title: History of Kolkata

text: Historically, Calcutta was the centre of activity in the early stages of the national movement of independence. Exactly a hundred years after the fall of Bengal in the [[Battle of Plassey]], Calcutta saw the beginning of what is often called the First Independence Movement of India. It is also just as often as not referred to as a War of Independence, and as one historian put it, "The so called First National War of Independence was neither First, nor National, nor a War of Independence". In the suburbs of Calcutta, at the [[Barrackpore]] military barracks, [[sepoy]] [[Mangal Pandey]] sparked off a huge revolt that shook the foundations of the British Empire. This movement is sometimes also called the [[Indian Mutiny]], although recent evidence goes against using this name and suggests "The Revolt of 1857" as a better and less controversial choice.


title: History of Kolkata

text: In 1883, [[Surendranath Banerjea]] organised a [[Indian National Association|national conference]] – the first of its kind in 19th century India. This conference heralded the birth of The [[Indian National Congress]]. The first native president of the [[Indian National Congress]] was Sir [[Womesh Chunder Bonnerjee]] and he was also the first Congress president to advocate self-rule by Indians, Sir [[Surendra Nath Banerjea]] (referred to by the British as "Surrender Not") were early eminent Calcuttans, who provoked and influenced nationalist thinking in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.


title: History of Kolkata

text: Other societies based on nationalist or religious thoughts were started, like the [[Hindu Mela]]. Revolutionary organisations like the [[Jugantar]] and the [[Anushilan Samiti]] were formed with the goal of using force against the British rulers. Among early nationalist leaders, the most prominent were [[Sri Aurobindo]], Indira devi Chaudhurani, [[Bipin Chandra Pal]]. The early nationalists were inspired by [[Swami Vivekananda]], the foremost disciple of the [[Hindu]] mystic Sri [[Ramakrishna]] and helped by [[Sister Nivedita]], disciple of the former. The rousing cry that awakened India's soul was penned by [[Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay]]. Now the national song of the nation, it is an ode to the land of [[Names of India#Bharat|Bharat]] (India) as the Divine Mother, "[[Vande Mataram]]".


title: History of Kolkata

text: The Elgin Road residence of [[Subhas Chandra Bose]] in Calcutta was the place from where he escaped the British to reach Germany during the [[World War II|Second World War]]. He was the co-founder of the [[Indian National Army]] and the head of state of the [[Arzi Hukumate Azad Hind]], formed to counter and combat the [[British Raj]] in India. Renamed Netaji by poet laureate [[Rabindranath Tagore]], he is regarded by many as perhaps the most prominent and influential freedom fighter in Indian history and is venerated in many Bengali households even today.


title: History of Kolkata

text: Muslims were also involved in the nationalist movement, most notably Fazl Huq who from Calcutta in the 1930s attempted to organise a non-communal peasant party to agitate against the British and the wealthy Indian landowning class. The fact that many of the Hindus in this latter group were linked to the local Congress organisation and dominated the mainstream nationalist movement in Bengal from Calcutta led to attempts to thwart Huq's activities and fed into the tragic decline in communal relations that savaged Calcutta in 1946 and 1947.


title: History of Kolkata

text: The intense violence caused during the [[partition of India]] led to a shift in demographics in Bengal, and especially Kolkata; large numbers of Muslims left for [[East Pakistan]], while hundreds of thousands of Hindus arrived to take their place. Kolkata received millions of refugees from what became East Pakistan without receiving substantial assistance from the central government.


title: History of Kolkata

text: Over the 1960s and 1970s, severe power shortages, strife in labour relations (including strikes by workers and lockouts by employers) and a militant [[Maoism|Marxist-Maoist]] movement who sometimes used violence and property destruction as tactics of protest – the [[Naxalite]]s – damaged much of the city's infrastructure, leading to economic stagnation. (Ironically, this is the same city that has historically been a strong base of Indian communism: West Bengal was ruled by the [[Communist Party of India (Marxist)]] (CPI(M)) dominated [[Left Front (West Bengal)|Left Front]] for nearly three decades – the world's longest-running democratically elected communist government.)


title: History of Kolkata

text: In 1971, the war between India and Pakistan led to another massive influx of refugees from the former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), and their settling in Calcutta massively strained its already damaged infrastructure.


title: History of Kolkata

text: Calcutta became plagued by power outages, labor unrest, disappearing industry, and violence from the [[Naxalite]] movement. In 1985 [[Rajiv Gandhi]] referred to Calcutta as a "dying city" because of the social and political traumas.


title: History of Kolkata

text: The city's economic recovery gathered momentum after [[economic reforms in India]] introduced by the central government in the mid-1990s. Since 2000, [[information technology]] (IT) services revitalized the city's stagnant economy. The city has also experienced a growth in the manufacturing sector. Following similar moves elsewhere in the country, the state government changed the city's official name from "Calcutta" to "Kolkata" in 2001.


title: Nicholas Lea

text: Nicholas Lea (born Nicholas Christopher Herbert; June 22, 1962) is a Canadian actor known for his portrayal of Alex Krycek on "The X-Files" and of Tom Foss on "Kyle XY".


title: Nicholas Lea

text: Lea was born in New Westminster, British Columbia. He attended Prince of Wales Secondary School (graduated 1980).


title: Nicholas Lea

text: Lea's first major role was on the TV series "The Commish" where he played Officer Enrico Caruso from 1991 to 1994. It was during this time that he had a minor guest role in a first-season episode of "The X-Files" called "Gender Bender". The producers were impressed by his performance and when, in the second season, he auditioned for the role of turncoat FBI agent Alex Krycek, he was successful.


title: Nicholas Lea

text: Lea guest starred in eleven episodes from 1994 to 1996 and became a popular character amongst the fans. Because of his character's willingness to switch sides, he was known as the 'ratboy'. In the season three episode "Apocrypha," Krycek was left to die in an abandoned missile silo with an alien ship. This allowed Lea to take a starring role in the series "Once a Thief"—which followed on from the 1996 John Woo film—alongside Ivan Sergei. The series was cancelled after one season. Lea continued to play Krycek, who became a nemesis not just of Mulder and Scully but particularly of A.D. Skinner (Mitch Pileggi).


title: Nicholas Lea

text: Lea co-starred with Lau Ching-Wan, Theresa Lee and Bif Naked in the Hong Kong-Canadian film "Lunch with Charles" in 2001.


title: Nicholas Lea

text: In 2006, Lea had a role on ABC Family's "Kyle XY" (26 episodes) playing Tom Foss, Kyle's tutor, and was one of the lead actors (playing Ethan McKaye) on the Canadian TV series "Whistler". He was also that series' associate producer. He did not return to "Whistler" for its second season in 2007.


title: Nicholas Lea

text: He has guest starred in shows such as "NYPD Blue" (3 episodes), "Andromeda", "Burn Notice", "Sliders", "", "Judging Amy", "" (4 episodes) (as Catherine Willows' boyfriend) and "Men in Trees" (10 episodes) (as Eric, the minister). Nicholas has also guest starred in the ABC remake of the sci-fi series "V". He is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Lyric School of Acting in Vancouver.


title: Nicholas Lea

text: Lea appeared in the film "Guido Superstar: The Rise of Guido", starring, produced, and directed by Silvio Pollio, including Lea, John Cassini, Terry Chen, and Michael Eklund. The film screened at the 2010 Vancouver International Film Festival. In 2012 he portrayed Eliot Ness who formed the law enforcement group The Untouchables in the "Supernatural" episode "Time after Time". Lea had a minor role on "Arrow" as Mark Francis, who was Moira Queen's campaign manager. He appeared in three episodes.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison Clark is a fictional character and the main protagonist for the first four seasons of the AMC television series "Fear the Walking Dead." She is portrayed by Kim Dickens, and created by Robert Kirkman and former showrunner Dave Erickson. Madison is a former high school guidance counselor, Nick and Alicia's mother, and Travis Manawa's fiancée.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison is described as intelligent and willful to the point that she sometimes becomes forceful. She is quick to adapt to the new world, likes being in control of situations, and is prone to feeling tense during disagreements with others or in situations where she is largely powerless.


title: Madison Clark

text: After Nick wakes up in a heroin den in an abandoned church, he is hit by a car and hospitalized, and the doctor tells Madison and Travis that Nick's perception of the incident is drug-induced. Nick escapes and meets with the drug dealer, Calvin, who is mortally wounded after trying to kill him. After Travis and Madison arrive, the zombified Calvin attacks them. Nick runs over Calvin repeatedly with Travis's truck, and they flee to the desert, inviting Alicia, Liza, and Chris to follow.


title: Madison Clark

text: The group returns to Madison's home to gather supplies. Nick suffers from heroin withdrawal, so Madison drives to her school to get him oxycodone, where she encounters Tobias scavenging for food. A zombified Artie is killed while trying to bite Tobias. Travis later tells Madison to take the kids to the desert without him. Alicia witnesses her zombified neighbor, Mr. Dawson, attacking Mrs. Cruz across the street, but Madison prevents her from intervening.


title: Madison Clark

text: A mob sets fire to the store adjoining the barbershop, forcing the Salazars and Manawas to flee. The group reaches Travis's truck and escapes, but Griselda is injured by a collapsing scaffold. Unable to reach a hospital, the group drives to Madison's house, where Nick, Madison, and Alicia temporarily flee when Mr. Dawson attempts to enter, attracted by the barking dog Nick had let in. Nick leads Madison and Alicia to the Trans' house next door, where they take a shotgun. Travis arrives and is attacked by Mr. Dawson, who is killed. The next morning, as the Clarks and Manawas begin to drive away, the National Guard arrives and quarantines the block.


