title: Mission to Mars

text: Mark Halverson, writing in "Sacramento News & Review", said "My inner child felt cheated that the film leapt from an astronaut barbecue to Mars without so much as a rocket launch and that the best special effect (a sandstorm nod to "The Mummy") was unveiled in the first 20 minutes." He added, "This visually alluring mess also includes gobs of cheesy dialogue and a hokey-looking alien." Left unimpressed, Bob Graham in the "San Francisco Chronicle", wrote that the film "meanders into space-mystico mumbo jumbo. We're supposed to share the characters' awe at the wonder of the universe, but more likely the audience will wonder whatever were the filmmakers thinking." Graham characterized "Mission to Mars" as "a very mixed bag: rhapsodic cinematography, several genuine shocks amid a suffocating air of gooeyness, impressive visual effects – even if some seem to exist in a vacuum – and an absolutely loony conclusion." Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times", said the film "contains conversations that drag on beyond all reason. It is quiet when quiet is not called for. It contains actions that deny common sense. And for long stretches the characters speak nothing but boilerplate". He believed that "It misses too many of its marks. But it has extraordinary things in it. It's as if the director, the gifted Brian De Palma, rises to the occasions but the screenplay gives him nothing much to do in between them." The film however, was not without its supporters. Michael Wilmington of the "NY Daily News", exclaimed the film was "One of the most gorgeous science-fiction movies ever - and probably also one of the most realistic in detail and scientific extrapolation". Richard Corliss of "TIME" commented that "This isn't "", by a long shot, but for 2000, it'll do nicely". William Arnold of the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer", added to the positive sentiment by saying "Here and there an inspired shot makes the film come alive, and at least three of its sequences had me positioned well on the edge of my seat."


title: Mission to Mars

text: Writing for "The Austin Chronicle", Marc Savlov noted that the ""Mission to Mars" falls prey to an overwhelming sense of a man trying to please everyone all the time." He went further, that "De Palma has reached out to embrace a larger audience and seemingly sacrificed those traits that drew us to him in the first place: his singular vision, his clinical stylistics, and the palpable sense of dread that his best films engender." In a mixed review, James Berardinelli writing for "ReelViews", called the film "Ineptly directed, badly acted, and scripted with an eye towards stupidity and incoherence, the film is worthwhile only to those who are in desperate need of a nap. And, as is often the case when a big budget, high profile motion picture self-destructs, this one does so in spectacular fashion." Describing a mixed opinion, J. Hoberman of "The Village Voice" said the film encompassed "a touchy-feely esprit that's predicated on equal parts Buck Rogers bravado and backyard barbecue, the whole burnt burger drenched in Ennio Morricone's elegiac western-style score".


title: Mission to Mars

text: Elvis Mitchell of "The New York Times", stated that the "visual design is spectacular, and the scenes on the Martian surface look so real that the picture could have been made on location. A holographic sequence detailing the evolutionary link between Earth and Mars is staggeringly well staged." However, he ultimately came to the conclusion that there wasn't "an original moment in the entire movie, and the score is so repetitive that it could have been downloaded directly from "EnnioMorricone.com"." Similarly, Todd McCarthy wrote in "Variety" that the film's "dramatic package that it arrives in is so flimsy, unconvincing and poorly wrought that it's impossible to be swept away by the illustrated version of creationism on offer." He did note "Pictorially, the film is smooth and pristine looking. De Palma and his frequent cinematographer Stephen H. Burum go for their patented swooping and twisting camera moves whenever possible, and there are some very nice ones onboard the recovery ship." Lisa Schwarzbaum writing for "Entertainment Weekly" deduced that ""Mission to Mars" wants us to think about lofty things: the bravery of explorers, the ingenuity of our nation's space program, the humility required to comprehend the possibility that we earthlings are not the be-all and end-all of creation. But De Palma's film is too embarrassed, too jittery and self-conscious to hush up and pay attention."


title: Mission to Mars

text: The film premiered in cinemas on March 10, 2000, in wide release throughout the U.S. During its opening weekend, the film opened in first place grossing $22,855,247 in business showing at 3,054 locations. The film "The Ninth Gate" came in second place during that weekend grossing $6,622,518. The film's revenue dropped by 50% in its second week of release, earning $11,385,709. For that particular weekend, the film fell to second place screening in 3,060 theaters. "Erin Brockovich" unseated "Mission to Mars" to open in first place grossing $28,138,465 in box office revenue. During its final weekend in release, it opened in a distant 72nd place with $17,467 in revenue. The film went on to top out domestically at $60,883,407 in total ticket sales through an 18-week theatrical run. The film took in an additional $50,100,000 in business through international release to top out at a combined $110,983,407 in gross revenue. The film ranked 41st at the box office for 2000.


title: Mission to Mars

text: "Mission on Mars" was released on VHS and DVD on September 12, 2000. The film was later released on Blu-ray in France on September 22, 2009.


title: Horizon Line

text: Horizon Line is a 2020 English-language Swedish adventure thriller film directed by Mikael Marcimain and starring Alexander Dreymon, Allison Williams and Keith David. The film concentrates on a pair that desperately struggles to survive, flying a small plane over the Indian Ocean after the pilot suffered a fatal heart attack.


title: Horizon Line

text: "Horizon Line" was released on 6 November 2020 in Sweden by SF Studios, and in the United States on 12 January 2021 by STXfilms.


title: Horizon Line

text: Sara is at an island bar and is getting ready to head home. She is with a boyfriend and he asks her for one more drink before she goes. He orders, then heads out of the bar (presumably to the bathroom), and she leaves, as she has stated that she "hates goodbyes."


title: Horizon Line

text: Visiting Mauritius for her friend's wedding, Sara hooks up with ex-boyfriend Jackson, misses the last boat to the wedding venue on Rodrigues, and hitches a ride on a small plane piloted by her friend, Freddy Wyman, who is also going to the wedding. She is surprised when it turns out that Jackson has also arranged to fly with Freddy to the wedding.


title: Horizon Line

text: Freddy invites Sara to the co-pilot seat while Jackson sleeps. During the flight Freddy has a heart attack and passes away, sending the plane into freefall. Sara and Jackson recover, but the autopilot is damaged, and they are faced with the fact that Sara, who Freddy has taught some basics, will need to fly the plane to get them to safety.


title: Horizon Line

text: They manage to contact Samuel, a local air traffic controller, on the shortwave radio, and he attempts to guide them to safety, but they have to fly through a storm first. They manage to get through the storm but not before they damage their compass. The plane is also starting to lose fuel at an alarming rate. Jackson volunteers to climb out of the plane to try to patch a fuel line. While successful, he badly breaks his arm. The pair decides to shed weight, including the lifeless body of Freddy, to save fuel. Sara realizes they have several bottles of rum that they can use as extra fuel, and she attempts to manually refuel the plane by climbing out the window.


title: Horizon Line

text: Sara manages the temporary refueling and climbs back into the plane. They try to raise Samuel, but the radio is silent. As the plane runs out of fuel, they spot a small island and attempt to glide the stricken plane to the island. The plane crashes into the sea and flips. Sara rescues Jackson, who got stuck at the wing of the submerged plane, and both barely escape and swim to the barren island.


title: Horizon Line

text: They make it to the island only to discover that it is just a sandbar that will shortly disappear as the tide rises. As the sandbar disappears, they stay afloat, but Jackson, sensing he is sure to die, offers Sara his life vest. Sara declines, telling him they are a team. Jackson professes his love for Sara as they sense the end is near, but just then a fishing vessel that heard their radio transmission arrives to rescue them.


title: Horizon Line

text: Jon Ekstrand and Carl-Johan Sevedag has composed the film score. Sony Classical has released the soundtrack featuring the composers score and an original song by Silverberg and Daniella Mason.


title: Horizon Line

text: The film was released in theaters in Sweden on 6 November 2020 and in the United States on video on demand on 12 January 2021, followed by a release on Epix later in the year. The film was released in Taiwan on 31 December 2020, in South Korea on 10 February 2021, and in Japan under the title "The story of how I flew a Cessna with my ex-boyfriend and the pilot died" on 6 August 2021. Also released in Indonesia on Wednesday, 7 December 2022.


title: Horizon Line

text: Jeffrey M. Anderson of Common Sense Media rated the film 2 stars out of 5 and wrote: "It has a decent premise and is compact and nicely paced, but this trapped-in-a-plane thriller eventually nose-dives due to uninteresting characters, lack of suspense, and too much preposterousness." John Serba of "Decider" wrote: ""Horizon Line" maintains tension for the final hour, and that’s about it. Don’t expect more. A modest goal, mostly met."


title: Manorialism

text: Manorialism, also known as the manor system or manorial system, was the method of land ownership (or "tenure") in parts of Europe, notably France and later England, during the Middle Ages. Its defining features included a large, sometimes fortified manor house in which the lord of the manor and his dependents lived and administered a rural estate, and a population of labourers who worked the surrounding land to support themselves and the lord. These labourers fulfilled their obligations with labour time or in-kind produce at first, and later by cash payment as commercial activity increased. Manorialism is sometimes included as part of the feudal system.


title: Manorialism

text: Manorialism originated in the Roman villa system of the Late Roman Empire, and was widely practiced in medieval western Europe and parts of central Europe. An essential element of feudal society, manorialism was slowly replaced by the advent of a money-based market economy and new forms of agrarian contract.


title: Manorialism

text: In examining the origins of the monastic cloister, Walter Horn found that "as a manorial entity the Carolingian monastery ... differed little from the fabric of a feudal estate, save that the corporate community of men for whose sustenance this organisation was maintained consisted of monks who served God in chant and spent much of their time in reading and writing."


