CHAPTER 53
Another Round up of unconnected trifles
THE BOOK
As we continue the analysis of the evidence, we are inevitably drawn back to Kate’s book, written either by herself alone, with assistance of a ghost writer, or wholly by a ghost writer. We may surely assume that for a book of this importance the manuscript or proof would have been submitted to lawyers to ensure there was nothing self-condemnatory, to press relations agencies to ensure the correct “spin’ was preserved, to the ‘Fat controller’ [qv.] to ensure that the official “story’ was not being inadvertently undermined, and almost certainly to the Tapas 7 to ensure they were not inadvertently compromised.
We focus again on a salient point in the ‘story’.
People have remarked on Kate’s and Gerry’s remarkable failure or refusal actually to search for their daughter on the night in question.
Kate records it in the book – so it must be true . . .
QUOTE
“Back in the apartment the cold, black night enveloped us all for what seemed like an eternity. Dianne and I sat there just staring at each other, still as statues. ‘It’s so dark,’ she said again and again. ‘I want the light to come.’ I felt exactly the same way. Gerry was stretched out on a camp bed with Amelie asleep on his chest. He kept saying, ‘Kate, we need to rest.’ He managed to drift off but only briefly, certainly for less than an hour. I didn’t even try. I couldn’t have allowed myself to entertain sleep. I felt Madeleine’s terror, and I had to keep vigil with her. I needed to be doing something, but I didn’t know where to put myself. I wandered restlessly in and out of the room and on to the balcony. At long last, dawn broke.
McCann, Kate. Madeleine Transworld Digital. Kindle Edition.” (p. 81).
REF 1
Kate ‘kept vigil’ for Madeleine, - again we have observed that this is a tradition afforded to the dead on their first night after death for various religions and superstitious reasons, as well as being a good way of foiling body-snatchers, and perhaps above all of ensuring that the person is question was not merely in a deep coma, and that by the morning the temperature of the body had fallen below a level consistent with continued existence. . . and stared at a candle flame whilst Gerry slept.
In the chapter in question. Ch 8, Kate uses the word ‘Dark’, no fewer than 6 times.
She wants us to believe that the search was useless because of the dark. Because it was night time.
Strangely the 100 or so holiday makers and staff who joined the GNR police officers and searched through the night found themselves under no such constraints. The street lights were working, and the Police officers and some people may be supposed to have brought flash-lamps.
But then there was the moon.
The skies had cleared by about 8pm, on 3/5/7 the weather front with the heavy cloud bank which had ruined their holiday for the four days from the Sunday evening drifted off to the west and the sky was clear. This much is evident not only from meteorological reports and charts and weather satellite images which uncritical believers refuse to engage with or understand, but also from the many photos, timed and dated, on Flickr and other internet sites as well as first hand contemporaneous accounts from a locally based British ex-pat whose previous career was inextricably involved in observation of weather.
The sky was CLEAR, and there was a ‘full’ moon.
Sunset on Thursday 3/5/7 was at 2022.
Civil twilight ended at 2050
The moon rose at 21:53 on Thursday 3/5/7, and set at 07:23 on Friday 4/5/7
(It was in fact a ‘waning gibbous’ Moon. Astronomical Full moon was the night before. (2/5/7 - 3/5/7), except that the 100% cloud cover prevented people’s seeing it). But to the naked and untrained eye it was a Full moon. To the trained astronomer like Gerry McCann’s brother-in-law, ‘Quicksand Tony’, the tiniest sliver of the western edge was now in darkness. 99.6% of the moon’s earth-facing surface was illuminated. It would have been very bright and cast shadows on the ground in places where they were not obliterated by light from the street lamps. Almost bright enough to read a newspaper by, a phenomenon with which we are all, surely familiar.
It was, in short, NOT dark. And certainly not so dark that frantic parents would not at least try, or pretend to try, to search.
But Kate insists it was Dark.
All of this is of course freely available to any who believes that Kate’s and Gerry’s account is unequivocally True, and contains nothing but the objective facts. But of course those who ‘believe’ will not trouble themselves with researching or considering the objective facts. That is part of the issue.
The moon-set on 4/5/7 was at 08:05
Sunrise on 4/5/7 was at 06:36
Civil twilight on 4/5/7 began at 06:08
REF 2
Ponder that for a moment. There is a huge bright full moon which is still in the sky reflecting the light of the sun, and is still there when the sun itself ‘comes up’. One in the west, the other in the east.
