title: Police dog

text: The Australian Federal Police employ "general purpose" police dogs, whose duties include searching for missing persons, suspect apprehension, and keeping the peace. The Australian Federal Police also employ police dogs trained for specialized purposes, such as detecting firearms, explosives, illegal narcotics, and currency. The Australian Border Force also utilizes detector dogs to search for concealed people or illegal products at border checkpoints.


title: Police dog

text: Border Guards Bangladesh, Rapid Action Battalion and the Dhaka Metropolitan Police maintain several dog squads to assist in anti-narcotic and anti-bombing campaigns.


title: Police dog

text: The Belgian Canine Support Group is part of the country's federal police. It has 35 dog teams, most of which are Belgian Malinois. Some dogs are trained to detect drugs, human remains, hormones or fire accelerants. About a third are tracker dogs trained to find or identify living people. These teams are often deployed to earthquake areas to locate people trapped in collapsed buildings. The federal police's explosive detector dogs are attached to the Federal Police Special Units.


title: Police dog

text: Canadians started using police dogs occasionally in 1908. However, they used privately owned dogs until 1935 when the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) saw the value of police dogs and created the first team in 1937. By the 1950s, the RCMP had German Shepherds, Schnauzers, and Doberman Pinschers in service.


title: Police dog

text: Many Canadian municipalities use dog squads as a means of tracking suspects. Most municipalities in Canada employ the bite and hold technique rather than the bark and hold technique meaning once the dog is deployed, it bites the suspect until the dog handler commands it to release. This often results in serious puncture wounds and is traumatic for suspects. A dog has the legal status of property in Canada. As such, developing case law is moving towards absolute liability for the handlers of animals deliberately released to intentionally maim suspects. The dog is effectively a weapon.


title: Police dog

text: In 2010, an Alberta Court of Queen's Bench judge stayed criminal charges against Kirk Steele, a man who was near-fatally shot by a police officer while he stabbed the officer's police dog. The judge found that the shooting was cruel and unusual treatment and excessive force.


title: Police dog

text: Police require reasonable suspicion they will recover evidence in order to use a dog to sniff a person or their possessions in public. This is because using a dog to detect scents is considered a search. The main exemption to that rule are the dogs of the Canada Border Services Agency who are allowed to make searches without warrants under s.98 of the Customs Act.


title: Police dog

text: In 2017, it was reported that the Canadian forces had approximately 170 RCMP dog teams across Canada, and was continuing to grow as more and more Canadian municipalities saw the value of police dogs.


title: Police dog

text: There are a total of 240 active police dogs in Denmark, each of which are ranked in one of three groups: Group 1, Group 2 and Group 3. Dogs in Group 1 are very experienced, and highly trained. Group 1 dogs are typically within the age range of four to eight years old and are used for patrolling, rescue, searching for biological evidence and major crime investigations. Group 2 dogs are employed for the same tasks as members of Group 1, but they do not participate in major crime investigations or searching for biological evidence. Group 3 is the beginner rank for police dogs, and are only employed for patrol operations.


title: Police dog

text: The Police Dog Unit (PDU; ) was established in 1949 and is a specialist force of the Hong Kong Police under the direct command of the Special Operations Bureau. Their roles are crowd control, search and rescue, and poison and explosive detection. In addition, the PDU works in collaboration with other departments for anti-crime operations.


title: Police dog

text: The Dutch Police Dog Brigade is part of the national police corps national unit, and supports other units with specially trained dogs. The dogs are trained to recognize a single specific scent. They specialize in identifying scents (identifying the scent shared by an object and a person), narcotics, explosives and firearms, detecting human remains, and locating drowning people and fire accelerants.


title: Police dog

text: The 10 regional units also have dog brigades of their own. For example, the canine unit of the regional police East netherlands.


title: Police dog

text: In India, the National Security Guard inducted the Belgian Malinois into its K-9 Unit, Border Security Force, and Central Reserve Police Force use Rajapalayam as guard dogs to support the Force on the borders of Kashmir.


title: Police dog

text: For regional security, the Delhi Police has recruited many of the city's street dogs to be trained for security purposes. The Bengal Police uses German Shepherds, Labrador Retrievers, and the Indian pariah dog in its bomb-sniffing squad.


title: Police dog

text: Israel utilizes canine units for border patrols to track illegal persons or objects that pose a threat. Police dogs serve in the Israel Police and Israel Prison Service.


title: Police dog

text: All the law enforcement in Italy (Carabinieri, Polizia di Stato and Guardia di Finanza) have in service many patrol dogs for Public Order, Anti-Drug, Anti-explosive, Search and Rescue. The first train centers for police dogs in Italy were established after World War I and in 1924, Italy purchased German Shepherds from Germany for border patrol operations in the Alps. The Carabinieri Kennel Club was formed in 1957 to produce police dogs and train handlers in Italy. German and Belgian shepherds are used for multiple purposes, Labradors for drug, weapons and explosive surveillance and Rottweilers serve for protection.


title: Police dog

text: Japan is one of the few east Asian countries that have dogs serving in law enforcement as others dislike dogs due to cultural norms. Between the 16th and 19th centuries, samurai had Akita service companions that would defend samurai while they slept at night. In modern times, the German shepherd is the common police dog of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department.


title: Police dog

text: Police dogs began their service in Kenya in 1948 as part of the Kenya Police Criminal Investigation Department of the Kenya Police. Since the 1950s, the main police dog in service is the German shepherd, with Labradors, Rottweilers and English Springer Spaniels being used for specialized purposes. Since the 2000s, the Kenya Police has increased the breeding and adoption of police dogs with the long-term goal of having canines serving in each police station of Kenya.


title: Police dog

text: The Nepal Police first established a canine unit in 1975 due to increased crime rates and to help with investigations. Since then, police dogs are in service throughout various regions of Nepal and have been present at the Tribhuwan International Airport since 2009.


title: Police dog

text: Pakistan Customs uses a K-9 unit for anti-smuggling operations. Pakistan's Sindh Police also have a specialized K-9 unit.


title: Police dog

text: Peru recruits various canine units for various governmental, military and police operations. The National Service of Agrarian Health (SENASA) of the Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation has the Canine Brigade of Plant Health that detects plants that may violate phytosanitary trade practices and to prevent the contraband importation of pests in plants and fruit. The brigade is present at Jorge Chávez International Airport and in Peruvian territory.


title: Police dog

text: For the National Police of Peru, they prefer the German Shepherd, Belgian Shepherd Malinois, Beagle, Weimaraner, Golden Retriever and Labrador Retriever breeds for their service and accept donations of dogs between the ages of 12 and 24 months. The National Police use canine units for drug surveillance in the country's main airport, Jorge Chávez International Airport, with the force receiving canine training from United States Customs and Border Protection.


title: Police dog

text: The Peruvian Army has canine units trained for search and rescue as well as disaster situations. During the COVID-19 pandemic in Peru, a limitation of gatherings and curfew was enforced with the assistance of canine units that served for law enforcement.


title: Police dog

text: Police dogs have been used in Russia since 1909 in Saint Petersburg. Attack dogs are used commonly by police and are muzzled at all times unless ordered to apprehend a suspect. Police dogs have also been used to track fugitives, which has remained common in most Soviet Union Successor States.


title: Police dog

text: The Swedish Police Authority currently deploys around 400 police canines. There is however no requirement for the dogs to be purebred, as long as they meet mental and physical requirements set by the police. Dogs aged 18–48 months are eligible to take admission tests for the K9 training. The police dogs live with their operators, and after retirement at age 8–10 the operator often assumes the ownership of the dog.


title: Police dog

text: Police forces across the country, as well as the RAF Police, employ dogs and handlers and dog training schools are available to cater for the ever-increasing number of dogs being used. The use of police dogs became popular in the 1930s when Scotland Yard officially added dogs to its police force.


title: Police dog

text: There are over 2,500 police dogs employed amongst the various police forces in the UK, with the Belgian Malinois as the most popular breed for general purpose work. In 2008, a Belgian Malinois female handled by PC Graham Clarke won the National Police Dog Trials with the highest score ever recorded.


title: Police dog

text: All British police dogs, irrespective of the discipline they are trained in, must be licensed to work operationally. To obtain the licence they have to pass a test at the completion of their training, and then again every year until they retire, which is usually at about the age of 8. The standards required to become operational are laid down by the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) sub-committee on police dogs and are reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that training and licensing reflects the most appropriate methods and standards.


title: Police dog

text: Police dogs are in widespread use across the United States. Police dogs are operated on the federal, state, county, and local levels and are used for a wide variety of duties, similar to those of other nations. Their duties generally include detecting illegal narcotics, explosives, and other weapons, search-and-rescue, and cadaver searches. The most common breeds for everyday duties are the German Shepherd and the Belgian Malinois, though other breeds may be used to perform specific tasks.


title: Police dog

text: On the federal level, police dogs may be seen in some airports assisting Transportation Security Administration officials search for explosives and weapons, or by Customs and Border Protection searching for concealed narcotics and people. Some dogs may also be used by tactical components of such agencies as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the United States Marshals Service. Federally owned police dogs play a vital role in homeland security. An expert on police dogs, L. Paul Waggoner of the Canine Performance Sciences Program at Auburn University said, "detector dogs are a critical component of national security – and they also provide a very visible and proven deterrent to terrorist activities." The American Kennel Club estimates that between 80–90 percent of dogs purchased by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Department of Defense come from foreign vendors, mostly located in Europe.


title: Police dog

text: Most police agencies in the United States – whether state, county, or local – use police dogs as means of law enforcement. Often, even the smallest of departments operates a K-9 division of at least one dog; in these cases, police dogs will usually serve all purposes deemed necessary, most commonly suspect apprehension and narcotics detection, and teams are often on call. In larger cities and metropolitan areas, police departments regularly employ dozens of police dogs. In these cases, individual dogs often serve individual purposes in which each particular animal is specialized, and teams usually serve scheduled shifts. In both cases, police dogs are almost always cared for by their specific handlers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services agency requires police dogs to undergo annual in-service training to recertify their skills and credentials. This training must last at least 24 hours each year.


