title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: Another year passes and Corrine has not visited in months. Cathy and Chris conclude that their mother has abandoned them and begin planning their escape. When Corrine does return, she happily announces she has married Bart and the reason for her absence was her honeymoon in Europe. She is upset that the children are not more excited and seems oblivious to the deterioration in the twins. Olivia soon brings the children sugar-powdered doughnuts, which she says are a gift from their mother. Olivia beats Chris with a belt after he demands to be called by his name rather than "boy". Cathy tends to his wounds and admits her fear of losing him. Chris assures her nothing will happen to him and they kiss. When Olivia comes to deliver their food, Chris tells her that she was right about them being the "devil's spawn" and pleads for forgiveness. After she leaves, Chris reveals the whole scene was a scheme to get an impression of the attic key in soap, and he carves a wooden copy.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: Now able to leave the attic, Cathy and Chris begin to steal money from their mother's room to finance an escape by train. On a night raid, Cathy finds Bart asleep and kisses him. Chris later overhears his mother and Bart talking about a dream of a young, blonde-haired girl coming into the room and kissing Bart. Chris angrily confronts Cathy, who assures him that the kiss meant nothing and she only did it out of curiosity. She kisses him and they end up having sex. Cathy suggests they move to Florida and Chris tells her that he loves her and can never love anyone else. Carrie suddenly announces that Cory isn't feeling good. It becomes obvious that Cory is seriously ill. Cathy tells Olivia and Corrine that Cory is sick and demands her mother take Cory to a hospital, threatening revenge if she does not. The next day, Corrine tells them Cory had pneumonia and died, and has already been buried.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: Devastated by Cory's death and in fear for their lives, Cathy and Chris decide to take all the money they have collected and grab as much jewelry as they can and escape. During their search for valuables, they discover that Corrine and Bart have left Foxworth Hall. Chris overhears a conversation between the butler and a maid, and learns that Olivia has been leaving poison to kill "the mice" in the attic and that their grandfather died seven months ago. Cathy shows Chris how Cory's pet mouse has died after eating a piece of powdered doughnut, revealing that the poison was in the powdered sugar on the doughnuts. Olivia then comes to take their key, and Chris restrains her long enough for Cathy and Carrie to escape. Olivia chases after them, but panics due to her claustrophobia when Chris shuts the door and turns the lights off. Olivia tells them that their mother was the one who poisoned them, not her, but they ignore her and climb out the window, fleeing on foot.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: During their escape, they run into the butler, who realizes they are Corrine's children. Horrified, he tells them to run while he cuts off the electric fence for them. They board a train to Florida and Chris assures her that their ordeal is finally over. Cathy vows revenge on their mother.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: "Flowers in the Attic" was first announced on July 23, 2013 as a television film for the Lifetime network. It was also announced that the film would star Heather Graham as Corrine Dollanganger and Ellen Burstyn as Olivia Foxworth. It was also announced that the film would be directed by Deborah Chow and written by Kayla Alpert.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: On August 14 it was announced that Kiernan Shipka and Mason Dye had been cast as Cathy and Chris respectively. During the same month, it was announced that Dylan Bruce had joined the cast as Bart Winslow, Corrine's love interest.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: In its original televised airing, the film was watched by 6.06 million total viewers, and had a rating (percentage) of 1.9 in the 18-49 age demographic. At the time, it was cable's number-one original movie performance since the October 2012 premiere of "Steel Magnolias".


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: On April 15, 2014, "Flowers in the Attic" was released in DVD format for Region 1. The single disc featured the entire film, as well as a behind-the-scenes featurette with the cast and crew. It was later re-released on June 23, 2015, with "Petals on the Wind" as a "Double Feature." On November 10, 2015, it was included in a "4-Film Collection" with "Petals on the Wind," "If There Be Thorns," and "Seeds of Yesterday."


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: "Flowers in the Attic" received mixed reviews from critics, albeit far more positive reviews than the 1987 adaptation. Review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 52% of 23 critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 5.5 out of ten. The film averaged 49 out of 100, based on 22 critics, on Metacritic, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: For her performance, Burstyn was nominated for a Critics' Choice Television Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Shipka was nominated an Online Film & Television Association Award for her performance.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: Based on the next book of the Dollanganger series, "Petals on the Wind" premiered on Lifetime on May 26, 2014, earning 3.4 million viewers, down from the 6.1 million earned by "Flowers". Unlike the book, the film jumped ten years ahead from the events of "Flowers". It starred Rose McIver as Cathy, Wyatt Nash as Christopher, replacing Kiernan Shipka and Mason Dye from the previous movie, respectively, and Will Kemp as Julian Marquet, with Heather Graham as Corrine and Ellen Burstyn as Olivia Foxworth. Production for the film began on February 25, 2014, in Los Angeles.


title: Flowers in the Attic (2014 film)

text: On the premiere of the sequel, Lifetime announced the production of the two following books in the Dollanganger series, "If There Be Thorns" and "Seeds of Yesterday", both which premiered in 2015. Both sequels were shot by cinematographer James Liston.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, honey, or anything safe to eat, and/or by hunting game (pursuing and/or trapping and killing wild animals, including catching fish), roughly as most animal omnivores do. Hunter-gatherer societies stand in contrast to the more sedentary agricultural societies, which rely mainly on cultivating crops and raising domesticated animals for food production, although the boundaries between the two ways of living are not completely distinct.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Hunting and gathering was humanity's original and most enduring successful competitive adaptation in the natural world, occupying at least 90 percent of human history. Following the invention of agriculture, hunter-gatherers who did not change were displaced or conquered by farming or pastoralist groups in most parts of the world.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Only a few contemporary societies of uncontacted people are still classified as hunter-gatherers, and many supplement their foraging activity with horticulture or pastoralism.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Hunting and gathering was presumably the subsistence strategy employed by human societies beginning some 1.8 million years ago, by "Homo erectus", and from its appearance some 200,000 years ago by "Homo sapiens". Prehistoric hunter-gatherers lived in groups that consisted of several families resulting in a size of a few dozen people. It remained the only mode of subsistence until the end of the Mesolithic period some 10,000 years ago, and after this was replaced only gradually with the spread of the Neolithic Revolution.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: During the 1970s, Lewis Binford suggested that early humans obtained food via scavenging, not hunting. Early humans in the Lower Paleolithic lived in forests and woodlands, which allowed them to collect seafood, eggs, nuts, and fruits besides scavenging. Rather than killing large animals for meat, according to this view, they used carcasses of such animals that had either been killed by predators or that had died of natural causes. Archaeological and genetic data suggest that the source populations of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers survived in sparsely wooded areas and dispersed through areas of high primary productivity while avoiding dense forest cover.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: According to the endurance running hypothesis, long-distance running as in persistence hunting, a method still practiced by some hunter-gatherer groups in modern times, was likely the driving evolutionary force leading to the evolution of certain human characteristics. This hypothesis does not necessarily contradict the scavenging hypothesis: both subsistence strategies may have been in use sequentially, alternately or even simultaneously.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Starting at the transition between the Middle to Upper Paleolithic period, some 80,000 to 70,000 years ago, some hunter-gatherer bands began to specialize, concentrating on hunting a smaller selection of (often larger) game and gathering a smaller selection of food. This specialization of work also involved creating specialized tools such as fishing nets, hooks, and bone harpoons. The transition into the subsequent Neolithic period is chiefly defined by the unprecedented development of nascent agricultural practices. Agriculture originated as early as 12,000 years ago in the Middle East, and also independently originated in many other areas including Southeast Asia, parts of Africa, Mesoamerica, and the Andes.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Forest gardening was also being used as a food production system in various parts of the world over this period. Forest gardens had originated in prehistoric times along jungle-clad river banks and in the wet foothills of monsoon regions. In the gradual process of families improving their immediate environment, useful tree and vine species were identified, protected, and improved, whilst undesirable species were eliminated. Eventually superior introduced species were selected and incorporated into the gardens.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Many groups continued their hunter-gatherer ways of life, although their numbers have continually declined, partly as a result of pressure from growing agricultural and pastoral communities. Many of them reside in the developing world, either in arid regions or tropical forests. Areas that were formerly available to hunter-gatherers were—and continue to be—encroached upon by the settlements of agriculturalists. In the resulting competition for land use, hunter-gatherer societies either adopted these practices or moved to other areas. In addition, Jared Diamond has blamed a decline in the availability of wild foods, particularly animal resources. In North and South America, for example, most large mammal species had gone extinct by the end of the Pleistocene—according to Diamond, because of overexploitation by humans, one of several explanations offered for the Quaternary extinction event there.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: As the number and size of agricultural societies increased, they expanded into lands traditionally used by hunter-gatherers. This process of agriculture-driven expansion led to the development of the first forms of government in agricultural centers, such as the Fertile Crescent, Ancient India, Ancient China, Olmec, Sub-Saharan Africa and Norte Chico.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: As a result of the now near-universal human reliance upon agriculture, the few contemporary hunter-gatherer cultures usually live in areas unsuitable for agricultural use.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Archaeologists can use evidence such as stone tool use to track hunter-gatherer activities, including mobility.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Ethnobotany is the field of study whereby food plants of various peoples and tribes worldwide are documented.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Most hunter-gatherers are nomadic or semi-nomadic and live in temporary settlements. Mobile communities typically construct shelters using impermanent building materials, or they may use natural rock shelters, where they are available.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Some hunter-gatherer cultures, such as the indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and the Yokuts, lived in particularly rich environments that allowed them to be sedentary or semi-sedentary. Amongst the earliest example of permanent settlements is the Osipovka culture (14–10.3 thousand years ago), which lived in a fish-rich environment that allowed them to be able to stay at the same place all year. One group, the Chumash, had the highest recorded population density of any known hunter and gatherer society with an estimated 21.6 persons per square mile.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Hunter-gatherers tend to have an egalitarian social ethos, although settled hunter-gatherers (for example, those inhabiting the Northwest Coast of North America) are an exception to this rule. For example, the San people or "Bushmen" of southern Africa have social customs that strongly discourage hoarding and displays of authority, and encourage economic equality via sharing of food and material goods. Karl Marx defined this socio-economic system as primitive communism.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers is never total, but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male. So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by paleoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the evolutionary emergence of human consciousness, language, kinship and social organization.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Most anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers do not have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Within a particular tribe or people, hunter-gatherers are connected by both kinship and band (residence/domestic group) membership. Postmarital residence among hunter-gatherers tends to be matrilocal, at least initially. Young mothers can enjoy childcare support from their own mothers, who continue living nearby in the same camp. The systems of kinship and descent among human hunter-gatherers were relatively flexible, although there is evidence that early human kinship in general tended to be matrilineal.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: The conventional assumption has been that women did most of the gathering, while men concentrated on big game hunting. An illustrative account is Megan Biesele's study of the southern African Ju/'hoan, 'Women Like Meat'. A recent study suggests that the sexual division of labor was the fundamental organizational innovation that gave "Homo sapiens" the edge over the Neanderthals, allowing our ancestors to migrate from Africa and spread across the globe.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: This view was challenged by feminist anthropologists in the 1970s who pointed out that anthropology had historically overly emphasized men. The stereotype of "man the hunter, women the gatherer" may have described a common division of labor, but men in hunter-gatherer societies still help with the gathering, especially when women are tired or sick, or the hunt is unsuccessful. Women hunted with different weapons. Women hunted with dogs or blowpipes and poison darts. Women could trap animals too, using nets or baskets to snare crabs and fish.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: A 1986 study found most hunter-gatherers have a symbolically structured sexual division of labor. However, it is true that in a small minority of cases, women hunted the same kind of quarry as men, sometimes doing so alongside men. Among the Ju'/hoansi people of Namibia, women help men track down quarry. In the Australian Martu, both women and men participate in hunting but with a different style of gendered division; while men are willing to take more risks to hunt bigger animals such as kangaroo for political gain as a form of "competitive magnanimity", women target smaller game such as lizards to feed their children and promote working relationships with other women, preferring a more constant supply of sustenance.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: 9000-year-old remains of a female hunter along with a toolkit of projectile points and animal processing implements were discovered at the Andean site of Wilamaya Patjxa, Puno District in Peru.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: At the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference, anthropologists Richard Borshay Lee and Irven DeVore suggested that egalitarianism was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population. Therefore, no surplus of resources can be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were flux in territorial boundaries as well as in demographic composition.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented a paper entitled, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society", in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers lives as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short", as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they were satisfied with very little in the material sense. Later, in 1996, Ross Sackett performed two distinct meta-analyses to empirically test Sahlin's view. The first of these studies looked at 102 time-allocation studies, and the second one analyzed 207 energy-expenditure studies. Sackett found that adults in foraging and horticultural societies work, on average, about 6.5 hours a day, whereas people in agricultural and industrial societies work on average 8.8 hours a day.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Researchers Gurven and Kaplan have estimated that around 57% of hunter-gatherers reach the age of 15. Of those that reach 15 years of age, 64% continue to live to or past the age of 45. This places the life expectancy between 21 and 37 years. They further estimate that 70% of deaths are due to diseases of some kind, 20% of deaths come from violence or accidents and 10% are due to degenerative diseases.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Mutual exchange and sharing of resources (i.e., meat gained from hunting) are important in the economic systems of hunter-gatherer societies. Therefore, these societies can be described as based on a "gift economy."


