title: Gangtok

text: Gangtok's schools are either run by the state government or by private and religious organisations. Schools mainly use English and Nepali as their medium of instruction. The schools are either affiliated with the Indian Certificate of Secondary Education, Central Board of Secondary Education or the National Institute of Open Schooling. Notable schools include the Tashi Namgyal Academy, Paljor Namgyal Girls School, Holy Cross School, Taktse International School, Sikkim Judicial Academy, and Kendriya Vidyalaya.


title: Gangtok

text: Colleges conferring graduate degrees include Sikkim Government College, Sikkim Government Law College and Damber Singh College. Sikkim University established in 2007 is functioning in Gangtok; the university has been allotted land in neighbouring Yang Yang town for establishment of its own campus. The university offers a diverse range of courses and has a number of institutes affiliated to it. from here is the headquarters of the Sikkim Manipal University, which houses Sikkim Manipal Institute of Medical Sciences and Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology. The Indira Gandhi National Open University also has a regional centre in the city. There are other institutions offering diplomas in Buddhist literature, catering and other non-mainstream fields. District Institute of Education and Training and State Institute of Education conduct teacher training programmes.


title: Gangtok

text: More than 50 newspapers are published in Sikkim. Multiple local Nepali and English newspapers are published, whereas regional and national Hindi and English newspapers, printed elsewhere in India, are also circulated. The English newspapers include "The Statesman" and "The Telegraph", which are printed in Siliguri; "The Hindu" and "The Times of India", which are printed in Kolkata. "Sikkim Herald", the newsweekly of the Government of Sikkim is published in thirteen languages of the state.


title: Gangtok

text: Gangtok has two cinemas featuring Nepali, Hindi and English-language films. The town also has a public library.


title: Gangtok

text: The main service providers are "Sikkim Cable", "Nayuma", "Dish TV" and "Doordarshan". All India Radio has a local station in Gangtok, which transmits various programmes of mass interest. Gangtok has three FM stations, namely 93.5 (Red FM), 95.0 (Radio Misty), 91.9 (Nine FM) and one AIR Gangtok radio station. BSNL, Vodafone, Jio and Airtel have the four largest cellular networks in the town with 4G services available within the city limits. There is a Doordarshan TV station in Gangtok.


title: Midnight's Children

text: Midnight's Children is a 1981 novel by Indian-British writer Salman Rushdie, published by Jonathan Cape with cover design by Bill Botten, about India's transition from British colonial rule to independence and partition. It is a postcolonial, postmodern and magical realist story told by its chief protagonist, Saleem Sinai, set in the context of historical events. The style of preserving history with fictional accounts is self-reflexive.


title: Midnight's Children

text: "Midnight's Children" sold over one million copies in the UK alone and won the Booker Prize and James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1981. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. In 2003 the novel appeared at number 100 on the BBC's The Big Read poll which determined the UK's "best-loved novels" of all time.


title: Midnight's Children

text: "Midnight's Children" is a loose allegory for events in 1947 British Raj India and after the partition of India. The protagonist and narrator of the story is Saleem Sinai, born at the exact moment when India became an independent country. He was born with telepathic powers, as well as an enormous and constantly dripping nose with an extremely sensitive sense of smell. The novel is divided into three books.


title: Midnight's Children

text: The first book begins with the story of the Sinai family, particularly with events leading up to the fall of British Colonial India and the partition. Saleem is born precisely at midnight, 15 August 1947, therefore, exactly as old as independent India. He later discovers that all children born in India between 12 a.m. and 1 a.m. on that date are imbued with special powers. Saleem, using his telepathic powers, assembles a "Midnight Children's Conference", reflective of the issues India faced in its early statehood concerning the cultural, linguistic, religious, and political differences faced by a vastly diverse nation. Saleem acts as a telepathic conduit, bringing hundreds of geographically disparate children into contact while also attempting to discover the meaning of their gifts. In particular, those children born closest to the stroke of midnight wield more powerful gifts than the others. Shiva "of the Knees", Saleem's nemesis, and Parvati, called "Parvati-the-witch," are two of these children with notable gifts and roles in Saleem's story.


title: Midnight's Children

text: Meanwhile, Saleem's family begin a number of migrations and endure the numerous wars which plague the subcontinent. During this period he also suffers amnesia until he enters a quasi-mythological exile in the jungle of Sundarban, where he is re-endowed with his memory. In doing so, he reconnects with his childhood friends. Saleem later becomes involved with the Indira Gandhi-proclaimed Emergency and her son Sanjay's "cleansing" of the Jama Masjid slum. For a time Saleem is held as a political prisoner; these passages contain scathing criticisms of Indira Gandhi's over-reach during the Emergency as well as a personal lust for power bordering on godhood. The Emergency signals the end of the potency of the Midnight Children, and there is little left for Saleem to do but pick up the few pieces of his life he may still find and write the chronicle that encompasses both his personal history and that of his still-young nation, a chronicle written for his son, who, like his father, is both chained and supernaturally endowed by history.


title: Midnight's Children

text: The technique of magical realism finds liberal expression throughout the novel and is crucial to constructing the parallel to the country's history. The story moves in different parts of Indian Subcontinent – from Kashmir to Agra and then to Bombay, Lahore and Dhaka. Nicholas Stewart in his essay, "Magic realism in relation to the post-colonial and Midnight's Children," argues that the "narrative framework of "Midnight's Children" consists of a tale – comprising his life story – which Saleem Sinai recounts orally to his wife-to-be Padma. This self-referential narrative (within a single paragraph Saleem refers to himself in the first person: 'And I, wishing upon myself the curse of Nadir Khan...;' and the third: '"I tell you," Saleem cried, "it is true. ..."') recalls indigenous Indian culture, particularly the similarly orally recounted "Arabian Nights". The events in the book also parallel the magical nature of the narratives recounted in "Arabian Nights" (consider the attempt to electrocute Saleem at the latrine (p. 353), or his journey in the 'basket of invisibility' (p. 383))."


title: Midnight's Children

text: He also notes that, "the narrative comprises and compresses Indian cultural history." "'Once upon a time,' Saleem muses, 'there were Radha and Krishna, and Rama and Sita, and Laila and Majnun; also (because we are not unaffected by the West) Romeo and Juliet, and Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn' (259)." Stewart (citing Hutcheon) suggests that "Midnight's Children" chronologically entwines characters from both India and the West, "with post-colonial Indian history to examine both the effect of these indigenous and non-indigenous cultures on the Indian mind and in the light of Indian independence."


title: Midnight's Children

text: "Midnight's Children" has been called "a watershed in the post-independence development of the Indian English novel", to the extent that the decade after its 1981 publication has been called "post-Rushdie". During that decade, many novels inspired by "Midnight's Children" were written by both established and young Indian writers.


title: Midnight's Children

text: Rushdie's innovative use of magic realism allowed him to employ the nation-as-family allegory and at the same time confound it with an impossible telepathy among a multitude of children from a multitude of languages, cultures, regions and religions. No one genre dominates the entire novel, however. It encompasses the comic and the tragic, the real, the surreal, and the mythic. The postcolonial experience could not be expressed by a Western or Eastern, public or private, polarity or unity, any more than any single political party could represent all the people of the nation.


title: Midnight's Children

text: "Midnight's Children" was awarded the 1981 Booker Prize, the English Speaking Union Literary Award, and the James Tait Prize. It also was awarded The Best of the Booker prize twice, in 1993 and 2008 (this was an award given out by the Booker committee to celebrate the 25th and 40th anniversary of the award).


title: Midnight's Children

text: In 1984 Prime Minister Indira Gandhi brought an action against the book in the British courts, claiming to have been defamed by a single sentence in the penultimate paragraph of chapter 28, in which her son Sanjay Gandhi was said to have had a hold over his mother by his accusing her of contributing to his father Feroze Gandhi's death through her neglect. The case was settled out of court when Salman Rushdie agreed to remove the offending sentence.


title: Midnight's Children

text: In the late 1990s the BBC was planning to film a five-part mini-series of the novel with Rahul Bose in the lead, but due to pressure from the Muslim community in Sri Lanka (a later novel, "The Satanic Verses", published in 1988 caused widespread uproar in the Muslim world), the filming permit was revoked and the project was cancelled. Later in 2003, the novel was adapted for the stage by the Royal Shakespeare Company. BBC Radio Four broadcast a dramatic adaptation in 2017 at the 70th anniversary of Indian independence, repeated in five parts in 2021.


title: Midnight's Children

text: Director Deepa Mehta collaborated with Salman Rushdie on a new version of the story, the film "Midnight's Children". British-Indian actor Satya Bhabha played the role of Saleem Sinai while other roles were played by Indian actors Shriya Saran, Seema Biswas, Shabana Azmi, Anupam Kher, Siddharth Narayan, Rahul Bose, Soha Ali Khan, Shahana Goswami, Anita Majumdar and Darsheel Safary. The film was premiered in September 2012 at the Toronto International Film Festival (2012-09-09) and the Vancouver International Film Festival (2012-09-27). For an academic overview of the adaptations of "Midnight's Children", see Mendes and Kuortti (2016).