title: Madison Clark

text: Travis, Madison, Daniel, and Ofelia go inside the National Guard's headquarters to rescue Liza, Griselda, and Nick, while Alicia and Chris stay behind. Meanwhile, the walkers breach the perimeter defenses and swarm the base. Travis's group reaches the holding cells and sets the detainees free before reuniting with Nick, Liza, and Strand. They try to escape through the medical ward, where they discover Dr. Exner has euthanized all of the patients.


title: Madison Clark

text: Exner tells them of an escape route before presumably committing suicide. Before they can escape, the group encounters Adams, who shoots Ofelia in the arm. Enraged, Travis brutally beats Adams and leaves him for dead. Strand leads the group to his oceanside mansion, where he reveals to Nick that he owns a yacht which he plans to escape on, called the Abigail. On the beach, Liza reveals to Madison that she had been bitten during the escape. Liza pleads with Madison and Travis to euthanize her before she turns. Travis promises to protect Chris before shooting Liza.


title: Madison Clark

text: The group evacuates to the "Abigail" as the military bombs Los Angeles in an attempt to contain the outbreak. Out at sea, the group comes across another boat full of survivors, but Strand refuses to pick them up and informs the group they are heading to San Diego.


title: Madison Clark

text: The group docks on a nearby island to escape the pursuit of the unknown ship. They have to leave because George poisoned his entire family as part of a suicide pact, and the group is forced to leave George's family behind on the island.


title: Madison Clark

text: The group later plans to use the hostage as bait to get back Travis and Alicia. Alicia attempts to befriend Jack and find her way home on her own, while Travis is locked in a cell. Chris is left to watch over the hostage and ends up shooting him in the face, killing him. He tells Madison the boy was turning, but she is worried that he is becoming unhinged.


title: Madison Clark

text: Travis sees Alex with Jack's group, and she admits to him that she volunteered information on them when she was found. Madison is able to free Travis by trading him for the now-turned brother of the leader, and they escape in the mayhem. Alicia breaks free from Jack and returns to the yacht with Travis and Madison. As they walk to the compound, the group is attacked by the dead, and Madison is knocked to the ground while Chris stands by watching, which Alicia sees before killing Madison's attacker. The group arrives at the compound and is greeted by Luis' mother Celia who tells them they can stay but must leave their weapons outside. Alicia tells Chris what she saw regarding Madison's attack.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison, aware of what Chris did, tells Travis she thinks he is not well, and they argue about her inability to want to help Chris when Travis was always willing to help Nick. Daniel discovers that Celia is keeping the compound's dead family members in the cellar. Madison decides to sleep with Alicia that night to provide comfort and they are woken by a gunshot to find Chris standing over them, holding a knife and they chase him from the room. Chris runs off and Travis chases him.


title: Madison Clark

text: Nick brings Celia's walker son Luis to her and because of this, she lets the group stay, but Strand must leave. Madison talks to Nick about his fascination with the dead and is frustrated by his feelings for Celia. Nick finds Travis and Chris, but Travis says he and Chris are not coming back and he needs to help Chris. He asks Nick to tell Madison he could not find them. Celia takes Madison to the cellar to show her the dead, but Madison locks her inside the cell.


title: Madison Clark

text: When the burning building goes up in flames, Strand returns to the compound to help the rest of the group escape the fire, but when Madison sees Nick, he lies about Travis, and tells her he is not going with them because Celia was right about the group destroying everything in their path, and he no longer wants to be a part of it. Madison, Strand, Alicia, and Ofelia flee Celia's burning estate, intending to get back to the "Abigail".


title: Madison Clark

text: The group discovers that the "Abigail" has been stolen, and they are forced to scavenge a nearby hotel for supplies. Madison and Strand get drunk in the bar as they express their various frustrations with life. However, a large horde of walkers attacks the hotel, trapping all four inside.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison turns on the hotel lights against everybody's wishes in hopes of attracting Nick's attention, though Alicia convinces her to respect Nick's decision to choose death over their family, despite becoming upset about Madison not appearing to care about her decision to stick with the group. Madison shuts off the lights, but not before Travis, now alone, sees them. The next morning, survivors who had seen the hotel's lights come on begin to flock to the hotel gates, but the hotel survivors refuse to let them enter.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison spots Travis among the crowd and lets him inside. She then talks with Alicia and reveals to her that her father's car crash was a suicide and reiterates her love for her. Afterwards, Madison sees that the other survivor group have been allowed into the hotel compound and are checked to see if they are healthy or sick. Later that night, a new group of survivors arrives at the hotel, among them the two tourists. At the hotel, the tourists are let in, and Madison recognizes them based on Travis' description.


title: Madison Clark

text: The tourists anger the rest of the refugees and are about to be thrown out of the hotel when Travis stops them and asks what happened to Chris. The tourists explain that Chris accidentally crashed their truck and was killed by the impact. However, an inconsistency in their stories lead Travis to conclude that Chris was only injured in the crash and was killed by the tourists. Enraged, Travis beats the tourists to death and severely injures Oscar who tries to stop him. Strand warns Madison that Travis must be exiled in order to maintain the unity of the hotel survivors. Madison is reluctant to have Travis exiled but ultimately agrees to go with him the next morning while Strand refuses to have anything to do with it. Oscar dies from his head injury. Enraged, several of the hotel survivors break into Travis' room and attack him, forcing Alicia to kill one of them to save his life.


title: Madison Clark

text: Travis, Madison, and Alicia are forced to flee the hotel while Strand decides to stay behind after intervening to help them escape. They return to the bandits' supermarket and find the entire building abandoned, and Alicia questions Madison's motives when she starts searching the bodies of Francisco and his family for clues to find Nick. They arrive at the community and find that Marco and his men have been killed by the infected.


title: Madison Clark

text: Travis, Madison, and Alicia are captured by an armed group and taken to a military compound, where Travis is separated from them and taken to a basement, and Madison and Alicia are taken to an office.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison and Alicia attack Troy, impaling one of his eyes with a spoon and taking him hostage, and Madison demands her family released. The family is reunited but the compound is overrun with walkers. Travis, Luciana and Alicia escape aboard a helicopter while Madison and Nick leave in a truck with Troy.


title: Madison Clark

text: The next morning Madison and Nick arrive at Broke Jaw Ranch, which is run by Jeremiah Otto, Jake and Troy's father. They learn that the helicopter carrying Travis, Alicia, Luciana, Jake, and Charlie never arrived at the ranch, causing Troy to order Madison and Nick off the truck while they wait outside the gates of the ranch while Troy goes looking for them. Nick wants to leave the ranch because of Troy's actions back at the compound, but is convinced by Madison to wait. Madison is greeted by Jeremiah who gives Madison coffee and asks if Travis could have hijacked the helicopter, implying his actions were based on his race, leading Madison to say he would protect her daughter at all costs.


title: Madison Clark

text: Alicia returns with Jake and Luciana and discovers that Travis was killed during their flight to the farm. In that moment, Nick pulls a gun on Troy for wanting to execute Luciana and refusing to give her medical attention; he eventually gives the gun to Jeremiah. Later that evening, Madison is mourning Travis' death when Jeremiah approaches her to sign a checkout book for weapons; she signs and they have a brief conversation. That night at their bunker, Madison is with her children, but Nick wants to leave due to Troy's actions at the compound. Madison refuses and declares they stay because Travis died getting here and she is tired of running; if the Ottos cannot run the ranch, they will take it. She asks Alicia how Travis died. The news upsets Madison, and makes her join Troy's militia in search of the plane wreckage and discover who shot the helicopter. Madison, Troy, and the group discover that the Native Americans shot down the helicopter when it flew over their lands and the Native leader, Qaletaqa Walker, says he will attack the ranch if the Ottos and the survivors do not leave the ranch, as the land belongs to them.


title: Madison Clark

text: After some clashes between the two communities, Madison suggests that Jeremiah kill himself so that Qaletaga can get revenge, as he had killed Qaletaga's family in his youth. Jeremiah refuses to commit suicide, and Nick shoots him in the head; Madison stages it as a suicide for Troy and Jake. The next morning, Madison hands Jeremiah's head over to Walker, putting a truce on the war. The natives move to the Ottos' ranch to be on the safe side. Troy does not accept the coexistence of the natives on the farm, and Madison fails to keep the peace between the two sides.


title: Madison Clark

text: After Troy tries to kill Qaletaga, his brother exiles him from the farm, and he plots revenge. Later, the ranch enters a time of water scarcity that makes Madison and Qaletaga head to El Bazar, a commercial point in the city of Mexicali. The two offer gold coins to the merchant Maria Lu in exchange for a tanker truck. However, Madison and Qaletaga find Strand in her place and the man decides to help them by offering a deal with Lola Guerrero, the new leader of the dam after Dante's death. The trio travel to Gonzales Dam and meets Daniel, who Madison tells that Ofelia is alive.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison convinces Lola to create an exchange system between the communities: water for livestock, plantations, etc. With a tanker truck, Madison returns to the ranch with the promise of taking Ofelia to Daniel. The ranch is attacked by thousands of infected who are attracted to Troy. Many die, including Jake, except for Nick, Alicia, Ofelia, Lee, and Troy. Alicia separates from the group and decides to survive alone for a while; she ends up meeting Los Procuradores, a gang from Mexicali that intends to attack the dam.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison and her group go with Daniel, and he is devastated to learn that his daughter was bitten and died shortly after. Daniel decides to take Madison and the group to the prey, but she is attacked by the Proctors. Troy is killed by Madison when she learns that he lured the infected to the ranch. Madison is separated from Alicia and Nick when the dam explodes and everyone is carried away by the current.


