title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: According to the final disaster report, the weather was rough, with a wind of , force 7–8 on the Beaufort scale and a significant wave height of compared with the highest measured significant wave height in the Baltic Sea of . Esa Mäkelä, the captain of "Silja Europa" who was appointed on-scene commander for the subsequent rescue effort, described the weather as "normally bad", or like a typical autumn storm in the Baltic Sea. According to modelled satellite data, gusts were in the excess of at 01:00 that night over the Baltic Sea, although the ship had not yet reached the areas with the heaviest gusts before its sinking. There was some rain and temperatures around . All scheduled passenger ferries were at sea, something not unusual for this weather in the Baltic Sea. The official report says that while the exact speed at the time of the accident is not known, "Estonia" had very regular voyage times, averaging . The chief mate of the Viking Line cruiseferry "Mariella" tracked "Estonia"s speed by radar at approximately before the first signs of distress, while the "Silja Europa"s officers estimated her speed at at midnight.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: The first sign of trouble aboard "Estonia" was when a metallic bang was heard, presumably caused by a heavy wave hitting the bow doors around 01:00, when the ship was on the outskirts of the Turku archipelago, but an inspection—limited to checking the indicator lights for the ramp and visor—showed no problems. Over the next 10 minutes, similar noises were reported by passengers and other crew. At about 01:15, the visor is believed to have separated and torn open the loading ramp behind it. The ship immediately took on a heavy starboard list (initially around 15 degrees, but by 01:30, the ship had rolled 60 degrees and by 01:50 the list was 90 degrees) as water flooded into the vehicle deck. "Estonia" was turned to port and slowed before her four engines cut out completely.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: At about 01:20, a quiet female voice called ""Häire, häire, laeval on häire"", Estonian for "Alarm, alarm, there is alarm on the ship", over the public address system, which was followed immediately by an internal alarm for the crew, then one minute later by the general emergency signal. The vessel's rapid list and the flooding prevented many people in the cabins from ascending to the boat deck, as water not only flooded the vessel via the car deck, but also through windows in cabins as well as the massive windows along deck 6. The windows gave way to the powerful waves as the ship listed and the sea reached the upper decks. Survivors reported that water flowed down from ceiling panels, stairwells and along corridors from decks that were not yet under water. This contributed to the rapid sinking. A mayday was communicated by the ship's crew at 01:22, but did not follow international formats. "Estonia" directed a call to "Silja Europa" and only after making contact with her did the radio operator utter the word "Mayday". The radio operator on "Silja Europa", chief mate Teijo Seppelin, replied in English: "Estonia, are you calling mayday?" After that, the voice of third mate Andres Tammes took over on "Estonia" and the conversation shifted to Finnish.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: Tammes was able to provide some details about their situation but, due to a loss of power, he could not give their position, which delayed rescue operations somewhat. Tammes would later die in the sinking. Some minutes later, power returned (or somebody on the bridge managed to lower him or herself to the starboard side of the bridge to check the marine GPS, which will display the ship's position even in blackout conditions), and the "Estonia" was able to radio its position to "Silja Europa" and "Mariella". The ship disappeared from the radar screens of other ships at around 01:50, and sank at in international waters, about on bearing 157° from Utö island, Finland, to a depth of of water. According to survivor accounts, the ship sank stern first after taking a list of 90 degrees.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: Search and rescue followed arrangements set up under the 1979 International Convention on Maritime Search and Rescue (the SAR Convention), and the nearest Maritime Rescue Co-ordination Centre MRCC Turku coordinated the effort in accordance with Finland's plans. The Baltic is one of the world's busiest shipping areas, with 2,000 vessels at sea at any time, and these plans assumed the ship's own boats and nearby ferries would provide immediate help and that helicopters could be airborne after an hour. This scheme had worked for the relatively small number of accidents involving sinkings, particularly as most ships have few people on board.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: "Mariella", the first of five ferries to reach the scene of the accident, arrived at 02:12. MRCC Turku failed to acknowledge the Mayday immediately and "Mariella"s report was relayed by Helsinki Radio as the less urgent pan-pan message. A full-scale emergency was only declared at 02:30. "Mariella" winched open liferafts into the sea onto which 13 people on "Estonia"s rafts successfully transferred, and reported the location of other rafts to Swedish and Finnish rescue helicopters, the first of which arrived at 03:05. The former took survivors to shore, while the latter—Finnish border guard helicopters Super Puma "OH-HVG" and Agusta Bell 412 "OH-HVD"—chose the riskier option of landing on the ferries. The pilot of "OH-HVG" stated that landing on the ferries was the most difficult part of the whole rescue operation; despite that, this single helicopter rescued 44 people, more than all the ferries. MS "Isabella" saved 16 survivors with its rescue slide.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: Of the 989 on board, 138 were rescued, one of whom died later in hospital. Ships rescued 34 and helicopters 104; the ferries played a much smaller part than the planners had intended because it was too dangerous to launch their man-overboard (MOB) boats or lifeboats. The accident claimed 852 lives. Most died by drowning and hypothermia, as the water temperature was .


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: One of the victims of the sinking was the Estonian singer Urmas Alender. In total, 94 bodies were recovered: 93 within 33 days of the accident, and the last victim was found 18 months later. By the time the rescue helicopters arrived, around a third of those who escaped from the "Estonia" had died of hypothermia, while fewer than half of those who had managed to leave the ship were eventually rescued. The survivors of the shipwreck were mostly young males with strong constitutions. Seven over 55 years of age survived and there were no survivors under age 12. About 650 people were still inside the ship when it sank. The commission estimated that up to 310 passengers reached the outer decks, 160 of whom boarded the life-rafts or lifeboats.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: The wreck was examined and videotaped by remotely operated underwater vehicles and by divers from a Norwegian company, Rockwater A/S, contracted for the investigation work. The official report indicated that the locks on the bow door had failed from the strain of the waves and the door had separated from the rest of the vessel, pulling the ramp behind it ajar. The bow visor and ramp had been torn off at points that would not trigger an "open" or "unlatched" warning on the bridge, as is the case in normal operation or failure of the latches. The bridge was also situated too far back on the ferry for the visor to be seen from there. While there was video monitoring of the inner ramp, the monitor on the bridge was not visible from the conning station. The bow visor was under-designed, as the ship's manufacturing and approval processes did not consider the visor and its attachments as critical items regarding ship safety. The first metallic bang was believed to have been the sound of the visor's lower locking mechanism failing, and that the subsequent noises would have been from the visor 'flapping' against the hull as the other locks failed, before tearing free and exposing the bow ramp. The subsequent failure of the bow ramp allowed water into the vehicle deck, which was identified as the main cause of the capsizing and sinking: RORO ferries with their wide vehicle decks are particularly vulnerable to capsizing if the vehicle deck is even slightly flooded because of free surface effect: the fluid's swirling motion across such a large area hampers the boat's ability to right itself after rolling with a wave. The same effect had caused the capsizing of seven years earlier.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: The report was critical of the crew's actions, particularly for failing to reduce speed before investigating the noises emanating from the bow, and for being unaware that the list was being caused by water entering the vehicle deck. There were also general criticisms of the delays in sounding the alarm, the passivity of the crew, and the lack of guidance from the bridge.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: Recommendations for modifications to be applied to similar ships included separation of the condition sensors from the latch and hinge mechanisms.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: In 1999, special training requirements in crowd and crisis management and human behaviour were extended to crew on all passenger ships, and amendments were made to watch-keeping standards. "Estonia"s distress beacons or EPIRBs required manual activation, which did not happen. Had they been activated automatically, it would have been immediately obvious that the ship was in distress and the location would have been clear. All EPIRBs were subsequently required to deploy automatically and the accident was "instrumental in the move to legislate Voyage Data Recorders". New International Maritime Organization (IMO) Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) liferaft regulations for rescue from listing ships in rough water were introduced.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: New designs, the "citadel concept" once again influenced by "Estonia", aim to ensure damaged ships have sufficient buoyancy to remain afloat, though cost will determine if any are built. SOLAS 90, which came into effect in 2010, specifies existing passenger ships' stability requirements and those in North West Europe must also be able to survive of water on the car deck.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: On 28 September 2020, a Swedish documentary was released which used underwater equipment to film the wreck. This investigation found a 4-metre hole in the ship's hull. This prompted the Estonian prime minister and foreign minister to meet with their Swedish and Finnish equivalents and announce that a "new technical investigation" would take place.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: The head of the Estonian investigation stated publicly that he believes this new information points to a collision with a submarine and that the hole could not have happened post-sinking. In October 2020, the Estonian government published a report stating that the hole was too small to have sunk the ship as quickly as it did. The Swedish documentary makers were prosecuted for violating the sanctity of the wreck, but were acquitted on 8 February 2021 as the diving happened on a German ship in international waters. Germany had not signed the treaty that declares sanctity over the site.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: By June 2021, laws allowing the examination of the wreck for investigation of the disaster were passed in the Swedish and Estonian Parliaments. Shortly after, the Swedish Accident Investigation Authority announced their plan to conduct dives at the grave site starting July 2021.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: The disaster had a major impact on ferry safety, leading to changes in safety regulations as well as in life-raft design, much as the RMS "Titanic" disaster did in 1912.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: Conspiracy theories exist about the cause of the sinking. German journalist Jutta Rabe and the British magazine "New Statesman" claim that laboratory tests on debris recovered illegally from Estonia's bow yielded trace evidence of a deliberate explosion, which they allege was concealed by the Swedish, British, and Russian governments to cover up an intelligence operation smuggling military hardware via the civilian ferry. Members of the Joint Accident Investigation Commission denied these claims, saying that the damage seen on the debris occurred during the visor's detachment from the vessel. The JAIC cited results from Germany's Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing, which found that Jutta Rabe's samples did not prove an explosion occurred.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: In the autumn of 2004, a former Swedish customs officer claimed on Sveriges Television that "Estonia" had been used to transport military equipment in September 1994. The Swedish and Estonian governments subsequently launched separate investigations, which both confirmed that non-explosive military equipment was aboard the ship on 14 and 20 September 1994. According to the Swedish Ministry of Defence, no such equipment was on board on the day of the disaster, and previous investigations by the Swedish Customs Service found no reports of any anomalous activity around the day of the disaster.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: In the aftermath of the disaster, many relatives of the deceased demanded that their loved ones be raised from international waters and given a land burial. Demands were also made that the entire ship be raised so that the cause of the disaster could be discovered by detailed inspection.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: Citing the practical difficulties and the moral implications of raising decaying bodies from the sea floor (the majority of the bodies were never recovered), and fearing the financial burden of lifting the entire hull to the surface and the salvage operation, the Swedish government suggested burying the whole ship "in situ" with a shell of concrete.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: As a preliminary step, thousands of tons of pebbles were dropped on the site. The "Estonia Agreement 1995", a treaty among Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Poland, Denmark, Russia and the United Kingdom, declared sanctity over the site, prohibiting their citizens from even approaching the wreck. The treaty is, however, only binding for citizens of the countries that are signatories. At least twice, the Swedish Navy has discovered diving operations at the wreck. The wreck's location is monitored on radar by the Finnish Navy.


