title: Arnold Palmer (drink)

text: The first mention of the beverage nationally was in the "Rolling Stone" 1997 "Hot Issue." Screenwriter Scott Alexander said it was the new "hot drink" and called it the "Half-and-Half." Alexander wrote, "It’s half-iced tea and half-lemonade. At any Hollywood lunch, everyone orders it."


title: Arnold Palmer (drink)

text: The drink has been sold under the Arnold Palmer trademark via a licensing arrangement with Innovative Flavors since 2001. Arizona Beverage Company began marketing and selling the beverage with Palmer's picture and signature on the bottle in 2002 and has handled distribution ever since. The line has expanded to include various flavors including Green Tea, Southern Style Sweet Tea and Pink Lemonade, Zero Calorie, Strawberry, Peach, Mango and Natural Energy. Lemonade combined with iced tea is also sold without the Arnold Palmer trademark by other companies, such as Nestea, Lipton Brisk, Honest Tea (as Half and Half), Nantucket Nectars (as Half and Half), Country Time, Sweet Leaf, XINGtea, Snapple, and Peace Iced Tea (as Caddyshack). It has 43 mg of caffeine per 23 oz drink. Recently, as of April 26, 2021, Chick-fil-A began selling its own version marketed as "Sunjoy."


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Eye in the Sky is a 2015 British thriller film starring Helen Mirren, Aaron Paul, Alan Rickman, and Barkhad Abdi. Directed by Gavin Hood and written by Guy Hibbert, the film explores the ethical challenges of drone warfare. Filming began in South Africa in September 2014.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: The film premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2015. Bleecker Street distributed the film in cinemas in the United States with a limited release on 2016 and then a wide release on 1 April.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: It is the last live-action film to feature Alan Rickman, who died in January 2016 (his last film overall, "Alice Through the Looking Glass", features his voice acting only). The film was dedicated to his memory.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: The film opens in Nairobi, Kenya, where Alia Mo'Allim, a young girl, twirls a hula hoop in her backyard.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: British Army Colonel Katherine Powell wakes up and hears that an undercover British/Kenyan agent has been murdered by the Al-Shabaab group. From Northwood Headquarters she takes command of a mission to capture three of the ten highest-level Al-Shabaab leaders, who are meeting in a safehouse in Nairobi.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: A multinational team works on the capture mission, linked together by video and voice systems. Aerial surveillance is provided by a USAF MQ-9 Reaper drone controlled from Creech Air Force Base in Nevada by Second Lieutenant Steve Watts. Undercover Kenyan field agents, including Jama Farah, use short-range ornithopter and insectothopter cameras to link in ground intelligence. Kenyan special forces are positioned nearby to make the arrest. Facial recognition to identify human targets is done at Joint Intelligence Center Pacific at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. The mission is supervised in the United Kingdom by a COBRA meeting that includes British Lieutenant General Frank Benson, two full government ministers and a ministerial under-secretary.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Farah discovers that the three high-level targets are now arming two suicide bombers for what is presumed to be an attack on a civilian target. Powell decides that the imminent bombing changes the mission objective from "capture" to "kill". She requests Watts to prepare a precision Hellfire missile attack on the building, and solicits the opinion of her British Army legal counsel. To her frustration, her counsel advises her to seek approval from superiors. Benson asks permission from the COBRA members, who fail to reach a decision and refer the question up to the UK Foreign Secretary, presently on a trade mission to Singapore. He does not offer a definite answer and defers to the United States Secretary of State, who immediately declares the American suicide bomber an enemy of the state. The Foreign Secretary then insists that COBRA take due diligence to minimise collateral damage.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Alia, who lives next door, is now near the target building selling her mother's bread. The senior military personnel stress the risk of letting would-be suicide bombers leave the house. The lawyers and politicians involved in the chain of command argue the personal, political and legal merits of and justification for launching a Hellfire missile attack in a friendly country not at war with the US or UK, with the significant risk of collateral damage. Watts can see the more direct risk of little Alia selling bread outside the targeted building, and they seek to delay firing the missile until she moves.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Farah is directed to try and buy all of Alia's bread so she will leave, but after paying her his cover is blown and he is forced to flee without collecting it. Seeking authorisation to execute the strike, Powell orders her risk-assessment officer to find parameters that will let him quote a lower 45% risk of civilian deaths. He re-evaluates the strike point and assesses the probability of Alia's death at 45–65%. She makes him confirm only the lower figure, and then reports this up the chain of command. The strike is authorised, and Watts fires a missile. The explosion destroys the building and injures Alia, but one conspirator survives. Watts is ordered to fire a second missile, which strikes the site just as Alia's parents reach her. They rush Alia to a hospital, where she is pronounced dead.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: In the London situation room, the under-secretary berates Benson for killing from the safety of his chair. Benson counters that he has been on the ground at the aftermaths of five suicide bombings and adds as he is leaving, provoking her to tears: "Never tell a soldier that he does not know the cost of war."


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: "Eye in the Sky" is directed by Gavin Hood based on a screenplay by Guy Hibbert. The screenplay was a project initially being developed at BBC Films, and FilmNation Entertainment acquired Hibbert's screenplay from BBC in September 2011 for Oliver Hirschbiegel to direct. Production did not happen as anticipated, and Hood sent the screenplay to Xavier Marchand, president of Entertainment One. Marchand decided to develop it to produce a film with Hood directing. Entertainment One partnered with Raindog Films in April 2014 to produce "Eye in the Sky" with Colin Firth as one of the producers. Actors Helen Mirren and Aaron Paul joined the cast the following month.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Hood, who was born in South Africa, chose to film "Eye in the Sky" in his home country. Filming began in South Africa in September 2014. Since the South African Civil Aviation Authority did not grant filmmakers permission to fly real drones in the country's airspace for the production, they used visual effects to display the drones. Hood found practical locations throughout South Africa that substituted for settings in the film: an area that looked like Surrey for Mirren's character, clubs that had the appearance of Las Vegas establishments, and Beaufort West which was a backdrop for the state of Nevada in the United States. The bombed town square was built as a movie set at Cape Town Film Studios. Filming concluded on 4 November 2014. None of the four lead actors—Mirren, Rickman, Paul, and Abdi—met one another during production, instead filming alone with Hood due to their characters' separate locations in the film. For example, despite the two costarring in a pair of films ("Eye in the Sky" and the animated feature "Help! I'm a Fish"), Aaron Paul and Alan Rickman had never met each other in person, according to Paul.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Mark Kilian and Paul Hepker, who scored Hood's films "Tsotsi" (2005) and "Rendition" (2007), reteamed to score "Eye in the Sky" as did editor Megan Gill.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: "Eye in the Sky" premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on 11 September 2015. The film had its United States premiere on 7 January 2016 at the Palm Springs International Film Festival.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Bleecker Street distributed the film in the United States, releasing it in New York City and Los Angeles on 2016 and gradually expanding to additional markets on the following two weekends. On 2016, the film received a wide release. "Deadline" said this release was positioned to take place after the 2015–2016 awards season.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Entertainment One distributed the film in the United Kingdom on 2016 and Malta in May 2016. It will also distribute the film in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: "Eye in the Sky" grossed $6.6 million in the UK, $18.7 million in the US and Canada, and $32.8 million worldwide.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: The film grossed $113,803 in the US on its opening weekend of 11–13 March 2016 from five screens, an average of $22,761 per screen. In its wide release the film grossed $4 million, finishing ninth at the box office.


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: "Eye in the Sky" received positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 95%, based on 175 critics, with a weighted average score of 7.5/10. The site's consensus reads, "As taut as it is timely, "Eye in the Sky" offers a powerfully acted – and unusually cerebral – spin on the modern wartime political thriller." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 38 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Rickman's performance was well received by critics, with Richard Roeper of the "Chicago Sun-Times" saying, "Mr Rickman was never nominated for an Academy Award and it's probably a long shot for a posthumous Supporting Actor for this film - but his work here is a reminder of what a special talent he possessed."


title: Eye in the Sky (2015 film)

text: Peter Asaro on "Science & Film" reviewed the accuracy of the advanced military technology depicted in the film concluding, "keep in mind that while some of the advanced technologies depicted are not yet out in the field, many are only a few years away from being a reality".


title: Curry tree

text: The curry tree, Murraya koenigii or Bergera koenigii, is a tropical and sub-tropical tree in the family Rutaceae (the rue family, which includes rue, citrus, and satinwood), native to Asia. The plant is also sometimes called sweet neem, though "M. koenigii" is in a different family to neem, "Azadirachta indica", which is in the related family Meliaceae.


title: Curry tree

text: It is a small tree, growing ) tall, with a trunk up to diameter. The aromatic leaves are pinnate, with 11–21 leaflets, each leaflet long and broad. The plant produces small white flowers which can self-pollinate to produce small shiny-black drupes containing a single, large viable seed. The berry pulp is edible, with a sweet flavor.


title: Curry tree

text: The tree is native to the Indian subcontinent. Commercial plantations have been established in India, and more recently Australia.


title: Curry tree

text: It grows best in well-drained soil that does not dry out, in areas with full sun or partial shade, preferably away from the wind. Growth is more robust when temperatures are at least .


title: Curry tree

text: The generic name, "Murraya", derives from Johan Andreas Murray (1740-1791), who studied botany under Carl Linnaeus and became a professor of medicine with an interest in medicinal plants at the University of Göttingen, Germany.


title: Curry tree

text: Curry tree is also called "curry leaf tree" or "curry bush", among numerous local names, depending on country.


title: Curry tree

text: The fresh leaves are an indispensable part of Indian cuisine and Indian traditional medicines. They are most widely used in southern and west coast Indian cooking, usually fried along with vegetable oil, mustard seeds and chopped onions in the first stage of the preparation. They are also used to make thoran, vada, rasam, and kadhi; additionally, they are often dry-roasted (and then ground) in the preparation of various powdered spice blends (masalas), such as South Indian sambar masala, the main seasoning in the ubiquitous vegetable stew sambar. The curry leaves are also added as flavoring to masala dosa, the South Indian potato-filled crepes, made with a mildly probiotic, fermented lentil and rice batter. The fresh leaves are valued as seasoning in the cuisines of South and Southeast Asia. In Cambodia, where the leaves are called "sloek kontroap", the leaves are roasted and used as an ingredient in a soup, "maju krueng". In Java, the leaves are often stewed to flavor "gulai". Though available dried, the aroma and flavor is greatly inferior. The oil can be extracted and used to make scented soaps.


title: Curry tree

text: The leaves of "Murraya koenigii" are also used as a herb in Ayurvedic and Siddha medicine in which they are believed to possess anti-disease properties, but there is no high-quality clinical evidence for such effects.


title: Curry tree

text: Seeds must be ripe and fresh to plant; dried or shriveled fruits are not viable. One can plant the whole fruit, but it is best to remove the pulp before planting in potting mix that is kept moist but not wet. Stem cuttings can be also used for propagation. In India it is mainly planted privately, but also cultivated commercially to a small extent.


title: Curry tree

text: Compounds found in curry tree leaves, stems, bark, and seeds include cinnamaldehyde, and numerous carbazole alkaloids, including mahanimbine, girinimbine, and mahanine.


title: Natasha Rothwell

text: Rothwell taught for KIPP NYC and went on to work at "Saturday Night Live" "(SNL)". She first garnered attention as a writer on "SNL" in the 2014–2015 season. She gained further fame through working on the HBO television series "Insecure". On "Insecure", she works as a writer, series regular, and supervising producer. In 2018 she was reportedly developing, writing, and executive producing another show for HBO, in which she would also star.


title: Natasha Rothwell

text: On April 15, 2019, Rothwell joined a host of other writers in firing their agents as part of the Writers Guild of America’s stand against the Association of Talent Agents and the practice of packaging. More recently, her company Big Hattie Productions struck an overall deal with ABC Signature.


title: Natasha Rothwell

text: Rothwell was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie for her work in HBO's "The White Lotus".


title: Thuggee

text: Thuggee (, ) are actions and crimes carried out by Thugs, historically, organised gangs of professional robbers and murderers in India. The English word "thug" traces its roots to the Hindi ठग (), which means 'swindler' or 'deceiver'. Related words are the verb "thugna" ('to deceive'), from the Sanskrit स्थग ( 'cunning, sly, fraudulent') and स्थगति (, 'he conceals'). This term, describing the murder and robbery of travellers, was popular in the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent, especially northern and eastern regions of historical India (present-day northern/eastern India and Bangladesh). Contemporary scholarship is increasingly skeptical of the "thuggee" concept, and has questioned the existence of such a phenomenon, which has led many historians to describe "thuggee" as the invention of the British colonial regime.


title: Thuggee

text: Thugs were said to have travelled in groups across the Indian subcontinent. Thugs are said to have operated as gangs of highway robbers, tricking and later strangling their victims. To take advantage of their victims, the thugs would join travellers and gain their confidence, which would allow them to surprise and strangle the travellers with a handkerchief or noose. They would then rob and bury their victims. This led to the thugs being called "Phansigar" (""using a noose""), a term more commonly used in southern India. During the 1830s, the thugs were targeted for eradication by the Governor-General of India, Lord William Bentinck, and his chief captain, William Henry Sleeman.


title: Thuggee

text: The "Thuggee" units would assume the physical appearance of travellers. Initially they wore turbans and carried with them a certain amount of baggage. Their attire as travellers would deceive peasants and royalty alike.


title: Thuggee

text: The methods used by the "Thugs" were meant to reap maximum loot without being caught. They did not accost travellers unless their own numbers were greater than those of their victims. They flattered travellers they met, which gave them a chance to assess what wealth their targets might have. Many of them avoided committing thuggee near the areas in which they lived, making the discovery of their crimes a difficult task. They often pretended to be either Hindu or Muslim to fool their victims.


title: Thuggee

text: They usually attack in the evening. A common method used was to distract their victims by engaging them in conversation, so that others in the band could strangle them swiftly from behind. To avoid suspicion, they avoided carrying more than a few swords. Sometimes they mutilated the corpses of their victims to avoid detection. The corpses were then hidden or buried.


title: Thuggee

text: A leader of a gang was called "jemadar". Usage of military-style ranks such as jemadar and "subedar" among Thugs as well as reference to individual members as a "private", suggests that the organisation of their gangs had a military link. They used a jargon known as "Ramasee" to disguise their true intentions from their targets. Although strangulation is one of their most-recognised methods of murder, they also used blades and poison.


title: Thuggee

text: The thugs comprised both men who had inherited thuggee as a family vocation, as well as those who were forced to turn to it out of necessity. The leadership of many of the groups tended to be hereditary with family members sometimes serving together in the same band. Such Thugs were known as "aseel". Many Thugs insisted, however, that novices were not taught Thuggee by their family but by others who were often more experienced Thugs, sometimes also called a "guru". While they usually kept their acts a secret, female thugs also existed and were called "baronee" in Ramasee, while an important male Thug was called "baroo".


title: Thuggee

text: They would often avoid killing children of victims and instead adopted them. They sometimes tended to murder women and children to eliminate witnesses or in case they had substantial loot. Some of the thugs avoided murdering victims they considered proscribed according to their beliefs and let other unscrupulous members commit the murder or were forced to let them by those who did not believe in their customs like the Muslim thugs.


title: Thuggee

text: The earliest known reference to the Thugs as a band or fraternity, rather than ordinary thieves, is found in Ziau-d din Barni's "History of Firoz Shah" (written about 1356). He narrated an incident of the sultan Jalal-ud-din Khalji having 1,000 arrested thugs being sent to Lakhnauti or Gaur:


title: Thuggee

text: There were numerous traditions about their origin; however, nothing is concrete. One recorded by D. F. McLeod traced it to some Muslim tribes formed from those who fled Delhi after murdering a physician. Another traced it to some great Muslim families who fled after murdering a favored slave of Akbar. According to this view, the original Muslim Thugs spread Thuggee amongst Hindus. According to other traditions preserved by the Thugs themselves, they were Kanjars or descended from those who worked in the Mughal camps. Others have blamed the rise of Thugs on the disbanding of armies in employment of Indian rulers after the British conquest.


title: Thuggee

text: In the 16th century Surdas, in his allegorical couplet, mentioned robbers called "thags" who would lure victims into their clutches to kill them and steal their property. Ibn Battuta, on his way to Calicut from Delhi as an envoy to China, was attacked by bandits, who probably were thugs. The Janamsakhis used the term thag to refer to a robber who used to lure pilgrims. Jean de Thévenot in his 1665 account referred to a band of robbers who used a "certain Slip with a running noose" to strangle their victims. John Fryer also mentions a similar method of strangling used by robbers from Surat whom he saw being given capital punishment by the Mughals in 1675. He mentioned that three of them were relatives, which Kim Wagner notices is similar to the Thugs who were thought to have engaged in this as a family profession. A decree issued by Aurangzeb in 1672 refers to a similar method and uses the term "Phansigar".


title: Thuggee

text: The garrote is often depicted as a weapon of the Thuggee. Other evidences suggest that the Katar (dagger) was their personal status weapon, the Thuggee wore this weapon proudly across their chest. Early references to Thugs reported they committed their strangulation murders with nooses of rope or catgut, but later they adopted the use of a length of cloth that could be used as a sash or scarf, and thus more easily concealed. This cloth is sometimes described as a rumāl (head covering or kerchief), translated as "yellow scarf"; "yellow", in this case, may refer to a natural cream or khaki colour rather than bright yellow.


title: Thuggee

text: The Thug preference for strangulation accorded the thugs some protection under the law which persisted from the times of the Mughal Empire, which ruled most of India from the 1500s. For a murderer to be sentenced to death, he or she must have shed the blood of their victim. Those who murdered but did not shed blood might face imprisonment, hard labor and paying a penalty—but they would not risk execution.


title: Thuggee

text: Preparations of "Datura metel", the Indian thornapple, (family Solanaceae), a poisonous plant sacred to Shiva with powerful deliriant properties, were sometimes used by Thugs to induce drowsiness or stupefaction, making strangulation easier.


title: Thuggee

text: The Hindi name for the plant "धतूरा" ("dhatūra") is derived from the Sanskrit and was adapted by Linnaeus into the Latinate genus name "Datura".


title: Thuggee

text: The "River Thugs" preyed upon people including Hindu pilgrims travelling using the Ganga river and became mostly active during the winter like their compatriots from Murnae, Bundelkhand and Awadh. Their dialect of Ramasee differed from the one used by their compatriots on land and used boats taken on lease from their builders or from a jemadar called Khuruck Baboo. Sleeman states that they tapped three times to give the signal to murder which they always committed during the day. To avoid detection of a corpse, they broke its back and threw it in the river to be eaten by crocodiles and only looted money or jewels.


title: Thuggee

text: The British found out about them in Southern India for the first time in 1807, while in North India they were discovered in 1809 with an effort to suppress them being carried out from 1809 to 1812.


title: Thuggee

text: After a dispute developed between the zamindar Tejun and the Thug Ghasee Ram in 1812, the latter took refuge with his family under another landlord called Laljee. Tejun in turn revealed the thugs of Sindouse to Nathaniel Halhed. Thomas Perry, the magistrate of Etawah, assembled some soldiers of the East India Company under the command of Halheld in 1812 to suppress the Thugs. Laljee and his forces including over 100 Thugs were defeated, with the village of Murnae, a headquarter of the Thugs, destroyed and burnt by the Company soldiers. Laljee fled to Rampura and the southern banks of Sindh River but was caught by the Marathas who turned him over to the company.


title: Thuggee

text: British authorities had occasionally captured and prosecuted Thugs, circulating information about these cases in newsletters or the journal "Asiatick Researches" of The Asiatic Society. However, Sleeman seems to have been the first to realize that information obtained from one group of stranglers might be used to track and identify other thugs in a different district. His first major breakthrough was the capture of "Feringhea" (also known as Syeed Amir Ali, Khuda Buksh, Deahuct Undun and Daviga Persaud), who was persuaded to turn King's evidence. (Feringhea's story was the basis of the successful 1839 novel "Confessions of a Thug"). Feringhea brought Sleeman to a mass grave with a hundred bodies, told him the circumstances of the murders and named the Thugs who had committed them.


title: Thuggee

text: After initial investigations confirmed what Feringhea had said, Sleeman began an extensive campaign using profiling and intelligence. Sleeman was made superintendent of the Thuggee and Dacoity Department in 1835, an organ of the Indian government first established by the East India Company in 1830. (Dacoity was a type of organised banditry, distinguished from Thugs most notably by its open practice and due to the fact that murder was not an intrinsic element of their "modus operandi".) Sleeman developed elaborate intelligence techniques that pre-dated similar methods in Europe and the US by decades.


title: Thuggee

text: Records were made in which the accused were given prisoner numbers, against which their names, residences, fellow thugs, and the criminal acts for which they were blamed were also noted. Many thugs' names were similar; they often lacked surnames since the Thuggee naming convention was to use the names of their tribes, castes and job assignments in the gangs. Accurate recording was also difficult because the thugs adopted many aliases, with both Muslim and Hindu thugs often posing as members of the other religion. Per the Thug Ghulam Hussain, though Hindus and Muslims avoided eating together, such was not the case for drinking and smoking.


title: Thuggee

text: The campaign relied heavily on captured Thugs who became informants. These informants were offered protection on the condition that they told everything that they knew. According to historian Mike Dash, who used documents in the UK archives, suspects were subject to bench trials before English judges. Though the trials were lacking by later standards (e.g., suspects were not allowed legal representation), they were conducted with care to protocols of the time. While most suspects were convicted, Dash notes that the courts genuinely seemed interested in finding the truth and rejected a minority of allegations due to mistaken identity or insufficient evidence. Even by later standards, Dash argues, the evidence of guilt for many Thugs was often overwhelming.


title: Thuggee

text: Because they used boats and disposed of their victims in rivers, the "River Thugs" were able to evade the British authorities for some time after their compatriots on land were suppressed. They were ultimately betrayed to the authorities by one of their compatriots, from Awadh. Forces under Sleeman's command hunted them down in 1836.


title: Thuggee

text: By the 1870s the Thug cult was essentially extinct, but the history of Thuggee led to the Criminal Tribes Act (CTA) of 1871. Although the CTA was repealed at Indian independence in 1947, tribes considered criminal still exist in India. The Thuggee and Dacoity Department remained in existence until 1904, when it was replaced by the Central Criminal Intelligence Department (CID).


title: Thuggee

text: In "Following the Equator", Mark Twain wrote about an 1839 government report by William Henry Sleeman:


title: Thuggee

text: Thugs considered themselves to be the children of Kali, having been created from her sweat. However, many of the Thugs who were captured and convicted by the British were Muslims, perhaps up to a third.


title: Thuggee

text: According to colonial sources, Thugs believed that they played a positive role in saving human lives. Without the Thugs' sacred service, Kali might destroy all mankind:


title: Thuggee

text: The Muslim thugs, while retaining their monotheistic faith, had functionalised Bhavani for Thuggee and she was syncretised as a spirit subordinate to Allah. A Muslim thug caught by Sleeman stated "In my heart, I take the name of God, when I strangle a man – saying ""thou God and ruler!"" ""Alla, toomee Malik!"" I do not pray to Bhowanee, but I worship her." Other Muslim thugs who had agreed to testify for Sleeman, stated they had assimilated Bhavani and started the practice of thuggee.


title: Thuggee

text: According to historian Mike Dash, the Thugs had no religious motive to kill. When religious elements were present among Thugs, their beliefs, in principle, were little different from the religious beliefs of many others who lived on the Indian subcontinent and attributed their success or failure to supernatural powers: "Indeed all of the Thugs's legends which concerned the goddess Kali featured exactly the cautionary notes which are typically found in folklore."


title: Thuggee

text: Donald Friell McLeod who led the campaign against them in the Rajputana Agency, recorded the traditions of their origins. According to them, they were originally Muslims and were taught Thuggee by the deity Devi or Bhavani. They then joined the Lodha people and migrated to Delhi where 84 tribes which were a part of all the criminal clans of India also became a part of the Thugs. A physician who belonged to these 84 tribes gained prominence after curing a royal elephant and was murdered by other Thugs. A schism developed and they left Delhi, which in turn led to the origin of seven Muslim tribes. According to McLeod, these tribes were named Bhyns, Bursot, Kachinee, Hutar, Kathur Gugra, Behleem and Ganoo. According to him, the thugs from Delhi were separated into more than 12 "classes".


title: Thuggee

text: The earliest recorded traditions about the origins of the Thugs date back to 1760. Based on genealogies which were recounted by some Thugs, historian Mike Dash stated that the origin of the Thuggee can be dated back to the second half of the 17th century. A general consensus among them was that they originated in Delhi. The thug Gholam Hossyn who was caught in early 1800s stated that his accomplices believed that Thugs had existed since the time of Alexander the Great. Another tradition among Thugs who lived in the early 1800s stated that they had lived in Delhi till the time of Akbar and consisted of seven great Muslim clans, though they had Hindu names, during the period. After one of them killed a favoured slave of Akbar, they left Delhi for other regions to avoid being targeted by the emperor. A Brahmin thug who was interrogated by Sleeman referred to the Muslim thugs as Kanjars though another Thug denied this.


title: Thuggee

text: Kim Wagner asserts that we can analyse their traditions about events after their flight from Delhi "to a much greater advantage". A tradition which was recounted by a captive Thug stated that the Thugs had originally tried to settle in Agra and they later settled in Akoopore in the Doab region. However, they had to flee to Himmutpur and later they fled to Parihara after their kings started demanding a larger share of the loot. In turn the original Muslim and Kayasth Thugs helped spread Thuggee amongst other groups like the Brahmins, Rajputs, Hindus, the Lodhi people and the Ahir people.


title: Thuggee

text: One thug stated that some of the ancestors of the Thugs were forced to disguise themselves as Khunjurs while they were fleeing Delhi but they were high-caste Muslims. He, however, stated that their claimed descent may be wrong and some of them may be partially descended from poor people who worked in the Mughal army's camps. However, their claim that membership in the Thugs' clans was closed to outsiders is contradicted by the fact that people of all backgrounds were allowed to join them by the early 19th century according to available evidence.


title: Thuggee

text: They considered it sinful to kill women, "fakirs", bards, musicians and dancers. Like the ancient Hindu texts which distinguished robbery from the murder of Brahmins, women or children as violent crimes, many Thugs considered it taboo to kill people who belonged to such categories. Those who worked in lowly professions, the diseased and disabled were also forbidden as victims based on their folk belief. The thugs who broke these rules of the fraternity were often believed to have been targeted by divine punishment and their manner of death was thought to depend upon the rules they broke.


title: Thuggee

text: The East India Company officers since the time of Thomas Perry, who was appointed to Etawah in 1811, came to understand that there were many Thug groups and they all viewed themselves to be different from the other groups.


title: Thuggee

text: The Thug sects were mostly identified based on their habitat, but also based on their professions. The sect called Jamuldahee was named so because its members lived along the Yamuna river, they hailed from the Doab and Awadh regions. Another stated origin is that their ancestor was the Thug Jumulud Deen. The Telinganie originated from Telangana, Arcottees from Arcot and Beraries from Berar. The Lodaha sect, mostly concentrated in Bihar, were caravaneers named after the "lodha" or load they carried and according to a Thug from the Doab, originated from the same ancestors of his clan. The Lodahas were prevalent in the region around Nepal in Bihar and Bengal during the tenure of Perry and originally hailed from Awadh which they left around 1700. A Deccan Thug stated that the "Hindu Thugs of Talghat", located around the Krishna River, didn't marry with the Telinganies whom they considered to be descendants of lower classes as a result of their professions. The Telinganie sect were also disparagingly called "Handeewuls" (from "handi") due to their eating habits.


title: Thuggee

text: The Pungoo or Bungoo of Bengal derived their name from the region, with the Lodhees or Lodaha also present. The Motheea sect of Rampur-Purnia region was from a caste of weavers and their name derived from the practice of giving "handful" ("muhti") of the spoils to the head. In the Uttar Pradesh the sects were: the Korkureeas from Kohrur, Agureeas of Agra, Jumaldahees, Lodhees and Tundals. The Multaneea were from Multan. In Madhya Pradesh the sects were: Bangureeas or Banjaras, Balheems or Bulheems, Khokhureeas and Soopurreeas of Sheopur. In modern Rajasthan, the sects were Guguras whose name derives from river Ghaggar and Sooseeas who were part of the Dhanuk clan. The Dhoulanee sect existed in modern-day Maharashtra. The Duckunies of Deccan were from Munirabad and Kurnaketies from Carnatic region. Another sect was Kathurs whose name derives from a bowl called "kathota", based on a tradition of a man who held it during celebrations by Thugs. The Qulundera sect's name was derived from the Muslim saints called "qalandar". There were also Jogee thugs who were divided into twelve sub-groups.


title: Thuggee

text: According to Feringheea, the Brahmins of Tehngoor village of Parihar were taught the Thuggee after they accompanied the kings of Meos to Delhi and later helped in spreading it in the region around Murnae. He also states that two of his ancestors who had settled and intermarried with Brahmins of Murnae about seven generations ago, which led to the introduction of Thuggee in the area. A Thug hailing from Shikohabad whilst talking of his clan's origin recounted to Perry a tradition that the Munhars were influenced to take up Thuggee after witnessing the immense plunder acquired by Afghans, Mewatties and the Sheikhs.


title: Thuggee

text: Sleeman in 1839 identified a band called "Meypunnaists" who he stated abducted children to sell them further. Another band called "Tashmabazes" who used methods introduced by a soldier named Creagh who was deployed at Cawnpore in 1802 were also identified by him. The group called "River Thugs" were based deep in the South Bengal region.


title: Thuggee

text: The British generally took the view that Thuggee was a type of ritual murder practiced by worshippers of the goddess Kali. Sleeman's view of it as an aberrant faith was based on the contemporary British view that Hinduism was a despicable and immoral faith founded on idol-worship. R. C. Sherwood in "Asiatick Resarches" published in 1820 traces this phenomenon back to the Muslim conquests of India and suggests links to Hindu mythology. Charles Trevelyan however instead of seeing them as a deviant sect, considered them to be representatives of the "essence" of Hinduism which he considered as "evil" and "false". Sleeman considered some Brahmins acted as intelligence providers to Thugs, claiming that they profited from Thuggee and directed it.


title: Thuggee

text: Kali's worship by thugs, both Muslims and Hindus, was emphasised by the British. McLeod commented, "It is a notable fact that not only amongst the Thugs, but in an especial manner among all lawless fraternities, and to a certain extent throughout the uneducated population of Central India, the Mussulmans vie with the Hindus in a devotion of this sanguinary deity ("Devi" or "Bhavani") far exceeding that they pay to any other." David Ochterlony blamed the Pindaris for the rise of Thuggee while Sleeman blamed it on Indian rulers dismissing their armies which took away the jobs of many soldiers. Based on Sleeman's writings about the Thugs, Robert Vane Russell claimed that most of them were Kanjars. He viewed the Muslim Kanjars as having recently converted to Islam.


title: Thuggee

text: In 1882 Alexander Cunningham commented on Hiouen-Thsang's remarks about "people who visited Kahalgaon and forgot to leave it", speculating that the actual reason might not have been that posited by the monk and noting Kahalgaon's later reputation as a place frequented by the "River Thugs".


title: Thuggee

text: Contemporary scholars have become increasingly sceptical of the "thuggee" concept, and have even questioned the existence of such a phenomenon. The British representation of Thuggee is held by some critics to be full of inconsistencies and exaggerations. Numerous historians have described "thuggee" as basically the invention of the British colonial regime. However, the more radical critics in this camp have themselves been criticized for focusing overly on British perceptions of thuggee rather than on the historical accuracy of primary source documents, but conclude that "the colonial representation of thuggee cannot be taken at face value".


title: Thuggee

text: Martine van Woerkens of École Pratique des Hautes Études writes that evidence for a Thug cult in the 19th century was the product of "colonial imaginings", arising from British fear of the little-known interior of India, as well as limited understanding of the religious and social practices of its inhabitants.


title: Thuggee

text: Cynthia Ann Humes states that the testimony of most of the thugs captured by Sleeman does not support his view of priests profiting from and directing the Thugs. She adds that the Islamic idea of fate or Iqbal was more commonly invoked during Thuggee acts, while invoking the Hindu Bhavani was far more rare.


title: Thuggee

text: Historian Kim Wagner views the policies of East India Company in relation to the dismissal of armies of the conquered Indian kingdoms as being responsible for the development of Thuggee. Roaming bands of freelance soldiers had often joined one kingdom or another during the pre-British era, with the main income of many armies coming from plunder. After being dismissed from military service, they turned to robbery as a means of subsistence. He also contested whether the thugs mentioned by Firuz Shah Tughlaq's biography were actually the same Thugs the British authorities fought against.


title: Thuggee

text: Sagnik Bhattacharya agrees with the sceptics and claims the thug-phenomenon to be nothing but a manifestation of the fear of the unknown that dawned on the British Raj at the thought of being alone in the wilderness of Central India. Using literary and legal sources, he has connected the "information panic" of the thug-phenomenon to the limitations of British demographic models that fell short of truly capturing the ethnic diversity of India. He explains the thug panic of the 1830s as being caused by the Raj's angst at realizing its own ignorance of local society.


title: Tango

text: Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries as the result of a combination of Rioplatense Candombe celebrations, Spanish-Cuban Habanera, and Argentine Milonga. The tango was frequently practiced in the brothels and bars of ports, where business owners employed bands to entertain their patrons. The tango then spread to the rest of the world. Many variations of this dance currently exist around the world.


title: Tango

text: On August 31, 2009, UNESCO approved a joint proposal by Argentina and Uruguay to include the tango in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.


title: Tango

text: Tango is a dance that has influences from African and European culture. Dances from the candombe ceremonies of former African enslaved people helped shape the modern day tango. The dance originated in lower-class districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The music derived from the fusion of various forms of music from Europe. The words "tango" and "tambo" around the River Plate basin were initially used to refer to musical gatherings of slaves, with written records of colonial authorities attempting to ban such gatherings as early as 1789.


title: Tango

text: Initially, it was just one of the many dances, but it soon became popular throughout society, as theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants.


title: Tango

text: When the tango began to spread internationally around 1900, cultural norms were generally conservative, and so tango dancing was widely regarded as extremely sexual and inappropriate for public display. This led to a phenomenon of culture shock. Additionally, the combination of African, Native American and European cultural influences in tango was new and unusual to most of the Western world.


title: Tango

text: Many neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires have their particular tango histories: for example , and . At Boedo Avenue, , and other singers and composers used to meet at the with the .


title: Tango

text: In the early years of the 20th century, dancers and orchestras from Buenos Aires travelled to Europe, and the first European tango craze took place in Paris, soon followed by London, Berlin, and other capitals. Tango historian Nardo Zalko, a native of Buenos Aires who lived most of his life in Paris, investigated the mutual fertilization between the two cities in his work, "Paris – Buenos Aires, Un Siècle de Tango" ("A Century of Tango"). Towards the end of 1913, it hit New York City as well as Finland. In the U.S., around 1911, the word "tango" was often applied to dances in a or rhythm such as the one-step. The term was fashionable and did not indicate that tango steps would be used in the dance, although they might be. Tango music was sometimes played but at a rather fast tempo. Instructors of the period would sometimes refer to this as a "North American tango", versus the so-called "Argentine tango". The tango was controversial because of its perceived sexual overtones and, by the end of 1913, the dance teachers who had introduced the dance to Paris were banished from the city. By 1914, more authentic tango stylings were soon developed, along with some variations like Albert Newman's "Minuet" tango.


title: Tango

text: In Argentina, the onset in 1929 of the Great Depression, and restrictions introduced after the overthrow of the Hipólito Yrigoyen government in 1930, caused a temporary decline in tango's popularity. Its fortunes were reversed later in the 1930s, and tango again became widely fashionable and a matter of national pride under the first Perón government, which in turn had a major effect on Argentinian culture overall. Mariano Mores played a role in the resurgence of the tango in 1950s Argentina. Mores's "Taquito Militar" was premiered in 1952 during a governmental speech by President Juan D. Perón, which generated a strong political and cultural controversy between different views of the concepts of "cultured" music and "popular" music, as well as the links between both "cultures".


title: Tango

text: Tango declined again in the late 1950s, as a result of economic depression and the banning of public gatherings by the military dictatorships; male-only tango practice—the custom at the time—was considered "public gathering". That, indirectly, boosted the popularity of rock and roll because, unlike tango, it did not require such gatherings. However, in the late 1980s the tango again experienced a resurgence in Argentina, partly due to the endeavors of Osvaldo Peredo.


title: Tango

text: There are several theories regarding the origin of the word "tango", none of which has been proven. An African culture is often credited as the creator of this word; in particular, it is theorized that the word derives from the Yoruba word "shangó", which refers to Shango, the God of Thunder in traditional Yoruba religion. This theory suggests that the word “shangó” was morphed through the dilution of the Nigerian language once it reached South America via slave trade. According to an alternative theory, "tango" is derived from the Spanish word for "drum", "tambor". This word was then mispronounced by Buenos Aires’ lower-class inhabitants to become "tambo", ultimately resulting in the common "tango". It is also sometimes theorized that the word is derived from the Portuguese word "tanger", which means "to play a musical instrument". Another Portuguese word, "tangomão", a combination of the verb "tanger" ("to touch") with the noun "mão" ("hand") meaning "to play a musical instrument with one's hands", has been suggested as the etymon of "tango".


title: Tango

text: According to some authors, "tango" is derived from the Kongo word "ntangu" which means "sun", "hour", "space-time".


title: Tango

text: The tango consists of a variety of styles that developed in different regions and eras of Argentina as well as in other locations around the world. The dance developed in response to many cultural elements, such as the crowding of the venue and even the fashions in clothing. The styles are mostly danced in either open embrace, where lead and follow have space between their bodies, or close embrace, where the lead and follow connect either chest-to-chest (Argentine tango) or in the upper thigh, hip area (American and International tango).


title: Tango

text: The milonguero style is characterized by a very close embrace, small steps, and syncopated rhythmic footwork. It is based on the or style of the crowded downtown clubs of the 1950s.


title: Tango

text: In contrast, the tango that originated in the family clubs of the suburban neighborhoods (Villa Urquiza/Devoto/Avellaneda etc.) emphasizes long elegant steps, and complex figures. In this case the embrace may be allowed to open briefly, to permit execution of the complex footwork.


title: Tango

text: The complex figures of this style became the basis for a theatrical performance style of tango seen in the touring stage shows. For stage purposes, the embrace is often open, and the complex footwork is augmented with gymnastic lifts, kicks, and drops.


title: Tango

text: A newer style sometimes called "tango nuevo" or 'new tango' has been popularized in recent years by a younger generation of dancers. The embrace is often quite open and very elastic, permitting the leader to lead a large variety of very complex figures. This style is often associated with those who enjoy dancing to jazz- and techno-tinged "alternative tango" music, in addition to traditional tango compositions.


title: Tango

text: "Tango canyengue" is a rhythmic style of tango that originated in the early 1900s and is still popular today. It is one of the original roots styles of tango and contains all fundamental elements of traditional Tango from the River Plate region (Uruguay and Argentina). In "tango canyengue" the dancers share one axis, dance in a closed embrace, and with the legs relaxed and slightly bent. "Tango canyengue" uses body dissociation for the leading, walking with firm ground contact, and a permanent combination of on- and off-beat rhythm. Its main characteristics are its musicality and playfulness. Its rhythm is described as "incisive, exciting, provocative".


title: Tango

text: The complex figures of this style became the basis for a theatrical performance style of Tango seen in the touring stage shows. For stage purposes, the embrace is often very open, and the complex footwork is augmented with gymnastic lifts, kicks, and drops.


title: Tango

text: A newer style sometimes called "tango nuevo" or 'new tango' was popularized after 1980 by a younger generation of musicians and dancers. Ástor Piazzolla, composer and virtuoso of the bandoneón (so-called "tango accordion") played a major role in the innovation of traditional tango music. The embrace is often quite open and very elastic, permitting the leader to initiate a great variety of very complex figures. This style is often associated with those who enjoy dancing to jazz- and techno-tinged, electronic and alternative music inspired in old tangos, in addition to traditional Tango compositions.


title: Tango

text: "Tango nuevo" is largely fueled by a fusion between tango music and electronica (), though the style can be adapted to traditional tango and even non-tango songs. Gotan Project released its first tango fusion album in 2000, quickly following with La Revancha del Tango in 2001. Bajofondo Tango Club, a Rioplatense music band consisting of seven musicians from Argentina and Uruguay, released their first album in 2002. Tanghetto's album "Emigrante (electrotango)" appeared in 2003 and was nominated for a Latin Grammy in 2004. These and other electronic tango fusion songs bring an element of revitalization to the tango dance, serving to attract a younger group of dancers.


title: Tango

text: In the second half of the 1990s, a movement of new tango songs was born in Buenos Aires. It was mainly influenced by the old orchestra style rather than by Piazzolla's renewal and experiments with electronic music. The novelty lies in the new songs, with today's lyrics and language, which find inspiration in a wide variety of contemporary styles.


title: Tango

text: In the 2000s, the movement grew with prominent figures such as the Orquesta Típica Fernandez Fierro, whose creator, Julian Peralta, would later start Astillero and the Orquesta Típica Julián Peralta. Other bands also have become part of the movement such as the Orquesta Rascacielos, Altertango, Ciudad Baigón, as well as singer and songwriters Alfredo "Tape" Rubín, Victoria di Raimondo, Juan Serén, Natalí de Vicenzo and Pacha González.


title: Tango

text: Ballroom tango, divided in recent decades into the "International" and "American" styles, has descended from the tango styles that developed when the tango first went abroad to Europe and North America. The dance was simplified, adapted to the preferences of conventional ballroom dancers, and incorporated into the repertoire used in International Ballroom dance competitions. English tango was first codified in October 1922, when it was proposed that it should only be danced to modern tunes, ideally at 30 bars per minute (i.e. 120 beats per minute – assuming a measure).


title: Tango

text: Subsequently, the English tango evolved mainly as a highly competitive dance, while the American tango evolved as an unjudged social dance with an emphasis on leading and following skills. This has led to some principal distinctions in basic technique and style. Nevertheless, there are quite a few competitions held in the American style, and of course mutual borrowing of technique and dance patterns happens all the time.


title: Tango

text: Ballroom tangos use different music and styling from the tangos from the River Plata region (Uruguay and Argentina), with more staccato movements and the characteristic "head snaps". The head snaps are totally foreign to Argentine and Uruguayan tango, and were introduced in 1934 under the influence of a similar movement in the legs and feet of the tango from the River Plate, and the theatrical movements of the pasodoble. This style became very popular in Germany and was soon introduced to England. The movements were very popular with spectators, but not with competition judges.


title: Tango

text: Tango arrived in Finland in 1913. The tango spread from the dominant urban dance form to become hugely popular across Finland in the 1950s after World War I and World War II. The melancholy tone of the music reflects the themes of Finnish folk poetry; Finnish tango is almost always in a minor key.


title: Tango

text: The tango is danced in very close full thigh, pelvis and upper body contact in a wide and strong frame, and features smooth horizontal movements that are very strong and determined. Dancers are very low, allowing long steps without any up and down movement, although rises and falls are optional in some styles. Forward steps land heel first except when descending from a rise, and in backward steps dancers push from the heel. In basic steps, the passing leg moves quickly to rest for a moment close to the grounded leg. Dips and rotations are typical. There is no open position, and typically feet stay close to the floor, except in dips the follower might slightly raise the left leg. Unlike in some Argentine-Uruguayan tango styles, in Finnish tango there is no kicking of any kind, and there are no aerials.


title: Tango

text: The annual Finnish tango festival "Tangomarkkinat" draws over 100,000 tango fans to the central Finnish town of Seinäjoki; the town also hosts the Tango Museum.


title: Tango

text: Argentine-Uruguayan and ballroom tango use very different techniques. In Argentine and Uruguayan tango, the body's center moves first, then the feet reach to support it. In ballroom tango, the body is initially set in motion across the floor through the flexing of the lower joints (hip, knee, ankle) while the feet are delayed, then the feet move quickly to catch the body, resulting in snatching or striking action that reflects the staccato nature of this style's preferred music.


title: Tango

text: In tango, the steps are typically more gliding, but can vary widely in timing, speed, and character, and follow no single specific rhythm. Because the dance is led and followed at the level of individual steps, these variations can occur from one step to the next. This allows the dancers to vary the dance from moment to moment to match the music (which often has both legato and/or staccato elements) and their mood.


title: Tango

text: The Tango's frame, called an "abrazo" or "embrace", is not rigid, but flexibly adjusts to different steps, and may vary from being quite close, to offset in a "V" frame, to open. The flexibility is as important as is all movement in dance. The American Ballroom Tango's frame is flexible too, but experienced dancers frequently dance in closed position: higher in the elbows, tone in the arms and constant connection through the body. When dancing socially with beginners, however, it may be better to use a more open position because the close position is too intimate for them. In American Tango open position may result in open breaks, pivots, and turns which are quite foreign in Argentine tango and International (English) tango.


title: Tango

text: There is a closed position as in other types of ballroom dance, but it differs significantly between types of tango. In Tango from the River Plata region, the "close embrace" involves continuous contact at the full upper body, but not the legs. In American Ballroom tango, the "close embrace" involves close contact in the pelvis or upper thighs, but not the upper body. Followers are instructed to thrust their hips forward, but pull their upper body away and shyly look over their left shoulder when they are led into a "corte".


title: Tango

text: In tango from the River Plate region, the open position, the legs may be intertwined and hooked together, in the style of Pulpo (the Octopus). In Pulpo's style, these hooks are not sharp, but smooth ganchos.


title: Tango

text: In Tango from the River Plata, Uruguay and Argentina, the ball or toe of the foot may be placed first. Alternatively, the dancer may take the floor with the entire foot in a cat-like manner. In the International style of Tango, "heel leads" (stepping first onto the heel, then the whole foot) are used for forward steps.


title: Tango

text: Ballroom tango steps stay close to the floor, while the River Plata Tango (Uruguayan and Argentine) includes moves such as the "boleo" (allowing momentum to carry one's leg into the air) and "gancho" (hooking one's leg around one's partner's leg or body) in which the feet travel off the ground. Both Uruguayan and Argentine tango features other vocabulary foreign to ballroom, such as the "parada" (in which the leader puts his foot against the follower's foot), the "arrastre" (in which the leader appears to drag or be dragged by the follower's foot), and several kinds of "sacada" (in which the leader displaces the follower's leg by stepping into her space).


title: Tango

text: Music and dance elements of tango are popular in activities related to gymnastics, figure skating, synchronized swimming, etc., because of its dramatic feeling and its cultural associations with romance.


title: Tango

text: For the 1978 FIFA World Cup in Argentina, Adidas designed a ball and named it Tango, likely a tribute to the host country of the event. This design was also used in 1982 FIFA World Cup in Spain as "Tango Málaga", and in 1984 and 1988 UEFA European Football Championships in France and West Germany.


title: Tango

text: Tango appears in different aspects of society: Regular milongas and special festivals. A very famous festival is the Tango Buenos Aires Festival y Mundial in Buenos Aires also known as World tango dance tournament. On a regional level there are also many festivals inside and outside of Argentina. One local festival outside Argentina is Buenos Aires in the Southern Highlands in Australia.


title: Tango

text: Typically the tango is performed between a man and a woman, however the two have very different aspirations within the tango. Women often looked to the tango to help them gain confidence and to help them find a potential relationship. Men however looked to the tango for intimate reasons, and were known to be flirty and sexually willing. Women, however, were primarily focused on the dance itself and became wealthy. As time went on and the tango culture changed, women and men often wanted to travel and compete and also teach tango classes and then both women and men are viewed as equals.


title: Tango

text: Gender roles also plays a big part in the mechanics of tango due to the tango needing a leader. But in more recent times this is being challenged due to woman not wanting to be dependent on the male for the dance. In the early 1900s, there were often more male dancers than female so the dance was performed between two men. This allowed for both men to learn the leading and following roles of tango and adapt to both lead equally in the dance. This changed the mechanics of the dance to be closer to two equally leading roles between men and women or same sex pairs.


title: Budget

text: A budget is a calculation play, usually but not always financial, for a defined period, often one year or a month. A budget may include anticipated sales volumes and revenues, resource quantities including time, costs and expenses, environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions, other impacts, assets, liabilities and cash flows. Companies, governments, families, and other organizations use budgets to express strategic plans of activities in measurable terms.


title: Budget

text: A budget expresses intended expenditures along with proposals for how to meet them with resources. A budget may express a surplus, providing resources for use at a future time, or a deficit in which expenditures exceed income or other resources.


title: Budget

text: The budget of a government is a summary or plan of the anticipated resources (often but not always from taxes) and expenditures of that government. There are three types of government budget: the operating or current budget, the capital or investment budget, and the cash or cash flow budget.


title: Budget

text: The federal budget is prepared by the Office of Management and Budget, and submitted to Congress for consideration. Invariably, Congress makes many and substantial changes. Nearly all American states are required to have balanced budgets, but the federal government is allowed to run deficits.


title: Budget

text: The budget is prepared by the Budget Division Department of Economic Affairs of the Ministry of Finance annually. The Finance Minister is the head of the budget making committee. The present Indian Finance minister is Nirmala Sitharaman. The Budget includes supplementary excess grants and when a proclamation by the President as to failure of Constitutional machinery is in operation in relation to a State or a Union Territory, preparation of the Budget of such State.


title: Budget

text: The Philippine budget is considered the most complicated in the world, incorporating multiple approaches in one single budget system: line-item (budget execution), performance (budget accountability), and zero-based budgeting. The Department of Budget and Management (DBM) prepares the National Expenditure Program and forwards it to the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives to come up with a General Appropriations Bill (GAB). The GAB will go through budget deliberations and voting; the same process occurs when the GAB is transmitted to the Philippine Senate.


title: Budget

text: After both houses of Congress approves the GAB, the President signs the bill into a General Appropriations Act (GAA); also, the President may opt to veto the GAB and have it returned to the legislative branch or leave the bill unsigned for 30 days and lapse into law. There are two types of budget bill veto: the line-item veto and the veto of the whole budget.


title: Budget

text: A personal budget or home budget is a finance plan that allocates future personal income towards expenses, savings and debt repayment. Past spending and personal debt are considered when creating a personal budget. There are several methods and tools available for creating, using, and adjusting a personal budget. For example, jobs are an income source, while bills and rent payments are expenses. A third category (other than income and expenses) may be assets (such as property, investments, or other savings or value) representing a potential reserve for funds in case of budget shortfalls.


title: Budget

text: is a financial forecast for the near-term future, aggregating the expected revenues and expenses of the various departments - operations, human resources, IT, etc - and is then a key element in integrated business planning, with targets correspondingly devolved to departmental managers (and becoming KPIs).


title: Budget

text: The budgeting process typically requires considerable effort, often involving dozens of staff; final sign off resides with both the financial director and operations director.


title: Budget

text: The budget is typically compiled on an annual basis, although this may be quarterly; the monitoring here is on an ongoing basis.


title: Budget

text: Re the latter: if the actual figures delivered come close to those budgeted, this suggests that managers understand their business and have been successful in "delivering".


title: Budget

text: This usually sits within the company's financial management area in general, sometimes, specifically, in "FP&A" (Financial planning and analysis);


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol, also known as vitamin D and colecalciferol, is a type of vitamin D that is made by the skin when exposed to sunlight; it is found in some foods and can be taken as a dietary supplement.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol is made in the skin following UVB light exposure. It is converted in the liver to calcifediol (25-hydroxyvitamin D) which is then converted in the kidney to calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D). One of its actions is to increase calcium uptake by the intestines. It is found in food such as some fish, beef liver, eggs, and cheese. Plant and cow milk, fruit juice, yogurt, and margarine also may have cholecalciferol added to them in some countries, including the United States.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol can be taken as an oral dietary supplement to prevent vitamin D deficiency or as a medication to treat associated diseases, including rickets. It is also used for familial hypophosphatemia, hypoparathyroidism that is causing low blood calcium, and Fanconi syndrome. Vitamin-D supplements may not be effective in people with severe kidney disease. Excessive doses in humans can result in vomiting, constipation, weakness, and confusion. Other risks include kidney stones. Doses greater than 40,000IU (1,000μg) per day are generally required before high blood calcium occurs. Normal doses, 800–2000 IU per day, are safe in pregnancy.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol was first described in 1936. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. In 2020, it was the 60th most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 11million prescriptions. Cholecalciferol is available as a generic medication and over the counter.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol appears to stimulate the body's interferon type I signaling system that protects against bacteria and viruses, unlike Vitamin D2.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol is a form of vitamin D which is naturally synthesized in skin and functions as a pro-hormone, being converted to calcitriol. This is important for maintaining calcium levels and promoting bone health and development. As a medication, cholecalciferol may be taken as a dietary supplement to prevent or to treat vitamin D deficiency. One gram is 40,000,000 (40x10) IU, equivalently 1 IU is 0.025 μg or 25 ng. Dietary reference intake values for vitamin D (cholecalciferol and/or ergocalciferol) have been established and recommendations vary depending on the country:


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Low levels of vitamin D are more commonly found in individuals living in northern latitudes, or with other reasons for a lack of regular sun exposure, including being housebound, frail, elderly, obese, having darker skin, or wearing clothes that cover most of the skin. Supplements are recommended for these groups of people.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: The Institute of Medicine in 2010 recommended a maximum uptake of vitamin D of 4,000 IU/day, finding that the dose for lowest observed adverse effect level is 40,000 IU daily for at least 12 weeks, and that there was a single case of toxicity above 10,000 IU after more than 7 years of daily intake; this case of toxicity occurred in circumstances that have led other researchers to dispute it as a credible case to consider when making vitamin D intake recommendations. Patients with severe vitamin D deficiency will require treatment with a loading dose; its magnitude can be calculated based on the actual serum 25-hydroxy-vitamin D level and body weight.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: There are conflicting reports concerning the relative effectiveness of cholecalciferol (D) versus ergocalciferol (D), with some studies suggesting less efficacy of D, and others showing no difference. There are differences in absorption, binding and inactivation of the two forms, with evidence usually favoring cholecalciferol in raising levels in blood, although more research is needed.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: A much less common use of cholecalciferol therapy in rickets utilizes a single large dose and has been called "stoss" therapy. Treatment is given either orally or by intramuscular injection of 300,000 IU (7,500 μg) to 500,000 IU (12,500 μg = 12.5 mg), in a single dose, or sometimes in two to four divided doses. There are concerns about the safety of such large doses.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Low circulating vitamin D levels have been associated with lower total testosterone levels in males. There has been shown information that Vitamin D supplmentation could potentially have evidence on total testosterone concentration, although more research is needed.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: A meta-analysis of 2007 concluded that daily intake of 1000 to 2000 IU per day of vitamin D could reduce the incidence of colorectal cancer with minimal risk. Also a 2008 study published in Cancer Research has shown the addition of vitamin D (along with calcium) to the diet of some mice fed a regimen similar in nutritional content to a new Western diet with 1000 IU cholecalciferol per day prevented colon cancer development. In humans, with 400 IU daily, there was no effect of cholecalciferol supplements on the risk of colorectal cancer.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Supplements are not recommended for prevention of cancer as any effects of cholecalciferol are very small. Although correlations exist between low levels of blood serum cholecalciferol and higher rates of various cancers, multiple sclerosis, tuberculosis, heart disease, and diabetes, the consensus is that supplementing levels is not beneficial. It is thought that tuberculosis may result in lower levels. It, however, is not entirely clear how the two are related.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol is one of the five forms of vitamin D. Cholecalciferol is a secosteroid, that is, a steroid molecule with one ring open.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: By itself cholecalciferol is inactive. It is converted to its active form by two hydroxylations: the first in the liver, by CYP2R1 or CYP27A1, to form 25-hydroxycholecalciferol (calcifediol, 25-OH vitamin D). The second hydroxylation occurs mainly in the kidney through the action of CYP27B1 to convert 25-OH vitamin D into 1,25-dihydroxycholecalciferol (calcitriol, 1,25-(OH)vitamin D). All these metabolites are bound in blood to the vitamin D-binding protein. The action of calcitriol is mediated by the vitamin D receptor, a nuclear receptor which regulates the synthesis of hundreds of proteins and is present in virtually every cell in the body.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: 7-Dehydrocholesterol is the precursor of cholecalciferol. Within the epidermal layer of skin, 7-dehydrocholesterol undergoes an electrocyclic reaction as a result of UVB light at wavelengths between 290 and 315 nm, with peak synthesis occurring between 295 and 300 nm. This results in the opening of the vitamin precursor B-ring through a conrotatory pathway making previtamin D (pre-cholecalciferol). In a process which is independent of UV light, the pre-cholecalciferol then undergoes a [1,7] antarafacial sigmatropic rearrangement and therein finally isomerizes to form vitamin D.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: The active UVB wavelengths are present in sunlight, and sufficient amounts of cholecalciferol can be produced with moderate exposure of the skin, depending on the strength of the sun. Time of day, season, and altitude affect the strength of the sun, and pollution, cloud cover or glass all reduce the amount of UVB exposure. Exposure of face, arms and legs, averaging 5–30 minutes twice per week, may be sufficient, but the darker the skin, and the weaker the sunlight, the more minutes of exposure are needed. Vitamin D overdose is impossible from UV exposure; the skin reaches an equilibrium where the vitamin degrades as fast as it is created.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol can be produced in skin from the light emitted by the UV lamps in tanning beds, which produce ultraviolet primarily in the UVA spectrum, but typically produce 4% to 10% of the total UV emissions as UVB. Levels in blood are higher in frequent uses of tanning salons.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Whether cholecalciferol and all forms of vitamin D are by definition "vitamins" can be disputed, since the definition of vitamins includes that the substance cannot be synthesized by the body and must be ingested. Cholecalciferol "is" synthesized by the body during UVB radiation exposure.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol is produced industrially for use in vitamin supplements and to fortify foods. As a pharmaceutical drug it is called cholecalciferol (USAN) or colecalciferol (INN, BAN). It is produced by the ultraviolet irradiation of 7-dehydrocholesterol extracted from lanolin found in sheep's wool. Cholesterol is extracted from wool grease and wool wax alcohols obtained from the cleaning of wool after shearing. The cholesterol undergoes a four-step process to make 7-dehydrocholesterol, the same compound that is produced in the skin of animals. The 7-dehydrocholesterol is then irradiated with ultraviolet light. Some unwanted isomers are formed during irradiation: these are removed by various techniques, leaving a resin which melts at about room temperature and usually has a potency of 25,000,000 to 30,000,000 International Units per gram.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol is also produced industrially for use in vitamin supplements from lichens, which is suitable for vegans.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Cholecalciferol is very sensitive to UV radiation and will rapidly, but reversibly, break down to form supra-sterols, which can further irreversibly convert to ergosterol.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Rodents are somewhat more susceptible to high doses than other species, and cholecalciferol has been used in poison bait for the control of these pests.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: The mechanism of high dose cholecalciferol is that it can produce "hypercalcemia, which results in systemic calcification of soft tissue, leading to kidney failure, cardiac abnormalities, hypertension, CNS depression, and GI upset. Signs generally develop within 18-36 hr of ingestion and can include depression, loss of appetite, polyuria, and polydipsia." High-dose cholecalciferol will tend to rapidly accumulate in adipose tissue yet release more slowly which will tend to delay time of death for several days from the time that high-dose bait is introduced.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: In New Zealand, possums have become a significant pest animal. For possum control, cholecalciferol has been used as the active ingredient in lethal baits. The LD is 16.8 mg/kg, but only 9.8 mg/kg if calcium carbonate is added to the bait. Kidneys and heart are target organs. LD of 4.4 mg/kg has been reported in rabbits, with lethality to almost all rabbits ingesting doses greater than 15 mg/kg. Toxicity has been reported across a wide range of cholecalciferol dosages, with LD as high as 88 mg/kg or as low as 2 mcg/kg reported for dogs.


title: Cholecalciferol

text: Researchers have reported that the compound is less toxic to non-target species than earlier generations of anticoagulant rodenticides (Warfarin and congeners) or Bromethalin, and that relay toxicosis (poisoning by eating a poisoned animal) has not been documented. Nevertheless, the same source reports that use of cholecalciferol in rodenticides may still pose a significant hazard to other animals, such as dogs and cats, when rodenticide bait or other forms of cholecalciferol are directly ingested.


title: Communes of France

text: The () is a level of administrative division in the French Republic. French are analogous to civil townships and incorporated municipalities in the United States and Canada, ' in Germany, ' in Italy, or " in Spain. The United Kingdom's equivalent are civil parishes, although some areas, particularly urban areas, are unparished. are based on historical geographic communities or villages and are vested with significant powers to manage the populations and land of the geographic area covered. The are the fourth-level administrative divisions of France.


title: Communes of France

text: A ' is the smallest and oldest administrative division in France. "Commune" in English has a historical association with socialist and collectivist political movements and philosophies. This association arises in part from the rising of the Paris Commune, 1871, which could have more felicitously been called, in English, "the rising of the City of Paris". There is nothing intrinsically different between "town" in English and ' in French.


title: Communes of France

text: The French word ' appeared in the 12th century, from Medieval Latin ', for a large gathering of people sharing a common life; from Latin ", 'things held in common'.


title: Communes of France

text: As of January 2021, there were 35,083 communes in France, of which 34,836 in metropolitan France, 129 in the overseas departments and 83 in the overseas collectivities and New Caledonia. This is a considerably higher total than that of any other European country, because French communes still largely reflect the division of France into villages or parishes at the time of the French Revolution.


title: Communes of France

text: The whole territory of the French Republic is divided into communes; even uninhabited mountains or rain forests are dependent on a commune for their administration. This is unlike some other countries, such as the United States, where unincorporated areas directly governed by a county or a higher authority can be found. There are only a few exceptions:


title: Communes of France

text: In metropolitan France, the average area of a commune in 2004 was . The median area of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was even smaller, at . The median area is a better measure of the area of a typical French commune.


title: Communes of France

text: In Italy, the median area of communes ("comuni") is ; in Belgium it is ; in Spain it is ; and in Germany, the majority of "Länder" have communes ("Gemeinden") with a median area above . Switzerland and the "Länder" of Rhineland-Palatinate, Schleswig-Holstein, and Thuringia in Germany were the only places in Europe where the communes had a smaller median area than in France.


title: Communes of France

text: The communes of France's overseas "départements" such as Réunion and French Guiana are large by French standards. They usually group into the same commune several villages or towns, often with sizeable distances among them. In Réunion, demographic expansion and sprawling urbanization have resulted in the administrative splitting of some "communes".


title: Communes of France

text: The median population of metropolitan France's communes at the 1999 census was 380 inhabitants. Again this is a very small number, and here France stands absolutely apart in Europe, with the lowest communes' median population of all the European countries (communes in Switzerland or Rhineland-Palatinate may cover a smaller area, as mentioned above, but they are more populated). This small median population of French communes can be compared with Italy, where the median population of communes in 2001 was 2,343 inhabitants, Belgium (11,265 inhabitants), or even Spain (564 inhabitants).


title: Communes of France

text: The median population given here should not hide the fact that there are pronounced differences in size between French communes. As mentioned in the introduction, a commune can be a city of 2 million inhabitants such as Paris, a town of 10,000 inhabitants, or just a hamlet of 10 inhabitants. What the median population tells us is that the vast majority of the French communes only have a few hundred inhabitants; but there are also a small number of communes within much higher populations.


title: Communes of France

text: In metropolitan France 57 percent of the 36,683 communes have fewer than 500 inhabitants and, with 4,638,000 inhabitants, these smaller communes constitute just 7.7 percent of the total population. In other words, just 8 percent of the French population live in 57 percent of its communes, whilst 92 percent are concentrated in the remaining 43 percent.


title: Communes of France

text: Alsace, with an area of , and now part of the Région Grand Est, used to be the smallest of the regions of metropolitan France, and still has no fewer than 904 communes. This high number is typical of metropolitan France but is atypical when compared with other European countries. It shows the distinctive nature of the French commune as a geo-political or administrative entity.


title: Communes of France

text: With its 904 communes, Alsace has three times as many municipalities as Sweden, which has a much larger territory covering and yet is divided into only 290 municipalities ("kommuner"). Alsace has more than double the total number of municipalities of the Netherlands which, in spite of having a population nine times larger and a land area four times larger than Alsace, is divided into just 390 municipalities ("gemeenten").


title: Communes of France

text: Most of the communes in Alsace, along with those in other regions of France, have rejected the central government's calls for mergers and rationalization. By way of contrast, in the German states bordering Alsace, the geo-political and administrative areas have been subject to various re-organizations from the 1960s onward. In the state of Baden-Württemberg, the number of "Gemeinden" or communities was reduced from 3,378 in 1968 to 1,108 in September 2007. In comparison, the number of communes in Alsace was only reduced from 945 in 1971 (just before the Marcellin law aimed at encouraging French communes to merge with each other was passed, see Current debate section below) to 904 in January 2007. Consequently, the Alsace region—despite having a land area only one-fifth the size and a total population only one-sixth of that of its neighbor Baden-Württemberg—has almost as many municipalities. The small Alsace region has more than double the number of municipalities compared to the large and populous state of North Rhine-Westphalia (396 "Gemeinden" in September 2007).


title: Communes of France

text: Despite enormous differences in population, each of the communes of the French Republic possess a mayor ("maire") and a municipal council ("conseil municipal"), which jointly manage the commune from the municipal hall ("mairie"), with exactly the same powers no matter the size of the commune. This uniformity of status is a legacy of the French Revolution, which wanted to do away with the local idiosyncrasies and tremendous differences of status that existed in the kingdom of France.


title: Communes of France

text: French law makes allowances for the vast differences in commune size in a number of areas of administrative law. The size of the municipal council, the method of electing the municipal council, the maximum allowable pay of the mayor and deputy mayors, and municipal campaign finance limits (among other features) all depend on the population echelon into which a particular commune falls.


title: Communes of France

text: Since the PLM Law of 1982, three French communes also have a special status in that they are further divided into municipal arrondissements: these are Paris, Marseille, and Lyon. The municipal arrondissement is the only administrative unit below the commune in the French Republic, but existing only in these three communes. These municipal arrondissements are not to be confused with the arrondissements that are subdivisions of French "départements": French communes are considered legal entities, whereas municipal arrondissements, by contrast, have no official capacity and no budget of their own.


title: Communes of France

text: The rights and obligations of communes are governed by the "Code général des collectivités territoriales (CGCT)" which replaced the "Code des communes" (except for personnel matters) with the passage of the law of 21 February 1996 for legislation and decree number 2000-318 of 7 April 2000 for regulations.


title: Communes of France

text: From 1794 to 1977 — except for a few months in 1848 and 1870-1871 — Paris had no mayor and was thus directly controlled by the departmental prefect. This meant that Paris had less autonomy than the smallest village. Even after Paris regained the right to elect its own mayor in 1977, the central government retained control of the Paris police. In all other French communes, the municipal police are under the mayor's supervision.


