title: To Your Eternity

text: Characters featured in the series are based on real life personalities. For example, Pioran reminded Ōima of her deceased grandmother. She furthermore expresses some guilt for having characters die. There are approximately 13 characters that are greatly affected by Fushi and which, before the series' beginning, would lead Ōima to the title, , before being replaced by "To Your Eternity". When it came to drawing, March was Ōima's favorite character due to her short stature. Furthermore, Ōima says she likes drawing children in confined places.


title: To Your Eternity

text: The overall setting is that of a main character being "a boy who knows nothing". Ōima wanted the reader to find themself, like Fushi, in this situation where they do not know anything. It is for this reason that she did not give prominence to any character other than the hero. A common theme portrayed in the manga is death and immortality. To reinforce the blank slate themes, she decided to create a white universe, which was how she obtained a snowy landscape. As characters living in this snowy region are not part of an indigenous population, she decided not to depict them as, for example, Inuit. For research, she watched several documentaries in order to learn how to make the boy look like he was living in a world of "survival", with limited resources and skills. To accomplish this, she had to think deeply about what was practical under such difficult circumstances. March was created to be talkative and balance the quiet ones. The manga presents the climate, disease and the polar bear as obstacles to the human will. Ōima elaborates that people have to live with these challenges, and it is to show how to overcome them that she included them in the scenes.


title: To Your Eternity

text: Director expressed surprise when first reading the manga series, initially believing the young villager would be the lead character rather than Fushi. He felt that the themes Ōima was approaching were thought-provoking, which he found challenging. Murata stated that, as minor parts of the manga were changed, the anime would stay true to the original printed version. The official Twitter account of the anime series stated that the main theme presented through March (and later Fushi) was the notion of growing into adulthood.


title: To Your Eternity

text: In casting the actors, Reiji Kawashima's voice quality was befitting for Fushifrom his point of view. "The Observer", played by Kenjiro Tsuda, is a narrative role that was not all that involved in the story due to Murata's view that Tsuda's voice was "cool". The first episode only had two voice actors: Kawashima and Tsuda. The former expressed relief when working as he felt that Tsuda was a friendly person. Tsuda felt that Kawashima was a passionate actor, exemplified by his early arrival for each episode's recording session. Kawashima thought his character to be exhausting based on his varied experiences, while Tsuda felt Fushi was too mysterious. Rie Hikisaka, who plays March, enjoyed Kawashima's work and his interactions with Pioran. For the sixth episode, Kawashima expressed difficulty portraying Fushi's lines due to the fact that the character was learning how to speak. Ryoko Shiraishi commented that while she enjoyed voicing Gugu, the character's fluid personality made the work more challenging.


title: To Your Eternity

text: Yoshitoki Ōima debuted "To Your Eternity" in issue 50 of Kodansha's "Weekly Shōnen Magazine" on November 9, 2016. It was Ōima's second series featured in the publication, the first being the critically acclaimed "A Silent Voice". The series' first arc finished on December 4, 2019, while the second started on January 22, 2020. The first printed volume was released on January 17, 2017 while the latest eighteenth one was released on September 16, 2022.


title: To Your Eternity

text: On January 17, 2017, Kodansha USA announced that they would digitally publish the first ten chapters of the series on various digital platforms. Thereafter, they would publish the manga's new chapters simultaneously with the Japanese releases. The first printed volume in North America was released on October 31, 2017. The seventeenth volume was released on July 26, 2022.


title: To Your Eternity

text: On January 8, 2020, Kodansha announced that the manga would receive an anime television series adaptation, to air on NHK Educational TV. The series was animated by Brain's Base and directed by Masahiko Murata, with Shinzō Fujita handling series composition, Koji Yabuno designing the characters, and Ryo Kawasaki composing the music. Originally scheduled to premiere in October 2020, the series was delayed until April 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The series aired from April 12 to August 30, 2021, and ran for 20 episodes. A second season was announced in the final episode of the first season. Drive replaced Brain's Base in animating the second season, while Kiyoko Sayama replaced Masahiko Murata as the director. The rest of the main staff are returning from the first season. It premiered on October 23, 2022. Crunchyroll has licensed the anime for streaming outside of Asia. Medialink has also acquired the series to stream it under its Ani-One brand. Hikaru Utada performed the series' opening theme song "Pink Blood", while Masashi Hamauzu composed "Mediator", which was used for the ending.


title: To Your Eternity

text: The first collected volume of the series sold 29,288 copies, ranking 17 on the weekly Oricon manga chart. Its second volume ranked 34, selling 22,565 copies in its first week, while its third debuted at 41 with 20,445 copies sold.


title: To Your Eternity

text: The manga was nominated for the 11th edition of the Manga Taishō awards in 2018 and it managed to gain a total of 47 points. In 2018, Ōima won the Daruma de la Meilleure Nouvelle Série at the Japan Expo in Paris, France for "To Your Eternity". In May 2019, it won the award for Best Shōnen Manga at the 43rd annual Kodansha Manga Awards, alongside "The Quintessential Quintuplets". In both 2018 and 2019, "Anime News Network" listed it as one of the best series for young readers. The first five volumes were listed by the American Library Association as one of the best manga series written for a young audience in 2019.


title: To Your Eternity

text: The manga's narrative and setting have been praised by critics like "Otaku USA" due to its multiple fantasy and drama elements. However, he felt the story provided in the first volume lacked the emotional impact from the mangaka's previous work, "A Silent Voice". Two reviewers from "Anime News Network (ANN)" and one from "UK Anime Network" gave the first volume perfect reviews, impressed by the narrative's depth in exploring the multiplicity of characters as well as how the first chapters handled the lonely youth who met Fushi in an Ice Age-like area. Two other writers from "ANN" wondered whether the new chapters would carry forward the emotional impact of the first. "Anime UK News" was engaged by the manga's first chapter based on the characterization of the unnamed villager rather than by Fushi. As the manga progressed, Fushi's character arc was the subject of praise as he was closer to acting like a human in contrast to his nearly emotionless introduction. As a result, writers felt the tone of the series was still tragic, thanks to the handling of this character. "Manga News" furthermore enjoyed the series' time-skips as Fushi's immortality allowed him to blend in with newer, more modern scenarios.


title: To Your Eternity

text: The critical response to the artwork was mostly positive. "Anime UK News" praised the way Ōima drew the pages, by giving the characters detailed features and the way its settings were presented. Similarly, "Manga Mexico" writer Tania Ávila praised the artworkespecially in the later chapters of the first volume. "Fantasy Mundo" noted that the drawings helped to further detail the characters and improve their emotional value. "The Fandom Post" felt that the artwork "is light on textures and right with detailed backgrounds once the story moves from the snowfields to the forest" and felt that the wildlife was often drawn strangely. "UK Anime Network" praised the way the backgrounds were detailed and how the author built the characters' emotions.


title: To Your Eternity

text: The anime adaptation also attracted positive reactions. "IGN" listed it among the best anime series of Spring 2021, directing readers to its portrayals of Earth's culture but refrained from further explaining the premise to avoid spoilers. In a Filmmarks survey, "To Your Eternity" was voted the ninth "Most Anticipated 2021 Spring Anime Ranking". In the website "Anime Trendz", the series was often listed as one of the most popular series from 2021. In 2022, the series was awarded Best Drama at the 6th Crunchyroll Anime Awards, and was nominated in the Kids: Animation category at the 50th International Emmy Awards.


title: To Your Eternity

text: Three "ANN" writers gave the anime's premiere a perfect score, based on the emotional storytelling involving Fushi and the nameless youth, most notably when the latter, initially cheerful and talkative, quickly becomes filled with despair, as he cannot find any other people in the region. Similarly, "The Fandom Post" gave the series' premiere a perfect score despite having read the manga years before, based on the cast's performances and Utada Hikaru's theme song "Pink Blood" which helped to convey a moving story. James Beckett, from the same site, continued reviewing the anime and while still enjoying the anime, was afraid of it becoming too melodramatic. "Comic Book Resources" felt the adaptation series was well done and given an appealing soundtrack as the emotional scenes became stronger thanks to the music provided. Critics praised the bonding involving Fushi, March and Parona, noting how heroic they were for each other while providing opportunity for more entertaining scenes. However, March's death in the fifth episode was found to be heartbreaking. Fushi's increasing display of humanity was praised, with the sixth episode giving him enough screentime to become the sole main character. Fushi's fight with Oniguma was also listed as the seventh best anime fight from 2021 by Crunchyroll.


title: To Your Eternity

text: The prison arc, however, was panned by "Anime News Network" for lacking the appeal of previous arcs as well as the animation being poorly done.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Joseph Anthony Colombo Sr. (; June 16, 1923 – May 22, 1978) was the boss of the Colombo crime family, one of the Five Families of the American Mafia in New York City.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Colombo was born in New York City, where his father was an early member of what was then the Profaci crime family. In 1961, the First Colombo War unfolded, instigated by the kidnapping of four high-ranking members in the Profaci family by Joe Gallo. Later that year, Gallo was imprisoned, and in 1962, family leader Joe Profaci died of cancer. In 1963, Bonanno crime family boss, Joseph Bonanno made plans with Joseph Magliocco to assassinate several rivals on The Commission. When Magliocco gave the contract to one of his top hit men, Colombo, he revealed the plot to its targets. The Commission spared Magliocco's life but forced him into retirement, while Bonanno fled to Canada. As a reward for turning on his boss, Colombo was awarded the Profaci family. His only prison term would come in 1966, when Colombo was sentenced to 30 days in prison for contempt of court by refusing to answer questions from a grand jury about his financial affairs.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: In 1970, Colombo created the Italian-American Civil Rights League. Later that year, the first Italian Unity Day rally was held in Columbus Circle to protest the federal persecution of all Italians everywhere. In 1971, Gallo was released from prison, and Colombo invited Gallo to a peace meeting with an offering of $1,000, which Gallo refused, instigating the Second Colombo War. On June 28, 1971, Colombo was shot three times by Jerome A. Johnson, once in the head, at the second Italian Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle sponsored by the Italian-American Civil Rights League; Johnson was immediately killed by Colombo's bodyguards. Colombo was paralyzed from the shooting. On May 22, 1978, Colombo died of cardiac arrest.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Joseph Colombo Sr. was born into an Italian American family on June 16, 1923, in Brooklyn. His father, Anthony Colombo, was an early member of the Profaci crime family, which would eventually be renamed after his son. In 1938, he was found strangled in a car with his mistress. Joe Colombo attended New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn for two years, then dropped out to join the U.S. Coast Guard. In 1945, he was diagnosed with neurosis and discharged from the service. His legitimate jobs included ten years as a longshoreman and six years as a salesman for a meat company. His final job was that of a real estate salesman.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Colombo owned a modest home in Dyker Heights, Brooklyn and a five-acre estate in Blooming Grove, New York. He married Lucille Faiello in 1944, and had five children including sons Christopher Colombo, Joseph Colombo Jr. (1946–2014) and Anthony Colombo (1945–2017).


