title: Keiko Fujimori

text: In January 2016, there were 19 presidential candidates, but by the first vote, nine had been expelled or dropped out. Cesar Acuna and Julio Guzman, two of the main competitors, had been excluded according to the National Jury of Elections. The candidacy of Acuna was interrupted because he gave money to the people during the campaign and Guzman was forced out of the race because of questions about whether his party functioned democratically. Fujimori was not free of accusations as the JNE also requested her removal from the election after it came to light that she had received donations larger than those allowed by the election laws. Fujimori countered that the accusations against her were "irresponsible" and alleged insufficient evidence. The JNE dismissed the claims as unfounded, declaring that "The candidate has not engaged in the prohibited activities of offering or giving money or gifts in the aim of obtaining votes." The outcome provoked suspicions that the original exclusionary rulings had been made in favor of Fujimori's candidacy, calling into question the clarity of the system for applying the election rules.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: As the first vote arrived, Fujimori maintained her lead over her competitors. With Acuña and Guzmán's disqualifications, her main opponents were now the center-right economist and former minister Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK), the left-leaning psychologist and congresswoman Veronika Mendoza, and the former delegate Alfredo Barnechea. Also in the ring were Alan Garcia and Alejandro Toledo, ex-presidents whose prospects were dim because of investigations and revelations connecting them to Operation Car Wash.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: On the anniversary of the self-coup of 1992, more than 50,000 demonstrators, most of them called by the non-profit organization No a Keiko, protested Fujimori's candidacy with chants such as "Fujimori never more" in the Plaza San Martin. As she had done in the previous elections, she promised to not pardon her father, but promised also to continue the struggle in court for his release; she also affirmed that this was a decision taken by the whole family, not just herself. Fujimori maintained a high level of disapproval, approximately 45% according to Ipsos, deriving mainly from the negative legacy of her father who was again seeking freedom and appeals for his sentence. The appeals process intensified, bringing Keiko to distance herself from the controversial shadow of her father, vowing to not follow his path, to provide reparations to women who were allegedly sterilized under her father, and to promise to not pardon him for his crimes, signing a document during a debate symbolizing her promise. She also stated that she would not run for another election if she won the presidency. She also supported the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, responsible for detailing the human rights violations committed between 1980 and 2000 by both the Shining Path Insurgency and the government, for the first time.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Polls indicated that she placed first in the first round of voting on 10 April, garnering approximately 40% of the vote over opponents Pedro Pablo Kuczynski and Verónika Mendoza who each received approximately 20%. Fuerza Popular obtained an absolute majority in the congress, garnering 73 of 130 available seats. After learning of the results, Fujimori said, "The new political map that has been drawn clearly shows us that Peru wants reconciliation and does not want any more violence." However, as no candidate had obtained a majority of votes for president, a second vote would be scheduled for 5 June.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: In this next stage of the campaign, Fujimori traveled across the country, especially to where her father continued to maintain a steady level of popularity, while PPK talked about possible allies and intended to present himself as a centrist candidate capable of winning over the antifujimorista vote. Fujimori continued to be the favorite according to polls, but her campaign suffered a major setback: as the election approached, accusations surfaced of connections between drug trafficking and Congressman Joaquín Ramírez, Secretary General of Fuerza Popular and one of Fujimori's principle aids. On 15 May 2016, Peruvian news program Cuarto Poder broadcast a report conducted with Univisión that alleging that Ramírez was being investigated by the DEA for money laundering. According to the report, the DEA had a recording in which Ramirez told a commercial pilot, "Do you know that "China" [referring to Keiko] gave me 15 million dollars during the last campaign in order to "clean" them for the 2011 campaign, and that I 'cleaned' them through a chain of faucets?" The DEA denied that there was any investigation into Fujimori, who denied any involvement in the case or having in fact ever given any money to Ramirez.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Her image continue to take a hit, primarily due to fears that the country would turn into a narco-state with her election, fears that were stoked by her rival PPK. At the same time, prosecutors announced they would be investigating suspicions of money laundering and other irregularities in Fujimori's campaign, which she dismissed as simply a smear campaign. In the final days before the vote, the leaders of the left, such as Mendoza, announced their support for PPK. At the beginning of June, another march organized by several left-leaning organizations against Fujimori garnered thousands of demonstraters in Lima, an event shared considerably via social media under the title "it is not hate, it is love for Peru." According to analysts, this second march was decisive in those not yet decided showing support for the PPK.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: In a very contested election, Fujimori trailed Pedro Pablo Kuczynski according to exit polls as ballots were counted late into the evening on 5 June 2016. The recount took up copious amounts of time after election day. Due to the narrow margin involved, the national (and international, to a lesser degree) press only began to consider PPK as the new "virtual president" on 9 June, four days after the original vote. At that point, PPK had obtained 50.12% of the vote, compared with 49.88% for Fujimori. On 10 June, Fujimori admitted her defeat, saying that her party had a "vigilant" opposition and wishing the new president elect well. On the other hand, Fujimori also claimed that the PPK had won with the help of "promoters of hatred" and "the political, economic, and media power of the outgoing government." Kuczynski had won by a narrow margin of less than half a percentage point, and was sworn in as President on 28 July.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: After the 2016 elections, Fujimori continued to be the main leader of the opposition against PPK's government presiding over the parliamentary majority, while defending herself from accusations of having maintained a controversial relationship with the Odebrecht conglomerate. In December 2017, she supported the first impeachment process against Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, though he pardoned her father Alberto Fujimori on 24 December 2018 three days after the impeachment process failed.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Her brother, Kenji Fujimori, declared his opposition to such a move, which worsened a growing rift between the siblings over their father's legacy and control of the opposition. In March 2018, PPK resigned having been accused of buying votes against his impeachment. At the time, Kenji was recorded negotiating for votes in favor of PPK's acquittal, dubbed his "kenjivideos", in return for a pardon for his father, a deal which PPK ended up following through with. When she found out about the videos, Keiko, accused of being partly responsible for the leak of the recordings, condemned her brother's actions. Upon his expulsion from Congress in June 2018, Kenji responded, "Keiko, congratulations! Here you have my head on a platter." During the second round of elections in 2016, Kenji did not vote for his own sister because he refused to compromise on the freedom of their father or have a discourse on his errors. When he lost a challenge to become leader of Fuerza Popular, Kenji promised to run for president in 2021, something that his sister was also planning to do for the third time, this time in a new party that would split from Fuerza Popular along with other dissidents in the party.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: When PPK resigned on 23 March 2017, the presidency was passed to civil engineer Martín Vizcarra, with Fujimori welcoming him and wished for his "success" through a tweet the same day. Nevertheless, she heavily criticized Vizcarra's 2018 Peruvian constitutional referendum since included on the ballot was whether citizens supported the re-election of congressmen and the return of a bicameral legislature. She claimed that the ballot items "are evidence of centrist populism", asked the president to "stop seeing congress members as your enemies", and was empowered to make as the parliamentary majority leader to attempt to defeat the measures through the referendum.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: On 10 October 2018, Fujimori was arrested and placed in provisional detention on charges of money laundering days after the Supreme Court of Peru nullified the pardon of her father, ordering him back to prison. The arrest came at the request of the Public Ministry, who accused her of illegally receiving money from Odebrecht during her campaign in 2011 as part of the Lava Jato corruption scandal. The arrest order stated that she led a "criminal organization inside of Fuerza 2011 [today Fuerza Popular]." In response, Fujimori wrote, "this is what we call political persecution ... without evidence against me, I am deprived of liberty, but still with my head held high and my spirit intact." On 18 October, she was let go as her appeal was accepted by the National Audience. On 31 October, she was arrested again when she was again sentenced to 3 years of pretrial detention for money laundering and "a high risk of escaping", as per the decision by judge Richard Concepcion Carhuancho.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Fujimori appealed yet again to be set free but the appeal was rejected by the Superior Court of Justice in January 2019. By August of that year, the Supreme Court, due to an impasse between its members, delayed their decision on her appeal. During the investigations, in September, the publication "La Republica" revealed that Fujimori had used a pseudonym together with the rest of her party's leadership in a Telegram group chat called "Titanic Group" where she made the most important party decisions under the name Ruth. By the beginning of December, Jose Camayo, a businessman investigated for the "White Collar Port" case involved with Fuerza Popular, declared before the Operation Car Wash Special Team that Señora K, a person accused of corruption, was in fact Keiko Fujimori herself, something that was later denied by her, and yet still had a significant impact on the ongoing investigation.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: In January 2020, the tribunal decided, four votes to three, to grant her "habeas corpus" on the grounds that the preventative detention sentence was invalid for its violation of her liberty. Shortly afterward, her husband Mark Vito began a hunger strike in a camp installed in front of the prison where she was detained. On 28 January, the judge Victor Zuniga Urday re-imposed a preventive prison for 15 months on the charges of money laundering from the Odebrecht company. On 30 April 2020, a Peruvian appeals court overturned her 15-month detention order and granted her a conditional release from prison. She was finally released on bail on 5 May 2020.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: After a few months out of the spotlight despite still leading her party, on 25 September 2020, she announced her total return to politics. A month later, 30 November, still under investigation by the Operation Car Wash team, she tweeted that she was officially announcing her candidacy as the Fuerza Popular's presidential candidate with her ballot partners ex-congressional president Luis Galarreta as first vice president and the former lawyer and director of National Solidarity, Patricia Juarez as second vice president. Fujimori's party helped lead the controversial removal of Martín Vizcarra and his replacement by Manuel Merino, which resulted with the peaceful 2020 Peruvian protests. The protests were violently put down, resulting in the deaths of Brian Pintado and Inti Sotelo. Shortly after their deaths, Fujimori lamented what had happened and also considered the current situation as "unsustainable", calling for Merino to step down or else he "should be censured right here right now", a move she believed a majority of Congress would support.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: On 9 December, she officially won the internal party elections to be come Fuerza Popular's candidate for the 2021 election. The campaign got off to a rocky start as on the same day as a victory, a poll by "Peru21" released a national Datum poll which revealed that 63% of Peruvians said they would "never vote" for her. Then, on 21 December, the National Jury of Elections declared that Fuerza Popular's presidential board was "inadmissible" and gave them two days to follow their instructions. In the end, the board was finally revised and admitted.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: She has said that she wanted to be a president with a "heavy hand" and "authority", proposing increased legal protection on law enforcement. She has called for the construction of more prisons to reduce overcrowding and to offer more instances of probation for small crime offenders. In a break with previous elections in which she promised not to pardon her father, Fujimori emphasized her closeness to his legacy during this election, stating that "after conversations that I have had with my father, through letters and during the year he's recently had in freedom, we've been able to get much closer and understand things about each other" as well as expressing that his presidency "was not a dictatorship, despite some moments of authoritarianism", and making clear a renewed promise to pardon her father if elected. She proposed a large stimulus to voters that would represent three percent of Peru's annual gross domestic product, possibly increasing the low national debt that exists in Peru.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Throughout the presidential campaign, she was among the frontrunners in opinion polling. Following the first round election, Fujimori gave a speech in which she framed the runoff as a battle between "markets and Marxism", framing her second round opponent Pedro Castillo as a communist. Americas Society/Council of the Americas wrote that a Fujimori presidency would bring the appearance of maintaining the "status quo" in Peru, but it would make the nation "far from stable."


