title: Ileus

text: Ileus is a cause of colic in horses due to functional obstruction of the intestines. It is most commonly seen in horses postoperatively, especially following colic surgery. Horses experiencing ileus are at risk for gastric rupture due to rapid reflux build-up, and require intense medical management with frequent nasogastric intubation. Ileus may increase adhesion formation, because intestinal segments have more prolonged contact and intestinal distention causes serosal injury and ischemia. It is usually treated with aggressive fluid support, prokinetics, and anti-inflammatories.


title: Ileus

text: ICD-10 coding reflects both impaired-peristalsis senses and mechanical-obstruction senses of the term as modified by various adjectives. Some authors have argued for trying to reserve the term for the impaired-peristalsis senses, under which prescription certain older terms such as "gallstone ileus" and "meconium ileus", although now technically misnomers, are still accepted as correct owing to their long-established usage.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: The Mortuary Collection is a 2019 American anthology horror film written and directed by Ryan Spindell. It stars Clancy Brown, Caitlin Custer, Christine Kilmer, Jacob Elordi, Barak Hardley, Sarah Hay and Mike C. Nelson.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: In the small island town of Raven's End in the 1980s, mortician Montgomery Dark manages the Raven's End Mortuary. One day, a young woman named Sam shows curiosity about a small child-sized coffin which Montgomery has recently performed a funeral for. She then reveals that she has actually come to respond to the Help Wanted sign outside. He agrees to give her an interview and takes her on a tour of the facility. Montgomery agrees to tell Sam a series of stories about those that have died in Raven's End.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: In the 1950s, a young woman named Emma goes to the restroom during a party to check on the wallets she's pickpocketed while attending. However, the bathroom medicine cabinet piques her curiosity, and she tries to open it but is unable to. When she pries it open, she finds a tentacled monster inside, and is killed by it. The monster drags Emma’s lifeless body into the cabinet and shuts it.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: In the 1960s, frat boy Jake passes out condoms on campus, preaching the value of sexual liberation as an excuse to get girls to come to frat parties and sleep with the members of his fraternity. However, upon making a connection with a woman named Sandra at a party, he secretly removes his condom while having sex with her. The next morning, he finds himself with a rash and goes to the campus doctor, Dr. Harold Kubler, for help. Jake discovers to his horror that he has a creature growing inside his stomach. He attempts to meet with Sandra but is caught in a surprise celebration by his fraternity buddies for sleeping with 67 women. They let him go when his water breaks and covers the group with discolored ooze.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: At Sandra's house, Jake is laid down on a table by Sandra's parents to help him birth his baby. Sandra is angered when Jake admits that he took his condom off, resulting in his anomalous pregnancy. She makes a phone call to another man, saying she is now free to go on a date with him, and callously leaves Jake with her parents. When Jake asks how they will get the baby out, Sandra's mother tells him that the only way the baby can come out is the same way it got in. As the baby is forcing its way out, Jake's penis explodes, ripping open his abdomen, killing him. Sandra's mother takes the monstrous baby upstairs and lays it in a crib in a room full of other monstrous children.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: In the 1970s, Wendell Owens is depressed and devoted to taking care of his catatonic wife Carol. Forced to plan his life around her, he responds positively to his doctor, Dr. Kubler's, suggestion that he "accidentally" overdose Carol on painkillers. However, when he tries to give them to her, she grabs his arm, then chokes on the food the pills are hidden in, forcing him to help her throw them up. When she collapses afterward, she impales her head on a statue and dies.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: Wendell calls Dr. Kubler for help, but is only told to get rid of the body. He dismembers the corpse amid hallucinations of it being alive again, then packs it into a trunk and takes it to his apartment building elevator. On his way down, the elevator gets stuck and Wendell's neighbor calls the police as he hallucinates blood leaking from the trunk. The elevator seems to start again and go infinitely down as Carol's body rises from the trunk in the form of a horrific ghoul and forces Wendell into a kiss. When the police arrive, they find Wendell on the floor of the elevator, repeating his wedding vows over and over with the corpse still in the box.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: Sam complains that Montgomery's stories, however true they may be, are too predictable and follow a theme of people being punished for their sins. Montgomery leads Sam down to the mortuary subbasement and prepares to cremate the child-size coffin; Sam stops him and tells him she's not here for a job - she's here for the dead child. She tells him her own story.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: One evening, Sam babysits for a child named Logan Kubler. She watches a horror movie as she cooks dinner but misses a news bulletin about an escaped patient from the local asylum. She then finds a strange man with a head wound in the house; not sure how he got in, Sam is uncertain about how to react until the phone rings and she hears an answering machine message about the escaped killer. This prompts her and the strange man to fight, the man charging upstairs to try to find Logan. After a series of encounters, the man tries to strangle Sam but she stops him by telling him he isn't a killer. She then throws the man down the stairs and drops a TV on his head, crushing it.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: When Logan's parents - Dr. Kubler and his wife Debra - come home, they find the dead man and recognize him as the real Sam as the broken television reveals that the woman claiming to be Sam is in fact a child murderer called the Tooth Fairy Killer who cannibalizes children and takes their deciduous teeth as trinkets, and her real name is Charlotte Gibbons. They soon find Logan's remains charred in the oven and scream in horror.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: As Charlotte finishes her story, she uses her buck knife to remove a tooth from Logan's remains, not having had the chance to do so when she killed him. She then stabs Montgomery in the stomach; however, Montgomery - who appears to bleed embalming fluid - simply laughs, telling her that the job is now hers. Charlotte attempts to escape the mortuary but finds herself unable to do so via a supernatural force that sends her back into the mortuary entrance. Montgomery corners her in the library and explains that he was never able to leave either, and her story is "only just beginning", as certain books fall from the shelves. The charred spirits of her child victims crawl out of the fallen library books and tear Charlotte apart.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: Montgomery sews Charlotte's body back together and replaces her blood with embalming fluid. Finally he finds himself able to leave the mortuary for the first time after several decades. However, after a moment in sunlight, he explodes into dust. Her body reanimates inside the mortuary and a final scene shows that Charlotte has now become the new mortician, as she tells a boy named Bill, who was earlier seen delivering newspapers, that she is about to start “making dinner.”


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: Spindell's 22-minute short film "The Babysitter Murders" (released in 2015) was featured in "The Mortuary Collection", as one of the segments.


title: The Mortuary Collection

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on critic reviews with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads "The rare anthology that maintains a consistently high level of quality, "The Mortuary Collection" is a must-see undertaking for horror fans."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Ayelet Shaked (; ; born 7 May 1976) is an Israeli politician, activist, and software engineer currently serving as Minister of Interior. She served as a member of the Knesset for The Jewish Home from 2013 to 2018, after which she became a member of the New Right. She formerly represented the Yamina alliance in the Knesset. She was Minister of Justice from 2015 to 2019. Although until 2018 she was representing a religious party, Shaked identifies as a secular politician.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: She began her career in Tel Aviv's high-tech industry, working as an engineer at Texas Instruments. In 2010, she established the My Israel extra-parliamentary movement with Naftali Bennett and led it until May 2012. In 2019, she established the New Right together with Bennett. After the party did not pass the electoral threshold in the April 2019 Israeli legislative election, Shaked planned to join Likud, but Miri Regev did not allow her to do so. Following Benjamin Netanyahu's failure to form a coalition government and the pending September 2019 Israeli legislative election, Shaked ended up succeeding Bennett as the chairwoman of the New Right, and later became the leader of the Yamina alliance.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: She is considered one of Israel's most active and influential legislators, and initiated and drafted laws including Israel's 2016 NGO law, its comprehensive law against terrorism, a version of the basic law proposal on Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people, as well as a law limiting the powers of the Israeli Supreme Court.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked was born Ayelet Ben Shaul in Tel Aviv to a well-educated upper-middle-class Israeli family. Her paternal grandmother immigrated to Israel from Iraq as a single mother in the 1950s as part of the Jewish exodus from Arab and Muslim countries, carefully investing her money in property and the education of her children. Her father was an accountant and voted Likud. Shaked describes herself as "half-Iraqi and proud of it". Her mother, a Bible teacher, was from a center-left Ashkenazi family whose ancestors migrated to Palestine from the Russian Empire and Romania in the 1880s as part of the First Aliyah.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: She grew up in the upper-middle-class Bavli neighborhood of Tel Aviv. She identified her political awakening and right-wing orientation to when she was 8 years old, after watching a television debate between Yitzhak Shamir and Shimon Peres, where she supported the right-wing views of Shamir. As a teenager, she was a main instructor in the Hebrew Scouts Movement in Israel. At high-school, she held right-wing views but was not highly political.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: She served in the IDF as an infantry instructor in the Golani Brigade, serving in the 12th "Barak" ("Lightning") battalion and Sayaret Golani (the special forces unit within the Golani Brigade). It was while she was in the army, that her right-wing views were strengthened. At Tel Aviv University, she obtained a BSc in electrical engineering and computer science. She began her career in the Tel Aviv high-tech industry, working as a software engineer at Texas Instruments and later becoming manager of the company's marketing.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: From 2006 to 2008, Shaked was office director for the office of Benjamin Netanyahu. In 2010 she established My Israel with Naftali Bennett and led it until May 2012.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: From the end of 2011, Shaked campaigned against illegal immigration from Africa to Israel, saying that it poses a threat to the state and also involves severe economic damage. She also campaigned against Galei Tzahal saying it had a "left-leaning agenda".


