title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: With tensions stoked between the Eastern region and Gowon's federal government, on 4–5 January 1967, in compliance with Ojukwu's desire to meet for talks only on neutral soil, a summit attended by Gowon, Ojukwu and other members of the Supreme Military Council was held at Aburi in Ghana, the stated purpose of which was to resolve all outstanding conflicts and establish Nigeria as a confederation of regions. The outcome of this summit was the Aburi Accord, the differing interpretations of which would soon cause Ojukwu to declare Biafran independence and plunge Nigeria into civil war.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Igbo withdrawal arose in part from the pogroms in the North that were aimed at Eastern people, most specifically, the Igbo. However, since the southeast encompassed most of the petroleum-rich Niger Delta, the prospect emerged of the Eastern Region gaining self-sufficiency and increasing prosperity. The exclusion of easterners from power caused many in the east to fear that oil revenues would be used to benefit areas in the north and west rather than their own. The desire to accrue profits from oil revenues combined with ethnic tensions acted as a catalyst for the Igbo-spearheaded secession.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Additionally, despite his denials in later years, it appears that Ojukwu's insistence on secession at the time was heavily influenced by his knowledge of the extent of the area's oil reserves. Recent evidence has suggested a tax battle waged by American oil companies contributed to the regional and ethnic tensions that would lead to the outbreak of war. It was also during this period that, again thanks to the Americans, the opacity and concomitant corruption of Nigerian oil began to crystallise. However, evidence from leaked US State Department documents have proven that Britain, through Shell-Mex & BP, still held the most influence over the Nigerian oil industry at the time the war broke out. The United States declared neutrality, with US Secretary of State Dean Rusk stating that "America is not in a position to take action as Nigeria is an area under British influence".


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: On top of scores of deaths, the war had a largely negative impact on the oil industry. Strife caused production of crude to drop significantly, particularly in Biafra. Total crude output decreased from in 1966 at the start of the war, to only in 1968. Shell alone saw a drop from in 1966, to in 1968. And in addition to concerns about production, oil companies began experiencing uncertainty as to the future of their investments depending on who prevailed in the war. This led to relations between oil companies and the federal government becoming strained, with the government at one point accusing the oil company Safrap (now TotalFinaElf, but Elf until 1974) of favouring Biafra and enlisting the aid of France for the Biafran cause. Shell, the other major holder of concessions in the southeast, was concerned but placated and limited politically by Britain's staunch support of the Nigerian government in the war effort.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Despite oil's prominent role in national affairs, up to this time, the Nigerian federal government had only limited involvement in the oil industry, and the government confined its financial involvement in the oil industry to taxes and royalties on the oil companies. The companies were subsequently able to set their own price on the petroleum they extracted, and dominated petroleum to such a point that laws governing the oil sector were having a negative effect on Nigerian interests. However, even during the conflict with Biafra would force changes to the relationship between federal government and the petroleum industry. Gowon's military government instituted the 1969 Petroleum Decree which dismantled the existing revenue allocation system that had divided revenue from oil taxes equally between federal and state government, instead favouring an allocation formula in which the federal government controlled the dispensation of revenues to the states.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: After the loss of over 2,000,000 lives, the war concluded in 1970 and resulted in a victory for the Nigerian state, as the withdrawing regions were subsequently brought back into the Nigerian fold. However, the former Eastern Region had been split into two new states, Rivers and South-Eastern (now Cross River) in order to discourage lingering ideas of independence.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: In May 1971 the Nigerian federal government, then under the control of General Yakubu Gowon, nationalised the oil industry by creating the Nigerian National Oil Corporation via a decree. Following the war with Biafra, the government felt it necessary to secure and gain more control over the oil industry. Nationalization of the oil sector was also precipitated by Nigeria's desire to join OPEC, which was encouraging member states to acquire 51% stakes and become increasingly involved in the oil sector. Although the Nigerian government had maintained involvement in the industry prior to 1971, this was accomplished mainly through business deals on concessions of the foreign firms in operation. The creation of the NNOC made government participation in the industry legally binding. The federal government would continue to consolidate its oil involvement throughout the next several decades.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: However, it was during the years of Gowon and his successors Murtala Mohammed and Olusegun Obasanjo known officially as the Heads of the Federal Military Government of Nigeria, who ruled amidst the oil boom of the 1970s that the political economy of petroleum in Nigeria truly became characterised by endemic patronage and corruption by the political elites, which plagues the nation to this day. At both state and federal government levels, power and therefore wealth has typically been monopolised by select lobby groups who maintain a strong tendency to 'look after their own' by financially rewarding their political supporters. At the state or community level this means that interest groups in power will reward and protect their own; this is typically based on ethnic/tribal or religious affiliation of the interest group. The heavy patronage based on tribal affiliation has fueled ethnic unrest and violence throughout Nigeria, but particularly in the Niger Delta states, where the stakes for control of the immense oil resources are very high. At the federal level, political elites have utilised patronage to consolidate power for the ruling government, not only by rewarding their political friends in the federal government, but also by paying off major interest groups at the state or tribal level in order to elicit their cooperation. Inevitably these financial favours are distributed unequally and inefficiently, resulting in concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a small minority. Nigeria is ranked by the Corruption Perceptions Index 136st out of 180 countries total (for comparison, this is the same as Russia).


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Following the NNOC's genesis, the Nigerian government continued to garner control over oil revenues. In 1972 it declared that all property not currently owned by a foreign entity was legally the property of the government, which gained jurisdiction over the sale and allocation of concessions to foreign investors. The military regime oversaw the implementation of a number of other important milestones related to oil:


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: 1975: Decree 6 increases federal government share in oil sector to 80%, with only 20% going to the states.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: 1976: First exploration and development venture by NNOC undertaken and drills to uncover commercial quantities of petroleum off-shore.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: 1978: Perhaps most importantly, the federal government created the Land Use Act which vested control over state lands in military governors appointed by the federal military regime, and eventually led to Section 40(3) of the 1979 constitution which declared all minerals, oil, natural gas, and natural resources found within the bounds of Nigeria to be legal property of the Nigerian federal government.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: 1979: In an effort to establish further control over the industry, the government merges and restructures the NNOC and the Ministry of Petroleum to form the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, an entity which would exert more power over the allocation and sale of concessions than the NNOC. By 1979, the NNPC had also gained 60% participation in the oil industry.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Despite the vast revenues accrued by Gowon and his heirs, the junta succumbed to the demands of the civilian population, and in 1979 military head of state Olusegun Obasanjo handed over power to elected National Party of Nigeria (NPN) candidate Shehu Shagari. This event coincided with the declaration of Nigeria's Second Republic. At this juncture, the oil producing states of the Niger Delta were accounting for 82% of all federal government revenue but the population of these areas received very little compensation and demands for adequate reimbursement for the black gold extracted from their land could be heard at this time. Overall, petroleum accounted for 96% of all government external revenue but a mere 27% of the nation's GDP. However, the advent of democracy did not improve the situation.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: A 1982 Revenue Act implemented by the Shagari government would eventually be modified by yet another military regime in 1984 via Decree 36 which reduced the government share of oil revenue from 80% to 55%. States got 32.5% and 10% went to local governments. The remaining 1.5% was earmarked as a special fund to new develop oil-producing areas, but during the Shagari regime the corruption in Nigerian governance reached its zenith and capital flight out of Nigeria peaked, while people in the oil-producing areas continued to receive little or none of the oil profits. Additionally, 1980 saw oil-generated revenues attain an all-time high of US$24.9 billion but Nigeria still managed an international debt of $9 billion.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Shagari's NPN government was viewed by the majority of Nigerians as incorrigibly corrupt by the time the national elections of 1983 came about. Shagari and his subordinates steadily transformed Nigeria into a police state where Nigerian military and police forces were permitted to utilise force quite liberally in order to control the civilian population. Such repressive measures were employed to ensure victory in the forthcoming elections, and this outcome was achieved largely through the bankrupting of the federal government's treasury.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Another disturbing trend had also been gaining steam in Nigeria since the early 1970s: a steep drop in agricultural production correlating roughly with the rise in federal revenues from petroleum extraction. Whereas previously Nigeria had been the world's lead exporter of cocoa, production of this cash crop dropped by 43%, while productivity in other important income generators like rubber (29%), groundnuts (64%), and cotton (65%) plummeted as well between 1972 and 1983. The decline in agricultural production was not limited to cash crops amid the oil boom, and national output of staple foodstuffs also fell. This situation contrasts to Nigeria in 1960 just after independence, when despite British underdevelopment, the nation was more or less self-sufficient in terms of food supply, while crops made up 97% of all revenue from exports. The drop in production was so substantial that by the early 1980s the NPN government was forced to implement a now notorious import license scheme which essentially involved Nigeria, for the first time in its history, importing basic food items. However, as Nigerian activist and Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka asserts, "the import license scam that was used by the party as a reward and enticement for party loyalists and would-be supporters cost the nation billions of dollars...while food production in the country virtually ceased".


