title: Panipat (film)

text: By 1758, the Maratha Empire had reached its peak under the leadership of Peshwa Balaji Baji Rao aka Nana Saheb. Maratha commanders Raghunath Rao, the Peshwa's brother, Shamsher Bahadur, the Peshwa's half-brother, and Sadashiv Rao Bhau, the Peshwa's cousin, defeat the Nizam of Hyderabad and capture their commander of artillery Ibrahim Khan Gardi, with Sadashiv inducting him into the Maratha Army as their commander of artillery. They return home to the Empire's capital at Pune and are welcomed. Due to pressure by his wife Gopika Bai, the Peshwa appoints Sadashiv as the Empire's finance minister in favour of the Peshwa's son Vishwas Rao, which he reluctantly accepts.


title: Panipat (film)

text: Sadashiv lists the defaulters who failed to pay taxes to the Maratha Empire on time, and notes that the Rohilla's Head Najib ad-Dawlah has the largest amount of tax due. Najib, determined to teach the Marathas a lesson, allies himself with Ahmad Shah Abdali, inviting him to Delhi. News of this formidable alliance reaches Pune, along with the news of Dattaji Shinde's death in battle against Najib. The Peshwa appoints Raghunath Rao as the commander of the Maratha forces which will be dispatched to fight Abdali and defend Delhi. However, Raghunath asks for a large amount of money, which Sadashiv denies, citing the treasury's condition after consecutive battles. Raghunath, therefore, refuses to march north, which leads the Peshwa to appoint Sadashiv as the commander-in-chief of the Maratha army, under the overlordship of Vishwas Rao, the Peshwa's son and heir. The army, along with a large number of non-combatants (women, children and pilgrims), begin their long and arduous journey north.


title: Panipat (film)

text: They arrive at Dholpur, where they're welcomed by their fellow Maratha generals— Govind Pant Bundela, Balwant Rao Mehendale, Jankoji Shinde, and the veteran Malhar Rao Holkar. They start making alliances with other kingdoms, including Maharaja Suraj Mal and Nawab Shuja-ud-Daulah, and are successful, with their army size growing to 50,000 men. Abdali is also making alliances, taking advantage of the Rajput kings' hatred for the Marathas. Sadashiv and the commanders receive intelligence that Abdali has camped on the other side of the Yamuna and spot Shuja's flags along with Abdali's, revealing that the Nawab had switched allegiance. Due to the heavy rains, the Marathas are unable to build a bridge to cross the Yamuna. Sadashiv decides to march north and capture Delhi and then cross the Yamuna to defeat Abdali.


title: Panipat (film)

text: Najib receives intelligence that the Marathas have retreated, from which Abdali deduces that they are marching north to Delhi. He suggests that they also march north and cross the Yamuna. Meanwhile, the Marathas defeat Najib's general and capture Delhi. After finding out the Afghans are chasing the Marathas, Sadashiv decides to strategically capture Kunjpura Fort and eventually carry out a massacre there of helpless Afghans departed from their main column, which angers Abdali to such an extent that he immediately reacts by crossing the swollen Yamuna in heavy rainfall. This leaves the Maharaja of Patiala, Ala Singh, unable to send his soldiers. Food begins to dwindle, and the Maratha soldiers and civilians are forced to go without food. Although the arrival of King Araadhak Singh provides some relief to the Maratha camp, but soon after camping at Panipat, Abdali catches up with the Marathas and comes face to face. However, after hearing of a possible coup d'état at his capital in Kandahar, Abdali arranges for a truce with Sadashiv but scraps it after the latter disagrees to Abdali's terms. After both sides decide on strategies and formations, they prepare for the final confrontation.


title: Panipat (film)

text: Parvati Bai and the civilians and pilgrims stay at a small camp towards the back, and Vishwas promises Sadashiv that he'll never get off his elephant during the battle for his own protection. Artillery firing begins by both sides, with substantial damage done to Abdali's army due to Ibrahim Khan's leadership. The riflemen also start attacking. The infantry then begins the main attack, with the Marathas doing well. Overcome with fear, many soldiers of Abdali's army retreat, but Abdali threatens them with severe punishment and forces them to return to the battle. Meanwhile, on seeing Shamsher wounded, Vishwas descends from his elephant to protect him. Sadashiv fends off the Afghans who attacked the young prince, but a bullet hits Vishwas on his head, killing him. This is a huge blow to the morale of the Marathas, who begin to lose ground from then. One by one, the Maratha chieftains are either wounded or killed. Araadhak Singh unexpectedly retreats from the battle. It is then revealed that he was angry with the Marathas for the high taxes imposed upon them, so he secretly allied himself with Abdali and passed the information onto him. Seeing the tide of the battle turn, Malhar Rao retreats from the battlefield and escorts the non-combatants to safety, as promised to Sadashiv on the eve of the battle. Abdali's soldiers close in on Sadashiv but he bravely fights back, sustaining serious injuries. He eventually succumbs to his wounds and dies, but not before making Abdali aware of his pyrrhic victory.


title: Panipat (film)

text: Back in Pune, Parvati Bai dies from grief. Abdali sends the Peshwa a letter, praising Sadashiv's bravery and courage. The epilogue reveals that even though victorious, Abdali never returned to India. Under the leadership of Peshwa Madhav Rao, the generals Mahadaji Shinde and Tukoji Rao Holkar saved the Maratha empire from extinction, and re-captured Delhi ten years later, making the Marathas a dominant force once again.


title: Panipat (film)

text: Art Director Nitin Chandrakant Desai recreated Shaniwar Wada at ND Studios, Karjat. Neeta Lulla designed the costumes. Padmini Kolhapure joined the cast in October 2018 as Gopika Bai. In June 2019, Zeenat Aman joined the cast to portray Sakina Begum.


title: Panipat (film)

text: On 30 November 2018, Gowariker and the cast tweeted a promotional poster to announce the beginning of principal photography. On 30 June 2019, Sanon wrapped up the shoot by posting pictures and notes for Gowariker and Kapoor.


title: Panipat (film)

text: The film received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film scored by critics. Monika Rawal Kukreja of "Hindustan Times" wrote ""Panipat" is an honest attempt at recreating the war that we only read in history books until now. It’s a tribute to the Maratha community in its truest form and even it was shorter by an hour, it could have had the same impact".


title: Panipat (film)

text: "The Times of India" gave 3.5 out of 5 stars stating ""Panipat" delves into a significant chapter in history and is a war drama that lauds the unshakable bravery, courage and the strong principles of the Maratha's".


title: Panipat (film)

text: "India Today" gave 2.5 out of 5 stars stating "Ashutosh Gowariker may not be able to do grandeur like Sanjay Leela Bhansali, but he can do war. Yet, a lacklustre cinematography and terrible CGI mars this solid attempt. It would have worked 10 years ago".


title: Panipat (film)

text: Namrata Joshi of "The Hindu" wrote "Gowariker may have taken liberties with history, but doesn’t play around with the form. He sticks to the tried and tested, the long and langourous and old-fashioned". "Bollywood Hungama" gave 3 out of 5 stars stating ""Panipat" throws light on an important chapter of Indian history with the battle scenes as its USP". Zee News gave 3 out of 5 stars stating "The film is a great effort by Gowariker and deserves to be watched for some impeccable performances and adrenaline-pumping action".


title: Panipat (film)

text: News18 gave 2.5 out of 5 stars stating ""Panipat", a film about Maratha warrior Sadashiv Rao Bhau who staves off Afghan ruler Ahmad Shah Abdali, disappoints only because of a linear screenplay that fails to rouse dramatic emotions so important to historicals". NDTV gave 2 out of 5 stars stating "The burden on Arjun Kapoor is too heavy for him though he rises manfully to the challenge. "Panipat" definitely isn't "Mohenjo Daro". But is that saying much? It will take three hours of your life and a whole lot of patience to sit through this laboured film". "Deccan Chronicle" gave 2.5 out of 5 stars stating "Directors like Gowariker do no service to the nation or their audience by twisting the truth, ignoring military, diplomatic, common sense follies and rewriting history with jingoistic fervour".


title: Panipat (film)

text: BBC News and Al Jazeera reported that the film received criticism from different parts of the world, especially from Afghanistan since Ahmad Shah Abdali is the national hero and the founder of modern day Afghanistan. Afghan viewers pointed that the film's portrayal of Abdali was that of an Arab, rather than an Afghan. Critics linked the rising number of Bollywood films with negative Muslim characters, such as the portrayal of Alauddin Khilji as a cruel and vicious ruler in the film "Padmaavat" (2018), as an attempt by the industry executives to align with India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, a Hindu nationalist party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.


title: Panipat (film)

text: The Panipat trailer depicted Ahmed Shah Durrani as a ruthless and brutal ruler and Afghans as 'battle-hardened, blood-thirsty savages'. While the film presented Marathas as "sophisticated and righteous". Consul General of Afghanistan in Mumbai, Naseem Sharifi, said that 'Afghans would not tolerate any insult to Ahmad Shah Durrani'. Afghan journalists stated that the film will create more Islamophobia and racism towards Afghans. "The Telegraph India" reported that films like "Padmaavat" (2018), "Kesari" (2019) and "Panipat" have stereotyped and vilified Afghans as brutal, cold-blooded and treacherous. Afghanistan's Ambassador to India, Tahir Qadiri, claimed that he was in contact with Indian officials and have shared the Afghan concerns with them. Ajmal Alamzai, the cultural attache at the Afghan embassy in New Delhi, claimed that he had made several unsuccessful attempts to contact the director of the film. Pajhwok Afghan News reported that the Panipat film trailer depicted the Maratha Empire as victorious in the Third Battle of Panipat despite the fact that it was Ahmad Shah Durrani, who had won the battle. Khaama Press, another Afghan newspaper, reported that some Afghan social media users have welcomed the film as reality while others criticised it and claimed that parts of history have been forged in favour of specific groups.