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: A 2010 paper argued that while hunter-gatherers may have lower levels of inequality than modern, industrialised societies, that does not mean inequality does not exist. The researchers estimated that the average Gini coefficient amongst hunter-gatherers was 0.25, equivalent to the country of Denmark in 2007. In addition, wealth transmission across generations was also a feature of hunter-gatherers, meaning that "wealthy" hunter-gatherers, within the context of their communities, were more likely to have children as wealthy as them than poorer members of their community and indeed hunter-gatherer societies demonstrate an understanding of social stratification. Thus while the researchers agreed that hunter-gatherers were more egalitarian than modern societies, prior characterisations of them living in a state of egalitarian primitive communism were inaccurate and misleading.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Hunter-gatherer societies manifest significant variability, depending on climate zone/life zone, available technology, and societal structure. Archaeologists examine hunter-gatherer tool kits to measure variability across different groups. Collard "et al." (2005) found temperature to be the only statistically significant factor to impact hunter-gatherer tool kits. Using temperature as a proxy for risk, Collard "et al.'s" results suggest that environments with extreme temperatures pose a threat to hunter-gatherer systems significant enough to warrant increased variability of tools. These results support Torrence's (1989) theory that the risk of failure is indeed the most important factor in determining the structure of hunter-gatherer toolkits.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers for egalitarianism and "delayed return" for nonegalitarian.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Hunting-gathering was the common human mode of subsistence throughout the Paleolithic, but the observation of current-day hunters and gatherers does not necessarily reflect Paleolithic societies; the hunter-gatherer cultures examined today have had much contact with modern civilization and do not represent "pristine" conditions found in uncontacted peoples.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: It has been argued that hunting and gathering represents an adaptive strategy, which may still be exploited, if necessary, when environmental change causes extreme food stress for agriculturalists. In fact, it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line between agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies, especially since the widespread adoption of agriculture and resulting cultural diffusion that has occurred in the last 10,000 years.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Nowadays, some scholars speak about the existence within cultural evolution of the so-called mixed-economies or dual economies which imply a combination of food procurement (gathering and hunting) and food production or when foragers have trade relations with farmers.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Some of the theorists who advocate this "revisionist" critique imply that, because the "pure hunter-gatherer" disappeared not long after colonial (or even agricultural) contact began, nothing meaningful can be learned about prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of modern ones (Kelly, 24–29; see Wilmsen)


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Lee and Guenther have rejected most of the arguments put forward by Wilmsen. Doron Shultziner and others have argued that we can learn a lot about the life-styles of prehistoric hunter-gatherers from studies of contemporary hunter-gatherers—especially their impressive levels of egalitarianism.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: There are nevertheless a number of contemporary hunter-gatherer peoples who, after contact with other societies, continue their ways of life with very little external influence or with modifications that perpetuate the viability of hunting and gathering in the 21st century. One such group is the Pila Nguru (Spinifex people) of Western Australia, whose habitat in the Great Victoria Desert has proved unsuitable for European agriculture (and even pastoralism). Another are the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands in the Indian Ocean, who live on North Sentinel Island and to date have maintained their independent existence, repelling attempts to engage with and contact them. The Savanna Pumé of Venezuela also live in an area that is inhospitable to large scale economic exploitation and maintain their subsistence based on hunting and gathering, as well as incorporating a small amount of manioc horticulture that supplements, but is not replacing, reliance on foraged foods.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Evidence suggests big-game hunter-gatherers crossed the Bering Strait from Asia (Eurasia) into North America over a land bridge (Beringia), that existed between 47,000 and 14,000 years ago. Around 18,500–15,500 years ago, these hunter-gatherers are believed to have followed herds of now-extinct Pleistocene megafauna along ice-free corridors that stretched between the Laurentide and Cordilleran ice sheets. Another route proposed is that, either on foot or using primitive boats, they migrated down the Pacific coast to South America.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Hunter-gatherers would eventually flourish all over the Americas, primarily based in the Great Plains of the United States and Canada, with offshoots as far east as the Gaspé Peninsula on the Atlantic coast, and as far south as Chile, Monte Verde. American hunter-gatherers were spread over a wide geographical area, thus there were regional variations in lifestyles. However, all the individual groups shared a common style of stone tool production, making knapping styles and progress identifiable. This early Paleo-Indian period lithic reduction tool adaptations have been found across the Americas, utilized by highly mobile bands consisting of approximately 25 to 50 members of an extended family.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: The Archaic period in the Americas saw a changing environment featuring a warmer more arid climate and the disappearance of the last megafauna. The majority of population groups at this time were still highly mobile hunter-gatherers. Individual groups started to focus on resources available to them locally, however, and thus archaeologists have identified a pattern of increasing regional generalization, as seen with the Southwest, Arctic, Poverty Point, Dalton and Plano traditions. These regional adaptations would become the norm, with reliance less on hunting and gathering, with a more mixed economy of small game, fish, seasonally wild vegetables and harvested plant foods.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: Scholars like Kat Anderson have suggested that the term Hunter-gatherer is reductive because it implies that Native Americans never stayed in one place long enough to affect the environment around them. However, many of the landscapes in the Americas today are due to the way the Natives of that area originally tended the land. Anderson specifically looks at California Natives and the practices they utilized to tame their land. Some of these practices included pruning, weeding, sowing, burning, and selective harvesting. These practices allowed them to take from the environment in a sustainable manner for centuries.


