title: Amy Yasbeck

text: Early into her acting career, she appeared in "Rockhopper", an unsold CBS television pilot from 1985. Yasbeck has had guest-starring roles in many television shows, including "Dallas", "Spies", "Werewolf", "J.J. Starbuck", "Magnum, P.I.", "China Beach", and "Murphy Brown". She auditioned for the role of Elaine Benes on "Seinfeld". She played Olivia Reed for four months between 1986 and 1987 on the long-running daytime soap opera "Days of Our Lives". She also played the starring role of the mermaid Madison in the Disney television movie "Splash, Too" in 1988 (the role of Madison was originated by Daryl Hannah in the 1984 movie "Splash"). Playing a mermaid in "Splash, Too" was a fulfillment of a childhood dream for Yasbeck, as she loved mermaids when she was 5 years old after watching a Disney movie that featured mermaids. Yasbeck has also had starring roles in the sitcoms "Wings", "Alright Already", and "Life on a Stick" and in movies such as "", "Pretty Woman", "Problem Child", "Problem Child 2", and "The Mask". She has twice worked with Mel Brooks, in 1993's "" and 1995's "".


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: Yasbeck also appeared once on the hit DCOS "That's So Raven" as the mother of one of the main characters, Chelsea. The episode originally aired on September 22, 2006.


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: In late 2007, plans surfaced of a potential "That's So Raven" spin-off featuring Yasbeck and Anneliese van der Pol, who portrayed her daughter, with occasional appearances by Raven-Symoné. The show was scrapped due to van der Pol signing onto a new Broadway play, and Yasbeck wanting to take a break from acting to focus on her family.


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: Yasbeck is the widow of actor John Ritter, with whom she had worked in several projects. She first met him at director Dennis Dugan's house during a read-through of their 1990 movie "Problem Child".


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: Yasbeck and Ritter also starred together in "Problem Child 2" (1991) and guest-starred together in an episode of "The Cosby Show" which aired in 1991. Ritter also guest-starred on "Wings" as Yasbeck's estranged husband in the season-seven episode "Love Overboard". The couple had a child together in 1998, and they married the following year on September 18, 1999, at the Murphy Theatre in Wilmington, Ohio.


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: On September 11, 2003, Ritter fell into a coma when rehearsing for "8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter". He was taken to the hospital by paramedics. Initially, Ritter was thought to be suffering a heart attack. At 10:48 that night, Ritter died. The cause of death was actually an aortic dissection stemming from a previously undiagnosed congenital heart defect.


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: Yasbeck gave her blessing to the continuation of the sitcom, as "8 Simple Rules", where it was ultimately decided that Katey Sagal's character would assume the lead role as a widow.


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: On the September 5, 1990, episode of "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", she said that her "great-great-great uncle" Charles Webb Murphy was the owner of the Chicago Cubs during their championships of the early 1900s.


title: Amy Yasbeck

text: After her husband John Ritter died, Yasbeck filed a $67 million wrongful death lawsuit against Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center and several doctors who treated him, alleging they misdiagnosed his condition and that contributed to his death. Several of the defendants settled out of court for a total of $14 million, including Providence St. Joseph, which settled for $9.4 million. On March 14, 2008, a jury split 9–3 in favor of the doctors, clearing the physicians of any wrongdoing.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Nel Ust Wyclef Jean (; born October 17, 1969) is a Haitian rapper, musician, and actor. At the age of nine, Jean immigrated to the United States with his family. He first achieved fame as a member of the New Jersey hip hop group the Fugees, alongside Lauryn Hill and Pras Michel. They released the albums "Blunted on Reality" (1994) and "The Score" (1996), the latter becoming one of the best-selling albums of all time. Jean would follow this with the release of his first solo studio album, "Wyclef Jean Presents The Carnival" (1997), which contains the top ten hit "Gone till November".


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean would continue to have a successful music career as a soloist. He released an additional eight studio albums; including the RIAA Platinum certified album, "" (2000), which reached the top ten on the "Billboard" 200 chart"." He also released the commercially successful singles "911" (featuring Mary J. Blige), and "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" (featuring Akon, Niia & Lil Wayne)"; was featured on Destiny Child's "No, No, No", as well as the US "Billboard" Hot 100 number one single "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira; and composed the single "Maria Maria" by Santana.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In August 2010, Jean filed for candidacy in the 2010 Haitian presidential election. However, Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council ruled him ineligible to stand for office, as he had not met the constitutional requirement to have been a resident in Haiti for five years prior to the election. Jean's highly publicized efforts to raise relief funds after the 2010 Haitian earthquake were channeled through his charitable organization, Yéle Haiti. The charity, which conducted education and welfare activities in Haiti between 2005 and 2010, effectively closed in 2012. "The New York Times" reported that much of the money raised by the organization in the "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon was retained by Jean for his own benefit. In 2012, Jean published his memoir "Purpose: An Immigrant's Story". Jean performed his single "Dar um Jeito (We Will Find a Way)", at the closing ceremony for the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: He has won three Grammy Awards, and has received a Golden Globe Award nomination for his musical work. In 2011, President Michel Martelly of Haiti awarded Jean with the National Order of Honour and Merit to the rank of Grand Officer. Jean has also been inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Named after the biblical scholar John Wycliffe, Wyclef Jean was born in Croix-des-Bouquets, Haiti on October 17, 1969. At nine years old, he immigrated with his family to Brooklyn, New York City, and ultimately settled in East Orange and Newark, New Jersey. Jean began to make music as a child, and as a teen, his mother, having recognized his musical talent, bought him a guitar. He has cited reggae artist Bigga Haitian as one of his early influences, as well as neighborhood heroes MC Tiger Paw Raw and producer Lobster v. Crab. He has stated that he played music to earn respect.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean graduated from Newark's Vailsburg High School and enrolled for one semester at Five Towns College in New York. In 2009 he enrolled in the Berklee College of Music to pursue his diploma. Jean has been a resident of Saddle River, South Orange, and North Caldwell, New Jersey.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean and other musicians formed a group in the 1980s under the name Tranzlator Crew. Jean and band member Lauryn Hill pursued a romantic relationship beginning in 1992, and ending in 1997, the year of the band's breakup. Jean later revealed that Hill's dishonesty about the parentage of her child, Zion David, caused the rift that split the group up. After they signed with Ruffhouse Records and Columbia Records in 1993, they renamed their group as Fugees – an abbreviation of "refugees", and also a sometimes derogatory reference to Haitian immigrants. The group's debut album, "Blunted on Reality," was released in 1994. It achieved limited commercial success, peaking at number 62 on the US Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart. The album peaked at number 122 on the UK Albums Chart in 1997, and it was certified gold by the Syndicat National de l'Édition Phonographique (SNEP). "Blunted on Reality" spawned three singles: "Boof Baf", "Nappy Heads" and "Vocab." "Nappy Heads" was the Fugees' first single to be ranked on the US "Billboard" Hot 100, charting at number 49.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In 1996, Fugees released their second album, titled "The Score." The album achieved significant commercial success in the U.S., topping the "Billboard" 200. It was later certified as six-times platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It performed well in several overseas nations, topping the Austrian, Canadian, French, German and Swiss albums charts, while also peaking at number two in Sweden and the United Kingdom.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Four commercially successful singles were released from "The Score"; "Fu-Gee-La", the first single from the album, peaked at number 29 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and was certified gold by the RIAA and by the Bundesverband Musikindustrie (BVMI). The other three singles – "Killing Me Softly", "Ready or Not" and "No Woman, No Cry" – did not appear on the "Billboard" Hot 100 as they were not released for commercial sale, making them ineligible to appear on the chart, although they all received sufficient airplay to appear on the Hot 100 Airplay and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay charts. "Killing Me Softly", a cover of the Roberta Flack song "Killing Me Softly with His Song", performed strongly in other territories, topping the singles charts in Australia, Austria, Germany and the United Kingdom, among several others.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: "Ready or Not" peaked at number one in the UK and at number three in Sweden. "No Woman, No Cry" – a cover of the Bob Marley & The Wailers song of the same name – topped the singles chart in New Zealand. Fugees collaborated with singer Bounty Killer on the single "Hip-Hopera" and recorded the single "Rumble in the Jungle" for the soundtrack to the film "When We Were Kings" in 1997: although they have not released any studio albums since "The Score", a compilation album, "Greatest Hits", was released in 2003, and spawned the single "Take It Easy".


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean announced plans to begin a solo career with 1997's "Wyclef Jean Presents the Carnival Featuring the Refugee All-Stars" (generally called "The Carnival"). The album's guests included Fugees members Lauryn Hill and Pras, along with Jean's siblings' group Melky Sedeck; the I Threes (back-up vocals for Bob Marley); The Neville Brothers and Celia Cruz. The album was a hit, as were two singles: "We Trying to Stay Alive" (adapted from the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive") and "Gone till November" (recorded with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra).


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Released in 2000, Jean's second solo album "" was recorded with guests including Youssou N'Dour; Earth, Wind & Fire; Kenny Rogers; The Rock; and Mary J. Blige. With Blige he released "911" as a single. He was nominated for Best Hip-Hop Act at the 2000 MTV Europe Music Awards.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Following the 9/11 attacks, Jean participated in the benefit concert "", contributing a cover of the Bob Marley song "Redemption Song". His third album, "Masquerade", was released in 2002. His fourth album, "The Preacher's Son", was released in November 2003 as the follow-up to his first solo album, "The Carnival". In 2004, he released his fifth album, "" (released in the U.S. by Koch Records). Most of its songs are in his native language of Haitian Creole like "Fanm Kreyòl" with the French Caribbean Admiral T. Jean also figured on the album "Mozaik Kreyòl" of this one in the song "Secret Lover". He then covered Creedence Clearwater Revival's song "Fortunate Son" for the soundtrack of the film "The Manchurian Candidate" (2004) and wrote the song "Million Voices" for the film "Hotel Rwanda" (2004).


