title: Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference

text: In 2012, Iona, who was inspired by one of their all around best players Sean Armand, which had lost in the semifinals of that year's MAAC tournament, received an NCAA at-large tournament bid. This was the second time the conference was awarded multiple men's NCAA bids.


title: Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference

text: After St. Peter’s won the 1995 MAAC tournament, the NCAA men's basketball tournament selection committee awarded Manhattan College an at large bid. The Jaspers proved the committee correct by defeating Oklahoma in the first round.


title: Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference

text: The same first-round success Manhattan enjoyed in the 1995 NCAA tournament could not be matched by Iona. In the 2012 NCAAs, the Gaels unexpectedly relinquished a 25-point, first-half lead to the BYU Cougars, falling 78–72 in Dayton, Ohio. Further, Iona's offense, the highest-scoring (per game) in the nation, managed just 17 points in the second half of that upset.


title: Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference

text: It was the largest comeback in NCAA tournament history, besting the 22-point hole the Duke Blue Devils rallied from to defeat the Maryland Terrapins in the Final Four of the 2001 NCAA tournament.


title: Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference

text: The MAAC Football League was formed before the 1993 season, but it was discontinued following the 2007 season.


title: Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference

text: Some of the notable sport figures who played collegiately and/or graduated from a MAAC school, include:


title: 100,000

text: 100,000 (one hundred thousand) is the natural number following 99,999 and preceding 100,001. In scientific notation, it is written as 10.


title: 100,000

text: In India, Pakistan and South Asia, one hundred thousand is called a lakh, and is written as 1,00,000. The Thai, Lao, Khmer and Vietnamese languages also have separate words for this number: , , (all "saen"), and respectively. The Malagasy word is .


title: 100,000

text: In astronomy, 100,000 metres, 100 kilometres, or 100 km (62 miles) is the altitude at which the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale (FAI) defines spaceflight to begin.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The Glenn L. Martin Company—also known as The Martin Company from 1957-1961—was an American aircraft and aerospace manufacturing company founded by aviation pioneer Glenn L. Martin, and operated between 1917-1961. The Martin Company produced many important aircraft for the defense of the US and allies, especially during World War II and the Cold War. During the 1950s and 60s, the Martin Company moved from the aircraft industry into the guided missile, space exploration, and space utilization industries.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: In 1961, the Martin Company merged with American-Marietta Corporation, a large industrial conglomerate, forming Martin Marietta Corporation. In 1995, Martin Marietta merged with aerospace giant Lockheed to form the Lockheed Martin Corporation.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: Glenn L. Martin Company was founded by aviation pioneer Glenn Luther Martin on August 16, 1912. He started the company building military training aircraft in Santa Ana, California, and in September 1916, Martin accepted a merger offer from the Wright Company, creating the Wright-Martin Aircraft Company. This merger did not function well, so Glenn Martin left to form a second Glenn L. Martin Company on September 10, 1917. This new company was headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio and later moved to Baltimore, Maryland.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: In 1913 Mexican insurgents from the northwestern state of Sonora bought a single seater Martin Pusher biplane in Los Angeles with the intention of attacking federal naval forces that were attacking the port of Guaymas. The aircraft was shipped on May 5, 1913, in five crates to Tucson, Arizona via Wells Fargo Express, and then moved through the border into Mexico to the town of Naco, Sonora. The aircraft, named "Sonora" by the insurgents, was reassembled there and fitted with a second seat for a bomber position.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The "Sonora", armed with rudimentary 3-inch pipe bombs, performed the first known air to naval bombing runs in history.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: For the Dutch East Indies a number of planes were delivered, with the first flight on November 6, 1915. It involved 2 types TE, 6 types TT and 8 types R. Martin's first big success came during World War I with the MB-1 bomber, a large biplane design ordered by the United States Army on January 17, 1918. The MB-1 entered service after the end of hostilities. A follow-up design, the MB-2, proved successful; 20 were ordered by the Army Air Service, the first five of them under the company designation and the last 15 as the NBS-1 (Night Bomber, Short range). Although the War Department ordered 110 more, it retained the ownership rights of the design, and put the order out for bid. The production orders were given to other companies that had bid lower, Curtiss (50), L.W.F. Engineering (35), and Aeromarine (25). The design was the only standard bomber used by the Air Service until 1930, and was used by seven squadrons of the Air Service/Air Corps: four in Virginia, two in Hawaii, and one in the Philippines.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: In 1924 the Martin Company underbid Curtiss for the production of a Curtiss-designed scout bomber, the SC-1, and ultimately Martin produced 404 of these. In 1929 Martin sold the Cleveland plant and built a new one in Middle River, Maryland, northeast of Baltimore.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: During the 1930s, Martin built flying boats for the U.S. Navy, and the innovative Martin B-10 bomber for the Army. The Martin Company also produced the noted China Clipper flying boats used by Pan American Airways for its transpacific San Francisco to the Philippines route.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: During World War II, a few of Martin's most successful designs were the B-26 Marauder and A-22 Maryland bombers, the PBM Mariner and JRM Mars flying boats, widely used for air-sea rescue, anti-submarine warfare and transport. The 1941 Office for Emergency Management film "Bomber" was filmed in the Martin facility in Baltimore, and showed aspects of the production of the B-26.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: Martin ranked 14th among U.S. corporations in the value of wartime production contracts. The company built 1,585 B-26 Marauders and 531 Boeing B-29 Superfortresses at its new bomber plant in Nebraska, just south of Omaha at Offutt Field. Among the B-29s manufactured there were all the Silverplate aircraft, including "Enola Gay" and "Bockscar", which dropped the two war-ending atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: Postwar efforts in aeronautics by the Martin Company included two unsuccessful prototype bombers, the XB-48 and the XB-51, the marginally successful AM Mauler, the successful B-57 Canberra tactical bombers, both the P5M Marlin and P6M SeaMaster seaplanes, and the Martin 4-0-4 twin-engine passenger airliner.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The Martin Company moved into the aerospace manufacturing business. It produced the Vanguard rocket, used by the American space program as one of its first satellite booster rockets as part of Project Vanguard. The Vanguard was the first American space exploration rocket designed from scratch to be an orbital launch vehicle — rather than being a modified sounding rocket (like the Juno I) or a ballistic missile (like the U.S. Army's Redstone missile). Martin also designed and manufactured the huge and heavily armed Titan I and LGM-25C Titan II Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs). Martin Company of Orlando, Florida, was the prime contractor for the US Army's Pershing missile.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The Martin Company was one of two finalists for the command and service modules of the Apollo Program. NASA awarded the design and production contracts for these to the North American Aviation Corporation.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The Martin Company went further in the production of larger booster rockets for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the U.S. Air Force with its Titan III series of over 100 rockets produced, including the Titan IIIA, the more-important Titan IIIC, and the Titan IIIE. Besides hundreds of Earth satellites, these rockets were essential for the sending to outer space of the two space probes of the Voyager Project to the outer planets the two space probes of the Viking Project to Mars, and the two Helios probes into low orbits around the Sun. (closer, even, than Mercury.)


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: Finally the US Air Force required a booster rocket that could launch heavier satellites than either the Titan IIIE or the Space Shuttle. The Martin Company responded with its extremely large Titan IV series of rockets. When the Titan IV came into service, it could carry a heavier payload to orbit than any other rocket in production. Besides its use by the Air Force to launch its sequence of very heavy reconnaissance satellites, one Titan IV, with a powerful Centaur rocket upper stage, was used to launch the heavy Cassini space probe to the planet Saturn in 1997. The Cassini probe orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017, successfully returning mountains of scientific data.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The halting of production of the Titan IV in 2004 brought to an end production of the last rocket able to carry a heavier payload than the Space Shuttle, which itself ended in 2011.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The Martin Company merged with the American-Marietta Corporation, a chemical products and construction materials manufacturer, in 1961 to form the Martin Marietta Corporation. In 1995, Martin Marietta, then the nation's 3rd-largest defense contractor, merged with the Lockheed Corporation, then the nation's second largest defense contractor, to form the Lockheed Martin Corporation, becoming the largest such company in the world.


title: Glenn L. Martin Company

text: The Martin Company employed many of the founders and chief engineers of the American aerospace industry, including:


title: Texas Seven

text: The Texas 7 were a group of prisoners who escaped from the John B. Connally Unit near Kenedy, Texas, on December 13, 2000. Six of the seven were apprehended over a month later, between January 21–23, 2001, as a direct result of the television show "America's Most Wanted". One of them committed suicide before he could be arrested. The six surviving members were all convicted and sentenced to death for the murder of Irving, Texas police officer Aubrey Wright Hawkins, who was shot and killed when responding to a robbery perpetrated by the Texas Seven. Four of the six sentenced have since been executed.


title: Texas Seven

text: On December 13, 2000, the seven carried out an elaborate scheme and escaped from the John B. Connally Unit, a maximum-security state prison near the South Texas city of Kenedy.


title: Texas Seven

text: At the time of the breakout, the reported ringleader of the Texas Seven, 30-year-old George Rivas, was serving 18 consecutive 15-to-life sentences. Michael Anthony Rodriguez, 38, was serving a 99-to-life term for contracting the murder of his wife by Rolando Ruiz Jr. (who was sentenced to death and subsequently executed in March 2017 for his involvement in the killing); while Larry James Harper, 37, Joseph Garcia, 29, and Patrick Henry Murphy Jr., 39, were all serving 50-year sentences. Donald Keith Newbury, 38, the member with the longest rap sheet in the group, was serving a 99-year sentence. Randy Halprin, 23, was serving a 30-year sentence for injury to a child, and was the youngest member.


title: Texas Seven

text: Using several well-planned ploys, the seven convicts overpowered and restrained nine civilian maintenance supervisors, including their boss, four correctional officers, and three uninvolved inmates, at approximately 11:20. The escape occurred during lunch and at count time; the "slowest" period of the prison day, when there was less surveillance of certain locations, such as the maintenance area. Most of these plans involved one of the offenders calling someone over while another hit the unsuspecting person on the head from behind. Once each victim was knocked unconscious, the offenders removed some of his clothing, tied him up, gagged him, and placed him in an electrical room behind a locked door full of electronics, including warning alarms. The attackers stole clothing, credit cards, and identification from their victims. The group impersonated prison officers on the phone and created false stories to ward off suspicion from authorities.