title: Hunter-gatherer

text: California Indians view the idea of wilderness in a negative light. They believe that wilderness is the result of humans losing their knowledge of the natural world and how to care for it. When the earth turns back to wilderness after the connection with humans is lost then the plants and animals will retreat and hide from the humans.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Aayirathil Oruvan () is a 2010 Indian Tamil-language action-adventure film written and directed by Selvaraghavan and produced by R. Ravindran. The film stars Karthi, Reemma Sen and Andrea Jeremiah with Parthiban playing a pivotal role. It revolves around three characters, Muthu (Karthi), Lavanya (Andrea Jeremiah) and Anitha (Reemma Sen) who embark on an adventure to search for a missing archaeologist. It is inspired loosely by the historical decline of the Tamil Chola dynasty and the rise of the Tamil Pandya dynasty.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: The film's principal photography commenced in July 2007, and continued till 2008; shooting of the film took place in various locations with 2,000 extras in areas including Chalakudy, Kerala and Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, and also filmed in Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad. The title "Aayirathil Oruvan" is taken from the 1965 film of the same name. The cinematography was handled by Ramji and editing work is done by Kola Bhaskar. The film's background score and soundtrack album is composed by G. V. Prakash Kumar, replacing Selvaraghavan's usual collaborator Yuvan Shankar Raja, whom he composed for his earlier films. The soundtrack received rave critical acclaim and emerged as one of the composer's best works till date.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: The film languished in development hell due to slow progress of the shoot and the extensive pre-and post-production works, evading release dates ranging one year, "Aayirathil Oruvan" was released during the Thai Pongal festival, on 14 January 2010. The distribution rights were bought by Ayngaran International. Though the original film length was 181 minutes, it was then trimmed to 154 minutes for the theatrical release.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Upon release, the film garnered critical acclaim from both the critics and audience, alike. However, the film developed a cult status over the following years. At the 58th Filmfare Awards South, the film won Best Supporting Actor award for R. Parthiepan.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: In 1279 A.D., the downfall of the Chola dynasty seems imminent as the Pandyas drive the Chola people out of their kingdom in southern India. To escape them and save the life of his successor, the Chola emperor sends his son, his royal advisor (Raja Guru), and the remaining Chola people to a secret territory. The refugees take along an idol sacred to the Pandyas, angering them. To capture the escaped Cholas and the stolen idol, the Pandyas extend their invasion to unexplored territories, but are unable to find them.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Centuries later, in 2008, Indian archaeologists are searching for the secret land of the lost Chola group using clues left by the ancient Pandyan warriors, but the searchers always disappear. After the sudden disappearance of archaeologist Chandramouli, the government organizes a search expedition led by the cruel and arrogant officer Anitha to find him and what became of the Cholas. She is assisted by a detachment of the Indian army led by Ravisekharan. They recruit Chandramouli's estranged daughter, the aloof and quiet archaeologist Lavanya. She supplies crucial documents about the Chola dynasty prepared by her father, which contain route information. Anitha also employs a group of porters headed by Muthu, who she and the army continually ill-treat.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: The expedition arrives at an island called Min-gua, on the borders of Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. There they face seven traps set by the Cholas: sea creatures, which they flee from; cannibals, who cannot eat them as long as they do not look them in the face; warriors whose land they invade and who they brutally kill; snakes; hunger; quicksand; and a village. Many porters and soldiers die, Anitha forcing the porters, who she had not warned of the dangers, to carry on and emotionally manipulating Muthu into not retreating by insulting his masculinity.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Muthu, Anitha and Lavanya then become separated from the others. They reach a ruined village, where they realize that someone is following them. Under the influence of black magic, they are almost driven mad, and surrender to the follower, who reveals himself as the aged Raja Guru, the royal advisor who was sent away 800 years ago. The Chola people have become an ethnically isolated primitive Tamil group ruled by Rajendra Chola III. They are living in poverty and suffering from drought while awaiting the arrival of the messenger who, it is foretold, will lead them back to their motherland of Thanjavur. When Muthu, Anitha, and Lavanya strip in front of themselves in front of the Raja Guru, a tattoo of a tiger is revealed on Muthu's back.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: After Muthu, Anitha, and Lavanya are revived to consciousness by the Raja Guru, other priests and physicians. Consulting the gods for omens, the king and priests are told that one of them is a Chola, one is a Pandya, and one is a commoner. The king and Raja Guru hypnotize Muthu, attempting to have him reveal himself as the messenger, but the king rejects the possibility because of Muthu's appearance and his incoherent babbling, and orders all three to be burnt alive as sacrifices.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: At this point Anitha suddenly pricks herself and uses her blood to perform black magic. She tells the king that she is the messenger. All the Chola people are ecstatic. Muthu and Lavanya are enslaved.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Unbeknownst to the Chola people, it is revealed to the audience that Anitha's account of her ancestry reveals her true identity as a descendant of the Pandya Dynasty. On glimpsing the Pandyas' sacred idol, she cries out. The minister sponsoring the expedition and Army officer Ravishekaran, who escaped the traps and is the sole survivor of the expeditionary force, are also revealed to be Pandyas. Anitha attempts to seduce the king and to persuade him to march immediately to the homeland so he can be formally crowned there, but he grows suspicious since her actions do not match the traditions about the messenger. The prophecy was that on arrival, the messenger will be beaten, it will rain, and finally, he will console the destitute. Giving up on persuading the king, Anitha attempts to kill the Raja Guru and poisons the wells, then hypnotizes a Chola girl into passing information to Ravishekaran, who returns with reinforcements. The king, horrified that he ever believed in her, realizes that Muthu is the true messenger. The Raja Guru gives all of his magical powers, including invisibility and invulnerability, to Muthu and dies.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: The Cholas fight bravely against Ravishekaran's troops but are overwhelmed by modern technology. Rajendra Chola III and his people are taken prisoners, their women raped by the soldiers. The king dies, and the remaining enslaved Cholas drown themselves in the sea with his body. Muthu then breaks free from his shackles, and saves the king's son, the last remaining heir of Chola dynasty. Using the powers given to him by the Raja Guru, he escapes from Anitha and the army with the Chola prince, presumably to India, thus fulfilling the prophecy that the messenger will take the seed of Chola dynasty to their homeland.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: After the reception to his 2007 gangster film, "Pudhupettai", Selvaraghavan took a sabbatical to plan future projects and set up a production company, "White Elephants", whose first project "Idhu Maalai Nerathu Mayakkam" started in November 2006. The film was co-produced by new producer R. Ravindran, and the first schedule began with Karthi, whose first film, "Paruthiveeran", was awaiting release, and Sandhya. The film was stalled in early 2007 due to cinematographer Arvind Krishna's decision to leave "White Elephants" and the project was eventually shelved. In July 2007, Selvaraghavan announced a new film with a new team of Karthi and Reemma Sen in the cast, with Ramji replacing regular Arvind Krishna as the cinematographer. It was Sen's first venture into this genre following a series of roles in commercial projects. Erum Ali, wife of actor Abbas, became the team's head costume designer, whilst Selvaraghavan's sister-in-law and Rajinikanth's daughter, Aishwarya Dhanush, was signed on as an associate director. The film was named after a popular M. G. Ramachandran film, "Aayirathil Oruvan". The producer was announced to be R. Ravindran whilst Yuvan Shankar Raja was appointed as music director following five previous successful soundtracks in Selvaraghavan films. Despite early indications that the director's brother Dhanush was going to play a guest role, the role was given to R. Parthiepan. Andrea Jeremiah was also signed for a role in the film in October 2007, in her second film after "Pachaikili Muthucharam", and director-actor Azhagam Perumal followed suit in November 2007.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: After extensive development and pre-production which took four months for scripting, the film started the first schedule in the forests of Chalakudy in Kerala with Karthi, Reemma Sen and Andrea during October 2007. Shooting took place in various locations throughout India also including Kerala and Jaisalmer, Rajasthan. The project developed a reputation for its gruelling shoots, a novel concept in Tamil films, at an early stage of production. Thirty-five days into the shoot, Selvaraghavan gave a statement that the film was forty percent over and the film should release by May 2008 whilst also mentioning that rains in Kerala had led to the budget going over expectations two months into the project. In January 2008, the unit moved to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan to shoot in the deserts in the region, but they were delayed again by unseasonal rains. Missing its original release date, the film's progress carried on through 2008, with shooting occurring towards the end of the year inside sets at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad. In the studios, choreographer Shivshankar composed a classical dance for Reemma Sen and Parthiepan, and the sequence was shot over twenty days. Shooting carried on in sets for three more months with second half scenes being recorded. Shoots in all regions were tough and demanding for the crew as the film featured more than three thousand junior artistes from a variety of unions across India, with the language barrier becoming a problem.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Eighteen months into shooting, the project began to face questions about its progress, with the producer, Ravindran, complaining to the Tamil Film Producers Council that Karthi was trying to change his look for his next film, "Paiyaa", following the long period he had spent with "Aayirathil Oruvan". In February 2009, filming was completed after 263 days of shooting; therefore the producers signaled for a summer release but it was postponed by six months.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: When asked by the media during production about the lengthy shooting, the lead actor said that the cast had also been unaware of how long the film's shoot was going to carry on. Reemma Sen originally signed for forty days whilst Andrea Jeremiah signed for three months, without knowing that the film would eventually take 263 days of filming. Furthermore, Parthiepan claimed to have been signed for forty days, whilst his segment lasted up to 140 days.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: In March 2008, after filming had already begun, music director Yuvan Shankar Raja was ousted from the project due to differences of opinion. G. V. Prakash Kumar succeeded him; it was his biggest project to that point. Rambo Rajkumar, the film's stunt director, died in April 2009 and was posthumously praised for his action choreography. Soon after the filming finished, the lead actors moved onto other projects, as did Selvaraghavan whilst post-production continued. During production, news websites had linked Selvaraghavan romantically with Andrea Jeremiah, to the pair's displeasure; in August 2009, he divorced his wife, Sonia Agarwal. During the period, G. V. Prakash Kumar and Selva also worked on the music in Mumbai whilst re-recording was also held in Austria and London.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: "Aayirathil Oruvan" languished in production hell due to slow progress of the shoot and the extensive pre- and post-production works, with release dates being postponed for a total of a year. During its release, the film's budget was reported to be crore. However, in August 2021, Selvaraghavan stated that the film's actual budget was crore and they had announced an inflated budget to create hype.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: The film was announced in 2007 with Selvaraghavan's regular music director, Yuvan Shankar Raja, following five successive successful albums together, but after his ouster during filming, work for the soundtrack began again from scratch under new music director G. V. Prakash Kumar. "Adada Vaa", the only song composed by Yuvan Shankar Raja for the film, was removed after his departure and instead used in "Sarvam". As


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Selvaraghavan had already filmed the visuals for that song, Prakash Kumar had to match the visuals and the choreography. "Un Mela Aasadhan", which he composed as the replacement, was noted for sounding similar to "Adada Vaa".


