title: Strategic Rocket Forces

text: The second system is the silo-based UR-100NUTTH / SS-19 "Stiletto". The last "Stiletto" missiles in service with six warheads each will be removed by 2019. The third system, the single warhead mobile RT-2PM Topol / SS-25 "Sickle" are planned to be decommissioned by 2019.


title: Strategic Rocket Forces

text: A new missile entering service is the RT-2UTTH Topol-M / SS-27 "Sickle B" with single warhead, of which 60 are silo-based and 18 are mobile. Some new missiles will be added in the future. The first upgraded Topol-M called RS-24 Yars, carrying three warheads, was commissioned in 2010. In July 2011 the first mobile regiment with nine missiles was completed. From 2012 to 2017, about 80 ICBMs were placed in active duty. The RF Defense Minister said in December 2021 that 89.1% of the country's nuclear forces was modern.


title: Strategic Rocket Forces

text: The composition of missiles and warheads of the Strategic Missile Forces previously had to be revealed as part of the START I treaty data exchange. The most recently reported (January 2020) order of battle of the forces is as follows:


title: Strategic Rocket Forces

text: Kristensen and Korda (2020) list the UR-100N (SS-19), as retired from deployment, while noting that UR-100NUTTH being deployed with the Avangard.


title: Strategic Rocket Forces

text: According to the Federation of American Scientists, for the foreseeable future, all new Russian ICBM deployments will be of MIRVed versions of the SS-27 "Topol-M". A “new ICBM” and a “heavy ICBM” are also being developed. By the early 2020s, according to announcements by Russian military officials, all SS-18 and SS-25 ICBMs will be retired from service following the retirements of the SS-19 systems.


title: Strategic Rocket Forces

text: This development would leave a Russian ICBM force structure based on five modifications of the solid-fuel SS-27 (silo- and mobile-based SS-27 Mod 1 (Topol-M); silo- and mobile-based SS-27 Mod 2 (RS-24 Yars); and the RS-26 Rubezh) and the liquid-fuel RS-28 Sarmat with a large payload – either MIRV or some advanced payload to evade missile defense systems. Although the future force will be smaller, a greater portion of it will be MIRVed – up from approximately 36 percent in 2014 to roughly 70 percent by 2024.


title: Rope

text: A rope is a group of yarns, plies, fibres, or strands that are twisted or braided together into a larger and stronger form. Ropes have tensile strength and so can be used for dragging and lifting. Rope is thicker and stronger than similarly constructed cord, string, and twine.


title: Rope

text: Rope may be constructed of any long, stringy, fibrous material, but generally is constructed of certain natural or synthetic fibres. Synthetic fibre ropes are significantly stronger than their natural fibre counterparts, they have a higher tensile strength, they are more resistant to rotting than ropes created from natural fibres, and they can be made to float on water. But synthetic ropes also possess certain disadvantages, including slipperiness, and some can be damaged more easily by UV light.


title: Rope

text: Common natural fibres for rope are Manila hemp, hemp, linen, cotton, coir, jute, straw, and sisal. Synthetic fibres in use for rope-making include polypropylene, nylon, polyesters (e.g. PET, LCP, Vectran), polyethylene (e.g. Dyneema and Spectra), Aramids (e.g. Twaron, Technora and Kevlar) and acrylics (e.g. Dralon). Some ropes are constructed of mixtures of several fibres or use co-polymer fibres. Wire rope is made of steel or other metal alloys. Ropes have been constructed of other fibrous materials such as silk, wool, and hair, but such ropes are not generally available. Rayon is a regenerated fibre used to make decorative rope.


title: Rope

text: The twist of the strands in a twisted or braided rope serves not only to keep a rope together, but enables the rope to more evenly distribute tension among the individual strands. Without any twist in the rope, the shortest strand(s) would always be supporting a much higher proportion of the total load.


title: Rope

text: Because rope has a long history, many systems have been used to specify the size of a rope. In systems that use the inch (Imperial and US customary measurement systems), large ropes over diameter – such as those used on ships – are measured by their circumference in inches; smaller ropes have a nominal diameter based on the circumference divided by three (as a rough approximation of pi). In the metric system of measurement, the nominal diameter is given in millimetres. The current preferred international standard for rope sizes is to give the mass per unit length, in kilograms per metre. However, even sources otherwise using metric units may still give a "rope number" for large ropes, which is the circumference in inches.


title: Rope

text: Rope has been used since prehistoric times. It is of paramount importance in fields as diverse as construction, seafaring, exploration, sports, theatre, and communications. Many types of knots have been developed to fasten with rope, join ropes, and utilize rope to generate mechanical advantage. Pulleys can redirect the pulling force of a rope in another direction, multiply its lifting or pulling power, and distribute a load over multiple parts of the same rope to increase safety and decrease wear.


title: Rope

text: The use of ropes for hunting, pulling, fastening, attaching, carrying, lifting, and climbing dates back to prehistoric times. It is likely that the earliest "ropes" were naturally occurring lengths of plant fibre, such as vines, followed soon by the first attempts at twisting and braiding these strands together to form the first proper ropes in the modern sense of the word. The earliest evidence of suspected rope is a very small fragment of three-ply cord from a Neanderthal site dated 50,000 years ago. This item was so small, it was only discovered and described with the help of a high power microscope. It is slightly thicker than the average thumb-nail, and would not stretch from edge-to-edge across a little finger-nail. There are other ways fibres can twist in nature, without deliberate construction.


title: Rope

text: A 40,000-year-old tool found in Hohle Fels cave in south-western Germany was identified in 2020 as very likely to be a tool for making rope. It is a strip of mammoth ivory with four holes drilled through it. Each hole is lined with precisely cut spiral incisions.


title: Rope

text: The grooves on three of the holes spiral in a clockwise direction from each side of the strip. The grooves on one hole spiral clockwise on one side, but counter-clockwise from the other side. Plant fibres would have been fed through the holes and the tool twisted, creating a single ply yarn. The spiral incisions would have tended to keep the fibres in place. But the incisions cannot impart any twist to the fibres pulled through the holes. Other 15,000-year-old objects with holes with spiral incisions, made from reindeer antler, found across Europe are thought to have been used to manipulate ropes, or perhaps some other purpose. They were originally named "batons", and thought possibly to have been carried as badges of rank.


title: Rope

text: Impressions of cordage found on fired clay provide evidence of string and rope-making technology in Europe dating back 28,000 years. Fossilized fragments of "probably two-ply laid rope of about diameter" were found in one of the caves at Lascaux, dating to approximately 15,000 BC.


title: Rope

text: The ancient Egyptians were probably the first civilization to develop special tools to make rope. Egyptian rope dates back to 4000 to 3500 BC and was generally made of water reed fibres. Other rope in antiquity was made from the fibres of date palms, flax, grass, papyrus, leather, or animal hair. The use of such ropes pulled by thousands of workers allowed the Egyptians to move the heavy stones required to build their monuments. Starting from approximately 2800 BC, rope made of hemp fibres was in use in China. Rope and the craft of rope making spread throughout Asia, India, and Europe over the next several thousand years.


title: Rope

text: From the Middle Ages until the 18th century, in Europe ropes were constructed in ropewalks, very long buildings where strands the full length of the rope were spread out and then "laid up" or twisted together to form the rope. The cable length was thus set by the length of the available rope walk. This is related to the unit of length termed "cable length". This allowed for long ropes of up to long or longer to be made. These long ropes were necessary in shipping as short ropes would require splicing to make them long enough to use for sheets and halyards. The strongest form of splicing is the short splice, which doubles the cross-sectional area of the rope at the area of the splice, which would cause problems in running the line through pulleys. Any splices narrow enough to maintain smooth running would be less able to support the required weight.


title: Rope

text: Leonardo da Vinci drew sketches of a concept for a ropemaking machine, but it was never built. Remarkable feats of construction were accomplished using rope but without advanced technology: In 1586, Domenico Fontana erected the 327 ton obelisk on Rome's Saint Peter's Square with a concerted effort of 900 men, 75 horses, and countless pulleys and meters of rope. By the late 18th century several working machines had been built and patented.


title: Rope

text: Some rope is still made from natural fibres, such as coir and sisal, despite the dominance of synthetic fibres such as nylon and polypropylene, which have become increasingly popular since the 1950s.


title: Rope

text: Nylon was discovered in the late 1930s and was first introduced into fiber ropes during World War II. Indeed, the first synthetic fiber ropes were small braided parachute cords and three-strand tow ropes for gliders, made of nylon during World War II.


title: Rope

text: Laid rope, also called twisted rope, is historically the prevalent form of rope, at least in modern Western history. Common twisted rope generally consists of three strands and is normally right-laid, or given a final right-handed twist. The ISO 2 standard uses the uppercase letters and to indicate the two possible directions of twist, as suggested by the direction of slant of the central portions of these two letters. The handedness of the twist is the direction of the twists as they progress away from an observer. Thus Z-twist rope is said to be right-handed, and S-twist to be left-handed.


title: Rope

text: Twisted ropes are built up in three steps. First, fibres are gathered and spun into yarns. A number of these yarns are then formed into strands by twisting. The strands are then twisted together to lay the rope. The twist of the yarn is opposite to that of the strand, and that in turn is opposite to that of the rope. It is this counter-twist, introduced with each successive operation, which holds the final rope together as a stable, unified object.


title: Rope

text: Traditionally, a three strand laid rope is called a "plain-" or "hawser-laid", a four strand rope is called "shroud-laid", and a larger rope formed by counter-twisting three or more multi-strand ropes together is called "cable-laid". Cable-laid rope is sometimes clamped to maintain a tight counter-twist rendering the resulting cable virtually waterproof. Without this feature, deep water sailing (before the advent of steel chains and other lines) was largely impossible, as any appreciable length of rope for anchoring or ship to ship transfers, would become too waterlogged – and therefore too heavy – to lift, even with the aid of a capstan or windlass.


title: Rope

text: One property of laid rope is partial untwisting when used. This can cause spinning of suspended loads, or stretching, kinking, or hockling of the rope itself. An additional drawback of twisted construction is that every fibre is exposed to abrasion numerous times along the length of the rope. This means that the rope can degrade to numerous inch-long fibre fragments, which is not easily detected visually.


title: Rope

text: Twisted ropes have a preferred direction for coiling. Normal right-laid rope should be coiled clockwise, to prevent kinking. Coiling this way imparts a twist to the rope. Rope of this type must be bound at its ends by some means to prevent untwisting.


