title: Elliptic curve

text: after a linear change of variables ( and are real numbers). This type of equation is called a Weierstrass equation, and said to be in Weierstrass form, or Weierstrass normal form.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The definition of elliptic curve also requires that the curve is non-singular. Geometrically, this means that the graph has no cusps, self-intersections, or isolated points. Algebraically, this holds if and only if the discriminant, formula_6, is not equal to zero.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The real graph of a non-singular curve has "two" components if its discriminant is positive, and "one" component if it is negative. For example, in the graphs shown in figure to the right, the discriminant in the first case is 64, and in the second case is −368.


title: Elliptic curve

text: When working in the projective plane, we can define a group structure on any smooth cubic curve. In Weierstrass normal form, such a curve will have an additional point at infinity (the homogeneous coordinates ), which serves as the identity of the group.


title: Elliptic curve

text: Since the curve is symmetrical about the -axis, given any point , we can take to be the point opposite it. formula_8, as it is the identity element.


title: Elliptic curve

text: If and are two points on the curve, then we can uniquely describe a third point in the following way. First, draw the line that intersects and . This will generally intersect the cubic at a third point, . We then take to be , the point opposite .


title: Elliptic curve

text: This definition for addition works except in a few special cases related to the point at infinity and intersection multiplicity. The first is when one of the points is . Here, we define , making the identity of the group. If we only have one point, thus we cannot define the line between them. In this case, we use the tangent line to the curve at this point as our line. In most cases, the tangent will intersect a second point and we can take its opposite. If and are opposites of each other, we define . Lastly, If is an inflection point (a point where the concavity of the curve changes), we take to be itself and is simply the point opposite itself, i.e. itself.


title: Elliptic curve

text: Let be a field over which the curve is defined (that is, the coefficients of the defining equation or equations of the curve are in ) and denote the curve by . Then the -rational points of are the points on whose coordinates all lie in , including the point at infinity. The set of -rational points is denoted by . is a group, because properties of polynomial equations show that if is in , then is also in , and if two of , , are in , then so is the third. Additionally, if is a subfield of , then is a subgroup of .


title: Elliptic curve

text: The above groups can be described algebraically as well as geometrically. Given the curve over the field (whose characteristic we assume to be neither 2 nor 3), and points and on the curve, assume first that (case "1"). Let be the equation of the line that intersects and , which has the following slope:


title: Elliptic curve

text: The line equation and the curve equation intersect at the points , , and , so the equations have identical values at these values.


title: Elliptic curve

text: If , then there are two options: if (case "3"), including the case where (case "4"), then the sum is defined as 0; thus, the inverse of each point on the curve is found by reflecting it across the -axis.


title: Elliptic curve

text: For a cubic curve not in Weierstrass normal form, we can still define a group structure by designating one of its nine inflection points as the identity . In the projective plane, each line will intersect a cubic at three points when accounting for multiplicity. For a point , is defined as the unique third point on the line passing through and . Then, for any and , is defined as where is the unique third point on the line containing and .


title: Elliptic curve

text: A curve "E" defined over the field of rational numbers is also defined over the field of real numbers. Therefore, the law of addition (of points with real coordinates) by the tangent and secant method can be applied to "E". The explicit formulae show that the sum of two points "P" and "Q" with rational coordinates has again rational coordinates, since the line joining "P" and "Q" has rational coefficients. This way, one shows that the set of rational points of "E" forms a subgroup of the group of real points of "E". As this group, it is an abelian group, that is, "P" + "Q" = "Q" + "P".


title: Elliptic curve

text: As another example, Ljunggren's equation, a curve whose Weierstrass form is "y" = "x" − 2"x", has only four solutions with "y" ≥ 0 :


title: Elliptic curve

text: Rational points can be constructed by the method of tangents and secants detailed above, starting with a "finite" number of rational points. More precisely the Mordell–Weil theorem states that the group "E"(Q) is a finitely generated (abelian) group. By the fundamental theorem of finitely generated abelian groups it is therefore a finite direct sum of copies of Z and finite cyclic groups.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The proof of the theorem involves two parts. The first part shows that for any integer "m" > 1, the quotient group "E"(Q)/"mE"(Q) is finite (this is the weak Mordell–Weil theorem). Second, introducing a height function "h" on the rational points "E"(Q) defined by "h"("P") = 0 and if "P" (unequal to the point at infinity "P") has as abscissa the rational number "x" = "p"/"q" (with coprime "p" and "q"). This height function "h" has the property that "h"("mP") grows roughly like the square of "m". Moreover, only finitely many rational points with height smaller than any constant exist on "E".


title: Elliptic curve

text: The proof of the theorem is thus a variant of the method of infinite descent and relies on the repeated application of Euclidean divisions on "E": let "P" ∈ "E"(Q) be a rational point on the curve, writing "P" as the sum 2"P" + "Q" where "Q" is a fixed representant of "P" in "E"(Q)/2"E"(Q), the height of "P" is about of the one of "P" (more generally, replacing 2 by any "m" > 1, and by ). Redoing the same with "P", that is to say "P" = 2"P" + "Q", then "P" = 2"P" + "Q", etc. finally expresses "P" as an integral linear combination of points "Q" and of points whose height is bounded by a fixed constant chosen in advance: by the weak Mordell–Weil theorem and the second property of the height function "P" is thus expressed as an integral linear combination of a finite number of fixed points.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The rank of "E"(Q), that is the number of copies of Z in "E"(Q) or, equivalently, the number of independent points of infinite order, is called the "rank" of "E". The Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture is concerned with determining the rank. One conjectures that it can be arbitrarily large, even if only examples with relatively small rank are known. The elliptic curve with the currently largest exactly-known rank is


title: Elliptic curve

text: It has rank 20, found by Noam Elkies and Zev Klagsbrun in 2020. Curves of rank higher than 20 have been known since 1994, with lower bounds on their ranks ranging from 21 to 28, but their exact ranks are not known and in particular it is not proven which of them have higher rank than the others or which is the true "current champion".


title: Elliptic curve

text: As for the groups constituting the torsion subgroup of "E"(Q), the following is known: the torsion subgroup of "E"(Q) is one of the 15 following groups (a theorem due to Barry Mazur): Z/"NZ for "N" = 1, 2, ..., 10, or 12, or Z/2Z × Z/2"NZ with "N" = 1, 2, 3, 4. Examples for every case are known. Moreover, elliptic curves whose Mordell–Weil groups over Q have the same torsion groups belong to a parametrized family.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The "Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture" (BSD) is one of the Millennium problems of the Clay Mathematics Institute. The conjecture relies on analytic and arithmetic objects defined by the elliptic curve in question.


title: Elliptic curve

text: At the analytic side, an important ingredient is a function of a complex variable, "L", the Hasse–Weil zeta function of "E" over Q. This function is a variant of the Riemann zeta function and Dirichlet L-functions. It is defined as an Euler product, with one factor for every prime number "p".


title: Elliptic curve

text: with integral coefficients formula_18, reducing the coefficients modulo "p" defines an elliptic curve over the finite field F (except for a finite number of primes "p", where the reduced curve has a singularity and thus fails to be elliptic, in which case "E" is said to be of bad reduction at "p").


title: Elliptic curve

text: The zeta function of an elliptic curve over a finite field F is, in some sense, a generating function assembling the information of the number of points of "E" with values in the finite field extensions F of F. It is given by


title: Elliptic curve

text: The interior sum of the exponential resembles the development of the logarithm and, in fact, the so-defined zeta function is a rational function:


title: Elliptic curve

text: where the 'trace of Frobenius' term formula_21 is defined to be the difference between the 'expected' number formula_22 and the number of points on the elliptic curve formula_23 over formula_24, viz.


title: Elliptic curve

text: We may define the same quantities and functions over an arbitrary finite field of characteristic formula_27, with formula_28 replacing formula_27 everywhere.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The of "E" over Q is then defined by collecting this information together, for all primes "p". It is defined by


title: Elliptic curve

text: where "N" is the conductor of "E", i.e. the product of primes with bad reduction, in which case "a" is defined differently from the method above: see Silverman (1986) below.


title: Elliptic curve

text: This product converges for Re("s") > 3/2 only. Hasse's conjecture affirms that the "L"-function admits an analytic continuation to the whole complex plane and satisfies a functional equation relating, for any "s", "L"("E", "s") to "L"("E", 2 − "s"). In 1999 this was shown to be a consequence of the proof of the Shimura–Taniyama–Weil conjecture, which asserts that every elliptic curve over "Q" is a modular curve, which implies that its "L"-function is the "L"-function of a modular form whose analytic continuation is known. One can therefore speak about the values of "L"("E", "s") at any complex number "s".


title: Elliptic curve

text: The "Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture" relates the arithmetic of the curve to the behaviour of this "L"-function at "s" = 1. It affirms that the vanishing order of the "L"-function at "s" = 1 equals the rank of "E" and predicts the leading term of the Laurent series of "L"("E", "s") at that point in terms of several quantities attached to the elliptic curve.


title: Elliptic curve

text: Much like the Riemann hypothesis, the truth of the BSD conjecture would have multiple consequences, including the following two:


title: Elliptic curve

text: Let "K" = F be the finite field with "q" elements and "E" an elliptic curve defined over "K". While the precise number of rational points of an elliptic curve "E" over "K" is in general difficult to compute, Hasse's theorem on elliptic curves gives the following inequality:


title: Elliptic curve

text: In other words, the number of points on the curve grows proportionally to the number of elements in the field. This fact can be understood and proven with the help of some general theory; see local zeta function and étale cohomology for example.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The set of points "E"(F) is a finite abelian group. It is always cyclic or the product of two cyclic groups, depending whether "q" is even or odd. For example, the curve defined by


title: Elliptic curve

text: over F has 72 points (71 affine points including (0,0) and one point at infinity) over this field, whose group structure is given by Z/2Z × Z/36Z. The number of points on a specific curve can be computed with Schoof's algorithm.


