title: Baltic Sea

text: The factors that determined the sea's characteristics were the submergence or emergence of the region due to the weight of ice and subsequent isostatic readjustment, and the connecting channels it found to the North Sea-Atlantic, either through the straits of Denmark or at what are now the large lakes of Sweden, and the White Sea-Arctic Sea.


title: Baltic Sea

text: The land is still emerging isostatically from its depressed state, which was caused by the weight of ice during the last glaciation. The phenomenon is known as post-glacial rebound. Consequently, the surface area and the depth of the sea are diminishing. The uplift is about eight millimeters per year on the Finnish coast of the northernmost Gulf of Bothnia. In the area, the former seabed is only gently sloping, leading to large areas of land being reclaimed in what are, geologically speaking, relatively short periods (decades and centuries).


title: Baltic Sea

text: The "Baltic Sea anomaly" is a feature on an indistinct sonar image taken by Swedish salvage divers on the floor of the northern Baltic Sea in June 2011. The treasure hunters suggested the image showed an object with unusual features of seemingly extraordinary origin. Speculation published in tabloid newspapers claimed that the object was a sunken UFO. A consensus of experts and scientists say that the image most likely shows a natural geological formation.


title: Baltic Sea

text: The fauna of the Baltic Sea is a mixture of marine and freshwater species. Among marine fishes are Atlantic cod, Atlantic herring, European hake, European plaice, European flounder, shorthorn sculpin and turbot, and examples of freshwater species include European perch, northern pike, whitefish and common roach. Freshwater species may occur at outflows of rivers or streams in all coastal sections of the Baltic Sea. Otherwise, marine species dominate in most sections of the Baltic, at least as far north as Gävle, where less than one-tenth are freshwater species. Further north the pattern is inverted. In the Bothnian Bay, roughly two-thirds of the species are freshwater. In the far north of this bay, saltwater species are almost entirely absent. For example, the common starfish and shore crab, two species that are very widespread along European coasts, are both unable to cope with the significantly lower salinity. Their range limit is west of Bornholm, meaning that they are absent from the vast majority of the Baltic Sea. Some marine species, like the Atlantic cod and European flounder, can survive at relatively low salinities but need higher salinities to breed, which therefore occurs in deeper parts of the Baltic Sea.


title: Baltic Sea

text: There is a decrease in species richness from the Danish belts to the Gulf of Bothnia. The decreasing salinity along this path causes restrictions in both physiology and habitats. At more than 600 species of invertebrates, fish, aquatic mammals, aquatic birds and macrophytes, the Arkona Basin (roughly between southeast Zealand and Bornholm) is far richer than other more eastern and northern basins in the Baltic Sea, which all have less than 400 species from these groups, with the exception of the Gulf of Finland with more than 750 species. However, even the most diverse sections of the Baltic Sea have far fewer species than the almost-full saltwater Kattegat, which is home to more than 1600 species from these groups. The lack of tides has affected the marine species as compared with the Atlantic.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Since the Baltic Sea is so young there are only two or three known endemic species: the brown alga "Fucus radicans" and the flounder "Platichthys solemdali". Both appear to have evolved in the Baltic basin and were only recognized as species in 2005 and 2018 respectively, having formerly been confused with more widespread relatives. The tiny Copenhagen cockle ("Parvicardium hauniense"), a rare mussel, is sometimes considered endemic, but has now been recorded in the Mediterranean. However, some consider non-Baltic records to be misidentifications of juvenile lagoon cockles ("Cerastoderma glaucum"). Several widespread marine species have distinctive subpopulations in the Baltic Sea adapted to the low salinity, such as the Baltic Sea forms of the Atlantic herring and lumpsucker, which are smaller than the widespread forms in the North Atlantic.


title: Baltic Sea

text: A peculiar feature of the fauna is that it contains a number of glacial relict species, isolated populations of arctic species which have remained in the Baltic Sea since the last glaciation, such as the large isopod "Saduria entomon", the Baltic subspecies of ringed seal, and the fourhorn sculpin. Some of these relicts are derived from glacial lakes, such as "Monoporeia affinis", which is a main element in the benthic fauna of the low-salinity Bothnian Bay.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Cetaceans in the Baltic Sea are monitored by the countries bordering the sea and data compiled by various intergovernmental bodies, such as ASCOBANS. A critically endangered population of harbor porpoise inhabit the Baltic proper, whereas the species is abundant in the outer Baltiuc (Western Baltic and Danish Straits) and occasionally oceanic and out-of-range species such as minke whales, bottlenose dolphins, beluga whales, orcas, and beaked whales visit the waters. In recent years, very small, but with increasing rates, fin whales and humpback whales migrate into Baltic sea including mother and calf pair. Now extinct Atlantic grey whales (remains found from Gräsö along Bothnian Sea/southern Bothnian Gulf and Ystad) and eastern population of North Atlantic right whales that is facing functional extinction once migrated into Baltic Sea.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Satellite images taken in July 2010 revealed a massive algal bloom covering in the Baltic Sea. The area of the bloom extended from Germany and Poland to Finland. Researchers of the phenomenon have indicated that algal blooms have occurred every summer for decades. Fertilizer runoff from surrounding agricultural land has exacerbated the problem and led to increased eutrophication.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Approximately of the Baltic's seafloor (a quarter of its total area) is a variable dead zone. The more saline (and therefore denser) water remains on the bottom, isolating it from surface waters and the atmosphere. This leads to decreased oxygen concentrations within the zone. It is mainly bacteria that grow in it, digesting organic material and releasing hydrogen sulfide. Because of this large anaerobic zone, the seafloor ecology differs from that of the neighboring Atlantic.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Plans to artificially oxygenate areas of the Baltic that have experienced eutrophication have been proposed by the University of Gothenburg and Inocean AB. The proposal intends to use wind-driven pumps to inject oxygen (air) into waters at, or around, 130m below sea level.


title: Baltic Sea

text: After World War II, Germany had to be disarmed and large quantities of ammunition stockpiles were disposed directly into the Baltic Sea and the North Sea. Environmental experts and marine biologists warn that these ammunition dumps pose a major environmental threat with potentially life-threatening consequences to the health and safety of humans on the coastlines of these seas.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Construction of the Great Belt Bridge in Denmark (completed 1997) and the Øresund Bridge-Tunnel (completed 1999), linking Denmark with Sweden, provided a highway and railroad connection between Sweden and the Danish mainland (the Jutland Peninsula, precisely the Zealand). The undersea tunnel of the Øresund Bridge-Tunnel provides for navigation of large ships into and out of the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea is the main trade route for the export of Russian petroleum. Many of the countries neighboring the Baltic Sea have been concerned about this since a major oil leak in a seagoing tanker would be disastrous for the Baltic—given the slow exchange of water. The tourism industry surrounding the Baltic Sea is naturally concerned about oil pollution.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Much shipbuilding is carried out in the shipyards around the Baltic Sea. The largest shipyards are at Gdańsk, Gdynia, and Szczecin, Poland; Kiel, Germany; Karlskrona and Malmö, Sweden; Rauma, Turku, and Helsinki, Finland; Riga, Ventspils, and Liepāja, Latvia; Klaipėda, Lithuania; and Saint Petersburg, Russia.


title: Baltic Sea

text: There are several cargo and passenger ferries that operate on the Baltic Sea, such as Scandlines, Silja Line, Polferries, the Viking Line, Tallink, and Superfast Ferries.


title: Baltic Sea

text: Construction of the Fehmarn Belt Fixed Link between Denmark and Germany is due to finish in 2029. It will be a three-bore tunnel carrying four motorway lanes and two rail tracks.


title: Baltic Sea

text: For the first time ever, all the sources of pollution around an entire sea were made subject to a single convention, signed in 1974 by the then seven Baltic coastal states. The 1974 Convention entered into force on 3 May 1980.


title: Baltic Sea

text: In the light of political changes and developments in international environmental and maritime law, a new convention was signed in 1992 by all the states bordering on the Baltic Sea, and the European Community. After ratification, the Convention entered into force on 17 January 2000. The Convention covers the whole of the Baltic Sea area, including inland waters and the water of the sea itself, as well as the seabed. Measures are also taken in the whole catchment area of the Baltic Sea to reduce land-based pollution. The convention on the Protection of the Marine Environment of the Baltic Sea Area, 1992, entered into force on 17 January 2000.


title: Baltic Sea

text: The governing body of the convention is the Helsinki Commission, also known as HELCOM, or Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission. The present contracting parties are Denmark, Estonia, the European Community, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden.


title: Baltic Sea

text: The ratification instruments were deposited by the European Community, Germany, Latvia and Sweden in 1994, by Estonia and Finland in 1995, by Denmark in 1996, by Lithuania in 1997, and by Poland and Russia in November 1999.


title: Coprophilia

text: Coprophilia (from Greek κόπρος, "kópros" 'excrement' and φιλία, "philía" 'liking, fondness'), also called scatophilia or scat (Greek: σκατά, "skatá" 'feces'), is the paraphilia involving sexual arousal and pleasure from feces.


title: Coprophilia

text: In the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association, it is classified under 302.89—Paraphilia NOS (Not Otherwise Specified) and has no diagnostic criteria other than a general statement about paraphilias that says "the diagnosis is made if the behavior, sexual urges, or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning". Furthermore, the DSM-IV-TR notes, "Fantasies, behaviors, or objects are paraphilic only when they lead to clinically significant distress or impairment (e.g. are obligatory, result in sexual dysfunction, require participation of nonconsenting individuals, lead to legal complications, interfere with social relationships)".


title: Coprophilia

text: Although there may be no connection between coprophilia and sadomasochism (SM), the limited data on the former comes from studies of the latter. A 1999 study of 164 males in Finland from two SM clubs found that 18.2% had engaged in coprophilia; 3% as a sadist only, 6.1% as a masochist only, and 9.1% as both. In the study pool 18% of heterosexuals and 17% of homosexuals had tried coprophilia, showing no statistically significant difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals. In a separate article analyzing 12 men who engaged in bestiality, an additional analysis of an 11-man subgroup revealed that six had engaged in coprophilic behavior, compared with only one in the matched control group consisting of 12 SM-oriented males who did not engage in bestiality.


