title: Romário

text: In 1992, during Romário's successful season at PSV Eindhoven, he was called up to the national team for a friendly match against Germany on 16 December 1992 in Porto Alegre – Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. Coach Carlos Alberto Parreira left Romário as a reserve, after which he expressed his dissatisfaction, saying he would not have come over from Netherlands if he had known he was not going to play. These declarations caused Parreira to ban Romário from the Brazilian team.


title: Romário

text: Brazil played the first seven matches of the 1994 World Cup qualification without Romário, and suffered their first loss ever in World Cup qualifying against Bolivia. His exclusion provoked a wave of outrage, with journalists and fans calling for his return to the team. Brazil had to beat or tie against Uruguay at the Maracanã Stadium to finish first of their group. Before the match against Uruguay, Parreira gave up and called Romário. Back in his beloved number 11 jersey, prior to the game Romário stated: "I already know what is going to happen: I'm going to finish Uruguay". Brazil won 2–0, with Romário scoring both goals, and qualified for the World Cup. Parreira commented afterwards: "God sent Romário to the Maracanã".


title: Romário

text: At the 1994 World Cup held in the United States, Romário partnered Bebeto in attack to lead his country to a record fourth World Cup title. Romário scored five goals in the tournament: one in each of the three first round matches, against Russia, Cameroon, and a trademark toe-poke finish against Sweden. He scored one against the Netherlands in the quarterfinals; and the game-winning header against Sweden in the semifinals.


title: Romário

text: Romário also assisted Bebeto in the only goal of the match against the United States in San Francisco for the round of 16 elimination match. Although he did not get on the scoresheet in the final in Los Angeles against Italy, a game played in searing heat which ended as a goalless draw, he converted Brazil's second penalty in the shoot-out, which ended in a 3–2 win for Brazil. Romário won the World Cup Golden Ball as the most valuable player of the tournament, and was named in the World Cup All-Star Team. Romário is also the last player to have won the Golden Ball and the World Cup in the same tournament.


title: Romário

text: Described by Jere Longman of "The New York Times" as "short on humility, long on talent", Romário demanded a window seat on the team plane and refused to sit next to Bebeto. He did however join Bebeto in one of the most iconic images of the tournament. After Bebeto scored against the Netherlands in Dallas, his goal celebration generated headlines around the world when he began rocking an imaginary baby – his wife had given birth to their third child just days before – with Romário (and Mazinho) then joining Bebeto in the rocking motion.


title: Romário

text: In the subsequent years, Romário formed, along with fellow Brazilian forward Ronaldo, a feared attacking combo, which was colloquially referred to as the "Ro-Ro" duo. The first title which the strikers won while playing together in the front line, was the 1997 Copa América in Bolivia where they scored a total of eight goals. Later on in December 1997 they each scored a hat-trick in a 6–0 win against Australia in the 1997 FIFA Confederations Cup final. Romário finished the tournament as the top-goalscorer with seven goals while Ronaldo added four. In 1997 alone, the duo scored an impressive total of 34 international goals with 19 coming from Romário. The "Ro-Ro" attack was expected to headline the upcoming World Cup in France.


title: Romário

text: Romário was left out of the 1998 World Cup squad. Medical exams had revealed that he had a muscular injury, and he received intensive treatment leading up to the tournament, but he did not recover completely and was dismissed the day of the deadline for the World Cup squad submissions. Just after the decision was announced, Romário held a press conference where he broke down in tears while saying that "this is very sad for me, a big disappointment. This is a very difficult moment in my life". Brazil lost the World Cup final against hosts France.


title: Romário

text: Prior to the 2002 World Cup, Romário, aged 36, was in considerably good form while playing for Vasco da Gama, but once again he was left out of the national squad by coach Luiz Felipe Scolari due to indiscipline. The final incident happened when he pulled out of the Brazil squad for the 2001 Copa América in Colombia. He told Scolari that he was having an eye operation, but played friendlies for club side Vasco da Gama in Mexico and went on holiday instead. Romário gave a televised news conference in which he made his case and apologised, bursting into tears three times, though he said he could not remember doing or saying anything against the manager and the players. The BBC's South American football correspondent, Tim Vickery, called Romário's news conference "bizarre" and reported that there were "increasingly credible rumours" that "senior players asked Scolari not to recall the veteran striker". Scolari was unmoved and did not pick him, saying before his squad announcement that Romário's exclusion was "technical and tactical". After the announcement, he said that it was as a result of Romário's withdrawing from the Copa América: "People forget the details, but I do not. I almost got fired from the national team after [the Copa América]." (Brazil had been beaten in the quarter-finals by Honduras.) Without Romário, Brazil went on to win the World Cup for the fifth time.


title: Romário

text: On 27 April 2005, Romário played his last game with the Brazilian national team in a friendly and celebratory match in São Paulo. He wore the captain's armband and scored the second goal in Brazil's 3–0 win against Guatemala. Following the end of his playing career with Brazil, Romário successfully campaigned for Brazil to be awarded host status for the 2014 FIFA World Cup.


title: Romário

text: Since the 1990s Romário has been a footvolley enthusiast, playing with friends in various tournaments. In 2006, he won the VIP Footvolley.net Open in Miami Beach, USA; and was runner-up in the 2011 Footvolley World Championship in Rio de Janeiro. He also plays Beach soccer and represented Brazil (won the bronze medal) at the 2005 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup.


title: Romário

text: Romário is regarded as one of the greatest and most prolific strikers of all time. His coach at Barcelona, Johan Cruyff, defined him as a "genius of the goal area", as well as the greatest player he ever coached. His Brazilian compatriot Ronaldo, who played with him in his early career, reflected, "Romário was the most decisive player who I played with, he was a great goal scorer, finisher, skillful, opportunist. I think I learnt all of that from him". Italian playmaker Roberto Baggio said "Romário is one of the greatest players of all time. He is a master of art in the penalty area," a view echoed by Paolo Maldini with, "Romário was incredible in the penalty area." Diego Maradona on who was the best player he ever saw play, "It is between Romário and Van Basten". Romário wore the number 11 shirt for most of his club and international career, which inspired Neymar's number at Santos (he also went on to wear number 11 for Barcelona).


title: Romário

text: Along with two other FIFA World Player of the Year recipients, Brazilian compatriot Ronaldo and Liberian star George Weah, Romário was seen as a new breed of striker in the 1990s who would also operate outside the penalty area before running with the ball towards goal, with former France striker Thierry Henry stating; "Ronaldo together with Romário and George Weah, reinvented the centre-forward position. They were the first to drop from the penalty box to pick up the ball in midfield, switch to the flanks, attract and disorientate the central defenders with their runs, their accelerations, their dribbling." Nicknamed "Baixinho" (Portuguese for "The Little One," or "Shorty") Romário was an extremely agile player, who possessed excellent balance on the ball, and significant strength in spite of his small stature, which made him particularly effective in tight spaces in the penalty area, and allowed him to retain possession of the ball when put under pressure by larger players; his low centre of gravity and quick bursts of acceleration enabled him to outrun opponents over short distances and beat defenders with sudden turns or changes of pace, while his technique and finishing ability saw him score a wide variety of numerous goals, including goals from powerful and accurate first-time strikes – notably through his trademark toe-pokes with little back-lift – or even from chipped shots. His ball control and dribbling skills saw him use elaborate feints, such as: dragging the ball around a defender without it leaving his foot, and the flip flap.


title: Romário

text: While he could operate outside the penalty area in making runs from deep, Romário built a reputation as an extremely opportunistic "goal-poacher" inside the penalty area. He was known for his intelligence, offensive movement, and positional sense, as well as his ability to find space in the area and lose his markers by making late runs. In addition to his goalscoring, he was also known for his speed, as well as his creativity and vision, which gave him the ability to link-up with and provide assists for teammates. This enabled him to form many notable attacking partnerships with other prolific, technically gifted forwards, such as Stoichkov (at Barcelona), Edmundo (at Vasco da Gama), Euller (Vasco da Gama) and Bebeto and Ronaldo (with Brazil). In spite of his talent, however, Romário was also criticised for being too outspoken, and for his poor work rate throughout his career, in particular for his vocal dislike of training. Regarding his work-rate and lifestyle off the pitch, Rodrigo Orihuela of "The Guardian" stated in 2007: "Romário has never been much of a committed athlete and has always had a rather laissez-faire approach to training. 'The night was always my friend. When I go out, I am happy and when I am happy I score goals', he once summarised."


title: Romário

text: Romário has appeared in commercials for the sportswear company Nike. In 1998, he starred in a Nike commercial set in an airport with a number of stars from the Brazil national team, including Ronaldo and Roberto Carlos. Romário features in EA Sports' "FIFA" video game series; he was included in the "FIFA 14" Ultimate Team Legends.


title: Romário

text: In the 2010 general election, Romário was elected to the Chamber of Deputies on the Brazilian Socialist Party ticket. He was the sixth most voted candidate for deputy in Rio de Janeiro.


title: Romário

text: He pushed his political agenda against the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil, denouncing the event as immersed in corruption and money laundering. He also expressed disagreement with Sean Kiley, Ricardo Teixeira, Jérôme Valcke, and Sepp Blatter. He is one of various figures claiming that the holding of the 2018 FIFA World Cup was "stolen" from England and sold to Russia in a part of 2011 scandal by FIFA.