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: The sinking of the "Estonia" has been the subject of a number of documentaries in addition to the feature film "Baltic Storm", including:


title: Sinking of the MS Estonia

text: A Finnish eight-part television series about the MS "Estonia"'s accident, produced by Fisher King company, is being worked on for the Nordic streaming service C More. According to the creators behind the series, the effort will be the most expensive drama series ever produced in Finland.


title: IPsec

text: In computing, Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) is a secure network protocol suite that authenticates and encrypts packets of data to provide secure encrypted communication between two computers over an Internet Protocol network. It is used in virtual private networks (VPNs).


title: IPsec

text: IPsec includes protocols for establishing mutual authentication between agents at the beginning of a session and negotiation of cryptographic keys to use during the session. IPsec can protect data flows between a pair of hosts ("host-to-host"), between a pair of security gateways ("network-to-network"), or between a security gateway and a host ("network-to-host").


title: IPsec

text: IPsec uses cryptographic security services to protect communications over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. It supports network-level peer authentication, data origin authentication, data integrity, data confidentiality (encryption), and replay protection (protection from replay attacks).


title: IPsec

text: The initial IPv4 suite was developed with few security provisions. As a part of the IPv4 enhancement, IPsec is a layer 3 OSI model or internet layer end-to-end security scheme. In contrast, while some other Internet security systems in widespread use operate above the network layer, such as Transport Layer Security (TLS) that operates above the transport layer and Secure Shell (SSH) that operates at the application layer, IPsec can automatically secure applications at the internet layer.


title: IPsec

text: Starting in the early 1970s, the Advanced Research Projects Agency sponsored a series of experimental ARPANET encryption devices, at first for native ARPANET packet encryption and subsequently for TCP/IP packet encryption; some of these were certified and fielded. From 1986 to 1991, the NSA sponsored the development of security protocols for the Internet under its Secure Data Network Systems (SDNS) program. This brought together various vendors including Motorola who produced a network encryption device in 1988. The work was openly published from about 1988 by NIST and, of these, "Security Protocol at Layer 3" (SP3) would eventually morph into the ISO standard Network Layer Security Protocol (NLSP).


title: IPsec

text: The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) formed the IP Security Working Group in 1992 to standardize openly specified security extensions to IP, called "IPsec". In 1995, the working group organized a few of the workshops with members from the five companies (TIS, Cisco, FTP, Checkpoint, etc.). During the IPSec workshops, the NRL's standards and Cisco and TIS' software are standardized as the public references, published as RFC-1825 through RFC-1827.


title: IPsec

text: The IPsec is an open standard as a part of the IPv4 suite. IPsec uses the following protocols to perform various functions:


title: IPsec

text: The Security Authentication Header (AH) was developed at the US Naval Research Laboratory in the early 1990s and is derived in part from previous IETF standards' work for authentication of the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) version 2. Authentication Header (AH) is a member of the IPsec protocol suite. AH ensures connectionless integrity by using a hash function and a secret shared key in the AH algorithm. AH also guarantees the data origin by authenticating IP packets. Optionally a sequence number can protect the IPsec packet's contents against replay attacks, using the sliding window technique and discarding old packets.


title: IPsec

text: The IP Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) was developed at the Naval Research Laboratory starting in 1992 as part of a DARPA-sponsored research project, and was openly published by IETF SIPP Working Group drafted in December 1993 as a security extension for SIPP. This ESP was originally derived from the US Department of Defense SP3D protocol, rather than being derived from the ISO Network-Layer Security Protocol (NLSP). The SP3D protocol specification was published by NIST in the late 1980s, but designed by the Secure Data Network System project of the US Department of Defense.


title: IPsec

text: Encapsulating Security Payload (ESP) is a member of the IPsec protocol suite. It provides origin authenticity through source authentication, data integrity through hash functions and confidentiality through encryption protection for IP packets. ESP also supports encryption-only and authentication-only configurations, but using encryption without authentication is strongly discouraged because it is insecure.


title: IPsec

text: Unlike Authentication Header (AH), ESP in transport mode does not provide integrity and authentication for the entire IP packet. However, in tunnel mode, where the entire original IP packet is encapsulated with a new packet header added, ESP protection is afforded to the whole inner IP packet (including the inner header) while the outer header (including any outer IPv4 options or IPv6 extension headers) remains unprotected.


title: IPsec

text: The IPsec protocols use a security association, where the communicating parties establish shared security attributes such as algorithms and keys. As such, IPsec provides a range of options once it has been determined whether AH or ESP is used. Before exchanging data, the two hosts agree on which symmetric encryption algorithm is used to encrypt the IP packet, for example AES or ChaCha20, and which hash function is used to ensure the integrity of the data, such as BLAKE2 or SHA256. These parameters are agreed for the particular session, for which a lifetime must be agreed and a session key.


title: IPsec

text: The algorithm for authentication is also agreed before the data transfer takes place and IPsec supports a range of methods. Authentication is possible through pre-shared key, where a symmetric key is already in the possession of both hosts, and the hosts send each other hashes of the shared key to prove that they are in possession of the same key. IPsec also supports public key encryption, where each host has a public and a private key, they exchange their public keys and each host sends the other a nonce encrypted with the other host's public key. Alternatively if both hosts hold a public key certificate from a certificate authority, this can be used for IPsec authentication.


title: IPsec

text: The security associations of IPsec are established using the Internet Security Association and Key Management Protocol (ISAKMP). ISAKMP is implemented by manual configuration with pre-shared secrets, Internet Key Exchange (IKE and IKEv2), Kerberized Internet Negotiation of Keys (KINK), and the use of IPSECKEY DNS records. RFC 5386 defines Better-Than-Nothing Security (BTNS) as an unauthenticated mode of IPsec using an extended IKE protocol. C. Meadows, C. Cremers, and others have used formal methods to identify various anomalies which exist in IKEv1 and also in IKEv2.


title: IPsec

text: In order to decide what protection is to be provided for an outgoing packet, IPsec uses the Security Parameter Index (SPI), an index to the security association database (SADB), along with the destination address in a packet header, which together uniquely identifies a security association for that packet. A similar procedure is performed for an incoming packet, where IPsec gathers decryption and verification keys from the security association database.


title: IPsec

text: For IP multicast a security association is provided for the group, and is duplicated across all authorized receivers of the group. There may be more than one security association for a group, using different SPIs, thereby allowing multiple levels and sets of security within a group. Indeed, each sender can have multiple security associations, allowing authentication, since a receiver can only know that someone knowing the keys sent the data. Note that the relevant standard does not describe how the association is chosen and duplicated across the group; it is assumed that a responsible party will have made the choice.


title: IPsec

text: The IPsec protocols AH and ESP can be implemented in a host-to-host transport mode, as well as in a network tunneling mode.


title: IPsec

text: In transport mode, only the payload of the IP packet is usually encrypted or authenticated. The routing is intact, since the IP header is neither modified nor encrypted; however, when the authentication header is used, the IP addresses cannot be modified by network address translation, as this always invalidates the hash value. The transport and application layers are always secured by a hash, so they cannot be modified in any way, for example by translating the port numbers.


title: IPsec

text: A means to encapsulate IPsec messages for NAT traversal has been defined by RFC documents describing the NAT-T mechanism.


title: IPsec

text: In tunnel mode, the entire IP packet is encrypted and authenticated. It is then encapsulated into a new IP packet with a new IP header. Tunnel mode is used to create virtual private networks for network-to-network communications (e.g. between routers to link sites), host-to-network communications (e.g. remote user access) and host-to-host communications (e.g. private chat).


title: IPsec

text: The IPsec can be implemented in the IP stack of an operating system. This method of implementation is done for hosts and security gateways. Various IPsec capable IP stacks are available from companies, such as HP or IBM. An alternative is so called bump-in-the-stack (BITS) implementation, where the operating system source code does not have to be modified. Here IPsec is installed between the IP stack and the network drivers. This way operating systems can be retrofitted with IPsec. This method of implementation is also used for both hosts and gateways. However, when retrofitting IPsec the encapsulation of IP packets may cause problems for the automatic path MTU discovery, where the maximum transmission unit (MTU) size on the network path between two IP hosts is established. If a host or gateway has a separate cryptoprocessor, which is common in the military and can also be found in commercial systems, a so-called bump-in-the-wire (BITW) implementation of IPsec is possible.


