title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The 1999–2000 battle of Grozny was the siege and assault of the Chechen capital Grozny by Russian forces, lasting from late 1999 to early 2000. The siege and fighting left the capital devastated. In 2003, the United Nations called Grozny the most destroyed city on Earth. Between 5,000 and 8,000 civilians were killed during the siege, making it the bloodiest episode of the Second Chechen War.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: On 15 October 1999, after mounting an intense tank and artillery barrage against Chechen separatists, Russian forces took control of a strategic ridge within artillery range of Grozny. They then made several abortive attempts to seize positions on the outskirts of the city. On 4 December, the commander of Russian forces in the North Caucasus, General Viktor Kazantsev, claimed that Grozny was fully blockaded by Russian troops. General Anatoly Kvashnin, chief of the army's general staff, even predicted the rebels would abandon the Chechen capital on their own, urged to withdraw by civilians fearing widespread destruction. Supported by the Russian Air Force, the Russian force vastly outnumbered and out-gunned the Chechen irregulars, who numbered around 3,000 to 6,000 fighters, and was considerably larger and much better prepared than the force sent to take the Chechen capital in the First Chechen War.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The Russian tactic in 1999 was to hold back tanks and armored personnel carriers and subject the entrenched Chechens to an intensive heavy artillery barrage and aerial bombardment before engaging them with relatively small groups of infantry, many with prior training in urban warfare. The Russian forces relied heavily on rocket artillery such as BM-21 Grad, BM-27 Uragan, BM-30 Smerch, ballistic missiles (SCUD, OTR-21 Tochka), cluster bombs and fuel air explosives. (The TOS-1, a multiple rocket launcher with thermobaric weapon warheads, played a particularly prominent role in the assault). These weapons wore down the Chechens, both physically and psychologically, and air strikes were also used to attack fighters hiding in basements; such attacks were designed for maximum psychological pressure. They would also demonstrate the hopelessness of further resistance against a foe that could strike with impunity and that was invulnerable to countermeasures. In November, the Kremlin appointed Beslan Gantamirov, former mayor of Grozny, as head of the pro-Moscow Chechen State Council. Gantamirov had just been pardoned by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and released from a 6-year prison sentence which he had been serving for embezzling federal funds which had been earmarked for the rebuilding of Chechnya in 1995 and 1996. He was chosen to lead a pro-Russian Chechen militia force in the upcoming battle. Interior Minister Vladimir Rushailo however refused to supply the militia with heavy weapons, limiting their combat arsenal to "obsolete AK-47s" and accused Gantamirov of accepting anyone who would volunteer, including rebel fighters. The militia, often used to spearhead the federal forces, suffered heavy casualties, losing more than 700 men in the battle.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The Russians met fierce resistance from Chechen rebel fighters intimately familiar with their capital city. The defenders had chosen to withstand the heavy Russian bombardment for the chance to come to grips with their enemy in an environment of their choosing, using interconnected firing positions and maneuver warfare. In stark contrast to the ad hoc defense of 1994, the separatists prepared well for the Russian assault. Grozny was transformed into a fortress city under the leadership of field commander Aslambek Ismailov. The Chechens dug hundreds of trenches and antitank ditches, built bunkers behind apartment buildings, laid land mines throughout the city, placed sniper nests on high-rise buildings and prepared escape routes. In some instances whole buildings were booby-trapped; the ground floor windows and doors were usually boarded-up or mined, making it impossible for the Russians to simply walk into a building. Relying on their high mobility (they usually did not use body armor because of lack of equipment), the Chechens would use the trenches to move between houses and sniper positions, engaging the Russians as they focused on the tops of buildings or on windows. Well-organized small groups of no more than 15 fighters moved freely about Grozny using the city's sewer network, even sneaking behind Russian lines and attacking unsuspecting soldiers from the rear.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The Russian ground troops advanced slowly, and Grozny was surrounded by late November 1999. More than two additional weeks of shelling and bombing were required before Russian troops were able to claim a foothold within any part of the city. Russian ground forces met stiff resistance from rebel fighters as they moved forward, using a slow, neighborhood-by-neighborhood advance with the fighting focused on a strategic hill overlooking the city. Both sides accused each other of launching chemical attacks. Claims of chemical attacks may have originated from the observation of unburnt remnants of gaseous explosive from TOS-1 thermobaric missiles or the chemicals may have escaped from destroyed industrial plants. The rumours of gas attacks and the divisions among Chechens (the Islamic extremists were blamed for provoking the war), contributed to the abandoning of Grozny by many rebel fighters. In early December, Russia seized the town of Urus-Martan, the separatist stronghold near Grozny, after it had been battered with heavy air and artillery bombardments for several weeks.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The majority of the city's civilian population fled following the missile attacks early in the war, leaving the streets mostly deserted. As many as 40,000 civilians, often the elderly, poor, and infirm, remained trapped in basements during the siege, suffering from the bombing, cold and hunger. Some of them were killed while trying to flee. On 3 December, about 40 people died when a refugee convoy attempting to leave the besieged areas was fired on. Around 250 to 300 people who were killed while trying to escape in October 1999, between the villages of Goryachevodsk and Petropavlovskaya, were buried in a mass grave. The Russian forces besieging Grozny planned to attack the city with a heavy air and artillery bombardment, intending to level the city to the extent where it was impossible for the rebels to defend it. On 5 December, Russian planes, which had been dropping bombs on Grozny, switched to leaflets with a warning from the general staff. The Russians set a deadline, urging residents of Grozny to 'leave or be destroyed' by 11 December 1999, stating that "Persons who stay in the city will be considered terrorists and bandits and will be destroyed by artillery and aviation. There will be no further negotiations. Everyone who does not leave the city will be destroyed".


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The Russian commanders prepared a "safe corridor" for those wishing to escape from Grozny, but reports from the war zone suggested few people were using it when it opened on 11 December. Desperate refugees who got away were telling stories of bombing, shelling and brutality. Russia put the number of people remaining in Grozny at 15,000, while a group of Chechen exiles in Geneva confirmed other reports estimating the civilian population at 50,000. Russia eventually withdrew the ultimatum in the face of international outrage from the United States and the European Union. British foreign secretary Robin Cook "wholeheartedly condemned" the Russian move: "We condemn vigorously what Milosevic did in Kosovo and we condemn vigorously what Russia is doing in Chechnya". The bombardment of the city continued; according to Russia's ministry for emergency situations, civilians remaining in Grozny had been estimated at anywhere from 8,000 to 35,000.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The early fighting was concentrated in the eastern outskirts of Grozny, with reconnaissance teams entering the city to identify rebel positions. The Russian tactic appeared to be to draw fire from the rebels, then pull back and pound the Chechen positions with artillery and rocket fire. By 13 December, Russian troops had regained control of Chechnya's main airport. Located in the suburb of Khankala, it was the main Russian military base during the first war and it was one of the first targets to be hit by warplanes at the start of Russia's involvement in the second. The next day, more than 100 Russian troops were reported killed when an armored column was ambushed in Minutka Square; reports by the Reuters and Associated Press correspondents were vehemently denied by the Russian government.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: On 2 January, Chechen fighters attacked and destroyed a Russian armoured column which had entered the village of Duba-Yurt the day before. The following day, Gen. Valentin Astaviyev said on state television that Russian forces had suffered only three dead in the previous 24 hours. Yet the commander of an Interior Ministry unit in Grozny told Agence France-Presse that 50 men had been killed in the previous 48 hours. On 4 January, Chechen fighters in Grozny launched a series of counter attacks and broke through Russian lines in at least two places, temporarily seizing the village of Alkhan-Kala. Russian public support for the war, which was previously overwhelming, appeared to fade as casualties mounted and the government came in for increasing criticism in the tightly controlled Russian media for understating casualty figures. Russia's bombardments had finally begun to take their toll: using multiple rocket launchers and massed tank and artillery fire, the Russians flattened large parts of Grozny in preparation for an all-out assault.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: On 10 January, Chechen forces launched a counteroffensive in support of the garrison in Grozny, briefly recapturing the towns of Shali, Argun and Gudermes and opening a new supply corridor to the capital. In coordinated attacks, the Chechens also ambushed a supply column on the Argun-Gudermes road near the village of Dzhalka, killing at least 26 servicemen in the heaviest one-day official death toll since the war began in September. The commander for the North Caucasus, Gen. Kazantsev, blamed the heavy losses on mistakes by "soft-hearted" officials who had allowed the rebels to counter-attack and declared that from now on only boys under the age of 10, old men over the age of 60 and girls and women would be considered refugees. On 15 January, the Russians said 58 Chechens were killed as they attempted to flee Grozny.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: By mid-January, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers had begun an advance on central Grozny from three directions. During this fighting, several suburbs and key buildings adjoining the city center changed hands several times. In a number of incidents, small bands of rebel fighters cut off exposed Russian units from the main forces. On 19 January, in a major setback for the Russian forces, Chechen snipers killed one of the Russian commanders, Gen. Mikhail Malofeyev. Russian troops were unable to recover his body until five days later. Two days later, one Russian unit lost 20 men killed in north-west Grozny after the rebels made their way through sewage tunnels and attacked them from the rear. On 26 January, the Russian government admitted that 1,173 servicemen had been killed in Chechnya since the war began in October. This figure was more than twice the 544 dead reported 19 days earlier, on 6 January, with just 300 dead reported on 4 January, indicating many losses in the Grozny battles and elsewhere during this month (later, Russia claimed 368 servicemen were killed in the city).