title: Madison Clark

text: The fourth season has a two-year time jump from the previous season to coincide with Morgan Jones's crossover from "The Walking Dead". Madison is only seen through flashbacks. She first appears in the second episode "Another Day in the Diamond" living in a baseball stadium where she, Nick, Alicia, Strand, and Luciana have lived for a year after the explosion of the dam. In the mid-season finale, Madison seemingly sacrifices herself in an explosion in order to let Alicia and the rest of her group escape the stadium prior to the start of season 4.


title: Madison Clark

text: Madison returns in the season finale, having survived the stadium fire shown in the fourth season, although how she escaped remains unexplained. As Morgan is nearly buried alive by a group of bandits under the assumption that he kidnapped their children, the group is shot dead by an oncoming attacker, who is revealed to be Madison. She is carrying an oxygen tank due to damages sustained from smoke inhalation. Morgan thanks her for saving him, not knowing who she is. She then holds him at gunpoint as she leaves with Mo, Morgan's adopted daughter, claiming that Mo will be better off without him. Morgan eventually catches up to Madison and, after a brief skirmish, notices her children's names tattooed on her wrists. Realizing who she is, he decides to keep the fate of her children secret until he reunites with Mo, whom Madison has given away to a community called PADRE. It is discovered that Mo is not the first child she has relocated, and that she has been kidnapping and giving children to PADRE under the promise that they would assist her in finding Nick and Alicia. However, over time, she became discouraged from wanting to reunite with her children due to her work for PADRE. Morgan later reveals the fate of her children, and Madison grieves them but decides she will not look for Alicia, who may still be alive. She chooses to help Morgan get Mo back from PADRE after he rescues Madison from a revenge-seeking posse whose children she had kidnapped. Madison and Morgan are transported to PADRE blindfolded, earning their ticket in with the promise of information on a pregnant survivor, but Madison admits that she doesn't actually know where PADRE is.


title: Madison Clark

text: Dickens received praise for her performance, but her character received mixed reviews among fans and critics, due to the uncertainty of whether she or Travis were the protagonist of the series. Dickens received top billing and was credited as the protagonist, but after Travis' death in season 3, Madison received critical acclaim as his death pushed her more towards a leader role, establishing her as the protagonist.


title: Madison Clark

text: In his season review for IGN, Matt Fowler gave the third season an 8.2 out of 10 rating; praising Kim Dickens' character Madison, he wrote, ""Fear the Walking Dead" more solidly found its tone and voice this season by embracing the arid landscape, ramping up the human-on-human conflict, and rallying around Kim Dickens' anti-hero mom, Madison, as the driving character" and that it is now "a better series overall than "The Walking Dead.""


title: Madison Clark

text: The decision to kill off Madison received intense criticism and is widely regarded as the reason the show plummeted in viewership, despite the season receiving positive reviews. Some fans demanded Dickens' return as Madison at a later point in the series, as her death was never actually shown, which was unusual for a lead character in the series.


title: Madison Clark

text: In a "Talking Dead" episode that aired on December 5, 2021, Kim Dickens made a surprise guest appearance to reveal that Madison is in fact still alive and that she will be returning in the show's seventh season.


title: Susanne Blakeslee

text: Susanne Ellender Blakeslee is an American voice, stage and musical theatre actress. She is also known as Susan Blakeslee, Suzanne Blakeslee, and Suzanne Blakesley;


title: Susanne Blakeslee

text: Among her notable roles are the voices of Wanda, Anti-Wanda, and Mrs. Turner on "The Fairly OddParents"; and as the voice of Maleficent in the "Kingdom Hearts" series and "Disney" media. In 2012, Blakeslee won an Ovation Award for Lead Actress in a Musical for "Forbidden Broadway Greatest Hits, Volume 2".


title: Susanne Blakeslee

text: Blakeslee performed on the stage set of "Forbidden Broadway" from 1990 to 1994 and worked as the show's choreographer in 1994. Blakeslee won the Lead Actress in a Musical Ovation Award in 2012 for her performance in "Forbidden Broadway Greatest Hits, Volume 2".


title: Susanne Blakeslee

text: Blakeslee is noted for voicing Wanda, Anti-Wanda, and Mrs. Turner, for "The Fairly OddParents" franchise from 2001 to 2017, including 127 episodes of the television series, six specials and seven TV movies, as well as voicing these characters in the related Jimmy Timmy Power Hour trilogy: "The Jimmy Timmy Power Hour", "", and "".


title: Susanne Blakeslee

text: Blakeslee has done extensive voice work for Disney, including animated features and theme park attractions at the Disneyland Resort, Walt Disney World and Tokyo Disney Resort. She has provided the voices of Cruella de Vil, the Evil Queen, Lady Tremaine, Maleficent and Madame Leota in "Disney" media since 2001.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Redistribution of income and wealth is the transfer of income and wealth (including physical property) from some individuals to others through a social mechanism such as taxation, welfare, public services, land reform, monetary policies, confiscation, divorce or tort law. The term typically refers to redistribution on an economy-wide basis rather than between selected individuals.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Interpretations of the phrase vary, depending on personal perspectives, political ideologies and the selective use of statistics. It is frequently used in politics, where it is used to refer to perceived redistribution from those who have more to those who have less.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Occasionally, however, the term is used to describe laws or policies that cause redistribution in the opposite direction, from the poor to the rich.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The phrase is often coupled with the term "class warfare", with high-income earners and the wealthy portrayed as victims of unfairness and discrimination.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Redistribution tax policy should not be confused with predistribution policies. "Predistribution" is the idea that the state should try to prevent inequalities from occurring in the first place rather than through the tax and benefits system once they have occurred. For example, a government predistribution policy might require employers to pay all employees a living wage and not just a minimum wage, as a "bottom-up" response to widespread income inequalities or high poverty rates.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Many alternate taxation proposals have been floated without the political will to alter the status quo. One example is the proposed "Buffett Rule", which is a hybrid taxation model composed of opposing systems intended to minimize the favoritism of special interests in tax design.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The effects of a redistributive system are actively debated on ethical and economic grounds. The subject includes an analysis of its rationales, objectives, means, and policy effectiveness.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: In ancient times, redistribution operated as a palace economy. These economies were centrally based around the administration, meaning the dictator or pharaoh had both the ability and the right to say who was taxed and who received special treatment.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Another early form of wealth redistribution occurred in Plymouth Colony under the leadership of William Bradford. Bradford recorded in his diary that this "common course" bred confusion, discontent, distrust, and the colonists looked upon it as a form of slavery.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: A closely related term, distributism (also known as distributionism or distributivism), refers to an economic ideology that developed in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th century. It was based on the principles of Catholic social teaching, particularly the teachings of Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical "Rerum Novarum" and Pope Pius XI in "Quadragesimo Anno". More recently, Pope Francis echoed the earlier Papal statements in his "Evangelii Gaudium".