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Colombo followed his father into the Profaci family. He became one of the family's top enforcers, and soon became a capo.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: On February 27, 1961, the Gallos kidnapped four of Profaci's top men: underboss Magliocco, Frank Profaci (Joe Profaci's brother), capo Salvatore Musacchia and soldier John Scimone. Profaci himself eluded capture and flew to sanctuary in Florida. While holding the hostages, Larry and Albert Gallo sent Joe Gallo to California. The Gallos demanded a more favorable financial scheme for the hostages' release. Gallo wanted to kill one hostage and demand $100,000 before negotiations, but his brother Larry overruled him. After a few weeks of negotiation, Profaci made a deal with the Gallos. Profaci's consigliere Charles "the Sidge" LoCicero negotiated with the Gallos and all the hostages were released peacefully. However, Profaci had no intention of honoring this peace agreement. On August 20, 1961 Joseph Profaci ordered the murder of Gallo members Joseph "Joe Jelly" Gioielli and Larry Gallo. Gunmen allegedly murdered Gioilli after inviting him to go fishing. Larry Gallo survived a strangulation attempt in the Sahara club of East Flatbush by Carmine Persico and Salvatore "Sally" D'Ambrosio after a police officer intervened. The Gallo brothers had been previously aligned with Persico against Profaci and his loyalists; The Gallos then began calling Persico ""The Snake"" after he had betrayed them. The war continued on resulting in nine murders and three disappearances. With the start of the gang war, the Gallo crew retreated to the Dormitory.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: In late November 1961, Joe Gallo was sentenced to seven-to-fourteen years in prison for murder. On June 6, 1962, Profaci died and was succeeded by longtime underboss Joseph Magliocco. In 1963, Joseph Bonanno, the head of the Bonanno crime family, made plans to assassinate several rivals on the Mafia Commission—bosses Tommy Lucchese, Carlo Gambino, and Stefano Magaddino, as well as Frank DeSimone. Bonanno sought Magliocco's support, and Magliocco readily agreed. Not only was he bitter from being denied a seat on the Commission, but Bonanno and Profaci had been close allies for over 30 years prior to Profaci's death. Bonanno's audacious goal was to take over the Commission and make Magliocco his right-hand man. Magliocco was assigned the task of killing Lucchese and Gambino, and gave the contract to one of his top hit men, Colombo. However, the opportunistic Colombo revealed the plot to its targets. The other bosses quickly realized that Magliocco could not have planned this himself. Remembering how close Bonanno was with Magliocco (and before him, Profaci), as well as their close ties through marriages, the other bosses concluded Bonanno was the real mastermind. The Commission summoned Bonanno and Magliocco to explain themselves. Fearing for his life, Bonanno went into hiding in Montreal, leaving Magliocco to deal with the Commission. Badly shaken and in failing health, Magliocco confessed his role in the plot. The Commission spared Magliocco's life, but forced him to retire as Profaci family boss and pay a $50,000 fine. As a reward for turning on his boss, Colombo was awarded the Profaci family.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: At the age of 41, Colombo was one of the youngest crime bosses in the country. He was also the first American-born boss of a New York crime family. When NYPD detective Albert Seedman (later the NYPD chief of detectives) called Colombo in for questioning about the death of one of his soldiers, Colombo came to the meeting without a lawyer. He told Seedman, "I am an American citizen, first class. I don't have a badge that makes me an official good guy like you, but I work just as honest for a living."


title: Joseph Colombo

text: On May 9, 1966, Colombo was sentenced to 30 days in jail for contempt by refusing to answer questions from a grand jury about his financial affairs.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: In April 1970, Colombo created the Italian-American Civil Rights League. That same month, his son Joseph Colombo Jr. was charged with melting down coins for resale as silver ingots. In response, Joseph Colombo Sr. claimed FBI harassment of Italian-Americans and, on April 30, 1970, sent 30 picketers outside FBI headquarters at Third Avenue and 69th Street to protest the federal persecution of all Italians everywhere; this went on for weeks. On June 29, 1970, 50,000 people attended the first Italian Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle in New York City. In February 1971, Colombo Jr. was acquitted of the federal charge after the chief witness in the trial was arrested on perjury charges.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Under Colombo's guidance, the League grew quickly and achieved national attention. Unlike other mob leaders who shunned the spotlight, Colombo appeared on television interviews, fundraisers and speaking engagements for the League. In 1971, Colombo aligned the League with Rabbi and political activist Meir Kahane's Jewish Defense League, claiming that both groups were being harassed by the federal government. At one point, Colombo posted bail for 11 jailed JDL members.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: In the spring of 1971, Paramount Pictures started filming "The Godfather" with the assistance of Colombo and the League. Due to its subject matter, the film originally faced great opposition from Italian-Americans to filming in New York. However, after producer Albert Ruddy met with Colombo and agreed to excise the terms "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" from the film, the League cooperated fully.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: In early 1971, Joe Gallo was released from prison. As a supposedly conciliatory gesture, Colombo invited Gallo to a peace meeting with an offering of $1,000. Gallo refused the invitation, wanting $100,000 to stop the conflict, which Colombo refused to pay. At that point, acting boss Vincenzo Aloi issued a new order to kill Gallo.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: On March 11, 1971, after being convicted of perjury for lying on his application to become a real estate broker, Colombo was sentenced to two and half years in state prison. The sentence, however, was delayed pending an appeal.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: On June 28, 1971, Colombo was shot three times by Jerome A. Johnson, with one bullet hitting him in the head, at the second Italian Unity Day rally in Columbus Circle sponsored by the Italian-American Civil Rights League; Johnson was immediately killed by Colombo's bodyguards.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Colombo was paralyzed from the shooting. On August 28, 1971, after two months at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan, Colombo was moved to his estate at Blooming Grove. In 1975, a court-ordered examination showed that Colombo could move his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. In 1976, there were reports that he could recognize people and utter several words. On May 22, 1978, Colombo died of cardiac arrest at St. Luke's Hospital (later St. Luke's Cornwall Hospital) in Newburgh, New York.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Colombo's funeral was held at St Bernadette's Catholic Church in Bensonhurst and he was buried in Saint John Cemetery in the Middle Village section of Queens.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: Although many in the Colombo family blamed Joe Gallo for the shooting, the police eventually concluded that Johnson was a lone gunman after they had questioned Gallo. Since Johnson had spent time a few days earlier at a Gambino club, one theory was that Carlo Gambino organized the shooting. Colombo refused to listen to Gambino's complaints about the League, and allegedly spat in Gambino's face during one argument. However, the Colombo family leadership was convinced that Joe Gallo ordered the murder after his falling out with the family. Gallo was murdered on April 7, 1972.


title: Joseph Colombo

text: After the Colombo shooting, Joseph Yacovelli became the acting boss for one year before Carmine Persico took over.


title: City Football Group

text: City Football Group Limited (CFG) is a holding company that administers association football clubs. The group is owned by three organisations; of which 81% is majority owned by Newton Investment and Development LLC, 18% by the American firm Silver Lake and 1% by Chinese firms China Media Capital and CITIC Capital.


title: City Football Group

text: The group derives its name from Manchester City F.C., its flagship football club and acts as the club's parent company. CFG also owns stakes in clubs in the United States, Australia, India, Japan, Spain, Uruguay, China, Belgium, France and Italy.


title: City Football Group

text: Founded in 2013, City Football Group is the realisation of a business vision by former Barcelona Economy Vice President Ferran Soriano. Soriano first conceived of the ideal of a global football entity while at the Catalan club, beginning with the creation of Barca-branded overseas academies. Soriano contacted Major League Soccer Commissioner Don Garber about creating a Barcelona-branded MLS franchise and the pair progressed as far as looking into several locations to place the team, but ultimately these plans were curtailed when Soriano and seven other members of Barcelona's board chose to resign in protest of then-President Joan Laporta's leadership.


title: City Football Group

text: After a four-year break from football management, Soriano was hired in late 2012 to replace Garry Cook as CEO of Manchester City following the latter's resignation. Soriano revived his ambitions of creating a global football business entity, beginning by resuming dialogues with Garber. Their discussions resulted in the announcement of New York City FC as MLS' 20th expansion side less than one year later in May 2013. In the process of managing the creation of a second football team City Football Group was created, designed to be the holding company to which both Manchester City and NYCFC belonged. CFG expanded at the start of 2014 when it partnered with Rugby league side Melbourne Storm to acquire a controlling stake in A-League franchise Melbourne Heart for 12 million Australian dollars. The club would subsequently be rebranded to "Melbourne City FC" and their badge changed as part of CFG's early attempts to synergise their investments with Manchester City as a brand, and the club's colours would slowly be changed to sky blue with their red-and-white stripes retained as away colours.


