title: Wolters Kluwer

text: The company became the fifth participant in the AAISalliance, an arrangement of information providers that make their services available for member insurance companies of the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS) in April 2014. In May 2014, Wolters Kluwer launched UpToDate, a clinical decision support resource, in the United Kingdom. UpToDate was launched throughout Western Europe a month later. Wolters Kluwer acquired Datacert, a Houston, Texas-based enterprise legal management software and services provider in April 2014.


title: Wolters Kluwer

text: The company partnered with Anhembi Morumbi University, a private university in São Paulo, Brazil, to provide information and resources to healthcare students and professionals in June 2014. That month, the company's CCH eSign solution won the "CPA Practice Advisor Magazine's" 2014 Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Award. The solution won the Software and Information Industry Association's “Best Enterprise Mobile Application” award that year. The company partnered with Broadridge Tax Services in August 2014 to facilitate tax reporting and reconciliation. In September, the company's UpToDate resource was released in Latin America. That month the company extended its partnership with the American Internal Revenue Service. 2014 marked the 15th year of their collaboration. In May 2016, the company acquired Enablon, a global provider of Environmental, Health, Safety & Sustainability and Operational Risk Management software and SaaS solutions. In 2017 Wolters Kluwer partnered with Skopos Labs to develop the Federal Developments Knowledge Center to help legal professionals stay up-to-date on actions by the President and Congress.


title: Wolters Kluwer

text: In the United States, Wolters Kluwer's Legal & Regulatory Education (the education division of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.) published casebooks and legal textbooks through its Aspen Publisher's, Inc. marquee. In 2021, Transom Capital Group purchased the Education division for US$88 million, renaming the entire operation as the standalone Aspen Publishing.


title: Wolters Kluwer

text: In June 2022, Wolters Kluwer signed and completed an agreement to acquire Level Programs S.L., a provider of legal practice management software in Spain.


title: Wolters Kluwer

text: Wolters Kluwer operated under four divisions as of 2013: Legal & Regulatory Solutions (sold to Peninsula Business Services in 2017; Wolters Kluwer continued to operate a division named Legal & Regulatory U.S., which also held on to its Aspen Publisher's, Inc. marquee until 2021), Tax & Accounting, Health and the Governance, Risk & Compliance Division. The company is active in over 150 countries. Approximately 74% of the company's revenue came from online, software and services in 2013. The United States medical publishing business is run through Wolters Kluwer Health.


title: Wolters Kluwer

text: Wolters Kluwer is listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The company received the Bronze Class Sustainability Award 2014 from RobecoSAM. Wolters Kluwer is recognized as one of the “Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World” by Corporate Knights.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: A broadcast signal intrusion is the hijacking of broadcast signals of radio, television stations, cable television broadcast feeds or satellite signals without permission or license. Hijacking incidents have involved local TV and radio stations as well as cable and national networks.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: Although television, cable, and satellite broadcast signal intrusions tend to receive more media coverage, radio station intrusions are more frequent, as many simply rebroadcast a signal received from another radio station. All that is required is an FM transmitter that can overpower the same frequency as the station being rebroadcast. Other methods that have been used in North America to intrude on legal broadcasts include breaking into the transmitter area and splicing audio directly into the feed.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: As a cable television operator connects itself in the signal path between individual stations and the system's subscribers, broadcasters have fallen victim to signal tampering on cable systems on multiple occasions.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On November 26, 1977, an audio message, purporting to come from outer space and conveyed by an individual named ‘Vrillon’ of the ‘Ashtar Galactic Command’, was broadcast during an ITN news bulletin on Southern Television in the United Kingdom. The intrusion did not entirely affect the video signal but replaced the program audio with a six-minute speech about the destiny of the human race and a disaster to affect "your world and the beings on other worlds around you". The IBA confirmed that it was the first time such a transmission had been made.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: In 2022, the person behind the intrusion was identified as journalist and pirate radio DJ Bob Tomalski, after journalist Tommie Trelawny, as part of investigative podcast "The Interruption", discovered an old comment thread in a private Facebook group for pirate radio enthusiasts, which identified Tomalski as the perpetrator.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: At 12:32 a.m. Eastern Time on April 27, 1986, HBO (Home Box Office) had its satellite signal feed from its operations center on Long Island in Hauppauge, New York interrupted by a man calling himself "Captain Midnight". The interruption occurred during a presentation of "The Falcon and the Snowman". The intrusion lasted between 4 and 5 minutes and was seen by viewers along the East Coast. The man, who during the interruption also threatened to hijack the signals of Showtime and The Movie Channel, was later caught and identified as John R. MacDougall of Ocala, Florida. He was prosecuted shortly thereafter. Authorities were tipped off by a man from Wisconsin in a phone booth at a rest area of Interstate Highway 75 in Gainesville, Florida. The man filing the report said that he overheard MacDougall bragging about the incident.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: MacDougall's guilt was confirmed by an FCC investigation that showed he was alone at Central Florida Teleport at the time of the incident and a recording of the jamming video showed that the text was created by a character generator at that location. He was charged with transmitting without a radio license in violation of . MacDougall pled guilty and was fined $5,000 and served a year of probation. Ambiguity about whether the 47 USC 301 charge was applicable since the transmitter had a license resulted in the passage of which made satellite jamming a felony.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: MacDougall was able to perform the intrusion while working a second job as a master control operator at a satellite teleport in Florida, where he worked to make ends meet due to declining income from his satellite TV equipment business. He stated that he did it because he was frustrated with HBO's service rates and that it was hurting his business selling satellite dishes (hence his second job at the teleport). The message, placed over SMPTE color bars, broadcast by MacDougall read:


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On the night of November 22, 1987, an unidentified man wearing a Max Headroom mask appeared on the signals of two television stations in Chicago, Illinois. WGN-TV, owned by Tribune Broadcasting, was hijacked first. The intrusion occurred during the sports report on its 9:00 p.m. newscast and lasted about 25 seconds. Next came PBS affiliate WTTW, where the man was seen and heard uttering garbled remarks before dropping his pants, partially exposing his buttocks, and was then spanked by a woman wearing a French maid costume with a flyswatter before normal programming resumed. This second interception occurred at about 11:00 p.m. during an episode of the "Doctor Who" serial, "Horror of Fang Rock", and lasted almost 90 seconds. None of the individuals responsible for the intrusion have been identified. This incident got the attention of the CBS Evening News the next day and was talked about nationwide. The HBO incident was also mentioned in the same news report.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: A broadcast of the movie "Three Daughters" on the Playboy Channel was disrupted with a text-only religious message on Sunday, September 6, 1987. The message read, "Thus sayeth the Lord thy God: Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. Repent, the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." (from the Bible verses and ).


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: Thomas Haynie, an employee of the Christian Broadcasting Network, was convicted of satellite piracy in connection with the incident. Haynie, who pleaded his innocence, was the first person convicted under a new federal law which had made satellite hacking a felony following the Captain Midnight incident.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: According to investigators, it was the religious content of the transmission and the type of equipment used that drew them to CBN. The jamming signal left behind subtle technical clues that were captured on a VHS recording made at the Playboy Channel's uplink at the time of the event – like finding "fingerprints" in the video. After investigators were confident that they identified the brand of transmitter and character generator from the video, they concluded that CBN was the culprit. Haynie, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, was on duty at his job as an uplink engineer at the time of the jamming.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: CBN maintained that the FCC's case was entirely circumstantial since there were no witnesses and the signal could not be traced to a point of origin. During the investigation, experts on both sides attempted to recreate the incident with CBN's equipment. According to CBN spokesman Dino McCann, they were unsuccessful. Furthermore, CBN asserted that there was not enough power for Haynie to jam Playboy's signal but during the trial, government witnesses said the CBN station was capable of interfering with satellite transmissions.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: After initially being deadlocked, the jury eventually sided with the prosecution and convicted Haynie on two of six counts. (Haynie was acquitted of similar charges of interfering with the American Exxxtasy channel; a recording of the event was of such poor quality that it was unusable.) Haynie received three years of probation, a $1,000 fine, and 150 hours of community service.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: In September 1985, four astronomers at Poland's University of Toruń (Zygmunt Turło, Leszek Zaleski, Piotr Łukaszewski, and Jan Hanasz) used a home computer, a synchronizing circuit, and a transmitter to superimpose messages in support of the labor movement Solidarność (Solidarity) over state-run television broadcasts in Toruń, including an episode of "07 zgłoś się". The messages read ""Dość podwyżek can, kłamstw I represji. Solidarność Toruń"" ("Enough price increases, lies, and repressions. Solidarity Toruń") and ""Bojkot wyborów naszym obowiązkiem."" ("It is our duty to boycott the election", referring to the Sejm elections of 1985) with the Solidarity logo. The four men were eventually discovered and were charged with "possession of an unlicensed radio transmitter and publication of materials that could cause public unrest". At their sentencing, the judge noted their prize-winning work in the Polish scientific community and gave each of them probation and a fine of the equivalent of US$100 each (or 3,000,000 old złoty, 300 PLN in today's currency).


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: The broadcast signal intrusion was a common practice in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s due to the absence of and high demand for any non-government broadcasting. As early as 1966, there was a report of an incident in the city of Kaluga where an 18-year-old had broadcast a hoax announcement that nuclear war had broken out with the United States.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: In the mid-1970s so many pirates were operating around the city of Arkhangelsk, especially at night, that local people were urged to telephone reports of violators to a special number.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: Hijackers using call signs such as "Cucumber", "Radio Millimeter", "Green Goat", "Fortune", and others, would overpower the signal on relay stations for wired radio networks to transmit their programming, or transmit into wired radio networks during gaps in regular programming. Even though the incidents appear to have been fairly common according to reports from the BBC, most were not publicly acknowledged for policy reasons. Reports in newspapers typically referred to the hijackers as "radio hooligans broadcasting drivel, rudeness, vulgarity, uncensored expressions, and trashy music". State news organizations also attempted smear campaigns against such pirate broadcasters, claiming that they had interfered with a state frequency used by Aeroflot, "preventing a doctor in an air ambulance from transmitting information about a patient".


