Signs and symptoms.

The most common symptoms of IC/BPS are suprapubic pain, urinary frequency, painful sexual intercourse, and waking up from sleep to urinate.  In general, symptoms may include painful urination described as a burning sensation in the urethra during urination, pelvic pain that is worsened with the consumption of certain foods or drinks, urinary urgency, and pressure in the bladder or pelvis. Other frequently described symptoms are urinary hesitancy (needing to wait for the urinary stream to begin, often caused by pelvic floor dysfunction and tension), and discomfort and difficulty driving, working, exercising, or traveling. Pelvic pain experienced by those with IC typically worsens with filling of the urinary bladder and may improve with urination.  During cystoscopy, 5–10% of people with IC are found to have Hunner's ulcers. A person with IC may have discomfort only in the urethra, while another might struggle with pain in the entire pelvis. Interstitial cystitis symptoms usually fall into one of two patterns: significant suprapubic pain with little frequency or a lesser amount of suprapubic pain but with increased urinary frequency.

Association with other conditions.

Some people with IC/BPS have been diagnosed with other conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, allergies, Sjögren syndrome, which raises the possibility that interstitial cystitis may be caused by mechanisms that cause these other conditions. There is also some evidence of an association between urologic pain syndromes, such as IC/BPS and CP/CPPS, with non-celiac gluten sensitivity in some people.  In addition, men with IC/PBS are frequently diagnosed as having chronic nonbacterial prostatitis, and there is an extensive overlap of symptoms and treatment between the two conditions, leading researchers to posit that the conditions may share the same cause and pathology.

Causes.

The cause of IC/BPS is currently unknown. However, several explanations have been proposed and include the following: autoimmune theory, nerve theory, mast cell theory, leaky lining theory, infection theory, and a theory of production of a toxic substance in the urine. Other suggested etiological causes are neurologic, allergic, genetic, and stress-psychological. In addition, recent research shows that those with IC may have a substance in the urine that inhibits the growth of cells in the bladder epithelium. An infection may then predispose those people to develop IC. Current evidence from clinical and laboratory studies confirms that mast cells play a central role in IC/BPS possibly due to their ability to release histamine and cause pain, swelling, scarring, and interfere with healing. Research has shown a proliferation of nerve fibers is present in the bladders of people with IC which is absent in the bladders of people who have not been diagnosed with IC.  Regardless of the origin, most people with IC/BPS struggle with a damaged urothelium, or bladder lining. When the surface glycosaminoglycan (GAG) layer is damaged (via a urinary tract infection (UTI), excessive consumption of coffee or sodas, traumatic injury, etc.), urinary chemicals can "leak" into surrounding tissues, causing pain, inflammation, and urinary symptoms. Oral medications like pentosan polysulfate and medications placed directly into the bladder via a catheter sometimes work to repair and rebuild this damaged/wounded lining, allowing for a reduction in symptoms. Most literature supports the belief that IC's symptoms are associated with a defect in the bladder epithelium lining, allowing irritating substances in the urine to penetrate into the bladder—essentially, a breakdown of the bladder lining (also known as the adherence theory). Deficiency in this glycosaminoglycan layer on the surface of the bladder results in increased permeability of the underlying submucosal tissues.  GP51 has been identified as a possible urinary biomarker for IC with significant variations in GP51 levels in those with IC when compared to individuals without interstitial cystitis.  Numerous studies have noted the link between IC, anxiety, stress, hyper-responsiveness, and panic. Another proposed cause for interstitial cystitis is that the body's immune system attacks the bladder. Biopsies on the bladder walls of people with IC usually contain mast cells. Mast cells containing histamine packets gather when an allergic reaction is occurring. The body identifies the bladder wall as a foreign agent, and the histamine packets burst open and attack. The body attacks itself, which is the basis of autoimmune disorders. Additionally, IC may be triggered by an unknown toxin or stimulus which causes nerves in the bladder wall to fire uncontrollably. When they fire, they release substances called neuropeptides that induce a cascade of reactions that cause pain in the bladder wall.

Genes.

Some genetic subtypes, in some people, have been linked to the disorder.

Diagnosis.

A diagnosis of IC/BPS is one of exclusion, as well as a review of clinical symptoms. The AUA Guidelines recommend starting with a careful history of the person, physical examination and laboratory tests to assess and document symptoms of IC, as well as other potential disorders.  The KCl test, also known as the "potassium sensitivity test", is no longer recommended. The test uses a mild potassium solution to evaluate the integrity of the bladder wall. Though the latter is not specific for IC/BPS, it has been determined to be helpful in predicting the use of compounds, such as pentosan polysulphate, which are designed to help repair the GAG layer.  For complicated cases, the use of hydrodistention with cystoscopy may be helpful. Researchers, however, determined that this visual examination of the bladder wall after stretching the bladder was not specific for IC/BPS and that the test, itself, can contribute to the development of small glomerulations (petechial hemorrhages) often found in IC/BPS. Thus, a diagnosis of IC/BPS is one of exclusion, as well as a review of clinical symptoms.  In 2006, the ESSIC society proposed more rigorous and demanding diagnostic methods with specific classification criteria so that it cannot be confused with other, similar conditions. Specifically, they require that a person must have pain associated with the bladder, accompanied by one other urinary symptom. Thus, a person with just frequency or urgency would be excluded from a diagnosis. Secondly, they strongly encourage the exclusion of confusable diseases through an extensive and expensive series of tests including (A) a medical history and physical exam, (B) a dipstick urinalysis, various urine cultures, and a serum PSA in men over 40, (C) flowmetry and post-void residual urine volume by ultrasound scanning and (D) cystoscopy. A diagnosis of IC/BPS would be confirmed with a hydrodistention during cystoscopy with biopsy.  They also propose a ranking system based upon the physical findings in the bladder. People would receive a numeric and letter based score based upon the severity of their disease as found during the hydrodistention. A score of 1–3 would relate to the severity of the disease and a rating of A–C represents biopsy findings. Thus, a person with 1A would have very mild symptoms and disease while a person with 3C would have the worst possible symptoms. Widely recognized scoring systems such as the O'Leary Sant symptom and problem score have emerged to evaluate the severity of IC symptoms such as pain and urinary symptoms.

Differential diagnosis.

The symptoms of IC/BPS are often misdiagnosed as a urinary tract infection. However, IC/BPS has not been shown to be caused by a bacterial infection and antibiotics are an ineffective treatment. IC/BPS is commonly misdiagnosed as chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome (CP/CPPS) in men, and endometriosis and uterine fibroids (in women).

Treatment.

In 2011, the American Urological Association released consensus-based guideline for the diagnosis and treatment of IC.  They include treatments ranging from conservative to more invasive:  The AUA guidelines also listed several discontinued treatments, including long-term oral antibiotics, intravesical bacillus Calmette Guerin, intravesical resiniferatoxin), high-pressure and long-duration hydrodistention, and systemic glucocorticoids.

Bladder distension.

Bladder distension while under general anesthesia, also known as hydrodistention (a procedure which stretches the bladder capacity), has shown some success in reducing urinary frequency and giving short-term pain relief to those with IC. However, it is unknown exactly how this procedure causes pain relief. Recent studies show pressure on pelvic trigger points can relieve symptoms. The relief achieved by bladder distensions is only temporary (weeks or months), so is not viable as a long-term treatment for IC/BPS. The proportion of people with IC/BPS who experience relief from hydrodistention is currently unknown and evidence for this modality is limited by a lack of properly controlled studies. Bladder rupture and sepsis may be associated with prolonged, high-pressure hydrodistention.

Bladder instillations.

Bladder instillation of medication is one of the main forms of treatment of interstitial cystitis, but evidence for its effectiveness is currently limited. Advantages of this treatment approach include direct contact of the medication with the bladder and low systemic side effects due to poor absorption of the medication. Single medications or a mixture of medications are commonly used in bladder instillation preparations. DMSO is the only approved bladder instillation for IC/BPS yet it is much less frequently used in urology clinics.  A 50% solution of DMSO had the potential to create irreversible muscle contraction. However, a lesser solution of 25% was found to be reversible. Long-term use of DMSO is questionable, as its mechanism of action is not fully understood though DMSO is thought to inhibit mast cells and may have anti-inflammatory, muscle-relaxing, and analgesic effects. Other agents used for bladder instillations to treat interstitial cystitis include: heparin, lidocaine, chondroitin sulfate, hyaluronic acid, pentosan polysulfate, oxybutynin, and botulinum toxin A. Preliminary evidence suggests these agents are efficacious in reducing symptoms of interstitial cystitis, but further study with larger, randomized, controlled clinical trials is needed.

Diet.

Diet modification is often recommended as a first-line method of self-treatment for interstitial cystitis, though rigorous controlled studies examining the impact diet has on interstitial cystitis signs and symptoms are currently lacking. Individuals with interstitial cystitis often experience an increase in symptoms when they consume certain foods and beverages. Avoidance of these potential trigger foods and beverages such as caffeine-containing beverages including coffee, tea, and soda, alcoholic beverages, chocolate, citrus fruits, hot peppers, and artificial sweeteners may be helpful in alleviating symptoms. Diet triggers vary between individuals with IC; the best way for a person to discover his or her own triggers is to use an elimination diet. Sensitivity to trigger foods may be reduced if calcium glycerophosphate and/or sodium bicarbonate is consumed. The foundation of therapy is a modification of diet to help people avoid those foods which can further irritate the damaged bladder wall.  The mechanism by which dietary modification benefits people with IC is unclear. Integration of neural signals from pelvic organs may mediate the effects of diet on symptoms of IC.

Medications.

The antihistamine hydroxyzine failed to demonstrate superiority over placebo in treatment of people with IC in a randomized, controlled, clinical trial. Amitriptyline has been shown to be effective in reducing symptoms such as chronic pelvic pain and nocturia in many people with IC/BPS with a median dose of 75 mg daily. In one study, the antidepressant duloxetine was found to be ineffective as a treatment, although a patent exists for use of duloxetine in the context of IC, and is known to relieve neuropathic pain. The calcineurin inhibitor cyclosporine A has been studied as a treatment for interstitial cystitis due to its immunosuppressive properties. A prospective randomized study found cyclosporine A to be more effective at treating IC symptoms than pentosan polysulfate, but also had more adverse effects.  Oral pentosan polysulfate is believed to repair the protective glycosaminoglycan coating of the bladder, but studies have encountered mixed results when attempting to determine if the effect is statistically significant compared to placebo.