title: IPsec

text: When IPsec is implemented in the kernel, the key management and ISAKMP/IKE negotiation is carried out from user space. The NRL-developed and openly specified "PF_KEY Key Management API, Version 2" is often used to enable the application-space key management application to update the IPsec security associations stored within the kernel-space IPsec implementation. Existing IPsec implementations usually include ESP, AH, and IKE version 2. Existing IPsec implementations on Unix-like operating systems, for example, Solaris or Linux, usually include PF_KEY version 2.


title: IPsec

text: Embedded IPsec can be used to ensure the secure communication among applications running over constrained resource systems with a small overhead.


title: IPsec

text: IPsec was developed in conjunction with IPv6 and was originally required to be supported by all standards-compliant implementations of IPv6 before RFC 6434 made it only a recommendation. IPsec is also optional for IPv4 implementations. IPsec is most commonly used to secure IPv4 traffic.


title: IPsec

text: IPsec protocols were originally defined in RFC 1825 through RFC 1829, which were published in 1995. In 1998, these documents were superseded by RFC 2401 and RFC 2412 with a few incompatible engineering details, although they were conceptually identical. In addition, a mutual authentication and key exchange protocol Internet Key Exchange (IKE) was defined to create and manage security associations. In December 2005, new standards were defined in RFC 4301 and RFC 4309 which are largely a superset of the previous editions with a second version of the Internet Key Exchange standard IKEv2. These third-generation documents standardized the abbreviation of IPsec to uppercase “IP” and lowercase “sec”. “ESP” generally refers to RFC 4303, which is the most recent version of the specification.


title: IPsec

text: In 2013, as part of Snowden leaks, it was revealed that the US National Security Agency had been actively working to "Insert vulnerabilities into commercial encryption systems, IT systems, networks, and endpoint communications devices used by targets" as part of the Bullrun program. There are allegations that IPsec was a targeted encryption system.


title: IPsec

text: The OpenBSD IPsec stack came later on and also was widely copied. In a letter which OpenBSD lead developer Theo de Raadt received on 11 Dec 2010 from Gregory Perry, it is alleged that Jason Wright and others, working for the FBI, inserted "a number of backdoors and side channel key leaking mechanisms" into the OpenBSD crypto code. In the forwarded email from 2010, Theo de Raadt did not at first express an official position on the validity of the claims, apart from the implicit endorsement from forwarding the email. Jason Wright's response to the allegations: "Every urban legend is made more real by the inclusion of real names, dates, and times. Gregory Perry's email falls into this category. … I will state clearly that I did not add backdoors to the OpenBSD operating system or the OpenBSD Cryptographic Framework (OCF)." Some days later, de Raadt commented that "I believe that NETSEC was probably contracted to write backdoors as alleged. … If those were written, I don't believe they made it into our tree." This was published before the Snowden leaks.


title: IPsec

text: An alternative explanation put forward by the authors of the Logjam attack suggests that the NSA compromised IPsec VPNs by undermining the Diffie-Hellman algorithm used in the key exchange. In their paper, they allege the NSA specially built a computing cluster to precompute multiplicative subgroups for specific primes and generators, such as for the second Oakley group defined in RFC 2409. As of May 2015, 90% of addressable IPsec VPNs supported the second Oakley group as part of IKE. If an organization were to precompute this group, they could derive the keys being exchanged and decrypt traffic without inserting any software backdoors.


title: IPsec

text: A second alternative explanation that was put forward was that the Equation Group used zero-day exploits against several manufacturers' VPN equipment which were validated by Kaspersky Lab as being tied to the Equation Group and validated by those manufacturers as being real exploits, some of which were zero-day exploits at the time of their exposure. The Cisco PIX and ASA firewalls had vulnerabilities that were used for wiretapping by the NSA.


title: IPsec

text: Furthermore, IPsec VPNs using "Aggressive Mode" settings send a hash of the PSK in the clear. This can be and apparently is targeted by the NSA using offline dictionary attacks.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: Snapdragon Stadium, known during its planning and early construction phases as Aztec Stadium, is an outdoor college football stadium on the west coast of the United States, in San Diego, California. It is located on the campus of San Diego State University at SDSU Mission Valley, a non-contiguous expansion parcel west of the main campus. Opened in August 2022, the 35,000-seat stadium is the home of the San Diego State Aztecs of the Mountain West Conference in NCAA Division I FBS.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: Snapdragon Stadium is also the home of San Diego Wave FC of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and the San Diego Legion of Major League Rugby (MLR). In 2023, the stadium will host the 2023 World Lacrosse Championship. Ground was broken on August 17, 2020, and the stadium opened two years later in 2022 for an Aztecs scrimmage on August 20. Its first game was two weeks later on September 3, a 38–20 loss to the Arizona Wildcats of the Pac-12 Conference.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: The venue was built adjacent to the demolished San Diego Stadium, which had been the home of the school's football program since the stadium opened in 1967 until it was razed in 2020–2021. Later known as Jack Murphy Stadium, Qualcomm Stadium, and SDCCU Stadium, it was the home of the San Diego Chargers of the National Football League (NFL) from 1967 through 2016, and the expansion San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball (MLB) from 1969 through 2003.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: Following the announced departure of the NFL's Chargers from what was then SDCCU Stadium to the Los Angeles area in January 2017, focus began on building a new stadium for the Aztecs that was modern and the right size for the program. Over the course of the next nearly two years, the plan for what would become Snapdragon Stadium and the rest of the SDSU Mission Valley development (initially known as SDSU West) took shape. A competing redevelopment proposal surfaced, known as SoccerCity, which envisioned the SDCCU Stadium site being leased from the city and redeveloped with private funding if San Diego was awarded a Major League Soccer (MLS) team. Under this proposal, SDSU football would have the option of sharing the proposed smaller-capacity soccer stadium with the new MLS team. The SoccerCity proposal was placed on the November 2018 ballot in competition with the SDSU Mission Valley proposal, where the SDSU Mission Valley plan emerged victorious.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: On December 5, 2019, the school announced that it had received a $15 million gift from Dianne L. Bashor to help finance the new stadium, which led to its playing surface being named Bashor Field.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: On June 30, 2020, the city of San Diego approved the sale of the SDCCU Stadium site to San Diego State University and on August 10, 2020, the university officially took control of the property. San Diego State bought the entire , including the existing stadium, from the city for $88 million. Groundbreaking on the new stadium took place on August 17, just one week after SDSU took control of the site.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: The entire $3.5 billion SDSU Mission Valley project includes housing, office and retail space, hotels, and of parks and open space, including a river park along the San Diego River on adjacent city property, and will be developed in phases over 10–15 years. The stadium will seat 35,000 fans and is being built to support college football, non-football NCAA championship games, professional soccer, rugby, lacrosse, and special events such as concerts. The stadium was designed to be expandable to a capacity of 55,000 (complete with a plan and renderings for such an expansion) or more to accommodate a prospective NFL return to San Diego and/or future needs of the Aztecs football team.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: On December 6, 2021, San Diego State announced a naming rights agreement with Qualcomm, who also owned the naming rights to the original stadium. The stadium became known as Snapdragon Stadium, named after Qualcomm's Snapdragon brand of Systems on a chip.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: On December 15, 2021, San Diego Wave FC of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) announced it would move to Snapdragon Stadium starting in September 2022 following the stadium's completion; the club began its inaugural 2022 season at Torero Stadium at the University of San Diego.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: In January 2022, it was announced that San Diego would be home to the 2023 World Lacrosse Championship, with Snapdragon Stadium to be the primary venue.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: On February 2, 2022, the San Diego Legion of Major League Rugby (MLR) announced Snapdragon Stadium to be their new home beginning in 2023.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: Snapdragon Stadium opened for a SDSU scrimmage on August 20, 2022. The first game in the stadium was played on September 3, ending with the Aztecs being defeated 38–20 by the Arizona Wildcats. The game occurred during a heat wave, resulting in heat illnesses among attendees that required the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department to send five ambulances and three fire engines to treat around 200 people, 20 of which were hospitalized. By kickoff, the game started when the temperature reached , with attendees retreating from the seating area and into shade. On social media, the stadium design was called into question by fans because of the lack of shade. On September 8, San Diego Fire-Rescue stated that the department did not receive a heat injury and illness plan from the university, having only received the medical plan two days before the game, and wrote that "it was evident that the sheer number of patients at the game quickly overwhelmed the EMS resources on site and required assistance from SDFD." Around 12:30 pm PDT (UTC−7), SDFD and EMS deputy chiefs considered asking the university to cancel the game but decided that doing so would not resolve the situation.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: Wave FC set a new NWSL attendance record when it debuted in the new stadium on September 17, 2022 against Angel City FC. By August 28, about three weeks before the game, over 27,000 tickets had been sold. This total was comparable to the then-current league record of 27,278, set on August 29, 2021 when OL Reign played Portland Thorns FC at Lumen Field in Seattle as part of a doubleheader that also featured an MLS match between rivals Seattle Sounders FC and the Portland Timbers. The pre-sales for Wave FC's stadium debut had already surpassed the record for a standalone game of 25,218, set on August 11, 2019 when Thorns FC hosted the North Carolina Courage at Providence Park in Portland, Oregon. On September 1, the team announced the game had sold out, based on a soccer capacity of 32,000, and the official attendance for the game was announced as that number.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: San Diego will be the site of the 2023 World Lacrosse Championship, with Snapdragon Stadium being announced as the primary venue in January 2022. Torero Stadium on the campus of the University of San Diego and three additional fields on the main San Diego State campus are slated to be the other venues.


