title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: After the Taliban seized all border crossings, Kabul Airport remained the only secure route out of Afghanistan. After the fall of Herat on 13 August, the US deployed an additional 3,000 troops and the UK deployed 600 troops to Kabul Airport to secure the airlifts of their nationals, embassy staff, and Afghan citizens who worked with coalition forces. US officials said at the time that all of their forces were still expected to leave Afghanistan by 31 August. On 13 August, a memorandum was sent to all staff of the US embassy to reduce "items with embassy or agency logos, American flags or items which could be misused in propaganda efforts". Diplomats were reported to be rapidly destroying classified documents and other sensitive materials. Among the documents destroyed were the passports of Afghan civilians who had applied for visas.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: As the Taliban surrounded and began entering Kabul, US Army CH-47 Chinook, UH-60 Black Hawk and State Department Air Wing CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters began landing at the US embassy to carry out evacuations. A convoy of armored sport utility vehicles (SUVs) was seen departing the embassy grounds, and an attack helicopter was reportedly seen deploying flares in the area to defend against potential shoot-downs. Along with the embassy personnel, 5,000 US troops and some NATO troops remained in the city. The US government later authorized the deployment of 1,000 additional troops from the 82nd Airborne Division to the airport, bolstering troop presence in Kabul to 6,000 to facilitate the evacuations.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Panic spread among the civilian population as the Taliban seized the capital, with many citizens rushing to their homes or to the airport, which remained under NATO control after the Afghan government dissolved. A chaotic situation developed as thousands of fleeing Afghan civilians rushed to Kabul Airport, with hundreds crowding the apron in an attempt to catch flights out of the city; some had climbed over boundary walls to enter the airport. US soldiers hovered helicopters low overhead as crowd control, deployed smoke grenades, and occasionally fired warning shots into the air to disperse people attempting to forcefully board aircraft. Video footage emerged showing hundreds of people running alongside a moving US Air Force C-17A transport plane taxiing toward the runway; some people could be seen clinging onto the aircraft, just below the wing. Others were running alongside "waving and shouting". At least two people, in an apparent attempt to stowaway, were reportedly shown to "fall from the undercarriage immediately after takeoff". Another body was later found in the landing gear of the C-17. One of the victims was identified as Zaki Anwari, who had played for Afghanistan's national youth football team. Three bodies, including that of a woman, were also found on the ground outside near the passenger terminal building, but their cause of death was unclear, though some observers speculated they may have died during a stampede. Seven people were eventually confirmed to have died during this stage—including two armed men shot after firing at US Soldiers, according to the US Department of Defense (DOD). The soldiers were not injured, and the gunmen were not identified.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: At least 22 Afghan Air Force planes and 24 helicopters carrying 585 Afghan military personnel and their relatives had fled to Uzbekistan. One Afghan Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano crashed after crossing the border, with Uzbek authorities issuing conflicting reports on the cause. Two Afghan military planes carrying over 100 soldiers also landed in the Tajikistan city of Bokhtar.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: At approximately 8:30 p.m. local time, reports emerged that the US embassy was taking fire. The embassy issued a declaration instructing US citizens in the area to shelter in place. Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the embassy would be relocated to the airport as the DOD had taken over security and air traffic control there. Various other nations had announced plans to evacuate their embassies, including Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and Denmark. The German government announced that it was sending A400M Atlas aircraft with a contingent of paratroopers for evacuations, adding it would not seek the required parliamentary approval for the operation until after the mission was complete. The Italian government was reported to have transferred its embassy staff as well as the families of 30 Afghan employees to Kabul airport under Carabinieri guard to prepare for evacuation. India was reported to have had C-17 transport planes prepared to evacuate Indian diplomatic staff, but had anticipated that it would take longer for the Taliban to capture Kabul. One group of Indian diplomats were escorted to the airport by the Taliban after negotiating the escort after having had their passage out of the Indian embassy blocked several times by the group. Albania said it had accepted a US request to serve as a transit hub for evacuees.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The Philippine government ordered the mandatory evacuation of Filipino nationals in Afghanistan through the auspices of the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Philippines Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan (which is accredited to Afghanistan). Of the 173 Filipino nationals there, 78 agreed to accept the government's repatriation efforts while some accepted help from their companies. The Philippine government also agreed to accept refugees from Afghanistan.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: A flight by Emirates Airlines to Kabul was diverted and later returned to Dubai, and United Arab Emirates airline Flydubai announced that it would suspend flights to Kabul on 16 August. By 16 August, most other airlines had also announced suspension of flights to Kabul. The Afghanistan Civil Aviation Authority announced that it had released Kabul airspace to the military and warned that "any transit through Kabul airspace will be uncontrolled".


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The US Department of Defense confirmed on 16 August that General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of United States Central Command, had met with Taliban leaders in Qatar to secure an agreement. The Taliban reportedly agreed to allow American evacuation flights at Kabul Airport to proceed without hindrance. International airlifts of evacuees had resumed by 17 August following a temporary halt to clear the runway of civilians as the US military confirmed the airport was open for all military flights and limited commercial flights. Pentagon officials added that evacuation efforts were expected to be expedited and were scheduled to continue until 31 August.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Al Jazeera, relaying tracking of flight data posts on Twitter, said that between 15 and 16 August, at least 170 military flights flew from countries including the United States (128); the United Kingdom (12); France (6); Canada (5); Germany (4); Italy (3); Australia (3); India (2); Austria (1); Belgium (1); Denmark (1); Netherlands (1); Sweden (1); Spain (1); and Turkey (1).


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: A photograph of over 800 refugees packed into an American C-17 taking off from Kabul was widely shared on social media. French newspaper "Le Monde" stated that the photo had become "a symbol of the escape from the Taliban". Another video went viral on 17 August, where a man attempting to escape the country recorded himself and others clinging onto a C-17 military aircraft. A photograph of a US soldier clutching the furled US embassy flag during the evacuations emerged and was circulated by media outlets.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 17 August, the United States Department of State and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan challenged reports of Afghans and Americans being unable to reach the airport. Sullivan told reporters that the Taliban were prepared to "provide the safe passage of civilians to the airport, and we intend to hold them to that commitment" while affirming that the withdrawal deadline remained 31 August. Sullivan acknowledged reports of the Taliban physically preventing people from evacuating, but said "By and large, what we have found is that people have been able to get to the airport."


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 18 August, it was reported that an Afghan interpreter who had worked for the Australian military had been shot in the leg by the Taliban as he crossed a checkpoint leading to the airport. That same day, it was further reported that the first Australian evacuation flight had departed the airport with only 26 people on board, despite having capacity for over 120. The first German evacuation flight the day prior had also transported a low number of evacuees, taking off with only 7 on board. The Malaysian High Commission in India (which is accredited to Afghanistan) confirmed it had helped a Malaysian citizen return home earlier in the month. It also confirmed that two other Malaysian nationals working for an international relief organisation had opted to remain in Kabul. The High Commission urged remaining Malaysian citizens to register with them for repatriation.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 19 August, UK Defence Secretary Ben Wallace stated that the evacuation flights could not take unaccompanied children after a number of videos posted to social media showed desperate families attempting to convince NATO soldiers to take their children to safety. "The Guardian" reported that the British government had informed the 125 Afghan guards who had been guarding the British embassy in Kabul that they would not be offered asylum in the UK because they were hired by the private security firm GardaWorld. In contrast, GardaWorld guards of the US embassy had already been evacuated. That evening, the Finnish government announced it was preparing to send troops to the airport to assist in the evacuations, with around 60 Finnish citizens still stuck in Kabul. French newspaper "Libération" obtained a confidential United Nations report that found the Taliban had priority lists of individuals to arrest and were also targeting the families of people who had worked with the Afghan government and NATO.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: By 20 August, it was reported that French special forces had rescued 400 civilians from Kabul, including French nationals and Afghan citizens that had aided French forces during the war. British special forces were also reportedly active during the evacuation. On 20 August, it was reported that the National Directorate of Security's 01 Unit was working alongside NATO forces in the airlift as its members refused to surrender to the Taliban. They were scheduled to be airlifted once American troops withdraw.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 21 August, Reuters reported that the World Bank's Kabul-based staff and their immediate families were safely evacuated among 350 people aboard a special Pakistan International Airlines flight to Islamabad. The Indian Express reported that the Taliban had blocked 72 Afghan Sikhs and Hindus from boarding an Indian Air Force evacuation flight. Kim Sengupta of "The Independent" reported that at least four women were crushed to death in a rush on a narrow road leading to the airport. By the afternoon, the US government was advising American citizens not to travel to the airport because of potential risks. On the same day, Indonesia evacuated 26 of its nationals, along with five Filipinos and two Afghan nationals using the Indonesian Air Force Boeing 737-400 with a number of soldiers of the Koopssus TNI.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 22 August, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation revealed that the Australian government had denied visas to over 100 Afghans who had worked as security guards for the Australian embassy. That evening, Lloyd Austin, United States Secretary of Defense, ordered the activation of the American Civil Reserve Air Fleet to aid in the evacuations, only the third time in history that the fleet had been activated. By the end of the day, at least 28,000 people had been officially evacuated from Kabul and 13 countries had agreed to temporarily host Afghan refugees awaiting clearance for resettlement in the US, but tens of thousands more foreign nationals and at-risk Afghans remained stuck in Kabul. Also on 22 August, the Dutch defence ministry announced that it was deploying more troops to Afghanistan to assist the 62 Dutch special forces personnel at Kabul Airport, where they were operating two C-130 military planes for evacuations. According to Defence Minister Sigrid Kaag, over 700 Dutch citizens in Afghanistan were still waiting to be evacuated, adding that at-risk Afghans that managed to be evacuated could be eligible for asylum. The Dutch embassy's 207 staffers and their families had evacuated to the Netherlands days prior.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: According to "Der Spiegel", on the night of 22 August, nine German KSK special forces operators code named "Blue Light" rescued a Munich family of three from a rendezvous point at a gate outside of Kabul Airport. The family had previously contacted Germany's Federal Foreign Office after several failed attempts to enter the north gate at the airport, but the office initially rejected the mother's evacuation due to her not being German citizen, before reversing the position. The initial rejection of the mother's evacuation resulted in domestic criticism by the Green Party.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Over a few days in August, the Royal Australian Air Force completed five evacuation flights, with the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) completing another before 23 August.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 23 August, the British government stated that it would not continue evacuations after American forces withdrew from the airport; however, the government would be asking the Americans not to withdraw at the end of the month in an emergency G7 meeting. The Taliban indicated that they would be unwilling to extend the 31 August deadline for American withdrawal. Around 7 a.m. local time, one Afghan guard was killed and three wounded in a firefight between Afghan, American, and German troops and unidentified attackers. Ireland approved the deployment of a small special forces team from the Army Ranger Wing and Irish diplomats to Kabul Airport in order to evacuate Irish citizens. The Canadian government officially confirmed that Canadian special forces had launched operations outside of the airport to help evacuate people. US president Biden said that thus far the Taliban had kept their promises and had not taken any action against US forces controlling Kabul Airport. Meanwhile, CIA Director William Burns held a secret meeting in Kabul with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, who had returned to Afghanistan from exile in Qatar to discuss the 31 August withdrawal deadline.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Also on 23 August, "Gulf News" reported that since 14 August, Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) evacuated 1,400 people from Kabul which included diplomats, foreign media and Afghan journalists and staff of international organizations. European Union (EU) and Asian Development Bank (ADB) also requested Pakistani authorities to help evacuate their employees and their families in Afghanistan. EU officials sought urgent evacuation of at least 420 people while ADB requested evacuation of 290 people. By this time PIA was the only commercial airline that was still operating flights to and from Kabul.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The US Department of Defense reported that 21,600 people had been evacuated from Kabul Airport in the preceding 24 hours, reflecting a significant increase in the speed of evacuations ahead of the 31 August withdrawal deadline. The total number of persons evacuated from Afghanistan via the airport in the preceding ten days was 70,700. Several hundred US military personnel in support roles who were deemed nonessential had withdrawn in the preceding days, while 5,800 US Army soldiers and US Marines remained to guard the airport. Among the US forces protecting the airport was the 82nd Airborne Division headquarters element; 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division; 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines; 1st Battalion, 8th Marines; 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division; 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 10th Mountain Division; HHB, 1st Battalion, 101st Field Artillery Regiment, Massachusetts Army National Guard and 1st Combined Arms Battalion, 194th Armor Regiment, Minnesota Army National Guard.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: By 24 August, six Fijian United Nations workers had been evacuated with the assistance of Australian forces. South Korea airlifted 380 Afghans who had "worked at the Korean Embassy or hospitals and job training centers run by Korean engineering and reconstruction forces."