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In January 2012, Shaked was elected to serve as a member of the Likud's Central Committee; however, in June 2012 she resigned and joined the Jewish Home. On 14 November 2012, she won third place in the party's primaries and was placed in the fifth spot on the Jewish Home list for the 2013 elections. With the list winning 12 seats, Shaked became the only secular Jewish Home MK. She subsequently joined the Economic Affairs Committee, the House Committee, and the Committee on Foreign Workers, and served as an alternate member on the Finance Committee. She also chaired the Knesset Committee for the Enforcement of the Security Service Law and the National-Civilian Service Law and the Special Committee for the Equal Sharing of the Burden Bill.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In June 2014, Shaked posted an article by the late Israeli writer Uri Elitzur on Facebook. The Facebook post was variously described in the media as calling Palestinian children "little snakes" and appearing to justify mass punishment of Palestinians. Based upon the Facebook post, the then Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said that Shaked's mindset was no different from Adolf Hitler's. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu condemned Erdoğan's comments, stating "Erdogan's anti-Semitic comments profaned the memory of the Holocaust." The leader of Israeli leftist Meretz party, Zehava Gal-On, suggested that "because of the presidential election Erdoğan has lost control." Shaked stated that her post was portrayed falsely in the media, especially in that the article was presented as her own words rather than Elitzur's. She said, "I refer specifically to 'Daily Beast' writer Gideon Resnick, who so misrepresented the facts in one of my recent Facebook posts, one has to wonder if his hatred for my country hasn’t rendered him outright useless to his website and his readers."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In 2015, Shaked won the primary election for the Jewish Home Party, which was considered an achievement as a secular female politician within a religious party.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In December 2018 Shaked was amongst the Jewish Home MKs to leave the party and form the breakaway New Right party. In the April 2019 Knesset elections, New Right narrowly failed to cross the electoral threshold; as a result, Shaked did not gain a seat in the 21st Knesset. Following the loss, Shaked initially announced that she will take a break from politics for an undetermined period of time.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: On 30 May 2019, after Netanyahu failed to form a governing coalition, the Knesset voted to dissolve itself and a snap election was called which was set to be held on 17 September. Shaked announced on 21 July that she would take part in the elections as the leader of New Right and on 29 July as the leader of the Yamina alliance, which is composed of the New Right, Tkuma and the Jewish Home. Yamina won seven seats at the elections. After no MK was able to form a government, yet another election was called, set to be held on 2 March 2020. At this election, Yamina won six seats.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked was placed third on the Jewish Home list for the 2015 elections, and was re-elected to the Knesset. On 6 May 2015, it was reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to appoint Shaked as Minister of Justice as part of a plan to form a new coalition government. Shaked took office as Justice Minister on 14 May 2015.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In July 2015, Shaked announced that she was forming a committee to create a stable legal structure for the Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The formation of the committee was agreed upon in the coalition agreement between Bayit Yehudi and Likud. She has stated: "There are many areas in Judea and Samaria, whose legal status has not been organized. It's time to remove the legal ambiguity, and allow the residents of Judea and Samaria, many of whom live in settlements that were built by the Israeli government, to live without the persistent fear of challenges to their property ownership". The legal status of the West Bank is disputed; the Palestinians, the UN, human rights organizations and most of the international community consider it to be occupied Palestinian territory.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In January 2016, Shaked sponsored a bill in the Knesset that would require non-governmental organizations ("NGOs") that receive a majority of their funding from "foreign government entities" to be so labeled. In an interview in "The Washington Post" she stated that the law would foster transparency by giving the public the right "to know which NGOs are receiving most of their support from foreign governments and therefore representing foreign government interests."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In June 2016 the Israeli Knesset passed a comprehensive law against terrorism, forbidding any kind of terrorism and support of terrorism, and setting severe punishments for terrorists. The law also regulates legal efforts against terrorism and counter-terrorism measures. The law was sponsored and promoted by Justice Minister Shaked.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Referencing the Knesset's basic law that Israel will be a Jewish and democratic state, Shaked opposes the view that the two values are in any way incompatible, arguing that "alongside the view that there is a constant struggle and a clash of civilizations between 'Jewish' and 'democratic,' I believe we can propose another model."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked argues that the key of concepts of property rights, the rejection of the divine right of kings, the importance of the separation of powers, and civil liberty are a byproduct of the Jewish philosophical tradition. She states: "On what did Locke base the right to property if not the chapters on creation? After all, Locke's Second Treatise of Government is inspired by a close textual reading of The Book of Genesis." She concludes that it was "not primarily Roman law or the democratic tradition of the Athenian polis that shaped and forged the modern democratic tradition in Europe or the United States, but Jewish tradition—joined, of course, by other traditions." She proposes that "it is precisely when we wish to promote advanced processes of democratization in Israel that we must deepen its Jewish identity. These identities clearly do not contradict each other; on the contrary, I believe that they strengthen each other."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In a controversial 2017 speech to the Israel Bar Association, Shaked stated that the Israeli judicial branch operates as if in a "dream", adopting a "utopian and universal worldview... Only a moral and political revolution of the magnitude of the revolution we saw in the 90s, but one reaffirming the accomplishments of Zionism and its unchanging positions may turn this problematic tide." She argued that the , of which she is an advocate and architect, will lead to a "moral and political revolution in Israel... It's a call to rouse from this dream. It's an overall perception bringing back the principles of our founding fathers to the forefront of the law. It moves Zionism and the deepest and most basic components of our identity from the blind spot it currently occupies in the judicial realm to its rightful place: under the spotlight." Shaked states that "Individual rights are almost sacred to me, but not devoid of context, not when cut off from our Israeli uniqueness, our national missions, our history, and our Zionist challenges."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: In 2022, Shaked suggested renewing citizenship legislation that had expired in July 2021 after the Knesset failed to renew it. She sponsored a bill proposing to prevent Palestinian family unification (residency for Palestinian citizens married to Israeli citizens). She cited security concerns and "demographic reasons", and added that it was meant to stop the "creeping right of return". The bill was blocked after Meretz filed an objection, sending the bill back to the cabinet for further appraisal.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked seeks to limit the power of the Israeli judiciary. She argues that the role of the judiciary needs to be delineated and restricted, saying: "Is it still correct to say of the judiciary in Israel what Alexander Hamilton said about the court that he knew, that it 'has no influence over either the sword or the purse'? Is it really true that the judiciary in Israel has 'no direction either of the strength or of the wealth of the society'? To my mind, this is very doubtful. In fact, it is inconceivable to me that a judicial body that bears no responsibility for filling the purse permits itself to empty it, but unfortunately, this is the situation in Israel today ... The new tracks that I seek to lay—carefully, while protecting the independence and dignity of the court—are meant to define more precisely the routes of each of the branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, and thus to enable regular traffic and prevent future collisions."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: She writes, referencing the arguments of Alexis de Tocqueville, that the long-term damage of normalizing judicial intervention has to be distinguished from the justness of any particular legal decision, stating: "[O]nly a person with real patience who knows that the advantage of democratic government lies not in its immunity from errors, but in the fact that its errors can be corrected in the long term ... only a person like this could understand the enormous benefits of long-term governance power and what de Tocqueville meant when he spoke of the healthy influence of the government's ability to govern effectively. Tocqueville's words must be borne in mind as we lay the new tracks regulating the relations between the Supreme Court and the other branches of government. The healthy influence of governance emerges in ways that are not obvious, and certainly not in a brief focused glance, which misses the aggregate damages caused when the court repeatedly strikes down the products of the government and the Knesset." Shaked concludes that the judicial system must "give enough power and leeway to elected officials while minimizing the harm to the individual and giving maximum consideration to the individual’s freedom to shape his life as he wishes".


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Sometimes nicknamed the "Iron Lady" because of her intransigence in repressing crimes committed by Palestinians, as well as for her nationalist positions, she supports the death penalty for individuals who have committed terrorist acts, including for Jews who killed Palestinians; however, she considers that the death penalty should only apply in the most extreme cases.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked argues that the Israeli economy is insufficiently capitalistic. As part of a 20-page treatise she wrote in an academic law journal in 2016 on the structure of the Israeli legal system, she argues that the Israeli economy is suffering from massive over-regulation and that the fight to de-regulate the economy is a constant uphill battle.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked opposes the imposition of limits on executive pay. She argues that limiting executive pay means that "banks and pension funds... are having trouble finding talented managers interested in being company officers. Good senior managers are looking for new directions, and are seeking to join other sectors to which the law does not apply, I'm asking you to refrain from enacting legislation where it is not needed. Unnecessary legislation is harmful legislation. It harms the economy on a macro scale and the individual on a micro-scale."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked has repeatedly stressed her support for an independent Kurdistan. Shaked says as the Sykes-Picot Agreement breaks apart, "the greatest opportunity that stands before us could come from strengthening the connections with the Kurdish nation." Shaked says, “the Jewish and Kurdish nations share a history... of mutual respect, mutual interests,” including fighting Islamic State. Shaked has additionally cited the high number of women serving in Kurdish armed forces.


