title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang continued to infuse chinked-out elements into his next album "Heroes of Earth" (2005). Unlike the aboriginal tribal music heard in "Shangri-La", "Heroes of Earth" contained mixes of Beijing opera and Kunqu. Following the concept of "heroes", he collaborated with Ashin of Mayday ("Beside the Plum Blossoms"), Chinese American rapper Jin and opera master Li Yan ("Heroes of Earth"), and also K-pop artists Rain and Lim Jeong-hee ("Perfect Interaction"). "Heroes of Earth" was the fastest-selling album of both 2005 and 2006, selling over 1 million copies ten days after its release. Subsequently, the album stayed as No. 1 in the charts for six weeks, and remained in the charts for 23 weeks, ultimately becoming 2006's third best-selling album. By 2007, about 3 million units were sold, and has since been Wang's most commercially and critically successful album. The album earned Wang a Golden Melody Award for Best Mandarin Male Singer for the second time.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Three months after the release of "Heroes of Earth", he began the Heroes of Earth Tour, his first major world tour. The concert commenced with two shows per night in the Taipei Dome in March 2006, breaking Taiwan's concert attendance records.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang took a break in working on his music to film "Lust, Caution" (2007), an espionage thriller film directed by Ang Lee. He released a promotional single "Falling Leaves Return to Roots" on June 20, 2007 through Hito Radio, a month before the release of his twelfth studio album, "Change Me". "Falling Leaves Return to Roots" incorporated Broadway-influenced musical elements, with classical instrumental accompaniments, such as the violin and piano. When asked about the sudden change of music style, Wang explained that the inspiration behind the song was due to the influence of his portrayal of Kuang Yumin in "Lust, Caution". "In the past, I have only been releasing mainstream pop and chinked-out related hip hop. "Lust, Caution" made me return to 1930's Shanghai, re-living the moment."


title: Wang Leehom

text: "Change Me" was released on Friday, July 13, despite the superstition generally attached to Friday the 13th. Unlike his previous albums, "Change Me" mainly concentrates on pop rock, including influences of Broadway ("Falling Leaves Return to Roots") and old-school Taiwanese pop ("You Are a Song in My Heart"). Through this album, he promoted the issue of global warming and raised environmental awareness. The packaging of the album used only recycled paper and contained no plastic. He believed that small changes by each person can change the world. "To change the world, you start with changing yourself." Reviews of the album were generally positive, defining the album as "mature". An online album poll organized by China's Sohu, however, suggested that Wang's album did not meet expectations. Netizens remarked that his chinked-out productions were more impressive, although that genre itself has also been criticized. Nonetheless, over 1 million units were shipped on the first day of release. The album broke past 2 million sales, becoming one of Wang's best-selling albums.


title: Wang Leehom

text: In August 2008, Wang sought US$320,000 in damages for plagiarism by Pritam, an Indian composer. The lead song for the movie "Race" (2008), composed by Pritam, was allegedly copied from "In the Depths of the Bamboo Forest", a single taken off from Wang Leehom's "Shangri-La" album. In November 2008, Wang was selected to conduct the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra for their 2008 annual grand finale, being the first Asian pop musician to conduct the orchestra. The concert "Hong Kong Music, Leehom Wang" (港樂‧王力宏) was held in the Hong Kong Cultural Centre for three nights, with four shows, receiving CNN International coverage throughout.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang embarked on his second world tour, the MUSIC-MAN Tour, in the latter months of 2008. The tour commenced with two shows per night in the Taipei Dome in September 2008, three months before the release of Wang's thirteenth studio album, "Heart Beat". "Heart Beat" was released on December 26, debuting at No. 3 on the weekly G-Music charts. The album peaked at No. 1 on its seventh week of release, ultimately staying on the charts for 17 weeks. Like Wang's previous album, "Heart Beat" showed a similar emphasis of rock influences. The album largely focused on guitar and electric guitar solos, which Wang also used for performances in most of the album's music videos. Wanting to continue a similar "chinked-out" element, the album's first single, "What's Up with Rock?!" incorporated rock influences with Chinese flavor. For the track, he worked with pipa artist Liu Fang, and the two concentrated on mixing both electric guitar elements and pipa strings into the song.


title: Wang Leehom

text: On April 15, 2011, Wang Leehom took home the Best Male Singer (Hong Kong and Taiwan region), Best Album for "The 18 Martial Arts", and Best Newcomer Director Award for his directorial debut, Love in Disguise at the Global Chinese Music Awards.


title: Wang Leehom

text: On September 7, 2011, it was announced that Wang hired Wong Fu Productions to direct his upcoming music video.


title: Wang Leehom

text: On December 2, 2012, Wang Leehom surpassed actress Yao Chen to become the Chinese with most Weibo (the most popular micro-blog in China) fans.


title: Wang Leehom

text: On April 21, 2013, Wang became the first Chinese singer invited to speak at Oxford Union at the University of Oxford.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang's music varies in style greatly from album to album. Although he is classified as an R&B artist, Wang Leehom demonstrates competence with many styles of music ranging from traditional Mandopop, Broadway, jazz, rock, R&B, gospel, acoustic, Indipop, hip-hop, to rap. Many of the styles are infused with a Chinese flavor.


title: Wang Leehom

text: When he debuted, he sang old school pop and acoustic R&B ballads. Starting from "Revolution" (公轉自轉), Wang began to test out R&B pop music, but quickly jumped to a quirky style of dance-pop for "Impossible to Miss You" (不可能錯過你). Starting from "Forever's First Day" (永遠的第一天), he began composing rock songs with heavy electric guitar melodies and less emphasis on dance-pop. Nonetheless, he still concentrated in light R&B music. "The One and Only" (唯一) became his only fully produced rock album.


title: Wang Leehom

text: "Unbelievable" began a new road of music for Wang. Aside from the usual R&B grove, he contributed hip hop and rap that was not clearly emphasized in his past albums. "Not Your Average Thug" was a newly composed R&B style with a huge amount of American influence. "Can You Feel My World" was a different style of R&B, and the song contained great uses of the piano and violin as the accompaniment. Fast dance songs like "Ya Birthday" and "Girlfriend" () incorporated rapid rap and heavy drum rhythms. "Girlfriend" included a heavily emphasised chinese flute and a music style that is influenced by Indipop.


title: Wang Leehom

text: "Heroes of Earth" displayed a different side to chinked out. Instead of ethnic minority music, Wang focused on Beijing opera and Kunqu. He used instruments such as the erhu, guqin, and guzheng to infuse his new album with another side of traditional Chinese sound. "Beside the Plum Blossoms" () dealt with fast kunqu melodies. In the last 50 seconds of the song, Wang rapped over 250 words, increasing in speed towards the middle and then slowed down. This was to emphasize the accelerating and descending beats of traditional Chinese opera.


title: Wang Leehom

text: In addition to his chinked-out style of music, he is also noted for writing modern love ballads like "Forever Love", "Kiss Goodbye", "The One and Only" and most recently, "All the Things You Never Knew" (你不知道的事）which are sung with piano and string instrument accompaniments.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang collaborated with Swedish EDM DJ Avicii for his 2014 single "Lose Myself", which was the theme for the Storm Music Festival, China's biggest electronic music festival held on October 5 & 6, 2014 in Shanghai. The song is also the first single to be released from his 2015 album, "Your Love".


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang had displayed interest in acting when he starred in several musical plays when he was in high school and college. In 2000, he made his feature film debut in the Hong Kong action crime thriller, "China Strike Force", starring alongside Aaron Kwok, Norika Fujiwara, and Ruby Lin. Hong Kong critics had remarked Wang for giving a well-toned performance as his first film. His next starring role was the 2001 Hong Kong science fiction film "The Avenging Fist" as the main character Nova. He then starred in two Japanese films "Moon Child" (2003) and "Starlit High Noon" (2005).


title: Wang Leehom

text: The major breakthrough in his film career was in "Lust, Caution", directed and produced by Academy Award-winner Ang Lee. The film is based on a novella written by Eileen Chang and revolves around a plot to assassinate a high-ranking Chinese official in the Wang Jingwei Government using a beautiful young woman as bait. Wang plays Kuang Yumin, a patriotic college student who persuades Wong Chia-chi (Tang Wei) to seduce Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). The film was released in the US cinemas on September 28, 2007. "Lust, Caution" was produced on a budget of approximately $15 million and grossed $64,574,876 worldwide.


title: Wang Leehom

text: In 2010, Wang stepped behind the camera to direct and star in, "Love in Disguise" (), also starring Liu Yifei and Joan Chen. "Love in Disguise" went on to become the highest-grossing film for a first-time director in Chinese history grossing over 60,000,000 RMB domestically.


title: Wang Leehom

text: In July 2013, Wang was announced to be starring in an adaptation of Stan Lee's "Annihilator". The film is a co-production between Magic Storm Entertainment, who partners with Stan Lee's POW! Entertainment banner and the Chinese state-run National Film Capital.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang co-starred with Chris Hemsworth and Tang Wei in "Blackhat" (2015), an action thriller film on cybercrime which was written, directed and produced by Michael Mann.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang is one of the most highly visible celebrities in Asia due in no small part to his many product endorsements including: Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Sony Ericsson, Bausch & Lomb, Bosideng MAN, Garnier, Lay's Chips, Nikon, Brand's, Hyundai, and also Wahaha purified drinking water, which he has endorsed since 1999.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang's Bausch & Lomb print advertisements and TV commercials featured prominently in the popular 2008–2010 TV series "Chou Nu Wu Di". The series, which took place at an advertising agency, was an adaptation of the 1999 Colombian telenovela "Yo soy Betty, la fea".


