title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Vietnam Airlines has enjoyed an average of 37% increase in passengers flown per year until 1997, when the Asian Financial Crisis and other contributing causes led to a loss in profits for the airline. Nevertheless, the airline remained profitable throughout the crisis. In 1996, the airline carried 2.5 million passengers, up 18% from 1995. The airline carried more than 4 million passengers in 2002, which is an 18% increase over the previous year. Its cargo traffic also climbed 20% during the same period, resulting in a 2002 profit of US$35.77 million.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Despite the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak, the airline posted a US$26.2 million profit for 2003. In 2006, it carried 6.8 million passengers (3.7 million international) and earned revenue of nearly US$1.37 billion (first 11 months). Vietnam Airlines carried more than 9 million passengers, of which 4 million were international travellers in 2007, the year which saw the airline earning a gross profit of US$23 million from a revenue of US$1.23 billion. It also transported 115,100 tonnes of cargo. In 2009, the airline's revenue was US$1.3 billion, compared to US$1.56 billion it earned the previous year. During this period, Vietnam Airlines carried 9.3 million passengers. According to "Anna.aero", Vietnam Airlines' passenger capacity for 2010 rose 30% over the same period of the previous year. This also coincided with the increase in capacity at Vietnamese airports, at 21%. In 2012, the company's total revenue totalled US$2.4 billion, with profits totalling US$3.3 million. The following year, the carrier posted a  million gross profit.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Vietnam Airlines held about 40% of the market share of international passengers flying to and from Vietnam in February 2012. At the time, Vietnam Airlines controlled 77% share of the domestic aviation market, with 14% covered by Jetstar Pacific. As of December 2012, Vietnam Airlines controlled just below 70% of the domestic market share.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: In July 2021, it was announced that Vietnam Airlines employees can buy 70 million shares as strategic shareholder ANA Holdings transferred 70 million shares to 15,100 employees of the Vietnam Airlines Group.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Vietnam Airlines Group has at least 20 subsidiaries and affiliates. By the end of its restructuring in 2015, the company will have offloaded its stakes in more than 10 enterprises.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Vietnam Airlines is increasingly becoming involved in the maintenance, overhauling, and production of aircraft. Maintenance works are carried out by Vietnam Airlines Engineering Company (VAECO), that was established on 1 January 2009. VAECO was organized mainly upon the amalgamation of the A75 and A76 aircraft maintenance bases. VAECO carries out maintenance and technical services for Vietnam Airlines as well as for other airlines. The establishment of this company opens a new era to the aircraft maintenance field in Vietnam. As of 2013, VAECO was capable of performing a wide range of maintenance on many different aircraft types; this includes C-checks for the Boeing 777, Airbus A330, Airbus A320 and Airbus A321; and D-checks, the most thorough of all maintenance procedures, which are carried out on the ATR 72 and Fokker 70.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: In addition to its self maintenance facilities, Vietnam Airlines also has maintenance contracts with other airlines and maintenance organisations.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: There are currently no production facilities in Vietnam for aircraft and spare parts. However, Boeing has managed to obtain 35% of the distribution market in Vietnam, and GE Aviation, in turn, supplies jet engines for the Boeing aircraft. For the future, conversely, Vietnam Airlines is planning to build a maintenance factory in conjunction with Rolls Royce and other companies. It has also signed a memorandum of understanding with EADS, a pan-European aerospace and defence corporation, that would let the corporation assemble and manufacture plane components in the future.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Vietnam Airlines has a network within Asia, North America, Europe and Oceania. With about 300 daily flights, the airline flies to 21 destinations domestically, and to 43 internationally. In addition, it has codeshare agreements with a number of airlines for other routes, some of which span to North America.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Vietnam Airlines have traditionally increased flights among Vietnamese cities to cater for the heavy demands brought by the annual Tết celebration. This busy period, which could fall anywhere from late January to mid-February, is Vietnam's most important celebration; hundreds of extra flights are scheduled by domestic airlines during this period to allow Vietnamese to return to their families, often in rural areas, to celebrate the occasion. In 2010, the airline increased its seat capacity from 45% to 120% on certain domestic routes. In 2011, it increased additional flights on ten routes, adding more than 100,000 seats. About 63,000 of these seats were between Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. This represented a remarkable 41% increase against normal days. In 2013, the carrier added an extra 174,000 seats during the celebratory period, of which 82,000 seats were on the trunk route between its primary hubs.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Since its conception in 1956, the airline has operated a wide range of aircraft, including Soviet, American, and European aircraft. Having retired all Soviet-made planes, the airline currently uses Boeing, ATR, and Airbus aircraft.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: On flights operated using Airbus A350 and Boeing 787, Vietnam Airlines offers In-flight entertainment via personal televisions. On flights operated using Airbus A321neo, Vietnam Airlines offers In-flight entertainment via personal devices. Entertainment options consist of films, games, TV programmes, audiobooks and music. Vietnam Airlines offers two in-flight magazines, "Heritage" and "Heritage Fashion", in addition to other reading material.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Business class is the highest of three cabin classes offered by the airline. As is the case with business class cabins in most airlines, the amenities offered in this class are substantially different from economy class, and more services and products are available. On Airbus A321s, recliner seats are offered, laid out in a 2-2 configuration. The seat offers 45 inch of pitch, 10 degree of recline as well as foot and leg rest. On Boeing 787s and Airbus A350s, lie-flat seats in a 1-2-1 configuration are offered. A 15.4 inch entertainment screen is available on the two aircraft. Seats are arranged in a reverse herringbone configuration on Boeing 787 and staggered seating is available on Airbus A350. Refreshments are offered on flights over 90 minutes, with hot meals available on flights that are longer than two hours.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: Economy class is available on all flights operated by Vietnam Airlines. Seats in this cabin feature seats in width. Seat pitch on this cabin class is , while seat recline ranges from 6 to 13°(5-6 inches). Refreshments are offered on flights over 90 minutes, with hot meals available on flights that are longer than two hours.


title: Vietnam Airlines

text: According to "Aviation Safety Network", Vietnam Airlines experienced six accidents/incidents since 1951, with three of them leading to fatalities. All of the deadly accidents occurred on final approach, and all involved Soviet-built aircraft. The deadliest one took place on 19 September 1988, when a Tupolev Tu-134A crashed on approach to Don Mueang International Airport, killing 76 of 90 occupants aboard. The second-deadliest accident occurred on 3 September 1997, when a Tupolev Tu-134B-3 crashed after hitting trees on approach to Phnom Penh International Airport; the death toll rose to 65. The third-deadliest accident occurred on 14 November 1992, when a Yakovlev Yak-40 crashed on approach to Nha Trang Airport, killing 30 of 31 occupants aboard. The airline has also experienced a hijacking episode in 1992, without any recorded fatality.


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: Zyzzyx Road ( ), also called Zyzzyx Rd., is a 2006 American thriller film written, produced and directed by John Penney and starring Katherine Heigl, Leo Grillo, and Tom Sizemore.


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: The film gained notoriety from its gross ticket sales of only $30 on its opening run, due to its intentionally limited release at a single cinema, making it the lowest-grossing film in U.S. history in terms of box office sales.


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: Grant, a philandering accountant, goes to Las Vegas on a business trip and encounters a seductress, Marissa, and her jealous ex-boyfriend Joey. Grant and Marissa incapacitate Joey, believing they have killed him, and decide to bury him along the eponymous Zzyzx Road, a rural road off Interstate 15 in California's Mojave Desert. After digging a grave, they return to find Joey missing from the trunk of Grant's car. Grant chases Joey through the desert with a shovel, and when he finds him hidden in an abandoned mine, he tells Joey a secret about Marissa.


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: Principal photography was in the summer of 2005 and lasted 18 days, plus an additional two days for pickup scenes. The film was shot entirely on location in the Mojave Desert, in and around local mines. Sizemore and longtime friend Peter Walton, who worked as Sizemore's assistant, were arrested during the film's production for repeatedly failing drug tests while on probation. Sizemore was allowed to resume filming his scenes.


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: From February 25 to March 2, 2006, "Zyzzyx Road" was shown once a day, at noon, at the Highland Park Village Theater in Dallas, Texas, in one auditorium rented by the producers for $1,000. The limited release was deliberate: Grillo was uninterested in releasing the film domestically until it underwent foreign distribution, but the film needed to fulfill the U.S. release obligation required by the Screen Actors Guild for low-budget films (those with budgets less than $2.5 million that are not for the direct-to-video market).


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: The strategy had the side effect of making it, at the time, the lowest-grossing film in history; it earned just $30 at the box office, from six patrons paying $5 each for admission. Unofficially, its opening weekend netted $20, with the $10 difference due to Grillo personally refunding two tickets purchased by Sheila Moore, the film's makeup artist, who saw the film with a friend.