title: Communes of France

text: Before the revolution, France's lowest level of administrative division was the parish ("paroisse"), and there were up to 60,000 of them in the kingdom. A parish was essentially a church, the houses around it (known as the village), and the cultivated land around the village. France was the most populous country in Europe at this time, with a population of approximately 25 million inhabitants in the late 18th century (England in contrast had only 6 million inhabitants), which accounts for the large number of parishes. French kings often prided themselves on ruling over a "realm of 100,000 steeples".


title: Communes of France

text: Parishes lacked the municipal structures of post-Revolution communes. Usually, one contained only a building committee ("conseil de fabrique"), made up of villagers, which managed the buildings of the parish church, the churchyard, and the other numerous church estates and properties, and sometimes also provided help for the poor, or even administered parish hospitals or schools. Since the Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts of 1539 by Francis I, the priest in charge of the parish was also required to record baptisms, marriages, and burials. Except for these tasks, villages were left to handle other issues as they pleased. Typically, villagers would gather to decide over a special issue regarding the community, such as agricultural land usage, but there existed no permanent municipal body. In many places, the local feudal lord ("seigneur") still had a major influence in the village's affairs, collecting taxes from tenant-villagers and ordering them to work the corvée, controlling which fields were to be used and when, and how much of the harvest should be given to him.


title: Communes of France

text: Additionally some cities had obtained charters during the Middle Ages, either from the king himself or from local counts or dukes (such as the city of Toulouse chartered by the counts of Toulouse). These cities were made up of several parishes (up to 50 parishes in the case of Paris), and they were usually enclosed by a defensive wall. They had been emancipated from the power of feudal lords in the 12th and 13th centuries, had municipal bodies which administered the city, and bore some resemblance with the communes that the French Revolution would establish except for two key points:


title: Communes of France

text: In the north, cities tended to be administered by "échevins" (from an old Germanic word meaning judge), while in the south, cities tended to be administered by "consuls" (in a clear reference to Roman antiquity), but Bordeaux was administered by "jurats" (etymologically meaning "sworn men") and Toulouse by "capitouls" ("men of the chapter"). Usually, there was no mayor in the modern sense; all the "échevins" or "consuls" were on equal footing, and rendered decisions collegially. However, for certain purposes there was one "échevin" or "consul" ranking above the others, a sort of mayor, although not with the same authority and executive powers as a modern mayor. This "mayor" was called provost of the merchants ("prévôt des marchands") in Paris and Lyon; "maire" in Marseille, Bordeaux, Rouen, Orléans, Bayonne and many other cities and towns; "mayeur" in Lille; "premier capitoul" in Toulouse; "viguier" in Montpellier; "premier consul" in many towns of southern France; "prêteur royal" in Strasbourg; "maître échevin" in Metz; "maire royal" in Nancy; or "prévôt" in Valenciennes.


title: Communes of France

text: On 14 July 1789, at the end of the afternoon, following the storming of the Bastille, the provost of the merchants of Paris, Jacques de Flesselles was shot by the crowd on the steps of Paris City Hall. Although in the Middle Ages the provosts of the merchants symbolized the independence of Paris and even had openly rebelled against King Charles V, their office had been suppressed by the king, then reinstated but with strict control from the king, and so they had ended up being viewed by the people as yet another representative of the king, no longer the embodiment of a free municipality.


title: Communes of France

text: Following that event, a "commune" of Paris was immediately set up to replace the old medieval chartered city of Paris, and a municipal guard was established to protect Paris against any attempt made by King Louis XVI to quell the ongoing revolution. Several other cities of France quickly followed suit, and communes arose everywhere, each with their municipal guard. On 14 December 1789, the National Assembly ("Assemblée Nationale") passed a law creating the commune, designed to be the lowest level of administrative division in France, thus endorsing these independently created communes, but also creating communes of its own. In this area as in many others, the work of the National Assembly was, properly speaking, revolutionary: not content with transforming all the chartered cities and towns into communes, the National Assembly also decided to turn all the village parishes into full-status communes. The Revolutionaries were inspired by Cartesian ideas as well as by the philosophy of the Enlightenment. They wanted to do away with all the peculiarities of the past and establish a perfect society, in which all and everything should be equal and set up according to reason, rather than by tradition or conservatism.


title: Communes of France

text: Thus, they set out to establish administrative divisions that would be uniform across the country: the whole of France would be divided into "départements", themselves divided into arrondissements, themselves divided into cantons, themselves divided into communes, no exceptions. All of these communes would have equal status, they would all have a mayor at their head, and a municipal council elected by the inhabitants of the commune. This was a real revolution for the thousands of villages that never had experienced organized municipal life before. A communal house had to be built in each of these villages, which would house the meetings of the municipal council as well as the administration of the commune. Some in the National Assembly were opposed to such a fragmentation of France into thousands of communes, but eventually Mirabeau and his ideas of one commune for each parish prevailed.


title: Communes of France

text: On 20 September 1792, the recording of births, marriages, and deaths also was withdrawn as a responsibility of the priests of the parishes and handed to the mayors. Civil marriages were established and started to be performed in the "mairie" with a ceremony not unlike the traditional one, with the mayor replacing the priest, and the name of the law replacing the name of God (""Au nom de la loi, je vous déclare unis par les liens du mariage."" – "In the name of the law, I declare you united by the bonds of marriage."). Priests were forced to surrender their centuries-old baptism, marriage, and burial books, which were deposited in the "mairies". These abrupt changes profoundly alienated devout Catholics, and France soon was plunged into the throes of civil war, with the fervently religious regions of western France at its center. It would take Napoleon I to re-establish peace in France, stabilize the new administrative system, and make it generally accepted by the population. Napoleon also abolished the election of the municipal councils, which now were chosen by the prefect, the local representative of the central government.


title: Communes of France

text: Today, French communes are still very much the same in their general principles as those that were established at the beginning of the Revolution. The biggest changes occurred in 1831, when the French Parliament re-established the principle of the election of municipal councils, and in 1837 when French communes were given legal "personality," being now considered legal entities with legal capacity. The Jacobin revolutionaries were afraid of independent local powers, which they saw as conservative and opposed to the revolution, and so they favored a powerful central state. Therefore, when they created the communes, they deprived them of any legal "personality" (as they did with the "départements"), with only the central state having legal "personality." By 1837 that situation was judged impractical, as mayors and municipal councils could not be parties in courts. The consequence of the change, however, was that tens of thousands of villages which had never had legal "personality" (contrary to the chartered cities) suddenly became legal entities for the first time in their history. This is still the case today.


title: Communes of France

text: During the revolution, approximately 41,000 communes were created, on territory corresponding to the limits of modern-day France (the 41,000 figure includes the communes of the departments of Savoie, Haute-Savoie and Alpes-Maritimes which were annexed in 1795, but does not include the departments of modern-day Belgium and Germany west of the Rhine, which were part of France between 1795 and 1815). This was fewer than the 60,000 parishes that existed before the revolution (in cities and towns, parishes were merged into one single commune; in the countryside, some very small parishes were merged with bigger ones), but 41,000 was still a considerable number, without any comparison in the world at the time, except in the empire of China (but there, only county level and above had any permanent administration).


title: Communes of France

text: Since then, tremendous changes have affected France, as they have the rest of Europe: the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, and the rural exodus have all depopulated the countryside and increased the size of cities. French administrative divisions, however, have remained extremely rigid and unchanged. Today about 90 percent of communes and departments are exactly the same as those designed at the time of the French Revolution more than 200 years ago, with the same limits. Countless rural communes that had hundreds of inhabitants at the time of the French Revolution now have only a hundred inhabitants or fewer. On the other hand, cities and towns have grown so much that their urbanized area is now extending far beyond the limits of their commune which were set at the time of the revolution. The most extreme example of this is Paris, where the urbanized area sprawls over 396 communes.


title: Communes of France

text: Paris in fact was one of the very few communes of France whose limits were extended to take into account the expansion of the urbanized area. The new, larger, commune of Paris was set up under the oversight of Emperor Napoléon III in 1859, but after 1859 the limits of Paris rigidified. Unlike most other European countries, which stringently merged their communes to better reflect modern-day densities of population (such as Germany and Italy around 1970), dramatically decreasing the number of communes in the processthe "Gemeinden" of West Germany were decreased from 24,400 to 8,400 in the space of a few yearsFrance only carried out mergers at the margin, and those were mostly carried out during the 19th century. From 41,000 communes at the time of the French Revolution, the number decreased to 37,963 in 1921, to 36,569 in 2008 (in metropolitan France).


title: Communes of France

text: Thus, in Europe, only Switzerland has as high a density of communes as France, and even there an extensive merger movement has started in the last 10 years. To better grasp the staggering number of communes in France, two comparisons can be made: First, of the original 15 member states of the European Union there are approximately 75,000 communes; France alone, which comprises 16 percent of the population of the EU-15, had nearly half of its communes. Second, the United States, with a territory fourteen times larger than that of the French Republic, and nearly five times its population, had 35,937 incorporated municipalities and townships at the 2002 Census of Governments, fewer than that of the French Republic.


title: Communes of France

text: There have long been calls in France for a massive merger of communes, including by such distinguished voices as the president of the Cour des Comptes (the central auditing administrative body in France). In 1971 the Marcellin law offered support and money from the government to entice the communes to merge freely with each other, but the law had only a limited effect (only about 1,300 communes agreed to merge with others). Many rural communes with few residents struggle to maintain and manage basic services such as running water, garbage collection, or properly paved communal roads.


title: Communes of France

text: Mergers, however, are not easy to achieve. One problem is that mergers reduce the number of available elected positions, and thus are not popular with local politicians. Moreover, citizens from one village may be unwilling to have their local services run by an executive located in another village, whom they may consider unaware of or inattentive to their local needs.