title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: 56% of those polled said that Russia should pay for the reconstruction of the Donbas, whereas 32% said Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts should pay. 59% of those polled said that they supported the government military operation in the Donbas, whereas 33% said that they opposed it. 73% of respondents said that the war in the Donbas was one of the three most important issues facing Ukraine.


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: A poll conducted by the same institute in 2017 showed that 80% of Ukrainians nationally and 73% of people from the Ukrainian-controlled areas of Donbas believed the separatist republics should remain as part of Ukraine. Around 60% of the people polled did not believe Ukraine was doing enough to regain the lost territories because of the Minsk agreements.


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: A joint poll done by Levada and the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology from September to October 2020 found that in the breakaway regions controlled by the DPR/LPR, over half of the respondents wanted to join Russia (either with or without some autonomous status) while less than one-tenth wanted independence and 12% wanted reintegration into Ukraine. It contrasted with respondents in Kyiv-controlled Donbas, where a vast majority felt the separatist regions should be returned to Ukraine. According to results from Levada in January 2022, roughly 70% of those in the breakaway regions said their territories should become part of Russia.


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: NATO said in July 2014 that it considered the conflict a war with Russian irregulars, and others considered it to be a war between Russian proxies and Ukraine. The International Committee of the Red Cross described the events in the Donbas region as a "non-international armed conflict" in July 2014. Some news agencies, such as the Information Telegraph Agency of Russia and Reuters, interpreted this statement as meaning that Ukraine was in a state of "civil war". Following the August 2014 invasion by Russian forces, in early September 2014, Amnesty International said that it considered the war to be "international", as opposed to "non-international".


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: Secretary General of Amnesty International Salil Shetty said that "satellite images, coupled with reports of Russian troops captured inside Ukraine and eyewitness accounts of Russian troops and military vehicles rolling across the border leave no doubt that this is now an international armed conflict". The conflict has also been classified as part of a "hybrid war" waged by Russia against Ukraine.


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: Until early 2015, the European Union tended to label the participants of the conflict as "foreign armed formations" or Russian-supported separatists. After the delivery of an IntCen classified report in January 2015, the official EU documents acknowledged the presence of the Russian military in the area and started openly referring to "Russian troops in Ukraine".


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: A 2015 paper released by the Royal United Services Institute and a 2017 report by the RAND Corporation document how the conflict evolved from a localised proxy conflict in its early stages to a hybrid war between Russian and Ukraine, and then to a limited conventional war with the August 2014 direct invasion by Russian troops.


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Oleksandr Turchynov said in June 2014 that he considered the conflict a direct war with Russia. According to Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, the war will be known in history of Ukraine as the "Patriotic War".


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: According to a VTSIOM survey taken in August 2014, 59% of the Russian citizens polled viewed the war in the Donbas as a civil war. Most of those polled said that direct war with Ukraine was either "absolutely impossible" or "extremely unlikely". 28% said that such a conflict could happen in the future.


title: War in Donbas (2014–2022)

text: In December 2021, the French newspaper "Le Monde" analyzed a shift in the Russian diplomatic label on the conflict. It was no longer about Ukraine membership in NATO, but about NATO expansion in Ukraine.


title: Lilliput (actor)

text: Lilliput is an Indian actor and writer for the TV series "Vikram Vetaal" and Bollywood films. His real name is M. M. Faruqui.


title: Lilliput (actor)

text: He adopted the screen name taking a cue from Lilliput and Blefuscu, two island nations in Jonathan Swift's novel "Gulliver's Travels" where Gulliver lands onto an island inhabited by little people.


title: Lilliput (actor)

text: He is best known for writing Doordarshan's popular science fiction series "Indradhanush" and acted in films such as "Bunty Aur Babli" (2005), "Saagar" (1985), and popular 90s sitcoms like "Dekh Bhai Dekh" , "Natkhat" and "Mr. Funtoosh", and for starring in "Woh" (1998) as Woh. He plays Dadda Tyagi in Famous web series Mirzapur Season 2. He made his Tamil film debut in Vijay starrer "Beast".


title: Got Milk?

text: Got Milk? (stylized as got milk?) is an American advertising campaign encouraging the consumption of milk and dairy products. Created by the advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners for the California Milk Processor Board in 1993, it was later licensed for use by milk processors and dairy farmers. Got Milk? launched in 1993 with the "Aaron Burr" television commercial, directed by Michael Bay. The national campaign, run by MilkPEP (Milk Processor Education Program) added the "got milk?" logo to its "Milk Mustache" ads beginning in 1995.


title: Got Milk?

text: In January 2014, MilkPEP discontinued its Milk Mustache and "got milk?" advertisements, and launched a new campaign with the tagline "Milk Life". The "got milk?" campaign continues in California and the "got milk?" trademark is being licensed to food and merchandise companies for U.S. and international sales. The campaign has led to increased milk sales in California, although not nationwide.


title: Got Milk?

text: The initial Got Milk? phrase was created by the American advertising agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners. In an interview in "Art & Copy", a 2009 documentary that focused on the origins of famous advertising slogans, Jeff Goodby and Rich Silverstein said that the phrase almost didn't turn into an advertising campaign. According to "The New York Times", people at Goodby Silverstein "thought it was lazy, not to mention grammatically incorrect".


title: Got Milk?

text: The advertisements would typically feature people in various situations involving dry or sticky foods and treats such as cakes and cookies. The people then would find themselves in an uncomfortable situation due to a full mouth and no milk to wash it down, including a commercial of a cruel businessman getting hit by a truck seconds after insulting someone over the phone and seemingly going to Heaven, only to find out it is actually Hell where he finds a huge plate of cookies and an endless supply of completely empty milk cartons, as well as a commercial of an airplane pilot intentionally putting his plane into a dangerously steep nosedive in order to obtain a bottle of milk from a flight attendant's cart out of his reach, only for the cart to crash into a man who gets out of the bathroom right in front of the cart. At the end of the commercial, the character would look directly to the camera sadly and then boldly displayed would be the words "Got Milk?" The print advertisements would feature food such as a sandwich, cookies, or cupcakes with a bite taken out of them or cats and children demanding milk.


title: Got Milk?

text: The first Got Milk? advertisement aired nationwide on October 29, 1993, which featured a hapless historian (played by Sean Whalen) receiving a call to answer a radio station's $10,000 trivia question (voiced by Rob Paulsen), "Who shot Alexander Hamilton in that famous duel?" (referring to the Burr–Hamilton duel). The man is shown to have an entire museum solely for the duel itself, packed with all the artifacts. He answers the question correctly by saying "Aaron Burr", but because his mouth is full of peanut butter sandwich and he does not have milk to wash it down, his answer is unintelligible. The DJ promptly hangs up on him. The ad, directed by Michael Bay, was at the top of the advertising industry's award circuit in 1994. In 2002, the ad was named one of the ten best commercials of all time by a "USA Today" poll and was run again nationwide that same year.


title: Got Milk?

text: The slogan "Got Milk?" was licensed to the National Milk Processor Education Program (MilkPEP) in 1995 to use on their celebrity print ads, which, since then, have included celebrities from the fields of sports, media, and entertainment, like Britney Spears, Beyoncé, Rihanna, Serena Williams and Venus Williams, as well as fictional characters from TV, video games, and films such as the Avengers, "The Simpsons", Batman, Mario, and "The Powerpuff Girls" posing in print advertisements sporting a "milk mustache" and employing the slogan, "Where's "your" mustache?" The milk mustache campaign was created by art director Bernie Hogya and copywriter Jennifer Gold. The milk mustache campaign promoting the Super Bowl has also been featured in "USA Today"; the Friday edition featured one player from each Super Bowl team to the player from the winning team in Monday's edition. It was not featured in 2014 as the advertising focus that year was on the "Protein Fight Club" campaign which promoted the importance of eating breakfast with milk and the "Refuel: Got Chocolate Milk" campaign.


title: Got Milk?

text: Former California Governor Gray Davis expressed his dislike for one commercial and asked if there was a way to remove it from the air. It featured two children who refuse to drink milk, because they believe milk is for babies. They tell their mother that their elderly next-door neighbor, Mr. Miller, never drinks milk. They see him going to use his wheelbarrow when suddenly his arms rip off because, having not consumed milk, his bones are weak and fragile. The children scream in horror and then frighteningly start imbibing every last drop of milk they have.


title: Got Milk?

text: From 1994 to 2005, ads appeared in California directed at Hispanic consumers, using the tagline "Familia, Amor y Leche" ("Family, Love and Milk"), created by Anita Santiago Advertising. In 2005, the Spanish-language campaign was awarded to ad agency Grupo Gallegos, who changed the tagline to “toma leche” or “drink milk”.


title: Got Milk?

text: According to the Got Milk? website, the campaign has over 90% awareness in the United States, and the tagline has been licensed to dairy boards across the nation since 1995. Got Milk? is a powerful property and has been licensed on a range of consumer goods, including Barbie dolls, Hot Wheels, baby and teen apparel, and kitchenware. The trademarked line has been widely parodied by groups championing a variety of causes. Many of these parodies use a lookalike rather than the actual persons used in the original Got Milk? advertisements. In 2005, the California Milk Processor Board created a "Got Ripped Off?" poster showcasing their top 100 favorite parodies of the slogan.


title: Got Milk?

text: The voice saying "Got Milk?" in most of the nationwide television commercials is that of veteran American voiceover actor Denny Delk. Other narrators have occasionally been used.


title: Got Milk?

text: In February 2014, MilkPEP announced that it would discontinue licensing the slogan for its advertising in favor of a new tagline named "Milk Life". Despite this, the California Milk Processor Board (the creators and owners of the trademark) continue to use it. As of 2016, the brand is used for a line of snack foods called Got Milk Snacks.