title: Rope

text: While rope may be made from three or more strands, modern braided rope consists of a braided (tubular) jacket over strands of fibre (these may also be braided). Some forms of braided rope with untwisted cores have a particular advantage; they do not impart an additional twisting force when they are stressed. The lack of added twisting forces is an advantage when a load is freely suspended, as when a rope is used for rappelling or to suspend an arborist. Other specialized cores reduce the shock from arresting a fall when used as a part of a personal or group safety system.


title: Rope

text: Braided ropes are generally made from nylon, polyester, polypropylene or high performance fibres such as high modulus polyethylene (HMPE) and aramid. Nylon is chosen for its strength and elastic stretch properties. However, nylon absorbs water and is 10–15% weaker when wet. Polyester is about 90% as strong as nylon but stretches less under load and is not affected by water. It has somewhat better UV resistance, and is more abrasion resistant. Polypropylene is preferred for low cost and light weight (it floats on water) but it has limited resistance to ultraviolet light, is susceptible to friction and has a poor heat resistance.


title: Rope

text: Braided ropes (and objects like garden hoses, fibre optic or coaxial cables, etc.) that have no "lay" (or inherent twist) uncoil better if each alternate loop is twisted in the opposite direction, such as in figure-eight coils, where the twist reverses regularly and essentially cancels out.


title: Rope

text: Single braid consists of an even number of strands, eight or twelve being typical, braided into a circular pattern with half of the strands going clockwise and the other half going anticlockwise. The strands can interlock with either twill or plain weave. The central void may be large or small; in the former case the term "hollow braid" is sometimes preferred.


title: Rope

text: Double braid, also called braid on braid, consists of an inner braid filling the central void in an outer braid, that may be of the same or different material. Often the inner braid fibre is chosen for strength while the outer braid fibre is chosen for abrasion resistance.


title: Rope

text: In solid braid, the strands all travel the same direction, clockwise or anticlockwise, and alternate between forming the outside of the rope and the interior of the rope. This construction is popular for general purpose utility rope but rare in specialized high performance line.


title: Rope

text: Kernmantle rope has a core (kern) of long twisted fibres in the center, with a braided outer sheath or mantle of woven fibres. The kern provides most of the strength (about 70%), while the mantle protects the kern and determines the handling properties of the rope (how easy it is to hold, to tie knots in, and so on). In dynamic climbing line, core fibres are usually twisted to make the rope more elastic. Static kernmantle ropes are made with untwisted core fibres and tighter braid, which causes them to be stiffer in addition to limiting the stretch.


title: Rope

text: Plaited rope is made by braiding twisted strands, and is also called "square braid". It is not as round as twisted rope and coarser to the touch. It is less prone to kinking than twisted rope and, depending on the material, very flexible and therefore easy to handle and knot. This construction exposes all fibres as well, with the same drawbacks as described above. Brait rope is a combination of braided and plaited, a non-rotating alternative to laid three-strand ropes. Due to its excellent energy-absorption characteristics, it is often used by arborists. It is also a popular rope for anchoring and can be used as mooring warps. This type of construction was pioneered by Yale Cordage.


title: Rope

text: Endless winding rope is made by winding single strands of high-performance yarns around two end terminations until the desired break strength or stiffness has been reached. This type of rope (often specified as cable to make the difference between a braided or twined construction) has the advantage of having no construction stretch as is the case with above constructions. Endless winding is pioneered by SmartRigging and FibreMax.


title: Rope

text: The sport of rock climbing uses what is termed "dynamic" rope, an elastic rope which stretches under load to absorb the energy generated in arresting a fall without creating forces high enough to injure the climber. Such ropes are of kernmantle construction, as described below.


title: Rope

text: Conversely, "static" ropes have minimal stretch and are not designed to arrest free falls. They are used in caving, rappelling, rescue applications, and industries such as window washing.


title: Rope

text: The UIAA, in concert with the CEN, sets climbing-rope standards and oversees testing. Any rope bearing a GUIANA or CE certification tag is suitable for climbing. Climbing ropes cut easily when under load. Keeping them away from sharp rock edges is imperative. Previous falls arrested by a rope, damage to its sheath, and contamination by dirt or solvents all weaken a rope and can render it unsuitable for further sport use.


title: Rope

text: Rock climbing ropes are designated as suitable for single, double or twin use. A single rope is the most common, and is intended to be used by itself. These range in thickness from roughly . Smaller diameter ropes are lighter, but wear out faster.


title: Rope

text: Double ropes are thinner than single, usually and under, and are intended for use in pairs. These offer a greater margin of safety against cutting, since it is unlikely that both ropes will be cut, but complicate both belaying and leading. Double ropes may be clipped into alternating pieces of protection, allowing each to stay straighter and reduce both individual and total rope drag.


title: Rope

text: Twin ropes are thin ropes which must be clipped into the same piece of protection, in effect being treated as a single strand. This adds security in situations where a rope may get cut. However new lighter-weight ropes with greater safety have virtually replaced this type of rope.


title: Rope

text: Rope made from hemp, cotton or nylon is generally stored in a cool dry place for proper storage. To prevent kinking it is usually coiled. To prevent fraying or unravelling, the ends of a rope are bound with twine (whipping), tape, or heat shrink tubing. The ends of plastic fibre ropes are often melted and fused solid; however, the rope and knotting expert Geoffrey Budworth warns against this practice thus:


title: Rope

text: "Sealing rope ends this way is lazy and dangerous." A tugboat operator once sliced the palm of his hand open down to the sinews after the hardened (and obviously "sharp") end of a rope that had been heat-sealed pulled through his grasp. There is no substitute for a properly made whipping.


title: Rope

text: If a load-bearing rope gets a sharp or sudden jolt or the rope shows signs of deteriorating, it is recommended that the rope be replaced immediately and should be discarded or only used for non-load-bearing tasks.


title: Rope

text: The average rope life-span is 5 years. Serious inspection should be given to line after that point. However, the use to which a rope is put affects frequency of inspection. Rope used in mission-critical applications, such as mooring lines or running rigging, should be regularly inspected on a much shorter timescale than this, and rope used in life-critical applications such as mountain climbing should be inspected on a far more frequent basis, up to and including before each use.


title: Rope

text: Avoid stepping on climbing rope, as this might force tiny pieces of rock through the sheath, which can eventually deteriorate the core of the rope.


title: Rope

text: Many types of filaments in ropes are weakened by corrosive liquids, solvents, and high temperatures. Such damage is particularly treacherous because it is often invisible to the eye.


title: Rope

text: Shock loading should be avoided with general use ropes, as it can damage them. All ropes should be used within a safe working load, which is much less than their breaking strength.


title: Rope

text: A rope under tension – particularly if it has a great deal of elasticity – can be dangerous if parted. Care should be taken around lines under load.


title: Rope

text: "Rope" is a material, and a tool. When it is assigned a specific function it is often referred to as a "line", especially in nautical usage. A line may get a further distinction, for example sail control lines are known as “sheets” (e.g. A jib sheet).


title: Rope

text: A halyard is a line used to raise and lower a sail, typically with a shackle on its sail end. Other maritime examples of “lines” include anchor line, mooring line, fishing line, . Common items include clothesline and a chalk line.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The national flag of Norway (; ; ) is red with a navy blue Scandinavian cross fimbriated in white that extends to the edges of the flag; the vertical part of the cross is shifted to the hoist side in the style of the "Dannebrog", the flag of Denmark.


title: Flag of Norway

text: It is difficult to establish what the earliest flag of Norway looked like. During ancient times countries did not fly flags. Kings and other rulers flew flags, especially in battle. Saint Olav used a serpent within a white mark at the Battle of Nesjar. Prior to this the raven or dragon was used. Magnus the Good used the same mark as Saint Olav. Harald Hardrade used the raven banner. This flag was flown by various Viking chieftains and other Scandinavian rulers during the 9th, 10th, and 11th centuries AD. Inge used a red lion on gold. Sverre used an eagle in gold and red. The earliest known flag which could be described as a national flag of Norway is the one used today as the Royal Standard. Eirik Magnusson used a flag described as a golden lion with axe and crown on red from 1280 and this was since regularly the flag of the King of Norway and thereby also of Norway.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The flag is based on the coat of arms and was originally only a flag for the ruler of Norway (as it is today). It was later also used on ships and on fortresses until it was gradually phased out during the 17th and 18th centuries. Its earliest certain depiction is on the seal of duchess Ingebjørg in 1318. Around 1500 it became the custom for ships to fly the flag of their home country to identify their nationality. A red flag with the golden lion and silver halberd is depicted as the flag of Norway in a Dutch flag book from 1669 to 1670. At least as late as 1698 the lion banner was flown over Akershus Fortress. The "Norwegian lion" was placed in the colours of all the Norwegian regiments in 1641. In 1748 a decree stated that the Dannebrog should be the only legal merchant flag.


title: Flag of Norway

text: From about the 16th century until 1814, Norway used the same flag as Denmark, as it was in union with that country. In 1814 independent Norway adopted the Danish flag with the Norwegian lion in the canton or the upper square at the hoist. This flag was in use as state and war flag until 1815 and as merchant flag until 1821. Later in 1814 Norway was united with Sweden, and on 7 March 1815 a common war flag for both states was introduced by royal order in council, the Swedish flag with a white cross on a red background in the square canton. The same design in a rectangular flag was introduced as an alternate merchant flag in 1818, for use in distant waters, i.e. south of Cape Finisterre in Spain.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The current flag of Norway was designed in 1821 by Fredrik Meltzer, a member of the parliament (Storting). It was adopted by both chambers of the Storting on 11 May and 16 May, respectively. However, the king refused to sign the flag law, but approved the design for civilian use by royal order in council on 13 July 1821. The constitution of 1814 explicitly stated that the war flag was to be a union flag, hence the common flag (Swedish with a canton signifying Norway) was used by the armies and navies of both states until 1844.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Until 1838 the Norwegian flag was only used in Northern waters, i.e. the waters north of Cape Finisterre, as Norway had no treaty with the Barbary pirates of North Africa and had to fly the Swedish or union flag for protection. In 1844 a union mark combining Norwegian and Swedish colours was placed at the hoist of both countries' flags. The badge was jokingly or derogatorily called "Sildesalaten" ("the herring salad") because of its jumble of colours and resemblance to a popular dish on the breakfast tables of both countries. Initially, the union flag was popular in Norway, since it clearly denoted the equal status of the two . As the union with Sweden became less popular, the Norwegian parliament abolished the union mark from the national (merchant) and state flags in 1898. Although the law was not approved by the King, it became effective since it had been passed by three consecutive Stortings. The "pure" flag was first flown in 1899, but the union mark had to be kept in the war flag. After the dissolution of the union, it was removed from the navy flag as well on 9 June 1905. Sweden kept it in all flags until 1 November 1905.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The Norwegian flag law of 1898 specifies the appearance of the merchant and state flags and their use by merchant ships, customs and post vessels. The flag regulations of 1927 further describe the use of the state flag on state property and on national holidays.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The flag regulations also describe the time of day when the flag should be hoisted and lowered. From March to October the flag should be hoisted from 08.00. From November to February it should be hoisted from 09.00. The flag is lowered at sunset, although no later than 21.00, even if sunset is later than that. In the northern counties of Nordland and Troms the flag is flown between 10.00 and 15.00 from November to February. These rules do not apply for private use of the flag, but they are generally observed by all citizens.