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: After Castillo took the lead during the ballot-counting process in the second round of elections, Fujimori disseminated unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud. According to "The Guardian", various international observers countered Fujimori's claims, stating that the election process was conducted in accordance with international standards, with electoral observers from the Inter-American Union of Electoral Organizations, the Organization of American States, and the Progressive International denying any instances of widespread fraud while also praising the accuracy of the elections.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Fujimori's statements about possibly overturning the election were described as being inspired by the attempts to overturn the 2020 United States presidential election by former U.S. president Donald Trump. "The Guardian" also reported that analysts and political observers criticized Fujimori's remarks, noting that it made her appear desperate after losing her third presidential run in a ten-year period. If elected into the presidency, criminal investigations against Fujimori would have been suspended until July 2026, with Anne Applebaum writing in "The Atlantic" that "the personal stakes are high. ... Fujimori previously spent a year in jail while awaiting trial for allegedly collecting illegal campaign contributions, and she could conceivably be sent back."


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: In December 2021, prosecutor José Domingo Pérez reported that Fujimori received one million dollars from the Odebrecht Department of Structured Operations that was delivered through offshore intermediary accounts of Gonzalo Monteverde's company Construmaq. Domingo stated that he held 1,900 pieces of evidence to determine that a criminal group existed within Popular Force.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Fujimori has continued to promote her father's ideology of Fujimorism within Peru and her political career was her father's idea. "The New York Times" wrote that her political movement was created "to help whitewash" her father Alberto's legacy. She has been described as having an authoritarian, centre-right, right-wing populist, and far-right political ideology. According to Fujimori, she believes in leading Peru with a "heavy hand" and that democracy "cannot be weak ... must be supported by a solid principle of authority." If on one hand fujimoristas have the support of at least 10.9% of the population, on the other there also exists "antifujimorismo", a group of activists who strongly reject the legacy of her father and see in his daughter not only a threat but a complete reversal of democracy, and that is considered one of the most important political forces in Peru, despite her attempts to craft her image as a moderate.


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Defeated in the 1990 elections by Alberto Fujimori, writer and politician Mario Vargas Llosa has been one of the voices most critical of Keiko, although his opinion of her has evolved over time. During her candidacy in the 2011 Peruvian general election, Vargas Llosa said "the worst option is that of Keiko Fujimori because it means the legitimation of one of the worst dictatorships that Peru has had in its history", while during her candidacy for the 2016 Peruvian general election, he stated that "Keiko is the daughter of a murderer and a thief who is imprisoned, tried by civil courts with international observers, sentenced to 25 years in prison for murderer and thief. I do not want her to win the elections." When Fujimori faced far-left candidate Pedro Castillo in 2021, Vargas Llosa endorsed her as the "lesser of two evils", a position criticized as being "the neoliberal right ... allied with authoritarian Fujimori" by Argentine newspaper "Página/12", who said the writer was "betting on fear and resuscitating an anti-communist coalition."


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: Michael Shifter, professor and president of Interamerican Dialogue, admitted that Fujimori has "definite political skill" and "has constructed a base of support." However, he considers the holdover of many of her father's officials in her own team as something that "generates resistance in parts of society that still have very bad memories from years defined by violation of human rights, corruption, and a polarized political climate."


title: Keiko Fujimori

text: According to a poll taken by Ipsos in March 2016, 27% of voters "definitely would not vote" for her. Fujimori's Popular Force party, which held a plurality within the Congress of the Republic of Peru until its dissolution in 2019, has little public support in Peru. In early 2018, Fujimori saw approval rating of about 30%. By July 2018, her public approval had dropped to 14% and her disapproval had increased to more than 88%, with the drop in her approval rating being correlated with allegations that placed her in the midst of the Odebrecht scandal. Prior to first round presidential elections in 2021, Ipsos polls found that 66.3% of respondents definitely would not vote for her, 7.1% probably would not vote for her, 16.3% probably would vote for her, and 7% definitely would vote for her.


title: Midgard

text: In Germanic cosmology, Midgard (an anglicised form of Old Norse ; Old English , Old Saxon , Old High German , and Gothic "Midjun-gards"; "middle yard", "middle enclosure") is the name for Earth (equivalent in meaning to the Greek term , "inhabited") inhabited by and known to humans in early Germanic cosmology. The Old Norse form plays a notable role in Norse cosmology.


title: Midgard

text: The Old Norse name is cognate with Gothic (attested in the Gospel of Luke as a translation of the Greek ), Old Saxon (in "Heliand"), Old High German (in "Muspilli"), and Old English . The latter, which appears in both prose and poetry, was transformed to or ("Middle-earth") in Middle English literature.


title: Midgard

text: In early Germanic cosmology, it stands alongside the term "world" (cf. Old English , Old Saxon , Old High German , Old Frisian , Old Norse ), itself from a Common Germanic compound "*wira-alđiz" ("man-age"), which refers to the inhabited world, i.e. the realm of humankind.


title: Midgard

text: In Norse mythology, "Miðgarðr" became applied to the wall around the world that the gods constructed from the eyebrows of the giant Ymir as a defense against the Jotuns who lived in Jotunheim, east of "Manheimr", the "home of men", a word used to refer to the entire world. The gods slew the giant Ymir, the first created being, and put his body into the central void of the universe, creating the world out of his body: his flesh constituting the land, his blood the oceans, his bones the mountains, his teeth the cliffs, his hairs the trees, and his brains the clouds. Ymir's skull was held by four dwarfs, Nordri, Sudri, Austri, and Vestri, who represent the four points on the compass and became the dome of heaven. The sun, moon, and stars were said to be scattered sparks in the skull.


title: Midgard

text: According to the Eddas, Midgard will be destroyed at Ragnarök, the battle at the end of the world. Jörmungandr (also known as the Midgard Serpent or World Serpent) will arise from the ocean, poisoning the land and sea with his venom and causing the sea to rear up and lash against the land. The final battle will take place on the plain of Vígríðr, following which Midgard and almost all life on it will be destroyed, with the earth sinking into the sea only to rise again, fertile and green when the cycle repeats and the creation begins again.


title: Midgard

text: Although most surviving instances of the word Midgard refer to spiritual matters, it was also used in more mundane situations, as in the Viking Age runestone poem from the inscription Sö 56 from Fyrby:


title: Midgard

text: The Danish and Swedish form or , the Norwegian or , as well as the Icelandic and Faroese form , all derive from the Old Norse term.


title: Midgard

text: The name "middangeard" occurs six times in the Old English epic poem "Beowulf", and is the same word as Midgard in Old Norse. The term is equivalent in meaning to the Greek term Oikoumene, as referring to the known and inhabited world.


title: Midgard

text: The concept of Midgard occurs many times in Middle English. The association with "earth" (OE "eorðe") in Middle English "middellærd", "middelerde" is by popular etymology; the modern English cognate of "geard" "enclosure" is "yard". An early example of this transformation is from the Ormulum:


title: Midgard

text: The usage of "Middle-earth" as a name for a setting was popularized by Old English scholar J. R. R. Tolkien in his "The Lord of the Rings" and other fantasy works; he was originally inspired by the references to "middangeard" and "Éarendel" in the Old English poem "Crist A".


title: Midgard

text: "Mittilagart" is mentioned in the 9th-century Old High German "Muspilli" (v. 54) meaning "the world" as opposed to the sea and the heavens:


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: "Legend of the Sea Devils" is the second of the 2022 specials of the British science fiction television programme "Doctor Who", which was broadcast on BBC One on 17 April 2022. The episode was written by Ella Road and Chris Chibnall, and directed by Haolu Wang. It follows "Eve of the Daleks", serving as an Easter special, and stars Jodie Whittaker in her penultimate episode as the Thirteenth Doctor, alongside Mandip Gill as Yasmin Khan and John Bishop as Dan Lewis.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: In 1807 China, the pirate Madam Ching raids a village and, using a gem, unwittingly releases the Sea Devil Marsissus from a stone statue. Marsissus kills Ying Wai, the young Ying Ki's father, who was tasked with keeping Marsissus contained. The Doctor, Yaz, and Dan arrive to confront Marsissus and investigate the village. Ying Ki and Dan take the gem, split off, and swim to Ching’s ship to take revenge. Ching reveals she is after the treasure of the legendary sailor Ji-Hun (who disappeared searching for the "Flor de la Mar" treasure) because she needs it to pay the ransom for her kidnapped crew. The Sea Devils unleash a leviathan, the Huasen, on Ching’s ship.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: The Doctor and Yaz take the TARDIS back 274 years and witness a Sea Devil betraying Ji-Hun aboard the latter’s ship. Returning to 1807, they try to find the shipwreck to no avail. The Huasen takes the TARDIS to the Sea Devils’ undersea lair. The Sea Devils seek the gem, the Keystone, to execute their plan. Pretending they have it, the Doctor and Yaz use it as leverage to board Ji-Hun's ship, which has been retrofitted with alien technology. They are shown Ji-Hun, who has been kept in stasis. He reveals he tricked the Sea Devils in their deal. Marsissus calls the Doctor’s bluff, claiming the Huasen has located the Keystone.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: Ji-Hun, the Doctor, and Yaz board Ching's ship. Ji-Hun finds out Ying Ki is the descendant of his most trusted crew member Lei Bao and reveals he gave the Keystone to Lei, who escaped his ship. Marsissus seizes the Keystone from Ying Ki just as the Doctor realises the Sea Devils plan to use it to flood Earth.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: The protagonists fight the Sea Devils aboard Ching's ship. The Doctor tampers with the technology on Ji-Hun's ship, but destroying it requires two cables to be held together. The Doctor volunteers to stay back while the others escape, but Ji-Hun offers to sacrifice himself instead.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: Madam Ching announces she has recovered enough treasure to pay the ransom and will make Ying Ki a member of her crew. The Doctor takes Yaz and Dan ashore. Dan leaves a message for his love interest Diane and is surprised when she calls him back. The Doctor, who had acknowledged Yaz's feelings for her on Ji-Hun's ship, solemnly expresses her wish that she could spend more time with Yaz.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: "Legend of the Sea Devils" was written by newcomer Ella Road, and showrunner and executive producer Chris Chibnall. The episode sees the return of the Sea Devils for the first time since "Warriors of the Deep" (1984).


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: Jodie Whittaker stars as the Thirteenth Doctor, alongside Mandip Gill as Yasmin Khan and John Bishop as Dan Lewis. The casting of Crystal Yu, Arthur Lee and Marlowe Chan-Reeves was announced alongside their appearances in a trailer following the credits of "Eve of the Daleks".


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: The episode was directed by Haolu Wang. The first two 2022 specials were filmed in the same production run as the thirteenth series. Filming for those specials concluded in August 2021.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: As part of the promotion for the episode, Scottish musician Nathan Evans was featured on the official "Doctor Who" YouTube channel, singing an adaptation of the sea ballad "Wellerman".


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: "Legend of the Sea Devils" was first broadcast on 17 April 2022 (Easter Sunday) and is the second of the three 2022 specials.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: The episode was watched by 2.20 million viewers overnight, becoming the eleventh most-watched programme of the day. The episode received an Audience Appreciation Index score of 76. The final consolidated ratings for the episode were 3.47 million viewers, the lowest viewing figure in the programme's post-2005 history, and the second-lowest in its entire history, only ahead of the first episode of "Battlefield" (1989), which received 3.1 million viewers.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator website, 57% of seven critics gave "Legend of the Sea Devils" a positive review, with an average rating of 4.90 out of 10. On Metacritic, another aggregator, the episode received a weighted average score of 51 based on six reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Benji Wilson, writing in "The Daily Telegraph", said that his kids thought the Sea Devils were "cute" which undermined the perceived scariness of the episode. However, he praised the "nascent relationship between the Doctor and Yaz" commenting that the interplay between the two characters was "genuinely affecting".


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: Awarding it three stars out of five, Martin Belam of "The Guardian" said the episode "promised a swashbuckling Easter special, and it partially delivered", but he felt that the scenes between the Doctor and Yaz towards the end "didn’t necessarily ring true".


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: "Eve of the Daleks" and "Legend of the Sea Devils" received a joint DVD and Blu-ray release in Region 2/B on 23 May 2022, in Region 1/A on 28 June 2022, and in Region 4/B on 13 July 2022. The episode was included in the home media set for the 2022 specials, to be released in Region 2/B on 7 November 2022.


title: Legend of the Sea Devils

text: On 18 November 2022, composer Segun Akinola announced that selected pieces of the score from this special would be digitally released on 9 December 2022. A physical CD release containing all 3 soundtracks of the 2022 specials is also set for release on 13 January 2023.


title: Matthias Jabs

text: Matthias Jabs (born 25 October 1955) is a German guitarist and songwriter. He is best known for being the lead guitarist in the hard rock band Scorpions. He has played on all but the first five Scorpions studio albums starting with "Lovedrive" (1979). He has a music store, MJ Guitars, in Munich, Germany.


title: Matthias Jabs

text: Jabs was discovered by Scorpions' bassist Francis Buchholz, who had tutored him in mathematics to earn extra money while still in school. Buchholz subsequently recommended the band give him an audition after lead guitarist Uli Roth quit the band in 1978. Before joining the Scorpions, Jabs played for the bands Lady, Fargo and Deadlock.


title: Matthias Jabs

text: For "Taken by Force", RCA Records made a determined effort to promote the album in stores and on the radio. The album's single, "Steamrock Fever", was added to some of RCA's radio promotional records, but Roth was not happy with the commercial direction the band was taking. Although he performed on the band's Japanese tour, he departed to form his own band, Electric Sun, prior to the release of the follow-up live album "Tokyo Tapes". "Tokyo Tapes" was released in the US and Europe six months after its Japanese release. By that time in mid 1978, after auditioning around 140 guitarists, Scorpions recruited Matthias Jabs to replace Roth.


title: Matthias Jabs

text: Following the addition of Jabs, Scorpions left RCA for Mercury Records in the United States and Harvest/EMI Electrola worldwide to record their next album, "Lovedrive". Michael Schenker also returned to the group for a short period during the recordings for the album. This gave the band three guitarists (though Schenker's contribution to the final release was limited to only three songs). The result was "Lovedrive", an album which some critics consider to be the pinnacle of their career. Containing such fan favourites as "Loving You Sunday Morning", "Always Somewhere", "Lovedrive", "Holiday" and the instrumental "Coast to Coast", it firmly cemented the 'Scorpions formula' of hard rock songs mixed with melodic ballads.


title: Matthias Jabs

text: After the completion and release of the album the band decided to retain Michael in the band, forcing Jabs to leave. However, in April 1979, after only a few weeks on the tour, Michael quit. Jabs was immediately brought in to permanently replace him.


title: Matthias Jabs

text: Jabs' playing style was a large part of "Lovedrive"s fresher, newer, heavier sound. This "Van Halen-like" sound would become the band's signature as it would propel them into superstardom in the 1980s.


title: Matthias Jabs

text: In 2000, he was awarded the city of Hanover plaque and the Cross of Merit on Ribbon (Verdienstkreuz am Bande) of the Lower Saxony Order of Merit.


title: Í

text: Í, í (i-acute) is a letter in the Faroese, Hungarian, Icelandic, Czech, Slovak, and Tatar languages, where it often indicates a long /i/ vowel ("ee" in English word "feel"). This form also appears in Catalan, Irish, Italian, Occitan, Portuguese, Spanish, Aragonese, Galician, Leonese, Navajo, and Vietnamese language as a variant of the letter "i". Í í In Latin, the long i is used instead of for a long i-vowel.


title: Í

text: Í is the 16th letter of the Hungarian alphabet, the 12th letter of the Icelandic alphabet, the 16th letter of the Czech alphabet and the 18th letter of the Slovak alphabet. It represents .


title: Í

text: In Ibero-Romance languages, the "í" is not considered a letter, but the letter "i" with an accent. It is used to denote an "i" syllable with abnormal stress.


title: Í

text: Í/í is a variant of I carrying an acute accent; it represents an /i/ carrying the tonic accent. It is used only if it is the last letter of the word except in dictionaries or when a different pronunciation may affect the meaning of a word: "víola" ("violates", ) and "viòla" ("violet", ).


title: Child labour in India

text: A significant proportion of children in India are engaged in child labour. In 2011, the national census of India found that the total number of child labourers, aged [5–14], to be at 10.12 million, out of the total of 259.64 million children in that age group. The child labour problem is not unique to India; worldwide, about 217 million children work, many full-time.


title: Child labour in India

text: As per the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986, amended in 2016 ("CLPR Act"), a "Child" is defined as any person below the age of 14, and the CLPR Act prohibits employment of a Child in any employment including as a domestic help. It is a cognizable criminal offence to employ a Child for any work. Children between age of 14 and 18 are defined as "Adolescent" and the law allows Adolescent to be employed except in the listed hazardous occupation and processes which include mining, inflammable substance and explosives related work and any other hazardous process as per the Factories Act, 1948. In 2001, an estimated 1% of all child workers, or about 1,20,000 children in India were in a hazardous job. Notably, the Constitution of India prohibits child labour in hazardous industries (but not in non-hazardous industries) as a Fundamental Right under Article 24. UNICEF estimates that India with its larger population, has the highest number of labourers in the world under 14 years of age, while sub-Saharan African countries have the highest percentage of children who are deployed as child labourers. The International Labour Organization estimates that agriculture, at 60 percent, is the largest employer of child labour in the world, while the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates 70% of child labour is deployed in agriculture and related activities. Outside of agriculture, child labour is observed in almost all informal sectors of the Indian economy.


title: Child labour in India

text: Companies including Gap, Primark, and Monsanto have been criticised for child labour in their products. The companies claim they have strict policies against selling products made by underage children for their own profit, but there are many links in a supply chain making it difficult to oversee them all. In 2011, after three years of Primark's effort, BBC acknowledged that its award-winning investigative journalism report of Indian child labour use by Primark was a fake. The BBC apologised to Primark, to Indian suppliers and all its viewers. Another company that has come under much scrutiny was Nike. Nike was under pressure to speak up about alleged sweatshops that harbored children that the company was exploiting to make their sneakers. Since then Nike has come out with a separate web page that specifically points out where they get their products from and where their products are manufactured.