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 24 August, Yevhen Yenin, the Ukrainian deputy minister for foreign affairs, claimed that an evacuation flight had been hijacked and flown to Iran; however, both the Iranian and Ukrainian governments denied that such an event had occurred. That day, two American congressmen, Seth Moulton and Peter Meijer, attracted criticism after flying into Kabul on a military charter plane and staying in the airport for a few hours on an alleged fact-finding mission before flying back out on another charter plane.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 26 August, it was reported that US officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of names of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies to grant entry into the airport for evacuation. President Biden stated that the "bulk of the group" had been allowed into the airport by the Taliban, but he could not say with "certitude" whether there was a list of names passed to the Taliban. Meanwhile, Canada announced that it was ending its Afghanistan evacuation mission, leaving unknown numbers of Canadian and Afghan allies stranded. Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and Poland also announced the end of their evacuations on this day.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Also on 26 August, the first convoy of 225 Turkish soldiers and 120 Azerbaijani soldiers returned to Turkey. And it was announced that 1,129 civilian were evacuated in total. A further 12,500 people were evacuated from Afghanistan in general.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 26 August, an explosion occurred outside the Abbey Gate of Hamid Karzai International Airport. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant – Khorasan Province (ISIL-K) claimed responsibility for the attack. ISIL-K is a sworn enemy of both the United States and the Taliban. The attack was perpetrated by a suicide bomber, who detonated a 25-pound explosive vest hidden under clothing, close to a group of US military personnel who were performing security screenings of Afghans hoping to enter the airport.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: According to local health officials, at least 170 people were killed, and another 150 others were wounded in the attack. The bombing was carried out at the airport gate. The majority of those killed were Afghan civilians, but 13 US military personnel (11 Marines, one soldier, and one Navy corpsman) and 2 British nationals were also among the dead. A Taliban official said that 28 Taliban members were killed in the attack, but a Taliban spokesman later denied that any of their fighters had been killed. The wounded included many Afghans and 18 American troops. The wounded Americans were medically evacuated to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center near Ramstein Air Base, Germany.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The bombing disrupted evacuation efforts, although flights resumed soon afterward. General Frank McKenzie, the head of US Central Command, indicated that US officials were on alert for possible future ISIL-K attacks against the airport, possibly through rockets or car bombs; McKenzie said intelligence was being shared with the Taliban and "some attacks have been thwarted by" the Taliban.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: After the airport attack, the US carried out a drone strike on an ISIL-K planner in Jalalabad, eastern Nangarhar province. The US Department of Defense reported that the airstrike killed the target and caused no civilian casualties.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 27 August, Australia, France, Italy, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland announced the end of their evacuation flights. The last Italian Air Force flight completed the evacuation of 5,011 people, 4,890 of whom were Afghan citizens.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 27 August, 120 Azerbaijani soldiers landed in Baku from Turkey. The second convoy of Turkish soldiers landed in Ankara, and Turkey announced that all Turkish military evacuations had been completed.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 28 August, the United Kingdom concluded its evacuation of British civilians. At the peak of UK evacuation efforts, more than 1,000 British troops were in Kabul; by 28 August, some had already left. The British government later confirmed that all British soldiers, diplomats and other officials had left Afghanistan by the following day.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The same day, it was reported that the Taliban and Turkey had reached a draft agreement allowing Turkey to operate Kabul Airport after the departure of US forces, for a transitional period. Turkish officials had stated that the country would not help operate the airport unless it can deploy its own security forces to guard it.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 29 August, the Associated Press reported that the Taliban had sealed off the airport as the US and its allies began concluding the airlift. The Taliban, meanwhile, insisted on taking over the security of Hamid Karzai International Airport themselves instead of Turkey, with spokesperson Zabiullah Mujahid stating that their own special forces would guarantee its safety. However, 98 countries, including the United States, released a joint statement saying that they had received assurances from the Taliban that foreign nationals and Afghans would be allowed to leave the country.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The United States military conducted a drone strike against a vehicle it stated was believed to be carrying at least one ISIL-KP suicide bomber in Kabul, who was trying to reach Kabul airport to attack it. The attack set off the explosives inside the vehicle, killing three children in a nearby building, according to Afghan officials. It was subsequently reported that the target was not a militant, but civilians. A relative of the deceased told CNN that nine people belonging to the same family, including six children, were killed due to the airstrike. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid criticised the United States for conducting the strike instead of informing the group about the attackers beforehand, and said that seven civilians had been killed due to the strike.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Relatives later stated that 10 people who lived in the building next to the target vehicle were killed, including seven children. Some of those killed had previously worked for international organisations and held visas allowing them US entry. US officials said that there had been a number of "substantial and powerful subsequent explosions" following the drone strike indicating that the vehicle had been carrying explosives and they were investigating reports of civilian casualties. Relatives however denied any subsequent explosions had occurred and claimed the driver of the car was not affiliated with the group.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: A United States official told Reuters that anti-missile defences had intercepted five rockets aimed at the Hamid Karzai International Airport. Pajhwok Afghan News reported that several rockets had struck Kabul. ISIL-K claimed responsibility for the attack.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: That morning, the UN Security Council adopted a motion calling on the Taliban to let people freely leave Afghanistan. However, the motion did not include a proposal French President Emmanuel Macron had earlier floated about creating a UN safe zone in Kabul.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Later that evening, General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr. announced that the United States had completed their evacuation from Afghanistan. Before departing, the American forces used thermite bombs to disable several remaining counter rocket, artillery, and mortar systems they had used to protect the airfield from incoming rockets fired by ISIS-K. In addition, the aircraft and vehicles at the airport were also disabled. The last two Americans to board an evacuation flight were acting Ambassador Ross Wilson, the top US diplomat in Afghanistan, and the final soldier to leave Afghanistan, Major General Chris Donahue, commanding general of the 82nd Airborne Division. The final flight, a US Air Force C-17, departed at 11:59 p.m. (Kabul time) on 30 August. The US phase of the Afghanistan conflict (1978–present), the 2001–2021 chapter that had begun with the 2001 invasion, had concluded.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: In the early hours of 31 August (Kabul time), not long after the final American flight had left, the Taliban marched into the airport, firing their guns into the air in celebration and posing for pictures with abandoned NATO equipment. Taliban leaders, flanked by the Badri 313 Battalion, then entered the airport to hold a press conference declaring that "Afghanistan is finally free" and that they would shortly be announcing a new government.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Efforts to evacuate foreign nationals and at-risk Afghans continued after military forces concluded their withdrawals.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 6 September 2021, the United States evacuated four American citizens (specifically, an Amarillo, Texas woman and her three children) from Afghanistan via an overland route, marking the first overland evacuation facilitated by the US Department of State since the military withdrawal. The Taliban was aware of the evacuation and did not make any effort to stop it.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 9 September 2021, the first flight of foreigners out of Kabul since the US military withdrawal took place. A Qatar Airways charter flight left the Kabul airport en route to Doha, Qatar, carrying some 200 passengers, including Americans. A second such flight was scheduled for the following day.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 11 October 2021, Aman Khalili, an Afghan interpreter who in 2008 had rescued then-Senators Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel, and John Kerry, was rescued along with his family. At the time Khalili's family was rescued by the Human First Coalition and the U.S. State Department, they were in Pakistan, having already left Afghanistan.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The UK Government’s "Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme" to help Afghans fleeing the Taliban settle in the UK, which was announced in August 2021, opened in January 2022.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The largest base handling the initial outflow of Afghan evacuees was Al Udeid Air Base outside Doha, Qatar, where evacuees were vetted against the National Counterterrorism Center's terrorist watch list.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The Ramstein Air Base, in Germany, the largest US Air Force base in Europe, was also a hub for processing Afghan evacuees who had assisted the US and its allies during the Afghan war. About a fifth of all evacuees from Kabul passed through Ramstein. The base has capacity for up to 12,000 evacuees. Evacuees went through medical screenings and were biometrically scanned. At least 30,000 hot meals were served daily; evacuees were housed in aircraft hangars and military tents. By 22 August, about 7,000 people had landed at Ramstein, and about 6,500 remained at the base. Around 700 departed on four flights to the US on 23–24 August, and by 25 August that number increased to around 800. As of 31 August, a total of 11,700 people had been flown from Ramstein to the United States or another safe location.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: DOD established temporary housing at military bases in Virginia, Texas, Wisconsin and New Jersey for Afghan refugees. Temporary refugee accommodation was set up at Fort Lee (Virginia), Fort Bliss (Texas), Fort Dix (New Jersey), and Fort McCoy (Wisconsin), with a total capacity for 25,000 people. Fort Lee was the first to receive Operation Allied Refuge evacuees, with 221 arriving at the fort on 30 July. Fort Pickett (Virginia) was also a site for temporary Afghan refugee accommodation.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 13 August 2021, the Canadian Government announced it would resettle an additional 20,000 vulnerable Afghans such as women leaders, human rights workers and journalists. This was in addition to an earlier initiative to resettle thousands of Afghans who had worked for the Canadian Government, such as interpreters and embassy employees, as well as their families. By March 2022, Canada resettled 8,580 Afghan refugees.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 17 August 2021, the United Kingdom Government announced a new resettlement programme that aims to resettle 20,000 Afghan refugees over a five-year period in the UK.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 23 August, the first flight of Afghan evacuees had arrived in New Zealand on a RNZAF Lockheed C-130 Hercules aircraft. By 26 August, the New Zealand Defence Force had evacuated 370 people from Afghanistan, which included an unspecified number of New Zealand, Australian, and Afghan passport holders. By 28 August, the evacuees were transferred to the United Arab Emirates while awaiting travel to New Zealand.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 11 October, the United Kingdom offered resettlement visas to the Afghan Women's Development Team of football players. The 35 players had fled to Pakistan following the Taliban takeover.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: As of 27 August, Pakistan has helped to evacuate more than 7,000 foreigners from Afghanistan through air and land routes since the fall of Kabul. By 27 August, more than 113 military and commercial flights have landed in Pakistan. Dawn reported that around 400 special flights carrying Afghan nationals and foreigners from Kabul have departed from and arrived in Islamabad. On 27 August 2021, Pakistan's Interior Minister Sheikh Rasheed announced that the Pakistan government has decided to offer 21 days transit visas to the evacuees.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte thanked Pakistan for its support and facilitation in evacuation of stranded people from Afghanistan. Germany's Ambassador to Pakistan Bernhard Schlagheck thanked Pakistani authorities for the cooperation at Islamabad International Airport.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: International Monetary Fund's Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva and Asian Development Bank's President Masatsugu Asakawa praised Pakistan's efforts in evacuating the respective financial institution's personnel and their families from Afghanistan. European Council President Charles Michel in a telephonic conversation with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan also thanked him for evacuating European nationals working for different international organisations in Afghanistan. David Beasley, Executive Director of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP), lauded Pakistan's support for repairing WFP's damaged planes returning from Kabul and establishing a "humanitarian airbridge".