title: Flag of Norway

text: There also exist written rules for the proper folding of the flag, for not letting it touch the ground, and in addition the unwritten rule that it should not be worn on the body below the waist.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Since 1933, only the Norwegian, the Sámi or the local official flags were allowed to fly on top of municipality buildings. Since 2014, the municipalities could hoist a different flag if an event in the building was related to it. In 2021, related to the group gathering restrictions with COVID-19, the government proposed to adapt the legislation so that municipalities do not need to host an event for hoisting a flag.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The proportions of the national flag are 16:22 (height (width) to length), its colour elements having widths of 6:1:2:1:6 and lengths of 6:1:2:1:12.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The law regarding the Norwegian flag by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs defines the colours as deep red and dark blue (“høirødt” og “mørkeblåt”) and white, with no reference to a specific colour system.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Flag producers normally use the red colour 200 and blue colour 281 from the Pantone colour matching system (note that no suffixes are specified in these PMS values, since the coated C version is normally assumed). These colours for the Norwegian flag were also defined on page 79 of the publication "Flags and anthems manual, London 2012", and were used for the summer Olympic games in London 2012. Oslo Orlogsforening also specifies Pantone 200 and 281. The flag manufacturer Langkilde & Søn even refers to Pantone 200 as «Norwegian Red» and Pantone 281 as «Norwegian Blue». As of 2021, the Nordic Council also specifies Pantone 200 and 281.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Other sources have specified different colours for the red and the blue in relation to the Pantone colour matching system (PMS). In a document on the Norwegian government's web pages, the red colour is defined as “Pantone 032 U” and the blue as “Pantone 281 U”. However, Norwegian flag producers consider this red colour to be incorrect, and have complained that the Norwegian state propagates what they perceive as misinformation. For example, it has been argued that pantone suffixes (such as C and U) only are relevant for print on paper, and thus should not be used to specify flag colours. Norwegian authorities have since clarified that the colours only were an internal recommendation intended specifically for silkscreen printing, and not a legal definition, and has since withdrawn the recommendation. The Nordic Flag Society currently defines the red colour as PMS 186 and the blue as PMS 287. The Nordic Council previously attributed their colours to this source but defined red colour as “Pantone 186 C” (note the C postfix) while the blue was identical to the source (“Pantone 287”). However, in 2010 the same website defined the blue colour as “Pantone 301”.


title: Flag of Norway

text: On 25 April 2018 the Norwegian foreign minister recommended that Norwegian flag manufacturers take initiative to form a technical standard describing a guidance on which colours to use in the flag of Norway, similar to what has been done in Denmark. It was stressed that it is the colour of the finished product that matters, and that this may result in the guide describing different colour codes for fabric, paper and web use.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Due to the vastly different ways colors are reproduced on physical flags versus on digital displays (using web colors), there is naturally no precise RGB equivalent to the Pantone colours. However, a good approximation can be achieved by following the official translation to web colors in the Pantone Formula Guide. With the de facto standard used by Norwegian flag producers being PMS 200 and 281, the corresponding web colors using the official Pantone Matching System is for PMS 200 (deep red) and for PMS 281 (dark blue).


title: Flag of Norway

text: When raising the Norwegian flag on festive or ceremonial occasions, the hoisting will often be accompanied by a bugle call, fanfare, or the national anthem (Ja, vi elsker). For civilian use on ceremonial occasions, there are no written rules concerning this. The Norwegian armed forces have a unified bugle call for hoisting and lowering the flag, known as "flaggappell" ("Attention to the flag") "(cf. Bugle calls of the Norwegian Army)."


title: Flag of Norway

text: According to Norwegian Law as well as common usage, flags of other sovereign states are to be treated with the same respect as the Norwegian flag.


title: Flag of Norway

text: For civilians and non-uniformed government employees, there are no formal hand gestures (e.g. the U.S. "hand-over-the-heart" gesture {cf. United States Flag Code}) that must be performed.


title: Flag of Norway

text: But it is commonly agreed that during the hoisting or lowering of the flag, civilians should conduct themselves in a respectful manner by facing the flag and standing still, straight, and quiet. Males should be bareheaded (unless there are religious, medical, or climatic reasons for covering the head).


title: Flag of Norway

text: All uniformed government personnel (e.g.: municipal traffic wardens, policemen, customs official, prison wardens, maritime pilots, armed forces personnel) follow the Norwegian Armed Forces regulation during flag hoisting or lowering. The regulations stipulate that when seeing the flag being hoisted or lowered, or hearing the bugle call, all activity should if possible be stopped, and personnel should execute the foot drill manoeuvre of ""Halt and front face"" (stopping up and turning one's body to face the flagpole).


title: Flag of Norway

text: If a person is not in formation and is wearing a uniform hat, cap or beret, he or she must render a salute. A person in formation or not wearing a prescribed uniform hat, should stand at attention for the duration of the bugle signal, or if in sight of the hoisting or lowering, until the flag is either at the top of the pole, at half mast, or until two thirds of the flag is in the hands of the flag party.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Unlike the Anglo-American traditions of folding a flag (the triangular shape of the U.S. flag or the square shape of the UK's Union Flag), the Norwegian tradition is to "roll the flag" into a cylindrical shape and tie it up after lowering it.


title: Flag of Norway

text: The first step of this procedure is to fold the flag lengthwise so that its two long sides meet. Each half will then be folded 180 degrees, concealing the longitudinal white and blue stripes. Finally the folded full length flag, its width of the hoist, will be rolled up into a red cylinder.


title: Flag of Norway

text: If the flag is fitted with a line, this is wrapped around the flag and tied with a simple slip knot. The use of a simple slip knot allows one person alone to hoist the flag unaided.


title: Flag of Norway

text: When on international missions, Norwegian armed forces may keep a flag (national or merchant flag) raised during the night and illuminated by a spotlight, to affirm their presence and to boost morale.


title: Flag of Norway

text: This tradition stems from World War II, when a small-sized flag was hoisted (usually above the CO quarters) in the numerous camps of Norwegian forces in the UK, USA, Sweden, and Canada, to symbolize that fight against the enemy would go on day and night until final victory.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Military regulations stipulate that a Norwegian flag shall never touch the ground, since this is disrespectful towards the flag and may signify surrender.


title: Flag of Norway

text: Fredrik Meltzer submitted his proposal just in time to be exhibited in parliament on 4 May 1821 together with a large number of other proposals. It was approved by both chambers during the following two weeks. Meltzer himself provided no written explanation for his choice of design and colours. However, his intentions may be inferred from an earlier letter of 30 April with his comments regarding the proposal from the flag committee. That design was divided quarterly red and white. Meltzer objected to the colours because they were too similar to those of the Danish flag. He added that it would be equally unseemly to choose the colours of any of "those states with which we have been or are connected with". Instead, he recommended a tricolour of red, white and blue, "three colours that now denote freedom, such as we have seen in the French flag of freedom, and still see in that of the Dutch and Americans, and in the Union of the Englishmen".


