title: Human history

text: In North America, this period saw the rise of the Mississippian culture in the modern-day United States CE, marked by the extensive 11th-century urban complex at Cahokia. The Ancestral Puebloans and their predecessors (9th – 13th centuries) built extensive permanent settlements, including stone structures that would remain the largest buildings in North America until the 19th century.


title: Human history

text: In Mesoamerica, the Teotihuacan civilization fell and the classic Maya collapse occurred. The Aztec Empire came to dominate much of Mesoamerica in the 14th and 15th centuries.


title: Human history

text: In South America, the 15th century saw the rise of the Inca. The Inca Empire or "Tawantinsuyu", with its capital at Cusco, spanned the entire Andes, making it the most extensive pre-Columbian civilization. The Inca were prosperous and advanced, known for an excellent road system and elegant stonework.


title: Human history

text: The "early modern period" was the period between the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution—roughly 1500 to 1800. The early Modern period was characterized by the rise of science, and by increasingly rapid technological progress, secularized civic politics, and the nation state. Capitalist economies began their rise, initially in the northern Italian republics. The early modern period saw the rise and dominance of mercantilist economic theory, and the decline and eventual disappearance, in much of the European sphere, of feudalism, serfdom, and the power of the Catholic Church. The period included the Reformation, the disastrous Thirty Years' War, the Age of Discovery, European colonial expansion, the peak of European witch-hunting, the Scientific Revolution, and the Age of Enlightenment. During the early modern period, Protestantism eventually became the majority faith throughout Northwestern Europe and in England and English-speaking America, and have developed their own culture, with major contributions in education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy and the arts and many other fields.


title: Human history

text: During this period, European powers came to dominate most of the world. Although the most developed regions of European classical civilization were more urbanized than any other region of the world, European civilization had undergone a lengthy period of gradual decline and collapse. During the early modern period, Europe was able to regain its dominance; historians still debate the causes.


title: Human history

text: This era was characterized by the rise of maritime European empires in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries, first the Portuguese and Spanish Empires, and later the French, English, and Dutch Empires. In the 17th century, globalization became also a private business phenomenon when chartered companies such as the English East India Company (founded in 1600), often described as the first multinational corporation, as well as the Dutch East India Company (founded in 1602) were established.


title: Human history

text: The Age of Discovery brought a broad change in globalization, being the first period in which Eurasia and Africa engaged in substantial cultural, material and biologic exchange with the New World. It began in the late 15th century, when the two kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula – Portugal and Castile – sent the first exploratory voyages around the Cape of Good Hope and to the Americas, "discovered" in 1492 by Christopher Columbus. Shortly before the turn of the 16th century, Portuguese started establishing factories from Africa to Asia and Brazil, to deal with the trade of local products like slaves, gold, spices, and lumber, introducing an international business center under a royal monopoly, the House of India.


title: Human history

text: Global integration continued with the European colonization of the Americas initiating the Columbian exchange, the enormous widespread exchange of plants, animals, foods, human populations (including slaves), communicable diseases, and culture between the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. It was one of the most significant global events concerning ecology, agriculture, and culture in history. New crops that came from the Americas via European seafarers in the 16th century significantly contributed to world population growth.


title: Human history

text: The Ottoman Empire, after conquering Constantinople in 1453, quickly came to dominate the Middle East. Persia came under the rule of the Safavid Empire in 1501, succeeded by the Afsharid Empire in 1736, the Zand Empire in 1751, and the Qajar Empire in 1794. In North Africa, the Wattasid Sultanate, Zayyanid Sultanate, and Hafsid Sultanate remained as independent Berber states until the 16th century. Areas to the north and east in Central Asia were held by the Uzbeks and Pashtuns. At the start of the 19th century, the Russian Empire began its conquest of the Caucasus.


title: Human history

text: Europe's Renaissance – the "rebirth" of classical culture, beginning in the 14th century and extending into the 16th – comprised the rediscovery of the classical world's cultural, scientific, and technological achievements, and the economic and social rise of Europe. The Renaissance engendered a culture of inquisitiveness which ultimately led to Humanism and the Scientific Revolution. This period, which saw social and political upheavals, and revolutions in many intellectual pursuits, is also celebrated for its artistic developments and the attainments of such polymaths as Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, who inspired the term "Renaissance man".


title: Human history

text: In Russia, Ivan the Terrible was crowned in 1547 as the first tsar of Russia, and by annexing the Turkic khanates in the east, transformed Russia into a regional power. The countries of Western Europe, while expanding prodigiously through technological advancement and colonial conquest, competed with each other economically and militarily in a state of almost constant . Often the wars had a religious dimension, either Catholic versus Protestant (primarily in Western Europe) or Christian versus Muslim (primarily in Eastern Europe). Wars of particular note include the Thirty Years' War, the War of the Spanish Succession, the Seven Years' War, and the French Revolutionary Wars. Napoleon came to power in France in 1799, an event foreshadowing the Napoleonic Wars of the early 19th century.


title: Human history

text: In Africa, this period saw a decline in many civilizations and an advancement in others. The Swahili coast declined after coming under the Portuguese Empire and later the Omani Empire. In West Africa, the Songhai Empire fell to the Moroccans in 1591 when they invaded with firearms. The Bono state gave birth to numerous Akan states in its wake in search of gold such as Akwamu, Akyem, Fante, Adansi, etc. The South African Kingdom of Zimbabwe gave way to smaller kingdoms such as Mutapa, Butua, and Rozvi. The Ethiopian Empire suffered from the 1531 invasion by the neighboring Muslim Adal Sultanate, and in 1769 entered the Zemene Mesafint (Age of Princes) during which the Emperor became a figurehead and the country was ruled by warlords, though the royal line later would recover under Emperor Tewodros II. The Ajuran Sultanate, in the Horn of Africa, began to decline in the 17th century, succeeded by the Geledi Sultanate. Other civilizations in Africa advanced during this period. The Oyo Empire experienced its golden age, as did the Kingdom of Benin. The Ashanti Empire rose to power in what is modern day Ghana in 1670. The Kingdom of Kongo also thrived during this period.


title: Human history

text: In the Indian subcontinent, the Mughal Empire began in 1526 and lasted for two centuries. Starting in the northwest, the Mughal Empire would by the late 17th century come to rule the entire subcontinent, except for the southernmost Indian provinces, which would remain independent. Against the Muslim Mughal Empire, the Hindu Maratha Empire was founded on the west coast in 1674, gradually gaining territory—a majority of present-day India—from the Mughals over several decades, particularly in the Mughal–Maratha Wars (1681–1701). The Maratha Empire would in 1818 fall under the control of the British East India Company, with all former Maratha and Mughal authority devolving in 1858 to the British Raj.


title: Human history

text: In China, the Ming gave way in 1644 to the Qing, the last Chinese imperial dynasty, which would rule until 1912. Japan experienced its Azuchi–Momoyama period (1568–1603), followed by the Edo period (1603–1868). The Korean Joseon dynasty (1392–1910) ruled throughout this period, successfully repelling 16th and 17th century invasions from Japan and China. Expanded maritime trade with Europe significantly affected China and Japan during this period, particularly by the Portuguese who had a presence in Macau and Nagasaki. However, China and Japan would later pursue isolationist policies designed to eliminate foreign influences.


title: Human history

text: In 1511, the Portuguese overthrew the Malacca Sultanate in present-day Malaysia and Indonesian Sumatra. The Portuguese held this important trading territory (and the valuable associated navigational strait) until overthrown by the Dutch in 1641. The Johor Sultanate, centred on the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, became the dominant trading power in the region. European colonization expanded with the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese in Timor, and the Spanish in the Philippines. Into the 19th century, European expansion would affect the whole of Southeast Asia, with the British in Myanmar and Malaysia, and the French in Indochina. Only Thailand would successfully resist colonization.


title: Human history

text: The Pacific islands of Oceania would also be affected by European contact, starting with the circumnavigational voyage of Ferdinand Magellan, who landed on the Marianas and other islands in 1521. Also notable were the voyages (1642–1644) of Abel Tasman to present-day Australia, New Zealand and nearby islands, and the voyages (1768–1779) of Captain James Cook, who made the first recorded European contact with Hawaii. Britain would found its first colony on Australia in 1788.


title: Human history

text: In the Americas, several European powers vigorously colonized the newly discovered continents, largely displacing the indigenous populations, and destroying the advanced civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas. Diseases introduced by Europeans devastated American societies, killing 60–90 million people by 1600 and reducing the population by 90–95%. Spain, Portugal, Britain, and France all made extensive territorial claims, and undertook large-scale settlement, including the importation of large numbers of African slaves. Portugal claimed Brazil. Spain claimed the rest of South America, Mesoamerica, and southern North America.


title: Human history

text: Britain colonized the east coast of North America, and France colonized the central region of North America. Russia made incursions onto the northwest coast of North America, with a first colony in present-day Alaska in 1784, and the outpost of Fort Ross in present-day California in 1812. In 1762, in the midst of the Seven Years' War, France secretly ceded most of its North American claims to Spain in the Treaty of Fontainebleau. Thirteen of the British colonies declared independence as the United States of America in 1776, ratified by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, ending the American Revolutionary War. Napoleon Bonaparte won France's claims back from Spain in the Napoleonic Wars in 1800, but sold them to the United States in 1803 as the Louisiana Purchase.


title: Human history

text: The Scientific Revolution changed humanity's understanding of the world and was followed by the Industrial Revolution, a major transformation of the world's economies. The Scientific Revolution in the 17th century had little immediate effect on industrial technology; only in the second half of the 19th century did scientific advances begin to be applied substantially to practical invention. The Industrial Revolution began in Great Britain and used new modes of production—the factory, mass production, and mechanization—to manufacture a wide array of goods faster and using less labor than previously required. The Age of Enlightenment also led to the beginnings of modern democracy in the late-18th century American and French Revolutions. Democracy and republicanism would grow to have a profound effect on world events and on quality of life.