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: During the 2006 Lebanon War, Israel overloaded the satellite transmission of Hezbollah's Al Manar TV to broadcast anti-Hezbollah propaganda. One spot showed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah with crosshairs superimposed on his image followed by three gunshots and a voice saying "Your day is coming" and shots of the Israeli Air Force destroying targets in Lebanon.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On the morning of Wednesday, May 17, 2006, the signal of Babylon, New York, FM radio station WBAB was hijacked for about 90 seconds while the signal jammers broadcast the song "Nigger Hatin' Me" by the 1960s-era white supremacist country singer Johnny Rebel. Roger Luce, the station's morning host, said at the time, "Whatever that was - it was very racist... 22 years at this radio station - I've never seen anything like this."


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: The incident made all the local newscasts that night. The next morning, it made the front page on "Newsday" with the headline "JACKED FM". The station's new general manager, John Shea, said, "I've only been here a week and we get hijacked." Former program director John Olsen said, "This was not some child's prank, this was a federal offense."


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: The hijack was likely accomplished by overpowering the studio transmitter link (STL) signal to the transmitter in Dix Hills. A signal hijacking with the same song happened to WBAB's sister station WBLI about two weeks earlier on a Sunday night.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: In June and July 2017, Mansfield 103.2 FM, a local radio station in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, England in the United Kingdom, had its signal intruded at least eight times during outside broadcasts. During these intrusions, "The Winker's Song (Misprint)" was played. , the perpetrator had not been identified.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On February 26, 2022, the hacker group Anonymous, as part of the cyber war declared to Russia, hacked several pro-Kremlin TV channels (Channel One Russia, Russia-1 and others), broadcasting a poem written by the singer Monatik about the Russo-Ukrainian war with its footage and Ukrainian music.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On May 9, 2022, during Russia's Victory Day parade in Moscow, Russian TV listings were hacked to display information on Putin's war crimes and to promote the truth about Russia's invasion of Ukraine using various messages. The names of every TV station were changed to "blood is on your hands" and other phrases used in the TV listings included "television and the government is lying" and "your hands are covered in blood from the deaths of thousands of Ukrainians and their children".


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: During the second inning from Game 1 of the 1988 World Series (known for Kirk Gibson’s famous walk-off Home Run) on October 15, 1988, an unidentified technician from NBC affiliate WMGT-TV in Macon, Georgia was fired after a 10-second sex scene from a random program was shown on-air during broadcast.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On January 3, 2007, in Australia, during a broadcast of an episode of the Canadian television series "Mayday" (known in Australia as "Air Crash Investigation") on the Seven Network, an audio signal unexpectedly started playing, clearly saying in an American accent, "Jesus Christ, help us all, Lord." This same voice message continued to repeat itself over and over during the show for a total of six minutes. A spokesman for Seven later denied that the transmission was a prank or a security breach and claimed that the repeated line was part of the original broadcast and said, "Jesus Christ, one of the Nazarenes", although there is hardly any similarity between the two phrases. A subsequent investigation by independent researchers revealed that the invading transmission was actually from a videotaped news broadcast of a civilian truck being ambushed in the Iraq War. It remains unknown whether or not this was an intentional act of television piracy or a genuine glitch of some sort.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On March 12, 2007, during a 9 p.m. airing of an Ion Life rebroadcast of a Tom Brokaw-hosted NBC special, "State of U.S. Health Care", on Phoenix, Arizona TV station KPPX-TV, a station employee inserted about 30 seconds of a pornographic film into the broadcast, prompting telephone calls to local news media outlets and the local cable provider, Cox Communications. Parent company Ion Media Networks conducted a rigorous investigation into what they called "an intolerable act of human sabotage", and shortly thereafter, announced that the employee found to be responsible had been fired, threatening further legal action.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On June 17, 2007, an intrusion incident occurred on Czech Television's Sunday morning program "Panorama", which shows panoramic shots of Prague and various locations across the country, especially mountain resorts. One of the cameras, located in Černý Důl in Krkonoše, had been tampered with on-site and its video stream was replaced with the hackers' own, which contained CGI of a small nuclear explosion in the local landscape, ending in white noise. The broadcast looked authentic enough; the only clue for the viewers was the Web address of the artist group Ztohoven, which had already performed several reality hacking incidents before. Czech Television considered legal action against the group, and tourism workers in the area expressed outrage (since the program serves to promote tourism in the areas shown).


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On July 13, 2007, a grainy photo of a man and woman interrupted Washington, D.C. ABC affiliate WJLA-TV's digital or HD signal. The picture was not transmitted over the analog signal, however. The incident was deemed a genuine signal intrusion by various websites but has since been confirmed to be the result of an older HDTV encoder malfunctioning in the early morning hours and going undetected. Station management stated that the image was from an advertisement for "The Oprah Winfrey Show".


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On February 11, 2013, Great Falls, Montana CBS affiliate KRTV had their Emergency Alert System hijacked with audible message warning viewers that "the bodies of the dead are rising from their graves and attacking the living." Later the same night in Marquette, Michigan and the early morning hours in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the same type of hijacking and reference to a "zombie invasion" was made over the EAS systems of CBS affiliate WKBT-DT, ABC affiliate WBUP and PBS member station WNMU during primetime programming. Shortly afterward, PBS affiliate KENW of Portales, New Mexico was struck with a similar hacking incident, repeating similar information regarding zombies; however, this led to the arrest of the hacker of the four television stations.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: In March 2017, intruders broadcast pornographic content for approximately 15 minutes on Touba TV, an Islamic TV channel in Senegal run by the Mouride Sufi order. In a statement, the channel's management "unreservedly condemn[ed] this criminal act which seems to be sabotage and a satanic trick".


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On October 8, 2022, during the Mahsa Amini protests in Iran, the state-run TV channel Islamic Republic TV was hacked by a group going by the name of "Adalat Ali". The screen briefly showed a man in a mask, before switching to a black screen containing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei engulfed in CGI flames with a target on his forehead, pictures of four women recently killed in the protests and the audio message "Women, life, freedom" on repeat. The hack lasted 12 seconds, before cutting back to a bewildered TV presenter.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On May 1, 2007, a Comcast headend replaced Disney Junior's program "Handy Manny" with hard-core pornography for viewers in Lincroft, New Jersey. Comcast stated it was investigating the event's cause but did not announce its findings to the public.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On February 1, 2009, a second Comcast headend, in Tucson, Arizona, replaced NBC affiliate KVOA's signal with graphic footage from the pornographic video "Wild Cherries 5" in portions of Arizona for 28 seconds, interrupting Super Bowl XLIII between the Arizona Cardinals and the Pittsburgh Steelers during the fourth quarter. Comcast claimed "Our initial investigation suggests this was an isolated malicious act. We are conducting a thorough investigation to determine who was behind this." KVOA also announced that it will be investigating the incident. On February 4, 2011, 38-year-old former Cox Cable employee Frank Tanori Gonzalez of Marana was arrested by the FBI and local police about the case. Later that October, Frank was pleaded guilty for two counts of computer tampering and was sentenced to three years in probation, as well as a $1,000 fine to the Arizona attorney general's anti-racketeering fund.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: In the morning hours of March 16, 2010, Raleigh area Time Warner Cable's transmission from both Kids and Kids Preschool On Demand channels in the Research Triangle counties of Johnston, Wake, Wayne, and Wilson in North Carolina (including the cities of Raleigh and Goldsboro) was replaced by Playboy TV for approximately two hours, while other TWC cable systems in the area outside the four counties only revealed a black screen. An executive from TWC reported to CBS (now NBC) station WRAL replied that it "was a technical malfunction that caused the wrong previews to be shown" on their kids' on-demand channels.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On April 20, 2012, three minutes of a gay pornographic film was broadcast during a morning news show on the Channel Zero-owned independent station CHCH-DT in Hamilton, Ontario, for Shaw Cable viewers. The night before, a cable was cut; while it was being fixed on the morning of the incident, the adult programming was spliced into CHCH's feed.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On September 7, 2012, the Disney Junior block on Disney Channel was interrupted on the Dish Network, replacing 6 minutes of "Lilo & Stitch" with a portion of a hardcore pornographic movie.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: On March 11, 2016, private satellite dish owners in Israel watching "HaAh HaGadol" (the Israeli version of "Big Brother") on Channel 2 had their show interrupted by propaganda videos from Hamas. The disruption lasted a little over three and a half minutes.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: The BBC's radio broadcast of a musical program on October 14, 1941, was interrupted by Nazi Germans shouting false questions and statements to Britains on "how much money Winston Churchill has been paid by Germans," and saying that "the Germans have being swindled and was led up the garden path and sold to America." The voice led to a target of "Harassing Harry", a counterpart of Russia's "Ivan the Terrible" who heckles German broadcasters becoming a welcome diversion to British broadcasting. The wavering intensity of the voice often gave a similar quality voice of Donald Duck which led some listeners to name him "Von Donald." Later, the heckler began interspersing comments between British news bulletins from the BBC. Some of the hecklings include the voice telling listeners to wait for the following day in the headline on the Germans keeping up their pressure on Ukraine, and the voice saying that a big offensive swept over Northern France has been shot down.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: The Federal Bureau of Investigation made major headlines on November 24, 1943, after a 90-second interruption of a rapid-firing Nazi man speaking over a CBS Radio program only on CBS station WOKO-AM in Albany, New York. The FBI later resulted that the interruption was reported as a mistake in telephone transmission "or possibly from an enemy broadcast" and reported that there is no "direct allegation" that was sent from the latter.


title: Broadcast signal intrusion

text: During the 2020 United States Presidential Election, the radio station WWEI 105.5 FM (which is owned by Audacy, Inc.) (at the time Entercom) and serves Springfield, Massachusetts), was hijacked and interrupted with a voice that said:""don't be a chump, vote for Trump"". As of November 4, attempts to contact the FCC were unsuccessful.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Joseph Duffy (born 18 February 1988) is an Irish retired mixed martial artist who competed in the lightweight division of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). A professional since 2008, he has formerly competed for Cage Warriors and was a contestant on . He is also a former professional boxer. He holds a notable victory over the former UFC lightweight and featherweight double-champion, Conor McGregor.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy is from Meenbanad, Burtonport, County Donegal. His family emigrated when he was young to the industrial town of Ebbw Vale in Wales, from where they travelled back and forth to Burtonport regularly.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy is an avid rugby fan, and growing up he says "I would always have made it known I wasn’t from Wales", which made his support for Ireland during the Six Nations a bit difficult sometimes. He claimed "if Ireland lost in the rugby, I would try to skip the next day at school, just to avoid the hassle it would bring". Duffy also played the sport through his youth, and despite captaining his school’s rugby team, it was martial arts that always occupied the majority of Duffy’s time. He started with taekwon-do before progressing to traditional jiu-jitsu, a foundation that eventually led him to a career in professional MMA.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Despite knowing from an early age that he wanted to be a MMA fighter, Duffy said "I always wondered how I would get on in boxing". He continued "it was never something I thought about pursuing. I had never boxed, even at amateur, until a few years ago". Duffy cited "the opportunity to work with one of the best coaches in the boxing world" as the main reason for his switch, and the chance "to spar with some of the best fighters in the world; James DeGale, Andy Lee, George Groves, Chris Eubank, Jr.", something he deemed "priceless". The decision was then made even easier, with Duffy explaining "I was fortunate enough to have sponsors to back me as well. That took care of the financial worries".


