Thara Ak-Var is a fictional character appearing in comic books published by DC Comics, created by Geoff Johns and James Robinson. The character first appeared during the Superman: New Krypton storyline in Superman #681 (October 2008). She is the latest character to take on the role of Flamebird. Along with the new Nightwing, Thara is the feature character in Action Comics beginning with issue #875 (May 2009). Thara Ak-Var's name is a reference to Ak-Var, who was the second pre-Crisis Flamebird, and his wife, Thara.

This character was portrayed by Esmé Bianco in the third season of Supergirl.

Fictional character biography

Silver Age
In the Silver Age, Thara was the wife of Ak-Var, lab assistant to the Kandorian scientist Van-Zee, who was also Thara's uncle. At one point, Van-Zee donned the Nightwing costume to rescue a captured Superman. After Superman and Jimmy's departure from Kandor, Van-Zee took up the role of Nightwing full-time. Ak-Var later assumed the mantle of Flamebird. The two shared several distinct adventures, once teaming up with Superman and Jimmy.

Modern Age
Thara Ak-Var lived in Argo City and was a childhood friend of Kara Zor-El. While Kara's parents were members of the Science Guild, Thara's parents were both of the Military Guild and had served under General Zod.

Thara was among the few survivors of Krypton’s destruction. Zor-El created a force field around all of Argo City to protect it using technology found after Brainiac’s capture of Kandor. Sensing his own technology being used, Brainiac tracked down Argo City and began to integrate it with Kandor, and killing those who tried to stop him, including Thara's parents. While Zor-El and Alura managed to assist their daughter in escaping, everyone else in Argo City was captured by Brainiac, including Thara.

Life in the shrunken city continued, though at a slower rate than the rest of the universe. Despite her young age and inexperience in actual combat, Thara was made chief of security for Kandor. She was adamant that no one think she did not earn her position.

Shortly afterward, Thara was approached by Kandor's religious guild, who conducted a ceremony that granted Thara a vision of the Flamebird, a mythical Kryptonian creature. The religious guild, believing Thara to be the living avatar of the Flamebird, took her into their ranks. One day Thara felt her mind connect with that of Chris Kent's, who himself seemed to have some kind of connection to the Nightwing, the Flamebird's partner deity. Reclaiming her position as chief of Security, Thara used a protective suit invented by Zor-El to enter the Phantom Zone, free Chris, and bring him to Kandor in secret.

When Superman discovered Kandor in Brainiac's ship, the imprisoned Kryptonians were all freed. Thara was reunited with her friend, Kara.

New Krypton
When the Kryptonians agreed to meet with the President of the United States in Metropolis, it was Thara who trained Zor-El and Alura's escorts. She also organized the evacuation of the area when Doomsday attacked the Kryptonian delegation. After Kara's father, Zor-El, was murdered by Reactron in Kandor, Alura came to blame Thara for her husband's death, as security within the city was her responsibility.

Thara Ak-Var began operating on Earth as the superhero Flamebird, aided by Chris as Nightwing. Both heroes work from the Fortress of Solitude where they initially stood guard over the Phantom Zone projector to stop Kryptonian soldiers from releasing Zod.

A World Without Superman
After all Kryptonians except for Superman are restricted from coming to Earth, Thara and Chris Kent remained behind in their guises of Flamebird and Nightwing. To further hide their Kryptonian origins, the duo began wearing powersuit versions of their costumes. The young heroes are tracking down Kryptonian sleeper agents operating on Earth by order of General Zod. Chris discovered the identities of these agents while his parents kept him prisoner in the Phantom Zone.

When Zod became aware of Flamebird and Nightwing's actions against his agents he sent Ursa to Earth to stop them. After a brutal attack by Ursa, Thara left gravely wounded by a frangible Kryptonite knife, and Chris was forced to bring her to Lois Lane for medical assistance. She was saved by the efforts of the JLA heroine, Doctor Light who used her powers to accelerate her sun absorption. Thara recovered, and joined Chris in an attempt to bring in a violent sleeper couple. Their battle was interrupted by a group of meta-human adversaries led by Codename: Assassin. During the fight, the sleepers escaped, pursued by Chris. Codename: Assassin's forces managed to pin Thara, and he used his psychic abilities to read her mind, learning about Chris and the sleepers. When Assassin threatened Chris's life, Thara's body erupted into flames, and she screamed "Get out of our mind!" in Kryptonian. Thara went on to defeat her attackers, but left them alive, stating: "We are not vengeful. But we will fight to protect what is ours, what we love. You are warned". After battling the sleeper couple, Chris and Thara become celebrity superheroes with an adoring public. Thara was uncomfortable with the female attention Chris got, especially after discovering a fan's phone number stuffed into Chris's armor. Thara denied feelings of jealousy, but Chris responded by kissing her. The two were then attacked by the Kryptonian sleeper couple. They chased them into the subway, only to find that it was really Metallo and Reactron in disguise. Thara and Chris were then swiftly defeated and captured.

Chris and Thara are teleported away, along with Supergirl. Supergirl attacks Thara, for killing her father and trying to kill her, but Chris stops her and tells her he is her cousin. The three are attacked by Guardian and the Science Police, for apparently killing Mon-El. Chris tries to tell Guardian that they did not murder Mon-El, but Guardian ignores him. The three manage to escape to Paris. Chris, Thara and Kara talk about what has happened. They then discover that the two sleepers they were fighting were Metallo and Reactron. They are then attacked by Squad K.

Escaping from Squad K, the three go to Lana Lang's apartment. They decide to get Lois's help in clearing their names. Chris and Lana go to find Lois while Kara and Thara stay in Lana's apartment.

Once more while being left alone the two girls argue over their perceived betrayals of another, with Supergirl blaming Thara for her father's death and Thara being angry due to Kara not believing her about the Flamebird entity. After a brief argument the two along with Chris are once more forced to flee. During the attempt to flee they once more encounter Squad K but the three opt to surrender to clear their names. While they manage to persuade the Squad K commander, Reactron quickly murders his team-mates and attempts to kill the three.

During their conflict Thara is injured while attempting to protect Supergirl. As Reactron is about to kill Chris and Kara, Thara manifests her Flamebird powers and personality in which she easily overpowers and defeats Reactron. The Flamebird decides to kill Reactron but is swayed to show mercy after Reactron reveals that Mon-El is alive and is talked down by Supergirl. The Flamebird is once more submerged after sharing a kiss with Chris. Following their battle Thara and Kara make up, deciding to renew their friendship.

Donning new costumes, Thara and Chris continue to protect the world, making sure to conceal their Kryptonian status. Thara shows slight jealousy over Chris getting fangirl attention, and in the ensuing argument, shares another kiss. On their return to their apartment, however, Chris undergoes another aging spurt becoming an old man. Under Kimiyo Hoshi's direction, Thara takes Chris to the renowned Dr. Pillings, who, unbeknownst to anyone, is actually the Kryptonian sleeper agent Jax-Ur. "Pillings" intentionally subjects Chris to a treatment that causes him extreme pain, causing enough emotional stress in Thara for the Flamebird to become dominant again. Realizing who the doctor really is, the Flamebird is forced into an unspecified agreement with Jax-Ur, after which he ensures Chris/the Nightwing's survival.

Superman: War of the Supermen
In the 2010 mini-series Superman: War of the Supermen, as Zod and the New Kryptonians prepare to attack earth, General Lane, working with Lex Luthor, finds a way to turn Reactron into a living bomb that destroys all of New Krypton. At the same time, Lane and Luthor use elements from the Rao construct to turn the sun red, which depowers the Kryptonians, many of whom die in space. Flamebird realizes that the only way to save the surviving Kryptonians is to unleash her power in the heart of the sun. It is implied by the dialogue that this act is Thara's final destiny, and the artwork shows her skeletal remains.

Powers and abilities
Thara has all the standard abilities of a Kryptonian exposed to the light of a yellow sun: super strength, super speed, invulnerability, flight, heat vision, super-breath, x-ray vision, and super hearing. She also possesses an undefined connection to the mythic "Flamebird" entity, which gives her the ability to create flame, and gives her a psychic link to Chris Kent. This connection to the Flamebird seems to be symbiotic in nature, as Thara recently referred to herself as "we" when attacking the warriors who threatened Chris.

The "Flamebird" entity further displays an immunity to gold kryptonite and is able to restore Thara to full health even after she was injured by Reactron. Furthermore, the "Flamebird" seems to be, like Thara, attracted to Chris Kent.

Like all Kryptonians, Thara is weakened by Kryptonite radiation and fatally vulnerable to prolonged exposure.

In other media

Television
Thara Ak-Var appears in The CW's live-action Arrowverse series Supergirl, portrayed by Esmé Bianco. This version is the police chief of Argo City.

Film
Thara Ak-Var appears in Superman: Unbound as a resident of Kandor, voiced by Melissa Disney.

References

Characters created by Geoff Johns
Characters created by James Robinson
Comics characters introduced in 2008
DC Comics aliens
DC Comics characters who can move at superhuman speeds
DC Comics characters who have mental powers
DC Comics characters with accelerated healing
DC Comics characters with superhuman durability or invulnerability
DC Comics characters with superhuman senses
DC Comics characters with superhuman strength
DC Comics extraterrestrial superheroes
DC Comics female superheroes
Fictional characters with absorption or parasitic abilities
Fictional characters with air or wind abilities
Fictional characters with energy-manipulation abilities
Fictional characters with fire or heat abilities
Fictional characters with ice or cold abilities
Fictional characters with nuclear or radiation abilities
Fictional characters with slowed ageing
Fictional characters with X-ray vision
Flamebird
Kryptonians
Superman characters


Christian Graf von Forbach, then Christian Marquis de Deux-Ponts and later Christian Freiherr von Zweibrücken (20 November 1752 – 25 October 1817) was an officer of the French Army and later a general of the Royal Prussian and then of the Bavarian Army, at last in the rank of General der Infanterie. He should not be confused with his nephew Christian Freiherr von Zweibrücken (aka Christian Graf von Forbach, 1782–1859), who was a Bavarian General of Cavalry (General der Kavallerie).

Early life and ancestry
Christian von Zweibrücken was the first of six children of Christian IV Herzog von Pfalz-Zweibrücken and Maria Johanna Camasse, Gräfin von Forbach (1734-1807). He was born in Zweibrücken. The children were unable to succeed to their father's Duchy due to the morganatic nature of their parents' marriage at first, but were allowed to wear the name Freiherr von Zweibrücken in 1792.