title: Police dog

text: Under the Federal Law Enforcement Animal Protection Act, it is a felony to assault or kill a law enforcement animal, including police dogs and police horses, in all 50 states. However, police dogs are not treated as police officers for the purpose of the law, and attacking or killing a police dog is not punishable in the same manner as attacking or killing a human police officer. Although many police departments formally swear dogs in as police officers, this swearing-in is purely honorary, and carries no legal significance.


title: Police dog

text: Police dogs also play a major role in American penal systems. Many jails and prisons will use special dog teams as a means of intervening in large-scale fights or riots by inmates. Also, many penal systems will employ dogs – usually bloodhounds – in searching for escaped prisoners.


title: Police dog

text: In October 2017, the U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform Intergovernmental Affairs Subcommittee held a hearing about whether there is a sufficient supply of dogs that can be trained as police dogs. Congressman Mike Rogers (R-AL) said that the continued ISIS-inspired attacks in the U.S. and all over the world "have driven demand through the roof" for police dogs.


title: Police dog

text: The United States Supreme Court is the highest federal court in the United States of America. Some U.S. Supreme Court cases that pertain to police dogs are:


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Andrew Bynum (born October 27, 1987) is an American former professional basketball player. He played the majority of his career with the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). After they selected him in the first round of the 2005 NBA draft with the 10th overall pick, the center won two NBA championships with the team in 2009 and 2010. He was named an All-Star and selected to the All-NBA team in 2012.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Bynum was an All-American player in high school before he decided to forgo college and enter the NBA. He became the youngest player ever to play in an NBA game. After seven seasons with the Lakers, he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers in 2012 as part of a four-team deal that sent All-Star center Dwight Howard to Los Angeles. Bynum missed the entire 2012–13 season because of knee problems. He signed as a free agent with the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he briefly played before being traded to the Chicago Bulls, who subsequently released him. He then signed with the Indiana Pacers for the remainder of the 2013–14 season.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Bynum was born in Plainsboro Township, New Jersey. His parents, Ernest Bynum and Janet McCoy, divorced when he was a one year old. He spent summers visiting his father in North Carolina. Bynum has one older brother, Corey.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Bynum attended St. Joseph High School, in Metuchen, New Jersey during his junior and senior year. For most of his freshman year, he attended West Windsor Plainsboro High School North located in Plainsboro, New Jersey. For the remainder of his freshman year and his sophomore year he attended Solebury School in Solebury, PA. He played in the 2005 McDonald's All-American game where he tallied 9 points and 5 rebounds. In his junior year of high school Bynum averaged 16.0 points, 13.0 rebounds, and 6.0 blocks. As a senior, he averaged 22.4 points, 16.8 rebounds and 5.3 blocks per game. During his junior and senior year at St. Joseph High School, Bynum finished his high school career averaging 19.2 points, 14.9 rebounds, and 5.6 blocks in 32 appearances. He originally planned to attend the University of Connecticut on a basketball scholarship; however, the 17-year-old made the decision to go directly into the NBA and made himself eligible for the 2005 NBA draft, where he was selected by the Los Angeles Lakers.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: In the 2005 NBA draft, Bynum was selected 10th overall by the Los Angeles Lakers. At age , Bynum was 12 days younger than Jermaine O'Neal, the previous youngest player drafted by an NBA team. After selecting him in the draft, the Lakers hired Hall of Famer Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to work with Bynum. Bynum played in a preseason game at 17 years old making him the first player to play in the NBA at 17 years of age. On November 2, 2005, during the Lakers' season opener against the Denver Nuggets, Bynum played six minutes and became the youngest player ever to play in an NBA game at age . During the game, he missed his two field goal attempts but had two rebounds and two blocks. In his second season, Bynum was still the youngest player in the league, due to his draft year being the last that a player could be drafted straight out of high school.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: In a game against the Miami Heat on January 16, 2006, Bynum matched up against former Laker center Shaquille O'Neal for the first time. At one point, O'Neal dunked over Bynum on a putback attempt. On the next play, Bynum spun past O'Neal and dunked the ball. He then ran down the court and shoved O'Neal with his elbow, who retaliated by elbowing Bynum's upper chest. Teammate Kobe Bryant quickly stepped in between the two. Both Bynum and O'Neal received technical fouls for the incident.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: With Lakers centers Chris Mihm and Kwame Brown injured at the start of 2006–07, Bynum was the starting center for the first 15 games of the season. In his first career start, he scored 18 points and had nine rebounds against the Phoenix Suns on October 31, 2006. His first career double-double on November 7 included a season-high 20 points, 14 rebounds and three blocks against the Minnesota Timberwolves. On January 26, 2007, he had a career-high seven blocks and a season-high 16 rebounds against the Charlotte Bobcats. He played in all 82 games during the season and started 53, finishing with averages of 7.8 points, 5.9 rebounds and 1.6 blocks in just over 21 minutes per game. During the season, the New Jersey Nets were interested in acquiring Bynum for Jason Kidd.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: After the season, Coach Pete Newell was impressed with Bynum's development, and stated that teammate Kobe Bryant should back off on his negative treatment of Bynum on the court. Bryant was also shown on an infamous amateur video saying that center Bynum should have been traded for Kidd.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: The Indiana Pacers also made a trade offer for Bynum. The Lakers would exercise a fourth-year contract option on Bynum.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Bynum helped the Lakers start to a 26–11 record, which was at the time the best record in the Pacific Division. Bynum played 35 games and started in 25 games during the season. On Christmas Day against the Phoenix Suns, he made 11-of-13 shots for 28 points to complement 12 boards, 4 assists and 2 blocks.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On January 13, 2008, he suffered an injury during a game against the Memphis Grizzlies. Bynum partially dislocated his left kneecap when he landed awkwardly on teammate Lamar Odom's left foot while attempting to grab a rebound. After Bynum's injury, the Lakers acquired Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: In March, there were reports that he could return before the end of the 2007–08 season or the first round of the playoffs; however, Lakers coach Phil Jackson said that he did not foresee Bynum making serious contributions any time soon in April. In May, rumors about his return were put to rest when Bynum underwent arthroscopic surgery on his kneecap. He missed 46 games due to the injury, and finished the season with averages of 13.1 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks and a .636 field goal percentage. Without Bynum, the Lakers made it to the 2008 NBA Finals, but lost to the Boston Celtics in six games.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: In September 2008, Bynum said that he was 100% healthy and was ready to participate in training camp, which was scheduled to begin at the end of the month, after working with his trainer. On October 30, 2008, he agreed to sign a 4-year, $58 million contract with the Lakers.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Bynum set a new career high in scoring with 42 points to go along with 15 rebounds (8 offensive) and 3 blocked shots on January 21, 2009 against the Los Angeles Clippers. On the next night, January 22, versus the Washington Wizards he scored 23 points to go along with 14 rebounds.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On January 27, 2009, in a double overtime loss against the Charlotte Bobcats, Bynum committed a flagrant foul, fracturing the rib and subsequently collapsing the lung of Gerald Wallace of the Bobcats.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: While playing against the Memphis Grizzlies on January 31, 2009, Kobe Bryant had an off balanced shot, fell and collided with Bynum's right knee, resulting in a right knee sprain. On February 2, 2009 it was revealed that Bynum had suffered a torn MCL in his right knee and would be out 8–12 weeks. This was the second straight year that Bynum had suffered a knee injury against the Grizzlies. He had averaged 26 points and 14 rebounds in his previous five games, posting five straight double-doubles.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Bynum missed the next 32 games. On April 9, 2009, he returned from injury in a home game against the Denver Nuggets. Bynum went 0–2 in the first half, but finished with 7–11 by the end of the game. With the 21 minutes that Bynum played, he scored 16 points and grabbed 7 rebounds. Still recovering from his knee injury, he played in the playoffs wearing an awkward knee brace. He was not the same player, averaging 6.3 points and 3.7 rebounds while often in foul trouble. The Lakers advanced to the 2009 NBA Finals against the Orlando Magic. Although Bynum averaged just 19 minutes against the Magic and their center Dwight Howard, the Lakers won the championship.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: In the 2010 NBA playoffs, Bynum injured his knee in Game 6 against the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round. It was the third consecutive season his knee injuries impacted the Lakers postseason. However, he kept on playing, and the Lakers won their second championship in a row. Postponing surgery until after the playoffs, Bynum appeared in all 23 of the Lakers' playoff games, averaging 8.6 points and 6.9 rebounds. Teammate Pau Gasol called Bynum's "tenacity remarkable. He gave his best. He sacrificed himself in order to help the team and have a better chance to win the championship."


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Before having surgery on his knee, Bynum attended the 2010 World Cup in South Africa and vacationed in Europe. "It's not the most serious (injury)", Bynum said of his torn meniscus. "I'm going to get it taken care of, and then everything is supposed to be cool." Bynum underwent surgery on July 28.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: A longer than expected recovery period was needed for Bynum's surgery that caused him to miss the beginning of the 2010–11 NBA season. Bynum gave the Lakers advance notice hours, not weeks, before the opening of training camp. He acknowledged that his doctor told him in advance that he might need more repair to the knee based on findings once the surgery began. Bynum said he would make the same decision again to delay the surgery until after his vacation, even with the knowledge that it would cost him a portion of the upcoming regular season. Kevin Ding of the "Orange County Register" and Michael Rosenberg of Sports Illustrated criticized Bynum for his summer activities and not expecting complications based on his history with injuries and recovery time.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Bynum came off the bench in his first game of the season on December 14 in a 103–89 win over the Wizards. He finished with 17 minutes, 1-of-5 from the field, seven points, four rebounds and two blocks. "I feel light-years better than back [in Game 7 of 2010 NBA Finals]", he said. In his first 24 games played during the season, Bynum averaged 24.6 minutes per game and 27.4 minutes in 17 games as a starter. Jackson was limiting Bynum's minutes in an attempt to minimize his risk of injury. At the All-Star break, Jackson discussed with Bynum that his primary role should be to defend and rebound—not score. It was a role Bynum had previously resisted.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On March 8, Bynum had his third straight game with at least 16 rebounds and had 50 rebounds and 12 blocks in that span. As the Lakers went 8–0 after the All-Star break, Bynum had 10 or more rebounds five times and blocked three or more shots four times while the Lakers held opponents to just 87 points per game. The Lakers revised their defense to have big men no longer were responsible for the perimeter against guards coming off screens, and Lakers' defenders would instead funnel the plays inside to Bynum.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On March 20, Bynum was suspended for two games by the NBA for a flagrant foul on Michael Beasley of the Minnesota Timberwolves.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On April 12 against the San Antonio Spurs, Bynum hyper-extended his right knee A magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) exam revealed he had a bruised knee, and he missed the last game of the regular season. Bynum ended the season averaging 11 points, 12 rebounds and 2.4 blocks after the All-Star break. He returned to the lineup for the start of the playoffs. After the Lakers defeated the New Orleans Hornets in the first round, 4–2, Hornets head coach Monty Williams said, "Kobe's Kobe, but I thought Bynum decided the series. He was that good."


