no difference between the humaneness of the two methods. The company plans to ask scientists at the University of Arkansas to initiate a similar study to test these initial results. The research will be led by the newly created chair in Food Animal Wellbeing at the Dale Bumpers College of Agricultural, Food and Life Sciences of the University of Arkansas. Tyson has committed $1.5 million to help establish the chair, which will be involved in overseeing research and classes focused on the humane management and treatment of food animals.

In 2012, Tyson introduced an auditing program known as FarmCheck to check how animals are treated by the company's suppliers. The program was introduced as a trial on certain hog farms, and was the first major program of its kind to apply penalties to producers for noncompliance. By 2020, FarmCheck had expanded to Tyson's poultry suppliers, and its poultry audits were certified by the Professional Animal Auditor Certification Organization.

In 2014, after an NBC News reported on abuse of piglets at a Tyson pig farm in Oklahoma, Tyson announced new animal care guidelines, such as keeping sows in larger cages, installing video cameras in cages, using pain mitigation strategies in the castration of piglets, and avoiding killing piglets through blunt force. Animal rights activities called on Tyson to make the guidelines a "mandate" rather than a "recommendation."

In 2015, Tyson Foods severed ties with a supplier after Mercy For Animals published videos showing that employees at a Tyson supplier were stabbing, clubbing and stomping on chickens. A 2016 undercover investigation by the animal rights organization Compassion Over Killing showed workers at four separate Tyson processing plants throwing, punching and kicking chickens, as well as sticking plastic rods through their beaks. They also wrung birds' necks, ran over them with forklifts, and left injured birds in heaping piles to die.

A 2017 investigation showed more abuse and cruelty towards chickens. After the 2017 investigation, Tyson responded by saying it would introduce a remote video auditing system to monitor treatment of chickens in its supply chain and hire off-site auditors. The company also started a pilot program for controlled atmosphere stunning, considered to be a more humane method of slaughter. Animal rights activists said the measure did not go far enough. In 2017, Matthew Prescott of the Humane Society of the United States criticized Tyson for failing to implement many of the animal welfare standards that other food suppliers were adopting.

In 2020, Tyson worked with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture to investigate the effects of lighting on broiler chicken welfare. Their research project, "Effect of Variable Light Intensity Program on Broiler Gait Score, Stress and Central Positive Welfare in Commercial Broiler Farm", received a $110,000 grant from the U.S. Poultry and Egg Association.

Following a 2020 complaint, the Federal Trade Commission is investigating Tyson for making false and misleading advertising claims regarding the treatment of its chickens.

Food recalls
On January 30, 2019, Tyson Foods announced a recall for over 36,000 pounds of chicken nuggets that were at risk of being contaminated with small pieces of rubber. The recall followed allegations by consumers who submitted complaints to the U.S. Agriculture Department. Tyson identified the contaminated nuggets as those received by Arizona, California, Illinois, New Jersey, and Utah club store distribution centers. On March 21, 2019, the company issued a recall for 69,000 pounds of chicken strips potentially contaminated with pieces of metal, following six complaints submitted to the Food Safety and Inspection Service, including three alleged oral injuries. An expanded recall for nearly 12 million pounds of chicken strips was issued on May 4, 2019.

On June 7, 2019, Tyson Foods announced a recall for over 190,000 pounds of chicken fritters which potentially contained hard plastic following reports from three consumers. The products were not sold in retail stores but supplied to various food service locations, including schools.

On July 3, 2021, Tyson Foods announced a recall for approximately 8,955,296 pounds of ready-to-eat (RTE) chicken products that may be adulterated with Listeria monocytogenes. These frozen, fully cooked chicken products were produced between December 26, 2020, and April 13, 2021.

Price manipulation
In 2016, Maplevale sued Tyson and other poultry producers for alleged price fixing. Since the original filing, numerous other customers and consumers have filed similar lawsuits, which are consolidated in the Northern District of Illinois. The companies were accused of working together to restrict the supply of chickens and to manipulate chicken prices; these activities allegedly started in 2008. Tyson has denied the allegations, with a spokesperson calling them "baseless".

In June 2020, it was announced that Tyson was cooperating with the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) in relation to price fixing and bid rigging in the poultry industry. Tyson was cooperating under a leniency program whereby it would avoid criminal prosecution by providing aid to DOJ investigators. Just prior to the announcement, four poultry industry executives were indicted for conspiracy to engage in price fixing. In October 2020, Pilgrim's Pride agreed to a plea agreement and a settlement of $110 million. In March 2021, Tyson agreed to pay $221.5 million to poultry buyers to settle the price-fixing claims.

title: Tyson Foods


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File:The Doors - Other Voices.jpg

Summary
Cover for the album Other Voices by The Doors

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

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Talk:Grigori Romanov

There is a somewhat longer stub article under the title "Grigory Romanov" -- can this one be simply turned into a redirect page, so that people who come to it using the alternate transliteration of his forename will go to the longer stub, and any expansion will be applied to that page, and no further energy wasted on this one.

