title: Moesia

text: During administrative reforms of Emperor Diocletian (284–305), both of the Moesian provinces were reorganized. Moesia Superior was divided in two, northern part forming the province of Moesia Prima including cities Viminacium and Singidunum, while the southern part was organised as the new province of Dardania with cities Scupi and Ulpiana. At the same time, Moesia Inferior was divided into Moesia Secunda and Scythia Minor. Moesia Secunda's main cities included Marcianopolis (Devnya), Odessus (Varna), Nicopolis (Nikopol), Abrittus (Razgrad), Durostorum (Silistra), Transmarisca (Tutrakan), Sexaginta Prista (Ruse) and Novae (Svishtov), all in Bulgaria today.


title: Moesia

text: As a frontier province, Moesia was strengthened by stations and fortresses erected along the southern bank of the Danube, and a wall was built from Axiopolis to Tomi as a protection against the Scythians and Sarmatians. The garrison of Moesia Secunda included Legio I Italica and Legio XI Claudia, as well as independent infantry units, cavalry units, and river flotillas. The Notitia Dignitatum lists its units and their bases as of the 390s CE. Units in Scythia Minor included Legio I Iovia and Legio II Herculia.


title: Moesia

text: After 238 AD, Moesia was frequently invaded or raided by the Dacian Carpi, and the East Germanic tribe of the Goths, who invaded Moesia in 250. Hard-pressed by the Huns, the Goths again crossed the Danube during the reign of Valens (376) and with his permission settled in Moesia. After they settled, quarrels soon took place, and the Goths under Fritigern defeated Valens in a great battle near Adrianople. These Goths are known as Moeso-Goths, for whom Ulfilas made the Gothic translation of the Bible.


title: Moesia

text: The Slavs allied with the Avars invaded and destroyed much of Moesia in 583–587 in the Avar–Byzantine wars. Moesia was settled by Slavs during the 7th century. Bulgars, arriving from Old Great Bulgaria, conquered Lower Moesia by the end of the 7th century. During the 8th century the Byzantine Empire lost also Upper Moesian territory to the First Bulgarian Empire.


title: Jeetendra filmography

text: This is the filmography of Jeetendra, the Indian Bollywood film actor; and films and TV serial producer. He has acted in Hindi films as the lead hero around 200 times. He also holds more than 121 box office hits in his six decade long film career.


title: Progressive soul

text: Progressive soul (often shortened to prog-soul; also called black prog, black rock, and progressive R&B) is a type of African-American music that uses a progressive approach, particularly in the context of the soul and funk genres. It developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s through the recordings of innovative black musicians who pushed the structural and stylistic boundaries of those genres. Among their influences were musical forms that arose from rhythm and blues music's transformation into rock, such as Motown, progressive rock, psychedelic soul, and jazz fusion.


title: Progressive soul

text: Progressive soul music can feature an eclectic range of influences, from both African and European sources. Musical characteristics commonly found in works of the genre are traditional R&B melodies, complex vocal patterns, rhythmically-unified extended composition, ambitious rock guitar, and instrumental techniques borrowed from jazz. Prog-soul artists often write songs around album-oriented concepts and socially conscious topics based in the African-American experience, left-wing politics, and bohemianism, sometimes employing thematic devices from Afrofuturism and science fiction. Their lyrics, while challenging, can also be marked by irony and humor.


title: Progressive soul

text: The original progressive soul movement peaked in the 1970s with the works of Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, Sly and the Family Stone, Parliament-Funkadelic, and Earth, Wind & Fire, among others. Since the 1980s, both prominent American and British acts have recorded music in its tradition, including Prince, Peter Gabriel, Sade, Bilal, and Janelle Monáe. The neo soul wave of the late 1990s and early 2000s, featuring the Soulquarians collective, is considered a derivative development of the genre.


title: Progressive soul

text: By the mid 1950s, rhythm and blues was transitioning from its blues and big band-based jazz origins toward the musical forms that would be known more broadly as rock music. This trend was expedited by the exposure of young white listeners and musicians to African-American music played by ambitious disc jockeys on radio stations in the Northern United States. However, partly in response to jealousy among veteran performers and prejudice in general, recording acts in the early rock era generally gravitated toward either one of the three stylistic influences from which the genre had primarily originated – R&B, country, and pop.


title: Progressive soul

text: In the mid 1960s, several new musical forms arose that diversified rock. Among them was the Motown sound of Detroit-based Motown Records, which released more refined and slick productions distinct from other R&B-leaning rock. The music academic Bill Martin traces the origins of progressive soul to Motown as well as Ray Charles and James Brown, whose recordings altogether span as early as the 1950s, while the jazz writer Rob Backus cites an early example in the Impressions' 1964 song "Keep On Pushing". Progressive rock, another emerging subgenre, utilized an eclectic range of elements such as exotic instrumentation from classical and folk, along with highly-developed lyrical concepts composed across album-length works. This trend emphasized the album format over the single and reached mainstream culture with the Beatles' 1967 album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Concurrently, psychedelic rock utilized electronic innovations with a harder sound primarily intended to induce or enhance the listener's consciousness rather than for relaxation, dance, or analytical listening.


title: Progressive soul

text: In the late 1960s, the structural and stylistic boundaries of African-American music were pushed further by the psychedelic experimentation of black rock acts like Jimi Hendrix, Arthur Lee's Love, and the Chamber Brothers. The jazz trumpeter-bandleader Miles Davis also made an impact with his wide-ranging fusion experiments, which incorporated elements from rock, electronic, avant-garde, and Eastern music. As with folk rock earlier in the decade, jazz fusion was another emerging subform to concede rock influences in a parent genre that had otherwise been exclusive to a cultural elite. These events inspired greater musical sophistication and diversity of influences, ambitious lyricism, and conceptual album-oriented approaches in black popular music, leading to the development of progressive soul.


title: Progressive soul

text: By the 1970s, many African-American recording artists primarily working in the soul and funk genres were creating music in a manner influenced by progressive rock. According to music critic Geoffrey Himes, this "progressive-soul movement flourished" from 1968 to 1973 and demonstrated "adventurous rock guitar, socially conscious lyrics and classic R&B melody", while AllMusic says the genre was "flowering" in 1971. Among the musicians at its forefront were Sly Stone (bandleader for Sly and the Family Stone), Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield, and George Clinton (bandleader for Parliament and Funkadelic). Under Berry Gordy's leadership at Motown, Gaye and Wonder were reluctantly given artistic control to approach their albums more seriously in what had generally been a single-focused soul genre, leading to a series of innovative records from the two during the 1970s. Similar to white prog musicians, black artists of this movement directed their creative control toward ideals of "individualism, artistic progression and writing for posterity", along with concerns related to the African-American experience, according to ethnomusicologist and University of Colorado Boulder music professor Jay Keister. However, he notes that the pursuit of individuality sometimes challenged the collective political values of the Black Arts Movement. Himes categorizes the progressive soul movement as "left-wing" and "bohemian" in the sense of "any culture with a middle class to produce young people who are more interested in the unfettered exploration of intellectual, artistic, sexual and political possibilities than in the mainstream goals of wealth, power and conformity"; he adds that this subculture among African Americans grew in proportion to their emerging middle class.


title: Progressive soul

text: Among the prog-rock characteristics shared in black progressive music of this period were extended composition, diverse musical appropriation, and making music for the purpose of concentrated listening as opposed to dancing. Progressive soul vocalists incorporated complex patterns in their singing, while instrumentalists used techniques learned from jazz. Unlike the European art music appropriations used by progressive white artists, who tended to distinguish their extended compositions with song-based suites, African-American counterparts favored musical idioms from both African-American and African sources, including the use of an underlying rhythmic groove to unify an extended recording. Altering instrumental textures were also used instead as a way of signifying a change in the section of an extended track. Applications of these elements featured in songs such as Funkadelic's "Wars of Armageddon" (1971) and Sun Ra's "Space Is the Place" (1973). The contemporaneous album-length works of Isaac Hayes were often extended and elaborately-composed R&B jams characterized by leitmotifs and his spoken interludes (known as "raps").


title: Progressive soul

text: Progressive soul musicians also used a variety of non-traditional influences, much like the Beatles had in the 1960s. Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic collective prominently used influences from psychedelia alongside those from Brown and the Motown sound. Both Clinton's collective and Sun Ra applied thematic concepts associated with Afrofuturism and outer space mythology. Some artists borrowed elements from European-American traditions to augment a song's lyrical idea. For example, Wonder added pleasant-sounding instrumental textures from a string ensemble to "Village Ghetto Land" (1976), lending a sense of irony to the song's otherwise bleak critique of social ills in urban ghettos. Mayfield's socially- and politically-charged 1970 album "Curtis" featured both the extended prog-soul song "Move on Up" and orchestral-laden works like "Wild and Free", which employed harps to produce distinctive timbres. Gaye's 1971 album "What's Going On" was composed as a social-protest song cycle unified by both rhythmic and melodic motifs. Clinton also explored the African-American experience and drew on "Black Power" literature as well as the music of Bob Dylan and the Beatles, pointing specifically to the latter's element of nonsense on songs like "I Am the Walrus" (1967). However, Clinton's themes were more party-centric, influenced by contemporary street culture, and often incorporated lowbrow elements of absurdity and toilet humor similar to the experimental rock musician Frank Zappa's recordings with The Mothers of Invention.


title: Progressive soul

text: The San Francisco music scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s was "a workshop for progressive soul", according to cultural anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo, who credits the radio station KDIA with showcasing the music of local acts like Sly and the Family Stone and Tower of Power. Popular with the hippie audience, Stone's songs appealed to tolerance, peace, and integration along racial and social lines, while his leadership of the Family Stone made them among the first racially- and gender-integrated popular acts. The Philadelphia station WDAS-FM, which had been progressive rock-oriented in the late 1960s, changed to a progressive soul format in 1971 and over time developed into an important media source for the African-American community. Progressive soul stations played extended soul recordings past the typical single length, as was the case with the nine-and-a-half-minute-long Temptations single "Runaway Child, Running Wild" (1969). Hayes' 1969 recording of "Walk on By" is considered a classic prog-soul single.