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: When reflecting on the experience, he stated "More than anything, I’m a person who doesn’t want to have any regrets. When I’m old I want to be able to say that I gave it a go. That’s what it was. I got to fight professionally and I got to spar with some of the best fighters in the world".


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy started his career as a welterweight, fighting in various regional promotions across the UK. Duffy defeated the former UFC two-weight champion, Conor McGregor, and Northern Irishman Norman Parke, who later went on to the join the UFC. It was after this fight that Duffy signed with Cage Warriors, the biggest MMA promotion in Europe.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: In February 2010, Duffy was announced as a cast member of where he competed as a lightweight. In his first fight, Duffy lost to Kyle Watson via rear-naked choke in the first round, and was subsequently eliminated from the show.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy made his name and rose to prominence while fighting under the CWFC banner. In his first bout with the promotion, Duffy submitted Conor McGregor, another Irish fighter who went on to UFC stardom.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: In 2011, Duffy earned a Cage Warriors title shot against Ivan Musardo. Duffy lost the fight, breaking his hand in the third round, and being subsequently submitted in the fourth.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Following his recovery, Duffy switched his attention to pro boxing. He amassed a 7–0 record before returning to Cage Warriors in 2014. Duffy's first fight back was against Frenchman, Damien Lapilus. Duffy won via rear-naked choke, 2 minutes and 18 seconds into the third round.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Three months later he defeated another Frenchman, Julien Boussuge. This time detecting his opponent's intention for a takedown, and connecting a clean knee to the head when Boussuge changed levels. It was an instant knockout.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy was expected to make his promotional debut against Vagner Rocha on 14 March 2015 at UFC 185. However, Rocha pulled out of the bout in early February citing injury and was replaced by Jake Lindsey.<ref name="RochaOut/LindseyIn"></ref> Duffy won the fight via TKO in the first round after wobbling his opponent with a head kick and then dropping Lindsey with a body shot, forcing the stoppage.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy faced Ivan Jorge on 18 July 2015 at UFC Fight Night 72. He won the fight via submission in the first round. He also earned a "Performance of the Night" bonus.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy was expected to face Dustin Poirier on 24 October 2015 at UFC Fight Night 76. However, Duffy pulled out of the fight on 21 October citing a concussion he incurred during a sparring session. In turn, the pairing was rescheduled, and took place on 2 January 2016 at UFC 195. Duffy lost the fight by unanimous decision (30–26, 30–27, 30–27).


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy next faced Mitch Clarke on 7 July 2016 at UFC Fight Night 90. He won the fight via submission in the opening minute of the first round.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy faced Reza Madadi on 18 March 2017 at UFC Fight Night 107. He won the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: On 13 July 2017, Duffy's manager Graham Boylan revealed Duffy had signed a new seven-fight contract with UFC.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy was expected to face Ross Pearson on 2 December 2018 at UFC Fight Night 142. However, Pearson announced on 7 November that he was out of the bout due to a broken nose and subsequent surgery to correct the injury. and he was replaced by newcomer M-1 Global Lightweight Champion Damir Ismagulov. In turn Duffy pulled out from the event, citing a rib injury.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy faced Marc Diakiese on 16 March 2019 at UFC Fight Night 147. He lost the fight by unanimous decision.


title: Joseph Duffy (fighter)

text: Duffy faced Joel Álvarez on 19 July 2020 at UFC Fight Night 172. He lost the fight via a guillotine choke in round one. After the fight, Duffy announced his retirement from MMA competition.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Pocahontas is the titular character of Walt Disney Pictures' 33rd animated feature film "Pocahontas" (1995). The character and the events she goes through are loosely based on the actual historical figure Pocahontas, making her the first Disney Princess not to be based on a fairytale or folktale but rather a real historical figure. She is also the first to technically not be a princess, as she is not of royalty nor does she marry into royalty. She is, however, a Chieftain's daughter, which can arguably be the equivalent of a princess.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Pocahontas, as the daughter of a Native American Tsenacommacah-paramount chief of the Powhatan paramountcy, is the first American Disney Princess. In Disney's animated 1995 film of the same name, she is voiced by Native American actress Irene Bedard, who was also one of the physical models for the character, and her singing vocals were performed by Broadway singer Judy Kuhn. Pocahontas is the seventh member of the Disney Princess line-up.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Following his directorial debut with "The Rescuers Down Under" (1990), Mike Gabriel happened upon an image of Pocahontas in a history book and decided that he wanted to pitch a film about her to Disney executives. Feeling that he was not adept at drawing women, he went to the pitch meeting with a Xeroxed image of Tiger Lily from "Peter Pan" (1953) which he added animals to. His one sentence pitch for the film was: "An Indian princess falls in love with an English settler, then is torn between her father's wish to destroy the settlers and her need to help them." When Disney executives asked Gabriel to summarize Pocahontas' character, he replied: "She's a girl with a problem." Inspired by William Shakespeare's play "Romeo and Juliet", the film's directors Mike Gabriel and Eric Goldberg wanted the story of "Pocahontas" to feature two characters of very different backgrounds falling in love.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Story supervisor Tom Sito, who became the project's unofficial historical consultant, did extensive research into the early colonial era and the story of John Smith and Pocahontas, and was confronted over the historical inaccuracies from historians. Already knowing that in reality Pocahontas married John Rolfe, Gabriel explained it was felt that "the story of Pocahontas and Rolfe was too complicated and violent for a youthful audience" so instead, they would focus on Pocahontas's meeting with John Smith. While the real Pocahontas was eleven or twelve years old upon meeting John Smith, she is depicted as being around eighteen or nineteen years of age in the film, according to her supervising animator Glen Keane. Keane explained that this change was made because a film wherein a thirty year-old Smith falls in love with a child would be "sleazy". Roy E. Disney felt that making the character older than the historical figure would make the film "more dramatic".


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Disney sought to consult Native American actors and a Native American organization in an attempt to accurately portray Indigenous culture onscreen. Elaine Dutka of the "Los Angeles Times" theorized that this decision was made due to the negative reception of "Aladdin" (1992) by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee; Disney denied Dutka's theory. Native American activist Russell Means who plays Pocahontas' father Powhatan in the film, suggested that Pocahontas say she was "honored" by a gift Powhatan gives in a scene of the film to reflect the ways that Native Americans talked; Disney changed the film's script in accordance with Means' suggestion. Michael Eisner pushed for Pocahontas to have a mother, lamenting that "We're always getting fried for having no mothers." The writers countered that Powhatan was polygamous and formed dynastic alliances among other neighboring tribes by impregnating a local woman and giving away the child, so it was believed that Pocahontas herself probably did not see her mother that much. Storyboard artist Joe Grant would conceive the idea of the swirling leaves to represent Pocahontas's mother. Pocahontas became the first Native American Disney Princess and the first woman of color to be the lead character in a Disney film. As of 2014, she remains the only Disney Princess to be based on a historical figure.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Keane also wanted Pocahontas to be written as a confident woman, unlike Ariel from "The Little Mermaid" (1989) or Belle from "Beauty and the Beast" (1991). The film's producer, Jim Pentacost, viewed the character as "the strongest heroine we've ever had in a Disney film." Disney spokesman Howard Green said that the studio desired for the film to portray its Native American characters in a "real" and "fair" way, in contrast to the "very comic, broad" and inaccurate portrayal of Native Americans in "Peter Pan" (1953). Green also said that the studio did not want the film to reinforce stereotypes about indigenous peoples of North America. The film's crew met with Ray Adams, the chairman of the United Indians of Virginia, and showed him ten minutes of unfinished animation and the song "Colors of the Wind" to see if they had portrayed Pocahontas in a way which would be more accurate to the Powhatan culture. Adams felt that the character's outfits were an accurate representation of Native American clothing and commented that Pocahontas was shown as "very beautiful and very intelligent and very loving, which the Native Americans are. We usually aren't portrayed as being loving, but the settlers would not have survived the first three winters if we had not been loving and helped them."