title: Manorialism

text: Manorialism faded away slowly and piecemeal, along with its most vivid feature in the landscape, the open field system. It outlasted serfdom in the sense that it continued with freehold labourers. As an economic system, it outlasted feudalism, according to Andrew Jones, because "it could maintain a warrior, but it could equally well maintain a capitalist landlord. It could be self-sufficient, yield produce for the market, or it could yield a money rent." The last feudal dues in France were abolished at the French Revolution. In parts of eastern Germany, the "Rittergut" manors of Junkers remained until World War II.


title: Manorialism

text: The term is most often used with reference to medieval Western Europe. Antecedents of the system can be traced to the rural economy of the later Roman Empire (Dominate). With a declining birthrate and population, labour was the key factor of production. Successive administrations tried to stabilise the imperial economy by freezing the social structure into place: sons were to succeed their fathers in their trade, councilors were forbidden to resign, and "coloni", the cultivators of land, were not to move from the land they were attached to. The workers of the land were on their way to becoming serfs.


title: Manorialism

text: Several factors conspired to merge the status of former slaves and former free farmers into a dependent class of such "coloni": it was possible to be described as "servus et colonus", "both slave and "colonus"". The Laws of Constantine I around 325 both reinforced the semi-servile status of the "coloni" and limited their rights to sue in the courts; the "Codex Theodosianus" promulgated under Theodosius II extended these restrictions. The legal status of "adscripti", "bound to the soil", contrasted with barbarian "foederati", who were permitted to settle within the imperial boundaries, remaining subject to their own traditional law.


title: Manorialism

text: As the Germanic kingdoms succeeded Roman authority in the West in the fifth century, Roman landlords were often simply replaced by Germanic ones, with little change to the underlying situation or displacement of populations.


title: Manorialism

text: The process of rural self-sufficiency was given an abrupt boost in the eighth century, when normal trade in the Mediterranean Sea was disrupted. The thesis put forward by Belgian historian Henri Pirenne supposes that the Arab conquests forced the medieval economy into even greater ruralisation and gave rise to the classic feudal pattern of varying degrees of servile peasantry underpinning a hierarchy of localised power centers.


title: Manorialism

text: The word derives from traditional inherited divisions of the countryside, reassigned as local jurisdictions known as manors or seigneuries; each manor being subject to a lord (French "seigneur"), usually holding his position in return for undertakings offered to a higher lord (see Feudalism). The lord held a manorial court, governed by public law and local custom. Not all territorial seigneurs were secular; bishops and abbots also held lands that entailed similar obligations.By extension, the word "manor" is sometimes used in England as a slang term for any home area or territory in which authority is held, often in a police or criminal context.


title: Manorialism

text: In the generic plan of a medieval manor from "Shepherd's Historical Atlas", the strips of individually worked land in the open field system are immediately apparent. In this plan, the manor house is set slightly apart from the village, but equally often the village grew up around the forecourt of the manor, formerly walled, while the manor lands stretched away outside, as still may be seen at Petworth House. As concerns for privacy increased in the 18th century, manor houses were often located a farther distance from the village. For example, when a grand new house was required by the new owner of Harlaxton Manor, Lincolnshire, in the 1830s, the site of the existing manor house at the edge of its village was abandoned for a new one, isolated in its park, with the village out of view.


title: Manorialism

text: In an agrarian society, the conditions of land tenure underlie all social or economic factors. There were two legal systems of pre-manorial landholding. One, the most common, was the system of holding land ""allodially"" in full outright ownership. The other was a use of "precaria" or benefices, in which land was held conditionally (the root of the English word "precarious").


title: Manorialism

text: To these two systems, the Carolingian monarchs added a third, the "aprisio", which linked manorialism with feudalism. The "aprisio" made its first appearance in Charlemagne's province of Septimania in the south of France, when Charlemagne had to settle the Visigothic refugees who had fled with his retreating forces after the failure of his Zaragoza expedition of 778. He solved this problem by allotting "desert" tracts of uncultivated land belonging to the royal "fisc" under direct control of the emperor. These holdings "aprisio" entailed specific conditions. The earliest specific "aprisio" grant that has been identified was at Fontjoncouse, near Narbonne (see Lewis, links). In former Roman settlements, a system of villas, dating from Late Antiquity, was inherited by the medieval world.


title: Manorialism

text: The possessor of a seigneurie bears the title of "Lord". He can be an individual, in the vast majority of cases a national of the nobility or of the Bourgeoisie, but also a judicial person most often an ecclesiastical institution such as an abbey, a cathedral or canonical chapter or a military order. The power of the lord was exercised through various intermediaries, the most important of which was the bailiff. The sovereign can also be a lord; the seigneuries he owns form the royal domain.


title: Manorialism

text: The title of lord is also granted, especially in modern times, to individuals holding noble fiefdoms which are not for all that seigneuries. These "lords" are sometimes called sieurs, equivalent terms in medieval times.


title: Manorialism

text: The lord is the direct or prominent owner of the land assets of his lordship. The notion of absolute ownership over a common good cannot be applied, because there are also others than the main user who have rights over these goods. We distinguish in the land lordship two sets the reserves which is the set of goods of which the lord reserves the direct exploitation and tenant-in-chief, property whose exploitation is entrusted to a tenant against payment of a royalty, most often called cens and services such as Corvée. The distribution between reserve and tenure varies depending on the period and region.


title: Manorialism

text: Additional sources of income for the lord included charges for use of his mill, bakery or wine-press, or for the right to hunt or to let pigs feed in his woodland, as well as court revenues and single payments on each change of tenant. On the other side of the account, manorial administration involved significant expenses, perhaps a reason why smaller manors tended to rely less on villein tenure.


title: Manorialism

text: Dependent holdings were held nominally by arrangement of lord and tenant, but tenure became in practice almost universally hereditary, with a payment made to the lord on each succession of another member of the family. Villein land could not be abandoned, at least until demographic and economic circumstances made flight a viable proposition; nor could they be passed to a third party without the lord's permission, and the customary payment.


title: Manorialism

text: Although not free, villeins were by no means in the same position as slaves: they enjoyed legal rights, subject to local custom, and had recourse to the law subject to court charges, which were an additional source of manorial income. Sub-letting of villein holdings was common, and labour on the demesne might be commuted into an additional money payment, as happened increasingly from the 13th century.


title: Manorialism

text: Land which was neither let to tenants nor formed part of demesne lands was known as "manorial waste"; typically, this included hedges, verges, etc. Common land where all members of the community had right of passage was known as "lord's waste". Part of the demesne land of the manor which being uncultivated was termed the Lord's Waste and served for public roads and for common pasture to the lord and his tenants. In many settlements during the early modern period, illegal building was carried out on lord's waste land by squatters who would then plead their case to remain with local support. An example of a lord's waste settlement, where the main centres grew up in this way, is the village of Bredfield in Suffolk. Lord's waste continues to be a source of rights and responsibilities issues in places such as Henley-in-Arden, Warwickshire.


title: Manorialism

text: Tenants owned land on the manor under one of several legal agreements: freehold, copyhold, customary freehold and leasehold.


title: Manorialism

text: Like feudalism which, together with manorialism, formed the legal and organisational framework of feudal society, manorial structures were not uniform or coordinated. In the later Middle Ages, areas of incomplete or non-existent manorialisation persisted while the manorial economy underwent substantial development with changing economic conditions.


title: Manorialism

text: Not all manors contained all three classes of land. Typically, demesne accounted for roughly a third of the arable area, and villein holdings rather more; but some manors consisted solely of demesne, others solely of peasant holdings. The proportion of unfree and free tenures could likewise vary greatly, with more or less reliance on wage labour for agricultural work on the demesne.


title: Manorialism

text: The proportion of the cultivated area in demesne tended to be greater in smaller manors, while the share of villein land was greater in large manors, providing the lord of the latter with a larger supply of obligatory labour for demesne work. The proportion of free tenements was generally less variable, but tended to be somewhat greater on the smaller manors.


title: Manorialism

text: Manors varied similarly in their geographical arrangement: most did not coincide with a single village, but rather consisted of parts of two or more villages, most of the latter containing also parts of at least one other manor. This situation sometimes led to replacement by cash payments or their equivalents in kind of the demesne labour obligations of those peasants living furthest from the lord's estate.


title: Manorialism

text: As with peasant plots, the demesne was not a single territorial unit, but consisted rather of a central house with neighbouring land and estate buildings, plus strips dispersed through the manor alongside free and villein ones: in addition, the lord might lease free tenements belonging to neighbouring manors, as well as holding other manors some distance away to provide a greater range of produce.


title: Manorialism

text: Nor were manors held necessarily by lay lords rendering military service (or again, cash in lieu) to their superior: a substantial share (estimated by value at 17% in England in 1086) belonged directly to the king, and a greater proportion (rather more than a quarter) were held by bishoprics and monasteries. Ecclesiastical manors tended to be larger, with a significantly greater villein area than neighbouring lay manors.


title: Manorialism

text: The effect of circumstances on manorial economy is complex and at times contradictory: upland conditions tended to preserve peasant freedoms (livestock husbandry in particular being less labour-intensive and therefore less demanding of villein services); on the other hand, some upland areas of Europe showed some of the most oppressive manorial conditions, while lowland eastern England is credited with an exceptionally large free peasantry, in part a legacy of Scandinavian settlement.