title: Elliptic curve

text: Studying the curve over the field extensions of F is facilitated by the introduction of the local zeta function of "E" over F, defined by a generating series (also see above)


title: Elliptic curve

text: where the field "K" is the (unique up to isomorphism) extension of "K" = F of degree "n" (that is, F).


title: Elliptic curve

text: where formula_43 is the complex conjugate. We choose formula_41 so that its absolute value is formula_45, that is formula_46, and that formula_47, so that formula_48 and formula_49, or in other words, formula_50.


title: Elliptic curve

text: formula_41 can then be used in the local zeta function as its values when raised to the various powers of can be said to reasonably approximate the behaviour of formula_39.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The Sato–Tate conjecture is a statement about how the error term formula_68 in Hasse's theorem varies with the different primes "q", if an elliptic curve E over Q is reduced modulo q. It was proven (for almost all such curves) in 2006 due to the results of Taylor, Harris and Shepherd-Barron, and says that the error terms are equidistributed.


title: Elliptic curve

text: Elliptic curves over finite fields are notably applied in cryptography and for the factorization of large integers. These algorithms often make use of the group structure on the points of "E". Algorithms that are applicable to general groups, for example the group of invertible elements in finite fields, F*, can thus be applied to the group of points on an elliptic curve. For example, the discrete logarithm is such an algorithm. The interest in this is that choosing an elliptic curve allows for more flexibility than choosing "q" (and thus the group of units in F). Also, the group structure of elliptic curves is generally more complicated.


title: Elliptic curve

text: Elliptic curves can be defined over any field "K"; the formal definition of an elliptic curve is a non-singular projective algebraic curve over "K" with genus 1 and endowed with a distinguished point defined over "K".


title: Elliptic curve

text: If the characteristic of "K" is neither 2 nor 3, then every elliptic curve over "K" can be written in the form


title: Elliptic curve

text: after a linear change of variables. Here "p" and "q" are elements of "K" such that the right hand side polynomial "x" − "px" − "q" does not have any double roots. If the characteristic is 2 or 3, then more terms need to be kept: in characteristic 3, the most general equation is of the form


title: Elliptic curve

text: for arbitrary constants "b", "b", "b" such that the polynomial on the right-hand side has distinct roots (the notation is chosen for historical reasons). In characteristic 2, even this much is not possible, and the most general equation is


title: Elliptic curve

text: provided that the variety it defines is non-singular. If characteristic were not an obstruction, each equation would reduce to the previous ones by a suitable linear change of variables.


title: Elliptic curve

text: One typically takes the curve to be the set of all points ("x","y") which satisfy the above equation and such that both "x" and "y" are elements of the algebraic closure of "K". Points of the curve whose coordinates both belong to "K" are called "K"-rational points.


title: Elliptic curve

text: Many of the preceding results remain valid when the field of definition of "E" is a number field "K", that is to say, a finite field extension of Q. In particular, the group "E(K)" of "K"-rational points of an elliptic curve "E" defined over "K" is finitely generated, which generalizes the Mordell–Weil theorem above. A theorem due to Loïc Merel shows that for a given integer "d", there are (up to isomorphism) only finitely many groups that can occur as the torsion groups of "E"("K") for an elliptic curve defined over a number field "K" of degree "d". More precisely, there is a number "B"("d") such that for any elliptic curve "E" defined over a number field "K" of degree "d", any torsion point of "E"("K") is of order less than "B"("d"). The theorem is effective: for "d" > 1, if a torsion point is of order "p", with "p" prime, then


title: Elliptic curve

text: As for the integral points, Siegel's theorem generalizes to the following: Let "E" be an elliptic curve defined over a number field "K", "x" and "y" the Weierstrass coordinates. Then there are only finitely many points of "E(K)" whose "x"-coordinate is in the ring of integers "O".


title: Elliptic curve

text: The properties of the Hasse–Weil zeta function and the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture can also be extended to this more general situation.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The formulation of elliptic curves as the embedding of a torus in the complex projective plane follows naturally from a curious property of Weierstrass's elliptic functions. These functions and their first derivative are related by the formula


title: Elliptic curve

text: Here, and are constants; is the Weierstrass elliptic function and its derivative. It should be clear that this relation is in the form of an elliptic curve (over the complex numbers). The Weierstrass functions are doubly periodic; that is, they are periodic with respect to a lattice ; in essence, the Weierstrass functions are naturally defined on a torus . This torus may be embedded in the complex projective plane by means of the map


title: Elliptic curve

text: This map is a group isomorphism of the torus (considered with its natural group structure) with the chord-and-tangent group law on the cubic curve which is the image of this map. It is also an isomorphism of Riemann surfaces from the torus to the cubic curve, so topologically, an elliptic curve is a torus. If the lattice is related by multiplication by a non-zero complex number to a lattice , then the corresponding curves are isomorphic. Isomorphism classes of elliptic curves are specified by the -invariant.


title: Elliptic curve

text: The isomorphism classes can be understood in a simpler way as well. The constants and , called the modular invariants, are uniquely determined by the lattice, that is, by the structure of the torus. However, all real polynomials factorize completely into linear factors over the complex numbers, since the field of complex numbers is the algebraic closure of the reals. So, the elliptic curve may be written as


title: Sketch comedy

text: Sketch comedy comprises a series of short, amusing scenes or vignettes, called "sketches", commonly between one and ten minutes long, performed by a group of comic actors or comedians. The form developed and became popular in vaudeville, and is used widely in variety shows, comedy talk shows, and some sitcoms and children's television series. The sketches may be improvised live by the performers, developed through improvisation before public performance, or scripted and rehearsed in advance like a play. Sketch comedians routinely differentiate their work from a "skit", maintaining that a skit is a (single) dramatized joke (or "bit") while a sketch is a comedic exploration of a concept, character, or situation.


title: Sketch comedy

text: Sketch comedy has its origins in vaudeville and music hall, where many brief humorous acts were strung together to form a larger programme.


title: Sketch comedy

text: In Britain, it moved to stage performances by Cambridge Footlights, such as "Beyond the Fringe" and "A Clump of Plinths" (which evolved into "Cambridge Circus"), to radio, with such shows as "It's That Man Again" and "I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again", then to television, with such shows as "Not Only... But Also", "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "Not the Nine O'Clock News" (and its successor "Alas Smith and Jones"), and "A Bit of Fry and Laurie".


title: Sketch comedy

text: In Mexico, the series "Los Supergenios de la Mesa Cuadrada", created by Mexican comedian Roberto Gómez Bolaños under the stage name Chespirito, was broadcast between 1968 and 1973, creating such famous characters as El Chavo del Ocho and El Chapulín Colorado.


title: Sketch comedy

text: While separate sketches historically have tended to be unrelated, more recent groups have introduced overarching themes that connect the sketches within a particular show with recurring characters that return for more than one appearance. Examples of recurring characters include Mr. Gumby from "Monty Python's Flying Circus"; Ted and Ralph from "The Fast Show"; The Family from "The Carol Burnett Show"; the Head Crusher from "The Kids in the Hall"; Martin Short's Ed Grimley, a recurring character from both "SCTV" and "Saturday Night Live"; The Nerd from "Robot Chicken"; and Kevin and Perry from "Harry Enfield and Chums". Recurring characters from "Saturday Night Live" have notably been featured in a number of spinoff films, including "The Blues Brothers" (1980), "Wayne's World" (1992) and "Superstar" (1999).


title: Sketch comedy

text: The idea of running characters was taken a step further with shows like "The Red Green Show" and "The League of Gentlemen", where sketches centered on the various inhabitants of the fictional towns of Possum Lake and Royston Vasey, respectively. In "Little Britain", sketches focused on a cast of recurring characters.


title: Sketch comedy

text: In North America, contemporary sketch comedy is largely an outgrowth of the improvisational comedy scene that flourished during the 1970s, largely growing out of "The Second City" in Chicago and Toronto, which was built upon the success in Minneapolis of The Brave New Workshop and Dudley Riggs.


title: Sketch comedy

text: Notable contemporary American stage sketch comedy groups include The Second City, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and The Groundlings. In South Bend, Indiana, area high school students produced a sketch comedy series called "Beyond Our Control" that aired on the local NBC affiliate WNDU-TV from 1967 to 1986.


title: Sketch comedy

text: Sketch films made during the 1970s and 1980s include "If You Don't Stop It... You'll Go Blind" and the sequel "Can I Do It... 'Til I Need Glasses?", "The Groove Tube", "Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)", "The Kentucky Fried Movie" and its sequel "Amazon Women on the Moon", and Monty Python's "And Now for Something Completely Different" and "The Meaning of Life".


title: Sketch comedy

text: More recent sketch films include "The Underground Comedy Movie", "InAPPropriate Comedy", "Movie 43" and "Livrés chez vous sans contact".


title: Sketch comedy

text: Since 1999, the growing sketch comedy scene has precipitated the development of sketch comedy festivals in cities all around North America. Noted festivals include:


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: Yuvarathnaa () is a 2021 Indian Kannada-language action drama film written and directed by Santhosh Ananddram. produced by Vijay Kiragandur under the banner Hombale Films, it stars Puneeth Rajkumar, Sayyeshaa, Dhananjay, Prakash Raj, Diganth, and Sai Kumar. The music for the film was composed by Thaman S, while the cinematography and editing was handled by Venkatesh Anguraj and Jnaanesh B. Matad, respectively. The film was theatrically released on 1 April 2021.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: "Yuvarathnaa" begins with RK-University student Sameera's suicide after failing her CET exam despite being a brilliant student. Gurudev Deshmukh, who is the principal of RK-University and Sameera's teacher is distraught and files a petition against private colleges for depriving public institutions of funds and declining opportunities to bright students studied in Government Colleges with the support of his former student Samarth Bhagwath, who is the present-Bangalore DC and Education minister Raghav Reddy. Antony Joseph, who runs the private colleges for his benefit, retaliates by sending gangsters across the state to stop the petition, but are warned and thrashed by the student leader Arjun, who is kicked out for going against the college.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: Arjun gets himself admitted into RK University as a student only to learn that Antony Joseph has sent goons, disguised as students as they want to ruin the students by disrupting their studies using harassment and drug supply. Arjun meets Vandana, a medical lecturer in the University, and they are attracted to each other. However, Vandana suspects Arjun when she witnesses him packing drugs and keeping them in library books. Arjun runs into a person, who recognises him and his intentions, Arjun takes the person's place and meets with Antony and his gang, where he finds that Raghava Reddy and RK-University's Vice Principal Jayapal are in cahoots with Antony Joseph. The duo were responsible for Sameera's suicide and were posing as Gurudev's ally, The mysterious person was a hitman who was hired by Raghav Reddy to assassinate Gurudev.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: However, Arjun foils their attempt and it is revealed he was actually supplying anti-drug medicines to cure the students with the help of librarian Govind. Gurudev arrives at the college and checks Arjun's file after Arjun lands in trouble for disturbing the college premises by thrashing the goons. Gurudev is shocked to see Arjun's file where he reveals that Arjun is actually Yuvaraj, an intelligent student suffering from anger management issues who was expelled 12 years back for manhandling a lecturer. Arjun (Yuvaraj) reveals the truth to Gurudev, who expels Jayapal from the college. Gurudev learns from Govind that Arjun had thrashed the lecturer as he was about to assault a female student and had become a renowned professor himself.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: Gurudev apologizes to Arjun and appoints him as the professor of the university. After clearing up the misunderstandings with Vandana, the two renew their relationship. As the lecturer, Arjun cleverly motivates his students and encourages them to take more control of their education and follow their dreams. Antony Joseph makes various attempts to make the college fail the reopening standards. After an incident where the kabaddi team's glucose is swapped for illegal chemicals which causes the college's disqualification from the Kabaddi tournament. Arjun realises that Samarth is also in cahoots with Antony, who was sent as a spy to provide information.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: After Samarth is exposed, Antony Joseph and his gang conspire to disrupt the exams. Realising their plan, Arjun patrols the college and stops various goons posing as exam invigilators from impeding the students. Despite some attempts, the exams proceed peacefully. Meanwhile, Samarth realises his mistakes and confesses the gang's activities to Yuva and Samrat's common friend Inspector Azad, leading to Raghav Reddy and Antony Joseph getting arrested for their crimes. The students's results are announced and everyone passes the exams with flying colors and celebrate. Arjun, along with other students are celebrating for RK-University 100th-year celebration where Gurudev hands over the chairman post of the University to Arjun.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: Puneeth Rajkumar was reported to sign his next film with Santhosh Ananddram, after completing the production works of his film "Natasaarvabhowma" (2019). The film marks the second collaboration between Puneeth Rajkumar and Ananddram after "Raajakumara" (2017). Vijay Kiragandur of Hombale Films was reported to produce the film after working on the duo's previous flick. On 10 October 2018, the makers announced that the film's title will be launched by one of his lucky fans, and also stated that the team might consider using a title from Rajkumar’s 200-odd films, but might contain a new element. On 23 October 2018, Puneeth Raajkumar took to Instagram to announce that the entire "Raajakumara" team (which consists of Puneeth Rajkumar, Ananddram, music composer V. Harikrishna and Hombale Films) will be joining this project. An event to launch the film's title was held at the Cauvery Theatre in Bangalore on 1 November 2018 (Kannada Rajyotsava), where the title was revealed to be "Yuvarathnaa". According to reports, Puneeth Rajkumar would play a college student in the film, for which he lost weight.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: On 1 December 2018, the team hosted auditions for budding actors and actresses to feature in the film. The makers reported that around 200 new talents were auditioned and shortlisted. Initially, Tamannaah was set to play the female lead, which would have been her full-fledged Kannada debut after appearing in item numbers in "Jaguar" (2016) and "" (2019); however it was later reported that Tamil actress Sayyeshaa was confirmed for the role. Dhananjay and Vasishta N. Simha were roped in for the film, appearing in negative roles. Arun Gowda was reported to be cast in the film. Veteran Tamil actress Raadhika Sarathkumar joined the cast in March 2019, marking her comeback in Kannada film industry after 32 years. Her last appearance in a Kannada film was in the 1987 film "Sathyam Shivam Sundaram"; however, she did not appear in the final cut of the film. Boman Irani was reported to play a pivotal role in the film, making his debut in Kannada.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: Prominent filmmaker Bhagavan made his acting debut in the film, alongside bodybuilder Mamatha Sanathkumar who made her Kannada debut. Triveni Rao confirmed her presence in the film in June 2019. In July 2019, Prakash Raj and Diganth joined the film's cast. Diganth's role was revealed to be a deputy commissioner in the film. The very same month, Sonu Gowda also joined the cast of the film. On 9 December 2019, Pavan, son of Kannada filmmaker Narayan, joined the sets of the film.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: Composer V. Harikrishna opted out of the project citing schedule conflicts and was replaced by Thaman S as the music director. Dhilip Subbarayan, who choreographed the action sequences in "Saaho" (2019), was roped in as the action director.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: The film had a formal launch in the presence of its cast and crew on 12 December 2018. The principal photography of the film began on 14 February 2019 in Dharwad, and wrapped up within six days. The film's second schedule started in Maharaja's College in Mysore in late February. The third schedule of the film kickstarted on 22 March. During the intermediate schedule on 8 April 2019, Puneeth's elder brother Raghavendra Rajkumar visited the sets. After a long break, the team resumed the fifth schedule of shoot in Dharwad in June 2019.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: It was reported that the team may kickstart the song shoot before November 2019. On 1 February 2020, Santhosh Ananddram tweeted about the song shoot choreographed by Jani Master. In late February, sources reported that two songs will be filmed in Europe, from late February to early March 2020. Amidst a coronavirus scare, the makers decided to shoot the songs in Austria and Slovenia. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the makers called off the overseas shooting schedules, and the film's shoot was further affected by pandemic-related restrictions.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: On 26 September 2020, Puneeth Rajkumar and his team resumed the final schedule for two songs in India. On 12 October 2020, the team announced that they have wrapped the shoot of the film.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: The film's music is composed by Thaman S, who worked with Puneeth Rajkumar in "Power" (2014) and "Chakravyuha" (2016). "Yuvarathnaa" marks Thaman's first collaboration with Santhosh Ananddram, replacing his regular collaborator V. Harikrishna for his films" Mr. and Mrs. Ramachari" (2014) and "Raajakumara" (2017).


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: "Yuvarathnaa" was originally slated to release on the eve of Dussehra, on 7 October 2019. However, the delay in the post-production works of the film made the makers postpone its release to December 2019, later to January 2020. In late December, the makers announced that the film will be released on 3 April 2020. However, in late February 2020, the makers announced that the film's release will be rescheduled for 8 May 2020, which was further postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic in India.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: In November 2020, it was announced that film will also be released in dubbed versions of Telugu, Tamil and Hindi languages along with the Kannada version. On the occasion of New Year's Day, the makers announced new theatrical release dates of 1 April 2021 in India, 31 March 2021 in USA and 10 April 2021 in Singapore.


title: Yuvarathnaa

text: The film, along with its dubbed versions, was made available to stream a week later through Amazon Prime Video on 9 April 2021 due to the COVID-19 restrictions in Karnataka and was telecasted on Udaya TV on 14 January 2022, during the eve of Makara Sankranthi.


title: Alan Parker

text: Sir Alan William Parker (14 February 1944 – 31 July 2020) was an English filmmaker. His early career, beginning in his late teens, was spent as a copywriter and director of television advertisements. After about ten years of filming adverts, many of which won awards for creativity, he began screenwriting and directing films.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker was known for using a wide range of filmmaking styles and working in differing genres. He directed musicals, including "Bugsy Malone" (1976), "Fame" (1980), "Pink Floyd – The Wall" (1982), "The Commitments" (1991) and "Evita" (1996); true-story dramas, including "Midnight Express" (1978), "Mississippi Burning" (1988), "Come See the Paradise" (1990) and "Angela's Ashes" (1999); family dramas, including "Shoot the Moon" (1982), and horrors and thrillers including "Angel Heart" (1987) and "The Life of David Gale" (2003).


title: Alan Parker

text: His films won nineteen BAFTA awards, ten Golden Globes and six Academy Awards. His film "Birdy" was chosen by the National Board of Review as one of the of 1984, and won the Grand Prix Spécial du Jury prize at the 1985 Cannes Film Festival. Parker was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire for his services to the British film industry and knighted in 2002. He was active in both British cinema and American cinema, along with being a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain and lecturing at various film schools.


title: Alan Parker

text: In 2000 he received the Royal Photographic Society Lumière Award for major achievement in cinematography, video or animation. In 2013 he received the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award, the highest honour the British Film Academy can give a filmmaker. Parker donated his personal archive to the British Film Institute's National Archive in 2015.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker was born into a working-class family in Islington, North London, the son of Elsie Ellen, a dressmaker, and William Leslie Parker, a house painter. He grew up on a council estate of Islington, which always made it easy for him to remain "almost defiantly working-class in attitudes" said the British novelist and screenwriter Ray Connolly. Parker said that although he had his share of fun growing up, he always felt he was studying for his secondary school exams, while his friends were out having a good time. He had an "ordinary background" with no aspirations to become a film director, nor did anyone in his family have any desire to be involved in the film industry. The closest he ever came, he said, to anything related to films was learning photography, a hobby inspired by his uncles: "That early introduction to photography is something I remember."