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: For these reasons, seizure of power by General Muhammadu Buhari a short time after the NPN government was fraudulently re-elected was initially perceived as a positive development by civilians. Buhari charged out of the gate in December 1983, declaring himself Head of the Supreme Military Council of Nigeria, he condemned the civilian government's blatant corruption and instituted programs supposedly designed to eliminate the disease of corruption. However, these measures were largely transparent and the looting of federal coffers by Nigeria's rulers continued largely unabated, "as Shagari's officers  – both within party and government – left the country, came in and out as they pleased, while Burahi's tribunal sentence opposition figures to spells of between a hundred and three hundred years in prison for every dubious kind of crime". The Buhari government neglected to punish even Shagari himself, a consistent trend in Nigerian's long line of dictatorial rulers, who almost universally been spared any kind of justice.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: In 1985, another general, this time General Ibrahim Babangida, stole power and again alleged that his predecessors were corrupt violators of human rights and promised to rectify the situation, committing to a return to democracy by 1990. Nigeria had been saddled with a crushingly large international debt at this point. This was because, despite over 101 billion US dollars having been generated by the oil industry between 1958 and 1983, nearly all of these funds had been siphoned into the private bank accounts and the state sponsored pet projects maintained by the succession of Nigerian governmental elites.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Immediately prior to Babangida's rise to power, which is viewed by some as having been orchestrated by international oil and banking interests, the International Monetary Fund was exerting increasingly acute pressure on the Nigerian government to repay its massive debts, of which 44% of all federal revenue was already servicing. Therefore, it was unsurprising when Babangida implemented the IMF's Structural Adjustment Program in October 1986 in order to facilitate debt repayment. The SAP was extremely controversial while it was in effect between 1986 and 1988. While it did permit Nigerian exports to become more competitive internationally and spurred a degree of economic growth, the SAP also incurred a dramatic drop in real wages for the majority of Nigerians. This, combined with major cuts to important public services, incited public unrest so extreme that Babangida's Armed Forces Ruling Council was obliged to partially reverse the SAP initiatives and return to inflationary economic policies. Babangida's rule also oversaw the annihilation of the Nigerian economic middle class, and Nigeria's entry to the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, despite Muslims accounting for less than 50% of the Nigerian populace.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The 1980s military juntas conducted several attempted re-organisations of the NNPC to increase its efficiency. However, according to most sources by the early 1990s the NNPC was characterised by chronic inefficiency and waste. Red tape and poor organisation are standard, with the NNPC being divided into several sub-entities, each fulfilling a particular function. This is despite the NNPC's growing participation in the industry, including development and exploration of numerous off-shore wells. As a result, the functionality of the industry is dependent on foreign corporations, not the NNPC.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The sudden jump in oil prices caused by the First Gulf War in 1990 and 1991, as most researchers confirm, was at best squandered. The Babangida junta has been widely accused of "mismanaging" the oil windfall from the Gulf War price jump, which accounted for about $12.5 billion in revenues. Another alleges that the federal government siphoned off about $12.2 billion between 1988 and 1994 into private accounts or expenditures, "clandestinely undertaken while the country was openly reeling with a crushing external debt".


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Under these circumstances, Babangida eventually allowed for nationwide elections on 12 June 1993. These elections were declared universally free and fair (at least in comparison to past elections) by all major international election monitors, and the eventual winner of the presidential race was the Chief M.K.O. Abiola [of the newly formed SDP]. However, the military regime cynically pronounced the election, in which fourteen million Nigerians participated, to be null and void due to "electoral irregularities". The Nigerian people took to the streets in large numbers to protest the election's annulment. As civil unrest continued, Babangida was forced to cede power to the caretaker government of Ernest Shonekan.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Shonekan's interim government would be short-lived, as on 17 November 1993, Babangida's former Chief of Army Staff and Minister of Defence Sani Abacha overthrew the caretaker regime and installed himself as Head of State. Popular opposition to the junta was widespread and public demonstrations were taking place on a regular basis. Immediately upon taking power, Abacha commenced the brutal repression of these subversive elements which would make his tenure notorious on a global basis.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Throughout the early 1990s such popular unrest grew steadily, particularly in the Niger Delta region, where various ethnic groups began demanding compensation for years of ecological damage as well as control over their land's oil resources. This unrest manifested itself at the outset as peaceful activist organisations that united their members on the basis of ethnicity.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: One of the most prominent of these organisations to emerge in the region was the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). The group declared that the Ogoni people, a small minority in Rivers State of Nigeria, were slowly being annihilated as the arable terrain of their homeland (known as Ogoniland) was degraded by pollution from oil production by Chevron and primarily Shell.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Conflict in the Niger Delta arose in the early 1990s due to tensions between the foreign oil corporations, the Nigerian federal government, and a number of the Niger Delta's ethnic groups who felt they were being exploited, particularly minority groups like the Ogoni as well as the Ijaw in the late 1990s. Ethnic and political unrest has continued throughout the 1990s and persists as of 2006 despite the conversion to a more democratic, civilian federal system under the Obasanjo government in 1999; democracy has to some degree fan the flames as politicians seeking office may now employ militia groups to coerce voters and generally disrupt the election process. Competition for oil wealth has fuelled violence between innumerable ethnic groups, causing the militarisation of nearly the entire region by ethnic militia groups as well as Nigerian military and police forces (notably the Nigerian Mobile Police). Victims of crimes are fearful of seeking justice for crimes committed against them because of growing "impunity from prosecution for individuals responsible for serious human rights abuses, [which] has created a devastating cycle of increasing conflict and violence". The regional and ethnic conflicts are so numerous that fully detailing each is impossible and impractical.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: On 30 January 2013, a Dutch court ruled that Shell can be held accountable for the pollution in the Niger Delta.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As of 1999, details and nature of the relationship between the government and the operating companies were governed by three types of agreements, joint ventures, production sharing contracts and service contracts.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As of 2007, Nigeria's oil revenue totaled $340 billion in exports since the 1970s and it was the fifth largest producer. Nigeria imports most of its gasoline, though it is a major oil exporter, and when fuel subsidies were lifted in January 2012, fuel increased from roughly $1.70 per gallon to $3.50. As of 2019, Nigeria produced a form of oil ideal for the United States, had huge reserves, and increased its production to of oil a day. At the same time this has been described as a resource curse hurting Nigeria and disadvantaging her people.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: In July 2013, a report analysing the effect of oil theft in Nigeria revealed that Nigeria lost $10.9 billion in potential oil revenues between 2009 and 2011. In 2022, the country's oil industry's regulator mentioned that oil theft accounted for 108,000 barrels a day, which is about 7% of total oil production. Watchdogs reckoned that 5% to 20% of oil in Nigeria is reportedly stolen. The Trans Niger pipeline suffered so much theft that its oil flow was forced to be halted. The head of the NNPC, Mele Kyari claimed that oil companies have cut production worth 700,000 barrels per day to avoid oil theft.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Process and Industrial Developments Ltd (P&ID) entered into a 20-year contract with the Nigerian government for natural gas supply and processing. Nigeria provided the gas, which PI&D refined so that it could be use to power the Nigerian electrical grid. PI&D could keep valuable byproducts for its own use. In 2012, PI&D demanded arbitration in London, alleging that Nigeria had not supplied the agreed quantity of gas or to construct the infrastructure it had agreed to build. The arbitral tribunal awarded damages of more than £4.8 billion. The compensation was valued £8.15 billion with interest when the case was heard in London High Court in December 2022.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The Niger Delta comprises of wetlands formed primarily by sediment deposition. Home to more than 20 million people and 40 different ethnic groups, this floodplain makes up 7.5% of Nigeria's total land mass. It is the largest wetland and maintains the third-largest drainage area in Africa. The Delta's environment can be broken down into four ecological zones: coastal barrier islands, mangrove swamp forests, freshwater swamps, and lowland rainforests.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: This incredibly well-endowed ecosystem, which contains one of the highest concentrations of biodiversity on the planet, in addition to supporting an abundant flora and fauna, arable terrain that can sustain a wide variety of crops, economic trees, and more species of freshwater fish than any ecosystem in West Africa. The region could experience a loss of 40% of its inhabitable terrain in the next thirty years because of extensive dam construction in the region. The carelessness of the oil industry has also precipitated this situation, which can perhaps be best encapsulated by a report issued by the NNPC in 1983, long before popular unrest surfaced:


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: "We witnessed the slow poisoning of the waters of this country and the destruction of vegetation and agricultural land by oil spills which occur during petroleum operations. But since the inception of the oil industry in Nigeria, more than twenty-five years ago, there has been no concerned and effective effort on the part of the government, let alone the oil operators, to control environmental problems associated with the industry".


