title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" was released for consoles and Windows in North America on November 5, 2007, in Australia on November 7, 2007, and in Europe on November 9, 2007. The Mac OS X version of the game was developed by Aspyr and released on September 26, 2008. It was released on the Mac App Store on January 16, 2011. It was rated 15 by the BBFC, M for Mature by the ESRB, MA 15+ by the OFLC, 16+ by the PEGI, and 18 by the USK. The Wii port of the game, titled "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – Reflex Edition", was developed by Treyarch and released on November 10, 2009, alongside "" and "".


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: As part of an exclusivity deal between Microsoft and Activision, multiplayer map packs for the "Call of Duty" franchise, beginning with "Modern Warfare", were released first on Xbox 360. The deal would ultimately last until "" in 2015, which introduces a new deal with Sony and PlayStation platforms.


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: Infinity Ward released the Variety Map Pack for the Xbox 360 on April 4, 2008. It includes the multiplayer maps "Killhouse", "Creek", "Chinatown", and "Broadcast". The same map pack was released for the PlayStation 3 on April 24, 2008. The Variety Map Pack was downloaded by over one million people in its first nine days of release, a record for paid Xbox Live downloadable content, valued at US$10 million. It was released as a free download for Windows on June 5, 2008, sponsored by Nvidia, along with patch 1.6. A further patch for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game was announced over a year later in August 2009; the patch primarily addressed online multiplayer exploits. Patch 1.7 was released in June 2008. This patch can be applied to the Game of the Year edition directly with no prior patches. Earlier versions must have patch 1.6 applied first.


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" received "universal acclaim" on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC versions, and "generally favorable reviews" for the Wii version, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The gameplay has been cited by reviewers to have brought the genre to "a new level of immersion and intensity that we had never seen before." GameSpot gave a favorable review for "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare", saying that the "high quality of that campaign and its terrific multiplayer options make "Call of Duty 4" a fantastic package." "Official Xbox Magazine" praised the single player campaign, with even greater praise for the multiplayer mode which makes the game an "instant-classic". "X-Play" commented that "It may not revolutionize the shooter genre, but it comes damn close to perfecting it." "GamePro" claims that "the amazingly deep multiplayer rivals" Halo 3" in terms of reach and scope."


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: The game's story has received a considerable amount of acclaim from reviewers. "GamePro" notes that "the intense single-player campaign offers up an action packed experience that features a tremendously compelling narrative; there are moments in the game that will send chills down your spine." GameSpot mentioned that the fact the "single-player campaign is over in a flash" as the only major flaw. While "IGN" described the campaign as "still very linear" like that of its predecessors, "eschewing the concept of sandbox gameplay", it noted that this resulted in "a much richer, more focused experience" with "beautifully scripted set pieces." "IGN" Voodoo Extreme similarly remarked that it "virtually plays on a rail, but that's part of its charm." In contrast to later entries in the "Call of Duty" franchise, Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw of "Zero Punctuation" gave the game a positive review, praising how it "never sacrifices gameplay for story, or vice versa" and that it featured "less of the smarmy, black-and-white, 'My Country, 'Tis of Thee' jingoism that turns me off most war games".


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: Nevertheless, the game has also received criticism. "Xbox World 360" stated "It's smoke and mirrors and a host of cheap tricks", commenting on the notion that the game did not revolutionize the genre. "Pelit" also remarked that "the structure of the single player game should ... have been updated" and that "barging from one invisible checkpoint to the next throughout the whole campaign just isn't good enough anymore."


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: "Modern Warfare – Reflex Edition" was ported by Treyarch. The Wii version of "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" has fewer features than the other console versions. It does not support split-screen multiplayer, and the graphics are not as developed. However, it supports co-operative gameplay in the campaign on a single screen. At any moment, a second Wii remote can be activated giving the second player their own aiming crosshairs. The game received an aggregated score of 76% on Metacritic. "IGN" gave the Wii version of the game, "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare – Reflex Edition", a score of 7.0, saying the visuals and pointer controls are not as polished as the Wii version of "", though they did mention the customization options and multiplayer are impressive. "Official Nintendo Magazine" gave it 80%, praising it for packing everything from its next-gen counterpart, but again criticizing the visuals. GameTrailers gave the game an 8.8, saying that despite some sacrifices, it retains everything good from its original version. "Game Informer" scored the game at a 6.5, stating that while the game was rather poor graphically, even by Wii standards, the bigger problem was the Wii remote, stating that it did not have enough buttons to support "Modern Warfare" control scheme, and also that it was quite imprecise, contrasting it with the dual analog system used by the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions, and the mouse and keyboard system on the Windows version of the game. "GameSpot" gave the game an 8.5, stating that the online was as addictive as the other versions, they also said that the controls "are precise and customizable enough to let you be all you can be".


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" spawned two sequels: "" and "", which were released in 2009 and 2011, respectively. A remastered version of "Modern Warfare", titled "", was developed by Raven Software. The remaster was first released as part of several special editions of "" when that game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, followed by a standalone release for PlayStation 4 in June 2017, and for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One in July 2017. A reboot of all three "Modern Warfare" installments, developed by Infinity Ward and simply titled "", was released in October 2019.


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: Before "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" was released, it was predicted to sell even more copies than the highly successful "Halo 3"; it had received reviews as high as "Halo 3"s, it was launching on three systems as opposed to one for "Halo 3", and demand for the game led to a wide range of retailers only having enough available to satisfy pre-orders. It fulfilled the prediction and the Xbox 360 version became the best-selling video game in the United States from November 2007 to January 2008 according to the NPD Group. The Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 versions would go on to sell 1.57 million and 444,000 units, respectively, in the United States in November 2007. 1.47 million units of the Xbox 360 version were sold in December 2007; the game sold 331,000 copies for the Xbox 360 and 140,000 copies for the PlayStation 3 in January 2008. The Xbox 360 version was the third best-selling video game of 2007 in the U.S. with 3.04 million units sold, behind "Halo 3", which sold 4.82 million units, according to the NPD Group. By January 2008, "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" had sold more than 7 million copies worldwide, and was the best-selling game of 2007. On June 3, 2008, Infinity Ward reported that the game had sold over 10 million units. During a May 2009 conference call, Activision announced that the game has sold 13 million copies, surpassing "Super Mario Galaxy" as the best selling game released that week of November 2007. By November 2013, the game had sold 15.7 million copies.


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" was widely distributed online in the form of infringing copies. Robert Bowling, Community Manager at Infinity Ward stated, "We pulled some disturbing numbers this past week about the amount of PC players currently playing Multiplayer... What wasn't fantastic was the percentage of those numbers who were playing on stolen copies of the game on stolen/cracked CD keys of pirated copies."


title: Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

text: "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare" received awards from various gaming sites and publications. Both GameSpot and GameTrailers gave the game the Best Graphics of E3 2007 award, and the Best PlayStation 3 Game of 2007 award, and later ranked it as the third best first-person shooter on its "Top 10 FPS Games Ever!" list. It gained high praise from both video game magazine "GamePro" and GameSpy, having been named the Best Overall Game of 2007 by the former, and Game of the Year by the latter. Game Critics also named the game "Best Action Game". From other authorities such as IGN and "X-play", and the "Spike Video Game Awards", the game won awards for areas such as Best Sound Design, Best Shooter of 2007, and Best Military Game. From the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences, the game won Console Game of the Year, Action game of the Year, and Overall Game of the Year. From the British Academy Video Games Awards, the game also won Best Gameplay of the Year, Best Story and Character of the Year, and People's Choice Game of the Year. The game was awarded with the Academy of Video Games Awards Game of the Year 2007 Award. In 2010, the readers of "PlayStation Official Magazine" voted it the 7th greatest PlayStation title ever released.


title: Maghreb

text: The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, is the western part of North Africa and the Arab world. The region includes Algeria, Libya, Mauritania (also considered part of West Africa), Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb also includes the disputed territory of Western Sahara (controlled mostly by Morocco and partly by the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) and the Spanish cities Ceuta and Melilla. As of 2018, the region had a population of over 100 million people.


title: Maghreb

text: Through the 18th and 19th centuries, English sources often referred to the region as the Barbary Coast or the Barbary States, a term derived from the demonym of the Berbers. Sometimes, the region is referred to as the Land of the Atlas, referring to the Atlas Mountains, which are located within it.


title: Maghreb

text: The Maghreb is usually defined as encompassing much of the northern part of Africa, including a large portion of the Sahara Desert, but excluding Egypt and Sudan, which are considered to be located in the Mashriq — the eastern part of the Arab world. The traditional definition of the Maghreb — which restricted its scope to the Atlas Mountains and the coastal plains of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya — was expanded in modern times to include Mauritania and the disputed territory of Western Sahara. During the era of Al-Andalus on the Iberian Peninsula (711–1492), the Maghreb's inhabitants — the Muslim Berbers, or Maghrebi — were known by Europeans as the "Moors".


title: Maghreb

text: Before the establishment of modern nation states in the region during the 20th century, the "Maghreb" most commonly referred to a smaller area, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlas Mountains in the south. It often also included the territory of eastern Libya, but not modern Mauritania. As recently as the late 19th century, the term "Maghreb" was used to refer to the Western Mediterranean region of coastal North Africa in general, and to Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, in particular.


title: Maghreb

text: During the rule of the Berber kingdom of Numidia, the region was somewhat unified as an independent political entity. This period was followed by one of the Roman Empire's rule or influence. The Germanic Vandals invaded after that, followed by the equally brief re-establishment of a weak Roman rule by the Byzantine Empire. The Islamic Caliphates came to power under the Umayyad Caliphate, the Abbasid Caliphate and the Fatimid Caliphate. The most enduring rule was that of the local Berber empires of the Ifranid dynasty (also called Emirate of Tlemcen with abu Qurra as leader; the Berbers called him "caliph" Ibn Khaldun, as explained in his book Kitab al ibar), Almoravid dynasty, Almohad Caliphate, Hammadid dynasty, Zirid dynasty, Marinid dynasty, Zayyanid dynasty, Hafsid dynasty and Wattasid dynasty, extending from the 8th to 13th centuries. The Ottoman Empire for a period also controlled parts of the region.


title: Maghreb

text: In the 19th and early 20th centuries, the region was ruled by European powers: France (Algeria, Tunisia, Mauritania and most of Morocco), Spain (northern Morocco and Western Sahara) and Italy (Libya). Italy was expelled from North Africa by the Allies in World War II. Decolonization of the region continued in the decades thereafter, with violent conflicts such as the Algerian War, the Ifni War and the Western Sahara War.