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker attended Dame Alice Owen's School, concentrating on science in his last year. He left school when he was eighteen to work in the advertising field, hoping that the advertising industry might be a good way to meet girls.


title: Alan Parker

text: His first job was office boy in the post room of Ogilvy & Mather an advertising agency in London. But more than anything, he said, he wanted to write, and would write essays and ads when he got home after work. His colleagues also encouraged him to write, which soon led him to a position as a copywriter in the company. Parker took jobs with different agencies over the next few years, having by then become proficient as a copywriter. One such agency was Collett Dickenson Pearce in London, where he first met the future producers David Puttnam and Alan Marshall, both of whom would later produce many of his films. Parker credited Puttnam with inspiring him and talking him into writing his first film script, "Melody" (1971).


title: Alan Parker

text: By 1968, Parker had moved from copywriting to successfully directing numerous television advertisements. In 1970, he joined Marshall to establish a company to make advertisements. That company eventually became one of Britain's best commercial production houses, winning nearly every major national and international award open to it. Among their award-winning adverts were the UK Cinzano vermouth advertisement (starring Joan Collins and Leonard Rossiter), and a Heineken advert which used 100 actors. Parker credited his years writing and directing adverts for his later success as a film director:


title: Alan Parker

text: After writing the screenplay for the Waris Hussein film "Melody" in 1971, Parker shot his first fictional film titled "No Hard Feelings" in 1973, for which he wrote the script. The film is a bleak love story set against the Blitz in London during the Second World War, when the Luftwaffe bombed the city for 57 consecutive nights. Parker was born during one of those bombing raids, and said "the baby in that [film] could well have been me". With no feature film directing experience, he could not find financial backing, and decided to risk using his own money and funds from mortgaging his house to cover the cost. The film impressed the BBC, which bought the film and showed it on television a few years later in 1976. The BBC producer Mark Shivas had, in the interim, also contracted Parker to direct "The Evacuees" (1975), a Second World War story written by Jack Rosenthal which was shown as a "Play for Today". The work was based on true events which involved the evacuation of school children from central Manchester. "The Evacuees" won a BAFTA for best TV drama and also an Emmy for best International Drama.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker next wrote and directed his first feature film, "Bugsy Malone" (1976), a parody of early American gangster films and American musicals, but with only child actors. Parker's desire in making the film was to entertain both children and adults with a unique concept and style of film:


title: Alan Parker

text: The film received eight British Academy Award nominations and five Awards, including two BAFTAs for Jodie Foster.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker next directed "Midnight Express" (1978), based on a true account by Billy Hayes about his incarceration and escape from a Turkish prison for trying to smuggle hashish out of the country. Parker made the film in order to do something radically different from "Bugsy Malone", which would broaden his style of filmmaking. The script was written by Oliver Stone in his first screenplay, and won Stone his first Academy Award. The music was composed by Giorgio Moroder, who was also awarded his first Oscar for the film. "Midnight Express" established Parker as a "front rank director", as both he and the film were Oscar nominated. The success of that film also gave him the freedom from then on to direct films of his own choosing.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker then directed "Fame" (1980), which follows the lives of eight students through their years at the New York City's High School of Performing Arts. It was a huge box-office success and led to a television spin-off series of the same name. Parker stated that after doing a serious drama like "Midnight Express", he wanted to do a film with music, but very different from typical musicals of the past:


title: Alan Parker

text: Actress Irene Cara recalls that "the nice thing about the way Alan works with everyone is that he allowed us to really feel like classmates." However, Parker was refused permission to use the actual school portrayed in the film because of the notoriety he achieved from his previous film, "Midnight Express". The head of the school district told him, "Mr. Parker, we can't risk you doing for New York high schools the same thing you did for Turkish prisons."


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker's next film was "Shoot the Moon" (1982), the story of a marital break-up that takes place in Northern California. Parker calls it "the first grown-up film that I'd done". He again chose to direct a subject distinctly different from his previous film, explaining, "I really try to do different work. I think that by doing different work each time, it keeps you creatively fresher." He described the theme of the film being about "two people who can't live together but who also can't let go of one another. A story of fading love, senseless rage, and the inevitable bewildering betrayal in the eyes of the children." Its stars, Albert Finney and Diane Keaton, received Golden Globe nominations for their performances.


title: Alan Parker

text: The film also had a personal significance for Parker, who said he was forced to examine his own marriage: "It was a painful film to make for me because there were echoes of my own life in it. It was about a breakup of a marriage, and the children in the story were quite close to my own children in age. "Shoot the Moon" was very, very close to my own life." He spent days with the writer Bo Goldman on developing a realistic story, and states that his marriage became "infinitely stronger" as a result of the film.


title: Alan Parker

text: Also in 1982 Parker directed a film version of the Pink Floyd conceptual rock opera, "The Wall", which starred Boomtown Rats frontman Bob Geldof as the fictive rocker "Pink". Parker later described the filming as "one of the most miserable experiences of my creative life." though not a box office success, it received positive critical reviews and became a cult classic.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker directed "Birdy" (1984), starring Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage. It recounts the story of two school friends who have returned from the Vietnam War but who were both psychologically and physically injured. Parker called it a "wonderful story" after having read the book by William Wharton. However, because of the nature of the story, he had no idea how to make it into a movie: "I didn't know if you could take the poetry of the book and make it cinematic poetry, or if an audience would actually want it."


title: Alan Parker

text: The film became a critical success. Richard Schickel says that Parker had "transcended realism ... [and] achieved his personal best", while Derek Malcolm considers "Birdy" to be Parker's "most mature and perhaps his best movie". The message of the film, writes critic Quentin Falk, is "joyously life-affirming", which he notes is common to much of Parker's work. He adds that Parker's films manage to achieve a blend of "strong story and elegant frame", a style which he says typically eludes other directors who rely too much on the purely visual.


title: Alan Parker

text: With "Mississippi Burning" (1988), Parker received his second Oscar nomination for Best Director. The film is based on a true story about the murders of three civil rights workers in 1964, and stars Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe. Hackman was nominated for Best Actor, while the film was nominated for five other Oscars, including Best Picture. It won for Best Cinematography.


title: Alan Parker

text: In 1991 Parker directed "The Commitments", a comedy about working class Dubliners who form a soul band. The film was an international success and led to a successful sound track album. To find a cast Parker visited most of the estimated 1,200 different bands then playing throughout Dublin. He met with over 3,000 different band members. Rather than pick known actors, Parker says he chose young musicians, most of whom had no acting experience, in order to remain "truthful to the story". "I cast everybody to be very close to the character that they play in the film. They're not really playing outside of who they are as people." Parker says he wanted to make the film because he could relate to the hardships in the lives of young Dubliners, having come from a similar working-class background in north London.


title: Alan Parker

text: Film critic David Thomson observes that with "The Commitments", Parker "showed an unusual fondness for people, place, and music. It was as close as Parker has come to optimism." Parker said that it was the "most enjoyable" film he ever made.


title: Alan Parker

text: "Evita" (1996), was another musical, starring Madonna, Antonio Banderas and Jonathan Pryce. Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's score originated from the earlier musical. Parker remembers Madonna's strong desire to play the role of Evita, that "as far as she was concerned, no one could play Evita as well as she could, and she said that she would sing, dance and act her heart out, ... and that's exactly what she did". "Evita" was nominated for five Academy Awards, winning for Best Original Song, which was sung by Madonna.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker's next film was "Angela's Ashes" (1999), a drama based on the real-life experiences of the Irish-American teacher Frank McCourt and his childhood. His family was forced to move from the United States back to Ireland because of financial difficulties, which led to the family's problems caused by his father's alcoholism.


title: Alan Parker

text: Colm Meaney, who acted in "The Commitments", noticed the dramatic shift in theme and style of Parker's films. He said "it's the variety of his work that sort of staggers me. He can go from "Evita" to "Angela's Ashes". He adds that "when Alan starts a project, it's going to be something very interesting and completely out of left field". Parker explained that doing a story like "Angela's Ashes" was simply his "reaction against a big film" like "Evita". He said that he tried to avoid the "obvious movies", saying "You want the film to stay with people afterwards ... It just seems to me that the greatest crime is to make just another movie." Parker said it is important to carefully choose which films to write and direct:


title: Alan Parker

text: Therefore, when Parker visited film schools and spoke to young filmmakers, he told them that the new film technology available for making films and telling a story is less important than conveying a message: "If you haven't got something to say, I don't think you should be a filmmaker".


title: Alan Parker

text: British film critic Geoff Andrew described Parker as a "natural storyteller" who got his message across using "dramatic lighting, vivid characterisation, scenes of violent conflict regularly interrupting sequences of expository dialogue, and an abiding sympathy for the underdog (he is a born liberal with a keen sense of injustice)".


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker produced and directed "The Life of David Gale" (2003), a crime thriller, starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Winslet. It tells the story of an advocate for the abolition of capital punishment who finds himself on death row after having been convicted of murdering a fellow activist. The film received generally poor reviews. Roger Ebert did not like the film, calling the story "silly", although he said the acting was "splendidly done".


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker was married twice; first to Annie Inglis from 1966 until their divorce in 1992, and then to producer Lisa Moran, to whom he was married until his death. He had five children, including screenwriter Nathan Parker.