Pelvic floor treatments.

Urologic pelvic pain syndromes, such as IC/BPS and CP/CPPS, are characterized by pelvic muscle tenderness, and symptoms may be reduced with pelvic myofascial physical therapy.  This may leave the pelvic area in a sensitized condition, resulting in a loop of muscle tension and heightened neurological feedback (neural wind-up), a form of myofascial pain syndrome. Current protocols, such as the Wise–Anderson Protocol, largely focus on stretches to release overtensed muscles in the pelvic or anal area (commonly referred to as trigger points), physical therapy to the area, and progressive relaxation therapy to reduce causative stress.  Pelvic floor dysfunction is a fairly new area of specialty for physical therapists worldwide. The goal of therapy is to relax and lengthen the pelvic floor muscles, rather than to tighten and/or strengthen them as is the goal of therapy for people with urinary incontinence. Thus, traditional exercises such as Kegel exercises, which are used to strengthen pelvic muscles, can provoke pain and additional muscle tension. A specially trained physical therapist can provide direct, hands on evaluation of the muscles, both externally and internally.

Surgery.

Surgery is rarely used for IC/BPS. Surgical intervention is very unpredictable, and is considered a treatment of last resort for severe refractory cases of interstitial cystitis. Some people who opt for surgical intervention continue to experience pain after surgery. Typical surgical interventions for refractory cases of IC/BPS include: bladder augmentation, urinary diversion, transurethral fulguration and resection of ulcers, and bladder removal (cystectomy).  Neuromodulation can be successful in treating IC/BPS symptoms, including pain. One electronic pain-killing option is TENS. Percutaneous tibial nerve stimulation stimulators have also been used, with varying degrees of success. Percutaneous sacral nerve root stimulation was able to produce statistically significant improvements in several parameters, including pain.

Alternative medicine.

There is little evidence looking at the effects of alternative medicine though their use is common. There is tentative evidence that acupuncture may help pain associated with IC/BPS as part of other treatments. Despite a scarcity of controlled studies on alternative medicine and IC/BPS, "rather good results have been obtained" when acupuncture is combined with other treatments.  Biofeedback, a relaxation technique aimed at helping people control functions of the autonomic nervous system, has shown some benefit in controlling pain associated with IC/BPS as part of a multimodal approach that may also include medication or hydrodistention of the bladder.

Prognosis.

IC/BPS has a profound impact on quality of life. A 2007 Finnish epidemiologic study showed that two-thirds of women at moderate to high risk of having interstitial cystitis reported impairment in their quality of life and 35% of people with IC reported an impact on their sexual life. A 2012 survey showed that among a group of adult women with symptoms of interstitial cystitis, 11% reported suicidal thoughts in the past two weeks. Other research has shown that the impact of IC/BPS on quality of life is severe and may be comparable to the quality of life experienced in end-stage kidney disease or rheumatoid arthritis.  International recognition of interstitial cystitis has grown and international urology conferences to address the heterogeneity in diagnostic criteria have recently been held. IC/PBS is now recognized with an official disability code in the United States of America.

Epidemiology.

IC/BPS affects men and women of all cultures, socioeconomic backgrounds, and ages. Although the disease was previously believed to be a condition of menopausal women, growing numbers of men and women are being diagnosed in their twenties and younger. IC/BPS is not a rare condition. Early research suggested that the number of IC/BPS cases ranged from 1 in 100,000 to 5.1 in 1,000 of the general population. In recent years, the scientific community has achieved a much deeper understanding of the epidemiology of interstitial cystitis. Recent studies have revealed that between 2.7 and 6.53 million women in the USA have symptoms of IC and up to 12% of women may have early symptoms of IC/BPS. Further study has estimated that the condition is far more prevalent in men than previously thought ranging from 1.8 to 4.2 million men having symptoms of interstitial cystitis.  The condition is officially recognized as a disability in the United States.

History.

Philadelphia surgeon Joseph Parrish published the earliest record of interstitial cystitis in 1836 describing three cases of severe lower urinary tract symptoms without the presence of a bladder stone. The term "interstitial cystitis" was coined by Dr. Alexander Skene in 1887 to describe the disease. In 2002, the United States amended the Social Security Act to include interstitial cystitis as a disability. The first guideline for diagnosis and treatment of interstitial cystitis is released by a Japanese research team in 2009. The American Urological Association released the first American clinical practice guideline for diagnosing and treating IC/BPS in 2011.

Names.

Originally called "interstitial cystitis", this disorder was renamed to "interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome" (IC/BPS) in the 2002–2010 timeframe. In 2007, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) began using the umbrella term urologic chronic pelvic pain syndrome (UCPPS) to refer to pelvic pain syndromes associated with the bladder (e.g., interstitial cystitis/bladder pain syndrome) and with the prostate gland or pelvis (e.g., chronic prostatitis/chronic pelvic pain syndrome).  In 2008, terms currently in use in addition to IC/BPS include "painful bladder syndrome", "bladder pain syndrome" and "hypersensitive bladder syndrome", alone and in a variety of combinations. These different terms are being used in different parts of the world. The term "interstitial cystitis" is the primary term used in ICD-10 and MeSH. Grover et al. said, "The International Continence Society named the disease interstitial cystitis/painful bladder syndrome (IC/PBS) in 2002 [Abrams et al. 2002], while the Multinational Interstitial Cystitis Association have labeled it as painful bladder syndrome/interstitial cystitis (PBS/IC) [Hanno et al. 2005]. Recently, the European Society for the study of Interstitial Cystitis (ESSIC) proposed the moniker, ‘bladder pain syndrome’ (BPS) [van de Merwe et al. 2008]."

Interstitial cystitis (IC), also known as bladder pain syndrome (BPS), is a type of chronic pain that affects the bladder. Symptoms include feeling the need to urinate right away, needing to urinate often, and pain with sex. IC/BPS is associated with depression and lower quality of life. Many of those affected also have irritable bowel syndrome and fibromyalgia. The cause of IC/BPS is unknown. While it can, it does not typically run in a family. The diagnosis is usually based on the symptoms after ruling out other conditions. Typically the urine culture is negative. Ulceration or inflammation may be seen on cystoscopy. Other conditions which can produce similar symptoms include urinary tract infection (UTI), overactive bladder, sexually transmitted infections, endometriosis, bladder cancer, and prostatitis. There is no cure for interstitial cystitis. Treatments that may improve symptoms include lifestyle changes, medications, or procedures. Lifestyle changes may include stopping smoking and reducing stress. Medications may include ibuprofen, pentosan polysulfate, or amitriptyline. Procedures may include bladder distention, nerve stimulation, or surgery. Pelvic floor exercises and long term antibiotics are not recommended. In the United States and Europe, it is estimated that around 0.5% of people are affected. Women are affected about five times as often as men. Onset is typically in middle age. The term "interstitial cystitis" first came into use in 1887.

Die Interstitielle Zystitis/Cystitis – engl.: Interstitial Cystitis oder Bladder Pain Syndrome (BPS) bzw. Painful Bladder Syndrome (PBS) – deshalb Kurzform "IC/BPS" – ist eine nicht heilbare Erkrankung der Blase, die mit einer chronischen Entzündung aller Schichten der Blasenwände einhergeht. Die Interstitielle Cystitis wird von Pollakisurie, urogenitalem Schmerz und ständigem Harndrang charakterisiert. Synonyme für die Erkrankung sind: chronische Interstitielle Zystitis; Hunner-Zystitis nach Guy Hunner; nicht bakterielle Blasenentzündung; abakterielle Zystitis; schmerzhaftes Blasen-Syndrom; Blasenschmerz-Syndrom.


International comparisons.

Austria's health care system was given 9th place by the World Health Organization (WHO) in their mid-2000s (decade) international ranking. In 2015 the cost of healthcare was 11.2% of GDP -the fifth highest in Europe.  The city of Vienna has been listed as 1st in quality of living (which includes a variety of social services) by the Mercer Consultants.  In a sample of 13 developed countries Austria was 5th in its population weighted usage of medication in 14 classes in 2009 and fourth 2013. The drugs studied were selected on the basis that the conditions treated had high incidence, prevalence and/or mortality, caused significant long-term morbidity and incurred high levels of expenditure and significant developments in prevention or treatment had been made in the last 10 years. The study noted considerable difficulties in cross border comparison of medication use.  It was placed 12th in Europe by the Euro health consumer index in 2015. The fact that abortion is not carried out in the public healthcare system reduced its rank.

Waiting times.

Despite government claims that no noteworthy waits exist (2007), medium or long waits are normal for at least some elective surgery. Hospital organizations in 2005 stated that mean hip and knee replacement wait times range from 1–12 months, but are generally 3–6 months. In Styria and Upper Austria mean hip replacement wait times were 108 days (about 3.5 months) and mean knee replacement 172 days (5.5 months), cor cataract surgery 142 days (4 months 20 days). For Upper Austria they were 10.3 weeks (72 days, 2 months 11 days) 21.3 weeks (149 days, almost 5 months) and 12 weeks (84 days, or 2 months 23 days). A survey by Statistik Austria found an average wait time of 102 days for eye lens surgery, 78 days (2.5 months) for hip joint surgery, 97 days (3 months 5–5 days) for knee joint surgery, 39 days (1 month 8- days) for coronary surgery, and 28 days (4 weeks) for cardiac surgery  Waiting times can be shortened by arranging to visit the same hospital doctor in a private hospital or clinic. Waits are also sometimes illegally shortened in return for legal or illegal additional payments. Hospital doctors also receive additional fees to treat privately insured patients even though they are only supposed to receive better amenities/accommodations. They may therefore treat private patients sooner. Two Austrian health insurance companies advertised low wait times on their web sites. In a survey in Lower Austria, 8% of respondents said that they were offered shorter waiting times for additional private payments. According to Statistics Austria, 2007, in Thomson & Mossialos, 2009, as cited in Health Systems in Transition (HiT) profile of Austria, 2013, social health insurance patients waited twice as long for cardiac catheterization, and 3-4 times as long for cataract and knee surgery. Compared to individuals with private supplementary insurance, those covered by statutory health insurance wait from three to four times as long for cataract operations and knee operations. For cardiac catheterization procedures, statutory insurance patients wait twice as long. Some states have created objective waiting list guidelines to counteract this.

