title: Galápagos Islands

text: José Valdizán and Manuel Julián Cobos tried a new colonization, beginning the exploitation of a type of lichen found in the islands ("Roccella portentosa") used as a coloring agent. After the assassination of Valdizán by some of his workers, Cobos brought from the continent to San Cristóbal Island a group of more than a hundred workers, and tried his luck at planting sugar cane. He ruled his plantation with an iron hand, which led to his assassination in 1904. In 1897, Antonio Gil began another plantation on Isabela Island.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Over the course of a whole year, from September 1904, an expedition of the Academy of Sciences of California, led by Rollo Beck, stayed in the Galápagos collecting scientific material on geology, entomology, ornithology, botany, zoology, and herpetology. Another expedition from that Academy was done in 1932 (Templeton Crocker Expedition) to collect insects, fish, shells, fossils, birds, and plants.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: For a long time during the early 1900s and at least through 1929, a cash-strapped Ecuador had reached out for potential buyers of the islands to alleviate financial troubles at home. The US had repeatedly expressed its interest in buying the islands for military use as they were positioned strategically guarding the Panama Canal. Besides the United States, Japan, Germany and Chile also expressed interest in establishing bases in the islands at the turn of the century. Chile had previously acquired the Straits of Magellan and Easter Island for strategic reasons and lieutenant Gregorio Santa Cruz argued in 1903 that possessing an island in equatorial waters, like the Galápagos, would be of great benefit since the geopolitical situation of Chile was expected to drastically change when the Panama Canal opened. Another benefit would be to widen the security radius of Chile. Chile was alarmed by the United States plans to establish a Guantanamo-like base in the Galápagos Islands since it would mean that Chile's nitrate-rich northern provinces would be within the range of United States Navy. Ecuador's staunch resistance to a US purchase or bases in the islands can be credited to Chilean diplomacy, which in turn was informally backed on this issue by Great Britain and Germany.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: In the 1920s and 1930s, a small wave of European settlers arrived in the islands. There occurred a series of unsolved disappearances on the island of Floreana in the 1930s among the largely European expatriate residents at the time. "The Galápagos Affair: Satan Came to Eden" is a 2013 feature-length documentary film about the same. Ecuadorian laws provided all colonists with the possibility of receiving twenty hectares each of free land, the right to maintain their citizenship, freedom from taxation for the first ten years in Galápagos, and the right to hunt and fish freely on all uninhabited islands where they might settle. The first European colonists to arrive were Norwegians who settled briefly on Floreana, before moving on to San Cristobal and Santa Cruz. A few years later, other colonists from Europe, America and Ecuador started arriving on the islands, seeking a simpler life. Descendants of the Norwegian Kastdalen family and the German Angermeyer still live on the islands.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: During World War II, Ecuador authorized the United States to establish a naval base in Baltra Island, and radar stations in other strategic locations. Baltra was established as a United States Army Air Force base. Baltra was given the name of "Beta Base" along with "Alpha Base" in Nicaragua and "Gamma Base" in Salinas (continental Ecuador). The Crews stationed at Baltra and the aforementioned locations established a geographic triangle of protection in charge of patrolling the Pacific for enemy submarines, and also provided protection for the Panama Canal. After the war, the facilities were given to the government of Ecuador. Today, the island continues as an official Ecuadorian military base. The foundations and other remains of the US base can still be seen as one crosses the island.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: The Galápagos became a national park in 1959, and tourism started in the 1960s, imposing several restrictions upon the human population already living on the island. However, opportunities in the tourism, fishing, and farming industries attracted a mass of poor fishermen and farmers from mainland Ecuador. In the 1990s and 2000s, violent confrontations between parts of the local population and the Galápagos National Park Service occurred, including capturing and killing giant tortoises and holding staff of the Galápagos National Park Service hostage to obtain higher annual sea cucumber quotas.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: The islands are administered by a provincial government. It was made a province by presidential decree by President Guillermo Rodríguez Lara on 18 February 1973. The province is divided into cantons, each covering certain islands. The capital is Puerto Baquerizo Moreno.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: The largest ethnic group is composed of Ecuadorian Mestizos, the mixed descendants of Spanish colonists and indigenous Native Americans, who arrived mainly in the last century from the continental part of Ecuador. Some descendants of the early European and American colonists on the islands also still remain on the islands.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: In 1959, approximately 1,000 to 2,000 people called the islands their home. In 1972 a census in the archipelago recorded a population of 3,488. By the 1980s, this number had risen to more than 15,000 people, and in 2010 there were 25,124 people in the Galápagos. 2021 projected population was 40,685.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Options for air travel to the Galápagos are limited to two islands: San Cristobal (San Cristóbal Airport) and Baltra (Seymour Airport). Private aircraft must use Baltra as it is the airport equipped with overnight plane accommodations. Seymour Airport on Baltra was recently renovated (2012–2013) to accommodate larger planes.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Until 1969 the only way to visit was on a private or chartered vessel. There was no regular air service until Forrest Nelson's Hotel Galápagos began the first organized tours in April 1969. Soon other travel companies brought in tour ships and yachts, and local fishermen began converting their wooden boats for rudimentary cruising with guests. These vessels were the main source of overnight accommodations in the Galápagos. Today there are about 85 yachts and ships equipped for overnight guests. In 2006 the Baltra military governed island, was opened up to limited overnight camping. Baltra also requires permits by the military government for overnight stays on the beach. Other inhabited islands also allow camping on the beaches designated as "recreational" use to the locals. All of these camping permits are limited to number of people and nights, with most nights not to exceed three.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Land based hotels are opening on the inhabited islands of San Cristobal, Santa Cruz, Floreana and Isabela. By 2012, more than half the visitors to Galápagos made their tours using day boats and these small hotels. Restaurants, easy access and economy make this an attractive travel option.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: There are only 116 visitor sites in the Galápagos: 54 land sites and 62 scuba-diving or snorkeling sites. Small groups are allowed to visit in 2- to 4-hour shifts only, to limit impact on the area. All groups are accompanied by licensed guides.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Though the first protective legislation for the Galápagos was enacted in 1930 and supplemented in 1936, it was not until the late 1950s that positive action was taken to control what was happening to the native flora and fauna. In 1955, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature organized a fact-finding mission to the Galápagos. Two years later, in 1957, UNESCO, in cooperation with the government of Ecuador, sent another expedition to study the conservation situation and choose a site for a research station.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: In 1959, the centenary year of Charles Darwin's publication of "The Origin of Species", the Ecuadorian government declared 97.5% of the archipelago's land area a national park, excepting areas already colonised. The Charles Darwin Foundation (CDF) was founded the same year. The core responsibility of CDF, an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) constituted in Belgium, is to conduct research and provide the research findings to the government for effective management of Galápagos. CDF's research efforts began with the establishment of the Charles Darwin Research Station on Santa Cruz Island in 1964. During the early years, conservation programs, such as eradication of introduced species and protection of native species, were carried out by research station personnel. Now much of that work is accomplished by the Galápagos National Park Service using the research findings and methodologies developed by CDF.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: In 1986, the 70,000 square kilometers (27,000 sq mi) of ocean surrounding the islands was declared a marine reserve, second in size only to Australia's Great Barrier Reef. In 1990, the archipelago became a whale sanctuary. UNESCO recognized the islands in 1978 as a World Heritage Site and in 1985, as a biosphere reserve. This was later extended in December 2001 to include the marine reserve.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: In July 2010, the World Heritage Committee agreed to remove the Galápagos Islands from its list of precious sites endangered by environmental threats or overuse.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Introduced plants and animals, such as feral goats, cats, and cattle, brought accidentally or willingly to the islands by humans, represent the main threat to Galápagos. Quick to reproduce and with no natural predators, these alien species decimated the habitats of native species. The native animals, lacking natural predators on the islands, are defenseless to introduced predators.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: There are over 700 introduced plant species today. There are only 500 native and endemic species. This difference is creating a major problem for the islands and the natural species that inhabit them. These plants have invaded large areas and eliminated endemic species in the humid zones of San Cristobal, Floreana, Isabela and Santa Cruz. Some of the most harmful introduced plants are the guayaba or guava ("Psidium guajava"), avocado ("Persea americana"), cascarilla ("Cinchona pubescens"), balsa ("Ochroma pyramidale"), hill raspberry ("Rubus niveus"), various citrus (orange, grapefruit, lemon), floripondio, higuerilla ("Ricinus communis") trees and the elephant grass, "Pennisetum purpureum".