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker died in London on 31 July 2020 at age 76, following a lengthy illness (not believed to be related to COVID-19).


title: Alan Parker

text: Parker was nominated for eight BAFTA awards, three Golden Globes and two Oscars. He was a founding member of the Directors Guild of Great Britain and lectured at film schools around the world. In 1985, the British Academy awarded him the Michael Balcon Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Cinema. Parker was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1995 Birthday Honours and Knight Bachelor in the 2002 New Year Honours for services to the film industry. In 1999 he was given the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Directors Guild of Great Britain. He became chairman of the Board of Governors of the British Film Institute (BFI) in 1998 and in 1999 was appointed the first chairman of the newly formed UK Film Council.


title: Alan Parker

text: In 2005 Parker received an honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of Sunderland of which his long-time associate Lord Puttnam is chancellor. In 2004 he was the Chairman of the Jury at the 26th Moscow International Film Festival. In 2013 he was awarded the BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award "in recognition of outstanding achievement in the art forms of the moving image", which is the highest honour the British Academy can bestow.


title: Alan Parker

text: The British Film Institute (BFI) produced a tribute to Parker in September and October 2015 with an event titled "Focus on Sir Alan Parker" which included multiple screenings of his films and an on-stage interview of Parker by producer David Puttnam. The event coincided and marked the donation his entire working archive to the BFI National Archive.


title: Pincer movement

text: The pincer movement, or double envelopment, is a military maneuver in which forces simultaneously attack both flanks (sides) of an enemy formation. This classic maneuver holds an important foothold throughout the history of warfare.


title: Pincer movement

text: The pincer movement typically occurs when opposing forces advance towards the center of an army that responds by moving its outside forces to the enemy's flanks to surround it. At the same time, a second layer of pincers may attack the more distant flanks to keep reinforcements from the target units.


title: Pincer movement

text: A full pincer movement leads to the attacking army facing the enemy in front, on both flanks, and in the rear. If attacking pincers link up in the enemy's rear, the enemy is encircled. Such battles often end in surrendering or destroying the enemy force, but the encircled force can try to break out. They can attack the encirclement from the inside to escape, or a friendly external force can attack from the outside to open an escape route.


title: Pincer movement

text: Sun Tzu, in "The Art of War" (traditionally dated to the 6th century BC), speculated on the maneuver but advised against trying it for fear that an army would likely run first before the move could be completed. He argued that it was best to allow the enemy a path to escape (or at least the appearance of one), as the target army would fight with more ferocity when surrounded. Still, it would lose formation and be more vulnerable to destruction if shown an avenue of escape.


title: Pincer movement

text: The maneuver may have first been used at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. The historian Herodotus describes how the Athenian general Miltiades deployed 900 Plataean and 10,000 Athenian hoplites in a U-formation with the wings manned much more deeply than the center. His enemy outnumbered him heavily, and Miltiades chose to match the breadth of the Persian battle line by thinning out the center of his forces while reinforcing the wings. In the course of the battle, the weaker central formations retreated, allowing the wings to converge behind the Persian battle line and drive the more numerous but lightly armed Persians to retreat in panic.


title: Pincer movement

text: The maneuver was used by Alexander the Great at the Battle of the Hydaspes in 326 BC. He launched his attack at the Indian left flank, and the Indian king Porus reacted by sending the cavalry on the right of his formation around in support. Alexander had positioned two cavalry units on the left of his formation, hidden from view, under the command of Coenus and Demitrius. The units were then able to follow Porus's cavalry around, trapping them in a classic pincer movement.


title: Pincer movement

text: The most famous example of its use was at the Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, when Hannibal executed the maneuver against the Romans. Military historians cite it as the first successful use of the pincer movement that was recorded in detail, by the Greek historian Polybius.


title: Pincer movement

text: It was also later used by Khalid ibn al-Walid at the Battle of Walaja in 633, by Alp Arslan at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 (under the name "crescent tactic") and by Saladin at the Battle of Hattin in 1187.


title: Pincer movement

text: Genghis Khan used a rudimentary form known colloquially as the "horns" tactic. Two enveloping flanks of horsemen surrounded the enemy, but they usually remained unjoined, leaving the enemy an escape route to the rear. It was key to many of Genghis's early victories over other Mongolian tribes.


title: Pincer movement

text: It was used at the Battle of Mohács by Süleyman the Magnificent in 1526 and by Field Marshal Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld at the Battle of Fraustadt in 1706.


title: Pincer movement

text: Even in the horse-and-musket era, the maneuver was used across many military cultures. A double envelopment was deployed by the Iranian conqueror Nader Shah at the Battle of Kirkuk (1733) against the Ottomans; the Persian army, under Nader, flanked the Ottomans on both ends of their line and encircled their centre despite being numerically at a disadvantage. In another battle at Kars in 1745, Nader routed the Ottoman army and subsequently encircled their encampment. The Ottoman army soon after collapsed under the pressure of the encirclement. Also during the Battle of Karnal in 1739, Nader drew out the Mughal army which outnumbered his own force by over six to one, and managed to encircle and defeat a significant contingent of the Mughals in an ambush around Kunjpura village.


title: Pincer movement

text: Daniel Morgan used it at the Battle of Cowpens in 1781 in South Carolina. Zulu impis used a version of the maneuver that they called the "buffalo horn" formation.


title: Pincer movement

text: The maneuver was used in the blitzkrieg of the armed forces of Nazi Germany during World War II, developing into a complex, multidisciplinary endeavor. It involved fast movement by mechanized armor, artillery barrages, air force bombardment, and effective radio communications, with the primary objective of destroying enemy command and control chains, undermining enemy troop morale and disrupting supply lines. During the Battle of Kiev (1941) the Axis forces managed to encircle the largest number of soldiers in the history of warfare. Well over half-a-million Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner by the end of the operation.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: The 2022 World Figure Skating Championships were held in Montpellier, France from March 21–27, 2022. Figure skaters competed for the title of world champion in men's singles, women's singles, pairs, and ice dance. The competition was used to determine the entry quotas for each federation at the 2023 World Championships.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Montpellier was announced as the host in June 2019. It is the first time that Montpellier has ever hosted the World Championships and the first time that France has hosted since 2012.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: The tournament was notable for several high-profile absences. On March 1, 2022, the ISU banned figure skaters and officials from Russia and Belarus from attending all international competitions due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. World champions in three of the four disciplines (as well as several other medalists) were barred from competing as a result. The Chinese Skating Association opted not to send any skaters to the competition. Several leading competitors such as Nathan Chen and Yuzuru Hanyu withdrew from the World Championship due to injury.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: During the men's short program on March 24, one judge received backlash from fans and the media for voting that Ukrainian skater Ivan Shmuratko had committed a "costume/prop violation" for wearing the Ukrainian national team's training clothes rather than his costume. Shmuratko did not receive a deduction due to a majority of judges' votes being required, and the crowd gave him a standing ovation for his performance. Shmuratko qualified for the free skating, where he finished at the last position.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: On the same day, one day prior to the rhythm dance, the ISU rejected Ukrainian ice dancers Oleksandra Nazarova / Maksym Nikitin's proposed program set to music by Ukrainian artists that included a 15-second snippet of a speech by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Ukrainian language calling for peace; the ISU cited the speech portion of the program as "propaganda". Following intervention by their federation, Nazarova/Nikitin were allowed to compete using a version featuring only music, and like teammate Shmuratko, they also wore the colors of the Ukrainian national team rather than their costumes and received a standing ovation. Despite limited training time leading up to the event, they said that they wanted to perform the new program set to "1944" by Jamala and Ukrainian folk song "Oi u luzi chervona kalyna" performed by Andriy Khlyvnyuk of BoomBox to "express what they are living through." After the rhythm dance, Ukrainian Figure Skating Federation president Mikhail Makarov issued an appeal to ISU president Jan Dijkema and National Olympic Committee of Ukraine president Sergey Bubka asking for help in understanding the rationale behind the ISU's decision. Nazarova/Nikitin later withdrew from the free dance due to feeling that performing their upbeat "Moulin Rouge!" program was inappropriate in light of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Skaters were eligible for the 2022 World Championships if they turned 15 years of age before July 1, 2021, and if they met the minimum technical elements score requirements. The ISU accepted scores if they were obtained at senior-level ISU-recognized international competitions during the ongoing season at least 21 days before the first official practice day of the championships or during the two preceding seasons (adjusted from the traditional one due to the pandemic).


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Based on the results of the 2021 World Championships, each ISU member nation can field one to three entries per discipline.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Member nations began announcing their selections in December 2021. The International Skating Union published a complete list of entries on March 2, 2022.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Small medals awarded to the skaters who achieve the highest short program or rhythm dance placements in each discipline:


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Medals awarded to the skaters who achieve the highest free skating or free dance placements in each discipline:


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: With Shoma Uno earning gold and Yuma Kagiyama taking silver, Japan placed at least one man on the podium for an eighth consecutive World Championships. Uno's title is the country's first in men's singles since 2017.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: The ban against Russian and Belarusian skaters seriously affected the women's singles competition as Russian skaters won 5 of the 6 last World titles in the discipline. They also won 5 of the 6 World medals awarded during the last two World Championships, including a podium sweep in 2021.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Kaori Sakamoto of Japan won the country's first medal since 2018 and the first title since Mao Asada in 2014. Silver medalist Loena Hendrickx of Belgium won the country's first ISU Championships medal in women's singles, while bronze medalist Alysa Liu of the United States won the country's first medal since Ashley Wagner in 2016. It was the first podium featuring skaters representing three different countries since 2014.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Due to the ban against Russian skaters and the Chinese Skating Association's decision not to send any skaters to compete, none of top five pairs from the 2022 Winter Olympics participated at this event. The final number of participants (14 pairs) was the lowest since 1989.


title: 2022 World Figure Skating Championships

text: Alexa Knierim / Brandon Frazier of the United States won the country's first pairs medal since Kyoko Ina / John Zimmerman earned bronze in 2002; it was also the first World title for the country since Tai Babilonia / Randy Gardner won in 1979. Japan's Riku Miura / Ryuichi Kihara earned the highest-ever placement for a Japanese pair with their silver medal finish. Americans Ashley Cain-Gribble / Timothy LeDuc, who were in second place after the short program, withdrew after a fall by Cain-Gribble during their free skate which necessitated her to be stretchered from the ice and hospitalized.


title: Unfinished Tales

text: Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-earth is a collection of stories and essays by J. R. R. Tolkien that were never completed during his lifetime, but were edited by his son Christopher Tolkien and published in 1980. Many of the tales within are retold in "The Silmarillion", albeit in modified forms; the work also contains a summary of the events of "The Lord of the Rings" told from a less personal perspective.


title: Unfinished Tales

text: Unlike "The Silmarillion", also published posthumously (in 1977), for which the narrative fragments were modified to connect into a consistent and coherent work, the "Unfinished Tales" are presented as Tolkien left them, with little more than names changed (the author having had a confusing habit of trying out different names for a character while writing a draft). Thus some of these are incomplete stories, while others are collections of information about Middle-earth. Each tale is followed by a long series of notes explaining inconsistencies and obscure points.