title: Wang Leehom

text: In December 2021, in the aftermath of infidelity scandals, several brands including Infiniti and Chow Tai Seng, terminated their endorsement deals with Wang. Infiniti had just signed an endorsement deal with Wang 2 days earlier.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang is also recognized for his effort and financial contributions to charity. He is active with Worldvision and has visited Laos and Sierra Leone in the last couple of years to raise awareness about the state of poverty in those countries. He personally sponsors over 20 underprivileged children throughout the world with NGO World Vision and frequently participates in the much needed fund-raising campaigns for disaster relief such as the massive earthquake at Sichuan (2008) and Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan (2009). In 2003, he and David Tao composed a song titled Hand in Hand (sung by over 80 celebrities in Taiwan) to promote support and courage to those affected by SARS.


title: Wang Leehom

text: In 2012, on World Vision Malaysia's 15th Anniversary, Wang was named as the 30-Hour Famine Ambassador. In 2019, he is once again named Ambassador Of World Vision Malaysia


title: Wang Leehom

text: Since 2012, Wang has been starting almost every year by holding a free show for his fans. The shows are usually held in an intimate setting with him and a small band in different cities every year, and tickets are given away free-of-charge on a first-come-first-served basis. The annual show has been held in the following cities:


title: Wang Leehom

text: In 2020, Wang joined the "Stand Against Racism in the Time of COVID" forum held by Asia Society, alongside guests such as Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Representative Ted Lieu.


title: Wang Leehom

text: Wang was chosen as one of the torchbearers to run in Greece. He was torchbearer number 17 on March 24, the first day of the torch relay. He also attended the torch lighting ceremony before his run. Wang took the torch from Liu Hongliang, son of the first Chinese to attend the Olympic games, Liu Changchun. He represented the newest generation of singers from Taiwan and China. He was chosen mainly because he is devoted to helping save the environment, as shown in his latest album "Change Me".


title: Wang Leehom

text: Another reason he was chosen is due to Wang's enthusiasm in the 2008 Olympic Games Theme Songs Competition. His single "One World One Dream" was chosen as an Olympic Games participation song. The single was written, sung, produced, and scored entirely by himself. He sang along with Jackie Chan, Stephanie Sun, and Han Hong in the song for "The One Man Olympics" which was about the first Chinese to be in the Olympics. He also sang in the 100 days countdown theme song "Beijing Welcomes You". He also sang alongside Stefanie Sun, Wang Feng, and Jane Zhang in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Torch Relay theme song "Light the Passion, Share the Dream". He is also one of the candidates on vote for performer of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games theme song. In the closing ceremony, he sang "Beijing Beijing, I Love Beijing" alongside Hong Kong singer Kelly Chen and Korean singer Rain.


title: Wang Leehom

text: During a Q&A session at Oxford University, Wang identified as a Christian. He did not specify if he adheres to any particular denomination.


title: Wang Leehom

text: On November 27, 2013, Wang married Taiwanese girlfriend, Lee Jinglei (李靚蕾). Lee came from a Japanese-Taiwanese family and was known by the name Michiko Nishimura when she attended Dominican International School in Taipei. Lee is her mother's surname. The couple has three children: two daughters, Wang Jiali, born July 2014 and Wang Jiana, born October 2016, and a son, Wang Jiayao, born August 2018.


title: Wang Leehom

text: On December 16, 2021, Wang announced they are separated and filing for divorce. On December 17, Lee began posting a series of accusations on Instagram and Sina Weibo against Wang, claiming serial infidelity, and having underaged sex with her when she was 16 years old. Lee's posts shocked the internet, especially Wang's fanbase, and were viewed over 3.3 billion times on Weibo. Wang stated he was being falsely smeared by Lee, and refuted all allegations of infidelity, and underage sex, with evidence posted, including a screenshot of the couple's first e-mail correspondence, dated 2011, when Lee was 24 years old, suggesting they were not intimate since she was a minor, as Lee claimed. Singers Vivian Hsu and By2 member Yumi Bai, who Lee accused of being Wang's mistresses during her marriage to Wang, both took legal action against Lee. Hsu's lawyers released several official statements denying the allegations. Yumi Bai sued Lee for defamation. Lee also responded, refuting some of Wang's points. Wang later made a general apology for not managing his marriage well as a public figure, adding that he would transfer the house to Lee and announced he will temporarily quit the entertainment business. After Wang's general apology for not handling his marriage well, Lee rejected the house offer and explained her reasons for making the matter public, saying that she did not receive a sincere apology, adding that children needed honest and trustworthy parents who can face their issues and change instead of perfect parents and that she was not out for the money. Lee ended with a general apology to "innocent parties dragged into the saga". Wang Leehom and Jinglei Lee are now suing each other for custody of their three children after Lee failed to comply with several orders from the Supreme Court of the State of New York to allow Wang to see his children, ending in an


title: Wang Leehom

text: OSC for Contempt of Court, which was later denied on account of jurisdiction. The ex-couple's custody battle has since moved to Taiwan.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In English historically represented (the voiceless velar fricative, as in the Scottish Gaelic word ), and still does in "lough" and certain other Hiberno-English words, especially proper nouns. In the dominant dialects of modern English, is almost always either silent or pronounced (see Ough). It is thought that before disappearing, the sound became partially or completely voiced to or , which would explain the new spelling — Old English used a simple  — and the diphthongization of any preceding vowel.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: Alexander John Ellis reported it being pronounced as on the Yorkshire-Lancashire border and in close to the Scottish border in the late nineteenth century.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: When gh occurs at the beginning of a word in English, it is pronounced as in "ghost", "ghastly", "ghoul", "ghetto", "ghee" etc. In this context, it does not derive from a former .


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In Middle Dutch, was often used to represent (the voiced velar fricative) before , , and . This usage survives in place name such as Ghent.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: The spelling of English word "ghost" with a (from Middle English ) was likely influenced by the Middle Dutch spelling (Modern Dutch ).


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In Italian and Romanian, represents (the voiced velar plosive) before and . In Esperanto orthography, (or ) can be used when the is missing, which represents . In Galician, it is often used to represent the pronunciation of gheada.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In Irish, represents (the voiced velar fricative) and (the voiced palatal approximant). Word-initially it represents the lenition of , for example 'my jaw' (compare 'jaw').


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In the Malay and Indonesian alphabet, is used to represent the voiced velar fricative () in Arabic origin words.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: The Maltese language has a related digraph, . It is considered a single letter, called "għajn" (the same word for eye and spring, named for the corresponding Arabic letter ʿayn). It is usually silent, but it is necessary to be included because it changes the pronunciation of neighbouring letters, usually lengthening the succeeding vowels. At the end of a word, when not substituted by an apostrophe, it is pronounced . Its function is thus not unlike modern English "gh", except that the English version comes after vowels rather than before like Maltese "għ" ("għajn" would come out something like "ighn" if spelled as in English).


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In the Roman Swahili alphabet, is used to represent the voiced velar fricative () in Arabic origin words.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In the romanization of various languages, usually represents the voiced velar fricative (). Like , may also be pharyngealized, as in several Caucasian and Native American languages.


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In transcriptions of Indo-Aryan languages such as Sanskrit and Hindi, as well as their ancestor, Proto-Indo-European, represents a voiced velar aspirated plosive (often referred to as a breathy or murmured voiced velar plosive).


title: Gh (digraph)

text: In the romanization of Ukrainian language is used seldom to avoid occurrence of another digraph, usually which is used for another type of phoneme. Such as the word "flock" in Ukrainian would be Romanized as zghraya () rather than zhraya, which could be misconstrued to intend .


title: Philia

text: Philia (; ), is one of the four ancient Greek words for love: "philia", "storge", "agape" and "eros". In Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics", philia is usually translated as "friendship" or affection. The complete opposite is called a phobia.


title: Philia

text: As Gerard Hughes points out, in Books VIII and IX of his "Nicomachean Ethics" Aristotle gives examples of philia including:


title: Philia

text: All of these different relationships involve getting on well with someone, though Aristotle at times implies that something more like actual liking is required. When he is talking about the character or disposition that falls between obsequiousness or flattery on the one hand and surliness or quarrelsomeness on the other, he says that this state:


title: Philia

text: This passage indicates also that, though broad, the notion of philia must be mutual, and thus excludes relationships with inanimate objects, though philia with animals, such as pets, is allowed for (see 1155b27–31).


title: Philia

text: Aristotle takes philia to be both necessary as a means to happiness ("no one would choose to live without friends even if he had all the other goods" [1155a5–6]) and noble or fine (καλόν) in itself.


title: Philia

text: Aristotle divides friendships into three types, based on the motive for forming them: friendships of utility, friendships of pleasure and friendships of the good.


title: Philia

text: Friendships of utility are relationships formed without regard to the other person at all. Buying merchandise, for example, may require meeting another person but usually needs only a very shallow relationship between the buyer and seller. In modern English, people in such a relationship would not even be called friends, but acquaintances (if they even remembered each other afterwards). The only reason these people are communicating is in order to buy or sell things, which is not a bad thing, but as soon as that motivation is gone, so goes the relationship between the two people unless another motivation is found. Complaints and quarrels generally only arise in this type of friendship.


title: Philia

text: At the next level, friendships of pleasure are based on pure delight in the company of other people. People who drink together or share a hobby may have such friendships. However, these friends may also part—in this case if they no longer enjoy the shared activity, or can no longer participate in it together.


title: Philia

text: Friendships of the good are ones where both friends enjoy each other's characters. As long as both friends keep similar characters, the relationship will endure since the motive behind it is care for the friend. This is the highest level of philia, and in modern English might be called true friendship.


title: Philia

text: Not all bonds of philia involves reciprocity Aristotle notes. Some examples of these might include love of father to son, elder to younger or ruler to subject. Generally though, the bonds of philia are symmetrical.


