Yuta WATANABE (light) of Japan vs Siu Wing CHAN (dark) of Hongkong. Nuki Sabio
MANILA, Philippines ? Japan rebounded from its opening game defeat to Qatar with a 76-59 hard-fought win over debuting Hong Kong in Group B of the 27th FIBA-Asia men?s Championship?Friday?at the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City.
Japan, which ended the third quarter on a high note to create separation after just leading by one, 41-40, at the half, put its 74-75 defeat last Thursday behind thanks to the efforts of Naoto Tsuji and JR Sakuragi.
Tsuji led the Japanese squad with 17 points while Sakuragi notched a double-double with 10 points and 12 rebounds.
Chun Wai Wong paced HK with 23 points.
Related Stories: Former NBA swingman Hayes helps Qatar beat Japan
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A world riden with war struggles to servive the ever advancing vampire rampage. In retaliation a small group hunters were formed from small town villagers. Will they survive or will they be destroyed.
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Tens of thousands of British jobs with Japanese firms could be at risk if the UK pulled out of the European Union, the government in Tokyo has indicated.
Its submission to the Foreign Office's review of the relationship with Brussels said Japanese firms were attracted to the UK because it offered a gateway to the prized European market.
The Sunday Times reported that the memo from the Japanese government expects the UK to maintain a "strong voice" in Brussels.
David Cameron has committed to renegotiate the UK's relationship with Brussels and then hold an in/out referendum on staying in the 28-member bloc before the end of 2017 if the Tories win the general election.
In its submission to the Government's "balance of competences review", Tokyo said it was "committed to making its relationship with the EU stronger than ever before".
It added: "In this context, it expects that the UK will maintain a strong voice and continue to play a major role in the EU.
"The UK, as a champion of free trade, is a reliable partner for Japan. More than 1,300 Japanese companies have invested in the UK, as part of the single market of the EU, and have created 130,000 jobs, more than anywhere else in Europe. This fact demonstrates that the advantage of the UK as a gateway to the European market has attracted Japanese investment."
In a statement to the Sunday Times the Japanese embassy in London said: "We know some countries decided not to submit comments but as a non-EU nation and major investor in the UK we thought it was appropriate.
"We have taken advantage of this occasion to express our expectations ... If the UK leaves the single market, countries investing in the UK and exporting to the EU would have to pay tariffs, and that is not good news."
But eurosceptic Tory MP Julian Brazier told the newspaper: "It's kind of the Japanese to give us guidance on our national destiny but at a time when the eurozone is in a crisis unseen for nearly a century I'm not sure they are well qualified to see the way forward for Britain. In deciding on our national interest we may have to disappoint their expectations."
Disney Researchers develop software tools to create physical versions of virtual charactersPublic release date: 19-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jennifer Liu jennifer.c.liu@disney.com 818-905-9905 Disney Research
Systems produce mechanical and actuated deformable characters
Achieving a desired motion in an animated physical character, whether it be a small toy or a full-sized figure, demands highly specialized engineering skills. But research teams at Disney Research have created a pair of software packages that can open the design process to people with a broader spectrum of skills and provide more creative choices.
One set of software tools can take a drawing of an articulated character and produce a type of animation that pre-dates video and film gear-driven mechanical characters, such as a dancing clock, a galloping horse or a Sisyphean character pushing a heavy load. The other set takes digital characters that are deformable rather than articulated, such as jelly monsters, plants and jiggling buildings, and helps transform them into elastic figures that can simulate the movements of their virtual forebears. In both instances, the design pipelines take advantage of rapid manufacturing methods, such as 3D printing, to fabricate the physical characters.
"Translating animated characters to the real world is an extremely difficult task, whether you are building a mechanical character such as a wind-up duck or something that has only existed in the virtual world, such as a dancing Eiffel Tower," said Bernd Bickel, research scientist at Disney Research, Zrich. "It's a process that has always required expert designers and engineers, but our new software tools could open the process to non-experts while expanding the creative choices available to all designers."
The two research projects involved investigators from Disney Research, Zrich, Disney Research, Boston, ETH Zrich and MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Both teams will present their results at ACM SIGGRAPH 2013, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, July 21-25 in Anaheim, California.
