title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: During Babrak Karmal's later years, and during Najibullah's tenure, the PDPA tried to improve their standing with Muslims by moving, or appearing to move, to the political centre. They wanted to create a new image for the party and state. In 1987, Najibullah re-added Ullah to his name to appease the Muslim community. Communist symbols were either replaced or removed. These measures did not contribute to any notable increase in support for the government, because the mujahideen had a stronger legitimacy to protect Islam than the government; they had rebelled against what they saw as an anti-Islamic government, that government was the PDPA. Islamic principles were embedded in the 1987 constitution, for instance, Article 2 of the constitution stated that Islam was the state religion, and Article 73 stated that the head of state had to be born into a Muslim Afghan family. The 1990 constitution stated that Afghanistan was an Islamic state, and the last references to communism were removed. Article 1 of the 1990 Constitution said that Afghanistan was an "independent, unitary and Islamic state."


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: Najibullah continued Karmal's economic policies. The augmenting of links with the Eastern Bloc and the Soviet Union continued, and so did bilateral trade. He encouraged the development of the private sector in industry. The Five-Year Economic and Social Development Plan which was introduced in January 1986 continued until March 1992, one month before the government's fall. According to the plan, the economy, which had grown less than 2 percent annually until 1985, would grow 25 percent in the plan. Industry would grow 28 percent, agriculture 14–16 percent, domestic trade by 150 percent and foreign trade with 15 percent. As expected, none of these targets were met, and 2 percent growth annually which had been the norm before the plan continued under Najibullah. The 1990 constitution gave due attention to the private sector. Article 20 was about the establishment of private firms, and Article 25 encouraged foreign investments in the private sector.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: While he may have been the "de jure" leader of Afghanistan, Soviet advisers still did the majority of work when Najibullah took power. As Gorbachev remarked "We're still doing everything ourselves [...]. That's all our people know how to do. They've tied Najibullah hand and foot." Fikryat Tabeev, the Soviet ambassador to Afghanistan, was accused of acting like a governor general by Gorbachev. Tabeev was recalled from Afghanistan in July 1986, but while Gorbachev called for the end of Soviet management of Afghanistan, he could not help but to do some managing himself. At a Soviet Politburo meeting, Gorbachev said "It's difficult to build a new building out of old material [...] I hope to God that we haven't made a mistake with Najibullah." As time would prove, the problem was that Najibullah's aims were the opposite of the Soviet Union's; Najibullah was opposed to a Soviet withdrawal, the Soviet Union wanted a Soviet withdrawal. This was logical, considering the fact that the Afghan military was on the brink of dissolution. The only means of survival seemed to Najibullah was to retain the Soviet presence. In July 1986 six regiments, which consisted up to 15,000 troops, were withdrawn from Afghanistan. The aim of this early withdrawal was, according to Gorbachev, to show the world that the Soviet leadership was serious about leaving Afghanistan. The Soviets told the United States Government that they were planning to withdraw, but the United States Government did not believe them. When Gorbachev met with Ronald Reagan during his visit the United States, Reagan called for the dissolution of the Afghan army.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: On 14 April 1988, the Afghan and Pakistani governments signed the Geneva Accords, and the Soviet Union and the United States signed as guarantors; the treaty specifically stated that the Soviet military had to withdraw from Afghanistan by 15 February 1989. Gorbachev later confided to Anatoly Chernyaev, a personal advisor to Gorbachev, that the Soviet withdrawal would be criticised for creating a bloodbath which could have been averted if the Soviets stayed. During a Politburo meeting Eduard Shevardnadze said "We will leave the country in a deplorable situation", and further talked about the economic collapse, and the need to keep at least 10 to 15,000 troops in Afghanistan. In this Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB Chairman, supported him. This stance, if implemented, would be a betrayal of the Geneva Accords just signed. During the second phase of the Soviet withdrawal, in 1989, Najibullah told Valentin Varennikov openly that he would do everything to slow down the Soviet departure. Varennikov in turn replied that such a move would not help, and would only lead to an international outcry against the war. Najibullah would repeat his position later that year, to a group of senior Soviet representatives in Kabul. This time Najibullah stated that Ahmad Shah Massoud was the main problem, and that he needed to be killed. In this, the Soviets agreed, but repeated that such a move would be a breach of the Geneva Accords; to hunt for Ahmad Shah Massoud so early on would disrupt the withdrawal, and would mean that the Soviet Union would fail to meet its deadline for withdrawal.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: During his January 1989 visit to Shevardnadze, Najibullah wanted to retain a small presence of Soviet troops in Afghanistan, and called for moving Soviet bombers to military bases close to the Afghan–Soviet border and place them on permanent alert. Najibullah also repeated his claims that his government could not survive if Ahmad Shah Massoud remained alive. Shevardnadze again repeated that troops could not stay, since it would lead to international outcry, but said he would look into the matter. Shevardnadze demanded that the Soviet embassy created a plan in which at least 12,000 Soviet troops would remain in Afghanistan either under direct control of the United Nations or remain as "volunteers". The Soviet military leadership, when hearing of Shevardnadze's plan, became furious. But they followed orders, and named the operation "Typhoon", maybe ironic considering that Operation Typhoon was the German military operation against the city of Moscow during World War II. Shevardnadze contacted the Soviet leadership about moving a unit to break the siege of Kandahar, and to protect convoys from and to the city. The Soviet leadership were against Shevardnadze's plan, and Chernyaev even believed it was part of Najibullah's plan to keep Soviet troops in the country. To which Shevardnadze replied angrily "You've not been there, [...] You've no idea all the things we have done there in the past ten years." At a Politburo meeting on 24 January, Shevardnadze argued that the Soviet leadership could not be indifferent to Najibullah and his government; again, Shevardnadze received support from Kryuchkov. In the end Shevardnadze lost the debate, and the Politburo reaffirmed their commitment to withdraw from Afghanistan. There was still a small presence of Soviet troops after the Soviet withdrawal; for instance, parachutists who protected the Soviet embassy staff, military advisors and special forces and reconnaissance troops still operated in the "outlying provinces", especially along the Afghan–Soviet border.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: Soviet military aid continued after their withdrawal, and massive quantities of food, fuel, ammunition and military equipment was given to the government. Varennikov visited Afghanistan in May 1989 to discuss ways and means to deliver the aid to the government. In 1990, Soviet aid amounted to an estimated 3 billion United States dollars. As it turned out, the Afghan military was entirely dependent on Soviet aid to function. When the Soviet Union was dissolved on 26 December 1991, Najibullah turned to former Soviet Central Asia for aid. These newly independent states had no wish to see Afghanistan being taken over by religious fundamentalists, and supplied Afghanistan with 6 million barrels of oil and 500,000 tons of wheat to survive the winter.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: With the Soviets' withdrawal in 1989, the Afghan army was left on its own to battle the insurgents. The most effective, and largest, assaults on the mujahideen were undertaken during the 1985–86 period. These offensives had forced the mujahideen on the defensive near Herat and Kandahar. The Soviets ensued a bomb and negotiate during 1986, and a major offensive that year included 10,000 Soviet troops and 8,000 Afghan troops.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: The Pakistani people and establishment continued to support the Afghan mujahideen even if it was in contravention of the Geneva Accords. At the beginning, most observers expected the Najibullah government to collapse immediately, and to be replaced with an Islamic fundamentalist government. The Central Intelligence Agency stated in a report that the new government would be ambivalent, or even worse, hostile towards the United States. Almost immediately after the Soviet withdrawal, the Battle of Jalalabad broke out between Afghan government forces and the mujahideen, in cooperation with Pakistan's Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI). The offensive against the city began when the mujahideen bribed several government military officers, from there, they tried to take the airport, but were repulsed with heavy casualties. The willingness of the common Afghan government soldier to fight increased when the mujahideen began to execute people during the battle. Hamid Gul, leader of the ISI, hoped that the battle would topple Najibullah's government and create a mujahideen government seated in Jalalabad. During the battle, Najibullah called for Soviet assistance. Gorbachev called an emergency session of the Politburo to discuss his proposal, but Najibullah's request was rejected. Other attacks against the city failed, and by April the government forces were on the offensive. During the battle over four hundred Scud missiles were shot, which were fired by a Soviet crew which had stayed behind. When the battle ended in July, the mujahideen had lost an estimated 3,000 troops. One mujahideen commander lamented "the battle of Jalalabad lost us credit won in ten years of fighting." After the mujahideen's defeat in Jalalabad, Gul blamed the administration of Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto for the defeat. Bhutto eventually sacked Gul.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: Hardline Khalqist Shahnawaz Tanai attempted to overthrow Najibullah in a failed coup attempt in March 1990. Although Tanai and his forces failed and fled to Pakistan, the coup attempt still managed to show weaknesses in Najibullah's government.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: From 1989 to 1990, the Najibullah government was partially successful in building up the Afghan defence forces. The Ministry of State Security had established a local militia force which stood at an estimated 100,000 men. The 17th Division in Herat, which had begun the 1979 Herat uprising against PDPA-rule, stood at 3,400 regular troops and 14,000 tribal men. In 1988, the total number of security forces available to the government stood at 300,000. This trend did not continue, and by the summer of 1990, the Afghan government forces were on the defensive again. By the beginning of 1991, the government controlled only 10 percent of Afghanistan, the eleven-year Siege of Khost had ended in a mujahideen victory and the morale of the Afghan military finally collapsed. In the Soviet Union, Kryuchkov and Shevardnadze had both supported continuing aid to the Najibullah government, but Kryuchkov had been arrested following the failed 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt and Shevardnadze had resigned from his posts in the Soviet government in December 1990 – there were no longer any pro-Najibullah people in the Soviet leadership and the Soviet Union was in the middle of an economic and political crisis, which would lead directly to the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 26 December 1991. At the same time, Boris Yeltsin became Russia's new hope, and he had no wish to continue to aid Najibullah's government, which he considered a relic of the past. In the autumn of 1991, Najibullah wrote to Shevardnadze "I didn't want to be president, you talked me into it, insisted on it, and promised support. Now you are throwing me and the Republic of Afghanistan to its fate."


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: In January 1992, the Russian government ended its aid to the Najibullah government. The effects were felt immediately: the Afghan Air Force, the most effective part of the Afghan military, was grounded due to lack of fuel. The Afghan mujahideen continued to be supported by Pakistan. Major cities were lost to the rebels. On the fifth anniversary of his policy of National Reconciliation, Najibullah blamed the Soviet Union for the disaster that had stricken Afghanistan. The day the Soviet Union withdrew was hailed by Najibullah as the Day of National Salvation. But it was too late, and his government's collapse was imminent.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: On 18 March 1992, Najibullah offered his government's immediate resignation, and followed the United Nations (UN) plan to be replaced by an interim government with all parties involved in the struggle. The announcement daunted his supporters and led to many territories surrendering or mutinying to the Mujahideen without resistance. In a serious blow, army commander Abdul Rashid Dostum decided to abandon Najibullah and join the Mujahideen coalition that was created by Ahmed Shah Massoud and Abdul Ali Mazari, meaning as many as 40,000 loyalist fighters of Dostum in the north had defected; it has been cited that Kabul being unable to grant weapons and money to Dostum persuaded him. Army chief general Mohammad Nabi Azimi was sent by Najibullah to Mazar-i-Sharif to find out what was going on, only for Azimi to also defect to the so-called "Coalition of the North". Other figures also defected including foreign minister Abdul Wakil. Within days, Mazar-i-Sharif was under the control of the Mujahideen coalition.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: In mid-April, Najibullah accepted a UN plan to hand power to a seven-man council, and several days later on 14 April, Najibullah was forced to resign on the orders of the Watan Party because of the loss of Bagram Airbase and the town of Charikar. Abdul Rahim Hatef became acting head of state following Najibullah's resignation. The mujahideen forces of Massoud and the defected Dostum took Kabul shortly thereafter; most mujahideen factions later signed the Peshawar Accord, creating the new Islamic State of Afghanistan.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: Not long before Kabul's fall, Najibullah appealed to the UN for protection after his guards fled, which was rejected. However, his attempt to flee to the airport was thwarted by troops of Abdul Rashid Dostum – once loyal to him, but now allied with Ahmad Shah Massoud – who controlled the airport. At the UN compound in Kabul, while waiting for the UN to negotiate his safe passage to India, he occupied himself by translating Peter Hopkirk's book "The Great Game" into his mother tongue Pashto. India was placed in a difficult position by deciding to allow Najibullah political asylum and safely escorting him out of the country. Supporters claimed he had always been close to India and should not be denied asylum, but others said doing so would risk antagonizing India's relationship with the new mujahideen government formed under the Peshawar Accord.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: India also refused to let him take refuge at the Indian embassy as it risked creating "subcontinental rivalries" and reprisals against Kabul's Indian community, arguing that Najibullah would be far safer at the UN compound. All attempts failed and he eventually sought refuge in the local UN headquarters, where he would stay until 1996. In 1994, India sent senior diplomat M. K. Bhadrakumar to Kabul to hold talks with Ahmad Shah Massoud, the defence minister, to consolidate relations with the Afghan authorities, reopen the embassy, and allow Najibullah to fly to India, but Massoud refused. Bhadrakumar wrote in 2016 that he believed Massoud did not want Najibullah to leave as Massoud could strategically make use of him, and that Massoud "probably harboured hopes of a co-habitation with Najib somewhere in the womb of time because that extraordinary Afghan politician was a strategic asset to have by his side". At the time, Massoud was commanding the government's forces fighting the militias of Dostum and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar during the Battle of Kabul. A few months before his death, he quoted, "Afghans keep making the same mistake," reflecting upon his translation to a visitor.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: In September 1996, when the Taliban were about to enter Kabul, Massoud offered Najibullah an opportunity to flee the capital. Najibullah refused. The reasons as to why he refused remain unclear. Massoud himself claimed that Najibullah feared that "if he fled with the Tajiks, he would be for ever damned in the eyes of his fellow Pashtuns." Others, like General Tokhi, who was with Najibullah until the day before his torture and murder, stated that Najibullah mistrusted Massoud after his militia had repeatedly fired rockets at the UN compound and had effectively barred Najibullah from leaving Kabul. "If they wanted Najibullah to flee Kabul in safety," Tokhi said, "they could have provided him the opportunity as they did with other high ranking officials from the communist party from 1992 to 1996." Whatever his true motivations were, when Massoud's militia went to both Najibullah and General Tokhi and asked them to flee Kabul, they rejected the offer.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: Najibullah was at the UN compound when the Taliban soldiers came for him on the evening of 26 September 1996. The Taliban abducted him from UN custody, castrated him, tortured him to death, and dragged his corpse behind a truck through the streets of Kabul. His brother, Shahpur Ahmadzai, was given the same treatment. Najibullah and Shahpur's bodies were hanged from a traffic light pole outside the Arg presidential palace the next day in order to show the public that a new era had begun. The Taliban prevented Islamic funeral prayers for Najibullah and Shahpur in Kabul, but the bodies were later handed over to the International Committee of the Red Cross who in turn sent their bodies to Gardez in Paktia Province, where both of them were buried after the Islamic funeral prayers for them by their fellow Ahmadzai tribesmen.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: News of Najibullah's murder was greeted with widespread international condemnation,<ref name="un-51/108">"Situation of human rights in Afghanistan" United Nations Resolution 51/108, Article 10. 12 December 1996. Retrieved 15 June 2015 ""Endorses the Special Rapporteur's condemnation of the abduction from United Nations premises of the former President of Afghanistan, Mr. Najibullah, and of his brother, and of their subsequent summary execution;""</ref> particularly from the Muslim world. The United Nations issued a statement which condemned the killing of Najibullah, and claimed that it would further destabilise Afghanistan. The Taliban responded by issuing death sentences on Dostum, Massoud and Burhanuddin Rabbani. India, which had been supporting Najibullah, strongly condemned his killing and began to support Massoud's United Front/Northern Alliance in an attempt to contain the rise of the Taliban.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: On the 20th anniversary of his death, in 2016, Afghanistan's Research Center blamed the ISI for his death, claiming that the plan to kill Najibullah was implemented by Pakistan.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: On 1 June 2020, following a visit to his grave in Gardez by the Afghan National Security Advisor Hamdullah Mohib, Najibullah's widow Fatana Najib said that before constructing a mausoleum for him, the government should first investigate his assassination.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: After Najibullah's death, the brutal civil war between mujahideen factions, the Taliban regime, continued fighting, and enduring problems with corruption and poverty, his image among the Afghan people dramatically improved, and Najibullah came to be seen as a strong and patriotic leader. Since the 2010s, posters and pictures of him have become a common sight in many Afghan cities.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: In 1997, the Watan Party of Afghanistan was formed and in 2003, the National United Party of Afghanistan was registered – who seek to unite former PDPA members formerly led by Mohammad Najibullah.


title: Mohammad Najibullah

text: Najibullah was married on 1 September 1974 to Fatana Najib, principal of the Russian-language Peace School whom he met when she was an eighth-grade student and he was her science tutor. The couple had three daughters, who were forced to leave Afghanistan after the Taliban seizure and the start of the civil war. The daughters grew up with their mother in New Delhi, India, after moving there in 1992. Najibullah's oldest daughter, Heela Najibullah, was born in Kabul in 1977, studied in Switzerland and was living there as of 2017. She has worked in the International Red Cross. In 2006 she spoke at the summit of young UN leaders representing Afghanistan. She is currently an employee of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Sweden, she maintains her Twitter account. The middle daughter, called Onai (born 1978), is a Master of Architecture, and the youngest daughter, Mosca Najib (born 1984), is an Indian citizen and works as a photographer for the international company Weber Shandwick in Singapore.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: The Conqueror is a 1956 American epic historical drama film directed by Dick Powell and written by Oscar Millard. The film stars John Wayne as the Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan and co-stars Susan Hayward, Agnes Moorehead, and Pedro Armendáriz. Produced by entrepreneur Howard Hughes, the film was principally shot near St. George, Utah.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Despite the stature of the cast and a respectable box office performance, the film was a critical flop; it is often ranked as one of the worst films of the 1950s and also as one of the worst films ever made. Wayne, who was at the height of his career, had lobbied for the role after reading the script and was widely believed to have been grossly miscast. "The Conqueror" was listed in the 1978 book "The Fifty Worst Films of All Time". Wayne was posthumously named a "winner" of a Golden Turkey Award (awarded to movies and performances considered the "worst" in history) in 1980, in the "Worst Casting" category, for his performance as Genghis Khan in the film.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Mongol chief Temujin (later to be known as Genghis Khan) falls for Bortai, the daughter of the Tatars' leader, and steals her away, precipitating war. Bortai spurns Temujin and is taken back in a raid. Temujin is later captured. Bortai falls in love with him and helps him escape. Temujin suspects he was betrayed by a fellow Mongol and sets out to find the traitor and overcome the Tatars.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: The role of Genghis Khan was originally written for Marlon Brando, but then Brando later backed out from the role.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Of the 220 film crew members, 91 (comprising 41% of the crew) developed cancer during their lifetime, while 46 (or 21%) died from it. When this was learned, many suspected that filming in Utah and surrounding locations, near nuclear test sites, was to blame. Although the number of cancer cases among the cast and crew is in line with the average for adults in the US at the time, the perception of a link between the film's location and subsequent illness remains, not least because many of those involved in the film developed cancer at a younger age than average.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Parts of the film were shot in Utah locations such as Snow Canyon, Pine Valley, Leeds, and Harrisburg. The exterior scenes were shot in the Escalante Desert near St. George, Utah, which is 137 miles (220 km) downwind of the United States government's Nevada National Security Site and received the brunt of nuclear fallout from testing active in this period. In 1953, 11 above-ground nuclear weapons tests occurred at the site as part of Operation Upshot–Knothole. The cast and crew spent many difficult weeks at the site, and producer Howard Hughes later shipped 60 tons of dirt back to Hollywood in order to match the Utah terrain and lend realism to studio re-shoots. The filmmakers knew about the nuclear tests but the federal government had assured residents that the tests posed no hazard to the public health.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Director Powell died of cancer in January 1963, seven years after the film's release. Armendáriz was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 1960 and killed himself in June 1963 after he learned his condition had become terminal. Wayne,


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Hayward and Moorehead all died of cancer in the 1970s. Hoyt died of lung cancer in 1991. Van Cleef's secondary cause of death was listed as throat cancer. Some point to other factors such as the wide use of tobacco – Wayne, in particular, was a heavy smoker, and Wayne himself believed his stomach cancer to have been a result of his six-pack-a-day cigarette habit. Agnes Moorehead was a nonsmoker, teetotaler, and health fanatic, yet died of cancer. Her mother Mary maintained it was working on "The Conqueror" which ultimately killed Agnes. Several of Wayne and Hayward's relatives who visited the set also had cancer scares. Michael Wayne developed skin cancer, his brother Patrick had a benign tumor removed from his breast, and Hayward's son, Tim Barker, had a benign tumor removed from his mouth.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Reportedly, Hughes felt guilty about his decisions regarding the film's production, particularly over the decision to film at a hazardous site. He bought every print of the film for $12 million and kept it out of circulation for many years until Universal Pictures purchased the film from his estate in 1979. "The Conqueror", along with "Ice Station Zebra", is said to be one of the films Hughes watched endlessly during his last years.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Dr. Robert Pendleton, then a professor of biology at the University of Utah, is reported to have stated in 1980, "With these numbers, this case could qualify as an epidemic. The connection between fallout radiation and cancer in individual cases has been practically impossible to prove conclusively. But in a group this size you'd expect only 30-some cancers to develop. With 91 cancer cases, I think the tie-in to their exposure on the set of "The Conqueror" would hold up in a court of law." Several cast and crew members, as well as relatives of those who died, considered suing the government for negligence, claiming it knew more about the hazards in the area than it let on.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: Since the primary cast and crew numbered about 220, and a considerable number of cancer cases would be expected, controversy exists as to whether the actual results are attributable to radiation at the nearby nuclear weapons test site. Statistically, the odds of developing cancer for men in the U.S. population are 43% and the odds of dying of cancer are 23% – very near what was found in this film crew. This statistic does not include the Native American Paiute extras in the film.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: "The Conqueror" received an A classification (Equivalent to a 'PG' rating in the US.) from the British Board of Film Censors but also required cuts to obtain the rating. The film premiered in London on February 2, 1956, before its Los Angeles premiere on February 22 and official theatrical release on March 28. The film also had premieres in Washington, D.C., Paris, Rome, and Manila. Its premiere in Berlin led to a riot as young fans from East Berlin, which was part of East Germany but was not yet separated from West Berlin by the Berlin Wall, stormed past the DDR Border Troops to see John Wayne.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: After Universal purchased the film rights in 1979, the studio released the film on DVD as part of their Vault Series on June 12, 2012.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: The film is listed in Golden Raspberry Award founder John Wilson's book "The Official Razzie Movie Guide" as one of the 100 Most Enjoyably Bad Movies Ever Made.


title: The Conqueror (1956 film)

text: The film was the eleventh most successful film at the North American box office in 1956, earning $4.5 million.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The Windrush scandal was a British political scandal which began in 2018 concerning people who were wrongly detained, denied legal rights, threatened with deportation, and in at least 83 cases wrongly deported from the UK by the Home Office. Many of those affected had been born British subjects and had arrived in the UK before 1973, particularly from Caribbean countries, as members of the "Windrush generation" (so named after the "Empire Windrush", the ship that brought one of the first groups of West Indian migrants to the UK in 1948).


title: Windrush scandal

text: As well as those who were deported, an unknown number were detained, lost their jobs or homes, had their passports confiscated, or were denied benefits or medical care to which they were entitled. A number of long-term UK residents were refused re-entry to the UK; a larger number were threatened with immediate deportation by the Home Office. Linked by commentators to the "hostile environment policy" instituted by Theresa May during her time as Home Secretary, the scandal led to the resignation of Amber Rudd as Home Secretary in April 2018 and the appointment of Sajid Javid as her successor. The scandal also prompted a wider debate about British immigration policy and Home Office practice.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The March 2020 independent "Windrush Lessons Learned Review" conducted by the inspector of constabulary concluded that the Home Office had shown "ignorance and thoughtlessness" and that what had happened had been "foreseeable and avoidable". It further found that immigration regulations were tightened "with complete disregard for the Windrush generation" and that officials had made "irrational" demands for multiple documents to establish residency rights.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Despite a compensation scheme being announced in December 2018, by November 2021, only an estimated 5% of victims had received any compensation and 23 of those eligible had died before receiving payments. Three separate Parliamentary committees had issued reports during 2021 criticising Home Office slowness and ineffectiveness in providing redress to victims and calling for the scheme to be taken out of the hands of the Home Office.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The British Nationality Act 1948 gave citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies status and the right of settlement in the UK to everyone who was at that time a British subject by virtue of having been born in a British colony. The act and encouragement from British government campaigns in Caribbean countries led to a wave of immigration. Between 1948 and 1970, nearly half a million people moved from the Caribbean to Britain, which in 1948 faced severe labour shortages in the wake of the Second World War. Those who came to the UK around this time were later referred to as "the Windrush generation". Working age adults and many children travelled from the Caribbean to join parents or grandparents in the UK or travelled with their parents without their own passports.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Having a legal right to come to the UK, they neither needed nor were given any documents upon entry to the UK, nor following changes in immigration laws in the early 1970s. Many worked or attended schools in the UK without any official documentary record of their having done so, other than the same records as any UK-born citizen.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Many of the countries from which the migrants had come became independent of the UK after 1948, thereby making those migrants citizens of the countries they formerly resided in. Legislative measures in the 1960s and early 1970s limited the rights of citizens of these former colonies, now members of the Commonwealth, to come to or work in the UK. Anyone who had arrived in the UK from a Commonwealth country before 1973 was granted an automatic right permanently to remain, unless they left the UK for more than two years. Since the right was automatic, many people in this category were never given, or asked to provide, documentary evidence of their right to remain at the time or over the next forty years, during which many continued to live and work in the UK, believing themselves to be British.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 specifically protected long-standing residents of the UK from Commonwealth countries from enforced removal. This provision was not transferred to 2014 immigration legislation because Commonwealth citizens living in the UK before 1 January 1973 were "adequately protected from removal", according to a Home Office spokesperson.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The hostile environment policy, which came into effect in October 2012, comprises administrative and legislative measures to make staying in the United Kingdom as difficult as possible for people without leave to remain in the hope that they may "voluntarily leave". In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May said the aim was to create "a really hostile environment for illegal immigrants". The policy was widely seen as part of a strategy of reducing UK immigration to the levels promised in the 2010 Conservative Party Election Manifesto. It introduced measures including a legal requirement for landlords, employers, the NHS, charities, community interest companies and banks to carry out ID checks and to refuse services to individuals unable to prove legal residence in the UK. Landlords, employers and others are liable to fines of up to £10,000 if they fail to comply with these measures.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The policy led to a more complicated application process for "leave to remain" and encouraged voluntary deportation. The policy coincided with sharp increases in Home Office fees for processing leave to remain, naturalisation and registration of citizenship applications. The BBC reported that the Home Office had made a profit of more than £800 million from nationality services between 2011 and 2017.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The term "hostile environment" had first been used under the Brown Government. On 25 April 2018, in answer to questions in Parliament during the Windrush scandal, then Prime Minister Theresa May said the hostile-environment policy would remain government policy.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In June 2020, Britain's human rights watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) launched a legal action to review the "hostile environment" immigration policy and to assess whether the Home Office had complied with its equality duties (as outlined in the Equality Act 2010). The EHRC planned to develop recommendations by September 2020. In November 2020, the EHRC said that the Home Office had broken the law by failing to obey public-sector equality duties by not considering how its policies affected black members of the Windrush generation.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The Home Office received warnings from 2013 onwards that many Windrush generation residents were being treated as illegal immigrants and that older Caribbean born people were being targeted. The Refugee and Migrant Centre in Wolverhampton said their caseworkers were seeing hundreds of people receiving letters from Capita, the Home Office's contractor, telling them that they had no right to be in the UK, some of whom were told to arrange to leave the UK at once. Roughly half the letters went to people who already had leave to remain or were in the process of formalising their immigration status. Caseworkers had warned the Home Office directly and also through local MPs of these cases since 2013. People considered illegal were sometimes losing their jobs or homes as a consequence of having benefits cut off and some had been refused medical care under the National Health Service, some placed in detention centres as preparation for their deportation, some deported or refused the right to return to the UK from abroad.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In 2013 Caribbean leaders had put the deportations on the agenda at the Commonwealth meeting in Sri Lanka and in April 2016 Caribbean governments told Philip Hammond, the UK Foreign Secretary, that people who had spent most of their lives in the UK were facing deportation and their concerns were passed on at the time to the Home Office. Shortly before the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in April 2018, twelve Caribbean countries made a formal request for a meeting with the British Prime Minister to discuss the issue, which was rejected by Downing Street.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In January 2018, the Home Affairs Select Committee issued a report which said the hostile environment policies were "unclear" and had seen too many people threatened with deportation based on "inaccurate and untested" information. The report warned that the errors being made, in one instance 10 per cent, threatened to undermine the "credibility of the system". A major concern voiced in the report was that the Home Office did not have means to evaluate the effectiveness of its hostile environment provisions and commented that there had been a "failure" to understand the effects of the policy. The report also noted that a shortage of accurate data about the scale of illegal immigration had allowed public anxiety about the issue to "grow unchecked", which, the report said, showed government "indifference" towards an issue of "high public interest".


title: Windrush scandal

text: A month before the report was published, more than 60 MPs, academics and campaign groups wrote an open letter to Amber Rudd urging the Government to halt the "inhumane" policy, citing the Home Office's "poor track record" of dealing with complaints and appeals in a timely manner.


title: Windrush scandal

text: From November 2017, newspapers reported that the British government had threatened to deport people from Commonwealth territories who had arrived in the UK before 1973 if they could not prove their right to remain in the UK. Although they were primarily identified as the "Windrush generation" and mainly from the Caribbean, it was estimated in April 2018 on figures provided by the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford that up to 57,000 Commonwealth migrants could be affected, of whom 15,000 were from Jamaica. In addition to those from the Caribbean, cases of people affected who had been born in Kenya, Cyprus, Canada and Sierra Leone were identified in the press.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The press coverage accused Home Office agencies of operating a "guilty until proven innocent" and "deport first, appeal later" regime; of targeting the weakest groups, particularly those from the Caribbean; of inhumanely applying regulations by cutting off access to jobs, services and bank accounts while cases were still being investigated; of losing large numbers of original documents that proved right to remain; of making unreasonable demands for documentary proof – in some instances, elderly people had been asked for four documents for each year they had lived in the UK; and of leaving people stranded outside the UK because of British administrative errors or intransigence and denial of medical treatment. Other cases covered in the press involved adults born in the UK, whose parents were "Windrush" immigrants and who had been threatened with deportation and had their rights removed, because they were unable to prove that their parents were legally in the UK at the time of their birth.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The Home Office and British government were further accused of having known about the negative impacts that the "hostile environment policy" was having on Windrush immigrants since as early as 2013 and of having done nothing to remedy them.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Those highlighting the issue included journalists Amelia Gentleman and Gary Younge, Caribbean diplomats Kevin Isaac, Seth George Ramocan and Guy Hewitt, and British politicians Herman Ouseley and David Lammy MP. Amelia Gentleman of "The Guardian" was later awarded the 2018 Paul Foot Award for her coverage of what the judges described as: "the catastrophic consequences for a group of elderly Commonwealth-born citizens who were told they were illegal immigrants, despite having lived in the UK for around 50 years".


title: Windrush scandal

text: In early March 2018, questions began to be asked in Parliament about individual cases that had been highlighted in the press. On 14 March, when Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn asked May about an individual who had been refused medical treatment under the NHS during Prime Minister's Questions in the House of Commons, May initially said she was "unaware of the case", but later agreed to "look into it". Parliament thereafter continued to be involved in what was increasingly being referred to as "the Windrush scandal".


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 16 April 2018, David Lammy MP challenged Amber Rudd in the House of Commons to give numbers as to how many had lost their jobs or homes, been denied medical care, or been detained or deported wrongly. Lammy called on Rudd to apologise for the threats of deportation and called it a "day of national shame", blaming the problems on the government's "hostile environment policy". Rudd replied that she did not know of any, but would attempt to verify that. In late April, Rudd faced increasing calls for her to resign and for the Government to abandon the "hostile environment policy". There were also calls for the Home Office to reduce fees for immigration services.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 2 May 2018, the opposition Labour Party introduced a motion in the House of Commons seeking to force the government to release documents to the Home Affairs Select Committee concerning its handling of cases involving people who came to the UK from Commonwealth countries between 1948 and the 1970s. The motion was defeated by 316 votes to 221.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 25 April, in answer to a question put to her by the Home Affairs Select Committee about deportation targets (i.e. specific numbers to meet), Rudd said she was unaware of such targets, saying "that's not how we operate", although another witness had discussed deportation targets. The following day, Rudd admitted in Parliament that targets had existed, but characterised them as "local targets for internal performance management" only, not "specific removal targets". She also claimed that she had been unaware of them and promised that they would be scrapped.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Two days later, "The Guardian" published a leaked memo that had been copied to Rudd's office. The memo said that the department had set "a target of achieving 12,800 enforced returns in 2017–18" and "we have exceeded our target of assisted returns". The memo added that progress had been made towards "the 10% increased performance on enforced returns, which we promised the Home Secretary earlier this year". Rudd responded by saying she had never seen the leaked memo, "although it was copied to my office, as many documents are".


title: Windrush scandal

text: The "New Statesman" said that the leaked memo gave, "in specific detail the targets set by the Home Office for the number of people to be removed from the United Kingdom. It suggests that Rudd misled MPs on at least one occasion". Diane Abbott MP called for Rudd's resignation: "Amber Rudd either failed to read this memo and has no clear understanding of the policies in her own department, or she has misled Parliament and the British people." Abbott also said, "The danger is that "(the)" very broad target put pressure on Home Office officials to bundle Jamaican grandmothers into detention centres".


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 29 April 2018, "The Guardian" published a private letter from Rudd to Theresa May dated January 2017 in which Rudd wrote of an "ambitious but deliverable" target for an increase in the enforced deportation of immigrants.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Later the same day (29 April 2018), Rudd resigned as Home Secretary, saying in her resignation letter that she had "inadvertently misled the Home Affairs Select Committee [...] on the issue of illegal immigration". Later that day, Sajid Javid was named as her successor.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Shortly before, Javid, while still Communities Secretary, had said in a "Sunday Telegraph" interview "I was really concerned when I first started hearing and reading about some of the issues ... My parents came to this country ... just like the Windrush generation ... When I heard about the Windrush issue I thought, 'That could be my mum, it could be my dad, it could be my uncle... it could be me.'"


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 30 April, Javid made his first appearance before Parliament as Home Secretary. He promised legislation to ensure the rights of those affected and said that the government would "do right by the Windrush generation". In comments seen by the press as distancing himself from Theresa May, Javid told Parliament that "I don't like the phrase hostile [...] I think it is a phrase that is unhelpful and it doesn't represent our values as a country".


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 15 May 2018, Javid told the Home Affairs Select Committee that 63 people had thus far been identified as having been possibly wrongly deported, though stating the figure was provisional and could rise. He also said that he had been unable to establish at that point how many Windrush cases had been wrongfully detained.


title: Windrush scandal

text: By late May 2018, the government had contacted 3 out of the 63 people possibly wrongly deported, and on 8 June, Seth George Ramocan, the Jamaican high commissioner in London said he had still not received either the numbers or the names of those people the Home Office believed they had wrongly deported to Jamaica, so that Jamaican records could be checked for contact details. By late June, long delays were being reported in processing "leave to remain" applications due to the large numbers of people contacting the Home Office. The Windrush hotline had recorded 19,000 calls up to that time, 6,800 of which were identified as potential Windrush cases. Sixteen hundred people had by then been issued documentation after having appointments with the Home Office.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Following complaints by ministers, the Home Office was reported in April 2018 to have set up an inquiry to investigate where the leaked documents that led to Rudd's departure came from.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 29 June 2018, the parliamentary Human Rights Select committee published a "damning" report on the exercise of powers by immigration officials. MPs and peers concluded in the report that there had been "systemic failures" and rejected the Home Office description of a "a series of mistakes" as not "credible or sufficient". The report concluded that the Home Office demonstrated a "wholly incorrect approach to case-handling and to depriving people of their liberty", and urged the Home Secretary to take action against the "human rights violations" occurring in his department. The committee had examined the cases of two people who had both twice been detained by the Home Office, whose detentions the report described as "simply unlawful" and whose treatment was described as "shocking". The committee sought to examine 60 other cases.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Harriet Harman MP and chair of the committee accused immigration officials of being "out of control", and the Home Office of being a "law unto itself". Harman commented that "protections and safeguards have been whittled away until what we can see now ... "[is]" that the Home Office is all powerful and human rights have been totally extinguished." Adding that "even when they're getting it wrong and even when all the evidence is there on their own files showing that they have no right to lock these people up, they go ahead and do it."


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 3 July 2018, the Home Affairs Select Committee (HASC) published a critical report which said that unless the Home Office was overhauled the scandal would "happen again, for another group of people". The report found that "a change in culture in the Home Office over recent years" had led to an environment in which applicants had been "forced to follow processes that appear designed to set them up to fail". The report questioned whether the hostile environment should continue in its current form, commenting that "rebranding it as the 'compliant' environment is a meaningless response to genuine concerns". (Sajid Javid had previously referred to the policy as the 'compliant' environment policy).


title: Windrush scandal

text: The report recommended that the Home Office should re-assess all hostile environment policies to evaluate their "efficacy, fairness, impact (both intended and unintended consequences) and value for money", as the policy placed "a huge administrative burden and cost on many parts of society, without any clear evidence of its effectiveness, but with numerous examples of mistakes made and significant distress caused".


title: Windrush scandal

text: The report made a series of recommendations designed to give the "Home Office a more human face". It also called for "passport fees to be abolished for Windrush citizens; for a return to face-to-face immigration interviews; for immigration appeal rights and legal aid to be reinstated; and for the net migration target to be dropped".


title: Windrush scandal

text: The report commented that they had hoped to uncover the extent of the impact on the Windrush generation, but that the government had "not been able to answer many of our questions … and we have not had access to internal Home Office papers". Commenting that it was "unacceptable that the Home Office still cannot tell us the number of people who have been unlawfully detained, were told to report to Home Office centres, who lost their jobs, or were denied medical treatment or other services."


title: Windrush scandal

text: The report also recommended extending the government compensation scheme to recognise "emotional distress as well as financial harm" and that the scheme should be open to Windrush children and grandchildren who had been adversely affected. The report reiterated its call for an immediate hardship fund for those in acute financial difficulty. Committee chair Yvette Cooper said the decision to delay hardship payments was "very troubling" and victims "should not have to struggle with debts while they are waiting for the compensation scheme".


title: Windrush scandal

text: The report also said that Home Office officials should have been aware of, and addressed, the problem much earlier. Cross-party MPs on the committee noted that the Home Office had taken no action during the months in which the issue had been highlighted in the press.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The Labour Party responded to the report by saying that "many questions remained unanswered by the Home Office". Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said it was a "disgrace" that the government had not yet published "a clear plan for compensation" for Windrush cases and that it had refused to institute a hardship fund, "even for people who have been made homeless or unemployed by their policies".


title: Windrush scandal

text: In response to questions from Parliamentary select committees, and questions asked in Parliament, the Home Office issued a number of replies during the scandal.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 28 June 2018, a letter to the HASC from the Home Office reported that it had "mistakenly detained" 850 people in the five years between 2012 and 2017. In the same five-year period, the Home Office had paid compensation of over £21m for wrongful detention. Compensation payments varied between £1 and £120,000; an unknown number of these detentions were Windrush cases. The letter also acknowledged that 23% of staff working within immigration enforcement had received performance bonuses, and that some staff had been set "personal objectives" "linked to targets to achieve enforced removals" on which bonus payments were made.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Figures released on 5 June by immigration minister Caroline Nokes revealed that in the 12 months prior to March 2018, 991 seats had been booked on commercial flights by the Home Office to remove people to the Caribbean who were suspected of being in the UK illegally. The 991 figure was not necessarily the number of deportations, as some removals may not have happened, and others may have involved multiple tickets for one person's flights. The figures did not say how many of the tickets booked were used for deportations. Nokes also said that in the two-year period from 2015 to 2017, the government had spent £52m on all deportation flights, including £17.7m on charter flights. Costs for the 12 months prior to March 2018 were not available.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In November 2018, in a monthly update to the Home Affairs Select Committee, Javid said there were 83 cases in which it had already been confirmed that people had been wrongfully deported, and officials feared there might be a further 81. At least 11 deportees had subsequently died.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In a report published in December 2018, the UK's National Audit Office found that the Home Office "failed to protect [the] rights to live, work and access services" of the Windrush scandal victims, had ignored warnings of the impending scandal, which had been raised up to four years earlier, and had still not adequately addressed the scandal.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Public outcry against the deportations caused them to be paused in 2018. However, in February 2019 it emerged that the Home Office intended to resume deportations. The news led to renewed outcries against the Home Office.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 5 February 2019, Javid claimed that all of the people due to be deported were guilty of "very serious crimes ... like rape and murder, firearms offences and drug-trafficking", but the claim was rebutted by the Home Office and was criticised by commentators as inaccurate and potentially detrimental to the futures of the deportees.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 21 February 2019, the Jamaican High Commissioner to the UK called for a halt to deportations to Jamaica until the Home Office has published its investigation into the Windrush scandal.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Amber Rudd, while still Home Secretary, apologised for the "appalling" treatment of the Windrush generation. On 23 April 2018, Rudd announced that compensation would be given to those affected and fees and language tests for citizenship applicants would be waived for this group in the future. Theresa May also apologised for the "anxiety caused" at a meeting with twelve Caribbean leaders, though she was unable to tell them "definitively" whether anyone had been wrongly deported. May also promised that those affected would no longer need to rely on providing formal documents to prove their history of residency in the UK, nor would they incur costs in getting necessary papers.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 24 May Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary, outlined a series of measures to process citizenship applications for people affected by the scandal. The measures included free citizenship applications for children who joined their parents in the UK when they were under 18 and for children born in the UK of Windrush parents, and free confirmation of right to remain for those entitled to it but currently outside the UK, subject to normal good character requirements. The measures were criticised by MPs, as they provided no right of appeal or review of decisions. Yvette Cooper, chair of the Commons Home Affairs Committee, said: "Given the history of this, how can anyone trust Home Office not to make further mistakes? If the Home Secretary is confident that senior caseworkers will be making good decisions in Windrush cases, he has nothing to fear about appeals and reviews." Javid also said that a Home Office team had identified 500 potential cases thus far.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In subsequent weeks, Javid also promised to provide figures on how many people had been wrongly detained and indicated that he did not believe in quantified targets for removals.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 21 May 2018, it was reported that many Windrush victims were still destitute, sleeping rough or on the sofas of friends and relatives while waiting for Home Office action. Many could not afford to travel to Home Office appointments if they got them. David Lammy MP described it as "yet another failure in a litany of abject failures that Windrush citizens are being left homeless and hungry on the streets." In late May and early June, there were calls from MPs for a hardship fund to be set up to meet urgent needs. By late June, it was reported that the government's two-week deadline for resolving cases has been repeatedly breached, and that many of the most serious cases still had not been addressed. Jamaican High Commissioner Seth George Ramocan said: "There has been an effort to correct the situation now that it has become so very open and public."


title: Windrush scandal

text: In August 2018 a compensation plan had still not been implemented. Examples cited included, a man who was still homeless while waiting for a decision; a former NHS nurse, Sharon, who told a caseworker, "I am not allowed to work, I have no benefits. I have a 12-year-old child." The caseworker replied, "Well I'm afraid these are the immigration rules... but obviously the Home Office point of view [is] if you don't have a legal status in the UK you're not entitled to work or study." Satbir Singh of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants stated, "It's appalling that the Home Office effectively told Sharon to go and beg for food, when there are laws requiring the state to act in the best interests of children, and provide financial support to children facing destitution." Also in August 2018, a caseworker for David Lammy, said: "We have referred 25 constituents to the Windrush taskforce in total. Only three have been granted their citizenship so far, and the others are left in a strange limbo … We still have some people who have not even got biometric residence permits and we alerted the Home Office to these people months ago."


title: Windrush scandal

text: In February 2019, the Home Office admitted that, although it had set up a hardship scheme in December 2018 for victims of the scandal, only one of the applicants to the scheme had thus far received any assistance. Also the compensation scheme promised by the Home Office in April 2018 was still not in place in February 2019.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In February 2020, government ministers were told that the number of people wrongly classified as illegal immigrants could be much greater than previously thought and that as many as 15,000 people could be eligible for compensation. Despite this, only 36 people's compensation claims had thus far been settled and only £62,198 has been paid out from a Home Office compensation pot which was expected to distribute between £200m and £570m.


title: Windrush scandal

text: By April 2020, the Windrush taskforce, which was set up to deal with applications from people who were wrongly categorised as illegal immigrants, still had 3,720 outstanding cases. 1,111 of these cases had yet to be considered, more than 150 of these had waited for over six months, and thirty-five had waited for over a year for a response. The Home Office revealed that it had thus far identified 164 people from Caribbean countries who it had wrongly detained or deported. Twenty-four people who had been wrongly deported had died before the UK government had been able to contact them, fourteen people who had been wrongly deported to the Caribbean, had thus far not been traced. Officials refused to attempt to trace people who had been wrongly deported to non-Caribbean Commonwealth countries. Up to that date thirty-five people had been granted "urgent and exceptional support" payments, totalling £46,795.


title: Windrush scandal

text: By October 2020, nine victims had died without receiving their compensation; many others had yet to receive compensation.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In November 2021, a report from the cross-party Home Affairs Select Committee found that the number of victims who had died without receiving compensation was at least twenty three and only an estimated 5% of Windrush victims had received compensation. Despite initial Home Office estimates of about 15,000 people being eligible, as of the end of September 2021 only 864 people had received any compensation. The Home Affairs Committee report identified a “litany of flaws in the design and operation” of the compensation scheme including an excessive burden on claimants to provide documentary evidence of the losses they suffered, long delays in processing applications and making payments, inadequate staffing of the scheme and a failure to provide urgent and exceptional payments to those in desperate need. It was “staggering” that the Home Office had failed to prepare for, resource and staff the Windrush compensation scheme before its launch, the report noted.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Other reports in 2021 from the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and the legal charity JUSTICE had all criticised the slowness and ineffectiveness of the compensation scheme and recommended that the scheme be taken out of the hands of the Home Office.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In June 2022, Home office figures showed that 7% of its original anticipated 15,000 claimants, and 25% of actual claimants had received any compensation up to that date. A further 25% of claims had been processed and rejected.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The only official records of the arrival of many "Windrush" immigrants in the 1950s through to the early 1970s were landing cards collected as they disembarked from ships in UK ports. In subsequent decades, these cards were routinely used by British immigration officials to verify dates of arrival for borderline immigration cases. In 2009, those landing cards were earmarked for destruction as part of a broader clean up of paper records. The decision to destroy was taken under the then-Labour government, but implemented in 2010 under the incoming coalition government. Whistleblowers and retired immigration officers claimed that they had warned managers in 2010 of the problems this would cause for some immigrants who had no other record of their arrival. During the scandal, there was discussion as to whether the destruction of the landing cards had negatively impacted Windrush immigrants.


title: Windrush scandal

text: The scandal drew attention to other issues relating to UK migration policy and practice, including treatment of other migrants, and of asylum seekers and what the status of EU nationals living in Britain would be after Brexit.


title: Windrush scandal

text: Stephen Hale of Refugee Action said, "All of the things those [Windrush] people have been through are also experiences that people are going through as result of asylum system". Some skilled workers had been threatened with deportation after living and working in the UK for over a decade because of minor irregularities in their tax returns, some were allowed to stay and fight deportation but prevented from working and denied access to the NHS while doing so. Sometimes the irregularities were due to the tax authorities, not the migrant.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In an interview with the BBC's Andrew Marr on 3 June, Sajid Javid said that key parts of the UK's immigration policy would be reviewed and that changes had already been made to the "hostile environment" approach to illegal immigration in the wake of the Windrush scandal.


title: Windrush scandal

text: On 19 March 2020, the Home Office released the "Windrush Lessons Learned Review". This study, described by the Home Secretary as "long-awaited", was an independent inquiry managed and conducted by Wendy Williams, an inspector of constabulary. The report concluded that the Home Office showed an inexcusable "ignorance and thoughtlessnes", and that what had happened had been "foreseeable and avoidable". It further found that immigration regulations were tightened "with complete disregard for the Windrush generation", and that officials had made "irrational" demands for multiple documents to establish residency rights. The study recommended a full review of the "hostile environment" immigration policy.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In March 2022, a progress report on the "Learned Review" concluded that the Home Office has broken pledges to transform its culture after the Windrush inquiry, warning that the scandal could be repeated. The report was also critical of the failure to review the effectiveness of the hostile environment policies – now known as “compliant environment” policies and of the slowness of the compensation scheme. A small poll of applicants for compensation found that 97% did not trust the Home Office to deliver on its commitments.


title: Windrush scandal

text: In June 2020, BBC Television screened an 85-minute, one-off drama, "Sitting in Limbo", starring Patrick Robinson as Anthony Bryan, who was caught up in the effects of the hostile environment policy.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: In a world very much like our own, great race horses of the past have a chance to be reborn as "horse girls"—girls with the ears and tails of horses as well as their speed and endurance. The best of these horse girls go to train at Tokyo's Tracen Academy, hopefully moving on to fame and fortune as both racers and idols.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: The first season features Special Week, a high school horse girl from the countryside, who has just transferred to Tracen. She's determined to fulfill her promise to her mother to become the best horse girl in Japan. On her way to school, she visits the race track and instantly falls in love with Silence Suzuka's style, becoming determined to race on the same team as her.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: The second season features Tokai Teio as the main character, and draws focus to other side characters such as Mejiro Mcqueen, Rice Shower, and Mihono Bourbon. Like the horse she is based upon, she suffers multiple injuries and struggles to remain one of the best racers.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: Most of the horse girls are named after famous legendary Japanese racehorses and are inspired by their careers and personalities. Each horse girl wears a ribbon or other accessory on one ear (or wears a hat that tilts toward one ear); if it's on the girl's right ear (viewer's left) then that girl's namesake was a stallion, or if it's on the girl's left ear (viewer's right) then her namesake was a mare.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: The game was announced in 2016. An animated trailer by P.A. Works debuted at that year's AnimeJapan event. It was set to be released in late 2018, but was delayed until its release on February 24, 2021. The PC version was released on March 10, 2021.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: A manga series titled , written by Katsumi Nakayama and illustrated by Huan Yu (ZECO), and titled , written and illustrated by Katsumi Nakayama, is serialized on Cygames' Cycomics website from May 8, 2016, to September 11, 2016. 10 episodes in total. This is a comedic story based on the true story of Haru Urara, with Haru Urara as the main character. The production was supported by Martha Farm, where the real Haru Urara lives the rest of her life, and the Kochi Prefecture Horse Racing Association.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: A manga series titled , written by Cygames and illustrated by S. Kosugi, began serialization on Cygames' Cycomics website on March 25, 2017. The manga has been compiled into six "tankōbon" volumes as of March 18, 2022.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: A four-panel manga series titled , written and illustrated by Jet Kuma, began serialization on Cygames' Cycomics website in March 2018.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: Another manga, titled , produced by Junnosuke Itō, written by Masafumi Sugiura and illustrated by Taiyō Kuzumi, began in Shueisha's "Weekly Young Jump" on June 11, 2020. The first collected "tankōbon" volume was released on January 19, 2021. As of August 2022, eight volumes have been released.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: Another manga, titled , written by Saki Monju and illustrated by Shin Hosaka, begin in Shueisha's "Shōnen Jump+", "Young Jump!" app and "Tonari no Young Jump" website in Spring 2023.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: A 13-episode anime television series adaptation by P.A. Works aired from April 2 to June 18, 2018, on Tokyo MX, with the first two episodes being broadcast back-to-back. Crunchyroll streamed the series. The anime is directed by Kei Oikawa at P.A. Works with scripts written by Masafumi Sugiura and Akihiro Ishihara. Utamaro Movement composed the music at Lantis. The series' opening theme is "Make Debut" and the ending theme is "Grow Up Shine!"; both are sung by Azumi Waki, Marika Kouno, Machico, Ayaka Ōhashi, Chisa Kimura, Hitomi Ueda, and Saori Ōnishi. A second season, with a returning cast and a new studio in Studio Kai, aired from January 5 to March 30, 2021. On February 22, 2022, a new animation "1st Anniversary Special Animation" was released on YouTube to commemorate the first anniversary of the game. This work is a continuation of TV anime season 2. A third season by Studio Kai was announced on November 6, 2022.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: A web animation YouTube channel titled was launched on March 25, 2018. The channel features the character Gold Ship.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: An anime television series based on the four-panel manga spinoff aired from July 7 to September 22, 2020. The series is directed by Seiya Miyajima at DMM.futureworks and W-Toon Studio. On December 8, 2021, a Blu-ray containing the main story, 12 episodes of the new OVA, and a manga tankōbon was released. A new short anime series titled was announced on May 5, 2022. It is animated by Scooter Films with Miyajima returning to direct and design the characters, with Seiichirō Mochizuki and Yumi Suzumori writing the screenplay. It premiered on YouTube on October 16, 2022.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: A new anime series titled was announced on May 4, 2022. It is animated by CygamesPictures. It will premiere on YouTube in Q2 2023.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: The mobile game, within ten months of release, grossed nearly in Japan by December 16, 2021. This makes it the world's ninth highest-grossing mobile game of 2021. The game grossed a total annual revenue of in 2021.


title: Uma Musume Pretty Derby

text: The manga spin-off, "Uma Musume Cinderella Grey", was nominated in the seventh Next Manga Awards in the Best Print Manga category and placed 2nd of 50 nominees.


title: Mike McGear

text: Peter Michael McCartney (born 7 January 1944), known professionally as Mike McGear, is an English performing artist and photographer who was a member of the groups the Scaffold and Grimms. He is the younger brother of former Beatle Paul McCartney.


title: Mike McGear

text: Michael and his brother Paul were both born in the Walton Centre in Walton, Liverpool, England, where their mother, Mary McCartney, had previously worked as a nursing sister in charge of the maternity ward. Michael was not enrolled in a Catholic school because his father, Jim McCartney, believed that they leaned too much towards religion instead of education. At age 17, McCartney started his first job at Jackson's the Tailors in Ranelagh Street, Liverpool. The year after, he took an apprenticeship at Andre Bernard, a ladies' hairdresser in the same street.


title: Mike McGear

text: At the time the Beatles became successful, Mike McCartney was working as an apprentice hairdresser, working alongside future actor Lewis Collins. Simultaneously, he was a member of the Liverpool comedy-poetry-music group The Scaffold (along with Roger McGough and John Gorman). The group formed in 1962 (the year of the Beatles' first hit). Mike decided to use a stage name, so as not to appear to be riding his brother's coattails. After first dubbing himself "Mike Blank", he settled on "Mike McGear", "gear" being the Liverpudlian equivalent of "fab". The band was subsequently signed to Parlophone.


title: Mike McGear

text: The Scaffold recorded a number of UK hit singles between 1966 and 1974, the most successful being the 1968 Christmas number one single, "Lily the Pink". McGear composed the band's next biggest hit, 1967's "Thank U Very Much". In 1968, he and McGough released a "duo" album ("McGough & McGear") that included the usual Scaffold mix of lyrics, poems, and comedy. The Scaffold ended up hosting a TV programme, "Score with the Scaffold", which limited the musical portion of their career, and they were dropped by Parlophone. McGear then signed to Island Records and released a solo musical album entitled "Woman" in 1972, which again included many tracks co-written with McGough, and The Scaffold subsequently released their own album on the label, "Fresh Liver".


title: Mike McGear

text: The Scaffold then added several other members and released two albums on Island in 1973 as Grimms (an acronym for Gorman-Roberts-Innes-McGear-McGough-Stanshall). However, McGear quit Grimms after the second album out of tension between himself and one of the poets added to the group.


title: Mike McGear

text: McGear then signed to Warner Bros. Records and in 1974 released his second non-comedy musical album, "McGear", in which he collaborated with his brother Paul and Paul's band Wings. Although four singles were released from these sessions, only "Leave It" enjoyed any moderate chart success (No. 36 UK). However, also recorded during McCartney's sessions with Wings was a Scaffold "reunion" song, "Liverpool Lou", which became The Scaffold's last top-ten hit. This led to the group's re-formation in 1974, and they recorded and performed together through to 1977.


title: Mike McGear

text: Individually, McGear released a few more singles. His final release, while still using the name Mike McGear, was the 1981 release "No Lar Di Dar (Is Lady Di)". This was a satirical tribute to Lady Diana Spencer, released at the time of her wedding to Prince Charles.


title: Mike McGear

text: In the 1980s, after retiring from music, Mike McCartney decided to end his use of the "McGear" pseudonym and revert to using his family name.


title: Mike McGear

text: McCartney was a photographer during his entire musical career, and has continued with photography since then. Beatles' manager Brian Epstein nicknamed him "Flash Harry" in the early 1960s because he was always taking pictures with a flash gun. He has published books of pictures that he took of the Beatles backstage and on tour and, in 2008, brought out a limited edition book of photos that he had taken spontaneously backstage at Live8. In 2005, McCartney premiered and exhibited a collection of photographs that he had taken in the 1960s, called "Mike McCartney's Liverpool Life", both in Liverpool and other venues, such as the Provincial Museum of Alberta. In addition, an exhibition book of the collection was published. He also took the cover photograph for Paul McCartney's 2005 solo album "Chaos and Creation in the Backyard".


title: Mike McGear

text: The McCartney brothers also have a sister named Ruth whom their father Jim adopted in 1964, when he married her mother Angela Williams. McCartney married Angela Fishwick in 1968. They later divorced. They have three daughters: Benna, Theran, and Abigail Faith. He later married Rowena Horne and they have three sons: Joshua, Max, and Sonny.


title: IWGP World Heavyweight Championship

text: The is a professional wrestling world heavyweight championship owned by the New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) promotion. "IWGP" is the acronym of NJPW's governing body, the . The championship was created on March 1, 2021 by the unification of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship and the IWGP Intercontinental Championship. The current champion is Jay White, who is in his first reign.


title: IWGP World Heavyweight Championship

text: In 2019, when he was IWGP Intercontinental Champion, Tetsuya Naito declared his intention of making history by becoming the first to hold the IWGP Heavyweight Championship and the Intercontinental Championship at the same time. By the end of the year, Jay White, who had won the Intercontinental Championship from Naito, and Kota Ibushi, who was the next challenger for the Heavyweight Championship, also expressed the same desire. After a fan vote, it was decided that Naito, White, Ibushi, and Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada would compete at Wrestle Kingdom 14 on January 4–5, 2020, where one would end up with both titles. Naito achieved the feat to become the first "Double Champion" and the two titles were defended together since (apart from one time). During 2020, Naito said his original intention was for the titles to be defended separately. He requested for this, or otherwise for the titles to be unified, but no change happened.


title: IWGP World Heavyweight Championship

text: After Ibushi won the titles from Naito at Wrestle Kingdom 15 on January 4, 2021, he expressed his desire for the titles to be unified. On March 1, 2021, with Ibushi still champion, the unification of the titles to create the new IWGP World Heavyweight Championship was officially announced, with Ibushi as the inaugural World Heavyweight Champion. After the announcement, Ibushi, who was scheduled to face El Desperado at the NJPW 49th Anniversary Show on March 4, 2021 in a non-title match, requested for the match to be for the Double Championship. His request was granted with the title unification delayed until after the match, of which the winner would be final Double Champion and, therefore, the inaugural World Heavyweight Champion. Ibushi won the match.


title: IWGP World Heavyweight Championship

text: With the announcement of the new championship was the announcement of a new championship belt. Until the new belt was ready, Ibushi continued to hold the old IWGP Heavyweight and IWGP Intercontinental Championship belts. The new belt was eventually revealed and presented to the champion Ibushi in a presentation ceremony on March 30, 2021. Its design incorporated the past belt designs of the two old titles.


title: IWGP World Heavyweight Championship

text: As of 28, 2022, there have been five reigns shared among five wrestlers with one vacancy. Kota Ibushi was the inaugural champion, had the shortest reign at 31 days, and is also the oldest champion, winning the title at 38 years and 255 days old. Will Ospreay was the youngest at 27. Shingo Takagi had the longest reign at 212 days and three successful title defenses.


title: IWGP World Heavyweight Championship

text: Jay White is the current champion in his first reign. He defeated Kazuchika Okada on June 12, 2022 at Dominion 6.12 in Osaka-jo Hall in Osaka, Japan.


title: Macross

text: Within the series, the term "Macross" is used to denote the main capital ship. This theme began in the original "Macross", the SDF-1 "Macross".


title: Macross

text: "Overtechnology" refers to the scientific advances discovered in an alien starship ASS-1 ("Alien Star Ship - One" later renamed "Super Dimension Fortress - One Macross") that crashed on "South Ataria" island. Humans were able to reverse engineer the technology to create the mecha (variable fighters and destroids), faster-than-light space fold drive for starships and other advanced technologies that the series features. The first TV series was adapted into the first season of "Robotech" in 1985, with edited content and a revised script.


title: Macross

text: The series title comes from the name of the main human spacecraft (which is usually shortened from "Super Dimension Fortress" to SDF-1 "Macross" as it is the first). The original name for the "Macross" project was "Battle City Megarodo" (or "Battle City Megaroad", as the Japanese transliteration to either "L" or "R" gives the title a double meaning in reference to the story line: "Megaload", referring to the spacecraft containing an entire city of people; and "Megaroad", referring to the long journey through space back to Earth); however, one of the sponsors of the project, Big West Advertising, was a fan of Shakespeare and wanted the series and the spacecraft to be named . A compromise was made with the title due to its similar pronunciation to "Macbeth" in Japanese and because it still contained connotations to the original title. The word "Macross" comes from a wordplay combination of the prefix "macro" in reference to its massive size in comparison to human vehicles (though when compared with the alien ships in the series, it is a relatively small gun destroyer) and the distance they must cross.


title: Macross

text: The following are themes commonly seen and established among the various series in the Macross franchise.


title: Macross

text: The is a fictional space military arm of the . It was established by the successor to the modern United Nations in order to defend Earth from a possible attack by hostile aliens, and was involved in Space War I against an extraterrestrial race called the Zentradi. Later operations of the U.N. Spacy expanded into interstellar colonization and general peacekeeping of off-world Earth settlements.


title: Macross

text: The term "Spacy" is a portmanteau of the terms "Space" and "Army" or "Navy". Some Japanese sources also use the term "Space Army" and some English-language sources use the term "Space Navy", suggesting that the term is a contraction.


title: Macross

text: A variable fighter (also known as a "veritech" fighter in the "Robotech" adaptation of the series), is one of a series of transformable aerospace fighters, primarily designed by franchise creator Shōji Kawamori and Kazutaka Miyatake. They are generally able to transform into jet/space fighters, a humanoid robot and a hybrid of the two modes, better known as Gerwalk (Guardian). The original VF-1 Valkyrie was actually named "Valkyrie", but the craft have generically been referred to as such in the series since then.


title: Macross

text: Music is integral part to almost every Macross title by having significances in a series' antagonists behavior towards it. Music idols also play a central role to various Macross stories. Often, the protagonist will be involved in a love triangle with a series' music idol; most notably, Lynn Minmay.


title: Macross

text: Space folding permits nearly-instantaneous ultra-long distance travel: a space-fold transports a spacecraft in a very short amount of time by first swapping the location of the spacecraft with "super dimension" space or subspace, and then swapping the "Super Dimension" space with the space at the destination.


title: Macross

text: According to U.N. Spacy First Lieutenant Hayase Misa during Space War I (2009–2012) an hour passes in super dimension space as approximately ten days passes in normal space. One of the latest "Macross" TV series, "Macross Frontier", further expands on that concept by introducing fold faults or dislocations, which further retard fold travel and interfere with fold communications. Also explained in "Macross Frontier" are the limitations of space folding, such as the geometric increase in energy requirement with the mass of the object to be folded, which prevents very large objects from being folded with ease across vast distances.


title: Macross

text: The act of entering "Super Dimension" space is called "fold in". When arriving at the destination, the act of leaving "Super Dimension" space is called a "defold" or a "fold out".


title: Macross

text: The metaplot of the franchise is centered on a purportedly extinct humanoid alien race called the . It was first conceptualized during the pre-production of "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross" when the creators were researching cultural studies to develop concepts used in the plot.


title: Macross

text: According to official sources, the Protoculture was the first advanced humanoid race in the universe—advanced Protoculture civilization started 500,000 years ago—and is the creator of the Zentradi and homo sapiens. Phases of colonization resulted in the establishment of an "Interstellar Republic", (similar to a galactic empire) which covers much of the Milky Way galaxy 2800 years after Protoculture civilization started (498,000 years ago).


title: Macross

text: A civil war happened sixty years later, resulting in a split in the Republic. One of the factions' created "super-Zentradi" forces, which was later possessed by interdimensional beings—these forces are later called the "Protodeviln", which feeds on life energy of both Protoculture and Zentradi; some of both the Protoculture and Zentradi was later brainwashed into the "Supervision Army".


title: Macross

text: The Supervision Army continued to battle both the Protoculture and Zentradi, which resulted in the dwindling of Protoculture population; they revoked the prime directive that banned Zentradi to attack the Supervision Army. This, however, made the war even more intense, and the Protoculture population sharply decreased; to avoid extinction, they seeded uninhabited planets by means of pantropy and avoided any conflict as much as possible. This action included the genetic engineering of homo sapiens on Earth by combining Protoculture genes with native genes; a "sub-Protoculture" race meant for preparing the Earth for a future Protoculture colonization. The genetic engineering crew, however, was immediately destroyed by anti-Interstellar Republic military ships.


title: Macross

text: The final blow of the war happened because of the Protoculture lost control of the Zentradi; 475,000 years ago, the Protoculture was believed extinct. However it was discovered that 10,000 years ago, the Protoculture remnants made contact with humans in "Mayan Island", genetically re-engineering the native inhabitants to utilize the artifacts left by them. This included the "Bird Human" bio-mecha, tasked to destroy humanity if they are still in war.


title: Macross

text: The franchise also explores minor themes including culture shock, capitalism, coming of age and nostalgia.


title: Macross

text: The new era following the end of Space War I is part of the ongoing fictional time-line of the "Macross" franchise. The most recent series, "Macross Delta", is set 59 years after the start of the war with the Zentradi. Its main plot is about the spread of a rage virus on a star system and the combined efforts of singing idols and valkyrie fighters to stop it spreading.


title: Macross

text: Along with "Gundam," a real robot mecha series of which Shoji Kawamori is a fan, "Macross" explored how individuals cope with warfare. Whereas "Gundam" is far more political and direct on the horrors of war, each "Macross" television series is unique for never depicting the antagonists as inherently evil and proved in the end that love, culture, and music can be used to resolve their conflicts.


title: Macross

text: Several sequel series and one prequel have followed. Most use a chronology created by the Studio Nue creators, and those that followed their own chronologies were regarded as "parallel storylines" by the studio. Several different studios were involved with Studio Nue in the Macross franchise along the years, but since 2002's "Macross Zero", production has been handled exclusively between Nue and Satelight, from which Shōji Kawamori is one of the main key members. The main of Macross production consists of (in chronological release order):


title: Macross

text: A feature film, subtitled "" (愛・おぼえていますか "Ai Oboete Imasu ka"), was released in 1984, with a condensed version of the storyline and cutting-edge animation. This movie was later described as a "historical drama" movie within the Macross universe (similar to World War II films in the real world). In "Macross Plus" and "Macross 7", it is revealed that there was a movie produced after Space War I (the original Earth-Zentradi conflict). Kawamori described the relation between the two depictions of Space War I: "The real Macross is out there, somewhere. If I tell the story in the length of a TV series, it looks one way, and if I tell it as a movie-length story, it's organized another way." (An edited, English-dubbed version of the feature was also released to video as "Clash of the Bionoids".)


title: Macross

text: "Macross II", the only animated project without Studio Nue's direct involvement, was declared by Studio Nue to be a parallel-world story.


title: Macross

text: In March 2007, Studio Victor placed a casting call for a voice actress to play the heroine, Ranka Lee, in a then untitled new Macross series. Eighteen-year-old Nakajima Megumi was selected in the nationwide singing and acting audition for the role of Ranka Lee in Japan. The project was given the tentative title of "Macross 25". Later, as part of the 25th anniversary concert, a trailer was shown that revealed the new tentative title of "Macross F (Frontier)". During the concert, Kawamori Shoji mentioned that the timeframe of "Macross Frontier" was about 2070 AD. Kawamori also announced that Yoko Kanno would be the music co-composer of the new Macross series. According to "Newtype" magazine, this new series were supposed to take place in a school. The pilot episode aired on December 23, 2007. The new series were finally set in the year 2059 AD and took place in a new Macross Colony Fleet called "Macross Frontier". The new show was produced by Satelight and its episodes began their regular broadcast on April 4, 2008, in MBS channel of Japan. The final episode aired on September 25, 2008, what brought the series to a total of 25 episodes. A "Macross Frontier Movie Edition" was announced just after the ending of the new TV animated series.


title: Macross

text: The Kanto area rerun of the "Macross Frontier" anime television series during early 2014 in Japan ended with a teaser announcement that a new "Macross" TV series is in the works, and later in the year was tentatively titled "Macross Δ (Delta)". Just like in Macross Frontier, a casting call was held for the series' main singer who also became part of the cast. The winner of the contest as well of the rest of the cast and characters were revealed in a special event held on October 29, 2015. A new "Macross" anime television series was to premiere in 2018, but still wasn't released (as of May 2021).


title: Macross

text: Several sequel series and prequels have followed in "Macross". The main "Macross" productions consists of (in fictional chronological timeline order):


title: Macross

text: Macross video games are based on its universe, sometimes expanding it with original characters and sidestories; latest games often include newly created anime footage, and all of them were exclusively released in Japan; except a Takatoku Toys handheld electronic game distributed by Incoming Trading, a Banpresto arcade game licensed by Fabtek, and a Bandai Visual PlayStation game whose debuted North American localization was eventually cancelled probably due to copyrights issues involving Harmony Gold.


title: Macross

text: See the list of "Macross" video games for all the official and crossover releases from the 1980s up to the 2010s.


title: Macross

text: Harmony Gold purchased the international distribution rights for the "Macross" series and between 1999 and 2003 filed trademarks on the distribution of "Macross" merchandise and media outside of Japan. Harmony Gold's international distribution rights are under dispute however as they bought the rights from the Japanese company, Tatsunoko Productions, which in a court ruling against companies, Studio Nue and Big West, was ruled to have only the rights to the international distribution of "The Super Dimension Fortress Macross" and no legal claim to the rest of the franchise; those belonging to the latter companies. Harmony Gold claims that the case does not apply to them since it occurred in Japan and does not apply to the international distribution rights. Harmony Gold continues to re-affirm their claim to the international distribution through cease and desist letters, resulting in later "Macross" series not being distributed outside of Japan.


title: Macross

text: On March 1, 2021, Big West, Studio Nue, and Harmony Gold have agreed to work together and distribute "Macross" properties outside Japan alongside "Robotech". The signed agreement also mentions that Big West will allow Harmony Gold to release their upcoming "Robotech" film in Japan.


title: Macross

text: "Macross" was the basis for the "Robotech" franchise in North America. "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" was adapted into the first saga of the "Robotech" television series (19851986), called "The Macross Saga", which spawned the "Robotech" franchise. "Robotech" was influential in the Western world, helping to introduce the anime medium to North America.


title: Macross

text: "Macross" popularized the concept of transforming mecha, which can transform between a standard vehicle (such as a fighter plane or transport truck) and a fighting mecha robot. Shōji Kawamori introduced the concept with "Diaclone" in 1980 and then popularized it with "Macross". Kawamori then went on to design transforming mecha for "Transformers" (1986). The transforming mecha concept became popular in the mid-1980s, with "" (1984) and "Zeta Gundam" (1985) in Japan, and with "Robotech" and "Transformers" in the West. "Transformers" went on to influence the Hollywood movie industry.


title: Macross

text: In contrast to earlier mecha anime which focused on combatants, "Macross" portrayed mecha conflict from the perspective of non-combatant civilians, such as the fictional singer Lynn Minmay. She went on to become the first virtual idol. Voiced by Mari Iijima, Minmay was the first fictional idol singer to garner major real-world success, with the theme song "Do You Remember Love?" (from the film "Macross: Do You Remember Love?") reaching number seven on the Oricon music charts in Japan. This was later further explored in "Macross Plus" with the virtual idol Sharon Apple, an artificial intelligence (AI) computer program who takes the form of an intergalactic pop star, and in "Macross 7" with the virtual band Fire Bomber who became a commercial success and spawned multiple CDs released in Japan. "Macross" set the template for later virtual idols in the early 21st century, such as Hatsune Miku and Kizuna AI.


title: Macross

text: Another innovative character concept in "Macross" was the role of Misa Hayase in "Super Dimension Fortress Macross" (called Lisa Hayes in "Robotech"), who was one of the main commanders of the Macross battleship. She was the boss and commanding officer of the fighter pilot protagonist Hikaru Ichijyo (called Rick Hunter in "Robotech"), and later his love interest. This was a scenario Kawamori came up with which he had not seen in any Hollywood movies before. A similar scenario, however, later appeared in the Hollywood movie "Top Gun" (1986). According to Kawamori, "Many people pointed out that later films like "Top Gun" copied that idea and setting, as well as including the combination of many songs and fighters too."


title: Amantadine

text: Amantadine, sold under the brand name Gocovri among others, is a medication used to treat dyskinesia associated with parkinsonism and influenza caused by type A influenzavirus, though its use for the latter is no longer recommended due to widespread drug resistance. It acts as a nicotinic antagonist, dopamine agonist, and noncompetitive NMDA antagonist. The antiviral mechanism of action is antagonism of the influenzavirus A M2 proton channel, which prevents endosomal escape (i.e. the release of viral genetic material into the host cytoplasm).


title: Amantadine

text: Amantadine was first used for the treatment of influenza A. After antiviral properties were initially reported in 1963, amantadine received approval for prophylaxis against the influenza virus A in 1976. However, amantadine-resistant influenza viruses were first reported during the 1980 influenza A epidemic and resistance frequency continued to rise into the early 2000s. Currently, amantadine is no longer recommended for the treatment of influenza A due to a high level of amantadine resistance among circulating influenza A viruses. In 1973, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved amantadine for use in the treatment of Parkinson's disease. In 2017, the extended release formulation was approved for use in the treatment of levodopa-induced dyskinesia. Off-label uses include improvement of fatigue in multiple sclerosis and accelerating the rate of functional recovery and arousal following a brain injury.


title: Amantadine

text: Amantadine has a mild side effect profile. Common neurological side effects include drowsiness, light headedness, dizziness, and confusion. Due to its effects on the central nervous system, it should not be combined with additional CNS stimulants or anticholinergic drugs. Amantadine is contraindicated in persons with end stage kidney disease, given that the drug is cleared by the kidneys. It should also be taken with caution in those with enlarged prostates or glaucoma, due to its anticholinergic effects. Live attenuated vaccines are contraindicated while taking amantadine, as it may limit the efficacy of the administered vaccine.