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Renowned for animating female characters such as Ariel, supervising animator Glen Keane was immediately tapped to draw the titular Indian princess. Following the demands of Jeffrey Katzenberg to make the title character "the most idealized and finest woman ever made", Keane first began to sought his inspirations for his depictions for Pocahontas from Shirley 'Little Dove' Custalow-McGowan and Devi White Dove, women he had met during the research trip to Virginia. Keane recalled meeting the women:


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: So I turned around and there's this beautiful Indian woman walking up; a Native American. She said 'Are you Glen Keane? The animator that's going to do Pocahontas?' I said 'Well, yeah.' And then from behind another tree another woman came up and she said, 'Well, my name is Shirley Little Dove, and this is my sister Devi White Dove, and we are descended from Pocahontas.' And as they stood there, I mean I took a picture of both of them, and between their faces was Pocahontas' face in my mind – I could see her.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Other inspirations were Christy Turlington, Natalie Belcon, Naomi Campbell, Jamie Pillow, white supermodel Kate Moss, Charmaine Craig, and Irene Bedard, who provided the character's speaking voice. Keane also looked to a 1620 depiction of Pocahontas from a history book, though Keane would state she was "not exactly a candidate for "People"s 'Most Beautiful' issue [so] I made a few adjustments to add an Asian feeling to her face." Pocahontas and all her tribesmen were depicted barefoot in the movie, presumably to signify their connection to nature. Due to the complexity of the color schemes, shapes, and expressions in the animation, a total of 55 animators worked on the design of Pocahontas' character alone, including Mark Henn and Pres Romanillos.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Dyna Taylor, a Filipina college student, was paid $200 to model for the character. She claimed that she was the main model for Pocahontas' face, and had four sessions with Disney animators over three years. At one point she says she was surrounded by 15 animation artists sketching her facial features. She was given an image of the character that Keane autographed with the words "To Dyna, with gratitude for the inspiration you gave us." Disappointed that she was not credited in the film, Taylor considered suing Disney but was advised against doing so by a lawyer she consulted. Keane told "The New York Times" that he deemed Taylor's contributions to the film unworthy of a screen credit.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Keane felt that the final version of the character was akin to a tribal version of Eve and less sexual and more athletic than earlier Disney character Jessica Rabbit.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Pocahontas has been identified as a feminist character who stands up against her father's patriarchal views in her refusal to marry the man her father wants her to marry. Megan Condis, assistant professor of English at Stephen F. Austin State University, has stated that compared to previous Disney Princesses "Pocahontas was definitely a very different type of character in that she isn't as defined by romantic relationships and she's a lot more active. Also, she is one of the first princesses to actually take an active role in governing." Sophie Gilbert of "The Atlantic" opined that in creating the character "Disney had, for the first time, provided an independent and fearless heroine with a strong sense of self." Gilbert noted that unlike Snow White or Cinderella, Pocahontas is able to find happiness outside of marriage. MTV's Lauren Vino noted that Pocahontas is not a damsel in distress, as she saves Smith's life rather than vice versa.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Upon the twentieth anniversary of "Pocahontas", "The A.V. Club" Caroline Siede said that the film "remains probably the most high profile story of a Native American in pop culture." Tom Brook of the BBC said that the character's portrayal was impacted by how "[t]he rights of Native Americans were strengthened in the two decades from the mid-1970s by legislation protecting tribal rights and interests".


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: In the beginning of the film, Pocahontas learns that Kocoum, one of her father's bravest warriors, has asked to marry her. (In place of a wedding ring, Pocahontas is given her deceased mother's wedding necklace, and she wears it throughout most of the film.) However, Pocahontas does not feel that this is the right path for her. She is the first one to spot the ship carrying the Europeans, mistaking the ship's sails for clouds. Pocahontas later encounters one of the settlers, John Smith. As the story unfolds, it is revealed that her mother has died and that she lives with her father.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Over time, the two get to know each other, asking all sorts of questions about each other's people, lives, and different worlds. However, the conversation goes sour when John Smith unintentionally reveals his prejudices towards Native Americans. Pocahontas explains to him the beauty and importance of nature and respecting the earth through the song, "Colors of the Wind". This causes John to see the ill of his thoughts and change his ways, and the two fall in love with each other.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: When Kocoum stumbles upon Pocahontas and John Smith kissing, he becomes enraged and attacks the white man. Pocahontas attempts to break them up, but Thomas, who had been sent to find John, shoots and kills Kocoum. John Smith takes the blame for Kocoum's death, is arrested by Chief Powhatan's men, and sentenced to death by beheading at sunrise.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Pocahontas realizes that she must stop the execution that will lead to war between the Native Americans and the settlers. She runs to where the execution takes place, calling out to the forces of nature to help her reach them in time. Pocahontas reaches John Smith just in time to throw herself over him and save him from being decapitated by her father, who then comes to his senses and releases Smith. When, enraged, Governor Ratcliffe shoots at the chief, John Smith pushes Powhatan out of the way and takes the bullet instead.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Soon after, a wounded John Smith asks her to come with him to England, but she explains that her place is in Virginia, with her people. To comfort him, she tells him that "no matter what happens, I'll always be with you, forever". They kiss, and the men carry him onto the ship. As it is leaving, Pocahontas runs as fast as she can to a cliff overlooking the ocean. John waves goodbye in the Powhatan fashion, and Pocahontas waves back in the Powhatan fashion, as she showed him earlier when the two first met.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: In "Pocahontas II: Journey to a New World", Pocahontas goes to London as a diplomat to stop a potential attack upon her people being ordered by King James in a plot by Ratcliffe. There, she is accompanied by John Rolfe and slowly develops a romance with him. In the end, she is reunited with John Smith but explains to him that they are "no longer following the same path that they went on years ago", and parts ways with him. Successfully exposing Ratcliffe, who is then arrested by order of the King, Pocahontas and John Rolfe get on a ship going back to Virginia together, and kiss as the ship sails off into the sunset.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: She is featured in Disney's Hollywood Studios nighttime fireworks stage show "Fantasmic!" and "World of Color" at Disney's California Adventure Park. She makes cameo appearances in numerous episodes of the "Disney's House of Mouse" television series. She appears daily at the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts in Frontierland and at Disney’s Animal Kingdom for meet and greets alongside Meeko and John Smith. She is the most common "Pocahontas" character, next to Meeko. She and John Smith appear in the Disney Cruise Line stage show "The Golden Mickeys". She is also known to come out for meet-and-greets on the ships. Pocahontas, Meeko, and Flit make cameo appearances in the Hong Kong Disneyland version of It's a Small World. She had her own show entitled "Pocahontas and her Forest Friends" at Disney's Animal Kingdom, which ran from 1998 to 2008.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Pocahontas, alongside other Disney Princesses, appeared in the 2018 film "Ralph Breaks the Internet", as was announced at the 2017 D23 Expo, with Bedard returning to voice her.


title: Pocahontas (character)

text: Lauren Vino of MTV considers Pocahontas to be the best of all the Disney Princesses. The "San Francisco Chronicle" Peter Stack praised the romance between Pocahontas and Smith, writing that "the film's isolation of the lovers -- their secret meetings near a stream, their tentative but enchanted glances, their first kiss -- is nothing short of captivating." Owen Gleiberman of "Entertainment Weekly" stated the character and John Smith are "generic". Peter Travers of "Rolling Stone" dubbed her "Poca-bore-me" and bemoaned that she "is so busy trying to teach John about protecting the spirit of the land, she hardly has time for romance."


The 2012 United States presidential election in Texas took place on November 6, 2012, as part of the 2012 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. Texas voters chose 38 electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote pitting incumbent Democratic President Barack Obama and his running mate, Vice President Joe Biden, against Republican challenger and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and his running mate, Congressman Paul Ryan.


title: 2012 United States presidential election in Texas

text: As one of the largest Republican strongholds in the country, Romney won the Lone Star State with 57.17%, over Obama's 41.38%, a margin of 15.78%. As in past elections, Obama and the Democrats dominated the Rio Grande Valley, winning upwards of 70% or 80% of the vote in most of these counties, with his best performance in Starr County at 86.34% to Romney's 13.02%, a 73.32% margin. Furthermore, he won the major urban centers of Austin, El Paso, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, but Republicans were able to overwhelm the urban vote by sweeping the vast rural areas and suburbs of Texas by large margins. Romney also came extremely close to carrying Harris County, home to Houston, which Obama carried by only 0.08%, or 971 votes. In the process, Romney beat George W. Bush's 2004 record of the most votes for a presidential candidate in Texas, a record later surpassed in 2016 by Donald Trump and in 2020 by both Trump and Joe Biden. By receiving 95.86% of the vote in King County, Romney also recorded the highest proportion of any county's vote cast for one candidate since Barry Goldwater received between 95.92 and 96.59% of the vote in seven Mississippi counties in Mississippi in 1964 – although this occurred when African-American majorities in these counties had been almost totally disenfranchised for seven and a half decades.


text: Texas's 38 electoral votes were Romney's largest electoral prize in the election. The state solidified its Republican identity in the Reagan Era and had not voted for a Democratic presidential nominee since fellow Southerner Jimmy Carter carried it in 1976. The oil industry is the driving factor of the state's economy, with numerous oil companies such as ExxonMobil being based in the state, and consequently the state has rejected the Democratic Party which has increasingly embraced environmentalist policies. In addition, moderate Republicans' popularity among suburban Texans boosted their support. However, although Romney improved on John McCain's 2008 performance, this election solidified the Texan urban areas' move away from the GOP. Dallas and Harris Counties, home to Dallas and Houston, respectively, both of which flipped in 2008, remained blue this year, setting the stage for suburban areas beginning to slip from the Republican Party.


text: As a result, this is the last time a Republican won Texas by a double-digit margin of victory. Following this election and the loss of the Republican Party's former hold on the vast suburbs of Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, and Houston, it would become a Republican-leaning state, voting for Donald Trump by only 8.99% in 2016 and 5.58% in 2020.


text: As of 2020, this is the last election in which Fort Bend County voted for the Republican nominee and the last time Jefferson County voted for the Democratic nominee. This election is also the last time Texas voted to the right of Indiana, Missouri, Iowa, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Montana.


text: The 2012 Texas Democratic Primary was held on May 29, 2012. Incumbent Barack Obama, who was running for the nomination without any major opposition, won the primary with 88.18% of the vote, and was awarded all of Texas' 287 delegates to the 2012 Democratic National Convention.


text: The election was originally scheduled to take place on Super Tuesday, March 6. Due to litigation over the state's redistricting following the 2010 United States Census, it was rescheduled for April 3. That date also became uncertain and the primary was expected to be held, at the earliest, in late May 2012, with both May 22 and May 29 being proposed. U.S. District Court judge Xavier Rodriguez, one of the three judges overseeing the litigation, had suggested a June 26 date for the election. Finally, on March 1, 2012, the court issued an order setting the date of the primary to May 29, 2012.


