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Rabbis for Human Rights

Rabbis for Human Rights is an Israeli human rights organization that describes itself as "the rabbinic voice of conscience in Israel, giving voice to the Jewish tradition of human rights".

Their membership includes Reform, Orthodox, Conservative and Reconstructionist rabbis and students. According to their web site, the organization includes "over one hundred ordained rabbis and rabbinical students".

The organization received the Niwano Peace Prize in 2006.

Organization
The organization was founded in 1988. Its membership consists of Israeli rabbis and rabbinical students. RHR has a nineteen-member board of directors. Rabbi Arik Ascherman served as co-director of Rabbis For Human Rights, becoming executive director in 1998. Ayala Levi took over as executive director in 2010. In the past, the organization received funds from the EU, UK and Spain.

Activities
RHR is best known for dispatching volunteers to act as a protective presence to protect the Palestinian olive harvest from vandalism and assault by settlers living on nearby land; every year, clashes are reported between settlers and Palestinian farmers. In 2008, the volunteer effort encompassed 40 villages. The effort was launched in 2002 when a Palestinian peace activist solicited RHR's help to protect olive pickers against attacks by settlers living near the village of Yanun.

RHR opposes the construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier in any place where it entails the expropriation of Arab-owned land, the division of villages, or cutting farmers off from their fields. RHR achieved a major victory in 2006 when it won a lawsuit to prevent the division by the fence of the village of Sheikh Sa'ad.

In December 2004, RHR executive director Rabbi Arik Ascherman was among three defendants on trial in Jerusalem for standing in front of bulldozers in an effort to block the demolition of Palestinian homes in East Jerusalem. He was charged with "interfering with police performance of duties on two occasions in 2003, and the intention to commit acts to prevent police from performing their duties." In March 2005, a magistrate court ruled Ascherman guilty, but said that he wouldn't have a criminal record.

A movie produced in 2013 by RHR, Fiddler with No Roof, compares the Prawer Plan to Jews' expulsion during the antisemitic Tsarist regime.

Durban UN Anti-Racism conferences
David Bedein from Independent Media Review Analysis has criticized RHR, accusing it of joining "forces with the PLO to support the idea that Israel, was indeed, an apartheid, racist regime" at the 2001 UN Anti-Racism conference in Durban, South Africa. Rabbi Ascherman strongly denies this account, saying: "I want to clarify that RHR’s representative at Durban, Rabbi Jeremy Milgrom, actively voiced our criticism of the inflammatory rhetoric and Israel-bashing".

Rabbi Ascherman and RHR also expressed concern about the second Durban conference, saying "that Israel has committed human rights violations [is an issue that] can appropriately be discussed at a conference like this. But if you allow the conference to be hijacked as if Israel is the only place in the world where there are issues of racism and human rights, then it makes a farce of the whole thing. We're not trying to protect Israel from being criticized, but as people who are really concerned with human rights and racism, and think it is important that there be a body among the community of nations dealing with these things, we don't want to see another hijacking."

title: Rabbis for Human Rights


text:
Talk:Alashiya

Papyrus Anastasi IV
I've restored the reference to Papyrus Anastasi IV as it's genuine - I got it from the LBA Cyprus webpage, where it's quoted with a (genuine academic) book reference. I imagine you thought it was bogus due to the mention of cows, so I've put that bit in parentheses. --G Rutter 09:34, 10 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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Amarna letter EA 151
It should be noted that Amarna letter EA 151, (I have worked on 25 to 50 letters, and put 20 into Wikipedia), clearly states in the first line, (a letter from Tyre) (Surru of the letters), states, Message King Land A-La-Ši-iYa. It is a mostly undamaged letter, entitled Hymn to the Pharaoh (see here in British Museum) .Mmcannis (talk) 18:51, 3 July 2018 (UTC)

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

title: Talk:Alashiya


text:
Litany

Litany, in Christian worship and some forms of Jewish worship, is a form of prayer used in services and processions, and consisting of a number of petitions. The word comes through Latin litania from Ancient Greek λιτανεία (litaneía), which in turn comes from λιτή (litḗ), meaning "prayer, supplication".

Western Christianity
This form of prayer finds its model in Psalm 136: "Praise the Lord, for he is good: for his mercy endures for ever. Praise ye the God of gods . . . the Lord of lords . . . Who alone doth great wonders . . . Who made the heavens", etc., with the concluding words in each verse, "for his mercy endures for ever."

The Litany originated in Antioch in the fourth century and from there was taken to Constantinople and through it to the rest of the East...From Constantinople the Litany was taken to Rome and the West. Josef Andreas Jungmann explains how the Kyrie in the Roman Mass is best seen as a vestige of a litany at the beginning of the Mass, like that of some Eastern churches.

Public Christian devotions became common by the fifth century and processions were frequently held. These processions were called "litanies", and in them pictures and other religious emblems were carried. In Rome, pope and people would go in procession each day, especially in Lent, to a different church, to celebrate the Sacred Mysteries. Thus originated the Roman "Stations", and what was called the "Litania Maior", "Major Rogation", was held on 25 April. The word rogation comes from the Latin verb rogare, meaning "to ask", which reflects the beseeching of God for the appeasement of his anger and for protection from calamities.

In 590, when an epidemic caused by an overflow of the Tiber was ravaging Rome, Gregory the Great commanded a litany; on the preceding day he exhorted the people to fervent prayer, and arranged the order to be observed in the procession, during which the Litany of the Saints was prayed.

The "Litania Minor", also called Minor Rogations or "Gallicana", the Rogation Days before Ascension, was introduced (477) by St. Mamertus, Bishop of Vienne, on account of the earthquakes and other calamities then prevalent. It was prescribed for the whole of Frankish Gaul, in 511, by the First Council of Orléans. For Rome it was ordered by Leo III, in 799. In the Ambrosian Rite this litany was celebrated on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday after Ascension. In Spain, a similar litany is prayed from Thursday to Saturday after Pentecost. In England the Litany of Rogation Days was known in the earliest periods. In Germany it was ordered by a Synod of Mainz in 813.

Because the Mass Litany became popular through its use in processions, numberless varieties were soon made, especially in the Middle Ages. Litanies appeared in honour of God the Father, of God the Son, of God the Holy Spirit, of the Precious Blood, of the Blessed Virgin, of the Immaculate Conception, of each of the saints honoured in different countries, for the souls in Purgatory, etc. In 1601 Baronius wrote that about eighty forms were in circulation. To prevent abuse, Pope Clement VIII, by decree of 6 September 1601, forbade the publication of any litany, except that of the saints as found in the liturgical books and that of Loreto.

Anglican litanies
The Anglican Communion also has a Litany in the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. This is substantially the same as Thomas Cranmer's original English vernacular service from 1544, Exhortation and Litany. Cranmer drew on a variety of sources, chiefly two medieval litanies from the Sarum rite, but also the German Litany of Martin Luther. He originally retained the invocation of the Saints and the Blessed Virgin Mary in very shortened form, but these were omitted in 1549, and he made a notable change in the style of the service by expanding and grouping together said by the priest and provided but a single response to the whole group. An anti-papal clause was omitted in 1559. The processional aspect was soon eliminated and the service said or sung kneeling in the church. The term "the Lesser Litany" is sometimes used to refer to the versicles and responses, with the Lord's Prayer, that follow the Apostles' Creed at Morning Prayer (or Matins) and Evening Prayer (or Evensong).

Many other litanies are used in private prayer. A Marian litany is one dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary; only one is authorised for public recitation (mentioned above). The Litany of humility is another well-known prayer.

Catholic litanies
In the Catholic Church, seven litanies are approved for public recitation:
 * The Litany of the Holy Name of Jesus
 * The Litany of the Sacred Heart of Jesus
 * The Litany of the Most Precious Blood of Jesus
 * The Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary (also known as the Litany of Loreto)
 * The Litany of Saint Joseph
 * The Litany of the Saints
 * The Litany (in Divine Worship: The Missal Appendix 8)

For all of them the 2004 Enchiridion Indulgentiarum grants the partial indulgence to the faithfuls of Christ who piously pray the Litanies.

Several others, including the Litany of the Blessed Sacrament, the Litany of the Passion, and the Litany of humility are approved for private devotion.

Lutheran litanies
Much of the historic Litany was retained by the Lutheran Church. Luther hailed it as one of the greatest Christian prayers ever. When faced with the Turkish armies at the gates of Vienna in 1528/29, Luther exhorted pastors to call their Christian people to repentance and prayer. He recommended the use of the Litany during the Sunday mass or Vespers. In 1529, he, after modifying the traditional Litany of the Saints (mostly by removing the invocation of saints and prayers for the pope), began using the Litany at Wittenberg in Latin and German. Thomas Cranmer used Luther's revised Litany as one of his main sources in the preparation of the Litany in the Book of Common Prayer. Today, a form of the Litany continues to be used in the various Lutheran Churches around the world.

Methodist litanies
The Methodist The Book of Worship for Church and Home (1965) contains the following litanies:
 * The Litany of Recollection of Jesus
 * The Litany on the Will of God
 * The Litany of the Divine Will
 * The Litany of Self-Examination
 * The Litany of Confession
 * The Litany of Supplication
 * The Litany of Remembrance
 * The Litany of Commemoration
 * The Litany of Intercession
 * The Litany for Peace

Eastern Christianity

In the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic churches, a litany is referred to as an ektenia. There are numerous ektenias during the Byzantine divine services: the Divine Liturgy, Vespers, Matins, the Sacraments, and numerous other services.

The petitions of the ektenias are usually chanted by a deacon (but if there is no deacon the priest will say the petitions), to each of which the choir (chanters) or congregation will respond. The response is usually Kyrie eleison ("Lord, have mercy"), but other responses are used at different ektenias. After the final petition, the priest makes the ekphonesis (exclamation) which summarizes the ektenia, and always involves an invocation of the Holy Trinity.

