title: Pawnbroker

text: Some stores also slim down inventory by selling items to speciality retailers. A pawnshop in a low-income neighborhood that pays a customer $300 for a power amplifier with a used value of $2000 may find the unit hard to sell alongside much less expensive merchandise. They may sell the amplifier to a used audio equipment store whose customers expect higher-end equipment. Some pawnshops sell speciality items online, on eBay or other websites. A speciality item such as a high-end model railroad set may not sell in the store for its "blue book" value. On an online auction, it stands a good chance of bringing a good price.


title: Pawnbroker

text: Another growing trend in the industry is vehicle pawn or auto pawning. This form of pawnbroking works like a traditional pawn loan, however, these stores only accept vehicles as security. Many stores are also accepting "Title Loans", where a customer can pawn the ownership or "Title" documents of their vehicle. This essentially means that the pawnbroker owns the car while the customer continues to drive it, and the customer regain ownership once they pay back their loan.


title: Pawnbroker

text: While the main business activities of a pawnshop are lending money for interest based on valuable items that customers bring in, some pawnshops also undertake other business activities, such as selling brand-new retail items that are in demand in the neighborhood of the store. Depending on where a pawnshop is located, these other retail items may range from musical instruments to firearms. Some pawnbrokers also sell brand-new self-defense items such as pepper spray or stun guns.


title: Pawnbroker

text: Many pawnshops will also trade used items, as long as the transaction turns a profit for pawn shop. In cases where the pawnshop buys items outright, the money is not a loan; it is a straight payment for the item. On sales, the pawnshop may offer layaway plans, subject to conditions (down payment, regular payments, and forfeiture of previously paid amounts if the item is not paid off).


title: Pawnbroker

text: Some pawnshops may keep a few unusual, high value items on display to capture the interests of passersby, such as a vintage Harley Davidson motorcycle; the owner is not typically expecting to sell these items. Other activities carried out by pawnshops are financial services including fee-based check cashing, payday loans, vehicle title or house title loans, and currency exchange services.


title: Pawnbroker

text: Upscale pawnshops began to appear in the early 20th century, often referred to as "loan offices", since the term “pawn shop” had a very negative historical reputation at this point. Some of these so-called loan offices are even located in the upper floors of office buildings. The modern euphemism for the upscale pawn shop is the "high-end collateral lender", lending to upper-class often white-collar individuals, including doctors, lawyers and bankers, as well as more colorful individuals like high-rolling gamblers. They are also interchangeably called "upscale pawnshops" and "high-end pawnshops" due to their acceptance of higher value merchandise in exchange for short-term loans. These objects can include wine collections, jewelry, large diamonds, fine art, cars, and unique memorabilia. Loans are often sought to deal with business revenue shortfalls and other expensive fiscal issues. Upscale pawnshops have also been featured in reality television.


title: Pawnbroker

text: In the US, there are over 11,000 pawnbrokers and an industry revenue of $14.5 billion. The US industry serves 30 million customers.


title: Pawnbroker

text: The pawnbrokers' symbol is three spheres suspended from a bar. The three sphere symbol may be indirectly attributed to the Medici family of Florence, Italy, owing to its symbolic meaning in heraldry. This refers to the Italian region of Lombardy, where pawn shop banking originated under the name of Lombard banking. It has been conjectured that the golden spheres were originally three flat yellow effigies of bezants, or gold coins, laid heraldically upon a sable field, but that they were converted into spheres to better attract attention.


title: Pawnbroker

text: Most European towns called the pawn shop the "Lombard". The Lombards were a banking community in medieval London, England. According to legend, a Medici employed by Charlemagne slew a giant using three bags of rocks. The three-ball symbol became the family crest. Since the Medicis were so successful in the financial, banking, and moneylending industries, other families also adopted the symbol. Throughout the Middle Ages, coats of arms bore three balls, orbs, plates, discs, coins and more as symbols of monetary success.


title: Pawnbroker

text: Saint Nicholas is the patron saint of pawnbrokers. The symbol has also been attributed to the story of Nicholas giving a poor man's three daughters each a bag of gold so they could get married.


title: Pawnbroker

text: In Hong Kong the practice follows the Chinese tradition, and the counter of the shop is typically higher than the average person for security. A customer can only hold up his hand to offer belongings and there is a wooden screen between the door and the counter for customers' privacy. The symbol of a pawn shop in Hong Kong is a bat holding a coin (, Cantonese: "fūk syú diu gām chín"). The bat signifies fortune and the coin signifies benefits. In Japan, the usual symbol for a pawn shop is a circled number seven because "shichi", the Japanese word for seven, sounds similar to the word for "pawn" ().


title: Pawnbroker

text: The majority of pawnbrokers in Malaysia, a multi-race country wherein Malaysian Chinese consists 25% of the population, are managed by Malaysian Chinese. In Malay, pawn is called "pajak gadai". A valid and licensed pawnshop in Malaysia must always declare themselves as a "pajak gadai" or a pawn shop for their company registration. They must also fulfill the requirements of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government which states the pawn counter must not be higher than 4 feet, is bullet-proof, has stainless-steel counters/doors, strong rooms with automatic locks, safes, equipped with fully computerized system, CCTV, alarm, and pawnbroker insurance.


title: Pawnbroker

text: In the Philippines, pawnshops are generally privately-owned businesses and are regulated by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP). Pawnshops in the country traditionally have Spanish names beginning with "Agencia de Empeños" (lit. "Pawn agency"), contrary to "Casa de Empeños" in Spain and Latin America. Most pawnshops accept jewelry, vehicles or electronic valuables as collateral. They also offer various forms of other finance-related services such as remittance, bills payment and microfinancing. Therefore, they serve as financial one stop shops primarily to communities in which alternatives such as banks are not available. Recently, they have also started conducting services online and through mobile applications although this is yet subject to regulation by the BSP.


title: Pawnbroker

text: In India, the Marwari Jain community pioneered the pawnbroking business, but today others are involved; the work is done by many agents called "saudagar". Instead of working from a shop, they go to needy people's homes and motivate them to become involved in the business. Pawn shops are often run as part of jewelry stores. Gold, silver, and diamonds are frequently accepted as collateral.


title: Pawnbroker

text: Pawnbroking is also a traditional trade in Thailand, where pawn shops are run both privately and by local governments.


title: Pawnbroker

text: In Sri Lanka, pawnbroking is a lucrative business engaged in by specialized pawnbrokers as well as commercial banks and other finance companies.


title: Pawnbroker

text: In Indonesia, there is a state-owned company called Pegadaian which provides a range of conventional and Sharia-compliant pawnbroking services across the archipelago. The company accepts high-value items such as gold, motor vehicles, and other expensive items as collateral. In addition to pawnbroking activities, the company provides a range of other services, such as a safe deposit box and gold trading services.


title: Bumfights

text: Bumfights is a video series produced by Indecline Films. The debut release titled "Bumfights Vol. 1: A Cause for Concern" features primarily high school fights caught on tape and homeless men (most notably Rufus Hannah and Donnie Brennan) in the San Diego, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas metropolitan areas attempting amateur stunts in a style inspired by the popular MTV series "Jackass". It was produced by Ryen McPherson, with friends Zachary Bubeck, Daniel J. Tanner, and Michael Slyman, as Indecline Films. Contrary to its title, the video does not depict homeless men actually fighting, but instead a compilation of street fights caught on tape and homeless men performing in skits and stunts.


title: Bumfights

text: The video series immediately garnered criticism. In April 2006, the four original filmmakers agreed not to produce any more "Bumfights" videos or distribute videos already made, and to pay three homeless men depicted in the videos, under a settlement announced shortly before a lawsuit was due to go to trial.


title: Bumfights

text: By June 2002, 250,000 copies were reported sold for $22 each, according to "Wired" magazine. Community complaints led to the police investigating if any laws were broken by producers. Advocacy groups were critical of the film.


title: Bumfights

text: The videos were originally produced in the early 2000s. The notorious videos had gained such popularity, that by 2002, there were large volumes of sales and merchandise. Around that time, the four original founders sold the business to two Las Vegas businessmen, who went by the pseudonyms Ty Beeson and Ray Leticia for $1.5 million USD. Beeson and Leticia released the three follow videos, volumes 2 - 4, including footage that was provided as part of their purchase of the business.


title: Bumfights

text: Ryen McPherson moved on to produce a similar reality video called "Indecline: Vol. 1—It's Worse Than You Think". Though controversial for its fight footage and acts of elaborate graffiti art, legal troubles did not hinder the sales of this video, although the website went offline in June 2008. The Indecline web site went back online in November 2008.


title: Bumfights

text: Phil McGraw, host of the talk show "Dr. Phil" invited one of the creators of "Bumfights", Ty Beeson, on to the show on December 12, 2006. Beeson attended the interview dressed in a Dr. Phil costume, nearly identical to Dr. Phil himself. After playing some snippets from the "Bumfights" videos to the audience, Dr. Phil stated that he was disgusted and kicked the "Bumfights" representative off even before the interview started, with security removing Beeson from the stage. While briefly onstage, Beeson critiqued what he perceived as Dr. Phil's hypocrisy; being outraged over their exploitation of the poor while he himself exploited people in duress for entertainment on his show. Dr. Phil revealed in the next segment he himself had been homeless. McPherson and Slyman later claimed that the man who appeared on the show was not Beeson, but in fact someone impersonating him, organized by the real Beeson and Leticia.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The basket-hilted sword is a sword type of the early modern era characterised by a basket-shaped guard that protects the hand. The basket hilt is a development of the quillons added to swords' crossguards since the Late Middle Ages.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The basket-hilted sword was generally in use as a military sword, in contrast with the rapier, the slim duelling sword worn with civilian dress during the same period, although each did find some use in both military and civilian contexts. A further distinction applied by arms historians and collectors is that a true broadsword possesses a double-edged blade, while similar wide-bladed swords with a single sharpened edge and a thickened back are called backswords. Various forms of basket-hilt were mounted on both broadsword and backsword blades.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: One of the weapon types in the modern German dueling sport of ("academic fencing") is the basket-hilted .