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Oil spills in Nigeria are a common occurrence; it has been estimated that between have been spilled since oil drilling started in 1958. The government estimates that about 7,000 spills occurred between 1970 and 2000. The process of remediating some of the contaminated site was conducted in Kwawa community, Khana Local Government Area of Rivers State, after the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) released an environmental assessment of Ogoniland in 2011, a remediation project popularly refer to as OGONI CLEAN-UP.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Oil spill causes include corrosion of pipelines and tankers (accounts for 50% of all spills), sabotage (28%), and oil production operations (21%), with 1% of the spills being accounted for by inadequate or non-functional production equipment. One reason that corrosion accounts for such a high percentage of all spills is that as a result of the small size of the oilfields in the Niger Delta, there is an extensive network of pipelines between the fields. Many facilities and pipelines were constructed to older standards, are poorly maintained and have outlived their estimated life span. Sabotage is performed primarily through what is known as "bunkering", whereby the saboteur taps a pipeline, and in the process of extraction sometimes the pipeline is damaged. Oil extracted in this manner is often sold for cash compensation.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Oil spills have a major impact on the ecosystem. Large tracts of mangrove forests have been destroyed. They are especially susceptible to oil spills because the oil is stored in the soil and re-released annually with each inundation. An estimated 5–10% of Nigerian mangrove ecosystems have been wiped out either by settlement or by oil. Spills also take out crops and aquacultures through contamination of groundwater and soils. Drinking water is frequently contaminated, and a sheen of oil is visible in many localised bodies of water. If the drinking water is contaminated, even if no immediate health effects are apparent, the numerous hydrocarbons and other chemicals present in oil represent a carcinogenic risk. Offshore spills, which are usually much greater in scale, contaminate coastal environments and cause a decline in local fishing production.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigerian regulations are weak and rarely enforced allowing oil companies, in essence, to self-regulate.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigeria flares more natural gas associated with oil extraction than any other country, with estimates suggesting that of the of associated gas (AG) produced annually, , or about 70%, is wasted via flaring. Statistical data associated with gas flaring is notoriously unreliable, but AG wasted during flaring is estimated to cost Nigeria US$2.5 billion on a yearly basis. Companies operating in Nigeria harvest natural gas for commercial purposes, however most prefer to extract it gas from deposits where it is found in isolation as non-associated gas. It is costly to separate commercially viable associated gas from oil, hence gas is flared to increase crude production.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Gas flaring is discouraged by the international community as it contributes to climate change. In fact, in western Europe 99% of associated gas is used or re-injected into the ground. Gas flaring in Nigeria releases large amounts of methane, which has a very high global warming potential. The methane is accompanied by carbon dioxide, of which Nigeria is estimated to have emitted more than 34.38 million tons in 2002, accounting for about 50% of all industrial emissions in the country and 30% of the total CO emissions. As flaring in the west has been minimised, in Nigeria it has grown proportionally with oil production. While the international community, the Nigerian government, and the oil corporations seem to agree that gas flaring need to be curtailed, efforts to do so have been slow and largely ineffective.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Gas flares release a variety of potentially poisonous chemicals such as nitrogen dioxides; sulfur dioxide; volatile organic compounds like benzene, toluene, xylene, and hydrogen sulfide; as well as carcinogens like benzapyrene and dioxins. Often gas flares are often close to local communities, and lack adequate fencing or protection for villagers who may risk nearing the heat of the flare in order to carry out their daily activities. Flares which are often older and inefficient are rarely relocated away from villages, and are known to coat the land and communities in the area with soot and damage adjacent vegetation.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: In November 2005, a judgment by "the Federal High Court of Nigeria ordered that gas flaring must stop in a Niger Delta community as it violates guaranteed constitutional rights to life and dignity. In a case brought against the Shell Petroleum Development Company of Nigeria (Shell), Justice C. V. Nwokorie ruled in Benin City that the damaging and wasteful practice of flaring cannot lawfully continue."


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: One of the greatest threats facing the people of the Niger River Delta has actually been their own government. The Nigerian government has total control over property rights and they have the authority to seize any property for use by the oil companies. A majority of every dollar that comes out of the ground in the delta goes to the State and Federal governments.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: According to the World Bank, most of Nigeria's oil wealth gets siphoned off by 1% of the population. Corruption in the government is rampant: since 1960 it is estimated that 300 to 400 billion dollars has been stolen by corrupt government officials. The corruption is found at the highest levels as well. For example, a former inspector general of the national police was accused of stealing 52 million dollars. He was sentenced to six years in prison for a lesser charge.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: Nigerians have on many occasions engaged in protests against oil-related corruption and environmental concerns in the past, but have been met with harsh suppression by government forces. For example, in February 2005 at a protest at Chevron's Escravos oil terminal, soldiers opened fire on the protestors. One man was killed and 30 others were injured. The soldiers claimed that the protestors were armed, which the protestors denied. Another, more extreme example happened in 1994. The Nigerian military moved into a region called Ogoniland in force. They razed 30 villages, arrested hundreds of protestors, and killed an estimated 2,000 people.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: One of the protestors they arrested was a man named Ken Saro-Wiwa, a Nigerian TV producer, writer and social activist. In 1990 he founded the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People (MOSOP). Ken wrote and spoke out about the rampant corruption in the Nigerian government and he condemned Shell and BP. He was arrested by the Nigerian government and imprisoned for 17 months. Then in a show trial he and eight others were condemned to death. He and the others were hung in 1995 and he was buried in an unmarked common grave.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: The people of the delta states have been living in extreme poverty even in the face of great material wealth found in the waters by their homes. In 2006, 70% of the people in the Niger River Delta lived on less than US$1 per day according to Amnesty International . For many people, this meant finding work in a labour market which is in many instances hostile to them. Much of the labour in the past has been imported. To a growing degree, the labour force for the oil companies is coming from Nigeria, but discrimination has been rampant, and for the most part, locals are discriminated against.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: This leads to a situation where the men in the community have to search for temporary employment. This has two negative effects on the community. First it takes the men out of the community as they go in search of work. The second is the nature of temporary employment sets up unsustainable spending habits, thinking it will be easy to earn more, when in many cases this does not turn out to be the case.).


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As of 1999, the government officials siphoned off all the money generated from oil sales so the infrastructure suffered, where most of the villages did not have electricity or even running water. They do not have good access to schools or medical clinics. For many, even clean drinking water is difficult to come by. The deterioration of the infrastructure in the delta states is so severe it is even a problem in the more urban areas. One example of was the airport at Port Harcourt. Part of a fence was not properly maintained and in 2005, an Air France flight hit a herd of cattle on the runway. The airport was closed and had not reopened by 2007. Yet in 2007, indicted corrupt leaders were also cheered by the Niger Delta people.


title: Petroleum industry in Nigeria

text: As of 2011, the leadership of the Niger Delta region appeared responsible for most of the underdevelopment in the region. There has been large-scale of corruption amongst the elected leaders especially governors, and the leaders have helped sponsor the militant groups in kidnapping and robbing innocent people and sabotaging the efforts by the federal government for infrastructural development.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Americana () is a municipality ("município") located in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. It is part of the Metropolitan Region of Campinas. The population is 229,322 (2015 est.) in an area of . The original settlement developed around the local railway station, founded in 1875, and the development of a cotton weaving factory in a nearby farm.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: After 1866, thousands of former Confederate sympathizers from the American Civil War settled in the region. Following the Civil War, slavery was abolished in the United States. In Brazil, however, slavery was legal until 1888, making it a particularly attractive location to former Confederates, among whom was a former member of the Alabama State Senate, William Hutchinson Norris.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Around three hundred of the "Confederados" are members of the "Fraternidade Descendência Americana" (Fraternity of American Descendants). They meet quarterly at the Campo Cemetery.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The city was known as "Vila dos Americanos" ("Village of the Americans") until 1904, when it belonged to the city of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste. It became a district in 1924 and a municipality in 1953.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Americana has several museums and tourist attractions, including the "Pedagogic Historical Museum" and the "Contemporary Art Museum".


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Rio Branco Esporte Clube, founded in 1913, is the football (soccer) club of the city. The team plays their home matches at Estádio Décio Vitta, which has a maximum capacity of 15,000 people.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The first records on the occupation of the lands where Americana now stands date from the late 18th century, when Domingos da Costa Machado I acquired a crown property between the municipalities of Vila Nova da Constituição (now Piracicaba) and Vila de São Carlos (now Campinas). In that area several estates were created, including Salto Grande, Machadinho, and Palmeiras.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: A part of the property, which included the Machadinho estate, was sold by Domingos da Costa Machado II to Antônio Bueno Rangel. After Rangel's death, the estate was divided between his sons José and Basílio Bueno Rangel. A part of the property was afterwards sold to the captain of the Brazilian National Guard, Ignácio Corrêa Pacheco, who is considered the founder of Americana.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In 1866, the region started to be populated with American immigrants from the former Confederate States of America, who were fleeing the aftermath of the American Civil War. The Emperor Dom Pedro II was a fierce advocate of the South during the war, and openly recruited the former Confederates, offering free transport, cheap land, and an easy path to citizenship.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The first immigrant to arrive was the lawyer and ex-state senator from Alabama, colonel William Hutchinson Norris. Norris installed himself in lands near the seat of the Machadinho estate and the Quilombo River.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Norris was to investigate and report on Brazil and as a possible new home for pro-slavery Confederates who no longer wanted to live in the United States. His report was positive, and in 1867 the rest of his family arrived in Brazil, accompanied by other families from the Confederate States. These families settled in the region, bringing agricultural innovations and a kind of watermelon known as "Georgia's rattlesnake". Between 8,000 and 20,000 former Confederates emigrated to Brazil (not all to this one town). Slaves were inexpensive in Brazil, one noted, and at least 54 families bought 536 slaves after arrival in Brazil.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In 1875, almost a decade after the arrival of the Confederate immigrants in the region, the Companhia Paulista de Estradas de Ferro completed the expansion of its main railway to the city of Rio Claro. A station was built within the lands of the Machadinho estate. Despite belonging to the municipality of Campinas, the station was made to serve the estates in the municipality of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste, which was further away and had no station of its own.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The inauguration of the station counted the Emperor Dom Pedro II and Gaston, comte d'Eu among those who attended. The station was baptized "Santa Bárbara station". It is unknown exactly when the small village became the city of Americana, but it is known that this village was created by the time of the inauguration of the railway station, and that it was Ignácio Corrêa Pacheco who distributed the lands. Pacheco is thus considered the founder of the city. The municipal holiday of Americana is still August 27, the day when the railway station was inaugurated.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The small town formed around the station was named "Villa da Estação de Santa Bárbara" (Santa Bárbara Station Town). Its inhabitants consisted mainly of American families, and the town became thus popularly known as "Villa dos Americanos" (Town of the Americans).


