title: Raveena Ravi

text: Raveena Ravi is an Indian voice-over artist and actor. She was born to voice actor Sreeja Ravi and Actor/Singer Ravindranathan Krishnan. She has dubbed several television advertisements directed by Rajiv Menon in Tamil, Malayalam and Telugu. She started dubbing for lead actresses with "Saattai" (2012). She debuted as an actress on-screen with "Oru Kidayin Karunai Manu" (2017).


title: Simon Fuller

text: Simon Fuller (born 17 May 1960) is a British entrepreneur, artist manager, and film and television producer renowned for nurturing and inspiring world class entertainment talent. He is the creator of the "Idols" TV format, including the UK series "Pop Idol" and the US series "American Idol".


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2020, Fuller signed an exclusive agreement with tech firm TikTok to create a new TikTok supergroup and concluded an agreement with Verizon Communications to develop 5G content. In 2021 Pearson PLC announced a partnership with Simon Fuller to create a new global education business in Performing Arts.In 2016, Simon Fuller persuaded Swedish quartet ABBA to re-unite to explore working in virtual reality, which led to the ABBA Voyage project.


title: Simon Fuller

text: "Time" has named Fuller one of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has been certified as the most successful British music manager of all time by "Billboard". Fuller received the 2,441st star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on 23 May 2011. In 2014 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Brighton in his home county East Sussex in recognition for his "contribution to business, entrepreneurship and philanthropy". The 2020 "Sunday Times Rich List" estimated Fuller's wealth at £445 million.


title: Simon Fuller

text: Fuller was born on 17 May 1960 in British Cyprus, though later the family moved to Accra, Ghana where his father was the headmaster of the British Military School, Burma Camp. The family moved back to Hastings, East Sussex, where Simon's father became headmaster of the school he attended. He has two brothers, Kim and Mark.


title: Simon Fuller

text: Fuller began his career in 1981 at Chrysalis in A&R (Chrysalis Records) in the UK, where he signed Madonna's first hit 'Holiday' to the company. He started his own management company in London in 1985, 19 Entertainment, eventually selling the business to CKX, Inc. in a cash and stock deal worth over $200 million in March 2005. In 2008 the company delivered a profit of $92.5 million (£66m) into the parent company. Fuller became a director of CKX, a position which gave him creative control over all of CKX's assets including the Elvis Presley Estate, Muhammad Ali's business interests, and other rights properties, until January 2010 when he started a new firm, XIX Entertainment, while continuing to work with CKX/19 as a consultant and executive producer. XIX Entertainment was given a valuation of $100 million and is run from offices in London and Los Angeles.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In February 2008, Fuller was presented with the PGA Award by the Producers Guild of America in Hollywood. At the event he was praised for his creativity, entrepreneurship, and charity work by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Prince Charles who also thanked Fuller for his support of the Prince's charity The Prince's Trust.


title: Simon Fuller

text: Fuller's first broadcast venture was "Miami "7"", a scripted teen TV drama starring the British pop group S Club 7 screened by BBC/Fox Kids in 100+ territories around the world. "Miami 7" launched the careers of several stars including Rachel Stevens, Jon Lee, Holly Willoughby, and Ben Barnes, and the show created a blueprint for the teen-orientated television musicals that followed, including "Glee" and "High School Musical".


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2001, Fuller created "Pop Idol", a Saturday night prime time TV show on British television that Maggie Brown in "The Guardian" states "became a seminal reality/entertainment format". The show produced instant No 1 chart hits, including for Will Young, whose single "Evergreen" was named by "NME" magazine in 2012 as the "biggest selling single of the century" in the UK. Fuller sold "Pop Idol" around the world, and he has been credited with creating the world's most valuable TV format with a value of over $8 billion made up of revenue from sponsors, merchandising, telephone, music sales, broadcast and advertising sources. In the US "American Idol" became a No.1 rated show. The show made stars of its presenter Ryan Seacrest as well as Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul as well as many of its performers including Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood and others. Over 30 million viewers saw David Cook win the seventh season of "American Idol" in May 2008 and when Fuller re-launched the show in 2011 for its 10th season ratings climbed 20% for the finale event. 122.4 million votes were cast, a record for a reality TV show.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2005, Fuller, along with co-creator Nigel Lythgoe, launched "So You Think You Can Dance" on the Fox network in the US. The show grew over 16 seasons to become a regular summer hit. In 2012, Simon Fuller's XIX Entertainment created a new international format with Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, and Jamie King named Q'Viva! The Chosen, and described as a celebration of Latin culture that screened in 21 territories reaching over 30 million Spanish-speaking TV viewers.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In December 2016, Norwegian state broadcaster NRK announced that it had concluded a deal with Simon Fuller to produce the English language version of "Skam"; Fuller later announced a deal with Facebook to launch award-winning drama format SKAM Austin in the US in 2018.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2017, international news media reported on auditions being staged by Fuller's business XIX for Now United, a real time access global pop group being cast in 14 cities around the world. In 2019, the "London Evening Standard" confirmed that BBC1 would broadcast "Serengeti", a wildlife drama created by Fuller. In July 2020, US media reported that "Serengeti", voiced by Lupita Nyong'o, created by Simon Fuller, was nominated for a Primetime EMMY Award


title: Simon Fuller

text: Fuller came to prominence in the 1990s for managing the pop group the Spice Girls. He has managed acts including Victoria Beckham, Annie Lennox, S Club 7, Now United, Steven Tyler, Amy Winehouse, Carrie Underwood, Kelly Clarkson, Will Young, Emma Bunton, Any Gabrielly, The Future X Lisa Marie Presley and many more in addition to sports icons Lewis Hamilton, Andy Murray.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2008, Fuller was certified as the most successful British music manager of all time by "Billboard" magazine. He has managed the career of Annie Lennox since the release of her multi platinum album "Diva" in 1991. He has managed hit songwriters and producers, including Cathy Dennis, who first met Fuller as the singer of D Mob in the 1980s. Under Fuller's guidance, Dennis became the UK's No. 1 female songwriter with a string of hits for artists including Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Katy Perry, Pink, Will Young, and others.


title: Simon Fuller

text: Fuller managed the Spice Girls through the peak of their 1990s success and he remains in partnership with the five girls today. Under Fuller's guidance, the Spice Girls became a marketing phenomenon, rose to chart topper status worldwide and went on to sell over 85 million records. In 2002, Fuller's company discovered 19-year-old Amy Winehouse, produced her first award-winning album "Frank" and signed her to Universal Music.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2005, 2006, and 2007, the biggest selling music acts in North America (Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, and Daughtry) were all managed by Fuller. In October 2016, Fuller announced a joint venture with the 4 original members of the Swedish supergroup ABBA to create a new digital ABBA; In August 2020, BBC News announced that Fuller had signed an exclusive agreement with tech firm TikTok to create a new TikTok supergroup.


title: Simon Fuller

text: Fuller owns significant stakes in British fashion businesses Victoria Beckham Ltd. In 2006, Fuller brokered the deal for 19 Entertainment to purchase a majority share in Storm Model Management. In 2008, Fuller launched the Victoria Beckham dress collection at New York Fashion Week. Since then Victoria Beckham Limited has grown to become a best selling high-end fashion brand, stocked in over 400 outlets around the world and winning Brand of The Year at the 2012 and 2014 British Fashion Awards. In 2012, Fuller accompanied Victoria Beckham to launch the business in China.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In February 2012, XIX Entertainment launched a David Beckham bodywear range in 2,500 H&M stores around the world. This was followed in 2015 when Fuller announced a joint venture with Hong Kong-based Global Brands Group Holding Ltd (787) giving Fuller and Beckham ownership of their own apparel business specifically to develop the David Beckham brand and other consumer products. The first result of this partnership was the Fall 2016 re-launch of the British heritage menswear label Kent & Curwen, which under Beckham, Fuller and 7 Global ownership currently runs 113 stores in 51 cities worldwide. In 2019, US media reported that Fuller sold 33% share of David Beckham business for $50 million after generating revenue of $72.4 million and a profit of $16 million for fiscal 2017.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2003, Fuller formed a joint venture partnership with British footballer David Beckham, building a global business and later negotiating his five year contract to join LA Galaxy. In 2014, Fuller and Beckham discussed plans to buy an MLS football team in Miami. Later in the same year Fuller and Beckham launched a new global whisky in partnership with British drinks company Diageo. Fuller's plan to deliver Beckham's ownership of an MLS team was announced in January 2018 when Miami was confirmed as 25th MLS team. The Financial Times reported that Fuller sold his interests in David Beckham's business in 2019 for a reported £50m.


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2009, Fuller took on personal representation of British No.1 tennis player Andy Murray, representing him during his US Open and Wimbledon wins and later helping the player to establish his own business. In March 2011, Fuller was announced as the manager of British F1 driver Lewis Hamilton and surprised many when he moved Hamilton from McLaren and signed him to a long-term contract with the MercedesAMG team. Hamilton won the 2014 F1 World Championship and publicly thanked Fuller for his support.


title: Simon Fuller

text: Fuller has championed many causes through his working life including The Prince's Trust, Amnesty International, Save the Children, United Nations Foundation, UNICEF, Greenpeace, WWF and Comic Relief. His idea for a philanthropic TV platform "Idol Gives Back" raised well over $185 million for US and African charities and led to Fuller being honored by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2011: "Simon Fuller is an extraordinary leader" he said. ""Idol Gives Back" is a tremendous initiative in giving Americans a way to save lives around the world".


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2008, Charles, Prince of Wales, thanked Fuller for his support of The Prince's Trust, stating; "He has been one of the most effective and generous ambassadors for my Trust, which I set up 32 years ago to help the most disadvantaged young people in the United Kingdom. There are many young people in the United Kingdom whose lives have been transformed and, in some cases, saved – literally – thanks to the contribution which Simon has made."


title: Simon Fuller

text: In 2009, Fuller founded Malaria No More UK in London, donating resources and funds to allow the charity to lead the fight against malaria. Fuller remains a passionate ambassador for the cause and has shared his own experience of malaria with the charity.


title: Simon Fuller

text: He has a portfolio of real estate including properties in Europe, North America, and South America. In 2014, Fuller was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Brighton in recognition for his "contribution to business, entrepreneurship and philanthropy".