title: Texas Seven

text: After this first phase, three of the group made their way to the back gate of the prison, some disguised in stolen civilian clothing. They pretended to be there to install video monitors. One guard at the gatehouse was subdued, and the trio raided the guard tower and stole numerous weapons. Meanwhile, the four offenders who stayed behind called the prison tower guards to distract them. They then stole a prison maintenance pick-up truck, which they drove to the back gate of the prison, picked up their cohorts, and drove away from the prison.


title: Texas Seven

text: Michael Rodriguez's father had provided the men a getaway car. For this act, he was convicted of a crime himself.


title: Texas Seven

text: A "Crime Library" article about the seven compared the breakout to the June 1962 Alcatraz escape that occurred decades earlier.


title: Texas Seven

text: The white prison truck was found in the Walmart parking lot in Kenedy, Texas. The Texas Seven first entered San Antonio right after breaking out of the complex. Realizing that they were running out of funds, they robbed a Radio Shack in Pearland, Texas, in Greater Houston, the following day.


title: Texas Seven

text: On December 19, four of the members checked into an Econo Lodge motel in Farmers Branch, Texas, in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, under assumed names. They decided to rob an Oshman's Sporting Goods in nearby Irving. On December 24, 2000, they entered the store, bound and gagged all the staff, and stole at least 40 guns and sets of ammunition, Including $70,000 from the store's safe. An ex-employee in her car outside the store noticed the commotion inside and called the police. Irving police officer Aubrey Wright Hawkins (February 23, 1971 – December 24, 2000) responded to the call and, upon arriving at the scene, was almost immediately ambushed, being shot 11 times and run over by the escaped convicts as they fled the scene. Hawkins died at Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas shortly after his arrival. Hawkins had been an officer with the Irving police department since October 4, 1995, and was married and had a son.


title: Texas Seven

text: After Officer Hawkins' murder, a $100,000 reward was offered to whoever could snare the group of criminals. The reward climbed to $500,000 before the six surviving members of the group were apprehended.


title: Texas Seven

text: Following an episode of the television show "America's Most Wanted" that first aired on January 20, 2001, several people phoned in possible sightings of the suspects at the Coachlight Motel and R.V. Park in Woodland Park, Colorado. They had apparently tried to pass themselves off as missionaries, playing loud Christian music within earshot of their neighbours.


title: Texas Seven

text: The El Paso County Sheriff's Office, Colorado, and Teller County Deputies SWAT team found Garcia, Rodriguez, and Rivas in a Jeep Cherokee in the RV Park, before following them to a nearby gas station where they were arrested, and later found Halprin and Harper in an RV; Halprin surrendered peacefully, but Harper was found dead after a standoff, having shot himself in the chest with a pistol. The surviving four were taken into federal custody.


title: Texas Seven

text: On January 23, 2001, the FBI received information that the remaining two escapees, Newbury and Murphy, were hiding in a Holiday Inn in Colorado Springs, Colorado. A deal was brokered with the two, allowing them to make live TV appearances before they were arrested. Media was tipped off when a guest asked KKTV chief photographer Mike Petkash and reporter Jeannette Hinds why he couldn't get to the hotel. The pair drove to the hotel, finding it flooded with law enforcement. In the early hours of January 24, a local KKTV television anchorman, Eric Singer, was taken into the hotel where he interviewed the two by telephone while on camera. Newbury and Murphy harshly denounced the criminal justice system in Texas, with Newbury adding, "the system is as corrupt as we are."


title: Texas Seven

text: In 2008, authorities indicted Patsy Gomez and Raul Rodriguez, the parents of Michael Rodriguez, for conspiring to help the Texas Seven.


title: Texas Seven

text: George Rivas, the ringleader, was the first to be brought to trial; he was convicted and sentenced to death. Subsequently, the other five surviving members of the Texas Seven were brought to trial, convicted, and sentenced to death.


title: Texas Seven

text: Rodriguez announced that he wished to forgo further appeal beyond the mandatory death-penalty appeal to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. A court-ordered psychiatric evaluation in January 2007 concluded that he was mentally competent to decide to forgo further appeals. Twenty months later, he became the first of the six surviving members to be executed on August 14, 2008, at 18:30. Rodriguez was TDCJ#999413, and his pre-death sentence TDCJ number was 698074.


title: Texas Seven

text: The remaining two members are incarcerated on death row at the Polunsky Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, located in West Livingston. Neither currently has an execution date.


title: Texas Seven

text: Murphy was scheduled for execution twice, first on March 28, 2019. The United States Supreme Court granted him a last-minute reprieve on the basis that TDCJ's denial of his request to have a Buddhist priest in the execution room with him violated the Establishment Clause and Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution. Murphy was then given a second execution date, November 13, 2019. However, his execution was stayed by the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas on November 7 to decide whether his religious discrimination lawsuit had merit.


title: Texas Seven

text: Halprin was scheduled to be executed on October 10, 2019. However, his execution was stayed by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on October 4, 2019, due to concerns of racial and religious discrimination from his trial judge. Halprin is Jewish. Trial Judge Vickers "Vic" Cunningham allegedly referred to Halprin as a "kike" and a "fucking Jew" and said Jews "needed to be shut down because they controlled all the money."


title: Texas Seven

text: In 2001, the American Court TV (now TruTV) television series "Mugshots" released an episode covering Rivas, titled "Mugshots - George Rivas".


title: Texas Seven

text: In 2007, Wild Dream Films produced "The Hunt For The Texas 7", a 90-minute feature documentary about the prison break. The film features interviews with members of The Texas 7 currently on Death Row and eyewitnesses to their crimes. The film was aired in late September 2008 on MSNBC.


title: Texas Seven

text: On March 25, 2011, Investigation Discovery aired an episode about the case on the show , subtitled "The Deadly Seven". One year later, on March 23, 2012, Investigation Discovery aired an episode of Werner Herzog's documentary series "On Death Row", which dealt with Rivas and Garcia. The seven were also featured in an episode of "Real Prison Breaks" on ITV4 in the UK.


title: Texas Seven

text: On July 30, 2014, Investigation Discovery's "I (Almost) Got Away with It" aired an episode titled "Got to Be Part of the Texas Seven."


title: Texas Seven

text: In Spring 2019, ITV UK produced the series: "Death Row: Countdown To Execution" hosted by Susanna Reid. Episode 1 chronicles the case of one of the members of Texas 7: Patrick Murphy. The series aired in the UK in June 2019.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: Fredrik Eklund (born April 26, 1977) is a Swedish real estate broker, former IT entrepreneur, reality television star, and author. He is best known for starring in the Bravo reality series, "Million Dollar Listing New York" for all of its nine seasons. In 2015, Eklund released his book "The Sell: The Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone", which made The New York Times Best Seller list.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: Eklund is the son of Klas Eklund, a senior economist at Swedish bank SEB, and brother of author Sigge Eklund. His paternal grandparents were Swedish actors Bengt Eklund and Fylgia Zadig.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: Eklund had his first American experience as a foreign exchange student in Edina, Minnesota, where he attended Edina High School. After finishing high school, Eklund studied at the Stockholm School of Economics, but never graduated. He has worked for the financial newspaper "Finanstidningen". At the age of 23, Eklund founded an Internet company with over 45 employees, and went on to work for the investment bank SEB in Stockholm, London, Singapore, and Tokyo before beginning his work in New York City.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: In 2004, before arriving in New York City, Eklund acted in a number of pornographic films under the pseudonym Tag Eriksson (or Tag Ericsson). In an interview with "Out Magazine," Eklund has said of this period, "It was only a week of my life, accumulated. It was spread out over a few months, so it was a very short period of my life. It was something that I tried and quickly decided that I was done with." Eklund went on to say in the interview that he is proud of who he is, that he does not regret anything, and that his past involvement in the pornographic film industry has not negatively affected his career.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: Eklund has closed over five billion dollars in residential real estate. Eklund became Managing Director at the New York City real estate firm CORE Group Marketing and in 2010, alongside his business partner John Gomes, Managing Director at Prudential Douglas Elliman, the largest real estate brokerage on the East Coast. Eklund also started the top-selling team at Elliman.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: Eklund is the founder of Eklund Stockholm New York, Scandinavia's most high-end residential real estate brokerage with 50 employees and $1 billion in closed sales in 2014. He is an active member of the Real Estate Board of New York.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: "The New York Times" featured Eklund on the front page of the "Sunday Style" section in November 2010. He is one of five New York City brokers starring in Bravo's "Million Dollar Listing New York".


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: On January 24, 2022, Fredrik Eklund announced his departure from the "Million Dollar Listing" franchise.


title: Fredrik Eklund

text: On February 9, 2013, Eklund married artist Derek Kaplan on Little Palm Island in the Florida Keys. The couple lived in New York with their dogs Mouse and Fritzy until 2016. They have since moved to Roxbury, Connecticut, to live in a mansion Eklund purchased. Eklund and Kaplan attempted to have children through surrogacy, but the surrogate suffered a miscarriage.


title: Network bridge

text: A network bridge is a computer networking device that creates a single, aggregate network from multiple communication networks or network segments. This function is called network bridging. Bridging is distinct from routing. Routing allows multiple networks to communicate independently and yet remain separate, whereas bridging connects two separate networks as if they were a single network. In the OSI model, bridging is performed in the data link layer (layer 2). If one or more segments of the bridged network are wireless, the device is known as a wireless bridge.


title: Network bridge

text: The main types of network bridging technologies are simple bridging, multiport bridging, and learning or transparent bridging.


title: Network bridge

text: Transparent bridging uses a table called the forwarding information base to control the forwarding of frames between network segments. The table starts empty and entries are added as the bridge receives frames. If a destination address entry is not found in the table, the frame is flooded to all other ports of the bridge, flooding the frame to all segments except the one from which it was received. By means of these flooded frames, a host on the destination network will respond and a forwarding database entry will be created. Both source and destination addresses are used in this process: source addresses are recorded in entries in the table, while destination addresses are looked up in the table and matched to the proper segment to send the frame to. Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) originally developed the technology in the 1980s.