title: Panipat (film)

text: "Panipat"s opening day domestic collection was 4.12 crore. On the second day, the film collected ₹5.78 crore. On the third day, the film collected ₹7.78 crore, taking the total opening weekend collection to ₹17.68 crore.


title: Panipat (film)

text: , with a gross of 40.81 crore in India and 8.48 crore overseas, the film has a worldwide gross collection of 49.29 crore.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon (; ; or Inch'ŏn; literally "kind river"), formerly Jemulpo or Chemulp'o (제물포) until the period after 1910, officially the Incheon Metropolitan City (인천광역시, 仁川廣域市), is a city located in northwestern South Korea, bordering Seoul and Gyeonggi to the east. Inhabited since the Neolithic, Incheon was home to just 4,700 people when it became an international port in 1883. Today, about 3 million people live in the city, making it South Korea's third-most-populous city after Seoul and Busan.


title: Incheon

text: The city's growth has been assured in modern times with the development of its port due to its natural advantages as a coastal city and its proximity to the South Korean capital. It is part of the Seoul Capital Area, along with Seoul itself and Gyeonggi Province, forming the world's fourth-largest metropolitan area by population.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon has since led the economic development of South Korea by opening its port to the outside world, ushering in the modernization of South Korea as a center of industrialization. In 2003, the city was designated as South Korea's first free economic zone. Since then, large local companies and global enterprises have increasingly invested in the Incheon Free Economic Zone, including Samsung which chose Songdo International City as its new investment destination for its bio industry.


title: Incheon

text: As an international city, Incheon has held numerous large-scale international conferences, such as the Incheon Global Fair & Festival in 2009. The 17th Asian Games Incheon 2014 was also held in Incheon on 19 September 2014. Incheon has established itself as a major transportation hub in northeast Asia with the Incheon International Airport and Incheon Port.


title: Incheon

text: The first historical record of the Incheon area dates back to 475 CE, during the reign of King Jangsu of Goguryeo, by the name of Michuhol, which is supposed to be located on today's Munhak Hill (). The area underwent several name changes with successive kingdoms and dynasties. In Goryeo era, Incheon was called Gyeongwon () or Inju (). The current name was turned to Incheon in 1413. Later, Incheon County became Incheon Metropolitan Prefecture (dohobu, ). Old Incheon consisted of today's southern Incheon (i.e. Jung-gu, Dong-gu, Nam-gu, Yeonsu-gu, and Namdong-gu) and the northern part of Siheung City. The city center was Gwangyo-dong, where the prefecture office () and the local academy (hyanggyo, ) were located. The "original" two remaining buildings of the Incheon prefecture office are located in Munhak Elementary School, while the newly built (in 2001) prefecture office buildings are right across from Munhak Baseball Stadium.


title: Incheon

text: Another historical name of the city, Jemulpo (alternatively Romanized as Chemulpo), was not widely used until the opening of the port in 1883. It was frequently used until the Japanese annexation. After the opening of the Incheon port, the city center moved from Gwangyo to Jemulpo. Today, either Jemulpo or Gwangyo-dong is considered "Original Incheon" (). It was internationally known as Jinsen during Japanese rule, based on the Japanese pronunciation of Incheon's Chinese name.


title: Incheon

text: In 1914, the Japanese colonial government merged outer parts of old Incheon (including the former center of Gwangyo) with Bupyeong County, forming Bucheon County. Between 1936 and 1940, some part of Bucheon County was recombined into Incheon City, by which some part of "old" Bupyeong was annexed into Incheon.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon was originally part of Gyeonggi Province, but was granted "Directly Governed" (now Metropolitan) City status on 1 July 1981; the city officially separated from the province. In 1989, neighboring islands and Gyeyang township of Gimpo County were ceded to Incheon and in 1995 Geomdan township of Gimpo Country and two counties of Ganghwa and Onjin were annexed to Incheon Metropolitan City.


title: Incheon

text: The city was the site of the Battle of Chemulpo Bay, where the first shots of the Russo-Japanese War were fired.


title: Incheon

text: During the Korean War, Incheon was occupied by North Korean troops on 4 July 1950. Incheon was the site of the Battle of Inchon when the United States troops landed to relieve pressure on the Pusan Perimeter and to launch a United Nations offensive northward. The result was a decisive UN victory and it was recaptured on 19 September 1950. was named after the tide-turning battle that ensued.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon has also hosted a series of major international events. The Global Fair & Festival 2009 Incheon was held in the Songdo District in August 2009. It was open from 7 August to 25 October for a period of 80 days. It was a comprehensive international event with global institutions and corporations as participants. Various musicians and artists performed during the event.


title: Incheon

text: The city hosted a meeting of the G20 Finance Ministers in February 2010. Incheon was the site of the third Global Model United Nations Conference, held from 10 to 14 August 2011.


title: Incheon

text: It first hosted the Incheon Women Artists' Biennale in 2004 which expanded into welcoming international artists in its subsequent 2007, 2009 and 2011.


title: Incheon

text: On 27 February 2007, Incheon declared itself an "English City," and inaugurated the "Incheon Free English Zone" program. The goal of the program is to make the city as proficient in English as Singapore. This is for the ultimate purpose of establishing Incheon as a commercial and business hub of northeast Asia (see Free Economic Zone below). The official slogan of the program is "Smile with English."


title: Incheon

text: Headquarters of the Green Climate Fund, Incheon has a humid subtropical climate (Köppen: "Cwa"), and humid continental climate (Köppen "Dwa", respectively). Like other metropolitan cities, incheon has a strong urban heat island effect. Incheon's climate is about average compared to the rest of Korea, with 8 locations being cooler and 10 locations being warmer, and with 9 locations being wetter and 9 locations being drier.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon experiences each of its four seasons, distinctly feeling the rise and fall of temperature and humidity. The temperature however, never rises to an extreme, and the climate of the city is essentially mild. Incheon is swept by the seasonal winds as the northwesterly winds strike the city in the winter and the summer in Incheon is affected by gusts of the warm southwesterly winds.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon forms the heart of Capital Industrial Region. During the industrialization of South Korea, several industrial complexes were built throughout the city, and as a result, the city was largely dependent on manufacturing industry. But with the designation of Incheon Free Economic Zone in 2003, the city is now making an effort to foster new growth industries. Major industrial parks include Bupyeong industrial complex, which hosts GM Incheon plant(formerly a GM Daewoo Incheon plant), Juan industrial complex, and Namdong Industrial complex.


title: Incheon

text: In recent years, bio industry is emerging as a new growth industry of the city. Currently, with the total production capacity of 330kℓ per year, the city ranks 2nd in the world by production capacity along with San Francisco, United States. The capacity is under expansion, and after completion in 2018, the city will rank 1st with the production capacity of 510kℓ. Also, logistics industry is also experiencing a rapid growth, thanks to Incheon Airport, which was ranked fourth in the world by cargo traffic, and the expansion of Incheon Port.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon International Airport is South Korea's primary international airport and a regional air hub. In 2015, it was the world's 22nd busiest airport by passenger traffic, with 49,412,750 passengers.


title: Incheon

text: There were a total of 305,446 flights (300,634 international, 4,812 domestic) to and from Incheon International Airport in 2015, an average of 837 flights (824 international, 13 domestic) daily. Korea's two main carriers, Korean Air and Asiana Airlines, serviced 50.9% of flights, while low-cost and foreign carriers serviced the remaining 49.1% of flights. The airport is experiencing a rapid increase in passengers, and the opening of Terminal 2 in December 2017 spurred additional traffic.


title: Incheon

text: The International Passenger Terminal located at the port offers ferries to five cities in China: Dalian, Qingdao, Tianjin, Dandong, and Weihai. There are also ferries to Incheon's outlying islands as well as Baengnyeong Island inside of the Northern Limit Line.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon Bus Terminal, located at its eponymous subway stop, offers express bus transportation to all parts of Korea. Many city bus lines offer transportation within city limits as well as to the neighboring cities of Bucheon, Gimpo, Seoul, and Siheung.


title: Incheon

text: Local service to Guro, Seoul, Cheongnyangni, Uijeongbu and Soyosan is offered by Seoul's subway Line 1. The line has 11 stations within Incheon and connects to the Incheon Subway at Bupyeong and Juan stations.


title: Incheon

text: Rapid service on the same line to Yongsan Station in Seoul depart from Dongincheon station and stops at major stations.


title: Incheon

text: The Airport Express (AREX) line runs from Incheon International Airport to Seoul Station via Gimpo International Airport. The Incheon-Gimpo section was opened in March 2007 and was extended to Seoul station in December 2010. Passengers can choose a high-speed service stopping only at Incheon airport and Seoul, which takes 43 minutes but departs only every half-hour; or the all-station service which takes 53 minutes but leaves every six minutes.


title: Incheon

text: KTX service was introduced on the AREX line on 30 June 2014, with stops at Incheon International Airport Station and Geoman Station. There are additional plans to use the newly built Suin Line to bring KTX service to Incheon Station by 2021.


title: Incheon

text: The Incheon Subway has two subway lines serving the city. The first line connects to the Seoul Metropolitan Subway system at Bupyeong Station (Seoul Subway Line 1), and AREX line at Gyeyang Station. It connects International Business District Station in Songdo to Gyeyang Station. The line has 28 stations on of track. The line also has transfer stations with the Suin Line at Woninjae Station, with the Incheon Subway Line 2 at Incheon City Hall Station, and with Seoul Subway Line 7 at Bupyeong-gu Office Station. Incheon Subway Line 2 opened in July 2016 and runs from Geomdan Oryu Station to Unyeon Station. The automated line is long, and has 27 stations, including transfer stations at Geomam station with the AREX line, Juan Station with Seoul Subway Line 1 and Incheon Subway Line 2 at Incheon City Hall Station.