title: City Football Group

text: In the weeks following their purchase of Melbourne City, CFG indicated their intentions of investing in women's football by rebranding Manchester City's female affiliate as "Manchester City Women's Football Club" and successfully lobbied for the team to be added to the top tier of the FA Women's Super League, promising to invest in women's football on a scale never before seen in England. Later the following year CFG would grow again with the purchase of a 20% in Japanese side Yokohama F Marinos, the traditional company team of group sponsor Nissan.


title: City Football Group

text: In April 2017, after a near three-year pause in its expansion, City Football Group announced the Uruguayan second-tier side Club Atletico Torque, who would later be renamed Montevideo City Torque. Several months later Torque would be followed in by Spanish second division club Girona, a club with ownership links to incumbent Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola.


title: City Football Group

text: 2019 saw the beginning of an increase in CFG's activity. The purchase of Chinese third division club Sichuan Jiuniu was followed towards the end of the year by a second venture in Asia, when the group bought a controlling stake in Indian Super League franchise Mumbai City. 2020 similarly would see two club purchases in European football, first of Lommel of Belgium and then of Troyes of France, with both moves notably seeing the purchased clubs rescued from financial difficulties and linked to the economic damages wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same year they would also expand their business interests by taking sole control of US-based five-a-side football business Goals Soccer Centers, a business they had previously invested in, following the near-collapse of the company's owners due to an internal scandal.


title: City Football Group

text: In March 2022, Dutch second-tier side NAC Breda announced that following an investigation into the best bidders to sell the club's shares, the shareholders of the club had agreed to a sale to CFG. In response, the club's fans held protests both in Breda and also Manchester and Lommel. A month later, a group of shareholders with key voting rights announced that in light of the backlash they had elected instead to sell their shares to a local consortium.


title: City Football Group

text: Since its inception, commenters have drawn parallels between City Football Group and Ferran Soriano's ideas spelled out in his 2011 book "Goal: The Ball Doesn't Go In By Chance", in which Soriano remarked that the natural evolution of club brands was to expand globally, and that doing so could include the creation of franchise clubs in foreign leagues. His book continued to expound upon the notion that appealing to foreign fans who had no strongly-ingrained non-domestic allegiances was an important facet of business growth of sporting brands, and that giving those fans a domestic side to support alongside and affiliated to their European club could encourage more loyalty from them. This idea would be termed "Disneyfication" by Professor Simon Chadwick, an expert in Eurasian sport at Emlyon Business School and himself a confidant of Soriano.


title: City Football Group

text: Early growth in the group focused on teams sharing a common identity and an associated brand, which aligned with the traditional identity of Manchester City and was viewed as a key way of helping the Manchester club build up its foreign support. This also matched Soriano's well-reported interest in placing City Football Group as a lynchpin in the opening-up of national markets in which association football has not previously been able to secure a strong presence, through the operation of and investment in franchises in those countries.


title: City Football Group

text: The first entity to join CFG was the newly created New York City FC, with the club announcing that they would sport the familiar sky blue kit with white shorts which Manchester City have traditionally been associated with, and the rebranded Melbourne City (originally named Melbourne Heart) similarly switched to sky blue after defeating challenges from fellow A-League club Sydney FC. With the purchase of Mumbai City and the renaming of Club Atletico Torque to "Montevideo City Torque", five teams in the group feature the word "City" in their name, and similarly all five wear sky blue kits. NYCFC's circular badge style would also be mimicked by Manchester City, Melbourne City and Torque. Following from these changes it was reported that the company's aim was to own a team on each continent with the "City" brand in its name.


title: City Football Group

text: Developments within Manchester City's academy would ultimately lead to a shift in strategy and focus of the group. Efforts to continue their success in bringing through youth talent led to the buying of promising players in the early teenage years, many of whom would go on to be sold for a large profit. This prompted Soriano and CFG's executive management to change their ambitions to put more emphasis on purchasing smaller clubs in strong existing football markets, with the intention of turning them into specialists centres for acquiring and training future stars from their local areas. As a result, the emphasis on clubs sharing kit colours and having discernibly similar badges and names has been reduced. Outside of Manchester, the European clubs within CFG in particular have not seen any change to their identities beyond the use of sky blue as a change strip colour in Girona. Similar is true of Asian clubs Yokohama F. Marinos and Sichuan Jiuniu.


title: City Football Group

text: One of the core philosophies of City Football Group since its inception has been the mutual supporting of clubs through combined scouting and player sharing. While virtually all large European clubs operate an international scouting network, financial demands make it impossible to access local knowledge in foreign countries to the same extent as a domestic club could. CFG clubs therefore provide invaluable services to each other by using their own local scouting networks to share information on players between clubs. With their combined knowledge, the group advertises that it has extensive information on half a million players around the world. Possessing such a network then allows the local clubs to sign players early in their development, safe in the knowledge that the range of clubs CFG owns means that they can be placed at any of a number of sides as their development continues and the need for other challenges arises. The player-sharing element of the City network was first advertised with the high-profile transfer of Aaron Mooy from Melbourne City to Manchester City – an early case of utilising the network to support revenue generation – with the 2020–21 season seeing Manchester City send 14 foreign-sourced youth players out on loan, predominantly to other group clubs.


title: City Football Group

text: In addition to internal player movements, CFG has also sought to foster movements of coaching staff within their network also; among the most notable relocations are French manager Eric Mombaerts, who has worked with Yokohama F. Marinos, Melbourne City and Troyes, Manchester City Women manager Nick Cushing transferring to New York and English coach Liam Manning transferring from the NYCFC academy to take over management of Lommel's first team.


title: City Football Group

text: The second of CFG's core philosophies regarding club collaboration is on- and off-pitch technical information sharing. Based around the tactics of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola – long coveted for the Manchester job by Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain after their experience working with him in Barcelona – all of City Football Group's clubs are given access to extensive databases of Manchester City's tactics and coaching methods, enabling them all to follow the group directive to use the same style of football, a style occasionally referred to as "the City Way". This synergy of tactical style extends beyond their first teams to the academies and women's sections. In addition to this, the clubs also share other information, such as medical, performance monitoring and player management.


title: City Football Group

text: Four of City Football Group's ten clubs sport women's teams, with Montevideo City Torque expected to launch a women's team in 2021 and New York City FC having previously held discussions about an affiliation with Sky Blue FC in 2014. In both Manchester and Melbourne, CFG (re)launched new women's sides in 2014 and 2015, promising to invest in women's football in unprecedent ways. In both cities the women's teams would ultimately be given bespoke facilities which, in contrast to the standard for football clubs, shared training locations with their affiliated men's teams. Similarly, both cities would see returns for their investment, with Manchester City Women repeatedly finishing amongst the top two and winning a series of domestic trophies while Melbourne City's unprecedented investment in Australian women's football – an area which had previously been underfunded and largely forgotten in the country – earned the side plaudits for their forward-thinking and would see their female side crowned Grand Final winners four times in five seasons.


title: City Football Group

text: Looking to capitalise on the growth of esports and for City Football Group to be seen as always being at the forefront of innovation, CFG made their first venture into digital gaming in June 2016 when they signed Kieran ""Kez"" Brown to represent Manchester City at FIFA tournaments and fan events as well as to make digital content for their social media profiles.


title: City Football Group

text: Over the following years, CFG expanded their esports footprint as most of their clubs signed players to represent them in FIFA tournaments, with most clubs keeping one PlayStation player and one Xbox player on their books to represent them at all times. By early 2021, CFG would have a total of 16 professional esports players across their various clubs. In 2021, Manchester City became the first CFG club to expand beyond FIFA when they signed Aiden ""Threats"" Mong to represent them in Fortnite tournaments. Unlike the other CFG teams, Manchester City would also go on to create separate esports teams in China and South Korea to compete in Asia-localised tournaments.


title: City Football Group

text: In addition to having their own esports players, CFG have also collaborated with existing teams. In 2019 Manchester City announced a partnership with FaZe Clan which would see the two run various esports competitions and merchandising lines, as well as allowing City's and FaZe's FIFA players to share facilities and train together. In 2022, CFG announced that it was sponsoring Blue United eFC, in a move which would see Blue United wear CFG-style sky blue shirts at competitive events.


title: City Football Group

text: Manchester City trace their origins back to 1880, taking their present name in the year 1894. The club was one of the founding members of the Football League Second Division in 1892 and first gained promotion to the top division of English football in 1899, in the process becoming the first team in history to be promoted via automatic promotion. They are ranked as one of the top ten clubs in England for most seasons spent in the English top flight, and top five for most major honours won. Their first trophy came in the 1904 FA Cup Final; in total, at the point of their acquisition by City Football Group, they had won two top flight league titles, four FA Cups, two League Cups, one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and three FA Community Shields.


title: City Football Group

text: After its takeover, Manchester City launched into a complete overhaul of all departments, intent on rising to the top as fast as possible. On the pitch, the following seasons saw the team replaced under the management of Mark Hughes and then a second time under Roberto Mancini as the lobbying of established UEFA Champions League clubs in the Premier League forced the Manchester team to act quickly in order to achieve Champions League status before the newly implemented Financial Fair Play Regulations made it unviable for teams to spend outside of their earnings in an attempt to move up the table. Meanwhile, off the pitch City spent £10 million on revamping their Platt Lane academy base as they formulated plans to produce a £100m training and academy facility on land opposite their stadium, studying training facilities around the world in an attempt to create the world's foremost development in its field. This came in conjunction with the announcement in 2014 that they had received planning permission to increase their stadium capacity to over 62,000, making it the second largest club stadium in England. Further investment came in the field of fan engagement, where City committed themselves to a policy of winning the global popularity contest with a mass display of social media. Since the start of the 2016–17 season, Manchester City have been coached by former FC Barcelona player and coach and FC Bayern Munich coach Pep Guardiola.