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The basket-hilted sword is a development of the 16th century, rising to popularity in the 17th century and remaining in widespread use throughout the 18th century, used especially by heavy cavalry up to the Napoleonic era.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: One of the earliest basket-hilted swords was recovered from the wreck of the Mary Rose, an English warship lost in 1545. Before the find, the earliest positive dating had been two swords from around the time of the English Civil War. At first the wire guard was a simple design but as time passed it became increasingly sculpted and ornate.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The basket-hilted sword was a cut and thrust sword which found the most use in a military context, contrasting with the rapier, the similarly heavy, thrust-oriented sword most often worn with civilian dress which evolved from the "espada ropera" or "spada da lato" type during the same period. The term "broadsword" was used in the 17th and 18th centuries, referring to double-edged basket-hilted swords. The term was introduced to distinguish these cut and thrust swords from the smaller and narrower smallsword.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: By the 17th century there were regional variations of basket-hilts: the Walloon hilt, the Sinclair hilt, schiavona, mortuary sword, Scottish broadsword, and some types of eastern European pallasches.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The mortuary and claybeg variants were commonly used in the British isles, whether domestically produced or acquired through trade with Italy and Germany. They also influenced the 18th-century cavalry sabre.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: During the 18th century, the fashion of duelling in Europe focused on the lighter small sword, and fencing with the broadsword came to be seen as a speciality of Scotland. A number of fencing manuals teaching fencing with the Scottish broadsword were published throughout the 18th century.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: Descendants of the basket-hilted sword, albeit in the form of backswords with reduced "half" or "three-quarter" baskets, remained in use in cavalry during the Napoleonic era and throughout the 19th century, specifically as the 1796 Heavy Cavalry Sword, the Gothic Hilted British Infantry Swords of the 1820s to 1890s, the 1897 Pattern British Infantry Officer's Sword and as the Pattern 1908 and 1912 cavalry swords down to the eve of World War I. One of the last active use of the scottish broadsword in war was in World War II by Major Jack Churchill.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The Schiavona was a Renaissance sword that became popular in Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. Stemming from the 16th-century sword of the Balkan mercenaries who formed the bodyguard of the Doge of Venice, the name came from the fact that the guard consisted largely of the "Schiavoni", Istrian and Dalmatian Slavs. It was widely recognizable for its "cat's-head pommel" and distinctive handguard made up of many leaf-shaped brass or iron bars that were attached to the cross-bar and knucklebow rather than the pommel.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: Classified as a true broadsword, this war sword had a wider blade than its contemporary civilian rapiers. While a rapier is primarily a thrusting sword, a schiavona is a cut and thrust sword that has extra weight for greater penetration. It was basket-hilted (often with an imbedded quillon for an upper guard) and its blade was double edged. A surviving blade measures 93.2 cm × 3.4 cm × 0.45 cm and bears two fullers or grooves running about 1/4 the length of the blade. Weighing in at around 1.1 kg, this blade was useful for both cut and thrust.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The schiavona became popular among the armies of those who traded with Italy during the 17th century and was the weapon of choice for many heavy cavalry. It was popular among mercenary soldiers and wealthy civilians alike; examples decorated with gilding and precious stones were imported by the upper classes to be worn as a combination of fashion accessory and defensive weapon.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: A similar weapon was the cut-and-thrust mortuary sword which was used after 1625 by cavalry during the English Civil War. This (usually) two-edged sword sported a half-basket hilt with a straight blade some 90–105 cm long. These hilts were often of very intricate sculpting and design.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: After the execution of King Charles I (1649), basket-hilted swords were made which depicted the face or death mask of the "martyred" king on the hilt. These swords came to be known as "mortuary swords", and the term has been extended to refer to the entire type of Civil War–era broadswords by some 20th-century authors.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: This sword was Oliver Cromwell's weapon of choice; the one he owned is now held by the Royal Armouries, and displayed at the Tower of London. Mortuary swords remained in use until around 1670 when they fell out of favor among civilians and began to be replaced with the smallsword.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: A common weapon among the clansmen during the Jacobite rebellions of the late 17th and early 18th centuries was the Scottish basket hilted broadsword, commonly known as claidheamh mor or claymore meaning "great sword" in Gaelic. Some authors suggest that claybeg should be used instead, from a purported Gaelic claidheamh beag "small sword". This does not parallel Scottish Gaelic usage. According to the Gaelic Dictionary by R. A. Armstrong (1825), claidheamh mór "big/great sword" translates to "broadsword", and claidheamh dà làimh to "two-handed sword", while claidheamh beag "small sword" is given as a translation of "Bilbo".


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The "Sinclair Hilt" is the name given by Victorian antiquarians, in the late 19th century, to Scandinavian swords that "bear a certain resemblance" to swords used in the Scottish Highlands in the 17th and 18th centuries. They named the sword for George Sinclair, a Scottish mercenary who died in Sweden (d. 1612).


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The so-called walloon sword ("épée wallone") or haudegen (hewing sword) was common in Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands and Scandinavia in the Thirty Years' War and Baroque era. The historian and sword typologist Ewart Oakeshott proposed an English origin for this type of sword, with subsequent development in the Netherlands and Germany.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: Basket-hilted rapiers and sword-rapiers, characterised by pierced shell-guards, made during the same period are known as Pappenheimer rapiers.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: The Walloon sword was favoured by both the military and civilian gentry. A distinctive feature of the Walloon sword is the presence of a thumb-ring, and it was therefore not ambidextrous. The most common hilt type featured a double shell guard and half-basket, though examples exist with hand protection ranging from a shell and single knuckle-bow to a full basket. The hilt may have influenced the design of 18th century continental hunting hangers.


title: Basket-hilted sword

text: Following their campaign in the Netherlands in 1672 (when many of these German-made swords were captured from the Dutch), the French began producing this weapon as their first regulation sword. Weapons of this design were also issued to the Swedish army from the time of Gustavus Adolphus until as late as the 1850s.


title: Recurve bow

text: In archery, a recurve bow is one of the main shapes a bow can take, with limbs that curve away from the archer when unstrung. A recurve bow stores more energy and delivers energy more efficiently than the equivalent straight-limbed bow, giving a greater amount of energy and speed to the arrow. A recurve will permit a shorter bow than the simple straight limb bow for given arrow energy, and this form was often preferred by archers in environments where long weapons could be cumbersome, such as in brush and forest terrain, or while on horseback.


title: Recurve bow

text: Recurved limbs also put greater stress on the materials used to make the bow, and they may make more noise with the shot. Extreme recurves make the bow unstable when being strung. An unstrung recurve bow can have a confusing shape and many Native American weapons, when separated from their original owners and cultures, were incorrectly strung backwards and destroyed when attempts were made to shoot them. A test performed by Hepworth and Smith in 2002 of a preparation manufactured from bovine tendon and pearl glue and used in traditional Asiatic recurve bows showed that the composite "was found to absorb 18 MJ/m of energy to failure, comparable to carbon fibre composites, spring steel and butyl rubber."


title: Recurve bow

text: Recurve bows made out of composite materials were used by, among other groups, the Persians, Parthians, Sarmatians, Scythians, Alans, Dacians, Cumans, Hyksos, Magyars, Huns, Bulgars, Greeks, Turks, Mongols, Koreans and Chinese.


title: Recurve bow

text: Perhaps the most ancient written record of the use of recurved bows is found Psalm 78:57 ("They were turned aside like a deceitful bow" KJV), which is dated by most scholars to the eighth century BC.


title: Recurve bow

text: 19th century Bible scholar Adam Clarke pointed out that "If a person, who is unskillful or weak, attempt to recurve and string one of these bows, if he take not great heed, it will spring back, and regain its quiescent position; and, perhaps, break his arm. And sometimes I have known it, when bent, to start aside, - regain its quiescent position, to my no small danger... this is precisely the kind of bow mentioned by Homer, Odyssey xxi, which none of Penelope's suitors could bend, called καμπυλα τοξα ['] in the state of rest; but τοξον παλιντονον ['], the recurved bow when prepared for use."


title: Recurve bow

text: The standard weapon of Roman imperial archers was a composite recurve, and the stiffening laths (also called siyah in Arabic/Asian bows and "szarv" (horns) in Hungarian bows) used to form the actual recurved ends have been found on Roman sites throughout the Empire, as far north as Bar Hill Fort on the Antonine Wall in Scotland.


title: Recurve bow

text: The Turkish archer used recurve bows, which were manufactured from laminates of wood glued with animal tissue like horn and sinew, to great destructive effect during the reign of the Ottomans.


title: Recurve bow

text: Its use by the Mongol horde allowed massed individuals on horseback to raid from the Pacific to central Europe, thanks to the relatively short length of recurve bows, with which archers could maneuver while seated on their mount. The rise of the Mongols can be partially attributed to the good range and power of the bows of Genghis Khan's hordes. These bows were made of a bamboo core, with horn on the belly (facing towards the archer) and sinew on the back, bound together with animal glue.


title: Recurve bow

text: During the Middle Ages composite recurve bows were used in the drier European countries because the laminate glue would not moisten and thereby lose its adhesive power; the all-wooden straight longbow was the normal form in wetter areas. Recurve bows depicted in the British Isles (see illustrations in "The Great War Bow") may have been composite weapons, or wooden bows with ends recurved by heat and force, or simply artistic licence.


title: Recurve bow

text: Recurve bows went out of widespread use in warfare with the greater availability of effective firearms in various nations at the end of the 19th century.


title: Recurve bow

text: Self bows, composite bows, and laminated bows using the recurve form are still made and used by bowyers, amateurs, and professional archers.


title: Recurve bow

text: The unqualified phrase "recurve bow" or just "a recurve" in modern archery circles usually refers to a typical modern recurve bow, as used by archers in the Olympics and many other competitive events. It employs advanced technologies and materials. The limbs are usually made from multiple layers of fibreglass, carbon and/or wood on a core of carbon foam or wood. The riser (the centre section of the bow) is generally separate and is constructed from wood, carbon, aluminium alloy or magnesium alloy. The term 'riser' is used because, in a one-piece bow, the centre section rises from the limbs in a taper to spread the stress. Several manufacturers produce risers made of carbon fibre (with metal fittings) or aluminium with carbon fibre. Risers for beginners are usually made of wood or plastic. The synthetic materials allow economic, predictable manufacture for consistent performance. The greater mass of a modern bow is in itself an aid to stability, and therefore to accuracy. However, accuracy is also related to a bow's draw weight, as well as how well an archer handles it. It is therefore imperative for an archer, particularly a beginner, never to overestimate their capabilities, and to choose a draw weight that is appropriate for their body build and level of experience.