"Although mechanical characters have been part of the toy industry since the 19th century, the design process is largely trial and error, even for the experts," said Bernhard Thomaszewski, a Disney Research, Zrich associate research scientist. "Most mechanical characters are therefore limited in scope
and complexity, inhibiting the creative freedom of designers."
He was part of a team that developed a computational design framework for mechanical characters. To make the process as easy and flexible as possible, the framework can work with arbitrary types of mechanical assemblies, including both external drives and internal gearing. To handle the complex and non-linear motions of such assemblies, they selected some representative mechanisms and then pre-computed a sampling of possible motions.
A designer can then input an articulated character into the software system, select a set of actuation points on the character and sketch a set of curves to indicate the motion desired at each point. The system then draws upon the motion library to identify the mechanical assembly and its related set-up that best matches the desired motions. Simulation software then optimizes the assembly to achieve the animation envisioned by the designer.
In further steps, the gears driving the mechanisms are connected to each other through a gear train designed in a semi-automatic fashion. The system then checks to see that mechanical components won't collide when in operation; if problems are found, they are reported to the designer, who can edit the assembly to fix them. Finally, support structures to hold the components in place are designed, making the mechanical character ready for fabrication.
The researchers demonstrated the versatility of their software pipeline by designing ten animated characters and manufacturing seven of them. Design took less than a half hour in each case.
"Our characters are currently restricted to cyclic motions," said Stelian Coros, an associate research scientist at Disney Research, Zrich. "However, our research brings us one step closer to the rapid design and manufacture of customized robots that can sense and interact with their environments to carry out complex tasks."
The creation of deformable characters presents a different set of problems since by their very nature these characters lack articulation. As input, the design system begins with a 3D representation of the figure in its neutral state as well as a set of target shapes representing the desired deformations. The user can then select actuation points in the figure or, particularly when the character lacks any apparent articulation structure, the system can suggest a number of actuators and their locations.
Once the number and approximate locations of the actuators have been decided, the system optimizes the design, taking into account whether actuation will be applied using strings, pins or clamps.
In the third design stage, the system computes the distribution of stiff and soft materials within the character that will enable the desired deformations, while maintaining the overall shape of the character. Soft materials, for instance, might be placed near joints, with stiffer materials used in the limbs. This step took the most computation time of the three, but proved powerful; the researchers demonstrated, for instance, that material optimization enabled a straight bar to be deformed into four shapes very close to the target shapes using just two clamp-type actuators.
The researchers designed and fabricated both two-dimensional and three-dimensional characters six in all with the prototypes showing good agreement with their simulations.
"We believe our method is an important step toward physics-based design of real-world characters," Bickel said. "Now, we'd like to explore using a larger number or range of materials to build these characters and to design more elaborate actuation systems so that the animation of complex structures could be automated."
###
In addition to Bickel, the team developing the design system for deformable characters included Coros, Thomaszewski, Melina Skouras and Markus Gross of Disney Research, Zrich. For more information and a video, visit the project website at http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/actuated-deformable-characters/.
The team developing the system for mechanically animated characters included Bickel, Robert Summer and Gioacchino Noris of Disney Research, Zrich, Shinjiro Sueda and Moira Forberg of Disney Research, Boston and Wojciech Matusik of MIT, as well as Coros and Thomaszewski. For more information and a video, visit the project web site at http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/mechanical-characters/.
About Disney Research
Disney Research is a network of research laboratories supporting The Walt Disney Company. Its purpose is to pursue scientific and technological innovation to advance the company's broad media and entertainment efforts. Disney Research is managed by an internal Disney Research Council co-chaired by Disney-Pixar's Ed Catmull and Walt Disney Imagineering's Bruce Vaughn, and including the directors of the individual labs. It has facilities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston and Zrich. Research topics include computer graphics, video processing, computer vision, robotics, radio and antennas, wireless communications, human-computer interaction, displays, data mining, machine learning and behavioral sciences.