title: Incheon

text: Korail has also constructed a new commuter rail line named Suin Line. The line opened in 2012 from Oido Station in Siheung to Songdo Station in Incheon. It was then extended in 2016, and now reaches Incheon Station where passengers can transfer to Seoul Subway Line 1. In 2020, the line was extended from Oido Station to Suwon Station.


title: Incheon

text: SMRT (one of three operating companies of Seoul Metropolitan Subway) has extended Seoul Metropolitan Subway Line 7 to Bupyeong-gu office by 2011 and provided transfers to the Incheon Subway system. It has 3 stations within Incheon. By 2020, the line will further be extended westwards to Seoknam Station where it will be possible to transfer to Incheon Subway Line 2.


title: Incheon

text: The Incheon Free Economic Zone consists of the three regions of Songdo, Cheongna, and the island of Yeongjong, and has a total area of . The goal of IFEZ is to transform these three areas into hubs for logistics, international business, leisure, and tourism for the Northeast Asian region. The term 'Free Economic Zone' applies to the development in these three areas with the aim of improving the business environment for foreign-invested enterprises and the living conditions for foreigners. The zone is a specially designated area to create the most favorable business and living environment where foreign nationals can live and invest freely and conveniently. Incheon's Free Economic Zone, the first in Korea, was officially designated by the Korean government in August 2003. IFEZ is planned to be a self-contained living and business district featuring air and sea transportation, a logistics complex, an international business center, financial services, residences, schools and hospitals, and shopping and entertainment centres.


title: Incheon

text: Songdo International City began development in 1994 and is being built on reclaimed land. It is designated to become a center of diverse international businesses, a hub for international trade, an area for knowledge-based technologies, and a place for eco-friendly urban living. Construction is due to be completed in 2020.


title: Incheon

text: , Yeongjong International City's centering on the Incheon International Airport is being developed as an eco-friendly airport city scheduled to be completed by 2020.


title: Incheon

text: Paradise Co, a South Korean casino operator, said in October 2013 that it will build the country's largest casino on Yeongjong Island.


title: Incheon

text: The Cheongna district, on the mainland adjacent Yeongjong Island, will focus on entertainment and will feature a world class theme park. It will also be a residential area with sports facilities, a floriculture complex, and a business area specially designed for international finance.


title: Incheon

text: According to the 2015 census, 32.6% of the population follow Christianity (23.1% Protestantism and 9.5% Catholicism) and 8.7% follow Buddhism. 57.9% of the population is irreligious. 0.8% of the population follow other religions including Islam, Muism, and Confucianism.


title: Incheon

text: The Incheon team was known to have a popular rivalry against former Bucheon SK (now Jeju United), due to the teams' close geographical relationship.


title: Incheon

text: The WKBL team Incheon Shinhan Bank S-Birds is based in Incheon. Between 1997 and 2021, Incheon hosted the KBL team Incheon Electroland Elephants.


title: Incheon

text: The V-League teams are Incheon Korean Air Jumbos (men's) and Incheon Heungkuk Life Pink Spiders (women's).


title: Incheon

text: The Munhak Sports Complex houses both a football stadium and a baseball stadium. The football stadium was Incheon's venue for the 2002 Football World Cup, and is also the home venue for Incheon United. The baseball stadium is the home venue for the SSG Landers.


title: Incheon

text: In April 2007, Incheon was selected as the host city for the 2014 Asian Games, beating out New Delhi.


title: Incheon

text: Yeonhui Cricket Ground is a purpose-built cricket stadium in Incheon built for cricket events at the 2014 Asian Games. The 2014 Asian Games featured cricket for both the men's and the women's event and this ground was used for the scheduled cricket matches played at the games. It is the first cricket stadium in South Korea.


title: Incheon

text: Incheon Football Stadium is the first football-only stadium in Incheon. It was built in 2012 with a capacity for 20,891 spectators.


title: Incheon

text: A number of Korea's western islands, including Ganghwa Island, Yeongjong Island, and Baengnyeong Island are also administered by Incheon. Baengnyeong Island is South Korea's westernmost point.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held in and around the Los Angeles Convention Center in Los Angeles on March 14, 2021. It recognized the best recordings, compositions, and artists of the eligibility year, running from September 1, 2019, to August 31, 2020. The nominations were revealed via a virtual livestream on November 24, 2020. The performers for the ceremony were announced on March 7, 2021. South African comedian Trevor Noah hosted the ceremony.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: Beyoncé received the most nominations with nine, followed by Dua Lipa, Roddy Ricch, and Taylor Swift with six each. Beyoncé received the most awards, with four, surpassing Alison Krauss as the most-awarded woman in the show's history, with 28 awards overall. Swift won Album of the Year for "Folklore", making her the first woman to win the award three times and the first artist to do so since Paul Simon in 1988. Billie Eilish won Record of the Year for "Everything I Wanted", becoming the second solo artist, after Roberta Flack in 1974, to win two years consecutively, and the third overall since U2 in 2002. H.E.R. won Song of the Year for "I Can't Breathe" and Megan Thee Stallion won Best New Artist, becoming the second female rapper to win since Lauryn Hill in 1999. The ceremony was originally scheduled for January 31, 2021; however, on January 5, 2021, the Recording Academy postponed the ceremony to March 14, 2021, due to a spike in COVID-19 cases in Los Angeles as well as health and safety concerns therein.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: The nominations were announced during a virtual livestream on November 24, 2020, by Chair, and Interim Recording Academy President/CEO Harvey Mason Jr., alongside Megan Thee Stallion, Dua Lipa, Mickey Guyton, Lauren Daigle, Pepe Aguilar, Nicola Benedetti, Gayle King, Yemi Alade, BTS, Imogen Heap and Sharon Osbourne. The academy announced Trevor Noah as the host of the ceremony.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: The 63rd Annual Grammy Awards ceremony was held at Los Angeles Convention Center, while the show's usual venue—Staples Center—served as the backdrop. The show was three and a half hours long.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: The Recording Academy appointed Ben Winston as the executive producer of the show, his first time working on a Grammy show. Winston, via "Rolling Stone", stated that the show would feature multiple stages, but no audience, highlighting the "creative triumphs, social justice movements, as well as COVID-19's impact on the arts". Regarding the venue shift, Winston stated that he does believe Staples is a safe place, but he wanted "to go above and beyond to make even the most-skeptical participants feel undoubtedly safe". The production was overseen by COVID-19 safety officers. To minimize physical contact, artists had their own backstage area, and entered the stages from different directions.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: The show involved five equally sized stages arranged in a circle facing inwards; one of the stages was for presenters and the other four for performers. Crew members worked from the center of the circular set. As soon as one performance ended, the next stage would be covered, and so on. Each stage set-up was changed every 45 minutes and replaced with a different performer in the lineup. Winston mentioned that the concept was inspired by the British entertainment programs "Later... with Jools Holland" and "TFI Friday." The show was a mix of live and pre-recorded performances, as "a fully live show would involve too many crew members moving sets and risking close contact". However, the whole show was planned to feel entirely live.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: To help plan the sprawling production and immersive spectacle of the show, Winston collaborated with a multitude of producers, such as co-executive producer Jesse Collins, who produced The Weeknd's Super Bowl halftime show; co-executive producer Raj Kapoor, who handled creative direction for many artists on the last seven Grammy shows and produced Las Vegas concert residencies for Backstreet Boys and Mariah Carey; producer Fatima Robinson, worked on the Black Eyed Peas' 2011 halftime show; producer Misty Buckley, who produced Kacey Musgraves' 2020 Christmas show; talent executive Patrick Menton from Dick Clark Productions; James Corden collaborator Josie Cliff; and Hamish Hamilton, who directed Super Bowl halftimes, Olympic ceremonies, Academy Award, and Emmy Award shows.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: Musical artists and industry personnel who had died in 2020 and early 2021 were included in a memorial reel aired during the Grammy telecast. At least 800 individuals were considered by producer Ben Winston for the segment. The Recording Academy was criticized by fans of Naya Rivera, Benny Mardones, Hal Ketchum, Riley Gale, and Frankie Banali for excluding their names from the broadcast, although all of them were included on a longer list of names posted on the Grammys website.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: The segment dedicated to Eddie Van Halen was criticized by fans, former bandmates and other figures within the hard rock and heavy metal community who felt that the brief seconds-long tribute was an insult to the guitarist's influence and legacy. Van Halen's son Wolfgang Van Halen revealed that he declined the Academy's offer to play "Eruption" for the segment out of respect for his father, believing that the "In Memoriam" would feature more songs. While disappointed with the brief tribute, Wolfgang was "hurt the most" by Eddie not being mentioned among other late artists remembered at the beginning of the show, attributing the mishap to the declining mainstream popularity in rock music and the Academy's historical lack of interest in the genre. However, Jem Aswad of "Variety" defended the tribute, opining that longer tributes featuring cover artists still would have failed to meet expectations and praised the subtext behind the segment, which featured a spotlight on Van Halen's signature Frankenstrat guitar with a video of the guitarist playing in the background, that Van Halen's talent could never be replicated.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: Following the release of the nominations, Canadian singer The Weeknd accused the Grammys of corruption after he failed to receive any nominations. Based on the success of his album, "After Hours", The Weeknd had been expected by many critics and publications to receive a large number of nominations, including Album of the Year as well as several nods for his single "Blinding Lights". Expressing his concerns, The Weeknd tweeted that "the Grammys remain corrupt. You owe me, my fans and the industry transparency". He further explained that he was expecting nominations due to discussions between his team and the Grammys to perform at the ceremony but it was later reported by "Rolling Stone" that these discussions broke down due to The Weeknd also performing at the Super Bowl LV halftime show. In response, the Grammys released a statement saying that they "empathized" with The Weeknd's disappointment but that some "deserving" artists miss out every year. Recording Academy president Harvey Mason Jr. later expanded on this by explaining that "we understand that The Weeknd is disappointed at not being nominated. I was surprised and can empathise with what he's feeling. Unfortunately, every year, there are fewer nominations than the number of deserving artists. To be clear, voting in all categories ended well before The Weeknd's performance at the Super Bowl was announced, so in no way could it have affected the nomination process". Several days later, The Weeknd stated that "I personally don't care anymore. I have three Grammys, which mean nothing to me now, obviously. I suck at giving speeches anyways. Forget awards shows. It's not like, 'Oh, I want the Grammy!' It's just that this happened, and I'm down to get in front of the fire, as long as it never happens again".


