title: Korean wave

text: The South Korean entertainment industry has been faced with claims of mistreatment towards its musical artists. This issue came to a head when popular boy group TVXQ brought their management company to court over allegations of mistreatment. The artists claimed they had not been paid what they were owed and that their 13-year contracts were far too long. While the court did rule in their favor, allegations of mistreatment of artists are still rampant.


title: Korean wave

text: During an episode of MBC TV reality show 'I live Alone' that was aired in July 2020, Hwasa of Mamamoo was accused of culturally appropriating Nigerian Buba, although MBC officials clarified that the clothing style originated from Korean sauna with no relation to the ethnic clothing wore by African communities.


title: Korean wave

text: On World Tour 'Ode to You', members of Seventeen were accused of singing Curry song of Norazo while visiting an Indian restaurants at San Jose, California. Only Jo bin of Norazo came forward to issue an apology after the incident. For South Asian ethnic groups it became part of culturally-rooted racism which they are facing for many decades in global pop culture.


title: Korean wave

text: Oh My Girl was accused of mixing and appropriating multiple cultures; from accessories of Hindu customs such as bindi and matha patti on to Indian and Southeast Asian background music with Middle-eastern dance form in Windy Days from 2016 released Pink Ocean.


title: Korean wave

text: In July 2020, Sunmi faced backlash in a TikTok video for misrepresenting Indian classical dance with hand gestures and head bobble movements using Bhangra song Tunak Tunak Tun as background music. Sunmi later issued an apology and deleted the video.


title: Korean wave

text: Actor Ji Chang-wook and Eum Moon Suk mired in controversy after uploading a video on social media wearing dreadlocks and performing comical dance. People from Black community found it racially offensive and insensitive. Professor of Sociology Yoon In-jin from Korea University said, “acceptance of multiculturalism and cultural sensitivity levels of many Koreans are very low. We have lived as monoethnic people and in monoethnic culture for a long time, so we lack in understanding and respecting other cultures. We are insensitive as to how our actions can be seen by others. On the other hand, we react angrily if foreigners belittle Korean culture or people.” To prevent these controversies, many agencies are educating artists about racial and gender discrimination. They are also banned from giving personal opinions on political, social and historical matters. Agencies who are managing bigger K-pop idols started creating manuals for artists on cultural taboos and politically sensitive topics before going for world tours.


title: Korean wave

text: On 1 September 2021, a billboard of Jungkook was taken down in Gujranwala, Pakistan under the request of assembly candidate Furqan Aziz Butt from Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan due to complaints from local residents As per Furqan Aziz Butt, BTS promotes homosexuality among youngsters, also the BTS fandom called ARMY is in conflict with the name Pakistan Army.


title: Korean wave

text: In 2021, Turkey increased the scrutiny of Hallyu especially Kpop and Kdrama due to their negative influence on Turkish youth. Ministry of Family and Social Services started investigation after incidents of underaged girls trying to run away from home to South Korea came to notice. Some conservative officials are also accusing Kpop stars as threat towards traditional Turkish values due to their open LGBTQ+ support.


title: Korean wave

text: With growing popularity and recognition of Korean Pop Music, there is an emerging trend of increasing backlash in Bangladesh from conservative section of the society. K-Pop artists and fans are targeted due to fear of promoting liberal or atheistic values and LGBT movements in the country. One anonymous hacktivist group called Team Copyright targeted BTS official Twitter handle for their open LGBTQ+ support and questioning the current masculinity standards by misusing loopholes of Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). The group claims the reason behind its actions is to maintain the purity of Islamic culture.


title: Korean wave

text: On 23 November 2021, RBW and Purple Kiss apologized for display of Nazi symbols during promotional photos for holiday season merchandise package. In the same year, Sowon of GFriend and Source Music also apologized for posting pictures on social media with Nazi mannequin.


title: Korean wave

text: With the globalization of Korean wave, colorism an issue between domestic and foreign fans. Korean content such as Single's Inferno faced a backlash for allegedly pushing a pale skin preference. But outside criticism according to writer and sociologist Arian Khameneh is often seen as neocolonial disrespect in an attempt to humiliate the country in front of global audience making it harder to discuss valid concerns. As per academics, colorism may not be a problem in South Korea due to its monoethnic background, but viewed negatively in highly diverse markets such as Southeast Asia, India and the United States. With South Korea planning to issue Hallyu visa for foreigners, Korean academicians started discussing colorism and diversity that can affect future of Korean wave.


title: Korean wave

text: Suriname expressed dissatisfaction against producers of Narco-Saints and Netflix for propagating negative image of the country. As per Government officials, they are working to improve the national image away from the global perception of a drug state but the k-drama and Netflix are damaging that effort. Foreign Minister Albert Ramdin said, the country is no longer associated with narcotics but the whole world is watching k-dramas and it is creating negative perception. Suriname government is considering legal action against the producers and will lodge diplomatic protest with South Korea.


title: Korean wave

text: On 5 October 2022, Department of Radio, Television, and Electronic Information of Vietnam asked Netflix to remove Little Women from content library for historical falsification of the Vietnam War. In response Studio Dragon released a statement saying they will take social and cultural sensitivity into account and pay more attention to future content production. Previously Vietnamese authority banned The Roundup for showcasing Ho Chi Minh City as lawless city.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: Fleet admiral (abbreviated FADM) is a five-star flag officer rank in the United States Navy whose rewards uniquely include active duty pay for life. Fleet admiral ranks immediately above admiral and is equivalent to General of the Army and General of the Air Force.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: Although it is a current and authorized rank, no U.S. Navy officer holds it presently. Only four men have ever held the rank: William D. Leahy, Ernest King, Chester W. Nimitz, and William Halsey Jr. Leahy, King, and Nimitz were promoted to the rank in December 1944, followed by Halsey in December 1945. While all four men effectively retired in the late 1940s, the rank of fleet admiral is for life. The last active fleet admiral was Nimitz, who died in 1966.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: The Navy originally had an established precursor 5-star rank of Admiral of the Navy, that was superior to Admiral.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: The rank used the 1867 regalation Admiral insignia. This rank was established and given only to Admiral George Dewey, in recognition of his victory at Manila Bay in 1898. On March 2, 1899, Congress passed approving the creation of the rank. The Senate confirmed Dewey's promotion to that rank on March 14, 1903, and he was officially promoted to Admiral of the Navy on March 24, 1903, with a retroactive date-of-rank of March 2, 1899. The congressional act also stipulated that upon Dewey's death, the rank would cease to exist. Dewey died on January 16, 1917, ending the Navy's use of the rank.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: A proper five-star rank of fleet admiral was created in 1944 in order to give United States military officers comparable rank to five-star officers of allied nations. The rank of fleet admiral was created by an Act of Congress for four officers to hold on a temporary basis under Pub.L. on December 14, 1944. The rank was made permanent for the four individual holders by on March 23, 1946. Although Congress authorized the promotion of Omar Bradley to the five-star rank of General of the Army in 1950 while serving as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so that he would be of the same rank as General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, the theater commander in Korea, there has been no new legislation authorizing the use of the rank of fleet admiral since 1946.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: The timing of the first three appointments was carefully planned, such that a clear order of seniority and a near-equivalence between the services was established for the Generals of the Army promoted at the same time. General Marshall was promoted to General of the Army on December 16, 1944; General MacArthur was promoted on December 18, 1944; General Eisenhower was promoted on December 20, 1944, and General Arnold was promoted on December 21, 1944. He would later be laterally promoted to General of the Air Force on May 7, 1949, after the Air Force was created as a separate service as part of the National Defense Act of 1947.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: The insignia for a fleet admiral is composed of five silver stars in a pentagonal design. Worn on the service dress blue uniform sleeve was a gold stripe two inches wide surrounding the sleeve two inches from the cuff with four half-inch stripes placed at inch intervals. The single gold five-pointed star, one ray down, worn above the top stripe was not part of the rank, but indicated the wearer to be a line officer.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: Another contender to receive the rank of fleet admiral was Admiral Raymond A. Spruance; the choice between him and Halsey was an issue that occupied several months of deliberation, before Admiral King finally chose Halsey. Purportedly U.S. Representative Carl Vinson, chairman of the House Armed Services committee and a strong supporter of Halsey, was responsible for blocking subsequent efforts to promote Spruance to fleet admiral (although his promotion continued to be blocked after Vinson retired). Instead, Spruance's achievements were recognized by the unique honor of a Special Act of Congress awarding him full four-star admiral's salary during the remainder of his life. Spruance expressed the following feelings over the issue:


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: The first fleet admiral to leave active duty was Ernest King who retired immediately after the conclusion of World War II. Chester Nimitz and William Halsey both retired two years later while William Leahy was the last fleet admiral to leave active duty in 1949. According to Public Law 78-482, fleet admirals on active duty receive the same pay as a Rear Admiral, Upper Half (two star) plus a $5,000 personal allowance, and upon retirement were to receive 75% of their active duty pay. When Public Law 79-333 made the rank permanent for Leahy, King, Nimitz, and Halsey, it also provided for full pay and allowances once those officers retired. As with a general of the army, a fleet admiral was entitled to an office maintained by the Navy along with an aide (of the rank of Captain), a secretary, and an orderly.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: Three of the four fleet admirals died in the late 1950s and, by 1960, Chester Nimitz was the sole surviving U.S. Navy fleet admiral. He held a ceremonial post as Navy adviser to the Western Sea Frontier with his quarters based in San Francisco. Nimitz died in 1966 with no further fleet admirals appointed since.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: No officers have been appointed to the rank of fleet admiral since William Halsey. The rank of fleet admiral is still maintained as a rank of the U.S. Navy, and could again be bestowed, pending approval of the United States Senate. However, the President, with consent from the Senate, may award a fifth star at any time they see fit.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: In the 1990s, there were proposals in Department of Defense academic circles to bestow a five-star rank on the office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: As recently as the late 2000s, some commentators proposed that the military leader in the Global War on Terrorism be promoted to a five-star rank.