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: The similarly-named film "Zzyzx" has mistakenly been cited as the lowest-grossing of all time instead, due to the two films' similar titles and release in the same month.


title: Zyzzyx Road

text: "Zyzzyx Road" was released on DVD in 23 countries, including Bulgaria, Indonesia, and Portugal. By the end of 2006, it had earned around $368,000. In the summer of 2012, six years after its original release, GoDigital released the film domestically in digital format because of its better performance internationally. It was released on DVD in North America in September 2010.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign ( ) is a city in Champaign County, Illinois, United States. The population was 88,302 at the 2020 census. It is the tenth-most populous municipality in Illinois and the fourth most populous city in Illinois outside the Chicago metropolitan area. It is included in the Champaign–Urbana metropolitan area.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign shares the main campus of the University of Illinois with its twin city of Urbana. Champaign is also home to Parkland College, which serves about 18,000 students during the academic year. Due to the university and a number of well-known technology startup companies, it is often referred to as the hub, or a significant landmark, of the Silicon Prairie. Champaign houses offices for the Fortune 500 companies Abbott, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), Caterpillar, John Deere, Dow Chemical Company, IBM, and State Farm. Champaign also serves as the headquarters for several companies, the most notable being Jimmy John's.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign was founded in 1855, when the Illinois Central Railroad laid its rail track two miles (3 km) west of downtown Urbana. Originally called "West Urbana", it was renamed Champaign when it acquired a city charter in 1860. Both the city and county name were derived from Champaign County, Ohio.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: During February 1969, Carl Perkins joined with Bob Dylan to write the song "Champaign, Illinois", which Perkins released on his album "On Top". The band Old 97's took another Bob Dylan song, "Desolation Row", and combined its melody with new lyrics to make a new song "Champaign, Illinois", which they released with Dylan's blessing on their 2010 album "The Grand Theatre Volume One". It achieved considerable popularity. The two "Champaign, Illinois" songs are not similar to each other, except that Bob Dylan was involved in both of them.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: On September 22, 1985, Champaign hosted the first Farm Aid concert at the University of Illinois' Memorial Stadium. The concert drew a crowd of 80,000 people and raised over $7 million for American family farmers.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: In 2005, Champaign-Urbana (specifically the University of Illinois) was the location of the National Science Olympiad Tournament, attracting young scientists from all 50 states. The city also hosts the state Science Olympiad competition every year. The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign once again hosted the National competition on May 20–22, 2010.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Joan Severns was the city's first female Mayor, serving between 1979 and 1983. Deb Frank Feinen, who has served as Mayor since 2015, is the city's second female Mayor. In May 2017, the city's first female-majority city council was sworn in.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Champaign has a total area of , of which (or 99.37%) is land and (or 0.63%) is water.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign is a city in central Illinois and is located on relatively high ground, providing sources to the Kaskaskia River to the west, and the Embarras River to the south. Downtown Champaign drains into Boneyard Creek, which feeds the Saline Branch of the Salt Fork Vermilion River.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign shares a border with the neighboring city of Urbana; together they are home to the University of Illinois. Champaign, Urbana, and the bordering village of Savoy form the Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area also known as "Champaign-Urbana". It may also be colloquially known as the "Twin Cities" or "Chambana".


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The city has a humid continental climate, typical of the Midwestern United States, with hot summers and cold, moderately snowy winters. Temperatures exceed 90 °F (32.2 °C) on an average of 24 days per year, and typically fall below 0 °F (−17.8 °C) on six nights annually. The record high temperature in Champaign was 109 °F (42.8 °C) in 1954, and the record low was −25 °F (−31.7 °C), recorded on four separate occasions − in 1899, 1905, 1994 and 1999.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: As of the 2020 census there were 88,302 people, 34,851 households, and 15,624 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 40,314 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 53.45% White, 17.97% African American, 0.37% Native American, 16.69% Asian, 0.05% Pacific Islander, 3.96% from other races, and 7.52% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 8.74% of the population.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: There were 34,851 households, out of which 40.07% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 32.63% were married couples living together, 8.77% had a female householder with no husband present, and 55.17% were non-families. 39.97% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.01% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 3.13 and the average family size was 2.30.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The city's age distribution consisted of 17.0% under the age of 18, 29.0% from 18 to 24, 25.8% from 25 to 44, 17.7% from 45 to 64, and 10.5% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 27.3 years. For every 100 females, there were 110.0 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 107.1 males.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The median income for a household in the city was $49,467, and the median income for a family was $78,118. Males had a median income of $36,680 versus $27,805 for females. The per capita income for the city was $30,245. About 10.3% of families and 23.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 17.3% of those under age 18 and 9.4% of those age 65 or over.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: In addition to the University of Illinois, Champaign is also home to Parkland College. Herff Jones, formerly Collegiate Cap and Gown, and Kraft also form part of the city's industrial base. Kraft's plant is one of the largest pasta factories in North America.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign is also home to nationally recognized record labels, artist management companies, booking agencies and recording studios. Polyvinyl Records, Undertow Music, Parasol Records, Great Western Record Recorders, Pogo Studios, and Nicodemus Booking Agency are all based in Champaign.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: In April 2011, "The Christian Science Monitor" named Champaign-Urbana one of the five cities leading the economic turnaround based on jobs; the information sector added over 300 jobs within a year and unemployment dropped 2.1%.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The city also features a large technology and software industry mostly focusing on research and development of new technologies. The Research Park, located in southern Champaign and backed by the University of Illinois, is home to many companies, including Riverbed Technology, Citrix Systems, Abbott Laboratories, Dow Innovation Center, Intelligent Medical Objects, Yahoo! and the State Farm Research Center. Numerous other software and technology companies also have offices in Champaign including AMD, Intel, IBM, Amdocs, Infobright, Instarecon, Phonak, Power World, Caterpillar Simulation Center, and Volition. The largest high technology employer is Wolfram Research, with more than 400 employees in Champaign. The United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains the Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL) in Champaign.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: According to the Champaign County Economic Development Corporation, the top ten employers in the city are<nowiki>:</nowiki>


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Other major employers include Horizon Hobby, Jimmy John's, Plastipak, SuperValu, and Wolfram Research.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The Champaign-Urbana community is a well-known hub for startups, including a top ranking from Silicon Prairie News in 2019.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: In the 1980s, part of the downtown Champaign area (Neil St.) was closed to vehicular traffic to create a pedestrian mall, but this short-lived experiment was scrapped when business declined. As part of a revitalization effort, One Main Development constructed two new mixed-use buildings: One Main and M2 on Neil. The City of Champaign gave $3.7 million in tax incentives for the building of M2 and agreed to pay nearly $11 million for a new parking deck.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: This growth in downtown Champaign coincided with the larger growth of the "north Prospect" shopping district on the city's northern boundary. The growth in the north Prospect area relied, in part, on leapfrogging, moving out to the countryside and developing more remote farm land that eventually connects to the main development. Given the overwhelming success of such suburban shopping areas nationally, new development within any city center represented an alternative to the dominant movement out and away from the cities.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: In April 2007, One Main Development broke ground on M2 on Neil, a nine-story, $40 million, mixed-use project – the largest ever for downtown Champaign – located at the corner of Neil and Church Street. M2 on Neil features retail and office space, and 50 upscale condominiums.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The project was expected to be complete in late 2008, but experienced delays in construction, partially due to $5 Million in mechanics liens filed against One Main Development, as well as a large fire on an adjacent property that caused substantial facade damage to M2. Construction on the commercial shell and core and the residences was completed in the Summer of 2009. New condo owners began moving into M2 in April 2009 and the first ground-floor tenant, a branch of local BankChampaign, opened its doors in November 2009. Destihl, a restaurant and brewpub, opened in Spring 2011, and two other restaurants opened in ground-floor space in Fall 2011.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The City of Champaign has constructed a six-story parking structure on Hill Street adjacent to M2, intended to serve the greater Downtown; it was completed in May 2009.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The Champaign City Building serves as the City Hall and is a recognizable landmark. The building replaces the original city building, which sat on the same site until 1937.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The Art Theater Co-op, which showed independent and foreign films, was built in 1913 as the Park Theatre. From 1969 to 1986, it showed adult films. Until October 2019, it was the only single-screen movie theater operating daily in Champaign-Urbana, and was the United States's first co-operatively owned art movie theater. It closed in October 2019.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The historic Virginia Theatre is a recently restored 1463-seat movie theater, which opened on December 28, 1921. It has an ornate, Spanish Renaissance-influenced interior, full stage and dressing rooms, and its original Wurlitzer pipe organ. It hosts Ebertfest and has a single 56' x 23' screen. The theater does not have a daily show schedule, but schedules special screenings and live performances several times each month.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Located along Green Street, this commercial district serves as the entertainment and retail center for students at the University of Illinois and citizens of the Champaign-Urbana Metropolitan Area. This area has been undergoing change since 2002 with the completion of a new $7 million streetscape project. Campustown is now attracting new retail and entertainment stores as well as serving as the center for new construction projects. Several new projects opened in 2008 including the 18-story Burnham 310 high-rise and grocery store at 4th and Springfield, and a new 24-story apartment building called 309 Green.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The newly renamed Tower at 3rd (formerly Champaign Hilton, Century 21, Quality Inn, University Inn, Presidential Tower) is located in the University District and is over twenty stories high. A hotel until 2001, it currently houses student apartments.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: A new 14-story apartment complex was completed in 2014 at the intersection of 6th and Green streets (site of the former Gameday Spirit). A 12-story, mixed-use complex consisting of a hotel, apartments and parking was scheduled to be completed by August 2015. The mixed-use complex is reported to consist of two towers which will be connected by a skywalk. A 27-story apartment building is planned at 308 East Green Street. This high-rise is reported to have an automated parking vault which will be operated by an elevator.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: During its history, the city has been home to several separate minor league baseball clubs. The first in 1889 was a shared club between Champaign and Logansport, Indiana called the Logansport/Champaign-Urbana Clippers. The Clippers played for one season in the Illinois–Indiana League before folding.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The city hosted its second team, the Champaign-Urbana Velvets from 1911 to 1914 who played in the Illinois–Missouri League until the league disbanded after 1914.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The city's most recent minor league team was the Champaign-Urbana Bandits who played during the single 1994 season of the Great Central League. The Bandits played at Illinois Field. Prior to holding postseason play, the league folded.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Twice Champaign was also home to a Collegiate Summer Baseball League team. The city's Champaign County Colts were a founding member of the Central Illinois Collegiate League from 1963 to 1964. In 1990 the Colts were revived as the Champaign-Urbana Colts until the team folded in 1996. The more recent club played its home games at Illinois Field.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: In October 2014, the Midwest Professional Basketball Association announced the creation of the Champaign Swarm as one of its founding members, that began play at the Dodds Athletic Center in January 2015.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Built from 1922 to 1923, Memorial Stadium was named in honor of the students and faculty members who died overseas during World War I. Since opening in 1923, Memorial Stadium has been home to Illinois Fighting Illini football. The stadium also was the temporary home of the NFL's Chicago Bears for the 2002 season while its regular venue Soldier Field was being renovated.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Originally known as the Assembly Hall, the State Farm Center is home to the Illinois Fighting Illini men's basketball and Illinois Fighting Illini women's basketball teams. It holds the annual Broadway Series, which features popular musicals.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The city of Champaign is served by Champaign Unit 4 School District. Unit 4 administers both Champaign Central High School and Champaign Centennial High School.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign is also served by three private high schools. The largest of the three is a Roman Catholic High school, St. Thomas More High School which is located on the city's far northwest side. The school opened in 2000 and is the newest charter of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Peoria.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The second is Judah Christian School, which is located just south of I-74 on Prospect Avenue. Judah Christian opened in 1983 and serves about 120 9th- 12th grade students. The entire school's pre-K through 12th grade enrollment is a little more than 500 students.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The third is Academy High, which is an accredited, Independent high school located in South Champaign on Fox Drive. Academy High opened in 1997 and serves 60 9th - 12th grade students. The school reflects the innovative culture of Champaign-Urbana and is designed to be student-centered, highly collaborative, and project-based.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Located within Champaign are two institutions of higher education, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Parkland College.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: NOAA Weather Radio station WXJ76 transmits from Champaign and is licensed to NOAA's National Weather Service Central Illinois Weather Forecast Office at Lincoln, broadcasting on a frequency of 162.550 MHz (channel 7 on most newer weather radios, and most SAME weather radios). The station activates the SAME tone alarm feature and a 1050 Hz tone activating older radios (except for AMBER Alerts, using the SAME feature only) for hazardous weather and non-weather warnings and emergencies, along with selected weather watches, for the Illinois counties of Champaign, Coles, DeWitt, Douglas, Edgar, Ford, Moultrie, Piatt, and Vermillion. Weather permitting, a tone alarm test of both the SAME and 1050 Hz tone features are conducted every Wednesday between 11 AM and Noon.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign is served by I-57, I-72, I-74, two railroad lines, and the University of Illinois operated Willard Airport (CMI).