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Many species were introduced to the Galápagos by pirates. Thor Heyerdahl quoted documents that mention the Viceroy of Peru, knowing that British pirates ate the goats that they themselves had released in the islands, ordered dogs to be freed there to eliminate the goats. Also, when colonization of Floreana by José de Villamil failed, he ordered the goats, donkeys, cattle and other animals from the farms in Floreana be transferred to other islands for the purpose of later colonization.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Non-native goats, pigs, dogs, rats, cats, mice, sheep, horses, donkeys, cows, poultry, ants, cockroaches, and some parasites inhabit the islands today. Dogs and cats attack the tame birds and destroy the nests of birds, land tortoises, and marine turtles. They sometimes kill small Galápagos tortoises and iguanas. Pigs are even more harmful, covering larger areas and destroying the nests of tortoises, turtles and iguanas, as well as eating the animals' native food. Pigs also knock down vegetation in their search for roots and insects. This problem abounds in Cerro Azul volcano and Isabela, and in Santiago, pigs may be the cause of the disappearance of the land iguanas that were so abundant when Darwin visited. The black rat ("Rattus rattus") attacks small Galápagos tortoises when they leave the nest, so in Pinzón they stopped the reproduction for a period of more than 50 years; only adults were found on that island. Also, where the black rat is found, the endemic rat has disappeared. Cattle and donkeys eat all the available vegetation and compete with native species for scarce water. In 1959, fishermen introduced one male and two female goats to Pinta island; by 1973, the National Park service estimated the population of goats to be over 30,000 individuals. Goats were also introduced to Marchena in 1967 and to Rabida in 1971. A goat eradication program, however, cleared the goats from Pinta and Santiago and most of the goat population from Isabela, and, by 2006, all feral pigs, donkeys and non-sterile goats had been eliminated from Santiago and Isabela, the largest islands with the worst problems due to non-native mammals.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: Six species of small non-native vertebrates have established self-sufficient populations in Galápagos and may become invasive: Fowler's snouted tree frog "Scinax quinquefasciatus", common house gecko "Hemidactylus frenatus", mourning gecko "Lepidodactylus lugubris", dwarf gecko "Gonatodes caudiscutatus", Peters' leaf-toed gecko "Phyllodactylus reissii", and smooth-billed ani "Crotophaga ani". Domestic fowl "Gallus gallus" holds feral populations, which may have self-sufficient populations, but evidence is unclear.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: The fast-growing poultry industry on the inhabited islands has been cause for concern from local conservationists, who fear domestic birds could introduce disease into the endemic wild bird populations.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: The Galápagos marine sanctuary is under threat from a host of illegal fishing activities, in addition to other problems of development. The most pressing threat to the Marine Reserve comes from local, mainland and foreign fishing targeting marine life illegally within the Reserve, such as sharks (hammerheads and other species) for their fins, and the harvest of sea cucumbers out of season. Development threatens both land and sea species. The growth of both the tourism industry and local populations fuelled by high birth rates and illegal immigration threaten the wildlife of the Archipelago. The grounding of the oil tanker "Jessica" in 2001 and the subsequent oil spill brought this threat to world attention.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: In 2007, UNESCO put the Galápagos Islands on their List of World Heritage in Danger because of threats posed by invasive species, unbridled tourism and overfishing.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: On 29 July 2010, the World Heritage Committee decided to remove the Galápagos Islands from the list because the Committee found significant progress had been made by Ecuador in addressing these problems.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: On 28 January 2008, Galápagos National Park official Victor Carrion announced 53 sea lions (13 pups, 25 youngsters, 9 males and 6 females) were killed at the Galápagos Islands nature reserve on Pinta, with their heads caved in. In 2001, poachers killed 35 male sea lions.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: The Galápagos Islands were short-listed as a candidate to be one of the New7Wonders of Nature by the New7Wonders of Nature Foundation. As of February 2009, the archipelago was ranked first in Group B, the category for islands.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: The islands' biodiversity is under threat from several sources. The human population is growing at a rate of 8% per year (1995). Introduced species have caused damage, and in 1996 a US$5 million, five-year eradication plan commenced in an attempt to rid the islands of introduced species such as goats, rats, deer, and donkeys. Except for the rats, the project was essentially completed in 2006. Rats have only been eliminated from the smaller Galápagos Islands of Rábida and Pinzón.


title: Galápagos Islands

text: El Niño has adversely affected the marine ecosystem. In January 2001, an oil slick from a stranded tanker threatened the islands, but winds and shifting ocean currents helped disperse the oil before much damage was done. The devastating El Niño of 1982–83 saw almost six times as much rain as normal in the Galapagos and created a wildlife catastrophe. The 1997–98 El Niño adversely affected wildlife in the waters surrounding the islands, as the waters were warmer than normal. Corals and barnacles suffered, hammerhead sharks were driven away, and most of the island's seabirds failed to breed in 1997–98. The mortality rate of marine iguanas rose as the green algae they feed on was replaced by inedible red algae. During the 1982–83 El Niño, 70% of the marine iguanas starved to death because of this.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: The 2023 AFC Asian Cup will be the 18th edition of the AFC Asian Cup, the quadrennial international men's football championship of Asia organised by the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). It will involve 24 national teams after expansion in 2019, with Qatar as the defending champions.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: The tournament was originally scheduled to be held in China from 16 June to 16 July 2023. On 14 May 2022, the AFC announced that China would not host the tournament due to the circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and China's Zero-COVID policy.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: On 17 October, the AFC announced that the tournament will be held in Qatar. After 1988 and 2011, it will be held in Qatar for the third time. Due to the high summer temperatures in the Gulf region, the tournament will probably be postponed from mid-2023 to early 2024.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: China was announced as the winning bid on 4 June 2019, on the eve of the 69th FIFA Congress in Paris, France. However, due to China's relinquishment of its hosting rights, the AFC conducted a second round of bidding, with a deadline for submissions scheduled on 17 October 2022.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: Four nations had submitted bids: Australia, Indonesia, Qatar and South Korea, but Australia subsequently withdrew in September 2022 and Indonesia on 15 October. On 17 October, the AFC announced that Qatar won the bid and will host the tournament.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: The first two rounds of qualification also served as the Asian qualification for the World Cup. Qatar participated only in the second round solely for qualification for the 2023 Asian Cup. They had qualified automatically for the World Cup as host nation. China too participated only in the second round. They had initially qualified automatically for the Asian Cup as host nation.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: Timor-Leste were barred from participating in the qualification tournament. The team was found to have fielded a total of twelve ineligible players in 2019 AFC Asian Cup qualification matches, among other competitions. However, as FIFA did not bar them from the 2022 FIFA World Cup qualifiers, Timor-Leste were still allowed to enter the competition, but were ineligible to qualify for the Asian Cup.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: Qualifying began on 6 June 2019 for 23 spots joining the then-chosen host nation China. North Korea withdrew from the qualifying round due to safety concerns related to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: 2023 AFC Asian Cup

text: The four best third-placed teams from the six groups advance to the knockout stage along with the six group winners and six runners-up.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Star Trek: Prodigy is an American animated television series created by Kevin and Dan Hageman for the streaming service Paramount+ and the cable channel Nickelodeon. It is the tenth "Star Trek" series and was launched in 2021 as part of executive producer Alex Kurtzman's expanded "Star Trek" Universe. "Prodigy" is the first "Star Trek" series to target younger audiences, and is also the franchise's first animated series to solely use 3D animation. It follows a group of young aliens who find the USS "Protostar", an abandoned starship.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Brett Gray, Ella Purnell, Jason Mantzoukas, Angus Imrie, Rylee Alazraqui, and Dee Bradley Baker voice the young crew of the USS "Protostar", with Jimmi Simpson, John Noble, and Kate Mulgrew also providing voices for the series, the latter reprising her role as Kathryn Janeway from "". Kurtzman first mentioned the series in January 2019, and it was confirmed a month later. The Hageman brothers were set as creators and showrunners, and Nickelodeon ordered two seasons of "Prodigy" that April. Ben Hibon was announced as director and creative lead in August 2020, and it was revealed in February 2021 that the series would debut on Paramount+ before airing on Nickelodeon. It is produced by CBS Eye Animation Productions and Nickelodeon Animation Studio in association with Secret Hideout, Roddenberry Entertainment, and Brothers Hageman Productions.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: "Star Trek: Prodigy" premiered on Paramount+ on October 28, 2021, and began airing on Nickelodeon on December 17. The first season of 20 episodes continued from October 27, 2022, and a second season is in production. In 2022, it was nominated for a Children's and Family Emmy Award in the category of "Outstanding Animated Series" and won the Emmy for "Oustanding Individual Achievement in Production Design."