title: Romário

text: On 19 February 2014, Romário announced that he would run for the Brazilian senate in the 2014 general election, and the decision was officially confirmed in June. On 5 October, Romario was elected to the Senate with the most votes received ever by a candidate representing the state of Rio de Janeiro.


title: Romário

text: In June 2017, Romário left the PSB and joined Podemos, becoming president of the party in the State of Rio de Janeiro. In March 2018, Romário announced his run for governor of Rio de Janeiro in the Brazilian general election as a candidate for the centrist Podemos party. Romário finished in fourth place, with 8.6% of valid votes.


title: Romário

text: In April 2021, Romário switched parties again, to the Liberal Party. In October, he publicly endorsed the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, and criticised the previous administration of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.


title: The Midnight Club

text: The Midnight Club is an American horror mystery-thriller streaming television series created by Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong, with Flanagan serving as showrunner, lead writer and executive producer. The series is set in a hospice and follows eight terminally ill young adults who form "the Midnight Club", meeting up each night to tell each other scary tales; it features an overarching story while also frequently depicting those tales on-screen. Although mostly based on the 1994 novel "The Midnight Club" by Christopher Pike, the series also contains elements from many other Pike books, featured in the "Midnight Club" tales themselves.


title: The Midnight Club

text: The series stars Iman Benson, Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, Annarah Shephard, William Chris Sumpter, and Sauriyan Sapkota as the eight Midnight Club members, alongside Heather Langenkamp, Zach Gilford, Matt Biedel, and Samantha Sloyan as older adults working at or living near the hospice; in addition to their main characters, cast members also portray the ones featured in the "Midnight Club" tales.


title: The Midnight Club

text: "The Midnight Club" premiered on Netflix on October 7, 2022. Unlike all three of Flanagan's previous series, it is not a miniseries, and was intended to last several seasons. However, in December 2022, the series was canceled after one season.


title: The Midnight Club

text: A group of eight close terminally ill young adults resides in the Brightcliffe Home hospice outside of Seattle run by an enigmatic doctor. They meet at midnight every night to tell each other scary stories. They have a pact that the first one to succumb to their disease is responsible for communicating with the others from beyond the grave.


title: The Midnight Club

text: In May 2020, it was announced an adaptation of Christopher Pike's young adult novel "The Midnight Club" would be created for Netflix by Mike Flanagan and Leah Fong. In an interview for IGN, Flanagan revealed that he was profoundly inspired by Nickelodeon’s horror anthology series "Are You Afraid of the Dark?". On the series' release in October 2022, Flanagan confirmed that the series would also adapt all "28 books" of Pike's, having pitched the series as ""The Midnight Club" — but the stories the kids tell [each other] will be other Christopher Pike books", planning for multiple seasons. On December 1, 2022, Netflix canceled the series after one season. Following its cancellation, Flanagan revealed what was planned for later seasons on his Tumblr, including the ultimate fates of the various characters and answers to the show's lingering mysteries.


title: The Midnight Club

text: Flanagan confirmed the cast in a series of tweets on Twitter: Adia, Igby Rigney, Ruth Codd, Aya Furukawa, Annarah Shephard, William Chris Sumpter, Sauriyan Sapkota as the titular cast, and Heather Langenkamp as the doctor presiding over the hospice of the terminally ill. Zach Gilford and Matt Biedel, and recurring Flanagan collaborators Samantha Sloyan and Robert Longstreet appear in recurring roles. In April 2021, Iman Benson, Larsen Thompson, William B. Davis, Crystal Balint, and Patricia Drak joined the cast.


title: The Midnight Club

text: The project began production on March 15, 2021, in Burnaby, British Columbia, and was planned to conclude on September 8, 2021, but actually finished production on September 10. The first two episodes of the series are directed by Flanagan, and other episodes in the season were helmed by directors Axelle Carolyn, Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour, Michael Fimognari, Morgan Beggs, and Viet Nguyen.


title: The Midnight Club

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported an 87% approval rating with an average rating of 7.4/10, based on 54 critic reviews. The website's critics' consensus reads, "Mike Flanagan's hot streak of heartfelt horror stories continues strong in "The Midnight Club", a tale of terminal teenagers told with jolts and joie de vivre." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 64 out of 100 based on 21 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Midnight Club

text: The first episode of the series broke the Guinness World Record for the most scripted jump-scares in a single episode of television at 21 jump-scares.


title: The Midnight Club

text: Between October 2 and October 23, 2022, "The Midnight Club" recorded 90.31 million hours in the Netflix top 10s.


title: Extinction

text: Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and recover may have been lost before this point. Because a species' potential range may be very large, determining this moment is difficult, and is usually done retrospectively. This difficulty leads to phenomena such as Lazarus taxa, where a species presumed extinct abruptly "reappears" (typically in the fossil record) after a period of apparent absence.


title: Extinction

text: More than 99% of all species that ever lived on Earth, amounting to over five billion species, are estimated to have died out. It is estimated that there are currently around 8.7 million species of eukaryote globally, and possibly many times more if microorganisms, like bacteria, are included. Notable extinct animal species include non-avian dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, dodos, mammoths, ground sloths, thylacines, trilobites, and golden toads.


title: Extinction

text: Through evolution, species arise through the process of speciation—where new varieties of organisms arise and thrive when they are able to find and exploit an ecological niche—and species become extinct when they are no longer able to survive in changing conditions or against superior competition. The relationship between animals and their ecological niches has been firmly established. A typical species becomes extinct within 10 million years of its first appearance, although some species, called living fossils, survive with little to no morphological change for hundreds of millions of years.


title: Extinction

text: Mass extinctions are relatively rare events; however, isolated extinctions of species and clades are quite common, and are a natural part of the evolutionary process. Only recently have extinctions been recorded and scientists have become alarmed at the current high rate of extinctions. Most species that become extinct are never scientifically documented. Some scientists estimate that up to half of presently existing plant and animal species may become extinct by 2100. A 2018 report indicated that the phylogenetic diversity of 300 mammalian species erased during the human era since the Late Pleistocene would require 5 to 7 million years to recover.


title: Extinction

text: According to the 2019 "Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services" by IPBES, the biomass of wild mammals has fallen by 82%, natural ecosystems have lost about half their area and a million species are at risk of extinction—all largely as a result of human actions. Twenty-five percent of plant and animal species are threatened with extinction. In a subsequent report, IPBES listed unsustainable fishing, hunting and logging as being some of the primary drivers of the global extinction crisis.


title: Extinction

text: In June 2019, one million species of plants and animals were at risk of extinction. At least 571 species have been lost since 1750, but likely many more. The main cause of the extinctions is the destruction of natural habitats by human activities, such as cutting down forests and converting land into fields for farming.


title: Extinction

text: A dagger symbol (†) placed next to the name of a species or other taxon normally indicates its status as extinct.


title: Extinction

text: A species is extinct when the last existing member dies. Extinction therefore becomes a certainty when there are no surviving individuals that can reproduce and create a new generation. A species may become functionally extinct when only a handful of individuals survive, which cannot reproduce due to poor health, age, sparse distribution over a large range, a lack of individuals of both sexes (in sexually reproducing species), or other reasons.


title: Extinction

text: Pinpointing the extinction (or pseudoextinction) of a species requires a clear definition of that species. If it is to be declared extinct, the species in question must be uniquely distinguishable from any ancestor or daughter species, and from any other closely related species. Extinction of a species (or replacement by a daughter species) plays a key role in the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge.


title: Extinction

text: In ecology, "extinction" is sometimes used informally to refer to local extinction, in which a species ceases to exist in the chosen area of study, despite still existing elsewhere. Local extinctions may be made good by the reintroduction of individuals of that species taken from other locations; wolf reintroduction is an example of this. Species that are not globally extinct are termed extant. Those species that are extant, yet are threatened with extinction, are referred to as threatened or endangered species.


title: Extinction

text: Currently, an important aspect of extinction is human attempts to preserve critically endangered species. These are reflected by the creation of the conservation status "extinct in the wild" (EW). Species listed under this status by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) are not known to have any living specimens in the wild and are maintained only in zoos or other artificial environments. Some of these species are functionally extinct, as they are no longer part of their natural habitat and it is unlikely the species will ever be restored to the wild. When possible, modern zoological institutions try to maintain a viable population for species preservation and possible future reintroduction to the wild, through use of carefully planned breeding programs.


title: Extinction

text: The extinction of one species' wild population can have knock-on effects, causing further extinctions. These are also called "chains of extinction". This is especially common with extinction of keystone species.


title: Extinction

text: A 2018 study indicated that the sixth mass extinction started in the Late Pleistocene could take up to 5 to 7 million years to restore 2.5 billion years of unique mammal diversity to what it was before the human era.


title: Extinction

text: Extinction of a parent species where daughter species or subspecies are still extant is called pseudoextinction or phyletic extinction. Effectively, the old taxon vanishes, transformed (anagenesis) into a successor, or split into more than one (cladogenesis).


title: Extinction

text: Pseudoextinction is difficult to demonstrate unless one has a strong chain of evidence linking a living species to members of a pre-existing species. For example, it is sometimes claimed that the extinct "Hyracotherium", which was an early horse that shares a common ancestor with the modern horse, is pseudoextinct, rather than extinct, because there are several extant species of "Equus", including zebra and donkey; however, as fossil species typically leave no genetic material behind, one cannot say whether "Hyracotherium" evolved into more modern horse species or merely evolved from a common ancestor with modern horses. Pseudoextinction is much easier to demonstrate for larger taxonomic groups.


