title: GIGN

text: Candidates undertake a one-week pre-selection screening followed by, for those accepted, a fourteen-month training program. Mental ability and self-control are important, in addition to physical strength. Similar to most special forces, the training is stressful with a high rate of failure, especially in the initial phase; only 7–8% of the volunteers complete the training process. AGIGN candidates undertake a one-week pre-selection screening followed by an eight-week training program.


title: GIGN

text: The GIGN trains alongside other counterterrorist units from NATO countries, including the American FBI HRT, British SAS, Australian SPS, German GSG 9, and Irish Garda ERU.


title: GIGN

text: Although GIGN, as part of the French military, has been deployed to external combat zones, it is primarily centered in France, engaging in peacetime operations as a special police force. Respect for human life, combined with fire discipline, has always been taught to group members since its inception. Each new member is traditionally issued a six-shot revolver as a reminder of these values.


title: GIGN

text: On 9 December 2011, French Defense Minister Gérard Longuet, awarded the Cross for Military Valour to GIGN for its participation in operation Harmattan in Libya. On 31 July 2013, GIGN was awarded a second Cross for Military Valour for its participation in the War in Afghanistan.


title: GIGN

text: On 15 June 2015, the unit received the Medal for internal security. As GIGN was awarded the Cross for Military Valour twice, members of the group are officially allowed to wear the fourragère.


title: GIGN

text: GIGN has been featured in dozens of media works, including films, television shows, novels, video games, and strip cartoons, typically working alongside other international counterterrorist units. They have also been the focus of several works, including:


title: The Association

text: The Association is an American sunshine pop band from California. During the late 1960s, the band had numerous hits at or near the top of the "Billboard" charts (including "Windy", "Cherish", "Never My Love" and "Along Comes Mary") and were the lead-off band at 1967's Monterey Pop Festival. They are known for intricate vocal harmonies by the band's multiple singers.


title: The Association

text: Their most well known lineup included; Terry Kirkman (vocals, woodwind instruments), Russ Giguere (vocals, guitar), Jim Yester (rhythm and lead guitar), Jules Alexander (lead and rhythm guitar), Brian Cole (bass) and Ted Bluechel Jr (drums) (and later Larry Ramos, who replaced Jules in early 1967.)


title: The Association

text: Jules Alexander (born September 25, 1943, Chattanooga, Tennessee) was in Hawaii in 1962 serving a stint in the Navy when he met Terry Kirkman (born December 12, 1939, Salina, Kansas), a visiting salesman. Kirkman grew up in Chino, California, and attended Chaffey College as a music major. The two young musicians jammed together and promised to get together once Alexander was discharged. That happened a year later; the two eventually moved to Los Angeles and began exploring the city's music scene in the mid-1960s, often working behind the scenes as directors and arrangers for other music acts. At the same time, Kirkman played in groups with Frank Zappa for a short period before Zappa went on to form the Mothers of Invention.


title: The Association

text: Eventually, at a Monday night hootenanny at the Los Angeles nightclub, The Troubadour in 1964, an ad hoc group called The Inner Tubes was formed by Kirkman, Alexander and Doug Dillard, whose rotating membership contained, at one time or another, Cass Elliot, David Crosby and many others who drifted in and out. This led, in the fall of 1964, to the forming of The Men, a 13-piece Folk rock band. This group had a brief spell as the house band at The Troubadour.


title: The Association

text: After a short time, however, The Men disbanded, with six of the members electing to go out on their own in February 1965. At the suggestion of Kirkman's then-fiancée, Judy, they took the name "The Association". The original lineup consisted of Alexander (using his middle name, Gary, on the first two albums) on vocals and lead guitar; Kirkman on vocals and a variety of wind, brass and percussion instruments; Brian Cole (September 8, 1942 – August 2, 1972, born Tacoma, Washington, died Los Angeles, California) on vocals, bass and woodwinds; Russ Giguere (born October 18, 1943, Portsmouth, New Hampshire), on vocals, percussion and guitar; Ted Bluechel, Jr. (born December 2, 1942, San Pedro, California), from The Cherry Hill Singers, on drums, guitar, bass and vocals; and Brian Cole's friend and bandmate from the group Gnu Fokes, Bob Page (born May 13, 1943), on guitar, banjo and vocals. However, Page was replaced by Jim Yester (born November 24, 1939, Birmingham, Alabama) on vocals, guitar and keyboards before any of the group's public performances.


title: The Association

text: The new band spent about five months rehearsing before they began performing around the Los Angeles area, most notably a regular stint at The Ice House in Pasadena (where Giguere had worked as lighting director) and its sister club in Glendale. They also auditioned for record labels but faced resistance. Eventually, the small Jubilee label issued a single of "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" (a song originally recorded by Joan Baez, later popularized by Led Zeppelin), but nothing happened. Finally, Valiant Records offered them a contract, with the first result being a version of Bob Dylan's "One Too Many Mornings", which was produced by Valiant's owner, Barry De Vorzon, at Gold Star Studios.


title: The Association

text: The Men were first managed by Doug Weston, owner of the Troubador, before switching to actor Dean Fredericks, who remained on board when The Association was formed and helped get them the Valiant deal. In 1966 Fredericks turned the reins over to Pat Colecchio, who managed the group for the next eight years, then on and off during the two years after that. But the change in management turned out to be less than amicable as Fredericks later sued the band for breach of contract and was subsequently awarded a settlement.


title: The Association

text: Their national break came with the song "Along Comes Mary", written by Tandyn Almer. Alexander first heard the song when he was hired to play on a demo version and persuaded Almer to give The Association first dibs on it, with Jim Yester on lead vocals. The song proved controversial since "Mary" was street slang for marijuana, but it went to No. 7 on the "Billboard" charts and led to the group's first album, "And Then... Along Comes the Association" (July 1966), produced by Curt Boettcher and begun in Gary S. Paxton's garage, with vocals done separately at Columbia. Another song from the album, "Cherish", written by Kirkman, became The Association's first No. 1 hit in September 1966 and one of a handful of the Sixties' most popular "slow dance" ballads.


title: The Association

text: The group followed with their second album, "Renaissance", released in November 1966. The band changed producers, dropping Boettcher in favor of Jerry Yester (brother of Jim and formerly of the Modern Folk Quartet and later, a member of the Lovin' Spoonful). The album did not spawn any major hits (the highest-charting single, "Pandora's Golden Heebie Jeebies" stalled at No. 35), and the album only reached No. 34, compared with the No. 5 showing for "And Then... Along Comes the Association".


title: The Association

text: In late 1966, Warner Bros. Records, which had been distributing Valiant, bought the smaller label and with it, The Association's contract.


title: The Association

text: In April 1967, Alexander left the band to study meditation in India and was replaced by Larry Ramos (born Hilario Ramos on April 19, 1942, Waimea, Hawaii; died April 30, 2014, Clarkston, Washington) on vocals and guitar. Ramos joined the band while Alexander was still performing with them after bassist Cole's hand was injured by a firecracker; Alexander subbed on bass while Ramos played lead guitar. Ramos had previously performed with the New Christy Minstrels and had even recorded solo singles for Columbia Records. He went on to sing co-lead (along with Giguere and Kirkman) on two of The Association's biggest hit singles, "Windy" and "Never My Love".


title: The Association

text: With the lineup settled, the group returned to the studio, this time with Bones Howe in the producer's chair. The first fruits of this pairing were the single "Windy", written by Ruthann Friedman, topping the "Billboard" Hot 100 on July 1, 1967 and staying there for four consecutive weeks, preceded by the album "Insight Out", which reached No. 8 in June.


title: The Association

text: On June 16, 1967, The Association was the first act to perform at the Monterey Pop Festival. (The Criterion Collection DVD of the festival includes their performance of "Along Comes Mary" on disc 3.)


title: The Association

text: The group's success continued with its next single, "Never My Love", written by Dick and Don Addrisi; it went to No. 2 in "Billboard" and No. 1 in "Cash Box" in October 1967. It became the group's only double-sided charted record, as its B-side, "Requiem For The Masses", made a brief showing on the "Billboard" chart. Like "Cherish" and "One Too Many Mornings", "Never My Love"'s vocal arrangement was provided by Clark Burroughs, former member of the Hi-Lo's. "Never My Love" has since been certified the second-most-frequently-played song in America during the 20th century.


title: The Association

text: In 1968, after turning down a cantata composed by Jimmy Webb that included the now-classic "MacArthur Park", the group produced its fourth album, "Birthday" (March 1968), with Bones Howe again at the controls. This album spawned "Everything That Touches You", the group's last Hot 100 Top 10 hit, and "Time for Livin'", the group's final Hot 100 Top 40 hit.


title: The Association

text: Later that year, the group released a self-produced single, the harder-edged "Six Man Band". This song also appeared on "Greatest Hits", released in November 1968.


title: The Association

text: At the close of 1968, Alexander, who had returned from India and had done a stint with another band called Joshua Fox, returned to the group, which now made The Association a seven-man band. ("Six-Man Band" became "Seven-".)


title: The Association

text: The larger band's first project was to contribute to the soundtrack for "Goodbye, Columbus" (1969), the film version of Philip Roth's best-selling novel. The title track, written by Yester, peaked at No. 80. John Boylan, one third of the little-known group Hamilton Streetcar, worked with the group on the soundtrack and stayed on board for its next album, "The Association" (August 1969). Many of the tracks on this album have a country-rock sound but none of the singles released made any impact, so the group re-teamed with Curt Boettcher in late 1969 for a one-off single, "Just About the Same" (released in February 1970), a reworking of a song Boettcher had recorded with his group, The Millennium. This too failed to catch on.


title: The Association

text: Despite all this, the band remained a popular concert draw, and on April 3, 1970 a Salt Lake City performance was recorded for "The Association Live".


title: The Association

text: In June 1970, Giguere left the band; he released a solo album, "Hexagram 16", the following year. The Association replaced him with keyboardist Richard Thompson (not to be confused with the English singer-songwriter/guitarist), who had contributed to previous albums and began playing live with the group for some July 4 & 5 appearances in Atlantic City. Thompson had previously been known primarily in jazz circles.


title: The Association

text: The album "Stop Your Motor" was released in July 1971. It was the group's least popular up to that date, reaching only No. 158 on the "Billboard" chart. "Stop Your Motor" marked the end of the Association's tenure at Warner Brothers.