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: The album was well received. It features ten tunes; six songs, two alternate versions and another two theme songs, with vocals from singers Karthik, Vijay Yesudas, Bombay Jayashri, Nithyasree Mahadevan and P. B. Sreenivas, who made a comeback to playback singing with his song. Moreover, Dhanush and Aishwarya sang for the album along with the composer, Prakash Kumar and Andrea Jeremiah. Lyrics for the songs were written by Vairamuthu, Veturi, Selvaraghavan and Andrea Jeremiah. For a song set in the thirteenth century, research was carried out to find instruments used during that period. A Yaazh, a melodic instrument used in the Sangam Period, and a horn made from animal horns from Bhutan were used.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: The soundtrack to "Aayirathil Oruvan" was released on 4 November 2009 at a University Auditorium in Chennai, in a critically praised event. Prominent film personalities across the South Indian film industry attended the launch, which became one of the first films to play live music at the audio launch. It featured live performances from G. V. Prakash Kumar and Andrea Jeremiah for several songs, as well as songs from Dhanush and Aishwarya Dhanush. Furthermore, the night featured a fashion show from Erum Ali, a Kalari performance, "Chenda Melam" by women from Kerala, a classical dance performance by an actress Poorna and choreographed by Sivashankar. The soundtrack garnered critical acclaim and was considered Prakash Kumar's finest work to date. Furthermore, shortly after the music release, an album success meet was held on 20 November 2009.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: In the film, only five songs from the album are used in their entirety. Moreover, one song in the film, not included in the soundtrack, is the original version of "Atho Andha Paravai" from the 1965 film "Aayirathil Oruvan", which was bought from the original copyright holders of the song in December 2007. The film's picturisation of the three exploring the ruins of the fallen kingdom in the song, were praised.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: "Aayirathil Oruvan" is considered as one of the longest films in Tamil cinema, with an original running time of 181 minutes (3 hours, 1 minute). However, the film's runtime was reduced to 154 minutes (2 hours, 34 minutes), in order to avert difficulties faced during the theatrical release. Towards the end of the year, the film began to announce release date of Christmas which was later further delayed to coincide with the Pongal festival. A date clash occurred with Karthi's "Paiyaa", with an eventual hearing leading to the Karthi's latter film being delayed. Throughout December 2009, release work began with a trailer and promotional songs being released on 13 December. The film was subsequently certified before the end of the year by the Central Board of Film Certification and settled with an adult rating, after Selvaraghavan refused to remove some gory scenes. It received a 12A rating from British Board of Film Classification. On 31 December, it was announced that the film was sold worldwide for for theatrical, television and other rights.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Sify cited that the film represented "something new in the placid world of Tamil cinema", adding that it "broke away from the shackles of the stereotypes". Selvaraghavan also was praised by the reviewer with claims that "the director transports us to a whole new world and at the end of it all, we are dumb struck by the visuals, the packaging and the new way of storytelling". Rediff.com gave the film 3.5 out of 5, claiming that viewers should "steel [their] stomach before [they] watch it" and "regardless of the minor discrepancies, "AO" is definitely a movie to watch".,


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: Released in 600 screens worldwide, "Aayirathil Oruvan" was declared a "hit" in Telugu and an "average" in Tamil. It took the biggest opening by a considerable distance earning on its opening weekend in Chennai. In the United Kingdom, the film opened across 7 screens and grossed £29,517 ($44,868) in the opening week. The film, distributed by Ayngaran International opened at 22nd place. The film grossed $440,000 in Malaysia, while opening in seventh. The film was also dubbed in Telugu as "Yuganiki Okkadu". Similarly, the Telugu dubbed version of the film which released on 5 February, took a strong opening. The Telugu version released across 93 screens across Andhra Pradesh&Telangana and grossed on its opening weekend.


title: Aayirathil Oruvan (2010 film)

text: On 1 January 2021, Selvaraghavan released the first-look poster for the sequel "Aayirathil Oruvan 2", confirming that it starred Dhanush. A character sketch of his role was released by Dhanush through his Twitter page. It is scheduled for release in 2024.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Gran Canaria (, ; ), also Grand Canary Island, is the third-largest and second-most-populous island of the Canary Islands, an archipelago off the Atlantic coast of Northwest Africa which is part of Spain. the island had a population of that constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, the capital of the island, is the biggest city of the Canary Islands and the ninth of Spain.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Gran Canaria is located in the Atlantic Ocean in a region known as Macaronesia about off the northwestern coast of Africa and about from Europe. With an area of km ( sq. mi) and an altitude of at Morro de la Agujereada, Gran Canaria is the third largest island of the archipelago in both area and altitude. Gran Canaria is also the third most populated island in Spain.


title: Gran Canaria

text: In antiquity, Gran Canaria was populated by the North African Canarii, who may have arrived as early as 500 BC. In the medieval period, after over a century of European incursions and attempts at conquest, the island was conquered on April 29, 1483, by the Crown of Castile, under Queen Isabella I. The conquest succeeded after a campaign that lasted five years, and it was an important step towards the expansion of the unified Spain.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The capital city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria was founded on June 24, 1478, under the name "Real de Las Palmas", by Juan Rejón, head of the invading Castilian army. In 1492, Christopher Columbus anchored in the Port of Las Palmas (and spent some time on the island) on his first trip to the Americas. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is, jointly with Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the capital of the autonomous community of the Canary Islands.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Pliny claimed that the island was called this way for the dogs on the island, of which two were presented as a gift to Juba, King of Mauretania. This opinion is disputed as when the Europeans arrived on the island, no dogs were found. An other source suggested the way the natives ate fish was dog like and this was the reason for its name. A more plausible assumption is that the islands name derives from the people Canario or Canarii living near the Atlas mountain range. Jean de Béthencourt named the island Gran Canaria as the people on the island were valorous opponents to his conquest. The Canarii called the island Tamarán ('land of the brave").


title: Gran Canaria

text: Gran Canaria is located in the Canary Islands archipelago southeast of Tenerife and west of Fuerteventura. The island is of volcanic origin, mostly made of fissure vents. It has a round shape, with a diameter of approximately and a surface area of . Gran Canaria's maximum elevation is at Morro de la Agujereada, although the nearby Pico de las Nieves has traditionally been considered the island's tallest peak. The coastline measures 236 km.


title: Gran Canaria

text: About 80% of the volume of the island was formed during the Miocene period eruptions, between 14 and 9 million years ago. This is called the "Old Cycle" and is estimated to have lasted some 200,000 years and have emitted about , mostly of fissural alkali basalt. This cycle continued with the emission of trachytes, phonolites and peralkaline rocks. This period was followed by one of erosion, which lasted some 4 million years.


title: Gran Canaria

text: A second cycle of volcanic eruptions, known as the "Roque Nublo cycle", took place between 4.5 and 3.4 million years ago. This shorter cycle emitted about . Most of the inland peaks were formed by erosion from these materials. This period also started with fissural basalts, but ended with violent eruptions of pyroclastic flows. Some phonolitic features, like the Risco Blanco, were also formed in its last stages.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The third or recent cycle is held to have started some 2.8 million years ago and is considered to be still active. The last eruptions are held to have occurred some 2000 years ago.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The changes in volume and, therefore, weight of the island have also caused the island to rise above the previous sea level during erosive periods and to sink during eruptive periods. Some of these "fossil beaches" can be seen in the cliff faces of the more eroded northern coast.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Until the conquest, Gran Canaria had extensive forests, but then suffered extensive deforestation as a result of continuous logging, land divisions and other intensive uses. This reduced the forest cover to just , making the island the most deforested of the Canary Islands. However, in the twentieth century reforestation of the ridge of the island was begun, recovering some of the lost forest mass. Much of the summit of the island is forested mostly due to reforestation.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Gran Canaria is in the autonomous community of the Canary Islands ("Islas Canarias"). It lies within the Province of Las Palmas, a Spanish province which consists of the eastern part of the Canary Islands community. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is the provincial capital, one of the two capitals of the Canary Islands along with Santa Cruz de Tenerife.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The island of Gran Canaria is governed by the Cabildo insular de Gran Canaria. Gran Canaria Island itself is divided into twenty-one smaller municipalities:


title: Gran Canaria

text: The island has a population at the start of 2019 of 851,231 with 379,925 of those in the capital city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Gran Canaria is the second most populous island of the Canary Islands, after Tenerife.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Gran Canaria has roads encircling the whole island and extending into the mountain areas. In the late 20th century, its dual carriageway, among the first in the Canary Islands, were opened and run around Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and were later extended to the north coast and the airport and subsequently to the south coast in response to increased tourist traffic. The only highway of Gran Canaria are GC1. Dual carriageway is GC2, and GC31, GC4 and GC5. The western and the north-western parts, with the fewest inhabitants, are linked only with main roads.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Public transport around Gran Canaria is provided by an extensive bus network, known in the local dialect as "guaguas". The "Autoridad Única del Transporte de Gran Canaria" (Gran Canaria Transport Authority, TGC) manages the network and operates a number of bus stations across the island, including San Telmo and Santa Catalina bus stations in Las Palmas, Maspalomas and Galdar. Bus tickets may be purchased with cash, and AUTGC also operates a contactless electronic ticket called the TransGC Card, which is valid across the whole network.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Inter-urban bus services across the island are operated by the Global bus company. Global was created in 2000 after the merger of two bus companies, Utinsa (which operated in the north of the island) and Salcai (the bus operator for the south). Local bus services in Las Palmas are run by the municipal bus company, "Guaguas Municipales de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria".


