title: Brindle

text: The brindle pattern may also take the place of tan in tricolor coats of some dog breeds (such as Basenjis). This coloration looks very similar to tricolor, and can be distinguished only at close range. Dogs of this color are often described as "trindle". It can also occur in combination with merle in the points, or as a brindle merle, in breeds such as the Cardigan Welsh Corgi, although the latter is not acceptable in the show ring. The "dark" markings are black or the dilutions gray (called blue) or brown (sometimes called red). It is not uncommon for a brindled Cairn Terrier to become progressively more black or silver as it ages.


title: Brindle

text: Brindled domestic cats are also known as tortoiseshell cats, and in some cases, tabby cats. A domestic brindled cat is almost exclusively female.


title: Brindle

text: Brindle is an old variety in guinea pigs. They are difficult to breed to perfection, as the black and red hairs should intermingle evenly all over. Brindle guinea pigs' fur type is Abyssinian (rosetted).


title: Brindle

text: Brindle coloring in horses is extremely rare and in many cases is linked to spontaneous chimerism, resulting in an animal with two sets of DNA, with the brindle pattern being an expression of two different sets of equine coat color genes in one horse. This form is not heritable. In some horses the pattern seems to be inherited, indicating that one or more genes are responsible. One heritable brindle pattern in a family of American Quarter Horses was identified in 2016 and named Brindle1 (BR1). The Brindle1 phenotype has an X-linked, semidominant mode of inheritance. Female horses with this gene have a striped coat pattern, plus hairs from the stripes have a different texture as well as color, less straight and unrulier. Male horses have sparse manes and tails but do not show a striped coat texture pattern. A Brindle1 test is available.


title: Brindle

text: Brindle coloring consists of irregular stripes extending vertically over the horse's body and horizontally around the legs. Brindle horses can also have a dorsal stripe. It usually does not affect the head and legs as much as the body, with the heaviest concentrations of brindling being on the neck, shoulders and hindquarters. The coloring has been documented in the past. At the Zoological Museum of the Academy of Science in Saint Petersburg, a Russian cab horse of brindle coloring from the early 19th century was mounted and put on display due to its rarity.


title: Brindle

text: The brindled pattern found in horses could be described as vertical stripes that are found along the neck, back, hindquarters, and upper legs. The horse's head is usually a solid color and is not affected by the striping. The brindled pattern has no effect on dark points on horses. Some brindle-colored horses are more eye-catching than others.


title: Brindle

text: With this rare coat pattern there is a base coat that covers the entire body of the horse. This base coat color can be any color. Recorded examples have been bay, chestnut, palomino, and dun. Earliest documented cases were said to have red dun or grulla as a base coat. Over top of the base color is either a lighter or darker color, giving the appearance of stripes.


title: Brindle

text: In William Shakespeare's play "Macbeth", the opening of act 4, scene 1, is often taken to refer to a brindled cat in the sense of coat pattern as described in this article, because it does contain the word "brinded":


title: Brindle

text: However, in this context – Elizabethan English – the word "brinded" was used to mean "branded", as in marked by fire. The word in Elizabethans used to describe a brindle-colored coat was "streaked".


title: Armored Core V

text: Armored Core V is a mecha-based video game developed by FromSoftware and published by Namco Bandai Games for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. It is an installment in the "Armored Core" series and is a return to the more traditional style of gameplay found in the original series of games.


title: Armored Core V

text: Whereas previous games in the series focused on quick-reflex combat, "Armored Core V" relies heavily on tactical gameplay. Similar to the first games in the series, "Armored Core V" requires players to use level geography to their advantage. New to the series is Ultimate Weapons, which deal enormous damage, but these weapons need to be recharged between uses, limiting the player to only one use per mission or match.


title: Armored Core V

text: The online mode features five-on-five team-based battles, with each side battling over specific objectives across the map. One member of each team is designated as the Operator and must oversee the entire battle and issue orders to their team.


title: Armored Core V

text: A curiosity about the game is that, according to the producer Toshifumi Nabeshima, the player should hold the controller (PS3 and Xbox 360) in a special way as the ideal to control the robotic war machines. According to information from the game itself, this way of playing is called “densetsu no AC mochi” (伝説のAC持ち) in Japanese, which means the “legendary Armored Core grip”.


title: Armored Core V

text: In a distant futuristic, post-apocalyptic world, people gathered in a few survivable areas. Among them, "City", which is relatively large, was oppressed by a person called the Father and his enigmatic organization called The Corporation. At one point, a man who was an aide to the Father was banished to the underground world. The man united the people of the underground world to form the Resistance organization. They carried out an all out counter-offensive war operation to break the tyrannical rule of the Father. However, the operation failed because it was detected in advance, and the man also died. A year later, the Resistance relaunched under a new leader.


title: Armored Core V

text: The game was released in Japan on January 26, 2012 for both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was released by Namco Bandai Games on March 20 in North America, March 22 in Australia, and March 23, 2012, in Europe.


title: Armored Core V

text: FromSoftware has released a companion application for iOS and Android devices which provides access to a database of in-game parts and weapons to aid in mech customization.


title: Armored Core V

text: The game received "mixed or average reviews" on both platforms according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, "Famitsu" gave it a score of one nine, two eights, and one nine for a total of 34 out of 40.


title: Armored Core V

text: "The Daily Telegraph" gave the Xbox 360 version four stars out of five and said it was "a brilliant game that is nonetheless difficult to recommend to everyone", but that "those with an eye for detail and a fair amount of patience will be rewarded with a deep, engaging and entirely idiosyncratic experience. Just don't go in expecting your hand to be held at any point". "The Digital Fix" gave the PlayStation 3 version seven out of ten and said it was "a very sterile and cold experience" without its multiplayer approach. "Metro" likewise gave it seven out of ten and said it was "still not the game that will make giant robot sims mainstream, but it does have some innovative ideas in terms of both combat and online play". "The Observer" gave the game a mixed review and said that it "looks fantastic and is thoroughly entertaining, but its impenetrability may prove too much for all but the faithful".


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Henri Lefebvre ( , ; 16 June 1901 – 29 June 1991) was a French Marxist philosopher and sociologist, best known for pioneering the critique of everyday life, for introducing the concepts of the right to the city and the production of social space, and for his work on dialectical materialism, alienation, and criticism of Stalinism, existentialism, and structuralism. In his prolific career, Lefebvre wrote more than sixty books and three hundred articles. He founded or took part in the founding of several intellectual and academic journals such as "Philosophies", "La Revue Marxiste", "Arguments", "Socialisme ou Barbarie", "Espaces et Sociétés".


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre was born in Hagetmau, Landes, France. He studied philosophy at the University of Paris (the Sorbonne), graduating in 1920. By 1924 he was working with Paul Nizan, Norbert Guterman, Georges Friedmann, Georges Politzer, and Pierre Morhange in the "Philosophies" group seeking a "philosophical revolution". This brought them into contact with the Surrealists, Dadaists, and other groups, before they moved towards the French Communist Party (PCF).


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre joined the PCF in 1928 and became one of the most prominent French Marxist intellectuals during the second quarter of the 20th century, before joining the French resistance. From 1944 to 1949, he was the director of "Radiodiffusion Française", a French radio broadcaster in Toulouse. Among his works was a highly influential, anti-Stalinist text on dialectics called "Dialectical Materialism" (1940). Seven years later, Lefebvre published his first volume of "The Critique of Everyday Life". His early work on method was applauded and borrowed centrally by the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre in "Critique of Dialectical Reason" (1960). During Lefebvre's thirty-year stint with the PCF, he was chosen to publish critical attacks on opposed theorists, especially existentialists like Sartre and Lefebvre's former colleague Nizan, only to intentionally get himself expelled from the party for his own heterodox theoretical and political opinions in the late 1950s. He then went from serving as a primary intellectual for the PCF to becoming one of France's most important critics of the PCF's politics (e.g. immediately, the lack of an opinion on Algeria, and more generally, the partial apologism for and continuation of Stalinism) and intellectual thought (i.e. structuralism, especially the work of Louis Althusser).


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: In 1961, Lefebvre became professor of sociology at the University of Strasbourg, before joining the faculty at the new university at in 1965. He was one of the most respected professors, and he had influenced and analysed the May 1968 student revolt. Lefebvre introduced the concept of the right to the city in his 1968 book "Le Droit à la ville" (the publication of the book predates the May 1968 revolts which took place in many French cities). Following the publication of this book, Lefebvre wrote several influential works on cities, urbanism, and space, including "The Production of Space" (1974), which became one of the most influential and heavily cited works of urban theory. By the 1970s, Lefebvre had also published some of the first critical statements on the work of post-structuralists, especially Michel Foucault. During the following years he was involved in the editorial group of "Arguments", a New Left magazine which largely served to enable the French public to familiarize themselves with Central European revisionism.


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre died in 1991. In his obituary, "Radical Philosophy" magazine honored his long and complex career and influence:


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: One of Lefebvre's most important contributions to social thought is the idea of the "critique of everyday life", which he pioneered in the 1930s. Lefebvre defined everyday life dialectically as the intersection of "illusion and truth, power and helplessness; the intersection of the sector man controls and the sector he does not control", and is where the perpetually transformative conflict occurs between diverse, specific rhythms: the body's polyrhythmic bundles of natural rhythms, physiological (natural) rhythms, and social rhythms (Lefebvre and Régulier, 1985: 73). The everyday was, in short, the space in which all life occurred, and between which all fragmented activities took place. It was the residual. While the theme presented itself in many works, it was most notably outlined in his eponymous three-volume study, which came out in individual installments, decades apart, in 1947, 1961, and 1981.


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre argued that everyday life was an underdeveloped sector compared to technology and production, and moreover that in the mid 20th century, capitalism changed such that everyday life was to be colonized—turned into a zone of sheer consumption. In this zone of everydayness (boredom) shared by everyone in society regardless of class or specialty, autocritique of everyday realities of boredom vs. societal promises of free time and leisure, could lead to people understanding and then revolutionizing their everyday lives. This was essential to Lefebvre because everyday life was where he saw capitalism surviving and reproducing itself. Without revolutionizing everyday life, capitalism would continue to diminish the quality of everyday life, and inhibit real self-expression. The critique of everyday life was crucial because it was for him only through the development of the conditions of human life—rather than abstract control of productive forces—that humans could reach a concrete utopian existence.