title: The Association

text: In early 1972, they resurfaced on Columbia with "Waterbeds in Trinidad!" (April 1972), produced by Lewis Merenstein (best known for producing Van Morrison's "Astral Weeks"). The album fared even less well than "Stop Your Motor", reaching No. 194, while a single of the Lovin' Spoonful's "Darlin' Be Home Soon" failed to break the Hot 100.


title: The Association

text: For their 1972 tour, the group expanded, bringing in first session bass player Wolfgang Melz, and then Mike Berkowitz on drums, to add more musical versatility on stage and free up Brian Cole and Ted Bluechel to concentrate on singing. But on August 2, 1972, 29-year-old Cole was found dead in his Los Angeles home of a heroin overdose.


title: The Association

text: For the rest of the 1970s, The Association was in a state of flux, releasing singles intermittently along with sporadic touring.


title: The Association

text: In September 1972, Kirkman departed, as did Melz and Berkowitz later on that fall. The group was then moved over to the CBS distributed Mums label and put out a new single, Albert Hammond's "Names, Tags, Numbers & Labels", in February 1973. It failed to make much of an impression, though, and the label's funding for a hoped for album by the group never materialized. Mums folded by the end of 1974.


title: The Association

text: In late 1972, the remaining quintet of Alexander, Bluechel, Yester, Ramos and Thompson brought in new members Maurice Miller (vocals, drums, percussion, formerly of Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band) and David Vaught (vocals, bass, fresh from a stint in the band Rosebud and later a member of the Lopez Beatles, who later played in the first lineup of Roger McGuinn's Thunderbyrd in 1976 and who died on March 20, 2013 from pancreatic cancer) and continued touring.


title: The Association

text: Jim Yester left in the late summer of 1973 and was briefly replaced by his brother Jerry (who, like Vaught, had just played in Rosebud). Jim Yester returned a short time later when Alexander left in late 1973, eventually to join Giguere and former Honey Ltd. female vocalists Alex Sliwin, Joan Sliwin and Marsha Temmer in a new outfit, Bijou. Jerry Yester stayed with The Association until the end of 1974 and pianist Thompson also left at that time. Dwayne Smith (vocals, keyboards) was then brought in.


title: The Association

text: In 1975, the band signed with RCA Records where they released two singles, "One Sunday Morning" (produced in Canada by Jack Richardson) and "Sleepy Eyes". An album called "The Association Bites Back" was to follow but was never released.


title: The Association

text: During this period, the band was offered a production deal with Mike Curb, who wanted them to record a disco version of the prior hits, "Cherish", "No Fair At All" and an original song which Larry Brown wrote and sang entitled "It's High Time To Get High". The deal did not go through.


title: The Association

text: Membership was fluid in 1975–1976. Smith had joined in December 1974 and appeared on "One Sunday Morning" but was replaced by Andy Chapin by the end of 1975. Ramos departed as well in mid-1975 and was replaced by Art Johnson, then the aforementioned Larry Brown (vocals, guitar). The increased tour schedule led to Chapin's departure in 1976 (he later played for artist Ricky Nelson and perished along with Nelson and his band when his plane crashed on December 31, 1985). Chapin was replaced, first by Jay Gruska, who then left for a stint with Three Dog Night, and then by David Morgan (who later joined Three Dog Night himself) in mid-1976.


title: The Association

text: In 1977, Bluechel, Jim Yester, and the current lineup recorded new versions of "Windy", "Cherish", "Never My Love", "Along Comes Mary" and "Everything That Touches You" with session players for K-tel Records that later ended up on a 1983 album collection, "Back to Back", where one half of the record was The Association songs and the other half tunes by the Turtles.


title: The Association

text: During the spring of 1977, Brown left to concentrate on session work and keyboardist Ric Ulsky joined, leaving Jim Yester as sole guitarist in the lineup. But by the summer of that same year, with the prime gigs proving to be fewer and far between, Yester left, leaving Bluechel as the only original member. Yester was replaced by lead guitarist Cliff Woolley and the group had two keyboardists for a short time in 1977–78, Ulsky and David Morgan, before Morgan was succeeded by guitarist/singer John William Tuttle (son of makeup artist William Tuttle; John died on August 17, 1991, at age 41 of a perforated ulcer in Van Nuys, California). Russ Levine (who had played with Bobby Womack, Donna Summer and Ultimate Spinach) also arrived in 1978 to take over drums from Maurice Miller (who went on to play with Lena Horne but died of complications from diabetes October 10, 2005 in Burbank, California at age 73) on drums. And a short time after that, guitarist Jack Harris came in for Woolley. Jerry Yester also returned for several gigs with the group in the fall of 1978.


title: The Association

text: The band dissolved shortly afterward, leaving Bluechel with a huge debt. To help clear away some of it, in November 1978, he leased the group's name to a company that put a fake "Association" out on the road.


title: The Association

text: In September 1979, the surviving key members Kirkman, Alexander, Giguere, Bluechel, Yester and Ramos combined with Richard Thompson and seasoned studio pro and arranger Ray Pohlman to reunite the Association at the Ambassador Hotel's Coconut Grove nightclub in Los Angeles for an HBO special called "Then and Now" (Kirkman was working for HBO at the time). That same year the reunited group also appeared at a charity show hosted in Dallas by Ed McMahon called "Ed McMahon and Company" that ran on the Showtime cable network in August 1980.


title: The Association

text: This led, in the early 1980s, to the band recording some self-financed demos and then a short-lived deal with Elektra Records resulting in a few singles (one of which, "Dreamer", reunited them with producer Bones Howe and made the Hot 100 with virtually no promotion) and more touring. Their former manager, Pat Colecchio, also came back into the group's life during this time.


title: The Association

text: In 1980, the surviving originals (with Ulsky returning in place of Thompson, Levine back on drums and Alexander taking over the bass) went back on the road for a concert tour, putting the short-lived bogus band out of business.


title: The Association

text: During 1980, drummer Levine departed again and Bluechel, who had been concentrating on singing only, stepped back behind the drums again.


title: The Association

text: Jim Yester left again in June 1983 and the group added Keith Moret (bass, backing vocals) as Alexander went back to playing guitar. Moret stayed only briefly until Joe LaManno (who had once done a brief fill-in stint with the group back in late 1972) joined during July 1984.


title: The Association

text: That same year, the group was invited to appear on the "Happy Together Again" tour, a multi-bill of 1960s acts produced by David Fishof (who had taken over the band's management from Pat Colecchio in 1981; Colecchio died of colon cancer on June 3, 2008), headlined by the Turtles, and also including Gary Puckett and Spanky McFarlane of Spanky & Our Gang. Gary's brother, Brian Puckett, played drums in the show for Gary and McFarlane and likewise joined The Association for their set as well. During the latter part of the tour, Mike Peed joined on keyboards in place of Ulsky but left himself in November 1984, turning it over to Donni Gougeon (from Joshua Perahia's band ). But by the end of the year, there was a mass exodus as Kirkman (who had already turned in his notice in September), Bluechel, LaManno and Brian Puckett all departed.


title: The Association

text: In February 1985, the band carried on as Alexander, Giguere, Ramos and Gougeon recruited new members: Paul Beach (vocals, bass, who had also played in the "Happy Together Again" show band) and Bruce Pictor (vocals, drums, percussion, who had played alongside Beach in Puckett's group in the early 1980s). Gougeon was replaced in early 1987 by Chris Urmston but was himself succeeded by Paul Holland later the same year. In 1989, when Beach quit, Holland switched over to bass as Gougeon then rejoined for a ten-year stint from 1989 to 1999 before illness in his family called him away. He was replaced by Jordan Cole, son of the band's original bassist, Brian Cole; Jordan first played with the band on a Caribbean Christmas cruise in December 1998, when he was asked to fill in for Holland on bass.


title: The Association

text: Besides the "Happy Together" tour, the group became mainstays on many other 1960s package tours, including the 1988 "Super 60s Tour" with Gary Puckett, the Grass Roots, and the Turtles; and Dick Clark's American Bandstand Tour in 1989, alongside The Spinners, The Guess Who and The Drifters, sponsored by VH1.


title: The Association

text: Alexander turned in his notice in early 1989. Larry Ramos's brother Del, who had started audio mixing for the group in the 1970s, and then again in the early 1980s, and had begun adding his voice to the mix from the sound board from 1985 on, also assumed bass duties in 1999 after Holland left to tend to his light and sound company. Bob Werner (vocals, guitar, bass), who had been the band's light man and road manager in 1974–75 and fill-in member as needed from 1989 on, was also a member of the group from 1999 to 2008.


title: The Association

text: During the 1980s and 1990s, the group's recorded output was minimal. They recorded a few new tracks and some covers of popular 1960s songs for a few compilation albums on the Hitbound label made through RadioShack's Tandy Corporation in the mid-1980s, including their first cover of "Walk Away Renée" that was recorded in collaboration with their original producer, Curt Boettcher, for the Mike Love and Dean Torrence 1983 cassette tape "Rock 'n' Roll City", two Christmas covers contributed to another Radio Shack album, "Scrooge's Rock 'n' Roll Christmas" (that was also a 1984 TV special), and an album of 1960s tunes called "New Memories" (1983). They also re-recorded some of their older material and even more cover songs for another album, "Vintage", for CBS in 1983 and put out yet another album full of covers, "The Association 95: A Little Bit More", in 1995 from On Track Records (based in New York City), produced by John Allen Orofino and Stan Vincent. "A Little Bit More"'s featured single was their second remake of The Left Banke's "Walk Away Renée".


title: The Association

text: Over the years, the group were sometimes visited by former members: Bluechel and Alexander sat in on a few of their 2001 shows, while Paul Holland guested on their DVD, "Pop Legends Live!", which came out in 2005. And in September 2003, they were inducted into the Vocal Group Hall of Fame, joined by Yester, Alexander, Kirkman and Bluechel at the induction ceremony at Cafaro Field in Niles, Ohio. Yester, Alexander, Kirkman and Bluechel again rejoined the others for the taping of a PBS 1960s rock music special "60s Experience" on December 9, 2004 at Dover Downs Showroom in Dover, Delaware.


title: The Association

text: In 2007 David Jackson (bass, guitar, formerly of Hearts & Flowers and Dillard & Clark) came into the group for a brief stint when Del Ramos was ill, then Jim Yester returned to sub for Werner. After which, Werner and Yester alternated in the group until late 2008 when Werner left altogether.