title: Snapdragon Stadium

text: San Diego is amongst the cities being considered for hosting matches during the 2031 (men's) and 2033 (women's) Rugby World Cup.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: Kim Hyo-yeon (born September 22, 1989), referred to as Hyoyeon or DJ Hyo, is a South Korean singer, dancer, DJ, and television personality. She debuted as a member of the girl group Girls' Generation in August 2007, which went on to become one of the best-selling artists in South Korea and one of the most popular K-pop groups worldwide. She has since participated in other SM Entertainment projects, including Girls' Generation-Oh!GG and Got the Beat. Since 2016, she has also released singles as a solo artist.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: Hyoyeon was born in Incheon, South Korea on September 22, 1989. She grew up with her parents and her younger brother, Kim Min-gu. Hyoyeon's formal dance training started in elementary school. At her neighborhood's small hip-hop school, she learned hip hop, jazz and Latin dance. In 1999, she enrolled in Winners Dance School, a famous dance school in South Korea specializing in popping, locking, animation and various other hip-hop styles. At the school she met Miss A's Min, with whom she formed the dance team Little Winners (). The duo performed at various showcases and was spotlighted by HipHoper.com in 2004.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: Hyoyeon auditioned for SM Entertainment at the age of 11 through the SM 2000 Casting System. Hyoyeon said she auditioned because her mother brought her to the offices of S.M. Entertainment in the hopes of meeting H.O.T. Hyoyeon then danced in an audition show. In 2004, along with Super Junior's Siwon, she was sent to study Chinese in Beijing. She received dance instruction from the Electric Boogaloos and top choreographers such as Kim Hye-rang, Poppin Seen, Kwang Hoo (aka Crazy Monkey), Poppin DS, Kwon Seok-jin (aka Locking Khan) and Black Beat's Shim Jae-won. She also worked with one of Justin Timberlake's choreographers and a few foreign teachers.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: Before debuting with Girls' Generation, she worked with a choreographer for Janet Jackson and was BoA's silhouette dancer during a performance at M.net KM Music Festival 2005. In 2007, she teamed up with Jae Won for a dance collaboration to "Anonymous". Hyoyeon was also picked as Korea's No. 1 idol dancer on Star News.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: Hyoyeon officially debuted as a member of Girls' Generation, a South Korean girl group formed by SM Entertainment, in August 2007.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On March 7, 2010, Hyoyeon and fellow Girls' Generation members Jessica and Sooyoung played cameo roles in episode 7 of the SBS television mini-series "Oh! My Lady", starring Chae Rim and labelmate Choi Siwon. In November 2011, Hyoyeon and fellow Girls' Generation member Sunny became cast members for the second season of "Invincible Youth", a South Korean reality television show.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: In April 2012, Hyoyeon became a contestant in the second season of "Dancing with the Stars", a competitive ballroom dancing television show. Hyoyeon and her partner, Kim Hyung-seok, ended up winning second place. In October 2012, Hyoyeon participated in S.M. Entertainment's special dance group Younique. The group released a single titled "Maxstep" as part of the collaboration between S.M. and Hyundai.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: In January 2013, Hyoyeon made a guest appearance on the television show "Blind Test Show 180 Degrees", where she took on the challenge of dancing to various types of club music. In May 2013, Hyoyeon was chosen as an Asian ambassador for the Hong Kong branch of Topshop. In June 2013, Hyoyeon and fellow Girls' Generation member Yuri became coaches for the contestants on "Dancing 9", a competitive dancing television show.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On February 12, 2015, Hyoyeon was featured in labelmate Amber's "Shake That Brass" music video, in which she plays a trumpet. On March 14, 2015, Hyoyeon was featured as the rapper in a performance by boyband S on "Immortal Songs 2", with which they won with 423 points. In June 2015, Hyoyeon began hosting her own reality television show, "Hyoyeon's One Million Likes", broadcast on OnStyle. Before the show was officially announced, an Instagram account was created where Hyoyeon posted pictures and videos with the goal of receiving one million likes from fans. On July 1, 2015, Hyoyeon became the first Girls' Generation member to publish a book with "Hyo Style", in which she shares tips on beauty, fashion and lifestyle. The book contains 142 pages and comes with a DVD. In September 2015, Hyoyeon became a contestant alongside Seo In Young, MBLAQ member Mir and AOA member Hyejeong, among others, in a television show titled "Mash Up", where they competed in DJing. On September 11, 2015, Hyoyeon was featured in rapper Vasco's "Whoa Ha!" music video, where guest stars lip-sync along to the song.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On February 3, 2016, Hyoyeon was a special MC on the OnStyle television show "Get It Beauty". In May 2015, she became a cast member of the Korean-Chinese reality television show "Star Advent". The show followed 12 Korean and Chinese celebrities tasked with working as office workers in foreign countries and premiered on July 9. In June 2016, she became a contestant alongside Shinee member Taemin, Sistar member Bora and Infinite member Hoya, among others, in the Mnet television show "Hit The Stage", where they collaborate with professional dancers to compete in different genres of dancing under a given theme.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: Later in June 2016, Hyoyeon was featured in the song "Up & Down" from fellow Girls' Generation member Taeyeon's second mini-album "Why". In August 2016, she collaborated with miss A member Min and 2AM member Jo Kwon to form a special group named Triple T and release a single titled "Born to Be Wild", featuring Park Jin-young, as part of S.M. Entertainment's Station music project. In December 2016, Hyoyeon released her first solo song since debut titled "Mystery" as another single for SM Station. To accompany her solo release, she performed the song on various Korean music shows and starred in her reality show, "Hyoyeon's 10 Million Likes 2".


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On April 12, 2018, SM Entertainment announced that Hyoyeon would return with a new single titled "Sober" on April 18, with new stage name Hyo (stylized in all uppercase), under SM's electronic dance music label Scream Records. The new single is a tropical-future house song characterized by electric guitar riffs and hook. It was also revealed that she would also be promoting actively as a DJ in domestic club tours and EDM festivals under her new stage name.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: In August 2018, Hyoyeon was announced to be part of Girls' Generation's second sub-unit, Oh!GG, which consists of the five members of the group who remained under SM Entertainment. The group released their debut single, "Lil' Touch", in September.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On November 7, 2018, SM Entertainment revealed teaser images with the announcement that Hyoyeon would be releasing her second official track as DJ Hyo with a new single titled "Punk Right Now", which features American DJ 3LAU, on November 13.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On July 20, 2019, Hyoyeon released a new single, "Badster", which is a psychedelic trance song she co-produced and co-wrote; an animated music video was released on the same day. It has Korean and English versions.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: In May 2020, Hyoyeon joined the competitive reality show "Good Girl". Several singles were released as a part of the program.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On July 22, Hyoyeon released a new single, "Dessert", alongside rappers Loopy and (G)I-DLE's Soyeon. It marked her return to music shows after debuting as a DJ.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On August 9, 2021, Hyoyeon released the new single "Second", featuring BIBI. The song debuted at position 17 on "Billboard" World Digital Songs in the chart issue dated August 21, 2021.[10]


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On December 27, 2021, Hyoyeon was revealed as a member of supergroup Got the Beat, alongside Girls' Generation groupmate Taeyeon and other labelmates. The group debuted on January 3, 2022 with single "Step Back".


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On May 2, 2022, SM Entertainment announced that Hyoyeon would be releasing her first extended play titled "Deep" on May 16. It includes the lead single of the same name, an original B-side, and several previous singles, in a total of seven tracks.


title: Kim Hyo-yeon

text: On May 17, SM Entertainment announced that Girls' Generation will have a full-group comeback for their fifteenth anniversary in August, ending their five-year hiatus, which will include Hyoyeon.


title: AArch64

text: Announced in October 2011, ARMv8-A represents a fundamental change to the ARM architecture. It adds an optional 64-bit architecture, named "AArch64", and the associated new "A64" instruction set. AArch64 provides user-space compatibility with the existing 32-bit architecture ("AArch32" / ARMv7-A), and instruction set ("A32"). The 16-32bit Thumb instruction set is referred to as "T32" and has no 64-bit counterpart. ARMv8-A allows 32-bit applications to be executed in a 64-bit OS, and a 32-bit OS to be under the control of a 64-bit hypervisor. ARM announced their Cortex-A53 and Cortex-A57 cores on 30 October 2012. Apple was the first to release an ARMv8-A compatible core (Cyclone) in a consumer product (iPhone 5S). AppliedMicro, using an FPGA, was the first to demo ARMv8-A. The first ARMv8-A SoC from Samsung is the Exynos 5433 used in the Galaxy Note 4, which features two clusters of four Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores in a big.LITTLE configuration; but it will run only in AArch32 mode.


title: AArch64

text: To both AArch32 and AArch64, ARMv8-A makes VFPv3/v4 and advanced SIMD (Neon) standard. It also adds cryptography instructions supporting AES, SHA-1/SHA-256 and finite field arithmetic.


title: AArch64

text: AArch64 was introduced in ARMv8-A and is included in subsequent versions of ARMv8-A. It was also introduced in ARMv8-R as an option, after its introduction in ARMv8-A; it is not included in ARMv8-M.


title: AArch64

text: In December 2014, ARMv8.1-A, an update with "incremental benefits over v8.0", was announced. The enhancements fell into two categories: changes to the instruction set, and changes to the exception model and memory translation.


title: AArch64

text: The Scalable Vector Extension (SVE) is "an optional extension to the ARMv8.2-A architecture and newer" developed specifically for vectorization of high-performance computing scientific workloads. The specification allows for variable vector lengths to be implemented from 128 to 2048 bits. The extension is complementary to, and does not replace, the NEON extensions.


title: AArch64

text: A 512-bit SVE variant has already been implemented on the Fugaku supercomputer using the Fujitsu A64FX ARM processor. It aims to be the world's highest-performing supercomputer with "the goal of beginning full operations around 2021."


title: AArch64

text: SVE is supported by the GCC compiler, with GCC 8 supporting automatic vectorization and GCC 10 supporting C intrinsics. As of July 2020, LLVM and clang support C and IR intrinsics. ARM's own fork of LLVM supports auto-vectorization.


title: AArch64

text: In March 2021, ARMv9-A was announced. ARMv9-A's baseline is all the features from ARMv8.5. ARMv9-A also adds:


title: AArch64

text: For example, fine-grained traps, Wait-for-Event (WFE) instructions, EnhancedPAC2 and FPAC. The Bfloat16 extensions for SVE and Neon are mainly for deep learning use.


