title: Cultural impact of Michael Jackson

text: Speaking of the music video in "The New Brazilian Cinema", Lúcia Nagib commented: "When Michael Jackson decided to shoot his new music video in a favela of Rio de Janeiro [...] he used the favela people as extras in a visual super-spectacle [...]. The interesting aspect of Michael Jackson's strategy is the efficiency with which it gives visibility to poverty and social problems in countries like Brazil without resorting to traditional political discourse. The problematic aspect is that it does not entail a real intervention in that poverty." In 2009, Billboard described the area as "now a model for social development" and claimed that Jackson's influence was partially responsible for this improvement.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: In computational science, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is a computational method that optimizes a problem by iteratively trying to improve a candidate solution with regard to a given measure of quality. It solves a problem by having a population of candidate solutions, here dubbed particles, and moving these particles around in the search-space according to simple mathematical formula over the particle's position and velocity. Each particle's movement is influenced by its local best known position, but is also guided toward the best known positions in the search-space, which are updated as better positions are found by other particles. This is expected to move the swarm toward the best solutions.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: PSO is originally attributed to Kennedy, Eberhart and Shi and was first intended for simulating social behaviour, as a stylized representation of the movement of organisms in a bird flock or fish school. The algorithm was simplified and it was observed to be performing optimization. The book by Kennedy and Eberhart describes many philosophical aspects of PSO and swarm intelligence. An extensive survey of PSO applications is made by Poli. Recently, a comprehensive review on theoretical and experimental works on PSO has been published by Bonyadi and Michalewicz.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: PSO is a metaheuristic as it makes few or no assumptions about the problem being optimized and can search very large spaces of candidate solutions. Also, PSO does not use the gradient of the problem being optimized, which means PSO does not require that the optimization problem be differentiable as is required by classic optimization methods such as gradient descent and quasi-newton methods. However, metaheuristics such as PSO do not guarantee an optimal solution is ever found.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: A basic variant of the PSO algorithm works by having a population (called a swarm) of candidate solutions (called particles). These particles are moved around in the search-space according to a few simple formulae. The movements of the particles are guided by their own best-known position in the search-space as well as the entire swarm's best-known position. When improved positions are being discovered these will then come to guide the movements of the swarm. The process is repeated and by doing so it is hoped, but not guaranteed, that a satisfactory solution will eventually be discovered.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Formally, let "f": ℝ → ℝ be the cost function which must be minimized. The function takes a candidate solution as an argument in the form of a vector of real numbers and produces a real number as output which indicates the objective function value of the given candidate solution. The gradient of "f" is not known. The goal is to find a solution a for which "f"(a) ≤ "f"(b) for all b in the search-space, which would mean a is the global minimum.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Let "S" be the number of particles in the swarm, each having a position x ∈ ℝ in the search-space and a velocity v ∈ ℝ. Let p be the best known position of particle "i" and let g be the best known position of the entire swarm. A basic PSO algorithm is then:


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: The values b and b represent the lower and upper boundaries of the search-space respectively. The w parameter is the inertia weight. The parameters φ and φ are often called cognitive coefficient and social coefficient.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: The termination criterion can be the number of iterations performed, or a solution where the adequate objective function value is found. The parameters w, φ, and φ are selected by the practitioner and control the behaviour and efficacy of the PSO method (below).


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: The choice of PSO parameters can have a large impact on optimization performance. Selecting PSO parameters that yield good performance has therefore been the subject of much research.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: To prevent divergence ("explosion") the inertia weight must be smaller than 1. The two other parameters can be then derived thanks to the constriction approach, or freely selected, but the analyses suggest convergence domains to constrain them. Typical values are in formula_1.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: The PSO parameters can also be tuned by using another overlaying optimizer, a concept known as meta-optimization, or even fine-tuned during the optimization, e.g., by means of fuzzy logic.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: The topology of the swarm defines the subset of particles with which each particle can exchange information. The basic version of the algorithm uses the global topology as the swarm communication structure. This topology allows all particles to communicate with all the other particles, thus the whole swarm share the same best position g from a single particle. However, this approach might lead the swarm to be trapped into a local minimum, thus different topologies have been used to control the flow of information among particles. For instance, in local topologies, particles only share information with a subset of particles. This subset can be a geometrical one – for example "the "m" nearest particles" – or, more often, a social one, i.e. a set of particles that is not depending on any distance. In such cases, the PSO variant is said to be local best (vs global best for the basic PSO).


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: A commonly used swarm topology is the ring, in which each particle has just two neighbours, but there are many others. The topology is not necessarily static. In fact, since the topology is related to the diversity of communication of the particles, some efforts have been done to create adaptive topologies (SPSO, APSO, stochastic star, TRIBES, Cyber Swarm, and C-PSO).


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: A common belief amongst researchers is that the swarm behaviour varies between exploratory behaviour, that is, searching a broader region of the search-space, and exploitative behaviour, that is, a locally oriented search so as to get closer to a (possibly local) optimum. This school of thought has been prevalent since the inception of PSO. This school of thought contends that the PSO algorithm and its parameters must be chosen so as to properly balance between exploration and exploitation to avoid premature convergence to a local optimum yet still ensure a good rate of convergence to the optimum. This belief is the precursor of many PSO variants, see below.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Another school of thought is that the behaviour of a PSO swarm is not well understood in terms of how it affects actual optimization performance, especially for higher-dimensional search-spaces and optimization problems that may be discontinuous, noisy, and time-varying. This school of thought merely tries to find PSO algorithms and parameters that cause good performance regardless of how the swarm behaviour can be interpreted in relation to e.g. exploration and exploitation. Such studies have led to the simplification of the PSO algorithm, see below.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Convergence of the sequence of solutions has been investigated for PSO. These analyses have resulted in guidelines for selecting PSO parameters that are believed to cause convergence to a point and prevent divergence of the swarm's particles (particles do not move unboundedly and will converge to somewhere). However, the analyses were criticized by Pedersen for being oversimplified as they assume the swarm has only one particle, that it does not use stochastic variables and that the points of attraction, that is, the particle's best known position p and the swarm's best known position g, remain constant throughout the optimization process. However, it was shown that these simplifications do not affect the boundaries found by these studies for parameter where the swarm is convergent. Considerable effort has been made in recent years to weaken the modelling assumption utilized during the stability analysis of PSO, with the most recent generalized result applying to numerous PSO variants and utilized what was shown to be the minimal necessary modeling assumptions.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Convergence to a local optimum has been analyzed for PSO in and. It has been proven that PSO needs some modification to guarantee finding a local optimum.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: This means that determining convergence capabilities of different PSO algorithms and parameters still depends on empirical results. One attempt at addressing this issue is the development of an "orthogonal learning" strategy for an improved use of the information already existing in the relationship between p and g, so as to form a leading converging exemplar and to be effective with any PSO topology. The aims are to improve the performance of PSO overall, including faster global convergence, higher solution quality, and stronger robustness. However, such studies do not provide theoretical evidence to actually prove their claims.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Without the need for a trade-off between convergence ('exploitation') and divergence ('exploration'), an adaptive mechanism can be introduced. Adaptive particle swarm optimization (APSO) features better search efficiency than standard PSO. APSO can perform global search over the entire search space with a higher convergence speed. It enables automatic control of the inertia weight, acceleration coefficients, and other algorithmic parameters at the run time, thereby improving the search effectiveness and efficiency at the same time. Also, APSO can act on the globally best particle to jump out of the likely local optima. However, APSO will introduce new algorithm parameters, it does not introduce additional design or implementation complexity nonetheless.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Numerous variants of even a basic PSO algorithm are possible. For example, there are different ways to initialize the particles and velocities (e.g. start with zero velocities instead), how to dampen the velocity, only update p and g after the entire swarm has been updated, etc. Some of these choices and their possible performance impact have been discussed in the literature.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: A series of standard implementations have been created by leading researchers, "intended for use both as a baseline for performance testing of improvements to the technique, as well as to represent PSO to the wider optimization community. Having a well-known, strictly-defined standard algorithm provides a valuable point of comparison which can be used throughout the field of research to better test new advances." The latest is Standard PSO 2011 (SPSO-2011).


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: New and more sophisticated PSO variants are also continually being introduced in an attempt to improve optimization performance. There are certain trends in that research; one is to make a hybrid optimization method using PSO combined with other optimizers, e.g., combined PSO with biogeography-based optimization, and the incorporation of an effective learning method.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Another research trend is to try and alleviate premature convergence (that is, optimization stagnation), e.g. by reversing or perturbing the movement of the PSO particles, another approach to deal with premature convergence is the use of multiple swarms (multi-swarm optimization). The multi-swarm approach can also be used to implement multi-objective optimization. Finally, there are developments in adapting the behavioural parameters of PSO during optimization.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Another school of thought is that PSO should be simplified as much as possible without impairing its performance; a general concept often referred to as Occam's razor. Simplifying PSO was originally suggested by Kennedy and has been studied more extensively, where it appeared that optimization performance was improved, and the parameters were easier to tune and they performed more consistently across different optimization problems.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Another argument in favour of simplifying PSO is that metaheuristics can only have their efficacy demonstrated empirically by doing computational experiments on a finite number of optimization problems. This means a metaheuristic such as PSO cannot be proven correct and this increases the risk of making errors in its description and implementation. A good example of this presented a promising variant of a genetic algorithm (another popular metaheuristic) but it was later found to be defective as it was strongly biased in its optimization search towards similar values for different dimensions in the search space, which happened to be the optimum of the benchmark problems considered. This bias was because of a programming error, and has now been fixed.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Initialization of velocities may require extra inputs. The Bare Bones PSO variant has been proposed in 2003 by James Kennedy, and does not need to use velocity at all.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Another simpler variant is the accelerated particle swarm optimization (APSO), which also does not need to use velocity and can speed up the convergence in many applications. A simple demo code of APSO is available.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: PSO has also been applied to multi-objective problems, in which the objective function comparison takes pareto dominance into account when moving the PSO particles and non-dominated solutions are stored so as to approximate the pareto front.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: As the PSO equations given above work on real numbers, a commonly used method to solve discrete problems is to map the discrete search space to a continuous domain, to apply a classical PSO, and then to demap the result. Such a mapping can be very simple (for example by just using rounded values) or more sophisticated.


