title: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

text: It opened on Friday, 16 October 1998, across 240 screens, along with "Bade Miyan Chote Miyan", and earned nett on its opening day. It grossed nett in its opening weekend, and went on to record the second-highest first week of the year with collections around nett, after "Bade Miyan Chote Miyan" which grossed nett. The film earned a total of nett, plus a distributor share of , and was declared an "All-Time Blockbuster" by "Box Office India". It is the highest-grossing film of 1998 in India.


title: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

text: It had an opening weekend of $800,000 (3.38 crore) and went on to gross $1.3 million (5.49 crore) in its first week. It became the first film to cross $5 million mark outside India, and became the highest grosser at that time. The film earned a total of $6.3 million (26.61 crore) at the end of its theatrical run. It became the second Bollywood film to break into the UK cinema top 10 after "Dil Se.." which released the same year. It was a bigger box office success than "Titanic" when it was screened in Indonesia. Overseas, It is the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 1998.


title: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

text: "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" received a leading 18 nominations at the 44th Filmfare Awards and won a leading 8 awards, including a sweep in all the major categories. It was the third film to win the four major awards (Best Film, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress) at Filmfare. Others include "Guide" (1965), "Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge" (1995) (also starring Shah Rukh Khan & Kajol), "Devdas" (2002), "Black" (2005) and "Gully Boy" (2019).


title: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

text: A few years after its release, Sony purchased satellite rights for the film for . The film was also released on VHS, DVD, and eventually Blu-ray. Now "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai", along with Johar's second film "Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham..." (2001), often play on television to consistently high ratings. Johar said, "It's gratifying to know that they've aged well and passed the test of time."


title: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

text: "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" was the subject of reviews and critical analysis following its initial release. Subhash K Jha called the film "a simple stylish, sensuous and ambrosial love story," further adding that the chemistry between the lead pair was unbeatable. A reviewer for "Timeout Film Guide", while commenting that the second love triangle went on too long, liked most of the film, saying that "its performances, camerawork, storytelling and extensive musical numbers [are] all energetically colourful." In 2004, Meor Shariman of "The Malay Mail" called the film a "must-watch" for Bollywood fans, and also for those seeking an introduction to Bollywood. The film has also been criticized for creating unreal worlds and characters, to which Johar has said that this was part of his vision of escapism.


title: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

text: One of the best examples of the iconic status of "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" was the 2012 film "Shirin Farhad Ki Toh Nikal Padi". Farah Khan and Boman Irani re-created scenes and characters from "KKHH" for posters to promote their film, and also paid homage in one of the songs, "Ramba Mein Samba". In 2010, "Kuch Kuch Hota Hai" was selected by "Time" as one of their "Five Essential Bollywood movies to Netflix". It was also mentioned in critic and author Shubhra Gupta's book, "50 Films That Changed Bollywood, 1995–2015". In 2018, Johar celebrated the 20-year anniversary of the film by hosting an event with the lead cast.


title: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai

text: "Koochie Koochie Hota Hai" is an animated remake of the original, directed by Tarun Mansukhani. Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Rani Mukerji, Anupam Kher are reprising their roles as Rahul a.k.a. Rocky, Anjali a.k.a. Angie, Tina, and the Principal. New cast members include Uday Chopra, Riteish Deshmukh, Sanjay Dutt and Simi Garewal. The story will have an anthropomorphic animal cast. As of October 2012, Karan Johar has placed the project on permanent hold. He said, "Animation films are not working nowadays, so as of now I have kept it on stand-by."


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. is an American video game holding company based in New York City and founded by Ryan Brant in September 1993.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: The company owns two major publishing labels, Rockstar Games and 2K, which operate internal game development studios. Take-Two created the Private Division label to support publishing from independent developers and more recently announced a new internal studio for the label called Intercept Games. The company also formed Ghost Story Games which was a former 2K studio under the name Irrational Games. The company acquired the developers Socialpoint, Playdots and Nordeus to establish itself in the mobile game market. The company also owns 50% of professional esports organization NBA 2K League. Take-Two's combined portfolio includes franchises such as "BioShock", "Borderlands", "Grand Theft Auto", "NBA 2K", and "Red Dead" among others.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: As of March 2018, it is the third-largest publicly traded game company in the Americas and Europe after Activision Blizzard and Electronic Arts, with an estimated market cap of .