Even ignoring the presence of the moon, Civil twilight began at 06:08 on 4/5/7.
Civil twilight, for those new to the term, is what we used to call ‘lighting up time’ for motor vehicles. To half an hour after sunset and from half an hour before sunrise. The sky is light all over, but the sun is still below the horizon. One can read a newspaper outside under the open sky, the sky is light blue, and colours are clearly visible. In lay terms it is ‘daylight’, Street lights switch off.
But Kate insists it was Dark.
*****
THE DAM
The recent events at the Arade Dam and reservoir are still fresh in people’s minds. Briefly, in May 2023 another search of a small area of the bank was carried out by the Portuguese, with observers from the BKA and Grange. After three or four days of activity they all packed up and went home.
Press reports varied from simple inventions – that “items of interest in the McCann case” had been found and were being taken to Germany for analysis, a statement so obviously ridiculous that a responsible local journalist felt constrained to correct it by pointing out that had anything been found it would have been retained by the Portuguese authorities, who still “own” the case, – to more credible ones that items of women’s underclothing had been found in the undergrowth.
That anyone considered this unusual at secluded areas round a well known beauty spot, shows a remarkable lack of experience or imagination.
REF 3
REF 4
Then we were told that “soil samples’ had been taken back to Germany for comparison with soil found on or in Brückner’s VW van. Brückner was arrested in Milan, Italy in 2018, having travelled from Switzerland. There might of course still have been sufficient material on whichever vehicle he was using at the time for forensic comparison after eleven years plus the time between his last visit to the dam and his arrest four countries and 2,500 km. away.
However the contamination and ad-mixing with material from every other place he had visited during that decade might just render any comparison less than evidentially conclusive.
For many unthinking believers that must still be reassuring, if only at the sub-primate intellectual level of “If the soil matches, then he must have abducted and killed Madeleine”
Well sadly not. Brückner was a frequent and possibly regular visitor to the Arade dam. Of that we can be sure because Jon Clarke tells us so in a long article published in his Olive Press on 2nd June.
It is as usual headlined “Exclusive”.
For the full luxurious experience of fanciful journalism I recommend reading it in full, at Appendix A (rather than paying for it on the website.)
APPENDIX A
In it we are told of the inevitable ‘secret camp’, which Clarke was the ONLY journalist (obviously) to visit last year. We are told Brückner came frequently for weekends, and sometimes the whole week, and that “conveniently” the ‘secret camp’; “had a flat stretch of land to park his van”.
It may be worth puncturing the balloon even at this stage by observing that the BBC reported on 25th May, rather over a week before Clarke’s exclusive “All the work carried out around the reservoir was on a peninsula jutting out into the Arade dam from its Western shore … The spit of land has a small car park on it, which is often used as an unofficial campsite.”
So we search for the “exclusive element and realise it must be in the Headline.
“GROUND ZERO - THE ‘DRUIDIC CIRCLE HIDEAWAY OF . . .”
(Keep reading, It gets better)
“Styling out [sic] a living area with a rudimentary table, hewn from a log, he even made an eccentric stone bench down by the water’s edge, facing north east, back towards his native Germany. Next to that, a fire pit and perfect stone circle, the type druids might once use [sic !] for ritual gatherings and sacrifices.”
To the list of secret societies invoked in this saga, Freemasons, Knights Templar, Catenian Brothers, Rosicrucians, . . . we now have to add DRUIDS, and we are faced with the dreadful but hilarious thought that Clarke may be amongst those who believe that stone circles and druids were somehow linked.
[Druids are a Celtic Iron age phenomenon. Stonehenge was build ca. 5,000 years ago, over 2,000 years before the Iron age even began. The last Druids disappeared around the 2nd c.AD during the Roman occupation.]
Elsewhere, though sadly not included in Clarke’s piece there were stories of a ‘Shrine’, and of an arrow formed of stones placed in formation on the ground.
“Consisting of boulders in the shape of an arrow pointing towards a picnic site which was dug over by police last week, the makeshift memorial was weighed down by a large rock and had a bouquet of flowers and a photograph of abducted Madeleine on it.”