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The similarity between the official name of the town and the one of the neighboring municipality frequently caused serious communication problems, such as mail to Santa Bárbara Station often being shipped to the municipality of Santa Bárbara, away. In order to solve the problem, the railway company changed the name of the station in 1900 to "Estação de Villa Americana" (American Town Station). The name of the town itself was then also officially changed to "Villa Americana" (American Town).


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The city celebrates an annual Confederate festival, named the "Festa Confederada". The Confederate flag is prominently displayed, men dress as Confederate soldiers.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In the 1890s, the farm known as "Fazenda Salto Grande" was purchased by the American Clement Willmot. Willmot established the first industry in Americana under the name Clement H. Willmot & Cia. In 1889, the factory was renamed "Fábrica de Tecidos Carioba" (Carioba Textile Factory). The name "Carioba" derives from the Tupi words for "white cloth".


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The factory ran into financial trouble after the abolition of slavery in 1888, and was purchased by German immigrants who were members of the Müller family. The town of Carioba sprang up around the factory. German immigrants brought European-style urbanization to Carioba which is reflected in the style of its manors, factories, hotels, and schools. Asphalt of tar was then first imported from Europe into Americana and utilized in road paving. The factory became the basis for the present-day "Parque Industrial de Americana" (Industrial Park of Americana).


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: On October 8, 1887, Joaquim Boer led a large group of Italian immigrants to Brazil. At Americana these Italian immigrants built their first church in 1896, dedicated to Saint Anthony of Padua, who eventually became the patron saint of the city. Born in Portugal, and called Saint Anthony of Lisbon there, the saint who is among the three June popular saints in the Catholic calendar (the others being Saints John the Baptist and Peter) is celebrated on June 13 with typical Junine countryside Brazilian food, prayers of the rosary, square dance, liquor, and bonfire.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Although immigrants got incentives to come to Brazil, Italians who arrived before that did not seem to have enjoyed special privileges. They often lived within the quarters designed for enslaved Africans who also suffered from lack of comfort and healthy conditions. Those immigrants worked as indentured servants, paying off their debts to farmers who had paid for their tickets and were exploited, until the system was revamped and improved. Their descendants went on to become laborers, merchants, and professionals.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In 1906, two years after the creation of the Distrito de Paz de Villa Americana, the municipality received a visit from Elihu Root, United States Secretary of State, who had been attending and presiding the Pan-American Conference held in Rio de Janeiro. After the conference, Root visited other parts of Brazil (such as Araras), and was informed of the existence of Americana. Root expressed interest in visiting the town, and was received at Americana with great emotion and affection. Hundreds of the residents received Root at nighttime.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: With the change in status from village to district, Americana developed rapidly. Its first police force was created, a sub prefecture was established, and three street lights – lit by kerosene and brought from Germany – were introduced. A school was also established, with the sending of the educator Silvino José de Oliveira to represent Americana's interests with the state government. All of these developments led the local inhabitants to clamor for the status of a city.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In 1922, Villa Americana was one of the most progressive districts in Campinas with a population of 4,500. In this year, the fight to change its status to city began, led by Antonio Lobo and others, such as Lieutenant Antas de Abreu, Cícero Jones and Hermann Müller himself. Their efforts finally bore fruit: on November 12, 1924, the Municipality of Villa Americana was created, comprising two districts: Villa Americana and Nova Odessa, Nova Odesa later becoming its own municipality.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: At the time of the beginning of the Getúlio Vargas dictatorship in Brazil in 1930, Americana was undergoing a profound economic transformation due to the rise of the textile industry there (the city was known as the "Rayon Capital").


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In 1932, during the administration of Mayor Antonio Zanaga, the revolt known as the Constitutionalist Revolution erupted against Vargas' regime. Americana sent volunteers to this revolution, and three of them, Jorge Jones, Fernando de Camargo and Aristeu Valente (from Nova Odessa, then part of Americana), perished during the struggle. Their sacrifice is remembered in Americana to this day.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In 1938, Mayor Zanaga changed the name of the town from Villa Americana to Americana, and due to the economic transformation of the town, the Comarca of Americana was created on December 31, 1953, during the administration of Mayor Jorge Arbix. In 1959, during the administration of Mayor Abrahim Abraham, Nova Odessa was made autonomous as its own municipality.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Between 1960 and 1970, the rapid development of Americana led many people to move there in search of work. Because of its size, there was not enough room to accommodate the new residents and many lived on the border of Santa Bárbara d'Oeste and Americana, creating what is known today as "Zona Leste de Santa Bárbara" (East Santa Barbara).


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The same also occurred because the majority of the population were unaware of the location where one municipality ended and where another began. The confusion came about because municipal limits were not yet fully determined. The problem was solved with the creation of a major avenue, today called Avenida da Amizade (Friendship Avenue), which became the dividing line.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: At the same time as these developments, some problems were also created. The sudden increase in population caused an imbalance in the public accounts of the municipality, which was not ready for such a great number of new residents.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Americana has an altitude tropical climate, with hot summers and chilly winters. In winter, there is much less rainfall than in summer. According to Köppen and Geiger the climate classification is Aw.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The median high temperature in summer is and the median low is , comparable to Boston. In winter, the median high temperature is and the median low temperature is , comparable to Orlando, Florida.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In Americana, the month with the most daily hours of sunshine is February with an average of 9.37 hours of sunshine. In total, there are 290.43 hours of sunshine in February.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The month with the fewest daily hours of sunshine in Americana is January with an average of 8.87 hours of sunshine per day. In total, there are 266.09 hours of sunshine in January. About 3251.14 hours of sunshine are counted in Americana throughout the year. On average, there are 106.92 hours of sunshine per month.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The population descends from a mixture of Portuguese and other immigrants, mainly Italian, Portuguese, German and Levantine.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Because of its origins as a village settled by American Confederates, it received the name "Americana", referring to "cidade" or city, the feminine form of "American", which in Portuguese means any native of the Americas, although often applied only to U.S. citizens.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The Municipal Library, named after the teacher Jandira Basseto Pântano, was founded on October 25, 1955. It occupies the old building belonging to the Academic Group "Dr. Heitor Penteado" on Comendador Müller Square, near the Church of Santo Antônio. It contains 41429 books on various general subjects and 9051 children's books, totalling 50,480 books (as of June 1999), as well as 114 various newspapers and 24,500 magazines, including children's. The average number of visitors in 1998 was 600 people, who mostly came in the afternoon. Its enrolled number of associates totals 31,900 people, as of December 1998.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Jandira Basseto Pântano was born on October 27, 1918, in Americana. She received her elementary education at the Escolas Reunidas, one of the first schools founded in the city. She completed her education at Campinas and in January 1938 was named a substitute teacher at the Academic Group "Dr. Heitor Penteado" before becoming a full-time teacher there. She worked as a teacher at the school for 22 years, and was noted for her hard work and diligence. She worked with all of the grades, but she preferred to work with the fourth year students, and prepare them for the wider world. She retired on March 9, 1968, and died on June 7, 1988. Up until her death, she continued to receive students at her home, helping illiterate adults and poor children.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Named Terminal Rodoviario Francisco Luiz Bendilatti, the Americana bus station has been in operation since 1988 and is located in the Campo Limpo neighborhood. The location receives buses from more than thirty locations, which operate in the Southeast, South and Center-west regions of Brazil. The main cities connected with Americana bus station are São Paulo, Goiânia, Curitiba, Araraquara, Osasco, Limeira, Santo André, Cascavel, Londrina and Maringá. The Terminal has twenty-five cargo transport companies.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: The main and closest airport in the area is in the neighboring city of Campinas, Campinas International Airport, and the main airport in Brazil and South America, in the city of São Paulo, São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport, is in the same state.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: In football the city is represented by Rio Branco Esporte Clube, founded on August 4, 1913. Rio Branco played in series A1 of the Campeonato Paulista since 1992 and was relegated to A2 in 2009.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: It used to play in series C of the Campeonato Brasileiro. The team plays in Décio Vitta, with a capacity of 15,000.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: Americana is also the hometown of Paralympics swimmer Danilo Binda Glasser, winner of two bronze medals in the Paralympics of Sydney 2000 and at Athens 2004, and footballer Oscar, a silver medallist at the 2012 London Olympics, a 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup champion, a 2011–2012 UEFA Champions League champion Chelsea F.C. player.


title: Americana, São Paulo

text: "Amblyomma sculptum" and "A. dubitatum" are common here. Brites-Neto "et al.", 2017 find α-cypermethrin (pyrethroid) and flufenoxuron (benzoylurea chitin synthesis inhibitor) are efficacious against populations in this area. These ticks are significant veterinary parasites and so α-cyp and flufenoxuron are useful here for animal protection.


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure is a 2021 computer-animated adventure film inspired by the dance show "Riverdance". The film was made by Cinesite for River Productions and Aniventure.


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: "Riverdance: The Animated Adventure" was released in the United Kingdom on 28 May 2021, by Sky Cinema, and was made available to stream on Netflix on 14 January 2022 in the United States.


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: The animated film follows a young Irish boy named Keegan, who’s been at a heart loss after his grandfather - a well-known dancer - had passed away. He and his Spanish friend Moya go on a journey to a magical world to learn about Riverdance as well as the dangers of the Huntsman.


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: In 2016, it was announced that Cinesite Studios was aiming to produce nine animated movies across a five year period, one of which included a film about "Riverdance". Cinesite then announced in 2018 that it had secured funding to begin working on a number of films, including "Riverdance".