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: However, it can be noted that the equations of movement make use of operators that perform four actions:


title: Particle swarm optimization

text: Usually a position and a velocity are represented by "n" real numbers, and these operators are simply -, *, +, and again +. But all these mathematical objects can be defined in a completely different way, in order to cope with binary problems (or more generally discrete ones), or even combinatorial ones. One approach is to redefine the operators based on sets.


title: 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election

text: The 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election took place on November 6, 2018, to elect the next Governor of Kansas. Democratic nominee Laura Kelly won the election, defeating Republican nominee Kris Kobach and independent candidate Greg Orman.


title: 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election

text: Incumbent Republican Governor Sam Brownback was term-limited and could not seek reelection to a third consecutive term. On July 26, 2017, Brownback was nominated by President Donald Trump to serve as United States Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom. He was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 24, 2018. Brownback resigned the governorship on January 31 and was succeeded by Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer. Colyer was eligible to seek a full term and announced his candidacy prior to becoming Governor of Kansas. In the August 7 primary, Colyer ran against CPA and incumbent Insurance Commissioner Ken Selzer, Topeka doctor and 2006 Republican Kansas gubernatorial nominee Jim Barnett, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach.


title: 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election

text: On August 7, 2018, Kobach defeated Colyer in the Republican gubernatorial primary by an initial margin of 191 votes, a lead that increased to 361 votes by August 14, although discrepancies in some counties needed resolution and provisional and absentee ballots may not have been counted in some counties. Colyer conceded the Republican nomination after the final votes were tallied, in which Kobach's margin grew slightly. Democratic State Senator Laura Kelly easily won the Democratic nomination. Businessman Greg Orman, who finished second as an independent in the 2014 U.S. Senate race against incumbent Republican Pat Roberts, also ran for governor as an independent candidate.


title: 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election

text: Given that Kansas is the only state which has no gubernatorial statutory qualifications whatsoever in its constitution, seven teenagers, including one who has never even been to the state of Kansas, ran for the office in this election cycle. A debate took place on September 5 between the three candidates that consistently polled above 5%. Polls in late August had Laura Kelly and Kris Kobach running close with Greg Orman polling in the single digits.


title: 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election

text: Kelly's win continued a streak of party turnover for Governor of Kansas, as Kansas has not elected two consecutive governors of the same party since Republican William Avery succeeded fellow Republican John Anderson Jr. following the 1964 election, and neither major party has held the governorship for longer than eight consecutive years since Republican John McCuish left office in 1957.


title: 2018 Kansas gubernatorial election

text: Kelly won 2 of 4 congressional districts, including one that was carried by a Republican in the concurrent congressional elections.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: Suite Française is a 2015 war romantic drama film directed by Saul Dibb and co-written with Matt Charman. It is based on the second part of Irène Némirovsky's 2004 novel of the same name. The film stars Michelle Williams, Kristin Scott Thomas, Matthias Schoenaerts, Sam Riley, Ruth Wilson, Lambert Wilson and Margot Robbie. It concerns a romance between a French villager and a German soldier during the early years of the German occupation of France. "Suite Française" was filmed on location in France and Belgium. It was released theatrically in the UK on 13 March 2015 and premiered in the US through Lifetime cable network on 22 May 2017. The film was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Music Composition.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: In German-occupied France, Lucile Angellier (Michelle Williams) and her domineering mother-in-law Madame Angellier (Kristin Scott Thomas) await news of her husband Gaston, who was serving in the French Army. While visiting tenants, Lucile and Madame Angellier escape an air raid by German Ju 87 stuka bombers. Following the French surrender, a regiment of German soldiers arrives, and promptly moves into the homes of the villagers.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: "Wehrmacht" "Oberleutnant" Bruno von Falk (Matthias Schoenaerts) is billeted at the Angelliers' household. Lucile tries to ignore Bruno but is charmed by his kind demeanor and his piano music. He gives her a piece of the sheet music. Lucile later learns that her husband Gaston's unit has been imprisoned at a German labor camp. Elsewhere, the farmer Benoit (Sam Riley) and his wife Madeleine (Ruth Wilson) chafe under the German officer Kurt Bonnet (Tom Schilling), who harasses Madeleine. Benoit, who was denied the chance to fight because of his leg wound, hides a rifle. As an act of resistance, he steals the German soldiers' clothes while they are bathing.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: When Lucile discovers that one of her mother-in-law's tenants Celine (Margot Robbie) is having sex with a German soldier, Celine reveals that Gaston has been having an extramarital affair and has fathered a girl named Simone. Angry with Madame Angellier for withholding her son's indiscretions, Lucile allows herself to develop romantic feelings for Bruno. At Lucile's request, Bruno confronts Kurt over his harassment. Lucile's relationship with Bruno draws the hostility of many of the townfolk.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: The Viscountess de Monfort (Harriet Walter) later catches Benoit stealing a chicken from her coop. When Benoit points a gun at her, she tells her husband, the collaborationist Viscount de Monfort (Lambert Wilson), who sends German soldiers after Benoit. While hiding in a barn, Benoit kills Kurt with his gun and flees into the forest.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: The Germans launch a manhunt and give the townsfolk 48 hours to surrender Benoit. The German Major (Heino Ferch) takes the Viscount hostage and threatens to execute him if Benoit is not found. At Madeleine's request, Lucile hides Benoit in the attic of the Angellier mansion with the help of the reluctant Madame Angellier. Despite a massive manhunt, the Germans fail to capture Benoit and the Viscount is executed by firing squad.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: With the Germans planning to withdraw from the town, Lucile takes part in a plan to smuggle Benoit into Paris, where the French Resistance is gathering. She manages to convince Bruno to issue her travel pass to Paris. However, Bruno's suspicious orderly suspects that Lucile is harboring Benoit and issues special instructions for the checkpoint guards to search her car.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: At the checkpoint, Benoit manages to shoot the German soldiers dead with his pistol but is wounded in the shoulder. Bruno arrives on a motorcycle. Lucile faces him with her pistol but is unable to kill him. To Lucile's relief, Bruno helps her lift the wounded Benoit into the car and allows them to escape to Paris. As she drives away, Lucile smiles at Bruno in gratitude. Lucile and Benoit later join the French resistance and help drive out the Germans. While Lucile later learns that Bruno perished during the war, she treasures the memory of his musical score "Suite Française".


title: Suite Française (film)

text: On 9 November 2006, Michael Fleming from "Variety" reported that the rights to Irène Némirovsky's novel "Suite Française" (written during the Nazi occupation of France but published posthumously in 2004) had been acquired by Universal Pictures. Irene was a novelist, murdered during the Holocaust, in Auschwitz. Her works were expected to have been created within the war years erworks Ronald Harwood, who wrote the script for "The Pianist", was set to write the screenplay, with Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall producing the film. The following year, TF1 Droits Audiovisuels acquired the rights to the novel from publisher Éditions Denoël. The novel was adapted for the screen by Saul Dibb and Matt Charman, with Dibb directing.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: In 2013, the film, produced by France's TF1 Droits Audiovisuels and UK's Entertainment One, was given a budget of €15 million ($20 million). Mick Brown of "The Daily Telegraph" noted this was "big by European, if not American, standards". In May 2013, it was reported that "Suite Française" would be a co-production between France, U.K. and Belgium, with Xavier Marchand, Romain Bremond, Michael Kuhn and Andrea Cornwell producing the film along with American Harvey Weinstein of The Weinstein Company serving as the executive producer.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: Dibb focused his adaptation on book two of Némirovsky's novels, which explores the relationships between the French women and the German soldiers who occupied their village, in particular the story of Lucile Angellier. She is awaiting news of her husband, who went to war, when a German officer is billeted in her home.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: Dibb used the account of the discovery of the manuscript of the novel by Némirovsky's daughter, Denise Epstein, to book-end the film. Némirovsky's original manuscript is shown during the credits. Epstein died shortly before production began, but she read drafts of the script.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: "Variety"s Jeff Sneider reported in October 2012 that actress Michelle Williams was in talks to star in "Suite Française" as the protagonist Lucile Angellier. Shortly after she joined the project, Kristin Scott Thomas was attached to appear as Lucile's "domineering" mother-in-law. In an interview with Moviefone's Erin Whitney, Scott Thomas commented that the character was similar to herself. Actor Matthias Schoenaerts joined the cast as Bruno, a German officer and Lucile's love interest in November 2012.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: On 14 June 2013, Dominic Patten from "Deadline Hollywood" reported that actor Sam Riley had joined the cast as a French soldier called Benoit. Riley's wife Alexandra Maria Lara also joined the cast, along with fellow actresses Margot Robbie as Celine and Ruth Wilson as Madeleine. Actors Tom Schilling and Lambert Wilson will also appear in the film as Kurt Bonnet and Viscount de Montmort respectively. Harriet Walter has been cast as Viscountess de Montmort, while Eileen Atkins will appear as Denise Epstein and Cédric Maerckx as Gaston Angellier.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: Principal photography commenced on 24 June 2013. The shoot lasted until late August. The cast and crew spent eight weeks shooting in Belgium and eight days in France. From 10 July, filming took place in the village of Marville in the Meuse department. In August, the cast and crew spent three-and-a-half weeks filming scenes in a house in Belgium. Dibb commented that the hot weather helped create "its own weird, uncomfortable, claustrophobic atmosphere which you hope is going to feed into the atmosphere of the scenes." Leo Barraclough from "Variety" reported that principal photography was completed on 2 September 2013.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: English costume designer Michael O'Connor, who previously worked with Dibb on "The Duchess", designed and created the clothing for the film. O'Connor used photographs, magazines and movies of the time to make the clothing and accessories as authentic as possible. His major influences were Némirovsky's novel, which describes the clothing in detail, and Jean Renoir's 1939 film "The Rules of the Game". The costumes use authentic French fabrics from Paris. The film's countryside setting led Jenny Shircore, the hair and make-up designer for the production, to invoke a sense of sobriety in place of glamor. Shircore used quite little make-up on Williams, who understood she must look quite "natural, simple, in a sense resigned."