title: Progressive soul

text: In discussing the exemplary prog-soul albums of this period, Himes names Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland" (1968), the Temptations' "Cloud Nine" (1968), Sly and the Family Stone's "Stand!" (1968), Gaye's "What's Going On" (1971), Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" (1971), Mayfield's "Super Fly" (1972), War's "The World Is a Ghetto" (1972), Earth Wind & Fire's "Head to the Sky" (1973), and Wonder's "Innervisions" (1973). Martin also cites albums from Wonder ("Innervisions", along with 1972's "Talking Book" and 1976's "Songs in the Key of Life") and War ("The World Is a Ghetto", along with 1971's "All Day Music" and 1973's "War Live"), as well as the Isley Brothers ("3 + 3" from 1973 and "Harvest for the World" from 1976). The 1975 albums "That's the Way of the World" (by Earth, Wind & Fire) and "Mothership Connection" (by Parliament) are other notable releases, with the latter a concept album culminating Clinton's Afrofuturist musical aspirations. Wonder's mid 1970s albums are also highlighted by "The Times" writer Dominic Maxwell as "prog soul of the highest order, pushing the form yet always heartfelt, ambitious and listenable", with "Songs in the Key of Life" regarded as a peak for its endless musical ideas and lavish yet energetic style. Backus notes among the genre's many politically-charged works to include the Temptations song "War" (1970), the LPs of Gil Scott-Heron, and the O'Jays' "Rich Get Richer" (from the 1975 album "Survival").


title: Progressive soul

text: Sly Stone was "the first superstar" of progressive soul, according to "Billboard" journalist Robert Ford, who noted his ability to "pack people into <nowiki>[</nowiki>Madison Square Garden<nowiki>]</nowiki> whenever the mood struck him". In the wake of Sly and the Family Stone's politicized and pessimistic hit album "There's a Riot Goin' On" (1971), a wave of similarly fashioned soul songs began to dominate the radio. By the release of the band's 1973 LP "Fresh" (featuring the million-seller "If You Want Me to Stay"), Vernon Gibbs of "Crawdaddy!" had proclaimed Stone "the founder of progressive soul".


title: Progressive soul

text: Also hugely popular, Wonder and Gaye's progressive soul albums sold millions of copies during the 1970s. Wonder's series of albums in particular were conceived with high artistic aspirations and proved much celebrated, winning the musician many Grammy Awards and transforming his career. Gaye's "What's Going On" eventually proved among the most acclaimed albums in history, and Earth, Wind & Fire's "That's the Way of the World" (with the help of its hit single "Shining Star") was among the most successful black-music records at the time, leading album sales for 1975 with more than 1.1 million copies.


title: Progressive soul

text: Progressive soul's name and rise in the mainstream were both reported in 1975 by "Billboard" and "Broadcasting" magazine, which said the "relatively new" genre was impacting pop radio across the US and reaching "an ever-broader audience". The latter magazine cited the commercial breakthroughs of Earth, Wind & Fire and the Blackbyrds (with their radio hit "Walking in Rhythm"). The continued success of the O'Jays with their hit "For the Love of Money" (1974) was also discussed, with Gamble and Huff's production highlighted for the use of "voice phasing and a variety of electronic effects that rival some space rock efforts by white musicians". According to "Stereo Review"s Phyl Garland, Earth, Wind & Fire was "the leading exponent of progressive soul" through the end of the decade.


title: Progressive soul

text: Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic collective achieved a corresponding success as a concert attraction, selling out large arenas and auditoriums while performing in sprawling fashion, with musicians dressed in eccentric costumes. As Keister chronicles, by the mid 1970s, Clinton had conceived an "elaborate stage show designed for his touring group called P-Funk, presenting his dual projects as a single, collective entity"; he "ruled over several dozen musicians in a tour that resembled a Broadway show, with a sizable budget from Casablanca Records that he never would have imagined just a few years earlier when his touring musicians were forced to improvise costumes out of garment bags from the dry cleaners". The P-Funk Earth Tour concerts climaxed with the highly popular conceit of a spacecraft-like prop (the P-Funk Mothership) landing on stage and Clinton strutting down its ramp to greet the live audience as his alter ego, Dr. Funkenstein (who resembled a flamboyantly dressed, extraterrestrial pimp).


title: Progressive soul

text: In February 1975, Parliament-Funkadelic played a co-billed show with Ohio Players and Graham Central Station at New York City's Radio City Music Hall. Reporting on the concert for "The New York Times", Ian Dove said that all three groups represented "a fair cross section of the progressive soul genre", while adding that soul in general had become "the trendy rage in discotheques". The original wave of progressive soul was "short-lived", however, with Himes noting its decline by the late 1970s. In Mayfield's case, he withdrew from public life after a series of lawsuits and poorly-received disco albums. Parliament-Funkadelic also fell into disarray with mismanagement of its various musical projects, drug abuse among many of its members, and Clinton's professional disputes with their record label, culminating in the end of the collective's original run by 1981. Stone suffered a similar fate, as legal and drug issues interfered with his productivity and presence in the music industry throughout the late 1970s and 1980s.


title: Progressive soul

text: During the 1980s, artists who made recordings in the genre included Prince, Peter Gabriel, Sade, JoBoxers, and Fine Young Cannibals. The latter three groups are cited by Himes as spearheading the movement's rebirth in the UK, which other acts like Kane Gang and the Housemartins would join by 1988. However, in a piece for "The Washington Post" the following year, he proclaimed that the original movement's expansion of R&B's "musical and lyrical boundaries" remained unrivalled.


title: Progressive soul

text: By 1990, younger American artists were renewing the progressive-soul tradition. These included Chris Thomas King, Terence Trent D'Arby, Lenny Kravitz, Tony! Toni! Toné!, and After 7. More emerged as the decade ensued, including the British singers Seal and Des'ree, and Americans Meshell Ndegeocello and Joi. "Spin" magazine's Tony Green credits the latter two artists with pioneering the prog-soul revival that would peak by the early 2000s.


title: Progressive soul

text: At the start of the 21st century, the leading artists of progressive soul were the Soulquarians, an experimental black-music collective active from the late 1990s to the early 2000s. Often marketed under the term "neo soul", their members recorded collectively at New York's Electric Lady Studios and included D'Angelo, James Poyser, Q-Tip, J Dilla, Erykah Badu, and Raphael Saadiq (formerly of Tony! Toni! Toné!). Himes, who cites Bilal, Jill Scott, and the Roots as a Philadelphia-based correlative within this collective, adds that they took "the progressive-soul tradition of Marvin Gaye, Curtis Mayfield and Prince and [gave] it a hip-hop twist". The commercial success of artists marketed as neo soul, such as Scott, Badu, and Maxwell, helped lend the genre credence as the modern manifestation of progressive soul in both mainstream and subcultural milieus through the 2000s.


title: Progressive soul

text: While having debuted with a popular R&B single for a major label, Bilal soon turned more to progressive soul and jazz performance, recording albums like "Love for Sale" (which alienated his label and went unreleased) and "Airtight's Revenge" (released in 2010 on an independent label). In discussing the latter work, "Exclaim!" journalist David Dacks says the singer's variant of soul is "utterly contemporary, meaning it's a mix of everything that's come before while adding a raft of futuristic sonic touches. At its heart is the classic, album-oriented prog soul of the '70s, with a strong, jazzy undercurrent, but it's much more than that. Bilal's reedy, Sly-meets-Prince voice runs down metaphysical and personal subjects overtop a continuously changing musical landscape ..." According to the music journalist Chris Campbell, Q-Tip (through his group work in A Tribe Called Quest, his own solo career, and other productions) "introduced a form of jazz sampling and bohemian chic that heavily influenced the neo-soul and progressive soul movements".


title: Progressive soul

text: Along with Bilal, prog-soul singer-songwriters in the 21st century have included Dwele, Anthony David, and Janelle Monáe. Monáe's work features Afrofuturist aesthetics and science fiction concepts, including narratives written around the android persona Cindi Mayweather, described by "PopMatters" critic Robert Loss as "a mechanical construction composed for the usefulness of others". Loss adds that her use of various genres, both individually and in combination with each other, "serves a progressive ideology" and acts as "a response to W. E. B. Du Bois' critical notion of 'double consciousness', wherein the African American is constantly aware of self and the self as seen by whites". Saadiq's 2011 prog-soul album "Stone Rollin'" prominently utilizes the Mellotron, an old-fashioned keyboard most often played in progressive and psychedelic rock, and evoking what AllMusic's Andy Kellman describes as "diseased flutes and wheezing strings". Alicia Keys performs in a similar form of soul as Monáe on the 2020 song "Truth Without Love" (from the album "Alicia"), described by "Mojo" magazine's James McNair as "astro-soul". Writing in 2021, "Gigwise" critic Lucy Wynne remarks that progressive soul is "very on-trend at the moment", noting the Leon Bridges album "Gold-Diggers Sound" in particular.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: Francis Kurkdjian (born 14 May 1969) is a French perfumer and businessman of Armenian descent. He is best known for creating the men's fragrance Le Male for Jean Paul Gaultier in 1995, which has become one of the world's best-selling perfumes. He has since created a further 40 fragrances for major companies worldwide, including Elie Saab Le Parfum for Elie Saab; My Burberry for Burberry; L'extase for Nina Ricci; and Narciso Rodriguez for Her for Narciso Rodriguez, Green Tea for Elizabeth Arden.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: Kurkdjian co-founded the fragrance house Maison Francis Kurkdjian with Lebanese-French businessman and former Ernst & Young partner Marc Chaya, which has become a niche brand in the fragrance industry. He was the winner of the Prix François Coty in 2001 for his lifetime achievement.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: Francis Kurkdjian was born in Paris, France on 14 May 1969 to Armenian parents. Having been exposed to music and dancing at a young age, Francis Kurkdjian wanted to be a ballet dancer during his youth. However, he failed passing the competition to study at the Paris Opera School of Dance in 1983. Kurkdjian, who already had an interest in perfume making since he was thirteen years old, decided in 1985 to become a perfumer. In 1990, Kurkdjian entered the Institut Supérieur International du Parfum, de la Cosmétique et de l'Aromatique Alimentaire (ISIPCA), a perfume school located in Versailles, France. He graduated from ISIPCA in 1993 and joined Quest International in Paris the same year. Kurkdjian continued his studies and obtained a master's degree from the Paris Institute of Luxury Marketing.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: In 1995, at the age of twenty-six, Kurkdjian created Le Male for Jean Paul Gaultier, one of the world's best selling perfumes. This became Kurkdjian's first success at perfume making. This was followed by more than 40 creations for major fashion designers and houses.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: Besides selling his scents to major fashion designers and houses in the beginning of his new career, Kurkdjian opened the pathways to a new vision, lending his talent to contemporary artists, re-creating Marie Antoinette’s favorite perfume for Palace of Versailles, going back in time to the early 17th century and the sources of perfumery.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: Kurkdjian has also created gigantic olfactory installations in emblematic spaces, making people dream with his ephemeral and spectacular perfumed performances and was honoured the "Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres" by French Government in 2008.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: He was the first to open his bespoke fragrances atelier in 2001, going against the trend of perfume democratization.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: In 2006, Kurkdjian redeveloped the Papier d'Arménie for the year of Armenia in France. Papier d'Arménie, a type of Armenian paper produced in France, is a room deodorizing product sold as booklets of twelve sheets of paper each cut into three pieces, which are coated with benzoin resin, the dried sap of styrax trees.


