title: Western honey bee

text: Western honey bees collect flower nectar and convert it to honey, which is stored in the hive. The nectar, transported in the bees' stomachs, is converted with the addition of digestive enzymes and storage in a honey cell for partial dehydration. Nectar and honey provide the energy for the bees' flight muscles and for heating the hive during the winter. Western honey bees also collect pollen which, after being processed to bee bread, supplies protein and fat for the bee brood to grow. Centuries of selective breeding by humans have created western honey bees which produce far more honey than the colony needs, and beekeepers (also known as apiarists) harvest the surplus honey.


title: Western honey bee

text: Beekeepers provide a place for the colony to live and store honey. There are seven basic types of beehive: skeps, Langstroth hives, top-bar hives, box hives, log gums, D. E. hives, and miller hives. All U.S. states require beekeepers to use movable frames to allow bee inspectors to check the brood for disease. This allows beekeepers to keep Langstroth, top-bar and D.E. hives without special permission, granted for purposes such as museum use. Modern hives also enable beekeepers to transport bees, moving from field to field as crops require pollinating (a source of income for beekeepers).


title: Western honey bee

text: In cold climates, some beekeepers have kept colonies alive (with varying degrees of success) by moving them indoors for winter. While this can protect the colonies from extremes of temperature and make winter care and feeding more convenient for the beekeeper, it increases the risk of dysentery and causes an excessive buildup of carbon dioxide from the bees' respiration. Inside wintering has been refined by Canadian beekeepers, who use large barns solely for the wintering of bees; automated ventilation systems assist in carbon dioxide dispersal.


title: Western honey bee

text: Honey bees are one of the products of a beehive. They can be purchased as mated queens, in spring packages of a queen along with two to five pounds (0.91 to 2.27 kg) of honey bees, as nucleus colonies (which include frames of brood), or as full colonies. Commerce of western honey bees dates back to as early as 1622, when the first colonies of bees were shipped from England to Virginia. Modern methods of producing queens and dividing colonies for increase date back to the late 1800s. Honey was extracted by killing off the hive, and bees and bee products were mainly an object of local trade. The first commercial beekeeper in the United States is considered Moses Quinby of New York, who experimented with movable box hives, which allow extraction without killing the hive. The improvements in roads and motor vehicles after World War I allowed commercial beekeepers to expand the size of their businesses.


title: Western honey bee

text: The western honey bee is an important pollinator of crops; this service accounts for much of the species' commercial value. In 2005, the estimated commercial value of western honey bees was just under $200 billion worldwide. A large number of the crop species farmed worldwide depend on it. Although orchards and fields have increased in size, wild pollinators have dwindled. In a number of regions the pollination shortage is addressed by migratory beekeepers, who supply hives during a crop bloom and move them after the blooming period. Commercial beekeepers plan their movements and wintering locations according to anticipated pollination services. At higher latitudes it is difficult (or impossible) to overwinter sufficient bees, or to have them ready for early blooming plants. Much migration is seasonal, with hives wintering in warmer climates and moving to follow the bloom at higher latitudes.


title: Western honey bee

text: In California, almond pollination occurs in February, early in the growing season before local hives have built up their populations. Almond orchards require two hives per acre, or per hive, for maximum yield, and pollination is dependent on the importation of hives from warmer climates. Almond pollination (in February and March in the U.S.) is the largest managed pollination event in the world, requiring more than one-third of all managed honey bees in the country. Bees are also moved en masse for pollination of apples in New York, Michigan, and Washington. Despite honey bees' inefficiency as blueberry pollinators, large numbers are moved to Maine because they are the only pollinators who can be easily moved and concentrated for this and other monoculture crops. Bees and other insects maintain flower constancy by transferring pollen to other biologically specific plants; this prevents flower stigmas from being clogged with pollen from other species. In 2000, Drs. Roger Morse and Nicholas Calderone of Cornell University attempted to quantify the effects of the western honey bee on only US food crops. Their calculations came up with a figure of US$14.6 billion in food crop value.


title: Western honey bee

text: Honey is the complex substance made from nectar and sweet deposits from plants and trees, which are gathered, modified and stored in the comb by honey bees. Honey is a biological mixture of inverted sugars, primarily glucose and fructose. It has antibacterial and anti-fungal properties. Honey from the western honey bee, along with the bee "Tetragonisca angustula", has specific antibacterial activity towards an infection-causing bacteria, "Staphylococcus aureus". Honey will not rot or ferment when stored under normal conditions, but it will crystallize over time. Although crystallized honey is acceptable for human use, bees can only use liquid honey and will remove and discard any crystallized honey from the hive.


title: Western honey bee

text: Bees produce honey by collecting nectar, a clear liquid consisting of nearly 80 percent water and complex sugars. The collecting bees store the nectar in a second stomach and return to the hive, where worker bees remove the nectar. The worker bees digest the raw nectar for about 30 minutes, using digestive enzymes to break down the complex sugars into simpler ones. Raw honey is then spread in empty honeycomb cells to dry, reducing its water content to less than 20 percent. When nectar is being processed, honey bees create a draft through the hive by fanning with their wings. When the honey has dried, the honeycomb cells are sealed (capped) with wax to preserve it.


title: Western honey bee

text: Mature worker bees secrete beeswax from glands on their abdomen, using it to form the walls and caps of the comb. When honey is harvested, the wax can be collected for use in products like candles and seals.


title: Western honey bee

text: Bees collect pollen in a pollen basket and carry it back to the hive where, after undergoing fermentation and turning into bee bread, it becomes a protein source for brood-rearing. Excess pollen can be collected from the hive; although it is sometimes consumed as a dietary supplement by humans, bee pollen may cause an allergic reaction in susceptible individuals.


title: Western honey bee

text: Bee brood, the eggs, larvae, or pupae of honey bees, is edible and highly nutritious. Bee brood contains the same amount of protein that beef or poultry does. Bee brood is often harvested as a byproduct when the beekeeper has excess bees and does not wish to have any more.


title: Western honey bee

text: Propolis is a resinous mixture collected by honey bees from tree buds, sap flows or other botanical sources, which is used as a sealant for unwanted open spaces in the hive. Although propolis is alleged to have health benefits (tincture of propolis is marketed as a cold and flu remedy), it may cause severe allergic reactions in some individuals. Propolis is also used in wood finishes, and gives a Stradivarius violin its unique red color.


title: Western honey bee

text: Royal jelly is a honey bee secretion used to nourish the larvae and queen. It is marketed for its alleged but unsupported claims of health benefits. On the other hand, it may cause severe allergic reactions in some individuals.


title: Western honey bee

text: As of October 28, 2006, the Honey Bee Genome Sequencing Consortium fully sequenced and analyzed the genome of "Apis mellifera," the western honey bee. Since 2007, attention has been devoted to colony collapse disorder, a decline in western honey bee colonies in a number of regions.


title: Western honey bee

text: The western honey bee is the third insect, after the fruit fly and the mosquito, whose genome has been mapped. According to scientists who analyzed its genetic code, the honey bee originated in Africa and spread to Europe in two ancient migrations. Scientists have found that genes related to smell outnumber those for taste, and the European honey bee has fewer genes regulating immunity than the fruit fly and the mosquito. The genome sequence also revealed that several groups of genes, particularly those related to circadian rhythm, resembled those of vertebrates more than other insects. Another significant finding from the honey bee genome study was that the western honey bee was the first insect to be discovered with a functional DNA methylation system since functional key enzymes (DNA methyltransferase-1 and -3) were identified in the genome. DNA methylation is one of the important mechanisms in epigenetics to study gene expression and regulation without changing the DNA sequence, but modifications on DNA activity. DNA methylation later was identified to play an important role in gene regulation and gene splicing. The genome is unusual in having few transposable elements, although they were present in the evolutionary past (remains and fossils have been found) and evolved more slowly than those in fly species.


title: Western honey bee

text: Since 2018 a new version of the honey bee genome is available on NCBI (Amel_HAv3.1, BioProject ID: PRJNA471592). This assembly contains full chromosome length scaffolds, which means that the sequence data for each chromosome is contiguous, and not split between multiple pieces called scaffolds. The existence of a highly contiguous reference genome for a species enables more detailed investigations of evolutionary processes that affect the genome as well as more accurate estimations of for example differentiation between populations and diversity within populations.


title: Western honey bee

text: An important process that shapes the honey bee genome is meiotic recombination, the rate of which is strongly elevated in honey bees and other social insects of the Hymenoptera order compared to most other eukaryotic species except fungi and protozoa. The reason for elevated recombination rates in social Hymenoptera is not fully understood, but one theory is that it is related to their social behaviour. The increased genetic diversity resulting from high recombination rates could make the workers less vulnerable to parasites and facilitate their specialisations to different tasks in the colony.


title: Western honey bee

text: Western honey bee populations face threats to their survival increasing interests into other pollinator species, like the common eastern bumblebee. North American and European populations were severely depleted by "Varroa" mite infestations during the early 1990s, and U.S. beekeepers were further affected by colony collapse disorder in 2006 and 2007. Some subspecies of "Apis mellifera" show naturally varroa sensitive hygiene, for example Apis mellifera lamarckii and Apis mellifera carnica. Improved cultural practices and chemical treatments against "Varroa" mites saved most commercial operations; new bee breeds are beginning to reduce beekeeper dependence on acaricides. Feral bee populations were greatly reduced during this period; they are slowly recovering, primarily in mild climates, due to natural selection for "Varroa" resistance and repopulation by resistant breeds. Although it is generally believed that insecticides have also depleted bee populations, particularly when used in excess of label directions, as bee pests and diseases (including American foulbrood and tracheal mites) are becoming resistant to medications, research in this regard has not been conclusive. A 2012 study of the effect of neonicotinoid-based insecticides showed "no effects observed in field studies at field-realistic dosages." A new study in 2020 found that neonicotinoid insecticides affected the developmental stability of honey bees, particularly haploid males were more susceptible to neonicotinoids than diploid females. The 2020 study also found that heterozygosity may play a key role in buffering insecticide exposure.