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean cowrote "My Love Is Your Love" for Whitney Houston's album of the same name. He produced and wrote songs for the soundtrack to Jonathan Demme's 2003 documentary "The Agronomist", about the Haitian activist and radio personality Jean Dominique. With Jerry 'Wonder' Duplessis, Jean also composed the score of the documentary "Ghosts of Cité Soleil", He helped produce the film and appears briefly onscreen speaking by telephone in 2004 to a ""chimere"" gang-leader and aspiring rapper, Winston "2Pac" Jean.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: During a period between 2004 and 2006, fueled by a reunion performance in the documentary "Dave Chappelle's Block Party" (2005), it appeared that Fugees would record a new album. However, Pras claimed to "Billboard" magazine, "To put it nicely, it's dead." Pras said the root of this animosity was the third member of the group, Lauryn Hill, and was quoted in "Billboard" as saying; "Me and Clef, we on the same page, but Lauryn Hill is in her zone, and I'm fed up with that shit. Here she is, blessed with a gift, with the opportunity to rock and give and she's running on some bullshit? I'm a fan of Lauryn's but I can't respect that."


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In 2006, Jean was featured in Shakira's smash hit "Hips Don't Lie". The song went on to become the highest selling single of the 21st century, in addition to reaching number one in over 55 countries. Jean and Shakira went on to perform the song at the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards and the 2007 Grammy Awards. He joined Shakira on various dates of her Oral Fixation Tour in the U.S. Also in 2007, Jean scored the Angelina Jolie documentary "A Place in Time".


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In August 2007, Jean released a new song called "Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)" featuring Lil Wayne, Niia and Akon, which references the song "C.R.E.A.M." by the Wu-Tang Clan. One month later he released an album that he recorded in Atlanta, Georgia, with the help of T.I., who also collaborated with Jean on the songs "You Know What it is" and "My Swag" on the latter's 2007 album, "T.I. vs. T.I.P". In 2008, an upbeat single "Let Me Touch Your Button" featuring will.i.am was released in the UK in conjunction with Jean's involvement with UK MOTOROKRSTAR. Jean released a song with Serj Tankian called "Riot".


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In 2009, Jean was featured on the song "Spanish Fly" with Ludacris and Bachata group Aventura included on Aventura's album "The Last", released in June. On June 17, 2009, Jean announced via Twitter that his new album would be called "wyclefjean" and was to be released sometime in February 2010. The first single from "wyclefjean" was to be titled "Seventeen" and feature Lil Wayne. In August 2009, Jean unveiled his video "Haitian Slumdog Millionaire" featuring Haitian artist Imposs. Making a guest appearance in the video was New York City entrepreneur and philanthropist Ali Naqvi.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In November 2009, a track titled "Suicide Love" featuring rapper Eve leaked online prior to the release of his EP. Wyclef Jean's EP named "From the Hut, to the Projects, to the Mansion" was released on November 10, 2009. It includes seventeen tracks, featuring Eve, Cyndi Lauper, Timbaland, and Lil' Kim. In this album, Wyclef uses the alias Toussaint St. Jean, his alter ego, when he raps.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean's self-entitled studio album was due to be released in 2011, but has yet to surface. "Hold On", the lead single from the project, features dancehall artist Mavado. In May 2014, a Jean video, "April Showers", was banned from YouTube after Cathy Scott, author of "The Killing of Tupac Shakur", lodged a copyright infringement complaint claiming an image in the video was similar to an autopsy photo released in her book. YouTube temporally banned the video. TMZ, which broke the story, reported that Scott and the video's director, Hezues R', had settled the matter and agreed that Hezues R' would include a screen credit to the book at the end of the video.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean worked with Avicii on a single titled "Divine Sorrow" from his upcoming EP "J'Ouvert". He collaborated again with Avicii in 2015 on the song "Can't Catch Me" on the album "Stories", which also featured Matisyahu. This marks the third collaboration with Avicii and Jean, following "Dar um Jeito (We Will Find a Way)" and "Divine Sorrow".


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean appeared as a featured vocalist in The Knocks' single "Kiss The Sky", which was released in January 2016. This song was part of their debut album, entitled "55", released in March 2016. Jean was also featured on the Young Thug song "Kanye West", from the rapper's mixtape "Jeffery", released in August 2016.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Wyclef wrote an autobiography entitled "Purpose: An Immigrant's Story" with the help of journalist Anthony Bozza, published in September 2012.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: On May 17, 2016, Wyclef released his first song in two years, which gave hints to a new album release. A month later on June 17, he released a new song called Hendrix, and later released a short film featuring Michael K. Williams. He then did many interviews teasing that his new J'ouvert Extended Play would drop in November. Although, this release was pushed back into February. To promote his EP, he did a concert at Terminal 5. On October 14, 2016 Wyclef released an election song called "If I Was President 2016" that would be featured on his J'ouvert EP. On November 1, 2016 he released a song that he had collaborated on with Young Thug. The song was called "I Swear," which is also featured on his EP. Wyclef had also collaborated on Young Thug's Jeffery Mixtape, and was featured on Thug's song "Kanye West." Young Thug also had a song named "Wyclef Jean" that was named after him because he was such a big influence.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In January 2017, Wyclef announced that his "J'ouvert" EP would be released on February 3, 2017. On February 2, 2017, Wyclef released his new single "Ne Me Quitte Pas", which was featured on his "J'ouvert" Deluxe EP. The EP was released and charted at 117 on the "Billboard" 200, and 50 on the Canadian Hot Albums. Four more singles were released from the album, "Life Matters", "The Ring," "Holding onto the Edge" and "Little Things". On June 9, Wyclef announced on his Instagram that "" would become available to pre-order on June 22, 2017.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In November 2017, Wyclef released his, "Wyclef Jean Inspired By" mixtape. The mixtape features reworks of some of today's most popular records like "Kendrick Lamar's" "DNA." The project also offers up social commentary in the track, "Chain Gang Free "Meek Mill"," features an original song called, "Camels and Ferraris," and also pays tribute to the late "Whitney Houston" on, "Inspired By Whitney."


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In December 2017, Wyclef along with Naughty Boy appeared on the final of the fourteenth series of "The X Factor", guest performing "Dimelo" with contestants Rak-Su. Rak-Su won and the performance was released as the winner's single.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: On December 25, 2017, Wyclef announced The Carnival Tour via social media. The tour had two legs with a total of 56 shows. It started on February 9, 2018 and ended on October 26, 2018.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In 2001, Jean established Yéle Haiti, a charitable organization known legally as the Wyclef Jean Foundation and incorporated in Illinois. Following 2004's Hurricane Jeanne, the organization provided scholarships to 3,600 children in Gonaïves, Haiti. It continued to provide scholarships, school funding, meals and other charitable benefits to citizens of Haiti in the following years.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: After the 2010 Haitian earthquake, Yéle became prominent in raising funds for disaster relief. According to Jean, Yéle raised over $1 million in 24 hours over Twitter. Jean took part in an MTV donation drive and other publicized fundraising, such as the "Hope for Haiti Now" telethon, which he organized with actor and producer George Clooney. Yéle donated funds to orphanages, street cleaning crews, hospitals and medical clinics and organized food service to provide hot meals to refugees and victims of the catastrophe.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: By February 2010, questions were reported about the history and management of Yéle. "The New York Times" reported that the charity had failed to file tax returns for several years. The former executive director, Sanjay Rawal, questioned Yéle's ability to handle large projects and criticized its lack of financial controls.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: By August 2012, chief executive Derek Q. Johnson was the last remaining officer of the charity. He resigned and announced that Yéle was closed, saying in a statement, "As the foundation's sole remaining employee, my decision implies the closure of the organization as a whole." New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman investigated Yéle and attempted to reach a settlement over allegations of mismanagement. Schneiderman said that the charity had made improper payments to Jean, members of his family, and personal acquaintances. In 2010, after the earthquake in Haiti, Yéle spent more than $9 million - with half of it going to travel expenses by Jean and his entourage, consultants' fees, and real estate fees. The charity has been the subject of lawsuits in Haiti for unpaid debts.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean has supported politicians in Haiti. In 2011 he told "Women's Wear Daily" that he was "a big fan of Sarah Palin", former vice-presidential candidate of the Republican Party. It was reported erroneously that Jean would be attending the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: On August 5, 2010, Wyclef confirmed rumors that he was running for president of Haiti during an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. The journalist questioned the rapper's citizenship qualifications, asking about his passport. "Exclaim!" magazine reported at the time that Jean would retire as chairman of Yéle Haiti. On August 5, Jean formally filed papers as a candidate for the 2010 Haitian presidential election. Wyclef intended to run as a candidate for the Viv Ansanm (Live Together) political party.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: On August 20, 2010, his bid for candidacy was rejected by Haiti's Provisional Electoral Council. He was turned down because he did not meet the constitutional residency requirement of having lived in Haiti for five years before the November 28 election. Jean said, "I respectfully accept the committee's final decision, and I urge my supporters to do the same.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In 2012 Jean published his memoir called "Purpose: An Immigrant's Story." and which takes him through the turmoil of immigration, The book depicts with painful detail, the story of  his childhood in Haiti, to his rise to the American music scene. Wyclef describes growing up in Haiti so poor, he actually ate dirt. Purpose is considered one of the top ten reads for Haitian Americans as per the Haitian Times.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: Jean had a relationship with Lauryn Hill. In 1994, he married Marie Claudinette, a designer for Fusha. In 2005, they adopted their daughter, Angelina Claudinelle Jean. The couple renewed their vows in August 2009.


title: Wyclef Jean

text: In 2011, President Michel Martelly of Haiti awarded Jean with the National Order of Honour and Merit to the rank of Grand Officer "as a sign of high consideration national for his dedication to the promotion of Haiti around the world."


title: Asian Games

text: The Asian Games, also known as Asiad, is a continental multi-sport event held every four years among athletes from all over Asia. The Games were regulated by the Asian Games Federation (AGF) from the first Games in New Delhi, India, until the 1978 Games. Since the 1982 Games, they have been organized by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), after the breakup of the Asian Games Federation. The Games are recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and are described as the second largest multi-sport event after the Olympic Games.