Thanks

--Leighkimmel 00:11, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that this should be turned into a redirect page. I wasn't aware of the other spelling/article when I started this one. Could you do the editing pls (I don't know about redirect markup off the top of my head). Thx.

--User:drux (still new to Wikipedia) 29 Oct 2005

title: Talk:Grigori Romanov


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Peace Race

The Peace Race (Friedensfahrt, Závod míru, Preteky mieru, Велогонка Мира (Velogonka Mira), Wyścig Pokoju, Course de la Paix, Corsa della Pace, Cursa Păcii) is a cycling race that was established as the largest amateur event in Eastern Europe after the Second World War. Since 2013, it has been run as one of the most prestigious stage races for national U23 teams.

History
At the outset, due to the political situation, it was an amateur event, which therefore excluded participation of "capitalist" cycling stars. Nevertheless, the organisers were able to give the event an international character thanks to the start of competitors from the socialist sphere. Workers' organisations from Italy, France and Finland also sent their representatives. In Prague, forty-five years after the first edition of the Tour de France, seven teams set off to Poland, and ten from Warsaw.

The race was officially called Slavjantour and took place between Prague and Warsaw. It was actually two races. A seven-stage race starting in Prague and a five-stage race from Warsaw. That first year, 53 competitors set off from Prague to cover 1,106 kilometres; 39 of them reached Warsaw after the seven stages. In the opposite direction, the course measured 880 km and 65 riders attempted to cover the five sections, although only 52 arrived in Prague. The winner's yellow jersey, modelled on the Tour de France, was claimed by Yugoslavs in both destination cities: in Prague Alexander Zorič (35:53.16 hours and an average speed of 30.7 km/h), in Warsaw Augustin Prosenik (26:52.25 hours, 32.4 km/h).

It was not until 1950 that the official name was changed to the Peace Race.

Gradually, the race gained in popularity and repute, although it remained open only to amateurs. From 1952, East Germany was added to the host countries and the races took place between Prague, Berlin and Warsaw. The opening stage starting locations and the finish line of the final stage alternated. In the eighties, the then Soviet Union was also included in the list of host countries.

After the beak up of the Czechoslovak Federation in the spring of 1993, the race remained almost exclusively in the territory of the Czech Republic. Thirteen years later the final edition of the Peace Race took place. Financial problems caused the collapse of the organisation.

Steffen Wesemann of Germany has the most victories in the history of the Peace Race. However, his five triumphs date to the period after 1989, when the Velvet Revolution took place in Czechoslovakia. Pole Ryszard Szurkowski and German Uwe Ampler can each boast four victories in the Peace Race.

German Olaf Ludwig was the absolute king among the sprinters, and he dominated the points competition eight times. Ryszard Szurkowski won three overall victories. In the mountain climbing competition, the best with three victories each are Sergej Suchoruchenkov from the then Soviet Union, Uwe Ampler and Czech competitor, Jaroslav Bílek.

Czech and Czechoslovakian cyclists have also left an indelible mark in history of the Peace Race. Victory was celebrated by Jan Veselý (1949), Jan Smolík (1964), Vlastimil Moravec (1972), Ján Svorada (1990), Jaroslav Bílek (1993), Pavel Padrnos (1995) and Ondřej Sosenka (2002).

Legacy
In April/May 2012 Alan Buttler organised a re-run of the 1955 Peace Race as a tribute to his father, Alf Buttler, who was the GB cycling team mechanic for many events in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. He was joined by former peace riders including Gustav-Adolf Schur, Geoff Wiles, John Woodburn, Alan Jacob, and Axel Peschel.

There is a museum in Kleinmühlingen in Germany dedicated to the Peace Race.

Junior Peace Race
A Junior Peace Race was first held in 1965 and held again the following year. After a hiatus it was revived in 1974 and has been held every year since, continuing after the senior race was no longer organised. Several riders who won the junior race have gone on to senior success, including Roman Kreuziger Sr., Roman Kreuziger Jr., Denis Menchov, Fabian Cancellara, Peter Velits, Tanel Kangert and Michal Kwiatkowski.

Peace Race U23
2013 saw a revival of the race, but in a completely different format. It became a race for national teams of cyclists under 23 years old. Since the 2015 season it has been part of the prestigious Nations Cup series.

Initially the race had just three stages, but this was expanded to four stages in the fourth year of the race. Past years have seen stars of the current world peloton, such as Tadej Pogačar, Tao Geoghegan Hart, Julian Alaphilippe and Marc Hirschi, lined up at the start of the race.

The Peace Race U23 is ridden over exceptionally demanding courses in the Jeseníky hills, which makes it the perfect proving ground for World Tour candidates.

"Every year we see young talents on the Peace Race who will soon appear on the rosters of elite division teams. Individual national teams send their best cyclists to the Peace Race. The stages of our race are regularly praised for revealing the strengths of the riders. Without exaggeration, we can say that it is a race comparable to those somewhere in the Pyrenees or the Alps," says Leopold König, director of the Under-23 Peace Race.

