title: Flight (2012 film)

text: Washington's performance received praise. "The Hollywood Reporter"'s Todd McCarthy wrote that the film "provides Denzel Washington with one of his meatiest, most complex roles, and he flies with it". Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" gave the film four out of four, writing ""Flight" segues into a brave and tortured performance by Denzel Washington—one of his very best. Not often does a movie character make such a harrowing personal journey that keeps us in deep sympathy all of the way." He also noted the plane's upside-down flight scene was "one of the most terrifying flight scenes I've ever witnessed" and called the film "nearly flawless". Ebert went on to name the film the sixth best of 2012. Although the film was not nominated for Best Picture, he later noted that it deserved to be. "Entertainment Weekly" wrote, "Denzel Washington didn't get an Oscar nod for nothing: His performance as an alcoholic airline pilot ensnared by his own heroics is crash-and-burn epic".


title: Flight (2012 film)

text: The film received some criticism from pilots who questioned its realism, particularly the premise of a pilot being able to continue flying with a significant substance-abuse problem. The Air Line Pilots' Association dismissed the film as an inaccurate portrayal of an air crew and stated that "we all enjoy being entertained, but a thrilling tale should not be mistaken for the true story of extraordinary safety and professionalism among airline pilots". Airline pilot Patrick Smith also commented that "a real-life Whitaker wouldn't survive two minutes at an airline, and all commercial pilots—including, if not especially, those who've dealt with drug or alcohol addiction—should feel slandered by his ugly caricature". The pilot also criticised the portrayal of the relationship between copilot and captain, the decision of Whitaker to increase speed dangerously in a storm, and the ultimate dive and crash landing of Whitaker's aircraft.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), commonly known as a drone, is an aircraft without any human pilot, crew, or passengers on board. UAVs are a component of an unmanned aircraft system (UAS), which includes adding a ground-based controller and a system of communications with the UAV. The flight of UAVs may operate under remote control by a human operator, as remotely-piloted aircraft (RPA), or with various degrees of autonomy, such as autopilot assistance, up to fully autonomous aircraft that have no provision for human intervention.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs were originally developed through the twentieth century for military missions too "dull, dirty or dangerous" for humans, and by the twenty-first, they had become essential assets to most militaries. As control technologies improved and costs fell, their use expanded to many non-military applications. These include forest fire monitoring, aerial photography, product deliveries, agriculture, policing and surveillance, infrastructure inspections, entertainment, science, smuggling, and drone racing.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The term drone has been used from the early days of aviation, being applied to remotely-flown target aircraft used for practice firing of a battleship's guns, such as the 1920s Fairey Queen and 1930s de Havilland Queen Bee. Later examples included the Airspeed Queen Wasp and Miles Queen Martinet, before ultimate replacement by the GAF Jindivik. The term remains in common use. In addition to the software, autonomous drones also employ a host of advanced technologies that allow them to carry out their missions without human intervention, such as cloud computing, computer vision, artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and thermal sensors. For recreational uses, an aerial photography drone (as opposed to a UAV) is an aircraft that has first-person video, autonomous capabilities, or both.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: An unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is defined as a "powered, aerial vehicle that does not carry a human operator, uses aerodynamic forces to provide vehicle lift, can fly autonomously or be piloted remotely, can be expendable or recoverable, and can carry a lethal or nonlethal payload". UAV is a term that is commonly applied to military use cases. However missiles with warheads are not considered UAVs because the vehicle itself is a munition. Also, the relation of UAVs to remote controlled model aircraft is unclear, UAVs may or may not include remote-controlled model aircraft. Some jurisdictions base their definition on size or weight; however, the US FAA defines any uncrewed flying craft as a UAV regardless of size.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The term "unmanned aircraft system" (UAS) was adopted by the United States Department of Defense (DoD) and the United States Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in 2005 according to their Unmanned Aircraft System Roadmap 2005–2030. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the British Civil Aviation Authority adopted this term, also used in the European Union's Single-European-Sky (SES) Air-Traffic-Management (ATM) Research (SESAR Joint Undertaking) roadmap for 2020. This term emphasizes the importance of elements other than the aircraft. It includes elements such as ground control stations, data links and other support equipment. A similar term is an "unmanned-aircraft vehicle system" (UAVS), "remotely piloted aerial vehicle" (RPAV), "remotely piloted aircraft system" (RPAS). Many similar terms are in use. "Unoccupied" and "uninhabited" are occasionally used as alternatives to "unmanned". Under new regulations which came into effect 1 June 2019, the term RPAS (Remotely Piloted Aircraft System) has been adopted by the Canadian Government to mean "a set of configurable elements consisting of a remotely piloted aircraft, its control station, the command and control links and any other system elements required during flight operation".


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs may be classified like any other aircraft, according to design configuration such as weight or engine type, maximum flight altitude, degree of operational autonomy, operational role, etc. According to the United States Department of Defense, UAVs are classified into five categories below:


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: There are usually four categories when UAVs are classified by size, with at least one of the dimensions (length or wingspan) meet the following respective limits:


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Drones could also be classified based on the degree of autonomy in their flight operations. ICAO classifies uncrewed aircraft as either remotely piloted aircraft or fully autonomous. Some UAVs offer intermediate degrees of autonomy. For example, a vehicle may be remotely piloted in most contexts but have an autonomous return-to-base operation. Some aircraft types may optionally fly manned or as UAVs, which may include manned aircraft transformed into uncrewed or Optionally Piloted UAVs (OPVs).


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Based on the altitude, the following UAV classifications have been used at industry events such as ParcAberporth Unmanned Systems forum:


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: An example of classification based on the composite criteria is U.S. Military's unmanned aerial systems (UAS) classification of UAVs based on weight, maximum altitude and speed of the UAV component.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The earliest recorded use of an unmanned aerial vehicle for warfighting occurred in July 1849, with a balloon carrier (the precursor to the aircraft carrier) in the first offensive use of air power in naval aviation. Austrian forces besieging Venice attempted to launch some 200 incendiary balloons at the besieged city. The balloons were launched mainly from land; however, some were also launched from the Austrian ship . At least one bomb fell in the city; however, due to the wind changing after launch, most of the balloons missed their target, and some drifted back over Austrian lines and the launching ship "Vulcano".


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo introduced a radio-based control-system called the ""Telekino"" at the Paris Academy of Science in 1903 with the intention of testing an airship of his own design without risking human lives.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Significant development of drones started in the 1900s, and originally focused on providing practice targets for training military personnel. The earliest attempt at a powered UAV was A. M. Low's "Aerial Target" in 1916. Low confirmed that Geoffrey de Havilland's monoplane was the one that flew under control on 21 March 1917 using his radio system. Following this successful demonstration in the spring of 1917 Low was transferred to develop aircraft controlled fast motor launches D.C.B.s with the Royal Navy in 1918 intended to attack shipping and port installations and he also assisted Wing Commander Brock in preparations for the Zeebrugge Raid. Other British unmanned developments followed, leading to the fleet of over 400 de Havilland 82 Queen Bee aerial targets that went into service in 1935.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Nikola Tesla described a fleet of uncrewed aerial combat vehicles in 1915. These developments also inspired the construction of the Kettering Bug by Charles Kettering from Dayton, Ohio and the Hewitt-Sperry Automatic Airplane – initially meant as an uncrewed plane that would carry an explosive payload to a predetermined target. Development continued during World War I, when the Dayton-Wright Airplane Company invented a pilotless aerial torpedo that would explode at a preset time.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The film star and model-airplane enthusiast Reginald Denny developed the first scaled remote piloted vehicle in 1935.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In 1940 Denny started the Radioplane Company and more models emerged during World War II used both to train antiaircraft gunners and to fly attack-missions. Nazi Germany produced and used various UAV aircraft during the war, like the Argus As 292 and the V-1 flying bomb with a jet engine.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: After World War II development continued in vehicles such as the American JB-4 (using television/radio-command guidance), the Australian GAF Jindivik and Teledyne Ryan Firebee I of 1951, while companies like Beechcraft offered their Model 1001 for the U.S. Navy in 1955. Nevertheless, they were little more than remote-controlled airplanes until the Vietnam War.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In 1959 the U.S. Air Force, concerned about losing pilots over hostile territory, began planning for the use of uncrewed aircraft. Planning intensified after the Soviet Union shot down a U-2 in 1960. Within days, a highly-classified UAV program started under the code name of "Red Wagon". The August 1964 clash in the Tonkin Gulf between naval units of the U.S. and the North Vietnamese Navy initiated America's highly-classified UAVs (Ryan Model 147, Ryan AQM-91 Firefly, Lockheed D-21) into their first combat missions of the Vietnam War. When the Chinese government showed photographs of downed U.S. UAVs via "Wide World Photos", the official U.S. response was "no comment".