title: Extinction

text: The coelacanth, a fish related to lungfish and tetrapods, was considered to have been extinct since the end of the Cretaceous Period. In 1938, however, a living specimen was found off the Chalumna River (now Tyolomnqa) on the east coast of South Africa. Museum curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer discovered the fish among the catch of a local trawler operated by Captain Hendrick Goosen, on December 23, 1938. A local chemistry professor, JLB Smith, confirmed the fish's importance with a famous cable: "MOST IMPORTANT PRESERVE SKELETON AND GILLS = FISH DESCRIBED".


title: Extinction

text: Far more recent possible or presumed extinctions of species which may turn out still to exist include the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger ("Thylacinus cynocephalus"), the last known example of which died in Hobart Zoo in Tasmania in 1936; the Japanese wolf ("Canis lupus hodophilax"), last sighted over 100 years ago; the American ivory-billed woodpecker ("Campephilus principalis"), with the last universally accepted sighting in 1944; and the slender-billed curlew ("Numenius tenuirostris"), not seen since 2007.


title: Extinction

text: As long as species have been evolving, species have been going extinct. It is estimated that over 99.9% of all species that ever lived are extinct. The average lifespan of a species is 1–10 million years, although this varies widely between taxa.


title: Extinction

text: There are a variety of causes that can contribute directly or indirectly to the extinction of a species or group of species. "Just as each species is unique", write Beverly and Stephen C. Stearns, "so is each extinction ... the causes for each are varied—some subtle and complex, others obvious and simple". Most simply, any species that cannot survive and reproduce in its environment and cannot move to a new environment where it can do so, dies out and becomes extinct. Extinction of a species may come suddenly when an otherwise healthy species is wiped out completely, as when toxic pollution renders its entire habitat unliveable; or may occur gradually over thousands or millions of years, such as when a species gradually loses out in competition for food to better adapted competitors. Extinction may occur a long time after the events that set it in motion, a phenomenon known as extinction debt.


title: Extinction

text: Assessing the relative importance of genetic factors compared to environmental ones as the causes of extinction has been compared to the debate on nature and nurture. The question of whether more extinctions in the fossil record have been caused by evolution or by competition or by predation or by disease or by catastrophe is a subject of discussion; Mark Newman, the author of "Modeling Extinction", argues for a mathematical model that falls in all positions. By contrast, conservation biology uses the extinction vortex model to classify extinctions by cause. When concerns about human extinction have been raised, for example in Sir Martin Rees' 2003 book "Our Final Hour", those concerns lie with the effects of climate change or technological disaster.


title: Extinction

text: Currently, environmental groups and some governments are concerned with the extinction of species caused by humanity, and they try to prevent further extinctions through a variety of conservation programs. Humans can cause extinction of a species through overharvesting, pollution, habitat destruction, introduction of invasive species (such as new predators and food competitors), overhunting, and other influences. Explosive, unsustainable human population growth and increasing per capita consumption are essential drivers of the extinction crisis. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), 784 extinctions have been recorded since the year 1500, the arbitrary date selected to define "recent" extinctions, up to the year 2004; with many more likely to have gone unnoticed. Several species have also been listed as extinct since 2004.


title: Extinction

text: If adaptation increasing population fitness is slower than environmental degradation plus the accumulation of slightly deleterious mutations, then a population will go extinct. Smaller populations have fewer beneficial mutations entering the population each generation, slowing adaptation. It is also easier for slightly deleterious mutations to fix in small populations; the resulting positive feedback loop between small population size and low fitness can cause mutational meltdown.


title: Extinction

text: Limited geographic range is the most important determinant of genus extinction at background rates but becomes increasingly irrelevant as mass extinction arises. Limited geographic range is a cause both of small population size and of greater vulnerability to local environmental catastrophes.


title: Extinction

text: Extinction rates can be affected not just by population size, but by any factor that affects evolvability, including balancing selection, cryptic genetic variation, phenotypic plasticity, and robustness. A diverse or deep gene pool gives a population a higher chance in the short term of surviving an adverse change in conditions. Effects that cause or reward a loss in genetic diversity can increase the chances of extinction of a species. Population bottlenecks can dramatically reduce genetic diversity by severely limiting the number of reproducing individuals and make inbreeding more frequent.


title: Extinction

text: Extinction sometimes results for species evolved to specific ecologies that are subjected to genetic pollution—i.e., uncontrolled hybridization, introgression and genetic swamping that lead to homogenization or out-competition from the introduced (or hybrid) species. Endemic populations can face such extinctions when new populations are imported or selectively bred by people, or when habitat modification brings previously isolated species into contact. Extinction is likeliest for rare species coming into contact with more abundant ones; interbreeding can swamp the rarer gene pool and create hybrids, depleting the purebred gene pool (for example, the endangered wild water buffalo is most threatened with extinction by genetic pollution from the abundant domestic water buffalo). Such extinctions are not always apparent from morphological (non-genetic) observations. Some degree of gene flow is a normal evolutionary process; nevertheless, hybridization (with or without introgression) threatens rare species' existence.


title: Extinction

text: The gene pool of a species or a population is the variety of genetic information in its living members. A large gene pool (extensive genetic diversity) is associated with robust populations that can survive bouts of intense selection. Meanwhile, low genetic diversity (see inbreeding and population bottlenecks) reduces the range of adaptions possible. Replacing native with alien genes narrows genetic diversity within the original population, thereby increasing the chance of extinction.


title: Extinction

text: Habitat degradation is currently the main anthropogenic cause of species extinctions. The main cause of habitat degradation worldwide is agriculture, with urban sprawl, logging, mining, and some fishing practices close behind. The degradation of a species' habitat may alter the fitness landscape to such an extent that the species is no longer able to survive and becomes extinct. This may occur by direct effects, such as the environment becoming toxic, or indirectly, by limiting a species' ability to compete effectively for diminished resources or against new competitor species.


title: Extinction

text: Habitat degradation through toxicity can kill off a species very rapidly, by killing all living members through contamination or sterilizing them. It can also occur over longer periods at lower toxicity levels by affecting life span, reproductive capacity, or competitiveness.


title: Extinction

text: Habitat degradation can also take the form of a physical destruction of niche habitats. The widespread destruction of tropical rainforests and replacement with open pastureland is widely cited as an example of this; elimination of the dense forest eliminated the infrastructure needed by many species to survive. For example, a fern that depends on dense shade for protection from direct sunlight can no longer survive without forest to shelter it. Another example is the destruction of ocean floors by bottom trawling.


title: Extinction

text: Diminished resources or introduction of new competitor species also often accompany habitat degradation. Global warming has allowed some species to expand their range, bringing unwelcome competition to other species that previously occupied that area. Sometimes these new competitors are predators and directly affect prey species, while at other times they may merely outcompete vulnerable species for limited resources. Vital resources including water and food can also be limited during habitat degradation, leading to extinction.


title: Extinction

text: In the natural course of events, species become extinct for a number of reasons, including but not limited to: extinction of a necessary host, prey or pollinator, inter-species competition, inability to deal with evolving diseases and changing environmental conditions (particularly sudden changes) which can act to introduce novel predators, or to remove prey. Recently in geological time, humans have become an additional cause of extinction (some people would say premature extinction) of some species, either as a new mega-predator or by transporting animals and plants from one part of the world to another. Such introductions have been occurring for thousands of years, sometimes intentionally (e.g. livestock released by sailors on islands as a future source of food) and sometimes accidentally (e.g. rats escaping from boats). In most cases, the introductions are unsuccessful, but when an invasive alien species does become established, the consequences can be catastrophic. Invasive alien species can affect native species directly by eating them, competing with them, and introducing pathogens or parasites that sicken or kill them; or indirectly by destroying or degrading their habitat. Human populations may themselves act as invasive predators. According to the "overkill hypothesis", the swift extinction of the megafauna in areas such as Australia (40,000 years before present), North and South America (12,000 years before present), Madagascar, Hawaii (AD 300–1000), and New Zealand (AD 1300–1500), resulted from the sudden introduction of human beings to environments full of animals that had never seen them before and were therefore completely unadapted to their predation techniques.


title: Extinction

text: Coextinction refers to the loss of a species due to the extinction of another; for example, the extinction of parasitic insects following the loss of their hosts. Coextinction can also occur when a species loses its pollinator, or to predators in a food chain who lose their prey. "Species coextinction is a manifestation of one of the interconnectednesses of organisms in complex ecosystems ... While coextinction may not be the most important cause of species extinctions, it is certainly an insidious one." Coextinction is especially common when a keystone species goes extinct. Models suggest that coextinction is the most common form of biodiversity loss. There may be a cascade of coextinction across the trophic levels. Such effects are most severe in mutualistic and parasitic relationships. An example of coextinction is the Haast's eagle and the moa: the Haast's eagle was a predator that became extinct because its food source became extinct. The moa were several species of flightless birds that were a food source for the Haast's eagle.


title: Extinction

text: Extinction as a result of climate change has been confirmed by fossil studies. Particularly, the extinction of amphibians during the Carboniferous Rainforest Collapse, 305 million years ago. A 2003 review across 14 biodiversity research centers predicted that, because of climate change, 15–37% of land species would be "committed to extinction" by 2050. The ecologically rich areas that would potentially suffer the heaviest losses include the Cape Floristic Region and the Caribbean Basin. These areas might see a doubling of present carbon dioxide levels and rising temperatures that could eliminate 56,000 plant and 3,700 animal species. Climate change has also been found to be a factor in habitat loss and desertification.