title: Western honey bee

text: In North America, various native milkweed species may be found with dead western honey bees stuck to their flowers. The non-native western honey bees are attracted to the flowers but are not adapted to their pollination mechanisms. The milkweed pollinium is collected when the tarsus (foot) of an insect falls into one of the flower's stigmatic slits as it obtains nectar from the flower's hood. If the insect is unable to remove its tarsus from the stigmatic slit it is likely to die due to predation or starvation/exhaustion. If the insect is able to escape with damaged or missing tarsi it may also be likely to die from its injuries. Western honey bees which escape with their tarsi intact may have their nectar gathering ability obstructed by parts of the pollinia being stuck to the bee's proboscis, resulting in starvation. The pollinia may also stick to the bee's tarsal claws, causing a lack of climbing ability and honey gathering which may result in expulsion from the colony leading to death. Native butterflies, moths, flies, beetles, bees and wasps are common milkweed visitors which are often able to escape without issue, though some species of "Megachile", "Halictus", "Astata", "Lucilia", "Trichius", "Pamphila" and "Scepsis" have been found dead on the flowers. After removing over 140 dead bees from a patch of "A. sullivantii", entomologist Charles Robertson quipped "... it seems that the flowers are better adapted to kill hive-bees than to produce fruit through their aid."


title: Western honey bee

text: Insect predators of western honey bees include the Asian giant hornet and other wasps, robber flies, dragonflies such as the green darner, some mantises, water striders and the European beewolf.


title: Western honey bee

text: Arachnid predators of western honey bees include fishing spiders, lynx spiders, goldenrod spiders and St. Andrew's cross spiders.


title: Western honey bee

text: Reptile and amphibian predators of western honey bees include the black girdled lizard, anoles, and other lizards, and various anuran amphibians including the American toad, the American bullfrog and the wood frog.


title: Western honey bee

text: Specialist bird predators of western honey bees include the bee-eaters; other birds that may take western honey bees include grackles, hummingbirds, tyrant flycatchers and the summer tanager. Most birds that eat bees do so opportunistically; however, summer tanagers will sit on a limb and catch dozens of bees from the hive entrance as they emerge.


title: Western honey bee

text: Mammals that sometimes take western honey bees include giant armadillos, both brown bears and black bears, opossums, raccoons, skunks, the North American least shrew and the honey badger.


title: Western honey bee

text: As an invasive species, feral western honey bees are a significant environmental problem in non-native areas. Imported bees may displace native bees and birds, and may also promote reproduction of invasive plants ignored by native pollinators.


title: Western honey bee

text: Honey bees are not native to the Americas, arriving with colonists in North America in the 18th century. Thomas Jefferson mentioned this in his "Notes on the State of Virginia":


title: Western honey bee

text: Honey bees have become an invasive species in the US, outcompeting native pollinators when resources are tight. With an increased number of honey bees in a specific area due to beekeeping, domesticated bees and native wild bees often have to compete for the limited habitat and food sources available. Western honey bees may become defensive in response to the seasonal arrival of competition from other colonies, particularly Africanized bees which may be on the offence and defence year round due to their tropical origin. In the United Kingdom, honey bees are known to compete with native bumblebees such as "Bombus hortorum", because they forage at the same sites. To resolve the issue and maximize both their total consumption during foraging, bumblebees forage early in the morning, while honey bees forage during the afternoon.


title: Western honey bee

text: Most flowering plants depend on specialized pollinators to efficiently fertilize them. Cucurbits, for example, are pollinated by squash bees that specifically visit the early-blooming male flowers before sunrise, when honey bees are inactive, and then return to pollinate the female flowers later in the day. Such symbiotic relationships also mean that the specialized pollinator will be covered mainly in its host's specific pollen.


title: Western honey bee

text: The very generalized nature of the honey bee's nectar-gathering activities, potentially visiting dozens of different species in a single day, means that a flower visited by a honey bee will often get very little pollen from its own species. This diminished pollination can reduce the plant's ability to produce seeds, especially when the honey bees are squeezing out the native pollinators for a species, a problem occurring all over the United States because of honey bees and other invasive species.


title: Western honey bee

text: Unlike native bees, they do not properly extract or transfer pollen from plants with pore anthers (anthers which only release pollen through tiny apical pores); this requires buzz pollination, a behavior rarely exhibited by honey bees. Honey bees reduce fruiting in "Melastoma affine", a plant with pore anthers, by robbing its stigmas of previously deposited pollen.


title: Western honey bee

text: Apart from "Apis mellifera", there are six other species in the genus "Apis". These are "Apis andreniformis", "Apis cerana", "Apis dorsata", "Apis florea", "Apis koschevnikovi", and "Apis nigrocincta". These species all originated in southern and southeastern Asia. Only "Apis mellifera" is thought to have originated in Europe, Asia, and Africa.


title: Conjugal visit

text: A conjugal visit is a scheduled period in which an inmate of a prison or jail is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor. The visitor is usually their legal spouse, and the visit's purpose is usually sexual activity. The generally recognized basis for permitting such visits in modern times is to preserve family bonds and increase the chances of success for a prisoner's eventual return to ordinary life after release from prison. They also provide an incentive for inmates to comply with the various day-to-day rules and regulations of the prison.


title: Conjugal visit

text: Conjugal visits usually take place in designated rooms or a structure provided for that purpose, such as a trailer or a small cabin. Supplies such as soap, condoms, lubricant, bed linens, and towels may be provided.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In Australia, conjugal visits are permitted in the Australian Capital Territory and Victoria. Other jurisdictions, including Western Australia and Queensland, do not permit conjugal visits.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In Brazil, male prisoners are eligible to be granted conjugal visits for both heterosexual and homosexual relationships, while women's conjugal visits are tightly regulated, if granted at all.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In Canada, all inmates in federal correctional facilities, with the exception of those on disciplinary restrictions or at risk for family violence, are permitted "private family visits" of up to 72 hours' duration once every two months. Eligible visitors, who may not themselves be prison inmates, are: spouse, or common-law partner of at least six months; children; parents; foster parents; siblings; grandparents; and "persons with whom, in the opinion of the institutional head, the inmate has a close familial bond". Food is provided by the institution but paid for by the inmates and visitors, who are also responsible for cleaning the unit after the visit. Prison staff have regular contact with the inmate and visitors during a visit.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In the Czech Republic, a prison warden has the authority to allow an inmate "a visit without visual and auditory supervision of the employees of the Prison Service". Inmate's medical check is required before such visit is permitted.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In Denmark, conjugal visits are permissible. The State Prison of East Jutland has apartments for couples, where inmates who have been sentenced to more than eight years in prison can have visitation for 47 hours per visit.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In France, inmates are permitted conjugal visits. Visits last up to 72 hours and take place in mini-apartments consisting of two small rooms, a kitchen and a dining area.


title: Conjugal visit

text: Germany allows prisoners and their spouses or partners to apply for conjugal visits. Those who are approved are allowed unsupervised visits so that prisoners can preserve intimate bonds with their partners. However, prisoners are searched before being allowed a visit. In 2010, an inmate murdered his girlfriend and attempted suicide during a visit, leading to additional criticism of the lax security in German prisons.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In 2015, the Punjab and Haryana High Court held that the right of married convicts and jail inmates to have conjugal visits or artificial insemination for pregnancy was a fundamental right.


title: Conjugal visit

text: Ireland does not allow conjugal visits. Marie and Noel Murray, an anarchist married couple imprisoned for a 1976 murder, lost a 1991 appeal for conjugal rights. The Supreme Court ruled that the Constitutional right to beget children within marriage was suspended while a spouse was lawfully imprisoned.


title: Conjugal visit

text: The Israel Prison Service (IPS) allows standard conjugal visits to inmates who are married or are in a common-law relationship or if their partner has been visiting them frequently for at least two years, and have a record of good behavior. Inmates who receive prison furloughs are not eligible for conjugal visits. Conjugal visits can be withheld on security grounds or as a means of punishment for misbehavior. IPS guidelines were clarified in July 2013 to allow conjugal visits of same-sex partners.


title: Conjugal visit

text: Conjugal visits are a universal practice in Mexico, independent of a prisoner's marital status; in some correctional facilities entire families are allowed to live in prisons with their imprisoned relative for extended periods. Specifically in Mexico City, in July 2007, the prison system in that city has begun to allow gay prisoners to have conjugal visits from their partners, on the basis of a 2003 law which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.


title: Conjugal visit

text: The Netherlands allows for one unsupervised visit ("Bezoek zonder Toezicht") per month, provided the imprisonment period is at least six months and there is a close and durable relation between the partners. This does not apply to maximum security penitentiaries.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In Pakistan, conjugal visits prior to 2009 were permitted only under special circumstances. In August 2009, Federal Shariat Court ruled that married prisoners should be allowed conjugal visits at the designated facilities within the jail complex and alternatively, they should be granted a short parole to visit their spouses. Following the ruling, the Province of Sindh was the first to adopt legislation providing conjugal visits for married prisoners within Jail premises. Human Rights Book 2010 reports that Conjugal visits are now available for Prisoners in all Provinces and Federal territories if they are male and married. Since homosexuality is considered a criminal offense in Pakistan and same-sex marriage is not recognized by law, this privilege applies only to heterosexual couples.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In the Russian penal system, since a campaign of prison reform that began in 2001, well-behaved prisoners are granted an eighteen-day holiday furlough from incarceration to see loved ones. Prisoners also get extended on-site family visits, approximately once per month.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In Spain, prisoners are allowed conjugal visits every four to eight weeks. They are held in private rooms and can last up to three hours. Couples are provided with condoms, shower facilities, and clean towels.


title: Conjugal visit

text: Since April 2013, the Turkish General Directorate of Prisons and Detention offers conjugal visits as a reward to well-behaved prisoners.