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: In 2383, five years after the USS "Voyager" returned to Earth at the end of "", a motley crew of young aliens find an abandoned Starfleet ship, the USS "Protostar", in the Tars Lamora prison colony. Taking control of the ship, they must learn to work together as they make their way from the Delta Quadrant to the Alpha Quadrant.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: In June 2018, after becoming sole showrunner of the series "", Alex Kurtzman signed a five-year overall deal with CBS Television Studios to expand the "Star Trek" franchise beyond "Discovery" to several new series, miniseries, and animated series. After the announcement of adult animated comedy "", Kurtzman said in January 2019 that there would be at least one more animated series released as part of his expansion. This would be a "kids-focused" series that could potentially be released on a different network from the more adult-focused streaming service CBS All Access (later rebranded Paramount+) where the other "Star Trek" series under Kurtzman were being released. Kurtzman said other animated series would be different from "Lower Decks" in both tone and visual style, with the latter potentially being achieved through different technology.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Kevin and Dan Hageman joined the series as writers by mid-February 2019, when Nickelodeon was in talks to air the show since its viewers match the series' younger target audience. The project was expected to be a "major tentpole series" for the network under its new president Brian Robbins. A month later, Kurtzman confirmed the project and said negotiations with Nickelodeon were almost complete. He expected the series to be ready for release in 2021 or 2022. Nickelodeon officially ordered the series in late April 2019, with the Hageman brothers confirmed to be writing and executive producing the series alongside Kurtzman, Secret Hideout's Heather Kadin, Rod Roddenberry (the son of "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry) and Trevor Roth of Roddenberry Entertainment, and CBS Television's animation executive Katie Krentz. Kadin revealed in October 2019 that the series had received a two-season order from Nickelodeon due to the animation work required for the series and said it would feature serialized elements. She explained that the Hagemans were hired due to their work on previous children's series that were not "playing down" to the audience and were still watchable for older viewers. Kadin felt the series would be something that older "Star Trek" fans could watch with their children to introduce them to the franchise.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: In an article on the "Star Trek" franchise in January 2020, "The Wall Street Journal" listed the series as "Star Trek: Prodigy". This title was officially confirmed in July, along with a 2021 release date. Ramsey Naito was overseeing the series for Nickelodeon as EVP of Animation Production and Development. Ben Hibon was announced as director, co-executive producer, and creative lead for the series in August 2020. Naito described Hibon as "an incredible storyteller and a world builder with a distinct vision" for the series. In February 2021, ViacomCBS announced that "Prodigy" would debut on the streaming service Paramount+ along with the rest of the "Star Trek" Universe. Paramount+'s EVP of development and programming, Julie McNamara, said they would have the "best of both worlds" with this move by introducing the series to fans of the other "Star Trek" series on the service before bringing it to new audiences on Nickelodeon. She added that viewership data from CBS All Access showed that fans of "Star Trek" also watched the animated series "The Legend of Korra" on the service, and this was another factor in deciding to add "Prodigy" to Paramount+. At that time, the series was revealed to have been ordered for a 20-episode season, with a second 20-episode season officially confirmed by Paramount+ in November.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: The Hageman brothers announced the series' writers room in July 2019, which included Julie and Shawna Benson, Diandra Pendleton-Thompson, Chad Quandt, Aaron Waltke, Lisa Shoop Boyd, Nikhil Jayaram, Erin McNamara, and Keith Sweet. "Star Trek" author David Mack served as a consultant and adviser on the series. Astrophysicist Erin Macdonald also served as a consultant on the series after being hired as a general science advisor for the "Star Trek" franchise. She worked in the writers room, and unlike the other "Star Trek" series—for which she focused on scientific accuracy—her role on "Prodigy" was focused on STEM education for the series' younger target audience. The series' premise was developed as a way to introduce "Star Trek" concepts to new, young audiences by featuring a group of young aliens from the Delta Quadrant who learn about Starfleet and its ideals throughout the series. Kevin Hageman noted that young viewers may not be able to identify with the "fully formed officers" who star in most "Star Trek" series so "Prodigy" starring younger characters also helped with the target audience being able to engage with the series. Waltke was promoted to co-head writer and co-executive producer of the second season, and explained that the first two seasons were written to tell one continuous story across four 10-episode "mini-arcs". He added that the series would change in tone each season as the characters grow up, because the writers saw the series as a story about young people joining Starfleet and moving up the ranks. He also said the series would not ignore the events of other "Star Trek" projects that are also set during the 2380s.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: During New York Comic-Con in October 2020, Kate Mulgrew was announced to be reprising her role of Kathryn Janeway from "". Further casting for the series was expected to be revealed in the following months. Kurtzman said bringing Mulgrew back for the series was part of the Hagemans' initial pitch, and he felt their reasoning was compelling enough to meet his requirements that "legacy characters" like Janeway only be brought back for a very specific reason. The production had approached Mulgrew about starring in the series a year before the official announcement, and Kurtzman was surprised that her involvement had not leaked during that time. Mulgrew was initially reluctant to join the series, but after several months of negotiations she was convinced to reprise her role by the idea of introducing "Star Trek" to a new generation of fans. The series' version of Janeway is a hologram aboard the USS "Protostar" that is based on the original character's likeness, though the actual Janeway also appears. The hologram Janeway helps train the series' bridge crew, which features six young misfits who, in a first for the "Star Trek" franchise, are all aliens rather than human. Mulgrew revealed in January 2021 that recording for the first season had been completed, and recording on the second season was about to begin. The main voice cast for the series was announced in June 2021, including Rylee Alazraqui as Rok-Tahk, Brett Gray as Dal, Angus Imrie as Zero, Jason Mantzoukas as Jankom Pog, Ella Purnell as Gwyn, and Dee Bradley Baker as Murf. At the end of August, John Noble was announced as voicing Gwyn's father, the Diviner, with Jimmi Simpson cast as the Diviner's robotic enforcer Drednok.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Bonnie Gordon was hired to provide temporary "scratch vocals" for Gwyn and Janeway during development of the series, which led to her getting a permanent role as the voice of the USS "Protostar" computer. Billy Campbell revealed in February 2021 that he was reprising his guest role of Thadiun Okona from "" in the series and said his role was one of several "legacy characters" that were returning for "Prodigy". Robert Beltran, who portrayed Chakotay in "Voyager", said he was working on "Prodigy" in August, and was confirmed that October to be reprising his role as Captain Chakotay. Other recurring guests include Daveed Diggs as Commander Tysess, Jameela Jamil as Ensign Asencia, and Jason Alexander as Dr. Noum. Alexander previously had a different guest role in "Voyager". In the sixth episode, Dal takes a holographic simulation of the "Kobayashi Maru" captaincy test from the film "" (1982). In the film, cadets took the test with experienced Starfleet officers as their crew, and episode writer Waltke chose to replicate this by including famous Starfleet officers from previous "Star Trek" series in the simulation. He originally included eight well-known crewmembers and the writers room debated which characters to bring back for the scene. This was ultimately narrowed down to five characters during the writing process: René Auberjonois's Odo from ""; James Doohan's Montgomery Scott, Nichelle Nichols' Uhura, and Leonard Nimoy's Spock from ""; and Gates McFadden's Beverly Crusher from "Star Trek: The Next Generation". McFadden returned to provide new vocals for the episode, while archival audio of the other actors was used for their characters. Waltke read around 90 scripts for past "Star Trek" episodes and rewatched 40 episodes of the older series to find lines that could fit into these scenes and then pulled the dialogue for those lines from the "Star Trek" archives.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Campbell's role in the series was officially confirmed in September 2022; he recurs as Okona throughout the second-half of the first season. At New York Comic-Con a month later, Ronny Cox was announced to also have a recurring role in the second-half of the first season, reprising his role as Edward Jellico from "The Next Generation" who has since been promoted from captain to admiral.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: When the series was announced, Kurtzman expected it would take around a year for each season's animation work to be completed. During their initial discussions when Hibon first joined the project, the Hagemans said that they wanted to create an "epic" scope without losing the characters and emotion. Using computer-generated animation was the logical choice for Hibon, as he felt it would give the production all the tools they needed to create a cinematic series that was on-par with the live-action entries in the franchise. Using CG animation differentiated "Prodigy" from the previous "Star Trek" animated series, "" and "Lower Decks". The series' design style was first developed through 2D drawings before being animated with 3D CG animation, and Kurtzman compared it to the animated anthology series "Love, Death & Robots" in terms of "beauty and lighting and cinema". Kadin further compared the style to the Hagemans' previous work on the animated series "Ninjago" and "", while Kurtzman said the series' animation was feature film-quality and would hold up if projected in cinemas. In August 2020, Kurtzman said work on the series' animation was "barreling ahead, full steam ahead" in contrast to the live-action "Star Trek" series that had been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: The series' designers tried to make the initial designs feel more grounded than previous "Star Trek" series, with the intention of integrating more of the "classic language" of "Star Trek" designs into "Prodigy" as the main characters move closer to the Federation and Starfleet. The USS "Protostar", the central ship of the series, has a similar design to the USS "Voyager". The series' opening title sequence follows the "Protostar" through various spatial anomalies, planets, and debris fields that form into images of the main cast.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: In August 2020, Kurtzman said Nami Melumad had been hired to compose the music for a new "Star Trek" series after impressing with her work on the "" short "Q&A". He did not reveal which series she had been hired for, but Melumad indicated that it was "Prodigy". She was confirmed to be composing for the series in October. The series' main theme was composed by Michael Giacchino, who supervised Melumad's "Short Treks" work and also composed the music for the Kelvin Timeline "Star Trek" films. Melumad was comfortable working with Giacchino's theme after their previous work together, and because her own style was influenced by his.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Melumad was the first woman to compose the music for a "Star Trek" series, which she said was "a huge honor, and [a] great responsibility". When she first joined the project, the showrunners sent her a Spotify playlist with music that they listened to while developing the series, which included Giacchino's score for the film "John Carter" (2012). Giacchino's advice to Melumad was to not overuse the series' main theme or the original "Star Trek" theme by Alexander Courage, so they would feel earned when they do get used. She settled on using the main theme only in the most triumphant moments for the main characters. Melumad composed several other themes, including for each of the main characters. To represent Jankom, Melumad used the trombone and "a little bit of a clumsy" melody. Zero's theme uses a piccolo, while Gwyn's features a "keyboard-y kind of bell tone sound". Melumad did not reprise Jerry Goldsmith's main theme from "Star Trek: Voyager" to represent Hologram Janeway, since the character represents Starfleet in general within the series and because she felt the young target audience would not recognize the theme anyway. She did say that the music becomes "more "Star Trek"-y" as the series goes on, especially as the main characters begin to interact with Starfleet in the second half of the first season.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: The score was recorded in Budapest with a 64-musician orchestra, and Melumad was glad that this was not impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which had forced other series to record their musicians individually. Selections from the score are being released after the debut of each episode, leading to a full soundtrack album at the end of the first season. All music by Nami Melumad, except where noted:


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: The title and logo were revealed at the virtual "Star Trek" Universe panel during the July 2020 Comic-Con@Home convention, while Mulgrew's casting was announced at another virtual "Star Trek" Universe panel for New York Comic-Con in October 2020. A first look at the main characters was released during the February 2021 ViacomCBS Investor Day, and a first look at Hologram Janeway was revealed during the "First Contact Day" virtual event on April 5, 2021, celebrating the fictional holiday marking first contact between humans and aliens in the "Star Trek" universe. At the Television Critics Association press tour in August 2021, the opening title sequence was revealed along with Giacchino's main theme. After being the dominant producer of "Star Trek" collectible figures in the 1990s, Playmates Toys returned to the franchise in 2022 with new figures based on "Prodigy". To promote the series' Nickelodeon debut, the family-friendly, space-themed interactive experience at CAMP Experience in Brooklyn, New York, was redressed to be "Prodigy"-themed from July 22 to August 29.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Mulgrew and Gray promoted the series at a "Star Trek Day" event on September 8, 2022, where the mid-season premiere date was announced and a new clip from the second half of the first season was shown. A mid-season trailer was revealed by the Hagemans at the "Star Trek" Universe panel for New York Comic-Con in October, which also featured Mulgrew, Gray, Jamil, and executive producers Kurtzman, Roddenberry, and Hibon.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: "Star Trek: Prodigy" premiered on October 28, 2021, on the streaming service Paramount+, in the United States. The series is being released in other countries as Paramount+ is made available to them. CTV Sci-Fi Channel broadcasts the series in Canada. The first five episodes were released through November 18, followed by a break before the rest of the first season's first half were released beginning on January 6, 2022. The series premiered on the cable channel Nickelodeon, which originally ordered the series, on December 17, 2021, before a weekly airing on the channel of the first half of the first season from July 8 to August 5, 2022. After their Nickelodeon debut, the episodes are made available on "Nick.com", the Nick App, and Nick On Demand. The 10-episode second half of the first season was released on Paramount+ in the U.S. beginning October 27.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: On November 18, 2022, it was announced the first 10 episodes will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on January 3, 2023.


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 94% approval rating for the first season, with an average rating of 8.1/10 based on 16 reviews. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 68 out of 100 based on reviews from 5 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Alex Maidy of "JoBlo.com" rated the series "great" and wrote: ""Star Trek: Prodigy" proves that it is entirely possible for Gene Roddenberry's vision to be both action-packed and thought-provoking... it is a rip-roaring adventure that will keep adults engaged, make kids think, and opens up endless possibilities for "Star Trek" more than any other series since the 1966 original." Collier Jennings of "Collider" praised the series in his review, claiming "it is one of the best new entries in the "Star Trek" franchise... "Prodigy" wrings genuine emotion out of its moments, proving that even though it's targeted toward a younger audience it won't speak down to said audience." Tara Bennett of IGN rated the episode 7 out of 10 and wrote: ""Prodigy" has the slick look of a high-end movie" and "The premiere sets the stage for a credible course for adventure that has the potential to grow into something special." Bennet praised the performances and said Ella Purnell's Gwyn and Rylee Alazraqui's Rok-Tahk are already stealing a lot of their scenes. Joel Keller of "Decider.com" wrote, "The animation, writing and action sequences make the show equally accessible to Trekkers, as well. Mulgrew's performance as a slightly more wise-acre version of Voyager's Janeway grounds the show in Trek's universe, but only just enough to not get it mired in the franchise's drier, more talky tendencies. The first episode is full of well-designed action that ratchets up tension and keeps all viewers engaged, whether they're kids or grownups." Jeff Ewing of "Slashfilm" praised "Star Trek: Prodigy's" bold themes and unique tone aimed at both young and old audiences, noting it is "well-paced for modern audiences with a strong set of character introductions, good action sequences, and a lot of open-ended potential. It strikes as ably accomplishing its goals to introduce younger audiences to the world of "Trek," finding a strong path to do so with its young characters' guided trip through the galaxy." Keith DeCandido, author of several Star Trek novels, praised "Prodigy" in a review for "Tor.com", saying it was even better than "", "", and "". DeCandido noted that "the target audience is on Nickelodeon, but honestly this show's audience is anyone who loves Star Trek, because this is very much a Trek show." Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the first episode a grade B and said the show had potential. He wrote: "The series is aimed at children, but in a cheery all-ages kind of way that avoids insulting its audience even if it never quite manages to impress them." Shah Shahid of "Comic Years" praised "Prodigy" as "a beautiful way to remind audiences of what the promise of a bright future means to those without that hope... and at the end of the day, that is ultimately what Roddenberry intended."


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: CNN.com's Brian Lowry was critical of the first episode and wrote: "The show mostly just transparently trades off the 'Trek' title without feeling like it's going anywhere, boldly or otherwise."


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Two tie-in novels are set to be published on January 17, 2023: "Star Trek: Prodigy – Supernova", written by longtime "Star Trek" author Robb Pearlman, is a "middle-grade" story based on the video game of the same name; and Cassandra Rose Clarke's "Star Trek: Prodigy – A Dangerous Trade" follows the series' young crew as they attempt to trade a Starfleet battery for new parts with a group of rogue traders who plan to steal the "Protostar".


title: Star Trek: Prodigy

text: Outright Games, a video game publisher that focuses on family-friendly properties, announced a new video game inspired by the series in April 2022. Titled "Star Trek Prodigy: Supernova", the game was developed by Tessera Studios for PC, Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo Switch, Steam, and Stadia. It was the first "Star Trek" video game aimed at younger players. The story, written by "Prodigy" staff writer Lisa Boyd, follows Dal and Gwyn as they attempt to save their friends, the "Protostar", and an alien planetary system from a supernova. The game features the series' main cast reprising their roles, including Mulgrew, and was set to be released on October 14.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: The 2014 Isla Vista killings were a series of misogynistic terror attacks in Isla Vista, California. On the evening of May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: killed six people and injured fourteen others—by gunshot, stabbing and vehicle ramming—near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), and then killed himself.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger stabbed three men to death in his apartment, apparently one by one on their arrival. About three hours later, he drove to a sorority house and, after failing to get inside, shot three women outside, two of whom died. He next drove past a nearby deli and shot a male student inside to death. He then began to drive through Isla Vista, shooting and wounding several pedestrians from his car and striking several others with his car. He exchanged gunfire with police twice, and he was injured in the hip. After his car crashed into a parked vehicle, he was found dead inside with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Before driving to the sorority house, Rodger uploaded a video to YouTube titled "Elliot Rodger's Retribution", in which he outlined his planned attack and his motives. He explained that he wanted to punish women for rejecting him, and sexually active men because he envied them. He also emailed a lengthy autobiographical manuscript to friends, his therapist and family members; the document appeared on the Internet and became widely known as his manifesto. In it, he described his childhood, family conflicts, frustration over his inability to find a girlfriend, his hatred of women, his contempt for couples (particularly interracial couples) and his plans for what he described as "retribution". In February 2020, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague retroactively described the killings as an act of misogynist terrorism. The US Secret Service describes it as "misogynistic extremism."


