title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Seven of the eight entrants in the quarter-final matches wrestled in a qualifying round prior to the PPV broadcast, while Bret Hart was entered without needing to qualify. Lex Luger was the first wrestler to qualify, as he defeated Bob Backlund in a match televised on the May 2 episode of "Wrestling Challenge". Six days later, Razor Ramon was added to the tournament after he defeated Tito Santana on "WWF Superstars". On May 9, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan pinned Papa Shango on "Wrestling Challenge" to become the fourth entrant. The following night, Bam Bam Bigelow qualified by defeating Typhoon on a live episode of "Monday Night Raw". On the May 15 episode of "WWF Superstars", Tatanka faced Giant Gonzalez in a qualifying match. Gonzalez choked his opponent and was disqualified by referee Bill Alfonso - whom Gonzalez attacked after the match; as a result, Tatanka advanced to the next round of the tournament. Mr. Perfect and Doink the Clown wrestled three qualifying matches against each other, before a decisive winner could be found to advance in the tournament. They first faced each other on the May 1 episode of "WWF Superstars", but the match was declared a draw when the time limit expired. Their next match took place on the May 16 episode of "Wrestling Challenge" and again resulted in time-limit draw. On the May 24 episode of "Monday Night Raw", a third match between the two was ordered, this time with no time limit, and Perfect pinned Doink to advance to the seventh spot in the quarter-finals. In the final qualifying match, Mr. Hughes defeated Kamala on the May 23 episode of "Wrestling Challenge".


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: At WrestleMania IX, Bret Hart dropped the WWF Championship to Yokozuna. At the conclusion of the match, Mr. Fuji, Yokozuna's manager, threw salt in Hart's eyes, enabling Yokozuna to win the match. After the match, Hulk Hogan came to the ring to help Hart. Fuji challenged Hogan to a match for the WWF Championship, which took place immediately. Fuji attempted to throw salt in Hogan's eyes, but Hogan moved and the salt hit Yokozuna instead. Hogan quickly defeated Yokozuna to become the new WWF Champion. Due to a real-life arrangement with WWF owner Vince McMahon, Hogan was supposed to lose the title to Bret Hart, but he changed his mind and refused to lose to Hart. He formed a compromise that allowed him to face Yokozuna in a rematch at King of the Ring. He did not want to be pinned cleanly, so he insisted on a storyline in which he would lose the belt due to outside interference. As a result of Hart's controversial loss, Jack Tunney, who played the on-screen role of WWF President, granted Hart entry into the King of the Ring tournament without requiring him to win a qualifying match.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Crush faced WWF Intercontinental Champion Shawn Michaels several times in early 1993 but was unable to win the title belt. The pair also faced each other in a qualifying match for the King of the Ring tournament on the May 22 episode of "WWF Superstars". The match ended in a double countout and both wrestlers were eliminated from the tournament. It was later announced that they would wrestle each other at King of the Ring 1993, with Michaels's championship on the line.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: The event also featured an eight-man tag team match that pitted the fan favorite team of The Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner and Scott Steiner) and The Smoking Gunns (Billy Gunn and Bart Gunn) against the villain team of Money Inc. (Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster) and The Headshrinkers (Samu and Fatu). The Steiners and The Headshrinkers had faced each other at WrestleMania in a match won by the Steiners. The Steiners then moved on to feud with Money Inc., the WWF Tag Team Champions. The Gunns made their WWF debut in the spring of 1993 and faced The Headshrinkers in a series of matches. The match was not a standard tag team match so the championship was not on the line.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Before the live PPV broadcast began, a dark match took place between Owen Hart and Papa Shango. Papa Shango pinned Hart to retain the USWA Unified World Heavyweight Championship, which was being defended in the WWF as part of a talent exchange program between the WWF and the United States Wrestling Association (USWA).


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: In the first televised match of the event, Bret Hart fought Razor Ramon. Hart got the early advantage, but Ramon used his size advantage to control much of the match. He performed a fallaway slam and a running powerslam but was unable to pin Hart. Hart performed several of his signature moves, including a Russian legsweep and an elbow drop from the second rope. Ramon regained control of the match and attempted to execute a suplex from the top rope. Hart landed on top of Ramon and pinned him to win the match.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Mr. Hughes used his strength advantage to control the early stages of the following match against Mr. Perfect. After he missed a leg drop, Perfect used the opportunity to perform a neckbreaker on Hughes. Hughes picked up the urn that he had stolen from The Undertaker and hit Perfect with it. As a result, Hughes was disqualified and Mr. Perfect advanced to the next round.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: In the next match, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan faced Bam Bam Bigelow. Neither wrestler was able to gain an advantage until Duggan was thrown into the corner of the ring. He suffered a storyline injury, which allowed Bigelow to place Duggan in a bear hug. Duggan bit Bigelow to escape from the hold. He executed a powerslam and attempted to perform his signature move, a charging clothesline. Bigelow moved out of the way and performed a diving headbutt on Duggan to get the pinfall victory.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Tatanka gained the early advantage over Lex Luger in the next match. He performed a crossbody to knock Luger down to the mat. Luger elbowed Tatanka to escape from a hold and then executed a chinlock on Tatanka. Tatanka came back by performing a knife-edge chop on Luger. He attempted the same move from the top rope, but Luger blocked him. Luger performed a clothesline on Tatanka to knock him down, but he was unable to pin him. The time limit expired, and both wrestlers were eliminated from the tournament. As a result, Bigelow received a bye into the final round.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: The semi-final round of the tournament took place immediately after the first round, and Mr. Perfect gained the early advantage over Bret Hart. Hart reversed the momentum of the match by applying a series of headlocks on Perfect. Perfect then performed a dropkick on Hart and followed it up by pushing him off the edge of the ring into the steel barricade on the arena floor. Perfect then performed another dropkick, but Hart recovered and executed a superplex on Perfect. Hart wore down Perfect's leg with a figure four leglock and attempted to perform the Sharpshooter, his finishing maneuver. Perfect blocked the move and attempted to perform the Perfectplex, his finishing move, on Hart. Hart reversed it, and both men were thrown out of the ring. When they returned, Perfect tried to pin Hart with a small package. Hart reversed the move to get the pinfall victory and advance to the tournament final.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: The WWF Championship match came next, as Hulk Hogan defended his title against Yokozuna. Yokozuna controlled the beginning of the match until he ran at Hogan in the corner but missed an avalanche splash. Hogan tried twice to body slam Yokozuna but could not pick him up. Yokozuna performed a bear hug on Hogan and tried to pin him after executing a belly to belly suplex. Hogan kicked Yokozuna in the face three times and knocked him down to the mat. He performed a leg drop, his signature move, on Yokozuna but was unable to pin him. As Hogan prepared to attempt to body slam Yokozuna, manager Harvey Wippleman, disguised as a planted photographer, jumped up onto the edge of the ring. His camera exploded in Hogan's face, which allowed Yokozuna to knock Hogan down and perform a leg drop. Yokozuna pinned Hogan to regain the WWF Championship and performed a Banzai drop on Hogan after the match.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: In the next match, the team of the Steiner Brothers (Rick Steiner and Scott Steiner) and The Smoking Gunns (Billy Gunn and Bart Gunn) faced the team of Money Inc. (Ted DiBiase and Irwin R. Schyster) and The Headshrinkers (Samu and Fatu). The match began with the Steiners in control as they took turns attacking DiBiase. Fatu and Bart Gunn entered the match, and Fatu and his teammates wore Bart down while preventing him from tagging in a partner. Billy Gunn fought DiBiase and controlled the match until DiBiase performed the Million Dollar Dream on Billy. DiBiase released the hold and gloated about his performance. This enabled Billy Gunn to surprise DiBiase with a small package pinfall to win the match. After the match, the teams continued to fight until the Steiners and Gunns cleared their opponents from the ring.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: The following match featured Shawn Michaels defending his WWF Intercontinental Championship against Crush. Crush controlled the early portion of the match by performing several dropkicks on Michaels, which he followed with a military press slam and a tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Michaels left the ring to recover and returned to attack Crush's head. Michaels was unable to pin Crush, who threw him out of the ring. Two wrestlers dressed as Doink the Clown, with whom Crush had been feuding, came to the ring to distract Crush. Michaels performed a superkick, his signature move, and pinned Crush to retain the championship.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: The final match of the evening was between Bret Hart and Bam Bam Bigelow to determine the winner of the tournament. Bigelow used his strength advantage to control the beginning of the match. He threw Hart out of the ring and focused on injuring Hart's back. Hart escaped from a bear hug and pushed Bigelow into the steel rail at ringside. Bigelow responded by pushing Hart's back into the ring post. Luna Vachon, Bigelow's valet, hit Hart with a chair, which enabled Bigelow to pin Hart and be declared the winner. Referee Earl Hebner came to the ring and explained to Joey Marella, the referee for the match, what had happened. The match was ordered to continue, and Bigelow continued to attack Hart's back. While Bigelow was outside of the ring, Hart performed a flying crossbody by jumping over the top rope and landing on Bigelow. He attempted to perform the Sharpshooter but was unable. As Bigelow ran at Hart in the corner of the ring, Hart moved out of the way. He climbed onto Bigelow's shoulders and flipped Bigelow forward to pin him with a victory roll.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: A coronation ceremony took place, in which Hart was proclaimed King of the Ring. Jerry Lawler interrupted the ceremony and claimed to be the only king in the WWF. He had been using the nickname "The King" since defeating Jackie Fargo for the AWA Southern Heavyweight Championship in 1974 and did not want to share the title. Lawler attacked Hart and hit him with the scepter and throne that were being used for the ceremony. As the PPV went off the air, Hart was lying on the floor, unable to fight back.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Reviews for the event are mainly positive. Writing for "Online Onslaught", columnist Adam Gutschmidt stated that the event is the best King of the Ring show to watch. He called all three of Bret Hart's matches "outstanding" but was not as impressed with any of the other matches on the card. He thought that the eight-man match served no real purpose, the match between Luger and Tatanka was poorly planned and executed, and that the WWF Championship match was the worst on the card. Also writing for "Online Onslaught", Rick Scaia also enjoyed Bret Hart's matches. He thought that the match between Tatanka and Luger was a "good booking decision" and that the wrestlers performed well in the match. He also enjoyed the endings to the WWF Championship match and the Intercontinental Championship match. The review from "The Other Arena" also praised Bret Hart's matches, as well as the Intercontinental Championship match. The other matches were not rated as highly, although only the WWF Championship match was said to be a bad match.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: The attendance for the event was 6,500 fans, who paid a total of $80,000 in admission. This is the lowest attendance figure for a King of the Ring event. The attendance the following year was almost twice as large, as 12,000 fans attended King of the Ring 1994. The PPV buyrate was 1.1, which was the highest buyrate in King of the Ring history until the 1999 event.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: The event was released on VHS in North America by Coliseum Video on August 11, 1993. It has also been released on VHS in PAL format in the United Kingdom. Packaged together with King of the Ring 1994, it was released on DVD in the United Kingdom as part of the WWE Tagged Classics line on July 5, 2004.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: For the remainder of the summer, Hulk Hogan resumed his feud with Yokozuna on the international house show circuit. He then left the WWF and focused on his acting career. He starred in "Thunder in Paradise", a weekly syndicated television show that ran from 1993 to 1994. While filming the show, he was offered a contract with World Championship Wrestling (WCW), the WWF's main competitor. He joined WCW in summer 1994 and wrestled his first match at Bash at the Beach 1994, where he defeated Ric Flair to win the WCW World Heavyweight Championship. He continued to wrestle for the company until the summer of 2000. WCW subsequently went out of business in the spring of 2001 and Hogan did not return to the WWF until early 2002.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Yokozuna held the WWF Championship for over nine months before dropping the belt to Bret Hart. Shawn Michaels was stripped of the Intercontinental Championship in September 1993, which set up a battle royal in which Razor Ramon became the next champion. The Steiner Brothers continued to feud with Money Inc. over the WWF Tag Team Championship. They defeated DiBiase and Schyster the day after King of the Ring to win the belts. They held them for two days before losing them to Money Inc. Three days later, the Steiners regained the belts, which they held for the remainder of the feud.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: Jerry Lawler feuded with Bret Hart for more than two years after King of the Ring. They faced each other at SummerSlam 1993 to determine the true king of the WWF. Lawler won the match and the title after Hart was disqualified. They were supposed to wrestle against each other at Survivor Series 1993 in an elimination match, but Lawler was unable to appear because he had been charged with rape and sodomy in real life. The accuser later admitted that she had falsified the charges. Hart feuded with his brother Owen throughout 1994, so the feud with Lawler lay dormant. Lawler accused Bret Hart of being a racist in 1995 in order to create problems between Hart and Japanese wrestler Hakushi. This re-ignited the feud between Hart and Lawler, and they faced each other at In Your House 1. Hakushi interfered in the match, which enabled Lawler to pin Hart. This set up a "Kiss my Foot" match between Hart and Lawler at King of the Ring 1995. According to the stipulation, the loser would be forced to kiss the winner's feet. Lawler lost and brought in his dentist, Isaac Yankem, who soon debuted in the WWF. Yankem wrestled Hart at SummerSlam 1995; Hart won the match by disqualification after Yankem and Lawler choked Hart with the ring ropes.