title: Conjugal visit

text: The English, Welsh, Scottish and Northern Irish prison systems do not allow conjugal visits. However, home visits, with a greater emphasis on building other links with the outside world to which the prisoner will be returned, are allowed. These home visits are usually only granted to prisoners who have a few weeks to a few months remaining of a long sentence. Furthermore, home visits are more likely to be granted if the prisoner is deemed to have a low risk of absconding (i.e. prisoners being held in open prisons have a better chance of being granted home visits than prisoners being held in closed conditions).


title: Conjugal visit

text: The first state to implement conjugal visits was Mississippi in the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman). It was enacted to convince black male prisoners to work harder in their manual labor. This was done unofficially at first, but had become official policy at Parchman Penitentiary by the 1950s.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In "Lyons v. Gilligan" (1974), the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio held that prisoners have no federal constitutional right to conjugal visits with their spouses during sentences.


title: Conjugal visit

text: As of 2008, conjugal visitation programs are now known as the extended-family visits or family-reunion visits because mothers, fathers, and other family members may attend these visits. The focus is on family ties and rehabilitation.


title: Conjugal visit

text: The United States Federal Bureau of Prisons does not allow conjugal visits for prisoners in federal custody.


title: Conjugal visit

text: For prisoners in state custody, the availability of conjugal visits is governed by the law of the particular state. The four states that currently allow conjugal visits are California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington.


title: Conjugal visit

text: Where conjugal visits are allowed, inmates must meet certain requirements to qualify for this privilege: The visitor may be required to undergo a background check, and the inmate must also be free of any sexually transmitted diseases. As a matter of procedure, both visitor and inmate are searched before and after the visit, to ensure that the visitor has not attempted to smuggle any items into or out of the facility.


title: Conjugal visit

text: Jorja Leap, a professor of social welfare at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California, Los Angeles stated that criminologists believe allowing conjugal visits would build family ties and reduce recidivism. Over the last 40 years, most new prisons included special buildings specifically designed for conjugal visits.


title: Conjugal visit

text: By the early 1990s, 17 states had conjugal programs. According to Leap, conjugal visits declined after an increase in attitudes that prison should be a place for punishment and that conjugal visits were not appropriate for people being punished, and also because academic literature in the 1980s and 1990s argued that it was not possible to rehabilitate some criminals. Many states that once allowed conjugal visits have since eliminated the programs. In April 2011, New York adopted legislation to allow family visits for married partners. In January 2014, the head of the Mississippi Department of Corrections, Chris Epps, terminated the state conjugal program. New Mexico announced it was also ending its program in May 2014.


title: Conjugal visit

text: In June 2007, the California Department of Corrections announced it would allow same-sex conjugal visits. The policy was enacted to comply with a 2005 state law requiring state agencies to give the same rights to domestic partners that heterosexual couples receive. The new rules allow for visits only by registered married same sex couples or domestic partners who are not themselves incarcerated. Further, the same-sex marriage or domestic partnership must have been established before the prisoner was incarcerated.


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Michael Moriarty (born April 5, 1941) is an American-Canadian actor and jazz musician. He received an Emmy Award and Golden Globe Award for his first acting role on American television as a Nazi SS officer in the 1978 mini-series "Holocaust" as well as a Tony Award in 1974 for his performance in the play "Find Your Way Home". He played Executive Assistant District Attorney Benjamin Stone for the first four seasons (1990–1994) of the television show "Law & Order." Moriarty is also known for his roles in films such as "Bang the Drum Slowly", "Who'll Stop the Rain", "Q: The Winged Serpent", "The Stuff", "Pale Rider", "Troll", "Courage Under Fire", and "Shiloh".


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Michael Moriarty was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 5, 1941. He is the son of Eleanor ("née" Paul) and George Moriarty, a surgeon. His grandfather George Moriarty was a third baseman, umpire and manager in major league baseball for nearly 40 years.


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Moriarty attended middle school at Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills before transferring to the University of Detroit Jesuit High School, graduating in 1959. He then matriculated at Dartmouth College, where he was a theatre college major, in the class of 1963. After receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree, he left for London, England, where he enrolled in the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA), having received a Fulbright Scholarship.


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Before gaining fame in films, Moriarty worked for several years as an actor at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. In 1973, Moriarty was cast as the egocentric Henry Wiggen in "Bang the Drum Slowly" opposite Robert De Niro as a slow-witted catcher who becomes terminally ill. In the same year, Moriarty starred in a TV movie adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "The Glass Menagerie" with Katharine Hepburn. Coincidentally, the film also featured Sam Waterston, who later replaced Moriarty as the Executive Assistant District Attorney on "Law & Order". Moriarty's role in "The Glass Menagerie" (as "Jim," the Gentleman Caller; Waterston played the son "Tom") won him an Emmy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1974, Moriarty starred as rookie detective Bo Lockley in the acclaimed police drama "Report to the Commissioner".


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Moriarty won a Tony Award in 1974 for his performance in the play "Find Your Way Home". His career on the screen was slow to develop while his theatre career was flourishing. He starred as the German SS officer Erik Dorf in the television miniseries "Holocaust", which earned him another Emmy. Through the 1980s, Moriarty starred in such Larry Cohen movies as "Q", "The Stuff", "", and "A Return to Salem's Lot" (much later, he appeared in Cohen's "Masters of Horror" episode "Pick Me Up"), as well as in Clint Eastwood's "Pale Rider" and "The Hanoi Hilton". In 1986, he starred in the fantasy science fiction movie "Troll", playing the role of Harry Potter Sr. (unrelated to the Harry Potter series).


title: Michael Moriarty

text: In 1989, Moriarty starred in the HBO production "", which dramatized the Soviet Union's shoot-down of Korean Air Lines flight 007 in 1983. He portrayed U.S. Air Force Major Hank Daniels, who was largely ignored (if not ridiculed) for showing how the ill-fated airliner had strayed off course into air space known by the Soviets to be used by U.S. Air Force electronic surveillance planes as they approached Soviet air space.


title: Michael Moriarty

text: From 1990 to 1994, Moriarty starred as Ben Stone on "Law & Order". He left the show in 1994, alleging that his departure was a result of his threatening a lawsuit against then-Attorney General Janet Reno, who had cited "Law & Order" as offensively violent. Moriarty criticized Reno's comment and claimed that she wanted to censor not only shows like "Law & Order" but also such fare as "Murder, She Wrote". He later accused "Law & Order" executive producer Dick Wolf of not taking his concerns seriously and claimed that Wolf and other network executives were "caving in" to Reno's "demands" on the issue of TV violence. On September 20, 1994, on "The Howard Stern Show", he made an offer to NBC, claiming that he would return to his role on the show if Dick Wolf was fired. Moriarty published a full-page advertisement in a Hollywood trade magazine calling upon fellow artists to stand up with him against attempts to censor TV show content. He subsequently wrote and published "The Gift of Stern Angels", his account of this time in his life. In the fictional "Law & Order" universe, the Ben Stone character resigns from the D.A.'s office in 1994 after a witness in one of his cases is murdered. The February 7, 2018, episode of "" shows Sam Waterston's character, Jack McCoy, delivering a eulogy at Stone's funeral.


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Wolf and others working on "Law & Order" tell a different story, however. On November 18, 1993, Moriarty and Wolf, along with other television executives, met with Reno to dissuade her from supporting any law that would censor the show. Wolf said that Moriarty overreacted to any effect the law was likely to have on the show. "Law & Order" producers claim they were forced to remove Moriarty from the series because of "erratic behavior," an example of which reportedly happened during the filming of the episode "Breeder" when, according to the episode's director Arthur Forney, Moriarty was unable to deliver his lines with a straight face. Series and network officials deny any connection between his departure and Janet Reno. Wolf also denies that the show has become less violent, graphic or controversial since 1994.


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Moriarty acted in "The Last Detail", "Courage Under Fire", "Along Came a Spider", "Shiloh", "Emily of New Moon" and "James Dean", for which he won his third Emmy. In 2007 he debuted his first feature-length film as screenwriter and performed the role of a man who thinks he is Adolf Hitler in "Hitler Meets Christ".


title: Michael Moriarty

text: In addition to his acting career, Moriarty is a semi-professional jazz pianist and singer as well as a classical composer. He has recorded three jazz albums (though the first, "Reaching Out", went unreleased). He has regularly performed live in both New York City and Vancouver with a jazz trio and quintet. In a 1990 concert review, "New York Times" reviewer Stephen Holden called Moriarty "a jazz pianist of considerable skill, an oddball singer with more than one vocal personality, and a writer of eccentric, jivey jazz songs."