title: Got Milk?

text: The slogan is a snowclone, having appeared in numerous alternative versions on T-shirts and other advertisements. By 2007, the slogan had become an international icon, and the phrase has been parodied more than any other ad slogan.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: The fourth-generation Chevrolet Camaro is a pony car that was produced by American automobile manufacturer General Motors for the 1993 through 2002 model years. It was introduced on an updated F-body platform, but retained the same characteristic since the first-generation's introduction back in 1967; 2-doors, 2+2 seating, coupé (with optional T-top roof) or convertible bodystyles, rear-wheel drive, and a choice of OHV V6 and V8 engines. The Camaro was revised in 1998 with both exterior and engine changes. General Motors discontinued production of the fourth generation of the Camaro due to slow sales, a deteriorated sports coupé market, and plant overcapacity.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: The fourth generation of the Camaro was introduced in January 1993, as a 1993 model. The production was moved from GM's Van Nuys, California assembly plant to Sainte-Thérèse, Quebec, Canada from November 1992. The new design incorporated sheet moulding compound (SMC) made from chopped fiberglass and polyester resin for the roof, hatch, doors, and spoiler. Both the front and rear suspension design was improved over its predecessor. The base models were powered by a 3.4 L OHV V6 engine equipped with a 5-speed manual transmission as standard. The 4-speed 4L60 automatic transmission was optional. All models came with a red Chevrolet Bowtie on the grille. 1993 was the only year interior instruments had yellow lettering (this is one way to tell the 1993 models from the 1994 which had white interior instrument lettering).


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: The high performance Z28 model came with rectangular dual exhaust tips to distinguish it from the base models. The Z28 featured the 5.7 L OHV LT1 V8 engine having a power output of and of torque that had been introduced on the Corvette one year earlier. The V8 engine came standard with a 4-speed (4L60) automatic transmission, although the Borg-Warner T56 6-speed manual transmission was a no cost option. In 1993, the Camaro Z28 was selected as the official pace car for the Indianapolis 500. A special "pace car edition" trim was introduced in the same year and featured "Indy 500" lettering on black and white body color scheme with multicolored pinstriping and white painted wheels. 645 units were made.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: Several changes were made for the 1994 model year. The mechanically controlled and operated 4L60 automatic transmission was replaced with the electronically operated and controlled 4L60E, which was shared with other GM vehicles with V8s, such as the Tahoe. Accordingly, the car's on-board computer was modified from dealing only with the engine as in 1993 (ECM), to controlling both the engine and transmission on automatic models (PCM).


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: The computer in 1993 was run via Speed Density system, which measured engine speed (RPM) and load (MAP in kPa) to compute airflow requirements and then use that against the VE (Volumetric Efficiency) table to closely estimate the amount of fuel to be injected. An Intake Air Temperature (IAT) sensor was also used, as air density changes with temperature. In 1994 however, the computer logic was changed to a Mass Air Flow system. This system uses a Mass Air Flow Sensor placed in front of the throttle body to measure incoming airflow into the motor by using a heated wire sensor in the airstream path, which has heat pulled away from it via the incoming air. The reduced heat is converted into a voltage signal, read by the PCM which interprets that voltage signal as mass flow. The computer uses engine sensors to judge engine conditions and provide the proper fueling off of this mass airflow reading. Another prominent difference between 1993 and 1994 systems is how the programming (or custom tuning) of the computer takes place. In 1993, the computer used a removable Memcal chip essential to run the systems. In 1994, this was swapped to a non-removable reflashable chip, which could be reprogrammed via the Assembly Line Diagnostic Link (ALDL) located underneath the driver's side of the dashboard, next to the center console.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: Dashboard gauge graphics were changed from yellow to white. There was also a spot in the gauge cluster reading "ASR off". Although GM had intended to install ASR or Acceleration Slip Regulation (called "TCS" by Pontiac) in the 1994 F-body models, it did not make it into production until the following model year. The Z28 received updated front brakes and cooling fans were changed mid-year from a parallel to a series setup. At low RPM, both fans operated on 6 V, but on high RPM, both operated on 12 V. Performance figures for the Z28 include a 0–60 mph acceleration time of 5.7 seconds and quarter-mile times of 14.2 seconds.<ref name="1/4 mile times"></ref>


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: In 1995, the 3800 Series II V6 engine joined the 3.4 liter V6 engine offered on the base models thus giving the buyers a choice of two V6 engines for the first time. The 3800 engine had a power output of and would eventually replace the 3.4 liter V6 engine due to its more refined nature. The LT1 V8 had a power output of . The high performance variant of the Z28 called the Z28 SS was not introduced until 1996 in collaboration with SLP Engineering with the engine tuned to have a power output of . 17-inch wheels also became available as an option.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: 1996 saw minor mechanical revisions, as well as small power gains from the new OBD II-compliant engine controls. All base models were now equipped with the 3800 series II V6 engine rated at 200 hp. New wheel and tire package on the SS resulted in better handling and braking compared to the Z28. Convertible Super Sport cars however had 16-inch ZR1 style wheels. Also available this year for the V6 model was the Y87 package, which included an Auburn limited-slip differential, better tires, dual exhaust tips, 4-wheel disc brakes, a sportier steering ratio, and more aggressive gear ratio in the differential for automatic transmission equipped cars.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: For the 1997 model year, the Camaro featured a new interior and tri-colored taillights that would be standard on all models from 1997 to 2002. A "30th Anniversary Limited Edition" trim package, commemorating 30 years since the Camaro was introduced, was added to the range which included unique orange stripes on white base paint. It was only available on the Z28 and SS models. A 30th Anniversary Camaro may be identified by RPO code Z4C on the trim tag. A total of 979 30th Anniversary models were made in 1997. New 5-spoke 16-inch wheels became standard on the Z28 this year (17-inch ZR-1 style on SS coupé models) available in either polished, chrome, or white (only on the 30th Anniversary models), replacing the previous 10-spoke turbine style design.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: An additional 108 30th Anniversary models were modified by SLP Engineering equipment with the LT4 V8 engine having a power output of and of torque. 100 cars were allocated to the US market while 6 cars were sold to Canadian buyers. The remaining 2 were prototypes. These models have the R7T RPO code. The LT4 was the fastest factory-built Camaro available, as well as the most expensive at US$40,000.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: For the 1998 model year, the Camaro received a facelift and now had a new front clip. This replaced the quartet of square inset headlights. Replacing the LT1 engine was the all-new 5.7 L (346 cuin) LS1 V8 engine rated at , which had been introduced in the 1997 Corvette. The new engine featured an aluminum cylinder block with iron sleeves, reducing weight by about as compared to the iron block LT1 engine. 1998 was the only year LS1 powered models had a working coolant temperature gauge. Minor changes were made to the suspension and the brakes were increased in size. Total production for 1998 was 48,495 units in total.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: The 1999 model year saw only a few minor changes made to the Camaro. These included the introduction of new colors such as "Hugger Orange". The fuel tanks were now made of plastic with a 16.8 gallon capacity instead of preceding metal units which had a capacity of 15.5 gallons. The valve covers on the LS1 powered models were switched to a center-bolt style, and traction control now became available on the V6 models. A new "oil change" light was added to the instrument cluster as General Motors introduced their early oil-life monitoring systems. Coolant temperature gauges were replaced with a dummy gauge. A Torsen differential was added for the Z28 and SS models. 1999 was the last model year for the RPO 1LE performance option which included factory installed double adjustable Koni shocks, stiffer springs, a larger front and rear anti-roll bars, and stiffer suspension bushings.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: Changes for 2000 were also largely cosmetic in nature. Monterey Maroon Metallic was added as an optional color, similar to the previously available Medium Patriot Red. The SS, however, was not available in this color. The black exterior color was now renamed Ebony. Previously, all V8 powered models had side mirrors painted in this color. A new four-spoke steering wheel, as found in other GM models of the time, was introduced to replace the two-spoke steering wheel dating back to the 1993 models. New 10-spoke 16-inch wheels became available, but the older 5-spoke wheels were still optional. The base models came with 16-inch steel wheels with hubcaps. The 3.8 L (231 ci) V6 and the 5.7 L (346 ci) LS1 V8 engines continued with no changes.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: 2001 proved to be the lowest production year for the Camaro with 29,009 units built. This was partially due to production ending earlier than usual to begin work on the 35th Anniversary models commemorating 35 years of the Camaro. The Z28 and SS models received the intake manifold from the LS6 engine, used on the Z06 from 2001 to 2004 and the first generation of the Cadillac CTS-V from 2004 to 2005. This change also resulted in a revised camshaft profile and removal of the EGR system. Chevrolet also introduced a new slave cylinder for the clutch assembly that was superior to the design of previous years, as well as an LS6 clutch in manual models. Accordingly, the engine power output was increased to for the Z28 and for the SS which also added a power steering cooler. SLP Engineering reintroduced the RS model this year, which included rally stripes and stock cold air intake system along with the Z28 take-off exhaust from their SS conversions.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: The final fourth-generation Camaro was built on 27 August 2002 after which the Boisbriand plant, located in the province of Quebec just outside of Montreal then closed down. Total production for 2002 was 42,098 units.


title: Chevrolet Camaro (fourth generation)

text: GM's Performance Division unveiled a Z28 show vehicle at the 2002 Woodward Dream Cruise as a send off for the Camaro's 35-year heritage. It emulated the 1960s and 1970s Penske-Sunoco stock TransAm race team vehicles. The 35th Anniversary trim package was also available for the SS.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She has been nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, "The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection". Additionally, she has been named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends".