title: Suite Française (film)

text: French composer Alexandre Desplat was originally attached to compose the film's musical score. Dibb wanted Bruno's piano piece to be composed before shooting began, and he wanted it to be played during the film as "a developing theme" and then at the end in its full form. Desplat wrote "Bruno's Theme", but was unable to write the final score for the entire film and was replaced by Rael Jones. Jones's score was recorded at the Abbey Road Studios in London. Sony Classical released the soundtrack album on 16 March 2015. It features original music composed by Jones, a piano piece composed by Desplat and songs performed by Lucienne Boyer, Josephine Baker and Rosita Serrano. Dibb explained that music plays a crucial part in the film and called the score "subtle and atmospheric."


title: Suite Française (film)

text: On 16 April 2013, it was reported that The Weinstein Company had pre-bought the U.S. distribution rights for the film. On 19 May 2013, it was announced that The Weinstein Company would also handle the distribution rights in Latin America, Australia, Russia and Germany, while Entertainment One would release the picture in the U.K., Spain and Canada. The first trailer for the film was released on 24 October 2014.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: "Suite Française" had its world premiere at the Cinema UGC Normandie in Paris on 10 March 2015. The film was originally scheduled to be released theatrically in the UK through Entertainment One on 23 January 2015, but it was postponed to 13 March 2015, and it was released on DVD on 27 July 2015. It was released in France by UGC Distribution on April 20, 2015.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: Although it had been acquired by The Weinstein Company, the film did not have a theatrical release in the US. It was scheduled to premiere on Lifetime cable network on 10 October 2016, but the release was postponed to 22 May 2017.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: "Suite Française" earned £503,928 upon its opening weekend in the United Kingdom. The film opened to 425 locations and landed at number four in the UK box office top ten. The following week the film played at a further 21 screens and earned £268,607 for a total of £1,293,408. It fell three places to seven in the box office chart. As of August 2015, "Suite Française" has earned over $9 million worldwide.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: The film received mostly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 76% of 45 critics have given the film a positive review, with an average rating of 5.94/10. The website's critical consensus states, ""Suite Française" takes an understated approach to its period romance, which – along with strong performances from a talented cast – pays absorbing dividends." Metacritic assigned a weighted average score of 63 out of 100 based on 8 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews." "The Guardian"s Peter Bradshaw gave the film two stars out of five and likened the central love story to "a damp haddock on a slab". He continued, "This adaptation of Irène Némirovsky's acclaimed bestseller about French folk collaborating with the Nazis is flabby, sugary – and passion-free." Emma Dibdin from Digital Spy gave the film three stars and commented, ""Suite Française" works far better as the story of a community in flux than it does as a brooding romance, the shifting loyalties between villagers and soldiers escalating towards a somewhat compelling third act."


title: Suite Française (film)

text: Anna Smith from "Empire" rated the film "good" and said "Sterling performances lift the occasionally soapy storyline in this semi-successful adaptation." "Variety"s Guy Lodge found the film "fusty but enjoyably old-fashioned", adding "iffy scripting decisions can't thwart the romantic allure of this handsomely crafted, sincerely performed wartime weeper." Writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", Leslie Felperin's consensus was "[Suite Française] has sturdy production values, a tony cast and middlebrow tastefulness up the wazoo, but barely any soul, bite or genuine passion."


title: Suite Française (film)

text: The "Desire" trailer for "Suite Française" created by eOne Films International and Create Advertising London earned a nomination for Best Foreign Romance Trailer at the 16th Golden Trailer Awards. Jones's score was nominated for the Public Choice Award at the 2015 World Soundtrack Awards.


title: Suite Française (film)

text: The film's postscript reads as follows: "Suite Francaise" was written in secret as the Nazis occupied France. It was never completed. In 1942 its author, Irene Nemirovsky, was arrested for being Jewish and died in Auschwitz. Her handwritten manuscript lay unread in a suitcase for nearly sixty years until it was discovered by her daughter. "Suite Francaise" was finally published in 2004 and became a worldwide bestseller. The daughter is quoted as saying: ""It is an extraordinary feeling to have brought my mother back to life. It shows the Nazis did not truly succeed in killing her. It is not vengeance, but it is a victory."" - Denise Epstein-Dauple


title: Nashville Skyline

text: Nashville Skyline is the ninth studio album by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan, released on April 9, 1969, by Columbia Records as LP record, reel to reel tape and audio cassette.


title: Nashville Skyline

text: Building on the rustic style he experimented with on "John Wesley Harding", "Nashville Skyline" displayed a complete immersion into country music. Along with the more basic lyrical themes, simple songwriting structures, and charming domestic feel, it introduced audiences to a radically new singing voice from Dylan, who had temporarily quit smoking—a soft, affected country croon.


title: Nashville Skyline

text: The result received a generally positive reaction from critics, and was a commercial success. Reaching in the U.S., the album also scored Dylan his fourth UK No. 1 album.


title: Nashville Skyline

text: The concept of recording a country album in Nashville was first discussed with Dylan in 1965 by Johnny Cash, who expressed interest in producing such an album."I've got my own ideas about that Nashville sound and I'd like to try it with Bob," Cash said in a March 1965 interview with Music Business magazine. Those sessions never materialized and by June of that year, Dylan was going fully electric with the recording of "Highway 61 Revisited". By the time "Nashville Skyline" was recorded, the political climate in the United States had grown more polarized. In 1968, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy (a leading candidate for the presidency) were assassinated. Riots broke out in most major American cities, including a major one surrounding the Democratic National Convention in Chicago and racially motivated conflagrations spurred by King's assassination. A new president, Richard Nixon, was sworn into office in January 1969, but the U.S. engagement in Southeast Asia, particularly the Vietnam War, would continue for several years. Protests over a wide range of political topics became more frequent. Dylan had been a leading cultural figure, noted for political and social commentary throughout the 1960s. Even as he moved away from topical songs, he never lost his cultural stature. However, as Clinton Heylin wrote of "Nashville Skyline", "If Dylan was concerned about retaining a hold on the rock constituency, making albums with Johnny Cash in Nashville was tantamount to abdication in many eyes."


title: Nashville Skyline

text: "Our generation owes him our artistic lives," observed Kris Kristofferson, who later sang with Cash in The Highwaymen, "because he opened all the doors in Nashville when he did "Blonde on Blonde" and "Nashville Skyline". The country scene was so conservative until he arrived. He brought in a whole new audience. He changed the way people thought about it – even the "Grand Ole Opry" was never the same again."


title: Nashville Skyline

text: Helped by a promotional appearance on "The Johnny Cash Show" on June 7, "Nashville Skyline" went on to become one of Dylan's best-selling albums. Three singles were pulled from it, all of which received significant airplay on AM radio.


title: Nashville Skyline

text: Despite the dramatic, commercial shift in direction, the press also gave "Nashville Skyline" a warm reception. A critic for "Newsweek" wrote of "the great charm... and the ways Dylan, both as composer and performer, has found to exploit subtle differences on a deliberately limited emotional and verbal scale." In "Rolling Stone", Paul Nelson wrote, ""Nashville Skyline" achieves the artistically impossible: a deep, humane, and interesting statement about being happy. It could well be... his best album." However, Nelson would reconsider his opinion in a review for "Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II" less than three years later, writing, "I was misinformed. That's why no one should pay any attention to critics, especially the artist." In "The Village Voice", Robert Christgau argued that "the beauty of the album" was in the "totally undemanding" and "one-dimensional" quality of the songs, believing Dylan had toyed with the public's expectations again by embracing a country tenor voice and aesthetic. He later included it in his "Basic Record Library" of 1950s and 1960s recordings, published in "" (1981). It was voted number 579 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's "All Time Top 1000 Albums" (2000).


title: Nashville Skyline

text: A few critics expressed some disappointment. Ed Ochs of "Billboard" wrote, "the satisfied man speaks in clichés, and blushes as if every day were Valentine's Day." Tim Souster of the BBC's "The Listener" magazine wrote, "One can't help feeling something is missing. Isn't this idyllic country landscape too good to be true?"


title: Nashville Skyline

text: Hip hop group Public Enemy reference it in their 2007 Dylan tribute song "Long and Whining Road": "Fans, if it's not for you, there'd be no PE / From the Nashville Skyline, to the homeboys and girls of South Country".


title: Golden Temple, Sripuram

text: Golden Temple Vellore complex inside the Thirupuram spiritual park is situated at the foot of a small range of green hills at Thirumalaikodi (or simply Malaikodi) Vellore in Tamil Nadu, India. It is 120 km from Tirupati, 145 km from Chennai, 160 km from Pondicherry and 200 km from Bengaluru. The Maha Kumbhabhishekam or consecration of the temple and its chief deity, Sri Lakshmi Narayani or Maha Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, was held on 24 August 2007, and devotees from all religions and backgrounds are welcome to visit.


