title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: The king introduced an unconventional tourism policy of "high-value, low-volume". Soon after the Coronation, in October 1974, the first group of 20 tourists entered the country through Phuntsholing, as there was no air service then. By 2006, the number of tourists, flown in by Druk Air and who paid royalty, reached 17,344.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: One of the landmark developments, soon after his coronation, was the signing of the Chukha Hydropower Project in March 1974. Construction began in 1983 and the President of India, Ramaswamy Venkataraman and King Jigme Singye inaugurated the Chukha Hydropower Project on 21 October 1988, nearly 13 years after the first discussion on it took place, in 1974. Chukha improved the revenue situation and the financial capacity of the country.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: In the industrial sphere, an early landmark project planned soon after his coronation was the development of a complete master plan for the construction of the Penden Cement Factory. The actual construction started in 1979 and the company was in production by 1983. The Penden Cement Authority produced about half a million tonnes of cement every day, for instance in 2008. Manufacturing and mining spread, mostly in the southern towns.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: The country strived to preserve major local languages, knowledge, beliefs, customs, skills, trades and institutions, and even species of crops and plants. Bhutanese society also remained cohesive because of promoting cultural identities under the Fourth King's reign. Wangchuck emphasized the distinctive characters of Bhutanese cultures. Wangchuck stated that it is the "distinct identity of our county", and not the nation's "wealth, weapons and armed forces", that is the vital instrument in securing the sovereignty of the nation.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: In the 34 years of Wangchuck's reign, the ten traditional cultural sciences (rignas) received considerable priority. Wangchuck cherished the importance of both the intangible and tangible aspects of Bhutanese culture.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: As an example of Wangchuck's support to classical Bhutanese culture he had Tango Shedra built. Tango Shedra became the apex of education according to classical system of cultural sciences, Rignas. Academic monks complete their long studies with bachelor's and master's degrees in Tango. In 2008, 163 candidates – with 14 master's degrees and 149 bachelor's degrees –from Tango Shedra and Sangngag Chokhor Shedra in Paro held their graduation ceremonies at Tango.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: Zo rigpa was enhanced by Wangchuck when he opened the Kawajangsa Institution of Zorig (now known as National Institute for Zorig Chusum) in 1971. At first, this institute concentrated on traditional fine arts. A similar institution was opened in 1997 in Tashi Yangtse. The Folk Heritage Museum started by Her Majesty "Ashi" Dorji Wangmo Wangchuck in Kawajangsa, Thimphu in 2001, drew attention to the heritage of lay people's sustainable products and their lifestyle. Likewise, in 2001, the first Textile Museum opened by Her Majesty "Ashi" Sangay Choden Wangchuck drew attention to the weaving skills of Bhutan. Skilled artisans – painters, statue-makers, carpenters and masons proliferated in Wangchuck's reign not only because of these new institutions, but also by receiving on the job training in many new temples and dzongs constructed in the country.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: The profile of indigenous medicine also became higher under Wangchuck's reign. Indigenous medicine spread as a parallel health service due to support to Institute of Indigenous Medicine.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: There probably were only about 2,000 monks in the state supported monasteries in 1972 when his reign started. By 2006, the number of monks subsisting on state allowances had increased to little over 6,000. In parallel to the increase in the number of monks and nuns, the monastic infrastructure that included tutors, lamas, temples, (meditation centres), and shedras (Buddhist colleges), increased in Wangchuck's reign. Many new official dratshangs in district headquarters, which hitherto did not have any monastic body, were opened such as Tsirang, Gaylegphug, Tashi Yangtse, Samtse, Pema Gatshel, Chukha, Bumthang and Zhemgang. Numerous affiliate monasteries to each dzongkhag rabdey were also opened throughout the country.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: By 2006, there were 13 shedras located in Tango, Dodeydrag, Khothokha, Sanga Choekhor, Gontey, Tshangkha, Tharpaling, Nimalung, Talo Nalanda, Sewla, Ngatsang, Drametse, and Bartsham with a total enrolment of some 700 monks. There were over 24 or meditation places, stretching from Singye dzong in the east to Tagchu goenpa in Haa, enlisting 300 officially supported people who meditate on a long-term basis in 2006. These numbers were rolled as new meditation to succeed old ones upon their completion. There were over 45 monastic lobdras, where teachers received official stipends and where (young lay priests) studied. By 2006, there were also 10 nunneries, started on an organized basis, located in Jashar goenpa in Pema Gatshel in the east to Kila Goenpa in Paro in the west.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: Wangchuck also enhanced the protection of natural resources such as forests and biodiversity. Wangchuck foresaw the potentially adverse impacts of both increased economic activity and increased population on the fragility of the mountain ecosystem. He raised the importance of preservation of environment during policy discussions, which resulted in vast areas of the country being devoted to parks and sanctuaries.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: At the end of the 4th FYP (1976-1981), Wangchuck extensively reviewed the successes and challenges of the previous four years of development, which also included the physical inspection of the field projects. Wangchuck envisioned different planning system for the 5th FYP (1981–86) emphasising decentralisation. New dzongdags were appointed in all the 18 districts, with responsibilities of managing public finances and co-ordinating district development plans, in their capacities as chairmen of DYTs. Dzongdags were delegated broad powers to make decisions at the local level in conjunction with gups and . Wangchuck's strengthening of the governmental sectors went hand in hand with strengthening local bodies like Dzongkhag Yargye Tshogchung (DYT) that Wangchuck founded in 1981, and the Gewog Yargye Tshogchung (GYT) he founded in 1991. He increasingly devolved authority on them.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: Bhutanese participation in international organisations at various levels increased. Personally, Wangchuck attended the non-aligned and SAARC summits until 1997, travelling to Colombo in 1976 for 8th Non-Aligned Summit; Havana in 1979 for 6th Non-Aligned Summit; New Delhi in 1983 for 5th SAARC Summit and 1995 for 8th SAARC Summit; Harare in 1986 for 8th Non-Aligned Summit; Kathmandu in 1987 for 3rd SAARC Summit; Islamabad in 1988 for 4th SAARC Summit; Belgrade in 1989 for 9th Non-Aligned Summit; Malé in 1990 for 5th SAARC Summit, and Dhaka in 1993 for 7th SAARC Summit.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: Wangchuck emphasised a two-fold foreign policy for Bhutan: to deepen Bhutan's relations with India and to create new bonds of friendship with fellow members of the UN. To diversify the sources of funding, Bhutan cultivated close relationships with the UN, ever since the visit of a UN Under-Secretary General in 1974.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: Relationships with other nations widened rapidly after 1974. The Coronation of 1974 brought a large numbers of foreign delegates. Representatives of some 18 nations attended the Coronation. Notably, a representative from China also attended. Bhutan had supported China's seat in the United Nations in 1971 soon after Bhutan became a member of the UN.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: In parallel to the increase in development assistance, the decade between 1980 and 1990 was a period of enhanced diplomacy for Bhutan. In this decade, under the guidance of Wangchuck, Bhutan established diplomatic relations with 17 out of the existing 53 countries, and became associated with 12 out of 20 organisations of the United Nations family.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: In Wangchuck's reign, diplomatic links were developed with many other nations such as Bangladesh in 1973; Kuwait in 1983; Nepal in 1983; The Maldives in 1984; Denmark in 1985; Norway in 1985; Sweden in 1985; Switzerland in 1985; Netherlands in 1985; Japan in 1986; Finland in 1986; South Korea in 1987; Sri Lanka in 1987; Austria in 1989; Thailand in 1991; Bahrain in 1992; Singapore in 2002; Australia in 2002 and Canada in 2003.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: Wangchuck cultivated bonds of friendship with other countries and strengthened Bhutan-international relationships and diversified its sources of development assistance.


title: Jigme Singye Wangchuck

text: Wangchuck said after announcing his decision to abdicate "In taking note of the progress that our nation has made over the past thirty-four years, I would like to state that whatever we have achieved so far is due to the merit of the people of Bhutan."


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In the Japanese localization of overseas dubs, Sakamoto has voiced Padmé Amidala in the "Star Wars" films and series, as well as performing the dub voice for Natalie Portman in numerous films.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In video games, Sakamoto voices Aigis in "Persona 3", Maki Harukawa in "", Aerith Gainsborough in "Compilation of Final Fantasy VII", Aura and Natsume in ".hack", La Mariposa in "Dead or Alive", Lightning in the "Final Fantasy XIII" games, Ling Xiaoyu in "Tekken", and Alisa Ilinichina Amiella in "God Eater".


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: As a singer, Sakamoto has performed songs in both English and Japanese. She released her debut single "Yakusoku wa Iranai" in collaboration with Yoko Kanno under Victor Entertainment on April 24, 1996. Her singles "Tune the Rainbow", "Loop", "Ame ga Furu", and "Triangler" have all reached the top 10 Oricon singles chart: "Triangler" in particular charted at number 3 and remained charting for 26 weeks. Her albums have had similar success, with "Shōnen Alice" and "Yūnagi Loop" both reaching the top 10 Oricon albums chart; and her album "You Can't Catch Me", released on January 12, 2011, became her first release to ever reach number 1. She held a concert at the Nippon Budokan on March 31, 2010, her thirtieth birthday.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: Born in Tokyo, Sakamoto grew up in a family formed by her parents and her older brother. She started working as a voice actress in a very early age and the first leading role she was given was in the 1993 OVA "Little Twins".


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In 1996, she was given the role of Hitomi Kanzaki, the leading role in the TV anime series "The Vision of Escaflowne". For this anime she also performed the opening theme, which was released as her debut single on April 24, 1996. The single was produced by Yoko Kanno, who was also in charge of the soundtrack for "Escaflowne". Her first album, "Grapefruit", was released on April 23, 1997. Sakamoto performed theme songs for several anime series, including "Clamp School Detectives" (1997), "Record of Lodoss War" (1998) and "Cardcaptor Sakura" (1999).