Biography
Due to a former business agreement from March 1751 between Louis XV of France and his father, who promised to the French king to raise a battalion of infantry for France when and if needed, the Infantry Regiment "Royal Deux-Ponts" (raised on 19, 1757) of two battalions to the French crown after the outbreak of the Seven Years' War, when it was at first deployed in the Battle of Rossbach. The commander of the regiment at this time was Christian von Forbach, and his brother Philippe Guillaume (later renamed to Wilhelm) was deputy commander. As part of De Rochambeau's expedition corps he led the "Royal Deux-Ponts" during the American Revolutionary War, where the regiment proved in the Battle of Yorktown, also called the "German Battle", on October 4, 1781. In 1783 he married Adélaïde-Françoise de Béthune-Pologne (1761–1823). The couple had three daughters. The first of them Maria Amalia Charlotte Auguste died in her year of birth 1784. The others were Maria Amalia Charlotte Franziska Auguste Eleonore (1786–1839) and Kasimira Maria Louise Antoinette (1787–1846).

Because of the French Revolution, he left the French forces in the rank of a Colonel, meanwhile titled Freiherr von Zweibrücken, and was taken over by the Prussian Army in the rank of a Major General, where he took part in the campaigns against France during 1794 and 1797.

In the end of the century he was taken over on his request by the Bavarian Army, where he became Lieutenant General and provincial commander of the Palatinate region. In spring of 1800 he became commander of a division, merged from the brigades of Von Deroy and von Wrede, and fought under the Austrian Feldzeugmeister Kray and under Archduke John of Austria against France for the British crown.

In 1808 he became Geheimer Rat (), and in January 1811 he was promoted to the rank of General der Infanterie. Obviously Von Zweibrücken had also plans to replace von Montgelas by his son-in-law Graf Karl Ernst von Gravenreuth (1771–1826), who was married to his daughter Kasimira. He died in Munich, where he and his brother Wilhelm are buried in the Old Southern Cemetery.

In the European Rose Garden in Zweibrücken a memorial remembers him and his brother.

Awards
 Cincinnati Order
 Order of the Red Eagle (6 June 1796)
 Kurpfalz-Bavarian Military Honour Award ( Militär-Ehrenzeichen) (24 March 1801, predecessor of the Military Order of Max Joseph)
 Grand Cross of the Military Order of Max Joseph (1 March 1806)

References and notes

1752 births
1817 deaths
People from Zweibrücken
Counts Palatine of Zweibrücken
Major generals of Prussia
Bavarian generals
French Army officers
House of Wittelsbach
French military personnel of the American Revolutionary War
Grand Crosses of the Military Order of Max Joseph
German commanders of the Napoleonic Wars
Sons of monarchs
Military personnel from Rhineland-Palatinate


Newey and Eyre was an electrical wholesaling company based in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1926, the company is now part of Rexel.

History
Established in 1926, Newey & Eyre has celebrated over 80 years of service to the electrical wholesale market. Over the years the business has been acquired by a number of different holding company but has remained relatively unchanged by the corporate mergers.

In 1993 Investor Group Hagemeyer acquired Newey & Eyre Group Ltd from Invensys PLC and in 2008 Newey and Eyre was acquired by Rexel.

In 2009 Newey and Eyre launched an online store, Neweys Online.

Newey & Eyre operates in the UK through a national network of nearly 130 branches with a profiled stock range of more than 32,000 different lines. Another 140,000 products are available either from stock or to special order. Newey and Eyre also hold a range of over 3.500 own branded products called Newlec.

Newey and Eyre's head office is based in Birmingham, West Midlands at Eagle Court.

In 2008 Newey & Eyre opened the capital's first dedicated facilities management centre.

In 2016 Newey & Eyre rebranded to Rexel as part of the One Rexel transformation programme.

References

Guardian

External links
 Rexel UK, Parent Company

Companies based in Birmingham, West Midlands


Crooked X is the first and only album by heavy metal band Crooked X, released in January 2009 by Capitol Metal. The band's musicians were all 14 years of age when the album was released, but tracks were written when members were as young as 11 (for example, "Nightmare"). "Nightmare" is featured in the music video game Rock Band, while "Gone" and "Rock 'N' Roll Dream" are featured as downloadable content for the Rock Band series.

Track listing

Credits

Band
Boomer Simpson - Drums, Backing Vocals
Forrest French - Lead Vocals, Guitar
Jesse Cooper - Guitar, Backing Vocals
Josh McDowell - Bass

References

2009 debut albums


Minuscule 398 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), α 398 (Soden), is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Paleographically it has been assigned to the 10th century.
Formerly it was designated by 9a and 11p.

Description

The codex contains the text of the Acts of the Apostles, General epistles, and Pauline epistles on 251 parchment leaves () with lacunae (Acts 3:6-17; 1 Timothy 4:12-2 Timothy 4:3; Hebrews 7:20-11:10; 11:23-13:25). It is written in one column per page, in 22 lines per page.

Text

The Greek text of the codex is a representative of the Byzantine text-type with exception for the General epistles. Aland placed it in Category V (except General epistles). The text of General epistles Aland assigned to the Category III.

Aland gave for it the following textual profile: Acts 751 281/2 42 1s, Cath 621 71/2 162 13s, Paul 1581 481/2 32 0S.

 1: agreements with the Byzantine text
 1/2: agreements with the Byzantine text where it has the same reading as the original text
 2: agreements with the original text
 S: independent or distinctive readings ("Sonderlesarten").

History

Gregory dated it to the 11th or 12th century. Currently it is dated by the INTF to the 10th century.

The manuscript once belonged to François Vatable, friend of Robert Estienne and professor of Hebrew in Paris. The manuscript probably was used in Editio Regia as ιγ'.
It was slightly examined by Scholz, who catalogued it twice (as 9a and 112a). Fenton Hort examined Catholic epistles. C. R. Gregory saw it in 1886. In 1908 Gregory gave for it number 398.

In the 18th century it was used as an argument against the authenticity of the Comma Johanneum.

Formerly it was designated by 9a and 11p. In 1908 Gregory gave the number 398 to it.

The manuscript is currently housed at the Cambridge University Library (Kk. 6.4) in Cambridge.

Former 398
Formerly number 398 (Scholz) belonged to a commentary housed in the Turin National University Library (C. II. 5). It contains 310 leaves (31.1 by 21.8 cm), written in 2 columns and 30 lines per page, dated to the 13th century. Gregory saw it in 1886. In 1908 Gregory removed it from the list of the New Testament manuscripts because it is rather a commentary, with incomplete text of the Gospels. It was examined and described by Giuseppe Passini (as 109).

See also

 List of New Testament minuscules
 Biblical manuscript
 Textual criticism

References

Further reading

Greek New Testament minuscules
10th-century biblical manuscripts


The Tangenziale di Mestre (Mestre beltway), or Autostrada A57, was opened to traffic on 3 September 1972 in northern Italy.

Overview
The original design was to have a central dual carriageway as Autostrada A4 (motorway A4), and alongside a separated single carriageway to serve as a local beltway (similar to what was built around Bologna) but it had high costs for a motorway that was not expected to carry much through traffic. East of Venice, it could go only to Udine and Trieste, the latter was at that time the border with the Iron Curtain. The opposition of conservationist groups to a double dual carriageway running inside a city caused the plan to reduce to a single dual carriageway section instead, serving both as Autostrada A4 and local beltway.

Increased traffic
By the 1990s, it became evident that a road designed to cope with a 55,000-vehicle daily traffic level would not be able for  traffic levels of up to 150,000–170,000 vehicles (of which 30% were HGVs) by the early 2000s.

A first but temporary solution was to open a "third dynamic lane" on each carriageway: in the most trafficked hours, the emergency lane was suppressed, to be used as a lane for lorries and slow vehicles.

Passante di Mestre

A second definitive solution was to build the Passante di Mestre: opened on 8 February 2009, after about 4 years and a half of construction. It completely bypasses the Tangenziale di Mestre, finally separating Autostrada A4 from the local beltway.

Today, the "third dynamic lane" is still used, but daily traffic has greatly decreased. Speed limit is 90 km/h on faster lanes, 60 km/h on slower ones; a small part, near the interchange with Autostrada A27, has a 50 km/h to 60 km/h speed limit.

The old Tangenziale di Mestre has now to be called, more properly, Tangenziale di Venezia (with new highway identification code: A57): indeed, it is longer than the old Mestre one, because the Passante di Mestre bypasses all the area around Venice, beginning west just after Padua, going north almost to Treviso, and ending east near Quarto d'Altino. So that the old exits of Dolo and Mira, before part of Autostrada A4, are today part of the Tangenziale. Unfortunately, the signage has not been adapted to take account of this development confusing the poor motorist without local knowledge. For example, travelling east, a sign directs the motorist onto the A57 and that's the last time you will see any reference to A57. The signage quickly reverts to the out-of-date A4 or uses the European route signage.

The beltway is managed by Società delle Autostrade di Venezia e Padova and Autovie Venete S.p.A.

Route

See also
Autostrada A4
Autostrada A27
Venice

References

External links
A short history of the Tangenziale

1972 establishments in Italy
Ring roads in Italy
Autostrade in Italy
Transport in Veneto


Acronicta oblinita, the smeared dagger moth or arioch dagger, is a moth of the family Noctuidae. Its larva, the smartweed caterpillar, has urticating hairs.  The species was first described by James Edward Smith in 1797.

Description
The smeared dagger moth adult has a wingspan of . The forewings have a mottled gray appearance, with orbicular and reniform spots on each dorsal surface that are incompletely outlined and indistinct.  Smeared-appearing dark wedge spots are present along the postmedial line with their apices pointed inward. There is a terminal line of dark spots on the forewing.  The hindwings are white and also have small dark spots along their terminal line.

The larva is a caterpillar up to  long that bears numerous tufts of irritating setae on wart-like protuberances along its thoracic and abdominal segments.  There are bright yellow blotches in the shape of carets (inverted "V" shapes) between the laterally-positioned spiracles.

Range
The smeared dagger moth is found across Canada as far north as Lake Athabasca.  In the United States, the moth is found in the Pacific Northwest and east of the Rocky Mountains south to Florida and Texas.

Habitat
Habitats include bogs and coastal marshes in the Pacific Northwest and wetlands, forests and meadows more generally.  Individuals have been collected in boreal forests in Canada.