title: Ice Cube discography

text: The discography of Ice Cube, an American rapper, consists of ten studio albums, six compilation albums, one extended play, as well as twelve movie soundtracks.


title: Apricot kernel

text: An apricot kernel is the apricot seed located within the fruit endocarp, which forms a hard shell around the seed called the pyrena (stone or pit).


title: Apricot kernel

text: The kernel contains amygdalin, a poisonous compound, in concentrations that vary between cultivars. Together with the related synthetic compound laetrile, amygdalin has been marketed as an alternative cancer treatment. However, studies have found the compounds to be ineffective for treating cancer.


title: Apricot kernel

text: The kernel is an economically significant byproduct of fruit processing and the extracted oil and resulting press cake have value. Apricot kernel oil gives Disaronno and some other types of amaretto their almond-like flavor.


title: Apricot kernel

text: Apricot kernels can cause potentially fatal cyanide poisoning when consumed. Symptoms include nausea, fever, headaches, insomnia, increased thirst, lethargy, nervousness, various aches and pains in joints and muscles, and a drop in blood pressure.


title: Apricot kernel

text: In 2016, the European Food Safety Authority reported that eating three small bitter apricot kernels or half of a large bitter kernel would exceed safe consumption levels of amygdalin and potentially cause cyanide poisoning. The Food Safety Authority of Ireland advises against eating either bitter or sweet varieties of apricot kernel due to the risk of cyanide poisoning and advises consumption be limited to one to two kernels a day for an adult. They also advise against consuming bitter almond for the same reasons.


title: Apricot kernel

text: In 1993, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets tested the cyanide content of two (8 oz) packages of bitter apricot kernels imported from Pakistan that were being sold in health-food stores as a snack. The results showed that each package, if consumed entirely, contained at least double the minimum lethal dosage of cyanide for an adult human; the product was removed from stores.


title: Apricot kernel

text: There was one reported case in the medical literature of cyanide toxicity from apricot kernels from 1979 to 1998 in the United States, a non-fatal poisoning by purchased apricot kernels.


title: Kitchen Confidential (book)

text: Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly is a "New York Times" bestselling nonfiction book written by American chef Anthony Bourdain, first published in 2000. In 2018, following Bourdain's death, it topped the New York Times non-fiction paperback and non-fiction combined e-book and print lists.


title: Kitchen Confidential (book)

text: In 1999, Bourdain's essay "Don't Eat Before Reading This" was published in "The New Yorker". The essay, an unsolicited submission to the magazine, launched Bourdain's media career and served as the foundation for "Kitchen Confidential." Released in 2000 to wide acclaim, the book is both a professional memoir and an unfiltered look at the less glamorous aspects of high-end restaurant kitchens, which he describes as unremittingly intense, unpleasant, hazardous, and staffed by misfits. Bourdain believes that the kitchen is no place for dilettantes or slackers and that only those with a dedication to cooking will remain undeterred.


title: Kitchen Confidential (book)

text: Structured as a loose collection of humorous anecdotes, "Kitchen Confidential" is equal parts confessional narrative and industry commentary on the cooking trade. Bourdain has cited George Orwell's "Down and Out in Paris and London" (1933), with its behind-the-scenes examination of the restaurant business in 1920s Paris, as an important influence on the book's themes and tone. He details some of his personal misdeeds and weaknesses, including drug use. He explains how restaurants function economically and warns consumers of the various tricks of restaurateurs. For example, he famously advises customers to avoid ordering fish on a Monday as it is likely left over from the weekend or earlier (years later, however, he retracted this advice). He also suggests avoiding well-done beef, since cheaper cuts are often substituted for the top-quality meat used for rarer orders.


title: Kitchen Confidential (book)

text: In 2005, the book was adapted into a television show of the same name, starring Bradley Cooper as a fictionalized Bourdain. The series was cancelled partway into its first season, and only 13 episodes were produced.


title: Kitchen Confidential (book)

text: In 2017, amidst the Me Too movement, Bourdain expressed remorse that "Kitchen Confidential" "celebrated or prolonged a culture that allowed the kind of grotesque behaviors we're hearing about all too frequently".


title: Alam Ara

text: Alam Ara () is a 1931 Indian Hindustani-language historical fantasy film directed and produced by Ardeshir Irani. It revolves on a king and his two wives, Navbahaar and Dilbahaar, who are childless; soon, a "fakir" (Muhammad Wazir Khan) tells the king that the former wife will give birth to a boy, later named Qamar (Master Vithal), but the child will die following his 18th birthday if Navbahaar cannot find the necklace he asks for. Meanwhile, the king finds out that Dilbahaar falls for the "senapati" Adil (Prithviraj Kapoor), leading the king to arrest him and evicts his pregnant wife, who later gives birth to Alam Ara (Zubeida).


title: Alam Ara

text: Irani was inspired to make "Alam Ara", after watching the 1929 American part-talkie "Show Boat". The story was adapted from the Bombay-based dramatist Joseph David's play of the same name. Made on a budget of , principal photography was handled by Adi M. Irani within four months in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). Because the studio was located near a railway track, it was filmed mostly during the nighttime to avoid noise from the active trains. Following filming, Ardeshir Irani finished the sound recording using the single-system recording. Firozshah Mistry and B. Irani served as the music director.


title: Alam Ara

text: "Alam Ara" was released on 14 March 1931 and performed well at the box office. Critics were appreciative, with the performance and songs got the most attention though some of whom criticised the sound recording. In addition to the successes, the film was also widely considered a major breakthrough for the Indian film industry and Ardeshir Irani's career with its status as the country's first sound film. Although no print or gramophone record of the film is known to survive, thereby making it a lost film, surviving artefacts include its stills and posters. In 2017, the British Film Institute declared it as the most important of any lost films produced in India.


title: Alam Ara

text: A king and his two wives, Navbahaar and Dilbahaar, are childless. Soon, a "fakir" tells Navbahaar she will give birth to a boy but she must find a necklace tied around a fish's neck—which will appear once at the lake of the palace—if she wants her son not to die on his 18th birthday. The boy is named Qamar. Beside that, Dilbahaar has an affair with the palace's "senapati", Adil. The king finds out about this, and Dilbahaar tells him it was Adil who seduced her first. Therefore, the king arrests him and evicts his pregnant wife, Mehar Nigar, from the palace; Nigar gives birth to Alam Ara and dies when a "shikari" tells her about her husband. The "shikari" later adopts Ara.


title: Alam Ara

text: Dilbahaar is jealous of Navbahaar and knows about her agreement with the "fakir". When the necklace appears on Qamar's 18th birthday, she secretly replaces it with a fake one, which makes Qamar die. His family, however, does not bury his body and starts looking for the "fakir" to find what was wrong. As a result, Qamar lives again every night when Dilbahaar removes the necklace from her neck and later dies when she wears it in the morning. Apart from that, Ara knows about her innocent father's suffering, vowing to release him from jail. On her visits to the place one night, Ara sees the alive Qamar and falls for him. Everyone in the palace subsequently knows about Dilbahaar's foul play and finally gets the real necklace, with Adil being released. The film ends with Qamar and Alam Ara living happily together.


title: Alam Ara

text: Other supporting roles were played by Jilloo, Sushila, Elizer, Jagdish Sethi, L. V. Prasad, and Yaqub.


title: Alam Ara

text: After watching Harry A. Pollard's 1929 American romantic drama part-talkie "Show Boat" at Excelsior Theatre in Bombay (present-day Mumbai), Ardeshir Irani was inspired to make his next project a sound film which he would direct and produce. Although having no experience creating this type of film, he determined to make it and decided to not follow any precedential sound films. The project was subsequently titled "Alam Ara" and produced by Irani for Imperial Film Company (IFC), an entertainment studio he co-founded with the tent showman Abdulally Esoofally in 1926. The story was adapted from the Bombay-based dramatist Joseph David's Parsi play of the same name, while the screenplay was done by Irani. The dialogue was written in Hindustani, a mix of Hindi and Urdu.


title: Alam Ara

text: Zubeida was cast in the title role after Irani's frequent collaborator and first choice, Ruby Myers, was unable to join the cast for her inability to speak the film's language. This left Myers disappointed and she took a one-year hiatus from acting, perfecting her ability to speak Hindustani. Irani initially wanted the debutant Mehboob Khan to be the male lead, but later changed his mind and wanted a "more commercially-viable" actor, an opportunity taken by Master Vithal—one of the most successful filmmakers of Indian silent cinema. In later years, Khan would admit that it left him unhappy. When Vithal decided to star in the film, he ended his ongoing contract with Saradhi Studios, at which he started his career, and it made him face legal issues as the studio believed he had a breach of contract. With help from his lawyer Muhammad Ali Jinnah, he won the case and moved to IFC to play the male lead of "Alam Ara".


title: Alam Ara

text: "Alam Ara", which was funded by the business tycoon Seth Badriprasad Dube, cost . Principal photography was completed by Adi M. Irani at Jyoti Studios in Bombay within four months, using equipment that was bought from Bell & Howell. When being interviewed by Bhagwan Das Garga, Ardeshir Irani confessed that he kept the project a secret during its production. H. M. Reddy, Bharucha, Gidwani, and Pessi Kerani were the assistant directors. As the studio was located near a railway track, the film was shot mostly during the nighttime—between 1:00am and 4:00am—to avoid noise from the active trains, which according to Ardeshir Irani would pass every several minutes. Microphones were placed at concealed locations around the actors.


title: Alam Ara

text: Irani and Rustom Bharucha, a lawyer and the manager of his other production company, Imperial Studios, worked as sound technicians for the film. Before the shooting started, they learned the basics of sound recording from American expert Wilford Deming. When Deming came to Mumbai to give them the sound machines, he charged , which Irani considered a large number at the time. Irani could not fulfill his demand and later finished it by himself and Bharucha. They used Tanar, a single-system recording by which sound is recorded at the same time of shooting. After filming ended, "Alam Ara" was edited by Ezra Mir and its final reel length was . In 2012, the magazine "Outlook" reported that the cast and crew were pleased to be parts of the film and ready to receive lesser pays for their work.


