title: Marietta, Ohio

text: After the war, the newly formed United States had little cash but plenty of land. Eager to develop additional lands, the new government decided to pay veterans of the Revolution with warrants for land in the Northwest Territory, which was organized under federal authority in 1787 by the Northwest Ordinance. Competing states had agreed to end their claims to the lands; Pennsylvania and Virginia received some lands in a settlement. Arthur St. Clair was appointed by the president as governor of the new territory. He was inaugurated on a site now marked by the Start Westward Memorial.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The Ohio Company of Associates had supported provisions in the ordinance to allow veterans to use their warrants to purchase the land. They bought 1.5 million acres (6,100 km) of land from Congress. On April 7, 1788, 48 men of the Ohio Company of Associates, led by General Putnam, arrived at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers. The site was on the east side of the Muskingum River, across from Fort Harmar, a military outpost built three years prior.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Bringing with them the first government sanctioned by the US for this area, they established the first permanent United States settlement in the Northwest Territory. (Older European settlements in the Northwest Territory region include Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, 1668; Cahokia, Illinois, 1696, Detroit, 1701; Kaskaskia, Illinois, 1703, Ouiatenon, Indiana, 1717, Prairie du Rocher, Illinois, 1720; Vincennes, Indiana, 1732, Clarksville, Indiana, 1783, Martin's Ferry, Ohio, 1785, Fort Finney/Jeffersonville, Indiana, 1786, most settled by ethnic French colonists from Canada.) The Americans named Marietta in honor of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, who had aided the colonies in their battle for independence from Great Britain.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The Indigenous peoples were unhappy to see white settlers moving into their territory. The latter immediately started construction of two forts: Campus Martius, whose former site is now occupied by the museum of the same name, and Picketed Point Stockade, at the confluence of the Muskingum and Ohio rivers. At the same time, the settlers started developing their community, platted according to plans they had made in Boston.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The families of the settlers began arriving within a few months. By the end of 1788, 137 people populated the area.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: In 1789, the United States signed the Treaty of Fort Harmar with several Indigenous tribes that occupied areas of the Northwest Territory, to settle issues related to trade, as well as the boundary between their lands and United States settlement. The US did not address the Indigenous people's major grievance about American settlers moving into their lands, particularly in the Western Reserve, where there were disputes over land. Although Congress authorized Governor Arthur St. Clair to give land back to the Indigenous people, he did not do so. Conflict increased as the Indigenous people tried to push the settlers out. After years of warfare in the region, they were defeated. The US signed the Treaty of Greenville (1795) with the Indigenous people, which secured the safety of settlers to leave the forts and develop their farms.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The settlers held services regularly and chartered the first church in 1799. It was a Congregational institution; its charter was unusually inclusive due to the varied religious backgrounds of its members. The congregation constructed the first church building in 1807. The original church burned in 1905 and another constructed in its place in 1906. The church, First Congregational Church United Church of Christ, is the longest continuously worshiping congregation west of the Alleghenies.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Education was important to the settlers, many of whom had been officers during the Revolution. During that first winter, they began a basic school for the children at Campus Martius. In 1797, settlers founded Muskingum Academy. The town had numerous abolitionists, and Ephraim Cutler was instrumental as a state delegate in 1802 at the state convention in swaying the vote for the state to be free of slavery.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Townspeople organized and chartered Marietta College in 1835. It was used as a station on the Underground Railroad to help slaves escape from the South. Ohio University was founded earlier in Athens, on land reserved for public education under the Northwest Ordinance.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The settlers preserved the Great Mound, or "Conus," by planning their own cemetery around it. They also preserved the two largest platform mounds, which they called "Capitolinus" and "Quadrophenus." The former was developed as the site for the city library. As of 1900, the Mound Cemetery had the highest number of burials of Revolutionary War officers in the nation, indicating the nature of the generation that settled Marietta.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Marietta's location on two major navigable rivers made it ideal for industry and commerce. Boat building was one of the early industries. Artisans built oceangoing vessels and sailed them downriver to the Mississippi and south to New Orleans and the Gulf of Mexico. In less than two decades after settlement, the steamboat had been developed, and was also constructed here. Brick factories and sawmills supplied materials for homes and public buildings. An iron mill, along with several foundries, provided rails for the growing railroad industry; the Marietta Chair Factory made furniture.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Interest in the prehistoric culture that built the Marietta Earthworks continued. The complex was surveyed and drawn by Ephraim George Squier and Edwin Hamilton Davis, whose large project on numerous prehistoric mounds throughout the Ohio and Mississippi valleys was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1848 as "Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley." It was the first book published by the Smithsonian. Their drawing above shows the plan of the original complex, which "included a large square enclosure surrounding four flat-topped pyramidal mounds, another smaller square, and a circular enclosure with a large burial mound at its center." The walled, graded path, called by the settlers the "Sacra Via", led from the largest enclosure to the lower river's edge. This pathway was destroyed in 1843 during mid-nineteenth century development.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Local development began with the Belpre and Cincinnati Railroad (B&C); it was founded in 1845. It was intended to connect from Belpre, Ohio, the next town downriver, to a planned Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) spur to Parkersburg. But, for years, the Virginia government did not allow the B&O to construct track south of Wheeling. In 1851 developers changed the Ohio state terminus to Marietta and changed the name of the railroad to the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad that year. The right-of-way for an alternate connection to the B&O extended upriver from Marietta to Bellaire, Ohio. The M&C was bankrupt by 1857, but construction of track continued west to reach Cincinnati. The first through-train from Cincinnati ran on April 9, 1857. The M&C got out of bankruptcy in 1860.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: In 1871, the Ohio Valley Railroad was formed and for the next two years built tracks going north for 103 miles. Their home office was in Marietta, with treasurer offices in Pittsburgh. The Ohio Valley railroad was reorganized as the Marietta and Cleveland. The Pennsylvania Railroad in its expansion later purchased the railroad and its right-of-way between Marietta and Bellaire.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Passengers traveling between Marietta and Parkersburg, Virginia (now West Virginia) had to take a steamboat for the 14 miles between the two towns and transfer. With help from the B&O and the Baltimore City Council, the Union Railroad finally connected Marietta to Belpre, Ohio in 1860. Later absorbed by the B&O, this section of track is still in operation (2008), with unit coal trains providing most of the traffic.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The planned bridge from Parkersburg across the Ohio River to Belpre was finally built 1868–1870 by the B&O, as part of its main line from Baltimore to St. Louis, Missouri. This cut Marietta off from traffic and trade, although it retained local and Ohio service. In the early 20th century, 24 passenger trains served Marietta each day, most of which ran on the PRR tracks.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: William P. Cutler was a major figure in the M&C. He also backed the Union Railroad and the Marietta, Columbus and Cleveland Railroad, among other local railroads. Cutler served as General Manager and as President of the M&C for many years.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: In 1860, oil was first drilled in the Marietta region. Oil booms in 1875 and 1910 made investors rich, who constructed numerous lavish houses in town, of which many still stand. The Dawes brothers of Marietta founded the Pure Oil Company. All four brothers became nationally prominent businessmen and/or politicians: Charles Gates Dawes, Rufus C. Dawes, Beman Gates Dawes and Henry May Dawes. Charles Dawes was elected in 1924 with President Calvin Coolidge to serve as the 30th Vice President of the United States (1925–1929). In 1925, he shared the Nobel Peace Prize, based on his work on the Dawes Plan and relieving an international crisis in 1923 related to German reparations after World War I.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: In 1880, the first Putnam Street Bridge was opened to connect Marietta to Fort Harmar. It provided the first free crossing of the Muskingum River.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: As transportation advanced along railroads and highways, Marietta was initially passed by. From 1868 to 1870, the B & O Railroad built a bridge to connect Parkersburg, West Virginia and Belpre; and the National Road went further north through Zanesville.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: But, the Pennsylvania Railroad expanded in the late 19th century and had a station in Marietta, running 26 daily trains between Marietta and Pittsburgh. After WWII passenger service decreased as the railroads restructured and the federal government invested in highway construction. The last rail passenger service ended in 1953. Marietta was relatively isolated from new travel routes until 1967, when I-77 was opened with close access to the city.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Before the United States entered the Great War, a group of 23 young men went from Marietta College to serve in France in 1917 as an ambulance unit; four died in battle. In 1937–1938, during the US celebration of the Northwest Territory, France gave a plaque to the city of Marietta, which was installed on the French monument, to commemorate these young men and their service.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: In 1939, the Sons and Daughters of Pioneer Rivermen was established in Marietta during the Great Depression to celebrate the city's substantial river history and its people. Two years later the Ohio River Museum was opened. In 1972, the museum campus was totally redesigned.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Marietta is home of the longest-running ferromanganese refinery in North America, Eramet Marietta Industries Inc., the only ferromanganese refinery in the United States until recently, and leader in Manganese emissions.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The city of Marietta uses the mayor-council form of government. The mayor is a full-time position; the seven city council members and the city council president are all part-time positions.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The president of council presides over all regular and special meetings of the council although he has no vote therein except in case of a tie. The president of council appoints all council members to the standing committees and is responsible for several city board and commission appointments as well as in charge of the records of city council. The president of council oversees all the day-to-day operations of the clerk of council. The president of council serves as the liaison to the city administration. When the mayor is absent from the city or unable to perform his duties, the president of council shall become acting mayor and shall have the same powers and perform the same duties as the mayor. The president of council is elected to a two-year term.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Three at-large council members represent the entire city of Marietta. All members of council chair a standing committee and serve on two other standing committees. At-large council members sponsor and introduce legislation and have a vote. All council members are elected to two-year terms.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Four ward council members represent each of the city's four wards. All members of council chair a standing committee and serve on two other standing committees. Ward council members sponsor and introduce legislation and have a vote. All council members are elected to two-year terms.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: A president pro tem is chosen by the members of the council from among the council to serve as the president pro tem (acting president of council) in the absence, disability or when the president of council is serving as acting mayor.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The clerk of council is responsible for recording council meeting minutes, reading the legislation at council meetings and performing the daily operations of the council office. The council clerk is appointed by the council and is supervised by the president of council.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Joshua D. Schlicher is the current Mayor of Marietta. A Republican, Schlicher previously served as President of the Marietta City Council. His term began on January 1, 2020, winning the 2019 election against Democratic candidate Harley Noland and the incumbent Mayor Joe Matthews, who ran as an independent after serving in office as a Democrat.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Steven Wetz is the current Safety Service Director of Marietta. He was appointed by Schlicher in 2020.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: City of Marietta politics feature a number of citizens groups that influence policy and public opinion. Such groups as Citizens for Responsible Government, the Citizen's Armory Preservation Society, and Neighbors for Clean Air work to improve the public process and exercise significant influence over the government of the city.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The residents of the city of Marietta are represented by Republican Jay Edwards (District 94) and by Republican Don Jones in the Ohio House of Representatives and Republican Frank Hoagland (District 30) in the Ohio Senate.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Interstate 77 runs east of Marietta connecting it to Cleveland, Ohio, to the north and Charleston, West Virginia, to the south.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Five state routes run through Marietta. These are: Ohio State Route 7, Ohio State Route 60, Ohio State Route 26, Ohio State Route 550, and Ohio State Route 676.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Marietta is served by Mid-Ohio Valley Regional Airport in Williamstown, West Virginia, which has three flights a day Monday through Friday from Charlotte Douglas International Airport.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 14,085 people, 5,828 households, and 3,215 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 6,519 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 94.9% White, 1.3% African American, 0.3% Native American, 1.4% Asian, 0.5% from other races, and 1.5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.1% of the population.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: There were 5,828 households, of which 25.3% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.9% were married couples living together, 13.0% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.3% had a male householder with no wife present, and 44.8% were non-families. 37.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 15.7% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.14 and the average family size was 2.80.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The median age in the city was 39 years. 18.9% of residents were under the age of 18; 16% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 21.1% were from 25 to 44; 25.7% were from 45 to 64; and 18.4% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 46.9% male and 53.1% female.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: As of the census of 2000, there were 14,515 people, 5,904 households, and 3,501 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,747.0 people per square mile (674.4/km). There were 6,609 housing units at an average density of 795.4 per square mile (307.1/km). The racial makeup of the city was 96.31% White, 1.08% African American, 0.46% Native American, 0.71% Asian, 0.06% Pacific Islander, 0.28% from other races, and 1.11% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 0.79% of the population.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: There were 5,904 households, out of which 27.2% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 42.4% were married couples living together, 13.1% had a female householder with no husband present, and 40.7% were non-families. 35.1% of all households were made up of individuals, and 14.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.21 and the average family size was 2.86.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: In the city the population was spread out, with 20.9% under the age of 18, 14.0% from 18 to 24, 25.1% from 25 to 44, 22.3% from 45 to 64, and 17.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 38 years. For every 100 females, there were 87.1 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 82.8 males.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: The median income for a household in the city was $29,272, and the median income for a family was $36,042. Males had a median income of $30,683 versus $22,085 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,021. About 13.6% of families and 16.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 24.6% of those under age 18 and 10.4% of those age 65 or over.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Eramet has released thousands of pounds of manganese and other hazardous air pollutants into the air.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: As of 2021, the Marietta City School District operates three elementary schools (two preK-2nd and one 3rd-6th), and one building that houses a middle/high school, Marietta High School. Phillips Elementary and Washington Elementary house the preK-2nd grades. The elementary school that houses 3rd-6th grades is located in the building that was previously the middle school.