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: Sakamoto's early music was produced by Kanno and her team, which included Yūho Iwasato, Shanti Snyder and Tim Jensen. Sakamoto worked almost exclusively with Kanno and company for almost a decade. Apart from her work as a voice actress and singer, in October 1996 Sakamoto also debuted as a radio host presenting her own program, "Sakamoto Maaya no Naisho-banashi", on radio station Nack 5.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In 2003, Sakamoto made her debut as a theatre actress on the Japanese version of the musical "Les Misérables", playing the role of Éponine. This year she also starred in her first TV drama "Suekko Chounan Ane San-nin", and also played the leading role in the short film "03†" directed by Hidenori Sugimori. On the other hand, Sakamoto's 11th single "Tune the Rainbow" (released on April 2, 2003), became her first Top 10 single in Japan, peaking at number 9 in the Oricon weekly charts. Her fourth album, "Shōnen Alice", released on December 10, 2003, became her first Top 10 album on the Oricon charts and also her last record to be produced exclusively by Yoko Kanno; since this release Sakamoto would involve further in the music making process and production of her records. Her fifth album, "Yūnagi Loop", released on October 26, 2005, was her first co-produced by herself along with musician Mistuyoshi Tamura, whom she would continue working in her subsequent records. This album's lead single, "Loop"—ending theme for TV anime series "Tsubasa Chronicle"—peaked at number seven on the Oricon charts, also becoming her highest chart peaking single at that time.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In 2008, Sakamoto worked once again with Yoko Kanno for her 15th single, "Triangler", which was used as opening theme for the TV anime series "Macross Frontier". "Triangler" became a big hit, peaking at the Top 3 single of the Oricon charts. The single ended up becoming Sakamoto's biggest selling single to date, with more than 90,000 copies sold. The song was later included in Sakamoto's sixth album, "Kazeyomi", which was released in January 2009 and also peaked within the Top 3. For promoting this album, Sakamoto began her first low-scale national tour, on which she held three concerts in Nagoya, Osaka and Tokyo. The tour was later released as her first live DVD on August 11, 2011.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In 2010, Sakamoto celebrated her 15th anniversary in the entertainment industry, releasing on March 31—her 30th birthday—her greatest hits album "Everywhere", and also holding a concert at the Nippon Budokan. also in 2010, Sakamoto was playing the role of Ritsuko Nonomura in Japanese musical adaption of the South Korean movie "A Moment to Remember", along with Rina Chinen and Rina Uchiyama (best known for starring in Strawberry on the Shortcake, Good Luck!!, Fire Boys, ). In 2011, her seventh album, "You Can't Catch Me," became her first album to reach the first stop of the Oricon charts.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: Her 2012 "Mitsubachi" tour concluded with an announcement at her New Year's Eve concert of a new full-length album of songs written and composed solely by Sakamoto, as well as a short concert tour to support it. The album, titled "Singer Song Writer", featured two new versions of Sakamoto's previous compositions "Everywhere" and "Chikai", as well as eight original tracks.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: On September 25, 2017, The NHK Anime World website revealed that Sakamoto will perform "Clear" (Sakamoto 27th single, Released on January 31, 2018), the opening song for the Anime Adaptation of . Sakamoto and Yoshiki Mizuno from Ikimonogakari co-written the song's lyrics, while music arrangement was arranged by .


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: Sakamoto first teamed up with composer Yoko Kanno in her 1996 debut single, "Yakusoku wa Iranai" ("Promises Not Needed"), which was used as the opening theme for the anime series "The Vision of Escaflowne". Kanno collaborated with Sakamoto up until her fifth album, "Yūnagi Loop", which has no songs composed by Kanno. Sakamoto also performed three songs for the series "Wolf's Rain", for which Kanno was the composer: "Gravity" (which is sung completely in English), "Tell Me What The Rain Knows" (with lyrics by Chris Mosdell) and "Cloud 9". She performed "Hemisphere", the opening theme of the series "RahXephon", as well as two songs for the series' theatrical version "": "Tune the Rainbow" and "The Garden of Everything" (duet with Steve Conte). In 2008, Sakamoto and Kanno collaborated again for "Triangler", the opening theme song for the series "Macross Frontier". She also performed the song "cream" with HIDE, which was featured in the "" mini album "be Human". She was one half of the voice acting duo "Whoops!!", alongside Chieko Higuchi.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: Sakamoto graduated from Toyo University with a Bachelor's degree in Sociology in 2002. On August 8, 2011, she married fellow voice actor and frequent co-star Kenichi Suzumura. On December 27, 2021, she announced that she was expecting her first child with Suzumura. On April 21, 2022, the couple announced the birth of their first child.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In the 23rd Anime Grand Prix, she ranked tenth place under the voice actress category with 126 votes.


title: Maaya Sakamoto

text: In addition, in the first "Seiyu Awards", she was nominated for "Best Actress in a leading role" for her portrayal of Haruhi Fujioka in "Ouran High School Host Club" as well as "Best Musical Performance" for "Tsubasa Chronicle"'s ending theme "Loop".


title: The Big Blue

text: The Big Blue (released in some countries under the French title Le Grand Bleu) is a 1988 film in the French "Cinéma du look" visual style, made by French director Luc Besson. It is a heavily fictionalized and dramatized story of the friendship and sporting rivalry between two leading contemporary champion free divers in the 20th century: Jacques Mayol (played by Jean-Marc Barr) and Enzo Maiorca (renamed "Enzo Molinari" and played by Jean Reno), and Mayol's fictionalized relationship with his girlfriend Johana Baker (played by Rosanna Arquette).


title: The Big Blue

text: The film became one of France's most commercially successful films (although an adaptation for US release was a commercial failure in that country). French President Jacques Chirac referred to the film in describing Mayol, after his death in 2001, as an enduring symbol for the "Big Blue" generation.


title: The Big Blue

text: The story was heavily adapted for cinema. In real life, Mayol lived from 1927 to 2001 and Maiorca retired from diving to politics in the 1980s. Both set no-limits category deep diving records below 100 metres, and Mayol was indeed involved in scientific research into human aquatic potential, but neither reached 400 feet (122 metres) as portrayed in the film, and they were not direct competitors. Mayol himself was a screenwriter for the film, and Mayol's search for love, family, "wholeness" and the meaning of life and death, and the conflict and tension between his yearning for the deep and his relationship with his girlfriend are also major elements of the latter part of the film.


title: The Big Blue

text: Two children, Jacques Mayol and Enzo Molinari, have grown up on the Greek island of Amorgos in the 1960s. Enzo challenges Jacques to collect a coin on the sea floor but Jacques refuses. Later, Jacques' father — who harvests shellfish from the seabed using a pump-supplied air hose and helmet — goes diving. His breathing apparatus and rope gets caught and punctured by rocks on the reef and weighed down by water, he drowns. Jacques and Enzo can do nothing but watch in horror as he is killed.


title: The Big Blue

text: By the 1980s, both are well known freedivers, swimmers who can remain underwater for great times and at great depths. Enzo is in Sicily now, where he rescues a trapped diver from a shipwreck. He is a world champion freediver with a brash and strong personality, and now wishes to find Jacques and persuade him to return to no limits freediving in order to prove he is still the better of the two, in a friendly sports rivalry. Jacques himself works extensively with scientific research as a human research subject, and with dolphins, and is temporarily participating in research into human physiology in the iced-over lakes of the Peruvian Andes, where his remarkable and dolphin-like bodily responses to cold water immersion are being recorded. Insurance broker Johana Baker visits the station for work purposes and is introduced to Jacques. She secretly falls in love with him. When she hears that Jacques will be at the World Diving Championships in Taormina, Sicily, she fabricates an insurance problem that requires her presence there, in order to meet him again. She and Jacques fall in love. However none of them realize the extent of Jacques' allurement with the depths. Jacques beats Enzo by 1 meter, and Enzo offers him a crystal dolphin as a gift, and a tape measure to show the small difference between Jacques' and Enzo's records. Johana goes back home to New York but is fired after her deception is discovered; she leaves New York and begins to live with Jacques. She hears the story that if one truly loves the deep sea, then a mermaid will appear at the depths of the sea, and will lead a diver to an enchanted place.


title: The Big Blue

text: At the next World Diving Championships, Enzo beats Jacques' record. The depths at which the divers are competing enter new territory and the dive doctor suggests they should cease competing, but the divers decide to continue. Jacques is asked to look at a local dolphinarium where a new dolphin has been placed, and where the dolphins are no longer performing; surmising that the new dolphin is homesick, the three of them break in at night to liberate the dolphin and transport her to the sea again. Back at the competition, other divers attempt to break Enzo's new record but all fail. Jacques then attempts his next dive and reaches 400 ft (122 m) breaking Enzo's world record. Angered by this, Enzo prepares to break Jacques' new world record. The doctor supervising the dive warns that the competitors must not go deeper - based upon Jacques' bodily reactions, at around 400 ft, conditions, and in particular the pressure, will become lethal and divers will be killed if they persist in attempting such depths. Enzo dismisses the advice and attempts the dive anyway, but is unable to make his way back to the surface. Jacques dives down to rescue him. Enzo, dying, tells Jacques that he was right and that it is better down there, and begs Jacques to help him back down to the depths, where he belongs. Jacques is grief-stricken and refuses, but after Enzo dies in his arms, finally honors his dying wish and takes Enzo's body back down to 400 ft, leaving him to drift to the ocean floor. Jacques - himself suffering from cardiac arrest after the dive - is rescued and brought back to the surface by supervising scuba divers and requires his heart to be restarted with a defibrillator before being placed in medical quarters to recover.


title: The Big Blue

text: Jacques appears to be recovering from the diving accident, but later experiences a strange hallucinatory dream in which the ceiling collapses and the room fills with water, and he finds himself in the ocean depths surrounded by dolphins. Johana, who has just discovered she is pregnant, returns to check up on Jacques in the middle of the night, but finds him lying awake yet unresponsive in his bed with bloody ears and a bloody nose. Johana attempts to help him, but Jacques begins to get up and walk to the empty diving boat and gets suited up for one final dive. Desperately, Johana begs Jacques not to go, saying she is alive but whatever has happened at the depths is not, but he says he has to. She tells Jacques that she is pregnant, and sorrowfully begs him to stay, but finally understands he feels he must go. The two embrace and Johana breaks down crying. Jacques then places the release cord for the dive ballast in her hand, and - still sobbing - she pulls it, sending him down to the depths he loves. Jacques descends and floats for a brief moment staring into the darkness. A dolphin then appears and Jacques lets go of his harness and swims away with it into the darkness.