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution". During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers. Over subsequent decades, her works discussed social issues, human relationships, and hip hop. Poems such as "Knoxville, Tennessee" and "Nikki-Rosa" have been frequently re-published in anthologies and other collections.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni has received numerous awards and holds 27 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities. She has also been given the key to over two dozen cities. Giovanni has been honored with the NAACP Image Award seven times. One of her more unique honors was having a South America bat species, "Micronycteris giovanniae", named after her in 2007.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni is proud of her Appalachian roots and works to change the way the world views Appalachians and Affrilachians.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni has taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and was a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech until September 1st 2022. Following the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, she delivered a chant-poem at a memorial for the shooting victims.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Yolande Cornelia Sr. and Jones "Gus" Giovanni. Soon after her birth, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio where her parents worked at Glenview School. In 1948, the family moved to Wyoming, Ohio, and sometime in those first three years, Giovanni's sister, Gary, began calling her "Nikki." In 1958, Giovanni moved to Knoxville, TN to live with her grandparents and attend Austin High School. In 1960, she began her studies at her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, as an "Early Entrant", which meant that she could enroll in college without having finished high school first. She immediately clashed with the Dean of Women, Ann Cheatam, and was expelled after neglecting to obtain the required permission from the Dean to leave campus and travel home for Thanksgiving break. Giovanni moved back to Knoxville, where she worked at a Walgreens drug store and helped care for her nephew, Christopher. In 1964, Giovanni spoke with the new Dean of Women at Fisk University, Blanche McConnell Cowan ("Jackie"), who urged her to return to Fisk that fall. While at Fisk, Giovanni edited a student literary journal (titled "Élan"), reinstated the campus chapter of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), and published an essay in "Negro Digest" on gender questions in the Movement. In 1967, she graduated with honors with a B.A. degree in history.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Soon after graduation, she suffered the loss of her grandmother, Louvenia Watson, and turned to writing to cope with her death. These poems would later be included in her collection "Black Feelings, Black Talk". In 1968, Giovanni attended a semester at University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work toward an MSW and then moved to New York City. She briefly attended Columbia University School of the Arts toward an MFA in poetry and privately published "Black Feeling, Black Talk". In 1969, Giovanni began teaching at Livingston College of Rutgers University. She was an active member of the Black Arts Movement beginning in the late 1960s. In 1969, she gave birth to Thomas Watson Giovanni, her only child.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: After the birth of her son, Giovanni was accused of setting a bad example because there were not many single moms at that time. Giovanni noted that the birth of her son helped her to realize that children have different interests and require different content than adults. This realization lead her to write six children’s books.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: In 1970, she began making regular appearances on the television program "Soul!", an entertainment/variety/talk show that promoted black art and culture and allowed political expression. "Soul!" hosted important guests such as Muhammad Ali, James Baldwin, Jesse Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Gladys Knight, Miriam Makeba, and Stevie Wonder. (In addition to being a "regular" on the show, Giovanni for several years helped design and produce episodes.) She published multiple poetry anthologies, children's books, and released spoken word albums from 1973 to 1987.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Since 1987, she has taught writing and literature at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor. She has received the NAACP Image Award several times, received 20 honorary doctorates and various other awards, including the Rosa Parks and the Langston Hughes Award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters. She also holds the key to several different cities, including Dallas, Miami, New York City, and Los Angeles. She is a member of the Order of the Eastern Star (PHA), she has received the Life Membership and Scroll from the National Council of Negro Women, and is an Honorary Member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni was diagnosed with lung cancer in the early 1990s and underwent numerous surgeries. Her book "Blues: For All the Changes: New Poems", published in 1999, contains poems about nature and her battle with cancer. In 2002, Giovanni spoke in front of NASA about the need for African Americans to pursue space travel, and later published "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems", which dealt with similar themes.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: She has also been honored for her life and career by the HistoryMakers, along with being the first person to receive the Rosa L. Parks Women of Courage Award. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor from Dillard University in 2010. In 2015, Giovanni was named one of the Library of Virginia's "Virginia Women in History" for her contributions to poetry, education, and society.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni gave an extended interview to Bryan Knight's "Tell A Friend" Podcast where she gave an assessment of her life and legacy.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Seung-Hui Cho, a mass murderer who killed 32 people in the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16, 2007, was a student in one of Giovanni's poetry classes. Describing him as "mean" and "menacing", she approached the department chair to have Cho taken out of her class, and said she was willing to resign rather than continue teaching him. Cho was removed from her class in 2005. After the massacre, Giovanni stated that, upon hearing of the shooting, she immediately suspected that Cho might be the shooter.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni was asked by Virginia Tech president Charles Steger to give a convocation speech at the April 17 memorial service for the shooting victims (she was asked by Steger at 5:00 pm on the day of the shootings, giving her less than 24 hours to prepare the speech). She expressed that she usually feels very comfortable delivering speeches, but worried that her emotion would get the best of her. On April 17, 2007, at the Virginia Tech Convocation commemorating the April 16 massacre, Giovanni closed the ceremony with a chant poem, intoning:


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Her speech also sought to express the idea that really terrible things happen to good people: "I would call it, in terms of writing, in terms of poetry, it's a laundry list. Because all you're doing is: This is who we are, and this is what we think, and this is what we feel, and this is why - you know?... I just wanted to admit, you know, that we didn't deserve this, and nobody does. And so I wanted to link our tragedy, in every sense, you know - we're no different from anything else that has ..."


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: She thought that ending with a thrice-repeated "We will prevail" would be anti-climactic, and she wanted to connect back with the beginning, for balance. So, shortly before going onstage, she added a closing: "We are Virginia Tech." Her performance produced a sense of unity and received a fifty-four second standing ovation from the over-capacity audience in Cassell Coliseum, including then-President George W. Bush.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movements inspired her early poetry that was collected in "Black Feeling, Black Talk" (1968), which sold over ten thousand copies in its first year, in "Black Judgement" (1968), selling six thousand copies in three months, and in "Re: Creation" (1970). All three of these early works aided in establishing Giovanni as a new voice for African Americans.(30) In ""After Mecca": Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement", Cheryl Clarke cites Giovanni as a woman poet who became a significant part of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement. Giovanni is commonly praised as one of the best African-American poets emerging from the 1960s Black Power and Black Arts Movements. Her early poems that were collected in the late 1960s and early 1970s are seen as radical as and more militant than her later work. Her poetry is described as being "politically, spiritually, and socially aware". Evie Shockley describes Giovanni as "epitomizing the defiant, unapologetically political, unabashedly Afrocentric, BAM ethos". Her work is described as conveying "urgency in expressing the need for Black awareness, unity, [and] solidarity." Likewise, Giovanni’s early work has been considered to be "polemic" and "incendiary". Examples of poems in which she vehemently advocated for change include “The True Import of Present Dialogue Black vs. Negro” (1968), “Poem for Black Boys” (1968) and “A Litany for Peppe” (1970).


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Not only did Giovanni write about racial equality, but she also advocated for gender equality, as well. In fact, Odon states that “Giovanni’s realignment of female identity with sexuality is crucial to the burgeoning feminist movement within the black community." In the poem, “Revolutionary Dreams” (1970), Giovanni discusses gender and objectification. She writes, “Woman doing what a woman/Does when she’s natural/I would have a revolution” (lines 14-16) Another example of a poem that encourages sexual equality is “Woman Poem” (1968). In “Woman Poem,” Giovanni shows that the Black Arts Movement and racial pride were not as liberating for women as they were for men (Virginia Fowler, Introduction to the"Collected Works of Nikki Giovanni"). In “Woman Poem,” Giovanni describes how pretty women become sex objects “and no love/or love and no sex if you’re fat/get back fat black woman be a mother/grandmother strong thing but not woman.”


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni herself takes great pride in being a "Black American, a daughter, mother, and a Professor of English". Giovanni is also known for her use of African American Vernacular English. She has since written more than two dozen books, including volumes of poetry, illustrated children's books, and three collections of essays. Her work is said to speak to all ages, and she strives to make her work easily accessible and understood by both adults and children. (29) Her writing, heavily inspired by African-American activists and artists, also reflects the influences of issues of race, gender, sexuality, and the African-American family. Her book "Love Poems" (1997) was written in memory of Tupac Shakur, and she has stated that she would "rather be with the thugs than the people who are complaining about them." Additionally, in 2007 she wrote a children's picture book titled "Rosa", which centers on the life of Civil Rights leader Rosa Parks. In addition to this book reaching number three on the New York Best Seller list, it also received the Caldecott Honors Award, and its illustrator, Brian Collier, received the Coretta Scott King Award.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni's poetry reaches more readership through her active engagement with live audiences. She gave her first public reading at the New York City jazz spot, Birdland. Her public expression of “oppression, anger, and solidarity” as well as her political activism allow her to reach more than just the poetic circles. After the birth of her son in 1969, Giovanni recorded several of her poems with a musical backdrop of jazz and gospel. She began to travel all around the world and speak and read to a wider audience. Even though Giovanni's earlier works were known to carry a militant, revolutionary tone, Giovanni communicated "a global sense of solidarity amongst oppressed peoples in the world" in her travels. It is in this sense of human unity in which Giovanni aligns herself with the beliefs of Martin Luther King, Jr. Like King, Giovanni believes a unified, collective government must be made up of the everyday, ordinary citizen, regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender. In the 1970s and '80s her popularity as a speaker increased even more. In 1972 Giovanni interviewed Muhammad Ali on "Soul!"


