title: Star Wars: Republic Commando

text: A sequel titled "Star Wars: Republic Commando: Order 66" was released in August 2005 for mobile phones running Symbian OS, and was developed by Magellan and published by THQ Wireless. Another sequel to the game was already planned well ahead of production of "Republic Commando". The game was titled "Star Wars: Imperial Commando" and was based on the betrayal of Republic soldiers, however the project only went as far as concept art and was cancelled. Nevertheless, Karen Traviss wrote a fifth and final novel of the "Republic Commando" novel series, titling it "", after the cancelled sequel.


title: Star Wars: Republic Commando

text: In April 2014, following The Walt Disney Company's acquisition of Lucasfilm, most of the licensed "Star Wars" novels, comics, and video games produced since the originating 1977 film were rebranded as "Star Wars Legends" and declared non-canon to the franchise going forward. "Republic Commando" was among the projects affected by this, as the events depicted in its campaign would no longer be considered canon. However, the game's characters remained canon thanks to Delta Squad's inclusion in "Witches of the Mist", an episode from the third season of the 2008 animated series (whose canonicity remained intact after the acquisition); the series supervising director Dave Filoni cited the game as an inspiration when creating the Clone characters from the show. One of the squad's members, Scorch, later re-appeared in "War-Mantle", an episode from the 2021 sequel series "". The helmet HUD design from the game was also briefly seen in the series.


title: Star Wars: Republic Commando

text: The concept of Clone/Republic Commandos introduced in the game has been featured in several other "Star Wars" works since. The episode "Missing in Action" of the fifth season of "The Clone Wars" introduces the character of Captain Gregor, a former clone commando suffering from amnesia. The season seven episode "The Bad Batch" introduces Clone Force 99/"The Bad Batch", a squad of four (later five) genetically enhanced clones very similar to Delta Squad. Clone commandos are also playable in the 2017 video game "Star Wars Battlefront II".


title: Prey for the Devil

text: Prey for the Devil is a 2022 American supernatural horror film about a nun who trains as an exorcist under the Roman Catholic Church and confronts demonic possession. The film is produced under the studio Lionsgate and is directed by Daniel Stamm. It stars Jacqueline Byers, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, Lisa Palfrey, Nicholas Ralph, Virginia Madsen, and Ben Cross. Lionsgate distributed "Prey for the Devil" in theaters in the United States and Canada on October 28, 2022. The film received negative reviews from critics.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: In response to a global rise in demonic possessions, the Catholic Church reopens exorcism schools to train priests in the Rite of Exorcism.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: Although nuns are forbidden to perform exorcisms, Father Quinn recognizes Sister Ann's gifts, including empathy with possessed victims of demons, and agrees to train her. Thrust onto the spiritual frontline with fellow student Father Dante, Ann finds herself in a battle for the soul of a young girl, Natalie, who she believes is possessed by a demon who tormented Ann's mentally unstable mother years ago.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: Ann attends classes, against some resistance from staff members and amusement by some priests. Frightening events begin to happen to her, such as disturbing visions and memories, and an elderly, possessed male patient harassing her and dancing with her against her will when she is trapped in his room. However, Ann persists in her quest, delving into secret archives with the help of Dante, and looking into the histories of "terminal cases" likely to die, and of one woman who was released from the institute.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: Ann helps exorcise Dante's troubled sister, apparently successfully. However, the school's leadership and the Cardinal tell her next morning that the woman killed herself. Ann unhappily concludes that she will go back to her old convent in response to the tragedy. However, Dante drops by and says that Natalie, who had recovered and left the school, has had a relapse and is likely to be sent to the Vatican as a "terminal case". He convinces her to sneak into the school with him and exorcise Natalie.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: Ann is shocked to find that Natalie is her own daughter, whom Ann gave up for adoption years ago, when she was pregnant as a teenager. The anguish of abandonment has made Natalie subject to demonic possession. Eventually, the demon leaves Natalie free but possesses Ann, who falls into a large pool of holy water and, fighting through the anguish of her troubled history, eventually frees herself from the demon.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: The school's leadership reward her with an academic fellowship to the Vatican; however, while in a cab, Ann finds that the driver is the old man who had harassed her under demonic influence. The cab stops in the street, and a sinister-looking woman, who was the one released from the institute, stares at her from the street. Ann arms herself with a crucifix as the driver snarls and lunges at her.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: In October 2019, the film was first announced as "The Devil's Light". Penned by "" scribe Robert Zappia, James Hawes was initially tapped as director. Lionsgate and Gold Circle Films co-produced the film, with a targeted shooting window of spring 2020 planned. Paul Brooks, Jessica Malanaphy, Todd R. Jones, and Earl Richey Jones produced the film while Scott Niemeyer, David Brooks and Brad Kessell were executive producers. Zappia's script, originally titled "The Devil's Flame", had made the 2018 BloodList. In February 2020, Daniel Stamm was set to direct instead, marking his return to the exorcism sub-genre after the 2010 film "The Last Exorcism". In June 2020, Jacqueline Byers was announced as the lead actress for the film, starring alongside Virginia Madsen, Ben Cross, Colin Salmon, Christian Navarro, and Nicholas Ralph.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: Filming took place during the summer of 2020 in Sofia, Bulgaria. Actor Ben Cross passed away on August 18, 2020 and had wrapped filming for his part a mere ten days beforehand.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: "Prey for the Devil" was released in theatres on October 28, 2022, by Lionsgate. It was previously scheduled to be theatrically released in the United States on January 8, 2021, then moved to February 11, 2022.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: The film was released for VOD platforms on December 13, 2022, followed by a Blu-ray, DVD and 4K UHD release on January 3, 2023.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: , "Prey for the Devil " has grossed $19.8 million in the United States and Canada, and $23.1 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $42.9 million.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: In the United States and Canada, "Prey for the Devil" was released alongside the wide expansions of "Tár" and "Till", and was projected to gross $7–8 million from 2,980 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $2.8 million on its first day, including $660,000 from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $7.2 million, finishing third at the box office. In its second weekend the film dropped 46% to $3.9 million, finishing in fifth.


title: Prey for the Devil

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 16% of 32 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 4.1/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 38 out of 100, based on five critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it a 64% overall positive score (including an average 2.5 out of 5 stars).


title: Notebook

text: A notebook (also known as a notepad, writing pad, drawing pad, or legal pad) is a book or stack of paper pages that are often ruled and used for purposes such as note-taking, journaling or other writing, drawing, or scrapbooking.


title: Notebook

text: During the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, notebooks were often made by hand at home by drawing on them into gatherings that were then bound at a later date. The pages were blank and every notekeeper had to make ruled lines across the paper. Making and keeping notebooks was such an important information-management technique that children learned its skills in school.


title: Notebook

text: According to a legend, Thomas W. Holley of Holyoke, Massachusetts, invented the legal pad around the year 1888 when he innovated the idea to collect all the sortings, various sorts of sub-standard paper scraps from various factories, and stitch them together in order to sell them as pads at an affordable and fair price. In about 1900, the latter then evolved into the modern, traditionally yellow legal pad when a local judge requested for a margin to be drawn on the left side of the paper. This was the first legal pad. The only technical requirement for this type of stationery to be considered a true "legal pad" is that it must have margins of 1.25 inches (3.17 centimeters) from the left edge. Here, the margin, also known as down lines, is room used to write notes or comments. Legal pads usually have a gum binding at the top instead of a spiral or stitched binding.


title: Notebook

text: In 1902, J.A. Birchall of Birchalls, a Launceston, Tasmania, Australia-based stationery shop, decided that the cumbersome method of selling writing paper in folded stacks of "quires" (four sheets of paper or parchment folded to form eight leaves) was inefficient. As a solution, he glued together a stack of halved sheets of paper, supported by a sheet of cardboard, creating what he called the "Silver City Writing Tablet".


title: Notebook

text: Principal types of binding are padding, perfect, spiral, comb, sewn, clasp, disc, and pressure, some of which can be combined. Binding methods can affect whether a notebook can lie flat when open and whether the pages are likely to remain attached. The cover material is usually distinct from the writing surface material, more durable, more decorative, and more firmly attached. It also is stiffer than the pages, even taken together. Cover materials should not contribute to damage or discomfort.


title: Notebook

text: It is frequently cheaper to purchase notebooks that are spiral-bound, meaning that a spiral of wire is looped through large perforations at the top or side of the page. Other bound notebooks are available that use glue to hold the pages together; this process is "padding." Today, it is common for pages in such notebooks to include a thin line of perforations that make it easier to tear out the page. Spiral-bound pages can be torn out, but frequently leave thin scraggly strips from the small amount of paper that is within the spiral, as well as an uneven rip along the top of the torn-out page. Hard-bound notebooks include a sewn spine, and the pages are not easily removed. Some styles of sewn bindings allow pages to open flat, while others cause the pages to drape.


title: Notebook

text: Variations of notebooks that allow pages to be added, removed, and replaced are bound by rings, rods, or discs. In each of these systems, the pages are modified with perforations that facilitate the specific binding mechanism's ability to secure them. Ring-bound and rod-bound notebooks secure their contents by threading perforated pages around straight or curved prongs. In the open position, the pages can be removed and rearranged. In the closed position, the pages are kept in order. Disc-bound notebooks remove the open or closed operation by modifying the pages themselves. A page perforated for a disc-bound binding system contains a row of teeth along the side edge of the page that grip onto the outside raised perimeter of individual discs.


title: Notebook

text: Notebooks used for drawing and scrapbooking are usually blank. Notebooks for writing usually have some kind of printing on the writing material, if only lines to align writing or facilitate certain kinds of drawing. Inventor's notebooks have page numbers preprinted to support priority claims. They may be considered as grey literature. Many notebooks have graphic decorations. Personal organizers can have various kinds of preprinted pages.