title: Human history

text: After Europeans had achieved influence and control over the Americas, imperial activities turned to the lands of Asia and Oceania. Britain gained control of the Indian subcontinent, Burma, and the Malay Peninsula; the French took Indochina; while the Dutch cemented their control over the Dutch East Indies. China was devastated by the Taiping Rebellion, history's bloodiest civil war, which killed 20–30 million people between 1850 and 1864. The British also colonized Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa with large numbers of British colonists emigrating to these colonies. Russia colonized large pre-agricultural areas of Siberia. In the late-19th century, the European powers divided the remaining areas of Africa. Within Europe, economic and military challenges created a system of nation states, and ethno-cultural groupings began to identify themselves as distinctive nations with aspirations for cultural and political autonomy. This nationalism would become important to peoples across the world in the 20th century.


title: Human history

text: The advantages that Europe had developed by the mid-18th century were two: an entrepreneurial culture, and the wealth generated by the Atlantic trade (including the African slave trade). The profits of the slave trade and of West Indian plantations amounted to 5% of the British economy at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Some historians conclude that, in 1750, labor productivity in the most developed regions of China was still on a par with that of Europe's Atlantic economy; other historians such as Angus Maddison hold that the per-capita productivity of Western Europe had by the Late Middle Ages surpassed that of all other regions.


title: Human history

text: During the Second Industrial Revolution, a new set of technological advances including electrical power, the internal combustion engine, and assembly line manufacturing increased productivity once again. Meanwhile, industrial pollution and environmental damage, present since the discovery of fire and the beginning of civilization, accelerated drastically.


title: Human history

text: The 20th century opened with Europe at an apex of wealth and power, and with much of the world under its direct colonial control or its indirect domination. Much of the rest of the world was influenced by heavily Europeanized nations: the United States and Japan. As the century unfolded, however, the global system dominated by rival powers was subjected to severe strains, and ultimately yielded to a more fluid structure of independent nation states.


title: Human history

text: This transformation was catalyzed by wars of unparalleled scope and devastation. World War I led to the collapse of four empires – Austria-Hungary, the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Russian Empire – and weakened the United Kingdom and France. The Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides were the systematic destruction, mass murder, and expulsion during World War I of the Armenians, Assyrians, and Greeks in the Ottoman Empire, spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP).


title: Human history

text: In the war's aftermath, powerful ideologies rose to prominence. The Russian Revolution of 1917 created the first communist state, while the 1920s and 1930s saw militaristic fascist dictatorships gain control in Italy, Germany, Spain, and elsewhere. From 1918 to 1920, the Spanish flu caused the deaths of at least 25 million people.


title: Human history

text: Ongoing national rivalries, exacerbated by the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, helped precipitate World War II. The militaristic dictatorships of Europe and Japan pursued an ultimately doomed course of imperialist expansionism, in the course of which Nazi Germany, under Adolf Hitler, orchestrated the genocide of six million Jews in the Holocaust, while Imperial Japan murdered millions of Chinese.


title: Human history

text: The World War II defeat of the Axis powers by the Allied powers opened the way for the advance of communism into Eastern Europe, China, North Korea, North Vietnam, and Cuba.


title: Human history

text: When World War II ended in 1945, the United Nations was founded in the hope of preventing future wars, as the League of Nations had been formed following World War I. World War II had left two countries, the United States and the Soviet Union, with principal power to influence international affairs. Each was suspicious of the other and feared a global spread of the other's, respectively capitalist and communist, political-economic model. This led to the Cold War, a 45-year stand-off and arms race between the United States and its allies, on one hand, and the Soviet Union and its allies on the other.


title: Human history

text: With the development of nuclear weapons during World War II, and with their subsequent proliferation, all of humanity were put at risk of nuclear war between the two superpowers, as demonstrated by many incidents, most prominently the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Such war being viewed as impractical, the superpowers instead waged proxy wars in non-nuclear-armed Third World countries. Between 1969 and 1972, as part of the Cold War Space Race, twelve American astronauts landed on the Moon and safely returned to Earth.


title: Human history

text: In China, Mao Zedong implemented industrialization and collectivization reforms as part of the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), leading to the starvation deaths (1959–1961) of 30–40 million people. After Mao's death, China entered a period of economic liberalization and rapid growth, with the economy expanding by 6.6% per year from 1978 to 2003.


title: Human history

text: The Cold War ended peacefully in 1991 after the Soviet Union collapsed, partly due to its inability to compete economically with the United States and Western Europe. The United States likewise began to show signs of slippage in its geopolitical influence, and its economic inequality increased.


title: Human history

text: In the early postwar decades, the colonies in Asia and Africa of the Belgian, British, Dutch, French, and other European empires won their formal independence. Most Western European and Central European countries gradually formed a political and economic community, the European Union, which expanded eastward to include former Soviet satellite states.


title: Human history

text: Cold War preparations to deter or to fight a third world war accelerated advances in technologies that, though conceptualized before World War II, had been implemented for that war's exigencies, such as jet aircraft, rocketry, and computers. In the decades after World War II, these advances led to jet travel; artificial satellites with innumerable applications, including GPS;


title: Human history

text: However, not all scientific and technological advances in the second half of the 20th century required an initial military impetus. That period also saw ground-breaking developments such as the discovery of the structure of DNA and DNA sequencing, the worldwide eradication of smallpox, the Green Revolution in agriculture, the introduction of the portable cellular phone, the discovery of plate tectonics, crewed and uncrewed exploration of space, and foundational discoveries in physics phenomena ranging from the smallest entities (particle physics) to the greatest entity (physical cosmology).


title: Human history

text: The 21st century has seen the expansion of communications with smartphones and the Internet, which have caused fundamental societal changes in business, politics, and individuals' personal lives.


title: Human history

text: This period has been marked by growing economic globalization and integration, with consequent increased risk to interlinked economies, as exemplified by the Great Recession of the late 2000s and early 2010s.


title: Human history

text: In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic substantially disrupted global trading and caused recessions in the global economy. As of 2022, more than six million people have died from COVID-19.


title: Human history

text: Humankind's adverse effects on the Earth have risen due to growing human populations and industrialization. The increased demands on Earth's resources are contributing to environmental degradation, including mass extinctions of plant and animal species, and climate change, which threatens the long-term survival of humankind.


title: The Meg

text: The Meg is a 2018 science fiction action film directed by Jon Turteltaub with screenplay by Dean Georgaris, Jon Hoeber, and Erich Hoeber, loosely based on the 1997 book "" by Steve Alten. The film stars Jason Statham, Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson, Ruby Rose, Winston Chao, and Cliff Curtis. A group of scientists encounters a megalodon shark while on a rescue mission on the floor of the Pacific Ocean.


title: The Meg

text: Walt Disney Studios originally purchased the film rights to the book in the 1990s but spent years in development hell. The rights eventually landed at Warner Bros. Pictures, and the film was green-lit in 2013. Turteltaub and much of the cast joined by September 2014, and filming began in New Zealand and Sanya, China, ending in January 2016. The film is an American and Chinese co-production. "The Meg" was released in both countries on August 10, 2018, in RealD 3D. It was a box office success and grossed over $530 million worldwide, despite receiving mixed reviews from critics.


title: The Meg

text: A sequel, titled "", is in development and is scheduled to be released on August 4, the same month as the film’s release, in 2023.


title: The Meg

text: Rescue diver Jonas Taylor attempts to save the crew of a damaged nuclear submarine when he sees the hull being rammed by an unidentified creature. Two of his crew are trapped in the damaged sub, but Taylor is forced to flee, realizing that attempting rescue would result in the deaths of everyone he has already saved. His account of the story is dismissed by fellow survivor Dr. Heller, who believes that Taylor turned drunk and cowardly due to induced pressure psychosis.


title: The Meg

text: Five years later, billionaire Jack Morris meets Dr. Minway Zhang at an underwater research facility the former finances called Mana One. Zhang and his oceanographer daughter Suyin supervise a mission to explore what could be the deepest section of the Mariana Trench, concealed by a thermocline of hydrogen sulfide. The mission submersible is piloted by Lori, Taylor's ex-wife, scientists Toshi and "The Wall". They discover an abundance of never-before-seen flora and fauna below the thermocline, but an attack by a large, unidentified creature causes the submersible to lose contact with Mana One.


title: The Meg

text: An old friend of Taylor's, Mana One operations manager James "Mac" Mackreides, suggests sending Taylor down to attempt a rescue. Despite the objections of Heller, now a member of the Mana One crew, Zhang and Mac venture to Thailand to recruit Taylor. He is initially skeptical but relents after listening to a taped recording containing the dialogue between Lori, her crew, and Mana One. Suyin attempts the rescue in their absence but is attacked by a giant squid. Before the squid can crush her submersible, it is killed by an enormous shark. Taylor, having agreed to help, breaches the thermocline and reaches the sunken submersible. When the shark returns and attacks the submersible before the evacuation has been completed, Toshi sacrifices himself to help the others escape.


title: The Meg

text: Returning to Mana One, the crew discovers the giant shark is a megalodon, or "Meg". While discussing how to address it, Suyin's daughter Meiying witnesses the shark arriving at the station. The crew realizes that the meg followed them through a temporary break they caused in the thermocline and resolves to go out and track the meg before killing it with poison. After the meg destroys three nearby ships, Taylor enters the water to shoot the meg with a tracker, and then the team puts Suyin in a shark-proof tank so she can shoot the meg with poison. However, the mission goes awry when the shark attacks the cage and cracks Suyin's mask, causing her to lose oxygen. Taylor gets her out just as the Meg returns, though it gets snagged on the cage's line and dies from the poison.