title: Network bridge

text: In the context of a two-port bridge, the forwarding information base can be seen as a filtering database. A bridge reads a frame's destination address and decides to either forward or filter. If the bridge determines that the destination host is on another segment on the network, it forwards the frame to that segment. If the destination address belongs to the same segment as the source address, the bridge filters the frame, preventing it from reaching the other network where it is not needed.


title: Network bridge

text: Transparent bridging can also operate over devices with more than two ports. As an example, consider a bridge connected to three hosts, A, B, and C. The bridge has three ports. A is connected to bridge port 1, B is connected to bridge port 2, C is connected to bridge port 3. A sends a frame addressed to B to the bridge. The bridge examines the source address of the frame and creates an address and port number entry for host "A" in its forwarding table. The bridge examines the destination address of the frame and does not find it in its forwarding table so it floods (broadcasts) it to all other ports: 2 and 3. The frame is received by hosts B and C. Host C examines the destination address and ignores the frame as it does not match with its address. Host B recognizes a destination address match and generates a response to A. On the return path, the bridge adds an address and port number entry for B to its forwarding table. The bridge already has A's address in its forwarding table so it forwards the response only to port 1. Host C or any other hosts on port 3 are not burdened with the response. Two-way communication is now possible between A and B without any further flooding to the network. Now, if A sends a frame addressed to C, the same procedure will be used, but this time the bridge will not create a new forwarding-table entry for A's address/port because it has already done so.


title: Network bridge

text: Bridging is called "transparent" when the frame format and its addressing aren't changed substantially. "Non-transparent" bridging is required especially when the frame addressing schemes on both sides of a bridge are not compatible with each other, e.g. between ARCNET with local addressing and Ethernet using IEEE MAC addresses, requiring translation. However, most often such incompatible networks are routed in between, not bridged.


title: Network bridge

text: A simple bridge connects two network segments, typically by operating transparently and deciding on a frame-by-frame basis whether or not to forward from one network to the other. A store and forward technique is typically used so, as part of forwarding, the frame integrity is verified on the source network and CSMA/CD delays are accommodated on the destination network. In contrast to repeaters which simply extend the maximum span of a segment, bridges only forward frames that are required to cross the bridge. Additionally, bridges reduce collisions by creating a separate collision domain on either side of the bridge.


title: Network bridge

text: A multiport bridge connects multiple networks and operates transparently to decide on a frame-by-frame basis "whether" to forward traffic. Additionally, a multiport bridge must decide "where" to forward traffic. Like the simple bridge, a multiport bridge typically uses store and forward operation. The multiport bridge function serves as the basis for network switches.


title: Network bridge

text: The forwarding information base stored in content-addressable memory (CAM) is initially empty. For each received Ethernet frame the switch learns from the frame's source MAC address and adds this together with an interface identifier to the forwarding information base. The switch then forwards the frame to the interface found in the CAM based on the frame's destination MAC address. If the destination address is unknown the switch sends the frame out on all interfaces (except the ingress interface). This behavior is called unicast flooding.


title: Network bridge

text: Once a bridge learns the addresses of its connected nodes, it forwards data link layer frames using a layer-2 forwarding method. There are four forwarding methods a bridge can use, of which the second through fourth methods were performance-increasing methods when used on "switch" products with the same input and output port bandwidths:


title: Network bridge

text: Shortest Path Bridging (SPB), specified in the IEEE 802.1aq standard and based on Dijkstra's algorithm, is a computer networking technology intended to simplify the creation and configuration of networks, while enabling multipath routing. It is a proposed replacement for Spanning Tree Protocol which blocks any redundant paths that could result in a switching loop. SPB allows all paths to be active with multiple equal-cost paths. SPB also increases the number of VLANs allowed on a layer-2 network.


title: Network bridge

text: TRILL (TRansparent Interconnection of Lots of Links) is the successor to Spanning Tree Protocol, both having been created by the same person, Radia Perlman. The catalyst for TRILL was an event at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center which began on 13 November 2002. The concept of Rbridges [sic] was first proposed to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in the year 2004, whom in 2005 rejected what came to be known as TRILL, and in the years 2006 through 2012 devised an incompatible variation known as Shortest Path Bridging.


title: Kim Manners

text: Kim Manners (January 13, 1951 – January 25, 2009) was an American television producer, director and actor best known for his work on "The X-Files" and "Supernatural".


title: Kim Manners

text: Kim Manners was raised in a show business family. His father, Sam Manners (born Savino Maneri in Cleveland, Ohio) had production credits on shows such as "The Wild Wild West" and "Route 66". Manners did some acting as a child; his first role was at the age of three in a Chevrolet commercial. He also watched and occasionally participated in his father's work as well as the work of William Beaudine, director of "The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin". It was Beaudine who inspired Manners to become a director.


title: Kim Manners

text: Manners' brother, Kelly, has production and directorial credits on "Angel", "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Dollhouse" and his sister, Tana, works as a television director.


title: Kim Manners

text: Manners made his directorial debut in 1978 at age 27, directing an episode of "Charlie's Angels". Prior to this, he had worked as unit production manager on the show and as an assistant director on a handful of other projects. Other notable directorial credits to Manners' name include episodes of "21 Jump Street", "", "", "Baywatch", "K-9000", and "The Commish".


title: Kim Manners

text: Manners left his directing job at Stephen J. Cannell Productions in 1993 to work on the television series "The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr." He directed 7 of the series' 27 episodes, more than any other director for the show. He joked that he was the series' "mascot director". He was happy with the work for the series, and felt that it "stretched" him creatively. He said, "It really woke me up as a director, almost spiritually…" and that directing for "Brisco" was a large contributing factor to his later success as a regular director on "The X-Files".


title: Kim Manners

text: Manners signed on to produce and direct "The X-Files" in the show's second season at the advice of Rob Bowman, who had worked on the show in its first season, and James Wong and Glen Morgan, who were writers for the show and had previously worked with Manners on "21 Jump Street".


title: Kim Manners

text: Manners, along with his fellow producers on "The X-Files", was nominated for four Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series in 1995, 1996, 1997 and 1998. Manners was referenced in the "X-Files" episode "Jose Chung's From Outer Space" with a foul-mouthed police detective named after him. Following the finale of "The X-Files" in 2002, Manners directed a number of small projects before signing on to direct and produce "Supernatural" in 2005.


title: Kim Manners

text: The closing credits of the "Supernatural" season four episode "Death Takes a Holiday", which aired on March 12, 2009, showed two photos of Manners, along with the caption "We dedicate the entire season to Kim Manners" and a message stating, "We miss you, Kim." The fifth episode of the second season of AMC's "Breaking Bad", titled "Breakage", which premiered on April 5, 2009, featured a dedication to Manners in the end credits, which stated "Dedicated to our Friend Kim Manners". The episode "Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster", from the revival season for "The X Files" which aired on February 1, 2016, features a scene where Mulder sits against Manners' gravestone, inscribed with Manners' real date of birth and death, and the phrase, "Let's Kick It in the Ass."


title: Benny Benassi

text: Marco "Benny" Benassi (; born 13 July 1967) is an Italian DJ, record producer and remixer. He is widely seen as a pioneer of electro house, a genre brought into the mainstream by his 2002 summer club hit "Satisfaction".


title: Benny Benassi

text: He started his career as DJ along with his cousin Alessandro "Alle" Benassi, forming the electronica duo Benassi Bros. Although he began to gain popularity with his pseudonym in 1997 by releasing the song "Electric Flying", his first international hit was "I Feel So Fine", launched in 2001 under the nickname KMC.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2003, Benassi released his first solo debut album, "Hypnotica", to positive reviews. Known as a pioneer album for electro-house, it incorporates electroclash sounds, many elements of house music and MacInTalk voices, and won the European Border Breakers Award. The following year, the debut album of the Benassi Bros., "Pumphonia", was released. Their track "Illusion" became very popular in the American club scene, finally peaking at number 4 on Hot Dance Club Play. Following "Hit My Heart" peaked at 15.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2008, his remix of Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise" won the Grammy Award for Best Remixed Recording at the 50th Grammy Awards. In 2009, Benassi also entered the Top 100 DJs list from "DJ Mag" at #26, while in 2011 was rated #7 on DJ Poll Top 100 by "DJ List" web site.


title: Benny Benassi

text: A native of Milan and raised in Reggio Emilia, DJ and producer Benassi, started DJing alongside cousin Alle Benassi in the late 1980s in their hometown, before moving to Larry Pignagnoli's Off Limits production studio in the mid-1990s, creating music for various acts, including Whigfield, J.K. and Ally & Jo. In 2001, Benassi, under the name KMC, released his first hit called "I Feel So Fine", with vocals by Dhany. The track first climbed the charts in Benassi's native Italy, and soon became a #1 hit in the UK club charts.


title: Benny Benassi

text: Moving from house to electro, "Satisfaction" took Benassi's success worldwide a year later with high-profile DJs like Carl Cox, Darren Emerson, and Roger Sanchez offering praises. The track reached #2 in the UK Singles Chart after the Ministry of Sound record company replaced the original video (an almost still picture of the band, overlaid with graphics) with a video of models using power tools.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2003 Benny Benassi released his first solo debut album "Hypnotica" (he won the European Border Breakers Award in 2005 which racked up the most sales for an Italian album outside Italy).


title: Benny Benassi

text: Benassi often works with vocalists Paul French and Violeta, who are collectively known as The Biz. He produced a group with cousin Alle, called Benassi Bros., a project designed to shine the spotlight on the two Biz vocalists, Paul French and Violeta Claudia and other guest singers. A year after the release of "Hypnotica", the album "Pumphonia" marked their first full-length release, and in 2005, Benassi Bros. released their second album "…Phobia".


title: Benny Benassi

text: Some of Benassi's singles have charted high in the United Kingdom and have been played worldwide in clubs. Remixes for OutKast, Goldfrapp, and Felix da Housecat followed. Benassi also remixes music of his contemporaries, such as Tomcraft and Fischerspooner.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2005, Benassi founded the record label Pump-Kin Music. The focus of the label is primarily new and unsigned producers. The stated aim of the venture is to give exposure to some of the lesser known DJ/production talent across the world.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In August 2007, Benassi released a remix of Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise". The video for the track was created by Eclectic Method and features a montage of live footage from Public Enemy. It premiered on imeem.com. In February 2008, "Bring the Noise" won a Grammy for best Remix (Dance).