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Top-down and bottom-up are both strategies of information processing and knowledge ordering, used in a variety of fields including software, humanistic and scientific theories (see systemics), and management and organization. In practice, they can be seen as a style of thinking, teaching, or leadership.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: A top-down approach (also known as "stepwise design" and stepwise refinement and in some cases used as a synonym of "decomposition") is essentially the breaking down of a system to gain insight into its compositional sub-systems in a reverse engineering fashion. In a top-down approach an overview of the system is formulated, specifying, but not detailing, any first-level subsystems. Each subsystem is then refined in yet greater detail, sometimes in many additional subsystem levels, until the entire specification is reduced to base elements. A top-down model is often specified with the assistance of "black boxes", which makes it easier to manipulate. However, black boxes may fail to clarify elementary mechanisms or be detailed enough to realistically validate the model. Top down approach starts with the big picture, then breaks down from there into smaller segments.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: A bottom-up approach is the piecing together of systems to give rise to more complex systems, thus making the original systems sub-systems of the emergent system. Bottom-up processing is a type of information processing based on incoming data from the environment to form a perception. From a cognitive psychology perspective, information enters the eyes in one direction (sensory input, or the "bottom"), and is then turned into an image by the brain that can be interpreted and recognized as a perception (output that is "built up" from processing to final cognition). In a bottom-up approach the individual base elements of the system are first specified in great detail. These elements are then linked together to form larger subsystems, which then in turn are linked, sometimes in many levels, until a complete top-level system is formed. This strategy often resembles a "seed" model, by which the beginnings are small but eventually grow in complexity and completeness. However, "organic strategies" may result in a tangle of elements and subsystems, developed in isolation and subject to local optimization as opposed to meeting a global purpose.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: During the design and development of new products, designers and engineers rely on both a bottom-up and top-down approach. The bottom-up approach is being utilized when off-the-shelf or existing components are selected and integrated into the product. An example would include selecting a particular fastener, such as a bolt, and designing the receiving components such that the fastener will fit properly. In a top-down approach, a custom fastener would be designed such that it would fit properly in the receiving components.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: For perspective, for a product with more restrictive requirements (such as weight, geometry, safety, environment, etc.), such as a space-suit, a more top-down approach is taken and almost everything is custom designed.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Top-down approaches emphasize planning and a complete understanding of the system. It is inherent that no coding can begin until a sufficient level of detail has been reached in the design of at least some part of the system. Top-down approaches are implemented by attaching the stubs in place of the module. This, however, delays testing of the ultimate functional units of a system until significant design is complete.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Bottom-up emphasizes coding and early testing, which can begin as soon as the first module has been specified. This approach, however, runs the risk that modules may be coded without having a clear idea of how they link to other parts of the system, and that such linking may not be as easy as first thought. Re-usability of code is one of the main benefits of the bottom-up approach.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Top-down design was promoted in the 1970s by IBM researchers Harlan Mills and Niklaus Wirth. Mills developed structured programming concepts for practical use and tested them in a 1969 project to automate the "New York Times" morgue index. The engineering and management success of this project led to the spread of the top-down approach through IBM and the rest of the computer industry. Among other achievements, Niklaus Wirth, the developer of Pascal programming language, wrote the influential paper "Program Development by Stepwise Refinement". Since Niklaus Wirth went on to develop languages such as Modula and Oberon (where one could define a module before knowing about the entire program specification), one can infer that top-down programming was not strictly what he promoted. Top-down methods were favored in software engineering until the late 1980s, and object-oriented programming assisted in demonstrating the idea that both aspects of top-down and bottom-up programming could be utilized.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Modern software design approaches usually combine both top-down and bottom-up approaches. Although an understanding of the complete system is usually considered necessary for good design, leading theoretically to a top-down approach, most software projects attempt to make use of existing code to some degree. Pre-existing modules give designs a bottom-up flavor. Some design approaches also use an approach where a partially functional system is designed and coded to completion, and this system is then expanded to fulfill all the requirements for the project.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Top-down is a programming style, the mainstay of traditional procedural languages, in which design begins by specifying complex pieces and then dividing them into successively smaller pieces. The technique for writing a program using top–down methods is to write a main procedure that names all the major functions it will need. Later, the programming team looks at the requirements of each of those functions and the process is repeated. These compartmentalized sub-routines eventually will perform actions so simple they can be easily and concisely coded. When all the various sub-routines have been coded the program is ready for testing. By defining how the application comes together at a high level, lower level work can be self-contained. By defining how the lower level abstractions are expected to integrate into higher level ones, interfaces become clearly defined.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: In a bottom-up approach, the individual base elements of the system are first specified in great detail. These elements are then linked together to form larger subsystems, which then in turn are linked, sometimes in many levels, until a complete top-level system is formed. This strategy often resembles a "seed" model, by which the beginnings are small, but eventually grow in complexity and completeness. Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a paradigm that uses "objects" to design applications and computer programs. In mechanical engineering with software programs such as Pro/ENGINEER, Solidworks, and Autodesk Inventor users can design products as pieces not part of the whole and later add those pieces together to form assemblies like building with Lego. Engineers call this piece part design.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: In a bottom-up approach, good intuition is necessary to decide the functionality that is to be provided by the module. If a system is to be built from an existing system, this approach is more suitable as it starts from some existing modules.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Parsing is the process of analyzing an input sequence (such as that read from a file or a keyboard) in order to determine its grammatical structure. This method is used in the analysis of both natural languages and computer languages, as in a compiler.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Bottom-up parsing is a strategy for analyzing unknown data relationships that attempts to identify the most fundamental units first, and then to infer higher-order structures from them. Top-down parsers, on the other hand, hypothesize general parse tree structures and then consider whether the known fundamental structures are compatible with the hypothesis. See Top-down parsing and Bottom-up parsing.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Top-down and bottom-up are two approaches for the manufacture of products. These terms were first applied to the field of nanotechnology by the Foresight Institute in 1989 in order to distinguish between molecular manufacturing (to mass-produce large atomically precise objects) and conventional manufacturing (which can mass-produce large objects that are not atomically precise). Bottom-up approaches seek to have smaller (usually molecular) components built up into more complex assemblies, while top-down approaches seek to create nanoscale devices by using larger, externally controlled ones to direct their assembly. Certain valuable nanostructures, such as Silicon nanowires, can be fabricated using either approach, with processing methods selected on the basis of targeted applications.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: The top-down approach often uses the traditional workshop or microfabrication methods where externally controlled tools are used to cut, mill, and shape materials into the desired shape and order. Micropatterning techniques, such as photolithography and inkjet printing belong to this category. Vapor treatment can be regarded as a new top-down secondary approaches to engineer nanostructures.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Bottom-up approaches, in contrast, use the chemical properties of single molecules to cause single-molecule components to (a) self-organize or self-assemble into some useful conformation, or (b) rely on positional assembly. These approaches utilize the concepts of molecular self-assembly and/or molecular recognition. See also Supramolecular chemistry. Such bottom-up approaches should, broadly speaking, be able to produce devices in parallel and much cheaper than top-down methods, but could potentially be overwhelmed as the size and complexity of the desired assembly increases.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: These terms are also employed in neuroscience, cognitive neuroscience and cognitive psychology to discuss the flow of information in processing. Typically sensory input is considered "bottom-up", and higher cognitive processes, which have more information from other sources, are considered "top-down". A bottom-up process is characterized by an absence of higher level direction in sensory processing, whereas a top-down process is characterized by a high level of direction of sensory processing by more cognition, such as goals or targets (Biederman, 19).


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: According to college teaching notes written by Charles Ramskov, Rock, Neiser, and Gregory claim that top-down approach involves perception that is an active and constructive process. Additionally, it is an approach not directly given by stimulus input, but is the result of stimulus, internal hypotheses, and expectation interactions. According to Theoretical Synthesis, "when a stimulus is presented short and clarity is uncertain that gives a vague stimulus, perception becomes a top-down approach."


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Conversely, psychology defines bottom-up processing as an approach wherein there is a progression from the individual elements to the whole. According to Ramskov, one proponent of bottom-up approach, Gibson, claims that it is a process that includes visual perception that needs information available from proximal stimulus produced by the distal stimulus. Theoretical Synthesis also claims that bottom-up processing occurs "when a stimulus is presented long and clearly enough."


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Cognitively speaking, certain cognitive processes, such as fast reactions or quick visual identification, are considered bottom-up processes because they rely primarily on sensory information, whereas processes such as motor control and directed attention are considered top-down because they are goal directed. Neurologically speaking, some areas of the brain, such as area V1 mostly have bottom-up connections. Other areas, such as the fusiform gyrus have inputs from higher brain areas and are considered to have top-down influence.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: The study of visual attention provides an example. If your attention is drawn to a flower in a field, it may be because the color or shape of the flower are visually salient. The information that caused you to attend to the flower came to you in a bottom-up fashion—your attention was not contingent upon knowledge of the flower; the outside stimulus was sufficient on its own. Contrast this situation with one in which you are looking for a flower. You have a representation of what you are looking for. When you see the object you are looking for, it is salient. This is an example of the use of top-down information.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: In cognitive terms, two thinking approaches are distinguished. "Top-down" (or "big chunk") is stereotypically the visionary, or the person who sees the larger picture and overview. Such people focus on the big picture and from that derive the details to support it. "Bottom-up" (or "small chunk") cognition is akin to focusing on the detail primarily, rather than the landscape. The expression "seeing the wood for the trees" references the two styles of cognition.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Studies done in task switching and response selection show that there are differences through the two types of processing. Top down primarily focuses on the attention side, Such as task repetition (Schneider, 2015).  While bottom-up focuses on item- based learning. Such as finding the same object over and over again( Schneider, 2015). Implications for understanding attentional control of response selection in conflict situations are discussed (Schneider, 2015).


