Lura may refer to:
Lura, born Maria de Lurdes Assunção Pina (born July 31, 1975 in Lisbon, Portugal) is a Portuguese singer and musician, of Cape Verdean descent. Her compositions are based on traditional Cape-Verdean music as for example the Morna, Funaná and Batuque, and influenced by African and contemporary Western music.
Lura was born in Portugal to Cape Verdean parents in 1975. Her father came from Santiago and her mother from São Nicolau. Initially she wanted to become a dancer or a swimming instructor. She became a singer at the age of seventeen when Juka, an artist from São Tomé and Príncipe, asked her to sing a duet with him for a music album. The album became a success, and subsequently she participated in productions by artists such as Bonga, Tito Paris, Paulo Flores and Paulino Vieira.
In 1996 she recorded her first album Nha Vida with her own compositions. In 1997 she participated in the AIDS benefit compilation album Onda Sonora: Red Hot + Lisbon produced by the Red Hot Organization among famous artists such as Caetano Veloso, Marisa Monte, Djavan, Bonga and Teresa Salgueiro. Further album productions and concerts all over Europe followed. In 2007 she sang her song Morna in the film Fados by Spanish film director Carlos Saura.
Maria may refer to:
Maria is a maleToulouse Goose (Anser anser), formerly living in Echo Park, Los Angeles who became the subject of news reports in 2011 after forming an unusual association with a local resident, named Dominic Ehrler.
Maria, named by locals and assumed to be female, was familiar to users of the park for several years as a goose which preferred the company of humans to that of his own species, often pecking at homeless people or following walkers and runners around.
Ehrler, a retired salesman, first encountered Maria at Echo Park lake in the summer of 2010 when the bird began to follow him on his daily walks around the lake, readily accepting food from him and soon becoming so attached that he would wait beside the road every morning for Ehrler to arrive at the park. Maria would walk alongside and possessively 'protect' Ehrler from other park users and their dogs and would also attempt to follow him from the park, flying closely behind him as he rode away on his scooter, necessitating attempts to distract the goose, or lock him behind a fence when leaving, to avoid being followed all the way home.
Final Fantasy II (ファイナルファンタジーII, Fainaru Fantajī Tsū) is a fantasy role-playing video game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix) in 1988 for the Family Computer as the second installment of the Final Fantasy series. The game has received numerous enhanced remakes for the WonderSwan Color, the Sony PlayStation, the Game Boy Advance, the PlayStation Portable, and multiple mobile and smartphone types. As neither this game nor Final Fantasy III were initially released outside Japan, Final Fantasy IV was originally released in North America as Final Fantasy II, so as not to confuse players. The most recent releases of the game are enhanced versions for the iOS and Android, which were released worldwide in 2010 and 2012, respectively.
The game's story centers on four youths whose parents were killed during an army invasion by the empire of Palamecia, who are using hellspawn to conquer the world. Three of the four main characters join a rebellion against the empire, embarking on missions to gain new magic and weapons, destroy enemy superweapons, and rescue leading members of the resistance. The Game Boy Advance remake adds a bonus story after the game is completed.