title: Latin America–United States relations

text: One sign of the US setback in the region has been the OEA 2005 Secretary General election. For the first time in the OEA's history, Washington's candidate was refused by the majority of countries, after two stalemates between José Miguel Insulza, member of the Socialist Party of Chile and former Interior Minister of the latter country, and Luis Ernesto Derbez, member of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and former Foreign Minister of Mexico. Derbez was explicitly supported by the US, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Bolivia (then presided by Carlos Mesa), Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, while Chilean minister José Insulza was supported by all the Southern Cone countries, as well as Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. José Insulza was finally elected at the third turn, and took office on May 26, 2005


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: Momentum for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA) was lost after the 2005 Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas, which saw strong protests against the proposal from members of the Anti-Globalization Movement from across the continent, however free trade agreements were not abandoned. Regional economic integration under the sign of neoliberalism continued: Under the Bush administration, the United States, which had signed two free-trade agreements with Latin American countries, signed eight further agreements, reaching a total of ten such bilateral agreements (including the United States-Chile Free Trade Agreement in 2003, the Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement in 2006, etc.). Three others, including the Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement signed in 2006, are awaiting for ratification by the US Congress.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: The Cuzco Declaration, signed a few weeks before at the Third South American Summit, announced the foundation of the Union of South American Nations (Unasul-Unasur) grouping Mercosul countries and the Andean Community and which as the aim of eliminating tariffs for non-sensitive products by 2014 and sensitive products by 2019. On the other hand, the CAFTA-DR free-trade agreement (Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement) was ratified by all countries except Costa Rica. The president of the latter country, Óscar Arias, member of the National Liberation Party and elected in February 2006, pronounced himself in favor of the agreement. Costa Rica then held a national referendum in which the population voted to approve CAFTA, which was then done by the parliament. Canada, which also has a free-trade agreement with Costa Rica, has also been negotiating such an agreement with Central American country, named Canada Central American Free Trade Agreement.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: Reformist Luis Guillermo Solís of the Citizens Action Party was elected in 2014. Solís belongs to a moderate Progressive party and had no link with the far-left, and also kept a friendly relationship with the USA, nevertheless his victory was also attributed to a general contempt toward Washington-endorsed neoliberal policies (Solís, for example, was a staunch opponent of CAFTA). During his presidency Solís established close relationships with some Progressive governments of South America, to the point of leaving the United Nations' chambers during Michel Temer's speech in protest for Rousseff's impeachment in September 2016. On the other hand, the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry has condemned Venezuela's government accusing it of being authoritarian and anti-democratic.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: Mercosur, the trade agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (with Venezuela currently suspended) is also in negotiations to sign a wider free-trade agreement with the European Union, following the signing of similar agreements with the Andean Community, Israel and Egypt in August 2010, among others. These negotiations between Mercosur and the EU are advancing rapidly again after stalling during the 2000s.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: On the other hand, a number of Latin American countries located in the Pacific such as Chile, Mexico and Peru have signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The agreement, originally signed on February 4, 2016, is being renegotiated after the United States withdrew. The eleven remaining members reached a partial agreement on November 11, 2017.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: Apart from binational free-trade agreements, the US has also signed a number of bilateral investment treaties (BIT) with Latin American countries, establishing the conditions of foreign direct investment. These treaties include "fair and equitable treatment", protection from expropriation, free transfer of means and full protection and security. Critics point out that US negotiators can control the pace, content and direction of bilateral negotiations with individual countries more easily than they can with larger negotiating frameworks.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: In case of a disagreement between a multinational firm and a state over some kind of investment made in a Latin American country, the firm may depose a lawsuit before the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (International Center for the Resolution of Investment Disputes), which is an international court depending on the World Bank. Such a lawsuit was deposed by the US-based multinational firm Bechtel following its expulsion from Bolivia during the Cochabamba protests of 2000. Local population had demonstrated against the privatization of the water company, requested by the World Bank, after poor management of the water by Bechtel. Thereafter, Bechtel requested $50 million from the Bolivian state in reparation. However, the firm finally decided to drop the case in 2006 after an international protest campaign.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: Such BIT were passed between the US and numerous countries (the given date is not of signature but of entrance in force of the treaty): Argentina (1994), Bolivia (2001), Ecuador (1997), Grenada (1989), Honduras (2001), Jamaica (1997), Panama (1991, amended in 2001), Trinidad and Tobago (1996). Others where signed but not ratified: El Salvador (1999), Haiti (1983 – one of the earliest, preceded by Panama), Nicaragua (1995).


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: In reply to the ALCA, Chavez initiated the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia signed the TCP (or People's Trade Agreement), while Venezuela, a main productor of natural gas and of petroleum (it is member of the OPEC) has signed treaties with Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega, former leader of the Sandinistas, was elected in 2006 – Ortega, however, cut down his anti-imperialist and socialist discourse, and is hotly controversial; both on the right-wing and on the left-wing. Chávez also implemented the Petrocaribe alliance, signed by 12 of the 15 members of the Caribbean Community in 2005. When Hurricane Katrina ravaged Florida and Louisiana, Chávez, who called the "Yanqui Empire" a "paper tiger", even ironically proposed to provide "oil-for-the-poor" to the US after Hurricane Katrina the same year, through Citgo, a subsidiary of PDVSA the state-owned Venezuelan petroleum company, which has 14,000 gas stations and owns eight oil refineries in the US.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: In June 2003, some 1,200 troops from Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua joined forces along with Spaniard forces (1,300 troops) to form the Plus Ultra Brigade in Iraq. The Brigade was dissolved in April 2004 following the retirement of Spain from Iraq, and all Latin American nations, except El Salvador, withdrew their troops.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: In September 2005, it was revealed that Triple Canopy, Inc., a private military company present in Iraq, was training Latin American mercenaries in Lepaterique in Honduras. Lepaterique was a former training base for the Contras. 105 Chilean mercenaries were deported from the country. According to "La Tribuna" Honduran newspaper, in one day in November, Your Solutions shipped 108 Hondurans, 88 Chileans and 16 Nicaraguans to Iraq. Approximatively 700 Peruvians, 250 Chileans and 320 Hondurans work in Baghdad's Green Zone for Triple Canopy, paid half price in comparison to North-American employees. The news also attracted attention in Chile, when it became known that retired military Marina Óscar Aspe worked for Triple Canopy. The latter had taken part to the assassination of Marcelo Barrios Andrade, a 21-year-old member of the FPMR, who is on the list of victims of the Rettig Report – while Marina Óscar Aspe is on the list of the "2001 Comisión Ética contra la Tortura" (2001 Ethical Commission Against Torture). Triple Canopy also has a subsidiary in Peru.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: In July 2007, Salvadoran president Antonio Saca reduced the number of deployed troops in Iraq from 380, to 280 soldiers. Four Salvadoran soldiers died in different situations since deployment in 2003, but on the bright side, more than 200 projects aimed to rebuild Iraq were completed.


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: The struggle for natural resources and the US defense of its commercial interests has not ceased since the zenith period of the banana republics supported by the US. The general context has changed significantly and each country's approach has evolved accordingly. Thus, the Bolivian Gas War in 2003–04 was sparked after projects by the Pacific LNG consortium to export natural gas – Bolivia possessing the second largest natural gas reserves in South America after Venezuela – to California ("Baja California" and US California) via Chile, resented in Bolivia since the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) which deprived it of an access to the Pacific Ocean. The ALCA was also opposed during the demonstrations, headed by the Bolivian Workers' Center and Felipe Quispe's Indigenous Pachakuti Movement (MIP).


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: A proof of the new geopolitical context can be seen in Evo Morales' announcement, in concordance with his electoral promises, of the nationalization of gas reserves, the second highest in South America after Venezuela. First of all, he carefully warned that they would not take the form of expropriations or confiscations, maybe fearing a violent response. The nationalizations, which, according to Vice President Álvaro García, are supposed to make the government's energy-related revenue jump to $780 million in the following year, expanding nearly sixfold from 2002, led to criticisms from Brazil, which Petrobras company is one of the largest foreign investors in Bolivia, controlling 14 percent of the country's gas reserves. Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America and was heavily affected by protests in the 1980s–90s, largely due to the shock therapy enforced by previous governments, and also by resentment concerning the coca eradication program – coca is a traditional plant for the Native Quechua and Aymara people, who use it for therapeutical (against altitude sickness) and cultural purposes. Thus, Brazil's Energy Minister, Silas Rondeau, reacted to Morales' announcement by condemning the move as "unfriendly." According to Reuters, "Bolivia's actions echo what Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, possibly Morales' biggest ally, did in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter with forced contract migrations and retroactive tax hikes – conditions that major oil companies largely agreed to accept." The Bolivian gas company YPFB, privatized by former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, was to pay foreign companies for their services, offering about 50 percent of the value of production, although the decree indicated that companies exploiting the country's two largest gas fields would get just 18 percent. After initially hostile reactions, Repsol "expressed its willingness to cooperate with the Bolivian government," while Petrobras retreated its call to cancel new investment in Bolivia. However, still according to Larry Birns, "The nationalization's high media profile could force the [US] State Department to take a tough approach to the region, even to the point of mobilizing the CIA and the U.S. military, but it is more likely to work its way by undermining the all-important chink in the armor – the Latin American armed forces."


title: Latin America–United States relations

text: In a review of 341 published academic books and articles on US-Latin America relations, Bertucci noted that the subject appears and combined a number of academic disciplines, including history, political science, international relations, and economics. Descriptive and normative research is prevalent, and that in works published through 2008, explicit theory-building and hypothesis-testing was limited. That work reviewed showed a prevalence of foreign policy analysis, especially of US foreign policy, with more limited attention to non-state actors and multilateralism. In her study of International Relations as studied and taught within Latin America, Tickner notes that US IR sources remain dominant in the teaching of IR, but that in research, these theories are commonly adapted and reinterpreted in a "Latin American hybrid." She notes the presence of original concepts and emphases; some of these emerge from dependency theory and explore autonomy and international insertion.