title: Extinction

text: Studies of fossils following species from the time they evolved to their extinction show that species with high sexual dimorphism, especially characteristics in males that are used to compete for mating, are at a higher risk of extinction and die out faster than less sexually dimorphic species, the least sexually dimorphic species surviving for millions of years while the most sexually dimorphic species die out within mere thousands of years. Earlier studies based on counting the number of currently living species in modern taxa have shown a higher number of species in more sexually dimorphic taxa which have been interpreted as higher survival in taxa with more sexual selection, but such studies of modern species only measure indirect effects of extinction and are subject to error sources such as dying and doomed taxa speciating more due to splitting of habitat ranges into more small isolated groups during the habitat retreat of taxa approaching extinction. Possible causes of the higher extinction risk in species with more sexual selection shown by the comprehensive fossil studies that rule out such error sources include expensive sexually selected ornaments having negative effects on the ability to survive natural selection, as well as sexual selection removing a diversity of genes that under current ecological conditions are neutral for natural selection but some of which may be important for surviving climate change.


title: Extinction

text: There have been at least five mass extinctions in the history of life on earth, and four in the last 350 million years in which many species have disappeared in a relatively short period of geological time. A massive eruptive event that released large quantities of tephra particles into the atmosphere is considered to be one likely cause of the "Permian–Triassic extinction event" about 250 million years ago, which is estimated to have killed 90% of species then existing. There is also evidence to suggest that this event was preceded by another mass extinction, known as Olson's Extinction. The Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event (K–Pg) occurred 66 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period; it is best known for having wiped out non-avian dinosaurs, among many other species.


title: Extinction

text: According to a 1998 survey of 400 biologists conducted by New York's American Museum of Natural History, nearly 70% believed that the Earth is currently in the early stages of a human-caused mass extinction, known as the Holocene extinction. In that survey, the same proportion of respondents agreed with the prediction that up to 20% of all living populations could become extinct within 30 years (by 2028). A 2014 special edition of "Science" declared there is widespread consensus on the issue of human-driven mass species extinctions. A 2020 study published in "PNAS" stated that the contemporary extinction crisis "may be the most serious environmental threat to the persistence of civilization, because it is irreversible."


title: Extinction

text: Biologist E. O. Wilson estimated in 2002 that if current rates of human destruction of the biosphere continue, one-half of all plant and animal species of life on earth will be extinct in 100 years. More significantly, the current rate of global species extinctions is estimated as 100 to 1,000 times "background" rates (the average extinction rates in the evolutionary time scale of planet Earth), faster than at any other time in human history, while future rates are likely 10,000 times higher. However, some groups are going extinct much faster. Biologists Paul R. Ehrlich and Stuart Pimm, among others, contend that human population growth and overconsumption are the main drivers of the modern extinction crisis.


title: Extinction

text: In January 2020, the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity drafted a plan to mitigate the contemporary extinction crisis by establishing a deadline of 2030 to protect 30% of the earth's land and oceans and reduce pollution by 50%, with the goal of allowing for the restoration of ecosystems by 2050. The 2020 United Nations' "Global Biodiversity Outlook" report stated that of the 20 biodiversity goals laid out by the Aichi Biodiversity Targets in 2010, only 6 were "partially achieved" by the deadline of 2020. The report warned that biodiversity will continue to decline if the status quo is not changed, in particular the "currently unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, population growth and technological developments". In a 2021 report published in the journal "Frontiers in Conservation Science", some top scientists asserted that even if the Aichi Biodiversity Targets set for 2020 had been achieved, it would not have resulted in a significant mitigation of biodiversity loss. They added that failure of the global community to reach these targets is hardly surprising given that biodiversity loss is "nowhere close to the top of any country's priorities, trailing far behind other concerns such as employment, healthcare, economic growth, or currency stability."


title: Extinction

text: For much of history, the modern understanding of extinction as the end of a species was incompatible with the prevailing worldview. Prior to the 19th century, much of Western society adhered to the belief that the world was created by God and as such was complete and perfect. This concept reached its heyday in the 1700s with the peak popularity of a theological concept called the great chain of being, in which all life on earth, from the tiniest microorganism to God, is linked in a continuous chain. The extinction of a species was impossible under this model, as it would create gaps or missing links in the chain and destroy the natural order. Thomas Jefferson was a firm supporter of the great chain of being and an opponent of extinction, famously denying the extinction of the woolly mammoth on the grounds that nature never allows a race of animals to become extinct.


title: Extinction

text: A series of fossils were discovered in the late 17th century that appeared unlike any living species. As a result, the scientific community embarked on a voyage of creative rationalization, seeking to understand what had happened to these species within a framework that did not account for total extinction. In October 1686, Robert Hooke presented an impression of a nautilus to the Royal Society that was more than two feet in diameter, and morphologically distinct from any known living species. Hooke theorized that this was simply because the species lived in the deep ocean and no one had discovered them yet. While he contended that it was possible a species could be "lost", he thought this highly unlikely. Similarly, in 1695, Sir Thomas Molyneux published an account of enormous antlers found in Ireland that did not belong to any extant taxa in that area. Molyneux reasoned that they came from the North American moose and that the animal had once been common on the British Isles. Rather than suggest that this indicated the possibility of species going extinct, he argued that although organisms could become locally extinct, they could never be entirely lost and would continue to exist in some unknown region of the globe. The antlers were later confirmed to be from the extinct deer "Megaloceros". Hooke and Molyneux's line of thinking was difficult to disprove. When parts of the world had not been thoroughly examined and charted, scientists could not rule out that animals found only in the fossil record were not simply "hiding" in unexplored regions of the Earth.


title: Extinction

text: Georges Cuvier is credited with establishing the modern conception of extinction in a 1796 lecture to the French Institute, though he would spend most of his career trying to convince the wider scientific community of his theory. Cuvier was a well-regarded geologist, lauded for his ability to reconstruct the anatomy of an unknown species from a few fragments of bone. His primary evidence for extinction came from mammoth skulls found in the Paris basin. Cuvier recognized them as distinct from any known living species of elephant, and argued that it was highly unlikely such an enormous animal would go undiscovered. In 1812, Cuvier, along with Alexandre Brongniart and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, mapped the strata of the Paris basin. They saw alternating saltwater and freshwater deposits, as well as patterns of the appearance and disappearance of fossils throughout the record. From these patterns, Cuvier inferred historic cycles of catastrophic flooding, extinction, and repopulation of the earth with new species.


title: Extinction

text: Cuvier's fossil evidence showed that very different life forms existed in the past than those that exist today, a fact that was accepted by most scientists. The primary debate focused on whether this turnover caused by extinction was gradual or abrupt in nature. Cuvier understood extinction to be the result of cataclysmic events that wipe out huge numbers of species, as opposed to the gradual decline of a species over time. His catastrophic view of the nature of extinction garnered him many opponents in the newly emerging school of uniformitarianism.


title: Extinction

text: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a gradualist and colleague of Cuvier, saw the fossils of different life forms as evidence of the mutable character of species. While Lamarck did not deny the possibility of extinction, he believed that it was exceptional and rare and that most of the change in species over time was due to gradual change. Unlike Cuvier, Lamarck was skeptical that catastrophic events of a scale large enough to cause total extinction were possible. In his geological history of the earth titled Hydrogeologie, Lamarck instead argued that the surface of the earth was shaped by gradual erosion and deposition by water, and that species changed over time in response to the changing environment.


title: Extinction

text: Charles Lyell, a noted geologist and founder of uniformitarianism, believed that past processes should be understood using present day processes. Like Lamarck, Lyell acknowledged that extinction could occur, noting the total extinction of the dodo and the extirpation of indigenous horses to the British Isles. He similarly argued against mass extinctions, believing that any extinction must be a gradual process. Lyell also showed that Cuvier's original interpretation of the Parisian strata was incorrect. Instead of the catastrophic floods inferred by Cuvier, Lyell demonstrated that patterns of saltwater and freshwater deposits, like those seen in the Paris basin, could be formed by a slow rise and fall of sea levels.


title: Extinction

text: The concept of extinction was integral to Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species", with less fit lineages disappearing over time. For Darwin, extinction was a constant side effect of competition. Because of the wide reach of "On the Origin of Species", it was widely accepted that extinction occurred gradually and evenly (a concept now referred to as background extinction). It was not until 1982, when David Raup and Jack Sepkoski published their seminal paper on mass extinctions, that Cuvier was vindicated and catastrophic extinction was accepted as an important mechanism. The current understanding of extinction is a synthesis of the cataclysmic extinction events proposed by Cuvier, and the background extinction events proposed by Lyell and Darwin.


title: Extinction

text: Extinction is an important research topic in the field of zoology, and biology in general, and has also become an area of concern outside the scientific community. A number of organizations, such as the Worldwide Fund for Nature, have been created with the goal of preserving species from extinction. Governments have attempted, through enacting laws, to avoid habitat destruction, agricultural over-harvesting, and pollution. While many human-caused extinctions have been accidental, humans have also engaged in the deliberate destruction of some species, such as dangerous viruses, and the total destruction of other problematic species has been suggested. Other species were deliberately driven to extinction, or nearly so, due to poaching or because they were "undesirable", or to push for other human agendas. One example was the near extinction of the American bison, which was nearly wiped out by mass hunts sanctioned by the United States government, to force the removal of Native Americans, many of whom relied on the bison for food.