title: Marietta, Ohio

text: Arthur St. Clair, Major General and Patriot in the revolutionary war, 9th President of the Continental Congress, he was the first governor of the Northwest Territory,


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: Biju Patnaik International Airport is an international airport serving Bhubaneswar, the capital city of Odisha. It is situated around south-west from Bhubaneswar Railway Station and from the city center. Named after the former chief minister of Odisha, Biju Patnaik, a famed aviator and freedom fighter, it is the 16th busiest airport in India and 11th busiest among the airports maintained by Airports Authority of India, registering an 11.7% fall in traffic over the previous year.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: The airport was dedicated to the people of Odisha on 17 April 1962, becoming the first ever commercial airport in the state. The airport boasts two active scheduled passenger terminals i.e. Terminals 1 and 2 for domestic and international passengers respectively. Former Minister of Civil Aviation, Ajit Singh, inaugurated Terminal 1 on 5 March 2013, which caters to domestic passengers, whereas Terminal 2 was then refurbished to handle international operations. The Government of India accorded international status to the airport on 30 October 2013.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: Biju Patnaik International Airport serves as one of the major civil aviation hubs in Eastern India. The airport boasts two actively scheduled passenger terminals, i.e. Terminals 1 and 2, for domestic and international passengers respectively.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: Inaugurated in March 2013, the terminal has a capacity of 4 million passengers per annum and was built at a cost of 1.45 billion by Lanco Infratech.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: The new terminal has been developed by the AAI as part of the upgrade of 35 non-metro airports across the country. Terminal 1, a two-storied building with a total area of , consists of 4 aerobridges, 4 elevators, several escalators, 18 check-in counters, 3 arrival luggage conveyors, a spa, and multiple seating areas. Apart from the Departure and Arrival Lounges, Terminal 1 also has several other lounges, including VIP Lounges, Pal Heights Spa Lounge, Dakota Lounge and Mayfair Lounge. The terminal is environment-friendly, built according to green building standards, with sewage treatment plants and provision for rain water harvesting. The internal walls of the terminal are decorated with tribal motifs, designs, masks, and sculptures derived from Odisha's culture. The new terminal also has food kiosks, gift shops, bookstores, art galleries and handloom/handicraft kiosks.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: Terminal 2 handles international operations to and from the airport. It was built in the mid-1960s to cater domestic flights. The terminal being built over an area of , consists of 6 check-in counters, 10 immigration counters, 4 customs counters, numerous amenities and multiple seating areas. A link building connecting Terminal 1 and 2 is being constructed with a budget of 872 million. It will be used for domestic and international arrivals.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: Terminal 3, is a proposed international passenger terminal, to be set up at a cost of 9.13 billion with a total area of . The terminal would handle 8 million passengers per annum, expanding Biju Patnaik International Airport's capacity to 11.5 million from 3.5 million passengers per annum. The construction work for the terminal is poised to begin in July 2019, with a given construction duration of three years. This terminal, once completed, would handle only international passengers, and the existing terminals 1 and 2 would then cater only domestic passengers' departures and arrivals, respectively. Terminal 2 will be used for both domestic and international arrivals.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: The Coast Guard Air Enclave along with the 743 Dornier Squadron was commissioned by former Vice-Admiral Anurag G Thapliyal, Director General of the Indian Coast Guard in Biju Patnaik International Airport on 15 December 2014.