title: Philia

text: If philia is a type of love, Thomas Jay Oord has argued that it must be defined so as not to contradict love. Oord defines philia as an intentional response to promote well-being when cooperating with or befriending others. And his philia is not only that meaning. The philia also gives humans authentic friendship.


title: Philia

text: Aristotle recognizes that there is an apparent conflict between what he says about "philia" and what he says elsewhere (and what is widely held at the time) about the self-sufficient nature of the fulfilled life:


title: Philia

text: He offers various answers. The first is based on the inherent goodness of acting for and being concerned for others ("the excellent person labours for his friends and for his native country, and will die for them if he must" [1169a19–20]); thus, being a wholly virtuous and fulfilled person necessarily involves having others for whom one is concerned—without them, one's life is incomplete:


title: Philia

text: Aristotle's second answer is: "good people's life together allows the cultivation of virtue" (1170a12). Finally, he argues that one's friend is "another oneself," and so the pleasure that the virtuous person gets from his own life is also found in the life of another virtuous person. "Anyone who is to be happy, then, must have excellent friends" (1170b19).


title: Philia

text: For Aristotle, in order to feel the highest form of philia for another, one must feel it for oneself; the object of philia is, after all, "another oneself." This alone does not commit Aristotle to egoism, of course. Not only is self-love not incompatible with love of others, but Aristotle is careful to distinguish the sort of self-love that is condemned (ascribed to "those who award the biggest share in money, honours, and bodily pleasures to themselves. For these are the goods desired and eagerly pursued by the many on the assumption that they are best" [1168b17–19]) from that which should be admired (ascribed to one who "is always eager above all to perform just or temperate actions or any other actions in accord with the virtues, and in general always gains for himself what is fine [noble, good]" [1168b25–27]). In fact:


title: Philia

text: Aristotle also holds, though, that, as Hughes puts it: "[t]he only ultimately justifiable reason for doing anything is that acting in that way will contribute to a fulfilled life." Thus acts of "philia" might seem to be essentially egoistic, performed apparently to help others, but in fact intended to increase the agent's happiness. This, however, confuses the nature of the action with its motivation; the good person doesn't perform an action to help a friend because it will give her fulfillment; she performs it in order to help the friend, and in performing it makes both her friend and herself happy. The action is thus good both in itself and for the effect it has on the agent's happiness.


title: D (programming language)

text: D, also known as dlang, is a multi-paradigm system programming language created by Walter Bright at Digital Mars and released in 2001. Andrei Alexandrescu joined the design and development effort in 2007. Though it originated as a re-engineering of C++, D is a profoundly different language —features of D can be considered streamlined and expanded-upon ideas from C++, however D also draws inspiration from other high-level programming languages, notably Java, Python, Ruby, C#, and Eiffel.


title: D (programming language)

text: D combines the performance and safety of compiled languages with the expressive power of modern dynamic and functional programming languages. Idiomatic D code is commonly as fast as equivalent C++ code, while also being shorter. The language as a whole is not memory-safe but includes optional attributes designed to guarantee memory safety of either subsets of or the whole program.


title: D (programming language)

text: Type inference, automatic memory management and syntactic sugar for common types allow faster development, while bounds checking and design by contract find bugs earlier at runtime, and a concurrency-aware type system catches bugs at compile time.


title: D (programming language)

text: D was designed with lessons learned from practical C++ usage, rather than from a purely theoretical perspective. Although the language uses many C and C++ concepts, it also discards some, or uses different approaches (and syntax) to achieve some goals. As such, it is not source compatible (nor does it aim to be) with C and C++ source code in general (some simpler code bases from these languages might by luck work with D, or require some porting). D has, however, been constrained in its design by the rule that any code that was legal in both C and D should behave in the same way.


title: D (programming language)

text: D gained some features before C++, such as closures, anonymous functions, compile-time function execution, ranges, built-in container iteration concepts and type inference. D adds to the functionality of C++ by also implementing design by contract, unit testing, true modules, garbage collection, first class arrays, associative arrays, dynamic arrays, array slicing, nested functions, lazy evaluation, scoped (deferred) code execution, and a re-engineered template syntax. C++ multiple inheritance was replaced by Java-style single inheritance with interfaces and mixins. On the other hand, D's declaration, statement and expression syntax closely matches that of C++.


title: D (programming language)

text: D retains C++'s ability to perform low-level programming including inline assembler, which typifies the differences between D and application languages like Java and C#. Inline assembler lets programmers enter machine-specific assembly code within standard D code, a method used by system programmers to access the low-level features of the processor needed to run programs that interface directly with the underlying hardware, such as operating systems and device drivers, as well as writing high-performance code (i.e. using vector extensions, SIMD) that is hard to generate by the compiler automatically.


title: D (programming language)

text: D supports function overloading and operator overloading, as well as dynamic arrays and associative arrays by default. Symbols (functions, variables, classes) can be declared in any order - forward declarations are not required. Similarly imports can be done almost in any order, and even be scoped (i.e. import some module or part of it inside a function, class or unittest only). D has built-in support for documentation comments, allowing automatic documentation generation.


title: D (programming language)

text: In D, text character strings are just arrays of characters, and arrays in D are bounds-checked, unlike those in C++. Specific operators for string handling exist, visually distinct from mathematical corellaries. D has first class types for complex and imaginary numbers, and evaluates expressions involving such types, efficiently.


title: D (programming language)

text: Imperative programming in D is almost identical to that in C. Functions, data, statements, declarations and expressions work just as they do in C, and the C runtime library may be accessed directly. On the other hand, some notable differences between D and C in the area of imperative programming include D's codice_1 loop construct, which allows looping over a collection, and nested functions, which are functions that are declared inside another and may access the enclosing function's local variables.


title: D (programming language)

text: Object-oriented programming in D is based on a single inheritance hierarchy, with all classes derived from class Object. D does not support multiple inheritance; instead, it uses Java-style interfaces, which are comparable to C++'s pure abstract classes, and mixins, which separates common functionality from the inheritance hierarchy. D also allows the defining of static and final (non-virtual) methods in interfaces.


title: D (programming language)

text: Classes (and interfaces) in D can contain invariants which are automatically checked before and after entry to public methods, in accordance with the design by contract methodology.


title: D (programming language)

text: Many aspects of classes (and structs) can be introspected automatically at compile time (a form of reflection using codice_2) and at run time (RTTI / codice_3), to facilitate generic code or automatic code generation (usually using compile-time techniques).


title: D (programming language)

text: D supports functional programming features such as function literals, closures, recursively-immutable objects and the use of higher-order functions. There are two syntaxes for anonymous functions, including a multiple-statement form and a "shorthand" single-expression notation:


title: D (programming language)

text: There are two built-in types for function literals, codice_4, which is simply a pointer to a stack-allocated function, and codice_5, which also includes a pointer to the surrounding environment. Type inference may be used with an anonymous function, in which case the compiler creates a codice_5 unless it can prove that an environment pointer is not necessary. Likewise, to implement a closure, the compiler places enclosed local variables on the heap only if necessary (for example, if a closure is returned by another function, and exits that function's scope). When using type inference, the compiler will also add attributes such as codice_7 and codice_8 to a function's type, if it can prove that they apply.


title: D (programming language)

text: Other functional features such as currying and common higher-order functions such as map, filter, and reduce are available through the standard library modules codice_9 and codice_10.


title: D (programming language)

text: Alternatively, the above function compositions can be expressed using Uniform function call syntax (UFCS) for more natural left-to-right reading:


title: D (programming language)

text: Parallel programming concepts are implemented in the library, and do not require extra support from the compiler. However the D type system and compiler ensure that data sharing can be detected and managed transparently.


title: D (programming language)

text: The same module also supports codice_13 which can be used for dynamic creation of parallel tasks, as well as map-filter-reduce and fold style operations on ranges (and arrays), which is useful when combined with functional operations. codice_14 returns a lazily evaluated range rather than an array. This way, the elements are computed by each worker task in parallel automatically.


title: D (programming language)

text: Concurrency is fully implemented in the library, and it does not require support from the compiler. Alternative implementations and methodologies of writing concurrent code are possible. The use of D typing system does help ensure memory safety.


title: D (programming language)

text: Metaprogramming is supported through templates, compile-time function execution, tuples, and string mixins. The following examples demonstrate some of D's compile-time features.


title: D (programming language)

text: Templates in D can be written in a more imperative style compared to the C++ functional style for templates. This is a regular function that calculates the factorial of a number:


title: D (programming language)

text: Here, the use of codice_15, D's compile-time conditional construct, is demonstrated to construct a template that performs the same calculation using code that is similar to that of the function above:


title: D (programming language)

text: In the following two examples, the template and function defined above are used to compute factorials. The types of constants need not be specified explicitly as the compiler infers their types from the right-hand sides of assignments:


title: D (programming language)

text: This is an example of compile-time function execution (CTFE). Ordinary functions may be used in constant, compile-time expressions provided they meet certain criteria:


title: D (programming language)

text: The codice_16 function performs codice_17-like data formatting (also at compile-time, through CTFE), and the "msg" pragma displays the result at compile time:


title: D (programming language)

text: String mixins, combined with compile-time function execution, allow for the generation of D code using string operations at compile time. This can be used to parse domain-specific languages, which will be compiled as part of the program:


title: D (programming language)

text: Memory is usually managed with garbage collection, but specific objects may be finalized immediately when they go out of scope. This is what the majority of programs and libraries written in D use.