title: Paradise Alley

text: Paradise Alley is a 1978 American sports drama film written, directed by and starring Sylvester Stallone, in his feature film directorial debut. The film tells the story of three brothers in Hell's Kitchen, New York City in the 1940s who become involved in professional wrestling.


title: Paradise Alley

text: This was the first major film in which Armand Assante appeared. Anne Archer also starred. Joe Spinell, a co-star of "Rocky", played the wrestling MC. It also stars Tom Waits in his film debut.


title: Paradise Alley

text: A number of professional wrestlers appeared, including Terry Funk as the foil to the hero. Cameos include Ted DiBiase, Bob Roop, Dick Murdoch, Dory Funk Jr., Don Leo Jonathan, Don Kernodle, Gene Kiniski, Dennis Stamp, Ray Stevens, and Uliuli Fifita. Playwright and screenwriter John Monks Jr appeared as Mickey the bartender.


title: Paradise Alley

text: Victor, the youngest and largest of the Carboni brothers (Cosmo and Lenny are the other two), becomes a local wrestler (named Kid Salami) at the request of Cosmo, who thinks there is big money to be made.


title: Paradise Alley

text: Lenny agrees to manage his career. They look to Victor to win enough matches so they can get out of Hell's Kitchen for good. (Victor wants to marry his Asian girlfriend and live on a houseboat they plan to buy in New Jersey.)


title: Paradise Alley

text: Each brother has his own style. Cosmo is a hustler and con-artist, always looking for the next easy buck. Lenny is the former war hero, now an undertaker who came back to the neighborhood with a limp and a bitter attitude. Victor is a gawky, strong, dumb yet sincere hulk of a man, who leaves his job hauling ice up tenement stairways once he is persuaded to become a wrestler.


title: Paradise Alley

text: Initially, it is Cosmo that dominates the proceedings, aggressively encouraging Victor to wrestle against the wishes of his girlfriend. Lenny is at first unsure of all this, and constantly tries to warn off Victor, reminding him that he could get hurt.


title: Paradise Alley

text: As the story progresses, the roles begin to reverse. Cosmo becomes concerned for Victor's welfare and feels guilty about getting him into this while Lenny becomes ever more keen to exploit Victor as far as he can. Lenny seems to undergo a complete personality change, losing his cool demeanor and becoming an aggressive, manipulative high roller.


title: Paradise Alley

text: Sylvester Stallone wrote the story as a novel then a screenplay before he wrote "Rocky". He later recalled:


title: Paradise Alley

text: I was very broke and I optioned the screenplay of PARADISE ALLEY to a real ... how should I say this ... maggot, who put his hooks in so deep I could never get it away from him. So the first time I went in to meet Chartoff and Winkler, I was there on an acting job. I didn't get it, but on the way out I said, "I have this screenplay called PARADISE ALLEY." They said to bring it over and I did. They wanted to make it, but the other cretin that I had optioned it to was so obnoxious, so overbearing, that the producers wanted nothing to do with me or the screenplay. So on the way out, they said, "If you have any ideas, we'd be happy to look at them." That night I went home - even a fire extinguisher couldn't cool the burning in my brain. The door of opportunity was wide open and I had nothing to carry over its threshold. That's when I started to write ROCKY. So thank God for the maggot; otherwise I never would've written the story of Mr. Balboa.


title: Paradise Alley

text: In an interview with Roger Ebert in 1980, Stallone mentioned that "Paradise Alley" was originally a much longer film before he was forced by Universal Pictures to cut it down. Stallone said: "I'll never forgive myself for the way I allowed myself to be manipulated during the editing of that film. There were a lot of scenes in there to give atmosphere and character, and they wanted them out just to speed things along. They removed 40 scenes, altogether. I put 10 of them back in for the version shown on TV. For example, the whole sequence of the soldier without legs, sitting on a bar eating peanuts."


title: Paradise Alley

text: Edward R. Pressman got involved in the project prior to "Rocky" however, after the success of "Rocky", the project received studio involvement.


title: Paradise Alley

text: "Paradise Alley" was released in the United States on November 10, 1978. In the Philippines, the film was released on December 5, 1990, with the song "U Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer included in the soundtrack.


title: Paradise Alley

text: "Paradise Alley" received negative reviews from many critics, who often compared the film unfavorably to "Rocky". Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" called it "a phony, attitudinizing, self-indulgent mess ... If there had been just a tiny bit of wit involved, or a consistent point of view, or genuine feeling, 'Paradise Alley' might have been an engaging throwback to the true B pictures of yesteryear. As it is, it's 'Rocky' warmed over and then thrown out."


title: Paradise Alley

text: Pauline Kael of "The New Yorker" also panned the film, writing: "As a director, Stallone shows no more feeling for visual modulation than as Cosmo he does for vocal modulation. In all his capacities here, he's trying to get a hammerlock on our emotions. You feel he'd reach out from the screen and grab you by the throat if he could ... As a writer, he's a primitive mining the mass media, without any apparent awareness of how stale his ideas are. Doesn't he know that there are a lot of us who have seen the same plays and movies he has? Aren't we even expected to remember 'Rocky'? Stallone tries to work our emotions in exactly the same ways, and there's no surprise to the shamelessness this time."


title: Paradise Alley

text: Gary Arnold of "The Washington Post" wrote: "Maybe there's something to be said for Stallone overreaching himself this early in his starring career. He may be compelled to take a more realistic look at what he can and cannot do after audiences exit shaking their heads over the scatterbrained mentality that seems to control 'Paradise Alley'. Stallone has a distinctive, funny presence and a flair for spontaneous slapstick and sentiment, but he appears to be a miserable coordinator and ringmaster."


title: Paradise Alley

text: Writing in "New York" magazine, David Denby found the film to have "some moments of warmth in its portrait of gaudy neighborhood bars and dance halls, gangsters, bimbos, and hangers-on, but the movie is so hyperbolic and synthetic you don't believe a minute of it."


title: Paradise Alley

text: John Gault of "Maclean's" wrote: "The climactic wrestling sequence is so derivative of 'Rocky' you almost start humming 'Gonna Fly Now'. But 'Rocky' did what every good fairy tale does: it temporarily suspended disbelief, made the implausible plausible. That works only if there is a high degree of consistency in plot and characterization, and 'Paradise Alley' doesn't have it."


title: Paradise Alley

text: Gene Siskel gave the film 3 out of 4 stars, praising the "rich characters" and declaring it "one of the most colorful films of the year." In a separate article he called it "a thoroughly engaging film—until its last reel, when Stallone slaps on a conventional, upbeat ending that is all wrong for this movie. It's the ending of 'Rocky' all over again, as Stallone and his older brother in the movie go unpunished for exploiting their baby brother, the brutish giant ... They don't deserve the same fate as Rocky. And to give them the same fate is to insult the audience's intelligence."


title: Paradise Alley

text: "Variety" gave the film a mostly positive review, calling it "'Rocky' rewritten by Damon Runyon ... It's an upbeat, funny, nostalgic film populated by colorful characters, memorable more for their individual moments than for their parts in the larger story." The review's only point of criticism was that "The relationship between the men and their women is never explored and is the one unsatisfying element in the film. The women have no life beyond their men; they are types who exist only as companions." On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an aggregated score of 40% based on 5 critic reviews.


title: Paradise Alley

text: The premise of "Paradise Alley" was later parodied in the fifth episode of the second season of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia". In the episode, Mac and Dennis exploit the childish Charlie by training him to become an underground street fighter so that they can profit off of it. Anne Archer, who portrayed Annie in "Paradise Alley", also portrayed Barbara Reynolds on the TV show.


title: Gildas

text: Gildas (Breton: "Gweltaz"; c. 450/500 – c. 570) — also known as Gildas the Wise or Gildas Sapiens — was a 6th-century British monk best known for his scathing religious polemic "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae", which recounts the history of the Britons before and during the coming of the Saxons. He is one of the best-documented figures of the Christian church in the British Isles during the sub-Roman period, and was renowned for his Biblical knowledge and literary style. In his later life, he emigrated to Brittany where he founded a monastery known as St Gildas de Rhuys.


title: Gildas

text: Differing versions of the "Life of Saint Gildas" exist, but both agree that he was born in what is now Scotland on the banks of the River Clyde, and that he was the son of a royal family. These works were written in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and are regarded by scholars as unhistorical. He is now thought to have his origins farther south. In his own work, he claims to have been born the same year as the Battle of Mount Badon. He was educated at a monastic centre, possibly Cor Tewdws in South Wales under St Illtud, where he chose to forsake his royal heritage and embrace monasticism. He became a renowned teacher, converting many to Christianity and founding numerous churches and monasteries throughout Britain and Ireland. He is thought to have made a pilgrimage to Rome before emigrating to Brittany, where he took on the life of a hermit. However, his life of solitude was short-lived, and pupils soon sought him out and begged him to teach them. He eventually founded a monastery for these students at Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany, where he wrote "De Excidio Britanniae," criticising British rulers and exhorting them to put off their sins and embrace true Christian faith. He is thought to have died at Rhuys, and was buried there.


title: Gildas

text: The First "Life" of Gildas was written by an unnamed monk at the monastery which Gildas founded in Rhuys, Brittany in the 9th century. According to this tradition, Gildas is the son of Caunus, king of Alt Clut in the "Hen Ogledd", the Brythonic-speaking region of northern Britain. He had four brothers; his brother Cuillum ascended to the throne on the death of his father, and the rest became monks. Gildas was sent as a child to the College of Theodosius (Cor Tewdws) in Glamorgan, under the care of St Illtud, and was a companion of St Samson of Dol and St Paul Aurelian. His master Illtud loved him tenderly and taught him with special zeal. He was supposed to be educated in liberal arts and divine scripture, but elected to study only holy doctrine, and to forsake his noble birth in favour of a religious life.


