title: Preterm birth

text: The routine use of caesarean section for early delivery of infants expected to have very low birth weight is controversial, and a decision concerning the route and time of delivery probably needs to be made on a case-by-case basis.


title: Preterm birth

text: In developed countries premature infants are usually cared for in a NICU. The physicians who specialize in the care of very sick or premature babies are known as neonatologists. In the NICU, premature babies are kept under radiant warmers or in incubators (also called isolettes), which are bassinets enclosed in plastic with climate control equipment designed to keep them warm and limit their exposure to germs. Modern neonatal intensive care involves sophisticated measurement of temperature, respiration, cardiac function, oxygenation, and brain activity. After delivery, plastic wraps or warm mattresses are useful to keep the infant warm on their way to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Treatments may include fluids and nutrition through intravenous catheters, oxygen supplementation, mechanical ventilation support, and medications. In developing countries where advanced equipment and even electricity may not be available or reliable, simple measures such as "kangaroo care" (skin to skin warming), encouraging breastfeeding, and basic infection control measures can significantly reduce preterm morbidity and mortality. Kangaroo mother care (KMC) can decrease the risk of neonatal sepsis, hypothermia, hypoglycemia and increase exclusive breastfeeding Bili lights may also be used to treat newborn jaundice (hyperbilirubinemia).


title: Preterm birth

text: Water can be carefully provided to prevent dehydration but not so much to increase risks of side effects.


title: Preterm birth

text: In terms of respiratory support, there may be little or no difference in the risk of death or chronic lung disease between high flow nasal cannulae (HFNC) and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) or nasal intermittent positive pressure ventilation (NPPV). For extremely preterm babies (born before 28 weeks' gestation), targeting a higher versus a lower oxygen saturation range makes little or no difference overall to the risk of death or major disability. Babies born before 32 weeks probably have a lower risk of death from bronchopulmonary dysplasia if they have CPAP immediately after being born, compared to receiving either supportive care or assisted ventilation.


title: Preterm birth

text: There is insufficient evidence for or against placing preterm stable twins in the same cot or incubator (co-bedding).


title: Preterm birth

text: Meeting the appropriate nutritional needs of preterm infants is important for long-term health. Optimal care may require a balance of meeting nutritional needs and preventing complications related to feeding. The ideal growth rate is not known, however, preterm infants usually require a higher energy intake compared to babies who are born at term. The recommended amount of milk is often prescribed based on approximated nutritional requirements of a similar aged fetus who is not compromised. An immature gastrointestinal tract (GI tract), medical conditions (or co-morbidities), risk of aspirating milk, and necrotizing enterocolitis may lead to difficulties in meeting this high nutritional demand and many preterm infants have nutritional deficits that may result in growth restrictions. In addition, very small preterm infants cannot coordinate sucking, swallowing, and breathing. Tolerating a full enteral feeding (the prescribed volume of milk or formula) is a priority in neonatal care as this reduces the risks associated with venous catheters including infection, and may reduce the length of time the infant requires specialized care in the hospital. Different strategies can be used to optimize feeding for preterm infants. The type of milk/formula and fortifiers, route of administration (by mouth, tube feeding, venous catheter), timing of feeding, quantity of milk, continuous or intermittent feeding, and managing gastric residuals are all considered by the neonatal care team when optimizing care. The evidence in the form of high quality randomized trials is generally fairly weak in this area, and for this reason different neonatal intensive care units may have different practices and this results in a fairly large variation in practice. The care of preterm infants also varies in different countries and depends on resources that are available.


title: Preterm birth

text: The American Academy of Pediatrics recommended feeding preterm infants human milk, finding "significant short- and long-term beneficial effects," including lower rates of necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC). In the absence of evidence from randomised controlled trials about the effects of feeding preterm infants with formula compared with mother's own breast milk, data collected from other types of studies suggest that mother's own breast milk is likely to have advantages over formula in terms of the baby's growth and development. When a mother's breast milk is not available, formula is probably better than donor breast milk for preterm babies in terms of weight gain, linear growth and head growth but there may be little or no difference in terms of neuro-developmental disability, death or necrotising enterocolitis.


title: Preterm birth

text: Breast milk or formula alone may not be sufficient to meet the nutritional needs of some preterm infants. Fortification of breast milk or formula by adding extra nutrients is an approach often taken for feeding preterm infants, with the goal of meeting the high nutritional demand. High quality randomized controlled trials are needed in this field to determine the effectiveness of fortification. It is unclear if fortification of breast milk improves outcomes in preterm babies, though it may speed growth. Supplementing human milk with extra protein may increase short-term growth but the longer-term effects on body composition, growth and brain development are uncertain. Higher protein formula (between 3 and 4 grams of protein per kilo of body weight) may be more effective than low protein formula (less than 3 grams per kilo per day) for weight gain in formula-fed low-birth-weight infants. There is insufficient evidence about the effect on preterm babies' growth of supplementing human milk with carbohydrate, fat, and branched-chain amino acids. Conversely, there is some indication that preterm babies who cannot breastfeed may do better if they are fed only with diluted formula compared to full strength formula but the clinical trial evidence remains uncertain.


title: Preterm birth

text: Individualizing the nutrients and quantities used to fortify enteral milk feeds in infants born with very low birth weight may lead to better short-term weight gain and growth but the evidence is uncertain for longer term outcomes and for the risk of serious illness and death. This includes targeted fortification (adjusting the level of nutrients in response to the results of a test on the breast milk) and adjustable fortification (adding nutrients based on testing the infant).


title: Preterm birth

text: Multi-nutrient fortifier used to fortify human milk and formula has traditionally been derived from bovine milk. Fortifier derived from humans is available, however, the evidence from clinical trials is uncertain and it is not clear if there are any differences between human-derived fortifier and bovine-derived fortifier in terms of neonatal weight gain, feeding intolerance, infections, or the risk of death.


title: Preterm birth

text: For very preterm infants, most neonatal care centres start milk feeds gradually, rather than starting with a full enteral feeding right away, however, is not clear if starting full enteral feeding early effects the risk of necrotising enterocolitis. In these cases, the preterm infant would be receiving the majority of their nutrition and fluids intravenously. The milk volume is usually gradually increased over the following weeks. Research into the ideal timing of enteral feeding and whether delaying enteral feeding or gradually introducing enteral feeds is beneficial at improving growth for preterm infants or low birth weight infants is needed. In addition, the ideal timing of enteral feeds to prevent side effects such as necrotising enterocolitis or mortality in preterm infants who require a packed red blood cell transfusion is not clear. Potential disadvantages of a more gradual approach to feeding preterm infants associated with less milk in the gut and include slower GI tract secretion of hormones and gut motility and slower microbial colonization of the gut.


title: Preterm birth

text: Regarding the timing of starting fortified milk, preterm infants are often started on fortified milk/formula once they are fed 100 mL/kg of their body weight. Other some neonatal specialists feel that starting to feed a preterm infant fortified milk earlier is beneficial to improve intake of nutrients. The risks of feeding intolerance and necrotising enterocolitis related to early versus later fortification of human milk are not clear. Once the infant is able to go home from the hospital there is limited evidence to support prescribing a preterm (fortified) formula.


title: Preterm birth

text: For infants who weigh less than 1500 grams, tube feeding is usually necessary. Most often, neonatal specialists feed preterm babies intermittently with a prescribed amount of milk over a short period of time. For example, a feed could last 10–20 minutes and be given every 3 hours. This intermittent approach is meant to mimic conditions of normal bodily functions involved with feeding and allow for a cyclic pattern in the release of gastrointestinal tract hormones to promote development of the gastrointestinal system. In certain cases, continuous nasogastric feeding is sometimes preferred. There is low to very low certainty evidence to suggest that low birth weight babies who receive continuous nasogastic feeding may reach the benchmark of tolerating full enteral feeding later than babies fed intermittently and it is not clear if continuous feeding has any effect on weight gain or the number of interruptions in feedings. Continuous feeding may have little to no effect on length of body growth or head circumference and the effects of continuous feeding on the risk of developing necrotising enterocolitis is not clear.


title: Preterm birth

text: Since preterm infants with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease do not have a fully developed antireflux mechanism, deciding on the most effective approach for nutrition is important. It is not clear if continuous bolus intragastric tube feeding is more effective compared to intermittent bolus intragastric tube feeding for feeding preterm infants with gastro-oesophageal reflux disease.


title: Preterm birth

text: For infants who would benefit from intermittent bolus feeding, some infants may be fed using the "push feed" method using a syringe to gently push the milk or formula into the stomach of the infant. Others may be fed using a gravity feeding system where the syringe is attached directly to a tube and the milk or formula drips into the infant's stomach. It is not clear from medical studies which approach to intermittent bolus feeding is more effective or reduces adverse effects such as apnoea, bradycardia, or oxygen desaturation episodes.


title: Preterm birth

text: High-volume (more than 180 mL per kilogram per day) enteral feeds of fortified or non-fortified human breast milk or formula may improve weight gain while the pre-term infant is hospitalized, however, there is insufficient evidence to determine if this approach improves growth of the neonate and other clinical outcomes including length of hospital stay. The risks or adverse effects associated with high-volume enteral feeding of preterm infants including aspiration pneumonia, reflux, apnoea, and sudden oxygen desaturation episodes have not been reported in the trials considered in a 2021 systematic review.


title: Preterm birth

text: For preterm infants who are born after 34 weeks of gestation ("late preterm infants") who are critically ill and cannot tolerate milk, there is some weak evidence that the infant may benefit from including amino acids and fats in the intravenous nutrition at a later time point (72 hours or longer from hospital admission) versus early (less than 72 hours from admission to hospital), however further research is required to understand the ideal timing of starting intravenous nutrition.


