title: Christine and the Queens

text: For his second studio album, Letissier had early sessions with both Mark Ronson and Damon Albarn, but eventually decided to work alone, with Cole M.G.N. as co-producer on some tracks. "Confident in his decision to go it alone, [he] cut [his] hair short and started again as Chris. 'I wanted to risk it all,' [he] said, smiling." In April 2018, he announced a tour across North America and Europe, planned for the autumn. In July, Christine also announced details of an upcoming album titled "Chris". It was preceded by the release of two singles, each in an English and French version: "Girlfriend"/"Damn, dis-moi" on 17 May, and "Doesn't Matter"/"Doesn't Matter (Voleur de soleil)" on 5 July. Later, he also released the singles: English-language "5 Dollars" on 16 August, and French-language "La marcheuse" on 23 August.


title: Christine and the Queens

text: "Chris" was released on 21 September 2018 and received universal critical acclaim. AllMusic editors summarised: "the singer/songwriter's triumphant second album borrows from '80s R&B and questions gender roles, engaging minds, hearts, and bodies along the way." Robert Steiner of "The Boston Globe" called the album "a refreshing, empowering record" and complimented its "stellar production and contagiously danceable jams", as well as Letissier's "engrossing lyricism". Although he felt that the album "loses steam" in its second half, Steiner named "The Walker" as a highlight for its "poignant" portrayal of a victim of domestic violence. "Chris" peaked at number 2 on the French and at No. 3 on the UK chart. The record featured at the top of many year-end best-of lists, ranked number one by "Clash", "The Guardian", and "The Independent", and placed in the top-five of five other lists, for a total of 12 positions in top-ten. "Girlfriend" was named song of the year by "Time". In the 'top pop albums of the 2010s' listings, "Chris" was ranked No. 15 by "Consequence", ahead of Rihanna's "Anti" and Ariana Grande's "Thank U, Next", and No. 24 by "Paste", ahead of Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" and Adele's "25".


title: Christine and the Queens

text: In May 2019, Letissier performed during the season finale for the eleventh season of "RuPaul's Drag Race" held at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles. The same month, he headlined the All Points East festival in London, marking his first UK headline festival appearance. His performance was well received; "The Independent" gave the concert five stars, calling it "a tiny tour de force".


title: Christine and the Queens

text: On 17 July, Charli XCX released the single "Gone" alongside the music video, a joint effort with Letissier, which they debuted earlier together at the end of May during the Primavera Sound festival. The track was shortlisted by BBC Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac for the Hottest Record of The Year, voted for by the public, and finished in third position. Pitchfork listed the song at number four on its list of 2019's 100 best songs and at number 145 for the 200 best songs of the 2010s. In September, the duo performed the song again at the Electric Picnic festival, on "The Jonathan Ross Show" to promote the release of Charli XCX's album, and on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon".


title: Christine and the Queens

text: On 5 February 2020, Letissier released "People, I've Been Sad", the first single from his forthcoming extended play. "La vita nuova" ('The New Life'), containing five tracks and one bonus track, was released on 27 February. Again, he was the sole writer, with Ash Workman as co-producer. Letissier simultaneously released a conceptual short film directed by his longtime collaborator Colin Solal Cardo. It takes place at the famed historical Paris landmark Palais Garnier, features Christine and a group of dancers dancing to the songs from the EP, and concludes with a guest appearance from featured artist Caroline Polachek. The EP was met with widespread critical acclaim upon its release. "NME"s El Hunt gave a rave review, summarizing; "conceptually, 'La Vita Nuova' is an astonishing feat – but even better than that, it also oozes an intensity of feeling that punches right in the gut." "Variety" called the EP "arguably [his] best work to date". "People, I've Been Sad" was recognized by "Time" as song of the year and also placed in the top-three of year-end critics' lists by "NPR", "Pitchfork", and "The Guardian". The short film was included in "Pitchfork"'s list of "The 20 Best Music Videos of 2020"; Ryan Dombal wrote: "this is art-pop cinema that's both steeped in history and gloriously unafraid to blaze its own way." Two more singles were released from "La vita nuova": "I Disappear In Your Arms" on 8 June and the title track featuring Caroline Polachek on 14 August; an EP with remixes of the latter was released on 28 August.


title: Christine and the Queens

text: During the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, Letissier was one of the most active musicians in the livestream performance space, sharing a series of theatrical performances on Instagram. Also, in April, he contributed to Lady Gaga's "One World: Together at Home" event, and in May, he performed "People, I've Been Sad" via livestream from his Parisian home for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert". In June, Letissier performed "I Disappear In Your Arms", recorded in an empty music venue, on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", and then "La vita nuova", filmed inside the empty Grand Palais, on Global Citizen's '' virtual benefit concert. On 2 July 2020, he debuted "Eyes of a Child", a track created for the second season of the Amazon Prime Video series "Hanna"; the single had been released earlier to streaming platforms on 25 February. On 25 November, French band Indochine released "3Sex" as a collaboration with Letissier, "a synth-pop dance reworking" of the band's song "" from their album "3" (1985).


title: Christine and the Queens

text: On 26 September 2021, Letissier released the two-track EP "Joseph", containing a cover of the George Michael song "Freedom", and the French classic song "Comme l'oiseau". On 4 November 2021, Charli XCX released "New Shapes" featuring Letissier and Caroline Polachek as the second single from her album "Crash" (2022).


title: Christine and the Queens

text: Letissier first mentioned work on a third studio album in April 2020, saying that he was "looking for something very vast and hopeful" for the project. In May 2022, he collaborated with American rapper 070 Shake on "Body", a single from the latter's second studio album "You Can't Kill Me". On 24 June 2022, Letissier released the lead single from his third studio album, "Je te vois enfin". The track is sung entirely in French and sees Letissier embody a "suave and sophisticated" alter ego named Redcar. His third studio album, "Redcar les adorables étoiles (prologue)", was released on 11 November 2022.


title: Christine and the Queens

text: Letissier prefers lyrics that are not immediately understandable. He explained that he enjoys "authors with difficult lyrics", such as Alain Bashung. His music has been labelled by music critics as pop, synthpop, electropop, indie pop, experimental pop, and art pop, while he described his own work as "freakpop".


title: Christine and the Queens

text: Letissier emphasized the importance of his experience with Madame Jojo's drag club in London: "These drag artists have become my friends, they've inspired my creativity. They gave me the idea of creating a character, inventing another silhouette, another way of being in this world. Before it was a musical project, Christine was for me the answer to how to live properly. The "Queens" in "Christine and the Queens" is my tribute to them. Without the queens, I wouldn't be here".


title: Christine and the Queens

text: He also said, "[he] does not want to choose between French music and English pop music" and takes influence from both. In a November 2013 interview with "", he cited artists such as Christophe, David Bowie (especially his Ziggy Stardust character), Kanye West, Kendrick Lamar, Philip Glass, T. Rex as well as the "Soul Train" soundtracks as his musical influences. He also named Michael Jackson as his favourite male singer and "either Patti Smith or Kate Bush" as his favourite female singer. Other influences include Björk, Beyoncé, Daniel Balavoine, Fever Ray, Frank Ocean, Janet Jackson, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Mylène Farmer, Joe Jackson, Lou Reed, and Serge Gainsbourg.


title: Christine and the Queens

text: Letissier is pansexual. In an October 2019 interview with the magazine "Attitude", he explained that he is genderqueer. Having tweeted in June 2021 that he uses all pronouns, he later told "The New York Times" in March 2022: "My journey with gender has always been tumultuous. It's raging right now, as I'm just exploring what is beyond this. A way to express it could be switching between they and she." In August of the same year, he stated in a TikTok video in French that his gender journey was "a long process" and explained that he had gendered himself in the masculine for about a year, which he had shared with family and close friends. He subsequently updated his pronouns to he/him across social media platforms. He has stated that he is "in resistance to the approach of trans identity that there has to be hormones and operations", which he considers as a form of binarism.


title: Christine and the Queens

text: Letissier has used numerous personal and stage names, and remarked that he "just ha[s] many names for all the layers". He began his career as Christine and the Queens. For his second album, he shortened it to Chris, which was accompanied by a shift to a persona described as "a woman playing with masculine tropes". In October 2021, he was using the name Rahim. This sparked a debate around cultural appropriation due to the name's Arabic origin. He eventually began using a succession of different names such as (the French title of "Fireman Sam") and a full stop before settling on Redcar, sometimes shortened as Red. He still occasionally uses his birth name, about which he said: "Héloïse Letissier is my parents' provenance and I love my parents. I sometimes use Héloïse to reconnect me to my childhood, but my inner child name is Manamané."


title: Humanzee

text: The humanzee (sometimes chuman, manpanzee or chumanzee) is a hypothetical hybrid of chimpanzee and human. Serious attempts to create such a hybrid were made by Soviet biologist Ilya Ivanovich Ivanov in the 1920s, and possibly by researchers in China in the 1960s, though neither succeeded. The portmanteau "humanzee" for a human–chimpanzee hybrid appears to have entered usage in the 1980s.


title: Humanzee

text: The possibility of hybrids between humans and other apes has been entertained since at least the medieval period; Saint Peter Damian (11th century) claimed to have been told of the offspring of a human woman who had mated with an ape, and so did Antonio Zucchelli, an Italian Franciscan capuchin friar who was a missionary in Africa from 1698 to 1702, and Sir Edward Coke in "The Institutes of the Lawes of England".


title: Humanzee

text: Chimpanzees and humans are closely related, sharing 95% of their DNA sequence and 99% of coding DNA sequences. Hybridization between chimpanzees and bonobos has been documented, and they share 99.6% of their genomes. However, genetic similarity, and thus the chances of successful hybridization, is not always correlated with visual appearances. For example, pugs and huskies look quite dissimilar, but belong to the same species and subspecies and can hybridize freely. On the other hand, rabbits and hares look very similar, but are only distantly related and cannot hybridize.