title: Golden Temple, Sripuram

text: The salient feature of 'Thirupuram' is the Lakshmi Narayani temple whose Vimanam and Ardha Mandapam is covered with pure gold, housing the deity Sri Lakshmi Narayani (female consort/wife of Vishnu Narayana). The temple is located on 100 acres of land and has been constructed by the Vellore-based charitable trust, Sri Narayani Peedam, headed by its spiritual leader Sri Sakthi Amma also known as 'Narayani Amma'.


title: Golden Temple, Sripuram

text: The temple with its gold covering, has intricate work done by artisans specialising in temple art using gold. Every single detail was manually created, including converting the gold bars into gold foils and then mounting the foils on copper. Gold foil from 9 layers to 10 layers has been mounted on the etched copper plates. Every single detail in the temple art has significance from the Vedas.


title: Golden Temple, Sripuram

text: Sripuram's design features a star-shaped path (Sri chakra), positioned in the middle of the lush green landscape, with a length of over 1.8 km. As one walks along this 'starpath' to reach the temple in the middle, one can also read various spiritual messages -- such as the gift of the human birth itself, and the value of spirituality -- along the way.


title: Golden Temple, Sripuram

text: The Sri Narayani Hospital & Research Centre is a general hospital located near the Thirupuram temple complex and is also run by the 'Sri Narayani Peedam' Charitable Trust.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: Sunil Bharti Mittal (born 23 October 1957) is an Indian billionaire entrepreneur, philanthropist and the founder and chairperson of Bharti Enterprises, which has diversified interests in telecom, insurance, real estate, education, malls, hospitality, Agri and food besides other ventures. Bharti Airtel, the group's flagship company is one of the world's largest and India's largest telecom company with operations in 18 countries across Asia and Africa with a customer base of over 399 million. Bharti Airtel clocked revenues of over in FY2016. In 2022 he was ranked the 11th richest person in India by "Forbes", with an estimated net worth of .


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 2007, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, India's third highest civilian honor. On 15 June 2016, he was elected as Chairman of the International Chamber of Commerce.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: Sunil Bharti Mittal was born in intercaste Agarwal-Khatri family. His ,father, Sat Paul Mittal, had been the Member of Parliament, Rajya Sabha (Indian National Congress) from Ludhiana, Punjab, he was elected from Punjab for two terms (1976 & 1982) and nominated to the Rajya Sabha once (1988). He first joined the Wynberg Allen School in Mussoorie, but later attended Scindia School at Gwalior and he graduated in 1976 from Panjab University, Chandigarh, with a Bachelor of Arts and Science for which he studied in Arya College, Ludhiana. His father died of cardiac arrest in 1992.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: A first-generation entrepreneur, Sunil started his first business in April 1976 at the age of 18, with a capital investment of borrowed from his father. His first business was to make crankshafts for local bicycle manufacturers.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 1980, he along with his brothers Rakesh Mittal and Rajan Mittal started an Import Enterprise named Bharti Overseas Trading Company. He sold his bicycle parts and yarn factories and moved to Mumbai. In 1981, he purchased importing licenses from exporting companies in Punjab. He then imported thousands of Suzuki Motors's portable electric-power generators from Japan. The importing of generators was suddenly banned by the then Indian Government.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 1984, he started assembling push-button phones in India, which he earlier used to import from a Taiwan company, Kingtel, replacing the old fashioned, bulky rotary phones that were in use in the country then. Bharti Telecom Limited (BTL) was incorporated and entered into a technical tie up with Siemens AG of Germany for manufacture of electronic push button phones. By the early 1990s, Sunil was making fax machines, cordless phones and other telecom gear. Sunil says, "In 1983, the government imposed a ban on the import of gensets. I was out of business overnight. Everything I was doing came to a screeching halt. I was in trouble. The question then was: what should I do next? Then, opportunity came calling. While in Taiwan, I noticed the popularity of the push-button phone – something which India hadn't seen then. We were still using those rotary dials with no speed dials or redials. I sensed my chance and embraced the telecom business. I started marketing telephones, answering/fax machines under the brand name Beetel and the company picked up really fast.". He named his first push-button phones as 'Mitbrau'.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 1992, he successfully bid for one of the four mobile phone network licenses auctioned in India. One of the conditions for the Delhi cellular license was that the bidder have some experience as a telecom operator. So, Mittal clinched a deal with the French telecom group Vivendi. He was one of the first Indian entrepreneurs to identify the mobile telecom business as a major growth area. His plans were finally approved by the Government in 1994 and he launched services in Delhi in 1995, when Bharti Cellular Limited (BCL) was formed to offer cellular services under the brand name AirTel in 1997. Within a few years Bharti became the first telecom company to cross the 2-million mobile subscriber mark. Bharti also brought down the STD/ISD cellular rates in India under brand name 'Indiaone'.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In May 2008, it emerged that Sunil Bharti Mittal was exploring the possibility of buying the MTN Group, a South Africa-based telecommunications company with coverage in 21 countries in Africa and the Middle East. "The Financial Times" reported that Bharti was considering offering US$45 billion for a 100% stake in MTN, which would be the largest overseas acquisition ever by an Indian firm. However, both sides emphasize the tentative nature of the talks, while "The Economist" magazine noted, "If anything, Bharti would be marrying up," as MTN has more subscribers, higher revenues and broader geographic coverage. However, the talks fell apart as MTN group tried to reverse the negotiations by making Bharti almost a subsidiary of the new company. In May 2009, Bharti Airtel again confirmed that it was in talks with MTN and the companies agreed to discuss the potential transaction exclusively by 31 July 2009. Talks eventually ended without agreement, some sources stating that this was due to opposition from the South African government.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In June 2010, Bharti led by Mittal acquired the African business of Zain Telecom for $10.7 billion (enterprise value) making it the largest ever acquisition by an Indian telecom firm. In 2012, Bharti tied up with Wal-Mart, the US retail giant, to start a number of retail stores across India. In 2014, Bharti planned to acquire Loop Mobile for INR 7 billion, but the deal was called off later. His son Kavin Bharti Mittal is the CEO and founder of hike Messenger.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In September 2010, Mittal's son, Shravin Mittal, joined Bharti Airtel as a manager having worked for Merrill Lynch in New York and Ernst & Young in London.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 2012, Mittal took Bharti Infratel public with an IPO that raised $760 million. Mittal noted that the sale, considered by many to be only a modest success, was a "strong endorsement from qualified investors". The board was restructured ahead of the IPO with Mittal remaining as Chairman and Managing Director. After the IPO, shares of Bharti Infratel dropped sharply at the commencement of trading.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 2013, Mittal was ordered to appear before a special Delhi court to answer questions about the additional allocation of airwaves to certain companies. Allegations against Mittal state that there had been collusion with key telecoms officials in the government to illegally secure an extra spectrum. No charges were issued against Mittal, however the trial court judge noted that there was enough material on record to proceed.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In late 2013, Mittal announced the acquisition of Warid Congo, making Bharti Airtel the largest telecoms provider in the Republic of Congo.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 2015, Sunil Mittal announced that he would be joining the board of Oneweb, a space internet company. Mittal was one of the investors in a $500 million investment round that included Coca-Cola, Virgin and Qualcomm.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 2016, Mittal made changes at Bharti Airtel to enable the company to compete against the launch of Jio. in the race to become India's largest telecom company.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 2017, Mittal announced "war on roaming" by scrapping charges for outgoing and incoming calls within India as well as international roaming charges.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: Mittal has also been working towards educating India through the Bharti Foundation, which is the philanthropic arm of Bharti Enterprises. The Foundation has established schools in villages across India and offers free quality education with free books, uniform and mid day meals to poor children.


title: Sunil Mittal

text: Satya Bharti School Program' – the Foundation's flagship program is running 254 schools in six States serving over 45,000 rural children, free of cost. The other educational initiatives including the – Satya Bharti School, Quality Support and Learning Centre Programs, are currently reaching out to over underprivileged children in 11 states. Other Program of the Foundation making considerable impact among the underprivileged sections is – 'Satya Bharti Abhiyan' (Sanitation).


title: Sunil Mittal

text: In 2017, the Bharti Family pledged 10% of their wealth (approx. Rs 70 billion) towards Philanthropy to set up Satya Bharti University, a world-class University to offer education to deserving youth from economically weaker sections of society


title: Sunil Mittal

text: Mittal has been married "for decades" to Nyna Mittal, a philanthropist who focuses on education. The couple has one daughter and two sons, who are twins, born August 31, 1987. The daughter, Eiesha Bharti Pasricha, a "lifestyle investor," lives in London with her husband, businessman Sharan Pasricha, and their two children. One son, Kavin Bharti Mittal, is an entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Hike, a New Delhi-headquartered tech and internet startup. The other son, Shravin Bharti Mittal, is the founder and CEO of Unbound, a London-based venture capital and private equity firm, and a director of Bharti Global Ltd, a London-headquartered firm in the Bharti corporate family. He was reportedly instrumental in the successful acquisition of OneWeb. In April 2015, in Delhi, Shavrin married Sakshi Chhabra.


title: Gáe Bulg

text: The Gáe Bulg () (also Gáe Bulga, Gáe Bolg, Gáe Bolga), meaning "spear of mortal pain/death", "gapped/notched spear", or "belly spear", was the name of the spear of Cúchulainn in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology. It was given to him by his martial arts teacher, the warrior woman Scáthach, and its technique was taught only to him.


