title: Player efficiency rating

text: PER largely measures offensive performance. Hollinger freely admits that two of the defensive statistics it incorporates—blocks and steals (which was not tracked as an official stat until 1973)—can produce a distorted picture of a player's value and that PER is not a reliable measure of a player's defensive acumen. For example, Bruce Bowen, widely regarded as one of the best defenders in the NBA through the 2006–07 season, routinely posted single-digit PERs.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Bear in mind that this rating is not the final, once-and-for-all answer for a player's accomplishments during the season. This is especially true for players such as Bruce Bowen and Trenton Hassell who are defensive specialists but don't get many blocks or steals.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Some have argued that PER gives undue weight to a player's contribution in limited minutes, or against a team's second unit, and it undervalues players who have enough diversity in their game to play starter's minutes.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: PER has been said to reward inefficient shooting. To quote Dave Berri, the author of "The Wages of Wins":


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Hollinger argues that each two point field goal made is worth about 1.65 points. A three point field goal made is worth 2.65 points. A missed field goal, though, costs a team 0.72 points. Given these values, with a bit of math we can show that a player will break even on his two point field goal attempts if he hits on 30.4% of these shots. On three pointers the break-even point is 21.4%. If a player exceeds these thresholds, and virtually every NBA player does so with respect to two-point shots, the more he shoots the higher his value in PERs. So a player can be an inefficient scorer and simply inflate his value by taking a large number of shots.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Berri leads off with a huge misunderstanding of PER—that the credits and debits it gives for making and missing shots equate to a “break-even” shooting mark of 30.4% on 2-point shots. He made this assumption because he forgot that PER is calibrated against the rest of the league at the end of the formula.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Actually, if we took a player that was completely average in every other respect for the 2006–07 season—rebounds, free throws, assists, turnovers, etc.—and gave him a league-average rate of shots, and all of them were 2-pointers, and he shot 30.4%, he'd end up with a PER of 7.18. As long-time PER fans know, that would make him considerably worse than nearly every player in the league.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: To end up with a league-average PER of 15.00, the actual break-even mark in this case is 48.5%, which is exactly what the league average is on 2-point shots this season.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Hollinger has set up PER so that the league average, every season, is 15.00, which produces sort of a handy reference guide:


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Only 30 times has a player posted a season efficiency rating over 30.0 (with more than 15 games played in that season), with the highest score being 32.85 (Nikola Jokić). Michael Jordan and LeBron James lead with four 30+ seasons, with Shaquille O'Neal, Wilt Chamberlain and Giannis Antetokounmpo having accomplished three each, Anthony Davis, Nikola Jokić and Joel Embiid having accomplished two each, and David Robinson, Tracy McGrady, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Stephen Curry, Russell Westbrook and James Harden having accomplished one each.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Prior to the 2013–14 season, LeBron James was on the verge of surpassing Michael Jordan's career PER to take the number one spot. As the metric is averaged over the length of a player's entire career a decrease in efficiency later in his career means a player can move down in the ranking; Jordan's PER took a big hit in the final two years of his career when he returned to the game with the Washington Wizards, posting 20.7 in his penultimate season and 19.3 in his final season, compared to his career high of 31.7 (Jordan's PER was 29.1 without accounting for his Wizards years). The debate was intensified on 1 October 2013, with Jordan stating that he would have liked to have played against LeBron, and believes he would have won a one-on-one encounter. Several news features focus on comparing the two players by using the PER metric.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: At the conclusion of the 2012–13 NBA season Miami Heat head coach, Erik Spoelstra, stated that comparing players from different generations is the equivalent to comparing apples and oranges. explaining: You'll never be able to tell [how James stacks up to Jordan or Magic Johnson] because they didn't play against each other. The game is different now than when it was played in the 1980s or even before that".


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Comparing players from different generations using PER presents several problems, this is primarily due to the rule changes and the changes in statistical data collected from different eras (although many other factors could be taken into consideration, even down to the increased sample size as the NBA grew through incorporating more teams). Some of the more important rule changes that should be considered include; some of the players on this list, such as Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell, played before the three-point shot, blocks, and steals stats were officially recorded. Blocked shots and steals were first officially recorded in the NBA during the 1973–74 season. The three-point shot entered the league in 1979–80 season. During the 1990s and 2000s numerous rule changes were incorporated, the "three point foul" and "clear path" rules were both introduced in the 1995–96 season with the effect of increasing the number of free throws, hand-checking (the amount of contact a defender may make with an opposing player) was banned in 1994 and the use of elbows was banned in 1997 (both rules had seen various degrees of limitation by earlier rule changes) although neither was fully implemented until 2004. The 2004 rule changes, which also included calling the defensive 3 second rule ("[...] a defensive player may not station himself in the key area longer than three seconds"—a longstanding rule which had been ignored by referees) had a major effect, opening up the game and allowing a more free-flowing offense; it encouraged aggressive inside attack based plays (to draw fouls), and has increased the number of fouls given when contact is made on players who drive to the basket.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Former ABA and NBA Coach Larry Brown is quoted as saying: "The college game is much more physical (than the NBA) [...] I always tease Michael (Jordan), if he played today, he'd average 50."


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Once uPER is calculated, it must be adjusted for team pace and normalized to the league to become PER:


title: Player efficiency rating

text: This final step takes away the advantage held by players whose teams play a fastbreak style (and therefore have more possessions and more opportunities to do things on offense), and then sets the league average to 15.00.


title: Player efficiency rating

text: Also note that it is impossible to calculate PER (at least in the conventional manner described above) for NBA seasons prior to 1978, as the league did not keep track of turnovers among other advanced statistics before that year.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Octopus Energy Group is a British renewable energy group specialising in sustainable energy. It was founded in 2015 with the backing of British fund management company Octopus Group, a British asset management company. Headquartered in London, the company has operations in the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. As of September 2021 the company has over three million domestic and business customers, making it the fourth largest energy supplier in the UK.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Octopus Energy Group operates a wide range of business divisions, including Octopus Energy Retail, Octopus Energy for Business, Octopus Energy Services, Octopus Electric Vehicles, Octopus Energy Generation, Octopus Hydrogen, Kraken, Kraken Flex and the not-for-profit Centre for Net Zero. The company also supplies software services to other energy suppliers.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Octopus Energy was established in August 2015 as a subsidiary of Octopus Capital Limited. Trading began in December 2015. Greg Jackson is the founder of the company and holds the position of chief executive.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: By April 2018, the company had 198,000 customers and had made an energy procurement deal with Shell. Later in 2018, Octopus gained the 100,000 customers of Iresa Limited, under Ofgem's "supplier of last resort" process, after Iresa ceased trading. The same year, Octopus replaced SSE as the energy supplier for M&S Energy, a brand of Marks & Spencer, and bought Affect Energy, which had 22,000 customers.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In 2018 Hanwha Energy Retail Australia (Nectr) chose the Kraken platform, developed by Octopus to provide billing, CRM and other technology services to support its launch into the Australian retail energy market.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In August 2019, an agreement with Midcounties Co-operative saw Octopus gain more than 300,000 customers, taking its total beyond 1 million. Three Co-op brands were affected: Octopus acquired the customers of the GB Energy and Flow Energy brands, and began to operate the accounts of Co-op Energy customers on a white label basis, while Midcounties retained responsibility for acquiring new Co-op Energy customers.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In both 2018 and 2019, Octopus was the only energy supplier to earn "Recommended Provider" status from the "Which?" consumer organisation. In January 2020, Octopus was ranked first in a "Which?" survey and was one of three recommended providers. In January 2021, Octopus was ranked second and was one of two recommended providers, becoming the only energy provider in the UK to have been named as a recommended provider four years running.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In January 2020, ENGIE UK announced that it was selling its residential energy supply business (comprising around 70,000 UK residential customers) to Octopus. The same month saw the launch of London Power, a partnership with the Mayor of London.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In 2020 Octopus completed two funding rounds totalling $577m, making the company the highest funded UK tech start-up that year.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In November 2020 Octopus acquired Manchester-based smart grid energy software company Upside Energy, which in June 2021 rebranded as KrakenFlex.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: The same month saw Octopus launch the not-for-profit Octopus Centre for Net Zero (OCNZ), a research organisation tasked with creating models and policy recommendations for potential paths to a green energy future.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In February 2021, CEO Greg Jackson said on a BBC News interview that Octopus does not operate a human resources department.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In March 2021 the "Financial Times" listed Octopus at number 23 on their list of the fastest growing companies in Europe.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In July 2021 Octopus rose 12 places on the UK Customer Service Index to 17th, making it the only energy company in the Top 50.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In 2021, Octopus built the UK's first R&D and training centre for the decarbonisation of heat. Located in Slough, the centre will train 1000 heat pump engineers per year and develop new heating systems.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In September 2021, Octopus was appointed as the Supplier of Last Resort (SOLR) for Avro Energy, acquiring Avro Energy's domestic customers and increasing their customer base to 3.1m customers.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In November 2021, Octopus announced in Manchester that it had signed a deal with the city region as part of a bid to become carbon neutral by 2038.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In September 2019 Octopus acquired German start-up 4hundred for £15m; the acquisition of 4hundred, which had 11,000 customers, was Octopus' first overseas expansion.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In May 2020, Australian electricity and gas supplier Origin Energy paid 507 million for a 20% stake in Octopus. This meant Octopus gained "unicorn" status, as a startup company with a value in excess of £1 billion. In September of that year, Octopus acquired Evolve Energy, a US Silicon Valley-based start-up, in a $5m deal. The acquisition was the first step in Octopus' $100m US expansion; at the time of the acquisition, Octopus announced it was aiming to acquire 25 million US customers, and 100 million global customers in total, by 2027.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In December 2020, Tokyo Gas paid about 20 billion yen ($193 million) for a 9.7% stake in Octopus, valuing the company at $2.1bn. Octopus and Tokyo Gas agreed to launch the Octopus brand in Japan via a 30:70 joint venture to provide electricity from renewable sources, amongst other services. Origin invested a further $50m at the same time, to maintain its 20% stake.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In August 2021, Octopus entered the Spanish market with the acquisition of green energy start-up Umeme. Upon the acquisition, Octopus announced it was targeting a million Spanish energy accounts under its brand by 2027. In November 2021, Octopus acquired Italian energy retailer SATO Luce e Gas, rebranding the business as Octopus Energy Italy, investing an initial £51m and targeting 5% of the Italian market by 2025. As a result of these acquisitions, Octopus now has retail, generation or technology licences in 13 countries across four continents.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In September 2021, Generation Investment Management, co-founded and chaired by Al Gore, purchased a 13% stake in Octopus Energy Group in a deal worth $600m. The investment increased the company's valuation to $4.6bn, with the cash injection to be used by Octopus to increase its investment in new technologies for cheaper and faster decarbonisation.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In December 2021, Octopus Energy announced a long-term partnership with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, raising US$300m and taking the valuation of Octopus Energy Group to approximately $5bn.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In January 2022 Octopus Energy entered the French market with the acquisition of Plüm énergie, a French energy start-up with 100,000 retail and corporate accounts. Plüm was subsequently rebranded as Octopus Energy France.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Besides industry-standard fixed and variable tariffs, the company is known for innovative tariffs which are made possible by the national rollout of smart meters. These include:


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In March 2019, Octopus announced it had partnered with Amazon's Alexa virtual assistant, to optimise home energy use through the Agile Octopus time-of-use tariff.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: As part of their partnership agreed in August 2019, Midcounties Co-operative and Octopus established a joint venture to develop the UK's community energy market and encourage small-scale electricity generation.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Besides the Octopus Energy brand, customers are supplied under the Ebico Energy, Affect Energy, Co-op Energy, M&S Energy and London Power brands.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In its early years the company did not generate gas or electricity, instead making purchases on the wholesale markets. In 2019, Octopus stated that all its electricity came from renewable sources, and began to offer a "green" gas tariff with carbon offsetting. In July 2021, Octopus acquired sister company Octopus Renewables which claims to be the UK's largest investor in solar farms, and also invests in wind power and anaerobic digesters. At the time of the acquisition, the generation assets were reported to be worth over £3.4billion.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In October 2020, Octopus partnered with Tesla Energy to power the Tesla Energy Plan, which is designed to power a home with 100% clean energy either from solar panels or Octopus. The plan allows households to become part of the UK Tesla Virtual Power Plant, which connects a network homes that generate, store and return electricity to grid at peak times.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In January 2021, Octopus acquired two 73 metre (240') wind turbines to power their 'Fan Club' tariff, which offers households living near its turbines cheaper electricity prices when the wind is blowing strongly. Customers on the tariff get a 20% discount on the unit price when the turbines are spinning, and a 50% discount when the wind is above 8m/s (20 mph). In November 2021, Octopus Energy announced plans to raise £4 billion to fund the global expansion of its Fan Club model, which would be expanded to include solar farms. By 2030, Octopus aims to supply around 2.5 million households with green electricity through Fan Club schemes.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Also in November 2021, Octopus Energy Group signed a deal with Elia Group at COP26 to build a "smart" green grid across Belgium and Germany. The company’s flexibility platform KrakenFlex will be used together with Elia Group’s energy data affiliate, re.alto, to enable electric vehicles, heat pumps and other green technologies to be used for grid balancing.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In January 2022, it was announced that Octopus Renewables had bought the Broons/Biterne-Sud wind farm in Cotes d’Armor, northeast Brittany, France from Energiequelle for an undisclosed price. In June of that year, the group's fund management team bought the rights to develop the 35MW Gaishecke wind farm near Frankfurt, Germany.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Octopus Renewables is contracted as the investment manager for Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust, an investment trust established in 2019 which owns wind and solar generation in the UK, Europe and Australia.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: The Electric Universe service, which aims to simplify public charging of electric vehicles, was launched in 2020 as Electric Juice and rebranded in 2022. As of September 2022, more than 450 charging companies were taking part, allowing customers access to over 300,000 chargers in over 50 countries through a single card and/or app. All drivers can use the service, and Octopus Energy customers have the option of paying their charging costs through their domestic energy bills.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Octopus Energy licenses their proprietary customer management system called Kraken, which runs on Amazon's cloud computing service. It was first licensed by UK rival Good Energy in late 2019, for an initial three-year term, to manage its 300,000 customers.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In March 2020 it was announced that E.ON and its Npower subsidiary had licensed the technology to manage their combined 10 million customers. In May 2021 it was announced that E.ON had completed the migration of all two million former npower customers to its Kraken-powered E.ON Next customer service platform. The migration was hailed as being responsible for E.ON's financial recovery in the UK. The Kraken software was also licensed to Australia's Origin Energy as part of their May 2020 agreement.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In November 2021, EDF Energy agreed a deal with Octopus Energy Group to move its five million customers onto its Kraken platform. The customer accounts will be migrated onto Kraken from 2023, increasing the number of energy accounts contracted to be served via Kraken to over 20million worldwide. Kraken also has strategic partnerships with Hanwha Group and Tokyo Gas.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In 2019 Octopus launched a 'Portraits from the Precipice' campaign, which sought to raise awareness of climate change and encouraged customers to switch to greener energy deals. The campaign artwork was exhibited at over 5,000 sites, making it the largest ever digital out-of-home (DOOH) art exhibition. As a result of the campaign, Octopus registered a 163% increase in sign-ups and gained 37,000 customers. The campaign won the 2020 "Marketing Week" Masters award for utilities, and the 2020 Energy Institute award for Public Engagement.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In November 2021 Octopus financed 'Grace of the Sun', a large-scale art piece by Robert Montgomery made using the Little Sun solar lamps designed by Olafur Eliasson and Frederik Ottesen. The project, which coincided with COP26, was realised in Glasgow through collaboration with the local art community, and was designed as a call for global leaders to invest in renewable energies such as solar PV, in order to power a sustainable future.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: In June 2021, Octopus suspended their advertising from the newly launched GB News television channel after the channel's first day of broadcasting, with CEO Greg Jackson stating "we are asking networks not to air our ads on new channels until we've seen their output for a period of time". Jackson said that Octopus would be monitoring GB News content to ensure the channel would not be in breach of Octopus' advertising policy.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Responding to Octopus Energy's decision on Twitter, Andrew Neil, founder of GB News, said "Let me know if you want to advertise. And I'll let you know if we want your ads. Or whether we organise a boycott of you". Jackson reaffirmed that Octopus had not boycotted the channel.


title: Octopus Energy Group

text: Octopus was one of a number of brands who considered pulling their advertising from the channel, with others including IKEA, Vodafone, Nivea, Kopparberg, Grolsch, the Open University, OVO Energy and LV=.


title: Direct-administered municipalities of China

text: A direct-administrated municipality (), commonly known as municipality, is the highest level of classification for cities used by the People's Republic of China. These cities have the same rank as provinces and form part of the first tier of administrative divisions of China.


text: A municipality is a "city" () with "provincial" () power under a unified jurisdiction. As such, it is simultaneously a city and a province in its own right.


text: A municipality is often not a "city" in the usual sense of the term (i.e. a large continuous urban settlement), but instead an administrative unit comprising, typically, a main central urban area (a city in the usual sense, usually with the same name as the municipality) and its much larger surrounding rural area containing many smaller cities (districts and subdistricts), towns and villages. The larger municipality spans over . To distinguish a "municipality" from its actual urban area (the traditional meaning of the word "city"), the term "urban area" () is used.


text: The first municipalities were the 11 cities of Nanjing, Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Qingdao, Chongqing, Xi'an, Guangzhou, Hankou (now part of Wuhan), Shenyang, and Harbin under the Republic of China. They were established in 1927 soon after they were designated as "cities" during the 1920s. Nominally, Dalian was a municipality as well, although it was under Japanese control. These cities were first called "special municipalities/cities" (), but were later renamed "Yuan-controlled municipalities" (), then "direct-controlled municipalities" () by the Central Government.


text: After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Anshan, Benxi, and Fushun were also made municipalities, while Qingdao, Dalian, and Harbin were reduced to provincial municipalities. Hankou was merged into Wuhan, which became a municipality of its own. Hence, there remained 12 municipalities. In November 1952, Nanjing was reduced to a provincial municipality. In March 1953, Lüda, which had resulted from the merger of Dalian and Lüshun in December 1950, was made a municipality. In July 1953, Harbin was restored to municipality status, whereas Changchun acquired that status for the first time. Except Beijing and Tianjin, which were under central control, all other municipalities were governed by the greater administrative areas.


text: In June 1954, 11 of the 14 municipalities were reduced to sub-provincial cities; many of them became capitals of the provinces they were in. Only Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin remained municipalities, until Chongqing was restored as a municipality in 1997 with a much enlarged area. Tianjin was also temporarily reverted to sub-provincial city status between 1958 and 1967.


text: Municipalities are the highest-ranked cities in the PRC. Some cities of lower levels may also refer to themselves as municipalities in the English language.


text: In municipalities, the highest ranking government official is the Mayor. The mayor is also a delegate in the National People's Congress (the legislature) and Deputy Secretary of the CPC Municipal Committee. However, the highest administrative authority in the municipality belongs to the Secretary of the CPC Municipal Committee or Party Secretary.


title: AutoHotkey

text: AutoHotkey is a free and open-source custom scripting language for Microsoft Windows, initially aimed at providing easy keyboard shortcuts or hotkeys, fast macro-creation and software automation that allows users of most levels of computer skill to automate repetitive tasks in any Windows application. User interfaces can easily be extended or modified by AutoHotkey (for example, overriding the default Windows control key commands with their Emacs equivalents). The AutoHotkey installation includes its own extensive help file, and web-based documentation is also available.