title: Humanzee

text: All great apes have similar genetic structure. Humans have one pair fewer chromosomes than other apes, with ape chromosomes 2 and 4 fused in the human genome into a large chromosome (which contains remnants of the centromere and telomeres of the ancestral 2 and 4). Chromosomes 6, 13, 19, 21, 22, and X are structurally the same in all great apes. Chromosomes 3, 11, 14, 15, 18, and 20 match between gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Chimpanzees and humans match on 1, 2p, 2q, 5, 7–10, 12, 16, and Y as well. Some older references include Y as a match between gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans, but chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans have recently been found to share a large transposition from chromosome 1 to Y not found in other apes.


title: Humanzee

text: The degree of chromosomal similarity among apes is roughly equivalent to that found in equines. Interfertility of horses and donkeys is common, although sterility of the offspring (mules) is nearly universal (with only around 60 exceptions recorded in equine history). Similar complexities and prevalent sterility pertain to horse–zebra hybrids, or zorses, whose chromosomal disparity is very wide, with horses typically having 32 chromosome pairs and zebras between 16 and 23 depending on species. In a direct parallel to the chimp–human case, the Przewalski's horse ("Equus ferus przewalskii") with 33 chromosome pairs, and the domestic horse ("E. f. caballus") with 32 pairs, have been found to be interfertile, and produce semi-fertile offspring: male hybrids can breed with female domestic horses.


title: Humanzee

text: In 1977, researcher J. Michael Bedford discovered that human sperm could penetrate the protective outer membranes of a gibbon egg. Bedford's paper also stated that human spermatozoa would not even attach to the zona surface of non-hominoid primates (baboon, rhesus monkey, and squirrel monkey), concluding that although the specificity of human spermatozoa is not confined to "Homo sapiens sapiens" alone, it is probably restricted to the Hominoidea. However, in the opposite direction of closely related species, it has been found that human sperm binds to gorilla oocytes with almost the same ease as to human ones.


title: Humanzee

text: Hybridization between members of different, but related genera is sometimes possible, as in the case of cama (camel and llama), wholphin (common bottlenose dolphin and false killer whale), and some felid hybrids, for example.


title: Humanzee

text: There have been no scientifically verified specimens of a human–chimpanzee hybrid, but there have been substantiated reports of unsuccessful attempts to create one in the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and various unsubstantiated reports on similar attempts during the second half of the 20th century.


title: Humanzee

text: Ilya Ivanov was the first person to attempt to create a human–chimpanzee hybrid by artificial insemination. Ivanov outlined his idea as early as 1910 in a presentation to the World Congress of Zoologists in Graz. In the 1920s, Ivanov carried out a series of experiments, culminating in inseminating three female chimpanzees with human sperm, but he failed to achieve a pregnancy. These initial experiments took place in French Guinea. (For comparison with known cama statistics, in the case of male camel–female guanaco cross the probability that insemination would lead to pregnancy was approximately 1/6.) In 1929 he organized a set of experiments involving nonhuman ape sperm and human volunteers, but was delayed by the death of his last orangutan. The next year he fell under political criticism from the Soviet government and was sentenced to exile in the Kazakh SSR; he worked there at the Kazakh Veterinary-Zootechnical Institute and died of a stroke two years later.


title: Humanzee

text: In the 1970s, a performing chimpanzee named Oliver was popularized as a possible "mutant" or even a human–chimpanzee hybrid. Claims that Oliver had 47 chromosomes—midpoint between the normal 46 for humans and 48 for chimpanzees—were disproven after an examination of his genetic material at the University of Chicago in 1996. Oliver's cranial morphology, ear shape, freckles, and baldness fall within the range of variability exhibited by the common chimpanzee. Results of further studies with Oliver were published in the "American Journal of Physical Anthropology".


title: Humanzee

text: In the 1980s, there were reports of an experiment in human–chimpanzee crossbreeding conducted in China in 1967, and on the planned resumption of such experiments. In 1981, Ji Yongxiang, head of a hospital in Shenyang, was reported as claiming to have been part of a 1967 experiment in Shengyang in which a chimpanzee female had been impregnated with human sperm. According to this account, the experiment was cut short by the Cultural Revolution, with the responsible scientists sent off to farm labour and the three-months pregnant chimpanzee dying from neglect. According to Timothy McNulty of "Chicago Tribune", the report was based on an article in the "Wenhui Bao" newspaper of Shanghai. Li Guong of the genetics research bureau at the Chinese Academy of Sciences was cited as confirming both the existence of the experiment prior to the Cultural Revolution and the plans to resume testing.


title: Humanzee

text: In 2019, unconfirmed reports surfaced that a team of researchers led by Professor Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte from the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in the U.S. successfully produced the first human-monkey chimera. Belmonte and others had previously produced pig and sheep embryos containing a small percentage of human cells. As with those embryos, the human-monkey chimeras were reportedly only allowed to develop for a few weeks. Although development was stopped prior to the formation of a nervous system or organs, avoiding more severe ethical concerns, the research was reportedly carried out in China to avoid legal issues. Due to the much larger evolutionary distance between humans and monkeys versus humans and chimpanzees, it is considered unlikely that true human-monkey hybrids could be brought to term. However, it is feasible that human-compatible organs for transplantation could be grown in these chimeras.


title: Humanzee

text: There is evidence for a complex speciation process for the "Pan"–"Homo" split. Different chromosomes appear to have split at different times, suggesting that large-scale hybridization may have taken place over a period of as much as four million years leading up to the emergence of the distinct human and chimpanzee lineages as late as six million years ago.


title: Humanzee

text: The similarity of the X chromosome in humans and chimpanzees might suggest hybridization taking place as late as four million years ago. However, other mechanisms such as natural selection on the X chromosome in the chimpanzee–human last common ancestor may also explain the apparent short divergence time in the X chromosome.


title: Wireless LAN

text: A wireless LAN (WLAN) is a wireless computer network that links two or more devices using wireless communication to form a local area network (LAN) within a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, campus, or office building. This gives users the ability to move around within the area and remain connected to the network. Through a gateway, a WLAN can also provide a connection to the wider Internet.


title: Wireless LAN

text: Wireless LANs based on the IEEE 802.11 standards are the most widely used computer networks in the world. These are commonly called Wi-Fi, which is a trademark belonging to the Wi-Fi Alliance. They are used for home and small office networks that link together laptop computers, printers, smartphones, Web TVs and gaming devices with a wireless router, which links them to the internet. Hotspots provided by routers at restaurants, coffee shops, hotels, libraries, and airports allow consumers to access the internet with portable wireless devices.


title: Wireless LAN

text: Norman Abramson, a professor at the University of Hawaii, developed the world's first wireless computer communication network, ALOHAnet. The system became operational in 1971 and included seven computers deployed over four islands to communicate with the central computer on the Oahu island without using phone lines.


title: Wireless LAN

text: Wireless LAN hardware initially cost so much that it was only used as an alternative to cabled LAN in places where cabling was difficult or impossible. Early development included industry-specific solutions and proprietary protocols, but at the end of the 1990s these were replaced by technical standards, primarily the various versions of IEEE 802.11 (in products using the Wi-Fi brand name).


title: Wireless LAN

text: Beginning in 1991, a European alternative known as HiperLAN/1 was pursued by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) with a first version approved in 1996. This was followed by a HiperLAN/2 functional specification with ATM influences accomplished February 2000. Neither European standard achieved the commercial success of 802.11, although much of the work on HiperLAN/2 has survived in the physical specification (PHY) for IEEE 802.11a, which is nearly identical to the PHY of HiperLAN/2.


title: Wireless LAN

text: In 2009 802.11n was added to 802.11. It operates in both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands at a maximum data transfer rate of 600 Mbit/s. Most newer routers are "dual-band" and able to utilize both wireless bands. This allows data communications to avoid the crowded 2.4 GHz band, which is also shared with Bluetooth devices and microwave ovens. The 5 GHz band also has more channels than the 2.4 GHz band, permitting a greater number of devices to share the space. Not all WLAN channels are available in all regions.


title: Wireless LAN

text: A HomeRF group formed in 1997 to promote a technology aimed for residential use, but it disbanded in January 2003.


title: Wireless LAN

text: All components that can connect into a wireless medium in a network are referred to as stations. All stations are equipped with wireless network interface controllers. Wireless stations fall into two categories: wireless access points (WAPs), and clients. WAPs are base stations for the wireless network. They transmit and receive radio frequencies for wireless-enabled devices to communicate with. Wireless clients can be mobile devices such as laptops, personal digital assistants, VoIP phones and other smartphones, or non-portable devices such as desktop computers, printers, and workstations that are equipped with a wireless network interface.


title: Wireless LAN

text: The basic service set (BSS) is a set of all stations that can communicate with each other at PHY layer. Every BSS has an identification (ID) called the BSSID, which is the MAC address of the access point servicing the BSS.


title: Wireless LAN

text: There are two types of BSS: Independent BSS (also referred to as IBSS), and infrastructure BSS. An independent BSS (IBSS) is an ad hoc network that contains no access points, which means they cannot connect to any other basic service set. In an IBSS the STAs are configured in ad hoc (peer-to-peer) mode.


title: Wireless LAN

text: An extended service set (ESS) is a set of connected BSSs. Access points in an ESS are connected by a distribution system. Each ESS has an ID called the SSID which is a 32-byte (maximum) character string.


title: Wireless LAN

text: A distribution system (DS) connects access points in an extended service set. The concept of a DS can be used to increase network coverage through roaming between cells. DS can be wired or wireless. Current wireless distribution systems are mostly based on WDS or Mesh protocols, though other systems are in use.


title: Wireless LAN

text: The IEEE 802.11 has two basic modes of operation: "infrastructure" and "ad hoc" mode. In ad hoc mode, mobile units communicate directly peer-to-peer. In infrastructure mode, mobile units communicate through a wireless access point (WAP) that also serves as a bridge to other networks such as a local area network or the Internet.


title: Wireless LAN

text: Since wireless communication uses a more open medium for communication in comparison to wired LANs, the 802.11 designers also included encryption mechanisms: Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP), no longer considered secure, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA, WPA2, WPA3), to secure wireless computer networks. Many access points will also offer Wi-Fi Protected Setup, a quick, but no longer considered secure, method of joining a new device to an encrypted network.