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two Interactive was founded by Ryan Ashley Brant, the son of media executive and "Interview" co-owner Peter Brant. Ryan Brant had attended the Hotchkiss School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in May 1992. He began his career in May 1991, working for his father as the chief operating officer of Stewart, Tabori & Chang, a publisher of illustrated books, until August 1993. As Brant wanted to forge his own path, he decided to create a video game publishing company. He stated "I wanted to get into a business where I could raise capital as a younger guy. In technology people expect you to be a younger person." An initial in funding was raised from his family and private investors. Take-Two was incorporated in Delaware on September 30, 1993, with Brant (21 years old at the time) as chief executive officer (CEO). The business was launched with assistance from John Antinori and Mark Seremet. Seremet sold his stake in the company in 1998. Early on, Take-Two had a location in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. By June 1994, the company had acquired and absorbed InterOptica, a software publisher owned by Wan Chai and headed by Catherine Winchester (later Heald); the latter became Take-Two's first president. Later that month, Take-Two struck a deal with GameTek that would see the publisher distribute five of Take-Two's games worldwide.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Starting with "Star Crusader" in September 1994, Take-Two found its first major success within games that included full motion video with well-known live actors performing the parts, following the success that Mechadeus had with "The Daedalus Encounter" which featured Tia Carrere. Take-Two hired Dennis Hopper, among others, to star in parts for "" (1994), which sold over 300,000 copies over the following year and established profit for the company. This was followed by "Ripper" (1996), of which of its budget was used to hire actors such as Christopher Walken, Karen Allen, and Burgess Meredith. The success of both these games, as well as earlier titles, led to a publishing agreement between Take-Two and Acclaim Entertainment to publish Take-Two's titles, as well as obtaining overseas distribution. Take-Two also secured a license with Sony Computer Entertainment to publish on the PlayStation line of consoles. In February 1995, GameTek acquired a stake in Take-Two, aligning the studio with its own Alternative Reality Technologies. By July 1995, Take-Two had established its head office in the Silicon Alley area of New York City. Take-Two expanded in its Latrobe location and, in September 1996, took over the second floor of its office building, which had been occupied by the Chestnut Ridge Chapter of the American Red Cross.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Around 1996, the company was making about , but Brant wanted to further expand the company, and made its first acquisition of Mission Studios and publishing its "JetFighter III" game in 1996. Brant decided to secure additional funds for acquisition by taking the company public. The company announced this intent in April 1997, looking to raise . The company had its initial public offering (IPO) on April 15, 1997, being listed under the ticker symbol TTWO on the NASDAQ stock exchange. The opening price was , above the expected , and on its first day rose to . From the IPO, the company gained about along with on venture fund promissory notes. At this time, Peter Brant had been the largest shareholder in Take-Two at 25% owned through Bridgehampton Investors LP, which also had Ryan Brant as general partner. The additional funds allowed Take-Two to acquire GameTek's European operations, its internal Alternative Reality Technologies studio (later renamed Rockstar Toronto), and the rights to GameTek's "Dark Colony", "The Quivering", "The Reap", "Jeopardy!" and "Wheel of Fortune" games. The company hired Kelly Sumner, a GameTek executive director, as part of this purchase. Additionally, the company acquired Inventory Management Systems, Creative Alliance Group, and Alliance Inventory Management, three video game distribution companies that helped to extend Take-Two's reach into the retail market.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In the same year, Take-Two stepped in as the publisher of "Monkey Hero". Its developer, Blam!, had been struggling financially after the game's original publisher, BMG Interactive, was shut down by its parent company, BMG Entertainment. In March 1998, Take-Two acquired all assets of BMG Interactive for 1.85 million shares (16% of Take-Two's common stock), worth about . In the previous year, the United Kingdom-based DMA Design and BMG Entertainment had just released "Grand Theft Auto", and while it financially performed well but was not a critical success in Europe, it had sparked controversy over the use of violence in video games, with United States Senator Joe Lieberman speaking out strongly against it. Seeing the opportunity to capture attention on the game, Brant had initiated the acquisition of BMG as to acquire the "Grand Theft Auto" property, and at the same time, contacted BMG's Sam and Dan Houser (both instrumental to getting "Grand Theft Auto" to market), Terry Donovan, and Jamie King to found a new label within Take-Two, called Rockstar Games for which to develop more titles like it. Electronic Arts' (EA) 2008 CEO, John Riccitiello, stated that, with the establishing of Rockstar, Take-Two effectively invented the "label" corporate structure, which EA followed into in 2008. With the rights to "Grand Theft Auto", Take-Two expanded its publication into North America, and the game became Take-Two's first financial success with over 1.5 million copies sold.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two also began taking on distribution capabilities, acquiring various distribution firms such as DirectSoft Australia for the Oceania market. Notably, in August 1998, Take-Two acquired Jack of All Games, an America game distributor, for about . Take-Two subsequently bundled many of its existing and future distribution outlets under the Jack of All Games brand.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In 1999, Take-Two acquired DMA Design (ultimately renamed Rockstar North), and invested into Gathering of Developers and Bungie (eventually transferred over to Microsoft Game Studios). In September, the company also acquired Triad Distributors and Global Star Software, a video game distributor and publisher, respectively, both founded in 1993 by Craig McGauley and Damian Cristiani and operating out of the same offices in Concord, Ontario, with the same management team. Israeli developer Pixel Broadband Studios was acquired for in March 2000, before Take-Two sold it off to Gameplay.com in October that year, receiving in Gameplay.com shares in return.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In February 2001, Brant stepped down as CEO of Take-Two to serve as its chairman, being replaced in the former role by Sumner. Around this time, the company had 658 employees. With Rockstar, Take-Two invested into developments of sequels to "Grand Theft Auto", including "Grand Theft Auto 2" (1999), and "Grand Theft Auto III" (2001) along with sequels, "" (2002) and "" (2004). By 2003, Take-Two had revenues exceeding . In 2004, Take-Two paid to Infogrames for the rights to the "Civilization" series. The company had also planned to acquire Vivendi Universal Games for .


