title: Ibrahim Ismail of Johor

text: In late 1992 to early 1993, Tunku Ibrahim also experienced fallouts of the Gomez Incident–in which his father and younger brother, Tunku Majid were accused of two separate but related incidences of assault which provoked a moral outrage nationwide and ultimately resulting in constitutional amendments allowing members of the royalty to be prosecuted for criminal wrongdoings. During that period of time, the press, which was supported by the Malaysian government, launched a series of vociferous press reports on the history of alleged incidences of royal wrongdoings, of which parliamentarians highlighted that Tunku Ibrahim had been convicted in at least two cases of assault in the 1980s. This included a victim who was allegedly assaulted by Tunku Ibrahim, Rahim Mohd Nor, who went so far as to describe his assault experience as an act of sadism by Tunku Ibrahim.


title: Ibrahim Ismail of Johor

text: In March 2005, a member of the Malaysian royalty allegedly assaulted a young woman by the name of Yasmin with whom he accused of two-timing him with another policeman. The victim's father, Mohd Yasin, later lodged a police report which alleged that the assault culprit was Tunku Ibrahim, the then Tunku Mahkota of Johor.


title: Ibrahim Ismail of Johor

text: In October 2005, a brawl occurred on Pulau Rawa after a Johor prince allegedly gatecrashed a wedding party. The prince ordered some guests off the island after a fight broke out when a woman refused to dance with one of the gatecrashers. The locals, who felt offended by the woman's attitude, went off but soon returned with golf clubs and weapons and started a fight. In the process, several people were injured and sent to hospital, while five others were arrested, including a 20-year-old prince from the Johor royal family. The names of the culprits were not released by the police, who chose to retain the confidentiality of the attackers. The Tunku Mahkota issued a press statement to urge the culprits to apologise to the affected guests.


title: Ibrahim Ismail of Johor

text: The following June, press reports leaked that Tunku Ibrahim had chalked RM26,700 worth of unpaid traffic fines since 2000, causing much embarrassment to the crown prince. A later report quoted him settling all the past fines with the traffic police.


title: Ibrahim Ismail of Johor

text: Tunku Ibrahim also spent lavishly on an unusual car plate number. For example, in May 2012, he spent RM520,000 to successfully bid for the car number plate WWW 1 for his red orange Satria Neo. In January 2014, he spent a record breaking RM748,000 on the car plate number W1N for his blue Suprima S. In July 2016, he also spent a record breaking RM836,660 on the car plate number F1 for his ruby red Proton Perdana.


title: Ibrahim Ismail of Johor

text: Although given a monthly allowance of RM27,000, Sultan Ibrahim had done some business dealings such as


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: Teamfight Tactics (TFT) is an auto battler game developed and published by Riot Games. The game is a spinoff of "League of Legends" and is based on "Dota Auto Chess", where players compete online against seven other opponents by building a team to be the last one standing. There are also multiple modes of the game which include: Normal, Ranked, HyperRoll and the most recent release, Double Up. While most of these modes are against seven other opponents, Double Up is a special game mode where players have a partner and the team plays against six other players who make up the three other teams. The game released as a "League of Legends" game mode for Microsoft Windows and macOS in June 2019 and as a standalone game for Android and iOS in March 2020, featuring cross-platform play between them.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: Based on "Dota Auto Chess", a mod for "Dota 2", the game centers around eight players who construct teams to fight one another and be the last player standing. The battlefield consists of hexagons, where players can strategically place units on the hexagons on their side of the game board between rounds. During each round, a short battle automatically commences, with two players matched randomly for that round, or else paired against computer-controlled enemies. In the rounds against computer-controlled enemies, each enemy has a chance to drop gold, units, or items that the player can use. Health lost from losing a round is calculated with a combination of set damage per round and how many units an opponent had still alive.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: The game consist of stages and rounds. Each stage consist of seven rounds with the exception of stage 1. Stage 1 consist of three rounds of computer-controlled enemies. On round four of each stage, there is a feature called the "Carousel", in which players have access to a free rotation of units with random equipped items to select from. During these shared rounds, the two players with the lowest health are able to choose their units first, followed by the next two players with the lowest health, and so on. If there are players with similar health points, the game will randomly choose the order. On the last round of each stage, players will face computer-controlled enemies.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: Players accumulate gold during rounds and can save it to build interest, which further increases their income per round. Players can also gain additional income per round by either winning multiple rounds in a row or losing multiple rounds in a row. With this gold, they can either reroll the five units automatically offered to them in their shop at the start of each round or purchase experience points to increase their level. The higher a player's level, the more units they can place on the board, which can also be augmented by certain items, and the higher the average rarity of units in the shop. Each unit is able to be upgraded if additional copies of the same unit are found in the shop or Shared Draft. Upgrading a champion increases their maximum health and attack damage.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: With some exceptions, units have a health bar and a mana bar. Taking damage from enemy attacks or abilities will lower a unit's health but increase a unit's mana. When a unit's health reaches zero, they are effectively removed from the round. When a unit's mana bar is full, they cast a unique ability. Some units may start the round with some percentage of their mana bar full, but units generally start the round with no mana.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: Synergies are activated by a team composition that makes use of one or multiple units with the same trait. Each unit has two or three traits and the effective combination of units will activate synergies that benefit the player. Synergies will usually fall into three categories: effects that strengthen allies, effects that weaken enemies, and miscellaneous effects. Each "set" of "Teamfight Tactics" corresponds to a unique unit pool, collection of synergies, and usable items.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: "Teamfight Tactics" periodically updates its unit roster. Every three months there is a partial rotation, referred by Riot Games developers as a mid-set update, rotating out traits and units which are problematic. As "Teamfight Tactics" is a game mode of "League of Legends", its patch numbering follows the same as its parent game rather than being labelled differently.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: "Teamfight Tactics" was based on "Dota Auto Chess", which in turn was inspired by Mahjong, where players pick up tiles and discard tiles in order to complete a hand by forming a pair and sets such as a sequence, or three or four identical tiles, while preventing other players to complete a hand. The game was released within the "League of Legends" client for Microsoft Windows and macOS on June 26, 2019, and as a standalone app for Android and iOS on March 19, 2020. By September 2019, the game had over 33million monthly players with 1.72 billion hours of accumulated game time.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: Similar to other free-to-play games from Riot, "Teamfight Tactics" monetization base around cosmetic consumptions. It has its own store separate from "League of Legends". The player's controllable avatar, called a "Little Legend", can be customized by buying new ones from the store. Those can be upgraded by buying from loot boxes called "Little Legend eggs" or through star shards that can either be bought in the store or earned from the season pass that lasts for the duration of the set. Since the release of the Chibi Champions, Riot has been refer to these avatars as Tacticians, though the term Little Legend is still commonly used. Note, however, Tactician had been a term to refer to players before that.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: Other than the controllable avatar, "Teamfight Tactics" also has skins for the player board where the combat between players is played. The boards can be bought directly or through bundles in the store. Boards also come with different prizes, while the cheap ones only change the model of the board, expensive ones are interactive and react to player achievement. Beside that, there is Boom, cosmetic that modify the damage particles of controllable avatar. All Booms released so far are rewards of Battle Pass.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: Besides Normal and Ranked game modes, Riot released a faster-paced game mode named "Hyper Roll" in April 2021, streamlining mechanics to decrease game time. Hyper roll gameplay differences include the following: Little Legends only carry 20 health and take 2 damage per fight lost for the first 4 stages, 4 damage from 5 to 7, and 8 damage from anything beyond, 75% increased movement speed, and the carousel is not part of the game. In early 2022, Riot made Double Up as a new game mode.


title: Teamfight Tactics

text: "Teamfight Tactics" is being supported by Riot Games post-launch, with regular balance updates to keep the game fair and entertaining, as well as Little Legend egg drops. The game also updates the game in a big way with "sets". Sets give players more incentive to play the game, changing synergies and introducing new ones, rotating various League of Legends champions into the roster, as well as dropping new season passes.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: Pedro Rafael Pierluisi Urrutia (born April 26, 1959) is a Puerto Rican politician and lawyer currently serving as governor of Puerto Rico. He has previously served as Secretary of Justice, Resident Commissioner, acting


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: Secretary of State, interim governor of Puerto Rico and as private attorney for Puerto Rico's fiscal oversight board under the Puerto Rico Oversight, Management, and Economic Stability Act.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: Pierluisi was born on April 26, 1959, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His parents are Jorge Pierluisi Díaz and Doris Urrutia. He attended Colegio Marista Guaynabo in Guaynabo, graduating in 1977. In 1981, he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in American History from Tulane University, and later earned a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School in 1984. He was President of the Puerto Rico Statehood Students Association chapter at Tulane University. During his studies at George Washington University, Pierluisi interned at the congressional office of then-Resident Commissioner of Puerto Rico Baltasar Corrada del Río.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: He practiced law in Puerto Rico from 1990 until 1993. In 1993, Governor Pedro Rossello nominated Pierluisi to serve as Puerto Rico's Secretary of Justice. His nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Puerto Rican legislature.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: On May 18, 2007, Pierluisi announced his candidacy for Resident Commissioner, Puerto Rico's sole delegate to the United States Congress in the November 2008 elections. He accompanied then current Resident Commissioner and gubernatorial candidate Luis Fortuño in the March 9, 2008 NPP primary ticket.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: Pierluisi is a member of the New Progressive Party in Puerto Rico which advocates statehood for the Island territory. While on Capitol Hill, Pierluisi caucused with the House Democratic Caucus.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: As Resident Commissioner, Pierluisi introduced H.R. 2499, which sought to provide for a plebiscite to be held in Puerto Rico to determine the island's ultimate political status. The bill was passed by the House of Representatives but did not receive a vote in the Senate, and lapsed following the sine die adjournment of the 111th Congress. In a separate bill, H.R. 870, Pierluisi sought to add Puerto Rico to Chapter 9 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code so that the island's government-owned corporations could file for bankruptcy — a privilege they do not enjoy due to the territory's exclusion from the code.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: In late July 2019 the embattled governor, Ricardo Rosselló, nominated Pierluisi to serve as Secretary of State of Puerto Rico. He was additionally sworn into the role as a recess appointment. Rosselló then summoned Puerto Rico's Legislative Assembly for them to issue their advice and consent. The House of Representatives approved his nomination 26–21. However, the following day, members of the Puerto Rican Senate announced that action on his nomination would not occur until August 1. When Rosselló resigned on August 2, he declared Pierluisi to be governor although he had not been confirmed by both the House and the Senate as secretary of state, and Pierluisi affirmed Rosselló's declaration. Pierluisi's accession to the governorship was challenged in the courts as being unconstitutional. On August 5, the Puerto Rico Senate filed a lawsuit against his appointment as governor by contending that unless he obtained the Senate's assent, his governorship was unconstitutional. Two days later, the Puerto Rico Supreme Court ruled that the law that enabled his swearing in was unconstitutional and ordered that the succession take place per Law 7 of 1952, as opposed to Law 7 of 2005.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: On August 16, 2020, Pierluisi won the PNP gubernatorial primary race against governor Wanda Vázquez Garced. With 75.6% of voting stations reporting, Pierluisi has won about 57.9% of the votes over Vazquez's 42.1%, clinching the nomination for New Progressive Party. On November 3, 2020, Pierluisi was elected as the Governor of Puerto Rico. He received approximately 32.9% of all the votes, distributed among 6 candidates that ran for office.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: On Saturday, January 2, 2021, Pierluisi took the oath of office. At 8:00 a.m., there was a private ceremony in which he took the oath from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Maite Oronoz Rodríguez. This was followed by a public ceremony on the northern side of the Capitol of Puerto Rico, where Pierluisi retook the oath of office publicly and gave his inaugural address.