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Different types of economic systems feature varying degrees of interventionism aimed at redistributing income, depending on how unequal their initial distributions of income are. Free-market capitalist economies tend to feature high degrees of income redistribution. However, Japan's government engages in much less redistribution because its initial wage distribution is much more equal than Western economies. Likewise, the socialist planned economies of the former Soviet Union and Eastern bloc featured very little income redistribution because private capital and land income were restricted. To attain an efficient allocation of resources with the desired distribution of income, if the assumptions of the competitive model are satisfied by the economy, the sole role of the government is to alter the initial distribution of wealth – the major drivers of income inequality in capitalist systems – was virtually nonexistent; and because the wage rates were set by the government in these economies.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: A comparison between Socialist and Capitalist Systems in terms of distribution of income is much easier as both these systems stand practically implemented in a number of countries under compatible political systems. Inequality in almost all the Eastern European economies has increased after moving from socialist controlled systems to market-based economies.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: For the Islamic distribution, the following are the three key elements of the Islamic Economic System, which have significant implications for the distribution of income and wealth (if fully implemented) and are markedly different from Capitalism. The Islamic system is defined by the following three key elements: Ushr and Zakat, the prohibition of usury, and the Inheritance Law. Ushr is an obligatory payment from agriculture output at the time of harvesting. If agricultural land is irrigated by rain or some other natural freely available water the producer is obliged to pay ten percent of the output as Ushr.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: In case irrigation water is not free of cost then the deduction would be five percent, while Zakat is a major instrument of restricting the excessive accumulation of wealth and helping the poor and most vulnerable members of the society, Secondly, usury, or charging interest, is prohibited. Elimination of interest from the economic system is a revolutionary step with profound effects on all spheres of economic activities. Finally, the Inheritance Law Of Islam is the distribution of the property of a deceased person from closest family members and moving towards a more distant family. Son(s), daughter(s), wife, husband and parents are the prime recipients. This distribution is explicitly illustrated in Qur’an and cannot be changed or modified. Under varying conditions, the share received by different relatives accordingly changes. The important principle is that the owner at the time of his/her death cannot change these shares.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The context that a person is in can influence their views on redistributive policies. For example, despite both being Western civilizations, typical Americans and Europeans do not have the same views on redistribution policies. This phenomenon persists even among people who would benefit most from redistributive policies, as poor Americans tend to favor redistributive policy less than equally poor Europeans. Research shows this is because when a society has a fundamental belief that those who work hard will earn rewards from their work, the society will favor lower redistributive policies. However, when a society as a whole believes that some combination of outside factors, such as luck or corruption, can contribute to determining one's wealth, those in the society will tend to favor higher redistributive policies. This leads to fundamentally different ideas of what is ‘just’ or fair in these countries and influences their overall views on redistribution.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Another context that can influence one's ideas of redistributive policies is the social class that one is born into. People tend to favor redistributive policy that will help the groups that they are a member of.  This is displayed in a study of Latin American lawmakers, where it is shown that lawmakers born into a lower social class tend to favor more redistributive policies than their counterparts born into a higher social class. Research has also found that women generally support redistribution more than men do, though the strength of this preference varies across countries. While literature remains mixed on if monetary gain is the true motivation behind favoring redistributive policies, most researchers accept that social class plays some role in determining someone's views towards redistributive policies. Nonetheless, the classic theory that individual preferences for redistribution decrease with their income, leading to societal preferences for redistribution that increase with income inequality has been disputed. Perhaps the most important impact of government on the distribution of “wealth” is in the sphere of education—in ensuring that everyone has a certain amount of human capital. By providing all individuals, regardless of the wealth of their parents, with a free basic education, government reduces the degree of inequality that otherwise would exist.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Income inequality has many different connotations, three of which are of particular importance: (1) The moral dimension, which leads into the discussion of human rights. What kinds of reasons should a society accept for the emergence or existence of inequality and how much inequality between its members is reconcilable with the right of each individual to human dignity? (2) The second dimension links inequality to political stability. How much inequality can a society endure before a significant number of its members begin to reject the existing pattern of distribution and demand fundamental changes? In societies with very rigid forms of the income distribution, this may easily lead to public protest, if not violence. Authorities are then faced with the option of reacting to protests with repression or reform. In societies with flexible tools of negotiation and bargaining on income, smoother mechanisms of adaptation may be available. (3) The third dimension – in many cases the dominant pattern in the social debate – links inequality to economic performance. Individuals who achieve more and perform better deserve a higher income. If everybody is treated the same, the overall willingness to work may decline. The argument includes the scarcity of skills. Societies have to provide incentives to ensure that talents and education are allocated to jobs where they are needed most. Not many people doubt the general accuracy of these arguments – but nobody has ever shown how to correctly measure performance and how to find an objective way of linking it to the prevailing level of the income distribution. Inequality is needed – to some extent – but nobody knows how much of it is good.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The existence of high inequality within many developing countries, side-by-side with persistent poverty, started to attract attention in the early 1970s. Nonetheless, through the 1980s and well into the 1990s, the mainstream view in development economics was still that high and/or rising inequality in poor countries was a far less important concern than assuring sufficient growth, which was the key to poverty reduction. The policy message for the developing world was clear: one could not expect to have both lower poverty and less inequality.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The redistribution of wealth and its practical application are bound to change with the continuous evolution of social norms, politics, and culture. Within developed countries income inequality has become a widely popular issue that has dominated the debate stage for the past few years. The importance of a nation's ability to redistribute wealth in order to implement social welfare programs, maintain public goods, and drive economic development has brought various conversations to the political arena. A country's means of redistributing wealth comes from the implementation of a carefully thought out well described system of taxation. The implementation of such a system would aid in achieving the desired social and economic objective of diminishing social inequality and maximizing social welfare. There are various ways to impose a tax system that will help create a more efficient allocation of resources, in particular, many democratic, even socialist governments utilize a progressive system of taxation to achieve a certain level of income redistribution. In addition to the creation and implementation of these tax systems, "globalization of the world economy [has] provided incentives for reforming the tax systems" across the globe. Along with utilizing a system of taxation to achieve the redistribution of wealth, the same socio-economic benefit can be achieved if there are appropriate policies enacted within a current political infrastructure that addresses these issues. Modern thinking towards the topic of the redistribution of wealth, focuses on the concept that economic development increases the standard of living across an entire society.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Today, income redistribution occurs in some form in most democratic countries, through economic policies. Some redistributive policies attempt to take wealth, income, and other resources from the "haves" and give them to the "have-nots", but many redistributions go elsewhere.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: For example, the U.S. government's progressive-rate income tax policy is redistributive because much tax revenue goes to social programs such as welfare and Medicare.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: In a progressive income tax system, a high income earner will pay a higher tax rate (a larger percentage of their income) than a low income earner; and therefore, will pay more total dollars per person.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Other taxation-based methods of redistributing income are the negative income tax for very low income earners and tax loopholes (tax avoidance) for the better-off.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Two other common types of governmental redistribution of income are subsidies and vouchers (such as food stamps or Section-8 housing vouchers). These transfer payment programs are funded through general taxation, but benefit the poor or influential special interest groups and corporations. While the persons receiving transfers from such programs may prefer to be directly given cash, these programs may be more palatable to society than cash assistance, as they give society some measure of control over how the funds are spent.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: In addition to having a progressive tax rate, the U.S. Social Security system also redistributes wealth to the poor via its highly progressive benefit formula.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Governmental redistribution of income may include a direct benefit program involving either cash transfers or the purchase of specific services for an individual. Medicare is one example. Medicare is a government-run health insurance program that covers people age 65 or older, certain younger people with disabilities, and people with end-stage renal disease (permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or a transplant, sometimes called ESRD). This is a direct benefit program because the government is directly providing health insurance for those who qualify.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The difference between the Gini index for the income distribution before taxation and the Gini index after taxation is an indicator for the effects of such taxation.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Wealth redistribution can be implemented through land reform that transfers ownership of land from one category of people to another, or through inheritance taxes, land value taxes or a broader wealth tax on assets in general. Before-and-after Gini coefficients for the distribution of wealth can be compared.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Interventions like rent control can impose large costs. Some alternative forms of interventions, such as housing subsidies, may achieve comparable distributional objectives at less cost. If the government cannot costlessly


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: redistribute, it should look for efficient ways of redistributing—that is, ways that reduce the costs as much as possible. This is one of the main concerns of the branch of economics called the economics of the public sector.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: One study suggests that "the middle class faces a paradoxical status" in that they tend to vote against income redistribution, even though they would benefit economically from it.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The objectives of income redistribution are to increase economic stability and opportunity for the less wealthy members of society and thus usually include the funding of public services.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: One basis for redistribution is the concept of distributive justice, whose premise is that money and resources ought to be distributed in such a way as to lead to a socially just, and possibly more financially egalitarian, society. Another argument is that a larger middle class benefits an economy by enabling more people to be consumers, while providing equal opportunities for individuals to reach a better standard of living. Seen for example in the work of John Rawls, another argument is that a truly fair society would be organized in a manner benefiting the least advantaged, and any inequality would be permissible only to the extent that it benefits the least advantaged.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Some proponents of redistribution argue that capitalism results in an externality that creates unequal wealth distribution.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Many economists have argued that wealth and income inequality are a cause of economic crises, and that reducing these inequalities is one way to prevent or ameliorate economic crises, with redistribution thus benefiting the economy overall. This view was associated with the underconsumptionism school in the 19th century, now considered an aspect of some schools of Keynesian economics; it has also been advanced, for different reasons, by Marxian economics. It was particularly advanced in the US in the 1920s by Waddill Catchings and William Trufant Foster. More recently, the so-called "Rajan hypothesis" posited that income inequality was at the basis of the explosion of the 2008 financial crisis. The reason is that rising inequality caused people on low and middle incomes, particularly in the US, to increase their debt to keep up their consumption levels with that of richer people. Borrowing was particularly high in the housing market and deregulation in the financial sector made it possible to extend lending in sub-prime mortgages. The downturn in the housing market in 2007 halted this process and triggered the financial crisis. Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz, along with many others, supports this view.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: There is currently a debate concerning the extent to which the world's extremely rich have become richer over recent decades. Thomas Piketty's "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" is at the forefront of the debate, mainly focusing on within-country concentration of income and wealth. Branko Milanovic provided evidence of increasing inequality at the global level, showing how the group of so-called "global plutocrats", i.e. the richest 1% in the world income distribution, were the main beneficiaries of economic growth in the period 1988–2008. More recent analysis supports this claim, as 27% of total economic growth worldwide accrued to the top 1% of the world income distribution in the period 1980–2016. The approach underpinning these analyses has been somehow critiqued in certain publications such as "The Economist".


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Peter Singer's argument contrasts to Thomas Pogge's in that he states we have an individual moral obligation to help the poor.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The rich people who are living in the states with more redistribution, are more in favor of immigrants than poorer people, because this can make them pay less wages.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Using statistics from 23 developed countries and the 50 states of the US, British researchers Richard G. Wilkinson and Kate Pickett show a correlation between income inequality and higher rates of health and social problems (obesity, mental illness, homicides, teenage births, incarceration, child conflict, drug use), and lower rates of social goods (life expectancy, educational performance, trust among strangers, women's status, social mobility, even numbers of patents issued per capita), on the other. The authors argue inequality leads to the social ills through the psychosocial stress, status anxiety it creates.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: A 2011 report by the International Monetary Fund by Andrew G. Berg and Jonathan D. Ostry found a strong association between lower levels of inequality and sustained periods of economic growth. Developing countries (such as Brazil, Cameroon, Jordan) with high inequality have "succeeded in initiating growth at high rates for a few years" but "longer growth spells are robustly associated with more equality in the income distribution."