title: Midnight's Children

text: In June 2018 streaming service Netflix announced plans to adapt "Midnight's Children" as an original Netflix TV series. By the end of 2019, the project had been abandoned. Although showrunner Vishal Bhardwaj had received support from Rushdie for his script and had done much of the work on casting and scouting locations, after the compromises he had made on his poorly-received 2017 film "Rangoon" he would not go ahead without agreement for a more ambitious project with a greater special effects budget than Netflix was prepared to agree.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: Radio Television of Kosovo (RTK; , / "Radio Televizija Kosova") is the public service broadcaster in Kosovo. RTK operates two radio services broadcasting a diverse programming of news and entertainment and four 24-hour television services broadcasting on terrestrial and satellite networks.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: RTK replaced (The Radio Television of Prishtina, RTP), which ceased to function in July 1990. After UNMIK took over the administration of Kosovo in June 1999 and re-employed former RTP staffs, RTK began broadcasting in September 1999 via analog satellite in PAL and SECAM television broadcast standards with a daily two-hour transmission, expanding to four hours per day in November 2000, with programming mainly in Albanian and once-a-day news edition in Serbian and Turkish. The following July, it expanded to seven hours a day and began offering programming in Bosnian as well.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: In 2001, RTK was established as an independent public service broadcaster by a UNMIK broadcasting regulation. The station was initially managed by the European Broadcasting Union to permit time for a non-political Board of Directors to be established. This was in place and the station was independent of the EBU by the end of the year. In January 2002, an office was opened in Tirana, with a website launching in July. A second office was opened in Tetovo in November 2002.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: In 2002, at which time it was broadcasting 15 hours a day, 35% of the station's broadcasts were produced externally, with the bulk of programming local. It included news and business coverage as well as farming information. Broadcasting remained multilingual, with programming in another language (the Romani language magazine “Yekhipe") beginning in September 2003. On 22 December of that year, the station began broadcasting 24 hours a day. Also in 2002, RTK began hosting awards, with the best news moderator being honored by the "Drita Germizaj" award and the best cameraman by the "Rudolf Sopi" award.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: RTK's radio transmission began with the October 1999 acquisition of the multilingual public radio station "Radio Prishtina", which became "Radio Kosovo". In 2000, it acquired the multi-ethnic UN youth radio station Radio Blue Sky.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: In 2013, RTK introduced a new logo and a newly corporate identity for the first time of 14 years since 1999. By that, the grey-coloured 1-numeral along with the red letter R, the white letter T, and the yellow letter K are all replaced by something brand new that is the RTK wordmark which is coloured blue, but it has the letter K being put inside a half square. At the same time, RTK's TV services were expanded to include a channel called RTK 2, which is intended to focus on minorities, and with it, all minority language programming were moved from RTK 1 to RTK 2.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: By 2014, RTK saw the launch of two new stations such as RTK 3 which is a news channel and RTK 4 which is an arts and documentary channel.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: Journalists at RTK have repeatedly protested in 2015 against political interference, up to asking for the dismissal of chief editors for obstruction and internal censorship.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: RTK is regulated by the Law on Public Broadcasting. Its financing was originally guaranteed by a license fee paid over electricity bill, until the Constitutional Court declared that it was not due and shifted RTK's budget over state subsidy (0.7% of Kosovo's budget). The change raised concerns for the preservation of RTK's independence. The legal requirement for RTK to plan an end to the transitional state budget funding has not been enacted.


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: RTK has been criticised for lack of investigative journalism and political bias, e.g. in the extensive coverage of the ruling political party (including the annual meeting of the ruling Democratic Party of Kosovo) as opposed to the short and misleading coverage of opposition Vetëvendosje 2012 protests, which was deemed "a major signal of state financing putting the editorial independence of public television at risk" (IREX, 2013b). Moreover, RTK coverage only reaches 62.7% of Kosovo's territory


title: Radio Television of Kosovo

text: RTK Board members are elected by the Parliament by majority vote, thus entrusting their appointment to the majority parties. Political pressures aside, RTK maintains an untapped potential thanks to good equipment and professional editors and journalists.


title: 2K (company)

text: 2K is an American video game publisher based in Novato, California. 2K was founded under Take-Two Interactive in January 2005 through the 2K Games and 2K Sports labels, following Take-Two Interactive's acquisition of Visual Concepts that same month. Originally based in New York City, it moved to Novato in 2007. A third label, 2K Play, was added in September 2007. 2K is governed by David Ismailer as president and Phil Dixon as COO. A motion capture studio for 2K is based in Petaluma, California.


title: 2K (company)

text: On January 24, 2005, Take-Two Interactive announced that it had acquired Visual Concepts, including its Kush Games subsidiary and the intellectual property of the "2K" sports-game series, from Sega for  million. The following day Take-Two Interactive established the 2K publishing label, consisting of the sub-labels 2K Games and 2K Sports, with the latter focusing on sports games. Several of Take-Two Interactive's development studios—Visual Concepts, Kush Games, Indie Built, Venom Games, PopTop Software, and Frog City Software—became studios of 2K, and Take-Two Licensing was merged into the new label.


title: 2K (company)

text: On January 21, 2006, a fire heavily damaged the administration and marketing portions of 2K's offices. In June 2007 2K announced that they had closed their offices in New York City and would move to a new location on the West Coast, namely Novato, California.


title: 2K (company)

text: On September 10, 2007, Take-Two Interactive announced that they had struck a partnership with Nickelodeon on publishing games based on their licenses. Alongside this announcement, Take-Two Interactive introduced a third 2K label, 2K Play, to focus on casual games. Through this opening, 2K absorbed all assets of Take-Two Interactive's budget-range publisher Global Star Software, including the game "Carnival Games", the studio Cat Daddy Games, and games based on "Deal or No Deal".


title: 2K (company)

text: In 2013, 2K obtained the rights to publish video games based on the professional wrestling company, WWE.


title: 2K (company)

text: On May 4, 2017, 2K's co-founder and until-then president, Christoph Hartmann, announced that he had stepped down from his position. Hartmann had worked for Take-Two Interactive for roughly 20 years, but did not state a reason for his departure. He later joined Amazon Game Studios in August 2018. He was succeeded by previous chief operating officer (COO) David Ismailer later in May 2017. The role of COO was filled by Phil Dixon, formerly of Betfair, in November 2017, and Melissa Bell was hired as senior vice president and head of global marketing in April 2018.


title: 2K (company)

text: On September 25, 2018, 2K announced 2K Foundations, a program that would "support underserved communities across the nation by refurbishing basketball courts in neighborhoods that need them the most". Microsoft will also partner with 2K to establish Xbox One S gaming-stations at these courts. 2K Foundations planned to refurbish 12 basketball courts in several cities across the United States (including Cincinnati, Baltimore, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cleveland) within its first year.


title: 2K (company)

text: 2K acquired HB Studios in March 2021, who previously developed "The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour" and "PGA Tour 2K21" under the 2K Sports' publishing label. The acquisition includes the rights to HB's "Golf Club" series, which has since relaunched as the "PGA Tour 2K" series, and is now officially licensed by the PGA Tour itself. Additionally, 2K announced they had secured a contract with Tiger Woods, who had previously been a key figure for Electronic Arts' own "PGA Tour" series, as an executive director and consultant for future 2K "PGA Tour" games as well as his likeness for the games.


title: 2K (company)

text: Also in March 2021, 2K acquired the games division of HookBang based in Austin, Texas, which had supported work on the "NBA 2K" series in the past. The division was relocated to a new Austin location and rebranded as Visual Concepts Austin to continue support for that series.


title: 2K (company)

text: In September 2022, 2K's support team was hacked. In October 2022, 2K confirmed their user data was stolen and placed on sale.


title: Jack Haley

text: John Joseph Haley Jr. (August 10, 1897 – June 6, 1979) was an American actor, comedian, dancer, radio host, singer and vaudevillian. He was best known for his portrayal of the Tin Man and his farmhand counterpart Hickory in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film "The Wizard of Oz".


title: Jack Haley

text: Haley was born on August 10, 1897. His father was a waiter by trade, and later a ship's steward. He died in the wreck of the schooner Charles A. Briggs at Nahant, Massachusetts on February 1, 1898, when Jack was almost six months old. He had one older brother, William Anthony "Bill" Haley, a musician, who died of pneumonia in 1916 at the age of twenty-one after contracting tuberculosis.


title: Jack Haley

text: Haley headlined in vaudeville as a song-and-dance comedian. One of his closest friends was Fred Allen, who would frequently mention "Mr. Jacob Haley of Newton Highlands, Massachusetts" on the air. Haley made a few phonograph records in 1923, and in the early 1930s, Haley starred in comedy shorts for Vitaphone in Brooklyn, New York. His wide-eyed, good-natured expression gained him supporting roles in musical feature films, including "Poor Little Rich Girl" with Shirley Temple, "Higher and Higher" with Frank Sinatra and the Irving Berlin musical "Alexander's Ragtime Band". Both "Poor Little Rich Girl" and "Alexander's Ragtime Band" were released by Twentieth Century-Fox. Haley was under contract to them and appeared in the Fox films "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" and "Pigskin Parade", marking his first appearance with Judy Garland.


title: Jack Haley

text: Haley hosted a radio show from 1937 to 1939 known to many as "The Jack Haley Show". The first season (1937-1938), the show was sponsored by Log Cabin Syrup and was known as "The Log Cabin Jamboree". The next season (1938-1939), the show was sponsored by Wonder Bread and was known as "The Wonder Show". During the second season the show featured Gale Gordon and Lucille Ball as regular radio performers.


title: Jack Haley

text: Haley returned to musical comedies in the 1940s. Most of his '40s work was for RKO Radio Pictures. He left the studio in 1947 when he refused to appear in a remake of RKO's "Seven Keys to Baldpate". Phillip Terry took the role. He subsequently went into real estate, taking guest roles in television series over the next couple of decades.


title: Jack Haley

text: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer hired Haley for the part of the Tin Man in "The Wizard of Oz" after its contracted song-and-dance comedian Buddy Ebsen suffered a severe reaction after inhaling aluminum powder from his silver face makeup, which triggered a congenital bronchial condition; the dust settled in Ebsen's lungs and, within a few days of principal photographic testing, he found himself struggling to breathe. For Haley, to avoid the same catastrophe, the dust was converted into a paste—even so, the paste caused an eye infection that sidelined Haley for four shooting days. Surgical treatment averted serious or permanent damage to Haley's eyes. Haley also portrayed the Tin Man's Kansas counterpart, Hickory Twicker, one of Aunt Em and Uncle Henry's farmhands.