title: The Meg

text: In their moment of triumph, a second, much larger Meg emerges, devouring The Wall and the dead Meg, critically wounding Zhang, and destroying the crew's ship. Heller sacrifices himself to save fellow crew member Jaxx. Mac swims out to a floating lifeboat so he and the crew can regroup at Mana One, though Zhang dies on the way. The shark chases them, but it is deterred by a helicopter Morris called in. Morris claims that he has informed all the local governments about the Meg and that they will handle it while secretly enlisting a mercenary team to kill the shark with depth charges. Amidst this, Morris falls overboard and is eaten. Learning that Morris did not contact the governments, and after failing to convince them, the Mana One crew resolve to track and kill the Meg themselves.


title: The Meg

text: The Meg attacks a crowded beach in Sanya Bay, China, and devours several beach-goers before the Mana One crew uses a whale call to divert its attention toward them. Taylor and Suyin work together to kill it, but Suyin is forced to break off to save the others when a helicopter crashing into their ship forces them into the water. Taylor wounds the beast, and attracted by the spilled blood, a swarm of modern sharks arrive and devour the dying Meg. Taylor reunites with the rest of the Mana One crew and considers taking a vacation with Suyin and Meiying. Meanwhile, in the water a passing Meg is heard, suggesting that more than two escaped the trench.


title: The Meg

text: Disney's Hollywood Pictures initially acquired the rights to the novel in 1996. Around that time, Tom Wheeler was hired to adapt the book into a screenplay, but, having decided that his script was not good enough, the studio hired Jeffrey Boam to write a new draft. Boam's script was later rejected for the same reason. By 1999 the project had stalled, and the rights reverted to Steve Alten, the book's author.


title: The Meg

text: In 2005, reports surfaced that the project was being developed by New Line Cinema, with an estimated budget of $75 million and a slated release of summer 2006. Names attached to the production included Jan de Bont as director, Guillermo del Toro as producer, and Shane Salerno as a screenwriter. However, New Line later canceled the project due to budgetary concerns. The rights reverted to Alten again, but the film remained in development hell.


title: The Meg

text: In 2015, it was announced that the film was now moving forward at Warner Bros., with a new script written by Dean Georgaris. By June of that year, Eli Roth was reported to be in talks to direct, but due to creative differences, Roth was replaced by Jon Turteltaub in early 2016. Jason Statham and much of the cast joined in August and September 2016.


title: The Meg

text: The film is an American and Chinese co-production. It was considered a full co-production under Chinese regulations, and it was not subject to the same quota system and revenue sharing agreements usually applied to imported films.


title: The Meg

text: Principal photography on the film began on October 13, 2016, in West Auckland, New Zealand. Filming ended on January 4, 2017, in Sanya City of Hainan, China.


title: The Meg

text: Visual effects were done by Sony Imageworks, Image Engine, and Scanline VFX. The visual effects team was challenged with designing a previously undiscovered prehistoric giant shark and designing the underwater environments and atmospherics, including realistic coral reefs, bubbles, and other sea life.


title: The Meg

text: Released by Gravity Pictures in China and Warner Bros. Pictures in the United States, the film was initially scheduled to be released on March 2, 2018. Warner and Gravity then said that the film would be released during the 2018 Chinese New Year period in China, a week-long annual holiday on February 16, 2018. The film was later pushed back from its original release date of March 2, 2018, to August 10, 2018, in 3D and IMAX. The studio spent $140 million on global prints and advertisements for the film.


title: The Meg

text: "The Meg" was released for digital download on October 30, 2018, and on Ultra HD Blu-ray, Blu-ray, and DVD on November 13. As of August 2020, it is available to stream on Amazon Prime in the United Kingdom. It is also available on Amazon Prime in the United States.


title: The Meg

text: "The Meg" grossed $145.4 million in the United States and Canada and $384.8 million in other territories, for a total worldwide gross of $530.2 million, against a production budget between $130–178 million.


title: The Meg

text: In the United States and Canada, was initially projected to gross $20–22 million from 4,118 theaters in its opening weekend. The film made $4 million from Thursday night previews, leading analysts to predict it would outperform its low $20 million projections. After making $16.5 million on its first day, weekend estimates were raised to $40 million. It went on to debut at $45.4 million, topping the box office and marking the best solo opening of Statham's career, as well as Turteltaub's. It made $21.5 million in its second weekend and $13 million in its third, finishing second behind "Crazy Rich Asians" both times.


title: The Meg

text: The film debuted to $101.5 million from 96 countries in other territories, for a worldwide opening of $146.9 million. In China, a co-producer of the film grossed $50.3 million from 12,650 screens and ranked 3 in the opening weekend. Other top openings were Mexico ($6.2 million), Russia ($5 million), the United Kingdom ($4.4 million), Spain ($2.4 million), and the Philippines ($2 million).


title: The Meg

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads: ""The Meg" sets audiences up for a good old-fashioned B-movie creature feature, but lacks the genre thrills—or the cheesy bite—to make it worth diving in." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 46 out of 100, based on 46 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Meg

text: Owen Gleiberman of "Variety" gave the film a mixed review, calling it "neither good enough—nor bad enough," and writing, ""The Meg", a rote sci-fi horror adventure film that features a shark the size of a blue whale, comes on like it wants to be the mother of all deep-sea attack movies. But it's really just the mother of all generically pandering, totally unsurprising "Jaws" ripoffs." Scott Mendelson of "Forbes" was impressed by the film's special effects and called it "a polished B movie that delivers the goods." At the same time, IGN's William Bibbiani praised the performances of the cast, particularly Statham. Writing for "The Hollywood Reporter", Simon Abrams said the film was "refreshingly unpretentious" and "a breath of fresh air" compared with the "Sharknado" series.


title: The Meg

text: The film was nominated for a Golden Raspberry Award in Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-off, or Sequel (as a ripoff of "Jaws").


title: The Meg

text: In April 2018, Jason Statham said a "Meg" sequel would happen if the film did well with the public saying, "I think it's like anything in this day and age—if it makes money, there's an appetite to make more money. And if it doesn't do well, they'll soon sweep it under the carpet. But that's the way Hollywood works." That August, Steve Alten said, "My feeling has always been that this is a billion-dollar franchise if it was done right. But to be done right, you had to get the shark right, get the cast right, get the tone right. And Warner Bros. has nailed it completely. The producers have nailed it."


title: The Meg

text: In October 2018, executive producer Catherine Xujun Ying said a sequel was in the early stages of development. In March 2019, a script for the film was in the works. In his September 2020 newsletter, Steve Alten confirmed the script, titled "Meg 2: The Trench", was complete, expressing interest in its "dark" tone and potential for an R-rating. British director Ben Wheatley will direct. In April 2021, Statham said that he believed that filming would begin in January 2022. Production officially began at Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden in February 2022, with screenwriters Dean Georgaris, Erich Hoeber, and Jon Hoeber returning, and Statham and Li expected to reprise their roles from the first film. In March 2022, it was announced that the film will be released on August 4, 2023.


title: Capgemini

text: Capgemini SE is a multinational information technology (IT) services and consulting company, headquartered in Paris, France.


title: Capgemini

text: Capgemini was founded by Serge Kampf in 1967 as an enterprise management and data processing company. The company was founded as the "Société pour la Gestion de l'Entreprise et le Traitement de l'Information" (Sogeti).


title: Capgemini

text: In 1974, Sogeti acquired Gemini Computers Systems, an American company based in New York. In 1975, having made two major acquisitions of CAP (Centre d'Analyse et de Programmation) and Gemini Computer Systems, and following resolution of a dispute with the similarly named CAP UK over the international use of the name 'CAP', Sogeti renamed itself as CAP Gemini Sogeti.


title: Capgemini

text: Cap Gemini Sogeti launched US operations in 1981, following the acquisition of Milwaukee-based DASD Corporation, specializing in data conversion and employing 500 people in 20 branches throughout the US. Following this acquisition, The U.S. Operation was known as Cap Gemini DASD.


title: Capgemini

text: In 1990 Cap Gemini Sogeti acquired the UK company Hoskyns Group, the European leader in IT outsourcing and managed services.


title: Capgemini

text: In 1996, the name was simplified to Cap Gemini, and the firm launched a new group logo. All operating companies worldwide were re-branded to operate as Cap Gemini.


title: Capgemini

text: Ernst & Young Consulting was acquired by Cap Gemini in 2000. It simultaneously integrated Gemini Consulting to form Cap Gemini Ernst & Young. In 2017, Cap Gemini S.A. became Capgemini SE, and its Euronext ticker name similarly changed from CAP GEMINI to CAPGEMINI.


title: Capgemini

text: In 2018, they acquired the Philadelphia-based digital customer engagement company LiquidHub for to assist Capgemini's digital and cloud growth in North America. Its large backend team is based in India. Earlier Capgemini acquisitions included Kanbay for $1.2 billion and iGate for $4 billion.


title: Capgemini

text: In 2019, Capgemini acquired Altran, in the largest acquisition in the company's history, bringing the total employee count to over 250,000. As part of the acquisition, Capgemini acquired frog design and Cambridge Consultants, which were integrated into Capgemini Invent; several other recent acquisitions in the design and digital space, including staff from Fahrenheit 212, Idean, and June21, have been merged into this group and operate under the frog brand.


title: Capgemini

text: In June 2021, Capgemini partnered with Sanofi, Orange & Generali to launch Future4care, a European start-up accelerator focused on digital healthcare. In 2021, Capgemini acquired RXP Services and Acclimation in Australia to expand their operations in Australia. Also in 2021, Capgemini acquired Australian company Empired and its New Zealand subsidiary Intergen.


title: Capgemini

text: As of 2021, Capgemini has over 300,000 employees in approximately 50 countries, with around 120,000 in India.


