text:
ELEANOR RUTH DUCKWORTH (born 1935) is a teacher, teacher educator, and psychologist.

Duckworth earned her Ph.D. (Docteur en sciences de l'éducation) at the Université de Genève in 1977. She grounds her work in Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder's insights into the nature and development of understanding and intelligence and in their clinical interview method. Duckworth also has been an elementary school teacher. Her participation in the 1960s curriculum development projects Elementary Science Study and African Primary Science Program was germinal for her insights and practices in exploratory methods in teaching and learning. She has conducted teacher education, curriculum development, and program evaluation in the United States, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and her native Canada. Duckworth is also a coordinator of Cambridge United for Justice with Peace and a performing modern dancer.

Short biography

Duckworth is the daughter of Jack and Muriel Duckworth, Canadian peace workers and social and community activists. She is named after Eleanor Roosevelt. Jack Duckworth, born in 1897, was a highly regarded leader in the national YMCA movement and an outspoken pacifist from the 1930s until his death in 1975.[1] Muriel Duckworth, born in 1908 (maiden name Ball), who celebrated her hundredth birthday on October 31, 2008, was renowned as a crusader for social justice, women's rights, de-militarization, educational development and fighting poverty. She was one of the 1000 women worldwide nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005.

Duckworth studied ballet in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as a student of Irene Apinee and Jury Gotshalks, and danced in the Gotshalks Halifax Ballet. She stopped her dance studies at the age of 15, and started again at the age of 58.

She is the sister of Montreal filmmaker Martin Duckworth,[2] and Nova Scotia businessman and musician John Duckworth.

(Re-)discovering Piaget

Piaget first influenced the child study and progressive education movement in Europe with publications such as __ (1923) and __ (1924), translated into English in the 1920s, and his experiments showing how young children understand size and volume were exhibited in the London Science Museum in the 1950s. However, Piaget's work was little known in the North American educational community after World War II until Eleanor Duckworth, a student of Piaget at that time, introduced his methods and analysis into the classroom and the US educational research community.

Eleanor Duckworth first met Jean Piaget in 1957 in Paris at the Sorbonne where she was a graduate student. For the next two years Duckworth studied with Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder at the Institut des Sciences de l'Education in Geneva, Switzerland. She served as a research and teaching assistant for the second of those years. She subsequently entered a doctoral program in cognitive psychology at Harvard University, and dropped out. For the years to come, the work with Piaget and Inhelder would have an important impact on her thinking and further development. She returned to Geneva to finish her doctorate.

At Inhelder's recommendation, Duckworth began to participate in the Elementary Science Study (ESS) in 1962, a curriculum development and science education reform project that grew out of MIT and became the foundation of the organization now known as Education Development Center. The project was initiated by Jerrold Zacharias and participating scientists and teachers included, among others, David Hawkins, Mike Savage, Philip Morrison, Phylis Morrison, Ben Nichols, Claryce Evans, Lynn Margulis, Marion Walter, David Webster, Ed Prenowitz, Mike Rice, Cap Weston, Elsa Dorfman, and Edith Churchill. The project involved “[putting] physical materials into children's hands from the start and help[ing] each child investigate through these materials the nature of the world around him [stet]” (ESS, 1970, p. 7). Teachers and students experimented with natural materials like bulbs, batteries, pendulums or butterflies, ice cubes and earthworms. During her four years as a staff member at the ESS, Duckworth struggled to incorporate the theory and clinical method of Piaget into the work she and her colleagues did in classrooms (Duckworth, 2006, p. 1).[3]

A breakthrough for communicating Piaget's work to a broader educational community occurred in 1964, when Duckworth acted as the English translator and interpreter of Piaget during a bi-coastal conference at Cornell University and University of California, Berkeley.[4] Duckworth reported to her colleagues at the ESS about the conference by writing a short paper, “Piaget Rediscovered”. This paper gave its name to the book that came out of the conference, a collection of papers on developmental psychology and curriculum development. The book was instrumental in re-awakening interest in Piaget's work among educators.

Deciding to devote herself to education, she sought work as elementary school teacher in Montreal. In 1970 she took a job at the Atlantic Institute of Education, in Halifax, Nova Scotia, as director of “The Lighthouse Project”, a curriculum development and teacher education program for the four Atlantic provinces of Canada.

Collaborating with Jeanne Bamberger at the Division for Study and Research in Education at MIT, they initiated “The Teacher Project”. During this project Duckworth and Bamberger worked to facilitate research experiences among teachers who worked in elementary schools in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1978. Duckworth continued to work with a smaller group of these same teachers for seven more years. This group, the Moon Group, explored the behaviour of the moon as a practice of learning and teaching.

Duckworth wrote essays based on some of these experiences with Piaget, the Cambridge Teacher Project, the Moon Group, and her own teaching in her landmark book _The Having of Wonderful Ideas_ (1987|2006).

The developmentalist tradition

Within teacher education in the United States in the twentieth century, Duckworth's contributions relate to a progressive or developmentalist approach. The idea of a teacher acting as a researcher is embraced by the following four traditions of reflective teaching practice: academic, social efficiency, developmentalist and social reconstructivist. The developmentalist tradition considers that the teacher is both a practitioner and a researcher: “The teacher as researcher strand of this tradition has emphasized the need to foster the teacher's experimental attitude toward practice and to help teachers initiate and sustain ongoing inquiries in their own classroom” (Zeichner, 1992, p. 165).

Duckworth (2006, p. xiii) wrote in her book _The Having of Wonderful Ideas_ that she built her developmental approach on two foundations very powerful to her:

1.  The work of Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder. Duckworth was a student and colleague in the late 1950s and she acted as the English translator and interpreter of Piaget during his American lectures, until his death in 1980. Two aspects in the work of Piaget and Inhelder were especially important for Duckworth (2005b, pp. 258–259): First, the basic idea of _assimilation_, that is, every person creates meaning on her own, while taking any experience into her own schemes, structures, previous understanding. Second, the clinical interviewing or _clinical method_, that is, engaging children in talking about their ideas with a researcher.
2.  Her experience with the Elementary Science Study (ESS) curriculum development program. This program is consistent with the work of Piaget and Inhelder in psychology and it is considered to be a milestone in the history of science education. The Elementary Science Study tackled the following main question: “So how do we present material 'from without' so that the activity that 'the mind itself undergoes' is valuable?” (Duckworth, 2005a, p. 142)

As a constructivist who defines teaching as helping people learn, Duckworth emphasizes the importance of engaging learners with phenomena, understanding students' current understandings and trying to facilitate students' own thinking. The central question of Duckworth's (2006: xiv) research over five decades continues to be: “How do people learn and what can anyone do to help?” In the process of investigating this question, she has developed a research method which she has called expanded clinical interviewing, teaching/learning research and critical exploration. These three phrases emerged in the course of her research and are used interchangeably (Duckworth, 2006, p. xv).

Critical Exploration

Bärbel Inhelder first applied the name critical exploration to Piaget's clinical interviewing which included observing children as well as interviewing and interacting with a child who is experimenting and investigating a problem set by the researcher. Inhelder introduced this method to pedagogical contexts (Inhelder, Sinclair & Bovet, 1974, p. 18–20). Duckworth (2005b, p. 258–259) describes critical exploration as having two facets: curriculum development and pedagogy. In the context of critical exploration, curriculum development means: the teacher is planning how to engage students' minds in exploring the subject matter. Pedagogy constitutes the practice by which teachers invite students to express their thoughts:

During critical exploration, exploring goes on in two modes: In one mode, the child explores the subject matter and in the other mode, the researcher-teacher explores the child's thinking. Hence, for the teacher, critical exploration finds itself at the nexus of research and teaching where teacher and learner support each other (Shorr, 2007, p. 369–370):

Consequently, Duckworth (2008b) suggests that a classroom teacher can take on the role of a researcher. The teacher explores too, by interacting with students' learning. It is the teacher's work to present engaging problems, and attend to students' ways of figuring them out helping them to notice what's interesting. For example, the teacher listens to students explain their ideas and asks them questions that seek to take students' thinking further (Duckworth, 2006, p. 173–174).

The main ideas of the teaching/learning research

Outlining her approach, Duckworth (2006, p. 173) states: “As a student of Piaget, I was convinced that people must construct their own knowledge and must assimilate new experiences in ways that make sense to them. I knew that, more often than not, simply telling students what we want them to know leaves them cold”. Considering learning and teaching, critical exploration stresses the following aspects:

-   _Students bring their prior expectations, interests and knowledge to the learning experience:_ The students' experience and insights are of high value as the development of their personal intelligence emerges through actions and the having of wonderful ideas. To reach deep understanding, students need to start from their own sets of ideas, be engaged in the subject matter and make a connection from the actual problem or subject matter to what they already understand. Consequently, the students do the talking as they explain the sense they are making, while the teacher listens. However, this requires a learning culture that accommodates students in feeling free and safe to say what their emerging ideas are, and that what they say is valued (Duckworth in Meek, 1991). “[B]y opening up to children the many fascinating aspects of the ordinary world and by enabling them to feel that their ideas are worthwhile having and following through, their tendency to have wonderful ideas can be affected in significant ways” (Duckworth, 2006, p. 12).[5]
-   _Students need something complex that challenges them to explore:_ Students need to engage with the phenomena of study, not schematic substitutes. It is in struggling with complex problems that every learner undergoes the process of constructing their own knowledge. As learners experience internal cognitive conflicts in what they believe about the subject matter, their minds become more deeply engaged with the problem at hand. Learners' efforts in figuring out questions and puzzles are more productive than knowing the right answer because higher order thinking processes are involved. Therefore, teachers of critical exploration value the diverse efforts that students make during their explorations even where these efforts do not arrive at expected answers. In facilitating this investigative work, the questions that are asked over and over again by students and teachers alike are, for example: “What do you notice?” What do you mean?" “How are you thinking about it?” “Why do you think that?” “Is that the same as what (someone else) thought they saw?” “How did you figure that?” “How did you do that?” “How does that fit with what she just said?” “Could you give an example?” The responses that teachers and students give to each other might have the form of: “I don't quite get it.” “It doesn't make sense (to me).” “I don't really get that; could you explain it another way?” Hence, most important: It is the students who make sense and understand by trying out their ideas, explaining them to others, and seeing how this holds up in other people's and their own eyes and in the light of the phenomena itself (Duckworth, 2002).
-   _Teacher as facilitator with a researcher mind-set:_ The teacher creates situations and selects environmental resources that get students excited and engaged in learning that is meaningful to them.[6] The teacher is sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of learners, puts students at ease, engages learners, invites them to talk about their ideas, waits for learners to think and listens and then, reacts to the substance of their answers without judging them. The teacher takes a neutral researcher's stance. Instead of lecturing, the teacher creates situations that put learners into confronting their thinking processes, where they are responsible for their own learning.[7] The teachers' role then, is asking questions like “When you say x, what do you mean by it?” “How would that work if applied to this situation?” “Am I right in understanding your idea, if I say it this way?” to reveal students' thinking and take their own thoughts further. That way, the teacher refrains from signaling to the students what he might expect them to say. Instead, the teacher provides opportunities for learners to reveal their own understanding. The thoughts that learners have become visible through the responses they make including: actions, drawings, gestures, constructions, dialogues and sound, for example. Guiding questions for the teacher himself might be as follows (Duckworth, 2005b, p. 261): “What lies behind this response? How may the other children be responding to it? What question shall I ask next, or what experience to offer next, or where to direct their attention next?” The students' work is to make sense of the phenomena of study. The teachers' work is to ensure safe and supportive conditions in the classroom so that the students can take intellectual risks and do their work investigatively.