title: Fleet admiral (United States)

text: The Navy does not have an established rank senior to fleet admiral. The only officially recognized United States military rank senior to fleet admiral is General of the Armies when Congress passed in 1976, promoting George Washington to that rank and making him senior to all other grades of the Army, past or present.


title: Lie to Me

text: Lie to Me (stylized as Lie to me*) is an American crime drama television series. It originally ran on the Fox network from January 21, 2009, to January 31, 2011. In the show, Dr. Cal Lightman (Tim Roth) and his colleagues in The Lightman Group accept assignments from third parties (commonly local and federal law enforcement), and assist in investigations, reaching the truth through applied psychology: interpreting microexpressions, through the Facial Action Coding System, and body language. In May 2009, the show was renewed for a second season consisting of 13 episodes; season two premiered on September 28, 2009. On November 24, 2009, Fox ordered an extra nine episodes for season two, bringing the season order to 22 episodes.


title: Lie to Me

text: On May 12, 2010, "Entertainment Weekly" reported that "Lie to Me" received a 13-episode third season pick-up. The third season of "Lie to Me" was originally set to premiere on November 10, 2010. On September 28, 2010, the date was moved up to October 4, 2010, because of the cancellation of "Lone Star". On May 11, 2011, Fox canceled "Lie to Me" after three seasons.


title: Lie to Me

text: The show is inspired by the work of Paul Ekman, a specialist on facial expressions and a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. Ekman has been an advisor to police departments and anti-terrorism groups. He was a scientific consultant in the production of the series. The lead character of "Lie to Me", Cal Lightman, is based on Ekman.


title: Lie to Me

text: Season one opens with Cal and Gillian hiring a new associate: TSA officer Ria Torres, who scored extraordinarily high on Cal's deception-detection diagnostic, and is in turn labeled a "natural" at deception detection. Her innate talent in the field clashes with Cal's academic approach, and he often shows off by rapidly analyzing her every facial expression. She counters by reading Lightman and, when he least expects it, peppers conversations with quotes from his books.


title: Lie to Me

text: It was gradually revealed that Dr. Lightman was driven to study micro-expressions as a result of guilt over his mother's suicide. She claimed to have been fine in order to obtain a weekend pass from a psychiatric ward, when she was actually experiencing agony (which parallels an anecdote in Paul Ekman's book "Telling Lies").


title: Lie to Me

text: For a small number of the early episodes, Lightman would team up with Torres to work on a case, while Foster and Loker would team up on a separate case. Occasionally, their work would intertwine, or Foster and/or Lightman would provide assistance on each other's cases. As the first season progressed, the cases became more involved, and all four of the main characters would work together on one case for each episode.


title: Lie to Me

text: In addition to detecting deception in subjects they interview, Lightman and his team also use various interviewing and interrogation tactics to elicit useful information. Rather than by force, they use careful lines of questioning, provocative statements, theatrics and healthy doses of deception on their own part. In the show's pilot episode, Lightman is speaking to a man who is refusing to speak at all, and is able to discern vital information by talking to him and gauging his reaction to each statement. This approach is also taken in several other episodes (e.g., "Do No Harm").


title: Lie to Me

text: Samuel Baum was the original showrunner and head writer on "Lie to Me". Brian Grazer, David Nevins, and Steven Maeda were executive producers. Katherine Pope, former president of NBC Universal's TV studio, signed on as a consulting producer, working on the final four episodes of the first season.<ref name="www.variety.com/article/VR1117999783.html?categoryid=14&cs=1"></ref> Shawn Ryan, creator of "The Shield" and "The Unit", took over as show runner for the second season.<ref name="ausiellofiles.ew.com/2009/05/scoop-fox-renew.html"></ref>


title: Lie to Me

text: Lightman Group offices use the Walter E. Washington Convention Center at 801 Mt Vernon Place NW, Washington DC 20001.


title: Lie to Me

text: The show received mostly positive reviews from television critics. It gained a score of 64 on Metacritic from 24 reviews. Entertainment Weekly's Ken Tucker awarded "Lie to Me" a B− rating and wrote ""Lie to Me" is derivative yet well crafted, predictable yet ever-so-slightly novel… it's no wonder that Fox thinks it's got itself a potential hit". However, he also commented "if this review were a face, Dr. Lightman would say it had a forced smile: hopeful, but dubious, about Lie's chances." Tom Shales, writing for "The Washington Post", said ""Lie to Me" seems an unusually meaty, thoughtful and thought-provoking crime drama – another police procedural, yes, but one with a dramatic and mesmerizing difference… easily one of the season's best new shows."


title: Lie to Me

text: In the United States, the viewing figures declined as the series progressed. The Pilot was seen by 12.37 million; however, by the final episode of the first season, it was down to 8.46 million. The most viewed episode was episode three, "A Perfect Score", which attracted 12.99 million. The second season premiered on September 28, 2009, to 7.73 million viewers. The season two finale had 4.94 million viewers in the U.S. on September 13, 2010. The third season, which had its premiere moved forward to October 4, 2010, was viewed by 5.87 million people in the U.S. The series' official cancellation was announced by Fox on May 10, 2011.


title: Lie to Me

text: The series was broadcast on Global in Canada, Network Ten in Australia, M-Net in South Africa, and also airs in Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Hungary and Belgium. "Lie to Me" aired on Sky1 in the UK and Ireland, starting on May 14, 2009. On July 20, 2009, Fox aired the premiere in Latin America. RTL 5 in The Netherlands has been broadcasting it since November 6, 2009. The series debuted in Italy on September 7, 2009, on the Fox Satellite channel. The series has aired in India since September 2010.


title: Lie to Me

text: Season one and two have been released on DVD in Regions 1, 2 and 4. However, while season one was also released on Blu-ray in North America there has been no announcement about releasing the second season on Blu-ray. The first and second season DVDs sets include deleted scenes and behind-the-scenes featurettes. The second season also includes "Dr. Ekman's Blog" and a gag reel. The third and final season was released on October 4, 2011.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Maria Angelita Ressa (, born Maria Angelita Delfin Aycardo on October 2, 1963) is a Filipino and American journalist. She is the co-founder and CEO of Rappler. She previously spent nearly two decades working as a lead investigative reporter in Southeast Asia for CNN.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa was born in Manila and raised in Toms River, New Jersey. She was included in "Time" Person of the Year 2018 issue featuring a collection of journalists from around the world actively combating fake news. On February 13, 2019, she was arrested by Philippine authorities for cyberlibel due to accusations that Rappler published a false news story concerning businessman Wilfredo Keng. On June 15, 2020, a court in Manila found her guilty of cyberlibel under the controversial Anti-Cybercrime law, a move condemned by human rights groups and journalists as an attack on press freedom. As she is a prominent critic of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, her arrest and conviction was seen by many in the opposition and the international community as a politically motivated act by Duterte's government. Ressa is one of the 25 leading figures on the Information and Democracy Commission launched by Reporters Without Borders. She was awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize jointly with Dmitry Muratov for "their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace."


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa was born in Manila in October 1963. Ressa's father Phil Sunico Aycardo, a Chinese-Filipino, died when she was one year old. She grew up speaking only Tagalog and studied at St. Scholastica's College in Manila. Her mother Hermelina then moved to the United States, leaving Ressa and her sister with their father's family, but would visit her two children frequently. Subsequently, her mother married an Italian-American man named Peter Ames Ressa and returned to the Philippines. She brought both of her children to New Jersey, United States when Ressa was ten years old. Ressa was adopted by her stepfather and she took his last name. Her parents then relocated to Toms River, New Jersey, where she went to Toms River High School North, a public school nearby. Ressa had to learn the English language, and by high school stood out as a member of the Theater Guild and student council. She explained her experience thus:I landed in New Jersey, where I could barely speak English, and I had to figure out what a short brown kid was going to do in this big white world.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Her yearbook profile included her dreams to set out and conquer the world. Ressa was an undergraduate student at Princeton University, where she graduated cum laude with an A.B. in English and certificates in theater and dance in 1986. She completed a 77-page-long senior thesis titled "Sagittarius." She then was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to study political theater at the University of the Philippines Diliman where she also taught several journalism courses as a faculty member in the university.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa's first job was at government station PTV 4. She then co-founded independent production company Probe in 1987, and simultaneously served as CNN's bureau chief in Manila until 1995. She then ran CNN's Jakarta bureau from 1995 to 2005. As CNN's lead investigative reporter in Asia, she specialized in investigating terrorist networks. She became an author-in-residence at the International Center for Political Violence and Terrorism Research (ICPVTR) of Nanyang Technological University's S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.


title: Maria Ressa

text: From 2004, Ressa headed the news division of ABS-CBN, while also writing for CNN, and "The Wall Street Journal". In September 2010, she wrote a piece for "The Wall Street Journal" criticising the then president Beningno Aquino III handling of the bus hostage crisis. This piece was published two weeks before the president's official visit to the United States of America. Speculations were rife that this, among other reasons, finally led to Ressa leaving the company in 2010, after deciding not to renew her contract.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa is a fellow at the Initiative on the Digital Economy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and


title: Maria Ressa

text: is a 2021 Joan Shorenstein Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and Hauser Leader at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School.


title: Maria Ressa

text: She is the author of two books concerning the rise of terrorism in Southeast Asia—"Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda's Newest Center" (2003) and "From Bin Laden to Facebook: 10 Days of Abduction, 10 Years of Terrorism" (2013).