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Disney Researchers develop software tools to create physical versions of virtual charactersPublic release date: 19-Jul-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jennifer Liu jennifer.c.liu@disney.com 818-905-9905 Disney Research
Systems produce mechanical and actuated deformable characters
Achieving a desired motion in an animated physical character, whether it be a small toy or a full-sized figure, demands highly specialized engineering skills. But research teams at Disney Research have created a pair of software packages that can open the design process to people with a broader spectrum of skills and provide more creative choices.
One set of software tools can take a drawing of an articulated character and produce a type of animation that pre-dates video and film gear-driven mechanical characters, such as a dancing clock, a galloping horse or a Sisyphean character pushing a heavy load. The other set takes digital characters that are deformable rather than articulated, such as jelly monsters, plants and jiggling buildings, and helps transform them into elastic figures that can simulate the movements of their virtual forebears. In both instances, the design pipelines take advantage of rapid manufacturing methods, such as 3D printing, to fabricate the physical characters.
"Translating animated characters to the real world is an extremely difficult task, whether you are building a mechanical character such as a wind-up duck or something that has only existed in the virtual world, such as a dancing Eiffel Tower," said Bernd Bickel, research scientist at Disney Research, Zrich. "It's a process that has always required expert designers and engineers, but our new software tools could open the process to non-experts while expanding the creative choices available to all designers."
The two research projects involved investigators from Disney Research, Zrich, Disney Research, Boston, ETH Zrich and MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Both teams will present their results at ACM SIGGRAPH 2013, the International Conference on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques, July 21-25 in Anaheim, California.
"Although mechanical characters have been part of the toy industry since the 19th century, the design process is largely trial and error, even for the experts," said Bernhard Thomaszewski, a Disney Research, Zrich associate research scientist. "Most mechanical characters are therefore limited in scope
and complexity, inhibiting the creative freedom of designers."
He was part of a team that developed a computational design framework for mechanical characters. To make the process as easy and flexible as possible, the framework can work with arbitrary types of mechanical assemblies, including both external drives and internal gearing. To handle the complex and non-linear motions of such assemblies, they selected some representative mechanisms and then pre-computed a sampling of possible motions.
A designer can then input an articulated character into the software system, select a set of actuation points on the character and sketch a set of curves to indicate the motion desired at each point. The system then draws upon the motion library to identify the mechanical assembly and its related set-up that best matches the desired motions. Simulation software then optimizes the assembly to achieve the animation envisioned by the designer.
In further steps, the gears driving the mechanisms are connected to each other through a gear train designed in a semi-automatic fashion. The system then checks to see that mechanical components won't collide when in operation; if problems are found, they are reported to the designer, who can edit the assembly to fix them. Finally, support structures to hold the components in place are designed, making the mechanical character ready for fabrication.
The researchers demonstrated the versatility of their software pipeline by designing ten animated characters and manufacturing seven of them. Design took less than a half hour in each case.
"Our characters are currently restricted to cyclic motions," said Stelian Coros, an associate research scientist at Disney Research, Zrich. "However, our research brings us one step closer to the rapid design and manufacture of customized robots that can sense and interact with their environments to carry out complex tasks."
The creation of deformable characters presents a different set of problems since by their very nature these characters lack articulation. As input, the design system begins with a 3D representation of the figure in its neutral state as well as a set of target shapes representing the desired deformations. The user can then select actuation points in the figure or, particularly when the character lacks any apparent articulation structure, the system can suggest a number of actuators and their locations.
Once the number and approximate locations of the actuators have been decided, the system optimizes the design, taking into account whether actuation will be applied using strings, pins or clamps.
In the third design stage, the system computes the distribution of stiff and soft materials within the character that will enable the desired deformations, while maintaining the overall shape of the character. Soft materials, for instance, might be placed near joints, with stiffer materials used in the limbs. This step took the most computation time of the three, but proved powerful; the researchers demonstrated, for instance, that material optimization enabled a straight bar to be deformed into four shapes very close to the target shapes using just two clamp-type actuators.
The researchers designed and fabricated both two-dimensional and three-dimensional characters six in all with the prototypes showing good agreement with their simulations.