title: Jack Haley

text: Haley did not remember the makeup or the costume fondly. Interviewed about the film years later by Tom Snyder, he related that many fans assumed making the film was a fun experience. Haley said, "Like hell it was. It was work!" For his role as the Tin Woodman, Haley spoke in the same soft tone he used when reading bedtime stories to his children. "Oz" was one of only two films Haley made for MGM. The other was "Pick a Star", a 1937 Hal Roach production distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


title: Jack Haley

text: Haley was raised Roman Catholic. He was a member of the Good Shepherd Parish and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California. His nephew Bob Dornan served as a Republican congressman for California.


title: Jack Haley

text: On Friday June 1, 1979, Haley suffered a heart attack. He died on June 6, 1979, at the UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at the age of 81. His funeral was held at the Church of the Good Shepherd and the eulogy was given by Ray Bolger who concluded it by saying, "It's going to be awfully lonely on that Yellow Brick Road now, Jack."


title: RoboCop 2

text: RoboCop 2 is a 1990 American science fiction action film directed by Irvin Kershner and written by Frank Miller and Walon Green. It stars Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O'Herlihy, Belinda Bauer, Tom Noonan and Gabriel Damon. It is the sequel to the 1987 film "RoboCop", the second entry in the "RoboCop" franchise, the last to feature Weller as RoboCop, and the last film Kershner directed before his death in 2010.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Set in a dystopian Detroit, the plot follows RoboCop (Weller) as he becomes embroiled in a scheme made by Omni Consumer Products to bankrupt and take over the city while also fighting the spread of a street drug and its gang of dealers led by Cain (Noonan). The film was shot on-location in Houston.


title: RoboCop 2

text: While receiving mixed reviews, the film received attention in 2013 from news media due to its plot predicting Detroit filing for bankruptcy in the future. It was nominated for three Saturn Awards, including Best Science Fiction Film, Best Performance by a Younger Actor (for Damon), and Best Special Effects (for Phil Tippett, Rob Bottin, and Peter Kuran).


title: RoboCop 2

text: In a near dystopian future, Detroit is close to bankruptcy after failing to pay off its debts to conglomerate Omni Consumer Products (OCP). The OCP chairman intends to have the city default on its debt, then foreclose on all public property, effectively taking over its government and allowing for OCP's on-going, radical urban-redevelopment plan (as established in the first film). To rally public opinion behind the project, OCP sparks an increase in street crime by terminating the privatized Detroit Police Department's pension plans and cutting salaries, triggering a police strike.


title: RoboCop 2

text: RoboCop remains on duty with his partner, Anne Lewis. They raid a manufacturing plant of Nuke, a new designer drug plaguing Detroit. The cartel's leader Cain and his prepubescent accomplice Hob escape. RoboCop has flashbacks to his previous life as Alex Murphy, and has begun watching his wife and son outside their home. Still grieving over the death of her husband, his wife brings litigation against OCP, complaining of harassment. After his handlers dress him down, RoboCop tells his wife that Murphy is dead.


title: RoboCop 2

text: OCP struggles to develop RoboCop 2, a police droid fitted with the brains of legally-dead police officers, intended for mass production to replace the striking police force. The resurrected cops keep committing suicide upon activation. Morally-warped psychologist Dr. Juliette Faxx theorizes that Murphy's strong moral code and strict Catholic upbringing were critical in his initial success; she convinces the Chairman to let her lead the project to recover their 90-million dollar research and development investment. The research staff are later horrified to learn that she seeks to use death row inmates, who desire power and immortality, rather than police officers.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Cain fears losing his grip after the Delta City project, and uses corrupt police officer Duffy to undermine OCP and RoboCop's enforcement efforts. RoboCop tracks down Duffy and violently confronts him, revealing Cain's hideout. He confronts Cain's gang at an abandoned construction site, but he walks into a trap and is overwhelmed. The criminals cut apart RoboCop's body and dump the pieces in front of his precinct. Cain has Duffy vivisected for revealing their location and encourages Hob to watch.


title: RoboCop 2

text: RoboCop is repaired, but Faxx intentionally reprograms him with new and softer directives with the approval of the OCP Board of Directors that severely impede his ability to perform his duties so that her project can be selected. RoboCop eventually clears these by shocking himself with a high voltage transformer and rebooting his system. Murphy motivates the striking officers to aid him in raiding Cain's hideout. As Cain tries to escape, RoboCop wounds and apprehends him. Hob escapes and takes control of Cain's drug empire. Believing she can control Cain via his Nuke addiction, Faxx selects him for the RoboCop 2 project and disconnects his life support. Surgeons place his brain in a heavily armed robotic body, similar to ED-209, and reactivate him.


title: RoboCop 2

text: After failing to pay the city's debts via voluntary fundraising, the Mayor is contacted by Hob, who offers to retire the city's entire debt in exchange for a "hands off" policy towards Nuke, thereby nullifying OCP's scheme and preventing Delta City's construction. Threatened by this move, OCP sends Cain to the meeting. Cain slaughters everyone but the mayor, who escapes. RoboCop arrives to find a wounded Hob, who identifies the attacker before dying.


title: RoboCop 2

text: The chairman presents an unveiling ceremony for Cain and Delta City, their redevelopment plan. When he presents a canister of Nuke, Cain's uncontrollable addiction causes him to disobey his programming and murder many civilians and police officers. RoboCop arrives and fights Cain, and their battle extends to the street. RoboCop recovers the Nuke canister and Lewis uses it to distract Cain. RoboCop leaps onto his back, shoots through his armor, rips out his brain and smashes it onto the ground, ending Cain's rampage. The Chairman and Johnson decide to use Dr. Faxx as the scapegoat for Cain's attack. As Lewis complains that OCP is going to avoid accountability again, RoboCop insists they must be patient because "we're only human".


title: RoboCop 2

text: "RoboCop" screenwriters Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner started drafting a sequel in September 1987 per strong demand by Orion which imposed a deadline of December 31, 1987. Neumeir and Miner rushed the screenplay as they were also simultaneously writing for another Orion project, "Company Man"; a film about the Central Intelligence Agency's involvement in the Contras, it was planned to be directed by Oliver Stone, star Paul Newman, and released before the next United States election.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Neumeier and Miner's draft, "RoboCop 2: The Corporate Wars", is set 25 years after RoboCop, trying to stop a bank-robbery, is blown up by a thief. The titular protagonist wakes up in a new United States named AmeriPlex, consisting of upper-class "plexes" made out of former cities (i.e. NewYorkPlex, RioPlex, DelhiPlex) and many more shantytowns with residents named OutPlexers. He is revived in a now-abandoned building for the defunct Omni-Consumer Products by two goons of a "super-entrepreneur" named Ted Flicker, who plans to make the national government a private corporate entity he owns. Flicker also currently has a lot of control over the country, despite another person (who was a former comedian) being the president. RoboCop's new system is also the central computer system of AmeriPlex, NeuroBrain.


title: RoboCop 2

text: "RoboCop 2" follows numerous subplots, such as Flicker's plan for domination, a violence-spreading narcotic named Smudge, the Internal Grid Security commander trying to commit genocide against the OutPlexers, and RoboCop's code being played with by an American scientist and a Chinese hacker. The script expands upon the first film's consumerist aspects; those in the high-class city plexes eat at LeisureGold where ServiceDroids serve them and make love with SexBots at various brothels; while the environment's media landscape is filled with "NewsBlips," mood-enhancing drugs ads, and MoonDog, a rapper from space, changing public opinion.


title: RoboCop 2

text: On March 7, 1988, a five-month Writers Guild of America strike began, and its length resulted in Neumeier and Miner being fired from the project for breach of contract. Additionally, the writers and Orion struggled to agree on a story, with the studio turned off by the gritty parts of Neumeier and Miner's draft. Stone also stopped "Company Man" to work on "Talk Radio" (1988), making Neumeier and Miner no longer involved at Orion.


title: RoboCop 2

text: In order for a sequel to still be possible, Orion had to sign a waiver to develop other "RoboCop" scripts, and, before he was fired, Neumeier recommended two popular comic book authors and artists to write them: Alan Moore and Frank Miller. Although Moore rejected the offer under the reason of "I don't do movies," Miller accepted and started writing his own script, which went through four drafts. Davison hired Miller through his company Tobor Pictures initially to write "RoboCop 3", only for the comic book author to write "RoboCop 2" after Miner and Neumeier's firing. Miller, a year before the original film's release, became popular for his edgy, "tragic hero" take on the Batman character, a style also suited for RoboCop.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Though there are no reports of Miller taking influence from "The Corporate Wars", both drafts share multiple traits: they begin their plots during the holiday season, follow a battle between corporations and poor citizens, depict an entrepreneur trying to buy governments (for Miller's screenplay, a city's government instead of a country's), have Asian hackers as RoboCop's sidekick (in Miller's case, a Japanese teenager named Keiko McFarland), and have a violence-causing drug selling throughout society.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Miller's first draft was less comic and had a bigger emphasis on corporate fascism than the final film, with the last showdown pitting RoboCop against OCP forces instead of RoboCop 2. It was enjoyed by Davison for its grittiness, "inventive action," humor, and politics; however, Orion rejected it as "unfilmable" and brought in a screenwriter of the violent western film "The Wild Bunch" (1969), Walon Green, to re-write it. Cut material included backstories for Anne Lewis and the marriage between Alex Murphy and his wife Ellen. Miller later used his treatment as the story of his own series of "RoboCop" comics published in the 2000s.