title: Notebook

text: Artists often use large notebooks, which include wide spaces of blank paper appropriate for drawing. Similarly composers utilize notebooks for writing their lyrics. Lawyers use rather large notebooks known as legal pads that contain lined paper (often yellow) and are appropriate for use on tables and desks. These horizontal lines or "rules" are sometimes classified according to their space apart with "wide rule" the farthest, "college rule" closer, "legal rule" slightly closer and "narrow rule" closest, allowing more lines of text per page. When sewn into a pasteboard backing, these may be called composition books, or in smaller signatures may be called "blue books" or exam books and used for essay exams.


title: Notebook

text: Various notebooks are popular among students for taking notes. The types of notebooks used for school work are single line, double line, four line, square grid line etc. These notebooks are also used by students for school assignments (homeworks) and writing projects.


title: Notebook

text: In contrast, journalists prefer small, hand-held notebooks for portability (reporters' notebooks), and sometimes use shorthand when taking notes. Scientists and other researchers use lab notebooks to document their experiments. The pages in lab notebooks are sometimes graph paper to plot data. Police officers are required to write notes on what they observe, using a police notebook. Land surveyors commonly record field notes in durable, hard-bound notebooks called "field books."


title: Notebook

text: Coloring enthusiasts use coloring notebooks for stress relief. The pages in coloring notebooks contain different adult coloring pages. Students take notes in notebooks, and studies suggest that the act of writing (as opposed to typing) improves learning.


title: Notebook

text: Notebook pages can be recycled via standard paper recycling. Recycled notebooks are available, differing in recycled percentage and paper quality.


title: Notebook

text: Since the late 20th century, many attempts have been made to integrate the simplicity of a notebook with the editing, searching, and communication capacities of computers through the development of note taking software. Laptop computers began to be called "notebooks" when they reached a small size in the mid 1990s, but they did not have any special note-taking ability. Most notably Personal digital assistants (PDAs) came next, integrating small liquid crystal displays with a touch-sensitive layer to input graphics and written text. Later on, this role was taken over by smartphones and tablets.


title: Notebook

text: Digital paper combines the simplicity of a traditional pen and notebook with digital storage and interactivity. By printing an invisible dot pattern on the notebook paper and using a pen with a built in infrared camera the written text can be transferred to a laptop, mobile phone or back office for storage and processing.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Portuguese Angola refers to Angola during the historic period when it was a territory under Portuguese rule in southwestern Africa. In the same context, it was known until 1951 as Portuguese West Africa (officially the State of West Africa).


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Initially ruling along the coast and engaging in military conflicts with the Kingdom of Kongo, in the 18th century Portugal gradually managed to colonise the interior Highlands. However, full control of the entire territory was not achieved until the beginning of the 20th century, when agreements with other European powers during the Scramble for Africa fixed the colony's interior borders. On 11 June 1951, the status was upgraded to Overseas Province of Angola and finally in 1973, State of Angola. In 1975, Portuguese Angola became the independent People's Republic of Angola.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The history of Portuguese presence on the territory of contemporary Angola lasted from the arrival of the explorer Diogo Cão in 1484 until the decolonization of the territory in November 1975. During these five centuries, several entirely different situations have to be distinguished.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: When Diogo Cão and other explorers reached the Kongo Kingdom at the end of the 15th century, Angola as such did not exist. Its present territory comprised a number of separate peoples, some organized as kingdoms or tribal federations of varying sizes. The Portuguese were interested in trade, principally in slaves. They therefore maintained a peaceful and mutually profitable relationship with the rulers and nobles of the Kongo Kingdom, whom they Christianised and taught Portuguese, allowing them a share of the benefits from the slave trade. They established small trading posts on the lower Congo, in the area of the present Democratic Republic. A more important trading settlement on the Atlantic coast was erected at Soyo in the territory of the Kongo Kingdom. It is now Angola's northernmost town, apart from the Cabinda exclave.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In 1575, the settlement of Luanda was established on the coast south of the Kongo Kingdom, and in the 17th century the settlement of Benguela, even farther to the south. From 1580 to the 1820s, well over a million people from present-day Angola were exported as slaves to the so-called New World, mainly to Brazil, but also to North America. According to Oliver and Atmore, "for 200 years, the colony of Angola developed essentially as a gigantic slave-trading enterprise". Portuguese people sailors, explorers, soldiers and merchants had a long-standing policy of conquest and establishment of military and trading outposts in Africa with the conquest of Muslim-ruled Ceuta in 1415 and the establishment of bases in present-day Morocco and the Gulf of Guinea. The Portuguese had Catholic beliefs and their military expeditions included from the very beginning the conversion of foreign peoples.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In the 17th century, conflicting economic interests led to a military confrontation with the Kongo Kingdom. Portugal defeated the Kongo Kingdom in the Battle of Mbwila on 29 October, 1665, but suffered a disastrous defeat at the Battle of Kitombo when they tried to invade Kongo in 1670. Control of most of the central highlands was achieved in the 18th century. Further reaching attempts at conquering the interior were undertaken in the 19th century. However, full Portuguese administrative control of the entire territory was not achieved until the beginning of the 20th century.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In 1884, the United Kingdom, which up to that time refused to acknowledge that Portugal possessed territorial rights north of Ambriz, concluded a treaty recognising Portuguese sovereignty over both banks of the lower Congo. However, the treaty, meeting with opposition there and in Germany, was not ratified. Agreements concluded with the Congo Free State, the German Empire and France in 1885–1886 fixed the limits of the province, except in the south-east, where the frontier between Barotseland (north-west Rhodesia) and Angola was determined by an Anglo-Portuguese agreement of 1891 and the arbitration award of King Vittorio Emanuele III of Italy in 1905.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: During the period of Portuguese colonial rule of Angola, cities, towns and trading posts were founded, railways were opened, ports were built, and a Westernised society was being gradually developed, despite the deep traditional tribal heritage in Angola which the minority European rulers were neither willing nor interested in eradicating. Since the 1920s, Portugal's administration showed an increasing interest in developing Angola's economy and social infrastructure.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Between 1939 and 1943 the Portuguese army carried out operations against the nomadic Mucubal people, accused of rebellion, which led to the death of half their population. The survivors were incarcerated in concentration camps, sent to forced labor camps, where the great majority of them perished due to the brutality of the work system, undernourishment and executions.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In 1951, the Portuguese Colony of Angola became an overseas province of Portugal. In the late 1950s the National Front for the Liberation of Angola (FNLA) and the People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) began to organize strategies and action plans to fight Portuguese rule and the remunerated system which affected many of the native African people from the countryside, who were relocated from their homes and made to perform compulsory work, almost always unskilled hard labour, in an environment of economic boom. Organised guerrilla warfare began in 1961, the same year that a law was passed to improve the working conditions of the largely unskilled native workforce, which was demanding more rights. In 1961, the Portuguese Government indeed abolished a number of basic legal provisions which discriminated against black people, like the "Estatuto do Indigenato" (Decree-Law 43: 893 of 6 September 1961). However, the conflict, conversely known as the Colonial War or the War of Liberation, erupted in the North of the territory when UPA rebels based in Republic of the Congo massacred both white and black civilians in surprise attacks in the countryside. After visiting the United Nations, rebel leader Holden Roberto returned to Kinshasa and organised Bakongo militants.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Holden Roberto launched an incursion into Angola on 15 March 1961, leading 4,000 to 5,000 militants. His forces took farms, government outposts, and trading centres, killing everyone they encountered. At least 1,000 whites and an unknown number of blacks were killed. Commenting on the incursion, Roberto said, "this time the slaves did not cower". They massacred everything. The effective military in Angola were composed of approximately 6,500 men: 5,000 black Africans and 1,500 white Europeans sent from Portugal. After these events the Portuguese Government, under the dictatorial "Estado Novo" regime of António de Oliveira Salazar and later Marcelo Caetano, sent thousands of troops from Europe to perform counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations. In 1963 Holden Roberto established the Revolutionary Government of Angola in Exile (Portuguese: "Governo revolucionário de Angola no exílio", GRAE) in Kinshasa in an attempt to claim on the international scene the sole representation of forces fighting Portuguese rule in Angola. The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) also started pro-independence guerrilla operations in 1966. Despite the overall military superiority of the Portuguese Army in the Angolan theatre, the independence guerrilla movements were never fully defeated. However, by 1972, after the "Frente Leste", a successful military campaign in the East of Angola, complemented by a pragmatic hearts and minds policy, the military conflict in Angola was effectively won for the Portuguese.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: From 1966 to 1970, the pro-independence guerrilla movement MPLA expanded their previously limited insurgency operations to the East of Angola. This vast countryside area was far away from the main urban centres and close to foreign countries where the guerrillas were able to take shelter. The UNITA, a smaller pro-independence guerrilla organisation established in the East, supported the MPLA. Until 1970, the combined guerrilla forces of MPLA and UNITA in the East Front were successful in pressuring Portuguese Armed Forces (FAP) in the area to the point that the guerrillas were able to cross the Cuanza River and could threaten the territory of Bié, which included an important urban centre in the agricultural, commercial and industrial town of Silva Porto. In 1970, the guerrilla movement decided to reinforce the Eastern Front by relocating troops and armament from the North to the East.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In 1971, the FAP started a successful counter-insurgency military campaign that expelled the three guerrilla movements operating in the East to beyond the frontiers of Angola. The last guerrillas lost hundreds of soldiers and left tons of equipment behind, disbanding chaotically to neighbouring countries or, in some cases, joining or surrendering to the Portuguese. In order to gain the confidence of the local rural populations, and to create conditions for their permanent and productive settlement in the region, the Portuguese authorities organised massive vaccination campaigns, medical check-ups, and water, sanitation and alimentary infrastructure as a way to better contribute to the economic and social development of the people and dissociate the population from the guerrillas and their influence. On 31 December 1972, the Development Plan of the East ("Plano de Desenvolvimento do Leste") included in its first stage 466 development enterprises (150 were completed and 316 were being built). Nineteen health centres had been built and 26 were being constructed. 51 new schools were operating and 82 were being constructed