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa has also taught courses in politics and the press in Southeast Asia for Princeton University, and broadcast journalism for the University of the Philippines Diliman.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa established the online news site Rappler in 2012 along with three other female founders and with a small team of 12 journalists and developers. It initially started as a Facebook page named MovePH in August 2011, evolving into a complete website on January 1, 2012. The site became one of the first multimedia news websites in the Philippines and a major news portal in the Philippines, receiving numerous local and international awards. She serves as the Executive Editor and Chief Executive Officer of the news website.


title: Maria Ressa

text: On September 25, 2020, Ressa became one the 25 members of the "Real Facebook Oversight Board," an independent watchdog group established to provide public commentary on Facebook's content moderation policies and role in civic life.


title: Maria Ressa

text: In October 2022, Ressa joined the Council for Responsible Social Media project launched by Issue One to address the negative mental, civic, and public health impacts of social media in the United States co-chaired by former House Democratic Caucus Leader Dick Gephardt and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa first interviewed Rodrigo Duterte, the 16th president of the Philippines, in the 1980s when he was mayor of Davao. She again interviewed him in 2015 during his presidential election campaign, where he confessed to killing three people when he was mayor. Under her leadership, Rappler has been consistently critical of Duterte's policies, especially his policies on the war on drugs with their stories demonstrating that the abuses were being carried out by the police with Duterte's approval. The website under her stewardship also wrote about the alleged pro-Duterte online "troll army" which according to their article, were pushing out fake news stories and manipulating the narrative around his presidency.


title: Maria Ressa

text: In July 2017, in his State of the Nation Address, Duterte declared Rappler to be "fully owned" by the Americans and hence in violation of the constitution. He also said, "Not only is Rappler's news fake, it being Filipino is also fake." Subsequently, in August 2017, the Philippine securities and exchange commission (SEC) initiated an investigation against Rappler and demanded to check its documents. In January 2018, it revoked Rappler's license to do business. The case went to the court of appeals, where it was remanded back to the SEC for having no basis. Duterte told a Rappler reporter in 2018: "If you are trying to throw garbage at us, then the least that we can do is explain – how about you? Are you also clean?" The government under his leadership revoked the site's operating license.


title: Maria Ressa

text: On January 22, 2018, Ressa appeared before the Philippines' National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), to comply with a subpoena over an online libel complaint under the Cybercrime Prevention Act of 2012, which the administration of Rodrigo Duterte has wielded to punish criticism of the President and his allies. The subpoena was issued on January 10 to Ressa, together with former Rappler reporter Reynaldo Santos, and businessman Benjamin Bitanga. The subpoena was filed in October 2017 by a Filipino–Chinese national, Wilfredo Keng, after Rappler published a story on Keng's alleged lending of his sports utility vehicle to now-deceased Chief Justice Renato Corona as a bribed form of favor. Though the article was written in 2012 before the act criminalizing cyberlibel was signed into law by Benigno Aquino III, the Department of Justice considered it republished after a typographical error was corrected in 2014. In 2019, human rights lawyers Amal Clooney, Caoilfhionn Gallagher, and Can Yeginsu joined the legal team (consisting of international and Filipino lawyers) defending Ressa. The Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), which is the main human rights law firm in the Philippines, led by Atty. Theodore O. "Ted" Te, managed the legal team of Ressa during her different cases.


title: Maria Ressa

text: In November 2018, the Philippine government announced that it would charge Ressa and Rappler's parent company, Rappler Holdings Corporation, with tax evasion and failure to file tax returns. The charge concerns the investment in Rappler by the Omidyar Network in 2015. Ressa has denied wrongdoing, originally stating that the foreign money was "donated" to its managers, later stating the investments were in the form of securities. Rappler issued a statement denying any wrongdoing. The Philippines' Bureau of Internal Revenue, after a study of Ressa's explanation, ruled that Rappler's issuance of securities-generated capital gains was taxable. It concluded that Rappler evaded payment amounting to ₱133million in taxes.


title: Maria Ressa

text: On February 13, 2019, Philippine judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa of the Manila Regional Trial Court Branch #46 issued the arrest warrant for "cyber libel" against Ressa for an article published on Rappler. The officials of the Philippines National Bureau of Investigation fulfilled this warrant filed under the charge of cyber libel. The "cyber libel" law was passed after the article was originally published, so the charge was based on the technicality that fixing a typo might be considered "republishing". The arrest was live-streamed by many of Rappler's senior reporters on Facebook.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Due to time constraints, Ressa was unable to post bail amounting to ₱60,000 ($1,150) resulting in her arrest and confinement within the (holding) board room office of the NBI building. A total of six lawyers, two pro bono, were assigned to work on her case. On February 14, 2019, at the executor proceeding of Manila city Judge Maria Teresa Abadilla, Ressa gained freedom by posting bail at ₱100,000 ($1,900).


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa's arrest was criticized by the international community. As Ressa is an outspoken critic of President Rodrigo Duterte, many viewed the arrest as being politically motivated. In contrast, the official spokesperson for the Malacañang Palace denied any government involvement in the arrest, asserting that the lawsuit against Ressa was set forth by a private individual, the plaintiff Wilfredo Keng.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Madeleine Albright, a former U.S. Secretary of State, issued an opinion stating that the arrest "must be condemned by all democratic nations". Similarly, the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines called it "a shameless act of persecution by a bully government".


title: Maria Ressa

text: The National Press Club, an organization accused of having close ties to the Duterte regime and with a long history of criticizing the Rappler organization, has stated that the arrest was not harassment, and that Ressa should not be relegated to "the altar of press freedom for martyrdom". It also warned against politicizing the issue.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa's trial on charges of cyberlibel began in July 2019. In a statement she made on the first day of her trial, Ressa said: "This case of cyberlibel stretches the rule of law until it breaks."


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa was found guilty on June 15, 2020. In her ruling, Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa argued that Rappler "did not offer a scintilla of proof that they verified the imputations of various crimes in the disputed article... They just simply published them as news in their online publication in reckless disregard of whether they are false or not." Judge Rainelda Estacio-Montesa also quoted Nelson Mandela, saying, "To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others." Sheila Coronel, director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University, argued that the conviction is representative of "how democracy dies in the 21st century."


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa faces between six months and six years in prison and a fine of ₱400,000 ($8,000). Ressa warned that her conviction could augur the end of freedom of the press in the Philippines. Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque asked the media to "respect the decision" and said President Rodrigo Duterte was still committed to free speech, while Vice President Leni Robredo described the conviction as a "chilling development" and the National Union of Journalists of the Philippines said it "basically kills freedom of speech and of the press." Internationally the ruling has been criticized by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Reporters Without Borders. In its statement condemning the sentence, Reporters Without Borders described the legal proceedings against Ressa as "Kafkaesque".


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa has won an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, the Asian Television Awards, TOWNS – Ten Outstanding Women in the Nation's Service (Philippines) and TOYM Philippines.


title: Maria Ressa

text: Ressa was nominated for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize by prime minister and leader of the Norwegian Labour Party Jonas Gahr Støre. On October 8, 2021, Ressa was officially announced as the recipient of the prize alongside Dmitry Muratov of the Russian Federation. They were awarded the prize "for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace". Ressa and Muratov are the first journalists since 1935 to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The Pokhran-II tests were a series of five nuclear bomb test explosions conducted by India at the Indian Army's Pokhran Test Range in May 1998. It was the second instance of nuclear testing conducted by India; the first test, code-named "Smiling Buddha", was conducted in May 1974.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The tests achieved their main objective of giving India the capability to build fission and thermonuclear weapons with yields up to 200 kilotons. The then-Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission described each one of the explosions of "Pokhran-II" to be "equivalent to several tests carried out by other nuclear weapon states over decades". Subsequently, India established computer simulation capability to predict the yields of nuclear explosives whose designs are related to the designs of explosives used in this test.


title: Pokhran-II

text: "Pokhran-II" consisted of five detonations, the first of which was a fusion bomb while the remaining four were fission bombs. The tests were initiated on 11 May 1998, under the assigned code name "Operation Shakti", with the detonation of one fusion and two fission bombs. On 13 May 1998, two additional fission devices were detonated, and the Indian government led by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee shortly convened a press conference to declare India as a full-fledged nuclear state. The tests resulted in a variety of sanctions against India by a number of major countries including Japan and the United States.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Many names have been assigned to these tests; originally these were collectively called "Operation Shakti–98", and the five nuclear bombs were designated "Shakti-I" through to "Shakti-V". More recently, the operation as a whole has come to be known as "Pokhran II", and the 1974 explosion as "Pokhran-I".


title: Pokhran-II

text: Efforts towards building the nuclear bomb, infrastructure, and research on related technologies have been undertaken by India since World War II. Origins of India's nuclear program date back to 1944 when nuclear physicist Homi Bhabha began persuading the Indian National Congress towards the harnessing of nuclear energy— a year later he established the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (TIFR).


title: Pokhran-II

text: In 1950s, the preliminary studies were carried out at the BARC and plans were developed to produce plutonium and other bomb components. In 1962, India and China engaged in the disputed northern front, and was further intimidated with a Chinese nuclear test in 1964. Direction towards militarisation of the nuclear program slowed down when Vikram Sarabhai became its head and Lal Bahadur Shastri showed little interest after becoming the Prime Minister in that year.


title: Pokhran-II

text: After Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister in 1966, the nuclear program was consolidated when physicist Raja Ramanna joined the efforts. Another nuclear test by China eventually led to India's decision to build nuclear weapons in 1967 and conduct its first nuclear test, Smiling Buddha, in 1974.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Responding to "Smiling Buddha", the Nuclear Suppliers Group severely affected India's nuclear program. The world's major nuclear powers imposed technological embargo on India and Pakistan, which was on its own technological race to match India's achievement. The nuclear program struggled for years to gain credibility and its progress was crippled by the lack of indigenous resources and dependence on imported technology and technical assistance. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi declared to the IAEA that India's nuclear program was not for military purposes, despite authorising preliminary work on the hydrogen bomb design.