title: Capgemini

text: Capgemini Invent was launched in September 2018, as the design and consulting brand of the Capgemini Group. Located in more than 37 offices globally, Capgemini Invent includes more than 10,000 employees. These include staff from frog design, which was acquired as part of the deal whereby Altran became Capgemini Engineering, and now operates as "frog, part of Capgemini Invent." Employees from Fahrenheit 212, Idean, and June21, have been integrated into the frog organization and Capgemini Invent.


title: Capgemini

text: Capgemini Q-Lab is a quantum computing laboratory set up in 2022 in collaboration with IBM, and will be an authorised IBM Quantum Hub. The facility will be available in the UK, Portugal and India, and will work as research facilities to help build quantum applications. The lab will feature IBM's latest 127-qubit quantum processor, Eagle.


title: Capgemini

text: Sogeti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Capgemini Group. It is an information technology consulting company specialising in technology and engineering professional services.


title: Capgemini

text: The Capgemini Group Executive Committee consists of 27 members. On 20 May 2020, Aiman Ezzat was appointed as the new CEO. He is associated with Capgemini for more than 20 years. From 2005 to 2007, Aiman was Capgemini's Deputy Director of Strategy. In November 2007, Ezzat was appointed COO of the Financial Services Global Business Unit, and became its Global Head in December 2008 till 2012. From January 2018 to May 2020, he served as Chief Operating Officer and prior to this as Chief Financial Officer, from December 2012 to 2018.


title: Capgemini

text: From 2012 to 2020, Paul Hermelin served as the Group Chairman and CEO. He joined Capgemini in 1993, and was appointed as its CEO in 2002. In May 2012, Hermelin became chairman and CEO of the Capgemini Group. He succeeded Serge Kampf, who served as the Vice Chairman of the Board until his death on 15 March 2016.


title: Capgemini

text: In May 2020, Aiman Ezzat succeeded Paul Hermelin as CEO. Paul Hermelin continues as Chairman of the Board of Directors.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Shashi Tharoor (; ; born 9 March 1956 in London, England ) is an Indian former international civil servant, diplomat, bureaucrat and politician, writer and public intellectual who has been serving as Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, since 2009. He is the Chairman of the Standing Committee on Chemicals and Fertilizers. He was formerly Under-Secretary General of the United Nations and unsuccessfully ran for the post of Secretary-General in 2006. Founder-Chairman of All India Professionals Congress, he formerly served as Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs and on Informational Technology.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Born in London, UK, and raised in India, Tharoor worked across the world, graduating from St. Stephen's College, Delhi in 1975 and culminated his studies in 1978 with a doctorate in International Relations and Affairs from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University. At the age of 22, he was the youngest person at the time to receive such an honour from the Fletcher School. From 1978 to 2007, Tharoor was a career official at the United Nations, rising to the rank of Under-Secretary General for Communications and Public Information in 2001. He announced his retirement after finishing second in the 2006 selection for U.N. Secretary-General to Ban Ki-moon.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In 2009, Tharoor began his political career by joining the Indian National Congress and successfully represented the party from Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala by winning in the Lok Sabha elections and becoming a member of parliament thrice. During the Congress-led UPA Government, Tharoor served as Minister of State for External Affairs. Popular for his command over the English language, Tharoor was the most followed Indian on Twitter before being overtaken by Narendra Modi.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: A Sahitya Academy Awardee, Tharoor has authored many works of fiction and non-fiction since 1981, which are centred on India and its history, culture, film, politics, society, foreign policy, and more related themes. He has written columns and articles in nearly all major publications of the world and India. A non-loyalist of the Gandhis, Tharoor was lopsidedly defeated by Mallikarjun Kharge to become the party president.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Shashi Tharoor was born on 10 March 1956 in London, United Kingdom to Chandran Tharoor and Sulekha Menon, a Malayali couple from Palakkad, Kerala. Tharoor has two younger sisters, Shobha and Smitha. Shashi's paternal grandfather's name was Chippukutty Nair. Shashi's paternal uncle was Parameshwaran Tharoor, the founder of "Reader's Digest" in India.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor's father, originally from Kerala, worked in various positions in London, Bombay, Calcutta and Delhi, including a 25-year career (culminating as group advertising manager) for "The Statesman". Tharoor's parents returned to India when he was 2-years old, where he joined the Montfort School, Yercaud, in 1962, subsequently moving to Bombay (now Mumbai) and studying at the Campion School (1963–68). He spent his high school years at St. Xavier's Collegiate School in Kolkata (1969–71).


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In 1975, Tharoor graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from St Stephen's College, University of Delhi, where he had been president of the student union and also founded the St. Stephen's Quiz Club. Within the same year, Tharoor went to the United States to obtain an M.A. in International Relations at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University in Medford. After obtaining his M.A. in 1976, Tharoor further obtained his Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy in 1977 and his Ph.D. in International Relations and Affairs in 1978. While he was pursuing his doctorate, Tharoor was awarded the Robert B. Stewart Prize for best student and was also the first editor of the Fletcher Forum of International Affairs. At the age of 22, he was the youngest person to receive a doctorate in the history of the Fletcher School.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor's career in the United Nations began in 1978 as a staff member of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Geneva. From 1981 until 1984 he was head of the UNHCR office in Singapore, during the boat people crisis, leading the organisation's rescue efforts at sea and succeeding in resettling a backlog of Vietnamese refugees. He also processed Polish and Acehnese refugee cases. After a further stint at the UNHCR headquarters in Geneva, during which he became the first chairman of the staff elected by UNHCR personnel worldwide, Tharoor left UNHCR. In 1989 he was appointed special assistant to the Under-Secretary-General for Special Political Affairs, the unit that later became the Peacekeeping Operations Department in New York. Until 1996, he led the team responsible for peacekeeping operations in the former Yugoslavia, spending considerable time on the ground during the civil war there.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In 1996, Tharoor was appointed Director of Communications and Special Projects and Executive Assistant to Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In January 2001, Tharoor was appointed as Interim Head of the Department of Public Information (DPI) at the Assistant-Secretary-General level. He was subsequently confirmed as the Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information (UNDPI) with effect from 1 June 2002. In this capacity, he was responsible for the United Nations' communications strategy, enhancing the image and effectiveness of the organisation. In 2003 the Secretary-General gave him the additional responsibility of United Nations Coordinator for Multilingualism. During his tenure at the UNDPI, Tharoor reformed the department and undertook a number of initiatives, ranging from organizing and conducting the first-ever UN seminar on Antisemitism, the first-ever UN seminar on Islamophobia after the 11 September attacks, and launching an annual list of "Ten Under-Reported Stories the World Ought to Know about", which was last produced in 2008 by his successor.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: On 9 February 2007, Tharoor resigned from the post of Under-Secretary-General and left the UN on 1 April 2007.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In 2006, the government of India nominated Tharoor for the post of UN Secretary-General. Had he won, the 50-year-old Shashi Tharoor would have become the second-youngest Secretary-General, after the 46-year-old Dag Hammarskjöld. Although all previous Secretaries-General had come from small countries, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan felt that Tharoor's candidacy would demonstrate India's willingness to play a larger role at the United Nations.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor finished second, behind Ban Ki-moon of South Korea, in each of the four straw polls conducted by the UN Security Council. In the final round, Ban emerged as the only candidate not to be vetoed by one of the permanent members, while Tharoor received one veto from the United States. U.S. Ambassador John Bolton later revealed his instructions from Condoleezza Rice: "We don't want a strong Secretary-General." Tharoor was a protégé of the independently minded Kofi Annan, and a senior American official told Tharoor that the US was determined to have "No more Kofis." After the vote, Tharoor withdrew his candidacy and declined Ban Ki-moon's invitation to remain in service beyond the expiry of his term as Under-Secretary-General.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In February 2007, amidst speculation about his post-UN future, the Indian press reported that Tharoor might be inducted into Council of Ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as Minister of State for External Affairs. In the same month, an American gossip blog reported that Tharoor was a finalist for the position of dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication in Los Angeles, but he withdrew his name from consideration at the final stage. Instead, Tharoor became chairman of Dubai-based Afras Ventures, which established the Afras Academy for Business Communication (AABC) in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, the city in which he would go on to win a record three parliamentary elections. He also spoke around the world about India and Kerala, where he spent increasing amounts of time before moving for good to India in October 2008.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Prior to embarking on his political career, Tharoor also served on the board of overseers of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, the board of trustees of the Aspen Institute, and the advisory boards of the Indo-American Arts Council, the American India Foundation, the World Policy Journal, the Virtue Foundation, and the human rights organisation Breakthrough. At the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in 1976, he founded and was the first chair of the editorial board of "The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs", a journal examining issues in international relations. Tharoor was an international adviser to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva from 2008 to 2011. He served on the advisory council of the Hague Institute for International Justice and was elected Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities during 1995–96. He also supported various educational causes, including as Patron of GEMS Modern Academy in Dubai.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor once said that when he began his political career he was approached by the Congress, the Communists, and the BJP. He chose Congress because he felt ideologically comfortable with it. In March 2009, Tharoor contested the Indian General elections as a candidate for the Congress Party in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala. His opponents included P. Ramachandran Nair of the Communist Party of India (CPI), Neelalohitadasan Nadar of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), MP Gangadharan of the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP), and PK Krishna Das of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Despite criticism that he was an "elite outsider",