Life cycle

The smeared dagger moth has one to two generations per year. In the coastal plain of North Carolina, adults can be seen beginning in early March through late June and again from mid-August until early October. Caterpillars may pupate within folded leaves of their host plant. Overwintering occurs as pupae.

Host plants

Larval hosts:
Salix spp.
Alnus spp.
Fragaria spp.
Typha spp.
Chamaenerion angustifolium
Polygonum spp.

References

External links

Acronicta
Moths of North America
Taxa named by James Edward Smith
Moths described in 1797


Cyrille Doyon (October 28, 1842 – January 7, 1918) was a Quebec merchant, farmer and political figure. He represented Laprairie in the House of Commons of Canada from 1887 to 1891 as an independent Liberal and Laprairie in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec from 1892 to 1897 as a Conservative member.

He was born in St-Isidore, Canada East, the son of Antoine Doyon and Marie-Archange Pépin dit Lachance, and was educated at the Collège de Montréal. Doyan was a justice of the peace and an inspector for the Farmers' Assurance Company and for the Sovereign Assurance Company. In 1869, he married Vitaline Riopel. Doyon served as mayor of Saint-Isidore from 1874 to 1876. He established the first butter factory in Saint-Isidore in 1885. Doyon was defeated when he ran for reelection to the House of Commons in 1891 and when he ran for reelection to the Quebec assembly in 1897. He moved to Montreal in 1898. Doyon died there at the age of 75 and was buried in the Notre-Dame-des-Neiges Cemetery.

References

1842 births
1918 deaths
Members of the House of Commons of Canada from Quebec
Conservative Party of Quebec MNAs
Mayors of places in Quebec
People from Montérégie
Canadian justices of the peace
Burials at Notre Dame des Neiges Cemetery


This is a list of people who served as Chief Whip of the Ulster Unionist Party in the Parliament of the United Kingdom, the Parliament of Northern Ireland and the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Parliament of the United Kingdom
1886: William Ellison-Macartney and Robert Uniacke-Penrose-Fitzgerald
James Kilfedder
1974: Robert Bradford
1975: Harold McCusker
1978: William Ross
1997: Martin Smyth
2001: Roy Beggs
2005: Post vacant
2015: None appointed

Parliament of Northern Ireland
Until 1969, Chief Whips were given the title "Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Finance".

1921: Herbert Dixon, 1st Baron Glentoran
1942: Sir Norman Stronge
1944: Sir Wilson Hungerford
1945: Lancelot Curran
1947: Walter Topping
1956: Brian Faulkner
1959: Isaac George Hawthorne
1963: William Craig
1963: James Chichester-Clark
1966: Post vacant
1968: Roy Bradford
1969: John Dobson
1971: John Brooke

Assistant Whips
Until 1969, Assistant Whips were given the title "Assistant Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Finance".
1921: Thomas Henry Burn
1925: Henry Mulholland
1929: Sir Basil Brooke
1933: Sir Wilson Hungerford
1941: Sir Norman Stronge
1942: Robert Corkey
1943: vacant
1945: John Edgar Bailey
1958: Harry West
1958: William James Morgan
1961: William Fitzsimmons
1963: James Chichester-Clark
1963: vacant
1965: Isaac George Hawthorne
1966: Roy Bradford and Samuel Magowan
1967: Samuel Magowan and vacancy
1968: Samuel Magowan and Joseph Burns
1969: Samuel Magowan and John William Kennedy

Northern Ireland Assembly
1973: Lloyd Hall-Thompson
1975: Austin Ardill
1982: William Douglas
1996: Robert Coulter
1998: Jim Wilson
2001: Ivan Davis
2004: David McClarty
2007: David McNarry
2008: Fred Cobain
2011: John McCallister
2012: Robin Swann
2017: Steve Aiken
2019: Robbie Butler
2021: John Stewart

See also

Ulster Unionist Party
Political whips


Sobieski is a Polish vodka brand. This company became a property of Marie Brizard Wine & Spirits in 1998.

Sobieski is named after Jan III Sobieski, king of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth from 1674 to 1696. His nickname is the "Lion of Lechistan."

Sobieski's basic vodka is a 100% pure rye vodka. It is distilled in Poland with rye (cultivar Dankowski) and water only. Sobieski also produces four flavored vodkas made from fruit juice: Raspberry, Lemon, Orange, and Vanilla. Two vodka-based liqueurs are also produced by the label: Strawberry and Caramel.

The Sobieski company was founded in 1846 by H.A. Winkelhausen in Koniaków, and produced over 60 types of alcohol. Following World War II, the Koniaków distillery was rebuilt and consolidated under the state monopoly on Vodka production. In 2003, Production moved to Starogard Gdański.

In 2009, American actor Bruce Willis signed a contract to become the international face of Belvedere SA's Sobieski Vodka in exchange for 3.3% ownership in the company.

References

External links

Alcoholic drink brands
Polish brands
Polish vodkas
Rye-based drinks


Acronicta tritona, the Triton dagger moth, is a moth of the family Noctuidae. The species was first described by Jacob Hübner in 1818. It is found in eastern North America, from Nova Scotia west to north-eastern Alberta, south to Florida and Texas, and west to Oregon.

The wingspan is 35–40 mm.

The larva feeds on Helonias bullata and Vaccinium species, including Oxycoccos species and Vaccinium stamineum.

References

External links

tritona
Moths of North America
Moths described in 1818


"Macushla" is the title of an Irish song that was copyrighted in 1910, with music by Dermot Macmurrough (Harold R. White) and lyrics by Josephine V. Rowe.

The title is a transliteration of the Irish mo chuisle, meaning "my pulse" as used in the phrase a chuisle mo chroí, which means "pulse of my heart", and thus mo chuisle has come to mean "darling" or "sweetheart".

Utilisations in music
"Macushla" became the signature tune in the 1912 musical Macushla by Chauncey Olcott.

The song was recorded by a number of operatic tenors including John McCormack, James McCracken, Christian Ketter, Kenneth McKellar and Josef Locke.

Utilisations in movies
 1945: In Christmas in Connecticut, starring Barbara Stanwyck, the cow was called Macushla.
 1996: The song was used in the historical drama, Michael Collins.
 2004: In Million Dollar Baby, trainer Frankie has "Mo Chuisle" embroidered on the silks of boxer Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank) for her first overseas fight, and it is subsequently chanted by the various crowds in the film numerous times.

References

Irish songs


Alagie Sosseh (born 21 July 1986) is a Gambian football player who plays for Assyriska FF.

Career
Sosseh has played for Hammarby IF and Landskrona BoIS. In December 2015, Sosseh transferred to Siah Jamegan of the Persian Gulf Pro League.

International career
As of 31 March 2011, he has played seven internationals for the Gambian national football team.

Personal life
Sosseh is the brother of the professional footballer Sal Jobarteh.

References

External links
  (archive)

Living people
1986 births
Swedish people of Gambian descent
People with acquired Gambian citizenship
Gambian men's footballers
Expatriate men's footballers in Iran
Swedish men's footballers
Swedish expatriate men's footballers
The Gambia men's international footballers
Men's association football forwards
Men's association football defenders
Landskrona BoIS players
Hammarby Talang FF players
Hammarby Fotboll players
AFC Eskilstuna players
IK Sirius Fotboll players
Mjøndalen IF Fotball players
Nest-Sotra Fotball players
IK Frej players
Akropolis IF players
Assyriska FF players
Enskede IK players
Song Lam Nghe An FC players
IFK Haninge players
Allsvenskan players
Superettan players
Norwegian First Division players
Eliteserien players
Persian Gulf Pro League players
V.League 1 players
TFF First League players
Expatriate men's footballers in Norway
Expatriate men's footballers in Turkey
Expatriate men's footballers in Vietnam
Gambian expatriate sportspeople in Norway

Gambian expatriate sportspeople in Turkey
Footballers from Stockholm


Chris Banks may refer to:
Chris Banks (poet) (born 1970), Canadian poet
Chris Banks (footballer, born 1965), English former professional footballer
Chris Banks (athlete) (born 1978), American marathon runner
Chris Banks (American soccer) (born 1987), American soccer player
Chris Banks (American football) (1973–2014), former American football guard for the Denver Broncos
Christopher Banks (born 1977), New Zealand journalist, musician, record producer, songwriter and filmmaker
Chris Banks (businessman) (born 1959), British businessman


The Jester Named Don John of Austria is a portrait by Velázquez, now in the  in Madrid. Its subject was a jester or bufón at the court of Philip IV of Spain from 1624 to 1654 who appeared in court comedies in front of important court figures. The subject's real name is unknown, but he came to be nicknamed after John of Austria, the son of Charles V, well known for his victory at Lepanto. He is shown dressed in a general's cloak and black doublet, is surrounded by abandoned helmets, armour and weapons, and with a fragment of a battle-scene of Lepanto in the background.

It was produced for display in the Torre de la Parada, a hunting lodge on the outskirts of Madrid in the Sierra de Guadarrama near El Pardo.  Around 1635-40 this lodge was one of Philip IV's main architectural projects, since he was a great hunting fanatic who wanted somewhere to rest during the long time he spent on that pastime. Its other homes have been the Palacio del Buen Retiro (1701–1716), the Royal Palace of Madrid (1772–1816) and the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (1816–1827), before it finally moved to its current home at the Prado in 1827.

See also
 List of works by Diego Velázquez

Bibliography
Museo del Prado. Pintura española de los siglos XVI y XVII. Enrique Lafuente Ferrari. Aguilar S.A. 1964
No. 72 in Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting, Gary Tinterow, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2003, , 9781588390400

Portraits by Diego Velázquez in the Museo del Prado
1633 paintings
17th-century portraits
Portraits of men
Portraits by Diego Velázquez


Minuscule 399 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering), ε94 (von Soden), is a Greek minuscule manuscript of the New Testament, on parchment. Paleographically it has been assigned to the 9th or 10th century.

Description

The codex contains text of the four Gospels, on 214 parchment leaves (). The text is written in one column per page, in 27 lines per page. It contains lectionary markings at the margin.

The texts of John 5:3.4 and Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) are marked by an obelus.

Text

The Greek text of the codex is a representative of the Byzantine text-type. Hermann von Soden classified it to the textual family K1. Aland placed it in Category V.
According to the Claremont Profile Method it represents textual family Kx in Luke 10 and Luke 20. In Luke 1 it has a mixture of the Byzantine text-families.