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: After the film received funding, Pierce Brosnan, Aisling Bea, Brendan Gleeson, Pauline McLynn, John Kavanagh and Lilly Singh were announced as joining the cast. It has Dave Rosenbaum and Eamonn Butler as directors, with Brosnan to voice both 'Patrick' and 'Grandad'. According to "Deadline Hollywood", Gleeson and Kavanagh are to voice the villains in the film, though Kavanagh was ultimately cast as a benign character.


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: The film features music by Irish composer, Bill Whelan. Whelan also served as composer for the original tour of "Riverdance" in the mid-1990s. Whelan also composed two original songs for the film's end credits; "Light Me Up", co-written with Irish singer Lyra, and a remix of the trademark Riverdance music.


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: The film was released exclusively on Sky Cinema in May 2021 and to streaming platform Netflix on 14 January 2022.


title: Riverdance: The Animated Adventure

text: Kevin Courtney of "The Irish Times" said the actors spoke with good Irish accents. But he worried that the movie only shows Irish people living in perfect villages and dancing all the time. He said the movie is sometimes like a Fáilte Ireland tourism advertisement.


title: Third Partition of Poland

text: The Third Partition of Poland (1795) was the last in a series of the Partitions of Poland–Lithuania and the land of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth among Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy, and the Russian Empire which effectively ended Polish–Lithuanian national sovereignty until 1918. The partition was the result of the Kościuszko Uprising and was followed by a number of Polish uprisings during the period.


title: Third Partition of Poland

text: Following the First Partition of Poland in 1772, in an attempt to strengthen the significantly weakened Commonwealth, King Stanisław August Poniatowski put into effect a series of reforms to enhance Poland's military, political system, economy, and society. These reforms reached their climax with the enactment of the May Constitution in 1791, which established a constitutional monarchy with separation into three branches of government, strengthened the bourgeoisie and abolished many of the nobility's privileges as well as many of the old laws of serfdom. In addition, to strengthen Poland's international standings, King Stanislaus signed the Polish-Prussian Pact of 1790, ceding further territories to Prussia in exchange for a military alliance. Angered by what was seen as dangerous, Jacobin-style reforms, Russia invaded Poland in 1792, beginning the War in Defense of the Constitution. Abandoned by her Prussian allies and betrayed by Polish nobles who desired to restore the privileges they had lost under the May Constitution, Poland was forced to sign the Second Partition in 1793, which ceded Dobrzyn, Kujavia, and a large portion of Greater Poland to Prussia and all of Poland's eastern provinces from Moldavia to Livonia to Russia, reducing Poland to one-third of her original size before the First Partition.


title: Third Partition of Poland

text: Outraged with the further humiliation of Poland by her neighbors and the betrayal by the Polish nobility, and emboldened by the French Revolution unfolding in France, the Polish masses quickly turned against the occupying forces of Prussia and Russia. Following a series of nationwide riots, on 24 March 1794, Polish patriot Tadeusz Kościuszko took command of the Polish armed forces and declared a nationwide uprising against Poland's foreign occupiers, marking the beginning of the Kościuszko Uprising. Catherine II and Frederick William II were quick to respond and, despite initial successes by Kosciuszko's forces, the uprising was crushed by November 1794. According to legend, when Kosciuszko fell off of his horse at the Battle of Maciejowice, shortly before he was captured, he said "Finis Poloniae", meaning in Latin "[This is] the end of Poland."


title: Third Partition of Poland

text: Austrian, Prussian, and Russian representatives met on 24 October 1795 to dissolve the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with the three conquering powers signing a treaty to divide the region on 26 January 1797. This gave the Habsburg monarchy control of the Western Galicia and Southern Masovia territories, with approximately 1.2 million people; Prussia received Podlachia, the remainder of Masovia, and Warsaw, with 1 million people; and Russia received the remaining land, including Vilnius and 1.2 million people. Unlike previous partitions, no Polish representative was party to the treaty. The Habsburgs, Russia, and Prussia forced King Stanislaus to abdicate and retire to St. Petersburg, where he died as Catherine II's trophy prisoner in 1798. The victors also agreed to erase the country's name:


title: Third Partition of Poland

text: The Third Partition of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth ended the existence of an independent Polish and Lithuanian state for the next 123 years. Immediately following the Third Partition, the occupying powers forced many Polish politicians, intellectuals, and revolutionaries to emigrate across Europe, in what was later known as the Great Emigration. These Polish nationalists participated in uprisings against Austria, Prussia, and Russia in former Polish lands, and many would serve France as part of Napoleon's armies. In addition, Polish poets and artists would make the desire for national freedom a defining characteristic of the Polish Romanticist movement. Poland briefly regained semi-autonomy in 1807 when Napoleon created the Duchy of Warsaw, but this effectively ended with the Congress of Vienna in 1815. The Congress created the Kingdom of Poland, sometimes called Congress Poland, as a Russian puppet state. Even this, however, came to an end after a Polish insurrection in 1831, at which point Russia dissolved the Congress Kingdom and exacted multiple punitive measures on the Polish populace. In 1867, Russia made Poland an official part of the Russian Empire, as opposed to a puppet state. Poland would not regain full independence until the end of World War I when the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the collapse of the Russian Empire allowed for the resurrection of Polish national sovereignty.


title: Taq polymerase

text: Taq" polymerase is a thermostable DNA polymerase I named after the thermophilic eubacterial microorganism "Thermus aquaticus," from which it was originally isolated by Chien et al. in 1976. Its name is often abbreviated to Taq or Taq" pol. It is frequently used in the polymerase chain reaction (PCR), a method for greatly amplifying the quantity of short segments of DNA.


title: Taq polymerase

text: "T. aquaticus" is a bacterium that lives in hot springs and hydrothermal vents, and "Taq" polymerase was identified as an enzyme able to withstand the protein-denaturing conditions (high temperature) required during PCR. Therefore, it replaced the DNA polymerase from "E. coli" originally used in PCR.


title: Taq polymerase

text: "Taq"'s optimum temperature for activity is 75–80 °C, with a half-life of greater than 2 hours at 92.5 °C, 40 minutes at 95 °C and 9 minutes at 97.5 °C, and can replicate a 1000 base pair strand of DNA in less than 10 seconds at 72 °C. At 75–80 °C, "Taq" reaches its optimal polymerization rate of about 150 nucleotides per second per enzyme molecule, and any deviations from the optimal temperature range inhibit the extension rate of the enzyme. A single "Taq" synthesizes about 60 nucleotides per second at 70 °C, 24 nucleotides/sec at 55 °C, 1.5 nucleotides/sec at 37 °C, and 0.25 nucleotides/sec at 22 °C. At temperatures above 90 °C, "Taq" demonstrates very little or no activity at all, but the enzyme itself does not denature and remains intact. Presence of certain ions in the reaction vessel also affects specific activity of the enzyme. Small amounts of potassium chloride (KCl) and magnesium ion (Mg) promote "Taq"'s enzymatic activity. "Taq" polymerase is maximally activated at 50mM KCl and just the right concentration of Mg which is determined by the concentration of nucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs). High concentrations of KCl and Mg inhibit "Taq"'s activity. Interestingly, the common metal ion chelator, EDTA, directly binds to "Taq" in the absence of these metal ions.


title: Taq polymerase

text: One of "Taq"'s drawbacks is its lack of 3' to 5' exonuclease proofreading activity resulting in relatively low replication fidelity. Originally its error rate was measured at about 1 in 9,000 nucleotides. Some thermostable DNA polymerases have been isolated from other thermophilic bacteria and archaea, such as "Pfu" DNA polymerase, possessing a proofreading activity, and are being used instead of (or in combination with) "Taq" for high-fidelity amplification. Fidelity can vary much between Taqs, which has profound effects in downstream sequencing applications.


title: Taq polymerase

text: "Taq" makes DNA products that have A (adenine) overhangs at their 3' ends. This may be useful in TA cloning, whereby a cloning vector (such as a plasmid) that has a T (thymine) 3' overhang is used, which complements with the A overhang of the PCR product, thus enabling ligation of the PCR product into the plasmid vector.


title: Taq polymerase

text: In the early 1980s, Kary Mullis was working at Cetus Corporation on the application of synthetic DNAs to biotechnology. He was familiar with the use of DNA oligonucleotides as probes for binding to target DNA strands, as well as their use as primers for DNA sequencing and cDNA synthesis. In 1983, he began using two primers, one to hybridize to each strand of a target DNA, and adding DNA polymerase to the reaction. This led to exponential DNA replication, greatly amplifying discrete segments of DNA between the primers.


title: Taq polymerase

text: However, after each round of replication the mixture needs to be heated above 90 °C to denature the newly formed DNA, allowing the strands to separate and act as templates in the next round of amplification. This heating step also inactivates the DNA polymerase that was in use before the discovery of "Taq" polymerase, the Klenow fragment (sourced from "E. coli"). "Taq" polymerase is well-suited for this application because it is able to withstand the temperature of 95 °C which is required for DNA strand separation without denaturing.


title: Taq polymerase

text: Use of the thermostable "Taq" enables running the PCR at high temperature (~60 °C and above), which facilitates high specificity of the primers and reduces the production of nonspecific products, such as primer dimer. Also, use of a thermostable polymerase eliminates the need to add new enzyme to each round of thermocycling. A single closed tube in a relatively simple machine can be used to carry out the entire process. Thus, the use of "Taq" polymerase was the key idea that made PCR applicable to a large variety of molecular biology problems concerning DNA analysis.