title: Coprophilia

text: American musician Chuck Berry recorded videos of himself urinating on and engaging in coprophilia with women. In one video, a woman defecates on him after he says "Now it's time for my breakfast." He was also sued for videotaping dozens of women in the restroom of a restaurant he owned, which has been identified as being motivated by his coprophilia fetish.


title: Coprophilia

text: The Cleveland steamer is a colloquial term for a form of coprophilia, where someone defecates on their partner's chest. The term received news attention through its use in a U.S. Congress staff hoax email and being addressed by the United States Federal Communications Commission.


title: Jerma985

text: Jerma985 (; born September 22, 1985), known mononymously as Jerma, is an American live streamer, YouTuber, and voice actor known for his elaborate, "borderline surreal" engagement-based livestreams on Twitch.


title: Jerma985

text: Jerma was born on September 22, 1985, to Irish and Polish parents. Upon receiving a B.S. in Communication, Jerma became a substitute teacher, and was a freelance wedding videographer.


title: Jerma985

text: Jerma previously owned a now defunct website called "jermanet.com". It contained video and audio clips, largely from his college years.


title: Jerma985

text: In 2005, Jerma created an account on Newgrounds, on which he frequented the Voice Acting Club board of the NG Forum "Clubs & Crews" and discussed voice acting work with other forum members. The only piece of media appearing on his now abandoned profile was voice acting work on Shaun McGlinn's "Salty Swamp", where he plays Loke the Village Idiot, along with numerous other characters. McGlinn, also known by his online alias Blordow, would later produce original animations and music for Jerma's YouTube and Twitch.


title: Jerma985

text: He has given his voice to characters in multiple indie games, such as "Matt" in "Galactic Phantasy Prelude", the Engineer in "Cryptark", and the Horse Lord Hipparchos in "Apotheon".


title: Jerma985

text: Jerma created his YouTube channel, Jerma985, on June 11, 2011. His content primarily focused on the video game "Team Fortress 2", which he used to help raise money for the non-profit organization "Camp One Step".


title: Jerma985

text: In March 2014, Jerma released the first "Jerma Rumble", an annual production which used the "WWE 2K" games to make primarily quirky or strange characters, often based on characters from Jerma's past videos and live streams, and watch them wrestle in-game. In August 2016, Jerma released a live-action wrestling sketch as that year's Jerma Rumble. In 2015, he played multiple low quality "Grand Theft Auto" clones through the Apple app store, which is to date his most-viewed video.


title: Jerma985

text: Jerma did not fully transition into Twitch streaming until 2016. He primarily streams video games (such as "The Sims") while interacting with viewers in the chat. After transitioning to Twitch as a main platform, he became well known for his "unconventional streams" and green screen performances, which fans used to edit comedic videos.


title: Jerma985

text: On September 21, 2019, Jerma hosted a real-life "robot carnival" stream that used viewer-controlled robots, allowing members of the live stream chat to control the aim in carnival games such as ring toss and dunk tank.


title: Jerma985

text: In March 2021, Jerma hosted a real-life archaeology and geology stream with a paleontologist from the Nevada Science Center. In the stream, he "unearthed" "Grotto Beasts," a fictitious trading card game from the 1990s based on "Pokémon". The cards were produced in collaboration with multiple artists. Fans played along with the joke, producing fan art in the form of found footage-style art, such as a website for the eponymous card game made to resemble a GeoCities webpage from the 1990s. In early 2022, Jerma donated $10,000 to the Nevada Science Center.


title: Jerma985

text: In August 2021, Jerma began his real-life "The Sims"-inspired "Dollhouse" streams, which he described as his "biggest project yet". The first of three streams, entitled "The Jerma985 Dollhouse", was aired on August 18 and began with a prerecorded video of Jerma choosing his outfit. The streams allowed viewers to control Jerma's actions similar to the way one would control a "Sims" character: keep him fed, happy, healthy and energetic. The Dollhouse series is notable for its high production value as well as the level of control that viewers were allowed to have over the events of the stream. These streams used a combination of visual effects and a real set.


title: Jerma985

text: On February 1, 2022, Jerma livestreamed the "Who Will Replace ME?" show on Twitch. The show featured various actors playing the parts of aspiring individuals auditioning for the chance to take over Jerma's Twitch channel. Viewers were able to vote for the winner and chose actor Ryan Manuel's character, "#13", in a Twitch poll. On February 4, 2022, Jerma featured the character "#13" on his channel again in a follow-up stream of the character commentating over "Destiny 2" gameplay, pretending to have taken over Jerma's channel.


title: Jerma985

text: In early 2022, Jerma signed a partnership deal with Evolved Talent Agency to help fund his upcoming large-stream events, which are each an expensive venture for him to produce. The 2019 "Carnival Stream" cost over $40,000, and The Jerma985 Dollhouse cost even more, requiring a sponsorship deal with Coinbase.


title: Jerma985

text: On August 19, 2022, Jerma hosted a streamed baseball game at CarShield Field, featuring the fictitious Jerma Baseball Association. He later compared the game to a "live comedy improv show". During the stream, two fictitious and comedic baseball teams, the Maryland Magicians and the California Circus (the teams were made up of semi-professional baseball players and circus performers), played a modified game of baseball with various gimmicks, such as "Power Cards" which provided advantages to the team that played them. Jerma played the role of the umpire. This event was viewed by over 250,000 viewers online, and received financial support from sponsors Fansly and Manscaped.


title: Jerma985

text: He has collaborated with other content creators, such as Ludwig Ahgren, Kitboga, and members of the Vinesauce streaming group.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus "Gossypium" in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure cellulose, and can contain minor percentages of waxes, fats, pectins, and water. Under natural conditions, the cotton bolls will increase the dispersal of the seeds.


title: Cotton

text: The plant is a shrub native to tropical and subtropical regions around the world, including the Americas, Africa, Egypt and India. The greatest diversity of wild cotton species is found in Mexico, followed by Australia and Africa. Cotton was independently domesticated in the Old and New Worlds.


title: Cotton

text: The fiber is most often spun into yarn or thread and used to make a soft, breathable, and durable textile. The use of cotton for fabric is known to date to prehistoric times; fragments of cotton fabric dated to the fifth millennium BC have been found in the Indus Valley civilization, as well as fabric remnants dated back to 4200 BC in Peru.


title: Cotton

text: Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production that led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today.


title: Cotton

text: Current estimates for world production are about 25 million tonnes or 110 million bales annually, accounting for 2.5% of the world's arable land. India is the world's largest producer of cotton. The United States has been the largest exporter for many years.


title: Cotton

text: Hybrid varieties are also cultivated. The two New World cotton species account for the vast majority of modern cotton production, but the two Old World species were widely used before the 1900s. While cotton fibers occur naturally in colors of white, brown, pink and green, fears of contaminating the genetics of white cotton have led many cotton-growing locations to ban the growing of colored cotton varieties.


title: Cotton

text: The word "cotton" has Arabic origins, derived from the Arabic word ( or ). This was the usual word for cotton in medieval Arabic. Marco Polo in chapter 2 in his book, describes a province he calls Khotan in Turkestan, today's Xinjiang, where cotton was grown in abundance. The word entered the Romance languages in the mid-12th century, and English a century later. Cotton fabric was known to the ancient Romans as an import, but cotton was rare in the Romance-speaking lands until imports from the Arabic-speaking lands in the later medieval era at transformatively lower prices.


title: Cotton

text: The earliest evidence of the use of cotton in the Old World, dated to 5500 BC and preserved in copper beads, has been found at the Neolithic site of Mehrgarh, at the foot of the Bolan Pass in ancient India, today in Balochistan Pakistan. Fragments of cotton textiles have been found at Mohenjo-daro and other sites of the Bronze Age Indus Valley civilization, and cotton may have been an important export from it.


title: Cotton

text: dated to as early as 5500 BC, but this date has been challenged. More securely dated is the domestication of "Gossypium hirsutum" in Mexico between around 3400 and 2300 BC. During this time, people between the Río Santiago and the Río Balsas grew, spun, wove, dyed, and sewed cotton. What they didn't use themselves, they sent to their Aztec rulers as tribute, on the scale of ~116 million pounds annually.


title: Cotton

text: In Peru, cultivation of the indigenous cotton species "Gossypium barbadense" has been dated, from a find in Ancon, to c. 4200 BC, and was the backbone of the development of coastal cultures such as the Norte Chico, Moche, and Nazca. Cotton was grown upriver, made into nets, and traded with fishing villages along the coast for large supplies of fish. The Spanish who came to Mexico and Peru in the early 16th century found the people growing cotton and wearing clothing made of it.


title: Cotton

text: The Greeks and the Arabs were not familiar with cotton until the Wars of Alexander the Great, as his contemporary Megasthenes told Seleucus I Nicator of "there being trees on which wool grows" in "Indica". This may be a reference to "tree cotton", "Gossypium arboreum", which is a native of the Indian subcontinent.


title: Cotton

text: In Iran (Persia), the history of cotton dates back to the Achaemenid era (5th century BC); however, there are few sources about the planting of cotton in pre-Islamic Iran. Cotton cultivation was common in Merv, Ray and Pars. In Persian poems, especially Ferdowsi's Shahname, there are references to cotton ("panbe" in Persian). Marco Polo (13th century) refers to the major products of Persia, including cotton. John Chardin, a French traveler of the 17th century who visited Safavid Persia, spoke approvingly of the vast cotton farms of Persia.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton ("Gossypium herbaceum" Linnaeus) may have been domesticated 5000 BC in eastern Sudan near the Middle Nile Basin region, where cotton cloth was being produced.