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Interstate 57 enters in Champaign County after a diamond interchange with Curtis Road. It makes 2 Cloverleaf interchanges with Interstate 72 towards Decatur, Illinois and the second (soon to be changed) Cloverleaf interchange with Interstate 74 in Illinois to Indianapolis. After making the two major interchanges, it runs out of Champaign County with a Partial cloverleaf interchange with U.S. Route 45 to Rantoul, Illinois. Interstate 74 starts with U.S. Route 150 in Illinois with Mahomet, Illinois it makes two total interchanges within the city's limits. After making those interchanges, it makes one interchange with Interstate 57. After making the main interchange it starts to make interchanges with the city's streets. Interstate 74 goes out of Champaign County with St. Joseph, Illinois.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Champaign is served by Willard Airport (CMI) which is operated by the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The airport is currently served by American Eagle offering daily flights to Chicago O'Hare International Airport and Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Housed at the Willard Airport was the University of Illinois Institute of Aviation, which was forced to close for the 2013–2014 academic year due to university budget cuts after 60 years of operation.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The local bus system, which is supported by the taxpayers of the Champaign-Urbana Mass Transit District (MTD) and the University of Illinois, serves Champaign, Urbana, Savoy, and surrounding areas. The C-U MTD has twice been named as the best local transit system in the United States.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: In 1999, a newly designed intermodal transportation center, aptly named Illinois Terminal by historic reference to the defunct electric interurban rail line that once ran through Champaign, was completed and serves as a central facility for intercity passenger rail, bus services as well as the MTD's local bus network.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Amtrak provides service to Champaign-Urbana by: Train 58/59, the City of New Orleans; Train 390/391, the Saluki; and Train 392/393, the Illini.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: The former Illinois Central Railroad line — now part of the Canadian National system — runs north to south through the city. A spur line from the Canadian National line provides service to several large industries, including two large food processing plants, on the west edge of Champaign and two grain elevators in outlying communities to the west. The Norfolk Southern operates an east to west line through Champaign. The NS line connects industries in eastern Urbana to the Norfolk Southern main line at Mansfield, Illinois, west of Champaign. The line now operated by Norfolk Southern is the former Peoria & Eastern Railway, later operated as part of the Big Four (Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis Railway), New York Central, Penn Central, and Conrail systems, being sold by Conrail to Norfolk Southern in 1996. Construction of the line was begun by the Danville, Urbana, Bloomington and Pekin Railroad. This short-lived entity became part of the Indianapolis, Bloomington and Western Railway before the railroad was completed.


title: Champaign, Illinois

text: Greyhound Lines, Peoria Charter Coach Company, and Burlington Trailways provide intercity bus service to Champaign.


title: Flag of Morocco

text: The flag of Morocco () is the flag used by the government of Morocco which served as the national flag of Morocco since 17 November 1915. It is a red field with a green star in the center. The green star represents the five pillars of Islam and the red represents the blood of the ancestors and unity.


title: Flag of Morocco

text: Red has considerable historic significance in Morocco, proclaiming the descent from royal 'Alawid dynasty. This ruling house was associated with the Islamic prophet Muhammad via Fatimah, the wife of Ali, the fourth Muslim Caliph. Red is also the color that was used by the sharifs of Mecca and the imams of Yemen. From the 17th century on, Morocco is ruled by the 'Alawid dynasty, and the flags of the country were plain red at first.


title: Flag of Morocco

text: On 17 November 1915, Sultan Yusef signed a dhahir that made Morocco's flag red with a green interlaced pentangle.


title: Flag of Morocco

text: While Morocco was under French and Spanish control, the red flag with the seal in the center remained in use, but only inland. Its use at sea was prohibited. When independence was restored in 1955, it once again became the national flag.


title: Flag of Morocco

text: The pentagram represents the seal of Solomon, an Islamic symbol. The five branches also represent the pillars of Islam.


title: Flag of Morocco

text: In the 17th century when Morocco got under the authority of the 'Alawid dynasty (current ruling dynasty), its flag was solid red at first. The Sharifs of Makkah used this shade as a reference colour.