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni is often interviewed regarding themes pertaining to her poetry such as gender and race. In an interview entitled "I am Black, Female, Polite", Peter Bailey questions her regarding the role of gender and race in the poetry she writes. Bailey specifically addresses the critically acclaimed poem "Nikki-Rosa," and questions whether it is reflective of the poet's own childhood and her experiences in her community. In the interview, Giovanni stresses that she did not like constantly reading the trope of the black family as a tragedy and that "Nikki-Rosa" demonstrates the experiences that she witnessed in her communities. For example, Giovanni writes about her happy childhood as: "Black love is Black wealth and they’ll/probably talk about my hard childhood/and never understand that/all the while I was quite happy" (lines 30-33)


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Specifically, the poem deals with black folk culture and touches on such gender, race, and social issues as alcoholism and domestic violence and not having an indoor bathroom.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni's poetry in the late 1960s and early 1970s addressed black womanhood and black manhood among other themes. In a book she co-wrote with James Baldwin entitled "A Dialogue", the two authors speak blatantly about the status of the black male in the household. Baldwin challenges Giovanni's opinion on the representation of black women as the "breadwinners" in the household. Baldwin states: "A man is not a woman. And whether he's wrong or right... Look, if we're living in the same house and you're my wife or my woman, I have to be responsible for that house." Conversely, Giovanni recognizes the black man's strength, whether or not he is "responsible" for the home or economically advantaged. The interview makes it clear that regardless of who is "responsible" for the home, the black woman and the black man should be dependent on one another. In a 1972 "Soul!" interview with Mohammed Ali, Giovanni uses her popularity as a speaker to a broader audience to read some of her essay "Gemini" from her book, "Gemini". In the excerpt from that essay, Giovanni intones, "we are born men and women...we need some happiness in our lives, some hope, some love...I really like to think a black, beautiful loving world is possible." Such themes appeared throughout her early poetry which focused on race and gender dynamics in the black community.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni tours nationwide and frequently speaks out against hate-motivated violence. At a 1999 Martin Luther King Day event, she recalled the 1998 murders of James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard: "What's the difference between dragging a black man behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, and beating a white boy to death in Wyoming because he's gay?"


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: "Those Who Ride the Night Winds" (1983) acknowledged black figures. Giovanni collected her essays in the 1988 volume "Sacred Cows ... and Other Edibles". Her more recent works include "Acolytes", a collection of 80 new poems, and "On My Journey Now". "Acolytes" is her first published volume since her 2003 "Collected Poems". The work is a celebration of love and recollection directed at friends and loved ones, and it recalls memories of nature, theater, and the glories of children. However, Giovanni's fiery persona still remains a constant undercurrent in "Acolytes", as some of the most serious verse links her own life struggles (being a black woman and a cancer survivor) to the wider frame of African-American history and the continual fight for equality.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni's collection "Bicycles: Love Poems" (2009) is a companion work to her 1997 "Love Poems". Both works touch on the deaths of her mother, her sister, and those massacred on the Virginia Tech campus. "Tragedy and trauma are the wheels" of the bicycle. The first poem ("Blacksburg Under Siege: 21 August 2006") and the last poem ("We Are Virginia Tech") reflect this. Giovanni chose the title of the collection as a metaphor for love itself, "because love requires trust and balance."


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: In "Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid" (2013), Giovanni describes falling off of a bike and her mother saying, "Come here, Nikki and I will pick you up." She has explained that it was comforting to hear her mother say this, and that "it took me the longest to realize – no, she made me get up myself." Chasing Utopia continues as a hybrid (poetry and prose) work about food as a metaphor and as a connection to the memory of her mother, sister, and grandmother. The theme of the work is love relationships.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: In 2004, Giovanni was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards for her album "The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection". This was a collection of poems that she read against the backdrop of gospel music.(29) She also featured on the track "Ego Trip by Nikki Giovanni" on Blackalicious's 2000 album "Nia". In November 2008, a song cycle of her poems, "Sounds That Shatter the Staleness in Lives" by Adam Hill, was premiered as part of the Soundscapes Chamber Music Series in Taos, New Mexico.


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: She was commissioned by National Public Radio's "All Things Considered" to create an inaugural poem for President Barack Obama. The poem, entitled “Roll Call: A Song of Celebration,” ends with the following enthusiastic, optimistic three lines: "Yes We Can/Yes We Can/Yes We Can."


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni was part of the 2016 Writer's Symposium by the Sea at Loma Nazarene University. The University of California Television (UCTV) published the readings of Giovanni at the symposium. In October 2017 Giovanni published her newest collection A Good Cry: What We Learn From Tears and Laughter. This collection includes poems that pay homage to the greatest influences on her life who have passed away, including close friend Maya Angelou who died in 2014. Giovanni often reads from her book. In one reading she shares her poem, “I Married My Mother.” In 2017, Giovanni presented at a TEDx event. Here she read the poem, “My Sister and Me.” She called her and her sister, “Two little chocolate girls.” After reading the poem she claims, "Sometimes you write a poem because damnit, you want to."


title: Nikki Giovanni

text: Giovanni's Big-Eared Bat, also known as "Micronycteris giovanniae," was named in her honor in 2007. The bat is found in western Ecuador and the naming was given "in recognition of her poetry and writings".


title: Parti Québécois

text: The Parti Québécois (; ; PQ) is a sovereignist and social democratic provincial political party in Quebec, Canada. The PQ advocates national sovereignty for Quebec involving independence of the province of Quebec from Canada and establishing a sovereign state. The PQ has also promoted the possibility of maintaining a loose political and economic sovereignty-association between Quebec and Canada. The party traditionally has support from the labour movement, but unlike most other social democratic parties, its ties with organized labour are informal. Members and supporters of the PQ are nicknamed "péquistes" (), a French word derived from the pronunciation of the party's initials in Quebec French.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The party is an associate member of COPPPAL. The party has strong informal ties to the Bloc Québécois (BQ, whose members are known as "Bloquistes"), the federal party that has also advocated for the secession of Quebec from Canada, but the two are not linked organizationally. As with its federal counterpart, the Parti Québécois has been supported by a wide range of voters in Quebec, from large sections of organized labour to more conservative rural voters.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The PQ is the result of the 1968 merger between former Quebec Liberal Party cabinet minister René Lévesque's Mouvement Souveraineté-Association and the Ralliement national. Following the creation of the PQ, the Rassemblement pour l'Indépendance Nationale held a general assembly that voted to dissolve the RIN. Its former members were invited to join the new Parti Québécois.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The PQ's primary goals were to obtain political, economic and social autonomy for the province of Quebec. Lévesque introduced the strategy of referendums early in the 1970s.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The PQ faced its first electoral test in the 1970 provincial election, winning seven seats. However, Lévesque was unable to get into the renamed National Assembly. Although it lost one seat in 1973, the decimation of the other parties, particularly the Union Nationale, allowed it to become the official opposition even though Lévesque was still unable to win a seat.


title: Parti Québécois

text: In the 1976 provincial election, the Parti Québécois won government for the first time, taking 71 of the 110 seats available. Lévesque became the Premier of Quebec. This provided cause for celebration among many French-speaking Quebecers, while it resulted in an acceleration of the migration of the province's Anglophone population and related economic activity toward Toronto.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The first PQ government was known as the "republic of professors" because of the large number of scholars in Lévesque's cabinet. The PQ was the first government to recognize the rights of Aboriginal peoples to self-determination, insofar as this self-determination did not affect the territorial integrity of Quebec. The PQ passed laws on public consultations and the financing of political parties, which ensured equal financing of political parties and limited contributions by individuals to $3000. However, the most prominent legacy of the PQ is the Charter of the French Language (Bill 101), a framework law which defines the linguistic primacy of French and seeks to make French the common public language of Quebec. It allowed the advancement of francophones towards management roles, until then largely out of their reach. Despite the fact that 85% of the population spoke French and most of them did not understand English, the language of management was English in most medium and large businesses. Critics, both Francophone and Anglophone, have however criticized the charter for restraining citizens' linguistic school choice, as it forbids immigrants and Quebecers of French descent from attending English-language schools funded by the state (private schools remained an option for those who could afford tuition). The Parti Québécois initiated the 1980 Quebec referendum seeking a mandate to begin negotiation for sovereignty-association. It was rejected by 60 per cent of voters.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The party was re-elected in the 1981 election, but in November 1984 it experienced the most severe internal crisis of its existence. Lévesque wanted to focus on governing Quebec rather than sovereignty, and also wanted to adopt a more conciliatory approach on constitutional issues. This angered the more ardent sovereigntists, known as the "purs et durs". Lévesque was forced to resign as a result. In September 1985, the party leadership election chose Pierre-Marc Johnson as his successor.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Despite its social-democratic past, the PQ failed to gain admission into the Socialist International, after the membership application was vetoed by the federal New Democratic Party.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The PQ led by Johnson was defeated by the Quebec Liberal Party in the 1985 election that saw Robert Bourassa return as premier. The Liberals served in office for two terms and attempted to negotiate a constitutional settlement with the rest of Canada but with the failure of the Meech Lake Accord and the Charlottetown Accord, two packages of proposed amendments to the Canadian constitution, the question of Quebec's status remained unresolved and the Quebec sovereignty movement revived.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The PQ returned to power under the leadership of hardline sovereigntist Jacques Parizeau in the 1994 Quebec election. This saw the PQ win 77 seats and 44% of the vote, on a promise to hold an independence referendum within a year. The following year, Parizeau called the 1995 Quebec referendum proposing negotiations on sovereignty. Again, the sovereigntists lost the vote. The final count showed 49.42% of voters supported negotiations that could eventually lead to sovereignty. On the night of the defeat, an emotionally drained Premier Parizeau stated that the loss was caused by "money and ethnic votes" (which led to accusations that Parizeau was racist) as well as by the divided votes amongst francophones. Parizeau resigned the next day (as he is alleged to have planned beforehand in case of a defeat).