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Moriarty announced his intention to run for the presidency in 2008 in an interview in the November 2005 issue of "Northwest Jazz Profile", but he never formally declared his candidacy. He later endorsed fellow former "Law & Order" actor Fred Thompson for the presidency during the 2008 Republican primaries, as well as Carly Fiorina during the 2016 primary election cycle. He has been a frequent contributor of numerous political columns to the Enter Stage Right online "Journal of Conservatism".


title: Michael Moriarty

text: Shortly after leaving "Law & Order", Moriarty moved to Canada, declaring himself a political exile. He lived for a time in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he was granted Canadian citizenship, and Toronto before settling in Vancouver.


title: Michael Moriarty

text: In 2006, in the blog "Enter Stage Right" Moriarty wrote that he was a "very bad drunk" but as of 2004 had been sober for two years.


title: Sonya Walger

text: Sonya Walger (born 6 June 1974) is a British actress who also holds American citizenship. She had starring roles in the short-lived sitcoms "The Mind of the Married Man" (2001–2002) and "Coupling" (2003) before landing her role as Penny Widmore in the ABC drama series "Lost" (2006–2010). Walger later starred on "Tell Me You Love Me" (2007), "FlashForward" (2009–2010), "Common Law" (2012), "The Catch" (2016–2017) and "For All Mankind" (2019–2022).


title: Sonya Walger

text: Walger was born in Hampstead, London. She was educated at the independent Wycombe Abbey School and at Christ Church, Oxford, where she studied English Literature, receiving a first class degree. Walger is conversational in French and fluent in Spanish, as her father was Argentinian.


title: Sonya Walger

text: Walger began her career on British television. In 1998, she guest-starred in an episode of ITV crime series, "Midsomer Murders". She had the recurring role in the BBC 1 sitcom "Goodnight Sweetheart" in 1999, and appeared in two episodes of the crime/drama "The Vice". Also in 1999, she played the daughter of newspaper magnate Max Van der Vuurst, Hilde, in the "Heat of the Sun" story "The Sport of Kings". The following year, Walger made her film debut in the biographical drama "Eisenstein". In 2001, she moved to the United States and was cast as Donna Barnes on the HBO comedy series, "The Mind of the Married Man". The series was cancelled after two seasons. In 2003, she starred on the short-lived U.S. version of "Coupling", which aired on NBC. In 2004, Walger played Nicole Noone opposite Noah Wyle in the TNT television film, "", for which she received Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress on Television nomination.


title: Sonya Walger

text: From 2006 to 2010, Walger had a recurring role as Penny Widmore in the ABC drama series, "Lost". She also had recurring roles on "Sleeper Cell", "", and "". In 2007, Walger appeared in the original Broadway production of "Frost/Nixon", as Charlotte Cushing, David Frost's then-girlfriend. Then she starred in the controversial HBO series "Tell Me You Love Me". The series gained notoriety even before the first episode had aired because of the frequency and extremely realistic nature of its sex scenes. Despite persistent rumours to the contrary, these scenes were eventually confirmed as simulated by several individuals intimately connected with the show. With reference to the manual masturbation apparently performed by Walger on actor Adam Scott at the end of the pilot episode, director Patricia Rozema and Walger's co-stars Ally Walker and Jane Alexander also explicitly denied that any actual sex took place on set. The series was canceled after a single season.


title: Sonya Walger

text: From 2009 to 2010, Walger starred as Olivia Benford, a surgeon and wife of FBI agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) in the ABC series, "FlashForward". Later in 2010, she appeared as Julia in season 3 of the HBO drama series "In Treatment". She played John Cusack's wife in the 2011 Direct-to-video crime thriller "The Factory". In 2012, she was regular cast member in the USA Network short lived series "Common Law". In 2013, Walger had a brief role in the comedy film "Admission", as a Virginia Woolf scholar. From 2013 to 2014, Walger appeared on the NBC drama series "Parenthood".


title: Sonya Walger

text: In 2014, Walger guest-starred in Shonda Rhimes' series "Scandal" as Katherine Winslow. The following year, Walger was cast in the new Rhimes series "The Catch", co-starring opposite Mireille Enos and Peter Krause.


title: Sonya Walger

text: In 2019, Walger starred as NASA astronaut Molly Cobb in the first season of the Apple TV+ original science fiction space drama series "For All Mankind". In 2021 and 2022, Walger returned for seasons two and three.


title: Sonya Walger

text: Walger married screenwriter/producer Davey Holmes in July 2009. She gave birth to a daughter Billie Rosie Holmes on 14 February 2013. She also gave birth to a son Jake in 2015. Walger became a U.S. citizen on 23 May 2013.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin () ( – 15 March 1938) was a Bolshevik revolutionary, Soviet politician, Marxist philosopher and economist and prolific author on revolutionary theory.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: As a young man, he spent six years in exile working closely with fellow exiles Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. After the revolution of February 1917, he returned to Moscow, where his Bolshevik credentials earned him a high rank in the party, and after the October Revolution became editor of their newspaper "Pravda."


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Within the Bolshevik Party, Bukharin was initially a left communist, but gradually moved to the right from 1921. His strong support for and defence of the New Economic Policy (NEP) eventually saw him lead the Right Opposition. By late 1924, this stance had positioned Bukharin favourably as Joseph Stalin's chief ally, with Bukharin soon elaborating Stalin's new theory and policy of Socialism in One Country. Together, Bukharin and Stalin ousted Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev from the party at the 15th Communist Party Congress in December 1927. From 1926 to 1929, Bukharin enjoyed great power as General Secretary of the Comintern's executive committee. However, Stalin's decision to proceed with collectivisation drove the two men apart, and Bukharin was expelled from the Politburo in 1929.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: When the Great Purge began in 1936, some of Bukharin's letters, conversations and tapped phone-calls indicated disloyalty. Arrested in February 1937, Bukharin was charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state. After a show trial that alienated many Western communist sympathisers, he was executed in March 1938.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Nikolai Bukharin was born on 27 September (9 October, new style), 1888, in Moscow. He was the second son of two schoolteachers, Ivan Gavrilovich Bukharin and Liubov Ivanovna Bukharina. According to Nikolai his father did not believe in God and often asked him to recite poetry for family friends as young as four years old. His childhood is vividly recounted in his mostly autobiographic novel "How It All Began".


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin's political life began at the age of sixteen, with his lifelong friend Ilya Ehrenburg, when they participated in student activities at Moscow University related to the Russian Revolution of 1905. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1906, becoming a member of the Bolshevik faction. With Grigori Sokolnikov, Bukharin convened the 1907 national youth conference in Moscow, which was later considered the founding of Komsomol.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: By age twenty, he was a member of the Moscow Committee of the party. The committee was widely infiltrated by the Tsarist secret police, the Okhrana. As one of its leaders, Bukharin quickly became a person of interest to them. During this time, he became closely associated with Valerian Obolensky and Vladimir Smirnov. He also met his future first wife, Nadezhda Mikhailovna Lukina, his cousin and the sister of Nikolai Lukin, who was also a member of the party. They married in 1911, soon after returning from internal exile.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: In 1911, after a brief imprisonment, Bukharin was exiled to Onega in Arkhangelsk, but he soon escaped to Hanover. He stayed in Germany for a year before visiting Kraków (now in Poland) in 1912 to meet Vladimir Lenin for the first time. During the exile, he continued his education and wrote several books that established him in his 20s as a major Bolshevik theorist. His work "" influenced Lenin, who freely borrowed from it in his larger and better-known work, "Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism". He and Lenin also often had hot disputes on theoretical issues, as well as Bukharin's closeness with the European Left and his anti-statist tendencies. Bukharin developed an interest in the works of Austrian Marxists and heterodox Marxist economic theorists, such as Aleksandr Bogdanov, who deviated from Leninist positions. Also, while in Vienna in 1913, he helped the Georgian Bolshevik Joseph Stalin write an article, "Marxism and the National Question", at Lenin's request.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: In October 1916, while based in New York City, Bukharin edited the newspaper ("New World") with Leon Trotsky and Alexandra Kollontai. When Trotsky arrived in New York in January 1917, Bukharin was the first of the émigrés to greet him. (Trotsky's wife recalled, "with a bear hug and immediately began to tell them about a public library which stayed open late at night and which he proposed to show us at once" dragging the tired Trotskys across town "to admire his great discovery").


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: At the news of the Russian Revolution of February 1917, exiled revolutionaries from around the world began to flock back to the homeland. Trotsky left New York on 27 March 1917, sailing for St. Petersburg. Bukharin left New York in early April and returned to Russia by way of Japan (where he was temporarily detained by local police), arriving in Moscow in early May 1917. Politically, the Bolsheviks in Moscow were a minority in relation to the Mensheviks and Social Democrats. As more people began to be attracted to Lenin's promise to bring peace by withdrawing from the Great War, membership in the Bolshevik faction began to increase dramatically – from 24,000 members in February 1917 to 200,000 members in October 1917. Upon his return to Moscow, Bukharin resumed his seat on the Moscow City Committee and also became a member of the Moscow Regional Bureau of the party.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: To complicate matters further, the Bolsheviks themselves were divided into a right wing and a left wing. The right-wing of the Bolsheviks, including Aleksei Rykov and Viktor Nogin, controlled the Moscow Committee, while the younger left-wing Bolsheviks, including Vladimir Smirnov, Valerian Osinsky, Georgii Lomov, Nikolay Yakovlev, Ivan Kizelshtein and Ivan Stukov, were members of the Moscow Regional Bureau. On 10 October 1917, Bukharin was elected to the Central Committee, along with two other Moscow Bolsheviks: Andrei Bubnov and Grigori Sokolnikov. This strong representation on the Central Committee was a direct recognition of the Moscow Bureau's increased importance. Whereas the Bolsheviks had previously been a minority in Moscow behind the Mensheviks and the Socialist Revolutionaries, by September 1917 the Bolsheviks were in the majority in Moscow. Furthermore, the Moscow Regional Bureau was formally responsible for the party organizations in each of the thirteen central provinces around Moscow – which accounted for 37% of the whole population of Russia and 20% of the Bolshevik membership.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: While no one dominated revolutionary politics in Moscow during the October Revolution as Trotsky did in St. Petersburg, Bukharin certainly was the most prominent leader in Moscow. During the October Revolution, Bukharin drafted, introduced, and defended the revolutionary decrees of the Moscow Soviet. Bukharin then represented the Moscow Soviet in their report to the revolutionary government in Petrograd. Following the October Revolution, Bukharin became the editor of the party's newspaper, "Pravda".


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin believed passionately in the promise of world revolution. In the Russian turmoil near the end of World War I, when a negotiated peace with the Central Powers was looming, he demanded a continuance of the war, fully expecting to incite all the foreign proletarian classes to arms. Even as he was uncompromising toward Russia's battlefield enemies, he also rejected any fraternization with the capitalist Allied powers: he reportedly wept when he learned of official negotiations for assistance.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin emerged as the leader of the Left Communists in bitter opposition to Lenin's decision to sign the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. In this wartime power struggle, Lenin's arrest had been seriously discussed by them and Left Socialist Revolutionaries in 1918. Bukharin revealed this in a Pravda article in 1924 and stated that it had been "a period when the party stood a hair from a split, and the whole country a hair from ruin".