title: Wireless LAN

text: Most Wi-Fi networks are deployed in "infrastructure mode". In infrastructure mode, wireless clients, such as laptops and smartphones, connect to the WAP to join the network. The WAP usually has a wired network connection and may have permanent wireless connections to other WAPs.


title: Wireless LAN

text: WAPs are usually fixed and provide service to their client nodes within range. Some networks will have multiple WAPs using the same SSID and security arrangement. In that case, connecting to any WAP on that network joins the client to the network, and the client software will try to choose the WAP that gives the best service, such as the WAP with the strongest signal.


title: Wireless LAN

text: An ad hoc network is a network where stations communicate only peer-to-peer (P2P). There is no base and no one gives permission to talk. This is accomplished using the Independent Basic Service Set (IBSS). A Wi-Fi Direct network is a different type of wireless network where stations communicate peer-to-peer. In a peer-to-peer network wireless devices within range of each other can discover and communicate directly without involving central access points.


title: Wireless LAN

text: In a Wi-Fi P2P group, the group owner operates as an access point and all other devices are clients. There are two main methods to establish a group owner in the Wi-Fi Direct group. In one approach, the user sets up a P2P group owner manually. This method is also known as "autonomous group owner" ("autonomous GO"). In the second method, called "negotiation-based group creation", two devices compete based on the group owner intent value. The device with higher intent value becomes a group owner and the second device becomes a client. Group owner intent value can depend on whether the wireless device performs a cross-connection between an infrastructure WLAN service and a P2P group, available power in the wireless device, whether the wireless device is already a group owner in another group or a received signal strength of the first wireless device.


title: Wireless LAN

text: IEEE 802.11 defines the PHY and medium access control (MAC) layers based on carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). This is in contrast to Ethernet which uses carrier-sense multiple access with collision detection (CSMA/CD). The 802.11 specification includes provisions designed to minimize collisions because mobile units have to contend with the hidden node problem where two mobile units may both be in range of a common access point, but out of range of each other.


title: Wireless LAN

text: A bridge can be used to connect networks, typically of different types. A wireless Ethernet bridge allows the connection of devices on a wired Ethernet network to a wireless network. The bridge acts as the connection point to the wireless LAN.


title: Wireless LAN

text: A wireless distribution system (WDS) enables the wireless interconnection of access points in an IEEE 802.11 network. It allows a wireless network to be expanded using multiple access points without the need for a wired backbone to link them, as is traditionally required. The notable advantage of a WDS over some other solutions is that it preserves the MAC addresses of client packets across links between access points.


title: Wireless LAN

text: An access point can be either a main, relay, or remote base station. A main base station is typically connected to the wired Ethernet. A relay base station relays data between remote base stations, wireless clients or other relay stations to either a main or another relay base station. A remote base station accepts connections from wireless clients and passes them to relay or main stations.


title: Wireless LAN

text: Because data is forwarded wirelessly, consuming wireless bandwidth, throughput in this method is halved for wireless clients not connected to a main base station. Connections between base stations are done at layer-2 and do not involve or require layer-3 IP addresses. WDS capability may also be referred to as repeater mode because it appears to bridge and accept wireless clients at the same time (unlike traditional bridging).


title: Wireless LAN

text: All base stations in a WDS must be configured to use the same radio channel, and share WEP keys or WPA keys if they are used. They can be configured to different service set identifiers. WDS also requires that every base station be configured to forward to others in the system as mentioned above.


title: Dungeon

text: A dungeon is a room or cell in which prisoners are held, especially underground. Dungeons are generally associated with medieval castles, though their association with torture probably belongs more to the Renaissance period. An oubliette (from french "oublier" meaning to "forget") or bottle dungeon is a basement room which is accessible only from a hatch or hole (an "angstloch") in a high ceiling. Victims in oubliettes were often left to starve and dehydrate to death, making the practice akin to—and some say an actual variety of—immurement.


title: Dungeon

text: The word "dungeon" comes from French "donjon" (also spelled "dongeon"), which means "keep", the main tower of a castle. The first recorded instance of the word in English was near the beginning of the 14th century when it held the same meaning as "donjon". The proper original meaning of "keep" is still in use for academics, although in popular culture it has been largely misused and come to mean a cell or "oubliette". Though it is uncertain, both "dungeon" and "donjon" are thought to derive from the Middle Latin word "dominus", meaning "lord" or "master".


title: Dungeon

text: In French, the term "donjon" still refers to a "keep", and the English term "dungeon" refers mostly to "oubliette" in French. "Donjon" is therefore a false friend to "dungeon" (although the game "Dungeons & Dragons" is titled "Donjons et Dragons" in its French editions).


title: Dungeon

text: An oubliette (same origin as the French "oublier", meaning "to forget") is a basement room which is accessible only from a hatch or hole (an "angstloch") in a high ceiling.


title: Dungeon

text: The use of "donjons" evolved over time, sometimes to include prison cells, which could explain why the meaning of "dungeon" in English evolved over time from being a prison within the tallest, most secure tower of the castle into meaning a cell, and by extension, in popular use, an oubliette or even a torture chamber.


title: Dungeon

text: The earliest use of "oubliette" in French dates back to 1374, but its earliest adoption in English is Walter Scott's "Ivanhoe" in 1819: "The place was utterly dark—the oubliette, as I suppose, of their accursed convent."


title: Dungeon

text: Few Norman keeps in English castles originally contained prisons, though they were more common in Scotland. Imprisonment was not a usual punishment in the Middle Ages, so most prisoners were awaiting trial, sentence or a political solution. Noble prisoners were not generally held in dungeons, but lived in some comfort in castle apartments. The Tower of London is famous for housing political prisoners, and Pontefract Castle at various times held Thomas of Lancaster (1322), Richard II (1400), Earl Rivers (1483), Richard Scrope, Archbishop of York (1405), James I of Scotland (1405–1424) and Charles, Duke of Orléans (1417–1430). Purpose-built prison chambers in castles became more common after the 12th century, when they were built into gatehouses or mural towers. Some castles had larger provision for prisoners, such as the prison tower at Caernarfon Castle.


title: Dungeon

text: Although many real dungeons are simply a single plain room with a heavy door or with access only from a hatchway or trapdoor in the floor of the room above, the use of dungeons for torture, along with their association to common human fears of being trapped underground, have made dungeons a powerful metaphor in a variety of contexts. Dungeons, as a whole, have become associated with underground complexes of cells and torture chambers. As a result, the number of true dungeons in castles is often exaggerated to interest tourists. Many chambers described as dungeons or oubliettes were in fact water-cisterns or even latrines.


title: Dungeon

text: An example of what might be popularly termed an "oubliette" is the particularly claustrophobic cell in the dungeon of Warwick Castle's Caesar's Tower, in central England. The access hatch consists of an iron grille. Even turning around (or moving at all) would be nearly impossible in this tiny chamber.


title: Dungeon

text: However, the tiny chamber that is described as the oubliette, is in reality a short shaft which opens up into a larger chamber with a latrine shaft entering it from above. This suggests that the chamber is in fact a partially back-filled drain. The positioning of the supposed oubliette within the larger dungeon, situated in a small alcove, is typical of garderobe arrangement within medieval buildings. These factors perhaps point to this feature being the remnants of a latrine rather than a cell for holding prisoners. Footage of the inside of this chamber can be seen in episode 3 of the first series of "Secrets of Great British Castles".


title: Dungeon

text: A "bottle dungeon" is sometimes simply another term for an oubliette. It has a narrow entrance at the top and sometimes the room below is even so narrow that it would be impossible to lie down but in other designs the actual cell is larger.


title: Dungeon

text: The identification of dungeons and rooms used to hold prisoners is not always a straightforward task. Alnwick Castle and Cockermouth Castle, both near England's border with Scotland, had chambers in their gatehouses which have often been interpreted as oubliettes. However, this has been challenged. These underground rooms (accessed by a door in the ceiling) were built without latrines, and since the gatehouses at Alnwick and Cockermouth provided accommodation it is unlikely that the rooms would have been used to hold prisoners. An alternative explanation was proposed, suggesting that these were strong-rooms where valuables were stored.


title: Dungeon

text: Oubliettes and dungeons were a favorite topic of nineteenth century gothic novels or historical novels, where they appeared as symbols of hidden cruelty and tyrannical power. Usually found under medieval castles or abbeys, they were used by villainous characters to persecute blameless characters. In Alexandre Dumas's "La Reine Margot", Catherine de Medici is portrayed gloating over a victim in the oubliettes of the Louvre.


title: Dungeon

text: Dungeons are common elements in modern fantasy literature, related tabletop, and video games. The most famous examples are the various "Dungeons & Dragons" media. In this context, the word "dungeon" is often used broadly to describe any labyrinthine complex (castle, cave system, etc) rather than a prison cell or torture chamber specifically. A role-playing game involving dungeon exploration is called a dungeon crawl.


title: Dungeon

text: Near the beginning of Jack Vance's high-fantasy "Lyonesse Trilogy" (1983–1989), King Casmir of Lyonesse commits Prince Aillas of Troicinet, who he believes to be a vagabond, to an oubliette for the crime of having seduced his daughter. After some months, the resourceful prince fashions a ladder from the bones of earlier prisoners and the rope by which he had been lowered, and escapes.


title: Dungeon

text: In the musical fantasy film "Labyrinth", director Jim Henson includes a scene in which the heroine Sarah is freed from an oubliette by the dwarf Hoggle, who defines it for her as "a place you put people... to forget about 'em!"


title: Dungeon

text: In the Thomas Harris novel "The Silence of the Lambs", Clarice makes a descent into Gumb's basement dungeon labyrinth in the narrative's climactic scene, where the killer is described as having an oubliette.


title: Dungeon

text: In the Robert A. Heinlein novel "Stranger in a Strange Land", the term "oubliette" is used to refer to a trash disposal much like the "memory holes" in "Nineteen Eighty-Four".