History

The manuscript is dated to the 9th or 10th century. It was added to the list of New Testament manuscripts by Gregory in 1908.

The manuscript is currently housed at the National Library of Russia (Gr. 220) in Saint Petersburg.

Scholz's 399
The codex contains incomplete text of the Gospels: John, Luke, and Matthew, on 220 parchment leaves (). The text is written in one column per page, in 22 lines per page. It contains prolegomena, the tables of the  (tables of contents) before each Gospel, numbers of Verses, and a commentary (of John Chrysostom, in Luke of Bostra's).

The order of Gospels is the same as in codex 90.

It was examined and described by Giuseppe Passini (as 109). It was added to the list of New Testament manuscripts by Scholz (1794-1852),
who slightly examined it. Fenton Hort saw it in 1864. C. R. Gregory saw it in 1886. In 1908 Gregory removed it from the list of the New Testament manuscript, because it is rather a commentary than text and sometimes without text.

The manuscript is currently housed at the Turin National University Library (C. II. 14) in Turin.

See also

 List of New Testament minuscules
 Biblical manuscript
 Textual criticism

References

Further reading

 Kurt Treu, Die Griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments in der UdSSR; eine systematische Auswertung des Texthandschriften in Leningrad, Moskau, Kiev, Odessa, Tbilisi und Erevan, T & U 90 (Berlin, 1966), pp. 88–90.

Greek New Testament minuscules
9th-century biblical manuscripts
National Library of Russia collection


Césaire Thérien (January 12, 1824 – February 9, 1890) was a merchant and political figure in Quebec. He represented Laprairie in the Legislative Assembly of Quebec from 1867 to 1871 as a Conservative member.

He was born in L'Assomption, Lower Canada, the son of Jean-Baptiste Thérien and Apolline Gariépy. Thérien married Marie-Félonise Colette in 1852. He worked as a clerk in his father-in-law Paul Colette's store before establishing himself as a merchant in Saint-Isidore. Thérien was mayor of Saint-Isidore from 1866 to 1868. After the death of his first wife, he married Ézilda Mazurette, dit Lapierre. He died in Verchères at the age of 66.

His widow married Louis Duhamel, who also served in the Quebec assembly.

References

1824 births
1890 deaths
Conservative Party of Quebec MNAs
Mayors of places in Quebec
People from Lanaudière


The 4th British Academy Video Games Awards (known for the purposes of sponsorship as British Academy Video Games Awards in Association with PC World), awarded by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, was an award ceremony held on 23 October 2007 in Battersea Evolution. The ceremony honoured achievement in 2007 for games which were released between 6 October 2006 and 5 October 2007 and was hosted by Vic Reeves. Wii Sports led with the most nominations with seven. Wii Sports was the major winner on the night, taking six of the seven awards available, equaling the record Grand Theft Auto: Vice City (2003) and Half-Life 2 (2004) had with the most awards won in any BAFTA Video Games Awards ceremony. BioShock took the main prize of Best Game.

Winners and nominees
Winners are shown first in bold.

Academy Fellowship
 Will Wright

Games with multiple nominations and wins

Nominations

Wins

 Two separate franchises (the FIFA and Football Manager series) garnered more than one nomination (with one each for FIFA 07, FIFA 08 Football Manager 2007 (winner of PC World Gamers Award) and Football Manager 2008).

External links
4th BAFTA Video Games Awards page

British Academy Games Awards ceremonies
2007 awards in the United Kingdom
2007 in video gaming
October 2007 events in the United Kingdom


A list of existing and former windmills whose sites fall within Greater London, England. When built, these mills were within the counties of Kent, Surrey, Middlesex, Hertfordshire or Essex. Of those windmills known to have existed, nine remain and are preserved; as are the tide mills at Three Mills, West Ham.

Locations

A - B

C - D

E - F

G -H

I - L

M - P

R - S

T - W

Maps

c.1563 "Woodcut" (or "Agas") map of London
1610 John Speed
1616 John Visscher
1626
1635 Moses Glover (Map of the Isleworth Hundred)
1647 Wenceslas Hollar (Long View of London from Bankside)
1648 John Norden
1658 William Faithorne
1659 William Faithorne
1660 Frederick De Wit
1666 Ben Gerlen
1673 Richard Blome
1675 John Ogilby
1678 John Ogilby & William Morgan
1695 Robert Morden
1695*Robert Morden
1696 Robert Morden
1700 Robert Morden & John Pask
1700*
1703 Joel Gascoigne (survey of the Parish of Stepney)
1720 Dr Harris
1723 Sutton Nicholl (A prospect of Greenwich & London)
1724 Sutton Nicholl (View of London and Southwark)
1724* John Warburton, Joseph Bland & Payler Smith
1729 John Sennex
1731 C du Box (A view of Greenwich)
1733 John Seller
1736 Emanuel Bowen
1742 John Seller
1746 John Rocque
1746* John Rocque
1753 Emanuel Bowen
1754 John Rocque
1762 John Rocque
1763 John Rocque
1769 Andrews, Dury and Herbert
1777 John Chapman and Peter André
1777*Andrews & Dury
1789 Lindley & Crosley
1790 William Faden
1800 Laurie & Whittle
1816 Ordnance Survey
1818 Christopher & John Greenwood
1819 Ordnance Survey
1830 Ordnance Survey
1823 Bryant
1824 Christopher Greenwood (Map of London)
1825 Christopher Greenwood
1832 Cary (Map of Deptford)
1843 Ordnance Survey
1844 Ordnance Survey
1850 C Knight
1863 Ordnance Survey
1893 Ordnance Survey
1903 Ordnance Survey

Notes

Mills in bold are still standing, known building dates are indicated in bold. Text in italics denotes indicates that the information is not confirmed, but is likely to be the case stated.

Bexleyheath
May Place Mill, listed in Watermills and Windmills under Bexleyheath, actually stood just within Crayford, and has an entry at the List of windmills in Kent.

Finsbury Fields
The last of the Finsbury Fields windmills was demolished c. 1750 to make way for St Luke's Hospital for the Clergy.

Millwall
Three mills were standing in 1835, two in 1845. The last mill standing was the smock mill, as detailed above.

Sources

Unless indicated otherwise, the source for all entries is  .

References

London
Windmills


Harbinger Capital Partners is a private hedge fund based in New York City, New York, founded by Philip Falcone. Harbinger is a highly diversified multi-strategy hedge fund. Notable investments have included sub-prime mortgages in the United States and the United Kingdom, such as HBOS, and LightSquared, a wireless communications company that filed bankruptcy in 2012.

History
Harbinger was founded in 2001 by Philip Falcone and Harbert Management Corporation, a Birmingham, Alabama-based investment company that provided much of the original funding. Harbinger had funds under management of $26.5 billion (£13.4 billion) as of the end of June 2008. In 2009, Harbinger acquired the ownership of its funds from Harbert. Also in 2009, Harbinger acquired controlling stock of the Zapata Corporation from the Glazer family and changed its name to The Harbinger Group Inc. (NYSE: HRG). The hedge fund is based in New York, New York. The firm's hedge funds include the Harbinger Capital Partners Master Fund, the Credit Distressed BlueLine Fund, and Harbinger Capital Partners Special Situations Fund.

Harbinger has owned large stakes in The New York Times Company, Cleveland-Cliffs, and 28% stock ownership of satellite communications company Inmarsat. The company has also owned stakes in rival satellite operators SkyTerra and Terrestar, and British sugar producer Tate & Lyle. The company was ranked on the Wall Street Journal's "The Hedge Fund 100" list in 2008 and 2009. According to press accounts the assets under management at Harbinger peaked at $26 billion in 2008 and had declined to approximately $9 billion as of 2010 due to sizeable investor redemptions with approximately 40% of that total (approximately $3.5 billion) concentrated in investments related to building a high-speed wireless network in the United States.

Harbinger Capital, which owned Russell Hobbs, merged it with Spectrum Brands on June 16, 2010 for $661 million and now controls approximately 64% of the appliance maker, Spectrum.

In November 2014, Falcone announced his resignation as chief executive and chairman from Harbinger Group HRG, whose second-biggest shareholder is Harbinger Capital. Falcone was paid a lump sum of $40.3 million upon his resignation.

In March 2015, the lawsuit accusing Falcone and Harbinger Capital Partners of "misleading investors about the firm's stake in LightSquared Inc." was dismissed. That same month, a judge approved Harbinger Capital's restructuring plan of LightSquared, which paid off lender Charlie Ergen, and put LightSquared in the hands of investors, including JP Morgan Chase. As part of the deal, Harbinger maintained 44% equity, but Falcone would no longer be involved in day-to-day operations.

As of 2015, the top equity holdings of the firm were in the shares of the following companies: Spectrum Brands Inc, Harbinger Group Inc, North American Energy Partners Inc, and EXCO Resources Inc.

In December 2017, Harbinger Capital Partners filed a lawsuit against Apollo Global Management, alleging fraud over "pouring" "$2 billion into the ill-fated wireless venture formerly known as LightSquared Inc."

SEC settlement
In August 2013, the firm reached a settlement with the SEC agreeing to pay more than $18 million and admit wrongdoing.  As part of the settlement, Harbinger Senior Managing Director Philip Falcone was also barred from the securities industry for at least five years, but it did not prohibit him from working as an officer or director of a public company. Among the SEC's multiple allegations were that Falcone misused fund assets and diverted fund assets for personal use, that the fund engaged in redemption and other practices that favored certain investors over others, and that fund attempted to conduct an improper short squeeze on the bonds of Canadian manufacturing firm, partially in retaliation against a competitor investment firm.  Harbinger and Falcone largely admitted to these allegations in the settlement.

July 4, 2014, the U.S. Security and Exchange Commission's Office of the Whistleblower issued a "Final Order" in matter number 2012 -81 ruling that rejected a claim made by an individual requesting a reward for assisting in the investigation. The SEC rejected the claim, asserting in the "Claimant did not provide information that led to the successful enforcement" and denying the application.

See also
Harbert Management Corporation
HRG Group

References

External links
Harbinger Capital Partners Website

Hedge fund firms in New York City
Investment management companies of the United States
Financial services companies established in 2001
Private equity firms of the United States


After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to reunite families or to allow members of minority ethnic groups to return to their homelands.