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The Industrial Revolution led to increasing inequality among nations. Some economies took off, whereas others, like


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: many of those in Africa or Asia, remained close to a subsistence standard of living. General calculations show that


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: the 17 countries of the world with the most-developed economies had, on average, 2.4 times the GDP per capita of


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: the world’s poorest economies in 1870. By 1960, the most developed economies had 4.2 times the GDP per capita of


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Regarding to GDP indicator, GDP has nothing to say about the level of inequality in society. GDP per capita is only an average. When GDP per capita rises by 5%, it could mean that GDP for everyone in the society has risen by 5%, or that GDP of some groups has risen by more while that of others has risen by less—or even declined.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Public choice theory states that redistribution tends to benefit those with political clout to set spending priorities more than those in need, who lack real influence on government.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The socialist economists John Roemer and Pranab Bardhan criticize redistribution via taxation in the context of Nordic-style social democracy, reportedly highlighting its limited success at promoting relative egalitarianism and its lack of sustainability. They point out that social democracy requires a strong labor movement to sustain its heavy redistribution, and that it is unrealistic to expect such redistribution to be feasible in countries with weaker labor movements. They point out that, even in the Scandinavian countries, social democracy has been in decline since the labor movement weakened. Instead, Roemer and Bardhan argue that changing the patterns of enterprise ownership and market socialism, obviating the need for redistribution, would be more sustainable and effective at promoting egalitarianism.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Marxian economists argue that social democratic reforms – including policies to redistribute income – such as unemployment benefits and high taxes on profits and the wealthy create more contradictions in capitalism by further limiting the efficiency of the capitalist system via reducing incentives for capitalists to invest in further production. In the Marxist view, redistribution cannot resolve the fundamental issues of capitalism – only a transition to a socialist economy can.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: Income redistribution will lower poverty by reducing inequality, if done properly. But it may not accelerate growth in any major way, except perhaps by reducing social tensions arising from inequality and allowing poor people to devote more resources to human and physical asset accumulation. Directly investing in opportunities for poor people is essential.


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: The distribution of income that emerges from competitive markets may be very unequal. However, under the


title: Redistribution of income and wealth

text: conditions of the basic competitive model, a redistribution of wealth can move the economy to a more equal allocation that is also Pareto efficient.


title: Sorry 4 the Wait

text: Sorry 4 the Wait is a mixtape by American rapper Lil Wayne, named as an attempt to apologize for the continued delay of his ninth album, "Tha Carter IV". Wayne said the mixtape would have about ten songs and be similar to "No Ceilings", with him using other artists' tracks and making a cover track. It was released for digital download on July 13, 2011, and received generally positive reviews from music critics.


title: Sorry 4 the Wait

text: The sequel to the mixtape was released on January 20, 2015, as a response to the long delay of Wayne's album "Tha Carter V" and disagreements with his Cash Money label.


title: Sorry 4 the Wait

text: On January 14, 2022, nearly 11 years after its initial release, the mixtape was re-released on streaming platforms. All 12 songs from the original release were cleared and included, in addition to 4 newly recorded songs.


title: Sorry 4 the Wait

text: Cortez Bryant delayed "Tha Carter IV" back until August 29, hence worrying Wayne about his fans' patience. The mixtape was worked on secretly until Young Money president Mack Maine tweeted "BREAKING NEWS!!! Lil Wayne mixtape “SORRY 4 THE WAIT” coming soon!!!!! #C4boom". Rappers Lil B and Gudda Gudda were featured on the mixtape. "Tunechi's Back" was the first track released off the mixtape on July 8. It samples "Tupac Back" by Meek Mill featuring Rick Ross. The official mixtape, containing a total of 12 tracks, was released later that month on July 13.


title: Sorry 4 the Wait

text: On November 12, 2021, Mack Maine announced plans to release an older Lil Wayne mixtape on streaming platforms in an interview with Billboard magazine. While not revealing the name of the mixtape, Maine did mention a possible January 2022 release date. Additionally, unlike Wayne's previous streaming re-release (the summer 2020 re-release of "No Ceilings"), every song on the yet-to-be-revealed mixtape was able to be cleared and included on all digital platforms.


title: Sorry 4 the Wait

text: On January 10, 2022, Lil Wayne announced he would be releasing "Sorry 4 The Wait" on streaming platforms "soon" through a post on his Instagram. While not giving an exact release date, Wayne did give fans the option to pre-save the mixtape on Apple Music and Spotify.


title: Sorry 4 the Wait

text: Less than a week after his Instagram announcement, Lil Wayne released "Sorry 4 The Wait" on streaming platforms on January 14, 2022. Included on the mixtape are 4 newly recorded songs, listed at the beginning of the tracklist. Some songs also had their name changed in order to avoid sample-clearance issues, such as "Sure Thing" being renamed "Twist Made Me".


title: Merchant bank

text: A merchant bank is historically a bank dealing in commercial loans and investment. In modern British usage it is the same as an investment bank. Merchant banks were the first modern banks and evolved from medieval merchants who traded in commodities, particularly cloth merchants. Historically, merchant banks' purpose was to facilitate and/or finance production and trade of commodities, hence the name "merchant". Few banks today restrict their activities to such a narrow scope.


title: Merchant bank

text: In modern usage in the United States, the term additionally has taken on a more narrow meaning, and refers to a financial institution providing capital to companies in the form of share ownership instead of loans. A merchant bank also provides advice on corporate matters to the firms in which they invest.


title: Merchant bank

text: Merchant banks were the first modern banks. They emerged in the Middle Ages from the Italian grain and cloth merchants community and started to develop in the 11th century during the large European fair of St. Giles (England), then at the Champagne fairs (France). As the Lombardy merchants and bankers grew in stature based on the strength of the Lombard plains cereal crops, many displaced Jews fleeing Spanish persecution were attracted to the trade. The Florentine merchant banking community was exceptionally active and propagated new finance practices all over Europe. Both Jews and Florentine merchants perfected ancient practices used in the Middle East trade routes and the Far East silk routes. Originally intended for the finance of long trading journeys, these methods were applied to finance the medieval Commercial Revolution.


title: Merchant bank

text: Jews entered the great trading piazzas and halls of Lombardy, alongside the local traders, and set up their benches to trade in crops. They had one great advantage over the locals. Christians were strictly forbidden from any kind of lending at interest, since such activities were equated with the sin of usury. Jewish law disallowed usury among Jews, but not when the borrower was Gentile. The Jewish newcomers, on the other hand, could lend to farmers against crops in the field, a high-risk loan at what would have been considered usurious rates by the Church; but the Jews were not subject to the Church's dictates. In this way they could secure the grain-sale rights against the eventual harvest. They then began to advance payment against the future delivery of grain shipped to distant ports. In both cases they made their profit from the present discount against the future price. This two-handed trade was time-consuming and soon there arose a class of merchants who were trading grain debt instead of grain. The buying of future crop and the trading of grain debt is analogous to the future contract market in modern finance.


title: Merchant bank

text: The court Jew performed both financing (credit) and underwriting (insurance) functions. Financing took the form of a farmer obtaining a crop loan at the beginning of the growing season, which allowed a farmer to develop and manufacture (through seeding, growing, weeding, and harvesting) his annual crop. Underwriting in the form of a crop, or commodity, insurance guaranteed the delivery of the crop to its buyer, typically a merchant wholesaler. In addition, traders performed the merchant function by making arrangements to supply the buyer of the crop through alternative sources—grain stores or alternate markets, for instance—in the event of crop failure. He could also keep the farmer (or other commodity producer) in business during a drought or other crop failure, through the issuance of a crop (or commodity) insurance against the hazard of failure of his crop.


title: Merchant bank

text: Merchant banking progressed from financing trade on one's own behalf to settling trades for others and then to holding deposits for settlement of "billette" or notes written by the people who were still brokering the actual grain. And so the merchant's "benches" ("bank" is derived from the Italian for bench, "banco", as in a counter) in the great grain markets became centers for holding money against a bill ("billette", a note, a letter of formal exchange, later a bill of exchange and later still a cheque).


title: Merchant bank

text: These deposited funds were intended to be held for the settlement of grain trades, but often were used for the bench's own trades in the meantime. The term bankrupt is a corruption of the Italian "banca rotta", or broken bench, which is what happened when someone lost his traders' deposits. Being "broke" has the same connotation.


title: Merchant bank

text: A sensible manner of discounting interest to the depositors against what could be earned by employing their money in the trade of the bench soon developed; in short, selling an "interest" to them in a specific trade, thus overcoming the usury objection. Once again this merely developed what was an ancient method of financing long-distance transport of goods.


title: Merchant bank

text: The medieval Italian markets were disrupted by wars and in any case were limited by the fractured nature of the Italian states. And so the next generation of bankers arose from migrant Jewish merchants in the great wheat-growing areas of Germany and Poland. Many of these merchants were from the same families who had been part of the development of the banking process in Italy. They also had links with family members who had, centuries before, fled Spain for both Italy and England. As non-agricultural wealth expanded, many families of goldsmiths (another business not prohibited to Jews) also gradually moved into banking. This course of events set the stage for the rise of Jewish family banking firms whose names still resonate today, such as Warburgs and Rothschilds.


title: Merchant bank

text: The rise of Protestantism, however, freed many European Christians from Rome's dictates against usury. In the late 18th century, Protestant merchant families began to move into banking to an increasing degree, especially in trading countries such as the United Kingdom (Barings), Germany (Schroders, Berenbergs) and the Netherlands (Hope & Co., Gülcher & Mulder) At the same time, new types of financial activities broadened the scope of banking far beyond its origins. The merchant-banking families dealt in everything from underwriting bonds to originating foreign loans. For instance, bullion trading and bond issuance were two of the specialties of the Rothschilds. In 1803, Barings teamed with Hope & Co. to facilitate the Louisiana Purchase.


