title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw Union Territory consists of 2 districts subdivided into 8 townships. Pyinmana, Lewe, and Tatkone townships were all formerly part of Yamethin District in Mandalay Region. Ottarathiri, Dekkhinathiri, Popphathiri, Zabuthiri, and Zeyathiri are all new townships under construction. Like the townships in the rest of the country, they are governered by a development affairs organization (DAO) which includes a Township Administrator appointed by the General Administration Department, and an elected Township Development Affairs Committee (TDAC).


title: Naypyidaw

text: There is sometimes some controversy about land use and changes in land ownership related to the urban spread of Naypyidaw. In late 2014, for example, there were suggestions in parliament that land grabs were occurring near the Dekkhinathiri Township and that existing laws needed to be amended to provide better protection for farmers. There has also been criticism from some members of parliament about the size of the Naypyidaw Union Territory and the fact that money is being spent on urban infrastructure (such as lighting around lakes) although the facilities do not attract much use.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The four-lane, Yangon-Naypyidaw highway links Naypyidaw with Yangon directly and is part of the long Yangon-Naypyidaw-Mandalay Expressway. There is a 20-lane boulevard; like most roads in the city, it is largely empty. Naypyidaw has four-lane roads and multilevel, flower-covered roundabouts (traffic circles).


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw International Airport, also known as Ayelar Airport, opened in December 2011 and is south-east of the city, between the towns of Ela and Lewe. It is served by all domestic airlines—Air Bagan, Air Mandalay, Myanmar National Airlines, FMI Air and Yangon Airways—with regular flights to Yangon and other cities across the country. According to the Transport Ministry, the airport has a long runway, a control tower high and handle up to 65,000 flights annually. Bangkok Airways, China Eastern Airlines, Qingdao Airlines, and Donghai Airlines serve the airport with international flights to and from Bangkok, Kunming, Nanning, Xi' an, and Shenzhen.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Public transport services are limited between neighborhoods. Government ministries run shuttle buses in the morning and evening to their respective buildings.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The city has a central bus station and one taxi company, which is operated by the military. Motorbikes are banned from some roads in Naypyidaw city limits, including sections of Taw Win Yadana Road, as a result of hundreds of traffic accident-related deaths in 2009.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw railway station was opened at milepost No. (233/0), between Ywataw station and Kyihtaunggan station on the Yangon-Mandalay railroad with a station area of and a covered area of . Construction began on 8 December 2006 and Naypyidaw railway station was opened on 5 July 2009, even though the overpass, locomotive shed, concrete road leading up to the station, parking lot, passenger lounge and platform were not completed.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Before the opening of Naypyidaw railway station, Naypyidaw was served by Pyinmana and Lewe stations, though only Pyinmana station is on the main rail line (which extends from Yangon-Bago-Naypyidaw-Thazi-Mandalay). Lewe station is on the way from Pyinmana to Kyaukpadaung. It takes nine hours by train to get from Yangon to Pyinmana; trains leave at 12:00 and arrive at 21:30 local time.


title: Naypyidaw

text: In August 2011, Russian news media announced that a Russian-based firm would be constructing a metro line, which would be the country's first underground rail system, underneath Naypyidaw. However, the Rail Transportation Ministry then announced that the plan had been cancelled due to lack of demand and budgetary limits.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The city is served by five public hospitals: 1000-bed Naypyidaw General Hospital, Naypyidaw Women Hospital, Naypyidaw ENT Hospital, 100-bed Naypyidaw Traditional Medicine Hospital, and Naypyidaw Orthopaedic Hospital. There is also a 300-bed Obstetric, Gynaecological and Children's Hospital of Defence Services, which is one of the teaching hospitals of Myanmar Defence Services Medical Academy. The nearby towns of Lewe, Pyinmana, and Tatkone each have one hospital.


title: Naypyidaw

text: Naypyidaw F.C, a Myanmar National League football club, is based at Wunna Theikdi Stadium in Naypyidaw.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The Myanmar Motion Picture Academy Awards are held annually in Naypyidaw given to the highest achievers in Burmese cinema. There is a movie theater in the Junction Centre Mall as well as in the Ocean Shopping Mall. There are two others in nearby Pyinmana, and one in Tatkone Township.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The headquarter of the Ministry of Information is located in Naypyidaw. Since 2009, Naypyidaw has had mobile phone coverage.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The "Myanmar Alin" and the "Kyaymon" in Burmese and the "New Light of Myanmar" in English are available in Naypyidaw. Since 18 November 2011, the Ministry of Information has begun publishing a weekly journal called the "Naypyidaw" "Times", to report on government policies.


title: Naypyidaw

text: There are a number of AM and FM stations broadcasting in Naypyidaw. The main available channels in Naypyidaw are Myanmar Radio (operated by MRTV), Cherry FM, Mandalay FM, FM Bagan, Padamyar FM, Pyinsawaddy FM, Shwe FM and City FM.


title: Naypyidaw

text: MRTV, MRTV-4 and MWD are the main channels, broadcasting Burmese-language programmes in Naypyidaw. Privately owned enterprise Sky Net provides more than 70 pay-TV channels of local and international origin. MRTV broadcasts 19 free-to-air channels and MWD broadcasts 8 free-to-air channels. Other TV channels such as Channel 7, 5-plus and Myanmar International, the English-language channel that targets overseas audiences are also available.


title: Naypyidaw

text: One estimate puts the cost in the range of $3–4 billion USD although only part of this estimate is for cash spending because non-cash investments were also reportedly involved in supporting the construction effort.


title: Naypyidaw

text: There is now continual travel by vehicles along the highway from Yangon to Naypyidaw, which is four lanes for most of the way. There are relatively few vehicles for much of the time on the road. Most trucks traveling North from Yangon to Naypyidaw and Mandalay are prohibited from using the highway. The Asian Development Bank has estimated that allowing more trucks onto the road would save over $100 million per year in reduced traveling time and other savings. There are plans to turn the road into a six-lane highway for greater safety.


title: Naypyidaw

text: The proportion of housing that meets expatriate needs is limited because the majority of existing apartments are for government employees.


title: Naypyidaw

text: In March 2014, Naypyidaw was one of the locations featured on the British motoring TV show "Top Gear" during a two-part special event in Myanmar.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Deus Ex is a 2000 action role-playing game developed by Ion Storm and published by Eidos Interactive. Set in a cyberpunk-themed dystopian world in the year 2052, the game follows JC Denton, an agent of the fictional agency United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO), who is given superhuman abilities by nanotechnology, as he sets out to combat hostile forces in a world ravaged by inequality and a deadly plague. His missions entangle him in a conspiracy that brings him into conflict with the Triads, Majestic 12, and the Illuminati.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex"s gameplay combines elements of the first-person shooter with stealth elements, adventure, and role-playing genres, allowing for its tasks and missions to be completed in a variety of ways, which in turn lead to differing outcomes. Presented from the first-person perspective, the player can customize Denton's various abilities such as weapon skills or lockpicking, increasing his effectiveness in these areas; this opens up different avenues of exploration and methods of interacting with or manipulating other characters. The player can complete side missions away from the primary storyline by moving freely around the available areas, which can reward the player with experience points to upgrade abilities and alternative ways to tackle main missions. Powered by the Unreal Engine, the game was released for Microsoft Windows in June 2000, with a Mac OS port following the next month. A modified version of the game was released for the PlayStation 2 in 2002 as Deus Ex: The Conspiracy. In the years following its release, "Deus Ex" has received additional improvements and content from its fan community.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The game received critical acclaim, including being named "Best PC Game of All Time" in "PC Gamer"s "Top 100 PC Games" in 2011 and a poll carried out by the UK gaming magazine "PC Zone". Deus Ex was praised for ambitious plot, freedom of immersive gameplay, world-building, diversity of character customization and choice matters, but its graphics and voice acting received polarized critics. It received several Game of the Year awards, drawing praise for its pioneering designs in player choice and multiple narrative paths. "Deus Ex" is regarded as one of the best video games of all time. It has sold more than 1 million copies, as of April 23, 2009. The game led to a series, which includes the sequel "" (2003), and three prequels: "" (2011), "" (2013), and "" (2016).


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" incorporates elements from four video game genres: role-playing, first-person shooter, adventure, and "immersive simulation", the last of which being a game where "nothing reminds you that you're just playing a game." For example, the game uses a first-person camera during gameplay and includes exploration and character interaction as primary features.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The player assumes the role of JC Denton, a nanotech-augmented operative of the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO). This nanotechnology is a central gameplay mechanism and allows players to perform superhuman feats.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: As the player accomplishes objectives, the player character is rewarded with "skill points". Skill points are used to enhance a character's abilities in eleven different areas, and were designed to provide players with a way to customize their characters; a player might create a combat-focused character by increasing proficiency with pistols or rifles, while a more furtive character can be created by focusing on lock picking and computer hacking abilities. There are four different levels of proficiency in each skill, with the skill point cost increasing for each successive level.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Weapons may be customized through "weapon modifications", which can be found or purchased throughout the game. The player might add scopes, silencers, or laser sights; increase the weapon's range, accuracy, or magazine size; or decrease its recoil and reload time; as appropriate to the weapon type.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Players are further encouraged to customize their characters through nano-augmentations—cybernetic devices that grant characters superhuman powers. While the game contains eighteen different nano-augmentations, the player can install a maximum of nine, as each must be used on a certain part of the body: one in the arms, legs, eyes, and head; two underneath the skin; and three in the torso. This forces the player to choose carefully between the benefits offered by each augmentation. For example, the arm augmentation requires the player to decide between boosting their character's skill in hand-to-hand combat or his ability to lift heavy objects.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Interaction with non-player characters (NPCs) was a significant design focus. When the player interacts with a non-player character, the game will enter a cutscene-like conversation mode where the player advances the conversation by selecting from a list of dialogue options. The player's choices often have a substantial effect on both gameplay and plot, as non-player characters will react in different ways depending on the selected answer (e.g., rudeness makes them less likely to assist the player).