title: Pedro Pierluisi

text: His first marriage was to María Eugenia Rojo, with whom he shares his four children. They divorced in the late 1990s. In 2019, after twelve years of marriage, he and his ex-wife María Elena Carrión divorced. The Governor is currently single. Pierluisi's father, Jorge Pierluisi, served as Secretary of Puerto Rico's Housing Department under Gov. Carlos Romero Barceló from 1977 to 1985. His brother, José Jaime Pierluisi, an economic adviser to then governor Pedro Rossello, was shot and killed during a carjacking in 1994.


title: Sydney Greenstreet

text: Sydney Hughes Greenstreet (December 27, 1879 – January 18, 1954) was a British-American actor. While he did not begin his career in films until the age of 61, he had a run of significant motion pictures in a Hollywood career lasting through the 1940s. He is best remembered for his Warner Bros. films with Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lorre, including "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), "Casablanca" (1942), and "Passage to Marseille" (1944). He portrayed Nero Wolfe on radio during 1950 and 1951. He became a United States citizen in 1925.


title: Sydney Greenstreet

text: Sidney Hughes Greenstreet was born on December 27, 1879, in Sandwich, Kent, the son of Ann (née Baker) and John Jarvis Greenstreet, a tanner. He had seven siblings. He left home at the age of 18 to make his fortune as a Ceylon tea planter, but drought forced him out of business. He began managing a brewery and, to escape boredom, took acting lessons.


title: Sydney Greenstreet

text: Greenstreet's stage debut was as a murderer in a 1902 production of a Sherlock Holmes story at the Marina Theatre, Ramsgate, Kent. He toured Britain with Ben Greet's Shakespearean company, and in 1905 made his New York City debut in "Everyman". He appeared in such plays as a revival of "As You Like It" (1914). He appeared in numerous plays in Britain and America, working through most of the 1930s with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne at the Theatre Guild. His stage roles ranged from musical comedy to Shakespeare, and years of such versatile acting on two continents led to many offers to appear in films. He refused until he was 61.


title: Sydney Greenstreet

text: In 1941, Greenstreet began working for Warner Bros. His debut film role was as Kasper Gutman ("The Fat Man") co-starring with Humphrey Bogart in "The Maltese Falcon". In "Casablanca" (1942), Greenstreet played crooked club owner Signor Ferrari (for which he received a salary of $3,750 per week—equivalent to $60,179.91 in 2020 dollars—for seven weeks' work). He also appeared in "Background to Danger" (1943), with George Raft; "Passage to Marseille" (1944), reuniting with "Casablanca" stars Bogart, Peter Lorre and Claude Rains; "The Mask of Dimitrios" (1944); "The Conspirators" (1944) with Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid; "Hollywood Canteen" (1944); "Conflict" (1945), again with Bogart; "Three Strangers" (1946); and "The Verdict" (1946). In the last two, and "The Mask of Dimitrios", he received top billing. He had dramatic roles, such as William Makepeace Thackeray in "Devotion" (1946), and witty performances in screwball comedies, such as Alexander Yardley in "Christmas in Connecticut" (1944). Near the end of his film career, he played opposite Joan Crawford in "Flamingo Road" (1949).


title: Sydney Greenstreet

text: After little more than eight years, Greenstreet's film career ended with "Malaya" (also 1949), in which he was billed third, after Spencer Tracy and James Stewart. In those years, he worked with stars ranging from Clark Gable to Ava Gardner to Joan Crawford. Author Tennessee Williams wrote his one-act play "The Last of My Solid Gold Watches" with Greenstreet in mind, and dedicated it to him. During 1950–1951, Greenstreet played Nero Wolfe on the radio program "The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe", based loosely on the rotund detective genius created by Rex Stout.


title: Sydney Greenstreet

text: Greenstreet suffered from diabetes and Bright's disease, a kidney disorder. Five years after leaving films, he died in 1954 in Hollywood owing to complications from both conditions. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California, in the Utility Columbarium area of the Great Mausoleum, inaccessible to the public. He was survived by his only child, John Ogden Greenstreet (1920–2004), from his marriage to Dorothy Marie Ogden. Actor Mark Greenstreet is his great-nephew.


title: Li Xiannian

text: Li Xiannian (pronounced ; 23 June 1909 – 21 June 1992) was a Chinese Communist military and political leader, President of the People's Republic of China ("de jure" head of state) from 1983 to 1988 under Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping and then Chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference from 1988 until his death. He was a full member of the Politburo from 1956 to 1987, and of its Standing Committee from 1977 to 1987.


title: Li Xiannian

text: Li worked as an apprentice carpenter in his teenage years to support his family. He joined the Communist Party in December 1927 and became a soldier in the Chinese Red Army. After studying at the Military–Political University and the Central Party School, he became an influential and successful military commander during the Second Sino–Japanese War and the Chinese Civil War, distinguishing himself in the Huai–Hai Campaign. After the PRC was established, he served as Governor and Party Secretary of his native Hubei Province from 1949 to 1954, and then joined the central leadership in Beijing, serving as Minister of Finance (1954–1970) and Vice Premier (1954–1982). He supported Mao Zedong's designated successor, Hua Guofeng, and was named Vice Chairman of the Party (1977–1982).


title: Li Xiannian

text: One of the Eight Elders of the Communist Party, he was considered the most leftist among them, both politically and economically. Li played a key role in blocking privatizations and maintaining state control in many sectors of the economy, promoted classical Communist political and cultural values through his patronage of theorists such as Hu Qiaomu and Deng Liqun, and was instrumental in purging liberals Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. He enthusiastically advocated for the military suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests.


title: Li Xiannian

text: Born in Hong'an, Hubei, Li came from a poor family and spent his teenage years working at a carpenter's shop. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in December 1927, and served as an army captain and political commissar for the Chinese Red Army during the Long March. After arriving in Yan'an, he studied at the Counter-Japanese Military and Political University and at the Central Party School. He fought in both the Second Sino–Japanese War and the subsequent Chinese Civil War, especially in the Central Plains, and played a key role in many Communist victories, most significantly in the Huai–Hai Campaign.


title: Li Xiannian

text: After the Communists' victory in China, Li was appointed Governor and Party Secretary of his native Hubei Province from 1949 to 1954, and he also served as the commander and political commissar of the province's military garrison. Additionally, he was Vice Chairman of the PRC's Military Commission for South–Central China (overseeing military and public security forces in Guangdong, Hainan, Henan, Hubei and Hunan).


title: Li Xiannian

text: In 1954, Li joined the central leadership in Beijing and became China's Minister of Finance. He was also appointed Vice Premier for the entire period of 1954–1982. Despite losing his job as Finance Minister in 1970, during the Cultural Revolution, he nonetheless enjoyed Zhou Enlai's protection and was the only civilian official to serve without interruption alongside Zhou throughout the 1966–1976 Cultural Revolution decade. In 1976, Li played an instrumental role in destroying the Gang Of Four. After the demise of the Gang, Li was appointed Vice Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party and a member of the Central Military Commission.


title: Li Xiannian

text: When Chairman Hua Guofeng rose to leadership after the death of Mao Zedong, Li became Hua's chief economic adviser and one of his main backers, along with Generals Wang Dongxing and Chen Xilian. If Hua had been successful in his efforts to achieve supreme power, Li would have become one of the most powerful officials in China, but Li's political career stalled when Deng Xiaoping eclipsed Hua as China's "Paramount leader". For the rest of his career, Li complained that his own achievements during the brief Hua interregnum were not sufficiently recognized as the basis of the progress experienced in China during the 1980s.


title: Li Xiannian

text: Li was described as an "orthodox" or "Soviet-style" communist and was a firm believer in central planning and sociopolitical conformity, so disliked Deng Xiaoping's more radical economic reform ideas. He had in fact been largely responsible for drafting the short-lived Ten Year Plan of 1978 which attempted to build a Soviet-style economy based around heavy industry and energy production. Li's ideas enjoyed strong support among some sections of the Chinese top leadership; General Yu Qiuli and his "oil clique", for example, fully supported Li.


title: Li Xiannian

text: However, Deng quickly terminated these ideas and instituted his own "go slow" approach that involved gradually allowing the development of light industry and consumer goods. He also went about assigning government posts to younger men who were followers of his ideas. One of these was Premier Zhao Ziyang, whom Li strongly opposed for being too willing to import Western ideas and move away from a planned economy. According to Zhao, Li "hated me because I was implementing Deng Xiaoping's reforms, but since it was difficult for him to openly oppose Deng, he made me the target of his opposition."