List of races

 * P = prologue
 * E = epilogue

Most individual wins
Cyclists with three wins at least listed

Overall:

 * 5 wins: Steffen Wesemann
 * 4 wins: Ryszard Szurkowski, Uwe Ampler

Sprinter competition:

 * 8 wins: Olaf Ludwig
 * 3 wins: Ryszard Szurkowski

Mountain climbers competition:

 * 3 wins: Sergei Sukhoruchenkov, Uwe Ampler, Jaroslav Bílek

Most team wins

 * 20 wins: Soviet Union
 * 10 wins: East Germany
 * 9 wins: Poland
 * 5 wins: Czechoslovakia
 * 3 wins: Team Mroz

Winners by country
Individual overall competitions were won by cyclist from following countries:

 * 12 wins: East Germany
 * 10 wins: Soviet Union
 * 7 wins: Poland, Germany
 * 5 wins: Denmark
 * 4 wins: Czechoslovakia
 * 3 wins: Czech Republic
 * 2 wins: SFR Yugoslavia, France, Italy
 * 1 win: United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Netherlands, Belgium

title: Peace Race


text:
Talk:USS Massachusetts

Minelayer
I know of a minelayer called USS Oglala (CM-4, later ARG-1), 1917-1965. Originally named Massachusetts (ID # 1255). Renamed Shawmut (ID # 1255, later CM-4) in 1918. helix84, 25 Oct 2004, 1:11 GMT

title: Talk:USS Massachusetts


text:
Girraween

Girraween may refer to:
 * Girraween, New South Wales
 * Girraween, Northern Territory
 * Girraween National Park in Queensland

title: Girraween


text:
Sphingolipid

Sphingolipids are a class of lipids containing a backbone of sphingoid bases, which are a set of aliphatic amino alcohols that includes sphingosine. They were discovered in brain extracts in the 1870s and were named after the mythological sphinx because of their enigmatic nature. These compounds play important roles in signal transduction and cell recognition. Sphingolipidoses, or disorders of sphingolipid metabolism, have particular impact on neural tissue. A sphingolipid with a terminal hydroxyl group is a ceramide. Other common groups bonded to the terminal oxygen atom include phosphocholine, yielding a sphingomyelin, and various sugar monomers or dimers, yielding cerebrosides and globosides, respectively. Cerebrosides and globosides are collectively known as glycosphingolipids.

Structure
The long-chain bases, sometimes simply known as sphingoid bases, are the first non-transient products of de novo sphingolipid synthesis in both yeast and mammals. These compounds, specifically known as phytosphingosine and dihydrosphingosine (also known as sphinganine, although this term is less common), are mainly C18 compounds, with somewhat lower levels of C20 bases. Ceramides and glycosphingolipids are N-acyl derivatives of these compounds.

The sphingosine backbone is O-linked to a (usually) charged head group such as ethanolamine, serine, or choline.

The backbone is also amide-linked to an acyl group, such as a fatty acid.

Types
Simple sphingolipids, which include the sphingoid bases and ceramides, make up the early products of the sphingolipid synthetic pathways.
 * Sphingoid bases are the fundamental building blocks of all sphingolipids. The main mammalian sphingoid bases are dihydrosphingosine and sphingosine, while dihydrosphingosine and phytosphingosine are the principal sphingoid bases in yeast. Sphingosine, dihydrosphingosine, and phytosphingosine may be phosphorylated.
 * Ceramides, as a general class, are N-acylated sphingoid bases lacking additional head groups.
 * Dihydroceramide is produced by N-acylation of dihydrosphingosine. Dihydroceramide is found in both yeast and mammalian systems.
 * Ceramide is produced in mammalian systems by desaturation of dihydroceramide by dihydroceramide desaturase 1 (DES1). This highly bioactive molecule may also be phosphorylated to form ceramide-1-phosphate.
 * Phytoceramide is produced in yeast by hydroxylation of dihydroceramide at C-4.

Complex sphingolipids may be formed by addition of head groups to ceramide or phytoceramide:
 * Sphingomyelins have a phosphocholine or phosphoethanolamine molecule with an ester linkage to the 1-hydroxy group of a ceramide.
 * Glycosphingolipids are ceramides with one or more sugar residues joined in a β-glycosidic linkage at the 1-hydroxyl position (see image).
 * Cerebrosides have a single glucose or galactose at the 1-hydroxy position.
 * Sulfatides are sulfated cerebrosides.
 * Gangliosides have at least three sugars, one of which must be sialic acid.
 * Inositol-containing ceramides, which are derived from phytoceramide, are produced in yeast. These include inositol phosphorylceramide, mannose inositol phosphorylceramide, and mannose diinositol phosphorylceramide.

Mammalian sphingolipid metabolism
De novo sphingolipid synthesis begins with formation of 3-keto-dihydrosphingosine by serine palmitoyltransferase. The preferred substrates for this reaction are palmitoyl-CoA and serine. However, studies have demonstrated that serine palmitoyltransferase has some activity toward other species of fatty acyl-CoA and alternative amino acids, and the diversity of sphingoid bases has recently been reviewed. Next, 3-keto-dihydrosphingosine is reduced to form dihydrosphingosine. Dihydrosphingosine is acylated by one of six (dihydro)-ceramide synthase, CerS - originally termed LASS - to form dihydroceramide. The six CerS enzymes have different specificity for acyl-CoA substrates, resulting in the generation of dihydroceramides with differing chain lengths (ranging from C14-C26). Dihydroceramides are then desaturated to form ceramide.

