Copula (linguistics)

In linguistics, a copula (plural: copulas or copulae) is a word used to link the subject of a sentence with a predicate (a subject complement), such as the word is in the sentence "The sky is blue." The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things.

A copula is often a verb or a verb-like word, though this is not universally the case. A verb that is a copula is sometimes called a copulative or copular verb. In English primary education grammar courses, a copula is often called a linking verb. In other languages, copulas show more resemblances to pronouns, as in Classical Chinese and Guarani, or may take the form of suffixes attached to a noun, as in Beja, Ket, and Inuit languages.

Most languages have one main copula, although some (such as Spanish, Portuguese and Thai) have more than one, and some have none. In the case of English, this is the verb to be. While the term copula is generally used to refer to such principal forms, it may also be used to refer to some other verbs with similar functions, like become, get, feel and seem in English (these may also be called "semi-copulas" or "pseudo-copulas").

Dana White

Dana Frederick White, Jr. (born July 28, 1969) is an American businessman and philanthropist. He is the President of the mixed martial arts organization Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC).

Early life

Dana Frederick White, Jr. was born to Dana White, Sr. and June White on July 28, 1969 in Manchester, Connecticut. White and his sister Kelly were raised by his mother and her family the majority of his childhood. Dana is Irish-American. He began boxing at age 17 and graduated from Hermon High School in Maine in 1987.

Career

Ultimate Fighting Championship (2001–present)

While working as a manager for Tito Ortiz and Chuck Liddell, White learned that Semaphore Entertainment Group, the parent company of the UFC, was looking for a buyer for the UFC. White contacted childhood friend Lorenzo Fertitta, an executive at Station Casinos and a former commissioner of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. Within a month, in January of 2001, Lorenzo and his older brother Frank bought the UFC with White installed as its president. White owns 9% of Zuffa, LLC, the entity the Fertitta brothers created to own and manage the UFC.

Julian Assange

Julian Paul Assange (born 3 July 1971) is an Australian computer programmer, publisher and journalist. He is editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, an organisation which he founded in 2006. Subject to extradition to Sweden for legal proceedings, he was granted political asylum by Ecuador in August 2012. He has remained in Ecuador's London embassy and, as of February 2016, he is unable to leave without expectation of arrest.

In February 2016 a UN panel issued a non-binding legal opinion that Assange had been subject to arbitrary detention and should be allowed to walk free and be given compensation. The findings were rejected by UK and Swedish prosecutors, as well as UK Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, Philip Hammond.

Early life

Assange was born in the north Queensland city of Townsville, to Christine Ann Hawkins (b. 1951), a visual artist, and John Shipton, an anti-war activist and builder. The couple had separated before Assange was born.

When he was a year old, his mother married Richard Brett Assange, an actor, with whom she ran a small theatre company. They divorced around 1979, and Christine Assange then became involved with Leif Meynell, also known as Leif Hamilton, a member of the Australian New Age group The Family, with whom she had a son before the couple broke up in 1982. Assange had a nomadic childhood, and had lived in over thirty different Australian towns by the time he reached his mid-teens, when he settled with his mother and half-brother in Melbourne, Victoria.

Kim Dotcom

Kim Dotcom (born Kim Schmitz; 21 January 1974), also known as Kimble and Kim Tim Jim Vestor, is a German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur, businessman, musician, and political party founder who resides in New Zealand. He first rose to fame in Germany in the 1990s as a self-proclaimed teenage internet entrepreneur. In 1994 he received a two year suspended sentence for computer fraud and data espionage because he was underage, and received a similar sentence in 2003 for insider trading and embezzlement.

Dotcom was the founder of now-defunct file hosting service Megaupload but has subsequently been accused of criminal copyright infringement and a host of other charges, such as money laundering, racketeering and wire fraud, by the U.S. Department of Justice. In January 2012, the New Zealand Police raided his home in Auckland and placed him in custody in response to the US charges. Dotcom was accused of costing the entertainment industry $500 million through unlicensed content uploaded to Megaupload which had 150 million registered users. Dotcom has denied the charges, and is currently fighting attempts to extradite him to the United States.