title: Dungeon

text: In Brian Jacques's "Redwall" series, several buildings are known to have dungeons: Castle Floret of "The Bellmaker" turned out to have a dungeon, which held the castle's rightful owner Gael Squirrelking, his wife Serena, their son Truffen, and the badger Muta, after the castle was taken from them by the villainess foxes Urgan Nagru and Silvamord. It also added the heroes Mariel Gullwhacker, Dandin and Meldrum Fallowthorn the hare, and at one point the shrike Glokkpod. Fort Bladegirt of the prequel "Mariel of Redwall", ruled by the pirate rat Gabool the Wild, also sported dungeons where he kept prisoners (which include Mariel), with one housing his pet scorpion Skrabblag. In "Mossflower", the fortress Kotir had a dungeon used by the wildcat Tsarmina Greeneyes, where she imprisoned Martin the warrior, Gonff the mousethief, her own brother Gingivere Greeneyes, and the hedgehog brothers Ferdy and Coggs Stickle. Even the titular location Redwall Abbey had a dungeon in the Redwall TV series, where it held the rats Redtooth and Fangburn.


title: Professional services

text: Professional services are occupations in the service sector requiring special training in the arts or sciences. Some professional services, such as architects, accountants, engineers, doctors, and lawyers require the practitioner to hold professional degrees or licenses and possess specific skills. Other professional services involve providing specialist business support to businesses of all sizes and in all sectors; this can include tax advice, supporting a company with accounting, IT services, public relations services or providing management services.


title: Professional services

text: Many industry groups have been used for academic research, while looking at professional services firms, making a clear definition hard to attain. Some work has been directed at better defining professional service firms (PSF). In particular, Von Nordenflycht generated a taxonomy of professional service firms, defining four types:


title: Professional services

text: Frameworks such as this aid the ability of managers and academics to better understand how such firms manage themselves and how to judge benchmark practices.


title: Professional services

text: There is no definitive list of occupations in professional services, but examples include the following:


title: Professional services

text: Professional services can be provided by sole proprietors, partnerships or corporations. A person providing the service can often be described as a consultant. In law, barristers normally organise themselves into chambers. Businesses in other industries, such as banks and retailers, can employ individuals or teams to offer professional services for their customers. Major cities such as London and New York are leading global centres for professional services firms.


title: Professional services

text: The marketing and selection of professional-service providers may depend on factors such as skill, knowledge, experience, reputation, capacity, ethics, and creativity. Large corporations may have a formal procurement process for engaging professional services. Prices for services, even within the same field, may vary greatly. Professional-service providers may offer fixed rates for specific work, charge in relation to the number or seniority of people engaged, or charge in relation to the success or profit generated by the project.


title: Alex Rider

text: Alex Rider is a series of spy novels written by British author Anthony Horowitz. The novels revolve around a teenage spy named Alex Rider and is primarily aimed towards young adults. The series currently comprises thirteen novels, as well as six graphic novels, seven short stories, a supplementary book, and a TV series. In January 2022, Horowitz indicated that he hopes to start writing a fourteenth novel later in 2022, and that it will be published in 2023.


title: Alex Rider

text: The first novel, "Stormbreaker", was released in the United Kingdom in the year 2000 and was adapted into a film in 2006, starring Alex Pettyfer. Walker Books published the first novels in the United Kingdom alongside Puffin in the United States, but more recent entries in the series were published by Philomel Books, an imprint of Penguin Books.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Stormbreaker" was first published in the year 2000, in the United Kingdom, and then in the year 2001 in the United States. Alex, the main character, is recruited by MI6 after discovering the truth about his uncle's life and death. He is sent to complete his uncle's latest mission: to investigate a Lebanese multimillionaire named Herod Sayle and his creation: the revolutionary and newly-developed computer called Stormbreaker - which Sayle is donating to every school in England. Alex discovers that the Stormbreaker computers contain a lethal variation of smallpox and that Sayle plans to ruthlessly kill thousands of schoolchildren around the world with it. Alex foils the plan and succeeds on his first mission.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Point Blanc" was published in the United Kingdom in 2001, and in North America in 2002 under the alternate title "Point Blank". After the deaths of two billionaires, MI6 discovers a connection: the two men who died each had a son attending Point Blanc, a school for rebellious sons of billionaires located in the French Alps, owned by Dr. Hugo Grief. MI6 sends Alex to investigate Point Blanc, where he discovers that Grief is replacing the students with clones of himself, who are altered through plastic surgery to resemble the students, including Alex himself, so Grief can inherit the fortune and gain the power to control the whole world. However, Alex foils his plan.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Skeleton Key" was published in 2002. After foiling a Triad plot to fix the 2001 Wimbledon tennis tournament and befriending Sabina, Alex is in grave danger of assassination. Forced to leave the country, MI6 sends him on a mission to Cuba with two doubtful CIA agents, of whom he is the sole survivor. He encounters former Soviet general Alexei Sarov, who tries to adopt Alex and expresses ideas of a nuclear holocaust and world domination under communist rule. Alex then foils his plans saving the world for a third time.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Eagle Strike" was published in 2003. Popstar Damian Cray hopes to destroy the drug-making countries of the world by hijacking the United States nuclear arsenal. Suspicious of him, Alex takes Cray on without the help of the skeptical MI6. Cray releases a state-of-the-art games console called the 'Gameslayer.' with its first game, 'Feathered Serpent', being much more than it seems. Alex uncovers a plot involving the US government and the international community but is caught spying and forced into a real-life version of 'Feathered Serpent' which he manages to escape by cheating. He leaves Damian Cray's mansion after stealing a piece of equipment vital to Damian's plan but is forced to give it up because Damian kidnaps Alex's girlfriend, Sabina. The two enter Air Force One, where Damian Cray launches nuclear missiles at the drug-supplying countries. Cray kills Yassen Gregorovich, but soon after Alex pushes Cray to his death. He then stops the missiles before they can hit their targets. Just before dying, Gregorovich tells Alex to look for a criminal organization called Scorpia, a group he claims his father worked for. The book was adapted as the basis for the second season of the Alex Rider television series.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Scorpia" was published in 2004. Following the advice of the assassin Yassen Gregorovich, Alex seeks the criminal organization "Scorpia" to find the truth about his father. He is soon recruited by Scorpia executive Julia Rothman, and he is trained as an assassin before being ordered to kill Mrs. Jones. He fails in this mission but realigns with MI6 after learning that thousands of schoolchildren in London would die if he did not help them. Alex is returned to Scorpia as a double agent and discovers the broadcasting dishes that Scorpia intends to use to kill their targets, which are later lifted into the sky by a hot air balloon. Rothman's henchman, Nile, tries to stop Alex, but he is afraid of heights, causing him to slip and fall to his death after being taunted by Alex. Alex manages to stop the death of the schoolchildren while Rothman herself is killed when the dish equipment falls on top of her. At the end of the novel, Mrs. Jones and Alan Blunt tell Alex the truth about his father; he was an MI6 agent working as a double agent in Scorpia attempting to take down the organization. They also explain his parents' death, ordered by Julia Rothman after she was noted of his father's treachery along with the true details of the event that happened on Albert Bridge. As Alex leaves Liverpool Street, a Scorpia sniper shoots him.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Ark Angel", published in 2005, follows Alex's second mission for the CIA. After recovering from a Scorpia assassination attempt, he is sent to investigate businessman Nikolei Drevin, who built a hotel in outer space called "Ark Angel." The hotel was ultimately left unfinished due to high expenses. After Alex's cover is blown, Drevin learns that the CIA is gathering evidence against him and plans to retaliate by attacking the Pentagon. Drevin is killed and Alex is sent into space, moving the bomb to prevent the wreckage from entering the atmosphere.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Snakehead" was published in 2007. Taking place immediately after Ark Angel, the novel sees Alex crash land in Australia. There, he is recruited by ASIS, Australia's secret service, to infiltrate a Snakehead organization by posing as an Afghan refugee. He meets his godfather, Ash, while preparing in Thailand, and they team up. The Snakehead organization and its leader, Major Winston Yu, a Scorpia board member, reportedly stole a powerful bomb called Royal Blue, which MI6 wants to intercept. Ash and Alex find Royal Blue but are apprehended by Yu, who later reveals his plan to destroy an island hosting an international summit. Ash is revealed to be an employee of Yu and is killed in the conflict over Royal Blue. Before death, Ash confesses to being ordered by Julia Rothman to murder of Alex's parents. Yu tries to escape before the bomb detonates but is ultimately the sole casualty of Royal Blue's shockwave.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Crocodile Tears" was published in 2009. It begins with Alex's girlfriend, Sabina, and her family visiting the UK from San Francisco. Alex goes to Scotland with them. They go to millionaire Desmond McCain's mansion for a Christmas party, but after Alex offends McCain in a game of poker, their 2017 Nissan X-Trail falls into the lagoon. Alex is rescued by a man whose identity is later revealed as Rahim, an Indian RAW agent sent to kill McCain. Alex is recruited by MI6 to investigate McCain but is captured by him. He is taken to Kenya where he learns that McCain will poison Kenya, killing its inhabitants and animals and collecting 'charity money' that he will collect for personal benefit. Alex is nearly killed by McCain but saved by Rahim. Alex ultimately foils McCain's plan, but as they escape, McCain kills Rahim, who Alex then kills and then ventures back to England.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Scorpia Rising" was published in 2011. A Greek trillionaire, Yannis Ariston Xenopolos hires Scorpia to return the Elgin Marbles to Greece. Scorpia's plan includes the laying of a false trail to Cairo, Egypt, and blackmailing MI6 into returning the Marbles. MI6 falls for the trap and Alex is sent to Cairo, where he is dismayed to find that Scorpia has been pulling the strings all along. He also meets Julius Grief, his clone from Point Blanc who escaped from an MI6 prison in Gibraltar. He aims to personally kill Alex to avenge Dr Grief's death. Alex is captured by Scorpia and manages to help his long-time friend and caregiver after his uncle's death, Jack, (who has also been captured) escape. Scorpia anticipated this and laid a trap for Jack. The news of her alleged killing devastates Alex but he manages to stop Scorpia's plan and kills Julius. The book ends when Alex escapes and moves to San Francisco with Sabina's family, changing him forever and disallowing him to return to his spy life.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Russian Roulette" was published in 2013. It is told from the point of view of the infamous contract killer, Yassen Gregorovich. It starts in a small, isolated Russian village where Yassen, known as Yasha, grew up. Yasha is a teenager with a best friend named Leo and parents working at a laboratory, living near Moscow. One day, Yasha's parents reveal that their lab's latest client bribed them into corruption and forced them to make weaponized smallpox to wipe out Russia's enemies. When the smallpox contaminated the lab and the village, Yasha's parents made their escape. Yasha's mother injects him with a vaccine and dies of smallpox while his father dies from a bullet wound. He escapes with Leo, who dies of smallpox under a highway. He travels by train to Moscow, where he meets his parents' friend, a Professor at a school, who betrays him and has him arrested. He escapes the guards and realizes he was robbed by a boy he met earlier at the train station. He goes back and finds the boy and his crew, and they recruit him into their posse of street thieves. Months later, after being transformed into a skillful thief, attempts to rob a wealthy man named Vladimir Sharksvosky. He is captured and sent to work for Sharksvosky at his compound somewhere else in Russia. Before he becomes Vladimir's food tester, Sharksvosky forces him to play Russian Roulette to test his luck. Yasha survives, but when he is questioned, a mouth injury leads him to pronounce his name as "Yassen." Yassen is put to work for many years, often enduring the teasing of Sharksvosky's son Ivan, and being taught by his helicopter pilot. One day, Yassen overhears Sharksvosky reveal he was the client who had his parents' lab create smallpox and vows to one day kill him. Later, the helicopter pilot breaks the helicopter and kills Sharksvosky's usual mechanic in order to get his companion into the compound. The mechanic shoots Sharksvosky and one of the two guards, but the second is killed by Yassen, who steals a gun and holds the mechanic at gunpoint. He and the pilot are forced to take him to their organization, which is Scorpia. He is taken to Italy, where Rothman tells him Sharksvosky is alive, kills the mechanic, and sends him to Malgasto, their terrorist school. Yassen is taught to be a model assassin, and assassin John Rider is assigned to look over him. In three assassination attempts, Yassen fails the first, John saves him in the second, and Yassen also fails the third. John tells him to run or Scorpia will kill him for failing. But after his departure, Yassen discovers he is a spy for MI6, and angrily heads to Sharksvosky's compound. Using his expert skills to sneak in, Yassen plays Russian Roulette with Sharksvosky, with only one round not containing a bullet this time, miraculously survives, and kills Sharksvosky. Before leaving, he also brutally kills Ivan. Since then, he rejoins Scorpia, kills many others, and then fails to kill Alex Rider after the young agent foils Stormbreaker, and in the end sacrifices himself for Alex, remembering how John saved his life once.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Never Say Die" was published in June 2017 with a US release in October 2017. After the events of Scorpia Rising, Alex is left traumatized by the death of his caregiver and close friend, Jack Starbright. After being given a glimmer of hope about her survival, through an unknown email, Alex is thrust into the horrors of his past in a battle to recover his friend from the dead. Along the way, he encounters new foes (associated with Scorpia) who are nothing like anyone he has battled before. He foils their plans of making rich parents pay to get their children back (after kidnapping the children) so they could become millionaires. In the process, he finds Jack, who then helps him free the children. He then manages to derail a steam locomotive with an improvised bomb (Thermos with diesel in it), thus killing his foes who were chasing after him in it.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Secret Weapon" was published in 2019. A collection of seven adventures that Alex Rider experienced outside of the missions assigned to him by MI6. These stories occur throughout the series. Four of these short stories were already previously released by author Anthony Horowitz, but "Alex In Afghanistan", "Tea with Smithers" and "Spy Trap" were all written exclusively for this collection.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Nightshade" was published in 2020. Alex is battling against a new criminal organization, Nightshade (after the downfall of Scorpia) which Mrs. Jones had been reading a document about at the end of Never Say Die. After the assassination of an MI6 agent in Rio de Janeiro, one of the assassins is caught. It is a 15-year-old boy - Frederick Grey - who was presumed dead. The dead agent's final words tell about a terrorist attack by Nightshade. Mrs. Jones recognizes her daughter, Sofia, when she sees a picture of Grey's escaped partner. Alex is sent by Mrs. Jones to pretend to be Julius Grief at the Gibraltar prison, where Julius was before escaping at the start of Scorpia Rising, and where Frederick is being held; the mission is to learn about the organization Frederick works for. Unable to get the right information, when Alex becomes friends with Frederick, he decides to escape with Frederick and then infiltrate Nightshade's base of operations, an abandoned military base in Crete. There, he learns that Nightshade is using twenty-three brainwashed children (originally 25 but 2 were killed in a "training accident") to work as mercenaries for a group of four Americans calling themselves the "Teachers". Alex's cover is blown by Nightshade's client, and he is used as a distraction while Frederick, Sofia, and 'Number Eleven' try to kill many at St Paul's Cathedral. Alex prevents that by disabling the Teacher's communication system with their child agents. Alex tries to help Fredrick after his capture and promises Mrs. Jones to help her find 'Nightshade', who still has her son, William, as an agent, not knowing that 'Nightshade' is already plotting revenge against Alex.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Christmas at Gunpoint" was later published as part of "The Mission Files", material from which was included in "Secret Weapon", along with new material published on April 4, 2019, and which were made available on Anthony Horowitz's website.