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre's work on everyday life was heavily influential in French theory, particularly for the Situationists, as well as in politics (e.g. for the May 1968 student revolts). The third volume has also recently influenced scholars writing about digital technology and information in the present day, since it has a section dealing with this topic at length, including analysis of the (1977); key aspects of information theory; and other general discussion of the "colonisation" of everyday life through information communication technologies as "devices" or "services".


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre dedicated a great deal of his philosophical writings to understanding the importance of (the production of) space in what he called the reproduction of social relations of production. This idea is the central argument in the book "The Survival of Capitalism", written as a sort of prelude to (1974) ("The Production of Space"). These works have deeply influenced current urban theory, mainly within human geography, as seen in the current work of authors such as David Harvey, Dolores Hayden, and Edward Soja, and in the contemporary discussions around the notion of spatial justice. Lefebvre is widely recognized as a Marxist thinker who was responsible for widening considerably the scope of Marxist theory, embracing everyday life and the contemporary meanings and implications of the ever-expanding reach of the urban in the western world throughout the 20th century. The generalization of industry, and its relation to cities (which is treated in ), "The Right to the City" and "The Urban Revolution" were all themes of Lefebvre's writings in the late 1960s, which was concerned, among other aspects, with the deep transformation of "the city" into "the urban" which culminated in its omnipresence (the "complete urbanization of society").


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre contends that there are different modes of production of space (i.e. spatialization) from natural space ('absolute space') to more complex spaces and flows whose meaning is produced in a social way (i.e. social space). Lefebvre analyzes each historical mode as a three-part dialectic between everyday practices and perceptions (), representations or theories of space () and the spatial imaginary of the time ().


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre's argument in "The Production of Space" is that space is a social product, or a complex social construction (based on values, and the social production of meanings) which affects spatial practices and perceptions. This argument implies the shift of the research perspective from space to processes of its production; the embrace of the multiplicity of spaces that are socially produced and made productive in social practices; and the focus on the contradictory, conflictual, and, ultimately, political character of the processes of production of space. As a Marxist theorist (but highly critical of the economic structuralism that dominated the academic discourse in his period), Lefebvre argues that this social production of urban space is fundamental to the reproduction of society, hence of capitalism itself. The social production of space is commanded by a hegemonic class as a tool to reproduce its dominance (see Antonio Gramsci).


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: Lefebvre argued that every society—and, therefore, every mode of production—produces a certain space, its own space. The city of the ancient world cannot be understood as a simple agglomeration of people and things in space—it had its own spatial practice, making its own space (which was suitable for itself—Lefebvre argues that the intellectual climate of the city in the ancient world was very much related to the social production of its spatiality). Then if every society produces its own space, any "social existence" aspiring to be or declaring itself to be real, but not producing its own space, would be a strange entity, a very peculiar abstraction incapable of escaping the ideological or even cultural spheres. Based on this argument, Lefebvre criticized Soviet urban planners on the basis that they failed to produce a socialist space, having just reproduced the modernist model of urban design (interventions on physical space, which were insufficient to grasp social space) and applied it onto that context:


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: In his book "The Urban Question", Manuel Castells criticizes Lefebvre's Marxist humanism and approach to the city influenced by Hegel and Nietzsche. Castells' political criticisms of Lefebvre's approach to Marxism echoed the structuralist "Scientific Marxism" school of Louis Althusser of which Lefebvre was an immediate critic. Many responses to Castells are provided in "The Survival of Capitalism", and some such as Andy Merrifield argue that the acceptance of those critiques in the academic world would be a motive for Lefebvre's effort in writing the long and theoretically dense "The Production of Space".


title: Henri Lefebvre

text: In "Actually-Existing Success: Economics, Aesthetics, and the Specificity of (Still-)Socialist Urbanism," Michal Murawski critiques Lefebvre's dismissal of actually existing socialism by showing how socialist states produced differential space.


title: Max Park

text: Max Park is an American Rubik's Cube speedsolver who is currently tied with Tymon Kolasiński of Poland for the world record average of five 3×3×3 solves (by WCA standards), 4.86 seconds, set on 24 September 2022. Park first held this record from 23 April 2017 to 28 June 2017 and was the only cuber other than Feliks Zemdegs to hold the record between 27 September 2009 and 5 June 2021. Park has also set multiple world records in speedsolving the 4×4×4, 5×5×5, 6×6×6, and 7×7×7 cubes, and the 3×3×3 one-handed. As of 20 November 2022, he has won 391 total events in World Cube Association competitions.


title: Max Park

text: Max Park was born on November 28, 2001, in Cerritos, California. When Park was two years old, he was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism. His parents, Miki and Schwan Park, were told that he might need lifelong care. Park's motor skills were severely impaired because of his autism and so his mother, Miki Park, taught Park how to solve a Rubik's cube that he had taken interest in. He began learning speedcubing and performing at competitions. At his second competition, he came in first place in the 6×6×6 event. He made progress in social development by waiting in a queue and mirroring body language on a podium—at competitions.


title: Max Park

text: Park holds the world record for average of five 3×3×3 solves with a 4.86 second average set at Marshall Cubing September 2022 on the 24th of the month.


title: Max Park

text: Park previously held the world record for average of five 3×3×3 solves with one hand at 9.02 seconds, set on 12 March 2022 at Florida Spring B 2022. This record was broken by Patrick Ponce with an average of 8.70 seconds. Park was the first person to achieve a sub-10 second one-handed average in competition, with an average of 9.99 seconds on 13 January 2018 at Thanks Four The Invite 2018. Park also holds the world record single for one-handed solving at 6.20 seconds set at Bay Area Speedcubin' 20 2019, breaking one of the longest standing cubing world record which was held by Feliks Zemdegs.


title: Max Park

text: Park holds the world records for single and average of five 4×4×4 solves with 16.79 seconds and 19.88 seconds, both set on April 3, 2022, at Bay Area Speedcubin' 29 PM 2022.


title: Max Park

text: Park holds the world records for single and average of five 5×5×5 solves with 33.02 seconds and 38.42 seconds, both set at Florida Big & Blind Time 2022. Prior to Park's first 5×5×5 record, the records for single and the average of five 5×5×5 solves had been held by Feliks Zemdegs, who had improved the two records a combined 32 times. Park is the only cuber other than Zemdegs to have set either 5×5×5 record since 11 August 2012.


title: Max Park

text: Park holds the world records for single and mean of three 6×6×6 solves: 59.74 seconds and 1 minute, 9.23 seconds, both set at CubingUSA Southeast Championship 2022.


title: Max Park

text: Park holds the world records for single and mean of three 7×7×7 solves: 1 minute, 40.89 seconds and 1 minute, 46.57 seconds, set at Cubing Nationals 2019 and Houston Winter 2020 respectively.


title: Max Park

text: Park is the 2-time US National Champion in 3×3×3, 3-time champion in 4×4×4, 2-time champion in 5×5×5, 2018 champion in 6×6×6, 2018 champion in 7×7×7, and 2-time champion in 3×3×3 One-Handed.


title: Max Park

text: At the World Championship 2017 in Paris, Park won 3×3×3 and 3×3×3 one-handed and placed 3rd in 5×5×5 and 6×6×6.


title: Max Park

text: At the World Championship 2019 in Melbourne, Park won 4×4×4, 5×5×5, 6×6×6, 7×7×7, and 3×3×3 one-handed. Park finished 4th in the 3×3×3 final after winning the first three rounds.


title: Max Park

text: Park is one of two cubers to have solved the 3×3×3 in less than 5 seconds in competition at least five times, and one of the two cubers to have achieved at least five sub-6 second averages of five 3×3×3 solves in competition.


title: Max Park

text: In 2020, Max appeared in the Netflix documentary "The Speed Cubers", a film about speedcubing largely focusing on Feliks Zemdegs and Max Park and their speedcubing journey.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: Melissa Reddy (born 24 August 1986) is a South African football journalist and author. Reddy left her role as the Senior Football Correspondent at "The Independent" in March 2022, to become a senior reporter for "Sky Sports" and "Sky Sports News". Her speciality is the Premier League.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: Whilst studying at university, Reddy did an internship at Summit TV, a business channel in South Africa. After moving to Cape Town and joining TEAMtalk Media in 2007 and working across many sports, Reddy was Head of Football by 2011, before becoming Deputy Editor of KICK OFF Magazine which is Africa's largest sport publication. On both occasions, she was the first female to hold such a post and was also the first to feature as a football analyst on SuperSport’s marquee shows Backpages and Monday Night Football.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: Reddy became the Liverpool Correspondent of Goal's 38 editions worldwide in November 2015. Reddy was then football correspondent at ESPN, wrote for "The Athletic", and became the senior football correspondent at JOE, before joining "The Independent" as Senior football correspondent in November 2019.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: Reddy's television appearances include Sky Sports News 'Tackling Racism’, "Sunday Supplement" and Red Men TV and the BBC’s Premier League Show. Reddy has also guested on BBC Radio Five Live.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: Reddy has written for, guested and presented shows on The Anfield Wrap. Reddy has also presented shows on The Football Ramble, and guested on Second Captains, and BT Sport’s Football Writers Podcast. In 2020 Reddy started her own podcast interview series entitled Between The Lines with Melissa Reddy. Guests have included Gary Lineker, Mauricio Pochettino and Daniel Sturridge.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: In 2020 Reddy released her first book, entitled "Believe Us: How Jürgen Klopp Transformed Liverpool Into Title Winners". The book was referenced by England national rugby union team head coach Eddie Jones as an insight into the thinking and practises of the elite team produced by Jürgen Klopp at Liverpool FC.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: Reddy has spoken prominently about the racism and sexism she has endured forging her career and barriers women face.