title: Preterm birth

text: For preterm infants in neonatal intensive care on gavage feeds, monitoring the volume and colour of gastric residuals, the milk and gastrointestinal secretions that remain in the stomach after a set amount of time, is common standard of care practice. Gastric residual often contains gastric acid, hormones, enzymes, and other substances that may help improve digestion and mobility of the gastrointestinal tract. Analysis of gastric residuals may help guide timing of feeds. Increased gastric residual may indicate feeding intolerance or it may be an early sign of necrotizing enterocolitis. Increased gastric residual may be caused by an underdeveloped gastrointestinal system that leads to slower gastric emptying or movement of the milk in the intestinal tract, reduced hormone or enzyme secretions from the gastrointestinal tract, duodenogastric reflux, formula, medications, and/or illness. The clinical decision to discard the gastric residuals (versus re-feeding) is often individualized based on the quantity and quality of the residual. Some experts also suggest replacing the fresh milk or curded milk and bile-stained aspirates, but not replacing haemorrhagic residual. Evidence to support or refute the practice of re-feeding preterm infants with gastric residuals is lacking.


title: Preterm birth

text: The Joint Committee on Infant Hearing (JCIH) state that for preterm infants who are in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for a prolonged time should have a diagnostic audiologic evaluation before they are discharged from the hospital. Well babies follow a 1-2-3-month benchmark timeline where they are screened, diagnosed, and receiving intervention for a hearing loss. However, very premature babies it might not be possible to complete a hearing screen at one month of age due to several factors. Once the baby is stable an audiologic evaluation should be performed. For premature babies in the NICU, auditory brainstem response (ABR) testing is recommended. If the infant doesn't pass the screen, they should be referred for an audiologic evaluation by an audiologist. If the infant is on aminoglycosides such as gentamicin for less than five days they should be monitored and have a follow up 6–7 months of being discharged from the hospital to ensure there is no late onset hearing loss due to the medication.


title: Preterm birth

text: In the U.S. where many neonatal infections and other causes of neonatal death have been markedly reduced, prematurity is the leading cause of neonatal mortality at 25%. Prematurely born infants are also at greater risk for having subsequent serious chronic health problems as discussed below.


title: Preterm birth

text: The earliest gestational age at which the infant has at least a 50% chance of survival is referred to as the limit of viability. As NICU care has improved over the last 40 years, the limit of viability has reduced to approximately 24 weeks. Most newborns who die, and 40% of older infants who die, were born between 20 and 25.9 weeks (gestational age), during the second trimester.


title: Preterm birth

text: As risk of brain damage and developmental delay is significant at that threshold even if the infant survives, there are ethical controversies over the aggressiveness of the care rendered to such infants. The limit of viability has also become a factor in the abortion debate.


title: Preterm birth

text: Preterm infants usually show physical signs of prematurity in reverse proportion to the gestational age. As a result, they are at risk for numerous medical problems affecting different organ systems.


title: Preterm birth

text: The chance of survival at 22 weeks is about 6%, while at 23 weeks it is 26%, 24 weeks 55% and 25 weeks about 72% as of 2016. With extensive treatment up to 30% of those who survive birth at 22 weeks survive longer term as of 2019. The chances of survival without long-term difficulties is less. Of those who survive following birth at 22 weeks 33% have severe disabilities. In the developed world overall survival is about 90% while in low-income countries survival rates are about 10%.


title: Preterm birth

text: Some children will adjust well during childhood and adolescence, although disability is more likely nearer the limits of viability. A large study followed children born between 22 and 25 weeks until the age of 6 years old. Of these children, 46 percent had moderate to severe disabilities such as cerebral palsy, vision or hearing loss and learning disabilities, 34 percent had mild disabilities, and 20 percent had no disabilities. 12 percent had disabling cerebral palsy. Up to 15 out of 100 premature infants have significant hearing loss.


title: Preterm birth

text: As survival has improved, the focus of interventions directed at the newborn has shifted to reduce long-term disabilities, particularly those related to brain injury. Some of the complications related to prematurity may not be apparent until years after the birth. A long-term study demonstrated that the risks of medical and social disabilities extend into adulthood and are higher with decreasing gestational age at birth and include cerebral palsy, intellectual disability, disorders of psychological development, behavior, and emotion, disabilities of vision and hearing, and epilepsy. Standard intelligence tests showed that 41 percent of children born between 22 and 25 weeks had moderate or severe learning disabilities when compared to the test scores of a group of similar classmates who were born at full term. It is also shown that higher levels of education were less likely to be obtained with decreasing gestational age at birth. People born prematurely may be more susceptible to developing depression as teenagers.


title: Preterm birth

text: Some of these problems can be described as being within the executive domain and have been speculated to arise due to decreased myelinization of the frontal lobes. Studies of people born premature and investigated later with MRI brain imaging, demonstrate qualitative anomalies of brain structure and grey matter deficits within temporal lobe structures and the cerebellum that persist into adolescence. Throughout life they are more likely to require services provided by physical therapists, occupational therapists, or speech therapists. They are more likely to develop type 1 diabetes (roughly 1.2 times the rate) and type 2 diabetes (1.5 times).


title: Preterm birth

text: Despite the neurosensory, mental and educational problems studied in school age and adolescent children born extremely preterm, the majority of preterm survivors born during the early years of neonatal intensive care are found to do well and to live fairly normal lives in young adulthood. Young adults born preterm seem to acknowledge that they have more health problems than their peers, yet feel the same degree of satisfaction with their quality of life.


title: Preterm birth

text: Beyond the neurodevelopmental consequences of prematurity, infants born preterm have a greater risk for many other health problems. For instance, children born prematurely have an increased risk for developing chronic kidney disease.


title: Preterm birth

text: Preterm birth complicates the births of infants worldwide affecting 5% to 18% of births. In Europe and many developed countries the preterm birth rate is generally 5–9%, and in the U.S. it has even risen to 12–13% in the last decades.


title: Preterm birth

text: As weight is easier to determine than gestational age, the World Health Organization tracks rates of low birth weight (< 2,500 grams), which occurred in 16.5 percent of births in less developed regions in 2000. It is estimated that one third of these low birth weight deliveries are due to preterm delivery. Weight generally correlates to gestational age; however, infants may be underweight for other reasons than a preterm delivery. Neonates of low birth weight (LBW) have a birth weight of less than and are mostly but not exclusively preterm babies as they also include "small for gestational age" (SGA) babies. Weight-based classification further recognizes "Very Low Birth Weight" (VLBW) which is less than 1,500 g, and "Extremely Low Birth Weight" (ELBW) which is less than 1,000 g. Almost all neonates in these latter two groups are born preterm.


title: Preterm birth

text: About 75% of nearly a million deaths due to preterm deliver would survive if provided warmth, breastfeeding, treatments for infection, and breathing support. Complications from preterm births resulted in 740,000 deaths in 2013, down from 1.57 million in 1990.


title: Preterm birth

text: Preterm birth is a significant cost factor in healthcare, not even considering the expenses of long-term care for individuals with disabilities due to preterm birth. A 2003 study in the U.S. determined neonatal costs to be $224,400 for a newborn at 500–700 g versus $1,000 at over 3,000 g. The costs increase exponentially with decreasing gestational age and weight.


title: Preterm birth

text: The 2007 Institute of Medicine report "Preterm Birth" found that the 550,000 premature babies born each year in the U.S. run up about $26 billion in annual costs, mostly related to care in neonatal intensive care units, but the real tab may top $50 billion.


title: Preterm birth

text: James Elgin Gill (born on 20 May 1987 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada) was the earliest premature baby in the world, until that record was broken in 2004. He was 128 days premature (21 weeks 5 days gestation) and weighed . He survived.


title: Preterm birth

text: In 2014, Lyla Stensrud, born in San Antonio, Texas, U.S. became the youngest premature baby in the world. She was born at 21 weeks 4 days and weighed 410 grams (less than a pound). Kaashif Ahmad resuscitated the baby after she was born. As of November 2018, Lyla was attending preschool. She had a slight delay in speech, but no other known medical issues or disabilities.


title: Preterm birth

text: Amillia Taylor is also often cited as the most premature baby. She was born on 24 October 2006 in Miami, Florida, U.S. at 21 weeks and 6 days' gestation. This report has created some confusion as her gestation was measured from the date of conception (through "in vitro" fertilization) rather than the date of her mother's last menstrual period, making her appear 2 weeks younger than if gestation was calculated by the more common method. At birth, she was long and weighed . She had digestive and respiratory problems, together with a brain hemorrhage. She was discharged from the Baptist Children's Hospital on 20 February 2007.


title: Preterm birth

text: The record for the smallest premature baby to survive was held for a considerable amount of time by Madeline Mann, who was born in 1989 at 26 weeks, weighing and measuring long. This record was broken in September 2004 by Rumaisa Rahman, who was born in the same hospital, Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, Illinois. at 25 weeks' gestation. At birth, she was long and weighed . Her twin sister was also a small baby, weighing at birth. During pregnancy their mother had pre-eclampsia, requiring birth by caesarean section. The larger twin left the hospital at the end of December, while the smaller remained there until 10 February 2005 by which time her weight had increased to . Generally healthy, the twins had to undergo laser eye surgery to correct vision problems, a common occurrence among premature babies.


title: Preterm birth

text: In May 2019, Sharp Mary Birch Hospital for Women & Newborns in San Diego announced that a baby nicknamed "Saybie" had been discharged almost five months after being born at 23 weeks' gestation and weighing . Saybie was confirmed by Dr. Edward Bell of the University of Iowa, which keeps the Tiniest Babies Registry, to be the new smallest surviving premature baby in that registry.


title: Preterm birth

text: The world's smallest premature boy to survive was born in February 2009 at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. Jonathon Whitehill was born at 25 weeks' gestation with a weight of . He was hospitalized in a neonatal intensive care unit for five months, and then discharged.


title: Preterm birth

text: In 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world's most premature baby was born. The baby, named Richard Hutchinson, was born at Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota in Minneapolis, Minnesota, on June 5, 2020, at 21 weeks 2 days gestation. At birth he weighed . He remained hospitalized until November 2020, when he was then discharged.