De novo generated ceramide is the central hub of the sphingolipid network and subsequently has several fates. It may be phosphorylated by ceramide kinase to form ceramide-1-phosphate. Alternatively, it may be glycosylated by glucosylceramide synthase or galactosylceramide synthase. Additionally, it can be converted to sphingomyelin by the addition of a phosphorylcholine headgroup by sphingomyelin synthase. Diacylglycerol is generated by this process. Finally, ceramide may be broken down by a ceramidase to form sphingosine. Sphingosine may be phosphorylated to form sphingosine-1-phosphate. This may be dephosphorylated to reform sphingosine.

Breakdown pathways allow the reversion of these metabolites to ceramide. The complex glycosphingolipids are hydrolyzed to glucosylceramide and galactosylceramide. These lipids are then hydrolyzed by beta-glucosidases and beta-galactosidases to regenerate ceramide. Similarly, sphingomyelin may be broken down by sphingomyelinase to form ceramide.

The only route by which sphingolipids are converted to non-sphingolipids is through sphingosine-1-phosphate lyase. This forms ethanolamine phosphate and hexadecenal.

Functions of mammalian sphingolipids
Sphingolipids are commonly believed to protect the cell surface against harmful environmental factors by forming a mechanically stable and chemically resistant outer leaflet of the plasma membrane lipid bilayer. Certain complex glycosphingolipids were found to be involved in specific functions, such as cell recognition and signaling. Cell recognition depends mainly on the physical properties of the sphingolipids, whereas signaling involves specific interactions of the glycan structures of glycosphingolipids with similar lipids present on neighboring cells or with proteins.

Recently, simple sphingolipid metabolites, such as ceramide and sphingosine-1-phosphate, have been shown to be important mediators in the signaling cascades involved in apoptosis, proliferation, stress responses, necrosis, inflammation, autophagy, senescence, and differentiation. Ceramide-based lipids self-aggregate in cell membranes and form separate phases less fluid than the bulk phospholipids. These sphingolipid-based microdomains, or "lipid rafts" were originally proposed to sort membrane proteins along the cellular pathways of membrane transport. At present, most research focuses on the organizing function during signal transduction.

Sphingolipids are synthesized in a pathway that begins in the ER and is completed in the Golgi apparatus, but these lipids are enriched in the plasma membrane and in endosomes, where they perform many of their functions. Transport occurs via vesicles and monomeric transport in the cytosol. Sphingolipids are virtually absent from mitochondria and the ER, but constitute a 20-35 molar fraction of plasma membrane lipids.

In experimental animals, feeding sphingolipids inhibits colon carcinogenesis, reduces LDL cholesterol and elevates HDL cholesterol.

Other sphingolipids
Sphingolipids are universal in eukaryotes but are rare in bacteria and archaea, meaning that they are evolutionally very old. Bacteria that do produce sphingolipids are found in some members of the superphylum FCB group (Sphingobacteria), particularly family Sphingomonadaceae, some members of the Bdellovibrionota, and some members of the Myxococcota.

Yeast sphingolipids
Because of the incredible complexity of mammalian systems, yeast are often used as a model organism for working out new pathways. These single-celled organisms are often more genetically tractable than mammalian cells, and strain libraries are available to supply strains harboring almost any non-lethal open reading frame single deletion. The two most commonly used yeasts are Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Schizosaccharomyces pombe, although research is also done in the pathogenic yeast Candida albicans.

In addition to the important structural functions of complex sphingolipids (inositol phosphorylceramide and its mannosylated derivatives), the sphingoid bases phytosphingosine and dihydrosphingosine (sphinganine) play vital signaling roles in S. cerevisiae. These effects include regulation of endocytosis, ubiquitin-dependent proteolysis (and, thus, regulation of nutrient uptake ), cytoskeletal dynamics, the cell cycle, translation, posttranslational protein modification, and the heat stress response. Additionally, modulation of sphingolipid metabolism by phosphatidylinositol (4,5)-bisphosphate signaling via Slm1p and Slm2p and calcineurin has recently been described. Additionally, a substrate-level interaction has been shown between complex sphingolipid synthesis and cycling of phosphatidylinositol 4-phosphate by the phosphatidylinositol kinase Stt4p and the lipid phosphatase Sac1p.

Plant sphingolipids
Higher plants contain a wider variety of sphingolipids than animals and fungi.

Disorders
There are several disorders of sphingolipid metabolism, known as sphingolipidoses. The main members of this group are Niemann-Pick disease, Fabry disease, Krabbe disease, Gaucher disease, Tay–Sachs disease and Metachromatic leukodystrophy. They are generally inherited in an autosomal recessive fashion, but notably Fabry disease is X-linked. Taken together, sphingolipidoses have an incidence of approximately 1 in 10,000, but substantially more in certain populations such as Ashkenazi Jews. Enzyme replacement therapy is available to treat mainly Fabry disease and Gaucher disease, and people with these types of sphingolipidoses may live well into adulthood. The other types are generally fatal by age 1 to 5 years for infantile forms, but progression may be mild for juvenile- or adult-onset forms.