title: Asian Games

text: There have been nine nations that have hosted the Asian Games. Forty-six nations have participated in the Games, including Israel, which was excluded from the Games altogether after Israel managed to win a silver medal (in their last participation) at the 1974 Asian Games in Iran. The most recent games was held in Jakarta and Palembang, Indonesia from 18 August to 2 September 2018. The next games are scheduled to be held in Hangzhou, China.


title: Asian Games

text: Since 2010, host cities manage both the Asian Games and the Asian Para Games, the latter an event for athletes with disabilities to compete with each other. The Asian Para Games are held immediately following the Asian Games, but the exclusion of Asian Para Games from any Asian Games host city contract means that both events will run independently of each other.


title: Asian Games

text: The Far Eastern Championship Games existed previous to the Asian Games, the former mooted in 1912 for a location set between Japan, the Philippines, and China. The inaugural Far Eastern Games were held in Manila in 1913 with 6 participating nations. There were ten Far Eastern Games held by 1934. The second Sino-Japanese War in 1934, and Japan's insistence on including the Manchu Empire as a competitor nation in the Games, brought China to announce its withdrawal from participation. The Far Eastern Games scheduled for 1938 were cancelled. The organization was discontinued.


title: Asian Games

text: After World War II, several areas in Asia became sovereign states. Many of these countries sought to exhibit Asian prowess without violence. At the London 1948 Summer Olympics, a conversation started amongst China and the Philippines to restore the idea of the Far Eastern Games. Guru Dutt Sondhi, the Indian International Olympic Committee representative, believed that the restoration of the Far Eastern Games would sufficiently display the spirit of unity and level of achievement taking place in Asian sports. He proposed the idea of a new competition  – which came to be the Asian Games. The Asian Athletic Federation would eventually be formed. A preparatory committee was set up to draft the charter for this new body. On 13 February 1949, the Asian Athletic Federation was formally inaugurated in and New Delhi, announced as the inaugural host city to be held in 1950.


title: Asian Games

text: In 1962, the Games were hit by several crises. The host country Indonesia, refused to permit the participation of Israel and Taiwan due to political recognition issues. The IOC terminated its sponsorship of the Games and terminated Indonesia's membership in the IOC. The Asian Football Confederation (AFC), International Amateur Athletics Federation (IAAF) and International Weightlifting Federation (IWF), also removed their recognition of the Games.


title: Asian Games

text: South Korea renounced its plan to host the 1970 Asian Games on the grounds of a national security crisis; the main reason was due to a financial crisis. The previous host, Thailand, would host the Games in Bangkok using funds transferred from South Korea. Japan was asked to host but declined the opportunity as they were already committed to Expo '70 in Osaka. This edition marked the Games' inaugural television broadcasting, world-wide. In Tehran, in 1974, the Games formally recognized the participation of China, North Korea and Mongolia. Israel was allowed to participate despite the opposition from the Arab world, while Taiwan was permitted to continue taking part (as "Chinese Taipei") although its status was abolished in general meeting on 16 November 1973 by Games Federation.


title: Asian Games

text: Prior to the 1978 Games, Pakistan retracted its plan to host the 1975 Games due to a financial crisis and political issues. Thailand offer to host and the Games were held in Bangkok. As in 1962, Taiwan and Israel were refused the participation by Games Federation, amid political issues and security fears. Several governing bodies protested the ban. The IAAF threatened to bar the participating athletes from the 1980 Summer Olympics. Several nations withdraw prior to the Games opening.


title: Asian Games

text: These events led the National Olympic Committees in Asia to revise the constitution of the Asian Games Federation. The Olympic Council of Asia was created in November 1981, excluding Israel. India was scheduled to host in 1982 and the OCA decided not to drop the old AGF timetable. The OCA formally started to supervise the Games with the South Korea 1986 Asian Games. In the succeeding Games, Taiwan (Republic of China) was re-admitted, under pressure by the People's Republic of China to compete as "Chinese Taipei".


title: Asian Games

text: In 1994, the Games included the inaugural participation of the former republics of the Soviet Union: Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It was also the inaugural Games held in a host country outside its capital city. However, Iraq was suspended from the Games due to the 1990 Persian Gulf War. North Korea boycotted the Games due to political issues. The Games were hampered during the opening ceremony by the death of Nareshkumar Adhikari, the chief of the Nepalese delegation.


title: Asian Games

text: The 1998 Games marked the fourth time the Games were held in Bangkok, Thailand. The opening ceremony was on 6 December; the previous three were on 9 December. King Bhumibol Adulyadej opened the Games; the closing ceremony was on 20 December (the same date as all the previous games hosted by Thailand).


title: Asian Games

text: The Asian Games Movement uses symbols to represent the ideals embodied in the Asian Games charter. The Asian Games motto is "Ever Onward" which was designed and proposed by Guru Dutt Sondhi upon the creation of the Asian Games Federation in 1949. The Asian Games symbol is a bright sun in red with 16 rays and a white circle in the middle of its disc which represents the ever glimmering and warm spirit of the Asian people.


title: Asian Games

text: Since the 1982 Asian Games in New Delhi, India, the Asian Games have had a mascot, usually an animal native to the area or occasionally human figures representing the cultural heritage.


title: Asian Games

text: All 45 members affiliated to the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) are eligible to participate in the Games.


title: Asian Games

text: According to membership in the OCA, transcontinental Kazakhstan participates in the Asian Games but Egypt does not as a country with Asian minor region in Sinai, participating in the African Games instead. Various countries participating in the European Games rather than the Asian Games whose major geographical parts located in Asian continent: Turkey and Russia/Soviet Union; almost completely in Asia: Azerbaijan and Georgia; wholly in Asia: Cyprus, Armenia, and Israel.


title: Asian Games

text: In history, 46 National Olympic Committees (NOCs) have sent competitors to the Games. Israel has been excluded from the Games since 1976, the reason cited as being due to security reasons. Israel requested to participate in the 1982 Games, but the request was rejected by the organizers due to the Munich massacre. Israel is now a member of the European Olympic Committees (EOC) and competes at the European Games.


title: Asian Games

text: Taiwan, Palestine, Hong Kong, and Macau participate in the Asian Games according to membership in OCA. Due to its continuing ambiguous political status, Taiwan participates in the Games under the flag of Chinese Taipei since 1990. Macau NOC is allowed to compete as one of the NOCs in Asian Games, despite not being recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for participation in the Olympic Games.


title: Asian Games

text: In 2007, the President of OCA, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Fahad Al-Ahmed Al-Sabah, rejected the proposal to allow Australia to participate in the Games. He stated that while Australia would add good value to the Asian Games, it would be unfair to the Oceania National Olympic Committees (ONOC). Being members of ONOC, Australia and New Zealand participate in Pacific Games since 2015. This motion was mooted again in 2017 after Australia's participation in the 2017 Asian Winter Games as they are in discussions to become a full Asian Games member from 2022 or 2026. However, the Australian Olympic Committee announced that Australia would be allowed a small contingent of athletes for the 2022 Games, as long as the qualification for Summer Olympics events such as basketball and volleyball are through Asia.


title: Asian Games

text: There are only seven countries, namely India, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Singapore and Thailand that have competed in all editions of the games.


title: Asian Games

text: The average for the edition of events by the edition of the Asian Games is of nearly 260 events with 24 sports by edition.


title: Asian Games

text: Fifty-one sports, spanning 39 different disciplines and nearly 400 events, have been part of the Asian Games program at one point or another, including the 2018 Games in Indonesia. The edition where the largest number of events was the Guangzhou 2010 Games, where 476 events in 42 sports were disputed. The number of events varies according to edition and the demands of the local organizing committee, along with those of the host country. It was established in 2011, that the Games program would respect the eventual changes to the Olympic Games program along with this, eight extremely popular sports in Asia are in the program, plus up to 7 chosen by the local organization.


title: Asian Games

text: Of the 46 National Olympic Committees participating throughout the history of the Games, 43 nations have won at least a single medal in the competition, leaving three nations: Bhutan, Maldives and Timor-Leste yet to win a single medal. 38 nations have won at least one gold medal (only Japan and India have done so at every Asian Games), while Japan and China became the only two nations in history to emerge as overall champions.


title: Asian Games

text: The most valuable player (MVP) award was introduced since 1998 Games in Bangkok, Thailand. Below is the list of winners:


title: Asian Games

text: On 8 November 2012, the OCA decided at its 31st General Assembly in Macau to create a special multi-sport event called "Asian Games Centennial Festival" in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Oriental Games (later became Far Eastern Championship Games). OCA awarded the Philippines the hosting rights as it was also the host 100 years previous. The event was originally scheduled to be held in Boracay, Malay, Aklan on 27 to 29 November 2013 but due to the events surrounding Typhoon Haiyan, it was moved to January 2014.


Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga is a 2020 American musical comedy film directed by David Dobkin, written by Will Ferrell and Andrew Steele, and starring Will Ferrell, Rachel McAdams, Dan Stevens, Melissanthi Mahut, Mikael Persbrandt, Ólafur Darri Ólafsson, Graham Norton, Demi Lovato, and Pierce Brosnan. The film follows the personally close Icelandic singers Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdóttir as they are given the chance to represent their country at the Eurovision Song Contest.


title: Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga

text: "The Story of Fire Saga" was originally scheduled to release in May 2020 to coincide with the Eurovision Song Contest 2020. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 contest was cancelled, and the film was subsequently released a month later, on June 26, on Netflix.


text: "The Story of Fire Saga" received mixed reviews from critics, who praised the original music but criticised the two-hour runtime, but had a positive reception from many Eurovision fans. The film received a nomination for Best Original Song at the 93rd Academy Awards (for "Husavik").


text: In the small town of Húsavík, Iceland, Lars Erickssong and Sigrit Ericksdóttir, best friends since childhood, make music together as the band Fire Saga, much to the dismay of Lars' widowed father, Erick ("Volcano Man"). Lars has one dream: to win the Eurovision Song Contest. But at the local bar where they perform, the only song the audience wants to hear is the suggestive nonsense song "Ja Ja Ding Dong". Sigrit's mother also disapproves of their partnership, saying that Lars is holding Sigrit back, and that she will never hit the "Speorg note"—a note that can only be sung when being your truest self—when singing with him. The pair apply and are randomly selected to take part in Söngvakeppnin, the Icelandic pre-selection for Eurovision. Lars is so ecstatic about their participation that he rings the belltower, resulting in him being arrested by a policeman for falsely signalling an emergency. Lars, to his defense, states that the town is near death and that Fire Saga's participation in the contest is the only chance their town has to be alive. Sigrit convinces the police officers to free him. On the outskirts of town, Sigrit, who believes in the old Icelandic tradition of elves, asks the elves for help to get them into the contest in the hope that if Fire Saga wins, Lars will return Sigrit's romantic feelings for him.


text: Due to technical problems, Fire Saga's performance at Söngvakeppnin goes disastrously wrong ("Double Trouble"). Lars, dejected, declines to attend the boat party thrown for all the finalists and sits disappointed on the dock as Sigrit tries to comfort him. Suddenly, the boat explodes, killing everyone on board and leaving Fire Saga as the only surviving contestants and thus winners by default. Lars and Sigrit arrive in Edinburgh, Scotland, where Eurovision is being held ("Amar pelos dois"). Once there, Lars rebuffs Sigrit's attempts to kiss him, reiterating that they need to focus on the competition and not on their relationship. They struggle with a new remix of their song and Lars' elaborate staging plans. They meet Alexander Lemtov, a Russian singer who is a favorite to win the contest ("Lion of Love").


text: Alexander invites Lars and Sigrit to a party at his house, attended by numerous real-life former Eurovision contestants, where he introduces them both to the Greek contestant Mita Xenakis. They join the other contestants in a "Song-A-Long" (a mashup of "Believe", "Ray of Light", "Ne partez pas sans moi", "Waterloo" and "I Gotta Feeling"). Alexander and Sigrit spend the night together, as do Lars and Mita, although neither pair becomes intimate. At their rehearsal, Sigrit expresses her hate for the new clothing and remix and asks Lars to go back to the way things originally were. In response, Lars decides to change their clothing and revert their song to its original version. Later, back at the hotel, Lars overhears Sigrit working on a new song and (wrongly) presumes that it is a love song made for Alexander and that they are pursuing a romantic relationship.


text: Their semi-final performance of "Double Trouble" initially runs well, but is derailed by an accident involving Sigrit's scarf and a giant hamster wheel prop. They recover and finish the song, but are met with deafening silence and scattered laughter. Believing Fire Saga has become a laughing stock, they exit the stage, unaware that the crowd has erupted with applause for their persistence in finishing the performance. Sigrit pleads Lars to stay, but Lars angrily refuses; Sigrit then breaks up with Lars. Lars prepares to head back to Iceland, but not before telling Sigrit to go sing her love song for Alexander, upon which she reveals that she wrote it for Lars. Unaware that Fire Saga has been voted through to the final, Lars returns to Iceland to become a fisherman with his father.


text: Out at sea, Lars confesses his love for Sigrit to his father Erick, who convinces him to go back and fight for his love. Upon learning that Iceland is in the final, Lars immediately leaves. Meanwhile, Alexander sees an opportunity to establish a partnership with Sigrit, but she declines. Sigrit realizes that Alexander is gay but can't come out because of homophobia in Russia. Lars hitches a ride with Victor Karlosson (governor of the Central Bank of Iceland, and one of the Icelandic organizational team members), who attempts to murder Lars and reveals that he blew up the boat at Söngvakeppnin, for fear that Iceland would not be able to host Eurovision the following year if they win due to bankruptcy. Unseen elves save Lars by killing Victor with a thrown knife in the back, allowing Lars to make it back to the final in time. Interrupting their performance, he encourages Sigrit to ditch their official entry and perform the song she has written for him, "Húsavík". Lars starts playing the song on the piano, and Sigrit sings her song, culminating with a Speorg note, touching all of Iceland. Realising that they are in love with each other, Lars and Sigrit kiss each other on stage to a standing ovation in the audience. Backstage, Alexander is happy for them and accepts Mita's invitation to come to Greece with her in order to find his own happiness.


text: Fire Saga is disqualified for changing their song during the contest, but both Lars and Sigrit have lost interest in winning the competition, realizing that their relationship is more important. Back in Húsavík, Lars and Sigrit awake on the bus to a cheering crowd of locals. Some time later, Fire Saga is back to performing in the local bar, this time at the wedding reception of Lars’ father and Sigrit's mother. Bringing their newborn baby along, they ask if anyone wants to hear their Eurovision song, but the crowd once again demands "Ja Ja Ding Dong".


text: Will Ferrell was introduced to the Eurovision Song Contest in 1999 by his Swedish wife, actress Viveca Paulin. Sweden happened to win that year with the song "Take Me to Your Heaven", which Ferrell mentions as a reason he became invested in the competition.


text: In May 2018, in preparation for the film, Ferrell attended the final of the Eurovision Song Contest 2018 at the Altice Arena in Lisbon, Portugal, to research possible characters and scenarios for the film. He also spoke backstage with Eurovision contestants. On June 18, 2018, it was announced that Ferrell would star, co-write and produce a film inspired by the Eurovision Song Contest. The film would be distributed by Netflix.


text: In March 2019, David Dobkin signed on to direct the film. In May 2019, Rachel McAdams joined the cast. McAdams and Ferrell were spotted at the dress rehearsals of the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 in Tel Aviv, Israel, the stage of which was later rebuilt on a soundstage in London for the in-contest scenes, while plate shots were done with the real-life live audience back in Tel Aviv. In August 2019, Pierce Brosnan, Dan Stevens, and Demi Lovato, among others, joined the cast, with filming commencing in Edinburgh and Glasgow, Scotland, and in Iceland. Ferrell was pictured filming scenes at both the OVO Hydro, in Glasgow itself, and Glasgow Airport, in Abbotsinch, Paisley, in October 2019. Filming also took place at Warner Bros. Studios, Leavesden in England, making it the second Netflix feature to be filmed there, the first having been "". Knebworth House was used for the exterior shots of Alexander Lemtov's British house in the film.


text: The actors put on an Icelandic accent for the film. They trained with dialect coaches and McAdams studied videos of Icelandic singer Björk. Tabitha and Napoleon D'umo (known for "So You Think You Can Dance") oversaw the choreography.


text: Production costs in Iceland were $3.6 million, out of which the Icelandic government paid close to a million dollars as a part of the country's movie production incentives.


text: The soundtrack album for the film was released digitally on June 26, 2020, and the CD release followed on August 21, 2020. "Volcano Man" was the first song released from the album and features vocals from Will Ferrell and Swedish singer Molly Sandén (credited as My Marianne). According to Netflix, Sandén's vocals were mixed with McAdams' own voice for the tracks. In a separate phone call with "Vanity Fair", the soundtrack's producer, Savan Kotecha, said that Sandén and McAdams' "tones worked so well together" that, in playing back certain tracks, he had a hard time differentiating between the vocals. The soundtrack was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media at the 63rd Annual Grammy Awards.


text: "The Story of Fire Saga" was digitally released by Netflix on June 26, 2020. In its first weekend, the film was the top-streamed item on Netflix in the United States and reached the No. 1 ranking position in multiple other regions as well. In its second weekend it fell to number eight on the site.


text: After the cancellation of the Eurovision Song Contest 2020, as part of broadcasting plans for the , the movie was aired by a number of broadcasters competing that year, typically on public channels affiliated with the European Broadcasting Union, the producers of both the contest and the film.


text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critics consensus reads: ""Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga" contains inspired ingredients and laugh-out-loud moments but they're outnumbered by the flat stretches in this overlong comedy." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 50 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


text: David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote: "If ever a comedy cried out for tight 85-minute treatment that keeps the gags pinging fast enough to disguise the thin sketch material at its core, it's this hit-or-miss two-hour feature." Owen Gleiberman of "Variety" called it "a badly shot one-joke movie that sits there and goes thud."


text: Chris Hewitt of "Empire" magazine wrote: "The votes are in and it's official: this largely unfunny paean to Eurovision is a waste of some serious talent. At least some of the songs are decent." Hewitt also complained about the length of the film: "It's all rather airless and lifeless and is at least half an hour too long." Robbie Collin of "The Daily Telegraph" wrote: "Sending up the Eurovision Song Contest is like flattening Salisbury Plain: one quick look at the thing should be enough to reassure you that the job took care of itself long ago. Nevertheless, Will Ferrell has decided to give it a shot and the result is this pulverisingly unfunny and vacuous two-hour gauntlet run of non-entertainment." Peter Bradshaw of "The Guardian" wrote: "The movie is not a disaster, just weirdly pointless". Bradshaw also criticizes the script saying it "pulls its punches" and the plot is borrowed from "The Producers". Other writers noted plot similarities with the 1996 "Father Ted" episode "A Song for Europe."


text: Charlotte O'Sullivan of the "Evening Standard" gave the film a more positive review, praising the performances of McAdams and Stevens and writing that "Ferrell, who co-wrote the script, wisely realises that this institution is beyond parody and is simply content to pay homage. The result is extremely silly and ridiculously rousing." David Sims of "The Atlantic" praised the film's "chipper spirit" and wrote "this is a comedy that knows how to make fun "and" have fun." Kevin Maher of "The Times" concluded that "This might just be the most idiotic movie of the year so far. But joyously so."


text: For the Eurovision Song Contest 2021, Hannes Óli Ágústsson reprised his role as Olaf Yohansson for the voting segment of the final, in which he presented the points on behalf of the Icelandic jury. In announcing Iceland's jury points, he attempted to give 12 points to "Ja Ja Ding Dong"; upon being told that it's impossible to do so, he reluctantly granted the points to instead. The Finnish representatives Blind Channel also held up signs saying "PLAY JA JA DING DONG" in the green room during the televoting window.