title: Unfinished Tales

text: As with "The Silmarillion", Christopher Tolkien edited and published "Unfinished Tales" before he had finished his study of the materials in his father's archive. "Unfinished Tales" provides more detailed information about characters, events and places mentioned only briefly in "The Lord of the Rings". Versions of such tales, including the origins of Gandalf and the other Istari (Wizards), the death of Isildur and the loss of the One Ring in the Gladden Fields, and the founding of the kingdom of Rohan, help expand knowledge about Middle-earth.


title: Unfinished Tales

text: The commercial success of "Unfinished Tales" demonstrated that the demand for Tolkien's stories several years after his death was not only still present but growing. Encouraged by the result, Christopher Tolkien embarked upon the more ambitious twelve-volume work entitled "The History of Middle-earth" which encompasses nearly the entire corpus of his father's writings about Middle-earth.


title: Unfinished Tales

text: The scholar Paul H. Kocher, reviewing "Unfinished Tales" in "Mythlore", notes that all the stories are linked to either "The Silmarillion", "Akallabeth" or "The Lord of the Rings", and extensively annotated, mainly by Christopher Tolkien. In Kocher's view, the stories contain "some of Tolkien's best writing" (and he summarizes them in some detail), though there is much of interest in the editorial material also. He notes the revised map with the additional placenames used in the tales, and that the book does not address Tolkien's poetry.


title: Unfinished Tales

text: The independent scholar Douglas C. Kane writes that Christopher Tolkien chose to include not just narrative tales, despite the book's title, but "a taste of some of the descriptive and historical underpinnings of those heretofore uncharted vistas", and that indeed he suggested he might "dive even deeper into the history of his father's legendarium", as he eventually did with his 12-volume "The History of Middle-earth". The Tolkien scholar Corey Olsen notes that Christopher Tolkien chose to present the incomplete tales as they were, adding a commentary to help readers grasp how they fitted in to his father's Middle-earth legendarium. Olson comments that the book's commercial success demonstrated the existence of a market for more of Tolkien's writings, opening up a route to publication of "The History of Middle-earth".


title: Unfinished Tales

text: The Christian philosopher Peter Kreeft wrote in "Christianity & Literature" that many readers had felt disappointed by "Unfinished Tales", as some had felt about "The Silmarillion". Perry Bramlett adds that the book is not for the reader new to Tolkien, nor even one who has read only "The Hobbit" "or perhaps some or even all of the "Lord of the Rings"." He notes Christopher Tolkien's warning that the stories "constitute no whole" and that much of the content "will be found unrewarding" to those without a good knowledge of "Lord of the Rings". More positively, he cites David Bratman's comment that much of it is as well-crafted as any of Tolkien's writings, and that readers who found "The Silmarillion" "a little too high and distant" would welcome it.


title: Unfinished Tales

text: The science fiction author Warren Dunn, writing in 1993, described the book as engaging, and that every section contained "something of interest", but he cautioned that it required "an intimate knowledge" of "The Silmarillion", "The Lord of the Rings", and its appendices "for full enjoyment" of the book. He commented that "I really do wish we could have seen the whole history like this, even if it took up twelve volumes to get through the first, second and third ages before the "Lord of the Rings"!"


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: William Albert Murray (born 6 October 1941) is an English actor, best known for playing Don Beech in "The Bill" from 1995 to 2004, Johnny Allen in the BBC soap opera "EastEnders" from 2005 to 2006, and Captain John Price in the video games "", "", and "".


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: Often known for portraying "hard man" characters, he has also starred in "McVicar" (1980), "Essex Boys" (2000), "One in the Chamber" (2012), "We Still Steal the Old Way" (2016), "Nemesis" (2021) and the "Rise of the Footsoldier" film series (2007–2021).


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: Murray was born in Forest Gate, Essex and grew up in Upton Park, East London, one of three children of Timothy and Vera Murray; his father was a plasterer, nightclub bouncer and a boxing champion. Murray attended St. Edward's Catholic Primary and St Bonaventure's Catholic School. After leaving school at fourteen, Murray worked as a shelf-stacker at a Co-Op supermarket in Canning Town and at the local docks cleaning the dirt out of oil tankers. He also had football trials for West Ham United and boxed for the Reggie and Ronnie Kray-owned West Ham Boxing Club. Murray became good friends with the Krays to the extent that he accompanied them on holiday to Spain. The Kray twins paid £400 for him to go to East 15 Acting School as a teenager, because they "liked his attitude". They never asked for the money back, and Murray later appeared as a character witness for Charlie Kray who had been accused of smuggling cocaine.


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: Murray made his acting debut in the 1963 film "The Wrong Arm of the Law" before having minor uncredited roles in "What a Crazy World" (1963) and "Two Left Feet" (1965). This was followed by larger roles in the films "Poor Cow" (1967), "Corruption" (1968), "Up the Junction" (1968) and "Performance" (1970). From the 1970s through to the early 1990s, he made appearances in a wide variety of television series such as "Softly, Softly", "The Sweeney", "The Professionals", "Minder", "Bergerac" and "Casualty". He was also among those considered for the role of Derek "Del Boy" Trotter in the BBC TV series "Only Fools and Horses" before it finally went to David Jason. Other notable film roles include the role of Joey in the hit 1980 film "McVicar" (1980).


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: In 1995, he took on the role of DS Don Beech in the ITV police drama series "The Bill" appearing as a regular cast member from early 1995 to late 2000. In 2001 he reprised the role in a special spin-off episode entitled "Beech on the Run". This was followed by the six-part mini-series "Beech is Back". In 2004 he made his final appearance as Beech for a guest stint in five episodes, in which his character escaped from prison and is now back 'on the run'. Before playing Don Beech in the series, Murray played a different character, DI Jackson, in an episode in 1989.


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: In late 2004, he joined the cast of BBC soap opera "EastEnders" and played gangland figure Johnny Allen. This was Murray's second role within the series, as he previously appeared as loan shark Mr. X for two episodes in 1991. Murray's character as Johnny Allen made his first appearance on 4 January 2005, and became the show's main antagonist upon terrorizing numerous characters on the programme - including Peggy Mitchell; her sons Phil Mitchell and Grant Mitchell; their cousin Billy Mitchell, whom Johnny initially employed in his criminal empire; Phil and Grant's ex-lover Sharon Watts; her godmother Pauline Fowler; his daughter's best friend Stacey Slater; and even his own henchman Jake Moon. During his time on the show, Johnny killed fellow mob boss Andy Hunter on the show's 20th anniversary episode by throwing him from a motorway bridge. His character later arranged for Jake's brother Danny Moon to kill Sharon's husband Dennis Rickman on New Year's Eve 2005. He departed from the show in March 2006 when his character was jailed after his daughter Ruby Allen forced him to confess to having Dennis murdered and killing Andy himself. He made a brief return to "EastEnders" in October 2006 when his character was killed off after he succumbed to a heart attack in prison, though not before trying to arrange the death of Ruby's boyfriend and Stacey's brother Sean Slater upon learning that he plans to extract her family assets. For his performance as Johnny Allen Murray won the 'Best Villain' award at the British Soap Awards in May 2006.


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: Following his departure from "EastEnders", Murray appeared in several British films such as "Rollin' with the Nines" (2006), "Doghouse" (2009) and "Dead Cert" (2010). He also played Mickey Steele in three films from the "Rise of the Footsoldier" film series, those being "Rise of the Footsoldier" (2007), "" (2017) and "Rise of the Footsoldier: Origins" (2021).


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: He also provided the voice of Captain John Price in the video games "" (2007), "" (2009) and "" (2011) and fronted the adverts for Injury Lawyers 4 U, a compensation claims company in the UK.


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: Murray's later career has mainly consisted of film roles, including "The Rise and Fall of a White Collar Hooligan" (2012), "One in the Chamber" (2012), "We Still Steal the Old Way" (2016) and "Nemesis" (2021). He is also set to star alongside Lee Majors, Danny Trejo and Ian Ogilvy in the upcoming action-thriller film "Renegades" due for release in early 2022.


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: Murray has four children. A son and daughter from his first marriage to Maureen, and two daughters from his second marriage to Elaine. Jaime Murray, one of his daughters from his second marriage is an actress who is best known for starring in the television series "Hustle", as well as playing Lila Tournay in season two of "Dexter".


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: In 1998, Murray appeared in court after he and 3 other men allegedly attacked two men who they believed were supplying drugs to their daughters. Murray said that he suffered a nervous breakdown and slept rough on the set of "The Bill" for months as a court order banned him from living in his home county of Essex after he was charged with intimidating a witness involved in the case. He also admitted that the court case had put a strain on his marriage. Murray was cleared of assault, having claimed that at the time he was "suffering from a mouth abscess and a cracked collarbone and was in no condition to hit anyone".


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: One of the men attacked was quoted as saying that they wished the case had never gone to court, stating "I deserved everything I got".