title: Extinction

text: Biologist Bruce Walsh states three reasons for scientific interest in the preservation of species: genetic resources, ecosystem stability, and ethics; and today the scientific community "stress[es] the importance" of maintaining biodiversity.


title: Extinction

text: In modern times, commercial and industrial interests often have to contend with the effects of production on plant and animal life. However, some technologies with minimal, or no, proven harmful effects on "Homo sapiens" can be devastating to wildlife (for example, DDT). Biogeographer Jared Diamond notes that while big business may label environmental concerns as "exaggerated", and often cause "devastating damage", some corporations find it in their interest to adopt good conservation practices, and even engage in preservation efforts that surpass those taken by national parks.


title: Extinction

text: Governments sometimes see the loss of native species as a loss to ecotourism, and can enact laws with severe punishment against the trade in native species in an effort to prevent extinction in the wild. Nature preserves are created by governments as a means to provide continuing habitats to species crowded by human expansion. The 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity has resulted in international Biodiversity Action Plan programmes, which attempt to provide comprehensive guidelines for government biodiversity conservation. Advocacy groups, such as The Wildlands Project and the Alliance for Zero Extinctions, work to educate the public and pressure governments into action.


title: Extinction

text: People who live close to nature can be dependent on the survival of all the species in their environment, leaving them highly exposed to extinction risks. However, people prioritize day-to-day survival over species conservation; with human overpopulation in tropical developing countries, there has been enormous pressure on forests due to subsistence agriculture, including slash-and-burn agricultural techniques that can reduce endangered species's habitats.


title: Extinction

text: Antinatalist philosopher David Benatar concludes that any popular concern about non-human species extinction usually arises out of concern about how the loss of a species will impact human wants and needs, that "we shall live in a world impoverished by the loss of one aspect of faunal diversity, that we shall no longer be able to behold or use that species of animal." He notes that typical concerns about possible human extinction, such as the loss of individual members, are not considered in regards to non-human species extinction. Anthropologist Jason Hickel speculates that the reason humanity seems largely indifferent to anthropogenic mass species extinction is that we see ourselves as separate from the natural world and the organisms within it. He says that this is due in part to the logic of capitalism: "that the world is not really alive, and it is certainly not our kin, but rather just stuff to be extracted and discarded – and that includes most of the human beings living here too."


title: Extinction

text: "Dracunculus medinensis", or Guinea worm, a parasitic worm which causes the disease dracunculiasis, is now close to eradication thanks to efforts led by the Carter Center.


title: Extinction

text: "Treponema pallidum pertenue", a bacterium which causes the disease yaws, is in the process of being eradicated.


title: Extinction

text: Biologist Olivia Judson has advocated the deliberate extinction of certain disease-carrying mosquito species. In a September 25, 2003 article in "The New York Times", she advocated "specicide" of thirty mosquito species by introducing a genetic element that can insert itself into another crucial gene, to create recessive "knockout genes". She says that the "Anopheles" mosquitoes (which spread malaria) and "Aedes" mosquitoes (which spread dengue fever, yellow fever, elephantiasis, and other diseases) represent only 30 of around 3,500 mosquito species; eradicating these would save at least one million human lives per annum, at a cost of reducing the genetic diversity of the family Culicidae by only 1%. She further argues that since species become extinct "all the time" the disappearance of a few more will not destroy the ecosystem: "We're not left with a wasteland every time a species vanishes. Removing one species sometimes causes shifts in the populations of other species—but different need not mean worse." In addition, anti-malarial and mosquito control programs offer little realistic hope to the 300 million people in developing nations who will be infected with acute illnesses this year. Although trials are ongoing, she writes that if they fail "we should consider the ultimate swatting."


title: Extinction

text: Biologist E. O. Wilson has advocated the eradication of several species of mosquito, including malaria vector "Anopheles gambiae". Wilson stated, "I'm talking about a very small number of species that have co-evolved with us and are preying on humans, so it would certainly be acceptable to remove them. I believe it's just common sense."


title: Extinction

text: There have been many campaigns – some successful – to locally eradicate tsetse flies and their trypanosomes in areas, countries, and islands of Africa (including Príncipe). There are currently serious efforts to do away with them all across Africa, and this is generally viewed as beneficial and morally necessary, although not always.


title: Extinction

text: Some, such as Harvard geneticist George M. Church, believe that ongoing technological advances will let us "bring back to life" an extinct species by cloning, using DNA from the remains of that species. Proposed targets for cloning include the mammoth, the thylacine, and the Pyrenean ibex. For this to succeed, enough individuals would have to be cloned, from the DNA of different individuals (in the case of sexually reproducing organisms) to create a viable population. Though bioethical and philosophical objections have been raised, the cloning of extinct creatures seems theoretically possible.


title: Extinction

text: In 2003, scientists tried to clone the extinct Pyrenean ibex ("C. p. pyrenaica"). This attempt failed: of the 285 embryos reconstructed, 54 were transferred to 12 mountain goats and mountain goat–domestic goat hybrids, but only two survived the initial two months of gestation before they, too, died. In 2009, a second attempt was made to clone the Pyrenean ibex: one clone was born alive, but died seven minutes later, due to physical defects in the lungs.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (; SADR; also romanized with Saharawi; ' ), also known as Western Sahara, is a partially recognized state, recognised by 45 UN member states, located in the western Maghreb, which claims the non-self-governing territory of Western Sahara, but controls only the easternmost one-fifth of that territory. Between 1884 and 1975, Western Sahara was known as Spanish Sahara, a Spanish colony (later an overseas province). The SADR is one of the two African states in which Spanish is a significant language, the other being Equatorial Guinea.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The SADR was proclaimed by the Polisario Front (a former socialist liberation force which has since reformed its ideological and political views) on 27 February 1976, in Bir Lehlou, Western Sahara. The SADR government controls about 20–25% of the territory it claims. It calls the territories under its control the "Liberated Territories" or the "Free Zone". Morocco controls and administers the rest of the disputed territory, and calls these lands its Southern Provinces. The SADR government considers the Moroccan-held territory to be occupied territory, while Morocco considers the much smaller SADR-held territory to be a buffer zone. The claimed capital city of the SADR is El-Aaiún (Laayoune) (the former capital of Western Sahara). Since SADR does not control El-Aaiún, they have a temporary capital which moved from Bir Lehlou to Tifariti in 2008. The seat of the SADR government is located in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf, Algeria.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The SADR maintains diplomatic relations with 45 United Nations states, and is a full member of the African Union.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The name "Sahrawi" derives from the romanization of the Arabic word , meaning 'Inhabitant of the Desert'. The word then is derived from the Arabic word (), meaning 'desert'.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: Following the evacuation of the Spanish (as a consequence of the Moroccan Green March), Spain, Morocco, and Mauritania signed the Madrid Accords on 14 November 1975, six days before Francisco Franco died. Morocco and Mauritania responded by annexing the territory of Western Sahara. On 26 February 1976, Spain informed the United Nations (UN) that as of that date it had terminated its presence in Western Sahara and relinquished its responsibilities, which left the region devoid of any Administering Power. Neither Morocco nor Mauritania gained international recognition, and war ensued with the independence-seeking Polisario Front. The UN considers the Polisario Front to be the legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people, and maintains that the people of Western Sahara have a right to "self-determination and independence".


