title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: After the December 2003 death of Robert Stanfield, the former Premier of Nova Scotia and federal Leader of the Official Opposition, several proposals were made in Nova Scotia to honour the widely respected politician. In early 2005 the airport's governing board voted to rename the terminal building after Stanfield. The terminal was officially rechristened in a ceremony held on September 9, 2005, when the Stanfield family unveiled a brass memorial plaque in the airport observation floor.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: On Friday February 9, 2007 Prime Minister Stephen Harper arrived at the airport and formally renamed the entire facility from "Halifax International Airport" to "Halifax Robert L. Stanfield International Airport" in a further honour to Stanfield; at that time the terminal name was dropped and reverted to its original status.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: Halifax International Airport fared well in the 2005 AETRA survey for passenger satisfaction, produced by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Airports Council International. The airport was ranked the best airport in the Americas for the second year in a row, as well as the best airport in the less than 5 million passengers a year category for the third year in a row (worldwide), and best domestic airport for the second year in a row.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: In March 2007, the airport earned two first-place finishes in the 2006 Airports Council International (ACI) Service Quality Awards held in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. For the fourth consecutive year, it ranked first in overall passenger satisfaction for airports worldwide with under five million passengers. In addition, the airport ranked first in the Americas in the new category of Airport People Awards, and second in the best domestic airport worldwide category.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: In early 2010, Halifax Stanfield was rated by passengers as the Best Airport in the World in its class (under 5 million) for the seventh year in a row.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: In 2011 it won third "Best Airport in North America" of the Airport Service Quality Awards by Airports Council International, as well as 3rd "Best Airport by Size" in the 2 to 5 million passenger category.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The Air Terminal Building (ATB) was opened in August 1960. It cost about C$4.5 million to construct and, upon opening, included health, immigration and customs facilities for international passengers; a restaurant; a control tower and administrative offices; and two observation decks that projected onto the apron. It was designed by Gilleland and Strutt of Ottawa, in collaboration with C.D. Davidson of Halifax as well as A.W. Ramsey, chief architect at the Department of Transport. The main contractor was Ellis-Don. The modern complex contained Nova Scotia's first set of escalators.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: Today, the terminal serves over four million passengers per year. The growth experienced in the decades since the airport's construction has necessitated constant renovations, and there is often construction occurring there. Since the HIAA took over management of the airport in 2000, over $200 million has been invested in improvements to the terminal building.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: A new international arrivals area, three times larger than the previous one, opened at the north end of the terminal in August 2001. The upper level of this expansion included a space reserved for United States border preclearance facilities (see below). A new domestic arrivals hall, accommodating three baggage reclaim belts and a Nova Scotia visitor's centre, officially opened on December 18, 2002. Work also began in 2002 on a significant renovation to the central lobby of the terminal building. This expanded retail and dining space opened as the Airport Square on November 9, 2003. A third-storey public observation deck opened at the same time. A southern terminal expansion was completed in 2005, expanding the departures holdroom, adding three new jet bridges, and creating a dedicated commuter aircraft facility with new ground-loading gates.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: In December 2004, U.S. Customs and Border Protection approved Halifax for U.S. border preclearance. It took effect in late 2006. HIAA used to be the busiest airport in Canada without U.S. customs preclearance. On September 12, 2007, the airport authority announced the construction of a 2,300 space, five-storey parking garage, which was completed on March 12, 2009.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: Several improvements to the terminal were made in 2018–19. A three-storey extension to the central portion of the terminal building was constructed, projecting into the centre apron. The ground floor houses an expanded security screening area, increasing capacity and allowing for the implementation of "CATSA Plus", the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority's latest checkpoint design, which requires more space. The second floor contains an expanded, double-height passenger waiting area, with additional seating, as well as new dining and retail space. At the same time, new security features were added around the terminal, including anti-ramming bollards, blast-resistant glazing, more security cameras, and new access control features. Lastly, the domestic baggage claim area was renovated for cosmetic reasons. Ceilings were raised, column sizes were reduced, and new flooring was installed.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The terminal now has a total of 32 gate positions, with 13 using airbridges (gates 12, 14–16, 18, 20, 22–24, and 26–28). The remaining gates are ground-loading positions. Gates 22–24 and 26–28 are swing gates: a glassed-in secure corridor allows incoming international passengers and pre-cleared departing US passengers to be segregated from those in the domestic/international departure lounge; when used for US departures, these gates are numbered 52–54 and 56–58, respectively. Gates 2 (a-e) to 9 are ground-loading positions dedicated to domestic regional operations. Gates 34 to 46 are ground-loading gate positions for US flights.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: Halifax Stanfield has had two runways, arranged perpendicular to each other, since opening in 1960. In press releases the airport authority refers to the longer one as the "main runway" and the shorter as the "secondary runway".


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The airport opened with (using the present-day naming scheme) taxiways A, B (formerly part of A), C, D (section between the apron and the main runway), G, E, F, and H. Then-taxiway B and most of taxiway D (now M and D; see below) were constructed in 1982, providing a taxi route paralleling runway 14/32. In 2010, extension of the taxiway system resulted in an increased airside area, creating space for several newly constructed large hangars. Canadian Helicopters, Cougar Helicopters, Gateway Facilities, and IMP Group operate these new hangars along taxiways J and K.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: In November 2012, an extension of both ends of runway 05/23 was completed to accommodate larger, wide-body aircraft. This increased its length from to . This increase resulted in the renaming of several taxiways: taxiway B became M, and the end of taxiway A was renamed B. Taxiway F was also extended to meet the threshold of runway 23. In 2016 a new apron was constructed off taxiway J to serve primarily as a place to park cargo freighters.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: As early as the 1980s, the private sector expressed interest in building a hotel next to the airport terminal. In May 1988, Halifax-based Keddy's Motor Inns, a major Maritime hotel chain, signed a contract with Transport Canada to build a $20-million, 200-room hotel on Transport Canada-owned land opposite the terminal. Work on the Pegasus Hotel began in May 1990. After over $4 million had been spent, construction was halted in December 1990 by the main contractor, GEM Construction Specialists, due to unpaid work. Keddy's faced financial troubles and was $35 million in debt, and project funding from a consortium of Hong Kongese and Taiwanese immigrant investors fell through. The federal government searched for a company interested in completing the project, but the only proposal received was deemed inadequate. The unfinished shell of the hotel was considered an embarrassing eyesore, and Transport Canada demolished it in 1996.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The airport authority announced on May 13, 2008, that a letter of intent had been signed with New Castle Hotels and Southwest Properties for construction of a 176-room Sheraton hotel. It was estimated to cost about $30 million and would have included a fitness centre, swimming pool, conference centre, and dining facilities. In early 2009 the airport authority and the developers jointly agreed to postpone construction of the hotel due to the global economic downturn. In early 2010 the developers pulled out of the deal.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: On October 26, 2011, the airport authority announced the construction of an on-site 14-storey, 169-room, Alt Hotel. Linked to both the passenger terminal and the parking garage by an enclosed footbridge, the $27 million building was built by Marco Construction of Halifax and opened in 2013. Operated by Groupe Germain Hospitalité, the hotel includes conference and banquet facilities, a fitness centre, a pool, and a 24-hour cafe. It was built with soundproof windows to block aircraft noise.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The airport is served by several fixed-base operators (FBOs), which handle fueling, ground handling, hangarage, catering, etc. They include Air Canada Technical Services, Aircraft Service International, Gateway Facilities, Halifax International Fuel Facility Consortium (HIFFC), Inland Technologies, Innotech-Execaire, PAL Aviation Services, Shell AeroCentre, Strategic Aviation, and Swissport.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: Halifax Regional Police provides policing services. Emergency rescue and firefighting services are based in the Combined Services Complex (CSC), which also houses the airport's maintenance operations. The C$24-million, building opened in 2010, replacing the previous fire hall (built 1981) as well as the former maintenance garage, which opened with the airport in 1960. The complex includes a fire station, vehicular wash and storage bays, offices, conference rooms, staff rooms, sleeping quarters, and an emergency communications centre. The CSC was the first LEED certified building at the airport.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: Halifax International Airport was one of a handful of sites in eastern North America designated an emergency landing site for the Space Shuttle if a launch was aborted following liftoff. The airport kept in contact with Transport Canada and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration during each shuttle launch.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The airport is located adjacent to the Aerotech Business Park, a municipally-run business park originally catering towards aviation companies. The zoning has since been changed to allow for other types of companies to locate there. The largest tenants are Pratt & Whitney Canada and L3 Communications.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The latest airport master plan was published in January 2011. Many of its proposals have since been realised, such as construction of an on-site hotel, the southern terminal expansion, and extensions of the main runway. Possible future plans outlined in this document include new taxiways and parking stands, another de-icing area, space for new logistics and aviation services development, and a major expansion of the public road network (partly built) to facilitate development of a large commercial area between the airport and the highway.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: On November 15, 2018, transport minister Marc Garneau announced Government of Canada funding, via the National Trade Corridors Fund, toward a $36-million expansion of the airport's air cargo handling facilities. The federal government will contribute $18 million, while $5 million will come from the province and $13 million from the airport authority. The expansion will be built on forested land adjacent to the existing cargo area.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: MetroX route 320 is an express bus service that travels between the city centre and the airport, with intermediate stops at the Dartmouth Bridge Terminal and the suburb of Fall River. The route is operated by Halifax Transit (formerly Metro Transit) and runs all day on both weekdays and weekends.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: The airport is located at Exit 6 of Highway 102, which connects Halifax to the Trans-Canada Highway. It is a 28-minute drive from Halifax City Hall, the centre of Downtown Halifax. There are numerous car rental agencies located in the lower level of the airport car park.