title: Preterm birth

text: Historical figures who were born prematurely include Johannes Kepler (born in 1571 at seven months' gestation), Isaac Newton (born in 1642, small enough to fit into a quart mug, according to his mother), Winston Churchill (born in 1874 at seven months' gestation), and Anna Pavlova (born in 1885 at seven months' gestation).


title: Preterm birth

text: During the COVID-19 pandemic, a drastic drop in the rate of premature births has been reported in many countries, ranging from a 20% reduction to a 90% drop in the starkest cases. Studies in Ireland and Denmark first noticed the phenomenon, and it has been confirmed elsewhere. There is no universally accepted explanation for this drop as of August 2020. Hypotheses include additional rest and support for expectant mothers staying at home, less air pollution due to shutdowns and reduced car fumes, and reduced likelihood of catching other diseases and viruses in general due to the lockdowns.


title: Preterm birth

text: Brain injury is common among preterms, ranging from white matter injury to intraventricular and cerebellar haemorrhages. The characteristic neuropathology of preterms has been described as the "encephalopathy of prematurity". The number of preterms that receive special education is doubled compared to the general population. School marks are lower and so are verbal learning, executive function, language skills, and memory performance scores, as well as IQ scores. Behaviourally, adolescents who were born very preterm and/or very low birth weight have similar self-reports of quality of life, health status and self-esteem as term controls.


title: Preterm birth

text: Various structural magnetic resonance studies found consistent reductions in whole brain volume. The extensive list of particular regions with smaller volumes compared to controls includes many cortical areas (temporal, frontal, parietal, occipital and cingulate), the hippocampal regions, thalamus, basal ganglia, amygdala, brain stem, internal capsule, corpus callosum and cerebellum. Brain volume reduction seems to be present throughout the whole brain. In contrast, larger volumes were found in some of the same areas including medial/anterior frontal, parietal and temporal cortex, cerebellum, middle temporal gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus, and fusiform gyrus, as well as larger lateral ventricles on average. The cause of these inconsistencies are unknown. Additionally, reductions in cortical surface area/cortical thickness were found in the temporal lobes bilaterally and in left frontal and parietal areas. Thicker cortex was found bilaterally in the medial inferior and anterior parts of the frontal lobes and in the occipital lobes.


title: Preterm birth

text: Gestational age was positively correlated with volumes of the temporal and fusiform gyri and sensorimotor cortex bilaterally, left inferior parietal lobule, brain stem, and various white matter tracts, as well as specific positive associations with the cerebellum and thalamus. Several structural brain alterations have been linked back to cognitive and behavioural outcome measures. For example, total brain tissue volume explained between 20 and 40% of the IQ and educational outcome differences between extremely preterm born adolescents and control adolescents. In another study, a 25% quartile decrease in white matter values in middle temporal gyrus was associated with a 60% increase in the risk of cognitive impairment. Nosarti and colleagues previously hypothesised that maturational patterns in preterm brains were consistent with the age-related stages typically observed in younger subjects. Their most recent study suggests, however, that their trajectory may not only be delayed but also fundamentally distinctive. Since both smaller and larger regional volumes were found in very preterm individuals compared to controls.


title: Preterm birth

text: The evidence to support the use of osteopathic manipulations to provide benefit in neonatal care is weak.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: , also known by the nickname Yoshi-P"," is a Japanese video game producer, director and designer working for Square Enix. He is best known for his work on massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), mainly as director and producer of "" and its expansions"."


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Yoshida is credited with the revival of the original "Final Fantasy XIV" project by commentators like Game Informer, which was initially criticized for poor quality. Yoshida became an Executive Officer at Square Enix in 2015, the Head of Square Enix's Creative Business Unit III and part of the "Final Fantasy" Committee that is tasked with keeping the franchise's releases and content consistent in 2014.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Yoshida decided to work on video games in elementary school. His career choice was influenced by two Nintendo Entertainment System games: "Mario Bros." shocked him with the idea that people could control what was shown on television and the possibilities of multiplayer design; "Dragon Quest III" made him want to become a writer due to how engrossed he became by its story, more so than those of books and films. His formative years were lived in Hakodate, where he balanced high school studies with a part-time job running the entire game corner of a toy store.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: The Yoshida family had little money; Naoki had to work for play, which led him towards beating as many games as he could and getting the most out of coins spent on arcades. He has been deeply involved in games since childhood, where he would spend hundreds of hours playing just one title. "", directed by Yasumi Matsuno, is one of his favorites. It made such an impact that he built his career in order to have the opportunity to work with Matsuno and create a game together.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Yoshida joined the video game industry in 1993. He studied at a school run by Hudson Soft, where teaching came from many senior developers, concurrently with an internship at the studio. He applied to Chunsoft, his preferred choice, but the internship meant he could start earlier at Hudson: since Yoshida was going through difficulties at the time, he opted for the latter to give his mother peace of mind faster. He loved the company's games as a child, and wanted to do something for it to find back that energy, as its power faded. He was assigned to the creation of PC Engine games at first. His desire to be a scenario writer got him placed to work in the "Far East of Eden" series. His role kept expanding, eventually working under Oji Hiroi's supervision on the original , which was ultimately moved to the PC-FX. Yoshida was happy through the production with his position writing all the villager dialogue, but the game was cancelled when he was almost done.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: An avid fighting game fan, Yoshida indirectly influenced the balance of "Street Fighter EX". A business trip to the AOU Show had a pre-release build of that game available to play. He got sixty consecutive victories there, the last three against members of the Arika team developing it. On the released version, the character Yoshida attained all those wins with, Zangief, was drastically weaker than before.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Later, he participated as a designer in the "Bomberman" series. He faced a harsh environment: programmers held control over productions, saw designers as useless, would not realize documents if they found them boring and had no patience for people that did not understand or tried to broach their field. Yoshida had to develop his persuasion skills to handle that dynamic; communication in his case was easier than with other designers because he studied coding beforehand. To make the games he wanted to, Yoshida built trust with management and among his colleagues by taking on undesirable projects.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: His first experiences playing online games such as "Diablo" and the "Ultima Online" beta test, left a huge impression and turned him into an avid fan. Yoshida submitted three proposals to Hudson's internal new project contests: a multiplayer first-person shooter, a PlayStation 2 multiplayer "Dungeon Explorer" revival and a PC space exploration MMORPG. After four and a half years at the company, he left Hudson due to creative differences. Yoshida saw all titles he worked on as fun for all ages, but his superior only thought of them as made for children: "I couldn't work in a company that'd allow a person like this to be a manager. As soon as he told me that, I answered that I quit".


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: After he left Hudson Soft, he worked at several smaller game studios for five years, one of them founded by a former Hudson executive who actively recruited him. A partnership with Enix saw them develop a Windows online action RPG with randomly generated dungeons and a "Diablo"-like system, designed by Yoshida and produced by . After the merger, higher ups ordered a pivot to make it cross-platform with the PlayStation 2 and PlayOnline-compatible. The heads of Square's business divisions had high hopes for his game; those involved in "Final Fantasy XI" offering support, advice and that game's garbage collection source code. A sales meeting by management concluded a story mode was required, but since the team already had to rework it twice due to their demands, a debate ensued over how to inform the developers, which ultimately led them to shelf it instead.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: While working on that game, Yoshida also proposed a tool to run different variations of events in online games by combining preset settings, to aid Toshio Murouchi, a then new member of the PlayOnline operations team.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Following that game's shelving, Saito invited Yoshida to "take his revenge" by moving to Tokyo and working on what was then called "Dragon Quest Online". The former Hudson executive encouraged him to take the offer, if he promised to climb the corporate ladder and bring work to that studio. Yoshida joined Square Enix in 2004 as the fourth member of the "Dragon Quest X" team; as chief designer, besides handling the writing alongside Yuji Horii, with as director. Frustrated at how MMORPGs had not become popular in Japan, Yoshida felt that if "Dragon Quest" could not do it, nothing else would, which drove him to join the project.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: His work on the franchise at the time extended to arcades, as he concurrently helmed the "" series. Similarly, Fujisawa was involved in "Dragon Quest IX", whose team struggled to decide the project's focus. Eventually, that game required his full attention to be completed, so circa late 2007, he appointed Yoshida as acting director for "Dragon Quest X"—an arrangement that lasted over a year and a half—due to his "indisputable competence" and trustworthiness. Yoshida's involvement lasted from its early stages up to the internal alpha test; under his tenure, the core systems were completed, a number of systems went from existing only in the document to implemented in working order, and time-consuming parts like character and map graphics were made. The idea to loan player characters as NPC party members came as a result of preserving series integrity: "When working in all "Dragon Quest" projects, the theme is not about complexity but having a game that's really easy to get into". Yoshida wanted to work on "Dragon Quest X" until it went gold, but Square Enix company policy was against multiple directors working on the same project; once Fujisawa could return as full-time director on the game, Yoshida's superiors removed him from the team while he was away on a business trip.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Ordered to create something new, Yoshida worked on two projects. As one of Square Enix's "stray dogs" he, and Hiroshi Minagawa had been sent to various influential western studios in 2009 to study HD game development techniques. Upper management felt a need to compete with western games commercially outside Japan, and asked them to make a project the same way as westerners. They spent a year working on this game, whose visual and game design settled on something extremely similar to "Bloodborne" with asymmetric multiplayer. Yoshida steered the project as a learning experience for the younger team members, as he wanted to train future directions. That led to an extremely slow development process, and subsequently multiple arguments between Takai and Yoshida. Elsewhere, a desire to make a card game that parents and children could play together led Yoshida to conceive the car-centric "Chōsoku Henkei Gyrozetter" for arcades.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: At the same time, "Final Fantasy XIV" was facing difficulties right before and right after launch. The "stray dog" trio was pulled into a task force to diagnose that game's issues. They held frequent nightly meetings with members of that team, with Yoshida articulating approaches from both a director and player perspective. It was concluded early on that a solution to all the problems would only be possible as a group effort. After further meetings with the president and vice president of Square Enix included, it was decided in December 2010 to place Yoshida in charge of the staff as both director and—for the first time in his career—producer. Then company president Yoichi Wada attributed this decision to Yoshida's experience, "charismatic" leadership skills and "passionate" will to satisfy customers. The HD game oriented towards western tastes was abandoned, while the "Chōsoku Henkei Gyrozetter" team—which was still working on pre-production at the time—carried on without Yoshida.