title: Parti Québécois

text: Lucien Bouchard, a former member of Prime Minister Brian Mulroney's Cabinet and later founder of the Bloc Québécois, a federal-level sovereigntist party, succeeded Parizeau as PQ leader, but chose not to call another referendum due to the absence of "winning conditions". Bouchard's government then balanced the provincial budget – a feat achieved in Canada only by the federal government and a few of the ten Canadian provinces at that point – by reducing government spending, including social programs. The PQ was re-elected in the 1998 election, despite receiving fewer votes than the Quebec Liberal Party led by former federal deputy prime minister Jean Charest. Bouchard resigned in 2001, and was succeeded as PQ leader and Quebec Premier by Bernard Landry, a former PQ Finance minister. Under Landry's leadership, the party lost the 2003 election to Jean Charest's Liberals.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Mid-late 2004 was difficult for Landry's leadership, which was being contested. A vote was held during the party's June 2005 convention to determine whether Landry continued to have the confidence of the party membership. Landry said he wanted at least 80% of approval and after gaining 76.2% approval on the confidence vote from party membership on 4 June 2005, Landry announced his intention to resign.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Louise Harel had been chosen to replace him until a new leader, André Boisclair, was elected 15 November 2005, through the party's 2005 leadership election. At the time of Boisclair's election, the PQ was as much as 20 percent ahead of the Liberals in opinion polls, suggesting that Boisclair would lead them to a landslide majority government in the next election.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Progressives on the left wing of the PQ perceived a rightward move by the party towards neoliberalism under Bouchard, Landry and Boisclair. In 2006, a new left-wing party, Québec solidaire, was formed which included many activists who would have formerly been members or supporters of the PQ. Over subsequent elections, the QS would attract increasing support from left-wing sovereigntists disillusioned with the PQ, while on the right, the ADQ and later the Coalition Avenir Québec attracted the votes of right-wing and soft sovereigntists who eventually become Quebec autonomists and Canadian federalists while retaining their Quebec nationalist identities, resulting in the PQ being squeezed from both sides.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The PQ was unable to maintain the momentum it briefly had under Boisclair, and in the 2007 provincial election, the party fell to 36 seats and behind the conservative Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ) in number of seats and the popular vote: this is the first time since 1973 that the party did not form the government or Official Opposition. Boisclair said that the voters clearly did not support a strategy of a rapid referendum in the first mandate of a PQ government. Instead of a policy convention following the election, the party held a presidents' council. The party caucus in the provincial legislative assembly was said to have supported Boisclair continuing as leader.


title: Parti Québécois

text: On 8 May 2007 Boisclair announced his resignation as leader of the PQ. This was effective immediately, although Boisclair confirmed he would remain within the PQ caucus for the time being. He was replaced by veteran MNA François Gendron, pending a leadership race and convention.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Former Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe was the first to announce his intention to run for party leadership, on 11 May 2007. He was followed the same day by Pauline Marois. In a surprise move, Duceppe withdrew on the 12th – leaving Marois the only declared candidate. No other candidates came forward, and on 26 June 2007, Marois won the leadership by acclamation.


title: Parti Québécois

text: In June 2011, the party was shaken when three of its most prominent MNAs—popular actor Pierre Curzi, former cabinet minister Louise Beaudoin, and Lisette Lapointe, the wife of former premier Jacques Parizeau, followed the next day by a fourth, Jean-Martin Aussant, quit the party to sit as independents over Marois's support for a bill changing the law to permit an agreement between the City of Québec and Quebecor Inc. concerning the management of the new sports and entertainment complex in Quebec City. Unrest continued later in the month when a fifth MNA, Benoit Charette, also quit, citing his dissatisfaction with the party's sole focus being sovereignty. Beaudoin rejoined the PQ caucus in 2012.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The party won a minority government under Marois in the 2012 provincial election with 54 of 125 seats in the National Assembly. It embarked on a program of "sovereigntist governance" in relations with the rest of Canada, to return Quebec to balanced budgets through higher taxes and debt reduction, to increase the use of French in public services, and to address resource development in Northern Quebec. However the PQ's 'new Bill 101' did not pass. The centrepiece of the government's program was a Quebec Charter of Values which would have curtailed minority religious identity by banning the wearing of religious symbols by those in the employ of the government, particularly Sikh turbans, Muslim veils and Jewish kippahs.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Based on the charter's growing popularity among francophones, Marois called an early election for 7 April 2014 in an attempt to win a majority government. Despite leading in the polls when the writ was dropped, the campaign went badly due to several mishaps. The recruitment of star candidate Pierre Karl Péladeau, whose comments made sovereignty and the prospect of another referendum a focus of the campaign, as well as feminist Janette Bertrand suggesting that wealthy Muslim men were taking over swimming pools, among other incidents badly hurt the PQ. Marois' government was defeated by the Liberals, led by Philippe Couillard, in the 2014 provincial election which resulted in a Liberal majority government. The PQ won 25% of the vote and 30 seats, its worst result in terms of popular vote since 1970. Marois lost her own seat, and announced her intention to resign as PQ leader that night.


title: Parti Québécois

text: On 20 October 2014 Lévis by-election, PQ candidate Alexandre Bégin came in third place, with 8.28% of the popular vote, only narrowly beating Québec Solidaire.


title: Parti Québécois

text: On 27 November 2014, Pierre Karl Péladeau announced his intentions to run for PQ's leadership, joining Bernard Drainville, Martine Ouellet, Jean-François Lisée, Alexandre Cloutier, and Pierre Céré.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Despite a fiercely contested race, Péladeau was the frontrunner for much of the campaign, causing Jean-François Lisée to drop out in January 2015, Bernard Drainville to drop out on 22 April 2015, and Pierre Céré to follow Drainville only five days before the leadership election.


title: Parti Québécois

text: On 2 May 2016, Péladeau announced that he was retiring from politics to dedicate more time to his family.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Lisée charged Manon Massé with reneging in unsuccessful deliberations for a putative electoral alliance between the Parti Québécois and Québec Solidaire in 2017.


title: Parti Québécois

text: For the 2018 provincial election, the PQ ruled out holding a referendum on sovereignty until 2022 at the earliest. With the sovereignty issue taken off the table for the first time in almost half a century, the 2018 election unfolded in a historic way, being the first time in a half century a party other than the Parti Québécois or Liberals were elected to power, with a Coalition Avenir Québec majority win. It also marked, for the first time in 42 years, that the Parti Québécois failed to win a sufficient number of seats to maintain its official party status. With only 10 seats won, not only did it lose official status, but was relegated to third place (tied with Québec solidaire). The PQ was reduced to its smallest presence in the National Assembly since its first election in 1970. In this election the Parti Québécois only garnered 17% of the popular vote, the lowest score in party's history.


title: Parti Québécois

text: With few exceptions, its support bled to the CAQ, which took several ridings that had been in PQ hands for 40 years or more, by large margins in many cases. A number of longtime PQ supporters defected to the CAQ because they no longer believed sovereignty was a realistic goal. Notably, the party was completely shut out of Montreal for the first time in memory, including its traditional stronghold in the heavily francophone eastern portion. Historically, when the PQ won government, the eastern half of the Island of Montreal was coated light blue. Many younger sovereigntists defected to Québec Solidaire.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Leader Jean-François Lisée was defeated in his own riding and resigned thereafter, accepting the blame for his party's failure and collapse. After 50 years in the forefront of Quebec politics, the Parti Québécois had been pushed into marginal status. According to "The Globe and Mail," within hours of the results being known, there was speculation that the party's very survival was in doubt; there were concerns that it was no longer capable of attracting enough support "to justify its political usefulness". Christian Bourque of Montreal-based pollster Léger Marketing suggested that the PQ was likely finished in its present form, and would have to merge with another sovereigntist party to avoid fading into irrelevance. On 27 November 2018, the CAQ granted both the PQ and Québec Solidaire official status in the legislature, despite the parties being short on seats and percentage of the popular vote in order to qualify.


title: Parti Québécois

text: However, on 11 March 2019, Catherine Fournier, the current youngest MNA in the party and the province and the only PQ MNA from Greater Montreal, resigned from the Parti Québécois to sit as an independent, claiming the party had lost its way. At the same time, several members of the PQ's youth wing expressed concern that the party might not have a future. Fournier's defection dropped the party into fourth place, losing its standing as second opposition and potentially, losing their official party status once again.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The next leadership election occurred on 9 October 2020, with lawyer Paul St-Pierre Plamondon being elected as the tenth Parti Québécois leader.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The 2022 provincial election saw even further erosion and an unprecedented loss of support for the Parti Quebecois. Not only did the party once again not form government or the official opposition, but saw its lowest number of elected seats in the history of the PQ's existence–only 3 seats won (the previous lowest, the 1973 election, was six seats). Although new party leader Paul St-Pierre Plamondon managed to win his seat, the PQ lost its official party status and came in a distant fourth place. With just over 14% of the popular vote, it broke a new record low for the party, resulting in the PQ's smallest presence ever in the National Assembly. The movement of most voter support over to the CAQ and other nationalist parties put into question the party's relevance and its ability to survive in future.


title: Parti Québécois

text: On December 1, 2022, the PQ's 3 newly elected members were barred from the Quebec legislature following their refusal to swear an oath to the King, as required by the Constitution Act, 1867. In response, on December 9, 2022, the CAQ passed a bill abolishing the requirement, allowing the PQ into the legislature by early 2023, however its legality is being questioned.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The Bloc Québécois (BQ) is a federal political party founded in 1990 by former Progressive Conservative MP Lucien Bouchard. It has traditionally had close ties to the Parti Québécois and shares its principal objective of sovereignty. The two parties have frequently shared political candidates, and have supported each other during election campaigns. The two parties have a similar membership and voter base. Prominent members of either party often attend and speak at both organizations' public events. Gilles Duceppe, the former Bloc leader, is also the son of Jean Duceppe, a Quebec actor who helped found the PQ.