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor won the elections by a margin of 99,989. He was then selected as a Minister of State in the Council of Ministers of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. On 28 May 2009, he was sworn in as Minister of State for External Affairs, in charge of Africa, Latin America, and the Gulf, including the Haj pilgrimage, and the Consular, Passports, and Visas services of the Ministry. As Minister of State for External Affairs, he re-established long-dormant diplomatic relationships with African nations, where his fluency in French made him popular with Francophone countries and their heads of state.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor was a pioneer in using social media as an instrument of political interaction. He was India's most-followed politician on Twitter until 2013, when he was overtaken by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Some of his Twitter posts have proved controversial in the past and were highlighted negatively by the opposition and press.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: He was also the first Indian minister to visit Haiti after the devastating 2010 earthquake. He reformed the arrangements relating to the conduct of the Haj pilgrimage. He initiated new policy-planning activities on the Indian Ocean and represented India at various global events during his 11-month tenure as minister. In April 2010, he resigned from the position, following allegations that he had misused his office to get shares in the IPL cricket franchise. Tharoor denied the charges and, during his resignation speech in Parliament, called for a full inquiry. In a 2014 rejoinder he defended his position: "I was never involved in a scam of any sort in the IPL- I was brought down because...[I had] antagonised some powerful political cricketing interests" and added that he had "cooperated extensively with the detailed investigation conducted by the Enforcement Directorate into the entire issue", and no wrongdoing had been found.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Between 2010 and 2012 Tharoor remained active in Parliament and was member-convenor of the Parliamentary Forum on Disaster Management, a member of the Standing Committee on External Affairs, of the Consultative Committee of Defence, the Public Accounts Committee, and the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Telecoms. He participated in several important debates of the 15th Lok Sabha, including on the Lokpal Bill, the demand for grants of the Ministry of External Affairs and of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, the black money debate, and so on. In the special debate on the 60th anniversary of the Indian Parliament, Tharoor was one of four members of the Congress Party, including party President Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, and Leader of the House Pranab Mukherjee, to be invited to address the Lok Sabha.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In 2012 Tharoor was re-inducted into the Union Council of Ministers by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh with the portfolio of minister of state for HRD. In this role he took special interest in the problems and challenges of adult education, distance education and enhancing high-quality research by academic institutions. He was responsible for the ministry's written answers to Parliament's questions and responded to oral questions on education during the Lok Sabha's Question Hour. He addressed forums and conferences on education, explained a vision of India's educational challenges in the context of the country's demographic opportunities, and stressed that education was not only a socioeconomic issue, but also a national security issue.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: As Member of Parliament for Thiruvananthapuram, Tharoor became the first elected representative in India to issue annual reports on his work as MP, including furnishing accounts of his MPLADS expenditure. In 2012 he published a half-term report followed in 2014 by a full-term report.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In May 2014 Tharoor won his re-election from Thiruvananthapuram, defeating O. Rajagopal of the Bharatiya Janata Party by a margin of around 15,700 votes, and became a member of the 16th Lok Sabha, sitting in Opposition. He was named Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. Shashi Tharoor was dropped from the post of Congress spokesperson on 13 October 2014 after he praised statements of his party's opponent, Prime Minister Modi.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In regards to Tharoor's removal from the post of congress spokesperson, Kolkata's "The Telegraph" opined, "For an Opposition MP to have and to exercise the freedom to appreciate a good thing done by the government and for a ruling party MP to speak and vote against the party line is not just legitimate parliamentary practice, it is the very essence of parliamentary democracy. Shashi Tharoor, from the ranks of the Congress has tried to do that; there is not one BJP MP who has matched him. Blind conformism is not loyalty, nor independent thinking, dissent."


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: After the BJP victory of 2014, Tharoor was asked to help the treasury benches draft a statement condemning Pakistan for freeing Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the Lashkar-e-Toiba commander, who masterminded the 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. In January 2015, Tharoor asked not to debunk genuine accomplishments of Ancient Indian Science due to exaggerations of the Hindutva brigade, amid 2015 Indian Science Congress ancient aircraft controversy.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In March 2017, Tharoor called for the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata to be converted into a museum on the effects of British colonial rule in India. Tharoor wrote in an "Al Jazeera" article that the British "conquered one of the richest countries in the world (27 per cent of global gross domestic product in 1700) and reduced it to, after over two centuries of looting and exploitation, one of the poorest, most diseased and most illiterate countries on Earth by the time they left in 1947. ...Nor is there any memorial to the massacres of the Raj, from Delhi in 1857 to Amritsar in 1919, the deaths of 35 million Indians in totally unnecessary famines caused by British [policies]".


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Although there was significant support for Tharoor to contest as the Prime Minister candidate in 2019 General Elections, he has disowned, downplayed, and distanced himself from any such online campaigns run by his large number of followers.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor has also attempted to introduce a number of Private Members Bills in the Parliament. Notably, his efforts to amend Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code were voted out by the majority of parliamentarians on two occasions. The Apex court of India later ruled in favor of amending the controversial article in 2018, thereby vindicating the position advocated by Tharoor.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor is notable for his eloquence while speaking, as demonstrated by the popularity of his speeches on online platforms such as YouTube. For instance, Shashi Tharoor's Oxford Union speech, delivered at the Oxford Union in 2015, has amassed over 8.1 million views on one site alone, while simultaneously being praised as ground-breaking in various educational institutions in India. Further speeches such as those explaining the importance of "soft power" and analyzing the impacts of education in India have garnered over one million and two million views respectively.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Additionally, Tharoor is known for his views on a number of topics including economics, history, governance, and geopolitics due to both his well-regarded educational attainment and his broad experience while at the United Nations. He is an outspoken supporter of the Campaign for the Establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, an organisation which campaigns for democratic reformation of the United Nations, arguing that "United Nations needs to open its doors to elected representatives" Many note that it is his combination of wit, charm, wry humour, and intelligence that make him accessible and held in high esteem, both in India and abroad.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor has been a columnist in each of India's three best-known English-language newspapers, most recently for "The Hindu" (2001–2008) and in a weekly column, "Shashi on Sunday," in the "Times of India" (January 2007 – December 2008). Following his resignation as Minister of State for External Affairs, he began a fortnightly column on foreign policy issues in the "Deccan Chronicle". Previously he was a columnist for the "Gentleman" magazine and the "Indian Express" newspaper, as well as a frequent contributor to "Newsweek International" and the "International Herald Tribune". His op-eds and book reviews have appeared in "The Washington Post", "The New York Times" and the "Los Angeles Times", amongst other papers. His monthly column, "India Reawakening", distributed by Project Syndicate, appears in 80 newspapers around the world. As of 2021, Tharoor has written twenty-three books in English.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor began writing at the age of 6, and his first published story appeared in the Sunday edition of "The Free Press Journal", in Mumbai at age 10. His World War II adventure novel "Operation Bellows" about a RAF pilot Reginald Bellows, inspired by the Biggles books, was serialised in the Junior Statesman starting a week before his 11th birthday. "The Great Indian Novel" had had 43 reprints as of October 2014, and a Silver Jubilee special edition was issued on the book's 25th anniversary in October 2014, by Viking Penguin India."The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone" has also undergone several hardback re-prints. President Bill Clinton cited Shashi Tharoor's book "India From Midnight to the Millennium" in his speech to the Indian parliament in 2000.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor has lectured widely on India, and is often quoted for his observations, including, "India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay." He also coined a comparison of India's "thali" to the American "melting pot": "If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali – a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast".


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Shashi Tharoor's non-fiction work "An Era of Darkness", published later in the United Kingdom as "Inglorious Empire: What the British Did to India", arose out of a speech he made at the Oxford Union, was published in 2016. It has sold over 100,000 copies in hardback reprints and continues to be a bestseller in the country. The British edition rose to Number 1 in the "London Evening Standard" bestseller lists. Since then, he has published two other non-fiction books: "Why I Am A Hindu" (2018) and "The Paradoxical Prime Minister" (2018), both of which have been published in the Indian subcontinent by the Aleph Book Company. The two books, both mega-bestsellers in India, raised very important questions. "Why I Am a Hindu" makes the point that it is precisely because Hindus form the majority that India has survived as a plural, secular democracy, a status that come under threat in the present world. "The Paradoxical Prime Minister" was a critical study of the present Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the effect he has had on India, along with other questions about a leader who is reviled and worshipped in equal measure.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Victor Mallet in the "Financial Times" said Tharoor "wants us to understand the origins of the difficulties that confronted India" after Indian independence. An article by the "New Statesman" said it was especially important for readers in Britain in the light of post-Brexit discussions. Tharoor has called for the British government to pay "colonial reparations" to India.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In September 2019, he published a new book, "The Hindu Way: An Introduction", in line with his research into Hindu culture and ways of life of late. In 2020 he published "The New World Disorder And the Indian Imperative," co-authored with Samir Saran, President of Observer Research Foundation (ORF), one of Asia's most influential think tanks. The book is a crucial study on the current state of chaos in international politics and identifies India's imminent role, as a non-hegemonic global power, in scripting an equitable ethic for a new international order.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor's first wife was Tilottama Mukherji, a half-Bengali and half-Kashmiri academic, and the granddaughter of politician Kailash Nath Katju. Tharoor and Mukherji had been college sweethearts and were married in 1981. After their marriage, Tilottama took her husband's last name and began teaching English at the Ngee Ann Polytechnic university and also worked as a freelance writer. Their twin sons, Kanishk and Ishaan, were born prematurely in 1984 at the KK Hospital in Singapore. Ishaan is a former senior editor at "Time" magazine, and now writes on foreign affairs for "The Washington Post". Kanishk is a former editor at Open Democracy and is the author of the highly praised short story collection "Swimmer Among The Stars". Tilottama is currently a professor of humanities at New York University.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor and Tilottama were divorced at some point. In 2007, Tharoor married Christa Giles, a Canadian diplomat working at the United Nations. This marriage was short-lived and childless. Tharoor next married Dubai-based businesswoman Sunanda Pushkar at his ancestral home in Elavanchery village in Kerala's Palakkad district on 22 August 2010. He became her third husband, and step-father to her son Shiv Menon, born of a previous marriage. On 17 January 2014, Pushkar (aged 51) died at The Leela Hotel in Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, under mysterious circumstances. In May 2018, Tharoor was charged with encouraging the suicide of his wife and marital cruelty under sections 306 and 498A of the Indian Penal Code. On 18 August 2021, a court in Delhi discharged Tharoor from all the charges.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Tharoor is a vegetarian and he "abhors the idea of consuming the corpses of animals," although he claimed that he does not have a problem with those who do. He has stated that he is "very proud of being a Hindu" and that he's a "worshipping" and "believing Hindu". Tharoor also claims to have read a "fair amount" of the Upanishads.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: In April 2019, Tharoor had an accident when praying during a Thulabharam ritual at a temple in Thiruvananthapuram. After being discharged, he sought a probe by the government into the incident.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Shashi Tharoor was one of the first nine celebrities nominated in 2014 by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi to spread awareness regarding cleanliness, hygiene and good sanitation and make Swachh Bharat Mission a people's movement. He responded by cleaning the Vizhinjam port on the outskirts of Thiruvananthapuram.