title: Biju Patnaik Airport

text: The units operate under the operational and administrative control of the Commander of the Coast Guard Region (North East) through the Commander, Coast Guard District No 7 (Odisha). Several strategic air operations are streamlined and synergised for the protection of the sea areas off the Coastal Odisha.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Nazario Moreno González (8 March 1970 – 9 March 2014), commonly referred to by his alias El Chayo ("Nazario" or "The Rosary") and/or El Más Loco ("The Craziest One"), was a Mexican drug lord who headed La Familia Michoacana before heading the Knights Templar Cartel, a drug cartel headquartered in the state of Michoacán. He was one of Mexico's most-wanted drug lords.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Very few details are known of Moreno González's early life, but the authorities believe that religion played a major role in his upbringing. Although born in Michoacán, Moreno González moved to the United States as a teenager, but fled back into Mexico about a decade later to avoid prosecution on drug trafficking charges. In 2004, the drug boss Carlos Rosales Mendoza was captured, and Moreno González, alongside José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, took control of La Familia Michoacana. Unlike other traditional drug trafficking organizations in Mexico, his organization also operated like a religious cult, where its own members were given "bibles" with sayings and conduct guidelines. Moreno González reportedly carried out several philanthropic deeds to help the marginalized in Michoacán. Such deeds helped him craft an image of protector, saint, and Christ-like messianic figure among the poor, and gave La Familia Michoacana a level of influence among some natives.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: The Mexican government reported that Moreno González was killed during a two-day gunfight with the Mexican federal police in his home state in December 2010. After the shootout, however, no body was recovered. Rumours thus persisted that Moreno González was still alive and leading the Knights Templar Cartel, the split-off group of La Familia Michoacana. Four years later, on 9 March 2014, his survival was confirmed. Mexican authorities located him again, this time in the town of Tumbiscatío, Michoacán, and attempted to apprehend him. A gunfight ensued resulting in Moreno González's death. Subsequent forensic examination confirmed his identity.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Moreno González was born in the "ranchería" of Guanajuatillo in Apatzingán, Michoacán, Mexico at around 5:00 a.m. on 8 March 1970. There are few details of Moreno González's upbringing, but religion may have played an important role in his early life. His parents had 13 children (including Moreno González). His father Manuel Moreno was reportedly an alcoholic and had several mistresses, and one day he left his family when Moreno González was still very young, forcing his mother to singlehandedly raise the whole family. With their father gone, Moreno González and his siblings lived under the strict discipline of their mother. According to his autobiography, Moreno González had a love-hate relationship with his mother; as a child, he was beaten by his mother for being troublesome and getting into fights. In one occasion, he recalled that his mother once forced him to make his way back to his house by walking on his knees while keeping his arms stretched like a cross throughout the whole day for stealing an animal. Such treatments helped him develop resentment as to partially explain his violent behavior as an adult, he argued. He admitted, however, that he often got into fist fights with other kids from Guanajuatillo and the surrounding "rancherías". Moreno González recalled that he would not always win and that he once got into 10 fights in a single day. His violent reputation as a child helped him earn the nickname El Más Loco ("The Craziest One")—which he held onto for the rest of his life—among his siblings and other kids from the area where he grew up.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: He never attended school and was illiterate for some years of his early life. He learned to read and write reportedly out of curiosity after seeing and hearing comic books and stories of "Kalimán" and "Porfirio Cadena, El Ojo de Vidrio" on the local radio station. In his autobiography, Moreno González said that as a child he believed he had the superhuman ability of speaking telepathically with animals like "Kalimán" did in the comics. He said he wanted to be a hero like the comic characters. As a child, he was accustomed to seeing gunmen near his home, and played "las guerritas" ("war games") for fun. While playing the game, he often pretended to be dead, only to say later on that he had been wounded in the game but that he had managed to survive. Aged twelve he moved to Apatzingán and made a living by selling matches, peeling onions, working at a melon field, and throwing out the trash from several booths at a marketplace. As a teenager in the late 1980s, Moreno González migrated illegally to the United States, settling in California, where he eventually began selling marijuana. After some years, he moved to Texas and in 1994 was arrested for drug trafficking charges in McAllen. Nearly a decade later in 2003, the US government charged him with conspiracy to distribute five tons of narcotics and issued an arrest warrant. González fled back to Mexico.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Although raised Catholic, Moreno González became a Jehovah's Witness during his time in the United States. In Apatzingán, Moreno González preached to the poor and always carried a bible with him. With time, he won the loyalty of several locals, and many started to see him as a "messiah" for preaching religious principles and forming La Familia Michoacana, a drug cartel that posed as a vigilante group. When Carlos Rosales Mendoza was arrested in 2004, Moreno González ascended to the apex of La Familia Michoacana, a drug trafficking organization based in western Mexico, along with José de Jesús Méndez Vargas. In 2006, La Familia Michoacana broke relations with the Gulf Cartel and Los Zetas, and Moreno González heralded the organization's independence when several of his gunmen tossed five human heads on a discothèque dance floor in Uruapan. Near the severed heads lay a message that read, "La Familia doesn't kill for money, doesn't kill women, doesn't kill innocents. Only those who deserve to die will die."