title: Alam Ara

text: The soundtrack to "Alam Ara" was released by Saregama, and has a total of seven songs: "De De Khuda Ke Naam Pe Pyaare", "Badla Dilwayega Yaar Ab Tu Sitamgaroon Se", "Rootha Hai Aasmaan", "Teri Kateelee Nigaahon Ne Mara", "De Dil Ko Aaram Aey Saaki Gulfaam", "Bhar Bhar Ke Jaam Pila Ja", and "Daras Bin Morey Hain Tarse Nayna Pyare". "De De Khuda Ke Naam Pe Pyaare", sung by Muhammad Wazir Khan, became popular at the time of its release and was acknowledged as the first song of Hindi cinema. Zubeida performed mostly the rest of the songs. The credit of the film, however, did not mention both the music director and lyricist. According to Ferozshah Mistri's son Kersi Mistri, all of the songs were composed by his father; in contrast, the film's booklets mentioned B. Irani as the composer. Ardeshir Irani said that he did not know who the music directors are, adding that he had only a pump organ and tabla player. Furthermore, he confessed that the lyrical composition was done by himself.


title: Alam Ara

text: Distributed by Sagar Movietone, "Alam Ara" premiered at Majestic Cinema, Bombay on 14 March 1931, and the screenings ran for eight weeks. Ramesh Roy, an office boy of IFC, brought the film's reel to the theatre. When Mayank Shekhar of the "Hindustan Times" interviewed him in 2006, he recalled it as "a moment in history, when the public coming out of the show wouldn't stop talking about the film they'd seen, that also talked!" According to "Daily Bhaskar", crowds of people would stand in line from 9:00am although the first show occurred at 3:00pm. As a solution, police were assigned to the theatre and allowed to use sticks to control the crowds and traffic. Sharmistha Gooptu, in her article published in "The Times of India", reported: "["Alam Ara"] is proving to a great attraction at the Majestic Cinema, and crowded houses have been the order of the day." It was also the first film to be screened at Imperial Cinema in Paharganj.


title: Alam Ara

text: The film clashed with "Shirin Farhad", a J.J. Madan-directed musical film that was released around two months later. Exact figures for the box-office earnings of "Alam Ara" are not available, but many historians believed that the film performed well. According to the "Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema" in 2003, the film was more successful than "Shirin Farhad"; a 2006 report from "The Hindu" stated that it became an "instant hit". Similar thoughts were given by Roy Armes, in his book titled "Third World Film Making and the West" (1987), calling the film "an enormous popular success". In 2012, the writer of "Outlook" observed that the film's commercial performance "dealt a body blow to the careers of the reining stars of [silent] cinema", including Vithal especially since he was not fluent in Hindustani language.


title: Alam Ara

text: Critics were generally positive of "Alam Ara", praising the performance of the cast but some of whom criticising the sound recording; they have noted that it has "shared many of the common defects of Indian productions" and ended a trend where the previous Indian films always promoting social values in their plot. On 2 April 1931, "The Bombay Chronicle" took note of Irani's "thoughtful" direction and applauded the performances from Vithal, Zubeida and Kapoor, which the reviewer thought had evolved dramatic values that silent films could not do. In the magazine's June 1932 issue, "American Cinematographer" gave a scathing review, saying that "[t]hroughout, the blindest groping for fundamental facts was evident"; the reviewer wrote that the laboratory processing and sound recording were the biggest issues of the film. A writer of "The Times of India" observed how the actors lacked experience in talking near microphones, which made them sound like they were screaming. "Indian Talkie" (a magazine published by the Film Federation of India from 1931 to 1956) called the film "the birth cry of the talkie".


title: Alam Ara

text: "Alam Ara" is widely regarded as the first sound film of India. It has been described as the rise of the Indian cinema of the early 1930s, and in its 2013 report, "The Times of India" added, "... edging out the advantage enjoyed by imported films in the silent era, when the largest share of the Indian market was taken by American films ... this transition also made for the rise of a host of new operators, who would become the industry’s vanguard in the first talkie era." The author of "Indian Film Music" (1991), Nasreen Munni Kabir, said she believed that it has made later films produced in the country more dependent on songs "in a way that has differentiated Indian cinema from most world cinema". Writing for "The Rough Guide to World Music" (1999), Mark Ellingham reported that the film's success has influenced India, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar. In 2003, the scholar Shoma Chatterji hailed, "With the release of "Alam Ara", Indian cinema prove two things—that films could now be made in a regional language that the local viewers could understand; and that songs and music [were] integral part[s] of the entire form and structure of the Indian film."


title: Alam Ara

text: The film is also considered as a turning point of Ardeshir Irani's career and gave him a reputation as the "father of Indian talkies". Impressed by it, producer Birendranath Sircar acquired the recording equipment of the film and contacted Deming to work with him in Calcutta (present-day Kolkata). Irani used the sets of the film to shoot his next production venture, titled "Kalidas", which would become the first Indian multilingual film following its release in 1931. "Alam Ara" is listed in "40 Firsts in Indian Cinema" by NDTV in 2013, "100 Filmfare Days" by "Filmfare" in 2014, and "70 Iconic Films of Indian Cinema" by "Mint" in 2017. In 2011, Google made a doodle to celebrate its 80th release anniversary, featuring Vithal and Zubeida. Writer Renu Saran features the film in the book "101 Hit Films of Indian Cinema" (2014). In the same year, a 2015 calendar titled "The Beginnings of Indian Cinema" was released, featuring the poster of its. The film has been remade at least four times: by Chitrapu Narayana Rao in Telugu in 1942 and 1967, and by Nanubhai Vakil in Hindi in 1956 and 1973.


title: Alam Ara

text: No print of "Alam Ara" is known to have survived, but several stills and posters are available. According to an article published by "The Indian Express", several publications and the film's entry on Wikipedia had mistakenly stated that the film's last print was destroyed by a fire at the National Film Archive of India in 2003. Its founder, P. K. Nair, declined the reports, clarifying in 2011 that it has been lost before the archive itself was established in 1964. He added the fire only destroyed mostly the nitrate negatives of Prabhat Film Company, and confirmed that he had received several photographs of the film from Irani and his son Shapoorji. Nair estimated that 70 percent of pre-1950 Indian films are lost. In 2017, the British Film Institute's Shruti Narayanswamy declared "Alam Ara" as the most important lost film of India.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The Humber Bridge, near Kingston upon Hull, East Riding of Yorkshire, England, is a single-span road suspension bridge, which opened to traffic on 24 June 1981. When it opened, the bridge was the longest of its type in the world; it was not surpassed until 1998, with the completion of the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge, and is now the twelfth-longest.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The bridge spans the Humber (an estuary formed by the rivers Trent and Ouse), between Barton-upon-Humber on the south bank and Hessle on the north bank, connecting the East Riding of Yorkshire with North Lincolnshire. Both sides of the bridge were in the non-metropolitan county of Humberside until its dissolution in 1996. The bridge can be seen for miles around and from as far as Patrington in the East Riding of Yorkshire and out to sea miles off the coast. It is a Grade I listed building.


title: Humber Bridge

text: By 2006, the bridge carried an average of 120,000 vehicles per week. The toll was £3.00 each way for cars (higher for commercial vehicles), which made it the most expensive toll crossing in the United Kingdom. In April 2012, the toll was halved to £1.50 each way after the UK government deferred £150 million from the bridge's outstanding debt.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Before the bridge, commuters crossed the Humber on the Humber Ferry from Corporation Pier at Hull and New Holland Pier at New Holland, Lincolnshire or by road via the M62 (from 1976), M18 (from 1979) and M180 motorways, crossing the River Ouse near Goole (connected to the Humber). Until the mid-1970s, the route south was via the single-carriageway A63 and the A614 (via grid-locked Thorne where it met the busy A18 and crossed the Stainforth and Keadby Canal at a swing bridge bottleneck and on through Finningley and Bawtry, meeting the east–west A631).


title: Humber Bridge

text: The journey was along straight single-carriageway roads across foggy moors interrupted by bottlenecks for most of the journey to Blyth, Nottinghamshire, where it met the A1, and the accident rate was high. Debates in Parliament were held on the low standard of the route across the wind-swept plains around Goole. It was not unexpected that under these conditions, a Humber Bridge, with connecting dual-carriageway approach roads and grade-separated junctions, would seem worthwhile. By the time the bridge opened, much of this inferior route had been transformed by dualling of the A63 and its bypasses, extending the M62 and the connecting of the M18 from Thorne to Wadworth. The obvious need for a Humber Bridge had been reduced by the late 1970s with the improvements of the motorway infrastructure in the region. Although welcome, these improvements detracted from the need for vehicles to cross a bridge from Hessle to Barton. The Humber Bridge was a victim of the success of the M62 before it opened. A hovercraft service, "Minerva" and "Mercury", linked Hull Pier and Grimsby Docks from February to October 1969 but suffered relatively frequent breakdowns.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Plans for a bridge were drawn up in the 1930s and revised in 1955 but work did not begin until 27 July 1972. The Humber Bridge Act, promoted by Kingston Upon Hull Corporation, was passed in 1959. This established the Humber Bridge Board to manage and raise funds to build the bridge and buy the land required for the approach roads.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Raising funds proved impossible until the 1966 Kingston upon Hull North by-election. Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson prevailed upon his Minister of Transport Barbara Castle to sanction the building of the bridge. Dismay at the long wait for a crossing led to Christopher Rowe writing a protest song, "The Humber Bridge".


