title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The 1,320 MW $2.08 billion Pakistan Port Qasim Power Project near Port Qasim will be a joint venture of Al-Mirqab Capital from Qatar, and China's Power Construction Corporation – a subsidiary of Sinohydro Resources Limited. Pakistan's NEPRA and SinoHydro agreed to set the levelized tariff for electricity purchased from the consortium at 8.12 US cents/kWh. The first 660 MW reactor was commissioned in November 2017.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Liquefied natural gas power LNG projects are also considered vital to CPEC. The Chinese government has announced its intention to build a $2.5 billion 711 kilometre gas pipeline from Gwadar to Nawabshah in province as part of CPEC. The pipeline is designed to be a part of the 2,775 kilometre long Iran–Pakistan gas pipeline, with the 80 kilometre portion between Gwadar and the Iranian border to be connected when sanctions against Tehran are eased; Iran has already completed a 900 kilometre long portion of the pipeline on its side of the border.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The Pakistani portion of the pipeline is to be constructed by the state-owned China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau. It will be in diameter, and have the capacity to transport of liquified natural gas every day, with an additional of additional capacity when the planned off-shore LNG terminal is also completed The project will not only provide gas exporters with access to the Pakistani market, but will also allow China to secure a route for its own imports.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The project should not be confused with the $2 billion 1,100 kilometre North-South Pipeline liquified natural gas pipeline which is to be constructed with Russian assistance between Karachi and Lahore with anticipated completion by 2018. Nor should it be confused with the planned $7.5 billion TAPI Pipeline which is a planned project involving Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and India.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Other LNG projects are currently under construction with Chinese assistance and financing that will augment the scope of CPEC, but are neither funded by nor officially considered a part of CPEC. The 1,223 MW Balloki Power Plant is currently under construction near Kasur, and is being constructed by China's Harbin Electric Company with financing from the China's EXIM bank, is one such example. In October 2015, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif also inaugurated construction of the 1,180 MW Bhikhi Power Plant near Sheikhupura, which is to be jointly constructed by China's Harbin Electric Company and General Electric from the United States. It is expected to be Pakistan's most efficient power plant, and will provide enough power for an estimated 6 million homes. The facility became operational in May 2018.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: As part of the "Early Harvest" scheme of the CPEC, over 10,000 megawatts of electricity-generating capacity is to be developed between 2018 and 2020. While some "Early Harvest" projects will not be completed until 2020, the government of Pakistan plans to add approximately 10,000 MW of energy-generating capacity to Pakistan's electric grid by 2018 through the completion of projects which complement CPEC.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Although not officially under the scope of CPEC, the 1,223 MW Balloki Power Plant, and the 1,180 MW Bhakki powerplants have both been completed in mid-2018, which along with the 969 MW Neelum–Jhelum Hydropower Plant completed in summer 2018 and 1,410 MW Tarbela IV Extension Project, competed in February 2018, will result in an additional 10,000 MW being added to Pakistan's electricity grid by the end of 2018 with a combination of CPEC and non-CPEC projects. A further 1,000 MW of electricity will be imported to Pakistan from Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan as part of the CASA-1000 project, which is expected to be launched in 2018.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The CPEC announcement encompassed not only infrastructure works, but also addressed areas of co-operation between China and Pakistan.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: CPEC includes provisions for cooperation in management of water resources, livestock, and other fields of agriculture. Under the plan, agricultural information project, storage and distribution of agricultural equipment and construction project, agricultural mechanisation, demonstration and machinery leasing project and fertiliser production project for producing 800,000 tons of fertiliser and 100,000 tons of bio-organic fertiliser will be implemented. The framework includes cooperation in Remote Sensing (RS) and Geographical Information System (GIS), food processing, pre-and-post-harvest handling and storage of agricultural produce, selection and breeding of new breeds of animals and new varieties of plants, specifically fisheries and aquaculture.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: As part of CPEC, the two countries signed an Economic and Technical Cooperation Agreement, as well as pledged to "China-Pakistan Joint Cotton Bio-Tech Laboratory" The two countries also pledged to establish the "China-Pakistan Joint Marine Research Center" with State Oceanic Administration and Pakistan's Ministry of Science and Technology Also as part of the CPEC agreement, Pakistan and China have agreed to co-operate in the field of space research.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In February 2016, the two countries agreed to establish the "Pak-China Science, Technology, Commerce and Logistic Park" near Islamabad at an estimated cost of $1.5 billion. The park will be situated on 500 hectares, which will be provided by Pakistan to China's Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, with all investments expected to come from the Chinese side over the course of ten years.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In May 2016, construction began on the $44 million 820 kilometer long Pakistan-China Fiber Optic Project, a Cross Border Optical Fiber Cable that will enhance telecommunication and ICT Industry in the Gilgit Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab region, while offering Pakistan a fifth route by which to transmit telecommunication traffic. which will be extended to Gwadar.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: in May 2019, Vice President of China and Pakistan has decided to launch Huawei Technical Support Center in Pakistan.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: CPEC include establishment of pilot project of Digital Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcast for Pakistan Television Corporation through Chinese grant at Rebroadcast Station (RBS) at Murree. ZTE Corporation will provide Pakistan Television Corporation collaboration across R&D of digital terrestrial television technologies, staff training and content creation including partnerships with Chinese multinational companies in multiple areas including television sets and set top boxes as international Cooperation.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The two nations also pledged co-operation in field ranging from anti-narcotic efforts, to co-operation in an effort to reduce climate change. The two nations also agreed to increase co-operating between the banking sectors of the two countries, as well as to establish closer ties between China Central Television and the Pakistan Television Corporation.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Confucius Institute at University of Punjab is planned to be soon launched in 2019. Moreover, Rashakai Special Economic Zone on M1 Highway a motorway junction near Nowshehra is planned as well.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Approximately $11 billion worth of infrastructure projects being developed by the Pakistani government will be financed at an interest rate of 1.6%, after Pakistan successfully lobbied the Chinese government to reduce interest rates from an initial 3%. Loans will be dispersed by the Exim Bank of China, China Development Bank, and the ICBC. For comparison, loans for previous Pakistani infrastructure projects financed by the World Bank carried an interest rate between 5% and 8.5%, while interest rates on market loans approach 12%.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The loan money would be used to finance projects which are planned and executed by the Pakistani government. Portions of the approximately $6.6 billion Karachi–Lahore Motorway are already under construction. The $2.9 billion phase which will connect the city of Multan to the city of Sukkur over a distance of 392 kilometres has also been approved, with 90% of costs to be financed by the Chinese government at concessionary interest rates, while the remaining 10% is to be financed by the Public Sector Development Programme of the Pakistani government. In May 2016, the $2.9 billion loan were given final approvals required prior to disbursement of the funds were given by the Government of the People's Republic of China on 4 May 2016, and will be concessionary loans with an interest rate of 2.0%. The National Highway Authority of Pakistan reported that contractors arrived on site soon after the loan received final approval.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The China Development Bank will finance the $920 million towards the cost of reconstruction of the 487 kilometer portion of the Karakoram Highway between Burhan and Raikot. An addition $1.26 billion will be lent by the China Exim Bank for the construction of the Havelian to Thakot portion of this 487 kilometer stretch of roadway, to be dispersed as low-interest rate concessionary loans.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: $7 billion of the planned $8.2 billion overhaul of the Main Line 1 railway is to be financed by concessionary loans, which extended by China's state owned banks.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The long-planned 27.1 km long $1.6 billion Orange Line of the Lahore Metro is regarded as a commercial project, and does not qualify for the Exim Bank's 1.6% interest rate. It will instead by financed at a 2.4% interest rate after China agreed to reduce interest rates from an originally planned rate of 3.4%.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The $44 million Pakistan-China Fiber Optic Project, an 820 km long fibre optic wire connecting Pakistan and China, will be constructed using concessionary loans at an interest rate of 2%, rather than the 1.6% rate applied to other projects.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The government of China in August 2015 announced that concessionary loans for several projects in Gwadar totaling $757 million would be converted 0% interest loans. The projects which are now to financed by the 0% interest loans include: the construction of the $140 million East Bay Expressway project, installation of breakwaters in Gwadar which will cost $130 million, a $360 million coal power plant in Gwadar, a $27 million project to dredge berths in Gwadar harbor, and a $100 million 300-bed hospital in Gwadar. Thus, Pakistan only has to repay the principal on these loans.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In September 2015, the government of China also announced that the $230 million Gwadar International Airport project would no longer be financed by loans, but would instead be constructed by grants which the government of Pakistan will not be required to repay.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: $15.5 billion worth of energy projects are to be constructed by joint Chinese-Pakistani firms, rather than by the governments of either China or Pakistan. The Exim Bank of China will finance those investments at 5–6% interest rates, while the government of Pakistan will be contractually obliged to purchase electricity from those firms at pre-negotiated rates.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: As an example, the 1,223 MW Balloki Power Plant does not fall under the concessionary loan rate of 1.6%, as the project is not being developed by the Pakistani government. Instead, it is considered to be a private sector investment as its construction will be undertaken by a consortium of Harbin Electric and Habib Rafiq Limited after they successfully bid against international competitors. Chinese state-owned banks will provide loans to the consortium that are subsidised by the Chinese government. In the case of the Balloki Power Plant, state-owned banks will finance the project at an interest rate of 5%, while the Pakistani government will purchase electricity at the lowest bid rate of 7.973 cents per unit.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: While the Hazara Motorway is considered to be a crucial part of the route between Gwadar and China. M-15 will not be financed by CPEC funds. The project will instead be financed by the Asian Development Bank.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The N70 project is not officially a part of CPEC but will connect the CPEC's Western Alignment to the Karachi-Lahore Motorway at Multan. The project will be financed as part of a $195 million package by the Asian Development Bank announced in May 2015 to upgrade the N70 National Highway and N50 National Highway. In January 2016, The United Kingdom's Department for International Development announced a $72.4 million grant to Pakistan for roadway improvements in the province of Balochistan, thereby reducing the total Asian Development Bank loan from $195 million to $122.6 million.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The M-4 Motorway between Faisalabad and Multan is not to be financed by the Chinese government as part of CPEC, but will instead be the first infrastructure project partially financed by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and will be co-financed along with the Asian Development Bank for a total of approximately $275 million. Portions of the project will also be funded by a $90.7 million grant announced in October 2015 by the government of the United Kingdom towards the construction of the Gojra-Shorkot section of the M4 Motorway project.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The importance of CPEC to China is reflected by its inclusion as part of China's 13th five-year development plan. CPEC projects will provide China with an alternate route for energy supplies, as well as a new route by which Western China can conduct trade. Pakistan stands to gain due to upgrade of infrastructure and introduction of a reliable energy supply.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: On 8 January 2017, "Forbes" claimed that CPEC is part of China's vision to write the rules of the next era of globalization and help its export and investment engines run for years to come. Writing in January 2017, Arun Mohan Sukumar of India's Observer Research Foundation claimed that "CPEC is an important enough project whose economic and strategic consequences require methodical assessment", adding that "CPEC may be a bilateral endeavour, but New Delhi cannot ignore its spillover effects on regional governance" and concluding that "India would be ill-advised to rely on the false comfort that profits alone will drive China's business with Pakistan".