title: City Football Group

text: Under City Football Group, Manchester City Football Club have lifted the 2010–11 FA Cup, 2011–12 Premier League, 2012 FA Community Shield, 2013–14 Football League Cup, 2013–14 Premier League, 2015–16 Football League Cup, 2017–18 EFL Cup, 2017–18 Premier League, 2018 FA Community Shield, 2018–19 EFL Cup, 2018–19 Premier League, 2018–19 FA Cup, 2019 FA Community Shield, 2019–20 EFL Cup, 2020–21 EFL Cup, 2020–21 Premier League and 2021–22 Premier League. City's best European result in that timespan was a final in the 2020–21 UEFA Champions League.


title: City Football Group

text: In April 2022, a report from Der Spiegel, based on leaked internal documents, claimed that the Abu Dhabi owners had previously made payments into the club disguised as sponsorship payments by Emirati companies like Etihad and Etisalat (the same claim that the club had successfully defended at CAS in 2020); Sheikh Mansour's Abu Dhabi United Group had allegedly indirectly paid for underage players to sign with the club; and that the club had allegedly used a fictitious contract between Roberto Mancini and Mansour's Al Jazira Club to pay large compensation fees to the former manager, in addition to his salary. The three cases were under investigation by the Premier League for the last three years. In response the club dismissed these claims as untrue, where sources close to the club said the report was a continuation of an “orchestrated campaign” and part of “an endless attempt to damage us”.


title: City Football Group

text: Although Manchester City Women had existed since 1988 (previously under the name "Manchester City Ladies F.C.") they existed solely as an external affiliate of the club until August 2012, with few shared resources and with CFG enjoying no control over the club's management. Four years after the purchase of Manchester City, an agreement was signed in which the affiliated women's team would come under full control of Manchester City and would effectively become a department of the same organisation.


title: City Football Group

text: Shortly after taking control of the club, the side was relaunched as "Manchester City Women's Football Club" and applied successfully to join the top tier of English women's football - the recently created FA Women's Super League. When the new Manchester City training ground was constructed it was specifically designed to include the women's team as equal partners, and the encouragement of the women's team to have access to the same sports science and analysts as the men's teams was considered pioneering at the time. They won their first major in the 2014 FA WSL Cup, and they have become one of the most successful sides in the professional era of women's football in England, with a total of one league title, three Women's FA Cups and four FA WSL Cups.


title: City Football Group

text: Founded in 2013, New York City FC joined the American Major League Soccer as the 20th expansion team; their first season of actual competition was in 2015, alongside Orlando City SC. To date they are the only team built from scratch by City Football Group. CFG own 80% of NYCFC, with the remaining 20% owned by Yankee Global Enterprises, the parent company of the New York Yankees baseball club, at whose home stadium they play their matches. The club's first employee was former Manchester City and US national team player Claudio Reyna, who was appointed as Director of Football and undertook much of the initial building of the club before moving on in 2019.


title: City Football Group

text: Building on their work in Manchester, City Football Group announced the creation of a bespoke training facility, using the name "City Football Academy" as would become standard across the group, in Orangeburg, New York, just outside of the city limits: it opened in 2018. New York City FC's first season results were modest, but since their second season they have made the MLS Cup Playoffs in every season. They lifted the MLS Cup for the first time in 2021.


title: City Football Group

text: In late 2021, MLS announced the creation of a new division which the USSF recognised as a third-tier league in the US football league pyramid. NYCFC were announced to be one of the 21 clubs which would enter it as a founder-member. To this end, they launched a development team, called New York City FC II (frequently referred to as "NYCFC II" or "NYCFC2").


title: City Football Group

text: One of seven expansion sides in the A-League Men, Melbourne City originally joined their league as a new franchise in 2010 under the name of "Melbourne Heart". In so doing, they became the first club to join the league in a city where the A-League already had a presence, instantly creating a rivalry with founder member Melbourne Victory in what is now known as the Melbourne derby. Although the Heart won the first Melbourne derby their early performances in the league were poor, qualifying for the playoffs only once in the first four seasons and finishing in last place in the 2013–14 season.


title: City Football Group

text: City Football Group's purchase of Melbourne Heart was announced on 23 January 2014, in a deal worked out with a consortium of businessmen related to local rugby league club Melbourne Storm. Under the new ownership, the Heart changed its name to Melbourne City in June of the same year, with the club switching to sky blue jerseys in 2017 - their previous red and white stripes would be retained as their away colours, however. In 2015 they opened a new City Football Academy facility at La Trobe University based on the designs and principles of the Manchester training ground of the same name, and began construction of a larger base in the south of the city in 2021. In 2016 the club won their first major honour by beating Sydney FC in the final of the Australia Cup (then known as the "FFA Cup"), while they claimed their first league trophies by winning both the A-League Premier's Plate and the A-League Champions Trophy in 2021.


title: City Football Group

text: As part of the expansion of the National Premier Leagues Victoria 1 (now known as NPL Victoria 2), Melbourne City had an application accepted to field a team based around their now-defunct Youth side in the competition along with five additional new entrants. On 6 December 2014 they announced the creation of their NPL team, which began competition in the 2015 season.


title: City Football Group

text: Although Melbourne City have seen much success in the junior age categories they have not repeated this at the professional level, with no trophy wins. In 2019, when NPL Victoria 2 was split in half to create a new, lower, third tier NPL division, Melbourne City were one of the teams relegated to the lower level.


title: City Football Group

text: Following the success of their investment in Manchester City's women's team, CFG announced their continued support of women's football with the creation of a women's department in Melbourne in 2015 which was accepted as an expansion team in the W-League.


title: City Football Group

text: Since its inception the W-League had seen low levels of financial support from clubs into their female sides, with teams rarely spending even half of their budget cap. In this environment, Melbourne City were able to sweep the board in their first season, going undefeated all season to win both the league and the playoff trophies and setting a number of records. In total, Melbourne City have won the Premiership twice (in 2015–16 and 2019–20) and the championship four times (in 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2020).


title: City Football Group

text: As with many clubs in Japan, Yokohama F. Marinos were founded as a factory team of car manufacturing giant Nissan, and originally played under the name "Nissan Motors F.C." Though the club changed its name to "Yokohama Marinos" when they turned professional in 1993, throughout their history they have remainder under Nissan's majority ownership. In 1999 the club merged with local rivals Yokohama Flugels after the Flugels went into insolvancy - the combination of the two teams resulted in the current name "Yokohama F. Marinos". Over their history they have been one of Japan's more successful clubs, winning the Japanese top division league title on six occasions along with twelve domestic cups and two continental trophies.


title: City Football Group

text: On 20 May 2014, it was announced that City Football Group had invested in a minority share of Yokohama F. Marinos, creating a partnership with both the football club and car manufacturer Nissan. Through their contacts in the game, CFG would bring several managers in succession to Yokohama. Australian Ange Postecoglou would be the most successful, winning the 2019 J1 League, the club's first league title for 15 seasons. At the same time, pundits noted that Yokohama's switch to playing a CFG-inspired possession game had influenced the way that football was played in Japan, with many other teams copying their style.


title: City Football Group

text: Montevideo City Torque were first created as "Club Atlético Torque" in 2007. The club adopted the moniker "Torque" as one of its founders was an electromechanic, and collectively the founders liked the concept of torque as a relationship between power and movement. Starting from the third tier - at that time the lowest level of the Uruguayan football league system - the club made steady progress, earning promotion to the Segunda División in 2011 achieving finishes in the top half of the Segunda División table by 2015.


title: City Football Group

text: On 5 April 2017, CFG announced that it had acquired Club Atletico Torque, a club in Montevideo currently playing in the Uruguayan Primera División. That season, the club won the Segunda División by nine points, being promoted to the Primera División for the first time. Though they came close to winning the Torneo Intermedio - which would have qualified them for the Copa Sudamericana - they would at the end of the season fall foul of the Primera División relegation rules, which saw the bottom three teams relegated based on a two-year rolling average of points per game. Nevertheless, they would win the Segunda División again in 2019 to return to the top flight again. In 2020 the club would also rename itself to "Montevideo City Torque" and alter the club badge, simultaneously announcing the creation of a training facility and academy system intended to be one of the best in South America.


title: City Football Group

text: In 2021 Montevideo City Torque announced that they were creating a women's team, borne from City Football Group's desire to support and grow women's football; they recruited both a senior team and an under-19 side from a group of 100 trialists. The team was formed quickly enough to contest in the 2021 season of the Campeonato Femenino B, the second tier of women's football in Uruguay. In their first season they won all seven of their First Phase games but performed less well in the Promotion Phase, missing out on the chance to ascend to the top division at the first attempt.


title: City Football Group

text: On 23 August 2017, it was announced that the City Football Group had acquired 44.3% of La Liga side Girona. Another 44.3% was held by the Girona Football Group, led by Pere Guardiola, brother of Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola. Girona had previously been loaned a number of players by Manchester City while they were in the Segunda División, in what was seen by some as an attempt to attract Pep Guardiola to Manchester City. In August 2018, Girona had two loanees, both 21 years old, from Manchester City.


title: City Football Group

text: In line with the Spanish standard of major teams operating B-teams as development squads for younger players, Girona owns a subsidiary team named simply "Girona B", following the incorporation in 2011 of the formerly independent side CF Riudellots. At the time of the purchase of Girona by CFG, the club operated in the Segona Catalana division, the sixth level of football in Spain. As an official B-team Girona B is ineligible for promotion to a higher division than any other Girona-affiliated side above them in the leagues. Nor is it eligible to play in any cup competition in which Girona themselves already compete.


title: City Football Group

text: Girona additionally operated a primary B-team – CF Peralada-Girona B – although this team was merely in partnership with Girona and neither Girona nor CFG had any ownership stake in the club. In 2019, the affiliation with Peralada was terminated as they were relegated to the Tercera División.


title: City Football Group

text: Though they had operated a women's side since 2017, Girona Femení A only came into being in 2020, when Girona purchased the women's section of local club Sant Pere Pescador, renaming them to match the club's identity.