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: American singer Halsey spoke out in solidarity with The Weeknd after her 2020 album, "Manic", received no nominations. Taking to Instagram, Halsey wrote "The Grammys are an elusive process. It can often be about behind the scenes private performances, knowing the right people, campaigning through the grapevine, with the right handshake and 'bribes' that can be just ambiguous enough to pass as 'not bribes.'" The singer went on to share that speaking out against The Grammys could very well get an artist blacklisted. Halsey, who only has 2 nominations throughout her entire career, was the center of conversation when her song "Without Me", which reached number one on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, was passed up for a nomination at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards.


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: Justin Bieber expressed his disappointment with the academy following his album "Changes" receiving nominations in the Pop field rather than the R&B field. He explained that he is "very meticulous and intentional about my music. With that being said I set out to make an R&B album. Changes was and is an R&B album. It is not being acknowledged as an R&B album which is very strange to me". The Grammys later responded to Bieber, stating that "we always want to respect the artist's wishes. Art's a funny thing because it's so subjective, and at the Academy our goal is to honor excellence. At some point, decisions have to be made as to how to compare different things, and it is a very tough process and one I don't think we get right every time. We use our best efforts to get people where they wanna be and where they should be and try to evaluate them as best as we can. If he felt that was that type of a record, then, you know... I'll just leave it at that. We try really hard to make sure people's art is respected and evaluated in the right category".


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: Five days before the ceremony, British artist Zayn Malik posted a tweet criticizing the Grammys and their voting procedures stating that "unless you shake hands and send gifts, there's no nomination considerations. Next year I'll send you a basket of confectionary". After confusion from fans and the media, who noted that Malik's third album, "Nobody Is Listening", was ineligible for the 63rd Grammy Awards as it was released after the eligibility period ended in August, Malik stated his intentions in a follow-up tweet, explaining that his prior post was "not personal or about eligibility but was about the need for inclusion and the lack of transparency of the nomination process and the space that creates and allows favoritism, racism, and networking [sic] politics to influence the voting process".


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: During the ceremony, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion performed the song "WAP." Grammys host Trevor Noah prefaced the performance with, "If you have small children in the room, just tell them it's a song about giving a cat a bath", and the chorus "wet and gushy," was changed to "wet, wet, wet". "Billboard" ranked it as the best performance of the ceremony, commenting that "this had to be one of the most insane television debut performances of all time." Music critic Jon Caramanica called the performance "wildly and charmingly salacious, frisky and genuine in a way that the Grammys has rarely if ever made room for". However, the performance received criticism for being "non-family-friendly".


title: 63rd Annual Grammy Awards

text: The broadcast received an average of 8.8 million viewers in the United States, with a 2.1 Nielsen rating among adults aged 18 to 49, marking a more than 50 percent decline from the previous year's ceremony, and making it the least-viewed telecast in the history of the Grammys. Conversely, the live streaming audience for the show was up 83 percent over 2020 and the hashtag, #Grammys trended for 18 hours and peaked in the number one position.


title: Two-party system

text: A two-party system is a political party system in which two major political parties consistently dominate the political landscape. At any point in time, one of the two parties typically holds a majority in the legislature and is usually referred to as the "majority" or "governing party" while the other is the "minority" or "opposition party". Around the world, the term has different meanings. For example, in the United States, the Bahamas, Jamaica, United Kingdom and Zimbabwe, the sense of "two-party system" describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to either of the two major parties, and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from several factors, like "winner takes all" or "first past the post" election systems. In such systems, while chances for third-party candidates winning election to major national office are remote, it is possible for groups within the larger parties, or in opposition to one or both of them, to exert influence on the two major parties. In contrast, in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia and in other parliamentary systems and elsewhere, the term "two-party system" is sometimes used to indicate an arrangement in which two major parties dominate elections but in which there are viable third parties that do win some seats in the legislature, and in which the two major parties exert proportionately greater influence than their percentage of votes would suggest.


title: Two-party system

text: Explanations for why a political system with free elections may evolve into a two-party system have been debated. A leading theory, referred to as Duverger's law, states that two parties are a natural result of a winner-take-all voting system.


title: Two-party system

text: In countries such as Britain, two major parties emerge which have strong influence and tend to elect most of the candidates, but a multitude of lesser parties exist with varying degrees of influence, and sometimes these lesser parties are able to elect officials who participate in the legislature. Political systems based on the Westminster system, which is a particular style of parliamentary democracy based on the British model and found in many commonwealth countries, a majority party will form the government and the minority party will form the opposition, and coalitions of lesser parties are possible; in the rare circumstance in which neither party is the majority, a hung parliament arises. Sometimes these systems are described as "two-party systems" but they are usually referred to as "multi-party" systems or a "two-party plus" system. There is not always a sharp boundary between a two-party system and a multi-party system.


title: Two-party system

text: Generally, a two-party system becomes a dichotomous division of the political spectrum with an ostensibly left-wing and right-wing party:


title: Two-party system

text: the Democratic Party versus the Republican Party in the United States, the Labor Party versus the Liberal–National Coalition bloc in Australia, the Labour Party versus the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, and the Labour Party versus the Nationalist Party in Malta.


title: Two-party system

text: Other parties in these countries may have seen candidates elected to local or subnational office, however.


title: Two-party system

text: In some governments, certain chambers may resemble a two-party system and others a multi-party system. For example, the politics of Australia are largely two-party (the Liberal/National Coalition is often considered a single party at a national level due to their long-standing alliance in forming governments; they also rarely compete for the same seats for the Australian House of Representatives, which is elected by instant-runoff voting, known within Australia as preferential voting. However, third parties are more common in the Australian Senate, which uses a proportional voting system more amenable to minor parties.


title: Two-party system

text: In Canada, there is a multiparty system at the federal and provincial levels; however, some provinces have effectively become two-party systems in which only two parties regularly get members elected, while smaller parties largely fail to secure electoral representation, and two of the three territories are run under a non-partisan consensus government model rather than through a political party system. The provincial legislative assemblies of Alberta and Saskatchewan currently have only two parties; two-party representation has also historically been common in the legislative assemblies of British Columbia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, although all did elect some third-party members in their most recent provincial elections.


title: Two-party system

text: The Commonwealth Caribbean while inheriting their basic political system from Great Britain have become two-party systems. The politics of Jamaica are between the People's National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party. The politics of Guyana are between the People's Progressive Party and APNU which is actually a coalition of smaller parties. The politics of Trinidad and Tobago are between the People's National Movement and the United National Congress. The Politics of Belize are between the United Democratic Party and the People's United Party. The Politics of the Bahamas are between the Progressive Liberal Party and the Free National Movement. The politics of Barbados are between the Democratic Labour Party and the Barbados Labour Party.


title: Two-party system

text: The politics of Zimbabwe are effectively a two-party system between the Robert Mugabe founded Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front and the opposition coalition Movement for Democratic Change.


title: Two-party system

text: The United States has two dominant political parties; historically, there have been few instances in which third party candidates won an election. In the First Party System, only Alexander Hamilton's Federalist Party and Thomas Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party were significant political parties. Toward the end of the First Party System, the Democratic-Republicans were dominant (primarily under the Presidency of James Monroe).


title: Two-party system

text: Under the Second Party System, the Democratic-Republican Party split during the 1824 United States presidential election into Adams' Men and Jackson's Men. In the 1828 presidential election, the modern Democratic Party formed in support of Andrew Jackson. The National Republicans were formed in support of John Quincy Adams. After the National Republicans collapsed, the Whig Party and the Free Soil Party quickly formed and collapsed.


title: Two-party system

text: In 1854 began the Third Party System when the modern Republican Party formed from a loose coalition of former Whigs, Free Soilers and other anti-slavery activists. The Republicans quickly became the dominant party nationally, and Abraham Lincoln became the first Republican President in the 1860 presidential election. The Democrats held a strong, loyal coalition in the Solid South. This period saw the American Civil War where the South (which was mostly dominated by the Southern Democrats) attempted to secede as the Confederate States of America, in an attempt to preserve racial slavery. The South lost the war and were forced to end slavery, and during the following Reconstruction Era the Republicans remained the most popular party nationally while the Democrats remained dominant in the South.


title: Two-party system

text: During the Fourth Party System from about 1896 to 1932, the Republicans remained the dominant Presidential party, although Democrats Grover Cleveland and Woodrow Wilson were both elected to two terms.


title: Two-party system

text: The 1932 United States elections saw the onset of the Fifth Party System and a long period of Democratic dominance due to the New Deal Coalition. Democrat President Franklin D. Roosevelt won landslides in four consecutive elections. Other than the two terms of Republican Dwight Eisenhower from 1953 to 1961, Democrats retained firm control of the Presidency until the mid-1960s. In Congress, Democrats retained majorities in both houses for 60 years until the Republican Revolution, broken only by brief Republican majorities.


title: Two-party system

text: There was a significant change in U.S. politics in 1960, and this is seen by some as a transition to a sixth party system.


title: Two-party system

text: Since the mid-1960s, despite a couple of landslides (such as Richard Nixon carrying 49 states and 61% of the popular vote over George McGovern in 1972; Ronald Reagan carrying 49 states and 58% of the popular vote over Walter Mondale in 1984), Presidential elections have been competitive between the predominant Republican and Democratic parties and no one party has been able to hold the Presidency for more than three consecutive terms.


title: Two-party system

text: In the 2012 United States presidential election, only 4% separated the popular vote between Barack Obama (51%) and Mitt Romney (47%), although Obama won the electoral vote (332–206).