"We believe our method is an important step toward physics-based design of real-world characters," Bickel said. "Now, we'd like to explore using a larger number or range of materials to build these characters and to design more elaborate actuation systems so that the animation of complex structures could be automated."
###
In addition to Bickel, the team developing the design system for deformable characters included Coros, Thomaszewski, Melina Skouras and Markus Gross of Disney Research, Zrich. For more information and a video, visit the project website at http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/actuated-deformable-characters/.
The team developing the system for mechanically animated characters included Bickel, Robert Summer and Gioacchino Noris of Disney Research, Zrich, Shinjiro Sueda and Moira Forberg of Disney Research, Boston and Wojciech Matusik of MIT, as well as Coros and Thomaszewski. For more information and a video, visit the project web site at http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/mechanical-characters/.
About Disney Research
Disney Research is a network of research laboratories supporting The Walt Disney Company. Its purpose is to pursue scientific and technological innovation to advance the company's broad media and entertainment efforts. Disney Research is managed by an internal Disney Research Council co-chaired by Disney-Pixar's Ed Catmull and Walt Disney Imagineering's Bruce Vaughn, and including the directors of the individual labs. It has facilities in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, Boston and Zrich. Research topics include computer graphics, video processing, computer vision, robotics, radio and antennas, wireless communications, human-computer interaction, displays, data mining, machine learning and behavioral sciences.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The investigator who wrote a scathing report about the Internal Revenue Service targeting tea party groups says he is "disturbed" the agency withheld newly released documents showing progressive groups may also have been singled out for additional scrutiny.
IRS Inspector General J. Russell George told a congressional panel Thursday the IRS did not provide the documents to his office during a yearlong audit. George said he just received the documents last week.
George issued a report in May that said IRS agents in a Cincinnati office improperly singled out groups with "tea party" and other conservative labels for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status during the 2010 and 2012 elections.
George's report blamed ineffective management for allowing the practice to continue for more than 18 months, delaying hundreds of applications for more than a year.
Since the revelations were made public, three congressional committees and the Justice Department launched investigations and much of the top leadership was replaced, including the acting commissioner.
"The reason the report focuses on the terms 'tea party,' 'patriots' and '9/12' is that the IRS provided us a document at the beginning of our audit that shows these were the terms they used to select the potential political cases," George told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
Last month, the IRS provided documents to Congress that suggested some liberal and progressive groups may have been singled out for additional scrutiny as well ? information that was not included in George's May report. Some Democratic lawmakers said this was proof that George's report was one-sided.
"The committee has obtained new documents that raise serious questions about the inspector general's report, his testimony before Congress and his subsequent assertions in letters to members of Congress," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the oversight committee.
George, however, said he first saw the documents last week.
"They were not provided during our audit, even though similar documents that list 'tea party' but not 'progressive' were," George said. "I am very disturbed that these documents were not provided to our auditors at the outset, and we are currently reviewing this issue."
George also noted that IRS officials publicly agreed with his findings that the targeting focused on tea party groups.
"IRS staff at multiple levels concurred with our analysis citing 'tea party,' 'patriot' and '9/12' and certain policy positions as the criteria the IRS used to select potential political cases," George said.
The IRS did not respond to a request for comment.
The IRS was screening the groups' applications because agents were trying to determine their level of political activity. IRS regulations say tax-exempt social welfare organizations may engage in some political activity, but the activity may not be their primary mission. It is up to the IRS to make that determination.
George's report said applications from 298 groups were set aside for special scrutiny. Of those applications, 72 included the term "tea party," 13 included "patriots" and 11 included "9/12," the report said. No other labels were listed in the May report.
On Thursday, George said three groups had the word "progressive" in their name and four used the word "progress."