title: Pokhran-II

text: In the aftermath of the state emergency in 1975 that resulted in the collapse of the Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's government, the nuclear program was left in a vacuum, lacking political leadership and even basic management. Work on the hydrogen bomb design continued under M. Srinivasan, a mechanical engineer, but progress was slow.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The nuclear program received little attention from Prime Minister Morarji Desai who was renowned for his peace advocacy. In 1978, Prime Minister Desai transferred physicist Ramanna to Indian MoD, and his government once again accelerated India's nuclear program.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Shortly thereafter, the world discovered the Pakistan's clandestine atomic bomb program. Contrary to India's nuclear program, Pakistan's atomic bomb program was akin to United States Manhattan Project, in that it was under military oversight with civilian scientists in charge of the scientific aspects of the program. The Pakistan's secretive atomic bomb program was well funded and organised; India realised that Pakistan was very likely to succeed in its project in matter of two years.<ref name="http://nuclearweaponarchive.org"></ref>


title: Pokhran-II

text: In 1980, the general elections marked the return of Indira Gandhi and the nuclear program began to gain momentum under Ramanna in 1981. Requests for additional nuclear tests continued to be denied by the government after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi saw Pakistan begin engaging in brinkmanship, though the nuclear program continued to advance. Work towards the hydrogen bomb, as well as the launch of the missile programme, began under Dr. Abdul Kalam, who was then an aerospace engineer.


title: Pokhran-II

text: In 1989, the general elections witnessed the Janata Dal party led by V.P. Singh, forming the government. Prime Minister V.P. Singh downplayed the relations with the Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto whose Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) won the general elections in 1988. Foreign relations between India and Pakistan severely worsened when India accused Pakistan of supporting the Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir. During this time, the Indian Missile Program succeeded in the development of the "Prithvi" missiles.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Successive governments in India decided to observe this temporary moratorium for fear of inviting international criticism. The Indian public had supported the nuclear tests which ultimately led Prime Minister Narasimha Rao deciding to conduct further tests in 1995. Plans were halted after American spy satellites picked up signs of preparations for nuclear testing at Pokhran Test Range in Rajasthan. President Bill Clinton and his administration exerted enormous pressure on Prime Minister Narasimha Rao to stop the preparations. Responding to India, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto issued harsh criticism towards India on Pakistan's news channels; thus putting stress on the relations between two countries.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Diplomatic tensions escalated between India and Pakistan when Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto raised the Kashmir issue at the United Nations in 1995. In a speech delivered by then-Speaker of the National Assembly of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani, stressed the "Kashmir problem" as a continuing threat to peace and security in the region. The Indian delegation headed by Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the United Nations, reiterated that the "UN resolutions only call upon Pakistan— the occupying force to vacate the "Jammu and Kashmir Area."


title: Pokhran-II

text: The BJP, came to power in 1998 general elections with an exclusive public mandate. BJP's political might had been growing steadily in strength over the past decade over several issues.


title: Pokhran-II

text: In Pakistan, the similar conservative force, the PML(N), was also in power with an exclusive mandate led by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif who defeated the leftist PPP led by Benazir Bhutto in the general elections held in 1997. During the BJP campaign, Atal Bihari Vajpayee indulged in grandstanding— such as when he declared on 25 February that his government would "take back that part of Kashmir that is under Pakistan's control." Before this declaration, the BJP platform had clear intentions to "exercise the option to induct nuclear weapons" and "India should become an openly nuclear power to garner the respect on the world stage that India deserved." By 18 March 1998, Vajpayee publicly began lobbying for nuclear testing and declared that "there is no compromise on national security; all options including the nuclear options will be exercised to protect security and sovereignty."


title: Pokhran-II

text: Consultation began between Prime Minister Vajpayee, Dr.Abdul Kalam, R. Chidambaram and officials of the Indian DAE on nuclear options. Chidambaram briefed Prime Minister Vajpayee extensively on the nuclear program; Abdul Kalam presented the status of the missile program. On 28 March 1998, Prime Minister Vajpayee asked the scientists to make preparations in the shortest time possible, and preparations were hastily made.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Pakistan, at a Conference on Disarmament, said it would offered a peace agreement with India for "an equal and mutual restraint in conventional, missile and nuclear fields." Pakistan's equation was later reemphasised on 6 April and the momentum in India for nuclear tests began to build up which strengthened Vajpayee's position to order the tests.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Unlike Pakistan's weapon–testing laboratories, there was very little that India could do to hide its activity at Pokhran. Unlike the high-altitude granite mountains in Pakistan, the bushes are sparse and the dunes in the Rajasthan Desert provide little cover from probing satellites. The Indian Intelligence Agency had been aware of United States spy satellites and the CIA had been detecting Indian test preparations since 1995. Therefore, the tests required complete secrecy in India and also needed to avoid detection by other countries. The 58th Engineer Regiment of the Indian Army Corps of Engineers was commissioned to prepare the test sites to avoid detection by the United States spy satellites. The 58th Engineer's commander Colonel Gopal Kaushik supervised the test preparations and ordered his "staff officers take all measures to ensure total secrecy."


title: Pokhran-II

text: Extensive planning was done by a small group of scientists, senior military officers and senior politicians to ensure that the test preparations would remain secret, and even senior members of the Indian government didn't know what was going on. The chief scientific adviser and the Director of Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), Dr. Abdul Kalam, and Dr. R. Chidambaram, the Director of the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE), were the chief coordinators of this test planning. The scientists and engineers of the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), the Atomic Minerals Directorate for Exploration and Research (AMDER), and the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) were involved in the nuclear weapon assembly, layout, detonation and data collection. A small group of senior scientists were involved in the detonation process. All scientists were required to wear army uniforms to preserve the secrecy of the tests. Since 1995, the 58th Engineer Regiment had learned how to avoid satellite detection. Work was mostly done during night, and equipment was returned to the original place to give the impression that it was never moved.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Bomb shafts were dug under camouflage netting and the dug-out sand was shaped like dunes. Cables for sensors were covered with sand and concealed using native vegetation. Scientists would not depart for Pokhran in groups of two or three. They travelled to destinations other than Pokhran under pseudonyms, and were then transported by the army. Technical staff at the test range wore military uniforms, to prevent detection in satellite images.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Three laboratories of the DRDO were involved in designing, testing and producing components for the bombs, including the advanced detonators, the implosion and high-voltage trigger systems. These were also responsible for weaponising, systems engineering, aerodynamics, safety interlocks and flight trials. The bombs were transported in four Indian Army trucks under the command of Colonel Umang Kapur; all devices from BARC were relocated at 3 am on 1 May 1998. From the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, the bombs were flown in an Indian Air Force's AN-32 commanded by Squadron Leader Mahendra Prasad Sharma plane to Jaisalmer. They were transported to Pokhran in an army convoy of four trucks, and this required three trips. The devices were delivered to the device preparation building, which was designated as 'Prayer Hall'.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The test sites was organised into two government groups and were fired separately, with all devices in a group fired at the same time. The first group consisted of the thermonuclear device ("Shakti I"), the fission device ("Shakti II"), and a sub-kiloton device ("Shakti III"). The second group consisted of the remaining two sub-kiloton devices "Shakti IV" and "V". It was decided that the first group would be tested on 11 May and the second group on 13 May. The thermonuclear device was placed in a shaft code named 'White House', which was over deep, the fission bomb was placed in a deep shaft code named 'Taj Mahal', and the first sub-kiloton device in 'Kumbhkaran'. The first three devices were placed in their respective shafts on 10 May, and the first device to be placed was the sub-kiloton device in the 'Kumbhkaran' shaft, which was sealed by the army engineers by 8:30 pm. The thermonuclear device was lowered and sealed into the 'White House' shaft by 4 am, and the fission device being placed in the 'Taj Mahal' shaft was sealed at 7:30 am, which was 90 minutes before the planned test time. The shafts were L-shaped, with a horizontal chamber for the test device.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The timing of the tests depended on the local weather conditions, with the wind being the critical factor. The tests were underground, but due to a number of shaft seal failures that had occurred during tests conducted by the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom, the sealing of the shaft could not be guaranteed to be leak-proof. By early afternoon, the winds had died down and the test sequence was initiated. Dr. K. Santhanam of the DRDO, in charge of the test site preparations, gave the two keys that activated the test countdown to Dr. M. Vasudev, the range safety officer, who was responsible for verifying that all test indicators were normal. After checking the indicators, Vasudev handed one key each to a representative of BARC and the DRDO, who unlocked the countdown system together. At 3:45 pm the three devices were detonated.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Five nuclear devices were tested during Operation Shakti. Four of the devices were weapon-grade plutonium and one Thorium/U-233. They were:


title: Pokhran-II

text: At 3:43 pm IST; three nuclear bombs (specifically, the "Shakti I", "II" and "III") were detonated simultaneously, as measured by international seismic monitors. On 13 May, at 12.21 p.m. IST (6:51 UTC), two sub-kiloton devices ("Shakti IV" and "V") were detonated. Due to their very low yield, these explosions were not detected by any seismic station. On 13 May 1998, India declared the series of tests to be over after this.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Having tested weaponized nuclear warheads in the Pokhran-II series, India became the sixth country to join the nuclear club. Shortly after the tests, a press meet was convened at the Prime Minister's residence in New Delhi. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee appeared before the press corps and made the following short statement:


title: Pokhran-II

text: News of the tests were greeted with jubilation and large-scale approval by society in India. The Bombay Stock Exchange registered significant gains. Newspapers and television channels praised the government for its bold decision; editorials were full of praise for the country's leadership and advocated the development of an operational nuclear arsenal for the country's armed forces. The Indian opposition, led by Indian National Congress criticised the Vajpayee administration for carrying out the series of nuclear tests. The INC spokesperson Salman Khursheed, accused the BJP of trying to use the tests for political ends rather than to enhance the country's national security.


