title: Rajiv Menon

text: As a result of his travels as a youth, Menon rarely had exposure to television apart from group screenings of war films such as "The Guns of Navarone" (1961) at the naval base. Once his family moved to Visakhapatnam, he became increasingly interested in cinema, and was impressed by a mixture of Hindi and Malayalam films such as "Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam" (1962), "Chemmeen" (1965), "Nirmalyam" (1973), "Yaadon Ki Baaraat" (1973). Menon later moved to Madras aged fifteen and spent his formative years in the city. The death of his father during the period meant that Menon was left with little guidance during and did not want to take up a job which would put him in a "rat race". He was gifted a spare camera by his neighbour Desikan, a photo journalist with The Hindu, with the move igniting an interest for Menon in cinematography. After gaining admission into the Madras Film Institute, he began to explore filmmaking as a nuance and became a keen follower of the work of Bengali directors such as Satyajit Ray and Mrinal Sen, and Tamil directors such as Balu Mahendra and Mahendran.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Menon began his career in the entertainment industry as a still photographer, while also dabbling in work on fashion shoots and corporate films. He later got into commercials, and eventually graduated into working on them as a director. As a part of his commitment to an advert for Harvest Groundnut Oil, he first became acquainted with music composer A. R. Rahman, then widely known by his birth name of Dileep Kumar. The pair subsequently regularly collaborated on commercials, and often worked together in the late 1980s on brands such as Allwyn and Asian Paints.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: As his profile as an ad film-maker improved, Rajiv Menon worked on a few documentaries for filmmakers including Girish Karnad and Shyam Benegal. Karnad consequently offered him the opportunity to be the cinematographer for the Kannada film "Jokumaraswamy" in 1990, but the project was stalled after its lead actor Shankar Nag died in a car crash the day before the shoot. Another proposed film, "Agniputhri" was also shelved soon after its announcement. The following year, cinematographer P. C. Sreeram picked Menon to replace him for the shoot of Pratap Pothen's Telugu road film, "Chaitanya" (1991), starring Nagarjuna and Gautami. Menon has since revealed that his first assignment was a "physically and mentally exhausting" film to shoot, as it was full of chase scenes involving boats and motor cycles, and that he "couldn't wait to get back to commercials". He then worked with Karnad on a Kannada film titled "Cheluvi" (1992), to make up for the previous missed opportunity. During the period, Menon notably turned down the opportunity to work with M. Night Shyamalan on his directorial debut, "Praying with Anger" (1992), and on the chance to work as the lead actor in Mani Ratnam's romantic drama, "Roja" (1992).


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Menon was then approached by Mani Ratnam to shoot "Bombay" (1994), a film centred on events that occurred leading up to the demolition of the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya, and the increased religious tensions that led to the Bombay riots. As a part of his instructions, Menon needed to depict the scenes before the riots as beautiful as possible. So, Menon suggested shooting in the rains to achieve the effect. The team shot the interiors of homes in Pollachi in Tamil Nadu and the exteriors were shot in Kasargod, and Kannur village in Kerala, while the song sequence "Uyire" was shot at Bekal Fort. Menon described that the success of the film "changed his life".


title: Rajiv Menon

text: AVM Productions wanted to make a film to commemorate its 50th anniversary in 1997 and signed on Prabhu Deva to play a lead role and A. R. Rahman to score the music for a potential project. The production studio revealed that they were looking for a new director and Rahman suggested the name of Rajiv Menon to make his directorial debut. Menon thought about the offer for two months and was ultimately convinced by Rahman and Mani Ratnam to accept the project titled "Minsara Kanavu". Arvind Swamy was then signed up for a role as was Hindi actress Kajol, to make her debut in Tamil films. The film was released in January 1997 and was successful at the Chennai box office, notably outperforming Mani Ratnam's political drama "Iruvar" (1997), which was released on the same day. After audiences were initially unhappy with the sad climax of the film, distributors reverted and used an alternate ending which had also been shot for the film. A critic from Indolink.com gave the film a positive review, stating that ""Minsara Kanavu" is again a triangular love story with a little difference. It has good entertainment value, awesome cinematography and excellent songs and choreographed dances." The film was partially re-shot and released by ABC Films in October 1997 in Hindi as "Sapnay" to capitalise on Kajol's popularity in Northern India, earning above average reviews from critics.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: After the success of his maiden venture, Menon was signed by producer Kalaipuli S. Thanu to direct a film under his production in the final quarter of 1998. Menon announced he had begun pre-production work on a project titled "Theekkul Viralai Vaithal" during November 1998, with the title taken from a line by Subramania Bharati. Menon subsequently wanted a bigger storyline and scripted a screenplay based on the Jane Austen novel, "Sense and Sensibility" and the project was renamed as "Kandukondain Kandukondain". Menon claimed that the story of two sisters reflected in the film were reminiscent of him and his brother through difficult parts of their lives. Featuring an ensemble cast of actors including Mammootty, Ajith Kumar, Abbas, Aishwarya Rai and Tabu, the film was highly anticipated prior to release owing to its high production values and popular soundtrack by Rahman. After most of the production was complete in November 1999, Menon wanted a rough copy of the film to be previewed by the village audience first, to ensure that they could relate to the subject, after his previous film failed to fare well in rural areas. After showing parts of the film, they eventually held a group discussion before thanking the volunteers with gifts, while receiving positive feedback.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Made on a budget of 4 crore, the film opened to positive reviews from film critics. The Indian Express stated that it was "a progressive film encouraging female independence, yet staying a warm family tale in essence" and that ""Kandukondain Kandukondain" is the kind of film every intelligent movie-goer ought not to miss", making it "a wonderful watch". The film successfully completed 150 days at the box office in Tamil Nadu, becoming a box office success. Menon chose to bring the film to North Indian audiences too, but opted against dubbing the film and submitted a final copy with English subtitles. He felt that the strong elements of Carnatic music, Subramanya Bharathi's poetry and the ambience of Karaikudi, were exclusively made for a Tamil backdrop. The film was showcased at the Regus London Film Festival in November 2011, and critics from the UK newspaper The Guardian rated it as amongst the top 12 films out of 270. Critic Peter Bradshaw noted it "is an entertaining reinvention of the novel" and adds that "the richly complicated plot allows it to be exuberantly transposed to modern-day India", ranking it alongside Ang Lee's "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous". Menon showed the film across the world, including having screenings at the Washington Film Festival in April 2001, Locarno Film Festival in August 2002 and the Tiburon International Film Festival in March 2004. Menon discussed the potential of a Hindi version of the film with director Sanjay Leela Bhansali and actor Irrfan Khan but the project did not materialise.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: The release of Menon's second and third feature films were separated by eighteen years. In early 2001, Menon began writing "Spin", a Hinglish film based on a real-life relationship between a child with muscular dystrophy and cricketer Anil Kumble, who was set to play the lead role. The project however did not materialise, and he stopped working on revising the script soon after. In 2006, Menon worked on a Hindi adaptation of the comedy drama "Fiddler on the Roof", and hoped to sign Amitabh Bachchan to play the lead role. However, the project was put on hold and eventually did not materialise. Menon later narrated a script to Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan for a project titled "Dhun" during late 2008, and the pair agreed to work on the film. The script was inspired by Hrishikesh Mukherjee's "Abhimaan" (1973) but failed to take off after the actors became busy with other projects. Menon then agreed to work on a biopic of Carnatic singer M. S. Subbulakshmi for producer Somaprasad during January 2012, which would be based on the book "MS, A Life In Music" by T. J. S. George. However, in February 2013, Menon confirmed that he would begin work on an unrelated project with a similar script and a bigger budget, and that Vidya Balan had agreed to essay the lead role of the singer. Soon after the project was confirmed, Somaprasad filed for a stay on the film's production and subsequently won a court case to prevent Menon from making the film. Apart from writing and scrapping potential film ideas, Menon continued work as a teacher at his film institute and as a director for advertisements. He also worked with Mani Ratnam as the cinematographer for the director's films, "Guru" (2007) and "Kadal" (2013).


title: Rajiv Menon

text: After a brief gap in feature films, he is coming back with his latest creation, "Sarvam Thaala Mayam" (2019) featuring G. V. Prakash Kumar. The film is set in a musical background and tells the story of an aspiring percussionist.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Rajiv Menon has worked across several regional film industries in India, contributing towards English, Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu films. As a multilingual speaker, he revealed that during the making of his first few films, he would think of the dialogues in Malayalam, tape it and send it to writer Sujatha, who would help interpret them into Tamil. Although he has previously stated his desire to make a Malayalam language film, Menon has stated that the larger global reach of Tamil and Hindi films means that he is more regularly associated with such projects.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: For films which he has directed, Menon has selected other cinematographers to handle the camera work, despite his own proficiency. In his directorial projects to date, he has worked with Venu, Ravi K. Chandran and Ravi Yadav. Menon stated that he prefers to be available for the cast and crew as a director, and prefers not to have cutters covering him during the process of directing the film.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: In the past, Menon has actively turned down acting offers citing that he prefers to concentrate on being behind the screen. He has previously appeared in a supporting role in Fazil's Malayalam comedy drama film, "Harikrishnans" (1998) starring Mohanlal, Mammootty and Juhi Chawla. Playing the role of Guptan, Menon's character is killed and the entire plot surrounds around the investigation.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Regarding his reluctance to accept acting roles, Menon has stated that he had not taken any acting classes, but had worked hard towards becoming a cameraman and a director. He has also expressed his delight at leading an anonymous life, which could change if he were to become recognisable in public spaces.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Menon started his career in the field of ad-photography, and then went on to make a number of TV commercials. He entered the field during the early days (1980s) when competition was nil. It was the time when A. R. Rahman decided to do music on his own. They become friends and his creativeness was combined with A. R. Rahman's musical Jingles. He did his first Jingle in a national wide ad with him (Allwyn Trendy Watches). So far, Rajiv has done many ads with A. R. Rahman's Jingles. Noteworthy ones are for "Airtel, Colgate, Palmolive, Titan, Asian Paints, Raymonds, Coca Cola".


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Rajiv Menon's production house was ranked No.3 by Economic Times Mumbai in 2006. The next year's ranking saw the company move to No.2. Rajiv Menon's production house is set up in Chennai and his agency clients range from Ogilvy & Mather, Lintas, Rediffusion, Hindustan Thompson Associates, to even smaller ones like Zero Degree Design Studio, Rubecon and Situations Advertising.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: His recent work includes a film about seven great Carnatic musicians. This documentary was made for the event of releasing the coffee-table book "Voices Within" by the contemporary musicians T.M Krishna and Bombay Jayashree. The documentary by Rajiv Menon captures the qualities of these music stalwarts.


title: Rajiv Menon

text: Rajiv Menon is married to a fellow advertising director, Latha, and is based out of Chennai. The pair has two daughters, Saraswathi and Lakshmi. Menon has described music director A. R. Rahman and director Mani Ratnam as his close friends, and has suggested that he is professionally motivated by his associations with the pair.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In linguistics, a compound is a lexeme (less precisely, a word or sign) that consists of more than one stem. Compounding, composition or nominal composition is the process of word formation that creates compound lexemes. Compounding occurs when two or more words or signs are joined to make a longer word or sign. A compound that uses a space rather than a hyphen or concatenation is called an open compound or a spaced compound; the alternative is a closed compound.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: The meaning of the compound may be similar to or different from the meaning of its components in isolation. The component stems of a compound may be of the same part of speech—as in the case of the English word "footpath", composed of the two nouns "foot" and "path"—or they may belong to different parts of speech, as in the case of the English word "blackbird", composed of the adjective "black" and the noun "bird". With very few exceptions, English compound words are stressed on their first component stem.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that even simple compounds made since the 18th century tend to be written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German, and Dutch. However, this is merely an orthographic convention: As in other Germanic languages, arbitrary noun phrases, for example "girl scout troop", "city council member", and "cellar door", can be made up on the spot and used as compound nouns in English too.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: The process occurs readily in all Germanic languages for different reasons. Words can be concatenated both to mean the same as the sum of two words (e.g. ) or where an adjective and noun are compounded (e.g. ). This can create a plethora of large, but valid words in these languages, by compounding compound words with several more.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: The addition of affix morphemes to words (such as suffixes or prefixes, as in "employ" → "employment") should not be confused with nominal composition, as this is actually morphological derivation.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Some languages easily form compounds from what in other languages would be a multi-word expression. This can result in unusually long words, a phenomenon known in German (which is one such language) as or "tapeworm words".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In a synthetic language, the relationship between the elements of a compound may be marked with a case or other morpheme. For example, the German compound consists of the lexemes (sea captain) and (license) joined by an "-s-" (originally a genitive case suffix); and similarly, the Latin lexeme contains the archaic genitive form of the lexeme (family). Conversely, in the Hebrew language compound, the word בֵּית סֵפֶר (school), it is the head that is modified: the compound literally means "house-of book", with בַּיִת (house) having entered the construct state to become בֵּית (house-of). This latter pattern is common throughout the Semitic languages, though in some it is combined with an explicit genitive case, so that both parts of the compound are marked, e.g. Arabic عبد الله "ʕabd-u l-lāh-i" (servant-NOM DEF-god-GEN) "servant of-the-god: the servant of God".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Agglutinative languages tend to create very long words with derivational morphemes. Compounds may or may not require the use of derivational morphemes also. In German, extremely


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: extendable compound words can be found in the language of chemical compounds, where, in the cases of biochemistry and polymers, they can be practically unlimited in length, mostly because the German rule suggests combining all noun adjuncts with the noun as the last stem. German examples include (color television set), (radio remote control), and the often quoted jocular word (originally only two Fs, Danube-Steamboat-Shipping Company captain['s] hat), which can of course be made even longer and even more absurd, e.g. "Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaftskapitänsmützenreinigungsausschreibungsverordnungsdiskussionsanfang" ("beginning of the discussion of a regulation on tendering of Danube steamboat shipping company captain hats") etc. According to several editions of the Guinness Book of World Records, the longest published German word has 79 letters and is " Donaudampfschiffahrtselektrizitätenhauptbetriebswerkbauunterbeamtengesellschaft "("Association for Subordinate Officials of the Main Electric[ity] Maintenance Building of the Danube Steam Shipping"), but there is no evidence that this association ever actually existed.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In Finnish, although there is theoretically no limit to the length of compound words, words consisting of more than three components are rare. Even those with fewer than three components can look mysterious to non-Finnish speakers, such as (emergency exit). Internet folklore sometimes suggests that (Airplane jet turbine engine auxiliary mechanic non-commissioned officer student) is the longest word in Finnish, but evidence of it actually being used is scant and anecdotal at best.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Compounds can be rather long when translating technical documents from English to some other language, since the lengths of the words are theoretically unlimited, especially in chemical terminology. For example, when translating an English technical document to Swedish, the term "Motion estimation search range settings" can be directly translated to , though in reality, the word would most likely be divided in two: – "search range settings for motion estimation".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: An endocentric compound ("tatpuruṣa" in the Sanskrit tradition) consists of a "head", i.e. the categorical part that contains the basic meaning of the whole compound, and modifiers, which restrict this meaning. For example, the English compound "doghouse", where "house" is the head and "dog" is the modifier, is understood as a house intended for a dog. Endocentric compounds tend to be of the same part of speech (word class) as their head, as in the case of "doghouse".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: An exocentric compound ("bahuvrihi" in the Sanskrit tradition) is a hyponym of some unexpressed semantic category (such as a person, plant, or animal): none (neither) of its components can be perceived as a formal head, and its meaning often cannot be transparently guessed from its constituent parts. For example, the English compound "white-collar" is neither a kind of collar nor a white thing. In an exocentric compound, the word class is determined lexically, disregarding the class of the constituents. For example, a "must-have" is not a verb but a noun. The meaning of this type of compound can be glossed as "(one) whose B is A", where B is the second element of the compound and A the first. A bahuvrihi compound is one whose nature is expressed by neither of the words: thus a "white-collar" person is neither white nor a collar (the collar's colour is a metonym for socioeconomic status). Other English examples include "barefoot".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Copulative compounds (dvandva in the Sanskrit tradition) are compounds with two semantic heads, for example in a gradual scale (such a mix of colours).


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Appositional compounds are lexemes that have two (contrary or simultaneous) attributes that classify the compound.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: All natural languages have compound nouns. The positioning of the words (i.e. the most common order of constituents in phrases where nouns are modified by adjectives, by possessors, by other nouns, etc.) varies according to the language. While Germanic languages, for example, are left-branching when it comes to noun phrases (the modifiers come before the head), the Romance languages are usually right-branching.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In English, compound nouns can be open, hyphenated, or solid, and they sometimes change orthographically in that direction over time, reflecting a semantic identity that evolves from a mere collocation to something stronger in its unification. This theme has been summarized in usage guides under the aphorism that "compound nouns tend to solidify as they age"; thus, "child bearing" becomes "childbearing", or a noun such as "street car" begins as open in most attestations and then becomes "street-car" and eventually "streetcar"; see "English compound § Compound nouns" for more information. German, a fellow West Germanic language, has a somewhat different orthography, whereby compound nouns are virtually always required to be solid or at least hyphenated; even the hyphenated styling is used less now than it was in centuries past.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In French, compound nouns are often formed by left-hand heads with prepositional components inserted before the modifier, as in "chemin-de-fer" 'railway', lit. 'road of iron', and "moulin à vent" 'windmill', lit. 'mill (that works)-by-means-of wind'.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In Turkish, one way of forming compound nouns is as follows: "yeldeğirmeni" 'windmill' ("yel": wind, "değirmen-i": mill-possessive); "demiryolu" 'railway' ("demir": iron, "yol-u": road-possessive).


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Occasionally, two synonymous nouns can form a compound noun, resulting in a tautology. One example is the English word "pathway".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: A type of compound that is fairly common in the Indo-European languages is formed of a verb and its object, and in effect transforms a simple verbal clause into a noun.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In Spanish, for example, such compounds consist of a verb conjugated for the second person singular imperative followed by a noun (singular or plural): e.g., "rascacielos" (modelled on "skyscraper", lit. 'scratch skies'), "sacacorchos" 'corkscrew' (lit. 'pull corks'), "guardarropa" 'wardrobe' (lit. 'store clothes'). These compounds are formally invariable in the plural (but in many cases they have been reanalyzed as plural forms, and a singular form has appeared). French and Italian have these same compounds with the noun in the singular form: Italian "grattacielo" 'skyscraper', French "grille-pain" 'toaster' (lit. 'toast bread').


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: This construction exists in English, generally with the verb and noun both in uninflected form: examples are "spoilsport", "killjoy", "breakfast", "cutthroat", "pickpocket", "dreadnought", and "know-nothing".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Also common in English is another type of verb–noun (or noun–verb) compound, in which an argument of the verb is incorporated into the verb, which is then usually turned into a gerund, such as "breastfeeding", "finger-pointing", etc. The noun is often an instrumental complement. From these gerunds new verbs can be made: "(a mother) breastfeeds (a child)" and from them new compounds "mother-child breastfeeding", etc.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Verb-noun compounds derived from classical languages tend to be nouns; rarely, a verb-noun classical compound can be a verb. One example is "miscegenate", a word that literally falls into disuse nowadays, which is derived from a Latin verb and a Latin noun. In the Australian Aboriginal language Jingulu, a Pama–Nyungan language, it is claimed that all verbs are V+N compounds, such as "do a sleep", or "run a dive", and the language has only three basic verbs: "do", "make", and "run".


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: A special kind of compounding is incorporation, of which noun incorporation into a verbal root (as in English "backstabbing", "breastfeed", etc.) is most prevalent (see below).


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Verb–verb compounds are sequences of more than one verb acting together to determine clause structure. They have two types:


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Serial verb expressions in English may include "What did you go and do that for?", or "He just upped and left"; this is however not quite a true compound since they are connected by a conjunction and the second missing arguments may be taken as a case of ellipsis.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Parasynthetic compounds are formed by a combination of compounding and derivation, with multiple lexical stems and a derivational affix. For example, English "black-eyed" is composed of "black", "eye", and "-ed" 'having', with the meaning 'having a black eye'; Italian "imbustare" is composed of "in-" 'in', "busta" 'envelope', "-are" (verbal suffix), with the meaning 'to put into an envelope'.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Compound prepositions formed by prepositions and nouns are common in English and the Romance languages (consider English "on top of", Spanish "encima de", etc.). Hindi has a small number of simple (i.e., one-word) postpositions and a large number of compound postpositions, mostly consisting of simple postposition "ke" followed by a specific postposition (e.g., "ke pas", "near"; "ke nīche", "underneath").


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In Germanic languages (including English), compounds are formed by prepending what is effectively a namespace (disambiguation context) to the main word. For example, "football" would be a "ball" in the "foot" context. In itself, this does not alter the meaning of the main word. The added context only makes it more precise. As such, a "football" must be understood as a "ball". However, as is the case with "football", a well established compound word may have gained a special meaning in the language's vocabulary. Only this defines "football" as a particular type of ball (unambiguously the round object, not the dance party, at that), and also the game involving such a ball. Another example of special and altered meaning is "starfish" – a starfish is in fact not a fish in modern biology. Also syntactically, the compound word behaves like the main word – the whole compound word (or phrase) inherits the word class and inflection rules of the main word. That is to say, since "fish" and "shape" are nouns, "starfish" and "star shape" must also be nouns, and they must take plural forms as "starfish" and "star shapes", definite singular forms as "the starfish" and "the star shape", and so on. This principle also holds for languages that express definiteness by inflection (as in North Germanic).


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Because a compound is understood as a word in its own right, it may in turn be used in new compounds, so forming an arbitrarily long word is trivial. This contrasts to Romance languages, where prepositions are more used to specify word relationships instead of concatenating the words. As a member of the Germanic family of languages, English is unusual in that compounds are normally written in separate parts. This would be an error in other Germanic languages such as Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, German and Dutch. However, this is merely an orthographic convention: As in other Germanic languages, arbitrary noun phrases, for example "girl scout troop", "city council member", and "cellar door", can be made up on the spot and used as compound nouns in English too.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In the Russian language compounding is a common type of word formation, and several types of compounds exist, both in terms of compounded parts of speech and of the way of the formation of a compound.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Compound nouns may be agglutinative compounds, hyphenated compounds (стол-книга 'folding table', lit. 'table-book', "book-like table"), or abbreviated compounds (acronyms: колхоз 'kolkhoz'). Some compounds look like acronym, while in fact they are an agglutinations of type stem + word: Академгородок 'Akademgorodok' (from "akademichesky gorodok" 'academic village'). In agglutinative compound nouns, an agglutinating infix is typically used: пароход 'steamship': пар + о + ход. Compound nouns may be created as noun+noun, adjective + noun, noun + adjective (rare), noun + verb (or, rather, noun + verbal noun).


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Compound adjectives may be formed either per se (бело-розовый 'white-pink') or as a result of compounding during the derivation of an adjective from a multi-word term: Каменноостровский проспект () 'Stone Island Avenue', a street in St.Petersburg.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Quite a few Russian words are borrowed from other languages in an already-compounded form, including numerous "classical compounds" or internationalisms: автомобиль 'automobile'.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Sanskrit is very rich in compound formation with seven major compound types and as many as 55 sub-types. The compound formation process is productive, so it is not possible to list all Sanskrit compounds in a dictionary. Compounds of two or three words are more frequent, but longer compounds with some "running through pages" are not rare in Sanskrit literature. Some examples are below (hyphens below show individual word boundaries for ease of reading but are not required in original Sanskrit).


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Also in sign languages, compounding is a productive word formation process. Both endocentric and exocentric compounds have been described for a variety of sign languages. Copulative compounds or dvandva, which are composed of two or more nouns from the same semantic category to denote that semantic category, also occur regularly in many sign languages. The sign for "parents" in Italian Sign Language, for instance, is a combination of the nouns ‘father’ and ‘mother’. The sign for "breakfast" in American Sign Language follows the same concept. The words "eat" and "morning" are signed together to create a new word meaning breakfast. This is an example of a sequential compound; in sign languages, it is also possible to form "simultaneous" compounds, where one hand represents one lexeme while the other simultaneously represents another lexeme. An example is the sign for "weekend" in Sign Language of the Netherlands, which is produced by simultaneously signing a one-handed version of the sign for "Saturday" and a one-handed version of the sign for "Sunday." In American Sign Language there is another process easily compared to compounding. Blending is the blending of two morphemes to create a new word called a portmanteau. This is different from compounding in that it breaks the strict linear order of compounding.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: Although there is no universally agreed-upon guideline regarding the use of compound words in the English language, in recent decades written English has displayed a noticeable trend towards increased use of compounds. Recently, many words have been made by taking syllables of words and compounding them, such as pixel (picture element) and bit (binary digit). This is called a syllabic abbreviation.


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: In Dutch and the Scandinavian languages there is an unofficial trend toward splitting compound words, known in Norwegian as "særskriving", in Swedish as "särskrivning" (literally "separate writing"), and in Dutch as "Engelse ziekte" (the "English disease"). Because the Scandinavian languages rely heavily on the distinction between the compound word and the sequence of the separate words it consists of, this has serious implications. For example, the adjective "røykfritt" (literally "smokefree", meaning no smoking allowed) if separated into its composite parts, would mean "røyk fritt" ("smoke freely"). In Dutch, compounds written with spaces may also be confused, but can also be interpreted as a sequence of a noun and a genitive (which is unmarked in Dutch) in formal abbreviated writing. This may lead to, for example, "commissie vergadering" ("commission meeting") being read as "commission of the meeting" rather than "meeting of the commission" (normally spelled "commissievergadering").


title: Compound (linguistics)

text: The German spelling reform of 1996 introduced the option of hyphenating compound nouns when it enhances comprehensibility and readability. This is done mostly with very long compound words by separating them into two or more smaller compounds, like "Eisenbahn-Unterführung" (railway underpass) or "Kraftfahrzeugs-Betriebsanleitung" (car manual). Such practice is also permitted in other Germanic languages, e.g. Danish and Norwegian (Bokmål and Nynorsk alike), and is even encouraged between parts of the word that have very different pronunciation, such as when one part is a loan word or an acronym.


title: The Distillers

text: The Distillers are an American punk rock band, formed in Los Angeles, California in 1998 by vocalist and guitarist Brody Dalle. Dalle co-wrote, played guitar and provided lead vocals for nearly every track on the band's three albums. After the breakup of the band in 2006, Dalle and Distillers guitarist Tony Bevilacqua went on to form Spinnerette.


title: The Distillers

text: The Distillers first came together in late 1998, when Australian-born guitarist Brody Dalle met bassist Kim Chi and the two bonded over their love for playing punk rock. They proceeded to recruit Detroit guitarist Rose Mazzola and drummer Matt Young.


title: The Distillers

text: Signed to Epitaph, the band issued its self-titled debut in April 2000. By the end of the year, Kim Chi had left the group to join Exene Cervenka in her band, the Original Sinners. For awhile The Nerve Agents bassist Dante Sigona was playing bass for The Distillers but Ryan Sinn stepped in and took position. Matt departed to join Chi while Mazzola left during the height of "Seneca Falls". By summer 2002, The Distillers were composed of Dalle, Sinn, and new drummer Andy Granelli; joint American dates with No Doubt and Garbage were planned for later that fall. Guitarist/vocalist Tony Bradley joined The Distillers in time for the recording of their third album and major-label debut, "Coral Fang", which was released in 2003 by Sire. Following her very public divorce from Rancid's Tim Armstrong that same year, Brody Dalle resumed performing under her own name.


title: The Distillers

text: Granelli left the band in early 2005, moving on to play with Darker My Love, and by summer, Sinn had exited as well, later joining up with Angels & Airwaves. Despite rumors, The Distillers, now just Dalle and Bradley, denied that they were breaking up, instead simply going on hiatus. In early 2006, Dalle had her first child, daughter Camille, with new husband Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age. By the year's end, the two remaining members formally announced the band's disbandment and went on to form Spinnerette together.


title: The Distillers

text: In January 2018, Dalle shared a teaser video from The Distillers' Instagram and a newly-opened Twitter account to confirm the return of the band. Initially, it was believed the four Twitter accounts that The Distillers' Twitter was following, would make up the 2018 line-up of the band: Dalle, Bradley, Granelli and former Spinnerette member Alain Johannes. Since then, however, the account has removed Johannes; and subsequently added former bassist Sinn. Bradley has since deleted his Twitter account.


title: The Distillers

text: It was later announced that the band would perform their first official show in over 13 years at The Casbah in San Diego, California in late April 2018.


title: The Distillers

text: On September 11, 2018, the Distillers official Instagram account announced the release of a new single available on iTunes. In April 2019, the band confirmed that they had begin recording their fourth album and follow-up to "Coral Fang".


title: The Distillers

text: On April 28, 2019, The Distillers announced they would be entering the studio with English music producer Nick Launay.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg () is a city and municipality in the Netherlands, in the southern province of North Brabant. With a population of 222,601 (1 July 2021), it is the second-largest city or municipality in North Brabant after Eindhoven and the seventh-largest in the Netherlands as a whole.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg University is located in Tilburg, as are Avans University of Applied Sciences and Fontys University of Applied Sciences. Tilburg is known for its ten-day-long funfair, held in July each year. The Monday during the funfair is called "Roze Maandag" (Pink Monday) and is primarily LGBT-oriented.


title: Tilburg

text: There are three railway stations within the municipality: Tilburg, Tilburg Universiteit and Tilburg Reeshof. The "Spoorzone" area around Tilburg Central station, once a Dutch Railways train maintenance yard, has been purchased by the city and is being transformed into an urban zone.


title: Tilburg

text: Little is known about the beginnings of Tilburg. The name "Tilliburg" first appeared in documents dating from AD 709, but after that there was no mention for several centuries. In the later Middle Ages, Tilburg referred to a region rather than a particular town or village; its population was largely in a couple of hamlets, one of which was known as "Eastern Tilburg" ("Oost-Tilburg"), which was later reflected in the name "Oisterwijk" ("Eastern Quarter"). This village centred around a small (probably wooden) castle or "Motteburcht" on an equally small hill, which became derelict and was torn down after a few centuries at most. Of this first "Tilburg Castle", nothing remained c. 2000, except for a few remnants of its moat in the suburbs of Oisterwijk. In the 14th century, Tilburg was proclaimed a manor; together with Goirle, it acquired the title of "The Manor of Tilburg and Goirle".


title: Tilburg

text: Successively, the manorial rights fell into the hands of several lords of noble lineage. They derived their income from taxes, fines and interest paid by the villagers.


title: Tilburg

text: In the 15th century, one of the lords of Tilburg, Jan van Haestrecht, built Tilburg Castle. "That stone chamber at Hasselt" is mentioned in several historical documents. In 1858, however, the castle was pulled down to make way for a factory, but the name lives on, in the city arms and logo. A replica of the foundations of the castle was restored in ca. 1995 in its original location, after the factory was demolished. In 1803, Goirle was separated from Tilburg and on 18 April 1809, Tilburg was granted city status. In that year, it had about 9,000 inhabitants. In 2009 Tilburg hosted several festivities in celebration of 200 years as a city.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg grew around one of the so-called "herd places" or "Frankish triangles", triangular plots where a number of roads (usually sand roads) met. These herd places were collective pasturelands for flocks of sheep. Their shape is still reflected in the layout of many places in Tilburg. Many districts, including Korvel, Oerle, Broekhoven, Hasselt, Heikant, De Schans, and Heuvel, bear the names of these old hamlets. The poor farmers living in these hamlets soon decided not to sell the wool from their sheep but to weave it themselves, and for a long time, much of the space inside their small houses was occupied by a loom—by the 17th century these numbered about 300. Enterprising people saw their chance. As so-called "drapers" they supplied the weavers with the raw materials for their "home working", and the first Tilburg "mill houses" came into existence. From then on, the wool industry underwent rapid growth, and in 1881 Tilburg had as many as 145 wool mills. Home weaving continued, however, until the early 20th century. Woollen textiles from Tilburg were known far and wide.


title: Tilburg

text: After World War II Tilburg retained its place as wool capital of the Netherlands, but in the 1960s the industry collapsed and by the 1980s the number of operating wool mills had declined. Present-day Tilburg industry consists of a wide variety of enterprises. The main economic sector has become transport and logistics with a variety of industry as a close second.


title: Tilburg

text: When the wool industry collapsed in the 1960s, Cees Becht was the mayor of Tilburg. While he was in office, many old buildings were destroyed, including some precious monuments. The Koningswei neighbourhood (King's Meadows) was demolished and replaced by Koningsplein (King's Square). The reason for demolishing the neighbourhood was to replace slum with modern building. The new development, however, has not been successful and may feel that the square feels abandoned most of the year.


title: Tilburg

text: Considered even worse was the demolition of the old city hall. This classicistic-styled building was a national-registered monument, but even that didn't stop Becht's plans to demolish it to build the nine-storey, modern-day, black complex. A part of the empty area was used to build the system of the inner "Cityring".


title: Tilburg

text: Another building that was demolished was the old railway station, which was replaced due to "Hoogspoor" (literally: high rails), a project bringing the railway on viaducts to reduce traffic congestion in the years around 1960. The century-old station building was replaced by the modern one.


title: Tilburg

text: Because of all of this and some more parts of Tilburg, Cees Becht gained the dubious nickname "Cees de Sloper" (Cees the demolisher).


title: Tilburg

text: In the 1980s, many locations, formerly occupied by wool factories had been filled with small-scale housing projects. This mostly happened when Henk Letschert was mayor of Tilburg.


title: Tilburg

text: The "Heuvel", one of the important squares, had its own lime tree until 27 April 1994, being chopped for a bicycle parking basement. The felling led to many protests, because the tree was still healthy. After the Pieter Vreedeplein reconstruction, plans were made to plant a descendant of the original lime tree. Three were placed, only one of them survived. The last living tree was moved to another location again, but died shortly after. As of 23 November 2011, no more descendants have been placed. The current one is just another lime tree.


title: Tilburg

text: In the 1990s Tilburg developed a modern skyline. Because of new policy three buildings were built, which are considered skyscrapers in the Netherlands. These are the Interpolis headquarters, the Westpoint Tower and StadsHeer. The Westpoint Tower has an altitude of and was the tallest residential tower in The Netherlands until the Montevideo in Rotterdam surpassed it. The 'StadsHeer' is the third one and is part of the 'Haestrechtkwartier' (Haestrecht quarter). The residential tower is nicknamed "De Vogelkooikes" (The Bird Cages) for its cubic balconies taped onto the building.


title: Tilburg

text: King William II (1792–1849) was fond of Tilburg. "Here I can breathe freely and I feel happy", he once said about the town. King William II always supported Tilburg—he provided money to improve the sheep breeding, built new farms and founded a cavalry barracks on St. Joseph Street, now a monumental building of the City Archives. Although the King was always made welcome by the manufacturers he had befriended, he needed his own residence in Tilburg, and commissioned the construction of a palace, which would function as his country residence. Construction started in 1847 and was completed just days before William II died, in 1849. It is now part of Tilburg City Hall. In 1987 an obelisk was erected nearby, in memory of King William II. It replaced the old "needle" dating from 1874, which was removed from the street in 1968. After its restoration, William II's statue has got a place again in the heart of the city, where he felt happy among its inhabitants. The local football club Willem II Tilburg was named after the king.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg Centrum is the downtown of Tilburg, and is situated between (clockwise) the Spoorlaan, Heuvelring, Paleisring, Schouwburgring and Noordhoekring, which is the same as the order of the one-way roads around the district. The district has 6,572 inhabitants, and most of the shops, hotels, restaurants and cafes of the city. In 2008, the refurbished Pieter Vreedeplein was opened to the public, addressing a lack of shopping facilities as compared to similar-sized cities in the Netherlands. Two smaller cinemas were replaced by a bigger one on the Pieter Vreedeplein in 2007. Despite being called "Centrum", the district is some distance southeast of the geographical center. The district is connected by the Tilburg railway station.


title: Tilburg

text: Oud-Noord is situated north of the railway that crosses Tilburg, and between the "Ringbanen" (ring roads around the city center). The district has 33,915 inhabitants. Contemporary arts museum "De Pont" is located within the district. When the railway marshalling yard belonging to the Nederlandse Spoorwegen became obsolete, a considerable stretch of the railway across the city, the "Spoorzone", became an urban renewal project. New premises for two courses run by Fontys University of Applied Sciences will be located here, as will Tilburg's new central library, replacing the library in Koningsplein. The railway yard is the largest area, though more areas along the railway will be reconstructed.


title: Tilburg

text: Oud-Zuid is a district south, and also west and east of downtown Tilburg. The district has 38,659 inhabitants. , all the 'skyscrapers' of Tilburg, higher than are located within the district. The "Hart van Brabantlaan" is almost surrounded by high buildings like Westpoint Tower and the StadsHeer as a small part of the urban renewal. This area along the railway is partly located in "Oud-Zuid". Many important locations in Tilburg are located within the district, just out of the center, such as 013 music venue and the Schouwburg built in 1961. Also the Koningsplein with the main library and the Piushaven are located within the district. Old herd places include Korvel, Broekhoven and Oerle.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg-Noord is located north of the Wilhelmina Canal. The district has 23,340 inhabitants. Tilburg-Noord was built in the period 1966–1974. Therefore, it has many apartment buildings up to 16 floors, drive-in houses, green strips and industrial development. The streets in this district are mostly named after musicians from the Renaissance up to pop artists from the 1960s. The main shopping center is Wagnerplein, while there's also the Verdiplein in Stokhasselt. The one at the Tartinistraat became defunct. Before the district was built, it was mainly an agricultural area attached to a few villages, including Heikant, which is still the name of the biggest neighbourhood. Heikant's former village square, including the old church, is still present. The northernmost part of the district is still agricultural with some forests. In this agricultural area, the blessed Peter Donders was born; there still stands a chapel and a procession park.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg-oost consists of primarily industrial development. Residential neighbourhoods are in a small strip east of the Ringbaan Oost rather than the whole district, however, it is not considered as a part of the city center. The district only has 748 inhabitants.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg-Zuid is located between the A58 motorway and the Ringbaan Zuid, and is the southernmost district. Tilburg-zuid has 19,149 inhabitants. The district contains two neighbourhoods and many businesses. The football club Willem II is located within the district, as well as the ice-skating rink with a speed skating rink, the Ireen Wüst IJsbaan, which is located here. The main campus of Fontys University of Applied Sciences is located in this district, as well as St. Elisabeth hospital and Leijpark, one of the largest public parks in the city.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg-west was mostly built after WWII, and has 26,655 inhabitants. The district with its neighbourhoods consists mostly of small brick houses and apartment buildings, except for Zorgvlied, which contains more expensive, free-standing houses. The Westermarkt is the largest shopping center out of the inner city. Many higher educational buildings are standing here, like Tilburg University and Avans Hogeschool. Another place of many schools is along the Reitse Hoevenstraat with multiple secondary schools such as: Jozefmavo and Theresialyceum. The district is connected by train with the Tilburg Universiteit railway station, Previously known as "Tilburg West station" and has one of the two hospitals in Tilburg (). The largest mosque of Tilburg, the Turkish Süleymaniye-Mosque built in 2001, stands in the southeastern corner of the district. West is surrounded by forests like "Wandelbos" and the "Oude Warande", located west of the university.


title: Tilburg

text: The Reeshof is the westernmost district and the most recent expansion of the city of Tilburg proper. and has a population of 42,994 inhabitants. Because of this, the Reeshof became the largest district of Tilburg by population. The first houses were completed in 1980, in the neighbourhood Gesworen Hoek. , the last neighbourhood (Koolhoven Buiten) is under construction. The district is connected by the Tilburg Reeshof railway station and multiple roads that encircle the district plus the industrial development Vossenberg north of the Wilhelmina Canal.


title: Tilburg

text: The Donge runs through the district, including greenspace with some Highland cattle grazing between the fences protecting the surrounding neighbourhoods. This small-scale nature project is called the Dongevallei, which literally means Donge Valley in English.


title: Tilburg

text: The population of Tilburg was 222,601 on 1 July 2021. According to the Tilburg city council, the city will reach a population of 217,000 by 2025. Of these, 23.3% (47,964 people) are of foreign descent. People are classified as being of foreign descent when they were born outside of the Netherlands, or when at least one of their parents was born outside of the Netherlands.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification "Cfb") similar to almost all of the Netherlands. Thunderstorms occur in Western Brabant more often than anywhere else in the Netherlands, up to 31 days a year.


title: Tilburg

text: The economy was concentrated on wool industry for centuries, however, since the 1960s, Tilburg has made more progress in having different kinds of industries, supported by the government to save the city from poverty after the decline of wool industry. Chemical company IFF has a factory in Tilburg. In the 1980s, the Japanese company Fujifilm came to Tilburg. Insurance companies like Interpolis and CZ are headquartered in Tilburg, as well. Iris Ohyama has its European offices in Tilburg. Since 2013, the electric car-producing company Tesla operates their main EU facility for assembly and distribution in Europe in the industrial area of Vossenberg north of the suburb "De Reeshof" in Tilburg.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg has a high concentration of transportation/distribution industries, specializing in value added logistics and services, due to being the geographical center of the Benelux countries and being located on the transport corridor between Antwerp / Rotterdam and the Ruhr area. The 'Waalwijk-Tilburg' region has been in the logistics hotspots top 3 within the Netherlands for years now and finished third in 2017.


title: Tilburg

text: Higher education is of significant importance, with Tilburg University attracting scholars from all over the world. It has a student population of about 13,000 students, about 8 per cent of whom are international students. With well-facilitated Library, museums and city center with many pubs and cafes, this percentage has steadily increased over the past years. TiU offers both Dutch-taught and English-taught programmes. Tilburg is one of the best cities for exchange students to have great experience in the Netherlands. It is a perfect city for students to work, mingle, get to know each other and make friends.


title: Tilburg

text: The institution has gained a reputation in both research and education. In the field of economics, the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration ranked No. 1 in Europe for the second consecutive time in 2007 according to the Journal of the European Economic Association with regard to publications in top journals.


title: Tilburg

text: In 2007 the Executive MBA program at the university's TiasNimbas Business School ranked # 11 in the world according to the "Financial Times". In the field of law, Tilburg University was ranked No. 1 in the Netherlands for the last three years according to "Elsevier" magazine.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg is also the location of the Fontys School of Fine and Performing Arts (Dutch: "Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten" - "FHK"), part of the Fontys Hogescholen. The School originated from the merging of various educational institutions that had existed in different capacity in Tilburg before being united under the Fontys group, such as the Brabants Conservatorium, one of the nine conservatoires in the Netherlands, and the Academie voor Beeldende Vorming.


title: Tilburg

text: Fontys School of Arts offers various bachelor and master programmes in English and in Dutch, across different fields in music, visual arts, dance, theatre and performing arts


title: Tilburg

text: This institution is based in a building known as 'Kunstkluster', located in the centre of the city next to the Schouwburg and incorporating a Concert Hall.


title: Tilburg

text: Schrobbelèr is a local liqueur. It has an alcoholic percentage of 21.5%, slightly lower than most bitters and has a relatively sweet flavour. The drink is sold in a stone jar and is drunk cold from own glass, a high and tiny chalice glass, larger than a Jägermeister glass.


title: Tilburg

text: The drink originated in 1973 when Tilburgian entrepreneur Jan Wassing started experimenting with a drink with lower alcoholic percentage that was appropriate for his stomach. The result was successful. The drink is distilled now at Loven industrial area in Tilburg by the Eindhoven company Schrobbeler Ltd, without the è on the last vowel. The drink is especially consumed at Carnival. The name is derived from the profession of 'Schrobbelaar', in the textile industry in Tilburg. The profession was unskilled and had a low wage.


title: Tilburg

text: Another known drink from Tilburg is Peerke's Nat, which has a higher alcoholic percentage than Schrobbelèr (25%) and was introduced at the beatification of Peter Donders (locally named Peerke). The drink is sold in bottles of 70 centiliters.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg's open air art is mostly supported by KORT (Kunst in Open Ruimte Tilburg, Dutch for Art in Open Space Tilburg). One example is the turning house on the Hasseltrotonde, a roundabout, was erected in 2008.


title: Tilburg

text: Besides being responsible for newer, modern art, KORT also gives information about older works of art, like the Willem II statue on the Heuvel.


title: Tilburg

text: The city of Tilburg hosts many festivals, such as Incubate, "Festival Mundial" (world culture), Stranger Than Paranoia (jazz), Tilburg Students Festival, and Roadburn Festival. "013" is a modern pop-centre. Paradox is a club for experimental jazz and improvised music. Fontys University of Applied Sciences started a pop academy in the beginning of the 21st century, and students often perform on local stages.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg has an outstanding museum of Modern Art, De Pont, which houses works from renowned artists such as Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor and Richard Serra. There is also a large textile museum, offering not only a historical view in its former factory, but also a laboratory for design, production and development of textile as a material.


title: Tilburg

text: The Textile Museum: A Museum in a restored factory with striking glass entrance, for industrial & designer textiles. Tilburg has traditionally had a rich textile industry. The traces of this form of industry can be found in various places in the city.


title: Tilburg

text: De Pont, The museum of Modern Art located in Tilburg. De Pont houses works from renowned artists such as Ai Weiwei, Anish Kapoor and Richard Serra. The museum is housed in a former wool mill, an important piece of Tilburg's history. The artwork 'Skymirror' is displayed on the square in front of the museum. A work by Anish Kapoor.


title: Tilburg

text: Nature Museum Brabant: The Museum is dedicated to natural history. The museum was housed in the former intendant residence of King Willem II.


title: Tilburg

text: The collection of Natuurmuseum Brabant consists of stuffed animals of all shapes and sizes, animals "on strong water", dried plants, stones, minerals, fossils and archaeological objects.


title: Tilburg

text: SEA Foundation Tilburg: an internationally oriented art foundation, exhibition space and artist residence for artists, writers and curators.


title: Tilburg

text: The collection that Stadsmuseum Tilburg manages falls into the Tilburg City Collection. In addition, it manages the Memory of Tilburg with more than 4400 stories.


title: Tilburg

text: The tilburg city museum does not have a fixed location, but operates, among other things, in the Peerke Donders Pavilion and Vincent's Drawing Room.


title: Tilburg

text: A lot of parks and forests provide people from the Tilburg area with recreation. Leijpark and Reeshofpark are the largest among the parks in Tilburg. Leijpark was famous for Festival Mundial and lies next to St. Elisabeth hospital and a monastery, the Cenakel. Reeshofpark was created in the late 1990s, including some restaurants opened in 2011. Some older parks include Wilhelminapark in Oud-Noord, are built on the square of the former herd place Veldhoven. Tilburg offers, in comparison to other top-ten cities in the Netherlands, the most forest area. In the municipality, Tilburg has the Wandelbos, a forest south of the similarly named neighbourhood in Tilburg-West, the Oude Warande, the Kaaistoep, a forest of 4.5 km, and partially, Huis Ter Heide in the northwest of Tilburg, a 6.5 km-sized natural redevelopment area. Out of the municipality, there's a national park called Loonse en Drunense Duinen which includes dunes of drift sand from the west coast.


title: Tilburg

text: Students' sports like rowing and hockey are popular as well. Tilburg hosts three field hockey clubs that play in top national leagues.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg has an ice skating rink, including the 400 m speed skating rink Ireen Wüst IJsbaan. Within the speed skating rink there's an ice hockey field. The hockey team Tilburg Trappers dominated the Eredivisie (Dutch Premier League) for years before moving to the Oberliga, the third tier of ice hockey in Germany.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg has three railway stations: Tilburg (Centraal), Tilburg Universiteit and Tilburg Reeshof. The latter was built to connect the then-latest district of Tilburg, the Reeshof. Intercity trains only stop at Tilburg (centraal). The name of Tilburg Universiteit Station was Tilburg West from its construction in 1968 to December 2010, however, after 40 years, it was not the westernmost station anymore. A fourth railway station is planned for Berkel-Enschot, also in the municipality of Tilburg and getting more absorbed into Tilburg. In the past, until 1938, Berkel-Enschot had its own train station. Udenhout, lying further northeast in the municipality, also had its train station until 1938. Both stations are on the line to 's-Hertogenbosch.


title: Tilburg

text: The Tilburg city and local buses are operated by Veolia Transport Nederland. The city experimented from 2005 to 2008 with free public transport for children and 55+ people. Before Veolia took over the bus network, it was operated by BBA (abbreviation for Brabants(ch)e Buurtspoorwegen en Autobussen). It has since been transferred to Arriva.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg has an extensive bicycle path network called Sternet-Routes. The first bicycle path of this network was built between the city center and the university in 1975. From the mid-1990s, multiple bicycle paths (rather than lanes along the road) have been built. Since most of these have been paved by tiles, there is an increasing call for asphalt-paved paths. For this network of bicycle paths, some new tunnels were built under the railway that crosses the city.


title: Tilburg

text: Tilburg is, at variance from other Dutch cities of a similar size, connected by only one national motorway, the A58 / E312 (to Breda and Eindhoven). An outer beltway, consisting of two provincial 2x2-roads and the A58, was finished in May 2012. Although the outer beltway is fully navigable, the Burgemeester Bechtweg, which was built initially as a two-lane (one per direction) road, was finished in 2013. Two other routes are of considerable importance for Tilburg: the A261/N261 to Waalwijk and the A65/N65 to 's-Hertogenbosch. Neither is a complete motorway, and both experience bottlenecks. Various plans exist to build both to higher standards, with the N261 improved in 2015.


title: Azawad

text: Azawad, or Azawagh (Tuareg: Azawaɣ, or Azawad; ) was a short-lived unrecognised state from 2012 to 2013. Azawagh ("Azawaɣ") is the generic Tuareg Berber name of all Tuareg Berber areas, especially the northern half of Mali and northern and western Niger. Its independence was declared unilaterally by the National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) in 2012, after a Tuareg rebellion drove the Malian Army from the region.


title: Azawad

text: Azawad, as claimed by the MNLA, comprises the Malian regions of Timbuktu, Kidal, Gao, as well as a part of Mopti region, encompassing about 60 percent of Mali's total land area. Azawad borders Burkina Faso to the south, Mauritania to the west and northwest, Algeria to the north and northeast, and Niger to the east and southeast, with undisputed Mali to its southwest. It straddles a portion of the Sahara and the Sahelian zone. Gao is its largest city and served as the temporary capital, while Timbuktu is the second-largest city, and was intended to be the capital by the independence forces.


title: Azawad

text: On 6 April 2012, in a statement posted to its website, the MNLA declared "irrevocably" the independence of Azawad from Mali. In Gao on the same day, Bilal Ag Acherif, the secretary-general of the movement, signed the Azawadi Declaration of Independence, which also declared the MNLA as the interim administrators of Azawad until a "national authority" could be formed. The proclamation was never recognised by any foreign entity, and the MNLA's claim to have "de facto" control of the Azawad region was disputed by both the Malian government and Islamist insurgent groups in the Sahara. At this time, a rift was developing with the Islamists. The Economic Community of West African States, which refused to recognise Azawad and called the declaration of its independence "null and void", warned it could send troops into the disputed region in support of the Malian claim.


title: Azawad

text: Tuareg military leader Moussa Ag Achara Toumane affiliated with the MSA (French: ""Movement pour le Salut de l'Azawad""; English: ""Movement for the Salvation of Azawad"") was interviewed by the French language news outlet "TV5MONDE," during its ""Le journal Afrique"" or ""African Journal"" segment, about hostile events that occurred between the MNLA and other separatist groups against jihadi extremists in 2012. He claimed that jihadi groups, and the Ansar Dine in particular, had been in the region of Azawad for 10 years before the circumstances which led to the Azawadi Declaration of Independence. Locals had heard of their extremist views (in respect to shari'a law) then subsequently distanced themselves from the jihadis. Ag Toumane further asserted that the death of Col. Mu'ammar el Gaddafi destabilised the political landscape for Sahelians from Mali and Niger to such a degree that it was described as "disastrous." The Tuareg rebels allegedly went into a "survival mode" for 5 years after his death which were fraught with socio-political and socio-economic crises. Disorganised and unaware of moderate militias, some joined jihadi groups but left when acquainted with better options; they aimed to join movements that were "good" in nature and organised for humanitarian causes for the betterment of Azawad. When asked about the speculated alliance between the MNLA and the Ansar Dine, Ag Toumane said he "personally did not know of the alliance" and referred back to the distance Azawadi locals kept from them.


title: Azawad

text: On 14 February 2013, the MNLA renounced its claim of independence for Azawad and asked the Malian government to start negotiations on its future status. The MNLA ended the ceasefire in September of the same year after government forces reportedly opened fire on unarmed protesters.


title: Azawad

text: According to the Scottish explorer and scientist Robert Brown, Azawad is an Arabic corruption of the Berber word "Azawagh", referring to a dry river basin that covers western Niger, northeastern Mali, and southern Algeria. The name translates to "land of transhumance".


title: Azawad

text: On 6 April 2012, in a statement posted to its website, the MNLA declared the independence of Azawad from Mali. In this Azawad Declaration of Independence, the name "Independent State of Azawad" was used (, , ""). On 26 May, the MNLA and its former co-belligerent Ansar Dine announced a pact in which they would merge to form an Islamist state; according to the media the new long name of Azawad was used in this pact. But this new name is not clear – sources list several variants of it: the "Islamic Republic of Azawad" (), the "Islamic State of Azawad" (), the "Republic of Azawad". Azawad authorities did not officially confirm any change of name. Later reports indicated the MNLA had decided to withdraw from the pact with Ansar Dine. In a new statement, dated on 9 June, the MNLA used the name "State of Azawad" (). The MNLA produced a list of the 28 members of the Transitional Council of the State of Azawad (French: "Conseil de transition de l'État de l'Azawad", CTEA) serving as a provisional government with President Bilal Ag Acherif to manage the new State of Azawad.


title: Azawad

text: The Gao Empire owes its name to the town of Gao. In the ninth century AD, it was considered to be the most powerful West African kingdom.


title: Azawad

text: In the early 14th century, the southern part of the region came under the control of the Mali Empire. King Musa I peacefully annexed Timbuktu in 1324, as he returned from his famous pilgrimage to Mecca.


title: Azawad

text: With the power of the Mali Empire waning in the first half of the 15th century, the area around Timbuktu became relatively autonomous, although the Maghsharan Tuareg had a dominant position. Thirty years later, the rising Songhay Empire expanded in Gao, absorbing Timbuktu in 1468 or 1469 and much of the surrounding area. The city was led, consecutively, by Sunni Ali Ber (1468–1492), Sunni Baru (1492–1493) and Askia Mohammad I (1493–1528). Sunni Ali Ber was in severe conflict with Timbuktu after its conquest.


title: Azawad

text: Askia Mohammad I created a golden age for both the Songhay Empire and Timbuktu through an efficient central and regional administration that allowed sufficient leeway for the city's commercial centers to flourish. With Gao as the capital of the empire, Timbuktu enjoyed a relatively autonomous position. Merchants from Ghadames, Awjilah, and numerous other cities of North Africa gathered there to trade gold and slaves in exchange for the Saharan salt of Taghaza, and North African cloth and horses. The Askia dynasty held leadership of the empire until 1591, when internal fights weakened the dynasty's grip.


title: Azawad

text: Morocco attacked the region in 1591. The Saadi ruler of Morocco, Ahmad I al-Mansur, sent the Morisco General Judar Pasha into the area. Searching for gold, he led an expedition of 4,000 Andalusian Moriscos, 500 mercenaries and 2,500 auxiliaries, including slaves, dubbed the Arma. Following the Battle of Tondibi in a village just north of Gao, Pasha and his forces captured Gao on 30 May 1591. Pasha was born into a family of Spanish Muslims in Morocco, who were banished by the Spanish Crown following the failed Alpujarras uprising of 1568–71.


title: Azawad

text: The sacking of Gao marked the effective end of the Songhai as a regional power and its economic and intellectual decline. The increasing trans-Atlantic trade, which transported African slaves, including leaders and scholars of Timbuktu, marginalised Gao and Timbuktu's roles as trade and scholarly centers. The Moroccan expedition resulted in the formation of the Pashalik of Timbuktu. While initially controlling the Morocco – Timbuktu trade routes, Morocco soon cut its ties with the Arma. Subsequent "pashas" lost their grip on Timbuktu. By 1630, the colony was independent and the leadership had become indigenised through intermarriage and local alliances. Songhay never regained control and smaller taifa kingdoms were created.


title: Azawad

text: The Tuareg temporarily took control in 1737. During the remainder of the 18th century, various Tuareg tribes, Bambara and Kounta briefly occupied or besieged the city. During this period, the influence of the "Pashas", who by then had mixed with the Songhay through intermarriage, never completely disappeared.


title: Azawad

text: The Massina Empire took control of Timbuktu in 1826, holding it until 1865, when they were driven away by El Hadj Umar Tall's Toucouleur Empire. Sources conflict on who was in control when the French colonizers arrived: a 1924 article in the "Journal of the Royal African Society" mentions the Tuareg, the historian Elias N. Saad in 1983 suggests the Soninke Wangara, while the Africanist John Hunwick wrote in 2003 that several states competed for power 'in a shadowy way' until 1893.


title: Azawad

text: After European powers formalized the scramble for Africa in the Berlin Conference, the French assumed control of the land between the 14th meridian and Miltou, South-West Chad, bounded in the south by a line running from Say, Niger to Baroua. Although the Azawad region was French in name, the principle of effectivity required France to hold power in those areas assigned, e.g. by signing agreements with local chiefs, setting up a government, and making use of the area economically, before the claim would be definitive. On 15 December 1893, Timbuktu, by then long past its prime, was annexed by a small group of French soldiers, led by Lieutenant Gaston Boiteux. The region became part of French Sudan (Soudan Français), a colony of France. The colony was reorganised and the name changed several times during the French colonial period. In 1899 the French Sudan was subdivided and the Azawad became part of Upper Senegal and Middle Niger (Haut-Sénégal et Moyen Niger). In 1902 it was renamed as Senegambia and Niger (Sénégambie et Niger), and in 1904 this was changed again to Upper Senegal and Niger (Haut-Sénégal et Niger). This name was used until 1920 when it became French Sudan again.


title: Azawad

text: French Sudan became the autonomous state of Mali within the French Community in 1958, and Mali became independent from France in 1960. Four major Tuareg rebellions took place against Malian rule: the First Tuareg Rebellion (1962–64), the rebellion of 1990–1995, the rebellion of 2007–2009, and a 2012 rebellion.


title: Azawad

text: In the early twenty-first century, the region became notorious for banditry and drug smuggling. The area has been reported to contain great potential mineral wealth, including petroleum and uranium.


title: Azawad

text: On 17 January 2012, the MNLA announced the start of an insurrection in Northern Mali against central government, declaring that it "will continue so long as Bamako does not recognise this territory as a separate entity". After the first attack took place in the town of Ménaka, further fighting was reported in different parts of the north, including Aguelhok, Tessalit, Léré, and Niafunké. Contradictory reports on military gains and losses from Malian military, were strongly denied by the Malian government. On 24 January, the MNLA won control of the town of Aguelhok, killing around 160 Malian soldiers and capturing dozens of heavy weapons and military vehicles. In March 2012, the MNLA and Ansar Dine took control of the regional capitals of Kidal and Gao along with their military bases. On 1 April, Timbuktu was captured. After the seizure of Timbuktu on 1 April, the MNLA gained effective control of most of the territory they claim for an independent Azawad. In a statement released on the occasion, the MNLA invited all Tuaregs abroad to return home and join in constructing institutions in the new state.


title: Azawad

text: The National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) declared Northern Mali an independent state that they named Azawad on 6 April 2012 and pledged to draft a constitution establishing it as a democracy. Their statement acknowledged the United Nations charter and said the new state would uphold its principles.


title: Azawad

text: In the same interview, Assarid promised that they would respect the colonial frontiers that separate the region from its neighbours; he insisted that Azawad's declaration of independence had international legality.


title: Azawad

text: No foreign entity recognised Azawad. The MNLA's declaration was immediately rejected by the African Union, who declared it "null and no value whatsoever". The French Foreign Ministry said it would not recognise the unilateral partition of Mali, but it called for negotiations between the two entities to address "the demands of the northern Tuareg population [which] are old and for too long had not received adequate and necessary responses". The United States also rejected the declaration of independence.


title: Azawad

text: The MNLA is estimated to have up to 3,000 soldiers. ECOWAS declared Azawad "null and void", and said that Mali is "one and [an] indivisible entity". ECOWAS has said that it would use force, if necessary, to put down the rebellion. The French government indicated it could provide logistical support.


title: Azawad

text: On 26 May, the MNLA and its former co-belligerent Ansar Dine announced a pact to merge to form an Islamist state. Later reports indicated the MNLA withdrew from the pact, distancing itself from Ansar Dine. MNLA and Ansar Dine continued to clash, culminating in the Battle of Gao and Timbuktu on 27 June, in which the Islamist groups Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa and Ansar Dine took control of Gao, driving out the MNLA. The following day, Ansar Dine announced that it was in control of Timbuktu and Kidal, the three biggest cities of northern Mali. Ansar Dine continued its offensive against MNLA positions and overran all remaining MNLA held towns by 12 July with the fall of Ansongo.


title: Azawad

text: In December 2012, the MNLA agreed on Mali's national unity and territorial integrity in talks with both the central government and Ansar Dine.


title: Azawad

text: In January 2013, a minor insurgency began when Islamist fundamentalist groups attempted to take control of all of Mali. France and Chad sent troops in support of the Malian army. The whole Northern region was captured within a month prior to the Islamists offensive against the South. The rebels' main presence centered around their headquarters in Kidal. Islamists began slowly regrouping in the Adrar des Ifoghas mountains until the French and African coalition launched an offensive to eliminate the Islamist leadership and recover foreign hostages being held by them.


title: Azawad

text: Tuareg nomadic groups such as the MNLA, an Azawadi separatist group, helped retake several main towns in the North, but stayed neutral in fighting between the Islamists and the Malian army. The MNLA co-operated with the French troops, providing guides and logistical services and renting space in their military bases. However, no Malian army presence was allowed by MNLA authorities, due to accusations of Malian crimes against the Tuareg people. Despite this, the Islamists targeted MNLA checkpoints and other military installations with suicide bombers in retaliation. In-fighting also occurred when Chadian intervention forces were accused of firing upon Tuareg civilians.


title: Azawad

text: A peace deal was reached in June 2013 between the MNLA and Malian government giving military lease over Tuareg rebel held land also, Tuareg greater autonomy which was requested after the MNLA revoked their Independence claim. This allowed the North to participate in Malian presidential elections the same month. The ceasefire didn't last long before Malian troops clashed with rebels in skirmishes.


title: Azawad

text: In February 2014, a massacre of a Malian general's family who were ethnic Tuareg led to an ethnic conflict between Fulani Islamists and Tuareg MNLA separatists. A massacre deliberately targeting Tuareg majority civilians was carried out by Islamists killing over 30 unarmed men.


title: Azawad

text: There was going to be a referendum scheduled for 2017 on gaining autonomy and renaming the northern regions into "Azawad". However, Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, shelved the plans for the referendum on constitutional reforms that were met with opposition and ignited regular street protests.


title: Azawad

text: The local climate is desert or semi-desert. Reuters wrote of the terrain: "Much of the land is the Sahara desert at its most inhospitable: rock, sand dunes and dust scored by shifting tracks." Some definitions of Azawad also include parts of northern Niger and southern Algeria, adjacent areas to the south and the north though in its declaration of independence, the MNLA did not advance territorial claims on those areas.


title: Azawad

text: Traditionally, Azawad has referred to the sandplains north of Timbuktu. In geological terms, it is a mosaic of river, swamp, lake, and wind-borne deposits, while aeolian processes have proven the most imprinting.


title: Azawad

text: About 6500 BC, Azawad was a 90,000-square kilometres marshy and lake basin. The area of today's Timbuktu was probably permanently flooded. In the deeper parts of Azawad, there were large lakes, partly recharged by rainfall, partly by exposed groundwater. Seasonal lakes and creeks were fed by overflow of the Niger River. The annual Niger flood was diffused throughout the Azawad by a network of palaeochannels spread out over an area of 180 by 130 kilometres. The most important of these paleochannels is the Wadi el-Ahmar, which is 1 200 metres wide at its southern end, at the Niger bend, and winds 70 to 100 kilometres northward. These long interdunal indentations that are framed by Pleistocene longitudinal dunes, characterise the present landscape.


title: Azawad

text: The MNLA in its declaration of independence announced the first political institutions of the state of Azawad. It included:


title: Azawad

text: Although the MNLA claimed responsibility for managing the country "until the appointment of a national authority" in their declaration of independence, it has acknowledged the presence of rival armed groups in the region, including Islamist fighters under Ansar Dine, the Movement for Oneness and Jihad in West Africa, and Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). The MNLA did not establish a formal government, though it pledged to draft a constitution establishing Azawad as a democracy. The main government building is called the Palace of Azawad by the MNLA. It is a heavily guarded building in central Gao that served as the office of the Gao Region's governor prior to the rebellion.


title: Azawad

text: The military wing of Ansar Dine rejected the MNLA's declaration of independence hours after it was issued. Ansar Dine vowed to establish Islamic "sharia" law over all of Mali. At a conference, the Azawadis voiced their disapproval of radical Islamic groups, and asked all foreign fighters to disarm and leave the country.


title: Azawad

text: According to a Chatham House Africa expert, Mali was not to be considered "definitively partitioned". The peoples who constitute a major share of the population of northern Mali, such as Songhai and Fulani, considered themselves to be Malian and had no interest in a separate Tuareg-dominated state. On the day of the declaration of independence, about 200 Malian northerners staged a rally in Bamako, declaring their rejection of the partition and their willingness to fight to drive out the rebels. A day later, 2,000 protesters joined a new rally against separatism.


title: Azawad

text: According to Ramtane Lamamra, the African Union's peace and security commissioner, the African Union has discussed sending a military force to reunify Mali. He said that negotiations with terrorists had been ruled out, but negotiations with other armed factions were still open.


title: Azawad

text: Azawad, as proclaimed by the MNLA, includes the regions of Gao, Timbuktu, Kidal, and the northeast half of Mopti; until 1991, when the new Kidal Region was created, it formed the northern portion of Gao Region. As such, it includes the three biggest cities of Timbuktu, Gao and Kidal.


title: Azawad

text: Northern Mali has a population density of 1.5 people per square kilometre. The Malian regions claimed by Azawad are listed hereafter (apart from the portion of Mopti Region claimed and occupied by the MNLA). The population figures are from the 2009 census of Mali, taken before Azawadi independence was proclaimed. Since the start of the Tuareg rebellion in January 2012, an estimated 250,000 former inhabitants have fled the territory.


title: Azawad

text: The area was traditionally inhabited by the settled Songhay, and the nomadic Tuareg, Arabs, and Fulas (; ). The ethnic composition of the regions in 1950 (at that time, Kidal Region was a part of Gao Region) and in 2009 is shown in the adjacent diagrams.


title: Azawad

text: The languages of Northern Mali include Hassaniya Arabic, Fulfulde and Songhay, Tamashek. French, though not spoken natively, is widely used as a lingua franca, as well as negotiations with the government of Mali and foreign affairs.


title: Azawad

text: Most are Muslims, of the Sunni or Sufi orientations. Most popular in the Tuareg movement and northern Mali as a whole is the Maliki branch of Sunnism, in which traditional opinions and analogical reasoning by later Muslim scholars are often used instead of a strict reliance on hadith as a basis for legal judgment.


title: Azawad

text: Ansar Dine follows the Salafi branch of Sunni Islam. They strongly object to praying around the graves of Malikite 'holymen', and burned down an ancient Sufi shrine in Timbuktu, which had been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.


title: Azawad

text: Most of the 300 Christians who formerly lived in Timbuktu have fled to the South since the rebels captured the town on 2 April 2012.


title: Azawad

text: The people living in the central and northern Sahelian and Sahelo-Saharan areas of Mali are the country's poorest, according to an International Fund for Agricultural Development report. Most are pastoralists and farmers practicing subsistence agriculture on dry land with poor and increasingly degraded soils. The northern part of Mali suffers from a critical shortage of food and lack of health care. Starvation has prompted about 200,000 inhabitants to leave the region.


title: Azawad

text: Refugees in the 92,000-person refugee camp at Mbera, Mauritania, described the Islamists as "intent on imposing an Islam of lash and gun on Malian Muslims." The Islamists in Timbuktu have destroyed about a half-dozen historic above-ground tombs of revered holy men, proclaiming the tombs contrary to Shariah. One refugee in the camp spoke of encountering Afghans, Pakistanis and Nigerians among the invading forces.


title: Isaach de Bankolé

text: Zachari Bankolé (born 12 August 1957), known as Isaach or Isaac de Bankolé, is an Ivorian-French-American actor. He is known for his roles in "Chocolat", "Casino Royale", "Black Panther" and its , and the films of Jim Jarmusch.


title: Isaach de Bankolé

text: De Bankolé was born in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to Yoruba parents from Benin. His grandparents are from Nigeria. He moved to Paris in 1975 for his last year of lycée, and pursued a master's degree in physics and mathematics. He then attended an aviation school and earned a private pilot licence, before a chance encounter with French director led him to enroll in the , a Parisian drama school.


title: Isaach de Bankolé

text: De Bankolé has appeared in over fifty films, including Jim Jarmusch's "Night on Earth", "", "Coffee and Cigarettes" and "The Limits of Control". He has been based in the United States since 1997. He appeared in the movie "Machetero", in the role of journalist interviewing an imprisoned Puerto Rican revolutionary, along with the members of the New York City-based punk band Ricanstruction.


title: Isaach de Bankolé

text: De Bankolé has also appeared in Lars von Trier's "Manderlay". He portrayed Steven Obanno, a terrorist, in the 2006 James Bond film "Casino Royale", and "The Lone Man", an assassin in Jim Jarmusch's film, "The Limits of Control" (2009). In 2013, he starred as Ayodele Balogun in Andrew Dosunmu's "Mother of George", which premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and was the closing night selection for Maryland Film Festival 2013. He has also had roles in "Calvary", "The Last Witch Hunter", and "Black Panther".


title: Isaach de Bankolé

text: De Bankolé is fluent in Yoruba, Bambara, English, French, German, and speaks some Italian. He was married to musician Cassandra Wilson from 2000 to 2003.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: Billion Dollar Babies is the sixth studio album by American rock band Alice Cooper, released on February 25, 1973, by Warner Bros. Records. The album became the best selling Alice Cooper record at the time of its release, hit number one on the album charts in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and went on to be certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. The album has been retrospectively praised by such critics as Robert Christgau, Greg Prato of AllMusic, and Jason Thompson of "PopMatters", but "The Rolling Stone Album Guide" (2004) gave the album only two and a half stars.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: Songs were recorded in both the state of Connecticut and London, England. Lyrics cover topics and themes such as necrophilia, dental fear, horror, and sexual harassment. At 40 minutes and 51 seconds, it is the longest studio album the band has ever released; this does not count any of Cooper's solo albums.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: Drummer Neal Smith has said that the album can be traced back to the song "Caught in a Dream" from the album "Love It to Death" (1971). The first recording sessions for the album took place in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a mansion called the Galesi Estate. To achieve certain vocal sounds and echoes, microphones were run through rooms of various sizes and a greenhouse. Other sessions were held at Morgan Studios in London, where singer Donovan contributed to the album by singing on its title track. The album was produced by Bob Ezrin with Gerry Lyon as assistant in New York, Connecticut and London.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: Guitarists Glen Buxton and Michael Bruce both used Gibson SGs for the album. Three additional guitarists (including longtime band friend Mick Mashbir and New York-based session musicians Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter) were retained to cover for Buxton, who suffered from alcohol abuse-related pancreatitis throughout the sessions.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: A quadraphonic mix of the album was released on both 8-track and reel-to-reel format, as well as vinyl. This features radically different mixes of all of the songs, including different vocal tracks ("Raped and Freezin), unfaded endings ("Generation Landslide"), and editing ("I Love the Dead"). Alice's lead vocals are more upfront in the quad mix than the stereo mix.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: There has been discussion that this mix of the album can be found on the DVD-Audio release, which is not the case. The DVD-Audio release contains a newer 5.1 channel mix of the album, based on the original 2-channel tracks as opposed to the quad mix.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: The album's title comes from the fact that the five members of Alice Cooper were surprised about their success. Cooper related: "How could we, this band that two years ago was living in the Chambers Brothers' basement in Watts, be the Number One band in the world, with people throwing money at us?" The title was also later used as the name of the group Neal Smith, Dennis Dunaway, and Michael Bruce formed after Alice Cooper group had split up. Cooper said, "The whole idea behind the "Billion Dollar Babies" album was exploiting the idea that people do have sick perversions."


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: Alice Cooper, who wrote the majority of the album's lyrics, cited Chuck Berry as a key influence on his writing. "Hello Hooray", the album's opening track, was written by Canadian singer/songwriter Rolf Kempf and was previously recorded by Judy Collins. The band wanted their version of the song to sound like "Alice Cooper meets Cabaret". The album's third track, "Elected", is a rewrite of the song "Reflected" from "Pretties for You" (1969). "Raped and Freezin has been called a "hilarious and gorgeously catchy" take on the idea of sexual harassment by "PopMatters"s Jason Thompson. "Unfinished Sweet" is about visiting a dentist with sound effects recorded by Gerry Lyon. The title track was co-written by Reggie Vinson (credited on original pressings of the album as "R. Reggie", i.e., "Rockin' Reggie Vinson"), who had played guitar on and performed vocals for "School's Out" (1972). Donovan described the song as a "horror story song". The album's closing track, "I Love the Dead", is a tongue-in-cheek song about necrophilia.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: After the album was released, the band embarked on a tour which broke the United States box office records previously held by the Rolling Stones and included a scheduled 64 concerts in 59 cities in 90 days. The gross revenue of the tour was anticipated to be close to $20 million, but only about $4 million was achieved.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: Cooper hired magician James Randi to design effects for the show, and Randi traveled with the tour to supervise and coordinate the effects. Randi even played a role in the stage show as "The Executioner".


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: The live performances featured Cooper wearing a costume with fake blood stains at the crotch, tearing apart baby dolls, attacking mannequins, and being decapitated by a guillotine. Cooper has said that the mutilation of the dolls symbolized child neglect. Between 40 and 50 people were employed and 26,000 pounds of equipment were used. In preparation for the tour, two semi-trailer trucks carried a wide variety of props including a dentists drill, four whips, a surgical table, six hatchets, 33,000 program books, 300 baby dolls, 22,000 sparklers, 58 mannequins, 280 spare light bulbs, 1,000 patches, 6,000 mirror parts, 14 bubble machines, 28 gallons of bubble juice, and 250,000 packages of bubble bath.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: "Billion Dollar Babies" was commercially more successful than Alice Cooper's previous albums; it went to No. 1 in both the United Kingdom and United States. The album's singles "Elected", "Hello Hooray", "Billion Dollar Babies", and "No More Mr. Nice Guy", all became hits on the "Billboard" Hot 100. In March 1973 the album was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America and in 1986, it went platinum.


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: In a contemporary review for "Creem" magazine, Robert Christgau said that "Billion Dollar Babies" is Cooper's "most consistent album", even though it lacks a song as strong as "School's Out". In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Greg Prato awarded the album four and a half out of five stars and called it "one of Cooper's very best; it remains one of rock's all-time, quintessential classics". Jason Thompson of "PopMatters" praised the album, saying it was "arguably the original Alice Cooper Group's best album". However, the 2004 "The Rolling Stone Album Guide" was less positive about the album, giving it two and a half stars and criticizing songs like "I Love the Dead" for being "predictable". Daniel Bukszpan, the author of "The Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal", called it a "classic" and "arguably the original band's finest offering". In 2005, "Billion Dollar Babies" was ranked number 283 in "Rock Hard" magazine's book of "The 500 Greatest Rock & Metal Albums of All Time". The album was also included in the book "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die". "Treble" named it in its list "10 Essential Glam Rock Albums".


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: Chris Cornell of Soundgarden stated that it was one of his favorite records. In an interview with "Spin" magazine in 1989, he commented that: "When I was in junior high, every Friday the teachers would let the kids play their favorite records. I brought in "Billion Dollar Babies" [Alice Cooper, 1973] and they wouldn't let me play it. They never vetoed anyone's choice before. It was then I knew that rock'n'roll could scare the fuck out of certain people." The Norwegian band Turbonegro made a song called "Zillion Dollar Sadist" as a tribute to "Billion Dollar Babies". David Byrne of Talking Heads has said that the album inspired him to write the song, "Psycho Killer". The Swiss extreme metal group Samael did a cover of the song "I Love the Dead" on their "Rebellion" EP. Italian heavy metal band Death SS covered the song "I Love the Dead" on their debut album, "..in Death of Steve Sylvester" (1988).


title: Billion Dollar Babies

text: "Billion Dollar Babies" is the second most-represented album in Alice Cooper's live sets, behind only "Welcome to My Nightmare" (1975). The only song from the album that has never been played live in any form is the short "Mary Ann", although "Generation Landslide" was not played until the tour eight years later following "Special Forces" (1981) on which album it had been re-recorded.


title: Riau Islands

text: The Riau Islands () is a province of Indonesia. It comprises a total of 1,796 islands scattered between Sumatra, Malay Peninsula, and Borneo including the Riau Archipelago. Situated on one of the world's busiest shipping lanes along the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea, the province shares water borders with neighboring countries such as Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei. The Riau Islands also has a relatively large potential of mineral resources, energy, as well as marine resources. The capital of the province is Tanjung Pinang and the largest city is Batam.


title: Riau Islands

text: The Riau archipelago was once part of the Johor Sultanate, which was later partitioned between the Dutch East Indies and British Malaya after the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824, in which the archipelago fell under Dutch influence. A Dutch protectorate, the Riau-Lingga Sultanate, was established in the region between 1824 and 1911 before being directly ruled by the Dutch East Indies. The archipelago became a part of Indonesia following the occupation of the Japanese Empire (1942–1945) and the Indonesian National Revolution (1945–1949). The Riau Islands separated from the province of Riau in September 2002, becoming Indonesia's third-youngest province.


title: Riau Islands

text: A free trade zone of the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle, the Riau Islands has experienced rapid industrialisation since the 1970s. The Riau Islands is one of the country's most prosperous provinces, having a GDP per capita of () as of 2011, the fourth largest among all provinces in Indonesia after East Kalimantan, Jakarta and Riau. In addition, as of 2018, the Riau Islands has a Human Development Index of 0.748, also the fourth largest among all provinces in Indonesia after Jakarta, Special Region of Yogyakarta and East Kalimantan.


title: Riau Islands

text: The population of the Riau Islands is heterogeneous and is highly diverse in ethnicity, culture, language and religion. The province is home to different ethnic groups such as the Malays, Tionghoa, Javanese, Minangkabau and others. Economic rise in the region has attracted many immigrants and labors from other parts of Indonesia. The area around Batam is also home to many expatriates from different countries. Approximately 80% of these are from other Asian countries, with most of the westerners coming from the United Kingdom, rest of Europe, as well as Australia and the United States. The province also has the second largest number of foreign tourist arrivals in Indonesia, after Bali.


title: Riau Islands

text: There are several possible origins of the word "riau." The first possible origins is that "riau" is derived from the Portuguese word "rio", which means river. After the fall of the Malacca Sultanate in the early 16th century, the remaining Malaccan nobles and subjects fled from Malacca to mainland Sumatra while being pursued by the Portuguese. The Portuguese is believed to have reached as far as the Siak River.