title: The Big Blue

text: The original ending was intentionally ambiguous, though considering the depth Jacques has swum to, it would seem he is unlikely to regain the surface alive, and he dies. In the American adaptation, the ending is extended with an additional scene: after swimming away with the dolphin, Jacques is returned to the surface.


title: The Big Blue

text: The film was heavily fictionalized. In real life, the two were indeed champions and contemporaries. However, they did not directly compete, neither reached 400 feet, and neither died while diving.


title: The Big Blue

text: Mayol was indeed involved in scientific research into human aquatic potential, and was fascinated by dolphins, and was recorded as having a heartbeat that slowed from 60 to 27 beats per minute when diving. He held numerous world records, including dives to below 100 meters. After a bout of depression, he took his own life in 2001, long after the film's release.


title: The Big Blue

text: Maiorca (renamed as "Enzo Molinari" in the film) also set numerous depth records from 1960 to 1988, despite involuntarily retiring from the sport for over a decade between 1974 and 1986 after an outburst on TV cost him a competition ban. He entered politics in the 1990s, and became a member of the Italian Senate for a time. For many years, he resisted public showing of the film in Italy, as he considered it to caricature him poorly; after Mayol's death in 2001, he relented and accepted the showing of the film.


title: The Big Blue

text: Besson was initially unsure of whom to cast in the main role of Mayol. He initially offered the role to Christopher Lambert and Mickey Rourke and even considered himself for the role until someone suggested Jean-Marc Barr. Besson has a cameo appearance as one of the divers in the film. "The Big Blue" was the most financially successful French film of the 1980s, selling 9,193,873 tickets in France alone, and played in French theaters for a year.


title: The Big Blue

text: With its extensive underwater scenes and languid score (as with nearly all of Besson's films, the soundtrack was composed by Éric Serra), the film has been both praised as beautiful and serene, and in equal measure criticized as being too drawn out, overly reflective and introspective. While popular in Europe, the film was a commercial failure in North America. The American version was recut to include a simplified "happy" ending, and Serra's score was replaced with a soundtrack composed by Bill Conti. This version was only available on VHS and Laserdisc in the United States (both with 4x3 pan and scan transfers) and is currently out of print. The director later released a longer director's cut on DVD, featuring the original ending and an extended version of the Serra score.


title: The Big Blue

text: Much of the film was shot on the Greek island of Amorgos, where Agia Anna and the monastery of Panagia Hozoviotissa can be seen. The film was dedicated to his daughter Juliette Besson, who required surgery after becoming ill during filming.


title: The Big Blue

text: The film was met with positive reviews in Europe, where it was described as "one of the most significant cult movies of the 1980s" by French Cinema historian Rémi Lanzoni, who described it as "ooz[ing] with a sensuous beauty unlike any other film at the time".


title: The Big Blue

text: The film was slightly edited for US release to have a new, positive ending and the original score was also replaced.


title: The Big Blue

text: The US release was met with above average reviews. The film aggregator, Rotten Tomatoes gave it 62%, based on 21 reviews, stating that: Though this [film] features beautiful cinematography, it drags on, being way too overblown and melodramatic.


title: The Big Blue

text: Kevin Thomas of the "Los Angeles Times", praised its cinematography, but warned viewers to "be prepared to want to come up for air only minutes into [the film]", referring to the film's pointless plot.


title: The Big Blue

text: "The Big Blue" was nominated for several César Awards and won César Award for Best Music Written for a Film (Éric Serra) and Best Sound in 1989. The film also won France's National Academy of Cinema's Academy Award in 1989.


title: The Big Blue

text: A Blu-ray version containing both the extended and theatrical versions was released on September 14, 2009 in the United Kingdom, but this contains French-dubbed versions of both cuts, rather than the original English language. This was later corrected and the second release contained a LPCM 2.0 English soundtrack and a DTS 2.0 French dub. The French Blu-ray release contains only the Director's Cut of the film but with a French DTS-MA 5.1 soundtrack and is supplemented with Besson's "Atlantis" documentary on Blu-ray as well.


title: The Big Blue

text: A poster for the film can be seen in the photo studio in the 1992 South Korean film "The Moon Is... the Sun's Dream".


title: The Big Blue

text: In the 2009 Japanese anime series "Eden of the East", Akira plays the film in his villa's cinema for Saki, who was a big fan. The title of the episode, "On the Night of the Late Show", is a reference to this scene.


title: Marymount High School

text: Marymount High School is an independent, Catholic, all-girls, college-preparatory high school located in the Holmby Hills/Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It sits on Sunset Boulevard across from the University of California, Los Angeles campus at 10643 Sunset Boulevard. The school's main administration building, chapel and auditorium are listed as Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monuments.


title: Marymount High School

text: Marymount was established in 1923 by the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary. Mother Marie Joseph Butler of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary founded the school. Marymount students and teams are known as the "Sailors".


title: Yabloko

text: The Russian United Democratic Party Yabloko (RUDP Yabloko) () is a social-liberal political party in Russia. The party consequently participated in the elections of deputies of the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation of all eight convocations. Until 2003, Yabloko was represented by a faction in the State Duma and later until 2007 by individual deputies. In March 2002, the party became a full member of the Liberal International, and since November 1998, it had been in observer status. The founder of the party Grigory Yavlinsky is an honorary vice-president of the Liberal International and winner of its Prize for Freedom. Since 2006, Yabloko has been a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). As of 2021, the party was represented by factions in 4 regional parliaments of Russian Federation. In addition, members of the party were deputies of 13 administrative centers of the subjects of the Russian Federation, 183 representatives of the party were municipal deputies in Moscow, 84 in Saint Petersburg.


title: Yabloko

text: The party dates back to the early 1990s. Originally established as a public organization in 1993, it transformed into a political party in 2001. In 1993–2003, the party had a small faction in the State Duma; in 2003 four single-mandate deputies passed from Yabloko to the Duma: one of them joined United Russia, three joined the informal group of independent democrats. After the tightening of Russian legislation by 2011 only 7 registered political parties remained in Russia, among which was Yabloko. In 2011 the party managed to obtain the right to state funding, which allowed further functioning of the organization. As a result of the 2016 elections, the party is not receiving any state funding any further.


title: Yabloko

text: The immediate predecessor of the Yabloko party was the electoral bloc Yavlinsky-Boldyrev-Lukin, formed for the legislative elections of 1993. "Yabloko" is an acronym of the names of its founders: "Я" (Ya) for Grigory Yavlinsky; "Б" (B) for Yury Boldyrev, and "Л" (L) for Vladimir Lukin, with the full name meaning "Apple" in Russian.


title: Yabloko

text: The bloc included several political parties: the Republican, the Social Democratic and the Russian Christian Democratic Union – New Democracy. The Yabloko bloc in the 1993 elections received 7.86% of the vote, as a result of which the Yabloko faction was created in the State Duma In January 1995 Yabloko was transformed into a public association after holding a founding congress. Yavlinsky became the head of the central council. Already during this period there were some changes in the leadership. In 1994 part of the representatives of the Republican Party, headed by Vladimir Lysenko, left the bloc. At the same time the Regional Center Party from St. Petersburg joined Yabloko as a regional organization. In September 1995, due to disagreements on some fundamental issues, Yury Boldyrev left the association as well.


title: Yabloko

text: The Yabloko public association was able to form factions based on the results of the elections to the State Duma in 1995 and 1999. In 1995, in the elections to the State Duma of the 2nd convocation, the Yabloko association received 6.89% of the vote. In the elections of the State Duma of the III convocation in 1999 Yabloko association made an alliance with Sergei Stepashin, including him as number three of the party list. According to the results of the vote count, the party received 5.93% of the votes.


title: Yabloko

text: Yabloko during the entire period of president Yeltsin became the "democratic opposition" to the president's policies. For example, Yabloko opposed privatization conducted by Anatoly Chubais, and offered an alternative program in 1998, which stated that privatization was carried out in an economically senseless and socially detrimental way, passing control of sold organizations to the “directors” with a number of backdrop nominal owners.


title: Yabloko

text: During the 1996 elections Yavlinsky was offered to join the government. As a condition to join Yabloko's leader demanded an end to hostilities in Chechnya and to make serious adjustments to the socio-economic policy. In addition, he demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, head of the Security Service of the President of the Russian Federation Alexander Korzhakov, First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets, Defense Minister Pavel Grachev, head of the presidential administration Nikolai Yegorov, director of the FSS Mikhail Barsukov. Since these conditions were not accepted, the entry of Yavlinsky and his team did not enter the government.


title: Yabloko

text: Some members of the Yabloko faction nevertheless accepted the proposals of the executive branch: for example, Mikhail Zadornov and Oksana Dmitrieva became members of the government, for which they were expelled from the party. Also, Yabloko left Ivan Grachev and Vyacheslav Igrunov.


title: Yabloko

text: In May 1999, the Yabloko faction voted for the impeachment of the president. The bulk of the State Duma deputies supported the accusation of the president of unleashing war in Chechnya and 24 deputies voted for the impeachment of Yeltsin on charges of an armed dispersal of the Supreme Council in October 1993. Yabloko, however, refused to support other articles of accusations, including the article proposed by the Communist Party of the Russian Federation about the "genocide of the Russian people." Yabloko criticized presidential and government policies and regularly voted against draft state budgets submitted by the Cabinet of Ministers to the Duma.


title: Yabloko

text: On August 16, 1999, 18 members of the Yabloko faction, including Yavlinsky , voted for the appointment of Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister, 4 members abstained, 8 voted against, 15 did not vote. In May 2000, 4 deputies of the Yabloko faction voted for the appointment of Mikhail Kasyanov as prime minister, 8 members voted against and 4 abstained. Yabloko also supported a bill developed with the participation of faction deputy Mikhail Zadornov on the introduction of a flat income tax instead of a progressive taxation scale


title: Yabloko

text: Since Putin was never supported by a majority of Yabloko members, the party found itself in fierce opposition to the government, criticizing the government during the remaining term of the State Duma of the third convocation, especially as parliamentary elections approached.


title: Yabloko

text: In December 2001 on the basis of the all-russian political public organization Yabloko and the Party of Social liberalism was officially created the Russian Democratic Party Yabloko, which advocates the European path of development of the Russian Federation and is a member of a number of international and European organizations. Since November 1998, the Yabloko association has had observer status with the Liberal International and participated in its events. At the 51st Congress of the Liberal International, held on March 21–23, 2002 in Budapest, the Yabloko party was accepted into the ranks of this international organization as a full member.