Sphingolipids have also been implicated with the frataxin protein (Fxn), the deficiency of which is associated with Friedreich's ataxia (FRDA). Loss of Fxn in the nervous system in mice also activates an iron/sphingolipid/PDK1/Mef2 pathway, indicating that the mechanism is evolutionarily conserved. Furthermore, sphingolipid levels and PDK1 activity are also increased in hearts of FRDA patients, suggesting that a similar pathway is affected in FRDA. Other research has demonstrated that iron accumulation in the nervous systems of flies enhances the synthesis of sphingolipids, which in turn activates 3-phosphoinositide dependent protein kinase-1 (Pdk1) and myocyte enhancer factor-2 (Mef2) to trigger neurodegeneration of adult photoreceptors.

Sphingolipids play a key role in neuronal survival in Parkinson's Disease (PD) and their catabolic pathway alteration in the brain is partly represented in cerebrospinal fluid and blood tissues (Table1) and have the diagnostic potential.

title: Sphingolipid


text:
Hey Nostradamus!

Hey Nostradamus! is a novel by Douglas Coupland centred on a fictional 1988 school shooting in suburban Vancouver, British Columbia and its aftermath. It was first published by Random House of Canada in 2003. The novel comprises four first-person narratives, each from the perspective of a character directly or indirectly affected by the shooting. The novel intertwines substantial themes, including adolescent love, sex, religion, prayer and grief.

Plot synopsis
The novel follows the stories of victims of a fictional school shooting in North Vancouver in 1988. Coupland has expressed his concern that the killers of the Columbine High School massacre received more focus than the victims; this is his story about the victims of tragedy. The novel is told in four parts, each with a different narrator and focus.

1988: Cheryl
Cheryl Anway, the seventeen-year-old victim of a shooting massacre at her high school at Delbrook Senior Secondary, recounts her life from a liminal state where she is dead but can still hear the prayers and curses of those who are alive.

Cheryl was pregnant, having recently consummated her relationship with her long-term boyfriend, Jason, after they married in Las Vegas. Cheryl and Jason are members of a group of young Christians.

During the shooting, Cheryl is trapped under a table in the cafeteria. While the killers make their way through the crowd, one of them decides that he has had enough of the killing and wants to stop. The other killers decide that he has become weak, and kill him. They then turn their attention to Cheryl and her friends, and Cheryl becomes the final casualty. Before Cheryl is murdered, she witnesses Jason killing one of the gunman with a rock, enabling the other students to subdue and kill the final gunman.

1999: Jason
Eleven years after the massacre, Jason struggles to cope with life. He writes a letter to his twin nephews, born after the death of his older brother, Kent.

Jason works as a carpenter with no true friends, frequently drinking and occasionally blacking out. He reveals that after he killed one of the school shooters, his father Reg was angry with him and his alcoholic mother left Reg. Jason was investigated by the police and was devastated when his Christian friends and Cheryl's family turn against him. He is eventually cleared and his mother takes him to New Brunswick to recuperate.

During one of his present-day drinking binges, Jason blacks out and comes to in an isolated location aware that he is about to be murdered by Yorgos, a friend of his boss. Jason defends himself and is able to escape from Yorgos; rather than kill him, however, Jason leaves him injured and sends help to him.

At the end of his letter, Jason reveals to his nephews that after Kent died, his widow Barb asked Jason to impregnate her so that she could pass the child off as Kent's. Jason agreed under the condition that Barb marry him; they did so in Las Vegas, mimicking the conditions under which he married Cheryl. During their trip to Vegas, they are spotted by an acquaintance whom Barb later murders to protect her secret. Nine months later the twins are born.

2002: Heather
A court reporter, Heather is in distress after her boyfriend Jason goes missing.

She receives a call from a woman named Allison claiming to be a fake psychic who has had a real vision. Allison uses a secret language that is personal to Heather and Jason, making Heather believe that Jason is trying to contact her.

Despite claiming not to want money, Allison begins to extort money from Heather to pass on her messages. Heather decides to try to track down Allison and learns she is named Cecilia. She sees Cecilia with a young woman with whom she believes Jason had been having an affair. When Heather confronts the woman, she reveals she is Cecilia's daughter. Her mother came to know of the secret language because Jason came to her with detailed notes, wanting to pass along the information if he ever went missing.

Heather is left wondering about Jason's past, unaware that his decision was prompted by a chance meeting with Yorgos.

2003: Reg
Reg writes an open letter to his son, lamenting that he was a harsh and abusive father under the guise of being a Christian for most of Jason's childhood.

Reg repents of the way he treated both Jason and Kent, and regrets that he destroyed his relationship with a woman named Ruth because he would not divorce Jason's mother. He reveals that though Jason is still missing the RCMP located a shirt of his in the woods and Reg plans to post copies of his letter to trees hoping that somehow Jason will be able to read it.