title: Maghreb

text: Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia established the Arab Maghreb Union in 1989 to promote cooperation and economic integration in a common market. It was envisioned initially by Muammar Gaddafi as a superstate. The union included Western Sahara implicitly under Morocco's membership, and ended Morocco's long cold war with Algeria over this territory. However, this progress was short-lived, and the union is now dormant.


title: Maghreb

text: Tensions between Algeria and Morocco over Western Sahara re-emerged, reinforced by the unsolved border dispute between the two countries. These two main conflicts have hindered progress on the union's joint goals and practically made it inactive as a whole. The instability in the region and growing cross-border security threats revived calls for regional cooperation. In May 2015 foreign ministers of the Arab Maghreb Union declared a need for coordinated security policy at the 33rd session of the follow-up committee meeting; this revived hope of some form of cooperation.


title: Maghreb

text: The toponym "maghrib" is a geographical term that the Muslim Arabs gave to the region extending from Alexandria in the east to the Atlantic Ocean in the west. Etymologically it means both "the western place/land" and "the place where the sun sets". It is composed of the prefix "ma−", which makes a noun out of the verb root, and غرب (gharaba, "to set", as in "setting sun") (from gh-r-b root (غ-ر-ب)).


title: Maghreb

text: Muslim historians and geographers divided the region into three areas: "al-Maghrib al-Adna" (the near Maghrib), which included the lands extending from Alexandria to Tarabulus (modern-day Tripoli) in the west; "al-Maghrib al-Awsat" (the middle Maghrib), which extended from Tripoli to Bijaya (Béjaïa); and "al-Maghrib al-Aqsa" (the far Maghrib), which extended from Tahart (Tiaret) to the Atlantic Ocean. They disagreed, however, over the definition of the eastern boundary. Some authors place it at the sea of Kulzum (the Red Sea) and thus include Egypt and the country of Barca in the Maghrib. Ibn Khaldun does not accept this definition because, he says, the inhabitants of the Maghreb do not consider Egypt and Barca as forming part of Maghrib. The latter commences only at the province of Tripoli and includes the districts of which the country of the Berbers was composed in former times. Later Maghribi writers repeated the definition of Ibn Khaldun, with a few variations in details.


title: Maghreb

text: Speakers of Berber languages call this region "Tamazɣa" or "Tamazgha", which translates to "land of the Berbers". Since the second half of the twentieth century, this term has been popularized by activists promoting Berberism.


title: Maghreb

text: Around 3,500 BC, changes in the tilt of the Earth's orbit appear to have caused a rapid desertification of the Sahara region forming a natural barrier that severely limited contact between the Maghreb and sub-Saharan Africa. The Berber people have inhabited western North Africa since at least 10,000 BC.


title: Maghreb

text: Partially isolated from the rest of the continent by the Atlas Mountains (stretching from present-day Morocco to present-day Tunisia) and by the Sahara desert, inhabitants of the northern parts of the Berber world have long had commercial and cultural ties across the Mediterranean Sea to the inhabitants of the regions of Southern Europe and Western Asia. These trade relations date back at least to the Phoenicians in the 1st millennium BC. (According to tradition, the Phoenicians founded their colony of Carthage (in present-day Tunisia) ).


title: Maghreb

text: Phoenicians and Carthaginians arrived for trade. The main Berber and Phoenician settlements centered in the Gulf of Tunis (Carthage, Utica, Tunisia) along the North African littoral, between the Pillars of Hercules and the Libyan coast east of ancient Cyrenaica. They dominated the trade and intercourse of the Western Mediterranean for centuries. Rome's defeat of Carthage in the Punic Wars (264 to 146 BC) enabled Rome to establish the Province of Africa (146 BC) and to control many of these ports. Rome eventually took control of the entire Maghreb north of the Atlas Mountains. Rome was greatly helped by the defection of Massinissa (later King of Numidia, ) and of Carthage's eastern Numidian Massylii client-allies. Some of the most mountainous regions, such as the Moroccan Rif, remained outside Roman control. Furthermore, during the rule of the Romans, Byzantines, Vandals and Carthaginians the Kabyle people were the only or one of the few in North Africa who remained independent. The Kabyle people were incredibly resistible so much so that even during the Arab conquest of North Africa they still had control and possession over their mountains.


title: Maghreb

text: The pressure put on the Western Roman Empire by the Barbarian invasions (notably by the Vandals and Visigoths in Iberia) in the 5th century AD reduced Roman control and led to the establishment of the Vandal Kingdom of North Africa in 430 A.D., with its capital at Carthage. A century later, the Byzantine emperor Justinian I sent (533) a force under General Belisarius that succeeded in destroying the Vandal Kingdom in 534. Byzantine rule lasted for 150 years. The Berbers contested the extent of Byzantine control.


title: Maghreb

text: After the advent of Islam in Mediterranean Africa in the period from 639 to 700 AD, Arabs took control of the entire Maghreb region.


title: Maghreb

text: The Arabs reached the Maghreb in early Umayyad times. Islamic Berber kingdoms such as the Almohads expansion and the spread of Islam contributed to the development of trans-Saharan trade. While restricted due to the cost and dangers, the trade was highly profitable. Commodities traded included such goods as salt, gold, ivory, and slaves. Arab control over the Maghreb was quite weak. Various Islamic variations, such as the Ibadis and the Shia, were adopted by some Berbers, often leading to scorning of Caliphal control in favour of their own interpretation of Islam.


title: Maghreb

text: As a result of the invasion of the Banu Hilal Arabs, the Arabic language and dialects spread slowly without eliminating Berber. These Arabs had been set upon the Berbers by the Fatimids in punishment for their Zirid former Berber clients who defected and abandoned Shiism in the 12th century. Throughout this period, the Berber world most often was divided into three states, roughly corresponding to modern Morocco, western Algeria, and eastern Algeria and Tunisia. The Maghreb region was occasionally briefly unified, as under the Almohad Berber empire, Fatimids and briefly under the Zirids. The Hammadids also managed to conquer land in all countries in the Maghreb region.


title: Maghreb

text: Today, more than two and a half million Maghrebi immigrants live in France, many from Algeria and Morocco. In addition, as of 1999 there were 3 million French of Maghrebi origin (defined as having at least one grandparent from Algeria, Morocco or Tunisia). A 2003 estimate suggests six million French residents were ethnic Maghrebi.


title: Maghreb

text: The Maghreb is primarily inhabited by peoples of Arab and Berber ancestral origin. Arabs inhabit Algeria (70% to 80%), Libya (97%), Morocco (67%), and Tunisia (98%). Berbers inhabit Algeria (20%), Libya (10%), Morocco (35%), and Tunisia (1%). Ethnic French, West African, and Sephardic Jewish populations also inhabit the region.


title: Maghreb

text: Various other influences are also prominent throughout the Maghreb. In northern coastal towns, in particular, several waves of European immigrants influenced the population in the Medieval era. Most notable were the moriscos and muladies, that is, the indigenous Spaniards (Moors) who were forcibly converted to Catholicism and later expelled, together with ethnic Arab and Berber Muslims, during the Spanish Catholic Reconquista. Other European contributions included French, Italian, and English crews and passengers taken captive by corsairs. In some cases, they were returned to families after being ransomed; in others, they were used as slaves or assimilated and adopted into tribes.


title: Maghreb

text: Historically, the Maghreb was home to significant historic Jewish communities called Maghrebim, who predated the 7th-century introduction and conversion of the region to Islam. These were later augmented by Sephardic Jews from Spain and Portugal who, fleeing the Spanish Catholic Inquisition of the 15th and 16th centuries, established a presence in North Africa. They settled primarily in the urban trading centers.


title: Maghreb

text: Africans from south of the Sahara joined the population mix during centuries of trans-Saharan trade. Traders and slaves went to the Maghreb from the Sahel region. On the Saharan southern edge of the Maghreb are small communities of black populations, sometimes called Haratine.


title: Maghreb

text: In Algeria especially, a large European minority, known as the "pied noirs", immigrated to the region, settling under French colonial rule in the late 19th century. They established farms and businesses. The overwhelming majority of these, however, left Algeria during and following the war for independence.


title: Maghreb

text: In comparison to the population of France, the Maghrebi population was one-eighth of France's population in 1800, one-quarter in 1900, and equal in 2000. The Maghreb is home to 1% of the global population as of 2010.


title: Maghreb

text: The Y-chromosome genetic structure of the Maghreb population seems to be modulated chiefly by geography. The Y-DNA Haplogroups E1b1b and J make up the vast majority of the genetic markers of the populations of the Maghreb. Haplogroup E1b1b is the most widespread among Maghrebi groups, especially the downstream lineage of E1b1b1b1a, which is typical of the indigenous Berbers of North-West Africa. Haplogroup J is more indicative of Middle East origins, and has its highest distribution among populations in Arabia and the Levant. Due to the distribution of E-M81(E1b1b1b1a), which has reached its highest documented levels in the world at 95–100% in some populations of the Maghreb, it has often been termed the "Berber marker" in the scientific literature. The second most common marker, Haplogroup J, especially J1, which is typically Middle Eastern and originates in the Arabian peninsula, can reach frequencies of up to 35% in the region. Its highest density is found in the Arabian Peninsula. Haplogroup R1, a Eurasian marker, has also been observed in the Maghreb, though with lower frequency. The Y-DNA haplogroups shown above are observed in both Arabic speakers and Berber-speakers.


title: Maghreb

text: The Maghreb Y chromosome pool (including both Arab and Berber populations) may be summarized for most of the populations as follows, where only two haplogroups E1b1b and J comprise generally more than 80% of the total chromosomes:


title: Maghreb

text: The original religions of the peoples of the Maghreb seem to have been based in and related to fertility cults of a strong matriarchal pantheon. This theory is based on the social and linguistic structures of the Amazigh cultures that antedated all Egyptian and eastern Asian, northern Mediterranean, and European influences.


title: Maghreb

text: Historic records of religion in the Maghreb region show its gradual inclusion in the Classical World, with coastal colonies established first by Phoenicians, some Greeks, and later extensive conquest and colonization by the Romans. By the 2nd century of the common era, the area had become a center of Phoenician-speaking Christianity. Its bishops spoke and wrote in Punic, and Emperor Septimius Severus was noted by his local accent. Roman settlers and Romanized populations converted to Christianity. The region produced figures such as Christian church writer Tertullian (c. 155 – c. 202); and Christian martyrs or leading figures such as Perpetua, and Felicity (martyrs, c. 200 CE); St. Cyprian of Carthage (+ 258); St. Monica; her son the philosopher St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo I (+ 430) (1); and St. Julia of Carthage (5th century).