title: City Football Group

text: Although Girona FC operated a senior women's team for a number of years, financial constraints had forced them to cease operations at the senior level in 2013 and by 2017 the Catalan club operated just 3 junior teams with a total of 41 youth players in their system. Barely two months before CFG bought into the ownership of Girona FC, the club announced an expansion of its female set-up, including the restoration of the senior women's team, to start competing in the fifth tier of women's football in Spain.


title: City Football Group

text: On 20 February 2019, it was announced that the City Football Group as well as UBTECH and China Sports Capital had acquired Sichuan Jiuniu F.C.


title: City Football Group

text: City Football Group was announced as majority stakeholder of Mumbai City on Thursday 28 November 2019 after acquiring 65% of the club. Mumbai City FC is a professional football club based in Mumbai, competing in the Indian Super League.


title: City Football Group

text: Mumbai City FC Reserves were announced to be competing for the first time in the I-League 2nd Division, the third tier of Indian football.


title: City Football Group

text: City Football Group was announced as majority stakeholder of Lommel SK on Monday 11 May 2020 acquiring the majority (unspecified) of the shares of the club. Lommel S.K. is a professional football club based in Lommel, competing in the Belgian First Division B (second tier).


title: City Football Group

text: On 3 September 2020, City Football Group announced that they had purchased the shares of the former owner of Ligue 2 club Troyes AC Daniel Masoni, making them the majority shareholder of the Ligue 2 French club.


title: City Football Group

text: The development side of Troyes AC, known variously as Troyes AC Reserves and Troyes AC 2, play in Group F (Grand Est) of the Championnat National 3, the fifth tier of the French football league system.


title: City Football Group

text: ESTAC Troyes are represented in the women's game by Troyes AC Féminine, a senior side who compete in Grand Est Regional 1 (the third tier of women's football in France), having been denied promotion to Division 2 Féminine by the early closing of the 2019–20 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: City Football Group

text: On December 3, City Football Group acquired 90% of Esporte Clube Bahia. The deal is expected to be finalised by early 2023.


title: City Football Group

text: The following senior-level trophies have been won by City Football Group teams while under the ownership and control of the group. Trophies won before the inclusion in the City Football Group are not listed in this section:


title: City Football Group

text: Includes lower league titles plus any cups not available to top division clubs, but does not include cups considered non-competitive for statistics purposes (such as pre-season competitions or local FA tournaments habitually contested by reserve sides).


title: City Football Group

text: Though City Football Group has existed for a number of years, competing schedules and priorities have limited the number of occasions on which CFG teams have been able to contest matches against each other. The following record lists the games played between CFG teams while both have been under common ownership:


title: City Football Group

text: It was announced on 12 January 2021 that Club Bolivar had become the first partner club for the group. Club Bolivar is the most successful Bolivian club having won 29 domestic titles since it was founded in La Paz on 12 April 1925. The owner of the club Marcelo Claure is also part of the ownership group of Inter Miami CF alongside David Beckham as well as being COO of SoftBank Group with Masayoshi Son (CEO of Softbank) as well as Jorge Mas and Jose Mas from MasTec respectively.


title: City Football Group

text: It was announced on 17 February 2021 that French fourth tier side Vannes had become the latest partner club for the group. The two club were already linked after Vannes' President Maxime Ray had joined CFG to become a minority shareholder in Troyes AC as part of the 2020 purchase, though he agreed to have no operational role at Troyes as part of the takeover.


title: City Football Group

text: On 25 July 2017, City Football Group signed a joint venture partnership with Goals Soccer Centres, a 5-a-side football pitch operator, to invest capital into the US operations of the company in order to expand across North America. On 3 February 2020, CFG purchased the remaining 50% to take full ownership of the joint venture – operating under the Americanised name "Goals Soccer Centers" – following the near-collapse of their partner as a result of historic fraud allegations.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Armand Hammer (May 21, 1898 – December 10, 1990) was an American business manager and owner, most closely associated with Occidental Petroleum, a company he ran from 1957 until his death. Called "Lenin's chosen capitalist" by the press, he was also known for his art collection and his close ties to the Soviet Union.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer's business interests around the world and his "citizen diplomacy" helped him cultivate a wide network of friends and associates.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Armand Hammer was born in New York City to Jewish parents who emigrated from what was then the Russian Empire: Rose (née Lipschitz) and Julius Hammer. His father came to the United States from Odessa (now Ukraine) in 1875 and settled in the Bronx, where he ran a general medical practice and five drugstores. After the Russian Revolution, a part of the Socialist Labor Party of America (SLP) under Julius' leadership split off to become a founding element of the Communist Party USA which supported Vladimir Lenin and Bolshevism. As administrative head, commercial "attaché", and financial advisor of the Ludwig Martens-led Russian Soviet Government Bureau, Julius Hammer was assigned to generate support for the Russian Soviet Government Bureau and funded the Soviet Russian Bureau by money laundering the proceeds from illegal sales of smuggled diamonds through his company Allied Drug, while his Allied Drug partner, Abraham A. Heller, headed the Soviet Bureau's commercial department. Julius Hammer and Heller traveled extensively across the United States both to stop the embargo of Soviet Russia and to increase United States trade with Soviet Russia along with improving the image of Bolsheviks who were overwhelmingly despised by American socialists. During the United States embargo against Soviet Russia, Julius Hammer used his Allied Drug and Chemical as a front to smuggle items and materials between the United States and Soviet Russia through Riga. After the Lusk Committee supported police raid of the Soviet Russian Government Bureau on June 12, 1919, Ludwig Martens escaped and went underground, often hiding at Hammer's home. On December 18, 1920 Martens was deported and returned to Soviet Russia in January 1921.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer originally said that his father had named him after a character, Armand Duval, in "La Dame aux Camélias", a novel by Alexandre Dumas. According to other sources, Hammer later was said to be named after the "arm and hammer" graphic symbol of the SLP, in which his father had a leadership role. Late in his life, Hammer confirmed that this was indeed the origin of his given name.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Due to his socialist and communist activities, Hammer's father Julius had been put under federal surveillance. On July 5, 1919, federal agents witnessed Marie Oganesoff (the 33-year-old Russian wife of a former tsarist diplomat) entering Julius's medical office located in a wing of his Bronx home. Oganesoff, "who had accumulated a life-threatening history of miscarriages, abortions, and poor health, was pregnant and wanted to terminate her pregnancy." The surgical procedure took place in the midst of a great flu epidemic. Six days after the abortion Oganesoff died of pneumonia. Four weeks after her death a Bronx County grand jury indicted Julius Hammer for first-degree manslaughter. The following summer, a criminal prosecutor convinced a jury that Julius Hammer had let his patient "die like a dog" and that the claims that she had actually died from complications due to influenza were mere attempts to cover up his crime. In 1920, a judge sentenced Julius Hammer to three and a half years in Sing Sing prison.


title: Armand Hammer

text: ) state that Julius had performed the abortion, an opposing position has been put forward by author Edward Jay Epstein, who in his book "Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer" puts forward the claim that it was Armand Hammer, then a medical student, rather than his father who performed the abortion and his father Julius assumed the blame. Epstein's claims come from interview comments made by Bettye Murphy, who had been Armand's mistress. According to Murphy and Epstein's account, the legal strategy was that Julius did not deny that an abortion had been performed, but insisted that it had been medically necessary and that a licensed doctor rather than a medical student would be more convincing in presenting that argument.


title: Armand Hammer

text: After the Soviet Russian Government Bureau closed, Allied Drug's smuggling activities between the United States and Soviet Russia ceased, which caused Allied Drug to gain enormous debts from storing large amounts of unpaid items in warehouses in New York and Riga. In March 1921, Ludwig Martens sent a letter from Moscow through the Soviet mission in Tallinn to Julius Hammer, who was imprisoned at Sing Sing until 1924, granting his Allied Drug and Chemical concessions for trade with Soviet Russia and requested an Allied Drug representative to be present in Soviet Russia.


title: Armand Hammer

text: When his father was imprisoned, Hammer and his brother took Allied Drug, the family business, to new heights, reselling equipment they had bought at depressed prices at the end of World War I. According to Hammer, his first business success was in 1919, manufacturing and selling a ginger extract, which legally contained high levels of alcohol. This was extremely popular during Prohibition, and the company had $1 million in sales that year.


title: Armand Hammer

text: While Julius was imprisoned, he sent Armand Hammer, who could not speak any Russian, to the Soviet Union to look after the affairs of Allied Drug and Chemical. Hammer traveled back and forth from the Soviet Union for the next 10 years. In the meantime, Hammer graduated from Columbia College in 1919 and received his medical degree from the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1921.


title: Armand Hammer

text: In 1921, while waiting for his internship to begin at Bellevue Hospital, Hammer went to the Soviet Union for a trip that lasted until late 1930. Although his career in medicine was cut short, he relished being referred to as "Dr. Hammer". Hammer's intentions in the 1921 trip have been debated ever since. He has claimed that he originally intended to recoup $150,000 in debts for drugs shipped during the Allied intervention, but was soon moved by a capitalistic and philanthropic interest in selling wheat to the then-starving Russians. In his passport application, Hammer stated that he intended to visit only Western Europe. J. Edgar Hoover in the Justice Department knew this was false, but Hammer was allowed to travel, anyway. The 26-year-old Hoover, who was the Justice Department's expert on subversives, was tipped off that Armand Hammer was a courier for the COMINTERN and ensured that foreign intelligence agencies were notified of Armand Hammer's travels. A skeptical U.S. government watched him through this trip and for the rest of his life.