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: During the War of Attrition (1967–1970) in the Middle East, Israeli intelligence tested the first tactical UAVs installed with reconnaissance cameras, which successfully returned photos from across the Suez Canal. This was the first time that tactical UAVs that could be launched and landed on any short runway (unlike the heavier jet-based UAVs) were developed and tested in battle.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Israel used UAVs as decoys to spur opposing forces into wasting expensive anti-aircraft missiles. After the 1973 Yom Kippur war, a few key people from the team that developed this early UAV joined a small startup company that aimed to develop UAVs into a commercial product, eventually purchased by Tadiran and leading to the development of the first Israeli UAV.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In 1973 the U.S. military officially confirmed that they had been using UAVs in Southeast Asia (Vietnam). Over 5,000 U.S. airmen had been killed and over 1,000 more were missing or captured. The USAF 100th Strategic Reconnaissance Wing flew about 3,435 UAV missions during the war at a cost of about 554 UAVs lost to all causes. In the words of USAF General George S. Brown, Commander, Air Force Systems Command, in 1972, "The only reason we need (UAVs) is that we don't want to needlessly expend the man in the cockpit." Later that year, General John C. Meyer, Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command, stated, "we let the drone do the high-risk flying ... the loss rate is high, but we are willing to risk more of them ...they save lives!"


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: During the 1973 Yom Kippur War, Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missile-batteries in Egypt and Syria caused heavy damage to Israeli fighter jets. As a result, Israel developed the IAI Scout as the first UAV with real-time surveillance. The images and radar decoys provided by these UAVs helped Israel to completely neutralize the Syrian air defenses at the start of the 1982 Lebanon War, resulting in no pilots downed. In Israel in 1987, UAVs were first used as proof-of-concept of super-agility, post-stall controlled flight in combat-flight simulations that involved tailless, stealth-technology-based, three-dimensional thrust vectoring flight-control, and jet-steering.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: With the maturing and miniaturization of applicable technologies in the 1980s and 1990s, interest in UAVs grew within the higher echelons of the U.S. military. In the 1990s, the U.S. DoD gave a contract to AAI Corporation along with Israeli company Malat. The U.S. Navy bought the AAI Pioneer UAV that AAI and Malat developed jointly. Many of these UAVs saw service in the 1991 Gulf War. UAVs demonstrated the possibility of cheaper, more capable fighting-machines, deployable without risk to aircrews. Initial generations primarily involved surveillance aircraft, but some carried armaments, such as the General Atomics MQ-1 Predator, that launched AGM-114 Hellfire air-to-ground missiles.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The development of smart technologies and improved electrical-power systems led to a parallel increase in the use of drones for consumer and general aviation activities. As of 2021, quadcopter drones exemplify the widespread popularity of hobby radio-controlled aircraft and toys, however the use of UAVs in commercial and general aviation is limited by a lack of autonomy and by new regulatory environments which require line-of-sight contact with the pilot.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In 2020 a Kargu 2 drone hunted down and attacked a human target in Libya, according to a report from the UN Security Council's Panel of Experts on Libya, published in March 2021. This may have been the first time an autonomous killer-robot armed with lethal weaponry attacked human beings.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Superior drone technology, specifically the Bayraktar TB2, played a role in Azerbaijan's successes in the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war against Armenia.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs are also used in NASA missions. The Dragonfly spacecraft is being developed, and is aiming to reach and examine Saturn's moon Titan. Its primary goal is to roam around the surface, expanding the amount of area to be researched previously seen by Landers. As a UAV, Dragonfly allows examination of potentially diverse types of soil. The drone is set to launch in 2027, and is estimated to take a seven more years to reach the Saturnian system.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Crewed and uncrewed aircraft of the same type generally have recognizably similar physical components. The main exceptions are the cockpit and environmental control system or life support systems. Some UAVs carry payloads (such as a camera) that weigh considerably less than an adult human, and as a result, can be considerably smaller. Though they carry heavy payloads, weaponized military UAVs are lighter than their crewed counterparts with comparable armaments.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Small civilian UAVs have no life-critical systems, and can thus be built out of lighter but less sturdy materials and shapes, and can use less robustly tested electronic control systems. For small UAVs, the quadcopter design has become popular, though this layout is rarely used for crewed aircraft. Miniaturization means that less-powerful propulsion technologies can be used that are not feasible for crewed aircraft, such as small electric motors and batteries.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Control systems for UAVs are often different than crewed craft. For remote human control, a camera and video link almost always replace the cockpit windows; radio-transmitted digital commands replace physical cockpit controls. Autopilot software is used on both crewed and uncrewed aircraft, with varying feature sets.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The primary difference from manned aeroplanes is the lack of need for a cockpit area and its windows. However some types are adapted from piloted examples, or are designed for optional piloted or unmanned operational modes. Air safety is also less of a critical requirement for unmanned aircraft, allowing the designer greater freedom to experiment. These two factors have led to a great variety of airframe and engine configurations in UAVs.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: For conventional flight the flying wing and blended wing body offer light weight combined with low drag and stealth, and are popular configurations. Larger types which carry a variable payload are more likely to feature a distinct fuselage with a tail for stability, control and trim, although the wing configurations in use vary widely.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: For vertical flight, the tailless quadcopter requires a relatively simple control system and is common for smaller UAVs. However the mechanism does not scale well to larger aircraft, which tend to use a conventional single rotor with collective and cyclic pitch control, along with a stabilising tail rotor.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Traditional internal combustion and jet engines remain in use for drones requiring long range. However for shorter-range missions electric power has almost entirely taken over. The distance record for a UAV (built from balsa wood and mylar skin) across the North Atlantic Ocean is held by a gasoline model airplane or UAV. Manard Hill "in 2003 when one of his creations flew 1,882 miles across the Atlantic Ocean on less than a gallon of fuel" holds this record.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Besides the traditional piston engine, the Wankel rotary engine is used by some drones. This type offers high power output for lower weight, with quieter and more vibration-free running. Claims have also been made for improved reliability and greater range.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Small drones mostly use lithium-polymer batteries (Li-Po), while some larger vehicles have adopted the a hydrogen fuel cell. The energy density of modern Li-Po batteries is far less than gasoline or hydrogen. However electric motors are cheaper, lighter and quieter. Complex multi-engine, multi-propeller installations are under development with the goal of improving aerodynamic and propulsive efficiency. For such complex power installations, Battery elimination circuitry (BEC) may be used to centralize power distribution and minimize heating, under the control of a microcontroller unit (MCU).


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Flapping-wing ornithopters, imitating birds or insects, have been flown as microUAVs. Their inherent stealth recommends them for spy missions.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Sub-1g microUAVs inspired by flies, albeit using a power tether, have been able to "land" on vertical surfaces. Other projects mimic the flight of beetles and other insects.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAV computing capability followed the advances of computing technology, beginning with analog controls and evolving into microcontrollers, then system-on-a-chip (SOC) and single-board computers (SBC).


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: System hardware for small UAVs is often called the flight controller (FC), flight controller board (FCB) or autopilot. Common UAV-systems control hardware typically incorporate a primary microprocessor, a secondary or failsafe processor, and sensors such as accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, and barometers into a single module.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Position and movement sensors give information about the aircraft state. Exteroceptive sensors deal with external information like distance measurements, while exproprioceptive ones correlate internal and external states.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Non-cooperative sensors are able to detect targets autonomously so they are used for separation assurance and collision avoidance.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Degrees of freedom (DOF) refers to both the amount and quality of sensors on board: 6 DOF implies 3-axis gyroscopes and accelerometers (a typical inertial measurement unit IMU), 9 DOF refers to an IMU plus a compass, 10 DOF adds a barometer and 11 DOF usually adds a GPS receiver.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAV actuators include digital electronic speed controllers (which control the RPM of the motors) linked to motors/engines and propellers, servomotors (for planes and helicopters mostly), weapons, payload actuators, LEDs and speakers.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAV software is called the flight stack or autopilot. The purpose of the flight stack is to obtain data from sensors, control motors to ensure UAV stability, and facilitate ground control and mission planning communication.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs are real-time systems that require rapid response to changing sensor data. As a result, UAVs rely on single-board computers for their computational needs. Examples of such single-board computers include Raspberry Pis, Beagleboards, etc. shielded with NavIO, PXFMini, etc. or designed from scratch such as NuttX, preemptive-RT Linux, Xenomai, Orocos-Robot Operating System or DDS-ROS 2.0.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Due to the open-source nature of UAV software, they can be customized to fit specific applications. For example, researchers from the Technical University of Košice have replaced the default control algorithm of the PX4 autopilot. This flexibility and collaborative effort has led to a large number of different open-source stacks, some of which are forked from others, such as CleanFlight, which is forked from BaseFlight and from which three other stacks are forked from.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs use a radio for control and exchange of video and other data. Early UAVs had only narrowband uplink. Downlinks came later. These bi-directional narrowband radio links carried command and control (C&C) and telemetry data about the status of aircraft systems to the remote operator.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In most modern UAV applications, video transmission is required. So instead of having separate links for C&C, telemetry and video traffic, a broadband link is used to carry all types of data. These broadband links can leverage quality of service techniques and carry TCP/IP traffic that can be routed over the Internet.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Modern networking standards have explicitly considered drones and therefore include optimizations. The 5G standard has mandated reduced user plane latency to 1ms while using ultra-reliable and low-latency communications.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The level of autonomy in UAVs varies widely. UAV manufacturers often build in specific autonomous operations, such as:


