title: Naked (1993 film)

text: He returns to Louise's residence to find that their landlord Jeremy (aka Sebastian), a psychotic and amoral yuppie and rapist, has let himself into the apartment and raped Sophie. Sophie is desperate to get Jeremy out of the house, but she and Louise fear the police will not help. They try to keep the injured Johnny quiet, but he has a fit that awakens the sleeping Jeremy.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Sandra returns early from her trip. Though horrified by the state of the apartment, she tends to Johnny's injuries. Louise drives Jeremy from the house by feigning interest in him, then pulling a knife on him. He departs, leaving behind several hundred pounds. Feeling desolate and rejected, Sophie flees the house with her few possessions. Louise and Johnny seemingly reconcile and discuss returning to Manchester together, but once she leaves for work, Johnny steals the money and hobbles out into the streets.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Leigh first had the idea for the story while a student in Manchester in the early 1960s: "We had a very enlightened teacher who endlessly reminded us that the next total eclipse would be in August 1999. Later I started thinking about the millennium and the end of the world. In 1992 the millennium was impending, so I brought that idea to the film."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: In 1965, Leigh teamed up with David Halliwell, hired the Unity Theatre for a fortnight, and directed the first production of Halliwell's "Little Malcolm and his Struggle Against the Eunuchs". According to theater critic Michael Coveney, "Malcolm Scrawdyke is clearly a precursor of Johnny in "Naked". Scrawdyke was a loutish art student and absurd ideologue from Huddersfield who had trouble with girls and a hatred for his teachers...the play shared a deeply felt schoolboy coarseness with Alfred Jarry's "Ubu Roi", a piece originally written as a vicious attack on a loathed mathematics master."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Leigh's method, as in all his character dramas, consisted of elaborate improvisational rehearsals with the cast to develop the characters' background stories and traits. The actors interacted with the outside world and each other while in character until Leigh told them to come out of character and be themselves. The dialogue produced from these interactions was then edited, or "distilled", to form the script, based on a minimal plot outline by Leigh. The cast was not allowed to discuss their characters with one another outside of rehearsals, as Leigh, for realism, would rather they meet and interact as they would in real life. Thewlis's background reading for the part of Johnny included Voltaire's "Candide", the teachings of Buddha and James Gleick's "", as well as the Bible and the Qur'an.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: After weeks of improvisation, filming took place in London from 9 September to 16 December 1992. Sandra's Neo-Gothic home was an actual interior/exterior location that Leigh featured heavily, particularly in the last shot of the film, as its corner location allowed for wide street views.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: The scenes between Johnny and Brian the security guard came from an eight-hour improvisation. The uncut shot of Johnny and Brian in silhouette, where Johnny expounds on his convoluted apocalyptic conspiracy theory, had 26 takes, but Leigh ended up using one of the earliest. The film's dialogue has a loose, improvisational quality but, according to Thewlis, the only improvisation filmed on location was the scene of Johnny meeting and antagonising the poster man.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: The song sung by Johnny and Louise near the film's end, "Take me back to Manchester when it's raining", was one Leigh used to sing with his friends in Habonim ("the Builders"), the international socialist Jewish youth movement he joined as a schoolboy. After the film was released, Leigh heard from a retired schoolmaster at Stand Grammar in Whitefield, Greater Manchester, who had written the song for a school revue in 1950.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: The film is dark, monochromatic and claustrophobic, with subtle visual references to film noir and Alfred Hitchcock. Many shots are in stairwells and in borrowed flats whose tenants are hostile toward or unaware of the decor, making them seem disconnected from cultural touchstones and their place in their homes. Alienation, sexual violence and misogyny, addiction and depression are touched upon as Johnny meets various rootless individuals who work in dead-end jobs or are unemployed.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Intelligent, educated and eloquent, Johnny is also deeply embittered and egotistical. He tends to dominate conversations with his aggressive intellectualism and theories about modern culture. His tactics are based on a particular form of intellectual bullying, directed at strangers and intimate partners alike, and summed up in domineering, scholastic barrages drawn from eclectic sources. His overall behaviour is reckless, self-destructive, and at times borderline sadistic, and shows a penchant for aggressive sexual domination at least twice in the film.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Biographer Sheridan Morley described Johnny as "Alfie in the grips of Thatcherite depression"—thus, according to critic Michael Coveney, "cross fertilising Bill Naughton's chirpy cockney Lothario, immortalised by Michael Caine, with the dark sinister disaffection of the new underclass—a neat way of indicating that the Swinging Sixties had degenerated into the nauseated Nineties." Coveney said that Leigh had captured something of the anxiety, rootless cynicism, and big-city disaffection of the time.


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Ben Myers, in a "Guardian" article calling "Naked" Mike Leigh's "finest work" and "the best British film in recent history", elaborated on the many theories filmgoers have had on who Johnny might represent: "a modern, albeit highly flawed, Jesus attempting to change people's lives. Or perhaps he's the devil himself. Others have suggested it is a post-AIDS morality movie, or a classic urban existentialist tale."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Critics have suggested comparisons with William Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Jean Renoir's "Boudu Saved from Drowning" (one of Leigh's favourite films). Hamlet talks "incessantly to the audience [...] assuming a dominance over other characters through expressions of mania, and rapid, witty speech. Thewlis, [...] wrapped like Hamlet in a black and inky coat, [is similarly] socially untethered but burdened with useless knowledge and a vicious, bullying line in repartee." Of the precedent of "idiosyncratic, character-driven film-making" in "Boudu", Coveney said: "Both "Naked" and "Boudu" explore the tension between the domesticated and the anarchic (this is a central theme, probably "the" theme running through Leigh's work), and focus this tension in the tragicomedy of a central character."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: The film generated mostly positive reviews from critics. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an 88% rating based on reviews from 56 critics, with an average score of 8.19/10 and the consensus: ""Naked" lives up to its title with a thoroughly committed performance from David Thewlis that's backed up with some of Mike Leigh's most powerful direction." Metacritic, another review aggregator, assigned the film a weighted average score of 84 (out of 100) based on 20 reviews from mainstream critics, considered to be "universal acclaim."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Derek Malcolm of "The Guardian" noted that the film "is certainly Leigh's most striking piece of cinema to date" and that "it tries to articulate what is wrong with the society that Mrs Thatcher claims does not exist." Of Johnny, he writes: "He likes no one, least of all himself, and he dislikes women even more than men, relapsing into sexual violence as his misogyny takes hold. He is perhaps redeemable, but only just. And not by any woman in our immediate view." He praised the directing and performances, singling out Thewlis, writing that he "plays [Johnny] with a baleful brilliance that is certain to make this underrated, but consistently striking, actor into a star name ... [Johnny] is, at his worst, a cold, desperate fish. His redeeming feature is that he still cares."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film four out of four stars and analysed the message behind the title, saying it "describes characters who exist in the world without the usual layers of protection. They are clothed, but not warmly or cheerfully. But they are naked of families, relationships, homes, values and, in most cases, jobs. They exist in modern Britain with few possessions except their words." He praised the directing, writing: "[Leigh's] method has created in "Naked" a group of characters who could not possibly have emerged from a conventional screenplay; this is the kind of film that is beyond imagining, and only observation could have created it." He concluded: "This is a painful movie to watch. But it is also exhilarating, as all good movies are, because we are watching the director and actors venturing beyond any conventional idea of what a modern movie can be about. Here there is no plot, no characters to identify with, no hope. But there is care: The filmmakers care enough about these people to observe them very closely, to note how they look and sound and what they feel."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: Julie Burchill attacked the film in "The Sunday Times", saying that Leigh's characters talked like lobotomised Muppets: "sub-wittily, the way Diane Arbus's subjects look." And Suzanne Moore in "The Guardian" criticised the lethargic females whose lives Johnny routinely ruins: "What sort of realism is this? To show a misogynist and surround him with such walking doormats has the effect, intentional or not, of justifying this behaviour." Lesley Sharp responded: "There are a lot of people who don't go to art house cinemas who do have deeply troubled lives and are at risk ... We do actually live in a misogynistic, violent society and there are a lot of women in abusive relationships who find it very difficult to get out of them. And a lot of men, too." Coveney wrote in the film's defence: "Is there no room for irony, for the idea that in depicting horror in the sex war an artist is exposing them, not endorsing them? And who says that Sophie is an unwilling doormat or that Louise is a doormat at all? It is clear that the latter is taking serious stock of her relationship with Johnny. She exhibits both patience and tenderness in her dealings with him, whereas she finally pulls a knife on Jeremy."