title: Melissa Reddy

text: Reddy was shortlisted in the Best Writer category in the 2021 Football Supporters' Association awards.


title: Simca

text: Simca (; Mechanical and Automotive Body Manufacturing Company) was a French automaker, founded in November 1934 by Fiat S.p.A. and directed from July 1935 to May 1963 by Italian Henri Pigozzi. Simca was affiliated with Fiat and, after Simca bought Ford's French subsidiary, became increasingly controlled by Chrysler. In 1970, Simca became a brand of the Chrysler's European business, ending its period as an independent company. Simca disappeared in 1978, when Chrysler divested its European operations to another French automaker, PSA Peugeot Citroën. PSA replaced the Simca brand with Talbot after a short period when some models were badged as Simca-Talbots.


title: Simca

text: During most of its post-war activity, Simca was one of the biggest automobile manufacturers in France. The Simca 1100 was for some time the best-selling car in France, while the Simca 1307 and Simca Horizon won the coveted European Car of the Year title in 1976 and 1979, respectively—these models were badge engineered as products of other marques in some countries. For instance the Simca 1307 was sold in Britain as the Chrysler Alpine, and the Horizon was also sold under the Chrysler brand.


title: Simca

text: Simca vehicles were also manufactured by Simca do Brasil in São Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, and Barreiros (another Chrysler subsidiary) in Spain. They were also assembled in Australia, Chile, Colombia and the Netherlands during the Chrysler era. In Argentina, Simca had a small partnership with Metalmecánica SAIC (better known as de Carlo) for the production of the Simca Ariane in 1965.


title: Simca

text: Henri Pigozzi was active in the automotive business in the early 1920s when he met Fiat founder Giovanni Agnelli. They began business together in 1922 with Pigozzi acting as a scrap merchant, buying old automobile bodies and sending them to Fiat for recycling. Two years later Pigozzi became Fiat's General Agent in France, and in 1926 SAFAF (Société Anonyme Française des Automobiles Fiat) was founded. In 1928, SAFAF started the assembly of Fiat cars in Suresnes near Paris, and licensed the production of some parts to local suppliers. By 1934, as many as 30,000 Fiat cars were sold by SAFAF.


title: Simca

text: The SIMCA ("Société Industrielle de Mécanique et de Carrosserie Automobile") company was founded in 1935 by Fiat S.p.A., when it bought the former Donnet factory in the French town of Nanterre.


title: Simca

text: The first cars produced were Fiat 508 Balillas and Fiat 518 Arditas, but with Simca-Fiat 6CV and 11CV badges. They were followed during 1936 by the Simca Cinq or 5CV, a version of the Fiat Topolino announced in the Spring, but only available for sale from October 1936. The Huit, an 8CV version of the Fiat 508C-1100, appeared in 1937. Production of the 6CV and 11CV stopped in 1937, leaving the 5CV and the 8CV in production until the outbreak of World War II. The firm nevertheless remained closely connected with Fiat, and it was not until 1938 that the shortened name "Simca" replaced "Simca-Fiat".


title: Simca

text: Of the businesses that emerged as France's big four auto-makers after the war, Simca was unique in not suffering serious bomb damage to its plant. There were persistent suggestions that Henri Pigozzi's close personal relationship with the Agnelli family (which owned Fiat) and Fiat's powerful political influence with the Mussolini government in Italy secured relatively favourable treatment for Simca during the years when France fell under the control of Italy's powerful ally, Germany. Despite France being occupied, Simca cars continued to be produced in small numbers throughout the war.


title: Simca

text: Following the 1944 liberation, the company’s close association with Italy became an obvious liability in the feverish atmosphere of recrimination and new beginnings that swept France following four years of German occupation. Nevertheless, shortly after the liberation the Nanterre plant's financial sustainability received a boost when Simca won a contract from the American army to repair large numbers of Jeep engines.


title: Simca

text: On 3 January 1946 the new government’s five-year plan for the automobile industry (remembered, without affection, as the Pons Plan) came into force. Government plans for Simca involved pushing it into a merger with various smaller companies such as Delahaye-Delage, Bernard, Laffly and Unic so as to create an automobile manufacturing combine to be called “Générale française automobile” (GFA). With half an eye on the Volkswagen project across the Rhine, the authorities determined that GFA should produce the two door version of the "AFG", a small family car that had been developed during the war by the influential automobile engineer, Jean-Albert Grégoire. Grégoire owed his influence to a powerfully persuasive personality and a considerable engineering talent. Regarding the future of the French automobile industry, Grégoire held strong opinions, two of which favoured front-wheel drive and aluminium as a material for car bodies. A few weeks after the liberation Grégoire joined the Simca board as General Technical Director, in order to prepare for the production of the AFG at the company’s Nanterre factory.


title: Simca

text: For Simca, faced with a determinedly dirigiste left-wing French government, the prospect of nationalisation seemed very real. (Renault had already been confiscated and nationalised by the government at the start of 1945.) Simca’s long standing (but Italian born) Director General, Henri Pigozzi, was obliged to deploy his very considerable reserves of guile and charm in order to retain his own position within the company, and it appears that in the end Pigozzi owed his very survival at Simca to the intervention with the national politicians of his new board room colleague, Jean-Albert Grégoire. In return, Grégoire obtained the personal commitment of the surviving Director General to the production at Nanterre of his two-door AFG.


title: Simca

text: It is very easy to see how the two-door AFG looked, because its four-door equivalent went into production, little changed from Grégoire’s prototype, as the Panhard Dyna X. It was a car designed by an engineer, and Pigozzi thought it ugly. In trying to make it more appealing to the style conscious car buyers who, it was hoped, would appear in Simca showrooms once the economy picked up and government restrictions on car ownership began to be relaxed, Simca designers took the underpinnings of the Grégoire prototype and clothed it with various more conventionally modern bodies, the last of which looked uncannily similar to a shortened Peugeot 203. This “Simca-Grégoire” performed satisfactorily in road tests in France and around Turin (home town of Fiat who still owned Simca), and by September 1946 the car was deemed ready for production. But Pigozzi was still cautious. He had little enthusiasm for the gratuitously unfathomable complexities involved in producing a mass-market front-wheel drive car. The experience of the Citroën Traction Avant, which had bankrupted its manufacturer in the mid-1930s, was not encouraging. Pigozzi therefore applied to the (at this stage still strongly interventionist) government for a far higher level of government subsidy than the government could contemplate. Both the “Simca-Grégoire” project and the government’s own enthusiasm for micro-managing the French automobile industry were by now running out of momentum. Sensing that there was no prospect of putting the “Simca-Grégoire” into production any time soon, General Technical Director Grégoire resigned from the company early in 1947.


title: Simca

text: Meanwhile, at the first Paris Motor Show since the end of the war, in October 1946, two models were on display on the Simca stand, being the Simca 5 and the Simca 8, at this stage barely distinguishable from their pre-war equivalents. A new car arrived in 1948 with the Simca 6, a development of the Simca 5 which it would eventually replace, and featuring an overhead valve 570 cc engine: the Simca 6 was launched ahead of the introduction of the equivalent Fiat.


title: Simca

text: The French economy in this period was in a precarious condition and government pressure was applied on the auto-makers to maximize export sales. During the first eight months of 1947, Simca exported 70% of cars produced, placing it behind Citroën (92% exported), Renault (90% exported), Peugeot (87% exported) and Ford France (83% exported). In the struggle to maximize exports, Simca was handicapped by the fact that it could not compete with its principal Italian shareholder, Fiat.


title: Simca

text: The Simca Aronde, launched in 1951, was the first Simca model not based on a Fiat design. It had a 1200 cc engine and its production reached 100,000 units yearly. Following this success, Simca took over the French truck manufacturers Unic in 1951, Saurer in 1956, and the Poissy plant of Ford SAF in 1954. The Poissy plant had ample room for expansion, enabling Simca to consolidate French production in a single plant and, in 1961, to sell the old Nanterre plant.


title: Simca

text: The 1950s was a decade of growth for Simca, and by 1959 the combined output of the plants at Nanterre and at Poissy had exceeded 225,000 cars, placing the manufacturer in second place among French automakers in volume terms, ahead of Peugeot and Citroën, though still far behind market leader Renault.


title: Simca

text: The Ford purchase also added the V-8 powered Ford Vedette range to the Simca stable. This model continued to be produced and progressively upgraded until 1962 in France and 1967 in Brazil, but with various names under the Simca badge. An Aronde-powered version was also made in 1957 and called the Ariane which, because it was economical and had a large body, was popular as a taxi.


title: Simca

text: The Simca plant received a visit by Juscelino Kubitschek before his inauguration in 1956, organized by a Brazilian General who had a family member employed there. He jokingly invited Simca to build a plant in Minas Gerais, his home state. Simca followed through and sent a letter of intent to this effect. In the interim, Brazil had formed an (GEIA), which had established a set of requirements for any producer wishing to establish a plant in Brazil. Simca claimed that their proposal and arrangement with Kubitschek pre-dated these rules and lobbied for exceptions. Simca also lobbied directly in Minas, but in the end were forced to present their own proposal, which was accepted with a number of conditions. The delays in passing the GEIA rules meant that Simca, which established its first plant in São Paulo, was unable to access hard currency and suffered severe parts shortages as a result. Simca quickly developed a reputation for low quality which it was unable to shake.


title: Simca

text: Simca do Brasil was originally 50% Brazilian-owned, but after Chrysler took over Simca France in 1966 they also obtained control of the Brazilian arm. Simca remained based in São Paulo for the entire time they were active in Brazil and never moved to Minas, as originally promised. Their range was built around the 2.4 liter V8-engined Simca Vedette, which entered production in Brazil in March 1959. It was built under a variety of names and in a number of different bodystyles, until the Simca badge was retired there in 1969. Later models were redesigned completely, and were sold as the Simca Esplanada.