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: According to China's prime minister, Li Keqiang, Pakistan's development through the project might "wean the populace from fundamentalism".


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The CPEC is a landmark project in the annals of history of Pakistan. It is the largest investment Pakistan has attracted since independence and largest by China in any foreign country. CPEC is considered economically vital to Pakistan in helping it drive economic growth. The Pakistani media and government have called CPEC investments a "game and fate changer" for the region, while both China and Pakistan intend that the massive investment plan will transform Pakistan into a regional economic hub and further boost the deepening ties between the two countries. Approximately 1 year after the announcement of CPEC, Zhang Baozhong, chairman of China Overseas Port Holding Company told "The Washington Post" that his company planned to spend an additional $4.5 billion on roads, power, hotels and other infrastructure for Gwadar's industrial zone, which would be one of the largest ever sums of foreign direct investment into Pakistan.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Pakistan as late as early 2017 faced energy shortfalls of over 4,500 MW on a regular basis with routine power cuts of up to 12 hours per day, which has shed an estimated 2–2.5% off its annual GDP. The Financial Times noted that Pakistan's electricity shortages are a major hindrance to foreign investment, and that Chinese investments in Pakistani infrastructure and power projects will lead to a "virtuous cycle" that will make the country more attractive for foreign investment in a variety of sectors. Poor availability of electricity is considered by the World Bank to be a main constraint to both economic growth and investment in Pakistan.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The impact of Chinese investments in Energy sector was soon visible as in December 2017, Pakistan succeeded in producing surplus electricity. Pakistani Federal Minister for Power Division, Awais Leghari announced a complete end to power cuts in 5,297 feeders out of total 8,600 and claimed that the country's current electricity production had gone up to 16,477 Megawatts which was 2700 megawatts more than the demand.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Pakistan's large textile industry has also been negatively affected by several-hour long power cuts, with almost 20% of textile factories in the city of Faisalabad shutting down on account of power shortages. The CPEC's "Early Harvest" projects are expected to resolve shortages in power generation by 2018 by increasing Pakistan's power generation capacity by over 10,000 megawatts. As a result of improved infrastructure and energy supplies, the Pakistani government expects that economic growth rates will reach 7% by 2018.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Former Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz also stated in May 2016 that predicted economic growth from CPEC projects would result in stabilization of Pakistan's security situation, which has also been cited by the World Bank as hindrance to sustained economic growth in Pakistan.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: According to Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying, the corridor will "serve as a driver for connectivity between South Asia and East Asia." Mushahid Hussain, chairman of the Pakistan-China Institute, told "China Daily" that the economic corridor "will play a crucial role in regional integration of the 'Greater South Asia', which includes China, Iran, Afghanistan, and stretches all the way to Myanmar." When fully built, the corridor is expected to generate significant revenue from transit fees levied on Chinese goods – to the tune of several billion dollars per annum.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: According to "The Guardian", "The Chinese are not just offering to build much-needed infrastructure but also make Pakistan a key partner in its grand economic and strategic ambitions."


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Moody's Investors Service has described the project as a "credit positive" for Pakistan. In 2015, the agency acknowledged that much of the project's key benefits would not materialize until 2017, but stated that it believes at least some of the benefits from the economic corridor would likely begin accruing even before then. The Asian Development Bank stated "CPEC will connect economic agents along a defined geography. It will provide connection between economic nodes or hubs, centered on urban landscapes, in which large amount of economic resources and actors are concentrated. They link the supply and demand sides of markets." On 14 November 2016, Hyatt Hotels Corporation announced plan's to open four properties in Pakistan, in partnership with Bahria Town Group, citing the investment of CPEC as the reason behind the $600 million investment.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: On 12 March 2017, a consortium of Pakistani broker houses reported that Pakistan will end up paying $90 billion to China over a span of 30 years with annual average repayments of $3–4 billion per year post fiscal year 2020. The report further said that CPEC-related transportation would earn $400–500 million per annum to Pakistan, and would grow Pakistani exports by 4.5% a year till fiscal year 2025.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The Straits of Malacca provide China with its shortest maritime access to Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Approximately 80% of its Middle Eastern energy imports also pass through the Straits of Malacca. As the world's biggest oil importer, energy security is a key concern for China while current sea routes used to import Middle Eastern oil are frequently patrolled by the United States' Navy.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In the event that China were to face hostile actions from a United States, energy imports through the Straits of Malacca could be impeded, which in turn may jeopardise the Chinese economy in a scenario that is frequently referred to as the "Malacca Dilemma". In addition to vulnerabilities faced in the Straits of Malacca region, China is heavily dependent upon sea-routes that pass through the South China Sea, near the disputed Spratly Islands and Paracel Islands, which are currently a source of tension between China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, and the United States. The CPEC project will allow Chinese energy imports to circumvent these contentious areas and find a new artery in the west, and thereby decrease the possibility of confrontation between the United States and China. However, there is evidence to suggest that any pipelines from Gwadar up to China would be very expensive, would encounter numerous logistical difficulties including difficult terrain and potential terrorism, and would barely make any impact on China's overall energy security.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The CPEC Alignments will improve connectivity to restive Xinjiang, thereby increasing the region's potential to attract public and private investment. CPEC is considered central to China–Pakistan relations; its central importance is reflected by China's inclusion of the project as part of its 13th five-year development plan. The CPEC projects will also complement China's Western Development plan, which includes not only Xinjiang, but also the neighbouring regions of Tibet and Qinghai.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In addition to its significance to reduce Chinese dependence on the Sea of Malacca and South China Sea routes, CPEC will provide China an alternative and shorter route for energy imports from the Middle East, thereby reducing shipping costs and transit times. The currently available sea-route to China is roughly 12,000 kilometre long, while the distance from Gwadar Port to Xinjiang province is approximately 3,000 kilometre, with another 3,500 kilometre from Xinjiang to China's eastern coast. As a result of CPEC, Chinese imports and exports to the Middle East, Africa, and Europe would require much shorter shipment times and distances.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Negotiations to provide an alternate route to the Central Asian republics by way of China predate the announcement of CPEC. The Afghanistan–Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement of 2010 provided Pakistan access to Central Asia via Afghanistan; however, the full agreement has yet to be fully implemented. The "Quadrilateral Agreement on Traffic in Transit" (QATT) was first devised in 1995, and signed in 2004 by the governments of China, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan to facilitate transit trade between the various countries, with no inclusion of Afghanistan. Despite signing of the QATT, the agreement's full potential was never realized, largely on account of poor infrastructure links between the four countries prior to the announcement of CPEC.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: During the visit of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to India in April 2015, he stated "We will not provide equal transit access to Central Asia for Pakistani trucks" unless the Pakistani government included India as part of the 2010 Afghanistan–Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement. The current Transit Trade Agreement provides Afghanistan access to the Port of Karachi to conduct export trade with India, and allows Afghan goods to be transited up to any border of Pakistan, but does not guarantee Afghan trucks the right to traverse the Wagah Border, nor does the agreement permit Indian goods to be exported to Afghanistan via Pakistan. Owing to continued tensions between India and Pakistan, the Pakistani government expressed reluctance to include India in any trade negotiations with Afghanistan, and as a result, little progress was made between the Afghan and Pakistani sides.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In February 2016, the Pakistani government signalled its intention to completely bypass Afghanistan in its quest to access Central Asia by announcing its intent to revive the QATT so that Central Asian states could access Pakistani ports via Kashgar instead of Afghanistan, thereby allowing the Central Asian republics to access Pakistan's deep water ports without having to rely on a politically unstable Afghanistan as a transit corridor. In early March 2016, the Afghan government reportedly acquiesced to Pakistani requests to use Afghanistan as a corridor to Tajikistan, after having dropped demands from reciprocal access to India via Pakistan.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The heads of various Central Asian republics have expressed their desire to connect their infrastructure networks to the CPEC project via China. During the August 2015 visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to Kazakhstan, the Kazakh Prime Minister Karim Massimov, conveyed Kazakhstan's desire to link its road network to the CPEC project. During the November 2015 visit of Tajikistan President Emomali Rahmon to Pakistan, the Tajik premier also expressed his government's desire to join the Quadrilateral Agreement on Traffic in Transit to use CPEC as a conduit for imports and exports to Tajikistan by circumventing Afghanistan; the request received political backing by the Pakistani Prime Minister.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The Chinese government has already upgraded the road linking Kashgar to Osh in Kyrgyzstan via the Kyrgyz town of Erkeshtam while a railway between Urumqi, China and Almaty, Kazakhstan has also been completed as part of China's One Belt One Road initiative. Numerous land crossings already exist between Kazakhstan and China as well. Additionally, the Chinese government has announced plans to lay railway track from Tashkent, Uzbekistan, towards Kyrgyzstan with onwards connections to China and Pakistan. Further, the Pamir Highway already provides Tajikistan access to Kashgar via the Kulma Pass. These crossings complement the CPEC project to provide Central Asian states access to Pakistan's deepwater ports by completely bypassing Afghanistan – a country which has been ravaged by civil war and political instability since the late 1970s.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In May 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his counterpart, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, signed a series of twelve agreements in Tehran, in which India offered to refurbish one of Chabahar's ten existing berths, and reconstruct another berth at the Port of Chabahar, in order to allow Indian goods to be exported to Iran, with the possibility of onward connections to Afghanistan and Central Asia. As of February 2017, the project remains delayed while the governments of Iran and India blame one another for delays.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: A section of the Indian media described it as "a counter to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor", although the total monetary value of projects has been noted to be significantly less than that of CPEC.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: As part of the twelve memorandums of understanding signed by Indian and Iranian delegations as per text released by India's Ministry of External Affairs, India will offer a $150 million line of credit extended by the Exim Bank of India, while India Ports Global also signed a contract with Iran's Aria Banader to develop berths at the port, at a cost of $85 million over the course of 18 months.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Under the agreement, India Ports Global will refurbish a 640 meter long container handling facility, and reconstruct a 600 meter long berth at the port. India further agreed to extend a $400 million line of credit to be used for the import of steel for the construction of a rail link between Chabahar and Zahedan, while India's IRCON and Iran's Construction, Development of Transport and Infrastructure Company signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the construction and finance of the Chabahar to Zahedan rail line at a cost of $1.6 billion.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: India's Highways and Shipping Minister, Nitin Gadkari suggested that the free trade zone in Chabahar had the potential to attract upwards of $15 billion worth of investment in the future, although he stated that such investments are predicated upon Iran offering India natural gas at a rate of $1.50 per million British Thermal Units, which is substantially lower than the rate of $2.95 per million British Thermal Units offered by Iran. The two countries also signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the possibility of setting up an aluminum smelter at a cost of $2 billion, as well as establishing a urea processing facility in Chahbahar, although these investments are also contingent upon Iran supplying low-cost natural gas for operation of those facilities.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: India, Iran, and Afghanistan also signed an agreement with the intention of simplifying transit procedures between the three countries. Despite the expressed desire to circumvent Pakistan in order to augment Iranian and Indian economic ties, Indian goods destined for Iran currently do not require transit through Pakistan, as those goods can be exported to Iran via Bandar Abbas, where India also currently maintains a diplomatic mission. Bandar Abbas is also consider a key node on the North–South Transport Corridor, backed by India and Russia since 2002. Indian goods also can be imported and transited across Iran upon arrival at Bandar-e Emam Khomeyni near the Iraqi border.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: As per the Afghanistan–Pakistan Transit Trade Agreement, Afghan goods can be transited across Pakistan for export to India as well, though Indian goods cannot be exported to Afghanistan via Pakistan. Upon completion of Chabahar, Indian exporters will benefit from the potential ability to export goods to Afghanistan, a country with an annual gross domestic product estimated at $60.6 billion.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: After signing the agreement, Iran's ambassador to Pakistan, Mehdi Honerdoost, stated that the agreement was "not finished", and that Iran would welcome the inclusion of both Pakistan and China in the project. While clarifying that Chabahar Port would not be a rival or enemy to Pakistan's Gwadar Port, he further stated that Pakistan and China had both been invited to contribute to the project before India, but according to Pakistani media neither China nor Pakistan had expressed interest in joining.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: However, eventually, Iranian ambassador made it clear that Iran doesn't consider Chahbahar to be a project which could feasibly rival CPEC as he said "Iran is eager to join CPEC with its full capabilities, possibilities and abilities".