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In 2005, Take-Two began a host of acquisitions, spending more than buying game developers. One of its largest acquisitions was for the development studios Visual Concepts and Kush Games from Sega for about in January 2005. Both studios had been extensively behind several sports simulation games, branded through ESPN, and typically released updated versions each year, using a "2K" brand to differentiate versions (such as "ESPN NFL 2K5"). In 2004, Take-Two had struck a deal with Sega to help publish these titles. Just prior to Take-Two's acquisition, Electronic Arts announced it had secured the exclusive rights to create video games based on the National Football League (NFL) and a fifteen-year branding deal with ESPN, effectively killing Visual Concepts' own NFL title and devaluing their others games. This decision led Sega to abandon the sports-game market. Take-Two acquired these studios and unique branding (including the "2K" brand), as well as negotiated for exclusive rights with Major League Baseball for video games. A day after announcing these acquisitions, Take-Two established their 2K publishing label to maintain the "2K" brand, moving several planned games from their budget software label, Global Star, to 2K. Take-Two further realigned the other existing internal studios — Indie Built, Venom Games, PopTop Software and Frog City Software, and Take-Two Licensing — within this new structure.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: After the formation of 2K, Take-Two completed other major acquisitions. Firaxis Games was acquired in November 2005 for around ; Take-Two had already supported the studio by using their acquisition of the "Civilization" license to support publishing of "Civilization IV". Irrational Games was acquired around January 2006 for about , including both its Boston and its Canberra studio. At the time Irrational had already established a publishing deal with Take-Two for their upcoming "BioShock" game. With the deal, Irrational became part of the 2K label. It also acquired PAM Development from the Gaia Capital Group for , giving them access to the "Top Spin" series of tennis games.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: However, during this period, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began examining Take-Two's business records, based on complaints filed from 2001 that Take-Two's earnings did not seem to match figures of game sales reported by NPD Group. The SEC's formal complaint found that the company had purportedly sold products to distributors as a "parking transaction" for a quarter, as to artificially increase their revenues for investors, which it estimated was a fraud. A lawsuit was filed against Take-Two in December 2001, alleging that the company had lied to shareholders. Take-Two initially restated seven quarters of past financial results in February 2002, then five years in January 2004. Brant stepped down as chairman in March, being succeeded by Richard Roedel. After the SEC's issuance of the complaint in 2005, Take-Two agreed to pay a fine, along with Brant and other executives paying fines totaling around . Brant, who had remained with the company in the non-executive role of "Vice President of Production", ultimately resigned from the company in October 2006, following a four-month disability leave due to a bad back.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In 2007, a separate investigation by the SEC found further issues with Brant and two other executives of the company. In an industry-wide sweep against options backdating (receiving shares when they are priced high but backdating their ownership to when they were priced low), the SEC had found Brant had received backdating options of over 2.1 million shares, though he had excised all options upon his 2006 resignation. Brant pleaded guilty to falsifying business records, but agreed to co-operate with the SEC and instead of receiving up to four years in prison, was fined and barred from holding any "control management positions" in a publicly traded company. Brant died of cardiac arrest in March 2019 at the age of 47.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Further troubling Take-Two during this period was criticism and legal actions taken against the "Hot Coffee" mod, a user-made modification to "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" that unlocked a hidden graphic sex scene that was built into the game, with concerned politicians and consumers stating the scene belied the game's ESRB content rating. Actions taken against Take-Two included an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission for deceptive advertising, to which Take-Two and Rockstar settled in 2006 on fines for any future violations of content ratings. Take-Two completed a settlement related to class-action lawsuits filed against it in 2005 over the "Hot Coffee" mod, as well as to a class-action lawsuit brought by shareholders over the options backdating fraud, in September 2009.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: A fire had damaged part of the Take-Two headquarters building in New York in 2006. In early January 2007, Take-Two relocated the headquarters for 2K to Novato, California to 65,000 square feet of space at Hamilton Landing, an office park that had repurposed the former hangar structures from the Hamilton Army Airfield. Later that year in September, Take-Two established a partnership with Nickelodeon and launched a new label, 2K Play, designed for publishing of family-friendly titles alongside 2K's 2K Games and 2K Sports sub-labels, absorbing the remaining publishing duties of the Global Star label. In December 2007, Take-Two established 2K Marin (named after Marin County, where Novato is located) and expanded its presence at Hamilton Landing.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Due to the various SEC investigations and the "Hot Coffee" controversy, investors in Take-Two discussed the possibility to taking over the company at its next board meeting in March 2007, as to oust the company's current management. There was also issues with Take-Two failing to make its revenue targets, having lost in 2006. The investors, OppenheimerFunds Inc., S.A.C. Capital Management, Tudor Investment Corp., D.E. Shaw Valence Portfolios and ZelnickMedia, held 46% of the company's stock at this point, and were looking to put ZelnickMedia's Strauss Zelnick as the chairman of the board while outing long-standing management and board members. Zelnick had previously been president and CEO of BMG's North American division at the time of the sale of BMG Interactive to Take-Two, a move he had been against believing that BMG could have capitalized on the video game sector more. Following BMG, Zelnick had been COO of 20th Century Fox and CEO of Crystal Dynamics. He founded ZelnickMedia few years later in 2001 as a private equity firm to focus on media and interactive entertainment investments. Industry analyst Michael Pachter stated that a takeover would be best for Take-Two, as the present management "completely abdicated any responsibility for the oversight of the options-granting policy. A more responsible board would have committed hari-kari." The current CEO, Paul Eibeler, who had replaced Brant after his resignation, had tried to find a buyer for Take-Two after the investors filed their intent with the SEC, among which included EA, but could not negotiate a sale before the meeting. The takeover was successfully agreed to by stockholders on March 29, 2007, with Zelnick naming Ben Feder, a partner at ZelnickMedia, as the new CEO. , Strauss Zelnick is the largest single shareholder by voting power.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: The company announced a major restructuring in mid-2007, following the takeover. With the move of the 2K labels to Novato, the executive, management, distribution and sales areas were evaluated to align these by business discipline rather than geography. Subsequently, the company let go about 5 to 15% of its approximately 2100 employees, closed down some of its European offices and centralizing these in its Geneva location, and looked to get out of the distribution market by looking for buyers of Jack of All Games.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In mid-February 2008, EA made a -per-share all-cash transaction offer worth around to the board of Take-Two, subsequently revising it to per share after being rejected and making the offer known to the public. At the time, Take-Two's stock was valued around per share. EA CEO John Riccitiello said that EA had previous considered a deal for Take-Two in the previous year when they were approached by Eibeler, however, with Activision's acquisition of Vivendi Games in December 2007, EA was looking to resecure itself as one of the top video game publishers with the acquisition of Take-Two. While Take-Two had been discussing the potential of a buyout to a large media company after the shareholder takeover, Zelnick and the board rejected the offer, with Zelnick stating "We didn't slam the door, we just said look, the price is not right and the time is wrong". Take-Two offered to discuss the offer after "Grand Theft Auto IV" release on April 29, 2008, which many considered to be the lucrative property that EA desired. An acquisition would have ended EA's main competition in sports video games. EA continued to extend its bid offer throughout 2008, but by September 2008, EA decided to back away and let the offer expire, as Take-Two continued to call EA's cash offer as inadequate.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In September 2008, Take-Two established an outsourcing agreement with Ditan Distribution LLC, at the time owned by Cinram, a Canadian manufacturer of optical media. Through the agreement, Take-Two offloaded all distributing duties from Jack of All Games to Ditan, while establishing the means for Jack of All Games to license and distribute third-party titles. Subsequently, in December 2009, Take-Two sold Jack of All Games to Synnex for about , leaving the distribution market and focusing solely on development and publishing.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In 2010, Ben Feder stepped down as CEO, and was replaced by Zelnick, who remains the company's chairman and CEO. In January 2013, while being dissolved, THQ sold the rights of the "WWE" wrestling games series to Take-Two. Subsequently, 2K Sports has published annual "WWE 2K" games as part of its lineup.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Around 2013, Take-Two began to repurchase about 7.5 million outstanding shares of the company (about 10%), based on the company's projections that it would remain profitable over the next several years. As part of this, the company bought back around 12 million shares owned by Carl Icahn, about 11% of the total shares, for about . Icahn had been seen as favoring selling the company to a buyer. This subsequently led to three board members who had been recommended on the board by Icahn to resign. The move to buy back shares was seen by analysts of the company's assurance in "Grand Theft Auto V", which was released in September 2013. "Grand Theft Auto V" has since sold nearly 100 million units by 2018, making it one of the most successful video games ever and bringing an estimated to Take-Two, increasing its stock value by more than 600%.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In December 2013, former Marvel editor-in-chief Bill Jemas announced that he had joined Take-Two to start a "graphic fiction imprint". The imprint, Double Take Comics, was launched in October 2014, but ultimately was not successful and was shuttered in November 2016. Leslie Benzies, former President of Rockstar North, took sabbatical leave from Rockstar on September 1, 2014. In January 2016 it was announced that he had left the company. On April 12, 2016, Benzies started legal action against Rockstar and Take-Two claiming $150 million in unpaid royalties. Take-Two had invested into mobile-game developer Scopely in July 2016. On February 1, 2017, the company acquired social and mobile game developer Social Point for about to enter into the mobile gaming industry.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In that same month, Take-Two and the National Basketball Association (NBA) announced a partnership to create the NBA 2K League, a professional eSports league based on the "NBA 2K" games, and the first eSports league to be managed by a professional sports league. Teams for the League are to be partially sponsored by existing NBA teams, so that there would be eSports equivalent teams for each of the thirty professional NBA teams. The inaugural season is planned to launch in May 2018.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: On May 31, 2017, Take-Two Interactive acquired "Kerbal Space Program". Later, Take-Two announced the formation of its Private Division publishing label on December 14, 2017. Private Division was established to fund and publish games by mid-size independent development studios, such as "Kerbal Space Program", and had four planned games from separate studios at its launch.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: The company completed its move of its New York headquarters from NoHo to more than 61,000 square feet of space in Bryant Park in early 2018. According to Dan Houser, Rockstar Games required to expand in the two companies' shared headquarters and thus asked the Take-Two executives to move. On March 8, 2018, Zelnick attended a White House meeting held by the 45th president of the United States, Donald Trump, along with various other attendees involved with the video game industry, and members of Congress, to discuss video game violence in the wake of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: On March 9, 2018, S&P Global announced the addition of Take-Two Interactive to the S&P 500, joining two other major video game publishers EA and Activision Blizzard. Similar to the situation in 2013, Take-Two started buying back around of its stock (estimated to be about 2.5% of the outstanding stock), predicated on similar expectations that "Red Dead Redemption 2", to be released in October 2018, would similarly boost the company's profits as "Grand Theft Auto V" had done.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: On March 29, 2018, Benzies' litigation against Rockstar and Take-Two suffered a significant setback when the companies succeeded in dismissing 12 out of 18 of his claims, though the court did rule that Benzies "remains entitled to receive certain royalties" as part of his compensation.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Sometime in 2018, Take-Two levied a legal warning against Benzies' new company Royal Circus Games, citing the similarity of its acronym (RCG) to Rockstar Games (RSG) as an infringement of intellectual property; due to this, Benzies later renamed his company Build a Rocket Boy Games in October 2018. Take-Two had also decried their employment of Rockstar North staff as a deceptive tactic to create an affiliation between them.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two and the NBA signed a seven-year, licensing deal to extend Take-Two's rights to develop the "NBA 2K" games in January 2019. Analysts estimated that this represented at least 15% of Take-Two's revenue from the sale of "NBA 2K" games, atypical of other license deals, due to the growing popularity of the series.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: A then-yet-to-be named studio under the 2K brand in the Silicon Valley region of the San Francisco Bay Area was established by Take-Two in February 2019. The studio is led by Michael Condrey, formerly of Sledgehammer Games and Visceral Games, and was initially working on an unannounced project. A year later, it was announced that the studio would be officially named 31st Union, that it was opening a second studio in Spain, and that it was focusing on "an ambitious and inspired new IP".