title: Simca

text: The Simca Fulgur was a concept car designed in 1958 by Robert Opron for Simca and first displayed at the 1959 Geneva Auto Show. It was also displayed at the New York Auto Show, and the 1961 Chicago Auto Show. The concept car was intended to show what cars in the year 2000 would look like. It was to be atomic powered, voice controlled, guided by radar, and use only two wheels balanced by gyroscopes when driven at over 150 km/h. Fulgur is Latin for "flash" or "lightning".


title: Simca

text: In 1958, the American car manufacturer Chrysler, which wanted to enter the European car market, bought 15% of Simca from Ford in a deal which Henry Ford II was later reported as having publicly regretted. At this stage, however, the dominant shareholder remained Fiat S.p.A., and their influence is apparent in the engineering and design of Simcas of that period such as the 1000 and 1300 models introduced respectively in 1961 and 1963. However, in 1963 Chrysler increased their stake to a controlling 64% by purchasing stock from Fiat, and they subsequently extended that holding further to 77%. Even in 1971 Fiat retained a 19% holding, but by now they had long ceased to play an active role in the business.


title: Simca

text: Also, in 1964 Chrysler bought the British manufacturer Rootes thus putting together the basis of Chrysler Europe. All the Simca models manufactured after 1967 had the Chrysler pentastar logo as well as Simca badging. In 1961 Simca started to manufacture all of its models in the ex-Ford SAF factory in Poissy and sold the factory at Nanterre to Citroën. The rear-engined Simca 1000 was introduced in 1961 with its sporting offspring, the Simca-Abarth in 1963. The 1000 also served as the platform for the 1000 Coupe, a sports coupe sporting a Bertone-designed body by Giorgetto Giugiaro and 4-wheel disc brakes. It debuted in 1963 and was described by Car Magazine as "the world's neatest small coupe". 1967 saw the more powerful 1200S Bertone Coupe that, with a horsepower upgrade in 1970, could reach the dizzying speed of almost 112 mph (180 km/h), making it the fastest standard production Simca ever built. In 1967 a much more up to date car, the 1100, appeared with front wheel drive and independent suspension all round, and continued in production until 1979. On 1 July 1970 the company title was formally changed to Chrysler France.


title: Simca

text: The most successful pre-Chrysler Simca models were the Aronde, the Simca 1000 and the front-engined 1100 compact. During the 1970s Chrysler era, Simca produced the new Chrysler 160/180/2 litre saloon, 1307 range (Chrysler Alpine in the UK) and later the Horizon, (Dodge Omni and Plymouth Horizon in the USA). The 1307 and Horizon were both named European Car of the Year at launch. However, Chrysler's forced marriage of Simca and Rootes was not a happy one - Chrysler Europe collapsed in 1977 and the remains were sold to Peugeot SA the following year for a nominal US$1.00 plus assumption of outstanding debt. The cars sold reasonably well in France, but were outsold by their key Ford, British Leyland and Vauxhall rivals in Britain.


title: Simca

text: The last remaining Simca and Rootes models were discontinued by the end of 1981, and the Simca-based Alpine and Horizon soldiered on through the first half of the 1980s using the resurrected Talbot badge, which itself had vanished from passenger cars within a decade.


title: Simca

text: Meanwhile, Peugeot expanded its own brand and made use of the former Simca and Rootes factories for production of its own vehicles, although the Talbot brand survived into the 1990s on commercial vehicles.


title: Simca

text: Peugeot eventually abandoned the Talbot brand, and the last Simca design was launched as Peugeot 309 (instead of Talbot Arizona as had been originally planned). The Peugeot 309 used Simca engines until October 1991 (some 18 months before the end of production) when they were replaced by PSA's own TU and XU series of engines. The 309 was produced at the former Rootes factory in Ryton-on-Dunsmore, UK, as well as in the Poissy plant.


title: Simca

text: Simcas were also manufactured in Brazil, Colombia, Spain and Finland. The last Simca-based car produced was the Horizon-based Dodge Omni, which was built in the USA until 1990. The European equivalent had already been axed three years earlier when use of the Talbot name on passenger cars was finally discontinued.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Whitespace is an esoteric programming language developed by Edwin Brady and Chris Morris at the University of Durham (also developers of the Kaya and Idris programming languages). It was released on 1 April 2003 (April Fool's Day). Its name is a reference to whitespace characters. Unlike most programming languages, which ignore or assign little meaning to most whitespace characters, the Whitespace interpreter ignores any non-whitespace characters. Only spaces, tabs and linefeeds have meaning. A consequence of this property is that a Whitespace program can easily be contained within the whitespace characters of a program written in another language, except possibly in languages which depend on spaces for syntax validity such as Python, making the text a polyglot.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: The language itself is an imperative stack-based language. The virtual machine on which the programs run has a stack and a heap. The programmer is free to push arbitrary-width integers onto the stack (currently there is no implementation of floating point numbers) and can also access the heap as a permanent store for variables and data structures.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Whitespace was created by Edwin Brady and Chris Morris in 2002. Slashdot gave a review of this programming language on 1 April 2003.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: The idea of using whitespace characters as operators for the C++ language had been facetiously suggested five years earlier by Bjarne Stroustrup.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Commands are composed of sequences of spaces, tab stops and linefeeds. All other characters are ignored and thus can be used for comments. For example, tab-space-space-space performs arithmetic addition of the top two elements on the stack.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Code is written as an "Instruction Modification Parameter" (IMP) followed by the operation. The table below shows a list of all the IMPs in Whitespace.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Each IMP is followed by one operation defined for that IMP, and a parameter if needed. The list of operations supported in Whitespace is:


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: The "copy" and "slide" operations were added in Whitespace 0.3 and may not be supported by all implementations.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Numbers are composed of spaces (0) and tabs (1), and they are terminated by a linefeed. The first space/tab in the number represents the sign of the number, if it's a space the number is positive, if it's a tab the number is negative. The rest of the trailing spaces and tabs represent the rest of the binary number.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: space-tab-space-space-tab-space-tab-tab-linefeed (STSSTSTTL) represents the binary number 1001011 (positive, because the number starts with a space) => 75 in decimal.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: tab-tab-tab-space-space-tab-space-linefeed (TTTSSTSL) represents the binary number 110010 (negative, because the number starts with a tab) => -50 in decimal.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Labels are simply [LF] terminated lists of spaces and tabs. There is only one global namespace so all labels must be unique.


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: The following is a commented Whitespace program that simply prints "Hello, world!", where each Space, Tab, or Linefeed character is preceded by the identifying comment "S", "T", or "L", respectively:


title: Whitespace (programming language)

text: Note that when Whitespace source code is displayed in some browsers, the horizontal spacing produced by a tab character is not fixed, but depends on its location in the text relative to the next horizontal tab stop. Depending on the software, tab characters may also get replaced by the corresponding variable number of space characters.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: In queueing theory, a discipline within the mathematical theory of probability, an M/M/1 queue represents the queue length in a system having a single server, where arrivals are determined by a Poisson process and job service times have an exponential distribution. The model name is written in Kendall's notation. The model is the most elementary of queueing models and an attractive object of study as closed-form expressions can be obtained for many metrics of interest in this model. An extension of this model with more than one server is the M/M/c queue.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: An M/M/1 queue is a stochastic process whose state space is the set {0,1,2,3...} where the value corresponds to the number of customers in the system, including any currently in service.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: on the state space {0,1,2,3...}. This is the same continuous time Markov chain as in a birth–death process. The state space diagram for this chain is as below.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: We can write a probability mass function dependent on "t" to describe the probability that the M/M/1 queue is in a particular state at a given time. We assume that the queue is initially in state "i" and write "p"("t") for the probability of being in state "k" at time "t". Then


title: M/M/1 queue

text: where formula_3 is the initial number of customers in the station at time formula_4,formula_5, formula_6 and formula_7 is the modified Bessel function of the first kind. Moments for the transient solution can be expressed as the sum of two monotone functions.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: The model is considered stable only if λ < μ. If, on average, arrivals happen faster than service completions the queue will grow indefinitely long and the system will not have a stationary distribution. The stationary distribution is the limiting distribution for large values of "t".


title: M/M/1 queue

text: Various performance measures can be computed explicitly for the M/M/1 queue. We write ρ = λ/μ for the utilization of the buffer and require ρ < 1 for the queue to be stable. ρ represents the average proportion of time which the server is occupied.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: The probability that the stationary process is in state "i" (contains "i" customers, including those in service) is


title: M/M/1 queue

text: We see that the number of customers in the system is geometrically distributed with parameter 1 − "ρ". Thus the average number of customers in the system is "ρ"/(1 − "ρ") and the variance of number of customers in the system is "ρ"/(1 − "ρ"). This result holds for any work conserving service regime, such as processor sharing.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: The busy period is the time period measured between the instant a customer arrives to an empty system until the instant a customer departs leaving behind an empty system. The busy period has probability density function


title: M/M/1 queue

text: where "I" is a modified Bessel function of the first kind, obtained by using Laplace transforms and inverting the solution.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: which gives the moments of the busy period, in particular the mean is 1/("μ" − "λ") and variance is given by


title: M/M/1 queue

text: The average response time or sojourn time (total time a customer spends in the system) does not depend on scheduling discipline and can be computed using Little's law as 1/("μ" − "λ"). The average time spent waiting is 1/("μ" − "λ") − 1/"μ" = "ρ"/("μ" − "λ"). The distribution of response times experienced does depend on scheduling discipline.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: For customers who arrive and find the queue as a stationary process, the response time they experience (the sum of both waiting time and service time) has transform ("μ" − "λ")/("s" + "μ" − "λ") and therefore probability density function


title: M/M/1 queue

text: In an M/M/1-PS queue there is no waiting line and all jobs receive an equal proportion of the service capacity. Suppose the single server serves at rate 16 and there are 4 jobs in the system, each job will experience service at rate 4. The rate at which jobs receive service changes each time a job arrives at or departs from the system.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: For customers who arrive to find the queue as a stationary process, the Laplace transform of the distribution of response times experienced by customers was published in 1970, for which an integral representation is known. The waiting time distribution (response time less service time) for a customer requiring "x" amount of service has transform


title: M/M/1 queue

text: The mean response time for a job arriving and requiring amount "x" of service can therefore be computed as "x μ"/("μ" − "λ"). An alternative approach computes the same results using a spectral expansion method.