title: Gildas

text: After completing his studies under Illtud, Gildas went to Ireland where he was ordained as a priest. He returned to his native lands in northern Britain where he acted as a missionary, preaching to the pagan people and converting many of them to Christianity. He was then asked by Ainmericus, high king of Ireland (Ainmuire mac Sétnai, 566–569), to restore order to the church in Ireland, which had altogether lost the Christian faith. Gildas obeyed the king's summons and travelled all over the island, converting the inhabitants, building churches, and establishing monasteries. He then travelled to Rome and Ravenna where he performed many miracles, including slaying a dragon while in Rome. Intending to return to Britain, he instead settled on the Isle of Houat off Brittany where he led a solitary, austere life. At around this time, he also preached to Nonnita (Non), the mother of Saint David, while she was pregnant with the saint.


title: Gildas

text: He was eventually sought out by those who wished to study under him, and was entreated to establish a monastery in Brittany, which he did at a place now known as Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys. Finally, he built an oratory against an overhanging rock on the bank of the River Blavetum (River Blavet), near Pontivy, to resume his contemplative life. Fragments of letters that he wrote reveal that he composed a "Rule" for monastic life that was somewhat less austere than the "Rule" written by Saint David. Ten years after leaving Britain, he wrote an epistolary book in which he reproved five of the British kings. He died at Rhuys on 29 January 570, and his body was placed on a boat and allowed to drift, according to his wishes. Three months later, on 11 May, men from Rhuys found the ship in a creek with the body of Gildas still intact. They took the body back to Rhuys and buried it there.


title: Gildas

text: The second "Life" of Gildas was written by Caradoc of Llancarfan, a friend of Geoffrey of Monmouth and his Norman patrons. However, Llancarfan's work is most probably historically inaccurate, as his hagiographies tend towards the fictitious, rather than the strictly historical. Llancarfan's "Life" was written in the 12th century, and includes many elements of what have come to be known as mythical pseudo-histories, involving King Arthur, Guinevere, and Glastonbury Abbey, leading to the general opinion that this "life" is less historically accurate than the earlier version.


title: Gildas

text: In the "Llancarfan Life," Gildas is presented as the son of Nau, king of Scotia. Nau had 24 sons, all victorious warriors. Gildas studied literature as a youth, before leaving his homeland for Gaul, where he studied for seven years. When he returned, he brought back an extensive library with him, and was sought after as a master teacher. He became the most renowned teacher in all of the three kingdoms of Britain. Gildas was a subject of the mythical King Arthur, whom he loved and desired to obey. However, his 23 brothers were always rising up against their rightful king, and his eldest brother, Hueil, would submit to no rightful high king, not even Arthur. Hueil would often swoop down from Scotland to fight battles and carry off spoils, and during one of these raids, Hueil was pursued and killed by King Arthur. When news of his brother's murder reached Gildas in Ireland, he was greatly grieved, but was able to forgive Arthur, and pray for the salvation of his soul. Gildas then travelled to Britain, where he met Arthur face to face, and kissed him as he prayed for forgiveness, and Arthur accepted penance for murdering Gildas' brother.


title: Gildas

text: After this, Gildas taught at the school of St Cadoc before retiring to a secret island for seven years. Pirates from the Orkney Islands came and sacked his island, carrying off goods and his friends as slaves. In distress, he left the island, and came to Glastonbury, then ruled by Melvas, King of the 'Summer Country' ("Gwlad yr Haf", Somerset). Gildas intervened between King Arthur and Melvas, who had abducted and raped Arthur's wife Guinevere and brought her to his stronghold at Glastonbury. Arthur soon arrived to besiege him, but, the peacemaking saint persuaded Melvas to release Guinevere and the two kings made peace. Then desiring to live a hermit's life, Gildas built a hermitage devoted to the Trinity on the banks of the river at Glastonbury. He died, and was buried at Glastonbury Abbey, in the floor of St Mary's Church.


title: Gildas

text: The "Llancarfan Life" contains the earliest surviving appearance of the abduction of Guinevere episode, common in later Arthurian literature. Huail's enmity with Arthur was also apparently a popular subject in medieval Britain: he is mentioned as an enemy of Arthur's in the Welsh prose tale "Culhwch and Olwen", written around 1100. A strongly held tradition in North Wales places the beheading of Gildas' brother Huail at Ruthin, where what claims to be the execution stone (Maen Huail) has been preserved in the town square. Another brother of Gildas, Celyn ap Caw, was based in the north-east corner of Anglesey.


title: Gildas

text: Gildas is best known for his polemic "De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae", which recounts the sub-Roman history of Britain, and which is the only substantial source for history of this period written by a near-contemporary, although it is not intended to be an objective chronicle.


title: Gildas

text: The work is a sermon in three parts condemning the acts of his contemporaries, both secular and religious. The first part consists of Gildas' explanation for his work and a brief narrative of Roman Britain from its conquest under the Principate to Gildas' time. He describes the doings of the Romans and the Groans of the Britons, in which the Britons make one last request for military aid from the departed Roman military. He excoriates his fellow Britons for their sins, while at the same time lauding heroes such as Ambrosius Aurelianus, whom he is the first to describe as a leader of the resistance to the Saxons. He mentions the victory at the Battle of Mons Badonicus, a feat attributed to King Arthur in later texts, though Gildas does not mention who led the battle.


title: Gildas

text: Part two consists of a condemnation of five British kings, Constantine, Aurelius Conanus, Vortiporius, Cuneglas, and Maelgwn. As it is the only contemporary information about them, it is of particular interest to scholars of British history. Part three is a similar attack on the clergy of the time.


title: Gildas

text: "De Excidio" was usually dated to the 540s, but the historian Guy Halsall inclines to an "early Gildas" c. 490. Cambridge historian Karen George offered a date range of c. 510–530 AD.


title: Gildas

text: Gildas' relics were venerated in the abbey which he founded in Rhuys, until the 10th century, when they were removed to Berry. In the 18th century, they were said to be moved to the cathedral at Vannes and then hidden during the French Revolution. The various relics survived the revolution and have all since been returned to Saint-Gildas-de-Rhuys where they are visible at various times of the year at a dedicated "treasury" in the village. The body of Saint Gildas (minus the pieces incorporated into various reliquaries) is buried behind the altar in the church of Saint Gildas de Rhuys.


title: Gildas

text: The embroidered mitre supposedly worn by Gildas is also kept with these relics. Gildas is the patron saint of several churches and monasteries in Brittany, and his feast day is celebrated on 29 January.


title: Gildas

text: Gildas is credited with a hymn called the "Lorica", or "Breastplate", a prayer for deliverance from evil, which contains specimens of Hiberno-Latin. A proverb is also attributed to "Gildas mab y Gaw" in the "Englynion y Clyweid" in Llanstephan MS. 27.


title: Gildas

text: In "Bonedd y Saint", Gildas is recorded as having three sons and a daughter. Gwynnog ap Gildas and Noethon ap Gildas are named in the earliest tracts, together with their sister Dolgar. Another son, Tydech, is named in a later document. Iolo Morganwg adds Saint Cenydd to the list.


title: Gildas

text: The scholar David Dumville suggests that Gildas was the teacher of Finnian of Moville, who in turn was the teacher of St Columba of Iona.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: Korenizatsiya (, , "indigenization") was an early policy of the Soviet Union for the integration of non-Russian nationalities into the governments of their specific Soviet republics. In the 1920s the policy of korenization (nativization) promoted representatives of the titular nation, and their national minorities, into the lower administrative-levels of the local government, bureaucracy, and nomenklatura of their Soviet republics. In Russian, the term derives from (, "native population"). The policy practically ended in the mid-1930s with nationalities deportations.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: Politically and culturally, the nativization policy aimed to eliminate Russian domination and culture in Soviet republics where ethnic Russians did not constitute a majority. This policy was implemented even in areas with large Russian-speaking populations; for instance, all children in Ukraine were taught in the Ukrainian language in school. The policies of korenization facilitated the Communist Party's establishment of the local languages in government and education, in publishing, in culture, and in public life. In that manner, the cadre of the local Communist Party were promoted to every level of government, and ethnic Russians working in said governments were required to learn the local language and culture of the given Soviet republic.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: The nationalities policy was formulated by the Bolshevik party in 1913, four years before they came to power in Russia. Vladimir Lenin sent a young Joseph Stalin (himself a Georgian and therefore an ethnic minority member) to Vienna, which was a very ethnically diverse city due to its status as capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Stalin reported back to Moscow with his ideas for the policy. It was summarized in Stalin's pamphlet (his first scholarly publication), "Marxism and the National Question" (1913). Ironically Stalin would also be the major proponent of its eventual dismemberment and the reemergence of Russification.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: Faced with the massive non-Russian opposition to his regime, Lenin in late 1919 convinced his associates that their government had to stop the cultural administrative and linguistic policies it was following in the non-Russian republics. As adopted in 1923 korenizatziya involved teaching and administration in the language of the republic; and promoting non-Russians to positions of power in Republic administrations and the party, including for a time the creation of a special group of soviets called "natssoviety" (nationality councils) in their own "natsraiony" (nationality regions) based on concentrations of minorities within what were minority republics. For example, in Ukraine in the late 1920s there were even natssoviety for Russians and Estonians.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: This policy was meant to partially reverse decades of Russification, or promotion of Russian identity culture and language in non-Russian territories that had taken place during the imperial period. It won over many previously anti-bolshevik non-Russians throughout the country. It also provoked hostility among some Russians and Russified non-Russians in non-Russian republics.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: In 1920s, the society was still not "Socialist". There was animosity towards the Russians and towards other nationalities on the part of the Russians, but there were also conflicts and rivalries among other nationalities.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: In 1923 at the 12th Party Congress, Stalin identified two threats to the success of the party's "nationalities policy": Great Power Chauvinism ("velikoderzhavny shovinizm"; great state chauvinism) and local nationalism. However, he described the former as the greater danger:


title: Korenizatsiya

text: [The] Great-Russian chauvinist spirit, which is becoming stronger and stronger owing to the N.E.P., . . . [finds] expression in an arrogantly disdainful and heartlessly bureaucratic attitude on the part of Russian Soviet officials towards the needs and requirements of the national republics. The multi-national Soviet state can become really durable, and the co-operation of the peoples within it really fraternal, only if these survivals are vigorously and irrevocably eradicated from the practice of our state institutions. Hence, the first immediate task of our Party is vigorously to combat the survivals of Great-Russian chauvinism.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: The main danger, Great-Russian chauvinism, should be kept in check by the Russians themselves, for the sake of the larger goal of building socialism. Within the (minority) nationality areas new institutions should be organized giving the state a national (minority) character everywhere, built on the use of the nationality languages in government and education, and on the recruitment and promotion of leaders from the ranks of minority groups. On the central level the nationalities should be represented in the Soviet of Nationalities.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: The main idea of the "Korenizacija" was to grow communist cadres for every nationality. By the mid-1930s the percentage of locals in both the party and state service grew considerably.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: The initial period of korenizacija went together with the development of national-territorial administrative units and national cultures. The latter was reflected above all in the areas of language construction and education. For several of the small nationalities in Russia that had no literary language, a "Committee of the North" helped to create alphabets so that the national languages could be taught in schools and literacy could be brought to the people in their native languages—and the minorities would thereby be brought from backwardness to the modern world. And in the very large Ukrainian Republic, the program of Ukrainianization led to a profound shift of the language of instruction in schools to Ukrainian.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: In 1930, Stalin proclaimed at the 16th Party Congress that building socialism was a period of blossoming of national cultures. The final goal would be to merge into one international culture with a common language. Meanwhile, the first five-year plan in 1928–1931 was a period of radicalism, utopianism and violence in an atmosphere of "cultural revolution" . Russian cultural heritage was under attack, churches were closed, old specialists were dismissed, and science and art were proletarianized.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: The Bolsheviks' tactics in their struggle to neutralise nationalist aspirations led to political results by the beginning of the 1930s. The old structure of the Russian Empire had been destroyed and a hierarchical federal state structure, based on the national principle, was created. The structure was nationality-based states in which nationality cultures were blossoming, and nationality languages were spoken and used at schools and in local administration. The transition was real, not merely a centralized Russian empire camouflaged.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: The 17th Party congress in 1934, proclaimed that the building of the material basis for a socialist society had succeeded. The Soviet Union first became an officially socialist society in 1936 when the new constitution was adopted. The new constitution stated that the many socialist nations had transformed on a voluntary basis into a harmonious union. According to the new constitution there were 11 socialist republics, 22 autonomous republics, nine autonomous regions and nine national territories. At the same time, administration was now greatly centralised. All the Republics were now harnessed to serve one common socialist state.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: Between 1933 and 1938 korenizatsiya was not actually repealed. Its provisions merely stopped being enforced. There also began purges of the leaderships of the national republics and territories. The charge against non-Russians was that they had instigated national strife and oppressed the Russians or other minorities in the republics. In 1937 it was proclaimed that local elites had become hired agents and their goal had become dismemberment of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism. Now it was time to see that the Russians got fair treatment. National leaderships of the republics and autonomies were liquidated en masse.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: By the mid-1930s, with purges in some of the national areas, the policy of korenizatsiya took a new turn, and by the end of the 1930s the policy of promoting local languages began to be balanced by greater , though perhaps not overt Russification or attempts to assimilate the minorities. By this time, non-Russians found their appetite whetted rather than satiated by korenizatsiya and there was indication it was encouraging inter-ethnic violence to the extent that the territorial integrity of the USSR would be in danger. In addition, ethnic Russians resented the institutionalized and artificial "reverse discrimination" that benefited non-Russians and regarded them as ungrateful and manipulative as a result. Another concern was that the Soviet Union's westernmost minorities - Belarusians, Ukrainians, Poles, Finns etc - who had been previously treated with conscious benevolence in order to provide propaganda value to members of their ethnic groups in nations bordering the USSR (and thus facilitating future national unification, which would then bring about territorial expansion of the USSR) were now instead increasingly seen as vulnerable to influence from across the border, "fifth columns" for expansionist states seeking to acquire Soviet territory inhabited by their own ethnic group. The adherence of the masses to national rather than class identity was as strong in Russia as in other republics and regions. Between 1937 and 1953, racial policies began to creep into nationality policies, with certain nationalities seen as having immutable traits, particularly nationalities in the unstable borderlands.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: Moreover, Stalin seemed set on greatly reducing the number of officially recognized nationalities by contracting the official list of nationalities in the 1939 census, compared with the 1926 census. The development of so-called "national schools" (национальные школы) in which the languages of minority nationalities were the main media of instruction continued, spreading literacy and universal education in many national minority languages, while teaching Russian as a required subject of study. The term korenizatsiya went out of use in the latter half of the 1930s, replaced by more bureaucratic expressions, such as "selection and placement of national cadres" (подбор и расстановка национальных кадров).


title: Korenizatsiya

text: From 1937 the central press started to praise Russian language and Russian culture. Mass campaigns were organized to denounce the "enemies of the people". "Bourgeois nationalists" were new enemies of the Russian people which had suppressed the Russian language. The policy of indigenization was abandoned. In the following years the Russian language became a compulsory subject in all Soviet schools.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: The pre-revolution Russian nationalism was also rehabilitated. Many of the heroes of Russian history were re-appropriated for glorification. The Russian people became the "elder brother" of the "Socialist family of nations". A new kind of patriotism, Soviet patriotism, was declared to mean a willingness to fight for the Socialist fatherland.


title: Korenizatsiya

text: In 1938 Russian became a mandatory subject of study in all non-Russian schools. In general the cultural and linguistic russification reflected the overall centralization imposed by Stalin. The Cyrillic script was instituted for a number of Soviet languages, including the languages of Central Asia that in the late 1920s had been given Latin alphabets to replace Arabic ones.


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: Endrendrum Punnagai () is a 2013 Indian Tamil-language romantic comedy drama film written and directed by I. Ahmed starring Jiiva, Trisha, Vinay, Santhanam, Andrea, and Nassar. The film has music by Harris Jayaraj and cinematography by R. Madhi. The film was launched officially in Chennai on 29 June 2012. Upon its release on 20 December 2013, the film met with positive reviews from critics and became a commercial success.


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: The movie starts with Goutham (Jiiva) as a kid, being told that women are all bad and are very selfish by his father Sridhar (Nassar) because his wife had eloped that day. They then move to Chennai, where Goutham meets Baby (Santhanam) and Sri (Vinay). The trio becomes inseparable friends. 15 years later, it is shown that they are running an advertisement agency, and Goutham has stopped speaking to his father. After a heated incident at a friend's bachelor party, the three friends promise to never get married. They get an advertising offer from Sunny (T. M. Karthik), who sends Priya (Trisha) to assist them with the ad. Sonia (Andrea), an international model, is assigned to act for the ad. On the day of the shoot, Sonia falls in love with Goutham, and when the ad is finished, she bites his ear. Goutham retaliates by slapping her. Sunny scolds Goutham and tells him that he will never work with him again, but Priya supports Goutham, telling Sunny that it was Sonia's fault for behaving unprofessionally. After the shoot, Goutham calls up Priya and thanks her for supporting him. While speaking to Goutham, Priya meets with an accident. He rushes her to the hospital, where she recovers the next day.


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: After a few days, Baby and Sri decide to get married. When Goutham gets to know about it, he gets furious and ends their friendship. On the same day of the marriage, Sridhar tells Priya that he got married a second time many years before for his son's sake, and that is the reason for Goutham's anger towards him. He requests Priya to take care of Goutham. Goutham and Priya get another contract with Sunny and Sonia, and they leave for Switzerland for the shooting. On the day of the shooting, Sonia recalls everything Goutham had done and asks him to apologize for his act. He refuses because he knows that it is not his fault and then tells Sonia to leave. Afterwards, Priya takes the role of Sonia and acts for the advertisement. During the shooting, Priya and Goutham fall in love. When they come back from Switzerland, Goutham meets his friend and introduces Priya as just a stranger whom he met in the flight. Hurt by Goutham's cheap behavior, she leaves the airport. Goutham after returning home calls Priya and asks her to return his watch that he has given to her when they were in foreign. Hurt further, Priya reaches Goutham's office next day and returns his watch. Before leaving, Priya informs Goutham to contact Sunny in future, indicating that she doesn't want to interact with Goutham anymore. Later Sunny and Goutham discuss about the remaining work in the project and during the discussion Sunny informs that Priya is getting married to her friend working in US. Sunny further adds that he knows the feeling between Priya and Goutham and advises Goutham not to cheat himself. Goutham meets Priya at a beach and there quoting the airport incident, Priya tells Goutham that he is too egoistic that he will hurt anyone to maintain his macho image. She further tells him that due to his ego he has stopped talking to his father and friends who are very close to him and she can't afford to live with him since she knows that he will stop talking to her even if there is a small misunderstanding between them. After telling this, Priya leaves and Goutham starts feeling guilty.