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Former UK Chief of the General Staff Richard Dannatt stated that the British government had been aware of the need to evacuate vulnerable Afghans for several years and that "it would appear that the government was asleep on watch." The UK Foreign Office group charged with organising the evacuations was revealed to have left over 5000 email messages unread throughout the last week of the evacuations, including many that contained important information of cases of vulnerable Afghans.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: The evacuation of Pen Farthing and his Nowzad Dogs charity came under particular scrutiny in the UK. Visas for 68 people, including the staff of the charity and their immediate family members, had originally been granted on 23 August, but Farthing chose not to leave immediately. Permission for the charity's animals (173 dogs and cats) to be airlifted was granted two days later, but they were blocked from entering the airport on 26 August, and then on 27 August, the Afghan staff of the charity were blocked from boarding the evacuation flight. Farthing left Afghanistan along with the animals, but not his staff, on 28 August. Some journalists criticized this prioritizing animals over people as racist, and damaging to Westerners’ reputation among local people.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: On 28 August, a group of Afghans who had worked as security guards at the Finnish embassy in Kabul organised a protest over being left behind in Afghanistan.


title: 2021 Kabul airlift

text: Airbnb announced it would provide free temporary housing for 20,000 Afghan refugees in their destination communities.


title: Laurie Bird

text: Laurie Bird (September 26, 1952 – June 15, 1979) was an American film actress and photographer. She appeared in three films during the 1970s. Two of them were directed by Monte Hellman. She was romantically involved with Hellman and Art Garfunkel, committing suicide in the latter's apartment by taking an overdose of Valium.


title: Laurie Bird

text: Bird's mother died by suicide at the age of 26 when Bird was only three years old. Her father was an electrical engineer. She had two elder brothers. Her strict father restricted her social life and she fled home multiple times. In response, her father had put her in an institution for neglected girls. She attended Jamaica High School, in New York City, until she was 15.


title: Laurie Bird

text: Described by Hollywood columnist Dick Kleiner as "look[ing] like an innocent Hayley Mills," Bird appeared in just three films: "Two-Lane Blacktop" (1971), "Cockfighter" (1974), and a small role as girlfriend to Paul Simon's character in the romantic comedy "Annie Hall" (1977). While researching for "Two-Lane Blacktop", screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer met her and recommended her name to Hellman while he was looking for actresses for the same movie. In "Two-Lane Blacktop" she played a hitchhiker to whom the film's characters are initially attracted, but who runs off with a motorcyclist near the end of the film. In 2012, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress. Her second release, "Cockfighter", had her paired opposite Warren Oates. He loses her in a bet. Film critic Michael Atkinson wrote in his book "Exile Hollywood" (2008) "In two films, she made more of an impression, left more of a synaesthetic presence, than many actors do in a career".


title: Laurie Bird

text: Bird was the still photographer on "Cockfighter" and shot the cover photo for Art Garfunkel's 1977 album "Watermark". She appeared on the cover of Garfunkel's 1975 album "Breakaway".


title: Laurie Bird

text: She was romantically involved with her "Blacktop" and "Cockfighter" director Monte Hellman. From 1974 until her death in 1979, Bird was in a serious romantic relationship with Art Garfunkel.


title: Laurie Bird

text: In 1979, Bird died by suicide by taking an overdose of Valium in the New York apartment she shared with Garfunkel, who was deeply affected by her death. Garfunkel said, "She was beautiful, in a lonesome, haunted way, and I adored her. But I wasn't ready for marriage and she was not very comfortable being Laurie. She wasn't happy with herself. Her mother died by suicide at 25, and so did she."


title: Laurie Bird

text: Garfunkel's 1981 album "Scissors Cut" states in its credits that it was "dedicated to you, Bird", and carried a partial photograph of her on its back cover.


title: Laurie Bird

text: Bird's relationship with Garfunkel was referred to in the liner notes of the latter's 1988 album "Lefty" and his collection of prose poems "Still Water". Hellman dedicated his 2010 film "Road to Nowhere" to Laurie Bird.


title: Laurie Bird

text: Tim Kinsella's novel "Let Go and Go On and On" (2014) is subtitled "Based on the roles of Laurie Bird". In the foreword, he writes, "This book by no means intends to convey any "truth" beyond one possible solution to the puzzles of her life and work."


title: Gobstopper

text: Gobstoppers, also known as jawbreakers in the United States, are a type of hard candy. They are usually round, and usually range from across; though gobstoppers can be up to in diameter.


title: Gobstopper

text: The term "gobstopper" derives from "gob", which is slang in the United Kingdom and Ireland for mouth. The sweet was a favourite among British schoolboys in the first half of the twentieth century—author Roald Dahl, who wrote about a jar of gobstoppers featuring in the prank he played in his local sweet shop in 1924, also referred to them in his fictional Everlasting Gobstopper which was featured in his 1964 children's novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory".


title: Gobstopper

text: Gobstoppers usually consist of a number of layers, each layer dissolving to reveal a differently coloured (and sometimes differently flavoured) layer, before dissolving completely. Gobstoppers are too hard to bite without risking dental damage (hence the name "jawbreaker").


title: Gobstopper

text: Gobstoppers have been sold in traditional sweet shops for at least a century, often sold by weight from jars. As gobstoppers dissolve very slowly, they last a very long time in the mouth, which is a major factor in their popularity.