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked supports and has legislated for the decriminalization of cannabis consumption in Israel. In 2017, as Minister of Justice, Shaked submitted legislation to decriminalize the recreational use of cannabis. On successfully passing the legislation, Shaked said "Whether one supports use of cannabis or is opposed, it is wrong to judge cannabis users per criminal law and its derivatives."


title: Ayelet Shaked

text: Shaked is married to Ofir Shaked, a former fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force. They have two children and live in Bavli, Tel Aviv. She is an admirer of Steve Jobs. She was influenced by Ayn Rand, in particular "The Fountainhead" and "Atlas Shrugged". She describes her personality as 'intellectual' and 'systematic'.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Lana Lang is a fictional character on the television series "Smallville". She has been a series regular since the pilot episode, and has been played continuously by Kristin Kreuk, with two other actresses having portrayed Lana Lang as a child and as an elderly woman. The character of Lana Lang, first created for comic books by Bill Finger and John Sikela in the 1950s as a romantic interest for Superboy, was adapted to television in 2001 by Alfred Gough and Miles Millar. The character has also appeared in various literature based on the "Smallville" television series, none of which directly continues from or into the television episodes.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: In "Smallville", Lana is the first main love interest for Clark Kent, though, in the first season she is dating Whitney Fordman. By season two, with Whitney's departure, Lana and Clark begin to grow closer. Clark's dishonesty over the secrets he is hiding causes their relationship to end. Lana then grows closer to Lex Luthor, whom she marries and divorces in the sixth season. Eventually Lana learns the truth about Clark and they get back together. After stealing a kryptonite-powered suit from Lex, Lana absorbs an enormous amount of kryptonite radiation, which prohibits her from getting too close to Clark, and she leaves Smallville for good, but vowed to continue to use her powers to preserve life.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Initially, Lana is characterized as the intelligent "girl next door". She eventually becomes a tragic figure in "Smallville", as the decisions made by Clark and Lex change the character over the course of the show. As Gough explains, by the end of the sixth season, Lana has shown that she can beat Lex at his own game. Over the course of the show, Lana transitions from the girl next door to a more "self-reliant young woman". Kreuk has been nominated for various awards for her portrayal of Lana Lang.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: In the first season, Lana and Clark Kent (Tom Welling) are just beginning their friendship, as she is a popular cheerleader dating star quarterback Whitney Fordman (Eric Johnson), and Clark cannot get near her without getting sick from the kryptonite necklace she wears. In the pilot episode, when her parents are killed in the first meteor shower, Lana (Jade Unterman) is adopted by her aunt Nell (Sarah-Jane Redmond). As the first season progresses, Lana grows closer to Clark, while Whitney begins to distance himself because of his father's medical ailments. In season two's episode "Heat" Lana sends Whitney, who left Smallville for the Marines in the season one finale, a video message breaking up with him. Lana's aunt Nell moves to Metropolis with her fiancé in the season two episode "Ryan", but Lana opts to move in with her friend Chloe Sullivan (Allison Mack) so that she may finish high school in Smallville.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: By the end of season two, Lana and Clark slowly try and start a romantic relationship, but fear backlash from Chloe because of her personal feelings for Clark. Just as the two give in to their feelings fully, Clark unexpectedly runs away from Smallville in the season two finale. At the start of season three, it is shown that Lana, alongside the Kents, has been spending her time searching for Clark; she ultimately finds him in Metropolis thanks to Chloe's help. Clark's actions in Metropolis force the two to rethink their relationship in the season three episode "Phoenix", and Lana eventually begins a new relationship with Adam Knight (Ian Somerhalder), a guy she met while in physical therapy after being trampled by a horse in season three's "Asylum". By the season three episode "Crisis", it is discovered that the relationship Adam attempted to form with Lana was just a ploy so that Adam could investigate Clark.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Season three's "Forsaken" reveals that Lana, in order to move on with her life, applies and is admitted into a program to study in Paris, France. Season four shows that Lana, while in Paris, began a romantic relationship with Jason Teague (Jensen Ackles). At the beginning of season four, Lana returns to Smallville after receiving a mysterious tattoo on her lower back, which resembles a symbol on the local Kawatche cave walls, when she touched the tomb of Countess Margaret Isobel Theroux. In season four's "Spell" and "Sacred", the tattoo acts as a doorway for the spirit of Isobel to inhabit Lana's body; each time Isobel takes over Lana's body she sets out to find the three stones of knowledge, which are also being searched for by Clark and Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). In the season four finale "Commencement", Lana is confronted by Jason's mother Genevieve (Jane Seymour), who is also after the three stones of knowledge, and during a struggle Isobel comes forward and kills Genevieve. The resulting death of Genevieve, who was revealed to have been the cause for Isobel's death centuries prior in the episode "Bound", releases Isobel's control over Lana.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: During the second meteor shower, Lana witnesses the landing of an alien spacecraft, and two alien beings emerging and killing everyone in sight in the season five premiere. The spaceship becomes Lana's primary focus in season five, officially teaming up with Lex Luthor to discover the mystery behind the ship in the episode "Splinter". When her relationship with Clark hits a breaking point in season five's "Hypnotic", she begins to grow closer to Lex. The relationship with Lex eventually leads to marriage in the season six episode "Promise", but not before Lana discovers Clark's secret and realizes why he has been lying to her all these years. When she learns that Lex set up a fake pregnancy in order to get her to marry him in the season six finale "Phantom", Lana effectively ends the marriage and fakes her own death to escape Lex after he threatens her. She also frames Lex for her murder, to punish him for his betrayal. It is revealed at the start of season seven that her effort fails, but as part of the "settlement" of their divorce, Lex makes sure that Lana does not go to jail for her actions.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: With Clark's secret no longer an issue, the two begin a real relationship in the season seven episode "Fierce". Lana becomes obsessed with making Lex pay for all his crimes against humanity, which causes her to develop the Isis Foundation, using $10 million she stole from Lex. The Isis Foundation is a counseling center for kryptonite-infected people, but it doubles as a front for Lana's surveillance on Lex. Her obsessions also begin to affect her relationship with Clark by the episode "Wrath". Eventually, Lana realizes that, even though she loves him, the only way for Clark to help the world to the best of his ability would be if she left Clark and Smallville for good, which she does in the season seven finale.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: In the season eight episode "Bride", Oliver Queen (Justin Hartley), believing he is tracking Lex Luthor who has been missing since the season seven finale, discovers Lana instead. Oliver convinces her to return to Smallville so that she can attend Chloe's wedding. In the season eight episode "Power", it is revealed that Lana really returned so that she could steal Lex's "Prometheus" technology for herself, which harnesses alien DNA into a nanite "super-suit" to give the wearer superhuman abilities. By the end of the episode, the procedure is complete, and Lana becomes just as strong and invulnerable as Clark. In the episode "Requiem", Lana discovers that her suit absorbs kryptonite, but also emits the radiation making her a potential danger to Clark. When Winslow Schott puts a kryptonite bomb on the roof of the "Daily Planet" under Lex's orders, Lana is forced to absorb all of the kryptonite to deactivate the bomb. As a result, she leaves Smallville to go on her own quest as Clark can no longer get near her without the kryptonite radiation hurting him.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar were initially trying to find someone for the role of Clark Kent, but Kristin Kreuk was the first to be cast, as Lana Lang. Casting director Coreen Mayrs sent David Nutter, the director of the pilot episode, a tape of 69 people and the second person on the tape was Kreuk. They loved her audition tape so much they immediately showed her to the network. For one of her auditions, she read the graveyard scene with Tom Welling; the network thought they had "great chemistry". Jade Unterman and Louise Grant portrayed the character as a child and an elderly woman, respectively.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: At the time she was cast as Lana, Kreuk had no idea who the character was in Superman lore. Her uncle, who owned a comic book shop, filled her in on the details and she learned more from the producers. Kreuk realized that the character in the comics and her character on the show were two different people. As a result, Kreuk learns about the development of Lana as Lana is learning in the show, just as Welling does with Clark Kent. When asked if her being cast as a traditionally red haired character caused outcry from fans, Kreuk believes that whoever did "got over it pretty fast". By season three, Kreuk had decided to "invest" herself less in her character, as she felt that her character's ultimate development was entirely in the hands of the producers. She no longer became frustrated when the producers had Lana doing things that Kreuk felt were out of character, instead trusting that they would find the right direction for the character.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Kreuk enjoyed the fourth season because it gave her the chance to stretch her acting abilities with Lana's storyline involving the spirit of Countess Margaret Isobel Thoreaux. According to the actress, "That was a lot of fun; I thought it was funny as well […] It really was wonderful to be able to stretch and play this driven woman who has a goal and is going to reach it, and in the meantime she's going to be sexy doing it. That was a lot of fun for me because the show [sometimes] isn't realistic so, as actors, we get to play with different types of things." Kreuk says her strangest moment on the show was playing a vampire in season five's "Thirst", an experience she remembers as "uncomfortable" due to the fake blood they covered her in.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Coincidentally, Annette O'Toole, who portrayed Martha Kent in the series, played Lana Lang in "Superman III", starring Christopher Reeve.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: One of the early turning points for the character came in season one's "X-Ray", when Lana discovers information about her parents that changes her perspective on them. It began with her mother's graduation speech, which showed that her mother was not as happy as her aunt had led her to believe. Lana's perception of her mother drove the way she led her own life, which was based on the idea of everyone perceiving her in a good light. In season two, Lana discovers that her mother had had an affair with a man named Henry Small, and that he was her biological father. This continued the idea established in season one that Lana's perception that her parents were this perfect couple was wrong. According to Kreuk, meeting her biological father allowed the character to realize that she had to create her own life, as the one she had envisioned did not actually exist.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Season two also showed Lana's transition from the "girl next door" to a more "self-reliant young woman". At the beginning of the season Lana is forced to come to terms with her diminished feelings for Whitney, as well as her growing feelings for Clark. It takes time before Lana is strong enough to finally tell Whitney the truth, in a video message, about the way she feels. The Talon, a local coffee shop co-owned by Lana, becomes her new grounding force as Whitney and her aunt have left Smallville. Kreuk thinks that it can be hard to believe that a sixteen-year-old girl could become co-owner of a coffee shop, but she believes that it helps to provide more independence for the character and establish her more within the show. Eventually, in order to really get to know herself, and find her role in life, Lana leaves Smallville for Paris. In season four, Kristin Kreuk felt like Lana is "going a little crazy and is uncertain about her direction, and feels people aren't validating her beliefs".