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The creation of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic was proclaimed on 27 February 1976, as the Polisario declared the need for a new entity to fill what they considered a political void left by the departing Spanish colonizers. While the claimed capital is the former Western Sahara capital El-Aaiún (which is in Moroccan-controlled territory), the proclamation was made in the government-in-exile's provisional capital, Bir Lehlou, which remained in Polisario-held territory under the 1991 ceasefire (see Settlement Plan). On 27 February 2008, the provisional capital was formally moved to Tifariti. Day-to-day business, however, is conducted in the Sahrawi refugee camps in Tindouf Province, Algeria, which house most of the Sahrawi exile community.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: A new 1999 Constitution of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic took a form similar to the parliamentary constitutions of many European states, but with some paragraphs suspended until the achievement of "full independence". Among key points, the head of state is constitutionally the Secretary General of the Polisario Front during what is referred to as the "pre-independence phase", with provision in the constitution that on independence, Polisario is supposed to be dismantled or separated completely from the government structure. Provisions are detailed for a transitory phase beginning with independence, in which the present SADR is supposed to act as Western Sahara's government, ending with a constitutional reform and eventual establishment of a state along the lines specified in the constitution.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The broad guidelines laid down in the constitution for an eventual Western Saharan state include eventual multi-party democracy with a market economy. The constitution also defines Sahrawis as a Muslim, African and Arab people. The Constitution also declares a commitment to the principles of human rights and to the concept of a Greater Maghreb, as a regional variant of Pan-Arabism.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: Since August 1982, the highest office of the republic has been the President of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, a post held by the secretary-general of the Polisario Front, presently Brahim Ghali, who appoints the Prime Minister, presently Bouchraya Hammoudi Bayoun. The SADR's government structure consists of a Council of Ministers (a cabinet led by the Prime Minister), a judicial branch (with judges appointed by the President) and the parliamentary Sahrawi National Council (SNC; the present speaker is Kathri Aduh). Since its inception in 1976, the various constitutional revisions have transformed the republic from an "ad hoc" managerial structure into something approaching an actual governing apparatus. From the late 1980s the parliament began to take steps to institute a division of powers and to disentangle the republic's structures from those of the Polisario Front, although without clear effect to date.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: Its various ministries are responsible for a variety of services and functions. The judiciary, complete with trial courts, appeals courts and a supreme court, operates in the same areas. As a government-in-exile, many branches of government do not fully function, and has affected the constitutional roles of the institutions. Institutions parallel to government structures also have arisen within the Polisario Front, which is fused with the SADR's governing apparatus, and with operational competences overlapping between these party and governmental institutions and offices. A 2012 report mentioned the existence of the Sahrawi Bar Association. In 2016, the bar association (going by the name Union of Sahrawi Lawyers) issued a report calling for the implementation of political and civil rights. Unfortunately, there is no clear indication as to how certain demographic groups, such as women, have fared in the legal field.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The SNC is weak in its legislative role, having been instituted as a mainly consultative and consensus-building institution, but it has strengthened its theoretical legislative and controlling powers during later constitutional revisions. Among other things, it has added a ban on the death penalty to the constitution, and brought down the government in 1999 through a vote of no-confidence.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The Sahrawi National Council is composed of 53 members, all from the Popular Front for the Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The Sahrawi People's Liberation Army is the defence force of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic and previously served as the armed wing of the Polisario Front prior to the foundation of the Republic.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The SADR in its controlled territories uses the Sahrawi Peseta although the majority of the country uses the Moroccan Dirham.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The SADR acted as a government administration in the Sahrawi refugee camps located in the Tindouf Province of western Algeria. It is headquartered in Camp Rabouni, south of Tindouf, although some official events have taken place in towns in the Free Zone, including the provisional capitals, first Bir Lehlou until 2008, then Tifariti. The government of the SADR claims sovereignty over all of the Western Sahara territory, but has control only within the Free Zone. Several foreign aid agencies, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and non-governmental organizations, are continually active in the camps.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: states. Of these, have since "frozen" or "withdrawn" recognition for a number of reasons. A total of 40 UN states maintain diplomatic relations with the SADR, while a further 7 also recognise the state. Sahrawi embassies exist in 18 states.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: Although it is not recognised by the UN, the SADR has held full membership of the African Union (AU, formerly the Organisation of African Unity, OAU) since 1982. Morocco withdrew from the OAU in protest during 1984, and from the time of South Africa's admittance to the OAU in 1994 was the only African UN member not also a member of the AU, until it was readmitted on 30 January 2017. The SADR participates as a guest in meetings of the Non-Aligned Movement and the New Asian–African Strategic Partnership, over Moroccan objections to SADR participation.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The SADR also participated in a conference of the Permanent Conference of Political Parties of the Latin American and the Caribbean (COPPPAL) in 2006; the SADR ambassador to Nicaragua participated in the opening conference of the Central American Parliament in 2010, and a SADR delegation participated in the meeting of COPPPAL and International Conference of Asian Political Parties in Mexico City in 2012.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: On 27 February 2011, the 35th anniversary of the proclamation of SADR was held in Tifariti, Western Sahara. Delegations, including parliamentarians, ambassadors, NGOs and activists from many countries participated in this event.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: The SADR is not a member of the Arab League, nor of the Arab Maghreb Union, both of which include Morocco as a full member.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: Under the Baker Plan created by James Baker, former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's personal envoy to Western Sahara, the SADR would have been replaced with a five-year transitional Western Sahara Authority (WSA), a non-sovereign autonomous region supervised by Morocco, to be followed by a referendum on independence. It was endorsed by the UN in 2003. However, as Morocco has declined to participate, the plan appears dead.


title: Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic

text: In April 2007, the government of Morocco suggested that a self-governing entity, through the Royal Advisory Council for Saharan Affairs (CORCAS), should govern the territory with some degree of autonomy for Western Sahara. The project was presented to the UN Security Council in mid-April 2007. A stalemate over the Moroccan proposal led the UN, in an April 2007 "Report of the UN Secretary-General", to ask the parties to enter into direct and unconditional negotiations to reach a mutually accepted political solution.


title: Charlize Theron filmography

text: Charlize Theron is a South African-American actress who made her film debut in an uncredited role as a follower of a cult in the 1995 horror film "". Theron followed this with appearances as a hitman’s girlfriend in "2 Days in the Valley", a waitress in the romantic comedy "Trial and Error" (1997), and a woman plagued with demonic visions in the mystery thriller "The Devil's Advocate" (1997) with Keanu Reeves and Al Pacino. She appeared in the science fiction thriller "The Astronaut's Wife" with Johnny Depp, and Lasse Hallström's "The Cider House Rules" (both in 1999). For her portrayal of serial killer Aileen Wuornos in the crime drama "Monster" (2003), Theron received the Academy Award for Best Actress, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role. The following year, she played Swedish entertainer Britt Ekland in the biographical film "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers".


title: Charlize Theron filmography

text: Theron played the eponymous rebel assassin in the science fiction action film "Æon Flux", and a miner fighting sexual harassment in the drama "North Country" (both in 2005). The latter role earned her a nomination for Best Actress at the Academy Awards and the BAFTAs. In the same year, she voiced Æon Flux in the tie-in video game adaptation to the film for which she received the Best Performance by a Female award at the Spike Video Game Awards. Three years later, Theron starred in the superhero film "Hancock" with Will Smith. The film grossed over $624 million at the worldwide box office. She received a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical for her role as an alcoholic writer in the comedy-drama "Young Adult" (2011). The following year, Theron appeared in the action adventure film "Snow White and the Huntsman" and Ridley Scott's science fiction film "Prometheus". In 2015, she played rebel soldier Imperator Furiosa in George Miller's "". Two years later, Theron appeared as a cyberterrorist in the action film "The Fate of the Furious", which grossed over $1 billion at the worldwide box office—her highest grossing as of May 2017. Theron followed this with acclaimed performances in the comedy-drama "Tully" (2018), the romantic comedy "Long Shot" (2019), and the biographical drama "Bombshell" (2019), the lattermost of which earned her a third Academy Award nomination.


title: Counties of England

text: The counties of England are areas used for different purposes, which include administrative, geographical, cultural and political demarcation. The term "county" is defined in several ways and can apply to similar or the same areas used by each of these demarcation structures. These different types of county each have a more formal name but are commonly referred to just as "counties". The current arrangement is the result of incremental reform.


title: Counties of England

text: The original county structure has its origins in the Middle Ages. These counties are often referred to as the historic, traditional or former counties.


title: Counties of England

text: The Local Government Act 1888 created new areas for organising local government that it called administrative counties and county boroughs. These administrative areas adopted the names of, and closely resembled the areas of, the traditional counties. Later legislative changes to the new local government structure led to greater distinction between the traditional and the administrative counties.


title: Counties of England

text: The Local Government Act 1972 abolished the 1888 act, its administrative counties and county boroughs. In their place, the 1972 Act created new areas for handling local government that were also called administrative counties. The 1972 administrative counties differed distinctly in area from the 1888 administrative counties, that had now been abolished, and from the traditional counties, that had still not been abolished. Many of the names of the traditional counties were still being used now for the 1972 administrative counties. Later legislation created yet further area differences between the 1972 administrative counties and the traditional counties. As of 2020, for the purpose of administration, England outside Greater London and the Isles of Scilly is divided into 82 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties.


title: Counties of England

text: The Lieutenancies Act 1997 created areas to be used for the purpose of the Lieutenancies Act. These newly created areas are called counties and areas for the purposes of lieutenancies, also called ceremonial counties in informal usage, and are based on, but not always the same as, the areas of the 1972 administrative counties.


title: Counties of England

text: For the purpose of sorting and delivering mail, England was divided into 48 postal counties until 1996; they were then abandoned by Royal Mail in favour of postcodes.


title: Counties of England

text: The term "county", relating to any of its meanings, is used as the geographical basis for a number of institutions such as police and fire services, sports clubs and other non-government organisations.


title: Counties of England

text: Cumbria, Hertfordshire, Norfolk, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Warwickshire, West Sussex and Worcestershire are non-metropolitan counties of multiple districts with a county council. In these counties most services are provided by the county council and the district councils have a more limited role. Their areas each correspond exactly to ceremonial counties.


title: Counties of England

text: There are six metropolitan counties which are based on the major English conurbations; and they also correspond exactly to a ceremonial county and have multiple districts (commonly referred to as metropolitan boroughs), but do not have county councils. They are Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire. In these counties the district councils provide the majority of services.


title: Counties of England

text: Similarly, Berkshire is a non-metropolitan county with no county council and multiple districts. It maps directly to the ceremonial county of Berkshire.


title: Counties of England

text: Bristol, Herefordshire, the Isle of Wight, Northumberland and Rutland are ceremonial counties consisting of a non-metropolitan county of a single district, and are known as unitary authorities.


title: Counties of England

text: Cambridgeshire, Derbyshire, Devon, East Sussex, Essex, Gloucestershire, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Somerset and Staffordshire are non-metropolitan counties with multiple districts and a county council, where one or more districts have been split off to form unitary authorities. The effect is that the corresponding ceremonial county is larger than the non-metropolitan county of the same name and the county council is responsible for providing services in only part of the ceremonial county.


title: Counties of England

text: In Buckinghamshire, Cornwall, Dorset, Durham, East Riding of Yorkshire, Shropshire and Wiltshire the bulk of the area is a unitary authority which shares the name of the ceremonial county, and the rest of the ceremonial county consists of one or more other unitary authorities.