title: Armand Hammer

text: After leaving Columbia Medical School, Hammer extended earlier entrepreneurial ventures with a successful business importing many goods from and exporting pharmaceuticals to the newly formed Soviet Union, together with his younger brother Victor. The blockade of Soviet Russia had ended for most items in February 1921, and on July 5, 1921, he departed New York on his first trip to Soviet Russia as Allied Drug's representative in Soviet Russia. Prior to his departure, he visited Charles Recht, Lenin's United States attorney that supported Soviet Russia's best interests in the United States and whose law office was in the same building that the former Soviet Russian Government Bureau had occupied, and Recht gave Hammer a package to deliver to Ludwig Martens in Moscow. During this first visit, Armand Hammer allowed the Chekists, the Soviet secret police who later became known as the KGB, to take control of Allied Drug and Chemical. During his time in Soviet Russia and later the Soviet Union, he perfected bribery and money-laundering techniques, which were exposed later in the 1960s and 1970s during which he tape-recorded his payoffs. After returning to the United States, Hammer stated that Lenin had granted him an asbestos concession for 25 years to mine asbestos from the Urals in Soviet Russia. According to Hammer, on his initial trip, he took $60,000 in medical supplies to aid in a typhus epidemic and made a deal with Lenin for furs, caviar, and jewelry expropriated by the Soviet state in exchange for a million bushels (27,216 tons) shipment of surplus American wheat.


title: Armand Hammer

text: He moved to the USSR in the 1920s to oversee these operations, especially his large business manufacturing and exporting pens and pencils. According to Alexander Barmine, who was assigned by the Central Committee to run the Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga company to compete with Hammer, the stationery concession to produce such items in the Soviet Union was actually granted to Julius Hammer. Barmine states the party spent five million gold rubles on stationery supplies made in factories controlled by Julius Hammer and other concessionaires, making them rich. Barmine further contends that the Soviets were eventually able to duplicate certain items such as typewriter parts and pens, and end those concessions, but were never able to match the quality of Hammer's pencils, so that concession became permanent. Armand Hammer remained in the Soviet Union until 1930.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Back in the United States, Hammer was bequeathed a few Fabergé eggs by the Soviets between 1930 and 1933. The authenticity of the artifacts was questioned. According to Géza von Habsburg, Armand's brother Victor Hammer stated Stalin's trade commissar Anastas Mikoyan provided Fabergé hallmarking tools to Armand to sell fakes, and Victor stated a 1938 New York sale he ran with Armand, which grossed several million dollars, consisted of both authentic and inauthentic items (called Fauxbergé by Habsburg), with commissions going back to Mikoyan. Although certainly some fakes were produced, on close examination many of the so-called fake items turned out to actually be from various workshops, particularly that of Henrik Wigstrom, and had been appropriated by the Soviet government when they closed the Faberge company. As the items were either unfinished or not ready for retail sale, many were not hallmarked, so Hammer and his associates finished the work.


title: Armand Hammer

text: In his 1983 book, "Red Carpet," author Joseph Finder discusses Hammer's "extensive involvement with Russia." In "Dossier: The Secret History of Armand Hammer", Edward Jay Epstein called Hammer "a virtual spy" for the Soviet Union.


title: Armand Hammer

text: After returning to the US, Hammer entered into a diverse array of business, art, cultural, and humanitarian endeavors, including investing in various U.S. oil-production efforts. He gained enormous wealth through his United Distillers of America, which was a 1933 established firm known as the A. Hammer Cooperage Corporation until 1946, when it changed its name to United Distillers of America Ltd. In early 1944, Hammer purchased American Distilling Co. and a former New Market, New Hampshire, rum distillery at which his American Distilling employee, Dr. Hanns G. Maister, began producing the first United States-made potato-based spirit, which was a vodka, and also produced a blended whiskey that was retailed through the cooperage's account with West Shore. After a B-25 crashed into the north face of the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on a foggy Saturday the 28th of July in 1945, Hammer purchased the damaged 78th floor, refurbished it, and made it the headquarters of his United Distillers of America. His oil investments were later parlayed into control of Occidental Petroleum (Oxy) which he obtained in 1956. Through his Occidental Petroleum and its stakes in Libya, Hammer was pivotal in breaking the tight grip that the major United States domestic producers had on the price of oil, and instead gave OPEC control over oil prices. Arthur Andersen was Oxy's auditors. National Geographic described Occidental chairman Hammer as "a pioneer in the synfuels boom." Throughout his life he continued personal and business dealings with the Soviet Union, despite the Cold War. In later years, he lobbied and traveled extensively at a great personal expense, working for peace between the United States and the Communist countries of the world, including ferrying physicians and supplies into the Soviet Union to help Chernobyl survivors. In his book , Daniel Yergin writes that Hammer "ended up as a go-between for five Soviet General Secretaries and seven U.S. Presidents."


title: Armand Hammer

text: Through Hammer's closeness to Yuri Andropov, Andropov assigned Mikhail Ilyich Bruk (; 1923 Moscow – 2009 Jurmala) also called Mike or Michael Brook or Brooke, who was an English-Russian translator, as Hammer's personal ambassador and expediter and was present as Hammer's translator at all meetings between Armand Hammer and Soviet leaders in the Soviet Union beginning in 1964. Bruk had been a technical translator at the first Pugwash conference called the Thinkers' Lodge held in July 1957. According to Armand Hammer, "Mike's KGB."


title: Armand Hammer

text: In early 1969, Armand Hammer obtained control of Eaton's Tower International through which Hammer would have a controlling majority stake in Tower International in exchange for Hammer's Occidental Petroleum assuming the debts of Tower International and Eaton receiving 45% of any profits from Tower International's future projects. During détente in July 1972, Armand Hammer negotiated a twenty year agreement with Brezhnev of the Soviet Union that was signed by Hammer in April 1973 in which the Hammer controlled firms Occidental Petroleum and Tower International would export to the Soviet Union, and later Russia, phosphate, which Occidental mined in northern Florida, in return for the Soviet Union, and later Russia, exporting from Odessa through Hammer's firms natural gas that would be converted into ammonia, potash, and urea. This fertilizer deal was to continue until Hammer's 100th birthday in 1998. JaxPort at the Port of Jacksonville in Jacksonville, Florida, was the United States port through which this trade occurred. On 27 July 1978, the fertilizer deal began functioning in the Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, with the opening of the port and the Odessa plants near the former location of () () at the seaport "" () (), which is the deepest port in Ukraine servicing vessels with drafts up to . Pivdenny is located at the Small Adzhalyk Estuary () or () west of the 1974 established Yuzhne (). The Port of Pivdenny was known as "Grigorievsky" () until 1978 and as the Port of Yuzhne from 1978 until 17 April 2019 when the port was renamed from the Russian word to the Ukrainian word for "southern".


title: Armand Hammer

text: After Nixon, as the first United States President to visit the Soviet Union, traveled to Moscow for a summit that ended on June 1, 1972, Hammer traveled to Moscow arriving July 14, 1972, and, with Sargent Shriver as his legal advisor, negotiated the first trade agreement between the United States and the Soviet Union following Nixon's summit. Six weeks prior to Nixon's departure, Hammer personally gave Maurice Stans, the finance chairman of Nixon's campaign fund, $46,000 in cash from a numbered bank account in Switzerland which Hammer used as his slush fund money. Later, in September 1972 Hammer gave Nixon's campaign fund an additional $54,000 from the same Swiss bank account amounting to a total of $100,000 that Hammer donated to Nixon's campaign fund. On July 18, 1972, Hammer returned to the United States through London and called Tim Babcock, Hammer's lobbyist for the Nixon administration, to have him arrange a meeting with Nixon through H. R. Haldeman, who was Nixon's chief of staff, in order to debrief the President about Hammer's trade deal which occurred on July 20, 1972.


title: Armand Hammer

text: During Soviet times Armand Hammer also financed the , which opened in 1979 and became known as the Hammer Center.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Politically, Hammer was a strong supporter of the Republican Party. Hammer anonymously gave $46,000 to support Nixon before a 1971 law took effect on April 7, 1972, which banned political contributions both anonymous and through another person. Later, in September 1972, Armand Hammer made an additional three illegal contributions totaling $54,000 to Richard Nixon's Watergate fund through friends of former Montana Governor Tim Babcock, who was Hammer's vice president of Occidental Petroleum, after which both Hammer and Babcock plead guilty to charges involving illegal contributions. Hammer received probation and a $3,000 fine. In August 1989, US President George H. W. Bush pardoned Hammer for the illegal contributions to aid Nixon's re-election in 1972.


title: Armand Hammer

text: A 2003 interview with Aleksey Mitrofanov () erroneously places the Hammer and Gore families close to each other in Europe. Occidental's coal interests were represented for many years by attorney and former U.S. Senator Al Gore Sr., among others. Gore, who had a longtime close friendship with Hammer, became the head of the subsidiary Island Creek Coal Company, upon his election loss in the Senate in November 1970. Much of Occidental's coal and phosphate production was in Tennessee, the state Gore represented in the Senate, and Gore owned shares in the company. Former Vice President Al Gore Jr. received much criticism from environmentalists, when the shares passed to the estate after the death of Gore Sr., and Gore Jr. was a son and the executor of the estate. Gore Jr. did not exercise control over the shares, which were eventually sold when the estate closed.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer was very fond of Gore Jr. and, in 1984, under Hammer's guidance, Gore Jr. sought Tennessee's Senate office previously held by Howard Baker. Hammer supposedly promised Gore Sr. that he could make his son the president of the United States. It was under Hammer's encouragement and support that Gore Jr. sought the Democratic Party presidential nomination in 1988.


title: Armand Hammer

text: In the 1980s Hammer owned a considerable amount of stock in Church & Dwight, the company that manufactures Arm & Hammer products; he also served on its board of directors. However, the Arm & Hammer company's brand name did not originate with Armand Hammer. It was in use 31 years before Hammer was born. While Hammer and Occidental said that the Church & Dwight investment was a coincidence, Hammer acknowledged previously trying to buy the Arm & Hammer brand as a result of often being asked about it.