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: With their supply routes interdicted by an increasingly effective Russian blockade, ammunition running low and their losses mounting, the Chechen rebel leadership decided that resistance was futile. At a meeting in a bunker in central Grozny the rebel commanders decided on a desperate gamble to break through the three layers of Russian forces and into the mountains. Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov had been evacuated earlier to a secret headquarters somewhere in the south of Chechnya. About 1,000–1,500 fighters under field commander Ruslan Gelayev withdrew without orders, leaving other rebel forces exposed.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The main Chechen forces began to escape on the last day of January and first day of February during a winter storm, after an attempt to bribe their way out. A reconnaissance party they sent ahead failed to return but the commanders decided to leave anyway. Some 4,000 rebel fighters and some civilians, moving in a southwesterly direction, were met with heavy artillery fire. The column of some 2,000 fighters, several hundred non-combatants and 50 Russian prisoners of war, entered a minefield between the city and the village of Alkhan-Kala. The Russian forces ambushed them as they were crossing a bridge over the Sunzha River and bombarded them with artillery. The Chechens pushed on through the minefield, being unaware of it and lacking engineers. Scores of rebel fighters were killed by the combination of artillery fire and the crossing of the minefield, including several top Chechen commanders: Khunkar-Pasha Israpilov, the city's mayor Lecha Dudayev and Aslambek Ismailov, the commander of the defense of Grozny. The rebels said they lost about 400 fighters in the minefield at Alkhan-Kala, including 170 killed. About 200 of the wounded were maimed, including Abdul-Malik Mezhidov and Shamil Basayev, (the latter stepping on a mine while leading his men). In all, there were at least 600 casualties during the escape. Russian generals initially refused to admit that the Chechens had escaped from the blockaded city, saying that fierce fighting continued within the city. President Vladimir Putin's aide and the Russian government's spokesman on Chechnya Sergei Yastrzhembsky, said that if the rebels abandoned Grozny, "we would have informed you". Gen. Viktor Kazantsev asserted that as many as 500 rebels were killed during the breakout.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: After some fighting on the outskirts of the village, Alkhan-Kala itself was hit by OTR-21 Tochka tactical missiles tipped with cluster munition warheads, killing or wounding many civilians. The rebels moved on, but a number of wounded fighters, including Khadzhi-Murat Yandiyev, were left in the local hospital and were captured by the Russians. On 4 February, Russian forces, allegedly attempting to stop the Chechens from any further retreat, bombed the village of Katyr-Yurt. Up to 20,000 refugees desperately fled an intense bombardment that lasted for two days and killed hundreds of civilians, including the bombing of a civilian convoy which had been trying to leave the settlement during a lull in the fighting. A rebel post-operative war council was held in the village of Alkhan-Yurt, where it was decided that the Chechen forces would withdraw into the inaccessible Vedeno and Argun gorges in the southern mountains to carry on a guerrilla campaign against the Russians. The rebels then withdrew into the mountains.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: On 3 February, the day after the breakout, the Russians began mopping-up; many serious crimes were committed against civilians, most notoriously the Novye Aldi massacre in which at least 50 civilians were killed when the neighbourhood was looted by the OMON (special police troops) on 5 February. Several hundred rebel fighters remained in the booby-trapped ruins, lying low and harassing Russians with occasional sniper fire. Because of the dangers of snipers, mines and unexploded ordnance it was not until 6 February that the Russians were able to raise the Russian flag above the city center. President Putin announced Grozny was liberated and said that military operations had come to an end. Many damaged or mined buildings were blown up, including all high-rise buildings around Minutka Square. On 21 February, Russian forces held a military parade to mark the Defender of the Fatherland Day (formerly Soviet Army Day) and to symbolize the supposed final defeat of the Chechen rebels. Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said during the ceremony that "the final phase" of the operation to "destroy bandit formations and terrorist groups that were trying to tear down Russia" had been completed.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: The United Nations workers who entered the city with the first convoy of international aid discovered "a devastated and still insecure wasteland littered with bodies". There were some 21,000 civilians still in Grozny. The city's losses were never counted. Most of the corpses were cleared in 2000 and 2001 but one mass grave dating from the time of battle was discovered in 2006 in the former Kirov Park area of Grozny. In March, the Russian army began to allow refugees to return to the city.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: About 500 (Russian estimate) to 1,000 (separatist claim) rebel fighters remained in the city and more returned later with the civilians, often hiding in communication tunnels and basements of damaged buildings by day and emerging by night to fire at Russian positions or to plant IEDs in the streets to attack patrols and vehicles the next day. In June 2000, Russian police and special forces units began a counterinsurgency operation against the rebel forces in Grozny but the bombings and clashes in the city continued as the guerrillas hid among the partially returned civilian population. According to the mayor Bislan Gantamirov, the guerrillas were being helped by the Chechen police and the Russians were unlawfully killing up to 15 Chechens a day in Grozny. According to Russian military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, one could "be robbed, raped or shot at any time – even if ... loyal to Russia". In several incidents, helicopters were shot down by missiles over Grozny, killing a number of high-ranking military officials. In the 2002 Khankala Mi-26 crash, the deadliest attack, more than 120 soldiers were killed in the worst helicopter disaster in history. There was also a series of bomb attacks against local government buildings (including suicide bombings). The 2002 Grozny truck bombing destroyed the seat of the pro-Moscow Chechen government, killing at least 83. Military installations and police stations were also attacked and there were many daylight sniper shootings and other incidents, all aiming to kill or capture Russian soldiers venturing into the streets alone or in small groups.


title: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000)

text: Hostilities became more sporadic as the years passed and the conflict in Chechnya in general became less intensive. Eventually, attacks in the capital became a rare occurrence. Large-scale restoration efforts in the city took place from 2006, often accompanied by the discovery of human remains, including mass graves.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Anthony Grant Bloom (born 20 March 1970) is an English sports bettor, poker player, entrepreneur, owner and chairman of Premier League football club Brighton & Hove Albion and majority owner of Belgian First Division A team Royale Union Saint-Gilloise.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Bloom appeared in the Late Night Poker television series and also has a final table appearance on the World Poker Tour. He also made back-to-back final table appearances in the first two Poker Million events. His first major win came in January 2004 when he won the Australasian Poker Championship in Melbourne, collecting a first prize of around A$420,000 ($320,000, £180,000).


title: Tony Bloom

text: Bloom won the £5,000 No Limit Hold'em VC Poker Cup Final in London on 5 August 2005 and won the £200,000 ($351,401) first prize.


title: Tony Bloom

text: He also had a fourth-place finish in the 2005 World Series of Poker Tournament of Champions. He was a member of the winning British team in the Poker Nations Cup. Bloom won A$600,000 for his second-place finish in the High Rollers Challenge, Event #8 of the Australian Poker Millions tournament held in Melbourne in Jan 2009.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Bloom fell short of the million-pound grand prize in the Poker Million IX event held in London on December 10, 2010. He finished second behind Gus Hansen.


title: Tony Bloom

text: In September 2022, Bloom won Poker Masters Event #8: $25,000 Pot-Limit Omaha for $360,000. It was Bloom's first time playing poker in three years and his first time playing a PokerGO Tour event.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Bloom's wealth has been accumulated primarily through proprietary or value betting on sports events. Bloom heads a private betting syndicate which is believed to have been continuously successful year on year for a sustained period of time. Bloom has also holds significant property and private equity portfolios.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Since 2009, Bloom has been the chairman of Brighton & Hove Albion, who are currently a Premier League club, having gained promotion in the 2016–17 season after 34 years out of the top flight of English football.


title: Tony Bloom

text: He succeeded Dick Knight after securing a 75% shareholding in the club and investing £93 million in the development of the club's new ground, Falmer Stadium. The stadium had extensions in spectator capacity and received funding to ensure that it is "Premier League ready" by installing floodlights, amongst other features.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Bloom is a longtime Brighton fan and his family has had a long association with the club; his uncle Ray is a director and his grandfather, Harry, was vice-chairman during the 1970s.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Bloom appointed former Uruguay international Gus Poyet as manager in November 2009, and together they led the team to promotion from Football League One as champions in 2011, the season before Brighton moved into their new home - the Falmer Stadium. Poyet left the club in 2013 after losing in a play-off semi-final to Crystal Palace. In June 2013, Bloom appointed Óscar García as the new head coach of the club; Garcia resigned after losing a second successive play-off semi-final to Derby County and left the club in May 2014. The next manager was former Liverpool player Sami Hyypiä, who only lasted a few months in the managerial role after a poor start to the 2014–15 season left Brighton in the relegation zone. Chris Hughton became manager towards the end of 2014, and the club have been successful since.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Hughton steered Albion to safety in their 2014–15 campaign, and then guided the club to a 3rd-place position in the Championship in the following season, missing out on promotion to Middlesbrough on goal difference. The club would be defeated in the play-off semi final, for the third time in four years, this time to Sheffield Wednesday.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Brighton went one step further in the 2016–17 season under Hughton's management and Bloom's ownership, finishing second in the Championship and gaining promotion to the Premier League for the first time in the club's history. Bloom backed Hughton in the following transfer window, breaking several record transfer fees to improve the squad, readying Brighton's first Premier League season. On 13 May 2019, immediately after the end of the season, with the club ending at the 17th position and thus securing its top-tier status for the coming season, Bloom released a statement to the effect that "it was time for a change" and sacked Hughton, replacing him with Championship's Swansea coach Graham Potter.


title: Tony Bloom

text: In 2018, Bloom completed the takeover of Belgian second division club Union SG. It is understood that although Bloom is the majority owner of USG, he has no day-to-day involvement with the club which is run independently of both him and Brighton.


title: Tony Bloom

text: In the 2021–22 Premier League season, Brighton finished with 51 points, its highest ever points tally for the EPL. By finishing in 9th place Brighton also secured the highest ever top flight final position in its history.