History.

Austria’s health care system was developed alongside other social welfare programs by the Social Democratic Party of Austria in Vienna (during its classical 'Red Vienna' period) initially.  Austria's health care began primarily in 1956 with the "Allgemeines Sozialversicherungsgesetz" better referred to as the General Social Insurance Law or ASVG, which mandated that healthcare is a right. Individuals become eligible, and automatically registered for healthcare, upon employment. The individual get included into the insurance fund known as Krankenkasse, which results in you receiving an insurance card that covers not only the healthcare, but pensions, and unemployment as well. The level of coverage rapidly grew since 1955-1956 ratification of the General Social Insurance Law, and by 1980 it included unrestricted hospital care, and preventive check-up.  In 2010 under the Chancellorship of Werner Faymann, the Social Democratic Health Minister Alois Stöger began the process of reform as a response to rising healthcare costs and difficulties with capacity. The system is financed in part with public debt which had become a significant challenge in the aftermath of the recession which hit Austria in 2009. The reforms for 2013 aimed to increase capacity, improve the quality of care, and address fiscal concerns in concert with the Finance Ministry. A key outcome of the reform with the introduction of a budget cap on healthcare expenditure. The idea of structural reform was not entertained. Because of the federal structure of Austria the legal structure of the social security programme is unusually complex with multiple entities at the state level under the umbrella of the national institution: making adjustments to the federal framework would present a constitutional issue.

Structure.

Austria's health programs are funded by the sickness insurance fund known as the Krankenkasse, which in 2013 took 11.0% of the GDP, which was above the average of the E.U average of 7.8% of GDP. Austria's healthcare system is decentralized, and operates with a system similar to United States federalism. Each of the nine states and the federal government of Austria have legal limitation and roles in their healthcare system. Federal Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs is the federal aspect, its role is to develop the framework for the services that are offered, and handle the sickness insurance fund known as the Krankenkasse, which funds Austria's healthcare system. The role of the Provinces is to manage and provide the care as needed. The provision of healthcare is ultimately carried out jointly by federal, provincial, and local actors. Since Austria's health program covers a vast array of social insurance including but not limited to unemployment insurance, family benefits, accident insurance, the overall bureaucracy is vast. While the Krankenkasse is the primary fund, Austria social protection network actually implemented by 22 smaller funds, 19 of which are purely for sickness and all of which by public law are self-governed in order to insure decentralization. The funds are also differentiated to allow for effective risk pooling, which is why membership is compulsory and citizens are generally unable to select which fund they will belong to.

Electronic health records.

In December 2012 Austria introduced an Electronic Health Records Act (EHR-Act). These provisions are the legal foundation for a national EHR system based upon a substantial public interest according to Art 8(4) of the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC.  The Austrian EHR-Act pursues an opt-out approach in order to harmonize the interests of public health and privacy in the best possible manner.  The 4th Part of the Austrian Health Telematics Act 2012 (HTA 2012) – these are the EHR provisions – are one of the most detailed data protection rules within Austrian legislation. Numerous safeguards according to Art 8(4) DPD guarantee a high level of data protection. For example:

The nation of Austria has a two-tier health care system in which virtually all individuals receive publicly funded care, but they also have the option to purchase supplementary private health insurance. Care involving private insurance plans (sometimes referred to as "comfort class" care) can include more flexible visiting hours and private rooms and doctors. Some individuals choose to completely pay for their care privately.

Das österreichische Gesundheitswesen gewährleistet ein hohes Maß an Zugangsgerechtigkeit und besitzt ein starkes ethisch fundiertes solidarisches Krankenversicherungssystem. In Österreich waren 2011 über 99,9 % der Bevölkerung krankenversichert. Allerdings gibt es trotz der Gesundheitsreformen zwischen 2005 und 2012 in Österreich weiterhin Verbesserungsbedarf bei der Koordination und Steuerung des Gesundheitswesens. Fragmentierte Zuständigkeiten erschweren die Identifikation des Versorgungsbedarfs.


By country.

In the United States.

The negative perception of trailer parks was not improved by the creation of emergency trailer parks by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the displaced victims of Hurricane Katrina, the quality and temporary nature of which was disputed.  Many stereotypes have been developed regarding people who live in trailer parks, which are similar to stereotypes of the poor and the term "trailer trash" is often used as an adjective in the same vein as the derogatory American terms "white trash" or "ghetto". Though trailer parks appear throughout the United States, they are often associated with the Deep South and rural areas.  More recently referred to in the U.S. as "mobile home parks" or "manufactured housing communities", the stereotypes are often just that. Age-Restricted communities exist in many locales that permit mobile home parks as "55+ parks" in keeping with the Housing for Older Persons Act (HOPA). Generally at least one homeowner in these age-restricted communities must be age 55 or over and persons under the age of 18 are rarely permitted to live there. These can be gated communities with amenities such as swimming pools, clubhouses and on-site maintenance. Homes are often permanently installed on foundations. However, in certain circumstances residents may not own the land their homes occupy.

Corporate investment.

Mobile home parks in the U.S. have become an attractive investment for large financial firms, such as Carlyle Group, Apollo Global Management and TPG Capital. Over 100,000 US mobile home sites were estimated to be owned by large firms in 2019. One firm, Stockbridge Capital Group, owner of about 200 mobile-home parks throughout the US "saw a return on investment of more than 30 percent between late 2016 and the end of 2017." The company's expansion into this market was facilitated by $1.3 billion in financing from Fannie Mae, which has called mobile homes "inherently affordable." Profitability for the firms owning the parks has in some cases been tied to rent increases, and has not necessarily translated into good maintenance of the mobile homes.

Outside the United States.

Disputed trailer parks.

In Britain and Ireland, the term halting site is used in place of trailer parks. The biggest difference in Europe is the presence of unauthorised halting sites (or trailer parks). This stems from the practice of traditionally itinerant ethnic groups, such as the Romani and Irish Travellers, to periodically during the year set up a transient community. From the late 1970s onward there was also a growth in New Age travelers culture; these groups espoused alternative lifestyles combined with a Do-It-Yourself punk ethic. The latter were a commonplace phenomenon in Germany, giving rise to expressions such as "Wagenburg", "Wagendorf", and "Bauwagenplatz" ("wagon fort", "trailer village" and "construction trailer site" respectively).  Either rejected from or refusing to seek entrance in municipally authorised halting sites, groups of families practising a nomadic lifestyle would establish themselves under the cover of darkness on idle land near urban centers. These unauthorised encampments were often resented by local people, perpetuating a cycle of discrimination, violence, fear and discrimination. The use of land without the necessary permission also carried the threat of imprisonment for the squatting families, further worsening the socio-economic disadvantage experienced by these minorities.

Authorised caravan parks.

In Germany, the Netherlands and some other European countries, local law allows for normal camping at RV parks for a short time and seasonal camping for holiday makers, and also long-time camping (for years) with hardly movable travel trailers. Sometimes the inhabitants also cultivate a garden. Some cities allow a long-time camping lot to be the regular address registered with the authorities; others do not. Many of mobile home plots are offered by RV parks that allow for all sorts of camping and offer extra plots for mobile homes (static caravans).The cost for such a plot tends to be between 400 € and 1.500 € a year, depending on the location and facilities.  In France, living in a trailer or mobile home for more than three months is prohibited by law, even if the resident owns the land; however, building requirements and permissions for self building of recreational solid (static) country cottages are more relaxed in France if one stays within a certain amount of square meters.  In the United Kingdom, "trailers" are commonly known as static caravans, and are generally used for one of two purposes: firstly as holiday homes, designed for short-term living; and secondly as retirement homes for the elderly, designed for long-term occupancy. Both types of trailers usually enjoy good amenities and are surrounded by highly manicured gardens.  In Australia, there is generally no differentiation between a trailer park and an RV park. The term "caravan park" is used to refer to both.  In New Zealand, the suburb of Favona in Auckland is an area where trailer parks are concentrated.

A trailer park or caravan park is a temporary or permanent area for mobile homes and travel trailers. Advantages include low cost compared to other housing, and quick and easy moving to a new area, for example when taking a job in a distant place while keeping the same home.

Eine Wohnwagensiedlung ist eine Wohngegend, in welcher überwiegend Wohnwagen oder Mobilheime dauerhaft aufgestellt sind und bewohnt werden. Die ökonomisch begründeten Wohnwagensiedlungen unterscheiden sich von den sozial und politisch motivierten Wagenplätzen, wenngleich auch Überschneidungen vorhanden sind.


Purpose of VINITI.

VINITI is the name for the Russian, and formerly Soviet, organization, " All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information". It was established in 1952 as a branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. At its inception VINITI was tasked with gathering scientific and technical information from sources throughout the world, and also chartered to disseminate this information to the Soviet and socialist scientific community. By 1992 technical and scientific documents had been amassed from more than 100 countries in 60 languages, and available for dissemination. It had become the largest single source of secondary scientific and technical information in the world. 31 million citations indexed literature from 1953 to 1992. Much of the former Soviet database contained materials unique to the Eastern bloc scientific community, which was just then being made available to American, British, Western European, and Japanese scientists and researchers.  In 1952 the Presidium of the USSR Academy of Sciences made a decision to set up the Scientific Information Institute in the framework of the Academy of Sciences. The main task of the Institute was to organize the informational support of basic science by centralizing the analysis, searching, and processing of information. The Government reorganized the Institute into the formerly named All-Union Institute of Scientific and Technical Information (VINITI) in 1955. VINITI began to cover not only basic science, but also applied science.  By 2002, VINITI became a team of highly skilled professionals processing more than one million scientific publications annually. It is the largest on-line data bank in Russia, which contains more than 25 million documents, The database contains the Abstract Journal which is distributed, subscribed to, and read by scientists in sixty countries, with more than 330 titles of publications, which cover all fields of basic and applied sciences. In 2002, VINITI is noted for having more than 240 databases on science and technology, economics, and medicine. In addition it has powerful retrieval systems, and a wide range of services.