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Yoshida was not acquainted with any of the "Final Fantasy XIV" team's members and thus had to demonstrate his dedication to the project first to gain their trust as director. He then talked with the individual developers to find out their ideas for improvements to the revised version known as "". He proceeded with describing to the team the precise goals to achieve. Yoshida drew some inspiration from his long-lasting enthusiasm for MMORPGs, having played such titles as "Ultima Online", "EverQuest", "Dark Age of Camelot", "World of Warcraft", "Warhammer Online", "Rift", "" and "Guild Wars 2". Game Informer and other commentators have credited Yoshida's direction with "rescuing" the "Final Fantasy XIV" project. He went on to work with Matsuno in creating the Return to Ivalice raid for "", saying he "was able to fulfill [his] dream to work with Matsuno-san".


title: Naoki Yoshida

text: Between December 2013 and December 2019, Yoshida wrote a regular column for "Famitsu" titled , discussing his thoughts on "Final Fantasy XIV", video games, the game industry, and game development in general. It has been collected into three published volumes. Yoshida ended the column in December 2019 due to lack of time to write it. In September 2020, "Final Fantasy XVI" was revealed to be in development for PlayStation 5 with Yoshida serving as producer.


title: Asher Keddie

text: Asher Keddie (born 31 July 1974) is an Australian actress. Beginning her career in the television series "Five Mile Creek" in the mid 1980s, Keddie received wide recognition for her role in the television series "Offspring". Her significant repertoire in television has led to her being dubbed as the 'Golden Girl of Australian Television'. Keddie also had a small role in the film "", as Dr. Carol Frost. Aside from television and film work, she has several theatre credits, including in the Melbourne Theatre Company production of "Les Liaisons dangereuses" as Madame de Tourvel.


title: Asher Keddie

text: She won the Logie Award for Most Popular Actress five times in a row between 2011 and 2015. Keddie won the 2013 Gold Logie award for Most Popular Personality on Australian Television, for her role as Dr Nina Proudman in the Network Ten drama "Offspring". She had previously been nominated twice for the award. Keddie has a total of seven Logie Awards.


title: Asher Keddie

text: Keddie was born to Robi and James Keddie, both school teachers. As a child, she took dancing lessons for nine years and at age 14, she dislocated her knee prior to an audition at the Australian Ballet School. Despite her initial misfortune, she landed an acting gig in a dance wear ad while at ballet school and subsequently landed an agent. Keddie completed her secondary education at St Michael's Grammar School, St Kilda.


title: Asher Keddie

text: Keddie had guest roles early in her career in various television dramas, including her first roles in "Five Mile Creek" (1985), "Fortress" (1986) and "Janus" (1994). She played the role of Marriane Sheridan in "Blue Heelers" (season 3, episode 21) airing on 18 June 1996 and "Good Guys, Bad Guys" (1997). From 1997 to 1998, she came to the attention of senior network television producers, appearing in "State Coroner". Following this, she had a recurring role in "Stingers" from 2000 to 2004.


title: Asher Keddie

text: Keddie's big break came in 2004, where she had a leading role in "Love My Way", a drama series airing on Foxtel. The series ended in late 2007. This role led to Keddie being nominated for various awards for playing the part of Julia Jackson, a woman who struggles to cope with her own identity in the midst of family tragedy. Keddie's award win came at the end of "Love My Way" third series in 2006.


title: Asher Keddie

text: In 2009, Keddie appeared in three different roles. She portrayed police officer Liz Cruickshank in the television drama "" and journalist Jacinta Burns, in the TV series "Rush", as well as Dr Carol Frost in "".


title: Asher Keddie

text: In 2010, Keddie depicted author Blanche d'Alpuget in "Hawke", a telemovie about the premiership of Bob Hawke (the Prime Minister of Australia, 1983–91). She also became the star of the drama series "Offspring", which began airing in August 2010. In April 2011, she had the leading role of Ita Buttrose in ABC1's telemovie "", the story of Buttrose's rise to success as the editor of "Cleo" magazine.


title: Asher Keddie

text: In 2014, Keddie starred in "Party Tricks" as Premier Kate Ballard. Ballard faces an election campaign alongside newly announced Opposition candidate David McLeod (Rodger Corser), with whom she once had a tumultuous affair.


title: Asher Keddie

text: In 2019, Keddie starred in the ABC1 acclaimed series "The Cry". In March 2020, she starred in a 6 part series on ABC1, "Stateless". The series also stars and is produced by Australian actress, Cate Blanchett and is set in a detention centre in the middle of the Australian outback.


title: Asher Keddie

text: In 2021, Keddie played Heather Marconi in the Nicole Kidman led Hulu series, "Nine Perfect Strangers" alongside Melissa McCarthy, Samara Weaving and Bobby Cannavale.


title: Asher Keddie

text: Making her theatre debut for the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1998 in Patrick Marber's "Closer", Keddie went on to appear in "Cyrano de Bergerac", "Les Liaisons dangereuses", "Birthrights", "Great Expectations", "The Seagull" and Hannie Rayson's "Life After George". Her performances in the 2005 Melbourne Theatre Company production of "Les Liaisons dangereuses", and the Playbox's "The Ishmael Club", both earned her Green Room Award nominations.


title: Asher Keddie

text: In 2007 Keddie starred alongside Jay Bowen in the Melbourne Theatre Company's play "The Glass Soldier" written by Hannie Rayson.


title: Asher Keddie

text: Keddie married actor and musician Jay Bowen in January 2007. The pair separated in December 2011. In April 2014, she married artist Vincent Fantauzzo. On 19 November 2014 she announced at the GQ Men's Award that she was pregnant. On 1 March 2015, the couple welcomed their first child, a boy named Valentino Fantauzzo.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: USS "Essex" (CV/CVA/CVS-9) was an aircraft carrier and the lead ship of the 24-ship built for the United States Navy during World War II. She was the fourth US Navy ship to bear the name. Commissioned in December 1942, "Essex" participated in several campaigns in the Pacific Theater of Operations, earning the Presidential Unit Citation and 13 battle stars. Decommissioned shortly after the end of the war, she was modernized and recommissioned in the early 1950s as an attack carrier (CVA), eventually becoming an antisubmarine aircraft carrier (CVS). In her second career, she served mainly in the Atlantic, playing a role in the Cuban Missile Crisis. She also participated in the Korean War, earning four battle stars and the Navy Unit Commendation. She was the primary recovery carrier for the Apollo 7 space mission.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: She was decommissioned for the last time in 1969 and sold by the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMS) for scrap on 1June 1973.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: "Essex" was laid down on 28April 1941, by Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Co. After the Pearl Harbor attack her building contract (along with the same for and ) was reworked. After an accelerated construction, she was launched on 31 July 1942, sponsored by Mrs. Artemus L. Gates, the wife of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air. She was commissioned on 31December 1942, with Captain Donald B. Duncan commanding.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: Following her accelerated builder's trials and shakedown cruise, "Essex" moved to the Pacific in May 1943. Departing from Pearl Harbor, she participated with Task Force 16 (TF 16) in carrier operations against Marcus Island. On 31August 1943, she was designated the flagship of TF14 and struck Wake Island on 5and6 October. On 11November, she took part in carrier operations during the Rabaul strike, alongside and . She then launched an attack with Task Group 50.3 (TG50.3) against the Gilbert Islands where she took part in her first amphibious assault during the Battle of Tarawa. After refueling at sea, she cruised as the flagship of TG50.3 to attack Kwajalein on 4 December. Her second amphibious assault delivered in company with TG50.3 was against the Marshall Islands on 29January to 2February 1944.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: "Essex," in TG50.3, now joined with TG58.1 and TG58.2 to constitute Task Force 58, the "Fast Carrier Task Force", launched an attack against Truk between 17and 18February 1944 during which eight Japanese ships were sunk. While en route to the Mariana Islands to sever Japanese supply lines, the carrier force was detected and subjected to a prolonged aerial attack which it repelled successfully. It then continued with the scheduled attack upon Saipan, Tinian, and Guam on 23February 1944.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: After this operation, "Essex" proceeded to San Francisco for her single wartime overhaul. Following her overhaul, "Essex" became the carrier for Air Group 15, the "Fabled Fifteen," commanded by the U.S. Navy's top ace of the war, David McCampbell. She then joined carriers and in TG12.1 to strike Marcus Island on 19to 20May 1944, and Wake, on 23May 1944. She deployed with TF58 to support the occupation of the Marianas on 12June to10 August; sortied with TG38.3 to lead an attack against the Palau Islands on 6to 8September, and Mindanao on 9to 10September with enemy shipping as the main target, and remained in the area to support landings on Peleliu. On 2October, she weathered a typhoon and four days later departed with Task Force 38(TF 38) for the Ryukyus.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: For the remainder of 1944, she continued her frontline action, participating in strikes against Okinawa on 1October, and Formosa from 1to 14October, covering the Leyte landings, taking part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf 24to 25October, and continuing the search for enemy fleet units until 30October, when she returned to Ulithi, Caroline Islands, for replenishment. She resumed the offensive and delivered attacks on Manila and the northern Philippine Islands during November. On 25November, for the first time in her far-ranging operations and destruction to the enemy, "Essex" received damage. A kamikaze hit the port edge of her flight deck landing among planes gassed for takeoff causing extensive damage, killing 15, and wounding 44.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: Following quick repairs, she operated with the task force off Leyte supporting the occupation of Mindoro 14to 16December 1944. She rode out Typhoon Cobra and made a special search for survivors afterward. With TG38.3, she participated in the Lingayen Gulf operations, launched strikes against Formosa, Sakishima, Okinawa, and Luzon. Entering the South China Sea in search of enemy surface forces, the task force pounded shipping and conducted strikes on Formosa, the China coast, Hainan, and Hong Kong. "Essex" withstood the onslaught of the third typhoon in four months on 20and 21January 1945 before striking again at Formosa, Miyako-jima, and Okinawa on 26and 27January.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: For the remainder of the war, she operated with TF58, conducting attacks against the Tokyo area on 16and 17February. On 25February 1945, she was deployed to neutralize the enemy's air power before the landings on Iwo Jima and to cripple the aircraft manufacturing industry. She sent support missions against Iwo Jima and neighboring islands, but from 23March to 28May was employed primarily to support the conquest of Okinawa. In the closing days of the war, "Essex" took part in the final telling raids against the Japanese home islands on 10July to 15August 1945.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: Following the surrender of Japan, she continued defensive combat air patrols until 3 September, when she was ordered to Bremerton, Washington, for inactivation. She arrived at Puget Sound on 15 September. On 9January 1947, she was decommissioned and placed in reserve. Modernization endowed "Essex" with a new flight deck, and a streamlined island superstructure on 16 January 1951, when she was recommissioned, with Captain A. W. Wheelock commanding.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: After a brief cruise in Hawaiian waters, she began the first of three tours in Far Eastern waters during the Korean War. She served as flagship for Carrier Division 1 (CarDiv 1) and Task Force 77. She was the first carrier to launch F2H Banshees on combat missions; on 16September 1951, one of these planes, damaged in combat, crashed into aircraft parked on the forward flight deck, causing an explosion and fire which killed seven. After repairs at Yokosuka, she returned to frontline action on 3October to launch strikes up to the Yalu River and provide close air support for U.N. troops. Her two deployments in the Korean War were from August 1951March 1952 and July 1952January 1953.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: On 1December 1953, she started her final tour of the war, sailing in the East China Sea with what official U.S. Navy records describe as the "Peace Patrol".