Judaism
Although used to a much lesser extent in Jewish worship, litanies do appear in Jewish liturgy. The most notable examples are the Hoshanot recited in the additional (musaf) service during all seven days of the Sukkot festival. These are mostly alphabetical acrostics to which the refrain at the end of each line is "Hoshanah"!, a contraction of the biblical Hoshi'a na (Psalm 118:25), "Save us, please!" These are recited in a procession around the sanctuary, with congregants holding the lulav and etrog (the biblical "Four Species" of Leviticus 23:40). They are essentially prayers for rain.

Litanies are also recited during the Ten Days of Repentance. The most famous of these "supplicatory" prayers is Avinu Malkeinu ("Our Father, Our King"), which is recited during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgies. Certain Selichot prayers also take the form of a litany during the month of Elul, as do some prayers recited on fast days.

Mandaeism
Litanies are often recited in Mandaeism. The most commonly recited Mandaean litanies are the Asiet Malkia and Tabahatan.

Musical settings

 * Marc-Antoine Charpentier, Litany of Loreto, 9 settings, H.82 (1680), H.83 (1683–85), H.84 (1690), H.85 (1688–90), H.86 (1690), H.87 (1690), H.88 (1690), H.89 (1690), H.90 (1690).
 * Henry Dumont, Litany of Loreto (1652)
 * František Ignac Tuma, Lytaniae Lauretanae (18. century)
 * Karol Szymanowski, Litany to the Virgin Mary Op.59 (1933)
 * Francis Poulenc, Litanies de la Vierge noir. He wrote in 1936 Litanies à la Vierge Noire (Litanies to the Black Virgin) after a pilgrimage to the shrine of Rocamadour, setting a French local pilgrimage litany.
 * American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer Kanye West composed a litany in his song Water released on October 25, 2019.
 * Kolbe Ensemble (hr) released Sung litanies of St. Anthony in 2022 in Croatian, inspired by Italian setting of All Saint's Litanies.

title: Litany


text:
James Finlayson (industrialist)

James Finlayson (29 August 1772? – 1852?) was a British Quaker who, in effect, brought the Industrial Revolution to Tampere, Finland founding in 1820 the Finlayson company.

Finlayson was born 1772 in Penicuik and became a self-trained engineer. In 1817, he moved to St. Petersburg to found a textile factory with the backing of Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

In 1819 Finlayson visited the Grand Duchy of Finland, at the time under Russian rule. During his religious mission to sell bibles he visited Tampere. The next year Finlayson received permission from the Senate of Finland to build a factory in Tampere using water power from the Tammerkoski rapids. He moved to Tampere with his wife Margaret Finlayson.

At first Finlayson had to import machinists from Britain to train new workers. The first factory was completed 1823 with the aid of a state loan, with the stipulation that the technology employed could be freely inspected by the public to further civic technological advancement. Initially he manufactured machinery suitable for the textile industry but in 1828 switched from machine manufacture to cotton mills. He also founded an orphanage.

Finlayson & Compagnie
On 1 March 1836, Finlayson sold the factory to Georg Rauch and Karl Samuel Nottbeck on condition that they would retain his name for the factory. The new owners complied and founded Finlayson & Compagnie. Finlayson worked in an advisory capacity for a couple of years before moving back to the United Kingdom. He later died in 1852 in Edinburgh.

The company grew to be Tampere's largest employer, employing, at its peak, over 3,000 people. It still produces textiles. In 1995 the old factories in the center of Tampere were closed down and the old buildings converted to a commercial and entertainment district.

A weaving hall, completed in 1877 and at the time the largest in the Nordic countries, housed a total of 1,200 power looms. In accordance with the custom of naming significant new buildings after recent or current events, it was named Plevna after the Siege of Plevna. It now houses a brewpub and the cinema multiplex Finnkino Plevna.

Electric lighting
The Plevna building was the first in any of the Nordic countries and the fourth in Europe to be equipped with incandescent lighting. The lighting with 120 "8 candle" bulbs was first switched on on 15 March 1882. The Edison "dynamo" No. 24 is still located in the building. The system used 110 volt direct current; this system was adopted for all of Tampere, resulting in a war of currents with the later introduced Westinghouse alternating current.

title: James Finlayson (industrialist)


text:
Talk:Shady Grove station

Untitled
This article needs clarification or disambiguation. Currently it is linked to from "Quicksilver Messenger Service" as an album title. I do not know enough about wiki practices to do this myself, however. -Ben-San AZ

 * Thanks for the heads up; I whipped up a little disambiguation page at Shady Grove. --Golbez 17:14, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

merge proposal
I find the 1996 Gaithersburg Metrorail Accident to be ridiculously short. It is only two paragraphs long and that is likely to get as large as it is now. I propose merging that artilce into this one, just like how it was done with the 2004 accident at Woodley Park-Zoo. I mean, we don't have a Woodley Park-Zoo Revenue Train Accident, do we? Hbdragon88 02:57, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * I disagree, and here's why. The 1996 accident at Shady Grove was a fatal accident that exposed an alarming aspect of Metro's culture, where you follow the policy to the letter even if all parties involved know that an exception to the rule is necessary for fear of one's job. This article is on my to-do list, as I fully intend to expand it out to a full-length article, based on the NTSB's report on the accident. Give me a chance, please. SchuminWeb (Talk) 10:47, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Well, if it's going to be expanded, then by all means go for it. I removed the merge notices, by the way. The significance of the train accident wasn't quite fully expressed in the article as it stands now, and I was curious why it wasn't merged into the main station article like the Woodly Park-Zoo accident had been. - Hbdragon88 23:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Thanks. You've also provided good inspiration for me to re-read up on the incident so as to write a good, strong article on it. SchuminWeb (Talk) 23:53, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:08, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Requested move 23 December 2014

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: moved. There appears to be consensus for the proposed moves Number   5  7  16:33, 6 February 2015 (UTC)

– Following the move of the Green Line stations per the new WP:USSTATION guideline, these stations should have WP:NATURAL disambiguation (and eventually, consistency within the whole system). I think consensus there can be interpreted as a mandate to move them all, but for now, I thought this would be helpful for more pairs of eyes to check for possible naming conflicts. Note that Medical Center needs disambiguation. I think Metro Center is fine, but see MetroCentre. If it needs further disambiguation, it would be Metro Center (Washington, D.C.). --BDD (talk) 18:35, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Shady Grove (WMATA station) → Shady Grove Station
 * Rockville (WMATA station) → Rockville Station (WMATA)
 * Twinbrook (WMATA station) → Twinbrook Station
 * White Flint (WMATA station) → White Flint Station
 * Grosvenor–Strathmore (WMATA station) → Grosvenor–Strathmore Station
 * Medical Center (WMATA station) → Medical Center Station (Maryland)
 * Bethesda (WMATA station) → Bethesda Station
 * Friendship Heights (WMATA station) → Friendship Heights Station
 * Tenleytown–AU (WMATA station) → Tenleytown–AU Station
 * Van Ness – UDC (WMATA station) → Van Ness – UDC Station
 * Cleveland Park (WMATA station) → Cleveland Park Station
 * Woodley Park (WMATA station) → Woodley Park Station
 * Dupont Circle (WMATA station) → Dupont Circle Station
 * Farragut North (WMATA station) → Farragut North Station
 * Metro Center (WMATA station) → Metro Center Station
 * Judiciary Square (WMATA station) → Judiciary Square Station
 * Union Station (WMATA station) → Union Station (WMATA)
 * NoMa – Gallaudet U (WMATA station) → NoMa – Gallaudet U Station
 * Rhode Island Avenue – Brentwood (WMATA station) → Rhode Island Avenue – Brentwood Station
 * Brookland – CUA (WMATA station) → Brookland – CUA Station
 * Takoma (WMATA station) → Takoma Station
 * Silver Spring (WMATA station) → Silver Spring Station (WMATA)
 * Forest Glen (WMATA station) → Forest Glen Station (Maryland)
 * Wheaton (WMATA station) → Wheaton Station (Maryland)
 * Glenmont (WMATA station) → Glenmont Station
 * Union Station is a mess for a name, Even though Metro itself uses (for ex.)"White Flint Station" on the pylon, I believe it uses "Union Station" on the pylons there. I googled wmata.com for "Union Station". I got 10k hits for "Union Station" and *four* hits for "union station station" (one for "Union station station page" from Capital Bikeshare, two for "Union Station station entrance" and *one* refering to "Union Station station" standalone. I support Union Station (WMATA) as the best of the bad choices for a name.Naraht (talk) 18:58, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Silver Spring needs to be Silver Spring Station (WMATA) as there is another Silver Spring station. Mangoe (talk) 19:33, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * ✅ --BDD (talk) 20:17, 23 December 2014 (UTC)

 * Oppose "Rockville Station" -- Rockville Railroad Station, Rockville Air Force Station , Rockville Air Station (Iceland) , Rockville Centre (LIRR station) -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 23:02, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose "Metro Center Station" -- Fairfield Metro Center, MetroCentre railway station, 7th St/Metro Center (LACMTA station) -- this should instead be a redirect to MetroCentre -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 23:21, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose "Forest Glen Station" -- Forest Glen (Metra station) ; this should redirect to Forest Glen -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 23:28, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Oppose "Wheaton Staton" -- Wheaton (Metra station) -- this should redirect to Wheaton -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 23:30, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * So? We can have Metro Center Station (Washington, D.C.) or Metro Center Station (Washington Metro) (I prefer the latter; "(Maryland)" or "(Virginia)" just doesn't work out). In general, I don't see why we have to move all the station titles (it's not broken). Epicgenius (talk) 12:24, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment when Takoma is moved, it should carry a hatnote for Tacoma Station -- 67.70.35.44 (talk) 23:24, 23 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Hold pending the outcome of Move review/Log/2014 December, which is being used erroneously as a precedent for capitalization. I might also oppose for other reasons, but let's get this figured out first.  Dicklyon (talk) 23:54, 24 December 2014 (UTC)
 * Problem: User:Epicgenius has gone ahead and moved a bunch of these pages, and more, with capitalized "Station", citing the Greenbelt RM as reason, without waiting for the resolution of the case question or this RM discussion or others. Dicklyon (talk) 00:38, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh. I did not know about this RM. Sorry. (By the way, I moved all the stations in the entire system, so someone may want to fix that. Thanks.) Epicgenius (talk) 12:22, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, well. May as well vote. I reluctantly support a standardisation of titles, including moving pages to use the "Station" suffix. However, just so you know, these renamings are all unnecessary. Epicgenius (talk) 14:00, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, if this RM passes, can Medical Center (WMATA station) be renamed to Medical Center Station (WMATA) instead of Medical Center Station (Maryland), just for the sake of consistency? We already have Union Station (WMATA) and Silver Spring Station (WMATA) proposed. Wouldn't hurt to apply a uniform naming system. Epicgenius (talk) 15:30, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * USSTATION recommends disambiguating by state first. --BDD (talk) 16:28, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, if it's a railway system spanning multiple states, but this is a metropolitan area rapid transit system, so Washington Metro comes to the reader's mind first. Epicgenius (talk) 14:13, 21 January 2015 (UTC)