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: On February 7, 2019, Benzies' litigation with Take-Two had officially come to an end. All parties involved in the case successfully executed a confidential settlement, with each agreeing to bear its own costs and expenses, including, without limitation, attorney's fees.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In May 2019, Rockstar Games announced that they had acquired Dhruva Interactive from Starbreeze Studios for $7.9 million, with the sale having been finalized later that same month. The company had been merged into Rockstar India, which added an additional 320 employees to the studio.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In September 2019, Rockstar Games announced that they had released their own game launcher, a digital distribution, digital rights management, multiplayer and communications service.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two established a new, yet-to-be named studio under Private Division in February 2020, later named Intercept Games, located in Seattle to take on the development of "Kerbal Space Program 2". The new studio staff included more than a dozen former members of Star Theory Games who had been working on the title, including Jeremy Ables and Nate Simpson from Star Theory, which had been previously handling the development of the game but outside of Take-Two's structure.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Via 2K Sports, Take-Two established a new publishing agreement with the NFL in March 2020 to start republishing NFL games starting in 2021. While EA's "Madden" series will coexist and remain the official game of the NFL, while 2K's are called "non-simulation football game experiences" to distinguish from EA's games.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In August 2020, Take-Two announced it was acquiring mobile game developer Playdots (developer of the mobile games Dots, Two Dots and Dots & Co.) for $192 million in cash and stock with the acquisition expected to be completed in Q3 2020.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In October 2020, it was announced that Take-Two had acquired Dundee-based Ruffian Games (known for their work on "" and "Crackdown 3") after a year long development partnership on an undisclosed partnership, following the acquisition, Ruffian became part of Rockstar Games as Rockstar Dundee.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two offered to buyout Codemasters in November 2020 in a deal valued approximately . While the offer awaited regulatory approval and was expected to be complete by early 2021, both Take-Two and Codemasters' board of directors confirmed the deal. However, Take-Two's bid was subsequently trumped by Electronic Arts in December 2020, which offered ( per share), and agreed to acquire Codemasters. Take-Two formally withdrew its offer in January 2021.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: The Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia acquired 3.9 million shares of Take-Two, valued at , in February 2021.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: 2K acquired HB Studios in March 2021, who previously developed "PGA Tour 2K21" and "The Golf Club 2019 featuring PGA Tour" under 2K Sports' publishing labels. The acquisition includes the rights to the "PGA Tour" games, which have the official endorsement of the PGA Tour itself. Additionally, 2K announced they had secured a contract with Tiger Woods, who had previously been a key figure for Electronic Arts' "PGA Tour" series, as an executive director and consultant for future 2K "PGA Tour" games as well as his likeness for the games. Later that month, 2K acquired the games division of HookBang based in Austin, Texas, which had supported work on the "NBA 2K" series in the past. The division was relocated to a new Austin location and rebranded as Visual Concepts Austin to continue support for that series.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In June 2021, Take-Two made its largest acquisition to date with the $378 million acquisition of "Top Eleven" developer Nordeus, further expanding its mobile game division, which, as of July 2021, is known as T2 Mobile Games.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two Interactive announced its intent to acquire the mobile developer Zynga in January 2022, in a cash-and-stock deal with a value of $12.7 billion, with Take-Two acquiring all outstanding shares of Zynga at $9.86 apiece. The deal was expected to close in June. Take-Two said that the acquisition would help boost its presence in the mobile gaming market, stating "We see tremendous untapped potential to bring Take-Two’s renowned console and PC properties to mobile, a high-priority initiative that will be energized by the addition of Zynga’s leading development, publishing, and live operations teams." Both shareholders of the companies approved the merger on May 19, 2022 and the closing of the transaction took effect on May 23, 2022.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: In October 2022, Take-Two announced that Playdots would be shut down, with control of Two Dots being transferred to Zynga.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two's executive offices and worldwide headquarters are located in New York City. The company runs its European operations from Windsor, England and its Asian operations from Singapore. , Take-Two's primary business is through two self-owned publishing labels. One label is Rockstar Games, also located in New York City, and is specialized on development and publication of action-adventure games such as "Grand Theft Auto". The other label is 2K, headquartered in Novato, California, and is composed of its divisions 2K Games, 2K Sports, and 2K Play. The 2K Sports division handles the development and publication of Take-Two's sports simulation games, such as the "NBA 2K" series. 2K Play covers family-friendly and children's video games produced by Take-Two's studios. 2K Games handles nearly all other production from Take-Two's internal development studios as well as titles from selected third parties (such as the "Borderlands" series developed by Gearbox Software).