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" features combat similar to first-person shooters, with real-time action, a first-person perspective, and reflex-based gameplay. As the player will often encounter enemies in groups, combat often tends toward a tactical approach, including the use of cover, strafing, and "hit-and-run". A "USA Today" reviewer found, "At the easiest difficulty setting, your character is puréed again and again by an onslaught of human and robotic terrorists until you learn the value of stealth." However, through the game's role-playing systems, it is possible to develop a character's skills and augmentations to create a tank-like combat specialist with the ability to deal and absorb large amounts of damage. Non-player characters will praise or criticize the main character depending on the use of force, incorporating a moral element into the gameplay.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" features a head-up display crosshair, whose size dynamically shows where shots will fall based on movement, aim, and the weapon in use; the reticle expands while the player is moving or shifting their aim, and slowly shrinks to its original size while at rest. How quickly the reticle shrinks depends on the character's proficiency with the equipped weapon, the number of accuracy modifications added to the weapon, and the level of the "Targeting" nano-augmentation.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" features twenty-four weapons, ranging from crowbars, electroshock weapons, and riot baton, to laser-guided anti-tank rockets and assault rifles; both lethal and non-lethal weapons are available. The player can also make use of several weapons of opportunity, such as fire extinguishers.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Gameplay in "Deus Ex" emphasizes player choice. Objectives can be completed in numerous ways, including stealth, sniping, heavy frontal assault, dialogue, or engineering and computer hacking. This level of freedom requires that levels, characters, and puzzles be designed with significant redundancy, as a single play-through of the game will miss large sections of dialogue, areas, and other content. In some missions, the player is encouraged to avoid using deadly force, and specific aspects of the story may change depending on how violent or non-violent the player chooses to be. The game is also unusual in that two of its boss villains can be killed off early in the game, or left alive to be defeated later, and this too affects how other characters interact with the player.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Because of its design focus on player choice, "Deus Ex" has been compared with "System Shock", a game that inspired its design. Together, these factors give the game a high degree of replayability, as the player will have vastly different experiences, depending on which methods they use to accomplish objectives.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" was designed as a single-player game, and the initial releases of the Windows and Macintosh versions of the game did not include multiplayer functionality. Support for multiplayer modes was later incorporated through patches. The component consists of three game modes: deathmatch, basic team deathmatch, and advanced team deathmatch. Five maps, based on levels from the single-player portion of the game, were included with the original multiplayer patch, but many user-created maps exist, while also many features of the single-player game missing in multiplayer have been re-introduced by various user RPG modifications. The PlayStation 2 release of "Deus Ex" does not offer a multiplayer mode. In April 2014 it was announced that GameSpy would cease their masterserver services, also affecting "Deus Ex". A community-made patch for the multiplayer mode has been created as a response to this.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" takes place in 2052, in an alternate history where real-world conspiracy theories are true. These include speculations regarding black helicopters, vaccinations, and FEMA, as well as Area 51, the ECHELON network, Men in Black, chupacabras (in the form of "greasels"), and grey aliens. Mysterious groups such as Majestic 12, the Illuminati, the Knights Templar, the Bilderberg Group, and the Trilateral Commission also either play a central part in the plot or are alluded to during the course of the game.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The plot of "Deus Ex" depicts a society on a slow spiral into chaos. There is a massive division between the rich and the poor, not only socially, but in some cities physically. A lethal pandemic, known as the "Gray Death", ravages the world's population, especially within the United States, and has no cure. A synthetic vaccine, "Ambrosia", manufactured by the company VersaLife, nullifies the effects of the virus but is in critically short supply. Because of its scarcity, Ambrosia is available only to those deemed "vital to the social order", and finds its way primarily to government officials, military personnel, the rich and influential, scientists, and the intellectual elite. With no hope for the common people of the world, riots occur worldwide, and some terrorist organizations have formed with the professed intent of assisting the downtrodden, among them the National Secessionist Forces (NSF) of the U.S. and a French group known as Silhouette.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: To combat these threats to the world order, the United Nations has expanded its influence around the globe to form the United Nations Anti-Terrorist Coalition (UNATCO). It is headquartered near New York City in a bunker beneath Liberty Island, placed there after a terrorist strike on the Statue of Liberty.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The main character of "Deus Ex" is UNATCO agent JC Denton (voiced by Jay Franke), one of the first in a new line of agents physically altered with advanced nanotechnology to gain superhuman abilities, alongside his brother Paul (also voiced by Jay Franke), who joined UNATCO to avenge his parents' deaths at the hands of Majestic 12. His UNATCO colleagues include the mechanically-augmented and ruthlessly efficient field agents Gunther Hermann and Anna Navarre; Quartermaster General Sam Carter, and the bureaucratic UNATCO chief Joseph Manderley. UNATCO communications tech Alex Jacobson's character model and name are based on Warren Spector's nephew, Alec Jacobson.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: JC's missions bring him into contact with various characters, including NSF leader Juan Lebedev, hacker and scientist Tracer Tong, nano-tech expert Gary Savage, Nicolette DuClare (daughter of an Illuminati member), former Illuminati leader Morgan Everett, the Artificial Intelligences (AI) Daedalus and Icarus, and Bob Page, owner of VersaLife and leader of Majestic 12, a clandestine organization that has usurped the infrastructure of the Illuminati, allowing him to control the world for his own ends.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: After completing his training, UNATCO agent JC Denton takes several missions given by Director Joseph Manderley to track down members of the National Secessionist Forces (NSF) and their stolen shipments of the Ambrosia vaccine, the treatment for the Gray Death virus. Through these missions, JC is reunited with his brother, Paul, who is also nano-augmented. JC tracks the Ambrosia shipment to a private terminal at LaGuardia Airport. Paul meets JC outside the plane and explains that he has defected from UNATCO and is working with the NSF after learning that the Gray Death is a human-made virus, with UNATCO using its power to make sure only the elite receive the vaccine.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: JC returns to UNATCO headquarters and is told by Manderley that both he and Paul have been outfitted with a 24-hour kill switch and that Paul's has been activated due to his betrayal. Manderley orders JC to fly to Hong Kong to eliminate Tracer Tong, a hacker whom Paul has contact with, and who can disable the kill switches. Instead, JC returns to Paul's apartment to find Paul hiding inside. Paul further explains his defection and encourages JC to also defect by sending out a distress call to alert the NSF's allies. Upon doing so, JC becomes a wanted man by UNATCO, and his kill switch is activated by Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Director Walton Simons. JC is unable to escape UNATCO forces, and both he and Paul (provided he survived the raid on the apartment) are taken to a secret prison below UNATCO headquarters. An entity named "Daedalus" contacts JC and informs him that the prison is part of Majestic 12, and arranges for him and Paul to escape. The two flee to Hong Kong to meet with Tong, who deactivates their kill switches. Tong requests that JC infiltrate the VersaLife building. Doing so, JC discovers that the corporation is the source for the Gray Death, and he can steal the plans for the virus and destroy the universal constructor (UC) that produces it.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Analysis of the virus shows that its structure was designed by the Illuminati, prompting Tong to send JC to Paris to obtain their help fighting Majestic 12. JC meets with Illuminati leader Morgan Everett and learns that the technology behind the Gray Death was intended to be used for augmentation, but Majestic 12, led by trillionaire businessman and former Illuminatus Bob Page, stole and repurposed it. Everett recognizes that without VersaLife's UC, Majestic 12 can no longer create the virus, and will likely target Vandenberg Air Force Base, where X-51, a group of former Area 51 scientists, have built another one. After aiding the base personnel in repelling a Majestic 12 attack, JC meets X-51 leader Gary Savage, who reveals that Daedalus is an artificial intelligence (AI) borne out of the ECHELON program.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Everett attempts to gain control over Majestic 12's communications network by releasing Daedalus onto the U.S. military networks, but Page counters by releasing his own AI, Icarus. Icarus merges with Daedalus to form a new AI, Helios, which can control all global communications. Savage enlists JC's help in procuring schematics for reconstructing components for the UC that were damaged during Majestic 12's raid of Vandenberg. JC finds the schematics and transmits them to Savage. Page intercepts the transmission and targets a nuclear missile at Vandenberg to ensure that Area 51, now Majestic 12's headquarters, will be the only location in the world with an operational UC. However, JC can reprogram the missile to strike Area 51.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: JC travels to Area 51 to confront Page. Page reveals that he seeks to merge with Helios and gain full control over nanotechnology. JC is contacted by Tong, Everett, and the Helios AI simultaneously. All three factions ask for his help in defeating Page while furthering their own objectives. Tong seeks to plunge the world into a Dark Age by destroying the global communications hub and preventing anyone from taking control of the world. Everett offers Denton the chance to return the Illuminati to power by killing Page and using the Area 51 technology to rule the world with an invisible hand. Helios wishes to merge with Denton and rule the world as a benevolent dictator with infinite knowledge and reason. The player's decision determines the future and brings the game to a close.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: After Looking Glass Technologies and Origin Systems released "" in January 1993, producer Warren Spector began to plan "Troubleshooter", the game that would become "Deus Ex". In his 1994 proposal, he described the concept as ""Underworld"-style first-person action" in a real-world setting with "big-budget, nonstop action". After Spector and his team were laid off from Looking Glass, John Romero of Ion Storm offered him the chance to make his "dream game" without any restrictions.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Preproduction for "Deus Ex" began around August 1997 and lasted roughly six months. The project's budget was $5 million to $7 million. The game's working title was "Shooter: Majestic Revelations", and it was scheduled for release on Christmas 1998. The team developed the setting before the game mechanics. Noticing his wife's fascination with "The X-Files", Spector connected the "real world, millennial weirdness, [and] conspiracy" topics on his mind and decided to make a game about them that would appeal to a broad audience. The "Shooter" design document cast the player as an augmented agent working against an elite cabal in the "dangerous and chaotic" 2050s. It cited "Half-Life", "Fallout", "", and "GoldenEye 007" as game design influences, and used the stories and settings of "", "The Manchurian Candidate", "RoboCop", "The X-Files", and "Men in Black" as reference points. The team designed a skill system that featured "special powers" derived from nanotechnological augmentation and avoided the inclusion of die rolling and skills that required micromanagement. Spector also cited Konami's 1995 role-playing video game "Suikoden" as an inspiration, stating that the limited choices in "Suikoden" inspired him to expand on the idea with more meaningful choices in "Deux Ex".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: In early 1998, the "Deus Ex" team grew to 20 people, and the game entered a 28-month production phase. The development team consisted of three programmers, six designers, seven artists, a writer, an associate producer, a "tech", and Spector. Two writers and four testers were hired as contractors. Chris Norden was the lead programmer and assistant director, Harvey Smith the lead designer, Jay Lee the lead artist, and Sheldon Pacotti the lead writer. Close friends of the team who understood the intentions behind the game were invited to playtest and give feedback. The wide range of input led to debates in the office and changes to the game. Spector later concluded that the team was "blinded by promises of complete creative freedom", and by their belief that the game would have no budget, marketing, or time restraints. By mid-1998, the game's title had become "Deus Ex", derived from the Latin literary device "deus ex machina" ("god from the machine"), in which a plot is resolved by an unpredictable intervention.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Spector felt that the best aspects of "Deus Ex"s development were the "high-level vision" and length of preproduction, flexibility within the project, testable "proto-missions", and the Unreal Engine license. The team's pitfalls included the management structure, unrealistic goals, underestimating risks with artificial intelligence, their handling of proto-missions, and weakened morale from bad press. "Deus Ex" was released on June 23, 2000, and published by Eidos Interactive for Microsoft Windows. The team planned third-party ports for Mac OS 9 and Linux.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The original 1997 design document for "Deus Ex" privileges character development over all other features. The game was designed to be "genre-busting": in parts simulation, role-playing, first-person shooter, and adventure. The team wanted players to consider "who they wanted to be" in the game, and for that to alter how they behaved in the game. In this way, the game world was "deeply simulated", or realistic and believable enough that the player would solve problems in creative, emergent ways without noticing distinct puzzles. However, the simulation ultimately failed to maintain the desired level of openness, and they had to brute force "skill", "action", and "character interaction" paths through each level. Playtesting also revealed that their idea of a role-playing game based on the real world was more interesting in theory than in reality, as certain aspects of the real world, such as hotels and office buildings, were not compelling in a game.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: One of the things that Spector wanted to achieve in Deus Ex was to make JC Denton a cipher for the player, to create a better immersion and gameplay experience. He did not want the character to force any emotion, so that whatever feelings the player may be experiencing come from themselves rather than from JC Denton. To do this, Spector instructed voice actor Jay Anthony Franke to record his dialogue without any emotion but in a monotone voice, which is unusual for a voice acting role.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Once coded, the team's game systems did not work as intended. The early tests of the conversation system and user interface were flawed. The team also found augmentations and skills to be less interesting than they had seemed in the design document. In response, Harvey Smith substantially revised the augmentations and skills. Production milestones served as wake-up calls for the game's direction. A May 1998 milestone that called for a functional demo revealed that the size of the game's maps caused frame rate issues, which was one of the first signs that maps needed to be cut. A year later, the team reached a milestone for finished game systems, which led to better estimates for their future mission work and the reduction of the 500-page design document to 270 pages. Spector recalled Smith's mantra on this point: "less is more".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: One of the team's biggest blind spots was the AI programming for NPCs. Spector wrote that they considered it in preproduction, but that they did not figure out how to handle it until "relatively late in development". This led to wasted time when the team had to discard their old AI code. The team built atop their game engine's shooter-based AI instead of writing new code that would allow characters to exhibit convincing emotions. As a result, NPC behavior was variable until the very end of development. Spector felt that the team's "sin" was their inconsistent display of a trustable "human AI".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The game was developed on systems including dual-processor Pentium Pro 200s and Athlon 800s with eight and nine gigabyte hard drives, some using SCSI. The team used "more than 100 video cards" throughout development. "Deus Ex" was built using Visual Studio, Lightwave, and Lotus Notes. They also made a custom dialogue editor, ConEdit. The team used UnrealEd atop the Unreal game engine for map design, which Spector wrote was "superior to anything else available". Their trust in UnrealScript led them to code "special-cases" for their immediate mission needs instead of more generalized multi-case code. Even as concerned team members expressed misgivings, the team only addressed this later in the project. To Spector, this was a lesson to always prefer "general solutions" over "special casing", such that the toolset works predictably.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: They waited to license a game engine until after preproduction, expecting the benefits of licensing to be more time for the content and gameplay, which Spector reported to be the case. They chose the Unreal engine, as it did 80% of what they needed from an engine and was more economical than building from scratch. Their small programming team allowed for a larger design group. The programmers also found the engine accommodating, though it took about nine months to acclimate to the software. Spector felt that they would have understood the code better had they built it themselves, instead of "treating the engine as a black box" and coding conservatively. He acknowledged that this precipitated into the Direct3D issues in their final release, which slipped through their quality assurance testing. Spector also noted that the artificial intelligence, pathfinding, and sound propagation were designed for shooters and should have been rewritten from scratch instead of relying on the engine. He thought the licensed engine worked well enough that he expected to use the same for the game's sequel "" and "Thief 3". He added that developers should not attempt to force their technology to perform in ways it was not intended, and should find a balance between perfection and pragmatism.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The soundtrack of "Deus Ex", composed by Alexander Brandon (primary contributor, including main theme), Dan Gardopée ("Naval Base" and "Vandenberg"), Michiel van den Bos ("UNATCO", "Lebedev's Airfield", "Airfield Action", "DuClare Chateau", plus minor contribution to some of Brandon's tracks), and Reeves Gabrels ("NYC Bar"), was praised by critics for complementing the gritty atmosphere predominant throughout the game with melodious and ambient music incorporated from a number of genres, including techno, jazz, and classical. The music sports a basic dynamic element, similar to the iMUSE system used in early 1990s LucasArts games; during play, the music will change to a different iteration of the currently playing song based on the player's actions, such as when the player starts a conversation, engages in combat, or transitions to the next level. All the music in the game is tracked - Gabrels' contribution, "NYC Bar", was converted to a module by Alexander Brandon.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" has been re-released in several iterations since its original publication and has also been the basis of several mods developed by its fan community.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The "Deus Ex: Game of the Year Edition", which was released on May 8, 2001, contains the latest game updates and a software development kit, a separate soundtrack CD, and a page from a fictional newspaper featured prominently in "Deus Ex" titled "The Midnight Sun", which recounts recent events in the game's world. However, later releases of said version do not include the soundtrack CD and contain a PDF version of the newspaper on the game's disc.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The Mac OS version of the game, released a month after the Windows version, was shipped with the same capabilities and can also be patched to enable multiplayer support. However, publisher Aspyr Media did not release any subsequent editions of the game or any additional patches. As such, the game is only supported in Mac OS 9 and the "Classic" environment in Mac OS X, neither of which are compatible with Intel-based Macs. The Windows version will run on Intel-based Macs using Crossover, Boot Camp, or other software to enable a compatible version of Windows to run on a Mac.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: A PlayStation 2 port of the game, retitled "Deus Ex: The Conspiracy" outside of Europe, was released on March 26, 2002. Along with motion-captured character animations and pre-rendered introductory and ending cinematics that replaced the original versions, it features a simplified interface with optional auto-aim. There are many minor changes in level design, some to balance gameplay, but most to accommodate loading transition areas, due to the memory limitations of the PlayStation 2. The PlayStation 2 version was re-released in Europe on the PlayStation 3 as a PlayStation 2 Classic on May 16, 2012.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Loki Games worked on a Linux version of the game, but the company went out of business before releasing it. The OpenGL layer they wrote for the port, however, was sent out to Windows gamers through an online patch.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Though their quality assurance did not see major Direct3D issues, players noted "dramatic slowdowns" immediately following the launch, and the team did not understand the "black box" of the Unreal engine well enough to make it do exactly what they needed. Spector characterized "Deus Ex" reviews into two categories based on how they begin with either how "Warren Spector makes games all by himself" or that ""Deus Ex" couldn't possibly have been made by Ion Storm". He has said that the game won over 30 "best of" awards in 2001, and concluded that their final game was not perfect, but that they were much closer for having tried to "do things right or not at all".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" was built on the Unreal Engine, which already had an active community of modders. In September 2000, Eidos Interactive and Ion Storm announced in a press release that they would be releasing the software development kit (SDK), which included all the tools used to create the original game. Several team members, as well as project director Warren Spector, stated that they were "really looking forward to seeing what [the community] does with our tools". The kit was released on September 22, 2000, and soon gathered community interest, followed by the release of tutorials, small mods, up to announcements of large mods and conversions. While Ion Storm did not hugely alter the engine's rendering and core functionality, they introduced role-playing elements.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: In 2009, a fan-made mod called "The Nameless Mod" ("TNM") was released by Off Topic Productions. The game's protagonist is a user of an Internet forum, with digital places represented as physical locations. The mod offers roughly the same amount of gameplay as "Deus Ex" and adds several new features to the game, with a more open world structure than "Deus Ex" and new weapons such as the player character's fists. The mod was developed over seven years and has thousands of lines of recorded dialogue and two different parallel story arcs. Upon its release, "TNM" earned a 9/10 overall from "PC PowerPlay" magazine. In Mod DB's 2009 Mod of the Year awards, "The Nameless Mod" won the Editor's Choice award for Best Singleplayer Mod.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: In 2015, during the 15th anniversary of the game's release, Square Enix (who had acquired Eidos earlier) endorsed a free fan-created mod, "Deus Ex: Revision", which was released through Steam. The mod, created by Caustic Creative, is a graphical overhaul of the original game, adding in support for newer versions of DirectX, upgraded textures adapted from previous mods, a remixed soundtrack, and more world-building aesthetics. It also alters aspects of gameplay, including new level design paths and in-game architecture. Another overhaul mod, GMDX, released its final version in mid-2017 with enhanced artificial intelligence, improved physics, and upgraded visual textures.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "The Lay D Denton Project", a mod adding the ability to play as a female JC – a feature that had been planned for "Deus Ex" but ultimately not implemented – was released in 2021. This included the re-recording of all of JC's voice lines by voice actress Karen Rohan, the addition of 3D models for the character, and editing of all gendered references to JC including other characters' voice clips. The audio editing was the most difficult aspect, as any abnormalities would have been noticed easily; a few characters were too difficult to edit, and had to be recast for the mod.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: According to "Computer Gaming World"s Stefan Janicki, "Deus Ex" had "sold well in North America" by early 2001. In the United States, it debuted at #6 on PC Data's sales chart for the week ending June 24, at an average retail price of $40. It fell to eighth place in its second week but rose again to position 6 in its third. It proceeded to place in the top 10 rankings for August 6–12 and the week ending September 2 and to secure 10th place overall for the months of July and August. "Deus Ex" achieved sales of 138,840 copies and revenues of $5 million in the United States by the end of 2000, according to PC Data. The firm tracked another 91,013 copies sold in the country during 2001.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The game was a larger hit in Europe; Janicki called it a "blockbuster" for the region, which broke a trend of weak sales for 3D games. He wrote, "[I]n Europe—particularly in England—the action/RPG dominated the charts all summer, despite competition from heavyweights like "Diablo II" and "The Sims"." In the German-speaking market, "PC Player" reported sales over 70,000 units for "Deus Ex" by early 2001. It debuted at #3 in the region for July 2000 and held the position in August, before dropping to #10, #12 and #27 over the following three months. In the United Kingdom, "Deus Ex" reached #1 on the sales charts during August and spent three months in the top 10. It received a "Silver" award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association (ELSPA) in February 2002, indicating lifetime sales of at least 100,000 units in the United Kingdom. The ELSPA later raised it to "Gold" status, for 200,000 sales.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: In April 2009, Square-Enix revealed that "Deus Ex" had surpassed 1 million sales globally, but was outsold by "".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" received critical acclaim, attaining a score of 90 out of 100 from 28 critics on Metacritic. Thierry Nguyen from "Computer Gaming World" said that the game "delivers moments of brilliance, idiocy, ingenuity, and frustration". "Computer Games Magazine" praised the title for its deep gameplay and its use of multiple solutions to situations in the game. Similarly, "Edge" highlighted the game's freedom of choice, saying that "Deus Ex" "never tells you what to do. Goals are set, but alter according to your decisions." "Eurogamer"s Rob Fahey lauded the game, writing, "Moody and atmospheric, compelling and addictive, this is first person gaming in grown-up form, and it truly is magnificent." Jeff Lundrigan reviewed the PC version of the game for "Next Generation", rating it five stars out of five, and stated that "This is hands-down one of the best PC games ever made. Stop reading and go get yours now."