 * Support. There is clear consensus for the WP:USSTATION guidelines and the proposed titles better follow policy in regards to WP:COMMONNAME, WP:CONCISE, WP:PRECISE, WP:NATURAL, and WP:RECOGNIZABILITY.--Cúchullain t/ c 14:50, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:USSTATION. Adding station to the article title provides natural disambiguation, without the need for parenthetical disambiguation (in most cases) per WP:NATURAL. Regarding capitalization, if "station" is not in the official name (and I do not think it is), then it should be lowercase. If "Station" is in the official station name, then it should be capitalized. Also, I added the disambiguating term "(Maryland)" for Wheaton and Forest Glen, and "(WMATA)" for Rockville as per the IP's concerns above. --Scott Alter (talk) 02:52, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

 * Support per nom with "Station" capitalized as the signs at the stations do. Would greatly prefer "Washington Metro" as a disambiguator to "WMATA" or "Virginia" which are far less helpful to readers seeking the correct article. (Yes, I know that other systems use the stations but their primary use is by Metro train and bus).  —  AjaxSmack   03:20, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Oppose the capitalized "Station" per the new USSTATION guidelines. See more comments at [Talk:Vienna_(WMATA_station)#Requested_move_23_December_2014]].  Dicklyon (talk) 05:16, 23 January 2015 (UTC)
 * Support – Per WP:USSTATION. RGloucester  — ☎ 18:49, 27 January 2015 (UTC)

 * Support "station" (lower case). This is what Naming conventions (US stations) (currently) says it should be and WMATA doesn't use "Station" in the names on their Web site. I think that "Station" isn't a part of the formal name, as it makes sense to say the names without it (as in "get off at Shady Grove"), that the names are really descriptive terms saying where they're at (as in "the station at Shady Grove") and that the stations aren't unique entities themselves but instead pieces of the overall rail system and of the neighborhoods they serve (see proper name).

 * Lastly, this same capitalization discussion is occurring on Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (US stations). Jason McHuff (talk) 08:20, 1 February 2015 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Greenbelt Station which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 17:15, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

title: Talk:Shady Grove station


text:
Judith Exner

Judith Exner (January 11, 1934 – September 24, 1999) was an American woman who claimed to be the mistress of U.S. Senator, then U.S. president John F. Kennedy and Mafia leaders Sam Giancana and John Roselli. Several aspects of her claim of having known Kennedy have been verified by documents, phone records, and testimony. She was also known as Judith Campbell Exner, and Judith Campbell.

Early life
She was born Judith Eileen Katherine Immoor in Fort Lee, New Jersey; Her parents were Frederick Immoor, an architect of German descent, and Katherine (née Shea), who was of Irish descent. When she was a child, her family moved to southern California, where she grew up in Pacific Palisades. With her father a successful architect, she was raised in the prosperous neighborhood of Pacific Pallisades which influenced her future lifestyle and the social circles in which she would find friends and make social contacts. After her mother nearly died in an auto accident, Judith withdrew from school at the age of 14 and was tutored at home. Her older sister Jacqueline later became an actress and took the professional name Susan Morrow. Judith's association with the acting community was established through her sister's choice of careers, her own work as a model, and her association with her future husband, film actor William Campbell.

Marriage and family
In 1952, at the age of 18, Judith married actor William Campbell; they divorced in 1958.

Exner was not the first or only party to claim she had a relationship with President John Kennedy. An FBI investigation into JFK’s assassination and certain mob dealings uncovered Exner’s name and brought them to expose her to the nation. She described the circumstances of the 18-month relationship she had with then-Senator John F. Kennedy, beginning in 1960, which continued after he was elected President of the United States. She had a son, David Bohrer, from a later relationship. In 1975, Campbell married again, to Dan Exner, a golfer. They separated in 1988.

John F. Kennedy
According to Michael O'Brien of the Washington Monthly, on February 7, 1960, Frank Sinatra and Campbell were in Las Vegas, where Sinatra introduced her to John F. Kennedy, then a senator from Massachusetts and presidential candidate. In her 1977 memoir, she said that she became one of JFK's mistresses for a period of about two years, frequently visiting him in the White House after he was elected president. Her account was supported by phone records and other documentation, although Kennedy staff and supporters attacked her veracity when she published her memoir. A few months later in 1960, Sinatra introduced Campbell to "Sam Flood," who was actually Sam Giancana, the leading figure in the Chicago Mafia. She also became involved with him and knew his associate John Roselli. Clearly, her extramarital affair with a former President made her story controversial, and her association as a channel of information between the American Mafia and Kennedy, greatly increased the public interest and controversial nature of the relationship. The additional attention brought to bear on her story caused by the investigation performed by both the Senate and FBI greatly increased the level of public interest in her relationship with the President and her version of the story that would be told by her book.

Church Committee
Exner received additional media attention on a national level when she testified in 1975 before the Church Committee investigating CIA assassination attempts on Fidel Castro. Roselli testified to the committee about Mafia involvement in the CIA attempt on Castro's life. When the Church Committee report was released in December 1975, it said that a "close friend" of President Kennedy had also been a close friend of mobsters John Roselli and Sam Giancana." Campbell's identity as the close friend was leaked to The Washington Post, which publicized it. William Safire in The New York Times also published it. The Committee had sent Exner a subpoena to make her testify. By then, married to Dan Exner, Judith Exner called a press conference that month and denied any knowledge of Mafia involvement with Kennedy. Exner may have changed certain aspects of how she told her story largely in the interest of her own safety and security and that of her family, and to protect the reputation of certain individuals whose reputations were at risk as a result of the intense media and public attention being focused on them, and not because her story was inherently fictitious, dishonest, or fabricated.

Memoir
In 1977, Exner published Judith Exner: My Story. In her memoir, she said that her relationship with Kennedy was entirely personal. She also said that Frank Sinatra later introduced her to Sam Giancana, with whom she also became intimate. She said that Giancana never asked her for any information related to Kennedy. She also said that John Roselli was her friend.

Aside from her own alleged affair with JFK, Exner claimed to have knowledge of other women who had affairs with Kennedy. These affairs included one with Danish journalist Inga Arvad between late 1941 and early 1942. Many other authors and sources besides Exner, including Kennedy's letters, Kennedy's friends, the FBI, and FBI tape recordings have detailed Kennedy's relationship with Arvad. Exner also said that Kennedy brought prostitutes to the White House swimming pool. Journalists and some historians have also alleged that Kennedy had a number of affairs, citing a memo by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover as part of the evidence.

Exner said that President Kennedy's Special Assistant David Powers helped set up encounters with President Kennedy. Powers later stated that Kennedy never had an affair with Exner.

Later accounts
In a 1988 interview with Kitty Kelley of People magazine, Exner told a very different story about Giancana and Kennedy. She said that she had lied to the Church Committee and in her memoir out of fear of Mafia retaliation. She said Kennedy had asked her to contact Giancana, and she helped set up a meeting between them during the 1960 presidential election. For about 18 months in 1960–61, "Exner claimed she served as the president's link with the Mob. She crisscrossed the nation carrying envelopes between the president and Giancana, and arranged about 10 meetings between the two." She later claimed these messages concerned plans to assassinate the Cuban president Fidel Castro.

In 1997, Exner alleged more details and changed her story, in separate interviews with Liz Smith of Vanity Fair and Seymour Hersh. She said Kennedy told her of his plans related to Cuba, and used her to carry money to Giancana, as well as to arrange numerous meetings between Kennedy, Giancana and Roselli. According to one source, in all, Exner claimed she arranged 10 meetings between Giancana and Kennedy to help Kennedy get elected. Exner claimed to Smith to have terminated a pregnancy resulting from a last encounter in 1962 with Kennedy. She said that she had carried payoffs from California defense contractors to the Kennedys, including Robert F. Kennedy. A witness of Hersh's who appeared to support Exner's story of carrying money to Giancana later dropped his story.

Both liberal and conservative critics have attacked these later accounts. They depend mostly on Exner and are not supported by what is known of Kennedy and his staff. Her earlier accounts of her affair with Kennedy were supported by FBI reports, Secret Service and White House phone logs and staff documentation. She has been described as an "unreliable witness," with a history of instability, depression and paranoia and, by then, she was suffering from cancer.

Later years and death
Exner lived in Newport Beach and was a painter. She died on September 24, 1999, in Duarte, California, from breast cancer.

In popular culture
Exner's memoir was adapted as a made-for-TV movie, Power and Beauty (2002), directed by Susan Seidelman, in which she was played by Natasha Henstridge. Material was added from accounts published after her 1977 memoir.

In the Series 7 episode of Red Dwarf "Tikka to Ride" Exner is alluded to when, in an alternate timeline, it's discovered that she had been the mistress of both Kennedy and Giancana, resulting in Kennedy being impeached.