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In June 1972, the Portuguese National Assembly approved a new version of its Organic Law on Overseas Territories, in order to grant its African overseas territories a wider political autonomy and to tone down the increasing dissent both internally and abroad. It changed Angola's status from an overseas province to an “autonomous state” with authority over some internal affairs, while Portugal was to retain responsibility for defense and foreign relations. However, the intent was by no means to grant Angolan independence, but was instead to "win the hearts and minds" of the Angolans, convincing them to remain permanently a part of an intercontinental Portugal. Renaming Angola (like Mozambique) in November 1972 (in effect 1 January 1973) "Estado" (state) was part of an apparent effort to give the Portuguese Empire a sort of federal structure, conferring some degree of autonomy to the "states". In fact, the structural changes and increase in autonomy were extremely limited. The government of the "State of Angola" was the same as the old provincial government, except for some cosmetic changes to personnel and titles. As in Portugal itself, the government of the "State of Angola" was entirely composed of people aligned with the "Estado Novo" regime's establishment. While these changes were taking place, a few guerrilla nuclei stayed active inside the territory, and continued to campaign outside of Angola against Portuguese rule. The idea of having the independence movements take part in the political structure of the revamped territory's organization was absolutely unthinkable (on both sides).


title: Portuguese Angola

text: However, the Portuguese authorities were unable to defeat the guerrillas as a whole during the Portuguese Colonial War, particularly in Portuguese Guinea, and suffered heavy casualties in the 13 years of conflict. Throughout the war Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions from most of the international community. The war was becoming even more unpopular in Portuguese society due to its length and costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it played as a factor in the perpetuation of the "Estado Novo" regime. It was this escalation that would lead directly to the mutiny of members of the FAP in the Carnation Revolution of April 1974 – an event that would lead to the independence of all of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. On 25 April 1974, the Portuguese Government of the " Estado Novo" regime under Marcelo Caetano, the corporatist and authoritarian regime established by António de Oliveira Salazar that had ruled Portugal since the 1930s, was overthrown in the Carnation Revolution, a military uprising in Lisbon. In May of that year, the "Junta de Salvação Nacional" (the new revolutionary government of Portugal) proclaimed a truce with the pro-independence African guerrillas in an effort to promote peace talks and independence. The military-led coup returned democracy to Portugal, ending the unpopular Colonial War where hundreds of thousands of Portuguese soldiers had been conscripted into military service, and replacing the authoritarian "Estado Novo" (New State) regime and its secret police which repressed elemental civil liberties and political freedoms. It started as a professional class protest of Portuguese Armed Forces captains against the 1973 decree law "Dec. Lei n. 353/73".


title: Portuguese Angola

text: These events prompted a mass exodus of Portuguese citizens, overwhelmingly white but some "mestiço" (mixed race) or black, from Portugal's African territories, creating hundreds of thousands destitute refugees — the "retornados". Angola became a sovereign state on 11 November 1975 in accordance with the Alvor Agreement and the newly independent country was proclaimed the People's Republic of Angola.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In the 20th century, Portuguese Angola was subject to the "Estado Novo" regime. In 1951, the Portuguese authorities changed the statute of the territory from a colony to an overseas province of Portugal. Legally, the territory was as much a part of Portugal as Lisbon but as an overseas province enjoyed special derogations to account for its distance from Europe. Most members of the government of Angola were from Portugal, but a few were Angolan. Nearly all members of the bureaucracy were from Portugal, as most Angolans did not have the necessary qualifications to obtain positions.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The government of Angola, as it was in Portugal, was highly centralised. Power was concentrated in the executive branch, and all elections where they occurred were carried out using indirect methods. From the Prime Minister's office in Lisbon, authority extended down to the most remote posts of Angola through a rigid chain of command. The authority of the government of Angola was residual, primarily limited to implementing policies already decided in Europe. In 1967, Angola also sent a number of delegates to the National Assembly in Lisbon.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The highest official in the province was the governor-general, appointed by the Portuguese cabinet on recommendation of the Overseas Minister. The governor-general had both executive and legislative authority. A Government Council advised the governor-general in the running of the province. The functional cabinet consisted of five secretaries appointed by the Overseas Minister on the advice of the governor. A Legislative Council had limited powers and its main activity was approving the provincial budget. Finally, an Economic and Social Council had to be consulted on all draft legislation, and the governor-general had to justify his decision to Lisbon if he ignored its advice.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In 1972, the Portuguese National Assembly changed Angola's status from an overseas province to an “autonomous state” with authority over some internal affairs; Portugal was to retain responsibility for defense and foreign relations. Elections were held in Angola for a legislative assembly in 1973.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Portuguese Angola was a territory covering 1,246,700 km, an area greater than France and Spain put together. It had 5,198 km of terrestrial borders and a coastline with 1,600 km. Its geography was diverse. From the coastal plain, ranging in width from 25 kilometres in the south to 100–200 kilometers in the north, the land rises in stages towards the high inland plateau covering almost two-thirds of the country, with an average altitude of between 1,200 and 1,600 metres. Angola's two highest peaks were located in these central highlands. They were Moco Mountain (2,620 m) and Meco Mountain (2,538 m).


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Most of Angola's rivers rose in the central mountains. Of the many rivers that drain to the Atlantic Ocean, the Cuanza and Cunene were the most important. Other major streams included the Kwango River, which drains north to the Congo River system, and the Kwando and Cubango Rivers, both of which drain generally southeast to the Okavango Delta. As the land drops from the plateau, many rapids and waterfalls plunge downward in the rivers. Portuguese Angola had no sizable lakes, besides those formed by dams and reservoirs built by the Portuguese administration.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The Portuguese authorities established several national parks and natural reserves across the territory: Bicauri, Cameia, Cangandala, Iona, Mupa, Namibe and Quiçama. Iona was Angola's oldest and largest national park, it was proclaimed as a reserve in 1937 and upgraded to a national park in 1964.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Angola was indeed a territory that underwent a great deal of progress after 1950. The Portuguese government built dams, roads, schools, etc. There was also an economic boom that led to a huge increase of the European population. The white population increased from 44,083 in 1940 to 172,529 in 1960. With around 1,000 immigrants arriving each month. On the eve of the end of the colonial period, the ethnic European residents numbered 400,000 (1974) (excluding enlisted and commissioned soldiers from the mainland) and the mixed race population was at around 100,000 (many were Cape Verdian migrants working in the territory). The total population was around 5.9 million at that time.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Luanda grew from a town of 61,208 with 14.6% of those inhabitants being white in 1940, to a major cosmopolitan city of 475,328 in 1970 with 124,814 Europeans (26.3%) and around 50,000 mixed race inhabitants. Most of the other large cities in Angola had around the same ratio of Europeans at the time, with the exception of Sá da Bandeira (Lubango), Moçâmedes (Namibe) and Porto Alexandre (Tombua) in the south where the white population was more established. All of these cities had European majorities from 50% to 60%.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The capital of the territory was Luanda, officially called São Paulo de Luanda. Other cities and towns were:


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The exclave of Cabinda was to the north. Portuguese Congo (Cabinda) was established a Portuguese protectorate by the 1885 Treaty of Simulambuco. Sometime during the 1920s, it became incorporated into the larger colony (later the overseas province) of Portuguese Angola. The two colonies had initially been contiguous, but later became geographically separated by a narrow corridor of land, which Portugal ceded to Belgium, allowing the Belgian Congo access to the Atlantic Ocean. Following the decolonisation of Portuguese Angola with the 1975 Alvor Agreement, the short-lived Republic of Cabinda unilaterally declared its independence. However, Cabinda was soon overpowered and re-annexed by the newly proclaimed People's Republic of Angola and never achieved international recognition.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Portuguese explorers and settlers had founded trading posts and forts along the coast of Africa since the 15th century, and reached the Angolan coast in the 16th century. Portuguese explorer Paulo Dias de Novais founded Luanda in 1575 as "São Paulo de Loanda", and the region developed as a slave trade market with the help of local Imbangala and Mbundu peoples who were notable slave hunters. Trade was mostly with the Portuguese colony of Brazil in the New World. Brazilian ships were the most numerous in the ports of Luanda and Benguela. By this time, Angola, a Portuguese colony, was in fact more like a colony of Brazil, another Portuguese colony. A strong Brazilian influence was also exercised by the Jesuits in religion and education.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The philosophy of war gradually gave way to the philosophy of trade. The great trade routes and the agreements that made them possible were the driving force for activities between the different areas; warlike states become states ready to produce and to sell. In the Planalto, or high plains, the most important states were those of Bié and Bailundo, the latter being noted for its production of foodstuffs and rubber. The colonial power, Portugal, becoming ever richer and more powerful, would not tolerate the growth of these neighbouring states and subjugated them one by one, enabling Portuguese hegemony over much of the area. During the period of the Iberian Union (1580–1640), Portugal lost influence and power and made new enemies. The Dutch, a major enemy of Castile, invaded many Portuguese overseas possessions, including Luanda. The Dutch ruled Luanda from 1640 to 1648 as Fort Aardenburgh. They were seeking black slaves for use in sugarcane plantations of Northeastern Brazil (Pernambuco, Olinda and Recife), which they had also seized from Portugal. John Maurice, Prince of Nassau-Siegen, conquered the Portuguese possessions of Saint George del Mina, Saint Thomas, and Luanda on the west coast of Africa. After the dissolution of the Iberian Union in 1640, Portugal reestablished its authority over the lost territories of the Portuguese Empire.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: The Portuguese started to develop townships, trading posts, logging camps, and small processing factories. From 1764 onwards, there was a gradual change from a slave-based society to one based on production for domestic consumption and export. Brazil became independent in 1822 and the slave trade was abolished in 1836. In 1844, Angola's ports were opened to legal foreign shipping. By 1850, Luanda was one of the most developed cities outside Europe in the Portuguese Empire: it was full of trading companies, exporting (together with Benguela) palm and peanut oil, wax, copal, timber, ivory, cotton, coffee, and cocoa, among many other products. Maize, tobacco, dried meat and cassava flour also began to be produced locally. The Angolan bourgeoisie was born. From the 1920s to the 1960s, strong economic growth, abundant natural resources and development of infrastructure, led to the arrival of even more Portuguese settlers from the metropole.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Diamond mining began in 1912, when the first gems were discovered by Portuguese prospectors in a stream of the Lunda region, in the northeast. In 1917 the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang) was granted the concession for diamond mining and prospecting in Portuguese Angola. Diamang had exclusive mining and labor procurement rights in a huge concession in Angola and used this monopoly to become the colony's largest commercial operator and also its leading revenue generator. Its wealth was generated by African laborers, many of whom were forcibly recruited to work on the mines with Lunda's aggressive state-company recruitment methods (See also chivalo/shibalo). Work was done with shovels into the 1970s, and as late as 1947, the company saw no benefit to mechanizing its operations, because local labour was so inexpensive. Even the voluntary contract workers, or contratados, were exploited and had to build their own housing and often cheated of their wages. However Diamang, which was exempt from taxes, grew affluent in the 1930s and also realized that in a remote area like Lunda, the supply of workers was not inexhaustible and so the workers there were somewhat better treated than on some of the other mines or on the sugar plantations.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: On the whole African laborers performed brutal work in poor conditions for very little pay that they were frequently cheated of. The American sociologist Edward Ross visited rural Angola in 1924 on behalf of the Temporary Slavery Commission of the League of Nations and wrote a scathing report describing the labor system as "virtually state serfdom", that did not allow Africans time to produce their own food. In addition, when their wages were embezzled and they were denied access to the colonial judicial system.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: From the mid-1950s until 1974, iron ore was mined in Malanje, Bié, Huambo, and Huíla provinces, and production reached an average of 5.7 million tons per year between 1970 and 1974. Most of the iron ore was shipped to Japan, West Germany, and the United Kingdom, and earned almost US$50 million a year in export revenue. During 1966–67 a major iron ore terminal was built by the Portuguese at Saco, the bay just 12 km North of Moçâmedes (Namibe). The client was the "Compania Mineira do Lobito", the Lobito Mining Company, which developed an iron ore mine inland at Cassinga. The construction of the mine installations and a 300 km railway were commissioned to Krupp of Germany and the modern harbour terminal to SETH, a Portuguese company owned by Højgaard & Schultz of Denmark. The small fishing town of Moçâmedes hosted construction workers, foreign engineers and their families for two years. The Ore Terminal was completed on time within one year and the first 250,000 ton ore carrier docked and loaded with ore in 1967. The Portuguese discovered petroleum in Angola in 1955. Production began in the Cuanza basin in the 1950s, in the Congo basin in the 1960s, and in the exclave of Cabinda in 1968. The Portuguese government granted operating rights for Block Zero to the Cabinda Gulf Oil Company, a subsidiary of ChevronTexaco, in 1955. Oil production surpassed the exportation of coffee as Angola's largest export in 1973.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: By the early 1970s, a variety of crops and livestock were produced in Portuguese Angola. In the north, cassava, coffee, and cotton were grown; in the central highlands, maize was cultivated; and in the south, where rainfall is lowest, cattle herding was prevalent. In addition, there were large plantations run by Portuguese that produced palm oil, sugarcane, bananas, and sisal. These crops were grown by commercial farmers, primarily Portuguese, and by peasant farmers, who sold some of their surplus to local Portuguese traders in exchange for supplies. The commercial farmers were dominant in marketing these crops, however, and enjoyed substantial support from the overseas province's Portuguese government in the form of technical assistance, irrigation facilities, and financial credit. They produced the great majority of the crops that were marketed in Angola's urban centres or exported for several countries.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Fishing in Portuguese Angola was a major and growing industry. In the early 1970s, there were about 700 fishing boats, and the annual catch was more than 300,000 tons. Including the catch of foreign fishing fleets in Angolan waters, the combined annual catch was estimated at over 1 million tons. The Portuguese territory of Angola was a net exporter of fish products, and the ports of Moçâmedes, Luanda and Benguela were among the most important fishing harbours in the region.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Non-urban black African access to educational opportunities was very limited for most of the colonial period, most were not able to speak Portuguese and did not have knowledge of Portuguese culture and history. Until the 1950s, educational facilities run by the Portuguese colonial government were largely restricted to the urban areas. Responsibility for educating rural Africans were commissioned by the authorities to several Roman Catholic and Protestant missions based across the vast countryside, which taught black Africans in Portuguese language and culture. As a consequence, each of the missions established its own school system, although all were subject to ultimate control and support by the Portuguese.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: In mainland Portugal, the homeland of the colonial authorities who ruled in the territory from the 16th century until 1975, by the end of the 19th century the illiteracy rates were at over 80 percent and higher education was reserved for a small percentage of the population. 68.1 percent of mainland Portugal's population was still classified as illiterate by the 1930 census. Mainland Portugal's literacy rate by the 1940s and early 1950s was low by North American and Western European standards at the time. Only in the 1960s did the country make public education available for all children between the ages of six and twelve, and the overseas territories profited from this new educational developments and change in policy at Lisbon.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Starting in the early 1950s, the access to basic, secondary and technical education was expanded and its availability was being increasingly opened to both the African indigenes and the ethnic Portuguese of the territories. Education beyond the primary level became available to an increasing number of black Africans since the 1950s, and the proportion of the age group that went on to secondary school in the early 1970s was an all-time record high enrolment. Primary school attendance was also growing substantially. In general, the quality of teaching at the primary level was acceptable, even with instruction carried on largely by black Africans who sometimes had substandard qualifications. Most secondary school teachers were ethnically Portuguese, especially in the urban centers.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Two state-run university institutions were founded in Portuguese Africa in 1962 by the Portuguese Ministry of the Overseas Provinces headed by Adriano Moreira—the "Estudos Gerais Universitários de Angola" in Portuguese Angola and the "Estudos Gerais Universitários de Moçambique" in Portuguese Mozambique—awarding a wide range of degrees from engineering to medicine. In the 1960s, the Portuguese mainland had four public universities, two of them in Lisbon (which compares with the 14 Portuguese public universities today). In 1968, the "Estudos Gerais Universitários de Angola" was renamed "Universidade de Luanda" (University of Luanda).


title: Portuguese Angola

text: From the 1940s onward, city and town expansion and modernization included the construction of several sports facilities for football, rink hockey, basketball, volleyball, handball, athletics, gymnastics and swimming. Several sports clubs were founded across the entire territory, among them were some of the largest and oldest sports organizations of Angola. Several sportsmen, especially football players, that achieved wide notability in Portuguese sports were from Angola. José Águas, Rui Jordão and Jacinto João were examples of that, and excelled in the Portugal national football team. Since the 1960s, with the latest developments on commercial aviation, the highest ranked football teams of Angola and the other African overseas provinces of Portugal, started to compete in the Taça de Portugal (the Portuguese Cup). Other facilities and organizations for swimming, nautical sports, tennis and wild hunting became widespread. Beginning in the 1950s, motorsport was introduced to Angola. Sport races were organized in cities like Nova Lisboa, Benguela, Sá da Bandeira and Moçâmedes. The International Nova Lisboa 6 Hours sports car race became noted internationally.


title: Portuguese Angola

text: Football became very popular in Angola during the 20th century. Football was mostly spread to Angola by the Portuguese people who settled in the colonies. This was mostly due to the fact that immigration to the colonies was encouraged, both Angola and Mozambique saw an influx of Portuguese migrants. Football became very popular in Angola and people started to follow teams that were from the Portuguese mainland. In the latter half of the 20th century, Portugal would recruit many players form Angola. Miguel Arcanjo was one such player who played in Portugal. The colonial players would help Portuguese teams win many championships.


title: Lentivirus

text: Lentivirus is a genus of retroviruses that cause chronic and deadly diseases characterized by long incubation periods, in humans and other mammalian species. The genus includes the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS. Lentiviruses are distributed worldwide, and are known to be hosted in apes, cows, goats, horses, cats, and sheep as well as several other mammals.


title: Lentivirus

text: Lentiviruses can integrate a significant amount of viral complementary DNA into the DNA of the host cell and can efficiently infect nondividing cells, so they are one of the most efficient methods of gene delivery. They can become endogenous, integrating their genome into the host germline genome, so that the virus is henceforth inherited by the host's descendants.


title: Lentivirus

text: Five serogroups of lentiviruses are recognized, reflecting the vertebrate hosts with which they are associated (primates, sheep and goats, horses, domestic cats, and cattle). The primate lentiviruses are distinguished by the use of CD4 protein as a receptor and the absence of dUTPase. Some groups have cross-reactive gag antigens (e.g., the ovine, caprine, and feline lentiviruses). Antibodies to gag antigens in lions and other large felines indicate the existence of another yet to be identified virus related to feline lentivirus and the ovine/caprine lentiviruses.


title: Lentivirus

text: The virions are enveloped, slightly pleomorphic, spherical and measure 80–100 nm in diameter. Projections of envelope make the surface appear rough, or tiny spikes (about 8 nm) may be dispersed evenly over the surface. The nucleocapsids (cores) are isometric. The nucleoids are concentric and rod-shaped, or shaped like a truncated cone.