title: Manorialism

text: Similarly, the spread of money economy stimulated the replacement of labour services by money payments, but the growth of the money supply and resulting inflation after 1170 initially led nobles to take back leased estates and to re-impose labour dues as the value of fixed cash payments declined in real terms.


title: Manorialism

text: The last feudal dues in France were abolished at the French Revolution. In parts of eastern Germany, the "Rittergut" manors of Junkers remained until World War II. In Quebec, the last feudal rents were paid in 1970 under the modified provisions of the "Seigniorial Dues Abolition Act" of 1935.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The Nissan Xterra is a truck-based compact SUV manufactured and marketed by Nissan from 1999–2015 across two generations; the first (1999–2004) sharing a platform as well as front bumper, hood, A-pillar, windshield and front doors with the Nissan Frontier pickup – and the second (2005–2015) also sharing its platform with the Frontier.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: While the two Xterra generations differed significantly, both prioritized ruggedness and affordability over luxury and used body-on-frame construction along with underbody skid plates. Both generations also used a two-box design with c-pillar-mounted rear door handles, asymmetrical rear window, tailgate bump-out for a first aid kit accessible from inside – and a prominent two-tiered roof enabling stadium seating in the second row. The stepped roof accommodated a lower, front roof rack with a removable gear basket and a more conventional roof rack at the rear, upper roof.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: Nissan licensed the "Xterra" name from the XTERRA off-road triathlon race series and manufactured the SUV at Nissan's Smyrna Assembly, as well as in Canton, Mississippi. Variants were also manufactured in Brazil and China.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: Styled by NDI Director of Design Tom Semple and developed at Nissan Design America in La Jolla, California, the Xterra was the first Nissan vehicle completely conceived, developed and manufactured in the United States. According to Jerry Hirshberg, president of Nissan Design International (NDI), "the impetus for Xterra designers was to create an affordable, rugged, quality piece of equipment". He later described it as "a garage tool that says, 'treat me rough' – it's designed to look better dirty than clean."


title: Nissan Xterra

text: Road & Track described the Xterra as "an honest SUV that doesn't try to be a luxury car alternative, nor tries to hide its truck underpinnings". Jalopnik called it a "knockoff of the Land Rover Discovery". "The Washington Post" described it as "rugged without bravado".


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The Xterra was introduced in North America in the 2000 model year, using "Everything you need, nothing you don't" as its marketing tagline.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The XE featured a KA24DE I4, 5-speed manual transmission, and steel wheels as well as several option packages combining the 170 horsepower 3.3 L VG33E V6 engine with either a 5-speed manual or 4-speed automatic transmission, as well as roof rack (rated for a load up to 125lbs), side step-rails, sunroof, and carpeted floor mats. The SE featured standard equipment that was optional on an XE. All models featured removable, tab-secured rear seat cushions to accommodate a fold-flat rear seat back.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: With the 1999 Xterra having been developed at Nissan Design America in California, all updates for the 2002 Xterra were executed at Nissan Technical Center-North America in Farmington Hills, Michigan. The facelifted model debuted at the 2001 Chicago Auto Show prominently revised front-end styling with rounded headlights, revised instrument panel, center console, larger glove compartment, pullout rear cup holders and four interior power points, foot-operated pedal parking brake (vs. previous a dash-mounted pull-and-twist parking brake) — and an increase of 10 horsepower for the V6 engine.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The rear differential for all Xterras and Frontiers are H233B with a number of gear ratios offered in both limited slip and open configurations. The most common being 4.636:1 and 4.9:1. Early differentials has a flange style input to the pinion while late 2004 through the end of production had a Spicer yoke style input to the pinion.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The 3.3L VG33E V6 was upgraded to at 4,800 rpm and 202 lb⋅ft (274 N⋅m) at 2,800 rpm, with the Eaton M62 supercharged VG33ER option carried over from the 2001 Nissan Frontier, producing of torque for the automatic, and of torque with 5-speed manual.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: For 2003 the front seats received additional adjustability with added lumbar support and in SE models the available 6-disc, 4-speaker AM/FM/CD audio system was replaced by a 6-speaker 300W Rockford Fosgate AM/FM/CD audio system with an 8-inch subwoofer that took up a small portion of the rear storage area. The last of the model year 2004 Xterras were manufactured in January 2005.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The second generation Xterra debuted at the New York International Auto Show in 2004 using Nissan's F-Alpha platform. Larger in all dimensions than its predecessor, it entered showrooms in early 2005 for the 2005 model year. The standard engine was upgraded to Nissan's 4.0 L VQ40DE variable valve timing V6, producing . A rear differential locker was offered for off-roading.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The Xterra received a facelift for 2009 (July 2008 production) with more options and colors, leather seats on SE models, and roof mounted lights on off-road models. The last year of the Nissan Xterra in Mexico was 2008. In 2012, production was moved from Smyrna, Tennessee, to Nissan's facility in Canton, Mississippi.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: Early US models include X, S and PRO-4X, with a choice of 6-speed manual or 5-speed automatic transmissions, a choice of part-time 4-wheel drive or 2-wheel drive.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: The Xterra was discontinued in the U.S. after the 2015 model year. Poor fuel economy, declining sales, and mandated upgrades to safety and emissions were cited as reasons.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: All Nissan-produced Xterras manufactured outside the U.S. were built in São José dos Pinhais, Brazil until 2007. (Nissan ceased Brazilian production entirely in 2007.) It is built under license by Pars Khodro in Iran as the Nissan Roniz, and in China by Zhengzhou Nissan Automobile as the Nissan Paladin from 2003 to 2013. The "Paladin" uses the same chassis and running gear as the first generation Nissan Xterra, and the 2.4L KA24DE engine mated to a 5-speed manual transmission. The front end is from the local Pickup. (The second generation Xterra model is only available in North America.) Other difference between the American Xterra and its Chinese counterparts is the parking brake actuator, a pedal with a pull-handle release in America, and a lever in China.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: Dongfeng Motors produces a Chinese version of the Xterra called the Oting from 2007 to 2015. It is based on the first generation of the Xterra. It was available with the 2.4-liter "4G64" and "4G69" or a 2.5-liter turbo-diesel engine paired to a 5-speed manual gearbox.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: In comparison to pricing, the Chinese market Nissan Paladin was priced at 159,800 to 244,800 RMB (25,264 to US$38,702) while the Oting was priced at 119,800 to 154,800 RMB (18,940 to US$24,473). Trim levels for the Paladin were called the 2WD S, 2WD C, 2WD L, 2WD E, 4WD S, 4WD C, 4WD L and 4WD E. Trim levels for the Oting were called the China III MT L, China III MT E, China III AT L, China IV MT L, China IV MT E, Diesel 2WD and the Diesel 4WD.


title: Nissan Xterra

text: Following the Xterra's discontinuation from the U.S. market in 2015, Nissan began testing the D23 Navara-based SUV. The SUV, later named Terra, made its debut in Asia in early 2018, and the facelifted version was released in the Middle East in late 2020 under the "X-Terra" name.


title: Common carotid artery

text: In anatomy, the left and right common carotid arteries (carotids) () are arteries that supply the head and neck with oxygenated blood; they divide in the neck to form the external and internal carotid arteries.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The common carotid arteries are present on the left and right sides of the body. These arteries originate from different arteries but follow symmetrical courses. The right common carotid originates in the neck from the brachiocephalic trunk; the left from the aortic arch in the thorax. These split into the external and internal carotid arteries at the upper border of the thyroid cartilage, at around the level of the fourth cervical vertebra.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The left common carotid artery can be thought of as having two parts: a thoracic (chest) part and a cervical (neck) part. The right common carotid originates in or close to the neck and contains only a small thoracic portion. There are studies in the bioengineering literature that have looked into characterizing the geometric structure of the common carotid artery from both qualitative and mathematical (quantitative) standpoints.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The average diameters of the common carotids in adult males and females are 6.5 mm and 6.1 mm respectively.


title: Common carotid artery

text: Only the left common carotid artery has a substantial presence in the thorax. It originates directly from the aortic arch, and travels upward through the superior mediastinum to the level of the left sternoclavicular joint.


title: Common carotid artery

text: During the thoracic part of its course, the left common carotid artery is related to the following structures:


title: Common carotid artery

text: In front, it is separated from the manubrium of the sternum by the sternohyoid and sternothyroid muscles, the anterior portions of the left pleura and lung, the left brachiocephalic vein, and the remains of the thymus; behind, it lies on the trachea, esophagus, left recurrent laryngeal nerve, and thoracic duct.


title: Common carotid artery

text: To its right side below is the brachiocephalic trunk, and above, the trachea, the inferior thyroid veins, and the remains of the thymus; to its left side are the left vagus and phrenic nerves, left pleura, and lung. The left subclavian artery is posterior and slightly lateral to it.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The cervical portions of the common carotids resemble each other so closely that one description will apply to both.


title: Common carotid artery

text: Each vessel passes obliquely upward, from behind the sternoclavicular joint to the level of the upper border of the thyroid cartilage, where it divides.


title: Common carotid artery

text: At the lower neck the two common carotid arteries are separated from each other by a very narrow interval which contains the trachea; but at the upper part, the thyroid gland, the larynx and pharynx separate the two arteries.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The common carotid artery is contained in a sheath known as the carotid sheath, which is derived from the deep cervical fascia and encloses also the internal jugular vein and vagus nerve, the vein lying lateral to the artery, and the nerve between the artery and vein, on a plane posterior to both. On opening the sheath, each of these three structures is seen to have a separate fibrous cover.