title: Recurve bow

text: The modern recurve is the only form of bow permitted in the Olympics (though the compound bow is permitted in some categories at the Paralympic Games) and is the most widely used by European and Asian sporting archers.


title: Recurve bow

text: There is a movement to have future Olympic Games include the compound bow in competition, due to its framework technology being more available and widespread, which would make competitive stat-tracking and testing easier.


title: Recurve bow

text: The modern Olympic-style recurve is a development of the American flatbow, with rectangular-section limbs that taper towards the limb tips. Most recurves today are "take-down" bows; that is, the limbs can be detached from the riser, for ease of transportation and storage as well as interchangeability. Older recurves and some modern hunting recurves are one-piece bows. Hunters often prefer one-piece bows over take-down bows, because the limb pockets on take-down bows can make unwanted noise while drawing.


title: School of Rock (TV series)

text: School of Rock is an American musical-comedy television series developed by Jim Armogida and Steve Armogida that premiered on Nickelodeon on March 12, 2016. It ran for three seasons, with its final episode airing on April 8, 2018. The series is based on the 2003 film of the same name and stars Breanna Yde, Ricardo Hurtado, Jade Pettyjohn, Lance Lim, Aidan Miner, Tony Cavalero, and Jama Williamson.


title: School of Rock (TV series)

text: Set in Austin, Texas, the series follows a group of rule-abiding students who learn to take risks and reach new heights thanks to substitute teacher Dewey Finn, a down-on-his-luck musician who uses the language of rock and roll to inspire his class to form a secret band. Throughout the school year, these middle-school classmates find themselves navigating relationships, discovering their unknown talents and learning lessons on loyalty and friendships.


title: School of Rock (TV series)

text: In August 2014, Nickelodeon announced a TV series adaptation of "School of Rock", and the cast was revealed in March 2015. On April 5, 2016, Nickelodeon announced that "School of Rock" had been renewed for a 13-episode second season, and actress Breanna Yde announced on her Twitter account that production of season two began April 24, 2016. In April 2016, Jama Williamson was promoted to the regular cast for the series' second season. The second season premiered on Nickelodeon on September 17, 2016. Nickelodeon renewed the series for a 20-episode third season on December 2, 2016. The third season premiered on July 8, 2017. On November 15, 2017, Nickelodeon announced that the third season would be the last. Tony Cavalero reported on social media that the series finale was airing on April 8, 2018. The last episode of the third season as well as the series aired on April 8, 2018.


title: NBC Sports

text: NBC Sports is an American programming division of the broadcast network NBC, owned and operated by NBC Sports Group division of NBCUniversal and subsidiary of Comcast. The division is responsible for sports broadcasts on the network, and its dedicated national sports cable channels. Formerly operating as "a service of NBC News", it broadcasts a diverse array of sports events, including Major League Baseball, the French Open, the Premier League, the IndyCar Series, NASCAR, the National Football League (NFL), Notre Dame Fighting Irish college football, the Olympic Games, professional golf,the Tour de France and Thoroughbred racing, among others. Other programming from outside producers – such as coverage of the Ironman Triathlon – is also presented on the network through NBC Sports. With Comcast's acquisition of NBCUniversal in 2011, its own cable sports networks were aligned with NBC Sports into a part of the division known as the NBC Sports Group.


title: NBC Sports

text: In 2000, NBC declined to renew its broadcast agreement with Major League Baseball. In 2002, it was additionally outbid by ESPN and ABC for the National Basketball Association's new broadcast contract, ending the league's twelve-year run on NBC.


title: NBC Sports

text: During this era, NBC experimented with broadcasting emerging sports. In 2001, the network partnered with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) to establish the XFL – a new football league which introduced modified rules and debuted to tremendous, but short-lived fanfare, only lasting one season (NBC shared broadcast rights to the league's games, which were mainly held on Saturday nights, with UPN). In 2003, NBC obtained the broadcast rights and a minority interest in the Arena Football League. The network televised weekly games on a regional basis, as well as the entire playoffs. The deal lasted four years, after which the league and NBC parted ways.


title: NBC Sports

text: Beginning with the 1999 NASCAR Winston Cup Series, NBC began its foray into NASCAR. NBC, along with Fox and TNT, obtained the broadcast rights of the top two series – the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series – in a six-year deal, beginning in 2001. NBC televised the second half of the season and alternated coverage of the Daytona 500 with Fox. In December 2005, NBC announced that it would not renew its agreement with NASCAR. In 2001, NBC obtained the broadcast rights to horse racing's Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing in a five-year deal.


title: NBC Sports

text: In 2004, NBC reached a broadcast agreement with the National Hockey League (NHL). The revenue-sharing deal called for the two sides to split advertising revenue after the network recouped the expenses. Games were supposed to begin airing on the network during the 2004–05 season, however a league lockout that resulted in the cancellation of that season delayed the start of the contract until the second half of the 2005–06 NHL season. NBC televised regular season games at first on Saturday afternoons before moving the telecast to Sundays, Saturday and Sunday afternoon playoff games, and up to five games of the Stanley Cup. Additionally in 2008, NBC broadcast the 2008 NHL Winter Classic, an outdoor NHL game played on New Year's Day at Ralph Wilson Stadium, a success in attendance and television ratings. The following year's Winter Classic would become the most-watched regular season game in 34 years. In addition to this regular season success, Game 7 of the 2009 Stanley Cup Final was watched by an average of 8 million viewers, the highest ratings for an NHL game in 36 years.


title: NBC Sports

text: The NFL also returned to NBC in 2006 after an eight-year hiatus, broadcasting the league's new flagship "Sunday Night Football" game, along with select postseason games and Super Bowls XLIII, XLVI, XLIX, LII, LVI and LX.


title: NBC Sports

text: In January 2011, Comcast finalized its acquisition of a majority share in NBC Universal. As a result of the merger, the operations of Comcast's existing sports networks, such as Golf Channel and NBCSN, were merged into an entity known as the NBC Sports Group. NBC Sports' senior vice president Mike McCarley additionally became Golf Channel's new head. NBC Sports' golf production unit was merged with Golf Channel, along with NBC's on-air staff, with that unit rebranding under the banner "Golf Channel on NBC", while Versus was reformatted toward a more mainstream audience, renamed the NBC Sports Network and eventually rebranded as NBCSN.


title: NBC Sports

text: The merger also helped influence an extension of NBC Sports' contract with the NHL; the 10-year deal – valued at close to $2 billion, unified the cable and broadcast television rights to the league and introduced a new "Black Friday" "Thanksgiving Showdown" game on NBC, along with national coverage for every game in the Stanley Cup playoffs. On July 3, 2011, ESPN obtained the exclusive broadcast rights to The Championships, Wimbledon in a 12-year deal, ending NBC's television relationship with The Championships after 42 years.


title: NBC Sports

text: From 2012 until 2015, Major League Soccer games were shown on NBC and the NBC Sports Network. This included the broadcast of two regular season games, two playoff games, and two national team matches on NBC and 38 regular season games, three playoff games, and two national team matches on NBC Sports Network. Since the 2013–14 season NBC Sports has also held the rights to televise Premier League soccer in English (primarily on NBCSN) and Spanish (on Telemundo and Universo), through a $250 million deal, replacing ESPN and Fox Soccer as the league's U.S. broadcasters.


title: NBC Sports

text: NBC Sports held broadcast rights to the Formula One (formerly held by Speed and Fox Sports) from 2013 until 2017. The majority of its coverage (including much of the season, along with qualifying and practice sessions) aired on NBCSN, while NBC aired the Monaco Grand Prix, Canadian Grand Prix and the final two races of the season, which in the first year of the deal included the United States Grand Prix. All races were also streamed online and through the NBC Sports Live Extra mobile app. They lost the broadcast rights to ESPN beginning from the 2018 season.


title: NBC Sports

text: On March 18, 2013, nearly all of the operations for NBC Sports and NBCSN began to be based out of a purpose-built facility in Stamford, Connecticut. The move was made mainly to take advantage of tax credits given by the state of Connecticut, which NBC has taken advantage of previously with the tabloid talk shows of its NBCUniversal Television Distribution. Only "Football Night in America" remained in New York City, at NBC Studios, until September 7, 2014, when production of that program also moved to Stamford.


title: NBC Sports

text: NASCAR returned to NBC Sports properties in 2015 under a ten-year deal, with NBC once again airing the second half of the NASCAR Cup Series and NASCAR Xfinity Series seasons. While no specific financial details were disclosed, NBC reportedly paid 50% more than ESPN and TNT (who took over the portion of the season previously held by NBC) combined under the previous deal.


title: NBC Sports

text: In May 2015, NBCUniversal announced the formation of NBC Deportes (later renamed Telemundo Deportes), which serves as a Spanish language branch of NBC Sports for Telemundo and NBC Universo.


title: NBC Sports

text: On June 7, 2015, amid its loss of rights to the USGA's championships to Fox (including the U.S. Open), NBC Sports and The R&A agreed to a twelve-year deal to televise The Open Championship, Senior Open Championship, and Women's British Open on NBC and Golf Channel, beginning in 2017. Existing rightsholder ESPN opted out of its final year of its agreement for the tournaments, with the Open subsequently debuting a year early in 2016.


title: NBC Sports

text: Universal Sports ceased operations in November 2015. NBCUniversal acquired the rights to the content that was previously held by Universal Sports Network. Much of the programming moved to either Universal HD, NBCSN and NBC Sports Live Extra.


title: NBC Sports

text: From 2016 until 2018, NBC Sports held the rights to Premiership Rugby, the top division of English rugby union, through a three-year deal. The contract included up to 24 regularly-scheduled games on NBCSN per-season, and up to 50 streaming. Its first live match was on March 12, 2016, when London Irish hosted Saracens F.C. at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, New Jersey.


title: NBC Sports

text: In June 2016, NBC Sports launched NBC Sports Gold, a suite of sport-specific over-the-top subscription services that would included expanded and overflow coverage of its properties.


title: NBC Sports

text: On July 15, 2017. NBCUniversal relaunched Universal HD as Olympic Channel, a network that would carry Olympic sports programming as a complement to its long-standing agreement to cover the Games.