Teacher education

If teachers are to teach their students exploratively, they must have experienced learning as explorers themselves (Duckworth, 2006). In the teacher education work that Duckworth does at Harvard University and elsewhere, she provides teachers with the opportunity to live through and think about the phenomena of teaching and learning. She involves teacher education students in the effort to understand somebody else's understanding. She considers it important for teachers to know what their students are understanding, that is: what sense the students are making of the subject matter (Duckworth in Meek, 1991, p. 32).

In her courses at Harvard University she applies her teaching approach by using critical exploration to teach critical exploration. Her famous T-440 course titled _Teaching and Learning: “The Having of Wonderful Ideas”_ is usually conducted with two parallel groups, each having up to 50 teacher education students. Duckworth states on her course website: “The course starts from the premise that there are endless numbers of adequate pathways for people to come to understand subject matters. Curriculum and assessment must build on this diversity. A second premise is that every person can get involved with and enjoy and get good at every subject matter.”[8]

In her university teaching Duckworth (2006, p. 9 and 173–192) tries to engage teacher education students with three major kinds of teaching and learning phenomena:

1.  Films and/or (life) demonstrations with one or two children or adolescents. In this way teacher education students can observe children/adults learning while instructors are teaching by engaging those learners and by listening and understanding the explanations of those learners;
2.  Teacher education students carry out a similar inquiry outside of classtime, where they meet with one or two people who are their practice learners. In this way, each teacher education student creates, on his own, a trial critical exploration for learners and then reflects on it in writing;
3.  Teacher education students learn as a group about a particular subject other than teaching and learning. Through this exploratory study by the group, the teacher education students are learning in the same way that the children in their classes will be learning. This subject could be from any area of study such as: pendulums, mathematical permutations, history, arts and poems.

In the summer of 2013 Professor Duckworth went to the south of England as the guest of honor of the holistic Brockwood Park School for the education conference taking place there entitled “When is Teaching? Getting in or out of the way at the right time”.

Awards (selection)

-   Honorary doctorate, Colby College (2013)
-   Inaugural Barbara K. Lipman Award for Advances in Early Childhood Education given annually to a researcher, writer or program designer who has significantly influenced early childhood education or child growth and development, University of Memphis (2008).
-   Doctor of the University, Honoris Causa, University of Ottawa (1993).
-   The book _“The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning_ won the American Educational Association Award for writing on teaching and teacher education (1987).
-   Inaugural Catherine Molony Memorial Lecture at City College School of Education, Workshop Center for Open Education (1979).
-   Doctor of Humane Letters, Honoris Causa, Lesley University (1977).

Bibliography (selection)

-   -   -   Duckworth, E.R. (1973a). Language and Thought. In M. Schwebel & J. Raph (eds), _Piaget in the classroom_ (pp. 132–154). New York: Basic Books.
-   Duckworth, E.R. (1973b). The having of wonderful ideas. In M. Schwebel & J. Raph (Eds.), _Piaget in the classroom_ (pp. 258–277). New York: Basic Books.
-   Duckworth, E.R. (1973c). Piaget takes a teacher's look. An interview with Jean Piaget. _Learning: The magazine for Creative Teaching_, 22–27.
-   Duckworth, E.R. (1978). _The African primary science program: An evaluation and extended thoughts._ Grand Forks: North Dakota Study Group on Evaluation.
-   -   -   -   Duckworth, E.R. (1990). Opening the world. In E. Duckworth, J. Easley, D. Hawkins & A. Henriques (Eds.), _Science education: A minds-on approach for the elementary years_ (pp. 21–59). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
-   -   Duckworth, E.R. (2001a). Inventing density. In E. Duckworth (ed.), _“Tell me more”: Listening to learners explain_ (pp. 1–41). New York: Teachers College Press. Original publication 1986.
-   Duckworth, E.R. (eds.) (2001b). _“Tell me more”: Listening to learners explain._ New York: Teachers College Press. Booknote retrieved, April 12, 2009 at http://www.hepg.org/her/booknote/79 Book review retrieved, April 12, 2009 at http://www.nicholasmeier.com/Articles/2005-04_duckworth.htm
-   Duckworth, E.R. (2002). “The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning. _Fieldwork - Notes from expeditionary learning classrooms_, X(2), 11–12. Book review
-   Duckworth, E.R. (2005a). A reality to which each belongs. In B.S. Engel (ed.), _Holding values: What we mean by progressive education_ (pp. 142–147). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.
-   -   Duckworth, E.R. (2006). _“The having of wonderful ideas” and other essays on teaching and learning._ Third edition. New York: Teachers College Press.
-   Duckworth, E.R. (2008). Teaching as research. In A. Miletta & M. Miletta (eds), _Classroom conversations. A collection of classics for parents and teachers_ (pp. 119–144). New York: The New Press.
-   Duckworth, E.R. & Fusaro, M. (2008b). Critical exploration in the classroom. _Harvard Graduate School of Education - Usable Knowledge._
-   -   Duckworth, E.R. and the Experienced Teachers Group (1997). _Teacher to teacher: Learning from each other._ New York: Teachers College Press. Book review retrieved, April 12, 2009 at https://web.archive.org/web/20081006191210/http://edrev.asu.edu/reviews/rev42.htm
-   Duckworth, E.R. (2010). “The Soul Purpose”. Learning Landscapes, 3 (2): 21–28.
-   Duckworth, E.R. & Julyan, C. (2005). A constructivist perspective on teaching and learning science. In C.T. Fosnot (Ed.), _Constructivism: Theory, perspectives, and practice_ (pp. 61–79). 2nd edition. New York: Teachers College Press.
-   Duckworth, E.R., Easley, J., Hawkins, D. & Henriques, A. (Eds.) (1990). _Science education: A minds-on approach for the elementary years_. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Notes

[1] See https://www.oxfam.ca/donate/jack-and-murial-duckworth-fund-for-active-global-citizenship

[2]

[3] Duckworth states: “My colleagues did not seem to be any the worse for not taking Piaget seriously. Nor, I had to admit, did I seem to be any the better. Schools were such complicated places compared with psychology labs that I couldn't find a way to be of any special help. Not only did Piaget seem irrelevant, I was no longer sure that he was right. For a couple of years, I scarcely mentioned him and simply went about the business of trying to be helpful, with no single instance, as I recall, of drawing directly on any of his specific findings” (2006, p. 2).

[4] Verne N. Rockcastle, the conference director of the bi-coastal conference in 1964, wrote in the conference report of the Jean Piaget conferences: “Piaget, when looking over the list of participants at the Cornell conference, noticed with pleasure that Eleanor Duckworth of Educational Services, Inc., was going to attend. She had studied with Piaget and knew both him and his theories well. With little urging she agreed to translate Piaget's lectures for the conference. It soon was apparent that Eleanor Duckworth was a real key to the success of the Cornell conference. She was outstanding not only in her interpretation of Piaget's complex phraseology, but in her fielding and translating of the questions directed at Piaget at the close of each of his lectures. There was not any question but that she should translate at Berkeley as well. Again, the success of the conference was due in large measure to her superb translations” (1964, p. xi).

[5] “Exploring ideas can only be to the good, even if it takes time. Wrong ideas, moreover, can only be productive. Any wrong idea that is corrected provides far more depth than if one never had a wrong idea to begin with. You master the idea much more thoroughly if you have considered alternatives, tried to work it out in cases where it didn't work, and figured out why it was that it didn't work, all of which takes time” (Duckworth, 2006, p. 70).

[6] A good learning situation “[m]ust permit the child to establish plans to reach a distant goal, while leaving him wide freedom to follow his own routing” (Blanchet, 1977, p. 37 cited in Duckworth, 2006, p. 42). “If we can create situations like this, then differences among children are by definition taken into account – without our having to diagnose in advance each child's level in a dozen domains. We can also be sure that children will take their own individual notions further as they strive to make sense of any situation [...]” (Duckworth, 2006, p. 48).

[7] There are two aspects to providing occasions for wonderful ideas. One is being willing to accept children's ideas. The other is providing a setting that suggests wonderful ideas to children - different ideas to different children - as they are caught up in intellectual problems that are real to them (Duckworth, 2006, p. 7).

[8] See

title: Eleanor Duckworth

question: Who is Eleanor Duckworth?

answer: A teacher, teacher educator, and psychologist.

question: What are the most significant influences to her work?

answer: Jean Piaget and Bärbel Inhelder's insights into the nature and development of understanding and intelligence and in their clinical interview method. Also, her time working on the Elementary Science Study and African Primary Science Program projects.

question: How did she bring about a renewed interest in Piaget's theories in education?

answer: By translating for him on a tour through the US; she produced a short paper called "Piaget Rediscovered" that was integral in the re-awakening interest.

question: Write a ~0 sentence summary.


split: train

text:
TAMASHA is a 1952 Indian Hindi-language romantic comedy film directed by Phani Mazumdar, starring Meena Kumari, Dev Anand and Ashok Kumar. One of the big hits of the year from Bombay Talkies produced by Ashok Kumar and Savak Vacha, “Tamasha” had a narrative far ahead of its times, its action spread over 16 eventful days. This movie is a copy of the Hollywood movie It Started with Eve[1]

A young Meena Kumari with a sparkle in her eyes and an impish smile was quite the opposite of the accomplished tragedienne she became immortalised as. This is the first film of Meena Kumari and Dev Anand and the 2nd film in which Dev Anand and Kishore Kumar acted together. First film of Dev Anand and Kishore Kumar was Ziddi along with Kamini Kaushal.