title: RoboCop 2

text: "RoboCop" (1987) producer Jon Davison was skeptical about doing a sequel to "RoboCop". He had a negative opinion on sequel films, finding most of them worse than their predecessors and disliking not being able to make a different movie in order to produce another product audiences of the first film were used to. Additionally, he was in a dilemma between producing a second "RoboCop" film and Warren Beatty's screen adaptation of the "Dick Tracy" comics; he chose to do "RoboCop 2", as ""RoboCop" is my movie and "Dick Tracy" is more Warren's movie". Paul Verhoeven did not return as he was working on "Total Recall" (1990). As with the first film, multiple directors rejected offers from Davison to direct "RoboCop 2", although for different reasons; Davison reported potentials either concerned about following up Verhoeven's directing or not wanting to direct a sequel film. Alex Cox, for one week, was interested in the project, only to have a viewing of "The Exorcist" (1973) change his decision.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Davison first hired his friend Tim Hunter, most known for "River's Edge" (1986), to direct "RoboCop 2", citing his "realistic tone with actors" and "real dark sensibility" as reasons. However, Hunter's vision of an entirely dark product like the first film was at odds with Miller's intention of a dark yet humorous film, leading to a tonally unfocused script by June 1989, 11 weeks before filming started and when Hunter left the project. He was replaced by Irvin Kershner, who previously experienced taking over the director's chair in a film series with the "Star Wars" sequel "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980). Kershner luckily had the same goals as Miller, but Davison, earlier in development, made a requirement for a replacement director to not change the screenplay once shooting started; however, given the very close deadline to begin filming and the messy state of the script, Kershner had no choice but to work with Miller during filming, as well as editing, to tidy up the screenplay. Miller rejected other work offers to do this. Kershner's biggest addition was dialogue, as it was part of Miller's writing to be sparse with it; and he also threw out additional scenes written by Green for reasons of Kershner and Miller already re-working the script.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Orion Pictures was far more dictatorial with "RoboCop 2" than the 1987 first film, strongly going against input from Miller, Kershner, and the actors; and scheduling a release date before the story was completed, resulting in a rushed production. Neumeir and Miner reported this activity going on, claiming Orion controlled the material based on business decisions rather than creativity. According to Weller, the film did not have a proper third act as Orion thought "the monster's going to be enough." The planned released date was originally Christmas 1989 before being moved to an early summer date.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Initially, Orion was skeptical of casting Weller, under the reasoning that the audience would find RoboCop the same if another actor was under the helmet, similar to the titular character of Universal's "The Mummy". Weller himself was also skeptical coming back; he disliked Neumeier and Miner's draft as a "cartoon" and lacking in tension, felt not "complete with the character" thinking "there was something else to say with it," and wondered if he should do months of training for acting in a RoboCop suit or get paid for filming in the Caribbean for ten weeks. Ultimately, Weller returned for Miller and Green's new screenplay, and the fact that he would again work with mime Moni Yakim, who developed RoboCop movements for Weller in the first film; he praised him as the "magic element" to solve all of a crew's problems. Additionally, Russell Towery returned as Weller's stunt double, with Weller more dependent on him than the first movie.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Allen, despite already having played a cop character in the first RoboCop, still made preparations for shooting "RoboCop 2"; she learned martial arts and spent two months of training at a Los Angeles police academy. Although Cain was originally planned to be a typical professionally-suited drug dealer, his actor, Tom Noonan, came up with the character being a former hippie, with the actor using his experience as one in the 1960s.


title: RoboCop 2

text: "RoboCop 2" was chiefly filmed in Houston. Kershner mentioned that Houston was an ideal location due to the relative calmness of Downtown Houston at night. He also claimed that they were shooting in winter, and snow and rain would be an inappropriate climate for film production. Jefferson Davis Hospital was used as the location for the Nuke manufacturing plant. The finale of the film was shot in the Houston Theater District near Wortham Theater Center and Alley Theatre. Cullen Center was depicted as the headquarters of Omni Consumer Products, while Houston City Hall was shown in a scene in which Mayor Kuzak speaks to the press. The George R. Brown Convention Center and the Bank of America Center were also included in the film. Additional footage was filmed at the decommissioned Hiram Clarke Power Plant.


title: RoboCop 2

text: With Kershner's first few weeks spent storyboarding the visual effects during pre-production, the first month of filming "RoboCop 2" were for night filming and Vistavision-camera background plates for Phil Tippett's animated special effects of the final battle scenes. A week spent filming a major sequence at an abandoned steel mill established how Kershner would direct the film's other scenes in terms of acting, lighting, and camera movements.


title: RoboCop 2

text: The second unit was directed by Conrad Palmisano and mostly shot in Los Angeles, although a stunt sequence by the unit was reported to be filmed near the entrance of the Wortham Theater Center. it got so busy it was unable to produce all the shots Kershner wanted; this meant the director had to film at the unit for a few weeks.


title: RoboCop 2

text: A magazine article published at the time of filming described the environment on set as "hell on earth," with the cast and crew rebelling against Kershner's "obsessive finickyness" and "costly reshoots." However, this was debunked by Weller who said, "Kersh didn't delay anything, he's very, very instinctive - he had his mind made up, usually ahead of time." Kershner said "I didn't shoot a lot of film at all. You see, if I'd tried to do a lot of coverage, I would never have finished. I would have been 120 days. I had to pretty much lock it in, piece by piece by piece, giving myself an out here and there, a variation, so I wasn't totally locked in. That way, I could finish. If I didn't do that, this would have gone on forever. I never would have gotten each day's work done."


title: RoboCop 2

text: Although, at the time, Allen praised Kershner for his creativeness and attention to detail, she later criticized the director as antagonistic and ruining the humor and "heart" of the screenplay. Peter Weller was also critical of the script: ""RoboCop 2" didn't have a third act. I told the producers and Irv Kershner up front, and Frank Miller. I told them all. I said, 'Where's the third act here, man? So I beat up a big monster. In the third act, you have to have your Dan O'Herlihy. Somebody's got to be the third act.' 'No, no, the monster's going to be enough.' 'Look, it's not enough!'" Despite the script problem, he enjoyed working on the movie with Kershner: "I had a good time making "RoboCop 2" but the script did not have the code, the spine, or the soul of the first one." Noonan also claimed to be "relaxed" and enjoying himself on set, where "everyone was incredibly nice," and found Kershner able to adapt with many location and script changes during shooting.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Phil Tippett returned from the first "RoboCop" to do the visual effects for the sequel, this time leading all the effects units. "RoboCop 2" was Tippett and Kershner's second collaboration, after Tippett worked at Industrial Light & Magic for "The Empire Strikes Back".


title: RoboCop 2

text: RoboCop suit designer Rob Bottin, although not overseeing the process like in the first film, returned to produce a new suit for the second film. The first suit was dark chrome using metal flake and various green, purple, and gold colors to create a look made iridescent and steel-like by Jost Vacano's fluorescent lighting; however, since Mark Irwin replaced Vacano for cinematographer and used conventional lighting, the second film suit (although using a black base like the other suit) looked light-bluer, so iridescent colors were more directly applied with powder. Thanks to a bigger budget, the effects team had more time to paint and polish the suit, which led to Bottin's desired "show car" look he couldn't achieve in the first. With a lot of planning and fastener hunting, Bottin also built all parts of the suit to come on and off quickly so that it couldn't decay from the actor having it on too long, which was the case of the first film.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Stop-motion and computer animation was used for the final showdown between the RoboCop and RoboCop 2 characters.


title: RoboCop 2

text: The film score was composed and conducted by Leonard Rosenman, who did not use any of Basil Poledouris's themes from the first film, instead composing entirely new themes and "leitmotifs". The soundtrack album was released by Varèse Sarabande.


title: RoboCop 2

text: The glam metal group Babylon A.D. released a song called "The Kid Goes Wild", written by members Derek Davis, Vic Pepe, and Jack Ponti. The song is played in the background in the middle part of the film, and it was also used to promote the film. The group created a music video featuring RoboCop targeting the band and having a shootout with some bad guys (footage of the film was also used).


title: RoboCop 2

text: To promote the film, RoboCop made a guest appearance at WCW's pay-per-view event Capital Combat, where he rescued Sting from The Four Horsemen.


title: RoboCop 2

text: The film was first released to VHS on December 13, 1990, and was later released to DVD in 1998. The film first received a Blu-ray release in 2011. VHS copies of "RoboCop 2" began with an anti-drug PSA starring an out-of-character Weller that announced the Boys & Girls Clubs of America were where there was "no pot, no pills, no crack, no smack, no coke — no exceptions."


title: RoboCop 2

text: "RoboCop 2" debuted as the second-highest-grossing film at the box office in its opening weekend. It went on to gross $45.7 million at the U.S. box office and additional $22,505,000 from video rentals.


title: RoboCop 2

text: "RoboCop 2" received mixed reviews from critics. While the special effects and action sequences are widely praised, a common complaint was that the film did not focus enough on RoboCop and his partner Lewis and that the film's human story of the man trapped inside the machine was ultimately lost within a sea of violence.


title: RoboCop 2

text: In his "Chicago Sun Times" review, Roger Ebert wrote: "Cain's sidekicks include a violent, foul-mouthed young boy named Hob, who looks to be about 12 years old but kills people without remorse, swears like Eddie Murphy, and eventually takes over the drug business... The movie's screenplay is a confusion of half-baked and unfinished ideas... the use of that killer child is beneath contempt."


title: RoboCop 2

text: The film "reset" RoboCop's character by turning him back into the monotone-voiced peacekeeper seen early in the first film, despite his reclaiming his human identity and personality by the end of that film. Many were also critical of the child villain Hob; David Nusair of Reel Film Reviews stated, "That the film asks us to swallow a moment late in the story that features Robo taking pity on an injured Hob is heavy-handed and ridiculous (we should probably be thankful the screenwriters didn't have RoboCop say something like, 'Look at what these vile drugs have done to this innocent boy')."