title: Lentivirus

text: As with all retroviruses, lentiviruses have "gag", "pol" and "env" genes, coding for viral proteins in the order: 5´-"gag"-"pol"-"env"-3´. Unlike other retroviruses, however, lentiviruses have two regulatory genes, "tat" and "rev". They may also have additional accessory genes depending on the virus (e.g., for HIV-1: "vif", "vpr", "vpu", "nef") whose products are involved in regulation of synthesis and processing viral RNA and other replicative functions. The Long terminal repeat (LTR) is about 600 nt long, of which the U3 region is 450, the R sequence 100 and the U5 region some 70 nt long.


title: Lentivirus

text: Retroviruses carry specific proteins within their capsids, which typically associate with the RNA genome. These proteins are typically involved in the early stages of genome replication, and include reverse transcriptase and integrase. Reverse transcriptase is the virally encoded RNA-dependent DNA polymerase. The enzyme uses the viral RNA genome as a template for the synthesis of a complementary DNA copy. Reverse transcriptase also has RNaseH activity for destruction of the RNA-template. Integrase binds both the viral cDNA generated by reverse transcriptase and the host DNA. Integrase processes the LTR before inserting the viral genome into the host DNA. Tat acts as a trans-activator during transcription to enhance initiation and elongation. The Rev responsive element acts post-transcriptionally, regulating mRNA splicing and transport to the cytoplasm.


title: Lentivirus

text: The lentiviral proteome consists of five major structural proteins and 3-4 non-structural proteins (3 in the primate lentiviruses).


title: Lentivirus

text: The envelope proteins SU and TM are glycosylated in at least some lentiviruses (HIV, SIV), if not all of them. Glycosylation seems to play a structural role in the concealment and variation of antigenic sites necessary for the host to mount an immune system response.


title: Lentivirus

text: Serological relationships: Antigen determinants are type-specific and group-specific. Antigen determinants that possess type-specific reactivity are found on the envelope. Antigen determinants that possess type-specific reactivity and are involved in antibody mediated neutralization are found on the glycoproteins. Cross-reactivity has been found among some species of the same serotype, but not between members of different genera. Classification of members of this taxon is infrequently based on their antigenic properties.


title: Lentivirus

text: Lentivirus is primarily a research tool used to introduce a gene product into in vitro systems or animal models. Large-scale collaborative efforts are underway to use lentiviruses to block the expression of a specific gene using RNA interference technology in high-throughput formats. Conversely, lentivirus are also used to stably over-express certain genes, thus allowing researchers to examine the effect of increased gene expression in a model system.


title: Lentivirus

text: Another common application is to use a lentivirus to introduce a new gene into human or animal cells. For example, a model of mouse hemophilia is corrected by expressing wild-type platelet-factor VIII, the gene that is mutated in human hemophilia. Lentiviral infection has advantages over other gene-therapy methods including high-efficiency infection of dividing and non-dividing cells, long-term stable expression of a transgene, and low immunogenicity.


title: Lentivirus

text: Lentiviruses have also been successfully used for transduction of diabetic mice with the gene encoding PDGF (platelet-derived growth factor), a therapy being considered for use in humans. Finally, lentiviruses have been also used to elicit an immune response against tumor antigens. These treatments, like most current gene therapy experiments, show promise but are yet to be established as safe and effective in controlled human studies.


title: Lentivirus

text: Gammaretroviral and lentiviral vectors have so far been used in more than 300 clinical trials, addressing treatment options for various diseases.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: The Sicilian is a 1987 epic historical drama film directed and co-produced by Michael Cimino. The film was adapted by Steve Shagan and an uncredited Gore Vidal from Mario Puzo's 1984 novel of the same name. Christopher Lambert stars as Salvatore Giuliano, the infamous bandit who tried to liberate early 1950s Sicily from Italian rule. The film also stars Terence Stamp, Joss Ackland, John Turturro and Barbara Sukowa.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Salvatore Giuliano, an infamous bandit, together with his ragtag band of guerrillas, attempted to liberate early 1950s Sicily from Italian rule and make it an American state. Giuliano robs from the rich landowners to give to the peasants, who in turn hail him as their savior. As his popularity grows, so does his ego, and he eventually thinks he is above the power of his backer, Mafia Don Masino Croce. Don Croce, in turn, sets out to kill the upstart by convincing his cousin and closest adviser Gaspare "Aspanu" Pisciotta to assassinate him.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Due to the huge success of "The Godfather", Mario Puzo was given $1 million for the film rights to his novel "The Sicilian". David Begelman, head of Gladden Entertainment at the time, hired Michael Cimino to direct. When producer Bruce McNall met with Cimino at a dinner in Los Angeles, he complained loudly about the script and Begelman's interference with casting. Cimino wanted Christopher Lambert for the lead role and Begelman was concerned about a French actor starring in a film about an Italian hero in an English-speaking film. To move forward, Begelman and McNall gave Cimino what he wanted with regards to the script and casting.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Gore Vidal did some uncredited rewrite work on the film. Vidal sued both screenwriter Steve Shagan and the Writers Guild of America to receive screenplay credit: "I was defrauded of my work." Vidal eventually won the suit against WGA. In the DVD commentary of "Year of the Dragon", Cimino said he learned a lot from working with Vidal.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: The film was shot on location in Sicily in the spring and summer of 1986. In late April 1986, Begelman and McNall discovered that the film was over budget and behind schedule. The problems involved mostly hang-ups with personnel and equipment, nothing on the scale of Cimino's "Heaven's Gate". One exception was some low-level Mafia men who controlled certain locations and union workers. Cimino suggested that Begelman and McNall meet with Mafia men to overcome the impasse. Upon meeting them in a restaurant off the main piazza, the producers discovered that the Mafia men wanted to appear in the film. "Once we all understood," wrote McNall, "the fix was easy. There were plenty of little roles for walk-ons and extras. And if a real role didn't exist, we could pretend to involve some of the guys and throw them a day's pay." Once the problem was solved, Cimino had access to the countryside and the local labor pool.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: After location work was finished, Cimino took the footage straight to his editing room to begin cutting. Cimino did not report any of his progress on the editing as the months passed until he delivered a 150-minute cut of the film and declared that he was done. Under his contract with the producers, Cimino had the right to final cut as long as the film was under 120 minutes long. Cimino insisted that no more cuts could be made and pressed Begelman and McNall to present the current version to 20th Century Fox, the film's domestic distributor. Before viewing the film, the Fox executives said to the producers that the film was so long that it limited the number of showings a theater could present each day. It had to be trimmed or Fox would not release it.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: When Begelman and McNall relayed Fox's ruling to Cimino, he exploded. "I've been cutting for six months. There's nothing more to take out!" he shouted. The producers responded that there had to be a way to tell the story in 120 minutes. Cimino answered, "Fine! You want it shorter, you got it." A few days later, Cimino delivered a new version of the film in which all of the action scenes were cut out. "In the script a big wedding scene in the mountains is followed by an attack on the wedding party." wrote McNall. "In what we saw the wedding was followed by a scene at a hospital, where all the people in nice clothes were being treated for their wounds. He just cut out the battle." Begelman did not wait until the film ended to get on the phone and immediately called Cimino. Cimino said that his contract allowed him final cut in a 120-minute film and what he gave them qualified.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: As a result of the impasse with Cimino, the producers went to arbitration. "Every day that passed without the film being complete cost us and our partners—Fox and Dino DeLaurentiis—money." wrote McNall. "The judge in the arbitration acknowledged that problem and gave us a speedy hearing." Bert Fields represented the producers. Cimino's lawyers used a precedent established by Fields in an earlier case: Fields aided Warren Beatty's win in a dispute over final cut with the producers of the movie "Reds", a finding that stated a contract granting a director final cut was absolutely binding. The producers challenged the claim that Cimino's 120-minute version of the film was a legitimate piece of work. "It was an act of bad faith," argued McNall, "no matter what the contract said."


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Dino DeLaurentiis was called in to testify as an expert witness. DeLaurentiis had overseen Cimino's "Year of the Dragon", set the precedent for giving Cimino final cut in the contract for that film and even gave Cimino a positive recommendation to Begelman for "The Sicilian". However, when DeLaurentiis took the stand:


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: A subsequently unearthed side letter stated that notwithstanding the contract, Cimino did not have the right to final cut on "Year of the Dragon". Fields argued that by withholding the side letter, Cimino defrauded the producers. The judge agreed. Begelman personally trimmed the film to 115 minutes.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Fox released "The Sicilian" on October 23, 1987, in 370 theaters. The film opened at #7 on the box office charts, grossing $1,720,351 and averaging $4,649 per theater. The film's domestic box office gross eventually totaled $5,406,879. According to McNall, the losses on "The Sicilian" were offset by the profits from Gladden's other 1987 release "Mannequin", which unlike "The Sicilian", became a box office hit.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Critical reaction to the film was fairly negative. Many critics panned the film's incoherent narrative, muddy visual style, and the casting of Lambert in the lead as Giuliano. Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert gave "The Sicilian" "two thumbs down". Ebert complained about the cinematography: "The film alternates between scenes that are backlit where you can't see the faces and other scenes that were so murky that you couldn't see who was talking." Siskel attacked the film's star, "Let me just go after Christopher Lambert... because here is the center of the film. This would be as if the Al Pacino character in "The Godfather" were played by a member of the walking dead." In his "Chicago Sun-Times" review, Ebert claimed "The Sicilian" continues director Michael Cimino's "record of making an incomprehensible mess out of every other film he directs", contrasting the "power and efficiency" of "The Deer Hunter" and "The Year of the Dragon" with the "half-visible meditations on backlighting" of "Heaven's Gate" and "The Sicilian".