text: In the same year, the Norwegian representative Tix gained publicity over showing affection for the Azerbaijani representative, Samira Efendi, throughout their time at the contest. Tix was seen singing "Ja Ja Ding Dong" as a love serenade for Efendi.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: Francisco Hélmer Herrera Buitrago also known as "Pacho" and "H7", (August 24, 1951 – November 6, 1998) was a Colombian drug trafficker, fourth in command in the Cali Cartel, and believed to be the son of Benjamín Herrera Zuleta.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: Herrera grew up in the Colombian town of Palmira, in the Valle del Cauca Department. While in high school, Herrera studied technical maintenance, experience that got him a job later in the United States. Living in the United States, he also became a jeweler and precious metals broker until he began selling cocaine in New York City. In 1975, and 1978, Herrera was arrested on distribution charges in New York City for selling cocaine.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: In 1983, Herrera went to Cali, Colombia, to negotiate supply and distribution rights with the Cali Cartel for New York City. He would later open up trafficking routes for the Cali Cartel through Mexico, with connections he had previously established.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: Herrera also ran one of the "most sophisticated and profitable money laundering operations", according to the United States Drug Enforcement Administration. Herrera was soon promoted to Cali cartel kingpin and given control over Jamundí in the south of the Valle, and Palmira and Yumbo in the north and east of the Valle.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: The Herrera operation, according to the DEA, involved importing cocaine base from Peru and Bolivia, which would be trafficked via his own transportation to conversion laboratories in Colombia. It is believed that Herrera hired guerrilla forces such as Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia () (FARC) and then guerrilla group 19th of April Movement (, M-19), to guard remote lab sites.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: Herrera always kept a very low profile and was never interviewed, and his name was almost never mentioned with that of the other leaders of the Cali cartel. Although it has been argued that he was the source of most of the money involved in the illicit financing of Ernesto Samper's presidential campaign, Herrera himself never spoke of the issue and was never formally involved in the investigation. His name came to light only after a terrorist attack on a football field in Candelaria, Valle del Cauca, on September 25, 1990; 20 gunmen dressed in army and police attire opened fire on the crowd where Herrera was sitting, killing 18, but not hitting Herrera. The attack was attributed to the Medellin cartel, and particularly to Pablo Escobar, who apparently blamed Herrera for a car bomb which exploded on January 13, 1988, in the Monaco apartment building owned by Escobar in one of the most affluent areas in the city of Medellín. The war between the cartels shed much of each side's blood, but Herrera took a back role and left the fighting to the Rodriguez brothers. Another attempt on Herrera's life was made on July 27, 1991, in a summer resort: hooded gunmen wearing pink bracelets shot at the people in the place, killing 17 and hurting 13 others.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: Herrera was always said to be the main financial provider for the Los Pepes organization, but his name was never officially associated with them.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: In November 1991, the DEA launched Operation Kingpin, which targeted two of Herrera's distribution cells in New York City. Through a largescale wiretap effort, the DEA utilized over 100 simultaneous, court-authorized wiretaps on cellular phones. At the close of Operation Kingpin, nearly 100 traffickers were arrested, and more than $20 million in cash and assets, and over 2.5 tons of cocaine seized. In addition, records of transactions and personnel were seized from computers, which information later provided a greater look into the Cali Cartel cell structure.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: On September 1, 1996, Herrera turned himself in to the Search Bloc (), a unit of the Colombian National Police. Herrera was the last of the 4 leaders of the Cali Cartel to be captured. He was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison for drug trafficking charges, which was extended to 14 years in 1998.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: Once in prison, Herrera reportedly changed his lifestyle and devoted himself to football, becoming the sports organizer in the prison and sponsoring football tournaments. He also began a bachelor's degree in business administration. Although he was supposed to be in the maximum security wing of the prison, Herrera visited the other wings, where he would meet with his lawyers. On November 6, 1998, Rafael Ángel Uribe Serna, 32, got inside the prison and went to the football pitch where Herrera was playing. Uribe was reportedly drunk, but apparently Herrera stopped the game upon seeing him and went to greet him. After hugging Herrera, Uribe took out a gun and shot him seven times in the head. Uribe was caught by other inmates and then taken away by the prison guards, while Herrera was moved to a hospital where he died.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: There are a number of possible motives for Herrera's assassination. These include old vendettas from members of the Norte del Valle Cartel, in particular a man known by the alias of JJ, by orders of Wilber Varela, who apparently had been the victim some days earlier of an assassination attempt by the Cali cartel leaders and the collaboration between Herrera and DEA for betraying Orlando Henao, chief of the Norte del Valle Cartel and Varela's boss. Other hypotheses point to Herrera's long-time conflict against communist guerrillas. The assassin, Uribe, had been a personal adviser of Herrera's for 10 years and was a frequent visitor. Uribe declared that he had decided to kill Herrera because he had threatened Uribe's family when Uribe was unable to kill Víctor Carranza as Herrera had ordered. These declarations, however, were found unreliable, and probably a stratagem to take attention away from the real masterminds. The most accepted hypothesis is that Uribe was actually acting under the orders of the Norte del Valle cartel who were angry with Herrera for having released information about them, and who had been eager to take up the business left behind after the capture or death of the Cali cartel leaders. Uribe was also the uncle of brothers Luis Enrique and Javier Antonio Calle Serna, the "Comba" brothers, who took hold of the Norte del Valle cartel after Varela died. Uribe himself was assassinated in October 2009.


title: Hélmer Herrera

text: In the book, "La patrona de Pablo Escobar", written by Colombian journalist José Guarnizo, Herrera was described as "an immigrant who went from being an anonymous Latin mechanic to one of the wealthiest members of the Cartel de Cali" and "one of the few homosexuals who climbed high in the pyramid of the Mafia". At the time, Herrera's crimes overshadowed any speculation regarding his sexual orientation. In the Netflix drama "Narcos", Herrera is portrayed as openly gay.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: The Mayo Clinic () is a nonprofit American academic medical center focused on integrated health care, education, and research. It employs over 4,500 physicians and scientists, along with another 58,400 administrative and allied health staff, across three major campuses: Rochester, Minnesota; Jacksonville, Florida; and Phoenix/Scottsdale, Arizona. The practice specializes in treating difficult cases through tertiary care and destination medicine. It is home to the top-15 ranked Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine in addition to many of the highest regarded residency education programs in the United States. It spends over $660 million a year on research and has more than 3,000 full-time research personnel.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: William Worrall Mayo settled his family in Rochester in 1864 and opened a sole proprietorship medical practice that evolved under his sons, Will and Charlie Mayo, along with practice partners Stinchfield, Graham, Plummer, Millet, Judd, and Balfour, into Mayo Clinic. Today, in addition to the hospital at Rochester, Mayo Clinic has major campuses in Arizona and Florida. Most recently, in 2020, the Mayo Clinic bought a facility in central London, UK. The Mayo Clinic Health System also operates affiliated facilities throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Iowa.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic has ranked number one in the United States for seven consecutive years in "U.S. News & World Report" Best Hospitals Honor Roll, maintaining a position at or near the top for more than 35 years. It has been on the list of "100 Best Companies to Work For" published by "Fortune" magazine for fourteen consecutive years, and has continued to achieve this ranking through 2017. Drawing in patients from around the globe, Mayo Clinic performs near the highest number of transplants in the country, including both solid organ and hematologic transplantation.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic is a nonprofit hospital system with campuses in Rochester, Minnesota, Scottsdale and Phoenix, Arizona, and Jacksonville, Florida. Mayo Clinic employs 63,000 people, including more than 4,500 physicians and scientists and 58,400 administrative and allied health staff, as of 2018. Of those, approximately 34,000 are based in Rochester. In addition, Mayo Clinic partially owns and operates the Mayo Clinic Health System, which consists of more than 70 hospitals and clinics across Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. Mayo Clinic also operates the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, a nonprofit college dedicated to training medical and allied health professionals at Mayo Hospitals in Minnesota, Arizona, and Florida.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: The clinic created an independent business subsidiary in London in partnership with Oxford University Clinic, a collaboration between the University of Oxford and Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust to operate a clinic starting in 2019. The clinic, in the Harley Street Medical Area, will focus on preventative healthcare, with magnetic resonance imaging and CT scan technology and open in the summer of 2019.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic is led by president and CEO Gianrico Farrugia, M.D. John H. Noseworthy, M.D. retired as president and CEO in December 2018; his predecessor, Denis A. Cortese, M.D. retired in November 2009. Samuel A. DiPiazza, Jr., retired CEO of PricewaterhouseCoopers, is chairman of Mayo Clinic's governing board of trustees.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In 2018, more than 1.2 million different patients from all 50 states and 138 countries were seen at Mayo Clinic facilities. Mayo Clinic offers highly specialized medical care, and a large portion of the patient population are referrals from smaller clinics and hospitals across the upper Midwest and the United States. Mayo Clinic physicians are paid a fixed salary, which is not linked to patient volume (relative value units) or income from fee-for-service payments. This practice is thought to decrease the monetary motivation to see patients in excessive numbers and increase the incentive to spend more time with individuals.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic researchers contribute to the understanding of disease processes, best clinical practices, and translation of findings from the laboratory to the clinical practice. As of 2018, research personnel included 254 full-time scientific faculty, 766 physicians actively involved in research, and 4,027 full-time research personnel. In 2018, there were 3,067 new human research studies approved by the institutional review board and 12,760 ongoing human research studies. These research initiatives led to 9,275 research publications and review articles in peer-reviewed journals. In recent years, 100% of Mayo Clinic's internal medicine residents across the three campuses have published research during their tenure.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: The Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science (MCCMS), established in 1915, offers educational programs embedded in Mayo Clinic's clinical practice and biomedical research activities. MCCMS consists of five accredited schools, including the M.D. degree-granting Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine as well as the master's and Ph.D. degree-granting Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences. The Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences offers training for about 60 health sciences career fields. The Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education runs over 300 residences and fellowships in all medical and surgical specialties. The Mayo Clinic School of Continuous Professional Development delivers continuing education courses aimed at practicing medical professionals.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic originated with the medical practice of William Worrall Mayo, M.D., (1819–1911). Born near Manchester, England, he was mentored by the eminent British scientist John Dalton and immigrated to the United States in 1846. He worked his way west, earning two medical degrees at a time when formal education for physicians was limited. Mayo settled in Indiana, and he married Louise Abigail Wright in 1851. They moved to Minnesota Territory in 1854, seeking a more healthful climate. The family relocated within Minnesota several times until Mayo's appointment as an examining surgeon for the Union Army military draft board during the American Civil War brought them to Rochester. On January 27, 1864, Mayo advertised in the "Rochester City Post" the opening of a private medical practice "over the Union Drug Store on Third Street" with "all calls answered by day or night".