title: M/M/1 queue

text: When the utilization "ρ" is close to 1 the process can be approximated by a reflected Brownian motion with drift parameter "λ" – "μ" and variance parameter "λ" + "μ". This heavy traffic limit was first introduced by John Kingman.


title: Appellate court

text: A court of appeals, also called a court of appeal, appellate court, appeal court, court of second instance or second instance court, is any court of law that is empowered to hear an appeal of a trial court or other lower tribunal. In much of the world, court systems are divided into at least three levels: the trial court, which initially hears cases and reviews evidence and testimony to determine the facts of the case; at least one intermediate appellate court; and a supreme court (or court of last resort) which primarily reviews the decisions of the intermediate courts, often on a discretionary basis. A particular court system's supreme court is its highest appellate court. Appellate courts nationwide can operate under varying rules.


title: Appellate court

text: Under its standard of review, an appellate court decides the extent of the deference it would give to the lower court's decision, based on whether the appeal were one of fact or of law. In reviewing an issue of fact, an appellate court ordinarily gives deference to the trial court's findings. It is the duty of trial judges or juries to find facts, view the evidence firsthand, and observe witness testimony. When reviewing lower decisions on an issue of fact, courts of appeal generally look for clear error. The appellate court reviews issues of law (anew, no deference) and may reverse or modify the lower court's decision if the appellate court believes the lower court misapplied the facts or the law. An appellate court may also review the lower judge's discretionary decisions, such as whether the judge properly granted a new trial or disallowed evidence. The lower court's decision is only changed in cases of an "abuse of discretion". This standard tends to be even more deferential than the "clear error" standard.


title: Appellate court

text: Before hearing any case, the court must have jurisdiction to consider the appeal. The authority of appellate courts to review the decisions of lower courts varies widely from one jurisdiction to another. In some areas, the appellate court has limited powers of review. Generally, an appellate court's judgment provides the final directive of the appeals courts as to the matter appealed, setting out with specificity the court's determination that the action appealed from should be affirmed, reversed, remanded or modified. Depending on the type of case and the decision below, appellate review primarily consists of: an entirely new hearing (a non trial de novo); a hearing where the appellate court gives deference to factual findings of the lower court; or review of particular legal rulings made by the lower court (an appeal on the record).


title: Appellate court

text: While many appellate courts have jurisdiction over all cases decided by lower courts, some systems have appellate courts divided by the type of jurisdiction they exercise. Some jurisdictions have specialized appellate courts, such as the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, which only hears appeals raised in criminal cases, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which has general jurisdiction but derives most of its caseload from patent cases, on one hand, and appeals from the Court of Federal Claims on the other. In the United States, Alabama, Tennessee, and Oklahoma also have separate courts of criminal appeals. Texas and Oklahoma have the final determination of criminal cases vested in their respective courts of criminal appeals, while Alabama and Tennessee allow decisions of its court of criminal appeals to be finally appealed to the state supreme court.


title: Appellate court

text: The Court of Appeal of New Zealand, located in Wellington, is New Zealand's principal intermediate appellate court. In practice, most appeals are resolved at this intermediate appellate level, rather than in the Supreme Court.


title: Appellate court

text: The Court of Appeals of the Philippines is the principal intermediate appellate court of that country. The Court of Appeals is primarily found in Manila, with three divisions each in Cebu City and Cagayan de Oro. Other appellate courts include the Sandiganbayan for cases involving graft and corruption, and the Court of Tax Appeals for cases involving tax. Appeals from all three appellate courts are to the Supreme Court.


title: Appellate court

text: The Court of Appeal of Sri Lanka, located in Colombo, is the second senior court in the Sri Lankan legal system.


title: Appellate court

text: In the United States, both state and federal appellate courts are usually restricted to examining whether the lower court made the correct legal determinations, rather than hearing direct evidence and determining what the facts of the case were. Furthermore, U.S. appellate courts are usually restricted to hearing appeals based on matters that were originally brought up before the trial court. Hence, such an appellate court will not consider an appellant's argument if it is based on a theory that is raised for the first time in the appeal.


title: Appellate court

text: In most U.S. states, and in U.S. federal courts, parties before the court are allowed one appeal as of right. This means that a party who is unsatisfied with the outcome of a trial may bring an appeal to contest that outcome. However, appeals may be costly, and the appellate court must find an error on the part of the court below that justifies upsetting the verdict. Therefore, only a small proportion of trial court decisions result in appeals. Some appellate courts, particularly supreme courts, have the power of discretionary review, meaning that they can decide whether they will hear an appeal brought in a particular case.


title: Appellate court

text: Many U.S. jurisdictions title their appellate court a court of appeal or court of appeals. Historically, others have titled their appellate court a court of errors (or court of errors and appeals), on the premise that it was intended to correct errors made by lower courts. Examples of such courts include the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals (which existed from 1844 to 1947), the Connecticut Supreme Court of Errors (which has been renamed the Connecticut Supreme Court), the Kentucky Court of Errors (renamed the Kentucky Supreme Court), and the Mississippi High Court of Errors and Appeals (since renamed the Supreme Court of Mississippi). In some jurisdictions, a court able to hear appeals is known as an appellate division.


title: Appellate court

text: The phrase "court of appeals" most often refers to intermediate appellate courts. However, the Maryland and New York systems are different. The Maryland Court of Appeals and the New York Court of Appeals are the highest appellate courts in those states. The New York Supreme Court is a trial court of general jurisdiction. Depending on the system, certain courts may serve as both trial courts and appellate courts, hearing appeals of decisions made by courts with more limited jurisdiction.


title: Thelma Houston

text: Thelma Houston ( Jackson; born May 7, 1946) is an American singer. Beginning her recording career in the late 1960s, Houston scored a number-one hit record in 1977 with her recording of "Don't Leave Me This Way", which won the Grammy for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance.


title: Thelma Houston

text: Houston was born in Leland, Mississippi. Her mother was a cotton picker. She and her three sisters grew up primarily in Long Beach, California. After marrying and having two children, she joined the Art Reynolds Singers gospel group and was subsequently signed as a recording artist with Dunhill Records. Despite her surname, she is not related to Whitney Houston.


title: Thelma Houston

text: In 1969, Houston released her debut album, entitled "Sunshower", produced, arranged and composed by Jimmy Webb except for one track. In 1971 she signed with Motown Records but her early recordings with them were largely unsuccessful. Her most notable single during that period was "You've Been Doing Wrong for So Long" which peaked at No. 64 on the US "Billboard" R&B chart in 1974. However Houston's vocal prowess on that track secured her a nomination for a Best Female R&B Vocal Performance. In 1973 Motown Productions announced a projected biographical film of Dinah Washington which would star Houston; however the project was dropped due to difficulties in getting clearance from Washington's relatives. In April 1974, Houston joined the cast of "The Marty Feldman Comedy Machine", playing various characters during the show's skits. The show was canceled in August and for the next several years her work was limited to demo recordings and performing at small venues.


title: Thelma Houston

text: Houston took acting classes and received her first role in the 1975 made-for-television film "Death Scream". In that same year Sheffield Lab released "I've Got the Music in Me" a direct-to-disc recording by Thelma Houston and Pressure Cooker that went on to become a benchmark vinyl recording for audiophiles. The following year she recorded songs for the soundtrack of the film "The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings" starring Billy Dee Williams and James Earl Jones. In 1975 Houston appeared on the Golden Globe Award broadcast performing the nominated song "On & On" and also was featured in a tribute to Berry Gordy on that year's American Music Award broadcast singing "You've Made Me So Very Happy". That year Houston's version of "Do You Know Where You're Going To" was being set for single release when it was pulled and the song given to Diana Ross to serve as the theme song for the movie "Mahogany". In 1976 Houston sang backing vocals for Motown labelmate Jermaine Jackson on his album "My Name Is Jermaine".


title: Thelma Houston

text: Houston released her third solo album "Any Way You Like It" in 1976. The first single released was her version of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' 1975 song "Don't Leave Me This Way". In February 1977 the track hit Number 1 in the U.S. on the R&B and Club Play Singles charts, then in April 1977 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. "Don't Leave Me This Way" won Houston the Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the Grammys for 1977. Besides its US success "Don't Leave Me This Way" became a hit in at least twelve countries, including the UK where it reached Number 13 despite the concurrent single release of the Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes original, which reached Number 7. Also in 1977 Houston teamed up with Jerry Butler to record the album "Thelma & Jerry" and that November 1977 she co-starred in the film "Game Show Models". It was announced in February 1977 that Houston would star as Bessie Smith in a filmation of the play "Me and Bessie", to be produced by Motown; after an announcement that December that Houston was set to portray Bessie Smith in a biopic to be produced in 1978 by Columbia Pictures nothing more was heard of the project.


title: Thelma Houston

text: The second single from "Any Way You Like It" was Houston's rendition of "If It's the Last Thing I Do", a standard written by Saul Chaplin and Sammy Cahn; the track had been recorded and prepped for single release in 1973 but canceled. The impact of "If It's the Last Thing I Do" was far less than that of "Don't Leave Me This Way", as the former fell short of both the R&B top ten and the Pop top 40.


title: Thelma Houston

text: With the lead single from her 1978 album "The Devil in Me": "I'm Here Again", Houston returned to the style of "Don't Leave Me This Way" without recapturing the earlier single's success. Houston did enjoy considerable commercial success in 1978 via the inclusion of her track "Love Masterpiece" on the "Thank God It's Friday" soundtrack album which sold double platinum but her own album release that year "Ready to Roll" again failing to consolidate the stardom augured by "Don't Leave Me This Way". The album's second single: "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning", gradually accrued airplay entering the national charts in March 1979 and ascending as high as #34 (#19 R&B) that June. "Saturday Night, Sunday Morning" was issued on a new album by Houston: "Ride to the Rainbow" but the track's relative success was not enough to forestall Houston's planned departure from Motown.