title: Li Xiannian

text: In 1983, after the passing of a new Constitution, Li was appointed President of China at the age of 74. Although according to the 1982 Constitution the role of President was "largely ceremonial", it recognized Li's status as a respected Party elder and a member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, and Li himself went on to forcefully use his still very substantial influence to support leftist policies. In 1984, Li met with U.S. President Ronald Reagan during the latter's visit to China, notably discussing the status of Taiwan with the President. Li visited the United States in July 1985, the first time the head of state of the People's Republic of China made such a visit.


title: Li Xiannian

text: As the decade progressed, Deng Xiaoping, always an opponent of lifetime tenure in office, gradually convinced most of the party elders to retire. Li stepped down as president in 1988 and was succeeded by Yang Shangkun. Li was then named Chairman of the National Committee of the CPPCC. He was a strong supporter of Jiang Zemin's rise to power, and during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Li was one of the hardline Party elders who pushed for a strong response to the demonstrations and supported Premier Li Peng's desire to use military force to suppress the protests. Li continued to serve in government until his death in 1992.


title: Li Xiannian

text: Li had four children. His youngest daughter, Li Xiaolin, is the President of the Chinese People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries. She is a member of the CPPCC national committee.


title: Li Xiannian

text: Li died on 21 June 1992 at the age of 82, two days shy of his 83rd birthday. His funeral was held on 27 June 1992 and was attended by members of the Politburo Standing Committee. After the service, Li was cremated.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: Flags of the World (abbreviated FOTW or FotW) is an Internet-based vexillological association and resource. Its principal project is the Internet's largest website devoted to vexillology, containing comprehensive information about various flags, and an associated mailing list. The mailing list began as a discussion group in about September 1993, while the website was founded by Giuseppe Bottasini in late 1994, and Rob Raeside took over as director in 1998. Flags of the World became the 56th member of the FIAV in 2001.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: Flags of the World describes itself as "...an Internet group, the sole purpose of which is the advancement of the pursuit of vexillology, that is the creation and development of a body of knowledge about flags and flag usage of all types".


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: Both the website and the mailing list operate in the English language, though there are members from around the world and as such information from many languages is translated and included. The mailing list is monitored by the FOTW Listmaster, while work on the website is coordinated by the FOTW Editorial Director.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: An editorial staff of 21 unpaid volunteers manages and edits the FOTW website, which (as of 2013) contains more than 81,000 pages about flags and more than 179,000 images of flags, and also includes an extensive online dictionary of vexillology.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: The website is updated once a week with fresh material. Due to the high amount of material there is an editing backlog, causing some areas of FOTW to contain outdated information.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: By its own admission, the quality of the information published on the website varies greatly: it contains not only well-known and official flags, but also drawings and contributions based only on rumors, which are documented accordingly. The published contributions are explicitly declared as private opinions. FOTW declines any responsibility for the truthfulness and accuracy of the published information.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: The source for material on the FOTW website are contributions to the FOTW mailing list, which has over 1,000 members, of which some 100 are active contributors. The mailing list has notable minorities of Portuguese, French, Dutch, and Russian speakers. A staff of three unpaid volunteers manages and moderates the list.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: The FOTW website features sections on flags of different countries such as North Macedonia, which contains subsections about the proposed flags for the country, including documentation of the proposals made by The Flag Institute. Another documentation made by the website is about the Moroccan flag, which contains information about the symbols that were used by Morocco since the Almoravid dynasty. In 2016, the website had more than 9800 pages on flags with an estimated 18000 images.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: FOTW displays standardized flag images in GIF format, usually at a height of 216 pixels. While the GIF file format is capable of displaying 256 colours, the site's standard calls for a more restricted "FOTW palette" of 32 colours.


title: Flags of the World (website)

text: The organization's flag is a design by Mark Sensen, which was selected over 10 challengers in a poll of FOTW mailing list members and was adopted 8 March 1996. Since then, March 8 has been regarded as FOTW's Flag Day. Sensen described its symbolism:


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Lawrence Alan Kudlow (born August 20, 1947) is an American conservative television personality and financial program host for the Fox network who served as the Director of the National Economic Council during the Trump Administration from 2018 to 2021. He assumed that role after his previous employment as a CNBC television financial news host.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow began his career as a junior financial analyst at the New York Federal Reserve. He soon left government to work on Wall Street at Paine Webber and Bear Stearns as a financial analyst. In 1981, after previously volunteering and working for left-wing politicians and causes, Kudlow joined the administration of Ronald Reagan as associate director for economics and planning in the Office of Management and Budget.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: After leaving the Reagan Administration during the second term, Kudlow returned to Wall Street and Bear Stearns, serving as the firm's chief economist from 1987 until 1994. During this time, he also advised the gubernatorial campaign of Christine Todd Whitman on economic issues. In the late 1990s, after a publicized battle with cocaine and alcohol addiction, Kudlow left Wall Street to become an economic media commentatorfirst with "National Review", and later hosting several shows on CNBC.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow was born and raised in New Jersey, the son of Ruth (née Grodnick) and Irving Howard Kudlow. His family is Jewish. He attended The Elisabeth Morrow School in Englewood, New Jersey, until the sixth grade. He then attended the Dwight-Englewood School through high school.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: He graduated from the University of Rochester in Rochester, New York, with a bachelor's degree in history in 1969. Although he completed only an undergraduate degree (aside from his foreign policy coursework at Princeton), he claims that his particular history curriculum dealt heavily with themes in economics, especially trade policy.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In 1971, Kudlow enrolled in the master's program at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, but he left before completing his degree.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In 1970, while he was still a Democrat, Kudlow joined Americans for Democratic Action chair Joseph Duffey's "New Politics" senatorial campaign in Connecticut which also attracted an "A-list crowd of young Democrats", including Yale University law student Bill Clinton, John Podesta, and Michael Medved, another future conservative. Duffey was a leading anti-war politician during the Vietnam war era. Duffey's campaign manager called Kudlow a "brilliant organizer". In 1976, he worked on the U.S. Senate campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, along with Tim Russert, against Conservative Party incumbent James L. Buckley, brother of William F. Buckley, Jr.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow began his career as a staff economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, taking a position "as a junior economist in a job where a master's degree wasn't required". He worked in the division of the Fed that handled open market operations.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: During the first term of the Reagan administration (1981–1985), Kudlow was associate director for economics and planning in the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), a part of the Executive Office of the President. In April 2005, New York Governor George Pataki included Kudlow in a six-member state tax commission.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow's name was floated by Republicans as a potential Senate candidate in either Connecticut or New York in 2016. In October 2015, U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, in an email to supporters, attacked Kudlow as "a champion of big corporations and big money" despite Kudlow's not announcing a run. In early December 2015, Jack Fowler of "National Review" created a 527 organization that encouraged Kudlow to run.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In March 2018, Donald Trump appointed Kudlow to be Director of the National Economic Council, succeeding Gary Cohn. He assumed office on April 2, 2018.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: At the time, Kudlow said that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office was untrustworthy. He dismissed CBO's estimate that the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act would increase the deficit by $1.3 trillion, saying, "Never believe the CBO. Very important: Never believe them. They're always wrong, especially with regard to tax cuts, which they never score properly." Numerous studies of the tax plan, whether by non-partisan organizations, Wall Street analysts, or right-leaning research organizations, showed that the tax plan would increase the deficit. In July 2018, Kudlow supported his earlier opinion that the CBO is not credible when he asserted, "Even the CBO numbers show now that the entire $1.5 trillion tax cut is virtually paid for by higher revenues and better nominal GDP." The CBO later found that the tax cut reduced revenues and that the resulting deficits increased by $1.9 trillion after accounting for macroeconomic feedback.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Also in April, Kudlow alleged that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley had announced that the U.S. would soon sanction Russia due to "momentary confusion." After Haley contradicted Kudlow's claim, Kudlow called her to apologize.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In April 2018, Kudlow stated, "The trouble I had with the Obama [stimulus] program was it was all spending." However, about 35% of the stimulus was tax relief, including a $116 billion income tax cut.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: As Trump celebrated the five-month anniversary of the tax cut on June 29, 2018, Kudlow falsely asserted that the tax cut was generating such growth that "the deficit, which was one of the other criticisms, is coming down – and it's coming down rapidly." Kevin Hassett, chairman of Trump's Council of Economic Advisers, noted days earlier that the deficit was "skyrocketing", which is consistent with the analysis of every reputable budget analyst. Kudlow later asserted that he was referring to future deficits. Other budget forecasts indicated deficits in coming years would increase as a result of the Trump tax cut unless they were offset by major spending cuts. Barring such reductions, the CBO projected the tax cut would add $1.27 trillion to deficits over the next decade, even after considering any economic growth the tax cut might generate.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow asserted on June 29, 2018, that "capital investment, you know, for new jobs and better careers, [is] flowing in from all corners of the world", though foreign direct investment into America declined significantly during the two years through August 2019.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: On June 29, 2018, Kudlow stated, "This is now, the USA, according to the OECD, the hottest economy in the world." However, this was not a new phenomenon under the Trump presidency, as by 2015 the American GDP growth rate had been almost twice that of other industrialized countries since 2008, and by 2015 America had created as many jobs as all other industrialized countries combined since 2010. Kudlow also asserted: "They've been saying that all along, OK? We could never get to 3% growth... It couldn't be done, they say. It's being done." However, analysts have actually said that 3% "sustained" growth was unlikely, rather than "periodic" quarters of growth of 3% or more. From 2009 through 2016, GDP growth exceeded 3% in eight quarters – including 5.5% and 5.0% in consecutive quarters of 2014 – yet it did not sustain 3% or more for any full year. Although GDP exceeded 3% in two consecutive quarters of 2017, the average growth was 2.4% through Trump's first five quarters in office. The final figure for first quarter 2018 GDP growth was released the day before Kudlow spoke – coming in at 2.0%. Three months later GDP for the second quarter of 2018 was announced at an annual growth rate of 4.1%.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: On August 28, 2018, after Trump accused Google of rigging search results to show information biased against him, Kudlow told reporters, "We're taking a look at" regulating Google.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In November 2018, eleven months after the Trump tax cut, Kudlow stated, "The tax cut has paid for itself already barely through the first calendar year", although data released later showed that federal revenue had declined and that the deficit had increased during fiscal year 2018.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: During the 2018–2019 partial federal government shutdown, approximately 420,000 federal workers deemed "essential" were compelled to continue working without pay. On the 34th day of the shutdown, Kudlow asserted that such workers were "volunteering" to work for their love of the country and "presumably their allegiance to President Trump."