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: After the ratification of the treaty, Bukharin resumed his responsibilities within the party. In March 1919, he became a member of the Comintern's executive committee and a candidate member of the Politburo. During the Civil War period, he published several theoretical economic works, including the popular primer "The ABC of Communism" (with Yevgeni Preobrazhensky, 1919), and the more academic "Economics of the Transitional Period" (1920) and "Historical Materialism" (1921).


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: By 1921, he changed his position and accepted Lenin's emphasis on the survival and strengthening of the Soviet state as the bastion of the future world revolution. He became the foremost supporter of the New Economic Policy (NEP), to which he was to tie his political fortunes. Considered by the left communists as a retreat from socialist policies, the NEP reintroduced money and allowed private ownership and capitalistic practices in agriculture, retail trade, and light industry while the state retained control of heavy industry.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: After Lenin's death in 1924, Bukharin became a full member of the Politburo. In the subsequent power struggle among Leon Trotsky, Grigory Zinoviev, Lev Kamenev and Stalin, Bukharin allied himself with Stalin, who positioned himself as centrist of the Party and supported the NEP against the Left Opposition, which wanted more rapid industrialization, escalation of class struggle against the kulaks (wealthier peasants), and agitation for world revolution. It was Bukharin who formulated the thesis of "Socialism in One Country" put forth by Stalin in 1924, which argued that socialism (in Marxist theory, the period of transition to communism) could be developed in a single country, even one as underdeveloped as Russia. This new theory stated that socialist gains could be consolidated in a single country, without that country relying on simultaneous successful revolutions across the world. The thesis would become a hallmark of Stalinism.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Trotsky, the prime force behind the Left Opposition, was defeated by a triumvirate formed by Stalin, Zinoviev, and Kamenev, with the support of Bukharin. At the Fourteenth Party Congress in December 1925, Stalin openly attacked Kamenev and Zinoviev, revealing that they had asked for his aid in expelling Trotsky from the Party. By 1926, the Stalin-Bukharin alliance ousted Zinoviev and Kamenev from the Party leadership, and Bukharin enjoyed the highest degree of power during the 1926–1928 period. He emerged as the leader of the Party's right wing, which included two other Politburo members (Alexei Rykov, Lenin's successor as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars and Mikhail Tomsky, head of trade unions) and he became General Secretary of the Comintern's executive committee in 1926. However, prompted by a grain shortage in 1928, Stalin reversed himself and proposed a program of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization because he believed that the NEP was not working fast enough. Stalin felt that in the new situation the policies of his former foes—Trotsky, Zinoviev, and Kamenev—were the right ones.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin was worried by the prospect of Stalin's plan, which he feared would lead to "military-feudal exploitation" of the peasantry. Bukharin did want the Soviet Union to achieve industrialization but he preferred the more moderate approach of offering the peasants the opportunity to become prosperous, which would lead to greater grain production for sale abroad. Bukharin pressed his views throughout 1928 in meetings of the Politburo and at the Communist Party Congress, insisting that enforced grain requisition would be counterproductive, as War Communism had been a decade earlier.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin's support for the continuation of the NEP was not popular with higher Party cadres, and his slogan to peasants, "Enrich yourselves!" and proposal to achieve socialism "at snail's pace" left him vulnerable to attacks first by Zinoviev and later by Stalin. Stalin attacked Bukharin's views, portraying them as capitalist deviations and declaring that the revolution would be at risk without a strong policy that encouraged rapid industrialization.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Having helped Stalin achieve unchecked power against the Left Opposition, Bukharin found himself easily outmaneuvered by Stalin. Yet Bukharin played to Stalin's strength by maintaining the appearance of unity within the Party leadership. Meanwhile, Stalin used his control of the Party machine to replace Bukharin's supporters in the Rightist power base in Moscow, trade unions, and the Comintern.Bukharin attempted to gain support from earlier foes including Kamenev and Zinoviev who had fallen from power and held mid-level positions within the Communist party. The details of his meeting with Kamenev, to whom he confided that Stalin was "Genghis Khan" and changed policies to get rid of rivals, were leaked by the Trotskyist press and subjected him to accusations of factionalism. Jules Humbert-Droz, a former ally and friend of Bukharin, wrote that in spring 1929, Bukharin told him that he had formed an alliance with Zinoviev and Kamenev, and that they were planning to use individual terror (assassination) to get rid of Stalin. Eventually, Bukharin lost his position in the Comintern and the editorship of "Pravda" in April 1929, and he was expelled from the Politburo on 17 November of that year.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin was forced to renounce his views under pressure. He wrote letters to Stalin pleading for forgiveness and rehabilitation, but through wiretaps of Bukharin's private conversations with Stalin's enemies, Stalin knew Bukharin's repentance was insincere.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: International supporters of Bukharin, Jay Lovestone of the Communist Party USA among them, were also expelled from the Comintern. They formed an international alliance to promote their views, calling it the "International Communist Opposition", though it became better known as the Right Opposition, after a term used by the Trotskyist Left Opposition in the Soviet Union to refer to Bukharin and his supporters there.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Even after his fall, Bukharin still did some important work for the Party. For example, he helped write the 1936 Soviet constitution. Bukharin believed the constitution would guarantee real democratization. There is some evidence that Bukharin was thinking of evolution toward some kind of two-party or at least two-slate elections. Boris Nikolaevsky reported that Bukharin said: "A second party is necessary. If there is only one electoral list, without opposition, that's equivalent to Nazism." Grigory Tokaev, a Soviet defector and admirer of Bukharin, reported that: "Stalin aimed at one party dictatorship and complete centralisation. Bukharin envisaged several parties and even nationalist parties, and stood for the maximum of decentralisation."


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: In the brief period of thaw in 1934–1936, Bukharin was politically rehabilitated and was made editor of "Izvestia" in 1934. There, he consistently highlighted the dangers of fascist regimes in Europe and the need for "proletarian humanism". One of his first decisions as editor was to invite Boris Pasternak to contribute to the newspaper and sit in on editorial meetings. Pasternak described Bukharin as "a wonderful, historically extraordinary man, but fate has not been kind to him." They first met during the lying-in-state of the Soviet police chief, Vyacheslav Menzhinsky in May 1934, when Pasternak was seeking help for his fellow poet, Osip Mandelstam, who had been arrested – though at that time neither Pasternak nor Bukharin knew why.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin had acted as Mandelstam's political protector since 1922. According to Mandelstam's wife, Nadezhda, "M. owed him all the pleasant things in his life. His 1928 volume of poetry would never have come out without the active intervention of Bukharin. The journey to Armenia, our apartment and ration cards, contracts for future volumes – all this was arranged by Bukharin." Bukharin wrote to Stalin, pleading clemency for Mandelstam, and appealed personally to the head of the NKVD, Genrikh Yagoda. It was Yagoda who told him about Mandelstam's Stalin Epigram, after which he refused to have any further contact with Nadezhda Mandelstam, who had lied to him by denying that her husband had written "anything rash" – but continued to befriend Pasternak.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Soon after Mandelstam's arrest, Bukharin was delegated to prepare the official report on poetry for the First Soviet Writers' Congress, in August 1934. He could not any longer risk mentioning Mandelstam in his speech to the congress, but did devote a large section of his to Pasternak, whom he described as "remote from current affairs ... a singer of the old intelligensia ... delicate and subtle ... a wounded and easily vulnerable soul. He is the embodiment of chaste but self-absorbed laboratory craftsmanship". His speech was greeted with wild applause, though it greatly offended some of the listeners, such as the communist poet Semyon Kirsanov, who complained: "according to Bukharin, all the poets who have used their verses to participate in political life are out of date, but the others are not out of date, the so-called pure (and not so pure) lyric poets."


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: When Bukharin was arrested two years later, Boris Pasternak displayed extraordinary courage by having a letter delivered to Bukharin's wife saying that he was convinced of his innocence.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Stalin's collectivization policy proved to be as disastrous as Bukharin predicted, but Stalin had by then achieved unchallenged authority in the party leadership. However, there were signs that moderates among Stalin's supporters sought to end official terror and bring a general change in policy, after mass collectivization was largely completed and the worst was over. Although Bukharin had not challenged Stalin since 1929, his former supporters, including Martemyan Ryutin, drafted and clandestinely circulated an anti-Stalin platform, which called Stalin the "evil genius of the Russian Revolution".


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: However, Sergey Kirov, First Secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee was assassinated in Leningrad in December 1934, and his death was used by Stalin as a pretext to launch the Great Purge, in which about 700,000 people were to perish as Stalin eliminated all past and potential opposition to his authority. Some historians believe that Kirov's assassination in 1934 was arranged by Stalin himself or at least that there is sufficient evidence to plausibly posit such a conclusion. After Kirov's assassination, the NKVD charged an ever-growing group of former oppositionists with Kirov's murder and other acts of treason, terrorism, sabotage, and espionage.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: In February 1936, shortly before the purge started in earnest, Bukharin was sent to Paris by Stalin to negotiate the purchase of the Marx and Engels archives, held by the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) before its dissolution by Hitler. He was joined by his young wife Anna Larina, which therefore opened the possibility of exile, but he decided against it, saying that he could not live outside the Soviet Union.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin, who had been forced to follow the Party line since 1929, confided to his old friends and former opponents his real view of Stalin and his policy. His conversations with Boris Nicolaevsky, a Menshevik leader who held the manuscripts on behalf of the SPD, formed the basis of "Letter of an Old Bolshevik", which was very influential in contemporary understanding of the period (especially the Ryutin Affair and the Kirov murder), although there are doubts about its authenticity.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: According to Nicolaevsky, Bukharin spoke of "the mass annihilation of completely defenseless men, with women and children" under forced collectivization and liquidation of kulaks as a class that dehumanized the Party members with "the profound psychological change in those communists who took part in the campaign. Instead of going mad, they accepted terror as a normal administrative method and regarded obedience to all orders from above as a supreme virtue. ... They are no longer human beings. They have truly become the cogs in a terrible machine."