VINITI publications.

VINITI publishes the "Abstracts Journal" series (Russian: "Referativny Zhurnal"), which has been published since 1952. The "Abstracts Journal" is made up of reviews and abstracts of various published materials in particular areas: books, scientific research papers, patent documents, regulatory information, technical papers, trade publications, foreign dissertations, and cartographic publications.

VINITI (; All-Russian Institute for Scientific and Technical Information; former All-Union Institute for Scientific and Technical Information) is a subsidiary of the Russian Academy of Sciences devoted to gathering scientific and technical information from sources throughout the world and disseminating this information to Russian scientific community. The institute was established as the Institute for Scientific Information () in 1952. The founder of the institute was Alexander Nesmeyanov. The main office of the institute is situated in Moscow, while its publishing house is located in Lyubertsy.

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Background.

A key precursor to the Kosovo Liberation Army was the People's Movement of Kosovo (LPK). This group, who argued Kosovo's freedom could be won only through armed struggle, traces back to 1982, and played a crucial role in the creation of the KLA in 1993. Fund-raising began in the 1980s in Switzerland by Albanian exiles of the violence of 1981 and subsequent émigrés. Slobodan Milošević revoked Kosovan autonomy in 1989, returning the region to its 1945 status, ejecting ethnic Albanians from the Kosovan bureaucracy and violently putting down protests. In response, Kosovar Albanians established the Democratic League of Kosovo (LDK). Headed by Ibrahim Rugova, its goal was independence from Serbia, but via peaceful means. To this end, the LDK set up and developed a "parallel state" with a particular focus on education and healthcare.  The KLA made their name known publicly for the first time in 1995, and a first public appearance followed in 1997, at which time its membership was still only around 200. Critical of the progress made by Rugova, the KLA received boosts from the 1995 Dayton Accords— these granted Kosovo nothing, and so generated a more widespread rejection of the LDK's peaceful methods — and from looted weaponry that spilled into Kosovo after the Albanian rebellion of 1997. During 1997–98, the Kosovo Liberation Army moved ahead of Rugova's LDK, a fact starkly illustrated by the KLA's Hashim Thaçi leading the Kosovar Albanians at the Rambouillet negotiations of spring 1999, with Rugova as his deputy.  In February 1996, the KLA undertook a series of attacks against police stations and Yugoslav government officers, saying that they had killed Albanian civilians as part of an ethnic cleansing campaign. Later that year, the British weekly "The European" carried an article by a French expert stating that "German civil and military intelligence services have been involved in training and equipping the rebels with the aim of cementing German influence in the Balkan area. (...) The birth of the KLA in 1996 coincided with the appointment of Hansjoerg Geiger as the new head of the BND (German secret Service). (...) The BND men were in charge of selecting recruits for the KLA command structure from the 500,000 Kosovars in Albania." Matthias Küntzel tried to prove later on that German secret diplomacy had been instrumental in helping the KLA since its creation.  Serbian authorities denounced the KLA as a terrorist organisation and increased the number of security forces in the region. This had the effect of boosting the credibility of the embryonic KLA among the Kosovo Albanian population. Not long before NATO's military action commenced, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants reported that "Kosovo Liberation Army... attacks aimed at trying to 'cleanse' Kosovo of its ethnic Serb population." The NATO North Atlantic Council had stressed that KLA was "the main initiator of the violence" and that it had "launched what appears to be a deliberate campaign of provocation".  One of the goals mentioned by the KLA commanders was the formation of Greater Albania, irredentist concept of lands that are considered to form the national homeland by many Albanians, encompassing Kosovo, Albania, and the ethnic Albanian minority of neighbouring Macedonia and Montenegro.

Funding.

The KLA received large funds from the Albanian diaspora in Europe and the United States. It is estimated that those funds amounted from $75 million to $100 million. There is a possibility that among donators to the KLA were people involved in illegal activities such as drug trafficking, however insufficient evidence exists that the KLA itself was involved in such activities. When the U.S. State Department listed the KLA as a terrorist organization in 1998, it noted its links to the heroin trade, and a briefing paper for the U.S. Congress stated: "We would be remiss to dismiss allegations that between 30 and 50 percent of the KLA's money comes from drugs." By 1999, Western intelligence agencies estimated that over $250m of narcotics money had found its way into KLA coffers. After the NATO bombing, KLA-linked heroin traffickers began using Kosovo again as a major supply route; in 2000, an estimated 80% of Europe's heroin supply was controlled by Kosovar Albanians.

Kosovo War.

Between 5 and 7 March 1998, the Yugoslav Army launched an operation on Prekaz. The operation followed an earlier firefight (28 February) in which four policemen were killed and several more were wounded; Adem Jashari, a KLA leader, escaped. In Prekaz, 28 militants were killed, along with 30 civilians, most belonging to Jashari's family. Amnesty International claimed that it was a military operation focused primarily on the elimination of Jashari and his family.  On 23 April 1998, the Yugoslav Army (VJ) ambushed the KLA near the Albanian-Yugoslav border. The KLA had tried to smuggle arms and supplies into Kosovo. The Yugoslav Army, although greatly outnumbered, had no casualties, while 19 militants were killed.  According to Roland Keith, a field office director of the OSCE's Kosovo Verification Mission:  Upon my arrival the war increasingly evolved into a mid intensity conflict as ambushes, the encroachment of critical lines of communication and the [KLA] kidnapping of security forces resulted in a significant increase in government casualties which in turn led to major Yugoslavian reprisal security operations... By the beginning of March these terror and counter-terror operations led to the inhabitants of numerous villages fleeing, or being dispersed to either other villages, cities or the hills to seek refuge... The situation was clearly that KLA provocations, as personally witnessed in ambushes of security patrols which inflicted fatal and other casualties, were clear violations of the previous October's agreement [and United Nations Security Council Resolution 1199].  Some sources say that the KLA never won a battle, while others say it won relatively few battles.

Recruitment.

In Kosovo.

The original core of KLA in the early 1990s was a closely knitted group of commanders consisting of commissioned and non commissioned officers belonging to reserve, regular and territorial defense units of the Yugoslav army (JNA). In 1996, the KLA consisted of only a few hundred fighters. Within the context of the armed struggle, in 1996-1997 a report by the CIA noted that the KLA could mobilize tens of thousands of supporters in Kosovo within a two to three year time frame. By the end of 1998, the KLA had 17,000 men. Religion did not play a role within the KLA and some of its most committed fund raisers and fighters came from the Catholic community.

Foreign volunteers.

Albanian recruits from neighbouring Macedonia joined the KLA and their numbers ranged from several dozen into the thousands. Following the war some Albanians from Macedonia have felt that their military participation and assistance to fellow Kosovan Albanians during the conflict has not been properly recognised in Kosovo.  Former KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said that volunteers came from "Sweden, Belgium, the UK, Germany and the U.S.". The KLA included many foreign volunteers from West Europe, mostly from Germany and Switzerland, and also ethnic Albanians from the U.S.  According to the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by September 1998 there were 1,000 foreign mercenaries from Albania, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina (Muslims) and Croatia. The mujahideen unit of 115 members operated in Drenica in May–June 1998, and dozen of its members were Saudis and Egyptians, reportedly funded by Islamist organizations. The group was later disbanded, and no permanent Jihadist presence was established.  During the Kosovo conflict Milošević and his supporters portrayed the KLA as a terrorist organisation of militant Islam. The CIA advised the KLA to avoid involvement with Muslim extremists. The KLA rejected offers of assistance from Muslim fundamentalists. There was an understanding within the ranks of the KLA that foreign assistance from Muslim fundamentalists would limit support toward the cause of Kosovo Albanians in the West.

Aftermath (post-1999).

After the war, the KLA was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps, which worked alongside NATO forces patrolling the province. In 2000 there was unrest in Kosovska Mitrovica, with a Yugoslav police officer and physician killed, and three officers and a physician wounded, in February. In March, the FRY complained about the escalation of violence in the region, claiming this showed that the KLA was still active. Between April and September the FRY issued several documents to the UN Security Council about violence against Serbs and other non-Albanians.  Some people from non-Albanian communities such as the Serbs and Romani fled Kosovo, some fearing revenge attacks by armed people and returning refugees and others were pressured by the KLA and armed gangs to leave. The Yugoslav Red Cross had estimated a total of 30,000 refugees and internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Kosovo, most of whom were Serb. The UNHCR estimated the figure at 55,000 refugees who had fled to Montenegro and Central Serbia, most of whom were Kosovo Serbs: "Over 90 mixed villages in Kosovo have now been emptied of Serb inhabitants and other Serbs continue leaving, either to be displaced in other parts of Kosovo or fleeing into central Serbia."  In post war Kosovo, KLA fighters have been venerated by Kosovar Albanian society with the publishing of literature such as biographies, the erection of monuments and commemorative events. The exploits of Adem Jashari have been celebrated and turned into legend by former KLA members and by Kosovar Albanian society. Several songs, literature works, monuments, memorials have been dedicated to him, and some streets and buildings bear his name across Kosovo.

Insurgency in south Serbia and Macedonia.

Ali Ahmeti organised the NLA that fought in the Insurgency in the Republic of Macedonia, of former KLA fighters from Kosovo and Macedonia, Albanian insurgents from Preševo, Medveđa and Bujanovac in Serbia, young Albanian radicals and nationalists from Macedonia, and foreign mercenaries. The acronym was the same as KLA's in Albanian.

KLA veterans in politics.

A number of KLA figures now play a major role in Kosovar politics.

Indictments.