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: In the spring of 1954, she was dispatched along with the USS Boxer to the South China Sea, between Indochina and the Philippines, while the United States considered whether to use carrier aircraft to support French troops during the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, a key battle in the First Indochina War. The United States eventually decided to not join the fighting.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: From November 1954 – June 1955 she engaged in training exercises, operated for three months with the United States Seventh Fleet, assisted in the Tachen Islands evacuation, and engaged in air operations and fleet maneuvers off Okinawa.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: In July 1955, "Essex" entered Puget Sound Naval Shipyard for repairs and extensive alterations. The SCB-125 modernization program included installation of an angled flight deck and an enclosed hurricane bow, as well as relocation of the aft elevator to the starboard deck edge. Modernization completed, she rejoined the Pacific Fleet in March 1956. For the next 14 months, the carrier operated off the West Coast, except for a six-month cruise with the 7th Fleet in the Far East.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: Ordered to join the Atlantic Fleet for the first time in her long career, she sailed from San Diego on 21June 1957, rounded Cape Horn, and arrived at Naval Station Mayport on 1 August.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: In the fall of 1957, "Essex" participated as an anti-submarine carrier in the NATO Exercise Strikeback and in February 1958, deployed with the 6th Fleet until May, when she shifted to the eastern Mediterranean. Alerted to the Middle East crisis on 14July 1958, she sped to support the US landings in Beirut, Lebanon, launching reconnaissance and patrol missions until 20August. Once again, she was ordered to proceed to Asian waters and transited the Suez Canal to arrive in the Taiwan operational area, where she joined TF77 in conducting flight operations before rounding the Horn and proceeding back to Mayport. "Essex" joined with the 2nd Fleet and British ships in Atlantic exercises and with NATO forces in the eastern Mediterranean during the fall of 1959. In December she aided victims of a disastrous flood at Fréjus, France.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: In the spring of 1960, she was converted into an ASW Support Carrier and was thereafter homeported at Quonset Point, Rhode Island. Since that time, she operated as the flagship of Carrier Division 18 and Antisubmarine Carrier Group Three. She conducted rescue and salvage operations off the New Jersey coast for a downed blimp, cruised with midshipmen, and was deployed on NATO and CENTO exercises that took her through the Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean. Ports of call included Karachi and the British Crown Colony of Aden. In November she joined the French navy in Operation "Jet Stream".


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: On 7November 1960, the Soviet research vessel was reported by TASS to have been buzzed in the Arabian Sea by a Grumman S-2F Tracker from "Essex". The United States Navy denied that the aircraft was buzzing the ship, claiming it was merely establishing her identity.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: In April 1961, "Essex" steamed out of Quonset Point on a two-week "routine training" cruise, purportedly to support the carrier qualification of a squadron of Navy pilots. Twelve A4D Skyhawks from VA-34 stationed at NAS Cecil Field, Florida flew aboard. VS-34 aircraft had been removed to make room for VA-34's aircraft. VA-34's support enlisted crew flew aboard in C1A COD aircraft. The A4D-2 were armed with 2 20mm Mk-12 cannons loaded with "service" ammo and one LAU-3a 19 shot 2.75 FFAR pod with "anti-tank" warheads mounted on the centerline ejector rack, Station 3. After several days at sea, all their identifying markings were crudely obscured with flat gray paint. They began flying two aircraft missions day only. Not generally known to "Essex" crew was that they had been tasked to provide air support to CIA-sponsored bombers during the ill-fated Bay of Pigs Invasion. Cuba's leader Castro knew the "Essex" was off the Cuban Coast but the US Navy denied that claim. The naval aviation part of the mission was aborted by President John F. Kennedy at the last moment and the "Essex" crew was sworn to secrecy. Returning home and while at sea VA-34's aircraft hastily repainted "national stars and bars" by all available enlisted personnel, then flew off and landed at NAS Jacksonville, Florida and underwent professional repainting at the NARF Naval Aviation Rework facility. The planes then flew a few miles over to her home base at NAS Cecil Field. The entire VA-34 crew was sworn to secrecy. In 1967-68 VA-34's crew was awarded the Navy and Marine Expeditionary medal.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: Later in 1961, "Essex" completed a "People to People" cruise to Northern Europe with ports of call in Rotterdam, Hamburg, and Greenock. During the Hamburg visit over one million visitors toured "Essex". During her departure, "Essex" almost ran aground in the shallow Elbe River. On her return voyage to the United States she ran into a severe North Atlantic storm (January 1962) and suffered major structural damage. In early 1962, she went into dry dock in the Brooklyn Navy Yard for a major overhaul.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: "Essex" had just finished her six-month-long overhaul and was at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base for sea trials when President Kennedy placed a naval "quarantine" on Cuba in October 1962, in response to the discovered presence of Soviet missiles in that country (see Cuban Missile Crisis). The word "quarantine" was used rather than "blockade" for reasons of international law, Kennedy reasoned that a blockade would be an act of war, and war had not been declared between the U.S. and Cuba. "Essex" spent over a month in the Caribbean as one of the US Navy ships enforcing this "quarantine", returning home just before Thanksgiving.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: While conducting replenishment exercises with NATO forces on 10 November 1966, "Essex" collided with the submerged submarine . The submarine sustained extensive sail damage, returning to port unassisted. Aboard "Essex", the hull was opened, and the ship's speed indicator equipment was destroyed, but the carrier was still able to make port unassisted. "Essex" subsequently reported to the Boston Naval Shipyard for an extensive overhaul and hull repairs.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: On 25 May 1968, "Essex" was underway in the Norwegian Sea when she was buzzed four times by a Soviet Tupolev Tu-16 heavy bomber. On the fourth pass, the plane's wing clipped the surface of the sea, and the aircraft disintegrated. The "Essex" launched rescue helicopters but none of the three crew on board survived.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: "Essex" was scheduled to be the prime recovery carrier for the ill-fated Apollo 1 space mission. She was to pick up Apollo1 astronauts north of Puerto Rico on 7March 1967 after a 14-day spaceflight. However, the mission did not take place because on 27January 1967, the Apollo1s crew was killed by a flash fire in their spacecraft on LC-34 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: "Essex" was the prime recovery carrier for the Apollo 7 mission. She recovered the Apollo 7 crew on 22October 1968 after a splashdown north of Puerto Rico.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: "Essex" was the main vessel on which future Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong served during the Korean War.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: "Essex" was decommissioned on 30June 1969 at Boston Navy Yard. She was struck from the Naval Vessel Register on 1June 1973 and sold by the Defense Reutilization and Marketing Service (DRMS) for scrapping on 1June 1975. "Essex" was scrapped at Kearny, New Jersey.


title: USS Essex (CV-9)

text: During the 4 March 1974 broadcast of his WOR-AM radio show, Jean Shepherd, who wrote the book on which the movie "A Christmas Story" is based (as well as providing the voice-over), describes daily life aboard "Essex" and tells how he there met Robert Gaffney, who would later direct "Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster".


title: Naga people

text: Nagas are various ethnic groups native to northeastern India and northwestern Myanmar. The groups have similar cultures and traditions, and form the majority of population in the Indian states of Nagaland and Manipur and Naga Self-Administered Zone of Myanmar; with significant populations in Arunachal Pradesh and Assam in India; Sagaing Region and Kachin State in Myanmar (Burma).


title: Naga people

text: The Nagas are divided into various Naga ethnic groups whose numbers and population are unclear. They each speak distinct Naga languages often unintelligible to the others, but all are somehow in a way loosely connected to each other.


title: Naga people

text: The present day Naga people have been called by many names, like 'Noga' by Assamese, 'Hao' by Manipuri and 'Chin' by Burmese. However, over time 'Naga' became the commonly accepted nomenclature, and was also used by the British. According to the Burma Gazetteer, the term 'Naga' is of doubtful origin and is used to describe hill tribes that occupy the country between the Chins in the south and Kachins (Singphos) in the Northeast.