title: Thelma Houston

text: Houston continued recording music into the 1980s, beginning with the RCA release "Breakwater Cat" which reunited her with Jimmy Webb who produced her debut single "Sunshower" and which like their earlier collaboration was a commercially overlooked critical success. During the December 22, 1984 "Billboard" magazine interview, Houston admitted to "'no real commercial success' since the single 'Don't Leave Me This Way' broke on the Pop charts in late 1976" indicating that the disco backlash had left her with "no real base of audience support" and that her current album "Qualifying Heat", executive produced by Houston herself, was a concentrated initiative to restore her as a viable chart presence; the album featured three cuts from Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis – including the single "You Used to Hold Me So Tight" – and production work from Glen Ballard, Dennis Lambert, Cliff Magness and – in his first known recording work – Lenny Kravitz (then billed as Romeo Blue), who each produced a cut apiece. "You Use to Hold Me So Tight" became Houston's most successful post-1970s release with a No. 13 R&B peak, but its parent album was a comparative failure – charting No. 41 R&B – and Houston would not cut another album for six years.


title: Thelma Houston

text: The constant ranking of her 1980s releases as moderate or minor R&B hits led Houston to concentrate on alternate exposure. After appearing in the independent film "The Seventh Dwarf" in 1979 Houston made guest-starring appearances into the mid-1980s in several popular television programs including "Cagney & Lacey", "Simon & Simon" – a January 1986 appearance that featured her performing "You Used to Hold Me So Tight" – and "Faerie Tale Theatre". Houston also appeared in the 1987 CBS after school special "Little Miss Perfect" (1987) – as "Prison Singer" – in the 1988 film "And God Created Woman".


title: Thelma Houston

text: On the May 19, 1985 NBC broadcast "Motown Returns to the Apollo" Houston performed "What a Diff'rence a Day Makes" in the guise of Dinah Washington. Houston continued to contribute to movie soundtracks, recording "Keep It Light" for the 1985 film "Into the Night" and she remade Bill Withers' "Lean on Me" for the 1989 film entitled "Lean on Me". Houston also co-wrote and sang back-up on the song "Be Yourself" for Patti LaBelle's 1989 album of the same title.


title: Thelma Houston

text: The Fall of 1990 saw the release of Houston's first album in six years, "Throw You Down", a long-planned collaboration with producer Richard Perry which briefly extended Houston's career as a minor R&B chart presence. The title song reached No. 5 on the U.S. dance chart. A remix of "Don't Leave Me This Way" was released, and once again charted on the Hot Dance Club Play chart at No. 19 in 1995. Subsequent singles include "I Need Somebody Tonight" and "All of That".


title: Thelma Houston

text: In 1994, Houston participated in an AIDS benefit at New York's Algonquin Hotel, performing gospel music with Phoebe Snow, Chaka Khan and CeCe Peniston as "Sisters of Glory". Intended as a one-off performance troupe, the Sisters of Glory remained together – with the addition of Mavis Staples and Lois Walden, and without Chaka Khan – to perform at Woodstock '94. Houston performed with the Sisters of Glory for the Pope in Vatican City and in 1995 Houston, Phoebe Snow, CeCe Peniston, Lois Walden and Albertina Walker recorded the Warner Brothers album "Good News in Hard Times" as the Sisters of Glory.


title: Thelma Houston

text: Houston provided lead vocals on several tracks of guitarist Scott Henderson's 1997 Atlantic album, "Tore Down House", and in 1998 she made cameo appearances in two films: in "54" Houston portrayed herself singing "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" supposedly at Studio 54, and in "Beloved" Houston played 'One of The Thirty Women'.


title: Thelma Houston

text: In 2000, Houston toured successfully throughout Australia in the stage musical version of "Fame". In 2002 she again guested on a Scott Henderson album, providing lead vocals for two of the tracks on "Well to the Bone". Upon returning to the U.S. Houston toured with Nile Rodgers and Chic, and was among the opening acts of the originally intended finale of Cher's "" in Toronto on October 31, 2003. Houston regularly performs at Teatro ZinZanni in Seattle and San Francisco.


title: Thelma Houston

text: Her version of "Don't Leave Me This Way" continues to be popular today. In recent years she has been invited to sing this song on dozens of TV shows and specials including NBC's "Today Show", ABC's "Motown 45" and "The Disco Ball...A 30-Year Celebration", and PBS' specials "American Soundtrack: Rhythm, Love and Soul", "Soul Superstars", and "Old School Superstars". "Don't Leave Me This Way" was mentioned by VH1 as being among the greatest dance songs in 2000, and was ranked number eighty-six on the channel's countdown of The 100 Greatest One-Hit Wonders. She won an episode of the NBC show "Hit Me, Baby, One More Time" with her renditions of her own hit and "Fallin'" by Alicia Keys. On September 20, 2004, Houston's rendition of "Don't Leave Me This Way" was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in New York City.


title: Thelma Houston

text: On August 14, 2007, Houston released her first studio album in seventeen years, "A Woman's Touch". The album was produced by Peitor Angell and features cover versions of songs by male artists such as Luther Vandross, Marvin Gaye, and Sting that Houston had been inspired by. The first single from the album was "Brand New Day". On August 20, 2007, Houston's 1984 album "Qualifying Heat" was reissued as an import title in the U.S. with a bonus track.


title: Thelma Houston

text: She sang "Don't Leave Me This Way" on "American Idol" on April 22, 2009, and on "America's Got Talent" on September 16, 2009.


title: Thelma Houston

text: On July 29, 2013, a collaboration between Thelma and Los Angeles-based producer Janitor, entitled "Enemy", premiered on SoundCloud. Several tracks followed, culminating in the release of an EP, "Forty-Two", in September. This is the first new material from Thelma Houston in six years.


title: Thelma Houston

text: She is featured on British singer Morrissey's single "Bobby, Don't You Think They Know?", released on streaming platforms on January 10, 2020, from his album "I Am Not a Dog on a Chain".


title: Just Say No

text: "Just Say No" was an advertising campaign prevalent during the 1980s and early 1990s as a part of the U.S.-led war on drugs, aiming to discourage children from engaging in illegal recreational drug use by offering various ways of saying "no". The slogan was created and championed by Nancy Reagan during her husband's presidency.


title: Just Say No

text: The campaign emerged from a substance abuse prevention program supported by the National Institutes of Health, pioneered in the 1970s by University of Houston Social Psychology Professor Richard I. Evans. Evans promoted a social inoculation model, which included teaching student skills to resist peer pressure and other social influences. The campaign involved University projects done by students across the nation. Jordan Zimmerman, then a student at University of South Florida, and later an advertising entrepreneur, won the campaign. The anti-drug movement was among the resistance skills recommended in response to low peer pressure, and Nancy Reagan's larger campaign proved to be a useful dissemination of this social inoculation strategy.


title: Just Say No

text: Nancy Reagan first became involved during a campaign trip in 1980 to Daytop Village in New York City. She recalls feeling impressed by a need to educate the youth about drugs and drug abuse. Upon her husband's election to the presidency, she returned to Daytop Village and outlined how she wished to help educate the youth. She stated in 1981 that her best role would be to bring awareness about the dangers of drug abuse:


title: Just Say No

text: Understanding what drugs can do to your children, understanding peer pressure and understanding why they turn to drugs is ... the first step in solving the problem.


title: Just Say No

text: The "Just Say No" slogan was the creation of Robert Cox and David Cantor, advertising executives at the New York office of Needham, Harper & Steers/USA in the early 1980s.


title: Just Say No

text: In 1984, the phrase "Just Say No" first emerged when Nancy Reagan was visiting Longfellow Elementary School in Oakland, California. When asked by a schoolgirl what to do if she was offered drugs by her peers, the First Lady responded, "Just say 'no'." Just Say No club organizations within schools and school-run anti-drug programs soon became common, in which young people were making pacts not to use drugs.


title: Just Say No

text: When asked about her efforts in the campaign, Nancy Reagan said: "If you can save just one child, it's worth it." She traveled throughout the United States and several other nations, totaling over . Nancy Reagan visited drug rehabilitation centers and abuse prevention programs; with the media attention that the first lady receives, she appeared on television talk shows, recorded public service announcements, and wrote guest articles. By the autumn of 1985, she had appeared on 23 talk shows, co-hosted an October 1983 episode of "Good Morning America", and starred in a two-hour PBS documentary on drug abuse.


title: Just Say No

text: The campaign and the phrase "Just Say No" made their way into popular American culture when television series such as "Diff'rent Strokes" and "Punky Brewster" produced episodes centered on the campaign. In 1983, Nancy Reagan appeared as herself on "Diff'rent Strokes" to garner support for the anti-drug campaign. She participated in a 1985 rock music video "Stop the Madness" as well. She even appeared in numerous public service announcements, including one which aired in movie theaters where she appeared alongside actor Clint Eastwood. La Toya Jackson became spokesperson for the campaign in 1987 and recorded a song titled "Just Say No" with British hit producers Stock/Aitken/Waterman.


title: Just Say No

text: In 1985, Nancy Reagan expanded the campaign internationally. She invited the First Ladies of 30 nations to the White House in Washington, DC, for a conference entitled the "First Ladies Conference on Drug Abuse". She later became the first First Lady invited to address the United Nations.


title: Just Say No

text: She enlisted the help of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America, Kiwanis Club International, and the National Federation of Parents for a Drug-Free Youth to promote the cause; the Kiwanis put up over 2000 billboards with Nancy Reagan's likeness and the slogan. Over 5000 Just Say No clubs were founded in schools and youth organizations in the United States and abroad. Many clubs and organizations remain in operation around the country, where they aim to educate children and teenagers about the effects of drugs.