Hajredin Bala, an ex-KLA prison guard, was sentenced on 30 November 2005 to 13 years’ imprisonment for the mistreatment of three prisoners at the Llapushnik prison camp, his personal role in the "maintenance and enforcement of the inhumane conditions" of the camp, aiding the torture of one prisoner, and of participating in the murder of nine prisoners from the camp who were marched to the Berisha Mountains on 25 or 26 July 1998 and killed. Bala appealed the sentence and the appeal is still pending.

Foreign support.

The United States (and NATO) directly supported the KLA. The CIA funded, trained and supplied the KLA (as they had earlier the Bosnian Army). As disclosed to "The Sunday Times" by CIA sources, "American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia". In 1999, a retired Colonel told that KLA forces had been trained in Albania by former U.S. military working for MPRI.  James Bissett, Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, wrote in 2001 that media reports indicate that "as early as 1998, the Central Intelligence Agency assisted by the British Special Air Service were arming and training Kosovo Liberation Army members in Albania to foment armed rebellion in Kosovo. (...) The hope was that with Kosovo in flames NATO could intervene...". According to Tim Judah, KLA representatives had already met with American, British, and Swiss intelligence agencies in 1996, and possibly "several years earlier".  American Republican Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, while opposed to American ground troops in Kosovo, advocated for America providing support to the KLA to help them gain their freedom. He was honored by the Albanian American Civic League at a New Jersey located fundraising event on 23 July 2001. President of the League, Joseph J. DioGuardi, praised Rohrabacher for his support to the KLA, saying "He was the first member of Congress to insist that the United States arm the Kosovo Liberation Army, and one of the few members who to this day publicly supports the independence of Kosovo." Rohrabacher gave a speech in support of American equipping the KLA with weaponry, comparing it to French support of America in the Revolutionary War.

Reported abuses.

There have been reports of war crimes committed by the KLA both during and after the conflict. These have been directed against Serbs, other ethnic minorities (primarily the Roma) and against ethnic Albanians accused of collaborating with Serb authorities. According to a 2001 report by Human Rights Watch (HRW):  The KLA was responsible for serious abuses... including abductions and murders of Serbs and ethnic Albanians considered collaborators with the state.  Elements of the KLA are also responsible for post-conflict attacks on Serbs, Roma, and other non-Albanians, as well as ethnic Albanian political rivals... widespread and systematic burning and looting of homes belonging to Serbs, Roma, and other minorities and the destruction of Orthodox churches and monasteries... combined with harassment and intimidation designed to force people from their homes and communities... elements of the KLA are clearly responsible for many of these crimes.  The KLA engaged in tit-for-tat attacks against Serbs in Kosovo, reprisals against ethnic Albanians who "collaborated" with the Serbian government, and bombed police stations and cafes known to be frequented by Serb officials, killing innocent civilians in the process. Most of its activities were funded by drug running, though its ties to community groups and Albanian exiles gave it local popularity.  The Panda Bar incident, a massacre of Serb teenagers in a cafe, that led to an immediate crackdown on the Albanian-populated southern quarters of Peć during which Serbian police killed two Albanians has been alleged by Serbian newspaper "Kurir" to have been organized by the Serbian government, while Aleksandar Vučić has stated that there is no evidence that the murder was committed by Albanians, as previously believed.  The exact number of victims of the KLA is not known. According to a Serbian government report, the KLA had killed and kidnapped 3,276 people of various ethnic descriptions including some Albanians. From 1 January 1998 to 10 June 1999 the KLA killed 988 people and kidnapped 287; in the period from 10 June 1999 to 11 November 2001, when NATO took control in Kosovo, 847 were reported to have been killed and 1,154 kidnapped. This comprised both civilians and security force personnel. Of those killed in the first period, 335 were civilians, 351 soldiers, 230 police and 72 were unidentified. By nationality, 87 of the killed civilians were Serbs, 230 Albanians, and 18 of other nationalities. Following the withdrawal of Serbian and Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo in June 1999, all casualties were civilians, the vast majority being Serbs. According to Human Rights Watch, as "many as one thousand Serbs and Roma have been murdered or have gone missing since 12 June 1999."  A Serbian court sentenced 9 former KLA members for murdering 32 non-Albanian civilians. In the same case, another 35 civilians are missing while 153 were tortured and released.

Alleged use of child soldiers.

The Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted by the UN General Assembly on 20 November 1989, entered into force on 2 September 1990 and was valid throughout the conflict. Article 38 of this Convention state the age of 15 as the minimum for recruitment or participation in armed conflict. Article 38 requires state parties to prevent anyone under the age of 15 from taking direct part in hostilities and to refrain from recruiting anyone under the age of 15 years.  The participation of persons under age of 18 in the KLA was confirmed in October 2000 when details of the registration of 16,024 KLA soldiers by the International Organisation for Migration in Kosovo became known. Ten per cent of this number were under age of 18. The majority of them were 16 and 17 years old. Around 2% were below the age of 16. These were mainly girls recruited to cook for the soldiers rather than to actually fight.

Organ theft.

Carla Del Ponte, a long-time ICTY chief prosecutor, claimed in her book "" that there were instances of organ trafficking in 1999 after the end of the Kosovo War. These allegations were dismissed by Kosovar and Albanian authorities. The allegations have been rejected by Kosovar authorities as fabrications while the ICTY has said "no reliable evidence had been obtained to substantiate the allegations".  In early 2011 the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs viewed a report by Dick Marty on the alleged criminal activities and alleged organ harvesting controversy; however, the Members of Parliament criticised the report, citing lack of evidence, and Marty responded that a witness protection program was needed in Kosovo before he could provide more details on witnesses because their lives were in danger. Investigations are continuing.

Massacres.

In 2003, the daily Serbian newspaper "Večernje novosti" published wartime photographs of three KLA soldiers with the heads of decapitated Serbs. The newspaper identified two of the three KLA members as Sadik Chuflaj and his son Valon Chuflaj, who according to the newspaper then worked for the Kosovo Protection Corps. Bojan Cvetkovic, a volunteer soldier who had been only on duty for weeks was identified as one of the victims while the Serbian Radical Party later confirmed that soldier Aleksandar Njegovic who was a SRP member, was the second victim out of three other soldiers that went missing at the same time.

Destroyed medieval churches and monuments.

Cultural historian András Riedlmayer stated that no Serbian Orthodox churches or monasteries were damaged or destroyed by the KLA during the war. Riedlmayer and Andrew Herscher conducted a survey of Kosovo cultural heritage for the ICTY and UNMIK following the war and their results found that most of the damage to the churches occurred during revenge attacks following the conflict and the return of Kosovo Albanian refugees. In 1999 KLA fighters were accused of vandalizing Devič monastery and terrorizing the staff. The KFOR troops said KLA rebels vandalized centuries-old murals and paintings in the chapel and stole two cars and all the monastery's food.  Karima Bennoune, United Nations special rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, referred to the many reports of widespread attacks against churches committed by the Kosovo Liberation Army. In 2014, John Clint Williamson announced EU Special Investigative Task Force's investigative findings and he indicated that a certain element of the KLA following the conclusion of the war (June 1999) intentionally targeted minority populations in organized ethnic cleansing campaign with acts of persecution that also included desecration and destruction of churches and other religious sites. Fabio Maniscalco, an Italian archaeologist, specialist about the protection of cultural property, described that KLA members seized icons and liturgical ornaments as they ransacked and that they proceeded to destroy Christian Orthodox churches and monasteries with mortar bombs after the arrival of KFOR.

Sexual violence.

Since the entry of the NATO-led Kosovo Force, rapes of Serb and Romani, as well as Albanian women perceived as collaborators, by ethnic Albanians and sometimes by KLA members have been documented.

Status as a terrorist group.

The Yugoslav authorities, under Slobodan Milošević, regarded the KLA as terrorist group. In February 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gelbard, condemned both the actions of the Serb government and of the KLA, and described the KLA as "without any questions, a terrorist group". UN resolution 1160 took a similar stance. But the 1997 U.S. State Department's terrorist list hadn't included the KLA. In March 1998, just one month later Gerbald had to modify his statements to say that KLA had not been classified legally by the U.S. government as a terrorist group, and the U.S. government approached the KLA leaders to make them interlocutors with the Serbs. A Wall Street Journal article claimed later that the U.S. government had in February 1998 removed the KLA from the list of terrorist organisations, a removal that has never been confirmed. France didn't delist the KLA until late 1998, after strong U.S. and UK lobbying. KLA is still present in the MIPT Terrorism Knowledge Base list of terrorist groups, and is listed as an inactive terrorist organisation by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism.  During the war, the KLA troops collaborated with the NATO troops, and one of its members was called by NATO the embodiment of the Kosovo "freedom fighters". In late 1999 the KLA was disbanded and its members entered the Kosovo Protection Corps.

Special Court of Kosovo.

In April 2014, the Assembly of Kosovo considered and approved the establishment of a special court of Kosovo to try alleged war crimes and other serious abuses committed during and after the 1998–99 Kosovo war. The court will adjudicate cases against individuals based on a 2010 Council of Europe report by the Swiss senator Dick Marty. The proceedings will be EU-funded and held in The Hague, though it would still be a Kosovo national court. Defendants will likely include members of the Kosovo Liberation Army who are alleged to have committed crimes against ethnic minorities and political opponents, meaning the court is likely to meet with some unpopularity at home, where the KLA are still widely considered heroes.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA;, ) was an ethnic-Albanian separatist militia that sought the separation of Kosovo from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) and Serbia during the 1990s and the eventual creation of Greater Albania due to the presence of a vast ethnic majority of Albanians in the region, stressing Albanian culture, ethnicity and nation.

Die UÇK [] (Kurzform für, „Befreiungsarmee des Kosovo“) war eine albanische paramilitärische Organisation, die für die Unabhängigkeit des Kosovo kämpfte.


Early life and education.

Brashear was born on January 19, 1931, in Tonieville, Kentucky, the sixth of eight children to sharecroppers McDonald and Gonzella Brashear. In 1935, the family settled on a farm in Sonora, Kentucky. Brashear attended Sonora Grade School from 1937 to 1946.

Career.

