title: Bigger (film)

text: On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, and an average rating of . On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 37 out of 100 based on 5 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Michael Rechtshaffen of "Los Angeles Times" wrote: "Without a sturdier script featuring fully dimensional characters... the performances prove to be as unconvincing as their ethnic accents and period wigs."


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Shaadi Mubarak () is an Indian drama television series produced under Shashi Sumeet Productions. It premiered on 24 August 2020 on Star Plus. It stars Rati Pandey and Manav Gohil. The final episode was broadcast on 20 April 2021.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Preeti, a simple and caring woman, wishes to earn self-respect by working as a wedding planner after her son, Tarun, and his wife, Rati, deserted and throw her out of the house.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: On the other side, KT, who appears happy, hides a deep wound within. When Chanda Rathore, a prospective bride for KT, insults him because he rejected her, KT's uncle Sushant motivates him to work again.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: KT offers a partnership to Preeti, which she initially denies but agrees when KT stands for her before a wretched client. They face many issues in their initial days of business, but this leads them to develop a bond of friendship, trust, and respect.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Tarun puts forth a challenge before Preeti where, in 25 days, she will have to prove herself capable of becoming a businesswoman. With KT's help, she wins.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: While organizing Bua Sa and Fufa Sa's 50th wedding anniversary, misunderstandings occur, leading Preeti to break her partnership with KT after finishing an event with a mysterious client.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: On the day of the wedding event, the mysterious client turns out to be KT's ex-wife, Nandini. To get his revenge, KT marries Preeti. However, Preeti knows that their relationship is respect for each other.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: After their marriage, Preeti falls in love with KT, and they collaborate to discover Nandini's motive.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: On the day of Makar Sankranti, Nandini discloses Arjun is an orphan. KT is caught in a fire but is saved by Preeti. Nandini is arrested but vows to return. Later, Tarun and Arjun apologize to Preeti for mistreating her.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Preeti then confesses her love to KT. He initially tells Preeti that he love her too but he confessed to Neel that he lied.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Kusum breaks ties with Preeti when Neel denies having any feelings for Priyanka and becomes engaged to Shika. Neel tells KT and Preeti that Kushaala pressured him to marry as they went through a business crisis. Preeti and KT arrange the money through Shaadi Mubarak. Kusum apologizes to Preeti and gives her blessings to Priyanka and Neel. Preeti and KT both agree to divorce, as KT doesn't love Preeti.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: While Preeti leaves for Mumbai, KT realizes he is in love with her. Desperate to win her back, KT rushes to Preeti and declares his love for her publicly, and they reconcile.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Kusum goes abroad with Aastha for her studies. Preeti is heartbroken after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer. KT and Peeeti long for a child so they chose Phurti, a carefree bubbly girl who dreams of settling in London, as a surrogate in return for sending her to London. Phurti becomes pregnant with KT and Preeti's child through IVF. Preeti introduces Phurti as her sister to the family as she begins to live in the Tibrewal Mansion.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: The Tibrewals are in turmoil following the revelations regarding Phurti's pregnancy as KT accepts the baby as his and Preeti's. Kushaala criticizes Preeti for taking her son away from her after KT takes a stand on his and Preeti's decision to choose surrogacy to get KT and the family a child. After some tension, the family eventually accepts the surrogacy situation.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Juhi finds a doctor that can cure Preeti. While KT and Preeti's baby shower occurs, Kushaala finds Preeti in pain after slipping in the bathroom and admits her to the hospital. After seeing Preeti at the cancer hospital in Delhi on the news, KT confronts Juhi, revealing about Preeti's illness. Phurti goes into premature labor and delivers a girl. Preeti's surgery is successful, but she is suffering from amnesia. While the hospital catches on fire, Preeti helps a pregnant Shikha and is taken in by her and her husband, Vishal.Priyanka gives birth to her son,Beer.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: KT has an emotional outburst when he does not find Preeti and blames Kushaala for not caring for her. Vishal and Shikha go to the hospital to find out about Preeti's family, but some confusion leads them to think that Preeti is a different patient, Mohi Bansal. Shikha delivers a baby girl but asks Mohi to take care of her after an accident. Vishal hates Mohi, thinking she is the reason for Shikha's death. KT stops his family from performing Preeti's last rituals and states that she will return.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: KT is an RJ and a doting father of his and Preeti's daughter, Kirti. Preeti, who still thinks she is ‘Mohi,’ moves to Udaipur. Shikha and Vishal's daughter, also named Preeti, and Kirti is admitted to the same school. Kirti, not knowing Mohi is her mother, dislikes her when she makes her clean the school floor. Mohi hates KT when he rusticates her after Kirti complains to him about her.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Mohi calls KT to confront him about his decision, but he does not answer, so she goes to the Tibrewal mansion. The Tibrewals are happily celebrating Holi while KT feels Mohi's presence and searches for her. KT encounters Mohi, and she warns him to retract his complaint. Everyone becomes emotional seeing her while she furiously goes from there.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: KT learns about Mohi's past and befriends her, but he hides his identity and goes by the name "Keertan". Mohi accepts Keertan's request to join Shaadi Mubarak, but after learning that the owner is none other than KT she immediately declines the job offer. Keertan makes Mohi realize that KT is not a bad person and she rejoins the office.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: KT is frozen to his place after Kirti gets stuck in a fire and remembers the hospital incident. Mohi rescues her while KT scolds Kirti for not respecting Mohi. Vishal plans vengeance on Mohi for separating his daughter from him. Mohi suspects Keertan's intentions after he takes KT's side whenever he lands into trouble. Kushaala confronts Priyanka and Neel after overhearing their conversation to separate Mohi and little Preeti. Priyanka stands her ground by stating that she feels Mohi isn't getting what she deserves and reveals that she has suffered from two miscarriages and is only doing what's best for the family. Mohi witnesses Kirti and little Preeti being kidnapped, and rescues them. The show ends with Mohi getting attacked and becoming unconscious.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: The shooting of the series was supposed to begin in March 2020. However, due to the COVID-19 outbreak in India, all the television and film shootings were indefinitely stalled from 19 March 2020, and the series shooting was postponed. After four months, the shooting of the series began in July 2020.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: On 16 September 2020, the shoot was stalled after Rajeshwari Sachdev tested positive for COVID-19. Sachdev shot for her sequences from her home until she recovered. The show took a five-year leap on 28 March 2021.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: On 13 April 2021, Manav Gohil tested positive for COVID-19. On the same day, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray, announced a sudden curfew from 15 April 2021, and the series' shooting was halted. Later, it was reported that the show would be shifted to Bikaner to continue shooting. After many discussions with the team about further shooting, the producers decided to wait until lockdown completes in Maharashtra and then continue shooting once Gohil recovers. On 20 April 2021, the last of the show's 206 episodes was broadcast.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: The first promo was released on 30 July 2020 featuring the leads and premiered on 24 August 2020 at 7:30 pm time slot on StarPlus.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: On 21 April 2021, due to the sudden halt in the series' shooting, its 7.30 slot was given to another StarPlus show, Pandya Store.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: Initially, Kabeer Kumar was cast for playing the character of Preeti's son, Tarun. However, he was replaced by Gaurav Sharma in July 2020. Later, he was offered the role of Keertan's cousin.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: In the middle of October 2020, lead actress Rajshree Thakur quit to take care of her health, mentioning the hectic schedule of the series and was immediately replaced by Rati Pandey. Thakur played her role for 54 episodes.


title: Shaadi Mubarak

text: The Times of India stated, "Rajashree Thakur’s fight to earn respect, Manav Gohil’s charismatic presence and Rajeshwari Sachdev steals the show."


title: ESAF Small Finance Bank

text: ESAF Small Finance Bank (formerly known as ESAF Microfinance and Investments Pvt. Ltd.) is an Indian small finance bank providing banking services and small loans to the underbanked. It was founded as a small finance bank in March 2017. ESAF Microfinance started its operations as an NGO in 1992 as "Evangelical Social Action Forum". Before becoming a bank, ESAF was a non-banking finance company and microfinance institution (NBFC-MFI), licensed by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and headquartered in Thrissur city of Kerala.


title: ESAF Small Finance Bank

text: On 11 March 1992, K. Paul Thomas, along with Mereena Paul and a few friends, started ESAF in a small house in Mannuthy named "Little". Jacob Samuel, one of the co-founders, coined the name ESAF, which is an acronym for Evangelical Social Action Forum. At inception, ESAF had five life members, seven annual members and eight honorary members. ESAF society was registered under the Travancore Cochin Literary, Scientific and Charitable Societies Registration Act. The initial president was Itty Mathew; J. Danabai was the vice president, Thomas was the secretary, supported by Samuel as joint secretary and Arun Ramakrishnan as treasurer.


title: ESAF Small Finance Bank

text: ESAF started lending in 1995 as the first microfinance company in Kerala. It became ESAF Small Finance Bank after receiving the first banking license in Kerala since independence.


title: ESAF Small Finance Bank

text: On 17 March 2017, Pinarayi Vijayan, the Chief Minister of Kerala officially inaugurated ESAF Small Finance Bank at Thrissur, Kerala. By August 2017, the bank had 3,750 employees, 284 branches, and a presence in 11 states.


title: ESAF Small Finance Bank

text: In March 2018, a year after its launch, the bank had expanded to 4,000 employees and 400 branches, with crore (US$ million) in deposits and crore (US$ million) in loans.


title: ESAF Small Finance Bank

text: ESAF Small Finance Bank received RBI approval to operate as scheduled bank in December 2018, making the Thrissur-based bank the fifth scheduled bank from Kerala. This will reduce the bank's cost of funds, while increasing the bank's ability and obligation to provide services. The bank's net profit increased to crore in the 2019-2020 financial year from crore the previous year.


title: ESAF Small Finance Bank

text: On 26 March 2020, the bank received approval from SEBI for issuing its crore initial public offering.


title: Breast ironing

text: Breast ironing, also known as breast flattening, is the pounding and massaging of a pubescent girl's breasts, using hard or heated objects, to try to make them stop developing or disappear. The practice is typically performed by a close female figure to the victim, traditionally fulfilled by a mother, grandmother, aunt, or female guardian who will say she is trying to protect the girl from sexual harassment and rape, to prevent early pregnancy that would tarnish the family name, preventing the spread of sexually transmitted infections such as HIV/AIDS, or to allow the girl to pursue education rather than be forced into early marriage.


title: Breast ironing

text: It is mostly practiced in parts of Cameroon, where boys and men may think that girls whose breasts have begun to grow are ready for sex. Evidence suggests that it has spread to the Cameroonian diaspora, for example to Britain, where the law defines it as child abuse. The most widely used implement for breast ironing is a wooden pestle normally used for pounding tubers. Other tools used include leaves, bananas, coconut shells, grinding stones, ladles, spatulas, and hammers heated over coals. The ironing practice is generally performed around dusk or dawn in a private area such as the household kitchen to prevent others from seeing the victim or becoming aware of the process, particularly fathers or other male figures. The massaging process could occur anywhere between one week to several months, depending on the victim's refusal and the resistance of the breasts; in cases where the breasts appear to be consistently protruding, the ironing practice may occur more than once a day for these weeks or months at a time.


title: Breast ironing

text: Breast ironing may be derived from the ancient practice of breast massage. Breast massage aims to help even out different breast sizes and reduce the pain of nursing mothers by massaging the breast with warm objects, see Treatment for Mastitis.


title: Breast ironing

text: The breast ironing practice has been documented in Nigeria, Togo, Republic of Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire, Kenya, and Zimbabwe. Additionally it has been found in other African countries including Burkina Faso, Central African Republic (CAR), Benin, and Guinea-Conakry. Breast "sweeping" has been reported in South Africa. The practice has become commonly associated with Cameroon as a result of media attention and local levels of activism from human rights groups. All of Cameroon's 200 ethnic groups engage in breast ironing, with no known relation to religion, socio-economic status, or any other identifier. A 2006 survey by the German development agency GIZ of more than 5,000 Cameroonian girls and women between the ages of 10 and 82 estimated that nearly one in four had undergone breast ironing, corresponding to four million girls. The survey also reported that it is most commonly practiced in urban areas, where mothers fear their daughters could be more exposed to sexual abuse. Incidence is 53 percent in the Cameroon's southeastern region of Littoral. Compared with Cameroon's Christian and animist south, breast ironing is less common in the Muslim north, where only 10 percent of women are affected. Some hypothesize that this is related to the practice of early marriage, which is more common in the north, making early sexual development irrelevant or even preferable. Research suggests that 16% of girls, particularly in the far North regions where child marriages are highly common, try to flatten their own breasts in an attempt to delay early sexual maturity and early marriage.


title: Breast ironing

text: A 2007 journal suggested that social norms in Cameroon result in women lacking bodily autonomy, as Cameroonian women are not socialized to negotiate safer sex practices, while Cameroonian men are encouraged to engage in polygyny and to take concubines. This lack of bodily autonomy contributes to an increased incidence of breast ironing, sexual coercion, and the normalization of early marriage practices. In an interview, one human rights activist stated that parents who resist under-aged marriages "usually point to the fact that the girlʼs breasts have not grown meaning that she is not yet ready for sexual intercourse. For parents who practice child marriage, by ironing the breasts of the prospective bride, they can continue receiving goods and services from their in-laws."


title: Breast ironing

text: A 2008 report suggested that the rise in the incidence of breast ironing is due to the earlier onset of puberty, caused by dietary improvements in Cameroon over the previous 50 years. Half of Cameroonian girls who develop under the age of nine have their breasts ironed, and 38% of those who develop before eleven. Additionally, since 1976, the percentage of women married by the age of 19 has decreased from nearly 50% to 20%, leading to an increasingly long gap between childhood and marriage. The later age of marriage may be due to changed social norms that allow girls and women to attend school through university and to hold jobs in the formal sector; previously, girls entered married life young, wed to an older man without informed consent. Women who delay marriage in pursuit of education and career are more likely to be financially independent later in life, whereas girls who become pregnant are often forced to drop out of school and forgo formal employment.


title: Breast ironing

text: One of the only full-length reports on breast ironing dates from 2011, when a Cameroonian NGO sponsored by GIZ called it "a harmful traditional practice that has been silenced for too long".


title: Breast ironing

text: There are fears that the practice has spread to the Cameroonian diaspora, for example to Britain. A charity, CAME Women and Girls Development Organisation, is working with London's Metropolitan Police Service and social services departments to raise awareness of breast ironing.


title: Breast ironing

text: Breast ironing is extremely painful and can cause tissue damage. , there have been no medical studies on its effects. However, medical experts warn that it might contribute toward breast cancer, cysts and depression, and perhaps interfere with breastfeeding later. In addition to this, breast ironing puts girls at risk of abscesses, cysts, infections, and permanent tissue damage, resulting in breast pimples, imbalance in breast size, and milk infection from scarring. In extreme cases of damage, there are currently ten cases of diagnosed breast cancer reported from women who identified as victims of breast ironing. Other possible side effects reported by GIZ include malformed breasts and the eradication of one or both breasts. The practice ranges dramatically in its severity, from using heated leaves to press and massage the breasts, to using a scalding grinding stone to crush the budding gland. Due to this variation, health consequences vary from benign to acute. The Child Rights Information Network (CRIN) reports the delay of breast milk development after birth, endangering the life of newborns.


title: Breast ironing

text: Breast ironing can cause women to fear sexual activity. Men have said that breast loss detracts from women's sexual experiences, although this has not been corroborated by women.


title: Breast ironing

text: Many women also suffer mental trauma after undergoing breast ironing. Victims feel as if it is punishment and often internalise blame, and fear breastfeeding in the future.


title: Breast ironing

text: As well as being dangerous, breast ironing is criticised as being ineffective for stopping early sex and pregnancy. GIZ (then called "GTZ") and the Network of Aunties (RENATA), a Cameroonian non-governmental organization that supports young mothers, campaign against breast ironing, and are supported by the Ministry for the Promotion of Women and the Family. Some have also advocated a law against the practice; however, no such law has been passed. Some consider the practice to be an emerging human rights issue, recognized as an act of gender-based violence as breast ironing affects women and girls regardless or race, class, religion, socioeconomic background, or age. In regards to recent opposition, in 2000, the United Nations (UN) identified breast ironing as one of five intersecting forms of discrimination and overlooked crimes against women.


title: Breast ironing

text: According to one Cameroonian lawyer, if a medical doctor determines that damage has been caused to the breasts, the perpetrator can be punished by up to three years in prison, provided the matter is reported within a few months. However, it is unclear if such a law exists as there are no recorded instances of legal enforcement.


title: Breast ironing

text: The GIZ survey found that in 2006, 39 percent of Cameroonian women opposed breast ironing, with 41 percent expressing support and 26 percent indifferent. Reuters reported in 2014 that nationwide campaigning against the practice had helped reduce the rate of breast ironing by 50 percent in the country.


title: Don Matteo

text: Don Matteo () is an Italian television series that has been airing on Rai 1, Italian national television's first channel, since 2000.


title: Don Matteo

text: The protagonist of the series is Father Matteo (portrayed by Terence Hill), a Catholic priest in a parish of the town of Gubbio, Perugia. He is also known for his unrivalled talent in investigating local crime stories. Father Matteo is a wise and respected person who really manages to understand people's problems, and always appears to be willing to help. Thanks to his charm and positivity, he often helps criminals on their way to redemption and he always convinces them to confess their crimes and to accept their responsibilities.


title: Don Matteo

text: Comedian Nino Frassica portrays Marshal Antonio Cecchini, a middle-aged Carabiniere who also happens to be Matteo's best friend. Cecchini is one of the main co-protagonists and often provides humour and comic relief in the series. Other notable cast members include Flavio Insinna, who portrayed Captain Flavio Anceschi from 2000 to 2006, Milena Miconi, who played Laura, the mayor of Gubbio as well as Anceschi's love interest and Simone Montedoro who has been playing the role of Captain Giulio Tommasi, successor to Anceschi, since the sixth season.


title: Don Matteo

text: The series has also a Polish version titled ""Ojciec Mateusz"" produced by TVP and a Russian version titled ""Otec Matvej"" (: Отец Матвей).


title: Don Matteo

text: The plot primarily revolves around the titular Matteo, a Catholic priest with an impressive insight in human nature, aiding the Carabinieri, the national as opposed to local police force personnel in solving crimes (usually murder cases). In this he usually finds support in marshal Antonio Cecchini, a warrant officer who often shares with him important details and clues, but also hostility, in the figure of Cecchini's direct superior, captain Flavio Anceschi (and later Giulio Tommasi and Anna Olivieri), who has little tolerance for the priest's continuous interference with the investigation.


title: Don Matteo

text: The series received two awards at the 42nd Monte-Carlo Television Festival in 2002: Terence Hill won the award for Best Actor and Alessandro Jacchia won the award for Best Producer.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby-de-la-Zouch, sometimes spelt Ashby de la Zouch () and shortened locally to Ashby, is a market town and civil parish in the North West Leicestershire district of Leicestershire, England. The town is near to the Derbyshire and Staffordshire borders. Its 2001 census population of 11,410 rose to 12,370 in 2011. The castle in the town was an important fort in the 15th–17th centuries. In the 19th century the town's main industries were ribbon manufacture, coal mining, and brickmaking.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The civil parish includes the hamlets of Shellbrook to the west and Boundary to the north-west. Swadlincote, Burton upon Trent, Melbourne and Coalville are within , with Derby due north. Ashby lies at the heart of The National Forest, about south of the Peak District National Park, on the A42 between Tamworth and Nottingham. In 2018, Ashby Market Street was named "Best Shopping Experience", and in 2019 it made the final of the rising-star category for UK high streets.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The town was known as Ashby in 1086. This is a word of Anglo-Danish origin, meaning "Ash-tree farm" or "Ash-tree settlement". The Norman French name extension dates from the years after the Norman conquest of England, when Ashby became a possession of the La Zouche family during the reign of Henry III.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby de la Zouch Castle was built in the 12th century. The town and castle came into the possession of the Hastings family in 1464 and William Hastings, 1st Baron Hastings enhanced its fortifications from 1473. In the English Civil War, the town was one of the Cavaliers' chief garrisons under the control of Colonel Henry Hastings, 1st Baron Loughborough and commander of the North Midlands Army. When the town fell after a long siege in March 1646, it was counted a great relief to the surrounding towns and villages.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Many of the buildings in Market Street, the town's main thoroughfare, are timber framed. Most of this structure is hidden by later brick facades. "The Bull's Head" public house retains its original Elizabethan half-timbering, although most of this was plastered over some years ago and can no longer be seen from the street. A short distance further down Market Street is a shop, currently occupied as a LOROS Charity Shop, which retains its original Elizabethan timbers in full street view. Regency buildings are also standing in this street. Bath Street has a row of Classical-style houses called "Rawdon Terrace", dating from the time of the 1820s, when the town was a spa destination.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: St Helen's Church is Ashby's original Anglican parish church. It is a late 15th-century Perpendicular Gothic building. The outer aisles were designed by J. P. St. Aubyn and added in 1878. St. Helen's contains notable memorials to various members of the Hastings family and other notables. It also holds a rare 300-year-old finger pillory.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Holy Trinity Church is a Gothic Revival building designed by H. I. Stevens in the Early English Gothic style and built in 1838–40. It has galleries supported by iron columns. The chancel was added in 1866 and the ironwork chancel screen in 1891.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The Roman Catholic Church of Our Lady of Lourdes was designed by F. A. Walters and built in 1908–15 at the expense of the 15th Duke of Norfolk. It is neo-Norman, with three apses and a tower at the southeast corner.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The Congregational Church was built in 1825 in a neoclassical style with Tuscan columns. There is also a Christadelphian meeting hall in the town.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The Ivanhoe Baths was an 1822 Neo-Grecian building with a Doric façade long. Unused, it was derelict by 1960, and was demolished in 1962. Mineworkers discovered a copious saline spring when working coal at Moira Colliery, west of the town, in 1805. Here developers built the Moira Baths, with a large hotel nearby for travellers. After a few years, however, it was decided to convey the water to Ashby, where the Ivanhoe Baths were built. The Royal Hotel, originally called the Hastings Hotel, was built in 1826 to accommodate visitors to the growing spa. It has a Doric porte-cochère and additional Doric columns in its hall inside. The hotel closed in February 2018.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The Grade II-listed, 19th-century water tower, located in the town's cemetery on Moira Road, has been converted into a dwelling. The conversion was controversial since it involved a number of modern additions to the building.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: In 1879, Baron Donington, the widowed husband of Edith Rawdon-Hastings, 10th Countess of Loudoun, had the Loudoun monument erected to her memory in Ashby. The octagonal monument by Sir George Gilbert Scott is based on the Eleanor crosses and is a Listed building. It is located at the junction of Bath and South Streets, opposite the Roman Catholic church.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby-de-la-Zouch Town Hall, which was built at the same time as the market hall to its rear, dates to 1857.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Manor House School was an independent day school in the centre of Ashby for boys and girls aged four to 16. The school was located between St Helen's Church and the ruins of Ashby's historic castle. Pupils travelled to the school from a wide area. The school entered into administration on 13 December 2018.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: In the 19th century Ashby's main industry was leather working. There was also a cotton textile factory and a glue factory. Ashby was surrounded by coalmines but was never a coalmining town itself. By far the largest employer in the town today is United Biscuits, providing about 2,000 jobs at its distribution centre, which stores its products and transports them nationwide, and its KP Snacks factory in Smisby Road. The firm formerly had a larger presence in Ashby. McVitie's biscuit factory on Smisby Road closed in 2004 with the loss of 900 jobs.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Other employers in Ashby include Tesco, Ashfield Commercial & Medical Services, Timeline Communications, Eduteq Limited and TAC UK Ltd, a firm of energy consultants. Standard Soap Ltd, a significant industrial employer within Ashby-de-la-Zouch since 1928, closed in early 2012, resulting in the loss of 155 jobs. The town has a concentration of high-tech employers. The video game software house Ultimate Play the Game, was based in Ashby. Now called Rare, it has moved to Manor Park near Twycross.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby United Community Football Club is a community club for juniors and seniors of all ages. They play across multiple divisions across all of their Junior and Senior teams and are seen as leading the way in community inclusion when it comes to football and sports in the town.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Willesley Park Golf Course is set in rolling countryside, partly in parkland and partly on heathland, covering 230 acres of gentle undulating countryside. The course was opened for play in April 1921. The first hole is played along an avenue of lime trees which once flanked the old coach road from the old Norman castle in the town to the now demolished Willesley Hall.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby Hastings Cricket Club was founded before 1831. Its ground, the Bath Grounds in the centre of Ashby, hosts Leicestershire CCC 2nd XI matches each year. The club runs three Saturday League sides, all of which play in the Everard's Leicestershire County Cricket League. The 1st XI play in the Premier Division, the highest level of club cricket available in Leicestershire, the 2nd XI play in Division 4 and the 3rd XI play in Division 8. The club also run a Midweek XI who play in the Premier Division of the Loughborough Cricket Association League and a Sunday XI who play friendly cricket. The club's Junior Section includes sides at Under 15, Under 13, Under 11 and Under 10 age groups. A second club, Ashby Town Cricket Club was formed in 1945.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby RFC has its grounds in Nottingham Road. It plays in the League Midland 3 East (North). It also has mini and junior sections for girls and boys from age four, as well as seniors and seconds side and an O2 Touch team for players of all ages and both genders.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: A greyhound racing track, was opened on 3 April 1931. The racing was independent (not affiliated to the sports governing body the National Greyhound Racing Club) known as a flapping track, which was the nickname given to independent tracks. Racing was held on Tuesday and Saturday evenings and distances included 200, 350, 550 and 525 yards. The date of closure is thought to be around 1935.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The town was to be served by Ashby Canal from 1804 but the canal never reached Ashby, as it was constructed only to the village of Moira. The town was served by the Leicester–Burton upon Trent line of the Midland Railway and had its own station. After the canal was abandoned in stages between 1944 and 1966, British Railways withdrew the passenger service and closed Ashby de la Zouch railway station in September 1964. The railway remains open for freight. There were also connections to both the Melbourne Line and Ashby and Nuneaton Joint Railway connecting the town with the towns of Melbourne, Market Bosworth, Hinckley and Nuneaton as well as the city of Derby, but these lines closed between the 1950s and 1980s. Both of the lines now form footpaths with some of the old stations still present but others demolished.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: In the 1990s BR planned to restore passenger services between Leicester and Burton as the second phase of its Ivanhoe Line project. However, after the privatisation of British Rail in 1995, this phase of the project was shelved. In 2009 the Association of Train Operating Companies published a £49-million proposal to restore passenger services to the line, which would include reopening a station at Ashby.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The nearest railway station is , away. The fastest train to London in the mornings and evenings is from Tamworth (12 miles from Ashby) to Euston at 1hr 2mins average non-stop at peak hours.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: The A50 Leicester to Stoke-on-Trent road and the A453 Birmingham to Nottingham road used to pass through the town centre. The heavy traffic, which previously travelled through the town, has been greatly relieved by the A42 and A511 bypasses, which replace the A453 and A50, respectively.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Bus routes provide an hourly direct service to Burton-upon-Trent, Coalville, East Midlands Airport, Leicester and Swadlincote (Midland Classic 9 and 19, and Arriva Midlands 29, 29A and X29). The National Express coach network is available in Leicester, which has a daily direct service to London.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: East Midlands Airport is north-east of Ashby. It provides flights to and from other parts of the UK and Europe. For International travellers Birmingham Airport is 26 miles away (c. 30 mins) and provides international flights


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Every May, Ashby holds an arts festival sponsored by the district council. This features local artists, musicians, songwriters, poets, performers, and story tellers. The multiple sites around the town host exhibitions, musical performances, workshops and talks, and the town centre is decorated with flags and an outdoor gallery.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby Statutes, a travelling funfair, is held every September. Instituted by Royal Statute, it was originally a hiring fair, where domestic servants and farmworkers would be hired for the year. During the fair in the 21st century, Market Street, the main road through the town (the former A50 trunk road), is closed for nearly a week. The traffic is diverted along narrower roads either side of Market Street. Locals call this event "The Statutes".


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: A song "Ashby de la Zouch (Castle Abbey)", written by Al Hoffman, Milton Drake and Jerry Livingston, was recorded by the Merry Macs in 1946 on Decca No. 18811. It includes the lines "If you wanna smooch and be happy as a pooch, go to Ashby de la Zouch by the sea." (Ashby-de-la-Zouch is close to the centre of England, almost as far from the sea as is possible.) In April 1946 the American jazz bassist and composer Charles Mingus recorded a tune called "Ashby de la Zouch" with his band. The title or choice of song could have been an acknowledgement of guitarist Irving Ashby, who took part in the recording. Ashby-de-la-Zouch is twinned with Pithiviers in north-central France.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Ashby-de-la-Zouch is mentioned in Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott as "the lists at Ashby", suggesting that jousting may once have taken place in the town ("lists" being the barriers through which the respective steeds charge during a joust). The same phrase is used in the original computer game Defender of the Crown, which apparently drew inspiration from Scott's novel.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: Neighbouring communities include Lount, Normanton le Heath, Smisby, Packington, Donisthorpe, Oakthorpe, Moira, Measham and Coleorton.


title: Ashby-de-la-Zouch

text: There is a very in-depth record of the town written in a book by W. Scott in 1907 entitled "The History of Ashby-de-la-Zouch", and printed by a local Printer called George Brown. It includes many excellent images.


title: John Beck (actor)

text: John Beck (born January 28, 1943) is an American retired actor, known for his role as Mark Graison in the television series "Dallas" during the mid-1980s.


title: John Beck (actor)

text: Beck was born in Chicago, Illinois but he grew up in Evanston and Joliet on his father's ranch with the goal of becoming a veterinarian. His goals changed at the age of sixteen after performing in a play in high school to overcome shyness. Three years later, Beck moved to California and took jobs in television commercials. In 1963-4, Beck attended Joliet Junior College but quit to begin acting in plays in other cities.


title: John Beck (actor)

text: Beck's television debut was as a Sergeant in the 1965 "I Dream of Jeannie" episode, "Russian Roulette". His first regular role was on the western series "Nichols" (1971-1972) alongside James Garner, playing the role of Orv Ketcham.


title: John Beck (actor)

text: In film, one of Beck's earliest roles was as Skinny in "Cyborg 2087" (1966). Beck played Erno who leads a revolt against a fascist government in the Woody Allen sci-fi comedy "Sleeper" (1973). That same year, he appeared as John W. Poe in the Sam Peckinpah western "Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid". In 1975, he appeared opposite James Caan as Moonpie in "Rollerball". He had a leading role in "The Other Side of Midnight" (1977), which had some prestige, but the film was a failure at the box office. Other film credits include "The Big Bus" (1976), "Audrey Rose" (1977), "Deadly Illusion" (1987), "In the Cold of the Night" (1990), "A Climate for Killing" (1991), "Last Time Out" (1994), "Black Day Blue Night" (1995), "Dark Planet" (1997), "A Place to Grow" (1998), "Chain of Command" (2000), "Crash Point Zero" (2001), "" (2003), and "Crash Landing" (2005).


title: John Beck (actor)

text: Beck also took guest roles in television soap operas, movies, and series, one of the most popular being, "Dallas". Guest appearances include, "Baywatch", "Bonanza", "Death Valley Days", "", "Gunsmoke", "Hawaii Five-O", "Magnum, P.I.", "Mannix", "Matlock", "", "The Mod Squad", "Murder, She Wrote", "Perry Mason: The Case of the Lady in the Lake", "", "Touched by an Angel", "The Twilight Zone" (1989), and "Walker, Texas Ranger", among others.


title: John Beck (actor)

text: On April 23, 1971 in Los Angeles, Beck married Valerie Shellibeer (also known by her stage name, Tina Carter). The couple had a son and three daughters.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: "Have I Told You Lately" is a song written and recorded by Northern Irish singer and songwriter Van Morrison for his nineteenth studio album "Avalon Sunset" (1989). It is a romantic ballad that is often played at weddings, although it was originally written as a prayer.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: It was released as the album's lead single on 5 June 1989, and reached number 12 on the US "Billboard" Adult Contemporary chart. It has become a popular cover song with many vocal and instrumental versions recorded by numerous artists and bands. In 1993, Rod Stewart's version charted at number five on both the US "Billboard" Hot 100 as well as on the UK Singles Chart. In 2021, the song peaked at #1 in Ireland on the radio airplay chart.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: "Have I Told You Lately" has received acclaim, winning a Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals and a BMI Million-Air certificate.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: Composed as a love ballad and built on the framework of "Someone Like You", it is preceded on "Avalon Sunset" by the song, "I'd Love to Write Another Song" proclaiming "In poetry I'd carve it well/ I'd even make it rhyme." Then, in the words of Brian Hinton what follows is:


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: "Have I Told You Lately" was listed as number 261 on the "All Time 885 Greatest Songs" list compiled in 2004 by Philadelphia radio station WXPN from listeners' votes.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: Van Morrison's original recording was also voted number six on a list of the "Top 10 First Dance Wedding Songs", based on a poll of 1,300 DJs in the UK, and was ranked number 98 on the "New York Daily News" list of The 100 Greatest Love Songs, published on 12 February 2007.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: In October 2007, Van Morrison received a Million-Air certificate for over four million air plays of "Have I Told You Lately" from the prestigious BMI awards ceremony held in London, England.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: The "Record Mirror" said, "Van the Man must have been talking to Stevie Wonder recently, because he seems to have caught some of his infectious sentimentality. Either that, or he bumped into Richard Clayderman in the corridor at his record company. There's a really slushy bit of piano in this that my mum would love."


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: Morrison chose "Have I Told You Lately" as one of the songs included on 1990s "The Best of Van Morrison", his first greatest-hits album. It was also one of the songs on two of the compilation albums that were issued in 2007: "Still on Top - The Greatest Hits" contains a remastered version of this song and it was also featured on the compilation album, "Van Morrison at the Movies - Soundtrack Hits". A live performance version was included on his 1994 album, "A Night in San Francisco". In 1995 Morrison accompanied The Chieftains on a recording of the song for their album "The Long Black Veil"; this version was awarded the 1996 Grammy Award for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals. A jazz arrangement is featured on the 2018 album Morrison recorded with organist Joey DeFrancesco entitled "You're Driving Me Crazy".


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: Filmed performances of the song include a version recorded in 1989 that was featured on Morrison's video album "" the following year. In 1997 Morrison performed the song in a duet with Sinéad O'Connor on "Late Show with David Letterman"; this version was subsequently released on the "Live on Letterman: Music from the Late Show" CD.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: Rod Stewart covered the song for his album "Vagabond Heart" (1991). A live version from his album "Unplugged...and Seated" (1993) was released as a single, becoming a number-five hit in the US and the UK. This version also reached number four on the US "Billboard" Mainstream Top 40 chart and spent five weeks at number one on the US "Billboard" Adult Contemporary chart. It was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and sold 700,000 copies in the US. Another live version by Stewart from his 2013 performance at The Troubadour, West Hollywood was included on the deluxe edition of his album "Time".


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: "Heb ik ooit gezegd" ("Have I ever said") is a song recorded by Belgian pop band Clouseau from their eleventh studio album, "In Stereo" (1999). The song was produced by Kris Wauters and . The song was released as the album's lead single on 29 January 1999, and remained on the Belgium (Flanders) Ultratop 50 chart for sixteen weeks, peaking at number seven for two weeks. It also spent eight weeks on the Netherlands GfK Dutch Chart, peaking at number 68.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: Clouseau is best known for their ballads; but although lead singer Koen Wauters was eager to release more lively, upbeat songs, their cover of Van Morrison's romantic ballad "Have I Told You Lately" was chosen as the album's lead single. The Dutch translation of Morrison's English lyrics was written by Koen Wauters and Yurek Onzia, and the song was produced by Kris Wauters and .


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: "Heb ik ooit gezegd" entered the Belgium (Flanders) Ultratop 50 chart on 6 February 1999 at number 27. Two weeks later on 20 February 1999, it peaked at number seven, where it remained for two weeks. It briefly dropped out of the top ten but returned to number eight on 20 March 1999 and held that position for two weeks. The song finally exited on 22 May 1999, having spent a total of sixteen weeks on the chart, five of which were in the top ten.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: In the Netherlands, "Heb ik ooit gezegd" entered the Dutch charts at number 88 on 1 May 1999, peaking three weeks later at number 72 on 22 May 1999. The song dropped out at number 90 on 19 June 1999, after a total of eight weeks on the chart.


title: Have I Told You Lately

text: Belgian X-Factor winner Udo Mechels recorded a cover of Clouseau's version of the song for the album "Braveau Clouseau" (2007), produced by . The album, a tribute to Clouseau, topped the Belgium (Flanders) Ultratop 200 Albums chart in September 2007 and was certified Gold in Belgium on 22 September 2007. Udo performed the song live in 2011 at a concert in Lier, Belgium; Alexandra Soto of "" described Udo's performance of "Heb ik ooit gezegd" as "beautiful".


title: Pop-up ad

text: Pop-up ads or pop-ups are forms of online advertising on the World Wide Web. A pop-up is a graphical user interface (GUI) display area, usually a small window, that suddenly appears ("pops up") in the foreground of the visual interface. The pop-up window containing an advertisement is usually generated by JavaScript that uses cross-site scripting (XSS), sometimes with a secondary payload that uses Adobe Flash. They can also be generated by other vulnerabilities/security holes in browser security.


title: Pop-up ad

text: A variation on the pop-up window, the pop-under advertisement, opens a new browser window under the active window. Pop-unders do not interrupt the user immediately, but appear when the user closes the covering window, making it more difficult to determine which website created them.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Pop-up ads originated on the Tripod.com webpage hosting site in the late 1990s. JavaScript provided the capability for a web page to open another window. Ethan Zuckerman claims he used that capability to launch advertisements in separate windows as a response to complaints from advertisers about their ads appearing on pages with sexual content. Zuckerman later apologized for the unforeseen nuisance pop-up ads had evolved into.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Web development and design technologies allow an author to associate any item on a pop-up with any action, including with a cancel or innocent looking button. Because of bad experiences and apprehensive of possible damage that they may cause, some users do not click on or interact with any item inside a pop-up window whatsoever, and may leave the site that generated them or block all pop-ups.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Opera was the first major browser to incorporate tools to block pop-up ads; the Mozilla browser later improved on this by blocking only pop-ups generated as the page loads. In the early 2000s, all major web browsers except Internet Explorer let users block unwanted pop-ups almost completely. In 2004, Microsoft released Windows XP SP2, which added pop-up blocking to Internet Explorer. Most modern browsers provide pop-up blocking tools; third-party tools add other features, such as ad filtering.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Users of websites and web applications continuously experience unwanted pop up ads through the course of their normal interaction with a web browser. Ordinarily, users respond by dismissing the pop-up through the "close" or "cancel" feature of the window hosting the pop-up. Because this is a typical response, some authors of pop-up advertising depend on this, and create on-screen buttons or controls that look similar to a "close" or "cancel" option. When the user chooses one of these "simulated cancel" options, the button performs an unexpected or unauthorized action (such as opening a "new" pop-up, or downloading an unwanted file on the user's system).


title: Pop-up ad

text: A "hover ad" or "in-page pop-up" uses JavaScript to combine a banner ad and a pop-up window that appears in front of the browser screen. JavaScript imposes an advertisement over a webpage in a transparent layer. This advertisement can appear in a variety of forms. For example, an advertisement can contain an Adobe Flash animation that links to the advertiser's site. An advertisement can also look like a normal window. Pop-up blockers cannot block the ad because it is a part of the webpage, but it can be blocked with third-party ad blockers such as AdBlock and Adblock Plus, or by using custom style sheets.


title: Pop-up ad

text: URLs are sometimes opened in a new tab and then the content of the old background tab will be replaced with an advertisement page by URL redirection, other times it switches the tab the user is on to the advertisement tab. Adblock Plus, uBlock and NoScript cannot block these redirects.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Pop-under ads are similar to pop-up ads, but the ad window appears hidden behind the main browser window rather than superimposed in front of it. As pop-up ads became more widespread and more intrusive, often taking up whole computer screen, many users would immediately close the pop-up ads that appeared over a site without looking at them. Pop-under ads do not immediately impede the view of content, but remain unnoticed until the user closes or minimizes the main browser window.


title: Pop-up ad

text: A pop-under ad involves two JavaScript functions introduced in 1995 with the Netscape 2.0b3 browser. Modern web publishers and advertisers use it to create a window in front of the users screen, load an advertisement, and then send it behind the screen.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Most modern browsers allow codice_1 to execute only if it was called by a user interaction (e.g., a mouse click) event handler. Any non-interactive calls (timer callback, load events, etc.) to codice_1 result in the new window being blocked.


title: Pop-up ad

text: To bypass this restriction, most pop-under ads trigger on a mouse click event listener attached directly to the document or the document's body. This enables catching all mouse click events that were not consumed by other click event handlers, and calling codice_1 without being blocked. For example, when the user selects a text, the mouse click triggers the mouse click handler attached to the document and a pop-under opens using the above code. Other techniques to bypass the codice_1 call restriction do so by "hijacking" mouse clicks.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Hover ads, more commonly called in-page pop-ups, are a special type of pop-up ads created using Dynamic HTML, JavaScript and similar web browser technologies. Because they do not scroll with the web page, they appear to "hover" over the page, usually obscuring the content. Hover ads tend to be very hard to block by pop-up blocking software


title: Pop-up ad

text: because the hover ad window is an integral part of the HTML content of the web page. Thus a software filtering the content has no algorithmic means of recognizing and removing parts of


title: Pop-up ad

text: the content, either descriptive or procedural, that create, populate and manipulate the hover ad's window.


title: Pop-up ad

text: Most pop-up advertising tools include built-in measurement possibilities. These are often dashboards that offer a detailed analysis of your current and previous pop-up ads. Typically, measurable items include:


title: Pop-up ad

text: ExitExchange.com filed for a patent in 2000 on a subset of pop-under advertising called an exit pop. After years of controversy and numerous articles on the pop-under patent, the patent was awarded by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in April and June 2008. The respective patent numbers are ('555) and ('229). '555 is related to the method of opening an exit pop from a toolbar or software application on a computing device, whereas '229 covers the method used to open an exit pop from an embedded script found within a media file (e.g., JavaScript code on a web page).


title: Pop-up ad

text: Copyright aspects of pop-up advertising are discussed in the Wikipedia articles Derivative works and Transformativeness. Both articles contain illustrations and links to examples of pop-up advertising.


title: Yū Aoi

text: She has won numerous awards for her performances on screen, including the Japan Academy Prize and Kinema Junpo Awards for best supporting actress in 2007 for "Hula Girls" and Rookie of the Year for continued performances in the field of "Films in Media and Fine Arts" by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan in 2009.


title: Yū Aoi

text: Yu Aoi made her stage debut as Polly in the 1999 rendition of "Annie", followed by her appearance as a regular on TV Tokyo's "Oha Suta" (The Super Kids Station) in 2000. A year later, she debuted in Shunji Iwai's "All About Lily Chou-Chou" playing Shiori Tsuda alongside Hayato Ichihara, Shugo Oshinari, Miwako Ichikawa, and Ayumi Ito. Aoi would later work in "Ao to Shiro de Mizuiro" and "Gaichu" with friend Aoi Miyazaki. With her first roles on the small and big screen came TV commercials and endorsements for Sony, Yamaha, DoCoMo, Toshiba and Coca-Cola.


title: Yū Aoi

text: In 2003, commemorating the 30th anniversary of Kit Kat in Japan, Shunji Iwai shot a series of short films starring Yu Aoi and Anne Suzuki, which later was expanded into the feature film called "Hana & Alice", which earned Aoi the Best Actress award at the Japanese Professional Movie Award.


title: Yū Aoi

text: In 2005, Aoi played her first lead on the big screen in "Letters from Kanai Nirai", which was sold in Korea with the alternate title of "Aoi Yu's Letter" due to her popularity. She also had supporting roles in the Satoshi Miki film "Turtles Swim Faster than Expected" starring Juri Ueno, and "Yamato" with Shido Nakamura and Kenichi Matsuyama. This supporting role would earn her one of her double-nomination as Best Supporting Actress at the 2007 Japanese Academy Award. She won against herself for her work as Kimiko Tanikawa in the Japanese hit Hula Girls, which was sent to the Academy Awards as the Japanese official selection that year.


title: Yū Aoi

text: To this date, her role as the hula dancing girl from small town Iwaki remains her most successful role yet, earning her a dozen awards as Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, alongside her other smaller roles that year as Hagu in Honey & Clover, and Kana Sato in the Shunji-Iwai-produced and Nirai-Kanai-directed "Rainbow Song". Aoi also lent her voice to play Shiro in the animated film "Tekkon Kinkreet", the adaptation to the Taiyō Matsumoto manga, Black and White, directed by Michael Arias.


title: Yū Aoi

text: During these years, she made commercials for Nintendo, Canon, Shiseido Cosmetics, Shueisha Publishing, Kirin Beverage and continued endorsing DoCoMo. Aoi also released two photobooks with Yoko Takahashi as photographer, and distributed by Rockin'on: "Travel Sand" in 2005 and "Dandelion" in 2007.


title: Yū Aoi

text: In 2007, she participated in the live-action adaptation of the manga series "Mushishi" alongside Joe Odagiri, as well as WOWOW's "Don't Laugh at My Romance", "Welcome to the Quiet Room" with Yuki Uchida, and going back to the stage to play Desdemona in a rendition of "Shakespeare's Othello". For these last two roles, Aoi lost 7 kg for her role as eating disorder patient, Miki.


title: Yū Aoi

text: Aoi began 2008 with the release of "Don't Laugh at My Romance", which earned her a nomination as Best Supporting Actress at the Asian Film Awards 2009. She appeared in the experimental drama "Camouflage" (aka. Aoi Yu x 4 Lies), in which she collaborated with four different directors exploring the theme of lies. The series lasted for 12 episodes, and included work with Ryō Kase, Yoichi Nukumizu, Shoko Ikezu, Nobuhiro Yamashita, and Yuki Tanada.


title: Yū Aoi

text: A couple of months later, NTV signed Aoi to play her first TV leading role as Handa Sen in the live-action adaptation of Shota Kikuchi's manga series "Osen", which aired until the end of June with ten episodes.


title: Yū Aoi

text: Next, Aoi released "One Million Yen Girl" written and directed by "Camouflage" director Yuki Tanada, and also released by WOWOW. This was her latest leading film role since Nirai Kanai in 2005. She briefly participated in the Japanese World-War-II-jury-themed film "Best Wishes for Tomorrow", as well as the international "Tokyo!" - a three-short-film collection by Michel Gondry, Leos Carax, and Bong Joon Ho.


title: Yū Aoi

text: In 2009, The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan named Yu Aoi Rookie of the Year in the field of Films in Media and Fine Arts, citing her work in her film debut in "All About Lily Chou Chou", until her work in "One Million Yen Girl". Later that year, Aoi provided the voice of Ikechan in the film "Ikechan and Me", a live-action adaptation of the picture book of the same name by Rieko Saibara, as well as playing supporting roles in "Honokaa Boy" and Yoji Yamada's "Ototo". The following year Aoi starred in Ryūichi Hiroki's 2010 film "The Lightning Tree". She later appeared in "Vampire", "Rurouni Kenshin", and Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2012 television drama "Penance".


title: Yū Aoi

text: Aoi married comedian Ryota Yamasato on June 3, 2019. On February 10, 2022, they announced that she was pregnant with their first child and due in the summer. On August 10, 2022, Yamasato revealed that Aoi had given birth to their daughter.


title: Business class

text: Business class is a travel class available on many commercial airlines and rail lines, known by brand names which vary, by airline or rail company. In the airline industry, it was originally intended as an intermediate level of service between economy class and first class, but many airlines now offer business class as the highest level of service, having eliminated first-class seating. Business class is distinguished from other travel classes by the quality of seating, food, drinks, ground service and other amenities. In commercial aviation, full business class is usually denoted 'J' or 'C' with schedule flexibility, but can be many other letters depending on circumstances.


title: Business class

text: Airlines began separating full-fare and discounted economy-class passengers in the late 1970s. In 1976, KLM introduced a Full Fare Facilities (FFF) service for its full fare economy-class passengers, which allowed them to sit at the front of the economy cabin immediately behind first class, and this concept was quickly copied by several other airlines including Air Canada. Both United Airlines and Trans World Airlines experimented with a similar three-class concept in 1978, but abandoned it due to negative reactions from discount economy-class travelers who felt that amenities were being taken away from them. United also cited the difficulty of tracking which passengers should be seated in which section of the economy cabin on connecting flights. American Airlines also began separating full-fare economy passengers from discounted economy passengers in 1978, and offered open middle seats for full-fare passengers.


title: Business class

text: Around this time, there was speculation in the airline industry that supersonic aircraft would corner the market for the highest-paying premium passengers, and that a three-class market would emerge consisting of supersonic first class and subsonic business and economy classes. In 1977, El Al announced plans to reconfigure its aircraft with a small first-class cabin and larger business-class cabin on the assumption that most transatlantic first-class passengers would shift their business to the Concorde.


title: Business class

text: British Airways introduced "Club World", a separate premium cabin with numerous amenities, in October 1978 under CEO Colin Marshall as a means of further distinguishing full-fare business travelers from tourists flying on discounted fares. Pan Am announced that it would introduce "Clipper Class" in July 1978, and both Air France and Pan Am introduced business class in November 1978. Qantas claims to have launched the world's first Business Class in 1979.


title: Business class

text: On November 1, 1981, Scandinavian Airlines System introduced EuroClass with a separate cabin, dedicated check-in counters and lounges for full-fare passengers. Simultaneously, first class disappeared from their European fleet.


title: Business class

text: Both Qantas and Virgin Australia offer business class on their domestic networks as well as on trans-Tasman flights to New Zealand. Flights between Perth and Sydney typically feature lie-flat seats, with deep recline cradle seats on other routes.


title: Business class

text: On the other hand, Air New Zealand does not offer business class on its domestic network. Business Class is available on flights between New Zealand, Australia and the Pacific Islands when operated by Boeing 777 and Boeing 787 family aircraft, both of which have lie-flat seats.


title: Business class

text: On short-haul flights Air Canada offers recliner seats, which are similar to what is offered on regional business class in the United States. However, on some high-capacity routes, such as Vancouver–Toronto, Air Canada utilizes its long-haul fleet, such as the Boeing 777, Boeing 787, Boeing 767, and the Airbus A330. On flights using internationally configured aircraft such as these, the business-class product is a lie-flat product. However, on discount carriers, such as Air Transat, business class is "euro-style", an economy-class seat with a blocked middle seat for added comfort.


title: Business class

text: With the introduction of their Boeing 787’s on select domestic and international routes, WestJet Airlines offers 16 lay-flat business seats on each of their 787-9’s.


title: Business class

text: American Airlines and Delta Air Lines both exclusively use fully lie-flat Business Class seats with direct aisle access on their widebody aircraft. United Airlines is in the process of retrofitting their older lie-flat seats to a new design with aisle access for all passengers and increased privacy. A multiple course meal is served on china after takeoff, and depending on the flight length a chilled snack or light meal will be served before landing. International Business Class passengers have access to priority check-in and security, along with lounge access. United and American both also offer premium lounges with enhanced food service in their hubs for these passengers.


title: Business class

text: Select routes between the East and West coasts are deemed "premium transcontinental" and offer a comparable experience to long haul international Business Class. However, it is uncommon for all seats to have direct aisle access. American uses a dedicated sub-fleet of 3-cabin A321T planes with 20 lie-flat Flagship Business seats in a 2-2 configuration for these flights. JetBlue also has a sub-fleet of A321s featuring their Mint Business Class, which alternates between a 2-2 lie flat seats and 1-1 suites with a closing door. United and Delta use a combination of wide and narrow body aircraft for these routes, with a variety of lie-flat seat designs.


title: Business class

text: Nearly all other flights in the US (as well as to Canada, Central America, and the Caribbean) on American, United, Delta, and Alaska use 2-cabin narrowbody aircraft. The forward cabin is marketed as "First Class" on domestic routes but regardless uses a Business Class fare basis. These fares include a larger "recliner" seat, priority check-in/security/boarding, and increased service. Only Alaska Airlines allows lounge access for customers in "First Class" without further international travel. Both alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages are included, and are served in glassware or ceramic mugs. Meal service is highly variable depending on the airline, departure time, and route. Flights between hub airports during daytime hours are usually catered with a full warm meal regardless of the flight time. Regional jets do not have ovens, and all entrees are served chilled. At the very least, a flight attendant will pass around a basket containing premium snacks.


title: Business class

text: European carriers generally offer a business class consisting of enhanced economy seating with better service. There may be a curtain to separate business from economy class, based on demand, but the seats are in the same cabin. Some airlines such as Air France and Lufthansa use convertible seats that seat three people across in economy, or adjust with a lever to become two seats with a half seat length between them for business-class use.


title: Business class

text: Business class has started to disappear from some short/medium haul routes, to be replaced with full fare economy and discount economy (KLM and SAS). On these routes, the seats are the same for all passengers, only the flexibility of the ticket and the food and beverage service differs. On shorter routes (typically less than one hour) many airlines have removed business class entirely (e.g. BMI on many routes) and offer only one class of service. British Airways used to offer "Business UK" on their domestic system, offering the same service as economy class, with the addition of expedited check-in, baggage reclaim, lounge access and priority boarding. In flight, until January 11, 2017, drink, tea or coffee and a snack were served to all customers, with a hot breakfast on flights prior to 9.29am.


title: Business class

text: Most low-cost carriers, such as Ryanair and EasyJet in Europe, Tigerair in Australia, Southwest Airlines in the United States, and even some national carriers such as Aer Lingus and Air New Zealand on their domestic and regional networks do not offer any premium classes of service. Some, however, have options above a standard coach seat:


title: Business class

text: Business class is a much more significant upgrade from economy class for long-haul flights, in contrast to a regional or domestic flight where business class offers few relative advantages over economy class. The innovations in business-class seating, incorporating features previously only found in first class (see below), has narrowed the comfort and amenities gap with traditional first-class seats. These advances and added features to business class, as well as the late 2000s recession, have caused some airlines to remove or not install first-class seating in their aircraft (as first-class seats are usually double the price of business class but can take up more than twice the room) which leaves business class as the most expensive seats on such planes, while other airlines have reintroduced first-class sections as suites to stay upmarket over contemporary business class.


title: Business class

text: As with first class, all alcoholic beverages are complimentary and meals are of higher quality than economy class. Economy-class passengers are usually not permitted in the business-class cabin though first-class passengers are generally allowed to cross the curtain between business and first class.


title: Business class

text: Long-haul business-class seats are substantially different from economy-class seats, and many airlines have installed "lie-flat" seats into business class, whereas previously seats with such a recline were only available in international first class. There are essentially three types of long-haul business-class seats today. These are listed in ascending order of perceived "quality".


title: Business class

text: Recaro claims its CL6710 business-class seat is one of the lightest at 80 kg (176 lb) while other can be beyond , adding up to a for 60 seats.


title: Business class

text: While flying on a long-haul business-class flight, airlines such as Swiss, Lufthansa, SAS Scandinavian Airlines, and many others offer in-flight gourmet meals with a choice of entree. Upon seating in their seats, business-class passengers are presented with a choice of champagne, orange juice, or water (called pre-flight service), with a 3-5 course meal (typically including a salad, soup, entree (typically up to 3 choices), and a choice of dessert) to follow during the flight. Depending on the time of arrival, the flight may offer either a breakfast with a variety of choices or a light snack approximately 90 minutes prior to landing. Some airlines, such as Singapore Airlines, allow travelers to request specific meals not on the regular menu prior to the flight. The alcoholic beverage choices for business-class cabins are generous, with airlines offering different premium wines, and an assortment of beers and liqueurs.


title: Business class

text: Business class is the highest class of service in China high-speed rail, while first class and second class are the more affordable options. Business class passenger have the access to a pre-departure lounge if available. Train seats of business class is arranged in 1-1 or 2-1 configuration with fully enclosed seats. Free meals, unlimited snacks, and beverages are provided for the business class passenger throughout the journey.


title: Business class

text: Select Amtrak trains in the United States offer a Business Class service. On "Acela" trains, Business Class is the primary class of service, and does not include any additional benefits onboard. On other routes, Business Class includes a refundable fare, and seating in a reserved area. Depending on the specific route, lounge access, wider seats with legrests, newspapers, or complimentary non-alcoholic beverages may be included.


title: Business class

text: Until June 2009, Via Rail in Canada premium-class service was called "Via 1", on short-range routes oriented towards business travel. The premium service on the transcontinental route ("The Canadian") is called "Silver & Blue". In June 2009, "Via 1" was renamed "Business Class" and "Silver & Blue" ("The Canadian") and "Easterly" ("The Ocean") were renamed "Sleeper Touring Class" and "Totem" ("The Skeena") was renamed "Touring Class".


title: Business class

text: Eurostar also offers business-class accommodation on their rail services – named "Business Premier", the seats are similar to the premium economy "Standard Premier" offering (wider seats with more legroom and greater recline compared to economy "standard class") but include faster check-in, boarding and a full meal service, among other features. Chiltern Railways offers a business zone on selected services.


title: Business class

text: Austrian federal railway service ÖBB also offers a business class in their high-speed Railjet trains.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: Produced by the Austrian company Schiebel, it was developed from 2003 to 2005. With a maximum take-off weight (MTOW) of , its endurance is 6 hours (extendable to over 10 hours with optional external AVGAS fuel tanks fitted). It has a maximum speed of and a ceiling of . It is powered by a Diamond engine and can carry various payloads, such as electro-optics and infrared sensors.The primary radio link between ground station(s) occupy the 5030‐5091 MHz band. A secondary link in the UHF band would operate within 433.2125 MHz to 434.4625 MHz.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: On 12 March 2012 Schiebel announced that it successfully tested a company-developed heavy-fuel engine interchangeable with the standard Diamond engine. This heavy-fuel engine allows for the use of JP-5, Jet A-1 or JP-8 jet fuels. These fuels, which are standard on marine vessels, are safer to store and handle than gasoline.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: On 7 February 2013, Schiebel flight tested a Thales Group I-Master surveillance radar system on the Camcopter at its Wiener Neustadt, Austria, facility. The I-Master system, weighing , provides ground moving target indication and synthetic-aperture radar operations.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: The launch customer for the S-100 was the UAE Army, which ordered 40 aircraft with an option for 40 more. The aircraft was ordered by three more undisclosed nations, with total orders reaching 200.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: The Camcopter underwent sea trials on the Indian Navy's during October 2007. Flight testing occurred aboard a Pakistan Navy Type 21 frigate in the Arabian Sea on 16 March 2008, with further naval testing on 14 April 2008 on the Spanish Guardia Civil vessel "Rio Miño" off Gran Canaria.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: The German Navy conducted testing during three weeks in August and September 2008 on the s "Braunschweig" and "Magdeburg", respectively. More than 130 takeoffs were conducted, and the UAV maintained unaided on-deck stability in greater than 15° flight deck roll conditions.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: The French Navy performed test flights during September and October 2008, with a Camcopter spending four days on a barge in the Atlantic Ocean and a further three days on the frigate "Montcalm" (D642).


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: Jordan ordered two S-100s with L3Harris Wescam MX-10 EO-IR payloads in July 2010 and accepted delivery in February 2011.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: In November 2011 the Camcopter demonstrated flights from the French "L'Adroit". At the same time, the Gorizont (Horizon) Air S-100, a Russian license-built version of the UAV was successfully tested aboard the Coast Guard patrol cutter "Rubin". Russia intends to equip all s with these UAVs.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: In 2010 the Chinese Navy purchased 18 of these systems. Two years later, in May 2012, an unmanned UAV believed to be a Camcopter S-100 was photographed operating from the fantail of a Chinese Type 054A frigate.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: In April 2012, the Camcopter became the first unmanned helicopter to fly from an Italian Navy vessel when it was flight tested from the MM "Bersagliere" (F-584). In February 2014, the Italian Navy chose the S-100 as its primary unmanned aerial system for shipboard operations, where it will be used for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR). It will additionally support other activities, such as search and rescue and natural disaster recovery. They are currently assigned to the "4° Gruppo Elicotteri" (4th Helicopter Sqn.) based at the Grottaglie Naval Air Station near Taranto.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: In December 2014, the Camcopter went through a series of trials in Bizerte, Tunisia, to serve within the Tunisian Army. Schiebel selected the Italian company Leonardo to supply AESA-based SAR radar for the systems which were to enter service in 2017.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: In February 2017, the Royal Australian Navy awarded a contract to provide an unrevealed number of Camcopter systems, plus three-years support. The type is operated by 822X Squadron RAN, which is responsible for trialling UAVs.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: In 2018, the Belgian Navy conducted a weeks-long testing of the Camcopter, assessing its utility for maritime surveillance and search and rescue.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: On 10 May 2012, an Austrian engineer from Schiebel was killed and two South Korean colleagues were injured when a Camcopter S-100 crashed into their control vehicle during a test flight in the South Korean city of Incheon.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: On 25 August 2015, forces in Yemen shot down a Camcopter S-100 operated by the United Arab Emirates Army in the area of Mukayris of southern Yemen.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: On 28 August 2020, a Camcopter S-100 owned by the European Maritime Safety Agency and operated by the Croatian Ministry of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure crashed shortly after takeoff from Brač Airport, causing a fire which destroyed of macchia. No injuries were reported.


title: Schiebel Camcopter S-100

text: On 20 April 2022, It falsely claimed that the Ukrainian forces shot down a Horizon Air S-100 operated by the Russian Armed Forces using a Man-portable air-defense system. The images showed a wreckage of a Russian VM-V helicopter target (decoy) with its manufacturer АО ЦНТУ «Динамика» written on the plate.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Naturally occurring lithium (Li) is composed of two stable isotopes, lithium-6 and lithium-7, with the latter being far more abundant on Earth. Both of the natural isotopes have an unexpectedly low nuclear binding energy per nucleon ( for lithium-6 and for lithium-7) when compared with the adjacent lighter and heavier elements, helium ( for helium-4) and beryllium ( for beryllium-9). The longest-lived radioisotope of lithium is lithium-8, which has a half-life of just . Lithium-9 has a half-life of , and lithium-11 has a half-life of . All of the remaining isotopes of lithium have half-lives that are shorter than 10 nanoseconds. The shortest-lived known isotope of lithium is lithium-4, which decays by proton emission with a half-life of about (), although the half-life of lithium-3 is yet to be determined, and is likely to be much shorter, like helium-2 (diproton) which undergoes proton emission within s.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-7 and lithium-6 are two of the primordial nuclides that were produced in the Big Bang, with lithium-7 to be 10 of all primordial nuclides, and lithium-6 around 10. A small percentage of lithium-6 is also known to be produced by nuclear reactions in certain stars. The isotopes of lithium separate somewhat during a variety of geological processes, including mineral formation (chemical precipitation and ion exchange). Lithium ions replace magnesium or iron in certain octahedral locations in clays, and lithium-6 is sometimes preferred over lithium-7. This results in some enrichment of lithium-6 in geological processes.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-6 is an important isotope in nuclear physics because when it is bombarded with neutrons, tritium is produced.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-6 has a greater affinity than lithium-7 for the element mercury. When an amalgam of lithium and mercury is added to solutions containing lithium hydroxide, the lithium-6 becomes more concentrated in the amalgam and the lithium-7 more in the hydroxide solution.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: The colex (column exchange) separation method makes use of this by passing a counter-flow of amalgam and hydroxide through a cascade of stages. The fraction of lithium-6 is preferentially drained by the mercury, but the lithium-7 flows mostly with the hydroxide.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: At the bottom of the column, the lithium (enriched with lithium-6) is separated from the amalgam, and the mercury is recovered to be reused with fresh raw material. At the top, the lithium hydroxide solution is electrolyzed to liberate the lithium-7 fraction. The enrichment obtained with this method varies with the column length and the flow speed.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium is heated to a temperature of about in a vacuum. Lithium atoms evaporate from the liquid surface and are collected on a cold surface positioned a few centimetres above the liquid surface. Since lithium-6 atoms have a greater mean free path, they are collected preferentially.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: The theoretical separation efficiency is about 8.0 percent. A multistage process may be used to obtain higher degrees of separation.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-3, also known as the triproton, would consist of three protons and zero neutrons. It was reported as proton unbound in 1969, but this result was not accepted and its existence is thus unproven. No other resonances attributable to have been reported, and it is expected to decay by prompt proton emission (much like the diproton, ).


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-4 contains three protons and one neutron. It is the shortest-lived known isotope of lithium, with a half-life of () and decays by proton emission to helium-3. Lithium-4 can be formed as an intermediate in some nuclear fusion reactions.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-6 is valuable as the source material for the production of tritium (hydrogen-3) and as an absorber of neutrons in nuclear fusion reactions. Between 1.9% and 7.8% of terrestrial lithium in normal materials consists of lithium-6, with the rest being lithium-7. Large amounts of lithium-6 have been separated out for placing into thermonuclear weapons. The separation of lithium-6 has by now ceased in the large thermonuclear powers, but stockpiles of it remain in these countries.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: The deuterium–tritium fusion reaction has been investigated as a possible energy source, as it is currently the only fusion reaction with sufficient energy output for feasible implementation. In this scenario, lithium enriched in lithium-6 would be required to generate the necessary quantities of tritium. Mineral and brine lithium resources are a potential limiting factor in this scenario, but seawater can eventually also be used. Pressurized heavy-water reactors such as the CANDU produce small quantities of tritium in their coolant/moderator from neutron absorption and this is sometimes extracted as an alternative to the use of Lithium-6.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-6 is one of only three stable isotopes with a spin of 1, the others being deuterium and nitrogen-14,


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-7 is by far the most abundant isotope of lithium, making up between 92.2% and 98.1% of all terrestrial lithium. A lithium-7 atom contains three protons, four neutrons, and three electrons.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Because of its nuclear properties, lithium-7 is less common than helium, carbon, nitrogen, or oxygen in the Universe, even though the latter three all have heavier nuclei.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: The industrial production of lithium-6 results in a waste product which is enriched in lithium-7 and depleted in lithium-6. This material has been sold commercially, and some of it has been released into the environment. A relative abundance of lithium-7, as high as 35 percent greater than the natural value, has been measured in the ground water in a carbonate aquifer underneath the West Valley Creek in Pennsylvania, which is downstream from a lithium processing plant. The isotopic composition of lithium in normal materials can vary somewhat depending on its origin, which determines its relative atomic mass in the source material. An accurate relative atomic mass for samples of lithium cannot be measured for all sources of lithium.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-7 is used as a part of the molten lithium fluoride in molten salt reactors: liquid-fluoride nuclear reactors. The large neutron absorption cross section of lithium-6 (about 940 barns)


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: as compared with the very small neutron cross section of lithium-7 (about 45 millibarns) makes high separation of lithium-7 from natural lithium a strong requirement for the possible use in lithium fluoride reactors.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Some lithium-7 has been produced, for a few picoseconds, which contains a lambda particle in its nucleus, whereas an atomic nucleus is generally thought to contain only neutrons and protons.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-8 has been proposed as a source of 6.4 MeV electron antineutrinos generated by the inverse beta decay to Beryllium-8. The ISODAR particle physics collaboration describes a scheme to generated Lithium-8 for immediate decay by bombarding stable Lithium-7 with 60 MeV protons created by a cyclotron particle accelerator.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-11 is thought to possess a halo nucleus consisting of a core of three protons and eight neutrons, two of which are in a nuclear halo. It has an exceptionally large cross-section of 3.16 fm, comparable to that of . It decays by beta emission and neutron emission to , , or (see tables above and below).


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: Lithium-12 has a considerably shorter half-life. It decays by neutron emission into , which decays as mentioned above.


title: Isotopes of lithium

text: While β decay into isotopes of beryllium (often combined with single- or multiple-neutron emission) is predominant in heavier isotopes of lithium, and decay via neutron emission into and respectively due to their positions beyond the neutron drip line. Lithium-11 has also been observed to decay via multiple forms of fission. Isotopes lighter than decay exclusively by proton emission, as they are beyond the proton drip line. The decay modes of the two isomers of are unknown.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The Rwanda Defence Force (RDF, , , ) is the military of the Republic of Rwanda. The country's armed forces were originally known as the Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), but following the Rwandan Civil War of 1990–1994 and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi, the victorious Rwandan Patriotic Front (Inkotanyi) created a new organization and named it Rwandan Patriotic Army (RPA). Later, it was renamed to its current name.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: After it conquered the country in July 1994 in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide of April to July 1994, the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF) decided to split into a political division (which retained the RPF name) and a military division, which would serve as the official army of the Rwandan state.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Defence spending continues to represent an important share of the national budget, largely due to continuing security problems along Rwanda's frontiers with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Burundi, and lingering concerns about Uganda's intentions towards its former ally.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: There is an ongoing, low-level insurgency from Rwandan rebels based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, mainly the "Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda" (or FDLR).


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The RDF is regularly deployed in peacekeeping missions in Africa. Rwanda is now one of the largest contributors of personnel on UN missions.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: While Rwanda was a Belgian colony administered as a part of Ruanda-Urundi, its security was provided by the Force Publique, the colonial army of the Belgian Congo. As the Congo was due to achieve independence in 1960 and withdraw its forces, the Belgian Special Resident decided to create an indigenous army to provide for Rwanda's security. On 19 May 1960 he ordered the recruitment of a 650-strong military force to become the Garde Territoriale. The force was later renamed the Garde Nationale. The U.S. Army's "Area Handbook for Rwanda", compiled in 1968–9, describes the security forces of Rwanda in 1969 as the 2,500 strong National Guard and the National Police, about 1,200 strong.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The "Forces armées rwandaises" (FAR) was the national army of Rwanda until July 1994, when the government collapsed in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide and the war with the Rwandan Patriotic Front/(Inkotanyi). The FAR was estimated at 7,000 strong, including approximately 1,200 members of the Gendarmerie. Elite troops included the Presidential Guard, estimated at between 1,000 and 1,300 troops, as well as the Paracommando and Reconnaissance units. These two units were of battalion strength by 1994, and then counted a total of 800 troops.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: In response to the RPF invasion of 1990, the 5,000-man FAR rapidly expanded, with French training assistance (as many as 1,100 French troops were in Rwanda at a time), to some 30,000 by 1992.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The Arusha Accords, signed on August 4, 1993, laid out a detailed plan for the integration of the Rwandan Government and Rwandan Patriotic Front military forces. The Rwandan government was to provide 60% of the troops for the new integrated army, but would have to share command positions with the RPF down to the level of battalion. The new army was to consist of no more than 19,000 soldiers and 6,000 Gendarmerie. However radical elements within the Rwandan government were implacably opposed to implementation of the Accords and, instead, began the planning that would lay the foundations for the genocide.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The Reconnaissance Battalion's commander, François-Xavier Nzuwonemeye, and his subordinates played a key role during the genocide. Together with the Reconnaissance Battalion, the Paracommando Battalion under Major Aloys Ntabakuze and the Presidential Guard under Major Protais Mpiranya became the three most significant "genocidare" units.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Col. Marcel Gatsinzi was briefly named chief of staff of the Rwandan army from April 6 to April 16, 1994, but was replaced by Augustin Bizimungu, who was also promoted to major general on 18 April, since Col. Gatsinzi opposed the genocide. Bizimungu was only briefly chief of staff before fleeing the country. Many soldiers of the FAR have since been implicated by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in the genocide, including its leader during the genocide, Col. Théoneste Bagosora, who was chief of the "cabinet" (private office) of the Ministry of Defence prior to the genocide.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Many elements of the former Rwandan regime, including soldiers of the FAR, fled to eastern Zaire after the RPF victory, where they formed the Rassemblement Démocratique pour le Rwanda (RDR), which later became the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), which is still active in eastern Congo's North Kivu Province.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Circa 2000 during the Second Congo War, the Rwanda Patriotic Army unofficially admitted to having 4,000 to 8,000 troops deployed in the Congo, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, but this was believed to be a substantial understatement. The International Crisis Group estimated that the RPA has between 17,000 and 25,000 troops deployed in the Congo. In April 2001, a United Nations report on the exploitation of the Congo, said the RPA had a minimum of 25,000 troops in the Congo, an estimate the report attributes to "military specialists with a great deal of experience in the region." During the deployment on DRC, Rwandan forces fought the so-called "Six-Day War" against Ugandan forces over the city of Kisangani, leaving at least 1,000 dead.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: On 17 September 2002 the first Rwandan soldiers were withdrawn from the eastern DRC. On 5 October Rwanda announced the completion of its withdrawal; MONUC confirmed the departure of over 20,000 Rwandan soldiers.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: There is an ongoing, low-level insurgency from Rwandan rebels based in the Democratic Republic of the Congo; mainly the "Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda" (or FDLR) During early 2009 the RDF operated in eastern DRC against FDLR rebels in joint operations with the armed forces of the DRC. The initial 2009 deployment was code-named Operation Umoja Wetu. The RDF re-entered the DRC in 2009 to assist the DRC in putting down the Dongo Rebellion. These operations inside the DRC did not prevent cross-border attacks within Rwanda during late 2012, August 2013, December 2018 and December 2019.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: There has also been a small number of attacks in southern Rwanda from Burundi-based rebels. These attacks are usually blamed on the National Forces of Liberation ("Forces nationales de libération"), or FNL. The FNL is the armed wing of an externally-based opposition party: the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change, or MRCD, which was formed by Paul Rusesabagina and Callixte Nsabimana. Rusesabagina is considered by some to be a hero of the 1994 Rwandan Genocide and his actions are portrayed in the Hollywood film 'Hotel Rwanda'. Rusesabagina and Nsabimana were kidnapped and flown to Kigali, where they were arrested, in September 2020. Their trial continues. Incursions into southern Rwanda by armed members of the FNL occurred in 2018 and 2019 and, more recently, on 27 June 2020 and 23 May 2021.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The Rwanda National Congress is another opposition group reported by the Kigali Government as carrying out attacks in Rwanda. These include blame for grenade attacks in Rwanda between 2010 and 2014 that killed at least 17 people and injured over 400 others.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The RDF has deployed forces on a number of UN and AU endorsed peace support operations in Africa. Rwanda is now one of the largest contributors of personnel on UN missions. Deployments include:


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Units were deployed on year-long tours of duty between August 2004 and December 2007. The peak commitment was four battalions.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: In the first ever deployment of Rwandan personnel on a United Nations mission, a small contingent of 254 personnel was deployed for year-long tours between November 2005 and September 2010.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: This UN mission superseded the AU mission in the Darfur region of Sudan. Infantry battalions have been deployed, for year-long tours, between January 2008 and mid-2020. Starting with a peak deployed strength of four battalions, the numbers had declined by mid-2020 to two battalions.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: In April 2012 a Rwandan contingent was deployed to this UN mission in the newly independent country of South Sudan. The deployment was continuing in mid-2020, by when an aviation unit, two infantry battalions and a Regional Protection Force battalion were deployed.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: This African Union mission to the troubled Central African Republic was joined, between January and September 2014, by a Rwandan mechanised battalion.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA)


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: This UN mission superseded the AU-led mission in the Central African Republic. Rwanda provides a protection battalion in the capital of Bangui, a level two hospital in the town of Bria and, from September 2017, a battle group comprising a mechanised infantry battalion. During August 2021 the Rwandan was expanded again, when a third Rwandan infantry battalion was deployed to the CAR.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: On 9 July 2021 a 1000-strong joint Rwandan Military-Police force started deploying to northern Mozambique to assist the national security forces in combating Islamic extremists. The force was soon in action and within the month was reported to have overrun a terrorist base and inflicted casualties. The Rwandan deployment to Mozambique under a bilateral agreement pre-empted a long-planned Southern African Development Council (SADC) military operation.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Several sources, including Gérard Prunier, document U.S. aid to the RPA before the First Congo War. The officially admitted part of the training was Joint Combined Exchange Training. Prunier strongly implies the United States supplied communications equipment, vehicles, boots, and medicines to the RPA before the war began and after it broke out, delivered second-hand Warsaw Pact weapons and ammunition either directly to Goma or by airdrop along the AFDL front lines. He reports that after the war's outbreak, the U.S. Air Force had switched from using C-141 Starlifters and C-5 Galaxys to deliver the non-lethal aid to Kigali Airport and Entebbe Airport, to airdrops by C-130 Hercules aircraft.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: From July 1994 until December 1997 the RPA had six brigades, as designated in the Arusha Accords: 402nd in Kigali and Kigali Rurale Prefecture; 201st in Kibungo, Umatura, and Byumba Prefectures; 301st in Butare, Gikongoro, and Cyangugu Prefectures; 305th in Gitatama and Kibuye Prefectures; and 211th in Gisenyi and Ruhengeri Prefectures. The brigade boundaries mirrored the political administrative boundaries, which often complicated military operations. During the First Congo War the brigade headquarters remained inside Rwanda but directed operations inside the Democratic Republic of the Congo.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Jane's World Armies said in July 2009 that 'the RDF is deployed to protect the country's borders and defend against external aggression. There are four divisions, each deploying three brigades:


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: Many soldiers from the former Rwandan Armed Forces (FAR), the national army under the previous regime, have been incorporated into the RDF since 1994. This process began soon after the genocide in January 1995, when several former FAR officers were given senior positions in the new armed forces: Col. (later Gen.) Marcel Gatsinzi became the Deputy Chief of Staff of the RPA, Col. Balthazar Ndengeyinka became commander of the 305th Brigade, Lt. Col. Laurent Munyakazi took command of the 99th Battalion, and Lt. Col. (later Brig. Gen.) Emmanuel Habyarimana became an RPA Member of Parliament and Director of Training in the Ministry of Defence. Gen. Gatsinzi later became Director of Security and then Minister of Defence in 2002.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: The Rwandan Land Forces also contain a marine unit which operates on Lake Kivu. The unit utilizes several Fabio Buzzi powerboats equipped as fast attack craft, each armed with a single a single Chinese Type-85 heavy machine gun. In 2021, Rwanda deployed several of the powerboats to operate in littoral waters in the Indian Ocean as part of its deployment to support Mozambique during the Insurgency in Cabo Delgado.


title: Rwanda Defence Force

text: After achieving independence in 1962, the air arm ("Force aérienne rwandaise") was formed with Belgian help. By 1972 the first modern equipment started to arrive in the form of seven Alouette IIIs. Other deliveries included Aérospatiale Gazelle, Britten-Norman Islanders, Nord Noratlas, SOCATA Guerrier armed light planes and Eurocopter AS350 Écureuil. After fighting began between the RPA and the government in 1990 most aircraft were shot down, destroyed on the ground or crashed. Few survived.