title: D (programming language)

text: In case more control over memory layout and better performance is needed, explicit memory management is possible using the overloaded operators codice_18 and codice_19, by calling C's malloc and free directly, or implementing custom allocator schemes (i.e. on stack with fallback, RAII style allocation, reference counting, shared reference counting). Garbage collection can be controlled: programmers may add and exclude memory ranges from being observed by the collector, can disable and enable the collector and force either a generational or full collection cycle. The manual gives many examples of how to implement different highly optimized memory management schemes for when garbage collection is inadequate in a program.


title: D (programming language)

text: In functions, codice_20 instances are by default allocated on the stack, while codice_21 instances by default allocated on the heap (with only reference to the class instance being on the stack). However this can be changed for classes, for example using standard library template codice_22, or by using codice_18 for structs and assigning to a pointer instead of a value-based variable.


title: D (programming language)

text: In functions, static arrays (of known size) are allocated on the stack. For dynamic arrays, one can use the codice_24 function (similar to codice_25 in C), to allocate memory on the stack. The returned pointer can be used (recast) into a (typed) dynamic array, by means of a slice (however resizing array, including appending must be avoided; and for obvious reasons they must not be returned from the function).


title: D (programming language)

text: A codice_26 keyword can be used both to annotate parts of code, but also variables and classes/structs, to indicate they should be destroyed (destructor called) immediately on scope exit. Whatever the memory is deallocated also depends on implementation and class-vs-struct differences.


title: D (programming language)

text: codice_27 contains a modular and composable allocator templates, to create custom high performance allocators for special use cases.


title: D (programming language)

text: is the name given to the subset of D that can be guaranteed to be memory safe (no writes to memory that has not been allocated or that has been recycled). Functions marked codice_28 are checked at compile time to ensure that they do not use any features that could result in corruption of memory, such as pointer arithmetic and unchecked casts, and any other functions called must also be marked as codice_28 or codice_30. Functions can be marked codice_30 for the cases where the compiler cannot distinguish between safe use of a feature that is disabled in SafeD and a potential case of memory corruption.


title: D (programming language)

text: Initially under the banners of DIP1000 and DIP25 (now part of the language specification), D provides protections against certain ill-formed constructions involving the lifetimes of data.


title: D (programming language)

text: The current mechanisms in place primarily deal with function parameters and stack memory however it is a stated ambition of the leadership of the programming language to provide a more thorough treatment of lifetimes within the D programming language (influenced by ideas from Rust programming language).


title: D (programming language)

text: Within @safe code, the lifetime of an assignment involving a reference type is checked to ensure that the lifetime of the assignee is longer than that of the assigned.


title: D (programming language)

text: When applied to function parameter which are either of pointer type or references, the keywords "return" and "scope" constrain the lifetime and use of that parameter.


title: D (programming language)

text: C's application binary interface (ABI) is supported, as well as all of C's fundamental and derived types, enabling direct access to existing C code and libraries. D bindings are available for many popular C libraries. Additionally, C's standard library is part of standard D.


title: D (programming language)

text: As long as memory management is properly taken care of, many other languages can be mixed with D in a single binary. For example, GDC compiler allow to link C, C++, and other supported language codes to be intermixed. D code (functions) can also be marked as using C, C++, Pascal ABIs, and thus be passed to the libraries written in these languages as callbacks. Similarly data can be interchanged between the codes written in these languages in both ways. This usually restricts use to primitive types, pointers, some forms of arrays, unions, structs, and only some types of function pointers.


title: D (programming language)

text: Because many other programming languages often provide the C API for writing extensions or running the interpreter of the languages, D can interface directly with these languages as well, using standard C bindings (with a thin D interface file). For example, there are bi-directional bindings for languages like Python, Lua and other languages, often using compile-time code generation and compile-time type reflection methods.


title: D (programming language)

text: The D programming language has an official subset known as "". This subset forbids access to D features requiring use of runtime libraries other than that of C.


title: D (programming language)

text: Enabled via the compiler flags "-betterC" on DMD and LDC, and "-fno-druntime" on GDC, may only call into D code compiled under the same flag (and linked code other than D) but code compiled without the option may call into code compiled with it: this will, however, lead to slightly different behaviours due to differences in how C and D handle asserts.


title: D (programming language)

text: Walter Bright started working on a new language in 1999. D was first released in December 2001 and reached version 1.0 in January 2007. The first version of the language (D1) concentrated on the imperative, object oriented and metaprogramming paradigms, similar to C++.


title: D (programming language)

text: Some members of the D community dissatisfied with Phobos, D's official runtime and standard library, created an alternative runtime and standard library named Tango. The first public Tango announcement came within days of D 1.0's release. Tango adopted a different programming style, embracing OOP and high modularity. Being a community-led project, Tango was more open to contributions, which allowed it to progress faster than the official standard library. At that time, Tango and Phobos were incompatible due to different runtime support APIs (the garbage collector, threading support, etc.). This made it impossible to use both libraries in the same project. The existence of two libraries, both widely in use, has led to significant dispute due to some packages using Phobos and others using Tango.


title: D (programming language)

text: In June 2007, the first version of D2 was released. The beginning of D2's development signaled D1's stabilization. The first version of the language has been placed in maintenance, only receiving corrections and implementation bugfixes. D2 introduced breaking changes to the language, beginning with its first experimental const system. D2 later added numerous other language features, such as closures, purity, and support for the functional and concurrent programming paradigms. D2 also solved standard library problems by separating the runtime from the standard library. The completion of a D2 Tango port was announced in February 2012.


title: D (programming language)

text: The release of Andrei Alexandrescu's book "The D Programming Language" on 12 June 2010, marked the stabilization of D2, which today is commonly referred to as just "D".


title: D (programming language)

text: In January 2011, D development moved from a bugtracker / patch-submission basis to GitHub. This has led to a significant increase in contributions to the compiler, runtime and standard library.


title: D (programming language)

text: In December 2011, Andrei Alexandrescu announced that D1, the first version of the language, would be discontinued on 31 December 2012. The final D1 release, D v1.076, was on 31 December 2012.


title: D (programming language)

text: Code for the official D compiler, the "Digital Mars D compiler" by Walter Bright, was originally released under a custom license, qualifying as source available but not conforming to the open source definition. In 2014, the compiler front-end was re-licensed as open source under the Boost Software License. This re-licensed code excluded the back-end, which had been partially developed at Symantec. On 7 April 2017, the whole compiler was made available under the Boost license after Symantec gave permission to re-license the back-end, too. On 21 June 2017, the D Language was accepted for inclusion in GCC.


title: D (programming language)

text: Using above compilers and toolchains, it is possible to compile D programs to target many different architectures, including x86, amd64, AArch64, PowerPC, MIPS64, DEC Alpha, Motorola m68k, Sparc, s390, WebAssembly. The primary supported operating systems are Windows and Linux, but various compilers also support Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, AIX, Solaris/OpenSolaris and Android, either as a host or target, or both. WebAssembly target (supported via LDC and LLVM) can operate in any WebAssembly environment, like modern web browser (Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, Apple Safari), or dedicated Wasm virtual machines.


title: D (programming language)

text: Editors and integrated development environments (IDEs) supporting syntax highlighting and partial code completion for the language include SlickEdit, Emacs, vim, SciTE, Smultron, Zeus, and Geany among others.


title: D (programming language)

text: Open source D IDEs for Windows exist, some written in D, such as Poseidon, D-IDE, and Entice Designer.


title: D (programming language)

text: D applications can be debugged using any C/C++ debugger, like GDB or WinDbg, although support for various D-specific language features is extremely limited. On Windows, D programs can be debugged using Ddbg, or Microsoft debugging tools (WinDBG and Visual Studio), after having converted the debug information using cv2pdb. The ZeroBUGS debugger for Linux has experimental support for the D language. Ddbg can be used with various IDEs or from the command line; ZeroBUGS has its own graphical user interface (GUI).


title: D (programming language)

text: "DustMite" is a powerful tool for minimizing D source code, useful when finding compiler or tests issues.


title: D (programming language)

text: "dub" is a popular package and build manager for D applications and libraries, and is often integrated into IDE support.


title: D (programming language)

text: This example program prints its command line arguments. The codice_36 function is the entry point of a D program, and codice_37 is an array of strings representing the command line arguments. A codice_38 in D is an array of characters, represented by codice_39.


title: D (programming language)

text: The codice_1 statement can iterate over any collection. In this case, it is producing a sequence of indexes (codice_41) and values (codice_42) from the array codice_37. The index codice_41 and the value codice_42 have their types inferred from the type of the array codice_37.


title: D (programming language)

text: The following shows several D capabilities and D design trade-offs in a short program. It iterates over the lines of a text file named codice_47, which contains a different word on each line, and prints all the words that are anagrams of other words.


title: D (programming language)

text: Notable organisations that use the D programming language for projects include Facebook, eBay, and Netflix.


title: D (programming language)

text: D has been successfully used for AAA games, language interpreters, virtual machines, an operating system kernel, GPU programming, web development, numerical analysis, GUI applications, a passenger information system, machine learning, text processing, web and application servers and research.


title: 2022 WTA 125 tournaments

text: The WTA 125 tournaments are the secondary professional tennis circuit organised by the Women's Tennis Association. The 2022 calendar consists of twenty-four tournaments.


title: 2022 WTA 125 tournaments

text: These tables present the number of singles (S) and doubles (D) titles won by each player and each nation during the season. The players/nations are sorted by: 1) total number of titles (a doubles title won by two players representing the same nation counts as only one win for the nation); 2) a singles > doubles hierarchy; 3) alphabetical order (by family names for players).


title: 2022 WTA 125 tournaments

text: "To avoid confusion and double counting, these tables should be updated only after an event is completed."