title: Maghreb

text: Islam arrived in 647 and challenged the domination of Christianity. The first permanent foothold of Islam was the founding in 667 of the city of Kairouan, in present-day Tunisia. Carthage fell to Muslims in 698 and the remainder of the region fell by 709. Islamization proceeded slowly.


title: Maghreb

text: From the end of the 7th century, over a period of more than 400 years, the region's peoples converted to Islam. Many left during this time for Italy, although surviving letters showed correspondence from regional Christians to Rome up until the 12th century. Christianity was still a living faith. Although there were numerous conversions after the conquest, Muslims did not become a majority until some time late in the 9th century. During the 10th century, Islam became by far the dominant religion in the region. Christian bishoprics and dioceses continued to be active and continued their relations with the Christian Church of Rome. As late as the reign of Pope Benedict VII (974–983), a new Archbishop of Carthage was consecrated. From the 10th century, Christianity declined in the region. By the end of the 11th century, only two bishops were left in Carthage and Hippo Regius. Pope Gregory VII (1073–85) consecrated a new bishop for Hippo. Christianity seems to have suffered several shocks that led to its demise. First, many upper-class, urban-dwelling, Latin-speaking Christians left for Europe after the Muslim conquest. The second major influence was the large-scale conversions to Islam from the end of the 9th century. Many Christians of a much reduced community departed in the mid-11th century, and remnants were evacuated in the 12th by the Norman rulers of Sicily. The Latin-African language lingered a while longer.


title: Maghreb

text: There was a small but thriving Jewish community, as well as a small Christian community. Most Muslims follow the Sunni Maliki school. Small Ibadi communities remain in some areas. A strong tradition of venerating marabouts and saints' tombs is found throughout regions inhabited by Berbers. This practice was also common among the Jews of the region. Any map of the region demonstrates the tradition by the proliferation of "Sidi"s, showing places named after the marabouts. This tradition has declined through the 20th century. A network of "zaouias" traditionally helped teach basic literacy and knowledge of Islam in rural regions.


title: Maghreb

text: Communities of Christians, mostly Catholics and Protestant, persist in Algeria (100,000–380,000), Mauritania (10,000), Morocco (~380,000), Libya (170,000), and Tunisia (100,750). Most of the Roman Catholics in Greater Maghreb are of French, Spanish, and Italian descent, with ancestors who immigrated during the colonial era. Some are foreign missionaries or immigrant workers. There are also Christian communities of Berber or Arab descent in Greater Maghreb, made up of persons who converted mostly during the modern era, or under and after French colonialism. Prior to independence, Algeria was home to 1.4 million "pieds-noirs" (ethnic French who were mostly Catholic), and Morocco was home to half a million Europeans, Tunisia was home to 255,000 Europeans, and Libya was home to 145,000 Europeans. In religion, most of the "pieds-noirs" in Maghreb are Catholic. Due to the exodus of the "pieds-noirs" in the 1960s, more North African Christians of Berber or Arab descent now live in France than in Greater Maghreb.


title: Maghreb

text: Recently, the Protestant community of Berber or Arab descent has grown significantly as additional individuals convert to Christianity, especially to Evangelicalism. This has occurred in Algeria, especially in the Kabylie, Morocco and in Tunisia.


title: Maghreb

text: A 2015 study estimates 380,000 Muslims converted to Christianity in Algeria. The number of Moroccans who converted to Christianity (most of them secret worshipers) are estimated between 40,000-150,000. The International Religious Freedom Report for 2007 estimates thousands of Tunisian Muslims have converted to Christianity. A 2015 study estimate some 1,500 believers in Christ from a Muslim background living in Libya.


title: Maghreb

text: In the 10th century, as the social and political environment in Baghdad became increasingly hostile to Jews, some Jewish traders emigrated to the Maghreb, especially Kairouan, Tunisia. Over the following two or three centuries, such Jewish traders became known as the Maghribi, a distinctive social group who traveled throughout the Mediterranean world. They passed this identification on from father to son. Their tight-knit pan-Maghreb community had the ability to use social sanctions as a credible alternative to legal recourse, which was weak at the time anyway. This unique institutional alternative permitted the Maghribis to very successfully participate in the Mediterranean trade.


title: Maghreb

text: The Maghreb is divided into a Mediterranean climate region in the north, and the arid Sahara in the south. The Maghreb's variations in elevation, rainfall, temperature, and soils give rise to distinct communities of plants and animals. The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) identifies several distinct ecoregions in the Maghreb.


title: Maghreb

text: The portions of the Maghreb between the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean Sea, along with coastal Tripolitania and Cyrenaica in Libya, are home to Mediterranean forests, woodlands, and scrub. These ecoregions share many species of plants and animals with other portions of Mediterranean Basin. The southern extent of the Mediterranean Maghreb corresponds with the isohyet, or the southern range of the European Olive "(Olea europea)" and Esparto Grass "(Stipa tenacissima)".


title: Maghreb

text: The Sahara extends across northern Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Red Sea. Its central part is hyper-arid and supports little plant or animal life, but the northern portion of the desert receives occasional winter rains, while the strip along the Atlantic coast receives moisture from marine fog, which nourishes a greater variety of plants and animals. The northern edge of the Sahara corresponds to the 100 mm isohyet, which is also the northern range of the date palm "(Phoenix dactylifera)".


title: Maghreb

text: The countries of the Maghreb share many cultural traditions. Among these is a culinary tradition that Habib Bourguiba defined as Western Arab, where bread or couscous are the staple foods, as opposed to Eastern Arab, where bread, crushed wheat or white rice are the staple foods. In terms of food, some similarities beyond the starches are found throughout the Arab world.


title: Maghreb

text: Among other cultural and artistic traditions, jewellery of the Berber cultures worn by Amazigh women and made of silver, beads and other applications was a common trait of Berber identities in large areas of the Maghreb up to the second half of the 20th century.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Ernst Julius Günther Röhm (; 28 November 1887 – 1 July 1934) was a German military officer and an early member of the Nazi Party. As one of the members of its predecessor, the German Workers' Party, he was a close friend and early ally of Adolf Hitler and a co-founder of the (SA, "Storm Units"), the Nazi Party's militia, and later was its commander. By 1934, the German Army feared the SA's influence and Hitler had come to see Röhm as a potential rival, so he was executed during the Night of the Long Knives.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Ernst Röhm was born in Munich, the youngest of three children—he had an elder sister and brother—of Emilie and Julius Röhm. His father Julius, a railway official, was described as strict, but once he realized that his son responded better without exhortation, allowed him significant freedom to pursue his interests.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Although the family had no military tradition, Röhm entered the Royal Bavarian 10th Infantry Regiment Prinz Ludwig at Ingolstadt as a cadet on 23 July 1906 and was commissioned on 12 March 1908.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: At the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, he was adjutant of the 1st Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment König. The following month, he was seriously wounded in the face at Chanot Wood in Lorraine and carried the scars for the rest of his life. He was promoted to first lieutenant () in April 1915. During an attack on the fortification at Thiaumont, Verdun, on 23 June 1916, he sustained a serious chest wound and spent the remainder of the war in France and Romania as a staff officer. He was awarded the Iron Cross First Class before being wounded at Verdun, and was promoted to captain () in April 1917. Among his comrades, Röhm was considered a "fanatical, simple-minded swashbuckler" who frequently displayed contempt for danger. In his memoirs, Röhm reported that during the autumn of 1918, he contracted the deadly Spanish influenza and was not expected to live, but that he recovered after a lengthy convalescence.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Following the Armistice of 11 November 1918 that ended the war, Röhm continued his military career as a captain in the . He was one of the senior members in Franz Ritter von Epp's ("Bavarian Free Corps for Border Patrol East"), formed in Ohrdruf in April 1919, which finally overturned the Munich Soviet Republic by force of arms on 3 May 1919. In 1919 he joined the German Workers' Party (DAP), which the following year became the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). Not long afterward he met Adolf Hitler, and they became political allies and close friends. Röhm resigned or retired from the on 26 September 1923. Throughout the early 1920s, Röhm remained an important intermediary between Germany's right-wing paramilitary organizations and the . Additionally, it was Röhm who persuaded his former army commander, Franz Ritter von Epp, to join the Nazis, an important development since Epp helped raise the sixty-thousand marks needed to purchase the Nazi periodical, the "".


title: Ernst Röhm

text: When the Nazi Party held its "German Day" celebration at Nuremberg during early September 1923, it was Röhm who helped bring together some 100,000 participants drawn from right-wing militant groups, veterans' associations, and other paramilitary formations—which included the , , the SA, and the —all of them subordinate to Hitler as "political leader" of the collective alliance.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Röhm led the militia at the time of the Munich Beer Hall Putsch. He rented the cavernous main hall of the Löwenbräukeller, supposedly for a reunion and festive comradeship. Meanwhile, Hitler and his entourage were at the Bürgerbräukeller. Röhm planned to start the revolution and use the units at his disposal to obtain weapons from secret caches with which to occupy crucial points in the centre of the city. When the call came, he announced to those assembled in the Löwenbräukeller that the Kahr government had been deposed and Hitler had declared a "national revolution" which elicited wild cheering. Röhm then led his force of nearly 2,000 men to the War Ministry, which they occupied for sixteen hours. Once in control of the headquarters, Röhm awaited news, barricaded inside. The subsequent march into the city center led by Hitler, Hermann Göring, and General Erich Ludendorff with banners flying high, was ostensibly undertaken to "free" Röhm and his forces.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: While crowds cheered, egged on by Gregor Strasser shouting , Hitler's armed assembly, wearing red swastika armbands, encountered Bavarian State Policemen, who were prepared to counter the Putsch. Around the time the marchers reached the "Feldherrnhalle" near the city center, shots were fired, scattering the participants. By the end of the gunfire, fourteen Nazis and four policemen had been killed; the putsch had failed and the Nazis' first bid for power had lasted less than twenty-four hours.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Following the failed putsch, Röhm, Hitler, General Ludendorff, Lieutenant Colonel Hermann Kriebel and six others were tried in February 1924 for high treason. Röhm was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen months in prison, but the sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation. Hitler was found guilty and sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but served only nine months at Landsberg Prison (under permissively lenient conditions), during which time he dictated most of the first volume of "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle").