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In the summer of 2019, Kudlow twice asserted that the proposed United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement would increase GDP by half a percentage point and job creation by 180,000 per year after ratification. The International Trade Commission analysis that he was apparently referencing estimated that the Agreement would increase GDP by 0.35% and jobs by 176,000 six years following ratification. Another study by the Congressional Research Service found that the Agreement would not have a measurable effect on jobs, wages, or overall economic growth.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: On February 25, 2020, as a coronavirus pandemic was emerging as a global pandemic, Kudlow stated, "We have contained this, I won't say airtight but pretty close to airtight."


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In June 2020, amid the George Floyd protests against racism and police brutality, Kudlow said, "I don’t believe there is systemic racism in the U.S."


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In 1987, Kudlow was hired by Bear Stearns as its chief economist and senior managing director. Kudlow also served as an economic counsel to A. B. Laffer & Associates, the San Diego, California, company owned by Arthur Laffer, a major supply-side economist and promoter of the "Laffer Curve", an economic measure of the relationship between tax levels and government revenue. Kudlow was fired from Bear Stearns in the mid-1990s due to his cocaine addiction.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: He was a member of the board of directors of Empower America, a supply-side economics organization founded in 1993 and merged in 2004 with the Citizens for a Sound Economy to form FreedomWorks. Kudlow is also a founding member of the Board of Advisors for the Independent Institute and consulting chief economist for American Skandia Life Assurance, Inc., in Connecticut, a subsidiary of insurance giant Prudential Financial.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow became Economics Editor at "National Review Online" (NRO) in May 2001. In December 2007, NRO published a Kudlow article entitled "Bush Boom Continues", in which he asserted the economy would continue to expand for years to come. The Great Recession, the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, began that month.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow served as one in a rotating set of hosts on the CNBC show "America Now", which began airing in November 2001. In May 2002, the show was renamed "Kudlow & Cramer", and Kudlow and Jim Cramer became the permanent hosts. In January 2005, Cramer left to host his own show, "Mad Money", and the program's name was changed the next month to "Kudlow & Company". The program went on hiatus in October 2008, returned in January 2009 as "The Kudlow Report", and ended its run on CNBC in March 2014.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow is also a regular guest on "Squawk Box". He has contributed to CNBC.com on MSN. Starting in 2004, he also appeared on "The John Batchelor Show" as a co-host on Tuesdays and as a substitute, until he left to become an economics advisor to President Trump. In March 2006, Kudlow started to host a talk radio show on politics and economics on WABC as "The Larry Kudlow Show" aired on Saturday mornings from 10am to 1pm ET and via nationwide syndication in the US starting June 5, 2010.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: A self-described "Reagan supply-sider", Kudlow is known for his support for tax cuts and deregulation. He argues that reducing tax rates will encourage economic growth and ultimately increase tax revenue and, while acknowledging the limits of growth, that economic growth will clear deficits. According to "The Economist", Kudlow is "the quintessential member of the Republican Party's business wing". Kudlow has no formal economics qualifications.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In 1993, Kudlow said that Bill Clinton's tax increases would dampen economic growth. When the economy boomed in the late-1990s, Kudlow credited it to tax cuts and capital gains rate cut enacted during the Reagan administration (1981–1989).


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow was a strong advocate of George W. Bush's substantial tax cuts, and argued that the tax cuts would lead to an economic boom of equal magnitude. After the implementation of the Bush tax cuts, Kudlow said year after year that the economy was in the middle of a "Bush boom", and chastised other commentators for failing to realize it. Kudlow firmly denied that the United States would enter a recession in 2007, or that it was in the midst of a recession in early to mid-2008. In December 2007, he wrote: "The recession debate is over. It's not gonna happen. Time to move on. At a bare minimum, we are looking at Goldilocks 2.0. (And that's a minimum). The Bush boom is alive and well. It's finishing up its sixth splendid year with many more years to come".


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In a May 2008 column entitled "Bush's 'R' is for 'Right, Kudlow wrote: "President George W. Bush may turn out to be the top economic forecaster in the country". By July 2008, Kudlow continued to deny that the economy was looking poor, stating that "We are in a mental recession, not an actual recession." Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, creating a full-blown international banking crisis.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: As George W. Bush took office in January 2001, America was in the fourth consecutive fiscal year of federal budget surpluses and the CBO projected increasing surpluses in each year through 2010, totaling over $5 trillion. Days before Bush signed his tax cut plan in June, Kudlow predicted it would cause future budget surpluses to rise. Instead, there were budget deficits in every fiscal year of the Bush administration.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In their 2015 book "Superforecasting", University of Pennsylvania political scientist Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner refer to Kudlow as a "consistently wrong" pundit, and use Kudlow's long record of failed predictions to clarify common mistakes that poor forecasters make.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow supported free trade prior to his White House appointment. As recently as three weeks before taking office, he co-authored with Stephen Moore and Art Laffer an opinion piece entitled "Tariffs Are Taxes.", in which he argued against the proposed Trump tariffs. However, upon his appointment, he said that he was "in accord" with President Trump's steel and aluminum tariffs, apparently as a "negotiating tactic".


title: Larry Kudlow

text: On June 26, 2002, in a commentary in NRO titled "Taking Back the Market – By Force", Kudlow called for the United States to attack Iraq, saying Saddam Hussein had "weapons of mass destruction at his disposal" and that "a lack of decisive follow-through in the global war on terrorism is the single biggest problem facing the stock market and the nation today". In an open letter dated February 12, 2003, he endorsed George W. Bush's policies on economic growth and jobs.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In 2016, Kudlow endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump. He later defended Executive Order 13767, Trump's plan to build a wall along the Mexico–United States border, declaring it was necessary to prevent terrorists from entering the United States, the United States was at war with ISIS and Trump was going to do what was necessary to protect the country. He also penned an article for RealClearPolitics advocating for conservative unity in the election and asking his conservative peers to stop criticizing Trump and instead help him become a stronger candidate.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: After the 2018 G7 Summit in Charlevoix, Canada, he criticized Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a candid interview with CNN's Jake Tapper, saying that Trudeau had "stabbed us in the back".


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow has been married three times: In 1974, he married Nancy Ellen Gerstein, an editor in "The New Yorker" magazine's fiction department, with the marriage lasting about a year. In 1981, he married Susan (Cullman) Sicher, whose grandfather was businessman Joseph Cullman and whose great-grandfather was businessman Lyman G. Bloomingdale. The Washington wedding was presided over by U.S. District Judge John Sirica. In 1986, he married Judith "Judy" Pond, a painter and Montana native.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: In the mid-1990s, Kudlow left Bear Stearns and entered a 12-step program in order to deal with his addictions to cocaine and alcohol. He subsequently converted to Catholicism under the guidance of Father C. John McCloskey III.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: Kudlow is a member of the Catholic Advisory Board of the Ave Maria Mutual Funds. He served as a member of the Fordham University Board of Trustees and is on the advisory committee of the Kemp Institute at the Pepperdine University School of Public Policy.


title: Larry Kudlow

text: On June 11, 2018, Kudlow suffered what the White House referred to as a "very mild" heart attack. White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders stated that Kudlow had been admitted to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., and that he was "doing well" and expected a "full and speedy recovery". The incident took place on the same day President Trump was set to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un in Singapore for the American summit with North Korea. On June 13, Kudlow was discharged from the hospital.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The Deutsche Post AG, operating under the trade name Deutsche Post DHL Group, is a German multinational package delivery and supply chain management company headquartered in Bonn, Germany. It is one of the world's largest courier companies. The postal division delivers 61 million letters each day in Germany, making it Europe's largest such company. The Parcel division DHL is a wholly owned subsidiary claimed to be present in over 220 countries and territories.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The Deutsche Post is the successor to the German mail authority Deutsche Bundespost, which was privatized in 1995 and became a fully independent company in 2000. Since its privatization, Deutsche Post has significantly expanded its business area through acquisitions.


title: Deutsche Post

text: In late 2014, the group acquired StreetScooter GmbH, a small manufacturer of electric vehicles. Two years later, the group acquired UK Mail, a business-focused postal service in the UK for US$315.5 million (£243 million). The former company became a division of the Deutsche Post European parcel network.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The Deutsche Post DHL Group 2016 earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) was €3.491 billion (up 44.8 percent over 2015), with a net profit of €2.64 billion on revenue of €57.334 billion. Return on equity, before taxes, was 27.7 percent. The group's long term credit rating, in November 2016, was BBB+ with a Stable outlook per Fitch's.


title: Deutsche Post

text: Deutsche Post AG is listed on the Börse Frankfurt (Frankfurt Stock Exchange) as DPW and is in the Euro Stoxx 50 stock market index. In 2016, 20.5% of the group's shares were held by the state-owned KfW bank; 79.5% were freely floating: 65.6% held by institutional and 10.8% by private investors.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The Deutsche Post DHL Group has become a large, world-wide company in about two decades. The following are significant dates in the development into its current form.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The postal division delivers approximately 61 million letters every working day in Germany, and provides services across the entire mail value chain, including production facilities at central hubs, sales offices and production centers on four continents.


title: Deutsche Post

text: This division inherited most of the traditional mail services formerly offered by the state-owned monopoly, for which it uses the Deutsche Post brand. Its exclusive right to deliver letters under 50 grams in Germany expired on 1 January 2008, following the implementation of European legislation. A number of companies are vying to challenge Deutsche Post's near monopolistic hold on letter deliveries, including Luxembourg-based PIN Group and Dutch-owned TNT Post. In 2002, Deutsche Post was granted a license to deliver mail in the United Kingdom, breaking Royal Mail's long-standing monopoly.