title: Flag of Morocco

text: On May 8, 2010, a Moroccan flag with a size of , weighing , was set in Dakhla, a city in the disputed territory of Western Sahara. It was certified by the "Guinness Book of World Records" as the largest flag ever draped.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF; ), also called the Tigrayan People's Liberation Front, is a left-wing ethnic nationalist paramilitary group , a banned political party, and the former ruling party of Ethiopia. It is designated as a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government. It is widely known as Woyane (), or Wayane () in older texts and Amharic publications.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The TPLF was established on 18 February 1975 in Dedebit, northwestern Tigray, according to official records. Within 16 years, it had grown from about a dozen men into the most powerful armed “liberation” movement in Ethiopia. It led a political coalition called the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) from 1989 to 2018. It fought a 15-year-long war against the Derg regime which was overthrown in 1991. Due largely to its war fighting capabilities, the TPLF was at the forefront in the defeat of the Derg.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: With the help of its former ally, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), the TPLF overthrew the government of the People's Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (PDRE) and established a new government on 28 May 1991 that ruled Ethiopia until it was ousted from power in the federal government in 2018.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: On 18 January 2021, the National Election Board of Ethiopia terminated the party's registration, citing acts of violence and rebellion committed by the party's leadership against the Federal government in 2020, as well as a lack of representation. On 6 May 2021, the Ethiopian House of Peoples' Representatives formally approved a parliamentary resolution designating the TPLF as a terrorist organization.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The TPLF is, in a way, the product of the marginalization of the Tigray within Ethiopia after Menelik II of Shewa had become emperor in 1889. The Tigrayan traditional elite and peasantry had a strong regional identity and deeply resented the decline of Tigray. Memories of the armed revolt of 1942-43 (the "first [qädamay] "wäyyanä"") against the re-establishment of imperial rule after Italian occupation remained alive and provided an important reference for the new generations of educated Tigrayan nationalists.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: At Haile Selassie I University (Addis Ababa University), from the early 1960s onwards, Tigrayan students created the Political Association of Tigrayans (PAT) in 1972 and the Tigrayan University Students' Association (TUSA). PAT developed into a radical nationalist group calling for the independence of Tigray, establishing the Tigray Liberation Front (TLF) in 1974. A Marxist trend emerged in the TUSA favoring national self-determination for Tigray within a revolutionary transformed democratic Ethiopia.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Whereas the multinational left movements prioritized class struggle over the national self-determination of the Ethiopian nationalities, the Marxists of TUSA argued for self-determination as the launching pad for the ultimate socialist revolution, due to the existing inequalities among Ethiopian nationalities.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In February 1974, the Marxists within TUSA welcomed the Ethiopian Revolution but opposed the Derg (the military junta that ruled Ethiopia from 1974 to 1991) as they were convinced that it would neither lead a genuine socialist revolution nor correctly resolve the Ethiopian nationality question. Three days after the Derg took power, on 14 September 1974, seven leaders of this trend established the "Association of Progressives of the Tigray Nation" (, "Maḥbär Gäsgästi Bəḥer Təgray"), also known as Tigrayan National Organization (TNO): Alemseged Mengesha (nom de guerre: Haylu), Ammaha Tsehay (Abbay), Aregawi Berhe (Berhu), Embay Mesfin (Seyoum), Fentahun Zere'atsion (Gidey), Mulugeta Hagos (Asfeha) and Zeru Gesese (Agazi). The TNO was to prepare the ground for the future armed movement of Tigray.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: It secretly approached both the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) for support but the ELF already had relations with the TLF. In November 1974, the EPLF agreed to train TNO members and allowed EPLF fighters from the Tigrayan community in Eritrea, among them Mehari Tekle (Mussie), to join the TPLF. The first batch of trainees was sent to the EPLF in January 1975.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: On the night of 18 February 1975, eleven men including Gesese Ayyele (Sehul), Gidey, Asfeha, Seyoum, Agazi, and Berhu left Enda Selassie for Sehul's home area of Dedebit, where they established the TPLF (original name , "Tägadlo Ḥarənnät Ḥəzbi Təgray", "The Struggle for the Freedom of the People of Tigray"). Welde Selassie Nega (Sebhat), Legese Zenawi (Meles) and others soon joined the original group and, after the arrival of the trainees from Eritrea in June 1975, the TPLF had about 50 fighters. It then chose a formal leadership composed of Sehul (Chairman), Muse (Military Commander) and the seven TNO-founders. Berhu was appointed as political commissioner. Sehul played a crucial role in helping the nascent TPLF to establish itself among the local peasantry.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Although some successful raids established its military credibility, the TPLF grew to only about 120 fighters in early 1976, but a rapidly expanding clandestine network of supporters in the towns and support base among the peasantry provided vital supplies and intelligence. On 18 February 1976 a fighters' conference elected new leadership: Berhu (Chairman), Muse (Military Committee), Abbay (Political Committee), Agazi (Socio-Economic Committee), Seyoum (Foreign Relations), Gidey, and Sebhat. Meles became head of the political cadre school.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The first three years of its existence were marked by a constant struggle for survival, unstable cooperation with the Eritrean forces, and power struggles against the other Tigrayan fronts: in 1975 the TPLF liquidated the TLF, in 1976–78 it fought back the Ethiopian Democratic Union (EDU) in Shire and in 1978 it fought the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Party (EPRP) in eastern Tigray. Besides this the Front had to suffer heavy losses due to the Derg's offensives in the region.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Although the TPLF, the ELF and the EPLF co-operated during the Derg offensives of 1976 and 1978 in Tigray and Eritrea, no stable alliance was formed. The ELF resented the liquidation of the TLF and viewed the relations between the EPLF and the TPLF as a serious threat. Since 1977 the ELF and the TPLF had conflicts over the issue of Eritrean settlers in western Tigray, who were organized under the ELF and rejected the TPLF-land reform.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Relations with the EPLF also did not develop smoothly. Its material support was much less than the TPLF expected. Politically the EPLF preferred the multi-national EPRP to the ethno-regionalist TPLF with its then separatist agenda.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Following the Derg's victory in the Ogaden War in February 1978, Mengestu Haile Mariam's new alliance with the Soviets and the revolutionary growth of his armed forces, the TPLF momentum seemed to slow.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In February 1979 the TPLF held its first regular congress. It declared its struggle to be the second "wäyyanä" ("kalay wäyyanä") and changed its Tigrinya name to "Həzbawi Wäyyanä Harənnätä Təgray". It adopted a new political program calling for self-determination within a democratic Ethiopia with independence as an option only if unity proved to be impossible.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Winning and maintaining the support of the local population was at the heart of the TPLF’s strategy during the 1970s and 1980s. TPLF leaders understood that the goodwill of the population would sustain their movement and ultimately propel it to victory over the Derg. Consequently, any fighter caught abusing locals was punished or even executed by TPLF authorities. As a result, local support for the TPLF was consistent and invaluable. The local population shared food and resources with fighters, provided them with safe havens, and most critically, they supplied the TPLF with timely intelligence.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In retrospect, it is apparent that the 1978–1985 period further strengthened the TPLF. The Derg's increasingly alienating intervention, the Front's handling of the famine and of the refugee problems, as well as the foreign connections it built through its mission in Khartoum, all enabled the movement to mobilize and better equip more fighters and prepare for a change from guerrilla to frontal battles. Also, in the mid-1980s, developments within the TPLF led to a conceptual change from a struggle for the liberation of Tigray to that of all of Ethiopia.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: They established their headquarters in caves in Addi Geza'iti, some 50 kilometres west of Mekelle. The Ethiopian People's Democratic Movement (EPDM), a TPLF-loyal splinter group from the EPRP, used caves in Melfa (Dogu'a Tembien).


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The TPLF succeeded in turning the catastrophic famine of 1984–85 to its overall advantage. In early 1985 it organized a march of over 200,000 famine victims from Tigray to Sudan to draw international attention to the plight of Tigray. Its humanitarian branch, the Relief Society of Tigray (REST), established in 1978, received large amounts of international humanitarian aid for famine victims and small-scale development projects in liberated Tigray.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In 1984-1985, the TPLF redirected Western aid intended for starving civilians in order to purchase weapons.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In July 1985, a congress of a few hundred selected cadres established the Marxist–Leninist League of Tigray (MLLT). The MLLT was conceived to be the nucleus of the future Marxist-Leninst vanguard party for the whole of Ethiopia. The MLLT invited the genuine revolutionaries within the ranks of "Derg" regime, which was then busy organizing its own communist party, the Ethiopian Workers' Party, to join it.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: After the congress, the TPLF and its mass organizations were ruthlessly brought under the control of the MLLT, dissenting cadres among them TPLF-co-founders Gidey and Berhu, were purged.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In December 1988, the TPLF and EPDM founded the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) as the nucleus of the envisaged United Democratic Front. In spring 1989 first the MLLT and then the TPLF held a congress. Abbay was elected Chairman of both but towards the end of 1989 Meles became the chairman of both organizations. In May 1989 the EPDM established the Ethiopian Marxist-Leninist Force (EMLF).


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In July 1989 MLLT and EMLF created the Union of Ethiopian Proletarian Organizations. In April 1990 the TPLF formed the Ethiopian Democratic Officers Movement from politically re-educated captured Ethiopian officers to undercut the Free Officers Movement formed in 1987 by exiled Ethiopian officers in opposition to the "Derg". In May 1990 Oromo-members of the EPDM and politically re-educated Oromo-Prisoners-of-War founded the Oromo Peoples' Democratic Organization (OPDO) to deny the Oromo Liberation Front the claim to be the exclusive representative of the Ethiopian Oromo.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In November 1990 an Oromo Marxist-Leninist Movement was established within the OPDO. Also in 1990 the TPLF created the Afar Democratic Union to undercut the Afar movements. Before 1985 it had already helped to establish liberation fronts in Gambella and Benshangul.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In early 1988, the EPLF and the TPLF went on the offensive. The developing situation in both Eritrea and Tigray but also the shifting international context after the demise of the Soviet bloc induced the TPLF and EPLF to put their differences aside and to resume military cooperation. In 1989 the EPRDF formed a shadow government of Ethiopia administering the liberated areas under its control.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In February 1991 the EPRDF launched its offensive against the governing regime assisted by a large EPLF contingent. On 28 May 1991, the EPRDF entered Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, and assumed control of Ethiopia. In July 1991, the EPRDF established the Transitional Government of Ethiopia. In May 1991, the TPLF had 80,000 fighters, the EPDM 8,000 and the OPDO 2,000. The total number of TPLF-members was well beyond 100,000.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Reacting to the international political context after the demise of communism, the EPRDF and TPLF dropped all Marxist references in their political discourse and adopted a program of change based on multi-party politics, constitutional democracy, ethno-linguistic federalization and a mixed economy.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Under the EPRDF, Ethiopia was governed as an ethnically federal, dominant-party state. Meles Zenawi, a member of the TPLF, served as Prime Minister until his death in 2012. During EPRDF rule, Ethiopia retained authoritarianism and shifted from a one-party state to a dominant-party state.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In November 2019, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front chairman unified the constituent parties of the coalition into a new Prosperity Party. The TPLF viewed this merger as illegal and did not participate in the merger.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: From the start of January 2020, the TPLF were involved in activities that were criticized by the federal government. In June 2020, the Ethiopian parliament—which TPLF was a party to—voted to postpone the 2021 Ethiopian General Election which was originally scheduled to occur in 2020. The TPLF defied the parliamentary vote and held regional elections anyway.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The 2020 Tigray regional election was held on 9 September 2020. It was open to international observers, boycotted by Arena Tigray and the Tigray Democratic Party and 2.7 million people participated in the election. Prime Minister Ahmed stated that the federal government would not recognize the results of the election and banned foreign journalists from traveling to Tigray to document the elections.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: In November 2020, a civil conflict broke out between the TPLF and the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) when the TPLF attacked the ENDF Northern Command headquarters in what TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda called a "preemptive operation". In November 2020, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed declared victory over TPLF. Other sources implied that the Ethiopian National Defense Force (ENDF) was actually in control of only about 70% of the Tigray region. Many TPLF members joined the Tigray Defense Forces (TDF). The conflict caused a humanitarian crisis in many parts of the country, and estimates of the number of deaths are in the thousands. As of March 2021, approximately 2 million people had been displaced by the crisis, but the full extent of the crisis was unknown. The TPLF has accused the ENDF and Eritrean forces of war crimes, but it is difficult to independently verify these claims because of the media blackout that has been imposed by the Federal Government under Abiy. On 23 March 2021, the Prime Minister acknowledged for the first time that Eritrean military forces had been in the Tigray region, after international pressure. In July 2021, after the Ethiopian government had declared a unilateral ceasefire and withdrew from much of the Tigray Region, the TDF invaded the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions. The ENDF then launched its own counteroffensive and by December 2021 had recaptured those regions. As of March 2022, the war had ground to a virtual stalemate.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The TPLF has been accused of forced enlistment into the TDF, including that of minors. According to multiple witnesses and Tigrayan administrative officials, each household in Tigray was required to enlist one family member to the TDF, and those who refused to comply were arrested and imprisoned, including parents of minors who did not wish to enlist.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: Elections from 1995 to 2015 were conducted under the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front banner.