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Both of W. W. Mayo's sons, William James Mayo (1861–1939) and Charles Horace Mayo (1865–1939), who became known as Dr. Will and Dr. Charlie, grew up in Rochester and attended medical school. William graduated in 1883 and joined his father's practice, with Charles joining in 1888.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: On August 21, 1883, a tornado struck Rochester, causing at least 37 deaths and over 200 injuries. One-third of the town was destroyed, but the Mayo family escaped serious harm. Relief efforts began immediately in a variety of makeshift facilities. Mayo was placed in charge of organizing medical care for the wounded survivors. Needing nurses, he reached out to Mother Alfred Moes, the founder of the Sisters of Saint Francis of Rochester, Minnesota (a teaching order).


title: Mayo Clinic

text: After the crisis subsided, Mother Alfred approached W. W. Mayo with a proposal: The Sisters of St. Francis would raise the funds to build a hospital in Rochester if he and his sons would provide the medical and surgical care. The agreement was made over a handshake. On September 30, 1889, Saint Marys Hospital was opened by the Sisters with the three Mayo physicians on staff.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: The growing specialization of medicine and the expanding use of railroads, automobiles, and mass communications provided context for what Mayo Clinic calls its most significant and enduring contribution to the medical field: the content of integrated multispecialty practice.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Starting in the 1890s, the Mayo brothers welcomed other physicians to join them. W. W. Mayo's solo practice had evolved into a family practice with his sons' participation and now became a group practice with colleagues whose professional skills and ethos of teamwork complemented those of the Mayo brothers. Mayo Clinic's first partners were physicians Augustus W. Stinchfield, Christopher Graham, Melvin C. Millet, Henry Plummer, E. Star Judd, and Donald Balfour.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Preeminent among the early physicians who joined the practice was Henry Plummer, M.D. A specialist in thyroid disease, he made milestone contributions to the treatment of goiter. In terms of organizational development, he collaborated with the Mayo brothers in coordinating the introduction of specialties that expanded the scope of the Mayo practice beyond its origins in surgery. A polymath whose interests included architecture, engineering, and art, Plummer also created many of the systems and procedures that remain central to Mayo Clinic today, such as the integrated "dossier" medical record. In fact, Dr. Will said that hiring Plummer was the best day's work he ever did.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: By virtue of their surgical skills and efficient management, the Mayo brothers were financially successful and professionally prominent. They both served as president of the American Medical Association and achieved international recognition as surgeons. In 1919, the brothers and their wives donated the assets of the medical practice including land, buildings, and equipment, as well as the majority of their life savings, to transform the private partnership into a not-for-profit organization dedicated to an integrated mission of patient care, medical education, and medical research.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Following World War II, Mayo Clinic continued to expand in Rochester, Minnesota. The 1980s initiated transformative changes that set the course for the modern Mayo Clinic. An early adopter of the Internet, Mayo Clinic has been recognized for its online communications to patients, members of the public and medical professionals.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In 1986, Mayo Clinic formally united with Saint Marys Hospital and Rochester Methodist Hospital. That same year, Mayo Clinic expanded to Florida partly because of a donation of 400 acres of land in Jacksonville from the Davis family. This was followed by expansion to Scottsdale, Arizona, in 1987; the Phoenix, Arizona, campus opened in 1998. In 1992, Mayo Clinic Health System began as a network of community-based medical services in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin. In 2011, Mayo Clinic launched the Mayo Clinic Care Network, a collection of facilities with access to Mayo Clinic protocols and experts.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In November 2019, the Mayo Clinic, in a joint partnership with SEHA Abu Dhabi Health Services Co, invested $50 million into a 741-bed hospital in the United Arab Emirates for a 25% stake.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: At the beginning of 2020 the Mayo Clinic opened a health clinic in central London, in partnership with Oxford University Clinic. It was officially named Mayo Clinic Healthcare. In July 2020 it was reported that the Mayo Clinic had bought Oxford University Clinic's share of the facility, to become the sole owner and its first overseas clinic operated as a Mayo Clinic entity.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In the early 20th century, Henry Plummer developed Mayo Clinic's multi-specialty group practice model and an integrated medical record system. Plummer's system allowed physicians to better share patient information with one another. Prior to Plummer's system, physicians worked in solo practice and shared patient information when necessary either verbally or by letter. Plummer also helped design and fabricate building systems innovations, such as steam sterilization rooms, metal surgical tools and equipment, pneumatic tube system, and knee operated sinks. In 1905, Mayo Clinic advanced a technique of using frozen tissue during surgery to determine if a patient had cancer while the patient was still in the operating room. Mayo Clinic offered the first graduate medical education program in 1915 and the first nonprofit practice aligned with medical education and research. In the 1920s, Albert Compton Broders of the Mayo Clinic created the first index to grade tumors. Mayo Clinic opened the first hospital-based blood bank in Rochester in 1935. Early in Mayo Clinic's history, the hospital designed the one-legged mobile instrument stand known as the Mayo stand.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In the 1930s, Mayo Clinic associates Walter M. Boothby, Randolph Lovelace, and Arthur H. Bulbulian developed a high-altitude mask for oxygen therapy that became known as the BLB flight mask.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: During World War II, the U.S. Army tasked Mayo Clinic with finding a solution for pilots who were dying after suffering blackouts. Mayo Clinic hired a team of physicians to research and define the specific physiologic effects causing blackout and unconsciousness during high G forces. Physiologists Earl H. Wood, Edward Baldes, Charles Code, and Edward H. Lambert developed the G-suit with air bladders that prevented blood from pooling in pilots' legs. The suit was worn by U.S. pilots toward the end of World War II.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Two Mayo Clinic physicians were among three people awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine in 1950 for the discovery of cortisone. Professor Edward C. Kendall, PhD, and Philip S. Hench of Mayo Clinic were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in medicine alongside Tadeus Reichstein, a Swiss chemist who conducted independent research, for the discovery. They separated and identified compounds from the adrenal cortex that produced cortisone and hydrocortisone. Later in the decade, Mayo Clinic began using and refining the Gibbon heart–lung machine in cardiac surgery. It is now known as the Mayo–Gibbon heart–lung machine.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic associates Edward Howard Lambert, Lealdes (Lee) McKendree Eaton, and Edward Douglas Rooke were the first physicians to substantially describe the clinic and electrophysiological findings of what is known as Lambert–Eaton myasthenic syndrome in 1956. In 1972, the clustering of LEMS with other autoimmune diseases led to the hypothesis that it was caused by autoimmunity.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In 1969, Mayo Clinic doctors performed the first Food and Drug Administration-approved hip replacement in the United States. In 1973, Mayo Clinic bought the first CT scanner in the U.S.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic and Roche Molecular Biochemicals developed a rapid DNA test in 2001 to detect anthrax in humans and in the environment.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, was established in 2008 and has since worked on over 270 projects.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In 2013, Mayo Clinic specialists in regenerative medicine begin the "first-in-human study" whereby patient cells are used to attempt to heal heart damage.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: After several years using Apple Inc.'s Macintosh computers and mobile devices for patient care and test results, Mayo partnered with Apple in 2014 to develop the Apple Health and HealthKit apps to serve as a central location for personal health information. Mayo Clinic and Delos Living launched the Well Living Lab in September 2015. This research facility is designed to simulate real-world, non-hospital environments to allow Mayo Clinic researchers to study the interaction between indoor spaces and human health.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: As the practice grew in the 20th century, it required additional space. Saint Marys Hospital underwent frequent expansion. Rochester business leader John Kahler built innovative hotel-hospital facilities that served Mayo Clinic patients. In 1914, Mayo Clinic opened the world's first building expressly designed for multispecialty group practice, known as the 1914 "red brick" building. It facilitated ease of movement for patients and staff among specialty areas, brought research and education functions into proximity with clinical practice, and patient amenities. This approach was replicated and enhanced with the adjoining 1928 Mayo Clinic building, later named for Plummer, its principal designer, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Plummer Building features bronze entry doors designed by artist Charles Brioschi. Each 16-foot high, 5.25-inch thick door weighs 4,000 pounds and features ornamental panels. The doors are closed to memorialize important historical events and influential people, such as the deaths of the Mayo brothers, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the victims of September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The 1914 "red brick" building, a National Historic Landmark, was demolished by Mayo Clinic in the 1980s to make way for the Siebens Building (completed in 1989). Mayo Clinic's campus has undergone expansion over the years.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Other notable Mayo Clinic buildings include the Mayo Building (Rochester, Minnesota) (construction completed in 1955), Guggenheim Building (1974), Gonda Building (2001), Opus Imaging Research Building (2007) and recent addition in 2019 – Discovery Square building.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic's humanities program was founded on the belief that the arts and healing are linked. Over the decades, Mayo Clinic has established an extensive art collection, including these works on display across all campuses:


title: Mayo Clinic

text: The first medical educational programs at Mayo Clinic were developed in 1915 with the assistance of the University of Minnesota. Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education and the Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research were established in 1915. MFMER was established as a department of the University of Minnesota with a $1.5 million donation to offer graduate programs at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. The Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education is now part of the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science, which is divided into five schools. Those schools include Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic School of Health Sciences, Mayo Clinic School of Continuous Professional Development, and Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In 2011, the foundation that oversees the Mayo Clinic went before the Supreme Court to argue that medical residents should remain exempt from Social Security deductions. In "Mayo Foundation v. United States" the court sided with the Social Security Administration and required FICA to be deducted going forward.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic rules mandate that its CEOs must be physicians and come from within Mayo Clinic. John H. Noseworthy, M.D., served as president and CEO from 2009 to 2019. Under his leadership, Mayo Clinic was reorganized into a single operating company with a unified strategy and business plan, which helped the system expand. This included the launch of the Destination Medical Center, a 20-year economic growth plan in Rochester. During this time, annual revenue reached nearly $12 billion, and Mayo Clinic added 7,200 employees.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In 2018, Mayo Clinic announced that Gianrico Farrugia, M.D., a Mayo Clinic physician for more than 30 years, would replace Noseworthy as CEO. Farrugia had served as CEO of Mayo Clinic in Florida since 2015. The replacement adhered to Mayo Clinic's tradition of leadership changes, where a new president or CEO is named every seven to ten years. By 2018, Mayo Clinic doctors saw approximately 1.3 million patients annually.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic remains at the forefront of medical innovation leading hundreds of clinical trials and offering groundbreaking therapies, such as CAR-T and proton therapies. They are currently one of the leading research centers for the COVID-19 epidemic and were one of the first institutions offering plasma exchange for this patient population.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic has adopted more than 15,000 mobile devices from Apple for patient care, including the iPad, iPad Mini, and iPhone. Mayo Clinic then created an app for these devices called Synthesis Mobile, which integrated hundreds of their health systems. For Mayo Clinic Care Network members, more apps were created to help patients see their medical records or ask clinicians for assistance. In 2014, Mayo Clinic was developing an app for Apple's HealthKit to help users maintain healthy lifestyles and warn of certain health signs that need attention.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Mayo Clinic, in collaboration with real estate firm Delos Living, launched the Well Living Lab in September 2015. This research facility is designed to simulate real-world, non-hospital environments to allow Mayo Clinic researchers to study the interaction between indoor spaces and human health.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: The Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, established in 2008, was one of the pioneers of innovation in healthcare. It has since worked on over 270 projects and is often looked to as a role model for using design in healthcare.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In March 2018, Mayo Clinic and Mytonomy, a healthcare education system company, partnered to provide video content for cancer patients. The video content is used to address important questions and answers and designed to aid in the decision-making process between patient and doctor.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In September 2019, Mayo Clinic entered into a strategic partnership with Google for health care innovation and cloud computing, and Google planned to open its facility in Rochester, Minnesota, for Mayo Clinic.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In January 2020, Mayo Clinic and NTT Venture Capital joined a $60 million financing for biomedical software startup nference.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: Since 2016 the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, has been ranked as the #1 overall hospital in the United States by U.S. News & World Report. A total of almost 5,000 hospitals were considered and ranked in 16 specialties from cancer and heart disease to respiratory disorders and urology; 153 (just over 3 percent of the total) were ranked in at least one of the 16 specialties. Of the 153 hospitals that are ranked in one or more specialties, 20 qualified for the Honor Roll by earning high scores in at least six specialties. Mayo Clinic, Rochester, was ranked in the top 10 in all but one of 16 specialties, in the top 4 in 13 specialties, and was the #1 ranked hospital in 8 of the 12 data-driven specialties. This year U.S. News expanded their common procedures and conditions list to 9 individual measures, and Mayo was one of fewer than 70 hospitals to score High Performing in every category. Additionally, Mayo was the only hospital on the 2016–2017 honor roll to also receive 5 stars from CMS. Every Mayo Clinic hospital received an "A" safety rating from Leapfrog in its April 2017 report.


title: Mayo Clinic

text: In 2021–22, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, was ranked again as the #1 overall hospital in the United States by U.S. News & World Report.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Donaldo Gugliermo "Dennis" Farina (February 29, 1944 – July 22, 2013) was an American actor. Often typecast as a mobster or police officer, he is known for roles such as FBI Agent Jack Crawford in "Manhunter", mobster Jimmy Serrano in the comedy "Midnight Run", Ray "Bones" Barboni in "Get Shorty",


title: Dennis Farina

text: Cousin Avi in "Snatch", and Walt Miller in "New Girl". He starred on television as Lieutenant Mike Torello on "Crime Story" and as NYPD Detective Joe Fontana on "Law & Order". From 2008 to 2010, he hosted and narrated the television program "Unsolved Mysteries" on Spike TV. His last major television role was in HBO's "Luck", which premiered on January 29, 2012.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina was born on a Leap Day (February 29, 1944) in Chicago's Old Town neighborhood, the fourth son and youngest of the seven children of Joseph and Yolanda Farina. Farina's father, who was from Villalba, Sicily, was a Chicago-area doctor, and his mother a homemaker. They raised their children in a North Avenue home in Old Town, a working-class neighborhood with a broad ethnic mixture, with Italians and Germans the predominant ethnicities.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Before becoming an actor, Farina served three years in the United States Army during the Vietnam Era, followed by 18 years in the Chicago Police Department (1967 to 1985), during which he advanced from patrolman to detective.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina began working for director Michael Mann as a police consultant, which led Mann to cast him in a small role in the 1981 film "Thief". Farina worked with Mann again, as mobster Albert Lombard, in several episodes of "Miami Vice". He moonlighted as an actor in Chicago-based films (like "Code of Silence", a 1985 Chuck Norris film) and theater before Mann chose him for his "Crime Story" series, which aired on NBC from 1986 to 1988. He later starred as the title character in "Buddy Faro", a short-lived 1998 private detective series on CBS.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina played mob boss Jimmy Serrano in the comedy-crime film "Midnight Run;" and Ray "Bones" Barboni, a rival criminal to Chili Palmer, in "Get Shorty". He played FBI Agent Jack Crawford in Michael Mann's "Manhunter", the first film to feature the character Hannibal Lecter. His other film appearances include Steven Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan", "Striking Distance", "Another Stakeout", "Snatch", "The Mod Squad", "Reindeer Games", "Men of Respect", "Big Trouble" and "Out of Sight". He played a baseball manager in "Little Big League" and a nemesis basketball coach in "Eddie".


title: Dennis Farina

text: In a departure from his usual parts, he had a leading-man role, co-starring with Bette Midler, in the romantic comedy "That Old Feeling" (1997), directed by Carl Reiner.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina won an American Comedy Award for his performance in "Get Shorty," and starred in the television sitcom "In-Laws" from 2002 until 2003. He appeared in the 2002 film "Stealing Harvard", a comedy where he played a tough-talking, overprotective father-in-law. He had comic roles opposite Ed Harris and Helen Hunt in the HBO production of "Empire Falls" in 2005, and opposite Alan Rickman in the 2008 "Bottle Shock".


title: Dennis Farina

text: Working as a voice-actor beginning in early 2005, he provided the voice of aging boxer-turned-superhero Wildcat on "Justice League Unlimited". In early 2013, he voiced the father of Daffy Duck's girlfriend on "The Looney Tunes Show", and played himself in an April 13, 2014, episode of the animated series "Family Guy" called "The Most Interesting Man in the World," aired posthumously, one of his final acting roles.


title: Dennis Farina

text: In 2004, producers of the television series "Law & Order" hired him as Detective Joe Fontana, following the death of longtime cast member Jerry Orbach. Farina stayed on the show for two seasons. In May 2006, it was announced he was leaving "Law & Order" for other projects, including the 2007 "You Kill Me" opposite Ben Kingsley and the 2008 "What Happens in Vegas" with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.


title: Dennis Farina

text: His role of Detective Lt. Mike Torello on "Crime Story" was as a Chicago police officer, assigned to the U.S. Justice Department. Farina's "Law & Order" character, Detective Fontana, worked for Chicago Homicide before his transfer to the NYPD. Fontana shared a number of other characteristics with the actor who played him since they came from the same Chicago neighborhood, attended the same parochial school and had the same tastes in clothes and music and were fans of the Chicago Cubs.


title: Dennis Farina

text: He appeared in two television network miniseries based on Joe McGinniss's true-crime books, "Blind Faith" (1990) and "Cruel Doubt" (1992). He made a rare western, portraying legendary lawman Charlie Siringo in a 1995 television movie, "", a followup to the hit 1960s series.


title: Dennis Farina

text: In October 2008, he became the new host of "Unsolved Mysteries" when it returned to television with a new five-season, 175-episode run on Spike TV. Farina replaced Robert Stack, who had hosted the series for its prior 15-year run. This version featured re-edited segments from previous incarnations on NBC, CBS and Lifetime.


title: Dennis Farina

text: He played the title role in a 2011 independent film, "The Last Rites of Joe May", written and directed by Joe Maggio, shot on location in Chicago. He was among the stars of a 2014 release, "Authors Anonymous", playing a wannabe novelist with a fantasy of becoming another Tom Clancy.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Again on television, Farina co-starred in the 2012 HBO horse-race gambling series "Luck", with Dustin Hoffman, directed by Michael Mann. He had a recurring guest role in 2013 in the television comedy series "New Girl", though his character was killed off prior to his death.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina's last film role was as an aging Italian playboy in a film version of the Off-Broadway musical "Lucky Stiff" co-starring Dominic Marsh, Nikki M. James and Jason Alexander. The film, released posthumously in 2014, was dedicated to his memory.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina was married to Patricia Farina from 1970 until their divorce in 1980. They had three sons, Dennis Jr., Michael and Joseph (who is also an actor); two granddaughters, Brianna and Olivia; and four grandsons, Michael, Tyler, Matthew and Eric. He lived with his longtime girlfriend Marianne Cahill in Chicago and Scottsdale, Arizona.


title: Dennis Farina

text: A lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, he played a Cubs fan in a 1988 revival of the successful 1977 Organic Theater Company stage play "Bleacher Bums," written by and starring fellow Chicago actors Joe Mantegna and Dennis Franz.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina was arrested on May 11, 2008, for carrying a loaded .22-caliber pistol through Los Angeles International Airport security. He was taken to the Los Angeles Police Department's Pacific Division and booked on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon, with bail set at $25,000. He claimed he had simply forgotten the weapon was still in his briefcase and never intended to take it on a plane. After police determined the weapon was unregistered, the charges were upgraded to a felony and bail was increased to $35,000. After reaching a plea agreement with prosecutors, he pleaded no contest and was sentenced to two years' probation on July 17, 2008.


title: Dennis Farina

text: Farina died on July 22, 2013, in a Scottsdale, Arizona hospital from a pulmonary embolism. He was buried at Mount Carmel Cemetery at Hillside, Illinois.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a first-person-shooter survival horror video game series developed by GSC Game World. The series is set in an alternate version of the present-day Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Ukraine, where, according to the series' backstory, a mysterious second Chernobyl disaster took place in 2006. As a result, the physical, chemical, and biological processes in the area were altered, spawing numerous nature-defying anomalies, artifacts, and mutants. The player takes the role of a "stalker" - a name given to trespassers and adventurers who have come to explore the exclusion zone and its strange phenomena.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: The series is loosely based on the novel "Roadside Picnic" by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, and influenced by the movie "Stalker" by Andrei Tarkovsky. The name "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." is a backronym for "Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers".