title: Benny Benassi

text: His album "Rock 'n' Rave" was released on 16 June 2008. The first single from the album was "I Am Not Drunk."


title: Benny Benassi

text: Benassi also broadcasts the one-hour long "The Benny Benassi Show" on Sirius XM Radio's channel Area.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2009, he worked with Madonna on a remix for her single "Celebration" which was included on the official music video for the song.


title: Benny Benassi

text: On 28 October 2009, DJ Magazine announced the results of their annual Top 100 DJ Poll, with Ultra Records artist Benny Benassi placed #26, 13 spots higher than the previous year.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2010, Benassi released "Electro Sixteen", a video for Benny Benassi vs. "Iggy Pop", “Electro Sixteen,” published by Ultra Records, which is an experimental music video featuring more than 15,000 photographs from his DJ set at New York’s Electric Zoo Festival.


title: Benny Benassi

text: On 24 May 2010 "Spaceship", which featured Kelis, apl.de.ap and Jean-Baptiste, was selected as the Song of the Day on About.com, with the site calling Benassi's production "tight and melodic, [while] Kelis turns in a fantastic performance." The single was released via digital download on 21 August and charted at #18 on the UK Dance singles chart on 28 August."


title: Benny Benassi

text: On 23 January 2011, Benny Benassi released the music video for "Electroman", a single featuring T-Pain.


title: Benny Benassi

text: Benassi produced the track "Beautiful People", off Chris Brown's 2011 album "F.A.M.E." and off Benassi's album Electroman, released June 7 the same year. "Electroman" includes several singles, such as "Cinema", "Electroman", "Spaceship" and "Control".


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2012, Benassi worked a second time with Chris Brown. He contributed to "Don't Wake Me Up" which was released as the fourth single of Brown's fifth studio album "Fortune". Benny Benassi also worked with Madonna, producing three tracks for her latest album "MDNA": Second single "Girl Gone Wild", "I'm Addicted" and "Best Friend" (the latter is a track which can be found on the deluxe edition of the album). In addition, Benassi produced "Stardust", a track of British recording artist


title: Benny Benassi

text: Mika's recently released studio album "The Origin of Love". Next to them, Benny Benassi produced Anjulie latest single "You & I".


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2013, Benassi collaborated with John Legend and Heather Bright respectively for the songs "Dance the Pain Away" and "Ghost". In 2014, he released the single "Shooting Helicopters", featuring Serj Tankian.


title: Benny Benassi

text: In 2016, Benassi worked again with Chris Brown, releasing "Paradise", which was later included in his fourth studio album "Danceaholic". The album also features collaborations with Richard Judge, Marc Benjamin, Vassy, and Christian Burns.


title: MeRA25

text: The European Realistic Disobedience Front (), or MeRA25 (), is a left-wing Greek political party founded in 2018. Its founder and General Secretary is former Syriza MP and Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis. MeRa25 is part of the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025 (DiEM25), the European Spring and the Progressive International.


title: MeRA25

text: MeRA25 was founded on 27 March 2018 by former Greek Minister of Finance Yanis Varoufakis. The party's formation was announced during a special event in Athens. In December 2018 former Syriza member and MEP Sofia Sakorafa joined the party.


title: MeRA25

text: The party contested the 2019 European Parliament election as part of DiEM25. It narrowly failed to win a European Parliament seat. In the 2019 Greek legislative elections, MeRA25 gained 9 seats and 3.44% of the vote.


title: MeRA25

text: Without capitalisation, the letters of ΜέΡΑ25, μέρα (mera), spell the Greek word for "day", mirroring the Latin "diem" and thus showing the party's connection with DiEM25.


title: MeRA25

text: The party presents itself as an alliance of 'Left, Green and Liberal Greeks', standing on the grounds European internationalism, economic rationality and social emancipation. It plans to introduce a 'European Green New Deal', as a solution to the postmodern version of the Great Depression. In Greece, its core 7 legislative policy proposals are:


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: alpha-1 (α) adrenergic receptors are G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) associated with the G heterotrimeric G protein. α-adrenergic receptors are subdivided into three highly homologous subtypes, i.e., α-, α-, and α-adrenergic receptor subtypes. There is no α receptor. At one time, there was a subtype known as α, but it was found to be identical to the previously discovered α receptor subtype. To avoid confusion, naming was continued with the letter D. Catecholamines like norepinephrine (noradrenaline) and epinephrine (adrenaline) signal through the α-adrenergic receptors in the central and peripheral nervous systems. The crystal structure of the α-adrenergic receptor subtype has been determined in complex with the inverse agonist (+)-cyclazosin.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: The α-adrenergic receptor has several general functions in common with the α-adrenergic receptor, but also has specific effects of its own. α-receptors primarily mediate smooth muscle contraction, but have important functions elsewhere as well. The neurotransmitter norepinephrine has higher affinity for the α receptor than does the hormone adrenaline.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: In smooth muscle cells of blood vessels the principal effect of activation of these receptors is vasoconstriction. Blood vessels with α-adrenergic receptors are present in the skin, the sphincters of gastrointestinal system, kidney (renal artery) and brain. During the fight-or-flight response vasoconstriction results in decreased blood flow to these organs. This accounts for the pale appearance of the skin of an individual when frightened.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: It also induces contraction of the internal urethral sphincter of the urinary bladder, although this effect is minor compared to the relaxing effect of β-adrenergic receptors. In other words, the overall effect of sympathetic stimuli on the bladder is relaxation, in order to inhibit micturition upon anticipation of a stressful event. Other effects on smooth muscle are contraction in:


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: Activation of α-adrenergic receptors produces anorexia and partially mediates the efficacy of appetite suppressants like phenylpropanolamine and amphetamine in the treatment of obesity. Norepinephrine has been shown to decrease cellular excitability in all layers of the temporal cortex, including the primary auditory cortex. In particular, norepinephrine decreases glutamatergic excitatory postsynaptic potentials by the activation of α-adrenergic receptors. Norepinephrine also stimulates serotonin release by binding α1-adrenergic receptors located on serotonergic neurons in the raphe.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: α1-adrenergic receptor subtypes increase inhibition in the olfactory system, suggesting a synaptic mechanism for noradrenergic modulation of olfactory driven behaviors.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: α-Adrenergic receptors are members of the G protein-coupled receptor superfamily. Upon activation, a heterotrimeric G protein, G, activates phospholipase C (PLC), which causes phosphatidylinositol to be transformed into inositol trisphosphate (IP) and diacylglycerol (DAG). While DAG stays near the membrane, IP diffuses into the cytosol and to find the IP receptor on the endoplasmic reticulum, triggering calcium release from the stores. This triggers further effects, primarily through the activation of an enzyme Protein Kinase C. This enzyme, as a kinase, functions by phosphorylation of other enzymes causing their activation, or by phosphorylation of certain channels leading to the increase or decrease of electrolyte transfer in or out of the cell.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: During exercise, α-adrenergic receptors in active muscles are attenuated in an exercise intensity-dependent manner, allowing the β-adrenergic receptors which mediate vasodilation to dominate. In contrast to α-adrenergic receptors, α-adrenergic-receptors in the arterial vasculature of skeletal muscle are more resistant to inhibition, and attenuation of α1-adrenergic-receptor-mediated vasoconstriction only occurs during heavy exercise.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: Note that only active muscle α-adrenergic receptors will be blocked. Resting muscle will not have its α-adrenergic receptors blocked, and hence the overall effect will be α-adrenergic-mediated vasoconstriction.


title: Alpha-1 adrenergic receptor

text: Various heterocyclic antidepressants and antipsychotics are α-adrenergic receptor antagonists as well. This action is generally undesirable in such agents and mediates side effects like orthostatic hypotension, and headaches due to excessive vasodilation.


title: Steve Harley

text: Steve Harley (born Stephen Malcolm Ronald Nice; 27 February 1951) is an English singer and songwriter, best known as frontman of the rock group Cockney Rebel, with whom he still tours, albeit with frequent and significant personnel changes.


title: Steve Harley

text: Harley was born in 1951 in Deptford, London, the second of five children. His father was a milkman and his mother a semi-professional jazz singer.


title: Steve Harley

text: During the summer of 1953, Harley contracted polio, causing him to spend four years in hospital between the ages of three and 16. He underwent two major surgeries in 1963 and 1966. After recovering from the first operation at the age of 12, Harley was introduced to the poetry of T. S. Eliot and D. H. Lawrence, the prose of John Steinbeck, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, and the music of Bob Dylan, which inspired him to a career of words and music.


title: Steve Harley

text: From the age of nine, Harley began taking classical violin lessons and would later play as part of his grammar school orchestra. Aged 10, he began learning the guitar after receiving a Spanish nylon-strung guitar from his parents at Christmas. Harley was a pupil at Edmund Waller Primary School in New Cross, London. He then attended Haberdashers' Aske's Hatcham Boys' Grammar School until he was 17. He left school without completing his advanced level exams.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1968, at the age of 17, Harley began his first full-time job, working as a trainee accountant with the "Daily Express" – despite having gained only 24% in his mock O-level maths exam. From there he progressed to become a reporter. After being interviewed by several newspaper editors, Harley signed to train with Essex County Newspapers. Over three years, Harley worked at the "Essex County Standard", the "Braintree and Witham Times", the "Maldon and Burnham Standard" and the "Colchester Evening Gazette". He later returned to London to work for the "East London Advertiser" ("ELA"). Harley became disillusioned with the job when his editor insisted he write a report on a shoplifter who had absentmindedly walked out with a tin of soup and a tin of baked beans. Taking advice from his union representative, he stopped wearing a tie, grew his hair and was duly sacked. Among many of Harley's peers who went on to gain successful careers in national journalism were John Blake and Richard Madeley; the latter took over Harley's desk at the "ELA" in 1972.