title: Andrew Bynum

text: In the Lakers' second-round playoff series against the Dallas Mavericks, Bynum was ejected in the final game of the Mavericks' four-game sweep for a flagrant foul on J. J. Barea moments after teammate Lamar Odom was ejected for fouling Dirk Nowitzki. Bynum's actions were condemned by the sports news media, and he was suspended four games for the next season and fined $25,000.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: Jackson retired from coaching after 2010–11, and Mike Brown was hired as his replacement. During Brown's interview for the position, Lakers executive Jim Buss said Bynum needed to receive the ball inside, and Brown planned for Bynum to get the ball "more than what he did in the past." The new coach believed Bynum could become an All-Star, and perennial All-Star center Yao Ming had retired and Tim Duncan's skills were declining. In his first game of the season after serving his suspension, Bynum scored 29 points on 13 for 18 shooting and grabbed 13 rebounds, leading the Lakers to a 92–89 victory over the Denver Nuggets.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On January 3 against the Houston Rockets, Bynum had 21 points and 22 rebounds in the first 20–20 game of his career. He was selected as a starter to his first All-Star Game. Bynum was awarded Western Conference Player of the Week honors for the second time of his young career for games played Monday, March 12, through Sunday, March 18. He led the Lakers to a 3–1 week, leading the West in rebounding (14.8 rpg) and placed second in scoring (27.5) while shooting .665 from the field (fourth in the Conference). On March 28 against the Golden State Warriors, Bynum was benched by coach Mike Brown for the remainder of the third quarter after attempting an ill-advised three-point field goal with 10:05 left and the Lakers leading 56–50. Bynum did not join his teammates in huddles during multiple timeouts in the fourth quarter, instead sitting by himself toward the end of the bench. He was fined by the team around $7,500 for his actions. About a week later, he was again not involved in timeouts against an undermanned New Orleans Hornets team, explaining afterwards that he was resting and "getting my Zen on."


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On April 11, Bynum grabbed a career and an NBA season-high 30 rebounds against the San Antonio Spurs to become the fifth Lakers player ever to register at least 30 rebounds in a single game. Bynum finished the regular season with career highs in minutes per game (tied NBA 24th overall), rebounds per game (NBA 3rd overall), and points per game (NBA 20th overall). He also finished with the 3rd highest field-goal percentage in the league and 6th overall in blocks per game. Bynum ended the season tied with Oklahoma City All-Star guard Russell Westbrook at 10th overall in Player Efficiency Rating (PER) with a PER of 23.00. Bynum only missed one game the entire season due to injury (ankle). He became widely mentioned along with Howard as being the top center playing in the NBA.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: In a 103–88 win against the Nuggets in the opening game of the playoffs, Bynum had a triple-double with 10 points, 13 rebounds, and 10 blocked shots. The blocked shots broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's franchise record of nine, and tied the NBA playoff record set by Mark Eaton and Hakeem Olajuwon. After the Lakers led the series 3–1, Bynum said, "Close-out games are actually kind of easy." The Lakers eventually won the series 4–3 with Bynum contributing a career playoff-high 18 rebounds in Game 7.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On June 4, 2012, the Lakers exercised their $16.1-million team option on Bynum's contract for the 2012–13 season. On August 10, he was traded to the Philadelphia 76ers in a four-team deal that also sent Dwight Howard from the Magic to the Lakers and Andre Iguodala from the 76ers to the Denver Nuggets. The Magic decided against receiving Bynum due to concerns over his knees and his upcoming free agent status.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: About a week before training camp, Bynum underwent Orthokine treatments on both of his knees to stimulate healing for his arthritis. As a precaution at the start of camp, the 76ers decided to hold Bynum out from basketball activities for three weeks after he experienced discomfort in his knees. He was also diagnosed with a bone bruise to his right knee that was unrelated to the treatments he received. He did not practice or play with the team prior to the season, and suffered another setback after injuring his left knee while bowling. In November, Sixers general manager Tony DiLeo said Bynum's knees had worsened since the trade, and Bynum was declared out indefinitely. Since training camp, Bynum had been firm that he would make his debut for Philadelphia, and had targeted the All-Star break for his return. After still not playing through the end of February, it was reported that Bynum's knees had begun to degenerate.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On March 1, with swelling in his right knee, he conceded he might not play by the end of the season, although he said his left knee was fine. On March 19, Bynum had season-ending arthroscopic surgery on both knees, ending his 76ers tenure without appearing in a game for the franchise.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On July 19, 2013, Bynum signed with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Reportedly, the incentive-laden contract could pay him up to $24.79 million over two years. On October 30, 2013, he made his debut for the Cavaliers recording 3 points and 3 rebounds in 8 minutes of play. On November 30, Bynum set season highs of 20 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 blocks in a 97–93 victory over the Chicago Bulls. However, he also struggled at times, shooting 0–11 from the field with no points in 22 minutes in a loss to Detroit. On December 28, Bynum was suspended indefinitely by the Cavaliers for conduct detrimental to the team; he had been thrown out of practice after shooting the ball every time he received it, regardless of how far he was from the basket.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On January 7, 2014, the Cavaliers traded Bynum, a future first round draft pick, two future second round picks, and the option to swap first round picks in 2015 to the Chicago Bulls for Luol Deng. The same day, he was waived by the Bulls in a salary cap move that was projected to save Chicago more than $20 million and provide relief from paying the NBA's luxury tax. During his time with the Cavaliers, Bynum averaged 8.4 points and 5.3 rebounds per game in 20 minutes of play.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On February 1, 2014, Bynum signed with the Indiana Pacers for the remainder of the season. He was expected to back up All-Star center Roy Hibbert along with Ian Mahinmi. Coach Frank Vogel planned to give Bynum one to two weeks of practice before evaluating if he was ready to play.


title: Andrew Bynum

text: On March 11, 2014, Bynum made his Pacers debut with 8 points and 10 rebounds in 15 minutes in a 94–83 win over the Boston Celtics. He appeared in only two games before Indiana declared him out indefinitely with swelling and soreness in his right knee; he missed the remainder of the regular season. On May 7, before Game 2 of the second round of the 2014 NBA playoffs against Washington, the Pacers announced that Bynum would miss the remainder of the season and would no longer be involved in team activities. As late as 2018, Bynum was still working on an attempted NBA comeback.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: The first season of the American legal comedy-drama "Suits" originally aired on USA Network in the United States between June 23, 2011 and September 8, 2011. The season was produced by Hypnotic Films & Television and Universal Cable Productions, and the executive producers were Doug Liman, David Bartis and series creator Aaron Korsh.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: The series revolves around corporate lawyer Harvey Specter and his associate attorney Mike Ross, the latter practicing without a law degree. The season had six series regulars playing employees at the fictional Pearson Hardman law firm in Manhattan: Gabriel Macht, Patrick J. Adams, Rick Hoffman, Meghan Markle, Sarah Rafferty, and Gina Torres.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: On April 5, 2010, USA announced that it was developing seven new pilots for its 2010–2011 television season, including "A Legal Mind", which would later become "Suits". The premiere was written by Aaron Korsh, and David Bartis and Gene Klein served as executive producers. It was later announced on May 17, 2010 that USA ordered a ninety-minute cast-contingent pilot for the series. The network later picked up "A Legal Mind" on January 19, 2011 and ordered eleven one-hour episodes in addition to the 90-minute pilot.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: Creator Aaron Korsh, whose "Notes from the Underbelly" sitcom was canceled during the 2007–2008 Writers' Strike, wrote a spec script intended to be a "half-hour "Entourage"-type based on my experiences working on Wall Street." He later realized that the project should have hour-long episodes. Korsh and his agent took the script to several production companies and wanted to give the script to Universal Media Studios. However, Korsh found it odd that the studio did not want to sell the script to NBC, the network the studio typically worked with. Korsh's agent convinced USA Network executive Alex Sepiol that although the series was neither a procedural nor what the network typically did, he would like the characters. Sepiol approved of the script, and by then, Hypnotic Films & Television signed on to the project. The team pitched the script to USA, which bought the script after the pitch. Korsh did not pitch it to anyone else. When rewriting the script, Korsh made only small changes to the first half-hour, up to when Mike is hired. Originally, Mike did not take LSATs for others and only pretends to have attended Harvard, as opposed to pretending he attended Harvard and has a law degree. Korsh noted that there is no degree or test needed to work on Wall Street and be a mathematical genius, unlike the bar examination in law. He decided to "embrace" this difference and change the premise.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: The pilot episode was filmed in New York City, where the series is set. The rest of the series is filmed in Toronto, where the sets are built to be identical to the New York law offices seen in the pilot.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: To promote the series debut, USA had an advance screening of the pilot on June 2, 2011 at the Hudson River Park and distributed free Häagen-Dazs Sundaes cones at the viewing. The network also had branded ice cream carts, bikes, and scooters give away the Sundaes and USA/"Entertainment Weekly" 2011 promotion summer guides on June 22 and June 23 in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco, and Boston to promote the pilot.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: The season was created by Aaron Korsh and was aired on USA Network in the United States. The season was produced by Hypnotic Films & Television and Universal Cable Productions. The executive producers were Korsh, Doug Liman, and David Bartis. The staff writers were: Korsh with three writing credits; Sean Jablonski, Jon Cowan, Ethan Drogin, and Rick Muirragui with two each; and Erica Lipez with one. The directors throughout the season were Kevin Bray, John Scott, Dennie Gordon, Kate Woods, Terry McDonough, Tim Matheson, Norberto Barba, Felix Alcala, Jennifer Getzinger, and Mike Smith.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: Six actors received star billing in the show's first season. Each character works at the fictional Pearson Hardman law firm in Manhattan. Gabriel Macht plays corporate lawyer Harvey Specter, who is promoted to senior partner and is forced to hire an associate attorney. Patrick J. Adams plays college dropout Mike Ross, who wins the associate position with his eidetic memory and genuine desire to be a good lawyer. Rick Hoffman plays Louis Litt, Harvey's jealous rival and the direct supervisor of the firm's first-year associates. Meghan Markle plays Rachel Zane, a paralegal who aspires to be an attorney but her test anxiety prevents her from attending Harvard Law School. Sarah Rafferty plays Donna Paulsen, Harvey's long-time legal secretary, confidant, and initially the only one at the firm who knows Mike never attended law school. Rafferty was recommended for the role by Macht, who had been friends with Rafferty for twenty years at the time of production. When she auditioned for the role, Korsh felt she was best actress for the part. Gina Torres plays Jessica Pearson, the co-founder and managing partner of the firm.