title: RoboCop 2

text: Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" wrote, "Unlike "RoboCop", a clever and original science-fiction film with a genuinely tragic vision of its central character, "Robocop 2" doesn't bother to do anything new. It freely borrows the situation, characters and moral questions posed by the first film." She further adds, "The difference between "Robocop" and its sequel, [...] is the difference between an idea and an afterthought." She also expressed her opinion about the Hob character, "The aimlessness of "Robocop 2" runs so deep that after exploiting the inherent shock value of such an innocent-looking killer, the film tries to capitalize on his youth by also giving him a tearful deathbed scene." Variety wrote: "This ultraviolent, nihilistic sequel has enough technical dazzle to impress hardware fans, but obviously no one in the Orion front office told filmmakers that less is more." Peter Rainer of the "Los Angeles Times" panned the film.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Jay Scott, of "The Globe and Mail", was one of the few prominent critics who admired the film calling it a "sleek and clever sequel. For fans of violent but clever action films, "RoboCop 2" may be the sultry season's best bet: you get the gore of "Total Recall" and the satiric smarts of "" in one high-tech package held together by modest B-movie strings. "RoboCop 2" alludes to classics of horror and science-fiction "(Frankenstein", "Metropolis", "Westworld)", for sure, but it also evokes less rarefied examples of the same genres–"Forbidden Planet", "Godzilla", and that Z-movie about Hitler's brain in a bottle. It's ironic that the directorial coach of the first "RoboCop", Paul Verhoeven, went on to "Total Recall"; couldn't he see that the script for "Robo 2" was sleeker and swifter than Arnie's cumbersome vehicle? His absence in the driver's seat is happily unnoticed because Irvin Kershner, the engineer of sequels that often zip qualitatively past the originals ("The Empire Strikes Back"," The Return of a Man Called Horse", and the best Sean Connery–James Bond of all, "Never Say Never Again"), has tuned-up the premise until it purrs."


title: RoboCop 2

text: Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 39 reviews to give the film a score of 28%, with an average rating of 4.70/10. The site's consensus reads, "A less satisfying rehash that generally lives down to the negative stereotype of sequels, "Robocop 2" tries to deliver more of everything and ends up with less". On Metacritic the film has a score of 42 based on reviews from 22 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B− on scale of A to F.


title: RoboCop 2

text: The plot element of Detroit's bankruptcy received attention from the news media after this actually happened in 2013.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Kershner took the offer to direct "RoboCop 2". "RoboCop 2" continues the first film's critiques on American capitalism, corporate power and its resulting militarization and other perceived negative impacts; the city's greedy politics continue to benefit only a few, while other citizens have to face problems of crime, pollution, and infrastructure dilapidation due to inadequate restructuring and police strikes. Unlike the predecessor which had a self-aware tone and was hopeful the human race would last due to its rebelliousness, "RoboCop 2"s take on the corporate and political system is cynical, and more in the forefront of the story, with more staff of Omni-Consumer Products (including its CEO) becoming antagonists. It also includes a few humorous pokes at bleeding-heart liberalism, such as OCP recoding RoboCop into an environmentalist role model.


title: RoboCop 2

text: The creation of a second RoboCop to repeat the success of the original cyborg can be interpreted as a take on companies making their older products quickly out-of-date in order to keep selling new ones, and RoboCop 2's uncontrolled murdering of humans showcases how corporate entities devalue human life to a variable in an equation. More mock advertisements are seen, such as the MagnaVolt security system that electrocutes car thieves and the Sunblock 5000, a blue-and-green skincare product which can cause skin cancer itself to prevent getting skin cancer "ever since we lost the ozone layer." Noonan's idea behind Cain being a hippie was that a love for sex and drugs and hatred for law enforcement (common aspects of hippies) were negatively impacting a 1990s' Detroit.


title: RoboCop 2

text: "RoboCop 2" also elaborates on Officer Murphy's remaining humanity and the tech's impact on it, another reason Kershner wanted to direct; he found the conflict a symbol on real-life society becoming programmed and "roboticized" by outside forces unconsciously. Kershner's intention with "RoboCop 2" was to focus more on human depth and emotions and less on violence than the first film: "It's really the violence of the soul, the violence of human interaction that counts, and that's all there."


title: RoboCop 2

text: Weller summarized that the character, after "finding out" in the predecessor, is now "reaching out for ways to return to who he was." A scene depicts RoboCop spying on his former wife's home that brings back memories of his previous life; the camera presents from his point-of-view in these set of memories, which end with Murphy seeing his human face in a bathroom, changing his expression from a smile to frown, and match cutting back to the helmeted face of RoboCop in the police car. Fordham University social professor Maxwell Guttman suggests that while having memories don't make RoboCop more human than any other regular cyborg, the addition of unnecessary, lengthy, and conflicting directives by Dr. Juliette Faxx symbolizes how complicated human behavioral science is.


title: RoboCop 2

text: David Roche and Isabelle Schmitt-Pitiot interpreted mirror sequences in "RoboCop 2" and its predecessor as showing identity problems in the hypermasculine figure, mourning the loss of a "natural" masculine identity; while the first film's sequence showcased a mixture of a fake human face and electronic parts on his head as him having a fragmented identity, the second film's memory scene showcases two separate identities, where the real human one is no longer a part of him. The re-programming of RoboCop's code and use of it for a different RoboCop also presents masculinity as changing, taking various forms, and revealing hypermasculinity to not be a good form in comparison to others.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Serial killer Nathaniel White claimed to have found inspiration for his first murder while watching "RoboCop 2": "The first girl I killed was from a 'RoboCop' movie... I seen him cut somebody's throat then take the knife and slit down the chest to the stomach and left the body in a certain position. With the first person I killed I did exactly what I saw in the movie."


title: RoboCop 2

text: A mass market paperback novelization by Ed Naha, titled "RoboCop 2: A Novel", was published by Jove Books. Marvel Comics produced a three-issue adaptation of the film by Alan Grant. Like the novelization, the comic book series includes scenes omitted from the finished movie.


title: RoboCop 2

text: Frank Miller's original screenplay for "RoboCop 2" was turned into a nine-part comic book series titled "Frank Miller's RoboCop". Critical reaction to the comic adaptation of the Miller script was mixed. Ken Tucker of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the comic a "D" score, criticizing the "tired story" and lack of "interesting action." A recap written for the pop culture humor website I-Mockery said, "Having spent quite a lot of time with these comics over the past several days researching and writing this article, I can honestly say that it makes me want to watch the movie version of "RoboCop 2" again just so I can get the bad taste out of my mouth. Or prove to myself that the movie couldn't be worse than this."


title: ABBA Voyage

text: ABBA Voyage is a virtual concert residency by the Swedish pop group ABBA. The concerts feature virtual avatars (dubbed 'ABBAtars'), depicting the group as they appeared in 1977. The concerts are held in a purpose-built venue at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London, officially called the ABBA Arena.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: The digital versions of ABBA have been created with motion capture and performance techniques with the four band members and the visual effects company Industrial Light & Magic, in what is the company’s first foray into music.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: The ABBA Voyage concert has been staged with the help of producers Svana Gisla and Ludvig Andersson, director Baillie Walsh, co-executive producer Johan Renck and choreographer Wayne McGregor.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: Pophouse, a Swedish entertainment company, is a co-developer of the project and its lead investor. Two Pophouse executives, Michael Bolingbroke and Per Sundin, both serve in leadership positions of the production company behind the show. According to multiple media reports, the project is one of the most expensive live music experiences in history, with a budget of $175 million.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: ABBA had unofficially split up in December 1982, and despite renewed interest in the band from the 1990s onwards, following the worldwide success of their greatest hits album "ABBA Gold," the musical "Mamma Mia!" and its film adaptation, the members had repeatedly refused to re-form. Reportedly, they turned down an offer of $1 billion in 2000 to perform again. In 2008, Björn Ulvaeus told "The Sunday Telegraph", "We will never appear on stage again. There is simply no motivation to re-group." He repeated the statement in an interview in 2014 while promoting the publication of "ABBA: The Official Photo Book".


title: ABBA Voyage

text: In September 2017, Benny Andersson told Swedish newspaper "Expressen" that there were plans for ABBA to tour "virtually", using digital avatars of the group. Ulvaeus told the BBC that the idea had been proposed to the band by Simon Fuller. The idea of using representations of a singer backed by a live band originated with "" in the 1990s, when Elvis Presley "sang" at concerts via old video clips accompanied by his live backup band. In April 2018, the four members issued a statement saying that during preparations for the tour, they had regrouped in the studio and had recorded two new songs, titled "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down".


title: ABBA Voyage

text: On 26 August 2021, the "ABBA Voyage" website was launched, indicating the announcement of a new project a week later. On 2 September 2021, a globally-streamed press conference from the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in east London confirmed that the virtual concerts would take place in London from 27 May 2022. In addition, it was announced that a new ABBA album, "Voyage", would be released on 5 November. The new album would feature ten songs including the previously-announced "I Still Have Faith in You" and "Don't Shut Me Down". The concerts feature a 10-piece live band playing alongside the group's avatars, performing 22 of ABBA's songs. The live band was selected by James Righton of Klaxons and features Little Boots on keys.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: Concerts started in May 2022, and are currently extended until November 2023, with the possibility to extend the shows up until April 2026, when the permission for the ABBA Arena expires to give space to a housing project on the site.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: The ABBA band members wore motion-capture suits as part of the development process and were filmed as they performed a 22-song set over the course of five weeks. Some 160 cameras were used, with graphics later added by Industrial Light & Magic. The choreography is based on the band members' real movements, but captured from younger body doubles. The digital band, utilising songs' originally-recorded vocals, are accompanied by a live instrumental band on stage.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: The opening night of ABBA Voyage was attended by celebrities, including Kylie Minogue, Keira Knightley, Kate Moss, Sharleen Spiteri, and Carola Häggkvist, as well as members of the Swedish royal family including Carl XVI Gustaf and Queen Silvia. Mark Sutherland of "Variety" wrote that the crowd gave a standing ovation at the concert. After the 90-minute avatar performance, the four members of ABBA appeared on stage and gave a curtain call. The first showing was met with positive acclaim.


title: ABBA Voyage

text: The following set list was obtained from the concert held on 26 May 2022 at the ABBA Arena in London, the opening show. It does not represent all concerts for the duration of the residency.


