Alcatel-Lucent S. A. was a French global telecommunications equipment company, headquartered in Boulogne-Billancourt, France. It was formed in 2006 by the merger of France-based Alcatel and U. S.-based Lucent, the latter being the successor of AT&T's Western Electric. The company focused on fixed and converged networking hardware, IP technologies and services, with operations in more than 130 countries, it had been named Industry Group Leader for Technology Hardware & Equipment sector in the 2014 Dow Jones Sustainability Indices review and listed in the 2014 Thomson Reuters Top 100 Global Innovators for the 4th consecutive year. Alcatel-Lucent owned Bell Laboratories, one of the largest research and development facilities in the communications industry, whose employees have been awarded eight Nobel Prizes and the company holds in excess of 29,000 patents. On 3 November 2016, Nokia completed the acquisition of the company and it was merged into their Nokia Networks division. Bell Labs was still maintained as an independent subsidiary of Nokia.

The Alcatel-Lucent brand has been replaced by Nokia, but it still survives under Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, the enterprise division of Alcatel-Lucent, sold to China Huaxin in 2014. Alcatel-Lucent was formed when Alcatel merged with Lucent Technologies on December 1, 2006. However, the predecessors of the company have been a part of telecommunications industry since the late 19th century; the company has roots in two early telecommunications companies: La Compagnie Générale d'Electricité and the Western Electric Manufacturing Company. Western Electric began in 1869 when Elisha Gray and Enos N. Barton started a manufacturing firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, US. By 1880, the company had relocated to Chicago and become the largest electrical manufacturing company in the United States. In 1881, the American Bell Telephone Company, founded by Alexander Graham Bell and forerunner of American Telephone & Telegraph, purchased a controlling interest in Western Electric and made it the exclusive developer and manufacturer of equipment for the Bell telephone companies.

CGE was formed in 1898 by French engineer Pierre Azaria in the Alsace region of what was Germany and was a conglomerate involved in industries such as electricity, transportation and telecommunications. CGE would become a leader in digital communications and would be known for producing the TGV high-speed trains in France. Bell Telephone Laboratories was created in 1925 from the consolidation of the R&D organizations of Western Electric and AT&T. Bell Labs would make significant scientific advances including: the transistor, the laser, the solar cell, the digital signal processor chip, the Unix operating system and the cellular concept of mobile telephone service. Bell Labs researchers have won 7 Nobel Prizes. In 1925, Western Electric sold its International Western Electric Company subsidiary to ITT Corporation. CGE purchased the telecommunications part of ITT in the mid-1980s. AT&T re-entered the European telecommunications market in 1984 following the Bell System divestiture. Philips promoted the venture in part because its PRX public switching technology was ageing and it sought a partner to help fund the development costs of digital switching.

The joint company used the existing manufacturing and development facilities in The Hague, Hilversum and Malmesbury as well as its U. S. resources to adapt the 5ESS system to the European market. The joint venture company AT&T & Philips Telecommunications BV doubled annual turnover between 1984 and 1987, winning major switching and transmission contracts in the captive Netherlands market. In 1987, AT&T increased its holding to 60% and in 1990 it purchased the remainder of the Philips' holding. In 1998, Alcatel Alsthom shifted its focus to the telecommunications industry, spinning off its Alsthom activities and changing the company's name to Alcatel. AT&T spun off Lucent Technologies in April 1996 with an initial public offering. In April 2004, TCL Corporation and Alcatel announced the creation of a mobile phone manufacturing joint venture: Alcatel Mobile Phones. A year Alcatel sold its share in the joint venture but licensed the Alcatel brand name to TCL, which continues to this day under Nokia.

Facing intense competition in the telecommunications industry and Lucent Technologies merged on November 30, 2006. On 5 April 2006, Alcatel announced that it would swap its shares of Alcatel Alenia Space and Telespazio for €673 million and a 12.1% stake in Thales, a key player in the French defense industry. This increased Alcatel's stake in Thales to 20.8%. Alcatel-Lucent acquired Nortel's UMTS radio access business at the end of 2006. During 2007 the company acquired Canadian metro WDM networking supplier Tropic Networks, Inc.. Alcatel-Lucent acquired Motive, Inc. a provider of service management software for broadband and mobile data services in 2008. They had a joint venture with Dutch company Draka Holding N. V. for manufacturing optical fibre, but Draka bought out Alcatel-Lucent's 49.9% stake for €209 million in December 2007. Ben Verwaayen was appointed as chief executive officer in September 2008 after Alcatel-Lucent's first CEO, Patricia Russo, first chairman, Serge Tchuruk, resigned.