title: Shashi Tharoor

text: Currently, he is also on the Board of Advisors of India's International Movement to Unite Nations (I.I.M.U.N.).


title: Sean Gunn

text: Sean Gunn (born May 22, 1974) is an American actor. He is known for his roles as Kirk Gleason on The WB series "Gilmore Girls" (2000–2007), and Kraglin Obfonteri in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In this role, he has been in the films "Guardians of the Galaxy" (2014), "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2" (2017), "" (2019), "" (2022), the television film "The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special" (2022) and the upcoming film "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" (2023). He also played Weasel and Calendar Man in the Warner Bros./DCEU film "The Suicide Squad" (2021). He is the younger brother of director James Gunn and often appears in his brother's films.


title: Sean Gunn

text: In 1995 Gunn played Sammy Capulet in the B movie "Tromeo and Juliet". In 2000, he guest starred in the second episode of "Gilmore Girls" as Mick, a DSL cable installer. As the first season continued, Gunn was brought back to play the recurring role of Kirk Gleason, one of Stars Hollow's most eccentric citizens. Since 2002, until the end of the series in 2007, Gunn was a regular cast member of the show. He also had a recurring role on "October Road" as Rooster.


title: Sean Gunn

text: Although he is best known for his regular "Gilmore Girls" role, he also has several television show guest appearance credits, including "Angel"; "3rd Rock from the Sun"; "Yes, Dear"; "True Jackson, VP"; "Andy Richter Controls the Universe"; and "Bunheads". Gunn can also be seen in commercials as an "agent" for the text message information service KGB.com. In films, Gunn has also had several roles, the most substantial being "Alien Orphan/Doug" in "The Specials", for which he also received a co-producer credit.


title: Sean Gunn

text: In 2003, Gunn starred in the featurette "The Man Who Invented the Moon", directed by fellow Goodman School of Drama alum and "Gilmore Girls" cast member John Cabrera. Gunn and Cabrera have been close artistic colleagues since their school days in Chicago back in the mid-nineties.


title: Sean Gunn

text: Along with his brothers James and Brian, he is a creator and actor in the spoof-porn series, "James Gunn's PG Porn". He also had a brief role as a computer maintenance man on the Nickelodeon show "True Jackson VP". Gunn starred in a series of television commercials for Knowledge Generation Bureau. He appeared in the 2010 film "Super", written and directed by his brother James.


title: Sean Gunn

text: Sean is also the voice actor behind the character of Swan in the Warner Brothers video game "Lollipop Chainsaw", also written by his brother James.


title: Sean Gunn

text: In 2014, he provided performance capture for the character of Rocket, and played the role of Kraglin, Yondu Udonta's second-in-command, in "Guardians of the Galaxy".


title: Sean Gunn

text: In 2014, he held a supporting role in "Bones" on Fox in the episode "The Corpse at the Convention". In 2017, he reprised his role as Kraglin in "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2", playing a larger role, and again provided performance capture for the character of Rocket.


title: Sean Gunn

text: Sean Gunn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the youngest of six children. He is the brother of filmmaker James Gunn, actor and political writer Matt Gunn, screenwriter Brian Gunn, producer and former Executive Vice President of Artisan Entertainment Patrick, and a sister, Beth, who works as an employment attorney. Their parents are Leota and James F. Gunn, who is a retired partner and corporate attorney with the law firm Thompson Coburn in St. Louis.


title: Sean Gunn

text: Gunn and his brothers all attended the Jesuit St. Louis University High School, where he graduated in 1992. He then graduated from The Theatre School at DePaul University in 1996.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The AFC Asian Cup is the primary association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC), determining the continental champion of Asia. It is the second oldest continental football championship in the world after Copa América. The winning team becomes the champion of Asia and until 2015 qualified for the FIFA Confederations Cup.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The Asian Cup was held once every four years from the 1956 edition in Hong Kong until the 2004 tournament in China. However, since the Summer Olympic Games and the European Football Championship were also scheduled in the same year as the Asian Cup, the AFC decided to move their championship to a less crowded cycle. After 2004, the tournament was next held in 2007, when it was co-hosted by four countries in Southeast Asia: Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. Thereafter, it has been held every four years.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The Asian Cup has generally been dominated by a small number of top teams. Initially successful teams included South Korea (twice) and Iran (three times). Since 1984, Japan (four times) and Saudi Arabia (three times) have been the most successful teams, together winning seven of the last ten finals. The other teams which have achieved success are Qatar (2019 current champions), Australia (2015), Iraq (2007) and Kuwait (1980). Israel won in 1964 but was later expelled and has since joined UEFA.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Australia joined the Asian confederation in 2007 and hosted the Asian Cup finals in 2015, winning the competition in the final against South Korea. The 2019 tournament was expanded from 16 teams to 24 teams, with the qualifying process doubling as part of the qualification for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: A pan-Asian competition was first proposed after the end of World War II, but it was not implemented until the 1950s. Two years after the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) came into being in 1954, the first ever AFC Asian Cup was staged in Hong Kong with seven of the twelve founding members taking part, making the tournament the second oldest in the world. The qualifying process involved the hosts plus the winners of the various zones (Central, Eastern and Western). It was only a four-team tournament, a format that also existed for 1960 and 1964. Each sub-confederation already hosts their own biennial championship, each with varying degrees of interest.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: South Korea demonstrated its superiority in the early years of the competition as the country conquered the 1956 and 1960; this remains as South Korea's best achievements in the tournament.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: After Hong Kong and South Korea hosting the two first editions, Israel was chosen as hosts of the 1964 AFC Asian Cup. Using the same format of the two previous editions, this tournament only had four teams and played in one single group to determine the champions. Israel eventually topped the tournament ahead of India with three wins. The format was updated to five teams in 1968 before it was expanded to six teams in 1972 and 1976.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The tournament became the preserve of Iran who won three consecutive tournaments in 1968, 1972 and 1976, with Iran hosting the former and the latter. Iran stays as the only national team in Asia to have won three consecutive Asian Cups. The 1972 final was notable as it was the first Asian Cup to use the group stage-knockout phase format, which was followed in the subsequent tournaments with some alternation. However, the tournament was marked with a dark note when Israel was expelled from the AFC in 1972 due to Arab–Israeli conflict.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: From 1980 to 1988, the number of teams taking part expanded to ten, but West Asian countries continued their domination in the 1980s with Kuwait becoming the first Arab country to win the championship in 1980 held at home soil, beating South Korea 3–0 in the final. Saudi Arabia, after an initial poor start, began to emerge as the country qualified, then won two consecutive Asian trophies in 1984 and 1988, overcame both China and South Korea. Both tournaments were Saudi Arabia's debuts in any major competitions.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Up until 1990s, the AFC Asian Cup was mostly played in a more amateur level, despite its attempt to raise the standard. However, with Asia being granted more spots for the FIFA World Cup, attempts to professionalize the tournament also began. By the end of 1990s, the tournament has begun to be professionalized.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Japan until 1990s was mostly a small name in Asian football, and the country only qualified for the 1988 edition, the first time Japan took part in a continental football tournament. However, as Japan started to make a concrete move inroad to professional football, the country's fortunes increased. Japan hosted the 1992 AFC Asian Cup, which was reduced to eight teams and two groups, where it emerged victorious after beating Saudi Arabia, then-defending champions, 1–0, to win the country's first major international honour.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The 1996 AFC Asian Cup saw the tournament expanded to twelve teams in its process of professionalization. Held by the United Arab Emirates, the hosts breached into the final for the first time ever but was unable to win the trophy after losing to Saudi Arabia, who made it into the country's fourth consecutive Asian finals, on penalties. It was Saudi Arabia's third Asian title.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The 2000 AFC Asian Cup saw Lebanon took part in its first Asian tournament, and it was Saudi Arabia who again reached the final, but this time, Japan triumphed over Saudi Arabia 1–0 in a final filled with a majority of Saudi supporters. Japan would go on to retain their Asian trophy four years later, albeit in a more struggling style and a very heated, politically charged final toward hosts China. The 2004 edition was notable as it expanded to 16 teams and Saudi Arabia's absent from an Asian Cup final for the first time.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The 2007 AFC Asian Cup gained notable for the debut of Australia, which had abandoned the Oceania Football Confederation in 2006 (coincidentally the first team to qualify for the tournament), as well as being the first football competition in the world to be hosted by more than two nations, with four countries in Southeast Asia (Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia) hosting. In this tournament, Iraq crowned as Asian champions despite the ravaging Iraq War and sectarian tensions, overpowering the likes of Australia, South Korea and Saudi Arabia in process.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Australia (which joined the AFC in 2006), after its poor debut in 2007, rebounded to reach the final in 2011 AFC Asian Cup in Qatar, but lost to Japan after extra-time; the win for Japan meant it became the most decorated team in Asian football with four titles. Still, the tournament was notable as the first Asian Cup to use the jersey numbers' order from 1 to 23, previously not practised in prior competitions.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Following Australia's successes in the 2011 Asian Cup, the AFC approved the country to host the 2015 AFC Asian Cup. At the tournament, Australia managed to clamp down every opponent with only one loss, against eventual finalist South Korea, whom Australia would get a 2–1 final revenge after extra-time; the win officially sealed Southeast Asia's first Asian title as Australia joined the AFF in 2013.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: At the 2019 AFC Asian Cup, the video assistant referees were used in the tournament for the first time, as well as an expansion to 24 teams. In addition, a fourth substitution was allowed during extra time. The tournament, hosted by the United Arab Emirates for the second time, witnessed the rise of Qatar, who conquered its first ever Asian title after beating Japan in the final 3–1. The tournament was marred by the Qatar diplomatic crisis, due to the UAE's entry ban on Qatari supporters, as well as shoe-throwing in the two's semi-final clash.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Since 1972, the final tournament is played in two stages: the group stage and the knockout stage. Since 2019, each team plays three games in a group of four, with the winners and runners-up from each group advancing to the knockout stage along with the four best third-placed teams. In the knockout stage the sixteen teams compete in a single-elimination tournament, beginning with the round of 16 and ending with the final match of the tournament.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: There have been two Asian Cup trophies; the first one used between 1956 and 2015, and the second one in use since 2019.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The first trophy came in a form of a bowl with circular base. It was 42 centimeters tall and weighs 15 kilograms. Until the 2000 tournament, the black base contained plaques engraved with names of every winning country, as well as the edition won. The trophy was redesigned, adding more silver and reduce the black base to just a thin layer down. This base was plaque-free and the winning countries' names were engraved around the base.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: During the draw for the 2019 group stage on 4 May 2018 at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, an all new trophy made by Thomas Lyte was unveiled. It is 78 centimeters tall, 42 centimeters wide, and weighs 15 kilograms of silver. The trophy is modeled over lotus flower, a symbolically important aquatic Asian plant. Five petals of the lotus symbolize the five sub-confederations under the AFC. The winning countries' names are engraved around the trophy base, which is separable from the trophy's main body. This trophy has a handle on each side, unlike its predecessor.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Despite being the second oldest continental football tournament, the AFC Asian Cup has suffered numerous criticisms. Criticisms over the inability of the AFC Asian Cup to attract large attendances, political interference, high costs of traveling between AFC member states and different cultures were highlighted over the Asian Cup.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: The AFC Asian Cup is marked with numerous instances of political interference. One of these was the case of Israel, as the team used to be a member of the AFC but following the Yom Kippur War and increasing tensions against the Arab AFC members, Israel was expelled from the AFC in 1974 and had to compete in OFC, until being granted UEFA membership in 1990. Meanwhile, similar cases also exist in other AFC tournaments like the one between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Following the 2016 attack on the Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran, Saudi Arabia had refused to play against Iran and even threatened to withdraw, afterwards blowing over onto international level. Tensions between the two Koreas during qualification for the 2010 FIFA World Cup had led North Korea to withdraw from hosting the South Korean team and refusing to display the South Korean flag and play their national anthem. As a result, North Korea's home matches were moved to Shanghai.