title: Gran Canaria

text: Gran Canaria Airport (IATA: LPA) is the only commercial airport on the island. The large number of aircraft and passengers passing through it each year make it one of the busiest in Spain. Gran Canaria is also responsible for all air traffic control in the Canaries. By destination island, Gran Canaria is the second island that congregates the largest number of passengers in the Canary Islands.Car rental companies that have offices in the airports are: Autoreisen, Avis, Cicar, Europcar, Goldcar (only south airport), Hertz, Sixt and TopCar.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The most important ports in the island are the Port of Las Palmas "(Puerto de la Luz)," in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria; Arguineguín, which exports cement from a large factory; and Arinaga, located in the main industrial zone of Canaries and one of the major ones of Spain.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The main passenger ports are the Port of La Luz, where Trasmediterránea operates a weekly ferry route to Cadiz on the Spanish mainland, and the Port of Las Nieves, located in Agaete on the west side of the island, where Fred Olsen Express operates a catamaran ferry service to Santa Cruz de Tenerife.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Plans for a Tren de Gran Canaria railway network linking the capital with the south have been approved by both the Gran Canaria Cabildo and the autonomous Canary Islands' Government, though the discussion with the central Spanish Government hinges now on budget. The planned railway line would run between Las Palmas and Meloneras, with the section in the capital running entirely underground as far as the suburb of Jinámar. The line is planned to have 11 stations, including an underground station at Gran Canaria Airport. The scheme was first announced in 2009, with a planned operational date in 2015. A public company called "Ferrocarriles de Gran Canaria" has been formed by the Cabildo's Gran Canaria Transport Authority. Plans were still being discussed in 2018.


title: Gran Canaria

text: According to the Köppen climate classification, Gran Canaria is considered to have a desert climate (Bwh) due to its severe lack of precipitation. Gran Canaria has consistent warm temperatures in spring, summer and autumn, and mild winters. Gran Canaria is noted for its rich variety of microclimates. Generally speaking though, the average daytime high ranges from in winter to in summer. Some cool nights occur in winter, but lows below are unknown near the coast. Inland the climate is still mild but mountainous areas see the occasional frost or snow. Annual rainfall averages , most of this falling in the cooler months, with July, August and September normally rainless. Rainfall is unevenly distributed through the island with some areas being much drier than others.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Cloud cover and sunshine is often quite variable during the cooler months, and there can be several rather cloudy days at times in winter. Summers are generally quite sunny however, with the south of the island being most favoured.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Gran Canaria agriculture is unique among the Canaries islands in that it was traditionally dominated by plantations, with much of these being grains as well as sugarcane, rather than by stock-breeding. The caves of Valerón (a property of cultural interest in the "archaeological site" category) in the municipality of Santa María de Guía bears testimony of it by being the largest pre-Hispanic collective granary of the Canaries.


title: Gran Canaria

text: This island is called a "miniature continent" due to the different climates and variety of landscapes found, with long beaches and dunes of white sand, contrasting with green ravines and picturesque villages. A third of the island is under protection as a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The number of annual visitors was 3.6 million in 2014 (of which 450.000 Spaniards). Most of the tourists visit the southern part of the island. The north tends to be cooler, while the south is warmer and sunny. The east coast of the island is flat, dotted with beaches, while the western coast is rockier and mountainous.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The island possesses 32 Natural Protected Spaces, notably the Rural Park of Nublo, The Doramas Jungle, the Azuaje Ravine, Tamadaba, Pino Santo, etc.


title: Gran Canaria

text: In the south there is a large bird park, Palmitos Park, as well as many beach resort communities. Resorts are concentrated in the central eastern part of the southern coast in the Maspalomas area, which includes the towns of San Agustín, Playa del Inglés and Meloneras. The Maspalomas Dunes are located between Playa del Inglés ("The Englishman's Beach") and the distinctive 19th century Maspalomas lighthouse. Playa del Ingles is home to the Yumbo Centre, which was opened in 1982 and has almost 200 shops, including bars, restaurants, cafes, fashion boutiques, electronic outlets and jewellery stores.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Still further to the west along the southern shore, in the Municipality of Mogán, are the communities of Puerto Rico and Puerto de Mogán, a village referred to as "Little Venice" on account of its many canals.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Other attractions include Cocodrilos Park, Roque Nublo (an 80 m monolith), Cenobio de Valerón with more than 350 storage cavities, Painted cave of Galdar the most important archaeological park in Canary Islands, or the botanical gardens "Jardín Canario" (in Tafira Alta) and "Cactualdea" (in La Aldea de San Nicolás).


title: Gran Canaria

text: El Dedo de Dios, or "God's Finger", was a rocky spire jutting from the sea in Puerto de las Nieves, and was previously the signature attraction of the Canary Islands until it was destroyed by tropical storm Delta that crossed the archipelago in November 2005.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Other well-known rock formations are El Cura (also known as El Fraile), The Frog (La Rana), Roque Bentayga, the Roque de Gando, and the Peñón Bermejo. Traditionally, the highest peak of the island has been considered to be the Pico de las Nieves, at ; however, Morro de la Agujereada is taller, at .


title: Gran Canaria

text: The capital city is Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. "Las Canteras" beach, a protected area and diving zone, lies in the heart of the city. Las Palmas de Gran Canaria is also known for its annual "carnaval". It was the first stop of Christopher Columbus' expedition on his way back from the Americas, a commemoration of which is the Hermitage of San Antonio Abad, where the navigator prayed, and the "Casa de Colón". Other attractions in the capital city include the "Museo Canario" (the most important archaeology museum in the archipelago), the cathedral and the "Plaza del Espíritu Santo". In Teror the shrine of "Virgen del Pino" ("Virgin of the Pine"), patron saint of Gran Canaria, can be found. Its feast is celebrated on September 8.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The town of Agüimes, on the eastern part of the island, has been carefully restored and its town centre, centered on its old church and a peaceful square, now evokes the quiet living of a traditional Canarian town. The district also has some of the best preserved cave dwellings, in the protected area of the Guayadeque ravine, where even the church has been built into the mountainside and visitors can find a number of popular cave restaurants. The district also includes the most renowned scuba diving area on the island: the marine reserve at the "playa de El Cabrón" just outside the town of Arinaga.


title: Gran Canaria

text: Other important towns are Telde, known among other things for their surf schools in Salinetas, Vecindario (within the municipality of Santa Lucía de Tirajana) and Gáldar, that contains an important diving zone. In Arucas there is a Neogothic temple, popularly known as "Arucas' Cathedral", as well as a large fertile plain where bananas are grown. In Gáldar and its surroundings there is also a banana-growing plain and some remarkable archaeological remains, such as the Painted cave of Galdar or the cenobio de Valerón's communal silos, ancient tombs (among which the necropolis of Maipés), and the port of Sardina del Norte (one of the island's ports where, as in Las Palmas', Christopher Columbus used to get supplies for his ships).


title: Gran Canaria

text: Heading west along the southern coast is the fishing city of Arguineguín in the Municipality of Mogán.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The official natural symbols associated with Gran Canaria are "Canary Mastiff and "Euphorbia canariensis" (Cardón)


title: Gran Canaria

text: Nearly half of the island territory — (42.7% of island) — is under protection from the Red Canaria de Espacios Naturales Protegidos (Canary Islands Network for Protected Natural Areas). Of the 146 protected sites under control of network in the Canary Islands archipelago, a total of 33 are located in Gran Canaria, the second most protected island in the group.


title: Gran Canaria

text: In the 1960s, Gran Canaria was selected as the location for one of the 14 ground stations in the Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) to support the NASA space program. Maspalomas Station, located in the south of the island, took part in a number of space missions including the Apollo 11 Moon landings and Skylab. Today it continues to support satellite communications as part of the ESA network.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The island is home to CB Gran Canaria – a basketball club playing in Liga ACB at the Gran Canaria Arena, with a capacity of 11,000.


title: Gran Canaria

text: The island is also home to UD Las Palmas – a football club playing in Segunda División at the Estadio de Gran Canaria, with a capacity of 32,392.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau (; ; known previously as the Union Islands, and, until 1976, known officially as the Tokelau Islands) is a dependent territory of New Zealand in the southern Pacific Ocean. It consists of three tropical coral atolls: Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo. They have a combined land area of . The capital rotates yearly among the three atolls. In addition to these three, Swains Island, which forms part of the same archipelago, is the subject of an ongoing territorial dispute; it is currently administered by the United States as part of American Samoa. Tokelau lies north of the Samoan Islands, east of Tuvalu, south of the Phoenix Islands, southwest of the more distant Line Islands, and northwest of the Cook Islands.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau has a population of approximately 1,500 people; it has the fourth-smallest population of any sovereign state or dependency in the world. As of the 2016 census, around 45% of its residents had been born overseas, mostly in Samoa or New Zealand. The populace has a life expectancy of 69, which is comparable to that of other Oceanian island nations. Approximately 94% of the population speak Tokelauan as their first language. Tokelau has the smallest economy of any sovereign nation, although it is a leader in renewable energy, being the first 100% solar-powered nation in the world.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau is officially referred to as a "nation" by both the New Zealand government and the Tokelauan government. It is a free and democratic nation with elections every three years. However, in 2007, the United Nations General Assembly included Tokelau on its list of non-self-governing territories. Its inclusion on this list is controversial, as Tokelauans have twice narrowly voted against further self-determination, and the islands' small population makes the viability of self-government challenging. The basis of Tokelau's legislative, administrative and judicial systems is the Tokelau Islands Act 1948, which has been amended several times. Since 1993, the territory has annually elected its own head of government, the "Ulu-o-Tokelau". Before 1993, the administrator of Tokelau was the highest official in the government and the territory was directly administered by a New Zealand government department.