title: Yabloko

text: On April 26, 2002, the Russian Democratic Party Yabloko (Reg. No. 5018) was registered by the Ministry of Justice. Grigory Yavlinsky was elected chairman of the party.


title: Yabloko

text: In June 2003, the Yabloko faction voted for a vote of no confidence in the government, which, however, was not approved by the Duma.


title: Yabloko

text: Since 2003 Yabloko's position has worsened. In the 2003 State Duma elections, the Yabloko party received 4.3% of the vote (less than the 5% threshold) and did not receive seats in the State Duma on party lists (only 4 candidates from the party went through single-mandate constituencies). Interestingly, the fact that Vladimir Putin called Grigory Yavlinsky at night, during the counting of votes, with congratulations on the victory, became widely known.


title: Yabloko

text: After the joining of Green Russia and Soldiers' Mothers in 2006, the name of the party was changed to the Russian United Democratic Party "Yabloko" (RODP "Yabloko"). Since 2006, the Yabloko party has become part of the European party Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE). Sergey Mitrokhin became party chairman in 2008.


title: Yabloko

text: In the 2007 elections, only 1.59% of voters voted for Yabloko, and the party did not enter the State Duma again. In 2008 the party had 58,540 members. In the 2011 elections according to official data from the CEC, 3.43% of voters (2.25 million people) voted for Yabloko. In these elections, the party more than doubled its result, but still did not get into the State Duma. However, this result gave Yabloko possibility for state funding. In 2012 Yabloko leader Grigory Yavlinsky was not registered by the Central Election Commission as a candidate for the presidential elections.


title: Yabloko

text: In the elections to the State Duma of 2021, Grigory Yavlinsky for the first time in the history of the party refused to run for deputies, and the federal list of candidates was headed by Yabloko chairman Nikolay Rybakov., 1.34% of voters voted for Yabloko (750 000 people).


title: Yabloko

text: On October 14, 2021, the Federal Political Committee of the party decided to withdraw from the election candidates who supported the idea of Smart Voting Alexei Navalny. A number of Yabloko members criticized the party's policies and demanded the leadership to resign.


title: Yabloko

text: On October 26, 2021, the members of the Arkhangelsk regional branch of Yabloko published a statement, in which they demanded that the central political committee of the party be dismissed due to the adoption of the so-called “Yavlinsky blacklist”, which lead to suspension of the activities of the branch. On November 19, 2021, the federal bureau of Yabloko appointed the re-registration of party members prior to the upcoming party congress in December


title: Yabloko

text: On February 13, 2022, Yabloko published a petition against a possible war with Ukraine. Yabloko is opposing Russia's 2022 attack on Ukraine and has been taking part in protests against the war. After the beginning of the invasion, the Federal Political Committee of the party declared "“Yabloko expresses its categorical protest against the outbreak of hostilities against Ukraine. This war is Russia's war with the objective course of history, a war against time, a tragic fall from the reality of the modern world. The consequences of this war will last for a very long time, but now, first of all, it is a tragedy, suffering and death of people, and this will never be corrected. The reason for the tragedy is lies, cruelty and absolute indifference to the people of the Russian authorities. The Yabloko party considers the war with Ukraine to be the gravest crime. We believe that this war is contrary to the national interests of Russia and destroys the future of Russia.”" On February 28, 2022, the Yabloko factions in the parliaments of Moscow, St. Petersburg, the Pskov region and Karelia tried to initiate appeals from their legislative assemblies to President Putin with a call to immediately stop hostilities on the territory of Ukraine and start peace negotiations with international mediation, withdraw military units to places of permanent deployment, to exchange prisoners on the principle of “all for all”. A number of members of the Yabloko party in various regions were detained for participating in anti-war protests.


title: Yabloko

text: RUDP Yabloko consists of regional branches, one per subject of the federation, regional branches from local branches, one per urban district or municipal district, local branches from primary branches, one per urban settlement or rural settlement.


title: Yabloko

text: In 1995 Vladimir Lukin and Yury Boldyrev were elected vice-chairmen (he left Yabloko in the same year). Since 1996 Vladimir Lukin has become the first deputy chairman of the party, and Sergey Ivanenko and Vyacheslav Igrunov have been the deputies. In 2000–2001, Vladimir Lukin was again the only deputy chairman of the party. In 2001–2004, Lukin served as the first deputy chairman of the party, while the deputy chairman were Alexei Arbatov, Igor Artemiev, Sergei Ivanenko and Sergey Mitrokhin. In 2004–2008, the first deputy chairman of the party was Sergei Ivanenko, deputy chairmen were Alexei Arbatov, Igor Artemyev, Sergey Mitrokhin. The posts of deputy chairman until 2007 were also presented by Sergey Popov, Galina Khovanskaya, Irina Yarovaya. After joining the party of the Green Russia movement, the post of deputy chairman of the party in 2006-2008 was held by Alexei Yablokov.


title: Yabloko

text: At the XV Party Congress on June 21–22, 2008, Mitrokhin was elected the second chairman of Yabloko. In 2008–2015, the posts of deputy chairmen of the party were abolished.


title: Yabloko

text: The next party leadership elections were held at the XVIII Congress of Yabloko on December 19–20, 2015. Emilia Slabunova became the third chairman of the Yabloko party, and Alexander Gnezdilov, Sergei Ivanenko and Nikolay Rybakov were elected as her deputies.


title: Yabloko

text: At the XXI Congress on December 15, 2019, Nikolay Rybakov was elected the new chairman of the party. Sergey Ivanenko, Boris Vishnevsky and Ivan Bolshakov became his deputies.


title: Yabloko

text: The Federal Political Committee is the collegiate governing body of the party. It formulates the party's position on major political issues between congresses; makes submissions to the party's federal bureau on key personnel appointments; makes decisions on the volumes and main directions of financing the activities of the party; organizes the work of the federal council of the party and convenes its meetings. The Federal Political Committee has the right to convene extraordinary congresses of the Party.


title: Yabloko

text: The Federal Bureau of the Party is the permanent governing body of the party. The Federal Bureau makes political decisions and makes statements on behalf of the party in accordance with the decisions of the Political Committee, approves the estimates of income and expenses of the party, the procedure for receiving and spending funds and the report on their implementation in accordance with the decisions of the Political Committee, exercises the rights of a legal entity on behalf of the party and performs its duties in accordance with the party charter, and also exercises other powers in accordance with the party charter.


title: Yabloko

text: Over the entire history of the party, a number of prominent party members were excluded, who became prominent politicians on their own: Oksana Dmitriyeva, Alexei Navalny, Maxim Reznik, Maxim Katz, Ilya Yashin.


title: Yabloko

text: The period of Sergey Mitrokhin was marked not only by the exclusion of members but also by the suspension of the powers of the regional branches. It was the case in party regional branches in Omsk, Belgorod (for cooperation with United Russia party), Bryansk (for the removal of the chairman of the local branch – candidate for governor of the region Andrei Ponomarev – from the elections in the interests of the current governor of the region Nikolai Denin, later accused of corruption), Krasnodar (for violating party discipline), St. Petersburg and a number of other branches.


title: Yabloko

text: In 2020, the Federal leadership of Yabloko decided to exclude the chairman of the Novosibirsk branch and three of her associates from the party. The leadership considered that they "did not comply with the decision of the party bureau and publicly declared their disagreement with it, which caused political damage to the party". In addition to Kaverzina, Anton Nelidov, Mikhail Ryazantsev and Vyacheslav Udintsev lost their membership in the party.


title: Yabloko

text: Also in 2020 the Federal Bureau of Yabloko expelled other 16 people from the party, including Maxim Katz, co-founder of the City Projects Foundation. The decision of the bureau announced that Katz tried to gain control over the Moscow branch of the party by creating an "artificial majority" of his supporters who voted unanimously. Katz announced his intention to appeal the bureau's decision.


title: Yabloko

text: In 2021, mass expulsions from the party as part of the “fight against katzism” and for signing open appeals of party members to the Congress continued. At least 98 members were expelled from the Moscow branch (according to one of the excluded – more than 200).


title: Yabloko

text: The expelled members announced that they would form a new, independent from the party leadership organization, as well as that the current leadership of the party "is conducting a systematic fight against civil society", "justifies the repressions" and "accuses those who fight against them". The creation of the public movement "Yabloko" was announced, the declared aim to return the party under the control of their like-minded people or creating a new legal entity.


title: Yabloko

text: In addition, 189 members were denied registration, and 488 were suspended, depriving them of the right to any form of participation in internal elections. Many suspended party members consider this action to be inconsistent with the law on political parties and challenge it in court.


title: Yabloko

text: Following the results of the elections on December 4, 2011 to the regional parliaments, Yabloko formed its own factions in three regions: St. Petersburg (6 seats out of 50 in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg: Grigory Yavlinsky became the head of the faction), Karelia (4 seats out of 50 in the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia), Pskov Region (1 deputy seat out of 44 in the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies). In the elections on December 4, 2011, the Yabloko party received 6.72% of votes on party lists to the Pskov Regional Assembly of Deputies, to the Legislative Assembly of the Republic of Karelia – 7.13% of the votes, to the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg – 12 .50%.


title: Yabloko

text: In 2015, Yabloko adopted a Political Memorandum, which is a summary of the party's ideology. The new version of the memorandum was adopted in 2019. The document, in support of its provisions, must be signed by Yabloko candidates in elections at all levels.


title: Yabloko

text: Yabloko arose and developed in line with the democratic movement as an alliance of political groups representing various ideological currents – liberals, social democrats, Christian democrats. In the process of forming the party, it was necessary to decide what "niche" in the party-political spectrum it would occupy – whether it would eventually become a social democratic or liberal party. It was also necessary to decide which particular formula of liberalism could most accurately express its ideological credo. The decisive factor that influenced this decision was the attitude to the ongoing changes in the country.


title: Yabloko

text: At the II Congress of Yabloko (September 1995), the program document "The Path of Russian Reforms" was adopted, containing a negative assessment of the first results of Russian reforms, which were characterized as follows:


title: Yabloko

text: The congress document formulated a fundamental vision of the reforms – that they should be carried out in the interests of the majority of the population.