Characters

 * Cheryl
 * A grade 12 student who is a victim of the Delbrook Secondary School massacre. Cheryl grew up in a non-religious environment but becomes religious through her pursuit of Jason. Her family are agnostic and dislike her newfound faith. Cheryl is the last fatality, before Jason kills one of the gunmen. Her story alternates between her former life and current oblivion. Jason and Cheryl wed in Las Vegas. She informs Jason that she is pregnant with his child, just a few hours before the massacre occurs.

 * Jason
 * A quiet and rebellious child from a very religious family, Jason is narrates the second section of the novel. His father, Reg, is self-righteous, zealous, and unapologetic, and seems to favour his older brother Kent.

 * Reg
 * Reg is the narrator of the fourth part of the novel. Born to a strict father, Reg turned to belief as his salvation. Creating a very strict religious code for himself, Reg married and became the father to two children, Kent and Jason. Kent was his father's child, following in his father's religious footsteps. During the novel, Reg transforms from a narrow fundamentalist mindset to become more open and loving.

 * Jason's mother
 * Jason's mother married Reg due to his strong beliefs. She leaves Reg after he casts out Jason, and takes Jason across Canada. She eventually succumbs to alcohol-induced dementia.

 * Kent
 * Jason's older brother. He is a leader of a Christian movement and is Reg's favourite son. Kent is married to Barb, and has two twin sons with her. He dies in a car accident in the second part of the novel.

 * Barb
 * Kent's wife, but she is the mother of Jason's twin sons, therefore Kent's nephews. She and Kent tried to have kids but it didn't work. Since she was desperate to have kids, and Kent dies, she forces Jason to have sex with her, hoping the child will look like Kent. After a fallout with Reg, she remains close to Jason until his disappearance.

 * Heather
 * Jason's romantic partner in the latter half of the novel, Heather is another narrator. She feels distant and is brought back into the world, just as she brings out Jason from his emotional seclusion. She creates characters and stories with Jason, which are later provided back to her by a psychic, who Heather believes will bring her back to the missing Jason.

Inspiration
Coupland began to write the novel in December 2001, after a "nightmarish 40-city tour" of the United States that allowed him to experience the country's "collective sorrow". He began to research the events of the Columbine massacre after this experience.

"Some people say, how come you never explored the motives of the ones who did the shooting. To my mind, that was all people talked about. I'm very much a fan of JG Ballard, where you have people in this fantastically quotidian situation that goes suddenly wrong, and how people deal with that. Killers get too much press already. I remember growing up, the stories in which they live happily ever after, and the only part that I was interested was, like, after that. Well it was fun for a while then they broke up and she got into crystal meth, found religion and turned into a lesbian. That's the part I wanted to know. That's far more interesting to me."

- Coupland in The Observer

The quotation from Corinthians that opens the novel was found on a gravestone of a child who died in a high school shooting.

History of the novel
The novel was an international best-seller and was received well by critics.

"One lesson I've learned is that you can never guess how a work will be received, … Curiously, The Rocky Mountain News, which is the daily that did the most intense documentation of the incident, and which is the one paper I might have been a bit tetchy about, gave the book an A-minus and told its readers that the memory of Columbine was respected, and in no way diminished or exploited.

My personal litmus test was that I didn't want any family member of a Columbine shooting to feel that their loss was being exploited."

- Coupland in The Globe and Mail

The novel was released the same week as Gus Van Sant's film Elephant, which also dealt with a Columbine-like situation.

Coupland also had an art installation on the same topic, called "Tropical Birds", which featured 3D versions of the kneeling figure from the front cover of Hey Nostradamus!, and other pieces which features scenes from a school shooting tragedy.

title: Hey Nostradamus!


text: Category:Teton County, Wyoming

title: Category:Teton County, Wyoming


text:
Four-minute warning

The four-minute warning was a public alert system conceived by the British Government during the Cold War and operated between 1953 and 1992. The name derived from the approximate length of time from the point at which a Soviet nuclear missile attack against the United Kingdom could be confirmed and the impact of those missiles on their targets.

Basic details
The warning would be initiated by the detection of inbound missiles and aircraft targeted at the United Kingdom. Early in the Cold War, Jodrell Bank was used to detect and track incoming missiles, while continuing to be used for astronomical research.

Throughout the Cold War, there was a conflict between the Royal Air Force and the Home Office about who was in charge of the warning system. This was not for any practical or technical reason but more to do with who would be blamed if a false alarm were given or if an attack occurred without warning. By the 1980s, the warning was to be given on the orders of a Warning Officer from the Home Office's Warning and Monitoring Organisation stationed at RAF Booker near High Wycombe.

From the early 1960s, initial detection of attack would be provided primarily by the RAF BMEWS station at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. There, powerful radars would track the inbound missiles and allow confirmation of targets. In later years the first indication of any imminent attack would be expected to come from infrared detectors aboard the United States Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites. BMEWS would still play an important role in tracking and confirming the destination of any launches.