title: Gobstopper

text: Gobstoppers are made by slowly depositing layers onto a core (such as a pressed ball of sugar, a single seed of anise or a gumball). Gobstoppers are made in large, rotating, heated pans in a process known as "hot panning". The candies take several weeks to manufacture, as the process of adding liquid sugar is repeated multiple times. Natural and artificial colours and flavours are also added during the panning process.


title: Gobstopper

text: The Everlasting Gobstoppers, sold under Nestlé's Willy Wonka Candy Company brand, were first introduced in 1976 by Breaker Confections, and are named after the Everlasting Gobstoppers in Roald Dahl's children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". In Dahl's story, Everlasting Gobstoppers are purported to last forever. Dahl named the sweet after gobstoppers, which were a favourite among British schoolboys between the two World Wars. A jar of gobstoppers featured in the prank Dahl played on the owner of his local sweet shop in 1924, which he recorded in his autobiography "Boy: Tales of Childhood".


title: Gobstopper

text: In the 1964 children's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", British author Roald Dahl described "Everlasting Gobstoppers," a fictional gobstopper that could never get smaller or be finished.


title: Gobstopper

text: In the animated series "Ed, Edd n Eddy", jawbreakers are humongous, and the entire show revolves around them. Most episodes feature the titular main characters running a variety of scams to earn money to buy jawbreakers. They are also the main subject of the video game adaptation ""


title: Gobstopper

text: In the animated television series "Happy Tree Friends", Nutty attempts to eat a jawbreaker, but he ends up breaking his jaw trying to bite it in half, and it's indestructible, unbreakable and stone-harded candy, from the episode "Chew Said a Mouthful".


title: Gobstopper

text: The 1999 American teen black comedy Jawbreaker centers around the main characters accidentally killing their friend after gagging her with a jawbreaker.


title: Gobstopper

text: In 2003, Taquandra Diggs, a nine-year-old girl in Starke, Florida, suffered severe burns, allegedly from biting on an exploding Wonka Everlasting Gobstopper that had been refrigerated, left out in the sun, then refrigerated again. Diggs and several other alleged victims' families filed lawsuits against Nestlé for medical bills resulting from plastic surgery as well as pain and suffering; the matters were later settled outside of court for an undisclosed amount.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! is a 1965 American exploitation film directed by Russ Meyer and co-written by Meyer and Jack Moran. It follows three go-go dancers who embark on a spree of kidnapping and murder in the California desert.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: The film is known for its violence, provocative gender roles, and eminently quotable "dialogue to shame Raymond Chandler". It is also remembered for the performance of star Tura Satana, whose character Richard Corliss called "the most honest, maybe the one honest, portrayal in the Meyer canon". "Faster, Pussycat!" was a commercial and critical failure upon its initial release, but it has since become widely regarded as an important and influential film.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: Three wild, uninhibited go-go dancers — Billie, Rosie, and Varla — dance at a club before racing their sports cars across the California desert. They play a high-speed game of chicken on the salt flats and encounter a young couple, Tommy and Linda, out to run a time trial. After breaking Tommy's neck in a fight, Varla kidnaps and drugs Linda.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: In a small desert town, they stop at a gas station where they see a wheelchair-using old man and his muscular, dim-witted son. The gas station attendant tells the women that the old man was disabled in a railway accident, "going nuts" as a result, and that he received a large settlement of money that is hidden somewhere around his decrepit house in the desert. Intrigued, Varla hatches a scheme to rob the old man, and the three women follow him back to the ranch, with their captive in tow.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: At the ranch they encounter the old man, his younger son (who they learn is called "The Vegetable" due to his feeblemindedness) and his elder son, Kirk. The group all have lunch together, and Billie taunts Rosie when Varla leaves with Kirk, hoping to seduce him into revealing the location of the money. Linda subsequently escapes the drunken Billie and runs away into the desert. The old man and the younger son pursue in their truck. The younger son catches Linda and seems about to assault her, but he collapses in tears as Varla and Kirk arrive. Kirk finally acknowledges his father's lecherous nature and the old man's hold over his younger brother, and he vows to have his younger brother institutionalized. He tries to take the hysterical Linda into town in the truck, but the old man says that he has thrown away the keys, and Kirk and Linda set out across the desert on foot.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: Varla drives back to the house and tells Billie and Rosie that they should kill the men and the girl to cover up Linda's kidnapping and the murder of her boyfriend. Billie refuses, but as she walks away, Varla throws a knife into her back just as the old man and his younger son arrive. Rosie and Varla hit the old man with their car, killing him and knocking over his wheelchair to reveal the money hidden inside. Rosie is stabbed and killed by the younger son while trying to retrieve the knife from Billie's body. Varla tries to ram him into a wall with her car, injuring him. She drives off in the truck and overtakes Kirk and Linda, chasing them into a gully. Varla and Kirk fight hand-to-hand. She gets the better of him until Linda hits her with the truck, and she dies. Kirk and Linda drive off together in the truck.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: The film was a follow up to an earlier Meyer movie. "'We had just done a film called "Motorpsycho", which was about three bad boys, and it had gone through the roof. So I said, 'Well, let's do one with three bad girls'."


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: The screenplay is credited to Jack Moran from an original story by Russ Meyer. The first draft was titled "The Leather Girls" and was written over a brief four-day period by Moran, who also collaborated with Meyer on "Common Law Cabin" and "Good Morning and... Goodbye!" The screenplay went through a second working title—"The Mankillers"—and had already begun production when the sound editor, Richard S. Brummer, came up with the now-immortal final title. Although neither Moran nor Meyer overtly cited any prior works as inspiration, the plot has been called a "loose remake of "The Desperate Hours", or possibly "The Virgin Spring"" by one prominent film critic and a "pop-art setting of Aeschylus's "Eumenides"" by one classical scholar.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: Lori Williams later said "Russ didn't want to hire me because he didn't think I had a big enough bust! I said I could use pushups in my bra, which I did. He didn't know whether it would work, but then in rehearsals he finally said okay. I kind of did my part like a cartoon, like the rest of the film, bigger than life."


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: "Faster, Pussycat!" had a modest budget of about $45,000 and was shot in black and white in order to save money.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: The film began shooting at the Pussycat Club, a strip club in Van Nuys, before moving on to the California desert later that night. The film's early racing scene was shot on the dry salt flats of Cuddeback Lake, the gas station scene was filmed in the town of Randsburg, and the scenes at the Old Man's house at Ollie Peche's Musical Wells Ranch outside the town of Mojave. During principal photography, the cast and crew stayed at the Adobe Motel in Johannesburg.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: Meyer, who got his start making movies while serving in the US Army's 166th Signal Photographic Company during World War II, had a reputation for running strictly regimented film shoots with a small crew composed largely of former Army buddies. Actor Charles Napier, who appeared in five of Meyer's films, said that "Working with Russ Meyer was like being in the first wave landing in Normandy during World War II." Meyer considered the "Faster, Pussycat!" shoot no different, saying "It was the usual thing with me. It's like being in the military. Everybody has to get up and do their jobs to get things together, and that's it." Meyer's directorial style and the rules he imposed upon cast and crew caused clashes with his equally strong-willed star, Tura Satana.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: There was also friction between Susan Bernard and her director and co-stars, much of which they attributed to the presence of her mother on the set (necessitated by Bernard's being a sixteen-year-old minor at the time). Bernard has said in interviews that she was truly scared of Satana, and some have thought that this contributed to her performance as a frightened kidnapping victim.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: The film's title song, "Faster Pussycat!", was performed by California band, the Bostweeds. The lyrics were written by Rick Jarrard and the music was written and sung by Lynn Ready, who formed the Bostweeds and sang leads. The track was never released commercially, but it did appear in February 1966 as a promotional-only 45 single without a B-side.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" premiered in Los Angeles on August 6, 1965. Atypically for a Meyer film, it was a box office failure upon its initial release.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: "When it first came out, it was not successful", said Meyer. "At the time, people didn't understand that women could have a relationship with other women."


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: It was generally dismissed as an exploitative "skin flick" by the few critics who took any note of it at all. John L. Wasserman of the "San Francisco Chronicle", for example, reviewed a double bill of "Faster, Pussycat!" and "Mudhoney" in April 1966, saying that ""Pussycat" has the worst script ever written, and "Mudhoney" is the worst movie ever made."


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: In the years since, the film has been regarded more favorably, gaining in both commercial and critical stature. As of August 2020 it holds a "fresh" rating on film review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes, with 73% (22 of 30) critic reviews positive. In his review of the film's 1995 re-release, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic Roger Ebert gave the film three out of four stars. Noted feminist film critic B. Ruby Rich said that when she first saw "Faster, Pussycat!" in the 1970s she "was absolutely outraged that [she had] been forced to watch this misogynist film that objectified women and that was really just short of soft-core porn." Upon viewing it again in the early 1990s, however, she "just loved it" and wrote a piece in "The Village Voice" reappraising the film and discussing her change in opinion.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: "Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" is currently number 674 on the tenth edition of the often-referenced "1,000 Greatest Films" list and 377th on the "Sight & Sound" "Greatest Films Poll". It is frequently mentioned on lists of the best B movies and cult movies of all time.