title: Francis Kurkdjian

text: He co-founded his own fragrance house Maison Francis Kurkdjian with business partner Marc Chaya in 2009 near the Place Vendôme in Paris. The Maison Francis Kurkdjian is now a major player in the niche luxury fragrance segment with more than 300 locations worldwide.


title: Up opening sequence

text: The opening sequence to the 2009 Disney-Pixar film "Up" (sometimes referred to as "Married Life" after the accompanying instrumental piece, the Up" montage, or including the rest of the prologue The First 10 Minutes of "Up) has become known as a cultural milestone and a key element to the film's success.


title: Up opening sequence

text: While the core concept of the film was to have a house float into the sky with balloons, the filmmakers needed a rationale for why a character would do such a thing. Their solution was to show the entirety of a married couple's relationship from the first day they met to the day the wife died. They envisioned it as a wordless montage that would play like a series of Polaroid home movies. Director Pete Docter always felt that an expository sequence to open the film was important because if the viewers do not love the characters, "then [they're] not along for the ride." In an early draft of the Ellie-Carl meeting, Carl is trying to capture a bird with a trap and Ellie punches him in the face, yelling about animal rights. This led into a montage sequence of a "lifelong sneak-attack punching game, lending the script some heart in a 'non-sappy' way", according to the "Huffington Post". Co-director Bob Peterson said "we thought that was the funniest thing", noting that even when Carl visited Ellie's sickbed, she gives him a feeble slap. Nevertheless, the test audiences did not warm to the sequence. Docter explained "We showed it, and there was silence. I guess they thought it was too violent or something". From that point on, the filmmakers went with a sorrowful version of the sequence.


title: Up opening sequence

text: In one cutting room session, one part of the sequence in which Ellie is despondent having learnt she is not able to have children, received many notes from members of the studio, believing the moment may have pushed things too far. As a result, the scene was cut, though later put back into the film. Docter explained: "You didn’t feel as deeply [without the scene] — not only just [with] that sequence, but through the whole film. Most of the emotional stuff is not just to push on people and make them cry, but it’s for some greater reason to really make you care about the story."


title: Up opening sequence

text: The "Married Life" piece was the first assignment that composer Michael Giacchino had on the film. He explained: "We knew that was going to be one of the most difficult scenes in the film, so we tackled that first, and I was just working really hard to make that scene really work because I knew that was going to inform the rest of the story". Originally he had written a different piece to be played in that part of the film, but Docter requested a song that would play as if from one's grandmother's music box. Giacchino subsequently conceived of the new composition. After recording the initial piece, they went back to make touch-ups at various points to match the emotional tone of the visual sequence.


title: Up opening sequence

text: The scene "sketch[es] out Carl's early married life with childhood sweetheart Ellie". In general definitions, the 'sequence' excludes the earlier parts of the film's prologue in which Carl watches a filmreel about Charles F Muntz and has a dialogue sequence with Ellie. The sequence is "only minutes in length and almost completely silent".


title: Up opening sequence

text: The sequence begins with a flash of a camera at their wedding, followed by their first kiss, and then shows how they fix up the house where they met so that it matches Ellie's childhood drawing. They spend their time doing three hobbies: cloud watching, working at the zoo, and reading together. On one cloud watching session, Carl points out a cloud that looks like a baby. Inspired, they decide to conceive a child and prepare a nursery, but as the music slows, the two learn at the doctor's office that Ellie suffered a miscarriage and they are unable to have children, leaving them devastated. At their house, Carl brings Ellie her childhood scrapbook, which consoles her. They begin to keep a spare change jar to save up for Ellie's dream trip to Paradise Falls. However, several events, including a flat tire, Carl breaking his leg, and the house getting damaged during a storm, cause them to repeatedly break open the jar early.


title: Up opening sequence

text: A montage of Ellie tying Carl's ties follows, showing them getting ready for each day of work at the zoo. It is followed by them slow dancing at home, now in their old age, the spare change jar having been shelved and forgotten. As they fix up their house, where they will spend their retirement, Carl looks upon Ellie's art, representing her dream trip, and realizes he has yet to fulfill his promise, which almost stops the music entirely. He gets an idea and goes to a travel agency to buy tickets for Paradise Falls and take Ellie cloud watching, bringing the tickets with him on a picnic to surprise her. However, Ellie struggles to reach Carl and collapses as her husband runs to her side.


title: Up opening sequence

text: As instruments drop out of the harmony, Carl brings a dying Ellie a balloon to the hospital as she once brought him one. Ellie pushes her scrapbook to him, and he kisses her on the head. Time passes by to show her funeral in the church where they married. Carl is still holding the balloon. As he climbs up the steps, they become the steps to his home. He sadly disappears through the door and pulls the balloon in after him. The screen fades to black as the music ends.


title: Up opening sequence

text: The sequence uses "visual techniques and musical sound to accomplish all the above functions without relying on dialogue". According to the filmmakers, it was intended to come across as a memory. For the paper "Creating an emotional impact without dialogue: the case study of Pixar's Up", Michaela Wozny created a mood chart of the sequence. Carl is seen as sympathetic throughout the rest of the film "due to [his] helplessness against the often-cruel, vindictive power of fate."


title: Up opening sequence

text: The musical themes established during this sequence play throughout the rest of the film, changing in timbre depending on the context, as an emotional anchor to the relationship of Ellie and Carl.


title: Up opening sequence

text: "The Guardian" described the sequence as "remarkable", "brilliant", and a "masterclass in narrative exposition" and thought the childlessness reveal would be emotionally affecting to the audience. "The Telegraph" described it as "one of the most extraordinary openings to a film", live-action or otherwise, noting that in the context of a larger film it: "dares to risk alienating" the audience animated films are generally targeted towards, and threatens to topload the drama thereby making the rest of the film a letdown. "The Washington Post" deemed it "touching". CinemaBlend described it as a "heart-wrenching rollercoaster of emotions" and a "bonanza of bittersweetness". "The LA Times" writes that it "details the highs and lows of two lives with poignancy and depth." "The Guardian" deemed Ellie's death to be a "heart-wrenchingly understated" scene. Scott Meslow of "GQ" felt the montage had "sheer emotional power" and in 2018 wrote it still "fucks me up". Uproxx deemed it "beautifully depressing" and "as good as Pixar gets". Rotoscopers felt the sequence "shatters the stereotype of animation being strictly for children". Sean Wilson of Den of Geek wrote the sequence left him a "weeping husk of a man".