title: Armand Hammer

text: In 1981, Hammer was appointed by US President Ronald Reagan to serve on the three-member President's Cancer Panel and he later served as chairman of the panel from 1984 to 1989. As chairman of the panel, he announced a campaign to raise $1 billion a year to fight cancer.


title: Armand Hammer

text: He was a collector of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings. His personal donation forms the core of the permanent collection of the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California. Together with his brother Victor, he was the owner of the "Hammer Galleries" in New York City. Hammer purchased Knoedler, the oldest art gallery in America, in 1971.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer was a philanthropist, supporting causes related to education, medicine, and the arts. Among his legacies is the Armand Hammer United World College of the American West (now generally called the UWC-USA, part of the United World Colleges). Together with his friends Harry and Rosa Strygler, he also supported several Jewish foundations, particularly those associated with the Holocaust.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer hungered for a Nobel Peace Prize, and he was repeatedly nominated for one, including by Menachem Begin, but never won.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer made a guest appearance on a 1988 episode of "The Cosby Show" (as the grandfather of a friend of Theo Huxtable's who was suffering from cancer), saying that a cure for cancer was imminent.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer was leading Occidental in 1988 when its oil rig, Piper Alpha, exploded, killing 167 men. The Cullen Report highlighted failings in many areas on the platform.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Due to his closeness to the future Charles III, then Prince of Wales, he was mistakenly called a godfather to one of the Prince's children. It has been reported that Charles intended to make Hammer Prince William's godfather but was forced to abandon these plans as Princess Diana disliked the idea. In the 1980s, Hammer gave strong financial support to Prince Charles's projects of nearly 40 million pounds and free use of Hammer's Boeing 727.


title: Armand Hammer

text: As of 2016, he has been the subject of six biographies: in 1975 (Considine, authorized biography), 1985 (Bryson, coffee table book), Weinberg 1989, Blumay 1992, Epstein 1996, and Alef 2009; and two autobiographies (1932 and a bestseller in 1987). His art collection, "The Armand Hammer Collection: Four Centuries of Masterpieces", published by the Armand Hammer Foundation in multiple editions, eventually became "five" centuries of masterpieces, sometimes in conjunction with museums where the collection was displayed. and his philanthropic projects were the subject of numerous publications.


title: Armand Hammer

text: In 1978, Hammer, as a non-citizen of the Soviet Union, received the Soviet Union's award the Order of Friendship of Peoples from Leonid Brezhnev because of his strong support of both the International Workers and Communist movement and the needs of the Soviet Union. By the time of his death, Hammer received other awards including:


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer was the middle of three sons. He had close relationships, including in business, with his brothers, Harry and Victor Hammer, throughout their lives.


title: Armand Hammer

text: He married three times, first in 1927, to a Russian actress, Olga Vadimovna von Root, the daughter of a czarist general. In 1943, he was married to Angela Zevely. In 1956, he married the wealthy widow Frances Barrett, and they remained married until her death in 1989.


title: Armand Hammer

text: He had only one child, his son Julian Armand Hammer, by his first wife. Hammer's grandson is businessman Michael Armand Hammer; his great-grandson is actor Armie Hammer.


title: Armand Hammer

text: Hammer died of bone marrow cancer in December 1990, aged 92 in Los Angeles. He was buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, across the street from his Occidental building on Wilshire Boulevard.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: The British Union of Fascists (BUF) was a British fascist political party formed in 1932 by Oswald Mosley. Mosley changed its name to the British Union of Fascists and National Socialists in 1936 and, in 1937, to the British Union. In 1939, following the start of the Second World War, the party was proscribed by the British government and in 1940 it was disbanded.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: The BUF emerged in 1932 from the electoral defeat of its antecedent, the New Party, in the 1931 general election. The BUF's foundation was initially met with popular support, and it attracted a sizeable following, with the party claiming 50,000 members at one point. The press baron Lord Rothermere was a notable early supporter. As the party became increasingly radical, however, support declined. The Olympia Rally of 1934, in which a number of anti-fascist protestors were attacked by the paramilitary wing of the BUF, the Fascist Defence Force, isolated the party from much of its following. The party's embrace of Nazi-style anti-semitism in 1936 led to increasingly violent anti-fascist confrontations, notably the 1936 Battle of Cable Street in London's East End. The Public Order Act 1936, which banned political uniforms and responded to increasing political violence, had a particularly strong effect on the BUF whose supporters were known as "Blackshirts" after the uniforms they wore.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Growing British hostility towards Nazi Germany, with which the British press persistently associated the BUF, further contributed to the decline of the movement's membership. It was finally banned by the British government on 23 May 1940 after the start of the Second World War, amid suspicion that its remaining supporters might form a pro-Nazi "fifth column". A number of prominent BUF members were arrested and interned under Defence Regulation 18B.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Oswald Mosley was the youngest elected Conservative MP before crossing the floor in 1922, joining first Labour and, shortly afterward, the Independent Labour Party. He became Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in Ramsay MacDonald's Labour government, advising on rising unemployment.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: In 1930, Mosley issued his Mosley Memorandum, which fused protectionism with a proto-Keynesian programme of policies designed to tackle the problem of unemployment, and he resigned from the Labour Party soon after, in early 1931, when the plans were rejected. He immediately formed the New Party, with policies based on his memorandum. The party won 16% of the vote at a by-election in Ashton-under-Lyne in early 1931; however, it failed to achieve any other electoral success.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: During 1931, the New Party became increasingly influenced by fascism. The following year, after a January 1932 visit to Benito Mussolini in Italy, Mosley's own conversion to fascism was confirmed. He wound up the New Party in April, but preserved its youth movement, which would form the core of the BUF, intact. He spent the summer that year writing a fascist programme, "The Greater Britain", and this formed the basis of policy of the BUF, which was launched on 1 October 1932.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: The BUF claimed 50,000 members at one point, and the "Daily Mail", running the headline "Hurrah for the Blackshirts!", was an early supporter. The first Director of Propaganda, appointed in February 1933, was Wilfred Risdon, who was responsible for organising all of Mosley's public meetings. Despite strong resistance from anti-fascists, including the local Jewish community, the Labour Party, the Independent Labour Party, and the Communist Party of Great Britain, the BUF found a following in the East End of London, where in the London County Council elections of March 1937, it obtained reasonably successful results in Bethnal Green, Shoreditch, and Limehouse, polling almost 8,000 votes, although none of its candidates was elected. The BUF did elect a few councillors at local government level during the 1930s (including Charles Bentinck Budd (Worthing, Sussex), 1934; Ronald Creasy (Eye, Suffolk), 1938) but did not win any parliamentary seats. Two former members of the BUF, Major Sir Jocelyn Lucas and Harold Soref, were later elected as Conservative Members of Parliament (MPs).


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Having lost the funding of newspaper magnate Lord Rothermere that it had previously enjoyed, at the 1935 general election the party urged voters to abstain, calling for "Fascism Next Time". There never was a "next time" as the next general election was not held until July 1945, five years after the dissolution of the BUF.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Towards the middle of the 1930s, the BUF's violent clashes with opponents began to alienate some middle-class supporters, and membership decreased. At the Olympia rally in London, in 1934, BUF stewards violently ejected anti-fascist disrupters, and this led the "Daily Mail" to withdraw its support for the movement. The level of violence shown at the rally shocked many, with the effect of turning neutral parties against the BUF and contributing to anti-fascist support. One observer claimed: "I came to the conclusion that Mosley was a political maniac, and that all decent English people must combine to kill his movement."


title: British Union of Fascists

text: In Belfast in April 1934 an autonomous wing of the party in Northern Ireland called the "Ulster Fascists" was founded. The branch was a failure and became virtually extinct after less than a year in existence. It had ties with the Blueshirts in the Irish Free State and voiced support for a United Ireland, describing the partition of Ireland as "an insurmountable barrier to peace, and prosperity in Ireland". Its logo was a fasces on a Red Hand of Ulster.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: The BUF became more antisemitic over 1934–35 owing to the growing influence of Nazi sympathisers within the party, such as William Joyce and John Beckett, which provoked the resignation of members such as Dr. Robert Forgan. This anti-semitic emphasis and these high-profile resignations resulted in a significant decline in membership, dropping to below 8,000 by the end of 1935, and, ultimately, Mosley shifted the party's focus back to mainstream politics. There were frequent and continuous violent clashes between BUF party members and anti-fascist protesters, most famously at the Battle of Cable Street in October 1936, when organised anti-fascists prevented the BUF from marching through Cable Street. However, the party later staged other marches through the East End without incident, albeit not on Cable Street itself.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: BUF support for Edward VIII and the peace campaign to prevent a second World War saw membership and public support rise once more. The government was sufficiently concerned by the party's growing prominence to pass the Public Order Act 1936, which banned political uniforms and required police consent for political marches.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: In 1937, William Joyce and other Nazi sympathisers split from the party to form the National Socialist League, which quickly folded, with most of its members interned. Mosley later denounced Joyce as a traitor and condemned him for his extreme anti-semitism. The historian Stephen Dorril revealed in his book "Blackshirts" that secret envoys from the Nazis had donated about £50,000 to the BUF.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: By 1939, total BUF membership had declined to just 20,000. On 23 May 1940, the BUF was banned outright by the government via Defence Regulation 18B and Mosley, along with 740 other fascists, was interned for much of the Second World War. After the war, Mosley made several unsuccessful attempts to return to politics, such as via the Union Movement.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Attracted by ‘modern’ fascist policies, such as ending the widespread practice of sacking women from their jobs on marriage, many women joined the Blackshirts – particularly in economically depressed Lancashire. Eventually women constituted one-quarter of the BUF's membership.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: In a January 2010 BBC documentary, "Mother Was A Blackshirt", James Maw reported that in 1914 Norah Elam was placed in a Holloway Prison cell with Emmeline Pankhurst for her involvement with the suffragette movement, and, in 1940, she was returned to the same prison with Diana Mosley, this time for her involvement with the fascist movement. Another leading suffragette, Mary Richardson, became head of the women's section of the BUF.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Mary Sophia Allen OBE was a former branch leader of the West of England Women's Social and Political Union (WSPU). At the outbreak of the First World War, she joined the Women Police Volunteers, becoming the WPV Commandant in 1920. She met Mosley at the January Club in April 1932, going on to speak at the club following her visit to Germany, "to learn the truth about of the position of German womanhood".


title: British Union of Fascists

text: The BBC report described how Elam's fascist philosophy grew from her suffragette experiences, how the British fascist movement became largely driven by women, how they targeted young women from an early age, how the first British fascist movement was founded by a woman, and how the leading lights of the suffragettes had, with Oswald Mosley, founded the BUF.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Mosley's electoral strategy had been to prepare for the election after 1935, and in 1936 he announced a list of BUF candidates for that election, with Elam nominated to stand for Northampton. Mosley accompanied Elam to Northampton to introduce her to her electorate at a meeting in the Town Hall. At that meeting Mosley announced that "he was glad indeed to have the opportunity of introducing the first candidate, and ... [thereby] killed for all time the suggestion that National Socialism proposed putting British women back into the home; this is simply not true. Mrs Elam [he went on] had fought in the past for women's suffrage ... and was a great example of the emancipation of women in Britain."