title: The Association

text: Also in 2007, they joined Barry Manilow on a remake combining their two biggest hits, "Cherish" and "Windy", that was released on his "Greatest Hits of The '60s" album.


title: The Association

text: In 2008, drummer Pictor underwent back surgery. Blair Anderson (Yester's friend from the New Four Preps) sat in for Pictor until he was able to rejoin his bandmates that November.


title: The Association

text: By 2010, the band included Giguere, Ramos, Jim Yester, Del Ramos, Pictor and Jordan Cole. The Association continued to tour, mostly on bills with similar styled acts of the late 1960s, like the Grass Roots, the Buckinghams, Tommy James and Gary Puckett.


title: The Association

text: During the summer of 2011, The Association carried a heavy touring schedule throughout the U.S. as part of the "Happy Together: 2011" tour, along with the Grass Roots, Mark Lindsay, the Buckinghams and the Turtles featuring Flo & Eddie. The "Happy Together" appearances featured only Giguere, Ramos and Yester, who were backed up by the "Happy Together" show band.


title: The Association

text: In late 2011, Ramos was sidelined due to illness, so guitarist Godfrey Townsend (from the "Happy Together" and "Hippiefest" back-up bands) subbed for him. In January 2012, Alexander came back to the band as Ramos's stand-in and stayed after Ramos returned in March.


title: The Association

text: In 2013, Alexander, Giguere, Ramos and Yester became part of the "Where the Action Is" tour that included Mary Wilson of the Supremes, Paul Revere and the Raiders and Mitch Ryder.


title: The Association

text: "Shindig Magazine" named the Now Sounds reissue of the album "The Association" the best reissue of 2013.


title: The Association

text: In January 2014, it was announced that both Giguere and Ramos would be retiring from touring. Giguere was to move behind the scenes to the group's management, while Ramos's final performance with the group was a cancer benefit concert on February 24, 2014 at the Blue Fox Theater in Grangeville, Idaho. Upon returning from spending his 72nd birthday in his homeland of Hawaii, Ramos died from melanoma on April 30, 2014. After Ramos' death, former member Paul Holland was brought back into the group, this time as a guitarist/vocalist.


title: The Association

text: The Association was inducted into the Pop Music Hall of Fame's 2016 class in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.


title: The Association

text: In May 2016, Texas guitarist Paul Wilson filled in for Paul Holland at an Association performance in Monroe, Wisconsin. Wilson also subbed for Holland on two occasions in 2018: two shows during the "Flower Power Cruise" in late February (The Association performed with several other acts from the late 60s and early 70s on a week long Star Vista cruise through the Caribbean), and then again in May for one show at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. Then in October 2018, Jim Yester was unable to perform two concerts. For the appearances in Red Rock, Oklahoma and Bangor, Maine, the lineup consisted of: Alexander, Del Ramos, Cole, Pictor, Holland and Wilson. Concerts resumed in 2019 with the regular lineup.


title: The Association

text: In 2018, the first (unofficial) biography of the band — "The Association Cherish" — written by British author Malcolm C. Searles, was published via Dojotone Publications in the UK detailing the groups extensive 50-year career.


title: The Association

text: The Association were recipients of the Rock Justice Awards on January 18, 2019, at Village Studios in Los Angeles. All five surviving founding members - Kirkman, Alexander, Yester, Giguere and Bluechel - showed up to receive their awards. Ramos and founding member Cole also received awards. The current touring lineup - Alexander, Yester, Ramos's brother Del, Cole's son Jordan, Bruce Pictor, and Paul Holland performed a concert for fans.


title: The Association

text: Three songs by The Association have sold over one million copies and have been certified platinum discs: "Cherish", "Windy", and "Never My Love".


title: Passiflora

text: Passiflora, known also as the passion flowers or passion vines, is a genus of about 550 species of flowering plants, the type genus of the family Passifloraceae.


title: Passiflora

text: They are mostly tendril-bearing vines, with some being shrubs or trees. They can be woody or herbaceous. Passion flowers produce regular and usually showy flowers with a distinctive corona. There can be as many as eight coronal series, as in the case of "P. xiikzodz". The flower is pentamerous and ripens into an indehiscent fruit with numerous seeds.


title: Passiflora

text: "Passiflora" has a largely neotropic distribution, unlike other genera in the family Passifloraceae, which includes more Old World species (such as the genus "Adenia"). The vast majority of "Passiflora" are found in Mexico, Central America, the United States and South America, although there are additional representatives in Southeast Asia and Oceania. New species continue to be identified: for example, "P. xishuangbannaensis" and "P. pardifolia" have only been known to the scientific community since 2005 and 2006, respectively.


title: Passiflora

text: Some species of "Passiflora" have been naturalized beyond their native ranges. For example, the blue passion flower ("P. caerulea") now grows wild in Spain. The purple passionfruit ("P. edulis") and its yellow relative "flavicarpa" have been introduced in many tropical regions as commercial crops.


title: Passiflora

text: Passion flowers have floral structures adapted for biotic pollination. Pollinators of "Passiflora" include bumblebees, carpenter bees (e.g., "Xylocopa sonorina"), wasps, bats, and hummingbirds (especially hermits such as "Phaethornis"); some others are additionally capable of self-pollination. "Passiflora" often exhibit high levels of pollinator specificity, which has led to frequent coevolution across the genus. The sword-billed hummingbird ("Ensifera ensifera") is a notable example: it, with its immensely elongated bill, is the sole pollinator of 37 species of high Andean "Passiflora" in the supersection "Tacsonia".


title: Passiflora

text: The leaves are used for feeding by the larvae of a number of species of Lepidoptera. Famously, they are exclusively targeted by many butterfly species of the tribe Heliconiini. The many defensive adaptations visible on "Passiflora" include diverse leaf shapes (which help disguise their identity), colored nubs (which mimic butterfly eggs and can deter Heliconians from ovipositing on a seemingly crowded leaf), extrafloral nectaries, trichomes, variegation, and chemical defenses. These, combined with adaptations on the part of the butterflies, were important in the foundation of coevolutionary theory.


title: Passiflora

text: The generally high pollinator and parasite specificity in "Passiflora" may have led to the tremendous morphological variation in the genus. It is thought to have among the highest foliar diversity among all plant genera, with leaf shapes ranging from unlobed to five-lobed frequently found on the same plant. Coevolution can be a major driver of speciation, and may be responsible for the radiation of certain clades of "Passiflora" such as "Tacsonia".


title: Passiflora

text: The bracts of the stinking passion flower are covered by hairs which exude a sticky fluid. Many small insects get stuck to this and get digested to nutrient-rich goo by proteases and acid phosphatases. Since the insects usually killed are rarely major pests, this passion flower seems to be a protocarnivorous plant.


title: Passiflora

text: Banana passion flower or "banana poka" ("P. tarminiana"), originally from Central Brazil, is an invasive weed, especially on the islands of Hawaii. It is commonly spread by feral pigs eating the fruits. It overgrows and smothers stands of endemic vegetation, mainly on roadsides. Blue passion flower ("P. caerulea") is holding its own in Spain these days, and it probably needs to be watched so that unwanted spreading can be curtailed.


title: Passiflora

text: On the other hand, some species are endangered due to unsustainable logging and other forms of habitat destruction. For example, the Chilean passion flower ("P. pinnatistipula") is a rare vine growing in the Tropical Andes southwards from Venezuela between altitude, and in Coastal Central Chile, where it only occurs in a few tens of square kilometres of fog forest by the sea, near Zapallar. "P. pinnatistipula" has a round fruit, unusual in "Tacsonia" group species like banana passion flower and "P. mixta", with their elongated tubes and brightly red to rose-colored petals.


title: Passiflora

text: Notable and sometimes economically significant pathogens of "Passiflora" are several sac fungi of the genus "Septoria" (including "S. passiflorae"), the undescribed proteobacterium called "Pseudomonas tomato" (pv. "passiflorae"), the "Potyvirus" "passionfruit woodiness virus", and the "Carlavirus" "Passiflora latent virus".


title: Passiflora

text: A number of species of "Passiflora" are cultivated outside their natural range for both their flowers and fruit. Hundreds of hybrids have been named; hybridizing is currently being done extensively for flowers, foliage and fruit. The following hybrids and cultivars have gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit:


title: Passiflora

text: During the Victorian era the flower (which in all but a few species lasts only one day) was very popular, and many hybrids were created using the winged-stem passion flower ("P. alata"), the blue passion flower ("P. caerulea") and other tropical species.


title: Passiflora

text: Many cool-growing "Passiflora" from the Andes Mountains can be grown successfully for their beautiful flowers and fruit in cooler Mediterranean climates, such as the Monterey Bay and San Francisco in California and along the western coast of the U.S. into Canada. One blue passion flower or hybrid even grew to large size at Malmö Central Station in Sweden.


title: Passiflora

text: Passion flowers have been a subject of studies investigating extranuclear inheritance; paternal inheritance of chloroplast DNA has been documented in this genus. The plastome of the two-flowered passion flower ("P. biflora") has been sequenced.


title: Passiflora

text: Most species have round or elongated edible fruit from long and across, depending upon the species or cultivar.


title: Passiflora

text: A native source of beta-Carbolines (e.g., passion flower in North America) is mixed with "Desmanthus illinoensis" (Illinois bundleflower) root bark to produce a hallucinogenic drink called prairiehuasca, which is an analog of the shamanic brew ayahuasca.


title: Passiflora

text: "P. incarnata" (maypop) leaves and roots have a long history of use as a traditional medicine by Native Americans in North America and were adapted by European colonists. The fresh or dried leaves of maypop are used to make a tea that is used as a sedative. Passionflower as dried powder or an extract is used as a dietary supplement. There is insufficient clinical evidence for using passionflower to treat any medical condition.


title: Passiflora

text: Passionflower is classified as generally recognized as safe (GRAS) for use as a food ingredient in the United States.


title: Passiflora

text: Passion flower is not recommended during pregnancy because it may induce contractions. Consuming passion flower products may cause drowsiness, nausea, dizziness, abnormal heart rhythms, asthma, or rhinitis.