Judy Campbell was portrayed in the 1998 HBO movie The Rat Pack by Michelle Grace. In the 2004 episode "In Camelot" of the TV series The Sopranos, the character of Fran Felstein is based on Judith Exner. Campbell was portrayed by Megan Vincent in the 2011 TV series The Kennedys. In 2016, she appeared as a character in the third episode of the first season of the television series Timeless, played by Elena Satine.

title: Judith Exner


text:
Talk:Formal organization

Infra-organisational
At the beginning this says infra-organisational. Should this be intra-organisational?? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.215.149.98 (talk) 20:19, 31 March 2014 (UTC)

Organisation Junior morris (talk) 20:27, 29 November 2020 (UTC)

Removed from article
The following strikes me as redundant; I have cut it. If anyone thinks that there is anything here that is not already said in the article, please feel free to restore the relevant portion, preferably with some improvement to the writing. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:37, Dec 10, 2004 (UTC)

 * Formal organization acts, for example, around defining the division of labor, description of operational sequences, or definition of instruction powers. Formal organization is defined, however, only by its opposite, with both forms supplementing each other. A distinction between formal and informal organization would not be necessary if each coworker, or else each working group would find its own creative way to implement policies from superior levels of the hierarchy.

Meyer and Rowan
The article includes a lengthy (perhaps too lengthy) quotation that was attributed only as "JOHN MEYER AND BRIAN ROWAN, 1976". I removed the unorthodox use of uppercase, but I still have no idea what piece this comes from, which leaves this a rather weak citation.

I'm way outside any of my areas of expertise here, but I gather that Meyer and Rowan were among the pioneers of the concept of formal organizations, and they wrote quite a few papers together in the late 1970s. I'm unaware of anything they published together as early as 1976—"Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony" is 1977—but, conversely, I suspect that if they published a paper together that year, then they may well have published more than one. In any case, a citation that is presumably from a paper in a journal should say what paper in what journal. - Jmabel | Talk 19:44, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

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Extra-organizational sets of rules
Formal organizations also have rules about how to interact with other agents outside the organization. Shouldn't we take that into consideration?

George Rodney Maruri Game (talk) 22:54, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Formal organization


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Persian Princess

The Persian Princess or Persian Mummy is a mummy of an alleged Persian princess who surfaced in Pakistani Baluchistan in October 2000. After considerable attention and further investigation, the mummy proved to be an archaeological forgery and possibly a murder victim.

Discovery
The mummy was found on 19 October 2000. During a murder investigation, Pakistani authorities were alerted to a videotape recorded by Ali Aqbar, in which he claimed to have a mummy for sale. When questioned by the police, Aqbar told them where the mummy was located; at the house of tribal leader Wali Mohammed Reeki in Kharan, Baluchistan near the border of Afghanistan. Reeki claimed he had received the mummy from an Iranian named Sharif Shah Bakhi, who had said that he had found it after an earthquake near Quetta. The mummy had been put up for sale in the black antiquities market for 600 million rupees, the equivalent of $11 million. Reeki and Aqbar were accused of violating the country's Antiquities Act, a charge which carries a maximum sentence of ten years in prison.

Misidentification
In a press conference on 26 October, Pakistani archaeologist Ahmad Hasan Dani of Islamabad's Quaid-e-Azam University announced that the mummy seemed to be a princess dated circa 600 BC. The mummy was wrapped in ancient Egyptian style, and rested in a gilded wooden coffin with cuneiform carvings inside a stone sarcophagus. The coffin had been carved with a large faravahar image. The mummy was atop a layer of wax and honey, was covered by a stone slab and had a golden crown on its brow. An inscription on the golden chest plate claimed that she was the relatively unknown Rhodogune, a daughter of king Xerxes I of Persia and a member of the Achaemenid dynasty.

Hasan Dani speculated that she might have been an Egyptian princess married to a Persian prince, or a daughter of the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great. However, because mummification had been primarily an Egyptian practice, they had not encountered any mummies in Persia before.

Ownership
The governments of Iran and Pakistan soon began to argue about the ownership of the mummy. The Iranian Cultural Heritage Organization claimed her as a member of Persian royal family and demanded the mummy's return. Pakistan's Archaeological Department HQ said that it belonged to Pakistan because it had been found in Baluchistan. The Taliban of Afghanistan also made a claim. People in Quetta demanded that the police should return the mummy to them.

In November 2000, the mummy was placed in display in the National Museum of Pakistan.

Investigation
News of the Persian Princess prompted American archaeologist Oscar White Muscarella to describe an incident the previous March when he was shown photographs of a similar mummy. Amanollah Riggi, a middleman working on behalf of an unidentified antiquities dealer in Pakistan, had approached him, claiming its owners were a Zoroastrian family who had brought it to the country. The seller had claimed that it was a daughter of Xerxes, based on a translation of the cuneiform of the breastplate.

The cuneiform text on the breastplate contained a passage from the Behistun inscription in western Iran. The Behistun inscription was carved during the reign of Darius, the father of Xerxes. When the dealer's representative had sent a piece of a coffin to be carbon dated, analysis had shown that the coffin was only around 250 years old. Muscarella had suspected a forgery and severed contact. He had informed Interpol through the FBI.

When Asma Ibrahim, the curator of the National Museum of Pakistan, studied the item in police custody, she realised that the corpse was not as old as the coffin. The body had shown signs of decomposition fungus on the face, a sign of a recently deceased body, and the mat below the body was about five years old. During the investigation, Iran and the Taliban repeated their demands. The Taliban claimed that they had apprehended the smugglers who had taken the mummy out of Afghanistan.

The inscriptions on the breastplate were not in proper grammatical Persian. Instead of a Persian form of the daughter's name, Wardegauna, the forgers had used a Greek version Rhodugune. CAT and X-ray scans in Agha Khan Hospital indicated that the mummification had not been made following ancient Egyptian custom – for example, the heart had been removed along with the rest of the internal organs, whereas the heart of a genuine Egyptian mummy would normally be left inside the body. Furthermore, tendons that should have decayed over the centuries were still intact.

Ibrahim published her report on 17 April 2001. In it, she stated that the "Persian princess" was in fact a woman about 21–25 years of age, who had died around 1996, possibly killed with a blunt instrument to the lower back/pelvic region (e.g., hit by vehicle from behind). A subsequent accelerator mass spectrometry dating also confirmed the mummy's status as a modern fake. Her teeth had been removed after death, and her hip joint, pelvis and backbone damaged, before the body had been filled with powder. Police began to investigate a possible murder and arrested a number of suspects in Baluchistan.

Fate
The Edhi Foundation took custody of the body, and on 5 August 2005, announced that it was to be interred with proper burial rites. However, police and other government officials never responded to numerous requests, and it was not until 2008 that the foundation finally carried out the burial.

Representations in contemporary art
The Persian Princess is the name of an exhibition presented in August 2016 in Jerusalem, by artist Hili Greenfeld. The exhibition functions as a tribute to the anonymous woman who, in an instant, went from the status of a Princess in a gold-plated coffin displayed in a national museum, to the victim of a vicious murder in whom everyone quickly lost interest. The extreme transformation of the perception of the archeological object – from an honored Princess to a woman who was murdered – is what interests Greenfeld. Greenfeld picked up the signs and symbols used by the forgers, such as engraved rosettes, Cypress gold, the icon of Ahura Mazda, Gold Crown, etc. She painted the symbols on artificial grass, and created a hybrid of lyrical abstract paintings, Persian rugs and graffiti murals. The works that are shown on the walls and on the floor seem to be graffiti murals and then seem to be rugs, but in both cases they are synthetic imitations of the original.

title: Persian Princess


text:
Africa Leadership Forum

The Africa Leadership Foundation (ALF) (also known as the Africa Leadership Forum) is a not-for-profit organization founded in Nigeria in 1988 by Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo.

The primary focus of ALF is to help improve the current quality of leadership in Africa while at the same time helping to train the next generation of leaders for the continent. ALF provided the first forum where leaders could meet and exchange experiences with the view to improving their performance.

ALF has spearheaded regional and continent-wide initiatives such as the Conference on Security, Stability, Development and Cooperation (CSSDCA), now a standing conference of the African Union, and the Africa Women's Forum. Within Nigeria, ALF holds programs such as the Farmhouse Dialogs that allow participants on both sides of important and/or controversial issues to sit down together and discuss their concerns.

In 2001 ALF opened a new secretariat in Benja Village, Ota, Ogun State. This new complex includes a large conference hall, a digital library, Internet cafe, and training rooms.

title: Africa Leadership Forum


text:
Michael Pelligrino

Michael Pelligrino (born 1966) is a U.S. man who fooled publisher Simon & Schuster into thinking that he was Michael Gambino, grandson of Mafioso Carlo Gambino.

In 1999, Pelligrino was jailed for theft and impersonating an FBI agent. In jail, he contacted literary agent Joel Gotler of the Artist Management Group, a talent agency in Hollywood, and convinced him that he was actually Michael Gambino, the illegitimate grandson of Carlo Gambino.

When he was released in 2001, Gotler sold his story to Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, for a $500,000 advance.

Pelligrino used a ghostwriter to make a book The Honored Society, a novel that was supposedly based on his own experiences as a gangster. In the book he claimed that he had been 12 years in prison for bribery, gambling, extortion, kidnapping, money laundering, murder and pimping, and had decided to come clean when serving time. The book was published in November 2001. Pelligrino appeared on Good Morning America to promote his book, claiming that he was a son of Carlo Gambino's unknown son Vito, who had been born in Sicily and later immigrated to the United States.

As it happens, Carlo Gambino has a great-grandson named Michael, who lives in New York: Carlo Gambino's son Thomas, upon hearing of these events, instructed his own lawyer Michael Rosen to expose the impostor, and Rosen promptly contacted the publisher to inform them of the fraud.

Simon & Schuster withdrew the book. On August 27, 2002, Simon & Schuster sued Artist Management Group, accusing it of misrepresenting Michael Gambino and demanding return of the money and millions of dollars in damages. Pelligrino's lawyers defended their client by stating that he did believe he was Gambino's grandson and that the book was fiction, not a biography.

title: Michael Pelligrino


text:
Harry Grindell Matthews

Harry Grindell Matthews (17 March 1880 – 11 September 1941) was an English inventor who claimed to have invented a death ray in the 1920s.

Earlier life and inventions
Harry Grindell Matthews was born on 17 March 1880 in Winterbourne, Gloucestershire. Matthews studied at the Merchant Venturers' School in Bristol and became an electronic engineer. During the Second Boer War, Matthews served in the South African Constabulary and was twice wounded.