title: Two-party system

text: Throughout every American party system, no third party has won a Presidential election or majorities in either house of Congress. Despite that, third parties and third party candidates have gained traction and support. In the election of 1912, Theodore Roosevelt won 27% of the popular vote and 88 electoral votes running as a Progressive. In the 1992 Presidential election, Ross Perot won 19% of the popular vote but no electoral votes running as an Independent.


title: Two-party system

text: Modern American politics, in particular the electoral college system, has been described as duopolistic since the Republican and Democratic parties have dominated and framed policy debate as well as the public discourse on matters of national concern for about a century and a half. Third Parties have encountered various blocks in getting onto ballots at different levels of government as well as other electoral obstacles, such as denial of access to general election debates. Since 1987, the Commission on Presidential Debates, established by the Republican and Democratic parties themselves, supplanted debates run since 1920 by the League of Women Voters. The League withdrew its support in protest in 1988 over objections of alleged stagecraft such as rules for camera placement, filling the audience with supporters, approved moderators, predetermined question selection, room temperature and others. The Commission maintains its own rules for admittance and has only admitted a single third-party candidate to a televised debate, Ross Perot, in 1992.


title: Two-party system

text: Since the 1920s, the Australian House of Representatives (and thus the federal government) has in effect been a two-party system.


title: Two-party system

text: Since the end of World War II, Australia's House of Representatives has been dominated by two factions:


title: Two-party system

text: The Coalition has been in government about two-thirds of time, broken by four periods of Labor governments: 1972–1975, 1983–1996, 2007–2013 and 2022–present.


title: Two-party system

text: The ALP is Australia's largest and oldest continuing political party, it was formed in 1891 from the Australian labour movement. The party has branches in every state and territory.


title: Two-party system

text: The Coalition is a near-permanent alliance of several parties, primarily the Liberal Party of Australia (Australia's 2nd largest party) and National Party of Australia (4th largest). It was formed after the 1922 Australian federal election, when the Nationalist Party (ancestor of today's Liberal Party) lost its absolute majority, and was only able to remain in government by allying with the Country Party (now called the National Party). Under the Coalition agreement, if the Coalition forms government then the Prime Minister will be the leader of the Liberals, and the Deputy Prime Minister will be the leader of the Nationals. In theory, disagreements between the Coalition's constituent parties would lead to the Coalition being broken. However, the last time that this has happened at the federal level was in 1939-1940.


title: Two-party system

text: One reason for Australia's two-party system is because the House of Representatives (which chooses the Prime Minister of Australia) is elected through the instant-runoff voting electoral system. Although voters can preference third parties and independents above the major parties, and this does not lead to a spoiler effect, there is still only one member per electoral division (ie: a winner-take-all system) and so major parties tend to win the vast majority of seats (even if they need to rely on preferences to do so - for example, a Labor candidate may win a seat with 30% of the vote for Labor and 21% from Australian Greens voters who ranked Labor second).


title: Two-party system

text: On the other hand, the Australian Senate is effectively a multi-party system. It uses single transferable vote with multiple Senators for each state/territory. This results in rough proportional representation and as a result, third parties have much more influence and often hold the balance of power. Since 2004, the Australian Greens have been the third largest party in the country, with 8-13% of the national vote and an equivalent amount of Senators. Prior to this, the Australian Democrats was the third largest party. Other current and past parties include One Nation, the Liberal Democrats and Family First.


title: Two-party system

text: Some Australian States have seen the rise of minor parties at either the state or federal level (eg: Centre Alliance in South Australia, Katter's Australian Party in northern Queensland, and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party in western New South Wales), while some have seen long periods of dominance by one party. Some parties are absent entirely in parts of the country.


title: Two-party system

text: Most Latin American countries also have presidential systems very similar to the US often with winner takes all systems. Due to the common accumulation of power in the presidential office both the official party and the main opposition became important political protagonists causing historically two-party systems. Some of the first manifestations of this particularity was with the liberals and conservatives that often fought for power in all Latin America causing the first two-party systems in most Latin American countries which often lead to civil wars in places like Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, the Central American Republic and Peru, with fights focusing specially on opposing/defending the privileges of the Catholic Church and the creole aristocracy. Other examples of primitive two-party systems included the Pelucones versus Pipiolos in Chile, Federalists versus Unitarians in Argentina, Colorados versus Liberals in Paraguay and Colorados versus Nationals in Uruguay.


title: Two-party system

text: However, as in other regions, the original rivalry between liberals and conservatives was overtaken by a rivalry between center-left (often social-democratic) parties versus center-right liberal conservative parties, focusing more in economic differences than in cultural and religious differences as it was common during the liberal versus conservative period. Examples of this include National Liberation Party versus Social Christian Unity Party in Costa Rica, the peronista Justicialist Party versus Radical Civic Union in Argentina, Democratic Action versus COPEI in Venezuela, the Colombian Liberal Party versus the Colombian Conservative Party in Colombia, Democratic Revolutionary Party versus Panameñista Party in Panama and Liberal Party versus National Party in Honduras. After the democratization of Central America following the end of the Central American crisis in the 1990s former far-left guerrillas and former right-wing authoritarian parties, now in peace, make some similar two-party systems in countries like Nicaragua between the Sandinista National Liberation Front and the Liberals and in El Salvador between the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front and the Nationalist Republican Alliance.


title: Two-party system

text: The traditional two-party dynamic started to break after a while, especially in early 2000s; alternative parties won elections breaking the traditional two-party systems including Rafael Caldera's (National Convergence) victory in Venezuela in 1993, Álvaro Uribe (Colombia First) victory in 2002, Tabaré Vázquez (Broad Front) victory in Uruguay in 2004, Ricardo Martinelli (Democratic Change) victory in 2009 in Panama, Luis Guillermo Solís (Citizens' Action Party ) victory in 2014 in Costa Rica, Mauricio Macri (Republican Proposal) victory in 2015 in Argentina and Nayib Bukele (Grand Alliance for National Unity) victory in 2019 in El Salvador, all of them from non-traditional third parties in their respective countries. In some countries like Argentina, Chile and Venezuela the political system is now split in two large multi-party alliances or blocs, one on the left and one on the right of the spectrum Frente de Todos versus Juntos por el Cambio in Argentina, (Concertación/New Majority versus Alliance in Chile, Democratic Unity Roundtable versus Great Patriotic Pole in Venezuela).


title: Two-party system

text: Malta is somewhat unusual in that while the electoral system is single transferable vote (STV), traditionally associated with proportional representation, minor parties have not had much success. Politics is dominated between the centre-left Labour Party and the centre-right Nationalist Party, with no third parties winning seats in Parliament between 1962 and 2017.


title: Two-party system

text: South Korea has a multi-party system that has sometimes been described as having characteristics of a two-party system. Parties will have reconstructions based upon its leader, but the country continues to maintain two major parties. Currently these parties are the liberal Democratic Party of Korea and the conservative People Power Party.


title: Two-party system

text: Taiwan has a multi-party system that has sometimes been described as having characteristics of a two-party system. Currently these parties are the progressive Democratic Progressive Party and the conservative Kuomintang.


title: Two-party system

text: The Parliament of Lebanon is mainly made up of two bipartisan alliances. Although both alliances are made up of several political parties on both ends of the political spectrum the two-way political situation has mainly arisen due to strong ideological differences in the electorate. Once again this can mainly be attributed to the winner takes all thesis.


title: Two-party system

text: During the imperial period, since 1840, two great parties with a national base alternated its dominance between legislatures: the Liberal and the Conservative. These parties were dissolved in 1889, after the republic was instituted in Brazil, in which the registration of party directories came under the jurisdiction of the states.


title: Two-party system

text: Brazil also had a two-party system for most of its military dictatorship (1964–1985): on October 27, 1965, the Institutional Act 2 decree banned all existing parties and conditioned the creation of new parties to the quorum of 1/3 of the then-elected National Congress; resulting in the creation of two parties: a pro-government party, the National Renewal Alliance (ARENA) and an opposition party, the Brazilian Democratic Movement (MDB). Despite officially having a bipartisan system, complex electoral mechanisms, nominally neutral, were created to guarantee the prevalence of the ARENA in the National Congress, making Brazil, in practice, a dominant-party system in that period. The two parties were dissolved in 1979, when the regime allowed other parties to form.


title: Two-party system

text: A report in "The Christian Science Monitor" in 2008 suggested that Spain was moving towards a "greater two-party system" while acknowledging that Spain has "many small parties". However a 2015 article published by "WashingtonPost.com" written by academic Fernando Casal Bértoa noted the decline in support for the two main parties, the People's Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in recent years, with these two parties winning only 52 percent of the votes in that year's regional and local elections. He explained this as being due to the Spanish economic crisis, a series of political corruption scandals and broken campaign promises. He argued that the emergence of the new Citizens and Podemos parties would mean the political system would evolve into a two-bloc system, with an alliance of the PP and Citizens on the right facing a leftist coalition of PSOE, Podemos and the United Left. Far-right Vox party became the third largest group on the Spanish parliament recently.


title: Two-party system

text: There are several reasons why, in some systems, two major parties dominate the political landscape. There has been speculation that a two-party system arose in the United States from early political battling between the federalists and anti-federalists in the first few decades after the ratification of the Constitution, according to several views. In addition, there has been more speculation that the winner-takes-all electoral system as well as particular state and federal laws regarding voting procedures helped to cause a two-party system.