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In July 2020, Pakistani media The News International reported that the Iranian government has dropped India from a long stalled rail project and has instead signed a comprehensive deal with China.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: This report was later refuted by the government of Iran, who stated that the investments from India didn't have anything to do with the railway project in the first place.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: While agreements have specifically cited improvements for Afghan connectivity to the world as a benefit of Indian investment in the region, Afghanistan's politically instability could limit the potential usefulness of transit corridors to population centers near Kabul or Kandahar, as those routes traverse southern and eastern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is most active. The Chabahar plan relies upon connections to the Afghan Ring Road. By August 2016, the Taliban was noted to have captured large swathes of land in Helmand Province, and threatened to capture the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah, which lies on the portion of the Afghan Ring Road connecting Chabahar to Kandahar and Kabul. As a result, portions of the Afghan Ring Road were closed due to Taliban insurgent activity. Also in August 2016, the Taliban claimed responsibility for an attack which left twelve foreign tourists dead as they were traveling on an alternative route to the Afghan Ring Road, between Kabul and Herat. In September 2016, Iran's president Hassan Rouhani expressed his country's interest in joining CPEC during a meeting with Nawaz Sharif.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Pakistan Navy and Chinese Navy ships are to jointly guard the safety and security of the trade corridor, as Pakistan seeks to expand the role of its maritime forces. From December 2016, Pakistan's Navy established a special taskforce "TF-88" to ensure there is maritime security for trade. Chairman Parliamentary Committee on CPEC confirmed that Sindh province will dispatch 2000 police officers, while Punjab will dispatch 5000 police officers for the project, while the Pakistani Army will deploy 12,000 troops to safeguard the route. China plans to transfer 4 ships to the Maritime Security Agency with two ships called PMSS Hingol and PMSS Basol. For territorial security, Pakistan has formed the Special Security Division. Pakistan plans to train 12,000 security personnel to protect Chinese workers on the corridor. As of August 2015, 8,000 Pakistani security officials were deployed for the protection of over 8,100 Chinese workers in Pakistan. As part of CPEC, Pakistan has boosted its international engagement in terms of foreign policy with China, Iran, USA, Turkey and Malaysia are to be engaged for the maritime economy related to CPEC. Iranian President Rouhani revealed his intentions to Pakistan to join CPEC in a meeting at the UN Russia has also expressed support for CPEC.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The Baluchistan province saw multiple attempted nationalist and separatist insurgencies before CPEC, but investments in Balochistan have led to a significant drop in separatist groups, and this effect has even seen the integration of Bolchis in the workforce at Gwadar. Despite this, Pakistan still alleges that India is supporting anti-CPEC agenda, and the Pakistani government often points to such evidence as the alleged Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav, who was caught in the Baluchistan province on 3 March 2016. Information regarding Jadhav was then presented to the United Nations. Exiled Baloch nationalist Hyrbyair Marri in 2016 warned the safety of Chinese nationals working on the project could not be guaranteed, though violence in the region peaked in 2013 before sharply declining.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The Pakistani government reported that over 800 Baloch militants surrendered to security forces in 2016 after the launch of a reconciliation programme, including over 200 at a single ceremony in November 2016. Balakh Sher Badini, a senior militant commander of the Balochistan Liberation Army, surrendered to Pakistani forces in January 2017. Another 21 militants from another militant group, the Balochistan Republican Army, surrendered shortly thereafter along with 3 militant commanders. A few days later, high-ranking militant commander Lal Din Bugti surrendered to Pakistani security forces, along with 6 other commanders. Separatist violence had decreased in the province so much by 2017, that such groups had become much less of a threat compared to Islamist militants.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Pakistan faced Taliban insurgent violence that largely began in 2008 during the rule of General Pervez Musharraf. The outlawed terrorist organisation Tehrik-i-Taliban has claimed responsibility for past attacks on some Chinese nationals, and Chinese commentators have raised concerns that the safety of construction workers could be under threat. China reportedly also expressed concern that militant groups in Xinjiang could collaborate with Tehrik-i-Taliban militants in Pakistan. In 2014, Pakistan launched Operation Zarb-e-Azb to eradicate Tehrik-i-Taliban militants from Pakistani territory, following an attack on Karachi's airport, and the 2014 Peshawar school massacre in which terrorists from Tehrik-i-Taliban killed 148 school children.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Following the launch of Operation Zarb-e-Azb, violence in Pakistan has drastically declined. 2016 saw the lowest number of deaths from acts of violence since the current wave of violence began in 2007, with total fatalities dropping nearly 66% compared to 2014. Acts of terrorist violence fell 75% between 2014 and 2016. According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal, civilian fatalities from terrorist attacks in 2013 stood at 3,001, while the number had declined to 612 by 2016 – the lowest number since 2005.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Though terrorism-related deaths declined in Pakistan as a whole in 2016, the toll rose slightly in Baluchistan, where Tehrik-i-Taliban militants maintain a degree of subversive capability. In August 2016, Quetta was struck by a terrorist suicide bombing which killed 70 people, while sectarian militants still frequently target Baluchistan's Shia Hazaras.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: CPEC passes through the disputed region of Kashmir where Indian and Pakistani border guards have occasionally exchanged fire across the Line of Control, though no CPEC project is located near the line. Chinese intelligence agencies have also reportedly shared information with Pakistani authorities regarding alleged efforts by the India's Research and Analysis Wing to subvert CPEC. In March 2016, Pakistan reported that it had arrested Kulbhushan Yadav, whom Pakistan claims to be a spy from India's Research and Analysis Wing, and who entered Pakistan from Iran specifically to destabilize regions in Pakistan's Baluchistan province along with terrorist organization Tehrik-i-Taliban and Baloch liberation army (B.L.A) in order to hinder implementation of CPEC projects. India though has denied the claim saying that Yadav had been "kidnapped last year from Iran and his subsequent presence in Pakistan has never been explained credibly". Former Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif in April 2016 accused India's Research and Analysis Wing of destabilizing Pakistan in an attempt to disrupt and stymie implementation of various CPEC projects. Pakistan's Secretary of Defense Lieutenant General Alam Khattak stated in April 2016 that the arrest of Kulbhushan Yadav indicated Indian interference in CPEC, and further alleged that India's Research and Analysis Wing, in collusion with Afghanistan's National Directorate of Security, had set up a dedicated espionage unit with express intent to sabotage CPEC. India moved to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which after deliberation stayed execution of sentence passed by Pakistani military court, the ICJ also found violation of Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations by Pakistan and directed Pakistan to provide consular access to Kulbhushan Yadav in its July 2019 verdict.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Some planning aspects and technicalities associated with the route have been criticised in political forums and by the media. The Provincial Assembly of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province adopted a resolution against the alleged decision of the central government to change the multibillion route of the proposed project by diverting it away from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The federal Minister of Planning Development and Reform Ahsan Iqbal formally denied any change in the alignment. According to Dr Ahmad Rashid Malik, senior research fellow at the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad (ISSI), the route controversy is "baseless and an unfounded reality...". As a result of objections to CPEC, the Chinese government in 2015 issued a statement urging Pakistani political parties to resolve their differences over the project.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In addition to the aforementioned issues, some sources have suggested that the interest rate for CPEC related loans would be high, with India's "Daily News and Analysis" paper suggesting that Pakistan had unwittingly accepted loans that would "be offered at very high rates of interest", although the actual interest rates were negotiated prior to acceptance, and for most projects will be 1.6%; conversely previous Pakistani infrastructure projects financed by the World Bank carried an interest rate between 5% and 8.5% in comparison, and have strings attached.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Several articles in Pakistan have criticised the project's finances as being shrouded in mystery, while one article suggested that "there is far too much secrecy and far too little transparency". The Private Power and Infrastructure Board has also been accused of irregularities in the approval process for coal power plants and the tariffs at which Pakistan is contractually obliged to purchase electricity from those plants, with special concern regarding potential irregularities in the tariff approved for the 300 MW coal power plant to be built in Pind Dadan Khan by China Machinery Engineering Corporation.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In December 2017, it was reported that as per the Gwadar Port agreement, the Chinese companies would get 91 per cent but the Gwadar Port Authority would get only 9 per cent of revenue. In the same month a seven-member delegation of Senators visited China. On returning from China, all the Senators issued press statements and unequivocally claimed that Balochistan would not get anything from the CPEC. One of the senators, Senator Kabir Muhammad Shahi also claimed that while 60% of the funds are being used for power generation, other than 300 MW for Gwadar Port, not even 1 MW of that would be given to Balochistan.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Chinese exports through the Karakoram Highway have entered the domestic Pakistani market, and are cheaper due to the relatively higher cost of production in Pakistan. It has also been speculated that the CPEC will replace Pakistani exports by Chinese ones in external markets.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Some Baloch nationalists have opposed the large-scale development projects envisioned by CPEC, fearing that such developments in the province would eventually result in local residents "losing control" over natural resources. Others have alleged that CPEC is a "conspiracy" meant to stimulate the settlement of migrants from other regions of Pakistan in order to render ethnic Baloch a minority in the province.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In accordance to the Pakistani Government's announcement of its intent to issue resident cards to the city's inhabitants as a security measure to prevent the movement of firearms into the city, former Chief Minister of Balochistan province, Akhtar Mengal, suggested at a political rally in November 2015, that execution of CPEC projects and the resident card policy would eventually result in ethnic Baloch being denied entry into the city. The resident cards measure would require any non-resident visitor to the city to register at designated security checkpoints prior to entering the city by road, without any reference to ethnicity. The former Chief Minister did, however, clarify that he would not oppose development projects in the province that he believed would uplift the plight of local residents. Shortly thereafter, the Pakistani government announced its intention to establish a training institute named Pak-China Technical and Vocational Institute at Gwadar which is to be completed at the cost of 943 million rupees to impart skills to local residents to train them to operate machinery at the port.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Athar Hussain, the director of the Asia Research Centre at London School of Economics, has expressed concerns that the CPEC is "likely to bring more development to regions that are already developed, instead of poor areas such as Balochistan." Burzine Waghmar, a member of the Centre for the Study of Pakistan, SOAS, University of London, suggested that CPEC projects are not targeted towards benefiting the indigenous Baloch population, and will accelerate human rights violations in the province.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: In December 2016, the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) released a report that given the rate at which Chinese nationals were migrating to Balochistan for the CPEC project, the Chinese would outnumber the Baloch people by 2048, raising concerns of marginalisation of the Baloch citizens.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: While nationalists openly oppose CPEC, some local leaders and residents of Gwadar city have also expressed concern in regards to the project – the head of Gwadar's local fisherman association stated in an interview with "NBC News" that "Development is good, China is our great friend, this CPEC thing sounds amazing, but don't forget that this is our land, first." Other residents doubt they will see any of the benefits promised by CPEC, while others fear they will be evicted from their homes in order to make way for infrastructure works.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: heads security operations in the province, stated that locals would not be deprived of benefits, and that local Gwadar residents would have "the first right to everything." Pakistan's Minister of Planning, National Reforms, and Development, Ahsan Iqbal, further stated in May 2016 that Gwadar residents would be regarded as "main stakeholders" in the city's master plan, and that fishermen specifically would also be accommodated by the plan. The developer of Gwadar Port, COPHC, has also announced that it will assist Gwadar's fishermen to help boost the region's seafood industry by developing programmes to improve the quality of local seafoods.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: The Government of India, which shares tense relations with Pakistan, objects to the CPEC project as upgrade works to the Karakoram Highway are taking place in Gilgit-Baltistan; territory that India claims as its own. During the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to China in 2015, the Indian Foreign Minister, Sushma Swaraj reportedly told Chinese Communist Party general secretary Xi Jinping that projects passing through Gilgit-Baltistan are "unacceptable" as they require construction in the claimed territory. India's Foreign Secretary Subrahmanyam Jaishankar also confirmed that the issue had been raised with the Chinese government on the trip. Swaraj reiterated this stance during a meeting in August 2016 with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi, stating India would "resolutely oppose" the corridor in Kashmir.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: India did not object to Chinese construction of the Karakoram Highway, which was built between 1959 and 1979. India further did not initially object to major Chinese-sponsored upgrade works to the Karakoram Highway after a 2010 earthquake, though it did object the presence of Chinese troops in the region that were sent to guard Chinese workers.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: India further did not object to construction of the Mangla Dam, undertaken with World Bank funding and British technical assistance in southern Kashmir − a region which India claims as its own territory. India even maintained that the Wullar Barrage project in Indian-administered Kashmir, which Pakistan regards as a violation of the Indus Water Treaty, would ultimately be beneficial for the Mangla Dam. India further did not object to construction works at the Kashmir's Neelum–Jhelum Hydropower Plant, under construction with Chinese assistance since 2008. India in 1991 did not raise objections to its construction.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Following the 2005 Kashmir earthquake, large-scale reconstruction work of infrastructure took place across northern Kashmir with the assistance of South Korean, Turkish, and Saudi firms. Chinese companies took part in 14 post-earthquake reconstruction projects in the disputed region, worth $6 billion. India did not object to these works, despite the fact that infrastructure near the militarily sensitive Line of Control were upgraded.