title: King of the Ring (1993)

text: King of the Ring continued as the annual June PPV until the 2002 event, which was the same year that the WWF was renamed to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). During its years as a PPV, it was considered one of the promotion's "Big Five" PPVs, along with the Royal Rumble, WrestleMania, SummerSlam, and Survivor Series, the company's five biggest shows produced throughout the year. Although the promotion ceased producing the event as a PPV after the 2002 event, WWE has continued to periodically hold the tournament across their weekly television programs, "Raw" and "SmackDown", with the finals being held on an episode of "Raw" or at another PPV, such as Judgment Day for the 2006 tournament. Although King of the Ring ended its run as a PPV with the 2002 event, one further event promoted under the King of the Ring event chronology was held in 2015. It featured the semifinals and finals of the 2015 tournament and aired exclusively as an event on WWE's online streaming service, the WWE Network, which launched in February 2014.


title: Saab Bofors Dynamics

text: Saab Bofors Dynamics, located in Karlskoga and Linköping, Sweden, is a subsidiary of the Saab Group that specializes in military materiel such as missile systems and anti-tank systems.


title: Saab Bofors Dynamics

text: Its corporate heritage goes back to Bofors, a hammer mill, which was founded as a royal state-owned company in 1646. In 1873, this was converted to a modern corporate structure by becoming an "stock company", in Swedish an aktiebolag, that is a "limited company" or a "corporation". In 1999 Saab purchased the Celsius Group, by that time the parent owner of Bofors. In September 2000, SAAB sold their Bofors Weapon Systems, which produced the autocannon and tube artillery weapons, to United Defense Industries, while Saab retained their missile interests. Later BAE Systems acquired United Defense Industries.


title: Saab Bofors Dynamics

text: Several public campaigns, including civil disobedience actions, have targeted production sites as a protest against Swedish arms export.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The Khan Shaykhun chemical attack took place on 4 April 2017 on the town of Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib Governorate of Syria. The town was reported to have been struck by an airstrike by government forces followed by massive civilian chemical poisoning. The release of a toxic gas, which included sarin, or a similar substance, killed at least 89 people and injured more than 541, according to the opposition Idlib Health Directorate. The attack was the deadliest use of chemical weapons in the Syrian civil war since the Ghouta chemical attack in 2013.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism attributed the responsibility of the attack to the Syrian government. The OPCW-UN JIM described chemicals that it said linked the sarin used to the Syrian government: "The samples from Khan Shaykhun contain the three types of marker chemicals described above: PF6 [HFP], isopropyl phosphates and isopropyl phosphorofluoridates. Their presence is a strong indicator that the sarin disseminated in Khan Shaykhun was produced from DF from the Syrian Arab Republic stockpile."


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The governments of the United States, United Kingdom, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France, and Israel as well as Human Rights Watch attributed the attack to the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The Syrian government said the attack was a "fabrication" while the Russian government claimed that the entire incident was staged.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: On 7 April, the United States launched 59 cruise missiles at Shayrat Air Base, which U.S. intelligence cited as the source of the attack.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Use of chemical weapons in the Syrian Civil War has been confirmed by the local sources in Syria and by the United Nations. Deadly attacks by chemical weapons during the war include the Ghouta attack in the suburbs of Damascus in August 2013 and the Khan al-Assal attack in the suburbs of Aleppo in March 2013. While no party took responsibility for the chemical attacks, a U.N. fact-finding mission and a UNHRC Commission of Inquiry have both investigated the attacks.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The U.N. mission found likely use of the nerve agent sarin in the case of Khan al-Asal (19 March 2013), Saraqib (29 April 2013), Ghouta (21 August 2013), Jobar (24 August 2013) and Ashrafiyat Sahnaya (25 August 2013). The UNHRC commission later confirmed the use of sarin in the Khan al-Asal, Saraqib and Ghouta attacks, but did not mention the Jobar and the Ashrafiyat Sahnaya attacks. The UNHRC commission also found the sarin used in the Khan al-Asal attack bore "the same unique hallmarks" as the sarin used in the Ghouta attack and indicated the perpetrators likely had access to chemicals from the Syrian Army's stockpile. Those attacks prompted the international community to pressure disarmament of the Syrian Armed Forces from chemical weapons, which was executed during 2014. Despite the disarmament process, dozens of incidents with suspected use of chemical weapons followed throughout Syria, the majority being attributed to anti-government fighters, in particular the Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: In August and October 2016, United Nations reports explicitly blamed the Syrian military of Bashar al-Assad for dropping chlorine bombs on the towns of Talmenes on 21 April 2014, Sarmin on 16 March 2015. and Qmenas, also on 16 March 2015. Several other attacks have been alleged, reported and/or investigated. In December 2016, at least 53 people were killed in an alleged chemical weapons attack in ISIL-held villages near Uqairabat that bore similarities to the Ghouta attack, with none of the dead having blast injuries.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The immediate context for the Khan Shaykhun attack was the intensified aerial campaign in March and April 2017 by the government and its Russian ally to gain control of Kafr Zeita, Murek and al-Lataminah, then the three remaining rebel-held towns in the northern Hama Governorate. (See Hama offensive (March–April 2017).) On 30 March 2017, an airstrike hit al-Lataminah, around from Khan Shaykhun. More than 70 people in the area were then exposed to an unidentified chemical agent and showed symptoms of nausea, agitation, foaming, muscle spasm, and miosis (constriction of the pupil of the eye). Cardiac arrest occurred in two of the victims and an orthopedic doctor died. On 3 April 2017, one day before the Khan Shaykhun attack, a "regime aircraft" allegedly carried out a similar chlorine gas attack on Al-Habit, a nearby village, injuring dozens and killing two children.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The attack took place around 6:30 a.m. local time on 4 April, before most children and parents had left for school or work. Witnesses reported smelling a strange odor about ten minutes after a rocket attack and airstrike, followed by visible symptoms of poisoning. White Helmets volunteers reported four unusually weak explosions. Victims were treated at al-Rahma hospital in Idlib. Medical workers and witnesses said the attack was different than the chlorine gas attacks they had experienced in the past, in which the chlorine gas usually killed a few people in confined spaces and buildings. In contrast, in this attack, many people died outside. Furthermore, the victims exhibited pinpoint pupils, a sign of contact with nerve agents and sarin specifically. Other symptoms reported included coldness in the extremities, decreased heart rate, and low blood pressure, convulsions, foaming at the mouth or vomit, and respiratory paralysis. Some first responders became ill when they came into contact with the victims.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Rescue workers gathered soil and tissue samples and sent them to Western intelligence officials for analysis. On 6 April, the Turkish Ministry of Health, which had conducted tests on people transported to Turkey, said it had identified the chemical used in the attack as sarin, citing lung damage found in victims. On 11 April, Turkish Minister of Health Recep Akdağ stated that isopropyl methylphosphonic acid—a known byproduct of sarin reacting with other compounds—was "identified in the blood and urine tests conducted on samples taken from the victims". Tests by British scientists of samples found at the scene indicated the chemical involved was "sarin or a sarin-like substance".