title: Naked (1993 film)

text: The film opened in the UK on 22 screens on 5 November 1993 and grossed £52,279 for the weekend for 16th position at the UK box office.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: The administrative divisions of Ukraine (, "Administratyvnyi ustrii Ukrainy") are subnational administrative divisions within the geographical area of Ukraine under the jurisdiction of the Ukrainian Constitution. Ukraine is a unitary state with 3 levels of administrative divisions: 27 regions (24 oblasts, 2 cities with special status and 1 autonomous republic), 136 raions and 1469 hromadas.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: The latest reform of July 2020 radically reduced the second tier from 490 raions and 118 "cities of regional significance" to just 136 raions, with the "cities of regional significance" merging into the reformed raions. The overall structure did not change significantly from the middle of the 20th century. The next tier below raion are hromadas.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Following the annexations of Crimea and southeastern Ukraine by the Russian Federation, Autonomous Republic of Crimea and Sevastopol as well as portions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia Oblasts came under the "de facto" administration of the Russian Federation. Internationally, most states have not recognized the Russian claims.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: According to Article 133 of the Constitution of Ukraine, "the system of the administrative and territorial structure of Ukraine is composed of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, oblasts, districts, cities, districts in city, settlements, and villages." Certain types of subdivision are not mentioned in the Constitution (i.e. rural settlements), but they are mentioned for regional composition. Also, regular raions (districts) are sometimes denoted as rural to distinguish them from raions in cities.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Regions, cities, districts are governed by a state administration, a chief of which is appointed by the president after a nomination by the cabinet of ministers. Crimea has its own cabinet of ministers, however the state administration is represented by the office of the Presidential Representative of Ukraine. A basic and the lowest level of administrative division is a settlement that is governed by a local council (rada). Cities as a settlement always carry a special status within a region and have their own form of self-administration (municipality – "vykonkom") and some may consist of their own city's districts (raions). City municipalities are governed by a mayor and a city council (miskrada). Some smaller cities, towns, and rural localities may be under control of city municipalities based on larger cities. Towns as well as villages are not controlled by state administration and are self-governed by either a town council (selyshchna rada) or a village council (silrada) within the limits of the Constitution and the laws of Ukraine (article 140 of the Constitution of Ukraine). Village councils may carry a combined jurisdiction which may include several villages and hamlets (selyshche). Unlike villages, each town council always has a separate jurisdiction which may be part of bigger city's council. Hamlet (selyshche) is a non-governed rural locality and is governed by a village council of nearby village.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: In the 2020 administrative reform, all populated places in Ukraine (except for two cities with special status: Kyiv and Sevastopol) were resubordinated to raions (districts). The new figure of 136 raions includes 10 in the Crimean region (though they are not presently functional) and Sevastopol.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Before the introduction of oblasts in 1932, Ukraine comprised 40 okruhas, which had replaced the former Russian Imperial guberniya (governorate) subdivisions.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: In 1932 the territory of the Ukrainian SSR was re-established based on oblasts. Excluded in the administrative changes was Western Ukraine, which at that time formed part of the Second Polish Republic and shared in the Polish form of administrative division based on voivodeships.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: In the post-World War II period, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic consisted of 25 oblasts and two cities with special status.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Crimea obtained the status of an autonomous republic with its own government instead of a regional state administration.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: There are three types of first-level administrative divisions: 24 oblasts, 1 autonomous republic and 2 cities with special status.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: The Autonomous Republic of Crimea (Ukrainian: Автоно́мна Респу́бліка Крим, "Avtonomna Respublika Krym") geographically encompasses the major portion of the Crimean peninsula in southern Ukraine. Its capital is Simferopol. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea is the only region within Ukraine that has its own constitution.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: On 16 March 2014, after the occupation of Crimea by the Russian military, a referendum on joining the Russian Federation was held. A majority of votes supported the measure. On 21 March 2014, the Russian Duma voted to annex Crimea as a subject into the Russian Federation. The Ukrainian government does not recognize the referendum or annexation of Crimea as legitimate. On 27 March, the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 68/262 by 100 to 11 votes, recognizing the referendum as invalid and denying any legal change in the status of Crimea and Sevastopol.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: An oblast (Ukrainian: о́бласть, "oblast"; plural: о́бласті, "oblasti") is on the first level of the administrative division of Ukraine.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Most oblasts are named after their administrative center. Volyn and Zakarpattia, whose respective capitals are Lutsk and Uzhhorod, are named after the historic regions Volhynia and Transcarpathia.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Two cities have special status: Kyiv (the capital of Ukraine) and Sevastopol (occupied by Russia). Their special status puts them on the same administrative level as the oblasts, and thus under the direct supervision of the state via their respective local state administrations, which constitute the executive bodies of the cities.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Kyiv owes its special status to being the administrative center of the country, which grants it both additional powers and responsibilities. Sevastopol's special status was carried over from the Soviet era, and was due to the city being the historical headquarters of the Black Sea Fleet. Following the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, Sevastopol is controlled by Russia and is incorporated as a federal subject of Russia. It is recognized as a part of Ukraine by most of the international community.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Raions are smaller territorial units of subdivision in Ukraine. There are 136 raions. Following the December 2019 draft constitutional changes submitted to the Verkhovna Rada by President Volodymyr Zelensky, united territorial communities (136 new raions) have replaced the former 490 raions of Ukraine.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Ukraine has two types of settlements: rural and urban. Rural populated areas (сільський населений пункт) can be either a village (село, selo) or a rural settlement (селище). Urban populated areas (міський населений пункт) can be either a city (містo) or an urban-type settlement (селище міського типу). For the sake of brevity, urbanized settlements are sometimes classified as towns in the English language.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Changes to a settlement's status can be made only by the Verkhovna Rada. The size of a settlement does not ultimately define its status, although is a major factor. For example, the city of Prypiat still retains its status, while having a population of zero, due to its infrastructure, including buildings, roads, and utility networks.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: The typical Ukrainian "misto" ought to be considered a city, not a town (compare to City status in the United Kingdom). However, the city's subordination to either an oblast or raion also should be taken into account, especially in the political sense. Some of urbanized settlements may be cities of raion subordination, although it could seem confusing, a type of settlement should be considered first as its status is given for administrative purposes.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: According to Ukrainian law a city (Ukrainian: мі́сто, "misto"; plural: міста́, "mista") in Ukraine is a locality of at least 10,000 people. Cities may carry various status. Some may be of national importance, others of regional (oblast) importance, and the rest of district (raion) importance. For example, the cities of "Kyiv" and of "Sevastopol" have special status of national significance and each is officially classified as a "city with a special status", which administratively is equivalent to an oblast. Mayors of those cities, in general, as are governors of oblasts, are appointed by the President of Ukraine. However, the status of the mayor of Kyiv is somewhat more complex, and for further information see Legal status and local government of Kyiv. The status of Sevastopol is also unique.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Almost every oblast has at least one city of regional subordination (importance), which is the administrative center (capital) of that oblast. However, some other big cities within the oblast may have such status as well. The cities of oblast subordination have the same importance of a raion, and often are the administrative centers of such. In addition to regular raions, several Ukrainian cities with national or oblast status are further divided into "city raions" which may include other cities, towns and villages. In 2010, Ukraine had 23 such cities with their own city raions.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Many raions also have city municipalities of its level of subordination (importance). Those are usually the administrative centers (capitals). Notice that not all raions have a city as their administrative center; however all the raion centers are at least urban-like (urbanized). All administrative centers have their own form of self-administration. The municipalities of a raion subordination may administer several adjacent local councils (municipalities), usually rural. If a raion has several cities of raion (district) level, they may share administrative power for the raion.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: In addition to city municipalities, Ukraine has urban-like municipalities. The lowest form of self-administration are the rural municipalities and villages. A rural municipality may consist of a single village, usually big, or a combination of other rural villages or localities. Note that some villages also have some additional, very small settlements. Those settlements, together with the home village, combine a local (rural) municipality (silrada). For simplicity's sake, a silrada (rural municipality) is usually referred to as a village and is the lowest level of administrative division. The status of any settlement is granted by the Verkhovna Rada.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: The territorial hromadas (Ukrainian: територіа́льна грома́да, "terytorialna hromada"; 'territorial community'), or simlply hromadas (Ukrainian: грома́да, "hromada"; plural: грома́ди, "hromady") were established by the Government of Ukraine on 12 June 2020 as a part of administrative reform that started in 2015.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Ukraine also has several settlements known as "viiskove mistechko" which were former military installations. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the secrecy of such settlements has been unveiled, however, the towns are subordinated directly to the Ministry of Defense and do not have their own civil administrations. Such military installations are like ghost towns that are not even identified on a map. One of them, on the border of the Kyiv and Zhytomyr Oblasts is Makarov-1.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: A special territory known as the "zone of alienation" falls under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Emergencies and was the most severely affected territory by the Chernobyl disaster. Additionally, various restricted nature preserves known as "Zapovednik" fall under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Ecology.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, the status of civil–military administrations was created in territories of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts where the respective local government units cannot exercise their constitutionally guaranteed powers.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Ukraine has seven major agglomerated metropolitan areas (conurbations). These conurbation areas are not officially recognized and remain to be administered according to official oblast-raion system of subdivision. Some of them are:


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: The other three major areas are the metropolitan areas of such cities: Kryvyi Rih, Lviv, Zaporizhzhia.


title: Administrative divisions of Ukraine

text: Beside the administrative divisions, geographical divisions are at times used for reference or statistical purposes. The division splits Ukraine into four to six geographic areas: Western Ukraine, Eastern Ukraine, Southern Ukraine, Central Ukraine, Northern Ukraine (occasionally used).