title: Ernst Röhm

text: In April 1924, Röhm became a "Reichstag" deputy for the "völkisch" (racial-national) National Socialist Freedom Party. He made only one speech, urging the release of Lieutenant Colonel Kriebel. The seats won by his party were much reduced in the December 1924 election, and his name was too far down the list to return him to the "Reichstag". While Hitler was in prison, Röhm helped to create the "Frontbann" as a legal alternative to the then-outlawed "Sturmabteilung" (SA). Hitler did not fully support the ambitious plans that Röhm had for this organization, which proved problematic. Hitler was distrustful of these paramilitary organizations because competing groups like the "Bund Wiking", the "Bund Bayern und Reich", and the "Blücherbund" were all vying for membership and he realized from the failed putsch that these groups could not be legitimated so long as the police and "Reichswehr" stayed loyal to the government. When in April 1925 Hitler and Ludendorff disapproved of the proposals under which Röhm was prepared to integrate the 30,000-strong "Frontbann" into the SA, Röhm resigned from all political groups and military brigades on 1 May 1925. He felt great contempt for the "legalistic" path the party leaders wanted to follow and sought seclusion from public life. In 1928, he accepted a post in Bolivia as advisor to the Bolivian Army, where he was given the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the autumn of 1930, Röhm received a telephone call from Hitler requesting his return to Germany.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: In September 1930, as a consequence of the Stennes Revolt in Berlin, Hitler assumed supreme command of the SA as its new "Oberster SA-Führer". He sent a personal request to Röhm, asking him to return to serve as the SA's Chief of Staff. Röhm accepted this offer and began his new assignment on 5 January 1931. He brought radical new ideas to the SA and appointed several close friends to its senior leadership. Previously, the SA formations were subordinate to the Nazi Party leadership of each "Gau". Röhm established new "Gruppe", which had no regional Nazi Party oversight. Each "Gruppe" extended over several regions and was commanded by an SA-"Gruppenführer" who answered only to Röhm or Hitler.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: The SA by this time numbered over a million members. Their initial assignment of protecting Nazi leaders at rallies and assemblies was taken over by the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) in relation to the top leaders. The SA did continue its street battles against the communists, forces of rival political parties and violent actions against Jews and others deemed hostile to the Nazi agenda.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Under Röhm, the SA often took the side of workers in strikes and other labor disputes, attacking strikebreakers and supporting picket lines. SA intimidation contributed to the rise of the Nazis and the violent suppression of rival parties during electoral campaigns, but its reputation for street violence and heavy drinking was a hindrance, as was the rumored homosexuality of Röhm and other SA leaders such as his deputy Edmund Heines. In June 1931, the "Münchener Post", a Social Democratic newspaper, began attacking Röhm and the SA regarding homosexuality in its ranks and then in March 1932, the paper obtained and published some private letters of his in which Röhm described himself as "same-sex oriented" (). These letters had been confiscated by the Berlin police back in 1931 and subsequently passed along to the journalist Helmuth Klotz.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Hitler was aware of Röhm's homosexuality. Their friendship shows in that Röhm remained one of the few intimates allowed to use the familiar German "du" (the German familiar form of "you") when conversing with Hitler. Röhm was the only Nazi leader who dared to address Hitler by his first name "Adolf" or his nickname "Adi" rather than "". Their close association led to rumors that Hitler himself was homosexual. Unlike many in the Nazi hierarchy, Röhm never fell victim to Hitler's "arresting personality" nor did he come fully under his spell, which made him unique.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: As Hitler rose to national power with his appointment as chancellor in January 1933, SA members were appointed auxiliary police and ordered by Göring to sweep aside "all enemies of the state".


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Röhm and the SA regarded themselves as the vanguard of the "National Socialist revolution". After Hitler's national takeover they expected radical changes in Germany, including power and rewards for themselves, unaware that, as Chancellor, Hitler no longer needed their street-fighting capabilities.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Nevertheless, Hitler did name Röhm to numerous important Party and State positions. On 2 June 1933, Hitler named him a "Reichsleiter", the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. He was made a member of the Prussian State Council on 14 September and a member of the Academy for German Law on 3 October, advancing to its Leadership Council ("Führerrat") in November. On 12 November, Röhm was elected to the "Reichstag". Finally, on 2 December 1933, he was named to the Reich cabinet as a "Reichsminister" without portfolio and made a member of the Reich Defense Council.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Along with other members of the more radical faction within the Nazi Party, Röhm advocated a "second revolution" that was overtly anti-capitalist in its general disposition. These radicals rejected capitalism and they intended to take steps to curb monopolies and promoted the nationalization of land and industry. Such plans were threatening to the business community in general, and to Hitler's corporate financial backers in particular—including many German industrial leaders he would rely upon for arms production. In order to keep from alienating them, Hitler swiftly reassured his powerful industrial allies that there would be no such revolution as espoused by these Party radicals.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Many SA "storm troopers" had working-class origins and longed for a radical transformation of German society. They were disappointed by the new regime's lack of socialistic direction and its failure to provide the lavish patronage they had expected. Furthermore, Röhm and his SA colleagues thought of their force as the core of the future German Army, and saw themselves as replacing the "Reichswehr" and its established professional officer corps. By then, the SA had swollen to over three million men, dwarfing the "Reichswehr", which was limited to 100,000 men by the Treaty of Versailles. Although Röhm had been a member of the officer corps, he viewed them as "old fogies" who lacked "revolutionary spirit". He believed that the "Reichswehr" should be merged into the SA to form a true "people's army" under his command, a pronouncement that caused significant consternation within the army's hierarchy and convinced them that the SA was a serious threat. At a February 1934 cabinet meeting, Röhm then demanded that the merger be made, under his leadership as Minister of Defence.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: This horrified the army, with its traditions going back to Frederick the Great. The army officer corps viewed the SA as an "undisciplined mob" of "brawling" street thugs, and was also concerned by the pervasiveness of "corrupt morals" within the ranks of the SA. Reports of a huge cache of weapons in the hands of SA members caused additional concern to the army leadership. Unsurprisingly, the officer corps opposed Röhm's proposal. They insisted that discipline and honor would vanish if the SA gained control, but Röhm and the SA would settle for nothing less. In addition the army leadership was eager to co-operate with Hitler given his plan of re-armament and expansion of the established professional military forces.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: In February 1934, Hitler told British diplomat Anthony Eden of his plan to reduce the SA by two-thirds. That same month, Hitler announced that the SA would be left with only a few minor military functions. Röhm responded with complaints, and began expanding the armed elements of the SA. Speculation that the SA was planning a coup against Hitler became widespread in Berlin. In March, Röhm offered a compromise in which "only" a few thousand SA leaders would be taken into the army, but the army promptly rejected that idea.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: On 11 April 1934, Hitler met with German military leaders on the ship "Deutschland". By that time, he knew President Paul von Hindenburg would likely die before the end of the year. Hitler informed the army hierarchy of Hindenburg's declining health and proposed that the "Reichswehr" support him as Hindenburg's successor. In exchange, he offered to reduce the SA, suppress Röhm's ambitions, and guarantee the "Reichswehr" would be Germany's only military force. According to war correspondent William L. Shirer, Hitler also promised to expand the army and navy.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Although determined to curb the power of the SA, Hitler put off doing away with his long-time ally. A political struggle within the party grew, with those closest to Hitler, including Prussian premier Hermann Göring, Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels, and "Reichsführer-SS" Heinrich Himmler, positioning themselves against Röhm. To isolate Röhm, on 20 April 1934, Göring transferred control of the Prussian political police (Gestapo) to Himmler, who he believed could be counted on to move against Röhm.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Both the "Reichswehr" and the conservative business community continued to complain to Hindenburg about the SA. In early June, defence minister Werner von Blomberg issued an ultimatum to Hitler from Hindenburg: unless Hitler took immediate steps to end the growing tension in Germany, Hindenburg would declare martial law and turn over control of the country to the army. The threat of a declaration of martial law from Hindenburg, the only person in Germany with the authority to potentially depose the Nazi regime, put Hitler under pressure to act. Hitler decided the time had come both to destroy Röhm and to settle scores with old enemies. Both Himmler and Göring welcomed Hitler's decision, since both had much to gain by Röhm's downfall—the independence of the SS for Himmler, and the removal of a rival for Göring.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: In preparation for the purge known as the Night of the Long Knives, both Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the SS Security Service, assembled a dossier of manufactured evidence to suggest that Röhm had been paid (equivalent to € million ) by the government of France to overthrow Hitler. Leading officers in the SS were shown falsified evidence on 24 June that Röhm planned to use the SA to launch a plot against the government ("Röhm-Putsch"). At Hitler's direction, Göring, Himmler, Heydrich, and Victor Lutze drew up lists of people in and outside the SA to be killed. One of the men Göring recruited to assist him was Willi Lehmann, a Gestapo official and NKVD spy. On 25 June, General Werner von Fritsch placed the "Reichswehr" on the highest level of alert. On 27 June, Hitler moved to secure the army's cooperation. Blomberg and General Walther von Reichenau, the army's liaison to the party, gave it to him by expelling Röhm from the German Officers' League. On 28 June, Hitler went to Essen to attend Josef Terboven's wedding celebration and reception; from there he called Röhm's adjutant at Bad Wiessee and ordered SA leaders to meet with him on 30 June at 11:00 a.m. On 29 June, a signed article in "Völkischer Beobachter" by Blomberg appeared in which Blomberg stated with great fervour that the "Reichswehr" stood behind Hitler.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: On 30 June 1934, Hitler and a large group of SS and regular police flew to Munich and arrived between 06:00 and 07:00 at Hanselbauer Hotel in Bad Wiessee, where Röhm and his followers were staying. With Hitler's early arrival, the SA leadership, still in bed, were taken by surprise. SS men stormed the hotel and Hitler personally placed Röhm and other high-ranking SA leaders under arrest. According to Erich Kempka, Hitler turned Röhm over to "two detectives holding pistols with the safety catch off". The SS found Breslau SA leader Edmund Heines in bed with an unidentified eighteen-year-old male SA senior troop leader. Goebbels emphasised this aspect in subsequent propaganda, justifying the purge as a crackdown on moral turpitude. Kempka said in a 1946 interview that Hitler ordered both Heines and his partner taken outside of the hotel and shot. Meanwhile, the SS arrested the other SA leaders as they left their train for the planned meeting with Röhm and Hitler.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Although Hitler presented no evidence of a plot by Röhm to overthrow the regime, he nevertheless denounced the leadership of the SA. Arriving back at party headquarters in Munich, Hitler addressed the assembled crowd. Consumed with rage, Hitler denounced "the worst treachery in world history". Hitler told the crowd that "undisciplined and disobedient characters and asocial or diseased elements" would be annihilated. The crowd, which included party members and many SA members fortunate enough to escape arrest, shouted its approval. Joseph Goebbels, who had been with Hitler at Bad Wiessee, set the final phase of the plan in motion. Upon returning to Berlin, Goebbels telephoned Göring at 10:00 with the codeword ("hummingbird") to let loose the execution squads on the rest of their unsuspecting victims. "Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler" commander Sepp Dietrich received orders from Hitler to form an "execution squad" and go to Stadelheim prison in Munich where Röhm and other SA leaders were being held under arrest. There in the prison courtyard, the "Leibstandarte" firing squad shot five SA generals and an SA colonel. Several of those not immediately executed were taken back to the "Leibstandarte" barracks at Lichterfelde, given one-minute "trials", and shot by a firing squad. Röhm himself, however, was kept prisoner.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: Hitler was hesitant in authorising Röhm's execution, perhaps because of loyalty or embarrassment about the execution of an important lieutenant; he eventually did so, and agreed that Röhm should have the option of suicide. On 1 July, SS-"Brigadeführer" Theodor Eicke (later "Kommandant" of the Dachau concentration camp) and SS-"Obersturmbannführer" Michael Lippert visited Röhm. Once inside Röhm's cell, they handed him a Browning pistol loaded with a single cartridge and told him he had ten minutes to kill himself or they would do it for him. Röhm demurred, telling them, "If I am to be killed, let Adolf do it himself." Having heard nothing in the allotted time, Eicke and Lippert returned to Röhm's cell at 14:50 to find him standing, with his bare chest puffed out in a gesture of defiance. Eicke and Lippert then shot Röhm, killing him. SA-"Obergruppenführer" Viktor Lutze, who had been spying on Röhm, was named as the new "Stabschef SA".