title: Naga people

text: The Naga people love colour as is evident in the shawls designed and woven by women, and in the headgear that both sexes design. Clothing patterns are traditional to each group, and the cloths are woven by the women. They use beads in variety, profusion and complexity in their jewelry, along with a wide range of materials including glass, shell, stone, teeth or tusk, claws, horns, metal, bone, wood, seeds, hair, and fibre.


title: Naga people

text: According to Dr. Verrier Elwin, these groups made all the goods they used, as was once common in many traditional societies: "they have made their own cloth, their own hats and rain-coats; they have prepared their own medicines, their own cooking-vessels, their own substitutes for crockery.". Craftwork includes the making of baskets, weaving of cloth, wood carving, pottery, metalwork, jewellery-making and bead-work.


title: Naga people

text: Weaving of colorful woolen and cotton shawls is a central activity for women of all Nagas. One of the common features of Naga shawls is that three pieces are woven separately and stitched together. Weaving is an intricate and time consuming work and each shawl takes at least a few days to complete. Designs for shawls and wraparound garments (commonly called "mekhala") are different for men and women. Among many groups the design of the shawl denotes the social status of the wearer. Some of the more known shawls include "Tsüngkotepsü" and "Rongsü" of the Aos; "Sütam, Ethasü, Longpensü" of the Lothas; "Süpong" of the Sangtams, "Rongkhim" and "Tsüngrem Khim" of the Yimkhiungs; and the Angami "Lohe" shawls with thick embroidered animal motifs.


title: Naga people

text: Naga jewelry is an equally important part of identity, with the entire community wearing similar bead jewelry, specifically the necklace.


title: Naga people

text: The Indian Chamber of Commerce has filed an application seeking registration of traditional Naga shawls made in Nagaland with the Geographical Registry of India for Geographical Indication.


title: Naga people

text: Folk songs and dances are essential ingredients of the traditional Naga culture. The oral tradition is kept alive through the media of folk tales and songs. Naga folk songs are both romantic and historical, with songs narrating entire stories of famous ancestors and incidents. Seasonal songs describe activities done in a particular agricultural cycle. The early Western missionaries opposed the use of folk songs by Naga Christians as they were perceived to be associated with spirit worship, war, and immorality. As a result, translated versions of Western hymns were introduced, leading to the slow disappearance of indigenous music from the Naga hills.


title: Naga people

text: Folk dances of the Nagas are mostly performed in groups in synchronized fashion, by both men and women, depending on the type of dance. Dances are usually performed at festivals and religious occasions. War dances are performed mostly by men and are athletic and martial in style. All dances are accompanied by songs and war cries by the dancers. Indigenous musical instruments made and used by the people are tati, bamboo mouth organs, bamboo flutes, trumpets, drums made of cattle skin and log drums.


title: Naga people

text: The various Naga groups have their own distinct festivals. To promote inter-group interaction, the Government of Nagaland has organized the annual Hornbill Festival since 2000. Another inter-ethnic festival is Lui Ngai Ni. The group-specific festivals include:


title: Naga people

text: The word Naga originated as an exonym. Today, it covers a number of ethnic groups that reside in Nagaland, Manipur, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh states of India, and also in Myanmar.


title: Naga people

text: Before the arrival of the British, the term "Naga" was used by Assamese to refer to certain isolated ethnic groups. The British adopted this term for a number of ethnic groups in the surrounding area, based on loose linguistic and cultural associations. The number of groups classified as "Naga" increased significantly in the 20th century: as of December 2015, 89 groups are classified as Naga by the various sources. This expansion in the "Naga" identity has been due to a number of factors including the quest for upward mobility in the society of Nagaland, and the desire to establish a common purpose of resistance against dominance by other groups. In this way, the "Naga" identity has not always been fixed.


title: Naga people

text: Nagas are present in all Northeast Indian States except Tripura and are listed as scheduled tribes in other 6 Northeastern States: Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland


title: Naga people

text: Nagas in Myanmar are mostly found in Sagaing Division and Kachin state. The Naga territory in Myanmar is marked by Kabaw valley in the south bordering to the Chin state, the Kachin on the north and the Burmese on the east.


title: Naga people

text: Some other minor Naga groups are Anāl, Lamkang, Moyon, Koka (sometimes spelt as Goga or Koki), Longphuri, Paung Nyuan (Makhyam), etc


title: Naga people

text: Anāl and Moyon are mainly found in Tamu township on the south and a few Somra Nagas are also found in and around Tamu bordering to Layshi jurisdiction. Makury, Para and Somra tribes are mainly found in Layshi township. Makury Nagas and a few Somra Nagas are also found in Homalin township. Lahe is highly populated by Konyak, Nokko, Lainong and Makury tribes. Nanyun on the north is the home of Tangshang tribe which comprises more than 54 sub-dialect groups. Homlin township is highly populated by the considered lost tribes (Red Shans). But Kukis, Burmese, Chinese and Indians are also found there. Hkamti township is populated altogether by all the Naga tribes majority and with a number of Burmese, Shans, Chinese and Indians. Tanai in Kachin state of Myanmar is inhabited by the Tangshang Nagas among the Kachin people.


title: Naga people

text: Nagas have more language diversity than any other ethnic group or states in India. Naga people speak over 89 different languages and dialects, mostly unintelligible with each other. However, there are many similarities in between different languages spoken by them. The diversity of languages and traditions of the Nagas results most likely from the multiple cultural absorptions that occurred during their successive migrations. According to legend, before settling in the region, these groups moved over vast zones, and in the process, some clans were absorbed into one or more other groups. Therefore, until recent times, absorptions were a source of many interclan conflicts.


title: Naga people

text: In 1967, the Nagaland Assembly proclaimed English as the official language of Nagaland and it is the medium for education in Nagaland. Other than English, Nagamese, a creole language form of the Assamese language, is a widely spoken language. Every community has its own mother tongue but communicates with other communities in either Nagamese or English. However, English is the predominant spoken and written language in Nagaland. Hindi is also taught along with English in most schools and most Nagas prefer to used Hindi to communicate with the migrant workers of the state, that primarily comes from Bihar, UP and Madhya Pradesh. Hindi in India has been made official until class 10


title: The Tommyknockers

text: The Tommyknockers is a 1987 science fiction novel by Stephen King. While maintaining a horror style, the novel is an excursion into the realm of science fiction for King, as the residents of the Maine town of Haven gradually fall under the influence of a mysterious object buried in the woods.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: While walking in the woods near the small town of Haven, Maine, Roberta "Bobbi" Anderson, a writer of Wild West-themed fiction, stumbles upon a metal object that turns out to be a protrusion of a long-buried alien spacecraft. Once exposed, the spacecraft begins to release an invisible gas into the atmosphere that gradually transforms people into beings similar to the aliens who populated the ship. The transformation, or "becoming," provides them with a limited form of genius which makes them very inventive but does not provide any philosophical or ethical insight into their inventions. The spacecraft also prevents those affected by it from leaving town, provokes psychotic violence in some people, and causes the disappearance of a young boy, David Brown, who his older brother Hilly teleports to the planet referred to as Altair 4 by the Havenites. (Altair 4 is a reference to Forbidden Planet.)


title: The Tommyknockers

text: The book's central character is James Eric Gardener, a poet and friend of Bobbi, who goes by the nickname "Gard." He is somewhat immune to the ship's effects because of the steel plate in his head, a souvenir of a teenage skiing accident. Gard is also an alcoholic and is prone to binges that result in violent outbursts followed by lengthy blackouts.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: As Bobbi is almost totally overcome by the euphoria of "becoming" one with the spacecraft, Gard increasingly sees her health worsen and her sanity disappear. Gard feels he has little to live for aside from his friendship with Bobbi and decides to stay with her to try to halt her decline. He witnesses the transformation of the townspeople, discovers the torture and mutilation of Bobbi's dog Peter, and people being killed or worse when they pry too deeply into the strange events.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: Over the course of several weeks Gard, Bobbi, and others continue to unearth the ship. After exploring the ship and returning to Bobbi's home, Gard plans to kill Bobbi as he can see she is no longer human. Using a gun, Bobbi forces Gard to swallow a lethal dose of Valium. As they talk, he shields his mind, pulls his own gun out, and shoots Bobbi. As Bobbi dies, she telepathically screams and alerts the townspeople, who then swarm to her home, intent on killing Gard for fear that he intends to harm the ship. Ev Hillman, David and Hilly's grandfather, helps Gard escape into the woods in exchange for saving David Brown from Altair 4.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: Gard enters the ship, near death after his struggle with the townspeople. With his last ounce of strength, he activates the ship and telepathically launches it into space. This results in the eventual deaths of nearly all of the changed townspeople, but prevents the possibly disastrous consequences of the ship's influence spreading to the outside world. Very shortly afterward, agents from the FBI, CIA, and "The Shop" invade Haven and take as many of the Havenites as possible (killing nearly a quarter of the survivors), along with a few of the devices created by the altered people of Haven.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: In his autobiography "", King attributes the basic premise to the short story "The Colour Out of Space" by H. P. Lovecraft. He also used a poem from his childhood for the book's preamble:


title: The Tommyknockers

text: The writer and critic Kim Newman said of the novel that King had "more or less rewritten "Quatermass and the Pit"", a television serial from the late 1950s in which an alien spacecraft excavated in London evokes latent psychic abilities in some of the people who come near it.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: King wrote "The Tommyknockers" at a time when substance abuse was a significant part of his life. Metaphors for the stranglehold of addiction can be found throughout the book. In a 2014 interview with "Rolling Stone", King acknowledged that the quality of his writing suffered during his period of drug use, saying ""The Tommyknockers" is an awful book. That was the last one I wrote before I cleaned up my act", adding he believes it could be a good book if it was rewritten to about half its original length.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: Other themes in the book include the dangers of unchecked technological advancement and the corrupting influence of power. The physical transformation of the townspeople resembles the toxic effects of ionizing radiation.


title: The Tommyknockers

text: A two-part television miniseries based on the novel was shown in 1993 on ABC, starring Jimmy Smits as Jim Gardner and Marg Helgenberger as Bobbi Anderson. King has stated that he "didn't like it", commenting that "it felt kind of cheap and thrown together".