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Former "GameSpot" reviewer Greg Kasavin, though awarding the game a score of 8.2 of 10, was disappointed by the security and lockpicking mechanics. "Such instances are essentially noninteractive", he wrote. "You simply stand there and spend a particular quantity of electronic picks or modules until the door opens or the security goes down." Kasavin made similar complaints about the hacking interface, noting that "Even with basic hacking skills, you'll still be able to bypass the encryption and password protection ... by pressing the 'hack' button and waiting a few seconds".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The game's graphics and voice acting were also met with muted enthusiasm. Kasavin complained of "Deus Ex"s relatively sub-par graphics, blaming them on the game's "incessantly dark industrial environments". "GamePro" reviewer Chris Patterson took the time to note that despite being "solid acoustically", "Deus Ex" had moments of weakness. He poked fun at JC's "Joe Friday, 'just the facts', deadpan", and the "truly cheesy accents" of minor characters in Hong Kong and New York City. "IGN" called the graphics "blocky", adding that "the animation is stiff, and the dithering is just plain awful in some spots", referring to the limited capabilities of the Unreal Engine used to design the game. The website, later on, stated that "overall Deus Ex certainly looks better than your average game".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Reviewers and players also complained about the size of "Deus Ex"s save files. An Adrenaline Vault reviewer noted that "Playing through the entire adventure, [he] accumulated over 250 MB of save game data, with the average file coming in at over 15 MB."