title: Safaree Samuels

text: Safaree Lloyd Samuels (born July 4, 1981) is a Jamaican-American rapper. Samuels started his musical career in the group the Hoodstars in the early 2000s alongside American rapper Nicki Minaj. Samuels is also known as a solo artist. In 2016, he joined the cast of the VH1 reality show, "". In 2017, he moved back to his hometown of New York City and joined the "" cast.


title: Safaree Samuels

text: Safaree Lloyd Samuels was born to immigrant Jamaican parents in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on July 4, 1981. He has two sisters, Shaneequa and Samantha Samuels. He attended Midwood High School.


title: Safaree Samuels

text: Samuels started his musical career in the group the Hoodstars, formed in the early 2000s with rappers Nicki Minaj, Lou$tar, and Seven Up. In 2004, the group recorded the entrance song for WWE Diva Victoria, "Don't Mess With", which was featured on the compilation album "". After the group disbanded, Minaj started her solo career and Samuels supported her as a hype man.


title: Safaree Samuels

text: In 2012, he appeared in Minaj's music video "Stupid Hoe". In 2012, Minaj released her second album, "", where Samuels has six writing credits and was featured on the track "Press Conference".


title: Safaree Samuels

text: In 2015, Samuels released the mixtapes, "It Is What It Is" and "It Is What It Is, Vol. 2". In early 2016, he made appearance in the second season of "". In May 2016, it was announced that Samuels will join the cast of VH1 reality show, ""<nowiki>'s</nowiki> third season, which premiered in August 2016. In July 2016, he released a new mixtape titled "Real Yard Vibes". In August 2017, it was announced that Samuels would compete in the first season of VH1's "Scared Famous", which premiered in October 2017.


title: Safaree Samuels

text: In February 2018, Samuels was honored with a Blue & Bougie Impact Award. In the same month, a nude picture and video of Samuels was leaked online. In 2019, Safaree debuted the "Anaconda" line of dildos molded from his own penis. In 2020, Safaree launched an OnlyFans account sharing his amateur pornographic videos for $20 per month.


title: Safaree Samuels

text: Samuels dated rapper Nicki Minaj from 2000 until their breakup in 2014. Several tracks on Minaj's third album "The Pinkprint" are believed to have been inspired by the end of their relationship. In 2016, he attempted to sue Minaj and accused her of not crediting him on "The Pinkprint".


title: Safaree Samuels

text: He became engaged to model, TV personality and actress Erica Mena on Christmas Eve 2018. The couple married on October 7, 2019. On February 3, 2020, Samuels and Mena welcomed their daughter. On May 4, 2021, he announced that he and Mena were expecting their second child together. On May 25, 2021, TMZ reported that Mena officially filed for divorce from Samuels. On June 28, 2021, he announced the arrival of their second child, a boy.<br>


title: Fungibility

text: In economics, fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are essentially interchangeable, and each of whose parts is indistinguishable from any other part. Fungible tokens can be exchanged or replaced; for example, a $100 note can easily be exchanged for twenty $5 bills. In contrast, non-fungible tokens cannot be exchanged in the same manner.


title: Fungibility

text: For example, gold is fungible because its value doesn’t depend on any specific form, whether of coins, ingots, or other states. However, a unique item such as a gold statue by a famous artist would not be considered fungible. In short, a thing is fungible when all equivalent amounts of that thing are interchangeable. Fungible commodities include sweet crude oil, company shares, bonds, other precious metals, and currencies.


title: Fungibility

text: Fungibility refers only to the equivalence and indistinguishability of each unit of a commodity with other units of the same commodity, and not to the exchange of one commodity for another.


title: Fungibility

text: The word "fungibility" comes from the Latin "fungibilis", from the verb "fungī", meaning "to perform", via phrases such as "fungi vice", meaning "serve in place of". It is related to words such as "function" and "defunct".


title: Fungibility

text: Fungibility is different from liquidity. A good is said to be liquid if it can be easily exchanged for money or another good. A good is fungible if one unit of the good is substantially equivalent to another unit of the same good of the same quality at the same time, place, etc.


title: Fungibility

text: Notably, money is fungible: one US $10 banknote is interchangeable with any other genuine banknote like it. It is also interchangeable with two fives, ten ones, or any other combination of banknotes and coins adding up to $10.


title: Fungibility

text: On the other hand, diamonds and other gems are not perfectly fungible because their varying cuts, colors, grades, and sizes make it difficult to find several diamonds expected to have the same value. Packaged products on a retail shelf may be considered fungible if they are of the same type and equivalent in function and form. Customers and clerks can interchange packages freely until purchase, and sometimes afterward. After one opens the package and uses the product, however, it is usually considered unique and no longer interchangeable with unopened packages outside of exceptional circumstances, such as a return or exchange.


title: Fungibility

text: Cryptocurrencies are usually considered to be fungible assets, where one coin is equivalent to another. However, after a major breach in Japanese exchange Coincheck, token developers for cryptocurrency NEM added a special flag to hacked coins to indicate they are not to be traded or used.


title: Fungibility

text: Non-fungible tokens are similar to units of blockchain currency, except that they are connected to unique digital files, so that individual tokens can be considered to have a meaningful distinction from others.


title: Fungibility

text: Fungibility has been used to describe certain types of tasks that can be broken down into interchangeable pieces that are easily parallelized and are not interdependent on the other pieces. For example: If a worker can hand dig one meter of ditch in a day, and a ten-meter ditch needs to be dug, that worker can either be given ten days to complete the entire project, or nine more workers can be hired for a single day. Each worker can complete their piece of the project without interfering with the other workers, and more importantly, each worker is not "dependent" on the results of any of the other workers to complete their share of the total project.


title: Fungibility

text: On the other hand, non-fungible tasks tend to be highly serial in nature and require the completion of earlier steps before later steps can even be started. As an example of a serial task that is "not" fungible, suppose there was a group of nine newly pregnant women. After one month, these women would have experienced a total of nine months of pregnancy, but a complete baby would not have been formed.


title: Fungibility

text: Oxford University theoretical physicist David Deutsch has adopted the term "fungible" to describe the physical nature of quantum particles and universes within the quantum multiverse, where, by virtue of being identical in all respects, different particles chaotically divide or combine as a result of physical interactions from a common fungible fund in superposition.


title: Fungibility

text: In legal disputes in the United States, when one party is compelled to remedy another party as the result of a ruling or adjudication, the appropriate legal remedy may depend on the fungibility of the underlying right, obligation or property interest that is intended to be restored. Depending on whether the interests of the aggrieved party are fungible, a determination made by the trier of fact, the appropriate remedy may change. For example, a court may require specific performance (an equitable remedy) as a remedy for breach of contract, instead of the more favored remedy of monetary damages.


title: Fungibility

text: Belgium has adopted fungibility for its domestic central securities depository, CIK (Euroclear), which was set up in 1967–1968. According to royal decree No. 62, issued on 10 November 1967, depositors of fungible securities have the rights of co-ownership. This change was fundamental to the development of Euroclear, by then beginning to process Eurobonds and build systems.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The United States National Security Council (NSC) is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for consideration of national security, military, and foreign policy matters. Based in the White House, it is part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States, and composed of senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials.


title: United States National Security Council

text: Since its inception in 1947 by President Harry S. Truman, the function of the Council has been to advise and assist the President on national security and foreign policies. It also serves as the President's principal arm for coordinating these policies among various government agencies. The Council has subsequently played a key role in most major events in U.S. foreign policy, from the Korean War to the War on Terror.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The immediate predecessor to the National Security Council was the National Intelligence Authority (NIA), which was established by President Harry S. Truman's Executive Letter of January 22, 1946, to oversee the Central Intelligence Group, the CIA's predecessor. The NIA was composed of the Secretary of State, the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Chief of Staff to the Commander in Chief.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The National Security Council was created in 1947 by the National Security Act. It was created because policymakers felt that the diplomacy of the State Department was no longer adequate to contain the Soviet Union, in light of the tension between the Soviet Union and the United States. The intent was to ensure coordination and concurrence among the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and other instruments of national security policy such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also created in the National Security Act. In 2004, the position of Director of National Intelligence (DNI) was created, taking over the responsibilities previously held by the head of CIA, the Director of Central Intelligence, as a cabinet-level position to oversee and coordinate activities of the Intelligence Community


title: United States National Security Council

text: On May 26, 2009, President Barack Obama merged the White House staff supporting the Homeland Security Council (HSC) and the National Security Council into one National Security Staff (NSS). The HSC and NSC each continue to exist by statute as bodies supporting the President. The name of the staff organization was changed back to National Security Council Staff in 2014.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense was formed in 2016 under the Obama administration, disbanded in 2018 under the Trump Administration, and reinstated in January 2021 during the presidency of Joe Biden.


title: United States National Security Council

text: On January 29, 2017, President Donald Trump restructured the Principals Committee (a subset of the full National Security Council), while at the same time altering the attendance of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence.


title: United States National Security Council

text: According to "National Security Presidential Memorandum 2", the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence were to sit on the Principals Committee as and when matters pertaining to them arise, but will remain part of the full National Security Council. However, Chief of Staff Reince Priebus clarified the next day that they still are invited to attend meetings. With "National Security Presidential Memorandum 4" in April 2017, the Director of National Intelligence and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff "shall" attend Principals Committee meetings and included the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency as a regular attendee. The reorganization also placed the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development as a permanent member of the Deputies Committee, winning moderate praise, while the White House Chief Strategist was removed.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The National Security Council was established by the National Security Act of 1947 (PL 235 – 61 Stat. 496; U.S.C. 402), amended by the National Security Act Amendments of 1949 (63 Stat. 579; 50 U.S.C. 401 et seq.). Later in 1949, as part of the Reorganization Plan, the Council was placed in the Executive Office of the President.