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: In April 2011, it was reported that Murray had been charged with assault of his wife and daughter. In July 2011, it was confirmed that the assault case against Murray had been dropped.


title: Billy Murray (actor)

text: Outside of acting, Murray is involved in property investment and owns and rents out lock-ups, flats and garages across East London.


title: Laser weapon

text: A laser weapon is a directed-energy weapon based on lasers. After decades of R&D, directed-energy weapons including lasers are still at the experimental stage and it remains to be seen if or when they will be deployed as practical, high-performance military weapons. Atmospheric thermal blooming has been a major problem, still mostly unsolved, and worsened if fog, smoke, dust, rain, snow, smog, foam, or purposely dispersed obscurant chemicals are present. Essentially, a laser generates a beam of light which needs clear air, or a vacuum, to work without thermal blooming.


title: Laser weapon

text: Many types of laser can potentially be used as incapacitating weapons, through their ability to produce temporary or permanent vision loss when aimed at the eyes. The degree, character, and duration of vision impairment caused by eye exposure to laser light varies with the power of the laser, the wavelength(s), the collimation of the beam, the exact orientation of the beam, and the duration of exposure. Lasers of even a fraction of a watt in power can produce immediate, permanent vision loss under certain conditions, making such lasers potential non-lethal but incapacitating weapons. The extreme handicap that laser-induced blindness represents makes the use of lasers even as non-lethal weapons morally controversial, and weapons designed to cause permanent blindness have been banned by the Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons.


title: Laser weapon

text: Weapons designed to cause temporary blindness, known as dazzlers, are used by military and sometimes law enforcement organizations. Incidents of pilots being exposed to lasers while flying have prompted aviation authorities to implement special procedures to deal with such hazards. Laser weapons capable of directly damaging or destroying a target in combat are still in the experimental stage. The general idea of laser-beam weaponry is to hit a target with a train of brief pulses of light. The power needed to project a high-powered laser beam of this kind is beyond the limit of current mobile power technology, thus favoring chemically powered gas dynamic lasers. Example experimental systems included MIRACL and the Tactical High Energy Laser, which are now discontinued. The United States Navy has tested the very short range (1 mile), 30-kW Laser Weapon System or LaWS to be used against targets like small UAVs, rocket-propelled grenades, and visible motorboat or helicopter engines. It has been defined as "six welding lasers strapped together." A 60 kW system, HELIOS, is being developed for destroyer class ships .


title: Laser weapon

text: Laser-based directed-energy weapons are being developed, such as Boeing's Airborne Laser, which was constructed inside a Boeing 747. Designated the YAL-1, it was intended to kill short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles in their boost phase.


title: Laser weapon

text: Another example of direct use of a laser as a defensive weapon was researched for the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, nicknamed "Star Wars"), and its successor programs. This project would use ground-based or space-based laser systems to destroy incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). The practical problems of using and aiming these systems were many; particularly the problem of destroying ICBMs at the most opportune moment, the "boost phase" just after launch. This would involve directing a laser over a large distance through the atmosphere, which, due to optical scattering and refraction, would bend and distort the laser beam, complicating aim and reducing efficiency.


title: Laser weapon

text: Another idea from the SDI project was the nuclear-pumped X-ray laser. This was essentially an orbiting atomic bomb, surrounded by laser media in the form of glass rods; when the bomb exploded, the rods would be bombarded with highly-energetic gamma-ray photons, causing spontaneous and stimulated emission of X-ray photons in the atoms making up the rods. This would lead to optical amplification of the X-ray photons, producing an X-ray laser beam that would be minimally affected by atmospheric distortion and capable of destroying ICBMs in flight. The X-ray laser would be a strictly one-shot device, destroying itself on activation. Some initial tests of this concept were performed with underground nuclear testing; however, the results were not encouraging. Research into this approach to missile defense was discontinued after the SDI program was canceled.


title: Laser weapon

text: An electrolaser first ionizes its target path, and then sends an electric current down the conducting track of ionized plasma, somewhat like lightning. It functions as a giant, high-energy, long-distance version of the Taser or stun gun.


title: Laser weapon

text: Pulsed Energy Projectile or PEP systems emit an infrared laser pulse which creates rapidly expanding plasma at the target. The resulting sound, shock and electromagnetic waves stun the target and cause pain and temporary paralysis. The weapon is under development and is intended as a non-lethal weapon in crowd control though it can also be used as a lethal weapon.


title: Laser weapon

text: A dazzler is a directed-energy weapon intended to temporarily blind or disorient its target with intense directed radiation. Targets can include sensors or human vision. Dazzlers emit infrared or invisible light against various electronic sensors, and visible light against humans, when they are intended to cause no long-term damage to eyes. The emitters are usually lasers, making what is termed a "laser dazzler". Most of the contemporary systems are man-portable, and operate in either the red (a laser diode) or green (a diode-pumped solid-state laser, DPSS) areas of the electromagnetic spectrum.


title: Laser weapon

text: Initially developed for military use, non-military products are becoming available for use in law enforcement and security.


title: Laser weapon

text: The personnel halting and stimulation response rifle (PHASR) is a prototype non-lethal laser dazzler developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory's Directed Energy Directorate, U.S. Department of Defense. Its purpose is to temporarily disorient and blind a target. Blinding laser weapons have been tested in the past, but were banned under the 1995 United Nations Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons, which the United States acceded to on 21 January 2009. The PHASR rifle, a low-intensity laser, is not prohibited under this regulation, as the blinding effect is intended to be temporary. It also uses a two-wavelength laser. The PHASR was tested at Kirtland Air Force Base, part of the Air Force Research Laboratory Directed Energy Directorate in New Mexico.


title: Laser weapon

text: Leading Western companies in the development of laser weapons have been Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research, Rheinmetall and MBDA.


title: Laser weapon

text: Most of these projects have been canceled, discontinued, never went beyond the prototype or experimental stage, or are only used in niche applications like dazzling, blinding, mine clearance or close defense against small, unprotected targets. Effective, high performance laser weapons seem to be difficult to achieve using current or near-future technology.


title: Laser weapon

text: Laser beams begin to cause plasma breakdown in the atmosphere at energy densities of around one megajoule per cubic centimeter. This effect, called "blooming," causes the laser to defocus and disperse energy into the surrounding air. Blooming can be more severe if there is fog, smoke, dust, rain, snow, smog, or foam in the air.


title: Laser weapon

text: Essentially, laser generates a beam of light which will be delayed or stopped by any opaque medium and perturbed by any translucent or less than perfectly transparent medium just like any other type of light. A simple, dense smoke screen can and will often block a laser beam. Infrared or multi-spectrum smoke grenades or generators will also disturb or block infrared laser beams. Any opaque case, cowling, bodywork, fuselage, hull, wall, shield or armor will absorb at least the "first impact" of a laser weapon, so the beam must be sustained to achieve penetration.


title: Laser weapon

text: The Chinese People's Liberation Army has invested in the development of specialized coatings that can deflect beams fired by U.S. military lasers. Laser light can be deflected, reflected, or absorbed by manipulating physical and chemical properties of materials. Artificial coatings can counter certain specific types of lasers, but a different type of laser may match the coating's absorption spectrum enough to transfer damaging amounts of energy. The coatings are made of several different substances, including low-cost metals, rare earths, carbon fiber, silver, and diamonds that have been processed to fine sheens and tailored against specific laser weapons. China is developing anti-laser defenses because protection against them is considered far cheaper than creating competing laser weapons.


title: Laser weapon

text: Dielectric mirrors, inexpensive ablative coatings, thermal transport delay, and obscurants are also being studied as countermeasures. In not a few operational situations, even simple, passive countermeasures like rapid rotation (which spreads the heat and does not allow a fixed targeting point except in strictly frontal engagements), higher acceleration (which increases the distance and changes the angle quickly), or agile maneuvering during the terminal attack phase (which hampers the ability to target a vulnerable point, forces a constant re-aiming or tracking with close to zero lag, and allows for some cooling) can defeat or help to defeat non-highly pulsed, high-energy laser weapons.


title: Laser weapon

text: Arthur C. Clarke envisaged particle beam weapons in his 1955 novel "Earthlight", in which energy would be delivered by high-velocity beams of matter. After the invention of the laser in 1960, it briefly became the death ray of choice for science fiction writers. By the late 1960s and 1970s, as the laser's limits as a weapon became evident, the ray gun began to be replaced by similar weapons with names that better reflected the destructive capabilities of the device (like the "blasters" in "Star Wars" or the "phasers" in "Star Trek", which were originally lasers: according to "The Making of Star Trek", Gene Roddenberry claimed that production staff realized that using laser technology would cause problems in the future as people came to understand what lasers could and could not do; this resulted in the move to phasers on-screen, while letting lasers be known as a more primitive weapon style.)


Princess Margarita of Greece and Denmark (; 18 April 1905 – 24 April 1981) was by birth a Greek and Danish princess as well as Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg by marriage. A sister-in-law of Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, she was for a time linked to the Nazi regime. Also the aunt of King Charles III.


title: Princess Margarita of Greece and Denmark

text: The eldest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Margarita spent a happy childhood between Athens and Corfu. In her youth, however, she witnessed the Balkan Wars (1912–1913), followed by the First World War (1914–1918) and the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922). For the young princess and her relatives, these conflicts had dramatic consequences and led to their exile in Switzerland (between 1917 and 1920), then in France and the United Kingdom (from 1922 to 1936). During their exile, Margarita and her family depended on the generosity of their foreign relatives, in particular Princess George of Greece and Denmark (who offered them accommodation in Saint-Cloud) and Lady Louis Mountbatten (who supported them financially).


text: At the end of the 1920s, Margarita's mother was struck by a mental health crisis which led to her confinement in a Swiss psychiatric hospital. Shortly after, in 1931, Margarita married Prince Gottfried of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. The couple then moved to Weikersheim Castle, where they raised a family made up of four sons (Princes Kraft, Georg Andreas, Rupprecht and Albrecht) and a daughter (Princess Beatrix). Members of the Nazi party from 1937, Gottfried and Margarita used their family connections to promote a rapprochement of Nazism within the United Kingdom, though without success. During the 1930s, the couple also made several trips abroad. In particular, she visited New York in 1934 to testify in favor of Gloria Morgan Vanderbilt, Gottfried's former fiancée, in the case between her and her in-laws for the custody of her daughter, also named Gloria.


text: Affected by the Second World War, which divided her relatives into two factions, Margarita spent time in Langenburg during the conflict. The defeat of Germany and its occupation by the Allies brought new upheavals in the life of Margarita and Gottfried. Though preserved from Soviets, who caused the death of several of their cousins, the couple was ostracized by the British royal family at the time of the marriage of Prince Philip, Margarita's only brother, to Princess Elizabeth of the United Kingdom in 1947. Over the years, the couple was nevertheless reintegrated into the life of the European elite, as illustrated by their invitation and presence at the coronation of Elizabeth II in 1953; and the princess's presence at the wedding of Juan Carlos, Prince of Asturias, and Princess Sophia of Greece and Denmark in 1962.