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: The game developed a strong cult following, leading to a core modding and playing community that remained active over 15 years after its release. In an interview with IGN in June 2015, game director Warren Spector said he never expected "Deus Ex" to sell many copies, but he did expect it to become a cult classic among a smaller, active community, and he continues to receive fan mail from players to date regarding their experiences and thoughts about "Deus Ex".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" received over 30 "best of" awards in 2001, from outlets such as IGN, GameSpy, "PC Gamer", "Computer Gaming World", and The Adrenaline Vault. It won "Excellence in Game Design" and "Game Innovation Spotlight" at the 2001 Game Developers Choice Awards, and it was nominated for "Game of the Year". At the Interactive Achievement Awards, it won in the "Computer Innovation" and "Computer Action/Adventure" categories and received nominations for "Sound Design", "PC Role-Playing", and "Game of the Year" in both the PC and overall categories. The British Academy of Film and Television Arts named it "PC Game of the Year". The game also collected several "Best Story" accolades, including first prize in Gamasutra's 2006 "Quantum Leap" awards for storytelling in a video game.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: "Deus Ex" has appeared in several lists of the greatest games. It was included in "IGN" "100 Greatest Games of All Time" (#40, #21 and #34 in 2003, 2005 and 2007, respectively), "Top 25 Modern PC Games" (4th place in 2010) and "Top 25 PC Games of All Time" (#20 and #21 in 2007 and 2009 respectively) lists. GameSpy featured the game in its "Top 50 Games of All Time" (18th place in 2001) and "25 Most Memorable Games of the Past 5 Years" (15th place in 2004) lists, and in the site's "Hall of Fame". "PC Gamer" placed "Deus Ex" on its "Top 100 PC Games of All Time" (#2, #2, #1 by staff and #4 by readers in 2007, 2008, 2010 and 2010 respectively) and "50 Best Games of All Time" (#10 and #27 in 2001 and 2005) lists, and it was awarded 1st place in "PC Zone"s "101 Best PC Games Ever" feature. It was also included in Yahoo! UK Video Games' "100 Greatest Computer Games of All Time" (28th place) list, and in "Edge"s "The 100 Best Videogames" (29th place in 2007) and "100 Best Games to Play Today" (57th place in 2009) lists. "Deus Ex" was named the second-best game of the 2000s by Gamasutra. In 2012, "Time" named it one of the 100 greatest video games of all time, and G4tv named it the 53rd best game of all time for its "complex and well-crafted story that was really the start of players making choices that genuinely affect the outcome". "1UP.com" listed it as one of the most important games of all time, calling its influence "too massive to properly gauge". In 2019, the "Guardian" named it the 29th best game of the 21st century, describing it as a "cultural event".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: A sequel, "", was released in the United States on December 2, 2003, and in Europe in early 2004 for Windows and Xbox. A second sequel, titled "Deus Ex: Clan Wars", was initially conceived as a multiplayer-focused third game for the series. After the commercial performance and public reception of "Deus Ex: Invisible War" failed to meet expectations, the decision was made to set the game in a separate universe, and "Deus Ex: Clan Wars" was eventually published under the title "Project: Snowblind".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: On March 29, 2007, Valve announced "Deus Ex" and its sequel would be available for purchase from their Steam service. Among the games announced are several other Eidos franchise titles, including "" and "Tomb Raider".


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: Eidos Montréal produced a prequel to "Deus Ex" called "". This was confirmed on November 26, 2007, when Eidos Montréal posted a teaser trailer for the title on their website. The game was released on August 23, 2011, for the PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 platforms and received critical acclaim.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: On April 7, 2015, Eidos announced a sequel to "Deus Ex: Human Revolution" and second prequel to "Deus Ex" titled "". It was released on August 23, 2016.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: A film adaptation based on the game was initially announced in May 2002 by Columbia Pictures. The film was being produced by Laura Ziskin, along with Greg Pruss attached with writing the screenplay. Peter Schlessel, president of the production for Columbia Pictures, and Paul Baldwin, president of marketing for Eidos Interactive, stated that they were confident in that the adaptation would be a successful development for both the studios and the franchise. In March 2003, during an interview with Greg Pruss, he informed IGN that the character of JC Denton would be "a little bit filthier than he was in the game". He further stated that the script was shaping up to be darker in tone than the original game. Although a release date was scheduled for 2006, the film did not get past the scripting stage.


title: Deus Ex (video game)

text: In 2012, CBS films revived the project, buying the rights and commissioning a film inspired by the "Deux Ex" series; its direct inspiration was the 2011 game "". C. Robert Cargill and Scott Derrickson were to write the screenplay, and Derrickson was to direct the film.


title: 2000s

text: The 2000s (pronounced "two-thousands"; shortened to the 00s and known as the aughts or noughties) was a decade that began on January 1, 2000, and ended on December 31, 2009.


title: 2000s

text: The early part of the decade saw the long predicted breakthrough of economic giants in Asia, like India and China, which had double-digit growth during nearly the whole decade. It is also benefited from an economic boom, which saw the two most populous countries becoming an increasingly dominant economic force. The rapid catching-up of emerging economies with developed countries sparked some protectionist tensions during the period and was partly responsible for an increase in energy and food prices at the end of the decade. The economic developments in the latter third of the decade were dominated by a worldwide economic downturn, which started with the crisis in housing and credit in the United States in late 2007 and led to the bankruptcy of major banks and other financial institutions. The outbreak of this global financial crisis sparked a global recession, beginning in the United States and affecting most of the industrialized world.