title: Halifax Stanfield International Airport

text: Aside from the parking garage connected to the terminal, the airport also offers Park 'N Fly Airport Parking, a long-term parking service owned by Hong Kong company CK Hutchison Holdings.


title: Suchitra

text: Suchitra Ramadurai, known by the mononym Suchitra, is an Indian radio jockey, popular playback singer, songwriter, composer, voice artist, dubbing artist and film actress. She has sung in multiple languages including Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada and Telugu.


title: Suchitra

text: Suchitra was born in Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, as the daughter of Ramadurai and Padmaja. She has a sister named, Sunitha. Suchitra is a BSc graduate from Mar Ivanios College (Trivandrum). Later on she moved to Coimbatore for her MBA from PSG Institute of Management. She was part of a music band at PSG.


title: Suchitra

text: Suchitra joined Sify for a year, after graduating. She responded to an ad for the post of an RJ in Radio Mirchi. She became known as Rj Suchi, with her popular morning show "Hello Chennai". Her distinct and bold voice made her very popular with the younger crowd. She still does a radio show called "Flight983" on Radio Mirchi, on Sunday evenings (7–9 pm). The show deals with interesting international happenings.


title: Suchitra

text: She started singing after a few years as RJ. She also worked as a dubbing artist for popular heroines like Shriya Saran and Lakshmi Rai.


title: Suchitra

text: Her career as a playback singer now spans Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam films and she has several hits in all these languages to her credit. She sang her first song for the movie, Lesa Lesa under the composition of Harris Jayaraj and her co-singer was the legendary, K. S. Chitra. Suchitra is a sought-after performer at corporate and other such stage shows. She has also been appreciated for her honest and positive-humour-filled judging at reality shows like Vijay TV's Airtel Super Singer, Sun TV's Sun Singer, Asianet's Music India, and Bol Baby Bol on Gemini TV and Surya TV. 'Music I Like', an album of Suchitra's renditions of Mahakavi Bharatiyaar's poetry, set to contemporary tunes and music, released by Universal Music, was a turning point in her career.


title: Suchitra

text: Suchitra is now a singer-songwriter as well, composing music on her own and in collaboration with Singer Ranjith. Her YouTube channel 'Suchislife' has all her updated work.


title: Suchitra

text: She wrote a short story, a graphic illustration of an episode in the life of a black peppercorn called Kuru-Milaku, called "The Runaway Peppercorn".


title: Suchitra

text: After her Twitter page was hacked in 2016, and the pictures and videos released by the hacker went viral under #suchileaks, following a spate of bad press owing to the fact that she only released a statement on Sun News saying she was focused on shutting the page down, Suchitra left for London to pursue culinary arts at Le Cordon Bleu.


title: Suchitra

text: In 2020, Suchitra took part in the fourth season of the Tamil reality television show, "Bigg Boss Tamil" hosted by Kamal Haasan. She entered the show on day 28 as a new contestant and was evicted on day 49.


title: Suchitra

text: Suchitra was married to actor Karthik Kumar between 2005 and 2017. On 7 March 2017, she applied for divorce.


title: OneRepublic discography

text: American pop rock band OneRepublic has released five studio albums, one live album, six extended plays, 32 singles, 10 promotional singles, and 28 music videos. Formed in 2002, OneRepublic first found commercial recognition when their song "Apologize" was released onto Myspace in 2005 and they subsequently became the biggest act on that site. It was remixed by American record producer Timbaland, appearing on his album "Shock Value". Released as a single in 2007, the song topped the charts in multiple countries, including Australia and Canada, while also reaching the top three in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has since sold over 3.6 million digital downloads in the United States. The band's debut studio album, "Dreaming Out Loud", was released in November 2007. It hit the top ten on the albums charts of countries such as Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom. It also peaked at number 14 on the US "Billboard" 200, earning a gold certification from the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). The album's second single, "Stop and Stare", peaked at number 12 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 while also reaching the top five in Austria and the United Kingdom. The album spawned three more singles: "Say (All I Need)", "Mercy", and "Come Home".


title: OneRepublic discography

text: "Waking Up", the band's second studio album, was released in November 2009. It peaked at number 21 on the "Billboard" 200, earning a gold certification from the RIAA. The album's lead single, "All the Right Moves", became a top ten hit in multiple countries, including Ireland and Switzerland. It also peaked at number 18 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. "Secrets", the album's second single, peaked at number 21 on the Hot 100. "Marchin On" was released as the album's third single in Europe, becoming a top ten hit in Austria and Germany. "Good Life", the album's fourth single, became the band's second top ten hit on the "Billboard" Hot 100, where it peaked at number 8. It also peaked at number 5 on the Canadian Hot 100.


title: OneRepublic discography

text: "Native", the band's third album, was released in March 2013. The album peaked at number 4 on the "Billboard" 200, earning a gold certification and becoming the band's highest-charting album to date. The album contains the worldwide hit "Counting Stars", which topped the charts in Canada and the United Kingdom and reached number 2 in the United States and several other countries, as well as the moderately successful singles "Feel Again", "Something I Need" and "If I Lose Myself". In 2014, there was a reissue of that album, which contained a new single, "Love Runs Out", which peaked at number 15 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 chart, included a dance remix of the song "If I Lose Myself" by Alesso.


title: OneRepublic discography

text: "Oh My My", OneRepublic's fourth album, was released on October 7, 2016. The first single from the album, "Wherever I Go", reached number 55 on the "Billboard" Hot 100. The second single, "Kids", reached number 96 on the Hot 100. The band released their fifth album, "Human", on August 27, 2021.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited (ABFRL) is an Indian fashion retail company headquartered in Mumbai. ABFRL has a network of 3031+ stores with a presence across 25,000 multi-brand outlets(approx.) with 6,500+ point of sales in department stores across India. ABFRL was previously known as Pantaloons Fashion & Retail Limited prior to its acquisition by the Aditya Birla Group.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: Madura Garments was established in 1988, acquired by the Aditya Birla Group in 1999 and was re-christened Madura Fashion & Lifestyle in 2010. MFL brands includes Louis Philippe, Allen Solly, Van Heusen and Peter England.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2013, Aditya Birla Nuvo Limited (ABNL) (ABNL) took over Pantaloons. In May 2015, ABFRL came into form after the consolidation of the apparel businesses of the Aditya Birla Group, consisting of ABNL's Madura Fashion division and ABNL's subsidiaries- Pantaloons Fashion and Retail Ltd (PFRL acquired in 2013) and Madura Fashion & Lifestyle (MFL established in 1988) in May 2015. Post the consolidation, PFRL was renamed Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Ltd. (ABFRL).


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: The Collective, India's first and largest multi-retail brand for international brands, was launched in 2008.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2016, ABFRL struck a deal with a global luxury brand Ted Baker and also signed a MOU With Forever 21 for India Business.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2017, ABFRL brought Simon Carter to India. In the same year, ABFRL entered into a strategic alliance with American Eagle.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2018, ABFRL entered into a Store License and Distribution Agreement with Ralph Lauren Asia Pacific Limited (“RLAPL”), which offers apparel and accessories for both men and women under the brand name "Polo Ralph Lauren" and Ralph Lauren.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2019, ABFRL acquired ethnic wear brands, Jaypore and TG Apparel & Décor, for an enterprise value of up to ₹110 Crore. In the same year, the company bought 51% stake in M/s Finesse International Design Private Limited (“Finesse”) under the brand name Shantanu & Nikhil.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2019, ABFRL launched a chain of large format value fashion stores, named Style Up. Style Up typically operates large format stores, sized between 6,000 and 8,000 sq. ft, selling ethnic and western apparel and accessories for men, women and children.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2021, ABFRL announced a strategic partnership with India's largest design brand 'Sabyasachi' by signing a definitive agreement for acquiring 51% stake in 'Sabyasachi' brand. This partnership will add significant weight to ABFRL's growing ethnic wear portfolio, and the platform will complement the brand on its journey to becoming a global luxury house out of India.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In 2021, ABFRL acquired a 34% stake in Tarun Tahiliani's luxury business with an option to increase this shareholding to 51 percent in the next few years. ABFRL also entered into partnership with Tahiliani to form a new entity that will develop and launch affordable premium ethnic wear and accessories. ABFRL will hold an 80 percent stake in this new brand.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In June 2021, Jaypore, part of Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail Limited, entered into menswear category.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In January 2022, ABFRL has acquired 51% stake at Masaba Gupta's brand House of Masaba Lifestyle for Indian rupees 90 crores.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: In December 2021, Indian retailer Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail were breached and ransomed by ShinyHunters. The ransom demand was allegedly rejected and data containing 5.4M unique email addresses were subsequently dumped publicly on a popular hacking forum the next month. The data contained extensive personal customer information including names, phone numbers, physical addresses, DoBs, order histories and passwords stored as MD5 hashes. Hacker claimed Aditya Birla Fashion's websites are still vulnerable while company says 'Access Secured'.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: As on 31 March 2020, ABFRL has a network of 3,031 brand stores across the country. It is present across 25,000 multi-brand outlets and 6,514 SIS across departmental stores across India.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: ABFRL portfolio includes several brands such as Louis Philippe, Van Heusen, Allen Solly and Peter England established for over 25 years. Pantaloons brands caters to men, women and children with a mix of private labels and licensed brands in apparel and accessories.