title: Counties of England

text: In total, there are 39 unitary authorities that do not have the same name as any of the ceremonial counties. Bedfordshire, Cheshire and Northamptonshire are ceremonial counties that consist of a number of unitary authorities, none of which has the same name as the ceremonial county.


title: Counties of England

text: The City of London and Greater London are anomalous as ceremonial counties that do not correspond to any metropolitan or non-metropolitan counties, and pre-date their creation.


title: Counties of England

text: The metropolitan counties have passenger transport executives to manage public transport, a role undertaken by the local authorities of non-metropolitan counties and Transport for London in Greater London.


title: Counties of England

text: Large ceremonial counties often correspond to a single police force. For example, the four unitary authorities which make up Cheshire correspond to the same area as the Cheshire Constabulary. Some counties are grouped together for this purpose, such as Northumberland with Tyne and Wear to form the Northumbria Police area. In other areas a group of unitary authorities in several counties are grouped together to form police force areas, such as the Cleveland Police and Humberside Police. Greater London and the City of London each have their own police forces, the Metropolitan Police Service and the City of London Police.


title: Counties of England

text: The fire service is operated on a similar county basis, and the ambulance service is organised by the regions of England.


title: Counties of England

text: Most ceremonial counties form part of a single region, although Lincolnshire and North Yorkshire are divided between regions. Economic development is delivered using the regions, as is strategic planning.


title: Counties of England

text: As of 2009, the largest county by area is North Yorkshire and the smallest is the City of London. The smallest county with multiple districts is Tyne and Wear and the smallest non-metropolitan county with a county council is Buckinghamshire. The county with the highest population is Greater London and the lowest is the City of London.


title: Counties of England

text: Greater London and the metropolitan counties are all in the 15 largest by population and the 15 smallest by area. Greater London has the highest population density, while the lowest is found in Northumberland. By area, the largest ceremonial county consisting of a single-district non-metropolitan county is Northumberland and the smallest is Bristol. By population the largest such county is Bristol and the smallest is Rutland.


title: Counties of England

text: Slough is the smallest unitary authority by area that is not also a ceremonial county and Cheshire East is the largest. Hartlepool is the smallest such unitary authority by population and Cheshire West and Chester is the largest. The "sui generis" Isles of Scilly is smaller both in terms of area and population. The highest population density of any metropolitan or non-metropolitan county is found in Portsmouth and the lowest is found in Northumberland.


title: Counties of England

text: Most English counties were established in the Middle Ages sometime between the 7th and 11th centuries. The early divisions form most of the current counties, albeit with adapted boundaries. Counties were used for the administration of justice, the organisation of the military, local government and parliamentary representation. Some larger counties were divided early on for many purposes, including Yorkshire (into Ridings), Lincolnshire (into Parts) and Sussex (into East and West). In 1832, the Great Reform Act divided larger counties for parliamentary purposes. Changes in the administration of the Poor Law in 1832 and later the implementation of sanitary authorities caused the use of traditional divisions for civil administration to wane. The like-named and broadly similarly shaped registration counties existed for these purposes from 1851 and were used for census reporting from 1851 to 1911. Their boundaries differed from existing counties as they were formed from the combined areas of smaller registration districts, which crossed historic county boundaries.


title: Counties of England

text: By the late nineteenth century, there was increasing pressure to reform the structure of English counties. A boundary commission was appointed in 1887 to review all English and Welsh counties, and a Local Government Bill was introduced to parliament in the following year. The resulting Local Government Act 1888 divided the counties into administrative counties, controlled by county councils and independent areas known as county boroughs.


title: Counties of England

text: The county councils took over many of the functions of the Quarter Sessions courts, as well as being given further powers over the years. The County of London was created from parts of Kent, Middlesex and Surrey. Each county borough was technically an administrative county of a single district, whilst a number of counties were divided into more than one administrative county; they were Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Suffolk, Sussex and Yorkshire.


title: Counties of England

text: The counties used for purposes other than local government, such as lieutenancy, also changed, being either a single administrative county or a grouping of administrative counties and associated county boroughs. The one exception was the City of London, which alone among counties corporate retained a separate lieutenancy and although part of the administrative County of London was also a county of itself for all other purposes. In legislation after 1888 the unqualified use of the term "county" refers to these entities, although the informal term "geographical county" was also used to distinguish them from administrative counties. They were shown on Ordnance Survey maps of the time under both titles, and are equivalent to the modern ceremonial counties.


title: Counties of England

text: There were considerable boundary changes between the counties over the years, with areas being exchanged and suburban areas in one county being annexed by county boroughs in another. A major realignment came in 1931, when the boundaries between Gloucestershire, Warwickshire, and Worcestershire were adjusted by the Provisional Order Confirmation (Gloucestershire, Warwickshire and Worcestershire) Act which transferred 26 parishes between the three counties, largely to eliminate exclaves.


title: Counties of England

text: A Local Government Boundary Commission was set up in 1945 with the power to merge, create or divide all existing administrative counties and county boroughs. If the commission's recommendations had been carried out the county map of England would have been completely redrawn. The review process was instead abandoned after the 1950 general election. A Royal Commission on Local Government in Greater London was established in 1957 and a Local Government Commission for England in 1958 to recommend new local government structures.


title: Counties of England

text: The major outcomes of the work of the commissions came in 1965: The original County of London was abolished and was replaced by the Greater London administrative area, which also included most of the remaining part of Middlesex and areas formerly part of Surrey, Kent, Essex and Hertfordshire; Huntingdonshire was merged with the Soke of Peterborough to form Huntingdon and Peterborough, and the original Cambridgeshire was merged with the Isle of Ely to form Cambridgeshire and Isle of Ely. A Royal Commission on Local Government in England was set up in 1966 and reported in 1969, and broadly recommended the complete redrawing of local government areas in England, abandoning the existing counties. Due to a change in government, the report did not translate into legislation.


title: Counties of England

text: On 1 April 1974, the Local Government Act 1972 came into force. This abolished the existing local government structure of administrative counties and county boroughs in England and Wales outside Greater London, replacing it with a new entirely "two-tier" system. It created a new set of 45 counties, six of which were metropolitan and 39 of which were non-metropolitan. The historic county boundaries were retained wherever it was practicable.


title: Counties of England

text: However, some of the counties established by the Act were entirely new, such as Avon, Cleveland, Cumbria, Hereford and Worcester, and Humberside, along with the new metropolitan counties of Greater Manchester, Merseyside, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear, West Midlands and West Yorkshire; based on the major conurbations. The counties of Cumberland, Herefordshire, Rutland, Westmorland, Huntingdon & Peterborough and Worcestershire were disestablished. The abolition of the county boroughs resulted in the distinction made between the counties for lieutenancy and those for county councils becoming unnecessary. Section 216 of the Act adopted the new counties for ceremonial and judicial purposes, replacing the previous non-administrative counties.


title: Counties of England

text: The Royal Mail was unable to follow the changes to county boundaries in 1965 and 1974 due to cost constraints and because several new counties had names that were too similar to post towns. The main differences were that Hereford and Worcester, Greater Manchester and Greater London could not be adopted and that Humberside had to be split into North Humberside and South Humberside.


title: Counties of England

text: Additionally, a number of anomalies were created where villages with a post town in another county took the county of the post town for postal addressing purposes. This meant that for directing the mail, England was divided into a somewhat different set of county boundaries from those established in the reforms. There was also a series of official county name abbreviations sanctioned for use. The use of these postal counties was abandoned by the Royal Mail in 1996.


title: Counties of England

text: The metropolitan counties ceased to have county councils in 1986 and a further reform in the 1990s allowed the creation of non-metropolitan counties of a single district. These became known as unitary authorities and effectively re-established county boroughs. The reform caused the geographic counties to be defined separately once again, and they became known as ceremonial counties.


title: Counties of England

text: As well as unitary authorities covering large towns, some small counties such as Rutland and Herefordshire were re-established as unitary authorities. In 2009 unitary authorities were created to replace each of the county councils of Cornwall, County Durham, Northumberland, Shropshire and Wiltshire. Bedfordshire and Cheshire were thus abolished as non-metropolitan counties but are retained as ceremonial counties, divided between their unitary authorities.


title: Counties of England

text: There is no well-established series of official symbols or flags covering all the counties. From 1889 the newly created county councils could apply to the College of Arms for coats of arms, often incorporating traditional symbols associated with the county. This practice continued as new county councils were created in 1965 and 1974. However these armorial bearings belong to the incorporated body of the county council and not to the geographic area of the counties themselves. As county councils have been abolished, and unitary authorities have been carved out, some of these symbols have become obsolete or effectively no longer represent the whole ceremonial county. A recent series of flags, with varying levels of official adoption, have been established in many of the counties by competition or public poll. County days are a recent innovation in some areas.