Brashear enlisted in the U.S. Navy on February 25, 1948, shortly after the Navy had been desegregated by U.S. President Harry S. Truman. He graduated from the U.S. Navy Diving & Salvage School in 1954, becoming the first African-American to attend and graduate from the Diving & Salvage School and the first African-American U.S. Navy Diver.  While attending diving school in Bayonne, New Jersey, Brashear faced hostility and racism. He found notes on his bunk saying, "We're going to drown you today, nigger!" and "We don't want any nigger divers." Brashear received encouragement to finish from Boatswain's Mate First Class Rutherford, and graduated 16 out of 17.  Brashear first worked as a diver retrieving approximately 16,000 rounds of ammunition that fell off a barge which had broken in half and sunk to the bottom. On his first tour of shore duty in Quonset Point, Rhode Island, his duties included the salvaging of airplanes (including one Blue Angel) and recovering multiple dead bodies.  Brashear was assigned to escort the presidential yacht the "Barbara Anne" to Rhode Island. He met President Eisenhower and received a small knife that said, "To Carl M. Brashear. From Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957. Many, many thanks." After making chief in 1959, he stayed at Guam for three years doing mostly demolition dives.

Leg amputation and recovery.

In January 1966, in an accident now known as the Palomares incident, a B28 nuclear bomb was lost off the coast of Palomares, Spain, after two United States Air Force aircraft of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), a B-52G Stratofortress bomber and a KC-135A Stratotanker aerial refueling aircraft, collided during aerial refueling. Brashear was serving aboard when it was dispatched to find and recover the missing bomb for the Air Force. The warhead was found after two and a half months of searching. For his service in helping to retrieve the bomb, Brashear was later awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Medal – the highest Navy award for non-combat heroism.  During the bomb recovery operations on March 23, 1966, a line used for towing broke loose, causing a pipe to strike Brashear's left leg below the knee, nearly shearing it off. He was evacuated to Torrejon Air Base in Spain, then to the USAF Hospital at Wiesbaden Air Base, Germany; and finally to the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia. Beset with persistent infection and necrosis, his lower left leg was eventually amputated.  Brashear remained at the Naval Regional Medical Center in Portsmouth from May 1966 until March 1967 recovering and rehabilitating from the amputation. From March 1967 to March 1968, Brashear was assigned to the Harbor Clearance Unit Two, Diving School, preparing for return to full active duty and diving. In April 1968, after a long struggle, Brashear was the first amputee diver to be recertified as a U.S. Navy diver. In 1970, he became the first African-American U.S. Navy master diver, and served nine more years beyond that, achieving the rating of master chief boatswain's mate in 1971. Brashear was motivated by his beliefs that "It's not a sin to get knocked down; it's a sin to stay down" and "I ain't going to let nobody steal my dream".

Retirement.

BMCM (MDV) Brashear retired from the U.S. Navy on April 1, 1979, as a master chief petty officer (E-9) and master diver. He then served as a civilian employee for the government at Naval Station Norfolk, Norfolk, Virginia, and retired in 1993 with the grade of GS-11.

Personal life.

Brashear married and divorced three times: Junetta Wilcoxson (1952–1978), Hattie R. Elam (1980–1983), and Jeanette A. Brundage (1985–1987). He had four children: Shazanta (1955–1996), DaWayne, Phillip, and Patrick. Brashear's grand-nephew is retired professional ice hockey player Donald Brashear.  Brashear died of respiratory and heart failure at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Virginia, on July 25, 2006. He is buried at Woodlawn Memorial Gardens in Norfolk, Virginia.

Media portrayal.

Cuba Gooding, Jr. played the role of Brashear in "Men of Honor", a movie inspired by the life of Carl Brashear.

Carl Brashear Foundation.

After his death, his sons DaWayne and Phillip Brashear started the Carl Brashear Foundation in his honor.

Honors.

Brashear was honored with the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service in October 2000 for 42 years of combined military and federal civilian service. The award was presented by Secretary of Defense William Cohen.  On October 24, 2007, the Newport News Fire Department dedicated a high-speed fireboat named "Carl Brashear" to be used by their Dive and Marine Incident Response Teams.  The "Lewis and Clark"-class dry cargo ship USNS "Carl Brashear" (T-AKE-7) was christened in his honor in San Diego, California, on September 18, 2008. General Dynamics delivered the completed ship to the Navy on March 4, 2009.  On February 21, 2009, Nauticus, a science and maritime museum in downtown Norfolk, Virginia, opened a new exhibit called "Dream to Dive: The Life of Master Diver Carl Brashear". It is the first full-scale museum exhibit dedicated to Brashear.  In 2009 the Chief Petty Officer Club onboard Naval Station Little Creek VA was renamed The Carl Brashear Center. Carl's son and several friends gave speeches at and attended the renaming ceremony. Carl was known to frequent the CPO Club onboard Little Creek up until the time of his death.  On November 9, 2017, the Commonwealth of Kentucky dedicated the "Carl M. Brashear Radcliff Veterans Center" in honor of BMCM (MDV) Carl Brashear. Construction on the new center, which is located about 30 miles from Brashear's hometown of Sonora, was completed about a year before the dedication ceremony. On hand was his son Phillip, Founder of the Brashear Foundation, Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton, Veterans Center Administrator Israel Ray, members of the Brashear family, along with members of the Combat Veterans Motorcycle Association who nominated and worked to collect over 7,000 signatures in support of naming the center after Brashear.  On July 25, 2018, Lincoln Parkway bridge, just outside Tonieville, KY was renamed the "Master Chief Petty Officer Carl Maxie Brashear Memorial Bridge."

Carl Maxie Brashear (January 19, 1931 – July 25, 2006) was a highly decorated United States Navy sailor. He was a U.S. Navy master diver, rising to the position in 1970, despite having his left leg amputated in 1966. The film "Men of Honor" was based on his life.

Carl Maxie Brashear (* 19. Januar 1931 in Tonieville, LaRue County; † 25. Juli 2006 Portsmouth (Virginia)) war der erste afro-amerikanische Taucher sowie der erste zertifizierte Taucher mit einer Amputation in der US Navy.


Taxonomy, systematics and evolution.

Tropicbirds were traditionally grouped in the order Pelecaniformes, which contained the pelicans, cormorants and shags, darters, gannets and boobies and frigatebirds; in the Sibley–Ahlquist taxonomy, the Pelecaniformes were united with other groups into a large "Ciconiiformes". More recently this grouping has been found to be massively paraphyletic (missing closer relatives of its distantly related groups) and split again.  Microscopic analysis of eggshell structure by Konstantin Mikhailov in 1995 found that the eggshells of tropicbirds lacked the covering of thick microglobular material of other Pelecaniformes. Jarvis, "et al".'s 2014 paper "Whole-genome analyses resolve early branches in the tree of life of modern birds" aligns the tropicbirds most closely with the sunbittern and the kagu of the Eurypygiformes, with these two clades forming the sister group of the "core water birds", the Aequornithes, and the Metaves hypothesis abandoned. Order Phaethontiformes  The red-billed tropicbird is basal within the genus. The split between the red-billed tropicbird and the other two tropicbirds is hypothesized to have taken place about six million years ago, with the split between the red-tailed and white-tailed tropicbird taking place about four million years ago.  "Phaethusavis" and "Heliadornis" are prehistoric genera of tropicbirds described from fossils.

Description.

Tropicbirds range in size from 76 cm to 102 cm in length and 94 cm to 112 cm in wingspan. Their plumage is predominantly white, with elongated central tail feathers. The three species have different combinations of black markings on the face, back, and wings. Their bills are large, powerful and slightly decurved. Their heads are large and their necks are short and thick. They have totipalmate feet (that is, all four toes are connected by a web). The legs of a tropicbird are located far back on their body, making walking impossible, so that they can only move on land by pushing themselves forward with their feet.  The tropicbirds' call is typically a loud, piercing, shrill, but grating whistle, or crackle. These are often given in a rapid series when they are in a display flight at the colony. In old literature they were referred to as boatswain (bo'sun'/bosun) birds due their loud whistling calls.

Behaviour and ecology.

Tropicbirds frequently catch their prey by hovering and then plunge-diving, typically only into the surface-layer of the waters. They eat mostly fish, especially flying fish, and occasionally squid. Tropicbirds tend to avoid multi-species feeding flocks, unlike the frigatebirds, which have similar diets.  Tropicbirds are usually solitary or in pairs away from breeding colonies. There they engage in spectacular courtship displays. For several minutes, groups of 2–20 birds simultaneously and repeatedly fly around one another in large, vertical circles, while swinging the tail streamers from side to side. If the female likes the presentation, she will mate with the male in his prospective nest-site. Occasionally, disputes will occur between males trying to protect their mates and nesting areas.  Tropicbirds generally nest in holes or crevices on the bare ground. The female lays one white egg, spotted brown, and incubates for 40–46 days. The incubation is performed by both parents, but mostly the female, while the male brings food to feed the female. The chick hatches with grey down. It will stay alone in the nest while both parents search for food, and they will feed the chick twice every three days until fledging, about 12–13 weeks after hatching. The young are not able to fly initially; they will float on the ocean for several days to lose weight before flight.  Tropicbird chicks have slower growth than nearshore birds, and they tend to accumulate fat deposits while young. That, along with one-egg clutches, appears to be an adaptation to a pelagic lifestyle where food is often gathered in large amounts, but may be hard to find.

Tropicbirds are a family, Phaethontidae, of tropical pelagic seabirds. They are the sole living representatives of the order Phaethontiformes. For many years they were considered part of the Pelecaniformes, but genetics indicates they are most closely related to the Eurypygiformes. There are three species in one genus, Phaethon. The scientific names are derived from Ancient Greek "phaethon", "sun". They have predominantly white plumage with elongated tail feathers and small feeble legs and feet.

Die Tropikvögel ("Phaethon") sind eine Gattung von Seevögeln tropischer Ozeane, die drei eng miteinander verwandte und sehr ähnliche Arten umfasst. Sie werden in eine eigene Familie (Phaethontidae) und eine eigene Ordnung (Phaethontiformes) gestellt. Die Vögel sind schlank und größtenteils weiß, Kopf und Flügel sind schwarz gezeichnet. Das innere Paar der Schwanzfedern ist bei den Altvögeln extrem verlängert, während der Schwanz der Jungtiere keilförmig ist.