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: "The Guardian"'s Kareem Shaheen, the first reporter from western media to visit the town after the attack, photographed the crater where the chemical weapon was reported to have hit an apparently abandoned warehouse and silos near the crater.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Medical sources in Idlib in the immediate aftermath of the attack reported more than 58 people, including 11 children, were killed and over 300 were wounded. Test results of samples collected from ten of them indicated they had been exposed to sarin or a sarin-like substance.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: By 7:30 a.m. EEST 100 wounded people arrived at a local field hospital. The opposition minister of health, Mohamad Firas al-Jundi, said victims experienced suffocation, fluid in the lungs, foaming at the mouth, unconsciousness, spasm, and paralysis.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: A few hours after the attack, a nearby clinic treating victims was hit by an airstrike, with reports that Russians bombed the hospital with the victims in an attempt to destroy the evidence. The area's largest hospital was bombed two days prior. According to Dr. Abdel Hay Tennari, who treated 22 victims of the attack, the symptoms of victims corresponded to symptoms of exposure to sarin. Patients who received pralidoxime, an antidote of sarin, reportedly stabilized their medical state in around an hour. Médecins Sans Frontières visited Bab Al Hawa hospital where they determined symptoms consistent with sarin. They also visited other hospitals where victims were taken and reported, "that victims smelled of bleach, suggesting they had been exposed to chlorine." They concluded that the "reports strongly suggest that victims of the attack on Khan Sheikhoun were exposed to at least two different chemical agents."


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: On 5 April, local doctors and rescue workers at the scene said the number of dead had risen to 74, with 600 injured, and later that day "The Daily Telegraph" reported 86 deaths, including 30 children, and noted the death toll was rising as so many had died in their homes and only taken to hospitals later. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and French Ambassador to the United Nations François Delattre said over 100 had died. On 7 April, the opposition Idlib Health Directorate said 89 had died, 18 women and 33 children. On 9 May 2017, a report from CNN said the attack killed 92 people in all.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: On 6 September 2017, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights' Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic concluded that a Syrian Air Force aircraft was responsible the sarin attack, saying "the Syrian air force used sarin in Khan Sheikhoun, Idlib, killing dozens, the majority of whom were women and children". It dismissed claims by Damascus and Moscow that a bomb struck an opposition chemical weapons depot on the outskirts of the northern town as “fabricated”. The report found that a Sukhoi 22 jet, which is only flown by the Syrian airforce, had carried out four airstrikes at 6.45am on 4 April. Three bombs carried conventional explosives, but one, which struck a road, carried the deadly nerve agent, which was carried as far as 600 metres away on a gentle wind.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: “Weather conditions at 6.45am on 4 April were ideal for delivering a chemical weapon,” the report said. “The wind speed was just over 3km/h, with no rain and practically no cloud cover. Under such conditions, the agent cloud would have drifted slowly downhill following the terrain features at the location.”


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The Assad government has repeatedly denied using chemical weapons, but the report said the Syrian regime's version of events, that an unknown weapons depot had been hit, was “extremely unlikely”. It said sarin stored in such circumstances would have mostly burned off or been absorbed by rubble, and that there was no evidence of the building being contaminated.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: A visit by "The Guardian" to Khan Sheikhun two days after the attack revealed that the site officials claimed had been hit had been empty for many months, and contained only animal feed and a volleyball net. Witnesses described the frantic aftermath of a series of airstrikes, which overwhelmed the limited capacity of local medics and rescue workers. This finding was confirmed in a report released on 26 October 2017 by the OPCW-UN Joint Investigative Mechanism.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Many governments, such as the United States and some European countries and the Gulf Cooperation Council attributed the attack to the Syrian government. According to investigation by Human Rights Watch, the attack was conducted by Syrian government forces from the air using Soviet-made KhAB-250 aerial bombs designed to deliver sarin. The investigative journalism website Bellingcat suggested Russia may have inadvertently provided evidence of the Syrian government's use of the M4000 chemical bomb. The Syrian government denied any involvement. Immediately following the attacks, Russia said the Syrian Air Force had struck Khan Shaykhun "between 11:30am and 12:30pm local time" on 4 April, but that the target had been "a large terrorist ammunition depot" on its eastern outskirts. "On the territory of the depot, there were workshops which produced chemical warfare munitions", and following the OPCW conclusions, in October 2017, it strongly disputed the conclusion that the Syrian government was responsible. The UN Security Council session unanimously declared the need for an investigation of the chemical attack. According to an OPCW report, an investigation into the attack was concluded and released on 29 June 2017, which confirmed the use of sarin gas, or a similar substance.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: According to the Idlib Media Centre, the chemical agent had the characteristics of sarin. The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces accused the Syrian government and the Syrian Armed Forces of carrying out the attack and called for an immediate investigation by the United Nations Security Council. The opposition groups said the Syrian air force dropped chemical bombs on a civilian population.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: On the day of the attack, a Syrian government official told Reuters "the government does not and has not used chemical weapons, not in the past and not in the future." Later, the Russian Ministry of Defence reiterated the statement made by the Syrian Armed Forces, and said the attack on the ammunition depot took place between 11:30 and 12:30 EEST.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: In a 13 April interview to AFP, President Assad said the attack is "100 per cent fabrication" by the United States "working hand-in-glove with the terrorists", intended to provide a pretext for the airstrike on the Shayrat Airbase.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The Russian government denied involvement in the chemical attack; Russia's Defence Ministry issued a statement saying the Russian Air Force had "not carried out any strikes near Khan Shaykhun of Idlib province", but said a Syrian aircraft did conduct an airstrike on a warehouse containing ammunition and equipment belonging to rebels near Khan Shaykhun, "yesterday, from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m". The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was "premature to accuse the Syrian government of using chemical weapons in Idlib", and insist on full and impartial investigation. Shortly after the attack Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters the use of chemical weapons is a "dangerous and monstrous crime" and that Russia's support for Assad is not "unconditional". He also said he doubted information was based on "objective materials or evidence", and that only Syrian government can resist "terrorists on the ground." Mikhail Ulyanov, head of the Russian delegation to UNGA First Committee and Director of the Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control of the MFA of Russia, stated on the sidelines of the 72nd session of the UN General Assembly that Russia tended to 'more and more to opt for that version' that explained the event as a staged incident, and to doubt that it was the result of an air bomb strike.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Later, President Vladimir Putin said the attack could be a provocation, but that several versions were possible, and the UN should investigate the attack. On 11 April, Putin suggested the chemical attack was a false flag operation intended to discredit the Syrian government.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: UK based Bellingcat founder Eliot Higgins observed that Russian claims that a warehouse containing chemical weapons was bombed related to a raid carried out "two to three hours" after the first images of victims appeared. A statement made on the day of the attack by Major General Igor Konashenkov, a spokesperson for the Russian Ministry of Defence was also criticised by Higgins' Bellingcat colleague Dan Kaszeta, a veteran of the US Army Reserve's Chemical Corps, who called it "an infantile argument", and by the anti-Kremlin Russian non-profit Conflict Intelligence Team.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: According to the US government, the Syrian government under Assad was behind the chemical attack, and Syrian jets carried out the bombing of a rebel stronghold. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was quoted as saying "Either Russia has been complicit or Russia has been simply incompetent". According to Tillerson, the U.S. appealed to Assad to cease the use of chemical weapons, and "[o]ther than that, there is no change to our military posture", with ISIS remaining the primary priority.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: President Donald Trump called the attack "reprehensible" and attributed it to the Syrian government, saying the act could not be ignored "by the civilized world" during his meeting with King Abdullah II of Jordan. Trump also blamed the attack on supposed failures of the administration of his predecessor, Barack Obama. U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said: "Anyone who uses chemical weapons to attack his own people shows a fundamental disregard for human decency and must be held accountable." US representative to the UN Nikki Haley has stated that, though before the chemical attack the US had not considered overthrowing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from power a top US priority, it is now prominent among US priorities in the region. At the UN Security Council, Haley said "When the United Nations consistently fails in its duty to act collectively, there are times in the life of states that we are compelled to take our own action", by it implying if the UN failed to hold Assad accountable for the use of chemical weapons on civilians, the US will. CIA Director Mike Pompeo confirmed on Thursday 13 April that his agency concluded the Syrian government was responsible for the chemical attack in Khan Shaykhun. "“We were good and fast,”" Pompeo said. The top Democrat on the house intelligence committee, Rep. Adam Schiff, agreed that the Syrian government was responsible for the attack.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: A few members of Congress and former officials expressed skepticism, like Democratic Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, and former Republican Congressman Ron Paul.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: On the morning of 7 April 2017, 72 hours after the attack, the United States launched 59 cruise missiles on Shayrat Airbase, a Syrian airfield near Shayrat, believed to be the base for the aircraft that carried out the chemical attack. In contrast to the coalition's accidental air raid on Deir ez-Zor in 2016, this was both a unilateral action and the first intentional strike against the Syrian government.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: On 24 April 2017, the United States Department of the Treasury imposed sanctions on 271 employees of the Syrian Scientific Studies and Research Center for their alleged role in producing chemical weapons.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Secretary-General António Guterres said he was "deeply disturbed" by reports of the Idlib chemical attack, noting that the use of chemical weapons is banned under international law.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Federica Mogherini, the European Union's diplomatic chief, called the attack "awful" and said Bashar al-Assad's government bore "primary responsibility" for it.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) expressed "serious concern" and said its Fact-Finding Mission in Syria was "gathering and analysing information from all available sources." The following day, the Technical Secretariat of the OPCW, referring to the media reports, requested all member states of the Chemical Weapons Convention to share available information on what it described preliminary as "allegations of use of chemical weapons in the Khan Shaykhun area of Idlib province in the Syrian Arab Republic." Amnesty International said the evidence points to an "air-launched chemical attack", while the World Health Organization said victims carried the signs of exposure to nerve agents. On 26 October, an investigative panel created by the UN Security Council said it was "confident" that Assad's air force was behind the chemical attack. Further, that the attack was possible because it drew from old Syrian stockpiles that Assad had vowed to destroy in 2013, indicating that Damascus has systematically cheated international inspectors for the past four years.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: France called for an emergency meeting of the United Nations Security Council after the attack. France, Britain, and the United States (who are among the permanent members of the Security Council), circulated a draft to the council's 15 members condemning the attack in Syria and demanding a full investigation into it. The emergency closed-door meeting was set on 5 April in New York. United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, serving as president of the Security Council for the month, announced there would not be a vote on a draft resolution to respond to the chemical weapons attack, but instead of one resolution by the U.S. and a second resolution by Russia, there was a third resolution unexpectedly submitted by Sweden and nine other non-permanent members. When the council concluded its meeting without conclusion on the morning of 6 April, the U.S. launched a missile strike. On 12 April, the proposed draft resolution was vetoed by Russia as it attributed blame to the Syrian government before any investigation had been undertaken. This was the eighth time that Russia vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria. Instead, on 20 April, Russia and Iran formally proposed to start an OPCW investigation (which was rejected as an investigation is already in progress) and then on 26 April blocked UN resolution calling Syria to disclose information for the first OPCW investigation at the same accusing UN of "blocking independent international investigation" earlier proposed by Russia and Iran.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: On 26 April 2017, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault said France had concluded that the Syrian government was "unquestionably" the perpetrator of the attack. He added that the same mixture of sarin and hexamine had been used in the 2013 Saraqib chemical attack.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: United Kingdom government defense minister, Michael Fallon said he believed the Syrian air force responsible for the attack. Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said "There should now be an immediate ceasefire and a UN-led investigation rapidly into what is a horrific and totally illegal action by somebody using chemical weapons against innocent people."