title: Taq polymerase

text: Hoffmann-La Roche eventually bought the PCR and "Taq" patents from Cetus for $330 million, from which it may have received up to $2 billion in royalties. In 1989, Science Magazine named "Taq" polymerase its first "Molecule of the Year". Kary Mullis received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1993, the only one awarded for research performed at a biotechnology company. By the early 1990s, the PCR technique with "Taq" polymerase was being used in many areas, including basic molecular biology research, clinical testing, and forensics. It also began to find a pressing application in direct detection of the HIV in AIDS.


title: Taq polymerase

text: In December 1999, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the 1990 patent involving "Taq" polymerase was issued, in part, on misleading information and false claims by scientists with Cetus Corporation. The ruling supported a challenge by Promega Corporation against Hoffman-La Roche, which purchased the "Taq" patents in 1991. Judge Walker cited previous discoveries by other laboratories, including the laboratory of Professor John Trela in the University of Cincinnati department of biological sciences, as the basis for the ruling.


title: Taq polymerase

text: "Taq" PolA has an overall structure similar to that of "E. coli" PolA. The middle 3'–5' exonuclease domain responsible for proofreading has been dramatically changed and is not functional. It has a functional 5'-3' exonuclease domain at the amino terminal, described below. The remaining two domains act in coordination, via coupled domain motion.


title: Taq polymerase

text: "Taq" polymerase exonuclease is a domain found in the amino-terminal of "Taq" DNA polymerase I (thermostable). It assumes a ribonuclease H-like motif. The domain confers 5'-3' exonuclease activity to the polymerase.


title: Taq polymerase

text: Unlike the same domain in "E. coli", which would degrade primers and must be removed by digestion for PCR use, this domain is not said to degrade the primer. This activity is used in the TaqMan probe: as the daughter strands are formed, the probes complementary to the template come in contact with the polymerase and are cleaved into fluorescent pieces.


title: Taq polymerase

text: "Taq" polymerase is bound at its polymerase active-site cleft with the blunt end of duplex DNA. As the "Taq" polymerase is in contact with the bound DNA, its side chains form hydrogen bonds with the purines and pyrimidines of the DNA. The same region of "Taq" polymerase that has bonded to DNA also binds with exonuclease. These structures bound to the "Taq" polymerase have different interactions.


title: Taq polymerase

text: A site-directed mutagenesis experiment that improves the vestigial 3'-5' exonuclease activity by a factor of 2 has been reported, but it was never reported whether doing so decreases the error rate. Following a similar line of thought, chimera proteins have been made by cherry-picking domains from "E. coli", "Taq", and "T. neapolitana" polymerase I. Swapping out the vestigial domain for a functional one from "E. coli" created a protein with proof-reading ability but a lower optimal temperature and low thermostability.


title: Taq polymerase

text: Versions of the polymerase without the 5'-3' exonuclease domain has been produced, among which "Klentaq" or the "Stoffel" fragment are best known. The complete lack of exonuclease activity make these variants suitable for primers that exhibit secondary structure as well as for copying circular molecules. Other variations include using "Klentaq" with a high-fidelity polymerase, a "Thermosequenase" that recognizes substrates like T7 DNA polymerase does, mutants with higher tolerances to inhibitors, or "domain-tagged" versions that have an extra helix-hairpin-helix motif around the catalytic site to hold the DNA more tightly despite adverse conditions.


title: Taq polymerase

text: Because of the improvements "Taq" polymerase provided in PCR DNA replication: higher specificity, fewer nonspecific products, and simpler processes and equipment, it has been instrumental in the efforts made to detect diseases. “The use of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) in infectious disease diagnosis, has resulted in an ability to diagnose early and treat appropriately diseases due to fastidious pathogens, determine the antimicrobial susceptibility of slow growing organisms, and ascertain the quantum of infection.” The implementation of "Taq" polymerase has saved countless lives. It has served an essential role in the detection of many of the world’s worst diseases, including: tuberculosis, streptococcal pharyngitis, atypical pneumonia, AIDS, measles, hepatitis, and ulcerative urogenital infections. PCR, the method used to recreate copies of specific DNA samples, makes disease detection possible by targeting a specific DNA sequence of a targeted pathogen from a patient’s sample and amplifying trace amounts of the indicative sequences by copying them up to billions of times. Although this is the most accurate method of disease detection, especially for HIV, it is not performed as often as alternative, inferior tests because of the relatively high cost, labor, and time required.


title: Taq polymerase

text: The reliance upon "Taq" polymerase as a catalyst for the PCR replication process has been highlighted during the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020. Shortages of the necessary enzyme have impaired the ability of countries worldwide to produce test kits for the virus. Without "Taq" polymerase, the disease detection process is much slower and tedious.


title: Taq polymerase

text: Despite the advantages of using "Taq" polymerase in PCR disease detection, the enzyme is not without its shortcomings. Retroviral diseases (HIV, HTLV-1, and HTLV-II) often include mutations from guanine to adenine in their genome. Mutations such as these are what allow PCR tests to detect the diseases but "Taq" polymerase’s relatively low fidelity rate makes the same G-to-A mutation occur and possibly yield a false positive test result.


title: Inuit Ataqatigiit

text: Inuit Ataqatigiit (, , ) is a democratic socialist, separatist political party in Greenland that aims to make Greenland an independent state. The party, founded as a political organisation in 1976, was born out of the increased youth radicalism in Denmark during the 1970s. Traditionally in favour of a socialist economy, the party has been criticised from the left of having gradually moved towards a capitalist approach, supporting a market economy and privatisation. Inuit Ataqatigiit believes that an independent Greenland should be competitive while fighting to keep the environment clean.


title: Inuit Ataqatigiit

text: In 1982, the party successfully campaigned in a national referendum for Greenland to leave the European Economic Community (EEC). Inuit Ataqatigiit is represented in the Folketing (the Danish parliament) by Aaja Chemnitz Larsen. Múte B. Egede has been the party's leader since December 2018.


title: Inuit Ataqatigiit

text: Inuit Ataqatigiit made a major electoral breakthrough in the 2009 Greenlandic parliamentary election. Making gains from the 2005 Greenlandic parliamentary election, it doubled its total number of seats in the Parliament from 7 to 14 seats out of 31, just two seats short of a majority, and nearly doubled its total vote share from 22.4% to 43.7%. It supplanted both its coalition partners, shifting the Forward party from first to second and the Democrats party from second to third. At the 2014 elections the party obtained 11 members in the Greenlandic parliament, but after elections in 2018, their share decreased to eight seats. Following the 2021 elections, Inuit Ataqatigiit once again became the largest party in the Greenlandic parliament, with 12 seats.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: The Supreme Political Council (SPC; "al-Majlis as-Siyāsiyy al-ʾAʿlā") is a largely unrecognised executive body formed by the Houthi movement and the General People's Congress (GPC) to rule Yemen. Formed on 28 July 2016, the presidential council consists of 10 members and was headed by Saleh Ali al-Sammad as president until his death from a drone air strike on 19 April 2018 with Qassem Labozah as vice-president. The territory that it rules consists of the former North Yemen, which united with South Yemen in 1990.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: The SPC carries out the functions of head of state in Yemen and is to manage Yemen's state affairs in a bid to fill in political vacuum during Yemeni Civil War in 2015. The Council aims to outline a basis for running the country and managing state affairs on the basis of the existing constitution. Later, the SPC was also responsible for forming a new government led by Abdel-Aziz bin Habtour known as the National Salvation Government.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: The members were sworn in on 14 August 2016. On 15 August, the Supreme Revolutionary Committee (SRC) handed power to the Supreme Political Council. However, the SPC is only recognized by a few states and remains internationally largely unrecognized.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: In the wake of president Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi and prime minister Khaled Bahah resignations over Houthi rebels takeover of presidential palace in January 2015, Houthi leader Abdul Malik Al Houthi reportedly proposed a six-member "transitional presidential council" which would have equal representation from north and south, although this proposal was rejected by the Southern Movement. Nevertheless, on 1 February, the Houthis gave an ultimatum to Yemen's political factions warning that if they did not reach a solution to the current political crisis, then the Houthi "revolutionary leadership" would assume formal authority over the state. According to Reuters, political factions have agreed to form an interim presidential council to manage the country for up to one year. Former South Yemen president Ali Nasser Mohammed was originally being considered as a prospective interim leader, but Mohammed later declined the post.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: On 6 February 2015, the Houthis formally assumed over authority in Sanaa, declaring the dissolution of House of Representatives and announced that a "presidential council" would be formed to lead Yemen for two years, while a "revolutionary committee" would be put in charge of forming a new, 551-member national council. This governance plan was later affirmed by Houthi Ansarullah politburo leader Saleh Ali al-Sammad as he said that national council would choose a five-member presidential council to govern the country.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: On 2 October 2016, Abdel-Aziz bin Habtour was appointed as Prime Minister by the Houthis. On 4 October, he formed his cabinet. The cabinet is composed of members of the Southern Movement. However, the cabinet is not internationally recognized.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: On 28 November 2016, a new cabinet was formed. It is only composed by members of pro-Saleh GPC and the Ansarullah Movement.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: However, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said the move was "a new and unnecessary obstacle. Yemen is at a critical juncture. The actions recently taken by Ansarullah and the General People's Congress will only complicate the search for a peaceful solution. The parties must hold Yemen’s national interests above narrow partisan ambitions and take immediate steps to end political divisions and address the country’s security, humanitarian and economic challenges." He further claimed that such an action could harm peace talks.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: On 27 October 2020, the Minister of Youth and Sport Hassan Mohammed Zaid was shot dead by unknown gunmen in the capital Sanaa.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: The National Salvation government has diplomatic relations with only a few countries, in particular Iran, and Syria. Additionally, the government has diplomatic contacts with Abkhazia, North Korea and Russia. In 2015, the Wall Street Journal reported that the government would seek contacts with China, Iran and Russia. In 2016, a National Salvation government official had invited several North Korean diplomats to Damascus. The same year, a delegation of the National Salvation government visited Russia and met the Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. In 2017, foreign minister Hisham Sharaf Abdullah met with the chargés d’affaires of the Russian and the Syrian Embassy in Sanaa. In August 2019, the National Salvation government appointed an Ambassador to Tehran. In early 2020, the Saba News Agency reported that Hisham Sharaf Abdullah called China a "friendly government". In October 2020, Iran appointed an Ambassador to Sanaa. Two months later, the United States sanctioned the Iranian Ambassador to Sanaa. In August 2020, the National Salvation government appointed an Ambassador to Damascus. In March 2021, the National Salvation government appointed Ambassador in Damascus met with the Abkhaz Ambassador to Syria.