Storyline

A young heir-apparent, Dilip (Dev Anand) is hopelessly in love with an aspiring film actress, Nayantara (Kaushalya), who together with her scheming mother (Sunalini Devi), a struggling director (Randhir), and an assistant who actually want him to finance her launching pad. The stumbling block is Dilip's ailing grandfather, Rai Saheb (Bipin Gupta) who is dead against the alliance and constantly warning him to break away from the actress that will otherwise only bring shame to the family. Although Dilip keeps assuring him that he has severed all ties, and is, in fact, dating a homely girl from a middle-class family, he is actually besotted with the actress who is simultaneously in an unholy alliance with big star Ashok Kumar (Ashok Kumar). Persuaded by Rai Sahib, Dilip hires the services of Kiran (Meena Kumari) as his new love interest. As Kiran gets more and more comfortable as the housekeeper, Dilip gets caught in the whirlpool of his own creation, drowned in his infatuation with Nayantara and admiration for Kiran.

Cast

-   Ashok Kumar ... Ashok
-   Dev Anand ... Dilip
-   Meena Kumari ... Kiran
-   Kishore Kumar ... Rajju
-   Bipin Gupta ... Rai Saheb

Film

[]

Soundtrack

  Track #   Song                                                      Singer(s)         Lyrics        Composer            Length
  --------- --------------------------------------------------------- ----------------- ------------- ------------------- --------
  1         “Aramaanon Ki Nagari, Mere Chhote Se Dil Ko Tod Chale”    Lata Mangeshkar   Bharat Vyas   Manna Dey           4:45
  2         “Khaali Pili Kaahe Ko Akkhaa Din Baith Ke”                Kishore Kumar     Bharat Vyas   Manna Dey           3:43
  3         “Kyu Ankhiya Bhar Aayi Kya Fir Koi Yaad Aaya”             Lata Mangeshkar   Bharat Vyas   Manna Dey           3:35
  4         “Thi Jinse Palbhar Ki Pehchan Bane Ab Man Ke Vo Mehman”   Asha Bhosle       Bharat Vyas   Manna Dey
  5         “Nahi Bolu Ghunghat Nahi Kholu”                           Rajkumari         Bharat Vyas   Manna Dey           2:57
  6         “Raat Mohe Mitha Mitha Sapna Aaya Re”                     Geeta Dutt        Bharat Vyas   Manna Dey           3:26
  7         “Koi Jal Jal Mare Koi Phansi Chadhe”                      Asha Bhosle       Bharat Vyas   Manna Dey           2:59
  8         “Jab Miya Bibi Raazi To Kya Karega Kaazi”                                   Bharat Vyas   Khemchand Prakash

[1]

title: Tamasha (1952 film)

question: When was Tamasha made?

answer: 1952

question: What is Tamasha?

answer: An Indian Hindi-language version of the Hollywood romantic comedy film It Started with Eve.

question: List the characters in Tamasha.

answer:
Dilip, an heir apparant.
Nayantara, an aspiring actress and Dilip's initial love interest.
Rai Saheb, Dilip's ailing grandfather.
Kiran, Dilip's housekeeper and eventual love interest.

question: How many footnotes are in the article?

answer: 1

question: Summarize everything relating to the director.

answer: Phani Mazumdar directed the film.

question: Is anyone mentioned to have more than one role in Tamasha?

answer: Yes, Ashok Kumar both produced and starred in the film.

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: Tamasha (dir. Phani Mazumdar) is a 1952 Indian Hindi-language version of the Hollywood romantic comedy film It Started with Eve, about an heir apparent who becomes caught between the scheming woman his grandfather disapproves of and the housekeeper he's hired to make his grandfather happy.


text:
The music blared out of the car stereo, Leroy was doing his best to shout over it, but she could only hear him during the bridge.  “So I said to ‘im, ‘I don’t give a fuck what your company policy is, I’m’-” the chorus kicked in, she continued to nod whenever his lips stopped flapping– he needed to get this off his chest.  The song reached its climax, and began to fade as London’s jagged skyline revealed itself on the dusky horizon.  Gemma reached for the stop button, sticky with the coke that ‘exploded in his hand’ last week.  It would be nice to have a moment’s peace.  “Don’t you like them?” he asked – she had almost forgotten what he sounded like at a civilised volume.  “They’re okay.  A bit loud for me though.”  He rolled his eyes, and took them off the road for a moment to smile at her.  She ignored it, nodding ahead, and obediently he turned his gaze back to the ever nearing city, tapping his fingers nervously on the wheel.
“Do you want to listen to James Blunt instead?”

“Yeah, actually. That’d be nice” she replied, sinking into her chair.  It had been a long night.  Leroy felt around his seat.  His searching fingers waded through the Stella cans and moulding sandwich crusts, hoping to find the disc.  “Aha!” he shouted, pulling it from its stupor and proudly waving it in front of her face.  She threw a brief smile in his direction, which was enough for him.  Still grinning, he jammed it unsuccessfully into the CD player.  “Shit, forgot there’s one in already” Gemma had already nodded off.

“Gem. Gemma! I need a piss”.

“If I had a quid for every time I’ve been woken up by your bladder”

“You’d probably have about 2 or 3 quid. I won’t be long.”  They had stopped outside a grotty roadside café.  It looked as though nothing about it had changed since the 70’s, the grimy “open” sign hung in the smeared window, like an abandoned corpse swinging in the gallows.  “What about *him*” she asked.  It was unfair of him not to acknowledge it; she thought. He was forcing her to ask.  “What *about* him? He’s fine, aren’t you John?” A muffled yell came from the boot of the car.  “See?” Leroy smiled at her, as though she were a fool for even asking.  He was so patronising, sometimes.  The door closed with a thud behind him, sentencing the car to a stiff, nervous silence.  A few moments passed.

The car reeked of damp residue and stale beer.  Sporadic droplets of rain spattered her arm and face through the stubborn, slightly ajar window.  A few more moments passed.  With a tired sigh, she turned in her seat and looked at the boot.  It remained still, silent. Suddenly, she reeled around.  The dashboard was reverberating violently, crudely piercing the silence.  It was his phone.  John’s phone.  Shit shit shit.  She looked at the screen, it was his Mum. Shit shit shit.  The boot began to stir, a suppressed moan acknowledging the commotion. Adding to the commotion.  Shit shit shit.  The café door remained still, Leroy was taking his time.  She resolved to pick up the phone, doing her best to absorb its desperate vibrations with her sweaty palm, willing it to stop.  And it did.

The café door creaked, and out of it stepped a satisfied looking Leroy, grinning stupidly at her.  Immediately, he noticed something was wrong.

“What’s up with you?” he asked, blindly stabbing the car keys into the engine with familiar precision.  James Blunt continued his melancholic whining.

“I knew it would kick off as soon as you got out.”

“What ‘appened Gem?”

“His Mum rang him.”

“And?”

“And, he started moaning again.” She gestured behind her, somewhat unnecessarily.  Leroy let out a slight chuckle, much to her annoyance.

“Who gives a shit? You’re still breathing, he’s still breathing.  I, my girl, am still breathing.  No harm done.”  The phone buzzed again, it was punchier this time.  Startled, Gemma looked down at the device, Leroy continued to act unfazed.

“She’s sent him a text now. Should I read it?”

“I don’t see why not, it could be a laugh. Oi, John?” He shouted, laughing into the rear view mirror. “You’re Mum wants to know what you want for dinner!”

“On their way”, said Gemma, reading from the screen as though the words were written in a foreign tongue.

“Pardon?” asked Leroy, still chuckling to himself.

“It just says ‘On. Their. Way’”.  Gemma looked at him, her eyes stretched.  His relaxed façade began to reveal hidden concern.

“Well check ‘is sent items then” resolved Leroy.  Gemma leaned closer to the tiny screen, her pointed nose within inches of the black and white display.

“The last one he sent was to his Mum!” Gemma shouted, as though the revelation should come as a surprise.

“Shhh!” John glanced over at the boot. “We don’t want him thinking there’s anything wrong.”  He turned James Blunt up.

“JC08 1ET”, Gemma whispered. “What the fuck does that mean?   Do you think it’s a code or something?  Maybe it’s a postcode? I don’t recognise it. What do you reckon?”  She looked up at Leroy.  He was frozen.  His mouth slightly open.  His nostrils pulsing with heavy breath.  His glazed eyes staring at the phone.  “When was it sent?” he asked, doing his upmost to refrain from panic.  Gemma clicked a few more buttons with a slight tremor.  “03:37. So about 2 hours ago.”  Gemma began to bite her lip, searching her memory for clues. “Hang on, that’s when-”

“I know. That was about 3 minutes before we took him.”

The young couple look at each other.  Their faces awash with fear, glowing rhythmically from blue to red, blue to red. Both gulp in chorus.  A muffled cry comes from the boot, loud enough to be heard over James Blunt.  Behind them, a singular police van beams its headlights through the rusting car, turning them both to silhouette.   “JC08 1ET” reads the policeman sat in the passenger seat, staring at the illuminated number plate in front of him.  “Let’s check it out.”

title: Road Trip

question: Who is "them" referring to in the line "Don't you like them"?

answer: The band that was playing before Gemma pressed the stop button.

question: Roughly how many times have Gemma been woken up by Leroy needing to go to the washroom?

answer: According to her, about 2 or 3 times.

question: What is likely to happen to Gemma and Leroy?

answer: They will probably be arrested for kidnapping John.

question: What would have happened to John if he hadn't texted the license plate to his mother?

answer: Gemma and Leroy would have successfully kidnapped him.

question: Why did John text the license plate number to his mother?

answer: He was probably suspicious of the car and the people inside of it.


text:
1

It had only been a few days since we had left the mainland, and only a week since the infection had been first reported. Corpses scattered across war zones, covered with the settled remnants of radioactive dust from chemical weapons had begun reacting... twitching... moving. It was only a day later that the first scientists and reporters became the first victims and the first living humans turned. From there, the destruction and rate of infection had exploded.