title: China–Pakistan Economic Corridor

text: Indian objection to Chinese construction works in the Gilgit-Baltistan arose in 2011 in response to a Chinese complaint regarding a joint Indian-Vietnamese oil exploration project in the disputed South China Sea. The influential Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, a think tank funded by the Indian Ministry of Defence, in 2011 called for India to begin raising objection to Chinese projects in the region at the "international level."


title: Remote procedure call

text: In distributed computing, a remote procedure call (RPC) is when a computer program causes a procedure () to execute in a different address space (commonly on another computer on a shared network), which is coded as if it were a normal (local) procedure call, without the programmer explicitly coding the details for the remote interaction. That is, the programmer writes essentially the same code whether the subroutine is local to the executing program, or remote. This is a form of client–server interaction (caller is client, executor is server), typically implemented via a request–response message-passing system. In the object-oriented programming paradigm, RPCs are represented by remote method invocation (RMI). The RPC model implies a level of location transparency, namely that calling procedures are largely the same whether they are local or remote, but usually, they are not identical, so local calls can be distinguished from remote calls. Remote calls are usually orders of magnitude slower and less reliable than local calls, so distinguishing them is important.


title: Remote procedure call

text: RPCs are a form of inter-process communication (IPC), in that different processes have different address spaces: if on the same host machine, they have distinct virtual address spaces, even though the physical address space is the same; while if they are on different hosts, the physical address space is different. Many different (often incompatible) technologies have been used to implement the concept.