title: NBC Sports

text: In early 2018, it was announced that NBC Sports would renew its contract with the IndyCar Series (continuing a relationship with NBCSN which began in 2009 as Versus), through 2021, and acquire the broadcast television rights previously held by ABC. NBC televises eight races per-season since 2019, including the series flagship Indianapolis 500, with the remaining races airing on NBCSN as before. An IndyCar package is also offered through NBC Sports Gold. Shortly after, NBC announced a six-year agreement with the International Motor Sports Association beginning in 2019, including the WeatherTech SportsCar Championship, with the majority of coverage on NBCSN.


title: NBC Sports

text: Following the launch of NBCUniversal's streaming service Peacock, NBC Sports began to migrate some of its overflow content (including the Premier League and other NBC Sports Gold services) to the service. On June 29, 2020, Fox sold the last seven years of its contract to air USGA tournaments to NBC, regaining rights to the U.S. Open for the first time since 2015.


title: NBC Sports

text: In January 2021, it was reported that NBCUniversal planned to shut down NBCSN by the end of the year; an internal memo cited increased competition from streaming services and the other mainstream sports networks as reasoning.


title: NBC Sports

text: NBC's contract with the NHL expired after the 2020–21 season, with the league signing new contracts with ESPN and TNT.


title: NBC Sports

text: On December 31, 2021, NBCUniversal shut down NBCSN; its remaining programming rights were moved to other NBCUniversal platforms, particularly USA Network and Peacock.


title: NBC Sports

text: On April 6, 2022, NBC Sports announced a deal to carry a package of Sunday afternoon MLB games on Peacock beginning in the 2022 season. On July 1, 2022, NBC Sports announced that Olympic Channel would shut down as a linear channel on September 30, 2022.


title: NBC Sports

text: On August 18, 2022, NBC Sports announced a seven-year deal to carry Big Ten Conference college athletics across its platforms beginning in the 2023–24 academic season. This contract will most notably include a new package of primetime Big Ten college football games on NBC beginning in the 2023 season, as well as a package of college basketball and Olympic sports coverage on Peacock.


title: NBC Sports

text: In 1964, NBC televised the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo; in 1972, NBC televised the 1972 Winter Olympics for the first time. 1980 would prove to be a stinging disappointment for the network; after contentious negotiations, NBC won the broadcast rights to the 1980 Summer Olympics. After the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the United States and 64 other countries boycotted the event. NBC substantially scaled back its coverage and lost heavily in advertising revenue. In 1988, NBC televised the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. Since then, it has branded itself as "America's Olympic Network", televising every Summer Olympic Games since the Seoul event, as well as every Winter Olympic Games since 2002 Winter Olympics. In total, NBC has aired 13 Summer and Winter Olympics, the most by any one U.S. network. The Olympic Games have also become an integral part of the network, despite some recurring controversy over its method of broadcast delaying events in part to take advantage of a wider national audience in prime time.


title: NBC Sports

text: The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver were watched by a total of 190 million viewers, including 27.6 million viewers of the gold medal game in men's hockey.


title: NBC Sports

text: During the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, over 500 hours of the games were broadcast across five NBC-owned television channels (NBC, NBCSN, CNBC, MSNBC and USA Network), with 1,000 hours being streamed digitally. In January, the company announced some exclusive digital-only streaming of the 2014 Olympics via the NBCOlympics.com website and the NBC Sports Live Extra app for Android and iOS, including exclusive content such as Gold Zone, Olympic Ice and NBC's Olympic News Desk.


title: NBC Sports

text: With the premiere of "Sunday Night Football", NBCUniversal hired Troika Design Group to design an overall visual identity for its coverage, including branding, on-air graphics, and other visual elements.


title: NBC Sports

text: Concurrent with the relaunch of Versus as NBC Sports Network on January 2, 2012, and the 2012 NHL Winter Classic, NBC Sports also launched a comprehensive redesign of its branding, including a new on-air graphics design built around the NBC peacock, and an updated logo for the division as a whole (replacing a logo that had been in use since 1989). The new design was also intended to be modular, allowing it to be expanded for use in larger events across multiple networks (such as the Super Bowl and the Olympic Games). A refreshed design for on-air graphics was introduced on January 1, 2015 (in time for the 2015 NHL Winter Classic and NFL playoffs), with a cleaner and brighter visual appearance.


title: NBC Sports

text: NBC began using dedicated graphics packages specifically for "Sunday Night Football" during Super Bowl LII, and unveiled a second redesign for the 2022 season during Super Bowl LVI. NBC similarly diverged for its Premier League coverage in 2019, adopting elements of its new British sibling Sky Sports.


title: Percy Sledge

text: Percy Tyrone Sledge (November 25, 1940 – April 14, 2015) was an American R&B, soul and gospel singer. He is best known for the song "When a Man Loves a Woman", a No. 1 hit on both the "Billboard" Hot 100 and R&B singles charts in 1966. It was awarded a million-selling, Gold-certified disc from the RIAA.


title: Percy Sledge

text: Having previously worked as a hospital orderly in the early 1960s, Sledge achieved his strongest success in the late 1960s and early 1970s with a series of emotional soul songs. In later years, Sledge received the Rhythm and Blues Foundation's Career Achievement Award. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2005.


title: Percy Sledge

text: Sledge was born on November 25, 1940, in Leighton, Alabama. He worked in a series of agricultural jobs in the fields in Leighton, before taking a job as an orderly at Colbert County Hospital in Sheffield, Alabama. Through the mid-1960s, he toured the Southeast with the "Esquires Combo" on weekends, while working at the hospital during the week. A former patient and mutual friend of Sledge and record producer Quin Ivy introduced the two. An audition followed, and Sledge was signed to a recording contract.


title: Percy Sledge

text: Sledge's soulful voice was perfect for the series of soul ballads produced by Ivy and Marlin Greene, which rock critic Dave Marsh called "emotional classics for romantics of all ages". "When a Man Loves a Woman" was Sledge's first song recorded under the contract, and was released in March 1966. According to Sledge, the inspiration for the song came when his girlfriend left him for a modelling career after he was laid off from a construction job in late 1965, and, because bassist Calvin Lewis and organist Andrew Wright helped him with the song, he gave all the songwriting credits to them. It reached No. 1 in the US and went on to become an international hit. "When a Man Loves a Woman" was a hit twice in the UK, reaching No. 4 in 1966 and, on reissue, peaked at No. 2 in 1987. The song was also the first gold record released by Atlantic Records. The soul anthem became the cornerstone of Sledge's career, and was followed by "Warm and Tender Love" (covered by British singer Elkie Brooks in 1981), "It Tears Me Up", "Take Time to Know Her" (his second biggest US hit, reaching No. 11; the song's lyric was written by Steve Davis), "Love Me Tender", and "Cover Me".


title: Percy Sledge

text: Sledge charted with "I'll Be Your Everything" and "Sunshine" during the 1970s, and became an international concert favorite throughout the world, especially in the Netherlands, Germany, and on the African continent; he averaged 100 concerts a year in apartheid-era South Africa.


title: Percy Sledge

text: Sledge's career enjoyed a renaissance in the 1980s when "When a Man Loves a Woman" re-entered the UK Singles Chart, peaking at No. 2 behind the reissued Ben E. King classic "Stand by Me", after being used in a Levi's commercial. In the early 1990s, Michael Bolton brought "When a Man Loves a Woman" back into the limelight again on his hit album "Time, Love, & Tenderness". On the week of November 17 to November 23, 1991, Bolton's version also hit No. 1 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 singles chart, exactly 25½ years to the week after Percy's did in 1966.


title: Percy Sledge

text: In 1994, Saul Davis and Barry Goldberg produced Sledge's album, "Blue Night," for Philippe Le Bras' Sky Ranch label and Virgin Records. It featured Bobby Womack, Steve Cropper, and Mick Taylor among others. "Blue Night" received a Grammy nomination for Best Contemporary Blues Album, Vocal or Instrumental, and in 1996 it won the W.C. Handy Award for best soul or blues album.


title: Percy Sledge

text: In 2004, Davis and Goldberg also produced the "Shining Through the Rain" album, which preceded his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Songs on the CD were written by Mikael Rickfors, Steve Earle, the Bee Gees, Carla Olson, Denny Freeman, Allan Clarke and Jackie Lomax. The same year Percy recorded a live album with his band Sunset Drive entitled "Percy Sledge and Sunset Drive – Live in Virginia" on WRM Records produced by Warren Rodgers.


title: Percy Sledge

text: In May 2007, Percy was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame in his home city of Baton Rouge, LA.


title: Percy Sledge

text: In December 2010, Rhino Handmade issued a four-CD retrospective, "The Atlantic Recordings", which covers all of the issued Atlantic masters, as well as many of the tracks unissued in the United States (although some were simply the mono versions of songs originally issued in stereo; Disc 1 comprises Sledge's first two LPs which were not recorded on stereo equipment). In 2011 Sledge toured with Sir Cliff Richard during his Soulicious tour, performing "I'm Your Puppet".


title: Percy Sledge

text: Sledge married twice and was survived by his second wife, Rosa Sledge, whom he married in 1980. He had 12 children, three of whom became singers.


title: Percy Sledge

text: Sledge died of liver cancer at his home in Baton Rouge on April 14, 2015, at the age of 74. His interment was in Baton Rouge's Heavenly Gates Cemetery.


title: Percy Sledge

text: Sledge is sometimes cited as the inspiration behind the Australian language term "to sledge", meaning "to put someone off their game", first used in Test cricket, though the phrase more probably derives from "subtle as a sledgehammer".


title: Fred Meyer

text: Fred Meyer is an American chain of hypermarket superstores founded in 1922 in Portland, Oregon, USA, by Fred G. Meyer. The stores are found in the northwest U.S., within the states of Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Alaska. The company merged with Kroger in 1998, though the stores are still branded Fred Meyer. The chain was one of the first in the United States to promote one-stop shopping, eventually combining a complete grocery supermarket with a drugstore, bank, clothing, jewelry, home decor, home improvement, garden, electronics, restaurant, shoes, sporting goods and toys. The western region of Kroger corporation is headquartered in Portland.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1922, the first Fred Meyer store opened in Portland at the corner of SW 5th & Yamhill. The store combined separate shops under one roof such as meat, produce, cheese, and other merchandise. Mr. Meyer’s vision was to give customers more reasons to shop in his store than in any other.