title: Gáe Bulg

text: It was made from the bone of a sea monster, the Curruid, that had died while fighting another sea monster, the Coinchenn. Although some sources make it out to be simply a particularly deadly spear, others—notably the Book of Leinster—state that it could only be used under very specialized, ritual conditions:


title: Gáe Bulg

text: In other versions of the legend, the spear had seven heads, each with seven barbs. In the "Táin Bó Cuailnge", Cúchulainn received the spear after training with the great warrior mistress Scáthach in Alba. She taught him and his foster-brother, Ferdiad, everything the same, except she taught the Gáe Bulg feat only to Cuchulainn. He later used it in single combat against Ferdiad. They were fighting in a ford, and Ferdiad had the upper hand; Cúchulainn's charioteer, Láeg, floated the "Gáe Bulg" down the stream to his master, who cast it into Ferdiad's body, piercing the warrior's armor and "coursing through the highways and byways of his body so that every single joint filled with barbs." Ferdiad died soon after. On a separate occasion, Cúchulainn also killed his own son, Connla, with the spear. In both instances, it was used as a last resort, as once thrown it proved invariably fatal.


title: Gáe Bulg

text: Cúchulainn's use of the Gáe Bulg in the "Táin Bó Cuailnge" exemplifies its deadliness and the gruesome condition in which it leaves its victims. This can be seen in the fact that after it is used, one must literally cut into the victim to retrieve it. This was the case in Cúchulainn's slaying of Ferdiad. As it is stated in Ciaran Carson's translation of The Táin:


title: Gáe Bulg

text: Traditionally, the name has been translated as "belly spear", with the second element of the name, "bulga", being treated as a derivative of Old Irish bolg "belly, sack, bag".


title: Gáe Bulg

text: Several notable Celtic scholars, including Joseph Loth and Kuno Meyer, have preferred to derive it rather from Old Irish "bolc" "gap, breach, notch" (cognate with Welsh "bwlch"), suggesting a linguistic link with the second element in the name of Fergus mac Róich's sword, "Caladbolg" and King Arthur's sword "Caledfwlch".


title: Gáe Bulg

text: Linguist Eric Hamp derives the second element, "bulga", from a Proto-Celtic compound "*balu-gaisos" meaning "spear of mortal pain/death spear" (comparable to Old Irish "fogha" "spear, dart", from Proto-Celtic "*uo-gaisu-"). Once the second element "*gaisos" "spear" was no longer recognizable to Irish speaker, its Old Irish cognate, "gáe", was reattached to the beginning for clarification, forming a new, tautological compound.


title: Prem Nath

text: Prem Nath Malhotra, better known as Prem Nath, was an Indian actor and director, who was best known for his works in Hindi films. Nath made his debut with the film "Ajit" (1948), and went on to appear in over 100 films throughout his career. He was nominated for three Filmfare Awards, and later retired in 1985.


title: Prem Nath

text: He was born in 1926 in the Karimpura locality near Ghanta Ghar in Peshawar. His family moved to Jubbulpore (present-day Jabalpur) after partition and he moved to Bombay where he was discovered as an actor.


title: Prem Nath

text: He fell in love with actress Bina Rai during the filming of "Aurat". They married and formed a production company together called P.N. films. Their children are actor Prem Krishen and Kailash Nath (Monty). Premnath also dated the famous actress Madhubala but stopped when she became interested in actor Dilip Kumar.


title: Prem Nath

text: They are also the grandparents of actress Akanksha Malhotra and director Siddharth Malhotra who are Prem Krishen's children. Adiraj Malhotra and Arjun Malhotra are the sons of Kailash Nath. His sister Krishna married Raj Kapoor while his other sister Uma was married to veteran Hindi Film actor Prem Chopra. His brothers Rajendra Nath and Narendra Nath were also actors who mostly appeared in comic and supporting roles. He was also a close friend of the actress Asha Parekh. He died of a heart attack in 1992 at the age of 65, just 18 days before his 66th birthday.


title: Prem Nath

text: Premnath made his film debut in "Ajit" (1948), opposite Monica Desai, which was one of the first colour films. He got major roles in Raj Kapoor's first directorial film "Aag" (1948) and "Barsaat" (1949) which was his first major success. In 1951, Nath starred opposite Madhubala in ""Badal" which was a big box office success. In 1952, he co starred with Dilip Kumar in the swashbuckling technicolour film "Aan " which was the highest grossing film at the time.


title: Prem Nath

text: He went on to appear in many films in leading roles often opposite his wife Bina Rai which failed to do well. He set up a production company named P.N films and directed the film "Samundar" (1957), which was a box office disaster and remained his only directorial efffort. His career as a leading man declined in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the 1963 film "Rustom Sohrab" being one of his last films in the leading role.


title: Prem Nath

text: He started receiving recognition with playing the central villain or supporting role in some of the biggest blockbusters in Indian film history throughout the 1970s. Some of his notable films included "Teesri Manzil" (1966), "Johny Mera Naam" (1970), "Tere Mere Sapne" (1971), "Shor" (1972), "Bobby" (1973), "Roti Kapda Aur Makaan" (1974), "Dharmatma" (1975), "Kalicharan" (1976), "Krodhi" (1981) and "Desh Premee" (1982). He also starred in the religious Punjabi film "Sat Sri Akal" (1977). He earned Filmfare nominations as Best Supporting Actor for: "Shor" (1972), "Bobby" (1973), "Amir Garib" (1974) and "Roti Kapda Aur Makaan" (1974).


title: Prem Nath

text: Apart from Hindi films, he also appeared in an episode of the American television series "Maya" in 1967 and a 1969 American film titled "Kenner" opposite former American football player turned actor Jim Brown. His last film appearance was in "Hum Dono" (1985) after which he retired from acting.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (; born James Ngugi; 5 January 1938) is a Kenyan author and academic who writes primarily in Gikuyu and who formerly wrote in English. He has been described as having been "considered East Africa’s leading novelist". His work includes novels, plays, short stories, and essays, ranging from literary and social criticism to children's literature. He is the founder and editor of the Gikuyu-language journal Mũtĩiri. His short story "The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright", is translated into 100 languages from around the world.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: In 1977, Ngũgĩ embarked upon a novel form of theatre in his native Kenya that sought to liberate the theatrical process from what he held to be "the general bourgeois education system", by encouraging spontaneity and audience participation in the performances. His project sought to "demystify" the theatrical process, and to avoid the "process of alienation [that] produces a gallery of active stars and an undifferentiated mass of grateful admirers" which, according to Ngũgĩ, encourages passivity in "ordinary people". Although his landmark play, "Ngaahika Ndeenda", co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii, was a commercial success, it was shut down by the authoritarian Kenyan regime six weeks after its opening.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: Ngũgĩ was subsequently imprisoned for over a year. Adopted as an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience, the artist was released from prison, and fled Kenya. In the United States, he is currently Distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine. He has also previously taught at Northwestern University, Yale University, and New York University. Ngũgĩ has frequently been regarded as a likely candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature. He won the 2001 International Nonino Prize in Italy, and the 2016 Park Kyong-ni Prize. Among his children are the authors Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: Ngũgĩ was born in Kamiriithu, near Limuru in Kiambu district, Kenya, of Kikuyu descent, and baptised James Ngugi. His family was caught up in the Mau Mau Uprising; his half-brother Mwangi was actively involved in the Kenya Land and Freedom Army (during which he was killed), another brother was shot during the State of Emergency, and his mother was tortured at Kamiriithu home guard post.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: He went to the Alliance High School, and went on to study at Makerere University College in Kampala, Uganda. As a student he attended the African Writers Conference held at Makerere in June 1962, and his play "The Black Hermit" premiered as part of the event at The National Theatre. At the conference Ngũgĩ asked Chinua Achebe to read the manuscripts of his novels "The River Between" and "Weep Not, Child", which would subsequently be published in Heinemann's African Writers Series, launched in London that year, with Achebe as its first advisory editor. Ngũgĩ received his B.A. in English from Makerere University College, Uganda, in 1963.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: His debut novel, "Weep Not, Child", was published in May 1964, becoming the first novel in English to be published by a writer from East Africa.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: Later that year, having won a scholarship to the University of Leeds to study for an MA, Ngũgĩ travelled to England, where he was when his second novel, "The River Between", came out in 1965. "The River Between", which has as its background the Mau Mau Uprising, and described an unhappy romance between Christians and non-Christians, was previously on Kenya's national secondary school syllabus. He left Leeds without completing his thesis on Caribbean literature, for which his studies had focused on George Lamming, about whom Ngũgĩ said in his 1972 collection of essays "Homecoming": "He evoked for me, an unforgettable picture of a peasant revolt in a white-dominated world. And suddenly I knew that a novel could be made to speak to me, could, with a compelling urgency, touch cords [sic] deep down in me. His world was not as strange to me as that of Fielding, Defoe, Smollett, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Dickens, D. H. Lawrence."