Eastern Bloc governments argued that strict limits to emigration were necessary to prevent a brain drain. The United States and Western European governments argued that they represented a violation of human rights. Despite the restrictions, defections to the West occurred.

After East Germany tightened its zonal occupation border with West Germany, the city sector border between East Berlin and West Berlin became a loophole through which defection could occur. This was closed with the erection of the Berlin Wall in August 1961. Thereafter, emigration from the Eastern Bloc was effectively limited to illegal defections, ethnic emigration under bilateral agreements, and a small number of other cases.

Background

Original USSR emigration restrictions

Although the first program of the Bolshevik movement in Russia included a demand for the "abolition of passports", just two months after the Russian Revolution of 1917, the new regime instituted passport controls and forbade the exit of belligerent nationals.  The reasoning was partly that emigration was conflated with opposition to the socialist state and also the fear that emigration would inflate opposition armies.  The 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk obligated Russia to allow emigration of non-Russians who wanted German citizenship, but the regime attempted to reduce this flow by allowing it during only one month.  Beginning in 1919, travel abroad required the approval of the NKVD, with the additional consent of the Special Department of the Cheka added in 1920.  In 1922, after the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR, both the Ukrainian SSR and the Russian SFSR issued general rules for travel that foreclosed virtually all departures, making legal emigration all but impossible.  However, the Soviet Union could not control its borders until a system of border guards was created through a special corps of the Gosudarstvennoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie (GPU), such that by 1928, even illegal departure was all but impossible.

In 1929, even more strict controls were introduced, decreeing that any Soviet official serving abroad who went over "to the camp of the enemies of the working class and the peasants" and refused to return would be executed within twenty-four hours of being apprehended.  In 1932, as Stalin's first Five Year Plan forced collectivization, to allocate scarce housing and weed out "nonproductive" elements, internal passport controls were introduced. When combined with individual city Propiska ("place of residence") permits, and internal freedom of movement restrictions often called the 101st kilometre, these rules greatly restricted mobility within even small areas.  When the Soviet Constitution of 1936 was promulgated, virtually no legal emigration took place, except for very limited family reunification and some forced deportations.  Very small numbers snuck into Romania, Persia, and Manchuria, but the bulk of the population remained essentially captive. Moskovskaya Pravda later described the decision to emigrate as "unnatural and like burying someone alive."  Those wishing to leave were viewed not just as deserters, but traitors.

The mobilization of labor in the Soviet Union was not feasible if emigration remained an option with the relative low standard of living that existed at that time.  Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev later stated "We were scared, really scared.  We were afraid the thaw might unleash a flood, which we wouldn't be able to control and which could drown us.  How could it drown us?  It could have overflowed the banks of the Soviet riverbed and formed a tidal wave that which would have washed away all the barriers and retaining walls of our society."

In addition, emigration restrictions were used to keep secrecy about life in the Soviet Union.  Starting in 1935, Joseph Stalin had already effectively sealed off outside access to the Soviet Socialist Republics (and until his death in 1953), effectively permitting no foreign travel inside the Soviet Union such that outsiders did not know of the political processes that had taken place therein. During this period, and until the late 1970s, 25 years after Stalin's death, the few diplomats and foreign correspondents that were permitted inside the Soviet Union were usually restricted to within a few kilometers of Moscow, while their phones were tapped, their residences were restricted to foreigner-only locations, and they were constantly followed by Soviet authorities.  Dissenters who approached such foreigners were arrested. For many years after World War II, even the best informed foreigners did not know the number of arrested or executed Soviet citizens, or how poorly the Soviet economy had performed.

Creation of the Eastern Bloc

Bolsheviks took power in Russia following the Russian Revolution of 1917.  During the Russian Civil War that followed, coinciding with the Red Army's entry into Minsk in 1919, Belarus was declared the Socialist Soviet Republic of Byelorussia. After more conflict, the Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was declared in 1920.  With the defeat of Ukraine in the Polish-Ukrainian War, after the March 1921 Peace of Riga following the Polish-Soviet War, central and eastern Ukraine were annexed into the Soviet Union as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1922, the Russian SFSR, Ukraine SSR,  Byelorussian SSR and Transcaucasian SFSR were officially merged as republics creating the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, or Soviet Union.

During the final stages of World War II, the Soviet Union began the creation of the Eastern Bloc by directly annexing several countries as Soviet Socialist Republics that were originally effectively ceded to it by Nazi Germany in the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.

These included Eastern Poland (incorporated into three different SSRs), Latvia (became Latvian SSR), Estonia (became Estonian SSR), Lithuania (became Lithuanian SSR), part of eastern Finland (became Karelo-Finnish SSR, and later merged into the Russian SFSR) and northern Romania, Basarabia,(became the Moldavian SSR). By 1945, these additional annexed countries totaled approximately 465,000 additional square kilometers (180,000 square miles), or slightly more than the area of West Germany, East Germany and Austria combined.

Other states were converted into Soviet Satellite states, such as the People's Republic of Poland, the People's Republic of Hungary, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, the Romanian People's Republic, the People's Republic of Albania, and later East Germany from the Soviet zone of German occupation.  The Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia was also considered part of the Bloc, though a Tito–Stalin split occurred in 1948 followed by the formation of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Conditions in the Eastern Bloc

Throughout the Eastern Bloc, both in the Soviet Union and the rest of the Bloc, the Russian SFSR was given prominence, and referred to as the naibolee vydajuščajasja nacija (the most prominent nation) and the   rukovodjaščij narod (the leading people). The Soviets promoted the reverence of Russian actions and characteristics, and the construction of Soviet Communist structural hierarchies in the other countries of the Eastern Bloc.

The defining characteristic of communism implemented in the Eastern Bloc was the unique symbiosis of the state with society and the economy, resulting in politics and economics losing their distinctive features as autonomous and distinguishable spheres.  Initially, Stalin directed systems that rejected Western institutional characteristics of market economies, democratic governance (dubbed "bourgeois democracy" in Soviet parlance) and the rule of law subduing discretional intervention by the state. The Soviets mandated expropriation and  estatization of private property.

The Soviet-style "replica regimes" that arose in the Bloc not only reproduced the Soviet command economy, but also adopted the brutal methods employed by Joseph Stalin and Soviet secret police to suppress real and potential opposition.  Communist regimes in the Eastern Bloc saw even marginal groups of opposition intellectuals as a potential threat because of the bases underlying Communist power therein. The suppression of dissidence and opposition was a central prerequisite for the security of Communist power within the Eastern Bloc, though the degree of opposition and dissident suppression varied by country and time throughout the Bloc.

In addition, media in the Eastern Bloc served as an organ of the state, completely reliant on, and subservient to, the ruling Communist parties, with radio and television organizations being state-owned, while print media was usually owned by political organizations, mostly by the ruling Communist party. Furthermore, the Eastern Bloc experienced economic mis-development by central planners resulting in those countries following a path of extensive rather than intensive development, and lagged far behind their western European counterparts in per capita Gross Domestic Product.  Empty shelves in shops even in East Germany provided an open reminder of the inaccuracy of propaganda regarding purported magnificent and uninterrupted economic progress.

History

Fleeing and expelled ethnic Germans in the Eastern Bloc

At the end of, and following World War II, at least twelve million ethnic German Volksdeutsche or Reichsdeutsche fled or were expelled,  Barbara Marshall estimates that the number of ethnic Germans fleeing or expelled from the Eastern Bloc was "about fifteen million." mostly in and from Soviet-occupied territories becoming the Eastern Bloc, making it the largest movement of any European people in modern history.  The expulsions had been agreed upon before the end of the war by the Allies.  At least two million people perished due to flight and expulsion, 400,000 to 600,000 of whom by physical force.  Almost all of these occurred between 1944 and 1948. The total figures include a considerable exodus of Germans from areas near the front lines as the Red Army advanced towards German-settled areas.  Many were aware of the Soviet reprisals on German civilians, such as Soviet soldiers committing rape and other crimes. News of these atrocities, like the Nemmersdorf massacre, were also, in part, exaggerated and spread by the Nazi propaganda machine.  Many of these ethnic Germans also fled to the future East Germany, within the Eastern Bloc.

Post-war free emigration
After Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe at the end of World War II, the majority of people living in the newly acquired areas aspired for independence and wanted the Soviet troops to leave.  While millions of ethnic Germans fled or were expelled from Eastern Europe, about four million ethnic Germans were prevented from leaving by advancing Soviet troops or deported to remote areas of the Soviet Union as part of Stalin's policy towards the German population.

Before 1950, over 15 million immigrants emigrated from Soviet-occupied eastern European countries to the west in the five years immediately following World War II.   Until the early 1950s, the lines between German occupation zones could be easily crossed.  Taking advantage of this route, the number of Eastern Europeans applying for political asylum in West Germany was 197,000 in 1950, 165,000 in 1951, 182,000 in 1952 and 331,000 in 1953.  One reason for the sharp 1953 increase was fear of potential further Sovietization with the increasingly paranoid actions of Joseph Stalin in late 1952 and early 1953. 226,000 had fled in just the first six months of 1953. Because of the lack of resources and space in West Germany, at the request of Truman in 1952, the United States increased its resettlement admissions quotas under the United States Escapee Program (USEP). After the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, 171,000 Hungarian refugees crossed the border into Austria, while 20,000 crossed into Yugoslavia.

In 1948, in the debate of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Soviets objected to the language that "everyone has the right to leave any country including his own."  Arguing that "it would encourage emigration", the Soviets wanted to add the phrase "in accordance with the procedure laid down in the laws of that country", with only Poland and Saudi Arabia supporting the Soviet proposal.

Increasing transnational restrictions

Up until 1952, the lines between Soviet-occupied eastern Germany and the western occupied zones could be easily crossed in most places. Accordingly, before 1961, most of that east–west flow took place between East and West Germany, with over 3.5 million East Germans emigrating to West Germany before 1961, which comprised most of the total net emigration of 4.0 million emigrants from all of Central and Eastern Europe between 1950 and 1959.  In response to growing numbers crossing the borders, the Soviet Union instituted tighter border controls around their zone, the Inner German border. In 1955, the Soviet Union passed a law transferring control over civilian access in Berlin to East Germany, which officially abdicated the Soviets from direct responsibility of matters therein, while passing control to a regime not recognized in the west.  When large numbers of East Germans then defected under the guise of "visits", the new East German state essentially eliminated all travel to the west in 1956.  Soviet ambassador to East Germany Mikhail Pervukhin observed that "the presence in Berlin of an open and essentially uncontrolled border between the socialist and capitalist worlds unwittingly prompts the population to make a comparison between both parts of the city, which unfortunately, does not always turn out in favor of the Democratic [East] Berlin."