title: Suits (season 1)

text: The pilot episode gained a 1.6 ratings share among adults aged 18–49 and garnered an estimated 4.6 million viewers, making the episode the ninth most watched basic cable show for the week. The episode was watched 2 million in people aged 18–49 and 2.1 million in people aged 24–54, a double-digit increase over the January premiere of the network's other legal drama "Fairly Legal". The second episode, which aired June 30, experienced a four-tenths ratings drop, which was attributed to the holiday weekend. However, the episode's ratings were bolstered by a high DVR viewings. The ratings rose the next week garnering 4.5 million views with a 1.3 ratings share among adults aged 18–49. The premiere of "Jersey Shore", which shares the Thursday 10pm timeslot with "Suits", caused a decrease in ratings, a trend that continued for the rest of the season. Together, "Burn Notice" and "Suits" were the top scripted shows in primetime television, and no other network aired scripted series that garnered over four million total viewers, one million viewers aged 25–54, or one million viewers aged 18–49. "Suits" was ranked third in males aged 18–49 and males aged 25–54. The series made USA Network the most watched network in the Thursday 10pm timeslot and gained more total viewers and households than any other scripted series in the timeslot. The series has the network's third best performing premiere season in viewers aged 18–49, in viewers aged 18–34, and in total viewers.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: "Everybody Dies" is the series finale of the American medical drama television series "House". It is the 22nd episode of the eighth season and the 177th overall episode of the series. It originally aired on Fox in the United States on May 21, 2012. While treating a drug-addicted patient, House is forced to examine his life and future.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: The series finale aired immediately following "Swan Song", a two-hour retrospective episode. The episode featured cameos from multiple characters in previous seasons, including Remy "Thirteen" Hadley, Allison Cameron, Martha Masters, Dominika Petrova, and Stacy Warner, as well as Lawrence Kutner and Amber Volakis, who both died in previous seasons but appeared as hallucinations. The episode was watched by 8.72 million U.S. viewers and received mixed critical reception.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: House wakes up next to a dead body in an abandoned building that is slowly burning down. He starts to hallucinate about former and deceased colleagues and realizes he is arguing with his own subconscious about whether he should escape or die in the fire. Flashbacks show that in the days prior, House took up the case of Oliver, a heroin addict. Oliver overheard that House is facing felony vandalism charges, and had offered to take the blame for House as he believed he was about to die, but House realized that Oliver will likely live. In the present, House recognizes the dead body as Oliver.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: Meanwhile, Wilson and Foreman have not seen House for several days. Discovering that Oliver is also missing from the hospital, they suspect House may have gone with him to take heroin. They track down Oliver's address, and see


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: a burning building nearby; just as they see that House is trapped inside, the building explodes. A coroner confirms from dental records that a burnt body from the building is House's.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: A funeral is held for House. While most people call House a positive force in their lives, Wilson calls House arrogant and says that he never cared for his friends. Suddenly, a phone in Wilson's pocket rings, with the text message "SHUT UP YOU IDIOT". Wilson finds House waiting at his home. House admits he switched his dental records with his patient in order to fake his own death; astonished, Wilson states that House just destroyed his life, he will go to jail and will never be able to practice medicine again. House replies, "I'm dead, Wilson", and asks Wilson how Wilson would like to spend his last months before he dies from terminal cancer.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: The final scenes include a montage of House's colleagues. Chase replaced House as Head of Diagnostic Medicine, with Adams and Park working with him. Taub is at a restaurant spending time with Rachel, Ruby and his daughters. Cameron returns to work as the head of the emergency room in a Chicago hospital. She gazes at a photo of the old team before leaving to join her husband and child. Foreman discovers House's hospital ID stuck under a table leg in his office, which he had previously complained to House about and chuckles, realizing that House is alive. The final scene shows House and Wilson traveling the country on motorcycles.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: In March 2012 Amber Tamblyn was confirmed to reprise her role as Martha Masters for the finale. Anne Dudek, Sela Ward and Andre Braugher also reprised their previous roles as Amber, Stacy Warner and Dr. Nolan respectively. In April, it was announced that David Shore would direct and co-write the final episode of the show and that Olivia Wilde would return as Thirteen for the penultimate episode and the series finale. It was also reported Kal Penn would return as Dr. Kutner and Jennifer Morrison would return to the series in a cameo appearance as Dr. Cameron. Lisa Edelstein, who played Dr. Lisa Cuddy in the first seven seasons of House, did not return for the series finale.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: Many endings were considered for the finale of the series. The writers had considered killing House at one point, but settled for an ending where Wilson got sick, though the storyline was decided on at the beginning of the season. The episode also mirrors a Sherlock Holmes story where Holmes fakes his death. Laurie suggested the song "Enjoy Yourself (It's Later than You Think)" for the final scene. In interviews after the episode aired, Shore said that the fire was caused by Oliver falling asleep while smoking, and House had managed to escape the building in the few seconds between the collapse and the explosion. Chase has a minimal role in the finale, since the writers wanted to focus on the relationship between House and Wilson.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: Shore told "Entertainment Weekly" that the series finale is "a different kind of episode, but at its core I think it's still a "House" episode... I really wanted to make sure that we're doing that at the end and we're still happy. As Hugh Laurie says, Dr. House is the guy who leaves the party before people want him to." Other cast members agreed that it was time for the show to end; Omar Epps, who played Eric Foreman, said "You want to go out at a time when the show is still effective, people are still watching it, the stories are still fresh... I think we've run our course. It's the right time."


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: The title of the episode, "Everybody Dies", is a reference to the title of the pilot episode, "Everybody Lies", a line commonly said by House.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: The episode aired on May 21, 2012, immediately following a two-hour retrospective episode, Swan Song. The finale drew in an audience of 8.72 million in the US, finishing first on its hour and third on the night. Its 18-49 rating was 2.9, which was tied for second place on the night. In the US, "Everybody Dies" finished eighth in the week for adults 18–49 and finished eleventh overall. In Canada, the series finale finished third in the weekly viewership with 2.13 million viewers. In the United Kingdom, the episode had 688,000 viewers upon airing.


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: The episode received mixed critical reception. Some critics felt the episode was a fitting ending giving proper closure to the series. Lisa Palmer of "TV Fanatic" gave the finale an excellent rating of 4.8/5 and stated that "I feel satisfaction at this ending... I can move on from this show without hesitation," similar to Morgan Jeffery of Digital Spy, who stated "'Everybody Dies' probably won't go down in TV history as one of the great series finales, but it does get a hell of a lot right. House gets his happy ending with Wilson and, perhaps more importantly, there's the implication that he'll be okay once his friend is gone." Ken Tucker of "Entertainment Weekly" wrote that ""House" had, in its final seasons, become a rather sentimental show" and the final episode was a "satisfying" and "fitting ending".


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: Some critics were less positive. Zack Handlen of "The A.V. Club" awarded the episode a D+ rating, stating: "'Everybody Dies' is a failure of ambition." Handlen also criticized the direction the show had been going in over the last seasons, writing "then at some point, the soul floated away, and the writers were forced to push harder and harder to make us feel anything at all." Similar sentiments were shared by "Vulture"s Margaret Lyons who wrote, "More than a hospital drama or a character piece or anything else, "House" is a complex meditation on misery, but there is a line between "enlightened cynicism" and "misery-entropy". As the show wore on, its dramatic flare dimmed while its agony flare burned ever brighter." She concluded that "it's hard not to wish that the show was going out on more of a high note, rather than the middle-range note it's been playing, and playing, and playing, for years."


title: Everybody Dies (House)

text: "Entertainment Weekly" ranked House faking his death at number three for "Single Most Clever Twist" for the 2012 TV Season Finale Awards.


title: Joe Estevez

text: Joseph Estévez (born February 13, 1946) is an American actor and director. He is the younger brother of actor Martin Sheen and the uncle of Emilio Estevez, Charlie Sheen, Renée Estevez, and Ramon Estevez.


title: Joe Estevez

text: Estevez was born in Dayton, Ohio to a Catholic, Galician (Spanish) father, Francisco Estévez (1898–1974), and an Irish mother, Mary Anne (née Phelan) (1903–1951). He is one of ten children—nine boys and one girl.


title: Joe Estevez

text: As a child, he lived in the South Park neighborhood of Dayton. He attended Chaminade-Julienne High School, a Catholic High School located in Dayton. Upon his graduation, he enlisted and served in the United States Navy.


title: Joe Estevez

text: After serving in the United States Navy, Estevez began pursuing an acting career starting in the early 1970s. He initially used his mother's maiden name, Phelan, before using his surname, Estevez. Throughout his career, Estevez has appeared in numerous film and television roles in lead, supporting, and minor parts playing protagonists and antagonists, and he frequently appears in moderate and low-budget independent features and B-movies. In addition, he has worked as a voice-over artist and performs in stage productions. He has expressed in an interview that he wants to make movies that make a difference.