Equation.

Throughout this article, ["RL"] denotes the concentration of a receptor-ligand complex, ["R"] the concentration of free receptor, and ["L"] the concentration of free ligand (so that the total concentration of the receptor and ligand are ["R"]+["RL"] and ["L"]+["RL"], respectively). Let "n" be the number of binding sites for ligand on each receptor molecule, and let represent the average number of ligands bound to a receptor. Let "K" denote the dissociation constant between the ligand and receptor. The Scatchard equation is given by  By plotting /["L"] versus, the Scatchard plot shows that the slope equals to -1/"K" while the x-intercept equals the number of ligand binding sites "n".

Derivation.

"n"=1 Ligand.

When each receptor has a single ligand binding site, the system is described by with an on-rate ("k") and off-rate ("k") related to the dissociation constant through "K"="k"/"k". When the system equilibrates, so that the average number of ligands bound to each receptor is given by which is the Scatchard equation for "n"=1.

"n"=2 Ligands.

When each receptor has two ligand binding sites, the system is governed by At equilibrium, the average number of ligands bound to each receptor is given by which is equivalent to the Scatchard equation.

General Case of "n" Ligands.

For a receptor with "n" binding sites that independently bind to the ligand, each binding site will have an average occupancy of ["L"]/("K" + ["L"]). Hence, by considering all "n" binding sites, there will ligands bound to each receptor on average, from which the Scatchard equation follows.

Problems with the method.

The Scatchard method is rarely used because it is prone to error. As with the Lineweaver-Burk method, inferring ligand affinity using the Scatchard equation requires using the reciprocal of the free ligand concentration on the y-axis, which compounds small errors in measurement. A modern alternative is to use surface plasmon resonance, which has the added benefit of being able to measure the on-rate and off-rate of ligand-receptor binding.

The Scatchard equation is an equation used in molecular biology to calculate the affinity and number of binding sites of a receptor for a ligand. It is named after the American chemist George Scatchard.

Der Scatchard-Plot ist neben dem Hill-Diagramm eine Möglichkeit, Enzymaktivität auf Kooperativität zu überprüfen, also die Frage zu beantworten, ob das Enzym nach der Bindung eines ersten Liganden eine höhere oder niedrigere Affinität für weitere Liganden aufweist.


History.

The town was first chronicled in 1044. From 1098 it was the capital of the Siverian Principality, which served as a buffer zone against incursions of the Cumans (Polovtsy) and other steppe peoples. One of the numerous campaigns of local princes against the Cumans produced the great monument of early East Slavic literature, the Tale of Igor's Campaign.  After the town's destruction by Mongols in 1239, it passed to the princes of Bryansk and then to the Grand Dukes of Lithuania. It was ruled by Dymitr Korybut (Kaributas), son of Algirdas. Muscovy obtained the area following the Battle of Vedrosha in 1503, but lost it to Poland after the Time of Troubles. "Nowogród Siewierski" was granted Magdeburg city rights in 1620 by Polish King Sigismund III Vasa. It was the easternmost powiat (county) seat of Poland. The town passed to Russia as a result of the Russo-Polish War (1654-1667). During the Cossack epoch, it received the status of military company town ("sotenne misto") and later regimental town ("polkove misto"); these were military and administrative divisions in the Cossack army and country. Also Novhorod-Siverskyi became a cultural center of Left-bank Ukraine. It was made the capital of a separate namestnichestvo in 1782–97. Thereafter its importance steadily declined.  During World War II, Novhorod-Siverskyi was occupied by the German Army from 26 August 1941 to 16 September 1943.

Architecture.

Despite historic disasters, the town has preserved many architectural monuments, and a branch of the Chernihiv State Historical and Architectural Preserve has been established. The town has managed to keep random planning in its landscape. The boundary of the town historical center is vague. The tourist attractions are located on two high capes divided by ravines: the ensemble of Our Savior and Transfiguration Monastery and the town centre. The architectural monuments of state significance are scattered on five separate areas which compose the territory of the preserve. The biggest area is the territory of Our Savior and Transfiguration Monastery. The other areas are Uspensky (Dormition) Cathedral, the wooden St. Nicolas church, a triumphal arch, and shopping arcades. There are constructions and residential buildings from the 18th and 19th centuries in the town centre. The main point of interest in the town is the former residence of the Chernihiv metropolitans, the monastery of the Saviour's Transfiguration. It features a ponderous Neoclassical cathedral (1791–96, design by Giacomo Quarenghi), seventeenth-century stone walls, and several ecclesiastic foundations dating from the sixteenth century. Other landmarks include the Cossack Baroque Assumption cathedral, a triumphal arch (1787), and the wooden church of St. Nicholas (1760).

Novhorod-Siverskyi ( ; ; ) is a historic city in Chernihiv Oblast (province) of Ukraine. It is the administrative center of Novhorod-Siverskyi Raion, though it is incorporated as a city of oblast significance and does not belong to the raion. Novhorod-Siverskyi is situated on the bank of the Desna River, 330 km from the capital, Kiev, and 45 km south of the Russian border. Population:

Nowhorod-Siwerskyj (; ) ist eine Stadt in der nordukrainischen Oblast Tschernihiw und dem historischen Gebiet Sewerien mit 13.000 Einwohnern (2019).


Early life.

Müller was born in Schwandorf, Bavaria. After becoming a certified chemical technician, Müller began her career in 1972 working in the Max Planck Institute of Cell Chemistry, followed by a period of employment at the Institute of Biochemistry of University of Regensburg. She remained employed at the University, working in the Institute of Biochemistry, Microbiology and Genetics starting in 1988 where she remained until moving to the university's Institute of Physiology in 1988.

Early political career.

Müller began her political career at the municipal level, serving as a local councillor in the "marktgemeinde" (market town) of Bruck in the Upper Palatine from 1990 to 2003, and as district councillor in Schwandorf beginning in 1996. From 2005 to 2009, Müller served as a county chairwoman of the Women's Union, the women's working group of the CSU, and became chairwoman of the district association of the Upper Palatine CSU in 2008.  In 1999, Müller was elected to the European Parliament where she was a member of the Group of the European People's Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, a body she would serve on until 2003. In 2010, she became a member of the Committee of Regions of the European Parliament.

Career in State politics.

On 14 October 2003, Müller was appointed Secretary of State for the Ministry of Environment, Health and Consumer Protection in the 4th Cabinet of Minister-President Edmund Stoiber, a position she would hold until her appointment on 29 November 2005 as Minister of State for Federal and European Affairs. After succeeding Stoiber as Minister-President, Günther Beckstein appointed Müller as Minister of Economy, Infrastructure, Transport and Technology on 16 October 2007. From 2007 to 2008, Müller concurrently served on the Board of BayernLB, the public bank majority-owned by the State of Bavaria.  In the 2008 state election, Müller failed to be elected to the Landtag; despite this, she was once again chosen as Minister of State for Federal and European Affairs by newly elected Minister-President Horst Seehofer in the cabinet of his coalition government, composed of members of the CSU and their junior coalition partner, the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Following the result of the 2013 state election, which resulted in Müller's election to the Landtag and an absolute majority for the CSU, she was appointed to the 2nd Seehofer Cabinet as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Family and Integration, replacing fellow party member Christine Harderthauer.  In her position as Minister of Labor and Social Affairs, Family and Integration, Müller was criticized for the remarks she made when visiting a newly opened detention center near Ingolstadt in 2015. In the televised encounter, Müller told an asylum-seeker from Kosovo “You are well housed? Good. But you know that you have to go back”, a remark criticized by the Süddeutsche Zeitung as depicting a “complete lack of empathy for fleeing people”.

Personal life.

Müller is married and has two children, both of whom are adults. She currently resides in Bruck in the Upper Palatinate.

Emilia Franziska Müller (born 28 September 1951) is a German chemical technician and politician. A member of the conservative Christian Social Union of Bavaria (CSU), she has served as a member of the Landtag and as Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Family and Integration in the 2nd Cabinet of Minister-President Horst Seehofer since 2013. She has held a wide range of public positions at the municipal, state, and European Parliamentary level since beginning her political career in 1990.

Emilia Franziska Müller (* 28. September 1951 in Schwandorf) ist eine deutsche Politikerin (CSU). Sie war von November 2005 bis Oktober 2007 und von Oktober 2008 bis Oktober 2013 Staatsministerin für Bundes- und Europaangelegenheiten in der Bayerischen Staatskanzlei. Von Oktober 2007 bis Oktober 2008 war Müller Staatsministerin für Wirtschaft, Infrastruktur, Verkehr und Technologie. Von Oktober 2013 bis März 2018 amtierte sie als Sozialministerin im Kabinett Seehofer II.


History.

J. L. Schneller's family house (1854-60).

In the mid-19th century, English and German Protestant missions were operating in the Old City of Jerusalem. In 1854 Johann Ludwig Schneller (1820–1896), a German Lutheran missionary, came to Jerusalem from Württemberg together with his wife Magdalene Böhringer and six other members of the Brudergemeinde of Saint Chrischona, Basel, Switzerland, in order to manage the German Protestant mission. On 11 October 1855 Schneller bought from the people of Lifta a parcel of land outside their village, approximately northwest of Jaffa Gate, with the intention of living among and missionising to the local Arab population, and drew up plans for the construction of a home for his family. The house was constructed from 1855–56. After Schneller and his family took occupancy, the house was attacked several times by Arab robbers from the village of Beit Sorek, forcing them to retreat to the safety of the Old City. At the end of the decade, after the Turks had erected outposts and dispatched armed guards on horseback to patrol Jaffa Road (the route between Jerusalem and the port city of Jaffa, which lay near the Schneller compound), Schneller and his family were able to return to their home.

Schneller's Syrian Orphanage (est. 1860).