title: United States National Security Council

text: A secret National Security Council panel pursues the killing of an individual, including American citizens, who has been called a suspected terrorist. In this case, no public record of this decision or any operation to kill the suspect will be made available. The panel's actions are justified by "two principal legal theories": They "were permitted by Congress when it authorized the use of military forces against militants in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001; and they are permitted under international law if a country is defending itself."


title: United States National Security Council

text: Homeland Security Advisor John O. Brennan, who helped codify targeted killing criteria by creating the Disposition Matrix database, has described the Obama Administration targeted killing policy by stating that "in order to ensure that our counterterrorism operations involving the use of lethal force are legal, ethical, and wise, President Obama has demanded that we hold ourselves to the highest possible standards and processes".


title: United States National Security Council

text: Reuters reported that Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, was on such a kill list and was killed accordingly.


title: United States National Security Council

text: On February 4, 2013, NBC published a leaked Department of Justice memo providing a summary of the rationale used to justify targeted killing of US citizens who are senior operational leaders of Al-Qa'ida or associated forces.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The National Security Council, as of 2021 and as per statute and National Security Memorandum–2, is chaired by the President. Its members are the Vice President (statutory), the Secretary of State (statutory), the Secretary of the Treasury (statutory), the Secretary of Defense (statutory), the Secretary of Energy (statutory), the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (non-statutory), the Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (non-statutory), the Attorney General (non-statutory), the Secretary of Homeland Security (non-statutory), and the Representative of the United States to the United Nations (non-statutory).


title: United States National Security Council

text: The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is the military advisor to the Council, the Director of National Intelligence is the intelligence advisor, and the Director of National Drug Control Policy is the drug control policy advisor. The Chief of Staff to the President, White House Counsel, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy are also regularly invited to attend NSC meetings. The Attorney General, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency are invited to attend meetings pertaining to their responsibilities. The heads of other executive departments and agencies, as well as other senior officials, are invited to attend meetings of the NSC when appropriate.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The Principals Committee of the National Security Council is the Cabinet-level senior interagency forum for consideration of national security policy issues. The Principals Committee is convened and chaired by the National Security Advisor. The regular attendees of the Principals Committee are the Secretary of State, the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the White House Chief of Staff, the Director of National Intelligence, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Homeland Security Advisor, and the United States Ambassador to the United Nations.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The White House Counsel, the Deputy Counsel to the President for National Security Affairs, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Deputy National Security Advisor, the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy, the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, and the NSC Executive Secretary may also attend all meetings of the Principals Committee. When considering international economic issues, the Principals Committee's regular attendees will include the Secretary of Commerce, the United States Trade Representative, and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The National Security Council Deputies Committee is the senior sub-Cabinet interagency forum for consideration of national security policy issues. The Deputies Committee is also responsible for reviewing and monitoring the interagency national security process including for establishing and directing the Policy Coordination Committees. The Deputies Committee is convened and chaired by the Deputy National Security Advisor or the Deputy Homeland Security Advisor.


title: United States National Security Council

text: Regular members of the Deputies Committee are the Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategy, the Deputy Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary of the Treasury, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, the Deputy Attorney General, the Deputy Secretary of Energy, the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, the Deputy Director of the Office of Management and Budget, the Deputy Director of National Intelligence, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the National Security Advisor to the Vice President, the Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development, and the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Invitations to participate in or attend specific meetings are extended to Deputy or Under Secretary level of executive departments and agencies and to other senior officials when relevant issues are discussed. The Executive Secretary and the Deputy White House Counsel also attend. The relevant Senior Director on the National Security Council staff is also invited to attend when relevant.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The Policy Coordination Committees of the National Security Council, established and directed by the Deputies Committee, are responsible for the management of the development and implementation of national security policies through interagency coordination. Policy Coordination Committees are the main day-to-day for interagency coordination of national security policy development, implementation and analysis in aide of the Deputies Committee and the Principals Committee. Policy Coordination Committees are chaired by Senior Directors on the National Security Council staff, or sometimes National Economic Council staff, with Assistant Secretary-level officials from the relevant executive department or agency acting as co-chairs.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense, created by Barack Obama in 2016 in response to the 2014 Ebola outbreak, was responsible "to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic." The directorate was disbanded when a May 2018 change in organizational structure by John Bolton, Trump's recently appointed head of the National Security Council, resulted in the effective elimination of the office then led by Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, Sr. Director for Global Health Security and Biothreats. Remaining staff were moved to other NSC departments, prompting Ziemer's resignation, thus completing the elimination of the office.


title: United States National Security Council

text: The responsibilities that formerly belonged to the directorate, along with those of arms control and nonproliferation, and of weapons of mass destruction terrorism, were absorbed into a single new directorate, counterproliferation and biodefense, and assigned to Tim Morrison in July 2018 as director. Morrison characterized the consolidation as part of an overall NSC "reduction of force" and called it "specious" to say the office was "dissolved," describing the previous size of the organization as "bloat," and stating "That is why Trump began streamlining the NSC staff in 2017." Trump defended the 2018 cuts, describing the financial motivation, when questioned in a February 2020 press conference, suggesting that people on a pandemic response team are unnecessary between pandemics, saying "Some of the people we cut, they haven't been used for many, many years." No source of information could be found to support the president's statement, likely because the team was created in 2016 and disbanded in 2018. He continued: "And rather than spending the money — and I'm a business person — I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them." The size of the team before cuts was estimated at 430 people, but the "thousands" referenced by the president also included reduction in the staff numbers of the CDC.


title: United States National Security Council

text: In January 2021, the directorate was reinstated by President Joe Biden, who appointed Elizabeth Cameron as Senior Director for Global Health Security and Biodefense, a position she had previously held under the Obama administration and briefly under the Trump administration.


title: United States National Security Council

text: During his presidential transition, President-elect Joe Biden announced the creation of the position of U.S. Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, the occupant of which will be a member of the National Security Council.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin (PRL), also known as lactotropin, is a protein best known for its role in enabling mammals to produce milk. It is influential in over 300 separate processes in various vertebrates, including humans. Prolactin is secreted from the pituitary gland in response to eating, mating, estrogen treatment, ovulation and nursing. It is secreted heavily in pulses in between these events. Prolactin plays an essential role in metabolism, regulation of the immune system and pancreatic development.


title: Prolactin

text: Discovered in non-human animals around 1930 by Oscar Riddle and confirmed in humans in 1970 by Henry Friesen, prolactin is a peptide hormone, encoded by the "PRL" gene.


title: Prolactin

text: In mammals, prolactin is associated with milk production; in fish it is thought to be related to the control of water and salt balance. Prolactin also acts in a cytokine-like manner and as an important regulator of the immune system. It has important cell cycle-related functions as a growth-, differentiating- and anti-apoptotic factor. As a growth factor, binding to cytokine-like receptors, it influences hematopoiesis and angiogenesis and is involved in the regulation of blood clotting through several pathways. The hormone acts in endocrine, autocrine, and paracrine manners through the prolactin receptor and numerous cytokine receptors.


title: Prolactin

text: Pituitary prolactin secretion is regulated by endocrine neurons in the hypothalamus. The most important of these are the neurosecretory tuberoinfundibulum (TIDA) neurons of the arcuate nucleus that secrete dopamine (a.k.a. Prolactin Inhibitory Hormone) to act on the D receptors of lactotrophs, causing inhibition of prolactin secretion. Thyrotropin-releasing hormone has a stimulatory effect on prolactin release, although prolactin is the only anterior pituitary hormone whose principal control is inhibitory.


title: Prolactin

text: Several variants and forms are known per species. Many fish have variants "prolactin A" and "prolactin B". Most vertebrates, including humans, also have the closely related somatolactin. In humans, three smaller (4, 16, and 23 kDa) and several larger (so-called big and big-big) variants exist.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin has a wide variety of effects. It stimulates the mammary glands to produce milk (lactation): increased serum concentrations of prolactin during pregnancy cause enlargement of the mammary glands and prepare for milk production, which normally starts when levels of progesterone fall by the end of pregnancy and a suckling stimulus is present. Prolactin plays an important role in maternal behavior.


title: Prolactin

text: It has been shown in rats and sheep that prolactin affects lipid synthesis differentially in mammary and adipose cells. Prolactin deficiency induced by bromocriptine increased lipogenesis and insulin responsiveness in adipocytes while decreasing them in the mammary gland.


title: Prolactin

text: Elevated levels of prolactin decrease the levels of sex hormones—estrogen in women and testosterone in men. The effects of mildly elevated levels of prolactin are much more variable, in women, substantially increasing or decreasing estrogen levels.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin is sometimes classified as a gonadotropin although in humans it has only a weak luteotropic effect while the effect of suppressing classical gonadotropic hormones is more important. Prolactin within the normal reference ranges can act as a weak gonadotropin, but at the same time suppresses gonadotropin-releasing hormone secretion. The exact mechanism by which it inhibits gonadotropin-releasing hormone is poorly understood. Although expression of prolactin receptors have been demonstrated in rat hypothalamus, the same has not been observed in gonadotropin-releasing hormone neurons. Physiologic levels of prolactin in males enhance luteinizing hormone-receptors in Leydig cells, resulting in testosterone secretion, which leads to spermatogenesis.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin also stimulates proliferation of oligodendrocyte precursor cells. These cells differentiate into oligodendrocytes, the cells responsible for the formation of myelin coatings on axons in the central nervous system.


title: Prolactin

text: Other actions include contributing to pulmonary surfactant synthesis of the fetal lungs at the end of the pregnancy and immune tolerance of the fetus by the maternal organism during pregnancy. Prolactin promotes neurogenesis in maternal and fetal brains.