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: The United States government lifted the TPLF’s designation as a Tier III terrorist group upon the group’s ascension to power as a political party in 1991. An analysis by Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium also known as TRAC, has them listed as a terrorist group as far back as 1976 on the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). According to the TRAC:


title: Tigray People's Liberation Front

text: On 1 May 2021, the federal government of Ethiopia formally approved a parliamentary resolution designating the TPLF as a terrorist organization. Under Article 23, "this decision will become applicable to organizations and individuals who collaborate, have links with or relate to the ideas and actions of the designated terrorist organizations and others who have engaged in similar activities." However, individuals or organisations “engaged in humanitarian activities” are exempt, as per Ethiopian anti-terrorism proclamation 1176/2020.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast (), also called Kyivshchyna (), is an oblast (province) in central and northern Ukraine. It surrounds, but does not include, the city of Kyiv, which is a self-governing city with special status. The administrative center of the oblast is in Kyiv city, the capital of Ukraine, despite the city not being part of the oblast. The Kyiv metropolitan area extends out from Kyiv city into parts of the oblast, which is significantly dependent on the urban economy and transportation of Kyiv.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The Chernobyl Exclusion Zone is in the northern part of Kyiv Oblast. It is administered separately from the oblast and public access is prohibited.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast was created as part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic on February 27, 1932 among the first five original oblasts in Ukraine. It was established on territory that had been known as Ruthenian land.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Earlier historical administrative units that became the territory of the oblast include the Kiev Voivodeship under the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Kiev Viceroyalty and Kiev Governorate under the Russian Empire. The northern part of the oblast belongs to the historical region of Polesia ("Polissia").


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: In Kyiv region, there was a specific folk icon-painting style much influenced by the Kyiv Pechersk Lavra painting school. Saints were depicted on the deep purple or black background, their clothes dark, their haloes dark blue, dark green or even black, outlined by thin white dotted contours. The Kyiv region's icons collection is the part of the exhibition of the Museum of Ukrainian home icons in the Historical and cultural complex "The Radomysl Castle".


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The current borders of the oblast were set following the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. Administrative oversight of the new city of Slavutych, which was constructed as part of the Chernihiv Oblast, was then transferred to the Kyiv Oblast ("see Chernobyl zone below").


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: On 24 February 2022, Russian Armed Forces invaded Kyiv Oblast as part of its 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ukraine launched a counter-offensive to retake the region in March 2022. The oblast was declared free of invaders on 2 April 2022 by the Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Defense Hanna Malyar.<ref name="aljazeera2022/4/3/ukraine">Ukraine ‘retakes whole Kyiv region’ as Russia looks east, aljazeera.com (3 April 2022)</ref> According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense its troops had retaken more than 30 towns and villages around Kyiv. However, on April 9, 2022 the Russians attacked the Oblast again, even destroying a railway station in Bucha.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast has a total area of (approximately 35 times the area of Kyiv city) and is located in north-central Ukraine. On the west it borders the Zhytomyr Oblast, on the southwest – Vinnytsia Oblast, on the south – Cherkasy Oblast, on the southeast – Poltava Oblast, on the east and northeast – Chernihiv Oblast, and on the north – Homyel Voblasts of Belarus.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The oblast is equally split between both banks of the Dnieper River ("Dnipro") north and south of Kyiv. Other significant rivers in the oblast are the Dnieper's tributaries: Pripyat ("Prypiat") (R), Desna (L), Teteriv (R), Irpin' (R), Ros' (R) and Trubizh (L).


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The length of the Dnipro River within the boundaries of the oblast totals . The oblast has a total number of 177 rivers intersecting the region; 13 reservoirs (the most notable ones being Kyiv Reservoir and the Kaniv Reservoir), over 2000 ponds, and approximately 750 small lakes.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The climate of Kyiv Oblast is characteristic of the Polesia area and other neighboring forested areas. The oblast has a moderately continental climate with relatively mild winters and warm summers. The temperatures range from in January to degrees in July.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast has small mountains and slopes on the right bank of the Dnieper River. This entire area is surrounded by a continuous belt by greenery and forests. The oblast's "green area" covers , characterized by 250 different sorts of trees and bushes.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Before the July 2020 reform, the oblast was subdivided into 25 raions ("administrative districts"). It consists of 26 cities, 30 towns, and more than 1,000 villages.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: As with other oblasts of Ukraine, the head of the Kyiv Oblast State Administration (governor) is appointed by the President of Ukraine and subordinated to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Local self-government body is the popularly elected Kyiv Oblast Rada, chaired by a Speaker (elected from among the councilors).


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The municipality of Slavutych is within the borders of the neighboring Chernihiv Oblast on the eastern bank of the Dnieper river and the municipality has no common border with the Kyiv Oblast. Still, Slavutych is administrated by the Kyiv Oblast authorities (being a kind of administrative exclave).


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Similarly, the town of Kotsiubynske, which is within the borders of Kyiv city (which is surrounded by the Kyiv Oblast), is administrated by the Irpin city council.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The north-western end of the oblast is a part of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone due to the radioactive contamination caused by the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident. The largest cities within zone are Chernobyl and Prypiat, which are now abandoned. The city of Slavutych was built outside of the zone to host evacuated residents of Prypyat and personnel of the zone installations.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast's largest nationality group are Ukrainians (1,684,800 people, or 92.5%), followed by Russians, Jews, Belarusians, Poles, and others. The current estimated population (excluding Kyiv) is around 1.72 million (as of 2013). The population density is 63.01/km.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The urban population, according to the 2001 Ukrainian Census data, accounted for 1,053,500 people, or 57.6%, and the rural population – for 774,400 people, or 42.4%.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: According to the data, the number of men accounted for 845,900 people, or 46.3%, that of women – 982,000 people, or 53.7%.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast's main industry's include: power production, food, chemical and petrochemical industries, mechanical engineering and metal-working. The national share of tire production for automobiles constitutes – 63%, excavators – 53%, paper and cardboard – 40%, hoisting cranes – 39%. In general, the oblast has 330 licensed industrial enterprises and 742 smaller industrial enterprises. The Boryspil Bus Plant in Prolisky produces 1,700 buses per year of various modifications, and several other auto-industry factories are also located in the oblast'.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: In addition to industry, the oblast also has a developed agriculture production. In 1999, the gross grain yield in the region was about 1,118,600 tons, sugar-beets – 1,570,900 tons, sunflower seeds – 18,1 thousand tons, potatoes – 669,200 tons. The region also produced 156,900 tons of meat, 738,500 tons of milk and 855,2 million eggs. At the beginning of 1999, there were 1,130 registered farms within the oblast.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast has a highly developed rail transport system. The total length of the oblast's working railway lines is 88 km (as of 1985). Through the territory of the oblast pass the: Moscow—Kyiv—Lviv, Kyiv—Dnipro—Donetsk and other railway routes. In addition to inter-Ukraine and international rail routes, local Elektrychka lines also pass through the oblast: Kyiv—Fastiv—Koziatyn, Kyiv—Fastiv—Myronivka, Kyiv—Teteriv, Kyiv—Nizhyn, and Kyiv—Yahotyn.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The length of the oblast's roads totals 7,760 km, including 7,489 km of paved roads. The main roads passing thorough the oblast include:


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: The oblast's main airports include two international airports: the Boryspil Airport and the Hostomel (Antonov) Cargo Airport. Ukrainian military airbases are located in the cities of Bila Tserkva and Uzyn.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Strategic gas-pipelines in the oblast include Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhhorod pipeline, and Shebelynka—Poltava—Kyiv.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Kyiv Oblast has 795 state-run schools of general education, 219 (27.5%) of which are situated in urban areas and 576 (72.5%) of which – in rural areas. These schools are attended by 232,260 students, 141,416 (60.6%) which attend urban schools, and 98,944 (39.4%) which attend rural area schools. In addition, there are 12 evening schools with an enrollment of over 6,000 students, 15 private institutions teaching about 7,000 students, 23 vocational schools teaching over 14,300 students, 22 higher schools with an enrollment of over 34,900 students), and 52 home-school institutions containing over 48,700 children. There are also 756 institutions of pre-school education attended by a total of 44,400 children, 52 home-school institutions, 22 vocational institutions, having an enrollment of 17,300 students.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Also, educational institutions for orphans, physically and mentally disabled children represent an important component of Kyiv Oblast's educational system.