title: Steve Harley

text: Harley started his musical career playing in bars and clubs in 1971, mainly at folk venues on open-mike nights. He sang at Les Cousins, Bunjies and The Troubadour on nights featuring John Martyn, Ralph McTell, Martin Carthy and Julie Felix, who were all popular musicians within the London folk movement of the time. In 1971, he auditioned for the folk band Odin as rhythm guitarist and co-singer, which was where he met Jean-Paul Crocker, who would become the first Cockney Rebel violinist. Harley began busking around London in 1972, including on the Underground and in Portobello Road, whilst also writing songs. After the folk scene proved not to be his preference, he formed the band Cockney Rebel in late 1972 as a vehicle for his own work.


title: Steve Harley

text: The original Cockney Rebel consisted of Harley, Crocker, drummer Stuart Elliott, bassist Paul Jeffreys and guitarist Nick Jones. Jones was soon replaced by Pete Newnham; however, Harley felt the band did not need electric guitar, particularly with the arrival of keyboardist Milton Reame-James. They settled on the combination of Crocker's electric violin and Reame-James' Fender Rhodes piano.


title: Steve Harley

text: During 1972, representatives of Cockney Rebel began to send demo tapes to various labels. Mickie Most discovered the band at a London nightclub known as The Speakeasy Club and offered them their first contract with his RAK Publishing. In turn this influenced the A&R personnel at EMI Records, who then offered the band a three-album deal. With producer Neil Harrison, Cockney Rebel recorded their debut album, "The Human Menagerie", during June and July 1973. Their debut single "Sebastian" became a hit across Europe, but failed to chart in the UK. When released in November 1973, "The Human Menagerie" suffered a similar fate. Despite the lack of commercial success, the album was critically well-received and soon gained cult status.


title: Steve Harley

text: "The Human Menagerie"s lack of success led EMI to feel that the band had yet to record a potential hit single. In response, Harley went away to re-work the unrecorded song "Judy Teen", with the objective of making it single material. "Judy Teen" was released in March 1974 and peaked at No. 5 in the UK. During February and March 1974, the band recorded their second album "The Psychomodo", which was produced by Harley and Alan Parsons. Released in June, the album peaked at No. 8 in the UK. From May until July the band embarked on a major UK tour to promote the album; tensions grew among them as the tour progressed. On 18 July they received a 'Gold Award' for outstanding new act of 1974; a week later, with the tour finished, several members left over the disagreements. Crocker, Reame-James and Jeffreys chose to quit, having unsuccessfully demanded to write material for the group despite the initial understanding that Harley was the sole songwriter. Following the band's split, the single "Mr. Soft", taken from "The Psychomodo", reached No. 8 in the UK.


title: Steve Harley

text: Left without a permanent band, Harley soon began auditioning new musicians. Meanwhile, Harley and Parsons worked with Dutch singer Yvonne Keeley in the studio. In August 1974, EMI released her version of "Tumbling Down" as a single, backed by another Cockney Rebel cover, "Loretta's Tale". During September, Harley recorded his debut solo single "Big Big Deal", which was released in November. The song failed to enter the UK Top 50; however, it did enter the unnumbered BMRB's UK Breakers chart. By this time, a new line-up of Cockney Rebel had been finalised. With original drummer Stuart Elliott remaining in the band, the new line-up included guitarist Jim Cregan, keyboard player Duncan Mackay and bassist George Ford. Renamed Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, they recorded the album "The Best Years of Our Lives" in November and December 1974, with Harley and Parsons again producing.


title: Steve Harley

text: In January 1975, the lead single from the forthcoming album, "Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me)", was released. Becoming the band's biggest hit, the song reached the number one spot on the UK Chart in February and received a UK Silver certification that month. It was also Harley's only chart entry in America, reaching No. 96 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976. In a 2002 television interview, Harley described how the lyrics were directed at the former band members who, he felt, had abandoned him. As of 2015, the song has sold around 1.5 million copies in the UK. The Performing Rights Society have confirmed the song as one of the most played records in British broadcasting, while over 120 cover versions of the song have been recorded by other artists.


title: Steve Harley

text: "The Best Years of Our Lives" was released in March 1975, reaching No. 5 in the UK. The second single from the album, "Mr. Raffles (Man, It Was Mean)", was also a success, reaching No. 13. The band embarked on a UK and European tour to promote the album. During the summer, the band recorded their fourth studio album "Timeless Flight". Around the same period Harley also produced Dutch singer Patricia Paay's album "Beam of Light", with members of Cockney Rebel performing on many of the tracks. Later in the year, Harley and the band went on tour in the US as a support act to The Kinks. As the band had not achieved commercial success in the States, the compilation "A Closer Look" was released exclusively for the American market.


title: Steve Harley

text: "Timeless Flight" was released in February 1976, and became a Top 20 UK success, peaking at No. 18; however, the two singles "Black or White" and "White, White Dove" failed to reach the UK Top 50. They reached No. 2 and No. 6 on the BMRB's UK Breakers Chart respectively. Another UK and European tour followed the album's release. Between June and September 1976, the band recorded their fifth album "Love's a Prima Donna". In July they released a cover of George Harrison's "Here Comes the Sun", which reached No. 10 in the UK and became the band's last Top 40 single, discounting later re-releases of "Make Me Smile". "Love's a Prima Donna" was released in October 1976 and peaked at No. 28 in the UK. It also spawned a second charting single; "(I Believe) Love's a Prima Donna", which reached No. 41. In America, "(Love) Compared with You" was released as a single. During August and September 1976, Mackay recorded his second solo album "Score", which was released in 1977. Harley wrote the lyrics to four tracks, and provided lead vocals on "Time is No Healer".


title: Steve Harley

text: In November 1976, Harley provided backing vocals on T. Rex's song "Dandy in the Underworld", which was released as a single from the album of the same name in 1977. In December 1976, the band embarked on an eight-date UK tour to promote "Love's a Prima Donna". During the early part of 1977, Harley provided lead vocals on The Alan Parsons Project's song "The Voice" for their album "I Robot". In July, Harley disbanded Cockney Rebel, the announcement of which was followed by the release of a live album, "", which reached No. 40 and spawned the single "The Best Years of Our Lives".


title: Steve Harley

text: With Cockney Rebel's split, Harley signed to EMI for a further three years and began recording his debut solo album. He flew to Los Angeles in February 1978 to complete it and soon decided to emigrate to the US. He purchased a house in Beverly Hills and stayed there for nearly a year to gain new experience and inspirations. However, Harley later admitted that during his time in America he was never inspired to write a single song. The album "Hobo with a Grin" was released in July 1978, but was a commercial failure. The lead single "Roll the Dice" failed to chart, as did the second single, a remixed version of "Someone's Coming", which was released in early 1979. On the album, the track "Amerika the Brave" featured Marc Bolan's last studio performance, recorded shortly before his fatal car accident.


title: Steve Harley

text: Harley returned to London at the end of 1978. In February 1979, he recorded his second solo album "The Candidate". On 12 May, Harley and Peter Gabriel appeared as guest stars at one of Kate Bush's Hammersmith Odeon concerts during her Tour of Life. The show was staged as a benefit concert for the family of lighting technician Bill Duffield, who had died after a tragic fall earlier on Bush's tour. Duffield had previously worked for Harley and Gabriel. The concert was Harley's first performance on stage for over two years. Released in September, "The Candidate" was another commercial failure, although its single "Freedom's Prisoner" was moderately successful, peaking at No. 58. In October, Harley performed a one-off show at the Hammersmith Odeon. Following the disappointing sales of "The Candidate", EMI dropped Harley from their label.


title: Steve Harley

text: During the 1980s, which he would later describe as his "wilderness years", Harley took time out from the music business while his two children were growing up. In 1980 he formed a new line-up of Cockney Rebel for a short UK tour in July, followed by a UK Christmas tour. The latter tour followed the release of the compilation "The Best of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel" in November. During the same year "Somebody Special" and "Gi' Me Wings", two songs co-written by Harley, were released by Rod Stewart on his 1980 album "Foolish Behaviour". "Somebody Special", as the album's third single in 1981, reached No. 71 on the US Billboard Hot 100, and "Gi' Me Wings" reached No. 45 on the "Billboard" Top Rock Tracks chart.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1981, Harley was approached by Rick Wakeman to provide vocals on the song "No Name" for Wakeman's album "1984". He also made an appearance to perform the song at Wakeman's concert at the Hammersmith Odeon. Harley and his band would embark on another small UK tour during Christmas 1981. In March 1982, the band released the non-album single "I Can't Even Touch You". Produced by Midge Ure, the song failed to chart, despite expectations that it would become a hit. In August 1982, Harley made his acting debut as the 16th-century playwright Christopher Marlowe in the rock musical "Marlowe" at the John Crawford Adams Playhouse at Hofstra University, Hempstead, New York. Cockney Rebel played a one-off concert in London in June 1983, and Harley also released the single "Ballerina (Prima Donna)", which was written and produced by Mike Batt. It was one of Harley's most successful singles of the decade, peaking at No. 51 in the UK. In July, the band appeared at the Reading Festival. In December 1984, Harley and his band played a one-off concert at the Camden Palace in London. It proved to be the band's last show until 1989, and was filmed for a special TV broadcast. It was also released on VHS in 1985, titled "Live from London".