In May 2009, Alcatel-Lucent's stake in Thales was acquired by Dassault Aviation. Alcatel-Lucent announced the acquisition of OpenPlug on Se

Hosea Easton was an American Congregationalist and Methodist minister, abolitionist activist, author. He was one of the leaders of the convention movement in New England, he was one of four sons of James Easton of North Bridgewater a blacksmith, from Middleborough, Massachusetts. Background on the side of his father traces back to a group of slaves freed by Nicholas Easton and his brother Peter, on Rhode Island in the 17th century. James Easton married Sarah Dunbar, thought to be of mixed race, his ancestry was therefore African, Native American, European. Racial classifications meant little for this family, Hosea Easton was to write against their meaning anything intrinsic. James Easton was well-connected in the Boston area, he ran a vocational school for persons of color, attached to his foundry, from about 1816 to 1830. His son Hosea participated with his brother James who became a homeopathic physician. Easton married in 1827 and moved to Boston in 1828, where he was minister in a church in West Centre Street, Beacon Hill.

He joined the Massachusetts General Colored Association, set up in 1826. It had the dual aims of agitation for the abolition of slavery, the welfare of free blacks, he was one of the Boston committee set up by the convention of June 1831 in Philadelphia. It included Samuel Snowden and Thomas Paul, the only black ministers in Boston, Robert Roberts who had married Easton's sister Sarah as his second wife and so become brother-in-law, James G. Barbadoes. Robert Roberts and Easton's brother Joshua had joined with him in a previous venture, a vocational school in New Haven that would continue his father's ideas; that project had been made impossible by local racial hostility. They now united with him to oppose the American Colonization Society, who were acquiring land in what became Liberia; some 1831 meetings in Boston on the colonization issue were reported in The Liberator, in March and May. Easton moved to Hartford, Connecticut in 1833 with his wife family. With local black leaders he formed the Hartford Literary and Religious Institution, in January 1834 was appointed its agent.

He toured New England as a fundraiser, but had to cut his plans back because of racial violence. Easton was a preacher of the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church which he joined in the 1830s, an influence on the young Amos Beman, in Hartford teaching. Easton applied to the New York AMEZ conference in 1832; the dates and details of his associations with churches are not clear, however. According to one source, in 1833 there was a split of the congregation in Hartford, resulting in Congregational and Methodist churches, the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, now on Main Street, traces its history back to that year; the Metropolitan Church's official history describes an African Religious Society in Hartford in existence in 1827, owning a church on Talcott Street, the split occurring about 1835. There resulted the Colored Congregational Church, the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church where Easton was the first pastor. David E. Swift writes that the Talcott Street premises being shared by the Congregational and Methodist groups, Easton persuaded the Methodists to buy land of their own in Elm Street for a new church.

Hartford was singled out by Edward Strutt Abdy at this period for the virulence of racial hatred he saw. Easton's congregation were involved in the period 1834–36, culminating in the burning of the Methodist church in 1836. Easton published A Treatise On the Intellectual Character, Civil and Political Condition of the Colored People of the U. States. In this work Easton wrote against racial prejudice, he invoked the Declaration of Independence as free from racial discrimination. Not well received in its time, it is now considered to be a leading work articulating the African-American abolitionist view, with the 1829 Appeal of David Walker. William Cooper Nell quoted Easton at length in 1859 on the constitutional point, while speaking against the Dred Scott Decision, it has been argued. Easton's outlook was rather pessimistic, informed by what he perceived as a hardening of racial divisions into a polarization in the North-East of his time and experience, he wrote of the racist taunts and caricatures common in Boston.