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Also in how we structure these processing neroogically. With structuring information interfaces in our neurological processes for procdeual learning. These processes where proven effective to work in our interface design. However, Although both top-down principles were effective in guiding interface design, they were not sufficient. They can be combined with iterative bottom-up methods to produce usable interfaces  (Zacks & Tversky, 2003).


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Undergraduate students are taught the basis of Top-down bottom-up processing around their third year in the program. Going through 4 main parts of the processing when viewing it from a learning perspective. The two main definitions; Being bottom-up processing that is determined directly by environmental stimuli rather than the individual's knowledge and expectations (Koch, 2022). Top-down being stimulus processing that is determined by expectations, memory, and knowledge rather than directly by the stimulus (Koch, 2022). These are fairly standard definitions since the students are just learning, its good for them.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: In the fields of management and organization, the terms "top-down" and "bottom-up" are used to describe how decisions are made and/or how change is implemented.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: A ""top-down"" approach is where an executive decision maker or other top person makes the decisions of how something should be done. This approach is disseminated under their authority to lower levels in the hierarchy, who are, to a greater or lesser extent, bound by them. For example, when wanting to make an improvement in a hospital, a hospital administrator might decide that a major change (such as implementing a new program) is needed, and then the leader uses a planned approach to drive the changes down to the frontline staff (Stewart, Manges, Ward, 2015).


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: A ""bottom-up"" approach to changes is one that works from the grassroots—from a large number of people working together, causing a decision to arise from their joint involvement. A decision by a number of activists, students, or victims of some incident to take action is a "bottom-up" decision. A bottom-up approach can be thought of as "an incremental change approach that represents an emergent process cultivated and upheld primarily by frontline workers" (Stewart, Manges, Ward, 2015, p. 241).


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Positive aspects of top-down approaches include their efficiency and superb overview of higher levels. Also, external effects can be internalized. On the negative side, if reforms are perceived to be imposed 'from above', it can be difficult for lower levels to accept them (e.g. Bresser-Pereira, Maravall, and Przeworski 1993). Evidence suggests this to be true regardless of the content of reforms (e.g. Dubois 2002). A bottom-up approach allows for more experimentation and a better feeling for what is needed at the bottom. Other evidence suggests that there is a third combination approach to change (see Stewart, Manges, Ward, 2015).


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Both top-down and bottom-up approaches exist in public health. There are many examples of top-down programs, often run by governments or large inter-governmental organizations (IGOs); many of these are disease-specific or issue-specific, such as HIV control or Smallpox Eradication. Examples of bottom-up programs include many small NGOs set up to improve local access to healthcare. However, a lot of programs seek to combine both approaches; for instance, guinea worm eradication, a single-disease international program currently run by the Carter Center has involved the training of many local volunteers, boosting bottom-up capacity, as have international programs for hygiene, sanitation, and access to primary health-care.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Often, the École des Beaux-Arts school of design is said to have primarily promoted top-down design because it taught that an architectural design should begin with a parti, a basic plan drawing of the overall project.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: By contrast, the Bauhaus focused on bottom-up design. This method manifested itself in the study of translating small-scale organizational systems to a larger, more architectural scale (as with the wood panel carving and furniture design).


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: In ecology, top-down control refers to when a top predator controls the structure or population dynamics of the ecosystem. The interactions between these top predators and their prey is what influences lower trophic levels. Changes in the top level of trophic levels have an inverse effect on the lower trophic levels. Top-down control can have negative effects on the surrounding ecosystem if there is a drastic change in the number of predators. The classic example is of kelp forest ecosystems. In such ecosystems, sea otters are a keystone predator. They prey on urchins which in turn eat kelp. When otters are removed, urchin populations grow and reduce the kelp forest creating urchin barrens. This reduces the diversity of the ecosystem as a whole and can detrimental effects on all of the other organisms. In other words, such ecosystems are not controlled by productivity of the kelp, but rather, a top predator. One can see the inverse effect that top-down control has in this example; when the population of otters decreased, the population of the urchins increased.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Bottom-up control in ecosystems refers to ecosystems in which the nutrient supply, productivity, and type of primary producers (plants and phytoplankton) control the ecosystem structure. If there are not enough resources or producers in the ecosystem, there is not enough energy left for the rest of the animals in the food chain because of biomagnification and the ecological efficiency. An example would be how plankton populations are controlled by the availability of nutrients. Plankton populations tend to be higher and more complex in areas where upwelling brings nutrients to the surface.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: There are many different examples of these concepts. It is common for populations to be influenced by both types of control, and there is still debates going on as to which type of control affects food webs in certain ecosystems.


title: Top-down and bottom-up design

text: Top-down reasoning in ethics is when the reasoner starts from abstract universalisable principles and then reasons down them to particular situations. Bottom-up reasoning occurs when the reasoner starts from intuitive particular situational judgements and then reasons up to principles. Reflective equilibrium occurs when there is interaction between top-down and bottom-up reasoning until both are in harmony. That is to say, when universalisable abstract principles are reflectively found to be in equilibrium with particular intuitive judgements. The process occurs when cognitive dissonance occurs when reasoners try to resolve top-down with bottom-up reasoning, and adjust one or the other, until they are satisfied they have found the best combinations of principles and situational judgements.


title: Wolf Children

text: Hosoda established Studio Chizu for production. Yoshiyuki Sadamoto, of "" (1990) and "Neon Genesis Evangelion" (1995), designed the characters. "Wolf Children" had its world premiere in Paris on June 25, 2012, and was released theatrically on July 21, 2012 in Japan. Funimation licenses the film for North America and Manga Entertainment handles UK rights.


title: Wolf Children

text: In Tokyo, college student Hana falls in "fairy tale" love with an enigmatic man. The man reveals that he can transform into a wolf, and they later have two wolf/human children: A daughter named Yuki, and a son named Ame. Soon after, their father is killed in an accident while hunting food for the children.


title: Wolf Children

text: Hana's life as a single mother is difficult; Yuki and Ame constantly switch between their human and wolf forms, get into fights, and Hana has to hide them from the world. After she receives noise complaints and a visit from social workers concerned that the children have not had vaccinations, Hana moves the family to the countryside away from prying neighbors. She works hard to repair a dilapidated house, but struggles to sustain the family on their own crops. With help from a strict old man named Nirasaki, she learns to farm sufficiently and becomes friends with some of the locals.


title: Wolf Children

text: One winter day, Ame almost drowns in a river after trying to hunt a kingfisher, but Yuki rescues him, and Ame becomes more confident in his wolf abilities. Yuki begs her mother to let her go to school like other children. Hana accepts on the condition that Yuki keeps her wolf nature secret. Yuki soon makes friends at school. Meanwhile, Ame is more interested in the forest and takes lessons from an elderly fox about survival in the wild.


title: Wolf Children

text: In fourth grade, Yuki's class receives a new transfer student, Sōhei, who realizes something is strange about her. When he pursues the matter by cornering her, Yuki gets angry, transforms into a wolf, and inadvertently injures him, leaving a scar on his right ear. At the meeting with their parents and teachers, Sōhei tells them a wolf attacked him, absolving Yuki of the blame. The two become friends.


title: Wolf Children

text: Yuki and Ame fight over whether they are human or wolf, especially after Yuki forces Ame to start going back to school, to which he refuses. Two years later, a fierce storm gathers and Yuki's school is let out early. As Hana is about to leave to pick her up, Ame disappears into the forest to help his dying fox teacher, so she follows him. The other children are picked up by their parents, leaving Yuki and Sōhei alone. Yuki shows Sōhei that she can transform into a wolf and it was really her who attacked him. He tells her he already knew, and promises to keep her secret.


title: Wolf Children

text: As Hana searches for Ame, she slips and falls off a cliff. She sees a vision of the children's father, who tells her that Yuki and Ame will find their own paths in life, and that she raised them well. Ame finds Hana and carries her to safety. She awakens to see Ame fully transform into an adult wolf and run into the mountains. Realizing he has found his own path, she happily but tearfully accepts his goodbye.


title: Wolf Children

text: One year later, Yuki leaves home to move into a middle school dormitory. Ame's wolf howls are heard far and wide in the forest. Hana, now living alone, reflects that raising her wolf children was like a fairy tale, and feels proud to have raised them well.


title: Wolf Children

text: One of Hosoda's motivations for working on this film was that people around him had started raising children, and he "saw them shining as they became parents." In an interview with "Anime! Anime!" in February 2013, Hosoda explained why he chose the setting of "Wolf Children" despite the fact that it is a story about raising a child: "It is generally taken for granted that children are raised and then grow up. But for the actual people involved, it is not natural at all. In order for the audience to share this feeling, I thought it would be good if we all shared an experience that no one else had (raising a werewolf child)."


title: Wolf Children

text: In an interview with "Famitsu", Hosoda said, "I used to take it for granted that people would have children. However, after getting married, I began to realize that raising children in the city is a hardship in terms of the environment, such as public support, and that living in the countryside is not necessarily easy, and that there is a hardship of not having anyone of the same age. I wanted to make a film about such endurance." Human parenting cannot be done in complete isolation, and the reason for choosing wolves as the material for the project was that "wolves are very family-oriented, and they are disciplined animals that have a leader who leads the pack and lives with the whole group in mind."


title: Wolf Children

text: The setting of the early part of the story, "a national university on the outskirts of Tokyo," is modeled after Hitotsubashi University in Kunitachi, Tokyo. In addition, the countryside where Hana moves to is modeled after the undeveloped woodland in Toyama Prefecture. The backdrop of the film depicts the landscape of Nakaniikawa District's Kamiichi, Hosoda's hometown, and the neighboring town of Tateyama, and it was divulged that the former mayor of Kamiichi, Naoshi Itō, approached Hosoda to "make a film based on the town." The old house that served as the model for Hana's house was a private home owned by Masao Yamazaki, who lived in Kamiichi. In 2007, five years before the movie was released, Yamazaki passed away, and the house was considered for demolition, but it was chosen as the model for Hana's house, and after the movie became a big hit, it was opened to the public by the owners (relatives of Yamazaki) and volunteers (as of 2015). The elementary school that Ame and Yuki attended was modeled after Tanaka Elementary School (only the gymnasium is still in existence). The yakitori with sauce that appears in the film is oidare yakitori, a local dish from Ueda, Nagano, where Hosoda's wife's parents live.