title: Tokelau

text: is a word meaning "north wind" in the native Tokelau language. The Tokelau islands were named the "Union Islands" and "Union Group" by European explorers at an earlier time. "Tokelau Islands" was adopted as the islands’ official name in 1946. The name was officially shortened to "Tokelau" on 9 December 1976.


title: Tokelau

text: Archaeological evidence indicates that the atolls of Tokelau – Atafu, Nukunonu, and Fakaofo – were settled about 1,000 years ago from Samoa and may have been a gateway into Eastern Polynesia. The inhabitants embrace Polynesian mythology and the local god, Tui Tokelau. Over time, they developed distinctive musical and art forms. The three atolls have historically functioned separately politically, while maintaining social and linguistic cohesion. Tokelauan society has been governed by chiefly clans, and there have been occasional skirmishes and wars between the atolls, as well as inter-marriage. Fakaofo, the "chiefly island", held some dominion over Atafu and Nukunonu after the dispersal of Atafu. Life on the atolls was historically subsistence-based, with a diet that relied mainly on fish and coconut.


title: Tokelau

text: The first European to sight Atafu was Commodore John Byron, on 24 June 1765. He called the island "Duke of York's Island". Parties from his expedition who ventured ashore reported that there were no signs of current or previous inhabitants. Captain Edward Edwards, having learned of Byron's discovery, visited Atafu on 6 June 1791 in search of the "Bounty" mutineers. They found no inhabitants, but saw that there were houses containing canoes and fishing gear, which suggested to them that the island was being used as a temporary residence by fishing parties from other, nearby islands. On 12 June 1791, Edwards sailed farther south, and sighted Nukunonu, naming it "Duke of Clarence's Island". A landing party that went ashore was unable to make contact with the inhabitants, but saw ""morai"s", burying places, and canoes with "stages in their middle" sailing across the island's lagoons.


title: Tokelau

text: On 29 October 1825, August R. Strong of the USS "Dolphin" and his crew arrived at the atoll Nukunonu. He wrote: Upon examination, we found they had removed all the women and children from the settlement, which was quite small, and put them in canoes lying off a rock in the lagoon. They would frequently come near the shore, but when we approached they would pull off with great noise and precipitation.


title: Tokelau

text: On 14 February 1835, Captain Smith, of the United States whaling ship the "General Jackson", wrote of having sighted Fakaofo, which he chose to call "D'Wolf's Island". On 25 January 1841, the United States Exploring Expedition visited Atafu, and discovered a small population living on the island. The residents appeared to be there only temporarily, because there was no chief among them, and they had the kind of double canoes that were typically used for inter-island travel. They appeared to have interacted with foreigners in the past, because they expressed a desire to engage in barter with the expedition crew, and they possessed items that were apparently of foreign origin: blue beads and a plane-iron. A few days later, French explorer Captain Morvan sighted Fakaofo. The American expedition reached Nukunonu on 28 January 1841, but did not record any information about inhabitants. On 29 January 1841, the expedition sighted Fakaofo and named it "Bowditch". The Fakaofo islanders were found to be similar in appearance and behavior to the Atafu islanders.


title: Tokelau

text: Missionaries preached Christianity in Tokelau from 1845 to the 1870s. French Catholic missionaries on Wallis Island (also known as 'Uvea) and missionaries of the Protestant London Missionary Society in Samoa used native teachers to convert the Tokelauans. Atafu was converted to Protestantism by the London Missionary Society, Nukunonu was converted to Catholicism and Fakaofo was converted to both denominations. The Rev. Samuel James Whitmee, of the London Missionary Society, visited Tokelau in 1870.


title: Tokelau

text: Helped by Swains Island-based Eli Jennings senior, Peruvian "blackbird" slave traders arrived in 1863 and kidnapped nearly all (253) of the able-bodied men to work as labourers, depopulating the atolls. The Tokelauan men died of dysentery and smallpox, and very few returned. With that loss, the system of governance became based on the "Taupulega", or "Councils of Elders", on which individual families on each atoll were represented. During that time, Polynesian immigrants settled, followed by American, Scottish, French, Portuguese and German beachcombers, marrying local women and repopulating the atolls.


title: Tokelau

text: Between 1856 and 1979, the United States claimed that it held sovereignty over the island and the other Tokelauan atolls. In 1979, the U.S. conceded that Tokelau was under New Zealand sovereignty, and a maritime boundary between Tokelau and American Samoa was established by the Treaty of Tokehega.


title: Tokelau

text: Cyclone Percy struck and severely damaged Tokelau in late February and early March 2005. Forecasters underestimated the cyclone's strength and the length of time it would be in vicinity to Tokelau. It coincided with a spring tide which put most of the area of the two villages on Fakaofo and Nukunonu under a metre of seawater. The cyclone also caused major erosion on several islets of all three atolls, damaging roads and bridges and disrupting electric power and telecommunications systems. The cyclone did significant and widespread damage to food crops including bananas, coconuts and pandanus. It did not seriously injure anyone but villagers lost significant amounts of property.


title: Tokelau

text: No significant land is more than above high water of ordinary tides. This means Tokelau is particularly vulnerable to any possible sea level rises.


title: Tokelau

text: Until December 2011, Tokelau was 11 hours behind Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). At midnight 29 December 2011 Tokelau shifted to in response to Samoa's decision to switch sides of the International Dateline. This brought Tokelau closer to New Zealand time (and in the process omitted 30 December).


title: Tokelau

text: Many sources claim that Tokelau is 14 hours ahead of UTC (UTC−10 before the 2011 date switch), but the correct time zone offset is UTC+13:00.


title: Tokelau

text: In 1877, the islands were included under the protection of the United Kingdom by an Order in Council that claimed jurisdiction over all unclaimed Pacific Islands. Commander C. F. Oldham on HMS "Egeria" landed at each of the three atolls in June 1889 and officially raised the Union Flag, declaring the group a British protectorate. In conformity with desire expressed by "the Native government" they were annexed by the United Kingdom and included in the Gilbert Islands by the Tokelau Islands (Union Islands) Order in Council, 1916. The annexation took place on 29 February 1916. From the point in time that the islands were annexed, their people had the status of British subjects. Tokelau was removed from the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony and placed under the jurisdiction of the Governor-General of New Zealand in 1925, two Orders in Council being made for the purpose on the same day. This step meant that New Zealand took over administration of Tokelau from the British on 11 February 1926. At this point, Tokelau was still a territory under the sovereignty of the United Kingdom but administered by New Zealand.


title: Tokelau

text: The Union Islands (Revocation) Order in Council, 1948 after reciting the agreement by the governments of the United Kingdom and New Zealand that the islands should become part of New Zealand, revoked the Union Islands (No. 2) Order in Council, 1925, with effect from a date fixed by the Governor-General of New Zealand after he was satisfied that the New Zealand Parliament had provided for the incorporation of the islands with New Zealand, as it did by the "Tokelau Islands Act 1948". Tokelau formally became part of New Zealand on 1 January 1949.


title: Tokelau

text: The Dominion of New Zealand, of which Tokelau formerly was a part, has since been superseded by the Realm of New Zealand, of which Tokelau remains a part. Defence is the responsibility of New Zealand. When the "British Nationality and New Zealand Citizenship Act 1948" came into effect on 1 January 1949, Tokelauans who were British subjects gained New Zealand citizenship; a status they still hold.


title: Tokelau

text: Villages are entitled to enact their own laws regulating their daily lives and New Zealand law only applies where it has been extended by specific enactment. Serious crime is rare and there are no prisons, and offenders are publicly rebuked, fined or made to work.


title: Tokelau

text: The head of state is , the in right of New Zealand, who also reigns over the other Commonwealth realms. The is represented in the territory by the Administrator – currently Don Higgins. The current head of government is Siopili Perez, who presides over the Council for the Ongoing Government of Tokelau, which functions as a cabinet. The Council consists of the "faipule" (leader) and "pulenuku" (village mayor) of each of the three atolls. The administrator is appointed by the minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade of New Zealand, and the role of head of government rotates between the three "faipule" for a one-year term.


title: Tokelau

text: The Tokelau Amendment Act of 1996 confers legislative power on the General Fono, a unicameral body. The number of seats each atoll receives in the Fono is determined by population – at present, Fakaofo and Atafu each have seven and Nukunonu has six. "Faipule" and "pulenuku" also sit in the Fono.


title: Tokelau

text: On 11 November 2004, Tokelau and New Zealand took steps to formulate a treaty that would turn Tokelau from a non-self-governing territory to a self-governing state in free association with New Zealand. Besides the treaty, a United Nations-sponsored referendum on self-determination took place, with the three islands voting on successive days starting 13 February 2006. (Tokelauans in Apia, Samoa, voted on 11 February.) Out of 581 votes cast, 349 were for Free Association, being short of the two-thirds majority required for the measure to pass. The referendum was profiled (somewhat light-heartedly) in the 1 May 2006 issue of "The New Yorker" magazine. A repeat referendum took place on 20–24 October 2007, again narrowly failing to approve self-government. This time the vote was short by just 16 votes or 3%.


title: Tokelau

text: In May 2008, the United Nations' Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged colonial powers "to complete the decolonization process in every one of the remaining 16 non-self-governing territories", including Tokelau. This led "The New Zealand Herald" to comment that the United Nations was "apparently frustrated by two failed attempts to get Tokelau to vote for independence". In April 2008, speaking as leader of the National Party, future New Zealand Prime Minister John Key stated that New Zealand had "imposed two referenda on the people of the Tokelau Islands", and questioned "the accepted wisdom that small states should undergo a de-colonisation process".