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The Egyptian Foreign Ministry released a statement saying the "painful and unacceptable" images of the massacre reaffirm the necessity of reaching a political solution to end the crisis in Syria, in light of the international community decisions and Security Council Resolution 2254, as well as the Geneva Conventions.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Iranian President Hassan Rouhani called for an "impartial international fact-finding body" to be set up to investigate the attack. Foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif described the incident as "very painful" and condemned it, but also criticized US for attacking the Syrian airbase "without any investigation". Iranian Foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Ghassemi condemned "all use of chemical weapons," but suggested the blame for the attack lay with "terrorist groups" rather than the Syrian government.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: "There are continuing questions ... about who is responsible for these horrible attacks against civilians, and that's why I'm impressing on the UN Security Council to pass a strong resolution that allows the international community to determine first of all who was responsible for these attacks and how we will move forward." Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on the international community "to fulfill its obligation from 2013 to fully and finally remove these horrible weapons from Syria". Other countries who condemned the chemical attack include the Czech Republic, Italy, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the Vatican City.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: The Iraqi government condemned the chemical attack and called for an "initiative aimed at punishing those responsible". The next day, Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr also condemned the attacks and called for President Assad to step down. Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said if al-Assad was found to be behind the attack, as the United States believe, it represented "a shocking war crime." Other countries who accused Assad for responsibility include Qatar and Turkey.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Hans Blix, described the US retaliation as "measured" and specific, but later criticized the rapid American military response. He initially raised concern that the responsibility of the Syrian government was not yet proven, but stated on 11 April 2017, "On balance it seems probable that the attack with gas was undertaken by the Syrian government air force," adding that "the factual circumstances known so far do not point to the rebels as arranging the gas action".


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: Other people who have expressed skepticism of the Syrian government being responsible for the attack include former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter,  US based weapons expert and MIT professor emeritus Theodore Postol, former UK ambassador to Syria and director of the British Syrian Society Peter Ford, investigative Israeli journalist Uri Avneri, and investigative journalist Seymour Hersh. The OPCW-UN JIM report found no merit in any of these views and concluded that the sarin used in the attack bore the Syrian regime's signature; 'the Leadership Panel is confident that the Syrian Arab Republic is responsible for the release of sarin at Khan Shaykhun on 4 April 2017.


title: Khan Shaykhun chemical attack

text: In 2019, the Princeton University-linked journal "Science & Global Security", on whose editorial board Ted Postol sat, intended to publish a paper titled "Computational Forensic Analysis for the Chemical Weapons Attack at Khan Sheikhoun on 4 April 2017" written by Goong Chen, Cong Gu, Postol, Alexey Sergeev, Sanyang Liu, Pengfei Yao and Marlan O. Scully. The article questioned the findings of the UN/OPCW investigation which concluded that the Assad regime had used sarin. The report's arguments were rebutted in a Bellingcat article that detailed inconsistencies and anomalies in the report's analysis. In response to the Bellingcat article, the editors of "Science & Global Security" said “Regrettably, the Bellingcat group blog post contains a number of incorrect statements about the contents and conclusions of the paper to be published. Some of the statements appear to refer to an earlier manuscript and do not take account of all the changes made during the peer review and editorial process managed by this journal”. The journal later decided not to publish the paper.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: City of the Living Dead (, also released as The Gates of Hell) is a 1980 Italian supernatural horror film co-written and directed by Lucio Fulci. It stars Christopher George, Catriona MacColl, Carlo de Mejo, Antonella Interlenghi, Giovanni Lombardo Radice, and Janet Agren. The film follows a priest whose hanging opens a gateway to hell that releases the undead, where a psychic and a reporter team up to close it before All Saints' Day.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: "City of the Living Dead" was developed after the financial success of Fulci's previous film, "Zombi 2", leading him to work with screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti to write a new horror film inspired by the works of H.P. Lovecraft. The film was greenlit during production of "Contraband", which Fulci left to begin working on "City of the Living Dead". Principal photography was shot predominantly on location in the United States, with interiors shot in Rome.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: The film was theatrically released in Italy in August 1980, which grossed ₤985 million. It was followed by a release throughout Europe, including a screening at th at the Paris International Festival of Fantastic and Science-Fiction Film, where Fulci won the Audience Award, and in the United States in April 1983. Upon release, the film received criticism for its performances, plot, and graphic violence, but like many of Fulci's films, has developed a cult following.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: In New York City, during a séance held in the apartment of medium Theresa, Mary Woodhouse experiences a traumatic vision of a priest, Father Thomas, hanging himself in a cemetery of a village called Dunwich. Mary breaks the circle and collapses to the floor when the images overwhelm her. The group presumes Mary is dead and calls the police, who suspect foul play. Theresa warns the police chief of an imminent evil. Journalist Peter Bell begins to investigate Mary's mysterious death and visits her grave as she is about to be buried. However, she is still alive, and Peter saves her after hearing her cries. Peter and Mary visit Theresa, who warns them that according to the ancient book of Enoch, the events Mary witnessed in her visions presage the eruption of the living dead into our world. The death of Father Thomas has opened the gates of Hell through which the invasion will commence on All Saints Day, just a few days away.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: In Dunwich, a young vagrant named Bob visits an abandoned house but flees after seeing a rotting carcass. Across town, Gerry, a psychiatrist, is in consultation with Sandra, a neurotic patient, when Emily Robbins, his 19-year-old girlfriend and personal assistant, arrives. She tells Gerry that she's on her way to meet with Bob, whom she has been trying to help. That evening, Emily finds Bob at a derelict garage exhibiting strange behavior. The supernatural apparition of Father Thomas then appears as Bob runs away, smothering to death a frightened Emily with a maggot-covered hand. The next morning, Emily's body is found. Emily's father tells the sheriff and Gerry of his suspicions about Bob due to Bob's previous history of crime. Meanwhile, Peter and Mary leave New York and embark upon their search for the town of Dunwich.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: That evening, Bob returns to the deserted house, where he sees a vision of Father Thomas. After Emily's funeral, her younger brother John-John sees a ghostly image of her outside his bedroom window. At Sandra's house, the corpse of an elderly woman, Mrs. Holden, appears without explanation on her kitchen floor. Sandra calls Gerry for help, but the body disappears as soon as Gerry arrives. The two search the house but are disturbed by many strange occurrences, such as a window breaking, with the glass then dripping human blood.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: Meanwhile, Bob has taken refuge in the garage of a local man, Mr. Ross. Ross's teenage daughter Ann finds him and offers him marijuana, but Ross bursts in and attacks Bob, fearful he is trying to seduce his daughter. Ross kills Bob by impaling his head through a drilling lathe.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: The following morning, Peter and Mary arrive at the graveyard that Mary saw in her vision. They begin searching for Father Thomas' tomb and meet Gerry and Sandra. They go back to Gerry's office to discuss Father Thomas' death when suddenly the four are showered with maggots in an apparent supernatural attack. Gerry then receives a distressing phone call from John-John Robbins explaining his dead sister has returned and killed his parents. They rush over the Robbins' house and try to find the sheriff. While trying to get John-John to safety, Sandra is killed by Emily, who rips Sandra's scalp off. John-John runs through the town's streets and is saved by Gerry, who hands the boy over to the police.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: Mr. Ross is drinking at a bar when it is suddenly attacked by the re-animated dead people of the town, led by Bob. Ross and two other men are killed, as a state-of-emergency is declared over the radio. Mary, Peter, and Gerry arrive back at the graveyard as the clock strikes midnight and All Saints Day begins. They descend into Father Thomas' family tomb, discovering a cave of skeletal remains and cobwebbed putrescences. Sandra suddenly appears as a zombie and kills Peter before being killed by Gerry, who impales her with a metal spike. Mary and Gerry continue until they face Father Thomas, commanding an army of the undead. Before he can kill Mary, Gerry grabs a wooden cross and disembowels Father Thomas. The priest and the other revived corpses burst into flames and disappear. Mary and Gerry exit from Father Thomas' tomb into the graveyard in the morning to see John-John and the police. Mary is relieved to see John-John survived the ordeal but becomes frightened and screams as everything fades to black.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: After "Zombi 2" grossed over 1.5 billion lire in Italy, director Lucio Fulci began working on a new horror script with screenwriter Dardano Sacchetti. Elements of the story are influenced by the work of H.P. Lovecraft, such as naming the town the film is set in Dunwich, after Lovecraft's "The Dunwich Horror". Sacchetti noted that Fulci had just reread Lovecraft before working on the film's script, stating he wanted to re-create a Lovecraftian atmosphere. In Sacchetti's original writings, the story is not set in Dunwich, but Salem. This script also includes characters not used in the film, such as Mike, a homeless man who is devoured by cats and reappears later in the film as a zombie.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: Sacchetti recalled that, after completing the script, it was shelved for some time, due to their commitments to other projects. Fulci did not want to work with "Zombi 2" producer Fabrizio De Angelis again and convinced Renato Jaboni of Medusa Distribuzione and Luciano Martino and Mino Loy of Dania and National Cinematografica to contribute. The project was greenlit during the production of "Contraband", which Fulci left with his assistant director, Roberto Giandalia, to finish principal photography. Early choices for the cast included "Zombi 2" star Tisa Farrow as Mary Woodhouse, Fiamma Maglione as Sandra, Aldo Barberito as Father Thomas and Robert Kerman as Mr. Ross; they were replaced by Catriona MacColl, Janet Agren, Fabrizio Jovine and Venantino Venantini, respectively. Agren and Christopher George were specifically hired to increase the film's commercial prospects; Fulci's on-set relationship with the latter was turbulent, leading him to nickname George "the dog with the cigar".