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: The film has also been influential on other filmmakers. Writer-director John Waters stated in his book "Shock Value" that ""Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!" is, beyond a doubt, the best movie ever made. It is possibly better than any film that will be made in the future." He later said on its re-release that "it ages like fine wine." Music video director Keir McFarlane acknowledged that a scene in the video for the Janet Jackson song "You Want This" was a direct homage to "Faster, Pussycat!", showing the Porsche-driving singer and her female companions driving circles around two men in the desert. Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino referenced the movie and thanked Meyer in the credits of his film "Death Proof", and it was reported in "Variety" in 2008 that Tarantino was interested in remaking "Faster, Pussycat!"


title: Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!

text: In May 2021, it was reported that a television series adaptation of film is in development from bigbaldhead Productions, the production company run by Norman Reedus, and AMC Studios.


title: Generic trademark

text: A generic trademark, also known as a genericized trademark or proprietary eponym, is a trademark or brand name that, because of its popularity or significance, has become the generic term for, or synonymous with, a general class of products or services, usually against the intentions of the trademark's owner.


title: Generic trademark

text: A trademark is said to become "genericized"—or, informally, to have suffered "genericide"—when it begins as a distinctive product identifier but changes in meaning to become generic. This typically happens when the products or services which the trademark is associated with have acquired substantial market dominance or mind share, such that the primary meaning of the genericized trademark becomes the product or service itself rather than an indication of source for the product or service. A trademark thus popularised has its legal protection at risk in some countries such as the United States and United Kingdom, as its intellectual property rights in the trademark may be lost and competitors enabled to use the genericized trademark to describe their similar products, unless the owner of an affected trademark works sufficiently to correct and prevent such broad use.


title: Generic trademark

text: Genericization or "loss of secondary meaning" may be prevalent among either the general population or just a subpopulation, such as among people who work in a particular industry. Some examples of the latter type from the vocabulary of physicians include the names Luer-Lok (Luer lock), Phoroptor (phoropter), and Port-a-Cath (portacath), which have genericized mind share (among physicians) because no alternative generic name for the idea is widely used, and as a result, users may not realize that the term is a brand name rather than a medical eponym or generic-etymology term.


title: Generic trademark

text: Most often, genericization occurs because of heavy advertising that fails to provide an alternative generic name or that uses the trademark in similar fashion to generic terms. Thus, when the Otis Elevator Company advertised that it offered "the latest in elevator and escalator design," it was using the well-known generic term "elevator" and Otis' trademark "Escalator" for moving staircases in the same way. The United States Patent and Trademark Office and domestic courts concluded that, if Otis used their trademark in that generic way, they could not stop Westinghouse from calling its moving staircases "escalators", and a valuable trademark was lost through "genericization".


title: Generic trademark

text: The pharmaceutical industry affords some protection from genericization of trade names with the modern practice of assigning a nonproprietary name for a drug based upon chemical structure. Brand-name drugs have well-known nonproprietary names from the beginning of their commercial existence, even while still under patent, preventing the aforementioned problem of "no alternative generic name for the idea readily coming to mind". For example, even when Abilify was new, its nonproprietary name, aripiprazole, was well documented. Another example is warfarin, which was known as an ingredient in rat poison before it was approved for human use under the brand name of Coumadin.


title: Generic trademark

text: Examples of genericization before the modern system of generic drugs include aspirin, introduced to the market in 1897, and heroin, introduced in 1898. Both were originally trademarks of Bayer AG. However, U.S. court rulings in 1918 and 1921 found the terms to be genericized, stating the company's failure to reinforce the brand's connection with their product as the reason.


title: Generic trademark

text: A different sense of the word "genericized" in the pharmaceutical industry refers to products whose patent protection has expired. For example, Lipitor was genericized in the U.S. when the first competing generic version was approved by the FDA in November 2011. In this same context, the term "genericization" refers to the process of a brand drug losing market exclusivity to generics.


title: Generic trademark

text: Trademark erosion, or genericization, is a special case of antonomasia related to trademarks. It happens when a trademark becomes so common that it starts being used as a common name "and" the original company has failed to prevent such use. Once it has become an appellative, the word cannot be registered any more; this is why companies try hard not to let their trademark become too common, a phenomenon that could otherwise be considered a successful move since it would mean that the company gained an exceptional recognition. An example of trademark erosion is the verb “to hoover” (used with the meaning of “vacuum cleaning”), originated from the Hoover company brand name.


title: Generic trademark

text: Nintendo is an example of a brand that successfully fought trademark erosion, having managed to replace excessive use of its name by the then-neologism game console.


title: Generic trademark

text: Whether or not a mark is popularly identified as genericized, the owner of the mark may still be able to enforce the proprietary rights that attach to the use or registration of the mark, as long as the mark continues to exclusively identify the owner as the commercial origin of the applicable products or services. If the mark does not perform this essential function and it is no longer possible to legally enforce rights in relation to the mark, the mark may have become generic. In many legal systems (e.g., in the United States but not in Germany) a generic mark forms part of the public domain and can be commercially exploited by anyone. Nevertheless, there exists the possibility of a trademark becoming a revocable generic term in German (and European) trademark law.


title: Generic trademark

text: The process by which trademark rights are diminished or lost as a result of common use in the marketplace is known as "genericization". This process typically occurs over a period of time in which a mark is not used as a trademark (i.e., where it is not used to exclusively identify the products or services of a particular business), where a mark falls into disuse entirely, or where the trademark owner does not enforce its rights through actions for passing off or trademark infringement.


title: Generic trademark

text: One risk factor that may lead to genericization is the use of a trademark as a verb, plural or possessive, unless the mark itself is possessive or plural (e.g., "Friendly's" restaurants).


title: Generic trademark

text: However, in highly inflected languages, a tradename may have to carry case endings in usage. An example is Finnish, where ""Microsoftin"" is the genitive case and ""Facebookista"" is the elative case.


title: Generic trademark

text: Generic use of a trademark presents an inherent risk to the effective enforcement of trademark rights and may ultimately lead to genericization.


title: Generic trademark

text: Trademark owners may take various steps to reduce the risk, including educating businesses and consumers on appropriate trademark use, avoiding use of their marks in a generic manner, and systematically and effectively enforcing their trademark rights. If a trademark is associated with a new invention, the trademark owner may also consider developing a generic term for the product to be used in descriptive contexts, to avoid inappropriate use of the "house" mark. Such a term is called a "generic descriptor", and is frequently used immediately after the trademark to provide a description of the product or service. For example, "Kleenex tissues" ("facial tissues" being the generic descriptor) or "Velcro-brand fasteners" for Velcro brand name hook-and-loop fasteners.


title: Generic trademark

text: Another common practice among trademark owners is to follow their trademark with the word "brand" to help define the word as a trademark. Johnson & Johnson changed the lyrics of their Band-Aid television commercial jingle from, "I am stuck on Band-Aids, 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me" to "I am stuck on Band-Aid "brand", 'cause Band-Aid's stuck on me." Google has gone to lengths to prevent this process, discouraging publications from using the term 'googling' in reference to Web searches. In 2006, both the "Oxford English Dictionary" and the "Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary" struck a balance between acknowledging widespread use of the verb coinage and preserving the particular search engine's association with the coinage, defining "google" (all lower case, with -"le" ending) as a verb meaning "use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet".


title: Generic trademark

text: Where a trademark is used generically, a trademark owner may need to take aggressive measures to retain exclusive rights to the trademark. Xerox Corporation attempted to prevent the genericization of its core trademark through an extensive public relations campaign advising consumers to "photocopy" instead of "xerox" documents.


title: Generic trademark

text: One example of an active effort to prevent the genericization of a trademark was that of the Lego Company, which printed in manuals in the 1970s and 1980s a request to customers that they call the company's interlocking plastic building blocks Lego bricks', 'blocks' or 'toys', and not 'Legos'." While this went largely unheeded, and many children and adults in the U.S. referred to and continue to refer to the pieces as "Legos", use of the deprecated term remained largely confined to the Lego Company's own products – and not, for example, to Tyco's competing and interchangeable product – so genericization of the Lego trademark did not occur.


title: Generic trademark

text: Adobe Systems is working to prevent the genericization of their trademarks, such as Photoshop, but has had mixed success. This is shown via recurring use of the adjective "photoshopped", or the shortened version "shopped", throughout the Internet and mass media.


title: Generic trademark

text: Since 2003, the European Union has actively sought to restrict the use of geographical indications by third parties outside the EU by enforcing laws regarding "protected designation of origin". Although a geographical indication for specialty food or drink may be generic, it is not a trademark because it does not serve to identify exclusively a specific commercial enterprise and therefore cannot constitute a genericized trademark.


title: Generic trademark

text: The extension of protection for geographical indications is somewhat controversial. A geographical indication may have been registered as a trademark elsewhere; for example, if "Parma Ham" was part of a trademark registered in Canada by a Canadian manufacturer, then ham manufacturers in Parma, Italy, might be unable to use this name in Canada. Wines (such as Bordeaux, Port and Champagne), cheeses (such as Roquefort, Parmesan, Gouda, and Feta), Pisco liquor, and Scotch whisky are examples of geographical indications. Compare Russian use of "Шампанское" (= Shampanskoye) for champagne-type wine made in Russia.


title: Generic trademark

text: In the 1990s, the Parma consortium successfully sued the Asda supermarket chain to prevent it using the description "Parma ham" on prosciutto produced in Parma but sliced outside the Parma region. The European Court ruled that pre-packaged ham must be produced, sliced, and packaged in Parma in order to be labeled for sale as "Parma ham".


title: Generic trademark

text: A trademark is said to fall somewhere along a scale from being "distinctive" to "generic" (used primarily as a common name for the product or service rather than an indication of source). Among distinctive trademarks the scale goes from strong to weak:


title: Dowager

text: A dowager is a widow or widower who holds a title or property—a "dower"—derived from her or his deceased spouse. As an adjective, "dowager" usually appears in association with monarchical and aristocratic titles.


title: Dowager

text: In popular usage, the noun "dowager" may refer to any elderly widow, especially one of wealth and dignity or autocratic manner.


title: Dowager

text: In the United Kingdom the widow of a peer or baronet may continue to use the style she had during her husband's lifetime, e.g. "Countess of Loamshire", provided that his successor, if any, has no wife to bear the plain title. Otherwise she more properly prefixes either her forename or the word "Dowager", e.g. "Jane, Countess of Loamshire" or "Dowager Countess of Loamshire". (In any case, she would continue to be called "Lady Loamshire".)


title: Dowager

text: The term "queen dowager" is used in the United Kingdom and several other countries for the widow of a king; when the dowager is the mother of the current monarch she is more often known as the queen mother.


title: Dowager

text: Empress dowager is the title given to the mother or widow of a Chinese, Japanese, Korean or Vietnamese emperor. A notable example is Chinese Empress Dowager Cixi, who effectively ruled China for over 47 years.


title: Dowager

text: This form of address is used for noble ladies whose husbands have died. It was used for the late Queen Dowager, Fabiola of Belgium.


title: Dowager

text: Elderly widows of wealth, prominence, and dignified or autocratic manner are often referred to informally as dowagers.


title: Dowager

text: Dowagers portrayed in literature include Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest".


title: Dowager

text: Maggie Smith portrayed Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham from 2010 to 2015 in the television series "Downton Abbey", and in the 2019 movie sequel "Downton Abbey" and the 2022 film "".