title: 2000s

text: The growth of the Internet contributed to globalization during the decade, which allowed faster communication among people around the world; social networking sites arose as a new way for people to stay in touch from distant locations, as long as they had an internet connection. The first social networking sites were Friendster, Myspace, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, established in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, and 2006, respectively. Myspace was the most popular social networking website until June 2009, when Facebook overtook it in number of American users. E-mail continued to be popular throughout the decade and began to replace "snail mail" as the primary way of sending letters and other messages to people in distant locations, though it had existed since 1971.


title: 2000s

text: The War on Terror and War in Afghanistan began after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The International Criminal Court was formed in 2002. In 2003, a United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, and the Iraq War led to the end of Saddam Hussein's rule as Iraqi President and the Ba'ath Party in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist militant groups performed terrorist acts throughout the decade. The Second Congo War, the deadliest conflict since World War II, ended in July 2003. Further wars that ended included the Algerian Civil War, the Angolan Civil War, the Sierra Leone Civil War, the Second Liberian Civil War, the Nepalese Civil War, and the Sri Lankan Civil War. Wars that began included the conflict in the Niger Delta, the Houthi insurgency in Yemen, and the Mexican Drug War.


title: 2000s

text: Climate change and global warming became common concerns in the 2000s. Prediction tools made significant progress during the decade, UN-sponsored organizations such as the IPCC gained influence, and studies such as the Stern report influenced public support for paying the political and economic costs of countering climate change. The global temperature kept climbing during the decade. In December 2009, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that the 2000s may have been the warmest decade since records began in 1850, with four of the five warmest years since 1850 having occurred in this decade. The WMO's findings were later echoed by the NASA and the NOAA.


title: 2000s

text: Usage of computer-generated imagery became more widespread in films produced during the 2000s, especially with the success of 2001's "Shrek". Anime films gained more exposure outside Japan with the release of "Spirited Away". December 2009's "Avatar" became the highest-grossing film. Documentary and mockumentary films, such as "March of the Penguins", "Super Size Me", "Borat" and "Surf's Up", were popular in the 2000s. 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11" by Michael Moore was the highest grossing documentary of all time. Online films became popular, and conversion to digital cinema started. Video game consoles released in this decade included the PlayStation 2, the Xbox, the GameCube, the Wii, the PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360; while portable video game consoles included Game Boy Advance, Nintendo DS and PlayStation Portable. "Wii Sports" was the decade's best-selling console video game, while "New Super Mario Bros." was the decade's best-selling portable video game. J. K. Rowling was the best-selling author in the decade overall thanks to the "Harry Potter" book series, although she did not pen the best-selling individual book, being second to "The Da Vinci Code". Eminem was named the music artist of the decade by "Billboard".


title: 2000s

text: During this decade, the world population grew from 6.1 to 6.9 billion people. Approximately 1.35 billion people were born, and 550 million people died.


title: 2000s

text: Orthographically, the decade can be written as the "2000s" or the 00s". In the English-speaking world, a name for the decade wasn't immediately accepted as it had been for other decades ('80s, '90s), but usage eventually settled on "aughts" (US) or "noughties" (UK). Other possibilities included "two-thousands", “twenty hundreds”, "ohs", "oh ohs", "double ohs", "zeros", and "double zeros". The years of the decade can be referred to as '01, '02, etc., pronounced oh-one, oh-two, etc.


title: 2000s

text: The War on Terror and War in Afghanistan began after the September 11 attacks in 2001. The International Criminal Court was formed in 2002. In 2003 a United States-led coalition invaded Iraq, and the Iraq War led to the end of Saddam Hussein's rule as Iraqi President and the Ba'ath Party in Iraq. Al-Qaeda and affiliated Islamist militant groups performed terrorist acts throughout the decade. These acts included the 2004 Madrid train bombings, 7/7 London bombings in 2005, and the Mumbai attacks related to al-Qaeda in 2008. The European Union expanded its sanctions amid Iran's failure to comply with its transparency obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and United Nations resolutions.


title: 2000s

text: The War on Terror generated extreme controversy around the world, with questions regarding the justification for certain U.S. actions leading to a loss of support for the American government, both in and outside the United States. The additional armed conflict occurred in the Middle East, including between Israel and Hezbollah, then with Israel and Hamas. The most significant loss of life due to natural disasters came from the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which caused a tsunami that killed around one quarter-million people and displaced well over a million others.


title: 2000s

text: The most prominent terrorist attacks committed against the civilian population during the decade include:


title: 2000s

text: During this decade, the peaceful transfer of power through elections first occurred in Mexico, Indonesia, Taiwan, Colombia, and several other countries. (See below.)


title: 2000s

text: Antibiotic resistance is a serious and growing phenomenon in contemporary medicine and has emerged as one of the eminent public health concerns of the 21st century, particularly as it pertains to pathogenic organisms (the term is not especially relevant to organisms which don't cause disease in humans).


title: 2000s

text: The outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the United Kingdom in 2001 caused a crisis in British agriculture and tourism. This epizootic saw 2,000 cases of the disease in farms across most of the British countryside. Over 10 million sheep and cattle were killed.


title: 2000s

text: Between November 2002 and July 2003, an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) occurred in Hong Kong, with 8,273 cases and 775 deaths worldwide (9.6% fatality) according to the World Health Organization (WHO). Within weeks, SARS spread from Hong Kong to infect individuals in 37 countries in early 2003.


title: 2000s

text: Methicillin-resistant "Staphylococcus aureus": the Office for National Statistics reported 1,629 MRSA-related deaths in England and Wales during 2005, indicating a MRSA-related mortality rate half the rate of that in the United States for 2005, even though the figures from the British source were explained to be high because of "improved levels of reporting, possibly brought about by the continued high public profile of the disease" during the time of the 2005 United Kingdom General Election. MRSA is thought to have caused 1,652 deaths in 2006 in UK up from 51 in 1993.


title: 2000s

text: The 2009 H1N1 (swine flu) flu pandemic was also considered a natural disaster. On October 25, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama officially declared H1N1 a national emergency. Despite President Obama's concern, a Fairleigh Dickinson University PublicMind poll found in October 2009 that an overwhelming majority of New Jerseyans (74%) were not very worried or not at all worried about contracting the H1N1 flu virus.


title: 2000s

text: A study conducted in coordination with the University of Michigan Health Service is scheduled for publication in the December 2009 "American Journal of Roentgenology" warning that H1N1 flu can cause pulmonary embolism, surmised as a leading cause of death in this current pandemic. The study authors suggest physician evaluation via contrast enhanced CT scans for the presence of pulmonary emboli when caring for patients diagnosed with respiratory complications from a "severe" case of the H1N1 flu.


title: 2000s

text: As of May 30, 2010, as stated by the World Health Organization, more than 214 countries and overseas territories or communities have reported laboratory confirmed cases of pandemic influenza H1N1 2009, including over 18,138 deaths.


title: 2000s

text: The Walkerton Tragedy is a series of events that accompanied the contamination of the water supply of Walkerton, Ontario, Canada, by Escherichia coli bacteria in May 2000.


title: 2000s

text: Starting May 11, 2000, many residents of the community of about 5,000 people began to simultaneously experience bloody diarrhea, gastrointestinal infections and other symptoms of E. coli infection.


title: 2000s

text: Seven people died directly from drinking the E. coli contaminated water, who might have been saved if the Walkerton Public Utilities Commission had admitted to contaminated water sooner, and about 2,500 became ill.


title: 2000s

text: In 2001 a similar outbreak in North Battleford, Saskatchewan caused by the protozoan Cryptosporidium affected at least 5,800 people.


title: 2000s

text: The 2005 Baghdad bridge stampede occurred on August 31, 2005, when 953 people died following a stampede on Al-Aaimmah bridge, which crosses the Tigris river in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad.


title: 2000s

text: The most significant evolution of the early 2000s in the economic landscape was the long-time predicted breakthrough of economic giant China, which had double-digit growth during nearly the whole decade. To a lesser extent, India also benefited from an economic boom which saw the two most populous countries becoming an increasingly dominant economic force. The rapid catching-up of emerging economies with developed countries sparked some protectionist tensions during the period and was partly responsible for an increase in energy and food prices at the end of the decade. The economic developments in the latter third of the decade were dominated by a worldwide economic downturn, which started with the crisis in housing and credit in the United States in late 2007, and led to the bankruptcy of major banks and other financial institutions. The outbreak of this global financial crisis sparked a global recession, beginning in the United States and affecting most of the industrialized world.


title: 2000s

text: The period takes its name from Gordon Brown, the then UK Chancellor of the Exchequer (who later became Prime Minister), who decided to sell approximately half of the UK's gold reserves in a series of auctions. At the time, the UK's gold reserves were worth about US$6.5 billion, accounting for about half of the UK's US$13 billion foreign currency net reserves.


title: 2000s

text: The removal of trade and investment barriers, the growth of domestic markets, artificially low currencies, the proliferation of education, the rapid development of high tech and information systems industries and the growth of the world economy lead to a significant growth of offshore outsourcing during the decade as many multinational corporations significantly increased subcontracting of manufacturing (and increasingly, services) across national boundaries in developing countries and particularly in China and India, due to many benefits and mainly because the two countries which are the two most populous countries in the world provide huge pools from which to find talent and as because both countries are low cost sourcing countries. As a result of this growth, many of these developing countries accumulated capital and started investing abroad. Other countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Australia, Brazil and Russia, benefited from increased demand for their mineral and energy resources that global growth generated. The hollowing out of manufacturing was felt in Japan and parts of the United States and Europe which had not been able to develop successful innovative industries. Opponents point out that the practice of offshore outsourcing by countries with higher wages leads to the reduction of their own domestic employment and domestic investment. As a result, many customer service jobs as well as jobs in the information technology sectors (data processing, computer programming, and technical support) in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom have been or are potentially affected.