title: Child labour in India

text: In December 2014, the U.S. Department of Labor issued a "List of Goods Produced by Child Labor or Forced Labor" and India figured among 74 countries where a significant incidence of critical working conditions has been observed. Unlike any other country, 23 goods were attributed to India, the majority of which are produced by child labour in the manufacturing sector.


title: Child labour in India

text: In addition to the constitutional prohibition of hazardous child labour, various laws in India, such as the Juvenile Justice (care and protection) of Children Act-2000, and the Child Labour (Prohibition and Abolition) Act 1986 provide a basis in law to identify, prosecute and stop child labour in India.


title: Child labour in India

text: The term 'child labour', suggests ILO, is best defined as work that deprives children of their childhood, their potential and their dignity, and that is harmful to physical and mental development. Interferes with their schooling by depriving them of the opportunity to attend school; obliging them to leave school prematurely; or requiring them to attempt to combine school attendance with excessively long and heavy work.


title: Child labour in India

text: UNICEF defines child labour differently. A child, suggests UNICEF, is involved in child labour activities if between 5 and 11 years of age, he or she did at least one hour of economic activity or at least 28 hours of domestic work in a week, and in case of children between 12 and 14 years of age, he or she did at least 14 hours of economic activity or at least 42 hours of economic activity and domestic work per week. UNICEF, in another report, suggests that "Children’s work needs to be seen as happening along a continuum, with destructive or exploitative work at one end and beneficial work promoting or enhancing children’s development without interfering with their schooling, recreation and rest at the other. And between these two poles are vast areas of work that need not negatively affect a child’s development."


title: Child labour in India

text: India's Census 2001 office, defines child labour as participation of a child less than 17 years of age in any economically productive activity with or without compensation, wages or profit. Such participation could be physical or mental or both. This work includes part-time help or unpaid work on the farm, family enterprise or in any other economic activity such as cultivation and milk production for sale or domestic consumption. Indian government classifies child labourers into two groups: main workers are those who work 6 months or more per year, and marginal child workers are those who work at any time during the year but less than 6 months in a year.


title: Child labour in India

text: Some child rights activists argue that child labour must include every child who is not in school because he or she is a hidden child worker. UNICEF, however, points out that India faces major shortages of schools, classrooms and teachers particularly in rural areas where 90 percent of child labour problem is observed. About 1 in 5 primary schools have just one teacher to teach students across all grades.


title: Child labour in India

text: After its independence from colonial rule, India has passed a number of constitutional protections and laws on child labour. The Constitution of India in the Fundamental Rights and the Directive Principles of State Policy prohibits child labour below the age of 14 years in any factory or mine or castle or engaged in any other hazardous employment (Article 24). The constitution also envisioned that India shall, by 1960, provide infrastructure and resources for free and compulsory education to all children of the age six to 14 years. (Article 21-A and Article 45).


title: Child labour in India

text: India has a federal form of government, and labour being a subject in the Concurrent List, both the central and state governments can and have legislated on child labour.


title: Child labour in India

text: The Act prohibits the employment of children below the age of 14 years in any factory. The law also placed rules on who, when and how long can pre-adults aged 15–18 years be employed in any factory


title: Child labour in India

text: A "Child" is defined as any person below the age of 14 and the CLPR Act prohibits employment of a Child in any employment including as a domestic help (except helping own family in non-hazardous occupations). It is a cognizable criminal offence to employ a Child for any work. Children between age of 14 and 18 are defined as "Adolescent" and the law allows Adolescent to be employed except in the listed hazardous occupation and processes which include mining, inflammable substance and explosives related work and any other hazardous process as per the Factories Act, 1948.


title: Child labour in India

text: This law made it a crime, punishable with a prison term, for anyone to keep a child in bondage for the purpose of employment.


title: Child labour in India

text: The law mandates free and compulsory education to all children aged 6 to 16 years. This legislation also mandated that 25 per cent of seats in every private school must be allocated for children from economically disadvantaged groups (implementation gaps remain).


title: Child labour in India

text: India formulated a National Policy on Child Labour in 1987. This Policy seeks to adopt a gradual & sequential approach with a focus on rehabilitation of children working in hazardous occupations. It envisioned strict enforcement of Indian laws on child labour combined with development programs to address the root causes of child labour such as poverty. In 1988, this led to the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) initiative. This legal and development initiative continues, with a current central government funding of Rs. 6 billion, targeted solely to eliminate child labour in India. Despite these efforts, child labour remains a major challenge for India.


title: Child labour in India

text: No, child below age of 16 years shall be employed to work in any factory or mine or engaged in any hazardous employment


title: Child labour in India

text: Bonded child labour is a system of forced, or partly forced, labour under which the child, or child's parent enter into an agreement, oral or written, with a creditor. The child performs work as in-kind repayment of credit. In the 2005 ILO report, debt-bondage in India emerged during the colonial period, as a means of obtaining reliable cheap labour, with loan and land-lease relationships implemented during that era of Indian history. These were regionally called "Hali", or "Halwaha", or "Jeura" systems; and was named by the colonial administration as the "indentured" labour system. These systems included bonded child labour. Over time, claims the ILO report, this traditional forms of long-duration relationships have declined.


title: Child labour in India

text: In 1977, India passed legislation that prohibits solicitation or use of bonded labour by anyone, of anyone including children. Evidence of continuing bonded child labour continue. A report by the Special Rapporteur to India's National Human Rights Commission, reported the discovery of 53 child labourers in 1996 in the state of Tamil Nadu during a surprise inspection. Each child or the parent had taken an advance of Rs. 1,00,000 to 2,50,000. The children were made to work for 12 to 14 hours a day and received only Rs. 2 to 3 per day as wages. According to an ILO report, the extent of bonded child labour is difficult to determine, but estimates from various social activist groups range up to 350,000 in 2001.


title: Child labour in India

text: Despite its legislation, prosecutors in India rarely use the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act of 1976 to prosecute those responsible. According to one report, the prosecutors have no direction from the central government that if a child is found to be underpaid, the case should be prosecuted not only under the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 and the Child Labour (Prohibition & Regulation) Act, 1986, the case should include charges under the Bonded Labour Act of India. The few enforcement actions have had some unintended effects. While there has been a decrease in children working in factories because of enforcement and community vigilance committees, the report claims poverty still compels children and poor families to work. The factory lends money to whoever needs it, puts a loom in the person's home, and then the family with children works out of their homes, bring finished product to pay interest and get some wages. The bonded child and family labour operations were moving out of small urban factories into rural homes.


title: Child labour in India

text: The presence of a large number of child labourers is regarded as a serious issue in terms of economic welfare. Children who work fail to get necessary education. They do not get the opportunity to develop physically, intellectually, emotionally and psychologically. In terms of the physical condition of children, children are not ready for long monotonous work because they become exhausted more quickly than adults. This reduces their physical conditions and makes the children more vulnerable to disease.


title: Child labour in India

text: Children in hazardous working conditions are even in worse condition Children who work, instead of going to school, will remain illiterate which limits their ability to contribute to their own well being as well as to the community they live in. Child labour has long term adverse effects for India.


title: Child labour in India

text: To keep an economy prospering, a vital criterion is to have an educated workforce equipped with relevant skills for the needs of the industries. The young labourers today, will be part of India's human capital tomorrow. Child labour undoubtedly results in a trade-off with human capital accumulation.


title: Child labour in India

text: Child labour in India are employed with the majority (70%) in agriculture some in low-skilled labour-intensive sectors such as sari weaving or as domestic helpers, which require neither formal education nor training, but some in heavy industry such as coal mining.


title: Child labour in India

text: According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are tremendous economic benefits for developing nations by sending children to school instead of work. Without education, children do not gain the necessary skills such as English literacy and technical aptitude that will increase their productivity to enable them to secure higher-skilled jobs in future with higher wages that will lift them out of poverty.


title: Child labour in India

text: In the year 1999, the International Labour Organization co-published a report with Universal Alliance of Diamond Workers, a trade union. The ILO report claimed that child labour is prevalent in the Indian diamond industry. International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) in a separate 1997 press release observed that child labour continued to flourish in India's diamond industry. Not everyone agreed with these claims. The South Gujarat Diamond Workers Association, another trade union, acknowledged child labour is present but it is not systematic, is less than 1% and against local industry norms. Local diamond industry businessmen too downplayed these charges.


title: Child labour in India

text: According to the 1999 ILO paper, India annually cuts and polishes 70 percent of the world's diamonds by weight, or 40 percent by value. Additionally, India contributes 95 percent of the emeralds, 85 percent of the rubies, and 65 percent of the sapphires worldwide. India processes these diamonds and gems using traditional labour-intensive methods. About 1.5 million people are employed in the diamond industry, mostly in the unorganised sector. The industry is fragmented into small units, each employing a few workers. The industry has not scaled up, organised, and big operators absent.


title: Child labour in India

text: The ILO paper claims that this is to avoid the complex labour laws of India. The export order is split, work is subcontracted through many middlemen, and most workers do not know the name of enterprise with the export order. In this environment, claims the ILO report, exact number of child labourers in India's diamond and gem industry is unknown; they estimate that child labourers in 1997 were between 10,000 and 20,000 out of 1.5 million total workers (about 1 in 100). The ILO report claims the causes for child labour include parents who send their children to work because they see education as expensive, education quality offering no real value, while artisan work in diamond and gem industry to be more remunerative as the child grows up.


title: Child labour in India

text: A more recent study from 2005, conducted at 663 manufacturing units at 21 different locations in India's diamond and gem industry, claims incidence rates of child labour have dropped to 0.31%.