title: Deutsche Post

text: In 2016, in Germany alone, the Post – eCommerce – Parcel (PeP) division delivered over 1.2 billion parcels, an increase of 9.3% over 2015, much of it as result of shipping products purchased by customers on-line. The e-commerce aspect helped to generate a great deal of revenue. This division's revenue increased by 4.1 percent to €16.8 billion while earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) increased by 30.8 percent to over €1.4 billion.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The DHL Express division offers worldwide courier, express and parcel shipment service, combining air and ground transport, under the DHL brand. It owns five airlines: European Air Transport Leipzig, DHL Air UK, DHL Aero Expreso, SNAS/DHL and Blue Dart Aviation.


title: Deutsche Post

text: In 2016, this division's revenue increased by 2.7 per cent to €14 billion. The operating profit before interest and taxes (EBIT) increased by 11.3% over 2015 to €1.5 billion.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The DHL Global Forwarding division carries goods by rail, road, air and sea under the DHL brand and includes the DHL Freight operation which runs a ground-based freight network covering Europe, Russia and traffic into the Middle East. In 2016, this division's revenue declined by 7.7 percent to €13.7 billion but operating profit before interest and taxes (EBIT) improved from -€181 million in 2015 to +€287 million.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The DHL Supply Chain division provides contract logistics and corporate information. In 2016, this division's revenue decreased by 11.6% to €14.0 billion versus 2015, but operating profit improved by 27.4% to €572 million.


title: Deutsche Post

text: In July, 2020, Deutsche Post DHL Group significantly increased earnings in Q2 2020 despite COVID-19. Operating profit (EBIT) improved by around 16% to around EUR 890 million.


title: Deutsche Post

text: In December 2014 Deutsche Post DHL Group purchased StreetScooter GmbH, a small manufacturer of electric vehicles in Aachen, Germany. By April 2016, the company announced that it would produce 2,000 of the StreetScooter Work model in Aachen by year end.


title: Deutsche Post

text: The Work vehicle is equipped with lithium-ion battery packs and is powered by 30 kW asynchronous electric motors. The peak/continuous output is stated as 48 kW/38 kW. The range (before the need to recharge) is said to be 50 to 80 km, depending on the weight of the load and traffic conditions. The load capacity is 710 kg.


title: Deutsche Post

text: Deutsche Post's 2016 annual report indicates that it plans to replace its fleet of delivery vehicles in Germany with the electric StreetScooter products "in the medium term". Electric vans and trucks with a much greater range will be required to achieve the very long-term goal of replacing the group's entire fleet of approximately 70,000 vehicles with electric StreetScooter vehicles.


title: Deutsche Post

text: A mass production plan was announced in April 2016. StreetScooter GmbH would be scaling up to manufacture approximately 10,000 vehicles annually, starting in 2017. If that goal is achieved, it would become the largest electric light utility vehicle manufacturer in Europe, surpassing Renault which makes vans such as the Kangoo Z.E.


title: Deutsche Post

text: In addition to producing vehicles for Deutsche Post and DHL Express, StreetScooter has made marketing contacts with "numerous industries". A management board member told the media in March 2017 that one potential customer is considering a "very, very large number" of StreetScooters. More specifics would be announced in the next few months. The long-term business plan will require other types of models, some much larger, with entirely different equipment. StreetScooter showed a larger prototype, the Work L, in September 2016 that will provide double the capacity in cargo size; its load capacity will be 1,000 kg. The range (before recharging is necessary) is estimated at "up to 100 km". The company also announced that it was developing a Work Orange model with an "electro-hydraulic three-way dumper" for use by businesses that deal in trash or construction material handling.


title: Deutsche Post

text: In 2021 plans for the sale of Streetscooter to Luxembourg-based Odin Automative, now B-ON, were reported.


title: Maara

text: Maara is a 2021 Indian Tamil-language adventure romantic drama film directed by Dhilip Kumar in his directorial debut, and produced by Prateek Chakravorty and Shruti Nallappa of Pramod Films. An adaptation of the 2015 Malayalam blockbuster movie "Charlie" by Martin Prakkat, the film stars R. Madhavan, Shraddha Srinath and Sshivada, reprising the roles played by Dulquer Salmaan, Parvathy Thiruvothu and Aparna Gopinath in the original counterpart.


title: Maara

text: Pramod Films acquired the remake rights in early 2016, after which it underwent series of casting and screenplay changes for two years. In June 2018, Dhilip Kumar was announced to direct the film, after Martin Prakkat (the director of the original film), and A. L. Vijay, opted out of the project. Filming commenced in June 2018, with sporadic schedules at Kochi and Pondicherry, before the shooting wrapped up within late 2020. The film's music is composed by Ghibran, with cinematography and editing were handled by Dinesh B. Krishnan, Karthik Muthukumar and Bhuvan Srinivasan respectively.


title: Maara

text: The film was scheduled for a direct release, through over-the-top media services, after theatrical release plans failed to happen, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. Amazon Prime Video, which acquired the streaming rights of the film, premiered it on 8 January 2021.


title: Maara

text: Parvathy (Shraddha Srinath) a.k.a Paaru, is a restoration architect who comes to a small coastal village in Kerala for a project, while avoiding a marriage set-up back home. She finds a fairy-tale she had heard long ago as a child painted across the village. With the help of her friend, she ends up renting a house, filled messily with art and artefacts. She learns that it belongs to an artist named Maara (R. Madhavan) who is responsible for the paintings across the village. Maara is a free spirit and traveller who is often away visiting various places and returning as he pleases. When she starts cleaning up the place, she finds Maara's photo and a sketchbook. The sketches depict the previous New Year's Eve when a small-time thief (Alexander Babu) tried to rob Maara. In a turn-of-events, Maara joins the thief, and they both go on the rooftop of a home with a plan to rob the place. There, they see a woman about to shoot herself. The sketchbook ends there, and the story is left unfinished, which piques Paaru's curiosity about the rest of the story, and Maara as a person.


title: Maara

text: Intrigued, Paaru starts finding the people in Maara's sketches. Backtracking his steps, she meets an antique dealer, Usman bhai, a “pirate”, Chokku and learns about Selvi (Abhirami), a physically abused woman that Maara had known. Maara and Chokku had taken Selvi out to sea for her birthday where after having an evening that alleviated her sorrows, Selvi committed suicide. Maara then ensures that her daughter, Rani is enrolled into a school. When Paaru gets news that Rani has gone missing from her school, she traces her back to her father's lodge. Meanwhile, Maara, who has returned to the village, tracks Rani down to the lodge and rescues her from her abuser. Paaru gets a glimpse of Maara but just misses an encounter with him.


title: Maara

text: One day, she meets the thief depicted in the sketches and enquires about that day's events. He informs her that Maara stopped the woman from shooting herself, and followed her when she started to run away from him. They find the house and finally identify the woman as Doctor Kani (Sshivada). Paaru then tracks her to a mountain village and enquires about her story. Kani explains that when she performed her first independent operation as a paediatrician, a surgical error led to the death of a 10-year-old girl. Further slandered by the media, she was desperate and about to commit suicide on New Year's Eve when she was by chance, stopped by Maara. Maara then brings her to his mountain village, maintained by Vellaiya (Moulee), his foster father, and she has since been living there. Vellaiya, a retired postmaster and a hopeless romantic, has been searching for his teenage love Meenakshi for nearly fifty years. Vellaiya constantly tells the story of acting out a play to convey his love to Meenakshi, and eventually losing her when a storm flooded his home village.


title: Maara

text: When Vellaiya shows Paaru a photo of Meenakshi, she notices that she has on the same pendant of a conch as her aunt, Mary, who is a nurse at a convent. She brings her Aunt Mary to the village on Vellaiya's birthday, realising that the plot of his play is the fairy-tale she had heard as a child from Aunt Mary - a story of an immortal soldier who spends years looking for his beloved mystical fish. An emotional Velliya, who has spent all his adult life travelling from place to place in search of Meenakshi, thanks Paaru for fulfilling Velliya's wish. Paaru, who has chased one story after another in an attempt to find Maara, finally meets him in person. They introduce themselves and hold hands as they watch the sun set.


title: Maara

text: Producers Prateek Chakravorty and Shruti Nallappa of Pramod Films acquired the Tamil remake rights of the Malayalam film "Charlie" (2015) by Martin Prakkat, in February 2016. The producers were initially keen to retain Parvathy Thiruvothu from the original version, and considered either Vijay Sethupathi, Sivakarthikeyan or Siddharth to play the titular role. In April 2016, R. Madhavan was signed on to play the lead role, while Prakkat agreed to also direct the Tamil version of the film. The director later opted out and A. L. Vijay was signed in June 2016 to helm the project, and agreed in principle to take up the project after the completion of his commitments on "Devi" (2016) and "Vanamagan" (2017).


title: Maara

text: In January 2017, actress Sai Pallavi signed on to play the leading female role, with the makers announcing that production would soon begin in Ooty and Pondicherry. Following several months of inactivity, director Vijay confirmed in June 2017, that he would be prioritising other projects and the adaptation of the film was indefinitely postponed. He opted to instead work on the bilingual drama "Karu" (2018) with the dates he had for Sai Pallavi, and completed an alternate project for Pramod Films, the dance film "Lakshmi" (2018).


title: Maara

text: In June 2018, Pramod Films announced that they would make the film under the title of "Maara" with director Dhilip Kumar (of "Kalki" fame) signed on to replace Vijay. Dhilip confirmed that the makers were keen to retain Madhavan for the film despite the change of crew, believing that only the actor had the "innate charm" meant for the character of the lead protagonist. Dhilip stated that the makers were initially apprehensive about casting Shraddha Srinath as the lead actress, as she had already been paired with Madhavan in "Vikram Vedha" (2017), but finalised her because "Maara" was in a different genre. The director also suggested that he felt both Madhavan and Shraddha shared the real-life characteristics of their on-screen roles. Ghibran was signed as the film's music composer, and cinematographers Dinesh Krishnan and Karthik Muthukumar, editor Bhuvan Srinivasan, Malayali art director Ajayan Challisery was also picked to join the crew.