title: Alex Rider

text: "Resistance to Interrogation" and "Coda" are available on the author's website and have all been included in certain editions of that book except "Resistance to Interrogation", which was included in certain editions of "Never Say Die". "The White Carnation" was later included in the short story collection "Alex Rider: Undercover," which was published exclusively for World Book Day 2020.


title: Alex Rider

text: Horowitz wrote the screenplay for the feature film "Stormbreaker", directed by Geoffrey Sax. "Stormbreaker" was an international co-production between companies and financiers from the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany, and released on 21 July 2006. Intended to be the first entry in a film franchise, "Stormbreaker" grossed between $20.7 and $23.9 million worldwide upon its theatrical release, failing to recoup its $40 million budget and making the film a box office bomb.


title: Alex Rider

text: In May 2017, it was announced that ITV was developing a television adaptation of the Alex Rider novels. The series is being produced by Eleventh Hour Films, with "Tutankhamen" screenwriter and novelist Guy Burt acting as showrunner. Eleventh Hour Films is run by Horowitz's wife Jill Green.


title: Alex Rider

text: In July 2018, it was reported that Sony Pictures Television had replaced ITV as Eleventh Hour Film's distribution and financial partner for a new "Alex Rider" television series. Sony Pictures Television's international and worldwide distribution divisions under Wayne Garvie and Keith Le Goy were attached to the film series. Burt had adapted "Point Blanc", the second book in the "Alex Rider" novel series, for television. Horowitz will serve as executive producer for the series.


title: Alex Rider

text: The first season was released on Amazon Prime Video in the United Kingdom on 4 June 2020. In New Zealand, the television series is distributed by TVNZ On Demand. On 10 November 2020, the series was officially renewed for a second season and will adapt the Alex Rider book "Eagle Strike"; it was released on 3 December 2021.


title: Tiger reserves of India

text: The tiger reserves of India were set up in 1973 and are governed by Project Tiger, which is administrated by the National Tiger Conservation Authority. Until 2018, 50 protected areas have been designated tiger reserves.


title: Tiger reserves of India

text: In 2022, 53rd tiger reserve in India was declared in Ranipur Wildlife Sanctuary, Uttar Pradesh, and the State's fourth tiger reserve.


title: Tiger reserves of India

text: India is home to 80 percent of tigers in the world. In 2006, India estimated that there were 1,411 tigers which increased to 1,706 in 2010, 2,226 in 2014 and 2,967 in 2018. The increase in population of tigers in India played a big role in driving up global populations as well; the number of wild tigers globally rose from 3,159 in 2010 to 3,890 in 2016 according to World Wildlife Fund and Global Tiger Forum. However, a recent article by Gopalaswamy et al. in "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA", by citing several studies, has revealed that these claims of increasing tiger numbers are scientifically indefensible (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2203244119).


title: Tiger reserves of India

text: of declared reserves are operated by state forestry departments "to ensure maintenance of viable populations of the conservation dependent Bengal tigers in India". The tigers are maintained for their scientific, economic, aesthetic, cultural and ecological values and to preserve for all time areas of biological importance as a national heritage for the benefit, educational purposes."


title: Tiger reserves of India

text: By the year 2018, according to the National Tiger Conservation Authority, there were estimated only 2,967 tigers in existence in India. The 2010 National Tiger Assessment estimated the total population of tigers in India at 1,706. As per Ministry of Environment and Forests, the tiger population in India stood at 2,226 in 2014 with an increase of 30.5% since the 2010 estimate. This exhaustive study indicated that better protected tiger source sites, especially tiger reserves, have maintained viable populations. However, the area occupied by tigers outside protected areas has decreased considerably. This demonstrates the need for corridors in order for tigers to move between source sites. The existing tiger reserves represent around one-third of India's high density forest area. More tigers were killed in the first quarter of 2016 than in the entire previous year. This significant revelation comes at a time when the tiger census numbers are disputed by the scientific community.


title: Tiger reserves of India

text: In 2010–11, the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in partnership with the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) undertook an independent management effectiveness evaluation (MEE) of the 53 tiger reserves in the country. The reserves were categorized into four major categories. Madhya pradesh has the highest number of tigers(526) in the age group of 1.5 years with more than 408 big cats. Other states with significant populations include Karnataka (524), Uttarakhand (442), Tamil Nadu (229), Maharashtra (190), Assam (167), Kerala (136) and Uttar Pradesh (117).


title: Tiger reserves of India

text: In addition to existing reserves, the in-principle approval has been accorded by the National Tiger Conservation Authority for the creation of two new tiger reserves, namely Ratapani Tiger Reserve in Madhya Pradesh, Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh and Kaimur Wildlife Sanctuary in Bihar. Final approval has been accorded to Kudremukh National Park to be declared as a tiger reserve. The State Governments have been advised to send proposals for declaring the following areas as tiger reserves: Suhelva Sanctuary in Uttar Pradesh, Mhadei Sanctuary in Goa, Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary in Arunachal Pradesh and Cauvery-MM Hills in Karnataka.