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe is an ongoing period of currency instability in Zimbabwe that, using Cagan's definition of hyperinflation, began in February 2007. During the height of inflation from 2008 to 2009, it was difficult to measure Zimbabwe's hyperinflation because the government of Zimbabwe stopped filing official inflation statistics. However, Zimbabwe's peak month of inflation is estimated at 79.6 billion percent month-on-month, 89.7 sextillion percent year-on-year in mid-November 2008.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In April 2009, Zimbabwe stopped printing its currency, and currencies from other countries were used. In mid-2015, Zimbabwe announced plans to have completely switched to the United States dollar by the end of that year.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In June 2019, the Zimbabwean government announced the reintroduction of the Real Time Gross Settlement dollar (RTGS), to be known simply as the "Zimbabwe dollar", and that all foreign currency was no longer legal tender. By mid-July 2019, inflation had increased to 175%, sparking concerns that the country was entering another period of hyperinflation. In March 2020, with inflation above 500% annually, a new taskforce was created to assess the currency problems. By July 2020, annual inflation was estimated to be 737%.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: On 18 April 1980, the Republic of Zimbabwe was born from the former Republic of Rhodesia. The Rhodesian dollar was replaced by the Zimbabwean dollar at par value. When Zimbabwe gained its independence from the United Kingdom, the newly introduced Zimbabwean dollar was initially more valuable than the United States dollar at the official exchange rate. However, that did not reflect reality because, in terms of purchasing power on the open and black markets, it was less valuable, due primarily to the higher inflation in Zimbabwe. In its early years, Zimbabwe experienced strong growth and development. Wheat production for non-drought years was proportionally higher than previously, and the tobacco industry was thriving. Economic indicators for the country were strong.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: From 1991 to 1996, the Zimbabwean ZANU–PF President Robert Mugabe embarked on an Economic Structural Adjustment Programme (ESAP) that had serious negative effects on Zimbabwe's economy. In the late 1990s, the government instituted land reforms intended to evict white landowners and place their holdings in the hands of black farmers. However, many of the new farmers had no experience or training in agriculture. Many farms simply fell into disrepair or were given to Mugabe loyalists. From 1999 to 2009, the country experienced a sharp drop in food production and in all other sectors. The banking sector also collapsed, with farmers unable to obtain loans for capital development. Food output fell 45%, and manufacturing output fell by 29% in 2005, 26% in 2006 and 28% in 2007. Unemployment rose to 80%. Life expectancy dropped. Whites fled the country en masse taking much of the nations capital. The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe blamed the hyperinflation on economic sanctions imposed by the United States of America, the IMF, and the European Union. These sanctions affected the government of Zimbabwe, asset freezes and visa denials targeted at 200 specific Zimbabweans closely tied to the Mugabe regime. There were also restrictions placed on trade with Zimbabwe, by both individual businesses and the US Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: A monetarist view is that a general increase in the prices of things is less a commentary on the worth of those things than on the worth of the money. This has objective and subjective components:


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Crucial to both components is discipline over the creation of additional money. However, the Mugabe government was printing money to finance military involvement in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and, in 2000, in the Second Congo War, including higher salaries for army and government officials. Zimbabwe was under-reporting its war spending to the International Monetary Fund by perhaps $23 million a month.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Another motive for excessive money creation has been self-dealing. Transparency International ranks Zimbabwe's government 157th of 177 in terms of institutionalised corruption. The resulting lack of confidence in government undermines confidence in the future and faith in the currency.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Economic mis-steps by government can create shortages and occupy people with workarounds rather than productivity. Though this harms the economy, it does not necessarily undermine the value of the currency, but may harm confidence in the future. Widespread poverty and violence, including government violence to stifle political opposition, also undermines confidence in the future. Land reform lowered agricultural output, especially in tobacco, which accounted for one-third of Zimbabwe's foreign-exchange earnings. Manufacturing and mining also declined. An objective reason was, again, that farms were put in the hands of inexperienced people; and subjectively, that the move undermined the security of property.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Government instability and civic unrest were evident in other areas. Zimbabwean troops, trained by North Korean soldiers, conducted a massacre in the 1980s in the southern provinces of Matabeleland and Midlands, though Mugabe's government cites guerrilla attacks on civilian and state targets. Conflicts between the Ndebele ethnic minority and Mugabe's majority Shona people have led to many clashes, and there is also unrest between blacks and whites, in which the land reform was a factor. An aspect of this reform that seeks to discriminate against white specifically and many were forced by the regime to sign over 51% of their businesses to the black majority.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: The Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe responded to the dwindling value of the dollar by repeatedly arranging the printing of further banknotes, often at great expense from overseas suppliers. On 1 March 2008, it was reported that documents obtained by "The Sunday Times" showed that the Munich company Giesecke & Devrient (G&D) was receiving more than €500,000 (£381,562) a week for delivering bank notes equivalent to Z$170 trillion a week. By late 2008, inflation had risen so high that automated teller machines for one major bank gave a "data overflow error" and stopped customers' attempt to withdraw money with so many zeros.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In Zimbabwe, neither the issuance of banknotes of higher denominations nor proclamation of new currency regimes led holders of the currency to expect that the new money would be more stable than the old. Remedies announced by the government never included a believable basis for monetary stability. Thus, one reason the currency continued to lose value, causing hyperinflation, is that so many people expected it to.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Over the course of the five-year span of hyperinflation, the inflation rate fluctuated greatly. At one point, the US Ambassador to Zimbabwe predicted that it would reach 1.5 million percent. In June 2008 the annual rate of price growth was 11.2 million percent. The worst of the inflation occurred in 2008, leading to the abandonment of the currency. The peak month of hyperinflation occurred in mid-November 2008 with a rate estimated at 79,600,000,000% per month, with the year-over-year inflation rate reaching an astounding 89.7 sextillion percent. This resulted in becoming equivalent to Z$2,621,984,228.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: On 13 July 2007, the Zimbabwean government said that it had temporarily stopped publishing (official) inflation figures, a move that observers said was meant to draw attention away from "runaway inflation which has come to symbolise the country's unprecedented economic meltdown". In 2008, the inflation rate accelerated dramatically, from a rate in January of over 100,000% to an estimated rate of over 1,000,000% by May, and nearly 250,000,000% in July. As predicted by the quantity theory of money, this hyperinflation was linked to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe's choice to increase the money supply.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: As hyperinflation accelerated, the value of the Zimbabwe dollar declined rapidly against other currencies, yet official exchange rates published by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe were infrequently updated; this made it impossible to tell from an official source how much the Zimbabwe dollar was really worth against other currencies on a particular day, which in turn disrupted international business transactions involving Zimbabwe dollars. Staff from WM/Reuters devised an indirect means of measurement that was termed the Old Mutual Implied Rate (OMIR). This took the daily price of shares in the insurance company Old Mutual that traded in the London and Harare stock markets and derived from it a national daily exchange rate between the Zimbabwe dollar and the pound. Shares had much less strict capital controls than through the Zimbabwe banking system, so the shares were used as a vehicle for moving capital between currencies by buying stock in either London or Harare and then selling in the other location.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: The Old Mutual Implied rate was a widely adopted benchmark rate for unofficial currency exchange until intervention by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in May 2008 prohibited the transfer out of the country of shares in Old Mutual, ABC and Kingdom Meikles Africa, thereby blocking their fungibility.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In 2007, the government declared inflation illegal. Anyone who raised the prices for goods and services was subject to arrest. This amounted to a price freeze, which is usually ineffective in halting inflation. Officials arrested numerous corporate executives for changing their prices.In December 2008, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe licensed around 1,000 shops to deal in foreign currency. Citizens had increasingly been using foreign currency in daily exchanges, as local shops stated the prices of few goods in Zimbabwe dollars, because they needed foreign currency to import foreign goods. Many businesses and street vendors continued to do so without getting the license.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In January 2009, acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa lifted the restriction to use only Zimbabwean dollars. This too acknowledged what many were already doing. Citizens were allowed to use the US dollar, the euro, and the South African rand. However, teachers and civil servants were still being paid in Zimbabwean dollars. Even though their salaries were in the trillions per month, this amounted to around US$1, or half the daily bus fare. The government also used a restriction on bank withdrawals to try to limit the amount of money that was in circulation. It limited cash withdrawals to $Z500,000 which was around .