REF 5
Given that there was a car park, a camping area and flat land with a clear access to the reservoir, is it not at least possible that children and young adults have used this spot as a playground for three generations; that some child played with making a stone circle, and then as with cairns on hill tops across the globe, others added to it over the years. Is there evidence that the log was “hewn’ by Brückner, (Or ‘Brueckner’ as Clarke insists on his trademark mis-spelling through the entire article), or that he ‘styled out’ the eccentric stone bench.
And given the modern propensity for people to set up “shrines’ at the scenes of accidents or deaths, or to dump motorway service-station flowers in front of ceremonial gates, and to tie teddy bears to lampposts with piano wire; and that the scene of Madeleine’s death is not known except to a select few, then is it not just possible or even probable that someone who believed the official story might have been moved to make their own useless gesture in this way?
In other news outlets but by-passing the Olive Press entirely, we were assured that the ‘real focus’ of the search was for a gun and some video tapes stolen from Brückner by his close friends Manfred S and Helge B, which were then thrown into the dam. This had in fact been fully recorded by DCI Amaral a VERY long time ago.
REF 6
So far so good, and almost a reason to do bit of a search, now that the water level of the dam is about 10 metres below the level of 2007 and so much new ground has been exposed.
The only problem with this is that as DCI Amaral recorded - - -
it’s the wrong damned dam.
The gun, if any, was thrown, if it was, into the Santa Clara dam, about 30 km. to the North . . .
REF 7
“Or Not, as the case may be.”
Even Clarke averts to this later in his piece “he spent a lot of time at the Barragem da Bravura, nearer to Praia da Luz, as well as further inland at the Santa Clara reservoir, in Alentejo,”.
We may suppose that the soil from each of those areas and from every other area he visited during the decade in question, will be on whichever vehicle or vehicles he was using at the time, just as the very same soil will now be on Clarke’s vehicle, the PJ’s vehicles, and the hire cars used by Grange and the BKA.
Are the other two dams to be next year’s diversion from the search for the TRUTH ?
* * * * * *
CLARKE
Some time ago I mused about how Jon Clarke’s wife would respond when confronted with the full details of his bizarre attempt to blame me for giving out details of his house and the names of his wife and family when in fact not only had I not done so but he had, and was continuing to do.
But now, increasingly, it appears that we may have an insight into how Mrs Clarke reacted, not only to that revelation, but also to the fact of Clarke’s publicising his wilful abandonment of his family for some months, of which he makes much in his book and boasted to the whole world,
and to her terrible realisation that the large reformed farmhouse with the rental wing named after their daughter was bought and renovated with the proceeds of two egregious libels, one potentially marriage-breaking aimed squarely and vindictively at a dedicated young mother like herself.
Clarke’s own Facebook page (of which more later) having once revelled in the fact of his marriage “Got married. - 18 October 2010”
now states “No Relationship to show”, but then goes on to give the correct first names of his two children, as it has for some time.
REF 8
Add to that the fact that the rental house into which he ploughed so much of the money obtained from selling the proven grossly libellous stories about Jude Law and Nicole Kidman, and latterly about Robert Murat, seems to be officially listed as “permanently closed”, and we may begin to work out her response.
“The Murat wing of Kidman-Law Mansion is permanently closed.” ?
*****
And whilst we are on the subject of Clarke
Sometime ago readers will remember that questions arose about an entry on Clarke’s own Facebook page, where he advertises his book though a double page article in the prestigious Spanish newspaper ABC.
To recap: in the article it is stated that Clarke arrived in PdL at 0130 on 4/5/7 having received a phone call “that very day” – indicating 3/5/7. A short time later the article was amended to read “in the early hours of the morning” [original in Spanish. See refs]
When Clarke was questioned about this he became defensive and initially denied he had given those times.
@Sharon L. eh? Where did you get these incorrect times from?!!
When it was pointed out that they were his words in his article on his facebook page he resorted to his usual invective and ad hominem abuse, whilst in this case simultaneously offering an apparent explanation: that it was a “typo’.
@PeterMac No Plod - just like me he doesn’t have time to waste his time correcting something at your request … for the last time: it’s a typo, you prat!
REF 9
A ‘typo’ or typographical error is normally defined thus:
“- also called a misprint, is a mistake made in the typing of printed (or electronic) material.”