title: Humber Bridge

text: The consulting engineers for the project were Freeman Fox & Partners (now Arcadis NV). Sir Ralph Freeman had produced the first ideas in 1927 and in the early 1930s the cost of the project was estimated at £1.725 million and that the bridge would be unlikely to recoup the construction or maintenance costs. In 1935 he had an idea for a suspension bridge for the Humber Tunnel Executive Committee. Sir Gilbert Roberts produced more ideas in 1955 for a bridge with a central span, costing £15 million, to be paid for by East Riding County Council and Lindsey County Council. Once it was likely that a bridge would be constructed, Imperial College-educated Bernard Wex OBE (1922–1990) produced the design in 1964 that was actually built. The bridge was built to last 120 years. In 1985 Wex was awarded the Telford Medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers. In the 1950s he had helped to design High Marnham Power Station. He was a former UK chairman of the International Association of Bridge and Structural Engineers and helped to found the Steel Construction Institute in 1976.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The architect was R. E. Slater ARIBA. The administration building (for the tolls) was designed by Parker & Rosner. The landscaping was designed by Prof Arnold Weddle. Wind tunnel testing took place at the National Maritime Institute (now part of BMT Limited) at Teddington and the road deck was designed for wind speeds up to , but storms featuring considerably lower wind speeds have been cited as grounds for emergency repairs in recent years.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The main contractor for the steel superstructure was British Bridge Builders (the same grouping as for the Forth and Severn Road Bridges comprising Sir William Arrol & Co., then a unit of NEI Cranes Ltd, Cleveland Bridge & Engineering Company, and Redpath Dorman Long Ltd). The contractor for the concrete towers, anchorages and sub-structure was John Howard & Co Ltd of Chatham, Kent, who were later bought by Amec. Concrete was chosen for the towers, instead of steel, partly due to cost but also to fit the landscape.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Work began on the southern approach road in July 1972 by Clugston Construction of Scunthorpe. The approach road to the A1077 junction, by Costain Civil Engineering, began in September 1976. It included a span from the southern anchorage of seven pre-stressed concrete box sections and the A1077 junction, costing £4.25 million. Work on the bridge substructure (foundations) began in March 1973. To reduce heat of hydration in the concrete, which produces calcium silicate hydrate from belite, as much as 60 per cent of the Portland cement was replaced with ground granulated blast-furnace slag (GGBS). It took longer to build the southern anchorage due to a diaphragm wall design due to not enough shallow bedrock. The main southern approach roads from Barton to the M180 motorway junction at Barnetby were built in the late 1970s by Clugston Construction of Scunthorpe, opening in 1978.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The towers were constructed by slipforming and the north tower was completed by May 1974. The southern foundations were completed in September 1975, with the pier completed in March 1976 and the southern tower was completed by September 1976; the bridge had been planned to open in 1976. The northern tower and anchorage was built on solid chalk but the southern tower and anchorage were built on fissured Kimmeridge Clay, from the southern shore and built with a difficult caisson design. The subcontractor for the concrete was Tileman & Co. of Shipston-on-Stour, south Warwickshire.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Cable spinning took place between September 1977 and July 1979. Each cable weighs , with 37 strands of 404 lengths of cable. The cable on the northern span has four extra strands. Each cable can take a load of . The deck is of box girder form, the box sections around each. The first box sections were assembled in June 1975 and put into the main span on 9 November 1979. The toll buildings and north approach road were built by A. F. Budge of Retford, Nottinghamshire, costing £2.9 million. Work began on the administration building in November 1976. The toll system was manufactured by Plessey Controls of Poole, Dorset. Corrosion resistance on the steelwork was provided by Camrex Corrosion of Bellshill, North Lanarkshire. The road was laid by Tarmac Roadstone of Wolverhampton with mastic asphalt. In 2017, the bridge was designated a Grade I listed building.


title: Humber Bridge

text: At road level the deck was fastened to the towers through four rocking A-frames, to allow for movement caused by the catenary supporting the deck from above deflecting with the weight of passing traffic, from thermal expansion, and from changes in wind loading. The devices catered for a maximum deflection of 2 metres. By 2011 it was noticed that the pivot-pin bearings carrying the frames had worn, allowing them to drop towards the support structure. Each frame was replaced by two new components: a vertical linkage to cater for longitudinal movement and a sliding bearing for lateral displacement.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The bridge opened to traffic on 24 June 1981. It was opened officially by Queen Elizabeth II on 17 July 1981, a ceremony which included a prayer of dedication by the Archbishop of York and a fly-past by the Red Arrows.


title: Humber Bridge

text: With a centre span of and a total length of , the Humber Bridge was the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world for 17 years, until the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge opened in Japan on 5 April 1998.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The road-distance between Hull and Grimsby fell by nearly ; the town of Scunthorpe and environs were relieved of the passing traffic between the two.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The bridge's surface takes the form of a dual carriageway with a lower-level foot and cycle path on both sides. There is a permanent speed limit on the full length of the bridge.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Each tower consists of a pair of hollow vertical concrete columns, each tall and tapering from square at the base to at the top. The bridge is designed to tolerate constant motion and bends more than in winds of . The towers, although vertical, are farther apart at the top than the bottom due to the curvature of the earth.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The north tower is on the bank and has foundations down to . The south tower is in the water, and descends to as a consequence of the shifting sandbanks that make up the estuary.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The bridge held the record for the world's longest single-span suspension bridge for 17 years, from its opening in July 1981 until the opening of the Akashi Kaikyō Bridge in April 1998. In 2022 it became the twelfth longest, single-span suspension bridge. The central span, at , is the longest in Britain and in the Western Hemisphere. It remains the longest single-span suspension bridge in the world that can be crossed on foot or by bicycle.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The bridge is crossed twice during the annual Humber Bridge Half Marathon in June, and Hull Marathon in September.


title: Humber Bridge

text: In July 2013, work began on introducing a new electronic tolling system. The existing Humber Bridge toll system was largely the same as it was when the bridge opened in 1981. The computer system was over 15 years old, absorbed an increasing amount of maintenance and needed to be replaced. The project to modernise the tolls, decreased waiting times and was welcomed by business and transport leaders.


title: Humber Bridge

text: In the first phase, the toll booths and the toll plaza canopy were replaced and in the second phase writing, testing and setting up the new toll system was completed. From 2015 bridge users could set up an account with the bridge and pay into it. Account holders receive a device called the HumberTAG, a small electronic tag that enables the system to recognise the bridge user; the toll is automatically deducted from the user's account. Two central lanes through the plaza are free-flowing; they do not have booths and account holders are able to cross the bridge without stopping.


title: Humber Bridge

text: During construction of the bridge, the road deck sections were floated up on barges then hoisted into place by cables. During one of these lifting operations some of the cables on two of the road deck sections failed, leaving the sections hanging at an angle. The sections were subsequently installed.


title: Humber Bridge

text: On more than 200 occasions, people have jumped or fallen from the bridge since it was opened in 1981; only five people have survived. Between 1990 and February 2001 the Humber Rescue Team launched its boat 64 times to deal with people falling or jumping off the bridge.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Notable incidents include the cases of a West Yorkshire woman and her two-year-old daughter who fell off the bridge in 2005 and that of a man jumping from the bridge to his death on the A63 road below in September 2006.


title: Humber Bridge

text: Plans were announced on 26 December 2009 to construct a suicide barrier along the walkways of the bridge; design constraints were cited as the reason for not installing barriers during the construction of the bridge.


title: Humber Bridge

text: In May 2017, a YouTuber with the username 'Night Scape', along with a small group, illegally scaled the bridge without safety equipment. The group of young men climbed up the structure to the top of the bridge using the suspension wires as handholds. Humberside Police and the Humber Bridge Board are reviewing the security measures.


title: Humber Bridge

text: On 3 April 2021, the Humber Bridge was closed to pedestrians and cyclists following an unspecified 'recent incident'. The decision came after multiple deaths at the bridge in the month of March. Following the death of one individual that month, a petition calling for increased safety measures to 'secure' the bridge had gained thousands of signatures. Concerns were raised over how the change will affect those who commute on foot or by bike. On 6 May 2021 the bridge was reopened to pedestrians and cyclists between the hours of 0500 and 2100; only pre registered users can use the bridge outside of those hours. In addition, more CCTV and notices have been erected as well more staff to patrol the crossing.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The bridge had a toll charge of £1.50 for cars from 1 April 2012, until for six months it was £3.00 and the only trunk road British toll bridge to charge motorcycles (£1.20). In 2004 many motorcyclists held a slow-pay protest, taking off gloves and helmets and paying the toll in large denomination bank notes. Police reported that the protest caused a queue long.


title: Humber Bridge

text: In 1996, Parliament passed the Humber Bridge (Debts) Act 1996 to reorganise the board's liabilities to ensure the bridge could be safely maintained. Much of the interest on the debt was suspended and deferred in a refinancing which saw no write off – the balance was to be paid using tolls.


title: Humber Bridge

text: In 2006 a (Private Member's) Humber Bridge Bill was tabled by Cleethorpes's Labour MP Shona McIsaac. The Bill would have made amendments to the Act of 1959 "requiring the Secretary of State to give directions to members of the Humber Bridge Board regarding healthcare and to review the possibility of facilitating journeys across the Humber Bridge in relation to healthcare". The aim was to allow patients travelling between the banks for medical treatment to cross without paying the toll and to allow the Secretary of State for Transport to appoint two members of the board to represent the interests of the NHS. Even though the Bill received cross-party support (it was co-sponsored by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and supported by all other MPs representing North Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire) it ran out of time later that year.


title: Humber Bridge

text: A protest at the bridge on 1 September 2007 was supported by the local Cancer Patients Involvement Group, the Road Haulage Association, Yorkshire and the Humber MEP Diana Wallis and local business and council representatives. The government responded to the petition on 14 January 2008, stating that "Concessions or exemptions from tolls on the Humber Bridge are a matter for the Humber Bridge Board".


title: Humber Bridge

text: In October 2008, a joint campaign was launched by the "Scunthorpe Telegraph", "Hull Daily Mail" and "Grimsby Telegraph" to abolish the toll. The papers' campaign, A Toll Too Far, was launched after a mooted increase in the toll, receiving much support from councillors and MPs serving Lincolnshire and the East Riding of Yorkshire. The campaign was to stave off a potential increase, secure a reduction to £1.00 and ultimately to be abolished. Thousands of readers backed the campaign with a paper and an online petition.