title: Merchant bank

text: In the 19th century, the rise of trade and industry in the US led to powerful new private merchant banks, culminating in J.P. Morgan & Co. During the 20th century, however, the financial world began to outgrow the resources of family-owned and other forms of private-equity banking. Corporations came to dominate the banking business. For the same reasons, merchant banking activities became just one area of interest for modern banks.


title: Merchant bank

text: Known as "accepting and issuing houses" in the UK and "investment banks" in the US, modern merchant banks offer a wide range of activities: issue management, portfolio management, credit syndication, acceptance credit, counsel on mergers and acquisitions, insurance, etc.


title: Merchant bank

text: Of the two classes of merchant banks, the US variant initiates loans and then sells them to investors. These investors can be private investment firms. Even though some of these companies call themselves "merchant banks", they have few, if any, of the characteristics of former merchant banks.


title: Merchant bank

text: Today, according to the US Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), "the term merchant banking is generally understood to mean negotiated private equity investment by financial institutions in the unregistered securities of either privately or publicly held companies." Both commercial banks and investment banks may engage in merchant banking activities.


title: Jon Morrison

text: Jon Morrison is a Scottish actor who has appeared in many plays, films and television series since the early 1970s, including "The Bill", "Bergerac", "Taggart" and "Vera".


title: Jon Morrison

text: His best-known parts have been in the Peter McDougall plays "Just Another Saturday" (1975), about sectarianism in Glasgow, and "The Elephants' Graveyard" (1976), both with Billy Connolly and both part of BBC's "Play for Today" series. He also featured in Gary Oldman's "Nil by Mouth" (1997).


title: Jon Morrison

text: Morrison has portrayed DC Kenny Lockhart on the ITV detective series "Vera", from the start of the program in 2011 through series 11 in 2022.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The bhavacakra (Sanskrit: भवचक्र; Pāli: "bhavacakka"; Tibetan: སྲིད་པའི་འཁོར་ལོ, Wylie: "srid pa'i 'khor lo") is a symbolic representation of saṃsāra (or cyclic existence). It is found on the outside walls of Tibetan Buddhist temples and monasteries in the Indo-Tibetan region, to help non Buddhists understand Buddhist teachings. It is used in Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism.


title: Bhavacakra

text: In Buddhism, "bhava" denotes the continuity of becoming (reincarnating) in one of the realms of existence, in the samsaric context of rebirth, life and the maturation arising therefrom. It is the tenth of the Twelve Nidanas, in its "Pratītyasamutpāda" doctrine.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The word "Chakra" () derives from the Sanskrit word meaning "wheel," as well as "circle" and "cycle".


title: Bhavacakra

text: Legend has it that the historical Buddha himself created the first depiction of the bhavacakra, and the story of how he gave the illustration to King Rudrāyaṇa appears in the anthology of Buddhist narratives called the "Divyāvadāna".


title: Bhavacakra

text: The "bhavachakra" is painted on the outside walls of nearly every Tibetan Buddhist temple in Tibet and India, to instruct non-monastic audience about the Buddhist teachings.


title: Bhavacakra

text: Symbolically, the three inner circles, moving from the center outward, show that the three poisons of ignorance, attachment, and aversion give rise to positive and negative actions; these actions and their results are called karma. Karma in turn gives rise to the six realms, which represent the different types of suffering within samsara.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The fourth and outer layer of the wheel symbolizes the twelve links of dependent origination; these links indicate "how" the sources of suffering that the three poisons and karma produce live within cyclic existence.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The fierce being holding the wheel represents impermanence; this symbolizes that the entire process of samsara or cyclic existence is impermanent, transient, constantly changing. The moon above the wheel indicates liberation. The Buddha is pointing to the moon, indicating that liberation from samsara is possible.


title: Bhavacakra

text: In the hub of the wheel are three animals: a pig, a snake, and a bird. They represent the three poisons of ignorance, aversion, and attachment, respectively. The pig stands for ignorance; this comparison is based on the Indian concept of a pig being the most foolish of animals, since it sleeps in the dirtiest places and eats whatever comes to its mouth. The snake represents aversion or anger; this is because it will be aroused and strike at the slightest touch. The bird represents attachment (also translated as "desire" or "clinging"). The particular bird used in this diagram represents an Indian bird that is very attached to its partner. These three animals represent the three poisons, which are the core of the bhavacakra. From these three poisons, the whole cycle of existence evolves.


title: Bhavacakra

text: In many drawings of the wheel, the snake and bird are shown as coming out of the mouth of the pig, indicating that aversion and attachment arise from ignorance. The snake and bird are also shown grasping the tail of the pig, indicating that they in turn promote greater ignorance.


title: Bhavacakra

text: Under the influence of the three poisons, beings create karma, as shown in the next layer of the circle.


title: Bhavacakra

text: These images represent karma, the law of cause and effect. The light half-circle indicates people experiencing the results of positive actions. The dark half-circle indicates people experiencing the results of negative actions.


title: Bhavacakra

text: Propelled by their karma, beings take rebirth in the six realms of samsara, as shown in the next layer of the circle.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The third layer of the wheel is divided into six sections that represent the six realms of samsara, or cyclic existence, the process of cycling through one rebirth after another. These six realms are divided into three higher realms and three lower realms. The wheel can also be represented as having five realms, combining the God realm and the Demi-god realm into a single realm.


title: Bhavacakra

text: Among the six realms, the human realm is considered to offer the best opportunity to practice the dharma. In some representations of the wheel, there is a buddha or bodhisattva depicted within each realm, trying to help sentient beings find their way to nirvana.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The outer rim of the wheel is divided into twelve sections that represent the Twelve Nidānas. As previously stated, the three inner layers of the wheel show that the three poisons lead to karma, which leads to the suffering of the six realms. The twelve links of the outer rim show "how" this happens—by presenting the process of cause and effect in detail.


title: Bhavacakra

text: By contemplating on the twelve links, one gains greater insight into the workings of karma; this insight enables us to begin to unravel our habitual way of thinking and reacting.


title: Bhavacakra

text: This figure is often interpreted as being Mara, the demon who tried to tempt the Buddha, or as Yama, the lord of death. Regardless of the figure depicted, the inner meaning remains the same–that the entire process of cyclic existence (samsara) is transient; everything within this wheel is constantly changing.


title: Bhavacakra

text: Above the wheel is an image of the moon; the moon represents liberation from the sufferings of samsara. Some drawings may show an image of a "pure land" to indicate liberation, rather than a moon.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The upper part of the drawing also shows an image of the Buddha pointing toward the moon; this represents the path to liberation. While in Theravada Buddhism this is the Noble Eightfold Path, in Mahayana Buddhism this is the Bodhisattva path, striving to liberation for all sentient beings. In Tibetan Buddhism, this is Lamrim, which details all the stages on the path, while Zen has its own complicated history of the entanglement of meditation practice and direct insight.


title: Bhavacakra

text: Drawings of the Bhavacakra usually contain an inscription consisting of a few lines of text that explain the process that keeps us in samara and how to reverse that process.


title: Bhavacakra

text: The Theravada-tradition does not have a graphical representation of the round of rebirths, but cakra-symbolism is an elementary component of Buddhism, and Buddhaghosa's "Path of Purification (Visuddhimagga)" contains such imagery:


title: Bhavacakra

text: Some western interpreters take a psychological point of view, explaining that different karmic actions contribute to one's metaphorical existence in different realms, or rather, different actions reinforce personal characteristics described by the realms. According to Mark Epstein, "each realm becomes not so much a specific place but rather a metaphor for a different psychological state, with the entire wheel becoming a representation of neurotic suffering."


title: Thermophile

text: A thermophile is an organism—a type of extremophile—that thrives at relatively high temperatures, between . Many thermophiles are archaea, though they can be bacteria or fungi. Thermophilic eubacteria are suggested to have been among the earliest bacteria.


title: Thermophile

text: Thermophiles are found in various geothermally heated regions of the Earth, such as hot springs like those in Yellowstone National Park (see image) and deep sea hydrothermal vents, as well as decaying plant matter, such as peat bogs and compost.


title: Thermophile

text: Thermophiles can survive at high temperatures, whereas other bacteria or archaea would be damaged and sometimes killed if exposed to the same temperatures.


title: Thermophile

text: The enzymes in thermophiles function at high temperatures. Some of these enzymes are used in molecular biology, for example the "Taq" polymerase used in PCR. "Thermophile" is derived from the ("thermotita"), meaning heat, and ("philia"), love.


title: Thermophile

text: Thermophiles can be classified in various ways. One classification sorts these organisms according to their optimal growth temperatures:


title: Thermophile

text: Many of the hyperthermophilic Archaea require elemental sulfur for growth. Some are anaerobes that use the sulfur instead of oxygen as an electron acceptor during cellular respiration (anaerobic). Some are lithotrophs that oxidize sulphur to create sulfuric acid as an energy source, thus requiring the microorganism to be adapted to very low pH (i.e., it is an acidophile as well as thermophile). These organisms are inhabitants of hot, sulfur-rich environments usually associated with volcanism, such as hot springs, geysers, and fumaroles. In these places, especially in Yellowstone National Park, zonation of microorganisms according to their temperature optima occurs. These organisms are often colored, due to the presence of photosynthetic pigments.


title: Thermophile

text: Thermophiles can be discriminated from mesophiles from genomic features. For example, the GC-content levels in the coding regions of some signature genes were consistently identified as correlated with the temperature range condition when the association analysis was applied to mesophilic and thermophilic organisms regardless of their phylogeny, oxygen requirement, salinity, or habitat conditions.