title: Ernst Röhm

text: While some Germans were shocked by the killings of 30 June to 2 July 1934, many others saw Hitler as the one who restored "order" to the country. Goebbels's propaganda highlighted the "Röhm-Putsch" in the days that followed. The homosexuality of Röhm and other SA leaders was made public to add "shock value", even though it had been known to Hitler and other Nazi leaders for years.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: The purge of the SA was legalised on 3 July with a one-paragraph decree: the "Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defence", a step that historian Robin Cross contends was done by Hitler to cover his own tracks. The Law declared, "The measures taken on 30 June, 1 and 2 July to suppress treasonous assaults are legal as acts of self-defence by the State." At the time no public reference was made to the alleged SA rebellion, but only generalised references to misconduct, perversion and some sort of plot. In a nationally broadcast speech to the Reichstag on 13 July, Hitler justified the purge as a defence against treason. Before the events of the Night of the Long Knives concluded, not only was Röhm dead, but more than 200 additional people had been killed, including Nazi official Gregor Strasser, former chancellor General Kurt von Schleicher, and Franz von Papen's secretary, Edgar Jung. Most of those murdered had little to no affiliation with Röhm but were killed for political reasons.


title: Ernst Röhm

text: In an attempt to erase Röhm from German history, all known copies of the 1933 propaganda film "The Victory of Faith" ("Der Sieg des Glaubens") – in which Röhm appeared – were destroyed in 1934, probably on Hitler's order. However, at least one copy has survived destruction.


title: NBCUniversal

text: NBCUniversal Media, LLC is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate corporation owned by Comcast and headquartered at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, United States.


title: NBCUniversal

text: NBCUniversal is primarily involved in the media and entertainment industry. The company is named for its two most significant divisions, the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) – one of the United States' Big Three television networks – and the major Hollywood film studio Universal Pictures. It also has a significant presence in broadcasting through a portfolio of domestic and international properties, including USA, Syfy, Bravo, E!, Telemundo (Spanish), Universal Kids, and the streaming service Peacock. Via its Universal Parks & Resorts division, NBCUniversal is also the third-largest operator of amusement parks in the world. Since 2018, its sister company under Comcast's control, Sky Group Limited, holds its media and telecommunication assets.


title: NBCUniversal

text: NBCUniversal was formed on August 2, 2004, beginning on November 8, 2004 as NBC Universal, Inc., with the merger of General Electric's NBC with Vivendi Universal's film and television subsidiary Vivendi Universal Entertainment, after GE had acquired 80% of the subsidiary, giving Vivendi a 20% share of the new company. In 2011, Comcast attained 51% and thereby the control of newly reformed NBCUniversal, by purchasing shares from GE, while GE bought out Vivendi. Since 2013, the company has been wholly owned by Comcast, which bought GE's ownership stake.


title: NBCUniversal

text: NBC and Universal Television had a partnership dating back to 1950, when Universal Television's earliest ancestor, Revue Studios, produced a number of shows for NBC, although Revue would have hits on other networks as well. This partnership continued throughout a number of name changes and changes of ownership.


title: NBCUniversal

text: NBC Universal Television has its modern roots in a series of expansions undertaken by NBC. In the late 1980s, NBC began pursuing a strategy of diversification, including the formation of two NBC-owned cable-television networks: CNBC and America's Talking. NBC also had partial ownership of several regional sports channels and other cable channels such as American Movie Classics and Court TV (until 2007).


title: NBCUniversal

text: In 1995, NBC began operating NBC Desktop Video, a financial news service that delivered live video to personal computers. The following year, NBC announced an agreement with Microsoft to create an all-news cable television channel, MSNBC (using its subscriber base from America's Talking network). A separate joint venture with Microsoft included establishing a news website, MSNBC.com (now NBCNews.com).


title: NBCUniversal

text: In 1998, NBC partnered with Dow Jones & Co. The two companies combined their financial news channels outside the US. The new networks included NBC Europe, CNBC Europe, NBC Asia, CNBC Asia, NBC Africa, and CNBC Africa.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In 1999, NBC took a 32% stake in the Paxson group, operator of PAX TV. Five years later, NBC decided to sell its interest in PAX TV and end its relationship with PAX owner, Paxson Communications.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In 2001, NBC acquired the US Spanish-language broadcaster Telemundo, that includes the bilingual Mun2 Television for $1.98 billion. That same year NBC acquired the cable channel Bravo.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In 2004, amid a major financial crisis caused by over-expansion, Universal Studios' parent company, Vivendi Universal Entertainment (a division of the French company Vivendi Universal, now Vivendi), decided to sell an 80% stake to NBC's parent company, General Electric. The sale and resulting merger formed NBC Universal. The new company was 80% owned by GE, and 20% owned by Vivendi. The joint venture encompassed Vivendi's US film interests (such as Universal Studios), Universal Network Television, NBC Universal Television Distribution, production and distribution units, as well as five theme parks, cable television channels including USA Network, Sci-Fi Channel, the defunct Trio, Cloo (formerly Sleuth), as well as 50% stakes in Canal+ and StudioCanal. Universal Music Group was not included in the deal and is not part of NBC Universal.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On August 2, 2004, the television divisions of NBC and Universal Television were combined to form NBC Universal Television. NBC Studios series bought into the company include the NBC dramas "Las Vegas" (with DreamWorks SKG), "Crossing Jordan", and "American Dreams". Universal Network Television bought the "Law & Order" franchise and "The District"—in fact, Universal Network Television had co-produced "American Dreams" with NBC before the merger.


title: NBCUniversal

text: Entertainment shows produced by the new group include "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon", "Last Call with Carson Daly", and "Saturday Night Live".


title: NBCUniversal

text: The formation of NBC Universal saw the establishment of NBC Universal Cable, which oversees the distribution, marketing, and advertisement sales for thirteen channels (Bravo, Bravo HD+ (eventually renamed Universal HD), Chiller, CNBC, CNBC World, MSNBC, NBC Universo, Syfy, ShopNBC (which became ShopHQ after NBCUniversal sold its stake in the network), Telemundo, Cloo, USA Network, and the Olympic Games on cable). NBC Universal Cable also manages the company's investments in The Weather Channel and TiVo. The cable division also used to operate NBC Weather Plus until 2008. It also owned a 50% stake in Canal+ and also owned a 15% stake in A+E Networks until 2012.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In the early 1990s, NBC began its expansion throughout Europe by creating CNBC Europe and its long-time successful NBC Europe Superstation by broadcasting NBC Giga throughout Germany and the rest of the European Union. NBC Europe helped to develop the Leipzig-based Games Convention, the largest European video game exposition with more than 100,000 visitors each year.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In 2005, NBC Universal joined HANA, the High-Definition Audio-Video Network Alliance to help establish standards in consumer electronics interoperability. Later that year, NBC Universal announced a partnership with Apple Computer to offer shows from all the NBC Universal TV networks on Apple's iTunes Store.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In January 2006, NBC Universal launched a new cable channel, Sleuth. The channel's programming dedicated to mystery/crime genre. Sleuth Network's initial slogan was "Mystery. Crime. All The Time." In early 2008, the channel unveiled a new slogan, "Get Clued In." On August 15, 2011, Sleuth rebranded as Cloo, in order to be able to trademark and own the name, as NBCUniversal cannot so with the name Clue (as Hasbro owns the rights to it with their board game Clue). NBCUniversal also explained that another reason for the name change was the word "Sleuth" is too common for search engines (a Google search brings up over 9,530,000 results).


title: NBCUniversal

text: One year later after Sleuth's debut, NBC Universal announced that the company would launch a horror-themed cable channel, Chiller, on March 1, 2007. At launch Chiller would be available exclusively on DirecTV. The network would feature films like "Psycho" and "The Shining" and TV series that include "Twin Peaks", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents", "Freddy's Nightmares", "", "War of the Worlds" and "Tales from the Crypt". NBC Universal also stated that, aside from the content in their own vaults, Chiller will feature content from other studios as well. In 2009, Chiller unveiled a new slogan, "scary good". This replaced the channel's previous slogan "Dare To Watch".