title: Yabloko

text: The idea was put forward to return control powers to the parliament and thus eliminate the possibility of one authority appropriating the powers of another. The advancement of these principles meant the establishment of Yabloko as a political association of a social-liberal type.


title: Yabloko

text: According to the founders of the Yabloko party, European models of liberalism are preferable to American ones. Recognizing the civilizational, socio-cultural specifics of Russia, the leaders of Yabloko insisted on the need to take it into account when implementing reforms. This specificity primarily includes the traditionally high role of the state in the economic life of the country, the steady orientation of significant sections of the population towards ensuring that state institutions provide social assistance. Analyzing the features of the socio-economic and historical evolution of Russia, representatives of Yabloko paid special attention to disproportions in the development of our country. For the success of the reforms, it is necessary to eliminate these disproportions, which is possible only with an effective regulatory role of the state.


title: Yabloko

text: Among the founders of Yabloko was a group of social democrats, but as a result of the discussion, it was initially decided not to identify themselves social democrats. In this regard, Grigory Yavlinsky noted:Our ideological model is based on the need to combine liberal and social democratic approaches in Russia. This is a feature of Russia, in which we must be liberals in order to protect private property, achieve tax cuts, maximum freedoms for entrepreneurs, large-scale development of private entrepreneurship, because without this it is impossible to create a “public pie”. But we must not forget that Russia is a country that cannot exist without free education, without high-quality free healthcare. We cannot forget how many pensioners we have, how many people with disabilities, how many territories we have that today do not yet fit into the liberal approach ... We must do everything to ensure that the liberal foundations of the economy are as deep as possible, and at the same time solve the country's priority social tasks.In the first half of the 1990s, the ideas of socialism were generally not popular in the democratic movement. Yabloko's distancing from social democracy was manifested in the party's attitude to such a principle as social justice. In 1995, Grigory Yavlinsky said:The social justice thesis is one of the most dangerous theses that can exist. It has been proven many times that the struggle for social justice sooner or later ends in terrible tragedies. Therefore, for our country, the thesis would be correct not about social justice, but about social acceptability. This is a dynamic situation, which suggests that at different stages, under different conditions, society can agree with certain social costs. Especially during the period of reforms. And if, instead of organizing an efficient economy, we again begin to seek justice, while realizing that it does not exist, that this is an abstract thesis, we will again and again push people into social conflicts.


title: Yabloko

text: A book with a program titled "Land – Housing – Roads" was distributed by the party. To the housing issue: a breakthrough strategy contains a description of the strategy “Land – housing – roads”, approved by decision No. 10 of February 28, 2009 of the Political Committee of the RODP “Yabloko”. The strategy is positioned by the party as aimed at a comprehensive withdrawal of the country from the crisis.


title: Yabloko

text: In the period after the publication, the program was a permanent part of the Yabloko party election program.


title: Yabloko

text: On April 22, 2005, in connection with the completion of the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, Grigory Yavlinsky issued an open statement in which he indicated:"This process has nothing to do with strengthening the rule of law in the country, or at least establishing some kind of order ... Instead, it created an atmosphere of intimidation and legal chaos in the country ... The number of procedural violations during the process exceeded all possible limits, and the consequences of this will take a very long time to overcome. Probably, since the time of Stalin and the shooting within "anti-thieves" decrees of Khrushchev in the 1950s. The right was not violated so revealingly and rudely. And after such a high-profile precedent, this will have fatal consequences for thousands of entrepreneurs across the country".According to Yavlinsky, when organizing the trial, the Russian authorities set three goals: to prevent the sale of Yukos to foreigners, to intimidate and subjugate Russian big business, and to put Yukos under the control of a certain group of government officials. Wherein:"Since none of the objectives could be achieved by legal means..., brute force was used, under the guise of, as far as possible, quasi-legal procedures".Yavlinsky believes that with this process “the political elite of the country begins a new stage: physical persecution and, possibly, destruction of each other ... This is a war that has no end. Its goal is the destruction of people from the highest echelons of power and business, current and former, the destruction of the fate of their loved ones and families.”"Such a wheel can only be rolled – and it cannot be stopped. Repressions – revenge, new repressions – new revenge. Is it really not clear that the current top will be the same in a few years ...? Stalin's bloody 20 years showed that repressions within the political class are continuous and pointless – everyone lives in an atmosphere of fear of the future. Because if our country smells the smell of repression and blood, it will not stop for a long time. The execution of 1993 and the subsequent war of 1994, which lasted for more than 10 years, is from this area ... The imprisonment of Khodorkovsky and Lebedev is the way into repression and revenge. After that, no one can feel safe anymore – neither the accused, nor the accusers, nor the members of their families. This is the path to self-destruction of the nation and the country. The political class and top business in Russia must understand that the day the verdict of imprisonment is announced is the actual beginning of physical mutual destruction ... <...> Without a doubt, only President Putin can make a decision. It is necessary to proceed from reality – the outcome of the Yukos case, the imprisonment or not of Khodorkovsky, as well as the term of this imprisonment, entirely depend on the decision of Vladimir Putin. He actually bears political and moral responsibility for it. It is not necessary, taking advantage of your position of power, to put your opponents (or opponents of your entourage) in prison. And so much has already happened to make the situation irreversible, but in the main thing – as far as people's lives are concerned, there is still an opportunity to stop.


title: Yabloko

text: According to the Yabloko party, the Chechen problem is very complicated and ambiguous. It was provoked, according to the party, by the wrong policy of the Russian leadership, which dragged Russia into a protracted bloody conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and created conditions for criminal business in Chechnya. The Chechen war caused very high military spending and also threatened the safety of many people. After the defeat of the Supreme Soviet in 1993, Yeltsin needed, according to the party, a "small victorious war" that would provide an excellent opportunity to show the power of power. In addition, at that time the power of the Chechen criminal communities on Russian territory increased enormously, and Dzhokhar Dudayev greatly weakened his position by his actions.


title: Yabloko

text: The Yabloko party, however, believes that restoring constitutional order is one thing, but demonstrating strength is another. Especially when this demonstration is carried out in order to distract the people from the socio-economic crisis in the country. November 29, 1994 Russian President Boris Yeltsin issued an ultimatum to all forces in Chechnya. On December 5, Yabloko gathered a delegation ready to replace Russian tankmen prisoners of war – officers and soldiers of the Kantemirovskaya division, who participated in the unsuccessful attempt to storm Grozny on November 26, allegedly carried out by anti-Dudaev opposition forces as hostages. Dzhokhar Dudayev agreed to meet with Russian deputies, including Grigory Yavlinsky and Sergei Yushenkov. The deputies arrived in Grozny, but the negotiation process was disrupted – according to Yavlinsky, this happened because "the negotiations were not part of the authorities' plan for a small victorious war." The peaceful initiatives of Yabloko were not accepted by either the broad masses or the State Duma. The majority of the Duma deputies refused to consider the bill “On delegations for the settlement of the armed conflict in the Chechen Republic”.


title: Yabloko

text: The “easy war”, however, did not work out – it hit the whole society hard. The capture of Grozny by militants in March 1996, a year after the city was taken by federal troops, demonstrated the weakness of the federal troops, which then led to the Khasavyurt agreements. The only faction that supported the Khasavyurt agreements was the Yabloko faction. Three years later, during the impeachment of Boris Yeltsin, Yabloko formulated its position as follows:"... Responsibility for this war lies not only with Yeltsin and Dudayev's regime. It is also borne by the military leaders who gave and carried out criminal orders, the head of the government, Chernomyrdin, his deputies, ministers, bear this guilt and politicians, some of whom supported this war, others did not want to stop, and still others could not. However, we, Yabloko, are also responsible, because we did not do everything possible, not all of our resources were devoted to stopping the slaughter. Since no one can fix what happened, there is only one responsibility – to create such conditions under which what happened will never happen again. We, Yabloko, consider ourselves obligated to do everything possible to minimize the likelihood of such tragedies recurring in the future. Today we are obliged to create a precedent for punishing the authorities for crimes. The inevitable responsibility and punishability of the authorities for crimes against their own people is real democracy."However, a long-term peace did not work out, and as a result, events quickly escalated into the Second Chechen War. Nevertheless, even then Yabloko advocated the possibility of negotiations. In October 2002, during the seizure of hostages by Chechen terrorists in the theater center on Dubrovka in Moscow, one of the demands of the bandits was the participation of Grigory Yavlinsky in the negotiations. After the tragedy, Grigory Yavlinsky made a statement that expressed the official point of view of the Yabloko party:"We firmly believe that there can be no justification for terrorism – neither political, nor religious, nor by good causes, not even by so-called "symmetrical and retaliatory" measures, or any other. There is no justification for killing or threatening, blackmailing by killing innocent, defenseless people. In this sense, the cause of terrorism is not poverty or suffering, and not even revenge (which is directed at the guilty), but boundless meanness ... Undoubtedly, those who embark on the path of terror must be brought to justice or, if this is not possible, eliminated. However, what happened with a new acuteness raises the question of resolving the armed conflict in Chechnya, of ending the cleansings, torture, kidnappings, extrajudicial killings, bullying, unlimited physical violence – in essence, the cessation of the most brutal war to exterminate an entire people. All efforts to find political ways to end the war are required to be repeatedly intensified. All lessons must be learned from this tragedy."


title: Yabloko

text: Yabloko advocates the complete abolition of the death penalty in Russia. After on February 10, 2013, the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, Vladimir Kolokoltsev, in an interview with the program "Saturday Vesti" of the TV channel Russia-1 said that he had nothing against the return of the death penalty in Russia, this caused severe criticism from the party, on the website of which there was a proposal to send the minister to resign.


title: Yabloko

text: The Yabloko party has repeatedly advocated for the rights of the LGBT community. On April 5, 2012, activists of the Amur branch of the party organized a rally for the rights of LGBT people agreed with the authorities. In 2016, the St. Petersburg branch of the party included items on support for LGBT people in the program, and in 2017, in the program of the electoral association “Yabloko Party in Moscow” during the elections of deputies of representative bodies of local self-government in the city of Moscow, it was recorded that that party candidates oppose discrimination based on sexual orientation. Also in 2016, the pre-election plan for the legislative work of the Yabloko faction in the State Duma included a clause on the need to repeal the law on liability for “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations”. The need to repeal this law was also discussed on the party's pre-election website. And the federal program of the party declared the need to develop “such forms of interpersonal support as a civil partnership that allows people who are not related to each other to provide each other with mutual support and assistance, providing citizens who enter into such a partnership with the opportunity to visit each other in a hospital, joint ownership property, inheritance, etc." The youth and gender factions of the Yabloko party have repeatedly made statements and held actions in support of the rights of the LGBT community.