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: In addition to general education schools, the oblast has educational institutions specifically for gifted children, including:


title: Kyiv Oblast

text: Most of Ukraine's oblasts are named after their capital cities, officially referred to as "oblast centers". The name of each oblast is a relative adjective, formed by adding a feminine suffix to the name of respective center city: Kyiv (in transliterated Ukrainian) is the center of the "Kyivs’ka oblast"' (Kyiv Oblast). Most oblasts are also sometimes referred to in a feminine noun form, following the convention of traditional regional place names, ending with the suffix "-shchyna", as is the case with the Kyiv Oblast, "Kyivshchyna".


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (; 17 September 1826 – 20 July 1866) was a German mathematician who made contributions to analysis, number theory, and differential geometry. In the field of real analysis, he is mostly known for the first rigorous formulation of the integral, the Riemann integral, and his work on Fourier series. His contributions to complex analysis include most notably the introduction of Riemann surfaces, breaking new ground in a natural, geometric treatment of complex analysis. His 1859 paper on the prime-counting function, containing the original statement of the Riemann hypothesis, is regarded as a foundational paper of analytic number theory. Through his pioneering contributions to differential geometry, Riemann laid the foundations of the mathematics of general relativity. He is considered by many to be one of the greatest mathematicians of all time.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Riemann was born on 17 September 1826 in Breselenz, a village near Dannenberg in the Kingdom of Hanover. His father, Friedrich Bernhard Riemann, was a poor Lutheran pastor in Breselenz who fought in the Napoleonic Wars. His mother, Charlotte Ebell, died before her children had reached adulthood. Riemann was the second of six children, shy and suffering from numerous nervous breakdowns. Riemann exhibited exceptional mathematical talent, such as calculation abilities, from an early age but suffered from timidity and a fear of speaking in public.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: During 1840, Riemann went to Hanover to live with his grandmother and attend lyceum (middle school years). After the death of his grandmother in 1842, he attended high school at the . In high school, Riemann studied the Bible intensively, but he was often distracted by mathematics. His teachers were amazed by his ability to perform complicated mathematical operations, in which he often outstripped his instructor's knowledge. In 1846, at the age of 19, he started studying philology and Christian theology in order to become a pastor and help with his family's finances.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: During the spring of 1846, his father, after gathering enough money, sent Riemann to the University of Göttingen, where he planned to study towards a degree in theology. However, once there, he began studying mathematics under Carl Friedrich Gauss (specifically his lectures on the method of least squares). Gauss recommended that Riemann give up his theological work and enter the mathematical field; after getting his father's approval, Riemann transferred to the University of Berlin in 1847. During his time of study, Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi, Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet, Jakob Steiner, and Gotthold Eisenstein were teaching. He stayed in Berlin for two years and returned to Göttingen in 1849.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Riemann held his first lectures in 1854, which founded the field of Riemannian geometry and thereby set the stage for Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity. In 1857, there was an attempt to promote Riemann to extraordinary professor status at the University of Göttingen. Although this attempt failed, it did result in Riemann finally being granted a regular salary. In 1859, following the death of Dirichlet (who held Gauss's chair at the University of Göttingen), he was promoted to head the mathematics department at the University of Göttingen. He was also the first to suggest using dimensions higher than merely three or four in order to describe physical reality.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: In 1862 he married Elise Koch and they had a daughter Ida Schilling who was born on 22 December 1862.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Riemann fled Göttingen when the armies of Hanover and Prussia clashed there in 1866. He died of tuberculosis during his third journey to Italy in Selasca (now a hamlet of Verbania on Lake Maggiore) where he was buried in the cemetery in Biganzolo (Verbania).


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Riemann was a dedicated Christian, the son of a Protestant minister, and saw his life as a mathematician as another way to serve God. During his life, he held closely to his Christian faith and considered it to be the most important aspect of his life. At the time of his death, he was reciting the Lord's Prayer with his wife and died before they finished saying the prayer. Meanwhile, in Göttingen his housekeeper discarded some of the papers in his office, including much unpublished work. Riemann refused to publish incomplete work, and some deep insights may have been lost forever.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Riemann's published works opened up research areas combining analysis with geometry. These would subsequently become major parts of the theories of Riemannian geometry, algebraic geometry, and complex manifold theory. The theory of Riemann surfaces was elaborated by Felix Klein and particularly Adolf Hurwitz. This area of mathematics is part of the foundation of topology and is still being applied in novel ways to mathematical physics.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: In 1853, Gauss asked Riemann, his student, to prepare a "Habilitationsschrift" on the foundations of geometry. Over many months, Riemann developed his theory of higher dimensions and delivered his lecture at Göttingen in 1854 entitled "Ueber die Hypothesen, welche der Geometrie zu Grunde liegen". It was not published until twelve years later in 1868 by Dedekind, two years after his death. Its early reception appears to have been slow, but it is now recognized as one of the most important works in geometry.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: The subject founded by this work is Riemannian geometry. Riemann found the correct way to extend into "n" dimensions the differential geometry of surfaces, which Gauss himself proved in his "theorema egregium". The fundamental objects are called the Riemannian metric and the Riemann curvature tensor. For the surface (two-dimensional) case, the curvature at each point can be reduced to a number (scalar), with the surfaces of constant positive or negative curvature being models of the non-Euclidean geometries.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: The Riemann metric is a collection of numbers at every point in space (i.e., a tensor) which allows measurements of speed in any trajectory, whose integral gives the distance between the trajectory's endpoints. For example, Riemann found that in four spatial dimensions, one needs ten numbers at each point to describe distances and curvatures on a manifold, no matter how distorted it is.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: In his dissertation, he established a geometric foundation for complex analysis through Riemann surfaces, through which multi-valued functions like the logarithm (with infinitely many sheets) or the square root (with two sheets) could become one-to-one functions. Complex functions are harmonic functions (that is, they satisfy Laplace's equation and thus the Cauchy–Riemann equations) on these surfaces and are described by the location of their singularities and the topology of the surfaces. The topological "genus" of the Riemann surfaces is given by formula_1, where the surface has formula_2 leaves coming together at formula_3 branch points. For formula_4 the Riemann surface has formula_5 parameters (the "moduli").


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: His contributions to this area are numerous. The famous Riemann mapping theorem says that a simply connected domain in the complex plane is "biholomorphically equivalent" (i.e. there is a bijection between them that is holomorphic with a holomorphic inverse) to either formula_6 or to the interior of the unit circle. The generalization of the theorem to Riemann surfaces is the famous uniformization theorem, which was proved in the 19th century by Henri Poincaré and Felix Klein. Here, too, rigorous proofs were first given after the development of richer mathematical tools (in this case, topology). For the proof of the existence of functions on Riemann surfaces he used a minimality condition, which he called the Dirichlet principle. Karl Weierstrass found a gap in the proof: Riemann had not noticed that his working assumption (that the minimum existed) might not work; the function space might not be complete, and therefore the existence of a minimum was not guaranteed. Through the work of David Hilbert in the Calculus of Variations, the Dirichlet principle was finally established. Otherwise, Weierstrass was very impressed with Riemann, especially with his theory of abelian functions. When Riemann's work appeared, Weierstrass withdrew his paper from "Crelle's Journal" and did not publish it. They had a good understanding when Riemann visited him in Berlin in 1859. Weierstrass encouraged his student Hermann Amandus Schwarz to find alternatives to the Dirichlet principle in complex analysis, in which he was successful. An anecdote from Arnold Sommerfeld shows the difficulties which contemporary mathematicians had with Riemann's new ideas. In 1870, Weierstrass had taken Riemann's dissertation with him on a holiday to Rigi and complained that it was hard to understand. The physicist Hermann von Helmholtz assisted him in the work over night and returned with the comment that it was "natural" and "very understandable".


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Other highlights include his work on abelian functions and theta functions on Riemann surfaces. Riemann had been in a competition with Weierstrass since 1857 to solve the Jacobian inverse problems for abelian integrals, a generalization of elliptic integrals. Riemann used theta functions in several variables and reduced the problem to the determination of the zeros of these theta functions. Riemann also investigated period matrices and characterized them through the "Riemannian period relations" (symmetric, real part negative). By Ferdinand Georg Frobenius and Solomon Lefschetz the validity of this relation is equivalent with the embedding of formula_7 (where formula_8 is the lattice of the period matrix) in a projective space by means of theta functions. For certain values of formula_2, this is the Jacobian variety of the Riemann surface, an example of an abelian manifold.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Many mathematicians such as Alfred Clebsch furthered Riemann's work on algebraic curves. These theories depended on the properties of a function defined on Riemann surfaces. For example, the Riemann–Roch theorem (Roch was a student of Riemann) says something about the number of linearly independent differentials (with known conditions on the zeros and poles) of a Riemann surface.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: According to Detlef Laugwitz, automorphic functions appeared for the first time in an essay about the Laplace equation on electrically charged cylinders. Riemann however used such functions for conformal maps (such as mapping topological triangles to the circle) in his 1859 lecture on hypergeometric functions or in his treatise on minimal surfaces.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: In the field of real analysis, he discovered the Riemann integral in his habilitation. Among other things, he showed that every piecewise continuous function is integrable. Similarly, the Stieltjes integral goes back to the Göttinger mathematician, and so they are named together the Riemann–Stieltjes integral.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: In his habilitation work on Fourier series, where he followed the work of his teacher Dirichlet, he showed that Riemann-integrable functions are "representable" by Fourier series. Dirichlet has shown this for continuous, piecewise-differentiable functions (thus with countably many non-differentiable points). Riemann gave an example of a Fourier series representing a continuous, almost nowhere-differentiable function, a case not covered by Dirichlet. He also proved the Riemann–Lebesgue lemma: if a function is representable by a Fourier series, then the Fourier coefficients go to zero for large "n".