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The Metro Manila Subway, formerly known as the Mega Manila Subway (MMS), is an under-construction underground rapid transit line in Metro Manila, Philippines. The line, which will run north–south between Quezon City, Pasig, Makati, Taguig, Parañaque and Pasay, consists of 15 stations between the and stations. It will become the country's second direct airport rail link after the North–South Commuter Railway, with a branch line to Ninoy Aquino International Airport.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: Dubbed as the "Project of the Century" in the country, the subway line's groundbreaking took place on February 27, 2019, and construction began the following December. Construction however suffered delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is scheduled to be partially opened in 2025, and will be substantially operational by 2028 or 2029. The project is expected to cost ₱355.6billion (equivalent to US$7billion in 2017 dollars). Much of its cost is covered by a loan provided by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The line is integrated with the public transit system in Metro Manila, and passengers also take various forms of road-based public transport, such as buses and jeepneys, to and from a station to reach their intended destination. The line is also designed to connect with other urban rail transit services in the region. Riders may transfer to LRT Line 1, MRT Line 3, and MRT Line 7 at the nearby North Triangle Common Station, which is also currently under construction. Other connections include the existing LRT Line 2 and PNR Metro Commuter Line, as well as the planned Makati Intra-city Subway, the MRT Line 4, and MRT Line 8.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The first phase was initially planned to be long. However, it is estimated to be actually long. The project involves the construction of 17 stations in its first phase (listed from north to south):


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The following phases of the subway project would involve extending lines up to San Jose del Monte, Bulacan, north of Metro Manila ( from the proposed Mindanao Avenue station), and down to Dasmariñas, Cavite, south of Metro Manila ( from the proposed Ninoy Aquino International Airport station). The entire system, when completed, will serve up to 1.74 million passengers daily.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The initial plan was later modified in June 2020, with DOTr adding the East Valenzuela, Lawton, and Senate stations. The East Valenzuela station will be located in the subway's depot, while the Lawton and Senate stations replaced the Cayetano Boulevard station. However, these modifications are subject to the approval of NEDA and JICA.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: DOTr and JICA also propose a physical connection and interoperability between the North–South Commuter Railway and MMS. It proposes MMS rolling stock to switch over to the at-grade NSCR-South tracks around the area, via a physical connection of the tracks and electrical supply, and operate through services to NSCR-South stations from towards and vice versa.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The idea of building a subway in the Greater Manila Area had been forwarded as early as 1973, when the JICA (at the time known as the Overseas Technical Cooperation Agency or OTCA) and former Secretary of Public Works and Highways David Consunji conducted a study on what shall later be Metro Manila (formally constituted on November 7, 1975). The 1973 plan was known as the Urban Transport Study in Manila Metropolitan Area (UTSMMA). It was also proposed to be part of the 1977 Metro Manila Transport, Land Use and Development Planning Project (MMETROPLAN), which was funded by the World Bank. However, the plan was not included and implemented, for some of the areas included in the plan, such as Marikina and Cainta, are prone to flooding. Instead, what was built was the Manila Light Rail Transit System Line 1, opened on December 1, 1984 and completed on May 12, 1985. According to Felino Palafox, the LRT was the most feasible transport system at that time. Nevertheless, the current Manila Light Rail Transit System (mostly elevated) is shorter than the line system forwarded in 1973.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The 1973 plan provided for the construction of five heavy rail subway lines in Metro Manila. The first line (Line 1) would have a length of , running from Constitution Hills (now Batasan Hills), Quezon City to Talon, Las Piñas. The second line (Line 2), meanwhile, would be long from Novaliches, Quezon City to Cainta, Rizal, while Line 3 for throughout Epifanio de los Santos Avenue. The fourth line (Line 4) would have been long from Marikina to Zapote, Bacoor, and the fifth line would have a length of from Rizal Avenue, Manila to Meycauayan, Bulacan. The plan would have resolved the traffic problems of Metro Manila and would have taken 15 years to complete, or until 1988.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The project was proposed once more in the 2014 Metro Manila Dream Plan as a line that would serve as the second north–south mass transit backbone for the newly expanded Greater Capital Region (the first being the North–South Commuter Railway). The Metro Manila Dream Plan (formally titled the "Roadmap for Transport Infrastructure Development for Metro Manila and Its Surrounding Areas") is an integrated plan, created on the basis of recommendations from a study conducted by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA). It was approved by the National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA) Board in June 2014, to last until 2030. The program aims to improve the transport system in Metro Manila, Philippines, with the hope of turning it into a focal point for addressing Metro Manila's interlinked problems in the areas of transportation, land use, and environment.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The development of the project was approved by the Investment Coordination Committee (ICC) board of the National Economic and Development Authority on September 6, 2017, subject to secondary approval by the NEDA Board. The development was approved by the NEDA Board headed by President Rodrigo Duterte six days later. On March 16, 2018, the Philippine and Japanese governments signed a loan agreement for the subway. The first tranche of the official development assistance from the Japan International Cooperation Agency amounted to ¥104.5 billion (). The second tranche of the loan, signed on February 10, 2022, amounted to ¥253.3 billion ().


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: In November 2018, OC Global, a Japanese consortium consisting of Oriental Consultants Global Co. Ltd., Tokyo Metro Co. Ltd., Katahira & Engineers International, Pacific Consultants Co Ltd., Tonichi Engineering Consultants, Inc., and Metro Development Co. Ltd., was awarded the contract for the consulting services of the line.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The line was originally slated to begin partial operations by 2022, with three stations: the Qurino Highway, the Tandang Sora, and the North Avenue stations, are expected to begin operations within the said year. In June 2018, soil testing was conducted along the alignment. Massive tunnel boring machines will be employed for the project. In line with this, DOTr, PNR and JICA personnel inspected actual tunnel boring machines in Japan, estimated to arrive in May 2019.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The groundbreaking ceremony of the Metro Manila Subway was held on February 27, 2019. Ten months later, construction begun its clearing phase in Valenzuela on December 21. As part of the partial operability section, the first three stations will be built alongside the Philippine Railways Institute (PRI), the country's first-ever railway training center.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: In September 2020, the Department of Transportation (DOTr) presented one of the six tunnel boring machines in an acceptance test ceremony through a video conference. The first of 25 tunnel boring machines that will be used for the subway's construction was unveiled on February 5, 2021.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The first civil works contract to be awarded, Contract Package 101, which involves the design and construction of the first three stations, was awarded to the Japanese-Filipino joint venture of Shimizu Corporation, Fujita Corporation, Takenaka Civil Engineering Co. Ltd. and EEI Corporation in February 2019. Contract Package 104, covering the construction of the and stations was awarded to a Filipino-Japanese joint venture of Megawide Construction Corporation, Tokyu Construction, and Tobishima Construction on April 22, 2022, and the ₱18-billion contract was signed on May 5. Contract Package 103, worth , was awarded to Sumitomo Mitsui Construction on September 23 and covers the construction of the and Katipunan stations. Contract Package 102, worth and awarded to the joint venture of Nishimatsu Construction and DMCI on September 29, covers the construction of the and stations.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: Contract Package 107, which covers the rolling stock consisting of 240 train cars configurable to 30 eight-car train sets, was awarded to the joint venture of Sumitomo Corporation and Japan Transport Engineering Company in December 2020. The contract was signed on December 21, and the trains are scheduled to be fully delivered by March 2027. The contract is worth .