title: AArch64

text: In September 2021, ARMv8.8-A and ARMv9.3-A were announced. Their enhancements fell into these categories:


title: AArch64

text: Optional AArch64 support was added to the Armv8-R profile, with the first Arm core implementing it being the Cortex-R82. It adds the A64 instruction set, with some changes to the memory barrier instructions.


title: Sodium acetate

text: Sodium acetate, CHCOONa, also abbreviated NaOAc, is the sodium salt of acetic acid. This colorless deliquescent salt has a wide range of uses.


title: Sodium acetate

text: Sodium acetate is used as the carbon source for culturing bacteria. Sodium acetate is also useful for increasing yields of DNA isolation by ethanol precipitation.


title: Sodium acetate

text: Sodium acetate is used in the textile industry to neutralize sulfuric acid waste streams and also as a photoresist while using aniline dyes. It is also a pickling agent in chrome tanning and helps to impede vulcanization of chloroprene in synthetic rubber production. In processing cotton for disposable cotton pads, sodium acetate is used to eliminate the buildup of static electricity.


title: Sodium acetate

text: Sodium acetate is used to mitigate water damage to concrete by acting as a concrete sealant, while also being environmentally benign and cheaper than the commonly used epoxy alternative for sealing concrete against water permeation.


title: Sodium acetate

text: Sodium acetate may be added to food as a seasoning, sometimes in the form of sodium diacetate, a one-to-one complex of sodium acetate and acetic acid, given the E-number E262. It is often used to give potato chips a salt and vinegar flavour, and may be used as a substitute for vinegar itself on potato chips as it doesn't add moisture to the final product. Sodium acetate (anhydrous) is widely used as a shelf-life extending agent, pH control agent It is safe to eat at low concentration.


title: Sodium acetate

text: A solution of sodium acetate (a basic salt of acetic acid) and acetic acid can act as a buffer to keep a relatively constant pH level. This is useful especially in biochemical applications where reactions are pH-dependent in a mildly acidic range (pH 4–6).


title: Sodium acetate

text: Sodium acetate is also used in heating pads, hand warmers, and hot ice. Sodium acetate trihydrate crystals melt at , dissolving in their water of crystallization. When they are heated past the melting point and subsequently allowed to cool, the aqueous solution becomes supersaturated. This solution is capable of cooling to room temperature without forming crystals. By pressing on a metal disc within the heating pad, a nucleation center is formed, causing the solution to crystallize back into solid sodium acetate trihydrate. The bond-forming process of crystallization is exothermic. The latent heat of fusion is about 264–289 kJ/kg. Unlike some types of heat packs, such as those dependent upon irreversible chemical reactions, a sodium acetate heat pack can be easily reused by immersing the pack in boiling water for a few minutes, until the crystals are completely dissolved, and allowing the pack to slowly cool to room temperature.


title: Sodium acetate

text: For laboratory use, sodium acetate is inexpensive and usually purchased instead of being synthesized. It is sometimes produced in a laboratory experiment by the reaction of acetic acid, commonly in the 5–8% solution known as vinegar, with sodium carbonate ("washing soda"), sodium bicarbonate ("baking soda"), or sodium hydroxide ("lye", or "caustic soda"). Any of these reactions produce sodium acetate and water. When a sodium and carbonate ion-containing compound is used as the reactant, the carbonate anion from sodium bicarbonate or carbonate, reacts with the hydrogen from the carboxyl group (-COOH) in acetic acid, forming carbonic acid. Carbonic acid readily decomposes under normal conditions into gaseous carbon dioxide and water. This is the reaction taking place in the well-known "volcano" that occurs when the household products, baking soda and vinegar, are combined.


title: Sodium acetate

text: Industrially, sodium acetate trihydrate is prepared by reacting acetic acid with sodium hydroxide using water as the solvent.


title: Sodium acetate

text: The crystal structure of anhydrous sodium acetate has been described as alternating sodium-carboxylate and methyl group layers. Sodium acetate trihydrate's structure consists of distorted octahedral coordination at sodium. Adjacent octahedra share edges to form one-dimensional chains. Hydrogen bonding in two dimensions between acetate ions and water of hydration links the chains into a three-dimensional network.


title: Sodium acetate

text: Sodium acetate undergoes decarboxylation to form methane (CH) under forcing conditions (pyrolysis in the presence of sodium hydroxide):


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: According to spiritual beliefs, an aura or energy field is a colored emanation said to enclose a human body or any animal or object. In some esoteric positions, the aura is described as a subtle body. Psychics and holistic medicine practitioners often claim to have the ability to see the size, color and type of vibration of an aura.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: In spiritual alternative medicine, the human being aura is seen as part of a hidden anatomy that reflects the state of being and health of a client, often understood to even comprise centers of vital force called chakras. Such claims are not supported by scientific evidence and are thus pseudoscience. When tested under scientific controlled experiments, the ability to see auras has not been proven to exist.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: In Latin and Ancient Greek, "aura" means wind, breeze or breath. It was used in Middle English to mean "gentle breeze". By the end of the 19th century, the word was used in some spiritualist circles to describe a speculated subtle emanation around the body.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: The concept of auras was first popularized by Charles Webster Leadbeater, a former priest of the Church of England and a member of the mystic Theosophical Society. Leadbeater had studied theosophy in India, and believed he had the capacity to use his clairvoyant powers to make scientific investigations. He claimed that he had discovered that most men came from Mars but the more advanced men came from the Moon, and that hydrogen atoms were made of six bodies contained in an egg-like form. In his book "Man Visible and Invisible" published in 1903, Leadbeater illustrated the aura of man at various stages of his moral evolution, from the "savage" to the saint. In 1910, Leadbeater introduced the modern conception of auras by incorporating the Tantric notion of chakras in his book "The Inner Life". Leadbeater did not simply present the Tantric beliefs to the West, he reconstructed and reinterpreted them by mixing them with his own ideas, without acknowledging the sources of these innovations. Some of Leadbeater's innovations are describing chakras as energy vortices, and associating each of them with a gland, an organ and other body parts.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: In the following years, Leadbeater's ideas on the aura and chakras were adopted and reinterpreted by other theosophists such as Rudolf Steiner and Edgar Cayce, but his occult anatomy remained of minor interest within the esoteric counterculture until the 1980s, when it was picked up by the New Age movement.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: In 1977, American esotericist Christopher Hills published the book "Nuclear Evolution: The Rainbow Body", which presented a modified version of Leadbeater's occult anatomy. Whereas Leadbeater had drawn each chakras with intricately detailed shapes and multiple colors, Hills presented them as a sequence of centers, each one being associated with a color of the rainbow. Most of the subsequent New Age writers based their representations of the aura on Hill's interpretation of Leadbeater's ideas. Chakras became a part of mainstream esoteric speculations in the 1980s and 1990s. Many New Age techniques that aim to clear blockages of the chakras were developed during those years, such as crystal healing and aura-soma. Chakras were, by the late 1990s, less connected with their theosophical and Hinduist roots, and more infused with New Age ideas. A variety of New Age books proposed different links between each chakras and colors, personality traits, illnesses, Christian sacraments, etc. Various type of holistic healing within the New Age movement claim to use aura reading techniques, such as bioenergetic analysis, spiritual energy and energy medicine.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: In yoga participants attempt to focus on, or enhance their "auric energy shield". The concept of auric energy is spiritual and is concerned with metaphysics. Some people think that the aura carries a person's soul after death.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: There have been numerous attempts to capture an energy field around the human body, going as far back as photographs by French physician Hippolyte Baraduc in the 1890s. Supernatural interpretations of these images have often been the result of a lack of understanding of the simple natural phenomena behind them, such as heat emanating from a human body producing aura-like images under infrared photography.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: In 1939, Semyon Davidovich Kirlian discovered that by placing an object or body part directly on photographic paper, and then passing a high voltage across the object, he would obtain the image of a glowing contour surrounding the object. This process came to be known as Kirlian photography. Some parapsychologists, such as Thelma Moss of UCLA, have proposed that these images show levels of psychic powers and bioenergies. However, studies have found that the Kirlian effect is caused by the presence of moisture on the object being photographed. Electricity produces an area of gas ionization around the object if it is moist, which is the case for living things. This causes an alternation of the electric charge pattern on the film. After rigorous experimentations, no mysterious process has been discovered in relation to the Kirlian photography.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: More recent attempts at capturing auras include the Aura Imaging cameras and software introduced by Guy Coggins in 1992. Coggins claims that his software uses biofeedback data to color the picture of the subject. The technique has failed to yield reproducible results.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: One test involved placing people in a dark room and asking the psychic to state how many auras she could observe. Only chance results were obtained.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: Recognition of auras has occasionally been tested on television. One test involved an "aura reader" standing on one side of a room with an opaque partition separating her from a number of slots which might contain either actual people or mannequins. The aura reader failed to identify the slots containing people, incorrectly stating that all contained people.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: In another televised test another aura reader was placed before a partition where five people were standing. He claimed that he could see their auras from behind the partition. As each person moved out, the reader was asked to identify where that person was standing behind the slot. He identified two out of five correctly.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: Attempts to prove the existence of auras scientifically have repeatedly met with failure; for example people are unable to see auras in complete darkness, and auras have never been successfully used to identify people when their identifying features are otherwise obscured in controlled tests. A 1999 study concluded that conventional sensory cues such as radiated body heat might be mistaken for evidence of a metaphysical phenomenon.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: Psychologist Andrew Neher has written that "there is no good evidence to support the notion that auras are, in any way, psychic in origin." Studies in laboratory conditions have demonstrated that auras are instead best explained as visual illusions known as afterimages. Neurologists contend that people may perceive auras because of effects within the brain: epilepsy, migraines, or the influence of psychedelic drugs such as LSD.