Restrictions implemented in the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War stopped most east–west migration, with only 13.3 million migrations westward between 1950 and 1990.  By the early 1950s, the Soviet approach to controlling national movement was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc (along with China, Mongolia and North Korea), with heavy restrictions preventing such emigration.  A Hungarian economist stated that "it was quite obvious that the socialist countries—like other countries—intended to prevent their professionals, trained at the expense of their society, from being used to enrich other countries."  Eastern European spokesmen maintained that they were keeping would-be emigrants from suffering from insufficient linguistic and cultural preparation.  They also stressed the debt that individuals owed to socialist states, which offered care from birth, including subsidized education and training and, thus, they justified the emigration restrictions as an "education tax" with the states having a right to recoup its investment.   Open emigration policies would create a "brain drain", forcing the state to readjust its wage structure at a cost to other economic priorities. Bulgarian and Romanian representatives had long argued that they could not afford to match western salaries and, without emigration restrictions, they "would become like Africa."  The restrictions presented a quandary for some Eastern Bloc states that had been more economically advanced and open than the Soviet Union, such that crossing borders seemed more natural—especially between East and West Germany where no prior border existed.

Unrestricted emigration from East Berlin
With the closing of the Inner German border officially in 1952, the city sector border in Berlin remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because it was administered by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West.  East Germany introduced a new passport law on December 11, 1957, that reduced the overall number of refugees leaving East Germany, while drastically increasing the percentage of those leaving through West Berlin from 60% to well over 90% by the end of 1958. Those actually caught trying to leave East Berlin were subjected to heavy penalties, but with no physical barrier and even subway train access to West Berlin, such measures were ineffective.  Accordingly, the Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape. The 3.5 million East Germans that had left by 1961 totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population.

"Brain drain"
The emigrants tended to be young and well educated, leading to the brain drain feared by officials in East Germany.  Yuri Andropov, then the CPSU Director on Relations with Communist and Workers Parties of Socialist Countries wrote an urgent letter, on August 28, 1958, to the Central Committee about the significant 50% increase in the number of East German intelligentsia among the refugees.  Andropov reported that, while the East German leadership stated that they were leaving for economic reasons, testimony from refugees indicated that the reasons were more political than material. He stated "the flight of the intelligentsia has reached a particularly critical phase." SED leader Walter Ulbricht saw not only a problem from "brain drain", but also the Grenzgänger problem of 50,000 East Berliners working in West Berlin. Rural citizens disaffected after collectivization campaigns also caused the flight of tens of thousands of farmers, including one third of the wealthier farmers, leaving over 10% of East Germany's arable land fallow and resulting in food shortages.  The farmers that remained were disinclined to do more than produce for their own needs because fixed procurement prices meant little profit, and conspicuous production invited hasty inclusion in a collective or state farm. The exodus intensified existing shortages of goods and services in the shortage economy.

By 1960, the combination of World War II and the massive emigration westward left East Germany with only 61% of its population of working age, compared to 70.5% before the war.  The loss was disproportionately heavy among professionals—engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers.  The direct cost of manpower losses has been estimated at $7 billion to $9 billion, with East German party leader Walter Ulbricht later claiming that West Germany owed him $17 billion in compensation, including reparations as well as manpower losses. In addition, the drain of East Germany's young population potentially cost it over 22.5 billion marks in lost educational investment. The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the re-securing of the Soviet imperial frontier was imperative. At the same time, there were positive consequences of the emigration for the East German regime, including the removal of anti-Russian nationalists and vocal opponents, which might have helped East Germany government to avoid some of the unrest that developed in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia.

Construction of the Berlin Wall

Even with the Inner German border strengthening, emigration through Berlin began to swell, with 144,000 in 1949, 199,000 in 1960 and 207,000 in the first seven months of 1961 alone. Orderly planning had become almost impossible in East Germany, with entire towns existing without physicians, crops going unharvested and fifty-five-year-olds put to work running street cars.  The East German economy was on the verge of collapse.  With fears of drastic action in Berlin, on July 15, 1961 Ulbricht called a rare press conference, insisting that "no one has any intention of building a wall," but made clear that "the outflow has to stop."  He added "it goes without saying that the so-called refugee camps in West Berlin"—the transit camps at which refugees were processed en route from West Berlin to West Germany—"will be closed down."

On August 13, 1961, a barbed-wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin was erected by East Germany. Two days later, police and army engineers began to construct a more permanent concrete wall.  The construction briefly caused fears of a military crisis, though only 11,000 western troops were located in Berlin compared to 500,000 Soviet troops surrounding them deployed in East Germany. The completion of the Berlin Wall closed the biggest loophole in the Iron Curtain. It brought an end to a decade during which divided capital of the divided Germany was the easiest place for unauthorized east-to-west crossings. Along with the wall, the  zonal border became  wide on its East German side in some parts of Germany with a tall steel-mesh fence running along a "death strip" bordered by bands of plowed earth, to slow and to reveal the prints of those trying to escape, and mined fields.

Later restrictions and agreements
Thereafter, only 5,000 crossed the Berlin Wall between 1961 and 1989. Consequently, after the erection of the Wall, the total net emigration from Central and Eastern Europe fell even further to 1.9 million between 1960 and 1969 and 1.1 million between 1970 and 1979. This increased somewhat to 2.3 million between 1980 and 1989 with increased ethnic emigration after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the mid-1980s.  More than 75% of those emigrating from Eastern Bloc countries between 1950 and 1990 did so under bilateral agreements for "ethnic migration", and religious minorities, such as those from Bulgaria (ethnic Turks and other Muslims), Poland (ethnic Germans, ethnic Hungarians, and ethnic Jews), Romania (ethnic Germans, ethnic Jews), and Yugoslavia (ethnic Turks and other Muslims). Most Soviets allowed to leave during this time period were ethnic Jews permitted to immigrate to Israel after a series of embarrassing defections in 1970 caused the Soviets to open very limited ethnic emigrations.  About 10% of emigrants were refugee migrants under the Geneva Convention of 1951.  Emigration from Eastern Bloc countries was as follows:

Albania's tight security allowed almost no emigration, while almost all of East Germany's emigration took place before the erection of the Berlin Wall.  Because of East Germany's cultural affinity with West Germany and the viewing of West German television depicting western life throughout most of East Germany, East Germany was more prone to population loss.

Providing further emigration pressure was the growing gap in living standards between western Europe and the Eastern Bloc after the 1960s. Everyday complaints over consumer goods, supplies or wages could all too readily lead to comparisons with Western conditions.  The quality of goods displayed by "aunts" and Intershops, where visitors would buy premium goods with foreign currency (see also Beryozka, Pewex, Tuzex and Corecom), heightened Easterners' sense of their second-class status and this, in turn, affected their perception of economic arrangements in their own country. Walter Freidrich, director of the Leipzig Institute, complained that "shortcomings and weaknesses in our own country (e.g., problems with supply of consumer goods and spare parts; media policy; rose tinted perspectives; real democratic participation, etc) are coming increasingly into focus and subjected to sharper criticisms. To a growing extent, doubt is cast on the superiority of socialism." Stasi reports complained about individuals who had been given privileged access to travel to the West for work with "stories of the 'overwhelming range of commodities available . . . or with reports of East German goods on sale there at knock-down prices."

Defection attempts from the Soviet Union were governed by two laws: (i) illegal traveling abroad without a passport was a crime punishable by one to three years in prison, even in cases where the destination was another Eastern Bloc country; and (ii) illegal defection to a non-Eastern Bloc state and refusal to return home was considered treason against the state.  To remove the temptation for such treason, the Soviets invested heavily in border controls, with lengthy criminal rules regarding approaching a border region.  Almost no emigration occurred from the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s, except for ethnic Armenians returning to Armenia. In 1973, the United States Congress made liberalizing the Soviet emigration policy a prerequisite for lifting trade barriers, resulting in the emigration of 370,000 Soviet citizens, mostly ethnic Jews.  A second wave of emigration started in 1986–87, after Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, with most emigrants being ethnic Jews, ethnic Germans, Armenians, Greeks or Pentecostals.

Because of various international accords, non-Soviet Eastern Bloc countries did not explicitly ban emigration.  Instead, they introduced a long series of bureaucratic approvals an applicant must obtain beyond the passport office—including local police, employers and the state housing commission—with no time limit set for action. Applications could be denied, without appeal, on a variety of subjective grounds, such as national security and "the interest of the state." Much was left to administrative discretion and unpublished internal directives, with the odds against eventually receiving after years of the process being extremely high. Like in the Soviet Union, attempting to leave without permissions to a non-Eastern Bloc state was punishable as treason, with Albania and Romania invoking the death penalty for such offenses.  Even after families applied to leave to join refugees fleeing during the confusion of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, Czechoslovak authorities informed them "it is contrary to the State's interest to allow Czechoslovak citizens long-term private sojourns abroad, and that includes emigration. However, emigration was also used as a sort of release valve to hasten the departure of limited prominent vocal dissenters."

In 1964, Yugoslavia became the only communist country in Europe to allow its citizens to emigrate. Others qualified as refugees claiming to "escape" during crises, such as those fleeing during the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, the Polish Solidarity events and various events that occurred in East Germany, Bulgaria and Albania in the late 1980s.

1975 Helsinki Accords and restrictive strategies

The Helsinki Accords of 1975 were an important Cold War-era agreement signed by most European countries, including those of the Eastern Bloc, the United States and Canada. It governed various territorial agreements, frontier disputes, human rights, the threat of force and other items. The "third basket" of the Helsinki Accords contained pledges to uphold rights to international travel, family contact and freedom of information, and to promote cultural exchanges. In East Germany, while the government downplayed the existence of this provision in the media, as potential emigrants came to slowly perceive that exit visas might be attainable to some, 7,200 first time applicants applied in the late 1970s.