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes (; , ; c. 446 – c. 386 BC), son of Philippus, of the deme Kydathenaion (), was a comic playwright or comedy-writer of ancient Athens and a poet of Old Attic Comedy. Eleven of his forty plays survive virtually complete. These provide the most valuable examples of a genre of comic drama known as Old Comedy and are used to define it, along with fragments from dozens of lost plays by Aristophanes and his contemporaries.


title: Aristophanes

text: Also known as "The Father of Comedy" and "the Prince of Ancient Comedy", Aristophanes has been said to recreate the life of ancient Athens more convincingly than any other author. His powers of ridicule were feared and acknowledged by influential contemporaries; Plato singled out Aristophanes' play "The Clouds" as slander that contributed to the trial and subsequent condemning to death of Socrates, although other satirical playwrights had also caricatured the philosopher.


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes' second play, "The Babylonians" (now lost), was denounced by Cleon as a slander against the Athenian "polis". It is possible that the case was argued in court, but details of the trial are not recorded and Aristophanes caricatured Cleon mercilessly in his subsequent plays, especially "The Knights", the first of many plays that he directed himself. "In my opinion," he says through that play's Chorus, "the author-director of comedies has the hardest job of all."


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes's name means the perfect one that appears, from the greek 'Aριστος'=Aristos=perfect and the greek 'Φάνης'=Phanes=The one who appears and shines.


title: Aristophanes

text: Less is known about Aristophanes than about his plays. In fact, his plays are the main source of information about him and his life. It was conventional in Old Comedy for the chorus to speak on behalf of the author during an address called the parabasis and thus some biographical facts can be found there. However, these facts relate almost entirely to his career as a dramatist and the plays contain few clear and unambiguous clues about his personal beliefs or his private life. He was a comic poet in an age when it was conventional for a poet to assume the role of teacher (didaskalos), and though this specifically referred to his training of the Chorus in rehearsal, it also covered his relationship with the audience as a commentator on significant issues.


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes claimed to be writing for a clever and discerning audience, yet he also declared that "other times" would judge the audience according to its reception of his plays. He sometimes boasts of his originality as a dramatist yet his plays consistently espouse opposition to radical new influences in Athenian society. He caricatured leading figures in the arts (notably Euripides, whose influence on his own work however he once grudgingly acknowledged), in politics (especially the populist Cleon), and in philosophy/religion (where Socrates was the most obvious target). Such caricatures seem to imply that Aristophanes was an old-fashioned conservative, yet that view of him leads to contradictions.


title: Aristophanes

text: It has been argued that Aristophanes produced plays mainly to entertain the audience and to win prestigious competitions. His plays were written for production at the great dramatic festivals of Athens, the Lenaia and City Dionysia, where they were judged and awarded prizes in competition with the works of other comic dramatists. An elaborate series of lotteries, designed to prevent prejudice and corruption, reduced the voting judges at the City Dionysia to just five. These judges probably reflected the mood of the audiences yet there is much uncertainty about the composition of those audiences. The theatres were certainly huge, with seating for at least 10,000 at the Theatre of Dionysus. The day's program at the City Dionysia for example was crowded, with three tragedies and a satyr play ahead of a comedy, but it is possible that many of the poorer citizens (typically the main supporters of demagogues like Cleon) occupied the festival holiday with other pursuits. The conservative views expressed in the plays might therefore reflect the attitudes of the dominant group in an unrepresentative audience.


title: Aristophanes

text: The production process might also have influenced the views expressed in the plays. Throughout most of Aristophanes' career, the Chorus was essential to a play's success and it was recruited and funded by a "choregus", a wealthy citizen appointed to the task by one of the archons. A choregus could regard his personal expenditure on the Chorus as a civic duty and a public honour, but Aristophanes showed in "The Knights" that wealthy citizens might regard civic responsibilities as punishment imposed on them by demagogues and populists like Cleon. Thus the political conservatism of the plays may reflect the views of the wealthiest section of Athenian society, on whose generosity all dramatists depended for putting on their plays.


title: Aristophanes

text: When Aristophanes' first play "The Banqueters" was produced, Athens was an ambitious, imperial power and the Peloponnesian War was only in its fourth year. His plays often express pride in the achievement of the older generation (the victors at Marathon) yet they are not jingoistic, and they are staunchly opposed to the war with Sparta. The plays are particularly scathing in criticism of war profiteers, among whom populists such as Cleon figure prominently. By the time his last play was produced (around 386 BC) Athens had been defeated in war, its empire had been dismantled and it had undergone a transformation from being the political to the intellectual centre of Greece. Aristophanes was part of this transformation and he shared in the intellectual fashions of the period—the structure of his plays evolves from Old Comedy until, in his last surviving play, "Wealth II", it more closely resembles New Comedy. However it is uncertain whether he led or merely responded to changes in audience expectations.


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes won second prize at the City Dionysia in 427 BC with his first play "The Banqueters" (now lost). He won first prize there with his next play, "The Babylonians" (also now lost). It was usual for foreign dignitaries to attend the City Dionysia, and "The Babylonians" caused some embarrassment for the Athenian authorities since it depicted the cities of the Delian League as slaves grinding at a mill. Some influential citizens, notably Cleon, reviled the play as slander against the "polis" and possibly took legal action against the author. The details of the trial are unrecorded but, speaking through the hero of his third play "The Acharnians" (staged at the Lenaia, where there were few or no foreign dignitaries), the poet carefully distinguishes between the "polis" and the real targets of his acerbic wit:


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes repeatedly savages Cleon in his later plays. But these satirical diatribes appear to have had no effect on Cleon's political career—a few weeks after the performance of "The Knights"—a play full of anti-Cleon jokes—Cleon was elected to the prestigious board of ten generals. Cleon also seems to have had no real power to limit or control Aristophanes: the caricatures of him continued up to and even beyond his death.


title: Aristophanes

text: In the absence of clear biographical facts about Aristophanes, scholars make educated guesses based on interpretation of the language in the plays. Inscriptions and summaries or comments by Hellenistic and Byzantine scholars can also provide useful clues. We know from a combination of these sources, and especially from comments in "The Knights" and "The Clouds", that Aristophanes' first three plays were not directed by him—they were instead directed by Callistratus and Philoneides, an arrangement that seemed to suit Aristophanes since he appears to have used these same directors in many later plays as well (Philoneides for example later directed "The Frogs" and he was also credited, perhaps wrongly, with directing "The Wasps".) Aristophanes's use of directors complicates our reliance on the plays as sources of biographical information because apparent self-references might have been made with reference to his directors instead. Thus for example a statement by the chorus in "The Acharnians" seems to indicate that the "poet" had a close, personal association with the island of Aegina. Similarly, the hero in "The Acharnians" complains about Cleon "dragging me into court" over "last year's play."


title: Aristophanes

text: Comments made by the Chorus referring to Aristophanes in "The Clouds" have been interpreted as evidence that he can hardly have been more than 18 years old when his first play "The Banqueters" was produced. The second parabasis in "Wasps" appears to indicate that he reached some kind of temporary accommodation with Cleon following either the controversy over "The Babylonians" or a subsequent controversy over "The Knights". It has been inferred from statements in "The Clouds" and "Peace" that Aristophanes was prematurely bald.


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes was probably victorious at least once at the City Dionysia (with "Babylonians" in 427) and at least three times at the Lenaia, with "The Acharnians" in 425, "Knights" in 424, and "Frogs" in 405. "Frogs" in fact won the unique distinction of a repeat performance at a subsequent festival. A son of Aristophanes, Araros, was also a comic poet and he could have been heavily involved in the production of his father's play "Wealth II" in 388. Araros is also thought to have been responsible for the posthumous performances of the now lost plays "Aeolosicon II" and "Cocalus", and it is possible that the last of these won the prize at the City Dionysia in 387. It appears that a second son, Philippus, was twice victorious at the Lenaia and he could have directed some of Eubulus’ comedies. A third son was called either Nicostratus or Philetaerus, and a man by the latter name appears in the catalogue of Lenaia victors with two victories, the first probably in the late 370s.


title: Aristophanes

text: Plato's "The Symposium" appears to be a useful source of biographical information about Aristophanes, but its reliability is open to doubt. It purports to be a record of conversations at a dinner party at which both Aristophanes and Socrates are guests, held some seven years after the performance of "The Clouds", the play in which Socrates was cruelly caricatured. One of the guests, Alcibiades, even quotes from the play when teasing Socrates over his appearance and yet there is no indication of any ill-feeling between Socrates and Aristophanes. Plato's Aristophanes is in fact a genial character and this has been interpreted as evidence of Plato's own friendship with him (their friendship appears to be corroborated by an epitaph for Aristophanes, "reputedly" written by Plato, in which the playwright's soul is compared to an eternal shrine for the Graces). Plato was only a boy when the events in "The Symposium" are supposed to have occurred and it is possible that his Aristophanes is in fact based on a reading of the plays. For example, conversation among the guests turns to the subject of Love and Aristophanes explains his notion of it in terms of an amusing allegory, a device he often uses in his plays. He is represented as suffering an attack of hiccups and this might be a humorous reference to the crude physical jokes in his plays. He tells the other guests that he is quite happy to be thought amusing but he is wary of appearing ridiculous. This fear of being ridiculed is consistent with his declaration in "The Knights" that he embarked on the career of comic playwright warily after witnessing the public contempt and ridicule that other dramatists had incurred.


title: Aristophanes

text: Aristophanes survived The Peloponnesian War, two oligarchic revolutions and two democratic restorations; this has been interpreted as evidence that he was not actively involved in politics despite his highly political plays. He was probably appointed to the Council of Five Hundred for a year at the beginning of the fourth century but such appointments were very common in democratic Athens.


title: Aristophanes

text: The language of Aristophanes' plays, and in Old Comedy generally, was valued by ancient commentators as a model of the Attic dialect. The orator Quintilian believed that the charm and grandeur of the Attic dialect made Old Comedy an example for orators to study and follow, and he considered it inferior in these respects only to the works of Homer. A revival of interest in the Attic dialect may have been responsible for the recovery and circulation of Aristophanes' plays during the fourth and fifth centuries AD, resulting in their survival today. In Aristophanes' plays, the Attic dialect is couched in verse and his plays can be appreciated for their poetic qualities.