The British government was not the main beneficiary of BMEWS, given that it would only receive what Solly Zuckerman described in 1960 as "no more than 5 minutes warning time" of an attack. The United States was the United Kingdom's most important military and technological partner, and its US-based Strategic Air Command would have thirty minutes warning from the Fylingdales station, whilst the RAF's own V bomber force would have about ten minutes.

UKWMO and the ROC
It was the responsibility of the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) at the United Kingdom Regional Air Operations Centre (UK RAOC) located at RAF Booker to alert the nation to an imminent air attack. Once an alert was initiated the national and local television and radio networks would break into transmissions and broadcast a warning (the warning message would originate from an emergency studio in BBC Broadcasting House in London). Simultaneously the national air raid siren system would be brought into service. A system, which used the same frequency on normal telephone lines as the peacetime speaking clock, was employed for this whereby a key switch activation alerted 250 national Carrier Control Points or CCPs present in police stations across the country. In turn the CCPs would, via a signal carried along ordinary phone lines, cause 7,000 powered sirens to start up. In rural areas, around 11,000 hand powered sirens would be operated by postmasters, rural police officers, or Royal Observer Corps personnel (even parish priests, publicans, magistrates, subpostmasters or private citizens could be involved in some remote rural areas).

Linked into the system were the twenty-five Royal Observer Corps (ROC) group controls, also with direct links to the carrier control points. In the event of subsequent radioactive fallout, local fallout warnings could be generated from the group controls on a very localised basis over the same carrier wave system.

The national warning system saw many changes over the years. During the 1960s and 1970s, much of the local authority civil defence planning in the United Kingdom became outdated, although the WB400/WB600 warning system was maintained and kept serviceable along with updating of ROC instrumentation and communications. The system's main problem was that many of the telephone lines it needed had to be manually switched in times of pre-war tension by Post Office telephone engineers. The links were not hardened against the effects of EMP. In the late 1970s and early 1980s heightened fears and tensions led to a resumption of contingency planning and the upgrading of many systems. The outdated WB400/WB600 systems were replaced with brand new WB1400 equipment, communications links were made permanent and hardened against EMP disruption.

Sirens
The national siren system originating from World War II had a secondary role of "general warning", particularly for imminent flooding. Following the end of the Cold War, a telephone-based system was thought to be more appropriate for national warnings and less expensive to maintain.

Additionally the government retains an ability to break into television and radio broadcasts for the purpose of alerting the general public and has legal power to take over editorial control of the BBC during a national emergency under the BBC Charter and the Broadcasting Act 1980.

The national siren system was largely dismantled during the 1990s. The British government cited the increasing use of double-glazed windows (which make sirens harder to hear) and the reduced likelihood of air attack as reasons to eliminate the system in most parts of the country. Some coastal and river areas have retained and regularly test the sirens as part of the flood warning defences. Since 1952, Broadmoor Hospital has employed a network of 13 sirens to warn of escaped patients; this is tested every Monday at 10 am. The hospital sirens were scheduled for removal during 2018 except for one located in the hospital grounds. Carstairs Hospital also retains its sirens, which are tested monthly. In some towns, sirens were once used to summon part-time firemen until the introduction of radio pagers during the 1970s – these 'stand alone' sirens operated independently of the warning network.

Torness nuclear power station in East Lothian Scotland uses two of these sirens as a warning of an off site nuclear emergency, tested every Tuesday morning at 10 am.

Sample script
The following is a script that would have been broadcast in the aftermath of an attack, available from the BBC:

Cultural impact
The Cold War and the fear of nuclear attack permeated pop culture up until the 1990s. Examples include the song "Four Minute Warning" by the British punk band Chaos UK (EP "Burning Britain", 1982), the poem "Your Attention Please" by Peter Porter, a solo song by Take That singer, Mark Owen, and "Four Minutes" by Roger Waters (of Pink Floyd fame) on his 1987 solo album Radio K.A.O.S.. John Paul Jones has a song entitled "4-Minute Warning" on the 1988 Brian Eno album Music for Films III. The first single of the UK rap crew Gunshot, from 1990, was entitled "Battle Creek Brawl (4 Minute Warning)". A Radiohead track from the 2007 Bonus Disc album In Rainbows Disk 2 is titled "4 Minute Warning".

The four-minute warning was a central plot and narrative device in dramas (both on stage and screen) and novels, often being the motor force of plays, films, novels and cartoon strips. The BBC drama Threads, about how society decays after a nuclear holocaust, focuses on an attack on Sheffield. The War Game also portrays the four-minute warning, pointing out the warning period could be even less. The narrator, Michael Aspel, says it could even be two-and-a-half to three minutes between issuing the warning and impact on a target, or less than 30 seconds for a SLBM attack. The film adaptation of Raymond Briggs's satirical and blackly comic cartoon strip, When the Wind Blows, has the warning message as part of the script, which triggers arguing between Jim and Hilda Bloggs. Although this is not Peter Donaldson's pre-recorded warning (which was not available on grounds of national security and for copyright reasons), this was a fictional announcement written on grounds of artistic licence. It was read by Robin Houston, a voiceover artist who was known in London as a newsreader for Thames Television (who played the role of newsreader in the film).