title: Parti Québécois

text: In June 2014, Mario Beaulieu, a former PQ riding president and Bloc candidate, was elected leader of the Bloc Québécois. Notwithstanding his previous ties to both parties, Beaulieu has been critical of what he sees as a too timid approach to sovereignty by both the Bloc and PQ. Beaulieu's election as Bloc leader was more warmly received by the PQ's rival party, Option nationale, than by the PQ.


title: Parti Québécois

text: In 2018, the "Montreal Gazette" reported on an investigation into two closed Facebook groups, whose stated aim is to bolster the PQ, by anti-racist activist Jeff Ray. Ray found that many participants, while supporters of the PQ, were also members of far-right groups like La Meute and Storm Alliance. This included "grassroots activists to aspiring candidates to officials on the executive council" on the PQ side, and "key personalities of the far right" on the other.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The party's distinctive logo was designed in 1968 by painter and poet Roland Giguère. It consists of a stylised letter Q, represented by a blue circle broken by a red arrow. The creator meant it as an allegory of the Parti Québécois breaking the circle of colonialism which he claimed Canada was imposing on Quebec and opening Quebec upon the world and the future. The PQ has made very few significant modifications to its logo during its history. In 1985 it made the circle and arrow slightly thicker, and placed the tip of the latter at the centre of the circle. The original saw it span the whole diameter. When placed upon a blue background instead of a white one, the circle was commonly turned to white, the single main design variation currently observed.


title: Parti Québécois

text: The party revealed a new logo on 21 February 2007, at the beginning of the 2007 provincial election campaign. While maintaining the basic style of past logos, the Q was redesigned and modernized. In addition, the tail of the Q was recoloured green.


title: Parti Québécois

text: This logo was replaced in 2021 with a new logo that incorporated the fleur-de-lis into the letter "Q".


title: Parti Québécois

text: The Parti Québécois centres on the protection of the Franco-Québécois identity, up to or including the ultimate result of sovereignty-association. Sovereigntism, however, is 'Article 1' in its party program.


title: Parti Québécois

text: After then-French President Nicolas Sarkozy rejected the long-standing "non-interference, non-indifference" stance towards Quebec should it seek sovereignty in 2009, PQ leader and Premier Pauline Marois' visit to France in October 2012 saw her reinstate it with French President François Hollande. Also during her visit, Marois commented that "Canada's current foreign policy corresponds to neither our values nor our interests".


title: Parti Québécois

text: The PQ delivered a brief to the reasonable accommodation commission on minorities, which conducted hearings across the province. The commission briefing looked to reformulate the relations between Quebec's francophone and minority populations. Its task was to be a platform for the PQ's protectionism of French.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Marois stated there is nothing dogmatic in Francophones wishing to declare their existence even if it includes developing legislation requiring newcomers to have a basic understanding of French before becoming citizens of Quebec. (Note that there are no official citizens of Quebec; residents of Quebec are citizens of Canada.)


title: Parti Québécois

text: Further to her desire to protect French in Quebec, during Marois' visit to France in October 2012, she recommended that the "French elite" conduct themselves only in French on the international scene. However, some of Marois' international critics scoffed at her pretension that the "French elite" were Québécois.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Marois stated the PQ understands the arrival of newcomers is attractive and they "contribute greatly" to Quebec's growth, but she stated that does not imply that to better assimilate them that "we must erase our own history."


title: Parti Québécois

text: As of 2014, the PQ electoral program describes the party's main commitment: "Aspiring to political liberty, the Parti Québécois has as its first objective to achieve the sovereignty of Quebec after consulting the population by a referendum to be held at the moment that the government judges appropriate."


title: Parti Québécois

text: Like the Coalition Avenir Québec, the PQ supported the Quebec ban on face covering but also argued the ban is not extensive enough.


title: Parti Québécois

text: These are the slogans used by the Parti Québécois in general election campaigns throughout its history. They are displayed with an unofficial translation. The elections in which the PQ won or remained in power are in bold.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Until 5 June 2005, the office of Leader of the Parti Québécois was known as President of the Parti Québécois.


title: Parti Québécois

text: When a Parti Québécois leader does not have a seat in the National Assembly, another member leads the party in the legislature.


title: Parti Québécois

text: Until 5 June 2005, the office of President of the Parti Québécois was known as First Vice-president of the Parti Québécois.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: The curse of dimensionality refers to various phenomena that arise when analyzing and organizing data in high-dimensional spaces that do not occur in low-dimensional settings such as the three-dimensional physical space of everyday experience. The expression was coined by Richard E. Bellman when considering problems in dynamic programming.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Dimensionally cursed phenomena occur in domains such as numerical analysis, sampling, combinatorics, machine learning, data mining and databases. The common theme of these problems is that when the dimensionality increases, the volume of the space increases so fast that the available data become sparse. In order to obtain a reliable result, the amount of data needed often grows exponentially with the dimensionality. Also, organizing and searching data often relies on detecting areas where objects form groups with similar properties; in high dimensional data, however, all objects appear to be sparse and dissimilar in many ways, which prevents common data organization strategies from being efficient.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: In some problems, each variable can take one of several discrete values, or the range of possible values is divided to give a finite number of possibilities. Taking the variables together, a huge number of combinations of values must be considered. This effect is also known as the combinatorial explosion. Even in the simplest case of formula_1 binary variables, the number of possible combinations already is formula_2, exponential in the dimensionality. Naively, each additional dimension doubles the effort needed to try all combinations.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: There is an exponential increase in volume associated with adding extra dimensions to a mathematical space. For example, 10 = 100 evenly spaced sample points suffice to sample a unit interval (a "1-dimensional cube") with no more than 10 = 0.01 distance between points; an equivalent sampling of a 10-dimensional unit hypercube with a lattice that has a spacing of 10 = 0.01 between adjacent points would require 10 = [(10)] sample points. In general, with a spacing distance of 10 the 10-dimensional hypercube appears to be a factor of 10 = [(10)/(10)] "larger" than the 1-dimensional hypercube, which is the unit interval. In the above example "n" = 2: when using a sampling distance of 0.01 the 10-dimensional hypercube appears to be 10 "larger" than the unit interval. This effect is a combination of the combinatorics problems above and the distance function problems explained below.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: When solving dynamic optimization problems by numerical backward induction, the objective function must be computed for each combination of values. This is a significant obstacle when the dimension of the "state variable" is large.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: In machine learning problems that involve learning a "state-of-nature" from a finite number of data samples in a high-dimensional feature space with each feature having a range of possible values, typically an enormous amount of training data is required to ensure that there are several samples with each combination of values. In an abstract sense, as the number of features or dimensions grows, the amount of data we need to generalize accurately grows exponentially.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: A typical rule of thumb is that there should be at least 5 training examples for each dimension in the representation. In machine learning and insofar as predictive performance is concerned, the curse of dimensionality is used interchangeably with the "peaking phenomenon", which is also known as "Hughes phenomenon". This phenomenon states that with a fixed number of training samples, the average (expected) predictive power of a classifier or regressor first increases as the number of dimensions or features used is increased but beyond a certain dimensionality it starts deteriorating instead of improving steadily.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Nevertheless, in the context of a "simple" classifier (linear discriminant analysis in the multivariate Gaussian model under the assumption of a common known covariance matrix) Zollanvari et al. showed both analytically and empirically that as long as the relative cumulative efficacy of an additional feature set (with respect to features that are already part of the classifier) is greater (or less) than the size of this additional feature set, the expected error of the classifier constructed using these additional features will be less (or greater) than the expected error of the classifier constructed without them. In other words, both the size of additional features and their (relative) cumulative discriminatory effect are important in observing a decrease or increase in the average predictive power.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Consider the first table, which depicts 200 individuals and 2000 genes (features) with a 1 or 0 denoting whether or not they have a genetic mutation in that gene. A data mining application to this data set may be finding the correlation between specific genetic mutations and creating a classification algorithm such as a decision tree to determine whether an individual has cancer or not.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: A common practice of data mining in this domain would be to create association rules between genetic mutations that lead to the development of cancers. To do this, one would have to loop through each genetic mutation of each individual and find other genetic mutations that occur over a desired threshold and create pairs. They would start with pairs of two, then three, then four until they result in an empty set of pairs. The complexity of this algorithm can lead to calculating all permutations of gene pairs for each individual or row. Given the formula for calculating the permutations of n items with a group size of r is: formula_3, calculating the number of three pair permutations of any given individual would be 7988004000 different pairs of genes to evaluate for each individual. The number of pairs created will grow by an order of factorial as the size of the pairs increase. The growth is depicted in the permutation table (see right).