It is more generally understood as typing ‘hte’ or “th4” for ‘the’; typing 1.30 for 10.30; or in an extreme case writing 30µg instead of 3µg on a prescription.
But here we surely have something different. These are not simple slips of the keyboard. They are perfectly typed and are consistent one with another. They have also been proof-read and passed for publication.
Looking first at the editorial round the article we find
Trans: "It didn't seem like a big case, but I went. I arrived at half past one in the morning in Praia da Luz," recalls Clarke…”.
In the article itself we read
Trans: "On that very day 3 May 2007, a call to a telephone in Ronda requested his presence ... He answered and was asked if he could go to Portugal, where an English girl had disappeared. "It didn't seem like an important case, but I went to Praia da Luz", recalls Clarke about his first contact with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. That same night he met the little girl's parents, Gerry and Kate McCann."
Originals in Refs.
REF 10
That is not a slip of the post-prandial finger on a sticky keyboard. The various versions are consistent. It looks as if the reporter has accurately transcribed what he was sent or told.
How can you mistype “Llegué a la una y media de la madrugada . . .” = “I arrived at half past one in the early hours of the morning” ?
We could understand the ‘typo’ claim if it had read “I got there at 1.30 in the morning” when what had been intended was “I got there at 10.30 in the morning”, but the deliberate use of words rather than numerals, and the inclusion of the Spanish “Madrugada” – which has no direct English translation, but indicates the hours between midnight and dawn, during which in the intense heat of the Spanish summer much activity takes place in the streets of towns and cities to take full advantage of the cooler night air . . . makes the claim less persuasive.
[See Appendix for further discussion of Madrugada.]
APPENDIX B
And the strange grammatically redundant construction “just like me he doesn’t have time to waste his time correcting something at your request…” ignores that fact that the article is STILL on Clarke’s OWN facebook page, and has been since 23 October 2022. [a/a. 10/6/23], and characteristically twists the truth that no one is requesting a ”correction”.
What people are asking for are the facts.
Asking whether this is correct, or not.
And if not, what is the truth.
And why was it published in this form and allowed to stay in the public domain for so long.
Clarke surely has the ability to edit his own page. One might have thought that an important point like this, which despite what he may argue goes right to the core of the matter, should be resolved. But perhaps he is part of the “Confusion is good” school of thought [© G. McCann]
2022. A LOOK BACK
2022 was probably confusing for those who tried to follow the Brückner saga using the Olive Press and its syndicated articles as a guide.
In January we were told definitively that Bruckner was to be charged
In May we were told this was to happen “within months”
REF 11
On 3 May (09:10) Clarke changed to “in the summer”
and later the same day (17:45) this changed again to “this month”
and the churned version in the London-Post made it “within weeks’
REF 12
By 19th May it had changed again to “charges over Maddie – who was abducted while on holiday in Praia da Luz, age 3 – will come by the end of the year.” and then hilariously added
“Whether it’s crime, the environment or politics, the Olive Press has its finger on the pulse.”
REF 13
Clarke’s May article was churned by the London Post to read “‘will be charged within weeks’ an investigator has sensationally claimed today. Jon Clarke said he had been informed of the bombshell development by a source in the office of the team of German investigators probing the jailed sex offender.”
By contrast the mainstream papers of record took a slightly different line
The Times on 6th May had already reported "No charges in sight . . . in the foreseeable future,
says the prosecutor”
REF 14
But Clarke blundered on, and on 23 June told the world that Brückner was to be charged “The crimes – three rapes and two child sex assaults – are expected to come to court in the early autumn.. . “I hope it will only be some weeks or a month,” he [Wolters] added. “I hope this year we will charge and prosecute him for these crimes. In total, three rapes and two child sex offences.”
A prosecution against Brueckner, [sic] 45, in the case of abducted Madeleine, who vanished in Portugal, in May, 2007, will follow immediately after.”
REF 15
But by late June even the gutter press had had enough. The always reliable Sun, churned by the Daily Mail – told us that none of the Clarke’s claims of the Cross shaped scar on the thigh of the ‘rapist’, and the maxillofacial surgery which he insisted Brückner had had, so that Clarke could link him to a poorly drawn photofit sketch of someone with a notable overbite, were all nonsense, and had not been true or accurate or factually correct all along.