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: One approach to quantifying autonomous capabilities is based on OODA terminology, as suggested by a 2002 US Air Force Research Laboratory report, and used in the table on the right.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Full autonomy is available for specific tasks, such as airborne refueling or ground-based battery switching.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Other functions available or under development include; collective flight, real-time collision avoidance, wall following, corridor centring, simultaneous localization and mapping and swarming, cognitive radio and machine learning. In this context, computer vision can play an important role for automatically ensuring flight safety.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs can be programmed to perform aggressive maneuvers or landing/perching on inclined surfaces, and then to climb toward better communication spots. Some UAVs can control flight with varying flight modelisation, such as VTOL designs.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Because of their small size, low weight, low vibration and high power to weight ratio, Wankel rotary engines are used in many large UAVs. Their engine rotors cannot seize; the engine is not susceptible to shock-cooling during descent and it does not require an enriched fuel mixture for cooling at high power. These attributes reduce fuel usage, increasing range or payload.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Proper drone cooling is essential for long-term drone endurance. Overheating and subsequent engine failure is the most common cause of drone failure.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Hydrogen fuel cells, using hydrogen power, may be able to extend the endurance of small UAVs, up to several hours.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Micro air vehicles endurance is so far best achieved with flapping-wing UAVs, followed by planes and multirotors standing last, due to lower Reynolds number.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Solar-electric UAVs, a concept originally championed by the AstroFlight Sunrise in 1974, have achieved flight times of several weeks.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Solar-powered atmospheric satellites ("atmosats") designed for operating at altitudes exceeding 20 km (12 miles, or 60,000 feet) for as long as five years could potentially perform duties more economically and with more versatility than low Earth orbit satellites. Likely applications include weather drones for weather monitoring, disaster recovery, Earth imaging and communications.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Electric UAVs powered by microwave power transmission or laser power beaming are other potential endurance solutions.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Another application for a high endurance UAV would be to "stare" at a battlefield for a long interval (ARGUS-IS, Gorgon Stare, Integrated Sensor Is Structure) to record events that could then be played backwards to track battlefield activities.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Reliability improvements target all aspects of UAV systems, using resilience engineering and fault tolerance techniques.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Individual reliability covers robustness of flight controllers, to ensure safety without excessive redundancy to minimize cost and weight. Besides, dynamic assessment of flight envelope allows damage-resilient UAVs, using non-linear analysis with ad hoc designed loops or neural networks. UAV software liability is bending toward the design and certifications of crewed avionics software.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Swarm resilience involves maintaining operational capabilities and reconfiguring tasks given unit failures.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In recent years, autonomous drones have begun to transform various application areas as they can fly beyond visual line of sight (BVLOS) while maximizing production, reducing costs and risks, ensuring site safety, security and regulatory compliance, and protecting the human workforce in times of a pandemic. They can also be used for consumer-related missions like package delivery, as demonstrated by Amazon Prime Air, and critical deliveries of health supplies.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: There are numerous civilian, commercial, military, and aerospace applications for UAVs. These include:


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: As of 2020, seventeen countries have armed UAVs, and more than 100 countries use UAVs in a military capacity. The global military UAV market is dominated by companies based in the United States, Turkey, China, Israel and Iran. By sale numbers, the US held over 60% military-market share in 2017. Top military UAV manufactures are including General Atomics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Baykar, TAI, IAIO, CASC and CAIG. China has established and expanded its presence in military UAV market since 2010. Turkey also established and expanded its presence in military UAV market.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Of the 18 countries that are known to have received military drones between 2010 to 2019, the top 12 all purchased their drones from China. According to a report of 2015, Israeli companies mainly focus on small surveillance UAV systems and by quantity of drones, Israel exported 60.7% (2014) of UAV on the market while the United States export 23.9% (2014). Between 2010 and 2014, there were 439 drones exchanged compared to 322 in the five years previous to that, among these only small fraction of overall trade – just 11 (2.5%) of the 439 are armed drones. The US alone operated over 9,000 military UAVs in 2014; among them more than 7000 are RQ-11 Raven miniature UAVs. General Atomics is the dominant manufacturer with the Global Hawk and Predator/Mariner systems product-line.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: For intelligence and reconnaissance missions, the inherent stealth of micro UAV flapping-wing ornithopters, imitating birds or insects, offers potential for covert surveillance and makes them difficult targets to bring down.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The civilian (commercial and general) drone market is dominated by Chinese companies. Chinese drone manufacturer DJI alone had 74% of the civil market share in 2018, with no other company accounting for more than 5%, and with $11 billion forecast global sales in 2020. Following increased scrutiny of its activities, the US Interior Department grounded its fleet of DJI drones in 2020, while the Justice Department prohibited the use of federal funds for the purchase of DJI and other foreign made UAVs. DJI is followed by Chinese company Yuneec, US company 3D Robotics and French company Parrot with a significant gap in market share. As of May 2021, 873,576 UAVs have been registered with the US FAA, of which 42% are categorized as commercial drones and 58% as recreational drones. 2018 NPD point to consumers increasingly purchasing drones with more advanced features with 33 percent growth in both the $500+ and $1000+ market segments.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The civil UAV market is relatively new compared to the military one. Companies are emerging in both developed and developing nations at the same time. Many early stage startups have received support and funding from investors as is the case in the United States and by government agencies as is the case in India. Some universities offer research and training programs or degrees. Private entities also provide online and in-person training programs for both recreational and commercial UAV use.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Consumer drones are also widely used by military organizations worldwide because of the cost-effective nature of consumer product. In 2018, Israeli military started to use DJI Mavic and Matrice series of UAV for light reconnaissance mission since the civil drones are easier to use and have higher reliability. DJI drones is also the most widely used commercial unmanned aerial system that the US Army has employed. DJI surveillance drones have also been used by Chinese police in Xinjiang since 2017.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The global UAV market will reach US$21.47 billion, with the Indian market touching the US$885.7 million mark, by 2021.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Drones are ideally suited to capturing aerial shots in photography and cinematography, and are widely used for this purpose. Small drones avoid the need for precise coordination between pilot and cameraman, with the same person taking on both roles. However, big drones with professional cine cameras, there is usually a drone pilot and a camera operator who controls camera angle and lens. For example, the AERIGON cinema drone which is used in film production in big blockbuster movies is operated by 2 people. Drones provide access to dangerous, remote or otherwise inaccessible sites.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: As global demand for food production grows exponentially, resources are depleted, farmland is reduced, and agricultural labor is increasingly in short supply, there is an urgent need for more convenient and smarter agricultural solutions than traditional methods, and the agricultural drone and robotics industry is expected to make progress. Agricultural drones have been used in areas such as Africa to help build sustainable agriculture.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The use of UAVs is also being investigated to help detect and fight wildfires, whether through observation or launching pyrotechnic devices to start backfires.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs are also now widely used to survey wildlife such as nesting seabirds, seals and even wombat burrows


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs can threaten airspace security in numerous ways, including unintentional collisions or other interference with other aircraft, deliberate attacks or by distracting pilots or flight controllers. The first incident of a drone-airplane collision occurred in mid-October 2017 in Quebec City, Canada. The first recorded instance of a drone collision with a hot air balloon occurred on 10 August 2018 in Driggs, Idaho, United States; although there was no significant damage to the balloon nor any injuries to its 3 occupants, the balloon pilot reported the incident to the National Transportation Safety Board, stating that "I hope this incident helps create a conversation of respect for nature, the airspace, and rules and regulations". Unauthorized UAV flights into or near major airports have prompted extended shutdowns of commercial flights.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Drones caused significant disruption at Gatwick Airport during December 2018, needing the deployment of the British Army.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: In the United States, flying close to a wildfire is punishable by a maximum $25,000 fine. Nonetheless, in 2014 and 2015, firefighting air support in California was hindered on several occasions, including at the Lake Fire and the North Fire. In response, California legislators introduced a bill that would allow firefighters to disable UAVs which invaded restricted airspace. The FAA later required registration of most UAVs.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The interest in UAVs cyber security has been raised greatly after the Predator UAV video stream hijacking incident in 2009, where Islamic militants used cheap, off-the-shelf equipment to stream video feeds from a UAV. Another risk is the possibility of hijacking or jamming a UAV in flight. Several security researchers have made public some vulnerabilities in commercial UAVs, in some cases even providing full source code or tools to reproduce their attacks. At a workshop on UAVs and privacy in October 2016, researchers from the Federal Trade Commission showed they were able to hack into three different consumer quadcopters and noted that UAV manufacturers can make their UAVs more secure by the basic security measures of encrypting the Wi-Fi signal and adding password protection.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: UAVs could be loaded with dangerous payloads, and crashed into vulnerable targets. Payloads could include explosives, chemical, radiological or biological hazards. UAVs with generally non-lethal payloads could possibly be hacked and put to malicious purposes. Anti-UAV systems are being developed by states to counter this threat. This is, however, proving difficult. As Dr J. Rogers stated in an interview to A&T "There is a big debate out there at the moment about what the best way is to counter these small UAVs, whether they are used by hobbyists causing a bit of a nuisance or in a more sinister manner by a terrorist actor".


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The malicious use of UAVs has led to the development of counter unmanned air system (C-UAS) technologies. Automatic tracking and detection of UAVs from commercial cameras have become accurate thanks to the development of deep learning based machine learning algorithms. It is also possible to automatically identify UAVs across different cameras with different view points and hardware specification with re-identification methods. Commercial solutions such as the Aaronia AARTOS have been installed on major international airports. Anti-aircraft missile systems such as the Iron Dome are also being enhanced with C-UAS technologies. Utilising a smart UAV swarm to counter one or more hostile UAVs is also proposed.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: Regulatory bodies around the world are developing unmanned aircraft system traffic management solutions to better integrate UAVs into airspace.