title: Remote procedure call

text: Request–response protocols date to early distributed computing in the late 1960s, theoretical proposals of remote procedure calls as the model of network operations date to the 1970s, and practical implementations date to the early 1980s. Bruce Jay Nelson is generally credited with coining the term "remote procedure call" in 1981.


title: Remote procedure call

text: Remote procedure calls used in modern operating systems trace their roots back to the RC 4000 multiprogramming system, which used a request-response communication protocol for process synchronization. The idea of treating network operations as remote procedure calls goes back at least to the 1970s in early ARPANET documents. In 1978, Per Brinch Hansen proposed Distributed Processes, a language for distributed computing based on "external requests" consisting of procedure calls between processes.


title: Remote procedure call

text: One of the earliest practical implementations was in 1982 by Brian Randell and colleagues for their Newcastle Connection between UNIX machines. This was soon followed by "Lupine" by Andrew Birrell and Bruce Nelson in the Cedar environment at Xerox PARC. Lupine automatically generated stubs, providing type-safe bindings, and used an efficient protocol for communication. One of the first business uses of RPC was by Xerox under the name "Courier" in 1981. The first popular implementation of RPC on Unix was Sun's RPC (now called ONC RPC), used as the basis for Network File System (NFS).


title: Remote procedure call

text: In the 1990s, with the popularity of object-oriented programming, an alternative model of remote method invocation (RMI) was widely implemented, such as in Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA, 1991) and Java remote method invocation. RMIs, in turn, fell in popularity with the rise of the internet, particularly in the 2000s.


title: Remote procedure call

text: RPC is a request–response protocol. An RPC is initiated by the "client", which sends a request message to a known remote "server" to execute a specified procedure with supplied parameters. The remote server sends a response to the client, and the application continues its process. While the server is processing the call, the client is blocked (it waits until the server has finished processing before resuming execution), unless the client sends an asynchronous request to the server, such as an XMLHttpRequest. There are many variations and subtleties in various implementations, resulting in a variety of different (incompatible) RPC protocols.


title: Remote procedure call

text: An important difference between remote procedure calls and local calls is that remote calls can fail because of unpredictable network problems. Also, callers generally must deal with such failures without knowing whether the remote procedure was actually invoked. Idempotent procedures (those that have no additional effects if called more than once) are easily handled, but enough difficulties remain that code to call remote procedures is often confined to carefully written low-level subsystems.


title: Remote procedure call

text: To let different clients access servers, a number of standardized RPC systems have been created. Most of these use an interface description language (IDL) to let various platforms call the RPC. The IDL files can then be used to generate code to interface between the client and servers.


title: Tower Heist

text: Tower Heist is a 2011 American heist comedy film directed by Brett Ratner, written by Ted Griffin and Jeff Nathanson, based on a story by Bill Collage, Adam Cooper and Griffin and starring Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy with Casey Affleck, Alan Alda, Matthew Broderick, Judd Hirsch, Téa Leoni, Michael Peña, and Gabourey Sidibe in supporting roles. The plot follows employees of an exclusive apartment building who lose their pensions in the Ponzi scheme of a Wall Street businessman and enlist the aid of a criminal, a bankrupt businessman, and an immigrant maid to break into his apartment and steal back their money while avoiding the FBI agents in charge of his case.


title: Tower Heist

text: "Tower Heist" began development as early as 2005, based on an idea by Murphy that would star him and an all-black cast of comedians as a heist group who rob Trump International Hotel and Tower. As the script developed and changed into an "Ocean's Eleven"–style caper, Murphy left the project. Ratner continued to develop the idea into what would eventually become "Tower Heist", with Murphy later rejoining the production. Filming took place entirely in New York City on a budget of $75 million (after tax rebates), with several buildings provided by Donald Trump used to represent the eponymous tower. The film's soundtrack album and musical score was composed by Christophe Beck and produced by Jake Monaco and was released on November 1, 2011, by Varèse Sarabande, Back Lot Music and Colosseum Records.


title: Tower Heist

text: The film received mixed reviews from critics, with praise going to the cast, including Broderick, Leoni, and Stiller. Murphy's performance was repeatedly singled out, with critics feeling that he displayed a welcome return to the comedic style of his early career. Much of the criticism was focused on the plot, which was considered "formulaic", "rushed", "dull", and "laborious". The film was theatrically released on November 4, 2011, in the United States by Universal Pictures where it earned $152.9 million worldwide on a budget of $75–85 million.


title: Tower Heist

text: Prior to release, the film was involved in a controversy over plans by Universal Pictures to release it for home viewing on video on demand to 500,000 Comcast customers, only three weeks after its cinematic debut. Concern over the implementation's harming ticket sales and inspiring further films to follow suit resulted in several theater chains' refusal to show the film at all if the plan went ahead, forcing Universal to abandon the idea.


title: Tower Heist

text: Josh Kovaks is the building manager of The Tower, an upscale apartment complex in New York City that has Wall Street billionaire Arthur Shaw as its penthouse tenant. The Tower staff lose all their pensions because Josh had given the pension fund to Shaw to manage. At the time the story begins, Shaw is under house arrest by the FBI for masterminding a Ponzi scheme, embezzling up to $2 billion. Josh, his brother-in-law and the Tower's concierge Charlie, and elevator operator Enrique are fired after attempting to confront Shaw for his scheme.


title: Tower Heist

text: The FBI agent in charge of Shaw's case, Claire Denham, drunkenly suggests to Josh that Shaw has concealed $20 million as a reserve, and that he should steal it. Josh gets Charlie, Enrique, and evicted Tower tenant Mr. Fitzhugh to help him steal the money.


title: Tower Heist

text: They supplement their inexperience by enlisting Josh's childhood friend Slide, a petty criminal, and the tower's maid Odessa Montero, who has locksmith experience. Denham informs Josh that Shaw is scheduled to attend court on Thanksgiving during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade to avoid publicity, so Josh and his team decide to break into Shaw's apartment then. Prior to this, Charlie is rehired as the Tower's new manager, and, uncomfortable with the plan, warns Josh to abandon it, or Charlie will turn him over to the police.


title: Tower Heist

text: Slide attempts to betray the team by reaching the safe ahead of them and taking all of the money for himself, having tricked Odessa into giving him lessons. The team intercepts him at Shaw's apartment and break down a false wall, revealing Shaw's safe, which turns out to be empty. During the ensuing altercation, the group find gold underneath the paint of a Ferrari 250 GT Lusso which Shaw has displayed in his apartment, realizing that he invested his money in gold, turned it into car parts, and reassembled the car inside the apartment piece by piece to hide the money in plain sight, which, according to Fitzhugh, is worth about $45 million (give or take $10 million) in total. They then decide to lower it to Fitzhugh's old apartment using a window-washing platform. Charlie rejoins the team after realizing their presence and saves Fitzhugh from falling to his death. They push the car on top of one of the elevators, and Josh finds a ledger of Shaw's illegal finances in the car's glove box.


title: Tower Heist

text: Shaw and the FBI return, realizing the Thanksgiving Day court date to be part of Josh's plan. Denham notes the missing car and Shaw's hidden safe and forfeits his $10 million bail and remands him into federal custody until his real court date for not informing the FBI of the safe. The FBI arrests Josh's conspirators (except Slide, who somehow manages to slip away) while Denham catches up to Josh in Central Park. In the paddy wagon, Josh reveals to Shaw that he found the ledger. Shaw tries to negotiate a deal with them by giving them cash ten times the value of the gold car in exchange for their silence. They decline Shaw's bribe by reminding him "they don't accept tips at the Tower."


title: Tower Heist

text: At FBI HQ, Director Mazin and Denham mention to Josh that they know about his friendship with Slide. Tower receptionist Miss Iovenko tells Director Mazin that she passed her bar exam three days before and will be Josh's attorney. She shows them Shaw's ledger with evidence that will put him away for life, and tells them she will turn it over in exchange for everyone's freedom. Mazin accepts on the condition that Josh serve a minimal two-year sentence for masterminding the heist.


title: Tower Heist

text: A news report states that Shaw will enter a guilty plea. Slide leads the retrieval of the car from the Tower's swimming pool. Its various dismantled parts are sent to Tower employees to compensate for their lost pensions while splitting the remainder of the gold among themselves. While Shaw begins his life sentence, Josh enters his cell with a satisfied smile slowly forming on his face.


title: Tower Heist

text: The idea for "Tower Heist" began development as early as 2005, when Murphy pitched a concept to producer Brian Grazer and Ratner concerning an all-star cast of black comedians including Chris Tucker, Kevin Hart, Dave Chappelle, Tracy Morgan, and Martin Lawrence, as a group of disgruntled employees who plan to rob Donald Trump and Trump International Hotel and Tower. The film was originally titled "Trump Heist" under this concept. A script was developed by Adam Cooper and Bill Collage and over the course of the next five years, the script was rewritten by several writers including Russell Gewirtz, Rawson Marshall Thurber, Ted Griffin, Leslie Dixon, Noah Baumbach, and Jeff Nathanson, with the bulk of the work – and credit – going to Griffin and Nathanson. On the development of the film, Grazer said "It's difficult to imagine that a casual conversation six years ago has grown into such a fully realized film that is so grand in scope. Plus, who could have known that, in this period of time, the global financial markets would teeter on the verge of collapse and the villain in our story would pale in comparison to some very real ones on Wall Street? Truth remains stranger than fiction."