title: Common carotid artery

text: At approximately the level of the fourth cervical vertebra, the common carotid artery splits ("bifurcates" in literature) into an internal carotid artery (ICA) and an external carotid artery (ECA). While both branches travel upward, the internal carotid takes a deeper (more internal) path, eventually travelling up into the skull to supply the brain. The external carotid artery travels more closely to the surface, and sends off numerous branches that supply the neck and face.


title: Common carotid artery

text: At the lower part of the neck the common carotid artery is very deeply seated, being covered by the integument, superficial fascia, the platysma muscle, deep cervical fascia, the sternocleidomastoid muscle, the sternohyoid, sternothyroid, and the omohyoid; in the upper part of its course it is more superficial, being covered merely by the integument, the superficial fascia, the platysma, deep cervical fascia, and medial margin of the sternocleidomastoid.


title: Common carotid artery

text: When the sternocleidomastoid muscle is drawn backward, the artery is seen to be contained in a triangular space known as the carotid triangle. This space is bounded behind by the sternocleidomastoid, above by the stylohyoid and the posterior belly of the digastric muscle, and below by the superior belly of the omohyoid.


title: Common carotid artery

text: This part of the artery is crossed obliquely, from its medial to its lateral side, by the sternocleidomastoid branch of the superior thyroid artery; it is also crossed by the superior and middle thyroid veins (which end in the internal jugular vein); descending in front of its sheath is the descending branch of the hypoglossal nerve, this filament being joined by one or two branches from the cervical nerves, which cross the vessel obliquely.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The superior thyroid vein crosses the artery near its termination, and the middle thyroid vein a little below the level of the cricoid cartilage; the anterior jugular vein crosses the artery just above the clavicle, but is separated from it by the sternohyoid and sternothyroid.


title: Common carotid artery

text: Behind, the artery is separated from the transverse processes of the cervical vertebrae by the longus colli and longus capitis muscles, the sympathetic trunk being interposed between it and the muscles. The inferior thyroid artery crosses behind the lower part of the vessel.


title: Common carotid artery

text: Medially, it is in relation with the esophagus, trachea, and thyroid gland (which overlaps it), the inferior thyroid artery and recurrent laryngeal nerve being interposed; higher up, with the larynx and pharynx. Lateral to the artery, inside the carotid sheath with the common carotid, are the internal jugular vein and vagus nerve.


title: Common carotid artery

text: At the lower part of the neck, on the right side of the body, the right recurrent laryngeal nerve crosses obliquely behind the artery; the right internal jugular vein diverges from the artery. On the left side, however, the left internal jugular vein approaches and often overlaps the lower part of the artery.


title: Common carotid artery

text: Behind the angle of bifurcation of the common carotid artery is a reddish-brown oval body known as the carotid body. It is similar in structure to the coccygeal body which is situated on the median sacral artery.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The chief communications outside the skull take place between the superior and inferior thyroid arteries, and the deep cervical artery and the descending branch of the occipital artery; the vertebral artery takes the place of the internal carotid artery within the cranium.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The right common carotid may rise above the level of the upper border of the sternoclavicular joint; this variation occurs in about 12 percent of cases.


title: Common carotid artery

text: In other cases, the artery on the right side may arise as a separate branch from the arch of the aorta, or in conjunction with the left carotid.


title: Common carotid artery

text: In the majority of abnormal cases it arises with the brachiocephalic trunk; if that artery is absent, the two carotids arise usually by a single trunk.


title: Common carotid artery

text: It is rarely joined with the left subclavian artery, except in cases of transposition of the aortic arch.


title: Common carotid artery

text: In the majority of abnormal cases, the bifurcation occurs higher than usual, the artery dividing opposite or even above the hyoid bone; more rarely, it occurs below, opposite the middle of the larynx, or the lower border of the cricoid cartilage. In at least one reported case, the artery was only 4 cm in length and divided at the root of the neck.


title: Common carotid artery

text: Very rarely, the common carotid artery ascends in the neck without any subdivision, either the external or the internal carotid being absent; and in a few cases the common carotid has itself been found to be absent, the external and internal carotids arising directly from the arch of the aorta.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The common carotid usually gives off no branch previous to its bifurcation, but it occasionally gives origin to the superior thyroid artery or its laryngeal branch, the ascending pharyngeal artery, the inferior thyroid artery, or, more rarely, the vertebral artery.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The common carotid artery is often used in measuring the pulse, especially in patients who are in shock and who lack a detectable pulse in the more peripheral arteries of the body. The pulse is taken by palpating the artery just deep to the anterior border of the sternocleidomastoid muscle at the level of the superior border of the thyroid cartilage.


title: Common carotid artery

text: Presence of a carotid pulse has been estimated to indicate a systolic blood pressure of more than 40 mmHg, as given by the 50% percentile.


title: Common carotid artery

text: The intima-media thickness of the carotid artery wall is a marker of subclinical atherosclerosis, it increases with age and with long-term exposure to particulate air pollution.


title: Gonad

text: A gonad, sex gland, or reproductive gland is a mixed gland that produces the gametes and sex hormones of an organism. Female reproductive cells are egg cells, and male reproductive cells are sperm. The male gonad, the testicle, produces sperm in the form of spermatozoa. The female gonad, the ovary, produces egg cells. Both of these gametes are haploid cells. Some hermaphroditic animals have a type of gonad called an ovotestis.


title: Gonad

text: It is hard to find a common origin for gonads, but gonads most likely evolved independently several times.


title: Gonad

text: The gonads are controlled by luteinizing hormone and follicle-stimulating hormone, produced and secreted by gonadotropes or gonadotrophins in the anterior pituitary gland. This secretion is regulated by gonadotropin-releasing hormone produced in the hypothalamus.


title: Gonad

text: Gonads start developing as a common primordium (an organ in the earliest stage of development), in the form of genital ridges, which are only later differentiated to male or female sex organs. The presence of the SRY gene, located on the Y chromosome and encoding the testis determining factor, determines male sexual differentiation. In the absence of the SRY gene from the Y chromosome, the female sex (ovaries instead of testes) will develop. The development of the gonads is a part of the development of the urinary and reproductive organs.