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Prices in shops and restaurants were still quoted in Zimbabwean dollars, but were adjusted several times a day. Any Zimbabwean dollars acquired needed to be exchanged for foreign currency on the parallel market immediately, or the holder would suffer a significant loss of value. For example, mini-bus drivers were required by law to only accept payment from passengers in Zimbabwean dollars, but at increasing rates throughout the day: the evening commute was therefore highest-priced ride of the day, with the next morning's price higher still. A driver might have to exchange money three times a day, not in banks but in back office rooms and parking lots.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: Such business venues constituted a black market, an arena explicitly outside the law. Transactors could evade the price freezes and the mandate to use Zimbabwean dollars. The black market served the demand for daily goods such as soap and bread, as grocery stores operating within the law no longer sold items whose prices were strictly controlled, or charged customers more if they were paying in Zimbabwean dollars. At one point, a loaf of bread was in the regular market, when bread was even available; apart from a trip to another country, the black market was the only option for almost all goods, and bread might cost . In May 2022, it was reported that the devaluation of the Zimbabwe dollar's black market exchange rate, which is used in most financial transactions in the economy, has been driving up inflation in the country.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: At independence in 1980, the Zimbabwe dollar became the common currency. Originally, the paper notes were in denominations of , 5, 10 and 20, and coins in denominations of 1, 5, 10, 20, 50 cents and . As larger bills were needed to pay for menial amounts, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe planned to print and circulate denominations of up to , 20, 50, and 100 trillion. Announcements of new denominations were increasingly frequent; the bill was announced just days after the printing of the bills.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: The government did not attempt to fight inflation with fiscal and monetary policy. By 2003, there were growing shortages. In 2006, before hyperinflation reached its peak, the bank announced it would print larger bills to buy foreign currencies. The Reserve Bank printed a bill to pay off debts owed to the International Monetary Fund.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: On three occasions, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe redenominated its currency. First, in August 2006, the Reserve Bank recalled notes in exchange for new notes with three zeros slashed from the currency. In July 2008, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, Gideon Gono, announced a new Zimbabwean dollar, this time with 10 zeros removed. The would be redenominated to be . This move was not just to slow inflation but also to make computations more manageable.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: A third redenomination, producing the "fourth Zimbabwe dollar," occurred in February 2009, and dropped 12 more zeros from the currency. It was thus worth 10 trillion trillion original dollars, as the three redenominations together reduced the value of an original dollar by Computers could not handle the amount of zeros such that other forms of money had to be used to act as normal money (bearer's cheques). Banks had to input a lesser amount on the deposit or withdrawal slip then would put a covering statement, such as "multiply by or add 10 zeros to your amount to get the real value". The same was true for businesses as well and all traders.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: A solution effectively adopted by Zimbabwe was to adopt some foreign currency as official. To facilitate commerce, it is less important which currency is adopted than that the government standardise on a single currency. The US dollar, the euro, and the South African rand were candidates; the US dollar had the most credibility and was the most widely traded within Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe could have joined the nearby nations of Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, and Eswatini, which constitute the Common Monetary Area, or "Rand Zone" by formally deciding to use the rand to promote trade and stability.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In 2009, the government abandoned printing Zimbabwean dollars at all. This implicitly solved the chronic problem of lack of confidence in the Zimbabwean dollar, and compelled people to use the foreign currency of their choice. Since then Zimbabwe has used a combination of foreign currencies, mostly US dollars.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In 2014, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe unveiled "convertible" coins in denominations of through . The Bank said that 80% of Zimbabweans use the U.S. dollar, and said the local lack of coins induces retailers to round prices up to the next higher dollar. The coins extend the use of the dollar as a "de facto" currency, and indeed the National Bank repeatedly assured that it does not intend to bring back a national currency. As of May 2016 the liquidity of the USD had rapidly decreased and John Mangudya, the governor of the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe, said Zimbabwe would print a new bond note, which he said would be at par with the American dollar. This was to be done within the following two months. Some citizens disputed this, saying the 2008 error was now returning and they would not accept the bond notes.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: The July 2018 inflation rate in Zimbabwe was officially 4.3% (up from 2.9% in June). In June 2019, the official inflation rate was 97.9%. In 2022, it was reported that the inflation rate quickened to 96.4% in April, from 60.6% in January. Therefore, Zimbabwe's government ordered banks to stop lending with immediate effect. This move was designed to stop speculation against the Zimbabwean dollar and was part of a raft of measures to arrest its rapid devaluation on the black market. Other measures include an increased tax on forex bank transfers, higher levies on forex cash withdrawals above $1,000, and the payment of taxes which used to be charged in forex in local currency, according to Mnangagwa.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In June 2015, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe said it would begin a process to "demonetize" (i.e., to officially value a fiat currency at zero). The plan was to have completed the switch to the US dollar by the end of September 2015. In December 2015, Patrick Chinamasa, the Zimbabwe Minister of Finance, said they would make the Chinese yuan their main reserve currency and legal tender after China cancelled US$40 million in debts. However, this was denied by the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe in January 2016. In June 2016, nine currencies were legal tender in Zimbabwe but it was estimated 90% of transactions were in US dollars and 5% in Rand.


title: Hyperinflation in Zimbabwe

text: In 2019, the new Finance Minister, Mthuli Ncube, presided over the conversion from foreign currency to a new Zimbabwean currency, and the resultant return of hyperinflation. It was estimated that inflation reached 500% during 2019. According to the website"Trading Economics," the annual inflation rate in Zimbabwe was 540% in February 2020. The annual inflation rate had risen to 676% in March 2020, and there was a bleak economic outlook due to the effects of a drought in 2019 and the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2022, the country experienced another period of high inflation, which jumped to 131.7% in May from 96.4% in April.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The World Chess Championship 2021 was a chess match between the reigning world champion Magnus Carlsen and the challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi to determine the World Chess Champion. It was held under the auspices of FIDE and played during Expo 2020 at Dubai Exhibition Centre in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, between 24 November and 12 December 2021. It was originally scheduled for the latter half of 2020, but was postponed until 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, this is the first ever sporting event to be held at an international exposition since the 1904 Summer Olympics during the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis, United States.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The match began with five consecutive high-quality draws, before Carlsen won a closely-contested eight-hour struggle in Game 6 that, with 136 moves, was the longest ever game in a World Chess Championship. Following this loss, Nepomniachtchi's level of play worsened, with Carlsen capitalizing on a series of one-move blunders by Nepomniachtchi in Games 8, 9 and 11 to win another three points. This gave Carlsen a convincing match win with four wins, seven draws and no losses.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The challenger was Ian Nepomniachtchi, who qualified by winning the Candidates Tournament 2020–21, an eight-player double-round robin tournament in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Originally scheduled for 15 March to 5 April 2020, the tournament was halted at the halfway point on 26 March 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The second half was played between 19 April and 27 April 2021, also in Yekaterinburg.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: If one or more players declined the invitation to play in the Candidates Tournament, the players with the next highest average ratings would qualify. On March 6, 2020, Teimour Radjabov withdrew because of concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic, and this rule was used to select Maxime Vachier-Lagrave as his replacement. Radjabov was given a direct entry into the next Candidates Tournament.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The match was a best-of-14 match, with tie breaks if necessary. It was increased from best-of-12 (in place for every world championship match since 2006), after all 12 regular games were drawn in the previous match in 2018.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The prize fund was €2 million, split 60% vs 40% between winner and loser. If the match had been tied after 14 classical games, the prize fund would have been split 55% vs 45% in favor of the tiebreak winner.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The chief arbiter was Mahdi Abdulrahim from United Arab Emirates, and the deputy arbiter was Andy Howie from Scotland.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The time control for each game was 120 minutes per side for the first 40 moves, 60 minutes for the next 20 moves, and 15 minutes for the rest of the game, with a 30-second increment per move starting with move 61.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The match was best of 14 games; a score of at least 7½ would win the world championship. If the score had been equal after 14 games, tie-break games with faster time controls would have been played:


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Players were not allowed to agree to a draw before Black's 40th move. A draw claim before then was permitted only through the arbiter, if threefold repetition occurred.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Prior to the match, Nepomniachtchi and Carlsen had played 13 games against each other at classical time controls, of which Nepomniachtchi won 4 and Carlsen 1, with 8 draws. Several of these games were played when they were juniors, however, and in the five years before the match their head-to-head score was 1 win each with 4 draws. Their most recent pre-championship game, during the 2021 Norway Chess tournament, was a draw.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Bids were originally to be presented to FIDE no later than 1 March 2019, with inspection of the proposed venues between 1 July and 15 August 2019.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Early interest was expressed in 2018 by Monaco and Vienna, though nothing came of these. Stavanger, Norway, announced a bid in March 2019, but withdrew it in June 2019 after Carlsen expressed reluctance to play the match in Norway. In November 2019, FIDE president Arkady Dvorkovich announced that FIDE had received bids from Dubai and Argentina. In February 2020, he announced the match would most likely take place in Dubai.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: In January 2021, FIDE announced that the match would take place in Dubai from 24 November to 16 December 2021, as part of Expo 2020.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Due to WADA sanctions against Russia, FIDE confirmed that Nepomniachtchi would not compete under the Russian flag, but would play as a neutral player. The sanctions apply only to the world championship match, not to other FIDE events such as the Candidates Tournament. The Court of Arbitration for Sport upheld a ban on Russia competing at World Championships, and it is implemented by WADA in response to the state-sponsored doping program of Russian athletes.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Nepomniachtchi played under the Chess Federation of Russia (CFR) flag. Before the first game, WADA sanctions barred FIDE from using an initial flag with the full name "Chess Federation of Russia", so FIDE officials deployed a flag with the initials "CFR".