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: At the start of the show, Lana Lang is characterized as the girl next door. As Kreuk describes her, she is the "beautiful, popular girl who is really lonely". She has a "hole in her heart", because of the loss of her parents, and feels empathy for everyone. Kristin feels that deep down the character is a "tough girl", and that Lex manages to bring that side of her out more. For instance, he convinces her to fight back against a rival coffee shop that is spreading rumors about The Talon – the coffee shop that she joint owns with Lex. Unfortunately, that tough side is not seen in the first season. According to Kreuk, the character was never placed in situations where she could show her outgoing side, because she was left to communicate primarily with Whitney and Clark. Kreuk thinks that Lana "lived in her head a little bit"; she was intelligent enough to read classical books, but would also read romantic novels "on the sly".


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: As Alfred Gough sees it, Lana is a by-product of Clark and Lex's decisions. She will always love Clark, and Clark will always love her, but it was Clark's bad decisions, and Lex's "basest instincts" that make Lana the "receptacle of all of these bad decisions", marking her as a tragic figure on the show. While Lana was with Clark, Kreuk characterizes her as a "wimpy, whiny kind of girl"; with Lex, Lana is "strong, powerful, and doesn't have to question, 'What is going on? What does he think? Does he love me? I don't know where I stand.'" To clarify, Lana's relationship with Lex brings out a darkness that had not been seen in the character. This is evident in "Nemesis" when Lana manipulates her way into seeing Lionel, only to interrogate him about why he forced her to marry Lex, as well as leaving Lex to die in the tunnels. As Gough explains, by the end of the sixth season, Lana has shown that she can beat Lex at his own games.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Reviewer Jennifer Malkowski feels that Lana is one of the most gullible characters on television. According to Malkowski, Lana's strong feminist stance, and her request that people should stop protecting her and start telling her the truth, are diluted by her willingness to believe whatever pieces of information she gets, even if they are lies. After the series ended, Gough and Millar expressed regret with Lana's characterization throughout the course of the show, which they felt damaged Lana in the audiences' mind. Gough and Millar believed that Lana's behavior toward Clark (for refusing to reveal his secret) made her come across as cold and unsympathetic.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: When "Smallville" first began, Lana was in a romantic relationship with Whitney Fordman, the star quarterback of the football team. Kreuk believes that Lana truly was in love with Whitney when they first started dating, but by the time the audience first sees her in the pilot she is no longer in that same state of mind. Kreuk believes that by the time of the pilot Lana had grown “comfortable” with Whitney, and that was where their relationship ended. Though Lana had growing feelings for Clark, Kreuk feels that the producers rushed the coupling of Clark and Lana at the end of the second season. She believes that with everything that had happened throughout the season between the two characters, it seemed a bit of a stretch for Lana to just quickly fall into Clark's arms. The next season began to develop more of the relationship between Lex and Lana. Kreuk believes that Lana cares for Lex as a friend, and that she recognizes the "undertones" that Lex may be placing on their relationship, but that Lana tends to ignore them. Kreuk recognizes that Lex is a big part of Lana's life, and that Lana tries to pay more attention to the good that Lex does and focus less on the darker aspects of his life.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: The friendship that Lana shares with Chloe was deeply damaged at the start of season three, so much so that not even Kreuk realized how badly until the episode "Truth". Lana is aware that Chloe still has romantic feelings for Clark, but their friendship suffered the most when Chloe revealed that she had known where Clark had been hiding for months. The feelings of distrust for Chloe remained hidden until "Truth"—where Chloe gained the ability to have others speak the truth no matter what—when Lana finally revealed how much she cannot trust Chloe. This developing friendship between Lex and Lana puts a strain on Lana's relationship with Clark. Just as Clark is beginning to realize the truth about Lex and his lies, Lana is starting to trust Lex more. Ultimately, it is Clark's own lack of honesty that forces Lana to leave Smallville and go to Paris at the end of season three. In the end, Kreuk believes that Clark is Lana's only true friend, as Lex is more focused on bringing his father to justice and she and Chloe have a tense relationship based on their mutual feelings for Clark.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: While in Paris, Lana begins a new romantic relationship with Jason Teague. Kreuk believes that Lana did love Jason Teague, but she also still loved Clark at the same time. With Clark, it was the "first love" that she never had the chance to discover, and that lingered with her while she was in Paris during the space between seasons three and four. According to Kreuk, before Lana can experience successful relationships with other people she will need to know what it is like to truly be in a relationship with Clark, because of the "intense connection between [the] two". Allison Mack shares her insight into the relationship between Clark and Lana, believing that the pair should have remained apart until they could finally be honest with each other: "There's no honesty in their relationship, and there's no way that they could have a healthy relationship without that honesty […] You can't be with someone if you're not honest with them." Kreuk echoes Mack's sentiments, acknowledging that Lana is not stupid, and if Clark wants a real relationship then he is going to have to be honest with her.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: The beginning of season five saw, for the first time, Clark and Lana in a happy relationship together, one that was void of dishonesty and secrets. The return of Clark's powers in "Hidden", as well as the secrets and lies that accompany them, caused stress on their relationship. In the series' 100th episode, Clark finally took a chance and told Lana the truth. When it resulted, indirectly, in her death and he was allowed to live the day over again Clark chose not to tell her his secret. In "Hypnotic", in an effort to stop hurting Lana emotionally, Clark told her that he no longer loved her. This drove Lana into Lex's arms. Writer Darren Swimmer explains that this was not something that just happened in the series, but something that had been hinted at for many seasons. Swimmer believes that Lana started dating Lex as a way of making Clark mad, but the relationship "turned into much more". Kreuk contends that Lana went to Lex because "she knows she will never really love him." Kreuk believes that Lana's relationship with the men in her life has been motivated by a desire to fill a void in her life that was left after her parents were killed. This need to fill that emptiness was fulfilled in "Void", when Lana took a drug to induce death so that she could see her parents in the afterlife. Upon meeting her parents, Kreuk believes that Lana realized that she no longer needed someone else to fill that hole in her. Kreuk sees this filled void as the reason why Lana would gravitate toward Lex. Although she did not truly love Lex, Kreuk argues that Lex was not a rebound guy and that Lana did have feelings for him."


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Even though Lana eventually marries Lex in season six, Al Gough argues that Lana still loved Clark and Clark still loved her. The only reason Lana was with Lex was because Clark forced her in that direction and she ended up getting in over her head. By contrast, writer Caroline Dries feels that Lana did love Lex, and that she did not make any hasty decisions when she agreed to marry him. Dries believes that the progression of the show demonstrates that Lex earned Lana's love. To answer viewers that hated to see Lana marry Lex, Dries contends that as viewers we are seeing all of Lex, including how evil he truly is, while Lana only sees the portion of Lex that appears good.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: In 2001, Kristin Kreuk was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Actress, as well as Female Cinescape Genre Face of the Future. The following year, alongside co-star Tom Welling, Kreuk was nominated for a Best Actress Saturn Award again. She would receive two more nominations in that category, one in 2004 and one in 2006, before she departed from the show. In the 2003 Teen Choice Awards, Kristin Kreuk was nominated for Choice TV Actress: Drama/Action Adventure. She was nominated again in 2004, 2006, 2008 for the revised category Choice TV Actress: Action Adventure, and finally in 2009. Kreuk was also co-nominated with Welling at the 2006 Teen Choice Awards for Most Beautiful Couple (TV - Choice Chemistry).


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: DVD Verdict's Brian Byun felt that the casting of the series was "pitch-perfect"; noting that Kreuk is "painfully luminous" as Lana Lang, which makes it obvious why she is the object of Clark's obsession.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Lana makes her first literary appearance in "Smallville: Strange Visitors", published by Aspect. In "Strange Visitors", Lana attempts to organize a fund raiser for the family of a school mate, Stewart, who was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Her effort is rendered moot when Lex Luthor and Dr. Donald Jacobi, a con artist that comes to Smallville, pick up Stewart's medical bills after a meteor rock removes all of the malignant cancer cells in his brain. In "Smallville: Dragon", Lana visits an antiques dealer, Mrs. Mayfern, looking for a gift for her boyfriend, Whitney. When she leaves she breaks up with Whitney and starts dating Clark. It is eventually discovered that she was hypnotized by Mrs. Mayfern, whose homegrown herbal tea is fertilized by meteor rocks.