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: It has been suggested that auras may result from synaesthesia. However, a 2012 study discovered no link between auras and synaesthesia, concluding "the discrepancies found suggest that both phenomena are phenomenological and behaviourally dissimilar." Clinical neurologist Steven Novella has written: "Given the weight of the evidence it seems that the connection between auras and synaesthesia is speculative and based on superficial similarities that are likely coincidental."


title: Aura (paranormal)

text: Bridgette Perez, in a review for the "Skeptical Inquirer", wrote: "perceptual distortions, illusions, and hallucinations might promote belief in auras... Psychological factors, including absorption, fantasy proneness, vividness of visual imagery, and after-images, might also be responsible for the phenomena of the aura."


title: Tridha Choudhury

text: Tridha Choudhury is an Indian actress who predominantly appears in Hindi series and films and Telugu films. She won the title, "Clean & Clear Times of India Freshface 2011". Her first movie was "Mishawr Rawhoshyo" in 2013, directed by Srijit Mukherji. She made her television debut in the Star Plus series "Dahleez" which was premiered on 14 March 2016. Her latest work being Bandish Bandits directed by Anand Tewari & Aashram by Prakash Jha.


title: Tridha Choudhury

text: In 2020, she appeared on the Amazon Prime Video web series "Bandish Bandits" and the MX Player original web series "Aashram".


title: Tridha Choudhury

text: Choudhury was born in Kolkata, West Bengal, She studied in M. P. Birla Foundation Higher Secondary School and attended Scottish Church College in Kolkata.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Smite is a 2014 free-to-play, third-person multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game developed and published by Hi-Rez Studios for Microsoft Windows, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch, and Amazon Luna. In "Smite", players control a god, goddess or other mythological figure and take part in team-based combat, using their abilities and tactics against other player-controlled gods and non-player-controlled "minions".


title: Smite (video game)

text: The game has multiple player versus player (PVP) modes, many playable characters, and has a successful esports scene with multiple tournaments, including the annual million-dollar Smite World Championship.


title: Smite (video game)

text: "Smite" features many different game modes with the largest being Conquest. Players can choose between Training (vs AI), Custom, Co-Op (with clan/friends), Normal and Ranked play styles. From there, they can choose between a variety of standard game modes. Special event games with unique rules like unlimited gold are also often introduced.


title: Smite (video game)

text: With every game, players have to choose a god or other figure to play as. Currently, players can choose between a large variety of characters from different pantheons including, but not limited to, Babylonian, Celtic, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, Japanese, Norse, Polynesian, Slavic and Yoruba. The characters of King Arthur's legends (referred to as the Arthurian pantheon in-game) and the Cthulhu Mythos (referred to as the pantheon of the Great Old Ones) are also considered pantheons in this video game.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Each character is classified as one of the following classes: Assassin, Guardian, Hunter, Mage, or Warrior. Unless otherwise stated, two players on the same team cannot choose the same character (in competitive modes and those using a Draft pick method, each player must use a different character). Successful team configurations are typically based on standard RPG raid configurations (tank, healer, physical/magical damage) during god selection.


title: Smite (video game)

text: The player controls the god in a third-person perspective which is a unique characteristic of this MOBA, as other games of this genre are typically played from a top-down perspective. Each god has a basic attack, a passive trait and four abilities with varying effects, such as area damage, crowd control, buffs and many more. These abilities are acquired and upgraded when the player's character levels up by gaining experience from being in range of minions when they are killed, taking down towers or phoenixes and defeating enemy characters. The maximum level is 20 and each successive level is more difficult to reach. Gold (used to buy items that increase power, defense and passive effects, potions, wards and abilities) is accumulated through standard periodic income, by slaying enemies (player and NPC alike) or selling owned items.


title: Smite (video game)

text: The large areas between the lanes make up what is called the "jungle", where computer-controlled monsters such as packs of cyclopes or Furies (the latter alternately referred to as harpies) periodically spawn at specific locations distributed symmetrically across the map. Killing certain monsters in said jungle causes a "buff" to drop on the ground where it can be picked up by a player, which depending on the type of monster killed will grant the player bonuses to stats such as damage dealt, movement speed, attack speed. There are three special neutral monsters who appear less frequently that when killed will grant the entire team who killed it a powerful damage buff for a medium length of time, set amount of Gold, and a speed boost when coming out of the base respectively. There are also some monsters which do not offer a buff, only experience and gold.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Conquest is the default game mode for any MOBA like "Smite" or "League of Legends". It's a three-lane map based on "Warcraft III"s Defense of the Ancients map.


title: Smite (video game)

text: In Conquest, players are formed into two teams with five players on each team. All players begin at opposite sides of a map at their team's "fountain". Before the players enter the map, they are granted an amount of gold to buy starting items. These items grant special bonuses or abilities that enhance the player's god. There are three continuous "lanes" running from one side of the map to the other. Each lane is defended by a "Phoenix" which is accompanied by a pair of extra defensive towers. Phoenixes and towers deal a large amount of damage to any enemies that come too close.


title: Smite (video game)

text: The goal of each game is to destroy the opposing team's Phoenixes and the Titan, a giant warrior who must be defeated to win the game. The players are accompanied by "minions", small soldiers with a weak attack. These minions spawn at the Phoenixes every thirty seconds and run along their lane until they meet opposition and attack immediately. Archers will attack not only players and other minions but also towers, Phoenixes and the Titan. In fact, their presence is required for players to deal full damage to these objectives. Defensive positions will prioritize enemy minions over players, allowing players to attack a tower without receiving damage.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Towers will fire upon players if there are no minions nearby or the player attacks an enemy player under their tower. If a game is going badly for a certain team they can decide to surrender after at least 10 minutes, though this requires a majority of the team (4 players to 1) to agree. In the event of players dropping, two players on either team can choose to pause the game for 30 seconds to wait. If a team is down by one or more players, they can surrender within 6 minutes.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Joust is similar to Conquest, except each team has only three players and the map has only one lane with a jungle on each side. Players also start at level 3, due to the smaller map size and increased combat. There is a jungle boss called Bull Demon King in the side lane that renders the opposing team's tower or phoenix unable to attack enemy minions or players. This boss also provides a team buff that gives both health and mana regeneration. Teams have one tower, one phoenix and a titan each.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Slash resembles both Joust and Conquest, except it has two lanes with five players on each team. Each team has their own respective jungle, while three contested jungles are located in the centre (left, right and mid). Players start at level three and the middle jungle gets stronger as the match goes on, eventually spawning the boss Apophis. There are additional jungle bosses across the map that, if killed, spawn siege juggernauts, which can destroy towers and kill players and minions. Teams have two towers, two phoenixes and a titan each.


title: Smite (video game)

text: The name Slash is a portmanteau of the two discontinued game modes that it is based on - Siege and Clash. Slash replaced these two modes in 2022.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Assault is a one-lane fight with random gods assigned to each player. Each team has five players, and there are various health orbs scattered upon the map. Teams have two towers, one phoenix and a titan each. There are no jungle camps and the only goal is to push the minion waves forwards and destroy all of the enemy structures, with the game ending at the death of a Titan. Additionally, once a player has left the fountain, they cannot return to base to buy items or regenerate their health until they die.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Arena has no towers nor titans and the phoenixes can not be attacked (they instead defend team bases). Each team has five players in an open colosseum-like arena. There are three jungle camps on each side of the map (left and right) and a single stream of minions running to the opposing team's portal. Each time a minion is killed or enters a portal, one point is deducted from the enemy team's total. Each time a god is killed, 5 points are taken from the enemy team's total.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Teams can also spawn minotaurs after collectively killing 10 enemy gods, which give big point boosts if they survive long enough to reach the enemy portal (15 points are taken from the enemy team's total). Points start at 500 for each team and go down until one team reaches 0 and loses.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Passive gold income is greatly increased for this game mode and the spawn timers are greatly decreased. Each god starts at level 3 and has more starting gold than other game modes.


title: Smite (video game)

text: The matchmaking system uses a modified version of the TrueSkill ranking system. Around December 2013, there was a feature added that allowed players to choose between US and EU servers, but was later removed from the game due to issues with the matchmaking system. This feature was eventually re-added. Originally, most modes used to operate on queues with 3-minute matchmaking timers. Every three minutes, matches would be made from the group of people in queue at that time. In late 2014, that system was replaced with a more traditional non-timed one (a more popular format in many MOBAs) that looks for an optimal match instead of just the best match-ups at the present time. In this system, if it takes 5 minutes or more to match a player, the game will gradually lower its requirements until a match is found. A new matchmaking system similar to the original one was introduced in 2018, with different times for different modes. The system will prioritize the player's general performance over their account level.


title: Smite (video game)

text: In Ranked Leagues, players are matched by a variation of Elo, a system that rates players with a number that indicates how well the individual skill of that player is. The player will be matched with players that have a similar rating as them. The goal of this system is to have 2 individual teams that have a similar TOTAL Elo. Ranked mode is available for Conquest and Joust.


title: Smite (video game)

text: "Smite" was made available to the public for the first time on May 31, 2012, with its closed beta, transitioning into open beta on January 24, 2013. The game was officially released on March 25, 2014. Around that time, "Smite" reached 3 million players and later 4 million players in June that same year. In 2015, more than 10 million players have played "Smite". In June 2016, Hi-Rez Studios announced the game attracted 20 million players. In 2019, the game surpassed 30 million players and generated 300 million dollars. In April 2020, Hi-Rez reported that the game had over 40 million players.


title: Smite (video game)

text: On August 21, 2013, Hi-Rez Studios partnered themselves with Tencent, an online media company that publishes video games in China. On June 5, 2014, Hi-Rez Studios announced they partnered with Level Up! Games to bring the game to the Latin American region. In October 2014, Oceanic servers were added and in August 2016 southeast Asian servers were added. In October 2017, the Chinese client was announced to be merged with the international client, with migration taking place late November.