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Former suffragettes were drawn to the BUF for a variety of reasons. Many felt the movement's energy reminded them of the suffragettes, while others felt the BUF's economic policies would offer them true equality – unlike its continental counterparts, the movement insisted it would not require women to return to domesticity and that the corporatist state would ensure adequate representation for housewives, while it would also guarantee equal wages for women and remove the marriage bar that restricted the employment of married women. The BUF also offered support for new mothers (due to concerns of falling birth rates), while also offering effective birth control, as Mosley believed it was not in the national interest to have a populace ignorant of modern scientific knowledge. While these policies were motivated more out of making the best use of women's skills in state interest than any kind of feminism, it was still a draw for many suffragettes.


title: British Union of Fascists

text: Despite the short period of its operation the BUF attracted prominent members and supporters. These included:


title: Manisha Koirala

text: Manisha Koirala (; born 16 August 1970) is a Nepalese actress who works in Indian films, predominantly in Hindi and Tamil films and has also worked in few Telugu, Bengali, Malayalam, Nepali and English films. Known for her work in both commercial and independent cinema, she is the recipient of several accolades, including four Filmfare Awards. In 2001, the Government of Nepal awarded her with the Order of Gorkha Dakshina Bahu, the second highest honor of the country.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: Born to the politically prominent Koirala family, she is the daughter of Prakash Koirala and granddaughter of Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, former Prime Minister of Nepal. Koirala made her acting debut with the Nepali film "Pheri Bhetaula" (1989), and went on to feature in the Hindi drama "Saudagar" (1991). Following a series of commercial failures, she established herself as a leading actress with the romantic dramas "" (1994) and the Tamil-language "Bombay" (1995). She subsequently starred in a series of commercial successes, including "Agni Sakshi" (1996), "Indian" (1996), "" (1997), "Kachche Dhaage" (1999), "Mudhalvan" (1999), "Company" (2002) and "Ek Chhotisi Love Story" (2002).


title: Manisha Koirala

text: Koirala received critical recognition for her portrayals of characters in varied genres: an ambitious wife in "Akele Hum Akele Tum" (1995), the daughter of deaf-mute parents in "" (1996), a terrorist in "Dil Se.." (1998), a mistreated woman in "Lajja" (2001) and Sushmita Banerjee in "Escape From Taliban" (2003).


title: Manisha Koirala

text: Post-2003, Koirala began to work with independent film makers in art-house projects and in regional films. Her performances in the drama "Tulsi" (2008), the Malayalam psychological drama "Elektra" (2010), the anthology "I Am" (2010) and the romantic comedy "Mappillai" (2011) were praised.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: She took a break from acting after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 2012 and returned five years later with the coming-of-age drama "Dear Maya" (2017). The following year, she featured in the Netflix production "Lust Stories" and the biography "Sanju"; the latter ranks among the highest-grossing Indian releases. In addition to acting in films, Koirala was appointed as the Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund in 1999 for India and 2015 for Nepal, and was involved in the relief works after the April 2015 Nepal earthquake. She promotes causes such as women's rights, prevention of violence against women, prevention of human trafficking and cancer awareness, contributing as an author to the novel "Healed": an account of her struggle with ovarian cancer.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: Manisha Koirala was born into the politically prominent Brahmin Koirala family, in Kathmandu, Nepal. Her father, Prakash Koirala, is a politician, former Cabinet minister and a former member of Nepal’s House of Representatives, while her mother, Sushma Koirala, is a homemaker. She has one brother, Siddharth Koirala, who is an actor. Several members of her family went on to become politicians; her grandfather, Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala, was the Prime Minister of Nepal during the late 1950s to the early 1960s, as were two of her great-uncles, Girija Prasad Koirala and Matrika Prasad Koirala. Koirala spent her early life in India, and she stayed in Varanasi at her maternal grandmother's home for some years and later in Delhi and Mumbai.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: While at home in Varanasi, she attended the Vasant Kanya Mahavidyalaya until Class X. During a break after her board exams, Koirala made her acting debut in 1989 with the Nepali film "Pheri Bhetaula" as an experiment. Aspiring to become a doctor, she moved to Delhi and studied at the Army Public School (APS) of the Dhaula Kuan, New Delhi campus. In an interview, she said that living on her own in Delhi helped her become "strong and independent." In Delhi, Koirala took on a few modeling assignments, but later shifted her focus toward acting. One of these was for a wool company. Determined to pursue a career in acting, Koirala moved to Mumbai for film roles.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: She followed this with her Bollywood debut in Subhash Ghai's directorial "Saudagar" two years later, which emerged as a commercial success. According to Sukanya Verma of Rediff.com, "[C]ritics saw sparks in Manisha, even as she was constantly referred to as Madhuri Dixit's lookalike". "Yalgaar" (1992), did well at the box-office and was classified as a hit. However, this was trailed by a series of films that performed poorly at the box office, including "First Love Letter" (1991), "Anmol" and "Dhanwan" (both 1993), which led to Koirala being labeled "a jinx" by producers. Koirala is frequently cited as one of the most beautiful actress of Bollywood. She is credited for such roles as "1942 A Love Story", "Akele Hum Akele Tum", "Bombay", "Agnisakshi", "", "Gupt", "Dil Se" and "Company".


title: Manisha Koirala

text: Koirala's career prospects improved after starring in Vidhu Vinod Chopra's romance film "" (1994), set during the Indian independence movement. She played Rajjo, the daughter of a freedom fighter who falls in love with Naren (Anil Kapoor), the apolitical son of a British colonial employee. Chopra dismissed Koirala as a "terrible actress" after her first screen test, but was impressed with her performance for a second audition and decided to cast her in place of Madhuri Dixit. The film featured the protagonists sharing a deep kiss; it was certified U/A (Parental guidance required) by the Central Board of Film Certification, becoming the first Indian film to receive the rating. Koirala's performance received positive reviews, with critics hailing her as "a sensitive performer". The film proved to be a box office flop. However, it fetched Koirala her first nomination for Best Actress at the annual Filmfare Awards ceremony.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: In 1995, Koirala made her debut in Tamil cinema with the Mani Ratnam-directed political romance "Bombay", starring alongside Arvind Swami. She took up the role on the insistence of her friend Ashok Mehta, at a time when other contemporaries urged her to not act in non-Bollywood film industries. It received critical acclaim, with American critic James Berardinelli writing, ""Bombay" recalls how forceful a motion picture can be. It also reminds us of the maxim that those who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it". For playing a Muslim who marries a Hindu journalist against the backdrop of the Bombay riots in the eponymous film, Koirala won the Filmfare Critics Award for Best Performance, the only time it was awarded to a recipient for a performance in a non-Hindi film. At the 43rd Filmfare Awards South, she received her first Award in the Best Actress – Tamil category. Koirala's performances in "1942: A Love Story" and "Bombay" proved to be milestones in her career, and established her in the film industry. The same year, she featured in the musical romance "Akele Hum Akele Tum" opposite Aamir Khan, for which she received her second nomination in the Best Actress category at the Filmfare Awards.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: The following year, she played a battered wife on the run from her mentally-ill husband in the drama "Agni Sakshi", a remake of the Julia Roberts-starrer "Sleeping with the Enemy" (1991), which begot her positive reviews for her performance. The film was released in close succession with two other remakes of the same film–"Yaraana" (1995) and "Daraar" (1996). A reviewer for the University of California deemed the film to be superior to the original. In her book "Bioscope: A Frivolous History of Bollywood in Ten Chapters", Diptakirti Chaudhuri wrote, "Even in a derivative film like "Agni Sakshi", her performance as a tortured wife [is] pitch perfect against the formidable Nana Patekar". The film was a commercial success, emerging as the second highest-grossing film of the year in India. During the film's production, Koirala began dating her co-star Nana Patekar; Patekar confirmed their relationship and eventual breakup in 2003. Physical abuse on his part may have been a factor for their separation.


title: Manisha Koirala

text: Koirala next featured opposite Salman Khan in the comedy "Majhdhaar" the same year, which was both a critical and commercial failure. She then played a starring role in S. Shankar's "Indian" (1996), which marked her second Tamil film. It was also dubbed and released in Hindi under the title "Hindustani". Featuring Kamal Haasan in dual roles alongside Koirala and Urmila Matondkar, it was the most expensive Indian film at that time, with a budget of 150 million. Nirupama Subramanian of "India Today" felt the film was a commercial potboiler and wrote, ""Indian" has dances, foot-tapping melodies by A. R. Rahman and two pretty women, Manisha Koirala and Urmila Matondkar". Both "Indian" and "Hindustani" were commercial successes. The film was India's official entry for the Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards in 1996, but was not nominated.