title: Two-party system

text: Political scientists such as Maurice Duverger and William H. Riker claim that there are strong correlations between voting rules and type of party system. Jeffrey D. Sachs agreed that there was a link between voting arrangements and the effective number of parties. Sachs explained how the first-past-the-post voting arrangement tended to promote a two-party system:


title: Two-party system

text: Consider a system in which voters can vote for any candidate from any one of many parties. Suppose further that if a party gets 15% of votes, then that party will win 15% of the seats in the legislature. This is termed "proportional representation" or more accurately as "party-proportional representation". Political scientists speculate that proportional representation leads logically to multi-party systems, since it allows new parties to build a niche in the legislature:


title: Two-party system

text: In contrast, a voting system that allows only a single winner for each possible legislative seat is sometimes termed a plurality voting system or single-winner voting system and is usually described under the heading of a "winner-takes-all" arrangement. Each voter can cast a single vote for any candidate within any given legislative district, but the candidate with the most votes wins the seat, although variants, such as requiring a majority, are sometimes used. What happens is that in a general election, a party that consistently comes in third in every district is unlikely to win any legislative seats even if there is a significant proportion of the electorate favoring its positions. This arrangement strongly favors large and well–organized political parties that are able to appeal to voters in many districts and hence win many seats, and discourages smaller or regional parties. Politically oriented people consider their only realistic way to capture political power is to run under the auspices of the two dominant parties.


title: Two-party system

text: In the U.S., forty-eight states have a standard "winner-takes-all" electoral system for amassing presidential votes in the Electoral College system. The "winner-takes-all" principle applies in presidential elections, since if a presidential candidate gets the most votes in any particular state, "all" of the electoral votes from that state are awarded. In all but two states, Maine and Nebraska, the presidential candidate winning a plurality of votes wins all of the electoral votes, a practice called the unit rule.


title: Two-party system

text: Duverger concluded that "plurality election single-ballot procedures are likely to produce two-party systems, whereas proportional representation and runoff designs encourage multipartyism." He suggested there were two reasons why "winner-takes-all" systems leads to a two-party system. First, the weaker parties are pressured to form an alliance, sometimes called a "fusion", to try to become big enough to challenge a large dominant party and, in so doing, gain political clout in the legislature. Second, voters learn, over time, not to vote for candidates outside of one of the two large parties since their votes for third party candidates are usually ineffectual. As a result, weaker parties are eliminated by voters over time. Duverger pointed to statistics and tactics to suggest that voters tended to gravitate towards one of the two main parties, a phenomenon which he called "polarization", and tend to shun third parties. For example, some analysts suggest that the Electoral College system in the United States, by favoring a system of winner-takes-all in presidential elections, is a structural choice favoring only two major parties.


title: Two-party system

text: Gary Cox suggested that America's two-party system was highly related with economic prosperity in the country:


title: Two-party system

text: An effort in 2012 by centrist groups to promote ballot access by third-party candidates called Americans Elect spent $15 million to get ballot access but failed to elect any candidates. The lack of choice in a two-party model in politics has often been compared to the variety of choices in the marketplace.


title: Two-party system

text: Third parties, meaning a party other than one of the two dominant parties, are possible in two-party systems, but they are often unlikely to exert much influence by gaining control of legislatures or by winning elections. While there are occasional opinions in the media expressed about the possibility of third parties emerging in the United States, for example, political insiders such as the 1980 presidential candidate John Anderson think the chances of one appearing in the early twenty-first century is remote. A report in "The Guardian" suggested that American politics has been "stuck in a two-way fight between Republicans and Democrats" since the Civil War, and that third-party runs had little meaningful success.


title: Two-party system

text: When third parties are built around an ideology which is at odds with the majority mindset, many members belong to such a party not for the purpose of expecting electoral success but rather for personal or psychological reasons. In the U.S., third parties include older ones such as the Libertarian Party and the Green Party and newer ones such as the Pirate Party. Many believe that third parties do not affect American politics by winning elections, but they can act as "spoilers" by taking votes from one of the two major parties. They act like barometers of change in the political mood since they push the major parties to consider their demands. An analysis in "New York Magazine" by Ryan Lizza in 2006 suggested that third parties arose from time to time in the nineteenth century around single-issue movements such as abolition, women's suffrage, and the direct election of senators, but were less prominent in the twentieth century.


title: Two-party system

text: A so-called "third party" in the United Kingdom were historically the Liberal Democrats, prior to the Scottish National Party taken its place since the 2015 election by number of the House of Common seats. In the 2010 election, the Liberal Democrats received 23% of the votes but only 9% of the seats in the House of Commons. While electoral results do not necessarily translate into legislative seats, the Liberal Democrats can exert influence if there is a situation such as a hung parliament. In this instance, neither of the two main parties (at present, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party) have sufficient authority to run the government. Accordingly, the Liberal Democrats can in theory exert tremendous influence in such a situation since they can ally with one of the two main parties to form a coalition. This happened in the Coalition government of 2010. More than 13% of the seats in the British House of Commons are held in 2011 by representatives of political parties other than the two leading political parties of that nation, such that contemporary Britain is considered by some to be a multi-party system, and not a two-party system. The two party system in the United Kingdom allows for other parties to exist, although the main two parties tend to dominate politics; in this arrangement, other parties are not excluded and can win seats in Parliament. In contrast, the two party system in the United States has been described as a duopoly or an enforced two-party system, such that politics is almost entirely dominated by either the Republicans or Democrats, and third parties rarely win seats in Congress.


title: Two-party system

text: Some historians have suggested that two-party systems promote centrism and encourage political parties to find common positions which appeal to wide swaths of the electorate. It can lead to political stability which leads, in turn, to economic growth. Historian Patrick Allitt of the Teaching Company suggested that it is difficult to overestimate the long-term economic benefits of political stability. Sometimes two-party systems have been seen as preferable to multi-party systems because they are simpler to govern, with less fractiousness and greater harmony, since it discourages radical minor parties, while multi-party systems can sometimes lead to hung parliaments. Italy, with a multi-party system, has had years of divisive politics since 2000, although analyst Silvia Aloisi suggested in 2008 that the nation may be moving closer to a two-party arrangement. The two-party has been identified as simpler since there are fewer voting choices.


title: Two-party system

text: Two-party systems have been criticized for downplaying alternative views, being less competitive, encouraging voter apathy since there is a perception of fewer choices, and putting a damper on debate within a nation. In a proportional representation system, lesser parties can moderate policy since they are not usually eliminated from government. One analyst suggested the two-party approach may not promote inter-party compromise but may encourage partisanship. In "The Tyranny of the Two-party system", Lisa Jane Disch criticizes two-party systems for failing to provide enough options since only two choices are permitted on the ballot. She wrote:


title: Two-party system

text: There have been arguments that the winner-take-all mechanism discourages independent or third-party candidates from running for office or promulgating their views. Ross Perot's former campaign manager wrote that the problem with having only two parties is that the nation loses "the ability for things to bubble up from the body politic and give voice to things that aren't being voiced by the major parties." One analyst suggested that parliamentary systems, which typically are multi-party in nature, lead to a better "centralization of policy expertise" in government. Multi-party governments permit wider and more diverse viewpoints in government, and encourage dominant parties to make deals with weaker parties to form winning coalitions. Analyst Chris Weigant of "the Huffington Post" wrote that "the parliamentary system is inherently much more open to minority parties getting much better representation than third parties do in the American system". After an election in which the party changes, there can be a "polar shift in policy-making" when voters react to changes.


title: Two-party system

text: Political analyst A. G. Roderick, writing in his book "Two Tyrants", argued that the two American parties (the Republican Party and the Democratic Party) were highly unpopular (as of 2015), are not part of the political framework of state governments, and do not represent the 47% of the electorate who identify themselves as "independents". He makes a case that the American president should be elected on a non-partisan basis, and asserts that both political parties are "cut from the same cloth of corruption and corporate influence."


title: Two-party system

text: Others have accused two party systems of encouraging an environment which stifles individual thought processes and analysis. In a two party system, knowledge about political leaning facilitates assumptions to be made about an individuals' opinions on a wide variety of topics (e.g. abortion, taxes, the space program, a viral pandemic, human sexuality, the environment, warfare, opinions on police, etc.) which are not necessarily connected."The more destructive problem is the way this skews the discussion of the issues facing the nation. The media – meaning news sources from Fox News to the "New York Times" and everything in between – seem largely incapable of dealing with any issue outside of the liberal versus conservative paradigm. Whether it's dealing with ISIS, the debt ceiling, or climate change, the media frames every issue as a simple debate between the Democratic and the Republican positions. This creates the ludicrous idea that every public policy problem has two, and only two, approaches. That's nonsense. Certainly some problems have only two resolutions, some have only one, but most have a range of possible solutions. But the "national" debate presents every issue as a simplistic duality, which trivializes everything."


title: Two-party system

text: The two-party system, in the sense of the looser definition, where two parties dominate politics but in which third parties can elect members and gain some representation in the legislature, can be traced to the development of political parties in the United Kingdom. There was a division in English politics at the time of the Civil War and Glorious Revolution in the late 17th century. The Whigs supported Protestant constitutional monarchy against absolute rule and the Tories, originating in the Royalist (or "Cavalier") faction of the English Civil War, were conservative royalist supporters of a strong monarchy as a counterbalance to the republican tendencies of Parliament. In the following century, the Whig party's support base widened to include emerging industrial interests and wealthy merchants.


title: Two-party system

text: The basic matters of principle that defined the struggle between the two factions, were concerning the nature of constitutional monarchy, the desirability of a Catholic king, the extension of religious toleration to nonconformist Protestants, and other issues that had been put on the liberal agenda through the political concepts propounded by John Locke, Algernon Sidney and others.


title: Two-party system

text: Vigorous struggle between the two factions characterised the period from the Glorious Revolution to the 1715 Hanoverian succession, over the legacy of the overthrow of the Stuart dynasty and the nature of the new constitutional state. This proto two-party system fell into relative abeyance after the accession to the throne of George I and the consequent period of Whig supremacy under Robert Walpole, during which the Tories were systematically purged from high positions in government. However, although the Tories were dismissed from office for half a century, they still retained a measure of party cohesion under William Wyndham and acted as a united, though unavailing, opposition to Whig corruption and scandals. At times they cooperated with the "Opposition Whigs", Whigs who were in opposition to the Whig government; however, the ideological gap between the Tories and the Opposition Whigs prevented them from coalescing as a single party.