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Nepomniachtchi was helped by seconds Sergey Yanovsky, Vladimir Potkin, Peter Leko and Sergey Karjakin. Carlsen's seconds were revealed after the match as Peter Heine Nielsen, Laurent Fressinet, Jan Gustafsson, Jorden van Foreest, and Daniil Dubov. Carlsen confirmed that Nils Grandelius, who helped in previous World Championship preparation, was not on his team for this match.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Dubov was criticised by a number of other Russian players, including Sergey Karjakin and Sergei Shipov, who suggested that Dubov (a Russian grandmaster) should not aid a non-Russian in a match against a fellow Russian. In response, Dubov contended that he considered it to be a match between two individuals, and said that a counter-argument was that working with Carlsen would improve his chess and hence help the Russian team.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: In previous world championships, the players followed a simple two days on, one day off schedule. For this match, FIDE changed the format to a weekly cycle: 3 games Friday-Sunday, rest Monday, two games Tuesday-Wednesday, rest Thursday. Days with games are shaded. The tighter schedule was deliberately designed to try and ensure more decisive games.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Colours were drawn at the opening ceremony, and Nepomniachtchi received the white pieces for the first game. Colours alternated thereafter, with no switching at the halfway point as in previous matches.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The final three games were scheduled for 11, 12, and 14 December and tiebreaks were scheduled for 15 December; however, these were not required because Carlsen reached 7½ points after Game 11. Consequently, the closing ceremony, originally scheduled for either 15 or 16 December, depending on whether or not tiebreaks would be required, was moved up to 12 December.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Note: Since Carlsen reached 7½ points with game 11, the match ended even though not all 14 games were played.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 1 was a 45-move draw. Nepomniachtchi (White) opened with 1.e4, and the game developed into a Ruy Lopez. The players followed established lines until Carlsen (Black) played 8...Na5, the top choice of the neural network chess engine Leela Chess Zero. Nepomniachtchi quickly played the strong but not obvious move 14.Kf1!, indicating that he was still within his preparation. Carlsen sacrificed a pawn in return for the bishop pair, more space, and more activity. Nepomniachtchi played some inaccurate moves (22.Bf4 and 30.Ne1?!), allowing Carlsen to gain a slightly better position. With Carlsen pressing, Nepomniachtchi defended accurately, returning the pawn to neutralize Black's initiative and reached a threefold repetition draw. In his commentary, GM Sam Shankland expressed concern about Carlsen's opening preparation, noting that he had failed to equalize in the opening.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 2 was a 58-move draw. Carlsen played the Catalan Opening, and Nepomniachtchi elected to hold the pawn with 7...b5 rather than return it with the usual 7...a6, giving Carlsen an advantage in development and central position. Although the variation was clearly in Carlsen's preparation, Nepomniachtchi did not shirk from a battle with 13...Nd3. The resulting middlegame was complicated, with Carlsen holding an advantage until the inaccurate 17.Ne5. Carlsen later confessed that he had missed his opponent's response 18...Nac5. Nepomniachtchi won the exchange, but White had strong compensation and initiative. The game continued to be complicated, with commentator Sam Shankland writing that he thought White had an advantage before consulting an engine, which clearly favoured Black. GM Anish Giri called Nepomniatchi's 24...c3 a "panicky" move, and indeed this gave up most of his advantage. White had an opportunity to push for more, but an inaccuracy by Carlsen allowed Nepomniachtchi to force a theoretically drawn position. After a forced queen exchange, Carlsen played on for 15 moves, but the result was never in doubt.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 3 was a 41-move draw. Like Game 1, the players played the Ruy Lopez. Nepomniachtchi deviated first with 8.a4, but Carlsen was prepared and equalized smoothly. White had a small initiative, but after an accurate bishop maneuver by Black (17...Bc8 followed by ...Be6 preparing ...d5), mass exchanges into a drawn endgame followed. Chess.com called Carlsen's preparation with Black thus far "bulletproof", although Carlsen remarked during the postgame conference that it had not been as easy as it looked, and he had not managed to get many chances.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 4 was a 33-move draw. Carlsen opened with 1.e4, against which Nepomniachtchi played Petrov's Defence. The game followed known theory until Carlsen tried the novelty 18.Nh4. Although an interesting move, Nepomniachtchi had seen the idea before and had prepared for the variation. Although the position looked risky for Nepomniachtchi with a knight stuck on f8, the passed a-pawn provided strong counterplay. Carlsen thought for 50 minutes looking for winning chances, before acquiescing to a draw by threefold repetition.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Commentators GM Sam Shankland and GM Fabiano Caruana felt that Nepomniachtchi was the moral victor of the game, having successfully reached a clean draw even when faced with a new idea.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 5 was a 43-move draw. Similar to games 1 and 3, Nepomniachtchi opened with e4 following the Ruy Lopez opening. The endgame resulted in a draw by threefold repetition.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 6 was a 136-move win for Carlsen that lasted 7 hours 45 minutes. , it is the longest game in the history of the World Chess Championship, surpassing the previous record, a 124-move draw in game 5 of the World Chess Championship 1978 between Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: With 25...Rac8, Nepomniachtchi unbalanced the position by giving up two rooks for Carlsen's queen, offering a slight material advantage to Carlsen in exchange for Nepomniachtchi later obtaining a passed a-pawn. Both Carlsen and Nepomniachtchi missed chances during a time scramble just before the first time control at move 40, where the position was considered equal. With 52...Qe4, which Anish Giri believed was a mistake and Nepomniachtchi called "unnecessary" in the post-game press conference, Nepomniachtchi gave up his passed a-pawn for Carlsen's h-pawn, leading to an endgame which was advantageous to Carlsen. With 80.Rxf7+! Carlsen entered an endgame with rook, knight and two connected passed pawns against Nepomniachtchi's queen, which Giri described as "terribly unpleasant" for Nepomniachtchi. While the position was a tablebase draw, the burden was mainly on Nepomniachtchi to defend accurately to achieve this. Meanwhile, Carlsen, facing no serious threat of losing, could continue pressing his position. Nepomniachtchi's 118...Qa5 (instead of Qb6+, forcing the white king into the open) made his task much more difficult. Ultimately, Nepomniachtchi made the decisive error 130...Qe6 (130...Qb1 and 130...Qc2 were the only drawing moves according to the tablebase), allowing Carlsen to begin advancing his pawns towards inevitable promotion.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The players discussed the game immediately after its finish and seemingly agreed that the objective result should have been a draw. In the press conference after the game, Carlsen said: "Obviously I'm elated to get this result. It was never easy. Frankly it shouldn't be. There was a lot of the same emotions as the game that I won against Karjakin (in Game 10 of the 2016 World Championship), which was a marathon there as well. Obviously this is huge."


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The game was widely praised within the global chess community. Former world champion Garry Kasparov praised the game as a counterexample to the stereotypes that "chess isn't a sport" or "that physical condition isn't important in chess", as well as that "classical chess is dead". Former world champion challenger Nigel Short described the game as "epic" and called Carlsen's effort in the game "stupendous". Later in the match, "The New York Times" called game 6 "the breakthrough that blew open the contest" and "an epic struggle that rewrote the chess record books."


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 7 was a 41-move draw. Carlsen equalized smoothly out of another Ruy Lopez, after which the players heavily exchanged material leading to a drawn position. The position was completely lifeless by the 28th move, with the remainder of the game a formality to accede to the rules regarding draw offers. For many commentators, this lifeless draw was not surprising because of how draining game 6 had been (it had ended after midnight).


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 8 was a 46-move win for Carlsen. Nepomniachtchi blundered a pawn in the middle game, leaving him with a lost position, and Carlsen carefully and accurately converted his advantage to a win in the queen-and-pawn endgame. This gave Carlsen a two-game lead, with commentators saying it was now difficult for Nepomniachtchi to win the match.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Carlsen began with 1.e4 and Nepomniachtchi again replied with the Petrov Defense, Carlsen varying from game 4 with the less common (3.d4). Carlsen's 7.Nd2 is an obscure sideline, but it was after 9.0-0, in a position apparently beyond his preparation, that Nepomniachtchi took his first think before playing the surprising novelty 9...h5. In response, Carlsen took an even longer think before playing 10.Qe1+?!, a safe move, rejecting sharper (and perhaps stronger) alternatives by offering to trade queens. Carlsen commented after the game that he felt too tired after game 6 to properly calculate the sharper alternatives, and, leading the match, was happy to offer the quick draw and reach the scheduled rest day. Nepomniachtchi replied with 10...Kf8, avoiding the queen trade and probable draw which would have resulted from 10...Qe7, a decision which was criticized by multiple GMs, including Giri and Anand. Nepomniachtchi commented after the game that he thought both moves were equally drawish.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Middlegame play continued relatively normally until Nepomniachtchi blundered with 21...b5??, losing the a7 pawn in a simple combination. Commentators also considered Black's subsequent defense imprecise; several GMs, including Giri, Anand, Caruana and Polgár suggested 23...Bxh3 as a possible improvement, while Stockfish rates 24...Rd6 a blunder. Nevertheless, even with best defense the position was likely already lost by this point.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: The rooks and bishops were quickly exchanged, and further consolidation resulted in a queen-and-pawn endgame with Carlsen up two pawns. Such endgames are often difficult to win due to the threat of perpetual check. Nepomniachtchi made a last-ditch effort to create perpetual checks, but Carlsen calmly spent his available time to ensure this could not occur. Nepomniachtchi gave up a third pawn on move 44 and resigned on move 46.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 9 was a 39-move win for Carlsen. Nepomniachtchi played the English opening, a good psychological choice because there are few forcing lines for Black. He managed to get a complicated position out of the opening, which was also a success because such positions often provide greater opportunities for a win. On move 15, Nepomniachtchi missed the idea 15.b4, which temporarily sacrifices a pawn for open lines. Nepomniachtchi agreed that this idea was promising when it was pointed out to him during the press conference. As the game continued, Carlsen missed White's 24.Qe1 when playing 21...Qb4, which allowed White to win the b7-pawn, but Black had sufficient compensation. One move after capturing the b7-pawn, however, Nepomniachtchi blundered a bishop with 27.c5??, leaving the bishop trapped after 27...c6. Nepomniachtchi found the best practical try after the blunder, but, down a bishop, his position could not be salvaged. This win gave Carlsen a three-point lead over Nepomniachtchi, and commentators agreed this virtually assured Carlsen would win the match.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 10 was a 41-move draw. It was a quick, quiet game with the players eventually splitting the point. Nepomniachtchi surprised commentators by playing 1...e5 in response to Carlsen's King's Pawn Game, because this gives White many options to force a draw. When Nepomniachtchi followed 2.Nf3 with the Petroff Defense, it became clear that he was happy with a draw. The queens were quickly exchanged and a symmetrical position with no weaknesses on both sides appeared on the board, leading to a draw. Shankland described the game as a "snoozefest" and suggested that were draw offers permitted before move 40, the players might well have called the game off as early as move 11.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Game 11 was a 49-move win for Carlsen. Nepomniachtchi began with 1.e4, as he had in games 1, 3, 5, and 7, but deviated with 3.Bc4, the Italian Game, instead of the Ruy Lopez he had played previously. He did not play the most ambitious moves, and Black achieved the central pawn break ...d5 – thematic in the Italian – before White did. With no advantage, Nepomniachtchi blundered again with 23.g3??, a surprising blunder because Black has only one good response, but that response wins. Carlsen did not play the most direct winning lines afterwards, but still simplified the position into a comfortable pawn-up rook endgame which he converted without trouble. Commentators suggested that 23.Rxd4 could have maintained a drawn position.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: A number of commentators expressed regret and surprise over Nepomniachtchi's poor performance in the second half of the match, where he lost three games due to uncharacteristic blunders. The exhausting game six was identified as a possible explanation for the Russian grandmaster's seeming collapse. A typical comment, from the Chess.com summary of the match, reads:


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: "It's sad; we know what he's [Nepomniachtchi's] capable of and he didn't get to show the world in this match," said GM Robert Hess during the Chess.com broadcast today. The American grandmaster and commentator expressed what seems to be the general feeling in the chess world: that Nepomniachtchi's painful collapse after game six did not reflect the high level that he had shown in the first half of this championship or at the Candidates Tournament.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: It really felt like two matches were played. Nepo A played match one, and in my opinion, Nepo A is the second-best player in the world. Nepo B showed up for match two, and that was a farce. I really think if he can manage to consistently bring Nepo A to the board, he can be very ambitious about playing in another world championship match and giving Magnus a better fight someday.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Carlsen, in an interview with Chess24.com immediately after retaining the title, took pride in his performance in game six and said that the lopsided final score may have been the result of that grueling game:


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: You can point at things he [Nepomniachtchi] could have done differently in every game, of course, but overall I'm happy with my play, very proud of my effort in the 6th game, and that laid the foundation for everything. The final score is probably a bit more lopsided than it could have been, but that's the way some of the other matches also could have gone if I’d gotten a lead.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Oliver Roeder writing in FiveThirtyEight described the match as "featuring both the impressively precise and the inexplicably misguided". Data assembled by Lichess using the Stockfish chess engine estimated that of the 1,034 world chess championship games dating back to 1888, game seven was the most accurate game ever played in world chess championship history, while games three and ten were tied for the second-most accurate; on the other hand, Nepomniachtchi's blunder in game eight made it the 312th least accurate championship game ever.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: In an interview a month after the match, former world champion Anatoly Karpov said he felt Nepomniachtchi had played really well in the first half of the match, and had real winning chances in games 1, 2, and 5. Karpov felt Nepomniachtchi had been somewhat unlucky to lose his advantage in game 1 in the middlegame, while in game 5, if Nepomniachtchi had played c4 at the right moment he would have had a pleasant advantage that is difficult to defend against. In the critical game 6, Nepomniachtchi had also gotten very close to a win – although engine analysis showed that the position was balanced, Karpov felt that in a practical game it is difficult to defend White's position under time pressure. This loss turned into a crucial psychological turning point, with Karpov postulating that Nepomniachtchi crumbled when he realized how many chances he had missed. As a result, the second half of the match was not at world championship level – Carlsen won four games out of six, which was not something that has happened since the Interregnum of World Chess Champions in 1948. Nonetheless, Karpov acknowledges that Carlsen has proven he is the world's strongest player and therefore deserves the title.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Per regulation, Carlsen won €1.2 million while Nepomniachtchi took home €800,000. Carlsen won 9 Elo rating points and retained his number one position on the FIDE rating list, while Nepomniachtchi lost 9 points and remained fifth.


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: Shortly after his victory, Carlsen mentioned that he might not be motivated enough to play another world championship match unless the challenger was Alireza Firouzja, an 18-year-old prodigy who had recently risen to number two in the world rankings. This was something that surprised former world champion Anatoly Karpov, since Karpov felt that this was the first World Chess Championship that Carlsen has won decisively (Carlsen had needed tiebreaks to defeat Sergey Karjakin in 2016 and Fabiano Caruana in 2018, and in Karpov's opinion there were "questions" in his matches against Anand in 2013 and 2014).


title: World Chess Championship 2021

text: As the runner-up, Nepomniachtchi qualified for the Candidates Tournament 2022, an eight-player tournament to select the challenger for the 2023 World Chess Championship. Carlsen's former challengers Fabiano Caruana and Sergey Karjakin had also qualified for this Candidates tournament, as had Firouzja; however Karjakin was later disqualified by FIDE for his support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Nepomniachtchi won and was initially expected to challenge Carlsen once again in 2023. However, Carlsen announced in July 2022 that he would not defend his title, citing a lack of motivation, and Nepomniachtchi is instead scheduled to play Ding Liren, the runner-up of the Candidates Tournament.


title: Commander (United States)

text: In the United States, commander is a military rank that is also sometimes used as a military billet title—the designation of someone who manages living quarters or a base—depending on the branch of service. It is also used as a rank or title in non-military organizations; particularly in law enforcement.


title: Commander (United States)

text: The commander rank started out as "Master and Commander" in 1674 within the Royal Navy for the officer responsible for sailing a ship under the Captain and sometimes second-in-command. Sub-captain, under-captain, rector and master-commanding were also used for the same position. With the Master and Commander also serving as captain of smaller ships the Royal Navy subsumed as the third and lowest of three grades of captain given the various sizes of ships. The Continental Navy had the tri-graded captain ranks. Captain 2nd Grade, or Master Commandant, became Commander in 1838.


title: Commander (United States)

text: In the Navy, the Coast Guard, the NOAA Corps, and the Public Health Service Corps, commander (abbreviated "CDR") is a senior-grade officer rank, with the pay grade of O-5. Commander ranks above lieutenant commander (O-4) and below captain (O-6). Commander is equivalent to the rank of lieutenant colonel in the other uniformed services.


title: Commander (United States)

text: Notably, it is the first rank at which the holder wears an embellished cap whereas officers of the other military services are entitled to embellishment of similar headgear at O-4 rank. Promotion to commander in the Navy is governed by Department of Defense policies derived from the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act (DOPMA) of 1980 or its companion Reserve Officer Personnel Management Act (ROPMA). DOPMA/ROPMA guidelines suggest that 70% of lieutenant commanders should be promoted to commander after serving a minimum of three years at their present rank and after attaining 15–17 years of cumulative commissioned service, although this percentage may vary and be appreciably less for certain officer designators (i.e., primary "specialties") dependent on defense budgets, force structure and needs of the service.


title: Commander (United States)

text: A commander in the Navy may command a frigate, destroyer, submarine, aviation squadron or small shore activity, or may serve on a staff afloat or ashore (typically as an action officer or as an executive officer to a flag officer or general officer), or a larger vessel afloat (as either a department head or executive officer). An officer in the rank of commander who commands a vessel may also be referred to as "captain" as a courtesy title, or informally referred to as "skipper." Commanding officers of aviation squadrons and smaller shore activities may also be informally referred to as "skipper" but never as "captain" unless they actually hold the rank of captain, e.g., military pay grade O-6, as would be the case for certain Fleet Replacement Squadron commanding officers and a wide range of both small and large shore activities.


title: Commander (United States)

text: A commander in the Coast Guard may typically command a medium endurance cutter or a small air station. Like their Navy counterparts, a Coast Guard officer in the rank of commander who commands a cutter may also be referred to as "captain" as a courtesy title, or informally referred to as "skipper." Commanding officers of joint USN/USMC/USCG aviation training squadrons and small Coast Guard air stations and shore activities may also be informally referred to as "skipper" but never as "captain" unless they are commanding a large air station or shore activity and actually hold the rank of captain, e.g., military pay grade O-6.


title: Commander (United States)

text: Although it exists largely as a maritime training organization, the Maritime Service also has the grade of commander. The commission is appointed by the president via the Secretary of Transportation, making it a federally recognized rank with a corresponding paygrade.


title: Commander (United States)

text: In addition to its use as a rank title, the Navy also uses commander as a "position title" for senior captains or flag officers in command of multiple independent units, each with their own "commanding officer". For example, the senior officer in a Navy aviation squadron is the "commanding officer" (CO) because he or she is in command of that singular unit. That officer's immediate superior in command will likely be an air group or air wing "commander", with the latter being responsible for multiple squadrons. This is in keeping with the naval tradition of "commanding officers" commanding single units, but "commanders" commanding multiple units.


title: Commander (United States)

text: The Los Angeles Police Department was one of the first American police departments to use this rank. A commander in the LAPD is equivalent to an inspector in other police departments, such as the New York City Police Department. The LAPD rank was originally called inspector as well, but was changed in 1974 to commander after senior officers voiced a preference for the more military-sounding rank. A commander is the third-highest rank in the force, above the rank of captain and below deputy chief. Duties are assigned to the Commander of Community Affairs, Internal Affairs, Governmental Liaison, Narcotics, Organized Crime and Vice, Criminal Intelligence, Detective Services, and other departments.