title: Wolf Children

text: At a press conference held on 18 June 2012, the director Mamoru Hosoda announced that "Wolf Children" would be released in 34 countries and territories. This film's premiere was in France on June 25, 2012, marking its international debut.


title: Wolf Children

text: It was subsequently released in Japan on July 21, 2012. The film's Blu-ray and DVD release date for Japan was February 20, 2013. The film had a limited release in the United States on September 27, 2013.


title: Wolf Children

text: "Wolf Children" was screened at Animefest 2013 in May in the Czech Republic and at Animafest Zagreb 2013 in June in Croatia.


title: Wolf Children

text: In addition to the film, two novelizations and a manga written by Hosoda (with art by ) were released by Kadokawa Shoten. The manga was translated into English by Yen Press and was nominated for the "Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia" category at the 2015 Eisner Awards. As tie-ins to the film, a film picture book, an art book, and a storyboard book were released from Kadokawa, Media Pal, and Pia.


title: Wolf Children

text: "Wolf Children" was the second-highest-grossing film in Japan on its debut weekend of 21–22 July 2012, beating Pixar's animation "Brave", which debuted in Japan on the same weekend. It attracted an audience of 276,326 throughout the weekend, grossing 365.14 million yen. The film subsequently surpassed Hosoda's previous work "Summer Wars"' gross of around 1.6 billion yen during the weekend of 12–13 August 2012. In total, "Wolf Children" grossed 4.2 billion yen, making it the fifth-highest-grossing movie in Japan in 2012.


title: Wolf Children

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 95% of critics have given the film a positive review based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. On Metacritic, the film has an weighted average score of 71 out of 100 based on 5 critics, signifying "generally favorable reviews."


title: Wolf Children

text: Mark Schilling of "The Japan Times" gave the film three out of five stars and wrote that "The Miyazaki influence on Hosoda's own work seems obvious, from his cute-but-realistic style to his concern with pressing social issues and the messy emotions of actual human beings". He felt the film was "on the conventional and predictable side ... appealing to Jane Eyre fans in one scene, "Call of the Wild" fans in the next" and criticized its "well-worn, stereotypical rails".


title: Wolf Children

text: Thomas Sotinel of "Le Monde" gave the film five out of five stars. Dave Chua of "Mypaper" also praised the film's "magnificent understated eye for detail, from the grain of wood on doors to the lovingly captured forest scenes, that help lift the movie above regular animation fare." Chris Michael of "The Guardian" gave the film four out of five, writing that "telling the story through the eyes of the harried, bereaved but indomitable mother gives this calm, funny, only occasionally schmaltzy family film a maturity "Twilight" never reached." Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" described it as "an odd story, told in a one-of-a-kind style that feels equal parts sentimental, somber and strange," and felt the English language performances were inappropriately sweet and simplistic. Steven D. Greydanus, writing in the National Catholic Register, named the film a runner-up in its list of the best films of 2013, writing: "Despite brief early problematic content and an ambiguous climactic letdown, the main story is magic."


title: Wolf Children

text: "Wolf Children" won the 2013 Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year, the 2012 Mainichi Film Award for Best Animation Film, and the 2013 Animation of the Year award at TAF. It won two awards at the Oslo Films from the South festival in Norway: the main award, the Silver Mirror, and the audience award. It won an Audience Award at 2013 New York International Children's Film Festival and the 2014 Best Anime Disc award from "Home Media Magazine".


title: Corin Nemec

text: Joseph Charles Nemec IV (born November 5, 1971), known professionally as Corin Nemec, is an American actor, producer, and screenwriter. He was billed as Corin "Corky" Nemec or Corky Nemec until 1990.


title: Corin Nemec

text: Nemec is known for playing the title character in FOX sitcom "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" (1990–93), Jonas Quinn in television series "Stargate SG-1", and Harold Lauder in the ABC miniseries "The Stand". Nemec is known in India for his role as Allan in Rahul Dholakia's 2007 film "Parzania."


title: Corin Nemec

text: Nemec (Corky) was born on November 5, 1971. His mother, Janis was a graphic artist as well as a painter, writer, and poet. His father, Joseph Charles Nemec III, is of Czech descent, and works in the film industry as a set designer and production designer. His older sister, Anastacia C. Nemec, works also as an assistant director.


title: Corin Nemec

text: Corin dated Jami Beth Schahn when they were teenagers, and in 1993 they had their first child, Sadie Joy. Corin and Jami married in 2002 and had their second child, Lucas Manu, in 2005. Corin and Jami divorced in 2009 and shared custody of their children.


title: Corin Nemec

text: Nemec is close friends with actor David Faustino of television sitcom "Married... with Children", with whom he has a production company that co-produced the debut album from Austin-based band Hollow featuring Jon Dishongh. Nemec and Faustino co-starred in "Star-ving", a Web series Tharp the spoofs HBO's "Entourage" that aired on Crackle.


title: Corin Nemec

text: On September 22nd 2022, Tampa Bay Times reported Corin was moving to Tampa Bay to begin production on a Series of independent films with Scatter Brothers Productions, the filming of several new movies also starring Jeremy London, and a relationship with his girlfriend Sabrina Nova Tropf. Tampa Bay Times article


title: Corin Nemec

text: Nemec was inspired to become an actor after watching the children's film "The Goonies" at the age of 13, for which his father had done the art direction. He also cites his parents' artistic professions as a major influence, and that acting "seemed the right thing to do". Nemec began training with the Centre Stage LA theater company and signed on with an agent after performing in one of its talent showcases. He was booked for several commercials, such as Suzuki, and eventually landed a guest-spot on the TV show "Sidekicks" starring Ernie Reyes Jr., with whom Nemec is still friends. His first major film role was "" in 1988. He appeared in several TV shows, earning an Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Steven Stayner in the NBC miniseries


title: Corin Nemec

text: "I Know My First Name Is Steven". He starred alongside actors Jack Palance, Peter Boyle, and Charlton Heston in the 1990 feature film "Solar Crisis".


title: Corin Nemec

text: Nemec played the lead in the TV series "Parker Lewis Can't Lose" from 1990 to 1993. Also, in 1993, Nemec was cast as Harold Lauder in a TV adaptation of Stephen King's "The Stand". In 1997, he played a notable role in the movie "Goodbye, America". He also starred in the TV movies "My Brother's Keeper" alongside Jeanne Tripplehorn and "Blackout" with Jane Seymour. Nemec made appearances on several TV shows, including "Tales from the Crypt", "Smallville", "", "", "Supernatural", and "Ghost Whisperer". He also portrayed the serial killers Richard Speck and Ted Bundy. He played leading parts in some original Sci Fi Channel (United States) made-for-TV movies such as "Sea Beast", "Mansquito", "SS Doomtrooper", "Dragon Wasps", and "Lake Placid vs. Anaconda" and some original movies for Lifetime (TV network).


title: Corin Nemec

text: During the 1990s, Nemec had a brief foray into hip-hop, recording an entire album with the group Starship of Foolz, developed by Matt Robinson and Dedra Tate, and produced by actor Balthazar Getty. Nemec also produced a new comic series that starred Paul Mooney, father of fellow Starship of Foolz member Shane Mooney, as the president of the United States. He also appeared in the music video "Beer for My Horses" by Toby Keith and Willie Nelson.


title: Corin Nemec

text: From 2002 to 2004, he appeared as Jonas Quinn on "Stargate SG-1", temporarily replacing Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson) in the line-up of the SG-1 team.


title: Corin Nemec

text: In January 2013, while working on the film "Poseidon Rex", Nemec was involved in a boating accident. While he was being transported to set aboard a Belizian Coast Guard vessel, the boat ran into a semi-submerged barge. The entire right side of his body was shattered; he required multiple blood transfusions to save his life, and he underwent five surgeries.


title: Biological immortality

text: Biological immortality (sometimes referred to as bio-indefinite mortality) is a state in which the rate of mortality from senescence is stable or decreasing, thus decoupling it from chronological age. Various unicellular and multicellular species, including some vertebrates, achieve this state either throughout their existence or after living long enough. A biologically immortal living being can still die from means other than senescence, such as through injury, poison, disease, predation, lack of available resources, or changes to environment.


title: Biological immortality

text: This definition of immortality has been challenged in the "Handbook of the Biology of Aging", because the increase in rate of mortality as a function of chronological age may be negligible at extremely old ages, an idea referred to as the late-life mortality plateau. The rate of mortality may cease to increase in old age, but in most cases that rate is typically very high.


title: Biological immortality

text: The term is also used by biologists to describe cells that are not subject to the Hayflick limit on how many times they can divide.


title: Biological immortality

text: Biologists chose the word "immortal" to designate cells that are not subject to the Hayflick limit, the point at which cells can no longer divide due to DNA damage or shortened telomeres. Prior to Leonard Hayflick's theory, Alexis Carrel hypothesized that all normal somatic cells were immortal.


title: Biological immortality

text: The term "immortalization" was first applied to cancer cells that expressed the telomere-lengthening enzyme telomerase, and thereby avoided apoptosis—i.e. cell death caused by intracellular mechanisms. Among the most commonly used cell lines are HeLa and Jurkat, both of which are immortalized cancer cell lines. HeLa cells originated from a sample of cervical cancer taken from Henrietta Lacks in 1951. These cells have been and still are widely used in biological research such as creation of the polio vaccine, sex hormone steroid research, and cell metabolism. Embryonic stem cells and germ cells have also been described as immortal.