title: Gonad

text: The gonads are subject to many diseases, such as hypergonadism, hypogonadism, agonadism, tumors, and cancer, among others.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Formerly a single nation that was annexed by Japan in 1910, the Korean Peninsula has been divided into North Korea and South Korea since the end of World War II on 2 September 1945. The two governments were founded in the two regions in 1948, leading to the consolidation of division. The two countries became opposite and engaged in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 which ended in an armistice agreement but without a peace treaty. North Korea is a one-party totalitarian state run by the Kim dynasty. South Korea was formerly governed by a succession of military dictatorships, save for a brief one-year democratic period from 1960 to 1961, until thorough democratization in 1987, after which direct elections were held. Both nations claim the entire Korean peninsula and outlying islands. Both nations joined the United Nations in 1991 and are recognized by most member states. Since the 1970s, both nations have held informal diplomatic dialogues in order to ease military tensions. In 2000, President Kim Dae-jung became the first President of South Korea to visit North Korea, 55 years after the peninsula was divided.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Under President Kim, South Korea adopted the Sunshine Policy in pursuit of more peaceful relationships with North Korea. The policy established the Kaesong Industrial Region, among other things. This policy was continued by the next president Roh Moo-hyun who also visited North Korea in 2007 and met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Through this meeting both leaders signed a declaration to pursue peace and recover inter-Korean relations. However, faced with growing criticism, the Sunshine Policy was discontinued under the next two governments. During Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-Hye's presidencies, the relationship between North and South Korea became more hostile.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In 2018, beginning with North Korea's participation in the 2018 Winter Olympics, the relationship has seen a major diplomatic breakthrough and become significantly warmer. In April 2018, the two countries signed the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Unification of the Korean Peninsula. In 2018, a majority of South Koreans approved the new relationship. The summits between North and South Korea have also facilitated positive relationships between North Korea and the United States. However, tensions between the two countries remain.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: The Korean peninsula had been occupied by Japan from 1910. On 9 August 1945, in the closing days of World War II, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and advanced into Korea. Though the Soviet declaration of war had been agreed by the Allies at the Yalta Conference, the US government became concerned at the prospect of all of Korea falling under Soviet control. The US government therefore requested Soviet forces halt their advance at the 38th parallel north, leaving the south of the peninsula, including the capital, Seoul, to be occupied by the US. This was incorporated into General Order No. 1 to Japanese forces after the Surrender of Japan on 15 August. On 24 August, the Red Army entered Pyongyang and established a military government over Korea north of the parallel. American forces landed in the south on 8 September and established the United States Army Military Government in Korea.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: The Allies had originally envisaged a joint trusteeship which would steer Korea towards independence, but most Korean nationalists wanted independence immediately. Meanwhile, the wartime co-operation between the Soviet Union and the US deteriorated as the Cold War took hold. Both occupying powers began promoting into positions of authority Koreans aligned with their side of politics and marginalizing their opponents. Many of these emerging political leaders were returning exiles with little popular support. In North Korea, the Soviet Union supported Korean Communists. Kim Il-sung, who from 1941 had served in the Soviet Army, became the major political figure. Society was centralized and collectivized, following the Soviet model. Politics in the South was more tumultuous, but the strongly anti-Communist Syngman Rhee emerged as the most prominent politician.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: The US government took the issue to the United Nations, which led to the formation of the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) in 1947. The Soviet Union opposed this move and refused to allow UNTCOK to operate in the North. UNTCOK organized a general election in the South, which was held on 10 May 1948. The Republic of Korea was established with Syngman Rhee as president, and formally replaced the US military occupation on 15 August. In North Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was declared on 9 September, with Kim Il-sung as prime minister. Soviet occupation forces left the North on 10 December 1948. US forces left the South the following year, though the US Korean Military Advisory Group remained to train the Republic of Korea Army.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Both opposing governments considered themselves to be the government of the whole of Korea, and both saw the division as temporary. The DPRK proclaimed Seoul to be its official capital, a position not changed until 1972.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: North Korea invaded the South on 25 June 1950, and swiftly overran most of the country. In September 1950 the United Nations force, led by the United States, intervened to defend the South, and advanced into North Korea. As they neared the border with China, Chinese forces intervened on behalf of North Korea, shifting the balance of the war again. Fighting ended on 27 July 1953, with an armistice that approximately restored the original boundaries between North and South Korea. Syngman Rhee refused to sign the armistice, but reluctantly agreed to abide by it. The armistice inaugurated an official ceasefire but did not lead to a peace treaty. It established the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a buffer zone between the two sides, that intersected the 38th parallel but did not follow it. North Korea has announced that it will no longer abide by the armistice at least six times, in the years 1994, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2009, and 2013.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Large numbers of people were displaced as a result of the war, and many families were divided by the reconstituted border. In 2007 it was estimated that around 750,000 people remained separated from immediate family members, and family reunions have long been a diplomatic priority for the South.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Competition between North and South Korea became key to decision-making on both sides. For example, the construction of the Pyongyang Metro spurred the construction of one in Seoul. In the 1980s, the South Korean government built a 98m tall flagpole in its village of Daeseong-dong in the DMZ. In response, North Korea built a 160m tall flagpole in its nearby village of Kijŏng-dong.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Tensions escalated in the late 1960s with a series of low-level armed clashes known as the Korean DMZ Conflict. During this time North and South Korea conducted covert raids on each other in a series of retaliatory strikes, which included assassination attempts on the South and North leaders. On 21 January 1968, North Koreans commandos attacked the South Korean Blue House. On 11 December 1969, a South Korean airliner was hijacked.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: During preparations for US President Nixon's visit to China in 1972, South Korean President Park Chung-hee initiated covert contact with the North's Kim Il-sung. In August 1971, the first Red Cross talks between North and South Korea were held. Many of the participants were really intelligence or party officials. In May 1972, Lee Hu-rak, the director of the Korean CIA, secretly met with Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang. Kim apologized for the Blue House Raid, denying he had approved it. In return, North Korea's deputy premier Pak Song-chol made a secret visit to Seoul. On 4 July 1972, the North-South Joint Statement was issued. The statement announced the Three Principles of Reunification: first, reunification must be solved independently without interference from or reliance on foreign powers; second, reunification must be realized in a peaceful way without use of armed forces against each other; finally, reunification transcend the differences of ideologies and institutions to promote the unification of Korea as one ethnic group. It also established the first "hotline" between the two sides.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: North Korea suspended talks in 1973 after the kidnapping of South Korean opposition leader Kim Dae-jung by the Korean CIA. Talks restarted, however, and between 1973 and 1975 there were 10 meetings of the North-South Coordinating Committee at Panmunjom.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In the late 1970s, US President Jimmy Carter hoped to achieve peace in Korea. However, his plans were derailed because of the unpopularity of his proposed withdrawal of troops.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In 1983, a North Korean proposal for three-way talks with the United States and South Korea coincided with the Rangoon assassination attempt against the South Korean President. This contradictory behavior has never been explained.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In September 1984, North Korea's Red Cross sent emergency supplies to the South after severe floods. Talks resumed, resulting in the first reunion of separated families in 1985, as well as a series of cultural exchanges. Goodwill dissipated with the staging of the US-South Korean military exercise, Team Spirit, in 1986.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: When Seoul was chosen to host the 1988 Summer Olympics, North Korea tried to arrange a boycott by its Communist allies or a joint hosting of the Games. This failed, and the bombing of Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987 was seen as North Korea's revenge. However, at the same time, amid a global thawing of the Cold War, the newly elected South Korean President Roh Tae-woo launched a diplomatic initiative known as "Nordpolitik". This proposed the interim development of a "Korean Community", which was similar to a North Korean proposal for a confederation. From 4 to 7 September 1990, high-level talks were held in Seoul, at the same time that the North was protesting about the Soviet Union normalizing relations with the South. These talks led in 1991 to the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, Exchanges and Cooperation and the Joint Declaration of the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. This coincided with the admission of both North and South Korea into the United Nations. Meanwhile, on 25 March 1991, a unified Korean team first used the Korean Unification Flag at the World Table Tennis Competition in Japan, and on 6 May 1991, a unified team competed at the World Youth Football Competition in Portugal.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: There were limits to the thaw in relations, however. In 1989, Lim Su-kyung, a South Korean student activist who participated in the World Youth Festival in Pyongyang, was jailed on her return.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: The end of the Cold War brought economic crisis to North Korea and led to expectations that reunification was imminent. North Koreans began to flee to the South in increasing numbers. According to official statistics there were 561 defectors living in South Korea in 1995, and over 10,000 in 2007.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In December 1991 both states made an accord, the Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, Exchange and Cooperation, pledging non-aggression and cultural and economic exchanges. They also agreed on prior notification of major military movements and established a military hotline, and working on replacing the armistice with a "peace regime".


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In 1994, concern over North Korea's nuclear program led to the Agreed Framework between the US and North Korea.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung announced a Sunshine Policy towards North Korea. Despite a naval clash in 1999, this led in June 2000, to the first Inter-Korean summit, between Kim Dae-jung and Kim Jong-il. As a result, Kim Dae-jung was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The summit was followed in August by a family reunion. In September, the North and South Korean teams marched together at the Sydney Olympics. Trade increased to the point where South Korea became North Korea's largest trading partner. Starting in 1998, the Mount Kumgang Tourist Region was developed as a joint venture between the North Korean government and Hyundai. In 2003, the Kaesong Industrial Region was established to allow South Korean businesses to invest in the North. In the early 2000s South Korea ceased infiltrating its agents into the North.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: US President George W Bush, however, did not support the Sunshine Policy and in 2002 branded North Korea as a member of an Axis of Evil.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Continuing concerns about North Korea's potential to develop nuclear missiles led in 2003 to the six-party talks that included North Korea, South Korea, the US, Russia, China, and Japan. In 2006, however, North Korea resumed testing missiles and on 9 October conducted its first nuclear test.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: The 15 June 2000 Joint Declaration that the two leaders signed during the first South-North summit stated that they would hold the second summit at an appropriate time. It was originally envisaged that the second summit would be held in South Korea, but that did not happen. South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun walked across the Korean Demilitarized Zone on 2 October 2007 and traveled on to Pyongyang for talks with Kim Jong-il.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: The two sides reaffirmed the spirit of 15 June Joint Declaration and had discussions on various issues related to realizing the advancement of south–north relations, peace on the Korean Peninsula, common prosperity of the people and the unification of Korea. On 4 October 2007, South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun and North Korean leader Kim Jong-il signed a peace declaration. The document called for international talks to replace the which ended the Korean War with a permanent peace treaty.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: During this period political developments were reflected in art. The films "Shiri", in 1999, and "Joint Security Area", in 2000, gave sympathetic representations of North Koreans.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 26 March 2010, the 1,500-ton ROKS "Cheonan" with a crew of 104, sank off Baengnyeong Island in the Yellow Sea. Seoul said there was an explosion at the stern, and was investigating whether a torpedo attack was the cause. Out of 104 sailors, 46 died and 58 were rescued. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak convened an emergency meeting of security officials and ordered the military to focus on rescuing the sailors. On 20 May 2010, a team of international researchers published results claiming that the sinking had been caused by a North Korean torpedo; North Korea rejected the findings. South Korea agreed with the findings from the research group and President Lee Myung-bak declared afterwards that Seoul would cut all trade with North Korea as part of measures primarily aimed at striking back at North Korea diplomatically and financially. North Korea denied all such allegations and responded by severing ties between the countries and announced it abrogated the previous non-aggression agreement.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 23 November 2010, North Korea's artillery fired at South Korea's Yeonpyeong island in the Yellow Sea and South Korea returned fire. Two South Korean marines and two civilians were killed, more than a dozen were wounded, including three civilians. About 10 North Koreans were believed to be killed; however, the North Korean government denies this. The town was evacuated and South Korea warned of stern retaliation, with President Lee Myung-bak ordering the destruction of a nearby North Korea missile base if further provocation should occur. The official North Korean news agency, KCNA, stated that North Korea only fired after the South had "recklessly fired into our sea area".