title: NBCUniversal

text: On June 14, 2007, NBC Universal Television Studio was renamed Universal Media Studios. The company explained that the reason for the name change was because "the new name fully describes the company's mission to be the premier content provider for television and digital platforms, spanning all television dayparts and creative genres."


title: NBCUniversal

text: In August 2007, NBC Universal purchased Sparrowhawk Media Group and renamed it NBC Universal Global Networks. This acquisition gave NBC Universal all Hallmark channels outside the United States, plus the English channels Diva TV, Movies 24, Hallmark Channel and KidsCo. Later that fall, the company also acquired the Oxygen network in a separate $925 million deal. The sale was completed one month later.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In the summer of 2008, NBC Universal, Blackstone Group and Bain Capital announced their intentions to buy The Weather Channel from Landmark Communications. The deal closed on September 12, 2008. Shortly after the acquisition completed, NBC announced that their existing TV weather network, NBC Weather Plus, would be shut down by December 31, 2008.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In July 2008, Universal Cable Productions split off from Universal Media Studios and moved into NBCUniversal's NBCU Cable Entertainment division.


title: NBCUniversal

text: The summer of 2008 marked NBC Universal's first venture into the United Kingdom by acquiring English television production company Carnival Films.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On November 12, 2008, NBC Universal acquired 80.1% of Geneon Entertainment from Dentsu in Japan, merging it with Universal Pictures International Entertainment to form a new company, Geneon Universal Entertainment Japan.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On March 16, 2009, NBC Universal-owned cable channel Sci Fi announced that it would be changing its name to Syfy, replacing a generic term with a proprietary brand name that was able to be trademarked. The re-branding and name change took place on July 7, 2009.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On August 27, 2009, A&E Television Networks (A&E) merged with Lifetime Entertainment Services (Lifetime), giving NBC Universal an equal share of both Lifetime and A&E with The Walt Disney Company and Hearst.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On October 20, 2010, NBC Universal-owned horror/suspense-themed cable channel Chiller announced a major rebranding campaign incorporating a new logo and on-air look that launched on Wednesday, October 27, 2010. Syfy and Chiller President Dave Howe said, "We have very ambitious plans to grow this network as a brand."


title: NBCUniversal

text: On December 3, 2009, after months of rumors, a deal was formally announced in which Comcast would buy a stake in NBC Universal from GE for $6.5 billion after the spin-off of certain businesses, pending regulatory approval. Under the agreement, NBC Universal would be controlled with a 51% stake by Comcast and GE would retain the remaining 49%. The deal includes a provision under which Comcast must contribute $7.5 billion in programming including regional sports networks and cable channels such as Golf Channel, Versus, PBS Kids Sprout and E! Entertainment Television. GE used some of the funds, $5.8 billion, to buy out Vivendi's 20% minority stake in NBC Universal. Under the terms of the deal, Comcast reserves the right to buy out GE's share at certain times, and GE reserves the right to force the sale of their stake within the first seven years. Vivendi completed the initial transaction on September 27, 2010, selling a $2 billion stake to GE (approximately 7.66%).


title: NBCUniversal

text: U.S. regulators approved the proposed sale on January 18, 2011, with conditions. Comcast would have to give up NBC control over online video site Hulu and ensure NBC Universal programming is available to competing cable operators. The company unveiled a new logo designed by Wolff Olins, which replaced a logo featuring the NBC peacock and an invocation of the Universal Pictures globe, with a wordmark. The company also began to stylize its name in CamelCase as "NBCUniversal" rather than "NBC Universal", to reflect the unity of its two main divisions.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On January 26, 2011, Vivendi sold the remaining 20% of NBC Universal to GE, giving GE complete control of the company ahead of the completion of the sale of 51% of the company to Comcast on January 28, 2011. Comcast and GE formed the joint venture holding company NBCUniversal, LLC. NBC Universal, Inc. became a wholly owned subsidiary of the holding company and adopted the name, NBCUniversal Media, LLC, on January 29, 2011.


title: NBCUniversal

text: Comcast had planned to buy out GE's 49% stake over the following seven years, but ownership of NBCUniversal remained split at 51–49% for two years, until the February 12, 2013 announcement that Comcast intended to complete the $16.7 billion purchase early, all at once. The sale was completed on March 19, 2013.


title: NBCUniversal

text: The corporation on July 19, 2012, formed the NBCUniversal News Group with the NBC News, CNBC, and MSNBC divisions.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In February 2013, NBCUniversal merged its two cable divisions, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment & Cable Studios and NBCUniversal Entertainment & Digital Networks and Integrated Media, into one unit while moving out Telemundo and Mun2 to a new division, NBCUniversal Hispanic Enterprises and Content. The move also created the corporate-level position of executive vice president in charge of digital ventures. In July, the company placed NBC TV Stations and Telemundo's O&Os stations into a new division, NBCUniversal Owned Television Stations, with New England Cable News being transferred into NBC TV Stations.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On April 28, 2016, NBCUniversal officially announced its intent to acquire DreamWorks Animation for $3.8 billion. Universal Pictures took over the distribution for DreamWorks Animation films after their deal with 20th Century Fox expired. The sale was approved by board members, but was subject to regulatory approval. On June 21, 2016, the acquisition was approved by the United States Department of Justice. On August 22, 2016, the deal was completed, and DreamWorks Animation is now a wholly owned subsidiary of NBCUniversal. This gave Universal Pictures distribution to both DreamWorks Animation and Illumination films beginning in 2019.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On February 15, 2017, Universal Studios acquired a minority stake in Amblin Partners, strengthening the relationship between Universal and Amblin, and reuniting a minority percentage of the DreamWorks Pictures label with DreamWorks Animation.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On February 28, 2017, NBCUniversal announced that it would acquire the remaining 49% stake in the Universal Studios Japan theme park that it did not own.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On May 1, 2017, NBCUniversal announced that Sprout would be relaunched as Universal Kids on September 9, 2017. Universal Pictures' acquisition of DreamWorks Animation in 2016 would also be leveraged by Universal Kids to bolster its programming. Industry observers felt that the integration of DreamWorks IP with Universal Kids would help NBCUniversal establish a viable multi-platform competitor to other major children's networks (such as Paramount's Nickelodeon, Warner Bros. Discovery's Cartoon Network, and Disney Channel).


title: NBCUniversal

text: On May 10, 2017, NBCUniversal announced that it had acquired Denver-based online platform Craftsy for its Cable Entertainment Group division.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On November 16, 2017, NBCUniversal's parent company Comcast made a bid to acquire 21st Century Fox's filmed entertainment, cable entertainment, and international assets, ten days after The Walt Disney Company (at the time, owners of rival network ABC, cable sports channel ESPN and theme park Walt Disney World) was reported to be negotiating with Fox for the same assets. The deal contained key assets such as the 20th Century Fox film and television studios, 30% stake in Hulu, television assets FX Networks, National Geographic Channel, and international television operations such as Star India, while excluding the Fox Broadcasting Company, the Fox News Channel, Fox Television Stations, Fox Business Network, Fox Sports 1 and 2, Fox Deportes, and the Big Ten Network, all of which were spun off into the "New Fox" company (later known as the Fox Corporation) run by the Murdoch family.


title: NBCUniversal

text: However, on December 11, 2017, Comcast officially dropped the bid, saying that "We never got the level of engagement needed to make a definitive offer.” On December 14, 2017, Disney officially confirmed its acquisition of the most 21st Century Fox assets, which was granted approval from the United States Department of Justice Antitrust Division on June 27, 2018, and approved by stockholders from both companies one month later.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On April 25, 2018, Comcast launched its takeover offer for Sky plc at £12.50 per-share, or approximately £22.1 billion. 21st Century Fox owned a significant stake in Sky and was trying to take full control of it itself, ahead of its own acquisition by The Walt Disney Company. NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke stated that purchasing Sky would roughly double its presence in English-speaking markets, and allow for synergies between the respective networks and studios of NBCUniversal and Sky. On June 5, 2018, Culture Secretary Matt Hancock cleared both 21st Century Fox and Comcast's respective offers to acquire Sky plc. Fox's offer was contingent on the divestiture of Sky News. On June 15, 2018, the European Commission gave antitrust clearance to Comcast's offer to purchase Sky, citing that in terms of their current assets in Europe, there would be limited impact on competition. Comcast included a 10-year commitment to the operations and funding of Sky News. On July 11, 2018, Fox increased its bid for Sky to £14.00 per-share, valuing it at £24.5 billion. Comcast subsequently counterbid just hours later with an offer at £14.75 per-share, valued at £26 billion.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On September 20, 2018, the Panel on Takeovers and Mergers ordered that a blind auction be held "in order to provide an orderly framework for the resolution of this competitive situation". In this process, Fox, followed by Comcast, made new cash-only bids for Sky. After these first two rounds of bidding, there would be a third round where both companies could make new offers. However, the third round of bidding would only be binding if both companies make a bid. Comcast won the auction with a bid of £17.28 per-share, beating Fox's bid of £15.67. Sky plc had until October 11, 2018, to formally accept this offer.


title: NBCUniversal

text: Following its auction victory, Comcast began to acquire Sky shares from the open market. On September 26, 2018, Fox subsequently announced its intent to sell all of its shares in Sky plc to Comcast for £12 billion. On October 4. 2018, Fox completed the sale of their shares, giving Comcast a 76.8% controlling stake at the time. On October 12, 2018, Comcast announced it will compulsorily acquire the rest of Sky after its bid gained acceptances from 95.3% of the broadcaster's shareholders with the company being delisted by early 2019. Sky was delisted on November 7, 2018, after Comcast acquired all remaining shares.


title: NBCUniversal

text: While NBCUniversal and Sky still operate mainly as separate entities within Comcast, following the Sky takeover Comcast has begun the process of integrating some of NBCUniversal's international operations with parts of Sky. Among other moves, NBCUniversal's pay television channels in the United Kingdom will be folded with Sky's, and Sky Deutschland will become the parent company of NBCU's German networks.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On January 14, 2019, NBCUniversal announced that it will launch an over-the-top streaming service to compete with Netflix, CBS All Access, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Apple TV+, HBO Max, and Disney+. A reorganization of the major direct reporting division was made. Bonnie Hammer was appointed chairman of NBCUniversal Direct-to-Consumer and Digital Enterprises via the streaming services and the Digital Enterprises unit. Her former unit, NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Group, was given to Mark Lazarus as chairman, NBCUniversal Broadcast, Cable, Sports and News. Universal Filmed Entertainment Group chairman Jeff Shell added NBC Entertainment, Telemundo and international channels as chairman of NBCUniversal Film and Entertainment. On September 17, 2019, NBCUniversal announced the service would be called Peacock and is expected to launch in July 2020.