West Germany negotiated the exodus of some ethnic Germans from Poland in exchange for financial inducements, including large loans. Similarly, Romania was paid a fixed amount of 5,000 Deutsche Marks (DM) per ethnic German permitted to leave, which was increased to 7,800 DM in 1983 and to 11,000 DM in 1988. East Germany exported 70,000 political prisoners to West Germany, in exchange for 70,000 DM per head paid by West Germany, which netted East Germany 3.4 billion Deutsche Marks at a time when it was in financial crisis. East Germany viewed the payments they received for the release not as ransom, but as compensation of the damage such individuals inflicted on the socialist system, as well as reimbursement for their costs of education. However, letting some leave legally set a dangerous precedent, including the long term threat of the general public strongly moving for a right to emigrate. The Central Committee in 1988 warned that "the necessary commitment to preventing attempts to emigrate is not present in many", "the required prevailing atmosphere of opposition to these phenomena has not yet been achieved" and trade union "functionaries or brigade leaders sometimes state that they fail to understand why these citizens are not permitted to emigrate."

The regimes' strategy was to grant applications selectively and with long delays in a process that was designed to be demeaning, frustrating and leading to years of applicants waiting for a departure date that would never arrive. In addition, while waiting, applicants were subject to open discrimination, faced workplace firing or demotion, were denied university access, and were forced to relinquish their passports resulting in the denial of travel rights even within their country of residence. In 1984, twenty-five Czechoslovaks occupied the West German embassy in Prague demanding asylum in the west while seven East Germans did so in the library of the United States embassy in West Berlin. The authorities relented, and that year witnessed a huge rise in legal emigration, with applications swelling to 57,600, 29,800 of which were granted. Small groups of organized applicants had already held vigils calling for legal emigration since the late 1970s. The movement and application figures grew by the late 1980s as the east–west prosperity gap widened resulting in West German citizenship looking more attractive, while authorities were at a loss how to address the application rise. Increasing visa grants in the late 1980s accompanying a 1988 decision to prioritize those for citizens who engaged in protests provided incentives to further expand the movement. The East German SED party conceded that "[t]he emigration problem is confronting us with a fundamental problem of [East Germany]'s development" and this challenge "threatens to undermine beliefs in the correctness of the party's policies." The move accompanied a growing dissolving of confidence that the problems facing socialism could ever be solved and whether that system was the future.

Liberalization
By the late 1980s, Hungary had allowed citizens over fifty five years old to leave and liberalized family reunification emigration, along with increased travel permissions. Romania also liberalized emigration for family reunification purposes. By the mid-1980s, East Germany extended its program receiving payment for political prisoner release to the west to include "family reunification." The political prisoner payments became so large that East Germany accounted for them in their state economic planning process. Emigration restriction liberalisation in 1989 followed another flood of outmigration to West Germany during the Revolutions of 1989 indirectly through third countries—such as Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland—which accelerated the demise of the East German government when the closure of the borders precipitated demonstrations.

In 1985, following the Era of Stagnation, reform-minded Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev signaled the trend toward greater liberalization. Emigration increased following liberalizations passed in 1986. For example, the flow of ethnic Germans from the Eastern Bloc dramatically increased from 42,786 per year in 1986 to 202,673 in 1988. The Soviet Union was facing a period of severe economic decline and needed Western technology. Subsidies to foreign client states further strained the moribund Soviet economy.

The first signs of major reform came in 1986 when Gorbachev launched a policy of glasnost (openness) in the Soviet Union, and emphasized the need for perestroika (economic restructuring). Though glasnost advocated openness and political criticism, at the time, it was only permitted in accordance with the political views of the ruling powers. The general public in the Eastern bloc were still threatened by secret police and political repression.

Believing Gorbachev's reform initiatives would be short-lived, orthodox Communist rulers like East Germany's Erich Honecker, People's Republic of Bulgaria's Todor Zhivkov, Czechoslovak Socialist Republic's Gustáv Husák, and Socialist Republic of Romania’s Nicolae Ceauşescu obstinately ignored the calls for change. "When your neighbor puts up new wallpaper, it doesn't mean you have to too," declared one East German politburo member.

Revolutions and free emigration

By 1989, the Soviet Union had repealed the Brezhnev Doctrine in favor of non-intervention in the internal affairs of its Warsaw Pact allies, termed the Sinatra Doctrine in a joking reference to the song "My Way". A wave of Revolutions of 1989, sometimes called the "Autumn of Nations", swept across the Eastern Bloc. In the People's Republic of Poland in April 1989, the Solidarity organization was legalized, allowed to participate in parliamentary elections and captured a stunning 99 out of the 100 available parliamentary seats (with the one remaining seat taken by an independent candidate). Hungary had achieved some lasting economic reforms and limited political liberalization during the 1980s, but major reforms only occurred following the replacement of János Kádár as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1988.

In August 1989, the People's Republic of Hungary removed its physical border restrictions with Austria. The next month, more than 13,000 East German tourists in Hungary escaped to Austria, while Hungary prevented a larger number of East Germans from crossing the border, returning them to Budapest. The Monday demonstrations in East Germany () began, with East German protesters demanding rights such as the freedom to travel to foreign countries and to elect a democratic government. With regard to East Germans demanding emigration rights in Czechoslovakia, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher negotiated an agreement that allowed them to travel to the West, in trains that had to pass first through East Germany. When the trains passed Dresden central station in early October, police forces had to stop people from trying to jump on the trains.

By 9 October 1989, just after the celebrations for the 40th anniversary of East Germany thousands of protesters gathered, what had begun as a few hundred gatherers at the Nikolai Church in East Berlin chanting "Wir sind das Volk!" ("We are the people!"). Although some demonstrators were arrested, the threat of large-scale intervention by security forces never materialized, with SED leader Helmut Hackenberg and others not receiving precise orders for such action from a surprised East Berlin. These were followed by even larger protests exceeding 300,000 the next week. East German leader Honecker remained opposed to internal reform, with his regime even going so far as forbidding the circulation of Soviet publications that it viewed as subversive. Faced with ongoing and increasing civil unrest, the ruling Socialist Unity Party (SED) deposed Honecker in mid-October, and replaced him with Egon Krenz.

A wave of refugees left East Germany for the West through Czechoslovakia, which was tolerated by the new Krenz government and in agreement with the Czechoslovak government. In order to ease the complications, the Krenz-led Politburo had decided on 9 November to allow East Germans to travel directly to West Berlin the next day. However the government spokesman misstated the news and stated that East Germans could leave for the West effective immediately. As rumors spread, before the regulations were to go effect, on the night of 9 November, tens of thousands of Eastern Berliners flooded Checkpoint Charlie and other checkpoints along the wall, crossing into West Berlin. The surprised and overwhelmed border guards made many hectic telephone calls to their superiors, but it became clear that there was no one among the East German authorities who would dare to take personal responsibility for issuing orders to use lethal force, so there was no way for the vastly outnumbered soldiers to hold back the huge crowd of East German citizens. Therefore, the border checkpoints were opened, although it is disputed who was the first to issue the order.

In the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, following the suppression of a student protest in Prague, increasing protests swelled to an estimated half-million Czechs and Slovaks demanding freedoms. A two-hour general strike, involving all citizens of Czechoslovakia, was held on 27 November 1989. Barbed wire and other obstructions were removed from the border with West Germany and Austria in early December. The next day, the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia announced that it would relinquish power and dismantle the one-party state. On 10 December, President Gustáv Husák appointed the first largely non-Communist government in Czechoslovakia since 1948, and resigned, in what was called the Velvet Revolution.

In the People's Republic of Bulgaria, on 10 November 1989 — the day after the mass crossings across the Berlin Wall — Bulgaria's long-serving leader Todor Zhivkov was ousted by his Politburo and replaced with Petar Mladenov. In February 1990 the Party voluntarily gave up its claim on power and in June 1990 the first free elections since 1931 were held, won by the moderate wing of the Communist Party, renamed the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

Unlike other Eastern Bloc countries, the Socialist Republic of Romania had never undergone even a limited de-Stalinization. In November 1989, Ceauşescu, then aged 71, was re-elected for another five years as leader of the Romanian Communist Party, signaling that he intended to ride out the anti-Communist uprisings sweeping the rest of Eastern Europe. As Ceauşescu prepared to go on a state visit to Iran, on 16 December 1989, his Securitate ordered the arrest and exile of a local Hungarian-speaking Calvinist minister, László Tőkés, for sermons offending the regime.

Rioting followed the arrest. Returning from Iran, Ceauşescu ordered a mass rally in his support outside Communist Party headquarters in Bucharest. However, to his shock, the crowd booed as he spoke. Mass protests followed, with about 100,000 protesters occupying Operei Square chanting anti-government protests: "Noi suntem poporul!" ("We are the people!"), "Armata e cu noi!" ("The army is on our side!"), "Nu vă fie frică, Ceauşescu pică!" ("Have no fear, Ceauşescu will fall"). The Romanian military changed sides, turning on Ceauşescu, who was executed after a brief trial three days later.

In the People's Socialist Republic of Albania, a new package of regulations went into effect on 3 July 1990 entitling all Albanians over the age of 16 to own a passport for foreign travel. Meanwhile, hundreds of Albanian citizens gathered around foreign embassies to seek political asylum and flee the country.

Technically the Berlin Wall remained guarded for some time after 9 November though at a decreasing intensity. On 13 June 1990, the official dismantling of the Wall by the East German military began in Bernauer Straße. On 1 July, the day East Germany adopted the West German currency, all border controls ceased, although the inter-German border had become meaningless for some time before that. That month, the final obstacle to German reunification was removed when West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl convinced Gorbachev to drop Soviet objections to a reunited Germany within NATO in return for substantial German economic aid to the Soviet Union.

Defectors

Escapees
Although international movement was, for the most part, strictly controlled, there was a steady loss through escapees who were able to use ingenious methods to evade frontier security. Some of the people who tried to escape were in fact East german guards or soldiers. Some of them used military vehicles to smash through the Berlin wall. In East Germany, the term Republikflucht (fugitives from the Republic) was used for anyone wishing to leave to non-socialist countries. Republikflucht attempts to leave East Germany constituted a criminal act and carried severe penalties. Regarding the reasoning for such restrictions, a propaganda booklet published by the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1955 for the use of party agitators outlined the seriousness of 'flight from the republic', stating "leaving the GDR is an act of political and moral backwardness and depravity", and "workers throughout Germany will demand punishment for those who today leave the German Democratic Republic, the strong bastion of the fight for peace, to serve the deadly enemy of the German people, the imperialists and militarists". Moreover, an attempt to flee via East Germany's fortified borders involved considerable personal risk of injury or death. Estimates for those killed attempting to escape over the Berlin Wall range from 136 to just over 200. About 75,000 people were caught and imprisoned.