title: Aristophanes

text: For Aristophanes' contemporaries the works of Homer and Hesiod formed the cornerstones of Hellenic history and culture. Thus poetry had a moral and social significance that made it an inevitable topic of comic satire. Aristophanes was very conscious of literary fashions and traditions and his plays feature numerous references to other poets. These include not only rival comic dramatists such as Eupolis and Hermippus and predecessors such as Magnes, Crates and Cratinus, but also tragedians, notably Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, all three of whom are mentioned in e.g. "The Frogs". Aristophanes was the equal of these great tragedians in his subtle use of lyrics. He appears to have modelled his approach to language on that of Euripides in particular, so much so that the comic dramatist Cratinus labelled him a 'Euripidaristophanist' addicted to hair-splitting niceties.


title: Aristophanes

text: A full appreciation of Aristophanes' plays requires an understanding of the poetic forms he employed with virtuoso skill, and of their different rhythms and associations. There were three broad poetic forms: iambic dialogue, tetrameter verses and lyrics:


title: Aristophanes

text: The rhythm begins at a typical anapestic gallop, slows down to consider the revered poets Hesiod and Homer, then gallops off again to its comic conclusion at the expense of the unfortunate Pantocles. Such subtle variations in rhythm are common in the plays, allowing for serious points to be made while still whetting the audience's appetite for the next joke.


title: Aristophanes

text: It can be argued that the most important feature of the language of the plays is imagery, particularly the use of similes, metaphors and pictorial expressions. In "The Knights", for example, the ears of a character with selective hearing are represented as parasols that open and close. In "The Frogs", Aeschylus is said to compose verses in the manner of a horse rolling in a sandpit. Some plays feature revelations of human perfectibility that are poetic rather than religious in character, such as the marriage of the hero Pisthetairos to Zeus's paramour in "The Birds" and the "recreation" of old Athens, crowned with roses, at the end of "The Knights".


title: Aristophanes

text: It is widely believed that Aristophanes condemned rhetoric on both moral and political grounds. He states, "a speaker trained in the new rhetoric may use his talents to deceive the jury and bewilder his opponents so thoroughly that the trial loses all semblance of fairness" He is speaking to the "art" of flattery, and evidence points towards the fact that many of Aristophanes' plays were actually created with the intent to attack the view of rhetoric. The most noticeable attack can be seen in his play Banqueters, in which two brothers from different educational backgrounds argue over which education is better. One brother comes from a background of "old-fashioned" education while the other brother appears to be a product of the sophistic education


title: Aristophanes

text: The chorus was mainly used by Aristophanes as a defense against rhetoric and would often talk about topics such as the civic duty of those who were educated in classical teachings. In Aristophanes' opinion it was the job of those educated adults to protect the public from deception and to stand as a beacon of light for those who were more gullible than others. One of the main reasons why Aristophanes was so against the sophists came into existence from the requirements listed by the leaders of the organization. Money was essential, which meant that roughly all of the pupils studying with the sophists came from upper-class backgrounds and excluded the rest of the polis. Aristophanes believed that education and knowledge was a public service and that anything that excluded willing minds was nothing but an abomination. He concludes that all politicians that study rhetoric must have "doubtful citizenships, unspeakable morals, and too much arrogance".


title: Aristophanes

text: The plays of Aristophanes are among the defining examples of Old Comedy. For this reason, an understanding of Old Comedy and Aristophanes' place in it is useful to comprehend his plays in their historical and cultural context. The themes of Old Comedy included:


title: Aristophanes

text: The rules of competition did not prevent a playwright arranging and adjusting these elements to suit his particular needs. In "The Acharnians" and "Peace", for example, there is no formal agon whereas in "The Clouds" there are two agons.


title: Aristophanes

text: The parabasis is an address to the audience by the chorus or chorus leader while the actors leave or have left the stage. In this role, the chorus is sometimes out of character, as the author's voice, and sometimes in character, although these capacities are often difficult to distinguish. Generally the parabasis occurs somewhere in the middle of a play and often there is a second parabasis towards the end. The elements of a parabasis have been defined and named by scholars but it is probable that Aristophanes' own understanding was less formal. The selection of elements can vary from play to play and it varies considerably within plays between first and second parabasis. The early plays ("The Acharnians" to "The Birds") are fairly uniform in their approach however and the following elements of a parabasis can be found within them.


title: Aristophanes

text: "The Wasps" is thought to offer the best example of a conventional approach and the elements of a parabasis can be identified and located in that play as follows.


title: Aristophanes

text: Textual corruption is probably the reason for the absence of the antistrophe in the second parabasis.


title: Aristophanes

text: However, there are several variations from the ideal even within the early plays. For example, the parabasis proper in "The Clouds" (lines 518–562) is composed in eupolidean meter rather than in anapests and the second parabasis includes a kommation but it lacks strophe, antistrophe and antepirrhema ("The Clouds" lines 1113–1130). The second parabasis in "The Acharnians" lines 971–999 can be considered a hybrid parabasis/song (i.e. the declaimed sections are merely continuations of the strophe and antistrophe) and, unlike the typical parabasis, it seems to comment on actions that occur on stage during the address. An understanding of Old Comedy conventions such as the parabasis is necessary for a proper understanding of Aristophanes' plays; on the other hand, a sensitive appreciation of the plays is necessary for a proper understanding of the conventions.


title: Aristophanes

text: The tragic dramatists, Sophocles and Euripides, died near the end of the Peloponnesian War and the art of tragedy thereafter ceased to develop, yet comedy did continue to evolve after the defeat of Athens and it is possible that it did so because, in Aristophanes, it had a master craftsman who lived long enough to help usher it into a new age. Indeed, according to one ancient source (Platonius, c.9th Century AD), one of Aristophanes's last plays, "Aioliskon", had neither a parabasis nor any choral lyrics (making it a type of Middle Comedy), while "Kolakos" anticipated all the elements of New Comedy, including a rape and a recognition scene. Aristophanes seems to have had some appreciation of his formative role in the development of comedy, as indicated by his comment in "Clouds" that his audience would be judged by other times according to its reception of his plays. "Clouds" was awarded third (i.e. last) place after its original performance and the text that has come down to the modern age was a subsequent draft that Aristophanes intended to be read rather than acted. The circulation of his plays in manuscript extended their influence beyond the original audience, over whom in fact they seem to have had little or no practical influence: they did not affect the career of Cleon, they failed to persuade the Athenians to pursue an honourable peace with Sparta and it is not clear that they were instrumental in the trial and execution of Socrates, whose death probably resulted from public animosity towards the philosopher's disgraced associates (such as Alcibiades), exacerbated of course by his own intransigence during the trial. The plays, in manuscript form, have been put to some surprising uses—as indicated earlier, they were used in the study of rhetoric on the recommendation of Quintilian and by students of the Attic dialect in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries AD. It is possible that Plato sent copies of the plays to Dionysius of Syracuse so that he might learn about Athenian life and government.


title: Aristophanes

text: Latin translations of the plays by Andreas Divus (Venice 1528) were circulated widely throughout Europe in the Renaissance and these were soon followed by translations and adaptations in modern languages. Racine, for example, drew "Les Plaideurs" (1668) from "The Wasps". Goethe (who turned to Aristophanes for a warmer and more vivid form of comedy than he could derive from readings of Terence and Plautus) adapted a short play "Die Vögel" from "The Birds" for performance in Weimar. Aristophanes has appealed to both conservatives and radicals in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries—Anatoly Lunacharsky, first Commissar of Enlightenment for the USSR in 1917, declared that the ancient dramatist would have a permanent place in proletarian theatre and yet conservative, Prussian intellectuals interpreted Aristophanes as a satirical opponent of social reform. The avant-gardist stage-director Karolos Koun directed a version of "The Birds" under the Acropolis in 1959 that established a trend in modern Greek history of breaking taboos through the voice of Aristophanes.


title: Aristophanes

text: The plays have a significance that goes beyond their artistic function, as historical documents that open the window on life and politics in classical Athens, in which respect they are perhaps as important as the writings of Thucydides. The artistic influence of the plays is immeasurable. They have contributed to the history of European theatre and that history in turn shapes our understanding of the plays. Thus for example the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan can give us insights into Aristophanes' plays and similarly the plays can give us insights into the operettas. The plays are a source of famous sayings, such as "By words the mind is winged."


title: Aristophanes

text: Alan H. Sommerstein believes that although there are good translations of Aristophanes' comedies in English, none could be flawless, "for there is much truth in the paradox that the only really perfect translation is the original." In spite of that, it is crucial to be cited that there are competent respectable translations in other languages such as Farsi (by Reza Shirmarz, a well-known Iranian playwright, translator and researcher), French and German. Despite the fact that English translations of Aristophanes might not be perfect, "the reception of Aristophanes has gained extraordinary momentum as a topic of academic interest in the last few years."


title: Aristophanes

text: Most of these are traditionally referred to by abbreviations of their "Latin" titles; Latin remains a customary language of scholarship in classical studies.


title: Aristophanes

text: The standard modern edition of the fragments is Rudolf Kassel and Colin François Lloyd Austin's, "Poetae Comici Graeci" III.2.


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: Joseph Edward Abercrombie (born December 31, 1974) is a British fantasy writer and film editor. He is the author of "The First Law" trilogy, as well as other fantasy books in the same setting and a trilogy of young adult novels. His novel "Half a King" won the 2015 Locus Award for best young adult book.


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: Abercrombie was born in Lancaster, Lancashire, England. He was educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School and Manchester University, where he studied psychology. He has a wife, Lou.


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: Abercrombie has been an avid player of video games since his childhood. In an interview with "Edge" magazine, Abercrombie stated that video games have been a big influence on his writing, including early interest in text-based adventure games and historically based strategy games such as "Civilization" and "Age of Empires". Other favorite games of Abercrombie's include "Elite", "Dungeon Master", "Street Fighter II", and "Red Dead Redemption".


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: Abercrombie had a job making tea at a television production company before taking up a career as a freelance film editor. As a freelance film editor, Abercrombie found himself with more free time than he previously had. With this time, he decided to reconsider a story plot he conceived while attending University.