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: Ngũgĩ's 1967 novel "A Grain of Wheat" marked his embrace of Fanonist Marxism. He subsequently renounced writing in English, and the name James Ngugi as colonialist; by 1970 he had changed his name to Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o, and began to write in his native Gikuyu. In 1967, Ngũgĩ also began teaching at the University of Nairobi as a professor of English literature. He continued to teach at the university for ten years while serving as a Fellow in Creative Writing at Makerere. During this time, he also guest lectured at Northwestern University in the department of English and African Studies for a year.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: While a professor at the University of Nairobi, Ngũgĩ was the catalyst of the discussion to abolish the English department. He argued that after the end of colonialism, it was imperative that a university in Africa teach African literature, including oral literature, and that such should be done with the realization of the richness of African languages.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: In 1976, Thiong'o helped to establish The Kamiriithu Community Education and Cultural Centre which, among other things, organised African Theatre in the area. The following year saw the publication of Petals of Blood. Its strong political message, and that of his play "Ngaahika Ndeenda" ("I Will Marry When I Want"), co-written with Ngũgĩ wa Mirii and also published in 1977, provoked the then Kenyan Vice-President Daniel arap Moi to order his arrest. Along with copies of his play, books by Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and Vladimir Lenin were confiscated. He was sent to Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, and kept there without a trial for nearly a year.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: He was imprisoned in a cell with other political prisoners. During part of their imprisonment, they were allowed one hour of sunlight a day. Ngũgĩ writes "The compound used to be for the mentally deranged convicts before it was put to better use as a cage for 'the politically deranged." He found solace in writing and wrote the first modern novel in Gikuyu, "Devil on the Cross" ("Caitaani mũtharaba-Inĩ"), on prison-issued toilet paper.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: After his release in December 1978, he was not reinstated to his job as professor at Nairobi University, and his family was harassed. Due to his writing about the injustices of the dictatorial government at the time, Ngũgĩ and his family were forced to live in exile. Only after Arap Moi, the longest-serving Kenyan president, retired in 2002, was it safe for them to return.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: During his time in prison, Ngũgĩ made the decision to cease writing his plays and other works in English and began writing all his creative works in his native tongue, Gikuyu.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: His time in prison also inspired the play "The Trial of Dedan Kimathi" (1976). He wrote this in collaboration with Micere Githae Mugo.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: While in exile, Ngũgĩ worked with the London-based Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners in Kenya (1982–98). "Matigari ma Njiruungi" (translated by Wangui wa Goro into English as "Matigari") was published at this time. In 1984, he was Visiting Professor at Bayreuth University, and the following year was Writer-in-Residence for the Borough of Islington in London. He also studied film at Dramatiska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden (1986).


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: His later works include "Detained", his prison diary (1981), "Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature" (1986), an essay arguing for African writers' expression in their native languages rather than European languages, in order to renounce lingering colonial ties and to build an authentic African literature, and "Matigari" (translated by Wangui wa Goro), (1987), one of his most famous works, a satire based on a Gikuyu folk tale.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: Ngũgĩ was Visiting Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Yale University between 1989 and 1992. In 1992, he was guest at the Congress of South African Writers and spent time in Zwide Township with Mzi Mahola, the year he became a professor of Comparative Literature and Performance Studies at New York University, where he held the Erich Maria Remarque Chair. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature as well as having been the first director of the International Center for Writing and Translation at the University of California, Irvine.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: On 8 August 2004, Ngũgĩ returned to Kenya as part of a month-long tour of East Africa. On 11 August, robbers broke into his high-security apartment: they assaulted Ngũgĩ, sexually assaulted his wife and stole various items of value. When Ngũgĩ returned to America at the end of his month trip, five men were arrested on suspicion of the crime, including Ngũgĩ's own nephew. In the summer 2006 the American publishing firm Random House published his first new novel in nearly two decades, "Wizard of the Crow", translated to English from Gikuyu by the author.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: On 10 November 2006, while in San Francisco at Hotel Vitale at the Embarcadero, Ngũgĩ was harassed and ordered to leave the hotel by an employee. The event led to a public outcry and angered both African-Americans and members of the African diaspora living in America, prompting an apology by the hotel.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: His recent books include "Globalectics: Theory and the Politics of Knowing" (2012), and "Something Torn and New: An African Renaissance", a collection of essays published in 2009 making the argument for the crucial role of African languages in "the resurrection of African memory", about which "Publishers Weekly" said: "Ngugi’s language is fresh; the questions he raises are profound, the argument he makes is clear: 'To starve or kill a language is to starve and kill a people’s memory bank.'" This was followed by two well received autobiographical works: "Dreams in a Time of War: a Childhood Memoir" (2010) and "In the House of the Interpreter: A Memoir" (2012), which was described as "brilliant and essential" by the "Los Angeles Times", among other positive reviews.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: His book "The Perfect Nine", originally written and published in Gikuyu as " Kenda Muiyuru: Rugano Rwa Gikuyu na Mumbi" (2019), was translated into English by Ngũgĩ for its 2020 publication, and is a reimagining in epic poetry of his people's origin story. It was described by the "Los Angeles Times" as "a quest novel-in-verse that explores folklore, myth and allegory through a decidedly feminist and pan-African lens." The review in "World Literature Today" said: "Ngũgĩ crafts a beautiful retelling of the Gĩkũyũ myth that emphasizes the noble pursuit of beauty, the necessity of personal courage, the importance of filial piety, and a sense of the Giver Supreme—a being who represents divinity, and unity, across world religions. All these things coalesce into dynamic verse to make "The Perfect Nine" a story of miracles and perseverance; a chronicle of modernity and myth; a meditation on beginnings and endings; and a palimpsest of ancient and contemporary memory, as Ngũgĩ overlays the Perfect Nine's feminine power onto the origin myth of the Gĩkũyũ people of Kenya in a moving rendition of the epic form." Fiona Sampson writing in "The Guardian" concluded that it is "a beautiful work of integration that not only refuses distinctions between 'high art' and traditional storytelling, but supplies that all-too rare human necessity: the sense that life has meaning."


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: In March 2021, "The Perfect Nine" became the first work written in an indigenous African language to be longlisted for the International Booker Prize, with Ngũgĩ becoming the first nominee as both the author and translator of the same book.


title: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o

text: Four of his children are also published authors: Tee Ngũgĩ, Mũkoma wa Ngũgĩ, Nducu wa Ngũgĩ, and Wanjiku wa Ngũgĩ.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: Gina Lucia Coladangelo is a British businesswoman, lobbyist, and a former non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care. Images of Coladangelo and then Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Matt Hancock kissing and embracing, at a time when social distancing restrictions were in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom, led to Hancock's resignation as Health Secretary in June 2021.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: Coladangelo was born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, the daughter of Rino C. Coladangelo, a UK-based Italian "multi-millionaire" businessman, and Heather ( Burtt, a former florist. Rino Coladangelo trained in London as a doctor, had senior management roles in the National Health Service (NHS), and was the managing director of a large hospital trust. Rino Coladangelo was CEO of Medix UK plc, a healthcare research organization, and is now CEO of Rephine Ltd, a pharmaceutical consultancy.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: Gina Coladangelo studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford University from 1995 to 1998, and obtained a Master's degree from Oriel College. She worked as a newsreader at the student radio station, Oxygen 107.9 FM, where Matt Hancock was a sports reporter.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: Her brother, Roberto Coladangelo, is a director of Partnering Health Limited (PHL), which won a £28m NHS contract, and although there is "no suggestion of any wrongdoing" on the part of PHL, "Hancock was found to have breached the Ministerial Code by failing to declare a stake in a family company that won an NHS contract."


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: Coladangelo worked as a senior account manager in the campaigns division at Munro and Forster Communications before moving to the public relations and lobbying firm Luther Pendragon in 2002. She was promoted to partner in April 2005. With three other partners (Simon Whale, Amy Kroviak and Daniel Guthrie), she led a management buyout of the firm in December 2005 with the help of a £2,000,000 investment from Octopus Asset Management, a private equity firm. She therefore become a director and shareholder. She ceased to be employed by Luther Pendragon in 2014 and resigned as a director in 2017, though as of 2021 remains a shareholder. As of late June 2021, she had been the marketing and communications director since 2014 at the Oliver Bonas retail chain, which was founded by her husband Oliver Tress.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: In June 2019 she received a parliamentary pass as a member of Hancock's staff. In March 2020 she was given a part-time role as a non-executive director at the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC). She was paid £15,000, equivalent to £1,000 a day, for her directorship on a six-month contract, although there was no public record of the appointment. As an aide to Hancock, she accompanied him to confidential meetings with civil servants. In June 2021, it was reported that she resigned after her affair with Hancock was exposed.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: Coladangelo is the niece of former Arsenal goalkeeper Bob Wilson, and married Glynn Gibb, a London property lawyer, in 2004.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: In 2009, she married Oliver Tress, the owner of Oliver Bonas, with whom she has three children. In 2015, they moved from Clapham Junction in London to a five-bedroom house in Wandsworth in London, with a live-in nanny.


title: Gina Coladangelo

text: Coladangelo and Matt Hancock have been friends since studying together at Oxford University in the 1990s. On 6 May 2021, Coladangelo was pictured kissing and in an embrace with Hancock, who at the time was serving as the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care. On 25 June 2021 "The Sun" published closed-circuit television footage of the encounter, which occurred at a time when social distancing restrictions were in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. "The Sun" also said the pair were having an extramarital affair. Following the affair being made public, Coladangelo resigned from her position at the DHSC and it was reported that Coladangelo and Hancock separated from their spouses to move in together.


title: Brahmamuhurtha

text: Brahmamuhurta (Sanskrit-ब्रह्म मुहूर्त, ) is a period ("muhurta") that begins one hour and 36 minutes before sunrise, and ends 48 minutes before sunrise. It is traditionally the penultimate phase or "muhurta" of the night, and is considered an auspicious time for all practices of yoga and most appropriate for meditation, worship or any other religious practice. Spiritual activities performed early in the morning are said to have a greater effect than in any other part of the day.


title: Brahmamuhurtha

text: "Brahmamuhurtha" is the 14th "muhurtha kala" of the night. One "muhurtha" is a period of 48 minutes, with a whole night consisting of 15 muhurthas. The time of sunrise varies each day, according to geographic location and time of year, and the time of the "Brahmamuhurta" varies with it. For example, if sunrise is at 6:00 am, the "brahmamuhurta" begins at 4:24 am and ends at 5:12 am.


title: Brahmamuhurtha

text: Ayurveda medicine states that there are three "doshas" found in the human physical body, called "Vata" (air and ether), "Pitta" (fire and water) and "Kapha" (earth and water). The increase or decrease of these three "doshas" is related to the cycles of time. From sunrise until 10:00am is the time of "Kapha"; from 10:00am until 2:00pm is the time of "Pitta"; and from 2:00pm until 6:00pm (sunset) is the time of "Vata".