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Riemann's essay was also the starting point for Georg Cantor's work with Fourier series, which was the impetus for set theory.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: He also worked with hypergeometric differential equations in 1857 using complex analytical methods and presented the solutions through the behavior of closed paths about singularities (described by the monodromy matrix). The proof of the existence of such differential equations by previously known monodromy matrices is one of the Hilbert problems.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: He made some famous contributions to modern analytic number theory. In a single short paper, the only one he published on the subject of number theory, he investigated the zeta function that now bears his name, establishing its importance for understanding the distribution of prime numbers. The Riemann hypothesis was one of a series of conjectures he made about the function's properties.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: In Riemann's work, there are many more interesting developments. He proved the functional equation for the zeta function (already known to Leonhard Euler), behind which a theta function lies. Through the summation of this approximation function over the non-trivial zeros on the line with real portion 1/2, he gave an exact, "explicit formula" for formula_10.


title: Bernhard Riemann

text: Riemann knew of Pafnuty Chebyshev's work on the Prime Number Theorem. He had visited Dirichlet in 1852.


title: Gangnam District

text: Gangnam District ( ; , ) is one of the 25 local government districts which make up the city of Seoul, South Korea. Gangnam translates to "South of the (Han) River". Gangnam District is the third largest district in Seoul, with an area of . As of the 2017 census, Gangnam District had a population of 561,052. There is a high concentration of wealth in the district, with prices for an apartment as of 2020 nearly double those in the rest of Seoul. Gangnam district is generally referred to as a part of Gangnam School District Eight (강남 8학군), along with Seocho District. This district shares half of Gangnam-daero Gangnam Station area with Seocho District, which is one of the most crowded places in Korea.


title: Gangnam District

text: The Gangnam District office has designated two smoke-free zones within the district. The first is the section of Gangnam Boulevard between exit No. 2 of Gangnam station of Seoul Subway Line 2 and exit No. 5 of Sinnonhyeon station of Line 9; the second is the 836-meter (914-yard) section of sidewalk along Yeongdong Boulevard from exit No. 5 of Samseong station on Line 2, outside COEX Convention & Exhibition Center and ASEM Tower of the COEX complex.


title: Gangnam District

text: Both the Greater Gangnam Area and Gangnam itself are widely known for its heavily concentrated wealth and very high standard of living, which has been compared to cities such as Beverly Hills, California. The most significant indicator is its extremely expensive real estate. Seoul as a whole is known for its expensive housing prices—as of 2011, its average apartment cost approximately US$5,500 per m—but the average price in Gangnam is almost twice as high, roughly US$10,000 per m, which is 3.5 times the nationwide average. This is driven in part by the price of land: the 40 km making up Gangnam district rivals in valuation with the entirety of the city of Busan, the second-largest city in South Korea which occupies 770 km. Combined with the neighboring districts of Seocho and Songpa, the Greater Gangnam Area accounts for almost 10% of the land value of the entire country.


title: Gangnam District

text: While Seoul's traditional business centers such as Central District, Jongno District, Yongsan District and Yeongdeungpo District still maintain their leading roles, Gangnam and its neighboring districts have swiftly become the new core across all areas of business over the last few decades. KOSPI 200 companies based in Gangnam district include KEPCO, GS Group, Hyundai Department Store Group, HITEJinro, Hansol, Hankook Tire, GLOVIS and Korea Zinc Corporation. Besides, POSCO also operates POSCO Center in Teheran Valley, and KT&G operates Kosmo Tower. Other notable companies based in Gangnam include Dongbu Fire Insurance, Young Poong Group, T'way Airlines and Hankook P&G. Gangnam is also home to many IT and other internet-related companies including NC Soft and Pandora TV, and is also a strong hub of the country's financial and banking sectors. Many international companies also operate key offices in Gangnam, including Google, IBM, Toyota, and AMI.


title: Gangnam District

text: Since January 2012, the area has also been home to FNC Entertainment, which moved into its own company offices in Cheongdam-dong, separate from its parent company in the CJ E&M Music Performance Division Building in neighbouring Apgujeong-dong. Other entertainment companies located there include SM Entertainment, JYP Entertainment (until 2018), Cube Entertainment, Pledis Entertainment, LOEN Entertainment, Source Music, Plan A Entertainment, DSP Media, MBK Entertainment, Nega Network, C-JeS Entertainment, WM Entertainment, NH Media, J. Tune Entertainment, TOP Media, Happy Face Entertainment, Dream Tea Entertainment, Polaris Entertainment, Jellyfish Entertainment, DR Music, Stardom Entertainment, and HYBE Corporation.


title: Gangnam District

text: The Korean subsidiary of American Megatrends, AMI Korea, is headquartered in Daechidong, Gangnam District.


title: Gangnam District

text: Until the early 1980s Gangnam and its neighboring areas had remained the least developed in Seoul, but prodigious development over the last 30 years has earned it a reputation of being one of the most affluent, dynamic, and influential areas in both Seoul and South Korea as a whole.


title: Gangnam District

text: In addition, the COEX Convention & Exhibition Center in Gangnam recently hosted several international conferences such as the 2010 G-20 summit and the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit.


title: Gangnam District

text: South Korea is known for its high standard of education and intense competition for university entrance, and Gangnam is considered the national capital of education, which is one of the decisive factors to make Gangnam the most attractive destination in South Korea. In 2010, roughly 6% of the successful candidates to Seoul National University, which is considered the best university in South Korea, were from Gangnam district, while Gangnam's population makes up only 1% of the country's population. In 2008, 22.7 out of 1,000 students in Gangnam district went abroad to study, while the nation's average ratio in the same time frame was only 3.6 per 1,000 students. Following the substantial raising of the profile of the Gangnam district internationally, the area has become a popular destination for international students seeking Korean language lessons, marking the rise of Korea as a 'study tourism' destination. Both long-standing locally owned schools such as the Seoul Korean Academy, and more recent foreign-owned entities such as Lexis Korea report a significant increase in interest in the location.


title: Gangnam District

text: The important business district around Teheranno (Tehran Street) runs east–west from Gangnam station to Samseong station and the COEX Convention & Exhibition Center-Korean World Trade Center complex. Several popular shopping and entertainment areas are located in Gangnam District, including Apgujeong, the COEX Mall and the area around Gangnam station and Garosugil.


title: Gangnam District

text: Cheongdam-dong is notable as an upmarket shopping area, with stores of global and local luxury brands, such as MCM Haus flagship store; Vera Wang's third global and first Asian flagship store 'Vera Wang Bridal Korea'; as well as French jeweler Cartier's "Cartier Maison", located on Apgujeong-ro, which is the largest in Korea and at the time of opening, in 2008, the seventh largest in the world.


title: Gangnam District

text: The area has a large concentration of vegetarian and other upscale restaurants that serve Korean cuisine with a modern twist, namely on the main street from Bongeun Temple to Park Hyatt Hotel in Samseong-dong.


title: Gangnam District

text: Gangnam District is served by Seoul Subway Line 2, Seoul Subway Line 3, Seoul Subway Line 7, Seoul Subway Line 9, Bundang Line and the Shinbundang Line.