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The use of unmanned aerial vehicles is becoming increasingly regulated by the civil aviation authorities of individual countries. Regulatory regimes can differ significantly according to drone size and use. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) began exploring the use of drone technology as far back as 2005, which resulted in a 2011 report. France was among the first countries to set a national framework based on this report and larger aviation bodies such as the FAA and the EASA quickly followed suit. In 2021, the FAA published a rule requiring all commercially-used UAVs and all UAVs regardless of intent weighing 250g or more to participate in Remote ID, which makes drone locations, controller locations, and other information public from takeoff to shutdown; this rule has since been challenged in the pending federal lawsuit "RaceDayQuads v. FAA".


title: Unmanned aerial vehicle

text: The export of UAVs or technology capable of carrying a 500 kg payload at least 300 km is restricted in many countries by the Missile Technology Control Regime.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The World Trade Organization (WTO) is an intergovernmental organization that regulates and facilitates international trade. With effective cooperation


title: World Trade Organization

text: in the United Nations System, governments use the organization to establish, revise, and enforce the rules that govern international trade. It officially commenced operations on 1 January 1995, pursuant to the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement, thus replacing the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) that had been established in 1948. The WTO is the world's largest international economic organization, with 164 member states representing over 98% of global trade and global GDP.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO facilitates trade in goods, services and intellectual property among participating countries by providing a framework for negotiating trade agreements, which usually aim to reduce or eliminate tariffs, quotas, and other restrictions; these agreements are signed by representatives of member governments and ratified by their legislatures. The WTO also administers independent dispute resolution for enforcing participants' adherence to trade agreements and resolving trade-related disputes. The organization prohibits discrimination between trading partners, but provides exceptions for environmental protection, national security, and other important goals.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland. Its top decision-making body is the Ministerial Conference, which is composed of all member states and usually convenes biennially; consensus is emphasized in all decisions. Day-to-day functions are handled by the General Council, made up of representatives from all members. A Secretariat of over 600 personnel, led by the Director-General and four deputies, provides administrative, professional, and technical services. The WTO's annual budget is roughly 220 million USD, which is contributed by members based on their proportion of international trade.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Studies show the WTO has boosted trade and reduced trade barriers. It has also influenced trade agreement generally; a 2017 analysis found that the vast majority of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) up to that point explicitly reference the WTO, with substantial portions of text copied from WTO agreements. Goal 10 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals also referenced WTO agreements as instruments of reducing inequality. However, critics contend that the benefits of WTO-facilitated free trade are not shared equally.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO precursor General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was established by a multilateral treaty of 23 countries in 1947 after World War II in the wake of other new multilateral institutions dedicated to international economic cooperation—such as the World Bank (founded 1944) and the International Monetary Fund (founded 1944 or 1945). A comparable international institution for trade, named the International Trade Organization never started as the U.S. and other signatories did not ratify the establishment treaty, and so GATT slowly became a "de facto" international organization.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Seven rounds of negotiations occurred under GATT (1949 to 1979). The first real GATT trade rounds (1947 to 1960) concentrated on further reducing tariffs. Then the Kennedy Round in the mid-sixties brought about a GATT anti-dumping agreement and a section on development. The Tokyo Round during the seventies represented the first major attempt to tackle trade barriers that do not take the form of tariffs, and to improve the system, adopting a series of agreements on non-tariff barriers, which in some cases interpreted existing GATT rules, and in others broke entirely new ground. Because not all GATT members accepted these plurilateral agreements, they were often informally called "codes". (The Uruguay Round amended several of these codes and turned them into multilateral commitments accepted by all WTO members. Only four remained plurilateral (those on government procurement, bovine meat, civil aircraft, and dairy products), but in 1997 WTO members agreed to terminate the bovine meat and dairy agreements, leaving only two.) Despite attempts in the mid-1950s and 1960s to establish some form of institutional mechanism for international trade, the GATT continued to operate for almost half a century as a semi-institutionalized multilateral treaty régime on a provisional basis.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Well before GATT's 40th anniversary, its members concluded that the GATT system was straining to adapt to a new globalizing world economy. In response to the problems identified in the 1982 Ministerial Declaration (structural deficiencies, spill-over impacts of certain countries' policies on world trade GATT could not manage, etc.), the eighth GATT round—known as the Uruguay Round—was launched in September 1986, in Punta del Este, Uruguay.


title: World Trade Organization

text: It was the biggest negotiating mandate on trade ever agreed: the talks aimed to extend the trading system into several new areas, notably trade in services and intellectual property, and to reform trade in the sensitive sectors of agriculture and textiles; all the original GATT articles were up for review. The Final Act concluding the Uruguay Round and officially establishing the WTO regime was signed 15 April 1994, during the ministerial meeting at Marrakesh, Morocco, and hence is known as the Marrakesh Agreement.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The GATT still exists as the WTO's umbrella treaty for trade in goods, updated as a result of the Uruguay Round negotiations (a distinction is made between "GATT 1994", the updated parts of GATT, and "GATT 1947", the original agreement which is still the heart of GATT 1994). GATT 1994 is not, however, the only legally binding agreement included via the Final Act at Marrakesh; a long list of about 60 agreements, annexes, decisions, and understandings was adopted. The agreements fall into six main parts:


title: World Trade Organization

text: In terms of the WTO's principle relating to tariff "ceiling-binding" (No. 3), the Uruguay Round has been successful in increasing binding commitments by both developed and developing countries, as may be seen in the percentages of tariffs bound before and after the 1986–1994 talks.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The highest decision-making body of the WTO, the Ministerial Conference, usually meets every two years. It brings together all members of the WTO, all of which are countries or customs unions. The Ministerial Conference can take decisions on all matters under any of the multilateral trade agreements. Some meetings, such as the inaugural ministerial conference in Singapore and the Cancun conference in 2003 involved arguments between developed and developing economies referred to as the "Singapore issues" such as agricultural subsidies; while others such as the Seattle conference in 1999 provoked large demonstrations. The fourth ministerial conference in Doha in 2001 approved China's entry to the WTO and launched the Doha Development Round which was supplemented by the sixth WTO ministerial conference (in Hong Kong) which agreed to phase out agricultural export subsidies and to adopt the European Union's Everything but Arms initiative to phase out tariffs for goods from the least developed countries. At the sixth WTO Ministerial Conference of 2005 in December, WTO launched the Aid for Trade initiative and it is specifically to assist developing countries in trade as included in the Sustainable Development Goal 8 which is to increase aid for trade support and economic growth.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The Twelfth Ministerial Conference (MC12) was due to be held in Nur-Sultan, Kazakhstan, in June 2020 but was canceled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO launched the current round of negotiations, the Doha Development Round, at the fourth ministerial conference in Doha, Qatar in November 2001. This was to be an ambitious effort to make globalization more inclusive and help the world's poor, particularly by slashing barriers and subsidies in farming. The initial agenda comprised both further trade liberalization and new rule-making, underpinned by commitments to strengthen substantial assistance to developing countries.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Progress stalled over differences between developed nations and the major developing countries on issues such as industrial tariffs and non-tariff barriers to trade particularly against and between the EU and the US over their maintenance of agricultural subsidies—seen to operate effectively as trade barriers. Repeated attempts to revive the talks proved unsuccessful, though the adoption of the Bali Ministerial Declaration in 2013 addressed bureaucratic barriers to commerce.


title: World Trade Organization

text: , the future of the Doha Round remained uncertain: the work programme lists 21 subjects in which the original deadline of 1 January 2005 was missed, and the round remains incomplete. The conflict between free trade on industrial goods and services but retention of protectionism on farm subsidies to domestic agricultural sectors (requested by developed countries) and the substantiation of fair trade on agricultural products (requested by developing countries) remain the major obstacles. This impasse has made it impossible to launch new WTO negotiations beyond the Doha Development Round. As a result, there have been an increasing number of bilateral free trade agreements between governments. there were various negotiation groups in the WTO system for the current stalemated agricultural trade negotiation.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Promotion of growth by facilitating trade is the most important function of WTO. Other important functions include:


title: World Trade Organization

text: Additionally, it is WTO's duty to review and propagate the national trade policies and to ensure the coherence and transparency of trade policies through surveillance in global economic policy-making. Another priority of the WTO is the assistance of developing, least-developed and low-income countries in transition to adjust to WTO rules and disciplines through technical cooperation and training.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The above five listings are the additional functions of the World Trade Organization. As globalization proceeds in today's society, the necessity of an International Organization to manage the trading systems has been of vital importance. As the trade volume increases, issues such as protectionism, trade barriers, subsidies, violation of intellectual property arise due to the differences in the trading rules of every nation. The World Trade Organization serves as the mediator between the nations when such problems arise. WTO could be referred to as the product of globalization and also as one of the most important organizations in today's globalized society.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO is also a center of economic research and analysis: regular assessments of the global trade picture in its annual publications and research reports on specific topics are produced by the organization. Finally, the WTO cooperates closely with the two other components of the Bretton Woods system, the IMF and the World Bank.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO establishes a framework for trade policies; it does not define or specify outcomes. That is, it is concerned with setting the rules of "trade policy." Five principles are of particular importance in understanding both the pre-1994 GATT and the WTO:


title: World Trade Organization

text: Exceptions to the MFN principle also allow for preferential treatment of developing countries, regional free trade areas and customs unions.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The highest authority of the WTO is the Ministerial Conference, which must meet at least every two years. The Ministerial Conference met most recently in June 2022 in Geneva.