title: Yabloko

text: Some well-known Yabloko supporters, including Galina Mikhaleva, Maxim Reznik and Aleksey Melnikov, support LGBT people. “Protection against discrimination of the LGBT community” was identified in 2011 as one of the new areas of work for the gender faction. Members of the Moscow Yabloko took part in the events of the Week Against Homophobia in 2011, and the Moscow Youth Yabloko issued a special statement in support of it. Also, Youth Yabloko planned to participate in the Equality March in 2011. Party leaders Sergei Mitrokhin and Grigory Yavlinsky have repeatedly condemned homophobia. Nikolai Kavkazsky, a member of the Youth Yabloko, noted that “the gay parade is not a carnival, but a human rights event <...> which should be held more often than once a year”. However, LGBT support is not included in the party program.


title: Yabloko

text: Deputy of the State Duma of the III convocation Alexander Fedulov, head of the Kursk party organization of Yabloko, in the summer of 2011 appealed to the President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev with an appeal to "protect the moral and spiritual health of the absolute majority of Russians from the aggressive, impudent" pink-and-blue "minority", after which he was criticized by Sergei Mitrokhin, who noted that "In a civilized state, the rights of citizens must be respected regardless of their nationality, social class and sexual orientation."


title: Yabloko

text: Sergei Mitrokhin at the same time called on the LGBT community to refrain from holding gay pride parades “provoking part of the Russian society to aggression and violence – against not only the participants in the parades themselves, but in general all citizens of non-traditional sexual orientation”.


title: Yabloko

text: Later, Alexander Fedulov was expelled from the party "for repeated public statements and statements of a nationalist and misanthropic nature, as well as support for the leadership of an authoritarian-oligarchic corrupt regime".


title: Yabloko

text: On April 2, 2017, the party adopted a statement on the inadmissibility of the genocide of the LGBT community in the Chechen Republic.


title: Yabloko

text: On March 28, 2019, the position of the Yabloko party against LGBT discrimination was published on the official website of the party. In it, the party refers to its program documents and documents of international organizations to which it is a member. The party stated that:


title: Yabloko

text: The protection of human rights in relation to representatives of the LGBT community is one of the important areas of the human rights activities of the Yabloko party.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Pachyrhizus erosus, commonly known as jícama ( or ; Spanish "jícama" ; from Nahuatl "xīcamatl", ) Mexican turnip, is the name of a native Mexican vine, although the name most commonly refers to the plant's edible tuberous root. Jícama is a species in the "Pachyrhizus" erosus in the pea family. (Fabaceae). "Pachyrhizus tuberosus" and "Pachyrhizus ahipa" are the other two cultivated species. The naming of this group of edible plants can sometimes be confusing, with much overlap of similar or the same common names.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Flowers, either blue or white, and pods similar to peas, are produced on fully developed plants. Several species of jicama occur, but the one found in many markets is "P. erosus". The two cultivated forms of "P. erosus" are "jicama de agua" and "jicama de leche", both named for the consistency of their juice. The "leche" form has an elongated root and milky juice, while the "agua" form has a top-shaped to oblate root and a more watery, translucent juice, and is the preferred form for market.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: The jícama vine can reach a height of given suitable support. Its root can attain lengths up to and weigh up to . The heaviest jícama root ever recorded weighed and was found in 2010 in the Philippines.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Jicama is frost-tender and requires 9 months without frost for a good harvest of large tubers or to grow it commercially. It is worth growing in cooler areas that have at least 5 months without frost, as it will still produce tubers, but they will be smaller.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Warm, temperate areas with at least 5 months without frost can start seed 8 to 10 weeks before the last spring frost. Bottom heat is recommended, as the seeds require warm temperatures to germinate, so the pots will need to be kept in a warm place. Jicama is unsuitable for areas with a short growing season unless cultured in a greenhouse. Growers in tropical areas can sow seed at any time of the year. Those in subtropical areas should sow seed once the soil has warmed in the spring.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Other names for jicama include Mexican potato, "ahipa", "saa got", Chinese potato, and sweet turnip. In Ecuador and Peru, the name "jicama" is used for the unrelated "yacón" or Peruvian ground apple, a plant of the sunflower family whose tubers are also used as food.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: The jicama originated in Mexico and central America. It has been found at archaeological sites in Peru dating to 3000 BC. In the 17th century, the jicama was introduced to Asia by the Spanish.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Spaniards spread cultivation of jícama from Mexico to the Philippines (where it is known as "singkamas", from Nahuatl "xicamatl"), from there it went to China and other parts of Southeast Asia, where notable uses of raw jícama include "popiah, " "bola-bola" (meatballs) and fresh "lumpia" in the Philippines, and salads in Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia such as "yusheng" and "rojak".


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: In the Philippines, it is usually eaten fresh with condiments such as rice vinegar and sprinkled with salt, or with "bagoong" (shrimp paste). It is also used as an extender for the Filipino versions of siomai and meatballs. In Malay, it is known by the name "ubi sengkuang". In Indonesia, jícama is known as "bengkuang". This root crop is also known by people in Sumatra and Java, and eaten at fresh fruit bars or mixed in the "rojak" (a kind of spicy fruit salad). Padang, a city in West Sumatra, is called "the city of "bengkuang"". Local people might have thought that this jícama is the "indigenous crop" of Padang. The crop has been grown everywhere in this city and it has become a part of their culture.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: In contrast to the root, the remainder of the plant is very poisonous; the seeds contain the toxin rotenone, which is used to poison insects and fish.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: The root's exterior is yellow and papery, while its inside is creamy white with a crisp texture that resembles raw potato or pear. The flavor is sweet and starchy, reminiscent of some apples or raw green beans, and it is usually eaten raw, sometimes with salt, lemon, or lime juice, "alguashte", and chili powder. It is also cooked in soups and stir-fried dishes.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Jícama is often paired with chilli powder, cilantro, ginger, lemon, lime, orange, red onion, salsa, sesame oil, grilled fish, and soy sauce. It can be cut into thin wedges and dipped in salsa. In Mexico, it is popular in salads, fresh fruit combinations, fruit bars, soups, and other cooked dishes. The exterior of the seed pods is edible and can be used in cooking, for example the Ilocano dish "Bunga ng singkamas" where it is cooked in a stew as the main ingredient.


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Raw jícama is 90% water, 9% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and contains negligible fat (table). In a reference amount, it supplies 38 calories and is a rich source of vitamin C, with no other micronutrients in significant content (table).


title: Pachyrhizus erosus

text: Jícama should be stored dry, between 12.5 and 15 °C (55 and 59 °F). The jicama root will stay fresh for up to 4 months within this temperature range. Whole jicama can also be stored in a refrigerator to keep it free from moisture for up to 3 weeks. Storing at colder temperatures can discolor, damage the root, and degrade its texture. The root will keep fresh for one week after being sliced, and should be wrapped & refrigerated for storage in this state.


title: The Incal

text: The Incal (; French: "L'Incal") is a French graphic novel series written by Alejandro Jodorowsky and originally illustrated by Jean Giraud. "The Incal", with first pages originally released as Une aventure de John Difool ("A John Difool Adventure") in "Métal hurlant" and published by Les Humanoïdes Associés, introduced Jodorowsky's "Jodoverse" (or "Metabarons Universe"), a fictional universe in which his science fiction comics take place. It is an epic space opera blending fantastical intergalactic voyage, science, technology, political intrigues, conspiracies, messianism, mysticism, poetry, debauchery, love stories, and satire. "The Incal" includes and expands the concepts and artwork from the abandoned film project "Dune" directed by Jodorowsky and designed by Giraud from the early 1970s.


title: The Incal

text: Originally published in installments between 1980 and 1988 in the French magazine "Métal Hurlant", and followed by "Before the Incal" (1988–1995, with Zoran Janjetov), "After the Incal" (2000, with Jean Giraud), and "Final Incal" (2008–2014, with José Ladrönn), it has been described as a contender for "the best comic book" in the medium's history. From it came spin-off series "Metabarons", "The Technopriests", and "Megalex".


title: The Incal

text: The story is set in the dystopian capital city of an insignificant planet in a human-dominated galactic empire, wherein the Bergs, aliens who resemble featherless birds and reside in a neighboring galaxy, make up another power bloc. It starts in medias res with Difool thrown from the Suicide Alley to the great acid lake below by a masked group, luckily saved by a police cruiser. During the questioning he denies that he received the Light Incal, a crystal of enormous and infinite powers (it guides and protects those who believe in it), from a dying Berg. The Incal is then sought by many factions: the Bergs; the corrupt government of the great pit-city; the rebel group Amok (led by Tanatah); and the Church of Industrial Saints, commonly referred to as the Techno-Technos or the Technopriests, a sinister technocratic cult which worships the Dark Incal. Animah (an allusion to anima), the keeper of the Light Incal, seeks it as well. During the journey Difool and Deepo (Difool's loyal concrete seagull) are joined by Animah, The Metabaron, Solune, Tanatah (sister of Animah) and Kill Wolfhead, with a task of saving the universe from the forces of the Dark Incal, and the Technopriests manufacture and launch into outer space the sun-eating Dark Egg. As the darkness is overcome, Difool is brought before Orh, the fatherlike divinity, who tells him he must remember what he witnessed. As Difool falls away, he finds himself where he was at the beginning, falling down the shaft.


title: The Incal

text: The story is a considerably more straightforward noir tale of boundless urban corruption with the relative absence of spiritualistic elements, which dips deeper into exploring the urban fabric of the world of "The Incal". The story follows young Difool living in demimonde. He soon finds that his prostitute mother devoted herself to growing amorine, a drug that restores the ability to love. His father, Olivier Difool, breaks the law in wearing a fake halo that is the mark of an aristo. Justice is harsh for such transgressions of class — a legal clause "allows the condemned man to choose between a tablet at the morgue-wall, where he'll sleep away his thirty-year-and-one-day term", or "remodeling", which means having his entire memory wiped. His father chooses remodeling. Difool soon begins to investigate the mystery of the disappearance of prostitutes' children, something he shouldn't find out.