title: Child labour in India

text: The town of Sivakasi in South India, known for its fireworks and matchsticks industries, has been reported to employ child labour in the production of fireworks. In 2011, Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu was home to over 9,500 firecracker factories and produced almost 100 percent of total fireworks output in India. The fireworks industry employed about 150,000 people at an average of 15 employees per factory. Most of these were in unorganized sector, with a few registered and organized companies.


title: Child labour in India

text: In 1989, Shubh Bhardwaj reported that child labour is present in India's fireworks industry, and safety practices poor. Child labour is common in small shed operation in the unorganized sector. Only 4 companies scaled up and were in the organized sector with over 500 employees; the larger companies did not employ children and had superior safety practices and resources. The child labour in small, unorganized sector operations suffered long working hours, low wages, unsafe conditions and tiring schedules.


title: Child labour in India

text: A more recent 2002 report by international labour organization (ILO), claims that child labour is significant in Tamil Nadu's fireworks, matches or incense sticks industries. However, these children do not work in the formal economy and corporate establishments that produce for export. The child labourers in manufacturing typically toil in supply chains producing for the domestic market of fireworks, matches or incense sticks. The ILO report claims that as the demand for these products has grown, the formal economy and corporate establishments have not expanded to meet the demand, rather home-based production operations have mushroomed. This has increased the potential of child labour. Such hidden operations make research and effective action difficult, suggests ILO.


title: Child labour in India

text: A 2003 Human Rights Watch report, claims children as young as five years old are employed and work for up to 12 hours a day and six to seven days a week in silk industry. These children, claims, are bonded labour; even though the government of India denies existence of bonded child labour, these silk industries children are easy to find in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, claims Children are forced to dip their hands in scalding water to palpate the cocoons and are often paid less than Rs 10 per day.


title: Child labour in India

text: In 2012, a German news investigative report claimed that in states like Karnataka, non-governmental organisations had found up to 15,000 children working in the 1,100 silk factories in 1998. In other places, thousands of bonded child labourers were present in 1995. But today, after UNICEF and NGOs got involved, child labour figure is drastically lower, with the total estimated to be fewer than a thousand child labourers. The released children were back in school, claims the report.


title: Child labour in India

text: Siddartha Kara finds about 20% of carpets manufactured in India could involve child labour. He notes, "determining the extent to which the hand-made carpet supply chain from India to the U.S.A. is tainted by slavery and child labour requires an additional exercise in supply chain tracing." Kara's study also finds variation in child labour practices between ethnic and religious groups. Kara and colleagues report highest level of child labour in Muslim community carpet operations, and the presence of debt bonded child labourers in Muslim villages.


title: Child labour in India

text: Official estimates for child labour working as domestic labour and in restaurants is more than 2,500,000 while NGOs estimate the figure to be around 20 million. The Government of India expanded the coverage of The Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act and banned the employment of children as domestic workers and as workers in restaurants, dhabas, hotels, spas and resorts effective from 10 October 2006.


title: Child labour in India

text: Despite laws enacted in 1952 which prohibited employment of people under the age of 18, primitive coal mines in Meghalaya were caught employing children under the age of 18. This caught the attention of international media in 2013.


title: Child labour in India

text: A large number of brick kilns around Bangalore and Hosur employ bonded and child labour, under the pretext of offering high wages. In 2018, 22 bonded labourers including children were rescued from a brick kiln near Anekal in Bangalore and the employers were arrested by the police. The employers allegedly provided poor food and working conditions.


title: Child labour in India

text: In 1979, the Indian government formed the Gurupadswamy Committee to find about child labour and means to tackle it. The Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act was enacted based on the recommendations of the committee in 1986. A National Policy on Child Labour was formulated in 1987 to focus on rehabilitating children working in hazardous occupations. The Ministry of Labour and Employment had implemented around 100 industry-specific National Child Labour Projects to rehabilitate the child workers since 1988.


title: Child labour in India

text: The Indian government has enacted a plethora of acts, laws, organizations, and institutions to combat the overwhelming prominence of child labour. Some of the initiatives include the Child Labour Prohibition and Regulation Act which is a piece of legislation that prohibits the engagement of children in certain employment (mostly in dangerous conditions) and regulates the conditions of work of children; the National Policy on Child Labour seeks to adopt a sequential approach with focus on rehabilitation of children working in hazardous occupations & processes in the first instance; and the Ministry of Labour and employment functions to provide and supervise a range of policies concerning child labor in India. Furthermore, as reported by Osment, NGOs such as Care India, Child Rights and You, Global March against Child Labour have been implemented to combat child labour through education and accessibility to resources. However, these efforts have been largely unsuccessful.


title: Child labour in India

text: Child labour free zones have been promoted in India: a child labour free zone (CLFZ) is "a defined area, such as a village or a plantation, where everyone is convinced that 'No child should be working, every child should be in school!' The concept was introduced in 1992 by an Indian organisation, the Mamidipudi Venkatarangaiya Foundation (MVFoundation).


title: Child labour in India

text: Many NGOs like Bachpan Bachao Andolan, ChildFund, CARE India, Talaash Association, Child Rights and You, Global march against child labour, Bundelkhand matra bhumi samaj sevi sansthan project stop working with child labour in India, GoodWeave India, RIDE India, Childline etc. have been working to eradicate child labour in India.


title: Child labour in India

text: In India, millions of children are forced into child labour due to poverty, high illiteracy rates due to lack of education, unemployment, overpopulation, etc.


title: Child labour in India

text: As reported by Save the Children, children between the ages of 14–17 years engage in hazardous work and account for 62.8% of India's child labour workforce in which more boys than girls (38.7 million vs. 8.8 million) are forced into doing more hazardous work. Child labour used to be most ubiquitous in rural India in which 80% of working children found work. Recently, however, child labour has relocated from rural areas to urbanized areas where the big cities are located. Larger cities provide more opportunity for work compared to smaller, rural areas. As reported by UNICEF, there has been a 54% increase in child labor in urbanized areas for children between the ages of 5-14. In addition, according to a Campaign Against Child Labour study, India has approximately 12 666 377 child laborers total. Uttar Pradesh, a state in northern India, has 19,27,997 child labourers. Delhi, the capital of India, has over 1 million child labourers. Other leading states with similar figures include Bihar, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.


title: Child labour in India

text: According to 2005 Government of India NSSO (National Sample Survey Org.), child labour incidence rates in India is highest among Muslim Indians, about 40% higher than Hindu Indians. Child labour was found to be present in other minority religions of India but at significantly lower rates. Across caste classification, the children had child labour incidence rates of 2.8%, statistically similar to the nationwide average of 2.74%. Tribal populations, however, had higher child labour rates at 3.8%. India has the highest number of children stunted because of malnutrition (48.2 million) equivalent to Colombia's population, according to Save the Children's 'Stolen Childhoods' report. 31 million children are part of India's workforce, the highest number in the world. A minute analysis of the available child labour data reveals that a greater number of children in the age group of 5–14 years are engaged in agricultural labour in rural India.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine (symbol Leu or L) is an essential amino acid that is used in the biosynthesis of proteins. Leucine is an α-amino acid, meaning it contains an α-amino group (which is in the protonated −NH form under biological conditions), an α-carboxylic acid group (which is in the deprotonated −COO form under biological conditions), and a side chain isobutyl group, making it a non-polar aliphatic amino acid. It is essential in humans, meaning the body cannot synthesize it: it must be obtained from the diet. Human dietary sources are foods that contain protein, such as meats, dairy products, soy products, and beans and other legumes. It is encoded by the codons UUA, UUG, CUU, CUC, CUA, and CUG.


title: Leucine

text: Like valine and isoleucine, leucine is a branched-chain amino acid. The primary metabolic end products of leucine metabolism are acetyl-CoA and acetoacetate; consequently, it is one of the two exclusively ketogenic amino acids, with lysine being the other. It is the most important ketogenic amino acid in humans.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine and β-hydroxy β-methylbutyric acid, a minor leucine metabolite, exhibit pharmacological activity in humans and have been demonstrated to promote protein biosynthesis via the phosphorylation of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR).


title: Leucine

text: The Food and Nutrition Board (FNB) of the U.S. Institute of Medicine set Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for essential amino acids in 2002. For leucine, for adults 19 years and older, 42 mg/kg body weight/day.


title: Leucine

text: As a dietary supplement, leucine has been found to slow the degradation of muscle tissue by increasing the synthesis of muscle proteins in aged rats. However, results of comparative studies are conflicted. Long-term leucine supplementation does not increase muscle mass or strength in healthy elderly men. More studies are needed, preferably ones based on an objective, random sample of society. Factors such as lifestyle choices, age, gender, diet, exercise, etc. must be factored into the analyses to isolate the effects of supplemental leucine as a standalone, or if taken with other branched chain amino acids (BCAAs). Until then, dietary supplemental leucine cannot be associated as the prime reason for muscular growth or optimal maintenance for the entire population.


title: Leucine

text: Both L-leucine and D-leucine protect mice against epileptic seizures. D-leucine also terminates seizures in mice after the onset of seizure activity, at least as effectively as diazepam and without sedative effects. Decreased dietary intake of L-leucine lessens adiposity in mice. High blood levels of leucine are associated with insulin resistance in humans, mice, and rodents. This might be due to the effect of leucine to stimulate mTOR signaling. Dietary restriction of leucine and the other BCAAs can reverse diet-induced obesity in wild-type mice by increasing energy expenditure, and can restrict fat mass gain of hyperphagic rats.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine toxicity, as seen in decompensated maple syrup urine disease, causes delirium and neurologic compromise, and can be life-threatening.


title: Leucine

text: A high intake of leucine may cause or exacerbate symptoms of pellagra in people with low niacin status because it interferes with the conversion of L-tryptophan to niacin.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine at a dose exceeding 500 mg/kg/d was observed with hyperammonemia. As such, unofficially, a tolerable upper intake level (UL) for leucine in healthy adult men can be suggested at 500 mg/kg/d or 35 g/d under acute dietary conditions.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine is a dietary amino acid with the capacity to directly stimulate myofibrillar muscle protein synthesis. This effect of leucine results from its role as an activator of the mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), a serine-threonine protein kinase that regulates protein biosynthesis and cell growth. The activation of mTOR by leucine is mediated through Rag GTPases, leucine binding to leucyl-tRNA synthetase, leucine binding to sestrin 2, and possibly other mechanisms.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine metabolism occurs in many tissues in the human body; however, most dietary leucine is metabolized within the liver, adipose tissue, and muscle tissue. Adipose and muscle tissue use leucine in the formation of sterols and other compounds. Combined leucine use in these two tissues is seven times greater than in the liver.


title: Leucine

text: A small fraction of metabolism – less than 5% in all tissues except the testes where it accounts for about 33% – is initially catalyzed by leucine aminomutase, producing β-leucine, which is subsequently metabolized into (β-KIC), β-ketoisocaproyl-CoA, and then acetyl-CoA by a series of uncharacterized enzymes.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine is an essential amino acid in the diet of animals because they lack the complete enzyme pathway to synthesize it "de novo" from potential precursor compounds. Consequently, they must ingest it, usually as a component of proteins. Plants and microorganisms synthesize leucine from pyruvic acid with a series of enzymes:


title: Leucine

text: Synthesis of the small, hydrophobic amino acid valine also includes the initial part of this pathway.


title: Leucine

text: Leucine is a branched-chain amino acid (BCAA) since it possesses an aliphatic side-chain that is not linear.


title: Leucine

text: Racemic leucine had been subjected to circularly polarized synchrotron radiation to better understand the origin of biomolecular asymmetry. An enantiomeric enhancement of 2.6% had been induced, indicating a possible photochemical origin of biomolecules' homochirality.


title: Noble metal

text: A noble metal is ordinarily regarded as a metallic chemical element that is generally resistant to corrosion and is usually found in nature in its raw form. Gold, platinum, and the other platinum group metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium) are most often so classified. Silver, copper and mercury are sometimes included as noble metals, however less often as each of these usually occurs in nature combined with sulfur.


title: Noble metal

text: In more specialized fields of study and applications the number of elements counted as noble metals can be smaller or larger. In physics, there are only three noble metals: copper, silver and gold. In dentistry, silver is not always counted as a noble metal since it is subject to corrosion when present in the mouth. In chemistry, the term noble metal is sometimes applied more broadly to any metallic or semimetallic element that does not react with a weak acid and give off hydrogen gas in the process. This broader set includes copper, mercury, technetium, rhenium, arsenic, antimony, bismuth and polonium, as well as gold, the six platinum group metals, and silver.


title: Noble metal

text: While noble metal lists can differ, they tend to cluster around the six platinum group metals (ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, platinum) plus gold.


title: Noble metal

text: In addition to this term's function as a compound noun, there are circumstances where "noble" is used as an adjective for the noun "metal". A galvanic series is a hierarchy of metals (or other electrically conductive materials, including composites and semimetals) that runs from noble to active, and allows one to predict how materials will interact in the environment used to generate the series. In this sense of the word, graphite is more noble than silver and the relative nobility of many materials is highly dependent upon context, as for aluminium and stainless steel in conditions of varying pH.


title: Noble metal

text: The term "noble metal" can be traced back to at least the late 14th century and has slightly different meanings in different fields of study and application.


title: Noble metal

text: Prior to Mendeleev's publication in 1869 of the first (eventually) widely accepted periodic table, Odling published a table in 1864, in which the "noble metals" rhodium, ruthenium, palladium; and platinum, iridium, and osmium were grouped together, and adjacent to silver and gold.


title: Noble metal

text: The noble metals are siderophiles (iron-lovers). They tend to sink into the Earth's core because they dissolve readily in iron either as solid solutions or in the molten state. Most siderophile elements have practically no affinity whatsoever for oxygen: indeed, oxides of gold are thermodynamically unstable with respect to the elements.


title: Noble metal

text: Copper, silver, gold, and the six platinum group metals are the only native metals that occur naturally in relatively large amounts.


title: Noble metal

text: Ruthenium can be dissolved in aqua regia, a highly concentrated mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid, only when in the presence of oxygen, while rhodium must be in a fine pulverized form. Palladium and silver are soluble in nitric acid, with the solubility of silver being limited by the formation of silver chloride precipitate.


title: Noble metal

text: Rhenium reacts with oxidizing acids, and hydrogen peroxide, and is said to be tarnished by moist air. Osmium and iridium are chemically inert in ambient conditions. Platinum and gold can be dissolved in aqua regia. Mercury reacts with oxidising acids.


title: Noble metal

text: In 2010, US researchers discovered that an organic "aqua regia" in the form of a mixture of thionyl chloride SOCl and the organic solvent pyridine CHN achieved "high dissolution rates of noble metals under mild conditions, with the added benefit of being tunable to a specific metal" for example, gold but not palladium or platinum.


title: Noble metal

text: In physics, the expression "noble metal" is sometimes confined to copper, silver, and gold, since their full d-subshells contribute to what noble character they have. In contrast, the other noble metals, especially the platinum group metals, have notable catalytic applications, arising from their partially filled d-subshells. This is the case with palladium which has a full d-subshell in the atomic state but in condensed form has a partially filled sp band at the expense of d-band occupancy.


title: Noble metal

text: The difference in reactivity can be seen during the preparation of clean metal surfaces in an ultra-high vacuum: surfaces of "physically defined" noble metals (e.g., gold) are easy to clean and keep clean for a long time, while those of platinum or palladium, for example, are covered by carbon monoxide very quickly.


title: Noble metal

text: Standard reduction potentials in aqueous solution are also a useful way of predicting the non-aqueous chemistry of the metals involved. Thus, metals with high negative potentials, such as sodium, or potassium, will ignite in air, forming the respective oxides. These fires cannot be extinguished with water, which also react with the metals involved to give hydrogen, which is itself explosive. Noble metals, in contrast, are disinclined to react with oxygen and, for that reason (as well as their scarcity) have been valued for millennia, and used in jewellery and coins.


title: Noble metal

text: The adjacent table lists standard reduction potential in volts; electronegativity (revised Pauling); and electron affinity values (kJ/mol), for some metals and metalloids.


title: Noble metal

text: The simplified entries in the reaction column can be read in detail from the Pourbaix diagrams of the considered element in water. Noble metals have large positive potentials; elements not in this table have a negative standard potential or are not metals.


title: Noble metal

text: Electronegativity is included since it is reckoned to be, "a major driver of metal nobleness and reactivity".


title: Noble metal

text: On account of their high electron affinity values, the incorporation of a noble metal in the electrochemical photolysis process, such as platinum and gold, among others, can increase photoactivity.


title: Noble metal

text: Arsenic and antimony are usually considered to be metalloids rather than noble metals. However, physically speaking their most stable allotropes are metallic. Semiconductors, such as selenium and tellurium, have been excluded.


title: Noble metal

text: Rayner-Canham contends that, "silver is so much more chemically-reactive and has such a different chemistry, that it should not be considered as a 'noble metal'." In dentistry, silver is not regarded as a noble metal due to its tendency to corrode in the oral environment.


title: Noble metal

text: The relevance of the entry for water is addressed by Li et al. in the context of galvanic corrosion. Such a process will only occur when:


title: Noble metal

text: The superheavy elements from hassium (element 108) to livermorium (116) inclusive are expected to be "partially very noble metals"; chemical investigations of hassium has established that it behaves like its lighter congener osmium, and preliminary investigations of nihonium and flerovium have suggested but not definitively established noble behavior. Copernicium's behaviour seems to partly resemble both its lighter congener mercury and the noble gas radon.


title: Noble metal

text: Such nobility is mainly associated with the relatively high electronegativity values of the noble metals, resulting in only weakly polar covalent bonding with oxygen. The table lists the melting points of the oxides of the noble metals, and for some of those of the non-noble metals, for the elements in their most stable oxidation states.


title: Noble metal

text: Many of the noble metals can act as catalysts. For example, platinum is used in catalytic converters, devices which convert toxic gases produced in car engines, such as the oxides of nitrogen, into non-polluting substances.


title: Noble metal

text: Gold has many industrial applications; it is used as a catalyst in hydrogenation and the water gas shift reaction.


title: Lexus RC

text: The Lexus RC (Japanese: レクサス・RC, "Rekusasu RC") is a compact executive two-door coupé manufactured by Lexus, Toyota's luxury division. The RC which according to Lexus stands for "Radical Coupe" is a two-door coupé version of the Lexus IS (XE30). The RC is designated as the XC10 series. The RC borrowed styling from the LF-LC concept and was previewed by the LF-CC concept, being designed as a proposal by Pansoo Kwon from 2010 to early 2012 and approved by supervising designers Yasuo Kajino and Tatsuya Takei.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC has a shorter wheelbase than the Lexus IS (XE30) though it is longer overall. The platform shares the front end of the Lexus GS (L10), midsection from the Lexus IS (XE20) convertible, while the rear componentry is from the XE30 series IS. The RC has three LED lamps in the triangular headlights and 18-inch five-spoke alloy wheels as standard, or 19-inch ten-spoke wheels as option.


title: Lexus RC

text: Japan models were set to go on sale in the second half of 2014. Early models include RC 350 and RC 300h.


title: Lexus RC

text: US sales began in November 2014. In Japan, ownership of the version with the 5.0 litre engine is expensive due to the annual Japanese road tax obligation.


title: Lexus RC

text: Initially, the RC was available with a choice of three engines; the RC 300h with the 2.5-liter "2AR-FSE" inline-four engine mated to a continuously variable transmission, the RC 350 with the 3.5-liter "2GR-FSE" V6 (which was later replaced with the 2GR-FKS from model year 2018 on), and the RC F with 5.0-liter "2UR-GSE" V8. The RC 200t (now called RC 300), featuring a 2.0-liter "8AR-FTS I4" turbocharged petrol engine, was added to the range in late 2015. All-wheel drive is offered for the RC 300h and RC 350. Lexus RC AWD versions use a full-time all-wheel drive system that utilizes a planetary gearset center differential coupled with a multi-disc clutch to act as the slip limiting device. The planetary gearset provides a 30:70 front-to-rear torque split under normal conditions for handling agility, however the system can allow for a torque split of up to 50:50 to control wheel slip.


title: Lexus RC

text: Variants of the RC series have all-wheel steering, 2 piece brake rotors, variable suspension dampers, and a Torsen limited slip differential.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC 350 naturally aspirated V6 produces at 6,600rpm and at 4,800rpm. While comfort and luxury were the aim of the RC series, sportiness was also part of the equation, although its heavy curb weight dampens the car's performance driving capability especially against the RCs direct competitors such as the BMW 440i and Audi A5.


title: Lexus RC

text: TRD produces a bodykit, several aerodynamic and performance parts for the RC 350, these include an exhaust system, a rear diffuser, lightweight forged aluminium wheels with Michelin Pilot Super Sport tires, etc. The options are dealer fitted and are available only in Japan.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC received its first facelift in August 2018, with official images revealed ahead of its 2018 Paris Motor Show debut, which took place a few weeks after. The corporate 'L' shaped DRLs and the triple eye LED's are merged, making their placements look highly reminiscent of its bigger LC coupe along with a reworked cabin and rear tail lamp design. Base models now come standard with Amazon Alexa integration and a 4G LTE Wi-Fi hotspot.


title: Lexus RC

text: For the 2019 model year US market, the regular Lexus RC is offered as RC 300 and RC 350. Both models are available as rear wheel drive or AWD, as well as the choice of base or F Sport trim levels, which makes the total of 8 models to choose from.


title: Lexus RC

text: In most European countries, other than the high performance RC F, only the rear wheel drive RC 300h is offered as the base, F Sport, and special edition called Takumi. The RC300 h Takumi comes with multi-spoke 19-inch alloys and a 17-speaker Mark Levinson sound system. In South Africa, the RC 350 is the base model, with the RC F as the flagship model.


title: Lexus RC

text: Following the introduction of stricter crash safety regulations, the RC, along with the IS sedan and the CT hatchback, were pulled from the Australian market in November 2021.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC F is a high performance version of the RC. The vehicle was unveiled in the 2014 North American International Auto Show. It went on sale in the United States in November 2014 as a 2015 model year vehicle. It was set to go on sale in Japan in the second half of 2014.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC F features a "2UR-GSE" V8 engine with Atkinson cycle at cruising speeds, developing a maximum output of at 7100 rpm and of torque at 4800–5600 rpm. It is coupled to a Toyota AA80E 8-speed transmission built by Aisin AW.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC F has Brembo four-wheel power assisted disc brakes with anti-lock braking system (ABS), electronic brake force distribution (EBD) and brake assist (BA), and 255/35R19 front and 275/35R19 rear tires.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC F is equipped with vertical G-sensor for VDIM, rear Torsen or Torque Vectoring Differential (TVD) with three operating modes (Standard, Slalom, or Track), monotube gas-filled shock absorbers and ball-jointed stabilizer bars, new 19-inch BBS forged aluminum wheels, spindle grille with F-mesh pattern on the lower half, unique front hood which raises the peak of the vehicle, hood air vent from the LFA, front cooling ducts, front fender ducts in the L shape, exclusive combination meters from LFA (a large centrally mounted tachometer that alters according to drive mode, digital and analog speedometer, differential torque vectoring monitor, G-force meter, oil and water temperature gauges, mileage information and a stopwatch), and an elliptical cross-section thick grip steering wheel.


title: Lexus RC

text: The aerodynamic package includes an active rear spoiler, tuning of the underbody, the intakes in the grille and the front fender vents and aero stabilizing fins.


title: Lexus RC

text: The carbon fiber optional package, known in Japan as Carbon Exterior Package, includes a clear coated carbon fiber roof, active rear spoiler, and carbon fiber engine hood. The carbon fiber package parts for the RC F were made at the Aichi plant after the end of the LFA production.


title: Lexus RC

text: To celebrate the 10th-anniversary of Lexus F high performance models, a limited edition RC F was released for the 2018 model year US market. All of the limited edition RC F come in matte-finished Nebula Gray paint with gloss black wheels and bright blue brake calipers. Inside they are equipped with blue leather seats, steering wheel and shift knob, blue suede dashboard cover above the instrument cluster, and blue-silver carbon fiber power window switch panel.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC F Track Edition (or Performance Package) was unveiled at the January 2019 North American International Auto Show as the track-focused variant of the RC F. It has a similar styling direction to the other updated RC models. The car features performance upgrades and weighs less than the standard RC F. Weight-saving measures include lighter 19-inch wheels, carbon-ceramic brake rotors, a titanium muffler and exhaust pipes and extensive usage of carbon fiber. The "Track Edition" began sales in April 2019 and is available in white or matte gray with red interior color.


title: Lexus RC

text: Being fielded Sard racing in 2015 and then after by several private teams such as Tracy Sports, the RC 350 has won several championships in Japan's Pirelli Super Taikyu Endurance series under the ST-3 class. The RC F is also a popular contender.


title: Lexus RC

text: Toyota Gazoo Racing also entered the Lexus RC alongside its siblings, the IS F and LFA, in the VLN (German: "Veranstaltergemeinschaft Langstreckenpokal Nürburgring"), a series of endurance races held at the Nürburgring circuit every year.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC utilised a modified version of its 2.0, 8AR-FTS, whereas the RC F too made use of a modified version of the 5.0 2UR-GSE. Chassis wise, the RC was closer to the production car as required by SP3T regulations.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC has set numerous pole positions within its class numerous times within the years, most notably with a time of 8 minutes 56 seconds at the full Nürburgring circuit in 2017, with the RC F winning its class (SPX) on the car's debut in 2015.


title: Lexus RC

text: The RC F has given its name to a GT500 class competitor in the Super GT series in the 2014 season, replacing the SC430 that had been raced for 7 years. In its debut season, the car scored 4 victories by Team TOM'S at Okayama, Suzuka, and Buriram and Team ZENT Cerumo at Sportsland SUGO with the new technical regulations.


title: Lexus RC

text: In 2015, Andrea Caldarelli and Ryō Hirakawa claimed two wins, whereas Daisuke Itō and James Rossiter claimed one win. In the 2016 Super GT Series, the car claimed three wins, with Heikki Kovalainen and Kohei Hirate winning the title. The RC was replaced by the Lexus LC for the 2017 season.


title: Lexus RC

text: 3GT Racing, a partnership of Lexus and Paul Gentilozzi, developed a GT3-class RC F during 2016. The team entered two cars at the 2017 IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, with Scott Pruett, Sage Karam, Jack Hawksworth and Robert Alon as full-season drivers.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: Green Lantern Corps is the name of a fictional intergalactic law enforcement organization appearing in comics published by DC Comics. They patrol the farthest reaches of the DC Universe at the behest of the Guardians, a race of immortals residing on the planet Oa. According to DC continuity, the Green Lantern Corps has been in existence for three billion years. Currently operating amongst the 3600 "sectors" of the universe, there are 7204 members (known commonly as Green Lanterns). There are two lanterns for every sector, with the exception of sector 2814, which has six members. Each Green Lantern is given a power ring, a weapon granting the use of incredible abilities that are directed by the wearer's own willpower.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: In 1959, during a revival of the popularity of superhero comics in America, DC Comics' editor Julius Schwartz decided to reinvent the 1940s superhero character Green Lantern as a science fiction hero. Schwartz's new conception of Green Lantern had a different name (Hal Jordan), costume, and origin story, and no connection to the original Green Lantern. Whereas the Green Lantern of the 1940s was a lone vigilante who only had adventures on Earth, the new Green Lantern was but one of a group of interstellar lawmen who all called themselves Green Lanterns. The group is first mentioned in "Showcase #22" (1960) when a dying Green Lantern passes on his ring to Hal Jordan. Over the years, writers have introduced a large cast of Green Lanterns in both supporting and starring roles.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: The Guardians of the Universe are one of several races that originate on the planet Maltus and are among the first intelligent life forms in the universe. At this time, they are short greyish blue humanoids with black hair. They become scientists and thinkers, experimenting on the worlds around them. In a pivotal moment billions of years ago, a Maltusian named Krona uses time-bending technology to observe the beginning of the universe. However, this test unleashes disaster upon all existence. Originally, the experiment splinters the universe into the multiverse and creates the evil anti-matter universe. Following the retroactive destruction of the Multiverse, it is revealed that Krona flooded the beginning of the universe with entropy causing it "to be born old".


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: Krona's experiment also draws Volthoom, a traveler from the multiverse looking to save his Earth. He brings with him the Travel Lantern, powered by the Emotional Spectrum. Through working with Volthoom the future Guardians shed their emotions into The Great Heart and inadvertently create the First Ring. Volthoom receives this ring and has the Great Heart implanted in his chest, controlling the whole emotional spectrum makes him dangerous. The future guardians destroy his Travel Lantern further escalating the situation. Future Guardian Rami uses the pieces of the Travel Lantern to create the first seven green lantern rings and imprison the First Lantern Volthoom. Soon after, it is decided that the emotional spectrum is at present too dangerous to wield.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: The male Maltusians argued about how to deal with the situation. One group decides to dedicate their eternal existences to contain evil; this group fractures into the Guardians of the Universe and the Controllers. Later a single male Guardian becomes the Pale Bishop and founds The Paling, an anti-emotion faith. The females, however, see no need to involve themselves and, since the Oans are by then immortal and have no longer need to reproduce, leave their mates and become known as the Zamarons, later founding the Star Sapphires. Relocating to the planet Oa at "the center of the universe", the Guardians dedicate themselves to combatting evil and creating an orderly universe. During this period, they slowly evolve into their current appearance.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: A Green Lantern's only weakness is the yellow energy of fear, opposite to the green energy of will. After the Green Lantern Sinestro betrays the Green Lantern Corps and creates the Sinestro Corps, a prophecy is fulfilled that Lantern Corps of the other cosmic energies of other emotions shall form, such as Red (rage), Orange (greed), Black (death), White (life), Indigo (compassion), Blue (hope), and Violet (love).


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: In their first attempt to enforce their will and guard against all menaces, about 3.5 billion years ago the Guardians of the universe create the Manhunters, a legion of robotic sentinels. At first serving faithfully to enforce order, in time the Manhunters come to resent their servitude and the moral restrictions the Guardians decreed of them. They are also found to be inherently flawed due to their inability to recognize or feel emotions. They rebel against the Guardians and fight a millennia-long war that culminates with an attack on the planet Oa. The Guardians overcome their android servants, strip them of their power, and banish them across the universe. Eventually, the surviving Manhunters form their own robotic society and pursue their own interpretation of their original mission (which often includes interfering with and foiling the plans of the Guardians).


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: In the "Martian Manhunter" series, the Guardians first get the idea for an intergalactic police force from the Martians' own Manhunters. They offer the Martian race the opportunity to be that force. The Martians turn it down, but the Guardians take the name for the androids.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: In Geoff Johns' 2008 storyline "", it is revealed that the Manhunters suffer from a malfunction in their logic that lead them to believe that order can only be achieved by eliminating all life. They rampage through Sector 666, massacring trillions in the process. The only survivors band together to form the Five Inversions, swearing revenge on the Guardians for the actions of their creations. One of the five, Atrocitus, later becomes the leader of the Red Lantern Corps.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: It is later discovered that the Manhunters had not suffered a flaw in their logic, as had previously been assumed, but that the renegade Guardian Krona had reprogrammed them in an attempt to show the other Guardians the necessity in embracing emotions.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: Chastened by the failure of the Manhunters, the Guardians decide that their newest force of soldiers for good will consist of living beings, ones who have free will and strong moral character. A brief first attempt is the Halla, who are given the energy guns and the power batteries of the Manhunters to serve them in their goal. Soon the Guardians decide to discontinue this organization, the last of their number being Kendotha Kr'nek who served three and a half to three billion years ago in the war against Apokolips.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: To arm this new legion of celestial knights, the Guardians create the "Power Rings," rings of inconceivably-advanced technology that allow their wearers to project green beams of energy with which the bearer could conjure objects of any size or shape, limited only by their imagination and willpower. This begins with the selection of Rori Dag who becomes the first member of the 3600 Green Lantern Corps.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: Both the Corps and the Guardians suffer casualties during the Crisis on Infinite Earths. The Guardians' failure to take appropriate action during the Crisis leads to their decision to depart Oa in the company of their female counterparts, the Zamarons. Left to their own devices, the Corps undergo a major reorganization. A team of Green Lanterns led by Hal Jordan is stationed on Earth, and the system of assigning one Green Lantern to a sector is temporarily abandoned. The decision of the Corps to execute Sinestro results in the activation of a previously unknown fail-safe that depowers the rings of every Green Lantern except for Hal Jordan, Guy Gardner, Gnort, and Ch'p.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: The Guardians eventually return to Oa and begin the reconstruction of the Corps, assigning Guy Gardner to Earth, John Stewart to the , and Hal Jordan to recruit new members. Ironically, Jordan himself is eventually responsible for destroying the incarnation of the Corps that he helped create.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: The Green Lantern Corps patrol the DC Universe for over three billion years. In that vast length of time, some Green Lanterns rebel and turn against the Corps. A rogue Green Lantern, Universo, exists in the future epoch of the Legion of Super-Heroes. Two of the most important fallen Lanterns are Sinestro, the rogue Green Lantern, and Hal Jordan, who unknowingly becomes possessed by Parallax, the ancient fear-parasite trapped in the Battery. At the ruins of his home Coast City, Jordan is consumed by grief, which in turn allows him to be overcome by fear—all the while not knowing that his fear is tainted by the creature Parallax. This was planned by Sinestro while he was imprisoned in the Battery.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: The Green Lantern Corps ranks are decimated by the Parallax-possessed Jordan. The Corps' power source, the Central Power Battery, is drained by Jordan and destroyed, removing the original power source for the rings. One Guardian, Ganthet, survives Jordan's onslaught, and chooses a young human artist, Kyle Rayner, as the sole Green Lantern of the Corps. Rayner eventually becomes Parallax's nemesis, and during their first battle, Rayner intentionally triggers a chain reaction in Oa's core, causing the planet to explode.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: After the fall of the Corps, other organizations try to fill in the power vacuum left by the Guardians. Two organizations have initial notable successes: the Darkstars and L.E.G.I.O.N. However, neither ever achieve the power and reach of the Green Lantern Corps.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: Kyle Rayner accidentally travels through time to ten years in the past and meets a young Hal Jordan. After the two defeat Sinestro together, the Guardians send Rayner back to his own time by using the power from the Central Battery. However, while doing so, Sinestro uses his Qwardian ring to force Jordan to Rayner's time portal, stranding Jordan in Rayner's time period. Upon learning his future as Parallax (not knowing, however, that his future self's actions are the result of being possessed by Parallax) and aware that the future needs him to return to his own time, young Jordan knows he must forget everything he learned from the present, and gives Rayner a copy of his ring to restart the Green Lantern Corps in a bid to undo some of the damages he knows he is going to make once he returns to the past.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: Rayner then gives the ring to Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, daughter of the elder Green Lantern Alan Scott. She becomes the first female Green Lantern of Earth, following in her father's footsteps, after he made another copy with it. In "Green Lantern: The New Corps", during his weeks-long adventure in space, Rayner recruits Magaan Van'n Intraktus of the planet Van'n, Hammeroon, a bounty hunter from Ilskado System, Anya Savenlovich, a lieutenant colonel from the Soviet Air Forces who was in suspended animation after participating in a space mission in 1964, Garl Rathbone, a miner from the debris belt over the planet Daffith, and Sool, a judge from Daffith.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: However, the group later realizes Van'n Intraktus is a traitor who enslaved his home planet with his ring and began invading other worlds. The Green Lanterns stop him after a battle, but at the cost of one of their own: Hammeroon. Rayner then realizes that he cannot be the only one to choose whom to wear the rings, and takes all of the power rings back from the Green Lanterns until the time is right for the Corps' rebirth. After erecting a memorial for Hammeroon, Rayner returns to Earth. The former Green Lanterns, despite being stripped of their rings, decide to continue their intergalactic adventures.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: In an attempt to redeem himself after his actions as Parallax, Hal Jordan sacrifices his life reigniting the sun, whereupon Oa and the Central Power Battery are completely rebuilt by the physical manifestation of Jordan's dying will channeled through his old friend Thomas Kalmaku. Shortly after, Kyle Rayner, imbued with the power of Ion after his battle with Oblivion and Alexander Nero, funnels the remaining energy left in the sun that was once the Guardians back into the Central Power Battery. This allows them to be reborn as children of both genders. After Hayden regains her Starheart powers and becomes the superheroine Jade once more, Rayner gives the ring to John Stewart. After Oa's return, Kilowog is eventually resurrected. With everything in place, Ganthet, Kilowog, Stewart, and Rayner make plans to rebuild the Corps once more.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: It is later revealed that Hal Jordan was possessed by the living embodiment of fear, an ancient parasite called Parallax. Parallax had been imprisoned within the Central Power Battery for billions of years and is the mysterious "Yellow Impurity" within the Corps' green light that leaves them vulnerable against yellow. Hal Jordan, upon learning the truth about Parallax, separates himself from it and is reborn as a Green Lantern once again. Jordan, with the help of John Stewart, Guy Gardner, Kyle Rayner, and Kilowog, re-imprison Parallax. Upon Parallax's return to the Central Power Battery, the Guardians continue the re-construction and expansion of the Green Lantern Corps, with their power rings now able to directly affect yellow. This new Corps, under the training of Kilowog, Kyle Rayner, Guy Gardner, and other veterans, is primarily composed of new recruits. Only a handful of veteran Lanterns remain in the ranks. Each sector has two Lanterns assigned to protect it (with Hal Jordan and John Stewart assigned as the protectors of Sector 2814, Guy and Kyle acting as 'elite' members responsible for training). Due to an ancient pact with the Spider Guild, the Vega star system is off limits to all members of the Corps.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: The new Green Lantern Corps lacks both the manpower and the political influence it once had due to its years-long absence from many sectors. This leaves the Corps unable to intervene in situations it might have before Parallax destroyed the old Corps, including conflicts such as the Rann-Thanagar War. The Guardians remain staunchly uninvolved in what they see as a conflict that could destabilize many sectors, but that does not stop Kyle Rayner and Kilowog from helping refugees.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: Despite these difficulties, the Corps plays a key role in defeating Superboy-Prime. Several Lanterns are killed slowing the renegade Superboy's advance on Oa, a sacrifice that enables Earth's most powerful heroes to execute their plan to restrain him. Mogo, a sentient planet and Corps member, positions himself to act as a final battleground between Superboy-Prime and two Supermen. Responsibility for imprisoning Superboy-Prime is undertaken by the Guardians who charge the Corps with its undertaking, incarcerating him inside a small red Sun-Eater with fifty Green Lanterns on constant guard duty. "Prime Duty" is considered one of the lowlier functions of the Corps, and Guy Gardner is sentenced to a month of such duty for one of his frequent rules infractions.


title: Green Lantern Corps

text: As of the "One Year Later" timeframe, the Green Lantern Corps has increased its numbers, with many former trainees now full-fledged officers. A lack of truly experienced lanterns remains an issue, with Guy Gardner being called upon often to assist the rookies.