title: Tower Heist

text: Rewrites of the script gradually moved away from the ensemble of comedians and began to focus on two central characters, at which point Murphy left the project. The modified script reminded Ratner of the "Ocean's Eleven" remake, a project he had developed but for which he was unavailable due to his commitment to directing "Rush Hour 2". The project remained in development for a period of years but Ratner remained committed to the project, having enjoyed the heist films of the 1970s including "The Taking of Pelham One Two Three", "The Hot Rock", and "The Anderson Tapes", turning down the opportunity to direct other films such as "Horrible Bosses", which he instead produced. Ratner also wanted to work with Murphy, whom Ratner partially credited as inspiring his "Rush Hour" films. As the script began to be finalized, Murphy was drawn back into the much changed project after being informed of Stiller's participation, with Murphy being offered the role of Slide. Murphy rejoined as both a cast member and producer, alongside Grazer and Kim Roth. In late October 2010, the film was finally scheduled for release, being given a November 4, 2011, release date.


title: Tower Heist

text: Feeling the original concept was too close to "Ocean's Eleven", Ratner attempted to recruit "Rush Hour" screenwriter Nathanson to perform additional work on the "Tower Heist" script, but at that time Nathanson was unavailable. Ratner instead hired Griffin, a writer on the "Ocean's Eleven" remake. Griffin "brought the real motivation and the heart to the concept", moving away from the premise of performing an ensemble heist on a rich Donald Trump type, and focusing instead on a group of blue-collar employees who take on a corrupt, thieving Bernard Madoff like businessman who has embezzled their pensions. Ratner enjoyed the pitch and brought it to Grazer who gave his approval. After taking the script to Stiller and bringing him into the project, Ratner had Noah Baumbach perform specific rewrites for Stiller's character. Nathanson then came aboard the project and performed the final rewrites to Griffin's screenplay in October 2010, adding "the obstacles, complexities and specificities of the characters".


title: Tower Heist

text: To help develop the script, the filmmakers and writers spoke with the resident managers of several high-profile New York hotels to learn of their experiences interacting with their clientele. This research gave Griffin the idea for Shaw's possessing a vehicle in his apartment, which Grazer and Ratner eventually decided would be a rare 1963 Ferrari 250 GT Lusso which once belonged to Steve McQueen. On his research, Nathanson said "It was informative, to say the least, to speak with the people who work in these buildings. I interviewed everyone from doormen to housekeepers to building managers. There's a whole underworld to the New York building scene that exists in the basements that most people are unaware of. They make it all possible, and you just never see it. It's fascinating."


title: Tower Heist

text: Filming began in November 2010, taking place entirely in New York City on a budget of $85 million ($75 million after tax rebates). Production designer Kristi Zea visited several upscale hotels and high-rise residences to research the design elements to incorporate into the opulent surroundings of the tower and Shaw's penthouse. Zea created an amalgamation of the elements she saw during her research to create a sophisticated lobby design for the tower. For Shaw's penthouse, Zea took inspiration from a top-floor apartment in the Trump International Hotel and Tower at Central Park West in Columbus Circle. Zea populated the apartment with an assortment of art pieces to represent Shaw's status, based on specific artists and works that Ratner suggested. Zea decided to use modern-classic reproduction designs by artists such as Pablo Picasso, Francis Bacon, Cy Twombly, and Andy Warhol. Explaining her decision, Zea said "These days, it seems wealthy people want to have wall power. They want to have art on their walls that means something and shows people, just like a car, that, 'I'm rich, I'm smart and I know what I'm doing.


title: Tower Heist

text: Donald Trump allowed the production to use several of his own properties to portray the luxurious locales with the Trump International Hotel and Tower being used for exterior shots of the tower. Sections of the building were recreated on closed green screen sets for some of the film's visual effects. A foot and car chase sequence was filmed on Central Park West and Columbus Avenue. Some vehicle filming occurred on sound stages in Brooklyn. The burglary itself takes place during the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, requiring the crew to film parts of the actual parade itself, and then recreate the event one week later for further filming.


title: Tower Heist

text: For Shaw's Ferrari, it was decided that purchasing an actual model – of which only 350 exist and would cost at least $1 million – would be too expensive and the vehicle would be unsuitable for filming purposes. Instead, two replicas were commissioned, a process which took three months under the supervision of prop master Peter Gelfman. The replicas then received additional reinforcement for filming purposes from Steve Kirshoff and the special effects crew. After running camera tests on several authentic Ferrari colors, it was decided to paint the replicas bright red in order to create a lasting impression instead of using the actual metallic brown muted-coloring of McQueen's vehicle. Sidibe and Murphy performed the only improvised scene, in which they are cracking a safe together. Test screenings did not result in any scenes being cut from the film, with Ratner claiming that the theatrical version is his "director's cut". He did remove some scenes which he felt "didn't fit", or did not match the PG-13 rating the filmmakers were targeting. In post-production, Universal decided to film a new scene for the ending that would feature a reunion between Stiller and Murphy's characters. Murphy refused to return unless he was paid a further $500,000 on top of his $7.5 million salary. The studio declined to pay the additional money and the scene was not shot.


title: Tower Heist

text: The film's soundtrack album and musical score was composed by Christophe Beck and produced by Jake Monaco and was released on November 1, 2011, by Varèse Sarabande, Back Lot Music and Colosseum Records. It consists of 22 tracks with a runtime of 40 minutes.


title: Tower Heist

text: The world premiere of "Tower Heist" took place on October 24, 2011, at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York City. The film was theatrically released on November 4, 2011, in the United States by Universal Pictures and Relativity Media.


title: Tower Heist

text: On October 5, 2011, Universal Pictures announced that "Tower Heist" would be made available for home viewing via parent company Comcast's video on demand system three weeks after its theatrical debut at the rental cost of $59.99. The move was announced as a test case, to be conducted only in Atlanta and Portland. The move met with criticism from cinema chains over concern that the test and any further future implementation would impact ticket sales. The following day, Cinemark Theatres – the third largest cinema chain in the United States – threatened to not show the film at all if Universal proceeded with the test. On October 11, 2011, several independent theater chains, including Galaxy Theatres, Regency Theatres and Emagine Theatres, and small cinema houses representing approximately 50 screens across the country, also threatened not to play "Tower Heist". The following day the chains were joined by 950-screen National Amusements theater chain. In response, Universal Pictures released a statement saying that they would no longer pursue the proposed test.


title: Tower Heist

text: "Tower Heist" earned $78 million in the United States and Canada, and $74.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide gross of $152.9 million. Pre-release audience tracking in the United States indicated that the film had strong awareness among males of all ages, followed by older women. Universal Pictures projected opening takings of $25–30 million during the opening weekend – aiming below expectations due to a slow marketplace – with rival studios claiming that the film would need to make at least $30 million to be a success. In the United States and Canada, "Tower Heist" opened in 3,367 theaters. The film took $85,000 from midnight screenings and a total of $8.5 million opening Friday, becoming the number one grossing film for the day. Although the film had been expected to be the number one film for the weekend, it took $10.5 million on the opening Saturday, falling behind the animated film "Puss in Boots" ($15.3 million). "Tower Heist" became the number two film for the weekend with $24 million, behind "Puss in Boots" ($34 million), with 70% of the audience being over the age of 25—the largest segment, 27%, being over 50—and 56% male. The opening audience was ethnically diverse consisting of 48% Caucasian, 21% African American, and 21% Hispanic. "Tower Heist" was released on November 2, 2011, in the United Kingdom and opened in a total of 23 countries, including Germany, Spain, Hong Kong, and India, by November 4, 2011, at a total of 1,948 theaters. The opening weekend saw the film gross $9.5 million – an average of $5,000 per theater – with the largest earnings coming from the United Kingdom ($2.3 million at 416 theaters) where it was the number three film for the weekend, and Spain ($1.6 million at 300 theaters) where it was the number two film.


title: Tower Heist

text: "Tower Heist" was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in the United States on February 21, 2012. The DVD and Blu-ray disc versions contain two alternate endings to the film, deleted and alternate scenes, a gag reel of mistakes made during filming, commentary on the film by Ratner, Griffin, Nathanson, and editor Mark Helfrich, and a behind the scenes film that details the development process of the film. The Blu-ray edition additionally contains film storyboards, three videos about the filmmaking process led by Ratner, and musical tracks from the film.


title: Tower Heist

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 68% based on reviews from 200 critics, with an average rating of 6.20/10. The site's critics consensus reads: ""Tower Heist" is a true Brett Ratner joint: little brains to this caper, but it's fun fluff, exciting to watch, and showcases a welcome return to form for Eddie Murphy." Metacritic gave the film a weighted average score of 59 out of 100, based on reviews from 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Tower Heist

text: Tim Robey of "The Daily Telegraph" called the film "a tolerably enjoyable Brett Ratner movie", labeling it "brash, forgettable fun". He criticized Ratner for having the mostly white characters require the aid of a black character for the heist, saying "it's a little embarrassing that they can't conceive of doing this without bailing a black criminal out of jail but cultural sensitivity has never been Ratner's strong suit." "The Hollywood Reporter" Todd McCarthy said that the film is "snappy, well cast and streetwise" but felt that it ignored the "contemporary economic issues at its core". McCarthy said that Murphy's performance was a return to form as "the rude, confrontational, wiseass Murphy audiences have nearly forgotten after all the silly kid comedies and heavy-makeup outings of recent years", and said that with his introduction "the film's energy and amusement level kick up a few notches", but that the enjoyment ebbs during the actual break-in, in which "Murphy becomes neutered ... and the logistics of the heist become too far-fetched and laborious."