title: Thermophile

text: Fungi are the only group of organisms in the Eukarya kingdom that can survive at temperature ranges of 50–60 °C. Thermophilic fungi have been reported from a number of habitats, with most of them belonging to the fungal order Sordariales. Thermophilic fungi have great biotechnological potential due to their ability to produce industrial-relevant thermostable enzymes, in particular for the degradation of plant biomass.


title: Thermophile

text: "Sulfolobus solfataricus" and "Sulfolobus acidocaldarius" are hyperthermophilic archaea. When these organisms are exposed to the DNA damaging agents UV irradiation, bleomycin or mitomycin C, species-specific cellular aggregation is induced. In "S. acidocaldarius", UV-induced cellular aggregation mediates chromosomal marker exchange with high frequency. Recombination rates exceed those of uninduced cultures by up to three orders of magnitude. Frols et al. and Ajon et al.(2011) hypothesized that cellular aggregation enhances species-specific DNA transfer between "Sulfolobus" cells in order to provide increased repair of damaged DNA by means of homologous recombination. Van Wolferen et al., in discussing DNA exchange in the hyperthermophiles under extreme conditions, noted that DNA exchange likely plays a role in repair of DNA via homologous recombination. They suggested that this process is crucial under DNA damaging conditions such as high temperature. Also it has been suggested that DNA transfer in "Sulfolobus" may be a primitive form of sexual interaction similar to the more well-studied bacterial transformation systems that are associated with species-specific DNA transfer between cells leading to homologous recombinational repair of DNA damage [see Transformation (genetics)].


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: Woman Walks Ahead is a 2017 American biographical drama Western film directed by Susanna White and written by Steven Knight. The film is the story of Caroline Weldon (Jessica Chastain), a portrait painter who travels from New York City to the Dakotas in 1890 to paint a portrait of Sitting Bull (Michael Greyeyes). Chaske Spencer and Sam Rockwell also star.


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: The film premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival September 10, 2017. It was released through DirecTV Cinema on May 31, 2018, before being released in a limited release on June 29, 2018, by A24.


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: Caroline Weldon, a Swiss-American portrait painter, travels from Brooklyn, New York to the Dakotas in the 1890s to paint a portrait of Sitting Bull. She becomes embroiled in the Lakota people's struggle over the rights to their land.


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: On February 3, 2016, it was reported that Jessica Chastain was in talks to play Sitting Bull's confidante in "Woman Walks Ahead", directed by Susanna White. On September 14, 2016, Michael Greyeyes, Sam Rockwell, Ciarán Hinds, Chaske Spencer, and Bill Camp joined the cast, with principal photography having begun in New Mexico.


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: The film had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2017. Shortly after, A24 and DirecTV Cinema acquired distribution rights to the film. Its U.S. premiere was at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 25, 2018.


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: It was released through DirecTV Cinema on May 31, 2018, before being released in a limited release on June 29, 2018.


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 59% based on 44 reviews, and an average rating of 5.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Woman Walks Ahead" gets some extra mileage out of watchable work from Jessica Chastain and Michael Greyeyes, but uneven pacing and two-dimensional characters undermine their efforts." On Metacritic, which assigns a rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 51 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Woman Walks Ahead

text: Despite mixed reviews, Michael Greyeyes received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Sitting Bull. "The New York Times" critic Jeannette Catsoulis called his performance "a miracle of intelligence and dignity". RogerEbert.com contributor Susan Wloszczyna raved about his performance, calling it "the most subtle, soulful, and believable". "Los Angeles Times" and "Village Voice" critics described his presence as captivating as “wry wit and quiet gravity”, while the latter described his performance as "stirring".


title: Why We Fight

text: Why We Fight is a series of seven propaganda films produced by the US Department of War from 1942 to 1945, during World War II. It was originally written for American soldiers to help them understand why the United States was involved in the war, but US President Franklin Roosevelt ordered distribution for public viewing.


title: Why We Fight

text: Academy Award-winning filmmaker Frank Capra, daunted but impressed and challenged by Leni Riefenstahl's 1935 propaganda film "Triumph of the Will", worked in direct response. The series faced various challenges, such as convincing a noninterventionist nation to get involved in the war and to become an ally of the Soviet Union. Many entries feature Axis powers' propaganda footage from up to 20 years earlier, recontextualized to promote the Allies.


title: Why We Fight

text: Although primarily edited by William Hornbeck, some parts were re-enacted "under War Department supervision" if no relevant footage was available. Animated segments were produced by Walt Disney Productions, and the animated maps followed a convention of depicting Axis-occupied territory in black.


title: Why We Fight

text: After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 and America's subsequent joining World War II, American film director Frank Capra enlisted with the armed forces. He was already an established Hollywood director responsible for directing films winning Academy Award such as "It Happened One Night" (1934) and "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939). He was assigned to work directly under George Marshall, the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Marshall felt that the Signal Corps, an army branch responsible for communications, was incapable of producing "sensitive and objective troop information films". One colonel explained the importance of these future films to Capra:


title: Why We Fight

text: Shortly after his meeting with General Marshall, Capra viewed Leni Riefenstahl's "terrifying motion picture", "Triumph of the Will". Capra describes the film as "the ominous prelude of Hitler's holocaust of hate. Satan couldn't have devised a more blood-chilling super-spectacle. ... Though panoplied with all the pomp and mystical trappings of a Wagnerian opera, its message was as blunt and brutal as a lead pipe: We, the Herrenvolk, are the new invincible gods!"


title: Why We Fight

text: According to Capra, "Triumph of the Will" "fired no gun, dropped no bombs. But as a psychological weapon aimed at destroying the will to resist, it was just as lethal." Capra still had no assistants or facilities, and he began to see his assignment as overwhelming:


title: Why We Fight

text: Capra made his primary focus the creation of "one basic, powerful idea" that would spread and evolve into other related ideas. He considered one important idea that had always been in his thoughts:


title: Why We Fight

text: As a result, his goal became to "let the "enemy" prove to our soldiers the enormity of his cause—and the justness of ours." He would compile enemy speeches, films, newsreels, newspaper articles, with a list of the enemy's hostile actions. He presented his ideas to other officers who were now assigned to help him:


title: Why We Fight

text: Weeks later, after major efforts and disappointments, Capra located hard-to-reach archives within government facilities, and by avoiding normal channels, he was able to gain access:


title: Why We Fight

text: Produced from 1942 to 1945, the seven installments range from 40 to 76 minutes in length, and all are available for free on DVD or online since they have always been public domain material by the US government. All are directed by Frank Capra and narrated by Walter Huston alongside radio actors Elliott Lewis, Harry von Zell, film actor Lloyd Nolan and others. The score is performed by the Army Air Force Orchestra.


title: Why We Fight

text: The films employed a great deal of stock footage, including enemy propaganda (such as the Nazis' "Triumph of the Will") recontextualized to discredit its creators. Other scenes were performed. Animation was produced by Disney Studios. The quotation ending each film ("The victory of the democracies can only be complete with the "utter defeat" of the war machines of Germany and Japan") is from the Army Chief of Staff George Marshall.


title: Why We Fight

text: "Prelude to War" and "The Battle of China" refer to the "Tanaka Memorial" several times by portraying it as "Japan's "Mein Kampf"" in order to raise US morale for a protracted war against Japan. The authenticity of that document is not accepted by scholars today, and it is regarded as an anti-Japanese hoax, but the "Tanaka" Memorial was widely accepted as authentic in the 1930s and the 1940s because Japanese actions corresponded so closely to its plans.


title: Why We Fight

text: To justify the Western Allies' help to the Soviet Union, the series omitted many facts which could have cast the Soviets in a negative light, such as the Soviet occupation of the Baltic States and the Winter War. However, it shows the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact being signed and the Soviet invasion of Poland.


title: Why We Fight

text: After World War I, methods used to gain support from troops and civilians needed to change. Giving speeches to soldier recruits and to the US public was no longer effective. Film became the medium of choice to persuade US soldiers and recruits on why fighting was necessary. As Kathleen German stated, "this was the first massive attempt to influence opinion in the U.S. military" through film. Film was also chosen because it combined the senses of sight and hearing, which gives it an advantage over radio or print. Capra, who had no experience in documentary films, was chosen because "of his commitment to American ideals" and because of the popularity of some of his earlier feature films. He was thought "to understand the heart and soul of American audiences". Once the documentary series was completed, it was said to contain the "Capra touch".


title: Why We Fight

text: The series's appeal was furthered by its editing. "Throughout his career, Capra depended upon his skill as an editor to achieve the contrast of the individual and the group, critical in the success of his Hollywood movies." Capra thought that it would be most effective to use the enemy's original film and propaganda in the series to expose the enemies with their own images. By taking pieces of the enemy material to edit together and placing his own narration over the results, Capra gave meaning and purpose to the war with added narrative. That "parallel editing" created an "us vs. them" image by re-framing and showing clips out of their original order and context.


title: Why We Fight

text: By such careful editing, the films compare and contrast the forces of evil with the U.S. and its traditional values. Capra highlighted the differences between the US and the enemy and showed how the enemy would attack these values if "we" did not fight. That worked to create a battle not only between Allies and the Axis powers but also between good and evil. Capra treated it as a matter of showing the enormity of the Axis and the justness of the Allies.