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau includes three atolls in the South Pacific Ocean between longitudes 171° and 173° W and between latitudes 8° and 10° S, about midway between Hawaii and New Zealand. From Atafu in the north to Fakaofo in the south, Tokelau extends for less than 200 km. The atolls lie about north of Samoa. The atolls are Atafu, Nukunonu, both in a group of islands once called the Duke of Clarence Group, and Fakaofo, once Bowditch Island. Their combined land area is . The atolls each have a number of coral islands, where the villages are situated. The highest point of Tokelau is just above sea level. There are no ports or harbours for large vessels, however, all three atolls have a jetty to and from which supplies and passengers are shipped. Tokelau lies in the Pacific tropical cyclone belt. A fourth island that is culturally, historically, and geographically, but not politically, part of the Tokelau chain is Swains Island (Olohega), under United States control since about 1900 and administered as part of American Samoa since 1925.


title: Tokelau

text: Swains Island was claimed by the United States pursuant to the Guano Islands Act, as were the other three islands of Tokelau; the latter three claims were ceded to Tokelau by treaty in 1979. In the draft constitution of Tokelau subject to the Tokelauan self-determination referendum in 2006, Olohega (Swains Island) was also claimed as a part of Tokelau, though the claim was surrendered in the same 1979 treaty. This established a clearly defined boundary between American Samoa and Tokelau.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau's claim to Swains is generally comparable to the Marshall Islands' claim to US-administered Wake Island, but the re-emergence of this somewhat dormant issue has been an unintended result of the United Nations' recent efforts to promote decolonisation in Tokelau. Tokelauans have proven somewhat reluctant to push their national identity in the political realm: recent decolonisation moves have mainly been driven from outside for ideological reasons. But at the same time, Tokelauans are reluctant to disown their common cultural identity with Swains Islanders who speak their language.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau is located in the Western Polynesian tropical moist forests ecoregion. Most of the original vegetation has been replaced by coconut plantations, some of which have been abandoned and became scrubby forests. The atolls of Tokelau provide habitat for 38 indigenous plant species, over 150 insect species and 10 land crab species. One of the greatest threats to biodiversity is posed by introduced mammalian predators such as the Polynesian Rat.


title: Tokelau

text: According to the US Central Intelligence Agency's list of countries by GDP (PPP) Tokelau has the smallest economy in the world. Tokelau has an annual purchasing power of about US$1,000 (€674) per capita. The government is almost entirely dependent on subsidies from New Zealand. It has annual revenues of less than US$500,000 (€336,995) against expenditures of some US$2.8 million (€1.9 million). The deficit is made up by aid from New Zealand.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau annually exports around US$100,000 (€67,000) of stamps, copra and woven and carved handicrafts and imports over US$300,000 (€202,000) of foodstuffs, building materials, and fuel to, and from, New Zealand. New Zealand also pays directly for the cost of medical and education services. Local industries include small-scale enterprises for copra production, wood work, plaited craft goods, stamps, coins, and fishing. Agriculture and livestock produces coconuts, copra, breadfruit, papayas, bananas, figs, pigs, poultry and a few goats. Many Tokelauans live in New Zealand and support their families in Tokelau through remittances.


title: Tokelau

text: The goal of 100% renewable electricity was met on 7 November 2012, according to the Foreign Affairs Minister of New Zealand, Murray McCully. Previously electricity was generated using diesel generators and was only available about 16 hours/day.


title: Tokelau

text: Three solar power stations with a total generation capacity of 930kWp were installed to provide 100% of current electrical demand from photovoltaics, with lead acid battery backup able to store around 8MWh. The first power station was completed in August 2012. In total, 4,032 solar panels are used and 1,344 batteries weighing  each. The systems are designed to withstand winds of . By 2011, Tokelau's electricity was 93% generated by photovoltaics, with the remainder generated from coconut oil. As of 2019, increased demand and degradation of batteries had led to increased need for backup power. Plans were made for an additional 210 kW of PV and close to 2MWh of lithium-ion battery capacity.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau has increased its GDP by more than 10% through registrations of domain names under its top-level domain, .tk. Registrations can be either free, in which case the user owns only usage rights and not the domain itself, or paid, which grants full rights. Free domains are pointed to Tokelau name servers, which redirects the domain via HTML frames to a specified address or to a specified A or NS record, and the redirection of up to 250 email addresses to an external address (not at a .tk domain).


title: Tokelau

text: In September 2003 Fakaofo became the first part of Tokelau with a high-speed Internet connection. Foundation Tokelau financed the project. Tokelau gives most domain names under its authority away to anyone for free to gain publicity for the territory. This has allowed the nation to gain enhanced telecommunications technologies, such as more computers and Internet access for Tokelauan residents. By 2012, there were about 120 computers, mostly laptops, and 1/6th of the economy consists of income from .tk domain names.


title: Tokelau

text: According to a 2016 analysis of domain name registration performed by the .uk registrar Nominet using data from ZookNIC, tk domains are the "world's largest country-code domain ... almost as large as second and third place holders China (.cn) and Germany (.de) combined".


title: Tokelau

text: According to the 2016 Tokelau Census, Tokelau has a "de jure" usually resident population of 1,499 people. The census shows a 6.2% increase in the de jure usually resident population between 2011 and 2016.


title: Tokelau

text: The nationals of Tokelau are called Tokelauans, and the major ethnic group is Polynesian; it has no recorded minority groups. About 84% of inhabitants are of wholly or partly Tokelauan ethnicity; people of Samoan ethnicity make up 6.7% of the population, and Tuvaluans 2.8%. The main language—spoken by over 90% of inhabitants—is Tokelauan, but almost 60% also speak English.


title: Tokelau

text: The less than 1,500 Polynesian inhabitants live in three villages. Their isolation and lack of resources greatly limits economic development and confines agriculture to the subsistence level. The very limited natural resources and overcrowding are contributing to emigration to New Zealand and Samoa. In the 2013 New Zealand census, more than 7,000 people identified as Tokelauan, almost five times as many as live in Tokelau itself. Depletion of tuna has made fishing for food more difficult.


title: Tokelau

text: A significant proportion (44.9% in 2016) of the population were born overseas, mostly in Samoa (15.3% of total population) and New Zealand (11.5%).


title: Tokelau

text: While slightly more females than males live on Atafu and Fakaofo, males make up 57% of Nukunonu residents. Only 9% of Tokelauans aged 40 or more have never been married. One-quarter of the population were born overseas; almost all the rest live on the same atoll they were born on. Most households own five or more pigs.


title: Tokelau

text: Despite its low income, Tokelau has a life expectancy of 69 years, comparable with other Oceania islands.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau is predominantly Christian. On the island of Atafu almost all inhabitants are members of the Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (corresponding to 62% of the total population). On Nukunonu almost all are Roman Catholic (corresponding to 34% of the total population). On Fakaofo both denominations are present with the Congregational Christian Church predominant. 5% of the population follow other religions.


title: Tokelau

text: Each atoll has a school and hospital. The health services have a Director of Health in Apia and a Chief Clinical Advisor who moves from atoll to atoll as required to assist the doctors attached to each hospital. In 2007 there was not always a doctor on each island and locums were appointed to fill the gaps.


title: Tokelau

text: Many Tokelauan youth travel to New Zealand to further their education and Tokelau is most populated around the Christmas season, with students returning home and then heading off for another year of study.


title: Tokelau

text: Due to its small size, Tokelau is unaffiliated to most international sports organisations, and rarely takes part in international events. The only significant international competition Tokelau takes part in is the Pacific Games. Tokelau won its first-ever gold medals at the 2007 Pacific Games in Apia, winning a total of five medals (three gold, a silver and a bronze), all in lawn bowls, and finishing 12th (out of 22) on the overall medal table. This included two gold medals for Violina Linda Pedro (in the women's pairs and the women's singles), making her Tokelau's most successful individual athlete to date.


title: Tokelau

text: In October 2010, table tennis became "the first sport in Tokelau to be granted membership at a Continental or World level", when the Tokelau Table Tennis Association was formally established and became the 23rd member of the Oceania Table Tennis Federation.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau was due to take part, for the first time, in the 2010 Commonwealth Games, in Delhi, but, for unknown reasons, ultimately did not do so.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau has a National Sports Federation, and a significant sporting event is the Tokelau Games, which are held yearly. When they are held, "all of Tokelau virtually stands still", as "[i]n excess of 50% of the population take part and all work and school stops at the time". The 2010 Games included competitions in rugby sevens, netball and kilikiti, alongside "a cultural evening [...] where each atoll showcases their traditional songs and dances".


title: Tokelau

text: Netball is thought to have been introduced to Tokelau by the British, but became more popular when New Zealand's government took over the territory. The sport is often played during inter-island sport competitions, alongside other sports like rugby league and volleyball.


title: Tokelau

text: In Tokelau, there are two levels to the football league. From Fale, Fakaofo, two of the best clubs are Hakava Club and Matalele Club.