title: Tower Heist

text: "New York"s David Edelstein called it "a shameless but exuberantly well-done caper comedy", and praised the performances of Stiller, Murphy and Leoni, saying "Ben Stiller ... and Eddie Murphy ... show off two of the best fastballs in comedy, and Téa Leoni's best scene as an FBI agent – drunk, both sloppy and blunt – makes you wish she had more." Emanuel Levy called "Tower Heist" a "formulaic, haphazardly plotted action comedy ... whose best asset is its strong ensemble." Levy said "What makes the picture ... work is not its plot, which is overly familiar and utterly implausible, but the socio-psychological dynamics that prevail among the [characters]." Levy singled out Stiller as "well cast" and Sidibe as having "some of the picture's best lines", but gave individual praise to Murphy, saying that he "dominates the second half of the picture", rendering "a joyous performance that recalls his witty, charming, streetwise roles of the 1980s".


title: Tower Heist

text: "Empire"s Nick de Semlyen awarded the film three out of five stars, calling it "fun if uneven stuff from Ratner", with a "fairly dull" opening act. Semlyen said it was "a welcome return to form for Eddie Murphy", but was critical that he is "sorely underused". Semlyen praised Alda, saying that it is his "smarm offensive that turns out to be the primary pleasure". "The Village Voice"s Nick Pinkteron said that the film "deserves credit as a clean, well-turned job, fleet and funny and inconsequential", and appreciated the cast, praising Leoni as the "best thing going", and Murphy's "inspired" contributions. Pinkerton was critical of the script, describing it as "amateur as its crooks: the audience isn't even fully aware of who's in on the job when it kicks off, while other threads are left dangling."


title: Tower Heist

text: Roger Ebert awarded the film 2.5 out of 4, saying "This isn't a great heist movie for a lot of reasons, beginning with the stupidity of its heist plan and the impossibility of these characters ever being successful at anything more complex than standing in line", but appreciated that the comedy did not "go heavy on the excremental, the masturbatory and symphonies of four-letter words", calling it "funny in an innocent screwball kind of way". Lisa Schwarzbaum of "Entertainment Weekly" called the film "overblinged, eye-catching, and essentially tacky", and praised Murphy, saying "when Murphy is on screen, his comedic vigor ... gooses the movie's energy level ... but whenever Murphy wanders off, the movie's pulse rate drops. "Tower Heist" is in effect two movies: One belongs to Murphy, the other to the rest of the cast." "Time Out London"s Trevor Johnston said that "though it's hard to get excited by this amiable potboiler, "Tower Heist" is so at home with its limitations it's equally hard to dislike", but criticized the finale "which might have been a bit more tense had we been able to take it remotely seriously". "Time Out New York"s David Fear gave it 2 out of 5 stars, saying "one nail-biting moment and some much-missed Murphy mouthiness won't keep you from feeling like you're the one being ripped off."


title: Tower Heist

text: "The New Yorker" Anthony Lane criticized the plot, saying "toss everything you can find, starting with roughly diced plots, into the blender: such appears to be the method behind "Tower Heist"." Lane called the characters "unlikable people" but offered praise to Broderick, saying he "underplays [the character] so well". Lane lamented that "the notion of a theft from the thieves – from those who are lapped in lofty, screw you wealth – is a tempting one right now, but "Tower Heist" passes the buck." "Variety"s Peter Debruge was also critical, saying the film "goes wonky on the way to the bank, due to its lackluster pacing and shortage of the qualities that typically earn stars Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy their paychecks – namely, laughs." Debruge felt that the opening 40 minutes were "a dull blue-collar drama populated entirely by stereotypes", and while the film "picks up some much-needed momentum" with the actual heist, the "resolution feels rushed". Debruge echoed praise for Murphy, calling his performance "a welcome return to the comic's irreverent, '80s-era persona", and lamenting his limited screen-time.


title: Tower Heist

text: "Tower Heist" received two NAACP Image Award nominations, for Outstanding Motion Picture and Outstanding Actor in a Motion Picture for Eddie Murphy.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: Forgotten () is a 2017 South Korean psychological thriller film written and directed by Jang Hang-jun. The film stars Kang Ha-neul and Kim Mu-yeol, with Moon Sung-keun and Na Young-hee in supporting roles.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: Jin-seok, a young man, moves to a new house with his mother, father, and older brother Yoo-seok. Things seem off to Jin-seok in their new home. One rainy night he witnesses Yoo-seok being kidnapped and dragged into a car. Nineteen days pass and suddenly, Yoo-seok returns. Jin starts noticing discrepancies in his family's personality. He then realizes that they are not his family at all, but people pretending to be his family. He escapes the house and goes to the police. When he tells them he is 21 years old, the skeptical officer asks him what year it is. He replies that it's 1997; the officer reveals that it is actually 2017. Jin is, in fact, 41 years old.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: A shocked Jin looks around and sees signs of modern life: a tablet, a smartphone; an LED flat-screen TV showing the current South Korean President Moon Jae-in and United States President Donald Trump. He leaves confused, but is captured by the same "family" that was holding him captive. The young man pretending to be his brother, "Yoo-seok," tells Jin that twenty years ago, a teenage girl and her mother were murdered. The case went cold, so the family of the victims hired "Yoo-seok" to find the murderer which is Jin. In flashbacks, it is shown that Jin was abducted and tortured to confess, but maintained his innocence. A psychiatrist suggested that he had repressed his memory because the event was too traumatic. The team has the psychiatrist hypnotize him back to his last happy memory in 1997, figuring that if they could re-enact the events of the murder, Jin might be able to recover his memories and tell them what happened. Everything was going as planned, until the night when Jin saw Yoo-seok being kidnapped. He was actually being arrested for fraud, and was gone for 19 days because they needed to wait until the next rainy night to properly re-enact the night of the murder. Back in the present, Jin escapes the van and the young man crashes, while Jin is struck by a stranger's car, resulting in him regaining his memories from 1997.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: In 1997, the opening scene from the film is shown, except this time, Jin is with his actual parents and older brother, Yoo-seok. They get into a car accident that kills his parents and mortally injures his brother. Jin desperately needs money for Yoo-seok's surgery, but times are hard, due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. He goes online seeking a job, and is messaged by an anonymous person, telling Jin he will pay him to kill someone's wife, but he must leave the two children unharmed. Arriving at the house, Jin's conscience doesn't allow him to go through with it. He is about to leave when the mother sees him, then the daughter, who starts screaming, and Jin ends up killing them both. The youngest child, a little boy, comes out, and Jin tells him to go back to bed. As he leaves, he discovers that this is actually the family of his brother's doctor.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: Jin meets with the anonymous man, who is indeed Yoo-seok's doctor, demanding to know why the man would have his own family killed. The doctor explains that the financial crisis had bankrupted him; he had taken out multiple insurance policies on his wife to prevent his children from becoming homeless. Since Jin not only killed his wife but also his daughter, the doctor says Yoo-seok will die as well. A struggle ensues and the doctor is accidentally pushed to his death.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: In the present, Jin wakes up in a hospital. The young man who had pulled Jin into the van survived the crash, and was now about to poison him to death, but Jin informs him that his memory has returned. The young man reveals that he was the little boy in the house twenty years ago, whom Jin spared after killing his mother and sister. After the deaths of his parents and sister, his relatives took all the money and left him to grow up in an orphanage. He begs Jin to tell him why he hadn't killed him too, and whether the murders were planned by his father. A distraught Jin lies by taking full responsibility, but the young man doesn't believe him.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: Jin, now aware that he had in fact committed the murders, poisons himself with the poisonous needle and dies; simultaneously, the young man comes to terms with the murder of his family, jumps out of a hospital window and plunges to his death.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: The film flashes back to 1997. Jin's family is at the lake. His mother shouts out that the car is fixed now, implying someone was just working on it. Jin is stopped by a little boy, who offers him a lollipop. After being politely declined, the boy runs to his family. It is shown that it was the doctor and his family. The front of the doctor’s jacket appears slightly dirty, as if he was just working on a car. They all walk away happily. Jin is oblivious of things to come.


title: Forgotten (2017 film)

text: Principal photography began on March 11, 2017 and ended on June 8, 2017. For the film's premise, Jang Hang-jun took inspiration from a story told to him by a friend, who recalled how his cousin left home for about a month and seemed liked a radically different person when he returned. Jang also drew inspiration from French folktale "Bluebeard".


title: Angus Sampson

text: Angus Sampson (born 1979) is an Australian actor and filmmaker. He is best known for his performances in the "Insidious" film series, "The Mule", "", and the Peabody-winning second season of "Fargo".


title: Angus Sampson

text: Sampson was born in Sydney, Australia, and was educated at Trinity Grammar School in Summer Hill and at The Armidale School in northern New South Wales. He graduated from the AWARD School in 2002.


title: Angus Sampson

text: Sampson's acting career launched in 1996 with role as Dylan Lewis's sidekick on "Recovery", an ABC youth music show. Later television jobs include roles on "The Secret Life of Us", "", and "Greeks on the Roof". and as Ali in an episode of "Stingers". He has appeared a performer on the improvised show "Thank God You're Here". In 2007, Sampson portrayed television personality Ugly Dave Gray in the television movie "The King" which examines the life of Australian TV legend Graham Kennedy. In the same year he also appeared in "Wilfred". The following year he played Leonardo da Vinci in the children's television series "Time Trackers" and Michael Thorneycroft in the three final episodes of "Underbelly".


title: Angus Sampson

text: In 2010, Sampson helped his friend and fellow former "Recovery" presenter Leigh Whannell develop a horror film called "Insidious". The film was released in September 2010, with Whannell and Sampson playing "comical low-tech paranormal investigators" Specks and Tucker, roles they have reprised in the film's three follow-ups. Sampson was a special guest juror at the 2006 Melbourne International Film Festival, and host of the 2010 IF Awards, broadcast on SBS TV.