title: Two-party system

text: The old Whig leadership dissolved in the 1760s into a decade of factional chaos with distinct "Grenvillite", "Bedfordite", "Rockinghamite", and "Chathamite" factions successively in power, and all referring to themselves as "Whigs". Out of this chaos, the first distinctive parties emerged. The first such party was the Rockingham Whigs under the leadership of Charles Watson-Wentworth and the intellectual guidance of the political philosopher Edmund Burke. Burke laid out a philosophy that described the basic framework of the political party as "a body of men united for promoting by their joint endeavours the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed". As opposed to the instability of the earlier factions, which were often tied to a particular leader and could disintegrate if removed from power, the two party system was centred on a set of core principles held by both sides and that allowed the party out of power to remain as the Loyal Opposition to the governing party.


title: Two-party system

text: A genuine two-party system began to emerge, with the accession to power of William Pitt the Younger in 1783 leading the new Tories, against a reconstituted "Whig" party led by the radical politician Charles James Fox.


title: Two-party system

text: The two-party system matured in the early 19th century era of political reform, when the franchise was widened and politics entered into the basic divide between conservatism and liberalism that has fundamentally endured up to the present. The modern Conservative Party was created out of the "Pittite" Tories by Robert Peel, who issued the Tamworth Manifesto in 1834 which set out the basic principles of Conservatism – the necessity in specific cases of reform in order to survive, but an opposition to unnecessary change, that could lead to "a perpetual vortex of agitation". Meanwhile, the Whigs, along with free trade Tory followers of Robert Peel, and independent Radicals, formed the Liberal Party under Lord Palmerston in 1859, and transformed into a party of the growing urban middle-class, under the long leadership of William Ewart Gladstone. The two party system had come of age at the time of Gladstone and his Conservative rival Benjamin Disraeli after the 1867 Reform Act.


title: Two-party system

text: Although the Founding Fathers of the United States did not originally intend for American politics to be partisan, early political controversies in the 1790s saw the emergence of a two-party political system, the Federalist Party and the Democratic-Republican Party, centred on the differing views on federal government powers of Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton and James Madison. However, a consensus reached on these issues ended party politics in 1816 for a decade, a period commonly known as the Era of Good Feelings.


title: Two-party system

text: Partisan politics revived in 1829 with the split of the Democratic-Republican Party into the Jacksonian Democrats led by Andrew Jackson, and the Whig Party, led by Henry Clay. The former evolved into the modern Democratic Party and the latter was replaced with the Republican Party as one of the two main parties in the 1850s.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Lapland ( ; ; ; ; ) is the largest and northernmost region of Finland. The 21 municipalities in the region cooperate in a Regional Council. Lapland borders the region of North Ostrobothnia in the south. It also borders the Gulf of Bothnia, Norrbotten County in Sweden, Troms and Finnmark County in Norway, and Murmansk Oblast and the Republic of Karelia in Russia. Topography varies from vast mires and forests of the South to fells in the North. The Arctic Circle crosses Lapland, so polar phenomena such as the midnight sun and polar night can be viewed in Lapland.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Lapland's cold and wintry climate, coupled with its relative abundance of conifer trees such as pines and spruces, means that it has become associated with Christmas in some countries, most notably the United Kingdom, and holidays to Lapland are common towards the end of the year. However, the Lapland region has developed its infrastructure for year-round tourism. For example, the 2019 snow-free period tourism grew more than the winter season. Rovaniemi is the main regional center of Lapland, and the Rovaniemi Airport is the third busiest airport in Finland. Besides tourism, other important sectors are trade, manufacturing and construction. Like Rovaniemi, Inari is also one of the most important tourist destinations in Lapland for foreign tourism.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Lapland has been connected with the legendary "North Pole" home of Santa Claus (Father Christmas or Saint Nicholas) since 1927, when Finnish radio host Markus Rautio said that Santa Claus lived on Korvatunturi, a fell (mountain) in the region. Later, Rovaniemi staked a claim as Santa's "official hometown" and developed the Santa Claus Village attraction to encourage tourism.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The area of the Lapland region is 100,367 km², which consists of 92,667 km² of dry land, 6,316 km² fresh water and 1,383 km² of sea water. In the south it borders the Northern Ostrobothnia region, in the west Sweden, in the north and west Norway and in the east Russia. Its borders follow three rivers: Tana, Muonio and Torne. The largest lake is Lake Inari, 1,102 km². Highest point is on Halti, which reaches 1,324 m (4,344 ft) on the Finnish side of the border.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The areas of Enontekiö and Utsjoki in northern Lapland are known as Fell-Lapland. The bulk and remaining Lapland is known as Forest-Lapland. Lake Inari, the many fens of the region and the Salla-Saariselkä mountains are all part of Forest-Lapland. Fell-Lapland lies in the fells of the Scandinavian Mountains. It is not made up of barren ground like blockfields but instead has a vegetation of birch forests, willow thickets or heath. Common soil types in Forest-Lapland are till and sand with conifer forests growing on top. These forests show little variation across Lapland. Compared to southern Finland forest tree species grow slower. Understory is typically made of blueberry, lichens, crowberry and ling.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The landscape of large parts of Lapland is an inselberg plain. It has been suggested the inselberg plains were formed in the Late Cretaceous or Paleogene period by pediplanation or etchplanation. Relative to southern Finland Lapland stands out for its thick till cover. The hills and mountains are typically made up of resistant rocks like granite, gneiss, quartzite and amphibolite. The ice sheet that covered Finland intermittently during the Quaternary grew out from the Scandinavian Mountains. The central parts of the Fennoscandian ice sheet had cold-based conditions during times of maximum extent. This means that in areas like north-east Sweden and northern Finland pre-existing landforms and deposits escaped glacier erosion and are particularly well preserved at present. Northwest to southeast movement of the ice has left a field of aligned drumlins in central Lapland. Ribbed moraines found in the same area reflects a later west to east change in movement of the ice. During the last deglaciation ice in Lapland retreated from the north-east, east and southeast so that the lower course of the Tornio was the last part of Finland to be deglaciated 10,100 years ago. Present-day periglacial conditions in Lapland are reflected in the existence of numerous palsas, permafrost landforms developed on peat.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The bedrock of Lapland belongs to the Karelian Domain occupying the bulk of the region, the Kola Domain in the northeast around Lake Inari and the Scandinavian Caledonides in the tip of Lapland's northwestern arm. With few exceptions rocks are of Archean and Proterozoic age. Granites, gneiss, metasediments and metavolcanics are common rocks while greenstone belts are recurring features. More rare rock associations include mafic and ultramafic layered intrusions and one of the world's oldest ophiolites. The region hosts valuable deposits of gold, chromium, iron and phosphate.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The very first snowflakes fall to the ground in late August or early September over the higher peaks. The first ground-covering snow arrives on average in October or late September. Permanent snow cover comes between mid-October and the end of November, significantly earlier than in southern Finland. The winter is long, approximately seven months. The snow cover is usually thickest in early April. Soon after that the snow cover starts to melt fast. The thickest snow cover ever was measured in Kilpisjärvi in 19 April 1997 and it was 190 cm. The annual mean temperature varies from a couple of degrees below zero in the northwest to a couple of degrees above zero in the southwest (Kemi-Tornio area). Lapland exhibits a trend of increasing precipitation towards the south, with the dryest parts being located at the two arms.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Summer months, the average temperature is consistently over 10°C. Heat waves with daily temperatures exceeding +25 °C, occur average 5-10 days per summer in northern Finland.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The area of Lapland was split between two counties of the Swedish Realm from 1634 to 1809. The northern and western areas were part of Västerbotten County, while the southern areas (so-called Peräpohjola) were part of Ostrobothnia County (after 1755 Oulu County). The northern and western areas were transferred in 1809 to Oulu County, which became Oulu Province. Under the royalist constitution of Finland during the first half of 1918, Lapland was to become a Grand Principality and part of the inheritance of the proposed king of Finland. Lapland Province was separated from Oulu Province in 1938.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: During the Interim Peace and beginning of the Continuation War the government of Finland allowed the Nazi German Army to station itself in Lapland as a part of Operation Barbarossa. After Finland made a separate peace with the Soviet Union in 1944, the Soviet Union demanded that Finland expel the German army from its soil. The result was the Lapland War, during which almost the whole civilian population of Lapland was evacuated. The Germans used scorched earth tactics in Lapland, before they withdrew to Norway. Forty to forty-seven percent of the dwellings in Lapland and of railroads were destroyed, of roadways were mined, destroyed or were unusable, and 675 bridges and of telephone lines were also destroyed. Ninety percent of Rovaniemi, the capital of Lapland, was burned to the ground, with only a few pre-war buildings surviving the destruction.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: After the Second World War, Petsamo municipality and part of Salla municipality were ceded to the Soviet Union. The decades following the war were a period of rebuilding, industrialization and fast economic growth. Large hydroelectric plants and mines were established and cities, roads and bridges were rebuilt from the destruction of the war. In the late 20th century the economy of Lapland started to decline, mines and factories became unprofitable and the population started to decline rapidly across most of the region.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The provinces of Finland were abolished on 1 January 2010, but Lapland was reorganised as one of the new regions that replaced them.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Lapland is the home of about 3.4% of Finland's total population, and is by far the least densely populated area in the country. The biggest towns in Lapland are Rovaniemi (the regional capital), Tornio, and Kemi. In 2011, Lapland had a population of 183,320 of whom 177,950 spoke Finnish, 1,526 spoke Sami, 387 spoke Swedish and 3,467 spoke some other languages as their mother tongue. Of the Sami languages, Northern Sami, Inari Sami and Skolt Sami are spoken in the region. Pelkosenniemi is the smallest municipality in mainland Finland in terms of population, while Savukoski is sparsely populated in terms of population density.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The 21 municipalities of Lapland are organised into a single Region, where they cooperate in the Lapland Regional Council, "Lapin liitto" or "Lapplands förbund".