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In 2011 it was revealed that North Korea abducted four high-ranking South Korean military officers in 1999.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 12 December 2012, North Korea launched the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2, a scientific and technological satellite, and it reached orbit. In response, the United States deployed its warships in the region. January–September 2013 saw an escalation of tensions between North Korea and South Korea, the United States, and Japan that began because of United Nations Security Council Resolution 2087, which condemned North Korea for the launch of Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2. The crisis was marked by extreme escalation of rhetoric by the new North Korean administration under Kim Jong-un and actions suggesting imminent nuclear attacks against South Korea, Japan, and the United States.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: "The King 2 Hearts" () was a 2012 South Korean television series, starring Ha Ji-won and Lee Seung-gi in the leading roles. It was about a South Korean crown prince who falls in love with a North Korean special agent. The series aired on MBC from 21 March to 24 May 2012 on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 21:55 for 20 episodes.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 24 March 2014, a crashed North Korean drone was found near Paju, the onboard cameras contained pictures of the Blue House and military installations near the DMZ. On 31 March, following an exchange of artillery fire into the waters of the NLL, a North Korean drone was found crashed on Baengnyeongdo. On 15 September, wreckage of a suspected North Korean drone was found by a fisherman in the waters near Baengnyeongdo, the drone was reported to be similar to one of the North Korean drones which had crashed in March 2014.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: According to a 2014 BBC World Service poll, 3% of South Koreans viewed North Korea's influence positively, with 91% expressing a negative view, making South Korea, after Japan, the country with the most negative feelings of North Korea in the world. However, a 2014 government-funded survey found 13% of South Koreans viewed North Korea as hostile, and 58% of South Koreans believed North Korea was a country they should cooperate with.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 1 January 2015, Kim Jong-un, in his New Year's address to the country, stated that he was willing to resume higher-level talks with the South.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In the first week of August 2015, a mine went off at the DMZ, wounding two South Korean soldiers. The South Korean government accused the North of planting the mine, which the North denied. After that South Korea restarted propaganda broadcasts to the North.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 20 August 2015, North Korea fired a shell on the city of Yeoncheon. South Korea launched several artillery rounds in response. There were no casualties in the South, but some local residents evacuated. The shelling caused both countries to adopt pre-war statuses and a talk that was held by high level officials in the Panmunjeom to relieve tensions on 22 August 2015, and the talks carried over to the next day. Nonetheless, while talks were going on, North Korea deployed over 70 percent of their submarines, which increased the tension once more on 23 August 2015. Talks continued into the next day and finally concluded on 25 August when both parties reached an agreement and military tensions were eased.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Despite peace talks between South Korea and North Korea on 9 September 2016 regarding the North's missile test, North Korea continued to progress with its missile testing. North Korea carried out its fifth nuclear test as part of the state's 68th anniversary since its founding. In response South Korea revealed that it had a plan to assassinate Kim Jong-un.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: According to a 2017 Korea Institute for National Unification, 58% of South Korean citizens had responded that unification is necessary. Among the respondents of the 2017 survey, 14% said 'we really need unification' while 44% said 'we kind of need the unification'. Regarding the survey question of 'Do we still need unification even if ROK and DPRK could peacefully coexist?', 46% agreed and 32% disagreed.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In May 2017 Moon Jae-in was elected President of South Korea with a promise to return to the Sunshine Policy. In his New Year address for 2018, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un proposed sending a delegation to the upcoming Winter Olympics in South Korea. The Seoul–Pyongyang hotline was reopened after almost two years. At the Winter Olympics, North and South Korea marched together in the opening ceremony and fielded a united women's ice hockey team. As well as the athletes, North Korea sent an unprecedented high-level delegation, headed by Kim Yo-jong, sister of Kim Jong-un, and President Kim Yong-nam, and including performers like the Samjiyon Orchestra. A North Korean art troupe also performed in two separate South Korean cities, including Seoul, in honor of the Olympic games as well. The North Korean ship which carried the art troupe, Man Gyong Bong 92, was also the first North Korean ship to arrive in South Korea since 2002. The delegation passed on an invitation to President Moon to visit North Korea.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Following the Olympics, authorities of the two countries raised the possibility that they could host the 2021 Asian Winter Games together. On 1 April, South Korean K-pop stars performed a concert in Pyongyang entitled "Spring is Coming", which was attended by Kim Jong-un and his wife. The K-pop stars were part of a 160-member South Korean art troupe which performed in North Korea in early April 2018. It also marked the first time since 2005 that any South Korean artist performed in North Korea. Meanwhile, propaganda broadcasts stopped on both sides.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 27 April, a summit took place between Moon and Kim in the South Korean zone of the Joint Security Area. It was the first time since the Korean War that a North Korean leader had entered South Korean territory. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and South Korea's President Moon Jae-in met at the line that divides Korea. The summit ended with both countries pledging to work towards complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. They also vowed to declare an official end to the Korean War within a year. As part of the Panmunjom Declaration which was signed by leaders of both countries, both sides also called for the end of longstanding military activities in the region of the Korean border and a reunification of Korea. Also, the leaders agreed to work together to connect and modernise their railways.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 5 May, North Korea adjusted its time zone to match the South's. In May, South Korea began removing propaganda loudspeakers from the border area in line with the Panmunjom Declaration.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: Moon and Kim met a second time on 26 May to discuss Kim's upcoming summit with Trump. The summit led to further meetings between North and South Korean officials during June. On 1 June, officials from both countries agreed to move forward with the military and Red Cross talks. They also agreed to reopen an Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong that the South had shut down in February 2016 after a North Korean nuclear test. The second meeting, involving the Red Cross and military, was held at North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort on 22 June where it was agreed that family reunions would resume. After the summit in April, a summit between US President Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un was held on 12 June 2018 in Singapore. South Korea hailed it as a success.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: South Korea announced on 23 June 2018 that it would not conduct annual military exercises with the US in September, and would also stop its own drills in the Yellow Sea, in order to not provoke North Korea and to continue a peaceful dialog.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 1 July 2018 South and North Korea have resumed ship-to-ship radio communication, which could prevent accidental clashes between South and North Korean military vessels around the Northern Limit Line (NLL) in the West (Yellow) Sea. On 17 July 2018, South and North Korea fully restored their military communication line on the western part of the peninsula.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: South Korea and North Korea competed as "Korea" in some events at the 2018 Asian Games. The co-operation extended to the film industry, with South Korea giving their approval to screen North Korean movies at the country's local festival while inviting several moviemakers from the latter.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In August 2018 reunions of families divided since the Korean War took place at Mount Kumgang in North Korea. In September, at a summit with Moon in Pyongyang, Kim agreed to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons facilities if the United States took reciprocal action. In Pyongyang, an agreement titled the "Pyongyang Joint Declaration of September 2018" was signed by both Korean leaders The agreement calls for the removal of landmines, guard posts, weapons, and personnel in the JSA from both sides of the North-South Korean border. They also agreed that they would establish buffer zones on their borders to prevent clashes. Moon became the first South Korean leader to give a speech to the North Korean public when he addressed 150,000 spectators at the Arirang Festival on 19 September. Also during the September 2018 summit, military leaders from both countries signed an Agreement on Reconciliation, Non-Aggression, Exchanges and Cooperation" (a.k.a. "the Basic Agreement") to help ensure less military tension between both countries and greater arms control.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 23 October 2018, Moon ratified the Basic Agreement and Pyongyang Declaration just hours after they were approved by his cabinet.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 30 November 2018, a South Korean train crossed the DMZ border with North Korea and stopped at Panmun Station. This was the first time a South Korean train had entered North Korean territory since 2008.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 30 June, Kim and Moon met again in the DMZ, joined by US President Trump who initiated the meeting. The three held a meeting at the Inter-Korean House of Freedom. Meanwhile, North Korea conducted a series of short–range missile tests, and the US and South Korea took part in joint military drills in August. On 16 August 2019, North Korea's ruling party made a statement criticizing the South for participating in the drills and for buying US military hardware, calling it a "grave provocation" and saying there would be no more negotiation.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 5 August, South Korea's president Moon Jae-in spoke during a meeting with his senior aides at the presidential Blue House in Seoul, discussing Japan's imposed trade restrictions to Korea as a result of historical issues. Moon then withdrew South Korea from an intelligence-sharing agreement with Japan, seeking a breakthrough with North Korea in the process, but opted against it at the last minute. In a meeting at Seoul's presidential Blue House in August 2019, amid an escalating trade row between South Korea and Japan, Moon expressed his willingness to cooperate economically with North Korea to overtake Japan's economy.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 15 October, North and South Korea played a FIFA World Cup qualifier in Pyongyang, their first football match in the North in 30 years. The game was played behind closed doors with attendance open only to a total of 100 North Korean government personnel; no fans or South Korean media were allowed into the stadium, and the game was not broadcast live. No goals were scored. Meanwhile, Kim and Moon continued to have a close, respectful relationship.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: The 2019 South Korea Defense White Paper does not label North Korea as an "enemy" or "threat" for the first time in history. While not explicitly calling North Korea an enemy, the paper mentions that North Korea's weapons of mass destruction threaten peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 9 June 2020, North Korea began cutting off all of its communication lines with South Korea. This came after Pyongyang had repeatedly warned Seoul regarding matters such as the failure of the South to stop North Korean expatriate activists from sending anti-regime propaganda leaflets across the border. The Korean Central News Agency described it as "the first step of the determination to completely shut down all contact means with South Korea and get rid of unnecessary things". The sister of Kim Jong-un, Kim Yo-jong, as well as the Vice Chair of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Yong-chol, stated that North Korea had begun to treat South Korea as its enemy. A week prior to these actions, Kim Yo-Jong had called North Korean defectors "human scum" and "mongrel dogs". The severing of communication lines substantially diminished the agreements that were made in 2018.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 13 June, Kim Yo-jong, warned that "before long, a tragic scene of the useless North-South joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen." On 16 June, the North threatened to return troops that had been withdrawn from the border to posts where they had been previously stationed. Later that day, the joint liaison office in Kaesong was blown up by the North Korean government. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the South Korean delegation had departed from the building in January. On 5 June 2020, the North Korean foreign minister Ri Son-gwon said that prospects for peace between North and South Korea, and the U.S., had "faded away into a dark nightmare". On 21 June 2020, South Korea urged North Korea to not send propaganda leaflets across the border. The request followed the North's statement that it was ready to send 12 million leaflets, which could potentially become the largest psychological campaign against South Korea.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: On 14 December 2020, the South Korean parliament passed a law which criminalized the launching of propaganda leaflets into North Korea. This ban applies to not only the large amount of balloon propaganda leaflets which have been sent into North Korea over the years, but also leaflets that have been sent in bottles in rivers which run along the Korean border. Violators of the law, which went into effect three months after it was approved, face up to three years in prison or 30 million won ($27,400) in fines.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In February-March 2021, South Korea continued to omit North Korea's "enemy" status from the South Korean military's White Paper after downgrading the status of Japan.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In a statement made on 4 October 2021, South Korea's Unification Ministry announced that communication lines between North and South Korea have been restored. The reopening followed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's vow to restart communication with South Korea. The two countries' militaries have also restored their hotline along the east and west coasts, according to the South Korean Defense Ministry.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: "Crash Landing on You" () was a 2019–2020 South Korean television series directed by Lee Jeong-hyeo and featuring Hyun Bin, Son Ye-jin, Kim Jung-hyun, and Seo Ji-hye. It is about a South Korean woman who accidentally crash-lands in North Korea. It aired on tvN in South Korea and on Netflix worldwide from 14 December 2019 to 16 February 2020.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: "Ashfall" (), also known as: "Mount Paektu", was a 2019 South Korean action film directed by Lee Hae-jun and Kim Byung-seo, starring Lee Byung-hun, Ha Jung-woo, Ma Dong-seok, Bae Suzy and Jeon Hye-jin. The film was released in December 2019 in South Korea. In the film, the volcano of Baekdu Mountain suddenly erupts, causing severe earthquakes in both North and South Korea.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: During his election campaign in 2021, Yoon Suk-yeol said that he would ask that the United States to redeploy tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea if there is a threat from North Korea. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Japan and Korea Mark Lambert rejected Yoon's call, saying said the proposal was against U.S. policy.