title: Lana Lang (Smallville)

text: Lana made a non-speaking cameo appearance in the ninth issue of the show's comic book continuation "Smallville: Season Eleven", written by executive story editor Bryan Q. Miller. Though Clark and Bart Allen do not notice her, she watches them race over the coast of Cameroon. Lana returns in a parallel storyarc "Valkyrie," in which she uses the superhero alias "Angel of the Plateau" and battles terrorists in Africa. Lana also saves Lois from one of their attacks. Lana reveals that she has been using her abilities to help and protect children from people who would exploit them after Lana had settled in Africa. However, Lois tries not to reveal her relationship with Clark to Lana. Elsewhere, the terrorists seek John Corben's aid in defeating Angel of the Plateau. Corben's new kryptonite heart (installed by Winslow Schott) has absorbed the nanites embedded in Lana's skin, rendering her powerless and no longer emitting the kryptonite radiation once more. After Lois helps Lana defeat Corben, Lana reveals that she had seen Lois's engagement ring, thus she already knows about Clark's relationship with Lois. Lana gives her blessing to Lois, and decides to remain in Africa as the Angel.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Romani people (Roma; Romi, traditionally "Țigani", (often called "Gypsies" though this term is considered a slur) constitute one of Romania's largest minorities. According to the 2011 census, their number was 621.573 people or 3.3% of the total population, being the second-largest ethnic minority in Romania after Hungarians. There are different estimates about the size of the total population of people with Romani ancestry in Romania, varying from 4.6 per cent to over 10 percent of the population, because many people of Romani descent do not declare themselves Romani. For example, the Council of Europe estimates that approximately 1.85 million Roma live in Romania, a figure equivalent to 8.32% of the population.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The Romani people originate from northern India, presumably from the northwestern Indian regions such as Rajasthan and Punjab.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that roots of Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a big part of the basic lexicon, for example, body parts or daily routines. More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group. According to a genetic study in 2012, the ancestors of present scheduled tribes and scheduled caste populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India. The conference ended with a recommendation to the Government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In Romani, the native language of the Romani, the word for "people" is pronounced or depending on dialect ( or in the singular). Since the 1990s, the word has also been used officially in the Romanian language, although it was used by Romani activists in Romania as far back as 1933.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: There are two spellings of the word in Romanian: "rom" (plural "romi"), and "rrom" (plural "rromi"). The first spelling is preferred by the majority of Romani NGOs and it is the only spelling accepted in Romanian Academy's Dicționarul explicativ al limbii române. The two forms reflect the fact that for some speakers of Romani there are two rhotic (ar-like) phonemes: and . In the government-sponsored (Courthiade) writing system is spelt "rr". The final "i" in "rromi" is the Romanian (not Romani) plural.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The traditional and colloquial Romanian name for Romani, is "țigani" (cognate with Bulgarian "cigani", Hungarian "cigány", Greek "ατσίγγανοι" (atsinganoi), French "tsiganes", Portuguese "ciganos", Spanish "gitanos", Dutch "zigeuner", German "Zigeuner", Turkish "Çigan", Persian زرگری (zargari), Arabic غجري (ghajri), Italian "zingari", Russian цыгане (tsygane), Polish cyganie and Kazakh Сыған/ســىــعــان (syǵan)). Depending on context, the term may be considered to be pejorative in Romania.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In 2009–2010, a media campaign followed by a parliamentary initiative asked the Romanian Parliament to accept a proposal to revert the official name of country's Roma (adopted in 2000) to "Țigan" (Gypsy), the traditional and colloquial Romanian name for Romani, in order to avoid the possible confusion among the international community between the words Roma — which refers to the Romani ethnic minority — and Romania. The Romanian government supported the move on the grounds that many countries in the European Union use a variation of the word "Țigan" to refer to their Gypsy populations. The Romanian upper house, Senate, rejected the proposal.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Linguistic and historical data indicate that the Roma arrived in the Balkans following a long period within the Byzantine Empire, and that this most likely occurred around 1350. This date coincides with a period of instability in Asia Minor due to the expansion of the Ottoman Turks, which may have been a contributory factor in their migration.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: It is probable that the first arrival of Romani people in the territory of present-day Romania occurred shortly after 1370, when groups of Roma either migrated or were forcibly transferred north of the Danube, with Romani people likely reaching Transylvania, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary, in the final decades of the 14th century. The first written record of Romani people in Romanian territory dates to 1385 and is from Wallachia, noting the transfer of a group of Roma to the ownership of the monastery of Prizren, their presence then being documented in Transylvania in 1400, and Moldavia in 1425. It is, however, worth noting that the dates above relate principally to the first arrival of Roma in future Romanian territories, waves of migration from the south continued up until the 18th century, when the northward migration of the Roma, some of whom were Turkish-speaking Muslims, was still occurring.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Romani in Wallachia and Moldavia were, from their arrival in the region, enslaved, a situation which continued until the emancipations of the mid-19th century. The institution of Romani slavery also existed in Transylvania, especially in fiefdoms which had undergone a period of control by Wallachian or Moldavian princes, but the majority of Transylvanian Roma were not slaves. One child of a former Roma slave, Ștefan Răzvan, briefly achieved power in Moldavia, ruling as Voivod for part of the year 1595.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The economic contribution of slavery in the Danubian principalities was immense, yet no economic compensation was ever paid to freed slaves. The current state of social and economic exclusion in Romania has its roots in the ideology and practice of slavery, and therefore its effects are still felt today. Public discussion of Roma slavery remains something of a taboo in modern Romania, no museum of Roma history exists, nor are there any monuments or memorials to slavery. Textbooks and the Romanian school curriculum either minimise this and other aspects of Roma history or exclude it entirely.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The institution of slavery in Wallachia and Moldavia predated the arrival of the Roma in the region, and was at that time principally applied to groups of Tatars or Cumans resident in the territory. Although initially all the Roma were owned by princes, groups of Roma were very quickly transferred to monasteries or boyars, creating the three groups of Roma slaves; princely slaves, monastery slaves and boyar slaves. Any Gypsy without a master would automatically become a princely slave, and any foreign-born Romani passing through the prince's dominion risked being enslaved. The Tatar component of the slave population disappeared in the second half of the 15th century, fusing into the more numerous Roma population. during this period, the Roma were organised into bands composed of 30-40 families. These bands were delineated by profession and named for the nature of their economic activity, examples include gold-washers ("aurari"), bear-baiters (ursari), musicians (lăutari), and spoon-makers (lingurari).


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Slavery in the Danubian Principalities did not generally signify that Romani or Tatar slaves were forced remain on the property of their owners, most Roma remained nomadic but were tied to their owners by certain obligations. Slaves made up the lowest category of society, below the serfs, differing from the latter not in the fact that they were unfree, but in their lack of legal personhood. Slaves were considered wholly property of their owners, and could be transferred, bequeathed, mortgaged or exchanged for goods or services. In addition, any property owned by the slaves could also be appropriated. Slaves could be legally imprisoned or beaten by their masters at any time, but they could not be killed, and slaves resident at the manor of their masters had to be fed and clothed. Some Roma slaves were allowed to travel and earn their own living in exchange for a fixed payment to their owners. Still, the brutality of the slave owners in the Danubian Principalities was well known in Western Europe. Louis-Alexandre de Launay, visiting Wallachia and Moldova, noted that: ""the boyars are their absolute masters. At will, they sell them" (the Roma) "and kill them like cattle. Their children are born slaves regardless of their sex.""