The adult humour comic Viz ran a photo strip in its issue 107 called "Four Minutes to Fall in Love", where a boyfriend and girlfriend cram a whole relationship into the four minutes before a nuclear attack. The four-minute warning had become the inspiration for many jokes and sketches in comedy programmes in Britain, in the same way that the Emergency Broadcast System had in the United States (see nuclear weapons in popular culture). In one episode of Only Fools and Horses, "The Russians Are Coming," Delboy and Rodney Trotter sell fallout shelter kits and have an attack drill. Driving towards their shelter, they are stopped by the police for speeding and asked: "You just heard the four-minute warning?" After being sent on their way, Rodney points out: "We died forty-five seconds ago." Around the same time, a sketch on the BBC Scotland programme Naked Video had a mock announcement warning of an attack with a punchline of "...except for viewers in Scotland."

title: Four-minute warning


text:
Talk:Yakima River

Untitled
I think the article should mention the original name of the river, Tap Teel, or Tâpetêtt., 29 June, 2008. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.113.23.10 (talk) 19:23, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Why is there a photo of an irrigation ditch in the Yakima River article? I think that no photo is better than an misleading photo. Cacophony 00:16, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

 * Two reasons: 1. this article doubles as an article about the Yakima River Valley, and 2. It was placed there by someone who thought it was the Yakima River. I didn't delete it at the time, because having a picture from the Yakima Valley is useful -- RobLa 06:44, 25 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Regarding citations needed for Yakima River pollution
I am sorry if I'm doing this wrong. I'm a newbee. I tried to follow the directions, but I didn't really get it. I was looking for directions on how to "post" to this talk page. "Posting" is what most people call it.

Anyway here are my comments about Yakima River: 1. There are some Tri-City Herald articles from 10 years ago who you could quote. a. http://www.ecy.wa.gov/news/1997news/97-143.html b. http://archive.tri-cityherald.com/yakima/day1/story3.html c. http://archive.tri-cityherald.com/yakima/day2/story1.html

2. BUT, that was 10 years ago and may no longer be relevant or if used should be noted as being 10 years old. A lot of it looked like a bunch of hype to get people frightened about the extent of the pollution. No doubt there is pollution but the articles focus more on public opinion and hearsay rather than on fact. I'd be very interested to know how much has changed in the last 10 years. Zyzyxs (talk) 17:35, 23 May 2008 (UTC)

Geological History
The paragraph for which "Navarro, Mateo. "Geologist"." is cited as the source is either badly incorrect or very unclear. (I realize that I am incorporating "original research" here, but the current section is of a very similar nature -- perhaps we can Talk about how to get it right.) To start with, the citation is not a published written work, but merely a Wikipedia editor's recollection of what he thought a geologist had said.

In particular, Badger Canyon does not lead west from the Yakima River Valley to the Pacific Ocean. It is an errosional feature which runs downward to the east/north from the Horse Heaven, an elevated feature of igneous bedrock which rises westward to the Cascade Mountains. Badger Canyon does not cross the Horse Heaven, but merely drains a small portion of it. This is obvious to anyone who has ever driven down (or up) Badger Canyon.

Starting at about Prosser, and continuing to Benton City, the Yakima River flows between the Horse Heaven, to the south, and the Rattlesnake Mountains (a line of anticlinal ridges), to the North. At Benton City, the river doubles back, and then flows between two of the Rattlesnake Mountains: Rattlesnake Mountain and Red Mountain. The Yakima River then flows east into the Columbia, following the north side of the Rattlesnake Mountains past Red Mountain, Candy Mountain and Badger Mountain. Perhaps the geologist named Mateo Navarro was referring to the synclinal valley between Badger Mountain and the Horse Heaven as "Badger Canyon" (or was misunderstood as referring to Badger "Canyon"). It certainly seems sensible that the Yakima River may have once flowed east through this synclinal valley before a bunch of recent sedimentation blocked its path, but Badger Canyon is just out of the question.

Near its eastern terminus, the Horse Heaven is often known as the Horse Heaven Hills -- to the west, it is mountainously high, tilted upward to the west, but nearly flat on top.

Could someone please find a reference work on the pre-historic course of the Yakima River and fix the main article?

128.84.183.171 (talk) 19:19, 24 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Always start with looking for a Water Supply Paper. This one has maps and history.
 * Uncle G (talk) 04:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Uncle G (talk) 04:37, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

Scope for expansion
For 60 years, the Bureau of Reclamation ran its Yakima Project, which involves canals, tunnels, reservoirs, pumps, and substations all along the Yakima Valley, and is related to the earlier artesian wells in the Moxee Valley. It's extensively documented throughout those years; Pfaff's book being but a place to start. Things to mention should also include the decades-long fight by one Native American tribe to restore the water rights that were taken away from it by executive decision and only returned after a court battle, and Frank Crowe working on one of the Project's dams. We really should cover this somewhere, possibly starting in the "River modifications" section here in this article. Uncle G (talk) 04:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Yakima River


text: User talk:68.103.184.197

title: User talk:68.103.184.197


text:
Category:Universities and colleges in Wyoming

Institutions of higher education in the U.S. state of Wyoming.