In 1860 Lebanese Druze massacred thousands of Maronite Christians in Lebanon and Syria. Schneller travelled to Beirut with the intention of rescuing battle-orphaned children. He was rebuffed by the local community, which did not trust foreign Protestant missionaries, but managed to bring back nine orphaned boys to Jerusalem in October 1860. He decided to open an orphanage for them in his home, and by the end of 1861 had enrolled 41 boys in what became known as the Syrian Orphanage (). Over the next four years Schneller expanded his property to 13.6 acres (55 dunam) and erected a -high stone wall around it. Through 1867 Schneller expanded and added new infrastructure, creating a kitchen, dining room, storage cellar, bedrooms and living areas. In 1867 the orphanage began accepting girls.  Funds for construction and expansion, together with clothing and blankets, were solicited from Protestant communities in Germany and Switzerland. Between 1861 and 1885 Schneller collected a total of 550,000 francs in donations.

Enrollment, staff and curriculum.

Schneller was determined to give orphaned and abandoned Arab children a complete education, including teaching them a trade. To that end, he employed both academic and vocational teachers, primarily from Germany. The latter led professional workshops in tailoring, shoemaking, engraving, carpentry, metalworking, pottery, painting, printing, farming, and gardening.  Children stayed at the orphanage for up to 10 years, graduating at the age of 18. They came from all parts of Palestine as well as Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Armenia, Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Germany. They were also of differing religious denominations, including Protestant, Greek Orthodox, Catholic, Coptic, and Maronite. Notwithstanding the ethnic diversity of the student body, the language of instruction was German and Arabic. Most of the teachers employed during the orphanage's first 50 years were German, with some Armenians and Arabs.  In 1876 the orphanage had an enrollment of 70 students aged 4 to 17. By 1898 enrollment stood at 200 students. By the time of Schneller's death on 18 October 1896, 1500 students had passed through the orphanage's doors. The actual number of graduates totaled 425 in 1885 and 1169 at the 50th anniversary of the orphanage in 1910.

The school for the blind, est. 1901.

In 1901 a German noble bequeathed his entire fortune of 700,000 marks toward the establishment of a school for the blind at the orphanage. It opened in 1903 with space for 40 to 50 children, plus workshops to teach the blind weaving and spinning.

Expansion.

Besides classes and vocational workshops, the orphanage operated its own printing press and bindery where it produced its own textbooks, Braille books, and German-language newspapers. It also operated a flour mill and bakery that produced 35,000 loaves of bread a year, a laundry and clothing-repair service, a carpentry, a pottery factory that produced all the clay utensils used in the orphanage, and a tree and plant nursery. At the beginning of the 20th century, a large brick and tile factory was erected on the premises, which produced one million bricks and 250,000 tiles annually.  In 1889 Schneller acquired 1,235 acres (5,000 dunam) in Bir Salem (today Kibbutz Netzer Sereni) in order to develop an agricultural school and land for settlement for his students and graduates. In 1906 another 890 acres (3,600 dunam) was added to the original parcel. Although the agricultural school did not materialise, the grain, fruits and vegetables produced by the farm supplemented the orphanage diet during the food shortages of World War I.

Administration after J. W. Schneller (1889-1940).

In 1889 Schneller gave over the operation of the orphanage to a consortium based in Stuttgart, while his eldest son, Theodor (1856–1935), became manager of the institution. In 1927 Theodor's youngest son, Ernst, took over the management of the institution until its confiscation by the British in 1940.

Architecture.

Like other European Christian institutions built in Jerusalem in the 1800s, the Schneller Orphanage was situated on high ground and was surrounded by a high stone wall, with an iron gate that was locked at night. The property exuded the power and influence of European Christians in Jerusalem with its multistory buildings, a clock tower, and decorative façade, including reliefs in stone and epigrams. Engraved on the façade of the main building is the verse "Jesus the Messiah, have compassion upon us!" in German and Arabic, as well as the name of the institution, Syrian Orphanage (). There is also a stone relief of a lamb carrying a flag with a cross on it. Following the visit of Kaiser Wilhelm to Jerusalem in 1898, the orphanage received three bells for its tower.  The architectural style of the main building is a combination of Southern German and local Arabic. The tile roof and onion-dome tower mounted on a square base reflects the former, while wide, rounded arches for doors and windows reflect the latter. A lightning rod extends from the onion dome. The H-shaped main building has two interior courtyards which held a water cistern, garden and play area. The entire building covers an area of 50,590 square feet (4,700 square meters). At three stories, the main building housed the central dining room, a kitchen, a study hall, a library, a reading room, a small museum, and a Lutheran church in which students and staff worshipped.  Johann Ludwig Schneller brought in skilled Arab laborers from Bethlehem and Beit Jala to construct a total of eight buildings, which were constructed in stages and completed in the early 20th century. The year of completion and the name of the German city in which the donors for that building lived were engraved on each building façade. One of the buildings, called “the Red House” or “the model house,” was built entirely from materials produced on the orphanage grounds, including bricks, floor tiles and wrought-iron work.  For most of its existence, the orphanage was in a continual state of expansion and modernization. Ruth Kark et al. notes:... the locksmith-shop was remodeled and changed location within the complex five times between the period of 1861 and 1930 (1861, 1867, 1900, 1908, 1930). The bakery changed place and was modernized six times and – in a similar way – most of the functions and uses of the rooms changed during the seventy years of the institution’s existence. Johann Ludwig Schneller also purchased land in the vicinity of the orphanage and constructed houses for workers. Two of these "Batei Schneller" (Schneller Houses) still stand across the street from the main entrance, as well as three of the original five homes built several yards to the west (near the present corner of Malkhei Yisrael and Sarei Yisrael Streets). A plaque on each home bears the name of the German city of its donors. The cities are: Halle, Stuttgart, Kletz, Munich, Hamburg, Petersberg, and Erpfingen, Schneller's birthplace.

20th century.

By 1903 the educational facility had grown to eight buildings and included the orphanage, the school for the blind, and vocational workshops for youth.  In 1910, the jubilee year of the orphanage's founding, a fire destroyed the third floor and wooden roof of the main building, and damaged the second floor where the church was housed. Ludwig Schneller, a son of the founder who was the administrator at the time, managed to collect over 200,000 marks in donations from Germany and rebuilt the entire structure. The upper story of the building was rebuilt in stone.  Building and expansion continued up to World War I, by which time the orphanage occupied 150 acres (600 dunam) of land. The Schneller grounds reached all the way to present-day Romema, where Schneller planted forests on land that eventually housed the Jerusalem Biblical Zoo. The orphanage's holdings were gradually reduced to 17.5 acres with the sale of land to the new neighborhoods of Mekor Baruch and Kerem Avraham.  During World War I, the compound was used by the Turkish army and its allies as a barracks. From 1921 to 1927, Theodor Schneller resumed management of the orphanage, overseeing the modernization of the property with electrical and sewage installations, as well as new machinery for the various workshops. His son Ernst directed the orphanage from 1927 until its confiscation by the British army in 1940. The orphanage's German funding sources were severely curtailed during the 1930s when the Nazi government of Germany banned citizens from sending funds abroad.

Military base.

British military camp.

When World War II broke out, the British shut down the orphanage and deported its German teachers. The British turned the compound into a closed military camp known as the Schneller Barracks, installing about 50 watchtowers and huts. The camp housed the largest ammunition stockpile in the Middle East, as well as grain storehouses. The Royal Army Pay Corps 90th Battalion occupied the barracks in the late 1940s.  The British camp was targeted for attack by the Irgun on two occasions. On 27 June 1939, the paramilitary group placed a letter bomb in the mailbox attached to the outside wall; the subsequent explosion collapsed part of the wall and injured five Arabs in the vicinity. On 12 March 1947, the Irgun penetrated the camp itself in a pre-dawn operation and detonated explosives in one of the buildings to protest the imposition of martial law on Jerusalem. One British soldier was killed and eight injured in the blasts; martial law was lifted four days later.

Israeli military base.

On 17 March 1948, the British abandoned the camp and the Etzioni Brigade of the Haganah used it as a home base during the 1948 Israeli War of Independence. For the next 60 years, the compound served as a training base for the Israel Defense Forces and an army clinic; at one point, it also served as headquarters for the Home Front Command.  In 1951 the Israeli army summoned representatives of the World Lutheran Church to remove religious artifacts from the orphanage church; church representatives removed bells, windows and a pipe organ, but left the heavy marble altar encased in a wooden chest. The church was then converted into a basketball arena for the soldiers. In October 2009, on a tour of the facility after the army had vacated the grounds, the provost of the Evangelical German Lutheran Church of the Redeemer noticed the chest and asked for it to be opened, exposing the altar. The Lutherans negotiated for it to be moved to the Lutheran church at Augusta Victoria Hospital, where it was inaugurated in November 2010.  During the 60 years of occupancy by the Israeli army, the base was served by an army synagogue in one of the halls of the main building, including a Torah ark, bookcase, and a balcony door set with 12 stained-glass windows depicting the Twelve Tribes of Israel.

Current use.

In 2008 the army base relocated to the Ofrit base near Mount Scopus. The Jerusalem municipality put together a "preservation and construction plan" for the Schneller compound, calling for the eight historic buildings to be developed for public use by the Orthodox Jewish community nearby. In November 2010, part of the Schneller grounds were designated as a public parking lot by the municipality to ease the parking problems in the neighboring Geula commercial district. One hundred parking spaces were made available for up to three hours.  In 2011 the Israel Land Administration approved plans for the development of 218 luxury apartments on the property while preserving the eight historic orphanage buildings.  As of 2012, parts of the complex are being used for a Bais Yaakov girls' school, a Gerrer Talmud Torah, a training area for urban combat police, and municipal waste storage.

Successor schools.

The philosophy and mission of the Schneller Orphanage continued after World War II in two successor schools in the Middle East.

Schneller Orphanage, also called the Syrian Orphanage, was a German Protestant orphanage that operated in Jerusalem from 1860 to 1940.

Das Syrische Waisenhaus war eine missionarisch-diakonische Einrichtung in Jerusalem, deren Wurzeln in der Aufnahme mehrerer Waisenkinder am 11. November 1860 durch Johann Ludwig Schneller liegen.