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Yet to another Menshevik leader, Fyodor Dan, he confided that Stalin became "the man to whom the Party granted its confidence" and "is a sort of a symbol of the Party" even though he "is not a man, but a devil." In Dan's account, Bukharin's acceptance of the Soviet Union's new direction was thus a result of his utter commitment to Party solidarity.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: To his boyhood friend, Ilya Ehrenburg, he expressed the suspicion that the whole trip was a trap set up by Stalin. Indeed, his contacts with Mensheviks during this trip were to feature prominently in his trial.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Stalin was for a long time undecided on Bukharin and Georgy Pyatakov. After receiving Nikolay Yezhov's written evidence denouncing Bukharin, Stalin declined to sanction his arrest. Nevertheless, after the trial and execution of Zinoviev, Kamenev, and other leftist Old Bolsheviks in 1936, Bukharin and Rykov were arrested on 27 February 1937 following a plenum of the Central Committee, and were charged with conspiring to overthrow the Soviet state. Photostatic evidence shows that Stalin’s first impulse was to simply exile Bukharin, without sending him to trial. In the end, Bukharin was killed, but according to historian Alec Nove, "the road to his demise was not a straight one".


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin was tried in the Trial of the Twenty One on 2–13 March 1938 during the Great Purge, along with ex-premier Alexei Rykov, Christian Rakovsky, Nikolai Krestinsky, Genrikh Yagoda, and 16 other defendants alleged to belong to the so-called "Bloc of Rightists and Trotskyites". In a trial meant to be the culmination of previous show trials, it was alleged that Bukharin and others sought to assassinate Lenin and Stalin from 1918, murder Maxim Gorky by poison, partition the Soviet Union and hand out her territories to Germany, Japan, and Great Britain.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Even more than earlier Moscow show trials, Bukharin's trial horrified many previously sympathetic observers as they watched allegations become more absurd than ever and the purge expand to include almost every living Old Bolshevik leader except Stalin. For some prominent Communists such as Bertram Wolfe, Jay Lovestone, Arthur Koestler, and Heinrich Brandler, the Bukharin trial marked their final break with Communism and even turned the first three into passionate anti-Communists eventually.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: While Anastas Mikoyan and Vyacheslav Molotov later claimed that Bukharin was never tortured and his letters from prison do not give the suggestion that he was tortured, it is also known that his interrogators were given the order: "beating permitted". Bukharin held out for three months, but threats to his young wife and infant son, combined with "methods of physical influence" wore him down. But when he read his confession amended and corrected personally by Stalin, he withdrew his whole confession. The examination started all over again, with a double team of interrogators.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin's confession and his motivation became subject of much debate among Western observers, inspiring Koestler's acclaimed novel "Darkness at Noon" and a philosophical essay by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in "Humanism and Terror". His confessions were somewhat different from others in that while he pleaded guilty to the "sum total of crimes", he denied knowledge when it came to specific crimes. Some astute observers noted that he would allow only what was in the written confession and refuse to go any further.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: There are several interpretations of Bukharin's motivations (besides being coerced) in the trial. Koestler and others viewed it as a true believer's last service to the Party (while preserving the little amount of personal honor left) whereas Bukharin biographer Stephen Cohen and Robert Tucker saw traces of Aesopian language, with which Bukharin sought to turn the table into an anti-trial of Stalinism (while keeping his part of the bargain to save his family). While his letters to Stalin – he wrote 34 very emotional and desperate letters tearfully protesting his innocence and professing his loyalty – suggest a complete capitulation and acceptance of his role in the trial, it contrasts with his actual conduct in the trial. Bukharin himself speaks of his "peculiar duality of mind" in his last plea, which led to "semi-paralysis of the will" and Hegelian "unhappy consciousness", which likely stemmed not only from his knowledge of the ruinous reality of Stalinism (although of course he could not say so in the trial) but also of the impending threat of fascism.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: The result was a curious mix of fulsome confessions (of being a "degenerate fascist" working for the "restoration of capitalism") and subtle criticisms of the trial. After disproving several charges against him (one observer noted that he "proceeded to demolish or rather showed he could very easily demolish the whole case") and saying that "the confession of the accused is not essential. The confession of the accused is a medieval principle of jurisprudence" in a trial that was solely based on confessions, he finished his last plea with the words:


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: The state prosecutor, Andrey Vyshinsky, characterized Bukharin as an "accursed crossbreed of fox and pig" who supposedly committed a "whole nightmare of vile crimes".


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: While in prison, he wrote at least four book-length manuscripts including a lyrical autobiographical novel, "How It All Began", a philosophical treatise, "Philosophical Arabesques", a collection of poems, and "Socialism and Its Culture" – all of which were found in Stalin's archive and published in the 1990s.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Among other intercessors, the French author and Nobel laureate Romain Rolland wrote to Stalin seeking clemency, arguing that "an intellect like that of Bukharin is a treasure for his country". He compared Bukharin's situation to that of the great chemist Antoine Lavoisier who was guillotined during the French Revolution: "We in France, the most ardent revolutionaries ... still profoundly grieve and regret what we did. ... I beg you to show clemency." He had earlier written to Stalin in 1937, "For the sake of Gorky I am asking you for mercy, even if he may be guilty of something", to which Stalin noted: "We must not respond." Bukharin was executed on 15 March 1938 at the Kommunarka shooting ground, but the announcement of his death was overshadowed by the Nazi Anschluss of Austria.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: According to Zhores and Roy Medvedev in "The Unknown Stalin" (2006), Bukharin's last message to Stalin stated "Koba, why do you need me to die?", which was written in a note to Stalin just before his execution. "Koba" was Stalin's "nom de guerre", and Bukharin's use of it was a sign of how close the two had once been. The note was allegedly found still in Stalin's desk after his death in 1953.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Despite the promise to spare his family, Bukharin's wife, Anna Larina, was sent to a labor camp, but she survived to see her husband officially rehabilitated by the Soviet state under Mikhail Gorbachev in 1988. Their son, Yuri Larin (born 1936), was sent to an orphanage in an attempt to keep him safe from the authorities, and also lived to see his rehabilitation. His first wife, Nadezhda, died in a labor camp after being arrested in 1938. His second wife, Esfir' Gurvich, and their daughter Svetlana Gurvich-Bukharina (born 1924), were arrested in 1949, but survived past 1988, though they had lived in fear of the government their whole lives.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin was immensely popular within the party throughout the twenties and thirties, even after his fall from power. In his testament, Lenin portrayed him as the Golden Boy of the party, writing:


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Speaking of the young C.C. members, I wish to say a few words about Bukharin and Pyatakov. They are, in my opinion, the most outstanding figures (among the youngest ones), and the following must be borne in mind about them: Bukharin is not only a most valuable and major theorist of the Party; he is also rightly considered the favourite of the whole Party, but his theoretical views can be classified as fully Marxist only with great reserve, for there is something scholastic about him (he has never made a study of the dialectics, and, I think, never fully understood it) ... Both of these remarks, of course, are made only for the present, on the assumption that both these outstanding and devoted Party workers fail to find an occasion to enhance their knowledge and amend their one-sidedness.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin made several notable contributions to Marxist–Leninist thought, most notably "The Economics of the Transition Period" (1920) and his prison writings, "Philosophical Arabesques", as well as being a founding member of the Soviet Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a keen botanist. His primary contributions to economics were his critique of marginal utility theory, his analysis of imperialism, and his writings on the transition to communism in the Soviet Union.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: His ideas, especially in economics and the question of market-socialism, later became highly influential in the Chinese socialist market economy and Deng Xiaoping's reforms.


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: British author Martin Amis argues that Bukharin was perhaps the only major Bolshevik to acknowledge "moral hesitation" by questioning, even in passing, the violence and sweeping reforms of the early Soviet Union. Amis writes that Bukharin said "during the Civil War he had seen 'things that I would not want even my enemies to see'."


title: Nikolai Bukharin

text: Bukharin was a cartoonist who left many cartoons of contemporary Soviet politicians. The renowned artist Konstantin Yuon once told him: "Forget about politics. There is no future in politics for you. Painting is your real calling." His cartoons are sometimes used to illustrate the biographies of Soviet officials. Russian historian Yury Zhukov stated that Nikolai Bukharin's portraits of Joseph Stalin were the only ones drawn from the original, not from a photograph.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Hardcore Henry (also known simply as Hardcore () in some countries) is a 2015 science fiction action film written and directed by Ilya Naishuller (in his feature directorial debut), and produced by Timur Bekmambetov, Naishuller, Inga Vainshtein Smith and Ekaterina Kononenko. Will Stewart provided additional writing for the film.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: It stars Sharlto Copley, Danila Kozlovsky, Haley Bennett and Tim Roth. The film was released theatrically in the United States by STXfilms on April 8, 2016. It garnered mixed reviews in the US but was more positively received in Russia. Despite grossing $16.8 million worldwide against a $2 million budget, it was considered a box-office bomb in the US, due to STX spending $10 million to acquire global rights to the film.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: A man wakes inside a laboratory on an airship. A scientist; Estelle, tells him his name is Henry, claims to be his wife, and he has been revived from an accident that left him amnesiac and mute. She replaces his missing limbs with cybernetic prostheses, but mercenaries led by the psychokinetic Akan raid the ship before she can replace Henry's voice. Akan claims all of Estelle's research is his corporate property. He kills Estelle's scientists, but Henry and Estelle flee in an escape pod, landing in Moscow. The mercenaries follow and abduct Estelle.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Henry is rescued by a stranger named Jimmy, who informs him that his cybernetic limbs are running out of power, which will kill him if he cannot recharge. Jimmy is killed by corrupt police paid by Akan, but Henry escapes. He is joined by another Jimmy, now an alcoholic bum, who informs him that one of Akan's associates, Slick Dimitry, has a charging pump which Henry needs to recharge. The two are attacked, and again Jimmy is killed. Henry escapes, and hunts Dimitry through Moscow before capturing him. Just as Dimitry promises him information, he is killed by a sniper. Henry removes the pump and receives a call from Jimmy, who directs Henry to a brothel.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Henry meets two more distinct versions of Jimmy; one a nervous nerd, the other a drug-fuelled sex manic, who replace his pump. The brothel is attacked by Akan's forces. Akan taunts Henry about Estelle, who is being transported by an armored convoy, before ejecting Henry from the brothel. Outside, Henry encounters another Jimmy, a stoner, who transports him to Akan's convoy. Henry attacks the convoy and locates Estelle and Akan, who beats him with a baseball bat and buries him in the woods.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Jimmy finds and resuscitates Henry, only to be shelled by a tank. After killing the tank crew and fending off a helicopter, Henry finds another Jimmy, who leads him to an abandoned hotel and a hidden laboratory. Here, the original Jimmy—a quadriplegic scientist—reveals that he is seeking revenge against Akan, who crippled him after his own cyborg super-soldiers failed. The other Jimmys are clones based on aspects of Jimmy's personality that he can control via a headset. The clones sing and dance with Henry to the song "I've Got You Under My Skin".