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: In 2009, the Mexican government published a list of its 37 most-wanted drug lords and offered a $2.2 million reward for information that led to Moreno González's capture. His three partners – José de Jesús Méndez Vargas, Servando Gómez Martínez and Dionisio Loya Plancarte – were also on the list. In 2010, he was sanctioned under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (sometimes referred to simply as the "Kingpin Act") by the United States Department of the Treasury for his involvement in drug trafficking. The act prohibited US citizens and companies from doing business with Moreno González, and froze virtually all his assets in the US.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Los Zetas broke off from the Gulf Cartel in 2010, after serving in the armed wing of the organization for more than a decade. But, in opposition to Los Zetas, González's cartel re-joined the Gulf Cartel and allied with the Sinaloa Cartel to fight them off. After that La Familia Michoacana became one of the fastest-growing cartels in Mexico's drug war. It stood out for its promotion of "family values" and religious agenda, unlike traditional cartels. Although deeply involved in the methamphetamine business, Moreno González's cartel diversified its criminal agenda by controlling numerous "counterfeiting, extortion, kidnapping, armed robbery, prostitution and car dealership" rings in Michoacán and nearby states. By mid-2009, La Familia had managed to establish a foothold in about 20 to 30 urban areas across the United States.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Moreno González required his men to carry a "spiritual manual" that he wrote himself, "[containing] pseudo-Christian aphorisms for self-improvement." In his "bible," Moreno González prohibited his men from consuming alcoholic beverages or other drugs, and stated that he would severely punish those who mistreated women. His writings encouraged the corporal punishment of thieves by beating them and making them walk naked with billboards in the city streets. He prohibited members of his cartel from consuming or selling methamphetamine in Michoacán, arguing that the drug was only to be smuggled into the US for American consumers. Moreno González justified drug trafficking by stating that La Familia Michoacana regulated the drug trade to prevent exploitation of the people. The book, sometimes known as "The Sayings of the Craziest One", also talks about humility, service, wisdom, brotherhood, courage, and God. His second book, titled "They Call Me The Craziest One", is 13 chapters long and talks about his life, idealism, the origins of La Familia Michoacana, their battle against Los Zetas, and his rationale for joining organized crime. The text reads like a diary and justifies his criminal activities under the rationale that just like others in Michoacán, the limited opportunities and his poor financial situation pushed him to get involved in the drug trade. In addition, González blamed the government for the existence of criminals.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: As leader of La Familia Michoacana, González was in charge of forging alliances with other cartels. Reportedly, González met with several other high-ranking drug traffickers, including Fernando Sánchez Arellano of the Tijuana Cartel; Juan José Esparragoza Moreno of the Sinaloa Cartel; and Antonio Cárdenas Guillén of the Gulf Cartel. In these agreements, the cartels allowed La Familia Michoacana to move drugs freely in their territories in exchange for their support in fighting off rival gangs like Los Zetas. In 2008, Moreno González agreed to send armed men to help Joaquín Guzmán Loera and Ismael Zambada García fight off rival cartels, a favor which granted him access to the drug corridors in Sinaloa and Sonora. In addition, his friendship with the Gulf Cartel leader Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sánchez allowed him access to the northeastern state of Tamaulipas.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: During his tenure as leader of La Familia Michoacana, Moreno González reportedly gave loans to farmers, funded schools and churches, financed drainage projects, and carried out several aid campaigns to help out the disadvantaged in the state of Michoacán. This, along with the manpower of the organization, allowed him get the support of several rural sectors in the state, where many served as informants and collaborators for the cartel. His wife was also known for organizing several self-help seminars in Apatzingán. The support of La Familia Michoacana is rooted in family connections and local communities in Michoacán, and in the supposed exploitation of its citizens by the government.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: On 9 December 2010, the Mexican federal police surrounded the village of El Alcalde in Apatzingán, Michoacán with more than 2,000 officers. Reportedly, Moreno González was at a local festival handing out Christmas presents to the villagers when he was tracked down by the authorities.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: As the police troops drove into town, gunmen of La Familia Michoacana blocked the entrances with more than 40 burning trucks and cars. La Familia gunmen also surrounded the state capital of Morelia in an attempt to prevent the police from receiving reinforcements. The shootout lasted about two days, and at least 11 deaths were confirmed. During the gun battle, the gunmen managed to carry out the bodies of their fallen comrades up the hills. The government reported at the time that Moreno González had been killed, but that the cartel took his body away. This triggered rumors that he was alive and leading his cartel. However, the Mexican government denied such claims. Elías Álvarez, the commander of the 2010 police operation, said González's grave was in the mountains. 2014 reports from the Mexican government stated that Moreno González was possibly injured (but not killed) during the shootout. For four years, the drug lord took advantage of the government's mistake to fall off the authorities's radar and continue to command the cartel behind the scenes.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: The alleged death of Moreno González was considered one of the most significant government victories since the start of the drug war in 2006. La Familia Michoacana was the focus of the government because their stronghold, Michoacán state, is approximately four hours away from the country's capital, Mexico City. In addition, Michoacán is the home state of former President Felipe Calderón, who made it a top priority to pacify it.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: A few days after the shootout, several people carried out a peace march in Apatzingán expressing their support for the cartel with banners that read "Nazario will always live in our hearts," among others. Others protested against the presence of the federal forces in the state, and argued that the federal government—not the cartels—were responsible for increasing the violence in the country. Through several banners hung on bridges throughout the state of Michoacán, La Familia Michoacana publicly announced that they were open to the possibility of creating a "truce" (ceasefire) with the Mexican government throughout December 2010 and January 2011 to prove that they were not the source of the violence. The Mexican authorities "summarily rejected" the agreement.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: After Moreno Gonzalez was reported dead, José de Jesús Méndez Vargas took the lead of La Familia Michoacana. The other cartel leader, Servando Gómez Martínez (alias "La Tuta"), fought Méndez Vargas for control of the group and eventually formed the Knights Templar Cartel, a drug cartel and pseudo-religious splinter group. The cartel was headed by Moreno González, followed by Gómez Martínez, Dionisio Loya Plancarte (alias "El Tío"), and Enrique Plancarte Solís (alias "Kike Plancarte"), in that order. However, given that the Mexican government believed that Moreno González had been killed in 2010, Gómez Martínez was regarded as the first-in-command. Since its creation, the Knights Templar Cartel became a greater security concern for the Mexican government; it began to extort lime farmers, cutters, and packers, as well as people who worked in the avocado business in Michoacán. The cartel also stole minerals from the state's reserves to later ship to China for sale on the black market. Killings, extortions, kidnappings, and arson attacks against Michoacán residents and local businesses increased. In response to the cartel's activities, "autodefensa" (vigilante/self-defense) groups began to emerge in Michoacán in 2011, and gained significant momentum in February 2013 when they began to push the cartel outside of the Tierra Caliente region. President Enrique Peña Nieto sent in more federal troops to Michoacán in January 2014 initially with the intent to disarm the informal groups. However, that plan was quickly abandoned following some resistance, and the government decided to sign an agreement that month with the "autodefensas" to combat insecurity together.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Given that Moreno González's body was never recovered from the December 2010 shootout where officials said he was killed, there were rumors that he was alive and secretly leading the Knights Templar Cartel, the split-off group of La Familia Michoacana. In June 2011, members of La Familia Michoacana set up several public banners throughout the state of Guerrero with written messages directed to the former President Calderón and his security spokesman Alejandro Poiré. The banners proclaimed that Moreno González was in fact alive and leading the Knights Templar Cartel, and that the government was allegedly covering him up. The rumors were immediately denied by the Mexican government, which stood firm that the drug lord was killed by federal forces on 9 December 2010. Rumors sparked again in October 2011 following the arrest of Mario Buenrostro Quiroz, a drug trafficker who headed a Mexico City-based gang known as Los Aboytes. In a videotaped police confession, he told authorities that Moreno González was still alive and heading the cartel. Investigative news site InSight Crime said the rumors were probably part of a campaign of the Knights Templar Cartel to win prestige from La Familia Michoacana by saying that their leader is in fact alive and still supporting the group. On 27 October 2012, the Mexican Army raided a safe house in Apatzingán where they believed the drug lord Enrique Plancarte Solís was hiding. Though the raid was ultimately unsuccessful because Plancarte Solís managed to avoid capture by sending several gunmen from his inner circle to battle off the soldiers, the authorities discovered several documents written for Moreno González. The Army gave the documents to the intelligence agency SIEDO for further investigation.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Many Michoacán natives believed that Moreno González was alive; he was widely believed to have made a public appearance in Morelia in 2012 after his son was killed in a motorcycle accident. According to an unnamed official, his sister went to the morgue to reclaim the body of his son before the autopsy. When the coroner refused to give her the body, Moreno González paid him a visit and convinced him to give up the body. In fears of reprisals, local media outlets self-censored and did not report on the death of his son. Those who wrecked his son were reportedly kidnapped by Moreno González men and killed. In addition, one militia leader from the town of Coalcomán reported seeing him dressed as Saint Francis of Assisi, baptizing people, and leading his henchmen. There was no concrete evidence of Moreno González being alive. However, since no autopsy was performed, there was no evidence of him being dead either. In January 2014, Gregorio López, a priest of Apatzingán, reported that Moreno González ordered a self-imposed curfew in the city and threatened to burn down businesses that did not comply with the order. That week Michoacán had a series of violent episodes after the state's "autodefensa" (vigilante) groups—which emerged in February 2013 to fight the Knights Templar Cartel—attempted to move into several municipalities to fight the cartel. The priest said in an interview that there were rumors that the drug lord met with "La Tuta" for lunch in La Cucha, a ranch outside of Apatzingán. In an interview with Noticias MVS in February 2014, the former self-defense group leader José Manuel Mireles Valverde stated that Moreno González celebrated Christmas Day (25 December 2013) with the cartel leader Enrique Plancarte Solís and his daughter and banda singer Melissa at the drug lord's house. Mireles claimed in March 2014 that the self-defense groups nearly captured Moreno González at a ranch close to Tumbiscatío, Michoacán, but that he managed to escape 20 minutes before their arrival.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Rumors surrounding these allegations were around since Moreno González was declared dead by the Mexican government in 2010. The mysticism and spiritual teachings of the drug lord have played an important role in the Knights Templar Cartel's propaganda and recruitment in Michoacán. By spreading such rumors, the cartel hoped to gain a level of consensus from the public in their fight against the self-defense militias and state forces in the state.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: After Moreno González's reported death in 2010, Michoacán natives reportedly began to worship him as a saint, "drawing attention to the links between narco-culture and religion." In the region of Apatzingán, people created altars with statues and photos in honor of him. The figurines are often dressed in tunics similar to the Knights Templar, and had prayers calling him Saint Nazario. "Reforma" newspaper reported that Moreno González had his own prayer: "Oh Lord Almighty, free me from all sins, give me protection through Saint Nazario." These altars are found in the village of Holanda, on the hill of El Cerrito de la Cruz, and in Apatzingán. Villagers have noted that they had been forced to venerate the criminal under threat of armed force by the gang members.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: Throughout his criminal career, Moreno González promoted La Familia Michoacana as an organization that existed to protect the people in Michoacán, where he carried out several campaigns that implemented curfews, punished drinkers, and attacked Los Zetas, who he claimed had corroded the morality of the state and community. The prayers that are now dedicated to Moreno González now refer to him as the "Representative of God," the "Protector of the poorest," and as the "Knight of the towns." Such behavior proves that La Familia Michoacana's religious campaign influenced the local area.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: The area where the altars are located is reportedly patrolled by "Los 12 apóstoles" ('12 apostles'), the security body that allegedly protected Moreno González.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: At around 7:00 a.m. on 9 March 2014, the Mexican Army and Navy pinpointed Moreno González's whereabouts in Tumbiscatío, Michoacán. When they tried to apprehend him, the drug lord opened fire at the security forces before being killed in the fire exchange. Mexico's Procuraduría General de la República (PGR) officially confirmed his identity through DNA examinations and fingerprint identification. The results were consistent with law enforcement files. While investigators conducted the autopsy at a hospital in Apatzingán, more than 150 law enforcement officers from the Army, Navy, Federal Police, and the PGR cordoned the area to prevent organized crime members from attempting to steal his body. Post-mortem reports indicated that Moreno González died of two gunshot wounds on his thorax. On 12 March 2014, his corpse was transferred to Morelia under tight security for further testing. At the time of his death, the drug lord was wanted by the Mexican government for charges relating to drug trafficking, organized crime, kidnapping, murder, and theft.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: On the evening of 14 March 2014, his corpse was handed over to his sister and two nephews in Morelia by state authorities. As they left the forensic installations, they covered their faces in front of cameras and did not specify if they had plans to carry out a funeral for Moreno González. His family and friends, however, held a funeral for him at the Santa Cruz funeral home in Altozano, Morelia. They did not comment where the corpse was to be taken, but unconfirmed reports suggested that there were plans to cremate him and scatter his ashes at a village in the Tierra Caliente region in Michoacán.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: He went by several nicknames, including but not limited to El Chayo (hypocorism for "Nazario" or "Rosario", the Spanish word for Rosary), Víctor Nazario Castrejón Peña, El Dulce ("The Candy"), El Doctor ("The Doctor"), and El Más Loco ("The Craziest One"), In 2014, the Mexican government discovered that the drug lord also held the alias Emiliano Morelos Guevara in reference to revolutionary figures Emiliano Zapata, José María Morelos, and Che Guevara.


title: Nazario Moreno González

text: His father was reportedly Manuel Moreno, who died in July 2013, according to intelligence reports from Mexican federal agents. The drug lord was the uncle or cousin of Uriel Chávez Mendoza, the municipal president (equivalent of mayor) of Apatzingán. He was arrested by Mexican authorities on 15 April 2014 for his alleged ties to organized crime. The city councilman Isidro Villanueva Moreno may also be his cousin too. His half brother and cousin of Plancarte Solís, Antonio Magaña Pantoja, was arrested by Mexican authorities in Apatzingán on 9 February 2014. His half brother Heliodoro Moreno Anguiano (alias "El Yoyo") was arrested by Mexican authorities in Apatzingán, Michoacán on 18 February 2014. His nephew Faustino Andrade González was arrested by the Mexican Federal Police in Apatzingán with four other suspected criminals on 5 June 2014.


title: Rajeev Kanakala

text: Rajeev Kanakala (born 13 November 1968) is an Indian actor who works predominantly in Telugu films and television. He started his career in television serials and short films, where he not only acted but also produced and directed. He is married to Suma Kanakala since 1999, who is an actress and TV anchor.


title: Gold Medalist (company)

text: Goldmedalist (; stylized in all caps) is a private held South Korean entertainment company established in 2020 by Lee Sarang and Kim Mi-hye. It currently manages actors Kim Soo-hyun, Seo Yea-ji, Seol In-ah and Kim Sae-ron. It has also co-produced the 2020 romantic television series "It's Okay to Not Be Okay" and 2021 "One Ordinary Day".