title: Flag of Norway

text: His eventual choice a few days later of a Nordic cross was clearly based on the tradition established by the other Nordic countries, Denmark and Sweden. This cross represents Christianity. The red and blue colours also explicitly referred to the same two countries, former and present union partners. It was clearly understood by all who took part in the flag discussions locally, in the press or in parliament what those colours denoted. A predominantly red flag had many adherents among those who were attached to the union with Denmark or to its flag, which for centuries had also been that of Norway. Others, who saw Denmark as an oppressor, favoured the blue colour associated with the new Swedish dynasty which was seen as more receptive of Norwegian ambitions of autonomy. Consequently, most of the other flag proposals on the agenda had either red or blue as the predominant colour, depending on the political preferences of the proposers.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Tarim Basin is an endorheic basin in Northwest China occupying an area of about and one of the largest basins in Northwest China. Located in China's Xinjiang region, it is sometimes used synonymously to refer to the southern half of the province, or Nanjiang (), as opposed to the northern half of the province known as Dzungaria or Beijiang. Its northern boundary is the Tian Shan mountain range and its southern boundary is the Kunlun Mountains on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau. The Taklamakan Desert dominates much of the basin. The historical Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin is Altishahr (Traditional spelling: 六城 or ), which means 'six cities' in Uyghur.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Xinjiang consists of two main geographically, historically, and ethnically distinct regions with different historical names, Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin (Altishahr), before Qing China unified them into one political entity called Xinjiang province in 1884. At the time of the Qing conquest in 1759, Dzungaria was inhabited by steppe dwelling, nomadic Mongolic speaking, Tibetan Buddhist Dzungars, while the Tarim Basin (Altishahr) was inhabited by sedentary, oasis dwelling, Turkic speaking Muslim farmers, now known as the Uyghur people. They were governed separately until the creation of the province in 1884.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Chinese called this the "Tien Shan Nan Lu" or Tien Shan South Road, as opposed to the "Bei Lu" north of the mountains. Along it runs the modern highway and railroad while the middle Tarim River is about 100 km south. Kashgar was where the caravans met before crossing the mountains. Bachu or Miralbachi; Uchturpan north of the main road; Aksu on the large Aksu River; Kucha was once an important kingdom; Luntai; Korla, now a large town; Karashar near Bosten Lake; Turpan north of the Turpan Depression and south of the Bogda Shan; Hami; then southeast to Anxi and the Gansu Corridor.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Most of the basin is occupied by the Taklamakan Desert which is too dry for permanent habitation. The Yarkand, Kashgar and Aksu Rivers join to form the Tarim River which runs along the north side of the basin. Formerly it continued to Loulan, but some time after 330AD it turned southeast near Korla toward Charkilik and Loulan was abandoned. The Tarim ended at the now-dry Lop Nur which occupied a changing position east of Loulan. Eastward is the fabled Jade Gate which the Chinese considered the gateway to the Western Regions. Beyond that is Dunhuang with its ancient manuscripts and then Anxi at the west end of the Gansu Corridor.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Kashgar; Yangi Hissar, famous for its knives; Yarkand, once larger than Kashgar; Karghalik (Yecheng), with a route to India; Karakash; Khotan, the main source of Chinese jade; eastward the land becomes more desolate; Keriya (Yutian); Niya (Minfeng); Qiemo (Cherchen); Charkilik (Ruoqiang). The modern road continues east to Tibet. There is no current road east across the Kumtag Desert to Dunhuang, but caravans somehow made the crossing through the Yangguan pass south of the Jade Gate.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Southern Xinjiang Railway branches from the Lanxin Railway near Turpan, follows the north side of the basin to Kashgar and curves southeast to Khotan.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The main road from eastern China reaches Urumchi and continues as highway 314 along the north side to Kashgar. Highway 315 follows the south side from Kashgar to Charkilik and continues east to Tibet. There are currently four north–south roads across the desert. 218 runs from Charkilik to Korla along the former course of the Tarim, forming an oval whose other end is Kashgar. The Tarim Desert Highway, a major engineering achievement, crosses the center from Niya to Luntai. The new Highway 217 follows the Khotan River from Khotan to near Aksu. A road follows the Yarkand River from Yarkand to Baqu. East of the Korla-Charkilik road travel continues to be very difficult.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Rivers coming south from the Tien Shan join the Tarim, the largest being the Aksu. Rivers flowing north from the Kunlun are usually named for the town or oasis they pass through. Most dry up in the desert, only the Hotan River reaching the Tarim in good years. An exception is the Qiemo River which flowed northeast into Lop Nor. Ruins in the desert imply that these rivers were once larger.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The original caravan route seems to have followed the south side. At the time of the Han dynasty conquest, it shifted to the center (Jade Gate-Loulan-Korla). When the Tarim changed course about 330AD it shifted north to Hami. A minor route went north of the Tian Shan. When there was war on the Gansu Corridor trade entered the basin near Charkilik from the Qaidam Basin. The original route to India seems to have started near Yarkand and Kargilik, but it is now replaced by the Karakoram Highway south from Kashgar. To the west of Kashgar via the Irkeshtam border crossing is the Alay Valley which was once the route to Persia. Northeast of Kashgar the Torugart pass leads to the Ferghana Valley. Near Uchturpan the Bedel Pass leads to Lake Issyk-Kul and the steppes. Somewhere near Aksu the difficult Muzart Pass led north to the Ili River basin (Kulja). Near Korla was the Iron Gate Pass and now the highway and railway north to Urumchi. From Turfan the easy Dabancheng pass leads to Urumchi. The route from Charkilik to the Qaidam Plateau was of some importance when Tibet was an empire.


title: Tarim Basin

text: North of the Mountains is Dzungaria with its central Gurbantünggüt Desert, Urumchi the capital and the Karamay oil fields. The Kulja territory is the upper basin of the Ili River and opens out onto the Kazakh steppe with several roads eastward. The Dzungarian Gate was once a migration route and is now a road and rail crossing. Tacheng or Tarbaghatay is a road crossing and former trading post.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Tarim Basin is the result of an amalgamation between an ancient microcontinent and the growing Eurasian continent during the Carboniferous to Permian periods, a process which ended in the earliest Triassic with the closure of the Palaeo-Asian Ocean. At present, deformation around the margins of the basin is resulting in the microcontinental crust being pushed under Tian Shan to the north, and Kunlun Shan to the south.


title: Tarim Basin

text: A thick succession of Paleozoic, Mesozoic and Cenozoic sedimentary rocks occupy the central parts of the basin, locally exceeding thicknesses of . The source rocks of oil and gas tend to be mostly Permian mudstones and, less often, Ordovician strata which experienced an intense and widespread early Hercynian karstification. The effect of this event are e.g. paleokarst reservoirs in the Tahe oil field. Below the level enriched with gas and oil is a complex Precambrian basement believed to be made up of the remnants of the original Tarim microplate, which accrued to the growing Eurasian continent in Carboniferous time.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The snow on K2, the second-highest mountain in the world, flows into glaciers which move down the valleys to melt. The melted water forms rivers which flow down the mountains and into the Tarim Basin, never reaching the sea. Surrounded by desert, some rivers feed the oases where the water is used for irrigation while others flow to salt lakes and marshes.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Lop Nur is a marshy, saline depression at the east end of the Tarim Basin. The Tarim River ends in Lop Nur.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Tarim Basin is believed to contain large potential reserves of petroleum and natural gas. Methane comprises over 70 percent of the natural gas reserve, with variable contents of ethane (<1% ~18%) and propane (<0.5% ~9%). China National Petroleum Corporation's comprehensive exploration of the Tarim basin between 1989 and 1995 led to the identification of 26 oil- and gas-bearing structures. These occur at deeper depths and in scattered deposits. Beijing aims to develop Xinjiang into China's new energy base for the long run, supplying one-fifth of the country's total oil supply by 2010, with an annual output of 35 million tonnes. On June 10, 2010 Baker Hughes announced an agreement to work with PetroChina Tarim Oilfield Co. to supply oilfield services, including both directional and vertical drilling systems, formation evaluation services, completion systems and artificial lift technology for wells drilled into foothills formations greater than deep with pressures greater than 20,000 psi (1379 bar) and bottomhole temperatures of approximately . Electrical submersible pumping (ESP) systems will be employed to dewater gas and condensate wells. PetroChina will fund any joint development.


title: Tarim Basin

text: In 2015, Chinese researchers published the finding of a vast, carbon-rich underground sea beneath the basin.


title: Tarim Basin

text: It is speculated that the Tarim Basin may be one of the last places in Asia to have become inhabited: It is surrounded by mountains and irrigation technologies might have been necessary.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Northern Silk Road on one route bypassed the Tarim Basin north of the Tian Shan mountains and traversed it on three oases-dependent routes: one north of the Taklamakan Desert, one south, and a middle one connecting both through the Lop Nor region.


title: Tarim Basin

text: In the early period, beginning around 2000 BC, in the Tarim Basin there were six different cultural zones, and the use of bronze started to appear, one of these cultures in the region was the Xintala culture (c. 1700–1500 BC), located near the site of Yanqi also known as Karashar, to the north and east of the Tarim, at the Kaidu river.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Structures made of mud bricks were found at Xintala site, bearing similar building techniques to those seen in early oasis sites in western Central Asia, as well as in Yanbulake site. There are no burials found in Xintala culture, and its settlements were small.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The earliest Tarim people appear to have arisen from locals of primarily Ancient North Eurasian descend with minor Northeast Asian admixture. The Tarim mummies have been found in various locations in the eastern Tarim Basin such as Loulan, the Xiaohe Tomb complex, and Qäwrighul. These mummies have been previously suggested to be of Tocharian origin, but recent evidence suggest that the mummies belonged to a distinct population unrelated to Indo-European pastoralists, such as Afanasievo. Protected by the Taklamakan Desert from steppe nomads, elements of this unique culture survived until the 7th century, at the dawning of the 800s with the arriving Turkic immigrants from the collapsing Uyghur Khaganate of modern-day Mongolia began to absorb the Tocharians to form the modern-day Uyghur ethnic group.


title: Tarim Basin

text: In the Iron Age, the Chawuhu culture (c. 1000–400 BC) flourishes in the Yanqi (Karashar) oasis, and also reaches the Alagou sites near the Turfan basin, and north to the region close to Urumqi.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Earlier diggings in southern Tarim Basin, in 1990's, suggested that Yuansha (Djoumbulak Koum) in the Keriya river valley was the earliest fortified urban site, from around 400 BC, but new surveys and excavations between 2018 and 2020, showed that the site Kuiyukexiehai'er (Koyuk Shahri), located in the northern Tarim Basin, is actually the earliest fortified urban settlement in the entire region, covering 6 hectares, and developed in four phases between c. 770 BC and 80 AD. Spouted jars were found at this site, similar to Chawuhu Culture's ones, and buckles and moulds with animal motifs resemble steppe traditions.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Another people in the region besides these Tarim people are the Indo-Iranian Saka people who spoke various Eastern Iranian Khotanese Scythian or Saka dialects. In the Achaemenid-era Old Persian inscriptions found at Persepolis, dated to the reign of Darius I (r. 522–486 BC), the Saka are said to have lived just beyond the borders of Sogdiana. Likewise an inscription dated to the reign of Xerxes I (r. 486–465 BC) has them coupled with the Dahae people of Central Asia. The contemporary Greek historian Herodotus noted that the Achaemenid Persians called all of the Indo-Iranian Scythian peoples as the Saka. They were known as the Sai (塞, sāi, "sək" in archaic Chinese) in ancient Chinese records. These records indicate that they originally inhabited Ili and Chu River valleys of modern Kazakhstan. In the Chinese "Book of Han", the area was called the "land of the Sai", i.e. the Saka. Presence of a people believed to be Saka has also been found in various location in the Tarim Basin, for example in the Keriya region at Yumulak Kum (Djoumboulak Koum, Yuansha) around 200 km east of Khotan, with a tomb dated to as early as the 7th century BC.