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: When Goutham gets back home, he goes into his father's room and notices many paintings of him being happy, a wish that his father wanted. Goutham then discovers that his father was ill and rushes him to the hospital, where the doctors say that his father is suffering from pancreatic cancer and cannot be treated. Goutham becomes heartbroken. Sri comes to meet him and tells him that he knew that Sridhar was suffering from this disease. Baby then comes and says that Sridhar was the one who compelled them to get married so that Goutham might change his mind and get married. As the three friends reconcile, Priya comes to the hospital to meet Sridhar, where Gautham apologizes and admits to Priya that he has fallen for her. The film ends a happy ending with Gautham and Priya getting engaged in front of a recovering Sridhar at the hospital.


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: In 2011, it was reported that Jiiva will collaborate with "Vaamanan" director I. Ahmed. Tamannaah, was selected to play lead heroine in the film and later in November she out from project due date issues, which given bulk date for "Veeram" movie. In mid of November Trisha selected to play lead heroine in the ed film. Lisa Hayden who had been approached for a role in this flick was no longer doing that role due to date clashes. Andrea Jeremiah took up the role.


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: Music was composed by Harris Jayaraj scoring for a Jiiva film for the third time after "Ko" and "Nanban". The soundtrack album consist of 6 tracks. Harris Jayaraj and the director headed to Turkey for composing sessions. 2 songs for the film were recorded by early May 2012. A single track from the album titled "Vaan Engum Nee Minna" was released on 18 October. The album was released by Kamal Haasan on 24 October 2013 and within 24 hours of its release on the net, topped the iTunes India Charts. The soundtrack was met with positive reviews from critics, who claimed the album to be 'pleasant' with 'catchy songs that are sure to win hearts'.


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: The film was given a U/A certificate by the Indian Censor Board due to "a few adult comedy scenes". The film released in 750 screens worldwide on 20 December 2013 along with "Biriyani" and the Hindi film "Dhoom 3".


title: Endrendrum Punnagai

text: The film received positive reviews from critics. Sify wrote, "It's a feel – good breezy entertainer and it's got its heart in the right place. The film works big time due to director Ahmed's well- written script which encompass friendship, romance and an emotional father-son angle which has been handled sensitively". Behindwoods gave 3.5 stars out of 5 and wrote, "Ahmed's "Endrendrum Punnagai" is an extremely good looking film with beautiful people leading colorful and aspirational lifestyles. As an added bonus, the film also gifts you with moments that are genuinely likeable". The Hindu wrote, "The first half is largely fun and jokes and the film gently breezes along, thanks to the bonding and chemistry between the guys. The problem with "Endrendrum Punnagai" is that it takes itself a tad too seriously instead of living up to the title and keeping it light. There's just too much drama...clichés employed to infuse drama into the sluggish second half that is further burdened with songs". Deccan Herald wrote, ""Endrendrum Punnagai" is no great shakes as ensemble entertainer. It does have its moments. Beginning on a breezy note, it peters out into a languid tale in the latter half. With a plot as predictable as chicory coffee, especially after friction among friends "Endrendrum Punnagai" does not turn out everlasting happiness as its title suggests". Indiaglitz gave 3 out of 5 and wrote, "With a story behind everyone in the background and a lot of fun uniting the jigsaw pieces in the foreground, covering up all the sorrow as though it is a hassle-free life, the film is a different outlook on love and friendship. "Endrendrum Punnagai", as aptly titled, is a story that urges to unlock the happiness behind our ego, and a film worth investing your time on". Hindustan Times gave 1.5 stars and wrote, ""Endrendrum Punnagai" is predictable piece of a movie where we know what would happen when Trisha Krishnan's Priya walks into the lives of the three men as a project consultant for an ad film being made by them. It is bad enough that much of Tamil cinema is clocked in clichés and crassness. What is worse is that it continues to handle actors with immense potential with utter callousness". Cinemalead rated Endrendrum Punnagai with 3.5 rating and wrote "Ahmed has put his efforts into Endrendrum Punnagai to make it a fresh film to watch. The concept of blending friendship, love and ego has worked here. Rom-coms are always fun and this one is no less. "


title: Vero (app)

text: Vero (stylized as VERO) is a social media platform and mobile app company. Vero markets itself as a social network free from advertisements, data mining and algorithms.


title: Vero (app)

text: The app was founded by French-Lebanese billionaire Ayman Hariri who is the son of former Lebanese prime minister Rafic Hariri. The name is taken from the Italian word for true. The app launched officially in 2015 as an alternative to Facebook and their popular photo-blogging app Instagram. Within weeks of its release the app surged in popularity although users expressed mixed reports with some feeling confused about how the app worked.


title: Vero (app)

text: Cosplayers were early to adopt the app as their photo-sharing platform of choice, favouring the app's pinch and zoom magnification feature over Instagram's zoom feature. Other creative communities soon followed, and the app became popular with niche groups of makeup artists, tattoo artists, and skateboarders.


title: Vero (app)

text: In March 2018, Vero's popularity surged, partly helped by an exodus from Facebook and Instagram following the Cambridge Analytica data scandal. In the wake of the scandal, Vero devised an advertising campaign aimed at defected Facebook and Instagram users, hoping the app's policies and privacy settings would assuage concerns over sharing personal information on the internet. Within the space of one week, the app went from being a small service, akin to Ello or Peach, to being the most downloaded app in eighteen countries.


title: Vero (app)

text: In December 2020, Vero released its most significant update to date, Vero 2.0 which introduced new features including voice and video calls, game and app posts and bookmarks, and refinements to the UI.


title: Vero (app)

text: In October 2021, Vero introduced their Desktop app (beta) with multiple post options and a re-sizable multi-column feed.


title: Vero (app)

text: Vero's content feed resembles Instagram's although users can share a wider variety of content and the app has a chronological content feed whereas Facebook and Instagram's feeds are algorithm based. Vero's business plan is also distinct from similar social media apps. Whereas its competitors such as Facebook or Instagram make money from in-app advertising revenue and the sale of user data, Vero's business plan was to invite the first one million users to use the app for free then charge any subsequent users a subscription fee.


title: Vero (app)

text: The app was entirely funded by its founder and generated additional revenues by charging affiliate fees when someone buys a product they find on Vero. In an exclusive interview with Viralhare's Byron Lafayette, founder Ayman Harari said of the app "The thought pattern for Vero is to go to nature, the answers are in the real world not our screens or in the code."


title: Vero (app)

text: Vero was recognized at the 2021 Webbys, being named as an Honoree in the Best Visual Design - Aesthetic Category.


title: Vero (app)

text: Vero has faced some criticism over the wording of their manifesto, in particular, the statement "Vero only collects the data we believe is necessary to provide users with a great experience and to ensure the security of their accounts." Because this policy does not implicitly state that the app will not sell data on to third parties some users fear that the need to monetise the app through data might prove too tempting.


title: Vero (app)

text: Users have also complained about not being able to delete their accounts. While this was never the case, the option was hidden deep in the app's settings.


title: Vero (app)

text: Although Vero remains transparent about the app's Russian development team, they have been caught up in concerns about Russian interference on social media platforms. The app's founder Ayman Hariri was quick to dismiss the remarks as xenophobic and defend the nationality of his employees, stating in an interview with Time Magazine; "At the end of the day, where people are from is really not how anybody should judge anyone".


title: Vero (app)

text: Until 2013, Vero's founder Ayman Harari was deputy CEO and chairman of Saudi Oger, the Saudi Arabian construction company which collapsed in 2017, mired by controversies over the welfare and treatment of their employees. However, Hariri is quick to point out that he divested from the firm in 2014 and the worker's rights violations occurred after he had left the company.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate either body armour or vehicle armour.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: From the 1860s to 1950s, a major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armour carried on many warships and cause damage to their lightly-armoured interiors. From the 1920s onwards, armour-piercing weapons were required for anti-tank warfare.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: AP rounds smaller than 20 mm are intended for lightly-armoured targets such as body armour, bulletproof glass, and lightly-armoured vehicles.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: As tank armour improved during World War II, anti-vehicle rounds began to use a smaller but dense penetrating body within a larger shell, firing at very high muzzle velocity. Modern penetrators are long rods of dense material like tungsten or depleted uranium (DU) that further improve the terminal ballistics.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: The late 1850s saw the development of the ironclad warship, which carried wrought iron armour of considerable thickness. This armour was practically immune to both the round cast-iron cannonballs then in use and to the recently developed explosive shell.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: The first solution to this problem was effected by Major Sir W. Palliser, who, with the Palliser shot, invented a method of hardening the head of the pointed cast-iron shot. By casting the projectile point downwards and forming the head in an iron mold, the hot metal was suddenly chilled and became intensely "hard" (resistant to deformation through a Martensite phase transformation), while the remainder of the mold, being formed of sand, allowed the metal to cool slowly and the body of the shot to be made "tough" (resistant to shattering).