title: Gold Medalist (company)

text: In December 2019, media reported that Kim Soo-hyun will set up his own agency with his cousin Lee Sarang leaving his then management company KeyEast. On January 1, 2020 "Goldmedalist" was established by the director Lee Sarang and the producer Kim Mi-hye, who have worked with Kim Soo-hyun since the 2009 Korean drama "Will It Snow for Christmas?". Along with Kim Soo-hyun, the company recruited actresses Seo Yea-ji and Kim Sae-ron.


title: Gold Medalist (company)

text: As of December 2020, ex-KeyEast executive Shin Phil is the Chief executive officer (CEO) of the company and manages a total of eleven artists.


title: Toptal

text: Toptal is a global remote company that provides a freelancing platform, connecting businesses with software engineers, designers, finance experts, product managers, and project managers. The company has no headquarters.


title: Toptal

text: Taso Du Val and Breanden Beneschott founded the company in 2010. Du Val was previously an engineer at Fotolog and Slide.com while Beneschott was an undergraduate at Princeton University. The name stands for "top talent", and it was started as a virtual company with no dedicated offices.


title: Toptal

text: Toptal had more than $1 million in revenue by the time Beneschott graduated from Princeton. The co-founders moved to Budapest, Hungary to access software developers with fewer employment options than in the United States.


title: Toptal

text: The firm developed personality, language, and skills testing to remotely screen engineering candidates, and accepted the top 3% of several thousand monthly applicants.


title: Toptal

text: The firm matches business engagements with developers from its network and brokers the terms of each job. In 2015, it expanded to include freelance design. In 2016, it acquired the freelancer platform, Skillbridge, which offered freelance accountants, statisticians, and consultants in market research, financial modeling, and due diligence. In 2017, the company launched a vertical specializing in software engineers and designers for the automotive industry. It also launched a vertical for blockchain engineers in February 2018.


title: Toptal

text: Toptal accepted a $1.4 million seed round of financing from Andreessen Horowitz and angel investors including Quora founder Adam D'Angelo. The company is said not to have raised additional funds since its seed round because it has been profitable. In 2015 and 2016, Toptal's annual revenue was $80 million and $100 million respectively.


title: Pavel Batitsky

text: Pavel Fyodorovich Batitsky (; ; 27 June 1910 – 17 February 1984) was a Soviet military leader awarded the highest honorary title of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1965 and promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union in 1968. Batitsky served in the Red Army from 1924 and was commander-in-chief of the Air Defense Forces from 1966 to 1978. Following the death of Joseph Stalin in 1953, he was chosen to execute Lavrentiy Beria, the former head of the NKVD.


title: Pavel Batitsky

text: He was born in Kharkov, in the Russian Empire, and joined the Red Army in October 1924. At the age of 14, he entered the Kharkov Military Preparatory School (soon relocated to Poltava) and in 1926, was sent to study at the Military Cavalry School, graduating in 1929. From March 1929 to May 1935, he served in the cavalry and commanded a platoon and squad in the Belorussian Military District.


title: Pavel Batitsky

text: In 1938, he graduated with honors from the Frunze Military Academy. From September 1939 to December 1940, he was in China as Chief of Staff of Soviet military advisers at the headquarters of Chiang Kai-shek. Upon returning to the Soviet Union, he was made Chief of Staff of the 11th Motorized Machine Gun Artillery Brigade at Kaunas in the Baltic Special Military District. In March 1941, he was appointed Chief of Staff of the 202nd Motorized Division. Later that year, he took command of the 254th Rifle Division. Later, during World War II, he commanded the 73rd Rifle Corps (1943–1944) and the 128th Rifle Corps (1944–1945). After World War II he was Chief of the General Staff and Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet Air Forces (1950–1953).In December 1953, he was chosen personally to execute Lavrentiy Beria as part of a plot led by Nikita Khrushchev and assisted by the military forces of Marshal of the Soviet Union Georgy Zhukov (Batitsky was Colonel-General and First Deputy Commander of the Moscow Military District at the time).


title: Community (season 2)

text: The second season of the television comedy series "Community" premiered on September 23, 2010 and concluded on May 12, 2011, on NBC. The season consists of 24 episodes and aired on Thursdays at 8:00 pm ET as part of Comedy Night Done Right.


title: Community (season 2)

text: Guest stars in the second season of "Community" include Betty White in the season premiere as June Bauer, an anthropology professor. Drew Carey appeared in the second episode of the season as Ted, the boss from Jeff's old law firm, and Rob Corddry also appeared in the second episode as Alan, Jeff's best friend from his old law firm. Hilary Duff guest starred in the seventh episode as a "mean girl" who's a part of a clique that goes head-to-head with the Greendale study group.


title: Community (season 2)

text: The second season featured a stop-motion animated Christmas episode written by series creator Dan Harmon and Dino Stamatopoulos, who plays Star-Burns in the series. Harmon said, "There's a reason for it to be stop-motion animated, but it's not a dream. It still exists within the reality of the show."


title: Community (season 2)

text: On November 3, 2010, NBC ordered 2 additional episodes for the second season, bringing it to a total of 24 episodes.


title: Community (season 2)

text: The second-season finale was a two-part episode featuring Josh Holloway in a guest appearance. The episodes were a follow-up to the season one episode "Modern Warfare" where the students partake in a campus paintball match.


title: Community (season 2)

text: In the episode "Critical Film Studies", Abed mentions he traveled to Los Angeles to appear in a scene in the television series "Cougar Town". In the second-season finale of "Cougar Town", Danny Pudi as Abed appears in the background of a scene. "Cougar Town" actors Dan Byrd and Busy Philipps also appeared briefly in the background of a scene in second-season finale of "Community". "Cougar Town" creator Bill Lawrence explained, "They had Abed have a love of "Cougar Town", we had Travis have a love of "Community", and once we got wind of what they were having Abed say he experienced out here, we were going to try to find a way of Danny being a background character and essentially act that same thing out on our show." "Community" previously had an episode that featured several shout-outs to "Cougar Town". The mutual admiration between the two shows started as "Cougar Town" creators Bill Lawrence and Kevin Biegel became friends with "Community" creator Dan Harmon, and would often tweet each other. Also, "Community" executive producers Neil Goldman and Garrett Donovan previously worked with Lawrence on "Scrubs" for several years.


title: Community (season 2)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the season has an approval rating of 100% with an average score of 8.9 out of 10 based on 18 reviews. The website's critical consensus reads, ""Community" unfurls into a marvel of meta-madness in its sophomore season, artfully deconstructing sitcom tropes while repeatedly knocking its own emotional beats out of the park."


title: Community (season 2)

text: The second season of "Community" was released on region 1 DVD on September 6, 2011, and on region 2 DVD on September 24, 2012. The DVD contains all 24 episodes on four discs plus special features, which include:


title: Categorization

text: Categorization is the ability and activity of recognizing shared features or similarities between the elements of the experience of the world (such as objects, events, or ideas), organizing and classifying experience by associating them to a more abstract group (that is, a category, class, or type), on the basis of their traits, features, similarities or other criteria that are universal to the group. Categorization is considered one of the most fundamental cognitive abilities, and as such it is studied particularly by psychology and cognitive linguistics.


title: Categorization

text: Categorization is sometimes considered synonymous with classification (cf., Classification synonyms). Categorization and classification allow humans to organize things, objects, and ideas that exist around them and simplify their understanding of the world. Categorization is something that humans and other organisms "do": "doing the right thing with the right "kind" of thing." The activity of categorizing things can be nonverbal or verbal. For humans, both concrete objects and abstract ideas are recognized, differentiated, and understood through categorization. Objects are usually categorized for some adaptive or pragmatic purposes.


title: Categorization

text: Categorization is grounded in the features that distinguish the category's members from nonmembers. Categorization is important in learning, prediction, inference, decision making, language, and many forms of organisms' interaction with their environments.


title: Categorization

text: Categories are distinct collections of concrete or abstract instances (category members) that are considered equivalent by the cognitive system. Using category knowledge requires one to access mental representations that define the core features of category members (cognitive psychologists refer to these category-specific mental representations as concepts).


title: Categorization

text: To categorization theorists, the categorization of objects is often considered using taxonomies with three hierarchical levels of abstraction. For example, a plant could be identified at a high level of abstraction by simply labeling it a flower, a medium level of abstraction by specifying that the flower is a rose, or a low level of abstraction by further specifying this particular rose as a dog rose. Categories in a taxonomy are related to one another via class inclusion, with the highest level of abstraction being the most inclusive and the lowest level of abstraction being the least inclusive. The three levels of abstraction are as follows:


title: Categorization

text: The classical theory of categorization, is a term used in cognitive linguistics to denote the approach to categorization that appears in Plato and Aristotle and that has been highly influential and dominant in Western culture, particularly in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Aristotle's categorical method of analysis was transmitted to the scholastic medieval university through Porphyry's Isagoge. The classical view of categories can be summarized into three assumptions: a category can be described as a list of necessary and sufficient features that its membership must have, categories are discrete in that they have clearly defined boundaries (either an element belongs to one or not, with no possibilities in between), and all the members of a category have the same status. (There are no members of the category which belong more than others). In the classical view, categories need to be clearly defined, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive; this way, any entity in the given classification universe belongs unequivocally to one, and only one, of the proposed categories.