title: Biological immortality

text: Immortal cell lines of cancer cells can be created by induction of oncogenes or loss of tumor suppressor genes. One way to induce immortality is through viral-mediated induction of the large T-antigen, commonly introduced through simian virus 40 (SV-40).


title: Biological immortality

text: According to the Animal Aging and Longevity Database, the list of animals with negligible aging (along with estimated longevity in the wild) includes:


title: Biological immortality

text: In 2018, scientists working for Calico, a company owned by Alphabet, published a paper in the journal "eLife" which presents possible evidence that "Heterocephalus glaber" (Naked mole rat) do not face increased mortality risk due to aging.


title: Biological immortality

text: Many unicellular organisms age: as time passes, they divide more slowly and ultimately die. Asymmetrically dividing bacteria and yeast also age. However, symmetrically dividing bacteria and yeast can be biologically immortal under ideal growing conditions. In these conditions, when a cell splits symmetrically to produce two daughter cells, the process of cell division can restore the cell to a youthful state. However, if the parent asymmetrically buds off a daughter only the daughter is reset to the youthful state—the parent isn't restored and will go on to age and die. In a similar manner stem cells and gametes can be regarded as "immortal".


title: Biological immortality

text: Hydras are a genus of the Cnidaria phylum. All cnidarians can regenerate, allowing them to recover from injury and to reproduce asexually. Hydras are simple, freshwater animals possessing radial symmetry and contain post-mitotic cells (cells that will never divide again) only in the extremities. All hydra cells continually divide. It has been suggested that hydras do not undergo senescence, and, as such, are biologically immortal. In a four-year study, 3 cohorts of hydra did not show an increase in mortality with age. It is possible that these animals live much longer, considering that they reach maturity in 5 to 10 days. However, this does not explain how hydras are subsequently able to maintain telomere lengths.


title: Biological immortality

text: "Turritopsis dohrnii", or "Turritopsis nutricula", is a small () species of jellyfish that uses transdifferentiation to replenish cells after sexual reproduction. This cycle can repeat indefinitely, potentially rendering it biologically immortal. This organism originated in the Caribbean sea, but has now spread around the world. Key molecular mechanisms of its rejuvenation appear to involve DNA replication and repair, and stem cell renewal, according to a comparative genomics study.


title: Biological immortality

text: Research suggests that lobsters may not slow down, weaken, or lose fertility with age, and that older lobsters may be more fertile than younger lobsters. This does not however make them immortal in the traditional sense, as they are significantly more likely to die at a shell moult the older they get (as detailed below).


title: Biological immortality

text: Their longevity may be due to telomerase, an enzyme that repairs long repetitive sections of DNA sequences at the ends of chromosomes, referred to as telomeres. Telomerase is expressed by most vertebrates during embryonic stages but is generally absent from adult stages of life. However, unlike vertebrates, lobsters express telomerase as adults through most tissue, which has been suggested to be related to their longevity. Contrary to popular belief, lobsters are not immortal. Lobsters grow by moulting which requires considerable energy, and the larger the shell the more energy is required. Eventually, the lobster will die from exhaustion during a moult. Older lobsters are also known to stop moulting, which means that the shell will eventually become damaged, infected, or fall apart and they die. The European lobster has an average life span of 31 years for males and 54 years for females.


title: Biological immortality

text: Planarian flatworms have both sexually and asexually reproducing types. Studies on genus Schmidtea mediterranea suggest these planarians appear to regenerate (i.e. heal) indefinitely, and asexual individuals have an "apparently limitless [telomere] regenerative capacity fueled by a population of highly proliferative adult stem cells". "Both asexual and sexual animals display age-related decline in telomere length; however, asexual animals are able to maintain telomere lengths somatically (i.e. during reproduction by fission or when regeneration is induced by amputation), whereas sexual animals restore telomeres by extension during sexual reproduction or during embryogenesis like other sexual species. Homeostatic telomerase activity observed in both asexual and sexual animals is not sufficient to maintain telomere length, whereas the increased activity in regenerating asexuals is sufficient to renew telomere length... "


title: Biological immortality

text: For sexually reproducing planaria: "the lifespan of individual planarian can be as long as 3 years, likely due to the ability of neoblasts to constantly replace aging cells". Whereas for asexually reproducing planaria: "individual animals in clonal lines of some planarian species replicating by fission have been maintained for over 15 years".


title: Alpha Group

text: Spetsgruppa "A", also known as Alpha Group (a popular English name), or Alfa, whose official name is Directorate "A" of the FSB Special Purpose Center (TsSN FSB) (Russian: Спецназ ФСБ "Альфа"), is an elite stand-alone sub-unit of Russia's special forces within the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). It was created by the Soviet KGB in 1974. Although little is known about the exact nature of its primary directives, it is speculated that the unit is authorised to act under the direct control and sanction of Russia's top political leadership, similar to its sister unit, the Directorate "V" (Vympel), which is officially tasked with protecting Russia's strategic installations, as well as conducting black operations inside and outside Russia. It is also available for extended police duties, for paramilitary operations, and for covert operations, both domestically and internationally.


title: Alpha Group

text: On 28 July 1974, Alpha Group was created on the orders of the KGB Chairman, Yuri Andropov, in the aftermath of the 1972 Munich massacre. It might have been established as a response to West Germany's creation of the "Grenzschutzgruppe 9" (or the GSG 9). By attaching a special-purpose unit to the office of the First Chief Directorate in Moscow (later the Seventh Directorate), it was hoped that the Soviet Union's defensive capacity against terrorist attacks would increase significantly. At the time, other, more offensive special forces of the KGB included the groups Zenit and Kaskad/Omega. Another important mission for Alpha was to provide security for the Soviet leadership against enemy special forces in times of crisis or war.


title: Alpha Group

text: Initially, this special-purpose counter-terrorism unit was involved in delicate operations which necessitated its members have a unique skill set. In 1979, the Alpha Group shot a young Soviet Ukrainian, named Yuri Vlasenko, who was occupying a room in the Consular Section of the Embassy of the United States in Moscow, demanding he be granted asylum in the United States. He was either killed by gunfire, or by the detonation of his home-made bomb, which also slightly damaged the building. Throughout the 1980s, Alpha became increasingly deployed domestically to respond to a rising number of hostage taking situations, including at least two cases which involved buildings being taken over and hostages taken by violent groups of deserters from the Soviet Army, as well as other armed organizations. Notably, the 1983 hijacking of Aeroflot Flight 6833 in Tbilisi, Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic, was thwarted when Alpha stormed the airplane, killing three and capturing three other hijackers who were attempting to escape to the west, which also resulted in the loss of five hostages. The unit also became involved in the ethnic conflicts throughout the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Alpha was also used as the "spearhead" of KGB counterintelligence operations, interdicting hostile intelligence operations on Soviet territory and seizing enemy spies such as CIA agent Adolf Tolkachev in 1985. Two commanding officers of Group "A" were awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union: Gen. Viktor Karpukhin and Gen. Gennady Zaitsev.


title: Alpha Group

text: Soon, Alpha was assigned missions far exceeding its formal scope. On 27 December 1979, Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev launched a surprise armed intervention and regime change operation in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. Soviet forces, including KGB commandos who had infiltrated the country on a pretense to guard the Soviet Embassy, were able to quickly secure important government institutions throughout Kabul. Those institutions included: the Ministry of the Interior; the headquarters of the KHAD security service; the Ministry of Defense (Darul Aman Palace); and the Tajbeg Palace, in which, during a 34-minute storming, they successfully assassinated President Hafizullah Amin, along with his mistress and his young son (the orders were to kill every Afghan in the building). The assault on Tajbeg Palace was given the name Operation Storm-333 and involved a combined force of Soviet Airborne paratroopers (VDV), and special forces groups from the GRU and the KGB, including 24 men from the "Thunder" detachment of Alpha Group. The Alpha detachment were dressed in Afghan uniforms and headed by Grigoriy Boyarinov, commandant of the special operations school of the KGB's Department 8. It was Boyarinov who ordered that all Afghan witnesses of the operation be killed, and he was accidentally shot dead by Alpha troops when he was mistaken for a palace guard. According to Russian sources, the members of this highly trained group performed remarkably well, losing only two men; the lightest casualties of any of the forces involved in the raid. However, the success of Storm-333, and the initial invasion, marked the beginning of the ten-year Soviet–Afghan War, and subsequently, Alpha Group's extensive involvement throughout the conflict.


title: Alpha Group

text: Six years later, in October 1985, Alpha Group was dispatched to war-torn Beirut, Lebanon. The Kremlin was informed of the kidnapping of four Soviet diplomats by the militant group, the Islamic Liberation Organization (a radical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood). It was believed that this was retaliation for the Soviet support of Syrian involvement in the Lebanese Civil War. However, by the time Alpha arrived, one of the hostages had already been killed. Through a network of supporting KGB operatives, members of the task-force identified each of the perpetrators involved in the crisis, and once identified, began to take the relatives of these militants as hostages. Following the standard Soviet policy of "no negotiations with terrorists", one of the hostages taken by Alpha Group had his testicles removed and sent to the militants before being killed. The warning was clear: more would follow unless the remaining hostages were released immediately. The show of force worked; and, for a period of 20 years, no Soviet or Russian officials were taken captive, until the 2006 abduction and murder of four Russian embassy staff in Iraq. However, the veracity of this story has been brought into question. Another version says that the release of the Soviet hostages was the result of extensive diplomatic negotiations with the spiritual leader of Hezbollah, Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah, who appealed to King Hussein of Jordan, and the leaders of Libya and Iran, to use their influence on the kidnappers.