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Princely slaves were obliged to perform labour for the state and pay special taxes, according to a system based on tradition. These obligations were steadily increased over the period of Roma slavery and were sometimes partially extended to slaves owned by monasteries and boyars. A parallel legal system administered by local Romani leaders and sheriffs existed, as Romani people had no access to the law, and any damages caused by Romani people to the property or persons of non-Roma were legally the responsibility of their legal owners. Killings of Romani people were technically punishable by death, but boyars who killed a slave seem never to have been executed in practice and a Roma who killed another would usually simply be offered to the victim's master as compensation. Although contemporary records do show that Roma slaves were occasionally freed by their masters, this was very unusual.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In the late 18th century, formal legal codes forbidding the separation of married couples were enacted. These codes also prohibited the separation of children from their parents and made marriage between free people and the Roma legal without the enslavement of the non-Roma partner, which had been the practice up to that point. The children of such unions would no longer be considered slaves but free people.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The situation of Roma in Transylvania differed from that in Wallachia and Moldavia as a result of the different political conditions which prevailed there. At the time of the arrival of the first Roma, around 1400, the region formed part of the Kingdom of Hungary, becoming an autonomous principality in the mid-sixteenth century before finally falling under the dominion of the Habsburg monarchy at the end of the 17th century.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The region of Făgăraș, bordering Wallachia, was under the control of the Prince of Wallachia until the end of the 15th century, and therefore the institutions of slavery which pertained in that region were identical to those in Wallachia. There is also evidence that slavery was practiced in those areas which were temporarily under the control of the Prince of Moldavia. The only notable difference from the situation in Wallachia and Moldavia was that as well as the three categories of slaves found in those principalities, Romani people were owned by Bran Castle, the ownership of whom was later transferred to the town of Braşov. This special regime of slavery in specific regions of Transylvania continued throughout the period of the autonomous principality, before its final abolition under the Habsburgs in 1783.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: However, the majority of Roma in Transylvania were not enslaved, they instead constituted a type of royal serf, with obligations of service and tax owed to the state set at a lower level than the non-Roma population. The Roma were also exempted from military service and enjoyed a degree of toleration for their non-Christian religious practices. The economic role of Romani metal-workers and craftsmen was significant in the rural economy. Many Romanis retained their nomadic lifestyle, enjoying the right to camp on crown land, however, over the centuries part of the population settled in Saxon villages, on the edge of towns, or on the estates of boyars. Those who settled on Boyar estates quickly became serfs and integrated into the local population, while those in towns and villages tended to retain their identity and freedom, albeit as a marginalised group.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In the second half of the 18th century, the Habsburg monarchy undertook a series of measures designed to forcibly assimilate the Roma and suppress their nomadic lifestyle. The most severe of these decrees came in 1783 when the emperor Joseph II implemented a raft of policies which included forbidding the Roma from trading horses, living in tents, speaking Romani or even marrying another Romani person. They also finally emancipated the last slaves in Transylvania. The decrees seem to have rarely been implemented in full, which prevented the cultural extermination of the Roma, but they were very effective in promoting the sedentarisation of Gypsies in those areas of today's Romania then under Habsburg control.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Until the early 19th century, the Roma of Wallachia and Moldavia remained in conditions of slavery that had changed very little since the 14th century, despite the significant changes which had occurred in other sectors of society. Roma slavery was viewed as an integral part of the social system of the principalities, with the Phanariot rulers strongly influenced by the conservatism of their Ottoman suzerains. Following the replacement of the Phanariots with native princes in 1821, Wallachia and Moldova underwent a period of Westernisation and modernisation, eliminating many of the institutions of the ancien régime, but formally enshrining slavery in the founding acts of the principalities.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: As part of this modernisation, boyars owning slaves began to exploit their labour more intensively in a more capitalistic fashion. Romani slaves were employed in agricultural tasks during the summer months, which had not been common practice, forced to work on building sites and even in the factories of the nascent industrial sector. Private owners of slaves, monasteries and even the state frequently hired out their slave workforce for large sums of money. This new capitalistic system of exploitation transformed slaves into goods in the full sense of the term, whereas in the past slaves tended to be sold only in extremis, mass auctions of slaves became commonplace. As a result of this new mode of exploitation, the nomadic lifestyle of the Romani people of Moldavia and Wallachia was no longer possible, and, like Transylvanian rom, they became a largely sedentary population. The exact slave population of Wallachia and Moldavia at this time is a matter of some debate, but historian Viorel Achim puts the figure at around 400,000, or 7% of the population.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: From the 1830s international and domestic criticism of Roma slavery became increasingly prominent, instigated by events such as the mass slave auctions held in Bucharest. Support for the emancipation of the Roma from within the principalities was marginal in the 1830s, but became generalised among the educated classes in the 1840s, before developing into a well-defined abolitionist movement in the 1850s. Heated debate was conducted in newspapers, with abolitionist voices initially focusing on the material and spiritual poverty endured by the slaves, and the damage this did to the country's image, before adopting arguments based on humanism and liberalism. The economic unproductivity of slave labour was also argued by slavery's critics. During the revolutions of 1848, the Moldavian and Wallachian radicals included abolition of slavery as part of their programmes.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The Wallachian state freed its own slaves in 1843, and this was followed by the emancipation of church slaves in 1847. The government of Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei (1849-1856) introduced gradual restrictions of the freedom of private slave-owners to sell or donate slaves. A regulation was introduced in 1850 which forced slave-owners wishing to sell slaves to do so to the state treasury, which would immediately free them. In 1851 a measure allowing the state to compulsorily purchase mistreated slaves was introduced. The final decree of emancipation, entitled “The law for the emancipation of all Gypsies in the Principality of Wallachia” , was enacted in February 1856, thereby ending slavery in Wallachia. Slaveowners were compensated 10 ducats for each slave they possessed, with the cost of this purchase to be taken from the tax revenues which would be paid by freed slaves. The law obliged Romani People to settle in villages, where they could be more easily taxed, thus forcing the last nomadic Romani to become sedentary.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In Moldavia, the implementation of an emancipation law of 1844 liberated state and church slaves, leaving only boyar slaves in the principality. Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica emancipated the final Moldavian slaves in 1855, setting different rates of compensation dependent on whether the gypsies were nomadic "lăieşi" (4 ducats) or settled "vătraşi" and "linguari" (8 ducats). No compensation was paid for invalids or babies. As in Wallachia, the compensation was funded by the taxes paid by the liberated monastery and state slaves, but in Moldavia this was topped up with funds collected from the clergy. Some slave owners chose to be compensated in bonds, paying 10% annual interest, or with a 10-year exemption from taxation.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In Bessarabia, annexed by the Russian Empire in 1812, the Roma were liberated in 1861. Many of them migrated to other regions of the Empire, while important communities remained in Soroca, Otaci and the surroundings of Cetatea Albă, Chișinău, and Bălți.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The liberation of the Roma improved the legal status of Romania's Roma, however, they retained their position as the most marginalised sector of Romanian society. They frequently continued to work for the same masters, without significant improvement to their material conditions. Romani people who did not continue to labour for their former owners often suffered great economic hardship, imprisonment and death from hunger being frequent outcomes. During the first thirty years following liberation, a notable phenomenon of urbanisation occurred, with many Roma who were expelled from their former owners' estates, or who did not wish to adopt a lifestyle which would thrust them into poverty, migrating to towns. This contrasted the situation noted in some other groups of Roma, who adapted fully to this new condition and assimilated into the peasant population, losing their status as Roma both culturally and officially.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The social upheaval of emancipation led to mass Romani emigration from Romanian territory, initially into the Austro-Hungarian empire and thence to Western Europe, Poland, the Russian Empire, Scandinavia and the Americas. This migration was the primary origin of the Vlax Roma populations found worldwide today, although it is likely that some Vlax groups may have migrated out of Romania prior to emancipation. This pattern of Roma emigration continued until after the First World War, with Roma in Bavaria recorded as carrying Romanian passports in the 1920s.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The result of these processes of assimilation and emigration was a relative decline in the percentage of Roma inhabitants resident in Moldavia, Wallachia and Bessarabia. At the time of emancipation, the proportion of the populations of Moldavia and Wallachia who had been slaves was around 7%, between 200,000 and 250,000 people. By the last decade of the 19th century the number of Roma is estimated to have grown to between 250,000 and 300,000, 4-5% of the population.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In 1893, the Hungarian authorities carried out a census of Transylvanian Roma which provides a wealth of information on their social and economic situation in the late 19th century. There is evidence for a similar process of assimilation into the general population as was occurring in Moldavia and Wallachia, with Romani groups adopting a Romanian, Hungarian, Székely or Saxon ethnic identity. However, there is also evidence of Roma retaining their specific identity, even when they had abandoned the Romani language: the census records that 38.1% of Transylvanian Roma spoke Hungarian as their mother tongue, 29.97% spoke Romani, 24.39% spoke Romanian, with smaller numbers speaking Slavic languages or German. Though a largely rural population, Transylvanian Roma were rarely involved in agriculture, more commonly working as artisans or craftsmen, with nomadism almost eliminated by this date.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: After the First World War, Greater Romania was established which included Transylvania, Banat, Bukovina and Bessarabia and other territories which increased the number of ethnic Romani in Romania. However, despite this increase in the absolute number of Roma in the country, the decline in the relative proportion of Romani people within Romania continued. The first census in interwar Romania took place in 1930; 242,656 persons (1.6%) were registered as "(țigani)", this number was lower than the figures recorded in the late 19th century, although it was almost certainly much lower than the real figure. The reason for this relative decline was the continued gradual assimilation of Roma to a Romanian or Hungarian ethnic identity, linked to the status of peasants or smallholder, a process which was accelerated by the land reform carried out following the war.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The traditional Roma economic activities of metalwork and crafts became less tenable during this period, as ethnic Romanians began to adopt trades such as woodworking and competition from manufactured goods increased. The few Roma who retained a nomadic lifestyle tended to abandon their traditional crafts and adopt the role of pedlars, and their traditional lifestyle was made very difficult by police refusal to allow them to camp near villages. These economic and social changes reduced the strength of the traditional clan system and, despite the social and linguistic differences between Roma groups, fostered a common Roma identity.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The period of Romanian democracy, between 1918 and 1938, led to a flowering of Romani cultural, social, and political organisations. In 1933, two competing national Roma representative bodies were founded, the General Association of Gypsies in Romania and the General Union of Roma in Romania. These two organisations were bitter rivals who vied for members and whose leaders launched bitter attacks on each other, with the latter, under the leadership of the self-declared Roma Voivode Gheorghe Niculescu, emerging as the only truly national force. The organisation's stated aim was "the emancipation and reawakening of the Roma nation" so that Roma could live alongside their compatriots "without being ashamed".