title: Cotton

text: Around the 4th century BC, the cultivation of cotton and the knowledge of its spinning and weaving in Meroë reached a high level. The export of textiles was one of the sources of wealth for Meroë. Ancient Nubia had a “culture of cotton” of sorts, evidenced by physical evidence of cotton processing tools and the presence of cattle in certain areas. Some researchers propose that cotton was important to the Nubian economy for its use in contact with the neighboring Egyptians. Aksumite King Ezana boasted in his inscription that he destroyed large cotton plantations in Meroë during his conquest of the region.


title: Cotton

text: In the Meroitic Period (beginning 3rd century BCE), many cotton textiles have been recovered, preserved due to favorable arid conditions. Most of these fabric fragments come from Lower Nubia, and the cotton textiles account for 85% of the archaeological textiles from Classic/Late Meroitic sites. Due to these arid conditions, cotton, a plant that usually thrives moderate rainfall and richer soils, requires extra irrigation and labor in Sudanese climate conditions. Therefore, a great deal of resources would have been required, likely restricting its cultivation to the elite. In the first to third centuries CE, recovered cotton fragments all began to mirror the same style and production method, as seen from the direction of spun cotton and technique of weaving. Cotton textiles also appear in places of high regard, such as on funerary stelae and statues.


title: Cotton

text: During the Han dynasty (207 BC - 220 AD), cotton was grown by Chinese peoples in the southern Chinese province of Yunnan.


title: Cotton

text: Handheld roller cotton gins had been used in India since the 6th century, and was then introduced to other countries from there. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, dual-roller gins appeared in India and China. The Indian version of the dual-roller gin was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean cotton trade by the 16th century. This mechanical device was, in some areas, driven by water power.


title: Cotton

text: The earliest clear illustrations of the spinning wheel come from the Islamic world in the eleventh century. The earliest unambiguous reference to a spinning wheel in India is dated to 1350, suggesting that the spinning wheel was likely introduced from Iran to India during the Delhi Sultanate.


title: Cotton

text: During the late medieval period, cotton became known as an imported fiber in northern Europe, without any knowledge of how it was derived, other than that it was a plant. Because Herodotus had written in his "Histories", Book III, 106, that in India trees grew in the wild producing wool, it was assumed that the plant was a tree, rather than a shrub. This aspect is retained in the name for cotton in several Germanic languages, such as German "Baumwolle", which translates as "tree wool" ("Baum" means "tree"; "Wolle" means "wool"). Noting its similarities to wool, people in the region could only imagine that cotton must be produced by plant-borne sheep. John Mandeville, writing in 1350, stated as fact that "There grew there [India] a wonderful tree which bore tiny lambs on the endes of its branches. These branches were so pliable that they bent down to allow the lambs to feed when they are hungry." (See Vegetable Lamb of Tartary.)


title: Cotton

text: Cotton manufacture was introduced to Europe during the Muslim conquest of the Iberian Peninsula and Sicily. The knowledge of cotton weaving was spread to northern Italy in the 12th century, when Sicily was conquered by the Normans, and consequently to the rest of Europe. The spinning wheel, introduced to Europe circa 1350, improved the speed of cotton spinning. By the 15th century, Venice, Antwerp, and Haarlem were important ports for cotton trade, and the sale and transportation of cotton fabrics had become very profitable.


title: Cotton

text: Under the Mughal Empire, which ruled in the Indian subcontinent from the early 16th century to the early 18th century, Indian cotton production increased, in terms of both raw cotton and cotton textiles. The Mughals introduced agrarian reforms such as a new revenue system that was biased in favour of higher value cash crops such as cotton and indigo, providing state incentives to grow cash crops, in addition to rising market demand.


title: Cotton

text: The largest manufacturing industry in the Mughal Empire was cotton textile manufacturing, which included the production of piece goods, calicos, and muslins, available unbleached and in a variety of colours. The cotton textile industry was responsible for a large part of the empire's international trade. India had a 25% share of the global textile trade in the early 18th century. Indian cotton textiles were the most important manufactured goods in world trade in the 18th century, consumed across the world from the Americas to Japan. The most important center of cotton production was the Bengal Subah province, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka.


title: Cotton

text: The worm gear roller cotton gin, which was invented in India during the early Delhi Sultanate era of the 13th–14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire some time around the 16th century, and is still used in India through to the present day. Another innovation, the incorporation of the crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared in India some time during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. The production of cotton, which may have largely been spun in the villages and then taken to towns in the form of yarn to be woven into cloth textiles, was advanced by the diffusion of the spinning wheel across India shortly before the Mughal era, lowering the costs of yarn and helping to increase demand for cotton. The diffusion of the spinning wheel, and the incorporation of the worm gear and crank handle into the roller cotton gin, led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile production during the Mughal era.


title: Cotton

text: It was reported that, with an Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman could clean 28 pounds of cotton per day. With a modified Forbes version, one man and a boy could produce 250 pounds per day. If oxen were used to power 16 of these machines, and a few people's labour was used to feed them, they could produce as much work as 750 people did formerly.


title: Cotton

text: In the early 19th century, a Frenchman named M. Jumel proposed to the great ruler of Egypt, Mohamed Ali Pasha, that he could earn a substantial income by growing an extra-long staple Maho ("Gossypium barbadense") cotton, in Lower Egypt, for the French market. Mohamed Ali Pasha accepted the proposition and granted himself the monopoly on the sale and export of cotton in Egypt; and later dictated cotton should be grown in preference to other crops.


title: Cotton

text: Egypt under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century had the fifth most productive cotton industry in the world, in terms of the number of spindles per capita. The industry was initially driven by machinery that relied on traditional energy sources, such as animal power, water wheels, and windmills, which were also the principal energy sources in Western Europe up until around 1870. It was under Muhammad Ali in the early 19th century that steam engines were introduced to the Egyptian cotton industry.


title: Cotton

text: By the time of the American Civil war annual exports had reached $16 million (120,000 bales), which rose to $56 million by 1864, primarily due to the loss of the Confederate supply on the world market. Exports continued to grow even after the reintroduction of US cotton, produced now by a paid workforce, and Egyptian exports reached 1.2 million bales a year by 1903.


title: Cotton

text: The English East India Company (EIC) introduced the British to cheap calico and chintz cloth on the restoration of the monarchy in the 1660s. Initially imported as a novelty side line, from its spice trading posts in Asia, the cheap colourful cloth proved popular and overtook the EIC's spice trade by value in the late 17th century. The EIC embraced the demand, particularly for calico, by expanding its factories in Asia and producing and importing cloth in bulk, creating competition for domestic woollen and linen textile producers. The impacted weavers, spinners, dyers, shepherds and farmers objected and the calico question became one of the major issues of National politics between the 1680s and the 1730s. Parliament began to see a decline in domestic textile sales, and an increase in imported textiles from places like China and India. Seeing the East India Company and their textile importation as a threat to domestic textile businesses, Parliament passed the 1700 Calico Act, blocking the importation of cotton cloth. As there was no punishment for continuing to sell cotton cloth, smuggling of the popular material became commonplace. In 1721, dissatisfied with the results of the first act, Parliament passed a stricter addition, this time prohibiting the sale of most cottons, imported and domestic (exempting only thread Fustian and raw cotton). The exemption of raw cotton from the prohibition initially saw 2 thousand bales of cotton imported annually, to become the basis of a new indigenous industry, initially producing Fustian for the domestic market, though more importantly triggering the development of a series of mechanised spinning and weaving technologies, to process the material. This mechanised production was concentrated in new cotton mills, which slowly expanded until by the beginning of the 1770s seven thousand bales of cotton were imported annually, and pressure was put on Parliament, by the new mill owners, to remove the prohibition on the production and sale of pure cotton cloth, as they could easily compete with anything the EIC could import.


title: Cotton

text: The acts were repealed in 1774, triggering a wave of investment in mill-based cotton spinning and production, doubling the demand for raw cotton within a couple of years, and doubling it again every decade, into the 1840s.


title: Cotton

text: Indian cotton textiles, particularly those from Bengal, continued to maintain a competitive advantage up until the 19th century. In order to compete with India, Britain invested in labour-saving technical progress, while implementing protectionist policies such as bans and tariffs to restrict Indian imports. At the same time, the East India Company's rule in India contributed to its deindustrialization, opening up a new market for British goods, while the capital amassed from Bengal after its 1757 conquest was used to invest in British industries such as textile manufacturing and greatly increase British wealth. British colonization also forced open the large Indian market to British goods, which could be sold in India without tariffs or duties, compared to local Indian producers who were heavily taxed, while raw cotton was imported from India without tariffs to British factories which manufactured textiles from Indian cotton, giving Britain a monopoly over India's large market and cotton resources. India served as both a significant supplier of raw goods to British manufacturers and a large captive market for British manufactured goods. Britain eventually surpassed India as the world's leading cotton textile manufacturer in the 19th century.


title: Cotton

text: India's cotton-processing sector changed during EIC expansion in India in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From focusing on supplying the British market to supplying East Asia with raw cotton. As the Artisan produced textiles were no longer competitive with those produced Industrially, and Europe preferring the cheaper slave produced, long staple American, and Egyptian cottons, for its own materials.


title: Cotton

text: The advent of the Industrial Revolution in Britain provided a great boost to cotton manufacture, as textiles emerged as Britain's leading export. In 1738, Lewis Paul and John Wyatt, of Birmingham, England, patented the roller spinning machine, as well as the flyer-and-bobbin system for drawing cotton to a more even thickness using two sets of rollers that traveled at different speeds. Later, the invention of the James Hargreaves' spinning jenny in 1764, Richard Arkwright's spinning frame in 1769 and Samuel Crompton's spinning mule in 1775 enabled British spinners to produce cotton yarn at much higher rates. From the late 18th century on, the British city of Manchester acquired the nickname ""Cottonopolis"" due to the cotton industry's omnipresence within the city, and Manchester's role as the heart of the global cotton trade.