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: As we can see from the permutation table above, one of the major problems data miners face regarding the curse of dimensionality is that the space of possible parameter values grows exponentially or factorially as the number of features in the data set grows. This problem critically affects both computational time and space when searching for associations or optimal features to consider.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Another problem data miners may face when dealing with too many features is the notion that the number of false predictions or classifications tend to increase as the number of features grow in the data set. In terms of the classification problem discussed above, keeping every data point could lead to a higher number of false positives and false negatives in the model.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: This may seem counter intuitive but consider the genetic mutation table from above, depicting all genetic mutations for each individual. Each genetic mutation, whether they correlate with cancer or not, will have some input or weight in the model that guides the decision-making process of the algorithm. There may be mutations that are outliers or ones that dominate the overall distribution of genetic mutations when in fact they do not correlate with cancer. These features may be working against one's model, making it more difficult to obtain optimal results.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: This problem is up to the data miner to solve, and there is no universal solution. The first step any data miner should take is to explore the data, in an attempt to gain an understanding of how it can be used to solve the problem. One must first understand what the data means, and what they are trying to discover before they can decide if anything must be removed from the data set. Then they can create or use a feature selection or dimensionality reduction algorithm to remove samples or features from the data set if they deem it necessary. One example of such methods is the interquartile range method, used to remove outliers in a data set by calculating the standard deviation of a feature or occurrence.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: When a measure such as a Euclidean distance is defined using many coordinates, there is little difference in the distances between different pairs of samples.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: One way to illustrate the "vastness" of high-dimensional Euclidean space is to compare the proportion of an inscribed hypersphere with radius formula_4 and dimension formula_1, to that of a hypercube with edges of length formula_6


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: The volume of such a sphere is formula_7, where formula_8 is the gamma function, while the volume of the cube is formula_9.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: As the dimension formula_1 of the space increases, the hypersphere becomes an insignificant volume relative to that of the hypercube. This can clearly be by comparing the proportions as the dimension formula_1 goes to infinity:


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Furthermore, the distance between the center and the corners is formula_14, which increases without bound for fixed r.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: In this sense when points are uniformly generated in a high-dimensional hypercube, almost all points are much farther than formula_4 units away from the centre. In high dimensions, the volume of the "d"-dimensional unit hypercube (with coordinates of the vertices formula_16) is concentrated near a sphere with the radius formula_17 for large dimension "d". Indeed, for each coordinate formula_18 the average value of formula_19 in the cube is


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Therefore, the squared distance from the origin, formula_23 has the average value "d"/3 and variance 4"d"/45. For large "d", distribution of formula_24 is close to the normal distribution with the mean 1/3 and the standard deviation formula_25 according to the central limit theorem. Thus, when uniformly generating points in high dimensions, both the "middle" of the hypercube, and the corners are empty, and all the volume is concentrated near the surface of a sphere of "intermediate" radius formula_26.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: This also helps to understand the chi-squared distribution. Indeed, the (non-central) chi-squared distribution associated to a random point in the interval [-1, 1] is the same as the distribution of the length-squared of a random point in the "d"-cube. By the law of large numbers, this distribution concentrates itself in a narrow band around "d" times the standard deviation squared (σ) of the original derivation. This illuminates the chi-squared distribution and also illustrates that most of the volume of the "d"-cube concentrates near the boundary of a sphere of radius formula_27.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: A further development of this phenomenon is as follows. Any fixed distribution on the real numbers induces a product distribution on points in formula_28. For any fixed "n", it turns out that the difference between the minimum and the maximum distance between a random reference point "Q" and a list of "n" random data points "P"...,"P" become indiscernible compared to the minimum distance:


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: This is often cited as distance functions losing their usefulness (for the nearest-neighbor criterion in feature-comparison algorithms, for example) in high dimensions. However, recent research has shown this to only hold in the artificial scenario when the one-dimensional distributions formula_30 are independent and identically distributed. When attributes are correlated, data can become easier and provide higher distance contrast and the signal-to-noise ratio was found to play an important role, thus feature selection should be used.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: More recently, it has been suggested that there may be a conceptual flaw in the argument that contrast-loss creates a curse in high dimensions. Machine learning can be understood as the problem of assigning instances to their respective generative process of origin, with class labels acting as symbolic representations of individual generative processes. The curse's derivation assumes all instances are independent, identical outcomes of a single high dimensional generative process. If there is only one generative process, there would exist only one (naturally occurring) class and machine learning would be conceptually ill-defined in both high and low dimensions. Thus, the traditional argument that contrast-loss creates a curse, may be fundamentally inappropriate. In addition, it has been shown that when the generative model is modified to accommodate multiple generative processes, contrast-loss can morph from a curse to a blessing, as it ensures that the nearest-neighbor of an instance is almost-surely its most closely related instance. From this perspective, contrast-loss makes high dimensional distances especially meaningful and not especially non-meaningful as is often argued.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: The effect complicates nearest neighbor search in high dimensional space. It is not possible to quickly reject candidates by using the difference in one coordinate as a lower bound for a distance based on all the dimensions.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: However, it has recently been observed that the mere number of dimensions does not necessarily result in difficulties, since "relevant" additional dimensions can also increase the contrast. In addition, for the resulting ranking it remains useful to discern close and far neighbors. Irrelevant ("noise") dimensions, however, reduce the contrast in the manner described above. In time series analysis, where the data are inherently high-dimensional, distance functions also work reliably as long as the signal-to-noise ratio is high enough.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Another effect of high dimensionality on distance functions concerns "k"-nearest neighbor ("k"-NN) graphs constructed from a data set using a distance function. As the dimension increases, the indegree distribution of the "k"-NN digraph becomes skewed with a peak on the right because of the emergence of a disproportionate number of hubs, that is, data-points that appear in many more "k"-NN lists of other data-points than the average. This phenomenon can have a considerable impact on various techniques for classification (including the "k"-NN classifier), semi-supervised learning, and clustering, and it also affects information retrieval.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: In a 2012 survey, Zimek et al. identified the following problems when searching for anomalies in high-dimensional data:


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Many of the analyzed specialized methods tackle one or another of these problems, but there remain many open research questions.


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Surprisingly and despite the expected "curse of dimensionality" difficulties, common-sense heuristics based on the most straightforward methods "can yield results which are almost surely optimal" for high-dimensional problems. The term "blessing of dimensionality" was introduced in the late 1990s. Donoho in his "Millennium manifesto" clearly explained why the "blessing of dimensionality" will form a basis of future data mining. The effects of the blessing of dimensionality were discovered in many applications and found their foundation in the concentration of measure phenomena. One example of the blessing of dimensionality phenomenon is linear separability of a random point from a large finite random set with high probability even if this set is exponentially large: the number of elements in this random set can grow exponentially with dimension. Moreover, this linear functional can be selected in the form of the simplest linear Fisher discriminant. This separability theorem was proven for a wide class of probability distributions: general uniformly log-concave distributions, product distributions in a cube and many other families (reviewed recently in ).


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: "The blessing of dimensionality and the curse of dimensionality are two sides of the same coin." For example, the typical property of essentially high-dimensional probability distributions in a high-dimensional space is: the squared distance of random points to a selected point is, with high probability, close to the average (or median) squared distance. This property significantly simplifies the expected geometry of data and indexing of high-dimensional data (blessing), but, at the same time, it makes the similarity search in high dimensions difficult and even useless (curse).


title: Curse of dimensionality

text: Zimek et al. noted that while the typical formalizations of the curse of dimensionality affect i.i.d. data, having data that is separated in each attribute becomes easier even in high dimensions, and argued that the signal-to-noise ratio matters: data becomes easier with each attribute that adds signal, and harder with attributes that only add noise (irrelevant error) to the data. In particular for unsupervised data analysis this effect is known as swamping.


title: Reby Sky

text: Rebecca Victoria Hardy (née; Reyes; ; born August 6, 1986) is an American professional wrestler and model. She is best known for her recurring appearances with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling from 2014 to 2017.


title: Reby Sky

text: Hardy was born in Flushing, a neighborhood in the north central part of Queens, New York City. She is of Puerto Rican heritage. She has three older brothers and an older sister, Suzanne. Her father is a wrestling personality better known as "Señor Benjamin".


title: Reby Sky

text: Hardy began her career in modeling, performing nationally with the Amira Mor International Entertainment Company, a belly dance troupe, with whom she also made several belly dance instructional DVDs. In 2005, Hardy held a supporting role in the off-Broadway musical, "Secrets of the Desert". The show toured several off-Broadway venues, including the Duke Theatre on 42nd street in Times Square, and the DiCapo Opera House. Other notable venues Hardy has performed at Queens Theatre in the Park and New York City’s Radio City Music Hall, where she performed for The Beatles drummer, Ringo Starr. Reyes appeared in various television programs and music videos, including "Midnight Spike" (Spike TV), "Date Patrol", "Faking It" and "Más Maíz", a music video featuring N.O.R.E. and Fat Joe.


title: Reby Sky

text: Hardy appeared in a nude pictorial in "Playboy" magazine, "The Girls of Montauk', in July 2007, and as “Cyber Girl of the Week” in the July 2010 edition of the "Playboy Cyber Club". She was later named “Cyber Girl of the Month” for November 2010. Sky has also appeared in GQ, Esquire Magazine, Supermodels Unlimited, and STUFF. Rebecca was also interviewed in MTV’s True Life: I’m a Sports Fanatic, as the NY Giants Girl, airing on September 19, 2009. The show chronicled her involvement as a fan of the New York Football Giants. She sells a line of football fashion handbags via one of her websites, which also promotes her self-proclaimed NY Giants fanatic status as the NY Giants Girl. Hardy was named Miss Howard Stern TV for the month of December 2009 and was voted by Sirius Radio’s Howard Stern fans, as “Miss Howard TV of the Year 2009″. In 2013 Hardy starred in the film "Pro Wrestlers vs Zombies".


title: Reby Sky

text: In 2010, Hardy conducted interviews and commentary for the MTV2 program, "Lucha Libre USA: Masked Warriors", a show focusing on the transition of lucha libre and related organizations to the United States. On March 19, 2011, Hardy made her professional wrestling debut at a Lucha Libre USA show under the ring name "Rebecca Sky", where she teamed up with Nikki Corleone and ODB against Chrissy Cialis, Jacqueline Moore and Tigresa Caliente. On the June 18 episode of "LLUSA TV Tapings", Hardy teamed up with Chrissy Cialis and Vladimiro in a losing effort to Mini Park, Octagoncito and Pequeno Halloween in a mixed tag team match. In October, Hardy lost to Lady Luck in a lingerie match. She would return in 2012 during the second season, mainly teaming with Shane Helms in mixed tag team matches.