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Separately, Take-Two owns Private Division, a label designed to help publish and market games from mid-sized independent developers, such as Squad's "Kerbal Space Program". Finally, Take-Two owns Social Point, a developer for the mobile game market. With this structure been in place since 1997–1998, each labels are incorporated principal operating businesses and have a higher degree of autonomy and each with their own infrastructure and resources, management, and profit and loss strategies.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two has divested itself of its older manufacturing and distribution operations in favor of digital publication and third-party retail distribution. Since 2016, around half of the company's revenues are from digital distribution, whether from digital sales of games through personal computer or consoles, or through video game monetization of its computer, console, and mobile titles.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two equally shares control of the NBA 2K League, a competitive esports league based on its "NBA 2K" series, along with the National Basketball Association.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: The company has an undisclosed minority interest in Scopely. It had previously held 19.9% interest in Bungie, which it turned over to Microsoft Game Studios on their acquisition in June 2000, in exchange for receiving the rights to Bungie's "Myth" and "Oni" IPs, and the license to use the "Halo" engine to produce two new games. Take-Two also had a 2.3% interest in Twitch, which was bought out upon the service's acquisition by Amazon in 2014, receiving from the sale.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two has used trademark dilution complaints to prevent other publishers and developers from registering trademarks comparable to Take-Two's own trademarks, such as blocking trademark registration that involve "rockstar", "bully", "2K", and the capital letter "R". The publisher filed a dispute against Hazelight Studios to block its attempt to trademark "It Takes Two", due to the similarity of its name to Take-Two's. Hazelight was forced to abandon the trademark application, making it more difficult to promote the game.