title: Joe Estevez

text: Estevez stood in for his brother in a number of long shots and in some of the voice-overs for "Apocalypse Now" (1979), as Martin Sheen was recovering from his heart attack.


title: Joe Estevez

text: He plays a villain, Cyrus, in the film "Doonby" (2012), which features former "The Dukes of Hazzard" star John Schneider as a mysterious stranger who comes into a small town and falls in love with the spoiled daughter of Estevez's character, the local doctor. He also co-stars with David Faustino in the feature "Not Another B Movie" (2011) released by Troma Entertainment.


title: Joe Estevez

text: Estevez has recently worked with alternative-comedians Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington on various projects including "On Cinema", "The Tim Heidecker Murder Trial" and as President Jason Davidson (and President Davidson Jr.) on the Adult Swim series "Decker". In all his collaborations, Estevez either plays a fictionalized version of himself or a character being portrayed by a fictionalized version of Joe Estevez.


title: Joe Estevez

text: Estevez has been married twice. He married Shirley Monkman in 1978 and raised three daughters: Casey, Amanda, and Angela. His second wife is actress Constance Anderson, whom he married in 2004.


title: Joe Estevez

text: Joe Estevez is the youngest sibling of Martin Sheen and sounds very similar to him, a fact he took advantage of when he did a voice-over for a National Shooting Sports Foundation pro-gunmaker commercial in 2000; at the time, his brother was famous for playing a President of the United States on the television series "The West Wing". Sheen starred in a pro-gun control commercial that same year. Estevez also recorded the voiceover for his brother's role as Captain Willard in "Apocalypse Now" after Sheen's health issues on set prevented him from doing so.


title: Lens

text: A lens is a transmissive optical device which focuses or disperses a light beam by means of refraction. A simple lens consists of a single piece of transparent material, while a compound lens consists of several simple lenses ("elements"), usually arranged along a common axis. Lenses are made from materials such as glass or plastic, and are ground and polished or molded to a desired shape. A lens can focus light to form an image, unlike a prism, which refracts light without focusing. Devices that similarly focus or disperse waves and radiation other than visible light are also called lenses, such as microwave lenses, electron lenses, acoustic lenses, or explosive lenses.


title: Lens

text: Lenses are used in various imaging devices like telescopes, binoculars and cameras. They are also used as visual aids in glasses to correct defects of vision such as myopia and hypermetropia.


title: Lens

text: The word "lens" comes from "lēns", the Latin name of the lentil (a seed of a lentil plant), because a double-convex lens is lentil-shaped. The lentil also gives its name to a geometric figure.


title: Lens

text: Some scholars argue that the archeological evidence indicates that there was widespread use of lenses in antiquity, spanning several millennia. The so-called Nimrud lens is a rock crystal artifact dated to the 7th century BCE which may or may not have been used as a magnifying glass, or a burning glass. Others have suggested that certain Egyptian hieroglyphs depict "simple glass meniscal lenses".


title: Lens

text: The oldest certain reference to the use of lenses is from Aristophanes' play "The Clouds" (424 BCE) mentioning a burning-glass.


title: Lens

text: Pliny also has the earliest known reference to the use of a corrective lens when he mentions that Nero was said to watch the gladiatorial games using an emerald (presumably concave to correct for nearsightedness, though the reference is vague). Both Pliny and Seneca the Younger (3 BC–65 AD) described the magnifying effect of a glass globe filled with water.


title: Lens

text: Ptolemy (2nd century) wrote a book on "Optics", which however survives only in the Latin translation of an incomplete and very poor Arabic translation.


title: Lens

text: The book was, however, received by medieval scholars in the Islamic world, and commented upon by Ibn Sahl (10th century), who was in turn improved upon by Alhazen ("Book of Optics", 11th century). The Arabic translation of Ptolemy's "Optics" became available in Latin translation in the 12th century (Eugenius of Palermo 1154). Between the 11th and 13th century "reading stones" were invented. These were primitive plano-convex lenses initially made by cutting a glass sphere in half. The medieval (11th or 12th century) rock crystal Visby lenses may or may not have been intended for use as burning glasses.


title: Lens

text: Spectacles were invented as an improvement of the "reading stones" of the high medieval period in Northern Italy in the second half of the 13th century. This was the start of the optical industry of grinding and polishing lenses for spectacles, first in Venice and Florence in the late 13th century, and later in the spectacle-making centres in both the Netherlands and Germany.


title: Lens

text: Spectacle makers created improved types of lenses for the correction of vision based more on empirical knowledge gained from observing the effects of the lenses (probably without the knowledge of the rudimentary optical theory of the day). The practical development and experimentation with lenses led to the invention of the compound optical microscope around 1595, and the refracting telescope in 1608, both of which appeared in the spectacle-making centres in the Netherlands.


title: Lens

text: With the invention of the telescope and microscope there was a great deal of experimentation with lens shapes in the 17th and early 18th centuries by those trying to correct chromatic errors seen in lenses. Opticians tried to construct lenses of varying forms of curvature, wrongly assuming errors arose from defects in the spherical figure of their surfaces. Optical theory on refraction and experimentation was showing no single-element lens could bring all colours to a focus. This led to the invention of the compound achromatic lens by Chester Moore Hall in England in 1733, an invention also claimed by fellow Englishman John Dollond in a 1758 patent.


title: Lens

text: Most lenses are "spherical lenses": their two surfaces are parts of the surfaces of spheres. Each surface can be "convex" (bulging outwards from the lens), "concave" (depressed into the lens), or "planar" (flat). The line joining the centres of the spheres making up the lens surfaces is called the "axis" of the lens. Typically the lens axis passes through the physical centre of the lens, because of the way they are manufactured. Lenses may be cut or ground after manufacturing to give them a different shape or size. The lens axis may then not pass through the physical centre of the lens.


title: Lens

text: Toric or sphero-cylindrical lenses have surfaces with two different radii of curvature in two orthogonal planes. They have a different focal power in different meridians. This forms an astigmatic lens. An example is eyeglass lenses that are used to correct astigmatism in someone's eye.


title: Lens

text: Lenses are classified by the curvature of the two optical surfaces. A lens is "biconvex" (or "double convex", or just "convex") if both surfaces are convex. If both surfaces have the same radius of curvature, the lens is "equiconvex". A lens with two concave surfaces is "biconcave" (or just "concave"). If one of the surfaces is flat, the lens is "plano-convex" or "plano-concave" depending on the curvature of the other surface. A lens with one convex and one concave side is "convex-concave" or "meniscus". It is this type of lens that is most commonly used in corrective lenses.


title: Lens

text: If the lens is biconvex or plano-convex, a collimated beam of light passing through the lens converges to a spot (a "focus") behind the lens. In this case, the lens is called a "positive" or "converging" lens. For a thin lens in air, the distance from the lens to the spot is the focal length of the lens, which is commonly represented by "f" in diagrams and equations. An extended hemispherical lens is a special type of plano-convex lens, in which the lens's curved surface is a full hemisphere and the lens is much thicker than the radius of curvature.


title: Lens

text: If the lens is biconcave or plano-concave, a collimated beam of light passing through the lens is diverged (spread); the lens is thus called a "negative" or "diverging" lens. The beam, after passing through the lens, appears to emanate from a particular point on the axis in front of the lens. For a thin lens in air, the distance from this point to the lens is the focal length, though it is negative with respect to the focal length of a converging lens.


title: Lens

text: Convex-concave (meniscus) lenses can be either positive or negative, depending on the relative curvatures of the two surfaces. A "negative meniscus" lens has a steeper concave surface and is thinner at the centre than at the periphery. Conversely, a "positive meniscus" lens has a steeper convex surface and is thicker at the centre than at the periphery. An ideal thin lens with two surfaces of equal curvature would have zero optical power, meaning that it would neither converge nor diverge light. All real lenses have nonzero thickness, however, which makes a real lens with identical curved surfaces slightly positive. To obtain exactly zero optical power, a meniscus lens must have slightly unequal curvatures to account for the effect of the lens' thickness.


title: Lens

text: The focal length "f" is positive for converging lenses, and negative for diverging lenses. The reciprocal of the focal length, 1/"f", is the optical power of the lens. If the focal length is in metres, this gives the optical power in dioptres (inverse metres).


title: Lens

text: Lenses have the same focal length when light travels from the back to the front as when light goes from the front to the back. Other properties of the lens, such as the aberrations are not the same in both directions.


title: Lens

text: The signs of the lens' radii of curvature indicate whether the corresponding surfaces are convex or concave. The sign convention used to represent this varies, but in this article a "positive" "R" indicates a surface's center of curvature is further along in the direction of the ray travel (right, in the accompanying diagrams), while "negative" "R" means that rays reaching the surface have already passed the center of curvature. Consequently, for external lens surfaces as diagrammed above, and indicate "convex" surfaces (used to converge light in a positive lens), while and indicate "concave" surfaces. The reciprocal of the radius of curvature is called the curvature. A flat surface has zero curvature, and its radius of curvature is infinite.


title: Lens

text: If "d" is small compared to "R" and "R", then the "thin lens" approximation can be made. For a lens in air, "f" is then given by


title: Lens

text: As mentioned above, a positive or converging lens in air focuses a collimated beam travelling along the lens axis to a spot (known as the focal point) at a distance "f" from the lens. Conversely, a point source of light placed at the focal point is converted into a collimated beam by the lens. These two cases are examples of image formation in lenses. In the former case, an object at an infinite distance (as represented by a collimated beam of waves) is focused to an image at the focal point of the lens. In the latter, an object at the focal length distance from the lens is imaged at infinity. The plane perpendicular to the lens axis situated at a distance "f" from the lens is called the "focal plane".


title: Lens

text: If the distances from the object to the lens and from the lens to the image are "S" and "S" respectively, for a lens of negligible thickness (thin lens), in air, the distances are related by the thin lens formula:


title: Lens

text: Therefore, if an object is placed at a distance from a positive lens of focal length "f", we will find an image distance "S" according to this formula. If a screen is placed at a distance "S" on the opposite side of the lens, an image is formed on it. This sort of image, which can be projected onto a screen or image sensor, is known as a "real image". This is the principle of the camera, and also of the human eye, in which the retina serves as the image sensor.