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Lapland has seven seats in the 200-seat parliament of Finland. In the 2019 Finnish parliamentary election, three seats went to Centre Party, and the Finns Party, the Left Alliance, the Social Democratic Party and the National Coalition Party got one seat each.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The northernmost municipalities of Lapland where the Sámi people are the most numerous, form the Sami Domicile Area. Sami organization exists in parallel with the provincial one.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: The region of Lapland is made up of 21 municipalities, of which four have city status (marked in bold).


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Three European roads pass through Lapland: E8, E63 and E75, the latter of which runs almost 600 kilometers from the southernmost municipality of Simo to the northernmost municipality of Utsjoki.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: Kemi-Tornio, Rovaniemi, Kittilä, Ivalo and Enontekiö airports are located in Lapland. The flight time from Helsinki is about 1,5 hours.


title: Lapland (Finland)

text: In the western part, the Laurila–Kelloselkä railway runs from Tornio to Kolari, and the eastern line runs from Keminmaa via Rovaniemi and Kemijärvi to the eastern border of the country at Salla's Kelloselkä.


title: Driving under the influence

text: Driving under the influence (DUI)—also called driving while impaired, impaired driving, driving while intoxicated (DWI), drunk driving, operating while intoxicated (OWI), operating under the influence (OUI), operating [a] vehicle under the influence (OVI), and drink-driving (UK/Ireland)—is the offense of driving, operating, or being in control of a vehicle while impaired by alcohol or other drugs (including recreational drugs and those prescribed by physicians), to a level that renders the driver incapable of operating a motor vehicle safely.


title: Driving under the influence

text: The name of the offense varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and from legal to colloquial terminology. In the United States, the specific criminal offense is usually called driving under the influence, but states may use other names for the offense including "driving while intoxicated" (DWI), "operating while impaired" (OWI) or "operating while ability impaired", and "operating a vehicle under the influence" (OVI). Such laws may also apply to boating or piloting aircraft. Vehicles can include farm machinery and horse-drawn carriages, along with bicycles. Other commonly used terms to describe these offenses include drinking and driving, drunk driving, drunken driving, impaired driving, operating under the influence, or "over the prescribed limit".


title: Driving under the influence

text: In the United Kingdom, there are two separate offences to do with alcohol and driving. The first is "Driving or attempting to drive with excess alcohol" (legal code DR10), the other is known as "In charge of a vehicle with excess alcohol" (legal code DR40) or "drunk in charge" due to the wording of the Licensing Act 1872. In relation to motor vehicles, the Road Safety Act 1967 created a narrower offense of driving (or being in charge of) a vehicle while having breath, blood, or urine alcohol levels above the prescribed limits (colloquially called "being over the limit"); and a broader offense of "driving while unfit through drink or drugs," (DR20 and DR80 respectively) which can apply even with levels below the limits. These provisions were re-enacted in the Road Traffic Act 1988. A separate offense in the 1988 Act applies to bicycles. While the 1872 Act is mostly superseded, the offense of being "drunk while in charge ... of any carriage, horse, cattle, or steam engine" is still in force; "carriage" has sometimes been interpreted as including mobility scooters.


title: Driving under the influence

text: The criminal offense may not involve actual driving of the vehicle, but rather may broadly include being physically "in control" of a car while intoxicated, even if the person charged is not in the act of driving. For example, individuals found in the driver's seat of a car while intoxicated and holding the car keys, even while parked, may be charged with DUI in the majority of U.S. states because they are in control of the vehicle.


title: Driving under the influence

text: In construing the terms DUI, DWI, OWI, and OVI, a few states such as California therefore make it illegal to "drive a motor vehicle" while under the influence or driving while intoxicated while the others all indicate that it is illegal to "operate a motor vehicle" while under the influence. Virtually all of the states permit enforcement of DUI/DWI and OWI/OVI statutes based on "operation and control" of a vehicle, while while California and a few others require actual "driving". "The distinction between these two terms is material, for it is generally held that the word 'drive,' as used in statutes of this kind, usually denotes movement of the vehicle in some direction, whereas the word 'operate' has a broader meaning so as to include not only the motion of the vehicle but also acts which engage the machinery of the vehicle that, alone or in sequence, will set in motion the motive power of the vehicle." ("State v. Graves" (1977) 269 S.C. 356 [237 S.E.2d 584, 586–588, 586. fn. 8].)


title: Driving under the influence

text: "Merriam Webster's Dictionary" defines DUI (in the United States) as "1. the act or crime of driving a vehicle while affected by alcohol or drugs; 2. an arrest or conviction for driving under the influence; 3. a person who is arrested for or convicted of driving under the influence."


title: Driving under the influence

text: In some countries (including Australia and many jurisdictions throughout the United States), a person can be charged with a criminal offense for riding a bicycle, skateboard, or horse while intoxicated or under the influence of alcohol.


title: Driving under the influence

text: With alcohol consumption, a drunk driver's level of intoxication is typically determined by a measurement of blood alcohol content or BAC; but this can also be expressed as a breath test measurement, often referred to as a BrAC. A BAC or BrAC measurement in excess of the specific threshold level, such as 0.08%, defines the criminal offense with no need to prove impairment. In some jurisdictions, there is an aggravated category of the offense at a higher BAC level, such as 0.12%, 0.15%, or 0.25%. In many jurisdictions, police officers can conduct field tests of suspects to look for signs of intoxication. The legal limit in Florida is .08% BAC. The US state of Colorado has a maximum blood content of THC for drivers who have consumed cannabis, but it has been difficult to enforce.


title: Driving under the influence

text: In some countries, it is measured and known in gram per blood liter, with 0.5 g/L similar to a 0.05% rate, other use per mille (per thousand sign) with 0.5‰ = 0.05%.


title: Driving under the influence

text: Drinking enough alcohol to cause a blood alcohol concentration (BAC) of 0.03–0.12% typically causes a flushed, red appearance in the face and impaired judgment and fine muscle coordination. A BAC of 0.09% to 0.25% causes lethargy, sedation, balance problems, and blurred vision. A BAC from 0.18% to 0.30% causes profound confusion, impaired speech (e.g., slurred speech), staggering, dizziness, and vomiting. A BAC from 0.25% to 0.40% causes stupor, unconsciousness, anterograde amnesia, vomiting, and respiratory depression (potentially life-threatening). A BAC from 0.35% to 0.80% causes a coma (unconsciousness), life-threatening respiratory depression, and possibly fatal alcohol poisoning. There are a number of factors that affect the time in which BAC will reach or exceed 0.08, including weight, the time since one's recent drinking, and whether and what one ate within the time of drinking. A 170 lbs male can drink more than a 135 lbs female, before being over the BAC level.


title: Driving under the influence

text: NHTSA reports that the following blood alcohol levels (BAC) in a driver will have the following predictable effects on his or her ability to drive safely: (1) A BAC of .02 will result in a "[d]ecline in visual functions (rapid tracking of a moving target), decline in ability to perform two tasks at the same time (divided attention)"; (2) A BAC of .05 will result in "[r]educed coordination, reduced ability to track moving objects, difficulty steering, reduced response to emergency driving situations"; (3) A BAC of .08 will result in "[c]oncentration, short-term memory loss, speed control, reduced information processing capability (e.g., signal detection, visual search), impaired perception"; (4) A BAC of .10 will result in "[r]educed ability to maintain lane position and brake appropriately"; and (5) A BAC of .15 will result in "[s]ubstantial impairment in vehicle control, attention to driving task, and in necessary visual and auditory information processing."


title: Driving under the influence

text: A breathalyzer is a device for estimating BAC from a breath sample. It was developed by inventor Robert Frank Borkenstein and registered as a trademark in 1954, but many people use the term to refer to any generic device for estimating blood alcohol content. With the advent of a scientific test for BAC, law enforcement regimes moved from sobriety tests (e.g., asking the suspect to stand on one leg) to having more than a prescribed amount of blood alcohol content while driving. However, this does not preclude the simultaneous existence and use of the older subjective tests in which police officers measure the intoxication of the suspect by asking them to do certain activities or by examining their eyes and responses. BAC is most conveniently measured as a simple percent of alcohol in the blood by weight. Research shows an exponential increase of the relative risk for a crash with a linear increase of BAC as shown


title: Driving under the influence

text: (Relative risk of an accident based on blood alcohol levels) BAC does not depend on any units of measurement. In Europe, it is usually expressed as milligrams of alcohol per 100 milliliters of blood. However, 100 milliliters of blood weighs essentially the same as 100 milliliters of water, which weighs precisely 100 grams. Thus, for all practical purposes, this is the same as the simple dimensionless BAC measured as a percent. The per mille ("promille") measurement, which is equal to ten times the percentage value, is used in Denmark, Germany, Finland, Norway, and Sweden.


title: Driving under the influence

text: Depending on the jurisdiction, BAC may be measured by police using three methods: blood, breath, or urine. For law enforcement purposes, breath is the preferred method, since results are available almost instantaneously. The validity of the testing equipment/methods and mathematical relationships for the measurement of breath and blood alcohol have been criticized. Improper testing and equipment calibration is often used in defense of a DUI or DWI. There have been cases in Canada where officers have come upon a suspect who is unconscious after an accident and officers have taken a blood sample.


title: Driving under the influence

text: Driving while consuming alcohol may be illegal within a jurisdiction. In some, it is illegal for an open container of an alcoholic beverage to be in the passenger compartment of a motor vehicle or in some specific area of that compartment. There have been cases of drivers being convicted of a DUI when they were not observed driving after being proven in court they had been driving while under the influence.


title: Driving under the influence

text: In the case of an accident, car insurance may be automatically declared invalid for the intoxicated driver; the drunk driver would be fully responsible for damages. In the American system, a citation for driving under the influence also causes a major increase in car insurance premiums.