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The General Union of Roma in Romania enjoyed some successes before its suppression in 1941, even continuing to function to a degree after the establishment of a Royal Dictatorship in 1938. Land was obtained for nomadic Roma, church marriages were organised to legally and spiritually formalise Roma couples, and legal and medical services were provided to Roma. They also convinced the government to allow the Romani people freedom of movement within the national territory in order to allow them to practice their trades.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The Royal Dictatorship of Carol II, from 1938 to 1940, adopted discriminatory policies against Jewish Romanians and other national minorities.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The strongest anti-Roma attitudes of the 1918-1940 period were found not in politics, but in Academia. Scientific racism was rooted in university departments dedicated to Eugenics and biopolitics, which viewed Romani and Jewish people as a "bioethnic danger" to the Romanian nation. These views would come to the fore politically during the dictatorship of Ion Antonescu (1940-1944).


title: Romani people in Romania

text: During 1940, Romania was forced to cede territory to Hungary and the Soviet Union, an event which led to the military coup which installed general Ion Antonescu, first in concert with the fascist Iron Guard, and later as a predominantly military fascist dictatorship allied with Nazi Germany. Antonescu persecuted Roma with increasing severity until the invasion of Romania by the Soviets and his overthrow by the King in 1944. During the Second World War, the regime deported 25,000 Romani to Transnistria; of these many thousands died, with estimates of the exact number ranging from 11,000 to 12,500. In all, from the territory of present-day Romania (including Northern Transylvania), 36,000 Romani perished during that time. The mistreatment of Romania Roma during World War II has received scant attention from Romanian historians, despite the wide-ranging historical literature detailing the history of the Antonescu regime.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The anti-Roma discourse which had been present in Romanian academia during the 1930s became more prominent as an intellectual current after 1940, with academics who had never previously expressed anti-Roma views now doing so, and eugenicists making more radical demands such as the sterilisation of Roma people to protect Romania's "ethnic purity". These views also found expression in the ideology of the "legionary" Iron Guard, who followed the scientists in identifying a "Gypsy Problem" in Romania, however, they were suppressed in January 1941 before any serious anti-roma measures had been enacted. Antonescu's post-legionary regime's declared goal was the "Romanianisation" of Romania's territory, through the ethnic cleansing of minorities, especially Jewish and Romani people.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Although it appears that Antonescu initially planned the staged deportation of the entire Roma population to Transnistria, Soviet territory occupied by Romania, only the first stage was ever carried out. The initial wave was composed of Roma who the regime considered a "problem", in May 1942, a police survey was conducted to identify any Romani person without a clear occupation or with criminal convictions, difficulty supporting themself, or any practiced nomadism. Immediately following the survey, any Romani person who fell into any of these categories would be forbidden from leaving their county of residence. The deportation of these individuals and their families was justified on the pretext of combatting criminality occurring during blackouts.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The transportation of all nomadic Romanian Roma was carried out between June and August 1942, and was composed of 11,441 people, 6714 of them children. This deportation also included those nomadic Roma serving in the army, who were returned from the front for transportation. The expulsion of sedentary Roma occurred during September 1942 and was incomplete, including only 12,497 of the 31,438 individuals recorded in the police survey. This group consisted of Roma who were categorised as "dangerous and undesirable" and excluded any romani person who had been mobilised by the military and their families.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The September deportations, which occurred by train, were chaotic and often included individuals who were not intended to be deported, or in some cases, who were not even Roma. Cases were reported of theft and exploitative purchases of goods by police and gendarmes, and the deportees were not permitted to carry sufficient goods for survival in Transnistria. Despite the order to respect family members of serving soldiers, many were deported, leading to protests by Romani soldiers and complaints from the army hierarchy. As well as smaller expulsions in late September and early October, there was some repatriation of individuals and families who had been deported in error, before the deportation of the Roma was halted on 14 October 1942, due to its unpopularity.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Deported Romani people were generally settled on the edges of villages in the counties of Golta, Ochakov, Balta and Berezovka, their settlement frequently necessitating the eviction of Ukrainian residents who were billeted in the houses of their neighbours. The economic activity of the Roma was, theoretically, organised systematically by the state, however, in reality there was insufficient demand for labour to occupy them and they were unable to sustain themselves through work. Their high concentration in specific locations resulted in food shortages, as the local occupying authorities had insufficient resources to feed the deportees. The deported Roma suffered great hardship from the beginning due to cold and lack of food, with a high mortality rate being notable from the very beginning of the period of deportation. On occasions Roma colonies received no food rations for weeks on end, and as no clothing was issued to supplement the insufficient supply they had been allowed to bring with them, the Ukrainian winter caused much suffering and many deaths, while healthcare was practically non-existent.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The number of dead from cold and hunger among the transported Roma can not be securely calculated, as no reliable contemporary statistics exist. Transnistria was evacuated by the Romanian army in early 1944, in the face of the advancing Soviet forces. Some Romani pdople travelled back to Romania, whereas others remained in Soviet territory, from where they were likely dispersed into other regions, a factor which makes exact calculations of mortality among the transportees very difficult. Romanian historian Viorel Achim puts the number of dead at around half of those transported, roughly 12,500 people, whereas the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania gives an estimate of 11,000.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In August 1940, as part of the Second Vienna Award, control of Northern Transylvania, including of all of Maramureș and part of Crișana, was transferred to Hungary. Discrimination by Hungary against Roma had been common throughout the 1930s, and biannual police raids on Romani settlements were mandated by law. During the course of the war, Hungarian Roma were progressively expelled from urban areas or forced to live in ghettoes.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In March 1944, Hungary was occupied by Nazi Germany, Hungary stepped up its persecution of the Roma and Jewish population, with countless Jewish people deported to concentration camps and many Roma organised into forced labour battalions. Following the replacement in late 1944 of the Horthy government with that of the Arrow Cross Party, the mass deportation of Roma to concentration camps began. Initially the victims were transported to local Hungarian labour camps, from which many were later transferred to Dachau. Massacres of gypsies also occurred in various localities, including one occurring in Nagyszalonta (Salonta) now in Romania.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Of a population of around 100,000 Roma in Hungary, around 50,000 were subjected to forced labour. While the total number of Roma killed in Hungary is still a matter of academic debate, the "Columbia Guide to the Holocaust" puts the figure at 28,000.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The communist authorities have tried to integrate the Roma community, for example by building flats for them. Apart from the 1977 national campaign that confiscated all the gold (particularly jewelry) belonging to the Roma, there are few documents about the particular situation of this ethnic group during Ceaușescu's dictatorship.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Sometimes the authorities tried to cover up crimes related to racial hatred, so as not to raise the social tension. An example of this is the crime committed by a truck driver named Eugen Grigore, from Iași who, in 1974, to avenge the death of his wife and his three children caused by a group of Roma, drove his truck into a Roma camp, killing 24 people. This fact was made public only in the 2000s.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: After the fall of communism in Romania, there were many inter-ethnic conflicts targeting the Roma community, the most famous being the 1993 Hădăreni riots. Other important clashes against Roma happened, from 1989 to 2011, in Turulung, Vârghiș, Cuza Vodă, Bolintin-Deal, Ogrezeni, Reghin, Cărpiniş, Găiseni, Plăieşii de Sus, Vălenii Lăpuşului, Racşa, Valea Largă, Apața, Sânmartin, Sâncrăieni and Racoş. During the June 1990 Mineriad, a group of protesters organized a pogrom in the Roma neighborhoods of Bucharest. According to the press, the raids resulted in the destruction of apartments and houses, beatings of men and assaults of women of Roma ethnicity.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Many politicians have also made some offensive statements against the Roma people, such as the president of that time Traian Băsescu, who, in 2007, called a Roma journalist "stinky Gypsy". Later in 2020, during a TV show, Băsescu expressed objections about the use of the term "Roma" instead of "Gypsy", which according to him was "artificially created during the 90s" and "produces confusion with Romanians living abroad". He added that the Roma people created a bad image of Romania, and that the "(criminal) Gypsy groups need to understand that they cannot be tolerated with their way of life". Following these affirmations, the fined him.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In November 2011, the mayor of the city of Baia Mare, Cătălin Cherecheș, decided to build a wall in a neighborhood inhabited by a Roma community. The National Anti-Discrimination Council fined the mayor in 2011 and in 2020 for not demolishing the wall, despite the several orders in this regard. Also in 2020, the mayor of Târgu Mureș, Dorin Florea, complained that his county has the biggest number of Roma and that they are "a serious problem for Romania". Sorin Lavric, a senator member of the far-right AUR party, stated that the Roma are "a social plague".


title: Romani people in Romania

text: A 2000 EU report about Romani said that "in Romania... the continued high levels of discrimination are a serious concern.. and progress has been limited to programmes aimed at improving access to education".


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Various international institutions, such as the World Bank, the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB), and the Open Society Institute (OSI) launched the 2005-2015 Decade for Roma Inclusion. To this, followed the EU Decade of Roma Inclusion


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The accession of Romania to the European Union in 2007 led many members of the Romani minority, the most socially disadvantaged ethnic group in Romania, to migrate en masse to various Western European countries (mostly to Spain, Italy, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, United Kingdom, Sweden) hoping to find a better life. The exact number of emigrants is unknown. In 2007 Florin Cioabă, an important leader of the Romani community (also known as the "King of all Gypsies") declared in an interview that he worried that Romania may lose its Romani minority. However, the next population census in 2011 showed a substantial rise in those recording Romani ethnicity.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: According to some studies, Roma people make 17% of the adult prison population and 40% of the juvenile inmates in Romania. This over-representation makes this group a favorite target for mass media attacks and discriminatory practices. Another study conducted in six Romanian prisons found that 21% of the inmates were Roma, many more than expected based on any official or unofficial statistics on ethnic composition.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The "Pro Democrația association" in Romania revealed that 94% of the questioned persons believe that the Romanian citizenship should be revoked to the ethnic Roms who commit crimes abroad. Another survey revealed that 68% of Romanians think that Roma people commit most crimes, 46% think that they are thieves, while 43% lazy and dirty, and 36% believe that the Roma community might become a threat to Romania.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In another survey made in 2013 by "IRES", 57% respondents stated that they generally don't trust people of Roma ancestry and only 17% said to have a Roma friend. Still, 57% said that this ethnic group is not discriminated in Romania, 59% claimed that the Roma should not receive help from the state, and that Roma people are poor because they don't like to work (72%) and that most of them are thugs (61%). "IRES" published in 2020 a survey which revealed that 72% of Romanians don't trust Roma people and have a negative opinion about them.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In the context of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are some reports of discrimination against Ukrainian Roma who took refuge in Romania.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: With the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, Turkish speaking Muslim Roma Xoraxane settled in Dobruja (southeastern Europe) under Ottoman rule