title: Angus Sampson

text: Sampson has since played a diverse array of film roles. In the same year as "Insidious", he was the suit actor for the role of Bull in Spike Jonze's "Where The Wild Things Are". In 2015, Sampson starred on the second season of the FX show "Fargo", playing the character Bear Gerhardt. He starred as "Ozzy" in "The Walking Dead". In 2022, Sampson played the lead role of Dennis "Cisco" Wojciechowski in the Netflix drama series "The Lincoln Lawyer", based on the novel of the same name and written by David E. Kelley,


title: Angus Sampson

text: Sampson was an occasional co-host of Australian radio show "Get This" with Tony Martin on Triple M. Sampson was a founding member of The Forbidden Fruit, an experimental troupe whose only performance was a risque interpretation of "Mad Max 2" they performed on late night radio, in which Angus played The Lord Humongous, who turned out to be quite proficient with the jazz flute. Sampson has also been a presenter on RRR's "Breakfasters" program. In addition, Sampson was also the un-credited host of the cult classic late-night radio show "The Lonely Hearts Club", a deadpan comedy series which ran on ABC Radio National in early 2011 in which Sampson appeared under the pseudonym Richard Silk.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, often abbreviated RT, RTx, or XRT, is a therapy using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of cancer treatment to control or kill malignant cells and normally delivered by a linear accelerator. Radiation therapy may be curative in a number of types of cancer if they are localized to one area of the body. It may also be used as part of adjuvant therapy, to prevent tumor recurrence after surgery to remove a primary malignant tumor (for example, early stages of breast cancer). Radiation therapy is synergistic with chemotherapy, and has been used before, during, and after chemotherapy in susceptible cancers. The subspecialty of oncology concerned with radiotherapy is called radiation oncology. A physician who practices in this subspecialty is a radiation oncologist.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Radiation therapy is commonly applied to the cancerous tumor because of its ability to control cell growth. Ionizing radiation works by damaging the DNA of cancerous tissue leading to cellular death. To spare normal tissues (such as skin or organs which radiation must pass through to treat the tumor), shaped radiation beams are aimed from several angles of exposure to intersect at the tumor, providing a much larger absorbed dose there than in the surrounding healthy tissue. Besides the tumour itself, the radiation fields may also include the draining lymph nodes if they are clinically or radiologically involved with the tumor, or if there is thought to be a risk of subclinical malignant spread. It is necessary to include a margin of normal tissue around the tumor to allow for uncertainties in daily set-up and internal tumor motion. These uncertainties can be caused by internal movement (for example, respiration and bladder filling) and movement of external skin marks relative to the tumor position.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Radiation oncology is the medical specialty concerned with prescribing radiation, and is distinct from radiology, the use of radiation in medical imaging and diagnosis. Radiation may be prescribed by a radiation oncologist with intent to cure ("curative") or for adjuvant therapy. It may also be used as palliative treatment (where cure is not possible and the aim is for local disease control or symptomatic relief) or as therapeutic treatment (where the therapy has survival benefit and can be curative). It is also common to combine radiation therapy with surgery, chemotherapy, hormone therapy, immunotherapy or some mixture of the four. Most common cancer types can be treated with radiation therapy in some way.


title: Radiation therapy

text: The precise treatment intent (curative, adjuvant, neoadjuvant therapeutic, or palliative) will depend on the tumor type, location, and stage, as well as the general health of the patient. Total body irradiation (TBI) is a radiation therapy technique used to prepare the body to receive a bone marrow transplant. Brachytherapy, in which a radioactive source is placed inside or next to the area requiring treatment, is another form of radiation therapy that minimizes exposure to healthy tissue during procedures to treat cancers of the breast, prostate and other organs. Radiation therapy has several applications in non-malignant conditions, such as the treatment of trigeminal neuralgia, acoustic neuromas, severe thyroid eye disease, pterygium, pigmented villonodular synovitis, and prevention of keloid scar growth, vascular restenosis, and heterotopic ossification. The use of radiation therapy in non-malignant conditions is limited partly by worries about the risk of radiation-induced cancers.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Highly radiosensitive cancer cells are rapidly killed by modest doses of radiation. These include leukemias, most lymphomas and germ cell tumors.


title: Radiation therapy

text: The majority of epithelial cancers are only moderately radiosensitive, and require a significantly higher dose of radiation (60-70 Gy) to achieve a radical cure.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Some types of cancer are notably radioresistant, that is, much higher doses are required to produce a radical cure than may be safe in clinical practice. Renal cell cancer and melanoma are generally considered to be radioresistant but radiation therapy is still a palliative option for many patients with metastatic melanoma. Combining radiation therapy with immunotherapy is an active area of investigation and has shown some promise for melanoma and other cancers.


title: Radiation therapy

text: It is important to distinguish the radiosensitivity of a particular tumor, which to some extent is a laboratory measure, from the radiation "curability" of a cancer in actual clinical practice. For example, leukemias are not generally curable with radiation therapy, because they are disseminated through the body. Lymphoma may be radically curable if it is localised to one area of the body. Similarly, many of the common, moderately radioresponsive tumors are routinely treated with curative doses of radiation therapy if they are at an early stage. For example, non-melanoma skin cancer, head and neck cancer, breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, cervical cancer, anal cancer, and prostate cancer. With the exception of oligometastatic disease, metastatic cancers are incurable with radiation therapy because it is not possible to treat the whole body.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Modern radiation therapy relies on a CT scan to identify the tumor and surrounding normal structures and to perform dose calculations for the creation of a complex radiation treatment plan. The patient receives small skin marks to guide the placement of treatment fields. Patient positioning is crucial at this stage as the patient will have to be placed in an identical position during each treatment. Many patient positioning devices have been developed for this purpose, including masks and cushions which can be molded to the patient. Image-guided radiation therapy (IGRT) is a method that uses imaging to correct for positional errors of each treatment session.


title: Radiation therapy

text: The response of a tumor to radiation therapy is also related to its size. Due to complex radiobiology, very large tumors respond less well to radiation than smaller tumors or microscopic disease. Various strategies are used to overcome this effect. The most common technique is surgical resection prior to radiation therapy. This is most commonly seen in the treatment of breast cancer with wide local excision or mastectomy followed by adjuvant radiation therapy. Another method is to shrink the tumor with neoadjuvant chemotherapy prior to radical radiation therapy. A third technique is to enhance the radiosensitivity of the cancer by giving certain drugs during a course of radiation therapy. Examples of radiosensitizing drugs include cisplatin, nimorazole, and cetuximab.


title: Radiation therapy

text: The impact of radiotherapy varies between different types of cancer and different groups. For example, for breast cancer after breast-conserving surgery, radiotherapy has been found to halve the rate at which the disease recurs. In pancreatic cancer, radiotherapy has increased survival times for inoperable tumors.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Radiation therapy is in itself painless. Many low-dose palliative treatments (for example, radiation therapy to bony metastases) cause minimal or no side effects, although short-term pain flare-up can be experienced in the days following treatment due to oedema compressing nerves in the treated area. Higher doses can cause varying side effects during treatment (acute side effects), in the months or years following treatment (long-term side effects), or after re-treatment (cumulative side effects). The nature, severity, and longevity of side effects depends on the organs that receive the radiation, the treatment itself (type of radiation, dose, fractionation, concurrent chemotherapy), and the patient.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Most side effects are predictable and expected. Side effects from radiation are usually limited to the area of the patient's body that is under treatment. Side effects are dose- dependent; for example higher doses of head and neck radiation can be associated with cardiovascular complications, thyroid dysfunction, and pituitary axis dysfunction. Modern radiation therapy aims to reduce side effects to a minimum and to help the patient understand and deal with side effects that are unavoidable.


title: Radiation therapy

text: The main side effects reported are fatigue and skin irritation, like a mild to moderate sun burn. The fatigue often sets in during the middle of a course of treatment and can last for weeks after treatment ends. The irritated skin will heal, but may not be as elastic as it was before.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Late side effects occur months to years after treatment and are generally limited to the area that has been treated. They are often due to damage of blood vessels and connective tissue cells. Many late effects are reduced by fractionating treatment into smaller parts.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Cumulative effects from this process should not be confused with long-term effects – when short-term effects have disappeared and long-term effects are subclinical, reirradiation can still be problematic. These doses are calculated by the radiation oncologist and many factors are taken into account before the subsequent radiation takes place.


title: Radiation therapy

text: During the first two weeks after fertilization, radiation therapy is lethal but not teratogenic. High doses of radiation during pregnancy induce anomalies, impaired growth and intellectual disability, and there may be an increased risk of childhood leukemia and other tumours in the offspring.


title: Radiation therapy

text: In males previously having undergone radiotherapy, there appears to be no increase in genetic defects or congenital malformations in their children conceived after therapy. However, the use of assisted reproductive technologies and micromanipulation techniques might increase this risk.


title: Radiation therapy

text: Hypopituitarism commonly develops after radiation therapy for sellar and parasellar neoplasms, extrasellar brain tumours, head and neck tumours, and following whole body irradiation for systemic malignancies. Radiation-induced hypopituitarism mainly affects growth hormone and gonadal hormones. In contrast, adrenocorticotrophic hormone (ACTH) and thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) deficiencies are the least common among people with radiation-induced hypopituitarism. Changes in prolactin-secretion is usually mild, and vasopressin deficiency appears to be very rare as a consequence of radiation.