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau has a radio telephone service between the islands and to Samoa. In 1997, a government-regulated telephone service (TeleTok) with three satellite earth stations was established. Each atoll has a radio-broadcast station that broadcasts shipping and weather reports and every household has a radio or access to one. News is disseminated through the government newsletter "Te Vakai".


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau has the international calling code of 690, and has had five-digit telephone numbers from November 2015 (the existing four-digit numbers were prefixed by the digit "2").


title: Tokelau

text: Tokelau is served by the MV "Mataliki", delivered new in 2016 as a replacement of the smaller "MV Tokelau" and jointly managed by the Tokelau Transport Department and the company Transport and Marine. The vessel, which has a capacity of 60 passengers on international cruises and 120 for transport between the atolls of Tokelau, operates fortnightly between Tokelau and Apia, with the trip taking a little over a day. A dedicated cargo vessel, the "MV Kalopaga", will enter service in 2018 and replace chartered freight vessels.


title: Tokelau

text: Ships load and unload cargo by motoring up to the down-wind (leeward) side of the islet where the people live and maintaining station, by intermittent use of engines, close to the reef edge so that a landing barge can be motored out to transfer cargo to or from the shore. On returning to shore, the barge negotiates a narrow channel through the reef to the beach. Usually this landing is subject to ocean swell and beaching requires considerable skill and, often, coral abrasions to bodies. When bad weather prevents the barge making the trip, the ship stands off to wait for suitable weather or goes off to one of the other atolls to attempt to load or unload its passengers or cargo, or both.


title: Tokelau

text: There is no airport in Tokelau, so boats are the main means of travel and transport. Some seaplanes and amphibious aircraft are able to land in the island's lagoons. An airstrip was considered by the New Zealand Government in 2010. In 2016, plans to link the atolls with Samoa by helicopter had to be abandoned because of high costs, leading in the following years to renewed calls to the New Zealand government for help with establishing air services.


title: Hudson River

text: The Hudson River is a river that flows from north to south primarily through eastern New York. It originates in the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York and flows southward through the Hudson Valley to the New York Harbor between New York City and Jersey City, eventually draining into the Atlantic Ocean at Lower New York Bay. The river serves as a political boundary between the states of New Jersey and New York at its southern end. Farther north, it marks local boundaries between several New York counties. The lower half of the river is a tidal estuary, deeper than the body of water into which it flows, occupying the Hudson Fjord, an inlet which formed during the most recent period of North American glaciation, estimated at 26,000 to 13,300 years ago. Even as far north as the city of Troy, the flow of the river changes direction with the tides.


title: Hudson River

text: The Hudson River runs through the Munsee, Lenape, Mohican, Mohawk, and Haudenosaunee homelands. Prior to European exploration, the river was known as the "Mahicannittuk" by the Mohicans, "Ka'nón:no" by the Mohawks, and "Muhheakantuck" by the Lenape. The river was subsequently named after Henry Hudson, an Englishman sailing for the Dutch East India Company who explored it in 1609, and after whom Hudson Bay in Canada is also named. It had previously been observed by Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano sailing for King Francis I of France in 1524, as he became the first European known to have entered the Upper New York Bay, but he considered the river to be an estuary. The Dutch called the river the "North River"—with the Delaware River called the "South River"—and it formed the spine of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Settlements of the colony clustered around the Hudson, and its strategic importance as the gateway to the American interior led to years of competition between the English and the Dutch over control of the river and colony.


title: Hudson River

text: During the 18th century, the river valley and its inhabitants were the subject and inspiration of Washington Irving, the first internationally acclaimed American author. In the nineteenth century, the area inspired the Hudson River School of landscape painting, an American pastoral style, as well as the concepts of environmentalism and wilderness. The Hudson was also the eastern outlet for the Erie Canal, which, when completed in 1825, became an important transportation artery for the early 19th century United States.


title: Hudson River

text: Pollution in the river increased in the 20th century, more acutely by mid-century, particularly with industrial contamination from polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Pollution control regulations, enforcement actions and restoration projects initiated in the latter 20th century have begun to improve water quality, and restoration work has continued in the 21st century.


title: Hudson River

text: The river was called ' or "Ca-ho-ha-ta-te-a" ("the river") by the Haudenosaunee, and it was known as ' ("river that flows two ways" or "waters that are never still") or ' by the Mohican nation who formerly inhabited both banks of the lower portion of the river. The meaning of the Mohican name comes from the river's long tidal range. The Delaware Tribe of Indians (Bartlesville, Oklahoma) considers the closely related Mohicans to be a part of the Lenape people, and so the Lenape also claim the Hudson as part of their ancestral territory, also calling it '.


title: Hudson River

text: The first known European name for the river was the Rio San Antonio as named by the Portuguese explorer in Spain's employ, Estêvão Gomes, who explored the Mid-Atlantic coast in 1525. Another early name for the Hudson used by the Dutch was "Rio de Montaigne". Later, they generally termed it the "Noortrivier", or "North River", the Delaware River being known as the "Zuidrivier", or "South River". Other occasional names for the Hudson included "Manhattes rieviere" "Manhattan River", "Groote Rivier" "Great River", and "de grootte Mouritse reviere", or "the Great Mouritse River" (Mourits is a Dutch surname).


title: Hudson River

text: The translated name North River was used in the New York metropolitan area up until the early 1900s, with limited use continuing into the present day. The term persists in radio communication among commercial shipping traffic, especially below the Tappan Zee. The term also continues to be used in names of facilities in the river's southern portion, such as the North River piers, North River Tunnels, and the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant. It is believed that the first use of the name Hudson River in a map was in a map created by the cartographer John Carwitham in 1740.


title: Hudson River

text: In 1939, the magazine "Life" described the river as "America's Rhine", comparing it to the stretch of the Rhine in Central and Western Europe.


title: Hudson River

text: The tidal Hudson is unusually straight for a river, and the earliest colonial Dutch charts of the Hudson River designated the narrow, meandering stretches as "racks", or reaches. These names included the four “lower reaches” through the Hudson Highlands (Seylmakers rack, Cocks rack, Hoogh rack, and Vosserack) plus the four “upper reaches” from Inbocht Bay to Kinderhook (Backers rack, Jan Pleysiers rack, Klevers rack, and Harts rack). A ninth reach was described as “the long reach” by the Englishman Robert Juet and designated as the Langerack by the Dutch. An embellished (and partly erroneous) list of “The Old Reaches” was published in a tourist guidebook for steamboat passengers in the nineteenth century.


title: Hudson River

text: The source of the Hudson River is Lake Tear of the Clouds in the Adirondack Park at an elevation of . However, the river is not cartographically called the Hudson River until miles downstream. The river is named Feldspar Brook until its confluence with the Opalescent River, and then is named the Opalescent River until the river reaches Calamity Brook, flowing south from the outlet of Henderson Lake. From that point on, the stream is cartographically known as the Hudson River. The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) uses this cartographical definition.


title: Hudson River

text: The longest source of the Hudson River as shown on the most detailed USGS maps is the "Opalescent River" on the west slopes of Little Marcy Mountain, originating two miles north of Lake Tear of the Clouds, several miles, past the Flowed Lands, to the Hudson River. and a mile longer than "Feldspar Brook", which flows out of that lake in the Adirondack Mountains. Popular culture and convention, however, more often cite the photogenic Lake Tear of the Clouds as the source.


title: Hudson River

text: Using river names as seen on maps, Indian Pass Brook flows into Henderson Lake, and the outlet from Henderson Lake flows east and meets the southwest flowing Calamity Brook. The confluence of the two rivers is where maps begin to use the Hudson River name. South of the outlet of Sanford Lake, the Opalescent River flows into the Hudson.


title: Hudson River

text: The Hudson then flows south, taking in Beaver Brook and the outlet of Lake Harris. After its confluence with the Indian River, the Hudson forms the boundary between Essex and Hamilton counties. The Hudson flows entirely into Warren County in the hamlet of North River, and takes in the Schroon River at Warrensburg. Further south, the river forms the boundary between Warren and Saratoga Counties. The river then takes in the Sacandaga River from the Great Sacandaga Lake.


title: Hudson River

text: Shortly thereafter, the river leaves the Adirondack Park, flows under Interstate 87, and through Glens Falls, just south of Lake George although receiving no streamflow from the lake. It next goes through Hudson Falls. At this point the river forms the boundary between Washington and Saratoga Counties. Here the river has an elevation of . Just south in Fort Edward, the river reaches its confluence with the Champlain Canal, which historically provided boat traffic between New York City and Montreal and the rest of Eastern Canada via the Hudson, Lake Champlain and the Saint Lawrence Seaway.


title: Hudson River

text: Further south the Hudson takes in water from the Batten Kill River and Fish Creek near Schuylerville. The river then forms the boundary between Saratoga and Rensselaer counties. The river then enters the heart of the Capital District. It takes in water from the Hoosic River, which extends into Massachusetts. Shortly thereafter the river has its confluence with the Mohawk River, the largest tributary of the Hudson River, in Waterford. The river then reaches the Federal Dam in Troy, marking an impoundment of the river. At an elevation of , the bottom of the dam marks the beginning of the tidal influence in the Hudson as well as the beginning of the lower Hudson River.


title: Hudson River

text: South of the Federal Dam, the Hudson River begins to widen considerably. The river enters the Hudson Valley, flowing along the west bank of Albany and the east bank of Rensselaer. Interstate 90 crosses the Hudson into Albany at this point in the river. The Hudson then leaves the Capital District, forming the boundary between Greene and Columbia Counties. It then meets its confluence with Schodack Creek, widening considerably at this point. After flowing by Hudson, the river forms the boundary between Ulster and Columbia Counties and Ulster and Dutchess Counties, passing Germantown and Kingston.