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: Flashback, alternatively titled The Education of Fredrick Fitzell, is a 2020 Canadian mystery thriller film written and directed by Christopher MacBride. The film stars Dylan O'Brien, Hannah Gross and Maika Monroe. The film premiered at the 2020 Sitges Film Festival.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: Fred Fitzell and his wife Karen visit Fred's mother in a hospital where she is suffering from severe mental decline. Fred works in an office job but begins to get vivid flashbacks of high school. He remembers a girl named Cindy Williams and visits the high school and asks a librarian about her. The librarian tells Fred that Cindy went missing after a drug went around the school. Fred gets more flashbacks and is accosted by a scarred homeless person in his car while he is parked in an alley.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: Fred begins to have memories of a child who walked past him in high school who looks like the homeless person. Fred has disparate memories of the child and the homeless person in which they say a single word; when Fred pieces these words together, they combine to say "I'm/in/your/lobby." Fred visits his apartment lobby with a baseball bat and is surprised by the homeless person. Fred sees various visions of a mouth and of being on the floor looked at by Cindy and others. He awakens after having had a mental breakdown in the lobby.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: Fred reconnects with his friends from high school and continues to have more flashbacks. He has memories of doing a drug called mercury (or merc) in his high school's boiler room and of visiting a club to get "uncut merc". Near the club, Fred and Cindy talk on a roof about how the drug releases people from being trapped. In the present, Fred is having difficulty at work and needs to deliver a presentation. With his high school friends, he visits the now-abandoned club in an attempt to find out what happened. At the club, Fred begins to have flashbacks of taking uncut merc in high school. He finds homeless squatters, including the scarred man from earlier, and he finds Cindy. They tell him he never left. Fred flashes back between the homeless person and the child, who back in high school took high amounts of merc. He also sees visions of the mouth and people looking over him.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: Fred pieces together a series of words from memories of the homeless person and the child which tells him that there is an invasive lifeform that forces people to perceive time linearly (as a way to control them by seeing their outcomes as inescapable) and that the drug allows people to temporarily break free of this and see all temporal possibilities. Fred realizes that back in high school he had bad reaction to the merc and took a lamp and hit the child in the face, scarring his face. Fred wakes up in bed in the present day and realizes he has little time to finish the presentation for work. When he begins his presentation, he sees himself back in high school, where he is taking a final exam. He has a simultaneous breakdown in the past and present.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: Realizing that he can travel through multiple timelines, Fred flashes back to Cindy at the abandoned club. The two fall in love and live many lives together and travel to many different places, such as the Middle East and a Mediterranean villa. Eventually the two wake up in the present day at the abandoned club. Fred realizes that he can no longer travel with Cindy and travels back to the final exam, on which he does well. He meets his wife after the exam and does well on the presentation at his office job, ultimately leading to him and his wife buying a house.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: Fred finally reconnects with his mother at the hospital and realizes the vision of a mouth he keeps seeing is of his mother yelling at him as an infant when he almost fell down a staircase. His mother has a moment of lucidity and remembers who Fred is, and the two briefly connect. However, his mother dies shortly afterwards.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: In May 2018, it was announced that Dylan O'Brien, Maika Monroe, and Hannah Gross were set to star in the film, which is written and directed by Christopher MacBride. In September 2018, Amanda Brugel, Emory Cohen, and Keir Gilchrist joined the film in supporting roles.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: On April 13, 2021, it was announced that the film would release in select theaters and on video-on-demand services on June 4 of the same year, with a DVD and Blu-ray release to follow on June 8.


title: Flashback (2020 film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . On Metacritic, the film holds a score of 49 out of 100 from 4 reviews, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Bill Weld

text: William Floyd Weld (born July 31, 1945) is an American attorney, businessman, author, and politician who served as the 68th Governor of Massachusetts from 1991 to 1997.


title: Bill Weld

text: A Harvard and Oxford graduate, Weld began his career as legal counsel to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary before becoming the United States Attorney for the District of Massachusetts and later, the United States Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. He worked on a series of high-profile public corruption cases and later resigned in protest of an ethics scandal and associated investigations into Attorney General Edwin Meese.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld was elected Governor of Massachusetts in 1990. In the 1994 election, he was reelected by the largest margin of victory in Massachusetts history. In 1996, he was the Republican nominee for the United States Senate in Massachusetts, losing to Democratic incumbent John Kerry. Weld resigned as governor in 1997 to focus on his nomination by President Bill Clinton to serve as United States Ambassador to Mexico; due to opposition by socially conservative Senate Foreign Relations committee Chairman Jesse Helms, he was denied a hearing before the Foreign Relations committee and withdrew his nomination. After moving to New York in 2000, Weld sought the Republican nomination for Governor of New York in the 2006 election; when the Republican Party instead endorsed John Faso, Weld withdrew from the race.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld became involved in presidential politics in later years. In 2016, he left the Republican Party to become the Libertarian Party running mate of former Governor of New Mexico Gary Johnson. They received nearly 4.5 million votes, the highest number for a Libertarian ticket, and the best for any third-party ticket since 1996 with Ross Perot's Reform Party.


title: Bill Weld

text: Returning to the Republican Party, Weld announced in April 2019 that he would challenge President Donald Trump in the 2020 Republican primaries, launching his campaign. He won his first and only delegate of the primaries in the Iowa caucus in February, making him the first Republican since Pat Buchanan in 1992 to win a delegate while running against an incumbent president. Weld suspended his campaign on March 18, 2020, shortly after Trump's delegate count made him the presumptive Republican nominee. He endorsed Democrat Joe Biden seven months later.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld was born in Smithtown, New York. Weld's father, David (1911–1972), was an investment banker; his mother, Mary Nichols Weld (1913–1986), was a descendant of William Floyd, a signatory of the U.S. Declaration of Independence. His ancestor Edmund Weld was among the earliest students (Class of 1650) at Harvard College; eighteen other Welds have attended Harvard, and two Harvard buildings are named for the family. A distant cousin, General Stephen Minot Weld Jr., fought with distinction in the Civil War.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld attended Middlesex School in Concord, Massachusetts, graduated with an AB "summa cum laude" in classics from Harvard College in 1966. He studied economics at University College, Oxford. On return to the US he graduated with a JD "cum laude" from Harvard Law School in 1970.


title: Bill Weld

text: His siblings are Francis "Tim" Weld, David Weld, and Anne (married name Collins). His maternal grandfather was the ichthyologist and ornithologist John Treadwell Nichols, and his first cousin is the novelist John Nichols.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld began his legal career as a junior counsel on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee's impeachment inquiry staff during the 1974 impeachment process against Richard Nixon. He contributed to the groundbreaking "Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment" report, which detailed the historical basis and standards for impeachment of a president. He also worked on researching whether impoundment of appropriated funds was an impeachable offense. Among his colleagues was Hillary Clinton.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld's experience serving on the impeachment inquiry staff sparked his interest in criminal law. He returned afterward to Massachusetts, where he ran unsuccessfully for Massachusetts Attorney General in 1978. He lost to Democratic incumbent Francis X. Bellotti by 1,532,835 votes (78.4%) to 421,417 (21.6%).


title: Bill Weld

text: In 1981, Weld was recommended to President Reagan by Rudolph W. Giuliani, then Associate U.S. Attorney General, for appointment as the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts. During Weld's tenure, the Attorney General's office prosecuted some of New England's largest banks in cases involving money laundering and other white-collar crimes. Weld expanded an ongoing public corruption investigation of the administration of Boston Mayor Kevin White. More than 20 city employees were indicted, pleaded guilty, or were convicted of a range of charges, including several key political supporters of the Mayor. In 1985, "The Boston Globe" said Weld "has been by far the most visible figure in the prosecution of financial institutions."