title: North Korea–South Korea relations

text: In November 2022, a US-South Korean air force exercise named Vigilant Storm was countered by North Korea by missile tests and an air force exercise.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Drax the Destroyer (Arthur Douglas) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Jim Starlin, the character first appeared in "The Invincible Iron Man" #55 (February 1973).


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: The character's origin story relates that Arthur Douglas was a human whose family was attacked and killed by the supervillain Thanos. Needing a champion to combat Thanos, the being known as Kronos took Arthur's spirit and placed it in a powerful new body, and Drax the Destroyer was born. Drax's powers included enhanced strength and resilience, flight, and the ability to project energy blasts from his hands. The character often battled Thanos, and on occasion the superheroes Captain Marvel and Adam Warlock. He was also a member of the group known as the Infinity Watch.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: In 2004, the character lost his flight and energy blasts, and a portion of his strength and resilience. This version of the character played a role in the crossover comic book storylines "Annihilation" and "", and became a member of the relaunched Guardians of the Galaxy.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Drax has been featured in a variety of associated Marvel merchandise, including animated television series, action figures, and video games. Dave Bautista portrays the character in the Marvel Cinematic Universe films "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017), "" (2018), "" (2019), and "" (2022) and Guardians of the Galaxy: Holiday Special (2022 television film). Drax also appears in the Disney+ animated series "What If...?" (2021).


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Drax first appeared in "The Invincible Iron Man" #55 (February 1973), and was created by Jim Starlin with the help of writer Mike Friedrich. He had a recurring role in "Captain Marvel", beginning with issue #27 (July 1973). He also appeared in "Warlock" #10 (December 1975), "Iron Man" #88 (July 1976), "Warlock" #15 (November 1976), "Logan's Run" #6 (June 1977), "Thor" #314 (December 1981), and "Avengers" #219 (May 1982), before being killed by Moondragon in "The Avengers" #220 (June 1982).


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Starlin resurrected Drax in "Silver Surfer" vol. 3 #35 (1990), and he had a recurring role until issue 50. After appearing in "The Infinity Gauntlet" #1–6 (1991), he was featured in "Warlock and the Infinity Watch" #1–42 (1992–1995) as a member of the titular team, the Infinity Watch. The character reappeared in "Warlock" vol. 3 #1–4 (1998–1999) and "Captain Marvel" vol. 4 #4–6 (2001).


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Drax received an eponymous 4 issue miniseries in 2004, and was a starring character in "Annihilation: Nova" #1–4 (2005) and "Annihilation" #1–6 (2006). After a follow up appearance in "Nova" vol. 4 #4–7 (2007) and the 2008 "" storyline, he was featured as a team member in the 2008 relaunch of Guardians of the Galaxy, and appeared in the 25 issue series of the same name. The character had a small role in "The Thanos Imperative" #1–3 (2010), in which he was killed.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: The character reappeared in "Avengers Assemble" issues #4–8 (June–October 2012), with no reference to his death. He will star in "Guardians of the Galaxy" vol. 3, a part of the Marvel NOW! relaunch.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: While driving through a desert with his wife and daughter, Arthur Douglas' car is attacked by a spaceship piloted by Thanos, who thinks the humans have seen him. His daughter, Heather, survives the crash and is adopted by Thanos' father, Mentor, and raised on Titan. She later becomes Moondragon.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Needing a champion to combat the threat from Thanos, Mentor and the Titan god Kronos capture Douglas' spirit and place it in a powerful new body. He is rechristened "Drax the Destroyer", and his sole purpose is to kill Thanos. With Iron Man, Drax battles Thanos and the Blood Brothers, but Thanos escapes. While trying to prevent Thanos from getting the Cosmic Cube, Drax's memories are restored to him. After seeing Captain Marvel defeat Thanos, Drax attacks Captain Marvel for robbing him of his purpose. Drax wanders space in grim contemplation, searching for a resurrected Thanos. By the time he learns that Thanos had managed to rematerialize himself, Thanos has once again been destroyed in battle with Captain Marvel, the Avengers, and Adam Warlock. Alongside Captain Marvel, Drax battles ISAAC, Stellarax, Lord Gaea, Elysius, and Chaos.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Some time later, Drax, possessed by an alien entity, battles his daughter Moondragon and the superhero Thor. After Drax recovers, he and Moondragon journey through space in search of knowledge. Eventually, they come upon the planet Ba-Banis, a world of humanoid aliens caught in a vast civil war. Moondragon uses her mental powers to quell the conflict and then decides to set herself up as the world's goddess. Drax recognizes that her ambitions are ignoble and so sends their ship to Earth with a holographic distress message. The Avengers respond and discover Moondragon's world of mentally enforced tranquility. Freed by the Avengers from his daughter's mental domination, Drax advances toward her, seeking to end her menace. In order to stop him, Moondragon mentally forces Drax's life essence to vacate his artificial body.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: When Thanos is resurrected by Mistress Death, Kronos reanimates the Destroyer and grants him even greater physical power. However, Kronos does not consider the effects of Drax's death, and the Destroyer's mind retains the damage done by Moondragon. Alongside a multitude of other heroes, Drax helps battle Thanos and Nebula for possession of the Infinity Gauntlet. Drax is chosen by Adam Warlock to safeguard the Power Gem as part of the Infinity Watch.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: After the energy vampire Rune steals the gems, the Watch members go their separate ways. Drax returns to Titan with Moondragon, who successfully petitions Kronos to restore Drax's mind to its former acuity at the cost of some physical power. Thus, Drax is restored to his original condition. Drax is accused of the murder of Elysius and several others, but is cleared when it is discovered that the creature Syphon was manipulating him. While seeking out Moondragon, Drax enters into an altercation with Genis-Vell. In the course of this struggle, Drax is transported to the Microverse with Genis, where, for a time, he finds acceptance and happiness on the planet K'ai.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Later, Drax is seen on a prison transport ship with Paibok, Lunatik, and the Blood Brothers. The ship crashes in Alaska, and Drax attacks the others to keep them from harming innocent lives. He mistakes a young girl named Cammi for his daughter, and tries to protect her from Paibok. Drax appears to be killed, but a slimmer, smarter Drax emerges from the larger shell of the dead body. When a second prison ship arrives to recapture the prisoners, both Drax and Cammi are arrested.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Surviving Annihilus' attack on the intergalactic prison known as the Kyln, Drax and Cammi team up with the last member of the Xandarian Nova Corps, Richard Rider. Together they fight against the advancing Annihilation Wave as Drax trains Nova to be a warrior. Drax learns that Thanos has taken Moondragon hostage, and that she will be killed if Drax pursues him. During a doomed battle between the Annihilation Wave and the United Front, Drax stays behind to fight off the invaders while Nova and the rest of the group (including Cammi) finish the evacuation. Drax fights his way to the Annihilation Wave's mother ship, where he finds Thanos and kills him. Drax helps to free a captive Galactus, who teleports Moondragon and Drax to a far-off planet to spare them from his wrath on the Annihilation Wave. Afterwards, Moondragon says Drax just "disappeared". Cammi is later seen, alive, allied with Skreet, one of Thanos' powerful, miniature assistants.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: When the Phalanx invade the Kree home-world, Drax is assimilated as a "select" of the Phalanx hive mind. They dispatch him, along with Gamora, to apprehend Nova, who had fled the planet. Following Nova to Kvch, the home planet the Technarchy (parental race of the Phalanx), Drax and Gamora are freed from the Phalanx by the Technarch Tyro. Together they return to Hala where they help in the defeat of Ultron.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Star-Lord recruits Drax for the new Guardians of the Galaxy. The Guardians are forced to ally themselves with a resurrected Thanos and travel into an alternate reality known as the "Cancerverse". While experiencing a bout of madness, Drax attacks Thanos and is killed. Drax later reappears with the Guardians on Earth without reference to his death.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Drax's initial incarnation's powers included superhuman strength, stamina and resistance to physical injury as well the ability to project concussive blasts of cosmic energy from his hands. He could also travel at high speeds in outer space and hyperspace without air, food, or water. Drax also had telepathy, having used it to engage Thanos in a psychic battle and stalemating him mind to mind.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: After his resurrection, his physical capabilities are greatly enhanced beyond their original levels but he suffered severe mental disability in his new incarnation. Instead of his telepathy which enabled him to track Thanos across vast distances, he now possessed the ability to sense either him or other beings who have been in recent contact with Thanos, alongside a precognitive ability to sense when beings will be in contact with Thanos in the near future. For a time, Drax possessed the Power Gem that had the potential to grant him superhuman physical and energy manipulation powers with no feasible limit. However, because of his severely-reduced intellect, he lacked the mental capacity and imagination to use the gem for anything other than bolstering his physical strength. While possessing the gem, Drax's strength has been compared with that of the merged incarnation of the Hulk, but lacking the latter's rage-fueled potential.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Just prior to the 2006 "Annihilation" mini-series and continuing through the present, Drax undergoes a physical change, resulting in a much-smaller physical form, his superhuman, physical powers greatly reduced to a level comparable to those of his original form and the loss of his energy projection, flight and most any residual psionic capabilities; having just enough to glean the moments of his demise from Cammi. However, his intellect has returned to its original level, and he has taken a liking to using knives in battle. At least temporarily, he had the ability to pass through Thanos's force field; his power levels seem to increase the closer he is to Thanos. He could also heal at an accelerated rate and had senses sharp enough to tell humans from aliens by smell, root out a Skrull in disguise and detect when energy weapons were about to go off.