title: World Trade Organization

text: In between each Ministerial Conference, the daily work is handled by three bodies whose membership is the same; they only differ by the terms of reference under which each body is constituted.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The General Council, whose Chair as of 2020 is David Walker of New Zealand, has the following subsidiary bodies which oversee committees in different areas:


title: World Trade Organization

text: The Service Council has three subsidiary bodies: financial services, domestic regulations, GATS rules, and specific commitments. The council has several different committees, working groups, and working parties. There are committees on the following: Trade and Environment; Trade and Development (Subcommittee on Least-Developed Countries); Regional Trade Agreements; Balance of Payments Restrictions; and Budget, Finance and Administration. There are working parties on the following: Accession. There are working groups on the following: Trade, debt and finance; and Trade and technology transfer.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO describes itself as "a rules-based, member-driven organization—all decisions are made by the member governments, and the rules are the outcome of negotiations among members". The WTO Agreement foresees votes where consensus cannot be reached, but the practice of consensus dominates the process of decision-making.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Richard Harold Steinberg (2002) argues that although the WTO's consensus governance model provides law-based initial bargaining, trading rounds close through power-based bargaining favoring Europe and the U.S., and may not lead to Pareto improvement.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO's dispute-settlement system "is the result of the evolution of rules, procedures and practices developed over almost half a century under the GATT 1947". In 1994, the WTO members agreed on the Understanding on Rules and Procedures Governing the Settlement of Disputes (DSU) annexed to the "Final Act" signed in Marrakesh in 1994. Dispute settlement is regarded by the WTO as the central pillar of the multilateral trading system, and as a "unique contribution to the stability of the global economy". WTO members have agreed that, if they believe fellow-members are violating trade rules, they will use the multilateral system of settling disputes instead of taking action unilaterally.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The operation of the WTO dispute settlement process involves case-specific panels appointed by the Dispute Settlement Body (DSB), the Appellate Body, The Director-General and the WTO Secretariat, arbitrators, and advisory experts.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The priority is to settle disputes, preferably through a mutually agreed solution, and provision has been made for the process to be conducted in an efficient and timely manner so that "If a case is adjudicated, it should normally take no more than one year for a panel ruling and no more than 16 months if the case is appealed... If the complainant deems the case urgent, consideration of the case should take even less time. WTO member nations are obliged to accept the process as exclusive and compulsory.


title: World Trade Organization

text: According to a 2018 study in the "Journal of Politics", states are less likely and slower to enforce WTO violations when the violations affect states in a diffuse manner. This is because states face collective action problems with pursuing litigation: they all expect other states to carry the costs of litigation. A 2016 study in "International Studies Quarterly" challenges that the WTO dispute settlement system leads to greater increases in trade.


title: World Trade Organization

text: However, the dispute settlement system cannot be used to resolve trade disputes that arise from political disagreements. When Qatar requested the establishment of a dispute panel concerning measures imposed by the UAE, other GCC countries and the US were quick to dismiss its request as a political matter, stating that national security issues were political and not appropriate for the WTO dispute system.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The process of becoming a WTO member is unique to each applicant country, and the terms of accession are dependent upon the country's stage of economic development and the current trade regime. The process takes about five years, on average, but it can last longer if the country is less than fully committed to the process or if political issues interfere. The shortest accession negotiation was that of the Kyrgyz Republic, while the longest was that of Russia, which, having first applied to join GATT in 1993, was approved for membership in December 2011 and became a WTO member on 22 August 2012. Kazakhstan also had a long accession negotiation process. The Working Party on the Accession of Kazakhstan was established in 1996 and was approved for membership in 2015. The second longest was that of Vanuatu, whose Working Party on the Accession of Vanuatu was established on 11 July 1995. After a final meeting of the Working Party in October 2001, Vanuatu requested more time to consider its accession terms. In 2008, it indicated its interest to resume and conclude its WTO accession. The Working Party on the Accession of Vanuatu was reconvened informally on 4 April 2011 to discuss Vanuatu's future WTO membership. The re-convened Working Party completed its mandate on 2 May 2011. The General Council formally approved the Accession Package of Vanuatu on 26 October 2011. On 24 August 2012, the WTO welcomed Vanuatu as its 157th member. An offer of accession is only given once consensus is reached among interested parties.


title: World Trade Organization

text: A 2017 study argues that "political ties rather than issue-area functional gains determine who joins" and shows "how geopolitical alignment shapes the demand and supply sides of membership". The "findings challenge the view that states first liberalize trade to join the GATT/WTO. Instead, democracy and foreign policy similarity encourage states to join."


title: World Trade Organization

text: A country wishing to accede to the WTO submits an application to the General Council, and has to describe all aspects of its trade and economic policies that have a bearing on WTO agreements. The application is submitted to the WTO in a memorandum which is examined by a working party open to all interested WTO Members.


title: World Trade Organization

text: After all necessary background information has been acquired, the working party focuses on issues of discrepancy between the WTO rules and the applicant's international and domestic trade policies and laws. The working party determines the terms and conditions of entry into the WTO for the applicant nation and may consider transitional periods to allow countries some leeway in complying with the WTO rules.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The final phase of accession involves bilateral negotiations between the applicant nation and other working party members regarding the concessions and commitments on tariff levels and market access for goods and services. The new member's commitments are to apply equally to all WTO members under normal non-discrimination rules, even though they are negotiated bilaterally. For instance, as a result of joining the WTO, Armenia offered a 15 per cent ceiling bound tariff rate on accessing its market for goods. Together with the tariff bindings being ad valorem there are no specific or compound rates. Moreover, there are no tariff-rate quotas on both industrial and agricultural products. Armenia's economic and trade performance growth was noted since its first review in 2010, especially its revival from the 2008 global financial crisis, with an average annual 4% GDP growth rate, despite some fluctuations. Armenia's economy was marked by low inflation, diminishing poverty, and essential progress in enhancing its macroeconomic steadiness in which trade in goods and services, which is the equivalent of 87% of GDP, played a growing role.


title: World Trade Organization

text: When the bilateral talks conclude, the working party sends to the general council or ministerial conference an accession package, which includes a summary of all the working party meetings, the Protocol of Accession (a draft membership treaty), and lists ("schedules") of the member to be commitments. Once the general council or ministerial conference approves of the terms of accession, the applicant's parliament must ratify the Protocol of Accession before it can become a member. Some countries may have faced tougher and a much longer accession process due to challenges during negotiations with other WTO members, such as Vietnam, whose negotiations took more than 11 years before it became an official member in January 2007.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO has 164 members and 25 observer governments. Liberia became the 163rd member on 14 July 2016, and Afghanistan became the 164th member on 29 July 2016. In addition to states, the European Union, and each EU country in its own right, is a member. WTO members do not have to be fully independent states; they need only be a customs territory with full autonomy in the conduct of their external commercial relations. Thus Hong Kong has been a member since 1995 (as "Hong Kong, China" since 1997) predating the People's Republic of China, which joined in 2001 after 15 years of negotiations. Taiwan acceded to the WTO in 2002 as the "Separate Customs Territory of Taiwan, Penghu, Kinmen and Matsu." The WTO Secretariat omits the official titles (such as Counsellor, First Secretary, Second Secretary and Third Secretary) of the members of Taiwan's Permanent Mission to the WTO, except for the titles of the Permanent Representative and the Deputy Permanent Representative.


title: World Trade Organization

text: As of 2007, WTO member states represented 96.4% of global trade and 96.7% of global GDP. Iran, followed by Algeria, are the economies with the largest GDP and trade outside the WTO, using 2005 data. With the exception of the Holy See, observers must start accession negotiations within five years of becoming observers. A number of international intergovernmental organizations have also been granted observer status to WTO bodies. Ten UN members have no affiliation with the WTO.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO oversees about 60 different agreements which have the status of international legal texts. Member countries must sign and ratify all WTO agreements on accession. A discussion of some of the most important agreements follows.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The Agreement on Agriculture came into effect with the establishment of the WTO at the beginning of 1995. The AoA has three central concepts, or "pillars": domestic support, market access and export subsidies.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The General Agreement on Trade in Services was created to extend the multilateral trading system to service sector, in the same way as the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) provided such a system for merchandise trade. The agreement entered into force in January 1995.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights sets down minimum standards for many forms of intellectual property (IP) regulation. It was negotiated at the end of the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in 1994.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The Agreement on the Application of Sanitary and Phytosanitary Measures—also known as the SPS Agreement—was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of GATT, and entered into force with the establishment of the WTO at the beginning of 1995. Under the SPS agreement, the WTO sets constraints on members' policies relating to food safety (bacterial contaminants, pesticides, inspection, and labeling) as well as animal and plant health (imported pests and diseases).


title: World Trade Organization

text: The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade is an international treaty of the World Trade Organization. It was negotiated during the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade and entered into force with the establishment of the WTO at the end of 1994. The object ensures that technical negotiations and standards, as well as testing and certification procedures, do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade".