title: Tony Bloom

text: Bloom is Jewish, and has contributed significantly to the development of a synagogue and community centre project in Hove. He stepped in with the Brighton and Hove Hebrew Congregation suffering financial problems, and the funding for the development will come from his Bloom Foundation, of which he is the chairman.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: Prannoy Lal Roy (born 15 October 1949) is an Indian economist, chartered accountant, psephologist, journalist and author. He is the former executive co-chairperson of NDTV and is considered to be one of its co-founders, along with his wife Radhika Roy. NDTV was the first independent news network in India. Prannoy Roy is also credited for pioneering opinion polls in the country.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: Prannoy Roy was born in Calcutta, West Bengal on 15 October 1949, to P. L. "Hurricane" Roy, a Bengali executive at a multinational corporation in the city. His paternal grandfather was Paresh Lal Roy, a traffic superintendent and an amateur boxer, known as the "father of Indian boxing" for having popularised the sport in the country. Paresh Lal gave his grandson Prannoy the nickname of "Tempest" when he was a child.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: Roy attended La Martiniere Calcutta before being sent to The Doon School, a boy's boarding school in Dehradun, Uttar Pradesh (now in Uttarakhand). He was at the boarding school during his teenage years when he met Radhika Das, whom he would later marry. Radhika was also from the city of Calcutta and was sent to the Welham Girls' School, another boarding school in Dehradun.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: Prannoy and Radhika moved to London, United Kingdom for their higher education. Prannoy had received a Haileybury and Imperial Service College scholarship to acquire the A-level higher secondary certificate. Following his schooling, he enrolled at the Queen Mary University of London and graduated in 1973 with first class honours in economics. He then became a certified chartered accountant and a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales in 1975. Prannoy and Radhika also got married in London and then returned to India, settling down in Delhi.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: In India, Prannoy continued his studies at the Delhi School of Economics from where he attained a PhD in agricultural economics in 1978. Following his doctorate, Roy became a consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers India where he worked from 1979 till 1983. Roy is described to have been passionate about election results since his childhood and had produced his first election forecast for the 1977 Indian general election. The forecast was published by the "Mainstream" magazine and had predicted a victory for the Janata Party. In the 1980s, he began collaborating with the Oxford political scientist David Butler and Indian economist Ashok Lahiri in an effort to mainstream the field of psephology in India. The collaboration produced three book and Roy became an election analysts for the "India Today" magazine. For the 1984 Indian general election, Roy produced an extremely accurate election forecast which predicted an Indian National Congress victory with 400 seats. The prediction earned him the reputation of being the most successful psephologist in India. Roy is credited for pioneering opinion polling in India between 1980 and 1995.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: New Delhi Television Ltd (NDTV) was founded in 1984 as a production firm for international news broadcasters and the public service broadcaster Doordarshan. Radhika and Prannoy Roy are considered to be the co-founders of the company, however Prannoy states that Radhika was the original founder as he joined the company later. Radhika Roy was working as a journalist at "The Indian Express" and then at the "India Today" magazine before becoming the founder of NDTV. Doordarshan was initially wary of allowing private production houses to cover domestic news, and NDTV was contracted to produce a weekly international news programme called "The World This Week" for the public broadcaster. The weekly was instant success among its Indian audience and attained one of the highest viewerships on Doordarshan.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: Prannoy Roy in the meantime worked as an associate professor for an year in 1985 at the Delhi School of Economics. In 1986–1987 he was hired in a team of economists to build a macro-econometric model of India for the Ministry of Finance, the model is the largest of its kind. Doordarshan eventually contracted NDTV to cover the general election results and budget session specials. The first televised coverage of an election result in India was produced by NDTV for the 1989 Indian general election. Roy began his career as a television journalist by covering the general election for Doordarshan. Following which, he also began appearing as a news presenter in "The World This Week" programme. Both the election results coverage and the international news show were widely successful. According to Roy, it was not difficult to appear good in comparison to Doordarshan which he described as more radio than television and that the time period was the most "newsiest" in television history.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: NDTV requested for and received a contract from Doordarshan to produce a daily news bulletin on domestic affairs called "The News Tonight" on its second channel in 1995. The Roys who were the promoters of the company sought and acquired investments from several Indian businesses for the company in order to produce the show, among its investors was the multinational Tata Group. Later, the company also received contracts to produce shows such as "The News Hour" and "Good Morning India" for Doordarshan. Prannoy Roy was the news presenter for the NDTV bulletins and became the face of the NDTV brand in the process. His wife, Radhika Roy kept a low profile in comparison, being more invested in the editorial and production processes of the company.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: In 1998, NDTV entered into a 5 year exclusive partnership with Star India to launch the country's first independent 24x7 news channel. In the previous year, the incumbent director general of Doordarshan had also quit the public broadcaster and jointed it's multinational rival, the Star network. These developments created animosity in the government and a parliamentary committee was set up to scrutinise the activities of the former director general which alleged that there were "irregularities" in the contracts with NDTV. The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a number of cases against former officials of the public broadcaster including the director general and against Prannoy Roy who was the managing director of NDTV. The cases went on for several years in the form of a protracted conflict, until a court judgement in 2013 which acquitted all the accused of the charges, stating that there was no evidence of any wrongdoing.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: Radhika Roy who was the chairperson of the company became the managing director in 1998 and Prannoy Roy who was the managing director became the chairman. The partnership with Star India came to an end in 2003. NDTV became an independent news broadcaster in the same year with the launch of two news channels NDTV 24x7 and NDTV India. The company went public in May 2004 and by the end of the year had the highest market capitalisation among media companies. Roy along with his wife were designated as the executive co-chairpersons of NDTV after 2011.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: NDTV started facing government pressure through litigations and intimidation of advertisers on the network after Narendra Modi became the Prime Minister in 2014. The pressure was noted to be a part of diminishing media freedom in the country with similar tactics used against uncooperative news publications. The news network of NDTV had reported critically about state involvement in the 2002 Gujarat riots where over a 1,000 people were killed. The government attempted to ban the Hindi news channel NDTV India in 2016 and retracted following backlash including cross media protests from journalists. In 2017, the residence of the Roys at Greater Kailash, Delhi were raided by the CBI, after a NDTV journalist had questioned statements made by a ruling party spokesperson. The Editor's Guild of India and journalists unions called it an attack on press freedom.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: In 2019, Prannoy Roy collaborated with the psephologist <bdi>Dorab Sopariwala and published a book called "The Verdict: Decoding India’s Elections."</bdi> Meanwhile the litigations surrounding NDTV continued and in June, the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) barred Prannoy and Radhika Roy from holding managerial or board positions in the company for a period of 2 years over alleged withholding of information in loan agreements. The order was appealed against and stayed by the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT). In December 2020, SEBI imposed a fine on the Roys worth . SAT directed the Roys to deposit 50% of the sum as conditional to a second hearing. The company moved to the Supreme Court of India (SCI) which exempted them from the deposits. Justice Dhananjaya Y. Chandrachud remarked that it was "brash" for the tribunal to have demanded it.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: His academic awards include the Leverhulme Trust (UK) Fellowship, Queen Mary Prize for results at BSc and an OPOS Scholarship at the Doon School to study at Haileybury College.


title: Prannoy Roy

text: He won the Red Ink award by Mumbai Press Club for lifetime achievement for his consistent and pioneering contribution to news television and his service to journalism in 2015.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: Brandon Cronenberg (born January 10, 1980) is a Canadian director and screenwriter. He is David Cronenberg's son and Caitlin Cronenberg's brother. He is known for his science fiction horror films "Antiviral" (2012), "Possessor" (2020) and "Infinity Pool" (2023). He has won several accolades for his work.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: Cronenberg was born in Toronto, the son of filmmakers David Cronenberg and Carolyn Zeifman, and the brother of photographer Caitlin Cronenberg. He also has a half sister, Cassandra, from his father's first marriage. Cronenberg studied film at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He initially considered himself to be a "book nerd" growing up, who was interested in becoming a writer, painter, or musician. He came to realize that film contained all those elements and attended film school.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: In 2008, Cronenberg directed a short film titled "Broken Tulips", about people who pay to be injected with viruses that were harvested from celebrities. Cronenberg has stated that the genesis of the film was a viral infection he once had. More precisely, the "central idea came to him in a fever dream during a bout of illness," wrote journalist Jill Lawless. It was further shaped when he saw an interview Sarah Michelle Gellar did on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!"; what struck him was when "she said she was sick and if she sneezed she'd infect the whole audience, and everyone just started cheering."


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: The short was adapted from a script he was working on for his first feature, "Antiviral". Principal photography for the feature film adaptation took place in Hamilton, Ontario and in Toronto.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: "Antiviral" debuted at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival in the "Un Certain Regard" section. Cronenberg and his father both screened films at that year's Cannes Film Festival, marking the first time a father and son screened films together in the festival's history.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: Cronenberg re-edited the movie after the festival to make it tighter, trimming nearly six minutes from its running time. The revised version was first shown at the 2012 Toronto International Film Festival, where it tied for the award for Best Canadian First Feature Film. It later won the "Citizen Kane" Award for Best Debut Feature at the Sitges Film Festival.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: In 2019, Cronenberg's short film "Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You", starring Deragh Campbell, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in the International Critics' Week section. The film won the Canal+ Grand Prize at L'Étrange Festival in Paris, and in December 2019 was included in TIFF's annual year-end Canada's Top Ten list for short films.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: Cronenberg stated that visuals for "Please Speak Continuously and Describe Your Experiences as They Come to You" came from experiments he and his cinematographer Karim Hussain were doing for a feature film he was making called "Possessor".