title: Alpha Group

text: On 11 March 1990, the Supreme Council of the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic made public their intent to secede from the Soviet Union and re-establish the independent Republic of Lithuania. As a result of this pronouncement, on 9 January 1991, the Soviet leadership dispatched Alpha Group to quell the independence movement and maintain Lithuania's status as a Soviet republic. This attempt to re-establish Soviet dominance culminated in the violent seizure of the Vilnius TV Tower on 13 January 1991, during which the Soviet forces killed 13 unarmed Lithuanian protesters, as well as one Alpha operative (Lt. Viktor Shatskikh, who was apparently struck in the back by friendly fire). In 2011, the former commander of Alpha Group, retired KGB Col. Mikhail Golovatov, was detained at Vienna International Airport on a European Arrest Warrant due to this incident, issued by Lithuania, but Austrian authorities released him within 24 hours, claiming that the information provided by Lithuania was "too vague". In response, the Lithuanian parliament discussed breaking diplomatic ties with Austria in protest. A joint statement by the Foreign Ministers of all three Baltic States condemned Golovatov's release, and said that it should have been one of "... the occasions when suspects are detained and extradited, particularly when they are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity ..." as "... the crimes performed in 1991 in Vilnius and Riga have no limitation ..." ("Riga" referring to a similar crackdown in January 1991, when six Latvian policemen and civilians were killed by Soviet OMON and KGB forces, possibly including Alpha Group members).


title: Alpha Group

text: During the events of the Soviet coup attempt in August 1991, Alpha Group's commanding officer, Gen. Karpukhin, was commanded by KGB chairman, Vladimir Kryuchkov, to forcibly enter the White House, Russia's acting parliament, after paratroopers secured the entrance, to eliminate the President of the Russian SFSR, Boris Yeltsin, and various other anti-coup leaders assembled there. In addition to Alpha Group, Gen. Karpukhin was also given authority of Vega Group (Vympel), elements of the Soviet Airborne, Internal Troops, special units of the Dzerzhinsky Division (OMSDON), mobilised units of the Moscow OMON, three tank companies, and a squadron of helicopters. On-site analysis of the area was conducted by Airborne deputy commander Alexander Lebed, and other senior officers who mingled with the crowds of anti-coup protesters nearest to the White House. There was a general consensus among the military officials who gathered that day, as evidenced by their statements months after the botched coup attempt, that had they followed through on their endeavour it would have succeeded. The stated mission objectives could have been reached in no more than half-an-hour, but it would have come at a terrible human cost. Shortly after their assessment was made, Gen. Karpukhin and Vympel's Boris Beskov convinced the KGB Deputy chairman, Gennady Ageyev, that such a massive undertaking should be cancelled.


title: Alpha Group

text: Alpha Group was severely downgraded during the dissolution and collapse of the Soviet Union. After the fall of the USSR, both Alpha and Vympel were transferred to the newly formed Main Guard Directorate (GUO), which was established on the basis of the KGB's Ninth Chief Directorate. In 1993, they were taken from GUO control, and for a time being put under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD). As part of the government shakeup following the June 1995 Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis in which the Alpha Group had a leading role, Yeltsin fired the first Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB), Sergei Stepashin. Two months later, Alpha and Vityaz were both transferred from the MVD to the FSB. Simultaneously, Mikhail Barsukov became the new head of the organization, and created the FSB Anti-Terrorist Center (ATC), headed by Gen. Viktor Zorkin. Directorate "A" (Alpha) was tasked with protecting transportation and buildings while Directorate "V" (Vega/Vympel) was tasked with protecting strategic sites (another Directorate, "K", was tasked with ideological counterintelligence); "A" and "V" were soon joined in a "Tsentr Spetsnaz" (Special Purpose Center) under Gen. Vladimir Pronichev.


title: Alpha Group

text: Meanwhile, Alpha veterans became active in legitimate businesses (such as the private security company Alpha-B co-founded by Col. Golovatov in August 1993) in organised crime, as well as in politics. The Alpha veterans' association, led by Sergey Goncharov, strongly opposed Russian President Yeltsin faction's party, Our Home – Russia, in the legislative election of 1995 (Goncharov later became a State Duma deputy). Gen. Karpukhin, who resigned from the service following the 1991 coup attempt, became chief of security to Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev, after which he worked with private security companies in Moscow, and ran unsuccessfully for the Duma as a member of the Union of Patriots in 1995.


title: Alpha Group

text: In October 1995, Alpha killed the armed man who hijacked a bus with South Korean tourists in Moscow, who had demanded $1 million and to be flown out of the country. In December 1997, Alpha freed the Swedish trade counsellor Jan-Olof Nyström who was kidnapped in Moscow by a gunman similarly demanding a ransom and a flight out of Russia. The hostage was swapped for Alpha's Colonel Anatoly Saveliev (Savelyev), and the hostage-taker was killed during the storming of the embassy. Colonel Savelyev was injured during the action, and died in hospital of a heart attack shortly thereafter.


title: Alpha Group

text: In 1993, during the Russian constitutional crisis, Yeltsin, who by then was President of the Russian Federation, used Alpha and Vympel during a deadly showdown in central Moscow against the pro-parliament forces that sided with Vice-President Alexander Rutskoy (declaring him an acting president). The pro-parliament faction had seized the Russian White House, along with several Supreme Soviet deputies who had been taken hostage. Yeltsin ordered Russian troops to storm the building, including elements of the paratroopers, the Alpha and Vympel Groups, Russian ground forces, and the Internal Troops's special forces unit, Vityaz. However, the Alpha troops initially refused to attack the White House, reportedly bringing their commander, Gen. Zaitsev, to the brink of suicide over the open insubordination of his troops in the face of a presidential order. When one of the Alpha troops, Lt. Sergeyev, who was near the White House, was mortally wounded by sniper fire from the nearby Hotel Ukraina, the unit finally agreed to move. Opposition gunmen were blamed for the shooting, but it is possible that the shots were actually fired by members of a special unit loyal to Yeltsin; it was rumoured that the snipers in the hotel were commanded by Alexander Korzhakov, chief of the Presidential Security Service (SBP). The crisis ended when Yeltsin's forces, paratroopers supported by tanks and armoured personnel carriers, many of which were manned not by conscripts but members of the Union of Afghanistan Veterans, stormed and seized the White House on 4 October 1993, killing dozens, and possibly hundreds, of people, and ensuring the total victory of Yeltsin's faction. In the end, Rutskoy and the other leaders of anti-Yeltsin faction, including Ruslan Khasbulatov, Vladislav Achalov and Viktor Barannikov, all negotiated their surrender to the Alpha troops, who had entered the shelled and burning building after the shooting stopped, and brought them, along with the detained Supreme Soviet deputies, to Lefortovo Prison.


title: Alpha Group

text: The Alpha Group was involved in the First Chechen War of 1994–1996, following the Chechens' declaration of independence from the Russian SFSR and then the Soviet Union in 1990–1991. In the fall of 1994, Alpha provided personal security details for the main commanders of the invasion of Chechnya, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev and federal Interior Minister Viktor Yerin, as they travelled to the Mozdok airbase in North Ossetia, which was the main headquarters, staging area and logistics base for Russian forces entering Chechnya. Later, many Alpha troops served in "mobile anti-terror groups" (), as well as providing security for the pro-Moscow Chechen government complex and the regional FSB headquarters in the Chechen capital Grozny. In August 1996, when the city was retaken by Chechen separatist forces, 35 of them (including 14 members of the territorial Alpha unit from Krasnodar Krai) took part in a defence of the FSB headquarters. The separatist forces began to systematically retake individual buildings which were being defended by cut-off groups of Russian military and security forces. By the war's final ceasefire, the main FSB office was one of the few key structures still being held by federal forces in central Grozny, but at the cost of 70 of its defenders' lives in some of the fiercest fighting during the last battle.


title: Alpha Group

text: Allegations arose, following the Khasavyurt Accord of August 1996, that the ATC carried out clandestine operations intended to discredit the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, so that it would not receive international recognition of its independence. According to Jonathan Littell, the service "... was most likely deeply involved ..." in many of the high-profile kidnappings which damaged Chechnya's reputation. Littell wrote: "It is impossible to say whether these provocations were part of a more general FSB policy or whether the [ATC] and its departments were running their own show; certainly it did not reflect the official policy of the government, nor of those officials like Ivan Rybkin, the Secretary of the Security Council, tasked with the Chechen dossier between 1996 and 1999."


title: Alpha Group

text: Alpha was active during the Second Chechen War that began in 1999, as well as the subsequent Insurgency in the North Caucasus. During the 2000 Battle of Komsomolskoye, Alpha snipers attached to Vladimir Shamanov's Western Group of federal forces, were deployed in an attempt to suppress Ruslan Gelayev's snipers in the village. According to the unit's veterans, operations in which Alpha took part led to the arrest of Chechen commander Salman Raduyev in 2000, the killing of Chechen commander Arbi Barayev in 2001, the killing of Chechen separatist President Aslan Maskhadov in 2005, and the killing of foreign militant leader Abu Hafs in Dagestan in 2006. Following the transfer of responsibility for operations in Chechnya from the Ministry of Defence to the FSB in January 2001, and prior to the "Chechenization" policy that began in 2003, Alpha members (along with the other Russian personnel and pro-Moscow Chechen militia) participated in at least 10 mixed "combined special groups" (, SSGs), considered death squads by human rights groups and outside observers. It is believed that the SSGs were behind many of the numerous "name/address cleansings" ("imeny/adressny zachistki"): usually night-time raids by masked men in unmarked vehicles, targeting specific active or former rebel combatants, their supporters, their relatives, or other civilians for either forced disappearance or outright extrajudicial killing. In 2005, Human Rights Watch declared that the disappearances had reached the scale of a crime against humanity, and that "Russia has the inglorious distinction of being a world leader in enforced disappearances." Chechnya's UFSB also formed a local Alpha unit, believed to be similar in its role to the SSGs.


title: Alpha Group

text: The group was instrumental in the Russian government's attempts to forcibly bring an end to a series of mass hostage crisis incidents, in which groups of Chechen and other separatist militants took hostages. These events took place in Russia's southern territories near Chechnya as well as in the Russian heartland, and were made up of the Budyonnovsk hospital hostage crisis in June 1995, the Kizlyar-Pervomayskoye hostage crisis in January 1996, the Moscow theatre hostage crisis in October 2002, and the Beslan school hostage crisis in September 2004. Each of these high-profile incidents resulted in hundreds of fatalities and injuries among the hostages and, with the exception of the Moscow siege, significant losses among the unit's personnel.