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Elliot Rodger began his attacks at his apartment on Seville Road, where he killed three men by stabbing them multiple times. Bloodstains later found in the building's hallway suggest that Rodger had attacked one or more of his victims as they entered; a bloody bath towel and paper towels in the bathroom suggest Rodger had attempted to clean the hallway. The men's positions suggested that each was killed separately as he entered. Two of the victims were confirmed to be Rodger's roommates according to an apartment lease, while police were investigating whether the third was also a resident or visiting the apartment on the night of the killings.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: After the stabbings, Rodger purchased coffee at a coffee shop. At around 8:30 p.m., he was seen working on his laptop in his car in the parking lot of his apartment building. He uploaded his "Retribution" video at 9:17 and sent his manifesto e-mail at 9:18. After receiving a copy of the manifesto, Rodger's therapist phoned his mother, whofinding the "Retribution" video on Rodger's YouTube channelcontacted Rodger's father. In separate cars, his parents left Los Angeles for Santa Barbara, calling Isla Vista police enroute.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger drove to the Alpha Phi sorority house at Embarcadero del Norte and Segovia Road near UCSB, where he knocked on the front door for a few minutes. After no one answered the door, he then began shooting people nearby. Two women were killed and a third was injured. Rodger began driving again. He fired into an unoccupied coffee shop on Pardall Road, then several times into a delicatessen; a man was struck seven times and killed.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger drove south on Embarcadero del Norte on the wrong side of the street, striking a pedestrian and firing at two people on the sidewalk, missing them. He shot a couple exiting a pizzeria and a female cyclist. He drove south on El Embarcadero and shot at and missed a woman, turned east on Del Playa Drive, and made a U-turn to drive west. He then exchanged fire with a sheriff's deputy responding to a telephone report, and struck two pedestrians.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Turning north on Camino del Sur, Rodger shot and wounded three people at Sabado Tarde Street, and struck a skateboarder and two cyclists with his car. Turning east on Sabado Tarde, he struck another skateboarder with his car and shot two other men at the intersection with Camino Pescadero. On Sabado Tarde near Little Acorn Park, Rodger exchanged gunfire with three sheriff's deputies, and was shot in the hip. Pursued by police, he turned south a second time onto El Embarcadero, then west again on Del Playa. He struck a cyclist, then crashed on the north sidewalk just east of the intersection of Del Playa and Camino Pescadero.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: At 9:35, police found Rodger dead inside his car from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to his head. In the car were three pistols, knives, six empty ten-round magazines, and 548 rounds of unspent ammunition.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: All six murder victims were students at UCSB. The men killed at Rodger's apartment were George Chen (), 19; Chengyuan "James" Hong (), 20; and Weihan "David" Wang (), 20. The three who died from gunshot wounds were Katherine Breann Cooper, 22; Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, 20; and Veronika Elizabeth Weiss, 19. Cooper and Weiss were the women killed outside the Alpha Phi sorority house, while Michaels-Martinez was the victim inside the Isla Vista Deli Mart.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Fourteen other people were injured; seven from gunshot wounds and seven by blunt trauma sustained when Rodger struck them with his vehicle. Eleven of the injured were taken to hospitals. Seven went to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, where two were admitted in serious condition, one in fair condition, and two others in good condition, and one patient was released on the same day. The remaining four injured were taken to Goleta Valley Cottage Hospital, where they were all treated and released.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Students and community members gathered at Anisq'Oyo Park in Isla Vista on the evening of May 24 for a candlelight memorial to remember the victims. 20,000 people attended a memorial service at UCSB's Harder Stadium on May 27. On May 23, 2015, the first anniversary of the attacks, hundreds of people gathered at UCSB for a candlelight vigil commemorating the six slain victims. The mother of George Chen made a speech at the event.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Following the attacks, some on Twitter used the #NotAllMen hashtag to express that not all men are misogynistic and not all men commit murder. Others criticized use of this hashtag, as it was considered to derail from discussion of the issue of violence against women. Someone created the Twitter hashtag #YesAllWomen on May 24 to express the idea that all women experience misogyny and sexism.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger (July 24, 1991 – May 23, 2014) was an English-American former college student, and the sole perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Born in London, England, he moved to the United States with his parents at age five. He was raised in Los Angeles. His father is British filmmaker Peter Rodger, his paternal grandfather photo-journalist George Rodger. His mother is a Malaysian Chinese research assistant for a film company. A younger sister was born before his parents divorced. After Peter remarried, he and his second wife Soumaya Akaaboune, a Moroccan actress with whom Elliot had a strained relationship, had a son together; Elliot's half-brother.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger attended Crespi Carmelite High School, an all-boys Catholic school in Encino, Los Angeles, and then Taft High School in Woodland Hills, which he attended for only a week due to severe bullying. He last attended Independence Continuation High School in Lake Balboa from where he graduated in 2009. Rodger then briefly enrolled in Los Angeles Pierce College and Moorpark College before ultimately transferring to Santa Barbara City College in 2011. Thereafter, he resided in Isla Vista. After his attack, the school said he had not taken any classes since 2012.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: According to his family's attorney and a family friend, Rodger had seen multiple therapists since he was eight years old, but the attorney said he had never been formally diagnosed with a mental illness. He was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified, an autism spectrum disorder, in 2007.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: By the ninth grade, Rodger was "increasingly bullied", and wrote later that he "cried by [himself] at school every day"; at this time he developed an obsession with the multiplayer-online game "World of Warcraft", which dominated his life for most of his teenage years, and briefly into his 20s. At Crespi Carmelite High he was bullied; in one incident his head was taped to a desk while he was asleep. According to Rodger, in 2012, "the one friend [he] had in the whole world who truly understood [him]... said he didn't want to be friends anymore" without offering any reason. Rodger had a YouTube account, and a blog titled "Elliot Rodger's Official Blog", through which he expressed loneliness and rejection. He wrote that he had been prescribed risperidone but refused to take it, stating, "After researching this medication, I found that it was the absolute wrong thing for me to take."


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: After turning 18, Rodger began rejecting mental health care and became increasingly isolated. He said that he was unable to make friends, although acquaintances said that he rebuffed their attempts to be friendly. Family friend Dale Launer said that he counseled Rodger on approaching women, but that Rodger did not follow the advice; Launer also commented that when he met Rodger at eight or nine, "I could see then that there was something wrong with him... looking back now he strikes me as someone who was broken from the moment of conception."


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger claims in his manifesto that in 2011 he threw coffee on a couple he was jealous of; he claims in another incident, he splashed coffee on two girls for not smiling at him. In 2012, Rodger used a Super Soaker filled with orange juice to spray a group playing kickball at Girsh Park.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Referring to an incident in July 2013, Rodger wrote that after being mocked at a party he tried but failed to shove some girls over a ten-foot ledge; instead, other boys pushed him over and his ankle was injured. When he went back for his sunglasses he was again mocked and beaten. A neighbor saw Rodger come home crying and vowing to kill the men involved and then himself. He wrote in his manifesto that the incident was the final trigger for his planning the attack.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: In January 2014, Rodger accused Cheng Yuan Hong, one of his roommates, of stealing some candles; Hong pleaded guilty to petty theft. On April 30, Rodger's parents contacted police after becoming alarmed by his behavior and YouTube videos. Sheriff's deputies who visited Rodger determined that he did not meet the criteria for an involuntary mental health commitment; Rodger had told them he had a "misunderstanding" with his parents.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger emailed his 107,000-word manifesto, "My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger", to 34 people, including his therapist, Charles Sophy, his parents and other family, former teachers, and childhood friends. In it he said he had originally sought to carry out an attack on Halloween of 2013, but reconsidered because he thought there would be too many police present.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: In his last YouTube video, "Elliot Rodger's Retribution", Rodger complained of being rejected by women and envying sexually active men, and described his planned attack and the motives behind it. In the video, he says:


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: He wrote in "My Twisted World" that being of mixed race made him "different from the normal fully white kids". On one online forum, he said that he opposed interracial dating and made several racist posts regarding African-American, South Asian and East Asian people, stating that seeing men of these ethnic groups socializing with white women "makes you want to quit life". In one online post, Rodger wrote:


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger stated in his manifesto that, in his ideal world, he would quarantine all [women] in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off... I would have an enormous tower built just for myself... and gleefully watch them all die. He also dreamed of a pure world, [where] the man's mind can develop to greater heights than ever before. Future generations will live their lives free of having to worry about the barbarity of sex and women, which will enable them to expand their intelligence and advance the human race to a state of perfect civilization. He said that he planned to kill his half-brother and stepmother, but was not mentally prepared to kill his father.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: In September 2012, Rodger visited a shooting range to practice firing handguns. In November, he purchased his first handgun, a Glock 34 pistol, in Goleta, choosing it as "an efficient and highly accurate weapon". In early 2013, Rodger bought two additional handguns, both SIG Sauer P226 pistols, writing that they were "of a much higher quality than the Glock" and "a lot more efficient". He purchased the weapons legally in Oxnard and Burbank, California.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Rodger claimed to have saved at least $6,000, in order to purchase the weapons and supplies for the attacks. Gun law experts in California have said that there was nothing in Rodger's known history that prevented him from making legal firearm purchases.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: The attacks renewed calls for gun control and improvements in the American health care system, with Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal saying,


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: California Senator Dianne Feinstein blamed the National Rifle Association's "stranglehold" on gun laws for the attack and said "shame on us" in Congress for failing to do something about it. Timothy F. Murphy, a Representative from Pennsylvania and a clinical psychologist, said his bipartisan mental health overhaul would be a solution and urged Congress to pass it.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Richard Martinez, the father of victim Christopher Michaels-Martinez, gave a speech in which he placed the blame of the attacks on "craven, irresponsible" politicians and the National Rifle Association. Martinez later urged the public to join him in "demanding immediate action" from members of Congress regarding gun control. He also expressed his sympathy towards Rodger's parents.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Doris A. Fuller, the executive director of the Treatment Advocacy Center, said that California law permitted emergency psychiatric evaluations of potentially dangerous individuals through provisions, but such actions were never enabled during the initial police investigation of Rodger. She said,


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Some California lawmakers called for an investigation into the deputies' contact with Rodger on April 30, at which time the California gun ownership database reflected the fact that Rodger had bought at least two handguns. Deputies did not check the database, nor did they view the YouTube videos that had prompted Rodger's parents to contact them. In September 2014 California legislators in the California State Legislature passed a red flag law to enable judges to have guns seized from persons who are a danger to themselves or to others. It was subsequently signed into law by Governor Jerry Brown.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: The attack sparked discussion of broader issues of violence against women and misogyny. Rodger frequented online forums such as PUAHate and ForeverAlone, where he and other men posted misogynistic statements, and described himself online as an "incel" – a member of an online subculture based around its members' perceived inability to find a romantic or sexual partner. Rodger wrote that after purchasing his first gun he "felt a new sense of power. I was now armed. "Who's the alpha male now, bitches?" I thought to myself, regarding all of the girls who've looked down on me in the past." He also described his plan to invade a sorority house, writing, "I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blond slut I see inside there. All those girls I've desired so much. They have all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man." According to the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism at the Hague, these attacks were an act of misogynist terrorism.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Writer M.E. Williams objected to Rodger being labeled the "virgin killer", saying that implies that "one possible cause of male aggression is a lack of female sexual acquiescence". Amanda Hess, writing for "Slate", argued that although Rodger killed more men than women, his motivations were misogynistic because his reason for hating the men he attacked was that he thought they stole the women he felt entitled to. Writing for "Reason", Cathy Young countered with "that seems like a good example of stretching the concept into meaninglessness – or turning it into unfalsifiable quasi-religious dogma" and wrote that Rodger also wrote many hateful messages about other men.


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: In "" feminist academic Kate Manne analyzed the many arguments presented by Young, Mac Donald, and other media commentators to the effect that Rodger could not have been a misogynist because (among other reasons) he was sexually attracted to women, his hateful rhetoric was ultimately the result of mental illness, Rodger loved his mother and hence did not evince a psychological hatred of "all" women, and he murdered more men than women as an example of a no true Scotsman fallacy. In contrast to a narrow definition of misogyny requiring generalized hatred of women with few (or no) exceptions, similar to the virulent antisemitism of Nazi Germany, Manne argued that in practice misogynists tend to selectively target women based on real or imagined violations of patriarchal norms, and that an excessively narrow conception of misogyny "threaten[s] to deprive women of a suitable name for a potentially potent problem facing them."