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: "Possessor" was released the following year, starring Christopher Abbott, Andrea Riseborough, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuppence Middleton and Sean Bean. It premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival in the World Cinema Dramatic Competition section, where US distribution rights were picked up by Neon. The film won awards for Best Feature Length Film and Best Direction at the Sitges Film Festival that year, as well as the Grand Prize at the 2021 Gérardmer Film Festival. The film also received three nominations at the inaugural Critics' Choice Super Awards in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category, for Best Movie, Best Actor, and Best Actress. It was named to the Toronto International Film Festival's year-end Canada's Top Ten list for feature films.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival it was announced that Cronenberg's third feature would be a film called "Infinity Pool", based on an original script of his. "Infinity Pool" stars Alexander Skarsgård and Mia Goth, with a premiere set for the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.


title: Brandon Cronenberg

text: In 2021, it was announced that he would write and direct an adaptation of the J. G. Ballard novel "Super-Cannes" as a limited series for television.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: Carlo Maria Buonaparte or Charles-Marie Bonaparte (27 March 1746 – 24 February 1785) was a Corsican lawyer and diplomat, best known as the father of Napoleon Bonaparte and grandfather of Napoleon III.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: Buonaparte served briefly as a personal assistant to revolutionary leader Pasquale Paoli, fighting with the Corsican forces during the French conquest of Corsica. With the island conquered and the resistance defeated, Buonaparte eventually rose to become Corsica's representative to the court of Louis XVI. Twenty years after his death, his second surviving son, Napoleon, became Emperor of the French; subsequently, several of Buonaparte's other children received royal titles from their brother, and married into royalty.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: Carlo Buonaparte was born in 1746 in Ajaccio, Corsica, at the time part of the Republic of Genoa; he already had a sister Maria Gertrude, born in 1741, and a brother Sebastiano, born in 1743. His father, Giuseppe Maria Buonaparte, had represented Ajaccio at the Council of Corte in 1749. The Corsican Buonapartes were of Tuscan origin. Carlo's ancestor, Guglielmo di Buonaparte, had been a member of the Ghibelline-controlled municipal council of Florence in the thirteenth century, when the Guelphs faction took over Florence, Guglielmo and his family fled to Sarzana. His descendant Francesco di Buonaparte, sailed from Liguria to Corsica in the 16th century for a new life.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: Carlo initially followed in his father's footsteps and studied to be a lawyer at Pisa University, but following a substantial inheritance from the death of his father, he left before earning his degree to tend to his inheritance and take charge of family responsibilities. On 2 June 1764, he married fourteen year old Maria Letizia Ramolino: the Ramolinos descended from noble Lombard antecedents and were established in Corsica for 250 years. Their marriage was arranged by their families, economic convenience was one of several factors considered while arranging the match, the main considerations being of cultural compatibility in matters such as speech dialect, church habits, food habits, attire and other family traditions. Buonaparte's new wife brought with her a dowry of thirty-one acres of land, including a mill and bakery which yielded an annual income of roughly £10,000.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: For a period after his marriage at Ajaccio on 2/7 June 1764, he worked as a secretary and personal assistant to Pasquale Paoli. He had a son, Napoleone, who died in infancy in 1765 as did a daughter. Paoli sent him to Rome to negotiate with Pope Clement XIII in 1766. He had apparently enjoyed his time in Rome up until being forced for reasons unknown back to Corsica in 1768 - though he had possibly enjoyed an affair with a married woman during his stay which led to his departure. At the time of his return, the Republic of Genoa had offered Corsica to Louis XV as payment for a debt. The French were eager to obtain the strategically placed island for the protection of their own coasts, and Genoa equally keen to relinquish control given their inability to resist growing independence movements. Buonaparte was noted for a fervent speech against the French "invasion". Political upheaval followed as France gained ownership of Corsica, and many of Paoli's supporters had to flee to the mountains. Buonaparte and his family, now boasting newborn Giuseppe, who was the first child to survive infancy, were included. The family eventually returned to the town, where Buonaparte's wife gave birth to a third son, Napoleone.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: Soon after the French acquisition of the island, Carlo Buonaparte embraced the new government. He was appointed Assessor of the Royal Jurisdiction of Ajaccio and the neighbouring districts on 20 September 1769. Shortly after that, he became a Doctor of Law at the University of Pisa on 27 November 1769.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: In April 1770, the French administration created a Corsican Order of Nobility. He became an advocate of the Superior Council of Corsica on 11 December 1769 and a Substitute Procurator of the King of France in Ajaccio in October 1770. Carlo already possessed the title of a "Noble Patrician of Tuscany" ("Nobile Patrizio di Toscana") since 1769 by permission of the Archbishop of Pisa due to his ancestry, and had his nobility confirmed on 13 September 1771. He then became the assessor of the Royal Jurisdiction of Ajaccio in February 1771, Deputy of the Nobility in the General States of Corsica on 13 September 1771, Member of the Council of the Twelve Nobles of Dila (Western Corsica) in May 1772, Deputy of the Nobility of Corsica at the Royal French Court in July 1777 and finally he was named Corsica's representative to the Court of Louis XVI of France at Versailles in 1778.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: Despite being honoured with many titles, Buonaparte's dissatisfied nature led him to embark in risky business enterprises. He made many claims on land and money through legal means, but his success was limited and he burned through his finances rapidly. His apparent fondness of gambling worsened his monetary difficulties. Buonaparte made note of his situation in his account book: "In Paris, I received 4,000 francs from the King and a fee of 1,000 crowns from the government, but I came back without a penny." By 1782, Buonaparte was beginning to grow weak, and was suffering from constant pain. He travelled to Montpellier to seek proper medical care. Nothing could be done to quell the effects of what was believed to be stomach cancer, the same disease that may have killed his famous son, Napoleon. Carlo Buonaparte died on 24 February 1785, and, due to his frivolous spending, left his surviving wife and eight children penniless. Carlo Buonaparte's youngest son was born only three months before he died.


title: Carlo Buonaparte

text: Carlo Buonaparte's marriage to Letizia Ramolino produced thirteen children between 1768 and 1784; five of them died, two at birth and three in their infancy. Eight children survived.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: The 2020 Survivor Series was the 34th annual Survivor Series professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event produced by WWE. It was held for wrestlers from the promotion's Raw and SmackDown brand divisions. The event took place on November 22, 2020, from the WWE ThunderDome, hosted at the Amway Center in Orlando, Florida. It was WWE's final PPV presented from the Amway Center during the COVID-19 pandemic as the ThunderDome was relocated to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida due to the start of the 2020–21 ECHL and NBA seasons. The theme of the event was brand supremacy and featured wrestlers from the two brands against each other—unlike the 2019 event, NXT was not included at this year's event. The event also celebrated the 30th anniversary of The Undertaker's WWE debut—his retirement ceremony closed the event. This was the fourth Survivor Series event to take place in the state of Florida (two events in Miami and one in Tampa).


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Seven matches were contested at the event, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. The card was highlighted by two traditional Survivor Series elimination matches: Raw's men's and women's teams were victorious over SmackDown's. In the main event match, SmackDown's Universal Champion Roman Reigns defeated Raw's WWE Champion Drew McIntyre. Also on the card, SmackDown Women's Champion Sasha Banks defeated Raw Women's Champion Asuka, and SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford) defeated Raw Tag Team Champions The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods). Raw won brand supremacy by winning four of the seven matches.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Survivor Series is an annual gimmick pay-per-view (PPV) and WWE Network event, produced every November by WWE since 1987. The second longest running pay-per-view event in history (behind WWE's WrestleMania), it is one of the promotion's original four pay-per-views, along with WrestleMania, Royal Rumble, and SummerSlam, referred to as the "Big Four". The event is traditionally characterized by having Survivor Series matches, which are tag team elimination matches that typically pits teams of four or five wrestlers against each other. The 2020 event, which was the 34th event in the Survivor Series chronology, was scheduled to be held on November 22, 2020.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Since WWE reintroduced the brand split in July 2016, Survivor Series has centered around competition between wrestlers from Raw and SmackDown for brand supremacy. In addition to traditional Survivor Series matches between the brands, the champions of Raw face their SmackDown counterparts in non-title matches, which began at the 2017 event. The 2020 Survivor Series featured Raw's WWE Champion against SmackDown's Universal Champion, the Raw Women's Champion facing the SmackDown Women's Champion, Raw's United States Champion going against SmackDown's Intercontinental Champion, and the Raw Tag Team Champions facing off with the SmackDown Tag Team Champions.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic that began affecting the industry in mid-March, WWE had to present the majority of its programming from a behind closed doors set. Initially, Raw and SmackDown's television shows and PPVs were done at the WWE Performance Center in Orlando, Florida. A limited number of Performance Center trainees and friends and family members of the wrestlers were later utilized to serve as the live audience. In late August, these programs were moved to a bio-secure bubble called the WWE ThunderDome, hosted at Orlando's Amway Center. The select live audience was no longer utilized as the bubble allowed fans to attend the events virtually for free and be seen on the nearly 1,000 LED boards within the arena. Additionally, the ThunderDome utilized various special effects to further enhance wrestlers' entrances, and arena audio was mixed with that of the chants from the virtual fans.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: WWE's initial agreement with the Amway Center expired on October 31, but with the option to extend the contract with a two weeks notice. On October 12, "PWInsider" reported that the contract had been extended, with "Fightful" revealing the amended contract's expiration date as November 24. Survivor Series was subsequently the final WWE pay-per-view presented from the ThunderDome at the Amway Center, as WWE relocated to Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida, which began with the December 11 episode of "SmackDown". This move was also done due to the start of the 2020–21 ECHL and NBA seasons as the Amway Center is the shared home of the Orlando Solar Bears (ECHL) and the Orlando Magic (NBA).


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: "411Mania" reported that the COVID-19 pandemic was a reason that the NXT brand was not involved in the event, unlike the previous year. Outbreaks of the virus had occurred at both of NXT's home arenas, Full Sail University and then the WWE Performance Center, prompting WWE to exclude NXT wrestlers from the event to avoid potential transmission of the virus to members of the Raw and SmackDown rosters. This report was confirmed by WWE executive and NXT head Triple H during the media call on December 3.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: The show comprised seven matches, including one on the Kickoff pre-show. The matches resulted from scripted storylines, where wrestlers portrayed heroes, villains, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches. Results were predetermined by WWE's writers on the Raw and SmackDown brands, while storylines were produced on WWE's weekly television shows, "Monday Night Raw" and "Friday Night SmackDown".