title: Tarim Basin

text: According to the Sima Qian's "Shiji", the nomadic Indo-European Yuezhi originally lived between Tengri Tagh (Tian Shan) and Dunhuang of Gansu, China. However, the Yuezhi were assaulted and forced to flee from the Hexi Corridor of Gansu by the forces of the Xiongnu ruler Modu Chanyu, who conquered the area in 177–176 BC (decades before the Han Chinese conquest and colonization of western tip of Gansu or the establishment of the Protectorate of the Western Regions). In turn the Yuezhi were responsible for attacking and pushing the Sai (i.e. Saka) west into Sogdiana, where in the mid 2nd century BC the latter crossed the Syr Darya into Bactria, but also into the Fergana Valley where they settled in Dayuan, southwards towards northern India, and eastward as well where they settled in some of the oasis city-states of the Tarim Basin. Whereas the Yuezhi continued westward and conquered Daxia around 177–176 BC, the Sai (i.e. Saka), including some allied Tocharian peoples, fled south to the Pamirs before heading back east to settle in Tarim Basin sites like Yanqi (焉耆, Karasahr) and Qiuci (龜茲, Kucha). The Saka are recorded as inhabiting Khotan by at least the 3rd century and also settled in nearby Shache (莎車), a town named after the Saka inhabitants (i.e. "saγlâ"). Although the ancient Chinese had called Khotan "Yutian" (于闐), it's more native Iranian names during the Han period were "Jusadanna" (瞿薩旦那), derived from Indo-Iranian "Gostan" and "Gostana", the names of the town and region around it, respectively.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Around 200 BCE, the Yuezhi were overrun by the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu tried to invade the western region of China, but ultimately failed and lost control of the region to the Chinese. The Han Chinese wrested control of the Tarim Basin from the Xiongnu at the end of the 1st century under the leadership of General Ban Chao (32–102 CE), during the Han-Xiongnu War. The Chinese administered the Tarim Basin as the Protectorate of the Western Regions. The Tarim Basin was later under many foreign rulers, but ruled primary by Turkic, Han, Tibetan, and Mongolic peoples.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The powerful Kushans, who conquered the last vestiges of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, expanded back into the Tarim Basin in the 1st–2nd centuries CE, where they established a kingdom in Kashgar and competed for control of the area with nomads and Chinese forces. The Yuezhi or Rouzhi (, ) were an ancient people first reported in Chinese histories as nomadic pastoralists living in an arid grassland area in the western part of the modern Chinese province of Gansu, during the 1st millennium BC. After a major defeat by the Xiongnu, during the 2nd century BC, the Yuezhi split into two groups: the Greater Yuezhi ("Dà Yuèzhī" 大月氏) and Lesser Yuezhi ("Xiǎo Yuèzhī" 小月氏). They introduced the Brahmi script, the Indian Prakrit language for administration, and Buddhism, playing a central role in the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism to Eastern Asia.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Three pre-Han texts mention peoples who appear to be the Yuezhi, albeit under slightly different names.


title: Tarim Basin

text: After the Han dynasty, the Kingdoms of the Tarim Basin began to have strong cultural influences on China as a conduit between the cultures of India and Central Asia to China. Indian Buddhists had previously travelled to China during the Han dynasty, but the Buddhist monk Kumārajīva from Kucha who visited China during the Six Dynasties period was particularly renowned. The music and dances from Kucha were also popular in the Sui and Tang periods.


title: Tarim Basin

text: During the Tang dynasty, a series of military expeditions were conducted against the oasis states of the Tarim Basin, then vassals of the Western Turkic Khaganate. The campaigns against the oasis states began under Emperor Taizong with the annexation of Gaochang in 640. The nearby kingdom of Karasahr was captured by the Tang in 644 and the kingdom of Kucha was conquered in 649.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The expansion into Central Asia continued under Taizong's successor, Emperor Gaozong, who dispatched an army in 657 led by Su Dingfang against the Western Turk qaghan Ashina Helu. Ashina was defeated and the khaganate was absorbed into the Tang empire. The Tarim Basin was administered through the Anxi Protectorate and the Four Garrisons of Anxi. Tang hegemony beyond the Pamir Mountains in modern Tajikistan and Afghanistan ended with revolts by the Turks, but the Tang retained a military presence in Xinjiang. These holdings were later invaded by the Tibetan Empire to the south in 670. For the remainder of the Tang dynasty, the Tarim Basin alternated between Tang and Tibetan rule as they competed for control of Central Asia.


title: Tarim Basin

text: As a consequence of the Han–Xiongnu War spanning from 133 BC to 89 AD, the Tarim Basin region of Xinjiang in Northwest China, including the Saka-founded oasis city-state of Khotan and Kashgar, fell under Han Chinese influence, beginning with the reign of Emperor Wu (r. 141–87 BC) of the Han dynasty. Much like the neighboring people of the Kingdom of Khotan, people of Kashgar, the capital of the Shule Kingdom, spoke Saka, one of the Eastern Iranian languages. As noted by the Greek historian Herodotus, the contemporary Persians labelled all Scythians as the Saka. Indeed, modern scholarly consensus is that the Saka language, ancestor to the Pamir languages in northern India and Khotanese in Xinjiang, China belongs to the Scythian languages.


title: Tarim Basin

text: During China's Tang dynasty (618–907 AD), the region once again came under Chinese suzerainty with the campaigns of conquest by Emperor Taizong of Tang (r. 626–649). From the late 8th to 9th centuries, the region changed hands between the Chinese Tang Empire and the rival Tibetan Empire. By the early 11th century the region fell to the Muslim Turkic peoples of the Kara-Khanid Khanate, which led to both the Turkification of the region as well as its conversion from Buddhism to Islam.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Suggestive evidence of Khotan's early link to India are minted coins from Khotan dated to the 3rd century bearing dual inscriptions in Chinese and Gandhari Prakrit in the Kharosthi script. Although Prakrit was the administrative language of nearby Shanshan, 3rd-century documents from that kingdom record the title "hinajha" (i.e. "generalissimo") for the king of Khotan, Vij'ida-simha, a distinctively Iranian-based word equivalent to the Sanskrit title "senapati", yet nearly identical to the Khotanese Saka "hīnāysa" attested in contemporary documents. This along with the fact that the king's recorded regnal periods were given in Khotanese as "kṣuṇa", "implies an established connection between the Iranian inhabitants and the royal power", according to the late Professor of Iranian Studies Ronald E. Emmerick (d. 2001). He contended that Khotanese-Saka-language royal rescripts of Khotan dated to the 10th century "makes it likely that the ruler of Khotan was a speaker of Iranian." Furthermore, he elaborated on the early name of Khotan:


title: Tarim Basin

text: In Northwest China, Khotanese-Saka-language documents, ranging from medical texts to Buddhist literature, have been found primarily in Khotan and Tumshuq (northeast of Kashgar). They largely predate the arrival of Islam to the region under the Turkic Kara-Khanids. Similar documents in the Khotanese-Saka language were found in Dunhuang dating mostly to the 10th century.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The collapse of the Uyghur Khaganate in 840 AD led to the movement of the Uyghurs south to Turpan and Gansu, and some absorbed by the Karluks. Tocharian languages became slowly replaced and finally extinct due to Uyghur migrations to these areas. The Uyghurs of Turfan (or Qocho) in turn became Buddhists and adopted Tocharian elements into their culture. In the tenth century, the Karluks, Yagmas, Chigils and other Turkic tribes founded the Kara-Khanid Khanate in Semirechye, Western Tian Shan, and Kashgaria.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Karakhanids became the first Islamic Turkic dynasty in the tenth century when Sultan Satuq Bughra Khan converted to Islam in 966 and controlled Kashgar. Satuq Bughra Khan and his son directed endeavors to preach Islam among the Turks and engage in conquests. Satok Bughra Khan's nephew or grandson Ali Arslan was slain by the Buddhists during the war. Buddhism lost territory to the Turkic Karakhanid Satok Bughra Khan during the Karakhanid reign around the Kashgar area. The Tarim Basin became Islamicized over the next few centuries.


title: Tarim Basin

text: In the tenth century, the Buddhist Iranic Saka Kingdom of Khotan was the only city-state that was not conquered yet by the Turkic Uyghur (Buddhist) and the Turkic Karakhanid (Muslim) states. The Buddhist entitites of Dunhuang and Khotan had a tight-knit partnership, with intermarriage between Dunhuang and Khotan's rulers and Dunhuang's Mogao grottos and Buddhist temples being funded and sponsored by the Khotan royals, whose likenesses were drawn in the Mogao grottoes. Halfway in the 10th century Khotan came under attack by the Karakhanid ruler Musa, a long war ensued between the Turkic Karakhanid and Buddhist Khotan which eventually ended in the conquest of Khotan by Kashgar by the Karakhanid leader Yusuf Qadir Khan around 1006.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Accounts of the Muslim Karakhanid war against the Khotanese Buddhists are given in "Taẕkirah of the Four Sacrificed Imams" written sometime in the period from 1700 to 1849 which told the story of four imams from Mada'in city (possibly in modern-day Iraq) who traveled to help the Islamic conquest of Khotan, Yarkand, and Kashgar by Yusuf Qadir Khan, the Karakhanid leader. The "infidels" were defeated and driven towards Khotan by Yusuf Qadir Khan and the four Imams, but the Imams were assassinated by the Buddhists prior to the last Muslim victory. After Yusuf Qadir Khan's conquest of new land in Altishahr towards the east, he adopted the title "King of the East and China".


title: Tarim Basin

text: In 1006, the Muslim Kara-Khanid ruler Yusuf Kadir (Qadir) Khan of Kashgar conquered Khotan, ending Khotan's existence as an independent state. The Islamic conquest of Khotan led to alarm in the east and Dunhuang's Cave 17, which contained Khotanese literary works, was closed shut possibly after its caretakers heard that Khotan's Buddhist buildings were razed by the Muslims, the Buddhist religion had suddenly ceased to exist in Khotan. The Karakhanid Turkic Muslim writer Mahmud al-Kashgari recorded a short Turkic language poem about the conquest:


title: Tarim Basin

text: The Buddhist Uyghurs of the Kingdom of Qocho and Turfan embraced Islam after conversion at the hands of the Muslim Chagatai Khizr Khwaja.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Kara Del was a Mongolian ruled and Uighur populated Buddhist Kingdom. The Muslim Chagatai Khan Mansur invaded and used the sword to make the population convert to Islam.


title: Tarim Basin

text: After being converted to Islam, the descendants of the previously Buddhist Uyghurs in Turfan believed that the "infidel Kalmuks" (Dzungars) were the ones who built Buddhist monuments in their area, in opposition to the current academic theory that it was their own ancestral legacy.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Xinjiang did not exist as one unit until 1884 under Qing rule. It consisted of the two separate political entities of Dzungaria and the Tarim Basin (Eastern Turkestan). Dzungharia or Ili was called Zhunbu 準部 (Dzungar region) Tianshan Beilu 天山北路 (Northern March), "Xinjiang" 新疆 (New Frontier), or "Kalmykia" (La Kalmouquie in French). It was formerly the area of the Dzungar (or Zunghar) Khanate 準噶爾汗國, the land of the Dzungar people. The Tarim Basin was known as "Tianshan Nanlu 天山南路 (southern March), Huibu 回部 (Muslim region), Huijiang 回疆 (Muslim frontier), Chinese Turkestan, Kashgaria, Little Bukharia, East Turkestan", and the traditional Uyghur name for it was Altishahr (, "Алтә-шәһәр"). It was formerly the area of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate 東察合台汗國, land of the Uyghur people before being conquered by the Dzungars.