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: In some incel communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels. Rodger is the most frequently referenced, with incels often referring to him as their "saint" and sharing memes in which his face has been superimposed onto paintings of Christian icons. Some incels consider him to be the true progenitor of today's online incel communities. It is common to see references to "E.R." in incel forums, and mass violence by incels is regularly referred to as "going E.R." Rodger has been referenced by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other mass killings. For example, Alek Minassian, who killed 10 and injured 16 in Toronto, Canada, posted on Facebook before the murders: ""Private (recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The incel rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!""


title: 2014 Isla Vista killings

text: Several news networks limited the use of the "Retribution" video posted by Rodger for fear of triggering copycat crimes. The "New Statesman" posited that the manifesto may influence a "new generation of 'involuntary celibates'".


title: Primal (TV series)

text: Primal (also known as Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal) is an American adult animated action horror television series created and directed by Genndy Tartakovsky for Cartoon Network's late night programming block Adult Swim. "Primal" is set in a deliberately anachronistic vision of prehistory, portraying dinosaurs, prehistoric hominids, and Iron Age "Homo sapiens" as coexisting within the same barbaric time period and incorporating many elements of fantasy, horror, action, and adventure. The first 10-episode season of "Primal" was split into two 5-episode parts. The series premiered on Adult Swim on October 8, 2019, with the remaining episodes releasing daily that same week. The second half of the season premiered one episode April 1, 2020, with the remaining episodes premiering weekly for the five weeks following October 4, 2020. In August 2020, the series was renewed for a 10-episode second season, which premiered July 22 and concluded September 16, 2022. Following the second season finale and conclusion of Spear and Fang's storyline, Tartakovsky confirmed that "Primal" would become an anthology series from its forthcoming third season onward.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: "Primal" has received widespread critical acclaim, with much praise for its animation, storytelling, music, emotional depth, horror elements and editing. The show has won three Outstanding Individual Achievement in Animation Juried Awards from the Emmy for Storyboard Artist (Genndy Tartakovsky), Art Director (Scott Wills), and Character Designer (Stephen DeStefano).


title: Primal (TV series)

text: Set in an anachronistic and fantastical prehistoric world, the premise is a bond between a Neanderthal named Spear and a female "Tyrannosaurus rex" named Fang as they struggle to survive, encountering various dangerous fauna and people that live in their world while also encountering different creatures and Iron Age "homo sapiens".


title: Primal (TV series)

text: In comparison to Tartakovsky's other shows where there are multiple characters, "Primal" initially only features Spear and Fang in the show as they encounter different prehistoric or fantastical species and various tribes of hominins. Tartakovsky stated that although the show is a work of fantasy, the prehistoric animals, modern creatures and futuristic beasts in the show are based on real prehistoric animals, as well as some new ones created by the artists involved in the project.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: According to Tartakovsky, "Primal" was an early piece of work he scrapped because it did not click with him at the time. As he learned more and more about what drew people in to his shows, he wanted to experiment with those artistic traits, particularly the use of no dialogue and slow moments. He also stated that the method in which he approached animated projects began to slow down in terms of energy, and by the time he finished working on " ", it had come full circle. He said he was inspired by Conan the Barbarian and vintage pulp novels, as well as films such as "The Revenant". Tartakovsky felt that people would not take the show seriously because they were "breaking the rules" by having "a man and a dinosaur together," so he emphasized that it is a character study, a "buddies" journey about two characters who are very different but bonded by tragedy.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: The first season consists of 10 episodes. On August 31, 2020, the series was renewed for a second season which consists of 10 episodes.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: The first season premiered on October 8, 2019, with episodes from the first half of the season airing daily from the premiere date. An episode from the second half was shown during Adult Swim's April Fools' Day 2020 run. Adult Swim announced on their Twitter that the second half would start airing on October 4, 2020.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: The first season of "Primal" was broadcast during Thanksgiving weekend on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block for the first time on November 29, 2020. The marathon commemorated the launch of the series on the HBO Max streaming service. The first season began a second run on the normal schedule of the Toonami block beginning on May 15, 2022. The second season encored on the block on July 24, 2022.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: The first season was released on DVD and Blu-ray on June 1, 2021 by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment. It was later released in France, the Netherlands and Belgium.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: Initial reception for "Primal" was highly positive; much praise was given to the art and animation, the use of storytelling with no dialogue, and the balancing of the show's interpretation of violence and beauty. In a review from IndieWire, Steve Greene wrote ""Primal" is a piece of elemental storytelling that finds some real emotional depth without either of its protagonists uttering a single word of dialogue", ultimately giving the series an "A−". On Rotten Tomatoes, the first season has an approval rating of 100% based on reviews from 23 critics, with an average rating of 9.10/10. The site's critical consensus states: "Epic in every sense, "Genndy Tartakovsky's Primal" is a stunning feat of visual storytelling." The second season has an approval rating of 100% based on reviews from 7 critics, with an average rating of 9.30/10. On Metacritic, the series has a weighted average score of 87 out of 100 based on 5 critic reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Primal (TV series)

text: A film retelling of the first four episodes, Primal: Tales of Savagery, screened at the London West Hollywood at Beverly Hills on November 21, 2019. This version was submitted in the Best Animated Feature category for the 92nd Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.


title: Primal (TV series)

text: After the second season finale "Echoes of Eternity" aired on September 16, 2022, Genndy Tartakovsky confirmed that while Spear and Fang's story was officially concluded, he was formulating a third season for the series with a focus on new characters, intending for "Primal" to become an anthology series, inspired by the stand-alone second season episode "The Primal Theory". While no official release date has been announced, Tartakovsky said that he intends to develop the season after completing his work on New Line Cinema's "Fixed".


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Lady Sarah Frances Elizabeth Chatto (née Armstrong-Jones; born 1 May 1964) is the only daughter of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. She and her brother, David Armstrong-Jones, 2nd Earl of Snowdon, are the only maternal first cousins of King Charles III. She is the youngest grandchild of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother. At her birth, she was seventh in line of succession to the British throne; as of September 2022, she is 27th.


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Sarah Armstrong-Jones was born on 1 May 1964 at Kensington Palace in London. She is the second child and only daughter of Princess Margaret and Antony Armstrong-Jones, 1st Earl of Snowdon. She was christened in the private chapel at Buckingham Palace on 13 July 1964.


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Lady Sarah is a godmother to Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, Lady Rose Gilman, and Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor. She also has half-siblings on her father's side: Polly Fry (born 1960), Lady Frances Armstrong-Jones (born 1979), and Jasper Cable-Alexander (born 1998).


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Lady Sarah and her brother, David, then Viscount Linley, grew up in the nursery of Kensington Palace, Apartment 10. They were raised with a nanny called Verona Sumner, although their parents, especially their father, were comparatively hands-on (for the time), with their father teaching them to build things and be creative.


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Their parents' marriage was fractious; the couple formally separated when Sarah was 12 and divorced when she was 14. She and her brother spent weekends, depending on with which parent, at either Nymans or Royal Lodge. Holidays were given to the royal estates at Sandringham and Balmoral, where Lady Sarah did a lot of landscape painting.


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Lady Sarah was a bridesmaid at the wedding of her cousin Charles, Prince of Wales, and Lady Diana Spencer. She accompanied her mother and brother on an official visit to China and Hong Kong in May 1987.


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: She attended Bedales School, which she left with a single A level in Art. She enrolled at the Camberwell School of Art. She also studied art at the Royal Academy Schools. She then spent two years in India with her father, where he was employed to photograph the production of "A Passage to India". The film's producer, her relative John Knatchbull, 7th Baron Brabourne (son-in-law of Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma), gave her a job as an intern assisting the wardrobe department and studying wood gilding under her father's cousin Thomas Messel. Returning to England, she enrolled in a two-year course in textile and fabric design at Middlesex Polytechnic (later renamed as Middlesex University).


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Chatto has been exhibiting her work, always under the name Sarah Armstrong-Jones, at The Redfern Gallery since 1995. Her work has won awards: the Winsor & Newton Prize in 1988 and the Creswick Landscape Prize in 1990.