title: Maara

text: The actors completed a week-long rehearsal before the start of shoot, with production beginning in Pondicherry on 18 June 2018. The film was subsequently put on hold and Madhavan later became busy with the production of his first directorial venture, "" (2020), meaning that there was a schedule break of over a year. In October 2019, production restarted in Kochi with child actor Minon and comedian Alexander Babu joining the cast. In June 2020, the film's production house Pramod Films, stated that 50% of the film's shooting was completed in March 2020, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in India. The makers subsequently planned to wrap the pending portions in a single stretch, adhering to the safety guidelines imposed by the government, to curb the COVID-19 spread. The film entered post-production in June 2020.


title: Maara

text: The film's music and background score were composed by Ghibran, with lyrics written by Thamarai. On 28 October 2020, Think Music India released the lyrical video of the first single "Yaar Azhaippadhu", sung by Sid Sriram. The second single "Oru Arai Unathu", sung by Yazin Nizar and Sanah Moidutty was released on 20 November 2020. The third single "Oh Azhage" sung by Benny Dayal, was released on 4 December 2020. The full album was released on 30 December 2020.


title: Maara

text: Vipin Nair of "Music Aloud" reviewed ""Maara" isn’t an exact remake of "Charlie", rather an adaptation with a few changes made to the original story. Perhaps the same reflects in the soundtrack as well – there aren’t a lot of songs in "Maara" that we equate to a song from Malayalam. Gopi Sundar's music was one of the key factors behind the immense success of "Charlie"; Ghibran therefore had big shoes to fill here, however, he shows a level of consistency that he has not done in quite a long time."


title: Maara

text: The film was scheduled to release directly through Amazon Prime Video, skipping theatrical release, as a result of theatres being shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India. On 9 October 2020, Amazon Prime announced the release date of 9 original films, which included "Maara" scheduled for a release on 17 December 2020. However, a new release date of 8 January 2021 was announced later.


title: Maara

text: The film opened with mixed-to-positive response from critics. M. Suganth, editor-in-chief of "The Times of India" gave 3 out of 5 stars stating "The additional focus on this track results in an increased running time, and also takes the spotlight away from the Paru-Maara romance, leading to an ending that doesn’t leave you on a high that the initial moments promised." Logesh Balachandran, writing for "India Today", gave 3 out of 5 and stated "Though it's difficult to recreate the magic of the original film "Charlie", Dhilip has managed to retain its essence and delivered a film that leaves a lasting impact." Film critic Shubham Kulkarni, writing for the website "Koimoi", gave 3 out of 5 stating "Maara is not for the ones who cannot have a bit suspension of disbelief. But if you have an imagination that can travel far, go for it. There are flaws and a lot of them, but there is a lot of hope too, let’s see at the greener side this time."


title: Maara

text: S. Srivatsan of "The Hindu" stated "From an aesthetic point of view, ‘Maara’ directed by Dhilip Kumar is beautifully-shot and works somewhat better than the Malayalam film ‘Charlie’, although its rigidity comes close to spoiling the otherwise pleasant and charming film." "Behindwoods" gave the film a rating of 2.75 out of 5 stating, "Maara is a feel-good emotional drama that is painted with a beautiful story." Film critic Haricharan Pudipeddi, writing for "Hindustan Times" stated "Maara isn’t a frame-by-frame copy, but it retains the magic of Charlie." Shubhra Gupta, editor-in-chief for "The Indian Express", gave 3 out of 5 stating, "Madhavan is appropriately loose-limbed and dishy as he ambles through the film, spreading grizzled, warm charm." Sudhir Srinivasan, gave 3 out of 5 stars for the film, in his review for "Cinema Express", stating "This film that contains within it several smaller stories, like it were a book of fairytales, is an appeal to recognise the magicality of our world and its people."


title: Maara

text: Ranjani Krishnakumar, writing for "Firstpost", gave 2.5 out of 5 stars stating "If you aren’t instinctively drawn to the mystical world that Maara and Paru occupy, or even find it desirable, the film is a drag. If you’re a hopeless, dreamy romantic at heart, you might find your longing fulfilled." Baradwaj Rangan of "Film Companion" stated "The beauty of this fable, based on Charlie, is how much of a love story it is, and yet how it’s not really the love story of the “hero” and the “heroine”." Gautaman Baskaran of "News18" gave 3 out of 5 and stated "A truly charismatic Madhavan and an unforgettable Srinath make Maara a great watch." Sowmya Rajendran of "The News Minute", gave 3.5 out of 5 stating "Madhavan as Maara, however, looks jaded, but Shraddha Srinath carries the film through with her charm." Indiaglitz gave the film 2.75 out of 5 stating "A breezy, heartwarming entertainer with good performances."


title: Kevin Olusola

text: Kevin Oluwole Olusola, also known as K.O., (born October 5, 1988) is an American singer-songwriter, beatboxer, and cellist. Olusola is best known as the beatboxer of the a cappella group Pentatonix. After the group won NBC's "The Sing-Off" in 2011, they released eleven albums, which have sold over 2 million records, and have amassed more than two billion views on their YouTube channel.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: Olusola has also been identified as developing the art of "celloboxing" (playing cello and beatboxing simultaneously). His celloboxing version of Mark Summer's "Julie-O" went viral in April 2011, which led him to become involved with Pentatonix. Olusola has performed at classical musical festivals such as the Amsterdam Cello Biennale and the Kronberg Academy Festival, opened the TED Conference in Vancouver, and was chosen by Quincy Jones to represent him in concert at the 2012 Montreux Jazz Festival on the same program as Bobby McFerrin and Chick Corea.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: Olusola was born in Owensboro, Kentucky, to Nigerian-born Oluwole Olusola, a psychiatrist, and Grenadian-born Curline Paul, a nurse. At that time, his father had just come from medical school in Nigeria and an internship in Trinidad and Tobago to Loma Linda University, where he met his wife while she was doing her MPH. After they married, they moved to Hershey, Pennsylvania (where Kevin's sister Candace was born) for a short period of time, and then to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, for his father to finish residency at Albert Einstein Medical Center (where Kevin's brother Kellon was born). Olusola started his education at Greater Philadelphia Junior Academy, but his family eventually moved to Owensboro, Kentucky, where he was raised. He attended the Triplett School, a Montessori-based school, for a short period of time before his parents transferred him to the Owensboro Public Schools, where he went to Sutton Elementary School for their accelerated math program that allowed him to take precalculus starting in the 9th grade. He decided to enroll at Phillips Academy Andover for 11th grade (upper year).


title: Kevin Olusola

text: Olusola says that Andover taught him to have a strong work ethic, tenacity, and discipline. He went from an average student to a high honors student in his senior year. He was involved in community service (directing a music program for elementary string students) and Spanish-speaking activities, where he led the Spanish language table and went to Costa Rica for four weeks to study Spanish. After graduating from Andover, Olusola chose to attend Yale University.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: At Yale, Olusola planned to pursue medicine and finished all his pre-med requirements. He started as an academic music major, but decided to switch to East Asian Studies after being introduced to China through a 10-day Chinese government sponsored trip for 100 Yale students. He lived in Beijing for 6 months through a PKU-Yale joint program during his second year, and then took a leave of absence during the 2009–2010 academic school year on Yale's Light Fellowship to study intensive Chinese at the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Study in Beijing. In school, Olusola was the Director of Communications for a Rhodes Scholar-led non-profit called College Outreach, and he worked as a book monitor in the Yale Law School library and as a practice room monitor at the Yale School of Music. He graduated from Yale in 2011.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: Olusola's parents discovered his musical talent when he was six months old and decided to put him in music lessons. He started the piano at age 4, the cello at age 6, and alto saxophone at age 10. He was heavily involved in music programs throughout grade school at Owensboro, Kentucky, in school and the community participating in jazz band, marching band, concert band, orchestra, and community youth orchestra. When Olusola was 12 years old, he was selected as the principal saxophonist of the United States Collegiate Wind Band and toured Europe during the summer for three weeks. He was also the principal cellist of the Kentucky State Youth Orchestra and received the highest honor at the Kentucky Governor's School for the Arts. He soloed and performed in a piano trio at Carnegie Hall as the winner of the American Fine Arts Festival, and soloed a second time on alto saxophone for PBS’s special "From the Top at Carnegie Hall".