title: Fred Meyer

text: The first suburban one-stop shopping center opened in 1931 in the Hollywood District of Portland, a neighborhood he deliberately chose through an application of market research: he would pay customers' overtime parking tickets that they incurred while shopping at his downtown store, just to obtain their home addresses. The store's innovations included a grocery store alongside a drugstore plus home products, off-street parking, gas station, and eventually, clothing. Fred G. Meyer would base store locations on planned highway construction.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1951, the Fred Meyer Company built a large warehouse near Providence Portland Medical Center in Laurelhurst, despite complaints and controversy from neighbors and the city council. Neighbors did not want large truck volume in their city, but the area was already zoned for industrial and commercial east of 44th Avenue. The huge warehouse was built to the detriment of the Banfield Expressway, built in Sullivan's Gulch less than five years later. The warehouse had to be condemned and partially destroyed for the freeway, with the state highway commission selling the remaining sections to the Bemis Company. The Fred Meyer Company moved to Swan Island on land formerly occupied by wartime housing for Kaiser Shipyards.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In the 1960s, Fred Meyer entered the Seattle market by acquiring Seattle-based Marketime Drugs. Fred Meyer also acquired a Spokane-based grocery wholesaler, The Roundup Company. Roundup owned no stores in Spokane but owned Kalispell, Montana-based B&B stores in northwest Montana and Consumer Warehouse Foods in Soap Lake, Washington.


title: Fred Meyer

text: By March 1968, Fred Meyer, Inc., was operating in four states Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana and had 48 retail stores. Later in 1968, the first full-fledged Fred Meyer in the Seattle area opened, in Lynnwood, Washington. It was the largest Fred Meyer for about a decade.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1973, Fred Meyer acquired all five Oregon stores of the Valu-Mart discount chain (formerly known as Villa-Mart in Oregon) from its parent company, Seattle-based Weisfield's, Inc. The following year, Weisfield's leased its remaining stores (renamed "Leslie's"), in 1975. According to an article published in the business section of "The Seattle Times" on August 10, 1975, Fred Meyer signed long-term leases with most of the 21 Weisfield's-owned stores (Tacoma and Everett locations were not acquired). Some of the properties may have been purchased by Fred Meyer at the time in the Oregon market but Weisfield's maintained existing leases on properties in the Seattle/Tacoma market since leases for the grocery sections (leased to Associated Grocers in 1973) and other smaller businesses within the stores were kept. Kroger acquired these properties from Weisfield's during the 1990s and 2000s. Some of these properties such as the Greenwood and Midway locations were demolished to rebuild the locations. In 1975, Fred Meyer opened its first stores in Alaska as a result of acquiring Leslie's/Valu-Mart and changed the Leslie's/Valu-Mart stores to the Fred Meyer banner. As Fred Meyer became better known in the Seattle area, the Marketime Drug chain became known as Fred Meyer-Marketime. While Fred Meyer was building new stores in Washington state some smaller discount stores in the state would lease a portion of their stores to Fred Meyer as well such as The Hi-Ho Shopping Center in Puyallup and the Yard Birds Shopping Center in Centralia.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In January 1976, as part of a pressure campaign to support the eight-lane design of I-205, businessman Fred G. Meyer announced plans to build a Fred Meyer store and motel in the Gateway area.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1977, Marketime was renamed Fred Meyer. In the mid-1980s, the northwest Montana B&B stores also acquired the Fred Meyer name.


title: Fred Meyer

text: On September 2, 1978, Fred G. Meyer died at the age of 92. Until his death, Mr. Meyer had continued to play an active role in the day-to-day operation of his company. Also in 1978, "Fortune" placed Fred Meyer as the 45th largest retail company by sales. The chain had over $1 billion in sales in 1979.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1981, the company was purchased by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts in what was one of KKR's first major leveraged buyouts. As of May 1988, the chain had 99 stores in six states.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1984, Fred Meyer acquired Grand Central of Salt Lake City, Utah. The Grand Central stores in Utah and Idaho were converted to Fred Meyer stores, although most did not receive full supermarket departments until the mid-1990s.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In the 1990s Fred Meyer expanded into California by opening a store in Chico. Plans had been made to open a store in Redding and expand into Sacramento with several sites having been acquired. Eventually, the Chico location was closed and sold, and the Sacramento sites sold; the Redding site eventually became a Wal-Mart store in 1996.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1997, Fred Meyer acquired Smith's Food and Drug of Salt Lake City, though both companies maintained separate operations. The same year, Fred Meyer acquired Ralphs of Los Angeles, California, and QFC of Seattle. Both acquisitions also maintained separate operations with Fred Meyer as the holding company. In that fast string of mergers, Fred Meyer quickly became the nation's fifth largest food and drug store operator.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1997, Fred Meyer converted its Columbia Falls and Kalispell stores into Smith's Food & Drug Stores and closed its Polson location. In 2001, the Kalispell store was demolished and replaced with a newer Smiths location adjacent to the older, obsolete store. The Columbia Falls store retained the Fred Meyer decor (with Smith's logos over the old Fred Meyer logos) but only contained a grocery department, with none of the other departments or product offerings.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 1998, Fred Meyer merged with Kroger of Cincinnati, Ohio. Before the company's merger, it traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol FMY.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 2000, the Arizona Fred Meyer stores, all of which were formerly Smith's stores that Fred Meyer acquired in the Smith's merger, were re-branded as Fry's Marketplace.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 2004, Smith's Food and Drug assumed the operations of the Utah Fred Meyer stores, which were re-branded as Smith's Marketplace. Also, since the acquisition of the Fred Meyer Company, Kroger has been unifying standards across the company, adopting many of the Fred Meyer store standards, and implementing their own standards to the Fred Meyer stores. Kroger and Fred Meyer stores are slowly becoming more similar in management and merchandising.


title: Fred Meyer

text: Additionally, one Fred Meyer in Seattle in the Capitol Hill neighborhood merged its operations with QFC which had a grocery store across the street from the Broadway Market. This particular Fred Meyer, probably the smallest one in the chain, had only personal care and home health items, along with general merchandise, but no food or apparel. This store is now a QFC Marketplace, the only one of its kind, but it is not signed as such.


title: Fred Meyer

text: On March 16, 2018, Fred Meyer notified that it had decided to stop selling guns and ammunition to people under the age of 21.


title: Fred Meyer

text: Fred Meyer employs Kroger's manufacturing by adding its own private label brands alongside national brand products. Aside from products labeled "Kroger" or "Fred Meyer", one might also find the following brands at a Fred Meyer store: Kivu Coffee (locally roasted in Portland, OR & Seattle, WA), Country Oven, Everyday Living (and the more upscale eL²), F•M•V ("For Maximum Value") is now Kroger value, Moto Tech, Private Selection, HD Designs, Dip, Kidz Korner, Splash Spa, Simple Truth, Psst, Homesense, and Naturally Preferred. Former brands associated with Fred Meyer were My-Te-Fine, President's Choice, Fred Bear, F. G. Meyer First Choice, Personal Choice, and Perfect Choice.


title: Fred Meyer

text: On May 4, 2004, Fred Meyer introduced Fred Meyer Rewards, a program that rewards customers for shopping in their stores. To participate, a customer completes a registration form and receives three purple cards (a credit card-sized card and two key tags). When the program was introduced, participating customers received one point for every $5 they spent in a single transaction (transactions totaling under $5 did not receive a point). If a customer earned 100 points (spending at least $500) during a 13-week rewards cycle, they would receive about $5 in rebate vouchers. The rewards mailer also typically included percentage discount coupons on specific items.


title: Fred Meyer

text: On April 29, 2007, the company revised the program somewhat, simultaneously with the launch of their Fred Meyer Rewards MasterCard. Effective on that date (which was the beginning of a 13-week cycle), customers receive a point for each dollar spent, but the value of each point decreased proportionally, and a customer must earn 500 points in a 13-week rewards cycle to receive a rebate voucher. Customers who use the MasterCard version of Rewards earn double points at Fred Meyer (2 points per dollar spent), and single points everywhere else where MasterCard is accepted (1 point per dollar spent).


title: Fred Meyer

text: In 2011, the company switched from MasterCard to Visa, which uses the same points format as the MasterCard program. In addition to reward points, Visa rewards cardholders receive 15 cents off fuel per 100 fuel points.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In August 2020, Fred Meyer revised the program to match other Kroger divisions. The card is now required to purchase items in the store at sale prices.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In July 2010, Fred Meyer announced that effective August 1, it would no longer offer plastic bags at any of its 10 Portland stores, due to their negative environmental impacts. Until the City of Portland banned the use of plastic bags in grocery and certain big box stores in October 2011, Fred Meyer was the largest retail chain in the Portland metropolitan area to adopt such a policy. A spokesperson indicated that an increasing number of the chain's customers have been choosing to use reusable bags, noting that Fred Meyer's own sales of such bags at its check stands had increased 30 percent from 2008 to 2009. During the COVID-19 pandemic, baggers were still able to bag with paper bags, but customers with reusable bags were advised they would have to bag on their own.


title: Fred Meyer

text: In March 2018, Fred Meyer announced it would cease the sale of all firearms and ammunition to people under the age of 21, as a response to the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. Later that month, it was announced that the ban would be extended to sales of firearms in general. Additionally, the company will stop selling magazines that feature "assault rifles," although the company did not specify how it would screen publications.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The Bojinka plot (; ) was a large-scale, three-phase terrorist attack planned by Ramzi Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed for January 1995. They planned to assassinate Pope John Paul II; blow up 11 airliners in flight from Asia to the United States with the goal of killing approximately 4,000 passengers and shutting down air travel around the world; and crash a plane into the headquarters of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in Fairfax County, Virginia.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Despite careful planning, the Bojinka plot was disrupted after a chemical fire drew the attention of the Philippine National Police – Western Police District (PNP-WPD, now known as Manila Police District PNP-MPD) on January 6–7, 1995. Yousef and Mohammed were unable to stage any of the three attacks. The only fatality resulted from a test bomb planted by Yousef on Philippine Airlines Flight 434, which killed one person and injured 10 others. They also planted two other bombs in a shopping mall and theater in the southern Philippines. Elements of the Bojinka plot (including the plan to crash a plane into the CIA headquarters) would be later used in the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, six years later.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The plot is also known as Oplan Bojinka, Operation Bojinka, Project Bojinka, and Bojinga. FBI officials described Operation Bojinka as "48 hours of terror".


title: Bojinka plot

text: Several news media outlets, including "Time Asia", incorrectly stated that the word "Bojinka" means "loud bang" or "explosion" in the Serbo-Croatian language. Endnote 7 of Chapter 5 of the "9/11 Commission Report" states that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed "says bojinka is not Serbo-Croatian for 'big bang', as has been widely reported, but rather a nonsense word he adopted after hearing it on the front lines in Afghanistan."


title: Bojinka plot

text: Funding for the Bojinka plot came from Osama bin Laden and Hambali, and from front organizations operated by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, bin Laden's brother-in-law.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Wali Khan Amin Shah was the financier of the plot. He funded the plot by laundering money through his girlfriend and other Manila women, several of whom were bar hostesses and one of whom was an employee at a KFC restaurant. They were bribed with gifts and holiday trips so that they would open bank accounts to stash funds.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The transfers were small, equivalent to about 12,000 to 24,000 Philippine pesos ($500 to $1,000 US), and would be handed over each night at a Wendy's or a karaoke bar. The funds went to "Adam Sali", an alias used by Ramzi Yousef. The money came through a Filipino bank account owned by Jordanian Omar Abu Omar, who worked at International Relations and Information Centre, an Islamic organization run by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa.


title: Bojinka plot

text: A company called Konsojaya also provided financial assistance to the Manila cell by laundering money to it. Konsojaya was a front company that was started by the head of the group Jemaah Islamiyah, an Indonesian named Riduan Isamuddin, also known as Hambali. Wali Khan Amin Shah was on the board of directors of the company.


title: Bojinka plot

text: As soon as Yousef arrived in Manila, along with other "Arab Afghans" who were creating cells in Manila, he began work making bombs. Yousef had shown up in Singapore with Shah earlier in the autumn of 1994. The two got their Philippine visas in Singapore.


title: Bojinka plot

text: He left Manila for several days, but was met by Islamist emissaries upon his return to Metro Manila. They asked him to attack United States President Bill Clinton, who was due to arrive in the Philippines on November 12, 1994, as part of a five-day tour of Asia. Yousef thought of several ways to kill the president, including placing nuclear bombs on Clinton's motorcade route, firing a Stinger missile at Air Force One or the presidential limousine, launching theater ballistic missiles at Manila and or killing him with phosgene, a chemical weapon. He abandoned the idea, as it would be too difficult to kill the President. However, he incorporated his plan to kill the Pope into the Bojinka plot.


title: Bojinka plot

text: In 1994, Yousef and Khalid Sheik Mohammed started testing airport security. Yousef booked a flight between Kai Tak International Airport in Hong Kong and Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport near Taipei. Mohammed booked a flight between Ninoy Aquino International Airport near Manila and Kimpo International Airport near Seoul. The two had already converted 14 bottles of contact lens solution into bottles containing nitroglycerin, which was readily available in the Philippines. Yousef had taped a metal rod to the arch of his foot, which would serve as a detonator. The two wore jewelry and clothing with metal to confuse airport security. To support their claim that they were meeting women, they packed condoms in their bags.


title: Bojinka plot

text: On December 8, Yousef moved into the Doña Josefa Apartments under the alias "Najy Awaita Haddad" and purported himself to be a Moroccan. Edith Guerrera, the manager, laughed with the receptionist after the two men asked for new registration forms. "Perhaps they have forgotten their names", she said as the first ones were torn up. Yousef had accidentally put his actual name on the first form.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Yousef had booked Room 603 in advance. He had made an Php 80,000 (Philippine peso) deposit, and added Php 40,000 more upfront before taking the elevator to Room 603.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The apartments are located in the Malate district, away from the Apostolic Nunciature, the Holy See's diplomatic mission in the Philippines, and down the street from Manila Police Station No. 9 on Quirino Avenue. One of the windows of Room 603 looks down on the path that the Papal motorcade was to take.


title: Bojinka plot

text: People were suspicious of the men in Room 603, who were described as being very secretive. According to Guerrera, "They gave me the impression that they were here to study", said Mrs Guerrera. "They looked like students. They double-locked the door when they were inside or out. They didn't ask the room boy to clear up the room." The men, who had chemical burns on their hands, were carrying boxes and never hired other people to carry them up. The boxes contained chemicals bought from suppliers in Manila and Quezon City in Metro Manila. Yousef used these to make his bombs.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Mohammed purported himself to be a Saudi or Qatari plywood exporter named "Abdul Majid". In reality, Yousef and Mohammed had already started planning Operation Bojinka.


title: Bojinka plot

text: According to Abdul Hakim Murad, Yousef got an idea for crashing a plane into the CIA's headquarters from Murad while at the apartments. According to Murad, Yousef replied, "OK, we will think about it", before heading off with Mohammed to Puerto Galera for scuba diving.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Yousef's first operational test of his bomb was inside a mall in Cebu City. The bomb detonated several hours after he put it in a generator room. It caused minor damage, but it proved to Yousef that his bomb was workable.


title: Bojinka plot

text: On December 1, Ramzi placed a bomb under a seat in the Greenbelt Theatre in Manila to test what would happen if a bomb exploded under an airline seat. The bomb went off, injuring several patrons.


title: Bojinka plot

text: On December 11, 1994, Yousef built another bomb, which had one-tenth of the power that his final bombs were planned to have, in the lavatory of an aircraft. He left it inside the life jacket under his seat (26 K) and got off the plane when it arrived in Cebu. Yousef had boarded the flight under the assumed name of Armaldo Forlani, using a false Italian passport. The aircraft was Philippine Airlines Flight 434 on a Manila to Narita route, stopping partway at Cebu. Yousef had set the timer for four hours after he got off the aircraft.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The bomb exploded while the aircraft was over Japan's Minamidaitō Island, part of Okinawa Prefecture. A Japanese businessman named Haruki Ikegami occupying the seat was killed and an additional 10 passengers were injured. The flight was carrying 273 passengers in total. The blast blew a hole in the floor and the cabin's rapid expansion severed several control cables in the ceiling, cutting off control of the plane's right aileron, as well as both the captain and first officer's steering controls. Usually, 26K, the seat that Yousef chose to plant the bomb, would be positioned directly over the centre fuel tank, and the detonation of the bomb would have caused a crippling explosion, but on this particular airframe, a former Scandinavian Airlines aircraft, the seat was two rows forward from normal. The flight crew kept control of the Boeing 747-200 and brought it into an emergency landing at Okinawa's Naha Airport. Satisfied with the deadly results of the attack, Yousef then planned which flights to attack for "Phase II" of the plot.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The first plan was to assassinate Pope John Paul II when he visited the Philippines during the World Youth Day 1995 celebrations. On January 15, 1995, a suicide bomber would dress up as a priest, while John Paul II passed in his motorcade on his way to the San Carlos Seminary in Makati. The assassin planned to get close to the Pope and detonate the bomb. The planned assassination of the Pope was intended to divert attention from the next phase of the operation. About 20 men had been trained by Yousef to carry out this act prior to January 1995.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The details of Phase I were found in the evidence discovered in the investigation into Room 603 in the Doña Josefa.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The next plan would have involved at least five terrorists, including Yousef, Shah, Murad and two more unknown operatives. Beginning on January 21, 1995, and ending on January 22, 1995, they would have placed bombs on 11 United States-bound airliners which had stopovers scattered throughout East Asia and Southeast Asia. All of the flights had two legs. The bombs would be planted inside life jackets under seats on the first leg, and each bomber would then disembark. He would then board one or two more flights and repeat. After all of the bombers had planted bombs on all of the flights, each man would then catch flights to Lahore, Pakistan. The men never needed U.S. visas, as they only would have been on the planes for their first legs within Asia.


title: Bojinka plot

text: United States airlines had been chosen instead of Asian airlines so as to maximize the shock toward Americans. The flights targeted were listed under operatives with codenames: "Zyed", "Majbos", "Markoa", "Mirqas" and "Obaid". Obaid, who was really Abdul Hakim Murad, was to hit United Flight 80, and then he was to go back to Singapore on another United flight which he would bomb.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Zyed, probably Ramzi Yousef, was to target Northwest Flight 30, a United Flight going from Taipei to Honolulu, and a United Flight going from Bangkok to Taipei to San Francisco.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The explosions were to be timed by the operatives before they disembarked from the plane. The aircraft would have exploded over the Pacific Ocean and the South China Sea almost simultaneously. If this plan worked, several thousand passengers would have perished, and air travel would likely have been shut down worldwide. The U.S. government estimated the prospective death toll to be about 4,000 if the plot had been executed. (For comparison, about 3,000 were killed during the September 11 attacks in the United States.)


title: Bojinka plot

text: If Phase II of the plot had been successful, it would have been, in terms of casualties, the most devastating terrorist attack in recent history.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The "Mark II" "microbombs" had Casio digital watches as the timers, stabilizers that looked like cotton wool balls, and an undetectable quantity of nitroglycerin as the explosive. Other ingredients included glycerin, nitrate, sulfuric acid, and minute concentrations of nitrobenzene, silver azide (silver trinitride), and liquid acetone. Two 9-volt batteries in each bomb were used as a power source. The batteries would be connected to light bulb filaments that would detonate the bomb. Murad and Yousef wired an SCR (silicon controlled rectifier) as the switch to trigger the filaments to detonate the bomb. There was an external socket hidden when the wires were pushed under the watch base as the bomber would wear it. The alteration was so small that the watch could still be worn in a normal manner.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Yousef got batteries past airport security during his December 11 test bombing of Philippine Airlines Flight 434 by hiding them in hollowed-out heels of his shoes. Yousef smuggled the nitroglycerin on board by putting it inside a small container, reputedly containing contact lens cleaning solution.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Abdul Hakim Murad's confession detailed Phase III in his interrogation by the Manila police after his capture.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Phase III would have involved Murad either renting, buying, or hijacking a small airplane, preferably a Cessna. The airplane would be filled with explosives. He would then crash it into the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in the Langley area in Fairfax County, Virginia. Murad had been trained as a pilot in North Carolina, and was slated to be a suicide pilot.


title: Bojinka plot

text: There were alternate plans to hijack a 12th commercial airliner and use that instead of the small aircraft, probably due to the Manila cell's growing frustration with explosives. Testing explosives in a house or apartment is dangerous, and it can easily give away a terrorist plot. Khalid Sheik Mohammed probably made the alternate plan.


title: Bojinka plot

text: A report from the Philippines to the United States on January 20, 1995, stated, "What the subject has in his mind is that he will board any American commercial aircraft pretending to be an ordinary passenger. Then he will hijack said aircraft, control its cockpit and dive it at the CIA headquarters."


title: Bojinka plot

text: Another plot that was considered would have involved the hijacking of more airplanes. The World Trade Center (New York City, New York), The Pentagon (Arlington, Virginia), the United States Capitol (Washington, D.C.), the White House (Washington, D.C.), the Sears Tower (Chicago, Illinois), the U.S. Bank Tower (Los Angeles, California), and the Transamerica Pyramid (San Francisco, California) would have been the likely targets. In his confession to Filipino investigators, prior to the foiling of Operation Bojinka, Abdul Hakim Murad said that this part of the plot was dropped since the Manila cell could not recruit enough people to implement other hijackings. This plot would eventually be the base plot for the September 11 attacks which involved hijacking commercial airliners, as opposed to small aircraft loaded with explosives, and crashing them into their intended targets. However, only the World Trade Center (which was destroyed) and The Pentagon (which suffered partial damage) were hit.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The plot was abandoned after an apartment fire at the six-story Doña Josefa apartments occurred in Manila, Philippines, on the evening of Friday, January 6, 1995. The fire occurred before Pope John Paul II was scheduled to visit the Philippines on January 12.


title: Bojinka plot

text: According to the initial accounts of the Philippine authorities, Abdul Hakim Murad started a chemical fire in the kitchen sink in Room 603 on the sixth floor of the Doña Josefa apartment by pouring water on a substance. The fire was spotted at about 11:00p.m. after residents complained about a strange odour. Edith Guerrera, the owner of the apartments, called the fire brigade, but the fire went out unassisted. Yousef and Murad had told the firefighters to stay away before they fled. Police Major Francisco F. Bautista and his staff, including watch commander Aida D. Fariscal, decided to investigate the situation and saw four hot plates in their packing crates, what looked like cotton batting soaked in a beige solution, and loops of green, red, blue, and yellow electrical wiring. The telephone rang, and the police ran downstairs, thinking that it was a trap. Fariscal had been suspicious of the men in Room 603 due to the recent wave of bombings (committed by Yousef) that hit Metro Manila and Philippine Airlines Flight 434. Seeking a search warrant, they left and asked 11 judges before finding one that would grant a warrant.


title: Bojinka plot

text: A 2002 "Los Angeles Times" article stated that the police deliberately set a fire to rouse the men out of their apartment.


title: Bojinka plot

text: After police discovered the evidence, they arrested a man who called himself "Ahmed Saeed". "Saeed", who later proved to be Murad, claimed that he was a commercial pilot who was on his way to the precinct house to explain that what he claimed to be firecrackers had gone off. Murad initially tried to run away, but he was arrested after he tripped over a tree root. The arresting officer, having lost his handcuffs, improvised a solution by tying Murad's hands with the elastic cord taken from the officer's raincoat. Murad was hauled to the precinct in a taxi van with the help of two other people. He offered 110,740 Philippine pesos (US$2,000) to the policemen if they would agree to let him go, but the officers refused. At the precinct, Murad signed a statement saying that he was innocent and that he was a tourist visiting his friend in his chemical import/export business. He then mumbled about "two Satans that must be destroyed: the Pope and America."


title: Bojinka plot

text: Fariscal was later depicted in the 2006 docudrama "The Path to 9/11", in which US agencies in the script gave her much credit. An actress portrays her in the "Mayday" episode "Bomb on Board". The widow of a slain police officer, she had spent 17 years as a homemaker before enrolling in the police department in 1977. She became well known in her home nation, which awarded her the equivalent of 33,222 pesos ($700) and a trip to Taiwan. The CIA awarded her a certificate reading "in recognition of your personal outstanding efforts and co-operation." Her decision to investigate the fire was key to disrupting the plot and forcing Yousef to flee.


title: Bojinka plot

text: When the officers returned to Suite 603 at 2:30a.m. on January 7, they found street maps of Manila with routes plotting the papal motorcade, a rosary, a photograph of the pontiff, bibles, crucifixes, papal confessions, and priest clothing, including robes and collars. This collection of objects, and a phone message from a tailor reminding the occupant that "the cassock was ready to be tried on", along with the fact of the Pope's impending visit, was enough for Police Major Francisco F. Bautista to infer that an assassination plot had been interrupted. A search warrant was granted by 4:00a.m. on January 7.


title: Bojinka plot

text: More chemicals, such as gallons of sulfuric acid, picric acid, nitric acid, glycerin, acetone, sodium chlorate, nitrobenzoyl, ammonia, silver nitrate, methanamine, and ANFO were found. Several cans of gasoline and two large Welch's grape juice bottles containing nitroglycerin were found. Equipment such as thermometers, graduated cylinders, large cooking kettles, funnels, fuses, filters, soldering irons, beakers, mortars, pestles, different electronic fusing systems, timers, switches, and circuit breakers were found. Also discovered in the search was a finished remote-controlled brass pipe bomb, as well as another pipe bomb that was about to be packed. The apartment also contained a chemistry textbook and chemical dictionary, a "Time" magazine with the cover story on international terrorism, as well as a pharmacy receipt and bottle of contact lens solution. In a cupboard under the sink, a finished time bomb and other Casio watches were found.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The most conclusive piece of evidence found was a manual written in Arabic on how to build a liquid bomb.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Stacks of 12 false passports, including Norwegian, Afghan, Saudi, and Pakistani were also found in the apartment. Investigators found a business card from Mohammed Jamal Khalifa; Saeed apparently possessed five telephone numbers from Khalifa. Investigators also found phone numbers for Rose Masquera, Mohammed's girlfriend.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Yousef's project was discovered on four floppy disks and an off-white Toshiba laptop inside his apartment, two weeks before the plot would have been implemented. Several encrypted files on the hard drive contained flight schedules, calculations of detonation times, and other items.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The first string of text in one of the files states, "All people who support the U.S. government are our targets in our future plans and that is because all those people are responsible for their government's actions and they support the U.S. foreign policy and are satisfied with it. We will hit all U.S. nuclear targets. If the U.S. government keeps supporting Israel, then we will continue to carry out operations inside and outside the United States to include ..." which is where the text ended.


title: Bojinka plot

text: A file named "Bojinka" lists the 11 flights between Asia and the United States, which were grouped under five codenames. Strings were found, such as "codice_1" (for United flight 80), and "codice_2" (for Northwest Flight 30).


title: Bojinka plot

text: The laptop had names of dozens of associates, including some photographs of a few of them and including contact information for Mohammed Jamal Khalifa. They contained records of information about five-star hotels, dealings with a London trading corporation, a meat market owner in Malaysia, and an Islamic center in Tucson, Arizona. Information about how money moved through an Abu Dhabi banking firm was found.


title: Bojinka plot

text: A communication signed "Khalid Shaikh + Bojinka" was also found on Yousef's computer that threatened to attack targets "in response to the financial, political and military assistance given to the Jewish state in the occupied land of Palestine by the United States Government." The letter also said that the bombers claimed to have the "ability to make and use chemicals and poisonous gas ... for use against vital institutions and populations and the sources of drinking water."


title: Bojinka plot

text: The letter also threatened to assassinate Fidel V. Ramos, then-President of the Philippines, as well as attack aircraft if the United States did not meet the group's demands. The letter said that the group claiming responsibility was the "Fifth Division of the Liberation Army".


title: Bojinka plot

text: Saeed turned out to be Abdul Hakim Murad, who was sent to the apartment to retrieve the computer after the fire. Murad was sent to Camp Crame, the headquarters of the Philippine National Police. Murad at first taunted investigators. For 67 days, he endured "tactical interrogation" by Filipino investigators.


title: Bojinka plot

text: According to journalists Marites Dañguilan Vitug and Glenda M. Gloria, authors of the book "", agents hit Murad with a chair and club of wood when he did not talk. They forced water into his mouth, and crushed out lit cigarettes on his genitals. Murad's ribs were completely cracked. Agents were surprised that he survived. According to an investigator, he finally confessed out of fear of Jews after an agent masquerading as a member of the Mossad told him that he was being sent to Israel.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Murad admitted in his interrogations, "This is my — the best thing. I enjoy it", and "because the United States is the first country in this world making trouble for us, for Muslims and for our people."


title: Bojinka plot

text: He talked about the bombs. "Nobody [would] think that it's [an] explosive", he said, referring to the watches Ramzi Yousef planned to put on the airliners. He said that the nitroglycerin "which even if you'll put in the X-ray, you will never, nobody can" detect it.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Murad confessed that he was on a quest to be a martyr. He confessed to being the hijacker as part of Phase II of his plan. Murad was extradited to the United States on April 12, 1995. His testimony helped convict Yousef.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Wali Khan Amin Shah was arrested at an apartment complex on January 11 after police saw that a pager called by Yousef was registered in the name of Shah's girlfriend. Shah escaped from custody about 77 hours later. Shah was found to be a conspirator after authorities saw photos of him scanned on the laptop that contained information about the plot, as well as cell phone numbers that led investigators to the apartment. Yousef and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were able to escape from the Philippines to Pakistan. On January 31, 1995, Yousef flew from Pakistan to Thailand in an attempt to place suitcase bombs on a Delta Airlines and United Airlines aircraft. When that failed, he flew back to Pakistan.


title: Bojinka plot

text: After receiving Murad's phone call, Yousef made plans to leave and flew to Singapore about five hours after Murad's arrest. One day after Bojinka was discovered, Yousef made his way to Pakistan. Mohammed went to Pakistan days or weeks afterwards.