title: Cotton

text: Production capacity in Britain and the United States was improved by the invention of the modern cotton gin by the American Eli Whitney in 1793. Before the development of cotton gins, the cotton fibers had to be pulled from the seeds tediously by hand. By the late 1700s, a number of crude ginning machines had been developed. However, to produce a bale of cotton required over 600 hours of human labor, making large-scale production uneconomical in the United States, even with the use of humans as slave labor. The gin that Whitney manufactured (the Holmes design) reduced the hours down to just a dozen or so per bale. Although Whitney patented his own design for a cotton gin, he manufactured a prior design from Henry Odgen Holmes, for which Holmes filed a patent in 1796. Improving technology and increasing control of world markets allowed British traders to develop a commercial chain in which raw cotton fibers were (at first) purchased from colonial plantations, processed into cotton cloth in the mills of Lancashire, and then exported on British ships to captive colonial markets in West Africa, India, and China (via Shanghai and Hong Kong).


title: Cotton

text: By the 1840s, India was no longer capable of supplying the vast quantities of cotton fibers needed by mechanized British factories, while shipping bulky, low-price cotton from India to Britain was time-consuming and expensive. This, coupled with the emergence of American cotton as a superior type (due to the longer, stronger fibers of the two domesticated native American species, "Gossypium hirsutum" and "Gossypium barbadense"), encouraged British traders to purchase cotton from plantations in the United States and in the Caribbean. By the mid-19th century, "King Cotton" had become the backbone of the southern American economy. In the United States, cultivating and harvesting cotton became the leading occupation of slaves.


title: Cotton

text: During the American Civil War, American cotton exports slumped due to a Union blockade on Southern ports, and because of a strategic decision by the Confederate government to cut exports, hoping to force Britain to recognize the Confederacy or enter the war. The Lancashire Cotton Famine prompted the main purchasers of cotton, Britain and France, to turn to Egyptian cotton. British and French traders invested heavily in cotton plantations. The Egyptian government of Viceroy Isma'il took out substantial loans from European bankers and stock exchanges. After the American Civil War ended in 1865, British and French traders abandoned Egyptian cotton and returned to cheap American exports, sending Egypt into a deficit spiral that led to the country declaring bankruptcy in 1876, a key factor behind Egypt's occupation by the British Empire in 1882.


title: Cotton

text: During this time, cotton cultivation in the British Empire, especially Australia and India, greatly increased to replace the lost production of the American South. Through tariffs and other restrictions, the British government discouraged the production of cotton cloth in India; rather, the raw fiber was sent to England for processing. The Indian Mahatma Gandhi described the process:


title: Cotton

text: In the United States, growing Southern cotton generated significant wealth and capital for the antebellum South, as well as raw material for Northern textile industries. Before 1865 the cotton was largely produced through the labor of enslaved African Americans. It enriched both the Southern landowners and the new textile industries of the Northeastern United States and northwestern Europe. In 1860 the slogan "Cotton is king" characterized the attitude of Southern leaders toward this monocrop in that Europe would support an independent Confederate States of America in 1861 in order to protect the supply of cotton it needed for its very large textile industry.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton remained a key crop in the Southern economy after slavery ended in 1865. Across the South, sharecropping evolved, in which landless farmers worked land owned by others in return for a share of the profits. Some farmers rented the land and bore the production costs themselves. Until mechanical cotton pickers were developed, cotton farmers needed additional labor to hand-pick cotton. Picking cotton was a source of income for families across the South. Rural and small town school systems had split vacations so children could work in the fields during "cotton-picking."


title: Cotton

text: During the middle 20th century, employment in cotton farming fell, as machines began to replace laborers and the South's rural labor force dwindled during the World Wars. Cotton remains a major export of the United States, with large farms in California, Arizona and the Deep South. To acknowledge cotton's place in the history and heritage of Texas, the Texas Legislature designated cotton the official "State Fiber and Fabric of Texas" in 1997.


title: Cotton

text: China's Chang'e 4 took cotton seeds to the Moon's far side. On 15 January 2019, China announced that a cotton seed sprouted, the first "truly otherworldly plant in history". Inside the Von Kármán Crater, the capsule and seeds sit inside the Chang'e 4 lander.


title: Cotton

text: Successful cultivation of cotton requires a long frost-free period, plenty of sunshine, and a moderate rainfall, usually from . Soils usually need to be fairly heavy, although the level of nutrients does not need to be exceptional. In general, these conditions are met within the seasonally dry tropics and subtropics in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, but a large proportion of the cotton grown today is cultivated in areas with less rainfall that obtain the water from irrigation. Production of the crop for a given year usually starts soon after harvesting the preceding autumn. Cotton is naturally a perennial but is grown as an annual to help control pests. Planting time in spring in the Northern hemisphere varies from the beginning of February to the beginning of June. The area of the United States known as the South Plains is the largest contiguous cotton-growing region in the world. While dryland (non-irrigated) cotton is successfully grown in this region, consistent yields are only produced with heavy reliance on irrigation water drawn from the Ogallala Aquifer. Since cotton is somewhat salt and drought tolerant, this makes it an attractive crop for arid and semiarid regions. As water resources get tighter around the world, economies that rely on it face difficulties and conflict, as well as potential environmental problems. For example, improper cropping and irrigation practices have led to desertification in areas of Uzbekistan, where cotton is a major export. In the days of the Soviet Union, the Aral Sea was tapped for agricultural irrigation, largely of cotton, and now salination is widespread.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton can also be cultivated to have colors other than the yellowish off-white typical of modern commercial cotton fibers. Naturally colored cotton can come in red, green, and several shades of brown.


title: Cotton

text: The water footprint of cotton fibers is substantially larger than for most other plant fibers. Cotton is also known as a thirsty crop; on average, globally, cotton requires 8,000–10,000 liters of water for one kilogram of cotton, and in dry areas, it may require even more such as in some areas of India, it may need 22,500 liters.


title: Cotton

text: Genetically modified (GM) cotton was developed to reduce the heavy reliance on pesticides. The bacterium "Bacillus thuringiensis" (Bt) naturally produces a chemical harmful only to a small fraction of insects, most notably the larvae of moths and butterflies, beetles, and flies, and harmless to other forms of life. The gene coding for Bt toxin has been inserted into cotton, causing cotton, called Bt cotton, to produce this natural insecticide in its tissues. In many regions, the main pests in commercial cotton are lepidopteran larvae, which are killed by the Bt protein in the transgenic cotton they eat. This eliminates the need to use large amounts of broad-spectrum insecticides to kill lepidopteran pests (some of which have developed pyrethroid resistance). This spares natural insect predators in the farm ecology and further contributes to noninsecticide pest management.


title: Cotton

text: However, Bt cotton is ineffective against many cotton pests, such as plant bugs, stink bugs, and aphids; depending on circumstances it may still be desirable to use insecticides against these. A 2006 study done by Cornell researchers, the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy and the Chinese Academy of Science on Bt cotton farming in China found that after seven years these secondary pests that were normally controlled by pesticide had increased, necessitating the use of pesticides at similar levels to non-Bt cotton and causing less profit for farmers because of the extra expense of GM seeds. However, a 2009 study by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stanford University and Rutgers University refuted this. They concluded that the GM cotton effectively controlled bollworm. The secondary pests were mostly miridae (plant bugs) whose increase was related to local temperature and rainfall and only continued to increase in half the villages studied. Moreover, the increase in insecticide use for the control of these secondary insects was far smaller than the reduction in total insecticide use due to Bt cotton adoption. A 2012 Chinese study concluded that Bt cotton halved the use of pesticides and doubled the level of ladybirds, lacewings and spiders. The International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) said that, worldwide, GM cotton was planted on an area of 25 million hectares in 2011. This was 69% of the worldwide total area planted in cotton.


title: Cotton

text: GM cotton acreage in India grew at a rapid rate, increasing from 50,000 hectares in 2002 to 10.6 million hectares in 2011. The total cotton area in India was 12.1 million hectares in 2011, so GM cotton was grown on 88% of the cotton area. This made India the country with the largest area of GM cotton in the world. A long-term study on the economic impacts of Bt cotton in India, published in the Journal PNAS in 2012, showed that Bt cotton has increased yields, profits, and living standards of smallholder farmers. The U.S. GM cotton crop was 4.0 million hectares in 2011 the second largest area in the world, the Chinese GM cotton crop was third largest by area with 3.9 million hectares and Pakistan had the fourth largest GM cotton crop area of 2.6 million hectares in 2011. The initial introduction of GM cotton proved to be a success in Australia – the yields were equivalent to the non-transgenic varieties and the crop used much less pesticide to produce (85% reduction). The subsequent introduction of a second variety of GM cotton led to increases in GM cotton production until 95% of the Australian cotton crop was GM in 2009 making Australia the country with the fifth largest GM cotton crop in the world. Other GM cotton growing countries in 2011 were Argentina, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, South Africa and Costa Rica.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton has been genetically modified for resistance to glyphosate a broad-spectrum herbicide discovered by Monsanto which also sells some of the Bt cotton seeds to farmers. There are also a number of other cotton seed companies selling GM cotton around the world. About 62% of the GM cotton grown from 1996 to 2011 was insect resistant, 24% stacked product and 14% herbicide resistant.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton has gossypol, a toxin that makes it inedible. However, scientists have silenced the gene that produces the toxin, making it a potential food crop. On 17 October 2018, the USDA deregulated GE low-gossypol cotton.


title: Cotton

text: Organic cotton is generally understood as cotton from plants not genetically modified and that is certified to be grown without the use of any synthetic agricultural chemicals, such as fertilizers or pesticides. Its production also promotes and enhances biodiversity and biological cycles. In the United States, organic cotton plantations are required to enforce the National Organic Program (NOP). This institution determines the allowed practices for pest control, growing, fertilizing, and handling of organic crops. As of 2007, 265,517 bales of organic cotton were produced in 24 countries, and worldwide production was growing at a rate of more than 50% per year. Organic cotton products are now available for purchase at limited locations. These are popular for baby clothes and diapers; natural cotton products are known to be both sustainable and hypoallergenic.