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Qualifying matches for the men's Survivor Series elimination match began on the October 26 episode of "Raw". AJ Styles, Keith Lee, and Sheamus earned the first three spots on Team Raw by defeating Jeff Hardy, Elias, and Riddle, respectively. The following week, Braun Strowman qualified for the team by defeating Lee and Sheamus in a triple threat match. Riddle won the final spot on Team Raw by defeating Elias and Hardy in a triple threat match on the November 9 episode. Team SmackDown's first two members were determined on the October 30 episode of "SmackDown". Kevin Owens and Jey Uso qualified by defeating Dolph Ziggler and Daniel Bryan, respectively. The following week, King Corbin and Seth Rollins won the next two spots by defeating Rey Mysterio and Otis, respectively. On the November 20 episode, WWE official Adam Pearce named Otis as the final member of Team SmackDown.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: For the women's Survivor Series elimination match, all five of Team Raw's members were initially revealed on the October 26 episode of "Raw". WWE officials Adam Pearce and Pat Buck announced that WWE Women's Tag Team Champions Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler, along with Mandy Rose and Dana Brooke, would represent Team Raw. The fifth and final spot was determined by a fatal four-way match that night, which Lana won by defeating Lacey Evans, Peyton Royce, and Nikki Cross. On the November 16 episode of "Raw", due to Jax and Baszler attacking Rose's arm during a tag team match, and then Retribution's Reckoning later attacking Brooke backstage, both Rose and Brooke were deemed unable to compete at Survivor Series, thus Pearce announced that they would be replaced by Evans and Royce. Team SmackDown's first member was determined on the October 30 episode of "SmackDown". Bianca Belair won the spot by defeating Billie Kay and Natalya in a triple threat match. Ruby Riott won the second spot on the following episode, where she defeated Natalya and Zelina Vega in a triple threat match. On the November 13 episode, Liv Morgan qualified by defeating Chelsea Green, Natalya, and Tamina in a fatal four-way match. The following week, Pearce added Bayley to the team, and Natalya defeated Tamina to win the final spot on Team SmackDown.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: All four of the champions brand supremacy matches were announced on the October 26 episode of "Raw". At the time, it was announced that Raw's WWE Champion Randy Orton would face SmackDown's Universal Champion Roman Reigns, Raw Women's Champion Asuka would face SmackDown Women's Champion Sasha Banks, Raw's United States Champion Bobby Lashley would face SmackDown's Intercontinental Champion Sami Zayn, and Raw Tag Team Champions The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods) would face SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford).


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Over the next few weeks, five of the champions defended their titles before Survivor Series, with four of them retaining to keep the matchups the same as initially announced. SmackDown Women's Champion Sasha Banks retained her title against Bayley on the November 6 episode of "SmackDown", Bobby Lashley retained the United States Championship against Titus O'Neil on the November 9 episode of "Raw", Intercontinental Champion Sami Zayn retained his title against Apollo Crews on the November 13 episode of "SmackDown", and The New Day retained their Raw Tag Team Championship against The Hurt Business (Cedric Alexander and Shelton Benjamin) on the November 16 episode of "Raw". Also during this time, SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Street Profits tried to get info on their Survivor Series opponents from former New Day member Big E, who told them that New Day would win. The men's world championship matchup, however, changed. After losing the WWE Championship to Randy Orton at Hell in a Cell on October 25, Drew McIntyre was given a rematch for the title. Prior to that, McIntyre appeared on the November 13 episode of "SmackDown" to confront Universal Champion Roman Reigns, despite not being the WWE Champion. On the November 16 episode of "Raw", McIntyre defeated Orton to regain the WWE Championship, thus becoming Reigns' opponent at Survivor Series.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: During the Survivor Series Kickoff pre-show, an 18-man dual-brand battle royal was contested, with its participants evenly divided between Raw and SmackDown. In the end, Raw's The Miz eliminated SmackDown's Dominik Mysterio to win the match, giving Raw the first win of the night.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Also during the pre-show, The Gobbledy Gooker, a character that also first appeared at the 1990 Survivor Series, pinned R-Truth to win the WWE 24/7 Championship.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: The actual pay-per-view opened with the men's 5-on-5 traditional Survivor Series elimination match, featuring Team Raw (AJ Styles, Keith Lee, Sheamus, Braun Strowman, and Riddle) (accompanied by Styles' bodyguard, Omos) against Team SmackDown (Kevin Owens, Jey Uso, King Corbin, Seth Rollins, and Otis). Jey and Styles started the match. After Sheamus tagged in the match, Rollins tagged in, got on his knees, and allowed Sheamus to perform a Brogue Kick on him: Rollins was subsequently eliminated, proclaiming it was "for the greater good." After Rollins' elimination, the remaining SmackDown team members attempted to discuss a strategy outside the ring only for Strowman to tackle all of them with a running shoulder tackle. Back in the ring, Owens performed Stunners on Lee, Sheamus, and Riddle, after which, Styles performed a Phenomenal Forearm on Owens to eliminate him. Styles attacked Corbin with a superkick and Riddle performed a Floating Bro from the top rope to eliminate Corbin. After Otis performed the Caterpillar on Strowman, Otis attempted a Vader Bomb on Strowman only for Riddle to intercept Otis. Strowman took advantage of the distraction and performed a Running Powerslam on Otis to eliminate him. Jey attacked Team Raw with a flurry of Superkicks. In the end, Jey countered a Phenomenal Forearm from Styles and attempted a Splash on him; however, Lee, who was the legal member, intercepted Jey by catching him in midair and transitioned into a Spirit Bomb on Jey to win the match with a clean sweep, and giving Raw their second win of the night.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Next, SmackDown Tag Team Champions The Street Profits (Angelo Dawkins and Montez Ford) faced Raw Tag Team Champions The New Day (Kofi Kingston and Xavier Woods, accompanied by former stable member Big E from SmackDown); the trio came out dressed as their respective "Gears 5" characters, available as downloadable content for the game. Big E went backstage after the match began. After an evenly contested match between the two teams, The Street Profits performed an electric chair/blockbuster combination on Woods to win the match for SmackDown, giving SmackDown their first win of the night. Following the match, both teams showed mutual respect for each other.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: After that, Raw's United States Champion Bobby Lashley (accompanied by Hurt Business stablemates MVP, Cedric Alexander, and Shelton Benjamin) faced SmackDown's Intercontinental Champion Sami Zayn. Zayn refused to fight Lashley and attempted to walk away from the match, however, he was thwarted by The Hurt Business. In the closing moments, Zayn attempted to leave again, only for MVP to intercept him, after which, Zayn tried to convince the referee that MVP tripped him. MVP then threw Zayn back in the ring and Lashley applied the Hurt Lock on Zayn, who submitted, giving Raw their third win over SmackDown's one win.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Backstage, while Jey Uso was conversing with his brother Jimmy Uso, Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman appeared. Reigns lambasted Jey for losing, after which, Jimmy tried to calm Reigns down. Reigns then ordered Jimmy to leave and stated that Team SmackDown lost because Jey could not control his team and that they did not respect Jey. He then told Jey to also leave the building along with Jimmy.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: In the next match, Raw Women's Champion Asuka faced SmackDown Women's Champion Sasha Banks. In the end, after a series of attempted rollups on one another, Banks pinned Asuka with an inside cradle to win the match, giving SmackDown their second win of the night.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: In a backstage segment, new 24/7 Champion The Gobbledy Gooker stumbled upon a trail of bird seed backstage. As The Gooker started to indulge with the seed, Akira Tozawa appeared and performed a roll-up on The Gooker to win the title. R-Truth then appeared and attacked Tozawa with a bag of bird seed and pinned him to regain the title.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: The penultimate match was the women's 5-on-5 traditional Survivor Series elimination match, featuring Team Raw (Nia Jax, Shayna Baszler, Lana, Lacey Evans, and Peyton Royce) against Team SmackDown (Bianca Belair, Ruby Riott, Liv Morgan, Bayley, and Natalya). A few minutes into the match, Lana tagged in and faced off with Natalya. Jax then tagged in and Team Raw forced Lana to stand on the ring steps, not to tag in again. Bayley was the first to be eliminated after Royce performed Deja Vu on her and pinned her. Natalya then eliminated Royce by making her submit to the sharpshooter. Evans performed the Women's Right on Natalya to eliminate her. Baszler made Riott pass out to the Kirifuda Clutch and pinned Riott to eliminate her. Morgan then eliminated Evans with a crucifix pin. Morgan was then eliminated by Jax after Jax performed a Samoan Drop on her. The last remaining member of Team SmackDown, Belair, faced off with Baszler, who eventually applied the Kirifuda Clutch on Belair, who got to the ropes, but Baszler refused to let go of the hold as the referee counted to five, thus Baszler got herself eliminated by disqualification. Belair then fought with Jax. The two went outside the ring where Belair tumbled Jax over the ringside barrier; however, Belair did not make it back in the ring before the referee's count of ten, thus Jax and Belair were eliminated via count out, leaving Lana as the sole survivor of Team Raw. As this gave Raw their fourth win of the night, this automatically meant that Raw won brand supremacy.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: In the main event match, Raw's WWE Champion Drew McIntyre faced SmackDown's Universal Champion Roman Reigns (accompanied by Paul Heyman). In the end, as McIntyre performed the Claymore on Reigns, Reigns inadvertedly bumped into the referee, incapacitating him. Although he was instructed to leave the building earlier, Reigns' cousin Jey Uso then ran down to ringside and tussled with McIntyre, enabling Reigns to perform a low blow on McIntyre followed by a Superkick from Jey. Reigns then applied the guillotine choke submission on McIntyre, who passed out, to win the match. Although this gave SmackDown another win, Raw had already won brand supremacy with four wins to SmackDown's three.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: The 2020 Survivor Series saw the retirement ceremony of The Undertaker, who performed for WWE for 30 years, first making his debut for the promotion at the 1990 Survivor Series event. In what was the show's final segment, Shane McMahon, Big Show, John "Bradshaw" Layfield, Jeff Hardy, Mick Foley, The Godfather, The Godwinns (Henry and Phineas), Savio Vega, Rikishi, Kevin Nash, Booker T, Shawn Michaels, Ric Flair, Triple H, and Kane all entered the ring to kick off the ceremony. A video package recapping The Undertaker's career then aired, after which, WWE Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon was shown alone in the ring and gave a brief, heart felt message before introducing The Undertaker for the last time. The Undertaker then slowly walked to the ring in full costume where he then confirmed his retirement in an emotional farewell speech, stating "My time has come to let The Undertaker "Rest in Peace"". The Undertaker performed his trademark kneeling pose as an image of Undertaker's former longtime manager, the late Paul Bearer, appeared via hologram. The gong tolled ten times, officially putting an end to The Undertaker character. Undertaker delivered his trademark throat slash pose and then left the ring. The show ended with The Undertaker walking back up the entrance ramp to throw his fist up for one last time.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: The following night on "Raw", for winning the men's Survivor Series match with a clean sweep, WWE official Adam Pearce stated that one of Team Raw's members would receive a WWE Championship match against Drew McIntyre at and allowed each to state their case. The last to state their case was Braun Strowman, however, he became enraged over Pearce's use of the phrase "last but not least". This led to Strowman attacking Pearce and thus was suspended indefinitely. Former WWE Champion Randy Orton (who did not represent Raw at the pay-per-view but wanted a rematch) and United States Champion Bobby Lashley (who was the only champion from Raw to win his Champion vs. Champion match) each confronted Pearce backstage individually with their respective cases. Pearce scheduled three singles matches for that night, with the winners of each facing off in a triple threat match the following week to determine the number one contender. Riddle, Keith Lee, and AJ Styles advanced to the triple threat match by defeating Sheamus, Lashley, and Orton, respectively. Styles subsequently won the triple threat match.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: Also on "Raw", due to Lana emerging the sole survivor of the women's elimination match, she was given a Raw Women's Championship match against Asuka. However, this match ended in a no-contest by an interference from Women's Tag Team Champions Nia Jax and Shayna Baszler. This led to a tag team match in which Lana and Asuka defeated Jax and Baszler in a non-title match.