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Jimmy realizes that Henry has been unknowingly broadcasting his location to Akan, with a strike force closing in, and the clones attack Henry. Fending off Jimmy, Henry convinces him to help. Henry and the clones fight their way out, killing Akan's forces by collapsing the laboratory on them.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Jimmy and Henry drive to Akan's headquarters. They fight their way into an elevator, but Jimmy is mortally wounded. Before dying, Jimmy thanks Henry for being a friend, and removes a memory blocker, gradually restoring Henry's memories. Henry fights his way to the highest floor, where he is greeted by Akan and an army of cyborg super-soldiers with Henry's memories. The soldiers chase Henry to the roof.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Henry wipes out the entire army to the Queen song "Don't Stop Me Now", before Akan arrives and severely wounds Henry. Estelle arrives and reveals that she is actually Akan's wife. Everything that happened was an elaborate ruse to field-test their ability to manipulate cyborg soldiers into doing anything to "rescue" their "wives", including committing terrorist acts.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Akan and Estelle prepare to board a helicopter, leaving Henry for dead. Henry blacks out, but a memory of his father revives him and motivates him to crush Akan's hands and wrap his robotic eyestalk around Akan's jaw, decapitating him. He jumps onto Estelle's helicopter, presenting her with Akan's head. She shoots Henry, but a bullet ricochets and hits her, causing her to stumble out of the helicopter. Henry slams the door on her hands, sending her plumetting to her death.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Henry was originally played by Russian stuntman/camera operator Sergey Valyaev, but the camera rig used in production eventually caused him severe neck pain. The role was given to Andrei Dementiev (who also played Slick Dmitry). Dementiev suffered neck pain as well, in addition to losing a tooth after being accidentally struck by a stuntman. In scenes where Danila Kozlovskiy and Sharlto Copley talked directly to Henry, Valyaev and Dementiev wore shades to prevent the actors from looking at them instead of the camera. In a few scenes, Henry was played by Naishuller himself. Several stuntmen portrayed Henry between scenes—in all, more than ten actors shared the role.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Bodybuilding champion Alexey Karas appeared as a muscular cyborg. Video blogger BadComedian appears in a cameo.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: "Hardcore Henry" was filmed with GoPro cameras mounted on a specially made mask designed by Sergey Valyaev, deemed the "Adventure Mask", and stabilization systems that used either electronics or magnets, created by the movie's director of photography, Vsevolod Kaptur. Many prototypes of the mask were used to film the movie. Between the electronics and the magnet stabilization systems, Naishuller chose the magnets, as he felt that it resembled natural head movement. The recordings from the GoPro cameras were edited to cut the hundreds of shots together into one continuous film.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: While it was not the first feature film to exclusively use first-person point of view, the concept for the film came from the "Bad Motherfucker" and "The Stampede" music videos, which Naishuller made with Valyaev for his band, Biting Elbows. These were also shot with a GoPro from the first-person perspective. The movie was partially funded with Indiegogo.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: The film premiered at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival on September 12, 2015. The film became one of the highest-profile at the festival, and led to a bidding war between Lionsgate, Universal and STX Entertainment. Ultimately, STX acquired worldwide rights to "Hardcore", including a wide release commitment, for $10 million, becoming the studio's first festival acquisition. It was retitled "Hardcore Henry" for its international release. At the festival, the film won the Grolsch People's Choice Midnight Madness Award. The film was released on April 8, 2016, by STX. On July 26, 2016, "Hardcore Henry" was released on Blu-ray and DVD.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: "Hardcore Henry" has grossed $9.3 million in North America and $7.6 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $16.8 million, against a budget of $2 million.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: In the United States and Canada, pre-release tracking suggested the film would gross $7–10 million from 3,015 theaters in its opening weekend, trailing fellow newcomer "The Boss" ($20–24 million projection) but besting fellow newcomer "Demolition" ($2–3 million projection). It grossed $380,000 from its early Thursday screenings and $2 million on its first day. It went on to gross $5.1 million in its opening weekend, finishing 5th at the box office. After two weeks, the film was pulled from 2,496 theaters which was the second-largest third-weekend theater drop of all time, behind "Meet Dave" (2,523 in 2008).


title: Hardcore Henry

text: On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film had an approval rating of 51%, based on 149 reviews, with an average rating of 5.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""Hardcore Henry" seems poised to reinvent the action flick, but without a story or characters worth caring about, its first-person gimmick quickly loses its thrill." Metacritic gives the film a score of 51 out of 100, based on 30 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: In Russia, the film received positive reviews. According to Russian aggregator Kritikanstvo, "Hardcore Henry" was rated 7.9/10 on average by Russian critics (based on 52 reviews), and received only one negative review.


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Max Nicholson of "IGN" rated the film 8.6/10 stating "Two parts FPS, one part platformer and a pinch of HowToBasic, director Ilya Naishuller's "Hardcore Henry" is a recipe for non-stop, ludicrous fun. While the film's actual story is nigh existent, it's sure to please gamers and action junkies alike with its inventive set pieces and mind-boggling action" and ""Hardcore Henry" lives up to the title with non-stop, off-the-wall action and a love for all things video games".


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Both writer/director Ilya Naishuller and Sharlto Copley said in an interview to "TechRadar" that they will be willing to make a sequel. Naishuller said:


title: Hardcore Henry

text: Due to STXfilms spending $10 million for global rights to the film, the sequel would be very unlikely. This was later proven on July 9, 2020, when Naishuller replied to a fan that a sequel is "very unlikely", but stated possibilities of a spiritual sequel.


title: Gross income

text: For households and individuals, gross income is the sum of all wages, salaries, profits, interest payments, rents, and other forms of earnings, before any deductions or taxes. It is opposed to net income, defined as the gross income minus taxes and other deductions (e.g., mandatory pension contributions).


title: Gross income

text: For a firm, gross income (also gross profit, sales profit, or credit sales) is the difference between revenue and the cost of making a product or providing a service, before deducting overheads, payroll, taxation, and interest payments. This is different from operating profit (earnings before interest and taxes). Gross margin is often used interchangeably with gross profit, but the terms are different. When speaking about a monetary amount, it is technically correct to use the term gross profit; when referring to a percentage or ratio, it is correct to use gross margin. In other words, gross margin is a percentage value, while gross profit is a monetary value.


title: Gross income

text: The various deductions (and their corresponding metrics) leading from net sales to net income are as follows:


title: Gross income

text: In United States income tax law, gross income serves as the starting point for determining Federal and state income tax of individuals, corporations, estates and trusts, whether resident or non-resident.


title: Gross income

text: Under the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, "Except as otherwise provided" by law, gross income means "all income from whatever source derived," and is not limited to cash received. Federal tax regulations interpret this general rule. The amount of income recognized is generally the value received or the value which the taxpayer has a right to receive. Certain types of income are specifically excluded from gross income for tax purposes.


title: Gross income

text: The time at which gross income becomes taxable is determined under Federal tax rules, which differ in some cases from financial accounting rules.


title: Gross income

text: Individuals, corporations, members of partnerships, estates, trusts, and their beneficiaries ("taxpayers") are subject to income tax in the United States. The amount on which tax is computed, taxable income, equals gross income less allowable tax deductions.


title: Gross income

text: The Internal Revenue Code gives specific examples. The examples are not all inclusive. The term "income" is not defined in the statute or regulations. An early Supreme Court case stated, "Income may be defined as the gain derived from capital, from labor, or from both combined, provided it is understood to include profit gained through a sale or conversion of capital assets." The Court also held that the amount of gross income on disposition of property is the proceeds less the basis (usually, the acquisition cost) of the property.


title: Gross income

text: Gross income is not limited to cash received. "It includes income realized in any form, whether money, property, or services."


title: Gross income

text: Gifts and inheritances are not considered income to the recipient under U.S. law. However, gift or estate tax may be imposed on the donor or the estate of the decedent.


title: Gross income

text: A taxpayer must include Income as part of taxable income in the year recognized under the taxpayer's method of accounting. Generally, a taxpayer using the cash method of accounting (cash basis taxpayer) recognizes income when received. A taxpayer using the accrual method (accrual basis taxpayer) recognizes income when earned. Income is generally considered earned:


title: Gross income

text: For a cash method taxpayer, the measure of income is generally the amount of money or fair market value of property received. For an accrual method taxpayer, it includes the amount the taxpayer has a right to receive.