title: Cotton

text: The cotton industry relies heavily on chemicals, such as fertilizers, insecticides and herbicides, although a very small number of farmers are moving toward an organic model of production. Under most definitions, organic products do not use transgenic "Bt" cotton which contains a bacterial gene that codes for a plant-produced protein that is toxic to a number of pests especially the bollworms. For most producers, "Bt" cotton has allowed a substantial reduction in the use of synthetic insecticides, although in the long term resistance may become problematic.


title: Cotton

text: Significant global pests of cotton include various species of bollworm, such as "Pectinophora gossypiella". Sucking pests include cotton stainers, the chili thrips, "Scirtothrips dorsalis"; the cotton seed bug, "Oxycarenus hyalinipennis". Defoliators include the fall armyworm, "Spodoptera frugiperda".


title: Cotton

text: Cotton yield is threatened by the evolution of new biotypes of insects and of new pathogens. Maintaining good yield requires strategies to slow these adversaries' evolution.


title: Cotton

text: Historically, in North America, one of the most economically destructive pests in cotton production has been the boll weevil. Boll weevils are beetles who ate cotton in the 1950s, that slowed the production of the cotton industry drastically. “This bone pile of short budgets, loss of market share, failing prices, abandoned farms, and the new immunity of boll weevils generated a feeling of helplessness” Boll Weevils first appeared in Beeville, Texas wiping out field after field of cotton in south Texas. This swarm of Boll Weevils swept through east Texas and spread to the eastern seaboard, leaving ruin and devastation in its path, causing many cotton farmers to go out of business.


title: Cotton

text: Due to the US Department of Agriculture's highly successful Boll Weevil Eradication Program (BWEP), this pest has been eliminated from cotton in most of the United States. This program, along with the introduction of genetically engineered Bt cotton, has improved the management of a number of pests such as cotton bollworm and pink bollworm). Sucking pests include the cotton stainer, "Dysdercus suturellus" and the tarnish plant bug, "Lygus lineolaris". A significant cotton disease is caused by "Xanthomonas citri" subsp. "malvacearum".


title: Cotton

text: Most cotton in the United States, Europe and Australia is harvested mechanically, either by a cotton picker, a machine that removes the cotton from the boll without damaging the cotton plant, or by a cotton stripper, which strips the entire boll off the plant. Cotton strippers are used in regions where it is too windy to grow picker varieties of cotton, and usually after application of a chemical defoliant or the natural defoliation that occurs after a freeze. Cotton is a perennial crop in the tropics, and without defoliation or freezing, the plant will continue to grow.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton continues to be picked by hand in developing countries and in Xinjiang, China, by forced labor. Xinjiang produces over 20% of the world's cotton.


title: Cotton

text: The era of manufactured fibers began with the development of rayon in France in the 1890s. Rayon is derived from a natural cellulose and cannot be considered synthetic, but requires extensive processing in a manufacturing process, and led the less expensive replacement of more naturally derived materials. A succession of new synthetic fibers were introduced by the chemicals industry in the following decades. Acetate in fiber form was developed in 1924. Nylon, the first fiber synthesized entirely from petrochemicals, was introduced as a sewing thread by DuPont in 1936, followed by DuPont's acrylic in 1944. Some garments were created from fabrics based on these fibers, such as women's hosiery from nylon, but it was not until the introduction of polyester into the fiber marketplace in the early 1950s that the market for cotton came under threat. The rapid uptake of polyester garments in the 1960s caused economic hardship in cotton-exporting economies, especially in Central American countries, such as Nicaragua, where cotton production had boomed tenfold between 1950 and 1965 with the advent of cheap chemical pesticides. Cotton production recovered in the 1970s, but crashed to pre-1960 levels in the early 1990s.


title: Cotton

text: High water and pesticide use in cotton cultivation has prompted sustainability concerns and created a market for natural fiber alternatives. Other cellulose fibers, such as hemp, are seen as more sustainable options because of higher yields per acre with less water and pesticide use than cotton. Cellulose fiber alternatives have similar characteristics but are not perfect substitutes for cotton textiles with differences in properties like tensile strength and thermal regulation.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton is used to make a number of textile products. These include terrycloth for highly absorbent bath towels and robes; denim for blue jeans; cambric, popularly used in the manufacture of blue work shirts (from which we get the term "blue-collar"); and corduroy, seersucker, and cotton twill. Socks, underwear, and most T-shirts are made from cotton. Bed sheets often are made from cotton. It is a preferred material for sheets as it is hypoallergenic, easy to maintain and non-irritant to the skin. Cotton also is used to make yarn used in crochet and knitting. Fabric also can be made from recycled or recovered cotton that otherwise would be thrown away during the spinning, weaving, or cutting process. While many fabrics are made completely of cotton, some materials blend cotton with other fibers, including rayon and synthetic fibers such as polyester. It can either be used in knitted or woven fabrics, as it can be blended with elastine to make a stretchier thread for knitted fabrics, and apparel such as stretch jeans. Cotton can be blended also with linen producing fabrics with the benefits of both materials. Linen-cotton blends are wrinkle resistant and retain heat more effectively than only linen, and are thinner, stronger and lighter than only cotton.


title: Cotton

text: In addition to the textile industry, cotton is used in fishing nets, coffee filters, tents, explosives manufacture (see nitrocellulose), cotton paper, and in bookbinding. Fire hoses were once made of cotton.


title: Cotton

text: The cottonseed which remains after the cotton is ginned is used to produce cottonseed oil, which, after refining, can be consumed by humans like any other vegetable oil. The cottonseed meal that is left generally is fed to ruminant livestock; the gossypol remaining in the meal is toxic to monogastric animals. Cottonseed hulls can be added to dairy cattle rations for roughage. During the American slavery period, cotton root bark was used in folk remedies as an abortifacient, that is, to induce a miscarriage. Gossypol was one of the many substances found in all parts of the cotton plant and it was described by the scientists as 'poisonous pigment'. It also appears to inhibit the development of sperm or even restrict the mobility of the sperm. Also, it is thought to interfere with the menstrual cycle by restricting the release of certain hormones.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton linters are fine, silky fibers which adhere to the seeds of the cotton plant after ginning. These curly fibers typically are less than long. The term also may apply to the longer textile fiber staple lint as well as the shorter fuzzy fibers from some upland species. Linters are traditionally used in the manufacture of paper and as a raw material in the manufacture of cellulose. In the UK, linters are referred to as "cotton wool".


title: Cotton

text: A less technical use of the term "cotton wool", in the UK and Ireland, is for the refined product known as "absorbent cotton" (or, often, just "cotton") in U.S. usage: fluffy cotton in sheets or balls used for medical, cosmetic, protective packaging, and many other practical purposes. The first medical use of cotton wool was by Sampson Gamgee at the Queen's Hospital (later the General Hospital) in Birmingham, England.


title: Cotton

text: Long staple (LS cotton) is cotton of a longer fibre length and therefore of higher quality, while Extra-long staple cotton (ELS cotton) has longer fibre length still and of even higher quality. The name "Egyptian cotton" is broadly associated high quality cottons and is often an LS or (less often) an ELS cotton. Nowadays the name "Egyptian cotton" refers more to the way cotton is treated and threads produced rather than the location where it is grown. The American cotton variety "Pima" cotton is often compared to Egyptian cotton, as both are used in high quality bed sheets and other cotton products. While Pima cotton is often grown in the American southwest, the Pima name is now used by cotton-producing nations such as Peru, Australia and Israel. Not all products bearing the Pima name are made with the finest cotton: American-grown ELS Pima cotton is trademarked as "Supima" cotton. "Kasturi" cotton is a brand-building initiative for Indian long staple cotton by the Indian government. The PIB issued a press release announcing the same.


title: Cotton

text: Cottons have been grown as ornamentals or novelties due to their showy flowers and snowball-like fruit. For example, Jumel's cotton, once an important source of fiber in Egypt, started as an ornamental. However, agricultural authorities such as the Boll Weevil Eradication Program in the United States discourage using cotton as an ornamental, due to concerns about these plants harboring pests injurious to crops.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton lisle, or fil d'Ecosse cotton, is a finely-spun, tightly twisted type of cotton that is noted for being strong and durable. Lisle is composed of two strands that have each been twisted an extra twist per inch than ordinary yarns and combined to create a single thread. The yarn is spun so that it is compact and solid. This cotton is used mainly for underwear, stockings, and gloves. Colors applied to this yarn are noted for being more brilliant than colors applied to softer yarn. This type of thread was first made in the city of Lisle, France (now Lille), hence its name.


title: Cotton

text: The largest producers of cotton, as of 2017, are India and China, with annual production of about 18.53 million tonnes and 17.14 million tonnes, respectively; most of this production is consumed by their respective textile industries. The largest exporters of raw cotton are the United States, with sales of $4.9 billion, and Africa, with sales of $2.1 billion. The total international trade is estimated to be $12 billion. Africa's share of the cotton trade has doubled since 1980. Neither area has a significant domestic textile industry, textile manufacturing having moved to developing nations in Eastern and South Asia such as India and China. In Africa, cotton is grown by numerous small holders. Dunavant Enterprises, based in Memphis, Tennessee, is the leading cotton broker in Africa, with hundreds of purchasing agents. It operates cotton gins in Uganda, Mozambique, and Zambia. In Zambia, it often offers loans for seed and expenses to the 180,000 small farmers who grow cotton for it, as well as advice on farming methods. Cargill also purchases cotton in Africa for export.