Within 24 hours of the firsts, reports came in of massive hordes of reanimated corpses occupying major cities... turning all that stood in their way. Several countries tried sending their armies to quell the situation, but that only worsened it. Guns only did so much to zombie armies, hundreds of thousands deep, and with large explosions from tanks and bombs, came even wider contamination due to the chemicals in the corpses being disturbed and pushed higher into the atmosphere. It had become airborne...

The only escape was to rural areas, or to the sea. I chose the latter... it was only a matter of time before even the rural areas would not be as safe as people had hoped.

"LAAAAAAND!"

An island... Those in charge had said that there we would be safe from any sort of infection. We were students and teachers. Soldiers and doctors. Men, women, and children. We were, quite possibly, one of the few hopes for maintaining the species.

"Where the hell are we?" Sgt. Reynolds barked at one of the older gentlemen who had been appointed captain of the vessel. The original captain was... well, he didn't make it. Reynolds was a former Drill Instructor and has taken to appointing himself the leader of our group. At least we had someone to tell us what to do... Most of us were so disillusioned with the situation that we could barely talk.

There were only a few dozen of us who had made it onto the ship from the harbor. It was a miracle any of us had made it off the mainland alive, and even more so considering the only food we had we were lucky enough to have recovered from the bowels of the ship. It seemed as if the original captain had been preparing to live at sea until he could come up with a plan as to how the hell he could survive in a world full of flesh devouring corpses... But food for one man only goes so far between a group.
Zombies. They were fucking zombies. All of the films and stories had done nothing more than make us lower our guard as to how real a possibility the walking dead were.

"I have no idea, but we don't have the resources to care right now."
Most everyone was on deck, now, staring at the monolithic island before us. Whether we liked it or not, it was our new home, for now anyways. I, for one, was eager to get off the ship. I had always been afraid of the emptiness of the ocean. Funny how little your fear of the unknown matters when you’re faced with fear of something much greater and much more terrifying. Still, it felt great to know I would be able to step off of that heap I considered to be my floating coffin.
Staring at the coastline, all I could see was sand, and a thick tree line leading into a lush forest. I was looking at trees I had never seen before that looked like they had been there for far longer than I could imagine. Vines and thick brush started to come into view the closer we got. And then something in the trees... Fruit! Or at least something that resembled the fruit I was familiar with! We were going to be able to survive for at least some time longer. Relief flooded my body. Relief that we were going to be ok. That I wasn't going to die at sea with no hope of survival. Relief that...

My eyes locked onto something in the underbrush as we closed in further on the island. Something reflective... but what? The relief turned to panic as I realized what I was staring at. We were being watched. Those were eyes.

I glanced around for Reynolds. We needed to be prepared that we might have company when we landed. The undead? Impossible. Not this far out, there was no way. By the time I had looked back, the eyes were no longer visible to me. Maybe I was seeing things...
"Start unloading some supplies for a reconnaissance team to check out the island and we'll see if we can find any food, shelter, or signs of intelligence on this rock." Reynolds booming voice effortlessly carried itself.

I had convinced myself that I just needed to get off of the boat when a shriek erupted from the forest. A sound like nothing I had ever heard. The sound of a screaming jet engine combined with the emotional tones of something living... something communicating. Birds flew from the canopy of the forest as we all stared silently into the mysterious interior of the island.

"It doesn't matter, we can't stay on board," Reynolds projected over the deck, already knowing what we were all silently wondering.
"Besides, nothing can really be as bad or as frightening as what we've all already seen and been through..."

None of us could have possibly known how wrong he was.

title: I'm writing a short story... well, it's turning into a long story, about zombies and dinosaurs.  I would love some feedback.

question: What is the setting of the story?

answer: The land of zombies.

question: How did they reach a different land?

answer: Using a ship.

question: Where did they land?

answer: A land filled with more zombies.

question: Who was watching them?

answer: Information not found.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator and his crew escape zombies by sea. Eventually, they reach land, which unfortunately is filled with more zombies. The narrator notices that something odd is watching them and decides to run to it to escape the undead.


text:
reed to publish it -- and for her Cormoran Strike detective series, which she wrote under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith. Since she was applying anonymously, she didn’t have the benefit of the Potter caché when she submitted that manuscript. But she kept going anyway. “I wasn't going to give up until every single publisher turned me down, but I often feared that would happen,” Rowling wrote. “I had nothing to lose and sometimes that makes you brave enough to try.”

ELON MUSK
If you look closely, Musk’s career is actually littered with rejections and missteps. He apparently didn’t get any traction when he applied for a gig at Netscape in the 1990s. He was fired from his job as PayPal’s CEO after spending some time in the position after the company bought his finance startup X.com. His early attempts at building an aerospace business saw him dealing with less than enthused Russian entities that refused to sell him any rockets. But after each rejection, he went on to build something new. After his stint at Netscape came his first business, Zip2. After PayPal, he went on to co-found Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company. Musk still deals with setbacks such as Tesla production bottlenecks and enough rocket explosions to edit together a montage. But he is still reaching for the stars.

OPRAH WINFREY
While Winfrey is a huge success now, it was actually an early setback that helped forge the media icon she later became. After seven months as a co-anchor for the evening news at a local Baltimore station, sharing the news desk with a veteran anchor who frequently disrespected her, Winfrey was fired from the job. She was then tapped to host the network’s morning show, _People Are Talking_, which yielded some less than stellar reviews in the early go. Undeterred, Winfrey was going to make the most of the opportunity. Reflecting on the experience to _The Baltimore Sun_, Winfrey said, "Not all my memories of Baltimore are fond ones. … But I do have fond memories of Baltimore, because it grew me into a real woman. I came in naive, unskilled, not really knowing anything about the business -- or about life. And Baltimore grew me up.”

WARREN BUFFETT
Warren Buffett, one of the richest men on the planet, has been operating in the business world for a long time. The octogenarian CEO of Berkshire Hathaway starting making investments when he was just 11-years-old. You might think most of his career was smooth sailing, but the Oracle of Omaha has dealt with rejection too. At 19, he tried to get into his dream school Harvard, but it didn't happen. In an interview with Alice Schroeder in her biography of the tycoon, he shared how his application went awry. "I looked about 16 and emotionally was about 9. I spent 10 minutes with the Harvard alumnus who was doing the interview, and he assessed my capabilities and turned me down." While Harvard wasn’t the right fit, it led him to Columbia where he honed his skills in investing. It has clearly paid off.

BARBARA CORCORAN
Real estate mogul and investor Barbara Corcoran’s career also began somewhat inauspiciously. The then 22-year-old waitress got a loan from her boyfriend to launch a real estate firm. They built the company together, but then seven years in, she was blindsided when he told her that he was leaving -- and marrying her secretary. Years later, when Corcoran was in contention to be one of the judges on _Shark Tank_, she had the job, lost it to another female entrepreneur, and then won it back by writing a letter to the production team telling them what they would lose out on if they didn’t hire her for the team. “I said that all the best things happened to me on the heels of rejection and I considered his rejection a lucky charm,” Corcoran told _Entrepreneur_. “I cited half dozen similar situations throughout my career where obstacles turned into my greatest opportunities.”

JEFF BEZOS
Even though Amazon is so successful that American cities are actively bidding to host the ecommerce giant's second headquarters, at the beginning of the company’s life, Bezos was met with a lot of questions about whether it could even get off the ground. In an interview with _60 Minutes_, he explained the juggling act he had to do to raise early funds for the business. “I had to take 60 meetings to raise $1 million, and I raised it from 22 people at approximately $50,000 a person,” Bezos recalled. “It was nip and tuck whether I was going to be able to raise that money. So, the whole thing could have ended before the whole thing started. That was 1995, and the first question every investor asked me was: ‘What’s the internet?'” Eventually, it seemed that people caught on to what he was building.

SALLIE KRAWCHECK
Krawcheck was one of the most recognizable women on Wall Street. But in 2008, during the height of the financial crisis, she was publicly fired from her position as Citigroup’s chief financial officer after she said that the firm had an obligation to pay back some of the money that their clients had lost because of its advice. Krawcheck also believes that being a woman in a high-ranking leadership role led to her dismissal. But she channeled that rejection into becoming a first-time entrepreneur and launched an investing platform for women called Ellevest. “The biggest risk is not taking any career risk," Krawcheck told _Entrepreneur_. "We all need to be pushing ourselves in different directions, otherwise we risk having the world just pass us by.”

How do you bounce back from rejection? Let us know in the comments.

question: Summarize what the article says about rejection.

answer: According to the article, rejection provides opportunities for growth. The real estate investor Barbara Corcoran says that "all the best things happened to me on the heels of rejection," and that she "considered is rejection a lucky charm." The article highlights several CEOs and investors setbacks and how they handled rejection.

question: Summarize what the article says about Elon Musk.

answer: According to the article, Elon got no traction when he applied to work at Netscape in the 1990s. He was fired as PayPal's CEO and the Russians refused to sell him any rockets. Elon went on to co-found Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and the Boring Company.

question: Summarize what the article says about Oprah Winfrey.

answer: According to the article, Oprah's success was because of an early failure. She was fired from her job as a co-anchor at a Baltimore news station. Oprah says that the experience "grew me into a real woman," and "Baltimore grew me up."

question: Summarize what the article says about Warren Buffett.

answer: According to the article, Warren started investing when he was 11 years old. He tried to get into Harvard, but instead got into Columbia. He claims that Columbia gave him his investing skills. He is currently the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway.

question: Summarize what the article says about Barbara Corcoran.

answer: According to the article, Barbara launched a real estate firm with the help of her then-boyfriend. Seven years later, he left her for her secretary. She then won a seat on the show "Shark Tank" by writing a letter to the production team. She claims she "considered his rejection a lucky charm."

question: Summarize what the article says about Jeff Bezos.

answer: According to the article, Jeff had difficulties raising funds for Amazon. He had to "take 60 meetings to raise $1 million." He claims that most investors asked "What's the internet?" during these meetings.

question: Summarize what the article says about Sallie Krawcheck.

answer: According to the article, Sallie was fired from her job as CFO  because she suggested that her firm pay back some of the money clients lost. After that, she went on to found Ellevest. She claims "we all need to be pushing ourselves in different directions."


text:
My sleep is useless to me now, so I keep placing them in sandwich bags. It's comforting to me. It's familiar. But it doesn't help me any. I stop using sandwich baggies and start to use baby food jars instead. For some reason that I can't explain to myself, it's all that I've been eating: baby food. Maybe it's because it's easy on my stomach. Maybe it's because the jars are cute. Maybe it's because cute things remind me of her. Maybe it's because I keep thinking that she'd be the mother of my kids. Maybe it's because I was mourning our non-existent family. I don't really know.