title: Just Say No

text: Just Say No crossed over to the United Kingdom in the 1980s, where it was popularized by the BBC's 1986 "Drugwatch" campaign, which revolved around a heroin-addiction storyline in the popular children's TV drama serial "Grange Hill". The cast's cover of the original US campaign song, with an added rap, reached the UK top ten. The death of Anna Wood in Sydney, Australia and British teen Leah Betts from Essex in the mid-1990s sparked a media firestorm across both the UK and Australia over the use of illegal drugs. Wood's parents even released her school photograph on a badge with the saying "Just say no to drugs" placed on it to warn society on the dangers of illicit drug use. The photograph was widely circulated in the media. A photo of Betts in a coma in her hospital bed was also circulated in British media. Both teenagers died due to water intoxication as they drank too much water after ingesting ecstasy.


title: Just Say No

text: Nancy Reagan's related efforts increased public awareness of drug use, but extant research has not established a direct relationship between the Just Say No campaign and reduced drug use. Although the use and abuse of illegal recreational drugs significantly declined during the Reagan presidency, this may be a spurious correlation: a 2009 analysis of 20 controlled studies on enrollment in one of the most popular "Just Say No" programs, DARE, showed no impact on drug use.


title: Just Say No

text: The campaign drew significant criticism. Critics labelled Nancy Reagan's approach to promoting drug awareness reductive, arguing that tackling the issue of drug abuse required a more complex approach than simply encouraging the use of catchphrase. In fact, two studies suggested that enrollees in DARE-like programs were actually "more" likely to use alcohol and cigarettes. Journalist Michael McGrath suggested that inflamed fears from "Just Say No" exacerbated mass incarceration and prevented youth from receiving accurate information about dealing with drug abuse and responsible drug use. Critics also think that "Just Say No" contributed towards the well seasoned stigma about people who use drugs being labelled as "bad", and the stigma toward those people who are addicted to drugs being labelled as making a cognizant immoral choice to engage in drug use.


title: Kathir

text: Kathir is an Indian film director, producer, and screenwriter who works predominantly in Tamil cinema.


title: Kathir

text: Kathir was born in kalkarai, a small village in the Radhapuram Taluk of Tirunelveli District, state of Tamil Nadu, India. Kathir grew up in a middle-class family as the only son along with his three sisters. His father Subhash was a farmer and mother Isakiammal assisted him in his farming. Kathir had his elementary schooling in kalkarai elementary school. He finished his 5th standard there and joined St. Teresa's school in Vadakangulam. He completed his school studies here. Kathir got into the College of Fine arts and Crafts, Chennai. He did a five-year course in Fine arts and graduated with a Diploma in Fine Arts.


title: Kathir

text: Kathir started out as a poster designer in the film industry, and designed posters for films including "Moondram Pirai" (1981), "Andha 7 Naatkal" (1981), "Darling, Darling, Darling" (1982) and Mani Ratnam's "Pagal Nilavu" (1985) to make pocket money while he was in college.


title: Kathir

text: He worked as an assistant director for Pandiyarajan and GM Kumar. In 2001, he founded his own production studio Sound Light Studio through which he produced "Kadhal Virus". He also distributed the film all over Tamil Nadu. In 1996, "Kadhal Desam" emerged as the biggest hit of his career grossing 10 crore at the box office. Kathir scripted and was ready to make a film titled "I Love You" by 1997. After being unable to produce the film himself, he shelved the venture. He moved on to briefly begin pre-production work on a project titled "Bangalore" in late 1999, before opting not to continue.


title: Kathir

text: Kathir announced a comeback in 2008 and began work on a film titled "Manavar Dhinam" with Vinay in the lead role. Following a delay, the actor was replaced by Srikanth and a launch was held in 2009 by the production house Ayngaran International. However, the film was later shelved and the pair decided to collaborate for the new venture titled "Kodai Vidumurai". The film underwent a change in cast and work on the film, featuring Shaam, began again in July 2012. The film has since failed to make progress.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: Ariana Afghan Airlines Co. Ltd. (; ), also known simply as Ariana, is the flag carrier and largest airline of Afghanistan. Founded in 1955, Ariana is the oldest airline in the country and is state owned. The company has its main base at Kabul International Airport, from which it operates domestic flights and international connections to destinations in China, India, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. The carrier is headquartered in Shāre Naw district, Kabul. Ariana Afghan Airlines has been on the list of air carriers banned in the European Union .


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: The airline was set up on 27 January 1955. It was established as "Aryana Airlines" with the assistance of "Indamer Co. Ltd.", which initially held a 49% interest, and the government of Afghanistan owned the balance. At the beginning, services were operated to Bahrain, India, Iran, and Lebanon, with a fleet of three Douglas DC-3s. In 1957, Pan American World Airways became the minor shareholder of the airline when it took over the 49% interest from Indamer. Domestic scheduled services started the same year. By , a fleet of three DC-3s was being used for linking Kabul with Amritsar, Delhi, Jeddah, and Karachi, as well as with some points within Afghanistan, while a single DC-4 operated the Kabul–Kandahar–Tehran–Damascus–Beirut–Ankara–Prague–Frankfurt service, so-called "Marco Polo" route. In the early 1960s, from US aid to Afghanistan was used to capitalise the company.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: By , the airline had 650 employees. At this time, the fleet comprised one Boeing 727-100C, one CV-440, one DC-3 and two Douglas DC-6s that worked on routes serving the Middle East, India, Pakistan, the USSR, and Istanbul, Frankfurt, and London. Domestic services were then operated by "Bakhtar Alwatana", which was established by the government in 1967 for this purpose.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: The carrier's first widebody aircraft, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30, entered the fleet in early . By , the aircraft fleet consisted of the DC-10 and two Boeing 727-100Cs. In the mid-1980s, during the Soviet–Afghan War, the carrier was forced to sell the DC-10 to British Caledonian, as the Soviets wanted the carrier to fly the Tupolev Tu-154 as a replacement. In , Ariana was taken over by Bakhtar Afghan Airlines, which became the country's new national airline. In 1986, "Bakhtar" ordered two Tupolev Tu-154Ms; the airline took possession of these aircraft in . In , "Bakhtar" was merged back into "Ariana", thus creating an airline which could serve both short and long haul routes.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: Following the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in 1996 and the proclamation of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the country faced substantial economic sanctions from the international sector during the Taliban regime. The sanctions, along with the Taliban government's control of the company and the grounding of many of the carrier's international flights, had a devastating effect on the economic health of the company through the 1990s. The fleet was reduced to only a handful of Russian and Ukrainian built An-26s, Yakovlev Yak-40s and three Boeing 727s, which were used on the longest domestic routes. In October 1996, Pakistan provided a temporary maintenance and operational base at Karachi. With no overseas assets, by 1999 Ariana's international operations consisted of flights to Dubai only; also, limited cargo flights continued into China's western provinces. However, sanctions imposed by UN Security Council Resolution 1267 in November 1999 forced the airline to suspend overseas operations. In , Ariana was grounded completely.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: According to people interviewed by the "Los Angeles Times", Viktor Bout's companies helped in running the airline.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: Following the overthrow of the Taliban government during Operation Enduring Freedom, Ariana began to rebuild its operations in . About a month later, the UN sanctions were finally lifted, permitting the airline to resume international routes again. In 2002, the government of India gave the carrier a gift of three ex-Air India Airbus A300s. Ariana's first international passenger flight since 1999 landed at Indira Gandhi International Airport in , followed by routes to Pakistan and Germany in June and October the same year, respectively. In 2005, India signed an agreement on aviation cooperation with Afghanistan, with Air India training 50 officials for Ariana.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: All commercial flights were cancelled following the Taliban taking over the capital city of Kabul in 2021. Domestic flights resumed in September.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: Due to safety regulations, Ariana was mostly banned from flying into European Union airspace in , with the European Commission allowing the carrier to fly only a single France-registered Airbus A310 into the member states; the ban was extended to the entire fleet in October of that year. The ban was confirmed in subsequent updates of the list released in late 2009 and . In , all Afghanistan-registered aircraft were banned from operating in the European Union. Ariana is still included in the list as of June 2022.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: , Ariana Afghan Airlines serves three domestic and seven international destinations in Russia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, India, and China; most of the routes radiate from Kabul.