title: Categorization

text: The classical view of categories first appeared in the context of Western Philosophy in the work of Plato, who, in his Statesman dialogue, introduces the approach of grouping objects based on their similar properties. This approach was further explored and systematized by Aristotle in his Categories treatise, where he analyzes the differences between classes and objects. Aristotle also applied intensively the classical categorization scheme in his approach to the classification of living beings (which uses the technique of applying successive narrowing questions such as "Is it an animal or vegetable?", "How many feet does it have?", "Does it have fur or feathers?", "Can it fly?"...), establishing this way the basis for natural taxonomy.


title: Categorization

text: Examples of the use of the classical view of categories can be found in the western philosophical works of Descartes, Blaise Pascal, Spinoza and John Locke, and in the 20th century in Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore, the logical positivists. It has been a cornerstone of analytic philosophy and its conceptual analysis, with more recent formulations proposed in the 1990s by Frank Cameron Jackson and Christopher Peacocke. At the beginning of the 20th century, the question of categories was introduced into the empirical social sciences by Durkheim and Mauss, whose pioneering work has been revisited in contemporary scholarship.


title: Categorization

text: The classical model of categorization has been used at least since the 1960s from linguists of the structural semantics paradigm, by Jerrold Katz and Jerry Fodor in 1963, which in turn have influenced its adoption also by psychologists like Allan M. Collins and M. Ross Quillian.


title: Categorization

text: Modern versions of classical categorization theory study how the brain learns and represents categories by detecting the features that distinguish members from nonmembers.


title: Categorization

text: The pioneering research by psychologist Eleanor Rosch and colleagues since 1973, introduced the prototype theory, according to which categorization can also be viewed as the process of grouping things based on prototypes. This approach has been highly influential, particularly for cognitive linguistics. It was in part based on previous insights, in particular the formulation of a category model based on family resemblance by Wittgenstein (1953), and by Roger Brown's "How shall a thing be called?" (1958).


title: Categorization

text: Prototype theory has been then adopted by cognitive linguists like George Lakoff. The prototype theory is an example of a similarity-based approach to categorization, in which a stored category representation is used to assess the similarity of candidate category members. Under the prototype theory, this stored representation consists of a summary representation of the category's members. This prototype stimulus can take various forms. It might be a central tendency that represents the category's average member, a modal stimulus representing either the most frequent instance or a stimulus composed of the most common category features, or, lastly, the "ideal" category member, or a caricature that emphasizes the distinct features of the category. An important consideration of this prototype representation is that it does not necessarily reflect the existence of an actual instance of the category in the world. Furthermore, prototypes are highly sensitive to context. For example, while one's prototype for the category of beverages may be soda or seltzer, the context of brunch might lead them to select mimosa as a prototypical beverage.


title: Categorization

text: The prototype theory claims that members of a given category share a family resemblance, and categories are defined by sets of typical features (as opposed to all members possessing necessary and sufficient features).


title: Categorization

text: Another instance of the similarity-based approach to categorization, the exemplar theory likewise compares the similarity of candidate category members to stored memory representations. Under the exemplar theory, all known instances of a category are stored in memory as exemplars. When evaluating an unfamiliar entity's category membership, exemplars from potentially relevant categories are retrieved from memory, and the entity's similarity to those exemplars is summed to formulate a categorization decision. Medin and Schaffer's (1978) Context model employs a nearest neighbor approach which, rather than summing an entity's similarities to relevant exemplars, multiplies them to provide weighted similarities that reflect the entity's proximity to relevant exemplars. This effectively biases categorization decisions towards exemplars most similar to the entity to be categorized.


title: Categorization

text: Conceptual clustering is a machine learning paradigm for unsupervised classification that was defined by Ryszard S. Michalski in 1980. It is a modern variation of the classical approach of categorization, and derives from attempts to explain how knowledge is represented. In this approach, classes (clusters or entities) are generated by first formulating their conceptual descriptions and then classifying the entities according to the descriptions.


title: Categorization

text: Conceptual clustering developed mainly during the 1980s, as a machine paradigm for unsupervised learning. It is distinguished from ordinary data clustering by generating a concept description for each generated category.


title: Categorization

text: Conceptual clustering is closely related to fuzzy set theory, in which objects may belong to one or more groups, in varying degrees of fitness. A cognitive approach accepts that natural categories are graded (they tend to be fuzzy at their boundaries) and inconsistent in the status of their constituent members. The idea of necessary and sufficient conditions is almost never met in categories of naturally occurring things.


title: Categorization

text: "While an exhaustive discussion of category learning is beyond the scope of this article, a brief overview of category learning and its associated theories is useful in understanding formal models of categorization."


title: Categorization

text: If categorization research investigates how categories are maintained and used, the field of category learning seeks to understand how categories are acquired in the first place. To accomplish this, researchers often employ novel categories of arbitrary objects (e.g., dot matrices) to ensure that participants are entirely unfamiliar with the stimuli. Category learning researchers have generally focused on two distinct forms of category learning. Classification learning tasks participants with predicting category labels for a stimulus based on its provided features. Classification learning is centered around learning between-category information and the diagnostic features of categories. In contrast, inference learning tasks participants with inferring the presence/value of a category feature based on a provided category label and/or the presence of other category features. Inference learning is centered on learning within-category information and the category's prototypical features.


title: Categorization

text: Category learning tasks can generally be divided into two categories, supervised and unsupervised learning. Supervised learning tasks provide learners with category labels. Learners then use information extracted from labeled example categories to classify stimuli into the appropriate category, which may involve the abstraction of a rule or concept relating observed object features to category labels. Unsupervised learning tasks do not provide learners with category labels. Learners must therefore recognize inherent structures in a data set and group stimuli together by similarity into classes. Unsupervised learning is thus a process of generating a classification structure. Tasks used to study category learning take various forms:


title: Categorization

text: Category learning researchers have proposed various theories for how humans learn categories. Prevailing theories of category learning include the prototype theory, the exemplar theory, and the decision bound theory.


title: Categorization

text: The prototype theory suggests that to learn a category, one must learn the category's prototype. Subsequent categorization of novel stimuli is then accomplished by selecting the category with the most similar prototype.


title: Categorization

text: The exemplar theory suggests that to learn a category, one must learn about the exemplars that belong to that category. Subsequent categorization of a novel stimulus is then accomplished by computing its similarity to the known exemplars of potentially relevant categories and selecting the category that contains the most similar exemplars.


title: Categorization

text: Decision bound theory suggests that to learn a category, one must either learn the regions of a stimulus space associated with particular responses or the boundaries (the decision bounds) that divide these response regions. Categorization of a novel stimulus is then accomplished by determining which response region it is contained within.


title: Categorization

text: Computational models of categorization have been developed to test theories about how humans represent and use category information. To accomplish this, categorization models can be fit to experimental data to see how well the predictions afforded by the model line up with human performance. Based on the model's success at explaining the data, theorists are able to draw conclusions about the accuracy of their theories and their theory's relevance to human category representations.


title: Categorization

text: To effectively capture how humans represent and use category information, categorization models generally operate under variations of the same three basic assumptions. First, the model must make some kind of assumption about the internal representation of the stimulus (e.g., representing the perception of a stimulus as a point in a multi-dimensional space). Second, the model must make an assumption about the specific information that needs to be accessed in order to formulate a response (e.g., exemplar models require the collection of all available exemplars for each category). Third, the model must make an assumption about how a response is selected given the available information.


title: Categorization

text: Though all categorization models make these three assumptions, they distinguish themselves by the ways in which they represent and transform an input into a response representation. The internal knowledge structures of various categorization models reflect the specific representation(s) they use to perform these transformations. Typical representations employed by models include exemplars, prototypes, and rules.


title: Categorization

text: Weighted Features Prototype Model An early instantiation of the prototype model was produced by Reed in the early 1970s. Reed (1972) conducted a series of experiments to compare the performance of 18 models on explaining data from a categorization task that required participants to sort faces into one of two categories. Results suggested that the prevailing model was the weighted features prototype model, which belonged to the family of average distance models. Unlike traditional average distance models, however, this model differentially weighted the most distinguishing features of the two categories. Given this model's performance, Reed (1972) concluded that the strategy participants used during the face categorization task was to construct prototype representations for each of the two categories of faces and categorize test patterns into the category associated with the most similar prototype. Furthermore, results suggested that similarity was determined by each categories most discriminating features.


title: Categorization

text: Generalized Context Model Medin and Schaffer's (1978) context model was expanded upon by Nosofsky (1986) in the mid-1980's, resulting in the production of the Generalized Context Model (GCM). The GCM is an exemplar model that stores exemplars of stimuli as exhaustive combinations of the features associated with each exemplar. By storing these combinations, the model establishes contexts for the features of each exemplar, which are defined by all other features with which that feature co-occurs. The GCM computes the similarity of an exemplar and a stimulus in two steps. First, the GCM computes the psychological distance between the exemplar and the stimulus. This is accomplished by summing the absolute values of the dimensional difference between the exemplar and the stimulus. For example, suppose an exemplar has a value of 18 on dimension X and the stimulus has a value of 42 on dimension X; the resulting dimensional difference would be 24. Once psychological distance has been evaluated, an exponential decay function determines the similarity of the exemplar and the stimulus, where a distance of 0 results in a similarity of 1 (which begins to decrease exponentially as distance increases). Categorical responses are then generated by evaluating the similarity of the stimulus to each category's exemplars, where each exemplar provides a "vote" to their respective categories that varies in strength based on the exemplar's similarity to the stimulus and the strength of the exemplar's association with the category. This effectively assigns each category a selection probability that is determined by the proportion of votes it receives, which can then be fit to data.