title: Kevin Olusola

text: While at Yale, Olusola was one of the principal cellists of the Yale Symphony Orchestra and participated in chamber music. It was during his junior year when he started thinking about music as a career when, that previous summer in Beijing, he began working on "celloboxing". One of his teachers at a Harvard summer intensive Chinese program suggested that he should try combining the two abilities. He won runner-up in Yo-Yo Ma’s "Celebrate and Collaborate With Yo-Yo Ma" competition (Ma said Olusola's version of Dona Nobis Pacem was "inventive and unexpected") and opened for KRS-One at Southern Connecticut State University. Olusola says that, during that spring break, his pre-med mentor C. Brandon Ogbunu (who was an MD/PhD student at Yale at the time) helped him to make the decision to finally go into music, saying medicine would always be there. After a summer of neurobiology research at Yale, Olusola moved to Beijing for his academic year of Chinese study and continuously honed his celloboxing skills. He started uploading celloboxing covers to his YouTube channel and performed for Ambassador Jon Huntsman, Jr. at his residence, and on Beijing Television with Li Yu Gang and Chong’er (Chinese beatboxer). He also met KorElement, an American rapper in Beijing, and they did covers on YouTube, in addition to performing together at the American Pavilion for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: After Olusola's academic stint in China, he spent the summer in Beijing working on his celloboxing version of Mark Summer's "Julie-O" the summer of 2010 while living in a Chinese friend's apartment as a way to begin expanding his skills. He continued working on it throughout the year and decided to audition to music schools with it. He ultimately decided to enroll in the Berklee College of Music. During his spring semester of senior year, Olusola (along with YouTube sensation Sam Tsui) was nominated for a graduation-day prize and videotaped "Julie-O" with the help of YouTube star and Yale alum Jake Bruene. Olusola posted the video on April 14, 2011, and by the second week, the video had reached number 6 on Reddit, and had become a viral video on the Internet, garnering national and international acclaim.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: At the time the video was going viral, Olusola was contacted by Scott Hoying who was impressed by his musicality and beatboxing skills. Hoying was forming a group with Kirstin Maldonado, Mitch Grassi, and Avi Kaplan to compete in season three of NBC’s "The Sing-Off" and he wanted Olusola to join. The second weekend after Olusola graduated from college, he met the group the day before the audition, and Pentatonix was born. After the taping of the show, Olusola did a brief stint as the cellist for Gungor on the David Crowder Band "7" Tour before returning with Pentatonix for the season finale. The group won the Sing-Off title on November 28, 2011, which landed them a recording contract with Sony Music Entertainment and a $200K cash prize. The band immediately moved to Los Angeles to record their first album with producer Ben Bram, whom they met on the show. Their first EP, "PTX, Volume 1", was released on June 26, 2012, charting at No. 14 in the US Billboard 200 chart and No. 5 on the digital chart. It sold 20,000 copies in its first week of release. They embarked on a fall 2012 tour and released their Christmas EP, "PTXmas", on November 13, 2012.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: After their winter–spring 2013 tour, Pentatonix returned to the studio to finish their second EP, "PTX, Vol. II". Olusola became more interested in songwriting and production, especially with how stomping and clapping could be used as an effective production tool for bolstering their a cappella tracks. Olusola co-wrote four of the songs on the album, "Natural Disaster", "Love Again", "Hey Momma/Hit the Road Jack" and "Run to You". The album was released on November 5, 2013, and debuted at number ten on the "Billboard" 200 and number one on the Independent charts, selling 31,000 copies in the first week. The Christmas album was re-released on November 19, 2013, additionally labeled the "Deluxe Edition", and contained two additional tracks. One of these, "The Little Drummer Boy", charted in several "Billboard" categories including peaking at number two on the "Streaming Songs" chart and number one on the "Holiday 100" chart. It became the fourth-highest charting holiday song on the Hot 100 in "Billboard" history. Pentatonix signed a deal with RCA Records after finishing their third US tour and their second European tour in 2014, and have finished and released their self-titled album. Olusola also released a solo EP in early 2015, titled "The Renegade EP". It charted No. 1 on Billboard Classical Albums Chart and Apple iTunes Classical Chart.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: On February 8, 2015, Pentatonix won their first Grammy for Best Arrangement, Instrumental or A Cappella for their Daft Punk medley. On February 15, 2016, Pentatonix won their second Grammy in the same category for their rendition of "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy", which was featured on their holiday album, "That's Christmas to Me". On February 12, 2017, Pentatonix won their third Grammy for Best Country Duo/Group Performance for their cover of "Jolene", which featured Dolly Parton.


title: Kevin Olusola

text: On September 16, 2019, Olusola married college admissions consultant Leigh Weissman in traditional Nigerian and American ceremonies. The two met through a mutual friend in 2017. Their daughter was born on April 3, 2021.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield is a cathedral city in West Yorkshire, England located on the River Calder. The city had a population of 99,251 in the 2011 census. The city is the administrative centre of the wider City of Wakefield metropolitan district, which had a population of , the most populous district in England. It is part of the West Yorkshire Built-up Area and the Yorkshire and The Humber region.


title: Wakefield

text: In 1888, it was one of the last group of towns to gain city status due to having a cathedral. The city has a town hall and county hall, as the former administrative centre of the city's county borough and metropolitan borough as well as county town to both the West Riding of Yorkshire and West Yorkshire, respectively.


title: Wakefield

text: The Battle of Wakefield took place in the Wars of the Roses, and the city was a Royalist stronghold in the Civil War. Wakefield became an important market town and centre for wool, exploiting its position on the navigable River Calder to become an inland port. In the 18th century, Wakefield traded in corn, coal mining and textiles.


title: Wakefield

text: The name "Wakefield" may derive from "Waca's field" – the open land belonging to someone named "Waca" or could have evolved from the Old English word "wacu", meaning "a watch or wake", and "feld", an open field in which a wake or festival was held. In the Domesday Book of 1086, it was written "Wachefeld" and also as "Wachefelt".


title: Wakefield

text: Flint and stone tools and later bronze and iron implements have been found at Lee Moor and Lupset in the Wakefield area showing evidence of human activity since prehistoric times. This part of Yorkshire was home to the Brigantes until the Roman occupation in AD 43. A Roman road from Pontefract passing Streethouse, Heath Common, Ossett Street Side, through Kirklees and on to Manchester crossed the River Calder by a ford at Wakefield near the site of Wakefield Bridge. A large group of coin moulds, the Lingwell Gate coin moulds, representing Romano-British coin forgery were found at Lingwell Gate between 1697 and 1879. Wakefield was probably occupied again this time by the Angles in the 5th or 6th century and after AD 876 the area was controlled by the Vikings who founded twelve hamlets or "thorpes" around Wakefield. They divided the area into wapentakes and Wakefield was part of the Wapentake of Agbrigg. The settlement grew near a crossing place on the River Calder around three roads, Westgate, Northgate and Kirkgate. The "gate" suffix derives from Old Norse ' meaning road and kirk, from ' indicates there was a church.


title: Wakefield

text: Before 1066 the manor of Wakefield belonged to Edward the Confessor and it passed to William the Conqueror after the Battle of Hastings. After the Conquest Wakefield was a victim of the Harrying of the North in 1069 when William the Conqueror took revenge on the local population for resistance to Norman rule. The settlement was recorded as "Wachfeld" in the Domesday Book of 1086, and covered a much greater area than present day Wakefield, much of which was described as "waste". The manor was granted by the crown to William de Warenne, 1st Earl of Surrey whose descendants, the Earls Warenne, inherited it after his death in 1088. The construction of Sandal Castle began early in the 12th century. A second castle, Wakefield Castle, was built at Lawe Hill on the north side of the Calder but was abandoned. Wakefield and its environs formed the caput of an extensive baronial holding by the Warennes that extended to Cheshire and Lancashire. The Warennes, and their feudal sublords, held the area until the 14th century, when it passed to their heirs.


title: Wakefield

text: The Domesday Book recorded two churches, one in Wakefield and one in Sandal Magna. The Saxon church in Wakefield was rebuilt in about 1100 in stone in the Norman style and was continually enlarged until 1315 when the central tower collapsed. By 1420 the church was again rebuilt and was extended between 1458 and 1475.


title: Wakefield

text: In 1203 William de Warenne, 5th Earl of Surrey received a grant for a market in the town. In 1204 King John granted the rights for a fair at the feast of All Saints, 1 November, and in 1258 Henry III granted the right for fair on the feast of Saint John the Baptist, 24 June. The market was close to the Bull Ring and the church. The townsfolk of Wakefield amused themselves in games and sports, the chief sport in the 14th century was archery and the butts in Wakefield were at the Ings, near the river. Wakefield was dubbed the "Merrie City" in the Middle Ages.


title: Wakefield

text: During the Wars of the Roses, Richard Plantagenet, Duke of York was killed on 30 December 1460 in the Battle of Wakefield near Sandal Castle. In medieval times Wakefield became an inland port on the Calder and centre for the woollen and tanning trades. In 1538 John Leland described Wakefield as, "a very quick market town and meately large; well served of fish and flesh both from sea and by rivers ... so that all vitaile is very good and chepe there. A right honest man shall fare well for 2d. a meal. ... There be plenti of se coal in the quarters about Wakefield". As preparation for the impending invasion by the Spanish Armada in April 1558, 400 men from the wapentake of Morley and Agbrigg were summoned to Bruntcliffe near Morley with their weapons. Men from Kirkgate, Westgate, Northgate and Sandal were amongst them and all returned by August.


title: Wakefield

text: At the time of the Civil War, Wakefield was a Royalist stronghold. An attack led by Sir Thomas Fairfax on 20 May 1643 captured the town for the Parliamentarians. Over 1500 troops were taken prisoner along with the Royalist commander, Lieutenant-General Goring.


title: Wakefield

text: In 1699 an Act of Parliament was passed creating the Aire and Calder Navigation which provided the town with access to the North Sea. The first Registry of Deeds in the country opened in 1704 and in 1765 Wakefield's cattle market was established and became the one of largest in the north of England. The town was a centre for cloth dealing, with its own piece hall, the Tammy Hall, built in 1766. In the late 1700s Georgian town houses and St John's Church were built to the north of the town centre.<ref name="St Johns Church/"></ref>


title: Wakefield

text: At the start of 19th century Wakefield was a wealthy market town and inland port trading in wool and grain. The Aire and Calder and Calder and Hebble Navigations and the Barnsley Canal were instrumental in the development of Wakefield as an important market for grain and more was sold here than at any other market in the north. Large warehouses were built on the river banks to store grain from Norfolk, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire to supply the fast-growing population in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Great quantities of barley were grown in the neighbourhood and in 1885 more malt was made in Wakefield "than in any district of equal extent in the kingdom". The market developed in the streets around the Bull Ring, and the cattle market between George Street and Ings Road grew to be one of the biggest in the country. Road transport using turnpiked roads was important. Regular mail coaches departed to Leeds, London, Manchester, York and Sheffield and the 'Strafford Arms' was an important coaching inn. The railways arrived in Wakefield in 1840 when Kirkgate station was built on the Manchester and Leeds Railway.


title: Wakefield

text: When cloth dealing declined, wool spinning mills using steam power were built by the river. There was a glass works in Calder Vale Road, several breweries including Melbourne's and Beverley's Eagle Breweries, engineering works with strong links to the mining industry, soapworks and brickyards in Eastmoor, giving the town a diverse economy. Boats and sloops were built at yards on the Calder. On the outskirts of the town, coal had been dug since the 15th century and 300 men were employed in the town's coal pits in 1831. During the 19th century more mines were sunk so that there were 46 small mines in Wakefield and the surrounding area by 1869. The National Coal Board eventually became Wakefield's largest employer with Manor Colliery on Cross Lane and Park Hill colliery at Eastmoor surviving until 1982. Wakefield was also the site of the founding of the Miners' Association of Great Britain and Ireland, the country's first national trade union for miners, in 1842.