title: Counties of England

text: There are 17 first-class men's county cricket teams that are based on historical English counties. These compete in the County Championship and in the other top-level domestic competitions organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board along with the 18th first-class cricket county - Glamorgan in Wales. There are also 19 English minor county teams which, along with a Wales Minor Counties side, compete for the Minor Counties Championship. The County Football Associations are roughly based on English counties, with exceptions such as the combinations of Berkshire and Buckinghamshire and Leicestershire and Rutland.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: Assassin's Creed Origins is a 2017 action role-playing video game developed by Ubisoft Montreal and published by Ubisoft. It is the tenth major installment in the "Assassin's Creed" series, following 2015's "Assassin's Creed Syndicate". Principally set in Egypt, near the end of the Ptolemaic period from 49 to 43 BC, the story follows a Medjay named Bayek of Siwa and his wife Aya as they seek revenge for the murder of their son, and explores the origins of the millennia-long conflict between the Hidden Ones—forerunners to the Assassin Brotherhood, and the Order of the Ancients—forerunners to the Templar Order. The framing story, set in the 21st century, follows a new character, Layla Hassan, who relives Bayek and Aya's memories using a modified Animus device.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: The game's development began following the release of "" in 2013. Ubisoft Montreal led its four-year development with help from a team of nearly 700 people from other Ubisoft studios around the world. The team consulted Egyptologists and historians extensively to ensure the setting was authentically represented in the game. In response to the common criticism that the gameplay of the series was getting stale and overly familiar, Ubisoft decided to reinvent the "Assassin's Creed" formula with "Origins". Whereas previous entries were mainly stealth-action games, "Origins" introduces many elements found in role-playing games and an overhauled "hitbox-based" combat system. While "Assassin's Creed" had been an annual franchise since "Assassin's Creed II" (2009), an extra year of development time allowed the team to polish the game further. This was largely a response to the tepid sales of "Syndicate", and the troubled launch of "Assassin's Creed Unity", which was plagued with technical issues when it was released in 2014.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: Announced at E3 2017, "Origins" was released on October 27, 2017, for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One, and for Stadia on December 15, 2020. It received positive reviews from critics, with many calling it an improvement over previous entries and praising the story, characters, voice acting, reworked gameplay systems, world design, historical accuracy, and the visuals. However, the game also drew criticism for its pacing, quest design, and technical issues. The game has sold over ten million units worldwide and was nominated for several end-of-year accolades. Ubisoft supported "Origins" extensively following its launch, releasing two story expansions—"The Hidden Ones" and "Curse of the Pharaohs"—and a free "Discovery Tour" mode, which removes all combat from the game and allows players to learn about the history and culture of Ptolemaic Egypt through a series of guided tours. Its successor, "Assassin's Creed Odyssey", which is set in Classical Greece during the Peloponnesian War, was released in October 2018.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: "Assassin's Creed Origins" is an Role-playing video game played from a third-person perspective. Players complete quests—linear scenarios with set objectives—to progress through the story, and can freely roam the open world environment on foot, horseback, camel-back, horse-drawn vehicles or boat. The open world includes all of Ancient Egypt, featuring vast deserts, oasis, lakes and ancient cities such as Alexandria and Memphis. The game's main character, Bayek, can dive underwater and explore the lakes and the rivers, the first instance of underwater exploration in the series since 2013's "Black Flag". As the players explore the world, they encounter different non-playable characters who need assistance from Bayek. These side missions, which typically involve rescuing prisoners, defeating enemies, collecting items or investigating items of interest, often take Bayek to locations of interest, where the player can find treasures. Throughout the game, players can explore tombs and pyramids, raid bandit hideouts, solve riddle puzzles to find rare loot, and discover synchronization points, which then unlock additional locations of interest and serve as fast travel points. Other side activities players can undertake include competing in a gladiatorial arena where the player fights waves of increasingly difficult combinations of enemies culminating in a boss fight, participating in chariot racing, and solving stone circle puzzles.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: Players earn experience points by performing acts like completing campaign missions and side missions, discovering new locations, and defeating enemies. As the players earn sufficient experience points, they can level up and earn skill points, which can unlock new abilities. The skill tree has three unique branches: Hunter, Warrior, and Seer. Hunter improves Bayek's ranged abilities; Warrior makes Bayek a more capable melee fighter; Seer turns Bayek into a more lethal and efficient assassin. Missions and areas have a level recommendation. Players need to reach a certain level before completing them, or else the game's enemies can easily overpower them . To further enhance combat efficiency, Bayek's hidden blade, quiver, stabilizer glove, bracer, breastplate and tool pouch can be crafted using the resources collected from hunting wildlife, dismantling gear, and attacking convoys carrying supplies. Bayek needs to earn coins by looting and completing locations of interest. Coins can then be spent on purchasing or upgrading weapons, outfits and mounts. Gears and crafting materials can be purchased from a special vendor through loot boxes, though these boxes can only be purchased through the in-game currency. Despite this, some cosmetic items can only be purchased via Helix coins, which must be purchased with real-world currency.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: Previous titles in the "Assassin's Creed" series used a "paired animation system" whereby the player character would engage with an enemy and combat would be dictated by a series of predetermined animations based on player inputs and scripted AI movements. "Origins" moved to a "hit-box system". When the player wields a weapon, they strike at whatever is in range, allowing them to hit and injure enemies directly, and creating the possibility of missing an enemy entirely. There are two modes of melee attack—light attacks are fast but weak, and heavy attacks are slow but strong. Complementing this is the way weapons fall into different categories (common, rare and legendary) and are rated on the damage dealt, speed and range. Bayek can be equipped with eight types of melee weapons and four types of bows and arrows. Legendary weapons can usually be obtained by defeating high-level enemies called the Phylakes. As enemy combat is also dictated by the hit-box system, the player is equipped with a shield and needs to balance their offensive and defensive capabilities. Players need to use different weapons when facing different enemy archetypes. They may also need to dodge or parry hostile attacks. Adrenaline slowly builds up during combat. When the player's adrenaline bar is full, they can unleash a devastating attack with their melee weapon. Bayek also has access to tools such as sleeping darts, poison darts, and firebombs, and can use the environment to his advantage. For instance, he can light enemies on fire after shooting oil canisters with fire arrows, and set traps near braziers, defeating enemies when they attempt to call for reinforcements.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: Locations within the game world enable the player to choose their playing style by offering stealth and open combat as equally viable choices for completing objectives. Players can subdue enemies by sneaking up behind them using the hidden blade, though higher-level enemies are not easily defeated. The "eagle vision" mode, which was used by the franchise to give the player the ability to scout an area by highlighting enemies and objects, has been replaced by a Bonelli's eagle named Senu as a companion. The player can take control of Senu and scout an area in advance, highlighting enemies who will then be visible when they return to controlling Bayek. Players can hide in tall grass or navigate rooftops to avoid enemies' attention. Bayek, however, can whistle to draw an enemy toward him, allowing assassination when the player is still in hiding. As with other "Assassin's Creed" games, Bayek is an expert in free running and can climb nearly all structures. The player can also tame various predators, which will serve as a companion for the player and assist them against enemies. Naval combat returns in sections where players control Bayek's wife Aya, who can command a ship and attack hostile ship vessels.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: The player takes on the role of a Medjay named Bayek of Siwa and his wife Aya, as they work to protect the people of Ptolemaic Egypt during a time of widespread upheaval. The Pharaoh, Ptolemy XIII, struggles to maintain his rule while harboring ambitions of expanding his kingdom. His sister, the recently deposed Cleopatra, begins marshaling loyalist forces to launch a counter-coup against Ptolemy. Additionally, incursions into the Kingdom by the Roman Republic under the command of Julius Caesar lead to fears of an imminent invasion. Bayek's role as a Medjay brings him and Aya into contact with the secretive forces manipulating these events and into forming the Hidden Ones, the precursor organization to the Assassin Brotherhood.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: In 49 BC, Bayek, a Medjay charged with protecting the Siwa Oasis, is abducted along with his son Khemu by a group of masked men and taken to an underground vault in the Temple of Amun. They give Bayek a dormant Piece of Eden and demand that he use it to open a secret vault. Khemu helps Bayek escape. While struggling with one of the masked men, Bayek inadvertently kills Khemu. One year later, in 48 BC, Bayek has exiled himself to track down the five masked men to take his revenge. After eliminating two targets, Bayek heads for Alexandria to meet his wife Aya. Aya reveals that there is only one target left. Bayek identifies the Royal Scribe Eudoros as the last target, but he is disturbed by Eudoros' last words, which imply there are more masked men. Aya directs Bayek to her friend Apollodorus for more information. Apollodorus introduces him to Cleopatra, who confirms that the masked men are members of the Order of the Ancients, which ousted her from the throne and seeks to control Egypt using Ptolemy as their puppet.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: Cleopatra gives Bayek four new targets. He tracks them down and kills them while Aya convinces Pompey the Great to ally with Cleopatra. Bayek receives a letter from Aya explaining there are more members of the Order at large, including members of Ptolemy's royal guard. Bayek begins to believe that Cleopatra is using him to kill her rivals. Pompey is killed by Lucius Septimius, forcing Bayek and Aya to sneak Cleopatra into the palace to meet Julius Caesar. Cleopatra impresses Caesar and secures his support. Bayek kills Pothinus, "The Scorpion", but is stopped from killing Septimius by Caesar. Aya watches Ptolemy be eaten by crocodiles when he tries to flee across the Nile.


title: Assassin's Creed Origins

text: Cleopatra takes the throne as Pharaoh. Septimius becomes an advisor to Caesar, and Cleopatra cuts ties with Bayek and Aya. Bayek realizes that Cleopatra and Caesar have now allied themselves with the Order, and gathers his allies to form a brotherhood to counter the Order and defend the people's free will. Bayek and Aya realize the Order showed interest in the tomb of Alexander the Great, where they find a mortally wounded Apollodorus. He warns them Caesar's lieutenant Flavius is the leader of the Order. He and Septimius had taken the Orb and a Staff from the tomb and are going to Siwa to open the Vault.