title: AutoHotkey

text: AutoHotkey scripts can be used to launch programs, open documents, and emulate keystrokes or mouse clicks and movements. AutoHotkey scripts can also assign, retrieve, and manipulate variables, run loops and manipulate windows, files, and folders. These commands can be triggered by a hotkey, such as a script that would open an internet browser whenever the user presses on the keyboard. Keyboard keys can also be remapped or disabled, such that pressing , for example, might result in the active window receiving an em dash , or nothing at all. AutoHotkey also allows for "hotstrings" that will automatically replace certain text as it is typed, such as assigning the string "btw" to produce the text "by the way" when typed, or the text "%o" to produce "percentage of". Further, some scripts can be initiated automatically at computer startup and need not interact with the keyboard at all, perhaps performing file manipulation at a set interval.


title: AutoHotkey

text: More complex tasks can be achieved with custom data entry forms (GUI windows), working with the system registry, or using the Windows API by calling functions from DLLs. The scripts can be compiled into an executable file that can be run on other computers that do not have AutoHotkey installed. The source code is in C++ and can be compiled with Visual Studio Express.


title: AutoHotkey

text: The first public beta of AutoHotkey was released on November 10, 2003, after author Chris Mallett's proposal to integrate hotkey support into AutoIt v2 failed to generate response from the AutoIt community. Mallett built a new program from scratch basing the syntax on AutoIt v2 and using AutoIt v3 for some commands and the compiler. Later, AutoIt v3 switched from GPL to closed source because of "other projects repeatedly taking AutoIt code" and "setting themselves up as competitors".


title: AutoHotkey

text: In 2010, AutoHotkey v1.1 (originally called AutoHotkey_L) became the platform for ongoing development of AutoHotkey. In late 2012, it became the official branch. Another port of the program is AutoHotkey.dll.


title: AutoHotkey

text: In July 2021, the first AutoHotkey v2 beta was released. The first release candidate was released on November 20th 2022 with the full release of v2.0.0 planned later in the year.


title: AutoHotkey

text: The following script will allow a user to search for a particular word or phrase using Google. After copying text from any application to the clipboard, pressing the configurable hotkey will open the user's default web browser and perform the search.


title: AutoHotkey

text: The following script defines a hotstring that enables the user to type "afaik" in any program and have it automatically replaced with "as far as I know":


title: AutoHotkey

text: There are extensions/interops/inline script libraries available for usage with/from other programming languages:


title: AutoHotkey

text: When AutoHotkey is used to make self-contained software for distribution, that software must include the part of AutoHotkey itself that understands and executes AutoHotkey scripts, as it is an interpreted language. Inevitably, some malware has been written using AutoHotkey. When anti-malware products attempt to earmark items of malware that have been programmed using AutoHotkey, they sometimes falsely identify AutoHotkey as the culprit rather than the actual malware.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The tensor tympani is a muscle within the middle ear, located in the bony canal above the bony part of the auditory tube, and connects to the malleus bone. Its role is to dampen loud sounds, such as those produced from chewing, shouting, or thunder. Because its reaction time is not fast enough, the muscle cannot protect against hearing damage caused by sudden loud sounds, like explosions or gunshots.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The tensor tympani is a muscle that is present in the middle ear. It arises from the cartilaginous part of the auditory tube, and the adjacent great wing of the sphenoid. It then passes through its own canal, and ends in the tympanic cavity as a slim tendon that connects to the handle of the malleus. The tendon makes a sharp bend around the "processus cochleariformis", part of the wall of its cavity, before it joins with the malleus.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The tensor tympani receives blood from the middle meningeal artery via the superior tympanic branch. It is one of two muscles in the tympanic cavity, the other being the stapedius.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The tensor tympani is supplied by the tensor tympani nerve, a branch of the mandibular branch of the trigeminal nerve. As the tensor tympani is supplied by motor fibers of the trigeminal nerve, it does not receive fibers from the trigeminal ganglion, which has sensory fibers only.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The tensor tympani acts to dampen the noise produced by chewing. When tensed, the muscle pulls the malleus medially, tensing the tympanic membrane and damping vibration in the ear ossicles and thereby reducing the perceived amplitude of sounds. It is not to be confused by the acoustic reflex, but can be activated by the startle reflex.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: Contracting muscles produce vibration and sound. Slow twitch fibers produce 10 to 30 contractions per second (equivalent to 10 to 30 Hz sound frequency). Fast twitch fibers produce 30 to 70 contractions per second (equivalent to 30 to 70 Hz sound frequency). The vibration can be witnessed and felt by highly tensing one's muscles, as when making a firm fist. The sound can be heard by pressing a highly tensed muscle against the ear, again a firm fist is a good example. The sound is usually described as a rumbling sound.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: Some individuals can voluntarily produce this rumbling sound by contracting the muscle. The rumbling sound can also be heard when the neck or jaw muscles are highly tensed as when yawning deeply. This phenomenon has been known since (at least) 1884.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The tympanic reflex helps prevent damage to the inner ear by muffling the transmission of low frequency vibrations from the tympanic membrane to the oval window. The reflex has a response time of 40 milliseconds, not fast enough to protect the ear from sudden loud noises such as an explosion or gunshot. Thus, the reflex most likely developed to protect early humans from loud thunder claps which do not happen in a split second.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The reflex works by contracting the muscles of the middle ear, the tensor tympani and the stapedial muscle. However, the stapedial muscle is innervated by the facial nerve while the tensor tympani is innervated by the trigeminal nerve. The tensor tympani pulls the manubrium of the malleus inwards and tightens it while the stapedial muscle pulls the stapes inward. This tightening dampens the sound vibration that is allowed to penetrate the cochlea. Withdrawal from drugs such as benzodiazepines had been known to cause tonic tensor tympani syndrome (TTTS) during withdrawal. The tympanic reflex will also activate when loud vibrations are generated by the person themselves. The tensor tympani can often be observed vibrating while shouting at an increased volume, dampening the sound somewhat.


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: In many people with hyperacusis, an increased activity develops in the tensor tympani muscle in the middle ear as part of the startle response to some sounds. This lowered reflex threshold for tensor tympani contraction is activated by the perception/anticipation of loud sound, and is called tonic tensor tympani syndrome (TTTS). In some people with hyperacusis, the tensor tympani muscle can contract just by thinking about a loud sound. Following exposure to intolerable sounds, this contraction of the tensor tympani muscle tightens the ear drum, which can lead to the symptoms of ear pain/a fluttering sensation/a sensation of fullness in the ear (in the absence of any middle or inner ear pathology).


title: Tensor tympani muscle

text: The mechanisms behind dysfunction of the tympanic tensor muscle and their consequences are hypothesized. However, in a published study, researchers studied the case of an acoustic shock whose mechanisms suggest dysfunction of the tympanic tensor muscle. This study appears to be the first to provide experimental support suggesting that middle ear muscles (MEM) may behave abnormally after an acoustic shock. It is suggested that abnormal contractions (e.g. tonic contractions) of the tympanic tensor muscle may trigger neurogenic inflammation. Indeed, fibers with substances P and CGRP were found in close proximity.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Dougie Lee Poynter (born 30 November 1987) is an English musician, songwriter, fashion model, aspiring clothing designer, children's author and actor. He is the bassist of the pop rock band McFly.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Poynter was born in Orsett, Essex, England. He went to school at Herd Lane Primary School, Corringham and later, Gable Hall school in Corringham. He has one sister.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In 2003, a then 15 year-old Poynter auditioned for and subsequently became the bass player for the English band McFly. The band consists of Poynter, Tom Fletcher (vocals/guitar), Danny Jones (guitar/vocals), and Harry Judd (drums).


title: Dougie Poynter

text: McFly rose to fame with their first single, "Five Colours in Her Hair," which was released March 2004 and entered the UK Singles Chart at number one in April 2004. Their first album, "Room on the 3rd Floor", also hit number one in the UK Albums Chart and would earn McFly a Guinness World Record for being the youngest band to have a debut album enter the chart in the top position, previously held by the Beatles. That year, McFly would support Busted on tour before going on to headline a personal tour in September 2004.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: The band's second studio album, "Wonderland", was released in 2005 followed by "Motion in the Ocean" in 2006. A Greatest Hits compilation was released in 2007 followed by two more studio albums: "" (2008) and "Above the Noise" (2010).


title: Dougie Poynter

text: A second greatest hits album, "", was released in November 2012. Also in 2012, the band debuted their first written autobiography, "McFly: Unsaid Things... Our Story" with Transworld Publishers Ltd.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In April 2016, McFly announced that they would be going on tour for a three-night residency in Glasgow, Birmingham, Manchester, and London. The Anthology tour, in which they will play all five of their albums, will serve as McFly's first live reunion since 2013. The tour was postponed from June until September 2016 after drummer Harry Judd injured his neck.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In November 2013, McFly joined the band Busted to form the super-group, McBusted. They played a 34-date tour called The McBusted Tour. It was the biggest UK tour of 2014. McBusted concluded the tour headlining the British Summer Time concert series in Hyde Park where they performed for an audience of over 60,000 attendees.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In 2015, the band went on tour for a second time. McBusted's Most Excellent Adventure Tour consisted of 21 shows.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In 2018, Poynter announced on his Instagram he had joined Todd Dorigo and Corey Alexander to form a new alt-rock band "INK". That same day, they released their debut EP "Heaven" and announced a small UK tour. However, the tour was cancelled due to 'uncontrollable circumstances'. With no formal announcement, the tour was rescheduled without Poynter, who couldn't attend due to the reformation of McFly. He was replaced by Elliot Morgan.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Poynter made his runway debut in January 2016 at the Joshua Kane with Lab Series Autumn/Winter show for London Collections Men. Off the catwalk, Poynter is a front-row fixture at LCM and other global fashion weeks, garnering invites from top brands including Topman, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Moschino, and Saint Laurent Paris. Runway-side, Poynter is celebrated for his trend-setting personal style.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Poynter served as a guest fashion writer for "Fault Magazine" during LCM in June 2016. He provided an insider's perspective with his recaps of Topman S/S 2017, Katy Eary S/S 2017, and Christopher Raeburn S/S 2017. His most notable editorial work includes the fashion film "At Full Tilt" for "Vogue India" (August 2014), an online exclusive for "Notion Magazine" (August 2015), and a spread in Issue 19 of "Adon Magazine" (March 2016). Poynter also modelled alongside his then-girlfriend Ellie Goulding in the February 2016 issue of "Glamour".


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In addition to his work with McFly, Poynter has written collaboratively for talent such as 5 Seconds of Summer and One Direction (for the track "I Would" from the album Take Me Home and for the track "Don’t Forget Where You Belong" from the album Midnight Memories, respectively). He also worked alongside seasoned artists Mark Hoppus (Blink 182) and Alex Gaskarth (All Time Low) to develop the album for the McFly + Busted supergroup, McBusted. He is also credited in Busted's album "Half Way There" for the song "Nineties".


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Poynter wrote a children's book with McFly band-mate Tom Fletcher titled "The Dinosaur that Pooped Christmas". It sold over 72,000 copies and became the most popular debut children's novel of 2012. The follow-up book titled "The Dinosaur That Pooped A Planet" was released the following year in August 2013. Poynter also wrote the children's book "Plastic Sucks!: How YOU Can Reduce Single-Use Plastic and Save Our Planet" (2019).


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Poynter is also an active participant of The 5 Gyres Institute and their mission to eradicate the pollution of plastic in the ocean. He supports the banning of microplastic materials across Europe, citing the serious detrimental impact of these substances on the marine environment as the reason of his disapproval.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Poynter has also been part of charity endeavors alongside McFly. The band has raised money for causes such as Comic Relief, Children in Need, Live 8, Sport Relief, and Earth Hour.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In addition to this, Poynter has founded various clothing lines. His skate clothing brand Zookie is still active under different ownership. He also owned and founded Saint Kidd, and Polonius, both of which are no longer trading.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: Poynter dated Frankie Bridge (née Sandford) of The Saturdays from 2008 to 2010. His relationship with fellow musician Ellie Goulding was confirmed in February 2014; the couple split in 2016.


title: Dougie Poynter

text: In 2021, it was revealed he is related to Josh Franceschi who is the lead singer of English rock band You Me at Six.


title: ARP spoofing

text: In computer networking, ARP spoofing, ARP cache poisoning, or ARP poison routing, is a technique by which an attacker sends (spoofed) Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) messages onto a local area network. Generally, the aim is to associate the attacker's MAC address with the IP address of another host, such as the default gateway, causing any traffic meant for that IP address to be sent to the attacker instead.


title: ARP spoofing

text: ARP spoofing may allow an attacker to intercept data frames on a network, modify the traffic, or stop all traffic. Often the attack is used as an opening for other attacks, such as denial of service, man in the middle, or session hijacking attacks.


title: ARP spoofing

text: The attack can only be used on networks that use ARP, and requires attacker have direct access to the local network segment to be attacked.


title: ARP spoofing

text: The Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) is a widely used communications protocol for resolving Internet layer addresses into link layer addresses.


title: ARP spoofing

text: When an Internet Protocol (IP) datagram is sent from one host to another in a local area network, the destination IP address must be resolved to a MAC address for transmission via the data link layer. When another host's IP address is known, and its MAC address is needed, a broadcast packet is sent out on the local network. This packet is known as an "ARP request". The destination machine with the IP in the ARP request then responds with an "ARP reply" that contains the MAC address for that IP.


title: ARP spoofing

text: ARP is a stateless protocol. Network hosts will automatically cache any ARP replies they receive, regardless of whether network hosts requested them. Even ARP entries that have not yet expired will be overwritten when a new ARP reply packet is received. There is no method in the ARP protocol by which a host can authenticate the peer from which the packet originated. This behavior is the vulnerability that allows ARP spoofing to occur.


title: ARP spoofing

text: The basic principle behind ARP spoofing is to exploit the lack of authentication in the ARP protocol by sending spoofed ARP messages onto the LAN. ARP spoofing attacks can be run from a compromised host on the LAN, or from an attacker's machine that is connected directly to the target LAN.


title: ARP spoofing

text: An attacker using ARP spoofing will disguise as a host to the transmission of data on the network between the users. Then users would not know that the attacker is not the real host on the network.


title: ARP spoofing

text: Generally, the goal of the attack is to associate the attacker's host MAC address with the IP address of a target host, so that any traffic meant for the target host will be sent to the attacker's host. The attacker may choose to inspect the packets (spying), while forwarding the traffic to the actual default destination to avoid discovery, modify the data before forwarding it (man-in-the-middle attack), or launch a denial-of-service attack by causing some or all of the packets on the network to be dropped.


title: ARP spoofing

text: The simplest form of certification is the use of static, read-only entries for critical services in the ARP cache of a host. IP address-to-MAC address mappings in the local ARP cache may be statically entered. Hosts don't need to transmit ARP requests where such entries exist. While static entries provide some security against spoofing, they result in maintenance efforts as address mappings for all systems in the network must be generated and distributed. This does not scale on a large network since the mapping has to be set for each pair of machines resulting in "n"-"n" ARP entries that have to be configured when "n" machines are present; On each machine there must be an ARP entry for every other machine on the network; "n-1" ARP entries on each of the "n" machines.


title: ARP spoofing

text: Software that detects ARP spoofing generally relies on some form of certification or cross-checking of ARP responses. Uncertified ARP responses are then blocked. These techniques may be integrated with the DHCP server so that both dynamic and static IP addresses are certified. This capability may be implemented in individual hosts or may be integrated into Ethernet switches or other network equipment. The existence of multiple IP addresses associated with a single MAC address may indicate an ARP spoof attack, although there are legitimate uses of such a configuration. In a more passive approach a device listens for ARP replies on a network, and sends a notification via email when an ARP entry changes.


title: ARP spoofing

text: AntiARP also provides Windows-based spoofing prevention at the kernel level. ArpStar is a Linux module for kernel 2.6 and Linksys routers that drops invalid packets that violate mapping, and contains an option to repoison or heal.


title: ARP spoofing

text: Some virtualized environments such as KVM also provide security mechanisms to prevent MAC spoofing between guests running on the same host.


title: ARP spoofing

text: OpenBSD watches passively for hosts impersonating the local host and notifies in case of any attempt to overwrite a permanent entry


title: ARP spoofing

text: Operating systems react differently. Linux ignores unsolicited replies, but, on the other hand, uses responses to requests from other machines to update its cache. Solaris accepts updates on entries only after a timeout. In Microsoft Windows, the behavior of the ARP cache can be configured through several registry entries under HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters, ArpCacheLife, ArpCacheMinReferenceLife, ArpUseEtherSNAP, ArpTRSingleRoute, ArpAlwaysSourceRoute, ArpRetryCount.


title: ARP spoofing

text: The techniques that are used in ARP spoofing can also be used to implement redundancy of network services. For example, some software allows a backup server to issue a gratuitous ARP request in order to take over for a defective server and transparently offer redundancy.


title: ARP spoofing

text: ARP spoofing is often used by developers to debug IP traffic between two hosts when a switch is in use: if host A and host B are communicating through an Ethernet switch, their traffic would normally be invisible to a third monitoring host M. The developer configures A to have M's MAC address for B, and B to have M's MAC address for A; and also configures M to forward packets. M can now monitor the traffic, exactly as in a man-in-the-middle attack.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: Mount Lebanon (, "jabal lubnān", ; , "", , "ṭūr lewnōn" ) is a mountain range in Lebanon. It averages above in elevation, with its peak at .


title: Mount Lebanon

text: The Mount Lebanon range extends along the entire country for about , parallel to the Mediterranean coast. Their highest peak is Qurnat as Sawda', at . The range receives a substantial amount of precipitation, including snow, which averages around deep.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: Lebanon has historically been defined by the mountains, which provided protection for the local population. In Lebanon, changes in scenery are related less to geographical distances than to altitudes. The mountains were known for their oak and pine forests. The last remaining old growth groves of the famous Cedar of Lebanon ("Cedrus libani" var. libanii") are on the high slopes of Mount Lebanon, in the Cedars of God World Heritage Site.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: The Phoenicians used the forests from Mount Lebanon to build their ship fleet and to trade with their neighbors. The Phoenicians and successor rulers consistently replanted and restocked the range; even as late as the 16th century, its forested area was considerable.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: The name "Mount Lebanon" traces back to the Semitic root "LBN", meaning "white", likely a reference to the snow-covered mountains.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: Mount Lebanon is mentioned in the Old Testament numerous times. King Hiram I of Tyre sent engineers with Cedar wood which was abundant in Mount Lebanon, to build the Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. Since then the Cedar species known scientifically as "Cedrus libani" is often associated with Mount Lebanon. The Phoenicians used cedar to build ships in which they sailed the Mediterranean, thus they were the first to establish villages in Mount Lebanon and would live from cutting down Cedars and sending them to the coast.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: Eusebius records that the Emperor Constantine destroyed a temple of Venus 'on the summit of Mount Lebanon.'


title: Mount Lebanon

text: After the 5th century AD, Christian monks who were followers of a hermit named Maron, arrived from the Orontes valley in Northern Syria and began preaching their religion to the inhabitants of the northernmost parts of the mountain range. In the late 8th century a group known as the Mardaites (also Jarajima) settled in North Lebanon following the order of the Byzantine Emperor; their mission was to raid Islamic territories in Syria. They merged with the local population, refusing to leave after the emperor struck a deal with the Muslim Caliph of Damascus; thus, they became part of the Maronite society. In 1291 after the fall of Acre, the last crusader outpost in the Levant, the remnants of the European settlers who succeeded in escaping capture by the Mamelukes, settled in the Northern part of Lebanon and become part of the Maronite society.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: Mount Lebanon was visited and called home by many Muslim ascetics and Sufis since the 7th century, mentioned by many travelers to the region, few of which are known by name such as Shiban al-Muallah and Abbas al-Majnun. In the 10th century, Twelver Shia Muslim communities were likely established in Keserwan and the adjacent area to the north when Shia Islam was in the ascendant in Tripoli and the Islamic world at large. In the 13th century, a significant Shia population dominated Keserwan stretching out as far north as Dinniyeh, where reportedly the Shia feudal lord family, the Hamadas, were entrusted with tax-collecting in 1470. Subject to harsh military campaigns and state policies put-forth by the Mamluks and Ottomans over the centuries, this Shia population decreased over time and was driven to settle to the south in Jezzine and eastward in the western parts of the Bekaa valley, becoming a small minority in Mount Lebanon by the 19th century.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: In the 9th century, tribes from the "Jabal el Summaq" area north of Aleppo in Syria began settling the southern half of the mountain range. These tribes were known as the Tanoukhiyoun and in the 11th century they converted to the Druze faith and ruled the areas of Mount Lebanon stretching from Metn in the north to Jezzine in the south. This entire area became known as the 'Jabal ad-Duruz'. In the early 17th century, Emir Fakhr-al-Din II was entrusted as the main tax-collector and land-assigner in the Druze part of the mountains known as the Chouf. In an effort to unify Mount Lebanon, Emir Fakhreddine opened the door to Christians and in particular the Maronite settlement of the Chouf and Metn.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: Throughout the 18th century and into the 19th century more and more Maronites settled in the Druze regions of the Mount. The Druze viewed these Maronite settlements as a threat to their power in Mount Lebanon and in a series of clashes in the 1840s and 1860s, a miniature civil war erupted in the area resulting in the massacre of thousands of Christians. The Druze won militarily, but not politically, because European powers (mainly France and Britain) intervened on behalf of the Maronites and divided Mount Lebanon into two areas; Druze and Maronite. Seeing their authority decline in Mount Lebanon, a few Lebanese Druze began migrating to the new Jabal ad-Duruz in southern Syria. In 1861, the "Mount Lebanon" autonomous district was established within the Ottoman system, under an international guarantee.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: For centuries, the Maronites of the region have been protected by the noble Khazen family, which was endowed the responsibility by Pope Clement X and King Louis XIV and given "Cheikh" status in return for guarding the princes Fakhr-al-Din II and Younès al-Maani. The Khazen crest reflects the family's special closeness to Mount Lebanon, with snowy mountains and a cedar tree depicted.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: Mount Lebanon also lent its name to two political designations: an semi-autonomous province in Ottoman Syria that was established in 1861 and the central Governorate of modern Lebanon (see Mount Lebanon Governorate). The Mount Lebanon administrative region emerged in a time of rise of nationalism after the civil war of 1860. France intervened on behalf of the local Christian population and Britain on behalf of the Druze after the 1860 massacres in which 10,000 Christians were killed in clashes with the Druze. In 1861, the "Mount Lebanon" autonomous district was established within the Ottoman system, under an international guarantee. The Maronite Catholics and the Druze founded modern Lebanon in the early eighteenth century, through the ruling and social system known as the "Maronite-Druze dualism" in Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate.


title: Mount Lebanon

text: For decades, the Christians pressured the European powers to award them self determination by extending their small Lebanese territory to what they dubbed "Greater Lebanon", referring to a geographic unit comprising Mount Lebanon and its coast, and the Beqaa Valley to its east. After the First World War, France took hold of the formerly Ottoman holdings in the northern Levant, and expanded the borders of Mount Lebanon in 1920 to form Greater Lebanon, which was to be populated by remnants of the Middle Eastern Christian community. The Christians ended up gaining territorially, but the new borders merely ended the demographic dominance of Christians in the newly-created territory of Lebanon.


title: All India Services

text: The All India Services (AIS) comprises the Indian Administrative Service, Indian Police Service and Indian Forest Service. A unique feature of the All India Services is that the members of these services are recruited by the centre (Union government in federal polity), but their services are placed under various State cadres, and they have the ability to serve both under the State and under the centre. Due to the federal polity of the country, this is considered one of the tools that makes union government stronger than state governments. Officers of these three services comply to the All India Services Rules relating to pay, conduct, leave, various allowances etc.


title: All India Services

text: The All India Services Act, 1951, provides for the creation of two more All India Services, namely, the Indian Engineering Service and the Indian Medical Service.


title: All India Services

text: The Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions is the cadre controlling authority for the Indian Administrative Service, The Ministry of Home Affairs is the cadre controlling authority for the Indian Police Service and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change for the Forest Service. The examination for recruitment of IAS and IPS is conducted by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on the basis of the annual Civil Services Examination, a common civil service examination, and for the Indian Forest Service on the basis of the Forest Service Examination. Since 2012 onwards, the preliminary (first test) of the two examinations are combined. These officers are recruited and trained by the Central Government, and then allotted to different State cadres.


title: All India Services

text: The history of All India Services dates back to the British era when initially Civil Servants were appointed by the Court of Directors of the British East India Company. The service in those times was known as 'Covenanted Civil Service'. With time, they came to be known as Indian Civil Service (ICS).


title: All India Services

text: In 1947, with India gaining independence, ICS was replaced by Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and the Indian Police (IP) was replaced by Indian Police Service (IPS) and were recognised by the Indian Constitution as All-India Services.


title: All India Services

text: The All India Services Act, 1951 empowers the government of India to make, after consultation with state governments, rules for the regulation of recruitment and conditions of service of the persons appointed to an All India Service. All India Service is governed by All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968 which specifies the code of conduct for Civil Servant in general. The All India Service (Conduct) Rules, 1968 were amended latest by Govt. of India by notification published in official Gazette of India on 10 April 2015.


title: All India Services

text: Responsibilities vary with the seniority of the civil servant. Junior officers begin with probation and move up in the hierarchy. At the district level the responsibilities are concerned with district matters as well as all developmental affairs while at the divisional level the responsibilities focus on law and order also. Policy framing is carried on at the State and Central levels.


title: All India Services

text: The central government announced a new cadre allocation policy for the All India Services in August 2017, touting it as a policy to ensure national integration of the bureaucracy and to ensure an All India character of the services. The existing twenty-sixcadres were to be divided into fivezones by the Department of Personnel and Training. Under the new policy, a candidate first selects their zones of preference, in descending order, then indicates a cadre preference from each preferred zone. The candidate indicates their second cadre preference for every preferred zone subsequently. The preference for the zones and cadres remains in the same order and no change is permitted.


title: All India Services

text: IAS Officers are trained to handle Government affairs. This being the main responsibility, every civil servant is assigned to a particular office which deals with policy matters pertaining to that area. The policy matters are framed, modified, interpreted in this office under the direct supervision of the Administrative Officer in consultation with the Minister. The implementation of policies is also done on the advice of the Officer. The Cabinet Secretary stands at the top of the government machinery involved in policy making followed by Secretary/Additional Secretary, Joint Secretary, Director, Under Secretary and Junior Scale Officers in that order. These appointments are filled by civil servants according to seniority in the Civil Services. In the process of decision making, a number of officers give their views to the Minister who weighs the matter and makes a decision considering the issue involved.


title: All India Services

text: The implementation process involves supervision and touring. The allocation of enormous funds to and by the field officers calls for supervision and the officials concerned have to reply to queries made in the Parliament for which they must remain well informed.


title: All India Services

text: The Civil servant has also to represent the Government in another country or in International forums. At the level of Deputy Secretary, they are even authorized to sign agreements on behalf of the Government.


title: All India Services

text: A civil servant begins their career in the state with two years in probation. This period is spent at training schools, Secretariat, field offices or in a District Magistrate's office. They are given the position of Sub-Divisional Magistrate and have to look after the law, order and general administration including developmental work in the area under their charge. After the probation and 2 years of services as a junior scale officer, the officer is put in the senior scale. Then they may function as District Magistrate, Managing Director of a Public Enterprise or Director of a Department. Senior Scale comprises the Senior Time Scale (Joint Secretary), Junior Administrative Grade (Additional Secretary) and the Selection Grade (Special Secretary). Selection Grade is given on promotion after 13 years of regular service. The next promotion within the State is that of a Commissioner-cum-Secretary after 16 years. This promotion also entitles them to the Super Time Scale. Then after 24 years of regular service an IAS officer may be promoted to Above super time scale who is designated as Principal Secretaries/Financial Commissioners in some states


title: All India Services

text: Each State has many Secretaries/Principal Secretaries and only one Chief Secretary. Some appointments of Secretaries are considered more prestigious than others, e.g., the Finance Secretary, Development Commissioners, Home Secretary and hence they enjoy the salary of a Principal Secretary. the Chief Secretary in the State is the top ranking civil servant and may be assisted by Additional Chief Secretaries. In some cadres/States e.g. New Delhi, Financial Commissioner and other high ranking secretaries such as Additional Chief Secretaries enjoy the pay of the Chief Secretary .


title: All India Services

text: In the District, the administrative head is the Collector or Deputy Commissioner or District Magistrate. The DM/Collector/DC handle the affairs of the District including development functions. They necessarily tour all rural sectors inspecting specific projects, disputed sites and look into the problems of people on the spot also.


title: All India Services

text: At the divisional level, the Divisional Commissioner is in charge of their division. Their role is to oversee law and order and general administration and developmental work. Appeals against the Divisional Commissioner are heard by the Chairman of the Board of Revenue.


title: All India Services

text: India was one of the first countries in the world to introduce scientific forest management. In 1864, the British Raj established the Imperial Forest Department. In 1866 Dr. Dietrich Brandis, a German forest officer, was appointed Inspector General of Forests. The Imperial Forest Service (IFS) was organized in 1867.


title: All India Services

text: IFS Officers appointed from 1867 to 1885 were trained in Germany and France, and from 1885 to 1905 at Cooper's Hill, London, which was a noted professional college of forestry. From 1905 to 1926, the University of Oxford, University of Cambridge, and University of Edinburgh undertook the task of training Imperial Forestry Service officers.


title: All India Services

text: From 1927 to 1932, forest officers were trained at the Imperial Forest Research Institute (FRI) at Dehradun (established in 1906). Later The Indian Forest College (IFC) was established in 1938 at Dehradun, and officers recruited to the Superior Forest Service by the states and provinces were trained there. Forestry, which was managed by the federal government until then, was transferred to the "provincial list" by the Government of India Act 1935, and recruitment to the Imperial Forestry Service was subsequently discontinued.


title: All India Services

text: The modern Indian Forest Service was established in 1966, after independence, under the "All India Services Act 1951", for protection, conservation, and regeneration of forest resources.


title: All India Services

text: India has an area of 635,400 km designated as forests, about 19.32 percent of the country. Forest is included in the Concurrent List.


title: All India Services

text: Ranks of the Indian Forest Service are as follows: Assistant Conservator of Forests - Probationary Officer, Divisional Forest Officer (DFOs),


title: All India Services

text: Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (PCCF) & Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (HoFF) - highest post in a State,


title: All India Services

text: Director General of Forests (India) - highest post at Centre, selected from amongst the senior-most PCCFs of states.


title: All India Services

text: The training at Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy is designed in such a way that a Forest Service officer after completion of the probation, should be hardened enough to serve in the most difficult terrains of India. Another remarkable feature of this service is that it needs keen technical knowledge along with excellent administrative capacity to deliver the duty. Government of India is also providing Hari Singh fellowships to Forest Service officers to get specialized in the field of Remote Sensing and Geographical Information System from the ISRO's Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, University of Twente/ITC Netherlands and in Wildlife Management from the Wildlife Institute of India. The Forest Service officers also work in various International and National organizations related to management of forests, wildlife and environment such as Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, SAARC Forestry Centre, Forest Survey of India, Wildlife Institute of India, Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education (ICFRE), Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy (IGNFA), Directorate of Forest Education, Wildlife Crime Control Bureau (WCCB), etc. besides getting entrusted with senior positions in the Central Secretariat, State Secretariats and various assignments under the Central Staffing Scheme.


title: All India Services

text: The Indian Police Service more popularly known as the 'IPS', is responsible for internal security, public safety and law and order. In 1948, a year after India gained independence from Britain, the Imperial Police (IP) was replaced by the Indian Police Service. The IPS is not a law enforcement agency in its own right; rather it is the body to which all senior police officers belong regardless of the agency for whom they work.


title: All India Services

text: An IPS officer is subjected to and faces several life-threatening, crucial, complicated and harsh conditions. They are entrusted with the overall internal security of the entire State as the Director General of Police and entire Districts as its Superintendent of Police, and in Metropolitan Cities as Deputy Commissioner or the entire City as the Commissioner of Police. As Commissioner of Police they enjoy magisterial powers.


title: All India Services

text: The IPS officer takes charge as an Assistant Superintendent of Police of a Sub-division/circle after probation of 2 years. The tenure of this post is normally 3 years. The next appointment is as Superintendent of Police or Deputy Commissioner of Police after 4 years, they get promoted to Junior Administrative Grade after 9 years, then they serve as Senior Superintendent of Police and get pay of Selection Grade (Level 13) in 12–14 years, then as Deputy Inspector General of Police or Additional Commissioner of Police in 15 years, an Inspector General of Police in 18 years, Additional Director General of Police in 25 years and finally, the Director General of Police after 30 years in service.


title: All India Services

text: IPS officers also work in national government agencies such as Intelligence Bureau, Research and Analysis Wing, Central Bureau of Investigation, etc. IPS officers also get highly placed in several PSUs such as GAIL, SAIL, Indian Oil Corporation Limited etc. at the State Secretariat the Central Secretariat under the Central Staffing Scheme and in CAPFs at leadership positions of National Security Guards, Border Security Force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, the Central Reserve Police Force and the Central Industrial Security Force, etc. An IPS officer has vast opportunities to work in several International Organisations such as Interpol, International Cricket Council, the United Nations, Consulates (Foreign Missions) and Embassies all over the World in various capacities such as First Secretary, Consul, Consul General, Deputy High Commissioner, Minister, High Commissioner and Ambassador.


title: All India Services

text: The Director General of Police and Commissioner of Police is the head of the entire police force of the State or Metropolitan City (e.g. Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Madhya Pradesh etc.) and below him is the Additional DGP/Special Police Commissioner. The Inspector General or Joint Commissioner of Police is at the head of certain specialised police force like Criminal Investigation Department, Special Branch, etc.


title: All India Services

text: In January 2012, the Government amended All India Services Rule 16 (3) which permits the Central Government in consultation with the State Government to retire in the public interest, incompetent and non-performing Officers after a review on their completion of 15 years or 25 years of qualifying service or attaining the age of 50.


title: All India Services

text: On recommendation by Ministry of Personnel, Public Grievances and Pensions, from year 2014 state civil servants are required to clear 1000 marks four-stage process including a written exam and interview conducted by Union Public Service Commission to get promoted to the three all India services which was previously based solely on basis of seniority and annual confidential reports.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Justin Conrad Strzelczyk (August 18, 1968 – September 30, 2004) was an American football offensive tackle who played nine full seasons in the National Football League for the Pittsburgh Steelers from 1990 to 1998. His death, at age 36, helped spark a debate in the NFL about the link between playing football and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Strzelczyk was born and grew up in West Seneca, New York. His father Connie "Big Bird" Strzelczyk was a 6-foot-4 basketball standout player at Montana State University, from 1958 to 1960. He later returned to Buffalo where he became a school teacher and a painting contractor in the summer breaks. His father and mother, Mary Joyce, separated when Strzelczyk was 7.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Mary Joyce later called Strzelczyk's father a "tremendous influence" in sports. Growing up Strzelczyk played hockey, football, and basketball. He also was a baseball pitcher until shoulder pain prevented him from throwing anymore.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: He attended West Seneca West Senior High School and was a local basketball star. As a forward, Strzelczyk averaged 21 points a game as a junior and 22 as a senior, earning all-Western New York honors. Despite his love for football, Strzelczyk was to set on playing basketball in college. However Strzelczyk's dad, who had played college basketball only to end up teaching, convinced him that he had a better future in football.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: On October 16, 2009, West Seneca West High School retired Strzelczyk's football jersey #46. He was a member of the high school's graduating class of 1986.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Strzelczyk went on to play football at the University of Maine. The school won two Yankee Conference titles, during Strzelczyk's time on the team. Teammates stated that he hated steroids and made his weight through eating and weight training. He was given the nickname "Jughead", after the Archie comics character. In January 1990, he played in the East-West Shrine Game held in California. There he impressed then-Steelers coach, Chuck Noll, who drafted Strzelczyk in the 11th round of the 1990 NFL Draft.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: He made the Pittsburgh Steelers roster after the team's 1990 training camp and moved to Plum. Strzelczyk played on the Steelers special teams during his first two seasons. However, when right tackle Tunch Ilkin was injured and missed four games in 1992, Strzelczyk leaped into starting duty. He then started 75 of the 133 games he played and started at every line position, except center. During games, he would pick up the red phone on the Steelers' sideline and scream at the team's offensive coordinator, from Ron Erhardt to Chan Gailey to Ray Sherman: "Run the damn ball!" He played a key role in getting the Steelers to Super Bowl XXX.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: In May 1998 Strzelczyk's father died after being paralyzed in a drunk-driving accident. Five months later, during a Monday Night Football game, against the Kansas City Chiefs, Strzelczyk had a quadriceps tear that required season-ending surgery two days later. He then injured his knee again in a bar fight in March 1999, which required further surgery, ending his next season as well. The Steelers placed him on injured reserve and paid him $187,000, a fraction of the $1.5 million he was scheduled to earn. Then, he tore his biceps on January 24, 2000, celebrating a hockey game. The string of injuries prompted the Steelers to waive Strzelczyk.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Strzelczyk appeared in the 1997 Adam Sandler music video, "The Lonesome Kicker". There, Strzelczyk plays himself as he steals the kicker's "snow shoe" and taunts him throughout the video along with fellow Steeler teammates Jerome Bettis, Greg Lloyd, and Kordell Stewart.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Strzelczyk took up riding Harley-Davidson motorcycles, after signing with the Steelers. When he purchased his first bike at a bike-purchase celebration with teammates Ariel Solomon and Jerry Olsavsky in Oakland, Strzelczyk rammed into a couple of parked cars, denting only the fuel tank and his bike. He also took up the guitar and banjo, watching videos, reading books, cribbage and day trading as well. In early 1993, he married his wife Keana, and the couple had two children, before a divorce in 2001. Strzelczyk was known to be a heavy drinker, like his father Connie.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: After being waived by the Steelers, Strzelczyk hunted for ways to fill the time. He began cooking chicken wings and barbecue sauces. He also rode his motorcycle to the motorcycle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota. He skied, played music, acted in two plays, and he wrote a book titled "Balance", his theory about evening out life's enjoyments and stresses. He even once wrote a check for $17,000 to fund a daycare. He also invested in several businesses that failed, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, although the monetary losses did not cripple his finances.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Strzelczyk had several issues with the police after his career ended. In November 2000, Strzelczyk was arrested and charged with carrying a firearm without a permit. The handgun belonged to a friend of his, with whom he had gotten into a discussion over gun control and briefly brandished the weapon. He was acquitted eight-and-a-half months later. In early 2003, he was cited for DUI and his driver's license was suspended for one year. The sentence was later reduced to two months. In late 2003, Strzelczyk suddenly swore off alcohol and all drugs, even prescription medication.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: Strzelczyk was supposed to arrive in Orchard Park, New York, for a fundraiser that weekend. He packed only $2,600-plus in cash and some crucifixes. His cell phone was left at his home. He died in a car crash in Herkimer, New York, when he hit a tank truck driven by 60-year-old Harold Jackson (who was injured in the collision) while driving against the flow of traffic to evade capture by the New York State Police after a 40-mile (64 km) chase along the New York State Thruway. He was 36 years old.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: It was initially thought that Strzelczyk was under the influence of alcohol or other drugs due to his irrational behavior, but that was disproved by toxicity tests. A postmortem autopsy revealed that he had brain damage, due to his years of playing football. This incident sparked a debate about the seriousness of concussions at the National Football League Summit in June 2007 when neuropathologist Bennet Omalu linked the deaths of Strzelczyk to chronic traumatic encephalopathy like three other retired NFL players—Mike Webster, Andre Waters and Terry Long.


title: Justin Strzelczyk

text: In 2007, Strzelczyk's mother, Mary Strzelczyk, granted Omalu permission to examine her son's brain. Strzelczyk was played by Matt Willig in the 2015 film "Concussion." The film depicted the efforts of Omalu, who fought against the efforts by the NFL to suppress his research on the brain damage suffered by professional football players called chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease that football players get from taking constant hits to the head and causing damage to the brain.


title: Gangster film

text: A gangster film or gangster movie is a film belonging to a genre that focuses on gangs and organized crime. It is a subgenre of crime film, that may involve large criminal organizations, or small gangs formed to perform a certain illegal act. The genre is differentiated from Westerns and the gangs of that genre.


title: Gangster film

text: The American Film Institute defines the genre as "centered on organized crime or maverick criminals in a twentieth century setting". The institute named it one of the 10 "classic genres" in its 10 Top 10 list, released in 2008. The list recognizes 3 films from 1931 & 1932 ("Scarface", "The Public Enemy" & "Little Caesar"). Only 1 film made the list from 1933 to 1966, ("White Heat" (1949)). This was at least partly due to the limitations on the genre imposed by the Hays Code, which was finally abandoned in favor of the Motion Picture Association of America film rating system in 1968.


title: Gangster film

text: The genre was revitalized in the New Hollywood movement that followed. New Hollywood directors would be honored with 5 of the top 6 films on the list—1967's "Bonnie and Clyde" by Arthur Penn, 1972's "The Godfather" and 1974's "The Godfather Part II" both by Francis Ford Coppola, 1983's "Scarface", a remake of the 1932 original, by Brian De Palma, and 1990's "Goodfellas" by Martin Scorsese. The rise and fall of a mobster in a classic gangster film is often a thematic trope.


title: Gangster film

text: In the 1970s, as genre theory came to the focus of academic study and the creation of a more specific taxonomy of genres was defined, gangster film started being distinguished from other subgenres, especially that of western. The genre has been predominantly defined by its historical, ideological, and sociocultural context. Three main categories of gangster films can be distinguished, according to Martha Nochimson: films that follow the escapades of outlaw rebels, such as "Bonnie and Clyde", melodramas of villain gangsters against whom the in-story victims and the audience identify, such as "Key Largo" and, most predominantly in the genre, films following an outsider, immigrant gangster protagonist, with whom the audience identifies.


title: Gangster film

text: The first Japanese films about the Yakuza evolved from the Tendency films of the 1930s. They featured historical tales of outlaws and the abuses suffered by the common people often at the hands of the corrupt powers that be. The so-called "Chivalry movies" of the 1960s gave way to the violent realism of Kinji Fukasaku, whose 1973 "Battles Without Honor and Humanity" would inspire future filmmakers across the globe.


title: Gangster film

text: 1931 and 1932 produced three of the most enduring gangster films ever. "Scarface", "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy" remain as three of the greatest examples of the genre. However, starting in the mid-1930s, the Hays Code and its requirements for all criminal action to be punished and all authority figures to be treated with respect made gangster films scarce for the next three decades.


title: Gangster film

text: Politics combined with the social and economic climate of the time to influence how crime films were made and how the characters were portrayed. Many of the films imply that criminals are the creation of society, rather than its rebel, and considering the troublesome and bleak time of the 1930s, that argument carries significant weight. Often the best of the gangster films are those that have been closely tied to the reality of crime, reflecting public interest in a particular aspect of criminal activity; thus, the gangster film is in a sense a history of crime in the United States.


title: Gangster film

text: The institution of Prohibition in 1920 led to an explosion in crime, and the depiction of bootlegging is a frequent occurrence in many mob films. However, as the 1930s progressed, Hollywood also experimented with the stories of the rural criminals and bank robbers, such as John Dillinger, Baby Face Nelson, and Pretty Boy Floyd. The success of these characters in film can be attributed to their value as news subjects, as their exploits often thrilled the people of a nation who had become weary with inefficient government and apathy in business. However, as the FBI increased in power there was also a shift to favour the stories of the FBI agents hunting the criminals instead of focusing on the criminal characters. In fact, in 1935 at the height of the hunt for Dillinger, the Production Code office issued an order that no film should be made about Dillinger for fear of further glamorizing his character.


title: Gangster film

text: Many of the 1930s crime films also dealt with class and ethnic conflict, notably the earliest films, reflecting doubts about how well the American system was working. As stated, many films pushed the message that criminals were the result of a poor moral and economic society, and many are portrayed as having foreign backgrounds or coming from the lower class. Thus, the film criminal is often able to evoke sympathy and admiration out of the viewer, who often place the blame on not the criminal's shoulders but a cruel society in which success is difficult. When the decade came to a close, crime films became more figurative, representing metaphors, as opposed to the more straight forward films produced earlier in the decade, showing an increasing interest in offering a thought provoking message about criminal character.


title: Gangster film

text: With the abolition of the Hays Code in the late 1960s, studios and filmmakers found themselves free to produce films dealing with subject matter that had previously been off-limits. Early examples include Arthur Penn's depression-era tale of "Bonnie and Clyde"; "Mean Streets", Scorsese's cinema vérité story of a young aspiring mobster and his problem-gambler friend, played by Robert De Niro and Sam Peckinpah's "Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia", about the Mexican mob, family honor, and the opportunistic Bennie (Warren Oates), friend of the eponymous Alfredo Garcia, looking to make a big score when the chance drops in his lap. "Bonnie and Clyde" was one of 1967's biggest box office hits and garnered 2 Academy Awards and 8 other nominations including best picture. It, along with the others, however, were overshadowed by Francis Ford Coppola's "Godfather" saga.


title: Gangster film

text: In 1972, Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" was released. The epic story of the Corleone family, its generational transition from post-prohibition to post-war, its fratricidal intrigues, and its tapestry of mid-century America's criminal underworld became a huge critical and commercial success. It accounted for nearly 10% of gross proceeds for all films for the entire year. It won the Oscar for Best Picture, as well as the award for Best Actor for Marlon Brando and is widely considered one of the greatest American films of all time. Two years later, "The Godfather Part II" became the fifth-highest-grossing film of the year and garnered 11 Academy Award nominations. It again won Best Picture. Coppola won Best Director and Robert De Niro won best supporting actor for his portrayal of a young Vito Corleone.


title: Gangster film

text: The lesson of the films' successes was not wasted on Hollywood. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the studios issued a steady flow of films about Italian American gangsters and the Mafia. Some of these were critically acclaimed. Scorsese's "Goodfellas" about Henry Hill's life and relationship with the Lucchese and Gambino crime families, was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director and won the award for Best Supporting Actor for Joe Pesci's performance. The 1987 film "The Untouchables" was nominated for four Academy Awards; Sean Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in his role as an associate of Eliot Ness who helped bring down Al Capone. Others, however, strayed into stereotypes and the gratuitous use of Italian ethnicity in minor characters who happened to be criminals. This created a backlash in a portion of the Italian American community.


title: Gangster film

text: The films of the 1990s produced several critically acclaimed mob films, many of which were loosely based on real crimes and their perpetrators. Many of these films featured long-time actors well known for their roles as mobsters such as Al Pacino, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci and Chazz Palminteri.


title: Gangster film

text: "Goodfellas", directed by Martin Scorsese, starred Ray Liotta as real-life associate of the Lucchese crime family Henry Hill. It was one of the most notable gangster films of the decade. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci also starred in the film with Pesci earning an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The film was nominated for six Academy Awards in all, including Best Picture and Best Director, making "Goodfellas" one of the most critically acclaimed crime films of all time.


title: Gangster film

text: Following their collaboration in "Goodfellas", Scorsese, De Niro and Pesci would team up again in 1995's "Casino", based on Frank Rosenthal, an associate of the Chicago Outfit, that ran multiple casinos in Las Vegas during the 1970s and 1980s. The film was De Niro's third mob film of the decade, following "Goodfellas" (1990) and "A Bronx Tale "(1993).


title: Gangster film

text: Al Pacino also returned to the genre during the 1990s. He reprised his role as the iconic Michael Corleone in "The Godfather Part III" (1990). The film served as the final installment in The Godfather trilogy, following Michael Corleone as he tries to legitimize the Corleone family in the twilight of his career.


title: Gangster film

text: In 1993, Pacino starred in "Carlito's Way" as a former gangster released from prison that vows to go straight. In 1996, Armand Assante starred in television film "Gotti" as infamous New York mobster, John Gotti. In 1997's "Donnie Brasco", Pacino starred alongside Johnny Depp in the true story of undercover FBI agent Joseph Pistone and his infiltration of the Bonanno crime family of New York City during the 1970s. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.


title: Gangster film

text: In 2006, Scorsese released "The Departed", his adaptation of "Infernal affairs", the Hong Kong film. "The Departed" was also loosely based on the Whitey Bulger story, and Boston's Winter Hill Gang, which Bulger led. It earned Scorsese an Academy Award for Best Director and the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture.


title: Gangster film

text: A 2018 biographical mafia film, "Gotti", directed by Kevin Connolly, stars John Travolta as John Gotti, released in June. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 0% based on 38 reviews, and an average rating of 2.3/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "." In 2019, Martin Scorsese released a biographical mafia film distributed by Netflix, "The Irishman", starring all three heavyweights in the genre, Robert De Niro as Frank "The Irishman" Sheeran, Al Pacino as Jimmy Hoffa and Joe Pesci as Russell Bufalino.


title: Gangster film

text: "The Many Saints of Newark" is an American crime drama film directed by Alan Taylor and produced by David Chase and Lawrence Konner, as a prequel to Chase's HBO crime drama series "The Sopranos". The film focuses on the 1967 Newark riots.


title: Gangster film

text: Apart from telling their own tales of African American gangsters in syndicates, films like "Black Caesar" feature the Italian mafia prominently. Often the blaxploitation films of the 1970s such as "Shaft" tell the tale of African American gangsters rising up and defeating the established white criminal order. African Americans were under-represented in filmmaking roles during much of the 20th century. It took African American producers and directors of the 1990s like John Singleton, Spike Lee and the Hughes Brothers to begin exploring the criminal lifestyle in American urban communities, telling stories of drugs, gang culture, gang violence, racism and poverty in African American communities. Examples of films from the 1990s fitting the African-American gangster genre include "Boyz N The Hood", "Menace II Society" and "New Jack City".


title: Gangster film

text: Brian De Palma's 1983 remake of "Scarface" stars Al Pacino as Tony Montana, a Cuban exile and ambitious newcomer to Miami who sees an opportunity to build his own drug empire. Abel Ferrara's 1990 "King of New York" tells the story of Frank White, (Christopher Walken) and his return to New York City from prison. He navigates both the traditional Italian mafia authorities as well as the new cartels, as they are producing, smuggling and distributing cocaine in an uneasy business alliance.


title: Gangster film

text: An early example of the Gallic gangster film is Maurice Tourneur’s 1935 film "" set in Marseille. Tourneur's gangster-hero differentiates from his American equivalent by valuing honour, artisanship, community and solidarity. Four years before of the rise of film noir, in 1937, Julien Duvivier creates "Pépé le Moko", a French gangster film in the style of poetic realism that takes place in the Casbah. Its distribution in America was blocked by the US-makers of its 1938 remake Algiers. French gangster films will appear again in the mid-1950s, most notably Jacques Becker's "Touchez pas au grisbi", American blacklisted filmmaker Jules Dassin's "Rififi" and Jean-Pierre Melville's "Bob le flambeur". Melville would also go on to direct 1967's


title: Gangster film

text: 1969 and 1970 saw the release of three successful French gangster films featuring the day's biggest French movie stars. All three films featured good looking star Alain Delon, Jean Gabin, Delon, and Lino Ventura starred in 1969's "Le clan des siciliens", about a jewel thief and the Mafia. "Borsalino", a tale of the Italian Mafia in 1930 Marseilles, also featured Delon, along with Jean-Paul Belmondo. In "Le Cercle Rouge", Delon, Gian Maria Volonté, and Yves Montand team up to rob an impenetrable jewelry store.


title: Gangster film

text: All three of the films were domestic successes and "Borsalino" was popular elsewhere in Europe. None of them, however, broke through in the United States.


title: Gangster film

text: Various British film noir and crime dramas from the 1930s, 40s and 50s were set in the underworld with gangster or racketeer character, such as "Night and the City" (1950).


title: Gangster film

text: The 1947 adaptation of the Graham Greene novel by the same name, "Brighton Rock", is a stark portrayal of a young gang leader and the racketeers in Brighton. It has been recognized as one of the greatest UK films ever by the British Film Institute.


title: Gangster film

text: The late 1960s to early 70s saw a brief boom in British gangster films, alongside spy films and heist films, mirroring similar trends in Hollywood, Italy and elsewhere. Some films from this era took a lighthearted comedic approach to crime stories, like "The Italian Job" (1969), while others like "Villain" and "Get Carter" (both 1971) had a much darker neo-noir tone, a more fatalistic story, and a more gritty and violent portrayal of gangster life.


title: Gangster film

text: The early 2000s saw a resurgence of British gangster films, popularised by director Guy Ritchie's black comedy ensemble caper films "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" (1998) and "Snatch" (2000), and by Jonathan Glazer's "Sexy Beast (2000).


title: Gangster film

text: The "ninkyo eiga" (chivalry films) were replaced in the late 1960s and early 1970s by a new style, pioneered by Kinji Fukasaku and inspired by the French New Wave and American Film noir called "Jitsuroku eiga" (true record films). The new style is considered to have begun with Fukasaku's "Battles Without Honor and Humanity" (1972), a violent, realistic portrayal of post-war gangs in the ruins of Hiroshima.


title: Gangster film

text: Prior to "Battles", the films of Seijun Suzuki had departed from the "ninkyo eiga" formula, but had met with limited commercial success. Although, Suzuki's "Branded to Kill" would later inspire other directors in the gangster film genre, including John Woo, Chan-wook Park and Quentin Tarantino.


title: Gangster film

text: The Hong Kong gangster film genre began with 1986's "A Better Tomorrow", directed by John Woo and starring Chow Yun Fat. Woo's tale of counterfeiters portrays a gangster who balances "Kung Fu honor" and the materialistic goals of the Triads. It was the all-time biggest grossing Hong Kong film at the box office and was critically acclaimed. Woo would follow with a string of successes, including "The Killer", "Bullet in the Head", and "Hard Boiled".


title: Gangster film

text: Soviet propaganda has always said that organized crime exists only in the West. However, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, people of Russia had to face the fact of what they used to previously read only in newspapers. Gang wars accompanied the formation of capitalism in Russia. This decade in Russia received the name of "Dashing 90s" (, translit. "Lihie devyanostye").


title: Gangster film

text: In 1997 director Aleksei Balabanov released "Brother" which acquired cult status and started to return interest of local people to Russian cinema, which had been in crisis since the early 1990s. Later came the sequel "Brother 2" (2000), which was even more successful. Actor Sergei Bodrov Jr., who played a major role in both of those films, in 2001 released "Sisters", which was his directorial debut. Other notable films of those years were "Antikiller" (2002) by Yegor Konchalovsky and "Tycoon" (2002) by Pavel Lungin.


title: Gangster film

text: Pyotr Buslov, a young 26-year-old director, in 2003 released "Bimmer", which instantly became a hit. This movie about four friends was made in the road movie style. A few years later, Buslov released the sequel "" (2006). In 2005 Aleksei Balabanov returned to the theme of gangster cinema and filmed a black comedy "Dead Man's Bluff". Later Balabanov returned to the theme of bandits again in "The Stoker" (2010). In 2010 was also released "The Alien Girl" by Anton Bormatov.


title: Gangster film

text: Russian television shows a lot of series about bandits, however, they are mostly of poor quality. A great success was the mini-series "Brigada" (2002), which received cult status.


title: Black nobility

text: The black nobility or black aristocracy () are Roman aristocratic families who sided with the Papacy under Pope Pius IX after the Savoy family-led army of the Kingdom of Italy entered Rome on 20 September 1870, overthrew the Pope and the Papal States, and took over the Quirinal Palace, and any nobles subsequently ennobled by the Pope prior to the 1929 Lateran Treaty.


title: Black nobility

text: For the next 59 years, the Pope confined himself to Vatican City and claimed to be a prisoner in the Vatican to avoid the appearance of accepting the authority of the new Italian government and state. Aristocrats who had been ennobled by the Pope and were formerly subjects of the Papal states, including the senior members of the Papal Court, kept the front doors of their palaces in Rome closed to mourn the Pope's confinement, which led to their being called the "black nobility".


title: Black nobility

text: Despite the relatively recent name, the Black Nobility had existed for centuries, originating in the baronial class of Rome and in the powerful families who moved to Rome to benefit from a family connection to the Vatican. These supported the Popes in the governance of the Papal States and in the administration of the Holy See. Many of the members of Black Noble families also became high-ranking clergy and even Popes. Black Nobility families (in this instance families whose ancestors included Popes) still in existence include notably the Colonna, Massimo, Orsini, Ruspoli, Pallavicini, , Sacchetti, Borghese, Odescalchi, and . Major extinct papal families include the Savelli, Caetani, the Aldobrandini and Conti. Famous members of Black Nobility families include Arnaldo De Rosette, Bishop of Asti, who promulgated a Synod which provided some decrees to regulate and classify the clergy of Lombardy and Piedmont and its composition, with a particular emphasis on the Knights Hospitallers; Eugenio Pacelli, who later became Pope Pius XII; Ernesto Pacelli, an important financier; and Prospero Colonna, mayor of Rome.


title: Black nobility

text: Following the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty in 1929, the Black Nobility were given dual citizenship in Italy and Vatican City. Under the provisions of the treaty, noble titles granted by the pope were recognized in the Kingdom of Italy. Many of these families were members of the largely ceremonial Papal Noble Guard; others were foreigners affiliated with the Holy See in various ways. In 1931, Pope Pius XI denied the request of Alfonso XIII of Spain to open the Noble Guard further to nobles from all Catholic countries. In World War II, the Papal Noble Guard protected the Pope alongside the Swiss Guard.