title: Reby Sky

text: She made her debut for the new women's promotion Shine Wrestling on the inaugural show, as a face against Jayme Jameson, in a winning effort. On August 17, Hardy began a rivalry with Jessicka Havok after being viciously attacked by Havok with a chair injuring her after losing to her in a match. On October 19, Hardy faced off against Kellie Skater in a singles match, in a winning effort.


title: Reby Sky

text: On January 11, Hardy was defeated by Havok after Matt Hardy threw the towel in to stop Havok's attack. On March 23, Hardy defeated Jessicka Havok in a Career vs. Respect match, causing Havok to shake Hardy's hand and respect her and ending the storyline rivalry between Hardy and Havok.


title: Reby Sky

text: On July 1, 2012, Hardy made her independent circuit debut at Extreme Air Wrestling where she teamed with Paul London and Brian Kendrick to defeat Miss Jackie and The World's Greatest Tag Team. In 2012, Sky took on Jayme Jameson for the NWA Mid-Atlantic Ladies Championship on two occasions and lost both times. On March 9, Hardy was part of an infamous triple threat match which included Brittney Savage and Spyra Andover and was mentioned by Botchamania. With being engaged to Matt Hardy, she has appeared at several OMEGA events which Hardy owns. Hardy debuted for promotion Family Wrestling Entertainment at "No Limits", where Hardy lost to Ivelisse Vélez.


title: Reby Sky

text: Hardy made appearances in Vendetta Pro Wrestling competing singles match defeating Tab Jackson, Hudson Envy and Amber O'Neal.


title: Reby Sky

text: In the year of 2014, Hardy appeared for TNA in May through the company's One Night Only PPV's mainly on Knockouts Knockdown 2 in a match against Velvet Sky in a winning effort also qualifying for the gauntlet match later that night. However, she was eliminated by Angelina Love.


title: Reby Sky

text: Hardy appeared for TNA again in late 2015 at Bound for Glory celebrating with real life husband, Matt Hardy after he won his match for the TNA World Heavyweight Championship. Sky returned to "Impact Wrestling" on January 5, 2016, and watched as Hardy was defeated by Ethan Carter III in the finals of the TNA World Title Series. On the January 19 episode of "Impact Wrestling", both herself and Hardy turned into villains after Tyrus helped Hardy defeat EC3 to capture the TNA World Heavyweight Championship.


title: Reby Sky

text: On the September 1 episode of "Impact Wrestling", The Hardys started a feud with Decay, involving her feuding with Decay's valet Rosemary, turning her into a face. On February 27, 2017, Hardy departed TNA, along with Matt and Jeff.


title: Reby Sky

text: On the March 12 episode of "Raw" it was announced that Hardy would make an appearance in the "Ultimate Deletion" match between her husband Matt and Bray Wyatt at the Hardy Compound. She also appeared the following week on "Raw".


title: Reby Sky

text: In 2008, Hardy was sentenced to probation, a fine, and community service for opposing an officer without violence when police stopped her vehicle because it had a broken taillight in 2007 in Florida.


title: Reby Sky

text: On October 5, 2013, she married fellow professional wrestler Matt Hardy. On June 23, 2015, they had their first child, a son. On June 8, 2017, Matt and Reby welcomed their second son. On December 4, 2019, Reby gave birth to their third son. On January 8, 2021, it was announced that they are expecting a fourth child. On July 11, 2021, Reby gave birth to their fourth child, a daughter.


title: Greek drachma

text: The drachma ( , ; pl. "drachmae" or "drachmas") was the currency used in Greece during several periods in its history:


title: Greek drachma

text: The name "drachma" is derived from the verb (, "(I) grasp"). It is believed that the same word with the meaning of "handful" or "handle" is found in Linear B tablets of the Mycenean Pylos. Initially a drachma was a fistful (a "grasp") of six "oboloí" or "obeloí" (metal sticks, literally "spits") used as a form of currency as early as 1100 BC and being a form of "bullion": bronze, copper, or iron ingots denominated by weight. A hoard of over 150 rod-shaped obeloi was uncovered at Heraion of Argos in Peloponnese. Six of them are displayed at the Numismatic Museum of Athens.


title: Greek drachma

text: It was the standard unit of silver coinage at most ancient Greek mints, and the name "obol" was used to describe a coin that was one-sixth of a drachma. The notion that "drachma" derived from the word for fistful was recorded by Herakleides of Pontos (387–312 BC) who was informed by the priests of Heraion that Pheidon, king of Argos, dedicated rod-shaped obeloi to Heraion. Similar information about Pheidon's obeloi was also recorded at the Parian Chronicle.


title: Greek drachma

text: Ancient Greek coins normally had distinctive names in daily use. The Athenian tetradrachm was called owl, the Aeginetic stater was called chelone, the Corinthian stater was called "hippos" (horse) and so on. Each city would mint its own and have them stamped with recognizable symbols of the city, known as badge in numismatics, along with suitable inscriptions, and they would often be referred to either by the name of the city or of the image depicted. The exact exchange value of each was determined by the quantity and quality of the metal, which reflected on the reputation of each mint.


title: Greek drachma

text: Among the Greek cities that used the drachma were: Abdera, Abydos, Alexandria, Aetna, Antioch, Athens, Chios, Cyzicus, Corinth, Ephesus, Eretria, Gela, Catana, Kos, Maronia, Naxos, Pella, Pergamum, Rhegion, Salamis, Smyrni, Sparta, Syracuse, Tarsus, Thasos, Tenedos, Troy and more.


title: Greek drachma

text: The 5th century BC Athenian tetradrachm ("four drachmae") coin was perhaps the most widely used coin in the Greek world prior to the time of Alexander the Great (along with the Corinthian stater). It featured the helmeted profile bust of Athena on the obverse (front) and an owl on the reverse (back). In daily use they were called "glaukes" (owls), hence the proverb , 'an owl to Athens', referring to something that was in plentiful supply, like 'coals to Newcastle'. The reverse is featured on the national side of the modern Greek 1 euro coin.


title: Greek drachma

text: Drachmae were minted on different weight standards at different Greek mints. The standard that came to be most commonly used was the Athenian or Attic one, which weighed a little over 4.3 grams.


title: Greek drachma

text: After Alexander's conquests, the name "drachma" was used in many of the Hellenistic kingdoms in the Middle East, including the Ptolemaic kingdom in Alexandria and the Parthian Empire based in what is modern-day Iran. The Arabic unit of currency known as "dirham" (), known from pre-Islamic times and afterwards, inherited its name from the drachma or didrachm (, 2 drachmae); the dirham is still the name of the official currencies of Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. The Armenian dram () also derives its name from the drachma.


title: Greek drachma

text: It is difficult to estimate comparative exchange rates with modern currency because the range of products produced by economies of centuries gone by were different from today, which makes purchasing power parity (PPP) calculations very difficult; however, some historians and economists have estimated that in the 5th century BC a drachma had a rough value of 25 U.S. dollars (in the year 1990 – equivalent to US$46.50 in 2015), whereas classical historians regularly say that in the heyday of ancient Greece (the fifth and fourth centuries) the daily wage for a skilled worker or a hoplite was one drachma, and for a heliast (juror) half a drachma since 425 BC.


title: Greek drachma

text: Modern commentators derived from Xenophon that half a drachma per day (360 days per year) would provide "a comfortable subsistence" for "the poor citizens" (for the head of a household in 355 BC). Earlier in 422 BC, we also see in Aristophanes ("Wasps", line 300–302) that the daily half-drachma of a juror is just enough for the daily subsistence of a family of three.


title: Greek drachma

text: A modern person might think of one drachma as the rough equivalent of a skilled worker's daily pay in the place where they live, which could be as low as US$1, or as high as $100, depending on the country.


title: Greek drachma

text: Fractions and multiples of the drachma were minted by many states, most notably in Ptolemaic Egypt, which minted large coins in gold, silver and bronze.


title: Greek drachma

text: Notable Ptolemaic coins included the gold "pentadrachm" and "octadrachm", and silver "tetradrachm", "decadrachm" and "pentakaidecadrachm". This was especially noteworthy as it would not be until the introduction of the Guldengroschen in 1486 that coins of substantial size (particularly in silver) would be minted in significant quantities.


title: Greek drachma

text: The weight of the silver drachma was approximately 4.3 grams or 0.15 ounces, although weights varied significantly from one city-state to another. It was divided into six obols of 0.72 grams, which were subdivided into four tetartemoria of 0.18 grams, one of the smallest coins ever struck, approximately 5–7 mm in diameter.


title: Greek drachma

text: Minae and talents were never actually minted: they represented weight measures used for commodities (e.g. grain) as well as metals like silver or gold. The New Testament mentions both didrachma and, by implication, tetradrachma in context of the Temple tax. Luke's Gospel includes a parable told by Jesus of a woman with 10 drachmae, who lost one and searched her home until she found it.


title: Greek drachma

text: The drachma was reintroduced in May 1832, shortly before the establishment of the Kingdom of Greece. It replaced the "phoenix" at par. The drachma was subdivided into 100 lepta.


title: Greek drachma

text: The first coinage consisted of copper denominations of 1λ, 2λ, 5λ and 10λ, silver denominations of ₯, ₯, ₯1 and ₯5 and a gold coin of ₯20. The drachma coin weighed 4.5 g and contained 90% silver, with the ₯20 coin containing 5.8 g of gold.