title: Tarim Basin

text: According to census figures, the Tarim Basin is dominated by the Uyghurs. They form the majority population in cities such as Kashgar, Artush, and Hotan. There are however large pockets of Han Chinese in the region, such as Aksu and Korla. There are also smaller numbers of Hui and other ethnic groups, for example, the Tajiks who are concentrated at Tashkurgan in the Kashgar Prefecture, the Kyrgyz in Kizilsu, and the Mongols in Bayingolin.


title: Tarim Basin

text: The discovery of the Tarim mummies showed that the early people of the Tarim Basin were Indo-European. According to Sinologist Victor H. Mair: "From around 1800BC, the earliest mummies in the Tarim Basin were exclusively Caucasoid, or Europoid." He also said that East Asian migrants arriving in the eastern portions of the Tarim Basin around 3,000 years ago, and the Uyghur peoples "arrived after the collapse of the Orkon Uighur Kingdom, based in modern-day Mongolia, around the year 842." He also noted that the people of Xinjiang are a mixture: "Modern DNA and ancient DNA show that Uighurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyzs, the peoples of central Asia are all mixed Caucasian and East Asian. The modern and ancient DNA tell the same story." Professor James A. Millward described the original Uyghurs as physically Mongoloid, giving as an example the images in Bezeklik at Temple 9 of the Uyghur patrons, until they began to mix with the Tarim Basin's original Tocharian and eastern Iranian inhabitants.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Although archaeological findings are of interest in the Tarim Basin, the prime impetus for exploration was petroleum and natural gas. Recent research with help of GIS database have provided a fine-grained analysis of the ancient oasis of Niya on the Silk Road. This research led to significant findings; remains of hamlets with wattle and daub structures as well as farm land, orchards, vineyards, irrigation pools and bridges. The oasis at Niya preserves the ancient landscape. Here also have been found hundreds of 3rd and 4th century wooden accounting tablets at several settlements across the oasis. These texts are in the Kharosthi script native to today's Pakistan and Afghanistan. The texts are legal documents such as tax lists, and contracts containing detailed information pertaining to the administration of daily affairs.


title: Tarim Basin

text: Additional excavations have unearthed tombs with mummies, tools, ceramic works, painted pottery and other artistic artifacts. Such diversity was encouraged by the cultural contacts resulting from this area's position on the Silk Road. Early Buddhist sculptures and murals excavated at Miran show artistic similarities to the traditions of Central Asia and North India and stylistic aspects of paintings found there suggest that Miran had a direct connection with the West, specifically Rome and its provinces.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: Doom: Annihilation is a 2019 American science fiction action film written and directed by Tony Giglio. It is a reboot based on id Software's "Doom" franchise and is the second live-action film adaptation of the franchise following the 2005 film "Doom". The film stars Amy Manson, Dominic Mafham, Luke Allen-Gale, and Nina Bergman. In the film, marines battle demon-like creatures in a facility on Phobos, who have emerged from ancient teleportation devices known as "Gates".


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: Giglio pitched his idea for a new film to Universal in 2015, but was initially turned down. The success of the 2016 video game convinced Universal to proceed, and commission a script from Giglio. The project was announced in April 2018, with principal photography commencing soon afterward, and ending in June, with additional photography following in early 2019. "Doom: Annihilation" was released direct-to-video on October 1, 2019 to mixed reviews and earned $76,703 in domestic video sales. id Software publicly stated they were not involved with the film, as they had earlier declined an invitation to participate in its production.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: On a United Aerospace Corporation (UAC) base on Phobos, Dr. Betruger prepares to teleport a volunteer from a UAC lab in Nevada to Phobos by using ancient teleporters known as "Gates". The experiment proves successful, but the subject emerges partially deformed. On a UAC transport vessel, a group of marines on a mission to guard the Phobos base awaken from cryosleep. Amongst them is Joan Dark, a disgraced lieutenant the other marines are reluctant to work with. Joining them is Bennett Stone, a scientist, and ex-boyfriend of Joan. Against Dr. Kahn's wishes, Betruger prepares to teleport himself to the Nevada base. After preparations by Veronica, Betruger passes through the Gate. However, the Phobos base suddenly goes offline as monsters emerge from the Gate.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: Unable to communicate with or enter the base, the Marines receive orders to investigate and restore power. They enter via the emergency entrance and Bennett discovers that the reserve power has been drained to two percent, granting them 90 minutes before the fusion reactor explodes. The marines are then attacked by UAC staff who have been turned into zombie-like creatures. During the attack, the marines find three survivors: Betruger, Veronica, and the base's Chaplain, Glover. Betruger reveals that the UAC has been studying the Gates for 30 years in order to colonize planets. It is believed that the Gates were left by an ancient alien race while Glover believes them to be demons. Against Betruger's wishes, Joan orders the remaining marines and survivors to evacuate the base.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: Upon returning to the transport, the crew is attacked by Imp-like demons, killing several marines, including Glover. With the transport disabled, Joan agrees to Betruger's plan to restore power to use the Gate to teleport the survivors to the Nevada base, however, she reveals to Bennett that her agreement was a ruse to restore communications. As Bennett restores the base's power, Betruger reveals that Joan was disgraced for allowing a terrorist to go free due to poor judgment. Betruger then kills Veronica and seals the marines in the power server, who are then attacked by Imps. With only Joan and Bennett left standing, they plan to stop Betruger from activating the Gate.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: After Joan acquires the BFG 9000, Bennett is attacked by an Imp. As Joan shoots her way to the Gate chamber, she is attacked by a zombified Bennett, forcing her to kill him. Joan then shoots Betruger, who resurrects immediately and pushes Joan into the Gate. Joan is teleported to hell, where she encounters a horde of Imps and Stanga, their overlord. Stanga reveals that they plan to reclaim the Earth and annihilate humanity. Joan shoots him and blasts the horde with plasma grenades as she makes her way back to the Gate. She is then teleported to the Nevada base and demands that the Gate be shut down. She is apprehended and sedated by security. Before losing consciousness, the Gate begins to reactivate. Dr. Kahn believes it to be Betruger coming through. As the film cuts to black, a growl is heard.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: In 2015, director Tony Giglio pitched to Universal his outline for a new "Doom" film. Universal declined due to the film not being on its slate and due to the financial disappointment of the 2005 film. After the release of the 2016 video game, Giglio re-pitched the idea to Universal by revealing the game's sales numbers and new interest in the property from old and new fans. Convinced, the company demanded to see a script first. A 25-page treatment was then written by Giglio. Giglio said the previous film lacked demons, hell, and proper usage of the Gates and wished to prioritize those elements for the new film.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: Giglio created the character Joan after taking inspiration from "The Terminator" and "Aliens", feeling that a female protagonist can be effective in a sci-fi action film. Joan was named after Joan of Arc. Four suits were produced for the Imps, with one designed for leaping. Inspiration was drawn from the first three "Doom" games, as Universal did not retain the rights to the Bethesda version. Universal invited Bethesda to participate in the film; however, Bethesda respectfully declined and wished the production well. In April 2018, Universal revealed plans for a direct-to-video reboot of "Doom", to be produced by its Universal 1440 Entertainment subsidiary. Nina Bergman confirmed her participation in an Instagram post. Autonomous FX was commissioned to work on the special effects, makeup, and demon designs. The Imps were redesigned to have charred skin and sharp edges for more organic-like horns, while retaining the glowing eyes and wide mouth of the original design.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: Principal photography wrapped in Bulgaria in June 2018. Additional photography commenced in early 2019 to improve certain scenes and visual effects. The film used 1,000 visual effects shots. The Hell sequence was shot with Amy Manson standing before a green screen, and a small rock area was built for the water scenes.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: In March 2019, Universal revealed images, a synopsis, a potential release date, and revealed the film's official title as "Doom: Annihilation". That same month, the first trailer was released. The trailer received negative reactions from fans, with id Software confirming it was not involved with the film. Giglio admitted to not being enthusiastic about the first trailer since at the time only 80 effects out of the 1,000 effects shots were complete for marketing to use. Giglio noted the second trailer was better received, stating, "Once the fans saw the second teaser, I think we got a few more people saying: 'Oh, wait a minute. That's not what I thought the movie was gonna be.'"


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: "Doom: Annihilation" was released on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital formats on October 1, 2019. The film was originally scheduled to be released in April. Later in December, the film was made available on Netflix. In the United States and Canada, the DVD earned $2,737 and the Blu-ray earned $73,766, totaling $76,703 in domestic video sales.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . Alex Kane from Forbes called the film "good, trashy fun", praising the action scenes, special effects, Manson's performance, and improvements over the 2005 film, but criticized the production value. Martin Liebman from Blu-Ray.com called the film "a horribly dull action film", criticizing the acting, script, and production design. Jay Krieger from Cultured Vultures said that the film feels "fan-made" and "disappointingly inadequate", criticizing the plot, Easter eggs, characters, and inferiority to the 2005 film. Tom Jorgensen from IGN gave the film a 3.0 out of 10 and criticized the action, characters, plot, unoriginality, humor, visual effects, and cinematography. Jay Gervais from Dead Entertainment called the film "unsurprisingly terrible", criticizing the characters as "unlikable and forgettable", the film's emphasis on zombies rather than demons, repetitive action, and lacking the appealing qualities of the games. Gervais recommended to "skip it".