title: Passiflora

text: Many species of "Passiflora" have been found to contain beta-carboline harmala alkaloids, some of which are MAO inhibitors. The flower and fruit have only traces of these chemicals, but the leaves and the roots often contain more. The most common of these alkaloids is harman, but harmaline, harmalol, harmine, and harmol are also present. The species known to bear such alkaloids include: "P. actinia", "P. alata" (winged-stem passion flower), "P. alba", "P. bryonioides" (cupped passion flower), "P. caerulea" (blue passion flower), "P. capsularis", "P. decaisneana", "P. edulis" (passion fruit), "P. eichleriana", "P. foetida" (stinking passion flower), "P. incarnata" (maypop), "P. quadrangularis" (giant granadilla), "P. suberosa", "P. subpeltata" and "P. warmingii".


title: Passiflora

text: Other compounds found in passion flowers are coumarins (e.g. scopoletin and umbelliferone), maltol, phytosterols (e.g. lutenin) and cyanogenic glycosides (e.g. gynocardin) which render some species, i.e. "P. adenopoda", somewhat poisonous. Many flavonoids and their glycosides have been found in "Passiflora", including apigenin, benzoflavone, homoorientin, 7-isoorientin, isoshaftoside, isovitexin (or saponaretin), kaempferol, lucenin, luteolin, n-orientin, passiflorine (named after the genus), quercetin, rutin, saponarin, shaftoside, vicenin and vitexin. Maypop, blue passion flower ("P. caerulea"), and perhaps others contain the flavone chrysin. Also documented to occur at least in some "Passiflora" in quantity are the hydrocarbon nonacosane and the anthocyanidin pelargonidin-3-diglycoside.


title: Passiflora

text: The genus is rich in organic acids including formic, butyric, linoleic, linolenic, malic, myristic, oleic and palmitic acids as well as phenolic compounds, and the amino acid α-alanine. Esters like ethyl butyrate, ethyl caproate, "n"-hexyl butyrate and "n"-hexyl caproate give the fruits their flavor and appetizing smell. Sugars, contained mainly in the fruit, are most significantly d-fructose, d-glucose and raffinose. Among enzymes, "Passiflora" was found to be rich in catalase, pectin methylesterase and phenolase.


title: Passiflora

text: The "passion" in "passion flower" refers to the passion of Jesus in Christian theology; the word "passion" comes from the Latin , meaning 'suffering'. In the 15th and 16th centuries, Spanish Christian missionaries adopted the unique physical structures of this plant, particularly the numbers of its various flower parts, as symbols of the last days of Jesus and especially his crucifixion:


title: Passiflora

text: The flower has been given names related to this symbolism throughout Europe since the 15th century. In Spain, it is known as ('thorn of Christ'). Older Germanic names include ('Christ's crown'), ('Christ's bouquet'), ('crown of thorns'), ('Jesus' passion'), ('passion') or ('Mother of God's star').


title: Passiflora

text: Outside the Roman Catholic heartland, the regularly shaped flowers have reminded people of the face of a clock. In Israel they are known as "clock-flower" () and in Greece as "clock plant" (); in Japan too, they are known as . In Hawaiian, they are called ; is a string used for tying fabric together, such as a shoelace, and means 'to spring forth leave'.


title: Passiflora

text: In India, blue passionflowers are called () in Karnataka and Maharashtra, while in Uttar Pradesh and generally north it is colloquially called (referring to the five Pandavas in the Hindu epic, the ). The five anthers are interpreted as the five Pandavas, the divine Krishna is at the centre, and the radial filaments are opposing hundred. The colour blue is moreover associated with Krishna as the colour of his aura.


title: Passiflora

text: In northern Peru and Bolivia, the banana passionfruits are known as . This is one possible source of the name of the Tumbes region of Peru.


title: Passiflora

text: "Passiflora" is the most species rich genus of both the family Passifloraceae and the tribe Passifloreae. With over 550 species, an extensive hierarchy of infrageneric ranks is required to represent the relationships of the species. The infrageneric classification of "Passiflora" not only uses the widely used ranks of subgenus, section and series, but also the rank of supersection.


title: Passiflora

text: The New World species of "Passiflora" were first divided among 22 subgenera by Killip (1938) in the first monograph of the genus. More recent work has reduced these to 4, which are commonly accepted today (in order from most basally to most recently branching):


title: Passiflora

text: Some studies have shown that the segregate Old World genera "Hollrungia" and "Tetrapathaea" are nested within "Passiflora", and form a fifth subgenus ("Tetrapathaea"). Other studies support the current four subgenus classification.


title: Passiflora

text: Relationships below the subgenus level are not known with certainty and are an active area of research. The Old World species form two clades – supersection "Disemma" (part of subgenus "Decaloba") and subgenus "Tetrapathaea". The former is composed of 21 species divided into sections "Disemma" (three Australian species), "Holrungiella" (one New Guinean species) and "Octandranthus" (seventeen south and east Asian species).


title: Passiflora

text: The remaining (New World) species of subgenus "Decaloba" are divided into seven supersections. Supersection "Pterosperma" includes four species from Central America and southern Mexico. Supersection "Hahniopathanthus" includes five species from Central America, Mexico and northernmost South America. Supersection "Cicea" includes nineteen species, with apetalous flowers. Supersection "Bryonioides" includes twenty-one species, with a distribution centered on Mexico. Supersection "Auriculata" includes eight species from South America, one of which is also found in Central America. Supersection "Multiflora" includes nineteen species. Supersection "Decaloba" includes 123 species.


title: Gears 5

text: Gears 5 is a 2019 third-person shooter video game developed by The Coalition and published by Xbox Game Studios for Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X/S. It is the fifth main installment of the "Gears of War" series and the sequel to "Gears of War 4". "Gears 5" follows the story of Kait Diaz, who is on a journey to find out the origin of the Locust Horde, the main antagonistic faction of the "Gears of War" series.


title: Gears 5

text: The "Ultimate Edition" for "Gears 5" was released on September 6, 2019, while the standard edition of the game was released worldwide on September 10, 2019. "Gears 5" received generally favorable reviews from critics who praised the gameplay, campaign, presentation and amount of content, but criticised the story and overall lack of innovation.


title: Gears 5

text: Similar to its predecessor, the game is a third-person shooter. The player has three weapon slots, which allow them to equip one light weapon and two heavier weapons. The player also has access to explosives such as grenades, and they can use melee weapons such as the Lancer Assault Rifle, a mid-range assault rifle with a fully operational chainsaw for a bayonet. The player can also use the environment to their advantage. In addition to several linear scenarios, the game also features several hub worlds, which can be explored freely on foot or using a vehicle named the Skiff. In the game, the player can complete various side quests, and as the player explores the game's world, they would discover collectibles and essential components needed to upgrade Jack, a robot which accompanies Kait throughout the game. Through upgrading Jack, new skills, such as scanning enemies, cloaking Kait and her squad, stunning enemies, and deflecting bullets using an energy shield, will be unlocked.


title: Gears 5

text: In addition to single-player gameplay, the game supports three-player local split screen or online cooperative gameplay. Horde mode also returns in "Gears 5", in which five players must work together to fight against 50 waves of enemies. A boss will appear every 10 waves. Players need to select from one of five classes, namely Offense, Tank, Support, Scout, and Engineer. Each of whom has their own unique weapons and abilities. The game also introduces a new three-player cooperative mode named Escape. In Escape, the player assumes control of a "Hivebuster", who voluntarily get captured by the Swarm in order to infiltrate and destroy their hives using Venom Bombs. The players must cooperate with each other and utilize the unique abilities of each character in order to escape and reach an extraction point. The game also features several competitive multiplayer modes including Team Deathmatch, King of the Hill and Escalation. A new mode named Arcade is also available. It was described as a "hero shooter-lite" mode designed for new players or a more casual audience.


title: Gears 5

text: "Gears 5" is set on the world of Sera and takes place months after the events of "Gears of War 4". The majority of its narrative focuses on Kait Diaz (Laura Bailey), originally a member of a human faction known as the Outsiders who resist the totalitarian rule of the Coalition of Ordered Governments (COG), the dominant human nation state in Sera headquartered in the city of New Ephyra. Subsequent events in the narrative forces Kait, who had experienced recurring nightmarish visions after "Gears of War 4", to discover the origins of the monstrous Locust Horde that threatened the human civilizations of Sera a generation before, as well as the truth behind her connection to Myrrah (Carolyn Seymour), the deceased Queen of the Locust.


title: Gears 5

text: Kait is accompanied by her friend Delmont "Del" Walker (Eugene Byrd) and a robot named Jack for the majority of her journey. Del's best friend James Dominic "JD" Fenix (Liam McIntyre) is the player character for the first chapter of "Gears 5". Other important characters include JD's father Marcus Fenix (John DiMaggio); Damon Baird (Fred Tatasciore), a former comrade of Marcus and the creator of Jack; Fahz Chutani (Rahul Kohli), a former friend of JD and Del; and COG First Minister Mina Jinn (Angel Desai). By the events of "Gears 5", Kait, JD, Del, and Marcus are officially reinstated in the COG Army and reformed as the new Delta Squad.


title: Gears 5

text: Delta Squad travel to the ruins of Azura to restore an old superweapon network called the Hammer of Dawn. Shortly after their return to New Ephyra, First Minister Jinn directs them to assist the evacuation of COG Settlement 2. It is revealed during the battle that JD, Del, and Fahz had previously been deployed in Settlement 2 to quell a riot, which resulted in civilian deaths and prompted JD and Del to go AWOL, and that it was JD who gave Fahz the order to open fire on the civilians, causing Del and Kait to lose their trust in him. As the Swarm threatens to destroy the evacuation convoy, JD orders Baird to fire the Hammer of Dawn prematurely. While the Swarm forces are annihilated, the Hammer of Dawn malfunctions and begins firing wildly, severely injuring JD.


title: Gears 5

text: Four months later, Kait and Del go to an Outsider village located in the skeleton of the Riftworm to try to convince them to join the COG. The village chief, Kait's uncle Oscar, refuses, but they are suddenly attacked by the Swarm. Kait is captured by a Snatcher and experiences vivid visions of controlling the Swarm forces. She escapes the Snatcher but is unable to prevent Oscar's death which she witnesses through her visions. COG reinforcements then arrive to evacuate the village. Kait tells everybody about her visions, and Marcus recommends she head to the secret lab at New Hope to find answers, with Del joining her. At the lab, they find clues leading them to Mount Kadar, a former Locust stronghold.