title: Smite (video game)

text: In mid-2014, Hi-Rez Studios implemented a system by which players could join professional leagues in teams of 5. Players first played in online competitions, then progressed to offline competitions. Next, the teams were ranked according to how well they did within these competitions, and finally, the top teams were invited to compete in the "Smite" World Championship. From January 9–11, 2015, Hi-Rez Studios hosted the first "Smite" World Championship. Teams from North America, South America, Europe and China travelled to Atlanta for the tournament. The $2.6 million prize pool for the tournament was at the time the third-highest in esports, behind the third and fourth iterations of "Dota 2"s The International and just slightly ahead of the "League of Legends" World Championships. One of the North American teams, COGnitive Prime, took home the first place prize with a little over $1.3 million.


title: Smite (video game)

text: In July 2015, Stew Chisam, president of Hi-Rez Studios, announced that after discussing the prizing structure of "Smite" esports with team owners, players and members of other esports communities, Hi-Rez would be placing a cap on the prize pool for the "Smite" World Championships at $1 million. This decision was based to pay out more money to more players throughout the year instead of paying the bulk of earned prize money at a single event.


title: Smite (video game)

text: In January 2016, the "Smite" World Championship was held, returning to Atlanta, with the total prize of $1 million awarded.


title: Smite (video game)

text: "Smite" is a freemium game that is free to play but has in-game purchases for player skins, boost and more. It has two in-game currencies – gems and favor. Each has a different value and can be used to purchase different in-game items.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Gods in the free version are available on a monthly rotating basis, with only a dozen playable gods available at any given time. Players can pay to unlock gods, bonus skins, emotes, character taunts/dances, and access to Odyssey and Battle Pass quests.Many of these skins are limited editions and related to special events (i.e. E3 Tyr skin given only to 2015 convention attendees).


title: Smite (video game)

text: During its beta phase in 2013, the company sold lifetime passes for $59.99 to unlock all future gods. There are currently over 115 selectable gods in five classes: Assassin, Warrior, Guardian, Mage and Hunter.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Many skins represent brand partnerships including "Monstercat", "RWBY", "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles", "Bob Ross", "Stranger Things", "", "Transformers", "Slipknot" and "Nickelodeon". As of 2019, the game generated $300 million in revenue for Hi-Rez Studios and created over 450 jobs.


title: Smite (video game)

text: "Smite" received generally favorable reviews from critics. The game currently holds a score of 83 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on a dozen reviews by major video game critics.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Leah B. Jackson of "IGN" rated the game 8/10 and wrote that she was delighted with the wide variety of different gods and the detailed models, indicating "A new perspective on familiar game design can make everything feel fresh, and "Smite" doesn't stop there". Wes Fenlon from "PCGamer" rated the game 86/100, criticizing the low entry barriers for ranked games and emphasizes "Smite"s moderate willingness to provide new players with an easy entry into the MOBA genre. Keith Milburn from "NZGamer" reports some IA issues on the PlayStation 4 version that made the game less fluid. He praises the mixture of elements in "Smite" with PvE to create a pleasant chaos, which scores with MMO-like elements. Paulmichael Contreras from "PlayStation Life Style" describes the free-to-play model from "Smite" as a fair system without falling into the area of "pay-to-win". Champions that can be bought extra fit well into the game balance without being clearly better than others, especially since paying for game content is just an additional option. Implementation on the various platforms is also highlighted. "GamesRadar+" listed in their top "Free PS4 games: The best titles you can download without paying a thing", saying "With a current line-up of 93 playable hero deities covering ranged and melee archetypes (with separate magical and physical combat types), spread over five distinct classes, there's a huge amount of tactical team play to get stuck into. The free-to-play model is pretty damn pleasant, too". "Digital Trends" listed "Smite" in their top "The best free-to-play games for 2020", indicating that ""Smite" has been a mainstay in the MOBA genre since 2014. It stands out for its third-person presentation, differentiating itself from "League", "Heroes of the Storm", and "Dota 2"". "CulturedVultures" ranked "Smite" fourth in their list of the top "20 Best Free Games On Steam". "TheGamer" listed the game 7th in their top 10 "Free-to-Play Switch Games Actually Worth the Grind".


title: Smite (video game)

text: In June 2012, some Hindu leaders became upset at the inclusion of several Hindu gods in "Smite" and the fact that they are player-controlled. The deities that were in question were Kali, Agni and Vamana (the only playable Hindu deities at the time) and there was particular opposition to how Kali was dressed. Rajan Zed, the president of Universal Society of Hinduism, released a statement urging Hi-Rez to remove these gods from the game, claiming their presence is trivialized and in other words, offensive to the devoted. Since players control the gods, this is seen as offensive to the faithful.


title: Smite (video game)

text: Despite the response from Hi-Rez, in early July 2012, the Hindu leader who spoke out against the game had not given up on his quest to rid "Smite" of Hindu deities and since his initial statement he has gained new backers from other faiths that have come together in support of his stance that the game's content is offensive. Rajin Zed was joined by Rabbi Elizabeth Beyer and Buddhist Jikai Phil Bryan in condemning the game's content as offensive. These leaders have labelled the old Kali model as being depicted in a "pornographic style," which appeared to be their main concern. The Kali character went under a major art and gameplay overhaul in December 2013, which included more concealing armour. Despite the protests, Hi-Rez has continued to expand the Hindu Pantheon roster, with its most recent addition being Shiva.


title: Tonkotsu ramen

text: The broth for tonkotsu ramen is based upon pork bones, and in Japanese means "pork bones". The soup broth is prepared by boiling pork bones in water for a significant amount of time, up to eighteen hours, and the broth is typically cloudy in appearance. Additional broth ingredients can include onion, garlic, spring onions, ginger, pork back fat, pig's trotters, oil and chicken carcasses. For service, cooked ramen noodles and slices of roasted or braised pork belly are added, and additional ingredients can include kombu, kikurage, shōyu, chili bean paste, sesame seeds and others.


title: Tonkotsu ramen

text: The traditional preparation method for the ramen noodles used in tonkotsu ramen is for the noodles to be hard in the center. Some ramen shops allow customers to select the level of firmness for the noodles, including "futsu" for regular or standard, "harigane" for very hard, "barikata" for al dente and "yawamen" for soft. Some restaurants also provide a second order of noodles if requested by the customer, in a system referred to as "kaedama".


title: Tonkotsu ramen

text: Tonkotsu ramen originated in Kurume, Fukuoka Prefecture, which is located on the northern shore of Kyushu island in Japan, and it is a specialty dish in Fukuoka and Kyushu. In Fukuoka, the dish is often referred to as as Hakata is the historical name of central Fukuoka, but can also be called "Tonkotsu Ramen". The dish is prepared in ramen shops in all other regions of Japan. Tonkotsu ramen was originally prepared as an affordable and easily prepared fast food for laborers at fish markets. In contemporary times, tonkotsu ramen is renowned for the significant time it can take to prepare a proper version of the dish.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: House of Payne is an American sitcom television series created and produced by Tyler Perry that premiered in syndication on June 21, 2006.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: The series revolves around a multi-generational family living under one roof in Atlanta led by patriarch Curtis Payne and his wife Ella. While primarily a comedy, with elements of slapstick, "House of Payne" was known for featuring dark themes and subject matter, such as substance abuse and addiction. The show is also heavily serialized, with many references to past episodes, creating a continuing story arc.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: Reaching 254 episodes upon the conclusion of its sixth season, "House of Payne" has aired more episodes than any other television series with a predominantly African American cast, surpassing "The Jeffersons" with 253 episodes, "Family Matters" with 215 episodes, and "The Cosby Show" with 202 episodes.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: The sitcom ran in first-run syndication for 10 episodes during mid-2006 on the Atlanta-area broadcast of WPCH-TV, along with nine other broadcast outlets across the country, as a limited run, with additional episodes to be available for national distribution on TBS in June 2007. An order of 100 episodes was later requested by TBS.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: A cable record for sitcom airings was broken with 5.2 and 5.8 million for the two premiere episodes on TBS on June 6, 2007. However, the audience declined to 4.3 million as of the week ending September 30, 2007 and 2.260 and 2.099 as of May 19, 2010.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: The principal cast remained the same (with the exception of Lance Gross being added), led by LaVan Davis. The original format of the series centred around C.J. (Allen Payne) and his family moving in with his Aunt Ella (Cassi Davis) and Uncle Curtis (LaVan Davis). Robinne Lee had a recurring guest stint in Season 1–2 as Malik and Jazmine's principal Nicole Jamieson, whom C.J. began dating. Rochelle Aytes originally portrayed Nicole Jamieson in the test pilot episodes as Malik's math teacher. In the test run, Ella and Curtis were originally C.J.'s parents and his name was Curtis Jr., but in its televised format, Calvin is their son and C.J. their nephew and his name was changed to Clarence. Despite his top billing, Allen Payne is not considered the main actor of the series, especially since his long absence in the fifth season. The show was recorded in front of a live studio audience but sometimes used a laugh track.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: At the beginning of the fifth season, China Anne McClain (Jazmine) and Denise Burse (Claretha) were removed from the series. The characters were written out, with Jazmine going away to a school for gifted children in North Carolina and Claretha marrying a prince and moving away. In real life, McClain had gotten her own show on Disney Channel ("A.N.T. Farm") and Burse left the series for undisclosed reasons. In the beginning of Season 6, both McClain and Burse returned (albeit in a recurring role). Some of the cast members of "Tyler Perry's House of Payne" were on "The Mo'Nique Show" in October 2009. Beginning with the seventh season, China Anne McClain appeared infrequently due to her work schedule for "A.N.T. Farm". Denise Burse was no longer credited as a regular cast member; she appeared in a recurring role.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: Larramie "Doc" Shaw, who portrayed Malik, appeared infrequently after the sixth season. This was due to Shaw's work schedules for "The Suite Life on Deck" and "Pair of Kings". He remained a cast member throughout the series.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: Tyler Perry directed every episode of the first 5 seasons. Throughout Season 6, each episode was directed by actress Kim Fields or her mother Chip Hurd. Tyler Perry directed some of the episodes in seasons 7 and 8 while other episodes were directed by Kim Fields, Chip Hurd, and producer Roger M. Bobb.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: On September 28, 2011, TBS ordered 42 episodes. Season 8 began airing October 21, 2011, and concluded the series with a total of 254 episodes. The show aired its final two episodes on August 10, 2012.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: On January 30, 2017, a spin-off follow-up series titled "The Paynes" was ordered by Oprah Winfrey Network. It follows Ella and Curtis Payne as they enjoy retirement in Florida only to get caught in a real-estate deal that turns their lives upside down. The series was greenlighted for 38 episodes and premiered on January 16, 2018.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: After a possible revival was teased on Twitter, it was officially announced on February 4, 2020, that "House of Payne" would return with a ninth season to premiere on BET in the fall. The ninth season premiered on September 2, 2020.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: On May 3, 2021, it was announced that the tenth season would premiere on May 25, 2021. On the same day, it was renewed for an eleventh season ahead of the tenth-season premiere. The eleventh season premiered on March 23, 2022.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: "House of Payne" revolves around the Payne family who resides in the suburban Atlanta. It is noted that all main cast members are credited only for the episodes in which they appear.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: Locations in Atlanta, Georgia include the Payne's home, a firehouse located across the street from the Paynes' house, a barbershop, the help center, and the schools Malik and Jazmine attend. The Payne home is a one-story building, and 5 rooms are featured throughout the series: Curtis and Ella's bedroom, Malik and Jazmine's shared bedroom, the spare bedroom (which was Calvin's until he moved out), the kitchen, and the living room, and the outside patio. Calvin, C.J. and Janine's rooms were never seen. The only part of the firehouse seen on camera was its day room. The firehouse and its characters were phased out around Seasons 3 and 4. The barbershop is a setting often used from Seasons 2–5, and it is similar to that of Ice Cube's "Barbershop" movies. Miranda and Calvin's condo was added. The living room was the only room that was shown. C.J. and Janine's house is another setting added on to the series. The kitchen and the living were always seen on camera. None of the bedrooms were ever shown. The university Malik attended was a more recent setting and various areas were shown. And C.J.'s office where he and Janine work was another setting that was added to the series. Also, the Help Center where Ella works was shown in various forms.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: Tyler Perry's claim to fame is with the popularity of character Madea, who has appeared in numerous Tyler Perry plays and their film adaptations. When the series debuted on TBS in June 2007, Perry made a guest appearance as Madea. Actor David Mann reprised his Mr. Brown role, and Keke Palmer returned as Nikki, a bully who stole $20 worth of Malik's lunch money over a period of time, money which Madea, Nikki's foster mother, used at a casino. Perry returned as Madea for a Christmas episode of the show on December 5, 2007. Perry again returned as Madea to act as Curtis's wife on March 5, 2008. She has appeared in one episode every season, save seasons 4 and 5. She is one of Curtis' arch enemies.


