Stochastic gradient descent (often abbreviated SGD) is an iterative method for optimizing an objective function with suitable smoothness properties (e.g. differentiable or subdifferentiable). It can be regarded as a stochastic approximation of gradient descent optimization, since it replaces the actual gradient (calculated from the entire data set) by an estimate thereof (calculated from a randomly selected subset of the data). Especially in high-dimensional optimization problems this reduces the very high computational burden, achieving faster iterations in exchange for a lower convergence rate.

While the basic idea behind stochastic approximation can be traced back to the Robbins–Monro algorithm of the 1950s, stochastic gradient descent has become an important optimization method in machine learning.

Background

Both statistical estimation and machine learning consider the problem of minimizing an objective function that has the form of a sum:

where the parameter  that minimizes  is to be estimated. Each summand function  is typically associated with the -th observation in the data set (used for training).

In classical statistics, sum-minimization problems arise in least squares and in maximum-likelihood estimation (for independent observations).  The general class of estimators that arise as minimizers of sums are called M-estimators. However, in statistics, it has been long recognized that requiring even local minimization is too restrictive for some problems of maximum-likelihood estimation. Therefore, contemporary statistical theorists often consider stationary points of the likelihood function (or zeros of its derivative, the score function, and other estimating equations).

The sum-minimization problem also arises for empirical risk minimization. In this  is the value of the loss function at -th example, and  is the empirical risk.

When used to minimize the above function, a standard (or "batch") gradient descent method would perform the following iterations:

where  is a step size (sometimes called the learning rate in machine learning).

In many cases, the summand functions have a simple form that enables inexpensive evaluations of the sum-function and the sum gradient. For example, in statistics, one-parameter exponential families allow economical function-evaluations and gradient-evaluations.

However, in other cases, evaluating the sum-gradient may require expensive evaluations of the gradients from all summand functions. When the training set is enormous and no simple formulas exist, evaluating the sums of gradients becomes very expensive, because evaluating the gradient requires evaluating all the summand functions' gradients. To economize on the computational cost at every iteration, stochastic gradient descent samples a subset of summand functions at every step. This is very effective in the case of large-scale machine learning problems.

Iterative method

In stochastic (or "on-line") gradient descent, the true gradient of  is approximated by a gradient at a single sample:

As the algorithm sweeps through the training set, it performs the above update for each training sample. Several passes can be made over the training set until the algorithm converges. If this is done, the data can be shuffled for each pass to prevent cycles. Typical implementations may use an adaptive learning rate so that the algorithm converges.

In pseudocode, stochastic gradient descent can be presented as :
 Choose an initial vector of parameters  and learning rate .
 Repeat until an approximate minimum is obtained:
 Randomly shuffle samples in the training set.
 For , do:

A compromise between computing the true gradient and the gradient at a single sample is to compute the gradient against more than one training sample (called a "mini-batch") at each step.  This can perform significantly better than "true" stochastic gradient descent described, because the code can make use of vectorization libraries rather than computing each step separately as was first shown in  where it was called "the bunch-mode back-propagation algorithm".  It may also result in smoother convergence, as the gradient computed at each step is averaged over more training samples.

The convergence of stochastic gradient descent has been analyzed using the theories of convex minimization and of stochastic approximation. Briefly, when the learning rates  decrease with an appropriate rate,
and subject to relatively mild assumptions, stochastic gradient descent converges almost surely to a global minimum
when the objective function is convex or pseudoconvex,
and otherwise converges almost surely to a local minimum.
This is in fact a consequence of the Robbins–Siegmund theorem.

Example
Suppose we want to fit a straight line  to a training set with observations  and corresponding estimated responses  using least squares. The objective function to be minimized is

The last line in the above pseudocode for this specific problem will become:

Note that in each iteration or update step, the gradient is only evaluated at a single . This is the key difference between stochastic gradient descent and batched gradient descent.

History
In 1951, Herbert Robbins and Sutton Monro introduced the earliest stochastic approximation methods, preceding stochastic gradient descent. Building on this work one year later, Jack Kiefer and Jacob Wolfowitz published an optimization algorithm very close to stochastic gradient descent, using differences as an approximation of the gradient. Later in the 1950s, Frank Rosenblatt used SGD to optimize his perceptron model, demonstrating the first applicability of stochastic gradient descent to neural networks.

Backpropagation was first described in 1986, with stochastic gradient descent being used to efficiently optimize parameters across neural networks with multiple hidden layers. Soon after, another improvement was developed: mini-batch gradient descent, where small batches of data are substituted for single samples. In 1997, the practical performance benefits from vectorization achievable with such small batches were first explored, paving the way for efficient optimization in machine learning. As of 2023, this mini-batch approach remains the norm for training neural networks, balancing the benefits of stochastic gradient descent with gradient descent.

By the 1980s, momentum had already been introduced, and was added to SGD optimization techniques in 1986. However, these optimization techniques assumed constant hyperparameters, i.e. a fixed learning rate and momentum parameter. In the 2010s, adaptive approaches to applying SGD with a per-parameter learning rate were introduced with AdaGrad (for "Adaptive Gradient") in 2011 and RMSprop (for "Root Mean Square Propagation") in 2012. In 2014, Adam (for "Adaptive Moment Estimation") was published, applying the adaptive approaches of RMSprop to momentum; many improvements and branches of Adam were then developed such as Adadelta, Adagrad, AdamW, and Adamax.

Within machine learning, approaches to optimization in 2023 are dominated by Adam-derived optimizers. TensorFlow and PyTorch, by far the most popular machine learning libraries, as of 2023 largely only include Adam-derived optimizers, as well as predecessors to Adam such as RMSprop and classic SGD. PyTorch also partially supports LBFGS, a line-search method, but only for single-device setups without parameter groups.

Notable applications
Stochastic gradient descent is a popular algorithm for training a wide range of models in machine learning, including (linear) support vector machines, logistic regression (see, e.g., Vowpal Wabbit) and graphical models. When combined with the backpropagation algorithm, it is the de facto standard algorithm for training artificial neural networks. Its use has been also reported in the Geophysics community, specifically to applications of Full Waveform Inversion (FWI).

Stochastic gradient descent competes with the L-BFGS algorithm, which is also widely used. Stochastic gradient descent has been used since at least 1960 for training linear regression models, originally under the name ADALINE.

Another stochastic gradient descent algorithm is the least mean squares (LMS) adaptive filter.

Extensions and variants
Many improvements on the basic stochastic gradient descent algorithm have been proposed and used. In particular, in machine learning, the need to set a learning rate (step size) has been recognized as problematic. Setting this parameter too high can cause the algorithm to diverge; setting it too low makes it slow to converge. A conceptually simple extension of stochastic gradient descent makes the learning rate a decreasing function  of the iteration number , giving a learning rate schedule, so that the first iterations cause large changes in the parameters, while the later ones do only fine-tuning. Such schedules have been known since the work of MacQueen on -means clustering. Practical guidance on choosing the step size in several variants of SGD is given by Spall.

Implicit updates (ISGD)
As mentioned earlier, classical stochastic gradient descent is generally sensitive to learning rate . Fast convergence requires large learning rates but this may induce numerical instability. The problem can be largely solved by considering implicit updates whereby the stochastic gradient is evaluated at the next iterate rather than the current one:

This equation is implicit since  appears on both sides of the equation. It is a stochastic form of the proximal gradient method since the update
can also be written as:

As an example,
consider least squares with features  and observations
. We wish to solve:

where   indicates the inner product.
Note that  could have "1" as the first element to include an intercept. Classical stochastic gradient descent proceeds as follows:

where  is uniformly sampled between 1 and . Although theoretical convergence of this procedure happens under relatively mild assumptions, in practice the procedure can be quite unstable. In particular, when  is misspecified so that  has large absolute eigenvalues with high probability, the procedure may diverge numerically within a few iterations. In contrast, implicit stochastic gradient descent (shortened as ISGD) can be solved in closed-form as:

This procedure will remain numerically stable virtually for all  as the learning rate is now normalized. Such comparison between classical and implicit stochastic gradient descent in the least squares problem is very similar to the comparison between least mean squares (LMS) and
normalized least mean squares filter (NLMS).

Even though a closed-form solution for ISGD is only possible in least squares, the procedure can be efficiently implemented in a wide range of models. Specifically, suppose that  depends on  only through a linear combination with features , so that we can write , where  may depend on  as well but not on  except through . Least squares obeys this rule, and so does logistic regression, and most generalized linear models. For instance, in least squares, , and in logistic regression , where  is the logistic function. In Poisson regression, , and so on.

In such settings, ISGD is simply implemented as follows. Let , where  is scalar.
Then, ISGD is equivalent to:

The scaling factor  can be found through the bisection method since
in most regular models, such as the aforementioned generalized linear models, function  is decreasing,
and thus the search bounds for  are
.

Momentum
Further proposals include the momentum method or the heavy ball method, which in ML context appeared in Rumelhart, Hinton and Williams' paper on backpropagation learning and borrowed the idea from Soviet mathematician Boris Polyak's 1964 article on solving functional equations. Stochastic gradient descent with momentum remembers the update  at each iteration, and determines the next update as a linear combination of the gradient and the previous update:

that leads to:

where the parameter  which minimizes  is to be estimated,  is a step size (sometimes called the learning rate in machine learning) and  is an exponential decay factor between 0 and 1 that determines the relative contribution of the current gradient and earlier gradients to the weight change.

The name momentum stems from an analogy to momentum in physics: the weight vector , thought of as a particle traveling through parameter space, incurs acceleration from the gradient of the loss ("force"). Unlike in classical stochastic gradient descent, it tends to keep traveling in the same direction, preventing oscillations. Momentum has been used successfully by computer scientists in the training of artificial neural networks for several decades.
The momentum method  is closely related to underdamped Langevin dynamics, and may be combined with Simulated Annealing.

In mid-1980s the method was modified by Yurii Nesterov to use the gradient predicted at the next point, and the resulting so-called Nesterov Accelerated Gradient was sometimes used in ML in the 2010s.

Averaging
Averaged stochastic gradient descent, invented independently by Ruppert and Polyak in the late 1980s, is ordinary stochastic gradient descent that records an average of its parameter vector over time. That is, the update is the same as for ordinary stochastic gradient descent, but the algorithm also keeps track of

When optimization is done, this averaged parameter vector takes the place of .

AdaGrad
AdaGrad (for adaptive gradient algorithm) is a modified stochastic gradient descent algorithm with per-parameter learning rate, first published in 2011. Informally, this increases the learning rate for sparser parameters and decreases the learning rate for ones that are less sparse. This strategy often improves convergence performance over standard stochastic gradient descent in settings where data is sparse and sparse parameters are more informative. Examples of such applications include natural language processing and image recognition.

It still has a base learning rate , but this is multiplied with the elements of a vector  which is the diagonal of the outer product matrix

where , the gradient, at iteration . The diagonal is given by

This vector essentially stores a historical sum of gradient squares by dimension and is updated after every iteration. The formula for an update is now

or, written as per-parameter updates,

Each  gives rise to a scaling factor for the learning rate that applies to a single parameter . Since the denominator in this factor,  is the ℓ2 norm of previous derivatives, extreme parameter updates get dampened, while parameters that get few or small updates receive higher learning rates.

While designed for convex problems, AdaGrad has been successfully applied to non-convex optimization.

RMSProp
RMSProp (for Root Mean Square Propagation) is a method invented in 2012 by James Martens and Ilya Sutskever, at the time both PhD students in Geoffrey Hinton's group, in which the learning rate is, like in Adagrad, adapted for each of the parameters. The idea is to divide the learning rate for a weight by a running average of the magnitudes of recent gradients for that weight. Unusually, it was not published in an article but merely described in a Coursera lecture.

So, first the running average is calculated in terms of means square,

where,  is the forgetting factor. The concept of storing the historical gradient as sum of squares is borrowed from Adagrad, but "forgetting" is introduced to solve Adagrad's diminishing learning rates in non-convex problems by gradually decreasing the influence of old data.

And the parameters are updated as,

RMSProp has shown good adaptation of learning rate in different applications. RMSProp can be seen as a generalization of Rprop and is capable to work with mini-batches as well opposed to only full-batches.

Adam
Adam (short for Adaptive Moment Estimation) is a 2014 update to the RMSProp optimizer combining it with the main feature of the Momentum method. In this optimization algorithm, running averages with exponential forgetting of both the gradients and the second moments of the gradients are used. Given parameters  and a loss function , where  indexes the current training iteration (indexed at ), Adam's parameter update is given by:

where  is a small scalar (e.g. ) used to prevent division by 0, and  (e.g. 0.9) and  (e.g. 0.999) are the forgetting factors for gradients and second moments of gradients, respectively. Squaring and square-rooting is done element-wise. The profound influence of this algorithm inspired multiple newer, less well-known momentum-based optimization schemes using Nesterov-enhanced gradients (eg: NAdam and FASFA) and varying interpretations of second-order information (eg: Powerpropagation and AdaSqrt). However, the most commonly used variants are AdaMax, which generalizes Adam using the infinity norm, and AMSGrad, which addresses convergence problems from Adam by using maximum of past squared gradients instead of the exponential average.

AdamW is a later update which mitigates an unoptimal choice of the weight decay algorithm in Adam.

Sign-based stochastic gradient descent
Even though sign-based optimization goes back to the aforementioned Rprop, only in 2018 researchers tried to simplify Adam by removing the magnitude of the stochastic gradient from being taked into account and only considering its sign.

Backtracking line search
Backtracking line search is another variant of gradient descent. All of the below are sourced from the mentioned link. It is based on a condition known as the Armijo–Goldstein condition. Both methods allow learning rates to change at each iteration; however, the manner of the change is different. Backtracking line search uses function evaluations to check Armijo's condition, and in principle the loop in the algorithm for determining the learning rates can be long and unknown in advance. Adaptive SGD does not need a loop in determining learning rates. On the other hand, adaptive SGD does not guarantee the "descent property" – which Backtracking line search enjoys – which is that  for all n. If the gradient of the cost function is globally Lipschitz continuous, with Lipschitz constant L, and learning rate is chosen of the order 1/L, then the standard version of SGD is a special case of backtracking line search.

Second-order methods
A stochastic analogue of the standard (deterministic) Newton–Raphson algorithm (a "second-order" method) provides an asymptotically optimal or near-optimal form of iterative optimization in the setting of stochastic approximation. A method that uses direct measurements of the Hessian matrices of the summands in the empirical risk function was developed by Byrd, Hansen, Nocedal, and Singer. However, directly determining the required Hessian matrices for optimization may not be possible in practice. Practical and theoretically sound methods for second-order versions of SGD that do not require direct Hessian information are given by Spall and others. (A less efficient method based on finite differences, instead of simultaneous perturbations, is given by Ruppert.) Another approach to the approximation Hessian matrix is replacing it with the Fisher information matrix, which transforms usual gradient to natural. These methods not requiring direct Hessian information are based on either values of the summands in the above empirical risk function or values of the gradients of the summands (i.e., the SGD inputs). In particular, second-order optimality is asymptotically achievable without direct calculation of the Hessian matrices of the summands in the empirical risk function.

Approximations in continuous time
For small learning rate  stochastic gradient descent  can be viewed as a discretization of the gradient flow ODE

subject to additional stochastic noise. This approximation is only valid on a finite time-horizon in the following sense: assume that all the coefficients   are sufficiently smooth. Let  and  be a sufficiently smooth test function. Then, there exists a constant  such that for all

where  denotes taking the expectation with respect to the random choice of indices in the stochastic gradient descent scheme.

Since this approximation does not capture the random fluctuations around the mean behavior of stochastic gradient descent solutions to stochastic differential equations (SDEs) have been proposed as limiting objects. More precisely, the solution to the SDE

for  where  denotes the Ito-integral with respect to a Brownian motion is a more precise approximation in the sense that there exists a constant  such that

However this SDE only approximates the one-point motion of stochastic gradient descent. For an approximation of the stochastic flow one has to consider SDEs with infinite-dimensional noise.

Notes

See also
Backtracking line search
 Coordinate descent – changes one coordinate at a time, rather than one example
 Linear classifier
 Online machine learning
 Stochastic hill climbing
 Stochastic variance reduction

References

Further reading

External links
 Using stochastic gradient descent in C++, Boost, Ublas for linear regression
 Machine Learning Algorithms

  Interactive paper explaining momentum.

Stochastic optimization
Computational statistics
Gradient methods
M-estimators
Machine learning algorithms
Convex optimization
Statistical approximations

Stochastic gradient descent


Cycas aculeata is a species of cycad in the genus Cycas, native to Vietnam, where it is endemic to a single site on the south slopes of the Hai Van Pass.

It has a short subterranean stem 15–18 cm diameter, which bears 6-23 leaves. The leaves are 1.8-2.5 m long, and pinnate, with 100-150 leaflets and several basal spines; they are glossy dark green, but covered in orange pubescence at first which soon wears off. The leaflets are 35–52 cm long and 13–19 mm wide, and the basal spines .

The name derives from the Latin aculeatus, which translates as "prickly", indeed has short prominent spikes along the petiole (the leaf stalk). The stems are usually to slightly emergent, with trunk 6 inches in diameter. Emergent leaves are bright orange, and turn dark green with age, somewhat similar to Zamia integrifolia by coincidence.

The male cones are solitary, 15–20 cm long and 4–6 cm diameter; the female cones are undescribed.

Habitat
This cycad is one of a number of related subterranean species native to SE Asia. It is most closely related to Cycas balansae, little is known about this cycad. It grows in deep loam over granite in the inner forests of Vietnam. During the Vietnam war, herbicide spraying and mass bombings may have severely upset the plant's native habitat and may have killed many of the plants.

References

Cycad Pages: Cycas aculeata

aculeata
Endemic flora of Vietnam
Taxa named by Tiên Hiêp Nguyên
Taxa named by Ken Hill (botanist)

Cycas aculeata


Vientiane () is the capital city of Laos and the city with the largest number of people. It is in the Mekong Valley and over two hundred thousand people live in its central area.

It is on the Laos-Thailand border, being kept apart by the Mekong River. In other words, if one crossed the river from Vientiane, he/she would enter Thailand. The city is close to the First Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, an bridge that is also a border crossing and port between Thailand and Laos.

Even though it is the country's most populated city, many travelers to the city have said that Vientiane feels like a small town.

Popular tourist sites of the city include the Patuxai Monument, the Lao Textile Museum, the Pha That Luang stupa, the Buddha Park, and Haw Phra Kaew.

The city has one of three universities in the entire country, the National University of Laos.

Despite being the country's most populated city, many international companies do not exist in Laos. There is no McDonald's, Burger King, KFC, 7-Eleven, or Grab throughout the entire country. However, international companies like Big C, Chester's Chicken, and Texas Chicken do exist in Vientiane. Starbucks opened its first store in the country at the Parkson Mall in 2022.

Vientiane


The giant impact hypothesis is that the Moon was created out of the debris from a collision between the young Earth and a Mars-sized protoplanet. This is the favoured scientific hypothesis for the formation of the Moon.

Evidence for this hypothesis comes from Moon samples which show that:
the surface of the Moon was once molten
the Moon's apparently relatively small iron core and a lower density than the Earth, and
evidence of similar collisions in other star systems (which result in 'debris disks')

The colliding body is sometimes called Theia for the mythical Greek Titan who was the mother of Selene, the goddess of the moon.

There are several unanswered issues with this hypothesis. Lunar oxygen isotopic ratios are essentially identical to Earth, with no evidence of a contribution from another solar body. Also, lunar samples do not have expected ratios of volatile elements, iron oxide, or siderophilic elements (chemical elements which bond with iron), and there is no evidence that the Earth ever had the magma ocean implied by the hypothesis.

Context
The Earth's relatively large natural satellite, the Moon, is unique. During the Apollo program, rocks from the Moon's surface were brought to Earth. Radiometric dating of these rocks has shown the Moon to be 4527 ±10 million years old, about 30 to 55 million years younger than other bodies in the Solar System. New evidence suggests the Moon formed even later, 4.48 ±0.02 Ga (billion years ago), or 70–110 Ma (million years ago) after the start of the Solar System.

Another notable feature is the relatively low density of the Moon, which must mean it does not have a large metallic core, which other terrestrial bodies in the solar system have. The Moon has a bulk composition closely resembling the Earth's mantle and crust together, without the Earth's core. This has led to the giant impact hypothesis: the idea that the Moon was formed during a giant impact of the proto-Earth with another protoplanet.

The impactor, sometimes called Theia, is thought to have been a little smaller than the planet Mars. Theia collided with Earth about 4.533 Ga. Models show that if an impactor this size struck the proto-Earth at a low angle and relatively low speed (), much material from the mantles (and proto-crusts) of the proto-Earth and the impactor was ejected into space. Much of it stayed in orbit around the Earth. This material would eventually form the Moon.

However, the metallic cores of the impactor would have sunk through the Earth's mantle to fuse with the Earth's core, depleting the Moon of metallic material. The giant impact hypothesis thus explains the Moon's abnormal composition. The ejecta in orbit around the Earth could have condensed into a single body within weeks. Under the influence of its own gravity, the ejected material became a more spherical body: the Moon.

The radiometric ages show the Earth existed already for at least 10 million years before the impact, enough time to allow for differentiation of the Earth's primitive mantle and core. Then, when the impact occurred, only material from the mantle was ejected, leaving the Earth's core of heavy elements untouched.

Consequences
The impact had some important consequences for the young Earth. It released an enormous amount of energy, causing both the Earth and Moon to be completely molten. Immediately after the impact, the Earth's mantle was vigorously convecting, the surface was a large magma ocean. The planet's first atmosphere must have been completely blown away by the enormous amount of energy released. The impact is also thought to have changed Earth's axis to produce the large 23.5° axial tilt that is responsible for Earth's seasons (a simple, ideal model of the planets' origins would have axial tilts of 0° with no recognizable seasons). The impact may also have sped up Earth's rotation.

Recent evidence
Analysis of lunar rock brought back by Apollo astronauts appears to show traces of Theia. The researchers claim this confirms the theory that the Moon was created by a cataclysmic collision. Some scientists are surprised that the difference between the Theian material found in the Moon rock and the Earth is so small.

Related pages
Catastrophism

References

Moon
Earth sciences
Hadean

Giant impact hypothesis


Lords of Dogtown: Music from the Motion Picture is the 2005 soundtrack album for the movie Lords of Dogtown.

Track listing
"Death or Glory" by Social Distortion (The Clash cover)
"Hair of the Dog" by Nazareth
"I Just Want to Make Love to You" by Foghat
"Fox on the Run" by Sweet
"Motor City Madhouse" by Ted Nugent
"Turn to Stone" by Joe Walsh
"One Way Out" by The Allman Brothers Band
"Fire" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
"Space Truckin'" by Deep Purple
"Success" by Iggy Pop
"Suffragette City" by David Bowie
"Iron Man" by Black Sabbath
"Nervous Breakdown" by Rise Against (Black Flag cover)
"20th Century Boy" by T.Rex
"Maggie May" by Rod Stewart
"Wish You Were Here" by Sparklehorse & Thom Yorke (Pink Floyd cover)

Songs that were featured in the movie but not on the soundtrack album
"Half-Breed" by Cher
"Cat Scratch Fever" by Ted Nugent
"Old Man" by Neil Young
"Voodoo Chile" by The Jimi Hendrix Experience
"Steppin' Razor" by Peter Tosh
"Daydream" by Robin Trower
"Loose" by The Stooges
"Jackie Blue" by Ozark Mountain Daredevils
"Long Way to Go" by Alice Cooper
"Shambala" by Three Dog Night
"Sidewalk Surfin'" by Jan & Dean
"Walking in Rhythm" by The Blackbyrds
"The Red and the Black" by Blue Öyster Cult
"Mongoloid" by Devo
"Too High" by Stevie Wonder
"Brandy (You're a Fine Girl)" by Looking Glass
"Super Stupid" by Funkadelic
"Crash Course in Brain Surgery" by Budgie
"Fire" by Ohio Players
"Stay With Me" by Faces
"T.V. Eye" by The Stooges
"Strange Brew" by Cream
"Also Sprach Zarathustra" by Eumir Deodato
"Solitary Confinement" by The Weirdos
"Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day (featured only in the movie trailer)
"No Reason by Sum 41 (featured only in TV commercials for the movie)

References

Biographical film soundtracks
2005 soundtrack albums
Geffen Records soundtracks
Rock soundtracks


The Royal Norwegian Navy is the branch of the Norwegian Armed Forces responsible for naval operations of Norway. In 2008, the Royal Norwegian Navy had about 3,700 people and 70 ships and boats, including 4 heavy frigates, 6 submarines, 14 patrol boats, 4 minesweepers, 4 minehunters, 1 mine detection vessel, 4 support vessels and 2 training vessels. It also includes the Coast Guard.

There has been a navy since 955.  From 1509 to 1814 the navy was for both Denmark and Norway.  The seperate Norwegian navy was started again in 1814.

Norway was neutral during World War I, but the armed forces had to protect Norway's neutrality. The neutrality was sorely tested – the commercial fleet suffered heavy casualties to German U-boats and commerce raiders.

The Battle of Narvik, one of the first sea battles of World War II began on April 8, 1940. On June 7, 1940, thirteen ships, five aircraft and 500 men from the Royal Norwegian Navy followed the King of Norway to the United Kingdom and continued the fight from bases there until the war ended. They took part in the Normandy Invasion in 1944.

Organizations based in Norway
Navies

Royal Norwegian Navy


Nicholas Tate is a historian who was educated at Balliol College, University of Oxford, and at the universities of Bristol and Liverpool and until July 2011 was the Director-General of the International School of Geneva, Switzerland. Tate is known to be vocal in his education philosophy and is a fierce critic of undue reliance on standardised testing.

History
Following a career in schools and teacher training institutions in England and Scotland, and in school examining, Tate joined England's National Curriculum Council in 1989 at the time of the establishment of the English national curriculum, and for the next 11 years worked for a succession of public bodies charged with the administration of England's school curriculum, assessment and qualifications systems.

From 1994 to 1997 he was chief executive of the School Curriculum and Assessment Authority and from 1997 to 2000 chief executive of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (the bureau was renamed in 1997). In both of these positions he was the chief curriculum and qualifications adviser to the Secretary of State for Education. During this period he courted controversy with his attacks on cultural relativism and on its perceived influence on other educationalists' philosophy.

From 2000 to 2003 (the shortest time in office since 1467) he was headmaster of Winchester College, one of England's leading independent boarding schools. In 2003 he was appointed Director-General of the International School of Geneva and from 2011 to 2013 he was Chairman of International Education Systems (IES). He was Chairman of Trustees of Richmond, The American International University in London 2017–19. Recent publications include 'What is education for?' (2015) and 'The conservative case for education. Against the current' (2017).

He was appointed CBE in 2001 for services to education and training.

References

Further reading
 IBO.org profile
 June, 2001 BBC News Article

Living people
Year of birth missing (living people)
English educational theorists
Alumni of Balliol College, Oxford
Headmasters of Winchester College

Nicholas Tate


Isaiah Kwaku Osei-Duah is a Ghanaian politician and was a member of the first parliament of the second Republic of Ghana. He represented the Asutifi constituency under the membership of the progress party (PP).

Early life and education
Osei-Duah was born in 1933. He attended Surveyors School Accra and Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST). He holds certificates in Land Surveying and Estate Management. He later worked as a Surveyor, Farmer and Trader before going into parliament.

Politics
Osei-Duah) began his political career in 1969 when he became the parliamentary candidate for the Progress Party (PP) to represent the  Asutifi Constituency prior to the commencement of the 1969 Ghanaian parliamentary election.

He was sworn into the First Parliament of the Second Republic of Ghana on 1 October 1969, after being pronounced winner at the 1969 Ghanaian election held on 26 August 1969. His tenure of office as a member of parliament ended on 13 January 1972.

Personal life
Osei-Duah is a Christian.

References

Ghanaian MPs 1969–1972
1933 births
Living people
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology alumni
People from Brong-Ahafo Region
Progress Party (Ghana) politicians
Ghanaian farmers
Surveyors
20th-century Ghanaian politicians

Isaiah Kwaku Osei-Duah


Metaphycus helvolus is a species of parasitic wasp in the family Encyrtidae native to South Africa. It is a parasitoid of soft scale insects and has been used in their biological control in California and Australia.

Description
Metaphycus helvolus is a tiny insect, the adult female being yellowish-orange and about  long.

Ecology
The adult female Metaphycus helvolus seeks out suitable scale hosts. Its most important host is Mediterranean black scale (Saissetia oleae), but it also parasitises brown soft scale (Coccus hesperidum), nigra scale (Parasaissetia nigra), hemispherical scale (Saissetia coffeae) and European fruit lecanium (Parthenolecanium corni). Choosing a first instar to early third instar nymph, it punctures the cuticle with its ovipositor and lays an egg inside. This process takes several minutes, and is more likely to be successfully completed where there are no ants tending the scale insects. The wasp larva develops inside the scale nymph, killing it in the process, and emerges through a round hole that it chews. The wasp has several generations per year in mild climates, which is a faster reproduction rate than that of black scale. Adult wasps also feed on scale insect nymphs, puncturing them and consuming the liquid that exudes from the pierced hole.

Use in biological control
The black scale is a serious pest of citrus in the Mediterranean region, East Africa, California, Mexico, Chile and Australia; in 1926 it was estimated to be causing over two million dollars-worth of damage in California each year. When M. helvolus was introduced into the state in 1937, it reduced black scale dramatically so that within four years, less than 1% of the citrus plantations had economically damaging populations of the scale insect. Following this success, the wasp was introduced into South Australia in 1942 and was effective in reducing the scale on citrus in Australia to the status of a minor pest.

References

Encyrtinae
Biological pest control wasps
Hymenoptera of Australia
Hymenoptera of Europe
Hymenoptera of North America
Insects described in 1926

Metaphycus helvolus


Clayton Graham Blackmore (born 23 September 1964) is a Welsh former international footballer. He was a combative player known for his attacking free kicks and a utility player who excelled in defence, but could play equally well in midfield.

Blackmore began his professional career at Manchester United in 1982, having progressed through the club's youth ranks. After twelve years and 186 league appearances, he switched to Middlesbrough on a free transfer, and made 53 league appearances in five years, whilst also having a brief loan spell at Bristol City in 1996. Having left Middlesbrough in 1999, he had short spells at Barnsley, Notts County and Leigh RMI over the next couple of seasons, before a much longer stint at Bangor City commenced in 2000. He left Bangor City in 2006 (after a brief stint as player-manager), having made 176 league appearances for the club, and, after spending a season with Porthmadog (where he was also player-manager), switched to Neath Athletic in 2007, where he made a further 22 league appearances before retiring in 2010. Internationally, Blackmore won 39 caps for Wales between 1985 and 1997.

Club career

Manchester United
He joined Manchester United as an associated schoolboy at the age of 14, and was an FA Youth Cup finalist in 1982.

He was given his debut for United on 16 May 1984 by manager Ron Atkinson, in their 2–0 league defeat against Nottingham Forest at the City Ground. He made a solitary league appearance the following season, although in 1985–86 he scored three goals in 12 league games, but he did not get a serious run in the side until the 1987–88 season, by which time Alex Ferguson was United's manager, when he played 22 league games and scored three goals. 1988–89 saw Blackmore enjoy even more first team opportunities as he played 28 times in the league.

He made 35 League appearances for United in 1990–91, and 33 in 1991–92.

He was part of the 1990 FA Cup winning side and the following year, he won a European Cup Winners' Cup medal with United. He was United's regular left-back in the 1990–91 season, but when Paul Parker signed in the close season, Denis Irwin was switched to left-back and Blackmore returned to his familiar pattern of alternating between different positions, although he did enjoy a good run at right-back when Parker was injured.

Blackmore collected an FA Premier League title medal in 1992–93, although he was no longer a regular player at the club, often coming on as a substitute or standing in as a full-back or on the flanks on the few occasions he did start a game. A succession of injuries meant that he was unable to play in the 1993–94 season, and competition throughout the team was growing.

In the days of 1–11 numbering of shirts (with players not being assigned the same shirt number for every game of the season), Blackmore's versatility meant that he wore every shirt number from 2 to 11, as well as some of the shirt numbers from 12 to 16 as a substitute. He was assigned with the number 15 when squad numbers were introduced by the FA Premier League for the 1993–94 season, but did not play any first team games that season.

Middlesbrough
He joined Middlesbrough on a free transfer for the 1994–95 season after spending more than a decade at Old Trafford. He was signed by newly appointed player-manager Bryan Robson, who had just headed to Teesside from United. He helped them win promotion to the Premier League as Division One champions in his first season on Teesside, playing in 30 League games and scoring two goals. He also appeared in Middlesbrough's 1997 FA Cup Final defeat by Chelsea. Whilst at Boro he had a loan spell with Bristol City.

Later career
He later had brief spells with Barnsley and at Notts County. Later he moved into non-league football with Leigh RMI and Bangor City.

On 3 September 2018, Blackmore joined the coaching staff of the Dynamo Brest Academy He left the club in summer 2019.

International career
He won 39 caps for Wales. He made his senior debut for the national side on 26 February 1985, in a 1–1 friendly draw with Norway, and his final appearance for the Welsh side came on 29 March 1997.

Honours
Manchester United
Premier League: 1992–93
FA Cup: 1989–90
FA Charity Shield: 1990 (shared)
European Cup Winners' Cup: 1990–91
European Super Cup: 1991

Middlesbrough
Football League First Division: 1994–95

Leigh RMI
Peter Swales Shield: 1999–2000

Individual
 Welsh Premier League Team of the Year: 2004–05

References

External links
Wales stats at 11v11

1964 births
Living people
Footballers from Neath
Welsh men's footballers
Wales men's under-21 international footballers
Wales men's international footballers
Premier League players
English Football League players
Men's association football utility players
Manchester United F.C. players
Middlesbrough F.C. players
Bristol City F.C. players
Barnsley F.C. players
Notts County F.C. players
Leigh Genesis F.C. players
Cymru Premier players
Welsh football managers
Cymru Premier managers
Bangor City F.C. players
Porthmadog F.C. players
Bangor City F.C. managers
Porthmadog F.C. managers
Neath F.C. players
Men's association football fullbacks
Men's association football midfielders

Clayton Blackmore


Crate training is the process of training a pet to tolerate confinement in a dog crate or cage. Crate advocates often claim that dogs are "den-dwelling" animals and that a crate can become a "den" substitute and a familiar and safe location for the pet.  Most puppies can eventually tolerate crate training if it is introduced properly. The initial stress from being confined can give way to "increased feelings of security, safety, and comfort" after repeated exposure to the crate. Long-term or excessive crate confinement "may lead to emotional and behavioral deterioration over time." On the other hand, if properly done, crate training can play a major role in housebreaking a dog as fast as possible. Although confining a dog in a crate or cage restricts its movement and freedom, crate training can help dogs gain full bowel and bladder control while enjoying treats and comfort. If crate training is not taken seriously, the dog may start soiling around the house.

Rationale
Proponents of crate training argue that dogs are den animals and that the crate acts as a substitute for a den. While this is a widely held belief, there is little evidence to support it. Borchelt (1984) states:

The average dog book refers to dogs as "den dwelling" animals and presumes that confining imparts a feeling of security to a puppy. Dogs, in fact, are not den dwelling animals, although in a variety of canids the dam will construct a nest (often underground) for the pups. The nest is a defense against predators and protection against inclement weather. The pups use it as a "home base" from which they explore, investigate and play. There is no door on the den which encloses the pups for many hours.

Nevertheless, a dog can learn to tolerate confinement in a crate and accept it as a place of comfort and safety. The Humane Society of America recommends crate training to create a place of security and comfort for a dog, while cautioning that it is not the best solution to animal behavior problems.

Crate training may also reduce stress and anxiety in a dog that later requires confinement in a crate when visiting a vet, when traveling, during recuperation from an injury, and when confinement is necessary to protect your dog while you are away for short periods of time.

Crate selection

It is important to pick a crate that is the correct size for the pet and is appropriate for its purpose. Often larger crates come with some sort of divider so that a crate can grow with the pet. The correct size for a crate is just enough room for the animal to stand up without hitting their head, lay down and stretch out their paws and to turn around unimpeded. When using a crate in the home, make sure the crate is placed in a location that is comfortable. Avoid drafty areas near doors or windows, areas in the direct sunlight (which may become excessively hot), or areas adjacent to a radiator or heat source.

A crate for use at home can be larger than one used for travel. Crates used for international transport should adhere to international regulations stipulated by IATA. If the crate is too big the pet will be able to use one end for rest and sleep while using the other as a toilet, which will undermine one of the purposes of crate training.

A dog's natural instinct is to relieve themselves outside of the area in which they eat and sleep. So if a crate is small enough that they cannot possibly defecate while having enough room to sleep well away from it, a dog will 'hold it' as long as they possibly can. It is this instinct that facilitates using a crate as an aid for house training.

During air travel, an oversized cage does not permit the pet to use the sides easily as a brace during turbulence. Likewise, crates that are too small pose a health risk by restricting and preventing proper air flow and ventilation. This is of particular concern to domestic pets of a brachycephalic (short-headed) breed where the requirement is to allow extra room due to the high incidence of death in these pets during transport. Due to their shortened airways and limited ability to cool themselves through panting, overheating while traveling poses a risk to the health of such breeds.

Training
When crate training, it is important to use a training approach that is recommended by a reputable vet, trainer, breeder or a trusted training book.

Crate training is often practiced with new puppies as a method of house-training. Puppies naturally do not want to dirty the place where they sleep, so they will try as much as possible to hold it while they are in their crate. Of course, young puppies can not control their bladders for long: about one hour for every month of age. Owners of young dogs will have to continue to take the puppy outside frequently. The crate is the only space in the entire house that truly belongs to the dog, and if used appropriately, will become a safe haven for years to come.

Locking the dog in a crate and letting it whine, bark and attempt to escape is common but such attempts to introduce crate training may cause a negative association with crating. The dog should become slowly accustomed to the crate. This can involve making a crate an inviting place by placing small familiar toys inside, moving the pet bed into crate, leaving unwashed items of the owner's clothing inside, rewarding pets for entering the crate and remaining inside, incorporating the crate as part of play, feeding the pet in the crate, allowing the pet to explore and use the crate until it is no longer intimidating, and eventually building to the pet sleeping in the crate overnight.

Part of proper crate or cage training requires that the pet owner observe calm and relaxed behavior around the crate. The pet will attribute any emotional responses such as raised voices or other nervous behaviors to the foreign object in their normal environment. It is important for the owner not to create any negative associations with the cage in order for the pet to accept the crate in a calm manner.

Adverse effects
Without proper conditioning, dogs may vocalize their distress and make efforts to escape the crates. Crating suppresses the dog's behavior, removes the dog's freedom of movement and is a negative punishment (removal of reward) under operant conditioning. Dogs who do not react well to negative punishment may find crating highly stressful. Long term or excessive crate confinement "may lead to emotional and behavioral deterioration over time." To the extent that crating reduces the amount of exposure to different environmental and social situations, it can make dogs more reactive (fearful or aggressive) or intolerant of novel situations. Crating "may significantly exacerbate the distress and emotional reactivity associated with separation distress". Behavioral problems that compels owners to crate train in the first place, may be exacerbated by the negative effects of crating.

A dog may form a strong attachment to the crate eventually, feeling comfort and safety, after the initial feeling of distress and vulnerability. One dog behaviorist has compared this behavioral effect to Stockholm syndrome. Dogs that are trained to sleep in a crate, when allowed to sleep in a bedroom, can show signs consistent with that of separation distress, suggesting that dogs may love their crate "perhaps in some cases more than they love the owner." This bond with the crate may interfere with the human-animal bond and exacerbate bond-related behavior problems such as separation distress and owner-directed aggression.

Steven Lindsay in Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training states that while "the role of crate confinement in the etiology of behavior problems has not been scientifically established [...] empirical impressions and logic dictate that it probably plays an important role in the development or exacerbation of many adjustment problems." He argues that "the widespread practice of routinely caging a dog at night and then again during the day for periods totaling 16 to 18 hours (or more) is an extremely problematic practice that should not be condoned or encouraged, because it probably underlies the development of many adjustment problems, including aggression." The purpose of crate training, he says, "should be to get the dog out of the crate as soon as possible, and to use the crate as little as possible in the service of training and space-management objectives."

Legislation
In Sweden, regulations forbid keeping dogs in cages or other enclosures below a certain size. Exceptions are made for some situations, such as during travels or at dog shows/trials. Even then, the dogs have to be walked every two hours or three hours. The size required for an enclosure to be exempt from such regulations starts at —about the area of a single/twin mattress—for a small dog and up to  for a large dog. Similar regulations exist in Finland.

References

Dog training and behavior

Crate training


Nawab (Balochi, Pashto: نواب; ; ; ; Punjabi : ਨਵਾਬ; Persian, Punjabi , Sindhi, Urdu: ), also spelled Nawaab, Navaab, Navab, Nowab, Nabob, Nawaabshah, Nawabshah or Nobab, is a royal title indicating a sovereign ruler, often of a South Asian state, in many ways comparable to the western title of Prince. The relationship of a Nawab to the Emperor of India has been compared to that of the Kings of Saxony to the German Emperor. In earlier times the title was ratified and bestowed by the reigning Mughal emperor to semi-autonomous Muslim rulers of subdivisions or princely states in the Indian subcontinent loyal to the Mughal Empire, for example the Nawabs of Bengal.

"Nawab" usually refers to males and literally means Viceroy; the female equivalent is "Begum" or "Nawab Begum". The primary duty of a Nawab was to uphold the sovereignty of the Mughal emperor along with the administration of a certain province.

The title of "nawabi" was also awarded as a personal distinction by the paramount power, similar to a British peerage, to persons and families who ruled a princely state for various services to the Government of India. In some cases, the titles were also accompanied by jagir grants, either in cash revenues and allowances or land-holdings. During the British Raj, some of the chiefs, or sardars, of large or important tribes were also given the title, in addition to traditional titles already held by virtue of chieftainship.

The term "Zamindari" was originally used for the subahdar (provincial governor) or viceroy of a subah (province) or regions of the Mughal Empire.

History

Nawab was a Hindustani term, used in Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Pashto and many other North-Indian languages, borrowed via Persian from the Arabic honorific plural of naib, or "deputy." In some areas, especially Bengal, the term is pronounced nobab. This later variation has also entered English and other foreign languages as nabob.

The term nawaab is often used to refer to any Muslim ruler in north or south India while the term nizam is preferred for a senior official; it literally means "governor of region". The Nizam of Hyderabad had several nawabs under him: Nawabs of Cuddapah, Sira, Rajahmundry, Kurnool, Chicacole, et al. Nizam was his personal title, awarded by the Mughal Government and based on the term nazim as meaning "senior officer". Nazim is still used for a district collector in many parts of India. The term nawab is still technically imprecise, as the title was also awarded to Hindus and Sikhs, as well, and large zamindars and not necessarily to all Muslim rulers. With the decline of that empire, the title, and the powers that went with it, became hereditary in the ruling families in the various provinces.

Under later British rule, nawabs continued to rule various princely states of Amb, Bahawalpur, Balasinor, Baoni, Banganapalle, Bhopal, Cambay, Jaora, Junagadh, Kurnool (the main city of Deccan), Kurwai, Mamdot, Multan, Palanpur, Pataudi, Radhanpur, Rampur, Malerkotla, Sachin, and Tonk. Other former rulers bearing the title, such as the nawabs of Bengal and Awadh, had been deprived by the British or others by the time the Mughal dynasty finally ended in 1857.

Some princes became nawab by promotion. For example, the ruler of Palanpur was "diwan" until 1910, then "nawab sahib". Other nawabs were promoted are restyled to another princely style, or to and back, such as in Rajgarh a single rawat (rajah) went by nawab.

The style for a nawab's queen is begum. Most of the nawab dynasties were male primogenitures, although several ruling Begums of Bhopal were a notable exception.

Before the incorporation of the Subcontinent into the British Empire, nawabs ruled the kingdoms of Awadh (or Oudh, encouraged by the British to shed the Mughal suzerainty and assume the imperial style of Badshah), Bengal, Arcot and Bhopal.

Ruling nawab families

Nawabi dynasties acceding to India

 Nawab of Akbarpur - Asmatara Farida Begum
 Nawab Mir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur, the 7th Nizam of Hyderabad
 Nawab of Ashwath
 Nawab Babi of Balasinor
 Nawab of Banganapalle, previously Masulipatam
 Nawab of Baoni
 Nawab of Basai, Nawab Khwaja Muhammad Khan
 Nawab of Berar styled Mirza of Berar (title held by the heir to the Nizam of Hyderabad)
 Nawab of Bhikampur and Datawali
 Nawab of Bhopal (female rulers were known as Nawab Begum)
 Nawabs of Cambay
 the former Nawabs of the Carnatic, restyled Princes of Arcot
 Nawab of Dujana
 Nawab of Farrukhabad
 Nawab of Jaora
 Nawab Sahib of Junagadh
 Nawab of Malerkotla
 Nawab of Muhammadgarh
 Nawab Sahib of Palanpur (Diwan until 1910)
Nawab of Awadh
 Nawab of Pathari
 Nawab of Radhanpur
 Nawab of Rampur
 Nawab of Sachin
 Nawab of Sardhana
 Nawab of Tonk, India
 Nawab of Ghazipur

Nawabi dynasties in India abolished before independence
 Nawab of Kurwai
 Nawab of Pataudi
 Nawab of Savanur
 Nawab of Mamdot
 Nawab of Tarakote State
 Nawab of Farukhnagar
 Nawab of Jhajjar
 Nawab of Surat
 Nawab of Mohna

Nawabi dynasties acceding to Pakistan

 Nawab of Kalabagh
 Nawab of Amb
 Nawab of Bahawalpur
 Nawab of Dir
 Nawab Sahib of Junagadh
 Nawab of Kharan
 Nawab of Maler Kotla
 Nawab of Jogezai
 Nawab of Bugti
 Nawab of Marri (tribe)

Nawabi dynasties acceding to Bangladesh

 Nawab of Bengal
 Nawab of Dhaka
 Nawab of Longla (Sylhet)

Former dynasties which became political pensioners
 Padshah-i-Oudh, formerly Nawab Wazir of Awadh,
 also imperial Wazir of all Mughal India, both hereditary
 Nawabs of Bengal, as Nawabs of Murshidabad
 Nawab of Marauli
 Nawab of Patna
 Nawab of Surat
 Nawab of Longla (Sylhet)

Rohilla Confederation

All of these states were at some point under the authority of the Nawab of Rohilkhand, later made the Nawab of Rampur. Most of these states were annexed at the close of the First Rohilla War.
 Nawab of Badaun
 Nawab of Moradabad
 Nawab of Bareilly
 Nawab of Najibabad
 Nawab of Philibit
 Nawab of Farrukhabad
 Nawab of Bisollee

Miscellaneous nawabs

Personal nawabs

The title nawab was also awarded as a personal distinction by the paramount power, similarly to a British peerage, to persons and families who never ruled a princely state. For the Muslim elite various Mughal-type titles were introduced, including nawab. Among the noted British creations of this type were Nawab Hashim Ali Khan (1858–1940), Nawab Khwaja Abdul Ghani (1813–1896), Nawab Abdul Latif (1828–1893), Nawab Faizunnesa Choudhurani (1834–1904), Nawab Ali Chowdhury (1863–1929), Nawaab Syed Shamsul Huda (1862–1922), Nawab Sirajul Islam (1848–1923), Nawab Alam yar jung Bahadur, M.A, Madras, B.A., B.C.L., Barr-At-Law (1890–1974). There also were the Nawabs of Dhanbari, Nawabs of Ratanpur, Nawabs of Baroda and such others.

Nawab as a court rank

Nawab was also the rank title—again not an office—of a much lower class of Muslim nobles—in fact retainers—at the court of the Nizam of Hyderabad and Berar State, ranking only above Khan Bahadur and Khan, but under (in ascending order) Jang, Daula, Mulk, Umara and Jah; the equivalent for Hindu courtiers was Raja Bahadur.

Related titles

Nawabzada

This style, adding the Persian suffix -zada which means son (or other male descendants; see other cases in prince), etymologically fits a nawab's sons, but in actual practice various dynasties established other customs.

For example, in Bahawalpur only the nawbab's heir apparent used nawabzada before his personal name, then Khan Abassi, finally Wali Ahad Bahadur (an enhancement of Wali Ehed), while the other sons of the ruling nawab used the style sahibzada before the personal name and only Khan Abassi behind. "Nawabzadi" implies daughters of the reigning nawbab.

Elsewhere, there were rulers who were not styled nawbab yet awarded a title nawabzada to others.

Naib (Ottoman, Iranian, Arabic title)

The word naib () has been historically used to refer to any suzerain leader, feudatory, or regent in some parts of the Ottoman Empire, successive early modern Persianate kingdoms (Safavids, etc.), and in the eastern Caucasus (e.g. during Caucasian Imamate). In the Sultanate of Morocco, the Naib was the Sultan's emissary to the foreign legations in Tangier between 1848 and 1923, when the creation of the Tangier International Zone led to its replacement by the office of the Mendoub.

Today, the word is used to refer to directly elected legislators in lower houses of parliament in many Arabic-speaking areas to contrast them against officers of upper houses (or Shura). The term Majlis al-Nuwwab (, literally council of deputies) has been adopted as the name of several legislative lower houses and unicameral legislatures.

"Naib" has also been used in the Malay language (especially of the Malaysian variant) to translate the component of "deputy" or "vice" in certain titles (e.g "Vice President" - Naib Presiden) aside from timbalan and wakil (latter predominant in the Indonesian variant).

"Nabob", derived colloquial term

In colloquial usage in English (since 1612), adopted in other Western languages, the transliteration "nabob" refers to commoners: a merchant-leader of high social status and wealth. "Nabob" derives from the Bengali pronunciation of "nawab":  nôbab.

During the 18th century in particular, it was widely used as a disparaging term for British merchants or administrators who, having made a fortune in India, returned to Britain and aspired to be recognised as having the higher social status that their new wealth would enable them to maintain. Jos Sedley in Thackeray's Vanity Fair is probably the best known example in fiction.

From this specific usage it came to be sometimes used for ostentatiously rich businesspeople in general.

"Nabob" can also be used metaphorically for people who have a grandiose sense of their own importance, as in the famous alliterative dismissal of the news media as "nattering nabobs of negativism" in a speech that was delivered by Nixon's vice president Spiro Agnew and written by William Safire.

Gallery

Indian states formerly ruled by Nawabs

Amb (Tanoli)
Arcot
Awadh
Bahawalpur
Balasinor
Banganapalle
Baoni
Bengal
Berar (nominally under Nizam of Hyderabad)
Bhopal
Cambay
Dir
Farrukhabad (Uttar Pradesh, India)
Farrukhnagar
Hyderabad
Jaora
Junagadh
Ghazipur
Tarakote State
Kurwai
Kalabagh
Malerkotla
Mamdot
Manavadar
Warcha
Palanpur (Gujarat, India)
Pataudi
Radhanpur
Rampur
Sachin
Tonk

See also
 Subahdar
 Mughal Empire

References

Further reading

Etymology OnLine

Gubernatorial titles
Heads of state
Noble titles
Royal titles
Titles in Bangladesh
Titles in India
Titles in Pakistan
Titles of national or ethnic leadership

Nawab


Bonzo Goes to College is a 1952 American comedy film directed by Frederick De Cordova and starring Maureen O'Sullivan, Edmund Gwenn, Charles Drake, Gigi Perreau, Gene Lockhart, and Bonzo. It is a sequel to the 1951 film Bedtime for Bonzo.

Plot

Former lab chimpanzee Bonzo, suddenly literate, runs away from a carnival sideshow. He lands in the college town of Pawlton, where young Betsy mistakenly believes the chimp is a gift from her grandfather, Pop Drew, the football coach at Pawlton.

Betsy wants to formally adopt Bonzo, something her parents, Marion and Malcolm Drew, aren't too sure about. A judge goes along with the idea, pretending to officially approve an adoption, just to humor the girl. Betsy then writes her other grandfather, millionaire Clarence Gateson, to inform him she now has a baby brother. Gateson is thrilled until he arrives in Pawlton and finds the truth.

Gateson warms up to Bonzo and even takes him golfing. Discovering what a natural athlete the chimpanzee is, an idea is hatched that Bonzo could play quarterback for the college, where Pop is desperate for good players. A couple of con men, Edwards and Wilbur Crane, kidnap the chimpanzee just before the big game and replace Bonzo with one that can't play ball. Before they can collect their bets, the real Bonzo turns up and wins the game.

Cast
 Maureen O'Sullivan as Marion Gateson Drew
 Edmund Gwenn as Ten 'Pop' Drew
 Charles Drake as Malcolm Drew
 Gigi Perreau as Betsy Drew
 Gene Lockhart as Clarence B. Gateson
 Bonzo as Bonzo
 Irene Ryan as Nancy
 John Miljan as Wilbur Crane
 Frank Nelson as Dick
 Jerry Paris as Edwards
 Guy Williams as Ronald Calkins
 Richard Garrick as Judge George Simpkins
 Tom Harmon as Tom Harmon

See also
 List of American football films

References

External links

1952 films
1950s sports comedy films
American black-and-white films
American sports comedy films
American football films
American sequel films
Films about apes
Films about animals playing sports
Films directed by Frederick de Cordova
Films set in universities and colleges
Universal Pictures films
Films scored by Frank Skinner
1952 comedy films
1950s English-language films
1950s American films

Bonzo Goes to College


Cedar Grove is an unincorporated area and census-designated place in Bay County, Florida, United States. It was formerly an incorporated town, but it was dissolved in 2008 after a vote by residents.  The town had 90 days from October 3, 2008, to implement the dissolution ordinance and hand over all operations to organs of the county government.  This was the first time in Florida history that a town was disincorporated by a vote of its citizens. The dissolution ordinance took effect at 8:00 AM on October 22, 2008, at which time the police department was disbanded and all assets became the property of the Bay County Commission. The current census-designated place had a population of 3,397 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Panama City–Lynn Haven–Panama City Beach Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Geography
Cedar Grove is located at  (30.212219, -85.606028).

According to the United States Census Bureau, the census-designated place has a total area of , all land.

Demographics

As of the census of 2000, there were 5,367 people, 2,109 households, and 1,423 families residing in the town.  The population density was .  There were 2,341 housing units at an average density of .  The racial makeup of the town was 85.47% White, 9.60% African American, 0.73% Native American, 1.77% Asian, 0.09% Pacific Islander, 0.56% from other races, and 1.79% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 2.11% of the population.

There were 2,109 households, out of which 34.6% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.7% were married couples living together, 16.2% had a female householder with no husband present, and 32.5% were non-families. 26.4% of all households were made up of individuals, and 7.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.  The average household size was 2.49 and the average family size was 3.00.

In the town the population was spread out, with 27.2% under the age of 18, 9.9% from 18 to 24, 29.4% from 25 to 44, 20.7% from 45 to 64, and 12.9% who were 65 years of age or older.  The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.4 males.  For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 87.3 males.

The median income for a household in the town was $28,762, and the median income for a family was $31,577. Males had a median income of $25,203 versus $18,250 for females. The per capita income for the town was $13,588.  About 16.1% of families and 19.0% of the population were below the poverty line, including 29.8% of those under age 18 and 7.1% of those age 65 or over.

References

Census-designated places in Bay County, Florida
Populated places established in 1951
2008 disestablishments in Florida
Former municipalities in Florida
Census-designated places in Florida
Populated places disestablished in 2008

Cedar Grove, Florida


Number 10 is a drama series for BBC Radio 4 about a fictional British Prime Minister and his staff. The series was created by Jonathan Myerson, and produced by Clive Brill of Pacificus Productions, with Peter Hyman as Political Advisor. It has had five series to date, in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2012. The first three series starred Antony Sher as Adam Armstrong, the Labour Prime Minister. The fourth series replaced him with Damian Lewis as a Tory prime minister in a minority government, in response to the United Kingdom coalition government which took office in 2010.

Reception
The Independent wrote "Myerson's radio play was Shakespearean in its intrigue, its moments of tragedy and comedy and in its multi-layered action....Sixty action-packed minutes led to a gripping denouement. Number 10 possesses the fast pace that is found in the best of TV drama, which radio has been crying out for. Bring on the next four plays."

Cast

Regular

Series 1 to 3
 Adam Armstrong – Sir Antony Sher
 Monica Smith – Sasha Behar
 Polly Cairns – Haydn Gwynne
 Colin Brenner – Colin McFarlane
 Steve McKie – Stephen Mangan (Series 1 and 3)
 Steve McKie – Julian Rhind-Tutt (Series 2)

Series 4 & 5
 Simon Laity ..... Damian Lewis
 Constance "Connie" Merchant ..... Haydn Gwynne (Series 4)
 Constance "Connie" Merchant ..... Stella Gonet (Series 5)
 Nathan Toltzn ..... Mike Sengelow
 Sir Hugo Bathgate ..... Julian Glover
 Amjad Hemmati ..... Arsher Ali
 Alan ..... John Hollingworth
 Georgina "Georgie" Cullinan ..... Gina McKee

Guest cast

Series 1

Episode 1
 Frank ...... Anthony O'Donnell
 Lord Cairns ...... James Laurenson
 Nigel Ogden ...... Christopher Ettridge
 Rebecca ...... Flora Montgomery
 Conrad ...... Nick Rowe
 Ms Austen ...... Claire Perkins
 Journalist and News reader ...... Alice Arnold

Episode 2
 Kevin Munro ...... Clive Russell
 Angela Brenner ...... Emma Fielding
 Hannah Armstrong ...... Kelly Hunter
 Scottish MP ...... Nick Rowe
 Lewis Smiley MP ...... Dominic Rowan
 President Sawadogo ...... Joseph Marcell
 Ollie Armstrong ...... Joseph Kloska
 Television News Reporter ...... Alice Arnold

Episode 3
 Lord Cairns ...... James Laurenson
 Jasmine ...... Elizabeth McGovern
 Hannah ...... Kelly Hunter
 Norman Johnson ...... Shaun Prendergast
 George ...... Nicholas Grace
 Giles ...... Nicholas Woodeson
 Anita ...... Carol McReady
 Chrissie ...... Marcella Riordan

Episode 4

Episode 5
 Hannah ...... Kelly Hunter
 Major ...... Sean Baker
 General ...... Nicholas Woodeson
 Justin ...... Jamie Glover
 Billington ...... Anthony O'Donnell
 Flannery ...... Susan Brown
 Chrissie ...... Marcella Riordan
 Conrad ...... Nicholas Rowe
 Journalist ...... Alice Arnold

Episodes

Series 1
This series was first broadcast weekly at 9pm from 7 September to 5 October 2007. Episodes 1, 2 and 5 were written by Jonathan Myerson, episode 3 by Nicholas McInerny and episode 4 by Mike Harris. The series was produced and directed by Clive Brill.
Good News Day – As the Prime Minister prepares to announce an amnesty for all immigrants working illegally in the UK, a serious tube crash threatens to jeopardise his plans.
And Raise Them to Eternal Life – The party promised to eliminate Britain's carbon footprint, but poll ratings are plummeting and the unions are cutting up rough.
Who Won the Election? – As the government prepares for a major cancer screening initiative with a private American company, a leaked letter to the PM appears to advocate legalising cannabis.
Rule of Law – Launching a new organisation intended to integrate Muslims into British society and prevent radicalisation, the PM also has to decide whether to back Turkey's application for EU membership.
Home and Away – Crises loom on two fronts as the Prime Minister faces a backbench rebellion while British troops are being held hostage overseas.

References

2008 series – synopses
2009 series – synopses
2010 series – synopses

BBC Radio 4 programmes
British radio dramas

Number 10 (drama series)


The Horsehead Holding Corporation, formerly The New Jersey Zinc Company, was an American producer of zinc and related materials based in Pittsburgh. The operations of the historic company are currently conducted as American Zinc Recycling.

The New Jersey Zinc Company was for many years the largest producer of zinc and zinc products in the United States.  The company thrived in the period from 1897 to 1966, at which time it merged with Gulf and Western Industries.  It continued to operate as a subsidiary of Gulf+Western until 1981, when a management-led buyout acquired it under the name of Horsehead Industries.  The New Jersey Zinc Company remained a subsidiary of Horsehead Industries until 1987, when Horsehead merged it with St. Joe Minerals a Missouri lead and zinc producer to form Zinc Corporation of America.  The company suffered from worldwide record low prices for zinc in the early 2000s and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002.  Sun Capital Partners purchased the company's assets in 2003 for $73.6 million and renamed it Horsehead Corporation which currently produces zinc products processed from recycling and steelmaking waste.

Horsehead filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Feb 2, 2016.

History

The company had its origins in northwestern New Jersey in 1848 when two companies were created to exploit the iron and zinc deposits at Franklin and Sterling Hill in Sussex County, New Jersey.  The Sussex Zinc and Copper Mining and Manufacturing Corporation was incorporated in 1848 for the purpose of mining zinc, and the New Jersey Exploration and Mining Company was incorporated in 1849 for the purpose of mining iron.  The founding partners were the same for both companies, and in 1852 the companies merged to form the New Jersey Zinc Corporation.  The company adopted the horsehead, one of the state symbols of New Jersey, as its logo.

Because of ambiguous deeds, overlapping claims, and misunderstanding over the nature of the ores at Franklin and Sterling Hill, mining companies in the district were in constant litigation.  From 1868 to 1880, the New Jersey Zinc Company fought a legal battle with Moses Taylor's Franklin Iron Company, a dispute that was finally resolved in 1880 by merging the two companies into the New Jersey Zinc and Iron Company.  In 1897, the remaining Franklin District companies were consolidated under the umbrella of the New Jersey Zinc Company, led by Stephen S. Palmer and August Heckscher as general manager.  The Palmer family controlled the company for 46 years until the death of Stephen's son Edgar in 1943, when the estate of Edgar Palmer was forced to sell its controlling interest in order to pay inheritance taxes.

In 1966, the company agreed to merge with Gulf and Western Industries and become a subsidiary of that conglomerate.  The passage of environmental protection laws in the 1970s turned New Jersey Zinc's legacy of environmental pollution into a liability.  In 1981, former officials of Gulf and Western's Natural Resources Division led a buyout of New Jersey Zinc and made it a subsidiary of Horsehead Industries, Inc, a reference to the company's logo adopted in 1852.  Saddled with environmental cleanup liabilities, and struggling with cash flow due to record low prices in the early 2000s, Horsehead Industries filed for bankruptcy in 2002.

At its peak, the company owned and operated smelters and mines across the United States and Canada.  The sites of the smelters at De Pue, Illinois and Palmerton, Pennsylvania, and the Eagle Mine in Eagle County, Colorado are listed as EPA Superfund sites.

On July 22, 2010, two Horsehead workers were killed at a plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania. An explosion occurred in a refinery column and the workers suffocated due to smoke inhalation.

The 1954 film Salt of the Earth was based on the 1951 strike against New Jersey Zinc Company's Empire Zinc mine in Bayard, New Mexico.

In February 2016, Horsehead Corporation filed for Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Court of Bankruptcy in Delaware. Subsequent to the bankruptcy filing many shareholders wrote into the court alleging foul play by Greywolf and other members of the ad-hoc group of noteholders. On May 2, in the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware, Judge Sontchi entered an order for the formation of an official committee of equity holders, declaring, "Something Smells fishy to the court".

Shareholders in Horsehead included Mohnish Pabrai, Matthew Peterson, Phil Town and Guy Spier

Horsehead emerged from bankruptcy in September 2016 as a private company owned by Greywolf Capital Management, and renamed "American Zinc Recycling". As of August 2018, American Zinc Recycling operates six facilities: a state-of-the-art solvent-extraction and electrowinning plant in Mooresboro, NC; a zinc powder facility in Palmerton, Pennsylvania; and four recycling facilities located in Barnwell, South Carolina, Calumet, Illinois, Rockwood, Tennessee, and Palmerton, Pennsylvania.

On April 28, 2019, a fire started at the company's zinc production plant in Mooresboro which forced some residents in the area to evacuate. None of the company's employees were injured and all were accounted for.

See also
Zinc refining
Zamak

References

External links
 Horsehead Corporation (archived)

American companies established in 1848
Zinc companies
Mining companies of the United States
Companies based in Pittsburgh
Non-renewable resource companies established in 1848
1848 establishments in New Jersey
Companies formerly listed on the Nasdaq
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2002
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2016
Metal companies of the United States
2007 initial public offerings
Gulf and Western Industries
1966 mergers and acquisitions
1981 mergers and acquisitions
1987 mergers and acquisitions
2003 mergers and acquisitions

Horsehead Corporation


Robert Swain (born December 7, 1940) is an American artist working in the field of Color Sensation.

Early life and education
Robert Swain was born on December 7, 1940, in Austin, Texas and grew up in Arlington, Virginia.  As a teenager he was influenced by the art in the Washington, D.C. National Gallery of Art, specifically Raphael, Rembrandt, and Vermeer.  From 1956 to 1957 Swain traveled and worked in Central American on the Pan-American Highway, and from 1961 to 1962 he lived and studied at the University of Madrid, Spain as part of his undergraduate studies.

In 1964 Swain received his BA degree from the American University in Washington, D.C.

Career
Living and working in New York City Swain is a longtime member of the "Hunter Color School", along with Doug Ohson, Gabriele Evertz, Vincent Longo, Joanna Pousette-Dart, and Sanford Wurmfeld.

Swain is the recipient of a grant for painting from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation in 1969, a CAPS Grant (painting), from the State of New York, in 1982, and two Grants from the National Endowment for the Arts (painting); the first in 1976, and again in 1989.  Teaching at Hunter College from 1968 to 2014 Swain was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Art Award from the College Art Association in February 1998.  He has given numerous Visiting Artist lectures, served on various Fine Art Juries and participated in many panel discussions, such as the Artist's Panel at The Museum of Modern Art, entitled Tony Smith: Artists' Responses (1998) and, Seeing Red, Part III: Color as an Experience: A Two- Day Symposium on Contemporary Nonobjective Painting and Color Theory, at the Goethe–Institute Inter Nationes, New York (2003).

Major exhibitions
Swain's work has been included in group shows at The Museum of Modern Art, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Whitney Museum, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. In 2010 a major exhibition of his work, entitled Visual Sensations, The Paintings of Robert Swain: 1967 – 2010, was held at the Hunter College / Times Square Gallery, curated by Gabriele Evertz.

Public collections
Swain's artwork is represented The Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Walker Art Center, The Corcoran Gallery of Art, The Denver Art Museum, The Milwaukee Art Center, The Detroit Institute of Art, The Everson Art Museum, The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2012

Publications
Visual Sensations, The Paintings of Robert Swain: 1967-2010. Catalogue.
Modern Art in America 1908-68. Phaidon, 2016. William C. Agee. .

References

External links
 Conversation with artist Robert Swain on the occasion of his new exhibitioin Immersive Color at Minus Space 2021

1940 births
21st-century American painters
21st-century American male artists
American University alumni
Living people

Robert Swain (artist)


On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (19 April 1817) is a book by David Ricardo on economics.  The book concludes that land rent grows as population increases. It also presents the theory of comparative advantage, the theory that free trade between two or more countries can be mutually beneficial, even when one country has an absolute advantage over the other countries in all areas of production.

During the Napoleonic Wars, Ricardo grew weary of the Corn Laws, a tax imposed on wheat by the British that made it impossible to import wheat from the rest of Europe. Ricardo, despite his wealth, supported those who could no longer afford grains and bread once the price floor was in effect to support farmers. In his argument, for what is now free trade, Ricardo highlights the idea that if a country can get a good from another country at a lower cost, it would behoove a country to source that item from the cheaper producing country than to produce the good locally.  "To produce the wine in Portugal, might require only the labour of 80 men for one year, and to produce the cloth in the same country, might require the labour of 90 men for the same time. It would therefore be advantageous for her to export wine in exchange for cloth." Ricardo's theory demonstrates that a country, when choosing between two goods to produce and trade, could still achieve an advantage by focusing on the good requiring fewer resources to produce, even if the country does not have an absolute advantage in that good. This allows countries with an absolute advantage in multiple goods, or with no absolute advantage at all, to still benefit from international trade.

Ricardo claims in the preface that Turgot, James Steuart, Adam Smith, Jean-Baptiste Say, Sismondi, and others had not written enough "satisfactory information" on the topics of rent, profit, and wages. Principles of Political Economy is Ricardo's effort to fill that gap in the literature. Regardless of whether the book achieved that goal, it secured, according to Ronald Max Hartwell, Ricardo's position among the great classical economists Adam Smith, Thomas Malthus, John Stuart Mill, and Karl Marx.

In his book Adam's Fallacy: A Guide to Economic Theology, economist Duncan K. Foley highlights that in the Principles Ricardo criticizes Adam Smith's treatment of the theory of value and distribution for circular reasoning, in particular as far as concerns rent, and that Ricardo considers the labor theory of value, properly understood, a more logically sound basis for political economic reasoning.

Foley also discusses the chapter On Machinery, which Ricardo included in his third and final (1821) version of Principles. Here Ricardo famously analysed the impact of the adoption of machinery on the different classes of society, revising his earlier view that mechanization could be expected to be of benefit to each of the classes of the society. The increase in productivity due to mechanization lowers the production costs and thus also the real prices of commodities. Whereas the landowning class and capitalists benefit from the lower prices, workers in contrast do not reap such benefit from the lower prices if capitalists reduce the wage fund in order to finance the expensive machinery, causing technological unemployment among workers. In this case, Ricardo points out, wages are forced down by competition among workers, and the introduction of new machines can lead to an overall decline in the well-being of the working class.

References

External links
 On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, by David Ricardo. Complete, fully searchable text at the Library of Economics and Liberty.
Ricardo on Value: the Three Chapter Ones. A presentation tracing the changes in the Principles''' (University of Southampton).
 Biography of David Ricardo, at the Concise Encyclopedia of Economics''
 1917 reprint by J.M. Dent & Sons, London and E.P. Dutton & Co., New York at archive.org

Classical economics books
1817 non-fiction books
1817 in economics
British books
1817 in the United Kingdom
Political economy


Reichskriminalpolizeiamt (RKPA), was Nazi Germany's central criminal investigation department, founded in 1936 after the Prussian central criminal investigation department (Landeskriminalpolizeiamt) became the national criminal investigation department for Germany. It was merged, along with the secret state police department, the Gestapo, as two sub-branch departments of the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo). The SiPo was under Reinhard Heydrich's overall command. In September 1939, with the founding of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), the SiPo as a functioning state agency ceased to exist as a department and was merged into the RSHA.

Organization
The central organization contained a national surveillance register and eleven centers for national crimes.
 Fraud
 Drugs
 Missing persons
 Pornography
 Trafficking
 International pickpockets
 Gambling
 "Romani people"
 Serious violent crimes
 Professional fraud
 Professional burglary

The regional and local organizations included:
14 Kriminalpolizeileitstellen (regional criminal investigation units).
51 Kriminalpolizeistellen (local criminal investigation units).

Merger
In 1936, the RKPA was formed after the Prussian central criminal investigation department (Landeskriminalpolizeiamt) became the national criminal investigation department for Germany. The state police agencies in Germany were then statutorily divided into the Ordnungspolizei (uniformed police) and the Sicherheitspolizei (state security police; SiPo). The RKPA was merged, along with the secret state police, the Geheime Staatspolizei or Gestapo as two sub-branch departments of the SiPo. Reinhard Heydrich was placed in overall command of the SiPo and its central command office, the Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei. He was already head of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and Gestapo. Arthur Nebe was appointed the Reichskriminaldirektor of the Reichskriminalpolizeiamt, and reported to Heydrich.

In September 1939, the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was created as the command organization for the various state investigation and security agencies. The Hauptamt Sicherheitspolizei was officially abolished and its departments were folded into the RSHA. The Reichskriminalpolizeiamt became Amt V (Department V), the Kriminalpolizei (Criminal Police) in the RSHA. On 15 August 1944, Friedrich Panzinger took over as chief of Amt V in the RSHA until the end of the war in Europe.

References

Citations

Bibliography

Police of Nazi Germany
Police units of Nazi Germany
Reich Security Main Office

Reichskriminalpolizeiamt


Cineworld Group plc is a British cinema operator headquartered in London, England. It is the world's second-largest cinema chain (after AMC Theatres), with 9,139 screens across 747 sites in 10 countries: Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, the United Kingdom and the United States. The group's primary brands are Cineworld and Picturehouse in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Cinema City in Eastern and Central Europe, Planet in Israel, and Regal Cinemas in the United States.

As of March 2018, Cineworld was the leading cinema operator in the UK by box office market share (based on revenue). It operated, at that time, 99 cinemas and over 1,017 screens, including Cineworld Dublin—Ireland's single largest multiplex by screens and customer base. Cineworld Glasgow Renfrew Street is the tallest cinema in the world and the busiest, by customer base, in the UK. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

In October 2020, Cineworld temporarily closed its cinemas in the UK, Ireland, and the United States, citing the delay of tentpole films due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cinema. The cinemas reopened in May 2021. On 7 September 2022, Cineworld filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States.

In April 2023, Cineworld announced that it plans to secure funding of $2.26 billion and that it had entered into an agreement with its creditors to restructure its debt and come up with strategies to exit bankruptcy.

History

Cineworld was founded by Steve Wiener in 1995. The first Cineworld cinema opened in Stevenage, Hertfordshire in July 1996. A second cinema opened in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, in December 1996 and the third opened in Feltham, London in July 1997. In 2004, Cineworld was acquired by Blackstone private equity group for £120m. The following year, Cineworld acquired the UK and Ireland operations of French cinema company UGC.

In December 2012, Cineworld acquired the Picturehouse Cinema chain, adding 21 cinemas to its portfolio, including The Little Theatre in Bath, Brighton's Duke of York's cinema, the Cameo, Edinburgh, the Phoenix in Oxford and the Ritzy Cinema in Brixton.

The Blackstone Group, which had invested in Cineworld when it was privately owned, sold its entire remaining 20% shareholding in November 2010. In August 2013, The Guardian revealed that Cineworld employs 80% of its 4,300 staff on zero hour contracts. In October 2013, the Chester location was closed due to the landowner wanting to develop the land into a supermarket.

In 2014, Cineworld's Picturehouse chain was subject to industrial action owing to its refusal to pay the London living wage to its staff. The workforce attracted the support of Eric Cantona. On 27 February 2014, Cineworld completed the takeover of Cinema City International N.V. As of March 2015, the Greidinger family (who owned a controlling 54% stake in Cinema City International) held a controlling bloc as the largest shareholders in the enlarged company. In May 2014, Mooky Greidinger joined the board of directors as CEO, having previously been CEO of Cinema City International.

In 2015, Picturehouse unveiled their new West End flagship site, 'Picturehouse Central', a 1,000-seat seven-screen cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue near Piccadilly Circus in central London. In August 2016, Cineworld acquired six cinemas from Empire Cinemas, including the Empire Theatre in London's West End, and 4 other locations in Basildon, Poole, Bromley and Hemel Hempstead. Empire Newcastle was also acquired by Cineworld the following year.

In November 2017, Cineworld began merger talks with the US cinema chain Regal Cinemas. On 5 December, it was officially announced that Cineworld would buy Regal for US$3.6 billion (£2.7 billion), creating the world's second largest cinema group. It would also allow Cineworld access to the US market, the largest in the world. The acquisition was completed in 2018. In March 2019, Cineworld and Eagle Pictures invested in Spyglass Media Group.

On 16 December 2019, Cineworld announced its proposed acquisition of Cineplex Entertainment—Canada's largest cinema chain—for approximately US$2.1 billion. Cineworld planned to integrate its operations with Regal to achieve cost and revenue synergies, and maintain the Cineplex branding for the Canadian operations. This would have made it North America's largest cinema chain. The deal was approved by shareholders in February 2020. On 12 June 2020, however,  Cineworld would terminate the purchase agreement due to alleged "material adverse effect and breaches" by Cineplex. The company subsequently sued Cineworld over the aborted purchase. In December 2021, the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ordered Cineworld to pay damages of C$1.23 billion for pulling out of the acquisition of Cineplex. This decision caused the Cineworld share price to fall by nearly 30% overnight on the London Stock Exchange. Cineworld said it would appeal the decision.

In April 2023, Cineworld's stock price plummeted by 30% due to their plan to discontinue the sale of their business in the UK, US, and Ireland. This decision was made because of the company's inability to find a buyer. Cineworld said it was also open to offers for the purchase of its business in regions other than the aforementioned areas. It announced that it plans to secure a funding of $2.26 billion and that it had entered into an agreement with its creditors to restructure its debt and come up with strategies to exit bankruptcy.

Closure during the COVID-19 pandemic

On 17 March 2020, Cineworld and all other cinema companies in the UK temporarily closed all their UK cinemas due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Some 800 staff at Cineworld Group PLC wrote to Chief Executive Moshe Greidinger requesting their jobs back after many were made redundant "with immediate effect". Employees with over three years of service were told they would be retained with 40% of their salary or average pay. The letter said the move would leave many of the affected unable to afford essentials such as housing and food. In late May 2020, Cineworld announced it planned to reopen all its UK cinemas in July. On 14 August 2020, it announced a new reopening schedule, in which their Welsh cinemas would open on 14 August, whereas their Irish, Scottish and Jersey screens would open on 26 August. Their English cinemas had been open since 31 July.

In May 2020, Alicja Kornasiewicz became chair, having been a non-executive director since May 2015. On 5 October 2020, Cineworld announced the indefinite re-closure of all owned cinemas in the UK, Ireland, and United States from 8 October, citing the delay of major tentpole Hollywood films due to the wider impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on cinema, and its continued inability to reopen cinemas in the key U.S. market of New York (which CEO Mooky Greidinger cited as having resulted in the delays). The decision followed the delay of the James Bond film No Time to Die from November 2020 to 2 April 2021. Greidinger said the delay was the "last straw" for Cineworld following a string of other film delays and cancellations. Cineworld said that its decision would affect 45,000 workers, 5,500 of them in the UK, and 20,000 in the US. Later that month, it hired FTI Consulting, Houlihan Lokey, and AlixPartners to help refinance the company's $8 billion debt.

Greidinger said that Cineworld would reopen the cinemas once there was a "solid lineup of releases" ahead. He also said that its Central European operations would remain active on a case-by-case basis, as they have a stronger dependency on domestic productions than Hollywood productions. Cineworld cinemas reopened in May 2021.

Bankruptcy
The release of No Time to Die in October 2021 took the month's Cineworld revenues in UK and Ireland to 127% of October 2019's levels. In December, Cineworld's 2021 global revenue reached 88% of 2019's yearly intake. Cineworld credited this to the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, the only film to have made more than $1.5 billion globally since the pandemic began.

Before the pandemic, Cineworld had a share price of £1.97, which had fallen to 20p by mid-August 2022. That August, the Wall Street Journal reported that Cineworld was considering filing insolvency proceedings in the UK after struggling to rebuild attendance and incurring debts of more than $4.8 billion (£4 billion) following the pandemic. On 7 September 2022, Cineworld filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

In July 2023, Cineworld announced that its Chief Executive, Mooky Greidinger, would be stepping down. The company's lenders appointed Eduardo Acuna, executive at Cinépolis, to take his place. On 31 July 2023, Cineworld entered administration in the UK. That same day, Cineworld officially emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy after slashing billions of dollars in debt and the much-needed boost from the Barbenheimer box office success.

Cinemas
Across the Cineworld estate there are seven different ways in which their customers can watch a movie: 2D, 3D, 4DX, Superscreen, IMAX, VIP, and ScreenX. Prices are set according to the format the customer chooses, and not the movie they choose. As of April 2018, across the European estate there are 38 4DX screens, 35 IMAX screens and 12 VIP auditoriums. Out of 45 cinemas in the world that are fitted with IMAX with Laser projection systems, two are in the UK, both belonging to Cineworld, located in Leicester Square and Sheffield. In April 2018, IMAX And Cineworld Group signed an agreement to install 55 new IMAX with Laser experience in Cineworld and Regal IMAX locations.

In 2012, Cineworld began a trial of a premium service, the Screening Rooms. Located next to the Cheltenham cinema, The Screening Rooms offers considerably larger, leather seating, premium food, and 'table' service. The Screening Rooms was later converted into an extended Cineworld in Cheltenham when it was refurbished to become the second Cineworld in the country to offer the new premium VIP format. Sheffield was the first to offer it.

Cineworld was the only cinema chain in the United Kingdom to forbid customers bringing food and drink bought elsewhere into the cinema. In November 2012, the policy was changed and now states that "neither alcohol nor hot food may be brought onto the premises". In early 2014, Cineworld introduced an allocated seating system, starting as a trial in selected sites including Wembley and rolling out to all their cinemas by the summer. The move was controversial and a Twitter campaign was created against this policy. Cineworld have responded to the criticism stating that it gives customers peace of mind along with other benefits.

In 2017, the company opened nine new cinema locations with a total of 109 screens; four of which were in the UK and five in the rest of Europe. A further 75 screens were scheduled to open in 2018 in addition. Throughout 2018, the company opened 13 new locations with 108 screens in total, six in the United States, six in the United Kingdom and one in Romania.

References

External links

 Cineworld Group plc

Cinema chains in the United Kingdom
Cinema chains in the Republic of Ireland
Blackstone Inc. companies
Entertainment companies established in 1995
British companies established in 1995
Companies based in London
Multinational companies headquartered in England
Companies formerly listed on the London Stock Exchange
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2022
Companies that have entered administration in the United Kingdom

Cineworld