title: Survivor Series (2020)

text: On the following episode of "SmackDown", Universal Champion Roman Reigns lambasted Jey Uso for Team SmackDown losing, as well as returning to aid Reigns in his match against McIntyre, even though he ordered Jey to leave the building. Reigns stated that the rest of Team SmackDown did not respect Jey, and because of that, they do not respect Reigns or their family. This enraged Jey, who then attempted to further prove himself by viciously attacking Otis with a chair during his entrance. Later, he attacked Daniel Bryan backstage, causing Bryan to lose his match. In the main event, Jey faced Kevin Owens. Jey was intentionally disqualified after attacking Owens with a steel chair. After the match, Jey continued his assault on Owens, however, Owens retaliated by delivering multiple Stunners to Jey. Owens then taunted Reigns directly, who watched on from a television backstage.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Kumari Kandam is a mythical continent, believed to be lost with an ancient Tamil civilization, supposedly located south of present-day India in the Indian Ocean. Alternative names and spellings include "Kumarikkandam" and "Kumari Nadu".


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In the 19th century, some European and American scholars speculated the existence of a submerged continent called Lemuria to explain geological and other similarities between Africa, Australia, the Indian subcontinent and Madagascar. A section of Tamil revivalists adapted this theory, connecting it to the Pandyan legends of lands lost to the ocean, as described in ancient Tamil and Sanskrit literature. According to these writers, an ancient Tamil civilisation existed on Lemuria, before it was lost to the sea in a catastrophe.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In the 20th century, the Tamil writers started using the name "Kumari Kandam" to describe this submerged continent. Although the Lemuria theory was later rendered obsolete by the continental drift (plate tectonics) theory, the concept remained popular among Tamil revivalists of the 20th century. According to them, Kumari Kandam was the place where the first two Tamil literary academies (sangams) were organised during the Pandyan reign. They claimed Kumari Kandam as the cradle of civilisation to prove the antiquity of the Tamil language and culture.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: When the Tamil writers were introduced to the concept of Lemuria in the 1890s, they came up with the Tamilized versions of the continent's name (e.g. "Ilemuria"). By the early 1900s, they started using Tamil names for the continent, to support their depiction of Lemuria as an ancient Tamil civilization. In 1903, V.G. Suryanarayana Sastri first used the term "Kumarinatu" (or "Kumari Nadu", meaning "Kumari territory") in his work "Tamil Mozhiyin Varalaru" (History of the Tamil language). The term Kumari Kandam ("Kumari continent") was first used to describe Lemuria in the 1930s.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The words "Kumari Kandam" first appear in "Kanda Puranam", a 15th-century Tamil version of the Skanda Purana, written by Kachiappa Sivacharyara (1350–1420). Although the Tamil revivalists insist that it is a pure Tamil name, it is actually a derivative of the Sanskrit word "Kumārika Khaṇḍa". The "Andakosappadalam" section of "Kanda Puranam" describes the following cosmological model of the universe: There are many worlds, each having several continents, which in turn, have several kingdoms. Paratan, the ruler of one such kingdom, had eight sons and one daughter. He further divided his kingdom into nine parts, and the part ruled by his daughter Kumari came to be known as Kumari Kandam after her. Kumari Kandam is described as "the" kingdom of the Earth. Although the Kumari Kandam theory became popular among anti-Brahmin, anti-Sanskrit Tamil nationalists, the "Kanda Puranam" actually describes Kumari Kandam as the land where the Brahmins reside, where Shiva is worshipped and where the Vedas are recited. The rest of the kingdoms are described as the territory of the mlecchas.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The 20th-century Tamil writers came up with various theories to explain the etymology of "Kumari Kandam" or "Kumari Nadu". One set of claims was centered on the purported gender egalitarianism in the prelapsarian Tamil homeland. For example, M. Arunachalam (1944) claimed that the land was ruled by female rulers ("Kumari"s). D. Savariroyan Pillai stated that the women of the land had the right to choose their husbands and owned all the property because of which the land came to be known as "Kumari Nadu" ("the land of the maiden"). Yet another set of claims was centered on the Hindu goddess Kanya Kumari. Kandiah Pillai, in a book for children, fashioned a new history for the goddess, stating that the land was named after her. He claimed that the temple at Kanyakumari was established by those who survived the flood that submerged Kumari Kandam. According to cultural historian Sumathi Ramaswamy, the emphasis of the Tamil writers on the word "Kumari" (meaning virgin or maiden) symbolizes the purity of Tamil language and culture, before their contacts with the other ethnic groups such as the Indo-Aryans.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The Tamil writers also came up with several other names for the lost continent. In 1912, Somasundara Bharati first used the word "Tamilakam" (a name for the ancient Tamil country) to cover the concept of Lemuria, presenting it as the cradle of civilization, in his "Tamil Classics and Tamilakam". Another name used was "Pandiya nadu", after the Pandyas, regarded as the oldest of the Tamil dynasties. Some writers used "Navalan Tivu" (or Navalam Island), the Tamil name of Jambudvipa, to describe the submerged land.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Multiple ancient and medieval Tamil and Sanskrit works contain legendary accounts of lands in South India being lost to the ocean. The earliest explicit discussion of a "katalkol" ("seizure by ocean", possibly tsunami) of Pandyan land is found in a commentary on "Iraiyanar Akapporul". This commentary, attributed to Nakkeerar, is dated to the later centuries of the 1st millennium CE. It mentions that the Pandyan kings, an early Tamil dynasty, established three literary academies ("Sangams"): the first Sangam flourished for 4,400 years in a city called Tenmadurai (South Madurai) attended by 549 poets (including Agastya) and presided over by gods like Shiva, Kubera and Murugan. The second Sangam lasted for 3,700 years in a city called Kapatapuram, attended by 59 poets (including Agastya, again). The commentary states that both the cities were "seized by the ocean", resulting in loss of all the works created during the first two Sangams. The third Sangam was established in "Uttara" (North) Madurai, where it is said to have lasted for 1,850 years.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Nakkeerar's commentary does not mention the size of the territory lost to the sea. The size is first mentioned in a 15th-century commentary on Silappatikaram. The commentator Adiyarkunallar mentions that the lost land extended from Pahruli river in the north to the Kumari river in the South. It was located to the south of Kanyakumari, and covered an area of 700 "kavatam" (a unit of unknown measurement). It was divided into 49 territories ("natu"), classified in the following seven categories:


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Other medieval writers, such as Ilampuranar and Perasiriyar, also make stray references to the loss of antediluvian lands to the south of Kanyakumari, in their commentaries on ancient texts like "Tolkappiyam". Another legend about the loss of Pandyan territory to the sea is found in scattered verses of "Purananuru" (dated between 1st century BCE and 5th century CE) and "Kaliththokai" (6th–7th century CE). According to this account, the Pandyan king compensated the loss of his land by seizing an equivalent amount of land from the neighboring kingdoms of Cheras and Cholas.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: There are also several other ancient accounts of non-Pandyan land lost to the sea. Many Tamil Hindu shrines have legendary accounts of surviving the floods mentioned in Hindu mythology. These include the prominent temples of Kanyakumari, Kanchipuram, Kumbakonam, Madurai, Sirkazhi and Tiruvottiyur. There are also legends of temples submerged under the sea, such as the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram, the remains of which were discovered after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The Puranas place the beginning of the most popular Hindu flood myth – the legend of Manu – in South India. The Sanskrit-language "Bhagavata Purana" (dated 500 BCE–1000 CE) describes its protagonist Manu (aka Satyavrata) as the Lord of Dravida (South India). The "Matsya Purana" (dated 250–500 CE) also begins with Manu practicing "tapas" on Mount Malaya of South India. "Manimeghalai" (dated around 6th century CE) mentions that the ancient Chola port city of Kaverippumpattinam (present-day Puhar) was destroyed by a flood. It states that this flood was sent by the Hindu deity Indra, because the king forgot to celebrate a festival dedicated to him.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: None of these ancient texts or their medieval commentaries use the name "Kumari Kandam" or "Kumari Nadu" for the land purportedly lost to the sea. They do not state that the land lost by the sea was a whole continent located to the south of Kanyakumari. Nor do they link the loss of this land to the history of Tamil people as a community.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In 1864, the English zoologist Philip Sclater hypothesized the existence of a submerged land connection between India, Madagascar and continental Africa. He named this submerged land Lemuria, as the concept had its origins in his attempts to explain the presence of lemur-like primates (strepsirrhini) on these three disconnected lands. Before the Lemuria hypothesis was rendered obsolete by the continental drift theory, a number of scholars supported and expanded it. The concept was introduced to the Indian readers in an 1873 physical geography textbook by Henry Francis Blanford. According to Blanford, the landmass had submerged due to volcanic activity during the Cretaceous period. In late 1870s, the Lemuria theory found its first proponents in the present-day Tamil Nadu, when the leaders of the Adyar-headquartered Theosophical Society wrote about it (see the root race theory).