REF 16
Hardly surprising since whoever invented this ludicrous story seems to have failed to investigate is the actual COST, and the TIME a procedure to realign the jaw and front teeth actually takes.
As usual the red arrows point directly back to Clarke on this hogwash.
REF 17
A quick search on the internet will reveal the timescale for facio-maxilliary or orthognathic procedures
“The team do work together over an 18-month to two year period. The teeth are moved orthodontically over the first nine-month to 12 months. Then the surgery takes place, and then the braces are used to fine-tune the tooth position for a further 6-12 months after the surgery.”
REF 18
REF 19
The invented € 7,500 cost is also way out. “ Altogether with the orthodontist and surgery, you’re looking at about £20-25,000.”
REF 20
So the idea that immediately after abducting and murdering Madeleine, Brückner nipped over to Germany, had a bit of quick dentistry and surgery to redesign his skull and maxilla lasting no more than the time taken for a filling or a root canal, and then flew back to resume his career as a rapist and murderer is clearly abject and total nonsense.
At this point the Tabloids began to change the narrative to a slightly more acceptable but still incomprehensible “…a meeting to see if there was enough evidence to charge’ . . . or some such unintelligible drivel, and along the way some hack floated the idea that they were going to have a ‘mock trial’.
Yes, really. I am not making this up [© J.Tanner] Such is the intellectual and experiential level of modern Tabloid journalists.
Just as an aside, lest anyone believes Tabloid journalists are basically decent and honest people :-
CASE HISTORY - MODERN TABLOID JOURNALISM
This is a report from the current (June 2023) case brought by the Prince Harry and others currently in the High Court in England (a.a mid June 2023)
QUOTE
A convicted phone hacker and 'self-confessed professional liar' told the High Court today how he is assisting Prince Harry and others to sue British newspapers.
Graham Johnson agreed that he had cheated members of the public, 'destroyed people's lives with surgical impact' and had 'no integrity at all' when he worked at the News of the World.
He told the court it was true he had once described one of his own newspaper articles as '1,500 words of b******s' in which he had invented a sighting of a phantom wild cat known as 'the Beast of Bodmin'. He agreed this was 'a carefully crafted piece of deception designed to fool everybody’.
He was giving evidence during a seven-week trial in which Harry and three others are suing Mirror Group Newspapers alleging phone hacking, bugging, blagging and deception, which it denies.
He told Mr Justice Fancourt how he was helping the prince and other celebrities pursuing hacking claims against newspapers, including those at groups publishing the Mirror, the Sun and the Daily Mail.
It was put to him by the Mirror group's KC Andrew Green: 'Mr Johnson, why should the court believe you, a self-confessed professional liar who engaged in illegal activities for many years?' Mr Johnson agreed he had repeatedly engaged in unlawful behaviour at the News of the World in the 1990s, and the Sunday Mirror in the early 2000s, but said of his nefarious skills: 'I don't use them in the witness box under oath at the High Court.
He was sacked from the now-defunct News of the World in 1997 for fabricating stories and worked at the Sunday Mirror until 2005.
He was convicted of phone hacking in 2014 and given a two-month suspended sentence. But he says he converted to 'truth-telling' in 2007 and now runs a website, which he claims is committed to exposing wrongdoing and 'organised crime' in Fleet Street.
His behind-the-scenes role was questioned by Mr Green, who quizzed him about his tactics in recruiting witnesses to the cases against the newspapers.
END QUOTE
REF 21
He was sacked for fabricating stories and THEN employed by the Mirror. Ponder that.
Just as Rebekah Brookes was sacked when the News of the World was closed because of HER actions, and immediately employed by the same Murdoch organisation as editor of the Sun.
Just as the egregious Guzmaroli who invented the story about the waterslide resigned, emigrated, and was immediately employed on the other side of the world - by yet another Murdoch owned organ.
They really are all in the cess pit of tabloid journalism together.
CLARKE AGAIN
Clarke’s ability to rewrite history is a source of endless fascination.
A little time ago the following exchange took place on Clarke’s own FaceBook page during a discussion of his book. “MY SEARCH FOR MADELEINE: One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime". (Available world-wide on Amazon, in Print and Kindle editions, price £10.99.)
START QUOTE
On the back of this book Jon Clarke REPEATS the lie that "Jon Clarke was the first journalist at the scene when Madeleine McCann went missing in 2007."