title: The Incal

text: The story from the unfinished "After the Incal" was rewritten to provide a separate narrative for this volume. The story starts after "The Incal" climax, in which John Difool encountered a flowing-bearded divine being named Orh, witnessing a universe-shaking event, hurtling towards certain death in the acid lake. DiFool forgets about the cosmic encounter, and recovers his memory as the universe faces the threat of a metallic virus. The Prezident was cloned in a metallic body, equipped with both chemical and brutal weapons, but also an altered mind — operating under the influence of the "destroyer of all living things", the Bentacodon (equivalent to "The Incal"'s Black Egg). He unleashes a destructive organic virus called the Biophage 13-X with the purpose of forcing the population to abandon their natural bodies in favor of robotic ones. The only way to counteract is to reunite John Difool with his true love, Luz de Garra (from "Before the Incal"), and the Elohim (a force of goodness) makes four John Difools from different realities to encounter each other on a quest to find her. The egos of the allegedly evolved guru Difool and the super-evolved "angelic" Difool are ridiculed, and the least enlightened Difool, the ugliest and most craven, is selected to save the universe. In the end, the cosmic humanity manages to become one collective consciousness, as true love saves it from turning into a collection of unfeeling metallic beings.


title: The Incal

text: The center of the concept is Difool's fantastic spiritual journey (or initiation) on a cosmic scale, which he is reluctant to accept; he constantly wishes to return to his own ignorant reality of simple hedonistic pleasures. It is an allegory for the sins repeating, the futility of complacency and the necessity for individual transformation. As the story progresses he keeps changing, becoming more heroic, even physically more handsome. The original six installments begin and end by DiFool falling from the bridge; he descends, ascends and later re-descends in "closed" circularity.


title: The Incal

text: The universe is split into two galaxies, a human (with 22,000 planets), and a Berg (featherless birdlike aliens), and the story is set on four planets in the human galaxy: Ter21, Techno-Gea, Aquaend, and the Golden Planet.


title: The Incal

text: On the planet Ter21 there are two social classes: the fortunate (common and aristocrats), who reside at the top, and the others (including the mutants led by Gorgo the Foul, who represent the poor living in misery, on the fringes of society, minorities of all kinds), who live down in the pits. At the top, it's a near-panopticonical dystopia with standard TV program (with the same presenter Diavaloo) depicting filmed violence for public consumption, and indoctrination. Seemingly no one works anymore, and all life is mediated through the TriD (TV), even people's dreams. People are addicted to "love drug" amorine, while the president is engaged in repeated body transplants. The masculine role is ridiculed by mass-produced holographic prostitutes. The technopriests represent the most damning, avaricious human drives.


title: The Incal

text: John Difool is based upon The Fool from tarot with his name being a pun upon "John, the Fool". Animah's name is based on the Jungian concept of the anima, the feminine part of every male's psyche, as well in Latin "anima" means "psyche". The series has no taboos, an attitude towards sex, violence and general social stigmas that may be avoided in more conventional comics. They include black-and-white dualism or the conflict between good and evil, mystical symbolism, archetypes, metaphysics, tarot and other influences. In the story there's often a conflict between life or nature and dead technology (even uniformity and diversity), as "glasses enable you to see, that's technology. But happiness is not that, it's not your glasses. It's what you are able to see. If you have wonderful glasses but don't know how to see what's in front of you, then that technological tool is useless". The series also showcases religion, economy, politics and warfare, all mixed together.


title: The Incal

text: The "Final Incal" is kind of a call for revolt to organize life in a different way, because as individuals people are mortal, but as humanity itself they are immortal. To learn that others exist, to live together and give, that there is continuity only as part of humanity as a whole. It demonstrates that "love is the ultimate purifier; a force that can cleanse, renew and revitalize".


title: The Incal

text: The series capture worlds with cityscapes, huge spacecraft and lands populated by technopriests, rubbish-dwelling mutants, doppelgängers, giant jellyfish, chiming forests of gems and jostling, old gurus floating on crystals, an underground rat army, flying leeches, "necro-panzers", a selfish humanity among others. Some touches are borrowed directly from "Dune": the Emperoress, a "perfect androgyne", or Aquend, a planet composed entirely of water which is Arrakis's seeming opposite, and a "mentrek" who betrayed his former master.


title: The Incal

text: Jean Giraud's (also known as Moebius) artwork and Yves Chaland's colouring from "The Incal" were well praised. Jodorowsky initially didn't have a script, but recounted and mimed the ideas to Moebius who sketched the scenario, recorded their conversation on tape, and they jointly altered the plot. Jon Evans considered resemblance to the De Stijl school of art inspired by artists like Piet Mondrian and Vilmos Huszár.


title: The Incal

text: Moebius refused to do "Before the Incal", thus Jodorowsky found Zoran Janjetov. Although Janjetov had his own style, he was influenced by Moebius and imitated him. Finally, Moebius decided to do "After the Incal", but beside his illness at the time he had a different style, and Jodorowsky was not satisfied by the overall work. He depicted the nightmare of the tech-world with a more abundant sense of optimism, something peppered with light and hope throughout.


title: The Incal

text: José Ladrönn's rendition of the worlds that Moebius originally designed in the rewritten sequel "Final Incal" is much darker and grittier; the streets are emptier, less colorful, more muted. He excelled at drawing, but as if he has studied not only Moebius but also the movies that Moebius influenced, directly or indirectly (like "Blade Runner").


title: The Incal

text: "The Incal" was initially serialized in French between 1980 and 1985 in the magazine "Métal Hurlant", which was published by Les Humanoïdes Associés. An English translation was serialized in the magazine "Heavy Metal" (published by National Lampoon) from 1982 to 1984. Concurrent with its serialization in "Métal Hurlant", Les Humanoïdes Associés collected the series as six hardcover volumes: "L'Incal Noir" (1981), "L'Incal Lumière" (1982), "Ce qui est en bas" (1984), "Ce qui est en haut" (1985), "La cinquième essenceGalaxie qui Songe" (1988), and "La cinquième essenceLa planète Difool" (1988). In 1988, Epic Comics (a division of Marvel Comics) published "The Incal" in three volumes as a part of their "Epic Graphic Novels" line, with translation by Jean-Marc Lofficier and Randy Lofficier.


title: The Incal

text: Later, between 2001 and 2002, was republished a series of "The Incal" and "Before the Incal" in a twelve issue limited series, with the former in two parts "Orphan of the City Shaft" and "John Difool, Class "R" Detective" between 2002 and 2003, while the first in two parts "The Epic Conspiracy" and "The Epic Journey" softcover trade format by Humanoids Publishing. The Humanoids Publishing initial version (of both "The Incal" and "Before the Incal") was recolored in a more modern style and had the nudity censored. Jodorowsky did not like the change of the series to seduce young audience.


title: The Incal

text: In December 2010, Humanoids released a limited edition oversized hardcover edition of "The Incal", with only 750 copies printed. It was sold out and soon the series was out of print in the United States. In 2011 more hardcovers were released by Humanoids Publishing in the US and Self Made Hero in the UK. Smaller than the oversized hardcover edition they resemble it in that they restore the original colouring and remove the censorship. In 2012 Humanoids Publishing released 9.4 x 12.6" limited deluxe edition of "Before the Incal" with a foreword by José Ladrönn, artist on the upcoming "Final Incal". Between January 2013 and 2014, they released a sold out 12 x 16" limited coffee table edition of "The Incal" six volumes.


title: The Incal

text: In 2014, Humanoids released 7.9 x 10.8" hardcover trade collection of "The Incal", and its sequels "After the Incal" and "Final Incal" in one complete collection simply called "Final Incal", as a 9.5 x 12.5" deluxe slipcase hardcover, as well limited and numbered edition 12 x 16" coffee table format. In 2015 they released a 7.9 x 10.8" hardcover trade edition, but without "After the Incal". All the four volumes were digitally released by the Humanoids Publishing in 2014.


title: The Incal

text: In December 2021, Humanoids announced 3 new prequel graphic novels as part of the INCAL UNIVERSE project, to which Alejandro Jodorowsky has given his blessing. "Psychoverse" by Mark Russell & Yanick Paquette, "Dying Star" by Dan Watters & Jon Davis-Hunt and "Kill Wolfhead" by Brandon Thomas & Pete Woods. Psychoverse was released on November 15, 2022 and Kill Wolfhead will be the English language debut of "Kill Tête-de-Chien", released on November 17 2021 in France.


title: The Incal

text: "Rolling Stone" magazine in "The 50 Best Non-Superhero Graphic Novels" list placed the original volume as #30, calling it "one of "the" great comics team-ups". Patrick Hess from Nothing But Comics placed it as fourth out of seventy best comics list, as "there are very few comics ever created in the history of the medium that are this imaginative, this thoughtful, this heartfelt or this good".


title: The Incal

text: Mark Millar called it "quite simply one of the most perfect comics ever conceived and probably the most beautiful piece of graphic literature ever drawn".


title: The Incal

text: Anthony Paletta from "Los Angeles Review of Books" considered that ""The Incal" isn't only a parade of thrilling grotesqueries: it also has a spiritual core that ... reflects Jodorowsky’s abiding idiosyncratic Buddhism", while "Moebius’s work is simply some of the most beautiful not merely in his catalog, but in the comics world at large". He noted that the "echoes of "The Incal" can also be found in the work of Hayao Miyazaki, Katsuhiro Otomo’s "Akira", the decaying futurity of Ridley Scott’s "Blade Runner", "The Matrix", and even depictions of Coruscant in the "Star Wars" prequel films.


title: The Incal

text: Daniel Kalder from "The Comics Journal" noted that the drawing by Moebius in "After the Incal" was of lesser ability, also saying: "Moebius was and always will be The Man but he was not the man for this story: Ladrönn was. And so while "After the Incal" is certainly an intriguing footnote, a glimpse of a path not taken, "Final Incal" is the real deal".