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: In the series, Janine's drug problem and going to rehab are possible references to "Diary of a Mad Black Woman". The events of the episodes "Sad, Sad, Leroy Brown" parts 1 and 2 came directly before the movie "Meet the Browns", when Brown learns his father has died. The events of the episode "Weeping May Endure for a Night" happened somewhere in the middle, directly after the funeral and the reading of the will, where Brown found out that his father left him a broken-down house which Brown turned into a retirement home. Even though in the episode "Weeping May Endure for a Night", the Paynes claim to have attended the funeral of Brown's father, in "Meet the Browns", they are nowhere to be seen. This may be because Lance Gross, who plays Calvin Payne in the series, plays a character named Michael in the film and LaVan Davis, who plays Curtis Payne, plays a bus driver. Curtis claimed Brown made them wait in the cemetery for two hours while he gave his father a tour of Atlanta (his last request), but in the movie, Brown stayed the entire time. The episodes serve as a backdoor pilot to "Tyler Perry's Meet the Browns", a spin-off of the film and play as well as "House of Payne".


title: Tyler Perry's House of Payne

text: Lionsgate Home Entertainment has released the first 10 volumes on DVD in Region 1. It is unknown about the release of the two remaining volumes. According to listings of the previous volumes through Amazon.com, the series DVD releases has been put out of print.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: The 1986 United States bombing of Libya, code-named Operation El Dorado Canyon, consisted of air strikes by the United States against Libya on Tuesday 15 April 1986. The attack was carried out by the U.S. Air Force (USAF), U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps via air strikes, in retaliation for the West Berlin discotheque bombing ten days earlier, which U.S. President Ronald Reagan blamed on Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. There were 40 reported Libyan casualties, and one U.S. plane was shot down. One of the claimed Libyan deaths was of a baby girl, reported to be Gaddafi's daughter, Hana Gaddafi. However, there are doubts as to whether she was really killed, or whether she really even existed.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: Libya represented a high priority for President Ronald Reagan shortly after his 1981 inauguration. Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi was firmly anti-Israel and had supported violent organizations in the Palestinian territories and Syria. There were reports that Libya was attempting to become a nuclear power and Gaddafi's occupation of Chad, which was rich in uranium, was of major concern to the United States. Gaddafi's ambitions to set up a federation of Arab and Muslim states in North Africa were alarming to U.S. interests. Furthermore, then-U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig wanted to take proactive measures against Gaddafi because he had been using former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives to help set up terrorist camps (most notably Edwin P. Wilson and Frank E. Terpil).


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: After the December 1985 Rome and Vienna airport attacks, which killed 19 and wounded approximately 140, Gaddafi indicated that he would continue to support the Red Army Faction, the Red Brigades, and the Irish Republican Army as long as the European governments supported anti-Gaddafi Libyans.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: After years of occasional skirmishes with Libya over Libyan territorial claims to the Gulf of Sidra, the United States contemplated a military attack to strike targets within the Libyan mainland. In March 1986, the United States, asserting the limit to territorial waters according to international law, sent a carrier task force to the region. Libya responded with aggressive counter-maneuvers on 24 March that led to a naval engagement in the Gulf of Sidra.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: On 5 April 1986, alleged Libyan agents bombed "La Belle" nightclub in West Berlin, killing three people, including a U.S. serviceman, and injuring 229 people. West Germany and the United States obtained cable transcripts from Libyan agents in East Germany who were involved in the attack.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: More detailed information was retrieved years later when Stasi archives were investigated by the reunited Germany. Libyan agents who had carried out the operation from the Libyan embassy in East Germany were identified and prosecuted by Germany in the 1990s.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: The attack mission against Libya had been preceded in October 1985 by an exercise in which the 20th TFW stationed at RAF Upper Heyford airbase in the UK, which was equipped with F-111E Aardvarks, received a top-secret order to launch a simulated attack mission on 18 October, with ten F-111Es armed with eight 500-lb practice bombs, against a simulated airfield located in Newfoundland, Canada south of CFB Goose Bay. The mission was designated Operation Ghost Rider. The mission was a full rehearsal for a long-range strike against Libya. The mission was completed successfully, with the exception of one aircraft that had all but one of its eight bombs hang up on one of its wing racks. The lessons learned were passed on to the 48th TFW which was equipped with the newer "F" models of the F-111.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: Elements of the then-secret 4450th Tactical Group (USAF) were put on standby to fly the strike mission against Libya. Over 30 F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft had already been delivered to Tactical Air Command (USAF) and were operating from Tonopah Test Range Airport in Nevada. Commanders in the North Africa/Mediterranean theaters knew nothing about the stealth capabilities of the F-117, or that the aircraft even existed. Within an hour of the planned launch of the F-117s, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger scrubbed the stealth mission, fearing a compromise of the secret aircraft and its development program. The air strike was carried out with conventional U.S. Navy and USAF aircraft. The F-117 would remain completely unknown to the world for several more months, before being unveiled in 1988 and featured prominently in media coverage of Operation Desert Storm.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: For the Libyan raid, the United States was denied overflight rights by France, Spain, and Italy as well as the use of European continental bases, forcing the USAF portion of the operation to be flown around France and Spain, over Portugal and through the Straits of Gibraltar, adding 1,300 miles (2,100 km) each way and requiring multiple aerial refuelings. The French refusal alone added 2,800 km. French President François Mitterrand refused overflight clearance because the United States was interested in limited action in Libya while France was more interested in major action that would remove Gaddafi from power. Another factor in the French decision was the United States' last-minute failure to participate in a retaliatory air raid on Iranian positions after the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: After several unproductive days of meetings with European and Arab nations, and influenced by an American serviceman's death, Ronald Reagan, on 14 April, ordered an air raid on the following Libyan targets:


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: Among operational United States tactical aircraft, only the General Dynamics F-111 and the A-6 Intruder possessed the ability to attack at night with the required precision. Although the F-111s would be required to fly from distant bases, they were essential to mission success, because the eighteen A-6 available aboard and could not carry enough bombs to simultaneously inflict the desired damage on the five targets selected.


title: 1986 United States bombing of Libya

text: Twenty-eight McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extenders and Boeing KC-135 Stratotankers took off from RAF Mildenhall and RAF Fairford shortly after 19:00 on 14 April. These tankers would conduct four silent refueling operations over the round-trip route the F-111s would fly to target. Within minutes the tankers were followed by twenty-four F-111F strike aircraft of the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing, flying from RAF Lakenheath and five EF-111A Ravens of the 20th Tactical Fighter Wing from RAF Upper Heyford. Six F-111s and one EF-111 were designated spares who returned to base after the first refueling was completed without any system failures among the designated strike aircraft.