title: Humber Bridge

text: A public inquiry into the tolls was held in March 2009 by independent inspector Neil Taylor. In July 2009, the Department for Transport announced that it had decided not to allow the proposed increase. Transport Minister Sadiq Khan said he did not believe it was right for the tolls to be raised in the current economic climate. In October 2009, the government approved a £6 million grant for maintenance costs, which meant that there would be no toll increase before 2011 at the earliest, by which time tolls would have been frozen for five years.


title: Humber Bridge

text: The board applied again to the Department of Transport in September 2010, to raise the tolls from April 2011 but the government ordered a public inquiry into the application. A three-day public inquiry was held in Hull in early March 2011. Following the recommendation by the planning inspector, the government gave approval, on 14 June 2011, for the increase. The toll was raised on 1 October 2011, at which point it became the most expensive in the United Kingdom. The Severn Bridge/Second Severn Crossing charged £5.70 for Wales-bound traffic.


title: Humber Bridge

text: In the 2011 Autumn Statement on 29 November, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, announced that the government had agreed to reduce the debt on the bridge by £150 million, which would allow the toll for cars to be halved to £1.50. Following the government accepting the agreement, between the four local councils, to meet a portion of the debt if revenues proved insufficient, the Transport Secretary, Justine Greening, confirmed the reduction on 29 February 2012, with effect from April.


title: AptX

text: aptX ("apt" stands for "audio processing technology") is a family of proprietary audio codec compression algorithms owned by Qualcomm, with a heavy emphasis on wireless audio applications.


title: AptX

text: The original aptX algorithm was developed in the 1980s by Dr. Stephen Smyth as part of his Ph.D. research at Queen's University Belfast School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; its design is based on time domain ADPCM principles without psychoacoustic auditory masking techniques.


title: AptX

text: aptX audio coding was first introduced to the commercial market as a semiconductor product, a custom programmed DSP integrated circuit with part name APTX100ED, which was initially adopted by broadcast automation equipment manufacturers who required a means to store CD-quality audio on a computer hard disk drive for automatic playout during a radio show, for example, hence replacing the task of the disc jockey.


title: AptX

text: The company was bought by Solid State Logic ca. 1988, and became part of Carlton Communications plc. in 1989. In the early 1990s, APT's codecs were used to transfer audio via ISDN lines by companies such as Disney to check dubbing done in Europe. On 23 December 1999, Solid State Logic was sold by Carlton Communications to 3i. Then in 2005, Solid State Logic sold APT in a management buyout. On 1 March 2005 APT Licensing Ltd. was incorporated in Belfast (until 18 December 2008 named "Audio Processing Technology Holdings Limited").


title: AptX

text: The range of aptX algorithms for real-time audio data compression expanded with intellectual property becoming available in the form of software, firmware and programmable hardware for professional audio, television and radio broadcast, and consumer electronics, especially applications in wireless audio, low latency wireless audio for gaming and video, and audio over IP. In addition, the aptX codec was introduced as an alternative to SBC, the sub-band coding scheme for lossy stereo/mono audio streaming mandated by the Bluetooth SIG for the Advanced Audio Distribution Profile (A2DP) of Bluetooth, the short-range wireless personal area network standard. aptX is supported in high-performance Bluetooth peripherals.


title: AptX

text: Today, standard aptX and Enhanced aptX (E-aptX) are used in both ISDN and IP audio codec hardware from numerous broadcast equipment makers, including "APT WorldCast Systems", Tieline Technology, AVT, Harris Corporation, BW Broadcast, Digigram, MAYAH, Prodys, and Qbit. An addition to the aptX family in the form of aptX Live, offering up to 8:1 compression, was introduced in 2007; and aptX HD, a lossy, but scalable, adaptive, "near-lossless" quality audio codec was announced in April 2009.


title: AptX

text: The company split in 2009; the broadcast hardware business was acquired by Audemat and became part of what is now WorldCast Systems, and the licensing business became APT Licensing and was acquired by CSR plc in 2010. aptX was previously styled apt-X until acquired by CSR in 2010. CSR was subsequently acquired by Qualcomm in August 2015.


title: AptX

text: The aptX audio codec is used for consumer and automotive wireless audio applications, notably the real-time streaming of lossy stereo audio over the Bluetooth A2DP connection/pairing between a "source" device (such as a smartphone, tablet or laptop) and a "sink" accessory (e.g. a Bluetooth stereo speaker, headset or headphones). The technology must be incorporated in both transmitter and receiver to derive the sonic benefits of aptX audio coding over the default sub-band coding (SBC) mandated by the Bluetooth standard. Products bearing the CSR aptX logo are certified for interoperability with each other.


title: AptX

text: "Enhanced aptX" provides coding at 4:1 compression ratios for professional audio broadcast applications and is suitable for AM, FM, DAB, HD Radio and 5.1. Enhanced aptX can handle up to 4 stereo pairs of AES3 audio and compress to 1 AES3 stream for transmit. Enhanced aptX supports bit-depths of 16, 20 or 24 bit. For audio sampled at 48 kHz, the bit-rate for E-aptX is 384 kbit/s (dual channel), 768 kbit/s (quad channel), 1024 kbit/s (5.1-channel), and 1280 kbit/s (5.1 channels plus stereo). Its lowest bit-rate is 60(?) kbit/s for mono audio sampled at 16 kHz, offering about 7.5 kHz frequency response just below that of wideband telephony codecs (which usually operate at 16 kHz sampling rate).


title: AptX

text: "aptX Live" is a low-complexity audio codec that is specifically designed to maximise digital wireless microphone channel density in bandwidth-constrained scenarios, such as live performance (a.k.a. Programme Making and Special Events), where the spectrum-efficiency of radio-based devices (wireless microphones, in-ear monitoring, talk-back systems) is becoming a prime operational consideration. aptX Live offers up to 8:1 compression of 24-bit resolution digital audio streams while maintaining acoustic integrity (approx. 120 dB dynamic range) and ensuring latency of around 1.8 ms at 48 kHz sampling rates. In addition, aptX Live also features techniques that aid connection in situations where the bit error rate (BER) is excessively high.


title: AptX

text: "aptX LL" or "aptX Low Latency" is intended for video and gaming applications requiring comfortable audio-video synchronization whenever the stereo audio is transmitted over short-range radio to the listener(s) using the Bluetooth A2DP audio profile standard. The technology offers an end-to-end latency of 32 ms over Bluetooth. By comparison, the latency of standard Bluetooth stereo varies greatly depending on the system implementation and buffering. Solutions are available that use standard SBC encoding/decoding that achieve end-to-end latency of less than 40 ms. The recommended latency for audio-to-video synchronization in broadcast television is within +40 ms and −60 ms (audio before/after video, respectively). However, AptX Low Latency requires a dedicated, wireless antenna, so it did not achieve much adoption in smartphones and was retired by Qualcomm in favor of aptX Adaptive. Its main competitor is the LLAC.


title: AptX

text: "aptX HD" or "aptX High Definition" has bit-rate of 576 kbit/s. It supports high-definition audio up to 48 kHz sampling rates and sample resolutions up to 24 bits. Unlike the name suggests, the codec is still considered lossy; however, it permits a "hybrid" coding scheme for applications where average or peak compressed data rates must be capped at a constrained level. This involves the dynamic application of "near lossless" coding for those sections of audio where completely lossless coding is impossible due to bandwidth constraints. "Near lossless" coding maintains a high-definition audio quality, retaining audio frequencies up to 20 kHz and a dynamic range of at least 120 dB. Its main competitors are LDAC codec developed by Sony and LHDC.


title: AptX

text: Another scalable parameter within aptX HD is coding latency. It can be dynamically traded against other parameters such as levels of compression and computational complexity. The latency of the aptX HD codec can be scaled to as low as 1 ms for 48 kHz sampled audio, depending on the settings of other configurable parameters. aptX HD performs particularly well against other lossless codecs when the coding latency is constrained to be small, such as 5 ms or less, making it particularly appropriate for delay-sensitive interactive audio applications.


title: AptX

text: Many lossless codecs possess the benefit of a low computational overhead compared to well-known lossy codecs, such as MP3 and AAC. This is particularly important for deeply embedded audio applications running on low-power mobile devices. aptX HD promotes low computational overhead by dynamically selecting the simplest coding functions for each short segment of audio whilst complying with other operational constraints, such as levels of compression and coding delay. Depending on the settings of other scalable parameters, aptX HD can encode a 48 kHz 16-bit stereo audio stream using only 10 MIPS on a modern RISC processor with signal processing extensions. The corresponding decoder represents only 6 MIPS on the same platform.


title: AptX

text: User metadata and special synchronization data can be incorporated into the compressed format at configurable rates. The latter permits rapid decoder resynchronization in the event of data corruption or loss over communications links where quality of service (QoS) can vary rapidly. Depending on the settings of parameters, decoder resynchronization can occur within 1–2 ms.


title: AptX

text: "aptX Adaptive" is a next-generation dynamically adjustable audio codec intended for premium audio quality and low-latency. aptX Adaptive’s bitrate scales dynamically between 279 kbps and 420 kbps. It also works with a shared, rather than dedicated, wireless antenna. Qualcomm claims their new compression algorithm provides a compression ratio between 5:1 to 10:1. This allows aptX Adaptive at 279 kbps and 420 kbps to produce the same sound quality as aptX at 352 kbps and aptX HD at 576 kbps. aptX Adaptive supports 16 and 24 bit-depths at 44.1, 48, and 96 kHz sample rates. Actual 96KHz support, however, is depending on actual product hardware implementation. For example B&O H95 only support 48 KHz at max even with AptX Adaptive support. Hardware aptX Adaptive has end-to-end latency of 80 ms, but most phones are using a software transmitter - which does not have any latency advantages over other codecs. aptX Adaptive is also backward compatible with older aptX and aptX HD codecs, but not with aptX LL.


title: AptX

text: "aptX Voice" is a new feature of aptX Adaptive, and is designed to significantly improve the quality of voice for those using Bluetooth accessories to make voice calls. It does this by delivering 32 kHz voice call quality within the Bluetooth Hands-Free Profile.