title: Lens

text: The focusing adjustment of a camera adjusts "S", as using an image distance different from that required by this formula produces a defocused (fuzzy) image for an object at a distance of "S" from the camera. Put another way, modifying "S" causes objects at a different "S" to come into perfect focus.


title: Lens

text: In some cases "S" is negative, indicating that the image is formed on the opposite side of the lens from where those rays are being considered. Since the diverging light rays emanating from the lens never come into focus, and those rays are not physically present at the point where they "appear" to form an image, this is called a virtual image. Unlike real images, a virtual image cannot be projected on a screen, but appears to an observer looking through the lens as if it were a real object at the location of that virtual image. Likewise, it appears to a subsequent lens as if it were an object at that location, so that second lens could again focus that light into a real image, "S" then being measured from the virtual image location behind the first lens to the second lens. This is exactly what the eye does when looking through a magnifying glass. The magnifying glass creates a (magnified) virtual image behind the magnifying glass, but those rays are then re-imaged by the lens of the eye to create a "real image" on the retina.


title: Lens

text: Using a positive lens of focal length "f", a virtual image results when , the lens thus being used as a magnifying glass (rather than if as for a camera). Using a negative lens () with a "real object" () can only produce a virtual image (), according to the above formula. It is also possible for the object distance "S" to be negative, in which case the lens sees a so-called "virtual object". This happens when the lens is inserted into a converging beam (being focused by a previous lens) "before" the location of its real image. In that case even a negative lens can project a real image, as is done by a Barlow lens.


title: Lens

text: For a thin lens, the distances "S" and "S" are measured from the object and image to the position of the lens, as described above. When the thickness of the lens is not much smaller than "S" and "S" or there are multiple lens elements (a compound lens), one must instead measure from the object and image to the principal planes of the lens. If distances "S" or "S" pass through a medium other than air or vacuum a more complicated analysis is required.


title: Lens

text: where "M" is the magnification factor defined as the ratio of the size of an image compared to the size of the object. The sign convention here dictates that if "M" is negative, as it is for real images, the image is upside-down with respect to the object. For virtual images "M" is positive, so the image is upright.


title: Lens

text: This magnification formula provides two easy ways to distinguish converging ("f > 0") and diverging ("f < 0") lenses: For an object very close to the lens (), a converging lens would form a magnified (bigger) virtual image, whereas a diverging lens would form a demagnified (smaller) image; For an object very far from the lens (), a converging lens would form an inverted image, whereas a diverging lens would form an upright image.


title: Lens

text: Linear magnification "M" is not always the most useful measure of magnifying power. For instance, when characterizing a visual telescope or binoculars that produce only a virtual image, one would be more concerned with the angular magnification—which expresses how much larger a distant object appears through the telescope compared to the naked eye. In the case of a camera one would quote the plate scale, which compares the apparent (angular) size of a distant object to the size of the real image produced at the focus. The plate scale is the reciprocal of the focal length of the camera lens; lenses are categorized as long-focus lenses or wide-angle lenses according to their focal lengths.


title: Lens

text: Using an inappropriate measurement of magnification can be formally correct but yield a meaningless number. For instance, using a magnifying glass of 5 cm focal length, held 20 cm from the eye and 5 cm from the object, produces a virtual image at infinity of infinite linear size: . But the "angular magnification" is 5, meaning that the object appears 5 times larger to the eye than without the lens. When taking a picture of the moon using a camera with a 50 mm lens, one is not concerned with the linear magnification Rather, the plate scale of the camera is about 1°/mm, from which one can conclude that the 0.5 mm image on the film corresponds to an angular size of the moon seen from earth of about 0.5°.


title: Lens

text: In the extreme case where an object is an infinite distance away, , and , indicating that the object would be imaged to a single point in the focal plane. In fact, the diameter of the projected spot is not actually zero, since diffraction places a lower limit on the size of the point spread function. This is called the diffraction limit.


title: Lens

text: Lenses do not form perfect images, and a lens always introduces some degree of distortion or "aberration" that makes the image an imperfect replica of the object. Careful design of the lens system for a particular application minimizes the aberration. Several types of aberration affect image quality, including spherical aberration, coma, and chromatic aberration.


title: Lens

text: "Spherical aberration" occurs because spherical surfaces are not the ideal shape for a lens, but are by far the simplest shape to which glass can be ground and polished, and so are often used. Spherical aberration causes beams parallel to, but distant from, the lens axis to be focused in a slightly different place than beams close to the axis. This manifests itself as a blurring of the image. Spherical aberration can be minimised with normal lens shapes by carefully choosing the surface curvatures for a particular application. For instance, a plano-convex lens, which is used to focus a collimated beam, produces a sharper focal spot when used with the convex side towards the beam source.


title: Lens

text: "Coma", or "comatic aberration", derives its name from the comet-like appearance of the aberrated image. Coma occurs when an object off the optical axis of the lens is imaged, where rays pass through the lens at an angle to the axis θ. Rays that pass through the centre of a lens of focal length "f" are focused at a point with distance from the axis. Rays passing through the outer margins of the lens are focused at different points, either further from the axis (positive coma) or closer to the axis (negative coma). In general, a bundle of parallel rays passing through the lens at a fixed distance from the centre of the lens are focused to a ring-shaped image in the focal plane, known as a "comatic circle". The sum of all these circles results in a V-shaped or comet-like flare. As with spherical aberration, coma can be minimised (and in some cases eliminated) by choosing the curvature of the two lens surfaces to match the application. Lenses in which both spherical aberration and coma are minimised are called "bestform" lenses.


title: Lens

text: "Chromatic aberration" is caused by the dispersion of the lens material—the variation of its refractive index, "n", with the wavelength of light. Since, from the formulae above, "f" is dependent upon "n", it follows that light of different wavelengths is focused to different positions. Chromatic aberration of a lens is seen as fringes of colour around the image. It can be minimised by using an achromatic doublet (or "achromat") in which two materials with differing dispersion are bonded together to form a single lens. This reduces the amount of chromatic aberration over a certain range of wavelengths, though it does not produce perfect correction. The use of achromats was an important step in the development of the optical microscope. An apochromat is a lens or lens system with even better chromatic aberration correction, combined with improved spherical aberration correction. Apochromats are much more expensive than achromats.


title: Lens

text: Different lens materials may also be used to minimise chromatic aberration, such as specialised coatings or lenses made from the crystal fluorite. This naturally occurring substance has the highest known Abbe number, indicating that the material has low dispersion.


title: Lens

text: Other kinds of aberration include "field curvature", "barrel " and "pincushion distortion", and "astigmatism".


title: Lens

text: Even if a lens is designed to minimize or eliminate the aberrations described above, the image quality is still limited by the diffraction of light passing through the lens' finite aperture. A diffraction-limited lens is one in which aberrations have been reduced to the point where the image quality is primarily limited by diffraction under the design conditions.


title: Lens

text: Simple lenses are subject to the optical aberrations discussed above. In many cases these aberrations can be compensated for to a great extent by using a combination of simple lenses with complementary aberrations. A "compound lens" is a collection of simple lenses of different shapes and made of materials of different refractive indices, arranged one after the other with a common axis.


title: Lens

text: The simplest case is where lenses are placed in contact: if the lenses of focal lengths "f" and "f" are "thin", the combined focal length "f" of the lenses is given by


title: Lens

text: Since 1/"f" is the power of a lens, it can be seen that the powers of thin lenses in contact are additive.


title: Lens

text: If two thin lenses are separated in air by some distance "d", the focal length for the combined system is given by


title: Lens

text: The distance from the front focal point of the combined lenses to the first lens is called the "front focal length" (FFL):


title: Lens

text: Similarly, the distance from the second lens to the rear focal point of the combined system is the "back focal length" (BFL):


title: Lens

text: If the separation distance is equal to the sum of the focal lengths ("d" = "f" + "f"), the FFL and BFL are infinite. This corresponds to a pair of lenses that transform a parallel (collimated) beam into another collimated beam. This type of system is called an "afocal system", since it produces no net convergence or divergence of the beam. Two lenses at this separation form the simplest type of optical telescope. Although the system does not alter the divergence of a collimated beam, it does alter the width of the beam. The magnification of such a telescope is given by


title: Lens

text: which is the ratio of the output beam width to the input beam width. Note the sign convention: a telescope with two convex lenses ("f" > 0, "f" > 0) produces a negative magnification, indicating an inverted image. A convex plus a concave lens ("f" > 0 > "f") produces a positive magnification and the image is upright. For further information on simple optical telescopes, see Refracting telescope § Refracting telescope designs.


title: Lens

text: Cylindrical lenses have curvature along only one axis. They are used to focus light into a line, or to convert the elliptical light from a laser diode into a round beam. They are also used in motion picture anamorphic lenses.


title: Lens

text: Aspheric lenses have at least one surface that is neither spherical nor cylindrical. The more complicated shapes allow such lenses to form images with less aberration than standard simple lenses, but they are more difficult and expensive to produce. These were formerly complex to make and often extremely expensive, but advances in technology have greatly reduced the manufacturing cost for such lenses.


title: Lens

text: A Fresnel lens has its optical surface broken up into narrow rings, allowing the lens to be much thinner and lighter than conventional lenses. Durable Fresnel lenses can be molded from plastic and are inexpensive.


title: Lens

text: Lenticular lenses are arrays of microlenses that are used in lenticular printing to make images that have an illusion of depth or that change when viewed from different angles.


title: Lens

text: A gradient index lens has flat optical surfaces, but has a radial or axial variation in index of refraction that causes light passing through the lens to be focused.


title: Lens

text: An axicon has a conical optical surface. It images a point source into a line "along" the optic axis, or transforms a laser beam into a ring.


title: Lens

text: Superlenses are made from negative index metamaterials and claim to produce images at spatial resolutions exceeding the diffraction limit. The first superlenses were made in 2004 using such a metamaterial for microwaves. Improved versions have been made by other researchers. the superlens has not yet been demonstrated at visible or near-infrared wavelengths.


