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The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie
''The Maltese Double Cross – Lockerbie'' is a documentary film about the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103. Produced, written, and directed by Allan Francovich and financed by Tiny Rowland, the film was released by Hemar Enterprises in November 1994. With a controversial premise, it was immediately threatened with legal action by lawyers acting for a US government official, and the British government prevented screenings at the 1994 London Film Festival, at the Institute of Contemporary Arts and at several universities. But Labour MP Tam Dalyell ignored libel warnings and went ahead and showed the film at the House of Commons on 16 November 1994. Though it was never widely distributed, the film stirred up a great deal of controversy – particularly in the United Kingdom. Reviews of the film in major UK publications were mostly negative, even as they said that the film revealed certain problems in the mainstream account of the Lockerbie bombing. The film came in for fierc ...
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Investigation Into The Bombing Of Pan Am Flight 103
The investigation into the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 began at 19:03 on December 21, 1988 when Pan Am Flight 103 was blown up over Lockerbie in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. The perpetrators had intended the plane to crash into the sea, destroying any traceable evidence, but the late departure time of the aircraft meant that its explosion over land left a veritable trail of evidence.Katz, Samuel M. "Relentless Pursuit: The DSS and the manhunt for the al-Qaeda terrorists", 2002 The investigation led to the prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. Investigators In Scotland, responsibility for the investigation of sudden deaths rests with the local Procurator Fiscal (public prosecutor), who attends the scene and may direct the police in the conduct of their inquiries. The Procurator Fiscal holds a commission from the Lord Advocate, who is Scotland's chief law officer (and prior to devolution in 1999 was simultaneously a UK government minister). Respon ...
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the Scott Trust by its creators. Profits are reinvested in journalism rather than distributed to owners or shareholders. It is considered a newspaper of record in the UK. The editor-in-chief Katharine Viner succeeded Alan Rusbridger in 2015. Since 2018, the paper's main news ...
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Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a fourth television service in the United Kingdom. At the time, the only other channels were the television licence, licence-funded BBC One and BBC Two, and a single commercial broadcasting network ITV (TV network), ITV. The network's headquarters are based in London and Leeds, with creative hubs in Glasgow and Bristol. It is publicly owned and advertising-funded; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority (IBA), the station is now owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation, a public corporation of the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which was established in 1990 and came into operation in 1993. Until 2010, Channel 4 did not broadcast in Wales, but many of its programmes were re-broadcast ...
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Glasgow Film Theatre
The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) is an independent cinema in the city centre of Glasgow. GFT is a registered charity. It occupies a purpose-built cinema building, first opened in 1939, and now protected as a category B listed building. History and architecture GFT's predecessor, the Cosmo, was Scotland's first arts cinema and only the second purpose-built arthouse in Britain, after the Curzon Mayfair in London. Opened on 18 May 1939, it was also the last cinema to be built in Glasgow before the outbreak of WW2. The Cosmo arrived at the close of an important decade for British film culture. With the advent of sound in film, language became a barrier and popular films from the continent quickly disappeared from British screens. In Glasgow, audiences for world cinema were served by the Film Society of Glasgow. Founded in 1929, this was the first cultural film group in Scotland, and its growing membership demonstrated a real appetite for foreign-language film in the city. In fact, ...
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British House Of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 members known as members of Parliament (MPs). MPs are elected to represent constituencies by the first-past-the-post system and hold their seats until Parliament is dissolved. The House of Commons of England started to evolve in the 13th and 14th centuries. In 1707 it became the House of Commons of Great Britain after the political union with Scotland, and from 1800 it also became the House of Commons for Ireland after the political union of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, the body became the House of Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after the independence of the Irish Free State. Under the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the Lords' power to reject legislation was reduced to a delaying power. The gov ...
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Jim Swire
Herbert Swire (born 1936), best known as Jim Swire, is an English doctor best known for his involvement in the aftermath of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, in which his daughter Flora was killed. Swire lobbied toward a solution for the difficulties in bringing suspects in the original bombing to trial, and later advocated the retrial and release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the originally convicted suspect in the case. Swire also carried a fake bomb onto an aircraft as a demonstration of lax security. Lockerbie bombing On 20 December 1988, Swire's 23-year-old daughter Flora, who wanted to fly to the United States to spend Christmas with her American boyfriend, had little difficulty in booking a seat on the next day's half-empty transatlantic Pan Am Flight 103. Flora died when it crashed at the town of Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 including 11 on the ground. Investigations were soon launched in the United States and the United Kingdom. Eventually, two Libyans, Abdelbaset ...