title: Supreme Political Council

text: The President, the Parliament Speaker and the Foreign Minister of the National Salvation government have sent numerous diplomatic notes to a wide range of countries, like Algeria, Bahamas,


title: 2019–20 Juventus F.C. season

text: The 2019–20 season was Juventus Football Club's 122nd in existence and 13th consecutive season in the top-flight of Italian football. In addition to the domestic league, Juventus competed in the Coppa Italia, losing to Napoli in the final, Supercoppa Italiana, and the Champions League.


title: 2019–20 Juventus F.C. season

text: Cristiano Ronaldo became Juventus's third player in club history to reach the 30 league goal milestone in a single season in their 2–1 win over fellow title challengers Lazio on 20 July 2020.


title: 2019–20 Juventus F.C. season

text: ! colspan="18" style="background:#dcdcdc; text-align:center"| Players transferred/loaned out during the season


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: The 2006 Mumbai train bombings were a series of seven bomb blasts on 11 July. They took place over a period of 11 minutes on the Suburban Railway in Mumbai, the capital of the Indian state of Maharashtra and the nation's financial capital. The bombs were set off in pressure cookers on trains plying on the Western Line Suburban Section of the Mumbai Division of Western Railway. The blasts killed 209 people and injured over 700 more.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Pressure cooker bombs were placed on trains on the Western Line of the suburban ("local") train network, which forms the backbone of the city's transport network. Pressure cookers were used in this bombing and other recent explosions to increase the afterburn in a thermobaric reaction, more powerful than conventional high explosives. The first blast reportedly took place at 18:24 IST (12:54 UTC), and the explosions continued for approximately eleven minutes, until 18:35, during the after-work rush hour. All the bombs had been placed in the first-class "general" compartments of several trains running from Churchgate, the city-centre end of the western railway line, to the western suburbs of the city. They exploded at or in the near vicinity of the suburban railway stations of Matunga Road, Mahim Junction, Bandra, Khar Road, Jogeshwari, Bhayandar and Borivali. Home Minister Shivraj Patil told reporters that authorities had "some" information an attack was coming, "but place and time was not known".


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: The bomb attacks in Mumbai came hours after a series of grenade attacks in Srinagar, the largest city of Indian UT of Jammu and Kashmir. Home Secretary V K Duggal said there was no link between the Srinagar and Mumbai bomb blasts.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister R. R. Patil confirmed that a total of 200 people were killed and another 714 others have been injured. Additionally, various news organisations have reported that at least 200 people have died and that more than 700 others have been injured. A week after the blasts in Mumbai the confirmed death toll rose to 207. In September 2006 it was confirmed that the death toll had risen to 209.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: A state of high alert was declared in India's major cities. Both the airports in Mumbai were placed on high alert. The western line of the Mumbai Suburban Railway network was at first shut down, although some trains resumed service later, and stringent security arrangements, including frisking and searching of commuters, were instituted on the other lines of the network. The city's bus service, the BEST, pressed extra buses into service to transport stranded commuters home.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: The Prime Minister also held a security meeting at his residence attended by Home Minister Shivraj Patil, National Security Advisor M K Narayanan, and Home Secretary V K Duggal.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Western Railway services were restored on 11 July by 10.45 pm. As a show of investor confidence, the Bombay Stock Exchange rebounded, starting the day with the BSE Sensex Index up by nearly 1% in morning trade. Foreign investors also retained confidence, with the Sensex up almost 3% at 10,930.09 at the end of the day's trade.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: However a study commissioned by former MP Kirit Somaiya noted that only 174 of the 1,077 victims had received compensation through the Railway Claims Tribunal. For the handicapped victims, only 15 out of 235 eligible cases had been taken care of. Regarding the Prime Minister's promise to India concerning the rehabilitation of the victims, L. K. Advani noted that "none of the above mentioned assurances has been fulfilled to any degree of satisfaction"


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Due to the mobile phone networks being jammed, news channels ran tickertapes with information of injured individuals as well as SMS messages from those who wished to contact their families. Reports indicated that at around 18:00 UTC on 11 July (11:30 PM in Mumbai), the phone networks were restoring service; telephone service was completely restored during the night.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Mumbai Help, a blog run by around thirty bloggers, was a useful source of information, especially for those outside India.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Some 350 people were detained 36 hours after the incident in Maharashtra — police claim that these are people rounded up for investigations. On 14 July, Lashkar-e-Qahhar, a terrorist organisation Front linked to Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), claimed responsibility for the bombings. In an e-mail to an Indian TV channel, the outfit says it organised the bombings using 16 people who are all "safe". According to the e-mail, the main motive seems to have been a retaliation to the situation in the Gujarat and Kashmir regions, possibly referring to the alleged oppression of Muslim minorities in certain parts of the region. It also says that the blasts were part of a series of attacks aimed at other sites such as the Mumbai international airport, Gateway of India, the Taj Mahal in Agra and the Red Fort in New Delhi. The authorities are investigating this claim and are trying to track the location of the e-mail sender. However, on 17 July, the forensic science laboratory Mumbai has confirmed the use of a mixture of the highly explosive RDX and Ammonium Nitrate for the bombings. The presence of these explosives in the post explosive debris was confirmed by modern techniques such as Liquid Chromatography with mass detector (LCMS), Gas Chromatography with mass detector (GCMS) and Ion Scan Chromatography. They have indicated a strong possibility of all explosives being planted at the Churchgate railway station, which was the starting point for all affected trains.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Initially, religious extremists from the Lashkar-e-Taiba and the banned Students Islamic Movement of India terrorist groups, and Pakistan's intelligence agency ISI were the prime suspects. Both Lashkar and SIMI denied responsibility for the bombings. There was also evidence about the involvement of the international Islamic terrorist group Al-Qaeda following a phone call from a man claiming to be a spokesperson for the group on 13 July. The alleged al-Qaeda spokesman had said the blasts were a "consequence of Indian oppression and suppression of minorities, particularly Muslims."


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: On 30 September 2006, CNN reported that "The Indian government accused Pakistan's military spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence, of planning 11 July Mumbai train bombings that killed 209 people".


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: The New York City Police Department was intensely concerned about the attacks, citing their simplicity and lethality. To address these worries, the department deployed Brandon del Pozo, a Jordanian-based intelligence officer, to Mumbai to collect information on the attacks and report on ways they reflected similar vulnerabilities in the New York City's extensive commuter rail system.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: On 21 July 2006, police arrested three people suspected to be involved in the bombings. Police have detained more than 300 suspects since 18 July but these are the first arrests in the case. Two of the men were detained on Thursday in the northern state of Bihar and the third later in Mumbai. All three are said to belong to the banned SIMI organisation.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: On the same day, Abdul Karim Tunda was thought to be arrested in Mombasa, Kenya on suspicions of involvement in the train bombings. but it was the wrong person. He was one of India's most wanted men and also a suspected organiser for the banned terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was arrested in 2013 near the Nepal border.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: In late 2006, all the seven key accused in the Mumbai train blasts in July retracted their alleged confession to the police, saying they were illegally forced to sign blank papers, an Indian TV channel reported.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: M K Narayanan, the Indian National Security Advisor, has said that India doesn't have "clinching" evidence of the involvement of ISI in the Mumbai train blasts of 11 July.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: "I would hesitate to say we have clinching evidence but we have pretty good evidence," he was quoted as saying on CNN-IBN.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Following Narayanan's remarks, the Union Home Secretary V.K. Duggal on Monday characterised the evidence as "very good [...] it is fairly solid evidence,".