title: Aditya Birla Fashion and Retail

text: ABFRL holds online and offline rights to the India network of California-based fast fashion brand Forever 21. Its International Brands portfolio includes The Collective and select mono-brands such as Simon Carter, Hackett London, Ted Baker, Ralph Lauren, American Eagle, and Fred Perry.


title: Informatics

text: Informatics is the study of computational systems, especially those for data storage and retrieval. According to ACM "Europe and" "Informatics Europe", informatics is synonymous with computer science and computing as a profession, in which the central notion is transformation of information. In other countries, the term "informatics" is used with a different meaning in the context of library science.


title: Informatics

text: In some countries, depending on local interpretations, the term "informatics" is used synonymously to mean information systems, information science, information theory, information engineering, information technology, information processing, or other theoretical or practical fields. In Germany, the term "informatics" almost exactly corresponds to modern computer science. Accordingly, universities in continental Europe usually translate "informatics" as computer science, or sometimes information and computer science, although technical universities may translate it as computer science & engineering.


title: Informatics

text: In the United States, however, the term "informatics" is mostly used in context of data science, library science or its applications in healthcare (health informatics), where it first appeared in the US.


title: Informatics

text: The University of Washington uses this term to refer to social computing. In some countries, this term is associated with natural computation and neural computation.


title: Informatics

text: The Government of Canada uses the term to refer to operational units offering network and computer services to the various departments.


title: Informatics

text: In 1956, the German informatician Karl Steinbuch and engineer Helmut Gröttrup coined the word "Informatik" when they developed the "Informatik-Anlage" for the Quelle mail-order management, one of the earliest commercial applications of data processing. In April 1957, Steinbuch published a paper called "Informatik: Automatische Informationsverarbeitung" ("Informatics: Automatic Information Processing"). The morphology—"informat"-ion + -"ics"—uses "the accepted form for names of sciences, as conics, mathematics, linguistics, optics, or matters of practice, as economics, politics, tactics", and so, linguistically, the meaning extends easily to encompass both the science of information and the practice of information processing. The German word "Informatik" is usually translated to English as "computer science" by universities or "computer science & engineering" by technical universities (German equivalents for institutes of technology). Depending on the context, informatics is also translated into "computing", "scientific computing" or "information and computer technology". The French term "informatique" was coined in 1962 by Philippe Dreyfus. In the same month was also proposed independently by Walter F. Bauer (1924–2015) and associates who co-founded software company "Informatics Inc." The term for the new discipline quickly spread throughout Europe, but it did not catch on in the United States. Over the years, many different definitions of informatics have been developed, most of them claim that the essence of informatics is one of these concepts: information processing, algorithms, computation, information, algorithmic processes, computational processes or computational systems.


title: Informatics

text: The earliest uses of the term "informatics" in the United States was during the 1950s with the beginning of computer use in healthcare. Early practitioners interested in the field soon learned that there were no formal education programs, and none emerged until the late 1960s. They introduced the term informatics only in the context of archival science, which is only a small part of informatics. Professional development, therefore, played a significant role in the development of health informatics. According to Imhoff et al., 2001, healthcare informatics is not only the application of computer technology to problems in healthcare, but covers all aspects of generation, handling, communication, storage, retrieval, management, analysis, discovery, and synthesis of data information and knowledge in the entire scope of healthcare. Furthermore, they stated that the primary goal of health informatics can be distinguished as follows: "To provide solutions for problems related to data, information, and knowledge processing. To study general principles of processing data information and knowledge in medicine and healthcare". The term health informatics quickly spread throughout the United States in various forms such as nursing informatics, public health informatics or medical informatics. Analogous terms were later introduced for use of computers in various fields, such as business informatics, forest informatics, legal informatics etc. These fields still mainly use term informatics in context of library science.


title: Informatics

text: In the fields of geoinformatics or irrigation informatics, the term -informatics usually mean information science, in context related to library science. This was the first meaning of informatics introduced in Russia in 1966 by A.I. Mikhailov, R.S. Gilyarevskii, and A.I. Chernyi, which referred to a scientific discipline that studies the structure and properties of scientific information. In this context, the term was also used by the International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility. Some scientists use this term, however, to refer to the science of information processing, not data management.


title: Informatics

text: In the English-speaking world, the term "informatics" was first widely used in the compound medical informatics, taken to include "the cognitive, information processing, and communication tasks of medical practice, education, and research, including information science and the technology to support these tasks". Many such compounds are now in use; they can be viewed as different areas of ""applied informatics"".


title: Informatics

text: In the early 1990s, K.K. Kolin proposed an interpretation of informatics as a fundamental science that studies information processes in nature, society, and technical systems.


title: Informatics

text: A broad interpretation of "informatics", as "the study of the structure, algorithms, behaviour, and interactions of natural and artificial computational systems," was introduced by the University of Edinburgh in 1994. This has led to the merger of the institutes of computer science, artificial intelligence and cognitive science into a single School of Informatics in 2002.


title: Informatics

text: More than a dozen nearby universities joined Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance. Some non-European universities have also adopted this definition (e.g. Kyoto University School of Informatics).


title: Informatics

text: Informatics as a fundamental science of information in natural and artificial systems was proposed again in Russia in 2006.


title: Informatics

text: The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise, of the UK Funding Councils, includes a new, "Computer Science and Informatics," unit of assessment (UoA), whose scope is described as follows:


title: Informatics

text: In 2008, the construction of the Informatics Forum was completed. In 2018, the MIT Schwarzman College of Computing was established. Its construction is planned to be completed in 2021.


title: Informatics

text: Computer scientists study computational processes and systems. Computing Research Repository (CoRR) classification distinguishes the following main topics in computer science (alphabetic order):


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The rank insignia of the federal armed forces of the Federal Republic of Germany indicate rank and branch of service in the German Army (), German Air Force (), or the German Navy ().


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The " ( - Central Service Provision) gives the dress order and design variations. Further, the Federal Office of Equipment, IT, and In-Service Support of the Bundeswehr () provides numerous details.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: According to the rank system, the different types of rank insignias might be distinguished as follows:


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The rank insignias of all service personnel will be explained initially on the example of shoulder straps to the basic uniform or everyday uniform in order provide a general overview.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: As to naval persons in uniform there will be additionally depicted sleeve insignias on the uniform jacket. Pertaining army persons in uniform there will be shown next shoulder straps of the uniform jacket. Variations of the first instance depicted rank insignias will be explained in more detail.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Army- and Air Force persons in uniform of the commissioned officers rank group may carry in line with ZDv 37/10 self-procured hand stitched rank insignias (image: d.) instead of the metallic version (image: e.). However, this type of rank insignias is rather seldom in practice. Beside the rank insignia on light-grey shoulder straps, as shown above, there is to army persons in uniform a version (see image a.) on dark grey cloth. This version of shoulder straps will be worn to uniform shirt and overcoat.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Naval persons in uniform, of the enlisted personnel rank group, wear relatively seldom the dark blue jacket with the above indicated cuff titles, because enlisted mariner in the age below 30 years prefer to wear the white shirt or blue shirt instead of the uniform jacked. Sleeve insignias on shirts more simple, but pertaining form and dimensions identically to those on jackets.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: In the place of stripes, with parts of metallic spinning fibers wire yarn, the oblique chevrons are made from golden-yellow or steel-blue spinning fibers without any metallic parts of wire yarn (see images b and c.). For Army and Air Force personnel in Bundeswehr dress uniform, as well as for all female soldiers, shoulder straps are mandatory. However, male naval persons in uniform wear cuff titles, known from the jacket.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Deviating from the description above, naval enlisted personnel of the Guard Battalion of the MOD-Germany (de: Wachbataillon beim BMVg) are exempted from wearing any sleeve rating mark on all uniforms, instead wearing their insignia on shoulder boards.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: In opposition to the ZDv 37/10, in representative military units (e.g. "Guard Battalion of the MOD-Germany" and "Staff Military Band of the Armed Forces") for enlisted personnel and non commissioned officers the background of the basic uniform gorget patches shows the specific corps colour of the appropriate armed service, special troop, corps or assignment.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Also in deviation from the description above, on the service jacket and skiing blouse colour pipings or cops background colour on gorget patches are dropped.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Mounting straps or loops ( in German) are in principle identical to the design of the epaulettes depicted above. From this point of view it is sufficient to demonstrate the different versions of the design, instead of showing a complete list. Officially-procured mounting straps are weaved. The field-uniform type of mounting straps, used most, have black or golden emblems on stone-grey/olive-coloured base textiles. Soldiers of the lowest ranks generally do not wear shoulder straps. Exceptions to this are comparatively-low-ranked sub-officers, Mate aspirants, and Boatswain aspirants, as well as wearers of stone-grey/olive Luftwaffe uniforms that do not feature badges with the double wings.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Similar mounting straps exist for differently-coloured uniform parts as well as for Army, Air Force, and Navy personnel in uniform. Army personnel in uniform, for example, wear black mounting straps with bright-grey emblems (gold-yellow for Generals) on the epaulettes of grey shirts (see image a.).


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: For naval personnel, dark-blue mounting straps are widespread, particularly on the ship-parka (see image c.).


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: For Air Force pilots' flying suits there exists a version of the mounting straps with bright-grey emblems (gold-yellow for Generals) on dark-blue base textile (without double-wing). The Air Force double-wing is mounted to other parts of the flying suit, and is intentionally omitted on mounting straps.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: By amendment of the ""Presidential Order on Rank Designation and Uniform of Soldiers"" on February 7, 1996, it was decided that the silver-coloured rank insignia on the camouflage fighting suit (de: Kampfanzug Tarndruck) would become obsolete. They will be replaced by black-coloured ones.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: According to the ZDv 37/10, ”Until official procurement of the newly designed olive-green mounting loops with black-coloured rank insignias (for enlisted personnel, non commissioned officers, and commissioned officers including colonels of the Heer and Luftwaffe), the old-fashioned mounting loop with grey-colour rank insignias may be worn."


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: In practice, the replacement of the obsolete grey-coloured mounting loops by the new fashioned black-colour version is almost complete. However, on uni-coloured flying suits of army pilots and aviation technicians, mounting loops with grey-coloured rank insignias conform to the regulations.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The following tables below depict mounting loops that are used in practice in conjunction with the 3- or 5 colour flecktarn fighting suit. However, these particular versions are not mentioned or depicted in the ZDv 37/10, nor are they officially procured. Mounting loops in 3- and 5-colour flecktarn are "de facto" in contravention of the "Presidential Order on Rank Designation and Uniform of Soldiers", and may be only procured individually. However, the mounting loops in 3- and 5 colour flecktarn with black-, grey- or yellow-coloured emblems depicted below are tolerated and worn up to highest rank groups and grades.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: In service, some black-colour emblems, e.g. for the feldwebel grades, lieutenant, or major, might not be very visible.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: As illustrated above, all rank insignias come with a number of diverse additional elements. In most cases they characterize a rank or career group within the Bundeswehr. Additional elements are not components of the rank insignia, because the rank or grade level is clearly defined by the rank insignia itself. However, there are additional statuses not defined by these rank markings, such as being a licensed medical officer or a designated officer of NCO rank. These require additional elements to signify such status.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The double wing (also: aviator wing) is part of the mounting loop of any Luftwaffe uniform. It is woven in the colour of all other emblems (in most cases: black (image b.) – or gold by general ranks (image c.)). The double wing, also part of other elements on aviator's uniform, unambiguously distinguishes stone-grey/olive Luftwaffe uniforms from those of the Army. Double wing mounting loops are longer and wider than any other in the Bundeswehr. The double wing is even part of the otherwise empty mounting loop of the lowest private OR1-rank (German: Flieger (flyer) or Kanonier (gunner); see image a.), in order to distinguish between the Luftwaffe and Army in flecktarn Battle Dress Uniform.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Corps (or troop-function) colours ( in German) have been traditionally used in German armed forces since the 19th century. Corps-coloured piping and padding (4-mm-wide plain braiding) are used on the uniforms of Army and Luftwaffe personnel, placed on shoulder straps and cuffs to characterize the membership of an armed service, a special force, or a particular assignment. Corps-coloured loops might be used on mounting straps of field uniform. The collar patches on uniform jackets show corps colours as well. It should be mentioned that the piping and padding (German.: ) on the shoulder (bottom part of the badge) is issued after boot camp and the beret is issued to the Corps that the wearer is currently serving in. Hence, the can have a different colour to the beret since a soldier may have passed boot camp in another Corps than that which they currently serve in.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Assignment badges (German: ) of the German Navy are equivalent to the corps colours of the Army and Luftwaffe and have corresponding functions respectively.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Uniformed Naval personnel of enlisted and NCO rank wear specific marks of distinction or badges on epaulettes (not on mounting straps) and sleeves to characterize the appropriate assignment. The exception to this is officer-designated (OF(D)) grades.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: As well as rank insignias on epaulettes, assignment badges are made up of metallic gold-coloured embossed pins or badges. Both are identical in colour and design. However, the assignment badges on sleeves are embroidered by hand or machine. Only the steel-blue assignment badges on white shirts of enlisted personnel are weaved. Seamen (recruit OR-1) wear assignment badges on shoulder straps or upper-sleeves that are otherwise empty. Assignment badges are normally positioned as follows:


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Assignment badges on epaulettes are normally symmetric and placed between the head and rank insignia. The exception is for members of the Naval health service (assignment series 81), where the asymmetrical Rod of Asclepius is placed at the head.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: In the Army and Luftwaffe, the epaulettes of general ranks OF6 to OF9 on service uniform (basic design) and dress uniform are ornamented with a gold border made from metallic fabric (piping), as shown above. Field officer ranks (OF1 to OF5), including the officer designated grade (Army: Senior Cadet Sergeant, Luftwaffe: Senior Aviation Cadet, Senior Warrant Officer (Br. Senior Acting Pilot Officer), Navy: Senior Midshipman), have silver-ornamented borders, also made from metallic fabric.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The metallic fabric ornamental border of the general ranks is made of fire-gilded silver wire. As for the field officer ranks, the ornamental border contains aluminium. A similar piping is employed on other uniform parts as well, e.g. on collar points of the service uniform jacket for officer ranks including (Army and Luftwaffe), or on the peaked cap ( in German) or mountain cape (German: ).


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Most officer designated ranks (Army and Luftwaffe) already have this particular silver metallic tissue border on epaulettes, next to the lower end of the mounting loop. The only exception to this is the Oberfähnrich shoulder strap, to be worn on service and dress uniform. This particular epaulette has the silver piping on its outline, indicating the officer's career, but lacks the bronze-coloured edging that usually borders the centre part of NCO-rank insignia, as opposed to the service uniform epaulettes of a Hauptfeldwebel (Staff Sergeant/First Sergeant, OR-7). However, rank badges on the mounting loops of Hauptfeldwebel and Oberfähnrich are identical.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Designated officers of OR-1 rank wear simple silver mounting loops on the otherwise empty epaulettes. A silver cord on the lower end of the mounting loop is usually worn in the Army. Alongside is another loop of corps colour, which indicates the membership to the appropriate branch of service, special force or assignment.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The visible, silver-coloured stripes are essential in order to differentiate from equivalent NCO ranks, because an officer candidate with the rank of "Fähnrich" (Army: Cadet Sergeant, Luftwaffe: Aviation Cadet, Warrant Officer, Navy: Midshipman) may not yet have professional knowledge about his future troop type, whose colours he is already wearing, as opposed to a "Feldwebel" (Sergeant, OR-6). This is an issue solely related to specific service requirements, since formally, these ranks (e.g. Fahnenjunker and Unteroffizier) do not differ in their position in the command chain.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: <gallery class="center" caption="Rank insignias (epaulette / mounting loop) for officer aspirant (OA) ranks">


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Regarding the Navy, apart from the rank insignia there are no additional elements given to all officer grades and officer designated ranks. Various assignment badges indicate the different officer chains of career and distinguish designated officers from other rank groups, e.g. enlisted ratings and NCOs. Examples of assignment badges dedicated to officer ranks are:


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Assignment badges on shoulder straps are worn principally above the parallel gold-coloured galloons. They are designed as gold-coloured metallic stamped stickers in the style of the rank insignias of NCOs and enlisted men. The exception is weaved mounting loops, because not any assignment badge or career badge has to be worn on it.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Cuff assignment badges for officers are hand-embroidered and made from gold-coloured metallic fabric. In accordance with ZDv 37/10 on dark-blue epaulettes, hand-embroidered naval stars, made from gold-coloured metallic fabric, are tolerated as well.


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: As mentioned above, the nautical star identifies all officer dedicated ranks as well, with the exception of the medical career chain (see below).


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: The speciality badge is different for medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pharmacy. As mentioned above, it depicts the Rod of Asclepius. The head of the snake points forward, i.e. the direction the soldier is facing. Officer Aspirants are known as or for short, which translates as Medical Officer Aspirant (MOA). This denotes personnel who are yet to finish their medical studies. Excluding Officer Aspirants and Generals, medical ranks have slightly different names to denote specialities, e.g. a physician holding a rank equivalent to (Captain) is called (Staff Doctor), a dentist (Staff Dentist), a veterinarian (Staff Vet), and a pharmacist (Staff Pharmacist).