title: NBCUniversal

text: NBCUniversal Content Studios was formed in October 2019 with Hammer as chairman and George Cheeks as vice chairman, who was co-chairman of NBC Entertainment. This new unit consists of Universal Television and Universal Content Productions. Hammer was replaced as chairman of the Direct-to-Consumer and Digital Enterprises unit by Comcast executive Matt Strauss, while Paul Telegdy would become sole chairman of NBC Entertainment and continue reporting to Shell.


title: NBCUniversal

text: On February 25, 2020, Comcast announced it would purchase Xumo from the Panasonic/Viant joint venture for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition of the service—which will continue to operate as an independent business, albeit within Comcast's cable television division—stems mainly from Xumo's partnerships with smart TV manufacturers (including LG, Panasonic, and Vizio), which would allow Comcast to use Xumo's placement to market or showcase Xfinity and other Comcast services as well as use its technology to develop additional streaming platforms. The company plans to add content from the NBCUniversal programming library and the company's various television networks as well as use it to upsell its free/subscription hybrid service Peacock, akin to ViacomCBS's utilization of Pluto TV to offer content from its cable networks following the former Viacom's purchase of the rival streamer in the Spring of 2019.


title: NBCUniversal

text: In February 2020, it was reported that Comcast (via NBCUniversal) had entered talks into acquiring Vudu from Walmart. On April 20, 2020, Fandango (owned by NBCUniversal and Warner Bros. Discovery) announced that they would be acquiring Vudu. The acquisition was completed on July 6, 2020.


title: Pogrom

text: A pogrom () is a violent riot incited with the aim of massacring or expelling an ethnic or religious group, particularly Jews. The term entered the English language from Russian to describe 19th- and 20th-century attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire (mostly within the Pale of Settlement). Similar attacks against Jews which also occurred at other times and places retrospectively became known as pogroms. Sometimes the word is used to describe publicly sanctioned purgative attacks against non-Jewish groups. The characteristics of a pogrom vary widely, depending on the specific incident, at times leading to, or culminating in, massacres.


title: Pogrom

text: Significant pogroms in the Russian Empire included the Odessa pogroms, Warsaw pogrom (1881), Kishinev pogrom (1903), Kiev pogrom (1905), and Białystok pogrom (1906). After the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, several pogroms occurred amidst the power struggles in Eastern Europe, including the Lwów pogrom (1918) and Kiev Pogroms (1919).


title: Pogrom

text: The most significant pogrom which occurred in Nazi Germany was the 1938 Kristallnacht. At least 91 Jews were killed, a further thirty thousand arrested and subsequently incarcerated in concentration camps, a thousand synagogues burned, and over seven thousand Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged. Notorious pogroms of World War II included the 1941 Farhud in Iraq, the July 1941 Iași pogrom in Romania – in which over 13,200 Jews were killed – as well as the Jedwabne pogrom in German-occupied Poland. Post-World War II pogroms included the 1945 Tripoli pogrom, the 1946 Kielce pogrom and the 1947 Aleppo pogrom.


title: Pogrom

text: First recorded in English in 1882, the Russian word (, ) is derived from the common prefix () and the verb (, ) meaning 'to destroy, wreak havoc, demolish violently'. The noun "pogrom", which has a relatively short history, is used in English and many other languages as a loanword, possibly borrowed from Yiddish (where the word takes the form ). Its modern widespread circulation began with the antisemitic violence in the Russian Empire in 1881–1883.


title: Pogrom

text: The first recorded anti-Jewish riots took place in Alexandria in the year 38 CE, followed by the more known riot of 66 CE. Other notable events took place in Europe during the Middle Ages. Jewish communities were targeted in the Black Death Jewish persecutions of 1348–1350, in Toulon in 1348, the Massacre of 1391 in Barcelona as well as in other Catalan cities, during the Erfurt massacre (1349), the Basel massacre, massacres in Aragon and in Flanders, as well as the "Valentine's Day" Strasbourg massacre of 1349. Some 510 Jewish communities were destroyed during this period, extending further to the Brussels massacre of 1370. On Holy Saturday of 1389, a pogrom began in Prague that led to the burning of the Jewish quarter, the killing of many Jews, and the suicide of many Jews trapped in the main synagogue; the number of dead was estimated at 400–500 men, women and children.


title: Pogrom

text: The brutal murders of Jews and Poles occurred during the Khmelnytsky Uprising of 1648–1657 in present-day Ukraine. Modern historians give estimates of the scale of the murders by Khmelnytsky's Cossacks ranging between 40,000 and 100,000 men, women and children, or perhaps many more.


title: Pogrom

text: The outbreak of violence against Jews (Hep-Hep riots) occurred at the beginning of the 19th century in reaction to Jewish emancipation in the German Confederation.


title: Pogrom

text: The Russian Empire, which previously had very few Jews, acquired territories in the Russian Partition that contained large Jewish populations, during the military partitions of Poland in 1772, 1793 and 1795. In conquered territories, a new political entity called the Pale of Settlement was formed in 1791 by Catherine the Great. Most Jews from the former Commonwealth were allowed to reside only within the Pale, including families expelled by royal decree from St. Petersburg, Moscow and other large Russian cities. The 1821 Odessa pogroms marked the beginning of the 19th century pogroms in Tsarist Russia; there were four more such pogroms in Odessa before the end of the century. Following the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 by Narodnaya Volya, anti-Jewish events turned into a wave of over 200 pogroms by their modern definition, which lasted for several years. Jewish self-governing "Kehillah" were abolished by Tsar Nicholas I in 1844.


title: Pogrom

text: The first in 20th-century Russia was the Kishinev pogrom of 1903 in which 49 Jews were killed, hundreds wounded, 700 homes destroyed and 600 businesses pillaged. In the same year, pogroms took place in Gomel (Belarus), Smela, Feodosiya and Melitopol (Ukraine). Extreme savagery was typified by mutilations of the wounded. They were followed by the Zhitomir pogrom (with 29 killed), and the Kiev pogrom of October 1905 resulting in a massacre of approximately 100 Jews. In three years between 1903 and 1906, about 660 pogroms were recorded in Ukraine and Bessarabia; half a dozen more in Belorussia, carried out with the Russian government's complicity, but no anti-Jewish pogroms were recorded in Poland. At about that time, the Jewish Labor Bund began organizing armed self-defense units ready to shoot back, and the pogroms subsided for a number of years. According to professor Colin Tatz, between 1881 and 1920 there were 1,326 pogroms in Ukraine ("see: Southwestern Krai parts of the Pale") which took the lives of 70,000 to 250,000 civilian Jews, leaving half a million homeless. This violence across Eastern Europe prompted a wave of Jewish migration westward that totaled about 2.5 million people.


title: Pogrom

text: Large-scale pogroms, which began in the Russian Empire several decades earlier, intensified during the period of the Russian Civil War in the aftermath of World War I. Professor Zvi Gitelman ("A Century of Ambivalence") estimated that only in 1918–1919 over 1,200 pogroms took place in Ukraine, thus amounting to the greatest slaughter of Jews in Eastern Europe since 1648.


title: Pogrom

text: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his book "Two Hundred Years Together" provided additional statistics from research conducted by Nahum Gergel (1887–1931). Gergel counted 1,236 incidents of anti-Jewish violence and estimated that 887 mass pogroms occurred, the remainder being classified as "excesses" not assuming mass proportions. The Kiev pogroms of 1919, according to Gitelman, were the first of a subsequent wave of pogroms in which between 30,000 and 70,000 Jews were massacred across Ukraine; although more recent assessments put the Jewish death toll at more than 100,000. Of all the pogroms accounted for in Gergel's research:


title: Pogrom

text: Gergel's overall figures, which are generally considered conservative, are based on the testimony of witnesses and newspaper reports collected by the "Mizrakh-Yidish Historiche Arkhiv" which was first based in Kiev, then Berlin and later New York. The English version of Gergel's article was published in 1951 in the YIVO Annual of Jewish Social Science titled "The Pogroms in the Ukraine in 1918–1921".


title: Pogrom

text: On 8 August 1919, during the Polish–Soviet War, Polish troops took over Minsk in Operation Minsk. They killed 31 Jews merely suspected of supporting the Bolshevist movement, beat and attacked many more, looted 377 Jewish-owned shops (aided by the local civilians) and ransacked many private homes. The "Morgenthau's report of October 1919 stated that there is no question that some of the Jewish leaders exaggerated these evils." According to Elissa Bemporad, the "violence endured by the Jewish population under the Poles encouraged popular support for the Red Army, as Jewish public opinion welcomed the establishment of the Belorussian SSR."


title: Pogrom

text: After the First World War, during the localized armed conflicts of independence, 72 Jews were killed and 443 injured in the 1918 Lwów pogrom. The following year, pogroms were reported by the "New York Tribune" in several cities in the newly established Second Polish Republic.


title: Pogrom

text: In the early 20th century, pogroms broke out elsewhere in the world as well. In 1904 in Ireland, the Limerick boycott caused several Jewish families to leave the town. During the 1911 Tredegar riot in Wales, Jewish homes and businesses were looted and burned over a period of a week, before the British Army was called in by the then-Home Secretary Winston Churchill, who described the riot as a "pogrom".


title: Pogrom

text: In 1919 there was a pogrom in Argentina, during the Tragic Week. It had an added element, as it was called to attack Jews and Catalans indiscriminately. The reasons are not clear, especially considering that, in the case of Buenos Aires, the Catalan colony, established mainly in the neighborhood of Montserrat, came from the foundation of the city, but could have been the result of the influence of Spanish nationalism, which at the time described Catalans as a Semitic ethnicity.


title: Pogrom

text: In the north of Ireland during the early 1920s, violent riots which were aimed at the expulsion of a religious group took place. In 1920, Lisburn and Belfast saw violence related to the Irish War of Independence and partition of Ireland. On 21 July 1920 in Belfast, Protestant Loyalists marched on the Harland and Wolff shipyards and forced over 11,000 Catholic and left-wing Protestant workers from their jobs. The sectarian rioting that followed resulted in about 20 deaths in just three days. These sectarian actions are often referred to as the Belfast Pogrom. In Lisburn, County Antrim, on 23–25 August 1920 Protestant loyalist crowds looted and burned practically every Catholic business in the town and attacked Catholic homes. About 1,000 people, a third of the town's Catholics, fled Lisburn. By the end of the first six months of 1922, hundreds of people had been killed in sectarian violence in newly formed Northern Ireland. On a per capita basis, four Roman Catholics were killed for every Protestant.