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" said, "Cimino's fondness for amber lighting and great, sweeping camera movements are evident from time to time, but the film is mostly a garbled synopsis of the Puzo novel." Variety added "Cimino seems to be aiming for an operatic telling of the short career of the violent 20th-century folk hero [based on Mario Puzo's novel], but falls into an uncomfortable middle ground between European artfulness and stock Hollywood conventions." Hal Hinson of "The Washington Post" felt it was "unambiguously atrocious, but in that very special, howlingly grandiose manner that only a filmmaker with visions of epic greatness working on a large scale with a multinational cast can achieve." Leonard Maltin rated the film a "BOMB", calling it a "militantly lugubrious bio of Salvatore Giuliano".


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Producer McNall was personally disappointed by the film. "Given that "The Sicilian" was a descendant of Puzo's "The Godfather"," wrote McNall, "I had expected something with the same beauty, drama, and emotion. Cimino had shown with "The Deer Hunter" that he was capable of making such a movie. But he had failed." McNall even quoted Ebert's review in his appraisal of "The Sicilian", "Ebert criticized the cast, the cinematography, the script, even the sound quality. He was right about all of it."


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: Rotten Tomatoes gives "The Sicilian" a 10% "Rotten" rating, based on 20 reviews, with an average rating of 3.9/10.


title: The Sicilian (film)

text: A 146-minute director's cut was released theatrically in France and is available on VHS, DVD and Blu-Ray in the United States, and in Europe as a region 2 DVD. This version received mixed reviews when it initially opened in Paris. Maltin gave the director's cut of "The Sicilian" two stars out of four, writing that the film "seems shorter, thanks to more coherency and Sukowa's strengthened role. Neither version, though, can overcome two chief liabilities: Cimino's missing sense of humor and Lambert's laughably stone-faced performance." Film critic F.X. Feeney lauded this version of the film, and in an article of "L.A. Weekly", he compared and contrasted the two particular versions. He mentioned that Fox's cut removed "three major sequences, four major scenes, and about 100 lines of dialogue," stated that Lambert's performance was botched by the studio's tinkering, and that Sukowa's voice was dubbed by another actress in said version. Feeney went on to call "The Sicilian" "a masterpiece" and "a work of genius," and declared it as the best film of 1987.


title: All the Way (film)

text: All the Way is a 2016 American biographical television drama film based on events during the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Directed by Jay Roach and adapted by Robert Schenkkan from his 2012 play "All the Way", the film stars Bryan Cranston, who reprises his role as Johnson from the play's 2014 Broadway production, opposite Melissa Leo as First Lady Lady Bird Johnson; Anthony Mackie as Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr.; and Frank Langella as U.S. Senator Richard Russell Jr. from Georgia.


title: All the Way (film)

text: The film was broadcast on HBO on Saturday, May 21, 2016. The film was well received by critics, with Cranston's portrayal of Johnson garnering praise. It has been nominated for a Television Critics Association Award for Outstanding Achievement in Movies, Miniseries and Specials, with Cranston also nominated for Individual Achievement in Drama for his work on the film. It was nominated for eight Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Television Movie as well as acting nominations for Cranston and Leo.


title: All the Way (film)

text: Lyndon Baines Johnson becomes President of the United States after the John F. Kennedy assassination, assisted and advised by his wife Lady Bird. Johnson enters the White House but soon must work on the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Martin Luther King Jr. pressures Johnson to pass the bill without amendments that would defang it; Southern Democrats such as Richard Russell Jr. of Georgia oppose the bill so much that they may abandon the Democratic Party if the bill passes, and Republicans and Democrats on the fence offer amendments opposed by the liberals and the Civil Rights activists. At the same time, Johnson wants to declare a War on Poverty. The Gulf of Tonkin incident causes Johnson to ask Congress for a resolution endorsing a reprisal against North Vietnam, wary of being outflanked on the issue by the Republicans.


title: All the Way (film)

text: After successful passage of the Civil Rights Act over a filibuster, Johnson contends for election against Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election. This is complicated by the Freedom Summer movement and pulls between the northern liberal wing and Southern Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic Party. Johnson assigns J. Edgar Hoover to investigate the murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner in Mississippi. The state of Mississippi also sends two delegations to the Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City: the "normal" delegation from the Dixiecrat wing, which threatened to walk out on Johnson, and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, a renegade wing supported by the Civil Rights Movement, but vehemently opposed by other Southerners. Johnson, in a bid to save the South, offers the MFDP a compromise that satisfies neither side; the Mississippi delegation walks out, and the MFDP is unhappy with the two at-large delegates offered to them.


title: All the Way (film)

text: Johnson hits Goldwater hard in the election, portraying him as a dangerous fanatic who will destroy the world, but is worried. Johnson's aide and friend Walter Jenkins is arrested for "disorderly conduct" after he is found in a tryst with another man in a public restroom; Johnson has an uncomfortable conversation with Hoover on how this fact slipped by security screening. Martin Luther King wins the Nobel Peace Prize; Hoover, still distrusting King, sends him an insulting, anonymous letter demanding King commit suicide, which is ignored. Johnson wins the election conclusively, but the Democratic Party loses the states of the Deep South.


title: All the Way (film)

text: Hints of the Vietnam War, the Great Society programs against poverty, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the continuing loss of the South to the Republicans are given at the end.


title: All the Way (film)

text: On July 16, 2014, it was announced that HBO Films had acquired the rights to the play "All the Way" with Robert Schenkkan writing the adaptation and Bryan Cranston reprising his role as Lyndon B. Johnson. Schenkkan and producer Steven Spielberg agreed that the adaptation would differ significantly from the play. Schenkkan says, "When Steven, Bryan Cranston and I brought this to HBO, what I said at the time was, 'Look, I have no interest in just shooting the play. What I want to do is a complete cinematic reimagining of this story.' Everybody was on board for that. It's obviously recognizably the same story with many – but not all – of the same characters. I took a really hard look at how I could best tell this story on screen now that I had all the things that cinema brings that I did not have in my toolkit when I was working on stage."


title: All the Way (film)

text: On March 7, 2015, it was announced that Jay Roach would direct the film. On June 30, 2015, Anthony Mackie was cast as Martin Luther King Jr. On July 2, 2015, Melissa Leo was cast as Lady Bird Johnson. On July 8, 2015, Stephen Root and Marque Richardson were cast as J. Edgar Hoover and Bob Moses, respectively. On July 23, 2015, Bradley Whitford was cast as Hubert Humphrey. On July 23, 2015, Aisha Hinds, Spencer Garrett, Todd Weeks, and Mo McRae were cast as Fannie Lou Hamer, Walter Reuther, Walter Jenkins, and Stokely Carmichael, respectively. On July 28, 2015, Frank Langella was cast as Richard Russell Jr. On September 18, 2015, Bruce Nozick was cast as Stanley Levison. On September 29, 2015, Ned Van Zandt was cast as J. William Fulbright.


title: All the Way (film)

text: "All the Way" received positive reviews from critics. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gave the film an approval rating of 87%, based on 46 reviews, with an average rating of 7.9/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Anchored by Bryan Cranston's phenomenal performance as LBJ, "All the Way" is an engrossing portrayal of a complicated man during a pivotal moment in US history." On Metacritic the film has a score of 78 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: All the Way (film)

text: "All the Way" drew approximately 1.11 million total viewers and a 0.2 rating among adults 18–49, making it the second most watched (at the time it aired) HBO original movie behind 2015's "Bessie".


title: Democracy Now!

text: Democracy Now! is an hour-long American TV, radio, and Internet news program hosted by journalists Amy Goodman (who also acts as the show's executive producer), Juan González, and Nermeen Shaikh. The show, which airs live each weekday at 8 a.m. Eastern Time, is broadcast on the Internet and via more than 1,400 radio and television stations worldwide.


title: Democracy Now!

text: The program combines news reporting, interviews, investigative journalism and political commentary, with a focus on peace activism linked to environmental justice and social justice, guided by the ethics of ecofeminism as a philosophy. It documents social movements, struggles for justice, activism challenging corporate power and operates as a watchdog outfit regarding the effects of American foreign policy. "Democracy Now!" views as its aim to give activists and the citizenry a platform to debate people from "The Establishment". The show is described as progressive by fans as well as critics, but Goodman rejects that label, calling the program a global newscast that has "people speaking for themselves". "Democracy Now!" describes its staff as "includ[ing] some of this country's leading progressive journalists."


title: Democracy Now!

text: Democracy Now Productions, the independent media nonprofit organization which produces "Democracy Now!," is funded entirely through contributions from listeners, viewers, and foundations such as the Park Foundation, Ford Foundation, Lannan Foundation, and the J.M. Kaplan Fund. "Democracy Now!" does not accept advertisers, corporate underwriting or government funding. The show has become popular on the internet, and from the late 2010s onward, has been involved in pioneering extensive media cooperation in the public sphere across the US.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!", also called "Democracy Now! The War and Peace Report", "Democracy Now Independent Global News" or "Democracy News", was founded on February 19, 1996, at WBAI in New York City by journalists Amy Goodman, Juan González, Larry Bensky, Salim Muwakkil, and Julie Drizin. It originally aired on five Pacifica Radio stations. Goodman is the program's principal host, with Juan González and Nermeen Shaikh as frequent co-hosts. Jeremy Scahill, an investigative reporter and co-founding editor for "The Intercept", has been a frequent contributor since 1997.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!" partnered with Free Speech TV (FSTV) to cover the 2000 Democratic National Convention. Due to FSTV's satellite broadcast of the convention, the event marked a turning point for "Democracy Now!", as in addition to its presence on radio, it became a television show. From then onward, "Democracy Now!" has had their content promoted and broadcast on FSTV.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!" began broadcasting on television every weekday shortly after September 11, 2001, and is the only public media in the U.S. that airs simultaneously on satellite and cable television, radio, and the internet.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!" has been critical of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade deal. After data disclosures by the whistleblower organisation WikiLeaks regarding the TPP in 2010, "Democracy Now!" has given a significant media platform and extensively covered them since, and like some other news networks cooperated with its leader Julian Assange. Coverage of WikiLeaks by "Democracy Now!" was sympathetic.