title: The Tommyknockers

text: NBC announced in July 2013 that they would be producing a new miniseries based on "The Tommyknockers".


title: The Tommyknockers

text: "THR" reported on March 29, 2018 that "The Conjuring" filmmaker James Wan and the 2017 "It" producer Roy Lee will join up with producer Larry Sanitsky to create a feature film version of "The Tommyknockers".


title: Muladhara

text: Muladhara ( or मूलाधारा; IAST: , lit. ""root of Existence." Mula" means root and "dhara" means flux.) or the root chakra is one of the seven primary chakras according to Hindu tantrism. It is symbolized by a lotus with four petals and the colour pink or red.


title: Muladhara

text: Muladhara is said to be located near the coccygeal plexus beneath the sacrumit, while its "kshetram", or superficial activation point, is located between the perineum and the coccyx or the pelvic bone. Because of its location and connection with the act of excretion, it is associated with the anus. Muladhara is said to be the base from which the three main psychic channels or nadis emerge: the Ida, Pingala and Sushumna. It is also believed that Muladhara is a subtle abode of the Hindu God Ganapati. In the highest revered prayer for Ganapati, the Ganapati Atharvashirsha, it is mentioned that "one who worships Lord Ganapati would easily grasp the concept and realise Brahman".


title: Muladhara

text: It is symbolized by a red, four-petaled lotus with a yellow square at its center. Each petal has one of the Sanskrit syllables "वं vaṃ", "शं śaṃ", "षं ṣaṃ," and "सं saṃ" written on it in gold, representing the four vrittis: greatest joy, natural pleasure, delight in controlling passion, and blissfulness in concentration. Alternatively, they may represent dharma (psycho-spiritual longing), artha (psychic longing), kama (physical longing) and moksha (longing for spiritual liberation). Eight spears point out of the sides and corners of the square.


title: Muladhara

text: The deity Indra is associated with Muladhara. In these depictions, he is yellow, four-armed, and holds a vajra and a blue lotus in his hands. He is mounted upon the white elephant Airavata, who has seven trunks denoting the seven elements necessary for supporting life. Occasionally, Ganesha is also associated with Muladhara. In these depictions, he has orange skin, wears a yellow dhoti, and a green silk scarf draped around his shoulders. In three hands he holds a laddu, a lotus flower, and a hatchet, and the fourth is raised in the mudra of dispelling fear.


title: Muladhara

text: The seed mantra syllable is "लं laṃ". Within the bindu, the point that forms a part of the letter, is Brahma. He is deep red, with four faces and four arms, holding a staff, a sacred vase of nectar, and a japa mala, and making the gesture of dispelling fear. Alternatively, instead of the staff and japa mala, he may hold a lotus flower and the sacred scriptures. He is seated on a swan. The goddess Dakini, his shakti, is depicted with him. She is beautiful, with three eyes and four arms. Dakini is usually depicted with red or white skin, holding a trident, a skulled staff, a swan, and a drinking vessel, and is seated on a swan. At times, instead of a swan and drinking vessel, she holds a sword and a shield.


title: Muladhara

text: In the center of the square, below the seed syllable, is a deep red inverted triangle. The kundalini shakti is said to sleep here, waiting to be aroused and brought back up to Brahman, the source from which it originated. It is represented by a snake wrapped three and a half times around a smoky grey lingam.


title: Muladhara

text: Muladhara is considered the foundation of the "energy body". Yogic systems stress the importance of stabilizing this chakra. Kundalini awakening begins here. It is also known as the seat of the "red bindu," or subtle drop, which rises up to the "white bindu" in the head to unite the feminine and masculine energies, the Shakti and Shiva.


title: Muladhara

text: "By meditating thus on Her who shines within the Muladhara Chakra, with the luster of ten million Suns, a man becomes Lord of speech and King among men, and an Adept in all kinds of learning. He becomes ever free from all diseases, and his inmost Spirit becomes full of great gladness. Pure of disposition by his deep and musical words, he serves the foremost of the Devas."


title: Muladhara

text: In kundalini yoga there are various yogic practices held to incite the energy in Muladhara: asanas (such as Garudasana, Shashankasana (also called Balasana, child or hare pose) and Siddhasana); nosetip gazing, or Nasikagra Drishti; specific pranayamas; and most importantly the practice of Mula Bandha, involving the contraction of the perineum, which awakens kundalini, and is important for the retention of semen.


title: Muladhara

text: This chakra can also be activated by chanting the Seed-Mantra. It is said that one who chants the Seed Mantra of Muladhara Chakra for more than 100,000,000 times can attain all the Siddhis of the Muladhara Chakra.


title: Muladhara

text: When compared to the other important Tantric system of Vajrayana in Tibet the Muladhara chakra finds no parallel in the same place, unlike the other six chakras. Instead, the Tibetan system positions two chakras on the sexual organ: the jewel wheel in the middle, near the tip, and the tip of the sexual organ itself. These chakras are extremely important for the generation of great bliss, and play an important role in the highest tantric sexual practices. A unique feature, the red drop, called the red bodhicitta, is not located here, but instead at the navel wheel.


title: Muladhara

text: In the Sufi system of Lataif there are two "lower" Lataif. One is the nafs, which is just below the navel. The nafs incorporates all the elements of a person's "lower self". The other similar lataif is called the qalab, or mould, which appears in seven lataif systems and corresponds to the physical body, but this is sometimes located at the top of the head. Qalab is usually further divided into the four elements.


title: Muladhara

text: In the Kabbalah the lowest Sephiroth is known as Malkuth, and performs the same transcendental role as the basis of physical nature. It is associated with the sexual organ, in close contact with Yesod.


title: Muladhara

text: In astrology Mars is often correlated as being son of Earth, and having to do with the earthly nature of the Muladhara, and it is often referred to as being the ruling planet of the Muladhara by many modern astrologers.


title: Muladhara

text: In Earth-based spiritualities the Eight Directions are often used to represent the Wheel of the Year. The Eight Directions represent the four seasons (North – Winter, South – Summer, East – Spring, and West – Autumn) and the Winter and Summer Solstices, as well as the Spring and Fall Equinoxes. The midpoints between those four times of year are the four lesser directions. This Eight Direction model maps perfectly onto the eight arrows of the root chakra. The four petals of the chakra also map onto the four elements of Earth (North), Air (East), Fire (South) and Water (West). This chakra, being so closely related to the element of Earth, also reflects the earth elements.


title: 2022 food crises

text: 2022 saw a rapid increase in food prices and shortages of food supplies around the world. The compounding crises in distinct parts of the world were caused by compounding geopolitical and economic crisis. The crises followed food security and economic crises during the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Food and Agriculture Organization, as well as other observers of the food commodities markets, warned of a collapse in food supply and price increases. Much of the concern is related to supply shortages of key commodity crops, such as wheat, corn, and oil seeds, which could cause price increases. The invasion also led to fuel and associated fertilizer price increases, causing further food shortfalls and price increases.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Even before the invasion, food prices were already at record highs. As of February 2022, year-over-year food prices were up 20%, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. The war further increased year-over-year prices another 40% in March. The compounding issues, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, as well as climate-related crop failures, are expected to reverse global trends in reducing hunger and malnutrition.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Some regions, such as East Africa and Madagascar, were already experiencing drought and famine due to agricultural system failures and climate change, and the price increases are expected to make the situation worse. Even Global North countries that usually have secure food supplies, such as the UK and US, are beginning to experience the direct impacts of cost inflation due to food insecurity. Some analysts described the price increases as the worst since the 2007–2008 world food price crisis. Though initial international responses to the food crisis suggested that some suppliers or harvests may alleviate global shortages and price increases (e.g. a proposed influx of grain from India), as of June 2022 no international efforts have been effective at alleviating prices.


title: 2022 food crises

text: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly disrupted food supply chains around the world, disrupting distribution channels at the consumption and distribution stages of the food industry. A rise in fuel and transport prices further increased the complexity of distribution as food competed with other goods.


title: 2022 food crises

text: At the same time, significant floods and heatwaves in 2021 destroyed key crops in the Americas and Europe.


title: 2022 food crises

text: The price rises affected parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America particularly severely with Iran, Sri Lanka, Sudan, and Iraq seeing protests and food riots. Other countries that have seen food riots or are facing related unrest are Albania, Kenya, Indonesia, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Argentina, Tunisia and Lebanon.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Price increases for certain staples, such as wheat, were expected to most severely affect countries like Egypt, Turkey, and Somalia in MENA and East Africa, which rely heavily on wheat imports from Ukraine and Russia. This is expected to further hurt prices in regional food markets, such as Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, and South Sudan.


title: 2022 food crises

text: The changes in the food market caused by the invasion of Ukraine further exacerbated existing drought problems in the already vulnerable Horn of Africa. In February, the World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF had already projected nutrition and hunger gaps for thirteen million people in East Africa. By March, the UN had expanded that number to 20 million people.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Oxfam, ALIMA and Save the Children warned that the food crises in West Africa could affect 27 million people, especially in Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Mali, and Nigeria.


title: 2022 food crises

text: During a visit in Nigeria, the Secretary-General of the United Nations voiced concerns over the war exacerbating the crises of food, energy, and economies in Africa as a whole.


title: 2022 food crises

text: The main cause of the famine in Yemen is the ongoing Yemeni Civil War. Aid often cannot effectively reach the population because of the blockade of Yemen by Saudi Arabia which started in 2015. 17.4 million do not have enough food and malnutrition levels in Yemen are among the highest in the world.