text: Widowed in 1960, Margarita witnessed the fire breakout at Langenburg Castle in 1963. Her last years were marked by the marriages of three of her sons, but also by the deaths of several of her relatives, including her son Rupprecht, who committed suicide in 1978. The princess died in 1981 and her body was buried in the Hohenlohe-Langenburg family mausoleum. She was the paternal aunt of Charles III.


text: The eldest daughter of Prince Andrew of Greece and Denmark and Princess Alice of Battenberg, Margarita was born at the Royal Palace in Athens on 18 April 1905. Through her mother, Margarita was the eldest great-great grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Contrary to the custom of the time, her father attended her birth because her grandmother, Queen Olga, believed that "it is only justice that men see the suffering they cause to their wives, and from which they completely escape". Baptized on 11 May in the presence of her maternal grandparents, Margarita grew up surrounded by her father's animals, and within a united household, which rapidly expanded with the arrival of the her sisters Theodora (1906–1969), Cecilie (1911–1937), and Sophie (1914–2001). With their mother, Margarita and her sisters communicated in English, but they also used French, German, and Greek in the presence of their relatives and governesses. The princesses were formally educated in English and Greek.


text: Margarita's early childhood was marked by the instability that the Kingdom of Greece experienced at the beginning of the twentieth century. Tired of attacks from the press and the opposition, Andrew and Alice found refuge in travel and made many stays outside the borders of their home country. With their daughters, they stayed in the United Kingdom, Germany, Malta and Russia, where they reunited with their numerous relatives including Edward VII of the United Kingdom, Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse, Alexandra Feodorovna, Prince and Princess Louis of Battenberg (Alice's parents), etc. From 1905, Margarita was thus introduced to her young maternal uncle and aunt, Louis and Louise, to whom she and her sister Theodora subsequently became very close.


text: In 1909, the Goudi coup occurred, a military putsch organized against the government of King George I of Greece, Margarita's grandfather. Shortly after this event, Prince Andrew and his brothers were forced to resign from the army. Concerned about the political situation of their country, Andrew and Alice once again found refuge abroad and stayed in the United Kingdom, France and Hesse. After considering a life in exile for a while, the couple returned to live in Greece, where their third daughter was born.


text: Between 1912 and 1913, Greece engaged in the Balkan Wars, which put the country in opposition to the Ottoman Empire and to Bulgaria. Called to join the army again, Prince Andrew served under Crown Prince Constantine while Princess Alice worked as a nurse for wounded soldiers. Too young to follow their parents, Margarita and her sisters spent the duration of the conflict in Athens, with the exception of a brief stay in Thessaloniki in December 1912. Greece came out of the Balkan Wars with an expanded territory, but the conflict also led to the demise of George I, who was assassinated in March 1913. The death of the King of the Hellenes caused significant changes in the life of Margarita and her relatives. In his will, the sovereign bequeathed the Corfiote palace of Mon Repos to Andrew. After years of living in close proximity to the monarch, in the palaces of Athens and Tatoi, Andrew and his family therefore finally had their own residence.


text: When peace returned, Andrew, Alice and their daughters left Greece in August 1913. After a visit to Germany, they stayed in the United Kingdom, with Margarita's maternal grandparents. For little princesses, this trip was an opportunity to visit St Paul's Cathedral and London Zoo with their parents. Returning to Greece on 17 November 1913, the family was then retained in the country by Alice's fourth pregnancy and, above all, by the outbreak of the First World War. With Greece having proclaimed its neutrality, this new conflict initially hardly affected Margarita and her relatives. She and her sisters thus spent the summer of 1914 in Corfu, where they enjoyed the sun and the sea for four months.


text: Things changed as war creeped into the life of the country's people. Stationed in Thessaloniki with his garrison, Andrew was thus confronted with the occupation of the city by the Allies in October 1915. Shortly after, in December, the routed Serbian army found refuge in Corfu, leading Alice and her daughters to abandon Mon Repos for the capital. Over the months, the amount of threats against members of the royal dynasty increased. In July 1916, an arson attacked the domain of Tatoi, while the king was there with his wife and several of their children. In addition, on 1 December, the French navy bombarded the royal palace in Athens, forcing Margarita and her sisters to take refuge in the cellars with their mother.


text: In June 1917, King Constantine I was finally deposed and driven out of Greece by the Allies, who replaced him on the throne by his second son, the young Alexander. Fifteen days later, Margarita's family was in turn forced into exile in order to remove the possibility of the new monarch being influenced by those close to him. Forced to reside in German-speaking Switzerland, the small group first stayed in a hotel in St. Moritz, before settling in Lucerne, where they lived with uncertainty about their future.


text: Exile was not the only source of concern for the family, however. With the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, several of Margarita's relatives were murdered in Russia. Shortly after these events, the Grand Ducal family of Hesse, to which Margarita was closely related through her mother, was overthrown along with all the other German dynasties during the winter of 1918–1919. Finally, the family went through some health problems, several of them contracting the flu in 1920.


text: At the beginning of 1919, Margarita nevertheless had the joy of reuniting with her paternal grandmother, the Dowager Queen Olga, spared by the Bolsheviks thanks to the diplomatic intervention of the Danes. In the months that followed, she reconnected, moreover, with her maternal grandparents, whom the war forced to abandon the name of Battenberg for that of Mountbatten. For Margarita, who now formed a duo with her younger sister Theodora, exile was not only synonymous with nostalgia; it was also an opportunity for long family reunions and walks in the mountains.


text: On 2 October 1920, King Alexander, cousin of Margarita, was bitten by a domestic monkey during a walk in Tatoi. Poorly cared for, he contracted sepsis, which prevailed on 25 October, without any member of his family being allowed to come to his bedside. The death of the sovereign caused a violent institutional crisis in Greece. Already stuck, since 1919, in a new war against Turkey, Prime Minister Eleftherios Venizelos lost the 1920 Greek legislative election. Humiliated, he retired abroad while a referendum reinstalled Constantine I on the throne.


text: Prince Andrew was received triumphantly in Athens on 23 November 1920, and his wife and four daughters joined him a few days later. Margarita then returned to live in Corfu with her family. At the same time, Princess Alice found out that she was pregnant again. On 10 June 1921, the family welcomed Philip (1921–2021), the future Duke of Edinburgh. The joy that surrounded this birth, however, was obscured by the absence of Prince Andrew, who joined the Greek forces in Asia Minor during the Occupation of Smyrna. Despite worries about the war, Margarita and her siblings enjoyed life at Mon Repos, where they received a visit from their maternal grandmother and their aunt Louise in the spring of 1922. In the park near the palace, built on an ancient cemetery, the princesses devoted themselves to archeology and discovered some pottery, bronze pieces and bones.


text: During this period, Margarita and her sisters also participated, for the first time, in a number of great social events. In March 1921, the princesses attended in Athens the wedding of their cousin Helen to Crown Prince Carol of Romania. In July 1922, they went to the United Kingdom to be bridesmaids at the wedding of their uncle Louis Mountbatten to the wealthy heiress Edwina Ashley.


text: However, the military defeat of Greece against Turkey and the political unrest that it caused disrupted the life of Margarita and her family. In September 1922, Constantine I abdicated in favor of his eldest son, George II. A month later, Prince Andrew was arrested before being tried by a military tribunal, which declared him responsible for the defeat of the Sakarya. Saved from execution by the intervention of foreign chancelleries, the prince was condemned to banishment and cashiering. After a brief stop in Corfu, the prince and his relatives hurriedly left Greece aboard HMS "Calypso" in early December 1922.


text: After a journey of several weeks, which led them successively to Italy, France and the United Kingdom, Margarita, her parents and her siblings settled in Saint-Cloud in 1923. Settled in a house adjoining that of Princess Marie Bonaparte, the family depended for seven years on her generosity, and two other aunts of Margarita: first Princess Anastasia and then Lady Louis Mountbatten. Marie Bonaparte financed the studies of her nieces and nephew, while Lady Mountbatten got into the habit of offering her nieces her "used" clothes. In fact, Margarita's parents had little income and the children were the regular witnesses to their money problems and their difficulty in maintaining a household.


text: Deprived of their Greek nationality after the proclamation of the Second Hellenic Republic in March 1924, Margarita and her family received Danish passports from their cousin King Christian X. Now of marrying age, the princess and her sister Theodora regularly left France for Great Britain, where they lived with their maternal grandmother, the Dowager Marchioness of Milford Haven. With their aunt Louise, who increasingly replaced their mother as a chaperone and confidante, the two young girls attended most of the events by British aristocracy during the 1920s, including balls and dances, birthdays and garden parties at Buckingham Palace, horse races, etc. The two princesses also took advantage of their stays in London to visit their many relatives, such as their paternal grandmother, Queen Olga, who was Queen Alexandra's regular guest at Sandringham. However, the young girls' lack of fortune and their life in exile meant that they hardly had any suitors, which was a matter of concern to their mother.


text: During the summer of 1926, Margarita met Prince François-Ferdinand d'Isembourg-Birstein, eldest son of Prince François-Joseph d'Isembourg-Birstein, during a stay in Tarasp with her great-uncle Ernest Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse. The two young people enjoyed each other's company and their families met at the beginning of the following year. Margarita was enchanted by her suitor and by the region where he lived. However, François-Ferdinand was of the Catholic faith and the princess refused to give up Orthodox faith, which soon put an end to their romance. Thus, by 1930, neither Margarita nor Theodora had yet found a fiancé. This did not prevent them from rejoicing for their aunt Louise when she was asked by Gustaf Adolf, Crown Prince of Sweden, to marry him in June 1923.


text: Margarita, Theodora and Philip spent the summer of 1928 in Romania. Invited by Princess Helen, whose son Michael I was the same age as Philip, the two young women and their brother stayed for several weeks in Sinaia. At the time, Prince Nicholas of Romania was still single and Helen would like to see him marry one of her relatives, but her plans for her brother-in-law to marry one of her cousins came to nothing.