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: On 25 September 2008, Hindustan Times reported that "the Crime branch also learnt that the men [behind 2008 Delhi bombings] are those very operatives who had introduced themselves as Pakistanis to perpetrators of 11 July 2006 Mumbai train bombings.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: On 27 February 2009, Sadiq Sheikh, an arrested leader of the Indian Mujahideen confessed to his alleged role in the bombings in a news channel broadcast. He claimed to have engineered the pressure cooker bombs with his associates in a flat in central Mumbai. If verified, these allegations could invalidate the previous claims by the ATS that the ISI or the SIMI were involved. Sadiq states in his confession, ‘'All five of us arranged local first class train passes beforehand. We also had the local train time table with us so that we could choose a train as per our convenience. We purchased bags and pressure cookers in Bombay.'’ He also claimed to have misled investigators by blaming the attacks on the Al-Qaeda.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: In September 2015, 12 people were convicted in this case. On 30 September 2015, a special Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA) court sentenced to death Faisal Sheikh, Asif Khan, Kamal Ansari, Ehtesham Sidduqui and Naveed Khan who planted the bombs in various trains.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: The other seven convicts—Mohammed Sajid Ansari, who prepared the electrical circuits for the bombs, Mohammed Ali, who provided his Govandi residence to make the bombs, Dr Tanveer Ansari, one of the conspirators, and Majid Shafi, Muzzammil Shaikh, Sohail Shaikh and Zamir Shaikh who provided logistical support – were sentenced to life imprisonment.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: In wake of the blasts, the Indian government tightened security in railway stations. Under new restrictions passed by the Ministry of Railways, non-passengers would no longer be allowed on the railway platforms after July 2006. Other major security steps include installation of close circuit televisions inside the stations for round-the-clock vigil and installation of metal detectors.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: Various senior political figures from India and around the world condemned the attacks. In India, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh was quick to call for calm in Mumbai, while President Dr. A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav, and president of the Indian National Congress Sonia Gandhi also issued statements regarding the bombings in Mumbai. Officials from other nations offered their condolences to those affected by the bombings. Officials, from Pakistan which has long feuded with India, and the United Kingdom, which was the target of similar attacks the previous July, were among those who denounced the attacks in Mumbai as well as terrorism as a whole.


title: 2006 Mumbai train bombings

text: A memorial service was held in Mumbai on 18 July at 6:25 pm local time— exactly one week after the blasts. President Abdul Kalam, his hand raised to his forehead in salute, led the two-minute silence as people lit candles and placed wreaths at Mahim station, one of the seven places on the suburban rail network hit by bombs. Sirens sounded across Mumbai marking the memorial service. People gathered at the site of the blasts, in railway stations on the city's Western Line, traffic came to a halt, It interrupted films and observed a moment of silence to pay homage to the victims.


title: Topographic isolation

text: The topographic isolation of a summit is the minimum distance to a point of equal elevation, representing a radius of dominance in which the peak is the highest point. It can be calculated for small hills and islands as well as for major mountain peaks and can even be calculated for submarine summits.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Bird Box is a 2014 post-apocalyptic novel and the debut novel by American writer and singer Josh Malerman. The book was first published in the United Kingdom on March 27, 2014, through Harper Voyager and in the United States on May 13, 2014, through Ecco Press. The book follows a woman who must find a way to guide herself and her children to safety despite the potential threat from an unseen adversary. The story is partially told via flashbacks and takes place during three time periods.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: A sequel to the book, titled "Malorie", was released on July 21, 2020. "Bird Box" was adapted into a film of the same name in 2018.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: The book takes place in the present day, and two previous periods are revealed in flashback sequences. The story is told from the perspective of the main character, Malorie. This synopsis is in chronological order.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Upon discovering her pregnancy, Malorie is unable to contact her one-night stand. She initially dismisses international news reports of people going mad to the point of killing those nearby and then themselves shortly after seeing "something" outside, but begins to become fearful as reports start coming in from the United States. As the occurrences spread, the "something" is believed to be some sort of "creature" and the situation referred to as "The Problem". The entire world begins to shelter in place and cover all windows to their houses.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: In the early days of "The Problem", Malorie comes across a newspaper advertisement encouraging people to seek shelter with them in their safe house. She writes it off until she is forced to strike out on her own after her sister Shannon commits suicide, accidentally seeing the creature when a blanket covering her window comes loose. Malorie eventually makes it to the safe house and shelters with other survivors: Jules and his border collie Victor, Felix, Tom, Don, Cheryl, and later Olympia, who, like Malorie, is about four months pregnant. They spend their days sequestered inside the home, only going outside blindfolded to fetch water or empty out waste. Tom, the de facto leader of the group, tells Malorie the original owner, George, was the one who came up with the idea of the safe house and advertisement but was no longer with them. George had theories that the creatures could be viewed indirectly, which, if true, would allow humans to still see and be safe. George put his theories to the test by filming out of a window and then had the other housemates tie him to a chair while he watched the video. This tactic failed and George killed himself afterwards.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Tom comes up with the idea of using dogs as seeing eye dogs, believing animals were immune to the creatures, but Jules refuses to put his dog, Victor, at risk. Tom and Jules decide to search the neighboring houses for supplies and for dogs they can train. On their excursion they find supplies, two huskies, and some birds kept in a box. On their way home, they encounter a tent bizarrely in the middle of the street in front of their house. Tom excitedly explains they can use the "bird box" as an alarm system by hanging it outside their house since the birds coo whenever anything comes near.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: After months of isolation they are surprised by a knock on the door - a man named Gary. He asks for asylum as he claims he left his previous location because a man named Frank, a recluse obsessed with writing in journals, believed "The Problem" was merely caused by mass hysteria. The final straw for Gary was when Frank uncovered all the windows and opened the doors to prove this "insanity fuss" was all an illusion. Gary and Don become friends, frequently discussing Frank and Frank's ideology. Malorie is extremely suspicious of Gary and one night secretly opens Gary's briefcase and finds "Frank's" journal. She does not want to confront Gary though because Tom and Jules have gone on another excursion to Tom's house to pick up medical supplies (for the upcoming births) and a phone book so that they may call and see if they can contact other survivors. When Tom and Jules return, Malorie reveals this to the housemates and the house has a vote, where all of the members except Don vote to evict Gary. Don becomes more and more withdrawn and eventually moves into the cellar.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Time passes and the housemates call every number they can find in the phone book to no avail, but they were able to leave voice messages for several numbers. Olympia and Malorie both go into labour and are taken to the attic to give birth when there's a commotion from downstairs. It is revealed that Don had been secretly sheltering Gary in the cellar since Gary's "eviction". Gary goes up to the attic to taunt Malorie and reveals to her that he is indeed "Frank" and has no issues seeing the creatures; in fact it was his tent outside their house and he had been watching the occupants of the house as well as the creatures all along. Malorie realizes Gary was insane prior to the creatures and thus seems to be unaffected by seeing them. Downstairs, Don has done what "Frank" had done and taken down all the window coverings and opened the front door causing all the other housemates to go mad and kill each other except for Victor, who was shut in the cellar. Gary opens the door to the attic to allow the creature to come inside. Malorie immediately shuts her eyes but Olympia sees it and describes it as "beautiful" and "not bad at all" before going mad. Even through her madness though, with some coaxing from Malorie, Olympia gives Malorie her child before committing suicide. Malorie covers both children's faces until Gary and the creature leave.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Malorie discovers the dead bodies of all her other housemates but finds Victor, the border collie, alive in the cellar, believing Jules forced Victor in there for his safety before being overcome by the madness. The phone rings and she answers. A survivor named Rick is on the other side telling her he got Tom's message and that they have a very safe refuge and all are invited to travel there. He gives her detailed instructions on how to get to their refuge. Malorie burdened by the grief of the death of her housemates and the burden of raising two newly born children turns down the offer but Rick tells her he'll call her back weekly and that they were welcome any time and no matter the status of the phone lines, to never doubt that the refuge will always be there.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Malorie raises the children using harsh training techniques in order to ensure their survival, heightening their senses and training them to automatically keep their eyes closed. The children are only referred to as "Girl" and "Boy", as she feels that names are an unnecessary luxury. During one of her excursions to retrieve supplies from a bar, Malorie discovers Tom's conjecture that animals are immune to the creatures to be false as Victor confronts a creature and goes mad.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: When the children turn 4, Malorie decides the day has come to make the journey to Rick's safe house. She chooses this day because there is a heavy fog she hopes will hide their escape in case Gary still watches the house. Malorie inwardly expresses regret over all of the experiences and sights that the children have missed, but knows that it was necessary for their survival. Instructing them to follow her orders and to never remove their blindfolds regardless of what happens, Malorie and the children travel down the river. As they are rowing they come across a person who tries to convince them to remove their blindfolds in order to see the "beautiful" creature; however, they ignore him and continue along their journey where they are later beset by wolves, one of whom injures Malorie.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Eventually Malorie hears Tom's voice which surprises her but then realizes that Rick has used Tom's voicemail as the signal. But as she is prepared to remove the blindfold, the Boy says he hears something walking through the river toward them. The creature pulls at her blindfold, but then releases it and leaves them. Malorie is terrified to remove the blindfold, but knows that it is necessary to see which split of the river to take. She removes her blindfold and briefly marvels at sights previously denied due to the Problem before navigating down the correct path and replacing her blindfold. Eventually they make it to the refuge, which she discovers was originally a school for the blind. They are met by the blind Rick, a sighted Constance, and dozens of other people who have blinded themselves to remain unaffected. Now certain in their safety, Malorie finally allows herself to name the children "Tom" and "Olympia" and tells them to remove their blindfolds.


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Critical reception for "Bird Box" has been positive and Malerman has received comparisons to Stephen King and Jonathan Carroll. Tasha Robinson of "The A.V. Club" gave the book a B rating, writing "Malerman overreaches a bit in his debut, which could use as much attention to the cast as to the mood, but the mood is chillingly effective. Reading it feels like accepting a dare to walk into a strange place, eyes closed, with no idea who, or what, might be reaching out to make contact."


title: Bird Box (novel)

text: Malerman wrote the rough draft of "Bird Box" prior to the release of the 2008 M. Night Shyamalan film "The Happening" and the 2009 film "The Road" (although the novel "The Road" was written in 2006)"," which caused him to worry that the book "might get lost in the shuffle."""