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: Mike Sprague of JoBlo.com gave the film 7/10 stars, praising the film's action, improvement over the 2005 film, and called the film "watchable". William Bibbiani from Bloody Disgusting called the film "a modest, but effective sci-fi action thriller", calling it better than most game adaptations, stating, ""Doom: Annihilation" isn’t one of the bad ones." Phil Wheat of Nerdly said the film was one of the better game adaptations, praising the Easter eggs, characters, ideas over the 2005 film, and directing. Christopher Cross of Goomba Stomp called the film a "solid B-movie" and an "utter delight", said the story and characters were "wooden and lifeless", but praised the film's use of practical effects and its improvements over the 2005 film. John Noonan from Horror News called the film a "colossal waste of time", praising the Easter eggs but criticizing the lack of fun, scares, action, gore, and its slow pace.


title: Doom: Annihilation

text: In December 2018, months before its release, Giglio responded to a user on Twitter who asked if the "Barons of Hell" would make an appearance in the film, and stated that he might save them for the film's potential sequel.


title: Planarian

text: A planarian is one of the many flatworms of the traditional class Turbellaria. It usually describes free-living flatworms of the order Tricladida (triclads), although this common name is also used for a wide number of free-living platyhelminthes. Planaria are common to many parts of the world, living in both saltwater and freshwater ponds and rivers. Some species are terrestrial and are found under logs, in or on the soil, and on plants in humid areas.


title: Planarian

text: The triclads are characterized by triply branched intestine and anteriorly situated ovaries, next to the brain. Today the order Tricladida is split into three suborders, according to their phylogenetic relationships: Maricola, Cavernicola and Continenticola. Formerly, the Tricladida was split according to habitats: Maricola, which is marine; Paludicola which inhabits freshwater; and Terricola, which is land-dwelling.


title: Planarian

text: Planaria exhibit an extraordinary ability to regenerate lost body parts. For example, a planarian split lengthwise or crosswise will regenerate into two separate individuals. Some planarian species have two eye-spots (also known as ocelli) that can detect the intensity of light, while others have several eye-spots. The eye-spots act as photoreceptors and are used to move away from light sources. Planaria have three germ layers (ectoderm, mesoderm, and endoderm), and are acoelomate (they have a very solid body with no body cavity). They have a single-opening digestive tract; in Tricladida planarians this consists of one anterior branch and two posterior branches.


title: Planarian

text: Planarians move by beating cilia on the ventral dermis, allowing them to glide along on a film of mucus. Some also may move by undulations of the whole body by the contractions of muscles built into the body membrane.


title: Planarian

text: Triclads play an important role in watercourse ecosystems and are often very important as bio-indicators.


title: Planarian

text: The most frequently used planarian in high school and first-year college laboratories is the brownish "Girardia tigrina". Other common species used are the blackish "Planaria maculata" and "Girardia dorotocephala". Recently, however, the species "Schmidtea mediterranea" has emerged as the species of choice for modern molecular biological and genomic research due to its diploid chromosomes and the existence of both asexual and sexual strains. Recent genetic screens utilizing double-stranded RNA technology have uncovered 240 genes that affect regeneration in "S. mediterranea". Many of these genes have orthologs in the human genome.


title: Planarian

text: The planarian has very simple organ systems. The digestive system consists of a mouth, pharynx, and a gastrovascular cavity. The mouth is located in the middle of the underside of the body. Digestive enzymes are secreted from the mouth to begin external digestion. The pharynx connects the mouth to the gastrovascular cavity. This structure branches throughout the body allowing nutrients from food to reach all extremities. Planaria eat living or dead small animals that they suck up with their muscular mouths. Food passes from the mouth through the pharynx into the intestines where it is digested by the cells lining the intestines. Then its nutrients diffuse to the rest of the planaria.


title: Planarian

text: Planaria receive oxygen and release carbon dioxide by diffusion. The excretory system is made of many tubes with many flame cells and excretory pores on them. Also, flame cells remove unwanted liquids from the body by passing them through ducts which lead to excretory pores, where waste is released on the dorsal surface of the planarian.


title: Planarian

text: The triclads have an anterior end or head where sense organs, such as eyes and chemoreceptors, are usually found. Some species have auricles that protrude from the margins of the head. The auricles can contain chemical and mechanical sensory receptors.


title: Planarian

text: The number of eyes in the triclads is variable depending on the species. While many species have two eyes (e.g. "Dugesia" or "Microplana"), others have many more distributed along the body (e.g. most Geoplaninae). Sometimes, those species with two eyes may present smaller accessory or supernumerary eyes. The subterranean triclads are often eyeless or blind.


title: Planarian

text: The body of the triclads is covered by a ciliated epidermis that contains rhabdites. Between the epidermis and the gastrodermis there is a parenchymatous tissue or mesenchyme.


title: Planarian

text: The head of the planarian evolved through cephalisation; the planarian head has a ganglion under the eyespots. The cerebral ganglia, a bi-lobed mass of nerve tissue, is sometimes referred to as the planarian “brain” and has been shown to exhibit spontaneous electrophysiological oscillations, similar to the electroencephalographic (EEG) activity of other animals. From the ganglion there are two nerve cords which extend along the length of the tail. There are many transverse nerves connected to the nerve cords extending from the brain, which makes the nerve system look like a ladder. With a ladder-like nerve system, it is able to respond in a coordinated manner.


title: Planarian

text: The planarian has a soft, flat, wedge-shaped body that may be black, brown, blue, gray, or white. The blunt, triangular head has two ocelli (eyespots), pigmented areas that are sensitive to light. There are two auricles (earlike projections) at the base of the head, which are sensitive to touch and the presence of certain chemicals. The mouth is located in the middle of the underside of the body, which is covered with hairlike projections (cilia). There are no circulatory or respiratory systems; oxygen enters and carbon dioxide leaves the planarian's body by diffusing through the body wall.


title: Planarian

text: There are sexual and asexual planarian. Sexual planarian are hermaphrodites, possessing both testicles and ovaries. Thus, one of their gametes will combine with the gamete of another planarian. Each planarian transports its secretion to the other planarian, giving and receiving sperm. Eggs develop inside the body and are shed in capsules. Weeks later, the eggs hatch and grow into adults. In asexual reproduction, the planarian detaches its tail end and each half regrows the lost parts by regeneration, allowing endoblasts (adult stem cells) to divide and differentiate, thus resulting in two worms. Some researchers claim that the products derived from bisecting planarian are similar to the products of planarian asexual reproduction; however, debates about the nature of asexual reproduction in planaria and its effect on the population are ongoing. Some species of planarian are exclusively asexual, whereas some can reproduce both sexually and asexually. In most of the cases the sexual reproduction involve two individuals; auto fecundation has been rarely reported (e.g. in "Cura foremanii").


title: Planarian

text: The life history of planarians make them a model system for investigating a number of biological processes, many of which may have implications for human health and disease. Advances in molecular genetic technologies has made the study of gene function possible in these animals and scientists are studying them worldwide. Like other invertebrate model organisms, for example "C. elegans" and "D. melanogaster", the relative simplicity of planarians facilitates experimental study.


title: Planarian

text: Planarians have a number of cell types, tissues and simple organs that are homologous to our own cells, tissues and organs. However, regeneration has attracted the most attention. Thomas Hunt Morgan was responsible for some of the first systematic studies (that still underpin modern research) before the advent of molecular biology as a discipline.


title: Planarian

text: Planarians are also an emerging model organism for aging research. These animals have an apparently limitless regenerative capacity, and the asexual animals seem to maintain their telomerase levels throughout their lifetime, making them "effectively immortal".


title: Planarian

text: Planarian can be cut into pieces, and each piece can regenerate into a complete organism. Cells at the location of the wound site proliferate to form a blastema that will differentiate into new tissues and regenerate the missing parts of the piece of the cut planaria. It's this feature that gave them the famous designation of being "immortal under the edge of a knife." Very small pieces of the planarian, estimated to be as little as 1/279th of the organism it is cut from, can regenerate back into a complete organism over the course of a few weeks. New tissues can grow due to pluripotent stem cells that have the ability to create all the various cell types. These adult stem cells are called endoblasts, and comprise 20% or more of the cells in the adult animal. They are the only proliferating cells in the worm, and they differentiate into progeny that replace older cells. In addition, existing tissue is remodeled to restore symmetry and proportion of the new planaria that forms from a piece of a cut up organism.


title: Planarian

text: The organism itself does not have to be completely cut into separate pieces for the regeneration phenomenon to be witnessed. In fact, if the head of a planarian is cut in half down its center, and each side retained on the organism, it is possible for the planarian to regenerate two heads and continue to live. Researchers, including those from Tufts University in the U.S., sought to determine how microgravity and micro-geomagnetic fields would affect the growth and regeneration of planarian flatworms, "Dugesia japonica". They discovered that one of the amputated fragments sent to space regenerated into a double-headed worm. The majority of such amputated worms (95%) did not do so, however. An amputated worm regenerated into a double-head creature after spending five weeks aboard the International Space Station (ISS) – though regeneration of amputated worms as double-headed heteromorphosis is not a rare phenomenon unique to a microgravity environment. In contrast, two-headed planaria regenerates can be induced by exposing amputated fragments to electrical fields. Such exposure with opposite polarity can induce a planarian with 2 tails. Two-headed planaria regenerates can be induced by treating amputated fragments with pharmacological agents that alter levels of calcium, cyclic AMP, and protein kinase C activity in cells, as well as by genetic expression blocks (interference RNA) to the canonical Wnt/β-Catenin signalling pathway.


title: Planarian

text: In 1955, Robert Thompson and James V. McConnell conditioned planarian flatworms by pairing a bright light with an electric shock. After repeating this several times they took away the electric shock, and only exposed them to the bright light. The flatworms would react to the bright light as if they had been shocked. Thompson and McConnell found that if they cut the worm in two, and allowed both worms to regenerate each half would develop the light-shock reaction. In 1963, McConnell repeated the experiment, but instead of cutting the trained flatworms in two he ground them into small pieces and fed them to other flatworms. He reported that the flatworms learned to associate the bright light with a shock much faster than flatworms who had not been fed trained worms.


title: Planarian

text: This experiment intended to show that memory could be transferred chemically. The experiment was repeated with mice, fish, and rats, but it always failed to produce the same results. The perceived explanation was that rather than memory being transferred to the other animals, it was the hormones in the ingested ground animals that changed the behavior. McConnell believed that this was evidence of a chemical basis for memory, which he identified as memory RNA. McConnell's results are now attributed to observer bias. No blinded experiment has ever reproduced his results of planarians scrunching when exposed to light. Subsequent explanations of this scrunching behaviour associated with cannibalism of trained planarian worms were that the untrained flatworms were only following tracks left on the dirty glassware rather than absorbing the memory of their fodder.


title: Planarian

text: In 2012, Tal Shomrat and Michael Levin have shown that planarians exhibit evidence of long-term memory retrieval after regenerating a new head.


title: Lola Falana

text: Loletha Elayne Falana or Loletha Elaine Falana (born September 11, 1942), better known by her stage name Lola Falana, is an American singer, dancer, and actress.