title: Prolactin

text: The primary function of prolactin in fish is osmoregulation, i.e., controlling the movement of water and salts between the tissues of the fish and the surrounding water. Like mammals, however, prolactin in fish also has reproductive functions, including promoting sexual maturation and inducing breeding cycles, as well as brooding and parental care. In the South American discus, prolactin may also regulate the production of a skin secretion that provides food for larval fry. An increase in brooding behaviour caused by prolactin has been reported in hens.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin and its receptor are expressed in the skin, specifically in the hair follicles, where they regulate hair growth and moulting in an autocrine fashion. Elevated levels of prolactin can inhibit hair growth, and knock-out mutations in the prolactin gene cause increased hair length in cattle and mice. Conversely, mutations in the prolactin receptor can cause reduced hair growth, resulting in the "slick" phenotype in cattle. Additionally, prolactin delays hair regrowth in mice.


title: Prolactin

text: Analogous to its effects on hair growth and shedding in mammals, prolactin in birds controls the moulting of feathers, as well as the age at onset of feathering in both turkeys and chickens.


title: Prolactin

text: In rodents, pseudopregnancy can occur when a female is mated with a sterile male. This mating can cause bi-daily surges of prolactin which would normally occur in rodent pregnancy. Prolactin surges initiate the secretion of progesterone which maintains pregnancy and hence can initiate pseudopregnancy. The false maintenance of pregnancy exhibits the outward physical symptoms of pregnancy, in the absence of a foetus.


title: Prolactin

text: In humans, prolactin is produced at least in the anterior pituitary, decidua, myometrium, breast, lymphocytes, leukocytes and prostate.


title: Prolactin

text: Pituitary prolactin is controlled by the Pit-1 transcription factor that binds to the prolactin gene at several sites. Ultimately dopamine, extrapituitary prolactin is controlled by a superdistal promoter and apparently unaffected by dopamine. The thyrotropin-releasing hormone and the vasoactive intestinal peptide stimulate the secretion of prolactin in experimental settings, however their physiological influence is unclear. The main stimulus for prolactin secretion is suckling, the effect of which is neuronally mediated. A key regulator of prolactin production is estrogens that enhance growth of prolactin-producing cells and stimulate prolactin production directly, as well as suppressing dopamine.


title: Prolactin

text: In decidual cells and in lymphocytes the distal promoter and thus prolactin expression is stimulated by cAMP. Responsivness to cAMP is mediated by an imperfect cAMP–responsive element and two CAAT/enhancer binding proteins (C/EBP). Progesterone upregulates prolactin synthesis in the endometrium and decreases it in myometrium and breast glandular tissue. Breast and other tissues may express the Pit-1 promoter in addition to the distal promoter.


title: Prolactin

text: Extrapituitary production of prolactin is thought to be special to humans and primates and may serve mostly tissue-specific paracrine and autocrine purposes. It has been hypothesized that in vertebrates such as mice a similar tissue-specific effect is achieved by a large family of prolactin-like proteins controlled by at least 26 paralogous "PRL" genes not present in primates.


title: Prolactin

text: Vasoactive intestinal peptide and peptide histidine isoleucine help to regulate prolactin secretion in humans, but the functions of these hormones in birds can be quite different.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin follows diurnal and ovulatory cycles. Prolactin levels peak during REM sleep and in the early morning. Many mammals experience a seasonal cycle.


title: Prolactin

text: During pregnancy, high circulating concentrations of estrogen and progesterone increase prolactin levels by 10- to 20-fold. Estrogen and progesterone inhibit the stimulatory effects of prolactin on milk production. The abrupt drop of estrogen and progesterone levels following delivery allow prolactin—which temporarily remains high—to induce lactation.


title: Prolactin

text: Sucking on the nipple offsets the fall in prolactin as the internal stimulus for them is removed. The sucking activates mechanoreceptors in and around the nipple. These signals are carried by nerve fibers through the spinal cord to the hypothalamus, where changes in the electrical activity of neurons that regulate the pituitary gland increase prolactin secretion. The suckling stimulus also triggers the release of oxytocin from the posterior pituitary gland, which triggers milk let-down: Prolactin controls milk production (lactogenesis) but not the milk-ejection reflex; the rise in prolactin fills the breast with milk in preparation for the next feed.


title: Prolactin

text: In usual circumstances, in the absence of galactorrhea, lactation ceases within one or two weeks following the end of breastfeeding.


title: Prolactin

text: Levels can rise after exercise, high-protein meals, minor surgical procedures, following epileptic seizures or due to physical or emotional stress. In a study on female volunteers under hypnosis, prolactin surges resulted from the evocation, with rage, of humiliating experiences, but not from the fantasy of nursing.


title: Prolactin

text: Hypersecretion is more common than hyposecretion. Hyperprolactinemia is the most frequent abnormality of the anterior pituitary tumors, termed prolactinomas. Prolactinomas may disrupt the hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal axis as prolactin tends to suppress the secretion of gonadotropin-releasing hormone from the hypothalamus and in turn decreases the secretion of follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone from the anterior pituitary, therefore disrupting the ovulatory cycle. Such hormonal changes may manifest as amenorrhea and infertility in females as well as erectile dysfunction in males. Inappropriate lactation (galactorrhoea) is another important clinical sign of prolactinomas.


title: Prolactin

text: The structure of prolactin is similar to that of growth hormone and placental lactogen. The molecule is folded due to the activity of three disulfide bonds. Significant heterogeneity of the molecule has been described, thus bioassays and immunoassays can give different results due to differing glycosylation, phosphorylation and sulfation, as well as degradation. The non-glycosylated form of prolactin is the dominant form that is secreted by the pituitary gland.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin receptors are present in the mammillary glands, ovaries, pituitary glands, heart, lung, thymus, spleen, liver, pancreas, kidney, adrenal gland, uterus, skeletal muscle, skin and areas of the central nervous system. When prolactin binds to the receptor, it causes it to dimerize with another prolactin receptor. This results in the activation of Janus kinase 2, a tyrosine kinase that initiates the JAK-STAT pathway. Activation also results in the activation of mitogen-activated protein kinases and Src kinase.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin levels may be checked as part of a sex hormone workup, as elevated prolactin secretion can suppress the secretion of follicle stimulating hormone and gonadotropin-releasing hormone, leading to hypogonadism and sometimes causing erectile dysfunction.


title: Prolactin

text: Prolactin levels may be of some use in distinguishing epileptic seizures from psychogenic non-epileptic seizures. The serum prolactin level usually rises following an epileptic seizure.


title: Prolactin

text: The serum concentration of prolactin can be given in mass concentration (µg/L or ng/mL), molar concentration (nmol/L or pmol/L), or international units (typically mIU/L). The current IU is calibrated against the third International Standard for Prolactin, IS 84/500. Reference ampoules of IS 84/500 contain 2.5 µg of lyophilized human prolactin and have been assigned an activity of .053 International Units. Measurements that are calibrated against the current international standard can be converted into mass units using this ratio of grams to IUs; prolactin concentrations expressed in mIU/L can be converted to µg/L by dividing by 21.2. Previous standards use other ratios.


title: Prolactin

text: The first International Reference Preparation (or IRP) of human Prolactin for Immunoassay was established in 1978 (75/504 1st IRP for human prolactin) at a time when purified human prolactin was in short supply. Previous standards relied on prolactin from animal sources. Purified human prolactin was scarce, heterogeneous, unstable, and difficult to characterize. A preparation labeled 81/541 was distributed by the WHO Expert Committee on Biological Standardization without official status and given the assigned value of 50 mIU/ampoule based on an earlier collaborative study. It was determined that this preparation behaved anomalously in certain immunoassays and was not suitable as an IS.


title: Prolactin

text: Three different human pituitary extracts containing prolactin were subsequently obtained as candidates for an IS. These were distributed into ampoules coded 83/562, 83/573, and 84/500. Collaborative studies involving 20 different laboratories found little difference between these three preparations. 83/562 appeared to be the most stable. This preparation was largely free of dimers and polymers of prolactin. On the basis of these investigations, 83/562 was established as the Second IS for human prolactin. Once stocks of these ampoules were depleted, 84/500 was established as the Third IS for human prolactin.


title: Prolactin

text: General guidelines for diagnosing prolactin excess (hyperprolactinemia) define the upper threshold of normal prolactin at 25 µg/L for women and 20 µg/L for men. Similarly, guidelines for diagnosing prolactin deficiency (hypoprolactinemia) are defined as prolactin levels below 3 µg/L in women and 5 µg/L in men. However, different assays and methods for measuring prolactin are employed by different laboratories and as such the serum reference range for prolactin is often determined by the laboratory performing the measurement. Furthermore, prolactin levels vary according to factors as age, sex, menstrual cycle stage and pregnancy. The circumstances surrounding a given prolactin measurement (assay, patient condition, etc.) must therefore be considered before the measurement can be accurately interpreted.


title: Prolactin

text: The following chart illustrates the variations seen in normal prolactin measurements across different populations. Prolactin values were obtained from specific control groups of varying sizes using the IMMULITE assay.


title: Prolactin

text: The following table illustrates variability in reference ranges of serum prolactin between some commonly used assay methods (as of 2008), using a control group of healthy health care professionals (53 males, age 20–64 years, median 28 years; 97 females, age 19–59 years, median 29 years) in Essex, England:


title: Prolactin

text: An example of the use of the above table is, if using the Centaur assay to estimate prolactin values in µg/L for females, the mean is 7.92 µg/L and the reference range is 3.35–16.4 µg/L.


title: Prolactin

text: Hyperprolactinaemia, or excess serum prolactin, is associated with hypoestrogenism, anovulatory infertility, oligomenorrhoea, amenorrhoea, unexpected lactation and loss of libido in women and erectile dysfunction and loss of libido in men.


title: Prolactin

text: Hypoprolactinemia, or serum prolactin deficiency, is associated with ovarian dysfunction in women, and arteriogenic erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, oligozoospermia, asthenospermia, hypofunction of seminal vesicles and hypoandrogenism in men. In one study, normal sperm characteristics were restored when prolactin levels were raised to normal values in hypoprolactinemic men.


title: Prolactin

text: Hypoprolactinemia can result from hypopituitarism, excessive dopaminergic action in the tuberoinfundibular pathway and ingestion of D receptor agonists such as bromocriptine.