title: Ariana Afghan Airlines

text: According to "Aviation Safety Network", Ariana Afghan Airlines has written off 19 aircraft involved in 13 events, seven of them being deadly. Casualties totaled 154 deaths. The following list includes occurrences that led to at least one fatality, resulted in a write-off of the aircraft involved, or both.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Kirby's Return to Dream Land, released in Europe and Australia as Kirby's Adventure Wii, is a 2011 platform video game developed by HAL Laboratory and published by Nintendo for the Wii. It is the ninth mainline installment and the twenty-second game in the "Kirby" series. While "Kirby's Epic Yarn" was released in 2010, "Kirby's Return to Dream Land" is the first traditional "Kirby" platforming home console game since "", which was released in 2000 for the Nintendo 64. The title was released in North America on October 24, 2011, in Japan on October 27, 2011, in Europe on November 25, 2011, and in Australia on December 1, 2011.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: "Kirby's Return to Dream Land" features the staple gameplay of traditional "Kirby" platform games, in which Kirby possesses the ability to inhale and copy enemies to gain a variety of attacks such as breathing fire or swinging a sword. The game supports cooperative multiplayer gameplay, allowing up to four players to control various "Kirby" characters, including Bandana Waddle Dee, King Dedede, and Meta Knight. "Kirby"s plot focuses on the characters retrieving the scattered pieces of a crashed alien spaceship.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: The game was announced as a GameCube title to be released in late 2005, but development was later shifted to its successor console, the Wii. The game was presumed to be canceled until it was re-announced in 2011. The game was made available on the Wii U's Nintendo eShop in 2015.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Some elements from the cancelled "Kirby" title of 2005 were carried over to "Kirby's Return to Dream Land", such as the ability for players to stack up in a totem carried by the player on the bottom of the stack. Other elements from the "Kirby" title of 2005, such as Kirby's ability to befriend up to three "Helpers" (a gameplay mechanic from "Kirby Super Star"), were modified and carried over to another "Kirby" game, released in early 2018 on the Nintendo Switch, called "Kirby Star Allies". "Kirby's Return to Dream Land" received generally positive reviews, with praise for the return to form of the traditional "Kirby" series gameplay, level design, visuals, and graphics, but criticism for its low difficulty and multiplayer. A remake for the Nintendo Switch, Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe, is set for release on February 24, 2023.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: "Return to Dream Land" is a 2.5D side-scrolling platform game, controlled by holding the Wii Remote sideways. Unlike previous entries in the "Kirby" series, the game features 3D models for player characters and enemies rather than sprites.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Throughout the game, Kirby can collect items which will heal him; food items that recover health, items that give him an extra life, or by collecting 100 stars, which immediately grants him an extra life. There are also various items Kirby can use to interact with the environment. At the end of each stage, a bonus game is played in which players time a button press to jump as high as possible to earn additional items.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: The player controls Kirby, who retains his signature ability to inhale objects and enemies. The inhaled objects can either be swallowed, or propelled back out as a projectile. Kirby can also do a "Super Inhale", where shaking the Wii Remote or inhaling for a long time makes Kirby's inhale stronger. A Super Inhale has extended range and can suck up "Heave-ho Blocks", which are immovable from a regular inhale; the Super Inhale also allows Kirby to inhale other players and most large enemies.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Certain enemies, when swallowed, give Kirby access to a wide variety of "Copy Abilities", which gives Kirby the attack properties of the enemies he inhales. Kirby can only possess one copy ability at a time. Other players playing as another character through multiplayer, or those playing as King Dedede, Meta Knight, or Waddle Dee, can hold onto a Copy Ability's essence and throw them back to Kirby to be inhaled. If a discarded ability from these characters is left untouched, it will vanish shortly afterwards.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Each copy ability has multiple attacks that are utilized depending on the combination of button-inputs pressed by the player. New Abilities introduced in this game are the Whip Ability, which lets Kirby grab out-of-reach items, the Water Ability, which allows Kirby to extinguish fires, and the Leaf Ability, which lets Kirby use leaves as a form of attack and conjure a pile of leaves to hide in and become invulnerable to nearly all attacks. The remake introduces the Mecha Ability, which allows Kirby to shoot various projectiles, as well as use a robot arm to punch.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: The game introduces more powerful, temporary Copy Abilities called "Super Abilities," which are able to destroy parts of the environment and inflict tremendous damage across a wide range. Unlike regular Copy Abilities, ejecting a Super Ability will cause the Super Ability's to be discarded instantly. Five Super Abilities exist: Ultra Sword, Monster Flame, Flare Beam, Grand Hammer, and Snow Bowl, which are enhanced versions of five respective Copy Abilities, with different move-sets.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: The game features drop-in cooperative multiplayer for up to three additional players. These players can either play as a differently-colored-from-Player-One's Kirby, or as one of three unique characters: Meta Knight, King Dedede, and Waddle Dee. Each of these characters possess traits from corresponding Copy Abilities based on the way each character moves and attacks, though only Kirbys are able to inhale enemies and use Copy Abilities. Players are able to ride on top of each other as a "totem", which, with perfect timing, allows the use of a charged attack, called the "Team Attack", driven by the player at the bottom. Players can also share recently ingested health-restoring items through a move called "Face-to-Face" (similar to regurgitation).


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: All players share from a pool of lives, with each player requiring one life to enter the game. If one of the three additional players loses a life, they can spend an extra life to rejoin the game. However, if Player One dies, all players stop play and gameplay restarts from the last checkpoint.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: One day, a strange, dimension hopping spaceship called the Lor Starcutter suddenly flies out of a wormhole and crash onto Kirby's home planet of Popstar. As Kirby, Meta Knight, King Dedede and Waddle Dee go to investigate, they meet an alien named Magolor, who discovers that the five vital pieces of his ship, along with 120 energy spheres, have been scattered across the planet. With Magolor offering them a trip to his homeworld of Halcandra should they help fix his ship, Kirby and his friends set off to recover the lost pieces.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: After retrieving the main pieces, they travel to Halcandra, where they are attacked by a four headed dragon named Landia. Magolor claims Landia is an evil beast that has taken over Halcandra and sends Kirby to defeat it. However, after Landia is defeated, Magolor reveals his true motive was to steal the Master Crown on its head and become all powerful, with intent of making the entire universe bow before him, beginning with Popstar. Teaming up with Landia, who is revealed to be four individual dragons, Kirby and his friends confront Magolor in a final battle and destroy the Master Crown, taking Magolor with it. With peace restored to the universe, Kirby and friends are returned to Popstar. The Landia dragons take the Lor Starcutter and return home. A non-canon Extra Mode, which replaces Magolor's final form with Magolor Soul, reveals that Magolor may have been used as a puppet by the Master Crown itself.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Development on a new "Kirby" game for the GameCube began after the release of "" for the Nintendo 64 in 2000. The game underwent an 11-year development period, in which three different proposed versions of the game were developed and scrapped. The first version was similar to the graphical and gameplay style of "Kirby 64", rendered in 3D, but using traditional 2D side-scrolling gameplay. The game would also support multiplayer with up to four players. This build was demonstrated at E3 in 2005, and was set for release later that year. However, difficulty with programming multiplayer led to this version being scrapped, though its concept would later resurface as "Kirby Star Allies" for the Nintendo Switch. The second build placed Kirby in a 3D environment with open world-style gameplay, and the third build returned to side-scrolling gameplay, but had the graphical style of a pop-up book similar to "Yoshi's Story" for the Nintendo 64 in the late 1990s. Although the second build was cancelled because it didn't achieve HAL Laboratory's quality standards, its concept would eventually resurface as "Kirby and the Forgotten Land" for the Nintendo Switch with elements from 2D platform games. The development team realized that the failure of the first three attempts were caused by too much focus on multiplayer, so focus was shifted to the single-player experience. Development of the final version accelerated in October 2010, when the game began to take form.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: "Kirby"s long development caused the game to frequently appear and then disappear from Nintendo's upcoming game lists. On September 14, 2006, the "Kirby" game appeared on a list of upcoming Wii games, named , set for release in Japan. The December 2006 issue of "Nintendo Power" removed "Kirby" from its list of GameCube releases, but did not place it on its list of Wii releases. Matt Casamassina of "IGN", posting on his blog, furthered the idea of a Wii release by stating that it would indeed be released for the Wii in 2007. He compared it to "Donkey Kong Barrel Blast", another game that was originally announced as a GameCube title, but eventually released on Wii. While the game did not appear at E3 2007, Beth Llewelyn of Nintendo of America confirmed the game "had not been abandoned." The December 2007 issue of "Official Nintendo Magazine" claimed that a "Kirby" game for Wii was not in development. On May 7, 2010, Nintendo confirmed that a "Kirby" Wii title was still in the making.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Nintendo announced the game "Kirby's Epic Yarn" at E3 2010, a separate title that was in development by Good-Feel. The 2005 "Kirby" game was presumed to have been canceled until a Financial Results Briefing on January 28, 2011 re-announced the game with a release date set within the same year. At E3 2011, the game was demonstrated in playable form under the tentative title "Kirby Wii". The game was later renamed "Kirby's Return to Dream Land" in North America, "Kirby's Adventure Wii" in Europe and Australia, and "Hoshi no Kirby Wii" in Japan. The music is composed by Jun Ishikawa and Hirokazu Ando with a soundtrack called "Kirby Wii Music Selection" featuring 45 musical pieces from the game.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: During the Nintendo Direct on September 13, 2022; a remake of the game was announced for the Nintendo Switch titled "Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe". Additions to the original include a new Mecha Ability, a comic book-esque graphical style, and all new sub-games. The game is set for release on February 24, 2023.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: "Kirby's Return to Dream Land" received a 77/100, based on review aggregator Metacritic. According to Nintendo, the game sold 1.31 million copies by the end of 2012.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Multiple critics appreciated the return of traditional "Kirby" gameplay, compared to unique content such as "Kirby's Epic Yarn". The game was called nostalgic and reminiscent of previous games, with Jim Sterling of "Destructoid" describing the game as "refreshing" and stating that "Kirby doesn't need to innovate, he just needs to be fun; "Return to Dream Land" brings the fun in spades." The graphics and visuals were praised for being detailed and vibrant. "GameSpot" reviewer Nathan Meunier called the levels beautifully designed, appreciating each one's environment.


title: Kirby's Return to Dream Land

text: Complaints were raised of how the game lacked difficulty, mostly from the use of multiplayer. "IGN" stated that the game could appeal to a younger audience with a simple difficulty level.


title: Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd

text: Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd is the fourth compilation album by the English rock band Pink Floyd, released on 5 November 2001 by EMI internationally and a day later by Capitol Records in the United States. It debuted at No. 2 on the "Billboard" 200 album chart on 24 November 2001, with sales of 214,650 copies. It remained on the chart for 26 weeks. The album was certified gold, platinum and double platinum on 6 December 2001 in the US by the RIAA. It was certified triple platinum in the US on 8 January 2002, and quadruple platinum on 10 September 2007.


title: Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd

text: The compilation spans the career of Pink Floyd from their first single "Arnold Layne" in 1967, through to "High Hopes", the final track from their 1994 studio album "The Division Bell". Original frontman Syd Barrett is featured on six of the album's 26 tracks, providing lead vocals on five. Four of the band's albums—"More", "Ummagumma", "Atom Heart Mother" and "Obscured by Clouds"—are not represented, though multiple tracks from "Atom Heart Mother" and "Ummagumma" were planned to appear on the compilation. Each of the 26 tracks fades from one to the next with no break in the music, courtesy of longtime producer/engineer James Guthrie, to help recreate the concept album feel of the band's mid-period work. All 26 tracks were newly remastered specifically for this compilation and are not sequenced in chronological order.


title: Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd

text: The band's longtime guitarist, David Gilmour, said of the process of compiling the tracks themselves:


title: Echoes: The Best of Pink Floyd

text: Roger Waters's main contribution was the name of the compilation. "I had to, because the name the boys came up with was so awful. What was it? 'Sum of the Parts'. See what I mean?"