title: City of the Living Dead

text: MacColl had recently made her film debut in the title role of the manga adaptation "Lady Oscar", and would be cast as the lead in Fulci's later films "The Beyond" and "The House by the Cemetery". When she was approached for the film, she felt that the script was "badly written" and almost declined taking part. "It seemed to me like a series of special effects without a story", she said in an interview in 2011. She called her agent from her hotel room to seek his advice; he told her to take the role, because "nobody was going to see the film anyway"—a prediction that MacColl later noted would prove to be incorrect.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: Film historian and critic Roberto Curti stated that, according to the Public Cinematographic Register, filming was published as beginning on March 24, but it was more likely that filming had not begun until April 1980. The shooting schedule allowed for shooting on location in New York City and six weeks in Savannah, Georgia, as well as two weeks in Rome at De Paolis Studios for the special effects scenes. The decision to shoot in Savannah was dictated by the film's low budget, particularly to avoid conflict with unions regarding the importation of most of the film's cast and crew. The special effects scenes included a scene where the cast is attacked by maggots via two wind machines and 10 kg of maggots. To surprise Fulci, one crew member took some of the maggots and placed them in his pipe tobacco, which Fulci only learned about after a few puffs of what he was smoking, angering him immensely. Fulci would later theorize that this incident led to his future illness, as he underwent heart surgery in 1985, suffered a ventricular aneurysm, contracted viral hepatitis and developed Cirrhosis of the liver. Many of the film's gory and graphic scenes were not included in the original scripts or story, such as the scene where a character vomits their own intestines. This scene was performed by having Daniela Doria spit up baby veal intestines and then having her head replaced with a replica for further vomiting.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: The scene where Peter smashes open Mary's coffin with a pickaxe was shot in New York, but the interior of the coffin was shot in Rome. MacColl recalled that she would blink every time the pickaxe hit the coffin: "It was just a nervous reaction. And Lucio was getting crosser and crosser. He pulled me out of the coffin and shouted: 'I'll show you how easy it is!' So he climbed into the coffin and did the same shot without blinking. 'If I can do it, you can do it', he said."


title: City of the Living Dead

text: "City of the Living Dead" was distributed theatrically in Italy by Medusa Distribuzione on 11 August 1980. It grossed a total of 985,238,798 Italian lire domestically, a figure described by Curti as "somewhat disappointing". The film was distributed theatrically throughout Europe, including West Germany on September 11, 1980 and France on December 10, 1980, as well as the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal. The German edit of the film distributed by Alemannia/Arabella was about 10 minutes shorter than the Italian version, removing some dialogue scenes but keeping the gory scenes intact. In Paris, the film was screened as "Frayeurs" at the "Festival international du film et de science-fiction". At the festival, the film won the "Grand Prix du Public" (The Audience Award).


title: City of the Living Dead

text: The film was released in the United Kingdom on May 7, 1982, where it was passed by the BBFC after the drilling scene was cut. In the United States, the film was released on 8 April 1983 and was originally promoted as "Twilight of the Dead", which resulted in a cease and desist order from United Film Distribution Company, due to the title's similarity to their own film, George A. Romero's "Dawn of the Dead". This resulted in the distributor, Motion Picture Marketing, withdrawing the film and re-releasing it with a new title, "The Gates of Hell".


title: City of the Living Dead

text: In West Germany, the film became part of a press campaign against the home video distribution of violent films. This was part of a June 1984 news report on channel ZDF titled "Mama, Papa, Zombie - Horror für den Hausgebrauch", about the availability of violent films to minors. Prior to this screening, horror films such as "Maniac" and "The Beyond" were released uncensored in Germany. However, following this report, "City of the Living Dead" was banned in West Germany, while VHS tapes of the film released in 1983 (under the title "Ein Zombie hing am Glockenseil") were confiscated after a 1986 hearing by the District Court of Munich. Continuous re-releases of the film in West Germany with content removed led to truncated releases of the film as late as 2001 in Germany.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: The film was released on DVD in the United States by Anchor Bay in 2000, and on DVD and Blu-ray by Blue Underground in 2010. In 2018, Arrow Video released a limited edition 4K remaster of both the "City" and the "Gates" versions in the United Kingdom. In 2020, the "Gates" version was given a Blu-ray release in the United States as an online exclusive item.


title: City of the Living Dead

text: A reviewer in the Italian newspaper "La Stampa" referred to the film as "not recommended for easily impressionable viewers" and added that the film was a sign that Fulci had "reached expressive maturity", with a story that grew progressively to make an "expressive nightmarish atmosphere", concluding that the film was a "grand guignol spectacle". Giovanna Grassi of "Corriere della Sera" found the film too dependent on gore, lacking atmosphere, and "incoherent and stretched beyond measure". The review went on to praise actor Giovanni Lombardo Radice and Frizzi's score. A review by Pierre Gires of "L'Écran fantastique" found that the film left viewers in a series of "bloody and hallucinatory events that leave little room to breathe" and was "very well edited, with a lively pace". The review concluded that the film was a "definitive film after which it will be useless to revisit the same subject matter", and that it "ranks Lucio Fulci amongst the best craftsmen of the certain branch of the "fantastique"".


title: City of the Living Dead

text: Geoff Andrews of "Time Out" found the film "laughably awful" with a "nonsensical plot", and that it "could just conceivably be the disreputable movie that surrealists would have loved." John Pym of the "Monthly Film Bulletin" called it a "silly, meandering horror" film, concluding that "there is not much to discuss and little to recommend." Alan Jones of "Starburst" praised the film as being "what popular cinema was all about", adding that "Shadow, claustrophobic atmosphere [and] full on menace is the crux of this and there is no doubt in my mind that Fulci is the master of such manipulation." Jones went on to call out negative reception of Fulci, stating that anyone who described Fulci as a hack annoyed him, noting that "in each of his recent films he has made, there are so many worthwhile merits. At this stage in the game his talent cannot be called merely accidental."


title: City of the Living Dead

text: In the United States, some critics derided the acting in the film, including J.A. Conner of the "Santa Cruz Sentinel" ("intense overacting"), Tom Brown of the "Times Recorder" ("horribly acted") and Eleanor Ringel of "The Atlanta Constitution", with the latter stating that the only appeal of the film was in seeing the predominantly European cast attempting to adjust to "Fulci's muddled vision of Middle America". More critics dismissed the film due to its violent scenes, such as Jay Carr of the "Boston Globe" ("a film only a diehard necrophile could love"), Dick Fleming of "The Daily Times" ("scenes purely for the sake of shock value") and Ringel declaring it an "idiotic sleaze fest with nothing to offer but an abundance of filmed animal innards".


title: City of the Living Dead

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, "City of the Living Dead" currently has an approval rating of 46% based on 13 reviews, with an average rating of 5.80/10. Robert Firsching of AllMovie wrote that while the film "suffers from the same shortcomings present in much of Fulci's other horror films", it also "benefits from Fulci's ability to create and sustain an intensely creepy atmosphere", though he ultimately called the film "a dry run for the blend of graphic shocks and surrealism atmosphere that Lucio Fulci would perfect with "The Beyond"."