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Most European and American geologists dated Lemuria's disappearance to a period before the emergence of modern humans. Thus, according to them, Lemuria could not have hosted an ancient civilization. However, in 1885, the Indian Civil Service officer Charles D. Maclean published "The Manual of the Administration of the Madras Presidency", in which he theorized Lemuria as the proto-Dravidian urheimat. In a footnote in this work, he mentioned Ernst Haeckel's Asia hypothesis, which theorized that the humans originated in a land now submerged in the Indian Ocean. Maclean added that this submerged land was the homeland of the proto-Dravidians. He also suggested that the progenitors of the other races must have migrated from Lemuria to other places via South India. This theory was also cursorily discussed by other colonial officials like Edgar Thurston and Herbert Hope Risley, including in the census reports of 1891 and 1901. Later, Maclean's manual came to be cited as an authoritative work by the Tamil writers, who often wrongly referred to him as a "scientist" and a "Doctor".


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The native Tamil intellectuals first started discussing the concept of a submerged Tamil homeland in the late 1890s. In 1898, J. Nallasami Pillai published an article in the philosophical-literary journal "Siddhanta Deepika" (aka "The Truth of Light"). He wrote about the theory of a lost continent in the Indian Ocean (i.e. Lemuria), mentioning that the Tamil legends speak of floods which destroyed the literary works produced during the ancient sangams. However, he also added that this theory had "no serious historical or scientific footing".


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In the 1920s, the Lemuria concept was popularized by the Tamil revivalists to counter the dominance of Indo-Aryans and Sanskrit. Tamil revivalist writers claimed that Lemuria, prior to its deluge, was the original Tamil homeland and birthplace of Tamil civilization. They often misquoted or miscited the words of Western scholars to grant credibility to their assertions. During the British era, the loss of small patches of lands to cyclones was cataloged in several district reports, gazetteers, and other documents. The Tamil writers of the period cited these as evidence supporting the theory about an ancient land lost to the sea.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The books discussing the Kumari Kandam theory were first included in the college curriculum of the present-day Tamil Nadu in 1908. Suryanarayana Sastri's book was prescribed for use in Madras University's Master's degree courses in 1908-09. Over the next few decades, other such works were also included in the curriculum of Madras University and Annamalai University. These include Purnalingam Pillai's "A Primer of Tamil Literature" (1904) and "Tamil literature" (1929), Kandiah Pillai's "Tamilakam" (1934), and Srinivasa Pillai's "Tamil Varalaru" (1927). In a 1940 Tamil language textbook for ninth-grade students, T. V. Kalyanasundaram wrote that Lemuria of the European scholars was Kumarinatu of the Tamil literature.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: After the Dravidian parties came to power in the 1967 Madras State elections, the Kumari Kandam theory was disseminated more widely through school and college textbooks. In 1971, the Government of Tamil Nadu established a formal committee to write the history of "Tamilakam" (ancient Tamil territory). The state education minister R. Nedunceliyan declared in the Legislative Assembly that by "history", he meant "from the time of Lemuria that was seized by the ocean".


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In 1971, the Government of Tamil Nadu constituted a committee of historians and litterateurs, headed by M. Varadarajan. One of the objectives of the committee was to highlight "the great antiquity" of the Tamils. A 1975 textbook written by this committee detailed the Kumari Kandam theory, stating that it was supported by "the foremost geologists, ethnologists, and anthropologists". As late as 1981, the Tamil Nadu government's history textbooks mentioned the Kumari Kandam theory.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Tamil writers characterized Kumari Kandam as an ancient, but highly advanced civilization located in an isolated continent in the Indian Ocean. They also described it as the cradle of civilization inhabited solely by the speakers of Tamil language. The following sections describe these characteristics in detail.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Kumari Kandam is theorized as an isolated (both temporally and geographically) land mass. Geographically, it was located in the Indian Ocean. Temporally, it was a very ancient civilization. Many Tamil writers do not assign any date to the submergence of Kumari Kandam, resorting to phrases like "once upon a time" or "several thousands of years ago". Those who do, vary greatly, ranging from 30,000 BCE to the 3rd century BCE. Several other writers state that the land was progressively lost to the sea over a period of thousands of years. In 1991, R. Mathivanan, then Chief Editor of the Tamil Etymological Dictionary Project of the Government of Tamil Nadu, claimed that the Kumari Kandam civilization flourished around 50,000 BCE, and the continent submerged around 16,000 BCE. This theory was based on the methodology recommended by his teacher Devaneya Pavanar.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The isolation resulted in the possibility of describing Kumari Kandam as a utopian society insulated from external influences and foreign corruption. Unlike its description in the Kanda Puranam, the Tamil revivalists depicted Kumari Kandam as a place free of the upper-caste Brahmins, who had come to be identified as descendants of Indo-Aryans during the Dravidian movement. The non-utopian practices of the 20th century Tamil Hindu society, such as superstitions and caste-based discrimination, were all described as corruption resulting from Indo-Aryan influence.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: A land lost to the ocean also helped the Tamil revivalists provide an explanation for the lack of historically verifiable or scientifically acceptable material evidence about this ancient civilization. The earliest extant Tamil writings, which are attributed to the third Sangam, contain Sanskrit vocabulary, and thus could not have been the creation of a purely Tamil civilization. Connecting the concept of Lemuria to an ancient Tamil civilization allowed the Tamil revivalists to portray a society completely free of Indo-Aryan influence. They could claim that the various signs of the ancient Tamil civilization had been lost in the deep ocean. The later dominance of Sanskrit was offered as another explanation for the deliberate destruction of ancient Tamil works. In the 1950s, R. Nedunceliyan, who later became Tamil Nadu's education minister, published a pamphlet called "Marainta Tiravitam" ("Lost Dravidian land"). He insisted that the Brahmin historians, being biased towards Sanskrit, had deliberately kept the knowledge of the Tamil's greatness hidden from the public.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The Kumari Kandam proponents laid great emphasis on stating that the Kanyakumari city was a part of the original Kumari Kandam. Some of them also argued that entire Tamil Nadu, entire Indian peninsula (south of Vindhyas) or even entire India were a part of Kumari Kandam. This helped ensure that the modern Tamils could be described as both indigenous people of South India and the direct descendants of the people of Kumari Kandam. This, in turn, allowed them to describe the Tamil language and culture as the world's oldest.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: During British Raj, Kanyakumari was a part of the Travancore state, most of which was merged to the newly-formed Kerala state after the 1956 reorganization. The Tamil politicians made a concerted effort to ensure that Kanyakumari was incorporated into the Tamil-majority Madras State (now Tamil Nadu). Kanyakumari's purported connection with Kumari Kandam was one of the reasons for this effort.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: According to the Kumari Kandam proponents, the continent was submerged when the last ice age ended and the sea levels rose. The Tamil people then migrated to other lands, and mixed with the other groups, leading to the formation of new races, languages and civilizations. Some also theorize that the entire humanity is descended from the inhabitants of Kumari Kandam. Both narratives agree on the point that the Tamil culture is the source of all civilized culture in the world, and Tamil is the mother language of all other languages in the world. According to the most versions, the original culture of Kumari Kandam survived in Tamil Nadu.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: As early as 1903, Suryanarayana Sastri, in his "Tamilmoliyin Varalaru", insisted that all the humans were descendants of the ancient Tamils from Kumari Kandam. Such claims were repeated by several others, including M. S. Purnalingam Pillai and Maraimalai Adigal. In 1917, Abraham Pandithar wrote that Lemuria was the cradle of human race, and Tamil was the first language spoken by the humans. These claims were repeated in the school and college textbooks of Tamil Nadu throughout the 20th century.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: M. S. Purnalingam Pillai, writing in 1927, stated that Indus Valley civilisation was established by the Tamil survivors from the flood-hit Kumari Nadu. In the 1940s, N. S. Kandiah Pillai published maps showing migration of the Kumari Kandam residents to other parts of the world. In 1953, R. Nedunceliyan, who later became the education minister of Tamil Nadu, insisted that the civilization spread from South India to the Indus Valley and Sumer, and subsequently, to "Arabia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain and other places". They presented modern Tamil as a pale remnant of the glorious ancient Tamil language spoken in Kumari Kandam.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Some Tamil writers also claimed that the Indo-Aryans were also descendants of proto-Dravidians of Kumari Kandam. According to this theory, these Indo-Aryans belonged to a branch which migrated to Central Asia and then returned to India. Similar explanations were used to reconcile the popular theory that proto-Dravidians migrated to India from the Mediterranean region. A 1975 Government of Tamil Nadu college text book stated that the Dravidians of Kumari Kandam had migrated to the Mediterranean region after the submergence of their continent; later, they migrated back to India via the Himalayan passes.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The Tamil revivalists did not consider Kumari Kandam as a primitive society or a rural civilization. Instead, they described it as a utopia which had reached the zenith of human achievement, and where people lived a life devoted to learning, education, travel and commerce. Sumanthi Ramaswamy notes that this "placemaking" of Kumari Kandam was frequently intended as a teaching tool, meant to inspire the modern Tamils to pursue excellence. But this pre-occupation with "civilization" was also a response to the British rulers' projection of the Europeans as more civilized than the Tamils.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Suryanarayan Sastri, in 1903, described the antediluvian Tamils as expert cultivators, fine poets and far-traveling merchants, who lived in an egalitarian and democratic society. Savariroyan Pillai, writing a few years later, described Kumari Kandam as a seat of learning and culture. Sivagnana Yogi (1840-1924) stated that this ancient society was free of any caste system. Kandiah Pillai, in a 1945 work for children, wrote that Kumarikandam was ruled by a strong and just emperor called Sengon, who organized the sangams. In 1981, the Government of Tamil Nadu funded a documentary film on Kumari Kandam. The film, personally backed by the Chief Minister M. G. Ramachandran and directed by P. Neelakantan, was screened at the Fifth International Conference of Tamil Studies in Madurai. It combined the continental drift theory with the submerged continent theory to present Lemuria as a scientifically valid concept. It depicted Kumari Kandam cities resplendent with mansions, gardens, arts, crafts, music and dance.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The Tamil revivalists insisted that the first two Tamil sangams (literary academies) were not mythical, and happened in the Kumari Kandam era. While most Tamil revivalists did not enumerate or list the lost Sangam works, some came up with their names, and even listed their contents. In 1903, Suryanarayana Sastri named some of these works as "Mutunarai", "Mutukuruku", "Mapuranam" and "Putupuranam". In 1917, Abraham Pandithar listed three of these works as the world's first treatises of music: "Naratiyam", "Perunarai" and "Perunkuruku". He also listed several rare musical instruments such as the thousand-stringed lute, which had been lost to the sea. Devaneya Pavanar printed an entire list of the submerged books. Others listed books on a wide range of topics, including medicine, martial arts, logic, painting, sculpture, yoga, philosophy, music, mathematics, alchemy, magic, architecture, poetry, and wealth. Since these works had been lost to the sea, the Kumari Kandam proponents insisted that no empirical proof could be provided for their claims.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In 1902, Chidambaranar published a book called "Cenkonraraiccelavu", claiming that he had 'discovered' the manuscript from "some old cudgan leaves". The book was presented as a lost-and-found work of the first Sangam at Tenmadurai. The author of the poem was styled as Mutaluli Centan Taniyur ("Chentan who lived in Taniyur before the first deluge"). The work talked about the exploits of an antediluvian Tamil king Sengon, who ruled the now-submerged kingdom of Peruvalanatu, the region between the rivers Kumari and Pahruli. According to Chidambaranar, Sengon was a native of Olinadu, which was located south of the Equator; the king maintained several battleships and conquered lands as far as Tibet. In 1950s, "Cenkonraraiccelavu" was declared as a forgery by S. Vaiyapuri Pillai. However, this did not stop the Tamil revivalists from invoking the text. The 1981 documentary funded by Government of Tamil Nadu declared it as the "world's first travelogue".