So the FIRST SENTENCE on the COVER is a demonstrable LIE.
Jon seems incapable of toning it down to something acceptable, such as:
JC was at the scene within a few hours on that first day . . .
He was among the first few journalists . . .
All of which would be acceptable
Len Port got there at 0830.
@Jill Havern First of all who is Len Port ? He’s not a national UK journalist but a local hack working for the Algarve Resident, that has consistently supported Disgraced detective Amaral and his books and which has consistently casted doubt on the McCanns… plus a lot more that we will be exposing at some point soon …
On top of that who’s to say he was there at 8.30?!! He certainly wasn’t making himself clear to me and given I was representing 3 UK national newspapers I talked to EVERYONE there when I arrived.
Does Len support your evil narrative by any chance ?
WHY does Jon Clarke persist in this "I was the First journalist on the scene" nonsense, as he's written on the back cover of his novel?
We have film of Len Port by the pool, early morning, with long shadows
and we have film of Clarke in a huddle of 6 journalists outside the apartment block, looking over the shoulder of a girl, reading her notes
about 5 minutes before the McCanns leave at 1000.
Len is one of those in that group.
And Jon didn't speak to the McCanns either as can be seen in the video because they were on their way to the police station and didn't return until later that evening.
The camera never lies Jon. But you DO! Persistently!
@Nick Bennett I’m not attacking Len, just saying I was the first journalist from the UK media there that morning and I genuinely didn’t see or meet Len, but I wouldn’t have been hanging around in the pack in front of the apartment anyway … I was looking for clues.
END QUOTE
One hardly knows where to start.
“. . . who’s to say he was there at 8.30?!! He certainly wasn’t making himself clear to me and given I was representing 3 UK national newspapers I talked to EVERYONE there when I arrived.”
Len Port says he arrived at 0830; there is contemporaneous video of his walking past the pool where the length of the shadows make it incontrovertible that this was the early hours of the morning.
Why should Port make himself “Clear’ to anyone ?
And Clarke adds that he ‘talked to everyone” where previously he has insisted, violently and abusively that he was the FIRST or ONLY journalist at the scene.
and now the BIG BACKTRACK on everything Clarke has said over the previous 11 years
“… I was the first journalist from the UK media there that morning”
We have been suggesting that form of words for a decade or more, but have been roundly and very publicly abused and rebuked for it.
‘I genuinely didn’t see or meet Len, but I wouldn’t have been hanging around in the pack in front of the apartment anyway … I was looking for clues.”
REF 22
But he did, he did, he was, and he wasn’t.
APPENDIX C
Clarke surely knows by now since we have posted it many times, that there is newsreel video film of his hanging around in the pack in front of the apartment (No 5H incidentally not 5A) in a huddle of FIVE other journalists, including Port, and that he was not “looking for clues” at that time, but looking over shoulders and copying what others had written whilst waiting for the McCanns to come out of the apartment as they did just 18 seconds after he moved away and shook hands with the GNR inspector.
And the few clues that he looked at, like the obviously UNbroken, UNforced, and UNsmashed shutters, he negligently or purposefully ignored, and continues to ignore to this day.
To refresh memories the link to the videos is given in the Refs, and stills from that video showing Clarke with Port in the huddle of hacks are included for those who refuse to research for themselves lest they find something to challenge their ‘beliefs’.
REF 23
APPENDIX C
* * * * *
There is something slightly disturbing about Clarke’s endless manipulation of the truth. It increasingly appears that he does it to suit the “Zeitgeist” – the ‘spirit of the moment’.
He is clearly paid handsomely for his stories, but seems to use them to influence the uninformed public’s perception and belief in the instant issue.
We can perhaps understand the motive behind the cynical pecuniary advantage and financial benefit obtained by publishing untruths, though clearly cannot accept it when it involves egregious libels.
Again however we are drawn to two possible explanations. That Clarke is being used as a ‘useful idiot’, which is unlikely, or that he is fully aware and willingly in the pay and contracted for large sums of money to publish things on behalf of whoever is pulling the strings – The Fat Controller ?[qv. Ch. 41]
I cannot think of another explanation, but I confess I do not know the truth at the moment
Whether it will ever be told is another matter altogether.
****
References and Appendices: