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The Sun (New York City)

The Sun was a New York newspaper published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The Sun was the first successful penny daily newspaper in the United States, and was for a time, the most successful newspaper in America.

The paper had a central focus on crime news, in which it was a pioneer, and was the first journal to hire a police reporter. Its audience was primarily working class readers.

The Sun is well-known for publishing the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, as well as Francis Pharcellus Church's 1897 editorial containing the line "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus".

It merged with the New York World-Telegram in 1950.

History
The Sun began publication in New York on September 3, 1833, as a morning newspaper edited by Benjamin Day (1810–1889), with the slogan "It Shines for All". It cost only one penny (equivalent to ¢ in ), was easy to carry, and had illustrations and crime reporting popular with working-class readers.

It inspired a new genre across the nation, known as the penny press, which made the news more accessible to low-income readers at a time when most papers cost five cents. The Sun was also the first newspaper to hire newspaper hawkers to sell it on the street, developing the trade of newsboys shouting headlines.

The Sun was the first newspaper to report crimes and personal events such as suicides, deaths, and divorces. The paper had a focus on police reports and human-interest stories for the masses, which consisted of short descriptions of arrests, thefts, and violence. With their competitor the New York Herald, founded by James Gordon Bennett, they covered murder cases such as Helen Jewett's murder, the murder of John C. Colt's murder, Samuel Colt's brother, and Mary Rogers's case near Sybil's Cave. The Sun and The Herald took sides in these cases, championing working class people over the traditional landed and mercantile elites which, during this era, held disproportionate power over the nation's politics and economy.

Benjamin Day's brother-in-law, Moses Yale Beach, joined the venture in 1834, became co-owner in 1835, and a few years later, became sole proprietor, bringing a number of innovations to the industry. It became the largest among the Gotham papers for 20 years, sometimes eclipsed by the New-York Tribune or the New York Herald.

The newspaper printed the first newspaper account of a suicide. This story was significant because it was the first about the death of an ordinary person. It changed journalism forever, making the newspaper an integral part of the community and the lives of the readers.

Day was the first to hire reporters to go out and collect stories. Prior to this, newspapers dealt almost exclusively in articles about politics or reviews of books or the theater and relied, in the days before the organization of syndicates such as the Associated Press (AP) and United Press International (UPI), on items sent in by readers and unauthorized copies of stories from other newspapers. The Sun's focus on crime was the beginning of "the craft of reporting and storytelling".

Crime news provided New Yorkers with information about how the city worked, dwelling on violations of justice, abuse of state power and corrupt schemes.

The Sun was also the first newspaper to show that a newspaper could be substantially supported by advertisements rather than subscription fees, and could be sold on the street instead of delivered to each subscriber. Prior to The Sun, printers produced newspapers, often at a loss, making their living selling printing services. Day and The Sun recognized that the masses were fast becoming literate, and demonstrated that a profit could be made selling to them.

The offices of The Sun were initially located on Printing House Square, now called Park Row, Manhattan, and was next to New York City Hall and New York City Police Department. It had a pigeon house built on the roof of its New York office at Nassau Street, receiving news from New York Harbor. They also later used horses, steamships, trains, and the telegraph, the Pony Express and Royal Mail Ships.

Later history

Moses Yale Beach's sons, Alfred Ely Beach and Moses S. Beach, took over the paper following his retirement. He celebrated the event at his house on Chambers Street, along with the other editors of Gotham, with guests including Congressmen Horace Greeley and James Brooks, and Abraham Lincoln's Chairman Henry Jarvis Raymond.

In 1868, Moses S. Beach sold the newspaper to Charles A. Dana, the Assistant Secretary of War of Abraham Lincoln, and stayed a stockholder. In 1872 The Sun exposed the Crédit Mobilier Scandal, implicating a number of corrupt Congressmen and Vice President Schuyler Colfax in a corrupt scheme involving the construction of the Union Pacific Railroad, and in 1881 exposed the Star Route Scandal, implicating a number of high-profile politicians and businessmen in a scheme relating to the US Postal Service, resulting in number of trials and increasing public support for civil service reform.

An evening edition, known as The Evening Sun, was introduced in 1887. The newspaper magnate Frank Munsey bought both editions of the paper in 1916 and merged The Evening Sun with his New York Press. The morning edition of The Sun was merged for a time with Munsey's New York Herald as The Sun and New York Herald, but in 1920, Munsey separated them again, killed The Evening Sun, and switched The Sun to an evening publishing format.

From 1914 to 1919, The Sun moved its offices to 150 Nassau Street, one of the first skyscrapers made of steel, and one of the tallest in the city at the time. The tower was close to the New York Times Building, Woolworth Tower, and New York City Hall. In 1919, The Sun moved its offices to the A.T. Stewart Company Building, site of America's first department store, at 280 Broadway between Reade and Chambers Streets. 280 Broadway was renamed "The Sun Building" in 1928. A clock featuring The Sun name and slogan was built at the corner with Broadway and Chambers Street.

Munsey died in 1925 with a fortune of about 20 million dollars, and was ranked as one of the most powerful media moguls of his time, along with William Randolph Hearst. He left the bulk of his estate, including The Sun, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The next year The Sun was sold to William Dewart, a longtime associate of Munsey's. Dewart's son Thomas later ran the paper.

In the 1940s, the newspaper was considered among the most conservative in New York City and was strongly opposed to the New Deal and labor unions. The Sun won a Pulitzer Prize in 1949 for an exposé of labor racketeering; it also published the early work of sportswriter W.C. Heinz.

It continued until January 4, 1950, when it merged with the New York World-Telegram to form a new paper called the New York World-Telegram and Sun. That paper continued for 16 years; in 1966, it joined with the New York Herald Tribune to briefly become part of the World Journal Tribune, preserving the names of three of the most historic city newspapers, which folded amid disputes with the unions representing its staff the following year.

Milestones

The Sun first gained notice for its central role in the Great Moon Hoax of 1835, a fabricated story of life and civilization on the Moon which the paper falsely attributed to British astronomer John Herschel and never retracted. The hoax featured man-bat creatures named the "Vespertilio-homo" that inhabited the moon and built temples. A Yale University delegation was sent to look after the article, and the whole story created much sensation at the time.

On April 13, 1844, The Sun published a story by Edgar Allan Poe now known as "The Balloon-Hoax", retracted two days after publication. The story told of an imagined Atlantic crossing by hot-air balloon.

Today the paper is best known for the 1897 editorial "Is There a Santa Claus?" (commonly referred to as "Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus"), written by Francis Pharcellus Church.

John B. Bogart, city editor of The Sun between 1873 and 1890, made what is perhaps the most frequently quoted definition of the journalistic endeavor: "When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news." (The quotation is frequently attributed to Charles Dana, The Sun editor and part-owner between 1868 and his death in 1897.)

From 1912, Don Marquis wrote a regular column, 'The Sundial', for the Evening Sun. In 1916, he used this to introduce his characters Archy and Mehitabel.

In 1926, The Sun published a review by John Grierson of Robert Flaherty's film Moana, in which Grierson said the film had "documentary value". This is considered the origin of the term "documentary film".

The newspaper's editorial cartoonist, Rube Goldberg, received the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning for his cartoon, Peace Today. In 1949, The Sun won the Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for a groundbreaking series of articles by Malcolm Johnson, "Crime on the Waterfront". The series served as the basis for the 1954 movie On the Waterfront.

The Sun's first female reporter was Emily Verdery Bettey, hired in 1868. Eleanor Hoyt Brainerd was hired as a reporter and fashion editor in the 1880s. Brainerd was one of the first women to become a professional editor, and perhaps the first full-time fashion editor in American newspaper history.

In 1881, the heroic legend of sheriff Bartholomew Masterson, known as "Bat Masterson", started from the coverage of a Sun reporter whom he had duped. He was a companion of Buffalo Bill, and fought at the Battle of Dodge City War, and was later the subject of a book titled Gunfighter in Gotham and the American TV series Bat Masterson.

Legacy
The film Deadline – U.S.A. (1952) is a story about the death of a New York newspaper called The Day, loosely based upon the Sun, which closed in 1950. The original Sun newspaper was edited by Benjamin Day, making the film's newspaper name a play on words (not to be confused with the real-life New London, Connecticut newspaper of the same name).

The masthead of the original Sun is visible in a montage of newspaper clippings in a scene of the 1972 film The Godfather. The newspaper's offices were a converted department store at 280 Broadway, between Chambers and Reade streets in lower Manhattan, now known as "The Sun Building" and famous for the clocks that bear the newspaper's masthead and motto. They were recognized as a New York City landmark in 1986. The building now houses the New York City Department of Buildings.

In the 1994 movie The Paper, a fictional tabloid newspaper based in New York City bore the same name and motto of The Sun, with a slightly different masthead.

In 2002, a new broadsheet was launched, styled The New York Sun, and bearing the old newspaper's masthead and motto. It was intended as a "conservative alternative" and local news-focused alternative to the more liberal The New York Times and other New York newspapers. It was published by Ronald Weintraub and edited by Seth Lipsky, and ceased publication on September 30, 2008. In 2022, it was revived as an online newspaper, under the ownership of Dovid Efune, while Lipsky remained editor.

The history of the New York Sun is extensively covered in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. Past reporters of the paper have included NYC Police Commissioner, Col. Arthur H. Woods, and NYC Fire Commissioner Robert Adamson.

Journalists at The Sun

 * John A. Arneaux, reporter in 1884
 * Moses Yale Beach, an early owner of the Sun
 * Charles Anderson Dana, editor and part-owner of the Sun
 * Paul Dana, editor, 1880–1897
 * W. C. Heinz, war correspondent, sportswriter 1937–1950
 * Bruno Lessing, reporter, 1888–1894
 * Chester Sanders Lord, journalist and managing editor, 1873-1913
 * Kenneth M. Swezey, radio/technology reporter, 1930s
 * John Swinton, chief editorialist, 1875–1883 and 1892–1897

title: The Sun (New York City)


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Collateralized debt obligation

A collateralized debt obligation (CDO) is a type of structured asset-backed security (ABS). An "asset-backed security" is sometimes used as an umbrella term for a type of security backed by a pool of assets—including collateralized debt obligations and mortgage-backed securities. Example: "A capital market in which asset-backed securities are issued and traded is composed of three main categories: ABS, MBS and CDOs" (italics added). Source:.

Other times it is used for a particular type of that security—one backed by consumer loans. Example: "As a rule of thumb, securitization issues backed by mortgages are called MBS, and securitization issues backed by debt obligations are called CDO, [and s]ecuritization issues backed by consumer-backed products—car loans, consumer loans and credit cards, among others—are called ABS ..." (italics added). Source:

See also:  Originally developed as instruments for the corporate debt markets, after 2002 CDOs became vehicles for refinancing mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Like other private label securities backed by assets, a CDO can be thought of as a promise to pay investors in a prescribed sequence, based on the cash flow the CDO collects from the pool of bonds or other assets it owns. Distinctively, CDO credit risk is typically assessed based on a probability of default (PD) derived from ratings on those bonds or assets.

The CDO is "sliced" into sections known as "tranches", which "catch" the cash flow of interest and principal payments in sequence based on seniority. If some loans default and the cash collected by the CDO is insufficient to pay all of its investors, those in the lowest, most "junior" tranches suffer losses first. The last to lose payment from default are the safest, most senior tranches. Consequently, coupon payments (and interest rates) vary by tranche with the safest/most senior tranches receiving the lowest rates and the lowest tranches receiving the highest rates to compensate for higher default risk. As an example, a CDO might issue the following tranches in order of safeness: Senior AAA (sometimes known as "super senior"); Junior AAA; AA; A; BBB; Residual.

Separate special purpose entities—rather than the parent investment bank—issue the CDOs and pay interest to investors. As CDOs developed, some sponsors repackaged tranches into yet another iteration, known as "CDO-Squared", "CDOs of CDOs" or "synthetic CDOs".

In the early 2000s, the debt underpinning CDOs was generally diversified, but by 2006–2007—when the CDO market grew to hundreds of billions of dollars—this had changed. CDO collateral became dominated by high risk (BBB or A) tranches recycled from other asset-backed securities, whose assets were usually subprime mortgages. These CDOs have been called "the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain" for subprime mortgages, and are credited with giving lenders greater incentive to make subprime loans, leading to the 2007-2009 subprime mortgage crisis.

Beginnings
In 1970, the US government-backed mortgage guarantor Ginnie Mae created the first MBS (mortgage-backed security), based on FHA and VA mortgages. It guaranteed these MBSs. This would be the precursor to CDOs that would be created two decades later. In 1971, Freddie Mac issued its first Mortgage Participation Certificate. This was the first mortgage-backed security made of ordinary mortgages. All through the 1970s, private companies began mortgage asset securitization by creating private mortgage pools.

In 1974, the Equal Credit Opportunity Act in the United States imposed heavy sanctions for financial institutions found guilty of discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, or age This led to a more open policy of giving loans (sometimes subprime) by banks, guaranteed in most cases by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In 1977, the Community Reinvestment Act was enacted to address historical discrimination in lending, such as 'redlining'. The Act encouraged commercial banks and savings associations (Savings and loan banks) to meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods (who might earlier have been thought of as too risky for home loans).

In 1977, the investment bank Salomon Brothers created a "private label" MBS (mortgage backed security)—one that did not involve government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) mortgages. However, it failed in the marketplace. Subsequently, Lewis Ranieri (Salomon) and Larry Fink (First Boston) invented the idea of securitization; different mortgages were pooled together and this pool was then sliced into tranches, each of which was then sold separately to different investors. Many of these tranches were in turn bundled together, earning them the name CDO (Collateralized debt obligation).

The first CDOs to be issued by a private bank were seen in 1987 by the bankers at the now-defunct Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. for the also now-defunct Imperial Savings Association. During the 1990s the collateral of CDOs was generally corporate and emerging market bonds and bank loans. After 1998 "multi-sector" CDOs were developed by Prudential Securities, but CDOs remained fairly obscure until after 2000. In 2002 and 2003 CDOs had a setback when rating agencies "were forced to downgrade hundreds" of the securities, but sales of CDOs grew—from $69 billion in 2000 to around $500 billion in 2006. From 2004 through 2007, $1.4 trillion worth of CDOs were issued.

Early CDOs were diversified, and might include everything from aircraft lease-equipment debt, manufactured housing loans, to student loans and credit card debt. The diversification of borrowers in these "multisector CDOs" was a selling point, as it meant that if there was a downturn in one industry like aircraft manufacturing and their loans defaulted, other industries like manufactured housing might be unaffected. Another selling point was that CDOs offered returns that were sometimes 2-3 percentage points higher than corporate bonds with the same credit rating.

Explanations for growth

 * Advantages of securitization – Depository banks had incentive to "securitize" loans they originated—often in the form of CDO securities—because this removes the loans from their books. The transfer of these loans (along with related risk) to security-buying investors in return for cash frees up the banks' capital. This enabled them to remain in compliance with capital requirement laws while lending again and generating additional origination fees.
 * Global demand for fixed income investments – From 2000 to 2007, worldwide fixed income investment (i.e. investments in bonds and other conservative securities) roughly doubled in size to $70 trillion, yet the supply of relatively safe, income generating investments had not grown as fast, which bid up bond prices and drove down interest rates. Investment banks on Wall Street answered this demand with financial innovation such as the mortgage-backed security (MBS) and collateralized debt obligation (CDO), which were assigned safe ratings by the credit rating agencies.
 * Low interest rates – Fears of deflation, the bursting of the dot-com bubble, a U.S. recession, and the U.S. trade deficit kept interest rates low globally from 2000 to 2004–5, according to Economist Mark Zandi. The low yield of the safe US Treasury bonds created demand by global investors for subprime mortgage-backed CDOs with their relatively high-yields but credit ratings as high as the Treasuries. This search for yield by global investors caused many to purchase CDOs, though they lived to regret trusting the credit rating agencies' ratings.
 * Pricing models – Gaussian copula models, introduced in 2001 by David X. Li, allowed for the rapid pricing of CDOs.

Subprime mortgage boom

In 2005, as the CDO market continued to grow, subprime mortgages began to replace the diversified consumer loans as collateral. By 2004, mortgage-backed securities accounted for more than half of the collateral in CDOs. According to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Report, "the CDO became the engine that powered the mortgage supply chain", promoting an increase in demand for mortgage-backed securities without which lenders would have "had less reason to push so hard to make" non-prime loans. CDOs not only bought crucial tranches of subprime mortgage-backed securities, they provided cash for the initial funding of the securities. Between 2003 and 2007, Wall Street issued almost $700 billion in CDOs that included mortgage-backed securities as collateral. Despite this loss of diversification, CDO tranches were given the same proportion of high ratings by rating agencies on the grounds that mortgages were diversified by region and so "uncorrelated" —though those ratings were lowered after mortgage holders began to default.

The rise of "ratings arbitrage"—i.e., pooling low-rated tranches to make CDOs—helped push sales of CDOs to about $500 billion in 2006, with a global CDO market of over US$1.5 trillion. CDO was the fastest-growing sector of the structured finance market between 2003 and 2006; the number of CDO tranches issued in 2006 (9,278) was almost twice the number of tranches issued in 2005 (4,706).

CDOs, like mortgage-backed securities, were financed with debt, enhancing their profits but also enhancing losses if the market reversed course.

Explanations for growth
Subprime mortgages had been financed by mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Like CDOs, MBSs were structured into tranches, but issuers of the securities had difficulty selling the more lower level/lower-rated "mezzanine" tranches—the tranches rated somewhere from AA to BB. "Because most traditional mortgage investors are risk-averse, either because of the restrictions of their investment charters or business practices, they are interested in buying the higher-rated segments of the loan stack; as a result, those slices are easiest to sell. The more challenging task is finding buyers for the riskier pieces at the bottom of the pile. The way mortgage securities are structured, if you cannot find buyers for the lower-rated slices, the rest of the pool cannot be sold."

To deal with the problem, investment bankers "recycled" the mezzanine tranches, selling them to underwriters making more structured securities—CDOs. Though the pool that made up the CDO collateral might be overwhelmingly mezzanine tranches, most of the tranches (70 to 80% ) of the CDO were rated not BBB, A−, etc., but triple A. The minority of the tranches that were mezzanine were often bought up by other CDOs, concentrating the lower rated tranches still further. (See the chart on "The Theory of How the Financial System Created AAA-rated Assets out of Subprime Mortgages".)

As journalist Gretchen Morgenson put it, CDOs became "the perfect dumping ground for the low-rated slices Wall Street couldn't sell on its own."

Other factors explaining the popularity of CDOs include:
 * Growing demand for fixed income investments that started earlier in the decade continued. A "global savings glut" leading to "large capital inflows" from abroad helped finance the housing boom, keeping down US mortgage rates, even after the Federal Reserve Bank had raised interest rates to cool off the economy.
 * Supply generated by "hefty" fees the CDO industry earned. According to "one hedge fund manager who became a big investor in CDOs", as much "as 40 to 50 percent" of the cash flow generated by the assets in a CDO went to "pay the bankers, the CDO manager, the rating agencies, and others who took out fees." Rating agencies in particular—whose high ratings of the CDO tranches were crucial to the industry and who were paid by CDO issuers —earned extraordinary profits. Moody's Investors Service, one of the two biggest rating agencies, could earn "as much as $250,000 to rate a mortgage pool with $350 million in assets, versus the $50,000 in fees generated when rating a municipal bond of a similar size." In 2006, revenues from Moody's structured finance division "accounted for fully 44%" of all Moody's sales. Moody's operating margins were "consistently over 50%, making it one of the most profitable companies in existence"—more profitable in terms of margins than ExxonMobil or Microsoft. Between the time Moody's was spun off as a public company and February 2007, its stock rose 340%.
 * Trust in rating agencies. CDO managers "didn't always have to disclose what the securities contained" because the contents of the CDO were subject to change. But this lack of transparency did not affect demand for the securities. Investors "weren't so much buying a security. They were buying a triple-A rating," according to business journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera.
 * Financial innovations, such as credit default swaps and synthetic CDO. Credit default swaps provided insurance to investors against the possibility of losses in the value of tranches from default in exchange for premium-like payments, making CDOs appear "to be virtually risk-free" to investors. Synthetic CDOs were cheaper and easier to create than original "cash" CDOs. Synthetics "referenced" cash CDOs, replacing interest payments from MBS tranches with premium-like payments from credit default swaps. Rather than providing funding for housing, synthetic CDO-buying investors were in effect providing insurance against mortgage default. If the CDO did not perform per contractual requirements, one counterparty (typically a large investment bank or hedge fund) had to pay another. As underwriting standards deteriorated and the housing market became saturated, subprime mortgages became less abundant. Synthetic CDOs began to fill in for the original cash CDOs. Because more than one—in fact numerous—synthetics could be made to reference the same original, the amount of money that moved among market participants increased dramatically.

Crash

In the summer of 2006, the Case–Shiller index of house prices peaked. In California, home prices had more than doubled since 2000 and median house prices in Los Angeles had risen to ten times the median annual income. To entice those with low and moderate income to sign up for mortgages, down payments and income documentation were often dispensed with and interest and principal payments were often deferred upon request. Journalist Michael Lewis gave as an example of unsustainable underwriting practices a loan in Bakersfield, California, where "a Mexican strawberry picker with an income of $14,000 and no English was lent every penny he needed to buy a house of $724,000". As two-year "teaser" mortgage rates—common with those that made home purchases like this possible—expired, mortgage payments skyrocketed. Refinancing to lower mortgage payment was no longer available since it depended on rising home prices. Mezzanine tranches started to lose value in 2007; by mid year AA tranches were worth only 70 cents on the dollar. By October triple-A tranches had started to fall. Regional diversification notwithstanding, the mortgage backed securities turned out to be highly correlated.

Big CDO arrangers like Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS experienced some of the biggest losses, as did financial guaranteers such as AIG, Ambac, MBIA.

An early indicator of the crisis came in July 2007 when rating agencies made unprecedented mass downgrades of mortgage-related securities (by the end of 2008 91% of CDO securities were downgraded ), and two highly leveraged Bear Stearns hedge funds holding MBSs and CDOs collapsed. Investors were informed by Bear Stearns that they would get little if any of their money back.

In October and November the CEOs of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup resigned after reporting multibillion-dollar losses and CDO downgrades. As the global market for CDOs dried up the new issue pipeline for CDOs slowed significantly, and what CDO issuance there was usually in the form of collateralized loan obligations backed by middle-market or leveraged bank loans, rather than home mortgage ABS. The CDO collapse hurt mortgage credit available to homeowners since the bigger MBS market depended on CDO purchases of mezzanine tranches.

While non-prime mortgage defaults affected all securities backed by mortgages, CDOs were especially hard hit. More than half—$300 billion worth—of tranches issued in 2005, 2006, and 2007 rated most safe (triple-A) by rating agencies, were either downgraded to junk status or lost principal by 2009. In comparison, only small fractions of triple-A tranches of Alt-A or subprime mortgage-backed securities suffered the same fate. (See the Impaired Securities chart.)

Collateralized debt obligations also made up over half ($542 billion) of the nearly trillion dollars in losses suffered by financial institutions from 2007 to early 2009.

Criticism
Prior to the crisis, a few academics, analysts and investors such as Warren Buffett (who famously disparaged CDOs and other derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction, carrying dangers that, while now latent, are potentially lethal" ), and the IMF's former chief economist Raghuram Rajan warned that rather than reducing risk through diversification, CDOs and other derivatives spread risk and uncertainty about the value of the underlying assets more widely.

During and after the crisis, criticism of the CDO market was more vocal. According to the radio documentary "Giant Pool of Money", it was the strong demand for MBS and CDO that drove down home lending standards. Mortgages were needed for collateral and by approximately 2003, the supply of mortgages originated at traditional lending standards had been exhausted.

The head of banking supervision and regulation at the Federal Reserve, Patrick Parkinson, termed "the whole concept of ABS CDOs", an "abomination".

In December 2007, journalists Carrick Mollenkamp and Serena Ng wrote of a CDO called Norma created by Merrill Lynch at the behest of Illinois hedge fund, Magnetar. It was a tailor-made bet on subprime mortgages that went "too far." Janet Tavakoli, a Chicago consultant who specializes in CDOs, said Norma "is a tangled hairball of risk." When it came to market in March 2007, "any savvy investor would have thrown this...in the trash bin."

According to journalists Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera, no securities became "more pervasive – or [did] more damage than collateralized debt obligations" to create the Great Recession.

Gretchen Morgenson described the securities as "a sort of secret refuse heap for toxic mortgages [that] created even more demand for bad loans from wanton lenders." "CDOs prolonged the mania, vastly amplifying the losses that investors would suffer and ballooning the amounts of taxpayer money that would be required to rescue companies like Citigroup and the American International Group.' ..."

In the first quarter of 2008 alone, credit rating agencies announced 4,485 downgrades of CDOs. At least some analysts complained the agencies over-relied on computer models with imprecise inputs, failed to account adequately for large risks (like a nationwide collapse of housing values), and assumed the risk of the low rated tranches that made up CDOs would be diluted when in fact the mortgage risks were highly correlated, and when one mortgage defaulted, many did, affected by the same financial events.

They were strongly criticized by economist Joseph Stiglitz, among others. Stiglitz considered the agencies "one of the key culprits" of the crisis that "performed that alchemy that converted the securities from F-rated to A-rated. The banks could not have done what they did without the complicity of the ratings agencies." According to Morgenson, the agencies had pretended to transform "dross into gold."

"'As usual, the ratings agencies were chronically behind on developments in the financial markets and they could barely keep up with the new instruments springing from the brains of Wall Street's rocket scientists. Fitch, Moody's, and S&P paid their analysts far less than the big brokerage firms did and, not surprisingly wound up employing people who were often looking to befriend, accommodate, and impress the Wall Street clients in hopes of getting hired by them for a multiple increase in pay. ... Their [the rating agencies] failure to recognize that mortgage underwriting standards had decayed or to account for the possibility that real estate prices could decline completely undermined the ratings agencies' models and undercut their ability to estimate losses that these securities might generate.'"

Michael Lewis also pronounced the transformation of BBB tranches into 80% triple A CDOs as "dishonest", "artificial" and the result of "fat fees" paid to rating agencies by Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street firms. However, if the collateral had been sufficient, those ratings would have been correct, according to the FDIC.

Synthetic CDOs were criticized in particular, because of the difficulties to judge (and price) the risk inherent in that kind of securities correctly. That adverse effect roots in the pooling and tranching activities on every level of the derivation.

Others pointed out the risk of undoing the connection between borrowers and lenders—removing the lender's incentive to only pick borrowers who were creditworthy—inherent in all securitization. According to economist Mark Zandi: "As shaky mortgages were combined, diluting any problems into a larger pool, the incentive for responsibility was undermined."

Zandi and others also criticized lack of regulation. "Finance companies weren't subject to the same regulatory oversight as banks. Taxpayers weren't on the hook if they went belly up [pre-crisis], only their shareholders and other creditors were. Finance companies thus had little to discourage them from growing as aggressively as possible, even if that meant lowering or winking at traditional lending standards."

Concept
CDOs vary in structure and underlying assets, but the basic principle is the same. A CDO is a type of asset-backed security. To create a CDO, a corporate entity is constructed to hold assets as collateral backing packages of cash flows which are sold to investors. A sequence in constructing a CDO is:
 * A special purpose entity (SPE) is designed/constructed to acquire a portfolio of underlying assets. Common underlying assets held may include mortgage-backed securities, commercial real estate bonds and corporate loans.
 * The SPE issues bonds to investors in exchange for cash, which are used to purchase the portfolio of underlying assets. Like other ABS private label securities, the bonds are not uniform but issued in layers called tranches, each with different risk characteristics. Senior tranches are paid from the cash flows from the underlying assets before the junior tranches and equity tranches. Losses are first borne by the equity tranches, next by the junior tranches, and finally by the senior tranches.

A common analogy compares the cash flow from the CDO's portfolio of securities (say mortgage payments from mortgage-backed bonds) to water flowing into cups of the investors where senior tranches were filled first and overflowing cash flowed to junior tranches, then equity tranches. If a large portion of the mortgages enter default, there is insufficient cash flow to fill all these cups and equity tranche investors face the losses first.

The risk and return for a CDO investor depends both on how the tranches are defined, and on the underlying assets. In particular, the investment depends on the assumptions and methods used to define the risk and return of the tranches. CDOs, like all asset-backed securities, enable the originators of the underlying assets to pass credit risk to another institution or to individual investors. Thus investors must understand how the risk for CDOs is calculated.

The issuer of the CDO, typically an investment bank, earns a commission at the time of issue and earns management fees during the life of the CDO. The ability to earn substantial fees from originating CDOs, coupled with the absence of any residual liability, skews the incentives of originators in favor of loan volume rather than loan quality.

In some cases, the assets held by one CDO consisted entirely of equity layer tranches issued by other CDOs. This explains why some CDOs became entirely worthless, as the equity layer tranches were paid last in the sequence and there was not sufficient cash flow from the underlying subprime mortgages (many of which defaulted) to trickle down to the equity layers.

Ultimately the challenge is in accurately quantifying the risk and return characteristics of these constructs. Since the introduction of David Li's 2001 model, there have been material advances in techniques that more accurately model dynamics for these complex securities.

Structures
CDO refers to several different types of products. The primary classifications are as follows:

 * Source of funds—cash flow vs. market value
 * Cash flow CDOs pay interest and principal to tranche holders using the cash flows produced by the CDO's assets. Cash flow CDOs focus primarily on managing the credit quality of the underlying portfolio.
 * Market value CDOs attempt to enhance investor returns through the more frequent trading and profitable sale of collateral assets. The CDO asset manager seeks to realize capital gains on the assets in the CDO's portfolio. There is greater focus on the changes in market value of the CDO's assets. Market value CDOs are longer-established, but less common than cash flow CDOs.

 * Motivation—arbitrage vs. balance sheet
 * Arbitrage transactions (cash flow and market value) attempt to capture for equity investors the spread between the relatively high yielding assets and the lower yielding liabilities represented by the rated bonds. The majority, 86%, of CDOs are arbitrage-motivated.
 * Balance sheet transactions, by contrast, are primarily motivated by the issuing institutions' desire to remove loans and other assets from their balance sheets, to reduce their regulatory capital requirements and improve their return on risk capital. A bank may wish to offload the credit risk to reduce its balance sheet's credit risk.

 * Funding—cash vs. synthetic
 * Cash CDOs involve a portfolio of cash assets, such as loans, corporate bonds, asset-backed securities or mortgage-backed securities. Ownership of the assets is transferred to the legal entity (known as a special purpose vehicle) issuing the CDO's tranches. The risk of loss on the assets is divided among tranches in reverse order of seniority. Cash CDO issuance exceeded $400 billion in 2006.
 * Synthetic CDOs do not own cash assets like bonds or loans. Instead, synthetic CDOs gain credit exposure to a portfolio of fixed income assets without owning those assets through the use of credit default swaps, a derivatives instrument. (Under such a swap, the credit protection seller, the Synthetic CDO, receives periodic cash payments, called premiums, in exchange for agreeing to assume the risk of loss on a specific asset in the event that asset experiences a default or other credit event.) Like a cash CDO, the risk of loss on the Synthetic CDO's portfolio is divided into tranches. Losses will first affect the equity tranche, next the junior tranches, and finally the senior tranche. Each tranche receives a periodic payment (the swap premium), with the junior tranches offering higher premiums.
 * A synthetic CDO tranche may be either funded or unfunded. Under the swap agreements, the CDO could have to pay up to a certain amount of money in the event of a credit event on the reference obligations in the CDO's reference portfolio. Some of this credit exposure is funded at the time of investment by the investors in funded tranches. Typically, the junior tranches that face the greatest risk of experiencing a loss have to fund at closing. Until a credit event occurs, the proceeds provided by the funded tranches are often invested in high-quality, liquid assets or placed in a GIC (Guaranteed Investment Contract) account that offers a return that is a few basis points below LIBOR. The return from these investments plus the premium from the swap counterparty provide the cash flow stream to pay interest to the funded tranches. When a credit event occurs and a payout to the swap counterparty is required, the required payment is made from the GIC or reserve account that holds the liquid investments. In contrast, senior tranches are usually unfunded as the risk of loss is much lower. Unlike a cash CDO, investors in a senior tranche receive periodic payments but do not place any capital in the CDO when entering into the investment. Instead, the investors retain continuing funding exposure and may have to make a payment to the CDO in the event the portfolio's losses reach the senior tranche. Funded synthetic issuance exceeded $80 billion in 2006. From an issuance perspective, synthetic CDOs take less time to create. Cash assets do not have to be purchased and managed, and the CDO's tranches can be precisely structured.
 * Hybrid CDOs have a portfolio including both cash assets—like cash CDOs—and swaps that give the CDO credit exposure to additional assets—like a synthetic CDO. A portion of the proceeds from the funded tranches is invested in cash assets and the remainder is held in reserve to cover payments that may be required under the credit default swaps. The CDO receives payments from three sources: the return from the cash assets, the GIC or reserve account investments, and the CDO premiums.

 * Single-tranche CDOs
 * The flexibility of credit default swaps is used to construct Single Tranche CDOs (bespoke tranche CDOs) where the entire CDO is structured specifically for a single or small group of investors, and the remaining tranches are never sold but held by the dealer based on valuations from internal models. Residual risk is delta-hedged by the dealer.

 * Structured Operating Companies
 * Unlike CDOs, which are terminating structures that typically wind-down or refinance at the end of their financing term, Structured Operating Companies are permanently capitalized variants of CDOs, with an active management team and infrastructure. They often issue term notes, commercial paper, and/or auction rate securities, depending upon the structural and portfolio characteristics of the company. Credit Derivative Products Companies (CDPC) and Structured Investment Vehicles (SIV) are examples, with CDPC taking risk synthetically and SIV with predominantly 'cash' exposure.

Taxation
The issuer of a CDO—usually a special purpose entity—is typically a corporation established outside the United States to avoid being subject to U.S. federal income taxation on its global income. These corporations must restrict their activities to avoid U.S. tax liabilities; corporations that are deemed to engage in trade or business in the U.S. will be subject to federal taxation. Foreign corporations that only invest in and hold portfolios of U.S. stock and debt securities are not. Investing, unlike trading or dealing, is not considered to be a trade or business, regardless of its volume or frequency.

In addition, a safe harbor protects CDO issuers that do trade actively in securities, even though trading in securities technically is a business, provided the issuer's activities do not cause it to be viewed as a dealer in securities or engaged in a banking, lending or similar businesses.

CDOs are generally taxable as debt instruments except for the most junior class of CDOs which are treated as equity and are subject to special rules (such as PFIC and CFC reporting). The PFIC and CFC reporting is very complex and requires a specialized accountant to perform these calculations and manage the tax reporting obligations.

Types
A) Based on the underlying asset:
 * Collateralized loan obligations (CLOs): CDOs backed primarily by leveraged bank loans.
 * Collateralized bond obligations (CBOs): CDOs backed primarily by leveraged fixed income securities.
 * Collateralized synthetic obligations (CSOs): CDOs backed primarily by credit derivatives.
 * Structured finance CDOs (SFCDOs): CDOs backed primarily by structured products (such as asset-backed securities and mortgage-backed securities).

B) Other types of CDOs by assets/collateral include:
 * Commercial Real Estate CDOs (CRE CDOs): backed primarily by commercial real estate assets
 * Collateralized bond obligations (CBOs): CDOs backed primarily by corporate bonds
 * Collateralized Insurance Obligations (CIOs): backed by insurance or, more usually, reinsurance contracts
 * CDO-Squared: CDOs backed primarily by the tranches issued by other CDOs.
 * CDO^n: Generic term for CDO3 (CDO cubed) and higher, where the CDO is backed by other CDOs/CDO2/CDO3. These are particularly difficult vehicles to model because of the possible repetition of exposures in the underlying CDO.

Types of collateral
The collateral for cash CDOs include:
 * Structured finance securities (mortgage-backed securities, home equity asset-backed securities, commercial mortgage-backed securities)
 * Leveraged loans
 * Corporate bonds
 * Real estate investment trust (REIT) debt
 * Commercial real estate mortgage debt (including whole loans, B notes, and Mezzanine debt)
 * Project finance debt
 * Trust Preferred securities

Transaction participants
Participants in a CDO transaction include investors, the underwriter, the asset manager, the trustee and collateral administrator, accountants and attorneys. Beginning in 1999, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed banks to also participate.

Investors
Investors—buyers of CDO—include insurance companies, mutual fund companies, unit trusts, investment trusts, commercial banks, investment banks, pension fund managers, private banking organizations, other CDOs and structured investment vehicles. Investors have different motivations for purchasing CDO securities depending on which tranche they select. At the more senior levels of debt, investors are able to obtain better yields than those that are available on more traditional securities (e.g., corporate bonds) of a similar rating. In some cases, investors utilize leverage and hope to profit from the excess of the spread offered by the senior tranche and their cost of borrowing. This is true because senior tranches pay a spread above LIBOR despite their AAA-ratings. Investors also benefit from the diversification of the CDO portfolio, the expertise of the asset manager, and the credit support built into the transaction. Investors include banks and insurance companies as well as investment funds.

Junior tranche investors achieve a leveraged, non-recourse investment in the underlying diversified collateral portfolio. Mezzanine notes and equity notes offer yields that are not available in most other fixed income securities. Investors include hedge funds, banks, and wealthy individuals.

Underwriter
The underwriter of a CDO is typically an investment bank, and acts as the structurer and arranger. Working with the asset management firm that selects the CDO's portfolio, the underwriter structures debt and equity tranches. This includes selecting the debt-to-equity ratio, sizing each tranche, establishing coverage and collateral quality tests, and working with the credit rating agencies to gain the desired ratings for each debt tranche.

The key economic consideration for an underwriter that is considering bringing a new deal to market is whether the transaction can offer a sufficient return to the equity noteholders. Such a determination requires estimating the after-default return offered by the portfolio of debt securities and comparing it to the cost of funding the CDO's rated notes. The excess spread must be large enough to offer the potential of attractive IRRs to the equity holders.

Other underwriter responsibilities include working with a law firm and creating the special purpose legal vehicle (typically a trust incorporated in the Cayman Islands) that will purchase the assets and issue the CDO's tranches. In addition, the underwriter will work with the asset manager to determine the post-closing trading restrictions that will be included in the CDO's transaction documents and other files.

The final step is to price the CDO (i.e., set the coupons for each debt tranche) and place the tranches with investors. The priority in placement is finding investors for the risky equity tranche and junior debt tranches (A, BBB, etc.) of the CDO. It is common for the asset manager to retain a piece of the equity tranche. In addition, the underwriter was generally expected to provide some type of secondary market liquidity for the CDO, especially its more senior tranches.

According to Thomson Financial, the top underwriters before September 2008 were Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America Securities. CDOs are more profitable for underwriters than conventional bond underwriting because of the complexity involved. The underwriter is paid a fee when the CDO is issued.

The asset manager
The asset manager plays a key role in each CDO transaction, even after the CDO is issued. An experienced manager is critical in both the construction and maintenance of the CDO's portfolio. The manager can maintain the credit quality of a CDO's portfolio through trades as well as maximize recovery rates when defaults on the underlying assets occur.

In theory, the asset manager should add value in the manner outlined below, although in practice, this did not occur during the credit bubble of the mid-2000s (decade). In addition, it is now understood that the structural flaw in all asset-backed securities (originators profit from loan volume not loan quality) make the roles of subsequent participants peripheral to the quality of the investment.

The asset manager's role begins in the months before a CDO is issued, a bank usually provides financing to the manager to purchase some of the collateral assets for the forthcoming CDO. This process is called warehousing.

Even by the issuance date, the asset manager often will not have completed the construction of the CDO's portfolio. A "ramp-up" period following issuance during which the remaining assets are purchased can extend for several months after the CDO is issued. For this reason, some senior CDO notes are structured as delayed drawdown notes, allowing the asset manager to draw down cash from investors as collateral purchases are made. When a transaction is fully ramped, its initial portfolio of credits has been selected by the asset manager.

However, the asset manager's role continues even after the ramp-up period ends, albeit in a less active role. During the CDO's "reinvestment period", which usually extends several years past the issuance date of the CDO, the asset manager is authorized to reinvest principal proceeds by purchasing additional debt securities. Within the confines of the trading restrictions specified in the CDO's transaction documents, the asset manager can also make trades to maintain the credit quality of the CDO's portfolio. The manager also has a role in the redemption of a CDO's notes by auction call.

There are approximately 300 asset managers in the marketplace. CDO asset managers, as with other asset managers, can be more or less active depending on the personality and prospectus of the CDO. Asset managers make money by virtue of the senior fee (which is paid before any of the CDO investors are paid) and subordinated fee as well as any equity investment the manager has in the CDO, making CDOs a lucrative business for asset managers. These fees, together with underwriting fees, administration—approx 1.5 – 2% —by virtue of capital structure are provided by the equity investment, by virtue of reduced cash flow.

The trustee and collateral administrator
The trustee holds title to the assets of the CDO for the benefit of the "noteholders" (i.e., the investors). In the CDO market, the trustee also typically serves as collateral administrator. In this role, the collateral administrator produces and distributes noteholder reports, performs various compliance tests regarding the composition and liquidity of the asset portfolios in addition to constructing and executing the priority of payment waterfall models. In contrast to the asset manager, there are relatively few trustees in the marketplace. The following institutions offer trustee services in the CDO marketplace:
 * Bank of New York Mellon (note: the Bank of New York Mellon acquired the corporate trust unit of JP Morgan),
 * BNP Paribas Securities Services (note: currently serves the European market only)
 * Citibank
 * Deutsche Bank
 * Equity Trust
 * Intertrust Group (note: until mid-2009 was known as Fortis Intertrust; Acquired ATC Capital Markets in 2013)
 * HSBC
 * Sanne Trust
 * State Street Corporation
 * US Bank (note: US Bank acquired the corporate trust unit of Wachovia in 2008 and Bank of America in September 2011, which had previously acquired LaSalle Bank in 2010, and is the current market share leader)
 * Wells Fargo
 * Wilmington Trust: Wilmington shut down their business in early 2009.

Accountants
The underwriter typically will hire an accounting firm to perform due diligence on the CDO's portfolio of debt securities. This entails verifying certain attributes, such as credit rating and coupon/spread, of each collateral security. Source documents or public sources will typically be used to tie-out the collateral pool information. In addition, the accountants typically calculate certain collateral tests and determine whether the portfolio is in compliance with such tests.

The firm may also perform a cash flow tie-out in which the transaction's waterfall is modeled per the priority of payments set forth in the transaction documents. The yield and weighted average life of the bonds or equity notes being issued is then calculated based on the modeling assumptions provided by the underwriter. On each payment date, an accounting firm may work with the trustee to verify the distributions that are scheduled to be made to the noteholders.

Attorneys
Attorneys ensure compliance with applicable securities law and negotiate and draft the transaction documents. Attorneys will also draft an offering document or prospectus the purpose of which is to satisfy statutory requirements to disclose certain information to investors. This will be circulated to investors. It is common for multiple counsels to be involved in a single deal because of the number of parties to a single CDO from asset management firms to underwriters.

In popular media
In the 2015 biographical film The Big Short, CDOs of mortgage-backed securities are described metaphorically as "dog shit wrapped in cat shit".

title: Collateralized debt obligation


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SIM 101

SIM 101
Doesn't establish notability. --fvw *  04:10, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)
 * So two college students had an idea for a computer program...or a radio station...or something. Still no evidence it's had any impact on anybody else's life. Delete. [[User:Livajo|Ливай | ☺]] 07:08, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete Not notable. --LeeHunter 15:45, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Speedy Delete as prank. Wyss 22:17, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)

title: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/SIM 101


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Mariner Write

Mariner Write

 * This is an advertisement. Article was listed as a copyvio, but the site owner gave permission for the text to be used. Article was then listed for speedy deletion, but it doesn't qualify: see Spam, which says it must go through VfD. If someone wants to rewrite it as a real article, that would be great. Otherwise, delete.-gadfium (talk) 04:12, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * delete ~ mlk ✉ ♬  04:20, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) ~
 * I've cleaned up the advertising talk, which leaves a very small compu-stub. Not sufficiently notable for my tastes, but I'm aware that others have less strict requirments. Delete.  --fvw *  04:22, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)
 * Delete Macs suck anyway. —ExplorerCDT 07:33, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Keep, now just another computer stub waiting for someone to expand it. Dan100 09:30, Dec 22, 2004 (UTC)
 * Weak keep. Being anti-Borg, I like alternatives, but that doesn't affect my Wikipedia voting--apparently this software was voted "MacHome Magazine's Application of the Month", nominated for Best Productivity Application at the 2003 MacUser-UK Awards, and touted as one of the "best alternatives to Microsoft Word" in MacWorld Magazine--once we start talking awards, I think software becomes notable. Niteowlneils 17:20, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete: not an article, still an advert. Wile E. Heresiarch 22:03, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Delete, should have been speedied as spam. Wyss 22:16, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Neutral — I have originally nominated it for speedy deletion as an advertisement masquerading as article  (“Boasting an elegant and easy-to-use interface, Mariner Write can run on only 2MB of RAM. And that's no typo; only 38 MB less than Word®!” etc.) but now after fvw has rewritten it, it is no longer spam, so I won’t vote Delete. If the above informations about awards were in the article I would vote Keep. I’ll comment the content in Talk:Mariner Write. Rafał Pocztarski 17:29, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


text:
Category:History of physics

On the ordering of entries
Entries beginning with "History of " or "List of " are ordered by the rest of their names. (For example: History of special relativity is listed under "S".)

For information on how to reorder entries to adhere to this rule, please see this Categorization FAQ entry and/or view the relevant tag in one of the reordered entries.

title: Category:History of physics


text:
Mils Muliaina

Junior Malili "Mils" Muliaina (born 31 July 1980) is a former professional rugby union player who most recently played for San Francisco Rush in the US PRO Rugby competition. He played primarily as a fullback, though he has also played as a centre and on the wing.

Born in Salelesi, Samoa, Muliaina moved with his family to Invercargill, New Zealand, at the age of three. At international level Muliaina played for from 2003 until his retirement after the 2011 Rugby World Cup. Muliaina became only the second All Black to reach 100 caps during the World Cup quarter-final against in 2011. He scored 33 tries for New Zealand and remains among the top 30 highest try scorers in rugby union.

Early career
He first attended Cargill High School then Southland Boys' High School, where he proved proficient enough at rugby to be offered a scholarship to Kelston Boys' High School in Auckland, in 1998. Subsequently, Muliaina played for the NZ Secondary Schools XV, the team winning that year's world championship. He repeated this the following year with the Under 19 side, and in 2000 and 2001 was part of the world champion Under 21 (NZ Colt) teams of those years.

Super Rugby and the All Blacks
Muliaina joined the Auckland Blues in 2001 and was a part of the Super 12 title-winning team for the Blues in 2003. Muliaina's test debut for the All Blacks was against England on 14 June 2003 at the Westpac Stadium in Wellington. He was subsequently part of the All Black squad at the 2003 Rugby World Cup. In 2004, he was the only player to be selected for every test played by the All Blacks. Muliaina has also played in 11 tournaments for the sevens team, including winning a Commonwealth Games gold medal in 2002 in Manchester. Though he has expressed a preference for playing as an outside centre, Muliaina generally plays at fullback. In 2006 he joined the Chiefs, with whom he brought up his 100th Super Rugby cap in 2011.

On 9 October 2011 during the 2011 Rugby World Cup, Muliaina played his 100th game for the All Blacks after starting at fullback against Argentina. During the game, Muliaina was forced from the field at half-time, having injured his shoulder. This was later revealed to have been fractured, meaning he was dropped from the New Zealand World Cup squad. Muliaina retired from the All Blacks squad the following day on 10 October 2011 after achieving his 100th Test cap and returned on 23 October 2011 to claim his gold medal after the All Blacks won the 2011 Rugby World Cup final.

Europe
As of 4 May 2014, Mils had signed a one-year contract for Irish provincial region Connacht in the Pro12. On 21 November 2014, Muliaina made his Connacht debut in a 43–3 win over Italian side Zebre at the Sportgrounds.

In July 2015, Muliaina was charged with sexual assault following an incident with a woman in a Cardiff night club. The charge was dropped in October 2015 on evidential grounds.

United States
It was announced in March 2016 that Muliaina would play the upcoming season in the United States in the newly formed PRO Rugby competition. He joined the San Francisco Rush midway through the inaugural 2016 season.

Achievements

 * Under 21 Rugby World Champion (2000 & 2001)
 * Commonwealth Games Gold Medal, Sevens Rugby (2002)
 * IRB Sevens World Series Champion (1999, 2000 & 2001)
 * ITM Cup (also known as the National Provincial Championship, NPC) Champion (Auckland: 1999, 2002, 2005; Waikato: 2006)
 * Super Rugby Champion (2003 with )
 * NZ Super Rugby Player of the Year (2009)
 * 106 Super Rugby caps (Blues and Chiefs)
 * Tri-Nations Champion (2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 & 2010)
 * British & Irish Lions series victory (2005)
 * Grand Slam (2005, 2008 & 2010 )
 * IRB Player of the Year Nominee (2010)
 * Rugby World Cup Champion (2011)
 * 100 All Black Test caps (3 as captain)

title: Mils Muliaina


text:
Dressy Bessy

Dressy Bessy is an indie rock band from Denver, Colorado led by songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist, Tammy Ealom. The band is associated with the Elephant Six Recording Company and shares guitarist John Hill with The Apples in Stereo. Ealom formed the band with drummer Darren Albert and bassist Rob Greene in 1996. Hill joined the band after helping engineer early recordings in 1997. The name was taken from a popular Playskool doll of the 1970s.

1996–Present
They released two singles and an EP in 1997–98 and licensed songs to some compilation albums.

Dressy Bessy's first full-length release Pink Hearts, Yellow Moons (1999) was a mixture of beat group drums, infectious songs, and the odd burst of harmonium. Further releases include The California EP (2000), Sound Go Round (2002), and 2003's Dressy Bessy, which incorporated a harder guitar sound. 2003 also brought the compilation Little Music: Singles 1997-2002. These albums were initially released on Kindercore Records of Athens, Georgia. Their songs "If You Should Try to Kiss Her" and "Just Like Henry" were featured in the 1999 indie film But I'm a Cheerleader.

In late 2003, drummer Darren Albert left the band and was replaced in 2005 by Craig Gilbert. Later that year, the band signed to Transdreamer Records and recorded their fourth album, Electrified, which was released in June 2005. The band released HOLLERandSTOMP, on September 16, 2008.

Dressy Bessy released KINGSIZED on Yep Roc Records (CD, LP) and Burger Records (CS), February 5, 2016.

The band's seventh studio album, titled Fast Faster Disaster, was released June 14, 2019 by Yep Roc Records and Burger Records

Members

 * Tammy Ealom – Guitar, Lead Vocals (1996–Present)
 * Rob Greene – Bass (1996–2014)
 * Darren Albert – Drums (1996–2003)
 * John Hill – Guitar (1997–Present)
 * Becky Barron – Drums (2004) (Touring Member)
 * Craig Gilbert – Drums (2005–Present)
 * James Barone – Drums (2008) (Touring Member)
 * Paul Garcia – Guitar, Keys, Percussion (2008) (Touring Member)
 * Jeff Fuller – Bass (2016–2017) (Touring Member)
 * Michael Giblin – Bass (2016–2018) (Touring Member, Recording Contributor)
 * Eric Allen – Bass (2018) (Touring Member, Recording Contributor)
 * Lindsay Romig – Keys (Touring Member, Recording Contributor)

Albums

 * Pink Hearts Yellow Moons (Kindercore; CD/LP; 1999)
 * SoundGoRound (Kindercore; CD/LP; 2002)
 * Little Music: Singles 1997-2002 (Kindercore; CD/LP; 2003)
 * Dressy Bessy (Kindercore; CD; 2003)
 * Electrified (Transdreamer Records; CD/LP; 2005)
 * Holler and Stomp (Transdreamer Records; CD/LP; 2008)
 * KINGSIZED (Yep Roc Records / Burger Records; CD/LP/CS; 2016)
 * Fast Faster Disaster (Yep Roc Records / Burger Records; CD/LP; 2019)

EPs and singles

 * Ultra Vivid Color (Little Dipper; 7"; 1997)
 * You Stand Here (Drug Racer; CD; 1998)
 * Sunny (100 Guitar Mania; 7"; 1999)
 * The California EP (Kindercore; CD; 2000)
 * Split w/ Saloon (Track & Field Organisation; 7"; 2002)
 * Lady Liberty b/w What Is Life (Yep Roc Records; 7"; 2015)
 * Summer Singles Volume 1 & 2 (High Dive Records: 7"; 2017)

Compilations

 * "The Things That You Say That You Do" on Dive Right Inn: The Only Spring Break CD You'll Need (American Eagle Outfitters; CD; 2004)
 * "Makeup" on Pure Spun Sugar (CandyFloss; LP; 1998)
 * "Extra-Ordinary" on A Bunch Of Beatniks Riding A Rocket (Red Carpet Ring; Cassette; 1999)
 * "Lookaround" on Beikoku-Ongaku vol. 13 (Beikoku-Ongaku; CD/Mag; 1999)
 * "Just Like Henry" on Counterattack Of U.S. Indie (Contact; CD; 1999)
 * "All The Right Reasons" on Christmas Two (Kindercore; CD; 1999)
 * "Bubbles" on The Powerpuff Girls: Heroes And Villains (Rhino; CD; 2000)
 * "Gloria Days" on Songs For A Crimson Eggtree (Earworm; LP; 2000)
 * "Instead" on Kindercore Fifty (Kindercore; 3 CDs; 2000)
 * "Some Better Days" on The Winter Report (Hype City; CD; 2001)
 * "Extra-Ordinary (re-mix)" on Space Program (Philter; CD; 2001)
 * "Side 2" on Quiero ser linda como Ale !!! (Niñoboy; CD; 2008)

In Other Media
"If You Should Try To Kiss Her" and "Just Like Henry" from the album Pink Hearts Yellow Moons feature in the 1999 motion picture But I'm a Cheerleader. "Just Like Henry" also featured in the 2012 film Picture Day. "Lookaround," also from the album Pink Hearts Yellow Moons, appeared in the 15th episode of season 3 of Felicity, "Senioritis".

The band performed "Just Once More" from the album Dressy Bessy on the October 31, 2003 episode of Last Call with Carson Daly. They performed "Electrified" from the album Electrified on the August 5, 2005 episode of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. "Side 2," also from Electrified, featured in the 2006 motion picture She's the Man.

title: Dressy Bessy


text:
Tumulus culture

The Tumulus culture (German: Hügelgräberkultur) was the dominant material culture in Central Europe during the Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600 to 1300 BC).

It was the descendant of the Unetice culture. Its heartland was the area previously occupied by the Unetice culture, and its territory included parts of Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Switzerland, the Carpathian Basin, Poland and France. It was succeeded by the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture and part of the origin of the Italic and Celtic cultures.

Artefacts and characteristics

The Tumulus culture is distinguished by the practice of burying the dead beneath burial mounds (tumuli or kurgans).

In 1902, Paul Reinecke distinguished a number of cultural horizons based on research of Bronze Age hoards and tumuli in periods covered by these cultural horizons are shown in the table below (right). The Tumulus culture was prevalent during the Bronze Age periods B, C1, and C2. Tumuli have been used elsewhere in Europe from the Stone Age to the Iron Age; the term "Tumulus culture" specifically refers to the South German variant of the Bronze Age. In the table, Ha designates Hallstatt. Archaeological horizons Hallstatt A–B are part of the Bronze Age Urnfield culture, while horizons Hallstatt C–D are the type site for the Iron Age Hallstatt culture.

The Tumulus culture was eminently a warrior society, which expanded with new chiefdoms eastward into the Carpathian Basin (up to the river Tisza), and northward into Polish and Central European Únětice territories. The culture's dispersed settlements consisted of villages or homesteads centered on fortified structures such as hillforts. Significant fortified settlements include the Heuneburg, Bullenheimer Berg, Ehrenbürg, and Bernstorf. Fortification walls were built from wood, stone and clay. The massive 3.6m-wide wall surrounding the plateau of the Ehrenbürg resembled later murus gallicus fortifications known from the Iron Age. 'Cyclopean' stone fortifications topped with wooden battlements were constructed c. 1400 BC at the large hillfort of Stätteberg in Bavaria.

Tumulus culture societies traded with those in Scandinavia, Atlantic Europe, the Mediterranean region and the Aegean. Traded items included amber and metal artefacts. From the beginning of the Middle Bronze Age there is evidence for the use of weighed metal as form of payment or money. Weighing equipment has been found in central Europe dating from c. 1400 BC onwards.

Some scholars see Tumulus groups from southern Germany as corresponding to a community that shared an extinct Indo-European linguistic entity, such as the hypothetical Italo-Celtic group that was ancestral to Italic and Celtic. This particular hypothesis, however, conflicts with suggestions by other Indo-Europeanists. For instance, David W. Anthony suggests that Proto-Italic (and perhaps also Proto-Celtic) speakers could have entered Northern Italy at an earlier stage, from the east (e.g., the Balkan/Adriatic region).

The Bronze Hand of Prêles from Switzerland, dating from the 16th-15th century BC, is a unique find from the Tumulus culture period. Described as "the earliest metal representation of a human body part ever found in Europe", it may have been a ritual object, or mounted on a standard like similar metal hands known from the Iron Age, or possibly a prosthesis. It was found in a grave along with a bronze hair-ring, pin and dagger. The hand had a golden bracelet or cuff decorated with solar motifs.

Golden hats from Schifferstadt in Germany and Avanton in France, dating from the late Tumulus period (c. 1400 BC), may have been worn by elite religious figures, described as 'oracles' or 'king-priests' by researchers. The patterns of ornaments or symbols on the hats are thought to represent calendars, as on the later and more elaborate Berlin Gold Hat, which may encode knowledge of the luni-solar Metonic cycle. Gold discs from the Czech Republic, dating from c. 1650-1250 BC, feature similar ornaments and are thought to represent simpler calendars. Identical 'ritual objects' from Haschendorf in Austria and Balkåkra in Sweden may also date from the Middle Bronze Age and have been interpreted as solar calendars.

title: Tumulus culture


text: Category:Hospitals in Saudi Arabia

title: Category:Hospitals in Saudi Arabia


text:
Lampião

"Captain" Virgulino Ferreira da Silva (7 June 1897 – 28 July 1938), better known as Lampião (older spelling: Lampeão,, meaning "lantern" or "oil lamp"), was probably the twentieth century's most successful traditional bandit leader. The banditry endemic to the Brazilian Northeast was called Cangaço. Cangaço had origins in the late 19th century but was particularly prevalent in the 1920s and 1930s. Lampião led a band of up to 100 cangaceiros, who occasionally took over small towns and who fought a number of successful actions against paramilitary police when heavily outnumbered. Lampião's exploits and reputation turned him into a folk hero, the Brazilian equivalent of Jesse James or Pancho Villa. His image, as well as that of his partner Maria Bonita, can be seen across the entirety of the Northeast of Brazil.

Early life

Virgulino was born on June 7, 1897, near the village of Serra Talhada, on his father's 'ranch' named Passagem das Pedras in the semi-arid backlands (sertão) of the state of Pernambuco. He was the third of nine children of José Ferreira da Silva and Maria Lopes, a humble family of subsistence farmers. Until he was 21 years old, he worked hard herding his father's few cattle, sheep and goats, becoming a skilled rider and 'cowboy'. He was also an accomplished leathercraft artisan. Though he never attended school he was literate and used reading glasses—both quite unusual features for the rough and poor region where he lived.

The backlands had little in the way of law and order, even the few police in existence were usually in the pocket of a local "Coronel" – a leading landowner who was also a regional political chief – and would usually take sides in any dispute. Indeed, the poorer portion of the backlands population were generally badly treated by the paramilitary police, and would often prefer the presence of bandits in their settlements over that of the police. In such a society disputes between neighbours could quickly escalate into violent feuding. Virgulino's family fell into a deadly feud with other local families. His father twice moved his family to avoid the escalating dispute, first to Nazaré, and then to Água Branca in the State of Alagoas. These moves proved to be fruitless as violence followed the family, with Virgulino and his brothers Antônio and Levino gaining reputations as troublemakers. Eventually José Ferreira was killed in a confrontation with the police on May 18, 1921. Virgulino sought vengeance and proved to be extremely violent in doing so. He became an outlaw, a cangaceiro, and was incessantly pursued by the police (whom he called macacos or monkeys). Virgulino had acquired the nickname 'Lampião' as early as 1921, allegedly because he could fire a lever-action rifle so fast, that at night it looked as though he was holding a lamp.

Bandit leader
Lampião became associated with an established bandit leader, Sebastião Pereira. After only a few months of operating together, in 1922, Pereira decided to retire from banditry; he moved to the State of Goiás and lived there peacefully into advanced old age. Lampião then took over leadership of the remnants of Pereira's band. For the next 16 years, he led his band of cangaceiros, which varied greatly in number from around a dozen to up to a hundred, in a career of large-scale banditry through seven states of the Brazilian Northeast.

Depending on the terrain and other conditions, the bandits operated either on horseback or on foot. They were heavily armed, and wore leather outfits, including hats, jackets, sandals, ammunition belts, and trousers, to protect them from the thorns of the caatinga, the dry shrub and brushwood typical of the dry hinterland of Brazil's Northeast. The police and soldiers stationed in the backlands often dressed in an identical manner; on more than one occasion Lampião impersonated a police officer, especially when moving into a new area of operations, in order to gain information.

The firearms and ammunition of the cangaceiros were mostly stolen, or acquired by bribery, from the police and paramilitary units and consisted of Mauser military rifles and a variety of small arms including Winchester rifles, revolvers and the prized Luger and Mauser semi-automatic pistols.

A strange and contradictory piety ran through Lampião's psyche: while robbing and killing people, he also prayed regularly and reverenced the Church and priests. He wore many religious symbols on his person; presumably, he invested them with talismanic qualities. Like many others in the region he particularly revered Padre Cícero, the charismatic priest of Juazeiro. He was noted for his loyalty to those he befriended or to whom he owed a debt of gratitude. He generously rewarded his followers and those of the population who shielded or materially helped him (coiteiros), and he was entirely reliable if he gave his word of honour. Lampião was capable of acts of mercy and even charity, however, he systematically used terror to achieve his own survival. His enmity, once aroused, was implacable and he killed many people merely because they had an association with someone who had displeased him. He is recorded as having said "If you have to kill, kill quickly. But for me killing a thousand is just like killing one". For the cangaceiros murder was not only casual, they took pride in their efficiency in killing. They were excellent shots and were skilled in the use of long, narrow knives (nicknamed peixeiras – "fish-filleters") which could be used to dispatch a man quickly.

Lampião's band attacked small towns and farms in seven states, took hostages for ransom, extorted money by threats of violence, tortured, fire-branded, and maimed; it has been claimed that they killed over 1,000 people and 5,000 head of cattle and raped over 200 women. The band fought the police over 200 times and Lampião was wounded six times.

A typical example of Lampião's activities, and his ambivalent nature, is his descent on the small town of Queimadas in Bahia, which took place in December 1929. His band entered the town, and immediately shut down the telegraph office to stop news from spreading. The seven policemen in the town and their sergeant were shut in the jail, whilst the jail's previous occupants were set free. The wealthiest citizens of the town were then levied for a forced monetary contribution. The bandits, however, paid for items, including soap and perfume, taken from the town's shops. The seven policemen were summarily executed by shots to the head, but their sergeant was left unharmed as he was liked by the townspeople. In the evening Lampião organised a baile, a dance for the townspeople and his cangaceiros. He also ordered a cinema show to be presented. The bandits were under strict instructions not to molest the local young women, and such was Lampião's authority that none were. The bandits left the town at 4:00 in the morning; Lampião rode a borrowed mule, which he later duly returned to its owner. On one occasion he attacked a large town, Mossoró, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, in June 1927. The bandits began their assault on the town to the sound of a bugle; when advancing they shouted vivas and sang their special song, Mulher Rendeira (The Lacemaker). However, the inhabitants had time to organise a defence, and 300 armed townsmen drove off Lampião's 60 cangaceiros.

As well as engaging in criminal activities for gain or revenge Lampião's band also fought a number of pitched battles with the volantes – mobile units of paramilitary police. Probably the largest of these battles was fought on 28 November 1926 near Serra Grande, twenty miles from Vila Bela. Lampião with around 100 cangaceiros fought off 295 soldiers, killing 10 and wounding a dozen more. At around this time Lampião took to calling himself the "governor of the backlands", only partly in jest.

Lampião was joined in 1930 by his girlfriend, Maria Déia, nicknamed Maria Bonita ("Pretty Maria"). His relationship with Maria Bonita gave his reputation some of the 'romance and violence' notoriety enjoyed in the United States by Bonnie and Clyde. The women who joined bandit groups, often termed cangaceiras, dressed like their male comrades and participated in many of their actions. Maria and Lampião had a daughter, named Expedita, in 1932. A number of cangaceiras joined the band over the many years of its existence and Lampião usually attended any births these women had personally. Such children, including Lampião's own, were fostered out to settled relatives or friends of the cangaceiros, or left with priests. Expedita, Maria and Lampião's daughter, born in 1932, was raised by her uncle João after the deaths of her parents. João Ferreira was the only one of Lampião's brothers not to become an outlaw.

In 1935 Lampião and his band were filmed by Benjamin Abrahão Botto. Once reassured that the camera did not conceal a gun, Lampião co-operated enthusiastically with the filming. The film-stock was soon confiscated by the police, and Abrahão died in 1938. This cinematographic record was rediscovered in 1957, but had physically deteriorated to a great extent. However, several scenes survived, a unique example of moving images of Lampião, Maria Bonita and many other cangaceiros.

Death
On July 28, 1938, Lampião and his band were betrayed by one of his supporters, Joca Bernardes, and were ambushed in one of his hideouts, the Angicos farm, in the Poço Redondo area of the state of Sergipe. A police troop, led by João Bezerra and armed with machine guns, attacked the encamped bandits at daybreak. In a brief battle, Lampião, Maria Bonita and nine of his troops were killed, some forty other members of the bandit group managed to escape. The heads of those killed were cut off and sent to Salvador, the capital of Bahia, for examination by specialists at the State Forensic Institute. Later they were put on public exhibition in the city of Piranhas. In 1969, after more than 30 years, the mummified severed heads were removed from display at the Salvador museum and buried in the Quintas Cemetery in Salvador.

The end of Cangaço
In the early 1920s a large number of Cangaço bandit groups were in existence. When Lampião became a cangaceiro, joining the Cangaço was almost the equivalent of a career choice. At the time of Lampião's death, he was the only independent bandit leader remaining. However, his major subordinates, such as Luis Pedro, Ângelo Roque and Corisco, often led bandits in semi-independent operations at a considerable distance from the main camp, sometimes across state borders. It was Lampião's intelligence and charisma that ensured that large-scale banditry remained viable in the changing environment of late 1930s Brazil. Within two years of his death Cangaço was a thing of the past. A number of potential bandit leaders, such as Corisco, and lesser bandits were killed; many more gave themselves up to the authorities on assurance of escaping the death penalty. Ângelo Roque gave himself up, along with eight companions, in April 1940 at Bebedouro. Some bandits even turned on colleagues, killing and decapitating them; they then reported to the police with the severed head to show that their renunciation of banditry was sincere.

Notable band members
Lampião was active for a number of years and thus many men and women passed through his band. More notable ones included:

 * Antônio Ferreira – Lampião's eldest brother, died in an accident in 1926.
 * Levino Ferreira – Lampião's brother, killed in battle with police in July 1925.
 * Ezequiel Ferreira – Lampião's youngest brother, killed in battle with police in April 1931.
 * Luis Pedro – a lieutenant and member of the band for over a decade, he returned to die by Lampião's side even though he may have been able to escape. He accidentally killed Antônio Ferreira in 1926 when a gun went off during a wrestling bout. When told of his brother's death Lampião said that Luis must take his place.
 * Corisco (Cristino Gomes da Silva Cleto) – feared for his cruelty. There was speculation that he would take control of the band after Angicos, where he had not been present. Seeking vengeance for Angicos, Corisco interrogated Joca Bernardes the informant who had betrayed Lampião, who shifted the blame on someone else, Domingos Ventura. Corisco then murdered this entirely innocent person and his whole family, including two women. He was killed by police in 1940.
 * Dadá (Sérgia Ribeiro da Silva), the wife of Corisco. She lost a leg as a result of injuries sustained in the fight in which Corisco was killed; she died in 1994.
 * Ângelo Roque – a trusted lieutenant who was also not present when Lampião was killed. He operated until 1940 when he surrendered to police after being assured that he would not be executed for his crimes. He was initially sentenced to 95 years in prison, which was later reduced to 30 years and then commuted in 1950.
 * Volta Sêca ("Dry Gulch" Antônio dos Santos) – joined the bandits aged 14 as a message-carrier. He was later interviewed in prison and his accounts were an important source for the history of Lampião's activities. He composed and sang a number of songs about, or associated with, Lampião's bandits; many years later, in 1957, these were recorded for a sound documentary by Todamérica.

Folk hero

Despite his history of brutal acts and savagery, there was enough in his undoubted courage, his many fights against heavy odds, his occasional acts of mercy and charity, his conventional piety and calculated courting of publicity to ensure that Lampião entered Brazilian folk-history as a hero. One of the more dispassionate analyses of Lampião concluded that, if he was a hero, he was an anarchist hero who forged a prominent place for himself in a society and political environment where people put their own interests above all other considerations.

In 1957 the songs associated with Lampião's bandits were recorded, as "Cantigas de Lampião".

Joan Baez recorded a version of "Mulher Rendeira", renamed "O Cangaceiro", on her album Joan Baez/5 – released in October 1964. The lyrics refer directly to Lampião.

The story of Lampião and Maria Bonita became the subject of innumerable folk stories, books, comics books, popular pamphlets (cordel literature), songs, movies, and a number of TV soap operas, with all the elements of drama, passion, and violence typical of "Wild West" stories.

Capoeira culture honors his folk hero status in a verse of the quadra (call and response style song), 'Sim, Sim, Sim, Não, Não, Não'. Lampião was mentioned in the lyrics of "Ratamahatta", a song of Brazilian metal band Sepultura, from their Roots record. In classical music, the composer Caio Facó wrote a piece (Cangaceiros e Fanaticos, for string quartet) inspired by the theme of Cangaço.

The ultras group of Sport Club do Recife, called Torcida Jovem do Sport, use the myth of Lampião and Maria Bonita as their 'leaders' and symbols.

For the 2023 edition of the Carnival parade of the Rio de Janeiro samba schools Imperatriz Leopoldinense dedicated their performance to Lampião’s memory, complete with themes and images from his life. Expedita Ferreira, Lampião and Maria Bonita's only child, participated in the parade being featured on the last float in the procession.

Mulher Rendeira – The song of Lampião's bandits
The special song of Lampião's band——is thought by some to have been composed by Lampião, who is known to have played the accordion, but it seems more likely that it was a traditional tune to which the bandits added their own words.

Olê, Mulher Rendeira, Olê mulher rendá ---  "Olê", Lacemaker woman, "Olê" lace woman

A pequena vai no bolso, a maior vai no embornal ---      The small [gun] goes in the pocket, the large [gun] in a bag

Se chora por mim não fica, só se eu não puder levar ---    Only cry for me, if I cannot take you away

O fuzil de Lampião, tem cinco laços de fita ---     The rifle of Lampião, has five ribbons of cloth

O lugar que ele habita, não falta moça bonita ---      The place he lives in, does not lack pretty girls

title: Lampião


text:
The Bitmap Brothers

The Bitmap Brothers are a British video game developer founded in 1987. The company entered the video game industry in 1988 with the scrolling shooter Xenon. They quickly followed with Speedball. Prior to becoming the publisher of their own games (under Renegade Software), early Bitmap Brothers titles were distributed by Image Works and Konami.

The Bitmap Brothers released several games on the Amiga and Atari ST, Acorn Archimedes and DOS, and were one of the most successful companies on those platforms. They became known in particular for releasing games from a variety of different genres that usually came to be regarded as leaders in their respective fields. Their PC games have never matched the sales of their previous Amiga titles, despite garnering positive critical reviews in the press.

They publicized themselves as rock stars, and were featured in the press posing in dark glasses standing next to the helicopter of Robert Maxwell, the owner of Mirrorsoft, the publisher of a number of their games.

After 2002, the company also released ports of several of their games for both the Game Boy Advance and Pocket PC platforms, and since then they have been licensing their old games and properties to several other companies interested in attempting re-releases for modern platforms.

History
The Bitmap Brothers were based in Wapping, East London and were privately owned. The company's MD was Mike Montgomery, who had founded the company together with Eric Matthews and Steve Kelly. Mike Montgomery later went on to take sole control of the business.

Mark John Coleman is a computer graphics developer who frequently worked with the Bitmap Brothers, and along with Dan Malone was responsible for the visual style that became a trademark of the Bitmap Brothers' games. Other key staff included Technical Director John Phillips, Art Director John Kershaw, Business Development Director Ed Bartlett and Creative Director Jamie Barber.

The Bitmap Brothers became known for the high difficulty of their games. Montgomery later remarked that "all of the Bitmap Brothers games... they're probably a bit too difficult. The reason for that was we designed games that we wanted to play - for us it was actually quite hard to think that somebody would want to play something that's easy." The development team was voted Best 16-bit Programmers of the Year at the Golden Joystick Awards. Speedball was also voted best 16-bit Game of the Year overall.

Two former core members of the company — Mike Montgomery and John Phillips — went on to found Tower Studios (along with Sensible Software founder Jon Hare), and stated their involvement with Bitmap Brothers as having ended in 2004.

Business Development Director, Ed Bartlett went on to pioneer the in-game advertising industry, initially with Hive Partners and then with IGA Worldwide.

After years of silence a news post on the official website announced Speedball 2 Tournament which was released in November 2007 by Frogster Interactive, but failed to achieve the success of previous titles in the franchise.

In October 2010, it was announced that Speedball 2 would be resurrected again, this time for the iPhone and iPad systems, with Vivid Games managing the conversion.

Following this, a mobile version of Z was developed by Peter Harrap and TickTock Games and was published by KavCom for devices running iOS and Android, with the touch screen usually available on these devices lending itself to a game of this genre.. It was released on iPhone and iPad in 2011,  with further releases on BlackBerry Playbook, Android, and Kindle in 2012. The mobile version remake by TickTock Games was also released for Mac in 2012, and then published by Kiss Ltd and KavCom for Windows PC on Steam and GOG.com on 4 July 2014, together with a Steam release of Z: Steel Soldiers the following month.

On 2 July 2012, Speedball 2: Evolution was announced and released for Android in Google Play Store, and in 2013 The Chaos Engine was recreated for release on PC, Linux and Mac.

Rebellion Developments acquired the Bitmap Brothers back catalog in November 2019.

Titles
In chronological order:

 * Xenon (1988)
 * Speedball (1988)
 * Xenon II: Megablast (1989)
 * Cadaver (1990)
 * Speedball 2: Brutal Deluxe (1990)
 * Cadaver: The Payoff (1991)
 * Gods (1991)
 * Bike / Triple X / Havoc (cancelled)
 * Magic Pockets (1991)
 * The Chaos Engine (Soldiers of Fortune) (1993, 2013)
 * The Chaos Engine 2 (1996)
 * Z (1996)
 * Speedball 2100 (2000)
 * Xenon 2000 (2000)
 * Z: Steel Soldiers (2001)
 * Speedball Arena (cancelled)
 * Warbots (unreleased)
 * World War II: Frontline Command (2003)
 * Brutal Deluxe / ブルータル デラックス (unreleased)

title: The Bitmap Brothers


text:
Moreau

Moreau may refer to:

People

 * Moreau (surname)

Places

 * Moreau, New York
 * Moreau River (disambiguation)

Music

 * An alternate name for the band Cousteau, used for the album Nova Scotia in the United States for legal reasons

In fiction

 * Dr. Moreau, the anti villain of The Island of Dr. Moreau, an 1896 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, and various film adaptations
 * Andre-Louis Moreau, the hero of Scaramouche, a historical novel by Rafael Sabatini.
 * Moreau series of novels by S. Andrew Swann
 * Jeff "Joker" Moreau, flight lieutenant in the video game Mass Effect
 * Moreau, half-human-half-animal race in the role-playing game D20 Modern
 * Damien Moreau, villain in season 3 of the television show Leverage

title: Moreau


text:
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sikkibahm

Sikkibahm
Non-notable slangdef. --fvw *  04:15, 2004 Dec 22 (UTC)
 * delete ~ mlk ✉ ♬ 05:11, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC) ~
 * Delete, nn prank. Wyss 22:15, 22 Dec 2004 (UTC)
 * Concur. Edeans 00:12, 23 Dec 2004 (UTC)


text: User talk:67.183.177.233

title: User talk:67.183.177.233


text:
Boyzvoice

Boyzvoice was a fictional Norwegian boy band, best known from the movie Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced (2000). They consisted of three band members: brothers M*Pete (Espen Eckbo), Hot Tub (Øyvind Thoen), and Roar Lund-Bergseter (Kaare Daniel Steen).

Boyzvoice was originally formed by Norwegian comedians/actors Espen Eckbo and Henrik Elvestad with the purpose to make fun of boy bands and the commercial music industry. Boyzvoice first appeared on a late-night Norwegian talk-show in 1999 and the same year they climbed the charts in Norway with their Christmas single Let Me Be Your Father X-mas, but Verdens Gang took the song as sincere and described it as a "cliche orgasm" that couldn't be taken seriously, before rating it at one of six.

In Get Ready to be Boyzvoiced, a mockumentary about their lives, first released in 2000, they have to overcome a scandal involving lip-synching over recordings made by session musicians, which results in their being dropped by their record company — reminiscent of the real-life incident involving Milli Vanilli. The scandal is further fed by their manager Timothy Dahle (Henrik Elvestad) physically assaulting two elderly members of the Salvation Army at a charity concert, and the discovery that lead-singer M*Pete's 16-year-old girlfriend (Ida Thorkildsen Valvik) lied about her age and is in fact only 12.

title: Boyzvoice


text: File:The Longest Journey (game box art).jpg


text:
LLE (disambiguation)

LLE can stand for
 * Laboratory for Laser Energetics, Rochester, NY, US
 * Liquid–liquid extraction as a chemical separation method.
 * Llanelli railway station, Carmarthenshire, Wales (National Rail station code)
 * Locally linear embedding.
 * Low-Level Emulation
 * Lugiato-Lefever equation, a framework for the study of spontaneous pattern formation in nonlinear optical systems.

title: LLE (disambiguation)