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: These chilled iron shots proved very effective against wrought iron armour but were not serviceable against compound and steel armour, which was first introduced in the 1880s. A new departure, therefore, had to be made, and forged steel rounds with points hardened by water took the place of the Palliser shot. At first, these forged-steel rounds were made of ordinary carbon steel, but as armour improved in quality, the projectiles followed suit.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: During the 1890s and subsequently, cemented steel armour became commonplace, initially only on the thicker armour of warships. To combat this, the projectile was formed of steel—forged or cast—containing both nickel and chromium. Another change was the introduction of a soft metal cap over the point of the shell – so called "Makarov tips" invented by Russian admiral Stepan Makarov. This "cap" increased penetration by cushioning some of the impact shock and preventing the armour-piercing point from being damaged before it struck the armour face, or the body of the shell from shattering. It could also help penetration from an oblique angle by keeping the point from deflecting away from the armour face.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: An armour-piercing shell must withstand the shock of punching through armour plating. Shells designed for this purpose have a greatly strengthened body with a specially hardened and shaped nose. One common addition to later shells is the use of a softer ring or cap of metal on the nose known as a penetrating cap, or armour-piercing cap. This lowers the initial shock of impact to prevent the rigid shell from shattering, as well as aiding the contact between the target armour and the nose of the penetrator to prevent the shell from bouncing off in glancing shots. Ideally, these caps have a blunt profile, which led to the use of a further thin aerodynamic cap to improve long-range ballistics. Armour-piercing shells may contain a small explosive charge known as a "bursting charge". Some smaller-calibre armour-piercing shells have an inert filling or an incendiary charge in place of the bursting charge.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing shells containing an explosive filling were initially termed "shell", distinguishing them from non-explosive "shot". This was largely a matter of British usage, relating to the 1877 invention of the first of the type, the Palliser shell with 1.5% high explosive (HE). By the start of World War II, armour-piercing shells with bursting charges were sometimes distinguished by the suffix "HE"; armour-piercing high explosive (APHE) was common in anti-tank shells of 75 mm calibre and larger, due to the similarity with the much larger naval armour piercing shells already in common use. As the war progressed, ordnance design evolved so that the bursting charges in APHE became ever smaller to non-existent, especially in smaller calibre shells, e.g. Panzergranate 39 with only 0.2% high-explosive filling.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: The primary shell types for modern anti-tank warfare are discarding-sabot kinetic energy penetrators, such as APDS. Full-calibre armour-piercing shells are no longer the primary method of conducting anti-tank warfare. They are still in use in artillery above 50 mm calibre, but the tendency is to use semi-armour-piercing high-explosive (SAPHE) shells, which have less anti-armour capability but far greater anti-materiel and anti-personnel effects. These still have ballistic caps, hardened bodies and base fuzes, but tend to have far thinner body material and much higher explosive contents (4–15%).


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Shot and shell used before and during World War I were generally cast from special chromium (stainless) steel that was melted in pots. They were forged into shape afterward and then thoroughly annealed, the core bored at the rear and the exterior turned up in a lathe. The projectiles were finished in a similar manner to others described above. The final, or tempering treatment, which gave the required hardness/toughness profile (differential hardening) to the projectile body, was a closely guarded secret.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: The rear cavity of these projectiles was capable of receiving a small bursting charge of about 2% of the weight of the complete projectile; when this is used, the projectile is called a shell, not a shot. The high-explosive filling of the shell, whether fuzed or unfuzed, had a tendency to explode on striking armour in excess of its ability to perforate.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: During World War II, projectiles used highly alloyed steels containing nickel-chromium-molybdenum, although in Germany, this had to be changed to a silicon-manganese-chromium-based alloy when those grades became scarce. The latter alloy, although able to be hardened to the same level, was more brittle and had a tendency to shatter on striking highly sloped armour. The shattered shot lowered penetration, or resulted in total penetration failure; for "armour-piercing high-explosive" (APHE) projectiles, this could result in premature detonation of the high-explosive filling. Advanced and precise methods of differentially hardening a projectile were developed during this period, especially by the German armament industry. The resulting projectiles change gradually from high hardness (low toughness) at the head to high toughness (low hardness) at the rear and were much less likely to fail on impact.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: APHE shells for tank guns, although used by most forces of this period, were not used by the British. The only British APHE projectile for tank use in this period was the "Shell AP, Mk1" for the 2 pdr anti-tank gun and this was dropped as it was found that the fuze tended to separate from the body during penetration. Even when the fuze did not separate and the system functioned correctly, damage to the interior was little different from the solid shot, and so did not warrant the additional time and cost of producing a shell version. They had been using APHE since the invention of the 1.5% high-explosive Palliser shell in the 1870s and 1880s, and understood the tradeoffs between reliability, damage, percentage of high explosive, and penetration, and deemed reliability and penetration to be most important for tank use. Naval APHE projectiles of this period, being much larger used a bursting charge of about 1–3% of the weight of the complete projectile, but in anti-tank use, the much smaller and higher velocity shells used only about 0.5% e.g. Panzergranate 39 with only 0.2% high-explosive filling. This was due to much higher armour penetration requirements for the size of shell (e.g. over 2.5 times calibre in anti-tank use compared to below 1 times calibre for naval warfare). Therefore, in most APHE shells put to anti-tank use the aim of the bursting charge was to aid the number of fragments produced by the shell after armour penetration, the energy of the fragments coming from the speed of the shell after being fired from a high velocity anti-tank gun, as opposed to its bursting charge. There were some notable exceptions to this, with naval calibre shells put to use as anti-concrete and anti-armour shells, albeit with a much reduced armour penetrating ability. The filling was detonated by a rear-mounted delay fuze. The explosive used in APHE projectiles needs to be highly insensitive to shock to prevent premature detonation. The US forces normally used the explosive Explosive D, otherwise known as ammonium picrate, for this purpose. Other combatant forces of the period used various explosives, suitably desensitized (usually by the use of waxes mixed with the explosive).


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: High-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) shells are a type of shaped charge used to defeat armoured vehicles. They are very efficient at defeating plain steel armour but less so against later composite and reactive armour. The effectiveness of such shells is independent of velocity, and hence the range: it is as effective at 1000 metres as at 100 metres. This is because HEAT shells do not lose penetrating ability over distance. The speed can even be zero in the case where a soldier places a magnetic mine onto a tank's armour plate. A HEAT charge is most effective when detonated at a certain, optimal distance in front of a target and HEAT shells are usually distinguished by a long, thin nose probe protruding in front of the rest of the shell and detonating it at a correct distance, e.g., PIAT bomb. HEAT shells are less effective when spun, as when fired from a rifled gun.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: HEAT shells were developed during World War II as a munition made of an explosive shaped charge that uses the Munroe effect to create a very high-velocity particle stream of metal in a state of superplasticity, and used to penetrate solid vehicle armour. HEAT rounds caused a revolution in anti-tank warfare when they were first introduced in the later part of World War II. One infantryman could effectively destroy any extant tank with a handheld weapon, thereby dramatically altering the nature of mobile operations. During World War II, weapons using HEAT warheads were known as having a "hollow charge" or "shaped charge" warhead.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Claims for priority of invention are difficult to resolve due to subsequent historic interpretations, secrecy, espionage, and international commercial interest. Shaped-charge warheads were promoted internationally by the Swiss inventor Henry Mohaupt, who exhibited the weapon before World War II. Before 1939, Mohaupt demonstrated his invention to British and French ordnance authorities. During the war, the French communicated Henry Mohaupt's technology to the U.S. Ordnance Department, who invited him to the US, where he worked as a consultant on the bazooka project. By mid-1940, Germany had introduced the first HEAT round to be fired by a gun, the 7.5 cm fired by the Kw.K.37 L/24 of the Panzer IV tank and the Stug III self-propelled gun (7.5 cm Gr.38 Hl/A, later editions B and C). In mid-1941, Germany started producing HEAT rifle grenades, first issued to paratroopers and by 1942 to regular army units. In 1943, the "Püppchen", "Panzerschreck" and "Panzerfaust" were introduced. The Panzerfaust and Panzerschreck or 'tank terror' gave the German infantryman the ability to destroy any tank on the battlefield from 50–150 m with relative ease of use and training, unlike the UK PIAT.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: The first British HEAT weapon to be developed and issued was a rifle grenade using a -inch (63.5 mm) cup launcher on the end of the barrel; the British No. 68 AT grenade issued to the British army in 1940. By 1943, the PIAT was developed; a combination of a HEAT warhead and a spigot mortar delivery system. While cumbersome, the weapon at last allowed British infantry to engage armour at range; the earlier magnetic hand-mines and grenades required them to approach suicidally close. During World War II, the British referred to the Munroe effect as the "cavity effect on explosives".


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing solid shot for cannons may be simple, or composite, solid projectiles but tend to also combine some form of incendiary capability with that of armour-penetration. The incendiary compound is normally contained between the cap and penetrating nose, within a hollow at the rear, or a combination of both. If the projectile also uses a tracer, the rear cavity is often used to house the tracer compound. For larger-calibre projectiles, the tracer may instead be contained within an extension of the rear sealing plug. Common abbreviations for solid (non-composite/hardcore) cannon-fired shot are; "AP", "AP-T", "API" and "API-T"; where "T" stands for "tracer" and "I" for "incendiary". More complex, composite projectiles containing explosives and other ballistic devices tend to be referred to as armour-piercing shells.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Early WWII-era uncapped armour-piercing projectiles fired from high-velocity guns were able to penetrate about twice their calibre at close range (100 m). At longer ranges (500–1,000 m), this dropped 1.5–1.1 calibres due to the poor ballistic shape and higher drag of the smaller-diameter early projectiles. In January 1942 a process was developed by Arthur E. Schnell for 20 mm and 37 mm armour piercing rounds to press bar steel under 500 tons of pressure that made more even "flow-lines" on the tapered nose of the projectile, which allowed the shell to follow a more direct nose first path to the armour target. Later in the conflict, APCBC fired at close range (100 m) from large-calibre, high-velocity guns (75–128 mm) were able to penetrate a much greater thickness of armour in relation to their calibre (2.5 times) and also a greater thickness (2–1.75 times) at longer ranges (1,500–2,000 m).