title: Gross income

text: The courts have given very broad meaning to the phrase "all income from whatever source derived," interpreting it to include all income unless a specific exclusion applies. Certain types of income are specifically excluded from gross income. These may be referred to as exempt income, exclusions, or tax exemptions. Among the more common excluded items are the following:


title: Gross income

text: United States persons (including citizens, residents (whether U.S. citizens or aliens residing in the United States), and U.S. corporations) are generally subject to U.S. federal income tax on their worldwide income. Nonresident aliens are subject to U.S. federal income tax only on income from a U.S. business and certain income from United States sources. Source of income is determined based on the type of income. The source of compensation income is the place where the services giving rise to the income were performed. The source of certain income, such as dividends and interest, is based on location of the residence of the payor. The source of income from property is based on the location where the property is used. Significant additional rules apply.


title: Gross income

text: Nonresident aliens are subject to regular income tax on income from a U.S. business or for services performed in the United States. Nonresident aliens are subject to a flat rate of U.S. income tax on certain enumerated types of U.S. source income, generally collected as a withholding tax. The rate of tax is 30% of the gross income, unless reduced by a tax treaty. Nonresident aliens are subject to U.S. federal income tax on some, but not all capital gains. Wages may be treated as effectively connected income, or may be subject to the flat 30% tax, depending on the facts and circumstances.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: The FIFA World Cup qualification is a competitive match that a national association football team takes in order to qualify for one of the available berths at the final tournament of the (men's) FIFA World Cup.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Qualifying tournaments are held within the six FIFA continental zones, each organized by their respective confederations: AFC (Asia), CAF (Africa), CONCACAF (North and Central America and the Caribbean), CONMEBOL (South America), OFC (Oceania), and UEFA (Europe). For each World Cup, FIFA decides the number of places in the finals allocated to each of the zones, based on the numbers and relative strengths of the confederations' teams.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: As a courtesy, the host receives an automatic berth selection, as has happened with the immediate past tournament winner during much of the competition's history. All other finalists are determined on a standalone qualifying round achievement without regard to previous achievements.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: The berths for the inaugural 1930 tournament were filled by invitation only. The 1934 one was the first one to have an actual qualifying phase. The first ever World Cup qualifying match was played on 11 June 1933, when Sweden defeated Estonia 6–2 in Stockholm, and the first goal was scored 7 minutes into the game, with some sources attributing it to Swedish captain Knut Kroon while others credit it as an own goal by the Estonian goalkeeper.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: While the number of teams which qualified for the finals has increased steadily (16 between 1934 and 1978, then 24 between 1982 and 1994, then 32 from 1998 to 2022, and finally 48 starting from 2026), the qualification format has remained relatively unchanged. The teams are grouped by continent and compete for a fixed number of berths, with one or two places awarded to the winners of intercontinental play-offs.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: The table below lists the numbers of berths allocated by FIFA for each continent in each tournament. It also shows the total number of teams that entered and played in every qualification cycle.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: In the table, "H" denotes an automatic spot for the host, "C" denotes an automatic spot for the defending champion, and "inv" indicates the number of teams that were invited in 1930. Places in intercontinental play-offs are represented as fractions, as follows:


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Only teams that played at least one match are considered for the purposes of first appearance. Teams that withdrew prior to the qualification, or that qualified to the World Cup by walkover due to other teams' withdrawals, are not considered.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: The below table compares the overall records of all teams that have participated in qualification. Teams are ordered by points using the three points for a win system, then by goal difference, and then by goals scored. Note that this order does not represent any official rankings, and qualification tournaments are not direct competitions among all teams.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: The "Qualifying attempts" column counts qualifying campaigns where the team played at least one match that was not annulled. An attempt is treated as "successful" if the team gained the right to participate in the finals, even if it did not appear there eventually.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: As per statistical convention in football, goals scored during extra time are counted towards matches' scorelines and outcomes, while goals scored during penalty shoot-outs are not. Annulled matches are not counted; for matches that were annulled and then replayed, only the replays are counted. For matches where the scorelines were awarded, the awarded scorelines, and not the original ones (if any), are counted.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Qualification tournaments generally consist of a number of stages, made up of groups or knock-out ties.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: In all group tournaments, three points are awarded for a win, one for a draw, and none for a loss. FIFA has set the order of the tie-breakers for teams that finish level on points:


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Where teams are still equal, then a play-off on neutral ground, with extra time and penalties if necessary will be played if FIFA deems such a play-off able to be fitted within the coordinated international match calendar. If this is not deemed feasible, then the result will be determined by fair play points and then the drawing of lots.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Note that this order of tie-breaker application has not always been applied. While it was used in the 2010 qualifiers, the qualification for the 2006 World Cup used the head-to-head comparison prior to goal difference (although this system was – where applicable – used in the 2006 finals themselves). If these rules had applied in 2006, then Nigeria would have qualified rather than Angola.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Most knock-out qualifiers (such as the inter-confederation play-offs and many preliminary ties) are played over two legs. The team that scores a greater aggregate number of goals qualifies. Away goals rule applies. If these rules fail to determine the winner, extra time and penalty shootouts are used.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Occasionally – usually when one entrant lacks adequate facilities to host international matches – ties are played over a single leg, in which case matches level after 90 minutes will go to extra time and then to a penalty shootout if required.


title: FIFA World Cup qualification

text: Alternatively, "home" matches can be played in neutral countries, or occasionally one team will host both matches. In the latter case the visiting team will still be considered as the "home" team for one of the legs – which may determine which side advances under the away goals rule, as occurred in CONCACAF qualification in 2010.


title: Sina Weibo

text: Sina Weibo (新浪微博) is a Chinese microblogging (weibo) website. Launched by Sina Corporation on 14 August 2009, it is one of the biggest social media platforms in China, with over 582 million monthly active users (252 million daily active users) as of Q1 2022. The platform has been a huge financial success, with surging stocks, lucrative advertising sales and high revenue and total earnings per quarter. At the start of 2018, it surpassed the US$30 billion market valuation mark for the first time.


title: Sina Weibo

text: In March 2014, Sina Corporation announced a spinoff of Sina Weibo as a separate entity called simply "Weibo", and filed an IPO under the symbol WB. Sina carved out 11% of Weibo in the IPO, with Alibaba owning 32% post-IPO. The company began trading publicly on 17 April 2014. In March 2017, Sina launched Sina Weibo International Version. In November 2018, Sina Weibo suspended its registration function for minors under the age of 14. In July 2019, Sina Weibo announced that it would launch a two-month campaign to clean up pornographic and vulgar information, named "Project Deep Blue" (蔚蓝计划). On 29 September 2020, the company announced it would go private again due to rising tensions between the US and China. Sina had gone public on the Nasdaq in 2000. As of September 2021, Sina Weibo had 523 million active monthly users, with 3 in 7 of those using the site daily. Sina Weibo has attracted criticism over censoring its users.


title: Sina Weibo

text: "Weibo" (微博) is the Chinese word for "microblog". Sina Weibo launched its new domain name weibo.com on 7 April 2011, deactivating and redirecting from the old domain, t.sina.com.cn, to the new one. Due to its popularity, the media sometimes refers to the platform simply as "Weibo," despite the numerous other Chinese microblogging/weibo services including Tencent Weibo (腾讯微博), Sohu Weibo (搜狐微博), and NetEase Weibo (网易微博). However, Tencent Weibo (腾讯微博), Sohu Weibo (搜狐微博), and NetEase Weibo (网易微博) have stopped providing services.


title: Sina Weibo

text: Sina Weibo is a platform based on fostering user relationships to share, disseminate, and receive information. Through either the website or the mobile app, users can upload pictures and videos publicly for instant sharing, with other users being able to comment with text, pictures and videos, or use a multimedia instant messaging service. The company initially invited a large number of celebrities to join the platform at the beginning, and has since invited many media personalities, government departments, businesses and non-governmental organizations to open accounts as well for the purpose of publishing and communicating information. To avoid the impersonation of celebrities, Sina Weibo uses verification symbols; celebrity accounts have an orange letter "V" and organizations' accounts have a blue letter "V". Sina Weibo has more than 500 million registered users; out of these, 313 million are monthly active users, 85% use the Weibo mobile app, 70% are college-aged, 50.10% are male and 49.90% are female. There are over 100 million messages posted by users each day. With more than 100 million followers, actress Xie Na holds the record for the most followers on the platform. Despite fierce competition among Chinese social media platforms, Sina Weibo remains the most popular.


title: Sina Weibo

text: After the July 2009 Ürümqi riots, China shut down most domestic microblogging services, including Fanfou, the very first weibo service. Many popular non-China-based microblogging services like Twitter, Facebook, and Plurk have since been blocked. Sina Corporation CEO Charles Chao considered this to be an opportunity, and on 14 August 2009, Sina launched the tested version of Sina Weibo. Basic functions including message, private message, comment and reposting were made available that September. A Sina Weibo–compatible API platform for developing third-party applications was launched on 28 July 2010.


title: Sina Weibo

text: On 1 December 2010, the website experienced an outage, which administrators later said was due to the ever-increasing numbers of users and posts. Registered users surpassed 100 million in February 2011. Since 23 March 2011, t.cn has been used as Sina Weibo's official shortened URL in lieu of sinaurl.cn. On 7 April 2011, weibo.com replaced t.sina.com.cn as the new main domain name used by the website. The official logo was also updated. In June 2011, Sina announced an English-language version of Sina Weibo would be developed and launched, though content would still be governed by Chinese law.


title: Sina Weibo

text: On 11 January 2013, Sina Weibo and Alibaba China (a subsidiary of Alibaba Group) signed a strategic cooperation agreement.


title: Sina Weibo

text: With more and more foreign celebrities using Sina Weibo, language translation has become an urgent need for Chinese users who wish to communicate with their idols online, especially Korean. In January 2013, Sina Weibo and NetEase.com announced that they had reached a strategic cooperation agreement. When users browse foreign language content, they can now directly obtain translation results through the YouDao Dictionary.