title: Take-Two Interactive

text: Take-Two has also been active in blocking the release of mods for "Grand Theft Auto" games. While some of these mods had used assets from the original games and gave valid reason for Take-Two to protect its copyrights, other mods that Take-Two had targeted were made from legal reverse engineering of the game, making Take-Two's claims contentious. Take-Two has clarified that it had no issue with mods intended for single-player games that were legally made, but would take action against other types of mods.


title: GRU

text: The Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, formerly the Main Intelligence Directorate, and still commonly known by its previous abbreviation GRU, is the foreign military intelligence agency of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. The GRU controls the military intelligence service and maintains its own special forces units.


title: GRU

text: Unlike Russia's other security and intelligence agencies—such as the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Federal Protective Service (FSO), whose heads report directly to the president of Russia —the director of the GRU is subordinate to the Russian military command, reporting to the Minister of Defence and the Chief of the General Staff.


title: GRU

text: The directorate is reputedly Russia's largest foreign-intelligence agency, and is distinguished among its counterparts for its willingness to execute riskier "complicated, high stakes operations". According to unverified statements by Stanislav Lunev, a defector from the GRU, in 1997 the agency deployed six times as many agents in foreign countries as the SVR, and commanded some 25,000 Spetsnaz troops.


title: GRU

text: The first Russian body for military intelligence dates from 1810, in the context of the Napoleonic Wars raging across Europe, when War Minister Michael Andreas Barclay de Tolly proposed to Emperor Alexander I of Russia the formation of the Expedition for Secret Affairs under the War Ministry (); two years later, it was renamed the Special Bureau ().


title: GRU

text: In 1815, the Bureau became the First Department under the General Chief of Staff. In 1836, the intelligence functions were transferred to the Second Department under the General Chief of Staff. After many name-changes through the years, in April 1906, the Military intelligence was carried out by the Fifth Department under the General Chief of Staff of the War Ministry.


title: GRU

text: The GRU's first predecessor in Soviet Russia was established by the secret order signed on 5 November 1918 by Jukums Vācietis, the first commander-in-chief of the Red Army (RKKA), and by Ephraim Sklyansky, deputy to Leon Trotsky, the civilian leader of the Red Army. (Since 2006, the Russian Federation has officially observed the date of 5 November as the professional holiday of military intelligence in Russia.) The military human intelligence service thus established was originally known as the Registration Agency ("Registrupravlenie", or "Registrupr"; ) of the Field Headquarters of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic; Simon Aralov was its first head. Its early history was marked by a series of reorganisations influenced by the Soviet-Polish War, the consolidation and restablisation of the Soviet Union, and the general reorganisation of the Red Army; this included changes to its name, status, and responsibilities.


title: GRU

text: The first head of the Fourth Directorate was Yan Karlovich Berzin, who remained in the post from March 1924 until April 1935 (in 1938, he was arrested and executed as a Trotskyite during the Stalinist purges). Military intelligence was known for its fierce independence from the rival "internal intelligence organizations", such as the NKVD, and later KGB; however, public statements of Soviet military intelligence veterans state the Fourth Directorate, and later GRU, had always been operationally subordinate to the KGB. Military intelligence was headquartered in a small and nondescript complex west of the Kremlin, whereas the NKVD was in the very centre of Moscow, next to the building that housed People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs at the bottom of Kuznetsky Most. Consequently, Soviet military intelligence came to be known in Soviet diplomats' cant as "distant neighbours" () as opposed to the "near neighbours" of the NKVD/KGB.


title: GRU

text: The GRU was created under its current name and form by Joseph Stalin in February 1942, less than a year after the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. From April 1943 the GRU handled human intelligence exclusively outside the USSR. In addition to operations against the Axis powers, GRU is credited with having infiltrated the British nuclear weapon programme and up to 70 American government and scientific institutions.


title: GRU

text: During the Cold War, the GRU, like many of its Western rivals, maintained "rezidenturas", or resident spies, worldwide; these included both "legal" agents, based at Soviet embassies with official diplomatic cover, and "illegal" officers without cover. It also maintained a signals intelligence (SIGINT) station in Lourdes, Cuba and other Soviet-bloc countries. Though less well known than the KGB, with which it shared a fierce rivalry, GRU is known to have been involved in several high-profile episodes; this included opening backchannel negotiations with the U.S. government during the Cuban Missile Crisis and contributing to the Profumo scandal that partly contributed to the fall of a British administration. GRU was distinguished for its "closer ties with revolutionary movements and terrorist groups, greater experience with weapons and explosives, and even tougher training for recruits"; new recruits were allegedly shown footage of a traitorous officer being fed into a crematorium alive.


title: GRU

text: The existence of the GRU was not publicized during the Soviet era, though it was mentioned in the 1931 memoirs of the first OGPU defector, Georges Agabekov, and described in detail in the 1939 autobiography, "I Was Stalin's Agent," by Walter Krivitsky, the most senior Red Army intelligence officer ever to defect. GRU became widely known in Russia, and outside narrow confines of the Western intelligence community, during "perestroika", due partly to the writings of "Viktor Suvorov" (Vladimir Rezun), a GRU officer who defected to Great Britain in 1978 and wrote about his experiences in the Soviet military and intelligence services. According to Suvorov, even the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the country's "de facto" leader, needed to undergo a security screening to enter GRU headquarters.


title: GRU

text: Following the dissolution of the USSR in December 1991, the GRU continued as an important part of Russia's intelligence services, especially since it was the only one to more or less maintain operational and institutional continuity: the KGB had been dissolved after aiding a failed coup in 1991 against the then Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev. It is now succeeded by the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and the Federal Security Service (FSB).


title: GRU

text: Evidencing its growing strategic profile, in 2006 the GRU moved to a new headquarters complex at , which cost 9.5 billion rubles to build and incorporates 70,000 square meters. In April 2009, President Dmitry Medvedev fired then-GRU head Valentin Korabelnikov, who had headed the GRU since 1997, reportedly over Korabelnikov's objections to proposed reforms. Pursuant to these reforms, the following year, the official name of the unit was changed from "GRU" to the "Main Directorate of the Russian General Chief of Staff", or "G.U."; however, "GRU" continues to be commonly used in media.


title: GRU

text: The GRU underwent severe reductions in funding and personnel following the 2008 Russo-Georgian War, during which it failed to discover the more advanced anti-aircraft weapons obtained by Georgia. However, it continued to play a key role in several Russian operations, including in Russia's intervention in eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent annexation of Crimea. GRU agents were also implicated in numerous cyberwarfare operations across the West, including in the U.S., France, and Germany. Many of its successes took place during the tenure of Igor Sergun, who headed the service from late 2011 until his death in early January 2016. Sergun's sudden death shortly after the restoration of the GRU's influence led to speculations of foul play by Russian adversaries.


title: GRU

text: The tenure of Sergun's successor, Igor Korobov, was marked by what some news media construed as multiple high-profile setbacks, such as the thwarted 2016 coup d'état attempt in Montenegro, the failed 2018 Salisbury poisoning, and an unprecedented number of disclosed GRU agents. Korobov died on 21 November 2018, "after a serious and prolonged illness", according to the official Defence Ministry statement. His death provoked speculations and unverified reports of him having fallen ill in October that year following a harsh dressing-down from President Vladimir Putin. However, former CIA station-chief Daniel Hoffman cautioned in 2017 that some of the Russian intelligence's recent operations that appeared to be botched might have been intended for discovery. Similarly, in 2019, Eerik-Niiles Kross, a former Estonian intelligence official, opined that GRU's apparent sloppiness "has become part of the psychological warfare. It's not that they have become that much more aggressive. They want to be felt. It's part of the game."


title: GRU

text: On 2 November 2018, while marking the GU's 100th anniversary, President Putin proposed restoring the agency's former name: Главное разведывательное управление (GRU).


title: GRU

text: The GRU is organized into numerous directorates, directions, and sections. According to the data available in open sources in 1997, the structure of the Main Directorate consists of at least 12 known directorates and several other auxiliary departments.


title: GRU

text: The American Congressional Research Service, based on interviews with various experts, gives the following organization of the GRU, although it acknowledges that the organization's true structure is "a closely guarded secret."


title: GRU

text: Unit 29155 is tasked with foreign assassinations and other covert activities aimed at destabilizing European countries. The Unit is thought to have operated in secret since at least 2008, though its existence only became publicly known in 2019. It is commanded by Maj. Gen. and based at the headquarters of the 161st Special Purpose Specialist Training Center in eastern Moscow. Its membership included decorated veterans from the Soviet war in Afghanistan and Russia's most recent series of wars in Chechnya and Ukraine. It has been linked to the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea, the 2015 poisonings of Bulgarian arms dealer Emilian Grebev (also spelled Emilyan), the 2016 Montenegro coup attempt, and the poisoning of Russian defector Sergei Skripal. Unit 29155 operatives have also been tracked to Switzerland during the time (early 2018) other GRU units hacked the World Anti-Doping Agency (then investigating state-sponsored doping by Russian Olympians) and attempted to hack the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (then investigating the Douma chemical attack by Russia-backed Bashar al-Assad and evidence in the Skripal case). Spain has also investigated the travel of Unit 29155 member Denis Sergeev (who has also used the name Sergei Fedotov) to Barcelona in 2017 around the time of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum. The unit is also accused of being behind the alleged Russian bounty program where Taliban militants were paid to kill American troops, although the program's existence is uncertain, unproven, and unverified.