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: Contract Package 106, which covers the electrical and mechanical (E&M) systems, was awarded to Mitsubishi Corporation on September 24, 2021. In February 2022, Mitsubishi awarded a ₱57.5-billion turnkey contract to a consortium led by Colas Rail and composed of Thales and Egis. Colas Rail would be responsible for the engineering and system integration, railway track, communications-based train control signalling, power distribution, depot equipment and overhead lines. Thales, on the other hand, would be responsible for the installation of the communications and supervision systems as well as the automated fare collection (AFC) system. Lastly, Egis, along with Colas Rail, would be responsible for the preliminary design of the E&M systems as well as the installation of more than 1,300 full height platform screen doors.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: On November 11, 2021, a groundbreaking ceremony was held at Camp Aguinaldo to mark the start of pre-construction activities at the Camp Aguinaldo station.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: In April 2022, the Department of Transportation announced that partial operations of the subway will be delayed to 2025 instead of the originally planned opening in 2022 as a result of delays brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The underground and tunnel boring works for the subway were slated to start by the fourth quarter of 2021, but only started on June 12, 2022 after the first tunnel boring machine was ceremonially lowered. Further construction for the entry shaft resumed, and the tunnel boring machine was removed once again to complete the required works for actual tunnelling to commence.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: Construction for the Ortigas and Shaw stations began on October 3, 2022, with the groundbreaking ceremony led by President Bongbong Marcos and Transportation Secretary Jaime Bautista.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: , the project is 60% complete in terms of procurement, project management, and consultancy. In an interview with DOTr Undersecretary for Railways Cesar Chavez held hours prior to the groundbreaking ceremony for the construction for the Ortigas and Shaw stations, he stated that the project will be substantially operaional by 2028 or 2029, covering East Valenzuela station to Shaw station.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: In November 4, 2022, President Bongbong Marcos witnessed the awarding of two contracts for the sections of Quezon Avenue-East Avenue stations and Anonas-Camp Aguinaldo stations, respectively.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The line will be the fourth heavy rail line in the country, after LRT Line 2, MRT Line 7, and the North–South Commuter Railway, and the first to be mostly underground. It is designed to run trains at . The tunnel diameter inside and outside is projected to be and , respectively. Since there are estimates of an expected magnitude-7.2 earthquake (which can be as powerful as magnitude 7.6) in the Marikina Valley Fault System, it is designed to withstand a magnitude-8.0 earthquake. In addition, it may not be entirely underground. Assessment of the environmental and geographical considerations in the base alignment (initially long) recommends 18% of the line to be at-grade and 9% to be running through viaduct. Prior to final approval, some adjustments to the alignment were done so that it would reduce the risk of damage during earthquakes by travelling along solid adobe ground.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: On September 5, 2020, in response to questions, Transportation Secretary Arthur Tugade provided assurances that the system would be flood-proof, and announced that partial operations would commence in 2022, with the system being fully operational by 2026.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The stations would have design features such as water-stop panels, a high-level entrance for flood prevention, earthquake detection, and a train stop system, akin to the Tokyo subway. The stations are also designed to accommodate up to 1.5 million passengers daily. Full-height platform screen doors will also be built in the stations.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The major stations of the line are planned to have two platform levels, one for a local train service and another for express routes. These stations are planned to have 6 floors designed for 2 platform floors, commercial shops, ticketing facilities and other amenities.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: Seven of the proposed stations, namely , , , , , and North Avenue stations will be built on government property in order to boost property values in the surrounding areas.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The line will use a moving block signalling system based on communications-based train control (CBTC), which is the first railway line in the Philippines to use a moving block/CBTC system. Its subsystems include automatic train protection (ATP), automatic train operation (ATO), automatic train supervision (ATS), train detection through track circuits, and computer-based interlocking. will provide their SPARCS CBTC signalling solution for the line.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: Two types of rails will be employed in the subway: rails will be employed in the mainline while rails will be employed in the depot. The rails in the mainline will consist of continuous welded rails while the rails in the depot will be jointed rails with fishplates. The tracks will be supported by concrete sleepers except for the turnouts which will be supported by plastic/fiber-reinforced foam urethane railroad ties.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The Metro Manila Subway will use Sustina electric multiple units built by the Sumitomo Corporation and Japan Transport Engineering Company (J-TREC). The same type has been ordered by the Philippine National Railways for its North–South Commuter Railway project as the PNR EM10000 class. An order for 240 railcars, arrangeable into thirty 8-car trainsets, has been finalized by the Department of Transportation on December 21, 2020.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: Trains will have a capacity of 2,242 passengers, which is more than the normal capacity of the rolling stock of the existing LRT Line 1, LRT Line 2, MRT Line 3, and the PNR Metro Commuter Line. At its base form, it is twice longer than the 4-car trains of the LRTA 2000 class being used in the LRT Line 2. According to DOTr Undersecretary Timothy John Batan, each 8-car trainset will ease car traffic in Metro Manila equivalent to 1,300 cars, 220 jeepneys, or 60 buses. It will be powered through 1,500 V DC overhead lines similar to those ordered by PNR.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: The line will have an underground depot in Ugong, Valenzuela, within the vicinity of the East Valenzuela station. It occupies of space and serves as the headquarters for the operations and maintenance of the line. The trains are parked on several sets of tracks, which converge onto the spur route and later on to the main network.


title: Metro Manila Subway

text: A building will host the Philippine Railways Institute which will also be built within the depot vicinity. In addition, a test track and mock-ups of the tunnels, stations, and wayside equipment will be constructed for training purposes.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb is the eleventh studio album by Irish rock band U2. It was released on 22 November 2004 in the United Kingdom by Island Records and a day later in the United States by Interscope Records. Much like their previous album "All That You Can't Leave Behind" (2000), the record exhibits a more mainstream rock sound after the band experimented with alternative rock and dance music in the 1990s. It was produced by Steve Lillywhite, with additional production from Chris Thomas, Jacknife Lee, Nellee Hooper, Flood, Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, and Carl Glanville.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: Looking for a more hard-hitting sound than that of their previous album, U2 began recording "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" in February 2003 with Thomas. After nine months of work, the band had an album's worth of material ready for release, but they were not satisfied with the results. The group subsequently enlisted Lillywhite to take over as producer in Dublin in January 2004. Lillywhite, along with his assistant Lee, spent six months with the band reworking songs and encouraging better performances. U2 lead singer Bono described the album as "our first rock album. It's taken us twenty years or whatever it is, but this is our first rock album." Thematically, the record touches on life, death, love, war, faith, and family.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" received generally positive reviews from critics and reached number one in 30 countries, including the US, where first-week sales of 840,000 copies nearly doubled the band's previous personal best. The album and its singles won all nine Grammy Awards for which they were nominated (U2 themselves were awarded eight out of the nine). It was also the fourth-highest-selling album of 2004, with almost ten million copies sold, and it yielded several successful singles, such as "Vertigo", "City of Blinding Lights", and "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own". The album was included on "Rolling Stone"s list of the "100 Best Albums of the Decade" at number 68.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: Lead singer Bono explained that he had to ask himself a few hard questions before carrying on recording: "I wanted to check where I was to where I am. So I went back and listened to all the music that made me want to be in a band, right from the Buzzcocks, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Echo & The Bunnymen, all that stuff. And what was interesting is, that was what a lot of people in bands now are listening to anyway. So in a funny way, it made us completely contemporary."


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: Looking for a harder-hitting rock sound than that of their previous record, "All That You Can't Leave Behind", U2 began recording "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" in February 2003 with producer Chris Thomas. After nine months of work, the band had completed an album's worth of songs. In October, they met in Dublin to review their work. Bono and guitarist the Edge believed it was good enough to release; Bono said, "All we needed was the assent of the politburo and the record would have been out for Christmas." Bassist Adam Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen Jr., however, disagreed with their bandmates and voted against releasing the record. Mullen said that the songs "had no magic", while Clayton said, "When it comes to signing off on a project, you ask questions like, 'Have we got a first single to open the campaign?' Frankly, we were missing more than just a first single." Clayton and Mullen also had a nagging feeling that "All That You Can't Leave Behind" had been overpraised when it only produced one hit—"Beautiful Day". Clayton thought that if U2's goal was to continue to be the world's biggest band, they needed three or four hits from their album that could attract new fans.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: The group brought in their long-time producer Steve Lillywhite to mediate the disagreement. After they played him the album, Lillywhite assessed that it felt like "it had the weight of the world on its shoulders. It certainly wasn't any fun." After lengthy discussions, Bono and the Edge were convinced that the album needed more work. Bono thought their songs were good but admitted "good won't bring you to tears or make you want to leave your house and tour for a year". The group subsequently dismissed Thomas and enlisted Lillywhite to take over as the album's producer in Dublin in January 2004. Lillywhite, along with his assistant Jacknife Lee, spent six months with the band reworking songs and encouraging better performances. Several other producers received credits on the album, including Daniel Lanois, Brian Eno, Flood, Carl Glanville, and Nellee Hooper; Bono acknowledged that the involvement of multiple producers affected the record's "sonic cohesion".


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: A demo version of the album (guitarist the Edge's copy) was stolen while the band were having their photo taken for a magazine in France in July 2004. It contained unfinished versions of several songs that made it onto the album. The band publicly announced that if those tracks were leaked online, they would release the album immediately via the iTunes Store. Several months later, the finished album was leaked online, but the band did not release it earlier, despite previous comments.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: In late 2004, "Mercy", an unreleased track taken from the "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" sessions, surfaced on the Internet through a fan who had been given a copy of the album containing the extra track. The track is of less than standard audio quality, but managed to become a favorite on fan websites. It was cut from the final release, but was described by "Blender" as "a six-and-a-half-minute outpouring of U2 at its most uninhibitedly U2-ish". The lyrics to the song can be found in the booklet for the Special Limited Edition. A significantly revised version of the song was performed during the European leg of the U2 360° Tour; it made its live debut on 12 September 2010 during the second Zurich concert, and was officially released as the opening track on the band's "Wide Awake in Europe" vinyl-only live EP that November.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: As with "All That You Can't Leave Behind", this album finds U2 returning to "more 'stripped down' rock and pop sounds", according to musicologist Susan Fast.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: Adam Clayton said of "Atomic Bomb", "It's very much a guitar record. "Vertigo", "Love and Peace", "City of Blinding Lights", "All Because of You", all pretty up, rocky tunes. A lot of them are a kick-back to our very early days, so it's like with each year we have gathered a little bit more and this is what we are now."


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: In 2003, Bono said one of their new songs called "Full Metal Jacket" was "the mother of all rock songs" and "the reason to make a new album". A similar demo called "Native Son" was also recorded. Both of these demos would later become "Vertigo".