title: Pokhran-II

text: By the time India had conducted tests, the country had a total of $44bn in loans in 1998, from the IMF and the World Bank. The industrial sectors of the Indian economy, such as the chemicals industry, were likely to be hurt by sanctions. The Western consortium companies, which had invested heavily in India, especially in construction, computing and telecoms, were generally the ones who were harmed by the sanctions. In 1998, Indian government announced that it had already allowed for some economic response and was willing to take the consequences.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Strong criticism was drawn from Canada on India's actions and its High Commissioner. Sanctions were also imposed by Japan on India and consisted of freezing all new loans and grants except for humanitarian aid to India.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Some other nations also imposed sanctions on India, primarily in the form of suspension of to India and government-to-government credit lines. However, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia refrained from condemning India.


title: Pokhran-II

text: On 12 May the Chinese Foreign Ministry stated: "The Chinese government is seriously concerned about the nuclear tests conducted by India," and that the tests "run counter to the current international trend and are not conducive to peace and stability in South Asia.". The next day the Chinese Foreign Ministry issued the statement clearly stating that "it is shocked and strongly condemned" the Indian nuclear tests and called for the international community to "adopt a unified stand and strongly demand that India immediate stop development of nuclear weapons". China further rejected India's stated rationale of needing nuclear capabilities to counter a Chinese threat as "totally unreasonable". In a meeting with Masayoshi Takemura of Democratic Party of Japan, Foreign Minister of the People's Republic of China Qian Qichen was quoted as saying that India's nuclear tests were a "serious matter," particularly because they were conducted in light of the fact that more than 140 countries have signed the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. "It is even more unacceptable that India claims to have conducted the tests to counter what it called a ""China threat"". On 24 November 1998, the Chinese Embassy, New Delhi issued a formal statement:


title: Pokhran-II

text: The most vehement and strong reaction to India's nuclear explosion was from a neighbouring country, Pakistan. Great ire was raised in Pakistan, which issued a severe statement blaming India for instigating a nuclear arms race in the region. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif vowed that his country would give a suitable reply to India. The day after the first tests, Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub Khan indicated that Pakistan was ready to conduct a nuclear test. He stated: "Pakistan is prepared to match India, we have the capability... We in Pakistan will maintain a balance with India in all fields", he said in an interview. "We are in a headlong arms race on the subcontinent."


title: Pokhran-II

text: On 13 May 1998, Pakistan bitterly condemned the tests, and Foreign Minister Gohar Ayub was quoted as saying that Indian leadership seemed to "have gone berserk [sic] and was acting in a totally unrestrained way." Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was much more subdued, maintaining ambiguity about whether a test would be conducted in response: ""We are watching the situation and we will take appropriate action with regard to our security"", he said. Sharif sought to mobilise the entire Islamic world in support of Pakistan and criticised India for nuclear proliferation.


title: Pokhran-II

text: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had been under intense pressure regarding the nuclear tests by US President Bill Clinton and Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto at home. Initially surprising the world, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif authorised a nuclear testing program and the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC) carried out nuclear testing under the codename "Chagai-I" on 28 May 1998 and "Chagai-II" on 30 May 1998. These six underground nuclear tests at the Chagai and Kharan test site were conducted fifteen days after India's last test. The total yield of the tests was reported to be 40 kt (see codename: "Chagai-I").


title: Pokhran-II

text: Pakistan's subsequent tests invited similar condemnation from the United States. American President Bill Clinton was quoted as saying "Two wrongs don't make a right", criticising Pakistan's tests as reactionary to India's Pokhran-II. The United States and Japan reacted by imposing economic sanctions on Pakistan. According to the Pakistan's science community, the Indian nuclear tests gave an opportunity to Pakistan to conduct nuclear tests after 14 years of conducting only cold tests (See: Kirana-I).


title: Pokhran-II

text: Pakistan's leading nuclear physicist, Pervez Hoodbhoy, held India responsible for Pakistan's nuclear test experiments in Chagai.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The United States issued a strong statement condemning India and promised that sanctions would follow. The American intelligence community was embarrassed as there had been "a serious intelligence failure of the decade" in detecting the preparations for the test.


title: Pokhran-II

text: In keeping with its preferred approach to foreign policy in recent decades, and in compliance with the 1994 anti-proliferation law, the United States imposed economic sanctions on India. The sanctions on India consisted of cutting off all assistance to India except humanitarian aid, banning the export of certain defence material and technologies, ending American credit and credit guarantees to India, and requiring the US to oppose lending by international financial institutions to India.


title: Pokhran-II

text: From 1998 to 1999, the United States held series of bilateral talks with India over the issue of India becoming a part of the CTBT and NPT. In addition, the United States also made an unsuccessful attempt of holding talks regarding the rollback of India's nuclear program. India took a firm stand against the CTBT and refusing to become a signatory of it despite under pressure by the US President Bill Clinton, and noted the treaty as it was not consistent with India's national security interest.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The reactions from abroad started immediately after the tests were advertised. On 6 June, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1172, condemning the Indian and the Pakistani tests. China issued a vociferous condemnation calling upon the international community to exert pressure on India to sign the NPT and to eliminate its nuclear arsenal. With India joining the group of countries possessing nuclear weapons, a new strategic dimension had emerged in Asia, particularly in South Asia.


title: Pokhran-II

text: The Indian government has officially declared 11 May as National Technology Day in India to commemorate the first of the five nuclear tests that were carried out on 11 May 1998.


title: Pokhran-II

text: It was officially signed by then-Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 1998 and the day is celebrated by giving awards to various individuals and industries in the field of science and technology.


title: Tool

text: A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates back hundreds of millennia, have been observed using tools to make other tools.


title: Tool

text: Early human tools, made of such materials as stone, bone, and wood, were used for preparation of food, hunting, manufacture of weapons, and working of materials to produce clothing and useful artifacts. The development of metalworking made additional types of tools possible. Harnessing energy sources, such as animal power, wind, or steam, allowed increasingly complex tools to produce an even larger range of items, with the Industrial Revolution marking an inflection point in the use of tools. The introduction of widespread automation in the 19th and 20th centuries allowed tools to operate with minimal human supervision, further increasing the productivity of human labor.


title: Tool

text: While a common-sense understanding of the meaning of tool is widespread, several formal definitions have been proposed.


title: Tool

text: In 1981, Benjamin Beck published a widely used definition of tool use. This has been modified to:Other, briefer definitions have been proposed:


title: Tool

text: Anthropologists believe that the use of tools was an important step in the evolution of mankind. Because tools are used extensively by both humans and wild chimpanzees, it is widely assumed that the first routine use of tools took place prior to the divergence between the two species. These early tools, however, were likely made of perishable materials such as sticks, or consisted of unmodified stones that cannot be distinguished from other stones as tools.


title: Tool

text: Stone artifacts date back to about 2.5 million years ago. However, a 2010 study suggests the hominin species "Australopithecus afarensis" ate meat by carving animal carcasses with stone implements. This finding pushes back the earliest known use of stone tools among hominins to about 3.4 million years ago. Finds of actual tools date back at least 2.6 million years in Ethiopia. One of the earliest distinguishable stone tool forms is the hand axe.


title: Tool

text: Up until recently, weapons found in digs were the only tools of "early man" that were studied and given importance. Now, more tools are recognized as culturally and historically relevant. As well as hunting, other activities required tools such as preparing food, "...nutting, leatherworking, grain harvesting and woodworking..." Included in this group are "flake stone tools".


title: Tool

text: Tools are the most important items that the ancient humans used to climb to the top of the food chain; by inventing tools, they were able to accomplish tasks that human bodies could not, such as using a spear or bow to kill prey, since their teeth were not sharp enough to pierce many animals' skins. “Man the hunter” as the catalyst for Hominin change has been questioned. Based on marks on the bones at archaeological sites, it is now more evident that pre-humans were scavenging off of other predators' carcasses rather than killing their own food.


title: Tool

text: Many tools were made in prehistory or in the early centuries of recorded history, but archaeological evidence can provide dates of development and use.


title: Tool

text: Several of the six classic simple machines (wheel and axle, lever, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw) were invented in Mesopotamia. The wheel and axle mechanism first appeared with the potter's wheel, invented in what is now Iraq during the 5th millennium BC. This led to the invention of the wheeled vehicle in Mesopotamia during the early 4th millennium BC. The lever was used in the shadoof water-lifting device, the first crane machine, which appeared in Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC. and then in ancient Egyptian technology circa 2000 BC. The earliest evidence of pulleys date back to Mesopotamia in the early 2nd millennium BC.


title: Tool

text: The screw, the last of the simple machines to be invented, first appeared in Mesopotamia during the Neo-Assyrian period (911-609) BC. The Assyrian King Sennacherib (704–681 BC) claims to have invented automatic sluices and to have been the first to use water screw pumps, of up to 30 tons weight, which were cast using two-part clay molds rather than by the 'lost wax' process. The Jerwan Aqueduct (c. 688 BC) is made with stone arches and lined with waterproof concrete. The earliest evidence of water wheels and watermills date back to the ancient Near East in the 4th century BC, specifically in the Persian Empire before 350 BC, in the regions of Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Persia (Iran). This pioneering use of water power constituted the first human-devised motive force not to rely on muscle power (besides the sail).


title: Tool

text: Mechanical devices experienced a major expansion in their use in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome with the systematic employment of new energy sources, especially waterwheels. Their use expanded through the Dark Ages with the addition of windmills.