title: Up opening sequence

text: Michael Giacchino won the Academy Award for Best Original Score at the 82nd ceremony, and the Grammy Award for Best Instrumental Composition for the "Married Life" portion of the score at the 2010 ceremony.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party () is a liberal and formerly social-liberal political party in France. It is also often referred to simply as the Radical Party (), or to prevent confusion with other French Radical parties as the "Parti radical valoisien" (after its headquarters on the rue de Valois), abbreviated to Rad, PR, PRV, or historically PRRRS.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Founded in 1901, it is the oldest active political party in France. Coming from the Radical Republican tradition, the Radical Party upheld the principles of private property, social justice and secularism. The Radicals were originally a left-wing group, but with the emergence of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) in 1905 they shifted gradually towards the political centre. In 1926, its right wing split off to form the Unionist (or National) Radicals. In 1972, the left wing of the party split off to form the centre-left Radical Party of the Left (PRG). The Radical Party then affiliated with the centre-right, becoming one of the founder parties of the Union for French Democracy (UDF) in 1978. In 2002, the party split from the UDF and became an associate party of the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) and were represented on the Liaison Committee for the Presidential Majority prior to launching The Alliance (ARES) in 2011 and the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) in 2012.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the 2017 presidential and legislative elections, negotiations to merge the PR and the PRG began. The refounding congress to reunite the parties into the Radical Movement was held on 9 and 10 December 2017. However, a minority of the PRG refused to unite with PR and founded , which was joined by some left-wing members of the Radical Movement (most notably the last president of the PRG Sylvia Pinel) a year later, when the movement decided to ally Emmanuel Macron's La République En Marche! for the 2019 European Parliament election. In 2021 its president Laurent Hénart announced that the Radical Movement would "become again" the Radical Party.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the collapse of Napoleon's empire in 1815, a reactionary Bourbon Restoration took place. The left-wing opposition was constituted by the broad family of Republicans, but these differed over whether and how far to cooperate with liberal-constitutional monarchists in pursuit of their common adversary. In contrast to the Republicans' right wing (then the centre-left of the political spectrum), who were more inclined to accept a socially conservative constitutional monarchy as the first stage to a republic, the Republicans' left wing took a hard line in advocating progressive reforms such as universal manhood suffrage, civil liberties (such as press freedom and right to assembly, among others), and the immediate installation of a republican constitution. They came to be termed Radical Republicans by opposition to the Moderate Republicans.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the installation of the constitutional July Monarchy (1830–1848), the term Republican was outlawed and the regime's remaining Republican opponents adopted the term Radical for themselves. Following the monarchy's conservative turn, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin and Louis Blanc formulated a Radical doctrine. At this time, radicalism was distinct from and to the left of the July Monarchy's doctrinal liberalism. Radicals defended traditional peasant farmers and small craftsmen against the new rival economic projects of the 19th century, socialist collectivism and capitalist big business alike.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The Radicals took a major part in the 1848 Revolution and the foundation of the Second Republic, sitting in parliament as the Montagne legislative group. Fifty years later, the Radical-Socialist Party would consider this group its direct forefather. For a few months, Alexandre Auguste Ledru-Rollin was Interior Minister in the provisional government. However, the conservatives won the 1848 legislative election, the first election by universal suffrage. The repression of the June 1848 workers' demonstrations disappointed the left-wing supporters of the new regime. Ledru-Rollin obtained only 5% of votes at the December 1848 presidential election, which was won by Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, who launched a coup, ending parliamentary democracy in favour of a Second Empire.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: From opposition, Radicals criticized Bonaparte's autocratic rule and attacks on civil liberties. At the end of the 1860s, they advocated with the Belleville Programme (supported by Léon Gambetta) the election of civil servants and mayors, the proclamation of the so-called "great liberties", free public teaching and the separation of church and state.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the collapse of the Second French Empire following the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, the Third Republic was proclaimed in September 1870. The first elections in February 1871 returned a majority of monarchists belonging to two dinstinct factions, conservative-liberal Orléanists and Catholic-traditionalist Legitimists, but these were too divided to reach an agreement over the type of monarchy they wanted to restore. Their division allowed time for the Republicans to win the 1876 elections, leading to the firm establishment of a Republican republic. Like the monarchists, the Republicans were divided into two main factions, namely a centre-left formed of socially-conservative yet liberal and secular Moderate Republicans (pejoratively labeled "Opportunist Republicans") and a far-left of uncompromising anticlerical Radicals. Georges Clemenceau was the leader of the Radical parliamentary group, who criticized colonial policy as a form of diversion from "revenge" against Prussia and due to his ability was a protagonist of the collapse of many governments.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: In the 1890s, competition from the growing labour movement and concern for the plight of industrial workers prompted Léon Bourgeois to update the fifty-year-old Radical doctrine to encompass social reforms such as the progressive income tax and social insurance schemes, hence the term Radical-Socialist, a social-democratic synthesis of reformist socialism with traditional radicalism. After the Dreyfus Affair, Radicals joined forces with conservative Republicans and some Socialists in Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau's cabinet (1899–1902). In 1901, an Act on the right of association was voted and the various individual Radicals organised themselves into a political party in order to defend their governmental achievements from the Catholic Church's influence and the traditionalist opposition. However, not all Radicals accepted the change in doctrine and alliance. While retaining their doctrines, those show rejected the new turn towards social-democracy and partnership with the Socialist Party gradually peeled away, labelling themselves the Independent Radicals and sitting in their own loose-knit parliamentary party (Radical Left) to the right of the Radical-Socialists.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The Radical-Socialist and Radical Republican Party was the first large political party established at a national level in France, which contrasted with previous parliamentary groups that were formed spontaneously by likeminded independent lawmakers elected through purely local electoral committees. The first congress of the Radical Party was held in June 1901. Delegates represented 476 election committees, 215 editorial boards of Radical newspapers and 155 Masonic lodges as well as lawmakers, mayors and municipal councillors. However, it was not until 1914 that the Radical-Socialist Party imposed strict discipline on its parliamentary deputies, requiring them to sit exclusively in a single Radical-Socialist legislative caucus.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The existence of a national party immediately changed the political scene. Several Radical independents had already been presidents of the Council (Ferdinand Buisson, Emile Combes and Charles Floquet, among others) and the Radicals already benefited from a strong presence across the country. The party was composed of a heterogeneous alliance of personal fiefdoms, informal electoral clubs, masonic lodges and sections of the "Ligue des droits de l'homme" (Human Rights League) and the "Ligue française de l'enseignement" (French League of Education, an association dedicated to introducing, expanding and defending free, compulsory and non-religious primary education). The secularising cause was championed by Émile Combes' cabinet start of the 20th century. As the political enemy, they identified the Catholic Church, seen as a political campaign entity for ultra-conservatives and monarchists.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: At 1902 legislative election, the Radical-Socialists and the Independent Radicals allied themselves with the conservative-liberals of the Democratic Alliance (to their immediate right) and the Socialists (to their left) in the "Bloc des gauches" (Coalition of the Left), with the Radicals emerging the main political force. Émile Combes took the head of the "Bloc des gauches" cabinet and led a resolute anti-clerical policy culminating in the 1905 laic law which along with the earlier Jules Ferry laws removing confessional influence from public education formed the backbone of "laïcité", France's policy of combatting clericalism by actively excluding it from state institutions. From then on, the Radical-Socialist Party's chief aim in domestic policy was to prevent its wide-ranging set of reforms from being overturned by a return to power of the religious right.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the withdrawal of the Socialist ministers from the government following the International Socialist Congress of Amsterdam in 1904, the coalition dissolved and the Radicals went alone into the 1906 legislative elections. Nevertheless, the Radical-Socialist Party remained the axis of the parliamenary majorities and of the governments. The cabinet led by the Independent Radical Georges Clemenceau (1906–1909) introduced income tax and workers' pensions, but is also remembered for its violent repression of industrial strikes.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: For the latter part of the Third Republic (1918–1940), the Radical-Socialists, generally representing the anti-clerical segment of peasant and petty-bourgeois voters, were usually the largest single party in parliament, but with their anti-clerical agenda accomplished the party lost their driving force. Its leader before World War I Joseph Caillaux was generally more noted for his advocacy of better relations with Germany than for his reformist agenda.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: During World War I (1914–1918), the Radical-Socialist Party was the keystone of the "Sacred Union" while the most prominent Independent Radical Georges Clemenceau led the cabinet again from 1917 to 1919. He appeared as the "architect of victory", but his relationship with the Radical-Socialist Party deteriorated. The Radical-Socialists and the Independent Radicals entered the 1919 legislative election in opposing coalitions, thus Clemenceau's alliance of the right emerged victorious.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: By the end of World War I, the Radical-Socialist Party, now led by Édouard Herriot, were generally a moderate centre-left party faced with the governmental dominance of the socially-conservative liberal parties to its right (see Independent Radicals and Democratic Alliance) and pressure from its left by the rise of support for the socialist French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO) and French Communist Party (PCF). With these political forces, Radical-Socialists shared anti-clericalism and the struggle for "social progress", but unlike the other left parties the Radical-Socialists defended the principle of strict parliamentary action and the defence of private property, at least that of smallholders and small business. Additionally, the Radical-Socialist Party had thought before 1914 that its old adversaries among the Catholic, monarchist and traditionalist right had been weakened once and for all, instead these emerged reinvigorated by World War I.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: In 1924, Radical-Socialists formed electoral alliances with the SFIO. The "Cartel des Gauches" (Coalition of the Left) won the 1924 legislative election and Herriot formed a government. However, the Radical-Socialists gradually drifted to the right, moving from left-Republican governments supported by the non-participating Socialists to a coalition of "Republican concentration" with the centre-right Independent Radicals and the more socially-conservative liberal parties in 1926.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Two years later at the Angers Congress, the left-wing of the party obtained the withdrawal of the Radical-Socialists from the cabinet and the return to a policy of alliance with the Socialists. Édouard Daladier was elected party leader. However, a section of the party's right-wing defected to form a second centre-right Independent Radical party (the Social and Radical Left) which opposed alliance with the Socialist Party and preferred close cooperation with the centre-right liberals of the Democratic Alliance.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The second "Cartel des gauches" won the 1932 legislative election, but its two main components were not able to establish a common agenda and consequently the SFIO chose to support the second government led by Herriot without participation. The coalition fell on 7 February 1934 following riots organized by the far-right leagues the night before. The Radical-Socialist Camille Chautemps's government had been replaced by a government led by his popular rival Édouard Daladier in January after accusations of corruption against Chautemps' government in the wake of the Stavisky Affair and other similar scandals.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: This pattern of initial alliance with a socialist party unwilling to join in active government followed by disillusionment and alliance with the centre-right seemed to be broken in 1936, when the Popular Front electoral alliance with the Socialists and the Communists led to the accession of Socialist leader Léon Blum as President of the Council in a coalition government in which the Radical-Socialist leaders Édouard Daladier and Camille Chautemps (representing left and right of the Radical-Socialist Party, respectively) took important roles. For the first time in its history, the Radical-Socialist Party obtained fewer votes than the SFIO.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Over the tempestuous life of the coalition, the Radical-Socialists began to become concerned at the perceived radicalism of their coalition partners. Hence, they opposed themselves to Blum's intention to help the Republicans during the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), forcing him to adopt a non-interventionist policy. Following the failure of Blum's second government in April 1938, Daladier formed a new government in coalition with the liberal and conservative parties.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the 29 September 1938 Munich Agreement which handed over Sudetenland to Nazi Germany in exchange for what proved to be a temporary peace, Daladier was acclaimed upon his return to Paris as the man who had avoided war. However, two days after the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 the French government led by Daladier made good on its guarantees to Poland by declaring war alongside Britain. Following the 23 August 1939 Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, Daladier engaged in an anti-communist policy, prohibiting the Communists activities and the party's newspaper, "L'Humanité".