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1985, Harley signed a five-album recording contract with RAK Records and recorded "Irresistible" with Mickie Most as producer. Released as his debut single for the label in June 1985, it peaked at No. 81 in the UK. Harley had originally offered the song to Rod Stewart, who encouraged Harley to record it in the hope that it would put him back in the charts. Later that year, Mike Batt suggested that Harley sing the title track of the upcoming "The Phantom of the Opera" musical. Andrew Lloyd Webber had decided to record and release a single to promote the upcoming musical. Agreeing to audition, Harley was given the job and soon recorded the song with Sarah Brightman. The song reached No. 7 in the UK charts in January 1986. A music video was also created, featuring Harley as the Phantom. A prime candidate for the role in the musical, Harley soon auditioned to play the Phantom. Successful in getting the part, he then spent five months working on the role, including rehearsal with producer Hal Prince. He was later surprised when he ended up being replaced by Michael Crawford.


title: Steve Harley

text: While rehearsing for the musical, Harley released the non-album single "Heartbeat Like Thunder" in April 1986, though it was a commercial failure. In June 1986, a newly remixed version of "Irresistible" appeared as a single. Released as the lead single from Harley's forthcoming solo album "El Gran Senor", the single failed to chart. Shortly afterwards, RAK folded and was sold to EMI, leaving the album to be shelved. Later that year, Harley starred again as Marlowe when the musical of the same name ran in London. Harley's performance was described by one leading critic as "a major and moving performance." During the same period, Harley undertook an English 'A' level course, to which he devoted three hours of study each day. He passed in June 1987 with a 'B' grade.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1988, Batt approached Harley to provide vocals on his song "Whatever You Believe", alongside Jon Anderson. On 3 May 1988, the trio performed the song at a live TV broadcast at Battersea Park in London, as part of the Thames/LWT charity fundraising effort for the ITV Telethon. Later in November, a studio version was released as a charity TV tie-in single under the name Anderson, Harley & Batt. It did not chart. Following its use in a successful TV advert for Trebor Softmints, "Mr Soft" was re-issued as a single in 1988, but also failed to chart.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1989, Harley assembled a new line-up of Cockney Rebel and began touring in the UK and Europe. The band's return to touring was a success and has led Harley to continue performing with various incarnations of Cockney Rebel to the present day. To promote the 1989 summer tour, Harley released the solo single "When I'm with You", which had been recorded in early 1989 with ex-Cockney Rebel members Duncan Mackay and Jim Cregan at London's Point Studios. Later in October, a VHS using concert footage from the tour was released under the title "".


title: Steve Harley

text: In late 1989, Harley was scheduled to play the title role in a feature film based on the true story of John 'Babbacombe' Lee, an Englishman famous for surviving three attempts to hang him for murder. However, the film never raised the necessary funding and the project was cancelled in the early 1990s.


title: Steve Harley

text: Throughout 1989 and 1990, Harley continued recording material and working on a new album. During 1990, Harley also contributed to the album "Poetry in Motion" by providing lead vocals on the track "Harrow on the Hill". The album consisted of fourteen tracks featuring the words of Sir John Betjeman and music by Mike Read. In October 1991, Harley was invited to play Night of the Proms, where he performed "Sebastian" and "Make Me Smile".


title: Steve Harley

text: By the early 1990s, Harley and his band had established themselves as a major live act across Europe. In 1992, EMI released a new compilation album, "Make Me Smile – The Best of Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel", along with a re-issue of "Make Me Smile" as a single, which reached No. 46 in the UK. Harley's solo album "Yes You Can" was released in Europe in 1992 and the UK in 1993. The album featured a mix of older songs dating from the "El Gran Senor" period, as well as some newer tracks. In Europe, "Irresistible" was released as a single from the album, while "Star for a Week (Dino)" was released as a UK promotional single in 1993.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1995, the live compilation "Live at the BBC" was released; it included some early Cockney Rebel sessions from 1974, as well as a 1992 session. The same year saw a re-issue of "Make Me Smile" reach No. 33 in the UK. Harley released a new studio album, "Poetic Justice", in 1996, which was a critical success. In 1997, he participated in the Granada Men & Motors TV music quiz show "Elvis Has Just Left the Building", hosted by Mike Sweeney, with Noddy Holder and Clint Boon as team captains.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1998, Harley embarked on his first acoustic tour "Stripped to the Bare Bones". Alongside Cockney Rebel violinist/guitarist Nick Pynn, the pair played over a hundred dates, including fifty-four concerts in the UK alone. Coinciding with the tour was the release of the new compilation album "More Than Somewhat – The Very Best of Steve Harley", which reached No. 82 in the UK. In September 1999, the live acoustic album "Stripped to the Bare Bones" was released, which had been recorded at The Jazz Café in London during March 1998. In 1999, the new compilation "The Cream of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel" was released, which would later reach No. 21 on the UK Budget Albums Chart in 2006.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 1999, Harley began presenting the BBC Radio programme "The Sounds of the Seventies", with the first series that year featuring eight editions. He also formed his own label "Comeuppance" that year.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 2000, Harley re-issued his first two solo albums "Hobo with a Grin" and "The Candidate" on CD through Comeuppance, while in March–May he embarked the acoustic tour "Stripped Again", accompanied by Cockney Rebel guitarist Robbie Gladwell. That same year saw the airing of the second series of "The Sounds of the Seventies" show, which had twelve editions across 2000. Following high listening figures for the first two series, Harley accepted the BBC's offer to present the show all-year round. To accommodate his touring schedule, Harley began the new deal by pre-recording three shows at a time. The show continued for the next eight years, with the last programme airing on 27 March 2008. The show reached an audience of over 400,000 weekly.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 2000, Harley started working on a new studio album and began talks with various record companies. Although no album would surface for a few years, the single "A Friend for Life" was released in April 2001. It reached No. 125 in the UK. Co-written with Jim Cregan, Harley had offered the song to Rod Stewart, who would later record a version for his 2015 album "Another Country". In 2001, Harley and the band embarked on their first tour in four years, which was named "Back with the Band".


title: Steve Harley

text: Since 2002, Harley has been involved with the charity Mines Advisory Group. He later became an Ambassador for the charity and has led two fundraising treks; one around Cambodia in 2002 and the other across Death Valley in 2007. During 2002, Harley was also awarded a Gold Badge of Merit by the British Academy of Composers and Songwriters. In 2003, Harley released the acoustic live album "", featuring recordings from various UK concerts played during the previous autumn with Cregan. Towards the end of the year, Harley travelled to Cologne to collaborate with German artist Guido Dossche on the song "Ich Bin Gott", which was released as a single in Germany in 2004.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 2004, the live album "Anytime! (A Live Set)" was released under the name The Steve Harley Band. During June of that year, Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel played at the Isle of Wight Festival. The full performance was released on DVD in 2005, titled "Live at the Isle of Wight Festival". In June 2005, a newly recorded version of "Make Me Smile" was released, dubbed as the "30th Anniversary Re-mix", which reached No. 55 in the UK.


title: Steve Harley

text: A new studio album, "The Quality of Mercy", was released in 2005, which was Harley's first studio album to be released under the Cockney Rebel name since 1976. To promote the album, the band embarked on their biggest UK and European tour since the 1970s, with over 50 dates set between September–December. The album was a critical success and also charted at No. 40 in Norway in early 2006. The album included "A Friend for Life", while "The Last Goodbye" was released from it as a single in 2006. It reached No. 186 in the UK, and No. 21 on the UK Independent Singles Chart.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 2006, EMI released a CD box-set compilation album spanning Cockney Rebel and Harley's solo work, titled "The Cockney Rebel - A Steve Harley Anthology". In 2007, Harley starred with Mike Bennett in the West End premiere of the Samuel Beckett plays "Rough for Theatre I" and "Rough for Theatre II". The plays ran for a week in July at London's Arts Theatre. In 2008, Harley released his first book "The Impression of Being Relaxed". Published by Halstar, it is a collection of diary entries Harley had published on his website between 2000 and 2008. In 2009, Harley received a Special Award from Childline Rocks for his work for charity at the "Classic Rock" magazine Award ceremony at London's Park Lane Hotel. His work raising money for the Mines Advisory group and several schools for Disabled Children were cited in a speech delivered by blues guitarist Joe Bonamassa.


title: Steve Harley

text: During September and October 2009, Harley and his band returned to the studio to record a new album at Leeders Farm Residential Studios. In May 2010, Harley released his new studio album "Stranger Comes to Town", which peaked at No. 187 in the UK. Described by Harley as a protest album, two digital singles were released from the album; "Faith & Virtue" and "For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn". Earlier that year in February, Harley, a self-confessed technophobe, attributed poor literacy rates and the moral corrosion of British society to modern technology.


title: Steve Harley

text: In April 2012, Harley teamed up with Australian guitarist Joe Matera and embarked on a promotional tour of Australia. The pair made a number of appearances on radio and TV, performing live acoustic sessions. This included the SBS TV show RocKwiz, Noise 11 TV and Melbourne radio station Gold FM 104.3. In October 2012, EMI released a remastered four-disc box-set anthology compilation "", which chronicled the recording career of the original Cockney Rebel line-up.


title: Steve Harley

text: On 24 November 2012, Harley and his band, along with the Orchestra of the Swan and their Chamber Choir, performed the first two Cockney Rebel albums "The Human Menagerie" and "The Psychomodo" in their entirety for the first time. A live double-CD and DVD was released in October 2013 of this performance, titled "Birmingham". The album peaked at No. 158 in the UK and No. 36 on the UK Independent Albums Chart. In 2014, Harley and the band performed the same show again four times in the UK.


title: Steve Harley

text: In January 2015, "Make Me Smile" re-charted at No. 72 in the UK, after "Top Gear" presenters Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May urged viewers to download the song, as part of their discussion that Harley had recently received a speeding fine. Later in September, Harley's first new song of five years, "Ordinary People", was released as a single on iTunes. In November, Harley and the surviving members of the original second line-up of Cockney Rebel, embarked on a 16-date UK tour to celebrate the 40th anniversary of "The Best Years of Our Lives" album. On the tour, the band were backed by the MonaLisa Twins.


title: Steve Harley

text: In 2015, Harley pledged to help raise funds for a new memorial to his late friend Mick Ronson. In April 2016, Harley played for free at the Hull City Hall to help kick-start the appeal. In November 2016, Harley was one of a number of musicians who teamed up with British Members of Parliament and the Royal Opera House Thurrock Community Chorus to record a charity version of the Rolling Stones song "You Can't Always Get What You Want" in memory of Labour MP Jo Cox. The song was released by Chrysalis Records in December 2016, with all proceedings going to the Jo Cox Foundation. It reached No. 136 on the UK Singles Chart, No. 24 on the UK Singles Sales Chart and No. 9 on the Top 30 Indie Singles Chart.