title: Alpha Group

text: At Budyonnovsk (Budennovsk) in Stavropol Krai, two abortive storming attempts by Alpha and Vympel killed scores of hostages in a major public relations disaster for the Russian government, as the carnage was televised live across the country. In the first, a pre-dawn raid, only 86 out of more than 1,500 hostages were freed, but more than 30 hostages were killed before the rescuers were forced to retreat after four hours of fighting, which also resulted in the deaths of several men on both sides. After that, the leader of the hostage-takers, Chechen commander Shamil Basayev, agreed to release pregnant and nursing women, and to allow emergency services to put out a fire in the main building and to collect and remove dead bodies. The assault was then resumed at noon and included the use of tear gas; it stopped after over an hour later when Basayev agreed to release the remaining women and children. The overall death toll of more than 120 people included three Alpha members. In the end, the crisis was resolved through negotiations that led to an agreement involving a ceasefire in Chechnya and high-level peace talks, both of which later broke down, with full-scale hostilities resuming in October 1995. Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin claimed that both attacks had not been authorised by the government, but were launched by troops acting without orders.


title: Alpha Group

text: At Pervomayskoye, a small settlement on the outskirt of Kizlyar in Dagestan, in an operation that was conducted under the direct control of Barsukov, Alpha Group was mostly held in reserve during multiple failed storming attempts spearheaded by Vityaz and the SOBR (a special forces unit of the Moscow police), supported by tanks and armoured vehicles. Further attacks were conducted with heavy artillery, including Grad launchers firing salvos of rockets into the village, and helicopter gunship support. According to statements made to justify the use of unlimited force, the FSB had been informed, falsely, that the hostages had been executed by their captors, prior to the commencement of military operations. This full-scale offensive continued for three days, until the Chechen militants fought their way through the siege lines in a night-time break-out, escaping with many of the surviving hostages in another major humiliation for the Kremlin. 26 out of the 150 hostages lost their lives (most of the original 2,000 hostages had been released in Kizlyar), and in all the incident resulted more than 300 fatalities, mostly among the Russian forces. Although they avoided the kind of devastating losses that decimated the Moscow SOBR (including the death of their commanding officer) and the 22nd Independent Brigade of Spetsnaz GRU, Alpha Group still suffered casualties at Pervomayskoye. These included a friendly fire incident which occurred after fighting had ended, when a regular soldier accidentally fired his vehicle's Grom gun, killing two Alpha members. When the Alpha Group was deployed, they were sent in without winter clothing and quartered in unheated buses. One of the unit's commanders claimed they were "set up", saying: "The first day it was 15 below and we were standing in the fields with no warm clothes. There were no sleeping bags, no water, no food. The hostages were being destroyed, the rebels were being destroyed and we were being destroyed there. That's what happened."


title: Alpha Group

text: Several highly controversial actions made the force susceptible to criticism revolving around the loss of life among the hostages. One of these actions was the use of an unknown chemical agent to assist Alpha Group and the SOBR break the October 2002 Moscow hostage crisis, by knocking out the people inside the building. The FSB chemical attack resulted in the deaths of at least 129 hostages and serious damage to the health of many others, yet was hailed by the group's officers as their "... first successful operation for years". In 2011, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered Russia to pay compensation to 64 survivors of the siege for their physical and emotional suffering, and to prosecute the officials who committed the human rights violations, ruling that the authorities had failed to minimise the risks to the hostages. Russia failed to uphold the ECHR ruling, paying the compensation to victims but not launching an investigation into the violations.


title: Alpha Group

text: Another controversy was the use of tank cannons, portable flamethrowers, and other weapons such as grenade launchers in Beslan, North Ossetia. On 3 September 2004, the local school was taken over by Chechen-led militants from Ingushetia, and was subsequently raided by the heavily armed FSB special forces of Alpha and Vympel. The operation was overseen by the head of the Special Purpose Center, Gen. Alexander Tikhonov, who forbade extinguishing the fire in the school, while the actual attack was personally led by Gen. Pronichev, and supported by tanks, armoured personnel carriers and attack helicopters. John McAleese, a member of the Special Air Service (SAS) team which had liberated the Iranian Embassy in London in 1980, immediately called it one of the worst hostage rescue attempts he had seen or heard about. The Beslan siege turned out to be particularly bloody, costing the lives of more than 333 people, including 186 children (age 1 to 17), 111 relatives, guests and friends, 17 school staff members and 10 Alpha members. According to the government, "... the burn impact [on the dead hostages' bodies] was "post mortem" ...," and thus there were no grounds for a criminal case against troops who used flamethrowers during the assault. No ballistic tests were carried out, and prosecutors were not allowed to examine the special forces' weapons to determine who exactly killed the hostages. In 2007, 447 survivors and relatives of victims of the Beslan massacre brought a complaint against the Russian government in seven applications to the ECHR.


title: Alpha Group

text: The Minsk territorial unit of Alpha continues to exist within the State Security Committee (KGB) of Belarus, known simply as "Alfa" («Альфа»).


title: Alpha Group

text: The Almaty territorial unit of Alpha was turned into the special unit Arystan (meaning "Lions" in Kazakh) of the National Security Committee (KNB) of Kazakhstan. In 2006, five members of Arystan were arrested and charged with the kidnapping of the opposition politician Altynbek Sarsenbayuly, his driver, and his bodyguard; the three victims were then allegedly delivered to the people who murdered them.


title: Alpha Group

text: Special Group "Alpha" is a branch of the Security Service of Ukraine; and a successor of the Soviet Union's Alpha Group. It has continued to be informally called "Alpha".


title: Alpha Group

text: Georgia established its own Alpha unit in 1992. It was created as one of the three special forces units belonging to the Ministry of State Security, the other two being named Delta and Omega. In 1995, members of Alpha and the Minister of State Security, Igor Giorgadze, were blamed for the failed bombing attempt on the life of President Eduard Shevardnadze. After that, Giorgadze fled to Moscow, and Georgia's Alpha was purged and reorganised.


title: Alpha Group

text: A special unit named "Alfa" Special Operations Executive (ASOE) was established within the State Committee on National Security (GKNB) of Kyrgyzstan. In 2010, eight members of ASOE, including five snipers and the unit's commander, were charged with shooting and killing unarmed people during the Second Kyrgyz Revolution. Criminal cases were brought to the court under the articles: 97 (murder), and 305 part 2 (exceeding the limits of authority).


title: Snow Tha Product

text: Claudia Alexandra Madriz Meza (born June 24, 1987) known professionally as Snow Tha Product, is an American rapper and singer. She was signed to Atlantic Records from 2012 until November 2018. Since then, she has been an independent artist. Her most well-known projects are her 2013 mixtape "Good Nights & Bad Mornings 2: The Hangover" and the 2018 compilation album "VIBEHIGHER". On April 28, 2021, Snow collaborated with Bizarrap on "BZRP Music Sessions #39". Snow also acted on the "Queen of the South".


title: Snow Tha Product

text: Claudia Alexandra Madriz Meza was born on June 24, 1987, in San Jose, California, to Mexican parents. Her father was an undocumented immigrant from Michoacán and her mother immigrated legally to the United States. She has a younger brother named Miguel Ángel Madriz Meza, whom she endearingly calls Ito.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: During her younger years, Claudia was exposed to mariachi music on her father's side of the family as both her father and grandfather were mariachi singers. At the age of 6, she appeared in school talent shows and began performing with her grandfather's mariachi band in Redwood City. She got her first exposure to hip hop when she moved to San Diego and gradually became more involved with her own music. Claudia attended Mar Vista High School and Mira Mesa Senior High School. As a teenager, she started freestyling with her friends.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: After graduating high school, she briefly attended San Diego Mesa College to begin studying to become a social worker. At the age of 19, she began taking music seriously and dropped out of her first semester of college to pursue a career as a rapper. She adopted her name from Disney's character Snow White. Initially she used the name "Snow White", and then added "the Product". Then she changed it into her new moniker as "Snow White Tha Product", and ultimately "Snow Tha Product". After recording a number of songs in Spanish, she caught the attention of Mexican artist Jaime Kohen. They recorded a collaboration song, titled "Alguien", which became popular in Mexico and appeared on Kohen's album "Fotosíntesis".


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In 2007, Snow released her first compilation album "Verbal Assault Vol.1" with many local artists under her label Product Entertainment LLC. It was followed in 2008 with her first solo mixtape "Raising Tha Bar: Tha Mixtape", which included many remixes of popular songs of the era. In 2009, "Verbal Assault Vol. 2" was released, with the single "Whatever It Takes". In 2010, Snow released "Wake Ya Game Up, Vol. 1", along with the Wake Ya Game Up and Woke clothing brands and apparel.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In 2010, Snow released the mixtape "Run Up or Shut Up", which was hosted by DJ Ames from the UK and included the hit single "Drunk Love". On February 16, 2011, the official music video was featured in the popular Latino music television channel Mun2. Snow then moved her and her family to Texas and performed for two consecutive years at the South by Southwest festival.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: On October 26, 2011, Snow released her debut independent album on Street Science Ent. "Unorthodox". "Drunk Love" was re-released as a single along with "Woke Wednesday". Her real breakthrough came with the song "Holy Shit". The 90-second-long song received acclaim and was featured on 50 Cent's site ThisIs50.com. The success of her songs caught the attention of three major record labels, which got in contact with her – Sony, Universal and Atlantic. Adam Bernard of RapReviews.com, impressed by her work, went on to write "[Snow] may very well be one of the leaders of ... a bold new era of female emcees."