In 1911, Matthews claimed that he had invented an Aerophone device, a radiotelephone, and transmitted messages between a ground station and an aeroplane from a distance of 2 mi. His experiments attracted government attention, and on 4 July 1912, Matthews visited Buckingham Palace. However, when the British Admiralty requested a demonstration of the Aerophone, Matthews demanded that no experts be present at the scene. When four observers dismantled part of the apparatus before the demonstration began and took notes, Matthews cancelled the demonstration and drove observers away.

Newspapers rushed to Matthews' defence. The War Office denied tampering and claimed the demonstration was a failure. The government later stated that the affair was just a misunderstanding.

In 1914, after the outbreak of the First World War, the British government announced an award of £25,000 to anyone who could create a weapon against zeppelins or remotely control uncrewed vehicles. Matthews claimed he had developed a remote control system using selenium cells. Matthews successfully demonstrated it with a remotely controlled boat to representatives of the Admiralty at Richmond Park's Penn Pond. Matthews received his £25,000, but the Admiralty never used the invention.

Next, Matthews appeared in public in 1921 and claimed to have invented the world's first talking picture, a farewell interview of Ernest Shackleton recorded on 16 September 1921, shortly before Shackleton's last expedition. The film was not commercially successful. Other talking-picture processes had been developed before that of Matthews, including processes by William K. L. Dickson, Photokinema (Orlando Kellum) and Phonofilm (Lee DeForest). However, Matthews claimed his process was the first sound-on-film.

Death ray
In 1923, Matthews claimed that he had invented an electric ray that would put magnetos out of action. In a demonstration to some select journalists Matthews stopped a motorcycle engine from a distance. Matthews also claimed that with enough power, it could shoot down aeroplanes, explode gunpowder, stop ships, and incapacitate infantry from the distance of 4 mi. Newspapers obliged by publishing sensational accounts of his invention.

The War Office contacted Matthews in February 1924 to request a demonstration of his ray. Matthews did not reply to them but spoke to journalists and demonstrated the ray to a Star reporter by igniting gunpowder from a distance. Matthews still refused to say how the ray worked but insisted it did. When the British government still refused to rush to buy his ideas, Matthews announced that he had an offer from France.

The Air Ministry was wary, partly because of previous bad experiences with would-be inventors. Matthews was invited back to London to demonstrate his ray to the armed forces on 26 April. In Matthews's laboratory, they saw how his ray switched on a light bulb and cut off a motor. Matthews failed to convince the officials, who also suspected trickery or a confidence game. When the British Admiralty requested further demonstration, Matthews refused to give it.

On 27 May 1924, the High Court in London granted an injunction to Matthew's investors that forbade him from selling the rights to the death ray. When Major Wimperis arrived at Matthews's laboratory to negotiate a new deal, Matthews had already flown to Paris. Matthews's backers also appeared on the scene and rushed to Croydon airport to stop him, but it was too late.

Public furore attracted the interest of other would-be inventors who wanted to demonstrate death rays to the War Office. None of them were convincing. On 28 May, Commander Kenworthy asked in the House of Commons what the government intended to do to stop Matthews from selling the ray to a foreign power. The Under Secretary for Air answered that Matthews was not willing to let them investigate the ray to their satisfaction. A government representative also stated that one ministry official had stood before the ray and survived. Newspapers continued to root for Matthews.

The government required that Matthews use the ray to stop a petrol motorcycle engine in the conditions that would satisfy the Air Ministry. Matthews would receive £1000 and further consideration. From France, Matthews answered that he was unwilling to give proof of that kind and already had eight bids to choose from. Matthews also claimed that he had lost sight in his left eye because of his experiments. His involvement with his French backer Eugene Royer aroused further suspicions in Britain.

Sir Samuel Instone and his brother Theodore offered Matthews a huge salary if he kept the ray in Britain and demonstrated that it actually worked. Matthews refused again—he did not want to give any proof that the ray worked as he claimed it would.

Matthews returned to London on 1 June 1924 and gave an interview to the Sunday Express. Matthews claimed that he had a deal with Royer. The press again took his side. The only demonstration Matthews was willing to give was to make a Pathé film The Death Ray to propagate his ideas to his satisfaction. The device in the movie bore no resemblance to the one government officials had seen.

In July 1924, Matthews left for the US to market his invention. When Matthews was offered $25,000 to demonstrate his beam to the Radio World Fair at Madison Square Garden, he again refused and claimed, without foundation, that he was not permitted to demonstrate it outside England. US scientists were not impressed. One Professor Woods offered to stand before the death ray device to demonstrate his disbelief. Regardless, when Matthews returned to Britain, he claimed that the USA had bought his ray but refused to say who had done it and for how much. Matthews moved to the US and began to work for Warner Bros.

Further inventions
In 1925, Matthews invented what he called the "luminaphone".

On 24 December 1930, Matthews was back in England with his new creation – a Sky Projector that projected pictures onto clouds. Matthews demonstrated it in Hampstead by projecting an angel, the message "Happy Christmas", and a reportedly "accurate" clock face. Matthews demonstrated it again in New York. This invention was unsuccessful, and by 1931, Matthews faced bankruptcy. Matthews used most of his investors' money to live in expensive hotels.

In 1934, Matthews had a new set of investors and relocated to Tor Clawdd, Betws, South Wales. Matthews built a fortified laboratory and airfield. In 1935, Matthews claimed that he worked on aerial mines and, in 1937, invented a system for detecting submarines. In 1938, Matthews married Ganna Walska, a Polish-American opera singer, perfumer, and feminist, whose four previous husbands had owned fortunes totalling $125,000,000.

In 1935, Matthews became involved with the right-wing Lucy, Lady Houston, and intended to conduct experiments in French naval submarine detection from her luxury yacht, the Liberty. In 2010, new research chronicled the episode, explaining how Matthews was frustrated in carrying out his aims.

Later, Matthews propagated the idea of the "stratoplane" and joined the British Interplanetary Society. His reputation preceded him, and the British Government was no longer interested in his ideas.

Personal life
Harry Grindell Matthews was the fifth husband of singer Ganna Walska; they married in 1938. Matthews died of a heart attack on 11 September 1941.

title: Harry Grindell Matthews


text:
Angie Stone

Angela Laverne Brown (born December 18, 1961) known professionally as Angie Stone, is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and record producer. She rose to fame in the late 1970s as member of the hip hop trio The Sequence. In the early 1990s, she became a member of the R&B trio Vertical Hold. Stone would later release her solo debut Black Diamond (1999) on Arista Records, which was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and spawned the single "No More Rain (In This Cloud)".

After transitioning to J Records, she released her second album, Mahogany Soul (2001), which included the hit single "Wish I Didn't Miss You"; followed by the albums Stone Love (2004) and The Art of Love & War (2007), her first number-one album on the US Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.

Stone ventured into acting in the 2000s, making her film debut in the 2002 comedy film The Hot Chick, and her stage debut in 2003, in the role of Big Mama Morton in the Broadway musical Chicago. She has since appeared in supporting roles in films and television series as well as several musical productions, including VH1’s Celebrity Fit Club and TV One's R&B Divas, and movies such as The Fighting Temptations (2003), Pastor Brown (2009) and School Gyrls (2010).

Stone has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, and has won two Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards. In 2021, she received the Soul Music Icon Award at the Black Music Honors.

Early life
Stone was born in Columbia, South Carolina, where she began singing gospel music at First Nazareth Baptist Church, under the leadership of Reverend Blakely N. Scott. Her father, a member of a local gospel quartet, took Stone to see performances by gospel artists such as the Singing Angels and the Gospel Keynotes.

1979–1985: The Sequence
In the late 1970s, when Stone was 16, she formed the rap trio The Sequence, a female hip-hop act, also consisting of Cheryl "The Pearl" Cook and Gwendolyn "Blondie" Chisolm. They were the second rap group signed to the Sugar Hill Records after auditioning for manager Sylvia Robinson backstage at a Sugar Hill Gang concert in South Carolina. In 1980, The Sequence scored a hit with their single "Funk You Up", which reached number 15 on the US Top Black Singles chart. The trio enjoyed a series of rap hits as the first female rap group during the early years of hip hop. Singles such as "Monster Jam" featuring rapper Spoonie Gee and "Funky Sound (Tear The Roof Off)" kept the band touring, with Robinson acting as their mentor. The group faded into obscurity as hip hop changed from its original party sound to a more gritty street art form and the trio eventually disbanded in 1985.

1986–2005: Vertical Hold, Black Diamond and career breakthrough
Stone then worked with hip hop and electro funk music group Mantronix, before becoming the lead vocalist of the trio Vertical Hold which released the popular single "Seems You're Much Too Busy" as well as two albums: A Matter of Time (1993) and Head First (1995). In 1996, Stone teamed up with Gerry DeVeaux, singer Lenny Kravitz's cousin, and Charlie Mole to form the group Devox. They recorded one album, Devox featuring Angie B. Stone, released in Japan by Toshiba EMI. Selected cuts were featured on Gerry DeVeaux's Front of the Line via the Expansion Records, which also included Stone-penned material. Signed to Jocelyn Cooper's Midnight Songs, Stone also shared songwriting credits on D'Angelo's first two studio albums, Brown Sugar (1995) and Voodoo (2000), as well as provided backing vocals when on tour with him. She also served as a backing vocalist on Lenny Kravitz's fifth studio album, 5 (1998).

In the late 1990s, Arista Records then A&R manager Peter Edge brought Stone to label head Clive Davis's attention. He offered her a solo recording contract with the label and in September 1999, her debut solo album, Black Diamond, was released. Named after her then-teenage daughter Diamond Ti'ara, it was released to positive reviews from music critics, and reached the top ten on Billboard's US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Black Diamond was eventually certified gold by both the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) and spawned the Adult R&B Songs number-one hit "No More Rain (In This Cloud)". The single earned Stone two nominations at the 2000 Soul Train Music Awards.

In 2000, Stone transitioned from Arista to music manager Clive Davis's venture J Records. Also that year, she recorded the theme song for the UPN/The CW sitcom Girlfriends, starring Tracee Ellis Ross (as well as a cameo appearance from the third season episode "Blinded by the Lights"). She then released her second album Mahogany Soul on October 16, 2001, with the label. Involving a wider range of contemporary R&B musicians, Stone collaborated with Carvin & Ivan, Raphael Saadiq, Swizz Beatz, Alicia Keys and Eve on much of the album. Released to favorable reviews, it peaked at number four on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, while reaching the top twenty of the Dutch, Finnish and Flemish Album Charts. Again, Stone was awarded gold by BPI and RIAA for Mahogany Soul. "Wish I Didn't Miss You", the album's second single, became her biggest international hit yet, reaching the top ten in Australia and Belgium as well as the top of Billboard's Dance Club Songs. "More Than Woman", a duet with singer Joe, earned Stone her first Grammy Award nomination in the Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals category at the 45th ceremony.

In 2002, Stone had a guest role on Girlfriends and played store owner Madame Mambuza in the American teen comedy The Hot Chick, starring Rob Schneider. The film scored generally negative reviews from film critics for its vulgar and lowbrow humor, but became a moderate box office success in the US. The following year, the singer appeared in the role of Alma in the Jonathan Lynn's musical comedy-drama The Fighting Temptations alongside Cuba Gooding, Jr. and Beyoncé. Released to mixed reviews, it was commercially less successful than The Hot Chick. Stone recorded "Rain Down", a duet with Eddie Levert, for the accompanying soundtrack.

Stone Love, her third album, was released in June 2004. Davis consulted Warryn Campbell, Jazze Pha and Missy Elliott to work with Stone, who penned and produced half of the final track listing herself. The album debuted at number 14 on the US Billboard 200, selling 53,000 copies in its first week of release, and entered the top twenty in Belgium, Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands. Its release was preceded by the single "I Wanna Thank Ya" featuring Snoop Dogg, a top five hit in Belgium and Stone's second chart topper on the US Dance Club Songs. In 2005, Stone began recording what as expected to become her fifth regular album, but to save costs J Records asked her to transfer her new material, including the previously unreleased single "I Wasn't Kidding", to her first compilation album Stone Hits: The Very Best of Angie Stone, compromising songs from her first three albums. After five years with the company, Stone subsequently asked for and received an unconditional release from the label at the end of 2005.

2006–2014: The Art of Love and War and subsequent releases
In 2006, Stone appeared on the VH1's reality television series Celebrity Fit Club for the fourth season, which began on August 6, 2006. While on the show, she lost eighteen pounds, the second lowest loss in the history of the show. The same year, Stone signed to the reworked Stax Records. Her fourth studio album The Art of Love & War, a reference to her experiences in her final days at J Records, where it had become expected that she would help develop new talent, was released on October 15, 2007. The album debuted at number eleven on the US Billboard 200, selling 45,000 copies in its first week, becoming Stone's highest-charting album to date, as well as her first and only album to date to top the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. Lead single "Baby", a duet with Betty Wright, became her second number-one hit on the US Adult R&B Songs and earned Stone her third nomination at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.

Stone's second effort with Stax Records, her fifth studio album Unexpected, was released in November 2009. With its title partly referencing Stone's sudden and devastating loss of her father who unexpectedly died in the midst of her recording sessions for the album, it marked a slight move away from Stone's signature sound in favor of more upbeat R&B and funk influences. A commercial failure, the album debuted and peaked at number 133 on the US Billboard 200 and failed to chart elsewhere. "I Ain't Hearin' U", the album's lead single reached number 14 on Billboard's Adult R&B Songs. In 2009, Stone had a minor role as a strip-club owner in Rockmond Dunbar's comedy drama Pastor Brown. Also that year, she sang "Wade in the Water" in the civil rights documentary Soundtrack for a Revolution (2009). In 2010, Stone then played the head matron of an all-girls school in the film, School Gyrls (2010), directed by Nick Cannon, which featured many Def Jam artists.

Along with NeNe Leakes, Stone co-starred in the play Loving Him is Killing Me that was performed in Washington, DC, Miami, and Philadelphia in May 2011. The play was written by Theo London and also starred Tyson Beckford and Christopher Williams. In 2012, Stone signed to Saguaro Road Records, an in-house music recording label of Time-Life, and released Rich Girl September 25, 2012. actor Malcolm-Jamal Warner contributed a poetry-slam-style spoken-word interlude to the record. Stone and Brian McKnight, who starred together in Chicago on Broadway, toured nationally in a production of Hinton Battle's Love Lies, which started with an engagement at the Warner Theatre in Washington, D.C. in April 2013. The cast also included Crystal Aikin and Elise Neal. Also in 2013, Stone appeared on season two of TVOne's R&B Divas. Stone's role was that of a mentor and life coach.

2015–present: Dream and Full Circle
In November 2015, Stone released her seventh studio album Dream on Shanachie Entertainment in collaboration with TopNotch Music and Conjunction Entertainment. Producer Walter Millsap III and Stone co-wrote the majority of the album with a core group that also included former The Clutch members Candice Nelson, Balewa Muhammad and producer Hallway Productionz. The album received positive reviews from critics who called the record "another solid and empowering effort," and debuted at number three at Top Hip-Hop/R&B Albums chart, with approximately 9,000 copies sold in its opening week. The album's first single, "2 Bad Habits" became a minor hit on the Adult R&B Songs chart. Following another label change, Stone released the cover album Covered in Soul through Goldenlane Records, compromising rendition of popular Phil Collins, Hot Chocolate, and Neil Diamond songs. Preceded by the single "These Eyes", a cover of the same-titled The Guess Who song, it failed to chart.

In July 2019, Stone released her ninth studio album Full Circle, on Conjunction Entertainment and Cleopatra Records. The album features the lead single "Dinosaur", produced by Walter Millsap III & Hallway Productionz.

Personal life
Stone has two children. Stone's daughter, Diamond, was born in 1984 and is from her marriage to Rodney Stone (also known as Lil' Rodney C!, from the hip-hop group Funky Four Plus One). Diamond contributed background vocals to Stone's 2007 song "Baby". Diamond gave birth to Stone's grandson in 2008 and another grandchild in July 2012.

During the 1990s, Stone was in a relationship with neo soul singer D'Angelo. They have a son named Michael D'Angelo Archer II. He was born in 1998.

Stone lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her son, Michael and her daughter, Diamond.

In March 2015, it was reported that Stone had been arrested for assaulting her 30-year-old daughter.

Stone was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1999 and, along with comedian-actor Anthony Anderson, was part of the F.A.C.E Diabetes (Fearless African-Americans Connected and Empowered) program sponsored by Eli Lilly and Company, which helps African Americans understand their risk for the disease and how to control it. Stone said that both her mother and her mother's sister were diabetic.

Discography
Studio albums
 * Black Diamond (1999)
 * Mahogany Soul (2001)
 * Stone Love (2004)
 * The Art of Love & War (2007)
 * Unexpected (2009)
 * Rich Girl (2012)
 * Dream (2015)
 * Covered in Soul (2016)
 * Full Circle (2019)
 * Love Language (2023)

Wins

 * 2000: Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards: Best R&B/Soul Single, Solo for "No More Rain (In This Cloud)"
 * 2000: Soul Train Lady of Soul Awards: Best R&B/Soul or Rap New Artist, Solo
 * 2004: Edison Award for Stone Love

Nominations

 * 2003 Grammy Awards: Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "More Than a Woman" (with Joe)
 * 2004 Grammy Awards: Best Female R&B Vocal Performance for "U-Haul"
 * 2008 Grammy Awards: Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocals for "Baby" (with Betty Wright)
 * 2008: BET Awards: BET J Award
 * 2008: BET J Virtual Awards: Album of the Year for The Art of Love & War

title: Angie Stone


text: User talk:194.60.106.9

title: User talk:194.60.106.9


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Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie

Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie (6 January 1900 – 12 June 1969) was a French journalist, politician and member of the French Resistance.

Biography
Born in Paris, he attended the Naval Academy but resigned from the French Navy in 1923. He became a journalist and a poet and was involved with the integralist and monarchist journal Action Française, but turned towards the Left after the Spanish Civil War (1936–39).

When the Second World War broke out, d'Astier re-enlisted into the French Navy and became the head of naval intelligence. However, after the fall of France and the proclamation of Vichy France, he was dismissed for his political dossier.

In Clermont-Ferrand, d'Astier formed the Resistant group La Dernière Colonne, later known as Libération-sud, with Raymond Aubrac, Lucie Aubrac and Jean Cavaillès. During 1941, the group carried out two sabotage attacks at train stations in Perpignan and Cannes. In February, they organised the distribution of 10,000 propaganda flyers, but one of the distributors was caught by the police, leading to the arrest of d'Astier's niece and uncle. The group decided to cease activities. After a few months' hiatus, they began to work on an underground newspaper, Libération. The first edition was put together with the help of the typographers from a local newspaper and printed on paper supplied by local trade-unionists. 10,000 copies were produced in July 1941.

In 1942 d'Astier met with Jean Moulin to discuss the unification of the Resistance and eventually joined forces into the Conseil National de la Résistance (CNR, National Council of Resistance). In 1943 he met Charles de Gaulle in Algiers and joined his Free French Forces government-in-exile as a Commissioner to the Interior.

While in London in 1943, he wrote the lyrics for the song "La Complainte du partisan" with Anna Marly, who wrote the music. In English, it is known as "The Partisan" and was recorded by Leonard Cohen, Joan Baez, Buffy Saint Marie and many others.

After the Liberation, d'Astier became Minister of Interior in the Provisional Government of the French Republic (GPRF). He continued to publish Libération and wrote books based on his experiences. He ran as an ally of the French Communist Party on the Union républicaine et résistante list in the November 1946 French legislative elections, and won a seat in the National Assembly for Ille-et-Vilaine. He was later among the founders of the Union progressiste. In 1958 he received the Lenin Peace Prize. D'Astier was one of the founders of the Stockholm Committee; he denounced the Soviet Union leadership under Nikita Khrushchev after the crushing of the Hungarian uprising, and broke ties with communists.

His brother, Henri d'Astier de la Vigerie, was from the far right, and, initially a member of the Action Française, may even have been involved with the Cagoule terrorist group. Ultimately, Henri d'Astier also took part in the Résistance.