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld gained national recognition in fighting public corruption: he won 109 convictions out of 111 cases.


title: Bill Weld

text: In 1983, "The Boston Globe" stated: "The U.S. Attorney's office has not lost a single political corruption case since Weld took over, an achievement believed to be unparalleled in the various federal jurisdictions."


title: Bill Weld

text: In 1986, President Reagan promoted Weld to head of the Criminal Division of the Justice Department in Washington, where Weld oversaw 700 employees. Weld was responsible for supervising all federal prosecutions, including those investigated by the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration, as well as the work of the 93 U.S. Attorneys (who by then included Rudy Giuliani in Manhattan). During this time, Weld worked on some of the Reagan administration's most significant prosecutions and investigations, including the capture of Panama's Manuel Noriega on drug trafficking charges.


title: Bill Weld

text: In March 1988, Weld resigned from the Justice Department, together with United States Deputy Attorney General Arnold Burns and four aides, in protest of improper conduct by United States Attorney General Edwin Meese. In July 1988, Weld and Burns jointly testified before Congress in favor of a potential prosecution of Edwin Meese for his personal financial conduct, following a report by a special prosecutor investigating Edwin Meese. Meese resigned from office in July 1988 shortly after Weld's and Burns's testimony.


title: Bill Weld

text: In 1990, Weld announced his candidacy for Governor of Massachusetts to replace the out-going Michael Dukakis. Although Republicans made up under 14% of the Massachusetts electorate and a Republican had not won the gubernatorial election since 1970, Weld's liberal stances on social issues made him a viable candidate for office in the heavily Democratic state. At the state Republican convention, party officials backed Steven Pierce over Weld, and initial polling had Pierce ahead by 25 percentage points. However, Weld gained enough support to force a primary, and in an upset election, he won the Republican nomination over Pierce by a 60–40% margin.


title: Bill Weld

text: In the general election, he faced John Silber, the president of Boston University. Polls showed Weld anywhere from a statistical tie to trailing by as many as ten points. Voter dissatisfaction with the state's Democratic majority gave Weld support for his promises to reduce the state deficit, lower the unemployment rate, and cut taxes, while Silber's statements to the right of Weld on social issues caused many Democratic voters to vote for Weld. On November 6, 1990, he was elected as the 68th Governor of Massachusetts by a 50–47% margin, to become the first Republican governor of Massachusetts since Francis W. Sargent left office in 1975. Governor Weld is generally considered to have been a moderate or liberal Republican Governor. He is fiscally conservative and socially liberal.


title: Bill Weld

text: The business community reacted strongly to Weld's leadership. In a 1994 survey of chief executives conducted by the Massachusetts High Technology Council, 83% of those polled rated the state's business climate as good or excellentup from 33% at the beginning of his term. Proponents might claim that Weld's leadership changed the minds of 50% of the CEOs surveyed while others would note the national economic trends or other factors might play a part. Weld also reaped the benefits of the 1990s' prosperity, as the state's unemployment rate fell by more than 3 percentage points during his first term, from 9.6% in 1991 to 6.4% in 1994. As a result, Weld received grades of A in 1992, B in 1994, and B in 1996 from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, in their biennial Fiscal Policy Report Card on America's Governors. In 1993 he supported adoption of a gun control bill in Massachusetts that included limits on gun purchases under age 21, as well as prohibiting certain types of weapons, which was not ultimately passed. He has since renounced this proposal. Weld is pro-choice and helped to introduce legislation to make it easier for women to access abortion procedures. As Governor, he supported gay and lesbian rights. In 1992, he signed an executive order to recognize domestic partnership rights for same-sex couples. In 1993, he signed into law legislation protecting the rights of gay and lesbian students. He also said he would recognize same-sex marriages that might be performed out of state following a court decision in Hawaii. Weld signed into law the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 that created the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) and the legal framework for charter schools in Massachusetts. During his term, he launched a successful effort to privatize many state's human services, laying off thousands of state employees. One of the social services Weld opposed and eventually ended was a program providing higher education to prison inmates. He also worked to expand Medicaid access by requesting more federal funding and, then, allowing more residents to qualify for the plan to both solve budget problems and increase access to health care in the state. After cutting state spending year-over-year for his first two years, the Republican Party lost its ability to sustain a veto in the legislature due to losses in the Massachusetts State Senate, forcing Weld to make greater concessions to Democratic legislators.


title: Bill Weld

text: In 1994, Weld won reelection with 71% of the vote in the most one-sided gubernatorial contest in Massachusetts electoral history. Weld carried all but five towns in the whole state, even carrying Boston.


title: Bill Weld

text: In 1995, Weld eulogized one of his longtime supporters, former Massachusetts House member Mary B. Newman, stating, "Mary Newman, for years the grande dame both of Cambridge and its Republican party, launched me in politics by serving as chair of my statewide campaign in 1978."


title: Bill Weld

text: Following his landslide victory as governor, Weld briefly considered running for the presidency in 1996.


title: Bill Weld

text: On November 30, 1995, Weld announced that he would challenge incumbent Democratic Senator John Kerry in the 1996 election. Weld, who was among the first reasonably well-funded Republican Senate candidates in Massachusetts since Edward Brooke was unseated in 1978, said of the race, "I've spent some time recently considering where I can do the most good for the people of Massachusetts, and right now the fights that matter most to the people of this state are in another arena, Congress."


title: Bill Weld

text: The race was covered nationwide as one of the most closely watched Senate races that year. Noted for how civil their respective campaigns were of one another, Kerry and Weld negotiated a campaign spending cap and agreed to eight separate debates leading up to the election. Though facing a traditional uphill battle in a state where Democrats outnumbered Republicans 3-to-1, and running the same year as the presidential election, Weld was a popular incumbent governor and polled even with Kerry throughout the election.


title: Bill Weld

text: In the end, Senator Kerry won re-election with 53 percent to Weld's 45 percent – the last seriously contested Senate race in Massachusetts until the special election for Ted Kennedy's seat in 2010. Notably, President Bill Clinton won Massachusetts in 1996 with 61.5% of the vote.


title: Bill Weld

text: In July 1997, Weld was nominated to become United States Ambassador to Mexico by President Bill Clinton. His nomination stalled after Senate Foreign Relations committee Chairman Jesse Helms refused to hold a hearing on the nomination, effectively blocking it. Helms was also a Republican and their party held the majority in the chamber, but Helms objected to Weld's moderate stance on social issues such as his support for gay rights, abortion rights, and the legalization of medical marijuana. This refusal to hold hearings was also rumored to be at the request of former Attorney General and friend of Helms, Edwin Meese. Meese reportedly had a long-standing grudge against Weld stemming from Weld's investigation of Meese during the Iran–Contra affair. Meese denied the speculation, asserting that he wished to keep his distance from Weld. Weld publicly criticized Helms, which the White House discouraged him from doing, but Weld relished the opportunity, saying: "It feels like being in a campaign. I feel newly energized. I love to stir up the pot. I seem to click on more cylinders when the pot is stirred up." Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said that Weld's chances of being confirmed weren't "very good, and that he hurt himself by attacking the chairman unfairly and with political rhetoric that was just uncalled for." There was speculation that the White House would let his nomination "die", but he refused, saying that he hoped President Clinton "does not plan to give in to ideological extortion" and that "I wanted to send a message that I wanted to be captain of my ship [the nomination] even if it's going to bottom." Some speculated that attacking the more conservative Helms was a way to position him to pick up votes from fellow moderate Republicans in a potential run for president in 2000, but he rejected this, saying that "I've had a lot of people come up to me on the street and say, 'Give 'em hell. That's the Bill Weld we know and love.'"


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld resigned the governorship on July 29, 1997, to devote his full attention to campaigning for the ambassadorship, even though few thought he would be successful; there was speculation that he was really resigning because he had become tired of serving as governor. A bipartisan majority of Senators signed letters demanding that Helms advance his nomination, but Helms refused. After an intensive six-week battle, Weld conceded defeat and withdrew his nomination on September 15, 1997. He commented, "I asked President Clinton to withdraw my name from the Senate so I can go back to New England, where no one has to approach the government on bended knee to ask it to do its duty."


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld was a partner in the Boston and Manhattan offices of the international law firm McDermott Will & Emery from 1997 to 2001, and head of the New York office from 2000 to 2001. Weld was registered as a lobbyist for McDermott Will & Emery. Between 2007 and 2011, Weld was a lobbyist for defense contractor Raytheon, CNX Gas Corporation, Sony Electronics and shoemaker New Balance. In December 2000, the private equity firm Leeds Equity Partners announced that Weld would join the firm, to be renamed Leeds Weld & Co., as a general partner, effective on January 1, 2001. At the private equity firm, Weld later "reduced his role to a senior advisor while considering a run for New York governor" in 2005. Weld rejoined McDermott Will & Emery in 2006. Weld was admitted to the bar in New York in 2008. In 2012, Weld moved to the Boston law firm of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky, and Popeo, becoming a partner there and a principal with the firm's government relations affiliate, ML Strategies LLC.


title: Bill Weld

text: During the re-election campaign of President George W. Bush, who was running against Weld's old foe John Kerry, Weld helped Bush to prepare for the debates.


title: Bill Weld

text: From January to October 2005, Weld was chief executive of Decker College in Louisville, Kentucky. His term ended as the college was closing under bankruptcy protection following a disagreement with the U.S. Department of Education about accreditation of its construction-related courses and online instruction. This matter would follow Weld into the 2006 race for Governor of New York, with former U.S. Senator from New York Alfonse D'Amato asserting that Weld was responsible and oversaw "multimillion dollar looting".


title: Bill Weld

text: On March 27, 2016, "The Wall Street Journal" reported as part of an opinion article that "Bankruptcy trustee Robert Keats alleged [Ralph] LoBosco", a Department of Education employee, "was trying to exact revenge against Decker CEO William Weld". The article continued: "Education Department administrative law judge Robert Layton recently affirmed a 2012 bankruptcy court finding that the Council on Occupational Education had failed to tell the truth in stating that Decker's online programs were never accredited. The Council's 'factually erroneous' assertion caused the Education Department to withdraw federal student aid in 2005, which precipitated Decker's bankruptcy."


title: Bill Weld

text: After being Governor of Massachusetts, Weld moved to New York in 2000. On April 24, 2005, it was reported that he was in talks with the New York Republicans to run for Governor of New York in 2006, against likely Democratic nominee Eliot Spitzer. Incumbent GOP Governor George Pataki announced on July 27 that he would not seek a fourth term. On August 19, 2005, Weld officially announced his candidacy for Governor of New York, seeking to become the second person after Sam Houston to serve as governor of two different U.S. states.