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: Contemporary Christian artist Michael W. Smith joined the band in the studio during the "Atomic Bomb" sessions and worked on at least one track with them, entitled "North Star". That track, which was a tribute to Johnny Cash, has not yet surfaced officially or unofficially in any form. A song introduced by Bono as "North Star" was played in Turin during the U2 360° Tour; however, it is unknown whether or not this is the same song that was worked on during the sessions. Other tracks, such as "Shark Soup" (another version of "Vertigo"), "Lead Me In The Way I Should Go", and "You Can't Give Away Your Heart", were referenced in the media and by the band themselves, but have not been released.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: The very earliest versions of "Love and Peace or Else" originated during the recording sessions for "All That You Can't Leave Behind". It serves as "Atomic Bomb"s "big plea for peace" song, following in the footsteps of "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Miss Sarajevo", "Please", and "Peace on Earth". During performances on the Vertigo Tour, "Love and Peace Or Else" featured Mullen moving out to the center of the ellipse-shaped ramp, where he played a floor tom and crash cymbal for the majority of the song. Near the end, Bono took over and played the drum until the song segued into the opening drumbeat of "Sunday Bloody Sunday". Most live performances of the song also saw Mullen singing the "release, release, release, release" part during the chorus alongside Bono.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "Crumbs from Your Table" is about the relationship between Western countries and developing countries. The verses and chorus address the relationship from the perspective of citizens from the developing world, focusing on the disparity between the long-term socioeconomic planning stressed by the West ("You speak in signs and wonders") and the developing world's immediate need for sustenance ("But I'm begging for the crumbs from your table"). One line ("You speak in signs and wonders") was meant as a criticism of the Catholic Church. The bridge ("Where you live should not decide / Whether you live or whether you die") is statement from Bono that follows with the theme in his speeches in which he tries to raise awareness about African poverty. Bono stated on a bonus DVD included with special editions of the album that the band has no recollection of writing the song, as they were intoxicated at the time. A studio performance is also included on the aforementioned bonus DVD. It was only played a handful on times during the third leg of the Vertigo Tour.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "One Step Closer" is a slow tempo song, with Bono's lyrics centered around traffic images, leading to the singer being stranded on a refuge island. The origins of the song go back to the "All That You Can't Leave Behind" sessions. It was revived for "Atomic Bomb", with Lanois introducing a pedal steel guitar, in addition to guitars from the Edge and Bono, and musical influences varying from country music to The Velvet Underground making themselves felt. One recording of the song ran for more than 15 minutes, with Bono adding many verses that were subsequently dropped. Jacknife Lee also contributed to the final form of the recording. "One Step Closer" is billed in the album with thanks to Noel Gallagher of Oasis. The title of the song comes from a conversation Bono had with Gallagher about Bono's dying father, Bob Hewson. Bono asked, "Do you think he believes in God?" to which Gallagher replied, "Well, he's one step closer to knowing." Through the end of the Vertigo Tour, the song had never been performed in any U2 concert. The title of the album derives from a lyric in the song "Fast Cars", which was only available on some versions of the album.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: For the album release, U2 partnered with Apple Inc. for several cross-promotions. "Vertigo" was featured on a widely aired television advertisement for the company's iPod music player. Additionally, a special edition U2-branded iPod was released bearing the black and red color scheme of the album, as well as laser-engraved autographs of each member on the back. "The Complete U2", an iTunes Store-exclusive box set featuring 448 tracks, including previously unreleased content was also released. Proceeds from the iPod and iTunes partnerships were donated to charity. A live version of "Original of the Species" from the concert film "" was later featured in commercials for the video iPod. Several CD copies of the album have the message "Miss You Sugar" on the bottom of the CD near the matrix number.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: The compilation "Medium, Rare & Remastered" and the EP "Unreleased and Rare", included in "The Complete U2" box set, contains previously unreleased tracks, six of which were from the recording sessions for "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb":


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: U2 made various promotional appearances on television. On 20 November 2004, U2 appeared as the musical guests on "Saturday Night Live", performing "Vertigo", "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", and "I Will Follow". Two days later, on the day of the album's release, U2 performed on a flat-bed truck, which drove through much of downtown New York City. Footage of the flat-bed performance was used for the music video of "All Because of You". The drive ended at the Brooklyn Bridge, under which the band performed a "secret gig" in Empire Fulton Ferry State Park. Part of the concert was broadcast in an MTV television programme and released in the EP "Live from Under the Brooklyn Bridge".


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: The album was preceded by the lead single "Vertigo", which was released on 24 September 2004. The song topped the charts in several countries, including the UK, reached number 31 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, and topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart. It also topped the digital downloads chart in both the US and the UK, becoming U2's best-selling digital single ever in the US, with 2× Platinum status (note that for downloads, Platinum status was obtained at 200,000 copies sold). Upon release the song received extensive airplay and was an international hit, being featured in a popular iPod television commercial. The song lent its namesake to the band's Vertigo Tour.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: The second single in the UK was "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", released on 7 February 2005. The song is about Bono's relationship with his dying father. The song debuted at number one on the UK Singles Chart, becoming U2's first-ever follow-up single to top the charts. On US adult contemporary radio, it reached number 15 on the Adult Top 40 and also appeared on the Modern Rock Tracks chart, the Pop 100, and the Hot 100.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "City of Blinding Lights" was the third UK release. It peaked at number 2 and spent nine weeks on the chart. It also placed on the US Adult Top 40.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: The second single in the US was "All Because of You". Although it received some airplay on rock radio, reaching number 6 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and number 20 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart, the song had little mainstream exposure. When released in the UK, it peaked at number 4 but only spent four weeks on the chart.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "Original of the Species" was released as a promotional single in the US. It peaked at number 6 on the Triple A Chart according to mediaguide.com and the video has reached number 12 on VH1's top 20 video countdown. The track has also made brief appearances on the Hot AC charts according to Radio and Records and MediaGuide.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" received generally positive reviews from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized score out of 100 to ratings from critics, the album received an average score of 79 based on 26 reviews. Rob Sheffield of "Rolling Stone" described it as "grandiose music from grandiose men, sweatlessly confident in the execution of their duties", believing the album was well served by not tamping down Bono's ego or ambitions. Sheffield praised "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", calling it "a reminder that what makes U2 so big isn't really their clever ideas, or even their intelligence — it's the warmth that all too few rock stars have any idea how to turn into music". Johnny Davis of "Q" said that the Edge's guitar playing "makes this record" with his "arsenal of guitar noises that bring to mind a particularly impatient boy with a new box of indoor fireworks". Responding to Bono's quote about the group wanting to stave off a decline, Davis said, "They've succeeded in not becoming crap quite admirably." Robert Hilburn of the "Los Angeles Times" called the album "triumphant", praising U2's "journey from adolescence to maturity" over their career as one that few groups could make "with their creative vision so fully intact". He said that Bono lyrically "explores epic themes, from faith to family, with such indelible grace that the CD stands with 'The Joshua Tree' and 'Achtung Baby' as one of the Irish quartet's essential works". Dan Martin of "NME" called it "a classic U2 album, but also a breathtakingly modern heavy fucker", adding that "Bono's genius is that his inner monologue is so huge and heroic that it matches the scale of the music". Steve Morse of "The Boston Globe" called it a "nakedly honest, uplifting album" and their most personal one since "The Joshua Tree". He called it "a joy to see the group rekindle its shimmering '80s guitar-pop sound" and was encouraged that their music "comes so strongly from the gut once again, without the latest techno-experimental production techniques." Ann Powers of "Blender" called the album a ""tour de force" of tune and mood", adding, "because U2's sound has come to signify an open heart... it nearly always feels fresh, the way a new flame does". She thought that Bono lyrically "wields sentimentality like a switchblade" but also said that "U2's music is so broad and welcoming it can express ardor equally well for Christ, wives, supermodels, children or Bishop Desmond Tutu".


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: Stephen Troussé of "Uncut" called it "their most unabashedly strident record since The Unforgettable Fire" and said that songs such as "City of Blinding Lights" and "All Because of You" gave "the sense of a band flexing muscles they haven't used in years". He remarked about the melancholic undertow of Bono's lyrics, believing that the "lines that stay with you speak of a creeping malaise". Alexis Petridis of "The Guardian" said that the album "may be unadventurous and melodramatic, but it is packed with disarming moments". He thought the group had embraced the clichéd elements of their 1980s music but said, "Driven by a ferociously powerful rhythm section, U2 sound pleasingly raw, particularly next to the current wave of stadium rock pretenders". He lamented the abandonment of their 1990s experimentation, but appreciated their retention of self-awareness, concluding, "it seems highly unlikely anyone will laugh at U2 again". David Browne of "Entertainment Weekly" questioned U2's motivations for back-pedaling musically but called them "one of the few remaining bands who can make pop-chart lust work for them, as "Atomic Bomb" intermittently demonstrates". Greg Kot of the "Chicago Tribune" said that the record "marks a retreat from innovation and daring, and re-immerses the Irish quartet in the comfort zone of its earliest successes". He believed the band had "settl[ed] into middle age by recycling its best riffs and ideas" and that those musical ideas were "destined to pale in coming years as second-hand versions of those classic albums". Amanda Petrusich of "Pitchfork" called the record "brash, grungy, and loud" but not "especially surprising", judging it to contain a "tiny handful of outstanding tracks and a whole mess of schmaltzy filler". She criticised Bono's "vague, cliched observations, his sentiments always awkwardly bombastic or hopelessly maudlin" and thought the album's biggest issue was "that it sounds so much like U2". Keith Harris of "The Village Voice" said that the lyrics were marred by "legions of rampant clichés" and that the album's producers "simply construct a U2 album in miniature, mixing in the Edge's processed-guitar trademark whenever you fear they're straying into unforgivable un-U2ness. That's just not enough."


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: Following its 22 November 2004 release, the album debuted at number one in 34 countries, including the US "Billboard" 200 (with sales of 840,000), the UK Albums Chart, and the Australian ARIA Charts. The album has sold 9 million copies worldwide. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the album has sold 3.3 million copies in the US through March 2014.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" was rated the best album of 2004 by "USA Today", "Paste", and "The New York Times". Hilburn of the "Los Angeles Times" called it the second-best album of the year, and it was ranked fourth respectively by "Q" in its list of the best albums of the year. "The Village Voice" rated it the eighth-best album of 2004, while "PopMatters" ranked it 25th. It was included in "Rolling Stone"s Top 50 Albums of 2004.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" and its songs won eight Grammy Awards overall in 2005 and 2006, sweeping all of the categories in which they were nominated. In 2005, "Vertigo" won in three categories: Best Rock Song, Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, and Best Short Form Music Video. In 2006, "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own" was awarded Song of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, "City of Blinding Lights" was awarded Best Rock Song, and "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb" won for Best Rock Album and Album of the Year. The album producer's Steve Lillywhite was also awarded Producer of the Year, Non Classical in 2006.