Emmanuel d'Astier died in Paris in 1969. His wife Liubov was the second spouse of French politician Gaston Bergery (divorced in 1928) and the daughter of Bolshevik Leonid Krasin. They had three sons Jean-François, Christophe and Jérôme.

Family friend Joan Baez wrote and recorded a song, "Luba the Baroness", about learning of the death of the oldest son, Jean-François.

title: Emmanuel d'Astier de La Vigerie


text:
Aschenbrödel

Aschenbrödel (Cinderella) is a ballet written by Johann Strauss II. He had written all the principal parts of the ballet, and was intending to fill in the orchestration as time permitted. However, Strauss died in 1899, and it was finished by composer Josef Bayer in 1900.

History
The idea for Strauss to write a ballet came from Rudolf Lothar, editor of the influential magazine Die Waage (The Weighing Scales). This occurred after the music and dance critic Eduard Hanslick, having been encouraged by Strauss' impressive act 3 ballet score in his only opera, Ritter Pázmán, suggested that Strauss should write a full-score ballet. On 5 March 1898, a contest was organised in order to decide a proper scenario for Strauss' new ballet. The panel of judges consists of Hanslick; Gustav Mahler, the controversial conductor and composer who at the time also directed the Vienna Court Opera (including its ballet company); patron Nikolaus Dumba; Strauss himself, and Rudolf Lothar.

Finally, it was decided (after receiving over 700 entries) that the winner was a certain A. Kollmann from Salzburg. The prize money was even effected through a lawyer representative and there were even rumors circulated that Kollmann was a pseudonym and that he may even be a member of the royalty in Emperor Franz Josef's court.

Strauss was not particularly impressed with the scenario set in a modern department store, although he set to work almost immediately. He worked at his pace and refused to be rushed, and by the winter of 1898, he had completed act 1 and was able to perform small parts of the orchestral version on the piano. By the time Strauss died in Vienna on 3 June 1899, the work lay unfinished, although sketches of the entire work were already done.

Josef Bayer completed the work in 1900 and presented the score to Gustav Mahler for future production at the Vienna Court Opera. Mahler refused to appraise the score, doubting the originality of the work, as Bayer himself was also a ballet composer, and when shown the original score in Strauss' writing, he claimed that he could not care for the music. Many persistent rumors suggested that he was not interested in ballet at all and only concentrated on full-scale opera works. This has been disputed by the fact that Mahler himself was eager to obtain the rights to stage Tchaikovsky's The Sleeping Beauty ballet and that due to the lack of budget, he was not able to stage Aschenbrödel as envisioned in the scenario.

In 1901, Berlin's Royal Opera took interest in the score, with its directors captivated by the music, although they disapproved of the scenario. Their choreographer, Emil Graeb, suggested a change to the scenario and the task fell to Austrian writer Henrich Regel. The work's premiere on 2 May 1901 was a success, although reservations were made by Strauss' biographer, Ignaz Schnitzer, who commented that Bayer's orchestration fell short of Vienna's light-heartedness and the now-revised scenario was too "puritanical".

Mahler left the Vienna Court Opera at the end of the 1907 season. The new director, Felix Weingartner, who was impressed with the score, eagerly sought it out and conducted the orchestra himself at the premiere in Vienna on 4 October 1908. The ballet was regularly performed for seven years, achieving forty-six performances until the outbreak of World War I. Ironically, Mahler proved to be more accurate in his judgment as to the cost of the production, as the Viennese performances were expensive, and it was neglected until 1975 when the ballet was resurrected.

Summary of plot
The action takes place in a department store, The Four Seasons. The leading characters are Gustav, owner of the store, and Franz, his younger brother and rival for the love of Grete (Cinderella), who works in the women's fashions department. Grete's stepmother, Mme. Leontine, is the department's supervisor. She has, of course, two daughters who lord it over Grete and do not seem to work though they are often in the store. Another key character, Piccolo, Gustav's valet, is a travesty role. As mentioned, the ballerina (the part is referred to as "Floral") appears only in the ballroom (act 2) for the floral divertissement.

Typically, the printed program for Cinderella lists all the dances. From this inventory one gets an inkling how Viennese ballets at the time differed from those of Saint Petersburg, which we know at least a little. There are four dances in act 1. The first, called "Franz's Self-portrait", introduces the ballet's junior male lead (probably demicaractère) to the female cast of characters and to the audience. In this solo, Franz (Ferdinand Rathner) proclaims who he is and what he does. One of the things he masters is driving an automobile—dancemiming this topic seems very Léonide Massine. The stepsisters (danced by real sisters, Lydia and Olga Berger) have a Promenade Adventure and Piccolo (Luise Wopalenski) does a "Love Letter Delivery" to Grete (Marie Kohler) who, with her trained birds, dances the "Waltz of the Doves".

Apparently there are no ensemble dances in act 1, though there are several in act 2, at the party thrown by Gustav. First comes the "Marveilleusen Quadrille" for Franz and the female corps. A pas de trois, "Masked Game", is for the stepsisters and Gustav (Karl Godlewski, one of Joseph Haßreiter's deputy choreographers). Grete dances a solo named the "Blue Domino" after the costume she wears (probably as covering as she arrives at the party). The "Confections Waltz" (which may have something to do with the refreshments being served) features nine female soloists and the female corps; this is followed by a "Salon Quadrille" for four couples, a mazurka for the stepsisters, and Grete's big solo, the "Cinderella Waltz". The ballerina (Cäcilie Cerri, Vienna's last Italian prima, was "Flora") enters in a "Welcome with Flowers", which leads into the biggest dance number, the "Flowertorch Polonaise" with "Flora," Grete, thirteen female soloists, Gustav, four male soloists, the adult female corps and the group of female students.

An "Amoretten Polka" is the first dance in act 3, followed by the "Bridal-Treasure Waltz" for Grete, a female soloist, Piccolo, Gustav, and the female students. The next dance, "Old Vienna Porcelain", for Piccolo plus four solo women and four solo men, may represent a wedding present, and the final "Jewels Waltz" for Piccolo, nine female soloists and the female corps, is perhaps, the setting for the bridegroom's gift to his bride.

title: Aschenbrödel


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Catacombe dei Cappuccini

The Capuchin Catacombs of Palermo (also Catacombe dei Cappuccini or Catacombs of the Capuchins) are burial catacombs in Palermo, Sicily, southern Italy. Today they provide a somewhat macabre tourist attraction as well as an extraordinary historical record.

Historical background
Palermo's Capuchin monastery outgrew its original cemetery in the 16th century and monks began to excavate crypts below it. In 1599 they mummified one of their number, the recently-deceased brother Silvestro of Gubbio, and placed him in the catacombs.

Bodies were dehydrated on racks of ceramic pipes in the catacombs and sometimes later washed with vinegar. Some bodies were embalmed and others were enclosed in sealed glass cabinets. Friars were preserved with their everyday clothing and sometimes with ropes they had worn in penance.

Initially the catacombs were intended only for deceased friars. However, in later centuries it became a status symbol to be entombed in the Capuchin catacombs. In their wills, local luminaries would ask to be preserved in certain clothes, or even have their clothes changed at regular intervals. Priests wore their clerical vestments, while others were clothed according to contemporary fashion. Relatives would visit to pray for the deceased and to maintain the body in presentable condition.

The catacombs were maintained through donations from the relatives of the deceased. Each new body was placed in a temporary niche and later placed into a more permanent location. So long as contributions continued, the body remained in its proper place but if relatives stopped sending money, the body was put aside on a shelf until they resumed payments.

Interments
In 1871 Brother Riccardo was the last friar interred in the catacombs, but other famous people were interred after that. The catacombs were officially closed in 1880 but tourists continued to visit. The last burials are from the 1920s and 1930s. Among the final interments was Rosalia Lombardo, then nearly two years old, whose body remains remarkably intact, preserved with a procedure performed by Professor Alfredo Salafia. His process included formalin to kill bacteria, alcohol to dry the body, glycerin to keep it from over drying, salicylic acid to kill fungi, and the most important ingredients, zinc salts (zinc sulfate and zinc chloride) to give the body rigidity. The formula is one part glycerin, one part formalin saturated with both zinc salts, and one part of an alcohol solution saturated with salicylic acid. The final burial was that of Giovanni Licata di Baucina, the count of Isnello, in 1939.

The catacombs contain about 8,000 corpses and 1,252 mummies (as stated by last census made by EURAC in 2011) that line the walls. The halls are divided by category: men, women, virgins, children, priests, monks, and professionals. Some bodies are better preserved than others. Some are set in poses; for example, two children are sitting together in a rocking chair. The coffins were accessible to the families of the deceased so that on certain days the family, including the deceased, could join their hands in prayer.

Famous people buried in the catacombs include: Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa is sometimes said to be interred the catacombs, but he is buried in the cemetery next to them.
 * Filippo d'Austria, formerly Ayala, prince of Tunis and convert to Catholicism (1620)
 * Giuseppe Grimau, president of the kingdom (1755)
 * Vincenzo Natoli, judge (1770)
 * Lorenzo Marabitti, sculptor (early 19th c.)
 * Filippo Pennino, sculptor (1801)
 * Giuseppe Velasco, painter (1827)
 * Salvatore Manzella, surgeon (1835)
 * Alexandre Michaud de Beauretour, Piedmontese general and military advisor (1841, floor tomb)
 * Giulio Ascanio Enea, colonel and war committee member (1848)
 * Giovanni Corrao, partisan (1863)
 * Paolo Ragona, colonel of artillery (1863)
 * Bishop Agostino Franco (1877), titular Bishop of Hermopolis
 * Giovanni Paterniti, vice-consul of the United States (1911)
 * Ernesto Salafia, fencing master (1914)
 * Salvatore Auteri, opera composer (1924, tomb)

Scientific research
The Sicily Mummy Project was created in 2007 to study the mummies and to create profiles on those who were mummified. The project is led by anthropologist Dario Piombino-Mascali of the Department of Cultural Heritage and Sicilian Identity in Palermo, and is backed by the European Academy of Bozen/Bolzano The mummies are X-Rayed and CT scanned to collect information about them, along with other anthropological and paleopathological techniques to confirm their age and gender. Piombino-Mascali credits the program with re-opening discussion about death in Sicily;

"For many years the subject of death was taboo [in Sicily]. Now, given the scientific importance of what's emerging with these mummies, people are understanding that in Sicily, death has always been part of life. And for centuries many Sicilians were using mummification to make sure there was a constant relationship between life and death."