It's been a three weeks since we had broken up and I started eating baby food so now I have several dozens of these jars lying around my apartment. When I had first put my sleep in them, I didn't bother washing them out. I figured that my sleep would benefit from having a little "mashed-peas" flavoring to them, or maybe a little hint of "mashed bananas and strawberries." Clearly, clarity of thought wasn't my strong suit at this point. Doesn't sleep with a hint of kiwi sound good? Six to Eight hours of restful sleep, now in tropical flavors.

We were supposed to go on a tropical vacation together. If not, maybe just up to Vancouver. I've never been there before, but she told me that it was a real clean city. "It'll be so much fun!" she said. I believed her too. Still do. But I can't do that now and I think I hate Vancouver. It doesn't matter anyway. I have my sleep to pack. So much sleep to pack. What's worse is that the dream penguins are starting to become permanent. Well, at least one anyway. I've named him Bear and he's been following me for the last two days. The weird thing is that he listens to me and can actually fetch me things.

"Can you bring me that bag over there, Bear?"I ask.

He looks around and somehow I know that he doesn't see any.

"We've ran out?"

Bear nods.

"Hmm.. " I say.

But I see Bear shuffle around and walk into my room. I hear some ruckus and then he's back bringing me a baby-food jar.

"For my sleep?"

Bear doesn't even need to nod. Our thoughts, they're one.

I notice that he's cleaned out the jar. I don't know how how's managed to do it, but I take it in my hand and hold it up to the light. It's very clean. I wonder if it smells so I bring it up to my nose and, to my surprise, find that it has a very pleasing scent. A sort of airy, sunny-day type scent.

"How'd you-" I start, but the look he gives me tells me to stop.

"Ok, that's fine."

I imagine that I've somehow deluded myself into believing that Bear really exists and that I actually cleaned the jar out by myself, but I'm so tired that I don't give it anymore thought than that and accept Bear is real. Bear is my only friend.

I have two boxes of sleep saved up. Because the baby food jars are smaller than the sandwich baggies, I only manage to fit in about 4 maybe for hours worth. I haven't really figured out how to measure my sleep yet, so I'm guessing at the amount. I'm assuming that because I'm managing only to fit half as much sleep into the jars that the amount of rest would be half. Half is an approximation as well because  sometimes I have extra left over and sometimes I'm unable to fill two jars with one night of sleep.

God, I'm tired.

Bear nudges me.

Right, Right.

I have to fill this jar.
I have to fill this jar.

title: Sleep in a Jar

question: Why does the author now hate Vancouver if he has never visited?

answer: Because he is mourning a breakup while they were supposed to be going on a vacation together.


text:
If you're wondering what games are coming up in 2018, we've put them all in one convenient location. This list will be continually updated to act as a living, breathing schedule as new dates are announced, titles are delayed, and big reveals happen. This should help you plan out your next several months in gaming and beyond.

New additions or changes to the list are in bold.

As the gaming calendar is constantly changing, we highly recommend you bookmark this page. You'll likely find yourself coming back to this to find out the most recent release schedule for the most anticipated games across PC, consoles, handhelds, and mobile devices. If you notice that we've missed something, feel free to let us know! Please note that games will not get assigned to a month until they have confirmed release dates.

[]

Monster Hunter: World

January

January

-   The Escapists 2 (Switch) - January 11
-   Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition (PS4, PC) – January 16
-   Forged Battalion (PC) – January 16
-   Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - Hacker's Memory (PS4, Vita) – January 19
-   Kirby Battle (3DS) – January 19
-   Lost Sphear (PS4, Switch, PC) – January 23
-   The Inpatient (PSVR) – January 23
-   Iconoclasts (PS4, Vita, PC) – January 23
-   My Time at Portia (PC) – January 23
-   Celeste (PS4, Switch, PC) – January 25
-   Dust and Salt (PC) – January 25
-   Dragon Ball FighterZ (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – January 26
-   Monster Hunter: World (PS4, Xbox One) – January 26
-   Dissidia Final Fantasy NT (PS4) – January 30

[]

Shadow of the Colossus (PS4)

February

February

-   Batallion 1944 (PC Early Access) – February 1
-   Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age (PC) – February 1
-   Night In The Woods (Switch) – February 1
-   Steamworld Dig (Switch) – February 1
-   UFC 3 (PS4, Xbox One) - February 2
-   Shadow of the Colossus (PS4) – February 6
-   Little Triangle (Xbox One) - February 7
-   Samsara (Xbox One) - February 7
-   ACA NeoGeo Blazing Star (PS4, Xbox One, Switch) - February 8
-   Bleed 2 (Xbox One) - February 8
-   Starpoint Gemini Warlords (Xbox One) - February 8
-   Civilization VI: Rise and Fall (PC) – February 8
-   Dragon Quest Builders (Switch) - February 9
-   Overdriven Reloaded: Special Edition (Xbox One) - February 9
-   The Seven Deadly Sins: Knights of Britannia (PS4) – February 9
-   Under Night In-Birth Exe: Late[st] (PS4, PS3, Vita) – February 9
-   Monster Energy Supercross: Special Edition (Xbox One) - February 12
-   Dynasty Warriors 9 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – February 13
-   The Fall 2: Unbound (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – February 13
-   Kingdom Come: Deliverance (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – February 13
-   Owlboy (PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – February 13
-   Crossing Souls (PS4, PC) – February 13
-   Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology (3DS) – February 13
-   Monster Energy Supercross: The Official Videogame (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – February 13
-   The Longest Five Minutes (Switch, Vita, PC) – February 13
-   Secret of Mana (PS4, Vita, PC) – February 15
-   Bayonetta 1 + 2 Collection (Switch) – February 16
-   Fe (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – February 16
-   Long Gone Days (PC) – February 18
-   The Station (Xbox One) – February 19
-   Metal Gear Survive (PS4, Xbox One, PC) - February 20
-   Age of Empires: Definitive Edition (PC) - February 20
-   Xenon Valkyrie+ (Xbox One) – February 20
-   Pac-Man Championship Edition 2 Plus (Switch) – February 22
-   Stellaris: Apocalypse (PC) – February 22
-   Past Cure (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – February 23
-   Yume Nikki: Dream Diary (PC) – February 23
-   Sword Art Online: Fatal Bullet (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – February 23
-   Gravel (Xbox One) – February 26
-   De Blob 2 (PS4, Xbox One) - February 27
-   Immortal Redneck (Xbox One) – February 27
-   Payday 2 (Switch) - February 27
-   Riftstar Raiders (Xbox One) – February 27
-   Darkest Dungeon (Xbox One) – February 28

[]

Far Cry 5

March

March

-   Bravo Team (PSVR) – March 6
-   Pit People (Xbox One, PC) – March 2
-   Final Fantasy XV: Royal Edition (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – March 6
-   Frantics (PS4) – March 6
-   Scribblenauts Showdown (PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – March 6
-   Fear Effect Sedna (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – March 6
-   Devil May Cry HD Collection (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – March 13
-   Q.U.B.E. 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – March 13
-   #WarGames (PC) – March 14
-   Kirby Star Allies (Switch) – March 16
-   Burnout Paradise Remastered (PS4, Xbox One) – March 16
-   Assassin's Creed Rogue: Remastered (PS4, Xbox One) – March 20
-   Attack on Titan 2 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) - March 20
-   Sea of Thieves (Xbox One, PC) – March 20
-   Titan Quest (PS4, Xbox One) – March 20
-   A Way Out (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – March 23
-   Detective Pikachu (3DS) – March 23
-   Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom (PS4, PC) – March 23
-   Pure Farming 2018 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – March 23
-   Atelier Lydie & Suelle: The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings (PS4, Switch, PC) – March 27
-   Far Cry 5 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) - March 27
-   MLB The Show 18 (PS4) – March 27
-   Agony (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – March 30

[]

Nintendo Labo Variety Kit

April

April

-   Impact Winter (PS4, Xbox One) – April 4
-   Enigmatis 3: The Shadow of Karkhala (Xbox One) – April 6
-   Extinction (PS4, Xbox One, PC) –April 10
-   Masters of Anima (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – April 10
-   Owlboy (PS4, Xbox One) – April 10
-   Super Daryl Deluxe (PS4, Switch, PC) – April 10
-   Casey Powell Lacross 18 (PS4, Xbox One) – April 17
-   Gunhouse (PS4) – April 17
-   Yakuza 6: The Song of Life (PS4) – April 17
-   Metal Max Xeno (PS4, Vita) – April 19
-   God of War (PS4) – April 20
-   Nintendo Labo Variety Kit (Switch) – April 20
-   Nintendo Labo Robot Kit (Switch) – April 20
-   Phantom Trigger (PS4) – April 20
-   Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) - April 24
-   Dead Secret (PS4) – April 24
-   The Invisible Hours (PS4, Xbox One) – April 24
-   Just in TIme Incorporated (PS4) – April 24
-   South Park: The Fractured But Whole (Switch) – April 24
-   The Sword of Ditto (PS4) – April 24
-   Emily Wants to Play Too (PS4, Xbox One) – April 25
-   Runestone Keeper (Xbox One) – April 25
-   Agatha Knife (Xbox One) – April 26
-   DragoDino (Xbox One) – April 26
-   Late Shift (Switch) – April 26
-   Light Fall (Switch) – April 26
-   Saturday Morning RPG (Switch) – April 26
-   Korgan (Xbox One) – April 27

[]