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: In an effort to gain better aerodynamics, AP rounds were given ballistic caps to reduce drag and improve impact velocities at medium to long range. The hollow ballistic cap would break away when the projectile hit the target. These rounds were classified as armour-piercing ballistic capped (APBC) rounds.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing, capped projectiles had been developed in the early 1900s, and were in service with both the British and German fleets during World War I. The shells generally consisted of a nickel steel body that contained the burster charge and was fitted with a hardened steel nose intended to penetrate heavy armour. Striking a hardened steel plate at high velocity imparted significant force to the projectile and standard armour-piercing shells had a tendency to shatter instead of penetrating, especially at oblique angles, so shell designers added a mild steel cap to the nose of the shells. The more flexible mild steel would deform on impact and reduce the shock transmitted to the projectile body. Shell design varied, with some fitted with hollow caps and others with solid ones.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Since the best-performance penetrating caps were not very aerodynamic, an additional ballistic cap was later fitted to reduce drag. The resulting rounds were classified as armour-piercing capped ballistic capped (APCBC). The hollow ballistic cap gave the rounds a sharper point which reduced drag and broke away on impact.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: An important armour-piercing development was the armour-piercing discarding sabot (APDS). An early version was developed by engineers working for the French Edgar Brandt company, and was fielded in two calibres (75 mm/57 mm for the 75 mm Mle1897/33 anti-tank gun, 37 mm/25 mm for several 37 mm gun types) just before the French-German armistice of 1940. The Edgar Brandt engineers, having been evacuated to the United Kingdom, joined ongoing APDS development efforts there, culminating in significant improvements to the concept and its realization. The APDS projectile type was further developed in the United Kingdom between 1941 and 1944 by L. Permutter and S. W. Coppock, two designers with the Armaments Research Department. In mid-1944 the APDS projectile was first introduced into service for the UK's QF 6-pdr anti-tank gun and later in September 1944 for the QF-17 pdr anti-tank gun. The idea was to use a stronger and denser penetrator material with smaller size and hence less drag, to allow increased impact velocity and armour penetration.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: The armour-piercing concept calls for more penetration capability than the target's armour thickness. The penetrator is a pointed mass of high-density material that is designed to retain its shape and carry the maximum possible amount of energy as deeply as possible into the target. Generally, the penetration capability of an armour-piercing round increases with the projectile's kinetic energy and also with concentration of that energy in a small area. Thus, an efficient means of achieving increased penetrating power is increased velocity for the projectile. However, projectile impact against armour at higher velocity causes greater levels of shock. Materials have characteristic maximum levels of shock capacity, beyond which they may shatter, or otherwise disintegrate. At relatively high impact velocities, steel is no longer an adequate material for armour-piercing rounds. Tungsten and tungsten alloys are suitable for use in even higher-velocity armour-piercing rounds, due to their very high shock tolerance and shatter resistance, and to their high melting and boiling temperatures. They also have very high density. Aircraft and tank rounds sometimes use a core of depleted uranium. Depleted-uranium penetrators have the advantage of being pyrophoric and self-sharpening on impact, resulting in intense heat and energy focused on a minimal area of the target's armour. Some rounds also use explosive or incendiary tips to aid in the penetration of thicker armour. High explosive incendiary/armour piercing ammunition combines a tungsten carbide penetrator with an incendiary and explosive tip.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Energy is concentrated by using a reduced-diameter tungsten shot, surrounded by a lightweight outer carrier, the "sabot" (a French word for a wooden shoe). This combination allows the firing of a smaller diameter (thus lower mass/aerodynamic resistance/penetration resistance) projectile with a larger area of expanding-propellant "push", thus a greater propelling force and resulting kinetic energy. Once outside the barrel, the sabot is stripped off by a combination of centrifugal force and aerodynamic force, giving the shot low drag in flight. For a given calibre, the use of APDS ammunition can effectively double the anti-tank performance of a gun.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: An armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) projectile uses the sabot principle with fin (drag) stabilization. A long, thin sub-projectile has increased sectional density and thus penetration potential. However, once a projectile has a length-to-diameter ratio greater than 10 (less for higher density projectiles), spin stabilization becomes ineffective. Instead, aerodynamic lift stabilization is used, by means of fins attached to the base of the sub-projectile, making it look like a large metal arrow.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Large calibre (105+ mm) APFSDS projectiles are usually fired from smoothbore (unrifled) barrels, as the fin-stabilization negates the need for spin-stabilization through rifling. Basic APFSDS projectiles can traditionally not be fired from rifled guns, as the immense spinning caused by the rifling damages and destroys the fins of the projectile, etc. This can however be solved by the use of "slipping driving bands" on the sabot (driving bands which rotates freely from the sabot). Such ammunition was introduced during the 1970s and 1980s for rifled high caliber tank guns and similar, such as the Western Royal Ordnance L7 and the Eastern D-10T. However, as such guns have been taken out of service since the early 2000s onwards, rifled APFSDS mainly exist for small to medium caliber (<60 mm) weapon systems, as such mainly fire conventional full-caliber ammunition and thus need rifling.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: APFSDS projectiles are usually made from high-density metal alloys, such as tungsten heavy alloys (WHA) or depleted uranium (DU); maraging steel was used for some early Soviet projectiles. DU alloys are cheaper and have better penetration than others, as they are denser and self-sharpening. Uranium is also pyrophoric and may become opportunistically incendiary, especially as the round shears past the armour exposing non-oxidized metal, but both the metal's fragments and dust contaminate the battlefield with toxic hazards. The less toxic WHAs are preferred in most countries except the US and Russia.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing, composite rigid (APCR) in British nomenclature, high-velocity armour-piercing (HVAP) in US nomenclature, and 'hard core ammunition' () in German nomenclature, is a projectile which has a core of high-density hard material, such as tungsten carbide, surrounded by a full-bore shell of a lighter material (e.g., an aluminium alloy). However, the low sectional density of the APCR resulted in high aerodynamic drag. Tungsten compounds such as tungsten carbide were used in small quantities of inhomogeneous and discarded sabot round, but that element was in short supply in most places. Most APCR projectiles are shaped like the standard APCBC round (although some of the German "Pzgr." 40 and some Soviet designs resemble a stubby arrow), but the projectile is lighter: up to half the weight of a standard AP round of the same calibre. The lighter weight allows a higher muzzle velocity. The kinetic energy of the round is concentrated in the core and hence on a smaller impact area, improving the penetration of the target armour. To prevent shattering on impact, a shock-buffering cap is placed between the core and the outer ballistic shell as with APC rounds. However, because the round is lighter but still the same overall size it has poorer ballistic qualities, and loses velocity and accuracy at longer ranges. The APCR was superseded by the APDS, which dispensed with the outer light alloy shell once the round had left the barrel. The concept of a heavy, small-diameter penetrator encased in light metal was later employed in small-arms armour-piercing incendiary and HEIAP rounds.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing, composite non-rigid (APCNR) in British nomenclature, or 'flange projectile' () in Swedish nomenclature, is a sub-calibre projectile used in squeeze bore weapons (also known as "tapered bore" weapons) using the Gerlich principle. This projectile design is based on the same design as the APCR - a high-density core within a shell of soft iron or another alloy - but it is fired by a gun with a tapered barrel, either a taper in a fixed barrel or a final added section. The projectile is initially full-bore, but the outer shell is deformed as it passes through the taper. Flanges or studs are swaged down in the tapered section so that as it leaves the muzzle the projectile has a smaller overall cross-section. This gives it better flight characteristics with a higher sectional density, and the projectile retains velocity better at longer ranges than an undeformed shell of the same weight. As with the APCR, the kinetic energy of the round is concentrated at the core of impact. The initial velocity of the round is greatly increased by the decrease of barrel cross-sectional area toward the muzzle, resulting in a commensurate increase in velocity of the expanding propellant gases.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: The Germans deployed their initial design as a light anti-tank weapon, "2,8 cm schwere Panzerbüchse 41", early in World War II, and followed by the 4.2 cm Pak 41 and 7.5 cm Pak 41. Although HE rounds were also put into service, they weighed only 93 grams and had low effectiveness. The German taper was a fixed part of the barrel.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: In contrast, the British used the Littlejohn squeeze-bore adaptor, which could be attached or removed as necessary. The adaptor extended the usefulness of armoured cars and light tanks, which could not be upgraded with any gun larger than the QF 2 pdr. Although a full range of shells and shot could be used, changing an adaptor during a battle is usually impractical.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing bombs dropped by aircraft were used during World War II against capital and other armoured ships. Among the bombs used by the Imperial Japanese Navy in the attack on Pearl Harbor were armour-piercing bombs, modified from naval shells, which succeeded in sinking the battleship . The "Luftwaffe"'s PC 1400 armour-piercing bomb and the derived Fritz X precision-guided bomb were able to penetrate of armour. The "Luftwaffe" also developed a series of bombs propelled by rockets to assist in penetrating the armour of ships and similar targets.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Armour-piercing rifle and pistol cartridges are usually built around a penetrator of hardened steel, tungsten, or tungsten carbide, and such cartridges are often called 'hard-core bullets'. Rifle armour-piercing ammunition generally carries its hardened penetrator within a copper or cupronickel jacket, similar to the jacket which would surround lead in a conventional projectile. Upon impact on a hard target, the copper case is destroyed, but the penetrator continues its motion and penetrates the target. Armour-piercing ammunition for pistols has also been developed and uses a design similar to the rifle ammunition. Some small ammunition, such as the FN 5.7mm round, is inherently capable at piercing armour, being of a small calibre and very high velocity. The entire projectile is not normally made of the same material as the penetrator because the physical characteristics that make a good penetrator (i.e. extremely tough, hard metal) make the material equally harmful to the barrel of the gun firing the cartridge.


title: Armour-piercing ammunition

text: Most modern active protection systems (APS) are unlikely to be able to defeat full-calibre AP rounds fired from a large-calibre anti-tank gun, because of the high mass of the shot, its rigidity, short overall length, and thick body. The APS uses fragmentation warheads or projected plates, and both are designed to defeat the two most common anti-armour projectiles in use today: HEAT and kinetic energy penetrator. Defeating HEAT projectiles can occur by damaging or detonating their explosive filling, or by damaging a shaped charge liner or fuzing system. Defeating kinetic energy projectiles can occur by inducing changes in yaw or pitch or by fracturing the rod.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Natural catastrophe in India, many of them related to the climate of India, cause massive losses of life and property. Droughts, flash floods, cyclones, avalanches, landslides brought by torrential rains, and snowstorms pose the greatest threats. A natural disaster might be caused by earthquakes, flooding, volcanic eruption, landslides, hurricanes etc. In order to be classified as a disaster, it will need to have a profound environmental effect and/or human loss and frequently incurs a financial loss. Other dangers include frequent summer dust storms, which usually track from north to south; they cause extensive property damage in North India and deposit large amounts of dust and dirt from arid regions. Hail is also common in parts of India, causing severe damage to standing crops such as rice and wheat and many more "crops."