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: Feldwebel (Sergeant) Aspirant epaulettes include a bronze cord at the bottom of the strap as career indicator (Barely visible on some pictures; Click on Image to enlarge).


title: Rank insignia of the German Bundeswehr

text: <gallery class="center" caption="Versions to Unteroffizier Aspirant (UA) ranks/ Maat Aspirant (MA) Marine">


title: Yukari Tamura

text: Born in Fukuoka Prefecture, Tamura gained fame as an advocate for the Lolita fashion movement, wearing Lolita-style clothing in public, as well as for her music releases, often in music videos and on the covers of her CD releases. Affectionately called Yukarin by her fans, several of her releases have been used as opening and ending themes for anime series, while some have reached the Oricon top 100 singles and album charts. In 2001, Tamura formed a unit called Yamato Nadeshiko alongside Yui Horie. Two singles were released, "Mō Hitori no Watashi" and "Merry Merrily" - the latter of which was an insert song in the "Love Hina" Christmas Special.


title: Yukari Tamura

text: On January 1, 2007, Tamura's talent management agency changed from Arts Vision to I'm Enterprise, a subsidiary of Arts Vision and on April 1, 2007, Tamura's record company officially changed from Konami to King Records, however, there was no material effect to Tamura because the actual record production of Konami is carried out by King Records. She has also featured as a narrator of Japanese anime satellite television network Animax.


title: Yukari Tamura

text: In February 2016, Tamura's agency announced that a concert which had been announced during a Niconico livestream in 2015 would be cancelled. Her management also announced that her fanclub would change ownership and her radio programs would end. Her staff's Twitter account would be closed and her website would undergo maintenance. On February 13, 2016, her management announced that her contract with King Records would end on March 20, 2016. She changed her agency once more from I'm Enterprise to Amuleto.


title: Tony Burton

text: Anthony Mabron Burton (March 23, 1937 – February 25, 2016) was an American actor and boxer. He was known for his role as Tony "Duke" Evers in the "Rocky" films.


title: Tony Burton

text: Burton was born in Flint, Michigan. He had a younger sister named Loretta. A Flint Northern High School graduate, he was a Michigan Golden Gloves heavyweight boxing champion and two-time all-state football player. At Northern, he played halfback. In 1954, he scored 13 touchdowns and led his team in scoring. Many of his scoring runs were of 50 yards or more. He gained 820 yards rushing that year, and one of his runs was for 95 yards. That same year, he was selected to the first teams of the All City and All Valley teams as a halfback. He was also chosen as an All State honorable mention. He was the team's co-captain and Most Valuable Player. Burton led his team in yards gained and receiving yards. In one game against Grand Rapids Catholic, he gained 213 total yards. At Northern, Burton was also the leading baseball pitcher, pitching the team to the city championship title.


title: Tony Burton

text: Burton's boxing career included the Flint Golden Gloves light heavyweight championship in 1955 and 1957. Burton won the State Golden Gloves Light Heavyweight Championship in 1957 and lost in the Chicago Tournament of Champions semi-finals. He fought as a professional boxer in 1958 and 1959. During that time he was knocked out by knockout artist, Lamar Clark, who holds the record for most consecutive knockouts at 44.


title: Tony Burton

text: After his brief professional boxing career, Burton served more than three years in a Chino, Calif., prison for robbery. The acting exercises he performed as part of a therapy program helped steer him into an acting career after his release. NEA's Frank Sanello in March 1988:


title: Tony Burton

text: More specifically, one of the skills acquired at Chino landed Burton his wife, Rae, whom he met on a TV repair house call. Moreover, a workshop in the prison, that used psychodrama as a form of therapy, pointed Burton towards his acting career, when an emotional breakthrough achieved by one of his partners in an acting exercise dramatically demonstrated theater's potential power.


title: Tony Burton

text: After prison, Burton started getting work with small theater companies in and around Los Angeles, garnering favorable notices early on.


title: Tony Burton

text: A life member of the Actors Studio, Burton numbers among his many credits a co-starring role in "Frank's Place" and parts in films, such as "Stir Crazy" and "The Toy". He also appeared as Wells, one of the prisoners trapped in the besieged police station in John Carpenter's 1976 Howard Hawks-inspired action film, "Assault on Precinct 13". He later starred in the "Rocky" films as a trainer to Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) and Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone). He appeared in an episode of "Gibbsville" in 1976. Burton also appeared in "The Shining", "House Party 2", and "Hook". He had guest appearances in "Kojak", "The Rockford Files", "CHiPs", "Twin Peaks", and "The A-Team". Burton also guest starred as Conrad King Baylor on "In the Heat of the Night" in the episode "King's Ransom", which aired in January 1990.


title: Tony Burton

text: Burton resided in California for 30 years. He attended Immanuel Baptist Church in Highland, California. He was married to Aurelain (Rae) from 1980 until his death. The couple had two sons, one of whom, Martin, died of a heart attack at the age of 43 on May 8, 2014. They also had two daughters, Juanita and Christal.


title: Tony Burton

text: Burton was a talented chess player. Stanley Kubrick was defeated by him on the set of "The Shining", in which Burton played Larry Durkin, the garage owner. Speaking with Kubrick biographer Vincent LoBrutto, Burton recalled his first day on the set:


title: Tony Burton

text: Burton had been frequently hospitalized for the last year of his life, according to his sister. On February 25, 2016, he died at the age of 78, from complications of pneumonia at a hospital in Menifee, California.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is a 2011 British romantic comedy-drama film directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Kristin Scott Thomas and Amr Waked. Based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Paul Torday, and a screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, the film is about a fisheries expert who is recruited by a consultant to help realise a sheikh's vision of bringing the sport of fly fishing to the Yemen desert, initiating an upstream journey of faith to make the impossible possible. The film was shot on location in London, England, Scotland and Morocco from August to October 2010. The film premiered at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. The film received generally positive reviews upon its release, and earned over $34 million in revenue worldwide.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Fisheries expert Alfred Jones (Ewan McGregor) receives an email from financial adviser Harriet Chetwode-Talbot (Emily Blunt), seeking advice on a project to bring salmon fishing to the Yemen—a project being bankrolled by a wealthy Yemeni sheikh and supported by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (the FCO). Alfred dismisses the project as "fundamentally unfeasible" because the Yemen cannot provide the necessary environment for salmon. Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister's press secretary, Patricia Maxwell (Kristin Scott Thomas), suggests the salmon fishing story to the Prime Minister's office as a positive story to help improve relations between Britain and the Islamic world.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Alfred meets with Harriet to discuss the project, but despite Harriet correcting his misconceptions of the Yemen environment, Alfred is convinced that the project is foolhardy. Alfred's boss, pressured by Patricia, forces Alfred to accept a position on the project. Alfred considers resigning rather than ruin his reputation in the scientific community, but is convinced by his wife that they need his income and pension.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Harriet arranges for Alfred to meet the Sheikh (Amr Waked) at his estate in the Scottish Highlands. The Sheikh is excited to meet Alfred as he is the inventor of the "Woolly Jones" fishing fly. While the Sheikh acknowledges that the project may sound crazy, he still believes that fishing is a noble pursuit that promotes harmony and requires immense faith.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: After his wife accepts a position in Geneva, Alfred devotes himself to the salmon project. Although painfully shy, he enjoys working with Harriet and they begin to make progress. Their enthusiasm is interrupted, however, when Harriet learns that her new boyfriend, British special forces Captain Robert Meyers (Tom Mison), is missing in action. Devastated, Harriet withdraws to her apartment. When Alfred visits her, she gets upset, thinking he just wants her to return to work, but then she realises he has come to comfort her, and the two embrace.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Meanwhile, the Sheikh continues his work, despite radicals who accuse him of introducing Western ways to their region. Patricia informs the Sheikh that because of opposition to removing salmon from British rivers they will need to use farmed salmon. The Sheikh does not believe that salmon bred in captivity will survive and rejects Patricia's offer, ending the British Government's involvement in the project. Alfred resigns his government job to continue with the project.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: After a confrontation with his wife in which he realises that their marriage is over and that he is in love with Harriet, Alfred convinces the Sheikh to give the farmed salmon a try. As the two are fishing, a Yemeni radical attempts to assassinate the Sheikh, who is saved by Alfred casting his fishing line towards the assassin. Soon after, they return to the Yemen, where Harriet and Alfred continue to grow closer. After a moonlight swim, he asks her if there was a "theoretical possibility" of the two of them ending up together. She accepts with a kiss on his cheek, but says she will need some time.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: At a press conference in the Yemen, with the Foreign Secretary, Patricia reunites Harriet with her boyfriend Robert who has survived the counter-terrorism operation. The PR stunt leaves Alfred heartbroken. That night, Harriet realises her feelings for Robert have changed, and when Alfred gets a text message from his wife asking him to return, he declines.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: The following day the fish are released from their holding tanks. The fish swim upstream, and everyone celebrates the success of the project. While Robert and the Foreign Secretary fly-fish for the photographers, terrorists break into the dam upstream and open the flood gates. Although most people survive the resulting flash flood, the valley is left in ruins. The Sheikh blames himself for the tragedy, and vows to rebuild—this time with the support of the local community.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: The next day, as Harriet prepares to leave with Robert, the latter says while she was the one thing on his mind that kept him alive during his mission, she doesn't owe him anything. She approaches Alfred to say goodbye, where he tearfully wishes her luck as he ponders what to do next. Just then, they see a salmon jumping from the water, indicating that some fish survived. Alfred tells Harriet he will indeed stay and help them rebuild. Harriet asks if he will need a partner—and Alfred realises that she is talking about herself. They embrace, and then hold hands while looking out over the river.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: The screenplay for "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" was written by Simon Beaufoy, based on the novel by Paul Torday. The epistolary novel won the 2007 Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize, and the 2008 Waverton Good Read Award. Through a series of letters and documents, Torday creates a political satire that focused more on the "art of political spin" than on the force of the human spirit. Beaufoy enjoyed the challenge of transforming a fairly complex novel written in an unusual format—a series of emails, text messages, interviews, and testimony extracts—into a film. Beaufoy acknowledged, "I just love adapting material that allows room for creativity and allows room for me to be very present in the process, I suppose. Sometimes when you’re adapting something classic and famous you have to adopt a different attitude, to something like Salmon Fishing where it had such an unusual narrative and such an unusual structure, that you got quite a to do interesting things with it." Beaufoy integrated the emails, text messages, and chat texts into the film's narrative.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Beaufoy's screenplay is decidedly different from the novel in several respects. The most obvious difference is that his press secretary is a woman, played by Kristin Scott Thomas, whereas in the novel, the character is a man, Peter Maxwell. Where the novel focuses on political satire, the film is more about a man who decides to change direction in his life. In the novel, Jones is noticeably older than the film character, and the romantic subplot with Harriet is kept in the background because of the political satire. By making Jones younger, Beaufoy added a "quirky flair" to the character that gives the audience a "completely different experience in watching a man overcome himself to achieve happiness." Beaufoy noted, "That's the difference when reading the book. You can perceive specific conflicts, but when it's onscreen you have to create something different, something the audience can see and feel and root for."


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: For director Lasse Hallström, Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt were his "first choices" to play the leading roles. "They brought the lightness and the humour to the material," Hallström later observed. He also felt fortunate to get Kristin Scott Thomas to play the role of the bossy press secretary, Patricia Maxwell, recalling, "I knew she could be funny, as most actors can, but she brought that seriousness combined with a bit of heart." For Hallström, it was that combination of humour and seriousness that allowed the actress to capture the balance between the film's sentiment and political satire. Egyptian actor Amr Waked was cast in the role of the sheikh. Waked has enjoyed major success and fame in his own country and throughout the Arabic-speaking world. English-speaking audiences may recognise him as the fundamentalist Muslim cleric in the 2005 film "Syriana" and the HBO series "House Of Saddam".


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" was shot on location in London, Scotland, and Morocco. Scenes set in Yemen were filmed in Ouarzazate in the Moroccan Atlas Mountains. The restaurant scene in London was filmed at the Oxo Tower. The Sheikh's house in Scotland was filmed at Ardverikie House. Reshooting and water tank work was filmed at Black Hangar Studios in the UK. Principal photography started on 6 August 2010.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Music for the film was composed and orchestrated by Dario Marianelli. The score features Leo Abrahams (guitar), Dirk Campbell (woodwind), Giles Lewin (oud), and the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Benjamin Wallfisch. The original soundtrack album was released on 20 March 2012 by Lakeshore Records. The Scottish folksong "Mairi's Wedding" by The Clancy Brothers, which is played over one scene, and "Where You Go" by The Young Romans, the song played over the end credits, are not included on the album.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: The film received generally favourable reviews from critics. In his review in the "Los Angeles Times", Kenneth Turan called the film a "pleasant fantasy" and a "charming film whose few attempts at seriousness are best forgotten or ignored." Turan praised the performances of Emily Blunt and Ewan McGregor, concluding


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: In her review for "The Washington Post", Ann Hornaday gave the film two and a half out of four stars, calling the film an "absurdist but gently winning romantic comedy" that "works a strange kind of wonder". Hornaday praised the director's "assured hand and feather-light touch", as well as the acting performances by Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt, who finds "an easygoing rhythm with her leading man". Hornaday continued:


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: Hornaday found "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" a "surprisingly lush, endearing little film, in which a swelling sense of romanticism thoroughly banishes even the most far-fetched improbabilities."


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: In his review for "The Telegraph", Robbie Collins gave the film three out of five stars, calling it "cinema at its most easily digestible" with a cast that is as "unthreateningly attractive as its sense of humour is cosily inclusive." Collins concluded that "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" is a "disarmingly nice hour and three-quarters of gentle romance and even gentler comedy."


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: The film received some negative reviews. Peter Bradshaw from "The Guardian", who gave the film two out of five stars, wrote that it "feels as if you've seen it many times before". According to Bradshaw, the weakest scenes of the film involve the ferocious government PR chief (Kristin Scott Thomas), with "much lip-pursing and eye-rolling, but nothing funny or believable in the script for her to say."


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 67% positive rating among critics, based on 147 reviews. The critic consensus states: "Quirky and a little reserved, "Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" is nonetheless a charming little romantic drama sold by some strong central performances." The film holds a score of 58 on Metacritic, based on 35 reviews.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: The film opened in 18 cinemas so in the United States on 9 March 2012, taking in $225,000 for the three-day weekend. The film expanded to 483 cinemas by the end of March, when it had grossed over $3 million.


title: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

text: The film was also nominated for three Golden Globe Awards: Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for McGregor, and Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Blunt.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: Bank of the Philippine Islands (, , commonly known as BPI; ) is a universal bank in the Philippines. It is the first bank in both the Philippines and Southeast Asia. It is the fourth largest bank in terms of assets, the second largest bank in terms of market capitalization, and one of the most profitable banks in the Philippines.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: The bank has a network of over 900 branches in the Philippines, Hong Kong and Europe, and more than 3,000 ATMs and CDMs (cash deposit machines).


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: BPI was founded during the Spanish colonial era of the Philippines as El Banco Español Filipino de Isabel II. It provided credit to the National Treasury and printed and issued the Philippine peso fuerte, a precursor to today's Philippine peso.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: BPI was established on August 1, 1851, as the "El Banco Español Filipino de Isabel II" (), named after the Queen of Spain, Isabella II, the daughter of King Ferdinand VII. It was the first government bank in the Philippines and the third Philippine bank during the Spanish era. One of the founders and primary shareholders at that time was José Joaquín de Ynchausti of Ynchausti y Cía, a prominent Philippine multi-national conglomerate who also founded Tanduay Distillery and built the Puente Colgante. José was the managing director of the bank from 1868 to 1873 and 1876 to 1884.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: The royal decree establishing the Banco Español-Filipino also gave it the power to print Philippine currency, the first time the Philippine peso was printed in the country; before 1851, a multitude of currencies were used, most notably the Mexican peso. They were originally called Philippine peso fuerte (PF), or "strong pesos". First printed on May 1, 1852, they were redeemable at face value for gold or silver Mexican coins. The first deposit with the bank was also done on that day by a man named Fulgencio Barrera. Three days later, a Chinese man named Tadian became the first borrowing client of the bank after the bank discounted to him a promissory note amounting to ten thousand pesos fuertes.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: On September 3, 1869, following a revolution which overthrew Isabella II, the name was changed to Banco Español-Filipino. In January 1892, the bank moved from the Royal Custom House in Intramuros to the new business district of Binondo after it found out that Intramuros was becoming "economically inactive". It moved to 4 Plaza Cervantes corner Juan Luna Street which was at that time a prime property owned by the Dominican friars.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: The first branch of Banco Español-Filipino outside Manila was opened in Iloilo City on March 15, 1897. However, the idea to set up branches outside Manila was formulated as far back as the 1850s, with the first branch planned to be opened in Bacolor, the capital of Pampanga at the time. However, by then, Iloilo and other provinces in Panay had become more productive than Pampanga in the sugar industry, hence the move to open the first branch in Iloilo.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: Following the cession of the Philippines to the United States with the signing of the 1898 Treaty of Paris, the bank changed from a Spanish institution to a Philippine one. On January 1, 1912, a decision by the shareholders of Banco Español-Filipino changed the name to the present Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI) or "Banco de las Islas Filipinas" in Spanish. The basis for the name change was Republic Act No. 1790, passed on October 12, 1907, which permitted the bank to change its name. The bank was also privatized during the American colonial period.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: Following World War II, BPI was actively involved in the post-war reconstruction of the Philippines. In 1949, with the establishment of the Central Bank of the Philippines (now the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas), BPI lost the right to issue Philippine pesos, a right it had since the Spanish colonial era and during the American colonial period.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: On December 31, 1969, Ayala Corporation, which had been affiliated with BPI since its establishment in 1851, became the dominant shareholder of BPI, and eventually made BPI into the flagship of Ayala's financial entities.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: Starting in the 1970s, BPI has been involved with many mergers and acquisitions. The first merger occurred in 1974 with BPI's acquisition of the People's Bank and Trust Company. Major notable acquisitions include Commercial Bank and Trust Company in 1981, CityTrust Banking Corporation in 1996, Far East Bank and Trust Company in 2000, Prudential Bank in 2005 and BPI's subsidiary BPI Family Savings Bank in early-2022.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: In 1982, BPI became a universal bank, and in 2000, became the Philippines' first bank assurance firm, being the first Philippine bank to offer insurance services after acquiring the insurance companies of the Ayala Corporation, the parent company of the Ayala Corporation. Within that year, BPI also founded the BPI Direct Savings Bank, an Internet bank.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: In the second quarter of 2019, BPI will start constructing its new headquarters in Makati. BPI has tapped Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for its design. The old building will be demolished to make space for the new building.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: On the morning of June 7, 2017, a data processing glitch affected BPI clients making their account balances incorrect. Some clients had either a negative balance or an increased amount of money in their account. The error was fixed in the evening, but the next day, June 8, BPI suspended electronic services because incorrect balances occurred again. The services were restored once more on the evening of the same day upon fixing the defect.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: BPI Direct BanKo, Inc., A Savings Bank (operating as BPI BanKo) is a wholly owned subsidiary of BPI established through the merging of BPI Direct Savings Bank (the first internet-based bank in the country), allowing expatriate Filipinos and overseas workers in countries like Bahrain or Hong Kong to access and manage their bank accounts at any time) and the BPI Globe Banko.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: BPI Globe BanKo's predecessor BPI Direct Savings Bank, was incorporated and registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission on September 26, 1986, primarily as a subsidiary meant to engage in the general business of savings and mortgage banking.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: In 2000, BPI Direct underwent a major image change as it became the first Philippine bank designed around the telephone and online banking channels. Two years later, BPI Direct realigned its business strategy towards the Overseas Filipino community.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: As the result of BPI Direct and with BPI Globe BanKo (another thrift bank unit of BPI) merging in December 2016 forming BPI Direct BanKO Inc. (BPI BanKo).


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: BPI's consolidation of its two subsidiaries forming BPI Direct BanKo, is its answer to the growing microfinance-small and medium enterprise finance industry sector in the Philippines, competing directly with notable SME/Microfinance institution in the country - ASA Philippines, Card Bank (CardBank and Card SME Bank), and LifeBank MFI.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: On September 30, 2022, BPI and Robinsons Bank disclosed their merger expected to complete by December 31, 2023, with BPI as the surviving entity.


title: Bank of the Philippine Islands

text: While Philippine Central Depository is listed a major shareholder, it is more of a trustee-nominee for all shares lodged in the PCD system rather than a single owner/shareholder.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Female foeticide in India () is the abortion of a female foetus outside of legal methods. A research by Pew Research Center based on Union government data indicates foeticide of at least 9 million females in the years 2000-2019. The research found that 86.7% of these foeticides were by Hindus (80% of the population), followed by Sikhs(1.7% of the population) with 4.9%, and Muslims(14% of the population) with 6.6%. The research also indicated an overall decline in preference for sons in the time period.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: The natural sex ratio is assumed to be between 103 and 107 males per 100 females, and any number above it is considered suggestive of female foeticide. According to the decennial Indian census, the sex ratio in 0 to 6 age group in India has risen from 102.4 males per 100 females in 1961, to 104.2 in 1980, to 107.5 in 2001, to 108.9 in 2011.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: The child sex ratio is within the normal range in all eastern and southern states of India, but significantly higher in certain western and particularly northwestern states such as Maharashtra, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir (118, 120 and 116, as of 2011, respectively). The western states of Maharashtra and Rajasthan 2011 census found a child sex ratio of 113, Gujarat at 112 and Uttar Pradesh at 111.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: The Indian census data indicates that the sex ratio is poor when women have one or two children, but gets better as they have more children, which is result of sex-selective "stopping practices" (stopping having children based on sex of those born). The Indian census data also suggests there is a positive correlation between abnormal sex ratio and better socio-economic status and literacy. This may be connected to the dowry system in India where dowry deaths occur when a girl is seen as a financial burden. Urban India has higher child sex ratio than rural India according to 1991, 2001 and 2011 Census data, implying higher prevalence of female foeticide in urban India. Similarly, child sex ratio greater than 115 boys per 100 girls is found in regions where the predominant majority is Hindu; furthermore "normal" child sex ratio of 104 to 106 boys per 100 girls are found in regions where the predominant majority is Muslim, Sikh or Christian. These data suggest that sex selection is a practice which takes place among some educated, rich sections or a particular religion of the Indian society.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: There is an ongoing debate as to whether these high sex ratios are only caused by female foeticide or some of the higher ratio is explained by natural causes. The Indian government has passed Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PCPNDT) in 1994 to ban and punish prenatal sex screening and female foeticide. It is currently illegal in India to determine or disclose sex of the foetus to anyone. However, there are concerns that PCPNDT Act has been poorly enforced by authorities.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: One school of scholars suggest that any birth sex ratio of boys to girls that is outside of the normal 105-107 range, necessarily implies sex-selective abortion. These scholars claim that both the sex ratio at birth and the population sex ratio are remarkably constant in human populations. Significant deviations in birth sex ratios from the normal range can only be explained by manipulation, that is sex-selective abortion. In a widely cited article, Amartya Sen compared the birth sex ratio in Europe (106) and United States (105+) with those in Asia (107+) and argued that the high sex ratios in East Asia, West Asia and South Asia may be due to excessive female mortality. Sen pointed to research that had shown that if men and women receive similar nutritional and medical attention and good health care then females have better survival rates, and it is the male which is the genetically fragile sex. Sen estimated 'missing women' from extra women who would have survived in Asia if it had the same ratio of women to men as Europe and United States. According to Sen, the high birth sex ratio over decades, implies a female shortfall of 11% in Asia, or over 100 million women as missing from the 3 billion combined population of India, other South Asian countries, West Asia, North Africa and China.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: There is a strong son preference in India and this leads to a high sex ratio prioritizing male lives over female lives. This graph depicts a typical Indian family's indifference curves between wanting to have a daughter or a son. Most families find greater utility in having a son so the curves are higher up on the y axis. When having a female becomes more expensive (due to dowry prices, lack of financial return in the future, educational and health expenses) then the budget curve has to swing inward on the x axis. Even though the budget stays the same, it is relatively more expensive to have a girl than to have a boy. The substitution effect shows that people move from point A on the first indifference curve to point B on the second indifference curve. They move from an already low number of females due to social reasons to even fewer daughters than before due to the added financial liability of daughters being more expensive. The number of males grows and the contrasting increase and decrease in quantities results in a high sex ratio. This is based on the unitary model of the household where the household is seen as a single decision making entity under the same budget constraint. However, the non-unitary model of households argues that people have different preferences in a family and are able to carry those out according to their level of bargaining power. In India, the unitary model is more likely to occur because of the patriarchal society that prioritizes male opinion and bargaining power in the household. This is not to say that all households follow this model, but enough of them do that it results in a high sex ratio.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Female foeticide has been linked to the arrival, in the early 1990s, of affordable ultrasound technology and its widespread adoption in India. Obstetric ultrasonography, either transvaginally or transabdominally, checks for various markers of fetal sex. It can be performed at or after week 12 of pregnancy. At this point, of fetal sexes can be correctly determined, according to a 2001 study. Accuracy for males is approximately 50% and for females almost 100%. When performed after week 13 of pregnancy, ultrasonography gives an accurate result in almost 100% of cases.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Ultrasound technology arrived in China and India in 1979, but its expansion was slower in India. Ultrasound sex discernment technologies were first introduced in major cities of India in 1980s, its use expanded in India's urban regions in 1990s, and became widespread in 2000s.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Estimates for female foeticide vary by scholar. One group estimates more than 10 million female fetuses may have been illegally aborted in India since 1990s, and 500,000 girls were being lost annually due to female foeticide. MacPherson estimates that 100,000 abortions every year continue to be performed in India solely because the fetus is female.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Various theories have been proposed as possible reasons for sex-selective abortion. Culture is favored by some researchers, while some favor disparate gender-biased access to resources. Some demographers question whether sex-selective abortion or infanticide claims are accurate, because underreporting of female births may also explain high sex ratios. Natural reasons may also explain some of the abnormal sex ratios. Klasen and Wink suggest India and China's high sex ratios are primarily the result of sex-selective abortion.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: One school of scholars suggested that female foeticide can be seen through history and cultural background. Generally, male babies were preferred because they provided manual labor and success the family lineage. The selective abortion of female fetuses is most common in areas where cultural norms value male children over female children for a variety of social and economic reasons. A son is often preferred as an "asset" since he can earn and support the family; a daughter is a "liability" since she will be married off to another family, and so will not contribute financially to her parents. Female foeticide then, is a continuation in a different form, of a practice of female infanticide or withholding of postnatal health care for girls in certain households. Furthermore, in some cultures sons are expected to take care of their parents in their old age. These factors are complicated by the effect of diseases on child sex ratio, where communicable and noncommunicable diseases affect males and females differently.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Some of the variation in birth sex ratios and implied female foeticide may be due to disparate access to resources. As MacPherson (2007) notes, there can be significant differences in gender violence and access to food, healthcare, immunizations between male and female children. This leads to high infant and childhood mortality among girls, which causes changes in sex ratio.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Disparate, gendered access to resources appears to be strongly linked to socioeconomic status. Specifically, poorer families are sometimes forced to ration food, with daughters typically receiving less priority than sons (Klasen and Wink 2003). However, Klasen's 2001 study revealed that this practice is less common in the poorest families, but rises dramatically in the slightly less poor families. Klasen and Wink's 2003 study suggests that this is “related to greater female economic independence and fewer cultural strictures among the poorest sections of the population.” In other words, the poorest families are typically less bound by cultural expectations and norms, and women tend to have more freedom to become family breadwinners out of necessity.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Lopez and Ruzikah (1983) found that, when given the same resources, women tend to outlive men at all stages of life after infancy. However, globally, resources are not always allocated equitably. Thus, some scholars argue that disparities in access to resources such as healthcare, education, and nutrition play at least a small role in the high sex ratios seen in some parts of the world.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Minority goods provided by female leaders in India help to alleviate some of the problems of disparate gendered access to resources for women. Public goods are defined as non-excludable and non-rival, but India lacks a system of public goods and has many problems with access to clean water or roads. Additionally, many of the "public goods" exclude females because families choose to prioritize their male children's access to those resources. In India, previous research has found that women leaders' invest in public goods that are more in line with female preferences, in particular water infrastructure, which leads to a reduction in time spent on domestic chores by adolescent girls. This in turn results in more time for young girls to gain an education and increases their value to their families and to society so that they are more likely to give them access to resources in the future. Minority groups, like women, are likely to provide minority or low spillover goods such as transfers, rations, and water connections, which only benefit other women. The majority of men do not find any benefit from these goods and are less likely to invest in them. For example, in a study conducted by political scientists Chattopadhyay and Duflo, results show that in West Bengal women complain more about water and roads and the women politicians invest more in those issues. In Rajasthan, where women complain more often about drinking water, women politicians invest more in water and less in roads.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Even though the Dowry System legally ended with the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961, the impossibility of monitoring families and the prevalence of corruption have led to its continuance all over India. A dowry is a payment from the bride's family to the groom's family at the time of marriage. It is often found in "socially stratified, monogamous societies that are economically complex and where women have a relatively small productive role". Theoretically, marriage results in partners choosing the mate who best maximizes their utility and there is equal distribution of returns to both participants. The outcome is pareto optimal and reaches equilibrium when no one can be better off with any other partner or choosing not to marry. However, if both partners do not share an equal distribution of the returns then there must be a transfer of funds between them in order to reach efficiency. In Indian society, the rise of economic growth has allowed men to work in "productive" jobs and gain an income, but many women are not afforded these opportunities. Therefore, women and their families have to compete for men and pay a dowry as a transaction payment to make up for the lack of productive inputs they bring into a marriage. Dowries have been rising in India for the last six decades and increased 15 percent annually between 1921 and 1981. Women are valued less in this partnership and therefore are asked to pay in order to gain the benefits a man brings. The power hierarchy and financial obligation created through this system help perpetuate acts like female foeticide and a high son preference. Additionally, the technological progress leading to sex selective abortions lowers the cost of discrimination and many people think that it is better to pay a "500 rupees now (abortion) instead of 50,000 rupees in the future (dowry)."


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Furthermore, dowry-related expenses also extend well beyond marriage. The bride's family is expected to bear the burden of high expenses for the groom.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Another reason for this male preference is based on the economic benefits of having a son and the costs of having a daughter. In India, there is a very limited social security system so parents look to their sons to ensure their futures and care for them in old age. Daughters are liabilities because they have to leave to another family once they are married and cannot take care of their parents. Additionally, they do not contribute economically to the family wealth and are costly because of the dowry system. People in India usually see men's work as "productive" and contributing the family, while the social perception of female labor does not have that connotation. This also ties to the fact that it is easier for men in India to get high paying jobs and provide financially for their families. Women need increased access to education and economic resources in order to reach that level of gainful employment and change people's perceptions of daughters being financial liabilities. With this cost and benefit analysis, many families come to the conclusion that they must prioritize male children's lives over female lives in order to ensure their financial future.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: The traditional social security system in India is family centered, with the joint family of three generations living together and taking care of each other.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: The following table presents the child sex ratio data for India's states and union territories, according to 2011 Census of India for population count in the 0-1 age group. The data suggests 18 states/UT had birth sex ratio higher than 107 implying excess males at birth and/or excess female mortalities after birth but before she reaches the age of 1, 13 states/UT had normal child sex ratios in the 0-1 age group, and 4 states/UT had birth sex ratio less than 103 implying excess females at birth and/or excess male mortalities after birth but before he reaches the age of 1.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: Classic economic theory views the market for marriage as one in which people bargain for a spouse who maximizes their utility gains from marriage. In India, many of these bargains actually take place within the family and therefore individual utility is replaced by family utility. In this marriage market, men and their families are trying to maximize their utility, which creates a supply and demand for wives. However, female foeticide and a high sex ratio have high implications for this market. Dharma Kumar, argues that, "Sex selection at conception will reduce the supply of women, they will become more valuable, and female children will be better cared for and will live longer". In the graph, this is depicted by the leftward shift of the supply curve and the subsequent decrease in quantity of females from Q1 to Q2 and increase in their value from P1 to P2. However, this model does not work for the situation in India because it does not account for the common act of males importing brides from other regions. A low supply of women results in men and their families trafficking women from other areas and leads to increased sexual violence and abuse against women and children, increased child marriages, and increased maternal deaths due to forced abortions and early marriages. This ends up devaluing women instead of the presumed effect of increasing their value.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: In the graph, the supply of brides outside each village, locality, or region is depicted as 'supply foreign'. This foreign supply values the price of getting a wife at much cheaper than the first domestic price P1 and the second domestic price P2. Therefore, due to the decrease of women domestically due to sex selection and the low price of foreign women (because they are often bought as slaves or kidnapped), the resulting gap of imported women is from Q3 to Q4. Women act like imports in an international trade market if the import price is lower than the high price of domestic dowries with a low supply of women. The foreign price is lower than the market price and this results in even fewer domestic brides than without importation (Q3 instead of Q2). In turn, this creates a self-fulfilling cycle of limiting females domestically and continually importing them and there is no end to the cycle of female feticide if these acts can continue and importation is an option.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: The imported brides are known as "paros" and are treated very badly because they have no cultural, regional, or familial ties to their husbands before being brought into their homes. One of the field studies in Haryana revealed that more than 9000 married women are bought from other Indian states as imported brides. This act also results in wife sharing and polyandry by family members in some areas of Haryana, Rajasthan, and Punjab, which maintains the gender imbalance if one family can make do with only one female. For example, the polyandrous Toda of Nilgiri Hills in southern India practiced female infanticide in order to maintain a certain demographic imbalance.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: When families choose to partake in pre-natal sex selection through illegal ultrasounds or abortions, they impart a negative spillover on society. These include increased gender disparity, a high sex ratio, lives lost, lack of development, and abuse and violence against women and children. Families do not often keep this spillover in mind and this results in sex selection and female foeticide, which hurts society as a whole.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: A study by Satish B. Agnihotri infers the gender bias in India by studying the relationship between male and female infant and child mortality rates in the face of mortality as a whole looking like it is decreasing. Hypothetically, if males and females are identical, then there should be no difference in mortality rates and no gender gap. However, male and female children are perceived as psychologically and socially different so the equation relating mortality looks like this: MRf = a + b*MRm. MRf is female child mortality, a is residual female mortality when male mortality is 0, the slope b shows the rate of decline in female mortality for a decline in male mortality, and MRm is male mortality. In India, the infant mortality equation for 1982-1997 was IMRf = 6.5 + 0.93* IMRm, which shows that there is a high level of residual female mortality and male mortality declines slightly faster than female mortality. The author then breaks down the information by states and rural or urban population. Many states, like Haryana, that are known for high levels of female mortality have slopes greater than 1, which seems counterintuitive. However, this actually goes to show that pre-natal selection may reduce the extent of infanticide or poor treatment of girls who are born. It has a substitution effect on the post-natal discrimination and replaces its effects instead of adding to it. Additionally, urban households usually have a high constant term and a low slope. This shows that simply reducing mortality may not result in a subsequent reduction of female mortality. This research goes to show the extent of gender discrimination in India and how this affects the high sex ratio. It is important to not only target mortality, but specifically female mortality if there is to be any change in gender disparities.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: India passed its first abortion-related law, the so-called Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act of 1971, making abortion legal in most states, but specified legally acceptable reasons for abortion such as medical risk to mother and rape. The law also established physicians who can legally provide the procedure and the facilities where abortions can be performed, but did not anticipate female foeticide based on technology advances. With increasing availability of sex screening technologies in India through the 1980s in urban India, and claims of its misuse, the Government of India passed the Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques Act (PNDT) in 1994. This law was further amended into the Pre-Conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) (PCPNDT) Act in 2004 to deter and punish prenatal sex screening and female foeticide. However, there are concerns that PCPNDT Act has been poorly enforced by authorities.


title: Female foeticide in India

text: The impact of Indian laws on female foeticide and its enforcement is unclear. United Nations Population Fund and India's National Human Rights Commission, in 2009, asked the Government of India to assess the impact of the law. The Public Health Foundation of India, an premier research organization in its 2010 report, claimed a lack of awareness about the Act in parts of India, inactive role of the Appropriate Authorities, ambiguity among some clinics that offer prenatal care services, and the role of a few medical practitioners in disregarding the law. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare of India has targeted education and media advertisements to reach clinics and medical professionals to increase awareness. The Indian Medical Association has undertaken efforts to prevent prenatal sex selection by giving its members "Beti Bachao" (save the daughter) badges during its meetings and conferences. However, a recent study by Nandi and Deolalikar (2013) argues that the 1994 PNDT Act may have had a small impact by preventing 106,000 female foeticides over one decade.