title: Brahmamuhurtha

text: The evening follows a similar pattern, with the period from 2:00am until 6:00am (sunrise) being "Vata" time. "Brahmamuhurtha" occurs during this phase, and yoga masters state that the best time to meditate is one and a half hours before dawn, because the mind is inherently still at that time, enabling one to achieve a deeper meditative state. Yoga teacher Tirumalai Krishnamacharya stated "Think of God. If not God, the sun, if not the sun, your parents." Krishnamacharya identified himself with Vaishnavism, or the worship of bhagwān Vishnu, as did Annanta, under the guidance of Shiva, who is the first yogi. A modern Yogi would then show reverence to the sun.


title: Brahmamuhurtha

text: In the Kali Yuga, divinity can still be reached through yoga, but because of the agitated mind associated with the Yuga, Yoga must be practiced through Kriya, based on asana. It is therefore common for modern yogis whose lineage can be traced to Krishnamacharya to practice the Suryanamaskara, or sun salutation, in the morning. The Suryanamaskara can be used in ritual cleansing practice that uses the mind states associated with 'Vata' in Ayurveda medicine. These mind states are mentioned in "Patanjali's Yoga Sutras" These qualities are nearer to the divine, as they pertain to stillness of the mind, which allows for the spirit to shine. It is because of the inherently stiller state of mind in "Brahmamuhurtha", that meditative states can be more easily achieved.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: Ratcatcher (Otis Flannegan) is a fictional character appearing in American comic books and other media published by DC Comics, primarily as an enemy of Batman. He belongs to the collective of adversaries that make up the Dark Knight's rogues gallery. Once an actual rat-catcher in Gotham City, Flannegan sank into a life of crime. Calling himself the Ratcatcher because of his special ability to communicate with and train rats, Flannegan has used his minions to plague Gotham on more than one occasion by unleashing hordes of the vermin.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: A female version of the character named Cleo Cazo / Ratcatcher 2 appears in the DC Extended Universe film "The Suicide Squad" (2021), portrayed by Daniela Melchior. Taika Waititi portrays the first Ratcatcher, Cleo's father.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: Ratcatcher first appeared in "Detective Comics" #585 (April 1988) and was created by writers Alan Grant and John Wagner, and artist Norm Breyfogle.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: Otis Flannegan used to work as a rat-catcher in the Gotham City Sanitation Department and always claimed he could train rats to attack. Flannegan was eventually arrested and spent ten years in prison after stabbing a man to death in a street fight. After his release from the Gotham State Penitentiary, Flannegan kidnapped the four officials responsible for his arrest and subsequent sentence. He took his prisoners to a hideout located in the city's sewers, where he kept them for five years. During this period, Flannegan developed his current criminal alter-ego as Ratcatcher. Wearing protective equipment and using his animal training skills, Ratcatcher gathered a large mischief of rats which he used to torture and restrain his prisoners.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: After five years of captivity, one of Ratcatcher's prisoners managed to escape, although the Ratcatcher sent his army of rats to kill him. The man was killed upon reaching the surface and his body was found by Batman, who followed the rats back to the Ratcatcher's hideout. Forced to face the Dark Knight, Flannegan was outmatched once Batman got rid of all the rats and Ratcatcher was subsequently delivered to the authorities once again. After spending time in prison, Flannegan escaped his parole hearing by using a flute that he carved to control rats at high pitched frequency. His plans for Gotham were ruined by Batman (actually Dick Grayson replacing Bruce Wayne at the time) in the end and he was captured again.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: When "Infinite Crisis" began, the Ratcatcher was being protected by, in addition to his rat friends, the homeless community. When he was discovered and being taken away, one of the homeless attempted to aid Flannegan, but was easily knocked aside by the arresting officers. The man turned out to be an OMAC in hiding, and the injury apparently initiated its release. The OMAC identified the Ratcatcher as a gamma level threat and vaporized him.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: In September 2011, The New 52 rebooted DC's continuity. In this new timeline, Ratcatcher first appears in the series "Batman Eternal" as part of a plan to subtly destabilize Gotham via public services catastrophes.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: The Ratcatcher has the ability to communicate and control an army of rats. He has an in-depth knowledge of Gotham's sewer system and the layout of the Blackgate Penitentiary, which comes in handy as Flannegan is able to smuggle items in and out of prison with the help of his little servants. The Ratcatcher also wields a gas gun and can manipulate various things with cyanide gas.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: In "Master Comics", the version of Ratcatcher presented is a man named Ransom Trappe, who is an enemy of Bulletman and Bulletgirl.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: The Ratcatcher appears in "", in which he is seen participating in Two-Face's trial against Joker as a juror, where Ratcatcher voted guilty due to Joker having poisoned his rats.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: In the "Mother Panic" ongoing series, Otis Flannegan, now reformed and homeless, moves into the basement of the hotel the vigilante Violet Page uses as her headquarters. He ultimately orders his rats to dismember the supervillain Pretty's face.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: The Ratcatcher makes a cameo appearance in the comic series, "", set in the world of the DC Animated Universe. Ratcatcher appears as an attendee of a party hosted by Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy. This marks the character's first appearance in the DCAU.


title: Ratcatcher (comics)