title: Cotton

text: The 25,000 cotton growers in the United States are heavily subsidized at the rate of $2 billion per year although China now provides the highest overall level of cotton sector support. The future of these subsidies is uncertain and has led to anticipatory expansion of cotton brokers' operations in Africa. Dunavant expanded in Africa by buying out local operations. This is only possible in former British colonies and Mozambique; former French colonies continue to maintain tight monopolies, inherited from their former colonialist masters, on cotton purchases at low fixed prices.


title: Cotton

text: To encourage trade and organize discussion about cotton, World Cotton Day is celebrated every October 7.


title: Cotton

text: The five leading exporters of cotton in 2019 are (1) India, (2) the United States, (3) China, (4) Brazil, and (5) Pakistan.


title: Cotton

text: In India, the states of Maharashtra (26.63%), Gujarat (17.96%) and Andhra Pradesh (13.75%) and also Madhya Pradesh are the leading cotton producing states, these states have a predominantly tropical wet and dry climate.


title: Cotton

text: In the United States, the state of Texas led in total production as of 2004, while the state of California had the highest yield per acre.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton is an enormously important commodity throughout the world. It provides livelihoods for up to 1 billion people, including 100 million smallholder farmers who cultivate cotton. However, many farmers in developing countries receive a low price for their produce, or find it difficult to compete with developed countries.


title: Cotton

text: On 27 September 2002, Brazil requested consultations with the US regarding prohibited and actionable subsidies provided to US producers, users and/or exporters of upland cotton, as well as legislation, regulations, statutory instruments and amendments thereto providing such subsidies (including export credits), grants, and any other assistance to the US producers, users and exporters of upland cotton.


title: Cotton

text: On 8 September 2004, the Panel Report recommended that the United States "withdraw" export credit guarantees and payments to domestic users and exporters, and "take appropriate steps to remove the adverse effects or withdraw" the mandatory price-contingent subsidy measures.


title: Cotton

text: While Brazil was fighting the US through the WTO's Dispute Settlement Mechanism against a heavily subsidized cotton industry, a group of four least-developed African countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, and Mali – also known as "Cotton-4" have been the leading protagonist for the reduction of US cotton subsidies through negotiations. The four introduced a "Sectoral Initiative in Favour of Cotton", presented by Burkina Faso's President Blaise Compaoré during the Trade Negotiations Committee on 10 June 2003.


title: Cotton

text: In addition to concerns over subsidies, the cotton industries of some countries are criticized for employing child labor and damaging workers' health by exposure to pesticides used in production. The Environmental Justice Foundation has campaigned against the prevalent use of forced child and adult labor in cotton production in Uzbekistan, the world's third largest cotton exporter.


title: Cotton

text: The international production and trade situation has led to "fair trade" cotton clothing and footwear, joining a rapidly growing market for organic clothing, fair fashion or "ethical fashion". The fair trade system was initiated in 2005 with producers from Cameroon, Mali and Senegal, with the Association Max Havelaar France playing a lead role in the establishment of this segment of the fair trade system in conjunction with Fairtrade International and the French organisation ("Développement des Agro-Industries du Sud").


title: Cotton

text: Cotton is bought and sold by investors and price speculators as a tradable commodity on 2 different commodity exchanges in the United States of America.


title: Cotton

text: A temperature range of is the optimal range for mold development. At temperatures below , rotting of wet cotton stops. Damaged cotton is sometimes stored at these temperatures to prevent further deterioration.


title: Cotton

text: Egypt has a unique climatic temperature that the soil and the temperature provide an exceptional environment for cotton to grow rapidly.


title: Cotton

text: Cotton has a more complex structure among the other crops. A matured cotton fiber is a single, elongated complete dried multilayer cell that develops in the surface layer of cottonseed. It has the following parts.


title: Cotton

text: Dead cotton is a term that refers to unripe cotton fibers that do not absorb dye. Dead cotton is immature cotton that has poor dye affinity and appears as white specks on a dyed fabric. When cotton fibers are analyzed and assessed through a microscope, dead fibers appear differently. Dead cotton fibers have thin cell walls. In contrast, mature fibers have more cellulose and a greater degree of cell wall thickening


title: Cotton

text: There is a public effort to sequence the genome of cotton. It was started in 2007 by a consortium of public researchers. Their aim is to sequence the genome of cultivated, tetraploid cotton. "Tetraploid" means that its nucleus has two separate genomes, called A and D. The consortium agreed to first sequence the D-genome wild relative of cultivated cotton ("G. raimondii", a Central American species) because it is small and has few repetitive elements. It has nearly one-third of the bases of tetraploid cotton, and each chromosome occurs only once. Then, the A genome of "G. arboreum" would be sequenced. Its genome is roughly twice that of "G. raimondii". Part of the difference in size is due to the amplification of "retrotransposons" (GORGE). After both diploid genomes are assembled, they would be used as models for sequencing the genomes of tetraploid cultivated species. Without knowing the diploid genomes, the euchromatic DNA sequences of AD genomes would co-assemble, and their repetitive elements would assemble independently into A and D sequences respectively. There would be no way to untangle the mess of AD sequences without comparing them to their diploid counterparts.


title: Cotton

text: The public sector effort continues with the goal to create a high-quality, draft genome sequence from reads generated by all sources. The effort has generated Sanger reads of BACs, fosmids, and plasmids, as well as 454 reads. These later types of reads will be instrumental in assembling an initial draft of the D genome. In 2010, the companies Monsanto and Illumina completed enough Illumina sequencing to cover the D genome of "G. raimondii" about 50x. They announced that they would donate their raw reads to the public. This public relations effort gave them some recognition for sequencing the cotton genome. Once the D genome is assembled from all of this raw material, it will undoubtedly assist in the assembly of the AD genomes of cultivated varieties of cotton, but much work remains.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Joshua David Hawley (born December 31, 1979) is an American politician and lawyer who has served as the junior United States senator from Missouri since 2019. A member of the Republican Party, Hawley served as the 42nd attorney general of Missouri from 2017 to 2019, before defeating two-term incumbent Democratic senator Claire McCaskill in the 2018 election.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Born in Springdale, Arkansas, to a banker and a teacher, Hawley graduated from Stanford University in 2002 and Yale Law School in 2006. He was a law clerk to Tenth Circuit Judge Michael W. McConnell and Chief Justice John Roberts and then worked as a lawyer, first in private practice from 2008 to 2011 and then for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty from 2011 to 2015. Before becoming Missouri attorney general, he was also an associate professor at the University of Missouri School of Law, and a faculty member of the conservative Blackstone Legal Fellowship.


title: Josh Hawley

text: As Missouri attorney general, Hawley initiated several high-profile lawsuits and investigations, including a lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act, an investigation into Missouri governor Eric Greitens, and a lawsuit and investigation into companies associated with the opioid epidemic. In the Senate, Hawley became widely known for his criticism of Big Tech, as well as for his criticism of the Chinese government and his support for an independent Hong Kong. His political beliefs have been described as strongly socially conservative. Critics have characterized his ideology as reactionary and theocratic.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In December 2020, Hawley provoked a political backlash when he became the first senator to announce plans to object to the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 United States presidential election. Hawley led Senate efforts to overturn the Electoral College vote count and rallied supporters of the notion that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen, which subsequently motivated the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. In late January 2021, Hawley denied trying to overturn the election results.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Joshua David Hawley was born on December 31, 1979, in Springdale, Arkansas, to banker Ronald Hawley and teacher Virginia Hawley. In 1981, the Hawleys moved to Lexington, Missouri, after Ronald joined a division of Boatmen's Bancshares there.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Hawley attended Lexington Middle School and then Rockhurst High School, a private Jesuit boys' prep school in Kansas City, Missouri, from which he graduated in 1998 as a valedictorian. According to his middle school principal, Barbara Weibling, several of Hawley's teachers thought "he was probably going to be president one day." While in high school, Hawley regularly wrote columns for his hometown newspaper "The Lexington News", writing about such topics as the American militia movement following the Oklahoma City bombing, media coverage of Los Angeles Police Department detective Mark Fuhrman, and affirmative action, which he opposed. He then studied history at Stanford University, where his mother was an alumna. Hawley graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor of Arts degree with highest honors and Phi Beta Kappa membership. Hawley studied under professor David M. Kennedy, who later contributed the foreword to a book Hawley wrote, "Theodore Roosevelt: Preacher of Righteousness". Kennedy said Hawley stood out in a school "which is overstuffed with overachieving and very talented young people," and has described Hawley as "arguably the most gifted student I taught in 50 years."


title: Josh Hawley

text: After spending ten months in London teaching at St Paul's School from 2002 to 2003, Hawley returned to the U.S. to attend Yale Law School, graduating in 2006 with a Juris Doctor degree. "The Kansas City Star" reported that Hawley's classmates saw him as "politically ambitious and a deeply religious conservative." While at Yale, Hawley was an editor of the "Yale Law Journal" and served as president of the school's Federalist Society chapter.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Hawley spent two years as a law clerk after law school, clerking first for Judge Michael W. McConnell of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit from 2006 to 2007, then for Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court from 2007 to 2008. While at the Supreme Court, Hawley met his future wife, Erin Morrow, a fellow Yale Law graduate who was also clerking for Roberts.


title: Josh Hawley

text: After his clerkships, Hawley worked in private practice as an appellate litigator at the law firm Hogan & Hartson (now Hogan Lovells) from 2008 to 2011. From 2011 to 2015, he worked for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty at its Washington, D.C., offices before moving to Missouri. At Becket, he wrote briefs and gave legal advice in the Supreme Court cases "Hosanna-Tabor Evangelical Lutheran Church & School v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission", decided in 2012, and "Burwell v. Hobby Lobby", decided in 2014. In 2011, Hawley returned to Missouri and became an associate professor at the University of Missouri Law School, where he taught constitutional law, constitutional theory, legislation, and torts.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In June 2013, Hawley served as a faculty member of the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which is funded by Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian organization that has been designated an anti-LGBT hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).