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: "Rolling Stone" rated it the 68th-best album of the decade, while "Vertigo" was ranked the 64th-best song. Despite all of the critical acclaim for the album, Bono would later state that "[t]here are no weak songs. But as an album, the whole isn't greater than the sum of its parts, and it fucking annoys me."


title: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb

text: In support of the album, U2 launched the Vertigo Tour, which featured five legs and a total of 131 shows. The first and third legs featured indoor concerts in North America, while the second and fourth legs featured outdoor concerts in Europe, Mexico and South America, respectively. The final leg, which saw the band touring the Pacific, was delayed due to an illness suffered by The Edge's daughter Sian. The stage design of the indoor Vertigo Tour shows was a stripped-down, intimate affair for the fans and featured an ellipse-shaped B-stage extending from the main stage. In total, the Vertigo Tour had sold 4,619,021 tickets for a total gross of $389 million; the gross was the second-highest such figure ever. Three concert films depicting the tour, "", "", and "U2 3D", were recorded.


title: Ed Boon

text: Edward John Boon (born February 22, 1964) is an American video game programmer, voice actor, and director who was employed for over 15 years at Midway Games and since 2011 has worked for Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment in its daughter company NetherRealm Studios. Boon is best known for the widely popular "Mortal Kombat" series, which he created with John Tobias, and the "Injustice" series.


title: Ed Boon

text: Boon was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, on February 22, 1964 and graduated from high school at Loyola Academy in Wilmette. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics and computer science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.


title: Ed Boon

text: After graduation, he was employed by Williams Entertainment in their pinball department, working on approximately 20 pinball games over the next two years. During this time, he was called the Mortal Master, an early indicator towards a future creation.


title: Ed Boon

text: He is the co-creator of the "Mortal Kombat" fighting game series, along with John Tobias, and served as the series' lead programmer, with Tobias the lead designer, until their partnership dissolved with Tobias' departure from Midway in 2000. Boon named series characters Sonya and Tanya after his sisters Sonia and Tania, while another character, Noob Saibot, was named after Boon and Tobias' reversed surnames. This is also elaborated in their Twitter handles, @noobde and @therealsaibot. Programmer Mike Boon is Ed's younger brother, and has been in his team since Mortal Kombat 4. The Boons are Hispanic and Dominican by ethnicity.


title: Ed Boon

text: Boon was ranked #100 in IGN's 2009 list of "Top 100 Game Creators" for his involvement in the "Mortal Kombat" series. He continues to be directly involved with the "MK" franchise and its multimedia side projects, and has also provided voice acting and motion capture work for the games, most notably providing the voice for the "Come here!" and "Get over here!" catchphrases uttered by Scorpion in every installment of the series as well as all feature films. The 2008 edition of "Guinness World Records Gamer's Edition" consequently awarded him a world record for the "longest-serving video game voice actor."


title: Ed Boon

text: In 2018 "Mortal Kombat" was exhibited in an arcade cabinet at the Chicago New Media 1973–1992 exhibition, curated by jonCates.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: Lolita Shante Gooden (born March 8, 1970), better known by her stage name Roxanne Shante, is an American rapper. Born and raised in the Queensbridge Projects of Queens, New York City, Shante first gained attention through the Roxanne Wars and was part of the Juice Crew. The 2017 film, "Roxanne Roxanne", is a dramatization of Shante's life.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: Shante was born March 8, 1970 and in 1984, the young rapper ran into Bruce Bailey and Billy Beaver, DJ Mr. Magic, and record agent Marley Marl outside the Queensbridge housing project. The four of them were discussing U.T.F.O. since the rap trio had failed to make an appearance at a concert. U.T.F.O. had recently released a single called "Hanging Out," which did not gain much critical acclaim; however, the B-side "Roxanne, Roxanne", about a woman who would not respond to their advances, became a hit. Shante, who was a member of the Juice Crew, was contracted to write a track in rebuttal to U.T.F.O.'s rap, posing as the Roxanne in the U.T.F.O. song. Marley Marl produced the song "Roxanne's Revenge" using the original beats from an instrumental version of "Roxanne, Roxanne". The track became an instant hit and made Shante, only 14 years old at the time, one of the first female MCs to become very popular. Following this, the "Roxanne Wars" started, and Shante continued to rap and started touring with her producer, the Real Roxanne.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: In 1985, Shante released a record together with rapper Sparky D, who had dissed her before in her track "Sparky's Turn, Roxanne You're Through" for disrespecting U.T.F.O. and being too young to be in rap battles. The record called "Round One, Roxanne Shanté vs Sparky Dee" was released by Spin Records and included six tracks: the two original battle tracks ("Roxanne's Revenge" and "Sparky's Turn") as well as "Roxanne's Profile" by Shante, "Sparky's Profile" by Sparky D and a battle track, in which the two rappers freestyle and dis each other, in a censored and an uncensored version. Other hits included "Have a Nice Day" and "Go on Girl". In 1985, Shante battled Busy Bee Starski for the crown of "best freestyle rapper" but lost due to improper judging. Judge Kurtis Blow later admitted to Shante that he did not vote for her because she was a girl. The ongoing battle with KRS-One hit its height when KRS-One claimed in his 1986 track "The Bridge Is Over" that Shante was nothing more than a sexual appendage to male rappers. Shante released "Bad Sister" in 1989, "The Bitch Is Back" in 1992, and a greatest hits anthology in 1995.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: By the age of 25, Shante was largely retired from the recording industry. She continued to make occasional guest appearances and live performances, as well as mentor young female hip-hop artists. She did the latter by making a cameo appearance on VH1's hip hop reality show " Ms. Rap Supreme" and gave rap-battle strategies to the finalists of that show. She also took part in a series of Sprite commercials during the late 1990s.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: She returned to performing, and in 2008, her song "Roxanne's Revenge" was ranked number 42 on VH1's 100 Greatest Songs of Hip Hop; she re-recorded the song the following year. In an interview with EmEz in 2015, she stated that she had just been proposed to and that she had been married before. In the same interview, she said that KRS-One was one of her favorite rappers.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: It was reported by "Blender" in 2008, and more extensively in a New York "Daily News" account in 2009, that Shante earned a bachelor's degree from Marymount Manhattan College and a master's and Ph.D in psychology from Cornell University, and that a quirk in her recording contract obligated Warner Music to fund her college education. These were not new claims by Shante; she spoke on the subject at length on the "Beef II" documentary, which was released in 2004. However, an investigation by lawyer and journalist Ben Sheffner for "Slate" magazine found no evidence of Shante's claims. She was never signed to a Warner Music label, but was under contract to the independent label Cold Chillin' Records, which was in turn distributed by Reprise/Warner Bros. Records from 1987 to 1992. Academic records indicate that she attended only three months at Marymount Manhattan College. Shante never earned any degree and she is unlicensed by New York State officials to practice psychology or similar disciplines. The "Daily News" subsequently ran a five-paragraph correction. Shante apologized in November 2009.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: A dramatized biopic about Shante's life, "Roxanne Roxanne", was first shown at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival. It received critical acclaim and the lead actress Chanté Adams won best breakout performance for her portrayal of Shante. The film was co-produced by Forest Whitaker and Pharrell Williams, and written and directed by Michael Larnell. It was bought by the film studio Neon for general release later in 2017.


title: Roxanne Shante

text: At the height of her career, Shante was referred to as the "Queen of Rap" by "The New York Times" and has been noted as a hip hop pioneer. "The Sunday Times" credited her for popularizing diss tracks. "Billboard" editor Natalie Weiner wrote that Shante's "blazingly male-shaming diss track" and "hip-hop's first recorded beef" helped move hip-hop further toward the mainstream, calling her "rap's first female star." "Consequence" considered her "a mentor for generations of female MCs, and an early advocate in rap for female empowerment." In 1989, "The Christian Science Monitor" stated that the popularity of rappers like Roxanne Shante, Salt-N-Pepa and MC Lyte created a path for the next generation of female hip hop artists.


title: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

text: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling (also known by its initials as GLOW or G.L.O.W.) is a women's professional wrestling promotion that began in 1986 (the pilot was filmed in December 1985) and has continued in various forms after it left television. Colorful characters, strong women, and over-the-top comedy sketches were integral to the series' success. Most of the performers were actresses, models, dancers or stunt women hoping to enter show business.


title: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

text: David B. McLane created the series while working as an announcer and promoter with Indianapolis-based World Wrestling Association (WWA) after seeing fans react to women's wrestling. The show runner Dick the Bruiser believed that Indianapolis audiences would not be receptive to a wrestling promotion featuring female wrestlers and dismissed the concept as an unprofitable novelty.


title: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

text: Undeterred, McLane went to Hollywood and posted casting notices in "The Hollywood Reporter" and "Variety," leading to over 500 women showing up for auditions at The Hyatt on Sunset. The first audition was at Gold's Gym, and the dozen finalists selected trained for six weeks at the Broadway Boxing Gym at 108th and Broadway in the South Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts. McLane hired professional Mexican wrestler Mando Guerrero to train them and later brought in wrestling veteran Cynthia Peretti (professionally known as Princess Jasmine) to take over from Guerrero. Peretti also wrestled in the series as "Pepper".


title: Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling

text: McLane partnered with the television distribution company Independent Network Incorporated (INI), headed by former Lorimar-Telepictures executive Irv Holender. Holender's previous credits included producing "Gumby", which was revived about the same time. It was through Holender that McLane met Meshulam Riklis, chairman of Rapid-American Corporation, a conglomerate which included ownership of the Riviera Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip. Riklis arranged for the Riviera Hotel to host GLOW. Holender's firm was in charge of distribution (in a joint venture with a New York City based syndicator, MG/Perin) and McLane headed the venture. Matt Cimber, who had recently directed the movie "Butterfly", starring Riklis' then wife Pia Zadora, was brought in to provide creative services and direct the shows.