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Furthermore, Daladier moved increasingly to the right, notably repealing the 40-hour work week which had been the Popular Front's most visible accomplishment. Daladier would eventually resign in March 1940 and take part in the new government of Paul Reynaud (leader of the main centre-right liberal party, the Democratic Alliance) as minister of National Defense and of War. After the defeat of the Battle of France, the French army being overwhelmed by the Nazi "Blitzkrieg", the French government declared Paris an "open city" on 10 June and flew to Bordeaux. The same month, Daladier escaped to Morocco in the "Massilia". Thus, he was not there during the controversial 10 July 1940 vote of full powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain which opened the door to the Vichy regime. Daladier was arrested and tried in 1942 by the new regime (see the Riom Trial) which accused him as well as other political leaders such as Socialist Léon Blum and conservative Paul Reynaud of being morally and strategically responsible for the loss of the Battle of France.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After World War II, the Radicals, like many of the other political parties, were discredited by the fact that many of their members had voted to grant emergency powers to Marshal Philippe Pétain, although senior Radical leaders as Édouard Herriot, then President of the Chamber of Deputies (the parliamentary Speaker), had been ambivalent.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The Radical-Socialist Party was reconstituted and formed one of the important parties of the Fourth Republic (1946–1958), but never recovered its dominant pre-war position. It failed to prevent the adoption of the projects of the three-parties coalition (nationalizations and the welfare state). Along with Democratic and Socialist Union of the Resistance, it set up an electoral umbrella-group, the Rally of Republican Lefts (RGR). From 1947, after the split of the governmental coalition it participated to the Third Force coalition with the SFIO, the Christian-democratic Popular Republican Movement and the conservative-liberal National Centre of Independents and Peasants.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: In the early years of the Fourth Republic, the party returned to the moderate left under the leadership of Pierre Mendès-France, a strong opponent of French colonialism, whose premiership from 1954 to 1955 saw France's withdrawal from Indochina and the agreement for French withdrawal from Tunisia. Mendès-France, a very popular figure who helped renew the Radical-Socialist Party after its discredit, was indeed elected on the pledge to stop Indochina War (1946–1954).


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Mendès-France hoped to make the Radicals the party of the mainstream centre-left in France, taking advantage of the difficulties of the SFIO. The more conservative elements in the party led by Edgar Faure resisted these policies, leading to the fall of Mendès-France's government in 1955. They split and transformed the RGR in a centre-right party distinct from the Radical Party. Under Pierre Mendès-France's leadership, the Radical Party participated to a centre-left coalition, the Republican Front, which won the 1956 legislative election. Another split, this time over France's policy about the Algerian War (1954–1962), led to his resignation as party leader and the party's move in a distinctly conservative direction.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The Fourth Republic was characterized by constant parliamentary instability because of divisions between major parties over the Algerian War, which was officially called a "public order operation" until the 1990s. Mendès-France opposed the war and colonialism while the SFIO led by Prime Minister Guy Mollet supported it. Because of the start of the Cold War, all political parties, even the SFIO, opposed the French Communist Party (PCF), which was very popular due to its role during the Resistance (it was known as the "parti des 75,000 fusillés", "party of the 75,000 executed people"). The PCF was also opposed to French rule in Algeria and supported its independence.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: In the midst of this parliamentary instability and divisions of the political class, Charles de Gaulle took advantage of the May 1958 crisis to return to power. On 13 May, European colonists seized the Governor-General's building in Algiers while Opération Résurrection was launched by the right-wing insurrectionary "Comité de Salut Public". De Gaulle, who had deserted the political arena for a decade by disgust over the parliamentary system and its chronic instability (the "système des partis" which he severely criticized), now appeared as the only man able to reconcile the far-right and the European settlers, which were threatening a coup d'état, with the French Republic. Thus, he was called to power and proclaimed the end of the Fourth Republic (according to him too weak because of its parliamentarism) and replaced it by the Fifth Republic, a hybrid presidential-parliamentary system tailored for himself.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The Radical Party supported de Gaulle at this crucial moment, leading Mendès-France to quit the party. Opposed to the proposed constitution, Mendès-France campaigned for the "no" on 28 September 1958 referendum. However, the new Constitution was finally adopted and proclaimed on 4 October 1958.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Popular figure Pierre Mendès-France quit the Radical Party, which had crossed the threshold to the centre-right, as early moderate Republicans did at the beginning of the Third Republic, when the Radical Party, appearing to their left, pushed them over the border between the left-wing and the right-wing, a process dubbed "sinistrisme".


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Mendès-France then founded the "Centre d'Action Démocratique" (CAD), which would later join the Autonomous Socialist Party (PSA, which had split from the SFIO), which in turn fused into the Unified Socialist Party (PSU) on 3 April 1960. This new socialist party gathered all the dissidents from the Radical Party and the SFIO who were opposed to both the Algerian War and the proclamation of the new presidential regime. Mendès-France would officially become a member of the PSU in 1961, a year before the 18 March 1962 Evian Accords which put an end to the Algerian War.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: The Radical Party returned from support of the government to opposition in 1959 and declined throughout all the 1960s. Allied with the SFIO in the Federation of the Democratic and Socialist Left, it supported François Mitterrand for the 1965 presidential election. This federation later split in 1968.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Under the leadership of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, President since 29 October 1969 issued from the left-wing, the party again made tentative moves to the left in the 1970s, but stopped short of an alliance with Socialist Party (PS) leader François Mitterrand and his Communist allies, leading to a final split in 1972 when the remaining centre-left Radicals left the party and eventually became the Movement of the Radical-Socialist Left. This group, which wanted to be a part of the left-wing Common Programme, broke away to create the Movement of the Left Radicals (MRG) and at the 1974 presidential election, supported Mitterrand, the candidate of the left-wing.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Henceforth, the Radical Party began to be known as "valoisien", from the location of its national headquarters at the Place de Valois in Paris, in order to distinguish it from the MRG. Opposed to an electoral alliance with the PCF, which was the foundation of the 1972 "Common Programme", the Radicals were still anti-Gaullists. They allied with the Christian Democrats in the Reforming Movement in order to propose another way between the Common Programme's parties and the Presidential Majority led by Gaullists. Finally, they joined it after the election of Valéry Giscard d'Estaing to the presidency of France in 1974. They supported most reforms of Giscard d'Estaing's presidency (in particular the authorization of the contraceptive pill and recognition of women's rights). This evolution brought by Servan-Schreiber's influence would end with the latter's failure during the 1979 European elections.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: Following the left-wing scission in 1971, the Radical Party "valoisien" maintained the judicial rights to the official name of Republican, Radical and Radical-Socialist Party and is its legal continuation.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the failure of the alliance with the Christians Democrats into the Reforming Movement, the Radical Party maintained its influence by participating in the foundation of Giscard d'Estaing's Union for French Democracy (UDF) in 1978. The Radical Party was one of its six components, along with the centrists of the Centre of Social Democrats, the liberals of the Republican Party and of the National Federation of Perspectives and Realities Clubs, the social democrats of the Socialist-Democratic Movement and of the new members of the UDF. Through the UDF, the Radical Party participated to all of the governments issued from parliamentary majorities of the Rally for the Republic (RPR).


title: Radical Party (France)

text: An important split took place after the 1998 regional elections, during which some members of the party composed electoral alliances with the far-right National Front party. Those members created the Liberal Democratic Party while the Radical Party remained a member of the UDF. During the 2002 presidential election, François Bayrou presented himself as a candidate for the UDF while the Radical Party supported his rival Jacques Chirac (RPR).


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After Chirac's re-election in 2002, most radicals participated to the creation of his new party, the Union for a Popular Movement (UMP). The Radical Party then quit the UDF to associate itself with the UMP, sharing its memberships and budget with the latter. However, some members such as Thierry Cornillet continue to be part of UDF. It was then headed by Jean-Louis Borloo and André Rossinot.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: After the rise of Nicolas Sarkozy to the leadership of the UMP, Radicals launched a sort of re-foundation of their party in order to create a counterbalancing moderate and social wing within the UMP. The party soon started to attract other centrists (as Jean-Louis Borloo, Renaud Dutreil, Véronique Mathieu and Françoise Hostalier) and even some anti-Sarkozy neo-Gaullists (as Serge Lepeltier and Alain Ferry). As a result, the Radical Party had a comeback in French politics. It then had 21 deputies (four more from those elected in 2002), 6 senators (two more from 2002), 4 MEPs and 8,000 members. Jean-Louis Borloo was a high-ranking minister in François Fillon's second government as Minister of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Transport and Minister of State from 2007 to 2010, when he chose not take part to Fillon's third government. It was the first time since 1974 that Radicals were not represented in a centre-right government.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: During the 7th term of the European Parliament, three Radical MEPs sat with the European People's Party Group (EPP) along with the UMP.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: On 7 April 2011, Borloo announced the creation of a centrist coalition. During a party congress on 14–15 May, the Radicals decided to cut their ties with Sarkozy's Union for a Popular Movement (UMP), of which they had been an associate party since 2002. During a convention on 26 June, the party officially joined The Alliance (ARES) alongside New Centre and other centrist parties as an alternative to the UMP. The Alliance was replaced with the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) in September 2012.


title: Radical Party (France)

text: During the 8th European Parliament, the single Radical MEP Dominique Riquet sat with the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) group as part of the UDI.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Aleksei Alekseyevich Brusilov (; – 17 March 1926) was a Russian and later Soviet general most noted for the development of new offensive tactics used in the 1916 Brusilov Offensive, which was his greatest achievement. The innovative and relatively successful tactics used were later copied by the Germans. Born into the aristocracy to a father who was also a general, Brusilov trained as a cavalry officer, but by 1914 he realized that cavalry was obsolete in the new style of warfare because of its vulnerability to machine gun and artillery. Historians portray him as the only First World War Russian general capable of winning major battles. However, his heavy casualties seriously weakened the Russian army, which was unable to replace its losses.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Despite his prominent role in the Imperial Russian Army, he sided with the Bolsheviks in the Russian Civil War and aided in the early organization of the Red Army.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Brusilov was born in Tiflis (now Tbilisi, Georgia). His father Aleksi Nikolaevich Brusilov was Russian and his mother, Anna Luiza Niestojemska, was Polish. Three generations of Brusilovs had served as officers in the Imperial Russian Army, his grandfather fighting in the defense against Napoleon's invasion of 1812. His father rose to the rank of Lieutenant General before dying of tuberculosis in 1856. Brusilov's mother died shortly afterwards, and the young orphan was raised by relatives in Kutaisi.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: He was educated at home until the age of 14. He joined the Imperial Corps of Pages in Saint Petersburg in 1867. At the end of his first year, a tutor remarked of Brusilov, "his nature is brisk and even playful, but he is good, straight-forward and clean-living. Of high ability, but inclined to be lazy."