title: Pogrom

text: In Mandatory Palestine under British administration, Jews were targeted in the 1929 Hebron massacre and the 1929 Safed pogrom. In 1934 there were pogroms against Jews in Turkey and Algeria.


title: Pogrom

text: The first pogrom in Nazi Germany was the "Kristallnacht", often called "Pogromnacht", in which at least 91 Jews were killed, a further 30,000 arrested and incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps, over 1,000 synagogues burned, and over 7,000 Jewish businesses destroyed or damaged.


title: Pogrom

text: During World War II, Nazi German death squads encouraged local populations in German-occupied Europe to commit pogroms against Jews. Brand new battalions of "Volksdeutscher Selbstschutz" (trained by SD agents) were mobilized from among the German minorities.


title: Pogrom

text: A large number of pogroms occurred during the Holocaust at the hands of non-Germans. Perhaps the deadliest of these Holocaust-era pogroms was the Iași pogrom in Romania, perpetrated by Ion Antonescu, in which as many as 13,266 Jews were killed by Romanian citizens, police and military officials.


title: Pogrom

text: On 1–2 June 1941, in the two-day Farhud pogrom in Iraq, perpetrated by Rashid Ali, Yunis al-Sabawi, and the al-Futuwa youth, "rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews, injured 600 others, and raped an undetermined number of women. They also looted some 1,500 stores and homes". Also 300-400 non-Jewish rioters were killed in the attempt to quell the violence.


title: Pogrom

text: In June–July 1941, encouraged by the "Einsatzgruppen" in the city of Lviv the Ukrainian People's Militia perpetrated two citywide pogroms in which around 6,000 Polish Jews were murdered, in retribution for alleged collaboration with the Soviet NKVD. In Lithuania, some local police led by Algirdas Klimaitis and Lithuanian partisans – consisting of LAF units reinforced by 3,600 deserters from the 29th Lithuanian Territorial Corps of the Red Army promulgated anti-Jewish pogroms in Kaunas along with occupying Nazis. On 25–26 June 1941, about 3,800 Jews were killed and synagogues and Jewish settlements burned.


title: Pogrom

text: During the Jedwabne pogrom of July 1941, ethnic Poles burned at least 340 Jews in a barn (Institute of National Remembrance) in the presence of Nazi German "Ordnungspolizei". The role of the German "Einsatzgruppe B" remains the subject of debate.


title: Pogrom

text: After the end of World War II, a series of violent antisemitic incidents occurred against returning Jews throughout Europe, particularly in the Soviet-occupied East where Nazi propagandists had extensively promoted the notion of a Jewish-Communist conspiracy (see Anti-Jewish violence in Poland, 1944–1946 and Anti-Jewish violence in Eastern Europe, 1944–1946). Anti-Jewish riots also took place in Britain in 1947.


title: Pogrom

text: In the Arab world, anti-Jewish rioters killed over 140 Jews in the 1945 Anti-Jewish Riots in Tripolitania. Following the start of the 1947–48 Civil War in Mandatory Palestine, a number of anti-Jewish events occurred throughout the Arab world, some of which have been described as pogroms. In 1947, half of Aleppo's 10,000 Jews left the city in the wake of the Aleppo riots, while other anti-Jewish riots took place in British Aden and the French Moroccan cities of Oujda and Jerada.


title: Pogrom

text: According to Encyclopædia Britannica, "the term is usually applied to attacks on Jews in the Russian Empire in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, [and] the first extensive pogroms followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881", and the "Wiley-Blackwell Dictionary of Modern European History Since 1789" states that pogroms "were antisemitic disturbances that periodically occurred within the tsarist empire." However, the term is widely used to refer to many events which occurred prior to the Anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. Historian of Russian Jewry John Klier writes in "Russians, Jews, and the Pogroms of 1881–1882" that "By the twentieth century, the word 'pogrom' had become a generic term in English for all forms of collective violence directed against Jews." Abramson wrote that "in mainstream usage the word has come to imply an act of antisemitism", since while "Jews have not been the only group to suffer under this phenomenon ... historically Jews have been frequent victims of such violence."


title: Pogrom

text: The term is also used in reference to attacks on non-Jewish ethnic minorities, and accordingly some scholars do not include antisemitism as the defining characteristic of "pogroms". Reviewing its uses in scholarly literature, historian Werner Bergmann proposes that a pogrom should be "defined as a "unilateral, nongovernmental" form of "collective" violence that is "initiated by the majority population" against a largely defenseless minority ethnic group, and he also states that pogroms occur when the "majority" expects the state to provide it with no assistance in overcoming a (perceived) threat from the minority," but he adds that in Western usage, the word's "anti-Semitic overtones" have been retained. Historian David Engel supports this view, writing that "there can be no logically or empirically compelling grounds for declaring that some particular episode does or does not merit the label [pogrom]," but he states that the majority of the incidents which are "habitually" described as pogroms took place in societies that were significantly divided by ethnicity and/or religion where the violence was committed by members of the higher-ranking group against members of a stereotyped lower-ranking group with which they expressed some complaint, and the members of the higher-ranking group justified their acts of violence by claiming that the law of the land would not be used to stop them.


title: Pogrom

text: There is no universally accepted set of characteristics which define the term pogrom. Klier writes that "when applied indiscriminately to events in Eastern Europe, the term can be misleading, the more so when it implies that 'pogroms' were regular events in the region and that they always shared common features." Use of the term pogrom to refer to events in 1918–19 in Polish cities including Kielce pogrom, Pinsk massacre and Lwów pogrom, was specifically avoided in the 1919 Morgenthau Report and the word "excesses" was used instead because the authors argued that the use of the term "pogrom" required a situation to be antisemitic rather than political in nature, which meant that it was inapplicable to the conditions which exist in a war zone, and media use of the term pogrom to refer to the 1991 Crown Heights riot caused public controversy. In 2008, two separate attacks in the West Bank by Israeli Jewish settlers on Palestinian Arabs were characterized as pogroms by then Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert.


title: Pogrom

text: Werner Bergmann suggests that all such incidents have a particularly unifying characteristic: "[b]y the "collective attribution" of a threat, the pogrom differs from other forms of violence, such as lynchings, which are directed at individual members of a minority group, while the "imbalance of power" in favor of the rioters distinguishes pogroms from other forms of riots (food riots, race riots or "communal riots" between evenly matched groups); and again, the "low level of organization" separates them from vigilantism, terrorism, massacre and genocide".


title: Pogrom

text: This is a partial list of events for which one of the commonly accepted names includes the word "pogrom".


title: Bhediya (film)

text: Bhediya (transl: Wolf) is a 2022 Indian Hindi-language comedy horror film directed by Amar Kaushik. Produced by Dinesh Vijan, it stars Varun Dhawan and Kriti Sanon in lead roles. It is the third installment in Vijan's horror-comedy universe. The film released on 25 November 2022 and received positive reviews from critics and audience like.


title: Bhediya (film)

text: Bhaskar and his cousin, Janardhan "Jana", visit a small town in Arunachal Pradesh, as part of a development project to construct roads in the area. They make acquaintance with two locals, Jomin and Panda, who guide them around. One night, Bhaskar is chased and bitten by a wolf in the forest. Jana and Jomin immediately take him to Dr. Anika, who happens to be the local veterinarian. Seeing the huge bite mark on Bhaskar's rear end and him being in immense pain, she gives him an injection, hoping it would alleviate his pain.


title: Bhediya (film)

text: The next day, Bhaskar starts experiencing changes within him. He experiences a heightened sense of smell and hearing, whilst also communicating with animals. Meanwhile, the local people and tribals are against the idea of cutting down trees in the forests to construct roads and refuse to support it. However, Bhaskar manages to get support of the youth and they give their agreement for the project. Soon, two men who were a part of the project, are found dead. The scratch and bite marks on their body suggest that they might have been mauled and killed by an animal. Panda says that a shape-shifting werewolf is behind the killings, but nobody believes him.


title: Bhediya (film)

text: Seeing Bhaskar's increasingly strange behavior, Jana suspects that Bhaskar might be the shape-shifting werewolf. Jana and Jomin secretly acquire some of Bhaskar's stools to conduct a stool test and find that fragments of human bones were found in Bhaskar's stools. It is revealed that Bhaskar is indeed the one behind the killings, as he reveals the truth to them that ever since he was bitten by the wolf, he has been transforming into a werewolf, every night, and that he has no control over it.


title: Bhediya (film)

text: They decide to lock Bhaskar up at an isolated place so that he does not fall prey to his own urges. However, a local cop spots them and hears the truth, saying that he will reveal Bhaskar's identity to everyone. Just then, the wolf which had bitten Bhaskar, appears and kills the cop, allowing them to escape. In order to find a cure for Bhaskar's condition, they visit an aged medical practitioner. He tells them that the only way Bhaskar can be cured of his transformation is to get bitten again by the same wolf, on a new moon night, at the exact same spot as before.


title: Bhediya (film)

text: Bhaskar wears protective gear all over his body, except his rear end, where he needs to get bitten by the wolf, and goes to the forest, along with Jana and Jomin, waiting for the wolf to appear. The wolf appears and they are shocked to see that the wolf is none other than Dr. Anika, who is also a shape-shifter. She reveals that she had been bitten by the wolf around a hundred years ago. Since then, she had been the protector of the forest, killing anyone who tries to destroy the forest and its trees. She had bitten Bhaskar intending to kill him, but spared him, sensing goodness inside him. She advices him to not fall prey to deforestation and its rewards.


title: Bhediya (film)

text: Anika, suddenly, is shot down and captured by the local police force. Bhaskar transforms into a werewolf and rescues Anika, killing the policemen. However, Anika succumbs to her injuries and falls of a cliff, leaving Bhaskar heartbroken. He decides to work on constructing the roads, but around the borders of the forest, leaving the trees unharmed.


title: Bhediya (film)

text: In a mid-credits scene, Vicky and Bittu come to meet their long lost friend, Jana, who had previously been possessed by "Stree", and has since been staying far away from them, cutting off all contacts. They request Jana's help in uncovering the mystery of "Stree".