title: Lens

text: Lenses are used as prosthetics for the correction of refractive errors such as myopia, hypermetropia, presbyopia, and astigmatism. (See corrective lens, contact lens, eyeglasses.) Most lenses used for other purposes have strict axial symmetry; eyeglass lenses are only approximately symmetric. They are usually shaped to fit in a roughly oval, not circular, frame; the optical centres are placed over the eyeballs; their curvature may not be axially symmetric to correct for astigmatism. Sunglasses' lenses are designed to attenuate light; sunglass lenses that also correct visual impairments can be custom made.


title: Lens

text: Other uses are in imaging systems such as monoculars, binoculars, telescopes, microscopes, cameras and projectors. Some of these instruments produce a virtual image when applied to the human eye; others produce a real image that can be captured on photographic film or an optical sensor, or can be viewed on a screen. In these devices lenses are sometimes paired up with curved mirrors to make a catadioptric system where the lens's spherical aberration corrects the opposite aberration in the mirror (such as Schmidt and meniscus correctors).


title: Lens

text: Convex lenses produce an image of an object at infinity at their focus; if the sun is imaged, much of the visible and infrared light incident on the lens is concentrated into the small image. A large lens creates enough intensity to burn a flammable object at the focal point. Since ignition can be achieved even with a poorly made lens, lenses have been used as burning-glasses for at least 2400 years. A modern application is the use of relatively large lenses to concentrate solar energy on relatively small photovoltaic cells, harvesting more energy without the need to use larger and more expensive cells.


title: Lens

text: Radio astronomy and radar systems often use dielectric lenses, commonly called a lens antenna to refract electromagnetic radiation into a collector antenna.


title: Lens

text: Lenses can become scratched and abraded. Abrasion-resistant coatings are available to help control this.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Girish Karnad (19 May 1938 – 10 June 2019) was an Indian actor, film director, Kannada writer, playwright and a Jnanpith awardee, who predominantly worked in South Indian cinema and Bollywood. His rise as a playwright in the 1960s marked the coming of age of modern Indian playwriting in Kannada, just as Badal Sarkar did in Bengali, Vijay Tendulkar in Marathi, and Mohan Rakesh in Hindi. He was a recipient of the 1998 Jnanpith Award, the highest literary honour conferred in India.


title: Girish Karnad

text: For four decades Karnad composed plays, often using history and mythology to tackle contemporary issues. He translated his plays into English and received acclaim. His plays have been translated into some Indian languages and directed by directors like Ebrahim Alkazi, B. V. Karanth, Alyque Padamsee, Prasanna, Arvind Gaur, Satyadev Dubey, Vijaya Mehta, Shyamanand Jalan, Amal Allanaa and Zafer Mohiuddin.


title: Girish Karnad

text: He was active in the world of Indian cinema working as an actor, director and screenwriter, in Hindi and Kannada cinema, and has earned awards.


title: Girish Karnad

text: He was conferred Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan by the Government of India and won four Filmfare Awards, of which three are Filmfare Award for Best Director – Kannada and the fourth a Filmfare Best Screenplay Award. He was a presenter for a weekly science magazine programme called "Turning Point" that aired on Doordarshan in 1991.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Girish Karnad was born in Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin family of Matheran, in present-day Maharashtra, in 1938. His mother Krishnabai (née Mankikar) was a young widow with a son who belonged to a poor family. Since it was necessary for her to earn a living, she began working as a nurse and cook (general housekeeper) for the bedridden wife of a certain Raghunath Karnad, a doctor in the Bombay Medical Services. He was from the Konkani speaking Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmin community.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Some five years later, and while the first wife was still alive, Krishnabai and Dr. Raghunath Karnad were married in a private ceremony. The marriage was controversial not because of bigamy (it was legal until 1956 for a Hindu man to have more than one wife) but because of the prevailing social prejudice against widow remarriage. Therefore, the wedding was held privately, and under the dispensation of the Arya Samaj, a reform organization that condones widow remarriage. Girish was the third of the four children born thereafter.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Karnad's initial schooling was in Marathi. Later, after his father was transferred to Sirsi in the Kannada-speaking regions of Bombay Presidency, Karnad was exposed to travelling theatre groups and "natak mandalis" (theatre troupes), which were experiencing a period of efflorescence during the iconic Balgandharva era . As a youngster, he was an ardent admirer of Yakshagana and the theater in his village. His family moved to Dharwad in Karnataka when he was fourteen, where he grew up with his two sisters and a niece.


title: Girish Karnad

text: He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics and statistics from Karnataka Arts College, Dharwad (Karnataka University), in 1958. After graduation, he went to England and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Magdalen in Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar (1960–63), earning his Master of Arts degree in philosophy, political science and economics. Karnad was elected the President of the Oxford Union in 1962–63.


title: Girish Karnad

text: After working with the Oxford University Press, Chennai for seven years (1963–70), he resigned to take to writing full-time. While in Madras (now known as Chennai) he got involved with local amateur theatre group, The Madras Players.


title: Girish Karnad

text: During 1987–88, he was at the University of Chicago as visiting professor and Fulbright playwright-in-residence. During his tenure at Chicago "Nagamandala" had its world premiere at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis based on Karnad's English translation of the Kannada original.


title: Girish Karnad

text: He served as director of the Film and Television Institute of India (1974–1975) and chairman of the Sangeet Natak Akademi, the national academy of the performing arts (1988–93). He served as director of the Nehru Centre and as Minister of Culture, in the Indian High Commission, London (2000–2003).


title: Girish Karnad

text: Karnad is known as a playwright. His plays, written in Kannada, have been translated into English (mostly translated by himself) and some Indian languages. Kannada is his language of choice.


title: Girish Karnad

text: When Karnad started writing plays, Kannada literature was highly influenced by the renaissance in Western literature. Writers would choose a subject that looked entirely alien to manifestation of native soil. C. Rajagopalachari's version of the "Mahabharata" published in 1951, left a deep impact on him and soon, sometime in the mid-1950s, one day he experienced a rush of dialogues by characters from the Mahabharata in Kannada.


title: Girish Karnad

text: "I could actually hear the dialogues being spoken into my ears ... I was just the scribe," said Karnad in a later interview. "Yayati" was published in 1961, when he was 23 years old. It is based on the story of King Yayati, one of the ancestors of the Pandavas, who was cursed into premature old age by his preceptor, Shukracharya, who was incensed at Yayati's infidelity.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Yayati, in turn, asks his sons to sacrifice their youth for him, and one of them agrees. It ridicules the ironies of life through characters in "Mahabharata". The play in Hindi was adapted by Satyadev Dubey and Amrish Puri was lead actor for the play. It became an instant success, immediately translated and staged in several other Indian languages.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Karnad found a new approach of drawing historical and mythological sources to tackle contemporary themes and existentialist crisis of modern man through characters locked in psychological and philosophical conflicts. His next was "Tughlaq" (1964), about a rashly idealist 14th-century Sultan of Delhi, Muhammad bin Tughluq, and allegory on the Nehruvian era which started with ambitious idealism and ended up in disillusionment. This established Karnad, now 26 years old, as a promising playwright in the country. It was staged by the National School of Drama Repertory under the direction of Ebrahim Alkazi, with the actor Manohar Singh, playing the visionary king who later becomes disillusioned and turns bitter, amidst the historic Purana Qila in Delhi. It was staged in London by the National School of Drama for the Festival of India in 1982.


title: Girish Karnad

text: "Hayavadana" (1971) was based on a theme drawn from "The Transposed Heads", a 1940 novella by Thomas Mann, which is originally found in the 11th-century Sanskrit text "Kathasaritsagara". Herein he employed the folk theatre form of Yakshagana. A German version of the play was directed by Vijaya Mehta as part of the repertoire of the Deutsches National Theatre, Weimar.


title: Girish Karnad

text: "Naga-Mandala" (Play with Cobra, 1988) was based on a folk tale related to him by A. K. Ramanujam, brought him the Karnataka Sahitya Academy Award for the Most Creative Work of 1989. It was directed by J. Garland Wright, as part of the celebrations of the 30th anniversary of Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis. The theatre subsequently commissioned him to write the play, "Agni Mattu Male" (The Fire and the Rain). Though before it came "Taledanda" (Death by Beheading, 1990) which used the backdrop, the rise of Veerashaivism, a radical protest and reform movement in 12th century Karnataka to bring out current issues.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Karnad made his acting as well as screenwriting debut in a Kannada movie, "Samskara" (1970), based on a novel by U.R. Ananthamurthy and directed by Pattabhirama Reddy. That movie won the first President's Golden Lotus Award for Kannada cinema.


title: Girish Karnad

text: In television, he played the role of Swami's father in the TV series "Malgudi Days" (1986–1987), based on R. K. Narayan's books, directed by Kannada actor and director Shankar Nag. He also hosted the science magazine Turning Point on Doordarshan, in the early 1990s.


title: Girish Karnad

text: He made his directorial debut with "Vamsha Vriksha" (1971), based on a Kannada novel by S. L. Bhyrappa. It won him National Film Award for Best Direction along with B. V. Karanth, who co-directed the film. Later, Karnad directed several movies in Kannada and Hindi, including "Godhuli" (1977) and "Utsav" (1984). Karnad has made number of documentaries, like one on the Kannada poet D. R. Bendre (1972), "Kanaka-Purandara" (English, 1988) on two medieval Bhakti poets of Karnataka, Kanaka Dasa and Purandara Dasa, and "The Lamp in the Niche" (English, 1989) on Sufism and the Bhakti movement. Many of his films and documentaries have won several national and international awards.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Some of his famous Kannada movies include "Tabbaliyu Neenade Magane", "Ondanondu Kaladalli", "Cheluvi" and "Kaadu" and most recent film "Kanooru Heggaditi" (1999), based on a novel by Kannada writer Kuvempu.