___
Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., joined by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., right, speak to reporters after the Senate stepped back from the brink of a political meltdown, clearing the way for confirmation of one of President Barack Obama?s long-stalled nominations, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 16, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., joined by Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., right, speak to reporters after the Senate stepped back from the brink of a political meltdown, clearing the way for confirmation of one of President Barack Obama?s long-stalled nominations, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 16, 2013. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky speaks to reporters as lawmakers moved toward resolving their feud over filibusters of White House appointees on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 16, 2013. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
Republican senators, from left, Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., walk from the floor to a closed-door caucus after a compromise between the Democratic majority and the GOP minority on filibuster rules, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 16, 2013. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid credited Sen. McCain, with helping broker a breakthrough.The Senate just voted 71-29 to end a two-year Republican blockade that was preventing Richard Cordray from winning confirmation as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
Senate majority leader Harry Reid smiles as he speaks to the media as lawmakers moved toward resolving their feud over filibusters of White House appointees on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, July 16, 2013. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and GOP leaders talk to reporters after the Senate stepped back from the brink of a political meltdown, clearing the way for confirmation of one of President Barack Obama?s long-stalled nominations, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 16, 2013. At far left is Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Senate stepped away from the brink of a meltdown on Tuesday, confirming one of President Barack Obama's nominees long stalled by Republicans, agreeing to quick action on others and finessing a Democratic threat to overturn historic rules that protect minority-party rights.
"Nobody wants to come to Armageddon here," said Sen. Chuck Schumer, the New York Democrat whose talks with Arizona Republican John McCain were critical in avoiding a collision that had threatened to plunge the Senate even deeper into partisan gridlock.
McCain, a veteran of uncounted legislative struggles, told reporters that forging the deal was "probably the hardest thing I've been involved in."
The White House reaped the first fruits of the deal within hours, when Richard Cordray's nomination to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was approved 66-34. He was first nominated in July 2011 and has been in office by virtue of a recess appointment that bypassed the Senate.
In a written statement, Obama said he was pleased by the developments and that he hoped Congress would "build on this spirit of cooperation" to pass immigration legislation and rein in interest rates on student loans, among other measures.
As part of the Tuesday's agreement, both parties preserved their rights to resume combat over nominations in the future, Republicans by delaying votes and Democrats by threatening once again to change the rules governing such delays.
Still, officials in both parties said they hoped the deal would signal a new, less acrimonious time for the Senate, with critical decisions ahead on spending, the government's borrowing authority, student loan interest rates and more.
Under the agreement, several of seven stalled nominees would win confirmation later in the week, including Labor Secretary-designate Tom Perez and Gina McCarthy, named to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Fred Hochberg, appointed head of the Export-Import Bank, is on track for approval on Wednesday.
Even before the agreement was ratified by the rank and file, Cordray's long-stalled nomination to head the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau advanced toward approval on a test vote of 71-29, far more than the 60 required.
Two nominees to the National Labor Relations Board, Richard Griffin and Sharon Clark, are to be replaced by new selections, submitted quickly by Obama and steered toward speedy consideration by Senate Republicans. Obama installed Griffin and Clark in their posts by recess appointments in 2011, bypassing the Senate but triggering a legal challenge. An appeals court recently said the two appointments were invalid, and the Supreme Court has agreed to review the case. Republicans refused to confirm them, first because the Senate was bypassed, and later saying the nominations had been tainted by the court ruling.
In their places, Obama nominated Nancy Schiffer, a former top lawyer for the AFL-CIO, and Kent Hirozawa, counsel to NLRB Chairman Mark Pearce. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said their appointments would be reviewed and voted on in committee on Tuesday and Wednesday of next week, and then come before the Senate for confirmation the following day.
Pearce, awaiting confirmation to a new term, is the seventh appointee at issue. His pick is relatively uncontroversial, and he is likely to be approved along with the replacements for Griffin and Clark, if not before. The NLRB appointments, if confirmed as expected, would prevent the virtual shutdown of the agency because of a lack of confirmed board members to rule on collective bargaining disputes between unions and companies.
"I think we get what we want, they get what they want. Not a bad deal," said Reid.
"Crisis averted," said the Republican leader, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
There was more to it than that.
Scarcely 24 hours earlier, Reid had insisted that if Republicans didn't stop blocking confirmation of all seven, he would trigger a change in the Senate's procedures to strip them of their ability to delay. At the core of the dispute is the minority party's power to stall or block a yes-or-no vote on nearly anything, from legislation to judicial appointments to relatively routine nominations for administration positions.