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: Lady Sarah met Daniel Chatto during her years in India with her father in the 1980s. Chatto was working on another British film, "Heat and Dust". He is from a theatrical family, the son of actor Tom Chatto (1920–1982) and the theatrical agent Ros Chatto (born Rosalind Joan Thompson; died 2012). He proposed to her with a "vintage cluster ring."


title: Lady Sarah Chatto

text: The couple married on 14 July 1994; the Reverend Chad Varah, founder of the Samaritans, officiated at the wedding, held at St Stephen's, Walbrook in the City of London. The bride's wedding gown was designed by Jasper Conran. Her bridesmaids were all teenagers: her half-sister Lady Frances, Zara Phillips (daughter of her first cousin Princess Anne), and Tara Noble-Singh, a family friend.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The Eastern Front of World War II was a theatre of conflict between the European Axis powers against the Soviet Union (USSR), Poland and other Allies, which encompassed Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Northeast Europe (Baltics), and Southeast Europe (Balkans) from 22 June 1941 to 9 May 1945. It was known as the Great Patriotic War in the Soviet Union – and still is in some of its successor states, while almost everywhere else it has been called the "Eastern Front". In present-day German and Ukrainian historiography the name German-Soviet War is typically used.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The battles on the Eastern Front of the Second World War constituted the largest military confrontation in history. They were characterised by unprecedented ferocity and brutality, wholesale destruction, mass deportations, and immense loss of life due to combat, starvation, exposure, disease, and massacres. Of the estimated 70–85 million deaths attributed to World War II, around 30 million occurred on the Eastern Front, including 9 million children. The Eastern Front was decisive in determining the outcome in the European theatre of operations in World War II, eventually serving as the main reason for the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Axis nations.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The two principal belligerent powers were Germany and the Soviet Union, along with their respective allies. Though never sending in ground troops to the Eastern Front, the United States and the United Kingdom both provided substantial material aid to the Soviet Union in the form of the Lend-Lease program along with naval and air support. The joint German–Finnish operations across the northernmost Finnish–Soviet border and in the Murmansk region are considered part of the Eastern Front. In addition, the Soviet–Finnish Continuation War is generally also considered the northern flank of the Eastern Front.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Germany and the Soviet Union remained unsatisfied with the outcome of World War I (1914–1918). Soviet Russia had lost substantial territory in Eastern Europe as a result of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (March 1918), where the Bolsheviks in Petrograd conceded to German demands and ceded control of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Finland, and other areas, to the Central Powers. Subsequently, when Germany in its turn surrendered to the Allies (November 1918) and these territories became independent states under the terms of the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 at Versailles, Soviet Russia was in the midst of a civil war and the Allies did not recognise the Bolshevik government, so no Soviet Russian representation attended.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Adolf Hitler had declared his intention to invade the Soviet Union on 11 August 1939 to Carl Jacob Burckhardt, League of Nations Commissioner, by saying:


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Everything I undertake is directed against the Russians. If the West is too stupid and blind to grasp this, then I shall be compelled to come to an agreement with the Russians, beat the West and then after their defeat turn against the Soviet Union with all my forces. I need the Ukraine so that they can't starve us out, as happened in the last war.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact signed in August 1939 was a non-aggression agreement between Germany and the Soviet Union. It contained a secret protocol aiming to return Central Europe to the pre–World War I "status quo" by dividing it between Germany and the Soviet Union. Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania would return to the Soviet control, while Poland and Romania would be divided. The Eastern Front was also made possible by the German–Soviet Border and Commercial Agreement in which the Soviet Union gave Germany the resources necessary to launch military operations in Eastern Europe.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: On 1 September 1939 Germany invaded Poland, starting World War II. On 17 September, the Soviet Union invaded Eastern Poland, and, as a result, Poland was partitioned among Germany, the Soviet Union and Lithuania. Soon after that, the Soviet Union demanded significant territorial concessions from Finland, and after Finland rejected Soviet demands, the Soviet Union attacked Finland on 30 November 1939 in what became known as the Winter War – a bitter conflict that resulted in a peace treaty on 13 March 1940, with Finland maintaining its independence but losing its eastern parts in Karelia.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: In June 1940 the Soviet Union occupied and illegally annexed the three Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania). The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact ostensibly provided security to the Soviets in the occupation both of the Baltics and of the north and northeastern regions of Romania (Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia, June–July 1940), although Hitler, in announcing the invasion of the Soviet Union, cited the Soviet annexations of Baltic and Romanian territory as having violated Germany's understanding of the pact. Moscow partitioned the annexed Romanian territory between the Ukrainian and Moldavian Soviet republics.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Adolf Hitler had argued in his autobiography "Mein Kampf" (1925) for the necessity of "Lebensraum" ("living space"): acquiring new territory for Germans in Eastern Europe, in particular Russia. He envisaged settling Germans there, as according to Nazi ideology the Germanic people constituted the "master race", while exterminating or deporting most of the existing inhabitants to Siberia and using the remainder as slave labour.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Hitler as early as 1917 had referred to the Russians as inferior, believing that the Bolshevik Revolution had put the Jews in power over the mass of Slavs, who were, in Hitler's opinion, incapable of ruling themselves and had thus ended up being ruled by Jewish masters.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The Nazi leadership, including Heinrich Himmler, saw the war against the Soviet Union as a struggle between the ideologies of Nazism and Jewish Bolshevism, and ensuring territorial expansion for the Germanic "Übermensch" (superhumans), who according to Nazi ideology were the Aryan "Herrenvolk" ("master race"), at the expense of the Slavic "Untermenschen" (subhumans). Wehrmacht officers told their troops to target people who were described as "Jewish Bolshevik subhumans", the "Mongol hordes", the "Asiatic flood" and the "red beast". The vast majority of German soldiers viewed the war in Nazi terms, seeing the Soviet enemy as sub-human.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Hitler referred to the war in radical terms, calling it a "war of annihilation" ("Vernichtungskrieg") which was both an ideological and racial war. The Nazi vision for the future of Eastern Europe was codified most clearly in the "Generalplan Ost". The populations of occupied Central Europe and the Soviet Union were to be partially deported to West Siberia, enslaved and eventually exterminated; the conquered territories were to be colonised by German or "Germanized" settlers. In addition, the Nazis also sought to wipe out the large Jewish population of Central and Eastern Europe