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: The ASEAN Basketball League (ABL) is a professional men's basketball league in Southeast Asia and Hong Kong/Macau, which includes six teams from Southeast Asian nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam), one team from Hong Kong, and one team from Macau. The league was proposed in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and launched its inaugural season on 1 October 2009.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: Basketball officials from 6 ASEAN nations gathered in Metro Manila on 1 September 2009 to officially launch the new league.In its inaugural season, there were six participating teams from different nations in Southeast Asia:


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: On 22 September 2011, the Brunei Barracudas announced that they were bowing out of the third season of ABL after participating for 2 seasons. On 20 October 2011, the Saigon Sports Academy officially announced the participation of Saigon Heat into the third season of ABL, making them the first ever international professional basketball team to represent Vietnam.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: In the same season, San Miguel Beermen and Bangkok Cobras joined the league along with Saigon Heat. Unfortunately, the Beermen left the ABL after winning the title in 2013. The Cobras also left the league after one season. Further, in 2014, Laskar Dreya South Sumatra (INA) joined and played for a season.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: In 2015, Pilipinas MX3 Kings and Mono Vampire joined the league and both teams left in 2016. On 17 July 2016, Kaohsiung Truth from Kaohsiung, Taiwan announced that they will participate in the 2016–17 season. In the same year, the Eastern Basketball Club confirmed its participation in the league. The two teams were the first teams from outside Southeast Asia to compete in the league.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: The Philippines returned in the league with Alab Pilipinas on 6 August 2016. In September 2017, ABL confirmed four new teams for the 2017–18 season: CLS Knights Indonesia, Formosa Dreamers, the returning Mono Vampire Basketball Club, and the Nanhai Kung Fu after the Kaoshiung Truth disbanded after the seventh season of ABL.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: After the 2018 season, the Kung Fu moved to Macau and became the Macau Black Bears, while the league announced the addition of the Zhuhai Wolf Warriors, based in Zhuhai in the Pearl River delta. On 9 September 2019, the league confirmed the entry of the third team from Taiwan, Taipei Fubon Braves situated in Taipei after Formosa Dreamers and disbanded Kaohsiung Truth. Fubon Braves secured the best record in the Super Basketball League and capped it off with the SBL championship after sweeping the Finals series in four games. They are also one of the eight teams to compete in the 2019 FIBA Asia Champions Cup.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: The 2019-20 ABL season was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 placing the status of the ABL in uncertainty. The withdrawal of Mono Vampires, the reports of Taiwanese teams planning to join a domestic league, and the inactivity of the league's social media site were among the factors that fueled speculations that the ABL itself would fold. However, an ABL co-owner dispelled such rumors committing the resumption of the league stating that they plan to hold the eleventh season in 2021. Plans to resume the league were postponed again with the new starting date for the season initially being in February 2022. The start date was pushed back again a month later to September. The plan did not proceed as plan. In October, the ABL through social media announced that it is returning without providing anymore details.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: The finals is a best-of-5 (2–2–1) series (2010, 2013, 2016–present); it was a best-of-3 (1–1–1) series from 2011 to 2012 and 2014.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: ABL presents five individual awards to players: the Local MVP, World Import MVP, ASEAN Heritage MVP, and the Defensive Player of the Year. The Coach of the Year award is given to the league's best head coach of the season.


title: ASEAN Basketball League

text: Prior to the 2015–16 ABL season, there was only one MVP award for imports and was called the Best Import award. It was divided into two for World Imports (for players hailing from outside Southeast Asia and to the ASEAN Heritage Imports (for players from other Southeast Asian countries or players with at least one Southeast Asian parent). Also, the Defensive Player of the Year and Coach of the Year awards were only awarded since the 2012 season.


title: Executable

text: In computing, executable code, an executable file, or an executable program, sometimes simply referred to as an executable or binary, causes a computer "to perform indicated tasks according to encoded instructions", as opposed to a data file that must be interpreted (parsed) by a program to be meaningful.


title: Executable

text: The exact interpretation depends upon the use. "Instructions" is traditionally taken to mean machine code instructions for a physical CPU. In some contexts, a file containing scripting instructions (such as bytecode) may also be considered executable.


title: Executable

text: Executable files can be hand-coded in machine language, although it is far more convenient to develop software as source code in a high-level language that can be easily understood by humans. In some cases, source code might be specified in assembly language instead, which remains human-readable while being closely associated with machine code instructions.


title: Executable

text: The high-level language is compiled into either an executable machine code file or a non-executable machine code – object file of some sort; the equivalent process on assembly language source code is called "assembly". Several object files are linked to create the executable. Object files -- executable or not -- are typically stored in a container format, such as Executable and Linkable Format (ELF) or Portable Executable (PE) which is operating system-specific. This gives structure to the generated machine code, for example dividing it into sections such as .text (executable code), .data (initialized global and static variables), and .rodata (read-only data, such as constants and strings).


title: Executable

text: Executable files typically also include a runtime system, which implements runtime language features (such as task scheduling, exception handling, calling static constructors and destructors, etc.) and interactions with the operating system, notably passing arguments, environment, and returning an exit status, together with other startup and shutdown features such as releasing resources like file handles. For C, this is done by linking in the crt0 object, which contains the actual entry point and does setup and shutdown by calling the runtime library.


title: Executable

text: Executable files thus normally contain significant additional machine code beyond that directly generated from the specific source code. In some cases, it is desirable to omit this, for example for embedded systems development, or simply to understand how compilation, linking, and loading work. In C, this can be done by omitting the usual runtime, and instead explicitly specifying a linker script, which generates the entry point and handles startup and shutdown, such as calling codice_1 to start and returning exit status to the kernel at the end.


title: Executable

text: In order to be executed by the system (such as an operating system, firmware, or boot loader), an executable file must conform to the system's application binary interface (ABI). In simple interfaces, a file is executed by loading it into memory and jumping to the start of the address space and executing from there. In more complicated interfaces, executable files have additional metadata specifying a separate entry point. For example, in ELF, the entry point is specified in the header's codice_2 field, which specifies the (virtual) memory address at which to start execution. In the GCC (GNU Compiler Collection) this field is set by the linker based on the codice_3 symbol.


title: Mick Box

text: Michael Frederick Box (born 9 June 1947) is an English musician who is the lead guitarist of rock group Uriah Heep, having previously been a member of The Stalkers and Spice, both with original Uriah Heep vocalist David Byron. He is the only member from the band's founding in 1969 who is still active with the group, and – following the 2020 deaths of Lee Kerslake and Ken Hensley – is also the last surviving member of the group's classic line-up.


title: Mick Box

text: In 2018 Mick Box said he was influenced by Les Paul and Mary Ford, Django Reinhardt, Wes Montgomery, Tal Farlow and Barney Kessel. He attributes some of these influences to his first guitar instructor because he was the second guitarist for Django Reinhardt, as well as coming from a jazz background.


title: Mick Box

text: When he started performing with Uriah Heep, other new bands included Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and Led Zeppelin.


title: Mick Box

text: Before establishing Uriah Heep Box's band was called Spice . The band performed from 1968 to 1969 with David Byron


title: Mick Box

text: and Nigel Pegrum Box said they chose that name because they didn't want to get categorised into a narrow genre. "There's lots of spices, and that was our train of thought with the name of the band" said Box in a 2021 interview. After Ken Hensley joined the members of Spice, they became Uriah Heep.


title: Mick Box

text: Mick Box blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for preventing a 50th Anniversary Celebration, but was planning on a 52 year Celebration. He said he felt strange being in quarantine, because he was accustomed to being "on the road," and interacting with fans at concerts. He has used the time to compose songs and he produced some videos for the Lockdown Diaries.


title: George Weston Limited

text: George Weston Limited, often referred to as Weston or Weston's, is a Canadian food processing and distribution company. Founded by George Weston in 1882, the company today consists of Weston Foods, a wholly owned subsidiary, and Loblaw Companies Limited, Canada's largest supermarket retailer, in which it maintains a controlling interest. Retail brands include President's Choice, No Name and Joe Fresh, in addition to bakery brands Wonder, Country Harvest, D'Italiano, Ready Bake and Gadoua. The company is controlled by the Weston family, which owns a majority share in George Weston Limited.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In 1882, Toronto bread salesman George Weston, who got his start at the age of 12 as a baker's apprentice, went into business for himself when he bought a bread route from his employer, G.H. Bowen. Two years later, Weston bought out Bowen's Sullivan Street bakery and began baking and delivering his own bread. His first employee was Charles Upshall, another young baker, and the two worked long hours baking and delivering bread.


title: George Weston Limited

text: Weston's business prospered, particularly with the development of his "Real Home Made Bread," made from a combination of Manitoba No. 1 Hard Wheat and Ontario Fall wheat. His bakery underwent at least four expansions. At a time when many bakers were reluctant to adopt new technology, believing it adversely affected the taste and quality of their bread, Weston began introducing modern equipment to automate the baking process. "He has not spared expense getting in the latest designs of machinery to mix his dough," proclaimed one newspaper ad. Eventually, he renamed his bakery on Sullivan Street the "G. Weston’s Bread Factory."


title: George Weston Limited

text: In October 1897, George Weston unveiled his "Model Bakery", Canada's largest and most modern bread factory, at the corner of Soho and Phoebe streets in Toronto. Newspaper reports told of how Weston had travelled to other countries to inspect the latest in baking technology and that his new establishment represented the best of what he had seen. Not only was the factory hailed for its efficiency and cleanliness, but also its capacity to turn out thousands of loaves of bread:


title: George Weston Limited

text: Remember that bread alone is made in this immense factory, and such bread it is that has made the name of its maker famous. Over 3200 large loaves are turned out on an average daily, but the factory has a capacity of 6,500 loaves. One may judge the largeness of the business done weekly when it takes nearly three hundred barrels of flour to supply the weekly demand. Two teams are kept busy all day Friday and Saturday hauling flour to supply the week’s needs.