title: Romani people in Romania

text: According to the 2011 census, there are 245,677 people whose native language is romani, this represents just under 40% of the ethnic population. Over half of the Romani people speak Romanian as their native language, the rest (around 8-9%) speaking the Hungarian language.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Both the Roma and the Romanian languages are of the Indo-European language family, while the Hungarian is a Uralic one. The Roma language shares the most lexical similarities with Punjabi and Hindi, the most phonological similarities with Bengali and its grammar structure closely resembles the one found in Merwari.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Unsurprisingly, their language is Indo-Aryan, as they originally came from what is today part of east India's Rajasthan, Haryana and Punjab.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The following spreadsheet contains information regarding the native languages of the ethnic Romani population. Please note that information might not be fully accurate as there is a reasonable population of Romanis who consider themselves as part of the majority population.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: According to the official constitution of Romania, under law 57/2019, titl. III, art. 94, alin. 1, those communes in which any national (ethnic) minority of Romania, whose proportion of the commune's population is equal to or exceeds 20%, must provide services and inscriptions in that nation's language. However, in reality this is not necessarily the case. On the one hand, this law is respected in the cases of most national minorities (e.g.: Hungarian, German etc.). On the other hand, in communes where the ethnic Romani population (e.g.: Vâlcele, Ormeniş) clearly exceeds that threshold, no inscriptions nor services are available in the Romani language. Moreover, in the village of Crăciunești the population of whose native language is Romani form an absolute majority, and, still, none of the inscriptions are in Romani, only in the official language of the state, Romanian, and in another minority language, whose population also surpasses 20%, Hungarian. Furthermore, education is unavailable in all, except for one school in Timiș County. In the other schools, medium of instruction is Romanian, in some cases Hungarian. There are also a few schools, where they teach the language on afternoons. However, it is still not used in other classes.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: In Romania there are a total number of 2,315 Roma segregations, most of them are located on the outskirts of cities, but they can be found in villages as well. It is typical for these segregations to have a Roma population of almost 100%. However, it can also be said that the living conditions in these areas are extremely poor. Most houses are unmaintained, a number of these do not even have any services, let alone permission for building, with 4,5 people per house on average, a number twice as high as the Romanian one. The vast majority of these segregations are dominantly Romanian-speaking, like the largest one of the segregations, with over 10.000 people living in it, according to unofficial estimates (located in Săcele). Only a minority of these districts being Hungarian and Roma speaking. The following spreadsheet contains information regarding the largest dominantly Hungarian speaking Romani segregations.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: According to the 2011 census, 69.9% of Roma are Orthodox Christians, 18.4% Pentecostals, 3.8% Roman Catholics, 3% Reformed, 1.1% Greek Catholics, 0.9% Baptists, 0.8% Seventh-Day Adventists, while the rest belong to other religions such as Islam and Lutheranism.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Notable Romanian Romani musicians and bands include Grigoraş Dinicu, Johnny Răducanu, Ion Voicu, Taraf de Haïdouks, Connect-R and Nicole Cherry.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: The musical genre "manele", a part of Romanian pop culture, is often sung by Romani singers in Romania and has been influenced in part by Romani music, but mostly by Oriental music brought in Romania from Turkey during the 19th century. Romanian public opinion about the subject varies from support to outright condemnation.


title: Romani people in Romania

text: Romanian Roma are associated with vampires and have thought to brought the myth to Eastern Europe from their ancient homeland India.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: The Accidental Tourist is a 1988 American romantic drama film directed and co-produced by Lawrence Kasdan, from a screenplay by Frank Galati and Kasdan, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Anne Tyler. The film stars William Hurt as Macon Leary, a middle-aged travel writer whose life and marriage have been shattered by the tragic death of his son. It also stars Kathleen Turner and Geena Davis.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: "The Accidental Tourist" was theatrically released in the United States on December 23, 1988, by Warner Bros. Pictures. The film received critical acclaim and grossed over $32.6 million. It was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, with Geena Davis winning Best Supporting Actress. It was also nominated for two Golden Globe Awards, including Best Motion Picture – Drama.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: Macon Leary (William Hurt) is a Baltimore writer of travel guides for reluctant business travelers, which detail how best to avoid unpleasantness and difficulty.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: His marriage to his wife Sarah (Kathleen Turner) is disintegrating in the aftermath of the murder of their 12-year-old son, Ethan. Sarah eventually leaves Macon, moving out of their house and into an apartment. After he falls down the basement stairs and breaks his leg, Macon returns to his childhood home to stay with his eccentric siblings.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: Macon is pursued by Muriel Pritchet (Geena Davis), an animal hospital employee and dog trainer with a sickly son. Macon eventually hires Muriel to put his dog through much-needed obedience training. Although Muriel at first seems brash and unsophisticated, Macon eventually finds himself opening up to her and trusting her, and he moves into her apartment. When Sarah's apartment lease is up, she moves back into their old home and suggests to Macon that they start over. Macon leaves Muriel, and he and Sarah set up house once more.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: When Macon visits Paris for research, Muriel surprises him by showing up on the same flight and stays in the same Paris hotel, recommended by Macon in one of his travel guides. She suggests that they enjoy themselves as if they are vacationing together. Macon insists he is there strictly for business, and although he shows concern for how Alexander is doing, keeps Muriel at arm's length.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: During Macon's last night in Paris, Muriel asks to go with him, and despite an early flight she tells him he doesn't have to reply just now. Waking up in the middle of the night Macon decides to call Muriel but his telephone malfunctions. Macon gets up and while trying to fix the cord, hurts his back and becomes bedridden. Muriel knocks on his door waking him up but before he can decide what to do Muriel assumes he has gone already and leaves. Mustering the strength to go to the front desk, Macon phones his publisher to inform him of his back pain. Sarah comes to Paris, sent by Macon's sister Rose, to care and make day-trips for him in order to complete his travel guide. Sarah proposes that after finishing the day trips if he is feeling better they can go sightseeing, reschedule the flight for a later date and make the trip a second honeymoon to which Macon agrees. However, Sarah tells him that she has run into Muriel when she arrived and as such continues to question Macon about his attraction to Muriel, angering Macon.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: The next morning, Macon dresses while Sarah still sleeps, then wakes her to tell her that he is going back to Muriel. On his way to the airport, Macon spots Muriel hailing a taxi and tells the driver to stop. Thinking the driver stopped for her, Muriel bends to gather her luggage and catches sight of Macon in the taxi. She smiles, and Macon returns the smile.


title: The Accidental Tourist (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 82% based on 33 reviews with the consensus stating, "Generous with its character's foibles and virtues, "The Accidental Tourist" is a thoughtful drama vested with insight into the complications of relationships". On Metacritic the film has a score of 53 out of 100 based on reviews from 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade B on scale of A to F.


title: Somebody to Love (Queen song)

text: "Somebody to Love" is a song by the British rock band Queen, written by the lead singer/pianist Freddie Mercury. It debuted on the band's 1976 album "A Day at the Races" and also appears on their 1981 compilation album "Greatest Hits".


title: Somebody to Love (Queen song)

text: The song has similarities to Queen's earlier hit "Bohemian Rhapsody" with its complex harmonies and guitar solos; however instead of mimicking an English choir, the band turned to a gospel choir. It reached  2 in the UK and No. 13 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the US. The song demonstrated that "Queen could swing as hard as it could rock, by channeling the spirit of gospel music".


title: Somebody to Love (Queen song)

text: Written by Mercury at the piano, "Somebody to Love" is a soul-searching piece that questions God's role in a life without love. Through voice layering techniques, Queen was able to create the soulful sound of a 100-voice choir from three singers: Mercury, Brian May, and Roger Taylor. John Deacon did not sing backing vocals on the recorded album. Mercury's fascination and admiration for Aretha Franklin was a major influence for the creation of this song.


title: Somebody to Love (Queen song)

text: Queen played "Somebody to Love" live from 1977 to 1985, and a live performance of the song is recorded on the album "Queen Rock Montreal". In addition to these live performances, there were collaboration tributes to "Somebody to Love" after Mercury's death in 1991. The song was played live on 20 April 1992 during The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert, with George Michael on lead vocals.


title: Somebody to Love (Queen song)

text: Since its release in 1976, the song has appeared in several television shows, such as the "Idol" franchise, "The X Factor", and "Glee", as well as films, including "Happy Feet" and "Ella Enchanted". It has also been covered by many artists.


title: Somebody to Love (Queen song)

text: Like "Bohemian Rhapsody", the major hit from Queen's previous album "A Night at the Opera" (1975), "Somebody to Love" has a complex melody and deep layering of vocal tracks. But while "Bohemian Rhapsody" was based on English choir styles, "Somebody to Love" was based on a gospel choir arrangement. It was the first single from "A Day at the Races", on which Mercury, May and Taylor multitracked their voices to create the impression of a 100-voice gospel choir. The lyrics, especially combined with the gospel influence, create a song about faith, desperation and soul-searching; the singer questions both the lack of love experienced in his life, and the role and existence of God. This is reinforced by frequent use of word painting. The lyrics also speak to the feelings of desperation and isolation that accompany trying to find love as a queer man in an unaccepting and lonely world ("I just gotta get out of this prison cell. Someday I'm gonna be free."). Staying true to Queen's guitar-driven style, it was also filled with intricate harmonies and a notable guitar solo by May, and it went to No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 13 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the U.S.