title: Commander (United States)

text: The San Francisco Police Department also has a commander rank. As with the LAPD, it is above captain and below deputy chief. The Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia uses the rank of commander. The rank falls between those of inspector and assistant chief. The Rochester Police Department uses the rank of commander. Higher than captain and below deputy chief, the rank is achieved by appointment. Commander is the rank held by the two patrol division heads and other commanders fill various administrative roles. The Saint Paul Police Department is another police force that uses the rank of commander. In the Saint Paul Police Department, commanders serve as the chief of the district or unit that they oversee.


title: Commander (United States)

text: Many police departments in the Midwest use the rank of commander. It is equivalent to a lieutenant in most other departments, being above a sergeant and below a deputy chief or captain. Commander is also used as a title in certain circumstances, such as the commander of a squad of detectives, who would usually be of the rank of lieutenant. Commander is also utilized by larger sheriff's departments in the United States, with the rank usually falling between chief deputy and captain, three positions removed from the sheriff.


title: Commander (United States)

text: In the Army and Marine Corps, the term "commander" is officially applied to the commanding officer of a unit; hence, there are company commanders, battalion commanders, brigade commanders, and so forth. At the highest levels of military command structure, "commander" also refers to what used to be called commander-in-chief, or CINC, until October 24, 2002, although the term CINC is still used in casual speech. The soldier in charge of a tank, for example the M1 Abrams, is also called its "commander".


title: Commander (United States)

text: In the Air Force, the term "commander" (abbreviated "CC") is officially applied to the commanding officer of an Air Force unit; hence, there are squadron commanders, group commanders, wing commanders, numbered air force commanders, major command commanders and so forth. In rank, a squadron commander is typically a lieutenant colonel, although some smaller squadrons may be commanded by a major.


title: Commander (United States)

text: A group commander is typically a mid-grade colonel, while a wing commander is typically a senior colonel or a brigadier general. A numbered air force commander is normally a lieutenant general, although some may be in the rank of major general, especially in the Air Force Reserve or Air National Guard. The Major Command commanders are normally in the rank of general or lieutenant general.


title: Houston, we have a problem

text: "Houston, we have a problem" is a popular but slightly erroneous quotation from the radio communications between the Apollo 13 astronauts Jack Swigert, Jim Lovell and the NASA Mission Control Center ("Houston") during the Apollo 13 spaceflight in 1970, as the astronauts communicated their discovery of the explosion that crippled their spacecraft to mission control.


title: Houston, we have a problem

text: The words actually spoken, initially by Swigert, were "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here". After being prompted to repeat the transmission by CAPCOM Jack R. Lousma, this time Lovell responded with "Uh, Houston, we've had a problem."


title: Houston, we have a problem

text: Since then, the phrase "Houston, we have a problem" has become popular, being used to account, informally, the emergence of an unforeseen problem, often with a sense of ironic understatement.


title: Houston, we have a problem

text: The Apollo 13 Flight Journal lists the timestamps and dialogue between the astronauts and Mission Control. Along with the original audio, the message was:


title: Houston, we have a problem

text: In Chapter 13 of "Apollo Expeditions to the Moon" (1975), Jim Lovell recalls the event: "Jack Swigert saw a warning light that accompanied the bang, and said, 'Houston, we've had a problem here.' I came on and told the ground that it was a main B bus undervolt. The time was 21:08 hours on April 13."


title: Houston, we have a problem

text: In the 1995 film "Apollo 13", the actual quote was shortened to "Houston, we have a problem". Screenwriter William Broyles Jr. made the change, stating that the verb tense actually used "wasn't as dramatic". Broyles and American University linguist Naomi S. Baron said the actual line spoken would not work well in a suspense movie. The quote ranked at No. 50 on AFI's 100 Greatest Movie Quotes in June 2005.


title: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

text: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office is the title of the official resident cat at 10 Downing Street, the residence and executive office of the prime minister of the United Kingdom in London. There has been a resident cat in the British government employed as a mouser and pet since the 16th century, although modern records date only to the 1920s. Despite other cats having served Downing Street, the first one to be given the official title of Chief Mouser by the British government was Larry in 2011. Other cats have been given this title affectionately, usually by the British press.


title: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

text: In 2004, a study was conducted showing that voters' perceptions of the Chief Mouser were not completely above partisanship.


title: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

text: There is evidence of a cat in residence in the English government dating back to the reign of Henry VIII, when Cardinal Thomas Wolsey placed his cat by his side while acting in his judicial capacity as Lord Chancellor. Official records, however, released into the public domain on 4 January 2005 as part of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 only date back to 3 June 1929, when A.E. Banham at the Treasury authorised the Office Keeper "to spend 1d a day from petty cash towards the maintenance of an efficient cat". In April 1932, the weekly allowance was increased to 1s 6d. By the 21st century, the mouser was costing £100 "per annum". The cats do not necessarily belong to the Prime Minister in residence, and it is rare for the Chief Mouser's term of office to coincide with that of a Prime Minister. The cat with the longest known tenure at Downing Street is Wilberforce, who served under four different Prime Ministers: Edward Heath, Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, and Margaret Thatcher.


title: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

text: The post has been held by Larry since 2011, the first to be given the title officially. The departure of the previous incumbent, Sybil, was in January 2009. Sybil, who began her tenure on 11 September 2007, was the first mouser for ten years following the retirement of her predecessor Humphrey in 1997. Sybil was owned by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, who lived in 10 Downing Street while the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, lived in the larger 11 Downing Street. It was reported that Sybil did not stay in London, and was returned to Scotland to live with a friend of the Darlings. Sybil died on 27 July 2009.


title: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

text: In January 2011, rats were seen in Downing Street, "scurrying across the steps of Number 10 Downing Street for the second time during a TV news report," according to ITN. There being no incumbent Chief Mouser at that time, the Prime Minister's spokesman said there were "no plans" for a cat to be brought in to tackle the problem; however, the following day, newspapers reported that the spokesman had said there was a "pro-cat faction" within Downing Street, leading to speculation that a replacement might indeed be brought in to deal with the problem. On 14 February 2011, it was reported that a cat called "Larry" had been brought in to address the problem. The "London Evening Standard" reported that the cat had been selected by David Cameron and his family, from those at Battersea Dogs & Cats Home.


title: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

text: Chief Mousers in the past have overlapped, or been phased in, though the position can and has remained vacant for extended periods of time. Larry is the only Chief Mouser listed on the official web site for Number 10. In November 2014, George Osborne's cat Freya was removed from Downing Street leaving Larry as the Chief Mouser.


title: Chief Mouser to the Cabinet Office

text: In 2004, Robert Ford, a political scientist at the University of Manchester, reported on a YouGov survey on partisan reactions to the Downing Street cats. Participants in the survey were shown a picture of Humphrey, the Chief Mouser appointed by Margaret Thatcher, and told that he was either Thatcher's cat or Tony Blair's cat. Affinity for the cat divided along partisan lines: Conservative voters liked the cat far more when they were told he was Thatcher's and Labour voters liked the cat far more when they were told he was Blair's. Ford concludes that partisanship shapes reactions to everything a politician does, however trivial, similar to the halo effect (and a reverse "forked tail effect") observed by psychologists.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: A charge-coupled device (CCD) is an integrated circuit containing an array of linked, or coupled, capacitors. Under the control of an external circuit, each capacitor can transfer its electric charge to a neighboring capacitor. CCD sensors are a major technology used in digital imaging.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: In a CCD image sensor, pixels are represented by p-doped metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) capacitors. These MOS capacitors, the basic building blocks of a CCD, are biased above the threshold for inversion when image acquisition begins, allowing the conversion of incoming photons into electron charges at the semiconductor-oxide interface; the CCD is then used to read out these charges.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Although CCDs are not the only technology to allow for light detection, CCD image sensors are widely used in professional, medical, and scientific applications where high-quality image data are required.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: In applications with less exacting quality demands, such as consumer and professional digital cameras, active pixel sensors, also known as CMOS sensors (complementary MOS sensors), are generally used.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: However, the large quality advantage CCDs enjoyed early on has narrowed over time and since the late 2010s CMOS sensors are the dominant technology, having largely if not completely replaced CCD image sensors.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The basis for the CCD is the metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) structure, with MOS capacitors being the basic building blocks of a CCD, and a depleted MOS structure used as the photodetector in early CCD devices.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: In the late 1960s, Willard Boyle and George E. Smith at Bell Labs were researching MOS technology while working on semiconductor bubble memory. They realized that an electric charge was the analogy of the magnetic bubble and that it could be stored on a tiny MOS capacitor. As it was fairly straightforward to fabricate a series of MOS capacitors in a row, they connected a suitable voltage to them so that the charge could be stepped along from one to the next. This led to the invention of the charge-coupled device by Boyle and Smith in 1969. They conceived of the design of what they termed, in their notebook, "Charge 'Bubble' Devices".