title: Tool

text: Machine tools occasioned a surge in producing new tools in the Industrial Revolution. Pre-industrial machinery was built by various craftsmenmillwrights built water and windmills, carpenters made wooden framing, and smiths and turners made metal parts. Wooden components had the disadvantage of changing dimensions with temperature and humidity, and the various joints tended to rack (work loose) over time. As the Industrial Revolution progressed, machines with metal parts and frames became more common.


title: Tool

text: Other important uses of metal parts were in firearms and threaded fasteners, such as machine screws, bolts, and nuts. There was also the need for precision in making parts. Precision would allow better working machinery, interchangeability of parts, and standardization of threaded fasteners. The demand for metal parts led to the development of several machine tools. They have their origins in the tools developed in the 18th century by makers of clocks and watches and scientific instrument makers to enable them to batch-produce small mechanisms. Before the advent of machine tools, metal was worked manually using the basic hand tools of hammers, files, scrapers, saws, and chisels. Consequently, the use of metal machine parts was kept to a minimum. Hand methods of production were very laborious and costly and precision was difficult to achieve. With their inherent precision, machine tools enabled the economical production of interchangeable parts.


title: Tool

text: Some tools may be combinations of other tools. An alarm-clock is for example a combination of a measuring tool (the clock) and a perception tool (the alarm). This enables the alarm-clock to be a tool that falls outside of all the categories mentioned above.


title: Tool

text: There is some debate on whether to consider protective gear items as tools, because they do not directly help perform work, just protect the worker like ordinary clothing. They do meet the general definition of tools and in many cases are necessary for the completion of the work. Personal protective equipment includes such items as gloves, safety glasses, ear defenders and biohazard suits.


title: Tool

text: Often, by design or coincidence, a tool may share key functional attributes with one or more other tools. In this case, some tools can substitute for other tools, either as a makeshift solution or as a matter of practical efficiency. "One tool does it all" is a motto of some importance for workers who cannot practically carry every specialized tool to the location of every work task, such as a carpenter who does not necessarily work in a shop all day and needs to do jobs in a customer's house. Tool substitution may be divided broadly into two classes: substitution "by-design", or "multi-purpose", and substitution as makeshift. Substitution "by-design" would be tools that are designed specifically to accomplish multiple tasks using only that one tool.


title: Tool

text: Substitution is "makeshift" when human ingenuity comes into play and a tool is used for an unintended purpose such as using a long screw driver to separate a cars control arm from a ball joint instead of using a tuning fork. In many cases, the designed secondary functions of tools are not widely known. For example, many wood-cutting hand saws integrate a square by incorporating a specially shaped handle that allows 90° and 45° angles to be marked by aligning the appropriate part of the handle with an edge and scribing along the back edge of the saw. The latter is illustrated by the saying "All tools can be used as hammers." Nearly all tools can be used to function as a hammer, even though very few tools are intentionally designed for it and even fewer work as well as the original.


title: Tool

text: Tools are also often used to substitute for many mechanical apparatuses, especially in older mechanical devices. In many cases a cheap tool could be used to occupy the place of a missing mechanical part. A window roller in a car could easily be replaced with a pair of vise-grips or regular pliers. A transmission shifter or ignition switch would be able to be replaced with a screwdriver. Again, these would be considered tools that are being used for their unintended purposes, substitution as makeshift. Tools such as a rotary tool would be considered the substitution "by-design", or "multi-purpose". This class of tools allows the use of one tool that has at least two different capabilities. "Multi-purpose" tools are basically multiple tools in one device/tool. Tools such as this are often power tools that come with many different attachments like a rotary tool does, so you could say that a power drill is a "multi-purpose" tool because you can do more than just one thing with a power drill.


title: Tool

text: A multi-tool is a hand tool that incorporates several tools into a single, portable device; the Swiss army knife represents one of the earliest examples. Other tools have a primary purpose but also incorporate other functionality – for example, lineman's pliers incorporate a gripper and cutter and are often used as a hammer; and some hand saws incorporate a square in the right-angle between the blade's dull edge and the saw's handle. This would also be the category of "multi-purpose" tools, since they are also multiple tools in one (multi-use and multi-purpose can be used interchangeably – compare hand axe). These types of tools were specifically made to catch the eye of many different craftsman who traveled to do their work. To these workers these types of tools were revolutionary because they were one tool or one device that could do several different things. With this new revolution of tools, the traveling craftsman would not have to carry so many tools with them to job sites, in that their space would be limited to the vehicle or to the beast of burden they were driving. Multi-use tools solve the problem of having to deal with many different tools.


title: Tool

text: Tool use by animals is a phenomenon in which an animal uses any kind of tool in order to achieve a goal such as acquiring food and water, grooming, defense, communication, recreation or construction. Originally thought to be a skill possessed only by humans, some tool use requires a sophisticated level of cognition. There is considerable discussion about the definition of what constitutes a tool and therefore which behaviours can be considered true examples of tool use. Observation has confirmed that a number of species can use tools including monkeys, apes, elephants, several birds, and sea otters. Now the unique relationship of humans with tools is considered to be that we are the only species that uses tools to make "other" tools.Primates are well known for using tools for hunting or gathering food and water, cover for rain, and self-defense. Chimpanzees have often been the object of study in regard to their usage of tools, most famously by Jane Goodall, since these animals are frequently kept in captivity and are closely related to humans. Wild tool-use in other primates, especially among apes and monkeys, is considered relatively common, though its full extent remains poorly documented, as many primates in the wild are mainly only observed distantly or briefly when in their natural environments and living without human influence. Some novel tool-use by primates may arise in a localized or isolated manner within certain unique primate cultures, being transmitted and practiced among socially connected primates through cultural learning. Many famous researchers, such as Charles Darwin in his book "The Descent of Man", mentioned tool-use in monkeys (such as baboons).


title: Tool

text: Among other mammals, both wild and captive elephants are known to create tools using their trunks and feet, mainly for swatting flies, scratching, plugging up waterholes that they have dug (to close them up again so the water doesn't evaporate), and reaching food that is out of reach. Many other social mammals particularly have been observed engaging in tool-use. A group of dolphins in Shark Bay uses sea sponges to protect their beaks while foraging. Sea otters will use rocks or other hard objects to dislodge food (such as abalone) and break open shellfish. Many or most mammals of the order Carnivora have been observed using tools, often to trap or break open the shells of prey, as well as for scratching.


title: Tool

text: Corvids (such as crows, ravens and rooks) are well known for their large brains (among birds) and tool use. New Caledonian crows are among the only animals that create their own tools. They mainly manufacture probes out of twigs and wood (and sometimes metal wire) to catch or impale larvae. Tool use in some birds may be best exemplified in nest intricacy. Tailorbirds manufacture 'pouches' to make their nests in. Some birds, such as weaver birds, build complex nests utilizing a diverse array of objects and materials, many of which are specifically chosen by certain birds for their unique qualities. Woodpecker finches insert twigs into trees in order to catch or impale larvae. Parrots may use tools to wedge nuts so that they can crack open the outer shell of nuts without launching away the inner contents. Some birds take advantage of human activity, such as carrion crows in Japan, which drop nuts in front of cars to crack them open.


title: Tool

text: Several species of fish use tools to hunt and crack open shellfish, extract food that is out of reach, or clear an area for nesting. Among cephalopods (and perhaps uniquely or to an extent unobserved among invertebrates), octopuses are known to use tools relatively frequently, such as gathering coconut shells to create a shelter or using rocks to create barriers.


title: Tool

text: A telephone is a communication tool that interfaces between two people engaged in conversation at one level. It also interfaces between each user and the communication network at another level. It is in the domain of media and communications technology that a counter-intuitive aspect of our relationships with our tools first began to gain popular recognition. Marshall McLuhan famously said "We shape our tools. And then our tools shape us." McLuhan was referring to the fact that our social practices co-evolve with our use of new tools and the refinements we make to existing tools.


title: R. Parthiban

text: R. Parthiban (born 14 October 1958) is an Indian actor and filmmaker who works mainly in Tamil cinema. He has directed 15 films, produced 13 films and acted in more than 70 films. He started his career as assistant director for K. Bhagyaraj in 1984 and the duo worked in over 20 films from 1984 to 1991. Parthiban is known for having directed critically acclaimed films such as "Pudhiya Paadhai" (1989) and "Housefull" (1999) won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil. He also won National Film Award – Special Jury Award in "Otha Seruppu Size 7" (2019).


title: R. Parthiban

text: His performances as actor are in successful films such as "Bharathi Kannamma" (1997), "Nee Varuvai Ena" (1999), "Vetri Kodi Kattu" (2000), "Azhagi" (2002), "Aayirathil Oruvan" (2010), "Melvilasom" (2011), "Otha Seruppu Size 7" (2019) and "Iravin Nizhal" (2022).


title: R. Parthiban

text: On 25 December 2018, he was appointed as the new Vice President of the Tamil Film Producers Council replacing Gautham Vasudev Menon and Prakash Raj who were jointly holding the position until 24 December 2018.


title: R. Parthiban

text: He started as an assistant director in the film "Vedikkai Manidhargal". He was even given an opportunity to assist in dialogue in the name of R. Moorthy. After this, he joined as an assistant of K. Bhagyaraj. At that time, he used to make around Rs 6000 a month by dubbing for various artists. He made his first film appearance in "Ranuva Veeran" (1981). Then, he played the role of a postman in his mentor's "Dhavani Kanavugal" (1984).


title: R. Parthiban

text: Apart from direction and acting, he produces films. He wrote a book, "Kirukkkalgal – Thamizh Kavithai Thoguppu", which was released by M. Karunanidhi. He runs a charitable trust named "R.Parthepan Manidha Neya Mandram".