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: Abercrombie began writing "The Blade Itself" in 2002, completing it in 2004. It took a year of rejection by publishing agencies before Gillian Redfearn of Gollancz accepted the book for a five-figure deal in 2005 ("a seven-figure deal if you count the pence columns"). It was published by Gollancz in 2006 and was followed in the succeeding two years by two other books in the trilogy, by the titles of "Before They Are Hanged" and "Last Argument of Kings", respectively. In 2008, Joe Abercrombie was a finalist for the John W. Campbell award for Best New Writer. That same year Abercrombie was one of the contributors to the BBC "Worlds of Fantasy" series, alongside other contributors such as Michael Moorcock, Terry Pratchett and China Miéville. In 2009, Abercrombie released the novel "Best Served Cold". It is set in the same world as The First Law Trilogy but is a stand-alone novel. He followed with "The Heroes "(2011) and "Red Country" (2012), both again set in the world of the First Law Trilogy. The three standalone novels were later collected into an omnibus edition under the name "The Great Leveller".


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: In 2011, Abercrombie signed a deal with Gollancz for four more books set in the First Law world. In 2013, HarperCollins' fantasy and children's imprints acquired the rights to three books by Abercrombie, aimed at younger readers. The three standalone but interconnected novels were released as the Viking-influenced "Shattered Sea" trilogy.


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: The "Age of Madness" trilogy is set in the same fictional world as the "First Law" books during an industrial revolution.


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: <section begin=short-fiction />All short fiction is collected in "Sharp Ends: Stories from the World of the First Law" (April 2016). There are a total of 13 stories, of which five were original to the collection and eight previously published.


title: Joe Abercrombie

text: "Tough Times All Over" won a Locus Award, and "The Fool Jobs" and "Some Desperado" received nominations.<section end=short-fiction />


title: Bachchan family

text: The Bachchan Family is an Indian family primarily associated with the Hindi film industry. The real family name of its founder Harivanshrai Bachchan was of Srivastava subcaste.


title: Bachchan family

text: The notable members of the family include Amitabh's parents, poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan and social activist Teji Bachchan; his wife, actress Jaya Bhaduri; their daughter Shweta Bachchan Nanda; their son, actor Abhishek Bachchan; and Abhishek's wife, actress Aishwarya Rai. In 2007, "Time" listed Amitabh Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai on its list of most influential Indians.


title: Bachchan family

text: The Bachchan family came from an Indian Awadhi Hindu background and they were Chitraguptavanshi Kayasthas that were fluent in several Hindustani dialects (Awadhi, Hindi, Urdu) as well as Persian. The family also has Punjabi ethnic roots through patriarch Amitabh's mother Teji Bachchan (née Suri) and Bengali ethnic roots through wife of Amitabh Jaya Bachchan (née Bhaduri). Bachchan family also has roots in Mangalore region of South India through Abhishek Bachchan's wife Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who hail from Tulu speaking Bunt community.


title: Bachchan family

text: Amitabh Bachchan is the son of Hindi poet Harivansh Rai Bachchan, who married Shyama and Teji Bachchan. Amitabh's wife is actress Jaya Bachchan. Their children are Shweta Bachchan Nanda and actor Abhishek Bachchan. Shweta is married to Nikhil Nanda, the son of Ritu Nanda and grandson of actor Raj Kapoor. Shweta's children are son Agastya Nanda and daughter Navya Naveli Nanda. Abhishek is married to Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, and they have a daughter named Aaradhya Bachchan. The family stays in the two famous houses, Jalsa and Pratiksha, in Mumbai.


title: Bachchan family

text: Amitabh has a brother, Ajitabh Bachchan, who has three daughters, Nilima, Naina and Namrita Bachchan, and a son, Bhim Bachchan. Naina is married to actor Kunal Kapoor.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: Chappelle's Show is an American sketch comedy television series created by comedians Dave Chappelle and Neal Brennan, with Chappelle hosting the show and starring in the majority of its sketches. Chappelle, Brennan, and Michele Armour were the show's executive producers. The series premiered on January 22, 2003, on the American cable television network Comedy Central. The show ran for two complete seasons. An abbreviated third season of three episodes aired in 2006, compiled of previously unreleased sketches.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: After numerous delays, production of the third season of "Chappelle’s Show" was abruptly ended when Chappelle left the series. Critically acclaimed throughout its run, the series often satirized and examined—through dark and racial humor—race, social stereotypes, masculinity, celebrity culture, and comedy itself. "TV Guide" included it on their list of "TV's Top 100 Shows" and it was placed 26th on "Entertainment Weekly"'s "New TV Classics" ranking.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: The show opens with Chappelle being introduced over the instrumental from the song "Hip-Hop", from the album "Let's Get Free" by Dead Prez. Chappelle performs a short stand up in front of a live audience. The focus then shifts to a prerecorded sketch. The show is notorious for its handling of the topic of sexuality and Chappelle's casual usage of racial epithets. Chappelle performed sketches that premiered intricate cultural topics, such as prostitution, the entertainment industry, gun violence, numerous drug references (particularly marijuana, alcohol, PCP, crystal meth and crack cocaine) and music. The show sometimes ends with a musical performance by a hip hop or soul artist.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: Rather than acting out sketches in front of a live studio audience, the sketches were prerecorded with the audience reaction usually used in lieu of a laugh track. According to Neal Brennan in the season-two DVD commentary, the production team never edits in prerecorded laughs, with the exception of the "Dude's Night Out" sketch due to the lack of reaction from the audience.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: Many guest stars have appeared on the show, including "Half Baked" co-stars Guillermo Díaz, Jim Breuer and Snoop Dogg (who was also a musical guest); RZA, GZA and Method Man of the Wu-Tang Clan, Rick James, Damon Dash, Redman, Ice-T, Arsenio Hall, Wayne Brady (the only guest to appear on stage), Mos Def (who was also a musical guest), Eddie Griffin, Susan Sarandon, Q-Tip, Rashida Jones, Jamie Foxx, Carson Daly, Ron Jeremy, Bill Burr, Patrice O’Neal, Rich Vos, Spike Lee, Michael Rapaport and Joe Rogan.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: Musical guests include De La Soul, Ludacris, Robert Petkoff, Talib Kweli, Fat Joe, Wyclef Jean, Killer Mike, Big Boi of OutKast, Anthony Hamilton, Kanye West, Common, DMX, Busta Rhymes, Slum Village, John Mayer, Questlove, Cee-Lo Green, Vida Guerra, Erykah Badu and Lil Jon.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: During a June 2004 stand-up performance in Sacramento, California, Chappelle left the stage due to audience members interrupting the show by shouting, "I'm Rick James, bitch!," which became a catchphrase from the popular "Rick James" sketch. After a few minutes, Chappelle returned and continued by saying, "The show is ruining my life." He stated that he disliked working "20 hours a day" and that the popularity of the show was making it difficult for him to continue his stand-up career which was "the most important thing" to him. He also told the audience:


title: Chappelle's Show

text: The third season of "Chappelle's Show" was scheduled to premiere in February 2005. This date was pushed back to May 31, 2005, when production fell behind schedule in December 2004 because, according to Comedy Central, Chappelle had fallen ill with the flu (Chappelle later told Oprah Winfrey that this was untrue and that stress had caused him to leave). On May 4, 2005, just weeks before the anticipated premiere, Comedy Central announced that "Chappelle's Show" would not be ready by the announced date and that production had been suspended "until further notice". No reason for the delay or suspension was given and no response was given by Chappelle. One week later, it was reported (most notably by "The New York Times" and "Entertainment Weekly") that Chappelle had flown to South Africa on April 28 to stay in an undisclosed psychiatric facility.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: On May 14, "Time" announced that one of their reporters, Christopher John Farley, had interviewed Chappelle in South Africa, and that no psychiatric treatments were occurring or necessary. Chappelle returned shortly thereafter and quelled rumors of psychiatric or substance-abuse problems, and emphasized that his trip was a "spiritual retreat" intended to keep his sense of reality outside the bubble of intense pressure and fame and to keep his humor fresh.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: On July 14, Comedy Central president Doug Herzog announced that Chappelle was welcome back any time, but that the comedian had said he was still not ready to return. Herzog put a positive spin on negotiations, but conceded that he did not expect "Chappelle's Show" to return in 2005. "The New York Times" also reported that Chappelle explained to Herzog, over dinner, that his success was getting to him and that "he wanted to be wrong again sometimes, instead of always being right."


title: Chappelle's Show

text: In August, with Herzog and Chappelle having reportedly not spoken since their June 3 meeting, "TV Guide" featured an interview with Charlie Murphy, in which he stated, ""Chappelle's Show" is over, man. Done... It took me a long time to be able to say those words, but I can say it pretty easy now because it's the truth." Around the same time came confirmation from Comedy Central that co-creator Neal Brennan had left the show.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: Nonetheless, on December 11, during Comedy Central's "Last Laugh '05", a promotion for the third season of the show was aired.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: On January 24, 2006, the program premiered uncensored on the UK's FX, starting with the second season. The first episode featured the "Slow Motion" sketch, one of the most famous in the United Kingdom, popularized by the Internet. It was well received by critics, with outspoken TV critic Gary Naysmith declaring it, "The finest piece of television I've seen all year."


title: Chappelle's Show

text: On February 3, 2006, Chappelle made his first television interview since production ceased on season three, on "The Oprah Winfrey Show". He stated that burnout, losing his creative control, and a work environment that was uncomfortable, were some of the reasons he left the show. He also stated that he would be open to producing the remainder of season three (and perhaps a season four) only if his demands were met, one of which was to ensure that half of the proceeds of future "Chappelle's Show" DVD sales would go to charity. Chappelle claimed that if Comedy Central aired the unaired episodes, the show would be finished. After that announcement, Comedy Central stopped advertising the release of the third season for a period of time.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: In April, the network wrapped up production of the third season, taping the live studio audience segments for three episodes. In place of Chappelle, the last episodes were cohosted by regular cast members Charlie Murphy and Donnell Rawlings. Advertised as the "lost episodes", they began airing on July 9, 2006. The third and final episode aired on July 23, 2006. The DVD collection of the lost episodes was released on July 25, 2006.


title: Chappelle's Show

text: When asked if he felt guilty about carrying on with the lost episodes without Chappelle, Rawlings replied: