title: Feral cat

text: Some animal rights groups advocate trap-neuter-return programs to prevent the feral cats from continuing to breed. Scientific evidence has demonstrated that TNR is not effective at controlling feral cat populations.


title: Feral cat

text: The meaning of the term "feral cat" varies between professions and countries, and is sometimes used interchangeably with other terms such as "free-roaming", "street", "alley," or "community cat". Some of these terms are also used to refer to "stray" cats, although stray and feral cats are generally considered to be different by rescuers, veterinarians, and researchers. The lines between stray and feral cat are diffuse. The general idea is that owned cats that wander away from their homes may become stray cats, and stray cats that have lived in the wild for some time may become feral.


title: Feral cat

text: Activists who seek to normalize feral cats in the environment are attempting to rebrand feral cats as "community cats". Biologists say that this new term is euphemistic and distracts from feral cats being an environmental problem, and that it has connotations that falsely imply that feral cats exist with the consent of the communities where they live, and that the public has a moral obligation to support them in the outdoors. Studies have shown that the public does not support there being large numbers of free ranging cats in the outdoors, but that the use of language in surveys appears to influence the levels of support for different management options.


title: Feral cat

text: In the United Kingdom, a feral cat is defined as a cat that chooses not to interact with humans, survives with or without human assistance, and hides or defends itself when trapped rather than allowing itself to be handled. Animal rescuers and veterinarians consider cats to be feral when they had not had much human contact particularly before eight weeks of age, avoid humans, and prefer to escape rather than attack a human. Feral cats are distinguished from domesticated cats based on their levels of socialization, ownership, and confinement, and on the amount of fear of, interaction with, and dependence upon humans. However, veterinarians and rescuers disagreed on whether a feral cat would tend to hiss and spit at or attack a human during an encounter, and disagreed on whether adult feral cats could potentially be tamed.


title: Feral cat

text: In Italy, feral cats have been protected since 1991, and it is illegal to kill them. In Rome, they are surgically neutered by veterinarians of the Veterinary Public Services. Programs for sterilization of stray cats are also implemented in the Padua and Venice Provinces.


title: Feral cat

text: A survey of rescue and veterinary facilities in the United States revealed that no widely accepted definition of a feral cat exists. Many facilities used waiting periods to evaluate whether a cat was feral by observing whether the cat became less afraid and evasive over time. Other indicators included the cat's response to touch with an inanimate object, and observation of the cats' social behavior in varying environments such as response to human contact, with a human nearby, or when moved to a quieter environment.


title: Feral cat

text: The Australian government categorizes cats who have no interaction with or assistance from humans as feral, and unowned cats who rely on humans as semi-feral or stray. However, even these so-called 'managed colonies' often have a devastating impact on wildlife as demonstrated in the decimation of native mammals in adjacent reserves, such as occurred with numbats and woylies in Western Australia.


title: Feral cat

text: A farm cat is a free-ranging domestic cat that lives in a cat colony on agricultural farms in a feral or semi-feral condition. Farm cats primarily live outdoors and usually shelter in barns. They are partially supplied with food and milk, but mainly subsist on hunting rodents such as black rat, brown rat, common vole and "Apodemus" species. In England, farm cat colonies are present on the majority of farms and consist of up to 30 cats. Female farm cats show allomothering behaviour; they use communal nests and take care of kittens of other colony members.


title: Feral cat

text: Some animal rescue organizations maintain Barn Cat Programs and rehome neutered feral cats to people who are looking for barn cats.


title: Feral cat

text: Domestic cats have been members of ship crews since the beginning of commercial navigation. Phoenician and Etruscan traders probably carried cats on board their trading vessels to Italy and the Mediterranean islands.


title: Feral cat

text: The need to keep rodents from consuming or contaminating grain crops stored for later human consumption may be the original reason that cats were domesticated. The spread of cats throughout much of the world is thought to have originated in Egypt. Scientists do not agree on whether cats were domesticated in Ancient Egypt or introduced there after domestication. Phoenician traders brought them to Europe for control of rat populations, and monks brought them further into Asia. Roman armies also contributed spreading cats and eventually brought them to Britain. Since then, cats continued to be introduced to new countries, often by sailors or settlers. Cats are thought to have been introduced to Australia in either the 1600s by Dutch shipwrecks, or the late 1700s by English settlers. These domesticated cats began to form feral populations after their offspring began living away from human contact.


title: Feral cat

text: In the 19th and 20th centuries, several cat specimens were described as wildcat subspecies that are considered feral cat populations today:


title: Feral cat

text: The feral cat is the most widely distributed terrestrial carnivore. It occurs between 55° North and 54.3° South latitudes in a wide range of climatic zones and islands in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans, and the Mediterranean Sea, including Canary Islands, Port-Cros, Dassen Island, Marion Island, Juan de Nova Island, Réunion, Hahajima, Okinawa Island, Raoul Island, Herekopare Island, Stewart Island, Macquarie Island, Galápagos Islands, San Clemente Island, Isla Natividad, San José Island, and New Island.


title: Feral cat

text: The feral cat population on the Hawaiian Islands is mainly of European origin and probably arrived in the 19th century on ships.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral cat colonies in Rome have been monitored since 1991. Urban feral cats were studied in Madrid, Jerusalem and Ottawa.


title: Feral cat

text: Some behaviors of feral cats are commonly observed, although there is disagreement among veterinarians, rescuers and researchers on the prevalence of some. In a free-roaming environment, feral cats avoid humans. They do not allow themselves to be handled or touched by humans, and back away or run when they are able to do so. If trapped, they hiss, growl, bare their teeth, or strike out. They remain fairly hidden from humans and will not approach, although some feral cats gradually become more comfortable around humans who feed them regularly.


title: Feral cat

text: Most feral cats have small home ranges, although some are more transient and travel long distances. The home ranges of male feral cats, which are generally two or three times larger than those of female cats, are on average under , but can vary from almost to under . This variance is often due to breeding season, access to females, whether the cat is neutered, age, time of day, and availability of prey.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral cats often live in groups called colonies, which are located close to food sources and shelter. Researchers disagree on the existence, extent, and structure of dominance hierarchies among feral cats in colonies. Different types of hierarchies have been observed in colonies, including despotic and linear hierarchies. Some colonies are organized in more complex structures, such as relative hierarchies, where social status of individual cats varies, depending on location, time of day, or the activity the cats are engaged in, particularly feeding and mating.


title: Feral cat

text: A 'managed colony' is taken care of by humans who supply food and water to the cats, provide shelters and veterinary care, implement trap-neuter-return programs, find foster homes for cats that can be socialized for eventual adoption, and educate people in the neighborhood.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral kittens can be trapped and socialized, then adopted into a home. The age at which a kitten becomes difficult to socialize is not agreed upon, but suggestions generally range from seven weeks to four months of age. Although older cats can sometimes be socialized, it is a very long and difficult process, and the cat rarely becomes friendly and may remain fearful.


title: Feral cat

text: In a 2013 study with British participants, rescuers tended to be more willing than veterinarians to attempt to tame adult feral cats. Veterinarians tended to be more opposed to this practice, with some expressing concerns for the welfare of such a cat in a home environment. In a 2010 interview survey with veterinarians and rescuers in the United States, 66% of respondents had socialization programs for kittens, and 8% for adult cats.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral cats are either mesopredators (mid-ranking predators) or apex predators (top predators) in local ecosystems. They prey on a wide variety of both vertebrates and invertebrates, and typically prefer smaller animals with body weights under , particularly mammals, birds, and lizards. Their global prey spectrum encompasses over 1,000 species; the most commonly observed were the house mouse, European rabbit, black rat, house sparrow, and common blackbird.


title: Feral cat

text: In Australia, they prey on introduced species like the European rabbit and house mouse, and on native rodents and marsupials, particularly the common ringtail possum.


title: Feral cat

text: In the United States some people advocate for feral cats as a means to control pigeons and invasive rodents like the house mouse and brown rat, however these cosmopolitan species co-evolved with cats in human-disturbed environments, and so have an advantage over native rodents in evading cat predation. Studies in California showed that 67% of the mice killed by cats were native species, and that areas near feral cat colonies actually have larger house mouse populations, but fewer birds and native rodents.


title: Feral cat

text: Though cats usually prey on animals less than half their size, a feral cat in Australia was photographed killing an adult pademelon of around the cat's weight at .


title: Feral cat

text: Adult feral cats without human assistance have been found in surprisingly good condition. In Florida, a study of feral cats admitted to a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program concluded that "euthanasia for debilitated cats for humane reasons is rarely necessary". A further study of over 100,000 feral and stray cats admitted to TNR programs in diverse locations of the U.S. resulted in the same 0.4% rate of euthanasia for debilitating conditions. The body condition of feral cats entering a TNR program in Florida was described as "generally lean but not emaciated". However, many feral cats had suffered from parasites such as fleas and ear mites before entering TNR programs.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral cats in managed colonies can live long lives. A number of cats in managed colonies in the United Kingdom died of old age.


title: Feral cat

text: A long-term study of a trap-neuter-return (TNR) program on a university campus in Central Florida found that, despite widespread concern about the welfare of free-roaming cats, 83% of the cats studied had been present for more than six years, with almost half first observed as adults of unknown age. The authors compared this result to a 1984 study that found the mean life span for domesticated cats was 7.1 years.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral cats, as with all cats, are susceptible to diseases and infections including rabies, bartonellosis, toxoplasmosis, feline panleukopenia virus, external and internal parasites, feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV), feline leukemia virus (FeLV), rickettsial diseases, ringworm, and feline respiratory disease complex (a group of respiratory illnesses including feline herpesvirus type 1, feline calicivirus, "Chlamydophila felis", and "Mycoplasma haemofelis)".


title: Feral cat

text: Feline leukemia virus and feline immunodeficiency virus belong to the "Retroviridae" family, and both cause immunosuppression in cats, which can increase their susceptibility to other infections. Research has shown that the prevalence of these viruses among feral cat populations is low and is similar to prevalence rates for owned cats in the United States.


title: Feral cat

text: Researchers studying 553 feral cats in North Florida in the United States tested them for a number of infections that could be detrimental to feline or human health. The study found the most prevalent infection to be "Bartonella henselae", the cause of cat-scratch disease in humans, with 33.6% of the cats testing positive. Feline coronavirus was the next most common infection, found in 18.3% of the cats, although they noted that the antibody levels were low in most of the cats who tested positive, and concluded that the cats they tested did not appear to be a greater risk for shedding the virus than pet cats. Researchers studying 96 feral cats on Prince Edward Island in Canada found that feline roundworm was the most common infection in cats in that colony, afflicting 34% of cats. This was followed by "Toxoplasma gondii", which was detected in 29.8% of cats, although only one cat of the 78 for whom fecal samples were available was shedding "T. gondii" oocysts. They did note that most fecal samples collected indicated the presence of one intestinal parasite, with some samples indicating the presence of multiple parasites.


title: Feral cat

text: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has warned about the rabies risk associated with feral cats. With 16% of people infected with rabies from exposure to rabid cats, cats have been the primary animals responsible for transmission of the virus to humans in the United States since the efforts to control rabies in dogs in the 1970s. In 2010, there were 303 rabid cats reported within the United States. Although some colony management programs involve administering rabies vaccines, the need to revaccinate every few years makes this challenging to maintain. Furthermore, lack of documentation can mean that contact with vaccinated feral cats may still require post-exposure treatment.


title: Feral cat

text: The study of feral cats on Prince Edward Island warned of "considerable zoonotic risk" for transmission of intestinal parasites. Although the authors noted that their study did not provide evidence for great risk associated with "T. gondii" in cats, they advised that the risk should still be considered, as the infection in humans can cause significant health problems, and cats who are not otherwise transmitting the infection can begin shedding the parasite in times of stress.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral cats are controlled or managed by various agencies to manage disease, for the protection of native wildlife and to protect their welfare. Control of feral cats can be managed through trapping and euthanasia or other forms of lethal control, or, some claim, through trap-neuter-return (TNR). Scientific research has not found TNR to be an effective means of controlling the feral cat population. Literature reviews have found that, in the instances where studies documented TNR colonies that declined in population, those declines were being driven primarily by substantial percentages of colony cats being permanently removed from colonies by some combination of re-homing and euthanasia on an ongoing basis. TNR colonies often increase in population because cats breed quickly and the trapping and sterilization rates are frequently too low to stop this population growth, because food is usually being provided to the cats, and because public awareness of a TNR colony tends to encourage people in the surrounding community to dump their own unwanted pet cats there. The growing popularity of TNR, even near areas of particular ecological sensitivity, has been attributed in part to the failure of scientists to communicate the environmental harm caused by feral cats to the public, and their unwillingness to engage with TNR advocates.


title: Feral cat

text: Trap-neuter-return involves trapping feral cats, vaccinating, spaying or neutering them, and then returning them to the place where there were originally trapped. TNR programs are prevalent in several countries, including England, Italy, Canada, and the United States, and are supported by many local and state governments. Proponents of TNR argue that it is effective in stopping reproduction and reducing the population over time. TNR results in fewer complaints, as nuisance behaviors diminish following neutering, and the quality of life of the cats is improved. The practice is reported to save money and garner more public support and better morale than efforts that involve killing cats. TNR is popular, but there's little evidence that TNR by itself can control the growing population of free roaming cats.


title: Feral cat

text: The International Companion Animal Management Coalition advocates for TNR as a humane method of controlling feral cat populations. In the U.S., the practice is endorsed by the Humane Society of the United States. and the National Animal Control Association, TNR is opposed by the Australian Veterinary Association, the National Audubon Society, the National Wildlife Federation, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the American Association of Wildlife Veterinarians, the Wildlife Society, the American Bird Conservancy, and PETA. Some U.S. military bases have TNR programs, but the United States Navy prohibits such programs on Navy land.


title: Feral cat

text: The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), in 2016, adopted a resolution that "encourages collaborative efforts to identify humane and effective alternatives to the destruction of healthy cats for animal control purposes, while minimizing their negative impact on native wildlife and public health." The AVMA voiced support for "properly managed [feral cat] colonies" outside "wildlife-sensitive ecosystems" but stated that "[t]he goal of colony management should be continual reduction and eventual elimination of the colony through attrition." The AVMA stated that "free-roaming abandoned and feral cats that are not in properly managed colonies should be removed from their environment and treated in the same manner as other abandoned and stray animals in accordance with local and state ordinances" and that "[f]or colonies not achieving attrition and posing active threats to the area in which they are residing, the AVMA does not oppose the consideration of euthanasia when conducted by qualified personnel, using appropriate humane methods as described in the AVMA Guidelines for the Euthanasia of Animals."


title: Feral cat

text: The effectiveness of both trap-and-euthanise and TNR programmes is largely dependent upon controlling immigration of cats into cleared or controlled areas; where immigration of new cats is controlled both techniques can be effective. However where immigration is not controlled culling is more effective. Comparisons of different techniques have also found that trap-and-euthanise programmes are half the cost of TNR ones. An analysis of both techniques in Hawaii suggested they are less effective when new cats were introduced by the abandonment of pets. The usefulness of TNR is disputed by some scientists and conservation specialists, who argue that TNR is only concerned with cat welfare and ignores the ongoing damage caused by feeding outdoor populations of neutered cats, including the depredation of wildlife, transmission of diseases, and the accumulation of cat faeces in the environment. Conservation scientists also question the effectiveness of TNR at controlling numbers of feral cats. Some studies that have supported TNR have also been criticised for using anecdotal data to evaluate their effectiveness.


title: Feral cat

text: In order for TNR to reduce the cat population, sterilisation rates of at least 75% must be maintained at all times, particularly because TNR practitioners providing cats with food makes the problem worse by increasing the survival rate of feral kittens. Also, this food source causes other cats to be drawn into the colony from outside. Members of the public often begin dumping unwanted pet cats at TNR sites, increasing the rate of recruitment. And neutered cats are less territorial, allowing for higher populations. TNR programs are sometimes able to attain local reductions in the numbers of cats at specific colony locations, but it has never been demonstrated to meaningfully impact cat populations over large areas or regions, because the effort necessary to maintain sufficient sterilisation rates means that systemic TNR will never be a credible option. For example, to reduce a typical Australian city's population of 700,000 feral cats through TNR would require sterilising at least 500,000 of them initially, and then continuing to sterilise more than 75% of the kittens that the other 200,000 would continue to produce each year indefinitely, along with all the new recruits from other cat populations drawn by the food supply.


title: Feral cat

text: TNR is backed by well-funded advocacy organizations: in 2010, Alley Cat Allies spent US$3 million advocating to legalise TNR throughout the United States, while the Best Friends Animal Society spent $11 million on a "Focus on Felines" initiative that included TNR advocacy. Promoters of TNR are often funded by big businesses with a commercial interest in selling cat food, such as pet food mills and the pet products retailer PetSmart.


title: Feral cat

text: De-sexing cats, as in TNR programs, does nothing to prevent them from continuing to destroy wildlife. In Mandurah, Western Australia, a single, neutered, semi-feral cat raided a protected fairy tern colony on at least six nights in November 2018. It killed at least six breeding adult fairy terns; directly or indirectly killed at least 40 nestlings, and caused enough stress on the fairy tern colony that all 111 nests were abandoned; resulting in a complete breeding failure for the entire colony of threatened seabirds. The predation was documented by wildlife cameras, as well as by the presence of cat tracks, cat scat, decapitated fairy terns, and injured and missing fairy tern nestlings. Though the colony was surrounded by ultrasound generators intended to deter cats, the fairy tern colony might have been an irresistible target, and this particular cat was white and had a blue eye, traits commonly associated with deafness.


title: Feral cat

text: In the United States, free-ranging cats kill one to four billion birds and six to 22 billion mammals annually.


title: Feral cat

text: In Australia, domestic cats were introduced in the 1800s to settlements that had developed near gold mining sites and farms as a pest control strategy to decimate rabbits, mice, and rats. Feral cats kill on average one million reptiles each day. It has been estimated that they kill more than 800 million mammals annually, of which 56 percent are native species.


title: Feral cat

text: To date, little scientific data is available to assess the impact of cat predation on prey populations outside of agricultural situations. Even well-fed domestic cats may hunt and kill, mainly catching small mammals, but also birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish, and invertebrates. Hunting by domestic cats may be contributing to the decline in the numbers of birds in urban areas, although the importance of this effect remains controversial. Feral cats can threaten native species with extinction. Controlling or eliminating the populations of the non-native cats can produce a rapid recovery in native animals.


title: Feral cat

text: Native species such as the New Zealand kakapo and the Australian bettong tend to be more ecologically vulnerable and behaviorally "naive", when faced with predation by cats. Feral cats have had a major impact on these native species and have played a leading role in the endangerment and extinction of many species.


title: Feral cat

text: In Hawaii's remote, mountainous areas, they destroy the nests of seabirds including Newell's shearwater ("Puffinus newelli") and the Hawaiian petrel ("Pterodroma sandwichensis").


title: Feral cat

text: In agricultural settings, cats can be effective at keeping mouse and rat populations low, but only if rodent harborage locations (such as tall grass) are kept under control. While cats are effective at preventing rodent population explosions, they are not effective for eliminating pre-existing severe infestations. In systems where wildlife is threatened by both predation by rats and cats, there are concerns that controlling cats could increase predation by rats, due to rat populations increasing. For example, in Christmas Island, it was shown that decreasing cat populations would improve the growth rate of a threatened bird, as long as rats did not increase by more than 77 rats per cat removed.


title: Feral cat

text: Feral cats have interbred with wildcats to various extents throughout the world, the first reported case occurring more than 200 years ago. The significance of hybridisation is disputed. Modern genetic analysis revealed that the African wildcat is the ancestor of the domestic cat.


title: Feral cat

text: Pure Scottish wildcats are unlikely to exist, but the current wildcat population is distinct enough from domestic cats to be worth protecting.


title: Feral cat

text: High levels of hybridisation have led to difficulties in distinguishing pure wildcats from feral and domestic cats, which can complicate conservation efforts. Trap-neuter-return programs have been established to prevent hybridisation.


title: Feral cat

text: Notable gene introgression into European wildcat populations exists also in Italy, Hungary, Spain and Portugal.


title: Republic of Molossia

text: The Republic of Molossia, also known as Molossia (), is a micronation claiming sovereignty over of land near Dayton, Nevada. The micronation has not received recognition from any of the member states of the United Nations. It was founded by Kevin Baugh. He continues to pay property taxes on the land to Storey County (the recognized local government), although he calls it "foreign aid". He has stated "We all want to think we have our own country, but you know the U.S. is a lot bigger".


title: Republic of Molossia

text: Molossia started as a teenage dream of Kevin Baugh, and began, as the Kingdom of Molossia, in 1998 when he bought land in Nevada. Baugh has claimed that he based the idea of Molossia on the film "The Mouse That Roared," and also claims influence from his time in the military.


title: Republic of Molossia

text: The Republic of Molossia is situated in the Great Basin, the largest arid region in North America. It lies at an elevation of . The terrain consists of dry, rocky or sandy soil. Molossia is situated in the Dayton Valley, near the Carson River. The area occupied by Molossia experiences a dry-summer or Mediterranean climate. The average temperature for the year in Molossia is . The warmest month, on average, is July with an average temperature of . The coolest month on average is January, with an average temperature of .


title: Republic of Molossia

text: The Republic of Molossia claims to be at war with East Germany, alleging that they are responsible for military drills performed by Kevin Baugh while stationed with the United States Military in West Germany, and therefore are also responsible for the resulting diagnosis of sleep deprivation. While East Germany formally ceased to exist in 1990 following the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, Molossia argues that Ernst Thälmann Island, dedicated by Fidel Castro to Weimar German politician Ernst Thälmann and given to East Germany, as well as its lack of mention in the Treaty on the Final Settlement or by the nation of Cuba, is therefore still East German land, allowing the war to continue.


title: Republic of Molossia

text: Molossia has changed its national anthem twice. The first anthem was based on the Romanian patriotic song "Pe-al nostru steag e scris Unire," which was named "Molossia, Nation in the Desert." In 2014, the anthem was changed again to the music of "La Zaïroise" (the national anthem of Zaire) and was renamed to "Fair Molossia is Our Home" to mark the 15th anniversary of its independence.


title: Republic of Molossia

text: Molossia's flag is a horizontal tricolor flag of blue, white, and green. The blue bar represents the nation's strength and the desert sky, the white bar represents purity and the surrounding mountains, and the green bar represents prosperity and the Molossian landscape. To save on costs of producing custom-made flags, Molossia typically uses upside-down flags of Sierra Leone.


title: Republic of Molossia

text: Other national symbols of Molossia include the mustang, the national animal; the desert quail, the national bird; and the common juniper and common sagebrush, Molossia's national tree and flower, respectively.


title: Republic of Molossia

text: It is the origin of the Molossolini, a non-alcoholic mixed drink of Sprite, grenadine, and pineapple juice, with added cherries and slices of banana, orange, and pineapple.


title: Republic of Molossia

text: In 2010, the Republic of Molossia was featured in a feature-length special by Channel Awesome called "Kickassia". In the film, the Republic undergoes an invasion by the Nostalgia Critic (played by Doug Walker) and his posse of reviewers, who briefly replace Molossia with "Kickassia" before being ousted.


title: Withdrawal of United States troops from Afghanistan (2020–2021)

text: The United States Armed Forces completed their withdrawal from Afghanistan on 30 August 2021, marking the end of the 2001–2021 war. In February 2020, the Trump administration and the Taliban, without the participation of the then Afghan government, signed the US–Taliban deal in Doha, Qatar, which stipulated fighting restrictions for both the US and the Taliban, and provided for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Afghanistan in return for the Taliban's counter-terrorism commitments. The Trump administration's US–Taliban deal, and then the Biden administration’s decision in April 2021 to pull out all US troops by September 2021 without leaving a residual force, were the two critical events that caused the collapse of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF). Following the deal, the US dramatically reduced the number of air attacks and deprived the ANSF of a critical edge in fighting the Taliban insurgency, leading to the Taliban takeover of Kabul on 15 August 2021.


text: As part of the US–Taliban deal, the Trump administration agreed to an initial reduction of US forces from 13,000 to 8,600 troops by July 2020, followed by a complete withdrawal by 1 May 2021, if the Taliban kept its commitments. At the start of the Biden administration, there were 2,500 US soldiers in Afghanistan and, in April 2021, Biden said the US would not begin withdrawing these soldiers before 1 May, but would complete the withdrawal by 11 September. The Taliban began a final offensive on 1 May and, on 8 July, Biden specified a new completion date of 31 August. There were about 650 US troops in Afghanistan in early August 2021, tasked with protecting Hamid Karzai International Airport and the US embassy in Kabul. NATO's Resolute Support Mission concluded on 12 July 2021 while US intelligence assessments estimated as late as July that Kabul would fall within months or weeks following withdrawal of all American forces from Afghanistan, though the security situation deteriorated rapidly.


text: The US also launched Operation Allies Refuge to airlift the United States translators and selected Afghan citizens considered at risk of reprisals and US Forces Afghanistan Forward was established on 7 July 2021 as a successor command overseeing the evacuation of all US diplomatic, security, advisory, and counter-terrorism personnel remaining in the country after the withdrawal of US troops. On 12 August 2021, following continued Taliban victories across Afghanistan, the Biden administration announced that 3,000 US troops would be deployed to Kabul Airport to evacuate embassy personnel, US nationals and Special Immigrant Visa applicants. With the rapid advance of the Taliban in the provinces, on 14 August the US increased its troop commitment to 5,000. On 15 August, with the fall of Kabul, another 1,000 troops were deployed, and on 16 August, another 1,000 troops were deployed, bringing the total number of troops to 7,000. The last US military planes left Kabul airport at 11:59 p.m. Kabul time on 30 August 2021.


text: Following the U.S. withdrawal, around one thousand U.S. citizens and Afghans holding U.S. or other visas were held up by the Taliban with the U.S. government not authorizing their departure. On 28 and 29 September 2021, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley and United States Central Command (CENTCOM) commander Gen. Frank McKenzie were among the numerous Defense Department officials who denied during Congressional testimonies President Biden's previous claim that his decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan was because of advice from senior U.S. military leaders and stated that they had in fact advised him to keep some troops in Afghanistan.


text: In 2011, US President Barack Obama announced that the US would withdraw from Afghanistan by the end of 2014, concluding Operation Enduring Freedom. Although significant numbers of US troops were withdrawn by 2014 and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) had concluded, 9,800 US soldiers remained deployed inside of Afghanistan during Operation Freedom's Sentinel, a part of NATO's subsequent Resolute Support Mission (RSM). General John F. Campbell requested an additional 1,000 US troops in light of the new military operation.


text: Under President Donald Trump, the US strategy in Afghanistan was described in April 2017 as "an increase in special operations forces to train, advise and assist Afghan forces; a more robust plan to go after elements in Pakistan that aid the Taliban; the deployment of more air power and artillery; and a political commitment to the survival of the current government in Kabul".


text: In July 2017, when the official number of US troops operating in Afghanistan was 8,400, President Trump gave the US military decision-making authority to increase troop numbers for military operations in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan without first seeking formal approval from the White House. US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said: "Our overall mission in Afghanistan remains the same."


text: On 21 August 2017, President Trump unveiled his administration's strategy for Afghanistan, saying "victory will have a clear definition: attacking our enemies, obliterating the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), crushing al-Qaeda, preventing the Taliban from taking over the country, and stopping mass terror attacks against Americans before they emerge". On 24 August, the commander for US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General John W. Nicholson Jr., confirmed that troop levels, strategy, and conditions for success were dependent on the momentum of the war effort and on-the-ground conditions, not "arbitrary timelines". Trump did not specify the number of troops to be committed under his new open-ended strategy, but congressional officials were told an additional 4,000 troops were to be deployed. The "Washington Post" reported on 30 August that the additional US forces for Afghanistan would likely include paratroopers as well as small Marine artillery detachments, composed of about 100 or so troops per unit, which were to be dispersed across the country to fill in gaps in air support. According to the report, air support in the form of more F-16 fighters, A-10 ground attack aircraft and additional B-52 bomber support, or a combination of all three, were likely to be used. The newspaper also stated: "The additional US forces will allow Americans to advise Afghan troops in more locations and closer to the fighting, US officials in Kabul said [...]. With more units farther away from the country's biggest bases, additional air support and artillery will be needed to cover those forces." "The New York Times" added that "the American military will be able to advise select Afghan brigades in the field instead of trying to mentor them from more distant headquarters. They can step up the effort to train special operations forces and, thus, substantially increase the number of Afghan commandos. This will allow American war commanders and service members to call in air and artillery strikes on behalf of more Afghan units."


text: On 30 August 2017, the Department of Defense disclosed that there were more troops in Afghanistan than previously acknowledged. The Pentagon stated the actual "total force" number was closer to 11,000 rather than the previously stated 8,400, with the larger number including covert as well as temporary units. The lower troop-level estimate was a result of misleading accounting measures and red tape.


text: In September 2017, the Trump administration began deploying more than 3,000 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total number of US forces in Afghanistan to more than 14,000. When General Austin "Scott" Miller took command of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan in September 2018, there were 15,000 US troops deployed. In October 2019, following an abrupt end to peace talks with the Taliban a month prior, General Miller announced that US forces had been reduced to 13,000 within a year as a result of a unilateral decision by the US command in Kabul. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper commented on the troop decrease, saying "General Miller is doing exactly what I asked all our commanders to do when I entered office ... to look where they can free up time, money and manpower," as part of the National Defense Strategy to gradually shift global US military strategy from prioritizing counter-terrorism to also countering Russian and Chinese power projection. In December 2019, the "Afghanistan Papers" revealed that high-ranking military and government officials were generally of the opinion that the war in Afghanistan was unwinnable, but kept this hidden from the public. By the end of 2019, nearly 2,400 Americans had died in the war, with more than 20,000 wounded.


text: On 29 February 2020, the US, represented by diplomatic envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, and the Taliban signed the Agreement for Bringing Peace to Afghanistan, commonly known as the US–Taliban deal, that provided for the withdrawal from Afghanistan of "all military forces of the United States, its allies, and Coalition partners, including all non-diplomatic civilian personnel, private security contractors, trainers, advisors, and supporting services personnel" within 14 months (i.e., by 1 May 2021). At the time, there were about 13,000 US troops in the country. The withdrawal was conditional on the Taliban upholding the terms of the agreement that included "not to allow al-Qaeda or any other extremist group to operate in the areas they control". The US was to reduce its forces in Afghanistan by about 5,000 troops to 8,600 within 135 days. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg pledged to initially reduce NATO's numbers from roughly 16,000 troops to about 12,000.


text: In the meantime, intra-Afghan peace talks, comprising the Taliban and the Afghan government, were to work out a more concrete power-sharing settlement. That time frame would give the Afghan government the cover of US military protection while negotiating. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the remaining US troops would serve as leverage to ensure the Taliban lived up to its promises.


text: On 1 March 2020, the intra-Afghan talks hit a major snag when President Ashraf Ghani stated during a press conference that the Afghan government, which was not a party to the deal, would reject the US–Taliban deal's call for conducting a prisoner exchange with the Taliban by the proposed start of intra-Afghan negotiations on 10 March 2020, even stating that "[t]he government of Afghanistan has made no commitment to free 5,000 Taliban prisoners", that "an agreement that is signed behind closed doors will have basic problems in its implementation tomorrow", and that "[t]he release of prisoners is not the United States authority, but it is the authority of the government of Afghanistan". Ghani also stated that any prisoner exchange "cannot be a prerequisite for talks" but must be a part of the negotiations.


text: Some US troops withdrew from Afghanistan on 9 March 2020, as stipulated in the US–Taliban deal. On 10 March 2020, US Central Command (CENTCOM) rejected reports that the US military had developed a plan to withdraw all US troops from Afghanistan. General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., chief of CENTCOM, stated that the plan was to reduce the number of US troops in Afghanistan to 8,600 over a 14-month period. The US Army later confirmed that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan in the summer of 2020. According to CENTCOM, the US had reduced its Afghan troop numbers to 8,600 by 18 June 2020, in accordance with the US–Taliban deal. On 1 July 2020, following media reports of Taliban participation in an alleged Russian bounty program to target US troops, the US House Armed Services Committee voted for a National Defense Authorization Act amendment to set additional conditions to be met before President Trump could continue the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, including requiring an assessment on whether any country has offered incentives for the Taliban to attack US and coalition troops, along with prohibiting funding to reduce troop numbers to below 8,000, and again at 4,000, unless the administration certified that doing so would not compromise American interests in Afghanistan. The US Senate rejected an attempt by Senator Rand Paul's amendment to the NDAA, which would have required the withdrawal of all US forces from Afghanistan within a year and bring an end to the 19-year war.


text: In August 2020, US intelligence officials reportedly assessed that the Iranian government had also offered bounties for American soldiers in Afghanistan. Iran was accused of having made payments to the Haqqani network that were linked to at least six attacks in 2019, including the sophisticated attack on Bagram Air Base on 11 December 2019. According to CNN, the Trump administration "never mentioned Iran's connection to the bombing, an omission current and former officials said was connected to the broader prioritization" of the US–Taliban deal and withdrawal from Afghanistan. The alleged Iran-Taliban ties were cited as part of the justification for the assassination of Qasem Soleimani. On 8 August, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said that the United States would reduce troop levels to below 5,000 by the end of November 2020.


text: On 17 November 2020, acting US Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller announced further withdrawals of troops by 15 January 2021, leaving 2,500 troops across both Afghanistan and Iraq, down from the previous amount of 4,500 and 3,000, respectively. US National Security Advisor Robert C. O'Brien issued a statement on behalf of President Trump that it was his hope the incoming Biden administration would have all US troops "come home safely, and in their entirety" by their previously agreed 1 May 2021 deadline. Joe Biden had previously signaled his support for the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan during his presidential campaign, although he left room for the possibility that the US would be "open to maintaining a small number of troops in the country whose mission would focus solely on counterterrorism operations". O'Brien added that the remaining troops in Afghanistan were to defend American diplomats, the American embassy, and other agencies of the US government operating in Afghanistan. The announcement was criticized by United States Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.


text: NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned in a statement that "the price for leaving too soon or in an uncoordinated way could be very high". Critics said that the Afghan withdrawal would undermine the fragile security situation in the region and that the troop reductions would hamper the ongoing peace talks between Taliban fighters and the government of Afghanistan. According to a senior defense official the conditions used to measure the drawdown were based on whether national security would be threatened by a reduction in Afghanistan to 2,500 troops. "We do not feel that it is," said the official. The other condition was, "can we maintain a force posture in Afghanistan that permits us to carry out our mission with our allies and partners?" The announcement created anxiety in Afghanistan because there was a fear of a Taliban resurgence and US troops were considered a hedge against the group. Atiqullah Amarkhel, a retired Afghan Army general and military analyst, told "The New York Times" that the Taliban "are stronger than in the past, and if the Americans leave and don't support and assist the Afghan Army they won't resist long, and the Taliban will take over."


text: The Trump administration completed its reduction of forces to 2,500 troops in January 2021, the lowest number of American soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001. By January 2021, there were more than seven contractors for each US military service member remaining in Afghanistan, amounting to over 18,000 contractors, according to figures from US Central Command. In January 2021, incoming president Joe Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US would review the peace agreement in order to effectively withdraw its remaining 2,500 soldiers from Afghanistan. Biden supported a full withdrawal in 2014 but it was initially unclear as to whether he would uphold Trump's May 2021 withdrawal deadline.


text: On 18 February 2021, Jens Stoltenberg said that NATO had not made a decision on how to proceed regarding the withdrawal. Britain was expected to withdraw its remaining 750 Resolute Support Mission troops at the same time as the US and NATO troops would also follow the same withdrawal timeline. In April 2021, the US indicated that some troops (the exact number had not yet been decided) will remain in the country to provide diplomatic security, and it remained unclear what would happen to the several hundred US special operations forces working for the CIA on counter-terrorism missions. CIA Director William Joseph Burns told the US Senate Intelligence Committee on 14 April 2021, that is a significant risk once the US military and the coalition militaries withdraw" but added that the US would retain "a suite of capabilities". The Biden administration reportedly intended to use a broad array of foreign police tools ranging from military occupation to total abandonment.


text: In March 2021, news reports stated that President Biden was potentially considering keeping US forces in Afghanistan until November 2021. However, on 14 April 2021, Biden announced his intention to withdraw all regular US troops by 11 September 2021, the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks and four months after the 1 May deadline negotiated prior. The day before the announcement, Biden called former US presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama regarding his decision to withdraw. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the decision was made in order to refocus resources on countering China and the COVID-19 pandemic. Following withdrawal, the US was reportedly considering options for redeploying troops in the region, such as relocating to US Navy vessels, countries in the Middle East, or Central Asian countries like Tajikistan.


text: Biden said that after nearly 20 years of war, it was clear that the US military could not transform Afghanistan into a modern democracy.


text: In the aftermath of the US–Taliban deal, the US stopped supporting the Afghan military in its offensive operations, forcing it to take mostly defensive positions around the country. According to the agreement, US military aircraft could not attack Taliban groups waiting more than 500 meters away, giving the Taliban an edge in targeting Afghan military units. The agreement also exacerbated the morale of the Afghan army and police, making them more open to accepting bargains with the Taliban. Due to a lack of information and secret annexes in the agreement, that had not been shared even with the then Afghan government, the Taliban were able to spread propaganda and disinformation about the agreement, including convincing local police and military units that the US had handed over territories to the Taliban and that they should abandon their positions.


text: In the 45 days after the agreement (between March 1 and April 15, 2020), the Taliban conducted more than 4,500 attacks in Afghanistan, an increase of more than 70% compared to the same period in the previous year. More than 900 Afghan security forces were killed in the period, up from about 520 in the same period a year earlier. Meanwhile, because of a significant reduction in the number of offensives and airstrikes by Afghan and US forces against the Taliban, Taliban casualties dropped to 610 in the period down from about 1,660 in the same period a year earlier. The Pentagon spokesman, Jonathan Hoffman, said that although the Taliban stopped conducting attacks against the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan, the violence was still "unacceptably high" and "not conducive to a diplomatic solution." He added: "We have continued to do defensive attacks to help defend our partners in the area and we will continue to do that."


text: On 1 May 2021, the Taliban launched a major offensive, making quick advances against the retreating US-trained Afghan Armed Forces.


text: On 2 July, Germany and Italy withdrew their troops from Afghanistan. On the same day, American forces vacated Bagram Airfield. Afghan officials complained that the Americans had left without notifying the new Afghan commander until more than two hours after abandoning the base. As a result, the base was ransacked by looters before they could take control of the airfield. Meanwhile, fighting raged between the Taliban and Afghan government forces, with analysts from Al Jazeera saying that the Taliban was "at the door of Kabul". On 8 July 2021, President Biden announced that the official conclusion to the war in Afghanistan would be on 31 August 2021. Biden defended the withdrawal of US troops, saying to trust "the capacity of the Afghan military, who is better trained, better equipped and ... more competent in terms of conducting war". but the Afghan army was easily overwhelmed by the Taliban's advance in a matter of weeks.


text: On 12 July 2021, Austin S. Miller stepped down from his post as commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan.


text: By 12 July 2021, the Taliban had seized 139 districts from the Afghan National Army. According to a US intelligence report, the Afghan government was expected to collapse within six months of the withdrawal, however the US military later revised the assessment stating the collapse would occur much sooner.


text: Spokesmen for the Taliban, including Suhail Shaheen and Mohammad Naeem, issued statements that all foreign forces should withdraw from Afghanistan. The Taliban (self-styled the "Islamic Emirate") refused to participate in any talks until all foreign forces had withdrawn from the country. Local militias in the north of the country had reportedly engaged in combat against the Taliban. Footage taken on 16 June and released on 13 July showed Taliban gunmen executing 22 Afghan servicemen who had been attempting to surrender.


text: Australia had 1,500 troops in Afghanistan before the American-led withdrawal. That number was further reduced to 80 before Australian forces were completely withdrawn on 15 July.


text: On 21 July, the highest-ranking US military officer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, reported that half of all districts in Afghanistan were under Taliban control and that momentum was "sort of" on the side with the Taliban. On 21 July 2021, the US Air Force launched airstrikes against Taliban positions in Afghanistan.


text: It was reported by the UN Security Council in July 2021 that members of al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) are still present in as many as 15 Afghan provinces, and that they are operating under Taliban protection in Kandahar, Helmand and Nimroz provinces in violation of the US–Taliban deal.


text: On 22 July 2021, the US House of Representatives voted 407–16 to pass the ALLIES Act, a bill that would improve and provide visas for Afghan interpreters who worked for American personnel during the war. The initiative aimed to bring in Afghans under a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), which would allow them to bring their families and establish work in the United States. The SIV program was first created in 2006 by Congress, for Iraq and Afghan interpreters, with an estimated 50,000 or more individuals qualifying for the program. The first flight of the program arrived on 30 July 2021, with individuals who had qualified for the SIV and family members. While the majority of arrivals were to be relocated either to the United States, US facilities abroad or other countries to finish out the visa applications, the first group were to complete their visa applications at Fort Lee, Virginia, due to prior background checks and security screening.


text: In August 2021, as the Taliban captured city after city including Lashkar Gah and Kandahar, where the elite forces of the Afghan government were deployed, the Biden Administration continued to defend the withdrawal and their support for the "political process" in Afghanistan, saying it was up to Afghan leaders to "show political will at this point to push back". In the words of the President, "Afghan leaders have to come together".


text: News from within the Canadian government released on 12 August 2021 confirmed the country sent a small but undisclosed number of special forces to assist the evacuation effort in Kabul and secure the country's embassy. The next day, on 13 August 2021, the Canadian government announced a plan to resettle 20,000 displaced Afghans in Canada.


text: On 15 August 2021, the Taliban seized the capital city of Kabul as the Afghan government under President Ashraf Ghani dissolved, the speed of which surprised the US government. With Taliban fighters surrounding the city, the US embassy evacuated and retreated to Hamid Karzai International Airport, where fleeing Afghan forces had handed over control to NATO. As the security situation in the city deteriorated, other countries began to shutter and evacuate their respective embassies to the airport, where it became the center of the withdrawal for all US and NATO personnel as it became the only secure route out of Afghanistan. 5,000 US troops and some NATO troops, including British, Italian, Turkish, and Spanish personnel, remained in the city as chaos was ensuing as thousands of fleeing Afghan civilians rushed the airport, overrunning the runway and forcing US troops to conduct crowd control. The US government later authorized the deployment of 1,000 additional troops from the 82nd Airborne to the airport, increasing troop presence in Kabul to 6,000 to facilitate the evacuations. With the fall of Kabul, the military withdrawal evolved into an airlift of all of NATO's diplomatic staff, at-risk Afghan and Western nationals, and eligible refugees able to enter the surrounded Kabul Airport, prompting Western countries to send in additional troops to facilitate the evacuations.


text: On 16 August, the United Kingdom agreed to send 200 additional troops to Afghanistan, bringing the total number of British troops in the country to 900.


text: Also on 16 August, following the chaotic start of the Kabul Airport airlifts, President Biden held a press conference in which he justified the reasons for the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, affirming his view that following through on the withdrawal was the correct decision. On 18 August, US House Foreign Affairs Committee chair Gregory Meeks (D-NY) called for Biden to delay the withdrawal, stating that the evacuations were a more important priority.


text: There were about 650 US troops in Afghanistan in early August 2021. With the rapid advance of the Taliban in the provinces, on 14 August the US increased its troop commitment to 5,000. On 15 August, with the fall of Kabul, another 1,000 troops were deployed, and on 16 August, another 1,000 troops were deployed, bringing the total number of troops to 7,000.


text: During some evacuation incidents at the Kabul Airport, the Taliban fired crowd control gunshots and blocked efforts which were made by Britain to carry out evacuations.


text: On 19 August, the US Navy confirmed that F/A-18E/F Super Hornets from the USS "Ronald Reagan"—which was sailing in the North Arabian Sea—had been conducting armed overwatch sorties over Kabul, but denied that any low passes, shows of force, or airstrikes had been conducted. This contradicted previous social media reports by journalists and local sources that there had been fighter jets flying low over the city. A day prior, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, confirmed that a variety of air assets were flying similar overwatch missions across Afghanistan, including AC-130 gunships, MQ-9 Reaper drones, F-16C/D Viper fighter jets, B-52H bombers, and AV-8B Harrier jump jets, and that they were poised to provide close air support in case of contingencies, alongside other assets positioned in the region.


text: On 20 August, President Biden promised Americans that are stuck in Afghanistan that the US government will bring them back home. He also stated that the government do not know the exact number of Americans that are still in Afghanistan, and how many of them want to come back home to the United States.


text: On 23 August, at the direction of Biden, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director William Burns reportedly held a secret meeting in Kabul with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar, whom had returned to Afghanistan from exile in Qatar, to discuss the withdrawal's August 31 deadline. The Qataris helped facilitate the meeting, which was described by a US official as "an exchange of views on what needs to happen to be done". The Qatari government, the CIA, and the White House did not initially comment on the reports.


text: On 26 August, there was a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport, killing 11 Marines, one Army paratrooper, one Navy Corpsman and upwards of 70 Afghan citizens.


text: In the early morning hours of 30 August, a US counter rocket, artillery, and mortar (C-RAM) defense system operated by 1st Battalion, 101st Field Artillery Regiment intercepted five rockets launched at the airport, with no reports of casualties. ISIL-K claimed responsibility.


text: The last US military planes left Afghanistan on 30 August. Christopher T. Donahue was the final American soldier to leave Afghanistan. Following the last US flight, Taliban soldiers entered the airport and declared victory.


text: About 650 US troops remained on the ground in Afghanistan in early August 2021, keeping to a schedule made months earlier. They were tasked with protecting the airport and embassy. By 12 August, however, as the Taliban had—within just a few days—captured 18 of 34 provincial capitals including Herat and Kandahar, the US and UK said they would send more troops to evacuate embassy staff, other US and UK nationals, and their local translators. For this purpose, the US planned to send 3,000 troops and the UK planned to send 600 troops as part of US Forces Afghanistan Forward. Mazar-i-Sharif was taken by the Taliban on 14 August; on this day, the US increased its troop commitment to 5,000. On 15 August, the Taliban seized Kabul and overthrew the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, as President Ashraf Ghani fled the country; after which the Taliban took the presidential palace. However, 5,000 US troops still remained in Kabul, and NATO troops were still present at the Hamid Karzai International Airport. The same day, the US government ordered the deployment of 1,000 additional troops from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division to Afghanistan, bringing the total number of US troops in Kabul to 6,000. On 16 August, President Biden announced the deployment of another thousand members of the 82nd Airborne Division, bringing the total number of troops to 7,000 in the coming hours.


text: The United States left behind billions of dollars of American military hardware in Afghanistan within the reach of the Taliban, according to auditors with Open the Books, a government spending watchdog. The nonprofit found that over the course of the war in Afghanistan, the federal government doled out $89.2 billion to strengthen Afghan security forces, Just The News reported Saturday. The figure reportedly includes money spent on military equipment and training. "The hasty withdrawal of U.S. military forces in Afghanistan turned the Taliban into a major U.S. arms dealer for the next decade," CEO and Founder of Open The Books Adam Andrzejewski told the outlet. "The Taliban is going to be selling tickets to their terrorist gun show."


text: Around 650,000 weapons, according to Andrzejewski, were left in Afghanistan, Just The News reported. This includes 350,000 M4 and M16 rifles, 65,000 machine guns, 25,000 grenade launchers and 2,500 mortars and howitzers, according to Andrzejewski. "The watchdog found the United States provided 75,000 military vehicles including 50,000 light-  and medium-tactical vehicles, 22,000 Humvees and 928 mine-resistant vehicles to Afghanistan since 2001," Just The News' report stated. Furthermore, according to Andrzejewski, the United States had given 110 Black Hawk helicopters, costing $21 million each; 20 A-29 Super Tucano attack aircraft, worth $21.3 million each; and 7 C-208 light attack airplanes, each costing $12.1 million, to the Afghan security forces prior to their collapse at the Taliban's hands.


text: The U.S. also invested surveillance and reconnaissance equipment in Afghanistan. This included six Aerostat surveillance balloons, each costing taxpayers $8.9 million; eight ScanEagle drones, each costing $1.4 million; and more than 16,000 night vision devices costing $80 million in total, according to the nonprofit. "In November in Afghanistan, the Taliban, on the streets of the capital city of Kabul, held a military parade," Andrzejewski said, according to WHAM-TV. "In the skies were our aircraft and helicopters, on the streets were our armored vehicles and their soldiers marching in the parade were carrying our rifles." Should the U.S. go back to Afghanistan if circumstances warrant American intervention, the number of weapons accessible to the Sunni Islamist group's hands could "take its toll on our military, our human lives and our national treasure," Andrzejewski claimed. "The Biden Administration promised a 'peace dividend' from leaving Afghanistan. However, the National Defense Authorization Act just increased funding of the U.S. military by $30 billion," Andrzejewski said, according to Just The News. "There's no peace dividend, as the world is much more unsafe today because of the botched withdrawal."


text: According to the last CENTCOM update on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United States had retrograded "984 C-17 loads of material out of Afghanistan and have turned nearly 17,074 pieces of equipment to the Defense Logistics Agency for disposition." However, a large number of American weaponry and a considerable number of aircraft were in the hands of the Afghan security forces. When the Taliban began to sweep through the country's districts, before eventually taking over Kabul, tons of American weaponry fell into the hands of the Islamists, who once sheltered 9/11 terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden. Afghanistan faces a humanitarian crisis under the rule of the Taliban as the militant group begins to eliminate freedoms people in the country once enjoyed under American occupation. Two weeks ago, the outfit's ministry for Islamic guidance banned women from traveling in taxis without their heads fully covered. If a woman should journey beyond 45 miles, a male relative must accompany her, according to "The Washington Post".


text: Journalist Pepe Escobar suggested some claims of lost equipment or withdrawal mismanagement may have been deliberate deceptions put out by the military's psychological warfare operations to obscure the rat-lining of equipment to support covert operations in the region such as support for the 2022 Kazakh Unrest or to confuse foreign intelligence analysts about US force strength.


text: On 28 September 2021, U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Milley, CENTCOM Commander Gen. McKenzie and other U.S. Department of Defense officials contradicted during testimony before the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee President Biden's previous claim which he made in an interview with ABC News journalist George Stephanopolous in August 2021 that he withdrew U.S. troops from Afghanistan based on advice from senior military advisors. Milley testified that he advised the President to accept Gen. Austin Miller's recommendation to keep 2,500 troops in Afghanistan and described Biden's withdrawal plan as a "strategic failure." Secretary Austin described Biden's public "over-the-horizon" counter-terrorism strategy which was used to justify the Afghanistan withdrawal as "misleading at best and dishonest at worst" and also stated that he was concerned about the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, which he warned could pose a threat to the United States in "less than a year." McKenzie stated that he recommended to President Biden that 2,500 U.S. troops should maintain a presence in Afghanistan and that he also previously recommended to the Trump Administration in the fall of 2020 to keep 4,500 troops at that time. The next day, Austin, Milley and McKenzie would further criticize Biden's Afghanistan withdrawal when they testified before U.S. House Armed Services Committee.


text: According to some media analysts, such as Alexander Nazaryan of "Yahoo! News", the withdrawal was included among other actions that Biden broke with both Obama and Trump on, and was seen as maintaining the promise Biden made prior to becoming president that his term would not be "a third Obama term" because "President Trump has changed the landscape". Princeton professor Julian E. Zelizer claimed Biden "clearly learned a great deal from his time in the Obama presidency". "Washington Post" journalist Steven Levingston wrote, "Obama listened to military leaders who advised him that withdrawal would be a mistake. Biden, meanwhile, was the top administration official arguing for a much more limited role for American forces in Afghanistan. Later, Biden would go on to say that he could tell by Obama's 'body language' that he agreed with that assessment—even though he ultimately rejected it." Harvard historian James Kloppenberg stated, "only a fool would have been confident he knew all the answers [when it came to Afghanistan]. Obama was no fool."


text: "The Diplomat" reported on 17 April 2021, about the internal and external challenges for Afghanistan following the US troop withdrawal from the perspective of Afghanistan's civil society.


text: "The Washington Post" editorial board was critical of the withdrawal in an article dated 2 July 2021, saying the US was allowing its ally to fend for itself against the Taliban with insufficient resources, writing, "the descent from stalemate to defeat could be steep and grim. We wonder whether [Biden] has fully considered the consequences."


text: David E. Sanger, a "New York Times" correspondent, analyzed the decision to leave Afghanistan by Joe Biden, and consequently the manner of the fall of Kabul, as the result of four basic assumptions, or miscalculations: that there was enough time before the Afghan government collapsed for the US to withdraw, that the Afghan forces had "the same drive" to win as the Taliban did, that there was "a well-planned system for evacuating the embassy" and Afghans who had helped the US and their families, and that if the Taliban made it to Kabul, that there would be a "bloody block-by-block civil war" taking place in its streets. A report from the US Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released on 17 August found that the US had "struggled to develop and implement a coherent strategy" for the war and that "if the goal was to rebuild and leave a country that could sustain itself and pose little threat to US national security interests, the overall picture is bleak". The report also found that the US prioritised internal political interests instead of Afghan interests, that it had demonstrated ignorance of local context, and had wasted billions of dollars on unsustainable and bureaucratic projects.


text: On 22 August, "The Daily Telegraph" reported that "President Joe Biden's aides were “too scared” to question him on key decisions made in the run-up to the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, sources close to the administration have told The Telegraph."


text: The Biden administration's initial announcement of a full withdrawal of troops by 11 September 2021, generated both criticism and praise within the US. Senators Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Jim Inhofe, Mitt Romney, Joni Ernst, and Jeanne Shaheen criticized the withdrawal, while Patrick Leahy, Barbara Lee, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Ro Khanna, Rand Paul and Jack Reed supported the decision. Former President Donald Trump, while maintaining that withdrawal was "a wonderful and positive thing to do," criticized Biden for choosing 11 September as the day of the withdrawal, criticizing the deadline extension as "we can and should get out earlier," calling for the US to withdraw "as close" to 1 May as possible, and that 11 September "should remain a day of reflection and remembrance honoring those great souls we lost." Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that there were "consequences both foreseen and unintended of staying and of leaving"; one of these consequences, she expressed, was a potential collapse of the Afghan government, resulting in a takeover by the Taliban and a fresh civil war. Former President George W. Bush, who oversaw the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, said the withdrawal made him "concerned" and that he believed it had the potential to "create a vacuum, and into that vacuum is likely to come people who treat women as second class citizens." During an interview with Deutsche Welle on 14 July 2021, Bush reaffirmed his opposition to the troop withdrawal. Trump also reaffirmed his criticism of Biden's handling of the withdrawal in an interview with Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, calling it "the dumbest move ever made in U.S. history" and claiming that his negotiation with Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar accomplished more. British conservative author and commentator Douglas Murray strongly criticized the withdrawal and the Biden white house attempting to portray it as a success.


text: "Boston Globe" columnist Jeff Jacoby criticised the idea that the 2,500 troops in Afghanistan constituted a "forever war" that needed to end, pointing out that U.S. troops have been in Germany since 1945, with 35,000 there in 2021, and more troops currently in Korea, Djibouti, Bahrain, and Spain than Afghanistan. Jacoby argued the U.S. presence should have continued, citing accomplishments like successful suppression of the Taliban, halving of infant mortality, tripling access to electricity, a ten-fold increase in school attendance, and the inclusion of girls in education.


text: Following the collapse of the Afghanistan government on 15 August 2021, the Biden administration's withdrawal plan received bipartisan backlash. Former Secretary of Defense and CIA Chief Leon Panetta, who oversaw the raid which successfully killed Osama bin Laden, compared Biden's poor withdrawal planning to that of how former US President John F. Kennedy handled the 1961 Bay of Pigs Invasion. In addition to Republicans, numerous fellow Democrats in Congress, including chairs of some important Congressional committees, criticized Biden's handling of the withdrawal as well. Jordain Carney of "The Hill" wrote on 18 August 2021 that Biden now had "few Capitol Hill allies" amid the Afghanistan backlash. During an interview with ABC News, Biden defended his decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, and that chaos during the withdrawal is inevitable. Biden stated that while he had priced in enormous chaos in the withdrawal, and what is happening in Afghanistan is not priced in by him. Former Trump Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller also criticized Biden's choice of sticking to a withdrawal date, stating in an interview with CNN anchor Chris Cuomo that while the Trump Administration was leaning towards a withdrawal, no date was fixed, stating "We felt we had the ability to move the goal posts if we needed to on that one, in a way."


text: The Biden Administration faced further domestic criticism after Afghanistan fell to the Taliban following the Fall of Kabul in August 2021. President Biden's approval rating dropped to 41% and only 26% of Americans said they support Biden' s handling of the situation in Afghanistan. Some Republicans, including Senator Josh Hawley, Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, and former Ambassador Nikki Haley, called on Biden to resign. Former American presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Donald Trump, each of whom had overseen significant developments in the War in Afghanistan, also faced criticism. In the UK, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab faced calls to resign after it was revealed he had gone on holiday to Greece just prior to the fall and had refused attempts to contact him as developments occurred.


text: Some white nationalists and related extremists celebrated the Taliban takeover and American withdrawal on social media. White nationalist Nick Fuentes posted on the Telegram messaging service, "The Taliban is a conservative, religious force, the US is godless and liberal. The defeat of the US government in Afghanistan is unequivocally a positive development." Some experts warned American extremists would use events in Afghanistan to push disinformation, organize and recruit.


text: Stuart Scheller, a United States Marine Corps lieutenant colonel, was relieved of command after asking for his superiors to take responsibility for murdering innocents for profit and leaving his fellow troops and innocents behind in Afghanistan. He posted a video to Facebook demanding U.S. military leadership take responsibility after the 2021 Fall of Kabul, and was placed in the brig after refusing to take down his social media posts. His calls for accountability have been replayed by major TV hosts such as Tucker Carlson and CBS News. His imprisonment was reported by media including Fox News, "The Independent", "Daily Mail", and "New York Post".


text: Scheller was released from confinement on October 5, 2021. On October 14, 2021, Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. pled guilty to all six misdemeanor-level charges. On October 15, 2021, Scheller was issued a letter of reprimand and a forfeiture of $5,000 of pay. The judge stated he did not condone Scheller's offenses, but noted Scheller's 17 year United States Marine Corps career as an officer with an outstanding record. ABC News reported Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller Jr. concerns reporting that around 50 "U.S.-trained" former Afghan Air Force helicopter pilots are still trapped and left behind in Afghanistan and pleading for the United States government to evacuate them from the country, where they fear they face execution if found by the Taliban.


text: On 25 May 2021, Australia closed its Embassy in Kabul due to security concerns. Belgium and France withdrew their diplomats. May 10th, France began evacuating Afghans working for it, resulting in being called "pessimistic". The Chinese Embassy in Afghanistan issued a travel warning on 19 June, urging Chinese citizens to "leave Afghanistan as soon as possible" and demanding Chinese organizations to "take extra precautions and strengthen their emergency preparedness as the situation deteriorated" in the country. The Chinese government dispatched a charter-flight operated by XiamenAir to evacuate 210 Chinese nationals from Kabul on 2 July.


text: The two presidents of Afghanistan after the 2001 invasion, Hamid Karzai and Ashraf Ghani, both criticized the "abrupt" withdrawal of US troops from the country as giving momentum to the Taliban advance, with Karzai calling on the United States to "end this failed mission". At the 2021 Raisina Dialogue, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the Foreign Minister of Iran, said that the withdrawal was a welcome move, adding that foreign troops could not bring peace in Afghanistan.


text: British Secretary of State for Defence Ben Wallace said the US put Britain in a "very difficult position" following the withdrawal, though they subsequently followed suit. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan had a negative impact on United Kingdom–United States relations, with the British government briefing media against the American government. The fall of Afghanistan also had a negative impact on United States–European Union relations. Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Tony Blair, condemned the US withdrawal, stating that the US' decision to leave was "political" rather than "strategic". In an article on the website of Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, he wrote, "The abandonment of Afghanistan and its people is tragic, dangerous, unnecessary, not in their interests and not in ours." Blair further accused Biden of being "in obedience to an imbecilic political slogan about ending ‘the forever wars’," and warned that “The world is now uncertain of where the West stands because it is so obvious that the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan in this way was driven not by grand strategy but by politics."


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: "Snowflake" is a derogatory slang term for a person, implying that they have an inflated sense of uniqueness, an unwarranted sense of entitlement, or are overly-emotional, easily offended, and unable to deal with opposing opinions. The term gained prominence in the 2010s, and was declared by "The Guardian" to be the "defining insult of 2016", a term "thrown around with abandon in the wake of Brexit and the US election".


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: Common usages include the terms "special snowflake", "Generation Snowflake", and "snowflake" as a politicized insult. In the past, it held different meanings in reference to white people.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: It is popularly believed that every snowflake has a unique structure. Most usages of "snowflake" make reference to the physical qualities of snowflakes, such as their unique structure or fragility, while a minority of usages make reference to the white color of snow.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: In the 1860s, "snowflake" was used by abolitionists in Missouri to refer to those who opposed the abolition of slavery. The term referred to the color of snow, referring to valuing white people over black people. This usage was not believed to have extended beyond the state of Missouri in the 1800s.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: In the 1970s, according to "Green's Dictionary of Slang", snowflake has been used to describe "a white person or a black person who was perceived as acting too much like a white person".


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: Chuck Palahniuk has often been credited with originating the modern pejorative use of "snowflake" in his 1996 novel "Fight Club", which contains the quote: "you are not special, you are not a beautiful and unique snowflake". The 1999 film adaptation also includes this line. In January 2017, Palahniuk directly claimed credit, adding that young adults of the 2010s exhibit "a kind of new Victorianism". Palahniuk's claim to have coined the term has been questioned. In a short essay for "Entertainment Weekly", Palahniuk later clarified that while writing the novel in 1994, he did not intend "snowflake" to be an insult, and said it had nothing to do with fragility or sensitivity. Rather he was consciously reacting against the constant praise he had encountered in the education system, which he said had rendered him an "idiot" and poorly equipped him for the world. He said "A lifetime of disingenuous, one-size-fits-all praise had kept most of my peers from pushing hard to achieve any actual triumphs, and therefore we had no internal sense of ability or potential." The metaphor has been used positively with students to celebrate their individuality (and teamwork).


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: Following "Fight Club", the terms "special snowflake" and "special snowflake syndrome" were applied to individuals with a negative connotation. Such terminology refers to people who believe their status as a unique individuals means they are destined for great success, or deserve a special career, with abundant praise and admiration. According to Merriam-Webster, in the 2000s snowflake referred "mostly to millennials who were allegedly too convinced of their own status as special and unique people to be able (or bothered) to handle the normal trials and travails of regular adult life".


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: The term "Generation Snowflake" or "Snowflake Generation" was popularized by Claire Fox's 2016 book "I Find That Offensive!". The book discussed a 2015 student/faculty confrontation at Yale University between university students and faculty head of college, Nicholas A. Christakis that was recorded and uploaded to YouTube. The video captured a disagreement regarding Halloween costumes and the degree to which Yale University should intervene over costumes which may be perceived as cultural appropriation. Fox described the video as showing a: "screaming, almost hysterical mob of students" and that the backlash to the viral video led to the disparaging moniker "generation snowflake" for the students.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: The term "snowflake generation" was one of "Collins English Dictionarys" 2016 words of the year. Collins defines the term as "the young adults of the 2010s, viewed as being less resilient and more prone to taking offence than previous generations".


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: The terms "generation snowflake" and "snowflake generation" are frequently used in reference to use of trigger warnings and safe spaces, or to describe young adults as anti-free speech, specifically in reference to a practice referred to as deplatforming. It has also been used to refer to a reported increase in mental health issues among young adults.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: Following the referendum result in favour of Brexit in the UK and the election of Donald Trump as 45th President of the U.S., "generation snowflake" was often shortened to simply "snowflake" and became a politicized insult. A November 2016 article from "The Guardian" commented: "Until very recently, to call someone a snowflake would have involved the word 'generation'."


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: Snowflake as a politicized insult is typically used by those on the political right to insult those on the political left. In an article from the "Los Angeles Times", Jessica Roy says the alt-right in the United States pejoratively describes most liberals and those protesting against Donald Trump as "snowflakes". A 2017 article from "Think Progress" commented: "The insult expanded to encompass not just the young, but liberals of all ages; it became the epithet of choice for right-wingers to fling at anyone who could be accused of being too easily offended, too in need of 'safe spaces, too fragile'". Jonathon Green, editor of "Green's Dictionary of Slang", points out snowflake is an unusual insult in that it calls someone weak and fragile without using misogynistic or homophobic references.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: Actor George Takei extended the metaphor to emphasize the power of snowflakes, saying: "The thing about 'snowflakes' is this: They are beautiful and unique, but in large numbers become an unstoppable avalanche that will bury you." Others have returned the insult back at those with right-wing politics, arguing "oversensitive whiners can be found all over the political spectrum" including President Trump. Comedian Neal Brennan referred to Donald Trump as "the biggest snowflake in America", while a January 2017 opinion piece from "The Guardian" refers to President Trump as "Snowflake-in-Chief" and CNN commentator Anthony Kapel "Van" Jones called Trump "President Snowflake" based on his response to the FBI's Russia probe in May 2017.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: Shelly Haslam-Ormerod, senior lecturer in mental health and wellbeing at Edge Hill University, strongly criticised the use of the term, arguing in "The Conversation" that it stigmatises the mental health challenges faced by today's young people in an uncertain world and noting that even children aged under 10 have been unfairly labelled "snowflakes" in tabloid articles.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: In 2017, a U.S. marketing company created a "snowflake test" to be used in its hiring process to "weed out overly sensitive, liberal candidates who are too easily offended". Many questions were designed to assess a candidate's stance on America, police, and guns. However, psychologist and academic from the Manchester Business School at the University of Manchester, Cary Cooper suggests it is a poor strategy for attracting talented younger workers.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: "Broflake" (from "bro" and "snowflake") is a related derogatory term which the Oxford Dictionaries define as "a man who is readily upset or offended by progressive attitudes that conflict with his more conventional or conservative views". It has also been applied to women, in the more general sense of someone who claims to not be easily offended, yet often is.


title: Snowflake (slang)

text: In March 2017, the American live sketch comedy show "Saturday Night Live" aired a skit about a Trump-loving dog that, through the aid of technology, was able to berate the anti-Trump humans in the room as "liberal snowflakes".


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: The Cider House Rules is a 1999 American drama film directed by Lasse Hallström from a screenplay by John Irving, based on Irving's 1985 novel of the same name. Its story follows Homer Wells, who lives in a World War II–era Maine orphanage run by a doctor who trained him, and his journey after leaving the orphanage. The film stars Tobey Maguire, Charlize Theron, Delroy Lindo, Paul Rudd, Michael Caine, Jane Alexander, Kathy Baker, Kieran Culkin, Heavy D, Kate Nelligan, and Erykah Badu.


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: The film was produced by Miramax Films and FilmColony and had its world premiere at the 56th Venice International Film Festival. It was given a limited release by Miramax Films in the United States on December 10, 1999, followed by a wide release on January 7, 2000. It grossed $110,098 in its opening weekend and $88.5 million worldwide, against a budget of $24 million. It was positively reviewed and has a 71% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: The film won two Academy Awards: Irving won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, while Michael Caine won his second Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture, along with four other nominations at the 72nd Academy Awards. Irving documented his involvement in bringing the novel to the screen in his book, "My Movie Business".


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: Homer Wells grows up in St.Cloud's, a Maine orphanage directed by avuncular Dr. Wilbur Larch. He is returned twice by foster parents: the first felt he was too quiet (due to orphanage babies soon learning crying is pointless) and the second beat him. Dr. Larch is addicted to ether and also secretly performs abortions. Conditions at the orphanage are sparse, but the children have love, are given respect, and are like an extended family. With older kids like Buster looking out for the younger ones and in particular care for those who are sickly like Fuzzy Stone who was born prematurely to an alcoholic mother suffering from bronchitis and as such spends most of his time beneath a plastic tent ventilated with a breathing apparatus. Each night before sleeping, Dr. Larch says to them, "Goodnight you Princes of Maine, you Kings of New England", as both an encouragement and a kind of blessing.


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: Homer, the oldest of the orphans, is very bright, helpful and even-tempered, so Larch trains him in obstetrics and abortions as an apprentice; despite Homer's never having attended high school. He disapproves of abortions, and, although he has been trained by Larch, he refuses to perform them. After several years, Homer is very skillful and confident in performing obstetrical duties. Larch wants him to take over after he retires, but Homer feels it's impossible, as he lacks formal medical education and he wants to see the outside world beyond the orphanage. Homer leaves with Candy Kendall and her boyfriend Wally Worthington, a young couple who came to the clinic for an abortion. Wally is a pilot on leave from the service. Wally's mother, Olive, owns the Worthington family apple orchard where Homer settles as a worker. He lives on the Worthington estate in Cider House, the bunkhouse. Wally returns to World War II. Homer is exempt from this as Dr. Larch has diagnosed him with a heart condition.


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: While Wally is away, Candy starts flirting with Homer and they have an affair. He picks apples with Arthur Rose's team of migrant workers, employed seasonally at the orchard by the Worthingtons, and illiterate. Homer reads them the posted rules of the Cider House, the workers observe the rules have been made without the occupants' consent by people who do not live there and so do not face their problems. Consequently, they feel that they can ignore them. Homer and Candy become much closer during harvest and spend more time together while Wally is fighting in Burma. During this time while watching a private screening of King Kong Fuzzy Stone succumbs to his bronchitis with his death covered up by Larch, Buster and the other staff who falsely claim to all the orphans that Fuzzy was just adopted to keep up morale but their loss hits everyone hard none so more than Larch.


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: After Arthur and his team come back to work the following season, Homer discovers that Rose, Arthur's daughter, is pregnant. Candy finds out that the baby's father is Arthur. Homer decides he must help Rose, and performs an abortion with Arthur's assistance. A few days later, as Rose tries to run away, her father goes to say goodbye; she stabs him and flees. He then makes the injury worse, and as a last request, asks Homer and another worker to tell the police his death was a suicide.


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: Wally returns from Burma a paraplegic, and although she loves Homer, Candy decides to take care of Wally. Immediately after this, Homer learns Dr. Larch accidentally overdosed on ether. Homer decides he is most needed in the orphanage, where he is greeted joyously by both the children and staff. He learns not only did Larch fake his medical record to keep him out of the war, but also faked college credentials and also used reverse psychology to convince the orphanage board to appoint Homer as the next director. He fills the paternal role that Larch previously held for the children of the orphanage, telling them, "Goodnight you princes of Maine, you kings of New England".


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: On the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 71% approval rating, based on 112 reviews with an average rating of 6.6/10. The website's critical consensus reads, ""The Cider House Rules" derives affecting drama from wonderful performances, lovely visuals, and an old-fashioned feel." It also has a weighted average rating of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on 32 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: Leonard Maltin awarded the film a rare four-star rating. By contrast, Roger Ebert of the "Chicago Sun-Times" awarded it just two stars, stating the film: "is often absorbing or enchanting in its parts. Michael Caine's performance is one of his best, and Charlize Theron is sweet and direct as the girl", along with, "The story touches many themes, lingers with some of them, moves on and arrives at nowhere in particular."


title: The Cider House Rules (film)

text: In the USA, the film was given a PG-13 certificate by the MPAA, and in the UK, it was given a 12 certificate by the BBFC, which meant that anyone aged 12 or over could see it. However, in Ireland, the film was given the strictest possible rating, 18. According to Ireland's Film Censor, Sheamus Smith, this was because of its themes of abortion, incest and drugs. At the time, Ireland had a constitutional ban on abortion, which would not be lifted until after a referendum in 2018.


title: Henry Mancini

text: Henry Mancini ( ; born Enrico Nicola Mancini, ; April 16, 1924 – June 14, 1994) was an American composer, conductor, arranger, pianist and flautist. Often cited as one of the greatest composers in the history of film, he won four Academy Awards, a Golden Globe, and twenty Grammy Awards, plus a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995.


title: Henry Mancini

text: His works include the theme and soundtrack for the "Peter Gunn" television series as well as the music for "The Pink Panther" film series ("The Pink Panther Theme") and "Moon River" from "Breakfast at Tiffany's". "The Music from Peter Gunn" won the inaugural Grammy Award for Album of the Year. Mancini enjoyed a long collaboration in composing film scores for the film director Blake Edwards. Mancini also scored a No. 1 hit single during the rock era on the Hot 100: his arrangement and recording of the "Love Theme from "Romeo and Juliet"" spent two weeks at the top, starting with the week ending June 28, 1969.


title: Henry Mancini

text: Henry Mancini was born Enrico Nicola Mancini in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland and raised in West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, near Pittsburgh. Both his parents were Italian immigrants. Originally from Scanno, Abruzzo, his father Quintiliano "Quinto" Mancini was a laborer at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company and amateur musician who first came to the U.S. as a teenager around 1910. His mother Anna () came to the U.S. from Forlì del Sannio as an infant.


title: Henry Mancini

text: At age eight, Mancini began learning the piccolo. Mancini said that hearing Rudolph G. Kopp's score in the 1935 Cecil B. DeMille film "The Crusades" inspired him to pursue film music composition despite his father's wishes for him to become a teacher.


title: Henry Mancini

text: He later studied piano and orchestral arrangement under Pittsburgh concert pianist and Stanley Theatre (now Benedum Center) conductor Max Adkins. Not only did Mancini produce arrangements for the Stanley Theatre bands, but he also wrote one for Benny Goodman, an up-and-coming bandleader introduced to him by Adkins. According to Mancini biographer John Caps, the young Mancini "preferred music arranging to any kind of musical performance, but taking apart a Chopin mazurka or Schumann sonata in order to play it helped him see...how the puzzle of form, meter, melody, harmony, and counterpoint had been solved by previous composers."


title: Henry Mancini

text: After graduating from Aliquippa High School in 1942, Mancini first attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University) in Pittsburgh. Later that year, Mancini transferred to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City following a successful audition in which he performed a Beethoven sonata and improvisation on "Night and Day" by Cole Porter. Because he could only take orchestration and composition courses in his second year, Mancini studied only piano in his first year at Juilliard, in a condition Caps called "aimless and oppressed—a far cry from Adkins's enabling protective environment."


title: Henry Mancini

text: After turning 18, Mancini enlisted in the United States Army Air Forces in 1943. While in basic training in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he met musicians being recruited by Glenn Miller. Owing to a recommendation by Miller, Mancini was first assigned to the 28th Air Force Band before being reassigned overseas to the 1306th Engineers Brigade in France. In 1945, he helped liberate the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp in Austria.


title: Henry Mancini

text: Newly discharged, Mancini entered the music industry. In 1946, he became a pianist and arranger for the newly re-formed Glenn Miller Orchestra, led by 'Everyman' Tex Beneke. After World War II, Mancini broadened his skills in composition, counterpoint, harmony and orchestration during studies opening with the composers Ernst Krenek and Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco.


title: Henry Mancini

text: In 1952, Mancini joined the Universal-International's music department. During the next six years, he contributed music to over 100 movies, most notably "Creature from the Black Lagoon", "The Creature Walks Among Us", "It Came from Outer Space", "Tarantula", "This Island Earth", "The Glenn Miller Story" (for which he received his first Academy Award nomination), "The Benny Goodman Story" and Orson Welles' "Touch of Evil". During this time, he also wrote some popular songs. His first hit was a single by Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians titled "I Won't Let You Out of My Heart".