title: George Weston Limited

text: Although the Model Bakery was well received by the Toronto press, its appearance resulted in a price war, apparently initiated by the city's other bakers. On hearing that competitors were offering cut-rate bread – contrary to a local bakers’ agreement that set a standard price for a loaf of bread – George Weston left the bakers' association and lowered his prices. In retaliation, the competition dropped what they charged at the wholesale level in an apparent attempt to fill store shelves with their bread. In spite of the price war, the Model Bakery continued to expand production such that a year later business had increased by 78 percent. Less than two years later, George Weston was selling his bread to 38 cities and towns beyond Toronto's borders. By 1901, the factory's output had reached 10,000 large loaves a day and its bread was shipped to over 100 communities throughout Ontario. By 1899, Weston had also established in the town of Oshawa, northeast of Toronto, a branch bakeshop, which he described as a "miniature Model Bakery", for the production of bread.


title: George Weston Limited

text: While the Model Bakery established George Weston as Canada's biggest baker, he had already begun to move beyond bread into other lines of baked goods. By 1897, he had set up a separate shop for the making of cakes, crumpets, pastries and buns. Then, early in the new century, Weston began making biscuits and sodas. While the bread business was very competitive and typically low margin, biscuits offered higher margins. Within a few years, the Model Bakery had a dozen salesmen taking orders for Weston's biscuits from merchants throughout Ontario. In promoting his new vanilla wafer biscuits, Weston employed a form of early direct marketing. From a decorative bread wagon, salesmen handed out free samples of the new biscuits and told housewives to ask for them at their grocer's.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In 1901, George Weston merged with J.L. Spink, a flour mill operator at Pickering, Ontario, to form the Model Bakery Company. The amalgamation soon raised concerns, though, that the new partnership would result in higher bread prices. In a letter to local newspapers, Weston tried to allay fears of a "Bread Trust" and asserted that rather than an attempt to destroy competition that the merger would reduce the price of bread by cutting out the middleman's profit:


title: George Weston Limited

text: ... we are believers in honest competition. Some bakers are endeavouring to fill the minds of the grocers, and the public in general, with the fact that we intend to get control of the bread baking business for the purpose of raising the price of bread to consumers. Now, I wish to give this a straight denial. By the amalgamation of these two concerns, the mill and the bakery, we are going to lessen our expenses, and the public are going to reap the advantage.


title: George Weston Limited

text: Weston further contended that the new venture would ensure the very choicest flour for the Model Bakery and its bread. But while the Weston-Spink partnership lasted five years, for reasons unknown it was eventually dissolved and the baker and miller went their separate ways.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In 1911, George Weston entered into another merger, this time with fellow bakers in Toronto, Montreal and Winnipeg, to form the Canada Bread Company. The Model Bakery became part of the assets of Canada Bread and a new Weston's Biscuit Factory went into production at the corner of Peter and Richmond streets in Toronto. Meanwhile, the Canada Bread partners agreed to stay out of the bread making business for at least the next ten years. With the expiration of that non-compete clause, and at the urging of former customers who complained about the quality of the city's bread, George Weston re-entered the bread business in 1921.


title: George Weston Limited

text: As World War I dragged on, various shortages arose and some biscuit lines had to be discontinued. In spite of those difficulties the company remained profitable. But with the tragic loss of a youngest son and concern that his eldest son Garfield might not return from overseas duty as a soldier in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, George Weston considered selling the company to competitor Christie, Brown and Company. A letter from Garfield, from the trenches of war-torn France, in which he asked his father to hold on until his return home, convinced George Weston not to sell his business.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In 1922, George and Garfield Weston undertook a new and somewhat risky venture with the introduction of "English Quality Biscuits." While in England as a young Canadian soldier, Garfield had toured the world-famous British biscuit factories and came away convinced that a similar product could be manufactured and successfully marketed in Canada. "After the armistice, he convinced his skeptical father to import machines to make English-style cookies in Canada." In addition to importing biscuit making ovens all the way from England, the company brought master baker William Doyle from London. That year, Weston's English Quality Biscuits were launched with an advertising campaign that included an elaborate display at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto:


title: George Weston Limited

text: This unique exhibit is the method chosen by Weston’s to acquaint Exhibition visitors with the fact that they are now making, right here in Toronto, biscuits equal in every respect to the finest imported English lines – the standard of the world. English master bakers and English making machines have been installed at Weston’s new English Biscuit Factory, and the great opportunity of these English lines is proven by the fact that a 24 hour day production has been maintained for several weeks past.


title: George Weston Limited

text: The company also produced a sampler tin of the new biscuits that sold very well. Weston's English Quality Biscuits proved a long-term success and the product line became the basis for the company's continued growth.


title: George Weston Limited

text: With the death of George Weston in 1924, W. Garfield Weston became president of George Weston Limited at the age of 26. Garfield, who had effectively been running the company the past several years, set the firm on a path of expansion. In 1928, he took the company ‘public’ and made his first major acquisition – William Paterson Ltd., a Brantford, Ontario, biscuit and confectionery maker founded in 1863 by William Paterson.


title: George Weston Limited

text: The company also made its first foray into the American market but the effort ended in near disaster. A Weston's English Quality Biscuits factory was set up at Watertown, near Boston, Massachusetts, but after a series of missteps, that included a botched advertising campaign, the plant was closed. It was later realized that a senior manager had secretly been working for the competition. The American company was subsequently reorganized and a new biscuit plant established near Passaic, New Jersey.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In spite of the Great Depression, George Weston Limited continued to expand in Ontario and Western Canada. The company bought Lawlor's Bread Limited of Toronto for over a quarter million dollars in 1930. It went on to acquire Regal Bakeries Limited in Ontario in 1931, Independent Biscuit Co. of Calgary that same year, and Lawrence Bread Limited in 1933.


title: George Weston Limited

text: As the Depression deepened and George Weston Limited remained profitable, it bought companies and operations under favourable terms. In 1933, for example, it extended its service area to 100 miles around Toronto with the acquisition of Ontario Bakeries Limited from its trustee and receiver:


title: George Weston Limited

text: In this case, as in nearly every case where the company or its subsidiaries have taken in other plants, the company was able to take advantage of the extraordinary low price obtaining for capital assets during the depression, to expand its business at very low cost to itself and on purchase terms that are scarcely more than rental.


title: George Weston Limited

text: The company went on to acquire McCormick's Limited from its receivers in 1937 and bought Inter City Western Bakeries in 1938. In the United States, it expanded biscuit operations at Passaic, New Jersey, and established a new Weston's Biscuits plant at Battle Creek, Michigan. One long-time Weston executive, Frank Riddell, observed that since nobody had any money in those days that deals were often struck with relatively little cash and a guarantee of Weston stock. In addition to a program of expansion, the profitability of George Weston Limited allowed it to establish a minimum weekly wage for its male employees in 1934.


title: George Weston Limited

text: The early 1930s saw Garfield Weston pursue an ambitious overseas venture designed not only to extend the commercial interests of the company but also expand desperately needed export markets for Canadian wheat. Weston proposed to acquire bakeries throughout the British Isles that would then import more Canadian grain. Turned down by the banks at home, which considered the idea too risky, Weston arranged a meeting with a group of New York financiers. Among them was Wall Street speculator Ben Smith who bankrolled Weston to the tune of $2 million.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In 1933, George Weston Limited acquired Scottish biscuit maker Mitchell & Muil Limited. The antiquated factory at Aberdeen was shut down and production moved to a new facility at Edinburgh. With modern equipment and facilities, along with a reduced product line of 40 items instead of 400, Garfield Weston dramatically lowered costs and began selling biscuits at half the price of the competition. Other bakeries followed, as Weston quickly acquired a string of bread and biscuits factories, as the overseas business began to rival that of the parent:


title: George Weston Limited

text: All the British and Irish biscuit and bread companies obtained in the last 15 months in the course of Garfield Weston's large-scale British adventure are now reported to have a total volume of sales as great as that of the parent company in Canada, George Weston Ltd. Moreover, Mr. Weston told the shareholders at the annual meeting on March 28 that when plans at present under way are complete, he will have bread and biscuit companies in every strategic centre of England, Scotland, Northern and Southern Ireland.


title: George Weston Limited

text: Later that year, with operations still expanding, George Weston Limited offered its shareholders direct ownership in the overseas venture in a rights issue that transformed the British business into a separate commercial entity. By 1937, with fifteen regional bakeries under the Allied Bakeries banner and the success of the British Isles expansion evident, news headlines back home in Canada hailed Garfield Weston as "Britain’s biggest baker."


title: George Weston Limited

text: During World War II, George Weston Limited struggled to maintain production in light of shortages that included basic ingredients such as sugar. Cakes were still made but at times without icing. Labour was also in short supply and salesmen at times served as bakery workers. With most of its biscuit production going to supply the armed forces of Canada and the Allied Powers, the company ran newspaper ads advising customers that Weston products may not always be available:


title: George Weston Limited

text: We regret being unable to supply your grocer regularly with Weston's English Quality Biscuits. Our factories are working at top speed to help supply the biscuit needs of the armed forces of the United Nations. Even the ovens that bake the famous Weston's Soda Biscuits are now turning out "Iron Rations" for our fighting men.