title: World Trade Organization

text: The Agreement on Customs Valuation, formally known as the Agreement on Implementation of Article VII of GATT, prescribes methods of customs valuation that Members are to follow. Chiefly, it adopts the "transaction value" approach.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The procedures for the appointment of the WTO director-general were updated in January 2003, and include quadrennial terms. Additionally, there are four deputy directors-general. under director-general Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the four deputy directors-general are:


title: World Trade Organization

text: In May 2020, Director-General Roberto Azevedo announced that he would step down on 31 August 2020. , a nomination and selection process is currently under way with eight candidates and the final selection is expected on 7 November 2020 with the consensus of 164 member countries. A strong consensus had formed around the candidacy of Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala but on 28 October it emerged that the US representative was opposed to her appointment.


title: World Trade Organization

text: WTO members made history on 15 February 2021 when the General Council agreed by consensus to select Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala of Nigeria as the organization's seventh Director-General.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Okonjo-Iweala will became the first woman and the first African to be chosen as Director-General. Her term, renewable, will expire on 31 August 2025.


title: World Trade Organization

text: The WTO derives most of the income for its annual budget from contributions by its Members. These are established according to a formula based on their share of international trade.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Although tariffs and other trade barriers have been significantly reduced thanks to GATT and WTO, the promise that free trade will accelerate economic growth, reduce poverty, and increase people's incomes has been questioned by many critics. Some prominent skeptics cite the example of El Salvador. In the early 1990s, they removed all quantitative barriers to imports and also cut tariffs. However, the country's economic growth remained weak. On the other hand, Vietnam which only began reforming its economy in the late 1980s, saw a great deal of success by deciding to follow China's economic model and liberalizing slowly along with implementing safeguards for domestic commerce. Vietnam has largely succeeded in accelerating economic growth and reducing poverty without immediately removing substantial trade barriers.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Economist Ha-Joon Chang argues that there is a "paradox" in neo-liberal beliefs regarding free trade because the economic growth of developing countries was higher in the 1960–1980 period compared to the 1980–2000 period even though its trade policies are now far more liberal than before. Also, there are results of research that show that new countries actively reduce trade barriers only after becoming significantly rich. From the results of the study, WTO critics argue that trade liberalization does not guarantee economic growth and certainly not poverty alleviation.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Critics also put forward the view that the benefits derived from WTO facilitated free trade are not shared equally. This criticism is usually supported by historical accounts of the outcomes of negotiations and/or data showing that the gap between the rich and the poor continues to widen, especially in China and India, where economic inequality is growing even though economic growth is very high. In addition, WTO approaches aiming to reduce trade barriers can harm developing countries. Trade liberalization that is too early without any prominent domestic barriers is feared to trap the developing economies in the primary sector, which often does not require skilled labor. And when these developing countries decide to advance their economy utilizing industrialization, the premature domestic industry cannot immediately skyrocket as expected, making it difficult to compete with other countries whose industries are more advanced.


title: World Trade Organization

text: Studies show that the WTO boosted trade. Research shows that in the absence of the WTO, the average country would face an increase in tariffs on their exports by 32 percentage points. The dispute settlement mechanism in the WTO is one way in which trade is increased.


title: World Trade Organization

text: According to a 2017 study in the "Journal of International Economic Law", "nearly all recent preferential trade agreements (PTAs) reference the WTO explicitly, often dozens of times across multiple chapters. Likewise, in many of these same PTAs we find that substantial portions of treaty language—sometime the majority of a chapter—is copied verbatim from a WTO agreement... the presence of the WTO in PTAs has increased over time."


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: Pieces of Her is an American thriller drama streaming television series created by Charlotte Stoudt, based on the 2018 novel of the same name by Karin Slaughter, that premiered on Netflix on March 4, 2022.


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: Between February 27, 2022 and April 3, 2022 the series was watched for 227,470,000 hours on Netflix globally according to Netflix top 10s.


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: "Pieces of Her" follows the story of Andy, a 30-year-old woman who is caught in a deadly mass shooting at a local diner. Moments later, she witnesses her mother, Laura, violently eliminate the threat with ease. As Andy begins to unravel her mother's actions on that day, her perspective on their entire familial relationship takes a new turn. Soon, figures from her mother's past reappear, and she is forced to escape. On the journey, she attempts to find the truth that her mother buried long ago.


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: On February 5, 2019, it was announced that Netflix had given the production an 8-episode series order. The series was created and executive produced by Lesli Linka Glatter, Charlotte Stoudt and Bruna Papandrea. Production companies involved with the series consist of Made Up Stories and Endeavor Content. Stoudt is also credited as the writer and showrunner of the series, whilst Minkie Spiro directed all eight episodes. The series premiered on March 4, 2022.


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: In February 2020, Toni Collette and Bella Heathcote were cast in starring roles. In May 2020, it was announced that David Wenham was cast in a starring role. In January 2021, Jessica Barden, Joe Dempsie, Jacob Scipio, and Omari Hardwick joined the main cast. In February 2021, Gil Birmingham, Terry O’Quinn and Calum Worthy joined the cast in recurring roles. In April 2021, Nicholas Burton and Aaron Jeffery were cast in recurring capacities.


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: Principal photography for the series was originally expected to begin on March 16, 2020 and conclude on July 17, 2020 in Burnaby, British Columbia. Following an AU$21.58 million investment from the Australian Government, shared with the production of "Spiderhead" to boost the local economy during the COVID-19 pandemic, the production was lured to Sydney, Australia, where filming took place in early 2021.


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reported a 50% approval rating with an average rating of 5.7/10, based on 34 critic reviews. The website's critics consensus reads, "While Toni Collette heroically tries to bring "Pieces of Her" together, this lumbering mystery is too bogged down by backstory to satisfyingly cohere." Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned a score of 52 out of 100 based on 18 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Pieces of Her (TV series)

text: Angie Han writing for "The Hollywood Reporter" praised Collette's performance throughout the series as "fascinating to watch". Han also noted that the series eventually "loses steam" after the first three episodes, describing Heathcote's character as merely "a mechanism propelling the narrative forward" with little to no character development.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: The title, "Vinland Saga", would evoke associations to Vinland as described in two Norse sagas. "Vinland Saga", however, begins in Dane-controlled England at the start of the 11th century, and features the Danish invaders of England, commonly known as Vikings. The story combines a dramatization of King Cnut the Great's historical rise to power with a revenge plot centered on the historical explorer Thorfinn, the son of a murdered ex-warrior who serves under a group of mercenaries responsible for the deed.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: A 24-episode anime television series adaptation, animated by Wit Studio, aired on NHK General TV from July to December 2019. A second season, animated by MAPPA, is set to premiere on Tokyo MX and BS11 in January 2023.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: As of August 2022, "Vinland Saga" had over 7 million copies in circulation. The series won the 36th Kodansha Manga Award for Best General Manga and the Grand Prize of the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival. The anime adaptation was widely praised, with several critics calling it one of the best anime series of 2019.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: "Vinland Saga" is initially set mostly in 1013 AD England, which has been mostly conquered by the Danish King Sweyn Forkbeard. As King Sweyn nears death, his sons, Prince Harald and Prince Canute, are arguing over his succession. The story draws elements from historical accounts of the period such as "The Flateyjarbók", "The Saga of the Greenlanders" and "The Saga of Erik the Red".