Detroit: Become Human

May

May

-   Battlezone Gold Edition (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 1
-   Outbreak: The Nightmare Chronicles (Xbox One) – May 1
-   Super Mega Baseball 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 1
-   Coffee Crisis (PC) – May 2
-   Killing Floor: Incursion (PSVR) – May 1
-   Total War Saga: Thrones of Britannia (PC) – May 3
-   City of Brass (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 4
-   Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze (Switch) – May 4
-   Conan Exiles (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 8
-   Destiny 2: Warmind (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 8
-   Last Encounter (PC) – May 8
-   Megadimension Neptunia VIIR (PS4) – May 8
-   Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire (PC) – May 8
-   Raging Justice (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – May 8
-   Tacoma (PS4) – May 8
-   AO International Tennis (PS4, Xbox One) – May 8
-   Subaeria (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 9
-   Immortal Redneck (Switch) – May 10
-   Laser League (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 10
-   One Piece: Pirate Warriors 3 (Switch) – May 11
-   Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 11
-   Battle Chasers Nightwar (Switch) – May 15
-   Dragon's Crown Pro (PS4) – May 15
-   Horizon Chase Turbo (PS4, PC) – May 15
-   Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time (PS4, PC) – May 15
-   Omensight (PS4, PC) – May 15
-   Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux (3DS) – May 15
-   Floor Kids (Switch) – PC
-   Far: Lone Sails (PC) – May 17
-   Fox N Forest (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – May 17
-   Worlds Adrift (PC) – May 17
-   Hyrule Warriors: Definitive Edition (Switch) – May 18
-   Little Nightmares: Complete Edition (Switch) – May 18
-   State of Decay 2 (Xbox One, PC) – May 18
-   Ancestors Legacy (Xbox One, PC) – May 22
-   Mega Man Legacy Collection (Switch) – May 22
-   Runner 3 (Switch, PC) – May 22
-   Space Hulk: Deathwing – Enhanced Edition (PS4, PC) – May 22
-   Tennis World Tour (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – May 22
-   Dillon's Dead-Heat Breakers (3DS) – May 24
-   Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, 3DS, Vita, PC) – May 24
-   Dark Souls Remastered (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 25
-   Detroit: Become Human (PS4) – May 25
-   Agony (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – May 29
-   Everspace (PS4) – May 29
-   Legend of Kay Anniversary (Switch) – May 29
-   Moonlighter (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – May 29
-   Sega Mega Drive Classics (PS4, Xbox One) – May 29
-   Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – May 29

[]

Mario Tennis Aces

June

June

-   BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle (PS4, Switch, PC) – June 5
-   The Elder Scrolls Online: Summerset (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 5
-   Onrush (PS4, Xbox One) – June 5
-   Shaq Fu: A Legend Reborn (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – June 5
-   Vampyr (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 5
-   MotoGP 18 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 7
-   Flashback: Remastered Edition (Switch) – June 7
-   Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido (Switch, 3DS) – June 8
-   Unravel Two (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 9
-   Fallout Shelter (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 10
-   Fortnite (Switch) – June 12
-   Hollow Knight (Switch) – June 12
-   Super Bomberman R (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 12
-   Jurassic World Evolution (PC, PS4, Xbox One) – June 12
-   R.B.I. Baseball 18 (Switch) – June 14
-   Lego: The Incredibles (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – June 15
-   The Lost Child (PS4, Switch, Vita) – June 19
-   Mario Tennis Aces (Switch) – June 22
-   New Gundam Breaker (PS4, PC) – June 22
-   De Blob Remastered (Switch) – June 26
-   Nier: Automata Become As Gods Edition (Xbox One) – June 26
-   The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 26
-   Far Cry 3 Classic Edition (PS4, Xbox One) – June 26
-   Lumines Remastered (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – June 26
-   Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch) – June 26
-   Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy (Xbox One, Switch, PC) – June 26
-   Fighting EX Layer (PS4) – June 28
-   The Crew 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – June 29
-   Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus (Switch) – June 29

[]

Octopath Traveler

July

July

-   Red Faction: Guerrilla Remastered (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – July 3
-   Mushroom Wars 2 (Switch) – July 5
-   Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor – Martyr (PS4, Xbox One) – July 5
-   20XX (PS4, Switch) – July 10
-   20XX (Xbox One) – July 11
-   MXGP Pro (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – July 10
-   Shining Resonance Refrain (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – July 10
-   Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch, 3DS) – July 13
-   Earthfall (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – July 13
-   Hotel Transylvania 3: Monsters Overboard (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – July 13
-   Octopath Traveler (Switch) – July 13
-   Danger Zone 2 (PC) – July 13
-   Adventure Time: Pirates of the Enchiridion (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – July 17
-   Hand of Fate 2 (Switch) – July 17
-   Sonic Mania Plus (PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – July 17
-   Mothergunship (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – July 17
-   Pool Panic (Switch, PC) – July 19
-   The Banner Saga 3 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – July 24
-   Mega Man X Legacy Collection 1 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – July 24
-   Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – July 24
-   No Man’s Sky (Xbox One) – July 24
-   Train Sim World (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – July 24
-   Ys: Memories of Celceta (PC) – July 25
-   Sleep Tight (Switch, PC) – July 26
-   Code of Princess EX (Switch) – July 31
-   Titan Quest (Switch) – July 31
-   Chasm (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – July 31

[]

World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth

August

August

-   Yakuza 0 (PC) – August 1
-   Iconoclasts (Switch) – August 2
-   Salt & Sanctuary (Switch) – August 2
-   WarioWare Gold (3DS) – August 3
-   Overcooked 2 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – August 7
-   Dead Cells (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – August 7
-   Okami HD (Switch) – August 9
-   Minit (Switch) – August 9
-   Monster Hunter World (PC) – August 9
-   Madden NFL 19 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 10
-   We Happy Few (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 10
-   Death's Gambit (PS4, PC)  – August 14
-   Phantom Doctrine (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 14
-   The Walking Dead: The Final Season Episode 1 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 14
-   World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth (PC) – August 14
-   Cosmic Star Heroine (Switch) – August 14
-   Shenmue I & II (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 21
-   Guacamelee 2 (PS4, PC) – August 21
-   F1 2018 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 24
-   Firewall: Zero Hour (PSVR) – August 28
-   Little Dragon's Cafe (PS4, Switch) – August 28
-   Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate (Switch) – August 28
-   Pro Evolution Soccer 2019 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 28
-   Yakuza Kiwami 2 (PS4) – August 28
-   Strange Brigade (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 28
-   Blade Strangers (PS4, Switch, PC) – August 28
-   Donut County (PS4, PC, iOS) – August 28
-   De Blob 2 Remasted (Switch) – August 28
-   Fire Pro Wrestling World (PS4, PC) – August 28
-   Freedom Planet (Switch) – August 30
-   The Messenger (Switch, PC) – August 30
-   Two Point Hospital (PC) – August 30
-   Divinity: Original Sin 2 (PS4, Xbox One) – August 31
-   Naruto to Boruto: Shinobi Striker (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – August 31

[]

Marvel's Spider-Man

September

September

-   Destiny 2: Forsaken (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – September 4
-   Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age (PS4, PC) – September 4
-   Gone Home (Switch) – September 6
-   Immortal: Unchained (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – September 7
-   NBA 2K19 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – September 7
-   NBA Live 19 (PS4, Xbox One) – September 7
-   SNK Heroines: Tag Team Frenzy (Switch, PS4) – September 7
-   Marvel’s Spider-Man (PS4) – September 7
-   Yo-kai Watch Blasters: Red Cat Corp and White Dog Squad (3DS) – September 7
-   Dust: An Elysian Tail (Switch) – September 10
-   Frozen Synapse (PC) – September 13
-   FINAL FANTASY XV: POCKET EDITION (PS4, XBOX ONE, SWITCH) – SEPTEMBER 13
-   Nintendo Labo Vehicle Kit (Switch) – September 14
-   NHL 19 (PS4, Xbox One) – September 14
-   Shadow of the Tomb Raider (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – September 14
-   Black Clover: Quartet Knights (PS4, PC) – September 14
-   CAPCOM BEAT 'EM UP BUNDLE (PS4, XBOX ONE, SWITCH, PC) – SEPTEMBER 18
-   LABYRINTH OF REFRAIN: COVEN OF DUSK (PS4, SWITCH, PC) – SEPTEMBER 18
-   Insurgency: Sandstorm (PC) – September 18
-   Undertale (Switch) – September 18
-   Blind (PSVR, PC) – September 18
-   CROSSCODE (PC) – SEPTEMBER 20
-   Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna The Golden Country (Switch) – September 21
-   SOUTH PARK: THE STICK OF TRUTH (SWITCH) – SEPTEMBER 25
-   THE WALKING DEAD: THE FINAL SEASON EPISODE 2 (PS4, XBOX ONE, PC) – SEPTEMBER 25
-   HOLLOW KNIGHT (PS4, XBOX ONE) – SEPTEMBER 25
-   Valkyria Chronicles 4 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – September 25
-   Pathfinder: Kingmaker (PC) – September 25
-   Life is Strange 2: Episode 1 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – September 27
-   FIFA 19 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PS3, 360, PC) – September 28
-   Dragon Ball FighterZ (Switch) – September 28

[]

Red Dead Redemption II

October

October

-   ASTRO BOT RESCUE MISSION (PSVR) – OCTOBER 2
-   Forza Horizon 4 (Xbox One, PC) – October 2
-   Fist of the North Star: Lost Paradise (PS4) – October 2
-   Mega Man 11 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – October 2
-   Assassin's Creed Odyssey (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – October 5
-   Super Mario Party (Switch) – October 5
-   Disgaea 1 Complete (PS4, Switch) – October 9
-   WWE 2K19 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – October 9
-   The Occupation (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – October 9
-   MARK OF THE NINJA: REMASTERED (PS4, XBOX ONE, SWITCH, PC) – OCTOBER 9
-   Child of Light (Switch) – October 11
-   Luigi's Mansion (3DS) – October 12
-   The World Ends With You: Final Remix (Switch) – October 12
-   Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – October 12
-   Lego DC Super Villains (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – October 16
-   Starlink: Battle for Atlas (PS4, Xbox One, Switch) – October 16
-   Warriors Orochi 4 (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – October 16
-   For Honor: Marching Fire (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – October 16
-   Soulcalibur VI (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – October 19
-   Dark Souls Remastered (Switch) – October 19
-   Just Dance 2019 (PS4, XBox One, Switch, Wii, 360, Wii U) – October 23
-   My Hero One's Justice (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – October 26
-   Red Dead Redemption II (PS4, Xbox One) – October 26
-   Call of Cthulhu: The Official Video Game (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – October 30

[]