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The Independent
''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was published on Saturday 26 March 2016, leaving only the online edition. The newspaper was controlled by Tony O'Reilly's Irish Independent News & Media from 1997 until it was sold to the Russian oligarch and former KGB Officer Alexander Lebedev in 2010. In 2017, Sultan Muhammad Abuljadayel bought a 30% stake in it. The daily edition was named National Newspaper of the Year at the 2004 British Press Awards. The website and mobile app had a combined monthly reach of 19,826,000 in 2021. History 1986 to 1990 Launched in 1986, the first issue of ''The Independent'' was published on 7 October in broadsheet format.Dennis Griffiths (ed.) ''The Encyclopedia of the British Press, 1422–1992'', London & Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992, p. 330 It was produc ...
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Drug Enforcement Administration
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA; ) is a Federal law enforcement in the United States, United States federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Justice tasked with combating drug trafficking and distribution within the U.S. It is the lead agency for domestic enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act, sharing concurrent jurisdiction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection although the DEA has sole responsibility for coordinating and pursuing U.S. drug investigations both domestically and abroad. The DEA has an DEA Office of National Security Intelligence, intelligence unit that is also a member of the United States Intelligence Community, U.S. Intelligence Community. While the unit is part of the DEA chain-of-command, it also reports to the Director of National Intelligence. History and mandate The Drug Enforcement Administration was established on July 1, 1973, ...
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London Film Festival
The BFI London Film Festival is an annual film festival founded in 1957 and held in the United Kingdom, running for two weeks in October with co-operation from the British Film Institute. It screens more than 300 films, documentaries and shorts from approximately 50 countries. History At a dinner party in 1953 at the home of film critic Dilys Powell of ''The Sunday Times'' and at which film administrator James Quinn attended, the notion of a film festival for London was raised. Quinn went on to start the first London Film Festival which took place at the new National Film Theatre (now renamed BFI Southbank) from 16–26 October 1957. The first festival screened 15–20 films from a selection of directors to show films successful at other festivals, including Akira Kurosawa's ''Throne of Blood'' (which opened the festival), Satyajit Ray's ''Aparajito'', Andrzej Wajda's ''Kanał'', Luchino Visconti's ''White Nights'', Ingmar Bergman's ''The Seventh Seal'', Federico Fellini's '' ...
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Pik Botha
Roelof Frederik "Pik" Botha, (27 April 1932 – 12 October 2018) was a South African politician who served as the country's foreign minister in the last years of the apartheid era, the longest-serving in South African history. Known as a liberal within the party, Botha served to present a friendly, conciliatory face on the regime, while criticised internally. He was a leading contender for the leadership of the National Party upon John Vorster's resignation in 1978, but was ultimately not chosen. Staying in the government after the first non-racial general election in 1994, he served under Mandela as Minister of Mineral and Energy Affairs from 1994 to 1996, and eventually joined the African National Congress (ANC) after his resignation. Botha was nicknamed 'Pik' (short for ''pikkewyn'', Afrikaans for 'penguin') because of a perceived likeness to a penguin in his stance, accentuated when he wore a suit. He was not related to Prime Minister (later State President) P. W. Botha, ...
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Iran Air Flight 655
Iran Air Flight 655 was a scheduled passenger flight from Tehran to Dubai via Bandar Abbas that was shot down on 3July 1988 by two SM-2MR surface-to-air missiles fired by the , a Cruiser#US cruiser development, guided-missile cruiser of the United States Navy. The aircraft, an Airbus A300, was destroyed and all 290 people on board were killed. The jet was hit while flying over Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, along the flight's usual route, shortly after departing Bandar Abbas International Airport, the flight's stopover location. The attack occurred during the Iran–Iraq War, which had been continuing for nearly eight years. ''Vincennes'' had entered Iranian territory after one of its helicopters drew warning fire from Iranian speedboats operating within Iranian territorial limits. The reason for the downing has been disputed between the governments of the two countries. According to the United States, U.S., the ''Vincennes'' crew had incorrectly identified the Ai ...
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