title: Steve Harley

text: After the success of 1998 and 1999's respective 'Stripped To The Bare Bones' and 'Stripped Again' tours, Harley would continue to tour in an acoustic format. Firstly with Jim Cregan and a selection of other members of Cockney Rebel, depending on the exact date of the show, in 2002. This format produced 2003's '' album. With the exception of the 2015 reunion, which was in the full band format, Cregan would next join Harley for 2 acoustic shows in March 2020, which otherwise featured Harley performing alone. In 2003 and 2004, the 5-piece acoustic line-up that played 2004's 'Anytime! (A Live Set)' album was put together, featuring Lascelles on percussion, Gladwell on lead guitar, Wickens on violin/guitar, and Anderson on double bass. In 2005 and 2006, this format was used in Holland and Belgium while promoting 2005's 'The Quality Of Mercy' album, and these shows are notable for featuring significant rearrangements of some of the songs from the album, which were never played during concerts in England. These shows were played without Anderson. Between 2010 and 2019 these concerts were revived as a 3-man line-up, with Harley alongside Wickens and Lascelles (this time on keyboards and percussion, as per his role in the full rock band shows). These shows were originally marketed as the '3-man acoustic show' before being renamed to 'Acoustic Trio' in 2016. The shows in 2010 were marketed as an 'Acoustic Set', as they were the first acoustic shows since 2004. This format was phased out in 2020 - in order to promote Harley's new album 'Uncovered'- in favour of a revived 4-man line-up, though with David Delarre on lead guitar, and Oli Hayhurst on double bass, with Harley and Wickens reprising their roles. The COVID-19 pandemic delayed most of the shows on this tour - with only the first 9 played as planned. Two shows were however played in late-September 2020, both in the acoustic trio format, though Hayhurst accompanied the trio on the second of these shows. In addition, Harley held an online Q and A session via Zoom Videoconferencing in mid-December 2020, and will hold another in late-November 2021.


title: Steve Harley

text: In the aftermath of the 2020 pandemic, Harley's live shows eventually resumed in July 2021. The set-lists for these shows are notable in that they include much material that has been left unplayed for, in some cases, almost 30 years.


title: Steve Harley

text: Harley lives in North Essex with his wife, Dorothy, whom he married at Marylebone Register Office in February 1981. They have two children, Kerr and Greta. In 1991, the pair celebrated their tenth anniversary with a wedding blessing ceremony at their local church in Belchamp Otten, Essex. Harley has been involved in racehorse ownership since 1984, and racing has become his main pastime.


title: Broken Flowers

text: Broken Flowers is a 2005 French-American comedy-drama film written and directed by Jim Jarmusch and produced by Jon Kilik and Stacey Smith. The film focuses on an aging "Don Juan" who embarks on a cross-country journey to track down four of his former lovers after receiving an anonymous letter stating that he has a son. The film stars Bill Murray, Jeffrey Wright, Sharon Stone, Frances Conroy, Jessica Lange, Tilda Swinton, Julie Delpy, Mark Webber, Chloë Sevigny, Christopher McDonald, and Alexis Dziena.


title: Broken Flowers

text: The film was nominated for the "Palme d'Or" at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival and won the "Grand Prix". It received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed $47.3 million worldwide on a $10 million budget.


title: Broken Flowers

text: Don Johnston, a former "Don Juan" who made a small fortune in the computer industry, wants to live in quiet retirement. He is content to lounge around watching old movies and listening to classical or easy listening music. His current girlfriend, Sherry, is ending their relationship and moving out of his house when a letter in a pink envelope arrives.


title: Broken Flowers

text: Later Don reads the letter; it purports to be from an unnamed former girlfriend, informing him that he has a son who is nearly nineteen years old, and who may be looking for him. Initially, Don does not intend to do anything about it, but his busybody neighbor Winston, who is a mystery novel enthusiast, urges Don to investigate. Winston researches the current locations of the five women most likely to have written the letter and gives Don the information along with maps and flight reservations, and persuades him to visit them.


title: Broken Flowers

text: Ultimately Don meets with four women (the fifth one had died before the events of the film), each encounter worse than the last and each woman damaged in some way:


title: Broken Flowers

text: Later, Don stops at a florist to buy flowers from a young woman named Sun Green who treats his cut. Don leaves the flowers at the grave of the fifth woman, Michelle Pepe.


title: Broken Flowers

text: Finally, Don returns home where he finds a pink letter from Sherry, admitting she still likes him. He discusses the trip and second letter with Winston, who theorizes that Sherry might have written the original letter as a hoax. He then goes home to compare the two letters.


title: Broken Flowers

text: Don then meets a young man in the street who he suspects may be his son. He buys him a meal, but when he remarks that the young man believes that Don is his father, the young man becomes agitated and flees. Don attempts to chase the man but gives up, standing in the middle of a crossroads. Don watches a Volkswagen Beetle drive past from which a young man (Bill Murray's son, Homer Murray) in the passenger seat makes eye contact with Don, while the same music Don has listened to on his trip plays from the passing car.


title: Broken Flowers

text: The ending of the story was left deliberately unresolved. Director Jim Jarmusch had each of the four female leads write their own pink paper letter "in character" to plant in each one's mind the possibility that she was the mother of Don's supposed son. (The letter used in the film was a composite of the four.) In relation to the ending, Jarmusch said that the film is about "yearning for something that you're missing and not necessarily being able to define what it is".


title: Broken Flowers

text: Murray said in an 2019 interview with the Associated Press that he requested to Jarmusch that the film be shot in locations within an hour of his house; Jarmusch complied with Murray's wishes, adding that Murray "gave us limitations that helped us."


title: Broken Flowers

text: Slates for the film shown on the DVD extra "Broken Flowers: Start to Finish" list the title of the film as "Dead Flowers."


title: Broken Flowers

text: The film is dedicated to French director Jean Eustache. In an interview, Jarmusch said he felt close to Eustache for his commitment to making films in a unique and independent fashion.


title: Broken Flowers

text: Reed Martin sued Jarmusch in March 2006, claiming that the director stole the film's concept from a very similar script that had circulated among several people eventually involved in the production. Jarmusch denied the charges and stated in response that Martin's claim has "absolutely no merit". On September 28, 2007, a federal district court judge dismissed Martin's lawsuit.


title: Broken Flowers

text: "Broken Flowers" premiered in Europe at 2005 Cannes Film Festival on May 16, 2005. It opened on August 5, 2005, in the US in a limited release. It was released on video January 3, 2006.


title: Broken Flowers

text: The film was released theatrically on August 5, 2005, earning $780,408 from 27 theaters. After 15 weeks in release, the movie ended with a domestic total of $13,744,960. The film fared much better internationally, taking in $32,975,531 to bring its total gross to $46,720,491.


title: Broken Flowers

text: At the 2005 Cannes Film Festival, the film was nominated for the "Palme d'Or" and won the "Grand Prix". Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 87% of 194 surveyed critics wrote a positive review, with an average rating of 7.49/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Bill Murray's subtle and understated style complements director Jim Jarmusch's minimalist storytelling in this quirky, but deadpan comedy." On Metacritic, the film had an average score of 79 out of 100, based on 39 reviews from film critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Broken Flowers

text: According to Ken Tucker, ""Broken Flowers" relies on Bill Murray's persona, but it also turns that persona back on him. Instead of maintaining the satirical distance that made it easy to laugh at heartland eccentrics in, say, Alexander Payne's "About Schmidt", Jarmusch's film avoids caricature, and Murray's poker face melts. Don feels a bittersweet regret at becoming exactly the sort of granite-faced wise guy Bill Murray has made his rep at enshrining. Murray is at a point in his career when his self-effacement has achieved high comic art, and he collaborates with Jarmusch at a point in his career when he's trying to be something more than hipster-serene. Both succeed, by committing to the notion that a yearning to be reborn within a hopeless, brittle soul is worthy of drama—as well as a deeper, gentler humor."


title: Broken Flowers

text: Peter Bradshaw called it "Jarmusch's most enjoyable, accessible work for some time, perhaps his most emotionally generous film - like Cronenberg, he has made a bold venture into the mainstream with a movie that creates a gentle cloud of happiness. It is, it must be said, a lot more forgiving about aging men than Alexander Payne's road-movies "About Schmidt" or "Sideways", but it is still a very attractive piece of film-making, bolstered by terrific performances from an all-star cast, spearheaded by endlessly droll, seductively sensitive Bill Murray."


title: Broken Flowers

text: The soundtrack to the film features an eclectic mix of music, chiefly using instrumentals by Ethiopian jazz artist Mulatu Astatke as the main score, mixed with garage rock (The Brian Jonestown Massacre, The Greenhornes, Holly Golightly), stoner metal (Sleep), soul (Marvin Gaye), rocksteady reggae (The Tennors), and classical (Gabriel Fauré's "Requiem"). The film's score was composed by Mulatu Astatke.


Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier is a third-person tactical shooter video game developed and published by Ubisoft for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows. It was released in May and June 2012. "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier" was announced to be in development by Ubisoft on January 22, 2009. The game has a futuristic take on the "Ghost Recon" series. The campaign has settings such as Bolivia, Zambia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Russia, and Norway.


title: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

text: The game is a third-person cover-based shooter. Pulling the left trigger causes the over-the-shoulder view to zoom in, allowing for more precise aiming. Clicking on the right analog stick causes the game to switch to a first-person camera, which lets the player look down the iron sights. Some cover can be partially destroyed, forcing players to seek other hiding spots. While taking cover, players can be suppressed by machine gun fire, which takes the effect of narrowing and shaking the player's field of vision, making it harder to return fire.


text: A new feature in the series is adaptive camouflage, which allows the Ghosts to become partially invisible. In the game, it is explained that the processing power doesn't exist yet for the camouflage to keep up with quick movements, so it is only active when the player moves slowly. It's enabled automatically when the player crouches, and disengages when running, firing or taking damage.


text: During firefights, the player can prioritize up to four targets by marking them, on which squad members will focus fire. Outside of firefights, marking targets prepares for a synchronized takedown, so long as the enemy is still unaware of the team's presence. This mechanic is referred to by the game as "Sync Shot". The player is shown icons signifying when the squad mates have moved into position and taken aim on marked targets. If the player marks up to three targets, the player can either order them to fire, or take aim himself on one of the targets and fire, at which point the squad mates fire simultaneously. If the player marks four targets, the player must aim at one of the targets and fire in order to take down all four targets. Sync Shot also happens to be the only squad command in this game.