Fallout 76

November

November

-   DIABLO III: ETERNAL COLLECTION (SWITCH) – NOVEMBER 2
-   Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun! (Switch) – November 2
-   Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum Session! (PS4) – November 2
-   DÉRACINÉ (PSVR) – NOVEMBER 6
-   WORLD OF FINAL FANTASY MAXIMA (PS4, XBOX ONE, SWITCH, PC) – NOVEMBER 6
-   Overkill's The Walking Dead (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – November 6
-   The Forest (PS4) – November 6
-   Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom (PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC) – November 6
-   Ride 3 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – November 8
-   Valiant Hearts (Switch) – November 8
-   Hitman 2 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – November 13
-   SNK 40th Anniversary Collection (Switch) – November 13
-   Spyro Reignited Trilogy (PS4, Xbox One) – November 13
-   Fallout 76 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – November 14
-   Underworld Ascendant (PC) – November 15
-   Pokémon Let's Go Pikachu/Let's Go Eevee (Switch) – November 16
-   Civilization VI (Switch) – November 16
-   Battlefield V (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – November 20
-   Wreckfest (PS4, Xbox One) – November 20
-   WARFRAME (SWITCH) – NOVEMBER 20
-   Darksiders III (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – November 27
-   Artifact (PC) – November 28
-   KATAMARI DAMACY REROLL (SWITCH, PC) – NOVEMBER 30

[]

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

December

December

-   Just Cause 4 (PS4, Xbox One, PC) – December 4
-   Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight (PS4, Vita) – December 4
-   Persona 5: Dancing in Starlight (PS4, Vita) – December 4
-   Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) – December 7
-   Earth Defense Force 5 (PS4) – December 11
-   Insurgency: Sandstorm (PC) – December 12
-   FIREWATCH (SWITCH) – DECEMBER 17

question: What is being presented in this article>

answer: A gaming calendar is being presented in this article.

question: When are the games assigned to a month?

answer: Games are assigned to a month only when they have confirmed release dates.

question: What is the first game to come out on the gaming calendar?

answer: The first game to come out on the gaming calendar is the Escapists 2 on January 11th.

question: When does the game "Night in the Woods" release?

answer: It releases February 1st on the Switch.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: A video game calendar is posted with all the games coming out on specific dates and on specific consoles.


text:
KUNAEV STREET (; ) is one of the main streets in the city of Almaty that is named after Dinmukhamed Kunaev.

Location

Kunaev Street is located in the Medeu District, between the streets of Valikhanov (Krasin) and Tulebaev. It starts from the Raimbek Avenue, then crosses the streets of Zhibek Zholy (Gorky), Gogol, Tole Bi, Bogenbai Batyr (Kirov), Kabanbai Batyr (Kalinin), Shevchenko, Kurmangazy and ends in Abay Avenue. The length of the street is 3050 m.[1]

History

Kunaev Street was developed in the late 19th century, it housed shops for traders, buyers, and craftsmen workshops. The street is known for its historical and revolutionary events, related to the names of the heroes of October Revolution and Russian Civil War; Dmitry Furmanov, Bagautdin Shegabutdinov, Rudolf Marechek, Tokash Bokin. The demonstrations held in Kunaev Street were soldier's wives who protested against the imperialist war, and the first May Day demonstration of the working people of the Soviet Faithful. During the Soviet Union, the street was reconstructed and landscaped, planted with deciduous trees such as oak, poplar, and elm. A square with a bust statue of Kunaev was created in 1978, concrete canal ditches were installed, where during the summer, the water rose up from the ditch.[2]

Name

Until 1919, the street was called Kapalskoy. In Soviet times, from June 1919, it was renamed in honor of the founder of communism Karl Marx. In the 1994, it was renamed in honor of the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakh SSR Dinmukhamed Kunaev[3]

Notable buildings and structures

Residential and office buildings that were built during the Soviet times; “The Ministry of Social Welfare”, “Research Institute of Organic Catalysis and Electrochemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR”, the Central Committee of the Red Cross, the republican House of health education, the regional teacher's House, a republican House of models, factory hats, the firm “Almagul” by mating and individual tailoring of knitted products, the company “Kazakhstan” on individual sewing and repairing clothes and hotel “Kazpotrebsoyuz”.

On Kunaev Street are also located Kazakhstan Academy of Sciences, and a fire station Medeu district.

Monuments

File:E8546-Almaty-Kunaev-Square.jpg%7CKunaev Monument File: ALABokin.JPG |Tokash Bokin Monument

Transportation

In the street to 2015 (inclusive) and the tram route.

-   '' 'The tram number 4' '': It starts and ends at the Aksai station. Passes through the streets Momyshuly, Tole bi Baitursynov Shevchenko Kunaeva, Makatayev Jetysu, Arykova, Cherkasy defense Turgen (with access to the Zhetysu).

Tram now does not work.

Notes

[1]

[2]

[3]

title: Kunaev Street (Almaty)

question: Where is Kunaev Street?

answer: In the city of Almaty in the Medeu District

question: What is the street named afetr?

answer: Dinmukhamed Kunaev

question: What was Kunaev Street known for?

answer: For its historical and revolutionary events.

question: When was the street developed?

answer: In the late 19th century.

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: Kunaev Street was developed in the late 19th century and housed shops for traders, buyers and craftsmen workshops. It is located in the city of Almaty within the Medeu District. The street was known for its historical and revolutionary events and during the Soviet Union, it was reconstructed.


text:
The INSURGENCY IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS () was a low-level[1][2][3] armed conflict between Russia and militants associated with the Caucasus Emirate and, since June 2015, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) groups.[4] It followed the official end of the decade-long Second Chechen War on 16 April 2009.[5] It attracted people from the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and Central Asia, who then participated in the conflict, but volunteers from the North Caucasus are also fighting in Syria.[6] Also used is the name ARMED CONFLICT IN THE NORTH CAUCASUS ().[7]

The insurgency became relatively dormant in its later years.[8][9] During its peak, the violence was mostly concentrated in the North Caucasus republics of Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia and Kabardino-Balkaria. Occasional incidents happened in surrounding regions, like North Ossetia-Alania, Karachay-Cherkessia, Stavropol Krai and Volgograd Oblast.

The insurgency was officially declared over on 19 December 2017 after more than 8 years when FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov announced the final elimination of the terrorists groups underground in the North Caucasus.[10]

History and background

[Map of the North Caucasus] In late 1999, Russia's Premier, Vladimir Putin, ordered military, police and security forces to enter the breakaway region of Chechnya. By early 2000, these forces occupied most of the region. High levels of fighting continued for several more years and resulted in thousands of Russian and Chechen casualties and hundreds of thousands of displaced persons. In 2005, Chechen rebel leader, Abdul-Halim Sadulayev, decreed the formation of a Caucasus Front against Russia, among Islamic believers in the North Caucasus, in an attempt to widen Chechnya's conflict with Russia. After his death, his successor, Dokka Umarov, declared continuing jihad to establish an Islamic fundamentalist Caucasus Emirate in the North Caucasus and beyond. Russia's pacification policy in Chechnya has involved setting up a pro-Moscow regional government and transferring more local security duties to this government.

An important factor in Russia's apparent success in Chechnya has been reliance on pro-Moscow Chechen clans affiliated with regional President Ramzan Kadyrov. Terrorist attacks in the North Caucasus appeared to increase substantially in 2007–2010. In the summer of 2009, more than 442 persons died in North Caucasus violence in just four months as compared to only 150 deaths reported in the entire year of 2008.[11] In the whole year 2009, according to the official figures by the Russian government, 235 Interior Ministry personnel (Defense Ministry and the FSB losses not included) were killed and 686 injured,[12] while more than 541 alleged fighters and their supporters were killed and over 600 detained.[13] The rate of increase of terrorist incidents lessened in 2010, as compared to 2008–2009, however the rate of civilian casualties substantially increased throughout the North Caucasus in 2010 and a rising number of terrorist incidents took place outside of Chechnya.[14]

In the period from 2010 to 2014, the number of casualties in the North Caucasus insurgency declined each year, with the overall death toll falling by more than half.[15] Reasons suggested for the decline include the deaths of high-ranking insurgency commanders, the increased targeting by security forces of the support infrastructure relied on by the insurgents, and an exodus of insurgents to other conflict zones.[16] A special investigation by _Reuters_ claimed that in the lead-up to the 2014 Sochi Olympics, Russian security services had allowed and encouraged militants to leave Russia to fight in the Syrian Civil War, in order to reduce the risk of domestic attacks.[17]

Chechnya

The insurgency in the North Caucasus is a direct result of the two post-Soviet wars fought between Russia and Chechnya. The First Chechen War was a nationalist struggle, with both secular and Islamist overtones, for independence from Russia and took place between 1994 and 1996. After a vicious struggle between Russian federal forces and Chechen separatist guerrillas, Chechnya was granted _de facto_ independence per the terms of the Khasavyurt Accord, signed on 30 August 1996. With a devastated infrastructure and various armed factions, subordinate to specific warlords, the next three years saw Chechnya devolve into a corrupted and criminal state, plagued by armed gangs, an epidemic of kidnappings-for-ransom and the rise of radical Islam in the region as a response to suppression.

In August 1999, an armed incursion of 1,500 Islamic radicals, led by Chechen warlord, Shamil Basayev, and Arab jihadist, Ibn al-Khattab, in support of a Dagestani separatist movement, combined with a series of apartment bombings in Russia, gave Moscow sufficient reasoning for re-invading Chechnya, thus triggering the Second Chechen War, a conflict fought with significant Islamist overtones.

Having learned harsh lessons from the first war, the Russian military, rather than getting entangled in messy urban engagements such as that seen in Grozny in 1994–95, relied heavily on aerial bombardment and artillery such as ballistic missiles and fuel air explosives, typically surrounding and then destroying any towns or villages that put up resistance before sending in ground forces for mop-up operations. The second Battle of Grozny in 1999–2000 saw the bulk of Chechen resistance smashed, particularly after a column of some 2,000 fighters attempted to break out of the besieged city in February 2000 and instead walked directly into a minefield that Russian forces had prepared for an ambush. What remained of the decimated rebel units then withdrew into the inaccessible Vedeno and Argun gorges in the southern mountains of the republic in order to wage a guerrilla campaign.