title: Categorization

text: RULEX (Rule-Plus-Exception) Model While simple logical rules are ineffective at learning poorly defined category structures, some proponents of the rule-based theory of categorization suggest that an imperfect rule can be used to learn such category structures if exceptions to that rule are also stored and considered. To formalize this proposal, Nosofsky and colleagues (1994) designed the RULEX model. The RULEX model attempts to form a decision tree composed of sequential tests of an object's attribute values. Categorization of the object is then determined by the outcome of these sequential tests. The RULEX model searches for rules in the following ways:


title: Categorization

text: The method that RULEX uses to perform these searches is as follows: First, RULEX attempts an exact search. If successful, then RULEX will continuously apply that rule until misclassification occurs. If the exact search fails to identify a rule, either an imperfect or conjunctive search will begin. A sufficient, though imperfect, rule acquired during one of these search phases will become permanently implemented and the RULEX model will then begin to search for exceptions. If no rule is acquired, then the model will attempt the search it did not perform in the previous phase. If successful, RULEX will permanently implement the rule and then begin an exception search. If none of the previous search methods are successful RULEX will default to only searching for exceptions, despite lacking an associated rule, which equates to acquiring a random rule.


title: Categorization

text: SUSTAIN (Supervised and Unsupervised Stratified Adaptive Incremental Network) It is often the case that learned category representations vary depending on the learner's goals, as well as how categories are used during learning. Thus, some categorization researchers suggest that a proper model of categorization needs to be able to account for the variability present in the learner's goals, tasks, and strategies. This proposal was realized by Love and colleagues (2004) through the creation of SUSTAIN, a flexible clustering model capable of accommodating both simple and complex categorization problems through incremental adaptation to the specifics of problems.


title: Categorization

text: In practice, the SUSTAIN model first converts a stimulus' perceptual information into features that are organized along a set of dimensions. The representational space that encompasses these dimensions is then distorted (e.g., stretched or shrunk) to reflect the importance of each feature based on inputs from an attentional mechanism. A set of clusters (specific instances grouped by similarity) associated with distinct categories then compete to respond to the stimulus, with the stimulus being subsequently assigned to the cluster whose representational space is closest to the stimulus'. The unknown stimulus dimension value (e.g., category label) is then predicted by the winning cluster, which, in turn, informs the categorization decision.


title: Categorization

text: The flexibility of the SUSTAIN model is realized through its ability to employ both supervised and unsupervised learning at the cluster level. If SUSTAIN incorrectly predicts a stimulus as belonging to a particular cluster, corrective feedback (i.e., supervised learning) would signal sustain to recruit an additional cluster that represents the misclassified stimulus. Therefore, subsequent exposures to the stimulus (or a similar alternative) would be assigned to the correct cluster. SUSTAIN will also employ unsupervised learning to recruit an additional cluster if the similarity between the stimulus and the closest cluster does not exceed a threshold, as the model recognizes the weak predictive utility that would result from such a cluster assignment. SUSTAIN also exhibits flexibility in how it solves both simple and complex categorization problems. Outright, the internal representation of SUSTAIN contains only a single cluster, thus biasing the model towards simple solutions. As problems become increasingly complex (e.g., requiring solutions consisting of multiple stimulus dimensions), additional clusters are incrementally recruited so SUSTAIN can handle the rise in complexity.


title: Categorization

text: Social categorization consists of putting human beings into groups in order to identify them based on different criteria. Categorization is a process studied by scholars in cognitive science but can also be studied as a social activity. Social categorization is different from the categorization of other things because it implies that people create categories for themselves and others as human beings. Groups can be created based on ethnicity, country of origin, religion, sexual identity, social privileges, economic privileges, etc. Various ways to sort people exist according to one's schemas. People belong to various social groups because of their ethnicity, religion, or age.


title: Categorization

text: Social categories based on age, race, and gender are used by people when they encounter a new person. Because some of these categories refer to physical traits, they are often used automatically when people don't know each other. These categories are not objective and depend on how people see the world around them. They allow people to identify themselves with similar people, and to identify people who are different. They are useful in one's identity formation with the people around them. One can build their own identity by identifying themselves in a group or by rejecting another group.


title: Categorization

text: Social categorization is similar to other types of categorization since it aims at simplifying the understanding of people. However, creating social categories implies that people will position themselves in relation to other groups. A hierarchy in group relations can appear as a result of social categorization.


title: Categorization

text: Scholars argue that the categorization process starts at a young age when children start to learn about the world and the people around them. Children learn how to know people according to categories based on similarities and differences. Social categories made by adults also impact their understanding of the world. They learn about social groups by hearing generalities about these groups from their parents. They can then develop prejudices about people as a result of these generalities.


title: Categorization

text: Another aspect of social categorization is mentioned by Stephen Reicher and Nick Hopkins and is related to political domination. They argue that political leaders use social categories to influence political debates.


title: Categorization

text: The activity of sorting people according to subjective or objective criteria can be seen as a negative process because of its tendency to lead to violence from a group to another. Indeed, similarities gather people who share common traits but differences between groups can lead to tensions and then the use of violence between those groups. The creation of social groups by people is responsible of a hierarchization of relations between groups. These hierarchical relations participate in the promotion of stereotypes about people and groups, sometimes based on subjective criteria. Social categories can encourage people to associate stereotypes to groups of people. Associating stereotypes to a group, and to people who belong to this group, can lead to forms of discrimination towards people of this group. The perception of a group and the stereotypes associated with it have an impact on social relations and activities.


title: Categorization

text: Some social categories have more weight than others in society. For instance, in history and still today, the category of "race" is one of the first categories used to sort people. However, only a few categories of race are commonly used such as "Black", "White", "Asian" etc. It participates in the reduction of the multitude of ethnicities to a few categories based mostly on people's skin color.


title: Categorization

text: The process of sorting people creates a vision of the other as 'different', leading to the dehumanization of people. Scholars talk about intergroup relations with the concept of social identity theory developed by H. Tajfel. Indeed, in history, many examples of social categorization have led to forms of domination or violence from a dominant group to a dominated group. Periods of colonisation are examples of times when people from a group chose to dominate and control other people belonging to other groups because they considered them as inferior. Racism, discrimination and violence are consequences of social categorization and can occur because of it. When people see others as different, they tend to develop hierarchical relation with other groups.


title: Categorization

text: There cannot be categorization without the possibility of miscategorization. To do "the right thing with the right "kind" of thing.", there has to be both a right and a wrong thing to do. Not only does a category of which "everything" is a member lead logically to the Russell paradox ("is it or is it not a member of itself?"), but without the possibility of error, there is no way to detect or define what distinguishes category members from nonmembers.


title: Categorization

text: An example of the absence of nonmembers is the problem of the poverty of the stimulus in language learning by the child: children learning the language do not hear or make errors in the rules of Universal Grammar (UG). Hence they never get corrected for errors in UG. Yet children's speech obeys the rules of UG, and speakers can immediately detect that something is wrong if a linguist generates (deliberately) an utterance that violates UG. Hence speakers can categorize what is UG-compliant and UG-noncompliant. Linguists have concluded from this that the rules of UG must be somehow encoded innately in the human brain.


title: Categorization

text: Ordinary categories, however, such as "dogs," have abundant examples of nonmembers (cats, for example). So it is possible to learn, by trial and error, with error-correction, to detect and define what distinguishes dogs from non-dogs, and hence to correctly categorize them. This kind of learning, called reinforcement learning in the behavioral literature and supervised learning in the computational literature, is fundamentally dependent on the possibility of error, and error-correction. Miscategorization—examples of nonmembers of the category—must always exist, not only to make the category learnable, but for the category to exist and be definable at all.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Pornography in Asia is pornography created in Asia, watched in Asia, or consumed or displayed in other parts of the world as one or more genres of Asian porn.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Internet pornography was outlawed in the People's Republic of China effective 2002, when state censors issued guidelines requiring that all websites remove any pornographic material. The government started a crackdown in 2004, which included the jailing of a woman.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Since 2008, the production of pornographic films has been banned by state censors, the State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television's prohibition on pornography has been complete, and the government has shown no signs of changing course. Directors, producers, and actors involved in pornographic films have been barred from competing in any film competitions. Any film studio found in violation may have its license revoked. As a result of this regulation and censorship, adult films and media can only be obtained through the Internet and on the black market. Possession of pornography is punishable by up to 3 years in prison, a fine of , or up to life imprisonment for large underground distributors. In 2010 China shut down 60,000 pornographic websites according to the news agency Reuters, arresting almost 5,000 suspects in the process.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In Hong Kong, pornography is illegal if sold or shown to children under 18 years of age, if it is publicly displayed (except within the confines of and only visible from inside a "bona fide art gallery or museum"), or if it is sold without being wrapped completely with an "easily noticeable" warning stating that the material may be offensive and may not be distributed to minors.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Pornography in Japan includes pornography ranging from well-known sex acts such as bukkake to sexual fetish pornography such as tamakeri.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: As in Europe, photographs of nudes are not uncommon in the mainstream media. In the 1970s and 1980s, the strongest prohibition was against showing pubic hair or adult genitalia. Imported magazines would have the pubic hair scratched out, and even the most explicit videos could not portray it. Starting around 1991, photobook publishers began challenging this ban to the point where the portrayal of pubic hair is now fairly well accepted. Close-ups of genitalia remain proscribed. In 1999, the government enacted a law banning photos and videos of naked children. Manga and anime remain largely unregulated, although large publishers tend to self-censor or specify that characters are at least 18 years of age.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: The 1960s, in Japanese pornography, was the era of the independent "Pink film". In the years since the end of World War II, eroticism had been gradually making its way into Japanese cinema. The first kiss to be seen in Japanese film—discreetly half-hidden by an umbrella—caused a national sensation in 1946. Nevertheless, until the early 1960s, graphic depictions of nudity and sex in Japanese film could only be seen in single-reel "stag films", made illegally by underground film producers such as those depicted in Imamura's film "The Pornographers" (1966).