title: 2000s

text: While global trade rose in the decade (partially driven by China's entry into the WTO in 2001), there was little progress in the multilateral trading system. International trade continued to expand during the decade as emerging economies and developing countries, in particular China and South-Asian countries, benefited low wages costs and most often undervalued currencies. However, global negotiations to reduce tariffs did not make much progress, as member countries of the World Trade Organization did not succeed in finding agreements to stretch the extent of free trade. The Doha Round of negotiations, launched in 2001 by the WTO to promote development, failed to be completed because of growing tensions between regional areas. Nor did the Cancún Conference in 2003 find a consensus on services trade and agricultural subsidies.


title: 2000s

text: The comparative rise of China, India, and other developing countries also contributed to their growing clout in international forums. In 2009, it was determined that the G20, originally a forum of finance ministers and central bank governors, would replace the G8 as the main economic council.


title: 2000s

text: 2007 Chinese export recalls– In 2007, a series of product recalls and import bans were imposed by the product safety institutions of the United States, Canada, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand against products manufactured in and exported from the mainland of the People's Republic of China (PRC) because of numerous alleged consumer safety issues.


title: 2000s

text: Events in the confidence crisis included recalls on consumer goods such as pet food, toys, toothpaste, lipstick, and a ban on certain types of seafood. Also included are reports on the poor crash safety of Chinese automobiles, slated to enter the American and European markets in 2008. This created adverse consequences for the confidence in the safety and quality of mainland Chinese manufactured goods in the global economy.


title: 2000s

text: The decade was marked by two financial and economic crises. In 2001, the Dot-com bubble burst, causing turmoil in financial markets and a decline in economic activity in the developed economies, in particular in the United States. However, the impact of the crisis on the activity was limited thanks to the intervention of the central banks, notably the U.S. Federal Reserve System. Indeed, Alan Greenspan, leader of the Federal Reserve until 2006, cut the interest rates several times to avoid a severe recession, allowing an economic revival in the U.S.


title: 2000s

text: As the Federal Reserve maintained low interest rates to favor economic growth, a housing bubble began to appear in the United States. In 2007, the rise in interest rates and the collapse of the housing market caused a wave of loan payment failures in the U.S. The subsequent mortgage crisis caused a global financial crisis, because the subprime mortgages had been securitized and sold to international banks and investment funds. Despite the extensive intervention of central banks, including partial and total nationalization of major European banks, the crisis of sovereign debt became particularly acute, first in Iceland, though as events of the early 2010s would show, it was not an isolated European example. Economic activity was severely affected around the world in 2008 and 2009, with disastrous consequences for carmakers.


title: 2000s

text: In 2007, the UK's Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, delivered his final Mansion House speech as Chancellor before he moved into Number 10. Addressing financiers: "A new world order has been created", Everyone needed to follow the city's "great example", "an era that history will record as the beginning of a new Golden Age".


title: 2000s

text: Reactions of governments in all developed and developing countries against the economic slowdown were largely inspired by keynesian economics. The end of the decade was characterized by a Keynesian resurgence, while the influence and media popularity of left-wing economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman (Nobel Prize recipients in 2001 and 2008, respectively) did not stop growing during the decade. Several international summits were organized to find solutions against the economic crisis and to impose greater control on the financial markets. The G-20 became in 2008 and 2009 a major organization, as leaders of the member countries held two major summits in Washington in November 2008 and in London in April 2009 to regulate the banking and financial sectors, and also succeeding in coordinating their economic action and in avoiding protectionist reactions.


title: 2000s

text: From the mid-1980s to September 2003, the inflation-adjusted price of a barrel of crude oil on NYMEX was generally under $25/barrel. During 2003, the price rose above $30, reached $60 by August 11, 2005, and peaked at $147.30 in July 2008. Commentators attributed these price increases to many factors, including reports from the United States Department of Energy and others showing a decline in petroleum reserves, worries over peak oil, Middle East tension, and oil price speculation.


title: 2000s

text: For a time, geopolitical events and natural disasters indirectly related to the global oil market had strong short-term effects on oil prices. These events and disasters included North Korean missile tests, the 2006 conflict between Israel and Lebanon, worries over Iranian nuclear plants in 2006 and Hurricane Katrina. By 2008, such pressures appeared to have an insignificant impact on oil prices given the onset of the global recession. The recession caused demand for energy to shrink in late 2008 and early 2009 and the price plunged as well. However, it surged back in May 2009, bringing it back to November 2008 levels.


title: 2000s

text: Many fast-growing economies throughout the world, especially in Asia, also were a major factor in the rapidly increasing demand for fossil fuels, which—along with fewer new petroleum finds, greater extraction costs, and political turmoil—forced two other trends: a soar in the price of petroleum products and a push by governments and businesses to promote the development of environmentally friendly technology (known informally as "green" technology). However, a side-effect of the push by some industrial nations to "go green" and utilize biofuels was a decrease in the supply of food and a subsequent increase in the price of the same. It partially caused the 2007 food price crisis, which seriously affected the world's poorer nations with an even more severe shortage of food.


title: 2000s

text: A common currency for most EU member states, the euro, was established electronically in 1999, officially tying all the currencies of each participating nation to each other. The new currency was put into circulation in 2002 and the old currencies were phased out. Only three countries of the then 15 member states decided not to join the euro (the United Kingdom, Denmark and Sweden). In 2004 the EU undertook a major eastward enlargement, admitting 10 new member states (eight of which were former communist states). Two more, Bulgaria and Romania, joined in 2007, establishing a union of 27 nations.


title: 2000s

text: The euro has since become the second largest reserve currency and the second most traded currency in the world after the US$.


title: 2000s

text: , with more than €790 billion in circulation, the euro was the currency with the highest combined value of banknotes and coins in circulation in the world, having surpassed the US$.


title: 2000s

text: In the 2000s, the Internet became a mainstay, strengthening its grip on Western society while becoming increasingly available in the developing world.


title: 2000s

text: In late 2004 and early 2005, came a significant increase in reported incidents linked to laser pointers – see Lasers and aviation safety. The wave of incidents may have been triggered in part by "copycats" who read press accounts of laser pointer incidents. In one case, David Banach of New Jersey was charged under federal Patriot Act anti-terrorism laws, after he allegedly shone a laser pointer at aircraft.


title: 2000s

text: Chip and PIN was trialled in Northampton, England from May 2003, and as a result was rolled out nationwide in the United Kingdom in 2004 with advertisements in the press and national television touting the "Safety in Numbers" slogan.


title: 2000s

text: ATM crime in Europe jumped to €485m (£423m) in 2008 following a 149% rise in attacks on cash machines. Gangs are turning to Bluetooth wireless technology to transmit card and personal identification number (PIN) details to nearby laptops and using increasingly sophisticated techniques to skim cards.


title: 2000s

text: More conventional smash-and-grab attacks are also on the rise, says Enisa, the European Network and Information Security Agency. It reports a 32% rise in physical attacks on ATMs, ranging from ram raids to the use of rotary saws, blowtorches and diamond drills. It blames the increase on gangs from eastern Europe.


title: 2000s

text: Climate change and global warming became household words in the 2000s. Predictions tools made significant progress during the decade, UN-sponsored organisations such as the IPCC gained influence, and studies such as the Stern report influenced public support for paying the political and economic costs of countering climate change.


title: 2000s

text: The global temperature kept climbing during the decade. In December 2009, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) announced that the 2000s might have been the warmest decade since records began in 1850, with four of the five warmest years since 1850 having occurred in this decade. The NASA and the NOAA later echoed the WMO's findings.


title: 2000s

text: Climate change became a major issue for governments, populations and scientists. Debates on global warming and its causes made significant progress, as climate change denials were refuted by most scientific studies. Decisive reports such as the Stern Review and the 2007 IPCC Report almost established a climate change consensus. NGOs' actions and the commitment of political personalities (such as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore) also urged to international reactions against climate change. Documentary films "An Inconvenient Truth" and "Home" may have had a decisive impact.


title: 2000s

text: Under the auspices of The UN Convention on Climate Change the Kyoto Protocol (aimed at combating global warming) entered into force on February 16, 2005. As of November 2009, 187 states have signed and ratified the protocol. In addition The UN Convention on Climate Change helped coordinate the efforts of the international community to fight potentially disastrous effects of human activity on the planet and launched negotiations to set an ambitious program of carbon emission reduction that began in 2007 with the Bali Road Map. However, the representatives of the then 192 member countries of the United Nations gathered in December 2009 for the Copenhagen Conference failed to reach a binding agreement to reduce carbon emissions because of divisions between regional areas.


title: 2000s

text: However, as environmental technologies were to make up a potential market, some countries made large investments in renewable energies, energy conservation and sustainable transport. Many governments launched national plans to promote sustainable energy. In 2003, the European Union members created an emission trading scheme, and in 2007 they assembled a climate and energy package to reduce further their carbon emission and improve their energy-efficiency. In 2009, the United States Obama administration set up the Green New Deal, a plan to create millions of jobs in sectors related to environmentalism.


title: 2000s

text: The Household Waste Recycling Act 2003 requires local authorities in England to provide every household with a separate collection of at least two types of recyclable materials by 2010.


title: 2000s

text: Commercialization and globalization resulted in mass migration of people from rural areas to urban areas resulting in high-profile skyscrapers in Asia and Europe. In Asia skyscrapers were constructed in India, China, Thailand, South Korea, and Japan.