title: R. Parthiban

text: In 1989, he made his directorial debut through "Pudhiya Paadhai", starring himself as an inhuman ruffian who gets reformed by his rape victim. The film was released to critical acclaim and emerged a box office success, while also winning several accolades, including the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Tamil, Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Film and Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Story Writer. In early 1990, he directed and acted in "Pondatti Thevai", which failed at the box office. In the end of 1990, he appeared in R. Sundarrajan's "Thalattu Padava" and in the devotional film "Engal Swamy Ayyappan". In 1991, he starred in S. P. Muthuraman's "Thaiyalkaran". In 1992, he starred in "Unnai Vaazhthi Paadugiren", co-starring with Suman Ranganathan and Mohini. He then directed and acted in "Sugamana Sumaigal", a clean family drama, which failed at the box office. In 1993, to recoup the financial losses, he directed and acted in the commercial film "Ulle Veliye". Ayyappa Prasad of "The New Indian Express" labelled the film as "flesh and bore". Despite negative reviews, the film has been declared a super hit at the box office. He then directed and acted in 1994 in "Sarigamapadani" and the next year in "Pullakuttikaran". In 1996, he acted in the comedy film "Tata Birla".


title: R. Parthiban

text: He won Tamil Nadu State Film Award for Best Actor for "Bharathi Kannamma" (1997). He played a man from a lower caste who a zamindari falls in love with. Parthipan, the actor, director and producer, loves breaking the conventional rules set by commercial cinema. He has taken roles that other heroes would carefully avoid, directed films that his critics found to be arty. The actor has remained uncompromising and stuck to his principles in spite of some not-so-memorable roles in the past. After the critically acclaimed and award-winning films such as "Housefull" (1999) and "Azhagi" (2002), audience and the trade have acknowledged the maker's undisputed talents. His 1999 Tamil film "Housefull" won the same award.


title: R. Parthiban

text: In 2001, he launched an ambitious directorial project titled "Yelelo", with A. R. Rahman composing four songs for the film. Despite having a high-profile launch and completion of a few filming schedules, the venture was shelved. Similarly, he launched three films simultaneously titled "Kartha", "Rowdy" and "Adi" after the failure of "Kudaikul Mazhai" (2004), though all projects were abandoned.


title: R. Parthiban

text: The film "Aayirathil Oruvan" (2010), in which he portrayed a Chola King, won him the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actor – Tamil.


title: R. Parthiban

text: His previously released movie "Kathai Thiraikathai Vasanam Iyakkam" becomes Parthiban's first directorial film in which he does not feature in the lead role. The film, which has a tagline reading "a film without a story?", began production in late 2013 and released on 15 August 2014 and received positive reviews from all the sides and was a huge blockbuster hit in the box office. In 2015, he portrayed a cop in "Massu Engira Masilamani" and played a comedian villain in "Naanum Rowdy Dhaan". He acted in supporting role in the "Maaveeran Kittu" (2016) and "Koditta Idangalai Nirappuga" (2017). He appeared in Kannada movie "Dada Is Back" (2017), which he played in lead role as undisputed king of the underworld in Bengaluru. Followed by a comedy film, "Podhuvaga Emmanasu Thangam" (2017). In 2018, he acted in the drama film "Keni".


title: R. Parthiban

text: In 2019, Parthiban wrote, directed and appeared in "Oththa Seruppu Size 7", as the only character. He revealed that it was his 18-year dream to make this film. Along with the outstanding performance and sharp visuals, the film is amplified by the amazing sound design which gives life to the uncanny, yet detailed confession of Masilamani. At 67th National Film Awards, Parthiban won the Special Jury Award. He also wins three awards at Toronto Tamil Film Festival, which includes the Jury Award for Best Feature Film, Jury Award for Best Feature Film Director and Best Solo Act Award. Parthiban has been a part of multi-starrers as well, including "Ponmagal Vandhal" (2020), "Tughlaq Durbar" (2021), "Yutha Satham" (2022) and "Ponniyin Selvan" (2022).


title: Blood type distribution by country

text: This list concerns blood type distribution between countries and regions. Blood type (also called a "blood group") is a classification of blood, based on the presence and absence of antibodies and inherited antigenic substances on the surface of red blood cells (RBCs). These antigens may be proteins, carbohydrates, glycoproteins, or glycolipids, depending on the blood group system.


title: Blood type distribution by country

text: Blood group B has its highest frequency in the Middle East, where it ranks as the largest share of the population. In Southeast Asia its share of the population is lowest, especially in Thailand and Indonesia, secondarily in East Asia, Northern Asia and neighboring Central Asia, and its incidence diminishes both towards the east and the west, falling to single-digit percentages in Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and Switzerland. It is believed to have been entirely absent from Native American and Australian Aboriginal populations prior to the arrival of Europeans in those areas.


title: Blood type distribution by country

text: Blood group A is associated with high frequencies in Europe, especially in Scandinavia and Central Europe, although its highest frequencies occur in some Australian Aboriginal populations and the Blackfoot Indians of Montana, USA.


title: Blood type distribution by country

text: In the ABO blood group system, there are three alleles: "i", "I", and "I". As both "I" and "I" are dominant over "i", only "ii" people have type O blood. Individuals with "II" or "Ii" have type A blood, and individuals with "II" or "Ii" have type B. Those with "II" have type AB.


title: Excess mortality in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin

text: Estimates of the number of deaths attributable to the Soviet revolutionary and dictator Joseph Stalin vary widely. The scholarly consensus affirms that archival materials declassified in 1991 contain irrefutable data far superior to sources used prior to 1991 such as statements from emigres and other informants. A minority of authors and journalists maintain that "statistics can never fully describe what happened".


text: Prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the archival revelations, some historians estimated that the numbers killed by Stalin's regime were 20 million or higher. After the Soviet Union dissolved, evidence from the Soviet archives was declassified and researchers were allowed to study it. This contained official records of 799,455 executions (1921–1953), around 1.7 million deaths in the Gulag, some 390,000 deaths during the dekulakization forced resettlement, and up to 400,000 deaths of persons deported during the 1940s, with a total of about 3.3 million officially recorded victims in these categories. According to historian Stephen Wheatcroft, approximately 1 million of these deaths were "purposive" while the rest happened through neglect and irresponsibility. The deaths of at least 5.5 to 6.5 million persons in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 are sometimes, though not always, included with the victims of the Stalin era.


text: According to official Soviet estimates, more than 14 million people passed through the "Gulag" from 1929 to 1953, with a further 7 to 8 million being deported and exiled to remote areas of the Soviet Union, including entire nationalities in several cases.


text: According to a 1993 study of recently declassified archival Soviet data, a total of 1,053,829 people died in the Gulag (not including labor colonies) from 1934 to 1953 (there was no archival data for the period 1919–1934). More recent archival figures for the deaths in the Gulag, labor colonies and prisons combined for 1931–1953 were 1.713 million. According to historian Michael Ellman, non-state estimates of the actual Gulag death toll are usually higher because historians such as Robert Conquest took into account the likelihood of unreliable record keeping. According to author Anne Applebaum, it was common practice to release prisoners who were either suffering from incurable diseases or near death.


text: Golfo Alexopoulos, history professor at the University of South Florida, believes that at least 6 million people died as a result of their detention in the gulags. This estimate is disputed by other scholars, with critics such as J. Hardy stating that the evidence Alexopoulos used is indirect and misinterpreted. Historian Dan Healey argues that the estimate has obvious methodological difficulties.


text: Citing materials pre-1991, author John G. Heidenrich estimates the number of deaths at 12 million. His book is not primarily about estimating deaths from repressive policies in the Soviet Union, and he appears to have relied on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's political and literary work "The Gulag Archipelago", which historian Stephen G. Wheatcroft explains was not intended as a historical fact but as a challenge to Soviet authorities after their years of secrecy.


text: According to estimates based on data from Soviet archives post-1991, there were around 1.6 million deaths during the whole period from 1929 to 1953. The tentative historical consensus is that of the 18 million people who passed through the gulag system from 1930 to 1953, between 1.5 and 1.7 million died as a result of their incarceration.


text: The deaths of 5.7 to perhaps 7.0 million people in the Soviet famine of 1932–1933 and Soviet collectivization of agriculture are included among the victims of repression during the period of Stalin by some historians. This categorization is controversial, as historians differ as to whether the famine in Ukraine was created as a deliberate part of the campaign of repression against kulaks and others was an unintended consequence of the struggle over forced collectivization, or was primarily a result of natural factors.


text: According to official figures there were 777,975 judicial executions for political charges from 1929–53, including 681,692 in 1937–1938, the years of the Great Purge. Unofficial estimates estimate a total number of Stalinism repression deaths in 1937–38 at 700,000–1,200,000. There were also operations of mass ethnic cleansing against various minorities living in Stalin's USSR, known as the National operations of the NKVD, with the largest one being the Polish Operation of the NKVD during which over 111,000 Polish communists and other Poles were exterminated.


text: The last major famine to hit the Soviet Union began in July 1946, reached its peak in February–August 1947 and then quickly diminished in intensity, although there were still some famine deaths in 1948. Economist Michael Ellman states that the hands of the state could have fed all those who died of starvation. He argues that had the policies of the Soviet regime been different, there might have been no famine at all or a much smaller one. Ellman claims that the famine resulted in an estimated 1 to 1.5 million lives lost in addition to secondary population losses due to reduced fertility.


text: Large numbers of kulaks regardless of their nationality were resettled to Siberia and Central Asia. According to data from Soviet archives, which were published in 1990, 1,803,392 people were sent to labor colonies and camps in 1930 and 1931, and 1,317,022 reached the destination. Deportations on a smaller scale continued after 1931. Data from the Soviet archives indicates 2.4 million kulaks were deported from 1930–1934. The reported number of kulaks and their relatives who had died in labour colonies from 1932 to 1940 was 389,521. Popular history author Simon Sebag Montefiore estimated that 15 million kulaks and their families were deported by 1937; during the deportation, many people died, but the full number is not known.