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In 2012, Snow signed to Atlantic Records following her independent success with Unorthodox. She appeared on songs by major artists, such as DJ Paul and Krizz Kaliko. In November, she performed at the ABN Reunion concert in Houston, Texas, among rappers Trae and Z-Ro. On December 12, 2012, Snow released her anticipated mixtape "Good Nights & Bad Mornings", which spawned 3 singles: "Cookie Cutter Bitches", "Damn It" and "Lord Be with You".


title: Snow Tha Product

text: The sequel to "Good Nights & Bad Mornings" was released on October 14, 2013. The tape, called "Good Nights & Bad Mornings 2: The Hangover" has guest appearances from Tech N9ne, The Cataracs, Trae tha Truth, CyHi the Prynce, Dizzy Wright and Ty Dolla Sign. On May 16, 2013, Snow released the first single "Cali Luv", produced by The Cataracs, which samples 2Pac's hit California Love. She was featured on Dutch DJ Chuckie's single "Makin Papers" along Lupe Fiasco and Too Short. The video for the song premiered on MTV on August 8, 2013. In 2013, Snow went on the Fight to Unite Tour with Kottonmouth Kings and Dizzy Wright and performed at the 2013 South by Southwest (SXSW) and Rock the Bells festivals. In February 2014, Snow went on a F#*K YOUR PLANS (COME KICK IT) tour. On March 19, 2014, Snow was featured on the song "Not for the Weak Minded" by Kxng Crooked.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: On June 30, 2015, Snow released the mixtape, "The Rest Comes Later". She followed this with a tour of the same name with Audio Push. On February 17, 2016, she was featured on the remix to Joell Ortiz's single "Kill at Will". On May 2, 2016, she announced the Halfway There tour. On June 17, 2016, she released her EP "Half Way There... Pt. 1".


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In November 2016, Snow contributed to The Hamilton Mixtape, joining rappers K'naan, Riz MC, and Residente on the track "Immigrants (We Get the Job Done)". The music video for the song was released on June 28, 2017. In August 2017, the song has won Snow and her collaborators an MTV Video Music Award in the category of Best Fight Against the System.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: On October 4, 2017, Snow released the unfinished mixtape of "VIBEHIGHER" with artists Castro Escobar, Lex the Great, Jandro, and AJ Hernz on YouTube. She followed this with a tour of the same name in 2017 and 2018.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In 2017, Snow Tha Product featured as Lil' Traviesa, also known as Lil' T, on the television series "Queen of the South".


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In November 2018, Snow left Atlantic Records and went independent. She announced that she was releasing the full "VIBEHIGHER" mixtape on December 22, 2018, since it was finished and ready to be put out under her independent label Product Entertainment LLC.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: On May 1, 2019, Snow went on the 30-day Going Off tour. On September 12, she went on tour again which she named Going Off: Part 2.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In 2021, Snow received her first nomination for Latin GRAMMY Awards in the category of Best Rap/Hip-Hop Song for her collaboration song with Argentine producer, Bizarrap, "BZRP Music Sessions #39". She announced that her album VALEMADRE would be released in mid-2022. This would be her first solo project in five years and her first studio album in a decade.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: On February 11, 2022, Snow announced that she was going on a national tour throughout April and May 2022 which she named the Dale Gas tour.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: Snow is known for her rapid fire style of rapping. She stated she admires and supports artists who have their own original style. She is influenced by artists such as Missy Elliott, Da Brat, Big Pun, Lauryn Hill, Aaliyah, Amy Winehouse, André 3000, Ludacris, Johnny Cash, Eminem, Busta Rhymes, 2Pac, Mac Dre, Tech N9ne, and Brotha Lynch Hung, as well as Mexican actress María Félix and singers Selena Quintanilla, Gloria Trevi and Lupita D'Alessio.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In a June 2018 interview, Snow revealed that she got married when she was 19 which lasted for a decade from 2006 until 2016. From her marriage, she has a child by the name of Andrew Feliciano Jr. with her former husband, Andrew Feliciano. During an interview with Power 106 Los Angeles radio show in July 2018 she spoke about her experience raising her son and said her son was eight years old during the time of the interview. He was born in April 2010.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In 2017, Snow started dating Julisa Aponte, also known as (Daddie) Juju. On July 10, 2019, they announced their engagement when JuJu proposed to her. In late March 2022, Snow shared via her social media stories that the couple broke up after having a few rough months together. They have a YouTube channel called "everydaydays" and a podcast called "everynightnights". The YouTube channel was created on January 23, 2017, but was not officially used until November 28, 2018, for its first video.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Snow bought a ranch in California, wanting to embrace her Mexican roots of living on a ranch and centralizing all of her operations and businesses. She moved in September 2020.


title: Snow Tha Product

text: Snow has always been very open that she has ADHD, and says that having ADHD is something that motivates her to put her energy in different projects.


title: Carrie Lam

text: Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor ( Cheng; ; born 13 May 1957) is a retired Hong Kong politician who served as the 4th Chief Executive of Hong Kong from 2017 to 2022. She served as Chief Secretary for Administration between 2012 and 2017 and Secretary for Development between 2007 and 2012, and Chairperson of the Committee for Safeguarding National Security from 2020 to 2022.


title: Carrie Lam

text: After graduating from the University of Hong Kong, Lam joined the British Hong Kong civil service in 1980 and served in various government agencies. She became a key official in 2007 when she was appointed Secretary for Development. During her tenure, she earned the nickname "tough fighter" for her role in the controversial demolition of the Queen's Pier in 2008.


title: Carrie Lam

text: Lam became Chief Secretary for Administration under the Leung Chun-ying administration in 2012. From 2013 to 2015 Lam headed the Task Force on Constitutional Development for the 2014 Hong Kong electoral reform and held talks with student and opposition leaders during the widespread protests. In the 2017 Chief Executive selection process, Lam obtained 777 votes from the 1,194-member appointed Election Committee as the Beijing-favoured candidate and became the first female Chief Executive of Hong Kong.


title: Carrie Lam

text: Lam's administration has seen controversies, including the trial and imprisonment of democracy activists, the disqualification of several pro-democracy candidates, as well as the criminalisation of the pro-independence Hong Kong National Party. Her government was also criticised for raising the qualification age for Comprehensive Social Security Assistance and for its handling of the cross-harbour tunnel toll plan, among other policies.


title: Carrie Lam

text: In mid-2019, Lam's government pushed for a controversial amendment to the extradition law which received widespread domestic and international opposition. Massive protests broke out and persisted throughout the latter half of the year, from demanding the withdrawal of the bill to Lam's resignation among five key demands. Lam suspended the bill in June and did not withdraw the bill until September. She also stood firmly against the other demands including an independent inquiry into police conduct and universal suffrage for Legislative Council and Chief Executive elections. The clashes between the protesters and police escalated, which resulted in more than 9,000 arrests as of July 2020. Responding to the COVID-19 pandemic was also a major issue of her tenure.


title: Carrie Lam

text: Carrie Lam's popularity dropped to a historic low with the pro-Beijing camp suffering the worst landslide defeat in history in the November District Council election. On 3 April 2022, Lam announced that she would not seek a second term as Chief Executive, giving her wish to devote more time with her family as an explanation. She was succeeded on 1 July 2022 by John Lee.


title: Carrie Lam

text: Born Cheng Yuet-ngor to a low-income family of Zhoushan ancestry in Hong Kong, Lam was the fourth of five children. Her father was from Shanghai and worked on ships. She was born and grew up in a tenement house on Lockhart Road, Wan Chai, where she finished her primary and secondary education at St. Francis' Canossian College, a Catholic girls' school in the neighbourhood, where she was head prefect.


title: Carrie Lam

text: After leaving school, Lam attended the University of Hong Kong. Through her student activism, she came to know Lee Wing-tat and Sin Chung-kai, who later became prominent pro-democracy legislators. She co-organised exchange trips to Tsinghua University in Beijing. To better understand society and participate more actively in student activities, she switched her course of study from social work to sociology after the first year to avoid placements. Lam eventually graduated as a bachelor of social sciences in 1980.


title: Carrie Lam

text: After graduating from the University of Hong Kong, she became an administrative officer in the Hong Kong Civil Service. In 1982, while she remained a civil servant, the Hong Kong government funded her postgraduate studies at the University of Cambridge, where she met her future husband, mathematician Lam Siu-por.


title: Carrie Lam

text: Lam joined the Administrative Service in 1980 after she graduated from the University of Hong Kong. She served in various bureaus and departments, spending about seven years in the Finance Bureau which involved budgetary planning and expenditure control. Initially, she worked as Principal Assistant Secretary and subsequently as Deputy Secretary for the Treasury in the 1990s.


title: Carrie Lam

text: In 2000, Lam was promoted to the position of Director of the Social Welfare Department during a period of high unemployment and severe fiscal deficits in Hong Kong. She tightened the Comprehensive Social Security Assistance scheme, making it available only to people who had lived in Hong Kong for more than seven years, excluding new immigrants. With other senior officials, she helped set up the We Care Education Fund, raising over HK$80 million to meet the long term educational needs of children whose parents died from the SARS epidemic in 2003.


title: Carrie Lam

text: In November 2003, Lam was appointed Permanent Secretary for Housing, Planning and Lands and chairman of the Town Planning Board. She was soon appointed Director-General of the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office in London in September 2004.


title: Carrie Lam

text: On 8 March 2006, Lam returned to Hong Kong to take up the position as Permanent Secretary for Home Affairs. She was involved in the 2008 Beijing Olympics and Paralympics Equestrian Events and the West Kowloon Cultural District plan.


title: Carrie Lam

text: On 1 July 2007, Lam left the civil service when she was appointed Secretary for Development by Chief Executive Donald Tsang, becoming one of the principal officials. In the first days of her office, Lam oversaw the demolition of the landmark Edinburgh Place Ferry Pier for the Star Ferry and the Queen's Pier to make way for land reclamation, which triggered occupation protests by the conservationists.


title: Carrie Lam

text: In July 2007, she attended a public forum at Queen's Pier in a bid to persuade the protesters to disperse and allow the demolition to begin. She firmly repeated the government's position that it was not an option to retain the pier and she would "not give the people false hope". Her handling of the pier conflict earned her a reputation as a "tough fighter" by the then Chief Secretary for Administration Rafael Hui.