title: Gears 5

text: Kait and Del reach another secret COG lab hidden beneath Mount Kadar. There, they find an AI construct of scientist Niles Samson, who explains that the Locust were the result of his experiments by hybridizing the DNA of Imulsion-infected children with the indigenous creatures of the Hollow. He also reveals that Queen Myrrah was a human immune to Imulsion, who could control the Locust due to her genetics being used to create them. However, when her newborn daughter Reyna, Kait's dead mother, was taken away by her father, Myrrah led the Locust to rebel against the scientists and gain their independence. Kait realizes that she is the next queen and demands to be separated from the Swarm's hivemind. Niles puts Kait in a special machine connected to a dormant Berserker called the Matriarch, which successfully severs Kait from the hivemind but also resurrects Reyna in the process, this having been Niles' true intention. Niles is destroyed by the revived Matriarch, and Kait and Del kill it before escaping the facility. Realizing that Reyna is now the Swarm's queen, Kait reaffirms the COG's need to reactivate the Hammer of Dawn.


title: Gears 5

text: A few weeks later, Baird takes the group to the Vasgar desert, where the Union of Independent Republics' secret space program was located. They meet Baird's former squadmate Garron Paduk, who reveals that the UIR had a rocket loaded with Hammer of Dawn satellites ready to launch. JD and Fahz arrive to help, with JD apologizing to Del and Kait for his previous deception and subsequent behavior. The squad manages to assemble and launch the rocket and acquire targeting beacons to help control the Hammer of Dawn, though they encounter a giant Swarm creature called the Kraken. The group escapes when Paduk picks them up in a Raven to fly them home.


title: Gears 5

text: At New Ephyra, Jinn attempts to arrest Kait, intending to forcibly connect her to the hivemind in order to find the central Swarm Hive. Before she can do this, however, the Swarm attacks New Ephyra. The Gears attempt to set up UIR targeting beacons to provide targeting data to the Hammer of Dawn, but the Kraken destroys them. The transformed Reyna appears and attacks Kait, JD, and Del, forcing Kait to choose to save either JD or Del, leaving Reyna to kill the other. Kait and the survivor fight their way back to their friends but are attacked by the Kraken. The remaining soldiers are soon overwhelmed until the squad's robotic companion, Jack, kills the Kraken by sacrificing itself as a targeting beacon for the Hammer of Dawn. In the aftermath, Marcus tells Kait that Reyna will return, with Kait remarking that they will find her first before discarding her mother's Locust necklace.


title: Gears 5

text: "Gears 5" is developed by The Coalition as a sequel to "Gears of War 4". Unlike previous games in the "Gears of War" series, the game is simply titled "Gears 5" (without "of War" included in the title). Xbox marketing boss Aaron Greenberg explained that the new title was "cleaner" and that it was a natural change because most people had been ignoring "of War" for years. For "Gears 5", The Coalition decided to shift player focus from JD Fenix to Kait Diaz. According to studio head Rod Fergusson, "It was a natural choice. When you play through "Gears 4", think of it as "". It was really Furiosa's story, and Max was the side kick. That's how it felt in "Gears 4", the whole game is about saving Kait's mom, and really JD is there to help her."


title: Gears 5

text: The game received enhancements for the Xbox Series X upon its launch, including higher resolution textures, new visual effects such as volumetric fog, and running at 60 frames per second at minimum with potential to run at up to 120 frames per second.


title: Gears 5

text: "Gears 5" was announced at E3 2018, along with "Gears Pop!" and "Gears Tactics". The game was released for Windows 10 and Xbox One on September 10, 2019 as part of Xbox Play Anywhere. It was revealed at E3 2019 that for the game, a crossover with the upcoming film "" would have players control either Sarah Connor with Linda Hamilton voicing her character or a T-800 Terminator model as either a pre-order bonus or with Xbox Game Pass and Xbox Game Pass Ultimate. Moreover, action movie actor Dave Bautista appears as a playable character in a limited release where he uses his gimmick as a WWE professional wrestler after expressing interest in portraying Marcus Fenix in a potential film adaptation of "Gears of War". In addition to the standard and the ultimate editions, a "Gears 5" Limited Edition Xbox One X Console bundle was announced to be released the same day as the game's release. The bundle includes the Ultimate Edition of the game, a Limited Edition Xbox One X console, controller, headset, wireless keyboard, mouse from Razer (for console and PC), external hard drives from Seagate, "Gears of War: Ultimate Edition", and the standard versions of "Gears of War 2", "Gears of War 3", and "Gears of War 4".


title: Gears 5

text: A single-player expansion for the game, titled "", was released on December 15, 2020. The expansion is a direct prequel to the "" comic book series, and features the playable characters from the Escape multiplayer mode: Lahni, Keegan and Mac. In the pack, the three characters embark on their first mission as a member of the Hivebuster program on the volcanic Galangi islands. Supporting characters include Colonel Victor Hoffman from previous games, Hana Cole, the daughter of Augustus "Cole Train" Cole from Delta Squad and Tak, a King Raven pilot.


title: Gears 5

text: A digital exclusive "Game of the Year Edition" for "Gears 5" was released on December 15, 2020. It contains the base game, the "Hivebusters" expansion, a pack featuring "" characters, and a "30 days of boost" pack.


title: Gears 5

text: "Gears 5" has received "generally favorable" reviews, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Critics praised the gameplay, campaign, presentation and amount of content, but criticised the story and lack of innovation. Many critics praised the game for being a successful return to form for the series.


title: Gears 5

text: Ryan McCaffrey of "IGN" gave the game a 9/10 in a raving review, stating: "It’s not surprising at all that Gears 5 is an excellent third-person action game. This iconic series has never really had a misfire, even when changing hands from original developer Epic to The Coalition, and the hot streak remains unbroken. What was unexpected is just how effectively it doubles down on story with a character-focused, consequence-filled tale that plays to one of the franchise’s most underappreciated strengths and backs it up with fun, welcome additions to both its gameplay formula and flow. And that’s just the campaign: add in a heavy-hitting multiplayer lineup of Versus, Versus Arcade, Horde, and Escape and it makes Gears 5 one of the best and most versatile action-game packages in recent memory."


title: Gears 5

text: Andrew Reiner of "Game Informer" rated Gears 5 a 8.5/10, concluding: "Gears 5 is exactly what it needs to be. This old war vet still packs a punch. The open-world exploration has issues, but that isn’t enough to steal away the thunder The Coalition expertly deploys on the battlefield. The campaign is a fun ride that concludes with a shocker moment and a hell of a setup for a sequel. I’m already looking forward to that follow-up."


title: Gears 5

text: Wesley Yin-Poole, deputy editor of "Eurogamer" recommended the game with a 4 star rating out of 5. He concluded: "The campaign really is great. Perhaps even better than great, the more I think about it. All the new things about it - the open world stuff, Jack's powers, the light RPG elements, the side quests - all this stuff was done better years ago by other games. But those other games weren't Gears of War, which has actual decent third-person shooting, actual interesting things happening, and a story that doesn't try hard to win awards. But while Versus, Horde and even Escape are, ultimately, fine, they're let down by the party pooper progression system. The hope is The Coalition tweaks how the battle pass works, because as it stands, Gears 5's grind is depressing."


title: Gears 5

text: Phil Hornshaw of "GameSpot" rated it a 7/10, praising the "open areas" within the campaign and the "character moments" within it. However, he was critical of most of the campaign feeling "inconsequential" after the second act and the campaign feeling like a "rehash of earlier games." He concluded that "Gears 5 is very much a return of those best elements of Gears of War, but with a focus on making the game feel somewhat more adaptive to your particular ways of playing. Whether you want campaign or co-op, Competitive or Quickplay, there's an option for you in Gears 5, and plenty of stuff to reward you for time spent and skill gained. Gears 5 might suffer from some of the same storytelling missteps as its predecessors, and it might not venture far out of the past, but the new ideas it brings to the series are all good reasons for fans to return."


title: Gears 5

text: Justin Clark of "Slant Magazine" gave a rating of 4/5, writing: "Escape stands out in particular because of just how much work has gone into making "Gears 5" otherwise accessible. The "Gears of War" series has been broken of its worst habit: trying to put up the front of being better or harder or more stoic than the rest, allowing the deeper implications of its lore to come to the forefront. Despite dropping “of War” from its title, "Gears 5" is the first time the series has made the brutality of its combat feel not only bloody and cathartic, but also captivating and disturbingly intimate on a human level. The quintessential dudebro shooter has evolved with the times, and the world is so much better for it."


title: Gears 5

text: "Can I Play That?", a games accessibility resource aimed at gamers and developers, praised "Gears 5"'s accessibility features, awarding it a perfect score for deaf accessibility.


title: Gears 5

text: During its week of release, "Gears 5" retail sales in the UK were about 4.5 times less than its predecessor, and placed in second place in the retail UK charts, and fifth in Switzerland. The game was the seventh best-selling game in the US during the month of September 2019.


title: Gears 5

text: The game was played by 3 million people in its first weekend, making it Microsoft's most successful first-party launch since "Halo 4" and the biggest launch for Xbox Game Pass.


title: Policy

text: Policy is a deliberate system of guidelines to guide decisions and achieve rational outcomes. A policy is a statement of intent and is implemented as a procedure or protocol. Policies are generally adopted by a governance body within an organization. Policies can assist in both "subjective" and "objective" decision making. Policies used in subjective decision-making usually assist senior management with decisions that must be based on the relative merits of a number of factors, and as a result, are often hard to test objectively, e.g. work–life balance policy... Moreover, Governments and other institutions have policies in the form of laws, regulations, procedures, administrative actions, incentives and voluntary practices. Frequently, resource allocations mirror policy decisions.


title: Policy

text: In contrast, policies to assist in objective decision-making are usually operational in nature and can be objectively tested, e.g. password policy.


title: Policy

text: The term may apply to government, public sector organizations and groups, as well as individuals, Presidential executive orders, corporate privacy policies, and parliamentary rules of order are all examples of policy. Policy differs from rules or law. While the law can compel or prohibit behaviors (e.g. a law requiring the payment of taxes on income), policy merely guides actions toward those that are most likely to achieve the desired outcome.