title: Bojinka plot

text: The Philippines forwarded details on the Bojinka plot to the United States in April 1995. Konsojaya was heard via wiretaps to be frequently in contact with Mohammed Jamal Khalifa's charitable organization until the plot was discovered.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Yousef was arrested in the Su-Casa guest house in Islamabad, Pakistan on February 7, 1995 after a 23-day manhunt. Yousef later boasted to Secret Service agent Brian Parr about his plan. Wali Khan Amin Shah, the financier, was picked up in Malaysia in December 1995. His identity was revealed after he was fingerprinted. Shah was also extradited to the United States.


title: Bojinka plot

text: All three conspirators received life sentences for participating in the plot. Yousef also received a 240 year sentence along with his life sentence for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yousef was sentenced on January 8, 1998, and Murad was sentenced on May 16, 1998. Shah has been cooperating with the government since August 1998.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, a Saudi businessman from Jeddah who was married to one of Osama bin Laden's sisters, was in the Philippines earlier in 1994. He was arrested in 1994 in Mountain View, California, for conspiring in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. He was financing the Bojinka plot, according to the content that the Filipino investigators forwarded to the United States. The United States Immigration and Naturalization Service deported Khalifa to Jordan in May 1995. He was acquitted by the Jordanian court and moved to Saudi Arabia. He was murdered in his hotel room in January 2007 in Madagascar.


title: Bojinka plot

text: U.S. investigators did not find the connection with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to al-Qaeda until several years later.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed decided that explosives were too risky to use in his next plot, and chose instead to use airplanes. The plot was later revised and executed during the September 11 attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan in 2003.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Yousef filed a motion for a new trial in 2001. The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit heard the case on May 3, 2002, and announced on April 3, 2003 the decision that Yousef and his partners were to remain incarcerated.


title: Bojinka plot

text: Bojinka was included in a number of 9/11 documentaries and mini-series, including "The Path to 9/11", and "The Secret History of 9/11".


title: Common wheat

text: Common wheat (Triticum aestivum), also known as bread wheat, is a cultivated wheat species. About 95% of wheat produced worldwide is common wheat; it is the most widely grown of all crops and the cereal with the highest monetary yield.


title: Common wheat

text: Numerous forms of wheat have evolved under human selection. This diversity has led to confusion in the naming of wheats, with names based on both genetic and morphological characteristics.


title: Common wheat

text: Bread wheat is an allohexaploid (an allopolyploid with six sets of chromosomes: two sets from each of three different species). Of the six sets of chromosomes, two come from "Triticum urartu" (einkorn wheat) and two from a species related to "Aegilops speltoides". This spontaneous hybridisation created the tetraploid species "Triticum turgidum" (an ancestor of wild emmer wheat and durum wheat) 580,000–820,000 years ago. The last two sets of chromosomes came from wild goat-grass, "Aegilops tauschii", 230,000–430,000 years ago.<ref name="10.1126/science.1251788"></ref> Recent research suggest that T. macha originated from a hybrid cross between "T. aestivum" and wild emmer wheat.


title: Common wheat

text: Free-threshing wheat is closely related to spelt. As with spelt, genes contributed from "Aegilops tauschii" give bread wheat greater cold hardiness than most wheats, and it is cultivated throughout the world's temperate regions.


title: Common wheat

text: Common wheat was first domesticated in Western Asia during the early Holocene, and spread from there to North Africa, Europe and East Asia in the prehistoric period. Naked wheats (including "Triticum aestivum/durum/turgidum") were found in Roman burial sites ranging from 100BCE to 300CE .


title: Common wheat

text: Wheat first reached North America with Spanish missions in the 16th century, but North America's role as a major exporter of grain dates from the colonization of the prairies in the 1870s. As grain exports from Russia ceased in the First World War, grain production in Kansas doubled.


title: Common wheat

text: Worldwide, bread wheat has proved well adapted to modern industrial baking, and has displaced many of the other wheat, barley, and rye species that were once commonly used for bread making, particularly in Europe.


title: Common wheat

text: that reduce the plant's sensitivity to gibberellic acid, a plant hormone that lengthens cells. RHt genes were introduced to modern wheat varieties in the 1960s by Norman Borlaug from Norin 10 cultivars of wheat grown in Japan. Short stems are important because the application of high levels of chemical fertilizers would otherwise cause the stems to grow too high, resulting in lodging (collapse of the stems). Stem heights are also even, which is important for modern harvesting techniques.


title: Common wheat

text: Compact wheats (e.g., club wheat "Triticum compactum", but in India "T. sphaerococcum") are closely related to common wheat, but have a much more compact ear. Their shorter rachis segments lead to spikelets packed closer together. Compact wheats are often regarded as subspecies rather than species in their own right (thus "T. aestivum" subsp. "compactum").


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: The King Baudouin Stadium ( , ) is a sports ground in north-west Brussels, Belgium. Located in the Heysel district of the City of Brussels, it was built to embellish the Heysel Plateau in view of the 1935 Brussels International Exposition. It was inaugurated on 23 August 1930, with Crown Prince Leopold attending the opening ceremony. The stadium hosted 70,000 at the time. Its name honours King Baudouin, Leopold's son and successor as King of the Belgians, from 1951 to his death in 1993.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: The first version of the King Baudouin Stadium was built in 1929–1930 by the architect Joseph Van Neck, also chief architect of the 1935 Brussels International Exposition, in a classical modernist style. Its original name was the Jubilee Stadium (, ) because it was inaugurated as part of the centenary celebrations of the Belgian Revolution, with an unofficial Belgium–Netherlands football match.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: In 1946, the stadium was stripped of the wood of its cycling track, and was renamed the Heysel Stadium (, ), after the neighbourhood in which it is located. In 1971, a tartan track was installed allowing the organisation of athletics competitions. Three years later, in 1974, a new lighting system was installed.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: The Heysel Stadium hosted European Cup finals in 1958, 1966, 1974, and 1985 and Cup Winners' Cup finals in 1964, 1976 and 1980. The highest attendance at a European game was over 69,000 in 1958.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: Despite its status as Belgium's national stadium, the Heysel Stadium was not well maintained. The stadium's poor condition manifested itself at the 1985 European Cup Final. For example, the outer wall had been made of cinder block, and fans who did not have tickets were seen kicking holes in it to get in. Additionally, the only escape route led upward, and there were only three gates on each short side–nowhere near enough for the 22,000 people standing on the terraces on either side.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: The stadium's inadequacies had been well known for some time. When Arsenal played there in the early 1980s, its supporters ridiculed it as a "dump." Indeed, the presidents of the two 1985 European finalists, Juventus and Liverpool, had concluded that Heysel was in no condition to host a European Final, especially one featuring two of the largest and most powerful clubs in Europe at the time. They urged UEFA to move the match to another ground, to no avail. It later emerged that UEFA had only spent half an hour inspecting the stadium.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: The Heysel Stadium disaster resulted in the deaths of 39 Juventus spectators after they were attacked by Liverpool fans before the match. Despite this, the stadium continued to be used for Belgium international games from 1986 to 1990 with only minimal improvements made following the disaster. This was in part because the government had already drawn up plans to remodel the stadium into a 35,000-seat facility. Finally, in 1990, UEFA forced the issue by barring Belgium from hosting a European Final until at least 2000. It also continued to host track and field events and it still hosts the Memorial Van Damme every year.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: In 1995, a decade after the disaster, the ground was rebuilt at a cost of BEF 1,500 million (around €37/$50 million in 1995), and at this time renamed King Baudouin Stadium, after the Belgian monarch who had died two years previously. All that remains of the old stadium is a renovated gateway near the main entrance. The new structure combined the football ground with a running track and facilities for field events. It was re-opened on 23 August 1995 as the home of the Belgium national football team and is the largest stadium in Belgium; it can seat 50,093 spectators. The remodelled stadium hosted the 1996 European Cup Winners Cup final, as well as the opening game for Euro 2000.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: On 26 May 2006, the Belgian Football Association decided not to use the King Baudouin Stadium anymore for the national team home matches and for the Cup final, because the gates of stand one were too narrow and the stadium was deemed unsafe. The next match of the national team was thus held at the Constant Vanden Stock Stadium. The City of Brussels complained that contrary to these claims the stadium was safe, and this complaint was upheld in court. On 6 October 2006, the Belgian Football Association met with representatives of the City of Brussels and they agreed to renew the contract and extend it to 30 June 2008.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: In March 2019, the Belgian football association announced plans for a new redevelopment of the King Baudouin Stadium. The stadium would be rebuilt to a reduced capacity of 40,000 spectators and renamed to the Golden Generation Arena with a prospective completion date of 2022. That idea was quietly discarded. An architectural firm has never been appointed, an environmental study ordered or a client sought. From the politicians, who were said to be positive about the idea across party lines in the beginning, hardly anything is moving.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: On 25 August 2007, Belgium played Argentina in rugby union as part of Argentina's 2007 Rugby World Cup preparations. Argentina defeated Belgium 36–8.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: The stadium was scheduled to witness a rugby union milestone on 19 December 2009, when the Parisian club Stade Français planned to take their Heineken Cup home match against Irish club Ulster to the stadium in a match that had sold more than 30,000 tickets. However, heavy snowfall in Brussels on the intended matchday forced the cancellation of what would have been the first Heineken Cup match held in Belgium; the fixture was instead played the following day in Paris.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: The stadium had another shot at hosting a Heineken Cup match in 2012. On 20 October 2012, English club Saracens took their Heineken Cup pool match against Racing Métro to Brussels.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: On 8 July 2010, the stadium played host to the Best of Belgium gala which featured a tennis match originally scheduled to be between Justine Henin and Kim Clijsters. Unfortunately Henin had to pull out and Serena Williams replaced her as the match was played in front of the largest crowd ever for a single match, beating the attendance set at the Battle of the Sexes.


title: King Baudouin Stadium

text: Irish Rock band U2 performed at the stadium four times: the first one was on 10 June 2005 during their Vertigo Tour, in front of a sold-out crowd of 60,299 people. The second and the third were on 22 and 23 September 2010 during their U2 360° Tour, in front of a total sold-out crowd of 144,338 people. The performance of "Mercy" from the first 2010 show was recorded for the group's live EP "Wide Awake in Europe". The performance of "I Will Follow" from the same show was recorded for the group's live album "". Their fourth and last performance at the venue was on 1 August 2017 during their The Joshua Tree Tour 2017, in front of a sold-out crowd of 51,951 people.