Further, he argued, the stereotypical denigration based on race was a matter of early indoctrination, had economic ends, was supported by the way white clergy condoned slavery. Easton argued for race as no more intrinsic than any other effect of variegation, he put his case in a way not calculated to offend on all sides, but still risking having that effect. He dealt with stereotypes, attempting to sift those that were artefacts of the institution of slavery from those that represented human variability and could be attributed to God. Along with James Forten and William Watkins, Easton queried the "immediatist" assumptions common in white abolitionists, he stated. His message was not what abolitionists, whether black and in many prominent cases escaped slaves, or white, much wanted to hear, his reputation accordingly suffer

Topfreedom is a cultural and political movement seeking changes in laws to allow women to be topless in public places where men are permitted to be barechested, as a form of gender equality. The movement seeks the repeal or overturning of laws which restrict a woman's right not to have her chest covered at all times in public. In addition, topfreedom advocates seek allowing nursing mothers to breastfeed in public. Many societies consider women who expose their nipples and areolae as immodest and contrary to social norms. In many jurisdictions a topless woman may be or harassed or cited for public lewdness, indecent exposure, public indecency or disorderly conduct. Topfreedom advocates seek to change community attitudes to breasts as indecent. Several countries in Europe have decriminalised non-sexual toplessness. Topless swimming and sunbathing on beaches has become acceptable in many parts of Europe, though the practice remains controversial in many places, not common in most places. Many public swimming pools in Europe are owned by municipalities, which are treated as private organisations and allowed to set their dress codes.

In many countries around the world, breastfeeding in public is not unusual. During 2006–2010 and earlier, a number of news reports in the United States cited incidents where women were refused service or harassed for breastfeeding in public. In response, a majority of U. S. states have passed laws explicitly permitting nursing in public. The United States federal government enacted a law in 1999 which provides that "a woman may breastfeed her child at any location in a Federal building or on Federal property, if the woman and her child are otherwise authorized to be present at the location." However, these laws do not apply to rules imposed by private organizations or on private property, such as restaurants, airlines, or shopping malls. In support of Adda Smaradottir's FreeTheNipple act in public cyberspace, young women uploaded their topless photos to Facebook and protested against its Community Standards of considering women's breasts as sexual materials; those photos and related news articles were blocked but Facebook considered those photos did not violate Community Standards.

Bathing and sunbathing in the nude is legal on Danish beaches. Nudity and toplessness in other public outdoor places is also legal, unless it involves "offensive conduct" or is to cause public outrage; the public outrage law is used in practice, but in 1972 audience members were convicted of being nude in the Royal Danish Theatre. In December 2007, a group of women and men calling themselves Topless Front swam topless in public swim baths to promote topless equality. In March 2008, after a campaign by the group, Copenhagen's Culture and Leisure Committee voted to allow topless bathing in its swimming pools. After the Committee had voted, it was revealed that no laws had existed against topless bathing making the vote unnecessary. However, some public baths had restricted it themselves. Public breastfeeding is supported by the vast majority of both sexes in Denmark, is legal and accepted in all places, except for a few private cafés and restaurants that have restricted it. In France, the feminist collective Les TumulTueuses organized a topfree protest in Paris in May 2009.

In Greece toplessness is not illegal and is practiced by locals and tourists alike as there are no cultural taboos against it. Female toplessness has been legalized in all public beaches and swimming pools throughout the country in 20 March 2000, when the Supreme Court of Cassation has determined that the exposure of the nude female breast, after several decades, is now considered a "commonly accepted behavior", therefore, has "entered into the social costume". In Poland in 2008–2009, two women from Szczecin including glamour model Dorota Krzysztofek, won a court battle that reasserted the women's right to sunbathe topless on public beaches. Krzysztofek, along with her female companion, were fined by local municipal officials for topless sunbathing at a public recreation area; the women took the matter to Civil Court. Their first hearing had to be postponed due to remarkable media interest. On November 7, 2008, judge Szczepańska upheld the city staff decision, charged the women with indecent exposure, explaining that their personal freedoms cannot encroach on the freedoms of families with children who frequent the same recreation spot.

Although topless sunbathing is not prohibited in Poland, the judge sentenced them to pay a fine of 230 zloty for breaking the rules of conduct. In her rationale, the judge said that it is not up to the defendants to teach youngsters human anatomy. In 2009, the appellate court declared both women to be innocent, because the city staff were unable to prove that anyone at the beach was indignant or scandalized by their toplessness, no complaint was reported. On the contrary, some visitors stood up to their defense. There were no signs at the recreation area against; the appellate court's decision was binding, but it created an aura of ambivalence, with topless sunbathing in public declared acceptable only if nobody else including families with children formally objects to it. There are no federal laws in Spain that prohibit public nudity, because of this, both topless sunbathing and naturism (the latter o