title: Gangnam District

text: Following the anti-American protests in Seoul in the early 2000s, the local authorities in the Gangnam District have organized various cultural and sporting events, such as the International Peace Marathon, jointly with the United States Forces Korea. In 2009 they were awarded a 'special prize' by the US Army for promoting cultural exchanges with American troops.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: Giovanni's Room is a 1956 novel by James Baldwin. The book focuses on the events in the life of an American man living in Paris and his feelings and frustrations with his relationships with other men in his life, particularly an Italian bartender named Giovanni whom he meets at a Parisian gay bar.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: "Giovanni's Room" is noteworthy for bringing complex representations of homosexuality and bisexuality to a reading public with empathy and artistry, thereby fostering a broader public discourse of issues regarding same-sex desire.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: David, a young American man whose girlfriend has gone off to Spain to contemplate marriage, is left alone in Paris and begins an affair with an Italian man, Giovanni. The entire story is narrated by David during "the night which is leading me to the most terrible morning of my life," when Giovanni will be executed. Baldwin tackles social isolation, gender and sexual identity crisis, as well as conflicts of masculinity within this story of a young bisexual man navigating the public sphere in a society that rejects a core aspect of his sexuality.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: David, in the South of France, is about to board a train back to Paris. His girlfriend Hella, to whom he had proposed before she went to Spain, has returned to the United States. As for Giovanni, he is about to be guillotined.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: David remembers his first experience with a boy, Joey, who lived in Brooklyn. The two bonded and eventually had a sexual encounter during a sleepover. The two boys began kissing and making love. The next day, David left, and a little later he took to bullying Joey in order to feel like a real man.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: David now lives with his father, who is prone to drinking, and his aunt, Ellen. The latter upbraids the father for not being a good example to his son. David's father says that all he wants is for David to become a real man. Later, David begins drinking, too, and drinks and drives once, ending up in an accident. Back home, the two men talk, and David convinces his father to let him skip college and get a job instead. He then decides to move to France to find himself.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: After a year in Paris, penniless, he calls Jacques, an older homosexual acquaintance, to meet him for supper so he can ask for money. (In a prolepsis, Jacques and David meet again and discuss Giovanni's fall.) The two men go to Guillaume's gay bar. They meet Giovanni, the new bartender, at whom Jacques tries to make a pass until he gets talking with Guillaume. Meanwhile, David and Giovanni become friends. Later, they all go to a restaurant in Les Halles for breakfast. Jacques enjoins David not to be ashamed to feel love; they eat oysters and drink white wine. Giovanni recounts how he met Guillaume in a cinema; how the two men had dinner together because Giovanni wanted a free meal. He also explains that Guillaume is prone to making trouble. Later, the two men go back to Giovanni's room and they have sex.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: Flashing forward again to the day of Giovanni's execution, David is in his house in the South of France. The caretaker comes round for the inventory, as he is moving out the next day. She encourages him to get married, have children, and pray.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: David moves into Giovanni's small room. They broach the subject of Hella, about whom Giovanni is not worried, but who reveals the Italian's misogynistic prejudices about women and the need for men to dominate them. David then briefly describes Giovanni's room, which is always in the dark because there are no curtains and they need their own privacy. He goes on to read a letter from his father, asking him to go back to America, but he does not want to do that. The young man walks into a sailor; David believes the sailor is a gay man, though it is unclear whether this is true or the sailor is just staring back at David.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: A subsequent letter from Hella announces that she is returning in a few days, and David realizes he has to part with Giovanni soon. Setting off to prove to himself that he is not gay, David searches for a woman with whom he can have sex. He meets a slight acquaintance, Sue, in a bar and they go back to her place and have sex; he does not want to see her again and has only just had her to feel better about himself. When he returns to the room, David finds a hysterical Giovanni, who has been fired from Guillaume's bar.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: Hella eventually comes back and David leaves Giovanni's room with no notice for three days. He sends a letter to his father asking for money for their marriage. The couple then runs into Jacques and Giovanni in a bookshop, which makes Hella uncomfortable because she does not like Jacques's mannerisms. After walking Hella back to her hotel room, David goes to Giovanni's room to talk; the Italian man is distressed. David thinks that they cannot have a life together and feels that he would be sacrificing his manhood if he stays with Giovanni. He leaves, but runs into Giovanni several times and is upset by the "fairy" mannerisms that he is developing and his new relationship with Jacques, who is an older and richer man. Sometime later, David finds out that Giovanni is no longer with Jacques and that he might be able to get a job at Guillaume's bar again.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: The news of Guillaume's murder suddenly comes out, and Giovanni is castigated in all the newspapers. David fancies that Giovanni went back into the bar to ask for a job, going so far as to sacrifice his dignity and agree to sleep with Guillaume. He imagines that after Giovanni has compromised himself, Guillaume makes excuses for why he cannot rehire him as a bartender; in reality, they both know that Giovanni is no longer of interest to Guillaume's bar's clientele since so much of his life has been played out in public. Giovanni responds by killing Guillaume in rage. Giovanni attempts to hide, but he is discovered by the police and sentenced to death for murder. Hella and David then move to the South of France, where they discuss gender roles and Hella expresses her desire to live under a man as a woman. David, wracked with guilt over Giovanni's impending execution, leaves her and goes to Nice for a few days, where he spends his time with a sailor. Hella finds him and discovers his bisexuality, which she says she suspected all along. She bitterly decides to go back to America. The book ends with David's mental pictures of Giovanni's execution and his own guilt.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: The first image in the novel is a self-reflection in a window suggesting the presence of an inward gaze or an alienated stream of consciousness. We see this as David’s focus is not placed on the tragedy of his former lover, but on his own sexual experience, as he nostalgically feels a kind of responsibility for the events that transpired with Giovanni. At first David’s own alienation is smothered in the discourse of silence in the space of the closet. A term Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick asserts in ‘Axiomatic’, that ‘closetedness itself is a performance initiated as such by the speech act of silence - not a particular silence, but a silence that accrues particularly by fits and starts, in relation to the discourse that surrounds and differentially constitutes it’ (69). Thus, this closetedness is revealed through the letters David writes to his father and fiancée, Hella, as characters removed from the queer space of Giovanni’s room and Parisian nightlife. The title too implies a deeper significance of the space of Giovanni’s room specifically from his American past and Parisian present. Dragulescu, acknowledges this fact instating that Baldwin propels David ‘to one location that would challenge his self-representation: Giovanni's room - the metonym of his newly appropriated sexual identity. Once David enters Giovanni's dilapidated room, he virtually enters a realm of no return, a social inferno, yet also a heaven and haven of unrepressed sexuality’ (71).


title: Giovanni's Room

text: But within space we must recognise the significance of darkness as a reoccurring motif. David predetermines the narrative, ‘one day I would not be with Giovanni anymore. And would I then, like all the others, find myself turning and following all kinds of boys down God knows what dark avenue, into what dark place?’ (84). Here it is evident that darkness is a scrutinised place even within the depths of the closet. Armengol elaborates on the link between darkness and race ‘arguing that race and sexuality in Baldwin are not simply interrelated but virtually interchangeable so that homosexuality becomes, literally and metaphorically, associated with blackness at the same time that heterosexuality is, as we shall see, indissolubly linked to white-ness’ (674).


title: Giovanni's Room

text: On the theme of social alienation, Susan Stryker notes that prior to writing "Giovanni's Room", James Baldwin had recently emigrated to Europe and "felt that the effects of racism in the United States would never allow him to be seen simply as a writer, and he feared that being tagged as gay would mean he couldn't be a writer at all." In "Giovanni's Room", David is faced with the same type of decision; on the surface he faces a choice between his American fiancée (and value set) and his European boyfriend, but ultimately, like Baldwin, he must grapple with "being alienated by the culture that produced him."


title: Giovanni's Room

text: David grapples with insecurities pertaining to his masculinity throughout the novel. He spends much of his time comparing himself to every man he meets, ensuring that his performative masculinity allows him to "pass" while negotiating the public sphere. For David, masculinity is intertwined with sexual identity, and thus he believes that his same-sex desires act against his masculinity. Baldwin seems to direct the source of his toxic masculinity towards David's father, as he takes on many of his father's problematic traits. David craves an authority figure and blames his father's lack of authority and responsibility for many of his struggles throughout the novel. This comes to a head when David drunk-drives (a habit he assigns to his father) and is involved in an accident. When his father arrives all he can say is: "I haven't done anything wrong have I?". This ends his relationship with his father and cements his toxic masculine behaviours.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: The most poignant quote to understand the underlying systemic issues here is in the description of the Sailor who ‘wore his masculinity as unequivocally as he wore his skin’ (66). Firstly, the Sailor, as a figure of labour and Capitalism is pictured through a lens whereby his skin is a kind of commodity too. This is central as to why the novel is still inadvertently responding to history. As part of a wider mediation on the civil rights movement, masculinity and manhood is therefore aligned specifically to the ideal of the white man, thus implying a denial of black masculinity.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: Widely, there is a societal assumption that with manhood and masculinity comes an uncomfortable position on expressing inner life and desires. Baldwin draws upon this erasure of intimate life through his writing on women. David elaborates on this toxicity, ‘I respect women – very much – for their inside life, which is not like the life of a man’ (58). But what is baffling is the semantic imagery of water interlinked with femininity. David suggests ‘women are like water’ and that somehow, they are shallow (58). But ironically, water and therefore the feminine, is connected to the protagonists. David feels himself ‘flow towards him [Giovanni], as a river rushes when the ice breaks up’, as ‘life in that room seemed to be occurring underwater’ (60, 62). Here there seems to be a subtle link into the effeminate representing humanistic vitality and a distaste for masculine ideals ‘what passed between us as masculine candour exhausted and appalled me’ (19). We must acknowledge here the fluidity of the term ‘queer’ as a form of spectrum rather than a means for rigidity. David states that he is ‘queer for girls’ (27). This can be understood in duality, either as a universal term for sexuality or possibly a purposeful feminisation of himself to invert social norms and what we understand masculinity to be.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: The phrase 'manhood' repeats throughout the book, in much the same ways that we find masculinity manifesting itself. The difference between the two themes, in this case, is that David's manhood seems to be more to do with his sexual relationships, whereas his masculinity is guided by learned public behaviours he claims to inherit from his father. The self-loathing and projecting that ensues seems to depict the final blow to a man who already had a great amount of dysphoria. Baldwin's positioning of manhood within the narrative align it also with nationhood, sexuality and all facets of performance within the public sphere. Josep Armengol linked Baldwin's description of manhood as a way of him navigating his experiences of blackness in the LGBTQ+ community, particularly when David describes his earliest same-sex encounter with a boy called Joey. In this description "black" becomes a motif for experience and his dark thoughts surrounding Joey and his body.


title: Giovanni's Room

text: In keeping with the theme of social alienation, this novel also explores the topics of origin and identity. As Valerie Rohy of the University of Vermont argues, "Questions of origin and identity are central to James Baldwin’s "Giovanni’s Room", a text which not only participates in the tradition of the American expatriate novel exemplified by Stein and, especially, by Henry James but which does so in relation to the African-American idiom of passing and the genre of the passing novel. As such, "Giovanni’s Room" poses questions of nationalism, nostalgia, and the constitution of racial and sexual subjects in terms that are especially resonant for contemporary identity politics. Lorraine Hansberry, a writer, and playwright who Baldwin referred to as his baby sister, ‘fashioned an identity of intersectionality, whilst Baldwin discovered the interconnectedness of racial and sexual injustice’ (29). Johnson-Roullier corroborates the concept of intersectionality and places it within the context of Baldwin’s writing, ‘as he frees himself to write about homosexuality in terms of the culturally sanctioned silence surrounding it, the disavowal of homosexuality as a viable social identity, and the individual's conflict between personal desire and the communal obligation to eschew an identity not authorized by social consensus’ (932). Identity is then presented as central to the human condition rather than split into categorised binary, hegemonic groups. David exclaims ‘and no matter what I was doing, another me sat in my belly, absolutely cold with terror over the question of my life’ (60).