text: According to Russian historian Pavel Polian, 5.870 million persons were deported to forced settlements from 1920–1952, including 3.125 million from 1939–1952. Those ethnic minorities considered a threat to Soviet security in 1939–52 were forcibly deported to Special Settlements run by the NKVD. Poles, Ukrainians from western regions, Soviet Germans, Balts, and Estonians peoples from the Caucasus and Crimea were the primary victims of this policy. Data from the Soviet archives list 309,521 deaths in the Special Settlements from 1941–48 and 73,454 in 1949–50. According to Polian these people were not allowed to return to their home regions until after the death of Stalin, the exception being Soviet Germans who were not allowed to return to the Volga region of the Soviet Union. According to Soviet archives, the heaviest mortality rate was documented in people from the Northern Caucasus (the Chechens, Ingush) with 144,704 deaths, or 24.7% of the entire deported population, as well as 44,125 deaths from Crimea, or a 19.3% mortality rate.


text: The massacre was prompted by NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria's proposal to execute all captive members of the Polish officer corps, dated 5 March 1940, approved by the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, including its leader Joseph Stalin. The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000.


text: Writing in "Slavic Review", demographers Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver maintained that limited census data make a precise death count impossible. Instead, they offer a probable range of 3.2 to 5.5 million excess deaths for the entire Soviet Union from 1926 to 1939, a period that covers collectivization, the civil war in the countryside, the purges of the late 1930s and major epidemics of typhus and malaria.


text: Some historians claim that the death toll was around 20 million, a figure based on Conquest's book "The Great Terror" (1968), with some estimates relying in part on demographic losses such as Conquest's. In 2001, American historian Richard Pipes argued that the population had decreased by 9 to 10 million people from the 1932 to 1939 censuses. In 2003, British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore suggested that Stalin was ultimately responsible for the deaths of at least 20 million people. In 2006, political scientist Rudolph Rummel wrote that the earlier higher victim total estimates are correct, although he included those killed by the government of the Soviet Union in other Eastern European countries as well. In his most recent edition of "The Great Terror" (2007), Conquest stated that while exact numbers may never be known with complete certainty, at least 15 million people were killed "by the whole range of Soviet regime's terrors." According to Barbara Anderson and Brian Silver, historians such as Robert Conquest made the most primitive of errors. They asserted that these Cold Warriors overestimated fertility rates and underrated the impact of assimilation, through which many Ukrainians were redesignated as Russians in the 1939 census, confusing population deficits, which included unborn children, with excess deaths.


text: Historians such as J. Arch Getty, Stephen G. Wheatcroft, and others, insist that the opening of the Soviet archives has vindicated the lower estimates put forth by the revisionist school. In 2011, after assessing twenty years of historical research in Eastern European archives, American historian Timothy D. Snyder stated that Stalin deliberately killed about 6 million, which rise to 9 million if foreseeable deaths arising from policies are taken into account.


text: Some historians believe that the official archival figures of the categories that were recorded by Soviet authorities are unreliable and incomplete. In addition to failures regarding comprehensive recordings, as one additional example, Canadian historian Robert Gellately and Montefiore argue that the many suspects beaten and tortured to death while in "investigative custody" were likely not to have been counted amongst the executed. Conversely, Wheatcroft states that prior to the opening of the archives for historical research, "our understanding of the scale and the nature of Soviet repression has been extremely poor" and that some specialists who wish to maintain earlier high estimates of the Stalinist death toll are "finding it difficult to adapt to the new circumstances when the archives are open and when there are plenty of irrefutable data" and instead "hang on to their old Sovietological methods with round-about calculations based on odd statements from emigres and other informants who are supposed to have superior knowledge." British historian Michael Ellman argues that mass deaths from famines should be placed in a different category than the repression victims, mentioning that throughout Russian history famines and droughts have been a common occurrence, including the Russian famine of 1921–22, which occurred before Stalin came to power. He also states that famines were widespread throughout the world in the 19th and 20th centuries in countries such as China, India, Ireland, and Russia. Ellman compared the behaviour of the Stalinist regime vis-à-vis the Holodomor to that of the British government (towards Ireland and India) and the G8 in contemporary times. According to Ellman, the G8 "are guilty of mass manslaughter or mass deaths from criminal negligence because of their not taking obvious measures to reduce mass deaths" and Stalin's "behaviour was no worse than that of many rulers in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries." Ben Kiernan, an American academic and historian, described Stalin's era as "by far the bloodiest of Soviet or even Russian history".


text: Stalin has been accused of genocide in the cases of forced population transfer in the Soviet Union. Raphael Lemkin, a lawyer of Polish-Jewish descent who initiated the Genocide Convention and coined the term genocide himself, assumed that genocide was perpetrated in the context of the mass deportation of the Chechens, Ingush, Volga Germans, Crimean Tatars, Kalmyks and Karachay. Some academics disagree with the classification of deportation as genocide. Professor Alexander Statiev argues that Stalin's administration did not have a conscious genocidal intent to exterminate the various deported peoples, but that Soviet "political culture, poor planning, haste, and wartime shortages were responsible for the genocidal death rate among them." He rather considers these deportations an example of Soviet assimilation of "unwanted nations." According to Professor Amir Weiner, "...It was their territorial identity and not their physical existence or even their distinct ethnic identity that the regime sought to eradicate." According to Professor Francine Hirsch, "although the Soviet regime practiced politics of discrimination and exclusion, it did not practice what contemporaries thought of as "racial politics"." To her, these mass deportations were based on the concept that nationalities were "sociohistorical groups with a shared consciousness and not racial-biological groups". In contrast to this view, Jon K. Chang contends that the deportations had been in fact based on ethnicity and that "social historians" in the West have failed to champion the rights of marginalised ethnicities in the Soviet Union.


text: Contemporary historians classify these deportations as a crime against humanity and ethnic persecution. Two of these cases of mass deportation with the highest mortality rates, the deportation of the Crimean Tatars and the deportation of the Chechens and Ingush, were recognized as genocides by Ukraine (plus 3 other countries) and the European Parliament respectively. On 26 April 1991 the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Socialist Federal Soviet Republic, under its chairman Boris Yeltsin, passed the law On the Rehabilitation of Repressed Peoples with Article 2 denouncing all mass deportations as "Stalin's policy of defamation and genocide."


text: Historians continue to debate whether or not the 1932–33 Ukrainian famine, known in Ukraine as the Holodomor, should be called a genocide. Twenty six countries officially recognise it under the legal definition of genocide. In 2006, the Ukrainian Parliament declared it to be such, and in 2010 a Ukrainian court posthumously convicted Stalin, Lazar Kaganovich, Stanislav Kosior, and other Soviet leaders of genocide. Popular among some Ukrainian nationalists is the idea that Stalin consciously organised the famine to suppress national desires among the Ukrainian people. This interpretation has been disputed by more recent historical studies. These have articulated the view that while Stalin's policies contributed significantly to the high mortality rate, there is no evidence that Stalin or the Soviet government consciously engineered the famine. The idea that this was a targeted attack on the Ukrainians is complicated by the widespread suffering that also affected other Soviet peoples in the famine, including the Russians. Within Ukraine, ethnic Poles and Bulgarians died in similar proportions to ethnic Ukrainians. Despite any lack of clear intent on Stalin's part, the historian Norman Naimark noted that although there may not be sufficient "evidence to convict him in an international court of justice as a genocidaire [...] that does not mean that the event itself cannot be judged as genocide."


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Following her first book "The Beauty Myth" (1991), she became a leading spokeswoman of what has been described as the third wave of the feminist movement. Feminists including Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan praised her work. Others, including Camille Paglia, criticized it. In the 1990s, she was a political advisor to the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Al Gore.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf's later books include the bestseller "" in 2007 and "". Critics have challenged the quality and accuracy of the scholarship in her books; her serious misreading of court records for "Outrages" (2019) led to its US publication being cancelled. Wolf's career in journalism has included topics such as abortion and the Occupy Wall Street movement in articles for media outlets such as "The Nation", "The New Republic", "The Guardian", and "The Huffington Post".


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Since around 2014, Wolf has been described, by journalists and media outlets, as a conspiracy theorist. She has received criticism for promoting misinformation on topics such as beheadings carried out by ISIS, the Western African Ebola virus epidemic and Edward Snowden.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: She has objected to COVID-19 lockdowns and has criticized COVID-19 vaccines. In June 2021, her Twitter account was suspended for posting anti-vaccine misinformation.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf was born in San Francisco, to a Jewish family. Her mother is Deborah Goleman Wolf, an anthropologist and the author of "The Lesbian Community". Her father was Leonard Wolf, a Romanian-born scholar of gothic horror novels, faculty member at San Francisco State University, and Yiddish translator. Leonard Wolf died from Parkinson's disease on March 20, 2019. Wolf has a brother, Aaron, and a half-brother, Julius, from her father's earlier relationship; it remained a secret until Wolf was in her 30s. She attended Lowell High School and debated in regional speech tournaments as a member of the Lowell Forensic Society.


title: Naomi Wolf

text: Wolf attended Yale University, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1984. From 1985 to 1987, she was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford. Wolf's initial period at Oxford University was difficult as she experienced "raw sexism, overt snobbery and casual antisemitism". Her writing became so personal and subjective that her tutor advised against submitting her doctoral thesis. Wolf told interviewer Rachel Cooke, writing for "The Observer", in 2019: "My subject didn't exist. I wanted to write feminist theory, and I kept being told by the dons there was no such thing." Her writing at this time formed the basis of her first book, "The Beauty Myth".