title: Josh Hawley

text: In 2016, Hawley ran for Attorney General of Missouri. Of the $9.2 million raised for the campaign, $4.4 million was provided by David Humphreys, CEO of Joplin-based Tamko Building Products. On August 2, Hawley defeated Kurt Schaefer in the Republican primary with 64 percent of the vote. He defeated Democrat Teresa Hensley in the general election on November 8 with 58.5 percent of the vote. During the campaign, Hawley criticized "career politicians" who were "climbing the ladder" from one position to another, which later became a point of bipartisan criticism of him when he ran for the U.S. Senate two years later.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On May 5, 2017, Tory Sanders, a black motorist who had taken a wrong turn in Tennessee ran out of gas in rural Mississippi County, Missouri. He had gotten lost and was confused and asked a gas station attendant to call the police for assistance. Deputies responded and put him in the county jail. His mental condition had deteriorated further and he resisted when jail staff, under the command of Sheriff Cory Hutcheson, tried to release him as they had no grounds on which to hold him. Hutcheson, who himself faced and later was convicted of a variety of federal and state charges, led a team of police and jailers who repeatedly pepper-sprayed and tasered Sanders throughout the day. Hutcheson eventually led a team of cops and jailers into the cell and swarmed Sanders, who went into cardiac arrest and died. The cause of death was judged to be "excited delirium", a condition frequently cited in custody-related deaths but not recognized by major psychiatric authorities.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Hawley determined that those who had assaulted Sanders had not intended his death, and decided not to file murder charges. When the case was reviewed by Hawley's successor, Eric Schmitt, insufficient evidence caused him to reject first or second-degree murder charges, but the statute of limitations had expired for any lesser offenses, so no one could be held criminally accountable for Sanders's death. Hawley's handling of the case led to criticism from black lawmakers and the NAACP's Missouri chapter. Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, there was renewed interest in the case, with activists hoping that Schmitt would file charges. In February 2021, he chose not to do so.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In June 2017, Hawley announced that Missouri had filed suit in state court against three major drug companies, Endo Health Solutions, Janssen Pharmaceuticals, and Purdue Pharma, for allegedly hiding the danger of prescription painkillers and contributing to the opioid epidemic. The state argued that the companies violated Missouri consumer protection and Medicaid laws. The damages sought were among the largest in state history, on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In August 2017, Hawley announced that he had opened an investigation into seven opioid distributors (Allergan, Depomed, Insys, Mallinckrodt, Mylan, Pfizer, and Teva Pharmaceuticals). In October 2017, Hawley expanded his investigation into three additional pharmaceutical companies (AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson Corporation), the three largest U.S. opioid distributors.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On October 29, 2017, the "Columbia Missourian" published an exposé describing a large backlog of untested rape kits in Missouri and the long-ignored efforts of rape survivors and law enforcement agencies to have the state address the backlog. On November 29, Hawley announced a statewide audit of the number of untested rape kits. The results were made public in May 2018; there were 5,000 such kits. In August 2018, One Nation, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit connected to Republican campaign strategist Karl Rove, ran commercials giving Hawley credit for identifying the problem, a claim "The St. Louis Post-Dispatch" labeled misleading. In September 2020, Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt announced that of the 16 rape kit tests that were consequently uploaded to the national DNA database, 11 revealed the names of known criminals, and were referred for possible prosecution.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In November 2017, Hawley opened an investigation into whether Google's business practices violated state consumer protection and anti-trust laws. The investigation was focused on what data Google collects from users of its services, how it uses content providers' content, and whether its search engine results are biased.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In April 2018, after the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal, Hawley announced that his office had issued a subpoena to Facebook related to how the company shares its users' data. The investigation sought to find whether Facebook properly handles its users' sensitive data or collects more data than it publicly admits.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In December 2017, "The Kansas City Star" reported that Missouri's Republican Governor Eric Greitens and senior members of his staff used Confide, a messaging app that erases texts after they have been read, on their personal phones. They were accused by government transparency advocates of subverting Missouri's open records laws. Hawley initially declined to prosecute, citing a Missouri Supreme Court ruling that the attorney general cannot simultaneously represent a state officer and take legal action against that officer, but on December 20, 2017, he announced his office would investigate after all, saying that his clients are "first and foremost the citizens of the state". Hawley said text messages between government employees, whether made on private or government-issued phones, should be treated the same as emails: a determination must be made as to whether the text is a public record, and if so, whether it is subject to disclosure. Hawley's investigation found that no laws had been broken. In March 2018, six former Missouri attorneys released a letter describing the investigation as "half-hearted". Hawley's spokesperson called the letter a partisan attack.


title: Josh Hawley

text: When allegations emerged in January 2018 that Greitens had blackmailed a woman with whom he was having an affair, Hawley's office said it did not have jurisdiction to look into the matter. St. Louis circuit attorney Kimberly Gardner opened an investigation into the allegations. In April, after a special investigative committee of the Missouri House of Representatives released a report on the allegations, Hawley called on Greitens to resign immediately. The next week, Gardner filed a second felony charge against Greitens, alleging that his campaign had taken donor and email lists from The Mission Continues, a veterans' charity Greitens founded in 2007, and used the information to raise funds for his 2016 campaign for governor.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Hawley announced an investigation based on the new felony charges. On April 30, he announced that his office had launched an investigation into possible violations of the state's Sunshine laws, following allegations that a state employee had managed a social media account on Greitens's behalf. The same day, Greitens asked a judge to issue a restraining order blocking Hawley from investigating him.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On May 29, 2018, Greitens announced that he would resign effective June 1, 2018. Hawley issued a statement approving of the decision.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In February 2018, Hawley joined 20 other Republican-led states in a lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act as unconstitutional. Though some argued the lawsuit would eliminate insurance protections for people with preexisting conditions, Hawley said he supported protections for preexisting conditions. In September 2018, amid criticism from Hawley's U.S. Senate opponent Claire McCaskill about the lawsuit's impact on preexisting conditions, Hawley's office said that he supported protections for individuals with preexisting conditions. Hawley later published an op-ed in the "Springfield News-Leader" explaining that he supported protecting those with preexisting conditions by creating a taxpayer subsidy to reimburse insurance companies for covering these high-cost patients. In December 2018, Judge Reed O'Connor ruled the entirety of the ACA unconstitutional, but on appeal, the Fifth Circuit did not agree that the entire law should be voided.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In March 2018, Hawley defended the 1995 sentencing of Bobby Bostic, a Missouri man who had committed robbery and other crimes at the age of 16, to 241 years in prison. Bostic and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had attempted to appeal his sentence to the Supreme Court, saying it violated the court's ruling in "Graham v. Florida", which held that juveniles could not be sentenced to life imprisonment for charges lesser than homicide. In a Supreme Court filing, Hawley argued that Bostic's sentencing did not violate the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment, and that "Graham v. Florida" only applied to a sentence for one crime. The judge who sentenced Bostic said she had come to believe the sentence was too harsh, and asked to join an amicus brief filed by 26 former judges, prosecutors and law enforcement officials. On April 24, the Supreme Court rejected Bostic's appeal.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On November 14, 2022, Cole County Circuit Court Judge Jon Beetem ruled that Hawley violated Missouri’s open records law by withholding emails during his 2018 U.S. Senate campaign between his out-of-state political consultants and his taxpayer-funded staff. Beetem granted summary judgment and ruled Hawley's office had "knowingly and purposefully" violated Missouri's Sunshine Law, and fined the AG's office $12,000. When Hawley was AG, his staff used private email instead of government accounts to communicate with his political consultants. Those consultants illegally gave direct guidance and tasks to Hawley's staff and led meetings during office hours in the Missouri Supreme Court building. Beetem wrote, "There is no genuine dispute that the AGO knew the Sunshine Law required it to produce responsive documents in its possession when it received DSCC's two Sunshine Law requests, but made the conscious decision not to do so."


title: Josh Hawley

text: In August 2018, after a Pennsylvania grand jury released a report detailing over 1,000 cases of sexual abuse by Catholic clerics, as well as protests by survivors of clergy sexual abuse in St. Louis, Hawley announced that he would begin an investigation into potential cases of abuse in Missouri. Missouri was one of several states to launch such investigations in the wake of the Pennsylvania report; the attorneys general of Illinois, Nebraska, and New Mexico began similar inquiries. Hawley promised that he would investigate any crimes, publish a report for the public, and refer potential cases to local law enforcement officials. Archbishop of St. Louis Robert James Carlson pledged cooperation with the inquiry.


title: Josh Hawley

text: The investigation, which was inherited by Hawley's successor, Eric Schmitt, charged 12 former priests with sexual abuse of minors in September 2019.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In August 2017, Hawley formed an exploratory campaign committee for the U.S. Senate. In October 2017, he declared his candidacy for the Republican nomination in Missouri's 2018 U.S. Senate election for the seat held by Democrat Claire McCaskill. Before the official announcement, four former Republican U.S. Senators from Missouri (John Ashcroft, Kit Bond, John Danforth, and McCaskill's predecessor, Jim Talent) asked Hawley to run for the Senate seat.


title: Josh Hawley

text: The tightly contested Republican primary had 11 candidates hoping to unseat McCaskill. Hawley received substantial support from prominent Republicans, such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, President Donald Trump, and the Senate Conservatives Fund. He won a large majority of the vote in the primary election.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Trump endorsed Hawley in November 2017. During the general election campaign, Obamacare was a key issue, with both candidates pledging to ensure protections for preexisting conditions. McCaskill criticized Hawley's participation in a lawsuit that could end insurance protections for people with preexisting conditions by overturning the Affordable Care Act. Hawley made McCaskill's upcoming vote on the confirmation of CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State a campaign issue. His campaign spokesperson asked, "Will Senator McCaskill ignore her liberal donors and support Mike Pompeo for Secretary of State, or will she stick with Chuck Schumer and continue to obstruct the president?", adding, "It is deeply troubling how focused Senator McCaskill is on doing what's politically convenient instead of doing what's right."