title: Democracy Now!

text: On February 19, 2016, "Democracy Now!" marked 20 years on the air with an hour-long retrospective look back at "two decades of independent, unembedded news", with highlights chosen from over 5,000 episodes. Amy Goodman also published a book entitled "Democracy Now!: 20 Years Covering the Movements Changing America", and launched a 100-city tour across the United States to mark the 20th anniversary of "Democracy Now!", with scheduled broadcasts of the show recorded during her travels.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!" began as a radio program broadcast from the studios of WBAI, a local Pacifica Radio station in New York City. In early September 2001, amid a months-long debate over the mission and management of Pacifica, "Democracy Now!" was forced out of the WBAI studios. Goodman took the program to the Downtown Community Television Center located in a converted firehouse building in New York City's Chinatown, where the program began to be televised. Only a few days later on September 11, 2001 "Democracy Now!" was the closest national broadcast to Ground Zero. On that day Goodman and colleagues continued reporting beyond their scheduled hour-long time slot in what became an eight-hour marathon broadcast. Following 9/11, in addition to radio and television, "Democracy Now!" expanded their multimedia reach to include cable, satellite radio, Internet, and podcasts.


title: Democracy Now!

text: In November 2009, "Democracy Now!" left their broadcast studio in the converted DCTV firehouse, where they had broadcast for eight years. The studio subsequently moved to a repurposed graphic arts building in the Chelsea District of Manhattan. In 2010, the new 8,500-square-foot "Democracy Now!" studio became the first radio or television studio in the nation to receive LEED Platinum certification, the highest rating awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!" is the flagship program of the Pacifica Radio network. It also airs on several NPR member stations. The television simulcast airs on public-access television and several PBS stations; by satellite on Free Speech TV and Link TV, and free-to-air on C Band. "Democracy Now!" is also available on the Internet as downloadable and streaming audio and video. In total, nearly 1,400 television and radio stations broadcast "Democracy Now!" worldwide.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!" and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship", on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of two Nigerian villagers protesting an oil spill; and Goodman with Allan Nairn won Robert F. Kennedy Memorial's First Prize in International Radio for their 1993 report, "Massacre: The Story of East Timor" which involved first-hand coverage of genocide during the Indonesian occupation of East Timor.


title: Democracy Now!

text: On October 1, 2008, Goodman was named as a recipient of the 2008 Right Livelihood Award, in connection with her years of work establishing "Democracy Now!" and in 2009, she, like her frequent guest Glenn Greenwald, was awarded the first annual Izzy Award (named after journalist I. F. "Izzy" Stone) for "special achievement in independent media". Her co-host Juan González was inducted into the New York chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists' Hall of Fame on November 19, 2015.


title: Democracy Now!

text: Three journalists with "Democracy Now!"—including principal host Amy Goodman, and news producers Nicole Salazar and Sharif Abdel Kouddous—were detained by police during their reporting on the 2008 Republican National Convention protests in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Salazar was filming as officers in full riot gear charged her area. As she yelled "Press!" she was knocked down and told to put her face in the ground while another officer dragged her backward by her leg across the pavement. The video footage of the incident was immediately posted on the Internet, leading to a large public outcry against her arrest. When a second producer, Kouddous, approached, he too was arrested, and charged with a felony. According to a press release by "Democracy Now!", Goodman herself was arrested after confronting officers regarding the arrest of her colleagues. The officers had established a line of "crowd control", and ordered Goodman to move back. Goodman claims she was arrested after being pulled through the police line by an officer, and subsequently (as well as Kouddous) had her press credentials for the convention physically stripped from her by a Secret Service agent. All were held on charges of "probable cause for riot". A statement was later released by the city announcing that all "misdemeanor charges for presence at an unlawful assembly for journalists" would be dropped. The felony charges against Salazar and Kouddous were also dropped.


title: Democracy Now!

text: Goodman, Salazar, and Kouddous subsequently filed a lawsuit against the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis as well as other defendants. According to Baher Asmy of the Center for Constitutional Rights, "[a]ll three plaintiffs that are journalists with "Democracy Now" reached a final settlement with the city of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the United States Secret Service, that will resolve the claims that they had against them from unlawful and quite violent arrests." The settlement includes $100,000 in compensation and a promise of police training.


title: Democracy Now!

text: In September 2016, an arrest warrant for criminal trespass was issued for Amy Goodman after covering for "Democracy Now!" the Dakota Access Pipeline protests during which guards unleashed dogs and pepper spray on protesters in Morton County, North Dakota. An arrest warrant was reportedly also issued for Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein and her running mate, Ajamu Baraka.


title: Democracy Now!

text: Goodman elected to turn herself in. Three days before the court date, the charges were increased to engaging in a riot, which carried a penalty of up to 30 days in jail and a $1,500 fine. On October 17, 2016, the judge quickly dismissed the charges, but Morton County prosecutors insisted the case is still open and that they may pursue further charges in the future. Goodman asserted the importance of freedom of the press and said that "Democracy Now!" would continue covering the developing situation in North Dakota.


title: Democracy Now!

text: "Democracy Now!" has featured appearances from Green party candidate Jill Stein during the 2016 United States presidential election.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: Brother (, translit. "Brat") is a 1997 Russian neo-noir crime drama film written and directed by Aleksei Balabanov. The film stars Sergei Bodrov Jr. as Danila Bagrov, a young ex-conscript who becomes embroiled with the Saint Petersburg mob through his criminal older brother. It appeared in the Un Certain Regard section at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: After its release on VHS in June 1997, "Brother" unexpectedly became one of the most commercially successful Russian films of the 1990s and quickly rose to cult film status throughout Russia. Due to the film's popularity and fan demand, a sequel, "Brother 2", was released in 2000.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: After Danila Bagrov (Sergei Bodrov Jr.), a recently discharged Chechen War veteran, gets into a fight with security guards, his mother insists he travels to Saint Petersburg to seek out his successful older brother Viktor, whom his mother is confident will help him make a living. He does, and there he befriends Kat, an energetic drug addict, and "The German" Hoffman, a homeless street vendor whom Danila helps after a thug attempts to extort him.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: Unbeknown to their mother, Viktor is an accomplished hitman who goes by the street name "The Tatar" but is growing too independent and is starting to irritate his mob boss, Roundhead. His latest target is "The Chechen", a Chechen mafia boss who was recently released from prison and now runs a market. Roundhead, who is unhappy with the amount of money that Viktor demanded for the hit, orders his thugs to watch him in secret.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: Danila eventually meets up with Viktor. To avoid exposure, Viktor passes his assignment to his brother, gives him money to settle into the city, and then lies to him that the Chechen has been extorting from him, asking Danila to perform the hit, which he does. Roundhead's thugs spot and chase him, but he manages to escape by jumping into a freight tram, driven by a woman named Sveta.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: After Danila recovers, he decides to meet up with her, despite her being married to an abusive husband. With the money given to him by Viktor after the hit, he begins to enjoy Saint Petersburg, gives his provincial image a makeover and takes Sveta out to a concert of his favorite band Nautilus Pompilius. At the same time he also meets up with Kat to go to a nightclub, smokes cannabis in an afterparty and sleeps with her afterwards.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: Meanwhile, Roundhead is angry about losing one of his men and the fact that Viktor used someone else to carry out the hit, and decides to draw him into a combined raid. Viktor, again suspecting a trap, passes the job to Danila once more. The two thugs raid the apartment, but their main target is away. While they wait, in an apartment on the floor above, a party is taking place. A young radio director, Stepan, mistakes the raided flat for the party flat and is almost killed by the thugs, who take him captive. Bored of the waiting, Danila decides to go to the party above and relaxes in the friendly musical atmosphere. Some time afterward, he comes back to find the thugs killed their primary target, and are about to do the same with Stepan, but Danila kills them and, with Stepan's help, drags the bodies to the Smolensky Lutheran Cemetery, where Hoffman helps dispose of them.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: Roundhead, furious finding out what happened, decides to track Danila and intercepts Sveta's tram. They later raid her apartment, where his men beat and rape her, and learn his phone number, as well as his address. A henchman nicknamed "Mole" ambushes Danila near his apartment building, but Danila manages to kill him. Realizing that staying home is unsafe, he travels to Sveta's house and is shocked at her state. He learns that Roundhead was responsible and realizes that the only way they could have tracked her was when he returned a phone call from her home telephone to his brother.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: At the same time, Roundhead raids Viktor's apartment and forces him to call Danila at gunpoint, urging him to come over. Realizing the depth of the situation, Danila goes back to the communal room that he was renting, and buys a shotgun from his landlord. At Viktor's apartment, he takes out Roundhead and two of his henchmen and tells the surviving thug to warn the rest of the gang that he will kill anyone who hurts his brother.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: Danila forgives Viktor and gives him some of the money from Roundhead's suitcase, telling him to return home and to work for the militsiya. Before leaving for Moscow, he visits Sveta, and upon finding her husband beating her, he shoots him in his leg before leaving. He then says goodbye to Hoffman and Kat, before hitching a ride to Moscow on a passing truck.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: "Brother" was selected for screening at a number of Russian and international film festivals, where it won many awards. The festivals include, among others:


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: The film became an instant hit, and raised the fortunes of both Sergey Bodrov and director Aleksei Balabanov. The story's depiction revolves around the problems and attitudes of the 1990s Russia: crime, poverty (in face of the homeless Hoffman), the disaffection of the Russian youth (as with the character Kat), failing families (as with Sveta and her abusive husband) and of course, betrayal and hypocrisy even towards the most closest of relatives (such as Viktor first using Danila as cover, and then turning him over). All this was brought about in the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, which took place only six years prior. Yet, despite such negative connotation amid the social decay, it illustrates that there is still courage and good in the face of Danila, who is portrayed as having an acute sense of right and wrong, and appears to follow some semblance of a moral code. As such it carries a powerful psychological message to the Russian audience that even in such gloomy times there is still hope.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: "Brother" has an approval rating of 100% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 5 reviews, and an average rating of 7.63/10.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: Following the film's success, Balabanov initially planned on making a "Brother" trilogy: the second instalment was to take place in Moscow and the third in America. During the writing phase, however, he abandoned this idea and combined the second and third parts into a single sequel instead. "Brother 2" is notable for having a significantly higher budget, placing more emphasis on action sequences, and being set in Moscow and Chicago.


title: Brother (1997 film)

text: In the 2018 music video for her song "90", the Russian singer-songwriter Monetochka reenacts scenes from "Brother".


title: Downburst

text: In meteorology, a downburst is a strong downward and outward gushing wind system that emanates from a point source above and blows radially, that is, in straight lines in all directions from the area of impact at surface level. Capable of producing damaging winds, it may sometimes be confused with a tornado, where high-velocity winds circle a central area, and air moves inward and upward. These usually last for seconds to minutes. Downbursts are particularly strong downdrafts within thunderstorms (or deep, moist convection as sometimes downbursts emanate from cumulonimbus or even cumulus congestus clouds that are not producing lightning).


title: Downburst

text: Downbursts are most often created by an area of significantly precipitation-cooled air that, after reaching the surface (subsiding), spreads out in all directions producing strong winds. Dry downbursts are associated with thunderstorms that exhibit very little rain, while wet downbursts are created by thunderstorms with significant amounts of precipitation. Microbursts and macrobursts are downbursts at very small and larger scales, respectively. A rare variety of dry downburst, the heat burst, is created by vertical currents on the backside of old outflow boundaries and squall lines where rainfall is lacking. Heat bursts generate significantly higher temperatures due to the lack of rain-cooled air in their formation and compressional heating during descent. Downbursts create vertical wind shear, which is dangerous to aviation, especially during landing (or takeoff). Several fatal and historic crashes in past decades are attributed to the phenomenon and flight crew training goes to great lengths on how to properly recognize and recover from a downburst/wind shear event; wind shear recovery, among other adverse weather events, are standard topics across the world in flight simulator training that flight crews receive and must successfully complete. Detection and nowcasting technology was also implemented in much of the world and particularly around major airports, which in many cases actually have wind shear detection equipment on the field. This detection equipment helps air traffic controllers and pilots make decisions on the safety and feasibility of operating on or in the vicinity of the airport during storms.


title: Downburst

text: A downburst is created by a column of sinking air that after hitting the surface spreads out in all directions and is capable of producing damaging straight-line winds of over , often producing damage similar to, but distinguishable from, that caused by tornadoes. Downburst damage radiates from a central point as the descending column spreads out when hitting the surface, whereas tornado damage tends towards convergent damage consistent with rotating winds. To differentiate between tornado damage and damage from a downburst, the term straight-line winds is applied to damage from microbursts.


title: Downburst

text: Downbursts in air that is precipitation free or contains virga are known as dry downbursts; those accompanied with precipitation are known as wet downbursts. These generally are formed by precipitation-cooled air rushing to the surface, but they perhaps also could be powered by strong winds aloft being deflected toward the surface by dynamical processes in a thunderstorm (see rear flank downdraft). Most downbursts are less than in extent: these are called microbursts. Downbursts larger than in extent are sometimes called macrobursts. Downbursts can occur over large areas. In the extreme case, a series of continuing downbursts results in a derecho, which covers huge areas of more than wide and over long, persisting for 12 hours or more, and which is associated with some of the most intense straight-line winds.


title: Downburst

text: The term microburst was defined by mesoscale meteorology expert Ted Fujita as affecting an area in diameter or less, distinguishing them as a type of downburst and apart from common wind shear which can encompass greater areas. Fujita also coined the term macroburst for downbursts larger than .


title: Downburst

text: When rain falls below the cloud base or is mixed with dry air, it begins to evaporate and this evaporation process cools the air. The denser cool air descends and accelerates as it approaches the surface. When the cool air approaches the surface, it spreads out in all directions. High winds spread out in this type of pattern showing little or no curvature are known as straight-line winds.


title: Downburst

text: Dry microbursts are typically produced by high based thunderstorms that contain little to no surface rainfall. They occur in environments characterized by a thermodynamic profile exhibiting an inverted-V at thermal and moisture profile, as viewed on a Skew-T log-P thermodynamic diagram. Wakimoto (1985) developed a conceptual model (over the High Plains of the United States) of a dry microburst environment that comprised three important variables: mid-level moisture, cloud base in the mid troposphere, and low surface relative humidity. These conditions evaporate the moisture from the air as it falls, cooling the air and making it fall faster because it is more dense.


title: Downburst

text: Wet microbursts are downbursts accompanied by significant precipitation at the surface. These downbursts rely more on the drag of precipitation for downward acceleration of parcels as well as the negative buoyancy which tend to drive "dry" microbursts. As a result, higher mixing ratios are necessary for these downbursts to form (hence the name "wet" microbursts). Melting of ice, particularly hail, appears to play an important role in downburst formation (Wakimoto and Bringi, 1988), especially in the lowest above surface level (Proctor, 1989). These factors, among others, make forecasting wet microbursts difficult.


title: Downburst

text: Straight-line winds (also known as plough winds, thundergusts and hurricanes of the prairie) are very strong winds that can produce damage, demonstrating a lack of the rotational damage pattern associated with tornadoes. Straight-line winds are common with the gust front of a thunderstorm or originate with a downburst from a thunderstorm. These events can cause considerable damage, even in the absence of a tornado. The winds can gust to and winds of or more can last for more than twenty minutes. In the United States, such straight-line wind events are most common during the spring when instability is highest and weather fronts routinely cross the country. Straight-line wind events in the form of derechos can take place throughout the eastern half of the U.S.


title: Downburst

text: Straight-line winds may be damaging to marine interests. Small ships, cutters and sailboats are at risk from this meteorological phenomenon.


title: Downburst

text: The formation of a downburst starts with hail or large raindrops falling through drier air. Hailstones melt and raindrops evaporate, pulling latent heat from surrounding air and cooling it considerably. Cooler air has a higher density than the warmer air around it, so it sinks to the surface. As the cold air hits the ground or water it spreads out and a mesoscale front can be observed as a gust front. Areas under and immediately adjacent to the downburst are the areas which receive the highest winds and rainfall, if any is present. Also, because the rain-cooled air is descending from the middle troposphere, a significant drop in temperatures is noticed. Due to interaction with the surface, the downburst quickly loses strength as it fans out and forms the distinctive "curl shape" that is commonly seen at the periphery of the microburst (see image). Downbursts usually last only a few minutes and then dissipate, except in the case of squall lines and derecho events. However, despite their short lifespan, microbursts are a serious hazard to aviation and property and can result in substantial damage to the area.


title: Downburst

text: The evolution of microbursts is broken down into three stages: the contact stage, the outburst stage, and the cushion stage:


title: Downburst

text: On a weather radar Doppler display, a downburst is seen as a couplet of radial winds in the outburst and cushion stages. The rightmost image shows such a display from the ARMOR Doppler Weather Radar in Huntsville, Alabama in 2012. The radar is on the right side of the image and the downburst is along the line separating the velocity towards the radar (green), and the one moving away (red).


title: Downburst

text: By decomposing the variables into a basic state and a perturbation, defining the basic states, and using the ideal gas law (formula_1), then the equation can be written in the form


title: Downburst

text: where B is buoyancy. The virtual temperature correction usually is rather small and to a good approximation; it can be ignored when computing buoyancy. Finally, the effects of precipitation loading on the vertical motion are parametrized by including a term that decreases buoyancy as the liquid water mixing ratio (formula_2) increases, leading to the final form of the parcel's momentum equation:


title: Downburst

text: The first term is the effect of perturbation pressure gradients on vertical motion. In some storms this term has a large effect on updrafts (Rotunno and Klemp, 1982) but there is not much reason to believe it has much of an impact on downdrafts (at least to a first approximation) and therefore will be ignored.


title: Downburst

text: The second term is the effect of buoyancy on vertical motion. Clearly, in the case of microbursts, one expects to find that B is negative meaning the parcel is cooler than its environment. This cooling typically takes place as a result of phase changes (evaporation, melting, and sublimation). Precipitation particles that are small, but are in great quantity, promote a maximum contribution to cooling and, hence, to creation of negative buoyancy. The major contribution to this process is from evaporation.


title: Downburst

text: The last term is the effect of water loading. Whereas evaporation is promoted by large numbers of small droplets, it only requires a few large drops to contribute substantially to the downward acceleration of air parcels. This term is associated with storms having high precipitation rates. Comparing the effects of water loading to those associated with buoyancy, if a parcel has a liquid water mixing ratio of 1.0 g kg, this is roughly equivalent to about 0.3 K of negative buoyancy; the latter is a large (but not extreme) value. Therefore, in general terms, negative buoyancy is typically the major contributor to downdrafts.


title: Downburst

text: and where LFS denotes the level of free sink for a descending parcel and SFC denotes the surface. This means that the maximum downward motion is associated with the integrated negative buoyancy. Even a relatively modest negative buoyancy can result in a substantial downdraft if it is maintained over a relatively large depth. A downward speed of results from the relatively modest NAPE value of 312.5 m s. To a first approximation, the maximum gust is roughly equal to the maximum downdraft speed.