title: Policy

text: Policy or policy study may also refer to the process of making important organizational decisions, including the identification of different alternatives such as programs or spending priorities, and choosing among them on the basis of the impact they will have. Policies can be understood as political, managerial, financial, and administrative mechanisms arranged to reach explicit goals. In public corporate finance, a critical accounting policy is a policy for a firm/company or an industry that is considered to have a notably high subjective element, and that has a material impact on the financial statements.


title: Policy

text: The intended effects of a policy vary widely according to the organization and the context in which they are made. Broadly, policies are typically instituted to avoid some negative effect that has been noticed in the


title: Policy

text: A meta-analysis of policy studies concluded that international treaties that aim to foster global cooperation have mostly failed to produce their intended effects in addressing global challenges, and sometimes may have led to unintended harmful or net negative effects. The study suggests enforcement mechanisms are the "only modifiable treaty design choice" with the potential to improve the effectiveness.


title: Policy

text: Corporate purchasing policies provide an example of how organizations attempt to avoid negative effects. Many large companies have policies that all purchases above a certain value must be performed through a purchasing process. By requiring this standard purchasing process through policy, the organization can limit waste and standardize the way purchasing is done.


title: Policy

text: The State of California provides an example of benefit-seeking policy. In recent years, the numbers of hybrid cars in California has increased dramatically, in part because of policy changes in Federal law that provided USD $1,500 in tax credits (since phased out) as well as the use of high-occupancy vehicle lanes to hybrid owners (no loew hybrid vehicles). In this case, the organization (state and/or federal government) created an effect (increased ownership and use of hybrid vehicles) through policy (tax breaks, highway lanes).


title: Policy

text: Policies frequently have side effects or unintended consequences. Because the environments that policies seek to influence or manipulate are typically complex adaptive systems (e.g. governments, societies, large companies), making a policy change can have counterintuitive results. For example, a government may make a policy decision to raise taxes, in hopes of increasing overall tax revenue. Depending on the size of the tax increase, this may have the overall effect of reducing tax revenue by causing capital flight or by creating a rate so high that citizens are deterred from earning the money that is taxed. (See the Laffer curve.)


title: Policy

text: The policy formulation process theoretically includes an attempt to assess as many areas of potential policy impact as possible, to lessen the chances that a given policy will have unexpected or unintended consequences.


title: Policy

text: In political science, the policy cycle is a tool used for analyzing the development of a policy item. It can also be referred to as a "stagist approach", "stages heuristic" or "stages approach". It is thus a rule of thumb rather than the actual reality of how policy is created, but has been influential in how political scientists looked at policy in general. It was developed as a theory from Harold Lasswell's work.


title: Policy

text: Harold Lasswell's popular model of the policy cycle divided the process into seven distinct stages, asking questions of both how and why public policies should be made. With the stages ranging from (1) intelligence, (2) promotion, (3) prescription, (4) invocation, (5) application, (6) termination and (7) appraisal, this process inherently attempts to combine policy implementation to formulated policy goals.


title: Policy

text: An eight step policy cycle is developed in detail in "The Australian Policy Handbook" by Peter Bridgman and Glyn Davis: (now with Catherine Althaus in its 4th and 5th editions)


title: Policy

text: The Althaus, Bridgman & Davis model is heuristic and iterative. It is and not meant to be or predictive. Policy cycles are typically characterized as adopting a classical approach, and tend to describe processes from the perspective of policy decision makers. Accordingly, some postpositivist academics challenge cyclical models as unresponsive and unrealistic, preferring systemic and more complex models. They consider a broader range of actors involved in the policy space that includes civil society organisations, the media, intellectuals, think tanks or policy research institutes, corporations, lobbyists, etc.


title: Policy

text: Policies are typically promulgated through official written documents. Policy documents often come with the endorsement or signature of the executive powers within an organization to legitimize the policy and demonstrate that it is considered in force. Such documents often have standard formats that are particular to the organization issuing the policy. While such formats differ in form, policy documents usually contain certain standard components including:


title: Policy

text: The American political scientist Theodore J. Lowi proposed four types of policy, namely "distributive", "redistributive", "regulatory" and "constituent" in his article "Four Systems of Policy, Politics and Choice" and in "American Business, Public Policy, Case Studies and Political Theory". Policy addresses the intent of the organization, whether government, business, professional, or voluntary. Policy is intended to affect the "real" world, by guiding the decisions that are made. Whether they are formally written or not, most organizations have identified policies.


title: Policy

text: Policies may be classified in many different ways. The following is a sample of several different types of policies broken down by their effect on members of the organization.


title: Policy

text: Distributive policies extend goods and services to members of an organization, as well as distributing the costs of the goods/services amongst the members of the organization. Examples include government policies that impact spending for welfare, public education, highways, and public safety, or a professional organization's benefits plan.


title: Policy

text: Regulatory policies, or mandates, limit the discretion of individuals and agencies, or otherwise compel certain types of behavior. These policies are generally thought to be best applied when good behavior can be easily defined and bad behavior can be easily regulated and punished through fines or sanctions. An example of a fairly successful public regulatory policy is that of a highway speed limit.


title: Policy

text: Constituent policies create executive power entities, or deal with laws. Constituent policies also deal with fiscal policy in some circumstances.


title: Policy

text: Policies are dynamic; they are not just static lists of goals or laws. Policy blueprints have to be implemented, often with unexpected results. Social policies are what happens 'on the ground' when they are implemented, as well as what happens at the decision making or legislative stage.


title: Policy

text: The actions the organization actually takes may often vary significantly from stated policy. This difference is sometimes caused by political compromise over policy, while in other situations it is caused by lack of policy implementation and enforcement. Implementing policy may have unexpected results, stemming from a policy whose reach extends further than the problem it was originally crafted to address. Additionally, unpredictable results may arise from selective or idiosyncratic enforcement of policy.


title: Policy

text: These qualifiers can be combined, so one could, for example, have a stationary-memoryless-index policy.


title: Policy

text: In contemporary systems of market-oriented economics and of homogeneous voting of delegates and decisions, policy mixes are usually introduced depending on factors that include popularity in the public (influenced via media and education as well as by cultural identity), contemporary economics (such as what is beneficial or a burden in the long- and near-term within it) and a general state of international competition (often the focus of geopolitics). Broadly, considerations include political competition with other parties and social stability as well as national interests within the framework of global dynamics.


title: Policy

text: Policies or policy-elements can be designed and proposed by a multitude of actors or collaborating actor-networks in various ways. Alternative options as well as organisations and decision-makers that would be responsible for enacting these policies – or explaining their rejection – can be identified. "Policy sequencing" is a concept that integrates mixes of existing or hypothetical policies and arranges them in a sequential order. The use of such frameworks may make complex polycentric governance for the achievement of goals such as climate change mitigation and stoppage of deforestation more easily achievable or more effective, fair, efficient, legitimate and rapidly implemented.<ref name="10.1017/sus.2021.21"></ref>


title: Policy

text: Contemporary ways of policy-making or decision-making may depend on exogenously-driven shocks that "undermine institutionally entrenched policy equilibria" and may not always be functional in terms of sufficiently preventing and solving problems, especially when unpopular policies, regulation of influential entities with vested interests, international coordination and non-reactive strategic long-term thinking and management are needed. In that sense, "reactive sequencing" refers to "the notion that early events in a sequence set in motion a chain of causally linked reactions and counter-reactions which trigger subsequent development". This is a concept separate to policy sequencing in that the latter may require actions from a multitude of parties at different stages for progress of the sequence, rather than an initial "shock", force-exertion or catalysis of chains of events.


title: Policy

text: In the modern highly interconnected world, polycentric governance has become ever more important – such "requires a complex combination of multiple levels and diverse types of organizations drawn from the public, private, and voluntary sectors that have overlapping realms of responsibility and functional capacities". Key components of policies include command-and-control measures, enabling measures, monitoring, incentives and disincentives.


title: Policy

text: Science-based policy, related to the more narrow concept of evidence-based policy, may have also become more important. A review about worldwide pollution as a major cause of death – where it found little progress, suggests that successful control of conjoined threats such as pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss requires a global, "formal science–policy interface", e.g. to "inform intervention, influence research, and guide funding". Broadly, science–policy interfaces include both science in policy and science for policy.


title: Dead Silence

text: Dead Silence is a 2007 American supernatural horror film directed by James Wan and written by Leigh Whannell. The film stars Ryan Kwanten as Jamie Ashen, a young widower returning to his hometown to search for answers to his wife's death. It also stars Amber Valletta, Donnie Wahlberg, and Bob Gunton.


title: Dead Silence

text: "Dead Silence" was theatrically released in the United States on March 16, 2007, by Universal Pictures. The film was dedicated to Gregg Hoffman. Despite receiving initial negative reviews, the film has since gathered a cult following.


title: Dead Silence

text: Jamie Ashen and his wife, Lisa, receive an anonymous gift of a ventriloquist doll called "Billy". When Jamie goes out to pick up their takeout dinner, a figure attacks Lisa, who is pregnant, causing her to have a miscarriage and scream. Jamie returns home and finds her dead with her tongue cut out. After Jamie is released from custody by Detective Jim Lipton due to lack of evidence, he spots inside Billy's box a mysterious message about "Mary Shaw", a deceased ventriloquist from his hometown, Raven's Fair.


title: Dead Silence

text: Returning to Raven's Fair, now old and rundown, Jamie visits his estranged, wealthy and wheelchair-using father, Edward, and his much-younger wife, Ella, for information regarding Mary Shaw. Dismissing them as superstitions, Jamie arranges for Lisa's funeral with the help of a local mortician named Henry Walker. Henry's senile wife, Marion, warns Jamie that Mary Shaw's spirit is dangerous and urges him to bury Billy. Jamie does so but is confronted by Detective Lipton, who followed Jamie and finds his actions suspicious.


title: Dead Silence

text: Henry explains to Jamie that Mary Shaw was a famous and popular ventriloquist who was publicly humiliated when a young boy named Michael rudely claimed that he could see her lips moving during one of her performances. Some weeks later, Michael disappeared and his family blamed it on Mary Shaw and lynched her. Mary's last wish was to have her body turned into a doll and buried with her 101 dolls, who she called her children. Henry, then still a child, saw Shaw (after she was turned into a dummy) rise up, but was spared thanks to his silence, because Mary takes her revenge by killing those who scream. Jamie finds out that Michael, who actually "was" murdered by Mary Shaw, was his great-uncle. As part of Mary's lynching, the Ashen family forced her to scream and permanently silenced her by cutting her tongue out; as such, she has since been seeking revenge against their entire bloodline and all those in Raven's Fair by killing them using the same method.