title: AFC Asian Cup

text: Low crowds have also been another problems for the AFC Asian Cup. At the 2011 AFC Asian Cup, there had been concerns over low record of crowds due to little football interests and high costs of traveling between Asian nations leading to then-Australia coach Holger Osieck claiming that the Qatar Armed Forces were used to fill up the stadiums simply for aesthetics, while Australia international Brett Holman commented, "Worldwide it's not recognised as a good tournament".


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: Queen of the South is an American crime drama television series developed by M.A. Fortin and Joshua John Miller. The series premiered on June 23, 2016, and concluded on June 9, 2021, with 62 episodes aired on USA Network. It is an adaptation of the telenovela "La Reina del Sur" which airs on USA's sister network Telemundo; both are adapted from the novel "La Reina del Sur" by Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The series was renewed for a fifth season on August 29, 2019. Production of the new season was suspended indefinitely on March 14, 2020, due to COVID-19, but resumed in fall 2020. On March 8, 2021, it was announced that the fifth season would premiere on April 7, 2021 and serve as the series' final season.


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: "Queen of the South" is an adaptation of the telenovela "La Reina del Sur", which is itself an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Spanish author Arturo Pérez-Reverte. The series centers around Teresa Mendoza, a poor Mexican woman who becomes wealthy by building a vast drug empire.


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: Teresa lives in the barrio of Culiacán in Sinaloa, Mexico. She falls in love with a member of a drug cartel, and tries to rise above her life's impoverished condition. After she is told her boyfriend has been murdered, she is forced to flee. She crosses the border to the United States where she ends up in the criminal organization of the wife of the cartel boss who is after her.


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: Teresa has a different vision of the drug distribution business and due to her charisma attracts associates and ends up starting her own drug distributing organization. Teresa becomes very successful, which presents her with more problems, makes her endure sacrifices and attracts the attention of covert government forces.


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: "Queen of the South" first season received mixed to positive feedback from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, it has a score of 68%, based on 19 reviews, with an average rating of 6.18/10. The site's consensus reads: ""Queen of the South" enlivens an overdone premise with action and narrative vigor—and shows hints of intriguing potential." On Metacritic, the first season scored 59 out of 100, based on 16 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: Internationally, the series premiered in Australia on Showcase on August 4, 2016. German TV channel DMAX has been showing the series since June 14, 2017.


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: Pérez-Reverte, author of the novel, has stated that a great source of inspiration was Mexican "narcocorridos" (drug ballads), country-polka songs that tell the stories about real life Mexican drug lords.


title: Queen of the South (TV series)

text: One of the real-life characters who inspired the novel is Sandra Ávila Beltrán, known as the "Queen of the Pacific", famous for being one of the first female drug traffickers to reach the level of "boss" in the Mexican cartels, a place usually reserved for men.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto (; Japanese: , "Kyōto" ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in Japan. Located in the Kansai region on the island of Honshu, Kyoto forms a part of the Keihanshin metropolitan area along with Osaka and Kobe. , the city had a population of 1.46 million. The city is the cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area known as Greater Kyoto, a metropolitan statistical area (MSA) home to a census-estimated 3.8 million people.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto is one of the oldest municipalities in Japan, having been chosen in 794 as the new seat of Japan's imperial court by Emperor Kanmu. The original city, named Heian-kyō, was arranged in accordance with traditional Chinese feng shui following the model of the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an/Luoyang. The emperors of Japan ruled from Kyoto in the following eleven centuries until 1869. It was the scene of several key events of the Muromachi period, Sengoku period, and the Boshin War, such as the Ōnin War, the Honnō-ji Incident, the Kinmon incident and the Battle of Toba–Fushimi. The capital was relocated from Kyoto to Tokyo after the Meiji Restoration. The modern municipality of Kyoto was established in 1889. The city was spared from large-scale destruction during World War II and as a result, its prewar cultural heritage has mostly been preserved.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto is considered the cultural capital of Japan and is a major tourist destination. It is home to numerous Buddhist temples, Shinto shrines, palaces and gardens, some of which have been designated collectively as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Prominent landmarks include the Kyoto Imperial Palace, Kiyomizu-dera, Kinkaku-ji, Ginkaku-ji, and Kyoto Tower. The internationally renowned video game company Nintendo is based in Kyoto. Kyoto is also a center of higher learning in the country, and its institutions include Kyoto University, the second oldest university in Japan.


title: Kyoto

text: In Japanese, Kyoto was previously called Kyō (), Miyako (), Kyō no Miyako (), and . In the 11th century, the city was officially named "Kyōto" (, "capital city"), from the Middle Chinese ' (cf. Mandarin "jīngdū"). After the seat of the emperor was moved to the city of Edo and that city was renamed "Tōkyō" (, meaning "eastern capital"), Kyoto was briefly known as "Saikyō" (, meaning "western capital"). As the capital of Japan from 794 to 1868, Kyoto is sometimes called the thousand-year capital ().


title: Kyoto

text: Ample archeological evidence suggests human settlement in the area of Kyoto began as early as the Paleolithic period, although not much published material is retained about human activity in the region before the 6th century, around which time the Shimogamo Shrine is believed to have been established.


title: Kyoto

text: During the 8th century, when powerful Buddhist clergy became involved in the affairs of the imperial government, Emperor Kanmu chose to relocate the capital in order to distance it from the clerical establishment in Nara. His last choice for the site was the village of Uda, in the Kadono district of Yamashiro Province.


title: Kyoto

text: The new city, , modeled after Chinese Tang dynasty capital Chang'an, became the seat of Japan's imperial court in 794, beginning the Heian period of Japanese history. Although military rulers established their governments either in Kyoto (Muromachi shogunate) or in other cities such as Kamakura (Kamakura shogunate) and Edo (Tokugawa shogunate), Kyoto remained Japan's capital until the transfer of the imperial court to Tokyo in 1869 at the time of the Imperial Restoration.


title: Kyoto

text: In the Sengoku period, the city suffered extensive destruction in the Ōnin War of 1467–1477, and did not really recover until the mid-16th century. During the war, battles between samurai factions spilled into the streets, and came to involve court nobility ("kuge") and religious factions as well. Nobles' mansions were transformed into fortresses, deep trenches dug throughout the city for defense and as firebreaks, and numerous buildings burned. The city has not seen such widespread destruction since.


title: Kyoto

text: In the late 16th century, Toyotomi Hideyoshi reconstructed the city by building new streets to double the number of north–south streets in central Kyoto, creating rectangle blocks superseding ancient square blocks. Hideyoshi also built earthwork walls called encircling the city. Teramachi Street in central Kyoto is a Buddhist temple quarter where Hideyoshi gathered temples in the city.


title: Kyoto

text: Throughout the Edo period, the economy of the city flourished as one of three major cities in Japan, the others being Osaka and Edo. At the end of the period, the Hamaguri rebellion of 1864 burned down 28,000 houses in the city, which showed the rebels' dissatisfaction towards the Tokugawa Shogunate.


title: Kyoto

text: At the start of the Meiji period, the emperor's move from Kyoto to Tokyo in 1869 weakened the economy of Kyoto. The modern city of Kyoto was formed on April 1, 1889. The construction of Lake Biwa Canal in 1890 was one measure taken to revive the city. The population of the city exceeded one million in 1932.


title: Kyoto

text: There was some consideration by the United States of targeting Kyoto with an atomic bomb at the end of World War II because of the possibility that the city's importance was great enough that its loss might persuade Japan to surrender. In the end, at the insistence of Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations, the city was removed from the list of targets and replaced by Nagasaki. The city was largely spared from conventional bombing as well, although small-scale air raids did result in casualties. During the occupation, the U.S. Sixth Army and I Corps were headquartered in Kyoto.


title: Kyoto

text: As a result, Kyoto is one of the few Japanese cities that still have an abundance of prewar buildings, such as the traditional townhouses known as "machiya". However, modernization is continually breaking down traditional Kyoto in favor of newer architecture, such as the Kyōto Station complex.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto became a city designated by government ordinance on September 1, 1956. In 1997, Kyoto hosted the conference that resulted in the protocol on greenhouse gas emissions (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change).