title: The Incal

text: Hugh Armitage from Digital Spy noted that Moebius's "After the Incal" "delivers some typically breathtaking scenery, but his characters take on a cartoonish, Sergio Aragonés-like style that is both atypical for the artist and at odds with the dark story. [Valérie] Beltran's colours leave the images looking flat and uninteresting", and praised the Ladrönn's artwork in "Final Incal".


title: The Incal

text: The publishers sued Luc Besson, director of "The Fifth Element" (1997), claiming that the film borrowed graphic and story elements from "The Incal", but lost their case. In an interview given to Chilean newspaper "The Clinic", Jodorowsky claimed that neither he nor Moebius actually sued Besson, but instead that the lawsuit was filed by the editor of the comic series. He further claimed that the case was lost because Moebius "betrayed them" by working directly with Besson on the production of the film. In a 2002 interview with the Danish comic book magazine "Strip!", Jodorowsky considered it an honour that somebody stole his ideas.


title: The Incal

text: In the 1980s the Canadian animation director Pascal Blais created a short trailer for "The Incal" (i.e. "Dark Incal"), but the movie was never made. In 2011 and 2016, his studio made updated versions of the original trailer.


title: The Incal

text: In 2013, in an interview by France Inter, Nicolas Winding Refn was reportedly working as a director on a live-action movie adaptation of "The Incal", but it appeared to have been a rumor that Winding Refn dismissed in 2016.


title: The Incal

text: US black metal band Bihargam released the album "Ove Tenebrae" as a musical adaption of "The Incal" on October 16, 2020.


title: Cigna

text: Cigna is an American multinational managed healthcare and insurance company based in Bloomfield, Connecticut. Its insurance subsidiaries are major providers of medical, dental, disability, life and accident insurance and related products and services, the majority of which are offered through employers and other groups (e.g. governmental and non-governmental organizations, unions and associations). Cigna is incorporated in Connecticut.


title: Cigna

text: Cigna offers Medicare and Medicaid products and health, life and accident insurance coverages primarily to individuals in the U.S. and selected international markets. In addition to its ongoing operations described above, Cigna also has certain run-off operations, including a Run-off Reinsurance segment. In the Phoenix metropolitan area, Cigna runs a full-service staff-model health maintenance organization with satellite clinics throughout the region, known as the Cigna Medical Group. Cigna Global Health Benefits also operates under the Cigna corporation.


title: Cigna

text: The company ranked No. 12 in the 2021 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.


title: Cigna

text: Cigna was formed by the 1982 merger of the Connecticut General Life Insurance Company (CG) and INA Corporation (the parent corporation of Insurance Company of North America, the first stock insurance company in America).<ref name="www.cignaglobalhealth.com/"></ref> The company name, Cigna, is a mix of letters from the merging companies, CG and INA. Insurance Company of North America was formed in 1792, while CG was created in 1865 by a special act of the Governor of Connecticut. In October 1871, the great Chicago Fire burned for two days, destroyed 2,000 acres, and left 100,000 people in Illinois homeless. INA paid $650,000, one of only 51 insurance companies (out of a total of 202) to pay claims in full.


title: Cigna

text: Before selling its domestic and international property and casualty business to the Bermuda-based ACE Insurance company in the late 1990s, Cigna was among the companies with a large international network comparable to those of AIG, Allianz, and Zurich. The strategy behind the sale was to concentrate on core business. ACE – at that time a key player at the Bermuda and Lloyds insurance market – on the other hand, was interested in expanding the international network in the traditional insurance market.


title: Cigna

text: In 2002, it was alleged in violation of the Securities Exchange Act for earnings manipulation. Its common stock price plummeted significantly as a result. In October 2011, Cigna agreed to buy HealthSpring Inc. for $3.8 billion to jump-start its business selling Medicare plans from 46,000 Medicare Advantage members to almost 400,000 Medicare Advantage members. The payment would come from an issue of new equity to cover about 20 percent of the value, with the rest funded by additional cash and debt. In 2013, Cigna operated in 30 countries, had approximately 35,800 employees and managed around US$53.734 billion in assets.


title: Cigna

text: In June 2015, U.S. health insurer Anthem Inc. announced that it would acquire Cigna for $47 billion in cash and stock. Anthem confirmed it had reached a deal to buy Cigna on July 24, 2015. On July 21, 2016, the US Justice Department filed an antitrust suit to block the proposed merger, and a District Court ruling on February 8, 2017 blocked the merger on anticompetitive grounds. That month, Cigna Corp. called off its $48 billion merger agreement with Anthem Inc., with Anthem stating it would "continue to enforce its rights under the merger agreement and remains committed to closing the transaction."


title: Cigna

text: On March 7, 2018, it was announced that Cigna would acquire Express Scripts in a $67 billion deal and on August 24, 2018, the shareholders of Cigna and Express Scripts approved the deal.


title: Cigna

text: In June 2020, Cigna formed a strategic alliance with Priority Health to make comprehensive health care coverage more affordable and accessible to Michigan employers and customers.


title: Cigna

text: In September 2020, Cigna rebranded its health services portfolio under the name Evernorth, which included Express Scripts, Accredo, and eviCore.


title: Cigna

text: In October 2020, it was announced that Cigna and Envision Healthcare had renewed their agreement to include Envision's clinicians as in-network providers for Cigna's members. In 2021, Molina Healthcare acquired Cigna's Medicaid contracts in Texas for US$60 million.


title: Cigna

text: Cigna Global Health Benefits is a business unit within Cigna. The company is headquartered in Wilmington, Delaware, close to Philadelphia. Additional Cigna Global Health Benefits operations are located in Visalia, California, and Greenock, Scotland and Shanghai, China and Antwerp, Belgium. Sales offices are located in North America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.


title: Cigna

text: CGHB global health plans typically include medical, dental, behavioral and disability, as well as business travel and life components. Expatriates are defined as employees of multinational companies working outside their home country on short, and long-term international assignments. CGHB maintains its own, in-house international claims platform, and offers a network of physicians and hospitals for its members (including 550,000 in the U.S. and more than 141,000 outside the U.S.).


title: Cigna

text: On February 9, 2005, Cigna elected to adopt in the fourth quarter of 2004 fair value accounting for its stock options in accordance with SFAS No. 123 and to restate prior periods.


title: Cigna

text: The UK newspaper "Guardian" in their "Esc and Ctrl" videoblog about control of the Internet by corporations, documented an incident with Nataline Sarkisyan and the former vice president of Cigna talking about astroturfing, the practice of creating fake blogs by interested groups, e.g. health insurance companies, to push claims that are profitable for said company into media, e.g. dismissing universal health care.


title: Cigna

text: Cigna spent more than $4.4 million from 2005 to 2009 on lobbying to attain legislation that the company favors. This includes $720,000 spent in 2009 alone, when it had 20 lobbyists at five firms working on their behalf.


title: Cigna

text: In 2008, the head of Cigna's public relations, Wendell Potter, resigned, becoming a whistleblower who gave testimony in 2009 to the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation in favor of reform of the health care industry.


title: Cigna

text: In December 2007, Cigna was criticized after the company refused to pay for a liver transplant of a California teenage girl, Nataline Sarkisyan, justifying their refusal to pay by claiming that the procedure was experimental, even though there was a liver ready and waiting to be transplanted and doctors estimated she had a 65% chance of surviving at least six months. In response to much protest and public scrutiny, Cigna reversed its decision, though Ms. Sarkisyan died awaiting the transplant. Cigna notes that it had no financial stake in the decision to authorize the transplant because it merely administers the insurance plan of Mr. Sarkisyan's employer and would not bear the cost of any operation. However, Cigna offered to pay for the transplant itself when it made the exception to the policy.


title: Cigna

text: Even though liver transplants have been performed since 1963 and are a well-accepted treatment option for end-stage liver disease and acute liver failure, Cigna defended its actions by claiming that there was insufficient data to show that a transplant for a patient in Sarkisyan's condition would be safe and effective. The California court agreed with Cigna's position that the Sarkisyans’ claims regarding Cigna's decision-making were preempted by federal ERISA law. On April 16, 2009, the United States District Court for the Central District of California dismissed all of the claims against Cigna related to the coverage determination.


title: Cigna

text: Cigna received gold in the 2009 Gartner & 1to1 Customer Experience Excellence Award. The awards are given to the companies that "most clearly demonstrate exemplary customer relationship strategy and an unrivaled level of excellence in delivering the customer experience".


title: Cigna

text: In January 2010, Cigna received the JD Power award for customer service for all of its call centers for the fourth time in a row.


title: Cigna

text: In 2011, the California Nurses Association determined that Cigna denies roughly 39.6% of all claims (compared to competitors such as Aetna who denied about 5.9% of all claims in the same time frame).


title: Cigna

text: In 2008, the Cigna Foundation contributed $2,533,535 to charitable activities that promote wellness. Since 1995, Cigna and its employees have contributed $22.3 million to the March of Dimes.


title: Cigna

text: In July 2010, Cigna began giving each company employee eight hours of paid time off annually to volunteer with non-profit health and community service organizations. The Salvation Army of Greater Philadelphia helped kick off the program in front of Cigna's Philadelphia headquarters with the Christmas in July campaign.


title: Cigna

text: On April 16, 2010, Cigna announced an alliance with Humana group to offer a streamlined Medicare Advantage offering through employer clients for retirees.


title: Cigna

text: In November 2011, Cigna and TTK Group, an Indian business conglomerate focused on healthcare, formed a joint venture called Cigna TTK to develop a health insurance business in India subject to obtaining government approvals.


title: Cigna

text: In 2015, the American Consumer Satisfaction Index named Cigna as one of the most hated companies in the U.S. Cigna's name returned on the ACSI's most hated list in 2018.


title: Cigna

text: In August 2020, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Cigna alleging that the company defrauded Medicare Advantage, Medicare, and Medicaid for $1.4B by submitting diagnostic codes for health conditions that patients did not have.


title: Cigna

text: In November 2020, investors sued Cigna's CEO and board alleging that they had used “black-ops-style” tactics to “blow up the merger with Anthem in 2017. One pension fund accused Cigna CEO David Cordani of seeking to poison the deal after he had failed to secure the top post in the resulting company. The fund claimed he had utilized lawyers and public relations specialists to set up a “Trojan Horse” campaign. The merger would have produced the largest U.S. health insurer.