title: Dead Silence

text: Mary Shaw kills Henry Walker and Detective Lipton discovers that all of Mary Shaw's dolls have been dug up. He informs Jamie and is just about to arrest him, when Jamie receives a call from "Henry", asking him to go to Shaw's old theatre to prove his innocence. At the ruined theater, Jamie and Lipton discover 100 of the dolls in their massive display case, along with Michael's body, which had been turned into a marionette. Mary reveals to Jamie that she killed Lisa because, unbeknownst to him, she was pregnant with his child, thereby killing any potential newborn of the Ashen family. Jamie and Lipton burn the theatre and all of Shaw's dolls, but Lipton falls and screams, sealing his fate.


title: Dead Silence

text: Back at his father's residence, Jamie is confronted by Mary, but repels her by throwing Billy into the fireplace. He learns, much to his horror, that his father actually died long ago; the current "Edward" is actually a doll converted from his corpse, controlled by Ella, who is the "perfect doll" that Mary Shaw created just before her death. Jamie screams in terror as Ella, possessed by Mary, kills him.


title: Dead Silence

text: The film ends with Jamie reciting a nursery rhyme about Shaw while a photo album with human puppets is shown: Lisa, Henry, Lipton, Edward, Ella, and Jamie himself. Mary closes the book, finally completing her revenge.


title: Dead Silence

text: In the United States, as of April 16, 2007, the film's total domestic gross has been worth US$16.8 million (according to Box Office Mojo), and screenings of "Dead Silence" were ceased in most theatres 16 days following its release; the film's estimated production budget was US$20 million. As of April 1, 2009, US$5,572,971 has been generated globally. Worldwide, the film has grossed $22,382,047.


title: Dead Silence

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 21%, based on 81 reviews, with an average rating of 4.00/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "More tasteful than recent slasher flicks, but "Dead Silence" is undone by boring characters, bland dialogue, and an unnecessary and obvious twist ending." On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 34 out of 100, based on 15 reviews, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews".


title: Dead Silence

text: The film was released on DVD on June 26, 2007, with an "unrated" version also released, and the same thing was done for the HD DVD release. The film has since grossed US$17,304,718 in overall DVD sales.


title: Dead Silence

text: "Dead Silence" was released on Blu-ray Disc in the U.K. on October 25, 2010. In May 2015, it was announced that Universal Studios would be releasing the film to Blu-ray Disc in the U.S. It was released on August 11, 2015.


title: Dead Silence

text: Lakeshore Records released the soundtrack of "Dead Silence" on March 20, 2007. The CD contains 31 tracks, the first track being the song "We Sleep Forever" performed by American rock band Aiden (despite not actually being featured in the film itself). The rest of the CD is taken up by Charlie Clouser's film score. Clouser has worked on many film scores, such as the "Saw" series and "".


title: Dead Silence

text: Many alternate scenes were released on both the unrated DVD and the unrated HD DVD. They are listed below:


title: Dead Silence

text: In his personal blog, screenwriter Whannell reveals the origins of the film within the context of the Hollywood film industry. In a candid post entitled "Dud Silence: The Hellish Experience of Making a Bad Horror Film", Whannell explains that the film was conceived following the advice of his agent at the time and that a "script doctor" was eventually employed by the production studio. Whannell concludes the post with a description of the key lessons that were learned following the "Dead Silence" experience:


title: My Little Old Boy

text: My Little Old Boy (a.k.a. Mom's Diary: My Ugly Duckling; ) is a South Korean television entertainment program, distributed and syndicated by SBS every Sunday at 21:05 (KST), starting from August 26, 2016.


title: My Little Old Boy

text: This reality program focuses on the mothers of South Korean celebrities. Unlike the generic reality program which focuses solely on the celebrity, "My Little Old Boy" features commentary from the celebrities' mothers as they watch the footage of their sons and or daughters' daily activities.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: Seo Soo-jin (; born March 9, 1998), better known mononymously as Soojin, is a South Korean singer and dancer. She is a former member of the girl group (G)I-dle under Cube Entertainment.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: Soojin was born in Gyeonggi, South Korea. She attended Waw Middle School in Hwaseong. She later learned jazz dance and taekwondo while studying at the Korean Arts High School. She decided early in her life that she wanted to pursue a singing career, but said it took two years for her to convince her father to agree with her decisions.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: Soojin was a trainee in DN Entertainment and was originally supposed to be a member of the South Korean girl group Vividiva under her stage name N.Na (앤나), She took part in several performances and photo shoots of the group, but then left the group in 2015.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: Then in 2016, Soojin became a trainee at Cube Entertainment. In 2017–2018 she appeared in fellow-member Soyeon's solo music videos for the songs "Jelly" and "Idle Song" as an unknown dancer and wearing a mask.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: In 2018, she was revealed on as a member of the girl group (G)I-dle, she debuted with the group on May 2, 2018, following the release of the group's debut mini album, "I Am" and its lead single "Latata". (G)I-dle made their debut stage performance on Mnet's "M Countdown".


title: Soojin (singer)

text: In October 2020, Glance TV introduced their new fashion show "Minnie Soojin's i'M THE TREND" and paired Seo and Minnie together. The duo will have a styling battle every time for the title of 'Trend Center', which is a combination of a trend setter and an idol center. In addition, the duo will revealed their styling secrets, various outfits, shopping tips and video pictorial 'Fashion Film'. The show premiered on October 14 through Naver Style TV.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: On October 22, 2020, according to Cube Entertainment, Soojin was examined and treated at the hospital for a sprained ankle which she sustained during choreography practice. Soojin visited the hospital for examination and treatment. The agency said, "As a result of the examination by the medical staff, the ankle ligament has increased, and according to the opinion of the medical staff to wear a cast and protector until recovery, we will live with minimal movement for the time being and is unable to participate in the group's upcoming schedules, including '2020 LIVE in DMZ' on October 23 and '2020 K-Culture Festival' on October 24.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: On March 4, 2021, it was announced that Soojin would temporarily halt all activities following allegations of bullying by former classmates. On August 14, Cube Entertainment announced that Soojin had officially withdrawn from (G)I-dle, though she will remain under the same agency. (G)I-dle will also continue its activities as a five-member girl group after her departure.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: On March 5, 2022, Cube Entertainment announced that they have officially terminated Soojin's contract after police investigations concluded that the accusers were not guilty of spreading false information.


title: Soojin (singer)

text: On September 8, 2022, Soojin's legal representative released a statement on her behalf that stated Soojin had never committed any act of school violence, and that Soojin would not proceed any further with legal action.


title: Post-credits scene

text: A post-credits scene (commonly referred to as a stinger or credit cookie) or mid-credits scene is a short clip that appears after all or some of the closing credits have rolled and sometimes after a production logo of a film, TV series, or video game has run. It is usually included to reward the audience for watching through the credits sequence; it may be a scene written for humour or to set up a sequel.


title: Post-credits scene

text: Post-credits scenes may have their origins in encores, an additional performance added to the end of staged shows in response to audience applause. Opera encores were common practice in the 19th century, but fell out of favor in the 1920s due to rising emphasis on dramatic storytelling rather than vocal performance.


title: Post-credits scene

text: The first general release film to feature a post-credits scene is "The Silencers", released in March 1966. The scene depicts lead character Matt Helm (played by Dean Martin) lying shirtless on what appears to be a rotating sofa along with 10 scantily-clad women. He kisses two women before rubbing his face and muttering, "Oh my god." During the scene, text overlays reads "Coming Up Next" and "Matt Helm Meets Lovey Kravezit."


title: Post-credits scene

text: In 1979, "The Muppet Movie" uses a framing device in which the characters themselves watch the movie unfold in a theater. During the credits, the Muppets get up from their seats, talk to each other and joke around (thus incentivizing the real audience to stick around and see what happens next). In the final moment after the credits, Animal yells at the audience to "GO HOME!" before sighing "buh-bye" and passing out from exhaustion.


title: Post-credits scene

text: The use of such scenes gained popularity throughout the 1980s at the end of comedy films. In 1980, "Airplane!" ended with a callback to an abandoned taxicab passenger who was not a primary character. Enhanced application continued in 1985 with "Young Sherlock Holmes" (see below) and August 1987, in "Masters of the Universe" Skeletor's head emerges from the water at the bottom of the pit, saying "I'll be back!" "The Muppet Movie" also began a trend of using such scenes to break the fourth wall, even when much of the rest of the film had kept it intact. The scenes were often used as a form of metafiction, with characters showing an awareness that they were at the end of a film, and sometimes telling the audience directly to leave the theatre. Films using this technique include "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" (in which the title character frequently broke the fourth wall during the film) and the musical remake of "The Producers". The post-credits scene in the latter film also includes a cameo appearance by "Producers" screenwriter Mel Brooks.


title: Post-credits scene

text: Post-credits scenes also appeared on the long-running television show "Mystery Science Theater 3000", introduced in the 1990 episode "Rocket Attack U.S.A.", continuing until the end of the series. With few exceptions, they highlighted moments from the films that were either particularly nonsensical or had simply caught the writers' attention.


title: Post-credits scene

text: Stingers lacking the metafictional aspects also gained prominence in the 1980s, although they were still primarily used for comedy films. Post-credits scenes became useful places for humorous scenes that would not fit in the main body of the film. Most were short clips that served to tie together loose ends—minor characters whose fates were not elaborated on earlier in the film, or plot lines that were not fully wrapped up. For example, all five "Pirates of the Caribbean" films include such scenes. "Napoleon Dynamite" features a stinger that reveals that Kip and LaFawnduh get married, a scene that was included in its wide release. In the film "The Cannonball Run", bloopers from the film are shown. One of the stars in that picture, Jackie Chan, later featured outtakes during the credits of many of his films, often showing him getting injured doing his own stunts.