title: 2022 food crises

text: International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasted Consumer Price Index (CPI) in Bangladesh to rise to 5.9% by the year 2022. The price of cooking oil, sugar, eggs and chickpeas increased sharply, which contributed a great deal to the inflation. According to the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics, general inflation climbed to 6.17% by February 2022. Government officials link local prices to the global market situation and necessary stepstaken to stabilize price hikes due to these conditions. Experts see government failure behind the price hikes, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine pressuring inflationary tendencies further. Before the invasion of Ukraine, 95% of the cooking oil in Bangladesh was imported from overseas. The price of cooking oil per barrel was $700 then, it went up to $1,940 prior to the invasion. The price of liquified petroleum gas (LPG) also increased 12% by March.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Following the Taliban takeover, western nations suspended humanitarian aid and the World Bank and IMF also halted payments to Afghanistan. The Biden administration froze about $9 billion in assets belonging to the Afghan central bank, blocking the Taliban from accessing billions of dollars held in US bank accounts. In October 2021, the UN stated that more than half of Afghanistan's 39 million people faced an acute food shortage.


title: 2022 food crises

text: The price increases connected to Russia's invasion of Ukraine may worsen the economic crises in Afghanistan that followed the US withdrawal. According to the UN, $4.4bn to pay for increased food costs, with human rights experts calling on the US to unblock assets of the Afghan's central bank to ease humanitarian crisis.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Six out of every 10 Indians are dependent on state-delivered subsidised food. Though early reporting and government policy after the price increases following the war in Ukraine for wheat suggested India was well positioned to export more wheat, by end of April a heatwave that is projected to decrease harvests, increasing local prices, and fertilizer price increases projected a shortfall rather than an export-friendly market. The decrease in harvests was largely driven by the 2022 Indian heat wave which is expected to severely reduce wheat harvest, killing the plants during the final weeks where they are usually growing.


title: 2022 food crises

text: On 13 May, India, the world's second largest producer of wheat, prohibited wheat exports. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva urged India to reconsider its ban on wheat exports.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Extreme price increases for cooking oil sparked student protests and other civil unrest. The national government of Indonesia banned export of palm oil. As Indonesia is the largest producer of palm oil, and with a harvest decline in the second largest producer and neighbor Malaysia, the ban has caused severe global supply chain disruptions and further exacerbated the price increases caused by the loss of Russian and Ukrainian oil exports and failures of soy crops in South America. Following protests by palm farmers, the ban was reversed in late May after being in effect for around three weeks.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Sri Lanka was much more harshly affected by the food crisis as it was already facing mass man-made crop failures due to a total ban on chemical fertilizer by President Gotabaya Rajapaksa resulting in rice production in Sri Lanka falling by 40-50% while other crops also suffered large losses with some even reaching 70% loss even before it was affected by the effects of the Russian crisis. The 2022 Sri Lankan protests escalated in part due to food shortages and post-COVID-19 pandemic inflation. By the time government reversed the ban on chemical fertilizer the Russian invasion of Ukraine had caused fertilizer prices to rise making it unaffordable for Sri Lanka which had defaulted on its loans after nearly running out of forex reserves. On 9 May, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa resigned from his position after protests on the country's economic crisis turned violent.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Europe's energy crisis and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine caused significant price increases for European fertilizer and food industries. According to Julia Meehan, the head of fertilizers for the commodity price firm ICIS, "We are seeing record prices for every fertilizer type, which are all way above the previous highs in 2008. It's very, very serious. People don't realize that 50% of the world's food relies on fertilizers."


title: 2022 food crises

text: In 2022, Europe's driest summer in 500 years had a negative impact on European agricultural production.


title: 2022 food crises

text: North America was already experiencing significant shortfalls and supply chain issues connected to the 2020–22 North American drought and the 2021–2022 global supply chain crisis. The supply chain crisis was also one factor in infant formula shortages in the US.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Along with protests and civil unrest against the government of Haiti in response to rising energy prices and the rising cost of living, as well as armed gang violence and an outbreak of cholera, Haiti is experiencing widespread acute hunger. On 14 October 2022, the WFP reported that a record 4.7 million people (almost half of the country's population) are currently facing acute hunger in Haiti; using the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) scale, the WFP classified 19,000 of those people as belonging to the fifth and highest level on the scale, the "Catastrophe" phase (IPC 5).


title: 2022 food crises

text: The 2022 food crises have added to the mounting inflation in Chile has experienced since 2020. Measured by the change in the Índice de Precios al Consumidor, the (IPC) in March 2022 relative to March 2021 indicated an inflation rate of 1.9%, the highest known since October 1993. Bread and meat prices increased as well as those of food in general. Cooking oil prices have risen, with a particular brand at a Santiago supermarket experiencing a 90% price increase from April 2021 to April 2022.


title: 2022 food crises

text: The inflation in food prices is thought to be behind an increasing number of supermarket credit cards issued in 2022 as well as increasing rates of supermarket credit card debt default. In April 2022, President Gabriel Boric announced a $3.7 billion economic recovery plan that included an increase in the minimum wage to help people deal with rising prices. Supermarkets belonging to Cencosud begun rationing cooking oil, rice and flour in late April.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Natural gas is a major feedstock for the production of ammonia, via the Haber process, for use in fertilizer production. The development of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer has significantly supported global population growth — it has been estimated that almost half the people on the Earth are currently fed as a result of synthetic nitrogen fertilizer use.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Since 2021, the 2021–2022 global energy crisis has spread to the fertilizer and food industries. According to Julia Meehan, the head of fertilizers for the commodity price agency ICIS, "We are seeing record prices for every fertiliser type, which are all way above the previous highs in 2008. It's very, very serious. People don't realise that 50% of the world's food relies on fertilisers." The impact of agricultural input costs, including fertilizer and fuels, on food prices has been shown to be larger than the effect of the curtailment of food exports from Russia and Ukraine.


title: 2022 food crises

text: From 2 Feb to 1 April, Russia banned the export of ammonium nitrate (AN) to guarantee supplies for domestic farmers following the spike in global fertilizer prices, which were impacted by rising costs for natural gas. This conflict will affect most of the economies, however, the most affected economies are in Europe and Africa. It is advisable for these economies to explore and find alternative food supply chain partners and solutions in North America, South America, the Middle East, Australasia, and some regions of Asia and Africa that have been less affected by this conflict.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Multiple heat, flooding, and drought events between 2020 and 2022 significantly hurt global food supplies and reserves. These weather events, which have been connected with climate change, made the food system less resilient to shocks like the war in Ukraine. Global reserves of wheat were extremely low at the beginning of 2022 because of these weather events. During the year 2022 many similar events connected to climate change continue to severely reduce agriculture production in the world.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Climate change in Iraq is leading to increasing water scarcity which will likely have serious implications for the country for years to come. Additionally, Iraq's water security is based on the declining Tigris–Euphrates river system.


title: 2022 food crises

text: A drought in East Africa began in 2021 and further intensified in 2022, precipitated in part by the oncoming La Niña in 2022. Three rainy seasons failed in the Horn of Africa, destroying crops and killing large herds of livestock. In Somalia 4 rainy seasons failed and the fifth is also not seems good, Kenya and Sudan were also strongly affected. The UN identified 20 million people at risk of famine. Both wildlife and livestock have been killed by the drought. The region is especially vulnerable because an extreme wet season caused the 2019–2021 locust infestation, which destroyed large regions of crops.


title: 2022 food crises

text: By early October 2021, nearly a year after the Tigray War started, Mark Lowcock, who led OCHA during part of the Tigray War, stated that the Ethiopian federal government was deliberately starving Tigray, "running a sophisticated campaign to stop aid getting in" and that there was "not just an attempt to starve six million people but an attempt to cover up what's going on."


title: 2022 food crises

text: By the end of 2022, more than 8 million Somalis were in need of food assistance – roughly half of Somalia's population.


title: 2022 food crises

text: In mid-2021, a severe drought in southern Madagascar caused hundreds of thousands of people to suffer from food insecurity. In October 2022, UNICEF contributed with $23 millions for children suffering from the famine, which continued in the south, with a third of the population suffering from the disaster, according to researchers cited by the "Financial Times".


title: 2022 food crises

text: Drought significally reduced harvests in North America including the USA that produce a quarter of the world grains. The years 2000-2021 was the driest in centuries in North America. The production of crops in the Midwest declined by 20% in this period.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Droughts in Spain and Portugal during early 2022 led to 60-80% loss predictions for crops in some areas. The huge amount of precipitation in March and early April 2022 in mainland Spain provided relief but did not fully revert the ongoing meteorological drought. Fruit crops in most of Europe were damaged by a cold wave that caused freezing rain, frost, and snow during early budding, after a period of unseasonably early warm weather.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Additional drought in Italy, has reduced the flow of fresh water near the Po river, which is responsible for 40% of crop production. Salt water intrusion is expected to greatly reduce the viability of crop production in areas near the delta.


title: 2022 food crises

text: A heatwave that deeply affected Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, and Southern Brazil caused yield declines for corn, soy, and other key grains, resulting in significant global commodity price increases. The heatwave further exacerbated an already dry season in much of the region. Drought made 28% of the agricultural territory of Brazil "no longer climatically optimal"


title: 2022 food crises

text: A severe flood in New South Wales during February 2022 caused the complete destruction of soy and rice crops and 36% of macadamia nut production. Animal herds and farming infrastructure were also severely damaged by the flooding, which was the third major natural disaster to agriculture communities in the region.


title: 2022 food crises

text: In a May 2022 editorial for the Guardian, environmental George Monbiot described part of the collapse of food supply, a problem of concentration of supply in a handful of supply chains through the "Global Standard Diet" making the food system vulnerable to critical failures. He compared the food system failures to the 2008 banking crises, in terms of similar structural problems of concentration of economic power.


title: 2022 food crises

text: In China, rolling lockdowns as part of a zero-COVID policy significantly reduced key agricultural inputs for important grain crops. Before that, China already maintaining its food stockpiles at a "historically high level" in 2021, because of trade wars; the deal and negotiation with U.S. and Australia could also be prodding China to buy food reserves.


title: 2022 food crises

text: Ethanol fuel makes up about 10% of motor vehicle gasoline produced and consumed in 2021, and around 40% of corn grown is used for ethanol fuel in the United States each year. Because it is 33% less efficient than petroleum gasoline miles driven from ethanol is less than 10%.