text: Gunsmith allows extensive customizations of weapons, whereafter the player can test them on a firing range before entering a mission. Parts that can be customized include: optics, triggers, magazines, under-barrel attachments (e.g. foregrip or bipod), side-rail attachments (e.g. aiming laser), gas systems (standard, "over-gassed" for increased fire rate/lower accuracy, or "under-gassed" for decreased fire rate/higher accuracy), barrels, muzzles, stocks and paint (cosmetic only). In single-player, advanced parts are unlocked by completing missions and in-mission achievements (called "challenges"). In multiplayer, players unlock weapons and earn credits as they advance the level of their character. On the Xbox 360, players can use Kinect to customize their weapons through hand gestures and voice commands.


text: Players have use of drones that can be launched covertly and controlled remotely, hovering or moving over the playing field for a limited distance. The player can leave the drone hovering in the air indefinitely, so long as it is not spotted by the enemy, and switch between normal view and the drone camera view. The player can also order the drone to return. Drones can be spotted by enemies and shot, and if they take enough damage, they must be recalled for repair, which occurs automatically after a short period. The drone has a camera to provide an aerial view. Targets can be marked from the drone view. The drone can also be landed on the ground, at which point it maneuvers on wheels, has its own active camouflage, and a sonic blast that can be activated to disorient enemies.


text: Another automated element is the War Hound, used only in one single-player mission, which is a heavy walking robot, similar to BigDog, which can be controlled by the player and fires mortar rounds and TV-guided missiles. It can be used as portable cover.


text: The game has various multiplayer modes, including cooperative and competitive game types. "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier" features a fully cooperative campaign, as well as a new survival wave-based mode called Guerilla, which is also playable as a single-player mode. Also featured is competitive multiplayer, with the game types Conflict, Decoy, Saboteur, and Siege and characters-Scout, Engineer and Rifleman. A code is used for full-access online play, and is a one-time use code. Used copies of the game will not have full access to online play. Ubisoft announced that the multiplayer servers would be shut down on September 1, 2022. The date was later delayed to October 1, 2022. This renders several achievements and trophies as unachievable.


text: There are three downloadable content (DLC) packs that have been released: Arctic Strike, Raven Strike and Khyber Strike. They add maps, 6 weapons, 3 campaign missions, multiplayer Takeover, Stockade modes.


text: In 2024, a four-Man Ghost Recon squad led by Joe Ramirez is deployed to Nicaragua to disrupt weapons trafficking in the region; as they inspect a convoy they ambushed, a dirty bomb is remotely detonated, killing the team. Following this, Ghost team “Hunter”, consisting of “Ghost Lead” Captain Cedric Ferguson, Staff Sergeant John Kozak, Master Sergeant Robert "Pepper" Bonifacio, and Sergeant First Class Jimmy "30K" Ellison, are deployed to investigate the source of the bomb. The team ships out from Fort Bragg, North Carolina under the supervision of Major Scott Mitchell.


text: Mitchell informs the team of their new mission to rescue an arms dealer named Paez in Sucre, Bolivia who has information about the bomb’s origin. Hunter rescues Paez and then proceeds to follow the trail of weapons: First, to a refugee camp in Western Province, Zambia, where they eliminate local warlord Dede Macaba; to Nigeria, where they rescue CIA SAD officer Daniel Sykes from private military company Watchgate; to Peshawar, Pakistan, where they capture Russian arms dealer Katya Prugova; to the Kola Peninsula in Russia, where the team destroys an arms cache at a remote Arctic base; and finally to an airfield in Kaliningrad, where they intercept and destroy a missile guidance system, causing an international incident.


text: Some time later, a nuclear missile fired from Russia impacts London, but the nuclear warhead is eliminated at the last minute by the American missile shield. The launch is traced to Dagestan and is believed to be the work of a rogue Russian special operations group known as Raven's Rock, of which Prugova was an associate, with ties to ultranationalist political elements in Russia. Hunter is ordered into Dagestan to rescue a Georgian Special Forces squad who went to investigate the launch site. During the rescue operation, the team is ambushed by Russian Spetsnaz that have access to high-tech equipment on the same level as the Ghosts, and they later discover that these soldiers are part of the elite “Bodark” (Werewolf) unit, which have sided with Raven's Rock.


text: Soon after, Raven’s Rock stages a coup and manages to take over the majority of Russia, although a few loyalist Russian forces opposing the new government are scattered around the country. Hunter heads to northern Russia to secure some drilling ships to supply the loyalists with a steady flow of oil. Afterwards, the team is assigned to rescue a loyalist general who is the de facto leader of the resistance movement. After destroying artillery attacking the general's forces, the team is pinned down by overwhelming Raven's Rock forces, until air support arrives and eliminates the hostile forces. Kozak is then tasked with a solo operation to rescue deposed Russian President Volodin from a prison in Siberia. Kozak is successful, and Hunter then protects President Volodin in his return to Moscow, and eliminates the Raven's Rock commander coordinating the city's defense. The Raven's Rock forces are eventually overthrown and the loyalists manage to retake the country.


text: Major Mitchell then gives Hunter intelligence on the location of the seven other leaders of Raven's Rock, and the team is sent on a clandestine operation to eliminate them. After eliminating six of the seven, the team chases the last member, code-named "Ace", to a train station, where they wound him. The wounded Ace taunts the team that they will not kill him because the American government will stop them. Immediately after, Major Mitchell radios Hunter ordering them to stand down, stating that Ace is to be taken alive and brought back to the United States. At that point a train comes, and Ace, wounded on the tracks, calls for the team to save him, reminding them that their orders were to keep him alive. The team leaves him on the tracks, as they were explicitly ordered “not to touch him”, and Hunter leaves the area as Ace is run over by the oncoming train to make his death look like an accident.


text: In December 2009, ""Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier"" was trademarked by Ubisoft, raising speculation that this could be the name for the upcoming Ghost Recon 4. This was subsequently confirmed by an official announcement. It's developed by a heavily modified state of YETI, it's implementing global illumination, and Ambient occlusion.


text: The release of "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier" was initially targeted for the 2009–2010 fiscal year; publication was delayed to the 2010–2011 fiscal year, and then to the "March quarter of 2011" in May 2010, and then to the April 2011 – March 2012 fiscal period. The PC version was officially declared as cancelled in December 2011 and replaced by "Ghost Recon Online", citing piracy as the main reason. However, on January 10, 2012, the PC version was officially re-announced as being in development along with its console counterparts.


text: On April 19, 2012, a closed multiplayer beta for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 was made available to those who have pre-ordered the game from GameStop, own a copy of "", or have a PlayStation Plus membership. Some selected users from Uplay were also able to enter the closed beta. No PC multiplayer date was ever set.


text: Richard Machowicz, one of the hosts of "Deadliest Warrior" and the host for "Future Weapons", hosted a three-part miniseries titled "Believe in Ghosts". Here Machowicz looks at elements in the game and compares them to real life operations performed by special forces.


text: In the short live action movie "Ghost Recon: Alpha", which is a prequel to the game, a Ghost team (consisting of Pepper, 30k, Chuck, and an unnamed Ghost Leader) was trying to secure a RSM-56 Bulava nuclear warhead. While trying to disarm the warhead, Chuck was shot in the head. Eventually the remaining Ghosts managed to fight off the attacking force, but the warhead was airlifted by a helicopter belonging to an unknown faction. The short movie ends with a view of London set in the time period of the video game.


text: "Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier" received generally positive reviews from critics. Some reviewers, like IGN's, have praised the game's more thoughtful approach to cover-based shooting, scoring the game an 8.5 out of 10. GameSpot gave the game a 7.5 praising the lengthy campaign and multiplayer but criticizing the AI and combat. However, other sites such as Eurogamer Italy, Giant Bomb, Strategy Informer, and Cheat Code Central criticized "Future Soldier" for the streamlining and/or complete removal of many tactical shooter mechanics leaving many critics questioning whether or not it should even be considered a tactical shooter. The PC version suffered from lower ratings. Numerous bugs making the game unplayable, such as the interface ignoring keyboard and mouse inputs, were present in the game at launch. Ghost Recon Future Soldier on PC had huge issues with online PvP multiplayer due to peer-to-peer system that hosted games on people's computers instead of dedicated/cloud servers. Also, the game was locked at 60 fov as well as 60 fps.


title: One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

text: The One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge was an offer by the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) to pay out one million U.S. dollars to anyone who could demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria. A version of the challenge was first issued in 1964. Over a thousand people applied to take it, but none were successful. The challenge was terminated in 2015.


title: One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

text: James Randi developed the idea for the challenge during a radio panel discussion when a parapsychologist challenged him to "put [his] money where [his] mouth is." In 1964, Randi offered a $1,000 prize, soon increasing it to $10,000. Later, Lexington Broadcasting wanted Randi to do a show called the $100,000 Psychic Prize, so they added $90,000 to the original $10,000 raised by Randi. Finally, in 1996, one of his friends, Internet pioneer Rick Adams, donated $1 million for the prize. The prize is sometimes referred to in the media as the "Randi Prize".


title: One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

text: By April 1, 2007, only those with an already existing media profile and the backing of a reputable academic were allowed to apply for the challenge. It was hoped that the resources freed up by not having to test obscure and possibly mentally ill claimants would then be used to challenge high-profile alleged psychics and mediums such as Sylvia Browne and John Edward with a campaign in the media.


title: One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

text: On January 4, 2008, it was announced that the prize would be discontinued on March 6, 2010, in order to free the money for other uses. In the meantime, claimants were welcome to vie for it. One of the reasons offered for its discontinuation is the unwillingness of higher-profile claimants to apply. However, at "The Amazing Meeting 7", it was announced that the $1 Million Challenge prize would not expire in 2010. The Foundation issued a formal update on its website on July 30, 2009, announcing the Challenge's continuation, and stated more information would be provided at a later date on any possible changes to the requirements and procedures.


title: One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

text: As an April Fool's prank on April 1, 2008, at the MIT Media Lab, Randi pretended to award the prize to magician Seth Raphael after participating in a test of Raphael's "psychic abilities".


title: One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge

text: On March 8, 2011, the JREF announced that qualifications were being altered to open the challenge to more applicants. Whereas applicants were previously required to submit press clippings and a letter from an academic institution to qualify, the new rules now require applicants to present either press clippings, a letter from an academic institution, or a public video demonstrating their ability. The JREF explained that these new rules would give people without media or academic documentation a way to be considered for testing, and would allow the JREF to use online video and social media to reach a wider audience.