text: A female variation of the Ratcatcher named Cleo Cazo / Ratcatcher 2 appears in "The Suicide Squad", portrayed by Daniela Melchior. This version is one of the eponymous team's newest members, and is the daughter of an unnamed previous Ratcatcher (portrayed by Taika Waititi). She and her father were homeless in Portugal until he invented technology to get the city's rat population to help them. Following his death from a heroin overdose, Cazo came to America and began a criminal career, only to be arrested and recruited into the Suicide Squad. Joined by her pet rat "Sebastian" (vocal effects provided by Dee Bradley Baker) and wielding her father's equipment, she assists the squad in infiltrating and destroying a Corto Maltese prison containing Starro, forming bonds with her teammates Bloodsport and King Shark along the way. During the squad's final battle against Starro, Cazo summons an army of Corto Maltese rats to overwhelm and kill the alien by consuming it from within after her teammate Harley Quinn wounds its eye.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last manually operated cable car system and an icon of the city of San Francisco. The system forms part of the intermodal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway, which also includes the separate E Embarcadero and F Market & Wharves heritage streetcar lines, and the Muni Metro modern light rail system. Of the 23 cable car lines established between 1873 and 1890, only three remain (one of which combines parts of two earlier lines): two routes from downtown near Union Square to Fisherman's Wharf, and a third route along California Street. While the cable cars are used to a certain extent by commuters, the vast majority of the millions of passengers who use the system every year are tourists, and as a result, the wait to get on can often reach two hours or more. They are among the most significant tourist attractions in the city, along with Alcatraz Island, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Fisherman's Wharf. San Francisco's cable cars are listed on the National Register of Historic Places and are designated as a National Historic Landmark.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: In 1869, Andrew Smith Hallidie had the idea for a cable car system in San Francisco, reportedly after witnessing an accident in which a streetcar drawn by horses over wet cobblestones slid backwards, killing the horses. Hallidie solicited financial support in 1871 and 1872, and his primary backers were Henry L. Davis, Joseph Britton, and James Moffit.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The first successful cable-operated street running train was the Clay Street Hill Railroad, which had its inaugural run on August 2, 1873. The promoter of the line was Hallidie, and the engineer was William Eppelsheimer; both Hallidie and Eppelsheimer obtained several patents for their work on the Clay Street line. The line involved the use of grip cars, which carried the grip that engaged with the cable, towing trailer cars; the design was the first to use grips. The term "grip" became synonymous with the operator.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The line started regular service on September 1, 1873, and its success led it to become the template for other cable car transit systems. It was a financial success, and Hallidie's patents were enforced on other cable car promoters, making him wealthy.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Accounts differ as to the precise degree of Hallidie's involvement in the inception of the line, and to the exact date on which it first ran. According to the franchise granted by the city, operations were required to begin by August 1, 1873. A retrospective published in 1895 stated that a single car was run over the line at 4 AM on the morning of August 1 with few witnesses to ensure the franchise would not expire. Eppelsheimer would later bring a suit against Hallidie and the Clay Street Hill RR in June 1877 over patents, but dismissed it voluntarily the following March.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The next cable car line to open was the Sutter Street Railway, which converted from horse operation in January 1877. This line introduced the side grip, and lever operation, both designed by Henry Casebolt and his assistant Asa Hovey, and patented by Casebolt. This idea came about because Casebolt did not want to pay Hallidie royalties of $50,000 a year for the use of his patent. The side grip allowed cable cars to cross at intersections.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: In 1878, Leland Stanford opened his California Street Cable Railroad (Cal Cable). This company's first line was on California Street, and is the oldest cable car line still in operation. In 1880, the Geary Street, Park & Ocean Railway began operation. The Presidio and Ferries Railway followed two years later, and was the first cable company to include curves on its routes. The curves were "let-go" curves, in which the car drops the cable and coasts around the curve on its own momentum.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: In 1883, the Market Street Cable Railway opened its first line. This company was controlled by the Southern Pacific Railroad and would grow to become San Francisco's largest cable car operator. At its peak, it operated five lines, all of which converged on Market Street to a common terminus at the Ferry Building. During rush hours, cars left that terminus every 15 seconds.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: In 1888, the Ferries and Cliff House Railway opened its initial two-line system. The Powell–Mason line is still operated on the same route today; their other route was the Powell–Washington–Jackson line, stretches of which are used by today's Powell–Hyde line. The Ferries & Cliff House Railway was also responsible for the building of a car barn and powerhouse at Washington and Mason, and this site is still in use today. In the same year, it also purchased the original Clay Street Hill Railway, which it incorporated into a new Sacramento–Clay line in 1892.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: In 1889, the Omnibus Railroad and Cable Company became the last new cable car operator in San Francisco. The following year the California Street Cable Railroad opened two new lines, these being the last entirely new cable car lines built in the city. One of them was the O'Farrell–Jones–Hyde line, the Hyde section of which still remains in operation as part of the current Powell–Hyde line.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Originally, the cables were powered by stationary steam engines. For its initial three cables, the Ferries & Cliff House Railway constructed a three-story structure to house two coal-burning steam engines. The building was complete with a smokestack to vent away the heavy black smoke created by the Welsh anthracite coal that the company burned. Expansion of service required two additional coal-fired steam engines in 1890. Coal consumption in 1893 was about 10 tons per day. The system was converted from coal to oil burning in 1901, and the lessened amount of smoke allowed the smokestack to be shortened to . This shortened smokestack still stands at Washington-Mason car barn today.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Electric energy was introduced in 1912, when a General Electric motor came online. By 1926, all steam operation of the cable ended when a second electric drive was installed, a General Electric motor. With the reduction in the number of cable car lines, the single 750-horsepower electric motor was eventually able to take over the job of running all of the lines. The limitation with that configuration was that if one cable car on one line broke down, all lines had to be stopped. Consequently, during the 1984 reconstruction, each of the four cables (California, Hyde, Mason and Powell) was separately powered by its own electric motor.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The first electric streetcars in San Francisco began operation in 1892 under the auspices of the San Francisco and San Mateo Electric Railway.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: By the beginning of 1906 many of San Francisco's remaining cable cars were under the control of the United Railroads of San Francisco (URR), although Cal Cable and the Geary Street Company remained independent. URR was pressing to convert many of its cable lines to overhead electric traction, but this was met with resistance from opponents who objected to what they saw as ugly overhead lines on the major thoroughfares of the city center.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Those objections disappeared after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. The quake and resulting fire destroyed the power houses and car barns of both the Cal Cable and the URR's Powell Street lines, together with the 117 cable cars stored within them. The subsequent race to rebuild the city allowed the URR to replace most of its cable car lines with electric streetcar lines. By 1912, only eight cable car lines remained, all with steep grades impassable to electric streetcars. In the 1920s and 1930s, these remaining lines came under pressure from the much-improved motor buses of the era, which could now climb steeper hills than the electric streetcar. By 1944, five of those cable car lines had survived: the two Powell Street lines – by then under municipal ownership, as part of Muni – and the three lines owned by the still-independent Cal Cable.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: In 1947, Mayor Roger Lapham proposed the closure of the two municipally owned lines. In response, a joint meeting of 27 women's civic groups, led by Friedel Klussmann, formed the "Citizens' Committee to Save the Cable Cars". In a famous battle of wills, the citizens' committee eventually forced a referendum on an amendment to the city charter, compelling the city to continue operating the Powell Street lines. This passed overwhelmingly, by 166,989 votes to 51,457. Klussman led another campaign in 1948 to have the city acquire Cal Cable, but the referendum fell short of the required majority, with 58% in favor of acquisition; a second referendum in 1949, requiring a simple majority, passed and the city began negotiations with Cal Cable.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: In August 1951, the three Cal Cable lines were shut down when the company was unable to afford insurance. The city purchased and reopened the lines in January 1952, but another referendum that would have funded maintenance for the California Street tracks and the powerhouse and car barn at Hyde and California failed in November 1953. The amendment to the city charter did not protect the newly acquired Cal Cable lines, and the city proceeded with plans to replace them with buses; in addition, businesses in Union Square and downtown began advancing plans to convert O'Farrell to automobile traffic, which would remove service through the Tenderloin district via the inner section of the O'Farrell Jones & Hyde line. The result was a compromise that formed the current system: the California Street line from Cal Cable, the Powell–Mason line already in municipal ownership, and a third hybrid line formed by grafting the Hyde Street section of Cal Cable's O'Farrell-Jones-Hyde line onto a truncated Powell–Washington–Jackson line, now known as the Powell–Hyde line.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: This solution required some rebuilding to convert the Hyde Street trackage and terminus to operation by the single-ended cars of the Powell line, and also to allow the whole system to be operated from a single car barn and power house. Despite the changes, much of the systems infrastructure remained unchanged from the time of the earthquake.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: By 1979, the cable car system had become unsafe; it needed to be closed for seven months for urgently-needed repairs. A subsequent engineering evaluation concluded that it needed comprehensive rebuilding at a cost of US$60 million (equivalent to $ million in ). Mayor Dianne Feinstein, who took charge of the effort, helped win federal funding for the bulk of the rebuilding job. In 1982, the cable car system was closed for the rebuild which involved the replacement of 69 city blocks' worth of tracks and cable channels, a rebuilding of the car barn and powerhouse within the original outer brick walls, new propulsion equipment, and the repair or rebuild of 37 cable cars. The system reopened on June 21, 1984, in time to benefit from the publicity that accompanied San Francisco's hosting of that year's Democratic National Convention.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Since 1984, Muni has continued to upgrade the system. Work has included rebuilding historic cars, building brand new replacement cars, building a new terminal and turntable at the Hyde and Beach terminus, and a new turntable at the Powell and Market terminus.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Between 2017 and 2019, the system received a second, but less extensive rebuild. Over the two-year project, Muni rehabilitated the cable car system's gearboxes, which had been in service since the last rebuild in 1984.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The system was shut down in March 2020 to protect operators during the COVID-19 pandemic, as cable cars do not offer a compartment separating them from passengers (unlike Muni buses, which kept running). Limited service on all three lines resumed on August 2, 2021. Full revenue service began on September 4. On September 9, a valve failure caused the fire suppression system in the carbarn to activate, shutting down electric power to the powerhouse. Service resumed on September 18.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The cable cars are an iconic part of San Francisco and are protected National Historic Landmarks, but they are not without their critics. Most complaints center around the high cost of operating a system that mostly serves tourists, and the large number of accidents involving the cable cars.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The cable car lines serve around seven million passengers per year, but the vast majority are tourists, rather than commuters. The area where the cable cars operate is well-served by a large number of buses and trolleybuses that often give residents better options for their trips. Also, during busy times, the wait to board a cable car can often reach two hours or more.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: While Muni does allow monthly passholders to ride the cable cars at no additional charge, single-ride fares are more than triple the fares charged on other Muni routes. The high fares led the San Francisco Chronicle to describe the cable cars in 2017 as a "cash cow" for Muni, yielding a yearly revenue of around $30 million. Still, according to Mission Local, the cable car system had a $46 million operating deficit in 2019. In 2006, then-Mayor Gavin Newsom reported that he had observed several conductors pocketing cash fares from riders without receipt. The following year, the San Francisco auditor's office reported that the city was not receiving the expected revenue from cable cars, with an estimated 40% of cable car riders riding for free. Muni's management disputed this figure and pointed out that safe operation, rather than revenue collection, is the primary duty of conductors. In 2017, after an audit showing that some conductors were "consistently turn[ing] in low amounts of cash", as well as a sting operation, one conductor was arrested on charges of felony embezzlement.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Among U.S. mass transportation systems the cable cars have the most accidents per year and per vehicle mile, with 126 accidents and 151 injuries reported in the 10 years ending 2013. In the three years ending 2013 the city paid some $8 million to settle four dozen cable car accident claims.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The cable cars are pulled by a cable running below the street, held by a grip that extends from the car through a slit in the street surface, between the rails. Each cable is in diameter, running at a constant speed of , and driven by a electric motor located in the central power house (see below), via a set of self-adjusting sheaves. Each cable has six steel strands, with each strand containing 19 wires, wrapped around a sisal rope core (to allow easier gripping). The cable is coated with a synthetic lubricant to reduce wear and friction. Historically, pine tar was used to lubricate the cable. To start and stop the movement of the car, the grip operator (see below) closes and opens the grip around the cable (similar to the clutch of a conventional car). The grip's jaws exert a pressure of up to on the cable. Due to wear and tear, a grip's dies have to be replaced after three days of usage.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: There are four separate cables: one length and one length for the Hyde and Mason segments, a length for their common Powell section, and one length for the California Street line.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Apart from the cable itself (which limits the speeds of cars when going downhill), the cable cars use three separate braking systems:


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: Over the years, the cable cars have been retrofitted with several electrical components, including headlights, interior lighting, a GPS tracking system and cameras. However, unlike most modern trains, the cable cars have no method to generate power on board and instead must use large batteries that are recharged in the car barn. In 2018, the incandescent bulbs used for the headlights and interior lighting were replaced with LED bulbs which increased visibility for operators and had a lower drain on the batteries.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: There is also a set of non-revenue tracks from the California Street line along Hyde Street to join the Powell–Hyde line at Hyde and Washington. This connection exists to enable California Street cars to reach the car barn.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: A small signal tower controls the crossing of the lines at the intersection of California Street and Powell Street. It has been rebuilt in 1907, 1937, 1967, and 2020–2021.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: The cable car system connects at both its terminals on Market Street with the F Market heritage streetcar line. The Taylor and Bay terminal, and the Hyde and Beach terminal, are both short walks from the F Market line. The system connects with other Muni lines and BART at the Powell & Market and California & Drumm terminals.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: As of January 1, 2020, riding a cable car costs $8 for a single ride, except for seniors riding before 7 am or after 9 pm when the fare is $4. Cable car rides are included in monthly Muni passes, as well as 1-day, 3-day, 7-day passes, and the CityPASS program. Passes loaded on a Clipper card can be read by the conductor with a mobile device. Transfers or fare receipts are not accepted. In the 1960s, the fare for a single ride was 15 cents.


title: San Francisco cable car system

text: There are 28 single-ended cars available for operation on the Powell lines and 12 double-ended cars on the California Street line.