The republic remained a major center of violence for many years. According to Russian figures, between April 2009 (when the anti-terrorist operation in Chechnya was officially ended) and April 2010, 97 servicemen were killed in Chechnya; at the same time, government forces killed 189 persons claimed to be militants or their collaborators.[18] Reported casualties declined, with 26 security forces and 24 suspected militants being killed in 2014.[19]

Dagestan

[FSB Spetsnaz members during an anti-terrorist operation in Makhachkala, Dagestan.] Dagestan is the most religious, populous and complex of all the north Caucasian republics.[20] It is double the size of Chechnya and consists of several dozen ethnic groups, most with their own language.[21] The conflict in Dagestan, however, is not between ethnic groups but between Sufism, a syncretic form of Islam which includes local customs and recognises the state, and Salafism, a more traditional form which rejects secular rule and insists that the Salafist interpretation of Islam should govern all spheres of life.[22]

Dagestan has the highest levels of violence and extremism in the North Caucasus republics. The Russian Interior Ministry stated that of the 399 terrorist crimes committed in the North Caucasus in 2013, 242 were in Dagestan.

By 2017, all subversive and terrorist groups operating in Dagestan were eliminated.[23]

Ingushetia

Along with Dagestan, Ingushetia bore the brunt of the violence in the North Caucasus in the Insurgencies early years. The Islamist insurgency in the republic sprang from the wars in neighbouring Chechnya in the 1990s and early 2000s. In June 2004, Ingush and Chechen fighters launched a large-scale attack on Ingushetia's biggest town, Nazran, killing scores of civilians, policemen and soldiers.

As elsewhere in the North Caucasus, the brutality of state security forces has been a major factor, driving young men to join the Islamists. Under the presidency of the former KGB officer, Murat Zyazikov, teams of masked operatives kidnapped, tortured and killed suspected rebels and members of their families. Zyazikov's successor, Yunus-bek Yevkurov, appointed in 2008, had success in dampening the violence, although he was seriously injured in a suicide bombing by the militants during his first year in office. Human rights violations by Russian commandos decreased, but remained widespread.[24]

The capture of Ali Taziev in June 2010, an ethnic Ingush and one of the top leaders of the Caucasus Emirate, dealt a blow to the jihadists in Ingushetia, with the number of attacks falling substantially over the next 5 years.[25] In mid-2015, Ingushetia's president, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, stated that the insurgency in the Republic had been 'defeated'.[26]

Kabardino-Balkaria

The insurgency in Kabardino-Balkaria began in the early 2000s and was led by the Yarmuk Jamaat, a militant Islamist jamaat which flourished as a result of persecution of pious Muslims by police and security forces.

In October 2005, several score of the militants launched a raid on the capital of the republic, Nalchik, which left 142 people dead. The guerrillas have also carried out numerous assassinations of government officials and law enforcement officers.

The republic saw a flare-up of violence in late 2010 and early 2011, in the wake of the death of Anzor Astemirov, a senior figure in the Caucasus Emirate and the head of its United Vilayat of Kabarda, Balkaria and Karachay. The new leaders of Kabardino-Balkaria's guerrilla movement, Asker Dzhappuyev and Ratmir Shameyev, preferred a more aggressive approach and the militants murdered several civilians in the republic, including Russian tourists. In response, a vigilante group called the Black Hawks threatened the relatives of some of the Islamists.[27] Dzhappuyev, Shameyev and Khamurzov were killed in a special operation by security forces in April 2011.[28]

Casualties fell in the following years. There was a total of 49 people (militants, security forces and civilians) reported killed in the republic over the whole of 2014.[29]

North Ossetia-Alania

On 9 September 2010, a car-bomb attack occurred at a crowded marketplace in Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, killing 19 adults and children, and injuring over 190. President Medvedev responded, that “we will certainly do everything to catch these monsters, who have committed a terrorist attack against ordinary people. What's more, a barbarous terrorist attack. We will do everything, so that they are found and punished in accordance with the law of our country, or in the case of resistance or other cases, so that they are eliminated.”

Vilayat Galgaycho reportedly took responsibility, stating that the attack was aimed against “Ossetian infidels” on “occupied Ingush lands”.[30]

List of clashes in the North Caucasus

-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2009
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2010
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2011
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2012
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2014
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2015
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2016
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2017
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2018
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2019
-   List of clashes in the North Caucasus in 2020

Casualties

  Year    Killed                                                                                Wounded
  ------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------------------------------------- --------
  2009    508[31]                                                                                574[32]
  2010    754[33]                                                                                956[34]
  2011    750[35]                                                                                628[36]
  2012    700[37]                                                                                525[38]
  2013    529[39]                                                                                457[40]
  2014    341[41]                                                                                184[42]
  2015    209[43]                                                                                49[44]
  2016    202[45]                                                                                85[46]
  2017    134[47]                                                                                41[48]
  2018    83{{cite web|url=https://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/reduction_number_victims_2018/                                                    title=In 2018, the count of conflict victims in Northern Caucasus dropped by 38%
  2019    32{{cite web|url=https://jamestown.org/program/is-political-conflict-supplanting-insurgency-as-the-main-challenge-in-the-north-caucasus/   title=Is Political Conflict Supplanting Insurgency as the Main Challenge in the North Caucasus?|publisher=Jamestown Foundation|accessdate=2020-05-23}}
  Total   4,242                                                                                3,540

The majority of the civilians killed were Russians, but also foreigners from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Belarus, Germany, Austria, United Kingdom and Armenia were killed in terrorist attacks.

Note: The casualty totals are compiled by the news site Caucasian Knot, which does not vouch for the data's 100-percent accuracy.

Terrorist incidents

-   2009 Nazran bombing
-   2009 Nevsky Express bombing
-   2010 Moscow Metro bombings
-   2010 Kizlyar bombings
-   2010 Stavropol bomb blast
-   2010 Tsentoroy attack
-   2010 Vladikavkaz bombing
-   2010 Chechen Parliament attack
-   Domodedovo International Airport bombing
-   2012 Makhachkala attack
-   October 2013 Volgograd bus bombing
-   December 2013 Volgograd bombings
-   2014 Grozny bombing
-   2014 Grozny clashes
-   2018 Kizlyar church shooting

[1]

[2]

[3]

[4]

[5] Russia 'ends Chechnya operation' , BBC News, 16 April 2009

[6]

[7] Жертвами вооруженного конфликта на Северном Кавказе с 29 декабря по 4 января стали не менее шести человек , Caucasian Knot, 5 January 2015

[8]

[9]

[10] Нечаев А., Зайнашев Ю. Россия выиграла еще одну важнейшую битву // Взгляд.ру, 19.12.2017

[11] Moscow and Grozny Evince Growing Nervousness Over Regional Security , The Jamestown Foundation, 9 November 2009. Retrieved on 21 August 2010.

[12] Более 230 силовиков погибло на Северном Кавказе в 2009 году

[13] Кавказский Узел|Нургалиев: с начала года на Северном Кавказе нейтрализовано более 700 боевиков . Chechnya.kavkaz-uzel.ru. Retrieved on 21 August 2010.

[14] Gordon Hahn, “Trends in Jihadist Violence in Russia During 2010 in Statistics”, Islam, Islamism and Politics in Eurasia Report, Monterey Institute for International Studies, 26 January 2011

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18] Chechen Fighters Hold their Ground Against Kadyrov , The Jamestown Foundation, 28 May 2010

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24] A Fear of Three Letters , Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, 8 March 2011

[25]

[26]

[27] Blood Relations , Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, 21 February 2011

[28] Clashes in Russia's Caucasus Kill 10 Rebels , Reuters, 29 April 2011

[29]

[30] CEDR, 9 September 2010, Doc. No. CEP-950171

[31]

[32]

[33]

[34]

[35]

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title: Insurgency in the North Caucasus

question: When did the conflict take place?

answer: Between 2009 and 2017

question: Who were the combatants?

answer: Russia, and a group of militants associated with the Caucasus Emirate and, later, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant groups

question: What agreement gave Chechnya de facto independence?

answer: The Khasavyurt Accord

question: Who was the director of the FSB when the conflict ended?

answer: Alexander Bortnikov

question: Write a ~2 sentence summary.

answer: The Insurgency in the North Caucasus was a low-level armed conflict between Russia and militants associated with the Caucasus Emirate and, later, Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant groups. It lasted from the end of the Second Chechen War in 2009 to 2017, when it was officially declared over.


text:
SUGAR CREEK is a stream in St. Louis County in the U.S. state of Missouri.[1] It is a tributary of the Mississippi River.

Sugar Creek was so named on account of sugar maple trees near its course.[2]

[1]

[2]

title: Sugar Creek (Mississippi River tributary)

question: What is Sugar Creek?

answer: A stream.

question: Where is it located?

answer: St. Louis County.

question: Where is St. Louis County?

answer: Missouri.

question: How was it named?

answer: There are sugar maple trees near it.

question: Write a ~1 sentence summary.

answer: Sugar Creek is a stream in St. Louis County in the U.S. state of Missouri that was named after the nearby maple trees.


text:
Chapter 1:

Have you ever wanted a superpower? Ever dreamed of a god?  I used to. Used to, but we’ll get to that. Growing up, I was a pretty normal kid. The only abnormality was a love of reading and a crippling inability to talk to girls.

This love of reading rapidly matured into reading becoming a staple of my life. Soon my imagination expanded as well. Never really enjoying the biographies of my local libraries, I turned to science fiction and fantasy. Soon, I became addicted. Instead of sugar plums, visions of super heroes and mechs danced in my head. Reading became an escape for me. Being bullied growing up, I could delve into a book and forget about it all.

Reaching high school, I started to notice things. Objects I focused on seemed to move ever so slightly, just enough to register. For the longest, I thought staring at the fine print of to many books finally got to me. This persisted until I was a senior, the only change being that the motions seemed to stop. This lasted until that infamous day North Korea surprised the world.

title: Omnipotence is Overrated (First Chapter, feedback is appreciated)

question: Who is the narrator?

answer: That information can't be found

question: List the main characters.

answer: The narrator

question: In what time period is the story set?

answer: That information can't be found (beyond that it must be sometime after World War II)

question: Where does the story take place?

answer: That information can't be found

question: Write a ~3 sentence summary.

answer: The narrator grows up loving books and using them as an escape from bullying. They sometimes feel that objects they focus on seem to move slightly. Then one day, North Korea surprises the world.