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: In 1013 AD, the young Thorfinn works for Askeladd in the hopes of challenging to a duel and kill him in revenge for his father's death in 1002 AD when they were attacked by him on a journey to England. Askeladd's company found employment in 1013 AD as mercenaries under the Danish King Sweyn in the Danish invasion of London by the British and Thorkell the Tall, Thorfinn's fight-loving uncle who served with Thors in the Jomsvikings. When Thorkel takes Sweyn's son Prince Canute captive, Askeladd's company capture the prince with the intent of selling him to either side for a profit. Askeladd changes his plan to act on his personal agenda as a descendant of Artorius to secure his mother's homeland of Wales from being invaded. While Askeladd succeeds in making Canute assertive, he learned that Sweyn intended for his son to die so that his oldest son Harald would succeed him and prevent a schism among the Danes. Askeladd is ultimately forced to sacrifice himself by killing Sweyn during an audience when the king announces his plan to invade Wales, feigning madness as Canute kills him, so the prince could take over Dane-occupied England without question. But Thorfinn scars Canute in an attempt on the prince's life and is sentenced by an empathic Canute with life in enslavement.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: A year after Askeladd's death, Thorfinn is working on a farm owned by Ketil, a rich farmer who treats slaves well. He later befriends another slave named Einar. With Einar's help along with Snake, the farm's head of security, and Ketil's father Sverker, Thorfinn learns to let go of his dark past and is encouraged by dreams of his father, Thors, and Askeladd to pursue a life of peace and away from the Vikings' violent lifestyle. Canute had become both King of England and Denmark after poisoning his brother Harald. Canute begins his campaign with Ketil's farm, tricking Ketil's sons, Thorgil and Olmar, into justifying the seizure with Ketil's men easily defeated by Canute's Jomsvikings. Thorfinn confronts Canute to convince him to spare the farmers. Canute renounces his claim to the farm after seeing the pacifist Thorfinn has become. With Thorfinn and Einar now freed, they say their goodbyes to Sverker and Snake before sailing back to Iceland with Leif, an old friend of Thorfinn's father.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Reunited with his mother and sister, Thorfinn explains his intent to settle Vinland and build a new life of peace. In order to gain the funding for the trip to Vinland, Thorfinn, Leif, Einar and Leif's adopted son, Thorfinn "Bug-Eyes", plan to travel to Greece and sell narwhal horns there. Thorfinn's crew is later joined by others and, after attempting to fight them, are captured by some Jomsvikings and end up in service under Thorkell. Thorfinn recommences his journey with his crew. Thorfinn draws away the assassins around a set of islands while the rest of the crew escape toward Odense. Two spies among them take Thorfinn and Hild to meet Captain Vagn, the leader of a rebel camp of Jomsvikings who seek to usurp power from Floki before it goes into the hands of Floki's grandson Baldr. The surviving men of Vagn's camp swear allegiance to Thorkell who promises revenge against Floki for using Garm as an assassin. A series of battles erupt between Thorkell and Floki's forces at Jomsburg. Thorkell's army defeats Floki and captures him and Baldr, who was earlier revealed to be Thorfinn's cousin.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Thorfinn is temporarily made leader of the Jomsvikings and, with help from Thorkell, carries out orders from Canute to disband the Jomsvikings and spare Floki and Baldr from execution. Floki and Baldr are sent into exile. Gudrid, admitting her feelings for Thorfinn, talks Thorkell out of a duel that Thorfinn promised him and they're allowed to leave and continue their journey to Greece. Sigurd returns home without Gudrid, but realizes he never had romantic feelings for her and sets her free.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Two years later, Thorfinn's crew return to Iceland with the wealth they acquired from selling the narwhal horns. Thorfinn and Gudrid marry and raise Karli as their son. With the resources promised by Halfdan, Thorfinn begins to assemble a crew to colonize Vinland. Thorfinn struggles to achieve peace by creating a land where weapons are not needed but his ideals are often confronted by underlings. Canute himself appears in the lands but Thorfinn opposes any attack towards the innocent. Upon reaching Vinland, the crew starts establishing farms to live with the natives in fear of him. When the natives confront Thorfinn, Thorfinn manages to make peace with them despite their differences. Four years later, Thorfinn is expecting a second son but still struggles with bonding with the natives.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Makoto Yukimura began serializing "Vinland Saga" in April 2005 in Kodansha's "Weekly Shōnen Magazine", where it ran until October 2005. After a two-month hiatus, it resumed serialization late December 2005 in the "seinen" magazine "Monthly Afternoon", also owned by Kodansha. This switch was caused by Yukimura, who found he could not keep up a long-term weekly production schedule. He sometimes works 18 hours as one of his techniques requires a lot of time. He also said he creates and submits one page each day to the publisher. He states how tens of thousands of people wish to work creating manga and the competition results in high quality manga production. According to Yukimura, the series is divided into four story arcs; the "War" arc; the "Slave" arc; and the "Eastern Expedition" arc. The fourth and final arc was not given its own distinct name. In November 2019, Yukimura announced that the manga has entered its final arc; it will be more than 50 chapters long and more than 1,000 pages, and will take "several years to write".


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: When he first started drawing, Yukimura expected it to take 10 years, but it will still take 14 years to finish. He had calculated that there would be 20 volumes, with each part consisting of four volumes, with five volumes each, but then the amount increased to over 22 volumes. From the beginning of the serialization, he was at a loss, wondering when he could write the actual arc of Vinland. Because he often had problems with handling the story, Yukimura looks to Hajime Isayama for his work on "Attack on Titan" due to how he was able to handle the entire plot until the end especially since its 20th volume. He started drawing fully digitally at the chapter 168 due to Covid restrictions. However, he does inking in analog, then scans and does the finishing work digitally.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Yukimura was inspired by anime series about Vikings that he watched as a child, and since then he has been fascinated by them. Their culture and way of life was something new and fresh. He learned, for instance, that if somebody killed while intoxicated he could get a lower sentence or go free. He travelled to Norway and Scandinavia in 2003 to conduct research on Vikings. It was difficult due to the language barrier as he speaks no Norwegian and little English. He was able to see Oseberg Ship which he says is the most beautiful ship he has ever seen. Yukimura compares Vikings to Japanese pirates as he would find more differences than similarities between Vikings and samurai. The author believes Vikings are more free and honest about their own feelings; Samurai are more quiet as a people, and were obedient towards their master or own honour. As research he visited Denmark, Iceland, France, Britain and Canada (and regretted that his story was not found closer to home). He also makes full-scale models because he wants materials as realistic as possible, but the production of those models puts a lot of pressure on his time schedule.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: While the Vikings are recognized as heroes, Yukimura wanted to explain the harsh realities living in their era. Because of the harsh violence, the Thorfinn was always drawn with a serious facial expression in the first arc as well as with self-deprecation in the following arc where he pitied himself for his sins. As a result, the character of Thorkell is characterized as more comical and this makes the battles more enjoyable to draw. Meanwhile, Yukimura was often told by his editors not to draw Canute with a beard as they claimed it would not make the series popular as a result of ruining the bishonen archetype he represented. He rejected that idea, claiming that every man had a beard in that era. Meanwhile, Thorfinn becomes an adult in the second story arc, but he shaves his beard as Yukimura did not want him to look strong.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: The real Thorfinn attracted Yukimura after reading a book about him. With little historical information about Thorfinn, it motivated him to act as the protagonist because he would have more freedom. Yukimura believes Thorfinn's growth with Askeladd was well executed. He said the character of Askeladd became ambiguous even to himself as a result of the many sides he exposes in the manga. Yukimura states that when writing the characters, most of them are who Thorfinn needs with Askeladd being the exception as he is both Thorfinn's mentor and enemy. They have a seeming father-son relationship as at the beginning of the series, Yukimura was planning Askeladd's death and Thorfinn's reaction to it. Another complicated relationship involves Einar and Thorfinn as the two cannot help each other due to dark narrative involvement. One of Yukimura's themes is learning the effects of revenge on others. Yukimura regrets how he developed the character Einar.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Several characters are based on real life. The historical Leif Eiriksson is a famous Norsemen. However, Yukimura imagined that he would have had a very weak nature as a warrior so he instead fleshed him out as a strong adventurer. In retrospect, Yukimura found that the series features prominently male characters as the female ones die or are given little screen time. One of the few exceptions is Gudrid—she is based on a historical figure with the same name who makes a major impact on Thorfinn's life and the author tries to be faithful to such event. Meanwhile, the revengeful hunter Hild reminds Thorfinn of his sins as a Viking in the same way as in the start of the series—with Thorfinn wanting revenge on Askeladd.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: In a January 2008 interview, Yukimura revealed that he was inspired to enter the manga industry by reading the manga "Fist of the North Star" as a boy. In the same interview, he said he had always wanted to produce a series which reflected the same themes of "strength and justice". Yukimura's editor was against the idea of Thorfinn being a slave so he was changed into a Viking. The author agreed as he wanted Thorfinn to understand the causes of tragedy by his being a Viking in later parts of the narrative. He wanted the protagonist to be shaved by violence, often having poor luck.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: While the series is notable for its degree of violence normally caused by Vikings, Yukimura claimed he hates the concept of violence. As a result, a key element in writing this story was relaxing his modern sense of morality. The handling of the Vikings was that they admired the strength from each of their mates with Askeladd being respected as a result. Nevertheless, there are several betrayals. The anime added more scenes involving Thorfinn joining Askeladd's forces as well as how he becomes a skilled warrior which the manga author appreciated. The writer convinced the director to make the anime different from the manga in order to tell the story chronologically in contrast to how the manga starts with an already teenage Thorfinn remembering his childhood and father's death. Another addition was the first scene where Thors fights alongside Thorkell before his retiring from the forces. In order to adapt the boat scenes, the staff used 3D animation with the action and cameraset at the work. The team was also careful with how adapting the first fight between Thorfinn and Thorkell. Nevertheless, Seko believes Yukimura's version of the narrative is stronger. Yukimura's sensation during the Cold War and the September 11 attacks were projected onto Thorfinn's character who is traumatized by his actions as a Viking and thus decides to found Vinland in order to make a land where people from different races are able to live together peacefully.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: One of the earliest concepts when drawing Thorfinn was to make a story about a slave. Despite being a slave, Thorfinn would face several challenges and reach his goal. Yukimura was inspired by King of Norway Olaf Tryggvason who lost his position as king to become a slave but managed to return to his original position. Unlike Tryggvason who was extremely popular, Thorfinn was written to face several more problems. Yukimura wanted Thorfinn to learn about oppression and human afflictions. In retrospect, Yukimura stated that Thorfinn does not have a notable skill or imposing physique. In order to stand out as a main character, he was written to have the experience the pain human beings suffer. After Thorfinn is no longer a slave, the character continues having an arc across his growth to the point that he might look unrecognizable.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: "Vinland Saga" is written and illustrated by Makoto Yukimura. The series was first serialized in Kodansha's "shōnen" manga magazine "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" from April 13 to October 19, 2005. The series was transferred to Kodansha's "seinen" manga magazine "Monthly Afternoon", starting in the February 2006 issue, released on December 24, 2005. Kodansha has collected its chapters into individual "tankōbon" (bound volumes). The first two volumes were initially released under the Shōnen Magazine Comics imprint, and then reissued under the Afternoon imprint after the manga's serialization switch. As of May 23, 2022, twenty-six volumes have been published.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: The series is licensed in English by Kodansha USA, and it is being released in a two-in-one hardcover edition. The first volume was published on October 14, 2013. As of December 14, 2021, twelve volumes have been released. During their panel at Anime NYC 2022, Kodansha USA announced that they will release a 3-in-1 hardcover deluxe edition of the series.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: An anime television series adaptation of "Vinland Saga" was announced in March 2018. Produced by Twin Engine, Production I.G, Wit Studio and Kodansha, the series is animated by Wit Studio and directed by Shūhei Yabuta, with Hiroshi Seko handling series composition, Takahiko Abiru designing the characters and Yutaka Yamada composing the music. The series ran for 24 episodes on NHK General TV. The anime premiered on July 7, 2019, with the first three episodes. Due to the pending arrival of Typhoon Faxai on September 8, 2019, Episode 10 was delayed due to broadcasting news, and resumed on September 15, 2019. Due to the airing of the World Para Athletics Championship sports tournament on NHK, Episode 18 was delayed and resumed on November 17, 2019. The series finished on December 29, 2019. The first opening theme is "MUKANJYO." by Survive Said The Prophet while the first ending theme is "Torches" by Aimer. The second opening theme is "Dark Crow" by Man with a Mission and the second ending theme is "Drown" by milet.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Amazon streams the series in worldwide on their Prime Video service. Sentai Filmworks released the series on home video on August 31, 2021, with both a new translation and English dub. A different English dub, produced by VSI Los Angeles, previously launched on Netflix in Japan. MVM Entertainment licensed the series in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It will also be streamed on Netflix globally beginning July 7, 2022, as well as Crunchyroll and HiDive on select territories, and Korean streaming site KT Olleh on June 7.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: When the anime finale aired in Japan, director Shuhei Yabuta wrote, "This big incident changed everything for Thorfinn, but his story will continue!". On July 7, 2021, Twin Engine announced that a second season is in production. Shūhei Yabuta is returning as director, and Takahiko Abiru is returning as character designer. It will be animated by MAPPA and is set to premiere on Tokyo MX, BS11, and GBS on January 10, 2023. The season will run for 24 episodes. The second season will be streamed globally on both Netflix excluding China, and Crunchyroll excluding Asia. The opening theme is "River" by Anonymouz, while the ending theme is "Without Love" by LMYK.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Yukimura drew a seven-page crossover manga chapter between the series and the "Assassin's Creed Valhalla" video game that was uploaded to Ubisoft's website on October 23, 2020.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: "Vinland Saga" has been commercially successful in Japan, with combined sales of 1.2 million copies for the first five volumes as of June 2008. It had over 5 million copies in print as of 2018. Several volumes have appeared on the Taiyosha top ten best-selling manga list. As of August 2022, the manga had over 7 million copies in circulation.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: "The Comics Journal" lamented that "Vinland Saga" had yet to be licensed for publication in a 2006 article highlighting worthy unlicensed manga and scanlation groups. Despite this, the series attracted attention in the international manga community. The first volume was reviewed by "MangaCast" in 2005. This review praised "Vinland Saga" for its fluid action sequences, remarking how well author Yukimura made the transition to the action genre from his previous work "Planetes". The panel composition, realistically barbaric violence, and attention to detail in constructing the setting were highlighted and compared with those found in Kentaro Miura's long-running series "Berserk". The reviewer's primary criticism was that he found he had to suspend his disbelief more often than he would have liked to in a historical fiction series. In addition, he worried that the then-upcoming switch to monthly serialization would slow series production "to a crawl".