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In 1872, on completion of the Corps' programme, he sought admission to the advanced class for top ranking students, but was unsuccessful, and instead was posted as an ensign (Praporshchik) to the 15th (Tver) Dragoon Regiment. Usually, graduates from the Corps of Pages sought admission to one of the Guards regiments, but the Tver Dragoons were at that time stationed near Kutaisi, so the posting suited Brusilov on the basis of being near his family and being less financially draining than service in the Guards.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Brusilov joined the Tver Dragoons in August 1872 and was given command of a troop, but it was not long before his aptitude resulted in the appointment as regimental adjutant. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1874.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: He served with distinction in the Russo-Turkish War, 1877–78, being mentioned in despatches on three occasions. His unit operated on the Southern Front in the Caucasus, and took part in the assault of the fortress of Ardagan (now Ardahan, Turkey), for which Brusilov was awarded the Order of Saint Stanislav, 3rd Class. Later in the war, he also received the Order of Saint Anne, 3rd Class, and was promoted to the rank of Stabskapitän. Towards the end of the war, he led successful attacks on Ottoman Army positions around Kars, and his membership of the Order of Saint Stanislav was elevated to 2nd Class.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In 1881, Brusilov became a student at the Cavalry Officer School in Saint Petersburg and two years later was appointed as a riding instructor there. He spent the next thirteen years in a succession of posts at the school – Adjutant, Senior Teacher of Riding and Breaking Horses, Section Commander, Troop Commander, Squadron Commander and Assistant Chief of the School. On promotion to Major General in 1900, Brusilov was added to the list of Household Troops (officers who might be retained on official business by the Tsar). During this time, Brusilov married (1884), and the union produced a son in 1887.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In 1902, as a Lieutenant General, he took command of the school, and under his leadership, the "Horse Academy" became an acknowledged centre of excellence in preparing staff officers for the cavalry. Brusilov published papers on the use of cavalry and visited France, Austria-Hungary and Germany to study riding tuition and stud management.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Brusilov was appointed to command the 2nd Guards Cavalry Division in 1906, but this was not a happy posting for him. The 1905 Russian Revolution had left St Petersburg in turmoil, and after his wife's death, he sought a posting away from the Guards and the capital.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In 1908, he was appointed to command the 14th Army Corps in the Warsaw Military District, where his tenure was notable for the improvements in combat training he implemented. He also remarried at this time, to Nadejda ("Hope") Jelihovski. Promoted to General of Cavalry in 1912, he became Deputy Commander-in-Chief of forces in the Warsaw Military District. The failures of the Russo-Japanese War had led to allegations that generals from immigrant families, who made a significant fraction of the Russian Army's senior ranks, were less patriotic than those who traced their origins to within Russia's borders, and Brusilov would come into conflict with the Governor-General in Warsaw, Georgi Skalon, and other "Russian-German" generals in that District. Brusilov was soon seeking another post.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In 1913, Brusilov was posted to command the 12th Army Corps in the Kiev Military District, remarking on his departure, "I do not doubt, that my departure will produce a sensation in the troops of Warsaw region... Well! What's done is done, and I am glad, that I have escaped cesspool of Skalon's court atmosphere."


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In July 1914, with the Russian army expanding during mobilisation, Brusilov was promoted to command the 8th Army, part of the Southwest Front operating in Galicia. The 8th Army crushed the Austro-Hungarian Third Army before it, and rapidly advanced nearly . Reverses elsewhere along the Front, including the great defeat at Tannenberg, forced the 8th Army to retreat in conformity with the general Russian withdrawal. For his victories, Brusilov was awarded the Order of Saint George 4th, and then 3rd Class. By a quirk of fate, several future White Army commanders held senior posts in 8th Army at this time—Brusilov's Quartermaster general was Anton Denikin, while Alexey Kaledin commanded the 12th Cavalry Division and Lavr Kornilov was in command of 48th Infantry Division.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In the early part of 1915, Brusilov again advanced, penetrating the Carpathian passes and entering the Great Hungarian Plain. At this time, Nikolai II visited the 8th Army and Brusilov was promoted to the rank of General-Adjutant (in the Imperial Russian Army this was a "four-star" General rank).


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Once again, fortunes on other fronts would determine his actions, and the Central Powers breakthrough at Gorlice-Tarnów forced Brusilov to withdraw as part of the general retreat. By September, the 8th Army had withdrawn to the Tarnopol region. However, Brusilov's victories cast doubt on Austria-Hungary's ability to defend itself against Russian offensives and forced its senior military ally the German Empire to divert forces from the Western Front to assist it.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: In October 1915, Brusilov wanted to deport 20,000 German civilians from Volhynia. With Stavka Chief of Staff General Mikhail Alekseyev's permission, Brusilov carried out the operation.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: On 29 March 1916, Brusilov was given command of the Southwest Front and managed to secure a certain degree of freedom of action. Previous Russian offensives demonstrated a tendency to assault smaller and smaller sections of the front with increasing density of artillery and manpower to achieve a breakthrough. The narrow frontage of these attacks made counterattacks straightforward for German forces, and this approach met with repeated failure for the Russians.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Brusilov decided to distribute his attack over the entirety of Southwest Front. He hoped to disorganise the enemy over such a large area that some point would fatally give way. He decided not to waste resources by saturation bombardment of worthless areas, but to use interdiction fire against command posts, road networks, and other critically important targets to degrade German command and control over the whole front. The noted German artillery commander, Georg Bruchmüller, having served opposite Brusilov's Front at this time, would learn from and adapt these tactics when planning the preparatory bombardment for Operation Michael on the Western Front in 1918. Brusilov was not even concerned with securing a tremendous local advantage in manpower, permitting Divisions under his command to be transferred to other Fronts (so long as they attacked in support of his offensive).


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Brusilov's new techniques were, by First World War standards, highly successful and over the next 3 months, Southwest Front advanced an average of more than 30 kilometres along a front of more than , taking 400,000 Austro-Hungarian prisoners in the process. However, the planned supporting attack from West Front (the Army group to Brusilov's north) was not delivered, and Germany was able to transfer 17 divisions from France and Belgium to halt the Russian advance.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Brusilov was awarded the Sword of Saint George with Diamonds for his greatest victory, one of only 8 Russian commanders to receive this award during the First World War.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: From 27 June to 3 July 1916, Brusilov carried out, on his own initiative, the deportation of 13,000 German civilians from the Volhynian areas that had been conquered during the offensive.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: With the onset of the February Revolution in Russia, Brusilov argued for the Tsar's abdication. When approached by Stavka for his opinion on the need for the abdication he replied, "... For the moment the only thing that matters is to stabilise our position to allow the continuation of the war with the external enemy... to abdicate in favour of Grand Duke Mikhail and a council of regents... It is necessary to hurry, the faster to extinguish the flames [of revolution], otherwise we face innumerable catastrophic consequences."


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Throughout this period, Brusilov proved sympathetic to revolutionary aspirations, though his primary concern was that the war needed to be won first. In particular, he asserted that until peace was achieved, the full authority of the central government must be respected and that the army should maintain the full rigour of its disciplinary code. In a telegram to the Minister of War, Alexander Kerensky, he wrote, "... only the application of capital punishment will stop the decomposition of army and will save freedom and our homeland".


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: This unpopular stand, together with the failure of the Kerensky Offensive in July 1917, led to Brusilov's replacement as Commander in Chief by his former deputy, Lavr Kornilov. Brusilov moved to Moscow and remained there at the disposal of the Russian Provisional Government. He gave an excellent praising to Tomáš Masaryk for Czechoslovak Legion soldiers after Battle of Zborov in July 1918. When fighting broke out in Moscow following the October Revolution, he was severely wounded in the foot by a fragment of a shell that hit his bathroom.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Some former soldiers were serving in the newly formed Red Army, and he concurred with the need for radical change. On 30 May 1920, during the Polish Eastern offensive of the Polish-Soviet War Brusilov published in Pravda an appeal entitled "To All Former Officers, Wherever They Might Be", encouraging them to forgive past grievances and to join the Red Army. Brusilov considered it as a patriotic duty of all Russian officers to join hands with the Bolshevik government, which in his opinion was defending Russia against foreign invaders. On 12 September 1920 Mikhail Kalinin, Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Sergey Kamenev and Brusilov signed an appeal "To all officers of the army of Baron Wrangel", in which they called on White Army officers to go over to the side of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, accusing Wrangel of acting in the interests of the Polish nobility and the Anglo-French capitalists, who also use the Wrangel army to enslave the Russian people, as like as Czechoslovak corps and "black-skinned divisions".