title: Bill Weld

text: In December 2005, Weld received the backing of the Republican county chairs of New York State during a county chairs meeting. On April 29, 2006, Weld received the Libertarian Party's nomination for Governor Of New York. Weld reportedly offered his chief rival for the nomination, former Republican Assembly leader John Faso, the chance to join his ticket as a candidate for lieutenant governor, an offer Faso reportedly declined. Faso gained increasing support from party leaders in various counties, including Westchester and Suffolk, both of which had large delegate counts to the state convention.


title: Bill Weld

text: On June 1, 2006, the Republican State Convention voted 61% to 39% to endorse Faso over Weld. On June 5, Stephen J. Minarik (the chairman of the state Republican Party, and Weld's most prominent backer), called on Weld to withdraw from the race in the interest of party unity. Weld formally announced his withdrawal from the race the following day and returned to private life. Spitzer would go on to defeat Faso by the largest margin in New York gubernatorial history.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld publicly endorsed former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney for the presidency on January 8, 2007; he was a co-chairman for Romney's campaign in New York State. On the same day that Weld endorsed Romney, Gov. and Mrs. Weld also raised $50,000 for Romney's exploratory committee. Weld personally made a donation of $2,100, the maximum allowed per person per election at the time. After the maximum allowed rose to $2,300, Weld donated another $200.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld was also active in campaigning for Romney in New Hampshire, where both governors have been known to travel together. Weld went on to endorse Barack Obama over John McCain in the general election. Weld endorsed Romney in the 2012 presidential election.


title: Bill Weld

text: In February 2016, Weld endorsed Ohio Governor John Kasich for the Republican presidential nomination.


title: Bill Weld

text: On May 17, 2016, former New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson, the Libertarian Party's 2012 presidential nominee and the leading candidate for its 2016 nomination, announced his selection of Weld to be his choice for running mate. The vice-presidential candidate is formally nominated separately from and after the presidential candidate under the Libertarian Party's rules, although as the presidential nominee Johnson was first allowed to speak about his endorsement of Weld. Both candidates won their nominations on a second ballot after narrowly failing to attain an absolute majority on the first ballot. Weld accepted the Libertarian Party's nomination for vice president at the Libertarian National Convention in Orlando, Florida on May 29.


title: Bill Weld

text: During the campaign, Weld took the lead on fundraising operations, as well as appearing on national television and at campaign rallies across the nation. Together, Johnson and Weld were the first presidential ticket to consist of two Governors since the 1948 election when Thomas Dewey of New York ran as a Republican with Earl Warren of California and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina ran as a States' Rights Democrat with Fielding L. Wright of Mississippi. Despite polling higher than any third-party campaign since Ross Perot in 1992, Johnson and Weld were excluded from the debates controlled by the Commission on Presidential Debates and their poll numbers subsequently declined.


title: Bill Weld

text: Nationwide, the Johnson/Weld ticket received 4,488,919 votes (3.3%), breaking the Libertarian Party's record for both absolute vote total (previously 1,275,923 for Johnson in 2012) and percentage (previously 1.1% for Ed Clark and David Koch in 1980).


title: Bill Weld

text: On January 17, 2019, Weld rejoined the Republican Party, increasing speculation that he would run for president. On February 14, 2019, Weld announced that he was launching a presidential exploratory committee for the 2020 Republican primary, against incumbent Republican President Donald Trump. Appearing on Bloomberg News, Weld suggested that he could beat Trump in 2020 with help from independent voters. He accused Trump on CNN the same weekend of having "showed contempt for the American people." Weld challenged Trump on the issue of climate disruption, saying that he had made no effort to combat the effects of global warming. "We've got the polar ice cap that's going to melt with devastating consequences if we don’t get carbon out of the atmosphere," Weld told America's Newsroom, noting that he would plan ahead for an "environmental catastrophe."


title: Bill Weld

text: On April 15, 2019, Weld formally announced his candidacy for President of the United States on "The Lead with Jake Tapper". Weld received 1.3% of the vote in the Iowa caucuses and one pledged delegate on February 3.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He co-chaired its Independent Task Force on North America, which studied the liberalization of markets and free trade between the US, Canada, and Mexico. He was a principal at Leeds, Weld & Co., which describes itself as the United States's largest private equity fund focused on investing in the education and training industry. Weld serves on the board of directors of Acreage Holdings. For a time, he wrote thrillers and works of historical fiction.


title: Bill Weld

text: In February 2013, Weld publicly supported legal recognition for same-sex marriage in an amicus brief submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld joined Our America Initiative's 2016 Liberty Tour a number of times, speaking alongside other libertarian leaders and activists such as Law Enforcement Against Prohibition executive director and former Baltimore Police Chief Neill Franklin, Free the People's Matt Kibbe, Republican activists Ed Lopez and Liz Mair, Conscious Capitalism's Alex McCobin, Reason Foundation's David Nott, Foundation for Economic Education's Jeffrey Tucker, and the Libertarian Party's Carla Howell (as well as some speakers not ordinarily associated with libertarianism, such as author and journalist Naomi Wolf); the tour raised "awareness about third party inclusion in national presidential debates" and "spread the message of liberty and libertarian thought."


title: Bill Weld

text: Throughout 2017 and 2018, Weld appeared at several state Libertarian Party conventions and endorsed various Libertarian candidates in the 2018 United States elections. In January 2019, Weld changed his party affiliation back to Republican, in preparation for his presidential run as a Republican.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld currently works as a lobbyist for ML Strategies. Weld's primary areas of focus as a lobbyist are helping c-level executives navigate competition, white collar investigation and litigation, and "dealing with government at all levels". Weld also specializes in ESG consulting at ML Strategies.


title: Bill Weld

text: Weld married Susan Roosevelt Weld, a great-granddaughter of Theodore Roosevelt, on June 7, 1975. Susan Roosevelt Weld was a professor at Harvard University specializing in ancient Chinese civilization and law, and she later served as General Counsel to the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. The Welds had five children: David Minot (born 1976), a professor of physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara; Ethel Derby (born 1977), a physician; Mary Blake (born 1979), an attorney; Quentin Roosevelt (born 1981), an attorney; and Frances Wylie (born 1983), who has worked for the San Francisco Giants. The couple divorced in 2002.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: Alexander Aristides Reid (born 21 July 1975) is an English former mixed martial artist (MMA), fighting under Bellator, BAMMA and Cage Rage. He is an actor, having been in "Hollyoaks" also making an appearance in "Drifters". Reid was the winner of Channel 4's 7th and final series of "Celebrity Big Brother" in 2010.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: Reid was born in Aldershot, Hampshire, where he attended the Connaught School. His father was a paratrooper and his mother was a homemaker. He is the youngest of six siblings.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: Reid played Jason Cunliffe in the Channel 4 soap-opera "Hollyoaks" in 2001. He appeared in the comedy series "My Hero" in 2002. He also appeared in the TV Series "Drifters" (2016), as himself.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: Reid first got into martial arts at 14 and subsequently turned to mixed martial arts: "It was just a natural progression. I started off doing Kung Fu, Karate-style tournaments before moving on to Boxing, Kickboxing, a little bit of Judo, Jiu-Jitsu. MMA was a natural progression for a young lad wanting to find the latest and best style. It's just the most efficient and effective blend of martial arts really." He participated in mixed martial arts promotions Cage Rage, BAMMA and UCMMA and made his professional mixed martial arts debut in 2000.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: Between 2004 and 2007, Reid appeared in the Cage Rage Championships. During this period, he achieved a record of 8 wins and 2 losses. On 22 September 2007, Reid faced Matt Ewin for the Cage Rage British Middleweight Championship at "Cage Rage 23: Unbelievable," where he completed to fight until full time in which lost by a few points.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: On 15 May 2010, Reid was scheduled to return to the cage professionally for the first time since 2007 to face Tom "Kong" Watson for the vacant BAMMA Middleweight Championship at BAMMA 3. However, Reid injured his knee while filming his documentary TV series "Alex Reid: The Fight of His Life" and was forced to pull out of the Reid-Watson fight and he was replaced by Matt Horwich. The pair rescheduled to meet at BAMMA 4


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: On 14 May 2011, Reid announced his retirement from MMA at an UCMMA 20 event in London. However, he did not rule out a return to the sport in future. His retirement was short lived, as he accepted a challenge from Jason Barrett at UCMMA 22. During the weigh-ins the day prior to the 2011 fight, both men weighed in at just under the 13 st 3 lb mark, being 13 st 2 lb and 13 st 1 lb respectively. On 6 August, Reid defeated Jason Barrett, via triangle choke in the first round, marking his first win in 6 years in MMA. On 16 July 2016, Reid made his return to MMA for the first time in nearly four years.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: On 3 January 2010, Reid became one of twelve housemates in Channel 4's 7th and final series of Celebrity Big Brother. Reid managed to win over the public and on 29 January he won the show with 65% of the vote beating the bookies favourites Dane Bowers and Vinnie Jones to be awarded most successful Celebrity Big Brother winner by public vote.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: Reid began dating English media personality Katie Price July 2009, thus becoming embroiled in intense tabloid publicity in Britain following Price's divorce from Peter Andre, her first husband. In February 2010, Reid and Price married in Las Vegas. Price announced they had separated in January 2011.


title: Alex Reid (fighter)

text: Reid later began dating glamour model and fellow "Celebrity Big Brother" winner Chantelle Houghton. On 17 June 2012, Houghton gave birth to a daughter, Dolly Reid. The couple separated in October 2012.