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Upon its official release, the first volume was reviewed by Rebecca Silverman for "Anime News Network". She described it as a "deeply engrossing book" and praised it for its attention to detail and "excellent period detail" in its depiction of medieval times, but felt the art was "a bit generic shounen" and expressed disappointment at the lack of interesting female characters. Johanna Draper Carlson of "Comics Worth Reading" described the action in the first volume as "fast-paced, well-illustrated, and detailed" but "didn't transcend its premise"; she was instead more impressed by the scenes depicting family life, saying "that's where the insightful character work I expected from Yukimura came through." In a review of the second volume, Carlson changed her assessment, finding the jockeying and intrigue between competing factions to be compelling, and praised the series for showing how "all this battle, visually astounding and emotionally exciting as it may be, has a human cost". Carlson also praised the scenes depicting domestic life as providing grounding context for the story, as well as weaving in religion and politics, finding "Vinland Saga" "a fascinating read on multiple levels".


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Following Askebadd's death, critics were surprised by Thorfinn's quieter personality and noted that despite his life as a slave, the plot manages to make his life with other slaves interesting. Sportskeeda noted that Thorfinn's character arc into a pacifist is highly notable in how it changes his characterization to the point of calling it one of most interesting from "seinen" manga. The romantic relationship between Thorfinn and Gugrid surprised "Manga News" but still appreciated the handling of their wedding ceremony which gave the narrative a lighter narrative for a famous dark series. "Manga Sanctuary" agreed, finding Thorfinn to live to his father's legacy during his quest while finding his new found family appealing not only including his wife Gugrid but also his adopted son who often defends hims.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Manga author Hajime Isayama said that Thorfinn is his favorite character from "Vinland Saga" due to his humanity and guilt. He got into "Vinland Saga" after watching the anime adaptation of "Planetes".


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: The manga was nominated for the 1st Manga Taisho award in 2008. "Vinland Saga" was awarded the Grand Prize of the Manga Division at the 13th Japan Media Arts Festival in 2009; It was also a Jury Recommended work at the 25th edition in 2022. It won the 36th Kodansha Manga Award for Best General Manga in 2012.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: The anime adaptation of "Vinland Saga" was awarded Anime of the Year in the 6th Anime Trending Awards. The anime series was selected as "Best Drama" while receiving eight other nominations including "Anime of the Year" at the 4th Crunchyroll Anime Awards. IGN listed "Vinland Saga" among the best anime series of the 2010s. In a poll conducted by Kadokawa Game Linkage of the most satisfying series of 2019, "Vinland Saga" ranked in ninth place. Several writers from "Anime News Network" also listed the series as one of the best ones from 2019; with James Beckett listing Askeladd as best character.


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Rafael Motamayor of "Polygon" praised the anime series and compared it to "Vikings". Motamayor commended the character development shown in its first three episodes and ultimately called it an epic story that shows "the horrors of being a Viking at the turn of the 11th century, while also serving as a coming-of-age tale set against the background of a bloody and thrilling war". Gerald Rathkolb of "Otaku USA" called "Vinland Saga" a "story of a long, brilliantly written slow-burn revenge story" and named it one of the best anime series of 2019. Rathkolb wrote: "[It] is one of those rare anime that could have appeal outside of the anime sphere because of its setting and focus on complex characters and the excellent political intrigue ever-present in the show. It comes with my highest recommendation". Nick Creamer from "Anime News Network" also delivered a positive review, praising the themes, action scenes and characters, stating "No one has any enemies, is one of "Vinland Saga"'s principal lessons, a prayer of social goodwill that Thors complements with his dream of a distant, shimmering Vinland, a land free of strife and suffering. But "Vinland Saga" is not a sentimental work, and its conflicts stay mired in the blood and dirt of a country at war. Thors' idealistic prayer is quickly supplemented by a new moral, courtesy of the raider and mercenary lord Askeladd: "everyone is a slave, even if they can't see the chains." It's a story suffused with a thematic ambition and sharpness of perspective that raises its high above its genre peers. Populated with rich, sympathetic characters and adorned by breathtaking action highlights, it is a rich and rewarding adventure that might just inspire you to challenge the conditions of your own life. Beautiful, brutal, and fiercely intelligent. Succeeds effortlessly as a propulsive action vehicle, while also offering sharp commentary on human nature, remarkably characters, and a harsh yet beautifully realized world. "Vinland Saga" is one of the best anime of 2019".


title: Vinland Saga (manga)

text: Yukimura praised the adaptation, believing that it smoothed out pacing issues present in the original manga, and that anime's staff understood the story better than he did. He further recommended that people watch the anime before picking up the manga.


title: Paraphilia

text: Paraphilia (previously known as sexual perversion and sexual deviation) is the experience of intense sexual arousal to atypical objects, situations, fantasies, behaviors, or individuals. It has also been defined as sexual interest in anything other than a consenting human partner.


title: Paraphilia

text: There is no scientific consensus for any precise border between unusual sexual interests and paraphilic ones. There is debate over which, if any, of the paraphilias should be listed in diagnostic manuals, such as the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM) or the International Classification of Diseases (ICD).


title: Paraphilia

text: The number and taxonomy of paraphilia is under debate; one source lists as many as 549 types of paraphilia. The DSM-5 has specific listings for eight paraphilic disorders. Several sub-classifications of the paraphilias have been proposed, and some argue that a fully dimensional, spectrum or complaint-oriented approach would better reflect the evidence.


title: Paraphilia

text: Many terms have been used to describe atypical sexual interests, and there remains debate regarding technical accuracy and perceptions of stigma. Sexologist John Money popularized the term "paraphilia" as a non-pejorative designation for unusual sexual interests. Money described paraphilia as "a sexuoerotic embellishment of, or alternative to the official, ideological norm." Psychiatrist Glen Gabbard writes that despite efforts by Stekel and Money, "the term "paraphilia" remains pejorative in most circumstances."