title: 2000s

text: The usage of computer-generated imagery became more widespread in films during the 2000s. Documentary and mockumentary films, such as "March of the Penguins", "Borat", and "Super Size Me", were popular in the 2000s. 2004's "Fahrenheit 9/11" by Michael Moore is the highest-grossing documentary of all time. Online films became popular, and conversion to digital cinema started. Critically acclaimed movies released in the decade including highlights such as "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" (2004) and "Lost in Translation" (2003).


title: 2000s

text: December 2009's "Avatar", an American science fiction film written and directed by James Cameron, made extensive use of cutting edge motion capture filming techniques, and was released for traditional viewing, 3D viewing (using the RealD 3D, Dolby 3D, XpanD 3D, and IMAX 3D formats). It was also released in "4D" in select South Korean theaters.


title: 2000s

text: 3D films became more and more successful throughout the 2000s, culminating in the unprecedented success of 3D presentations of "Avatar".


title: 2000s

text: In July 2005, it was reported that the Scottish actor and producer Sir Sean Connery had decided to retire, due to disillusionment with the "idiots now in Hollywood"' Telling "The New Zealand Herald": "I'm fed up with the idiots... the ever-widening gap between people who know how to make movies and the people who greenlight the movies."


title: 2000s

text: "", a 2003 epic fantasy-drama film directed by Peter Jackson based on the second and third volumes of J. R. R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings", was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won all the categories for which it was nominated. The film is tied for largest number of awards won with "Ben-Hur" (1959) and "Titanic" (1997).


title: 2000s

text: "The Passion of the Christ", a 2004 American film directed by Mel Gibson and starring Jim Caviezel as Jesus Christ, was highly controversial and received mixed reviews; however, it was a major commercial hit, grossing in excess of $600 million worldwide during its theatrical release.


title: 2000s

text: The superhero film genre experienced renewed and intense interest throughout the 2000s. With high ticket and DVD sales, several new superhero films were released every year. The "X-Men", "Batman" and "Spider-Man" series were particularly prominent, and other films in the genre included "Daredevil" (2003), "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" (2003), "Hulk" (2003), "Hellboy" (2004), "The Incredibles" (2004), "Fantastic Four" (2005), the first two Marvel Cinematic Universe films ("Iron Man" and "The Incredible Hulk"; both in 2008), and "Watchmen" (2009). Some media commentators attributed the increased popularity of such franchises to the social and political climate in Western society since the September 11 terrorist attacks, although others argued advances in special effects technology played a more significant role.


title: 2000s

text: Animated feature film market changed radically. computer animated films became hugely popular following the release of "Shrek", as traditional animation immediately faded into obscurity. Following the failures of "The Road to El Dorado", "Rugrats Go Wild", "Eight Crazy Nights", "The Wild Thornberrys Movie", "Treasure Planet" and "", studios have stopped their production of traditional 2D animated films, and changed their focus into CGI animation. The only three traditional animated films that did well at the first half of the decade were "", "" and "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie".


title: 2000s

text: 20th Century Fox Animation's works in that decade include the "Ice Age" series, "Robots" and "Horton Hears a Who!" which were all made by its Blue Sky Studios subsidiary, and "Titan A.E.", "Waking Life", "The Simpsons Movie" and "Fantastic Mr. Fox"


title: 2000s

text: Stop motion animated works in that decade which mostly use live-action or computer animation methods included "Chicken Run", "", "", "Corpse Bride", "Flushed Away", "Coraline" and "Mary and Max". Independent animated works in that decade included "The Triplets of Belleville", "Terkel in Trouble", "Laura's Star", "A Scanner Darkly", "Renaissance", "Persepolis", "Sita Sings the Blues", "The Secret of Kells" and "A Town Called Panic".


title: 2000s

text: "Avatar", "", "", "The Dark Knight", "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone", "", "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince", "", "Shrek 2", "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire", "Spider-Man 3", "", "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets", "", "Finding Nemo", "", "", "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" and "Shrek the Third".


title: 2000s

text: "Harry Potter" film series, "The Lord of the Rings" film trilogy, "Pirates of the Caribbean" film series, "Spider-Man" film series, "Shrek" film series, "Ice Age" film series, "Transformers" film series, "X-Men" film series, "Batman" film series' "Batman Begins" and "The Dark Knight", "Star Wars" "" and "", "The Da Vinci Code" and "Angels & Demons", "The Matrix" film series' "The Matrix Reloaded" and "The Matrix Revolutions", "The Chronicles of Narnia" film series, "" film series' and "The Mummy" film series.


title: 2000s

text: In the 2000s, the Internet allowed consumers unprecedented access to music. The Internet also allowed more artists to distribute music relatively inexpensively and independently without the previously necessary financial support of a record label. Music sales began to decline following the year 2000, a state of affairs generally attributed to unlicensed uploading and downloading of sound files to the Internet, a practice which became more widely prevalent during this time. Business relationships called 360 deals—an arrangement in which a company provides support for an artist, and, in exchange, the artist pays the company a percentage of revenue earned not only from sales of recorded music, but also live performances and publishing—became a popular response by record labels to the loss of music sales attributed to online copyright infringement.


title: 2000s

text: In the 2000s, hip hop reached a commercial peak and heavily influenced various aspects of popular culture, dominating the musical landscape of the decade. The best-selling musical artist of the decade was American rapper Eminem, who sold 32 million albums. Other popular hip hop artists included Jay-Z, Nas, Busta Rhymes, Kanye West, Ludacris, Common, Ja Rule, Mos Def, DMX, Missy Elliot, OutKast, Lil Jon, Fat Joe, Cam'ron, Pharrell, Gorillaz, Snoop Dogg, Twista, 50 Cent, Nelly, Lil Wayne, T.I., Young Jeezy and The Game. The genre was extremely diverse stylistically, including subgenres such as gangsta rap and crunk. Many hip hop albums were released to widespread critical acclaim.


title: 2000s

text: R&B also gained prominence throughout the decade, and included artists such as D'Angelo, Aaliyah, Usher, Akon, Black Eyed Peas, R. Kelly, Amy Winehouse, Mary J. Blige, Jamie Foxx, Chris Brown, John Legend and Alicia Keys.


title: 2000s

text: In the early and mid 2000s, disco-inspired dance genres became popular; many french house and funky house songs broke into the charts. Popular tracks such as Daft Punk’s "One More Time" Fonzerelli’s "Moonlight Party", Kylie Minogue's "Spinning Around", Jamiroquai's "Little L", Michael Gray’s “The Weekend” and Freemasons "Love on My Mind".


title: 2000s

text: For Latin music Shakira dominated the charts with Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 being the 2nd best selling Spanish album of all-time and the best selling Spanish album of the 2000s being 11× platinum to date.


title: 2000s

text: "Billboard" magazine named Eminem as the artist with the best performance on the Billboard charts and Beyoncé as the "female artist of the decade", with Nickelback as the "band of the decade". In the UK, the biggest selling artist of the decade is Robbie Williams*and the biggest selling band of the decade is Westlife. American recording artist Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009, creating the largest global public mourning since the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997. On August 25, 2001, Aaliyah Haughton – an American recording artist, dancer, actress and model and eight others, were killed in an airplane crash in The Bahamas after filming the music video for the single "Rock the Boat". On April 25, 2002, Lisa Lopes an American: rapper, dancer, and singer-songwriter, best known as a member of the R&B/hip hop girl group TLC by her stage name Left Eye, was killed in a car crash in La Ceiba, Honduras. On October 30, 2002, Jason William Mizell (Jam Master Jay) of the hip hop group Run-D.M.C was shot and killed in a Merrick Boulevard recording studio in Jamaica, Queens. On December 25, 2006, James Brown – an American recording artist known as the "Godfather of Soul", died of pneumonia at the age of 73. On September 12, 2003, Johnny Cash – an American musician known as the "Man in Black", died of diabetes at the age of 71. On June 10, 2004, Ray Charles – an American musician and one of the pioneers of soul music, died of liver failure at the age of 73. On November 29, 2001, George Harrison – an English musician best known of the guitarist of the Beatles, died of lung cancer at the age of 58. Innovator, inventor, performer and guitar virtuoso Les Paul also died on August 12, 2009, at the age of 94.


title: 2000s

text: In 2002, Robbie Williams signed a record-breaking £80 million contract with EMI. So far it is the biggest music deal in British history.


title: 2000s

text: In alternative rock, the garage rock revival and post-punk revival entered the mainstream, with bands such as The Strokes, Interpol, The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The White Stripes seeing commercial success. Indie rock also saw a proliferation in the 2000s with numerous bands experiencing commercial success, including Modest Mouse, TV on the Radio, Franz Ferdinand, Death Cab for Cutie, Arcade Fire, Vampire Weekend, LCD Soundsystem, The Shins, Wilco, Bright Eyes, Spoon, The Decemberists, Broken Social Scene, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes and many more. Other genres such as post-grunge, post-Britpop, nu metal and metalcore also achieved notability during the decade.


title: 2000s

text: Popular metal or hard rock bands consisted of Avenged Sevenfold, Bullet for My Valentine, Disturbed, Breaking Benjamin, Linkin Park, Slipknot, Mudvayne, Tenacious D, System of a Down, Mastodon, The Mars Volta, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Three Days Grace, Godsmack, Shinedown, Limp Bizkit, Killswitch Engage, Evanescence, Tool, Deftones, Opeth, and Seether.


title: 2000s

text: Pop-punk and emo-pop became popular in the decade, with bands like The Offspring, Green Day, Good Charlotte, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco.


title: 2000s

text: The 2000s gave rise to a new trend in music production with the growing use of auto-tune. The effect was first popularized in the early 2000s by Eiffel 65 with their 1998 hit song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)", which came to global prominence in 2000. It was also used in certain tracks off critically acclaimed 2001 albums from Daft Punk (with "Discovery") and Radiohead (with "Amnesiac"). By 2008, auto-tune was part of the music mainstream with artists such as Lil Wayne, T-Pain and Kanye West utilizing it in their hit albums "Tha Carter III", "Three Ringz" and "808s & Heartbreak" respectively. Towards the end of the decade, electronic dance music began to dominate western charts (as it would proceed to in the following decade), and in turn helped contribute to a diminishing amount of rock music in the mainstream. Hip hop music also saw a decline in the mainstream in the late 2000s because of electronic music's rising popularity.