title: Josh Hawley

text: Hawley met criticism from both Republicans and Democrats for initiating his Senate campaign less than a year after being sworn in as attorney general, as during his attorney general campaign, Hawley had put out advertisements criticizing "ladder-climbing politicians." Hawley dismissed this, saying that the Senate was not on his mind during the attorney general campaign.


title: Josh Hawley

text: During the campaign, Hawley released his and his wife's tax returns and called on McCaskill to release her and her husband's returns. McCaskill released her returns, which she files separately from her husband. When asked if he thought Trump should release his returns, Hawley did not say.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On December 6, 2018, Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft launched an inquiry into whether Hawley misappropriated public funds for his Senate campaign. Hawley's office denied any wrongdoing. On February 28, 2019, Ashcroft closed the investigation because there was insufficient evidence that "an offense has been committed." A 2021 "New York Post" investigation of questionable campaign expenditures revealed that Hawley had apparently illegally spent such funds, for instance charging $80.04 at Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville to "travel", on a lobbyist-funded junket to Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida. Almost a year later Hawley's office said he had reimbursed the campaign for the inappropriate expenditures.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In June 2019, Hawley played a major role in preventing Trump nominee Michael S. Bogren from being appointed as a district judge for the Western District of Michigan. Hawley accused Bogren of "anti-religious animus" in a case he took as a lawyer, in which Bogren compared Catholic views on homosexuality to the Ku Klux Klan's views on interracial marriage.


title: Josh Hawley

text: During the Hong Kong protests in October 2019, Hawley and Senator Ted Cruz visited Hong Kong and spoke in favor of the protests. Hawley called the city a "police state". Chief Executive of Hong Kong Carrie Lam said Hawley's assertion was "irresponsible and unfounded".


title: Josh Hawley

text: On November 18, 2019, Hawley announced the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act, which would make it illegal for American companies to store user data or encryption keys in China. Engadget noted the bill might cause "serious problems" for companies that are legally obligated to store data in China, such as Apple and TikTok, and "might force them to leave China altogether". It was not Hawley's first technology-related bill; he had also introduced proposals to ban loot boxes in gaming and to restrict social network features "deemed addictive", among others. Hawley focused on TikTok, saying the bill would cover Russia as well as China, and "any other country the State Department deems a security risk". He said the bill was "targeted at social media platforms and data-intensive businesses", and "would block such mergers by default without pre-approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States". The bill also prevents the collection of "more user data than is necessary to conduct business".


title: Josh Hawley

text: Hawley joined President Donald Trump in his calls for an increase of the initial $600 coronavirus relief checks provided by the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 to $2,000, which put him on the same side as "unlikely ally" Bernie Sanders. Alongside Sanders and Chuck Schumer, Hawley attempted to force a vote to increase the checks, but it was blocked by other Republican senators.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On February 8, 2021, after he voted against the nomination of Denis McDonough for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Hawley became the only senator to vote against all of President Joe Biden's cabinet nominees, with the exception of Cecilia Rouse, whom he voted to confirm as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.


title: Josh Hawley

text: Ten months into Biden's term, Hawley had voted to approve only 4 of 118 executive appointments that received a Senate vote, and none in the preceding 5 months. This record made him a standout among senators. Political scientist Wendy Schiller compared Hawley to "senators who have basically made it their career to stop the Senate in its tracks." She noted that Hawley differed from his predecessors in that his obstruction had no clear policy goal, but was more about punishing the Biden administration.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On August 3, 2022, Hawley cast the sole vote against the Senate resolution agreeing to Sweden joining the NATO defense alliance; it passed, 95–1. On the same day, he also voted against a similar Senate resolution agreeing to Finland joining NATO; that resolution also passed 95–1. Before and after the votes, Hawley said the resolutions were not in America's best interest, with China posing a greater threat than Russia. According to "Politico": Hawley has worked for months to distinguish himself from the Republican pack on national security, beginning with his blockade of Pentagon nominees in protest of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan and his opposition to a $40 billion Ukraine aid package.


title: Josh Hawley

text: After Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Hawley announced his intention to object to the Senate's certification of the Electoral College vote count on January 6, 2021. He was the first senator to do so. Trump had refused to concede and made frequent baseless claims of fraud in the election. Hawley said that his attempt to reverse the election result was on behalf of those "concerned about election integrity." He made numerous statements suggesting that Trump could possibly remain in office. "The New York Times" wrote that Hawley was elevating false claims that President-elect Joe Biden stole the election. His maneuver prompted bipartisan condemnation of his action as undemocratic.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On December 30, 2020, Hawley said, "some states, particularly Pennsylvania, failed to follow their own state election laws", though multiple courts had rejected such claims. He repeated the false assertion about Pennsylvania in a February 2021 fundraising email, though the Pennsylvania Supreme Court had unanimously rejected the argument and the United States Supreme Court had declined to consider an appeal.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On December 30, 2020, after Hawley tweeted he would join the effort to object to Biden's victory, Walmart's official Twitter account responded, "Go ahead. Get your 2 hour debate. #soreloser." Hawley responded, accusing Walmart of using "slave labor" and "driv[ing] mom and pop stores out of business". Walmart deleted the tweet, apologizing to Hawley and saying it was "mistakenly posted by a member of our social media team." The event led the hashtag #BoycottWalmart to trend on Twitter.


title: Josh Hawley

text: On January 4, 2021, Hawley tweeted that his Washington, D.C. home had been vandalized and his family had been threatened by "Antifa scumbags" in an act of "leftwing violence" due to his claims of fraud. He said he was in Missouri at the time. ShutDownDC, the group that staged the event, said it was a peaceful candlelight vigil and claimed they did not vandalize Hawley's house or knock on the door. A video of the event shared by the group showed that some protesters wrote on the sidewalk in chalk, chanted through a megaphone, and left a copy of the U.S. Constitution at Hawley's door. Vienna, Virginia police said the protesters were peaceful with "no issues, no arrests" necessary; police spokesman Juan Vazquez said the police "didn't think it was that big of a deal."


title: Josh Hawley

text: On January 6, 2021, when Congress met to count the electoral votes for the 2020 presidential election, they were interrupted by pro-Trump rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building, forcing members of Congress to evacuate. Before the counting of the votes, to which Hawley had publicly announced he would object, he was photographed saluting the protestors with a raised fist outside the Capitol. The photograph immediately became a subject of controversy; "The Kansas City Star" called it "the image that will haunt Josh Hawley" and "one of the iconic images to emerge from the day the Capitol was breached by rioters" and Pulitzer Prize-winning "St. Louis Post-Dispatch" columnist Tony Messenger said "the staging was perfect" and recommended the photograph be known as "Hawley: The Face of Sedition". Tom Coleman, a former U.S. representative from Missouri and a fellow Republican, said Hawley's "clenched fist in front of the Capitol will seal his fate." The photographer, Francis Chung, declined to weigh in on the photograph's political impact, saying it "is what it is" and "kind of speaks for itself." Later that day, video showed Hawley running through the Capitol, fleeing the rioters.


title: Josh Hawley

text: That same day, "The Kansas City Star"'s editorial board published an editorial arguing that Hawley "has blood on his hands" due to the event, which they called a "coup attempt", saying that "no one other than President Donald Trump himself is more responsible" than Hawley, "who put out a fundraising appeal while the siege was underway". The next day, it published an editorial calling for Hawley to resign or be removed from office. Similarly, "The St. Louis Post-Dispatch", Missouri's other major newspaper, published an editorial on January 7 calling for Hawley to resign and Republican "silent enablers" to denounce Trumpism, writing that "Hawley's tardy, cover-his-ass condemnation of the violence ranks at the top of his substantial list of phony, smarmy and politically expedient declarations" and "Trumpism must die before it morphs into Hitlerism. Defenders like Hawley deserve to be cast into political purgatory for having promoted it".


title: Josh Hawley

text: Political scientists Henry Farrell and Elizabeth N. Saunders called Hawley's ploy a "cynical theatrical gesture" with Hawley "pursuing short-term political gain at the risk of long-term chaos." John Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri and Hawley's political mentor, said that supporting Hawley was the "worst mistake I ever made in my life". Danforth said Hawley was directly responsible for the riot. David M. Kennedy, who served as Hawley's academic adviser at Stanford, said he "absolutely could not have predicted that the bright, idealistic, clear-thinking young student that I knew would follow this path" and was "more than a little bamboozled by it, certainly distressed by it", though he said he did not believe Hawley directly incited the mob. Prominent conservative columnist George Will wrote on the day of the riot that Hawley, Trump and Senator Ted Cruz "will each wear the scarlet S of a seditionist." On January 9, NBC News reported that several Republican Party insiders anonymously condemned Hawley's actions, with one strategist saying of the fist salute that Hawley "looked phony and out of place and like a doofus" in a manner reminiscent of Michael Dukakis's tank photograph. After the riot, Hawley's approval rating dropped by six percentage points among Missouri voters, and nine among Missouri Republicans.


title: Josh Hawley

text: In the wake of the riot, other Republican lawmakers tried to persuade Hawley to abandon his objections to Biden's win, but he voted in support of the objections to the electoral votes for Arizona and Pennsylvania, making baseless claims that Pennsylvania election officials violated state election laws. Both senators from Pennsylvania rejected his objections, and the Senate rejected his objections by votes of 6–93 and 7–92, respectively. Some political commentators and Democratic lawmakers dubbed Hawley and other senators who sought to overturn the election the Sedition Caucus. Hawley has since faced bipartisan calls for his resignation, to which he has responded that he "will never apologize for giving voice to the millions of Missourians and Americans who have concerns about the integrity of our elections." Thousands of law school students and alumni, including at Hawley's alma mater Yale Law School, also called for Hawley and Cruz to be disbarred. On January 9, hundreds of protesters assembled in Downtown St. Louis in front of the Old Courthouse to demand Hawley's resignation.