title: Post-credits scene

text: Even when post-credit scenes started to be used by films with little comedy development, the same format of giving closure to incomplete storylines or inconsequential characters remained in use. Using humor in such scenes is also still common for more serious films, as in the film "Daredevil", in which Bullseye is shown after his defeat by Daredevil in a full body cast. Other films eschew the comedy in favor of a twist or revelation that would be out of place elsewhere in the film, as in ""s post-credits scene in which Professor X is shown to be alive after his apparent death by the hands of the Phoenix. Another example is the stinger at the end of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" which features a post-memory loss Lockhart. A third example occurs in "Young Sherlock Holmes": during the entire credits, a sleigh is seen traveling in the Alps to a mountain inn; at the end of the credits, the passenger Professor Rathe (presumed to be dead), also known as "Eh-Tar", signs the register as "Moriarty".


title: Post-credits scene

text: With the rise of pre-planned film franchises, post-credit scenes have been adopted in order to prepare the audience for upcoming sequels, sometimes going so far as to include a cliffhanger ending where the main film is largely stand-alone. The cinematic release of "The Matrix Reloaded" demonstrated the sequel set-up use of stingers by featuring the trailer for "The Matrix Revolutions".


title: Post-credits scene

text: Another example would be the ending of the supernatural horror film "" (2017), where we see a post-credits clip set in Romania, 1952 and see the character of Valak, the demon nun from "The Conjuring 2" (2016) gliding towards the viewer before it darkens, teasing the spin-off prequel "The Nun" (2018).


title: Post-credits scene

text: Some films, including Richard Linklater's "School of Rock", take the idea of the post-credits scene to its limit by running the credits during the main action of the film. In this example, the characters perform a song in the last minutes of the film, and the credits run inconspicuously until one character sings the line "the movie is over/but we're still on screen".


title: Post-credits scene

text: The Marvel Cinematic Universe has made extensive use of mid- and post-credit scenes (often both) which typically serve as a teaser for a future Marvel Studios film. For example, the post-credits scene of "Iron Man 2" shows S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson locating a large hammer at the bottom of a crater in a New Mexico desert, thus teasing the release of "Thor" the following year. The post-credits sequence of "" introduces the characters of Pietro and Wanda Maximoff, who join the franchise in "". Other times these mid- and post-credits scenes serve primarily as gags, such as the post-credits scene in "The Avengers", which has the team eating shawarma in a derelict restaurant in the aftermath of the film's climactic battle, or "", which features Captain America educating the audience on patience.


title: Post-credits scene

text: The credits of many Pixar films, including "A Bug's Life" (1998), "Finding Nemo" (2003), "The Good Dinosaur" (2015) and "Finding Dory" (2016) have included humorous mid-credits scenes. "A Bug's Life" (1998), for example, parodied the trend of bloopers at the end of movies by including fake blooper scenes of the characters making mistakes or goofing around on the "set" of the movie. "Toy Story 2" (1999) and "Monsters, Inc." (2001) followed suit. Other Pixar films, such as "Cars" (2006), "Toy Story 3" (2010) and "Inside Out" (2015) have included an epilogue that plays during the credits.


title: Post-credits scene

text: An unusual use of the post-credits scene is to fulfill contractual obligations. In order to secure the personality rights to produce "The Disaster Artist", a biopic of Tommy Wiseau, the filmmakers were obligated to include a cameo by Wiseau himself. This scene was filmed, but relegated to the post-credits sequence of the film.


title: Post-credits scene

text: Video games, particularly those with complex stories, sometimes also use post-credits scenes. An early example is "EarthBound", in which Ness awakens to a knocking on the front door just like at the beginning of the game, and finds Pokey Minch's younger brother Picky with a message from his big brother Pokey, indicating that he escaped and warns Ness to come and get him. A game may contain a scene or voiceover after the credits, of one or more characters speaking, revealing new information that gives a new perspective to the previous events as well as setting up part of the next game in the series. As the credits for modern games get longer, added cut scenes that maintain interest during the credits are becoming more common.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: General elections were held in Pakistan on Wednesday, 25 July 2018 to elect the members of 15th National Assembly and the four Provincial Assemblies. The three major parties Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) led by Imran Khan, the Pakistan Muslim League led by Shehbaz Sharif and the Pakistan Peoples Party led by Bilawal Bhutto. The PTI won the most seats in the National Assembly but fell short of a majority; the party subsequently formed a coalition government with several smaller parties. At the provincial level, the PTI remained the largest party in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP); the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) retained its dominance in Sindh and the newly formed Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) emerged as the largest party in Balochistan. In Punjab, the result was a hung parliament with the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) winning the most seats. However, after several independents MPAs joined the PTI, the latter became the largest party and was able to form a government.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: Opinion polling prior to the campaigns starting had initially shown leads for the Pakistan Muslim League (N) (PML-N) over the PTI. However, from an 11-point lead, the PML-N's lead began to diminish in the final weeks of the campaign, with some polls close to the election showing the PTI with a marginal but increasing lead. In the lead-up to the elections, there were rumours about some pre-poll rigging being conducted by the judiciary, the military and the intelligence agencies to sway the election results in favour of the PTI and against the PML-N. However, Reuters polling suggested PML-N's lead had genuinely narrowed in the run-up to the elections, and that the party had suffered "blow after blow" which caused setbacks to any hopes of re-election.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: Election day saw the PTI receive 31.82% of the vote (its highest share of the vote since its foundation), while the PML-N received 24.35%. Following the elections, six major parties including PML-N claimed there had been large-scale vote rigging and administrative malpractices. Imran Khan, chairman of the PTI, proceeded to form a coalition government, announcing his cabinet shortly after the elections. The newly formed coalition government included members of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and Pakistan Muslim League (Q).


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: Regarding the voting process, the Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) outrightly rejected reports of rigging and stated that the elections had been fair and free. A top electoral watchdog, Free and Fair Election Network (FAFEN), also said that the 2018 general elections in Pakistan had been "more transparent in some aspects" than the previous polls. In its preliminary report, the European Union Election Observation Mission said that no rigging had been observed during the election day in general, but found a "lack of equality" and criticized the process more than it had in the Pakistani election of 2013.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: This was also the third consecutive election from Pakistan's most recent transition to democracy where a democratic handover of power was observed. The day after the election, despite reservations over the result, PML-N conceded defeat. Pakistan's election commission reiterated its position, rejecting reports of rigging. The voter turnout dropped from 55.0% in 2013 to 51.7%.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: Although the election commission rejected rigging allegations, there were claims that Khan was able to lure more electable candidates to his party than PML-N, which led to suggestions that there was electoral inequality. However, the newly minted opposition decided against boycotting parliament, lending legitimacy to the electoral process by parliamentary participation. Initially a recount was ordered in 14 constituencies because of procedural errors. Moreover, procedural errors then led to a recount on 70 constituencies by the election commission (more than the winners margin of victory in Punjab and Federal elections). After the conclusion of these recounts, the ECP published a seat tally which confirmed PTI's position of being the largest party in the National Assembly. The margin for the Punjab election was narrow between Khan's PTI and Pakistan Muslim League (N), but independents and Pakistan Muslim League (Q) factions endorsed federal winners PTI, which led to Khan's party forming government in Punjab also. Thus PML-N lost the elections both at the provincial and the federal level, becoming the opposition, nominating Shehbaz Sharif to be leader of the opposition at the federal level and his son Hamza Shahbaz as opposition leader in Punjab.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: Following the elections in 2013, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), led by twice Prime Minister of Pakistan Nawaz Sharif, emerged as the largest party with 166 seats out of a total of 342 in the National Assembly. Although this was short of a majority, Sharif was able to form a government after several independents joined his party.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: During the election campaign, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), led by prominent cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, was widely expected to have huge success in the polls. The party fell short of these expectations, instead only taking 35 seats. It became the 3rd largest party in the National Assembly and formed a coalition government in the restive north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: PTI had initially conceded the elections to PML (N), although they asked for manual recounts to be carried out in several constituencies where rigging had been allegedly carried out. These calls were not answered by the government or the Supreme Court, despite a 2,100 page white paper by the party which allegedly contained evidence of vote-rigging in favour of the PML (N). The Azadi March of 2014 ("Azadi" meaning "Freedom" in Urdu) was started by Khan on 14 August 2014 which demanded the government to call a snap election. The sit-in in Islamabad continued for 126 days, until the 2014 Peshawar school massacre occurred, which forced Khan to end the protest for the sake of ‘national unity’. A judicial commission was formed by the government which would probe the allegations of vote-rigging: it found the election to have been largely conducted in a free and fair manner, while also stating that PTI's request for a probe was not "entirely unjustified".


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: On 3 April 2016 the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) made 11.5 million secret documents, later known as the Panama Papers, available to the public. The documents, sourced from Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca, among other revelations about other public figures in many other countries, included details of eight offshore companies with links to the family of Nawaz Sharif, the then-incumbent Prime Minister of Pakistan, and his brother Shehbaz Sharif, the incumbent Chief Minister of Punjab. According to the ICIJ, Sharif's children Maryam Nawaz, Hassan Nawaz and Hussain Nawaz “were owners or had the right to authorise transactions for several companies”.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: Sharif refused to resign and instead make an unsuccessful attempt to form a judicial commission. The opposition leader Khan filed a petition to the Supreme Court of Pakistan on 29 August seeking the disqualification of Sharif from public office (which would automatically remove him of the office of Prime Minister). This petition was also supported by prominent political leaders Sheikh Rasheed (AML) and Siraj-ul-Haq (PAT). Khan called, once again, for his supporters to put Islamabad in lockdown until Sharif resigned, although this was called off soon before it was meant to take place.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: On 20 April 2017, on a 3-2 verdict, the Supreme Court decided against the disqualification of Sharif, instead calling for a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to be created which would probe these allegations further.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: On 10 July 2017, JIT submitted a 275-page report in the apex court. The report requested NAB to file a reference against Sharif, his daughter Maryam, and his sons under section 9 of National Accountability Ordinance. Additionally, the report claimed that his daughter Maryam was guilty of falsifying documents, as she submitted a document from 2006 which used the Calibri font despite the font itself not being available for public use until 2007.


title: 2018 Pakistani general election

text: On 28 July 2017, following the submittal of the JIT report, the Supreme Court unanimously decided that Sharif was dishonest, therefore not fulfilling the requirements of articles 62 and 63 of the constitution which require one who holds public office to be "Sadiq" and "Ameen" (Urdu for Truthful and Virtuous). Hence, he was disqualified as Prime Minister and as a Member of the National Assembly. The court also ordered National Accountability Bureau to file a reference against Sharif, his family and his former Finance Minister Ishaq Dar on corruption charges.