title: Lola Falana

text: Lola Falana was born in Camden, New Jersey. She was the third of six children born to Bennett, a welder and Cleo Falana, a seamstress (1921–2010). Falana's father, an Afro-Cuban, left his homeland of Cuba to serve in the U.S. Marine Corps, later becoming a welder shortly after meeting Falana's mother, who was African-American. By the age of three, Falana was dancing, and by age five she was singing in the church choir. In 1952, Falana's family, which by this time included two more siblings, moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In the period she was in junior high school, Falana was already dancing in nightclubs to which she was escorted by her mother. Pursuing a musical career became so important to her that, against her parents' wishes, she dropped out of Germantown High School a few months before graduation and moved to New York City.


title: Lola Falana

text: In 1958, Falana's first dancing gig was at age sixteen during a Dinah Washington nightclub appearance in Philadelphia in which Washington gave her the opening act slot to perform. Washington, dubbed the "Queen of Blues", was influential in fostering Falana's early career. While dancing in a chorus line in Atlantic City, New Jersey, Falana was discovered by Sammy Davis Jr., who gave her a featured role in his 1964 Broadway musical "Golden Boy". After the musical, Falana launched her music career later in 1964. Her first single, "My Baby", was recorded and released for Mercury Records in 1965. Later in her career, she recorded under Frank Sinatra's record label. In the late 1960s, Falana was mentored by Sammy Davis, Jr.


title: Lola Falana

text: In 1966, Davis cast Falana, along with himself, Ossie Davis, and Cicely Tyson, in her first film role, in "A Man Called Adam". Falana became a major star of Italian television, from 1966, and cinema, beginning in 1967. In Italy she learned to speak fluent Italian while starring in three movies, the first of which was considered a Spaghetti Western. She was a showgirl for Saturday night main TV show "Sabato sera", next to acclaimed singer Mina. She was known as the "Black Venus". During this time she was busy touring with Davis as a singer and dancer, making films in Italy, and reprising her role in "Golden Boy" during its revival in London. In 1969, Falana ended her close working relationship with Sammy Davis Jr., though the two remained friends. "If I didn't break away," She told "TV Guide", "I would always be known as the little dancer with Sammy Davis Jr. ... I wanted to be known as something more." In 1970, she made her American film debut in "The Liberation of L.B. Jones" and was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for New Star Of The Year – Actress for her performance. That same year she posed for "Playboy" magazine. She was the first black woman to model for the Fabergé "Tigress" perfume ads. In those early years, she also starred in a few movies considered to be of the blaxploitation genre. She appeared at the Val Air Ballroom sponsored by Black Pride, Inc., in 1978.


title: Lola Falana

text: American TV audiences became familiar with Falana during the early 1970s. She often appeared on "The Joey Bishop Show" and "The Hollywood Palace", displaying her talent for music, dance, and light comedy. These appearances led to more opportunities. She was the first supporting player hired by Bill Cosby for his much-anticipated variety hour, "The New Bill Cosby Show", which made its debut on September 11, 1972 (her 30th birthday) on CBS. Cosby had met Falana in his college days, when he was a struggling comic and she was a 14-year-old dancing for $10 a show in Philadelphia nightclubs. Throughout the mid-1970s, Falana made guest appearances on many popular TV shows, including "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", "The Muppet Show", "Laugh-In" and "The Flip Wilson Show". She also starred in her own television specials. In 1975, Falana's disco record "There's A Man Out There Somewhere" reached #67 on the "Billboard" R&B chart. That same year, she returned to Broadway as the lead in the musical "Doctor Jazz". Although the production closed after just five performances, Falana was nominated for a Tony Award and won the 1975 Theater World Award.


title: Lola Falana

text: With help from Sammy Davis, Jr., she brought her act to Las Vegas and became a top draw there. By the late 1970s, Falana was considered the "Queen of Las Vegas". She played to sold-out crowds at The Sands, The Riviera, and the MGM Grand hotels. Finally The Aladdin offered her $100,000 a week to perform. At the time, Falana was the highest paid female performer in Las Vegas. Her show ran twenty weeks a year and became a major tourist attraction. While still playing to sold-out crowds in Las Vegas, Falana looked to other key TV roles, originally being slated to star in a remake of the 50s "Vampira Show". When this project collapsed she joined the cast of a short-lived CBS soap opera, "Capitol", as Charity Blake, a wealthy entertainment mogul.


title: Lola Falana

text: In 1995, Falana recorded the song "Don't Cry, Mary" with Catholic artist Joseph Lee Hooker. No longer performing, she now tours the country with a message of hope and spirituality. When not on tour, she lives a quiet life in Las Vegas working on the apostolate she founded, The Lambs of God Ministry. The ministry is focused on helping children who have been orphaned in Sub-Saharan Africa, and works closely with the group Save Sub-Saharan Orphans. Falana's last known musical performance was in 1997, at Wayne Newton's theater in Branson, Missouri.


title: Lola Falana

text: Sometime during 1965–1968, Lola Falana had an affair with her then-mentor Sammy Davis Jr., that became public knowledge after Davis confessed it to his then-wife May Britt, which led to their divorce in 1968. Falana was married to Feliciano "Butch" Tavares Jr., one of five brothers of the popular R&B and Soul vocal band Tavares in 1970, later divorcing in 1975.


title: Lola Falana

text: In 1987, Falana had a severe relapse of multiple sclerosis. Falana's left side was paralyzed, she became partially blind, and her voice and hearing were impaired. Her recovery lasted a year and a half, during which she spent most of her time praying. Falana attributes her recovery to a spiritual experience which she described as "Being able to feel the presence of the Lord". Falana converted to Roman Catholicism in 1988 and worked her newly found spirituality into her daily life. Though she performed again in Las Vegas shows in 1987, Falana's practice of religion and faith became the center of her life. After another bout with multiple sclerosis in 1996, Falana returned to Philadelphia and lived with her parents for a short time.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: He wanted to be a film crew member, but while in college, he passed the acting audition that his acquaintance encouraged him to take, and he became an actor.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: Nishijima made his debut in the contemporary detective television drama series "Hagure Keiji Junjōha" in 1992.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In 1993, Nishijima gained public recognition for his portrayal of a gay character in the massive hit television series "Asunaro Hakusho", which co-starred Takuya Kimura. Nishijima’s subtle performance and good looks in that series attracted attention.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In 1990s, Nishijima gained popularity as a young actor in television series, but left the major talent agency to become a film actor, and did not appear on commercial television from 1998 to 2002.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: Nishijima played his first leading role in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 1998 film "License to Live", and co-starred with Kōji Yakusho. He won the Best Actor award at the Japan Film Professional Awards for the film.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: Nishijima attracted attention again later, being selected by Takeshi Kitano for the lead role in "Dolls" in 2002. The film was a major turning point in his career.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In 2009, he was given the Best Supporting Actor award at the Yokohama Film Festival for his portrayal of a strange death row inmate in "Vacation".


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In the 2010s, he became one of the most popular actors in Japan, for his performances in hit television series, such as "General Rouge no Gaisen", "Strawberry Night", "Yae's Sakura", and "MOZU".


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In 2011, Nishijima had his first starring role alongside Korean actress Kim Tae-hee in the television series "Boku to Star no 99 Nichi", a romantic comedy drama about the romance between an actress and her bodyguard.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In Amir Naderi's 2011 film "Cut", he played the leading role, which was described by Chris Cabin of Slant Magazine as "the most convincingly pretentious and frustrated cinephile to ever be portrayed on film". His performance in the film was praised by Dan Fainaru of Screen International as "painfully memorable".


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: He also played the role of Kiro Honjo in Hayao Miyazaki's 2013 animated film "The Wind Rises" as a voice actor. His other voice work includes dubbing Colin Farrell in "Dumbo" and Detective Pikachu (Ryan Reynolds) in "Pokémon Detective Pikachu".


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: He was nominated for the Best Supporting Actor award at the Japanese Academy Awards in 2019 for his performance in "Samurai's Promise".


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In 2019, Nishijima starred in a television series "What Did You Eat Yesterday?", a drama about the daily lives of a middle-aged gay couple. The drama became very popular and was made into a hit film.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In 2021, he starred in Ryusuke Hamaguchi 's film "Drive My Car." His performance was highly acclaimed, with The New York Times selecting him as one of the "Great Performers / The Best Actors of 2021". He also won the National Society of Film Critics Award, the Boston Film Critics Circle Award, and the Japan Academy Award for Best Actor in a leading role for the film.


title: Hidetoshi Nishijima (actor)

text: In 2022, Nishijima portrayed the role of Kotaro Minami in the remake of 1987's Kamen Rider Black titled Kamen Rider Black Sun.


title: Garmr

text: In Norse mythology, Garmr or Garm (Old Norse: ; "rag") is a wolf or dog associated with both Hel and Ragnarök, and described as a blood-stained guardian of Hel's gate.


title: Garmr

text: The Old Norse name "Garmr" has been interpreted as meaning "rag." The etymology of the name remains uncertain. Bruce Lincoln brings together Garmr and the Greek mythological dog Cerberus, relating both names to a Proto-Indo-European root "*ger-" "to growl" (perhaps with the suffixes "-*m/*b" and "-*r"). However, Daniel Ogden notes that this analysis actually requires "Cerberus" and "Garmr" to be derived from two "different" Indo-European roots (*"ger-" and *"gher-" respectively), and in this opinion does not establish a relationship between the two names.


title: Garmr

text: After the first occurrence of this refrain the Fimbulvetr is related; the second occurrence is succeeded by the invasion the world of gods by jötnar; after the last occurrence, the rise of a new and better world is described.


title: Garmr

text: Although unnamed, this dog is normally assumed to be Garmr. Alternatively, Garmr is sometimes assumed to be identical to Fenrir. Garmr is sometimes seen as a hellhound, comparable to Cerberus.


title: Haute cuisine

text: Haute cuisine (; ) or grande cuisine is the cuisine of "high-level" establishments, gourmet restaurants, and luxury hotels. "Haute cuisine" is characterized by the meticulous preparation and careful presentation of food at a high price.


title: Haute cuisine

text: "Haute cuisine" represents the cooking and eating of carefully prepared food from regular and premium ingredients, prepared by specialists, and commissioned by those with the financial means to do so. It has had a long evolution through the monarchy and the bourgeoisie and their ability to explore and afford prepared dishes with exotic and varied flavors and looking like architectural wonders. "Haute cuisine" distinguished itself from regular French cuisine by what was cooked and served, by obtaining premium ingredients such as fruit out of season, and by using ingredients not typically found in France.