title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The special rapporteur on the question of Palestine to the previous UNCHR, the current UNHRC and the General Assembly was, between 2001 and 2008, John Dugard. Bayefski quotes him as saying that his mandate is to "investigate human rights violations by Israel, not by Palestinians".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: A particular criticism is its focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at each session as Agenda Item 7 (out of 10), the Council voting on 30 June 2006 to review the "Human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The council voted on 30 June 2006 to make a review of alleged human rights abuses by Israel a permanent feature of every council session. The council's special rapporteur on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is its only expert mandate with no year of expiry. The resolution, which was sponsored by Organisation of the Islamic Conference, passed by a vote of 29 to 12 with five abstentions. Human Rights Watch urged it to look at international human rights and humanitarian law violations committed by Palestinian armed groups as well. Human Rights Watch called on the Council to avoid the selectivity that discredited its predecessor and urged it to hold special sessions on other urgent situations, such as that in Darfur.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: None of the nine other items deals exclusively with a specific conflict. The council's special rapporteur on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is the council's only expert mandate with no year of expiry.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In 2006, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan argued that the Commission should not have a "disproportionate focus on violations by Israel. Not that Israel should be given a free pass. Absolutely not. But the Council should give the same attention to grave violations committed by other states as well".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 20 June 2007, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement that read: "The Secretary-General is disappointed at the council's decision to single out only one specific regional item given the range and scope of allegations of human rights violations throughout the world."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Former president of the council Doru Costea, the European Union, Canada, and the United States have accused the UNHRC of focusing disproportionately on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and Israel's occupation of the West Bank. Many allege an anti-Israel bias – the Council has resolved more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Boris Johnson, the then-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs on 18 June 2018 said: "We share the view that a dedicated agenda item focused solely on Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories is disproportionate and damaging to the cause of peace."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: UNHRC released a statement calling on Israel to stop its military operations in the Gaza Strip and to open the Strip's borders to allow the entry of food, fuel and medicine. UNHRC adopted the resolution by a vote of 30 to 1, with 15 states abstaining.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: "Unfortunately, neither this resolution nor the current session addressed the role of both parties. It was regretful that the current draft resolution did not condemn the rocket attacks on Israeli civilians," said Canada's representative Terry Cormier, the lone voter against.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United States and Israel boycotted the session. U.S. ambassador Warren Tichenor said the Council's unbalanced approach had "squandered its credibility" by failing to address continued rocket attacks against Israel. "Today's actions do nothing to help the Palestinian people, in whose name the supporters of this session claim to act," he said in a statement. "Supporters of a Palestinian state must avoid the kind of inflammatory rhetoric and actions that this session represents, which only stoke tensions and erode the chances for peace", he added. "We believe that this council should deplore the fact that innocent civilians on both sides are suffering", Slovenian Ambassador Andrej Logar said on behalf of the seven EU states on the council.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: At a press conference in Geneva on Wednesday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon responded when asked about its special session on Gaza, that "I appreciate that the council is looking in-depth into this particular situation. And it is rightly doing so. I would also appreciate it if the council will be looking with the same level of attention and urgency at all other matters around the world. There are still many areas where human rights are abused and not properly protected", he said.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Dugard was succeeded in 2008 by Richard Falk, who has compared Israel's treatment of Palestinians with the Nazis' treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Like his predecessor, Falk's mandate only covers Israel's human rights record. The Palestinian Authority has informally asked Falk to resign, among other reasons due to viewing him as "a partisan of Hamas". Falk disputes this and has called the reasons given "essentially untrue". In July 2011, Richard Falk posted a cartoon that critics have described as anti-Semitic onto his blog. The cartoon depicted a bloodthirsty dog with the word "USA" on it wearing a kippah, or Jewish headcovering. In response, Falk was heavily criticized by world leaders in the United States and certain European countries. The United States called Falk's behavior "shameful and outrageous" and "an embarrassment to the United Nations", and officially called on him to resign. Former U.S. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the former chairwoman of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, called on Falk to resign as well. The Anti-Defamation League described the cartoon as a "message of hatred".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: According to a UN press release, then Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Itzhak Levanon strongly criticized the appointment of Falk as the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967. Ambassador Levanon stated that Falk had written in an article that it was not "an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with the criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity," arguing that "someone who had publicly and repeatedly stated such views could not possibly be considered independent, impartial or objective". The Israeli government announced it would deny Falk a visa to Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, at least until the September 2008 meeting of the Human Rights Council.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The U.S. and Canadian representatives also criticized the appointment, while a Palestinian representative approved of it.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 3 April 2009, South African Judge Richard Goldstone was named as the head of the independent United Nations Fact-Finding Mission to investigate international human rights and humanitarian law violations related to the Gaza War. The Mission was established by Resolution S-9/1 of the United Nations Human Rights Council.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 15 September 2009, the UN Fact-Finding mission released its report which found that there was evidence "indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity". The mission also found that there was evidence that "Palestinian armed groups committed war crimes, as well as possibly crimes against humanity, in their repeated launching of rockets and mortars into Southern Israel". The mission called for referring either side in the conflict to the UN Security Council for prosecution at the International Criminal Court if they refuse to launch fully independent investigations by December 2009.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Goldstone has since partially retracted the report's conclusions that Israel committed war crimes, as new evidence has shed light upon the decision making by Israeli commanders. He said, "I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Goldstone acknowledged that Israel has "to a significant degree" implemented the report's recommendations that "each party to investigate [the incidents] transparently and in good faith," but "Hamas has done nothing". The Palestinian Authority has also implemented the report's recommendations by investigating "assassinations, torture and illegal detentions, perpetrated by Fatah in the West Bank", but Goldstone noted that "most of those allegations were confirmed by this inquiry".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 3 July 2015, UNHRC voted Resolution A/HRC/29/L.35 "ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem". It passed by 41 votes in favor including the eight sitting EU members (France, Germany, Britain, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Latvia and Estonia), one against (the US) and five absentions (India, Kenya, Ethiopia, Paraguay and Macedonia). India explained that its abstention was due to the reference to International Criminal Court (ICC) in the resolution whereas "India is not a signatory to the Rome Statute establishing the ICC".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 19 June 2018, the United States pulled out of the UNHRC accusing the body of bias against Israel and a failure to hold human rights abusers accountable. Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN, called the organisation a "cesspool of political bias". At UNHRC's 38th Session on 2 July 2018, Western nations "de facto" boycotted Agenda Item 7 by not speaking to it. Israel had been condemned in 78 resolutions by the Council since its creation in 2006—more resolutions condemning Israel than the rest of the world combined. By April 2007, the Council had passed eleven resolutions condemning Israel, the only country which it had specifically condemned. Conversely, towards Sudan, a country with human rights abuses documented by the Council's working groups, it has expressed "deep concern".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 9 July 2021, Michael Lynk, the Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, addressing a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva said that Israeli settlements in the West Bank amount to a war crime, and calling on countries to inflict a cost on Israel for its illegal occupation. Israel, which does not recognize Lynk's mandate, boycotted the session.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 21 March 2022, Lynk submitted a report, stating that Israel's control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip amounts to apartheid, an "institutionalised regime of systematic racial oppression and discrimination". The Israeli Foreign Ministry and other Israeli and Jewish organizations labelled Lynk as hostile to Israel and the report baseless.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Following the 2021 Israel–Palestine crisis, the council voted on 27 May 2021 to set up a United Nations fact-finding mission to investigate possible war crimes and other abuses committed in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. The commission will report to the Human Rights Council annually from June 2022. Unlike previous fact finding missions the inquiry is open ended and will examine "all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Speaking at the IDC's Herzliya Conference in Israel in January 2008, Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen criticized the actions of the Human Rights Council actions against Israel. "At the United Nations, censuring Israel has become something of a habit, while Hamas's terror is referred to in coded language or not at all. The Netherlands believes the record should be set straight, both in New York and at the Human Rights Council in Geneva", Verhagen said.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: At UNHRC's opening session in February 2011, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton criticized the council's "structural bias" against the State of Israel: "The structural bias against Israel – including a standing agenda item for Israel, whereas all other countries are treated under a common item – is wrong. And it undermines the important work we are trying to do together."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In March 2012, the UNHRC was criticized for facilitating an event in the UN Geneva building featuring a Hamas politician. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu castigated the UNHRC's decision stating, "He represents an organization that indiscriminately targets children and grown-ups, and women and men. Innocents – is their special favorite target". Israel's ambassador to the UN Ron Prosor denounced the speech stating that Hamas was an internationally recognized terrorist organization that targeted civilians. "Inviting a Hamas terrorist to lecture to the world about human rights is like asking Charles Manson to run the murder investigation unit at the NYPD", he said.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United States urged UNHRC in Geneva to stop its anti-Israel bias. It took particular exception to the council's Agenda Item 7, under which at every session, Israel's human rights record is debated. No other country has a dedicated agenda item. The US Ambassador to UNHRC Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe said that the United States was deeply troubled by the "Council's biased and disproportionate focus on Israel." She said that the hypocrisy was further exposed in the Golan Heights resolution that was advocated by the Syrian regime at a time when it was murdering its own citizens.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) was established by the Human Rights Council, in 2007, with its mandate amended in September 2016. This body provides the HRC with expert advice on the rights of indigenous peoples, and helps member states to achieve the goals of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Council's charter preserves the watchdog's right to appoint special investigators for countries whose human rights records are of particular concern, something many developing states have long opposed. A Council meeting in Geneva in 2007 caused controversy after Cuba and Belarus, both accused of abuses, were removed from a list of nine special mandates. The list, which included North Korea, Cambodia and Sudan, had been carried forward from the defunct Commission. Commenting on Cuba and Belarus, the UN statement said that Ban noted "that not having a Special Rapporteur assigned to a particular country does not absolve that country from its obligations under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United States said a day before the UN statement that the Council deal raised serious questions about whether the new body could be unbiased. Alejandro Wolff, deputy US permanent representative at the United Nations, accused the council of "a pathological obsession with Israel" and also denounced its action on Cuba and Belarus. The UNHRC President Doru Costea said that he agreed with Wolff, saying that the functioning of the Council needed continuous improvement. He added that the Council must examine the behaviour of all parties involved in complex disputes and not place just one state under the magnifying glass.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: From 1999 to 2011, the CHR and the UNHRC adopted resolutions in opposition to the "defamation of religion".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Human Rights Council has adopted the Resolution 10/4 about human rights and climate change. At its 48th the Council in Resolution 13 (A/HRC/48/13) recognized the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: At its Second Special Session in August 2006, the Council announced the establishment of a High-Level Commission of Inquiry charged with probing allegations that Israel systematically targeted and killed Lebanese civilians during the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict. The resolution was passed by a vote of 27 in favour to 11 against, with 8 abstentions. Before and after the vote several member states and NGOs objected that by targeting the resolution solely at Israel and failing to address Hezbollah attacks on Israeli civilians, the Council risked damaging its credibility. The members of the Commission of Inquiry, as announced on 1 September 2006, were Clemente Baena Soares of Brazil, Mohamed Chande Othman of Tanzania, and Stelios Perrakis of Greece. The Commission noted that its report on the conflict would be incomplete without fully investigating both sides, but that "the Commission is not entitled, even if it had wished, to construe [its charter] as equally authorizing the investigation of the actions by Hezbollah in Israel", as the Council had explicitly prohibited it from investigating the actions of Hezbollah.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In June 2015, a 500-page UNHRC report accused Eritrea's government of widespread human rights violations. These were alleged to include extrajudicial executions, torture, indefinitely prolonged national service and forced labour, and widespread sexual harassment, rape and sexual servitude by state officials. "The Guardian" said that the report "catalogues a litany of human rights violations by the 'totalitarian' regime of President Isaias Afwerki 'on a scope and scale seldom witnessed elsewhere. The report also asserted that these serial violations might amount to crimes against humanity.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The Eritrean Foreign Ministry responded by describing the Commission's report as "wild allegations", "totally unfounded and devoid of all merit", and countercharged the UNHRC with "vile slanders and false accusations".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The vice chairperson of the subcommittee on human rights at the European Parliament said the report detailed "very serious human rights violations", and said that EU funding for development would not continue as at present without change in Eritrea.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In August 2018, the UNHRC released a research report concluding that six generals in Myanmar armed forces should be prosecuted for war crimes as related to the genocide against the Rohingya Muslims. The UNHRC conducted 875 individual interviews as part of this research, confirming that the Myanmar army led a pogrom that claimed the lives of more than 10,000 Rohingyas.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: A 2019 report for the UNHRC has said the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia have committed war crimes during the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United Nations condemned the November 2020 arrest of three Egyptian human rights advocates of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights (EIPR). The activists were charged and detained for having a connection to terror groups. EIPR said the detention was a "clear and co-ordinated response" of their work against human rights violations in the country and the detention of the head of EIPR, Gasser Abdel-Razek, was an attempt to end the human rights work in Egypt.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United Nations Human Rights Council voted 32–2 on 4 March 2022, with 13 abstentions, to create the International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine, an independent committee of three human rights experts with a mandate to investigate alleged violations of human rights and of international humanitarian law in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: At its eleventh emergency special session, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution, with the required two-thirds majority of voting members, to suspend Russia from the Human Rights Council over reports of gross and systematic violations and abuses of human rights in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The measure required a two-thirds majority of the countries present and voting, not counting abstentions. The measure passed with 93 in favor, 24 against and 58 abstentions. After the suspension, Russia's deputy U.N. Ambassador, Gennady Kuzmin, announced that Russia had decided to quit the Human Rights Council altogether.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On November 24, 2022, the council held a special session on the deteriorating human rights situation in Iran, in particular with regard to women and children.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In July 2012, Syria announced that it would seek a UNHRC seat. This was while there was serious evidence (provided by numerous human rights organizations including the UN itself) that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had authorised and funded the slaughter of thousands of civilians, with estimates of 14,000 civilians being killed as of July 2012 during the Syrian civil war. According to UN Watch, Syria's candidacy was virtually assured under the prevailing election system. Syria would have been responsible for promoting human rights if elected. In response, the United States and European Union drafted a resolution to oppose the move. In the end, Syria was not on the ballot for the 12 November 2012 election to UNHRC.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In July 2012, it was reported that Sudan and Ethiopia were nominated for a UNHRC seat, despite being accused by human rights organizations of grave human rights violations. UN Watch condemned the move to nominate Sudan, pointing out that Sudan's President Omar Al-Bashir was indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court. According to UN Watch, Sudan was virtually assured of securing a seat. A joint letter of 18 African and international civil society organizations urged foreign ministers of the African Union to reverse its endorsement of Ethiopia and Sudan for a seat, accusing them of serious human rights violations and listing examples of such violations, and stating that they should not be rewarded with a seat. Sudan was not on the ballot for the 12 November 2012 election to UNHRC, but Ethiopia was elected.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In September 2015, Faisal bin Hassan Trad, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the UN in Geneva, was elected Chair of the UNHRC Advisory Committee, the panel that appoints independent experts. UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer said: "It is scandalous that the UN chose a country that has beheaded more people this year [2015] than ISIS to be head of a key human rights panel. Petro-dollars and politics have trumped human rights." Saudi Arabia also shut down criticism, during the UN meeting. In January 2016, Saudi Arabia executed the prominent Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr who had called for free elections in Saudi Arabia.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In September 2017, US President Donald Trump said that "it is an 'embarrassment' that there are countries on the UN human rights panel that have themselves committed atrocities", but not naming any particular country.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 13 October 2020, Saudi Arabia lost its bid to win a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Saudi Arabia and China were competing for membership in a five-way race for four spots with Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Nepal. China received 139 votes, Uzbekistan 164, Pakistan 169 votes, and Saudi Arabia came in fifth with 90 votes, beaten by Nepal with 150 votes. Human Rights Watch condemned the candidacy filed by China and Saudi Arabia, calling them "two of the world's most abusive governments".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: When the UN General Assembly voted to add to the UN Human Rights Council in October 2019, US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft wrote: "I am personally aggrieved that 105 countries voted in favor of this affront to human life and dignity. It provides ironclad proof that the Human Rights Council is broken, and reinforces why the United States withdrew." Venezuela had been accused of withholding from the Venezuelan people humanitarian aid delivered from other nations, and of manipulating its voters in exchange for food and medical care. The council had been criticized regularly for admitting members who were themselves suspected of human rights violations.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Sri Lanka came under increasing scrutiny in early 2012 after a presentation of a draft UNHRC resolution addressing their accountability with regard to their reconciliation activities, a resolution which was subsequently tabled by the United States. The original draft resolution from the United States noted the UNHRC "concern that the LLRC [Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission] report [did] not adequately address serious allegations of violations of international law". The UNHRC resolution then:


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Sri Lankan Ambassador in Geneva Tamara Kunanayakam pointed out that 80% of the UNHRC's funding requirements are supplied by powerful nations such as the United States and its allies. Also, key positions in the UNHRC are mostly held by those who have served in the foreign services of such countries. Sri Lanka's position is that this fact is significantly detrimental to the impartiality of the UNHRC activities, especially when dealing with the developing world. As a result, Sri Lanka, along with Cuba and Pakistan, sponsored a resolution seeking transparency in funding and staffing the UNHRC, during its 19th session starting in February 2012. The resolution was adopted on 4 April 2012.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The original US UNHRC draft resolution that prompted the Sri Lankan, Cuban, and Pakistani transparency initiative was thereafter significantly modified, and passed in 2013. Narayan Lakshman, writing from Washington, D.C. for "The Hindu", said the United States "watered down" the resolution, while UN Watch described the revised resolution as "toned down". Lakshman noted that "an entire paragraph calling for 'unfettered access'... by a host of external observers and specialists was deleted", and the reworded resolution's demand for international investigation into "alleged human rights violations" was elevated but then "veer[ed] off towards an apparent preference for Sri Lanka to conduct its own internal investigation". He noted that in general "weaker language has been inserted in place of more condemnatory tone". The revised resolution remained entitled "Promoting Reconciliation and Accountability in Sri Lanka" and was assigned UN code "A/HRC/22/L.1/Rev.1". As finally submitted, the U.S. resolution was co-sponsored by 33 countries, including three other members of the U.N. Security council at that time (the UK, France, and Germany), and four other European nations (Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, and Switzerland). By a vote of 25 in favor—which included the resolution sponsors and other EU countries, as well as South Korea—and 13 against, the resolution was adopted on 21 March 2013 (with nine countries abstaining or absent).


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The 43th U.S. President George W. Bush declared that the United States would not seek a seat on the Council, saying it would be more effective from the outside. He did pledge, however, to support the Council financially. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said, "We will work closely with partners in the international community to encourage the council to address serious cases of human rights abuse in countries such as Iran, Cuba, Zimbabwe, Burma, Sudan, and North Korea".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The U.S. State Department said on 5 March 2007 that, for the second year in a row, the United States had decided not to seek a seat on the Human Rights Council, asserting the body had lost its credibility with repeated attacks on Israel and a failure to confront other rights abusers. Spokesman Sean McCormack said the council had had a "singular focus" on Israel, while countries such as Cuba, Myanmar and North Korea had been spared scrutiny. He said that though the United States will have only an observer role, it will continue to shine a spotlight on human rights issues. The most senior Republican member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs of the U.S. House of Representatives, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, supported the administration decision. "Rather than standing as a strong defender of fundamental human rights, the Human Rights Council has faltered as a weak voice subject to gross political manipulation," she said.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Upon passage of UNHRC's June 2007 institution-building package, the U.S. restated its condemnation of bias in the institution's agenda. Spokesman Sean McCormack again criticised the Commission for focusing on Israel in light of many more pressing human rights issues around the world, such as Sudan or Myanmar, and went on to criticise the termination of special rapporteurs to Cuba and Belarus, as well as procedural irregularities that prevented member-states from voting on the issues; a similar critique was issued by the Canadian representative. In September 2007, the US Senate voted to cut off funding to the council.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United States joined with Australia, Canada, Israel, and three other countries in opposing the UNHRC's draft resolution on working rules citing continuing misplaced focus on Israel at the expense of action against countries with poor human-rights records. The resolution passed 154–7 in a rare vote forced by Israel including the support of France, the United Kingdom, and China, although it is usually approved through consensus. United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Zalmay Khalilzad, spoke about the "council's relentless focus during the year on a single country – Israel," contrasting that with failure "to address serious human rights violations taking place in other countries such as Zimbabwe, DPRK (North Korea), Iran, Belarus and Cuba." Khalilzad said that aside from condemnation of the crackdown of the Burmese anti-government protests, the council's past year was "very bad" and it "had failed to fulfill our hopes".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 6 June 2008, "Human Rights Tribune" announced that the United States had withdrawn entirely from the UNHRC, and had withdrawn its observer status.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United States boycotted the Council during the George W. Bush administration, but reversed its position on it during the Obama administration. Beginning in 2009 however, with the United States taking a leading role in the organization, American commentators began to argue that the UNHRC was becoming increasingly relevant.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 31 March 2009, the administration of Barack Obama announced that it would reverse the country's previous position and would join the UNHRC; New Zealand indicated its willingness not to seek election to the council to make room for the United States to run unopposed, along with Belgium and Norway for the WEOG seats.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 19 June 2018, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley announced that the United States, under President Donald Trump, was pulling out of the United Nations Human Rights Council, accusing the council being "hypocritical and self-serving"; in the past, Haley had accused it of "chronic anti-Israel bias". "When the Human Rights Council treats Israel worse than North Korea, Iran, and Syria, it is the Council itself that is foolish and unworthy of its name. It is time for the countries who know better to demand changes," Haley said in a statement at the time, pointing to the council's adoption of five resolutions condemning Israel. "The United States continues to evaluate our membership in the Human Rights Council. Our patience is not unlimited."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In December 2020, US Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft said that the UN Human Rights Council was "a haven for despots and dictators, hostile to Israel, and ineffectual on true human rights crises".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 8 February 2021, following the election of Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that the Biden administration will reengage with the UN Human Rights Council.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In July 2019, UN ambassadors from 22 nations, including Australia, Britain, Canada, France, Spain, Germany, and Japan, signed a joint letter to the UNHRC condemning China's mistreatment of the Uyghurs and other minority groups, urging the Chinese government to close the Xinjiang re-education camps.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In response, UN ambassadors from 50 countries including Russia, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, UAE, Sudan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Angola, Algeria, and Myanmar signed a joint letter to the UNHRC praising China's "remarkable achievements in Xinjiang" and opposing the practice of "politicizing human rights issues".


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In August 2019, Qatar told the UNHRC president that it had decided to withdraw from the response letter. Human rights activists praised Qatar's decision.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In October 2022, 17 countries voted in favor, 19 were against, and 11 abstained in a vote to hold a debate on Xinjiang at its next session, rejects Western bid to debate China’s Xinjiang Abuses.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: In March 2017, at the 34th regular session of the UN Human Rights Council, Vanuatu made a joint statement on behalf of Tonga, Nauru, Palau, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands and Marshall Islands raising human rights violations in the Western New Guinea, declared which has been occupied by Indonesia since 1963, and requested that the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights produce a report. Indonesia rejected Vanuatu's allegations. Also, a joint NGO statement was made. More than 100,000 Papuans have died during a 50-year Papua conflict.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The United States boycotted the UNHRC during the George W. Bush administration to protest the repressive states among its membership, but in March 2009 the Obama administration reversed that position and decided to "reengage" and seek a seat on the UNHRC. Beginning in 2009 however, with the United States taking a leading role in the organization, American commentators began to argue that the UNHRC was becoming increasingly relevant.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The UNHRC has been criticised for the repressive states among its membership. Countries with questionable human rights records that have served on the UNHRC include Pakistan, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, China, Indonesia, and Russia.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 12 October 2021, the Human Rights Watch criticised UNHRC elections and stated that UN member countries should refrain from voting for Cameroon, Eritrea, United Arab Emirates, and other candidates as they hold abysmal rights records. These countries were alleged not to meet the qualifications for membership on the board. The UN director at Human Rights Watch, Louis Charbonneau said that electing such serious rights abusers sends a terrible message that the UN member states do not take the council's fundamental mission to protect human rights seriously.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: A Reuters report in 2008 said that independent human rights groups say that UNHRC is being controlled by some Middle East and African nations, supported by China, Russia and Cuba, which protect each other from criticism. This drew criticism from the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon at the ineffectiveness of UNHRC, saying it had fallen short of its obligations. He urged countries to "drop rhetoric" and rise above "partisan posturing and regional divides" and get on with defending people around the world. This follows criticism since UNHRC was set up, where Israel has been condemned on most occasions, while the situation in other places such as Darfur, Tibet, North Korea, Pakistan and Zimbabwe have not been discussed at the council.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Of the 53 countries which defended China's imposition of the Hong Kong National Security Law following the 2019-2020 Hong Kong protests, at least 43 were participants in the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative, with one Axios reporter noting that "Beijing has effectively leveraged the UN Human Rights Council to endorse the very activities it was created to oppose."


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: Ban Ki-Moon also appealed for the United States to fully join the council and play a more active role.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: The UNHRC was criticized in 2009 for adopting a resolution submitted by Sri Lanka praising its conduct in Vanni that year, ignoring pleas for an international war crimes investigation.


title: United Nations Human Rights Council

text: On 18 June 2007, one year after holding its first meeting, the UNHRC adopted its "Institution-building package", to guide it in its future work. Among its elements was the Universal Periodic Review, which assesses the human rights situations in all 193 UN member states. Another element is an "Advisory Committee", which serves as the UNHRC's "think tank" and provides it with expertise and advice on thematic human rights issues. A further element is a "Complaint procedure", which allows individuals and organizations to bring complaints about human rights violations to the attention of the council.


title: UPN

text: The United Paramount Network (UPN) was an American broadcast television network that launched on January 16, 1995. It was originally owned by Chris-Craft Industries' United Television. Viacom (through its Paramount Television unit, which produced most of the network's series) turned it into a joint venture in 1996 after acquiring a 50% stake in the network, and subsequently purchased Chris-Craft's remaining stake in 2000. On December 31, 2005, UPN was spun off to CBS Corporation when Viacom split into two separate companies. CBS Corporation and Time Warner jointly announced on January 24, 2006, that the companies would shut down UPN and competitor The WB to launch a new joint venture network later that year. UPN ceased broadcasting on September 15, 2006, with The WB following two days later. Select programs from both networks moved to the new network, The CW (now parts of Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount Global) when it launched on September 18, 2006.


title: UPN

text: Paramount Pictures had played a pivotal role in the development of network television. It was a partner in the DuMont Television Network, and the Paramount Theaters chain, which was spun off from the corporate/studio parent, merged with ABC in a deal that helped cement that network's status as a major network. The Paramount Television Network was launched in 1948, but dissolved in the 1950s.


title: UPN

text: In the wake of the successful Universal Studios "ad hoc" syndication package "Operation Prime Time", which first featured a miniseries adaptation of John Jakes' novel "The Bastard" and went on to air several more productions, Paramount had earlier contemplated its own television network with the Paramount Television Service. Set to launch in early 1978, it would have run its programming for only one night a week. Thirty "Movies of the Week" would have followed "" on Saturday nights. Plans for the new network were scrapped when sufficient advertising slots could not be sold, though Paramount would contribute some programs to "Operation Prime Time", such as the mini-series "A Woman Called Golda", and the weekly pop music program, "Solid Gold". "Star Trek: Phase II" was reworked as the theatrical film, "", absorbing the costs already incurred from the aborted television series.


title: UPN

text: Paramount, and its eventual parent Viacom (which bought the studio's then-parent, Paramount Communications, in 1994), continued to consider launching their own television network. Independent stations, even more than network affiliates, were feeling the growing pressure of audience erosion to cable television in the 1980s and 1990s; there were unaffiliated commercial television stations in most of the major television markets, even after the foundation of Fox in 1986. Meanwhile, Paramount, which had long been successful in syndication with repeats of "", launched several first-run syndicated series by the 1990s, including "Entertainment Tonight", "The Arsenio Hall Show", "", "War of the Worlds", "", and "".


title: UPN

text: In 1993, Time Warner and Chris-Craft Industries entered into a joint venture to distribute programs via a prime time programming service, the Prime Time Entertainment Network (PTEN). Chris-Craft later became a partner in UPN, and Time Warner launched The WB in a joint venture with the Tribune Company at roughly the same time.


title: UPN

text: Paramount formed the Paramount Stations Group in 1991 when it purchased the assets of the TVX Broadcast Group, which owned several independent stations in major markets. This was not unlike the purchase of the Metromedia stations by News Corporation five years earlier, which were used as the nuclei for Fox. In another parallel, 20th Century Fox (the News Corporation subsidiary behind the Fox network, which was spun off with the company's other entertainment assets to 21st Century Fox in July 2013 before Disney acquired them in 2019), like Paramount, had long been a powerhouse in television syndication. All indicators suggested that Paramount was about to launch a network of its own.


title: UPN

text: On October 27, 1993, Paramount and Chris-Craft announced the formation of a new television network, later to be named the United Paramount Network, with initial plans to run two hours of programming in prime time for two nights per week. The new network would be owned by Chris-Craft Industries, while most of its shows were to be produced by Paramount Television.


title: UPN

text: Initially, the network was to simply be called "U", but the "U Network" trademark was held by the now-defunct National Association of College Broadcasters (NACB), which had been operating a satellite television programming network featuring largely college student-produced programs since 1991. The founder and first head of UPN, Lucie Salhany, approached NACB with an offer of US$50,000 to transfer the name. Due to the costs related to rebranding the student network, and under the advice of its then-volunteer legal counsel, Cary Tepper, the non-profit association countered with a request of $100,000, which Salhany refused. At one point, the network was set to be titled the U/P Network before its current name was decided. Ultimately, the "U" in UPN stood for Chris-Craft subsidiary United Television, which owned the network's two largest stations, WWOR-TV in New York City and KCOP-TV in Los Angeles; the "P" represented Paramount Television, the studio that formed a programming partnership with Chris-Craft to create the network. Chris-Craft and Paramount/Viacom each owned independent stations in several large and mid-sized U.S. cities, and these stations formed the nuclei of the new network.


title: UPN

text: Warner Bros. announced plans to launch a similar network, which would become known as The WB, in close proximity to UPN. The belief that a new broadcast network could grow to be competitive was predicated on the idea that the network in question would not have a fledgling rival to contend with. With the change in landscape, the joint understanding of assured defeat prompted executives from Viacom (UPN's parent company) and Time Warner (now WarnerMedia, a subsidiary of AT&T) to discuss the prospect of merging the networks together. Both sides reached an agreement on the division of affiliates, but Chris-Craft expressed extreme skepticism and declined to proceed with the merger. A merger would ultimately come in 2006 with the creation of The CW.


title: UPN

text: UPN launched on January 16, 1995, initially carrying programming only on Monday and Tuesday nights from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time. The first telecast, the of "", was an auspicious start, with 21.3 million viewers; however, "Voyager" would neither achieve such viewership levels again, nor would any of the series premiering on UPN's second night of broadcasting survive the season. In contrast, The WB debuted one week earlier, on January 11, with four series – only one of which, "Muscle", would not survive its first season. The first comedy series to premiere on UPN were "Platypus Man", starring Richard Jeni, and "Pig Sty", with both shows airing Monday nights in the 9:00 p.m. hour; both received mixed reviews, and neither lasted long.


title: UPN

text: Other early UPN programs included the action series "Nowhere Man", starring Bruce Greenwood and "Marker", starring Richard Grieco; the comic western "Legend" starring Richard Dean Anderson; the sci-fi themed action series, "The Sentinel"; and "Moesha", a sitcom starring R&B musician Brandy Norwood. Of the network's early offerings, only "Star Trek: Voyager", "Moesha" and "The Sentinel" would last longer than one season. As a result of the lack of viewership, UPN operated on a loss and had lost $800 million by 2000.


title: UPN

text: Within nearly two years of the network's launch, on December 8, 1996, Paramount/Viacom purchased a 50% stake in UPN from Chris-Craft for approximately $160 million. Like Fox had done nine years earlier, UPN started with a few nights of programming each week, with additional nights of primetime shows gradually being added over the course of several seasons. Because of this, UPN's affiliates were basically independent stations for all intents and purposes during the network's early years, with these stations airing either syndicated programs or movies during primetime on nights when the network did not provide programming. The first expansion of its primetime lineup came with the addition of programming on Wednesday nights on March 6, 1996 (during the second half of the 1995–96 season); that expansion also saw UPN assume the broadcast rights to the Blockbuster Entertainment Awards, which aired its inaugural broadcast on CBS the year before.


title: UPN

text: UPN ordered 36 sci-fi films to air as part of its weekly movie presentations beginning in 1998; the films were supplied by four production companies, with most of the titles coming from Paramount. Some titles would be shown on Showtime first, which allowed the premium cable channel to cooperate in advertising the movies.


title: UPN

text: UPN completed its prime time expansion in the 1998–99 season, with Thursdays and Fridays as the last nights of programming to be added to the network's evening slate. That season saw the debut of "The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer", a sitcom set during the Civil War that centered on a black English nobleman who becomes the valet to Abraham Lincoln; even before its premiere, the series was riddled by controversy and protests from several African American activist groups (including the Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, who picketed outside Paramount Studios one week before the originally scheduled pilot episode) and some advertisers for its perceived lighthearted take on American slavery in the 19th century, protested against the premise of the series. Despite what publicity "Desmond" received from its controversial topicality, the series suffered from low ratings (with the first episode on October 5, 1998, placing 116th out of 125 programs aired that week on network television) and was canceled after four episodes.


title: UPN

text: Six months after the company announced its $36 billion merger with (the original) CBS Corporation, in March 1999, Viacom applied a contractual clause that would – within a 45-day grace period – force Chris-Craft to either buy Viacom out of UPN, or have the former sell its ownership stake in the network to Viacom. Three days later on February 8, Chris-Craft subsequently filed a lawsuit against Viacom in the New York Supreme Court to block the latter's merger with CBS, claiming that a pact signed between the two partners in 1997 had prevented either from owning "any interest, financial or otherwise" in "any competing network," including CBS, for a four-year period through January 2001. On March 17, New York Supreme Court judge Herman Cahn ruled against Chris-Craft's move for a permanent injunction to curtail the Viacom-CBS merger and the enforcement of Viacom's ultimatum.


title: UPN

text: Unable to find a suitable partner, on March 20, Chris-Craft allowed Viacom to buy out its 50% stake for $5 million, giving Viacom full control of the network. This gave UPN the rare distinction of being one of the only broadcast networks to not have had owned-and-operated stations (O&O) in the three largest media markets, New York City, Los Angeles, and Chicago (with The WB – the only network that never have had an O&O – being the only other, as minority owner Tribune Broadcasting owned most of its charter affiliates including those in all three markets, while majority owner Time Warner only owned WTBS-TV, an independent station that originated then-superstation TBS). With Viacom taking full ownership control of UPN, KCOP-TV and WWOR-TV lost their statuses as O&Os and automatically became affiliates of the network, with the network's "de facto" owned-and-operated flagship stations becoming Philadelphia outlet WPSG (now the "de facto" East Coast flagship station of The CW) and San Francisco outlet KBHK (now KBCW-TV, the "de facto" West Coast flagship station of The CW). In addition, neither Chris-Craft or Viacom had ever held ownership of Chicago affiliate WPWR-TV, which had been the largest UPN station that was not owned-and-operated by the network before the Viacom buyout.


title: UPN

text: Shortly afterward, Viacom shortened the network's official name from the "United Paramount Network" to the three-letter initialism, "UPN". Viacom also proposed a rebranding of UPN into the "Paramount Network", using a prototype logo based on Paramount's mountain logo, which served as the basis for the "P" triangle in the network's original logo that was used until September 2002. This idea was abandoned after many affiliates protested, citing that the rebranding might confuse viewers and result in ratings declines, alongside the costs of rebranding their stations with a new image and new network (and possible call sign changes). Several years later, cable television network Spike (part of Viacom) re-branded as Paramount Network.


title: UPN

text: Viacom's purchase of CBS a few months before (which resulted in the merger of that network's owned-and-operated stations into Viacom's Paramount Stations Group unit), created duopolies between CBS and UPN stations in Philadelphia (KYW-TV and WPSG), Boston (WBZ-TV and WSBK-TV), Miami (WFOR-TV and WBFS-TV), Dallas–Fort Worth (KTVT and KTXA), Detroit (WWJ-TV and WKBD-TV), and Pittsburgh (KDKA-TV and WNPA). Viacom's purchase of CBS was said to be the "death knell" for the Federal Communications Commission's longtime ban on television station duopolies. Further transactions added San Francisco (KPIX-TV and KBHK, the latter of which was traded to Viacom/CBS by Fox Television Stations) and Sacramento (KOVR and KMAX-TV, the former of which was sold to Viacom/CBS by the Sinclair Broadcast Group) to the mix.


title: UPN

text: At the time of UPN's launch, the network's "de jure" flagship stations were Chris-Craft-owned WWOR-TV in Secaucus, New Jersey (which serves the New York City market) and KCOP-TV in Los Angeles (which serves the Los Angeles market). Even after Chris-Craft sold its share in the network to Viacom, WWOR and KCOP were still commonly regarded as the "de jure" flagship stations of the network since it had long been common practice for this status to be associated with a network's station in the East Coast and West Coast. For this reason, some doubt was cast on UPN's future after Fox Television Stations bought most of Chris-Craft's television stations for $5.5 billion on August 12, 2000, which included several UPN affiliates (including WWOR and KCOP). Fox later bought the third-largest UPN affiliate, Chicago's WPWR-TV, through a separate deal with Newsweb Corporation for $450 million in June 2002. Despite the uncertainty of the network's future following the Fox purchases, UPN reached four-year affiliation agreements with Fox Television Stations' nine UPN affiliates on September 24, 2003.


title: UPN

text: In 2001, UPN entered into a public bidding war to acquire two series from The WB – "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Roswell" – from producing studio 20th Century Fox Television. UPN eventually outbid The WB for the shows and aired them together on Tuesday nights until "Roswell" ended its run in 2002; "Buffy" ended its run the following year. In January 2002, Viacom President and COO, Mel Karmazin restructured the network, resulting in UPN being taken out of the ownership of Paramount Television, and being placed under the oversight of CBS Television, with CBS President Leslie Moonves being given responsibility for the network. Under CBS, new shows began to breathe life into the network starting in Fall 2003 with "America's Next Top Model" and sitcom "All of Us" (which was produced by Will and Jada Pinkett Smith), followed up by the Fall 2004 premiere of the mystery series "Veronica Mars" and the Fall 2005 premiere of the Chris Rock-produced and narrated sitcom "Everybody Hates Chris".


title: UPN

text: On June 14, 2005, Viacom announced that it would be split into two companies due to declining performance of the company's stock; both the original Viacom – which was renamed CBS Corporation – and a new company that took the Viacom name would be controlled by the original Viacom's parent National Amusements (controlled by Sumner Redstone), which also controlled the new CBS Corporation. UPN became part of CBS Corporation, while the new Viacom kept Paramount Pictures among other holdings each company acquired in the deal. The split took effect on December 31, 2005.


title: UPN

text: On January 24, 2006, UPN parent CBS Corporation and Time Warner, the majority owner of The WB, announced that they would shut down the two respective networks and launch a new broadcast network that would be operated as a joint venture between both companies, The CW, which incorporated UPN and The WB's higher-rated programs with newer series produced exclusively for The CW. The new network immediately signed 10-year affiliation agreements with 16 stations affiliated with The WB (out of 19 stations that were affiliated with the network) that were owned by that network's part-owner, the Tribune Company – including stations in the coveted markets of New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago – and 11 UPN stations that were owned by CBS Corporation. Fox Television Stations' nine UPN affiliates were passed over for affiliations as a result, and two days later, those stations removed all UPN branding from those stations and ceased promotion of the network's programs. One month later on February 22, Fox announced the formation of MyNetworkTV, a new network that would also launch in September 2006 that would use the company's soon-to-be former UPN affiliates as the nuclei. Over the next eight months, determinations were made as to which shows from the two networks would cross over to The CW, as well as which of UPN and The WB's affiliate stations would be selected to become affiliates of the new network. Programming-wise, six UPN shows – "America's Next Top Model" (which was the last surviving series from UPN that remained on The CW's schedule until it moved to VH1 in 2016), "Veronica Mars", "Everybody Hates Chris", "Girlfriends", "All of Us", and "WWE SmackDown!" – were chosen to move to The CW for its inaugural 2006–07 fall schedule.


title: UPN

text: With the exception of "WWE SmackDown!", all of the programs that aired during the network's final three months were reruns. Unlike The WB, which closed its operations two days later with "The Night of Favorites and Farewells" (a special night of programming paying tribute to the network's most popular series), UPN closed with little to no fanfare on September 15, 2006, fading to black after that night's "WWE SmackDown!." The Fox-owned UPN stations had disaffiliated from the network on August 31; as a result, UPN's last two weeks of programming did not air in 10 markets where Fox owned a UPN affiliate that was set to become an owned-and-operated station of MyNetworkTV, when that network launched on September 5, alongside other markets where the local UPN station affiliated with MyNetworkTV or terminated their UPN affiliation during the summer. Shortly after the network's closure, UPN's website was redirected to The CW's website, and then to CBS's website.


title: UPN

text: At the time of its shutdown, UPN ran only two hours of primetime network programming on Monday through Fridays from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. ET (compared to the three primetime hours on Monday through Saturdays and four hours on Sundays offered by the Big Three networks, ABC, NBC and CBS). UPN never carried any weekend primetime programming throughout the network's run (though it did offer children's programming on weekend mornings until 2003, and a movie package to its affiliates on weekend afternoons until 2000, when the latter was replaced with a two-hour repeat block of UPN programs); as a result, affiliates held the responsibility of programming their Saturday and Sunday evening schedules with syndicated programs, sports, movies or network programs that were preempted from earlier in the week due to special programming, in the 8:00–10:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time) time period. This primetime scheduling allowed for many of the network's affiliates to air local newscasts during the 10:00–11:00 p.m. (Eastern and Pacific Time) time period.


title: UPN

text: Most of UPN's programming through the years was produced by Paramount Television or a Viacom-owned sister company (Viacom Productions, Big Ticket Television, Spelling Television or CBS Productions). UPN's first official program was "", with the first comedy shows to debut being two short-lived series: the Richard Jeni starring vehicle "Platypus Man" and "Pig Sty".


title: UPN

text: Other notable UPN programs during the network's existence included "The Sentinel", "Moesha", "", "WWE SmackDown", "America's Next Top Model", "Girlfriends", the "Moesha" spin-off "The Parkers", "Veronica Mars", "Everybody Hates Chris", and the animated adaptation of "Dilbert". In Summer 2005, UPN aired "R U the Girl", in which R&B group TLC (not with Left Eye) searched for a woman to join them on a new song. The network also produced some special programs, including 2001's "Iron Chef USA". Much of UPN's comedy programming between 1996 and 2006 (particularly those that aired as part of the network's Monday evening lineup) was largely aimed at African American audiences, with minor exceptions in shows such as "Clueless", "Realitycheck" and "Head Over Heels".


title: UPN

text: UPN occasionally acquired series canceled by the other broadcast networks, including former WB series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Roswell" (both of which moved to UPN in 2001, "Buffy" was picked up after The WB chose not to renew it due to issues with license fees while "Roswell" joined UPN after that same network also canceled the series), and former ABC series "Clueless" and "The Hughleys". The first program that UPN acquired from another network was "In the House", which moved to the network from NBC (which canceled the LL Cool J sitcom after its second season) in 1996. In its later years, as part of the network's desire to maintain its own identity with its own unique shows, UPN instituted a policy of "not picking up other networks' scraps", which was a strong argument when fan pressure was generated in 2004 for them to pick up "Angel", the spin-off of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" which had been dropped from The WB.


title: UPN

text: UPN aired only one regular sports event program: the much-hyped XFL in 2001, airing Sunday evening games as part of a package from co-creator and WWE founder Vince McMahon, which also included what was then "WWF SmackDown!", and the only time the network carried programming officially outside of weeknights. UPN had planned to air a second season of the XFL in 2002, but it also demanded that "SmackDown!" be reduced by 30 minutes; McMahon did not agree to the change and the football league folded not long afterward.


title: UPN

text: Like Fox and The WB, UPN never aired national morning or evening newscasts; however, several of its affiliates and owned-and-operated stations did produce their own local news programs. Several UPN affiliates ran a local newscast in the 10:00–11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific (9:00–10:00 p.m. Central and Mountain Time) timeslot at some point during or throughout their affiliations with the network; there were also a few stations that produced a weekday morning newscast, although early evening newscasts were largely absent on most of these stations. The UPN affiliate body had fewer news-producing stations in comparison to stations aligned with the Big Three television networks (NBC, ABC and CBS) and considerably fewer than Fox and especially The WB. In several markets, the local UPN affiliate either outsourced news programming to an NBC, ABC or CBS station in the market (either due to insufficient funds or studio space for production of their own newscasts, or in later years after the FCC permitted duopolies in markets with at least eight unique station owners in 2000, the station being operated through a legal duopoly or management agreement with a major network affiliate); other affiliates opted to carry syndicated programming in the hour following UPN's primetime programming lineup. For example, one of the largest O&O UPN affiliates in the country, WPWR-TV, never aired news programming in its 11-year run. This is mainly due to Viacom and Chris Craft's non-affiliation with the Chicago station.


title: UPN

text: When the network launched in January 1995, UPN automatically added six affiliates with functioning news departments through Chris-Craft/United Television and Viacom's respective affiliation deals with the network, all of those stations started their news operations as either independent stations or during prior affiliations with other networks: WWOR-TV/Secaucus, New Jersey (New York City), KCOP-TV/Los Angeles, WKBD-TV/Detroit, KPTV/Portland, Oregon, KMSP-TV/Minneapolis and WTOG/Tampa, Florida. Two more stations would join them later on: KSTW/Seattle, also owned by Viacom at the time, after it affiliated with UPN in 1997 through the reversal of a 1995 affiliation switch with CBS affiliate KIRO-TV (which also kept its news department as a UPN affiliate), and KMAX-TV/Sacramento, which joined UPN after being acquired by Viacom in 1998 and began producing newscasts shortly after its 1995 affiliation with The WB. KSTW and WTOG's news departments were shut down in 1998 due to cost-cutting measures mandated by Viacom; newscasts would briefly return to KSTW via a news sharing agreement with KIRO-TV between 2003 and 2005.


title: UPN

text: Not all of UPN's news-producing stations were owned by the two companies that formed the nuclei of the network's affiliate group; WUAB/Cleveland, which started its news department in 1988, also continued its 10:00 p.m. newscast as a UPN affiliate (it would begin producing newscasts for sister station WOIO-TV in February 1995, after that station became a CBS affiliate; though WOIO eventually took over production of the newscast by 2002). Harrisburg affiliate WLYH-TV briefly continued its newscasts after switching to UPN from CBS in 1995, until WHP-TV began operating the station under a local marketing agreement that fall. WFTC/Minneapolis continued to produce a late evening newscast after Fox Television Stations (which acquired KMSP-TV through the Chris-Craft purchase, and converted it into a Fox O&O) acquired the station from Clear Channel Communications and switched the station to UPN – it was moved to 10:00 p.m. to avoid competing with KMSP's 9:00 p.m. newscast until the WFTC newscast was canceled in June 2006.


title: UPN

text: With the exception of KPTV and KMSP, both of which are now Fox stations, none of the former UPN affiliates that produced newscasts during their affiliation with the network continue to maintain an independent news department – despite license requirements imposed by the station's 1983 transfer of its license to Secaucus, New Jersey from New York City to cover New Jersey issues, WWOR-TV, which continued to produce news programming after coming under common ownership with Fox O&O WNYW, shut down its news department in July 2013 and replaced its lone 10:00 p.m. newscast with an outside produced program called "Chasing New Jersey", a move that resulted in calls by state politicians for the FCC to revoke Fox's license to operate the station. KTTV took over production of sister station KCOP's newscasts in 2007, before discontinuing news programming on that station in 2013. KMAX's news department has since been merged with that of KOVR although it still produces a morning newscast separate from that station. WKBD shut down its news department (which was later shared with WWJ-TV) in December 2002, with its 10:00 p.m. newscast continuing to be produced by ABC affiliate WXYZ-TV until its eventual cancellation in 2005.


title: UPN

text: When the network launched in January 1995, UPN introduced a weekend morning cartoon block called "UPN Kids" (later called "The UPN Kids Action Zone" during the 1998–99 season). In 1997, UPN added two teen-oriented series to the lineup with reruns of the syndicated "Sweet Valley High" (based on the young adult book series by Francine Pascal) and a new series, "Breaker High" (which co-starred a then-unknown Ryan Gosling); both shows filled the weekday morning block for the 1997–98 season, while they were also included alongside the animated series on Sunday mornings. Unlike other networks, UPN gave its affiliates the option of running its weekend children's program block on either Saturdays or Sundays. In January 1998, the network entered into a deal with Saban Entertainment to program the Sunday morning block (with shows such as "The Incredible Hulk", "" and "Spider-Man" joining the lineup).


title: UPN

text: There were rumors that UPN then entered into discussions with then-corporate sister Nickelodeon (both networks were owned by Viacom) to produce a new block.


title: UPN

text: In 1999, UPN contracted the rights to the network's children's programming lineup to The Walt Disney Company; as a result, the teen-oriented and animated series were replaced with a new block called "Disney's One Too", which debuted on September 6, 1999, and featured select programs seen on ABC's "Disney's One Saturday Morning" lineup (such as "Recess" and ""). Many UPN affiliates at the network's launch were already airing The Disney Afternoon, a block supplied by Disney-owned syndication distributor Buena Vista Television; however, that block would be discontinued in August 1997. The addition of "Disney's One Too" expanded UPN's children's program block back to two hours, running on Sunday mornings and weekday afternoons. In September 2002, "" moved to UPN from Fox Kids, due to Disney's acquisition of Fox's children's program inventory as well as the Fox Family Channel, which was renamed ABC Family (now Freeform) the past year. At the same time, the "One Too" branding was dropped from on-air usage due to the rebranding of ABC's Saturday morning lineup from "One Saturday Morning" to "ABC Kids" (although the block was unofficially referred to as "Disney's Animation Weekdays" outside the network). UPN subsequently chose not to renew its contract with Disney, with the network dropping all children's programming after August 31, 2003. This left UPN as one of only two major broadcast networks that did not air a children's programming block, the other being Pax TV, which discontinued its "Pax Kids" lineup in 2000, before returning children's programming as Ion Television through the 2006 launch of Qubo (as a 24/7 network, it was pulled off the air in 2021). Incidentally, UPN's successor The CW carried over the Kids' WB Saturday morning lineup from fellow predecessor The WB, resulting in UPN affiliates that joined The CW in September 2006 carrying network-supplied children's programming for the first time since the "One Too" block ended.


title: UPN

text: Some Fox stations that declined to carry 4Kids TV passed on that block to an affiliate of UPN or The WB, or an independent station, in order for the Fox affiliate to air general entertainment programming or local newscasts on Saturday mornings (for example, WFLD in Chicago moved the 4Kids TV schedule to co-owned then-UPN affiliate WPWR-TV, while WFLD aired infomercials).


title: UPN

text: During the late 1990s, UPN produced a number of television films under the umbrella brand "Blockbuster Shockwave Cinema", in conjunction with sponsor (and then-sister company) Blockbuster Video, almost all of which were sci-fi films.


title: UPN

text: From UPN's inception until 2000, the network also offered a hosted movie series called the "UPN Movie Trailer" to its stations. The weekend block featured mostly older theatrically released action and comedy films, often those from the Paramount film library. The "Movie Trailer" block was discontinued in 2000 to give stations that opted for them room for a two-hour block of select UPN series that aired in primetime during the past week. There were also three Paramount-branded blocks that aired on Viacom's UPN owned-and-operated stations between 1995 and 2000: the "Paramount Teleplex" as the main brand for movies at any given timeslot, the "Paramount Prime Movie" for primetime features, and the "Paramount Late Movie" for films airing in late night timeslots. From 2002 to 2006, UPN offred a movie block (airing on Saturdays or Sundays depending on the affiliates) called "Hot Weekend Movie", which carried movies (theatrical, made-for-TV and direct-to-video) from the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer library.


title: UPN

text: UPN had approximately 143 full-power owned-and-operated or primary affiliate stations in the United States, and another 65 stations aired some UPN programming as secondary affiliates. Although it was considered a major network by Nielsen for ratings purposes, UPN was not available in every American television market. In some areas, UPN programming was shown off-pattern by affiliates of other networks (airing immediately after programming from their primary network on some Fox and WB stations, or during overnight timeslots on major network affiliates) or by otherwise independent stations, such as in the case of KIKU-TV in Honolulu, Hawaii. Some affiliates were also known to extensively preempt network programming in order to broadcast local sporting events.


title: UPN

text: By 2003, UPN had an estimated audience reach of 85.98% of all U.S. households (equivalent to 91,689,290 households with at least one television set). In contrast, The WB was viewable in 91.66% of all U.S. television homes. This is mainly because UPN did not have wide distribution in areas ranked below the top 100 Nielsen-designated media markets, whereas The WB operated The WB 100+ Station Group – a cable-only station group that was launched by the network in September 1998 – to provide broad coverage to those markets (from January 1995 to October 1999, The WB's programming was carried over the superstation feed of the network's Chicago affiliate WGN-TV through a programming agreement with its owner Tribune Broadcasting). Despite the fact that UPN would not be able to have extensive small-market coverage at launch due to a lack of commercial television stations in those areas, Paramount Television denied Advance Entertainment Corporation permission from distributing the network's programming over the WWOR EMI Service, the superstation feed of New York City affiliate WWOR-TV, preventing the network from reaching markets without an exclusive or secondary UPN affiliate. The network proposed launching a cable-originated service to increase its distribution to markets without an over-the-air affiliate in July 1998; however, the service, which was to have been named UPN Plus, ultimately never launched. UPN did have one cable-only affiliate in its station form, WNFM-TV in Fort Myers, Florida, which joined the network in 1998.


title: UPN

text: In markets where Viacom had a CBS/UPN duopoly after its 2000 merger with CBS, the UPN station was used to air CBS network programs if local sporting events or extended breaking news coverage would air on the CBS station, sometimes resulting in UPN programs being pre-empted outright, as the CBS-owned outlets were usually the senior partner in the duopolies (an exception being Detroit, where WKBD-TV is considered the senior partner to WWJ-TV due to WKBD being longer-established). One such event occurred on September 26, 2004, when Hurricane Jeanne forced a scheduled NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Miami Dolphins in Miami to be postponed from its scheduled start time of 1:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. ET; the game aired locally on KDKA-TV and WFOR-TV while their respective UPN sister stations, WNPA-TV and WBFS-TV, aired CBS's regular Sunday night programming instead.


title: UPN

text: These factors led to the network struggling in the ratings over much of UPN's existence, with its later "Star Trek" franchise, "", perhaps suffering the most and ultimately being canceled by the network in a controversial decision in February 2005. The most consistent ratings performer for the network was "WWE SmackDown". During the 2004–2005 season, the network was getting consistently better ratings than The WB, much of this thanks to its carriage of the WWE.


title: UPN

text: When the network launched, UPN began having most of its stations branded using a combination of "UPN" or "Paramount" (the latter having been used only by the network's Viacom-owned stations, some of whom adopted the "Paramount" branding prior to UPN's launch), and the affiliated station's channel number. By the late 1990s, affiliates were simply branded under the "UPN (channel number or city)" scheme (for example, Chicago affiliate WPWR-TV called itself "UPN Chicago" and New York City O&O-turned-affiliate WWOR-TV was referred to as "UPN 9", until The CW's launch was announced in January 2006).


title: UPN

text: However, most of the UPN owned-and-operated stations under Viacom/CBS Corporation branded themselves by the network/city conventions (for example, KBHK/San Francisco was branded as "UPN Bay Area," WKBD/Detroit was branded as "UPN Detroit" and WUPL/New Orleans was branded as "UPN New Orleans"). That type of branding did not always apply though, as for example, WSBK-TV/Boston was branded "UPN 38" and KMAX-TV/Sacramento was branded "UPN 31". WNPA/Pittsburgh originally branded itself as "UPN 19", but rebranded itself as "UPN Pittsburgh" soon after the network introduced its second and final logo in September 2002, making it one of the few that had carried both standardization styles. Many UPN-affiliated stations followed the same branding scheme (for example, KFVE/Honolulu used the brand "UPN Hawaii").


title: UPN

text: This would be a continuation of the trend of networks using such naming schemes, which originated at Fox (and even earlier by the Canadian CBC), and was also predominately used at CBS (which has most of its owned-and-operated stations, with a few exceptions, brand using a combination of the network's name and over-the-air channel number) and The WB (with the exception of its Tribune Broadcasting-owned affiliates in Los Angeles and Chicago, and certain other stations); NBC and ABC also use similar branding schemes, but not to the same broad level outside their O&Os. While the "Big Three" networks do not require their affiliates to have such naming schemes (though some affiliates choose to adopt it anyway) and only on the network's O&Os is the style required, UPN mandated it on all stations – though in one case, Milwaukee affiliate WCGV branded as "Channel 24" from 1998 to 2001, excluding UPN imagery from its station branding (WCGV, which previously branded as "UPN 24", had disaffiliated from the network for eight months in 1998 due to a compensation dispute; it received a rare waiver from the network to air a marathon of the last half of which it had not aired in August 1998, before the fifth season's premiere in September.).


title: UPN

text: One Chris-Craft/United Television-owned station, KMSP-TV in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, only branded as "UPN 9" for its entertainment and network programming. Due to the station's circumstances of holding full cable carriage across the state of Minnesota and into The Dakotas as a superstation, local management preferred to retain their pre-UPN "Minnesota 9" branding in some manner, as most of the UPN schedule was of low appeal to the station's rural viewers, and it was building a successful and competitive news department that did not depend on the success or failure of UPN. KMSP's news division success despite UPN affiliation was one of the pushes for Fox Television Stations to acquire United Television overall, then convert KMSP-TV to a Fox owned-and-operated station in Fall 2002. The UPN affiliation thus moved to new sister station WFTC, which followed all UPN branding guidelines until Fox pulled their support for the network in January 2006.


title: Victoria 3

text: Victoria 3 is a 2022 grand strategy video game developed by Paradox Development Studio and published by Paradox Interactive. It is a sequel to the 2010 game "Victoria II" and was released on 25 October 2022.


title: Victoria 3

text: "Victoria 3" spans world history from 1836 to 1936 and allows the player to control any one of over 100 countries that existed during that time period.


title: Victoria 3

text: The game focuses on politics and demographics, with gameplay focusing on appealing to and appeasing population groups ("pops"), large blocks of people with shared interests. Pops possess a variety of interests with different ideologies that the player deals with.


title: Victoria 3

text: Another system in the game is Diplomatic Plays, which borrows heavily from "Victoria II" crisis system. When attempting to force other countries to concede land or open markets, players will present a target country with a demand detailing what they desire, which will result in the target country having the opportunity to demand concessions from the aggressor. Following this exchange of demands, a timer will begin counting down as both sides have a chance to mobilize troops and attract potential allies by offering spoils. If no diplomatic resolution is reached before the timer runs out, war will be declared. Designer Mikael Andersson explained that this system was designed with the intent to tone down the role of warfare by making diplomacy equally as capable.


title: Victoria 3

text: In the lead up to the game's announcement, "Victoria 3" was seen as a meme by the Paradox fanbase due to players constantly asking about it, only to be ignored, with many joking that it would never see a release or that any mention of the number 'three' from an official Paradox source meant that the game was on the way.


title: Victoria 3

text: Martin "Wiz" Anward served as director of the game's development. In April 2022, a beta version of the game was leaked online.


title: Victoria 3

text: "Destructoid" enjoyed the new tutorial, feeling it intuitively taught players game mechanics and "nearly all concepts that you [would] come into contact with during your time in "Victoria"".


title: Victoria 3

text: "PC Gamer" praised the new economic systems, saying it led players to use real world strategies, "You can run a deficit for a few years, then build up a reserve, or nearly bankrupt yourself fighting world wars before entering years of austere recovery".


title: Victoria 3

text: "IGN" critcized "Victoria 3" new war mechanics, "I respect Victoria 3's decision not to focus on war [...] But that doesn't change the fact that armed conflicts can be very fiddly and confusing".


title: Victoria 3

text: PCGamesN liked the overhauled colonialization system, ""Victoria 3" colonisable regions are controlled by indigenous people... it allows for colonised people to be granted independence and then played as a sovereign nation for the rest of the game".


title: Victoria 3

text: "Eurogamer" felt the economic mechanics stopped players from hoarding too much money, making the later game more interesting, "Economies in "Victoria 3" are based upon the gold standard, and if your gold stockpiles are too high, it devalues your currency. Hence, you need to find ways to either spend or temporarily lose money, such as increasing construction, reducing taxes, or getting involved in a nice, expensive war".


title: Victoria 3

text: "Kotaku" disliked the economic micromanagement, saying, "it also started to get a bit dull once the routine of "Victoria 3" set in".


title: Victoria 3

text: "Victoria 3" was nominated for Best Sim/Strategy Game at The Game Awards 2022, but lost to "Mario + Rabbids Sparks of Hope."


title: Alex Karras

text: Alexander George Karras (July 15, 1935 – October 10, 2012) was an American football player, professional wrestler, sportscaster, and actor. He was a four-time Pro Bowl player with the Detroit Lions of the National Football League (NFL), where he played from 1958 to 1970. As an actor, Karras played Mongo in the 1974 comedy film "Blazing Saddles". He starred as George Papadopolis, the adoptive father of Webster Long (Emmanuel Lewis), in the ABC sitcom "Webster" (1983–1989) alongside his wife Susan Clark. Karras also had a prominent role in "Victor/Victoria", starring Julie Andrews and James Garner. He is a member of the College Football Hall of Fame and was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in the Centennial class.


title: Alex Karras

text: Born and raised in Gary, Indiana, Karras was the son of Dr. George Karras, a Greek immigrant (from Chios) who graduated from the University of Chicago and pursued his medical degree in Canada. There, George Karras met and married a Canadian woman, Alex's mother, Emmeline (née Wilson), a registered nurse. George Karras opened a medical practice in Gary, but he died when Alex was thirteen years old. By that time, Alex Karras had learned to play football in a parking lot near his home, with and against his athletically-inclined brothers, and he blossomed into a four-time Indiana all-state selection at Gary's Emerson High School. Karras also excelled in numerous other sports in high school, including baseball, track, wrestling, and basketball.He graduated in 1954.


title: Alex Karras

text: His older brothers, Lou (a future member of the Redskins) and Ted (who later played with the Bears and Lions), had played at Purdue but later Ted transferred to Indiana. Because of it, Alex said, "Indiana had the inside track" on recruiting him. Shortly after he graduated from high school, three coaches from the Iowa Hawkeyes met Karras at his brother Louie's house with an airplane and flew him to Spencer, Iowa, where he remained incommunicado through the summer. Writing in the "Detroit Free Press" in 1971 (as reprinted in the "Iowa City Press-Citizen"), Karras said that "nobody knew where I was, not even my mom, although Louie told her not to worry. Obviously, Iowa came up with something, I have no intention of stirring up any mess. I'll only say that, as Louie explained it, some accommodations were made by the people at Iowa that would make things easier for the family, and so away I went. It was the beginning of some awful years."


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras struggled in the beginning at Iowa, with classwork, homesickness, and with his coach, Forest Evashevski. He was a pledge at Sigma Nu fraternity during his first year in school. Karras probably would have left Iowa had he not befriended a Greek theater owner, Ernie Pannos, as well as fellow players Cal Jones and Bob Commings. Karras's sophomore year with Iowa in 1955 got off to a rocky start when he showed up for practice overweight.


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras had been (dubiously) advised that year that he would need to gain substantial weight to have a chance at success in pro football, prompting him to report to camp at 260-270 pounds, in contrast to the 225-230 the Iowa coaching staff expected.


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras was also hampered that season by a cracked anklebone. After being disappointed at not getting to play in the season finale, Karras threw a shoe at Evashevski and quit the team. Karras did not earn a football letter for the 1955 season.


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras went to summer classes, lost the excess weight, and rejoined the football team, but a strained relationship resurfaced. Evashevski promised to start Karras in the 1956 season opener against Indiana, when he would square off against his brother, Ted.


title: Alex Karras

text: But Evashevski played Karras off the bench instead, and Karras quit the team again. This time, Karras agreed to return only after making Evashevski promise he would not talk to him other than in a coaching capacity. (Evashevski always denied any special agreement with Karras.) Iowa took the lead in the 1956 Big Ten title race with a victory over Minnesota. The Hawkeyes then clinched the Big Ten title and Iowa's first-ever Rose Bowl berth by defeating Ohio State Karras sealed the game with a sack on the game's final play.


title: Alex Karras

text: Iowa's final regular-season game in 1956 was at home over a struggling Notre Dame team. Karras called it his biggest college win, saying, "The Karrases have always had a rivalry with Notre Dame. The school was just down the road from our home and we wanted to beat 'em at anything." However, after the game, Karras got into a physical battle with Evashevski. Karras did not enjoy his trip to the Rose Bowl, either. "Pasadena was the most boring town I've ever been in," said Karras. Karras helped the Hawkeyes win the Rose Bowl over Oregon State, He was a first-team All-American in 1956.


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras spent the summer of 1957 with an American track team of Greek descent. He participated in the shot put, throwing a respectable . In his senior season in 1957, Karras was the most dominant lineman in the nation, won the Outland Trophy, and was the runner-up in the voting for the Heisman Trophy. Karras and Ohio State tackle John Hicks (in 1973) are two of only three linemen to finish so high in the Heisman Trophy voting. (Leon Hart, a Notre Dame end, was the only lineman ever to win the Heisman Trophy in 1949.) In addition, Karras was a consensus first-team All-American in 1957. Hawkeye teammate Randy Duncan said,


title: Alex Karras

text: Before his NFL career got underway, Karras signed a contract as a professional wrestler on December 13, 1957, earning $25,000 during the six-month off-season. Karras was the tenth selection of the 1958 NFL draft, taken by the Detroit Lions. He signed with the Lions, spurning an offer from the Canadian Football League's Winnipeg Blue Bombers. He quickly became one of the dominant defensive tackles in the NFL, playing for 12 seasons (1958–1962, 1964–1970) all with the Lions.


title: Alex Karras

text: As a rookie in 1958, joining the championship-contending Lions, Karras was adopted in training camp as an off-field flunky, chauffeur, and wingman by superstar quarterback Bobby Layne for his legendary late-night party activities.


title: Alex Karras

text: By many accounts Karras would marvel at Layne's ability to recover from heavy drinking sessions at night and being able to function effectively at practices or games the next day. Karras himself admitted he was frequently heavily hung over as a result of late night bar-hopping.


title: Alex Karras

text: Layne was traded to the Pittsburgh Steelers early in the 1958 season and Karras eventually assumed a veteran leadership position himself.


title: Alex Karras

text: On January 7, 1963, Karras's ownership share in Detroit's Lindell AC Bar became a source of controversy when league officials urged him to sell his financial interests in the place because of reports of gambling and organized crime influence.


title: Alex Karras

text: After first threatening to retire rather than give up the bar ownership, Karras admitted placing bets on NFL games and was suspended by the league, along with Green Bay Packers running back Paul Hornung, for one season (1963). During his exile, Karras returned to pro wrestling, taking on such memorable characters as Dick the Bruiser. He was reinstated, along with Hornung, on March 16, 1964, by NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle. Upon returning to action in 1964, Karras once refused when an official asked him to call the pregame coin toss. "I'm sorry, sir," Karras replied. "I'm not permitted to gamble." During his first year back, player discontent with head coach George Wilson resulted in Karras asking to be traded. However, the Lions settled the issue when they fired Wilson after the season.


title: Alex Karras

text: From 1960 to 1966, except for his suspension in 1963, he played next to Roger Brown, forming a formidable pair of defensive tackles, until Brown was traded to the Los Angeles Rams. After another season of controversy under new head coach Harry Gilmer, Karras was rumored to be ready to play out his option and sign with the expansion Miami Dolphins of the American Football League under his former coach Wilson. Instead, Karras signed a seven-year contract with the Lions on May 20, 1966, with Wilson stating that Karras had used the threat of signing with Miami to garner a large deal with Detroit. Despite the new contract, controversy remained, as Karras and Gilmer sparred in midseason, with the coach reportedly ready to release the veteran defensive tackle. As before, it would be the coach who would depart, with Karras's former teammate Joe Schmidt taking over for Gilmer. On June 4, 1967, Karras once again hinted he would retire to work at a new business venture; once training camp began, though, Karras was back with the Lions. During that preseason, he jokingly commented that he would walk back from Denver if the AFL Broncos defeated the Lions. When it actually happened, Karras backtracked and flew home on the team plane. He was still an All-Pro selection from 1967 to 1969. Despite not allowing a touchdown in the divisional round of the 1970 NFL playoffs, the Lions lost to the Dallas Cowboys his first playoff game and his final game. After the 1971 preseason, while rehabilitating a knee injury suffered the previous year, Karras was released, ending his playing career at age 35.


title: Alex Karras

text: From 1958 to 1970, the Lions were over .500 six of the 13 years, making the playoffs only once, in 1970, with a record in Karras's final year. Aside from 1970, their best years were 1962 and 1969 In 1962, the Lion defense allowed 177 points (12.6 points/game), 188 (13.4 ppg) in 1969, and 202 (14.4 ppg) in 1970; for all three years they were second-least in the NFL, thanks in large part to a tough and rugged defensive line led by Karras. He was called an "iron man" and also nicknamed "Twinkletoes" by his fans, and missed only one game due to injury in his 12 NFL seasons and his 161 games played are the fifteenth-most in Lions history. He made the Pro Bowl four times, and the Hall of Fame named him a member of the 1960s All-Decade team. The Professional Football Researchers Association named Karras to the PRFA Hall of Very Good Class of 2006


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras's sense of humor came to the attention of writer George Plimpton, who heard many stories about Karras while training with the Lions for his book "Paper Lion" during the summer of 1963.


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras himself was under suspension and thus absent during Plimpton's training camp tenure with the Lions, making him a constant topic of tall-tale discussion among his past (and future) teammates.


title: Alex Karras

text: Following his release by the Lions in 1971, he made several appearances on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" and also played a bit part in "The Mary Tyler Moore Show", appearing in the farewell party scene where Rhoda moves back to New York. Karras soon began acting on a full-time basis, playing a Tennessee boy turned Olympic weightlifter named Hugh Ray Feather in 1973's "The 500 Pound Jerk". He played a hulking villain who menaced Clint Walker in the ABC TV film "Hardcase". A minor but memorable role came one year later in the western parody "Blazing Saddles" (1974): the very strong and slow-witted thug Mongo, who rode into town on a huge brahman (marked with "yes" and "no" passing signals), and knocked out a horse with one punch. (Mongo was also surprisingly philosophical, stating that he was "only pawn in game of life." This line was much-quoted upon Karras's death.) In 1974, he also played the part of Lyle, a Marine saved by Hawkeye Pierce in "M*A*S*H". That same year, he was quickly brought in by ABC in September to replace Fred Williamson as a commentator for "Monday Night Football". He served three years in that role until leaving after the season, with his most memorable comment coming in his first game, when he joked that bald Oakland Raiders lineman Otis Sistrunk, who never attended college, was from "the University of Mars", after seeing steam coming off his head.


title: Alex Karras

text: In 1972, Karras hosted a local weekly football program for Windsor, Ontario CBC affiliate CKLW-TV, "The Alex Karras Football Show"; his program generally preceded the CBC's Wednesday night CFL telecasts. In 1973, Karras made several cameo appearances on the January 8 broadcast of "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In".


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras returned to acting with roles that included playing Sheriff Wallace in "Porky's" (in which his wife, Susan Clark, also starred), and as western settler Hans Brumbaugh in "Centennial". He played James Garner's closeted gay bodyguard in the 1982 Blake Edwards film "Victor Victoria". Karras played a darker role as Hank Sully, the right-hand man of villain Jake Wise (played by James Woods) in the 1984 film, "Against All Odds".


title: Alex Karras

text: In 1975, Karras appeared on "MNF" colleague Howard Cosell's ill-fated variety show "Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell" wearing a wig (a la Mongo) and performing "Already Gone" on the beach with The Eagles who were dubbed the "Alex Karras Blues Band" due to t-shirts the band members wore bearing that moniker.


title: Alex Karras

text: Karras's television appearances included guest roles on "Daniel Boone" in the episode "The Cache", "M*A*S*H" in the episode "Springtime", "The Odd Couple", and a brief run on "Match Game '75". He also signed on to play the character "Super Jock" in commercials for a line of sports action toys named Super Jock, produced by Schaper (1975). In 1977, he was cast in the lead of the TV movie "Mad Bull".


title: Alex Karras

text: In 1979, he had the role of Hans "Potato" Brumbaugh, a potato farmer, on the TV miniseries "Centennial". He was known for his humorous endorsement of La-Z-Boy recliners, in an ad campaign which also featured NFL greats such as Miami Dolphins Coach Don Shula, and New York Jets legend Joe Namath. In the 1980s, Karras had memorable success in the TV sitcom "Webster", playing George Papadapolis, the title character's adoptive father, in a role that showcased his softer side. His real-life wife, Susan Clark, played his fictional wife in the series; Karras and Clark produced the series through their Georgian Bay Entertainment production company. The two met in 1975 while filming the made-for-television biopic "Babe" for CBS.


title: Alex Karras

text: Besides being one of the subjects of George Plimpton's nonfiction book "Paper Lion" (published in 1966), he was one of the two principal subjects of Plimpton's follow-up book, "Mad Ducks and Bears" (1973), in which fellow Detroit Lion John Gordy was the "bear" to Karras's "mad duck". Karras named one of his sons after Plimpton. During his last years as a Detroit Lion, Karras wrote a journal of his experiences that was published in the "Detroit Free Press". He subsequently wrote a memoir, "Even Big Guys Cry" (1978), and a novel, "Tuesday Night Football" (1991).


title: Alex Karras

text: In conjunction with the 100 Years of Hawkeye Football celebration in 1989, Iowa Hawkeye fans selected an all-time team. The squad featured 11 players on offense and defense, two kickers, and 15 special-mention players who received strong fan support. Karras was voted to the team as a defensive lineman. He was elected to the Iowa Sports Hall of Fame in 1977 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1991.


title: Alex Karras

text: On December 12, 2014, the Big Ten Network included Karras on "The Mount Rushmore of Iowa Football", as chosen by online fan voting. Karras was joined in the honor by Nile Kinnick, Chuck Long, and Tim Dwight.


title: Alex Karras

text: On October 28, 2018, the Detroit Lions enshrined Karras in the franchise ring of honor along with former Detroit Lions Herman Moore and Roger Brown.