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Nudity and sex would officially enter the Japanese cinema with the independent, low-budget softcore pornographic films which would come to dominate domestically produced films in the 1960s and 1970s. These films were called "eroductions" during the early 1960s, but are now more commonly referred to as "pink films". The first true "pink film", and the first Japanese movie with nude scenes, was Satoru Kobayashi's controversial and popular independent production, "Flesh Market" ("Nikutai no Ichiba", 1962), starring Tamaki Katori. Katori would go on to star in over 600 "pink films" throughout the 1960s, earning the nickname the "Pink Princess".


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In 1964 Tetsuji Takechi made the first big-budget, mainstream "pink film", "Daydream". Takechi would remake "Daydream" as Japan's first theatrical hardcore film in 1981, starring Kyoko Aizome.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In 2007 the online newspaper Daily NK reported that pornographic literature was produced in North Korea for high-ranking officials during the late 1990s. Some pornographic films showing nude or scantily-clad women dancing to music were also made. In the 2000s these were superseded by imported pornographic films, for which a public rental market developed.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Imported works of pornography have been available in North Korea in recent decades, mainly in the capital Pyongyang and typically in the form of CD-R copies bought secretly at markets. There is very little domestic production. Producing, distributing, importing and watching pornography is illegal.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Importing pornography to North Korea is harshly punished. Pornography is sold openly on the China–North Korea border regardless of regulations. Despite attempts to curtail circulation of imported pornography, most of the pornography watched in North Korea is currently made abroad. A significant part of pornographic media in circulation consists of Chinese bootleg recordings of poor quality.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: North Korea has ratified the Optional Protocol on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography of the Convention on the Rights of the Child. However, there are currently no specific laws to combat child pornography.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Pornographic websites, books, writings, films, magazines, photographs, or other materials of a pornographic nature are illegal in South Korea, although the law is not regularly enforced. Distribution of pornography can result in a fine or a two-year prison sentence. Since 2009, pornographic websites have been blocked by the South Korean government. In 2012 the Ministry of Public Administration and Security released statistics that cited 39.5% of South Korean children having experienced watching online pornography, with 14.2% of those who have viewed online pornography reportedly "wanting to imitate" it.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In Taiwan, pornographic films can be legally traded and pornography is available via a number of routes, including DVD, television and the Internet. The level of piracy of pornographic films in Taiwan is high because authorities have not traditionally recognised their copyrights. Copyright protection is usually strictly applied in Taiwan, but pornography has been seen as an exception.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: The Indonesian criminal code (Kitab Undang-undang Hukum Pidana, KUHP), in conjunction with the Roman-Dutch law-based Indonesian legal system, strictly prohibits pornographic material. The creation, distribution, sale and rental of explicit materials is banned in the country. On 30 October 2008, the People's Representative Council (DPR) passed the Bill against Pornography and Pornoaction, but it was deemed controversial. The broadness of the law has concerned practitioners of regional traditions such as the nightclubs in Bali, West Javan jaipong dance, and New Guinean penis gourd wearing. In 2010 the anti-pornography law was challenged but Indonesia's Constitutional Court upheld the ban and stated that the law's definition of pornography was clear and did not violate the constitution.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: A revised criminal code (RUU KUHP) has been drafted and is currently being discussed by the DPR. There is controversy over the RUU (Law Proposal) because child abuse is already recognized by the KUHP and the RUU is deemed to meddle too much in domestic affairs.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Pornography is illegal in Laos. Decree No. 327 of October 2014 banned pornography and "inappropriate photos" from online publication, as well as "photos that contradict Lao traditions and culture".


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Pornography is illegal in Malaysia. Possession of pornographic material is punished by Malaysian criminal law and results in fine and up to 5 years' imprisonment.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: The "Printing Presses and Publications Act of 1984" subjects all offline media (such as newspapers, television, and radio stations) to licensing regimes granted at the discretion of ministers. However, the "Communications and Multimedia Act of 1998" pledged the Malaysian government to refrain from Internet censorship in Malaysia. Nevertheless, the "Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission", the main regulatory authority of information technology and communications industries, prohibits online content that is "indecent" or "obscene".


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In July 2018, the Malaysian police announced the creation of the Malaysian Internet Crime Against Children Investigation Unit (MICAC) that is equipped with real-time mass Internet surveillance software developed in the United States. It is tasked with the monitoring of all Malaysian Internet users even on mobile phones, with a focus on pornography, especially child pornography. The system creates a "data library" of users which includes details such as IP addresses, websites, locations, duration and frequency of use, and files uploaded and downloaded. Visiting these websites is subject to either questioning by police or imprisonment.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Pornographic material is prohibited in Myanmar. Many users of the Internet in Myanmar cannot access content outside the country, and a significant number of pornographic websites are blocked using content-control software.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Any kind of pornography is illegal in the Philippines. This is due to the influence of conservative Christian groups, such as the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, and churches, mainly the Roman Catholic Church, among other institutions.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Since 14 January 2017, several pornographic websites including Pornhub and XVideos have been blocked in the Philippines upon the order of President Rodrigo Duterte as part of his Republic Act 9775 or Anti-Child Pornography Law. However, there are a few Internet service providers in the country which still allow access to these websites.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In Singapore the government agency responsible for regulating media content is the Info-communications Media Development Authority (prior to 2016 the Media Development Authority). It is not a crime or offence to visit pornographic websites and view their content except for downloading, which is prohibited. It is deemed illegal to provide and/or supply any form of pornography from within the country. It is also an offence to be in possession of pornographic material. The 39-year-old Yangtze Cinema, which was probably the only theatre on the island to primarily screen softcore films in the city-state, also closed its doors on February 29, 2016.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: The 287th section of the Thai Penal Code makes it a criminal offence to produce, distribute or possess obscene materials for the purpose of trade. The maximum penalty is up to 3 years' imprisonment. Many types of pornography are prohibited in Thailand, but the law enforcement is relaxed and poorly enforces the prohibition. Some religious minorities may possess pornography for personal use legally because possession for personal use is legal. Other forms of pornography such as yaoi and hentai are illegal but are common over the Internet. The popular Thai actor, model and singer Penpak Sirikul has been a pioneer in Thai pornography.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Production, distribution, broadcasting, transport, import and advertisement of pornography, is strictly illegal in Vietnam. According to legislatures, pornography harms Vietnamese standard values.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In Azerbaijan in accordance with article 3 of the Media Act of 7 December 1999, "pornographic materials" are defined as works of art, photographic reproductions of paintings, information and other materials the main content of which is the crude and undignified depiction of the anatomical and physiological aspects of sexual relations. Pornography in Azerbaijan is easily and cheaply obtainable in Baku, although not in most other places. There are reports of bribes being charged for taking hardcore pornography across the country's borders. Meanwhile, the legal activity to combat child pornography is governed by 1998 Rights of the Child Act, 1999 Media Act, the Plan of Measures to Solve the Problem of Homeless and Street Children and the National Plan of Action to Combat Trafficking in Persons.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: The legal status of pornography in Kazakhstan was changed in 2013 with the introduction of the law: "On Ratification of the International Convention for Suppression of the Circulation and Traffic of Obscene Publications". This made it illegal to produce, possess or advertise pornography for the purpose of sale, circulation or public display. Additionally, the law made it a criminal offence to import or export pornography or run a pornography business.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Even though the legal status of pornography in Turkmenistan is unknown, a law, passed on 1 January 2015, banning citizens to access pornography on the Internet suggests that pornography is definitely illegal in Turkmenistan.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: In 2012, the government in Bangladesh attempted to outlaw pornography as a result of the passing of the Pornography Control Act. Information and telecommunication minister of 11th parliamentary government of Bangladesh, Mostafa Zabbar blocked nearly 20,000 porn websites access in Bangladesh from November 2018 to February 2019.


title: Pornography in Asia

text: Pornography in Bhutan is strictly forbidden. It is defined in Section 476 (A) of the Bhutan Penal Code of 2004, which states, “A defendant shall be guilty of the offence of computer pornography if the defendant publishes and distributes an obscene photography or picture on the computer or over the internet."