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The initial paper describing the concept in April 1970 listed possible uses as memory, a delay line, and an imaging device. The device could also be used as a shift register. The essence of the design was the ability to transfer charge along the surface of a semiconductor from one storage capacitor to the next. The concept was similar in principle to the bucket-brigade device (BBD), which was developed at Philips Research Labs during the late 1960s.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The first experimental device demonstrating the principle was a row of closely spaced metal squares on an oxidized silicon surface electrically accessed by wire bonds. It was demonstrated by Gil Amelio, Michael Francis Tompsett and George Smith in April 1970. This was the first experimental application of the CCD in image sensor technology, and used a depleted MOS structure as the photodetector. The first patent () on the application of CCDs to imaging was assigned to Tompsett, who filed the application in 1971.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The first working CCD made with integrated circuit technology was a simple 8-bit shift register, reported by Tompsett, Amelio and Smith in August 1970. This device had input and output circuits and was used to demonstrate its use as a shift register and as a crude eight pixel linear imaging device. Development of the device progressed at a rapid rate. By 1971, Bell researchers led by Michael Tompsett were able to capture images with simple linear devices.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Several companies, including Fairchild Semiconductor, RCA and Texas Instruments, picked up on the invention and began development programs. Fairchild's effort, led by ex-Bell researcher Gil Amelio, was the first with commercial devices, and by 1974 had a linear 500-element device and a 2D 100 × 100 pixel device. Steven Sasson, an electrical engineer working for Kodak, invented the first digital still camera using a Fairchild CCD in 1975.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The interline transfer (ILT) CCD device was proposed by L. Walsh and R. Dyck at Fairchild in 1973 to reduce smear and eliminate a mechanical shutter. To further reduce smear from bright light sources, the frame-interline-transfer (FIT) CCD architecture was developed by K. Horii, T. Kuroda and T. Kunii at Matsushita (now Panasonic) in 1981.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The first KH-11 KENNEN reconnaissance satellite equipped with charge-coupled device array ( pixels) technology for imaging was launched in December 1976. Under the leadership of Kazuo Iwama, Sony started a large development effort on CCDs involving a significant investment. Eventually, Sony managed to mass-produce CCDs for their camcorders. Before this happened, Iwama died in August 1982. Subsequently a CCD chip was placed on his tombstone to acknowledge his contribution. The first mass-produced consumer CCD video camera, the CCD-G5, was released by Sony in 1983, based on a prototype developed by Yoshiaki Hagiwara in 1981.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Early CCD sensors suffered from shutter lag. This was largely resolved with the invention of the pinned photodiode (PPD). It was invented by Nobukazu Teranishi, Hiromitsu Shiraki and Yasuo Ishihara at NEC in 1980. They recognized that lag can be eliminated if the signal carriers could be transferred from the photodiode to the CCD. This led to their invention of the pinned photodiode, a photodetector structure with low lag, low noise, high quantum efficiency and low dark current. It was first publicly reported by Teranishi and Ishihara with A. Kohono, E. Oda and K. Arai in 1982, with the addition of an anti-blooming structure. The new photodetector structure invented at NEC was given the name "pinned photodiode" (PPD) by B.C. Burkey at Kodak in 1984. In 1987, the PPD began to be incorporated into most CCD devices, becoming a fixture in consumer electronic video cameras and then digital still cameras. Since then, the PPD has been used in nearly all CCD sensors and then CMOS sensors.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: In January 2006, Boyle and Smith were awarded the National Academy of Engineering Charles Stark Draper Prize, and in 2009 they were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics for their invention of the CCD concept. Michael Tompsett was awarded the 2010 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, for pioneering work and electronic technologies including the design and development of the first CCD imagers. He was also awarded the 2012 IEEE Edison Medal for "pioneering contributions to imaging devices including CCD Imagers, cameras and thermal imagers".


title: Charge-coupled device

text: In a CCD for capturing images, there is a photoactive region (an epitaxial layer of silicon), and a transmission region made out of a shift register (the CCD, properly speaking).


title: Charge-coupled device

text: An image is projected through a lens onto the capacitor array (the photoactive region), causing each capacitor to accumulate an electric charge proportional to the light intensity at that location. A one-dimensional array, used in line-scan cameras, captures a single slice of the image, whereas a two-dimensional array, used in video and still cameras, captures a two-dimensional picture corresponding to the scene projected onto the focal plane of the sensor. Once the array has been exposed to the image, a control circuit causes each capacitor to transfer its contents to its neighbor (operating as a shift register). The last capacitor in the array dumps its charge into a charge amplifier, which converts the charge into a voltage. By repeating this process, the controlling circuit converts the entire contents of the array in the semiconductor to a sequence of voltages. In a digital device, these voltages are then sampled, digitized, and usually stored in memory; in an analog device (such as an analog video camera), they are processed into a continuous analog signal (e.g. by feeding the output of the charge amplifier into a low-pass filter), which is then processed and fed out to other circuits for transmission, recording, or other processing.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Before the MOS capacitors are exposed to light, they are biased into the depletion region; in n-channel CCDs, the silicon under the bias gate is slightly "p"-doped or intrinsic. The gate is then biased at a positive potential, above the threshold for strong inversion, which will eventually result in the creation of an "n" channel below the gate as in a MOSFET. However, it takes time to reach this thermal equilibrium: up to hours in high-end scientific cameras cooled at low temperature. Initially after biasing, the holes are pushed far into the substrate, and no mobile electrons are at or near the surface; the CCD thus operates in a non-equilibrium state called deep depletion.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Then, when electron–hole pairs are generated in the depletion region, they are separated by the electric field, the electrons move toward the surface, and the holes move toward the substrate. Four pair-generation processes can be identified:


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The last three processes are known as dark-current generation, and add noise to the image; they can limit the total usable integration time. The accumulation of electrons at or near the surface can proceed either until image integration is over and charge begins to be transferred, or thermal equilibrium is reached. In this case, the well is said to be full. The maximum capacity of each well is known as the well depth, typically about 10 electrons per pixel.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The photoactive region of a CCD is, generally, an epitaxial layer of silicon. It is lightly "p" doped (usually with boron) and is grown upon a substrate material, often p++. In buried-channel devices, the type of design utilized in most modern CCDs, certain areas of the surface of the silicon are ion implanted with phosphorus, giving them an n-doped designation. This region defines the channel in which the photogenerated charge packets will travel. Simon Sze details the advantages of a buried-channel device:


title: Charge-coupled device

text: This thin layer (= 0.2–0.3 micron) is fully depleted and the accumulated photogenerated charge is kept away from the surface. This structure has the advantages of higher transfer efficiency and lower dark current, from reduced surface recombination. The penalty is smaller charge capacity, by a factor of 2–3 compared to the surface-channel CCD. The gate oxide, i.e. the capacitor dielectric, is grown on top of the epitaxial layer and substrate.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Later in the process, polysilicon gates are deposited by chemical vapor deposition, patterned with photolithography, and etched in such a way that the separately phased gates lie perpendicular to the channels. The channels are further defined by utilization of the LOCOS process to produce the channel stop region.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Channel stops are thermally grown oxides that serve to isolate the charge packets in one column from those in another. These channel stops are produced before the polysilicon gates are, as the LOCOS process utilizes a high-temperature step that would destroy the gate material. The channel stops are parallel to, and exclusive of, the channel, or "charge carrying", regions.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Channel stops often have a p+ doped region underlying them, providing a further barrier to the electrons in the charge packets (this discussion of the physics of CCD devices assumes an electron transfer device, though hole transfer is possible).


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The clocking of the gates, alternately high and low, will forward and reverse bias the diode that is provided by the buried channel (n-doped) and the epitaxial layer (p-doped). This will cause the CCD to deplete, near the p–n junction and will collect and move the charge packets beneath the gates—and within the channels—of the device.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: CCD manufacturing and operation can be optimized for different uses. The above process describes a frame transfer CCD. While CCDs may be manufactured on a heavily doped p++ wafer it is also possible to manufacture a device inside p-wells that have been placed on an n-wafer. This second method, reportedly, reduces smear, dark current, and infrared and red response. This method of manufacture is used in the construction of interline-transfer devices.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: Another version of CCD is called a peristaltic CCD. In a peristaltic charge-coupled device, the charge-packet transfer operation is analogous to the peristaltic contraction and dilation of the digestive system. The peristaltic CCD has an additional implant that keeps the charge away from the silicon/silicon dioxide interface and generates a large lateral electric field from one gate to the next. This provides an additional driving force to aid in transfer of the charge packets.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The CCD image sensors can be implemented in several different architectures. The most common are full-frame, frame-transfer, and interline. The distinguishing characteristic of each of these architectures is their approach to the problem of shuttering.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: In a full-frame device, all of the image area is active, and there is no electronic shutter. A mechanical shutter must be added to this type of sensor or the image smears as the device is clocked or read out.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: With a frame-transfer CCD, half of the silicon area is covered by an opaque mask (typically aluminum). The image can be quickly transferred from the image area to the opaque area or storage region with acceptable smear of a few percent. That image can then be read out slowly from the storage region while a new image is integrating or exposing in the active area. Frame-transfer devices typically do not require a mechanical shutter and were a common architecture for early solid-state broadcast cameras. The downside to the frame-transfer architecture is that it requires twice the silicon real estate of an equivalent full-frame device; hence, it costs roughly twice as much.


title: Charge-coupled device

text: The interline architecture extends this concept one step further and masks every other column of the image sensor for storage. In this device, only one pixel shift has to occur to transfer from image area to storage area; thus, shutter times can be less than a microsecond and smear is essentially eliminated. The advantage is not free, however, as the imaging area is now covered by opaque strips dropping the fill factor to approximately 50 percent and the effective quantum efficiency by an equivalent amount. Modern designs have addressed this deleterious characteristic by adding microlenses on the surface of the device to direct light away from the opaque regions and on the active area. Microlenses can bring the fill factor back up to 90 percent or more depending on pixel size and the overall system's optical design.