Hijackers
On June 15, 1970, twelve mostly Jewish defectors were caught attempting to hijack a plane to escape from the Soviet Union, and were assigned harsh sentences, including death sentences for the two leaders, which were later commuted to 15 years in a labor camp. At least six attempted skyjacking defection attempts were made from Armenia, the Soviet Union, and Lithuania from 1970 to 1971.

There were three hijackings of airliners by GDR citizens in order to escape to West Germany; the most well-known is the LOT Polish Airlines Flight 165 hijacking in 1978.

Famous and discrete defectors
Famous defectors include Joseph Stalin's daughter Svetlana Alliluyeva (though she returned in 1984), Mig-25 pilot Viktor Belenko, U.N. Undersecretary General Arkady Shevchenko, chess grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi, ballet stars Rudolf Nureyev, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Natalia Makarova, and Alexander Godunov. Famous East German defectors include writer Wolfgang Leonhard, East German soldier Conrad Schumann, who was famously photographed jumping the Berlin wall while it was under construction, and a number of European football players, including Jörg Berger. Chess world champion Boris Spassky also emigrated to France in a fashion comparable to defection.

While media sources often reported high level defections, non-prominent defections usually went unreported. The number of non-public "black stream" defectors is not known.

See also
Soviet Empire
Soviet occupations
Post-Soviet states
Iron Curtain
Western world
Telephone tapping in the Eastern Bloc
List of Soviet and Eastern Bloc defectors
North Korean defectors

Notes

References

External links
Retracing the Berlin Wall
Berlin Wall: Past and Present
The Lost Border: Photographs of the Iron Curtain
One lucky escape from Communist Romania to the United States
Comprehensive Gallery (1961 to 1990) from the website Chronicle of the Wall
Virtual e-Tours "The Wall" Shockwave Player required
The Lost Border: Photographs of the Iron Curtain
 Borders: spotting the past along Berlin death strip. 2007 BW photo gallery.
Information about the Iron Curtain with a detailed map and how to make it by bike
1996 Interview with Viktor Belenko, who escaped in a Mig-25 Foxbat

Eastern Bloc defectors
Politics of Europe
Eastern Bloc
Defection


Ogasawara (written: 小笠原) is a Japanese surname. It may also refer to:

Locations
 Ogasawara Islands, also known as the Bonin Islands, an archipelago of over 30 islands about 1000 km south of Tokyo, Japan
 Ogasawara National Park, an island national park located on that archipelago
 Ogasawara Subprefecture, a subprefecture of Tokyo, Japan
 Ogasawara, Tokyo, a village in Ogasawara Subprefecture, Tokyo, Japan, that governs the Bonin Islands

People with the surname
, a Japanese voice actress
, a Japanese anime director from Chiba, Japan
, a Japanese Olympic Curler
, a Japanese baseball player
, Japanese speed skater
, a Japanese football (soccer) player
, Japanese baseball player
, Japanese rower

Fictional
, a fictional main character in the Maria-sama ga Miteru media series
, a character from Hibike! Euphonium

Historical
, a Japanese samurai clan
, a Japanese retainer of the Minamoto clan during the Heian period
, the 6th and final daimyō of Karatsu Domain in Hizen Province, Kyūshū, Japan
, a Japanese samurai and official in the Bakumatsu period Tokugawa Shogunate
, an Admiral and naval strategist in the Imperial Japanese Navy in Meiji and Taishō period Japan
, a Japanese daimyo of the mid-Edo period
, a Japanese daimyo of Shinano Province during the Sengoku Period
, the eldest son of Ogasawara Nagakiyo
, a Japanese daimyo of the late Edo period who ruled the Kokura Domain
, Japanese daimyo of the early Edo Period

Other
 10169 Ogasawara, a Main-belt Asteroid discovered on February 21, 1995
 Ogasawara High School, a public high school on Chichi-jima in Ogasawara, Tokyo, Japan

See also
 Izu–Ogasawara Trench
 Ogasawara Whale Watching Association

Japanese-language surnames


Habibpur is a census town in the Ranaghat I CD block in the Ranaghat subdivision of the Nadia district, west Bengal, India

Geography

Location
Habibpur  is located at .

The maps of Ranaghat I and Ranaghat II CD blocks, in the District Census Handbook 2011, Nadia, shows the census towns of Kamgachhi, Raghabpur, Panpara, Aistala, Satigachha, Anulia, Halalpur Krishnapur, Hijuli and Ranaghat (CT) forming a cluster around Ranaghat. Certain other localities such as Nokari, Nasra, Cooper's Camp, Birnagar, Habibpur, Gopalpur and Parbbatipur are also linked with this cluster.

Area overview
Nadia district is mostly alluvial plains lying to the east of Hooghly River, locally known as Bhagirathi. The alluvial plains are cut across by such distributaries as Jalangi, Churni and Ichhamati. With these rivers getting silted up, floods are a recurring feature. The Ranaghat subdivision has the Bhagirathi on the west, with Purba Bardhaman and Hooghly districts lying across the river. Topographically, Ranaghat subdivision is spread across the Krishnanagar-Santipur Plain, which occupies the central part of the district, and the Ranaghat-Chakdaha Plain, the low-lying area found in the south-eastern part of the district. The Churni separates the two plains. A portion of the east forms the boundary with Bangladesh. The lower portion of the east is covered by a portion of the North 24 Parganas district. The subdivision has achieved reasonably high urbanisation. 41.68% of the population lives in urban areas and 58.32% lives in rural areas.

Note: The map alongside presents some of the notable locations in the subdivision. All places marked in the map are linked in the larger full screen map. All the four subdivisions are presented with maps on the same scale – the size of the maps vary as per the area of the subdivision.

Demographics

According to the 2011 Census of India, Habibpur had a total population of 13,383, of which 6,924 (52%) were males and 6,459 (48%) were females. Population in the age range 0–6 years was 1,314. The total number of literate persons in Habibpur was 9,547 (79.10% of the population over 6 years).

Civic administration

CD block HQ
Habibpur area is administered by BDO. The headquarters of Ranaghat I CD block are located at Habibpur.

Transport
Habibpur railway station is situated on Ranaghat-Santipur branch line of Sealdah railway division.

Healthcare
Habibpur (Jadav Dutta) Rural Hospital, with 30 beds at Habibpur, is the major government medical facility in the Ranaghat I CD block.

References

Villages in Nadia district


The Future is the second studio album by American R&B group Guy, released in November 13, 1990, on Uptown Records. It was their last album before their reunion a decade later.

Background
The Future had a much darker tone in stark contrast to their debut. Most of it had to do with things going on behind the scenes. A year after the release of their debut album, they fired their manager Gene Griffin—who they claimed allocated funds from the group.  This revelation angered all of the members, and particularly infuriated lead singer Aaron Hall—so much so that he didn't sing on half of the album. Hall revealed:

"There came a time where I just did not want to sing a single note. To be honest, it was the money. It just became too depressing. We were the biggest group in the world and we were flat broke. It took its toll".

As a result, Teddy Riley assumed the duties of lead vocals for the remainder of The Future.

Also on a tour with their MCA labelmates New Edition, things got out of hand between the two acts. Although New Edition were headliners, Guy happened to upstage them a few dates into the tour. This created a rivalry backstage that turned deadly. One of New Edition's production managers Ronald Boyd shot and killed Anthony Bee—a member of Guy's security detail. Guy would dedicate the song "Long Gone" to the memory of Bee- as well as Wreckx-n-Effect member Brandon Mitchell, who was also killed in the same year. The Future contained songs where they attacked their former manager Gene Griffin and his then-proteges, Motown Records recording group Basic Black. By the time they released the fifth single "Let's Stay Together" in early 1992, Guy called it quits and embarked on separate endeavors, with Aaron and Damion Hall releasing solo albums and Riley starting the group Blackstreet.

Covers

A couple of the songs from The Future have been covered. Priority Records singer Toni Estes covered the song "Let's Chill" from her 2000 debut Two Eleven. Singer Charlie Wilson also covered "Let's Chill" from his 2005 album Charlie, Last Name Wilson. R&B singer Case covered the song "Smile" on his 2009 album The Rose Experience.

Release and reception

The Future peaked at sixteen on the U.S. Billboard 200 and reached number one on the R&B Albums chart. By January 1991, it was certified platinum in sales by the RIAA after sales exceeding one million copies in the United States.

Although Alex Henderson of AllMusic felt The Future was not as strong an album as its predecessor, he still gave a positive note to the work, calling it "one of the more appealing—and certainly more authentic—examples of "new jack swing."

Track listing

"Where Did The Love Go", "Yearning for Your Love" and "Smile" are not available on the vinyl release of The Future.
"Wanna Get With U" [Club Version] is not available on the cassette release of The Future.

Personnel
Credits adapted from the CD liner notes.

Vocals
 Tammy Lucas – background vocals (7, 11, 15)
 Mary Brown – background vocals (7, 15)
 Marsha McClurkin – background vocals (15)

Technical
 Teddy Riley – producer, all instruments, programming
 Guy – co-producers (1-3, 5-7, 9-16), background vocals (1-3, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13-16)
 Aaron Hall – co-producer (8), keyboards (6, 12, 14)
 Wreckx-N-Effect – co-producers (9), background vocals (1, 9)
 Bernard Belle – co-producer (5, 12), background vocals (5, 15)
 David "DJ" Wynn & Steve "Cut Technician" Thomas – scratching
 Dave Way – engineer, mixing at Soundworks Studio, New York City
 Mike Fossenkemper, Jim Kvoriack, Rich July, Kevin Kelly, Scott Canto, Dave Lebowitz – assistant engineers
 Chris Trevett – additional mixing (1, 5, 9)
 Herb Powers – mastering at Hit Factory, New York City

Artwork
 Carol Kim – personal assistant
 Jeannie Bradshaw – art direction and design
 Todd Gray – photography
 Stuart Wilson – logo and additional photography
 Keith Holman – stylist
 Guy & Charles Darrisaw – hair stylists
 La-Lette Littlejohn – makeup
 Sammy & Mike at Gallery 2000 – jewelry

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

References

External links

 The Future at Discogs

See also
List of number-one R&B albums of 1991 (U.S.)

1990 albums
Albums produced by Teddy Riley
Guy (band) albums
MCA Records albums
Uptown Records albums