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto is located in a valley, part of the Yamashiro (or Kyoto) Basin, in the eastern part of the mountainous region known as the Tamba highlands. The Yamashiro Basin is surrounded on three sides by mountains known as Higashiyama, Kitayama and Nishiyama, with a maximum height of approximately above sea level. This interior positioning results in hot summers and cold winters. There are three rivers in the basin, the Uji River to the south, the Katsura River to the west, and the Kamo River to the east. Kyoto City takes up 17.9% of the land in Kyoto Prefecture and has a total area of .


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto sits atop a large natural water table that provides the city with ample freshwater wells. Due to large-scale urbanization, the amount of rain draining into the table is dwindling and wells across the area are drying at an increasing rate.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen "Cfa"), featuring a marked seasonal variation in temperature and precipitation. Summers are hot and humid, but winters are relatively cold with occasional snowfall. Kyoto's rainy season begins around the middle of June and lasts until the end of July, yielding to a hot and sunny latter half of the summer. Kyoto, like most of the Pacific coast and central areas of Japan, is prone to typhoons during the summer and autumn.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto contains roughly 2,000 temples and shrines. The main business district is located to the south of the Kyoto Imperial Palace. In the center of the city, there are several covered shopping arcades only open to pedestrian traffic, such as Teramachi Street and Shinkyōgoku Street.


title: Kyoto

text: The original city was arranged in accordance with traditional Chinese feng shui following the model of the ancient Chinese capital of Chang'an/Luoyang. The Imperial Palace faced south, resulting in Ukyō (the right sector of the capital) being on the west, while Sakyō (the left sector) is on the east. The streets in the modern-day wards of Kamigyō-ku, Nakagyō-ku, and Shimogyō-ku still follow a grid pattern. Areas outside of the city center do not follow the same grid pattern, though streets throughout Kyoto are referred to by name, a practice that is rare in most regions of Japan.


title: Kyoto

text: In the 1870s, the city was divided into a northern ward (Kamigyō-ku) and a southern ward (Shimogyō-ku), each working as individual administrative divisions of Kyoto Prefecture. The modern municipality was created by the unification of these wards into the city of Kyoto in 1889.


title: Kyoto

text: Due to the creation of new administrative districts and a number of municipal mergers that took place between the 1920s and the 1970s, the contemporary city of Kyoto is divided into eleven . The central wards, located to the west of the Kamo River, are small and densely populated. The city hall is located in Nakagyō-ku, and the Kyoto prefectural offices are located in present-day Kamigyō-ku.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto was the largest city in Japan until the late 16th century, when its population was surpassed by those of Osaka and Edo. Before World War II, Kyoto vied with Kobe and Nagoya to rank as the fourth or fifth largest city in Japan. Having avoided most wartime destruction, it was again the third largest city in 1947. By 1960 it had fallen to fifth again, and by 1990 it had fallen to seventh. , it was the ninth largest city in Japan by population and had led the country in population decrease for two consecutive years. However, the population of the city rises during standard working hours, and Kyoto ranks seventh in Japan in terms of daytime population.


title: Kyoto

text: Approximately 55% of the total population of Kyoto Prefecture is concentrated in the city of Kyoto, which is the highest ratio among the prefectures of Japan.


title: Kyoto

text: The city of Kyoto is governed by the mayor of Kyoto and the Kyoto City Assembly, a municipal council.


title: Kyoto

text: The legislative city assembly has 67 elected members, and terms are four years in length. As of 2022, the assembly is controlled by a coalition of members affiliated with the Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito, and the Democratic Civic Forum.


title: Kyoto

text: Between the founding of the modern city and 1898, the governor of Kyoto Prefecture also acted as the mayor of the city of Kyoto. From 1898 through the Second World War, mayors were nominated by the Kyoto City Assembly and appointed by the Minister of Home Affairs.


title: Kyoto

text: Since 1947, mayors of Kyoto have been chosen by direct election to four-year terms. As of 2022, there have been nine mayors elected using this system. While some mayors have resigned or died in office, no mayor has lost a reelection bid in the postwar period. In the 2020 Kyoto mayoral election, independent candidate Daisaku Kadokawa was re-elected for the third time, supported by the Liberal Democratic Party, Komeito, the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Democratic Party for the People, and the Social Democratic Party.


title: Kyoto

text: In addition to its sister city arrangements which involve multi-faceted cooperation, Kyoto has created a system of "partner cities" which focus on cooperation based on a particular topic. At present, Kyoto has partner-city arrangements with the following cities:


title: Kyoto

text: Information technology and electronics are key industries in Kyoto. The city is home to the headquarters of Nintendo, Intelligent Systems, SCREEN Holdings, Tose, Hatena, Omron, Kyocera, Shimadzu, Rohm, Horiba, Nidec Corporation, Nichicon, Nissin Electric, and GS Yuasa.


title: Kyoto

text: Domestic and international tourism contributes significantly to Kyoto's economy. In 2014, the city government announced that a record number of tourists had visited Kyoto. As a result of a sharp decline in tourism during the COVID-19 pandemic, the mayor acknowledged in 2021 "the possibility of bankruptcy in the next decade" and announced job cuts in the administration and cuts in social assistance, including reductions in funding for home care.


title: Kyoto

text: Traditional Japanese crafts are also a major industry of Kyoto; Kyoto's kimono weavers are particularly renowned, and the city remains the premier center of kimono manufacturing. Sake brewing is another prominent traditional industry in Kyoto, and the headquarters of major sake brewers Gekkeikan and Takara Holdings are found in Kyoto.


title: Kyoto

text: Other notable businesses headquartered in Kyoto include Aiful, Ishida, Nissen Holdings, Gyoza no Ohsho, Sagawa Express, Volks, and Wacoal.


title: Kyoto

text: Home to 40 institutions of higher education, Kyoto is one of the academic centers in Japan. Kyoto University is often ranked first or second among national universities nationwide. The Kyoto Institute of Technology is considered to be among best universities for architecture and design in the country. Influential private universities such as Doshisha University and Ritsumeikan University are also located in the city.


title: Kyoto

text: The Consortium of Universities in Kyoto is a Kyoto-based higher education network consisting of three national universities, three public (prefectural and municipal) universities, 45 private universities, five other organizations, and representatives from the city government. The Consortium does not offer its own degree, but allows students to take courses at other participating universities.


title: Kyoto

text: In addition to Japanese universities and colleges, educational institutions from other countries operate programs in the city. The Kyoto Consortium for Japanese Studies (KCJS) is a group of 14 American universities that runs overseas academic programs in Japanese language and cultural studies for university students.


title: Kyoto

text: Kyoto is served by rail transportation systems operated by several different companies and organizations. The city's main gateway terminal, Kyōto Station, connects the Tokaido Shinkansen bullet train Line with five JR West lines, a Kintetsu line, and a municipal subway line.


title: Kyoto

text: The Keihan Electric Railway, the Hankyu Railway, and other rail networks also offer frequent services within the city and to other cities and suburbs in the Kinki region. Although Kyoto does not have its own commercial airport, the Haruka Express operated by JR West carries passengers from Kansai International Airport to Kyōto Station in 73 minutes.


title: Kyoto

text: The Kyoto Railway Museum in Shimogyō-ku, operated by JR West, displays many steam, diesel, and electric locomotives used in Japan between the 1880s and the present.


title: Kyoto

text: The Tokaidō Shinkansen, operated by JR Central, provides high-speed rail service linking Kyoto with Nagoya, Yokohama, and Tokyo to the east and with nearby Osaka to the west. Beyond Osaka, many trains boarding at Kyoto continue on the San'yō Shinkansen route managed by JR West, providing access to cities including Kobe, Hiroshima, and Fukuoka. The trip from Tokyo to Kyoto takes around 2.5 hours, and the trip from Hakata Station in Fukuoka to Kyoto takes just over three hours by Nozomi train service. All Shinkansen trains stop at Kyōto Station, including Hikari and Kodama trains.


title: Kyoto

text: The Kyoto Municipal Transportation Bureau operates the Kyoto Municipal Subway consisting of two lines: the Karasuma Line and the Tōzai Line. The two lines are linked at Karasuma Oike Station near the center of the economic district.


title: Kyoto

text: The Karasuma Line runs primarily north to south between the terminal of Kokusaikaikan Station and Takeda Station, and takes its name from the fact that trains run beneath Karasuma Street between Kitaōji Station in Kita-ku and Jūjō Station in Minami-ku. The Karasuma Line connects to the Hankyu Kyoto Main Line at the intersection of Shijō Karasuma in Kyoto's central business district and to JR lines and the Kyoto Kintetsu Line at Kyōto Station. In addition, the Transportation Bureau and Kintetsu jointly operate through services which continue to Kintetsu Nara Station in Nara.