title: George Weston Limited

text: Another wartime ad noted that the company's products were with the 8th Army of the North African campaign. "Those fighting lads who drove Rommel out of Egypt and Libya have been getting Weston's English Quality Biscuits right along. Naturally, we're proud of their choice!". In spite of the war, the company continued to expand. In the United States, it purchased a bankrupt biscuit plant at Salamanca, New York, and acquired the Southern Biscuit Co. of Richmond, Virginia. The National Biscuit Co. in Western Canada was bought, along with Edmonton City Bakery. By 1942, the company reported that Weston operations in Canada, the United States and Great Britain used over 15 million bushels of wheat a year and employed some 16 thousand workers.


title: George Weston Limited

text: The war years also saw the company diversify beyond baking with the purchase of a controlling interest in Western Grocers Ltd., a wholesale food distributor with some 700 associated Red & White stores throughout the prairies. In 1943, Garfield Weston also bought paper manufacturer E.B. Eddy Co. of Hull, Quebec, after he purchased controlling interest from Lord R.B. Bennett, the Canadian former Prime Minister. Some years later, Eddy Paper Co., along with subsidiary E.B. Eddy Co., was bought out by George Weston Limited in a cash and stock deal.


title: George Weston Limited

text: The post-war years saw tremendous growth as the company continued to diversify its holdings not only in terms of consumer products but also with a concerted move into retailing. In 1948, the company bought William Neilson Limited of Toronto, Ontario, Canada's largest chocolate and ice cream maker. A year earlier, Garfield Weston struck a deal to acquire a block of 100,000 shares of Loblaw Groceterias Co. Limited, one of the country's leading supermarket chains By 1953, George Weston Limited had established majority control. Three years later, the company announced it had purchased a 25 percent stake in Chicago-based National Tea Co., a large U.S. supermarket chain with more than 700 stores. By the early 1960s, it had gained controlling interest in National through subsidiary Loblaw Companies Limited.


title: George Weston Limited

text: During the 1960s, the company continued to diversify beyond baking. Along with the 1962 acquisition of Eddy Paper Co., George Weston Limited moved into fish processing on the East and West coasts with its purchase of Connors Brothers of New Brunswick and British Columbia Packers Limited. With the full extent of the company's holdings often unknown by even senior executives, not to mention the public, George Weston Limited was under increasing pressure from Canadian parliamentarians to reveal its corporate structure and holdings. In December 1966, it provided shareholders and the media with a detailed chart showing various subsidiaries, wholly owned and controlled. The Financial Post newspaper led with headlines that read, "Weston group unveils huge empire" and reported on how 150 Weston led companies accounted for $800 million in assets and produced $2.8 billion in annual sales. While the extent of the "Weston empire" became the lead business story, it apparently resulted in little or no negative reaction in terms of press coverage. Some months later, in fact, one news story went so far as to feature the headline, "Garfield Weston: Our champ at corporate empire-building."


title: George Weston Limited

text: By the late early 1970s, the company's aggressive expansion and acquisitions strategy, which in the past had produced such remarkable growth, was showing signs of strain. Retail sales and earnings were in decline as Loblaws’ aging chain of supermarkets looked increasingly uncompetitive. In 1972, Garfield Weston, Chairman of George Weston Limited, named his youngest son, W. Galen Weston, Chief Executive Officer of Loblaw Companies Limited. The appointment came at a time when Loblaws appeared all but bankrupt, with its share of the crucial Ontario market cut in half as a result of price wars among the major chains. At the same time, the company found its hands tied by leaseback agreements that prevented it from closing money-losing stores. With few assets, Loblaw was also deeply in debt. In spite of all the problems, though, Galen Weston felt that Loblaws had the potential to be the nucleus of one of the finest retailers in Canada. "As a 200 store chain, we didn’t look very good. As a 100 store chain, Loblaws looked very good indeed."


title: George Weston Limited

text: Leaseback agreements were bought out and the company began closing unprofitable stores. Old warehouse operations were shut down and a new distribution centre built. The company also initiated a broad marketing strategy that saw a prototype store renovated and remodelled in new colours and a new Loblaws logo. Toronto designer Don Watt introduced new wood panelling, big moveable display bins, and huge photos of fresh fruits, vegetables, and meats. The produce section was doubled in size and moved to the front of the store. Sales dramatically increased and more stores were remodelled and rebranded. Meanwhile, a new advertising campaign featured Canadian actor William Shatner of Star Trek fame, who told television audiences to "Come on over to Loblaws" and "More than the price is right ... but by gosh the price is right." In 1974, W. Galen Weston was appointed Chairman and Managing Director of George Weston Limited, and subsequently company President.


title: George Weston Limited

text: But as Loblaws regained market share, profitability south of the border, at National Tea Co., deteriorated. A similar program of rationalization saw hundreds of National stores closed and warehouses consolidated, while other outlets underwent renovation and rebranding. By 1974, of 1,100 retail food outlets across North America, 367 stores were closed, while 81 new stores had been built. Unprofitable divisions, namely Chicago, Syracuse and California, were sold. Although some supermarket assets were later acquired, eventually the company would divest itself of all retail and wholesale holdings in the United States.


title: George Weston Limited

text: Management continued to divest non-core assets through the decade as it shifted the company's focus to earnings rather than sales growth. In 1978, both George Weston Limited and Loblaw Companies Limited returned to profitability and two years later Weston's reported record earnings of $76 million on revenue of $6 billion. Once again, the company was in a position to make acquisitions and purchased Stroehmann Brothers of Pennsylvania, a baker of bread and rolls, for $32 million. George Weston Limited next made a well publicized bid to acquire controlling interest in the Hudson's Bay Company, with its diverse array of retail, resource and real estate holdings, in 1979. But as a bidding war ensued with the Ken Thomson and family, Galen Weston walked away from the process, noting that it would have cost "another $150 million to bump our offer up again" and had simply become too expensive.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In addition to revitalizing the look of its stores, Loblaw management earmarked $40 million for the development of its in-house, private label program. Generally regarded as inferior to the national brands, CEO W. Galen Weston put renewed emphasis on the quality of store brands:


title: George Weston Limited

text: We found it essential to change products and services before redesigning their image. For example, nothing is more disappointing for a consumer than to buy a private label product because of the attractiveness of its redesigned label and then find that the same quality that had disappointed her previously had not been improved.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In 1978, at a time of rampant food price inflation, Loblaws unveiled a new line of 16 generic "no-name" products. Sales proved stronger than anticipated and within a year the number of No Name product offerings had increased to over a hundred. Months later, the first "no frills" store was launched, which featured No Name and a limited selection of 500 discount items. Two more Toronto area stores follow within a few months. The No Name line continued to grow and gourmet items were even added to the generic line-up. Then, in 1984, Loblaw launched President's Choice, a premium line of private label items, with each product personally endorsed by Loblaws president Dave Nichol and promoted in the popular advertising supplement Dave Nichol's Insider's Report. No name and President's Choice products would go on to account for 25 percent of the company's domestic grocery sales or double the industry average.


title: George Weston Limited

text: With the signing of the Canada–U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1988 and the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, George Weston Limited found it necessary to once again re-evaluate its asset mix. A series of divestitures followed over the next decade as the company struggled to remain competitive within a continental free trade zone. Companies that were sold off included biscuit and ice cream making, chocolate bar manufacturing, sugar refining, milling, and paper and tissue making. In 1989, the company sold its White Swan tissue division to Scott Paper Ltd. for $110 million. While Weston's had acquired the Canadian operations of Cadbury in 1987 and merged them with William Neilson Limited, after attempting to break into emerging markets, by selling chocolate bars in Mexico, it finally sold its chocolate operations to Cadbury Schweppes in 1996. In 1998, long time holding E. B. Eddy was sold to Domtar in a cash-and-stock deal worth (CAN) $800 million.


title: George Weston Limited

text: Meanwhile, under Loblaw president Richard Currie, the company's retail food operations continued to expand under a variety of regional banners that included Loblaws, no frills, Zehrs and Fortinos in Ontario, the Real Canadian Superstore in Northern Ontario and Western Canada, and the Real Atlantic Superstore and SuperValu in Atlantic Canada. In particular, Dominion Stores Limited, Loblaw's lead competitor in Ontario, had failed to keep up with the times and the rival chain finally sold off its better stores and shuttered the rest. By the mid 1980s, with a 14 percent share of the $35 billion supermarket business in Canada and 41 consecutive quarters of higher earnings, Loblaw Companies had gone "from a sorry loser without a future into Canada's largest and perhaps most thriving food distributor". Nevertheless, Loblaw still had occasion to stumble, at times badly. While large-scale "combination stores", with their mix of food and general merchandise, had worked so well in Western Canada, the introduction of SuperCentres in Central Canada a few years later resulted in huge losses. The company's policy to own many of its properties, instead of simply leasing, gave it the "operating flexibility" to rent out redundant space and thereby mitigate losses.


title: George Weston Limited

text: On the acquisition side, George Weston Limited expanded within its traditional base of operations with the purchase of the Ontario assets of General Bakeries, a subsidiary of Dominion Stores Limited, in 1985, as Toronto financier Conrad Black divested holdings. Along with a number of bread and roll plants, the deal included ownership of the Wonder trademark in Canada, which would become an important brand for Weston Bakeries Limited.


title: George Weston Limited

text: In 1995, Loblaw divested the last of its U.S. retail operations with the sale of supermarkets in St. Louis (originally bought from Kroger) and New Orleans. In spite of the retreat, the company reiterated its overall strategy to take advantage of any opportunity that presented itself:


title: George Weston Limited

text: The company is prepared to enter new markets through the opening of new stores, as in its stated plan, to enter the Quebec market, or from focused acquisitions when opportunities arise. The company is also prepared to exit particular markets and redeploy assets elsewhere when it is strategically advantageous to do so, as demonstrated by the disposal of the United States retail business...


title: George Weston Limited

text: But while Loblaw no longer owned stores in the U.S., it had not made a complete retreat from the American market, with its President's Choice products available on the shelves of over 1,700 supermarkets in 35 States.