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Landslides are very common in the Lower Himalayas. The young age of the region's hills results in rock formations, which are susceptible to slippages. Rising population and development pressures, particularly from logging and tourism, cause deforestation. The result is denuded hillsides which exacerbate the severity of landslides; since tree, cover impedes the downhill flow of water. Parts of the Western Ghats also suffer from low-intensity landslides. Avalanches occurrences are common in Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, and Sikkim etc. Landslides in India are also highly dangerous as many Indian families and farmers reside in the hills or mountains.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Floods are the most common natural disaster in India. The heavy southwest monsoon rains cause the Brahmaputra and other rivers to distend their banks, often flooding surrounding areas. Though they provide rice paddy farmers with a largely dependable source of natural irrigation and fertilisation, the floods can kill thousands and displace millions. Excess, erratic, or untimely monsoon rainfall may also wash away or otherwise ruin crops. Almost all of India is flood-prone, and extremely precipitation events, such as flash floods and torrential rains, have become increasingly common in central India over the past several decades, coinciding with rising temperatures. Meanwhile, the annual precipitation totals have shown a gradual decline, due to a weakening monsoon circulation as a result of the rapid warming in the Indian Ocean and a reduced land-sea temperature difference. This means that there are more extreme rainfall events intermittent with longer dry spells over central India in the recent decades.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: The Intertropical Convergence Zone may affect thousands of Indians living in the coastal regions. Tropical cyclogenesis is particularly common in the northern reaches of the Indian Ocean in and around the Bay of Bengal. Cyclones bring with them heavy rains, storm surges, and winds that often cut affected areas off from relief and supplies. In the North Indian Ocean Basin, the cyclone season runs from April to December, with peak activity between May and November. Each year, an average of eight storms with sustained wind speeds greater than form; of these, two strengthen into true tropical cyclones, which have sustained gusts greater than . On average, a major (Category 3 or higher) cyclone develops every other year.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: During summer, the Bay of Bengal is subject to intense heating, giving rise to humid and unstable air masses that produce cyclones. Many powerful cyclones, including the 1737 Calcutta cyclone, the 1970 Bhola cyclone, the 1991 Bangladesh cyclone, the 1999 Odisha cyclone, and 2019s Cyclone Fani in Odisha and Cyclone Vayu in Gujarat, have led to widespread devastation along parts of the eastern coast of India and neighboring Bangladesh. Widespread death and property destruction are reported every year in exposed Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal. India's western coast, bordering the more placid Arabian Sea, experiences cyclones only rarely; these mainly strike Gujarat and, less frequently, Kerala and sometimes Odisha.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: In terms of damage and loss of life, the 1999 Odisha cyclone, a super cyclone that struck Odisha on 29 October 1999, was the worst in more than a quarter-century. With peak winds of , it was the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. Almost two million people were left homeless; another 20 million people's lives were disrupted by the cyclone. Officially, 9,803 people died from the storm; unofficial estimates place the death toll at over 10,100.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: In terms of damage and asset destruction, Cyclone Amphan, a super cyclone that struck West Bengal, Odisha and Bangladesh on 20 May 2020 is, as of that date, the worst in India in the 21st century. With peak winds of to , it was the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. Almost 5 million (50 lakh) people are left homeless in West Bengal, Odisha and Bangladesh ; another 10 million (1 crore) people's lives were disrupted by the cyclone. Officially, 128 people died from the storm. Official damage and asset destruction estimate is 13.40 to 13.69 billion US Dollars ; it is the costliest and most damaging cyclone ever to occur in the Bay of Bengal.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: The Indian meteorological department has declared that water cycle will be more intense, with higher annual average rainfall as well increased drought in future years. A 20% rise in monsoon over most states is also predicted. A 2 °C rise in global average temperature will make Indian monsoon highly unpredictable. At 4 °C an extremely wet monsoon which currently has a 1 in 100 year's chance will occur in every 10 years by 2100. Extremes in maximum and minimum temperatures and precipitation will increase particularly over western coast and central and north-east India.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: The per capita availability of freshwater in India is expected to drop below 1000 cubic meters by 2025 because of population growth and climate change. River basins of Cauvery, Penna, Mahi, Sabarmati, Tapi, Luni and few others are already water scarce. Krishna and Subarnarekha may become so by 2025. High population density, coastal flooding and saltwater intrusion and exposure to storm surges makes Ganga, Godavari, Krishna and Mahanadi coastal river deltas "hotspots" of climate change vulnerability.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Glaciers are the main source of water for the Himalayan Rivers such as Ganga, Brahmaputra and Indus. 67% of Himalayan glaciers have receded in the past decade and continue to diminish with increasing rates. The Ganga and the Indus are likely to become water scarce by 2025.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Since 1962, the overall glacier area has reduced by 21% from 2077 km to 1628 km. This will lead to water shortages becoming acuter with time and may endanger food security and energy generation.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Rise in sea temperature and sea level leads to loss of marine ecosystems and biodiversity, salination, erosion and flooding and also increases occurrence and intensity of storms along entire shoreline. Climate Change impacts are already observed in submergence of coastal lands in the Sundarbans, loss of wetlands and of coral reefs by bleaching, and an estimated sea level rise of 1.06 - 1.75 mm/year.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Low-end scenarios estimate sea levels in Asia will be at least 40  cm higher by 2100. The IPCC calculates that it would expose 13–94 million people to flooding, with about 60% of this total in South Asia. A sea-level rise of 100 cm would inundate 5,763 cubic km of India's landmass. It will severely affect populations in megacities like Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai due to land submergence and extreme weather events.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Increase in sea surface temperature increases frequency, intensity, scale and destructive power of tropical cyclones.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: 500Mha land in the Asia Pacific region is already experiencing land degradation. The summers have already become more intense in India with some regions regularly reporting temperatures around 47 °C. In the last four years, India has seen as many as over 4,620 deaths caused by heat waves, according to data published by the Ministry of Earth Sciences, Government of India.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Indian Meteorological Department declared that the storm that hit northern India in May 2018 was severe and their frequency could increase due to global warming. This is due to an increase in the intensity of the wind and dryness of the soil which increases the intensity of dust storms. The rise in land surface temperature will be more pronounced in the northern part of India. A recent study reports that summers could last up to 8 months in the Gangetic plain by 2070 if the global temperature increases beyond 2 °C.


title: Natural disasters in India

text: Increasingly severe and frequent Heat waves may substantially increase mortality and death incidences. Such warming conditions along with the water scarcities aggravates the impacts of droughts.


title: Jump Up! (Elton John album)

text: Jump Up! is the sixteenth studio album by English musician Elton John. It was released in 1982 by The Rocket Record Company except in the US and Canada, where it was released by Geffen Records.


title: Jump Up! (Elton John album)

text: The album includes "Empty Garden (Hey Hey Johnny)", a tribute to John Lennon (who had also signed to Geffen for the release of "Double Fantasy", which is now owned by EMI). This is one of the first few LPs that showcases John singing in a deeper voice, as can be heard in songs such as "Blue Eyes", "Princess", "Ball and Chain" and "Spiteful Child". "Legal Boys" was written by John and Tim Rice, who later wrote lyrics for "The Lion King" and "The Road to El Dorado". This is the last studio album in which James Newton Howard played keyboards (although he would play keyboards with John again on the soundtrack of "Gnomeo & Juliet" almost 30 years later).


title: Jump Up! (Elton John album)

text: In a 2010 Sirius radio special, John's lyricist, Bernie Taupin, talking about "Jump Up!", said it was "one of our worst albums". He added, "It's a terrible, awful, disposable album, but it had 'Empty Garden' on it, so it's worth it for that one song." In the United States, it was certified gold by the RIAA in November 1982. The album's inner sleeve artwork shows John's lifelong friend Vance Buck and Gary Osborne's then 5-year-old son Luke.


title: Jump Up! (Elton John album)

text: The album was recorded and mixed digitally at AIR Studios in Montserrat, and Pathe Marconi Studios in France.


title: Jump Up! (Elton John album)

text: Outtakes from "Jump Up!" include "At This Time in My Life", "Desperation Train", "I'm Not Very Well", "Jerry's Law", "Moral Majority", "Waking Up in Europe" and "The Ace of Hearts and the Jack of Spades". They all have yet to see circulation, either on bootlegs or officially.


title: Jump Up! (Elton John album)

text: However, "Desperation Train" was later recorded and released by John's lyricist Bernie Taupin on his 1987 album, "Tribe", with a new melody written by Martin Page.


title: Tomb of I'timād-ud-Daulah

text: Tomb of I'timād-ud-Daulah ("I'timād-ud-Daulah Maqbara") is a Mughal mausoleum in the city of Agra in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. Often described as a "jewel box", sometimes called the "Bachcha Taj" or the "Baby Taj", the tomb of I'timād-ud-Daulah is often regarded as a draft of the Taj Mahal.


title: Tomb of I'timād-ud-Daulah

text: Along with the main building, the structure consists of numerous outbuildings and gardens. The tomb, built between 1622 and 1628, represents a transition between the first phase of monumental Mughal architecture – primarily built from red sandstone with marble decorations, as in Humayun's Tomb in Delhi and Akbar's tomb in Sikandra – to its second phase, based on white marble and "pietra dura" inlay, most elegantly realized in the Taj Mahal.