While a simple majority vote is required to confirm presidential appointees, it takes 60 votes to end delaying tactics and proceed to a yes-or-no vote. Reid's threat to remove that right as it applied to nominations to administration positions was invariably described as the "nuclear option" for its likely impact on an institution with minority rights woven into its fabric.
The same term was used when Republicans made a similar threat on judicial nominations in 2005 ? an earlier showdown that McCain helped defuse when it was his own party threatening to change the rules unilaterally.
As part of the deal over Obama's nominees, Republicans agreed to step aside and permit confirmation of several, some of whom they had long stalled. Cordray was first appointed in July 2011, but a vote was held up by GOP lawmakers who sought to use his confirmation as leverage to make changes in the legislation that created his agency.
McCarthy was named to her post in March, and Republicans dragged their feet, demanding she answer hundreds of questions about the EPA. At one point, they boycotted a committee meeting called to approve her appointment.
Perez, also nominated in March, is a senior Justice Department official, and was accused by Republicans of making decisions guided by left-wing ideology rather than the pursuit of justice.
As described by officials, the deal is strikingly similar to a proposal that McConnell floated in remarks on the Senate floor last week during an unusually personal exchange with Reid. At the time, the Kentucky Republican also said he had told Obama last January to drop his hopes of confirmation for Griffin and Clark and instead name two replacements for quick consideration. He relayed the same message again last month to Vice President Joe Biden, a former senator with whom he has a long relationship.
Tuesday's developments unfolded the morning after a closed-door meeting of nearly all 100 senators, many of them eager to avoid a rules change that could poison relations between the two parties at a time the Senate is struggling in an era of chronic gridlock. About three dozen lawmakers spoke in the course of a session that lasted more than three hours, and while few details have emerged, several participants said later it had been a productive meeting.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she had urged others to "look ahead and think about the time when we would have a Republican president with Republican Senate and there could be someone appointed who was completely unacceptable to my Democratic colleagues and was nominated to run their favorite program" She said she asked if they "really want to give away their right to filibuster that individual."
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said the sense of history hung over the meeting, which was held in the Old Senate Chamber, where lawmakers had debated slavery and other great national issues for much of the 19th century. "Senator McCain talked about Webster, Jefferson and Madison. We knew that we were on sacred political ground," he said.
McCain told reporters that with McConnell's knowledge, he had been involved in talks for several days in search of a compromise, speaking with Biden, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough and numerous senators.
"At least 10 times it came together, and then fell apart because there's always some new wrinkle," he said.
___
Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Charles Babington, Donna Cassata, Josh Lederman and Sam Hananel contributed to this story
LONDON (Reuters) - The four surviving original copies of Britain's Magna Carta, the document that first defined government powers as limited by law, will be brought together in 2015 for the first time to mark the charter's 800-year anniversary.
The British Library said on Monday the four documents, currently held by Lincoln Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral and two by the British Library, would be united at the national library in London for a three-day exhibition.
Originally published in 1215, Magna Carta, meaning "The Great Charter", was intended by then-King John to placate powerful English barons who were rebelling against him over unsuccessful foreign policies and rising taxes.
Written in Latin on sheepskin parchment, the charter limited King John's hitherto arbitrary powers by asserting for the first time that English royalty was to be subject to the law.
All but three of the Magna Carta's 63 clauses have now been repealed. Those that remain include one protecting the liberties of the English church, another confirming the privileges of the city of London, and the most famous clause concerning civil liberties and guaranteeing judgment through the law.
The text became the foundation for the English system of common law and remains an important cornerstone of the unwritten British constitution in its use to defend civil liberties.
Its principles are also echoed in the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
"(Magna Carta) is venerated around the world as marking the starting point for government under the law," Claire Breay, lead curator of medieval and earlier manuscripts at the British Library, said in a statement.
The 2015 event will give researchers and the public a chance to study the texts side-by-side to look for clues about the still-unknown authors of the work.
The British Library said that 1,215 members of the public would be chosen by ballot to receive free tickets to see the unified manuscripts.
"Bringing the four surviving manuscripts together for the first time will create a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for researchers and members of the public to see them in one place," said Breay.
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