title: Drax the Destroyer

text: Drax the Destroyer appears in media set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, portrayed by Dave Bautista. He first appears in the live-action film "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014) before making subsequent appearances in the live-action films "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017), "" (2018), "" (2019), "" (2022), and the upcoming "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023). Additionally, Bautista reprises his role in "The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" (2022) while an alternate timeline version of Drax appears in the Disney+ animated series "What If...?", voiced by Fred Tatasciore.


title: Rao Ramesh

text: Raavu Ramesh Rao (born 25 May 1968) is an Indian actor known for his works primarily in Telugu cinema, Telugu theatre, and television. He is the son of veteran actor Rao Gopal Rao. Rao Ramesh initially appeared in "Seema Simham" (2002), "Okkadunnadu" (2007), before getting a breakthrough role in Krish's "Gamyam" (2008), portraying a reformed Naxalite, he received critical acclaim for his portrayal and the film went on to become one of the highest grossing Telugu films of the year.


title: Rao Ramesh

text: His subsequent films, "Kotha Bangaru Lokam" (2008), "Avakai Biryani" (2008) and S. S. Rajamouli's "Magadheera" (2009) were box office hits, while his role in the latter as a hunchbacked old Tantric won him further acclaim. Throughout the early 2010s, Rao Ramesh became a popular supporting actor and described that by 2015, he was in the "best phase of his career".


title: Rao Ramesh

text: Rao Ramesh was born on 25 May 1968 in Srikakulam, Andhra Pradesh, to actor Rao Gopal Rao. He was brought up in Chennai. His initial schooling was from Sri Ramakrishna Mission School in T. Nagar and later completed a degree in Communications before getting into Still-photography. He later joined K. S. Prakasa Rao, a cinematographer and brother of K. Raghavendra Rao, as an assistant before going to Bangalore to learn industrial photography.


title: Rao Ramesh

text: Rao began acting in a Television series directed by Ghantasala Ratna Kumar, but the production was shelved amidst schedules. He subsequently moved back to Chennai and started acting in soap operas such as "Pavithra Bandham" and "Kalavari Kodalu", and shot for over 1000 episodes in the space of four and half years.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: Birendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev () (28 December 1945 – 1 June 2001) was the tenth Shah Ruler and the King of Nepal from 1972 until his assassination in 2001. He was the eldest son of King Mahendra.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: Birendra was born at the Narayanhiti Royal Palace in Kathmandu as the eldest son of the then Crown Prince Mahendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev and his first wife, Crown Princess Indra Rajya Lakshmi Devi.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: Birendra spent eight years studying at St Joseph's School, a Jesuit school in Darjeeling, with his brother Gyanendra. On 13 March 1955, their grandfather King Tribhuvan died and their father succeeded the Nepalese throne. With his father's ascension, Birendra became the crown prince of Nepal.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: In 1959, Birendra was enrolled at Eton College in the United Kingdom. After studying at Eton until 1964, he returned to Nepal where he began to explore the country by traveling on foot to the remote parts of the country where he lived humbly with what was available in the villages. He later completed his education by spending some time at the University of Tokyo, before studying political theory at Harvard University from 1967 to 1968. Birendra enjoyed travelling in his youth, and went on trips to Canada, Latin America, Africa, many parts of India, and a number of other Asian countries. He was also an art collector and supporter of Nepalese craftspeople and artists and learned to fly helicopters.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: Birendra was married to Aishwarya Rajya Lakshmi Devi from the Rana family, his second cousin, on 27 February 1970. The wedding, which was billed as one of the most lavish Hindu nuptial ceremonies in history, cost $9.5 million to stage.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: Birendra ascended to the Nepalese throne on 31 January 1972, at the age of 27, after the death of his father, King Mahendra. However, his coronation was delayed until February 24, 1975, when he was 29, since the first year was considered to be a mourning period for death of king's father and the second year was deemed to be inauspicious by religious astrologers. As a Hindu monarch, he had to follow Nepalese tradition.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: On his ascension to the throne, Birendra was effectively an absolute monarch, as he inherited a country where political parties were banned and he ruled through a system of local and regional councils known as panchayats.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: In an attempt to maintain the "panchayat" system of government prominent leaders of the Nepali Congress Party were arrested frequently. During the 1980s the restraints that had been imposed on political organizations were eased, and liberal student-led groups started to demand constitutional change in Nepal. Because of the growing pro-democracy movement Birendra announced that a referendum to decide between a party-less or a multi-party system would be held. During, referendum options were given for a multi-party system or a Panchayati system. The referendum was held in May 1980 with the party-less system winning by a margin of 55% to 45%. The result of the election led the king to make mass restructuring of country both economically and politically. After the national referendum, he divided the nation into 5 development regions in order to create balanced development and visited each division once a year; the visits were discontinued after his status as a constitutional monarchy in 1990.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: In 1990, a series of strikes and pro-democracy riots broke out in Nepal. Due to the riots, Birendra lifted the ban on political parties and agreed to become a constitutional monarch in April 1990. He appointed an independent Constitution Recommendation Commission to represent the main opposition factions and to prepare a new constitution to accommodate their demands for political reform. The commission presented him with the draft of the proposed constitution on 10 September 1990. The new constitution would make Birendra head of state of a constitutional monarchy with a system of multiparty democracy. The draft constitution was approved by the Prime Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and his cabinet and so, on 9 November 1990, Birendra promulgated the new constitution transformed Nepal into a constitutional monarchy. As a constitutional monarchy, Birendra became more popular than he was as a autocratic ruler attributing to his democratic views and behaviors as well as the inability of the political parties. Birendra, however, could not prevent the Nepalese Civil War, a conflict between Maoist rebels and government forces, which lasted from 1996 until 2006.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: He managed to maintain Nepal’s independence despite encroaching influences by India, China, and the Soviet Union. His first trips abroad as king were to India in October 1973 and China two months later. He prevented the breaking up of Mustang from Nepal and Tibet from China during the Mustang revolution. The disarmament of Khampas rebellions working against China brought Nepal-China relations to a new height. His compatriots remember him for his extensive campaign and contribution for the establishment of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation and South Asian food reserve. During his reign, he was also able to set up the SAARC Secretariat in Kathmandu. He was able to establish diplomatic relations with additional 46 countries taking the total number of countries for diplomatic relations from 49 to 96. He further strengthened Nepal's policy of neutrality by promoting Nepal as zone of Peace in the UN. He believed that Nepal, sandwiched between the two Asian powers, should have good relationship with both.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: He proposed Nepal to be declared a zone of Peace in the United Nations meeting, taking into consideration Nepal's historic peace status, birth of Gautam Buddha and its historical policy of Non-alignment to any foreign powers. This proposal was supported by 116 countries in the UNO. He later established a "Peace Keeping Training Camp" in 1986. This was later restructured into a training institute in 2001 for training peace keeping forces . It was later renamed as Birendra Peace Operations Training Centre. This institute, was later restructured as the training organization through which Nepal started sending trained, peace-keeping forces in cooperation with the UN and became an active member of it. In 1974, King Birendra was successful in peacefully disarming the Khampas rebellions, settled in the northern Himalayan region, by giving land, money and citizenship to those who surrendered their arms, and by confiscating weapons as well. Thus who did not surrender would be prohibited from moving toward the Tibetan region. Birendra is also credited with blocking the use of the army for suppressing the Maoist revolution in the country, which would've further aggravated the situation and disturbed the peace in the nation.


title: Birendra of Nepal

text: King Birendra was regarded as a lover of nature and a great supporter of nature conservation. The trend of nature conservation from the government started during his reign. The dramatic decline of the rhinoceros population due to massive Terai migration and the extent of poaching prompted the government to institute the Rhino Patrol force (Nepali: "गैडा गस्ती" ) of 130 armed men and a network of guard posts all over Chitwan. To prevent the extinction of rhinos through a legal system, National park law was introduced which gazetted the Chitwan National Park in December 1970, with borders delineated the following year and established in 1973.