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Initially, Brusilov served on a special commission to determine the size and structure of the Red Army. Later, he led cavalry recruit training and became Inspector of Cavalry. He retired in 1924 but continued to carry out commissions for the Revolutionary Military Council.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: Aged seventy upon his retirement, he lived in his shared apartment with his sickly wife and another couple. He died in Moscow from congestive heart failure, and was given an honourable state funeral, buried in the Novodevichy Convent, by representatives from the 'new Russia' (the Bolsheviks), and the 'old Russia' (the clergy, the middle and upper class). His second wife Nadezhda Brusilova-Zhelikhova (1864–1938) is buried in the Orthodox section of the Olšany Cemetery in Prague, along with a number of other members of the Russian emigration.


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: His war memoirs were translated into English and published in 1930 as "A Soldier's Notebook, 1914–1918." Following the October Revolution, he served the Bolsheviks and joined the Red Army. Many pro-tsarist historians avoided praising or even mentioning his historical role, because of his role in the Red Army. Denikin, for example, a participant in the 1916 offensive and later a leading White commander, portrayed Brusilov as a ditherer who, at a critical moment in the 1916 offensive, "suffered a curious psychological breakdown" and ordered a needless retreat spurred by "imaginary dangers of the enemy breaking through."


title: Aleksei Brusilov

text: According to the assessment of British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, Brusilov was one of the seven outstanding fighting commanders of World War I, the others being Erich von Falkenhayn (later replaced by Paul von Hindenburg), Erich Ludendorff, Mustafa Kemal, Herbert Plumer, John Monash and Edmund Allenby.


title: Dermatophagia

text: Dermatophagia (from Ancient Greek "δέρμα" — "skin" and "φαγεία" "eating") or dermatodaxia (from "δήξις", "biting") is a compulsion disorder of gnawing or biting one's own skin, most commonly at the fingers. This action can either be conscious or unconscious. Those affected with dermatophagia typically bite the skin around the nails, leading to bleeding and discoloration over time. Some people also bite on their skin on their finger knuckles which can lead to pain and bleeding just by moving their fingers. In herpetology, dermatophagia is used to correctly describe the act in which amphibians and reptiles eat the skin they shed, but this is not what occurs in humans. Those diagnosed with this disorder do not develop wounds on the bitten areas of their hands or lose any skin. Instead, they experience a thickening of the skin being repeatedly bitten. Contemporary research suggests a link between impulse-control disorders and obsessive–compulsive disorders, and this was addressed in the DSM-5 when dermatophagia and other related disorders were classified as 'other specified obsessive-compulsive related disorders' and are given the specification of body focused repetitive behavior. Further information on OCD, other anxiety disorders, dermatophagia and other related body focused repetitive behaviors can be found in the DSM-5.


title: Dermatophagia

text: People with dermatophagia chew their skin out of compulsion, and can do so on a variety of places on their body. Those with dermatophagia typically chew the skin surrounding their fingernails and joints. They also chew on the inside of their mouth, cheeks, and/or lips, causing blisters in and outside of the mouth. If the behavior is left unchecked for an extended period, calluses may start to develop where most of the biting is done.


title: Dermatophagia

text: Skin chewing can be bolstered by times of apprehension and other unpleasant events. Blisters in particular can cause a feeling of desire to pull or bite off the affected skin and nails (since the skin is dead, thus easily pulled off), which could be detrimental, causing infection. Another disorder, known as excoriation disorder, the repetitive action of uncontrollably picking at one's skin, can sometimes accompany dermatophagia. Dermatophagia differs from excoriation disorder in that the repetitive motion affected persons partake in is the biting of the skin. People who have dermatophagia can also be prone to infection as when they bite their fingers so frequently, they make themselves vulnerable to bacteria seeping in and causing infection. Dermatophagia can be considered a "sister" disorder to trichophagia, which involves compulsively biting and eating one's hair.


title: Dermatophagia

text: Habit reversal training and variants thereof, like decoupling, are recommended for body-focused repetitive behaviors, including dermatophagia. Other techniques derived from cognitive-behavioral therapy recommend replacing things that do not actually dissolve with edibles that would. Moreover, it has been suggested to delay the urge by chewing gum, or on a soft drink straw.


title: Dermatophagia

text: There is no therapy known to effectively treat dermatophagia, but there have been attempts at stopping those affected from being able to chew on their skin. One notable method that is currently in development is focused on in curbing dermatophagia in children with cerebral palsy. This method is known as the PLAY (Protecting Little and Adolescent hands) hands protective glove. This method of intervention involves small, non-invasive plastic brackets being placed around the affected fingers. These brackets do not hinder movement or tactile feedback, and they are constructed from non-toxic durable plastic that can withstand the force of chewing. Presently PLAY hands protective gloves exist in concept and prototype only, but this intervention method could improve the quality of life of those with CP-induced dermatophagia.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: Legally Blonde (stylized as LEGALLY blonde) is an American media franchise created by Amanda Brown. It consists of American comedy films, a Broadway musical, a reality television series, and a cancelled television series. The films include two theatrical releases, one musical television film, one straight-to-home video release, and a third theatrical film in development. The installments follow the comical adventures of Elle Woods, portrayed by actress Reese Witherspoon in the films, a blonde California University of Los Angeles sorority president, who enrolls in law school.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: The media franchise is based on the 2001 novel, "Legally Blonde", written by Amanda Brown. The novel was based on Brown's experiences while enrolled in Stanford Law School.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: Elle Woods, a blonde University of Southern California sorority president and homecoming queen, is deeply in love with her college sweetheart, Warner Huntington III. When Warner enrolls in Harvard Law School and aims to find a girl more serious than Elle to be his wife, Elle schemes a plan to follow him there to win him back.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: Former Sorority President Elle Woods is happy and in love with her boyfriend. She wants nothing more than to be married, and become Mrs. Warner Huntington III. Huntington, however will not propose stating that she is "too blonde". Determined to win him over, and prove to herself that there's more to her than her looks, Elle rallies all of her resources and applies for the law program at Harvard University.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: Elle travels to Washington, D.C., determined to present her stance for animal rights. Ignored by every one she encounters, she learns that the Capitol can be more difficult to navigate than The Ivy League university law school from which she attained her J.D. degree. After befriending, and gaining the sympathy of a Republican politician named Victoria Rudd, Elle attains the chance of getting to present her arguments. To make a difference, she must convince the Legislature to take her seriously.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: With Elle Woods away as a successful lobbyist in Washington D.C., her two younger British cousins Annabelle "Annie" Woods and Isabelle "Izzy" Woods (played by Camilla and Rebecca Rosso) move to California to live in her home. The pair learn that they will be attending the Pacific Preparatory School and they upset the dominant social set of their fashion tastes and personalities.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: In June 2018, Reese Witherspoon entered negotiations with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to produce and star in a third installment in the "Legally Blonde" film series. Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith were hired as co-screenwriters. MGM later confirmed in a Twitter post that "Legally Blonde 3" was set to be released on May 8, 2020, though it did not meet this date. In May 2020, it was announced that Mindy Kaling and Dan Goor would write an entirely new script for the film.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: Originally filmed as the pilot episode of a cancelled television series, "Legally Blonde" aired through private viewing television in 2003. Jennifer Hall stars as Elle Woods, with the series intended to adapt the many misadventures she encountered as a former-sorority sister at Harvard University. The network executives ultimately passed on ordering a season for the series. In 2017, the film was widely released on YouTube as a television film, and was received with negative reviews.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: Three performances of the Broadway musical was filmed and aired on MTV in 2007. The television adaptation was co-directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller and Jerry Mitchell, from a script by Heather Hach, with music and lyrics were co-written by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: A reality competition television series in conjunction with the musical titled "Legally Blonde: The Musical – The Search for Elle Woods" debuted on MTV in 2008. The show debuted on June 2, 2008 as a competition show, where the winner would be cast in the lead role. Bailey Hanks ultimately won, and in addition to being cast in the starring role, was given the opportunity to record her own single of the musical's first-act number titled, "So Much Better". The show concluded on July 21, 2008. Autumn Hurlbert was the runner up. She served as Hanks' understudy and performed in the ensemble of the show. Bundy's last performance in the musical was on July 20, 2008. Hanks began performances on July 23, 2008 and remained with the show until it closed on October 19, 2008.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: A "Legally Blonde" musical debuted in 2007, with music and lyrics by Laurence O'Keefe and Nell Benjamin and book by Heather Hach. It premiered in pre-Broadway tryouts in San Francisco, California. In April 2007 the show moved to Broadway, opening to mixed reviews. Jerry Mitchell directed and choreographed. The original cast starred Laura Bell Bundy as Elle, Christian Borle as Emmett and Richard H. Blake as Warner. It received seven Tony nominations and ten Drama Desk nominations but did not win any.


title: Legally Blonde (franchise)

text: Following the release of the feature film, a series of teenage novels based jointly on the original book and the film series followed. Written by Natalie Standiford, the book series follows the continued adventures of Elle Woods.


title: Public holidays in South Korea

text: These days celebrate events considered joyous to Korea. In the beginning, Independence Declaration Day (March 1) was first stipulated in 1946. After the establishment of the Government of the Republic of Korea in 1948, four major National Celebration Days (Independence Declaration Day, Constitution Day, Liberation Day, National Foundation Day) were provided by "The Law Concerning the National Celebration Days" (국경일에관한법률) in 1949.


title: Public holidays in South Korea

text: All the National Celebration Days, Memorial Day (half staff), Armed Forces Day are provided by Article 8 of the "National Flag Law" (대한민국국기법 제8조). On these days, the raising of the taegukgi at every house and along every roadside is promoted.


title: Public holidays in South Korea

text: They are provided by the "Regulations on Holidays of Public Agencies" (관공서의 공휴일에 관한 규정) This Regulation originally applied only to government and public offices, but most individual business offices also follow it.