title: Wakefield

text: During the 19th century Wakefield became the administrative centre for the West Riding, when many familiar buildings were constructed. The first civic building in Wood Street, the court house, was built in 1810. The West Riding Pauper Lunatic Asylum was built at Stanley Royd, just outside the town on Aberford Road in 1816. During the 19th century, the Wakefield Asylum played a central role in the development of British psychiatry, with Henry Maudsley and James Crichton-Browne amongst its medical staff. Most of it is now demolished. The old House of Correction of 1595 was rebuilt as Wakefield Prison in 1847. Wakefield Union workhouse was built on Park Lodge Lane, Eastmoor in 1853 and Clayton Hospital was built in 1854 after a donation from Alderman Thomas Clayton. The Mechanics Institute containing an Assembly Room, public library and newsroom supported by subscription was built in Wood Street in 1820–1821 in the Classical style with Ionic details. Wakefield Literary Society ran there from 1827 until the 20th century and its Geological Society left artefacts to Wakefield Museum.


title: Wakefield

text: Up to 1837 Wakefield relied on wells and springs for its water supply; water from the River Calder was polluted, and various water supply schemes were unsuccessful until reservoirs on the Rishworth Moors and a service reservoir at Ardsley were built providing clean water from 1888.


title: Wakefield

text: By 1885 the streets of the town were paved and flagged and lit with gas supplied by a company incorporated in 1822. Between 1870 and 1885 they made improvements on the north side of town around St John's Church now a conservation area.


title: Wakefield

text: On 2 June 1906, Andrew Carnegie opened a new Wakefield Library on Drury Lane which had been built with a grant of £8,000 from the Carnegie Trust.


title: Wakefield

text: There are seven ex-council estates in Wakefield which the council started to build after the First World War, the oldest is Portobello, the largest is Lupset and the rest are Flanshaw, Plumpton, Peacock, Eastmoor and Kettlethorpe. Homes not bought by occupants under the Right to Buy scheme were transferred to a registered social landlord, Wakefield and District Housing (WDH) in 2005. The outlying villages of Sandal Magna, Belle Vue and Agbrigg have become suburbs of Wakefield.


title: Wakefield

text: The glass and textile industries closed in the 1970s and 1980s, and coal faced competition from alternative sources and demand decreased. The coal mines around Wakefield were amongst the first in Yorkshire to close under the government of Margaret Thatcher, which altered the national energy policy from a reliance on British coal and opposed the political power of the NUM. Between 1979 and 1983, the pits at Lofthouse, Manor, Newmarket, Newmillerdam, Parkhill and Walton all closed. As the Wakefield pits closed, the Selby Coalfield was being opened, many colliers in Wakefield accepted offers to transfer to the new pits which were built to facilitate commuting.


title: Wakefield

text: An April 2021 article in The Guardian discussed nearby Heath (or Heath Common), the "village of the [200 year old] mansions", located "around the edge of the green". These housed the wealthy merchants and business owners. The local newspaper published specifics about one of the mansions in March 2021: Dower House was built circa 1740; it was constructed for John Smyth by John Carr, of Yorkshire stone, and "retains many original features". It was intended to house widows. The Dower House is a Grade II* listed property; it was modified in the early 1800s.


title: Wakefield

text: The nearby Heath Hall, Heath, West Yorkshire, formerly known as Eshald House, was also built circa 1709 for the wealthy wool trader, John Smyth. The Hall was modified by John Carr between 1754 and 1780 for the original owner's nephew (also known as John Smyth). The Hall is a Grade I listed building.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield was anciently a market and parish town in the Agbrigg division of the wapentake of Agbrigg and Morley in the West Riding of Yorkshire. It became a parliamentary borough with one Member of Parliament after the Reform Act 1832. In 1836 the Wakefield Poor Law Union was formed following the Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 with an elected board of guardians. The town was incorporated as a municipal borough with elected councillors in 1848 under the Municipal Corporations Act 1835.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield was the "de facto" seat of regional government in Yorkshire for two centuries and became the county headquarters of the West Riding County Council created by the Local Government Act 1888. After Wakefield was elevated to a diocese in 1888, Wakefield council sought city status which was granted the same year. Wakefield became a county borough in 1913. In 1974, under the terms of the Local Government Act 1972, the county borough became defunct as it merged with surrounding local authorities to become the City of Wakefield district.


title: Wakefield

text: Today the city is the headquarters of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, Yorkshire Ambulance Service and West Yorkshire Police. Since 1987, the district council has been based in County Hall.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield is covered by four electoral wards (Wakefield East, Wakefield North, Wakefield South and Wakefield West) of the Wakefield Metropolitan District Council. Each ward elects three councillors to the 63-member metropolitan district council, Wakefield's local authority. In 2015 all the councillors elected for Wakefield East, North and West were members of the Labour Party and the councillors for Wakefield South represent the Conservative Party.


title: Wakefield

text: The parliamentary seat of Wakefield had been held by the Labour Party continuously from 1932 until the 2019 general election, when the Conservative Party's Imran Ahmad Khan defeated the incumbent Mary Creagh. The Conservative Party expelled Khan from the party on 11 April 2022, following a conviction of sexual assault. He announced three days after his conviction that he would be resigning as an MP, and left his post on 3 May, triggering the 2022 Wakefield by-election, which was held on 23 June and won by Labour's Simon Lightwood.


title: Wakefield

text: The Wakefield South ward covering Sandal, Kettlethorpe, Agbrigg and Belle Vue, is in the Hemsworth constituency, represented by the Labour party's Jon Trickett since 1996. He was re-elected in May 2010. and returned in 2015 with 51.3% of the vote. The seat has been held by the Labour Party since its creation in 1918.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield is south-east of Leeds and south-west of York on the eastern edge of the Pennines in the lower Calder Valley. The city centre is sited on a low hill on the north bank of the River Calder close to a crossing place where it is spanned by a 14th-century, nine-arched, stone bridge and a reinforced concrete bridge built in 1929–1930. It is at the junction of major north–south routes to Sheffield, Leeds and Doncaster and west–east routes to Huddersfield, Dewsbury and Pontefract.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield is within the area of the Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire & Yorkshire coalfield and lies on the middle coal measures and sandstones laid down in the Carboniferous period.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield includes the former outlying villages of Alverthorpe, Thornes, Sandal, Portobello, Belle Vue, Agbrigg, Lupset, Kettlethorpe and Flanshaw. In the 2011 Census, Newton Hill, Outwood, Stanley and Wrenthorpe were counted as parts of Wakefield, having been classified separately in the 2001 Census.


title: Wakefield

text: In 2001 the Wakefield subdivision of the West Yorkshire Urban Area had a population of 76,886 comprising 37,477 males and 39,409 females.


title: Wakefield

text: Also at the time of the 2001 UK census, the City of Wakefield had a total population of 315,172 of whom 161,962 were female and 153,210 were male. Of the 132,212 households in Wakefield, 39.56% were married couples living together, 28.32% were one-person households, 9.38% were co-habiting couples and 9.71% were lone parents. The figures for lone parent households were slightly above the national average of 9.5%, and the percentage of married couples was above the national average of 36.5%; the proportion of one person households was below the national average of 30.1%.


title: Wakefield

text: The population density was . Of those aged 16–74 in Wakefield, 39.14% had no academic qualifications, much higher than 28.9% in all of England. Of Wakefield's residents, 2.53% were born outside the United Kingdom, significantly lower than the national average of 9.2%. The largest minority group was recorded as Asian, at 1.41% of the population.


title: Wakefield

text: The number of theft-from-a-vehicle offences and theft of a vehicle per 1,000 of the population was 7.9 and 3.9 compared to the English national average of 6.3 and 2.3 respectively. The number of sexual offences was 0.9, in line with the national average. The national average of violence against another person was 16.7 compared to the Wakefield average of 15. The figures for crime statistics were all recorded during the 2008–09 financial year.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield had a population of 76,886 in 2001. At the 2011 Census, the population was given as 99,251. However, these two estimates are not directly comparable, as the 2001 Census did not classify the old Stanley Urban District as part of Wakefield whereas the 2011 Census classified all settlements in this area except Bottom Boat (a small village built for Newmarket Colliery workers) as parts of Wakefield.


title: Wakefield

text: The economy of Wakefield declined in the last quarter of the 20th century as the coal mines and traditional manufacturing industries closed, contributing to high rates of unemployment. In the Index of Multiple Deprivation 2015, 14.35% of the district's lower super-output areas were in the most deprived 10% of England.


title: Wakefield

text: Employment grew by 12% between 1998 and 2003 as the economy recovered and enjoyed growth as the economic base of the district was diversified. Growth has been supported by inward investment from European and United Kingdom government funding which has impacted on the regeneration of the area. Manufacturing remains an important employment sector although the decline is projected to continue whilst distribution and the service industries are now among the main employers.


title: Wakefield

text: At the 2001 census, there were 33,521 people in employment who were resident within Wakefield. Of these, 20.74% worked in the wholesale and retail trade, including repair of motor vehicles; 14.42% worked within manufacturing industry; 11% worked within the health and social work sector and 6.49% were employed in the transport, storage and communication industries.


title: Wakefield

text: Wakefield is a member of the Leeds City Region Partnership, a sub-regional economic development partnership covering an area of the historic county of Yorkshire.


title: Wakefield

text: Regeneration projects in Wakefield included the Trinity Walk retail development to the north east of the city centre, including a department store, a supermarket and shop units. Work began in autumn 2007 but was halted in 2009, restarted in 2010 and opened in 2011. The central square at the Bull Ring has been redesigned with a water feature and the Ridings Shopping Centre refurbished. Wakefield Westgate Station goods yard and land on Westgate and Balne Lane have been developed to create retail, residential and commercial space including new offices, a multi-storey carpark serving the station, and a hotel.


title: Wakefield

text: Developments by the river and canal, the "Wakefield Waterfront", include the refurbishment of the Grade II listed Navigation Warehouse and office, retail, restaurant and cafe units. The development includes the art gallery, The Hepworth Wakefield named in honour of local sculptor, Barbara Hepworth which opened in May 2011. The gallery has ten internal spaces, exhibiting many examples of Hepworth's work. The gallery added about £10 million to the local economy by attracting 500,000 visitors in its first year. Flats and offices were built at Chantry Waters, on an island between the river and canal.