title: Why We Fight

text: The "Why We Fight" series became a heavily-used means of presenting information about Axis powers for the American government during WWII. General Surles, director of the Department of War's Bureau of Public Relations, had hoped that the series would be effective enough to allow similar kinds of army films to be shown to the general public. Surles saw that goal to be realized when US President Franklin Roosevelt watched "Prelude to War", the most successful of the seven. Roosevelt considered it so important that he ordered its distribution in civilian arenas for public viewing. However, some objections were raised against the series due to its persuasiveness. Lowell Mellett, coordinator of government films and aide to Roosevelt, saw the films as dangerous. He was most concerned with the effect that the series would have after the war was over and the "hysteria" that it would create in its wake. At least 54 million Americans had seen the series by the end of the war, and studies were done to gauge the impact of the films. However, results were inconclusive and so the effectiveness of the series is still in question.


title: Why We Fight

text: Created by the US Army Pictorial Services, the films are in the public domain, and all of them are available for download on the Internet Archive.


title: Why We Fight

text: In 2000 the US Library of Congress deemed the films "culturally significant" and selected them for preservation in the National Film Registry.


title: Why We Fight

text: Capra was involved in a number of other World War II propaganda films that were not part of the "Why We Fight" series. He directed or co-directed the following films:


title: Why We Fight

text: Capra also directed, uncredited, the 13-minute 1945 military training film "Your Job in Germany", written by Dr. Seuss.


title: Ugaritic

text: Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic language, classified by some as a dialect of the Amorite language and so the only known Amorite dialect preserved in writing. It is known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1929 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle. It has been used by scholars of the Hebrew Bible to clarify Biblical Hebrew texts and has revealed ways in which the cultures of ancient Israel and Judah found parallels in the neighboring cultures.


title: Ugaritic

text: Ugaritic has been called "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform".


title: Ugaritic

text: The Ugaritic language is attested in texts from the 14th through the 12th century BC. The city of Ugarit was destroyed roughly 1190 BC.


title: Ugaritic

text: Literary texts discovered at Ugarit include the "Legend of Keret", the legends of Danel, the "Myth of Baal-Aliyan", and the "Death of Baal". The latter two are also known collectively as the "Baal Cycle". All reveal aspects of ancient Northwest Semitic religion.


title: Ugaritic

text: Edward Greenstein has proposed that Ugaritic texts might help solve biblical puzzles such as the anachronism of Ezekiel mentioning Daniel in .


title: Ugaritic

text: The Ugaritic alphabet is a cuneiform script used beginning in the 15th century BC. Like most Semitic scripts, it is an abjad, where each symbol stands for a consonant, leaving the reader to supply the appropriate vowel.


title: Ugaritic

text: Although it appears similar to Mesopotamian cuneiform (whose writing techniques it borrowed), its symbols and symbol meanings are unrelated. It is the oldest example of the family of West Semitic scripts such as the Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew, and Aramaic alphabets (including the Hebrew alphabet). The so-called "long alphabet" has 30 letters while the "short alphabet" has 22. Other languages (particularly Hurrian) were occasionally written in it in the Ugarit area, although not elsewhere.


title: Ugaritic

text: Clay tablets written in Ugaritic provide the earliest evidence of both the Levantine ordering of the alphabet, which gave rise to the alphabetic order of the Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alphabets; and the South Semitic order, which gave rise to the order of the Ge'ez script. The script was written from left to right.


title: Ugaritic

text: Ugaritic had 28 consonantal phonemes (including two semivowels) and eight vowel phonemes (three short vowels and five long vowels): "a ā i ī u ū ē ō". The phonemes "ē" and "ō" occur only as long vowels and are the result of monophthongization of the diphthongs "аy" and "aw", respectively.


title: Ugaritic

text: The following table shows Proto-Semitic phonemes and their correspondences among Ugaritic, Classical Arabic and Tiberian Hebrew:


title: Ugaritic

text: Ugaritic is an inflected language, and its grammatical features are highly similar to those found in Classical Arabic and Akkadian. It possesses two genders (masculine and feminine), three grammatical cases for nouns and adjectives (nominative, accusative, and genitive), three numbers (singular, dual, and plural), and verb aspects similar to those found in other Northwest Semitic languages. The word order for Ugaritic is verb–subject–object (VSO) and subject–object–verb (SOV), possessed–possessor (NG), and noun–adjective (NA). Ugaritic is considered a conservative Semitic language, since it retains most of the phonemes, the case system, and the word order of the ancestral Proto-Semitic language.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: Clapham Junction railway station () is a major railway station and transport hub near St John's Hill in south-west Battersea in the London Borough of Wandsworth. It is from and from ; it is on both the South West Main Line and Brighton Main Line as well as numerous other routes and branch lines passing through or diverging from the main lines at this station. Despite its name, Clapham Junction is not located in Clapham, a district situated approximately to the south-east and is instead sited in Battersea.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: Routes from London's south and south-west termini, Victoria and Waterloo, funnel through the station, making it the busiest in Europe by number of trains using it: between 100 and 180 per hour except for the five hours after midnight. The station is also the busiest UK station for interchanges between services, and the only railway station in Great Britain with more interchanges than entries or exits.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: On 21 May 1838 the London and Southampton Railway became the London and South Western Railway (L&SWR), and opened its line from as far as Woking.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: The second line, initially from Nine Elms to Richmond, opened on 27 July 1846. Nine Elms was replaced in 1848 as the terminus by Waterloo Bridge station, now Waterloo. The line to Victoria opened by 1860. Clapham Junction opened on 2 March 1863, a joint venture of the L&SWR, the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR) and the West London Extension Railway (WLER) as an interchange station for their lines.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: The railway companies, to attract a middle- and upper-class clientele, seized the nonindustrial parish calculating that being upon the slopes of Clapham's plateau would only reinforce this distinction, leading to a long-lasting misunderstanding that the station is in Clapham.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: A planning application from Metro Shopping Fund was withdrawn before governmental planning committee consideration on 20 May 2009.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: A 'Heathrow Airtrack' to reduce the 95-minute journey by tube and Gatwick Express to Gatwick and unite the Great Western Main Line with Heathrow, Gatwick and the South West Main Line was cancelled in 2011 following improvements to the 2005-built Heathrow Connect track from Hayes and Harlington and practical impediments, such as pressure for continued high-frequency services on the three deemed-'entrenched' semi-fast and slow services between Clapham Junction and Staines. Overground, the change would have been at Clapham Junction.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: On the morning of 12 December 1988, two collisions involving three commuter trains occurred slightly south west of the station due to a defective signal. Thirty-five people died and more than 100 were injured.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: On the morning of 16 December 1991, a bomb ripped through tracks on one of the station's platforms, causing major disruption to the rail network. The Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) claimed responsibility.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: The station is named Clapham Junction because it is at the junction of several rail lines. The name is not given to any rail junction near the station which, without end-on intercompany junctions, are:


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: Each day more than 2,000 trains, over half of them stopping, pass through the station, more than through any other station in Europe. At peak times up to 200 trains per hour pass through of which 122 stop. It is not the busiest station by number of passengers, most of whom (about 430,000 on a weekday, of which 135,000 are at rush hours) pass through. Interchanges make some 40% of the activity and on that basis too it is the busiest station in the UK.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: In 2011 the station had three entrances, all with staffed ticket offices, though only the south-east entrance is open 24 hours a day. The most heavily used of the three, this leads from St John's Hill via a small indoor shopping centre into a subway some wide, that connects to the eastern ends of all platforms.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: The north entrance, which has restricted opening hours, leads from the Winstanley Estate on Grant Road to the same subway. The subway is crowded during rush hours, with the ticket barriers at the ends being pinch points.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: The south-west entrance, also known as the Brighton Yard entrance, as the buildings still bear signage for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, has a more traditional appearance, with a Victorian station building set at the back of a large forecourt. This entrance leads to a very wide covered footbridge, which joins the western ends of all platforms. This entrance includes cycle parking and a taxi rank. It was re-opened in May 2011 as part of a wider programme of access improvements that included installing lifts to the platforms.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: There are public and disabled toilets at the south-west entrance. There are refreshment kiosks in the subway, on the footbridge and on some platforms; and a small shopping centre, including a small branch of Sainsbury's supermarket, in the south-east entrance.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: British Transport Police maintain a neighbourhood policing presence, whereas the Metropolitan Police Service and the part-Transport for London funded Safer Transport Command provides a police presence in the area outside the station.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: On 9 December 2012 a new platform for the East London Line opened, creating an orbital railway around inner London.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: Overcrowding is most frequent in the often convenient but narrow cross-platform subway. Using this rather than the wide, elegant flying concourse for interchange, a visitors' eyes assessment of fabric and environment listed Clapham Junction in the most needy 10% of Department for Transport category B stations.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: The station has seventeen platforms, numbered 1 to 17. In general, platforms 1 and 2 are used by London Overground trains, platforms 3–11 by South Western Railway trains, and platforms 12–17 by Southern trains. Non-stop Gatwick Express trains pass through platforms 12 and 13.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: Because the platform gap is too wide at platform 8, it must not be used for stopping trains unless in an emergency.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: All South Western Railway services from Waterloo pass through the station, as do Southern and Gatwick Express trains from Victoria. The West London line and South London line services of London Overground have Clapham Junction as one of the termini.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: During peak hours on weekdays express services on the South West Main Line and outer suburban services to Alton and Basingstoke typically do not stop at the station.


title: Clapham Junction railway station

text: In the 2010s, a Clapham Junction station was proposed as part of the Crossrail 2 project. A large underground station dug underneath the existing station was proposed to serve Crossrail 2 service. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the project was indefinitely postponed in 2020, although the route has been safeguarded.