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The medieval commentator Adiyarkunallar stated that the size of the land south of Kanyakumari, lost to the sea was 700 "kavatam". The modern equivalent of kavatam is not known. In 1905, Arasan Shanmugham Pillai wrote that this land amounted to thousands of miles. According to Purnalingam Pillai and Suryanarayana Sastri, the number was equivalent to 7000 miles. Others, such as Abraham Pandither, Aiyan Aarithan, Devaneyan and Raghava Aiyangar offered estimates ranging from 1,400 to 3,000 miles. According to U. V. Swaminatha Iyer, only the land amounting in area to only a few villages (equivalent to the Tamil measure of two kurram) was lost. In 1903, Suryanarayana Sastri suggested that Kumari Kandam extended from the present-day Kanyakumari in North to Kerguelen Islands in South, and from Madagascar in the West to Sunda Islands in the East. In 1912, Somasundara Bharati wrote that the continent touched China, Africa, Australia and Kanyakumari on four sides. In 1948, Maraimalai Adigal stated that the continent stretched as far as the South Pole. Somasundara Bharati offered an estimate of 6000–7000 miles.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: The first map to visualize Lemuria as an ancient Tamil territory was published by S. Subramania Sastri in 1916, in the journal "Centamil". This map was actually part of an article that criticized the pseudohistorical claims about a lost continent. Sastri insisted that the lost land mentioned in Adiyarkunallar's records was barely equivalent to a taluka (not larger than a few hundred square miles). The map depicted two different versions of Kumari Kandam: that of Sastri, and that of A. Shanmugam Pillai (see above). The lost land was depicted as a peninsula, similar to the present-day Indian peninsula.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In 1927, Purnalingam Pillai published a map titled "Puranic India before the Deluges", in which he labeled the various places of Kumari Kandam with names drawn from ancient Tamil and Sanskrit literary works. Pulavar Kulanthai, in his 1946 map, was first to depict cities like Tenmaturai and Kapatapuram on the maps of Kumari Kandam. Several maps also depicted the various mountain ranges and rivers of Kumari Kandam. The most elaborate cartographic visualization appeared in a 1977 map by R. Mathivanan. This map showed the 49 "nadu"s mentioned by Adiyarkunallar, and appears in the Tamil Nadu government's 1981 documentary.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: A 1981 map published by N. Mahalingam depicted the lost land as "Submerged Tamil Nadu" in 30,000 BCE. A 1991 map, created by R. Mathivanan, showed a land bridge connecting Indian peninsula to Antarctica. A few Tamil writers also depicted Gondwanaland as Kumari Kandam.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: Kumari Kandam is a mythical continent, and therefore, the attempts to mix this myth with Tamil history have attracted criticism since the late 19th century. One of the earliest criticisms came from M Seshagiri Sastri (1897), who described the claims of ante-diluvial sangams as "a mere fiction originated by the prolific imagination of Tamil poets." CH Monahan wrote a scathing review of Suryanarayana Sastri's "Tamilmoliyin Varalaru" (1903), shortly after its publication, accusing the author of "abandoning scientific research for mythology". K. N. Sivaraja Pillai (1932) similarly stressed on the need to closely examine the historical authenticity of Sangam works and their commentaries.


title: Kumari Kandam

text: In 1956, K. A. Nilakanta Sastri described the Kumari Kandam theory as "all bosh", stating that geological theories about events happening millions of years ago should not be connected to the human history of a few thousand years back. Historian N. Subrahmanian, writing in 1966, described the Lemuria myth as the most characteristic example of "anti-history" in Tamil Nadu. He noted that these myths persisted in the minds of Tamil people despite modern education. According to him, the land lost to sea, as described in the ancient Tamil legends, was a small area comparable to a present-day district, and submerged around 5th or 4th century BCE.


title: Rebel News

text: Rebel News (also known as The Rebel Media and The Rebel) is a Canadian right-wing to far-right political and social commentary media website operated by Rebel News Network Ltd. It has been described as a "global platform" for the anti-Muslim ideology known as counter-jihad. It was founded in February 2015 by former Sun News Network personalities Ezra Levant and Brian Lilley.


title: Rebel News

text: "Rebel News" broadcasts its content only on the internet and has been called Canada's version of "Breitbart News". "Rebel News" has been described as being part of the alt-right movement.<ref name="Langlois_Coulter_Elmer_McKelvey_12/9/2021"></ref>


title: Rebel News

text: Former Sun News reporter Faith Goldy joined "Rebel News" after its launch, but was fired for her coverage of the 2017 Charlottesville rally and for conducting an interview with "The Daily Stormer". A co-founder and two freelancers resigned in protest of the coverage. Gavin McInnes, founder of the far-right neo-fascist organization Proud Boys, was a contributor. McInnes departed in 2017, then temporarily rejoined the site for a period in 2019. In the midst of the 2021 Canadian federal election, Justin Trudeau accused "Rebel News" of spreading misinformation, especially with regards to COVID-19 vaccines.<ref name="Fawcett_9/10/2021"></ref> "Rebel News" has promoted climate change denial and oil sands extraction in Alberta.


title: Rebel News

text: Prior to the official opening of the media franchise operation as a corporation, it operated for a number of years as an individual effort of Levant's who styled himself "The Rebel." At least one of his ideas, to fight "anti-Christian bigots on Nanaimo city council," attracted support from university student and now Member of Parliament Dane Lloyd.


title: Rebel News

text: The Rebel Media was formed by Levant and Lilley following the closure of the Sun News Network. Levant said that his online production would be unencumbered by the regulatory and distribution difficulties faced by Sun News Network and that its lower production costs would make it more viable. Levant has cited "Breitbart News", the American far-right news hub, as an inspiration. A crowdfunding campaign raised roughly for the project. The site soon attracted a number of other former Sun News Network personalities such as David Menzies, Paige MacPherson, Faith Goldy, Patrick Moore and, briefly, Michael Coren.


title: Rebel News

text: In the summer of 2015, the channel, led by Levant, launched a campaign to boycott Tim Hortons, a chain of Canadian coffee shops, after it rejected in-store ads from Enbridge due to complaints from customers opposed to the oil pipeline projects being promoted by the ads.


title: Rebel News

text: In early 2016, the Alberta government banned The Rebel Media's correspondents from press briefings on the grounds that, because Ezra Levant had testified in court in 2014 that he was a columnist or commentator rather than a reporter, none of his current correspondents could be considered to be journalists. On 17 February 2016, the government admitted that it made a mistake and said that it would allow The Rebel Media correspondents into press briefings. The Canadian Association of Journalists supported preventing government from choosing journalism coverage."


title: Rebel News

text: In late 2016, after first being refused press accreditation for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) COP22 Climate Change Conference, Rebel Media was allowed to send two correspondents to COP22. Levant wrote that "We're not being excluded because we have an opinion. We're being excluded because we have the wrong opinion."<ref name="Craig_10/31/2016"></ref>


title: Rebel News

text: Rebel Media received support from the Environment Minister Catherine McKenna and three journalism organizations in getting the UNFCC to grant this access, after Levant's October 17 appeal to Justin Trudeau.


title: Rebel News

text: Following the Quebec City mosque shooting on 29 January 2017, Rebel promoted a conspiracy theory that the shooting was perpetrated by Muslims. In 2017, Rebel Media hired far-right activist Tommy Robinson, founder of the avowedly anti-Islamic English Defence League, as its British correspondent. Robinson was convicted of mortgage fraud and using a friend's passport to enter the US.


title: Rebel News

text: In March 2017, one of their correspondents, Gavin McInnes, made controversial comments defending Holocaust deniers, accused the Jews of being responsible for the Holodomor and the Treaty of Versailles, and said he was "becoming anti-Semitic". He later said his comments were taken out of context. McInnes also produced a satirical video for Rebel called "Ten Things I Hate about Jews", later retitled "Ten Things I Hate About Israel".


title: Rebel News

text: During the 2017 French Presidential Election, Jack Posobiec, The Rebel Media's Washington, D.C. bureau chief, supported far-right leader Marine Le Pen and played a role in the 2017 Macron e-mail leaks.


title: Rebel News

text: Co-founder Brian Lilley quit the Rebel on 12 August 2017, following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, writing, "What anyone from The Rebel was doing at a so-called 'unite the right' rally that was really an anti-Semitic white power rally is beyond me. Especially not a rally dedicated to keeping up a statue of Robert E. Lee, a man that whatever else he stood for, also fought on the wrong side of history and the wrong side of America’s bloodiest conflict." Lilley said he had become uncomfortable with what he felt was an "increasingly harsh tone" when The Rebel discussed topics such as immigration or Islam. He accused The Rebel of exhibiting a "lack of editorial and behavioural judgment that left unchecked will destroy it and those around it."