title: Citgo

text: Citgo Petroleum Corporation (or Citgo, stylized as CITGO) is a United States–based refiner, transporter and marketer of transportation fuels, lubricants, petrochemicals and other industrial products. Headquartered in the Energy Corridor area of Houston, it is majority-owned by PDVSA, a state-owned company of the Venezuelan government (although due to U.S. sanctions in 2019, they no longer economically benefit from Citgo).


title: Citgo

text: The company traces its heritage back to the early 1900s and oil entrepreneur Henry Latham Doherty. After quickly climbing the ladder of success in the manufactured gas and electric utility world, Doherty in 1910 created Cities Service Company to supply gas and electricity to small public utilities. He began by acquiring gas-producing properties in the mid-continent and southwest.


title: Citgo

text: The company then developed a pipeline system, tapping dozens of gas pools. To make this gas available to consumers, Doherty moved to acquire distributing companies and tied them into a common source of supply. Cities Service became the first company in the mid-continent to use the slack demand period of summer to refill depleted fields near its market areas. Thus, gas could be conveniently and inexpensively withdrawn during peak demand times. In 1931, Cities Service completed the nation's first long-distance high-pressure natural gas transportation system, a 24-inch pipeline 1,000 miles long from Amarillo, Texas to Chicago.


title: Citgo

text: A logical step in the company's program for finding and developing supplies of natural gas was its entry into the oil business. This move was marked by major discoveries at Augusta, Kansas, in 1914, and in El Dorado a year later. In 1928, a Cities Service subsidiary, Indian Territory Illuminating Oil Company, discovered the Oklahoma City field, one of the world's largest. Another participated in the discovery of the East Texas field, which, in its time, was the most sensational on the globe.


title: Citgo

text: Over three decades, the company sponsored the "Cities Service Concerts" on NBC radio. The long run of these musical broadcasts was heard on NBC from 1925 to 1956, encompassing a variety of vocalists and musicians. In 1944, it was retitled "Highways in Melody", and later the series was known as "The Cities Service Band of America". In 1964, the company moved its headquarters from Bartlesville, Oklahoma, to Tulsa.


title: Citgo

text: At the height of Cities Service's growth, Congress passed the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935, which forced the company to divest itself of either its utility operations or its oil and gas holdings. Cities Service elected to remain in the petroleum business. The first steps to liquidate investments in its public utilities were taken in 1943 and affected over 250 different utility corporations.


title: Citgo

text: At the same time, the government was nearing completion of a major refinery at Rose Bluff just outside Lake Charles, Louisiana, which would become the foundation of the company's manufacturing operation. Using designs developed by Cities Service and the Kellogg Co., the plant was dedicated only 18 months after groundbreaking. A month before Allied troops landed in France, it was turning out enough 100-octane aviation gasoline to fuel 1,000 daily bomber sorties from England to Germany. Government funding through the Defense Plant Corporation (DPC) also prompted Cities Service to build plants to manufacture butadiene, used to make synthetic rubber, and toluene, a fuel octane booster and solvent.


title: Citgo

text: In the years that followed, Cities Service grew into a fully diversified oil and gas company with global operations. Its green, expanding circle marketing logo became a familiar sight across much of the nation. During this time CEOs such as W. Alton Jones and Burl S. Watson ran the company.


title: Citgo

text: Cities Service Company inaugurated use of the Citgo brand in 1965 (officially styled "CITGO") for its refining, marketing and retail petroleum businesses (which became known internally as the RMT Division, for Refining, Marketing and Transportation). CITGO continued to be only a trademark, and not a company name, until the 1983 sale of what had been the RMT Division of Cities Service to Southland Corporation (now 7-Eleven Inc.).


title: Citgo

text: In 1982, T. Boone Pickens, founder of Mesa Petroleum, offered to buy Cities Service Company. Citgo responded by offering to buy Mesa, which was the first use of what became known as the "Pac-Man" take-over defense; i.e., a counter-tender offer initiated by a takeover target. Cities Service also threatened to dissolve itself by incremental sales rather than being taken over by Mesa, stating that it believed that the pieces would sell for more than Pickens was offering for the whole. Cities Service Company located what they thought would be a "white knight" to give them a better deal and entered into a merger agreement with Gulf Oil Corporation. Late in the summer of 1982, Gulf Oil terminated the merger agreement claiming that Cities Service's reserve estimates were over-stated. Over fifteen years of litigation resulted. (For a more detailed discussion of the Cities Service vs. Gulf Oil litigation, see Gulf Oil#Demise.) Ironically, two years later, Gulf Oil itself would collapse as a result of a Pickens-initiated takeover attempt.


title: Citgo

text: In the chaos that ensued after Gulf Oil's termination of its deal, Cities Service eventually entered into a merger agreement with, and was acquired by, Occidental Petroleum Corporation—a deal that was closed in the fall of 1982. That same year, Cities Service Company transferred all of the assets of its Refining, Marketing and Transportation division (which comprised its refining and retail petroleum business) into the newly formed Citgo Petroleum Corporation subsidiary, to ease the divestiture of the division, which Occidental had no interest in retaining. Pursuant to an agreement entered into in 1982, Citgo and the Citgo and Cities Service brands were sold by Occidental in 1983 to Southland Corporation, original owners of the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores.


title: Citgo

text: Fifty percent of Citgo was sold to Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA) in 1986, which acquired the remainder in 1990, resulting in the current ownership structure. In September 2010, in connection with the centennial of its original owner, Cities Service Company, Citgo unveiled a new retail design. Within five years, Citgo planned for all locations to display the new street image. With full ownership of Citgo, PDVSA at its peak controlled 10% of the US domestic oil market, creating a lucrative export chain from Venezuelan oil to American consumers, as the two largest buyers of Venezuelan petroleum are the United States and China, respectively.


title: Citgo

text: In October 2010, then President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, announced the intention to have PDVSA sell its Citgo subsidiary calling it a "bad business" and citing low profits since 2006. The minimum sale price was set at 10 billion US dollars; however, PDVSA has been unable to find a buyer at that price. It was confirmed in January 2015 that Citgo would not be sold, but rather bonds were sold by Citgo to give a dividend to PDVSA. The Bonds sold included a $1.5bn five-year bond and a $1.3bn term loan to be fully repaid in three and a half years.


title: Citgo

text: In November 2017, six executives working for Citgo, including five American citizens, were arrested while attending a meeting at the headquarters of PDVSA in Caracas, and as of June 2020 remained imprisoned without consular access and without a trial. Although granted house arrest in Venezuela in December 2019, the six men were transferred to harsher conditions in El Helicoide prison following U.S. President Donald Trump's hosting of opposition leader Juan Guaido at the 2020 State of the Union Address. Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called for their release on humanitarian grounds, stating that they were "wrongfully detained" and that they had been incarcerated without evidence presented against them for over two years. On March 9, 2022, one of the Citgo 6 was released following a visit by US officials, including US Ambassador to Venezuela James B. Story, to Venezuela, where they met with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Later that year, on October 1, the remaining five members of the Citgo 6 were released following a prisoner exchange.


title: Citgo

text: Other Venezuelan oil executives were arrested in what was seen as a purge designed to bolster more economic power behind President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, Asdrúbal Chávez, cousin of late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, was chosen as president of Citgo in November 2017.


title: Citgo

text: Citgo also has a much earlier connection to Venezuela, dating to the turn of the 20th century. Predecessor Warner-Quinley Asphalt's principal business was competition to the "Asphalt Trust" by means of a bitumen resources concession it held in Venezuela.


title: Citgo

text: Following the death of Hugo Chávez in 2013, his successor Nicolás Maduro presided in office through an era of economic depression caused by decreasing oil prices and sanctions. The destabilized economy resulted in hyperinflation, an economic depression, shortages in Venezuela and drastic increases in poverty, disease, child mortality, malnutrition, and crime. As a result of the crisis, Venezuela's debt to China and Russia – two political allies – increased. Due to the financial burden of this debt, Venezuela offered Citgo as collateral for Russian debt in 2016, raising the possibility that the Russian government could own Citgo due to Venezuela's high risk of default.


title: Citgo

text: In July 2018, Citgo president Asdrúbal Chávez had his work and tourist visas revoked by the United States and was ordered to leave the country within thirty days.


title: Citgo

text: On January 28, 2019, the U.S. Government imposed sanctions on PDVSA, freezing its assets in the U.S., and barring any U.S. firms and citizens from doing business with it. In February, Citgo cut ties with the PdVSA, and halted payments to them, placing them in a "blocked account". However, the sanctions limited Citgo's ability to refinance debt. In March, at the behest of the U.S. Treasury, 35 financial institutions secured a $1.2 billion loan to fund Citgo's daily operations and refinancing, allaying concerns about Citgo's ability to continue operating in the U.S.


title: Citgo

text: On June 6, 2019, the U.S. Treasury expanded the sanctions, clarifying that exports of diluents to Venezuela could be subject to sanctions.


title: Citgo

text: In a 2016 deal, Venezuela pledged 49.9% of Citgo to Russian oil firm Rosneft as collateral for a $1.5 billion loan. Both Republicans and Democrats in the United States urged oversight on this deal, describing Citgo's sale to Russia as a risk to the national security of the United States.


title: Citgo

text: In 2020, Citgo borrowed money in the form of a bond, and used 50.1% of the company's equity as collateral. If the bond is not repaid, the institutional investors that lent the money will obtain ownership of the 50.1%.


title: Citgo

text: Texaco sold some Citgo gas stations in the southeast when Chevron gained exclusive rights to the Texaco brand name in the U.S. in June 2006. On September 27, 2006, the 7-Eleven chain of convenience stores announced its 20-year contract with Citgo was coming to an end and would not be renewed. 7-Eleven spokeswoman Margaret Chabris said "Regardless of politics, we sympathize with many Americans' concern over derogatory comments about our country and its leadership recently made by Venezuela's president. Certainly Chavez's position and statements over the past year or so didn't tempt us to stay with Citgo."