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: The franchise takes place in an alternate Chernobyl Exclusion Zone (or simply "the Zone"), where a number of classified laboratories were established following the nuclear disaster of 1986. Due to the experiments conducted in these laboratories, a second catastrophe occurred in 2006, which caused physical and meteorological phenomena all over the exclusion zone and mutation of local plant and animal life. After the second disaster, the Zone grew rich with anomalies — inexplicable phenomena that don't obey the laws of physics or common sense (such as pillars of fire, lightning scatter, whirlwinds that tear everything that falls into them, etc).


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: The anomalies are causing artifacts to appear, which are items with unique and extraordinary properties such as anti-gravity or radioactivity absorption. People who have come to explore the Zone in search of personal enrichment such as artifacts are known as "stalkers". Many of them are working on their own, though there are also several organized factions present. The Duty are a paramilitary organization that believes the Zone is a threat to humanity that must be destroyed. Conversely, members of the Freedom faction believe the Zone is a gift that should be freely accessible to all people. Bandits are wanted criminals and outlaws that have come to the Zone to hide from authorities, while the Clear Sky seek to understand the origins of the Zone.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: To protect the Zone from intruders, a military checkpoint known as the Cordon was established by the Ukrainian Military Forces. The military have an uneasy relationship with stalkers - while official orders are to shoot any trespassers on sight, military personnel are often bribed to look the other way. Additionally, military squads carry out operations in the Zone, such as elimination missions or securing strategic points. The most dangerous of the Zone dwellers are other stalkers, particularly a fanatical sect called the Monolith that protects the center of the Zone, and mutants, some of which possess psionic powers.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: The protagonists in the series have different goals and allegiances, but often must work together. Typically, every game's primary goal is to reach the center of the Zone, with a number of adventures, dangers, and challenges on the way.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: In the first game of the series, the player takes on the role of an amnesiac stalker referred to as the "Marked One", tasked with killing another stalker named Strelok. During the game, the protagonist uncovers clues to his past and true identity while helping other stalkers and encountering dangerous mutants. He also learns about the nature and origins of the Zone by exploring mysterious underground laboratories in the area. "Shadow of Chernobyl" features seven endings which are dependent on multiple factors such as money earned during the game, supporting certain factions, or how much of the protagonist's memory was pieced together.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: "Clear Sky", the second game released in the series, is a prequel to "Shadow of Chernobyl". The player assumes the role of Scar, a veteran mercenary and the lone survivor of a huge energy emission he was caught in while escorting a group of scientists through the Zone. He is rescued by and ends up working for a group calling themselves the "Clear Sky", who are dedicated to researching and understanding the nature of the Zone. Throughout the game, the player can choose to have Scar side with or against certain factions in the area to help achieve Clear Sky's goal.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: The third game in the series, "Call of Pripyat", takes place shortly after the events of "Shadow of Chernobyl". Having discovered the open path to the center of the Zone, the government decides to establish control of the situation through "Operation Fairway". This includes sending a number of reconnaissance helicopters into the Zone before dispatching the main military force thoroughly. Despite these preparations, the military operation fails, with all helicopters mysteriously crashing. As a result, the Security Service of Ukraine deploys former stalker turned military operative Major Alexander Degtyarev into the Zone to investigate.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" was announced in August 2010, with an initial release date scheduled for 2012. Sergiy Grygorovych, CEO of GSC Game World, specified that the video game featured a completely new multi-platform engine, written by GSC itself. On 23 December 2011, GSC Game World announced they would be continuing development of "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2", despite an earlier announcement pointing to its cancellation. However, "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" was cancelled yet again by GSC Game World through a Twitter post on 25 April 2012.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: Development of a new "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" was announced on 15 May 2018 with a post on the "Cossacks 3" Facebook page. The post links to a site that displays the text "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 — 2.0.2.1.", implying a planned release year of 2021 powered by the Unreal Engine 4. In May 2018, Sergey Galyonkin, the creator of Steam Spy, tweeted that GSC Game World would create a "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2," using Unreal Engine 4. Shortly the GSC website mentioned that the company was working on "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2," and a teaser website appeared mentioning the release date of 2021. It was suggested that the game was still in the design phase, and was announced just before E3 2018 so it could find a publisher.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: On 23 March 2020, GSC Game World published a screenshot of the game in development, promising they would share new information about the game in the coming months.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: On 23 July 2020, it was announced that the game will be released in 2021 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox Series X/S, which will be the first time the series will be on consoles.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: On 13 June 2021, the release date was confirmed for 28 April 2022 through a gameplay trailer at the E3 2021 "Microsoft/Bethesda" press conference. It also revealed it would be on Xbox Game Pass at launch. On 12 January 2022, the release date was delayed until 8 December 2022.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: After the Russian Invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, it was announced that development had been put on an indefinite hold; however, after moving their development studio to the Czech Republic, the developers announced a 2023 release date via their official Discord server.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: The "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." series has positive reviews from popular gaming sites and was well received by critics. The series is scored between 75 and 82 on Metacritic.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: By August 2010, the franchise had sold over 4 million copies. In August 2021, GSC and Koch Media is claiming over 15 million total sales for the franchise.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: In 2010 the first game of the "Metro" game series was released. Metro is another series of Ukrainian first-person shooter games based on the "Metro 2033" literature series, which was created by some ex-members of the "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." development team who left to form 4A Games in 2006 before the release of "Shadow of Chernobyl".


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: The former "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2" team opened a new studio, Vostok Games, in 2012. In 2015, they released a free-to-play massively multiplayer online first-person shooter game titled "Survarium" in the spirit of the franchise, using ideas they created for the cancelled sequel. Their new project is a battle royale game set in Chernobyl, titled "Fear the Wolves".


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: In 2014, West-Games, which claimed to be composed of former "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." core developers (according to both GSC Game World and Vostok Games, falsely) launched a Kickstarter campaign for a spiritual successor to "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." first called "Areal" and then "STALKER Apocalypse". While it managed to reach its goal of $50,000, multiple concerns were raised throughout the campaign about the project being a possible scam, and Kickstarter eventually suspended the campaign two days before its deadline, for undisclosed reasons.


title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

text: In 2019, Alexey Sityanov, former game designer and story writer of "Shadow of Chernobyl, Survarium and Sketch Tales," teamed up with The Farm 51 to work on their Kickstarter project, "Chernobylite." The game features similar gameplay and themes to "S.T.A.L.K.E.R", and the environment is based on the real Chernobyl exclusion zone, done by utilizing photogrammetry measurements. A stalker is introduced in the game as an antagonist, known as Black Stalker. "Chernobylite" released the first early access version of the game on 16 October 2019, on Steam.


title: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

text: Assassin's Creed Syndicate is an action-adventure video game developed by Ubisoft Quebec and published by Ubisoft. It was released on October 23, 2015, for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on November 19, 2015, for Microsoft Windows. It is the ninth major installment in the "Assassin's Creed" series, and the successor to 2014's "Assassin's Creed Unity".


title: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

text: The game's plot follows the premise of the "Assassin's Creed" franchise, involving a fictional history of real-world events where a secret war has been fought for centuries between two factions: the Brotherhood of Assassins, who promote peace and liberty, and the Templar Order, who desire peace through control. The framing story is set in the 21st century and follows the same unnamed and unseen protagonist from "Assassin's Creed Unity", who assists the Assassins in their race against the Templars to find an artifact hidden in London. The main story is set in London in 1868, at the onset of the Second Industrial Revolution, and follows twin Assassins Jacob and Evie Frye as they navigate the corridors of organised crime and take back the city from Templar control. The narrative also includes segments set in 1916, during World War I, which follow Jacob's granddaughter, Lydia Frye.


title: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

text: The game is played from a third-person perspective and its open world is navigated on foot or by carriage. The game introduces new travelling systems and refined combat and stealth mechanics. Players control the two lead protagonists throughout the game's story, switching between them both during and outside of missions. After launch, the game was supported with several releases of downloadable content (DLC), including three story expansions. The most notable of these, "", is set twenty years after the main campaign, and involves Evie's pursuit of the titular unidentified serial killer, who is also playable.


title: Assassin's Creed Syndicate

text: "Assassin's Creed Syndicate" received positive reviews, with praise for its visuals, characters, narrative, and level design. However, the combat, open-world design and vehicle gameplay were met with some criticism. The game was nominated for multiple awards, including Best Action/Adventure at The Game Awards 2015. "Syndicate" was less financially successful than previous entries in the series, selling roughly 5.5 million copies by November 2017. It was followed in October 2017 by "Assassin's Creed Origins", which introduces a new storyline in the modern day and has its main plot set in Ptolemaic era Ancient Egypt.