title: 2000s

text: According to "The Guardian", music styles during the 2000s changed very little from how they were in the latter half of the 1990s. The 2000s had a profound impact on the condition of music distribution. Recent advents in digital technology have fundamentally altered industry and marketing practices as well as players in unusual rapidity. According to Nielsen Soundscan, by 2009 CDs accounted for 79 percent of album sales, with 20 percent coming from digital, representing both a 10 percent drop and gain for both formats in 2 years.


title: 2000s

text: Grime is a style of music that emerged from Bow, East London, England in the early 2000s, primarily as a development of UK garage, drum & bass, hip hop and dancehall. Pioneers of the style include English rappers Dizzee Rascal, Wiley, Roll Deep and Skepta.


title: 2000s

text: Michael Jackson's final album, "Invincible", released on October 30, 2001, and costing $30m to record, was the most expensive record ever made.


title: 2000s

text: The end of the 2000s decade also saw the dramatic rise of new pop stars such as Rihanna, Taylor Swift, Justin Bieber, Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga, all of whom would go on to become some of the best-selling musicians in history.


title: 2000s

text: The general socio-political fallout of Iraq War also extended to popular music. In July 2002, the release of English musician George Michael's song "Shoot the Dog" proved to be controversial. It was critical of George W. Bush and Tony Blair in the lead up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The video showed a cartoon version of Michael astride a nuclear missile in the Middle East and Tony and Cherie Blair in bed with President Bush. The Dixie Chicks are an American country music band. During a London concert ten days before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, lead vocalist Maines said, "we don't want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States <nowiki>[</nowiki>George W. Bush<nowiki>]</nowiki> is from Texas". The positive reaction to this statement from the British audience contrasted with the boycotts that ensued in the U.S., where "the band was assaulted by talk-show conservatives", while their albums were discarded in public protest. The original music video for the title song from American pop singer Madonna's "American Life" album was banned as music television stations thought that the video, featuring violence and war imagery, would be deemed unpatriotic since America was then at war with Iraq. She also made her widely considered "comeback" album with her tenth studio album Confessions on a Dance Floor which topped the charts worldwide in a record 40 countries. As of 2016 the album has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide. Madonna also made history by completing her Sticky & Sweet Tour which became the highest-grossing tour by a female artist and the tenth highest-grossing tour by an artist during 2008–2009.


title: 2000s

text: Live 8 was a string of benefit concerts that took place on July 2, 2005, in the G8 states and in South Africa. They were timed to precede the G8 conference and summit held at the Gleneagles Hotel in Auchterarder, Scotland from July 6 to 8, 2005; they also coincided with the 20th anniversary of Live Aid. Run in support of the aims of the UK's Make Poverty History campaign and the Global Call for Action Against Poverty, ten simultaneous concerts were held on July 2 and one on July 6. On July 7, the G8 leaders pledged to double 2004 levels of aid to poor nations from US$25 billion to US$50 billion by the year 2010. Half of the money was to go to Africa. More than 1,000 musicians performed at the concerts, which were broadcast on 182 television networks and 2,000 radio networks.


title: 2000s

text: In November 2006, the Rolling Stones' 'A Bigger Bang' tour was declared the highest-grossing tour of all time, earning $437 million.


title: 2000s

text: In December 2009, a campaign was launched on Facebook by Jon and Tracy Morter, from South Woodham Ferrers, which generated publicity in the UK and took the 1992 Rage Against the Machine track "Killing in the Name" to the Christmas Number One slot in the UK Singles Chart, which had been occupied the four consecutive years from 2005 by winners from the TV show The X Factor. Rage's Zack de la Rocha spoke to BBC1 upon hearing the news, stating that:


title: 2000s

text: "...We want to thank everyone that participated in this incredible, organic, grass-roots campaign. It says more about the spontaneous action taken by young people throughout the UK to topple this very sterile pop monopoly."


title: 2000s

text: During the late 2000s, a new wave of chiptune culture took place. This new culture has much more emphasis on live performances and record releases than the demoscene and tracker culture, of which the new artists are often only distantly aware. Much of 2000s hip hop was characterized as the "bling era", following the success of B.G.'s 1999 single Bling Bling, referring to forms of opulence and the material commodities that were popular from the early-to-mid part of the decade in hip-hop culture. However, by the end of the decade, an antecedent emotional rap subgenre gained prominence, with musical projects like Kanye West's fourth studio album "808s & Heartbreak" (2008), Kid Cudi's debut album "" (2009), and Drake's career catalyzing mixtape "So Far Gone" (2009) garnering significant popularity and ushering in a new era of hip hop.


title: 2000s

text: On February 23, 2003, Simon and Garfunkel reunited to perform in public for the first time in a decade, singing "The Sound of Silence" as the opening act of the Grammy Awards.


title: 2000s

text: On May 9, 2006, British five-piece vocal pop Take That returned to the recorded music scene after more than ten years of absence, signing with Polydor Records. The band's comeback album, "Beautiful World", entered the UK album chart at no. 1.


title: 2000s

text: On December 10, 2007, English rock band Led Zeppelin reunited for the one-off Ahmet Ertegun Tribute Concert at The O2 Arena in London. According to Guinness World Records 2009, Led Zeppelin set the world record for the "Highest Demand for Tickets for One Music Concert" as 20 million requests for the reunion show were rendered online.


title: 2000s

text: Fashion trends of the decade drew much inspiration from 1960s, 1970s and 1980s styles. Hair styles included the bleached and spiked hair for boys and men and long and straight hair for girls and women continued, as well as many other hairstyles from the mid-late 1990s. Kelly Clarkson made chunky highlights fashionable in 2002 on American Idol and lasted until about 2007. Both women and men highlighted their hair until the late 2000s.


title: 2000s

text: The decade started with the futuristic Y2K fashion which was built on hype surrounding the new millennium. This dark, slinky style remained popular until 9/11 occurred and casual fashions had made a comeback once again. Baggy cargo pants were extremely popular among both sexes throughout the early and mid 2000s until about late 2007. Bell-bottoms were the dominant pant style for women until about 2006 when fitted pants began rising in popularity. The late 1990s-style baggy pants remained popular throughout the early 2000s, but by 2003 boot-cut pants and jeans became the standard among men until about 2008.


title: 2000s

text: The 2000s saw a revival of 1980s fashion trends such as velour tracksuits in the early 2000s (an early 1980s fashion), and tapered pants in the later years (a late 1980s fashion). Skinny jeans became a staple clothing for young women and men. By 2009 with the Jerkin' movement playing a large part in the popularization of skinny jeans. Mass brands Gap and Levi launched their own lines for skinny jeans.


title: 2000s

text: Throughout the early and mid 2000s, adults and children wore Skechers shoes. The company used many celebrities to their advantage, including Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Carrie Underwood, and Ashlee Simpson. By the late 2000s, flatter and more compact shoes came into style as chunky sneakers were no longer the mode.


title: 2000s

text: "Geek chic" refers to a minor fashion trend that arose in the mid-2000s in which young individuals adopted stereotypically "geeky" fashions, such as oversized black Horn-rimmed glasses, suspenders/braces, and highwater trousers. The glasses—worn with non-prescription lenses or without lenses—quickly became the defining aspect of the trend, with the media identifying various celebrities as "trying geek" or "going geek" for their wearing such glasses, such as David Beckham, Justin Timberlake and Myleene Klass. Meanwhile, in the sports world, many NBA players wore "geek glasses" during post-game interviews, drawing comparisons to Steve Urkel.


title: 2000s

text: Emo fashion became popular amongst teenagers for most of the 2000s, associated with the success of bands tied to the subculture (many of whom started at the beginning of the 2000s and rose to fame during the middle part of the decade, such as Brand New, The Used, Hawthorne Heights, My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, Paramore, Panic! at the Disco and more). The style is commonly identified with wearing black/dark coloured skinny jeans, T-shirts bearing the name of emo music groups and long side-swept bangs, often covering one or both eyes. The Scene subculture that emerged in the mid-late 2000s drew much inspiration from Emo style.


title: 2000s

text: Hip hop fashion was popular throughout the 2000s with clothing and shoe brands such as Rocawear, Phat Farm, G-Unit clothing, Billionaire Boys Club, Dipset clothing, Pelle Pelle, BAPE, Nike, Fubu, and Air Jordan. Followers of Hip Hop wore oversized shorts, jewelry, NFL and NBA jerseys, pants, and T-shirts. By the late 2000s this gave way more to fitted and vibrantly colored clothing, with men wearing skinny jeans as influenced by the Hyphy and Jerkin' movements.


title: 2000s

text: In cosmetic applications, a Botox injection, consisting of a small dose of Botulinum toxin, can be used to prevent development of wrinkles by paralyzing facial muscles. As of 2007, it is the most common cosmetic operation, with 4.6 million procedures in the United States, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons.


title: 2000s

text: The 2000s saw a decrease in the popularity of radio as more listeners starting using MP3 players in their cars to customize driving music. Satellite radio receivers started selling at a much higher rate, which allowed listeners to pay a subscription fee for thousands of ad-free stations. Clear Channel Communications was the largest provider of radio entertainment in the United States with over 900 stations nationwide. Many radio stations began streaming their content over the Internet, allowing a market expansion far beyond the reaches of a radio transmitter.


title: 2000s

text: During the 2000s, FM radio faced its toughest competition ever for in-car entertainment. iPod, satellite radio, and HD radio were all new options for commuters. CD players had a steady decline in popularity throughout the 2000s but stayed prevalent in most vehicles, while cassette tapes became virtually obsolete.