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: After Germany's initial success at the Battle of Kiev in 1941, Hitler saw the Soviet Union as militarily weak and ripe for immediate conquest. In a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast on 3 October, he announced, "We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down." Thus, Germany expected another short "Blitzkrieg" and made no serious preparations for prolonged warfare. However, following the decisive Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943 and the resulting dire German military situation, Nazi propaganda began to portray the war as a German defence of Western civilisation against destruction by the vast "Bolshevik hordes" that were pouring into Europe.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Throughout the 1930s the Soviet Union underwent massive industrialisation and economic growth under the leadership of Joseph Stalin. Stalin's central tenet, "Socialism in One Country", manifested itself as a series of nationwide centralised five-year plans from 1929 onwards. This represented an ideological shift in Soviet policy, away from its commitment to the international communist revolution, and eventually leading to the dissolution of the Comintern (Third International) organisation in 1943. The Soviet Union started a process of militarisation with the first five-year plan that officially began in 1928, although it was only towards the end of the second five-year plan in the mid-1930s that military power became the primary focus of Soviet industrialisation.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: In February 1936 the Spanish general election brought many communist leaders into the Popular Front government in the Second Spanish Republic, but in a matter of months a right-wing military coup initiated the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. This conflict soon took on the characteristics of a proxy war involving the Soviet Union and left wing volunteers from different countries on the side of the predominantly socialist and communist-led Second Spanish Republic; while Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Portugal's Estado Novo took the side of Spanish Nationalists, the military rebel group led by General Francisco Franco. It served as a useful testing ground for both the Wehrmacht and the Red Army to experiment with equipment and tactics that they would later employ on a wider scale in the Second World War.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Nazi Germany, which was an anti-communist régime, formalised its ideological position on 25 November 1936 by signing the Anti-Comintern Pact with Imperial Japan. Fascist Italy joined the Pact a year later. The Soviet Union negotiated treaties of mutual assistance with France and with Czechoslovakia with the aim of containing Germany's expansion. The German "Anschluss" of Austria in 1938 and the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia (1938–1939) demonstrated the impossibility of establishing a collective security system in Europe, a policy advocated by the Soviet ministry of foreign affairs under Maxim Litvinov. This, as well as the reluctance of the British and French governments to sign a full-scale anti-German political and military alliance with the USSR, led to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany in late August 1939. The separate Tripartite Pact between what became the three prime Axis Powers would not be signed until some four years after the Anti-Comintern Pact.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The war was fought between Germany, its allies and Finland, against the Soviet Union and its allies. The conflict began on 22 June 1941 with the Operation Barbarossa offensive, when Axis forces crossed the borders described in the German–Soviet Nonaggression Pact, thereby invading the Soviet Union. The war ended on 9 May 1945, when Germany's armed forces surrendered unconditionally following the Battle of Berlin (also known as the Berlin Offensive), a strategic operation executed by the Red Army.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The states that provided forces and other resources for the German war effort included the Axis Powers – primarily Romania, Hungary, Italy, pro-Nazi Slovakia, and Croatia. Anti-Soviet Finland, which had fought the Winter War against the Soviet Union, also joined the offensive. The "Wehrmacht" forces were also assisted by anti-Communist partisans in places like Western Ukraine, and the Baltic states. Among the most prominent volunteer army formations was the Spanish Blue Division, sent by Spanish dictator Francisco Franco to keep his ties to the Axis intact.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The Soviet Union offered support to the anti-Axis partisans in many "Wehrmacht"-occupied countries in Central Europe, notably those in Slovakia and Poland. In addition, the Polish Armed Forces in the East, particularly the First and Second Polish armies, were armed and trained, and would eventually fight alongside the Red Army. The Free French forces also contributed to the Red Army by the formation of the GC3 ("Groupe de Chasse 3" or 3rd Fighter Group) unit to fulfil the commitment of Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, who thought that it was important for French servicemen to serve on all fronts.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The above figures includes all personnel in the German Army, i.e. active-duty Heer, Waffen SS, Luftwaffe ground forces, personnel of the naval coastal artillery and security units. In the spring of 1940, Germany had mobilised 5,500,000 men. By the time of the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht consisted of c. 3,800,000 men of the Heer, 1,680,000 of the Luftwaffe, 404,000 of the Kriegsmarine, 150,000 of the Waffen-SS, and 1,200,000 of the Replacement Army (contained 450,400 active reservists, 550,000 new recruits and 204,000 in administrative services, vigiles and or in convalescence). The Wehrmacht had a total strength of 7,234,000 men by 1941. For Operation Barbarossa, Germany mobilised 3,300,000 troops of the Heer, 150,000 of the Waffen-SS and approximately 250,000 personnel of the Luftwaffe were actively earmarked.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: By July 1943, the Wehrmacht numbered 6,815,000 troops. Of these, 3,900,000 were deployed in eastern Europe, 180,000 in Finland, 315,000 in Norway, 110,000 in Denmark, 1,370,000 in western Europe, 330,000 in Italy, and 610,000 in the Balkans. According to a presentation by Alfred Jodl, the Wehrmacht was up to 7,849,000 personnel in April 1944. 3,878,000 were deployed in eastern Europe, 311,000 in Norway/Denmark, 1,873,000 in western Europe, 961,000 in Italy, and 826,000 in the Balkans. About 15–20% of total German strength were foreign troops (from allied countries or conquered territories). The German high water mark was just before the Battle of Kursk, in early July 1943: 3,403,000 German troops and 650,000 Finnish, Hungarian, Romanian and other countries' troops.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: For nearly two years the border was quiet while Germany conquered Denmark, Norway, France, the Low Countries, and the Balkans. Hitler had always intended to renege on his pact with the Soviet Union, eventually making the decision to invade in the spring of 1941.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Some historians say Stalin was fearful of war with Germany, or just did not expect Germany to start a two-front war, and was reluctant to do anything to provoke Hitler. Others say that Stalin was eager for Germany to be at war with capitalist countries. Another viewpoint is that Stalin expected war in 1942 (the time when all his preparations would be complete) and stubbornly refused to believe it would come early.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: British historians Alan S. Milward and M. Medlicott show that Nazi Germany—unlike Imperial Germany—was prepared for only a short-term war (Blitzkrieg). According to Edward Ericson, although Germany's own resources were sufficient for the victories in the West in 1940, massive Soviet shipments obtained during a short period of Nazi–Soviet economic collaboration were critical for Germany to launch Operation Barbarossa.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Germany had been assembling very large numbers of troops in eastern Poland and making repeated reconnaissance flights over the border; the Soviet Union responded by assembling its divisions on its western border, although the Soviet mobilisation was slower than Germany's due to the country's less dense road network. As in the Sino-Soviet conflict on the Chinese Eastern Railway or Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, Soviet troops on the western border received a directive, signed by Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and General of the Army Georgy Zhukov, that ordered (as demanded by Stalin): "do not answer to any provocations" and "do not undertake any (offensive) actions without specific orders" – which meant that Soviet troops could open fire only on their soil and forbade counter-attack on German soil. The German invasion therefore caught the Soviet military and civilian leadership largely by surprise.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The extent of warnings received by Stalin about a German invasion is controversial, and the claim that there was a warning that "Germany will attack on 22 June without declaration of war" has been dismissed as a "popular myth". However, some sources quoted in the articles on Soviet spies Richard Sorge and Willi Lehmann, say they had sent warnings of an attack on 20 or 22 June, which were treated as "disinformation". The Lucy spy ring in Switzerland also sent warnings, possibly deriving from Ultra codebreaking in Britain. Sweden had access to internal German communications through breaking the crypto used in the Siemens and Halske T52 crypto machine also known as the Geheimschreiber and informed Stalin about the forthcoming invasion well ahead of June 22, but did not reveal its sources.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Soviet intelligence was fooled by German disinformation, so sent false alarms to Moscow about a German invasion in April, May and the beginning of June. Soviet intelligence reported that Germany would rather invade the USSR after the fall of the British Empire or after an unacceptable ultimatum demanding German occupation of Ukraine during the German invasion of Britain.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: A strategic air offensive by the United States Army Air Force and Royal Air Force played a significant part in damaging German industry and tying up German air force and air defence resources, with some bombings, such as the bombing of the eastern German city of Dresden, being done to facilitate specific Soviet operational goals. In addition to Germany, hundreds of thousands of tons of bombs were dropped on their eastern allies of Romania and Hungary, primarily in an attempt to cripple Romanian oil production.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: British and Commonwealth forces also contributed directly to the fighting on the Eastern Front through their service in the Arctic convoys and training Red Air Force pilots, as well as in the provision of early material and intelligence support.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Lend-Lease aid of military hardware, components and goods to the Soviet Union constituted to 20% percent of the assistance. The rest were foodstuff, nonferrous metals (e.g., copper, magnesium, nickel, zinc, lead, tin, aluminium), chemical substances, petroleum (high octane aviation gasoline) and factory machinery. The aid of production-line equipment and machinery were crucial and helped to maintain adequate levels of Soviet armament production during the entire war. In addition, the USSR received wartime innovations including penicillin, radar, rocket, precision-bombing technology, the long-range navigation system Loran, and many other innovations.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Of the 800,000 tons of nonferrous metals shipped, about 350,000 tons were aluminium. The shipment of aluminium not only represented double the amount of metal that Germany possessed, but also composed the bulk of aluminium that was used in manufacture of Soviet aircraft, that had fallen in critically short supply. Soviet statistics show, that without these shipments of aluminium, aircraft production would have been less than one-half (or about 45,000 less) of the total 137,000 produced aircraft.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Stalin noted in 1944, that two-thirds of Soviet heavy industry had been built with the help of the United States, and the remaining one-third, with the help from other Western nations such as Great Britain and Canada. The massive transfer of equipment and skilled personnel from occupied territories helped further to boost the economic base. Without Lend-Lease aid, Soviet Union's diminished post invasion economic base would not have produced adequate supplies of weaponry, other than focus on machine tool, foodstuff and consumer goods.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: In the last year of war, Lend-Lease data show that about 5.1 million tons of foodstuff left the United States for the Soviet Union. It is estimated that all the food supplies sent to Russia could feed a 12,000,000-man strong army a half pound of concentrated food per day, for the entire duration of the war.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The total Lend-Lease aid provided during the Second World War had been estimated between $42–50 billion. The Soviet Union received shipments in war materials, military equipment and other supplies worth of $12.5 billion, about a quarter of the American Lend-Lease aid provided to other Allied countries. However, post-war negotiations to settle all the debt were never concluded, and as of date, the debt issues is still on in future American-Russian summits and talks.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Prof. Dr. Albert L. Weeks concluded, "As to attempts to sum up the importance of those four-year-long shipments of Lend-Lease for the Russian victory on the Eastern Front in World War II, the jury is still out – that is, in any definitive sense of establishing "exactly" how crucial this aid was."


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Germany's economic, scientific, research and industrial capabilities were among the most technically advanced in the world at the time. However, access to (and control of) the resources, raw materials and production capacity required to entertain long-term goals (such as European control, German territorial expansion and the destruction of the USSR) were limited. Political demands necessitated the expansion of Germany's control of natural and human resources, industrial capacity and farmland beyond its borders (conquered territories). Germany's military production was tied to resources outside its area of control, a dynamic not found amongst the Allies.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: During the war, as Germany acquired new territories (either by direct annexation or by installing puppet governments in defeated countries), these new territories were forced to sell raw materials and agricultural products to German buyers at extremely low prices. Overall, France made the largest contribution to the German war effort. Two-thirds of all French trains in 1941 were used to carry goods to Germany. In 1943–44, French payments to Germany may have risen to as much as 55% of French GDP. Norway lost 20% of its national income in 1940 and 40% in 1943. Axis allies such as Romania and Italy, Hungary, Finland, Croatia and Bulgaria benefited from Germany's net imports. Overall, Germany imported 20% of its food and 33% of its raw materials from conquered territories and Axis allies.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: On 27 May 1940, Germany signed the "Oil Pact" with Romania, by which Germany would trade arms for oil. Romania's oil production amounted to approximately 6,000,000 tons annually. This production represents 35% of the total fuel production of the Axis, including synthetic products and substitutes, and 70% of the total production of crude oil. In 1941, Germany only had 18% of the oil it had in peacetime. Romania supplied Germany and its allies with roughly 13 million barrels of oil (about 4 million per year) between 1941 and 1943. Germany's peak oil production in 1944 amounted to about 12 million barrels of oil per year.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: Rolf Karlbom estimated that Swedish share of Germany's total consumption of iron may have amounted to 43% during the period of 1933–43. It may also be likely that "Swedish ore formed the raw material of four out of every ten German guns" during the Hitler era'.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The use of foreign forced labour and slavery in Germany and throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II took place on an unprecedented scale. It was a vital part of the German economic exploitation of conquered territories. It also contributed to the mass extermination of populations in German-occupied Europe. The Germans abducted approximately 12 million foreign people from almost twenty European countries; about two-thirds came from Central Europe and Eastern Europe. Counting deaths and turnover, about 15 million men and women were forced labourers at one point during the war. For example, 1.5 million French soldiers were kept in POW camps in Germany as hostages and forced workers and, in 1943, 600,000 French civilians were forced to move to Germany to work in war plants.


title: Eastern Front (World War II)

text: The defeat of Germany in 1945 freed approximately 11 million foreigners (categorised as "displaced persons"), most of whom were forced labourers and POWs. In wartime, the German forces had brought into the Reich 6.5 million civilians in addition to Soviet POWs for unfree labour in factories. In all, 5.2 million foreign workers and POWs were repatriated to the Soviet Union, 1.6 million to Poland, 1.5 million to France, and 900,000 to Italy, along with 300,000 to 400,000 each to Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Hungary, and Belgium.