title: Girish Karnad

text: His Hindi movies include "Nishaant" (1975), "Manthan" (1976), "Swami" (1977) and "Pukar" (2000). He has acted in a number of Nagesh Kukunoor films, starting with "Iqbal" (2005), where Karnad's role of the ruthless cricket coach got him critical acclaim. This was followed by "Dor" (2006), "8 x 10 Tasveer" (2009) and "Aashayein" (2010). He played a key role in movies "Ek Tha Tiger" (2012) and its sequel "Tiger Zinda Hai" (2017) produced by Yash Raj Films.


title: Girish Karnad

text: He provided the voice of A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, former President of India, in the audiobook of Kalam's autobiography by Charkha Audiobooks, "Wings of Fire".


title: Girish Karnad

text: At the Tata Literary Festival held in Mumbai in 2012, Karnad was invited to speak about "his life in theater" in an hour-long session. Instead of talking about the subject, he took the opportunity to lash out at V. S. Naipaul for his "antipathy towards Indian Muslims". V. S. Naipaul had earlier been conferred the Lifetime achievement award by the festival's organisers. Karnad also criticized the organizers for having honored Naipaul.


title: Girish Karnad

text: The audience, which had gathered to hear Karnad speak, had mixed reactions to the speech. Some, like organizer Anil Dharker, tried ineffectually to steer the speech toward less controversial waters. Others were amused by the episode, and some commented on the research and logic that had gone into the speech (unfortunately overshadowed by its 'scandalous' nature).


title: Girish Karnad

text: Just a few weeks after this, Karnad again created controversy by claiming that Rabindranath Tagore, who wrote India's national anthem, was a great poet but a second-rate playwright.


title: Girish Karnad

text: In November 2015, during celebrations marking the anniversary of 18th-century Muslim ruler Tipu Sultan's birth, Karnad stated that Bangalore International Airport should have been named after Tipu Sultan instead of Kempe Gowda. This created a furore among many people. Karnad apologised the following day.


title: Girish Karnad

text: While working in Madras for Oxford University Press on his return from England, he met his future wife Saraswathi Ganapathy at a party. They decided to marry but the marriage was only formalised ten years later, when Karnad was 42 years old. Saraswathi was born to a Parsi mother, Nurgesh Mugaseth, and a Kodava Hindu father, Kodandera Ganapathy. The couple had two children. They lived in Bangalore.


title: Girish Karnad

text: He was a proponent of multiculturalism and freedom of expression. He was a critic of religious fundamentalism. He had publicly condemned the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 and later spoke against the attempts to create controversy about the Idgah Maidan in Hubli. He had opposed RSS, BJP and other organizations on several occasions. He opposed Narendra Modi for the Prime Minister's post in the 2014 parliament elections. He was one of the 200 writers who put out an open letter against hate politics and for “diverse and equal India” during the 2019 general elections. With a tube in his nose, he wore a placard saying "Me Too Urban Naxal" at the first death anniversary of slain journalist Gauri Lankesh. Karnad claimed that Tipu Sultan was the greatest king Karnataka had in 500 years, on a religious controversy about the king. Karnad was a supporter of the Forum for Communal Harmony.


title: Girish Karnad

text: Karnad died on 10 June 2019 at Bengaluru at the age of 81 due to multiple organ failure following prolonged illness.


title: Girish Karnad

text: "After a discussion with his son, it was made clear to us that his last wish was to not have any floral procession, VVIPs or visits of any dignitaries. Hence, it will be a simple affair."


title: Ilona Staller

text: Ilona Staller (born 26 November 1951), widely known by her stage name Cicciolina ("little chubby one"), is a Hungarian-Italian former porn star, politician, and singer.


title: Ilona Staller

text: Ilona was born in Budapest, Hungary. Her father, László Staller, left the family when she was young. She was raised by her mother, who was a midwife, and her stepfather, who was an official in the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior.


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 1964, she began working as a model for the Hungarian news agency, M.T.I. In her memoirs and in a 1999 TV interview, she claimed that she had provided the Hungarian authorities with information on American diplomats staying at a Budapest luxury hotel where she worked as a maid in the 1960s. By the age of 25, and during her hotel work, she met an older Italian national named Salvatore Martini whom she later married in 1968.


title: Ilona Staller

text: Naturalized by marriage and settled in Italy, Staller met pornographer Riccardo Schicchi in the early 1970s, and, beginning in 1973, achieved fame with a radio show called "Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?" on Radio Luna. For that program she adopted the name "Cicciolina". She referred to her male fanbase, and later the male members of the Italian parliament, as , translating loosely as "little tubby boys". Although she appeared in several films from 1970, she made her debut under her own name in 1975 with "La liceale" (also known as "The Teasers") by playing with Gloria Guida as her lesbian classmate.


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 1978, on the RAI show "C'era due Volte", her breasts were the first to be bared live on Italian TV. Staller appeared in her first hardcore pornographic film, "Telefono rosso" ("Red Telephone") in 1983. She produced the film together with Schicchi's company Diva Futura. Her memoirs were published as "Confessioni erotiche di Cicciolina" ("Erotic confessions of Cicciolina") by Olympia Press of Milan in 1987. That same year she appeared in "", titled "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress" in the United States, co-starring John Holmes. The film was later to create a furor when it was revealed that Holmes had tested positive for HIV prior to appearing in it. Staller has appeared nude in "Playboy"s editions in several countries. Her first "Playboy" appearance was in Argentina in March 1988. Other appearances for the magazine were in the U.S. (September 1990), Hungary (June 2005), Serbia (July 2005) and Mexico (September 2005).


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 1987, invited by a local magazine, she visited the Portuguese Parliament and posed topless before being stopped by the authorities, to general giggles, leading to the suspending of the session and originating official complaints from members of CDS. Only Natália Correia was seen talking to the Italian member of parliament.


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 1996, she appeared in the film "Replikator" and, in 1996, she had a role in the Brazilian soap opera "" as Princess Ludovica di Castelgandolfo di Genova. In 2008, she was a contestant on the Argentine version of "Strictly Come Dancing" named "Bailando por un Sueño".


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 1979, Staller was presented as a female candidate to the Italian parliament by the Lista del Sole, Italy's first Green party. In 1985, she switched to the Partito Radicale, campaigning on a libertarian platform against nuclear energy and NATO membership, as well as for human rights. She was elected to the Italian parliament in 1987, with approximately 20,000 votes. While in office, and before the outset of the Gulf War, she offered to have sex with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in return for peace in the region. She was not re-elected at the end of her term in 1991.


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 1991, Staller was among the founders of another Italian political movement, called Partito dell'Amore ("Party of Love"), which was spearheaded by friend and fellow porn star Moana Pozzi. In January 2002, she began exploring the possibility of campaigning in Hungary, her country of birth, to represent Budapest's industrial Kőbánya district in the Hungarian parliament. However, she failed to collect enough petition signatures for a non-partisan candidacy. In the same year, she ran in local elections in Monza, Italy, promising to convert a prominent building into a gambling casino, but she attracted few votes. In 2004, she announced plans to run for mayor of Milan with a similar promise. She renewed her offer to have sex with Saddam Hussein in October 2002, when Iraq was resisting international pressure to allow inspections for weapons of mass destruction, and in April 2006, she made the same offer to Osama bin Laden.


title: Ilona Staller

text: In September 2011, it was revealed that Staller was eligible for and would be receiving a yearly pension of 39,000 euros from the Italian state as a result of her five years in the country's parliament. Reacting to the controversy raised by the news, the former porn star, who started receiving the pension in November 2011, when she turned 60, stated: "I earned it and I'm proud of it."


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 2012, Staller founded the Democracy, Nature and Love Party (DNA). Its objectives included the legalization of same-sex marriage, the reopening of former brothels ("closed houses"), a guaranteed minimum wage for young people, improvements to the judiciary, and the elimination of the privileges of the rich political "caste".


title: Ilona Staller

text: She was also a candidate, on a proposal by blogger Luca Bagatin, in administrative elections in Rome on 26 and 27 May 2013, on the list 'Republicans and Liberals'.


title: Ilona Staller

text: Staller has recorded several songs, mostly from live performances, with explicit lyrics being sung to a children's melody. Her most famous song is "", a song entirely dedicated to "il cazzo", which means "the dick" in Italian. Because of its extensive use of profanity, the song could not be released in Italy, but became a hit in other countries, especially in France. The song gained considerable popularity in the internet era, when many Italian speakers were able to hear it for the first time.


title: Ilona Staller

text: Several unreleased songs were recorded during her RCA period and the Diva Futura agency period. Some of these unreleased songs were subsequently used during her TV shows, live performances or as soundtracks in her porn movies.


title: Ilona Staller

text: She was the muse of American artist Jeff Koons, who persuaded her to collaborate on a series of sculptures and photographs of them having sex in many positions, settings and costumes, which were exhibited under the title "Made in Heaven" and made waves at the 1990 Venice Biennale. Staller married Koons in 1991. In 1992 they had a son, Ludwig, but separated the following year, partly because Staller refused to stop making porn. Their marriage ended in 1994. In violation of a US court order, Staller left the US for Italy, taking their then-two-year-old son, Ludwig. In 2008, Staller filed suit against Koons for failing to pay child support.


title: Ilona Staller

text: Staller is an accomplished chess player, having learned from her father while growing up in Hungary. In July 2021 it was announced she would demonstrate her ability in an exhibition match, taking on four top players simultaneously.


title: Ilona Staller

text: In 1980, an erotic comics series, "La Cicciolina", was made by Giovanni Romanini and Lucio Filippucci, based on the actress.


title: Ilona Staller

text: Italian metal band Bulldozer released the track "Ilona the Very Best" on their 1987 album IX in dedication to her. Later in 2005, Japanese metal band Abigail released the compilation "Abigail Loves Ilona, as She Is the Very Best" featuring a photograph of Ilona as the album art, and includes several Bulldozer covers.


title: Ilona Staller

text: British band Pop Will Eat Itself released a song called "Touched by the Hand of Cicciolina" as an unofficial World Cup single in July 1990. The song reached number 28 on the UK Singles Chart.


title: Ilona Staller

text: American industrial 1990s band, Machines of Loving Grace, paid tribute to Cicciolina on their first, self-titled album and named a song after her as part of a campaign to get her to present the FIFA World Cup trophy at the 1990 tournament.