Forensic biologist Mark Benecke identified several insects that shed light on the mummification process.

Recent scientific research has focused on the identities of the children in the Capuchin Catacombs.

Tourism
The catacombs are open to the public. Photography inside is officially prohibited, which prominent signs make clear to visitors. However, some bodies have been shown on film in Francesco Rosi's Cadaveri Eccellenti ("Illustrious Corpses"), and television programmes such as the Channel 4 series Coach Trip, BBC TV series The Human Body in 1998, Francesco's Italy: Top to Toe, Ghosthunting With Paul O'Grady and Friends on ITV2 in 2008 and The Learning Channel in 2000. Iron grilles have been installed to prevent tourists tampering or posing with the corpses.

title: Catacombe dei Cappuccini


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Practical shooting

Practical shooting, also known as dynamic shooting or action shooting, is a set of shooting sports in which the competitors try to unite the three principles of precision, power, and speed, by using a firearm of a certain minimum power factor to score as many points as possible during the shortest time (or sometimes within a set maximum time). While scoring systems vary between organizations, each measures the time in which the course is completed, with penalties for inaccurate shooting. The courses are called "stages", and are shot individually by the shooters. Usually the shooter must move and shoot from several positions, fire under or over obstacles and in other unfamiliar positions. There are no standard exercises or set arrangement of the targets, and the courses are often designed so that the shooter must be inventive, and therefore the solutions of exercises sometimes vary between shooters.

International sanctioning bodies
There are several international sanctioning bodies:
 * The International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) is the oldest and largest sanctioning body within practical shooting. IPSC Open Division is sometimes considered the "Formula One" of shooting sports, and is shot with handguns, rifles and shotguns.
 * The United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) is the U.S. regional affiliate of IPSC. Many of USPSA's rules differ slightly from those used internationally.
 * The Steel Challenge Shooting Association, founded as a separate discipline, was purchased and integrated by USPSA in 2007. In Steel Challenge matches, competitors shoot five strings of fire at a series of five steel plates of varying sizes at varied distances in an attempt to achieve the fastest time possible for knocking down the plates. The order of fire is dictated by a plate designated as the stop plate which must be shot last. The longest time is dropped and the remaining four times are averaged for a composite stage time.
 * The International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) is a game based on the philosophy of using practical equipment to solve real world self-defense scenarios. Fundamental aspects include shooting from behind cover (when available) and a mandate on engaging targets immediately as they become visible. The sport was created to bring defensive tactics back as a component in addition to speed and accuracy.
 * Cowboy Action Shooting is quite similar to IPSC-shooting, but with an Old West theme. There are multiple international sanctioning bodies, with Single Action Shooting Society being the oldest and largest. Firearms must be either original or reproduction designs correct for the 19th century, such as Colt single-action pistols and Winchester rifles. The competitors must also choose and go by a cowboy nickname, and are required to look the part by using cowboy and cowgirl garments in late 19th century period dress.
 * Multigun, also called 2-Gun or 3-Gun depending on the weapons used, are shooting events with a combination of rifles, handguns and shotguns. While multi-gun has a lot in common with ordinary IPSC/USPSA matches, the biggest difference is that the shooter generally has to transition between the use of several different firearms in each stage. Among the largest annual multigun events in the USA are the USPSA Multigun Championship, the Rocky Mountain 3-Gun, the DPMS Tri-Gun Challenge, the Superstition Mountain Mystery 3-Gun, and the LaRue Tactical Multigun Championship.
 * Glock Sport Shooting Foundation (GSSF) is a competition sponsored by Glock and limited to participants using Glock pistols.

Origins

Practical shooting evolved from experimentation with firearms for hunting and self-defense. The researchers of what were to become practical shooting were an international group of private individuals, law enforcement officers, and military people generally operating independently of each other, challenging the then-accepted standards of technique, training practices, and equipment. The work was, for the most part, conducted for their own purposes without official sanction. Even so, what they learned has had a great impact on police and military training forever.

Some consider the previous Olympic event 100 meter running deer as the first practical rifle shooting competition, which originated in Wimbledon, London in 1862. Other notable rifle speed shooting events are Stang shooting (stangskyting) which has been arranged since 1912, and Nordic field rapid shooting (called felthurtig, sekundfält and sekundskydning in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, respectively) which has been a part of the Nordic Fullbore Rifle Championship since 1953. Around 1900, efforts were done to develop more effective uses of handguns in combat shooting, mainly through experiments by two Britons, Captain William E. Fairbairn and Sergeant Eric A. Sykes. The first known attempts at developing practical shooting as a handgun sport were done in the U.S. before the Second World War, but the attempts resulted in little.

Shortly after the second world war a distinct combat shooting sport for handguns known as stridsskyting became popular in Norway. This form of shooting had few similarities with the practical pistol sport which would later emerge. During the 10 to 12 years of its existence, what today is known as field shooting gradually took over as the more popular form of pistol shooting in Norway, and the original stridsskyting was completely gone as a discipline in the beginning of the 1960s. Stridsskyting later also was used separately to describe the completely different sport of IPSC-style practical shooting during its infancy in Norway.

In the early 1950s, practical handgun competitions as we know them today emerged in the USA. Competitions begun with the leather slap quick draw events, which had grown out of America's love affair with the TV westerns of that era. However, many wished for a forum that would more directly test the results of the experimentation in modern technique that had been going on at the Bear Valley Gunslingers at Big Bear Lake, California and other places. Competitions were set up to test what had been learned, and they soon grew into a distinct sport, requiring competitors to deal with constantly changing scenarios. The first public competition was at the Big Bear Lake in 1957. In 1969, the South-West-Pistol-League was formed by individual shooters and clubs from California, which to this day is one of the oldest clubs for practical shooting.

The first IPSC World Shoot was held in 1975 in Zurich, about two years before IPSC was formally founded. Ray Chapman from the U.S. became the first ever world class practical pistol champion. The next year, the 1976 IPSC Handgun World Shoot followed with Jan Foss from Norway taking gold. On 24 May 1976 the International Practical Shooting Confederation was formally founded at the Columbia conference in Columbia, Missouri, with representation in fourteen nations. Jeff Cooper was unanimously chosen as the first president. Between 1974 and 1979, stridsskytterligaen (literally the Combat Shooting League) had been the forerunner of IPSC shooting in Norway, until the Norwegian Association for Practical Shooting took over and was incorporated into IPSC in 1979.

Finland pioneered IPSC Rifle in Scandinavia in the beginning of the 1980s, and the discipline soon spread to Norway where the first competitions were held in Stavanger February 1984. In 1987 the first official Norwegian Rifle Championship was held, and the championship has been held annually since. South Africa has held IPSC Rifle and Shotgun matches since 1983, and IPSC multigun matches since 1984.

The United Kingdom Practical Shooting Association (UKPSA) was founded in 1977, and initially focused on practical handgun competitions. In the 1980s, practical shotgun competitions were held both by UKPSA as well as another organisation known as the Combat Shotgun Society. UKPSA also held IPSC practical rifle competitions, while the NRA UK has held a separate discipline known as NRA Practical Rifle competitions with courses usually including physical elements. Today, the NRA UK also holds Practical Shotgun competitions (PSG) alongside the IPSC Shotgun of UKPSA.

One of the first 3-Gun matches to be held in the United States was the Soldier of Fortune matches held in 1979 in Missouri, but these matches were neither associated with USPSA nor IPSC. The first USPSA Multigun Championship was held in 1990 at Pike-Adams Sportsmen's Alliance (PASA) in Barry, Illinois, but USPSA did not take on multigun full-time until around 2000. In Finland multigun matches have been held since around 1992.

Australia held a Rifle and Shotgun Championship in September 1987, and the first IPSC European Shotgun Championship was held in October 1987 at the National Shooting Centre in Bisley, England, a couple of days before the seventh IPSC European Handgun Championship at the same shooting range.

In the beginning IPSC Shotgun and Rifle competitions were run using the IPSC Handgun Competition Rules with small adjustments. Adjustments were later formalized in supplementary rulebooks, e.g. UKPSA published a supplementary Rifle and Shotgun rulebook in 1989. Since 1996 IPSC Shotgun and Rifle rules have been published in standalone rulebooks separate from the IPSC Handgun rules.

Organizations
In 1976, an international group of enthusiasts, interested in what had become known as "practical shooting", met in Columbia, Missouri. From that meeting came the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC). In 1984, the United States Practical Shooting Association (USPSA) was incorporated as the US Region of IPSC. After many years of established IPSC competition, some shooters, including some of the original founders, became dissatisfied with IPSC, as more specialized equipment was allegedly required to remain competitive. The International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) was formed in 1996 with the aim of returning to the defensive pistol roots of practical shooting. Soon after this split, the USPSA devised a series of competition "divisions" with varying limits on type and modification of equipment, including a "Production" division with rules similar to the IDPA's regulations. Today USPSA and IDPA matches are two of the most popular forums of practical handgun shooting in the United States, with more than 25,000 and 11,000 members respectively.

In 1977 the UKPSA was formed to promote and regulate practical pistol shooting in the UK, and became England's regional affiliate of the IPSC. The association proved very popular, gaining international respect within the practical shooting community, and hosted many National, European and International competitions. Despite the 1997 Firearms Amendment Act in the UK, worldwide practical shooting is currently the second most popular international target shooting discipline and now the fastest growing. Most pistol shooting in the UK suffered severely after the handgun ban, which wiped out many shooting disciplines by removing the ability to participate. Practical shotgun has gained much popularity since the handgun ban, with numerous graded matches each year, and large entries to the European Practical Shotgun Championships.

Scoring methods
Various scoring methods are used:
 * Comstock, sometimes called hit factor scoring
 * Time plus
 * Points down
 * Virginia count
 * Fixed time (par time)

title: Practical shooting