title: GRU

text: Unit 54777, alternately called the 72nd Special Service Center, is one of the GRU's primary psychological warfare capabilities. Unit 54777 retains several front organizations, including InfoRos and the Institute of the Russian Diaspora. The unit originated from Soviet GLAVPUR ("Glavnoye Politicheskoye Upravlenie", or the Main Political Department) and was created in early 1990s and notably employed colonel Aleksandr Viktorovich Golyev, whose memoirs were published in 2020 along with other GRU documents. In the 1990s, the unit focused on pro-Soviet disinformation in newly split republics such as Lithuania and Chechnya. In later years the unit covered a broad range of activities from running NGOs targeting Russian expatriates in Western countries (InfoRos, Institute of the Russian Diaspora, World Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots Living Abroad, Foundation for Supporting and Protecting the Rights of Compatriots Living Abroad) and manipulating public opinion in Russia and abroad in preparation for armed conflicts such as in Georgia, Donbas or Syria.


title: GRU

text: Unit 26165, also known as Fancy Bear, STRONTIUM, and APT28, is a cyber operations/hacking group. Unit 26165 was originally created during the Cold War as the 85th Main Special Service Center, responsible for military intelligence cryptography. The Netherlands has accused Unit 26165 of also being involved in the attempted 2018 OPCW hack and targeting its investigation into the 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 (MH17), for which the Dutch investigation blames pro-Russian Ukrainian separatists armed with surface-to-air missiles by Russia.


title: GRU

text: Unit 74455, also known as the Sandworm Team or the Main Center for Technologies, used various fictitious online identities (DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0) to coordinate the release of the politically sensitive stolen documents with WikiLeaks for "maximum political impact" starting on the eve of the 2016 Democratic National Convention. Its guilt has been reported by American media and a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation. In October 2020, the United States Department of Justice indicted six Unit 74455 GRU officers for multiple cyberattacks, including the December 2015 Ukraine power grid cyberattack, the 2017 Macron e-mail leaks, the 2017 NotPetya attacks, the 2018 Winter Olympics hack (for which the GRU attempted to frame North Korea), several 2018 attacks on Skripal case investigators, and a 2018–2019 cyberattack campaign against Georgian media and the Georgian Parliament.


title: GRU

text: Since the mid-1970s the GRU has maintained a satellite communications interception post near Andreyevka, located approximately from Spassk-Dalny, Primorsky Krai.


title: GRU

text: According to a Western assessment of the GRU seen by Reuters in the autumn of 2018, the GRU had a long-running program to run 'illegal' spies, i.e. those who work without diplomatic cover and who live under an assumed identity in foreign countries for years. The assessment said: "It plays an increasingly important role in Russia's development of Information Warfare (both defensive and offensive). It is an aggressive and well-funded organization which has the direct support of – and access to – [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, allowing freedom in its activities and leniency with regards to diplomatic and legislative scrutiny."


title: GRU

text: The United States alleges that the GRU, as well as the SVR (its civilian foreign intelligence counterpart), makes use of both legal (intelligence officers with diplomatic protection/official government roles) and illegal operatives.


title: GRU

text: Commonly known as the "Spetsnaz GRU", it was formed in 1949. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Spetsnaz GRU remained intact as part of the Russian GRU until 2010, when it was reassigned to other agencies. In 2013, however, the decision was reversed and Spetsnaz GRU units were reassigned to GRU divisions and placed under GRU authority again.


title: GRU

text: GRU officers train at a Ministry of Defence military academy at 50 Narodnoe Opolchenie Street, with intelligence agents receiving additional training at the Cherepovets Higher Military School of Radio Electronics. The A.F. Mozhaysky Military-Space Academy has also been used to train GRU officers.


title: GRU

text: According to the Federation of American Scientists: "Though sometimes compared to the US Defense Intelligence Agency, [the GRU's] activities encompass those performed by nearly all joint US military intelligence agencies as well as other national US organizations. The GRU gathers human intelligence through military attaches and foreign agents. It also maintains significant signals intelligence (SIGINT) and imagery reconnaissance (IMINT) and satellite imagery capabilities." Soviet GRU Space Intelligence Directorate had put more than 130 SIGINT satellites into orbit. GRU and KGB SIGINT network employed about 350,000 specialists.


title: GRU

text: On 9 November 2018 Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said that a 70-year-old retired army colonel, identified only as "Martin M." was believed to have spied for Russia for years. The officer in question, whose name was not disclosed and who might have been approached under a false flag, was reported to have been engaged in selling official secrets to his GRU handlers from 1992 until September 2018. In July 2019, Austria's Ministry of the Interior confirmed that the colonel's handler was a Moscow-born GRU officer Igor Egorovich Zaytsev, a Russian national, for whom an international arrest warrant had been issued.


title: GRU

text: An investigation by Bellingcat and "Capital" identified GRU officer Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev (using the alias Sergey Vyacheslavovich Fedotov) as a suspect in the 2015 poisoning of Bulgarian businessman Emiliyan Gebrev ("Емилиян Гебрев") in Sofia, following an attack that mirrored the techniques used in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. That attack has been specifically tied to Unit 29155. Three individuals were charged in absentia by the Bulgarians in January 2020.


title: GRU

text: In March 2021, six Bulgarian nationals alleged to be members of a GRU spy ring operating in Bulgaria were arrested in Sofia.


title: GRU

text: The GRU received intelligence from Jeffrey Delisle of the Royal Canadian Navy, leading to the expulsion of several Russian Embassy staffers, including the defence attaché to Ottawa.


title: GRU

text: In December 2020, Migración Colombia confirmed the expulsion of two Russian diplomats accused of espionage. One of the assailants was identified as Aleksandr Nikolayevich Belousov who, according to the National Intelligence Directorate of Colombia, is a GRU officer that had been credited by the Russian Embassy in Bogotá as a secretary. Nikolayevich, along with an SVR officer, had reportedly tried to gather intelligence on the country's electricity infrastructure on behalf of Venezuela's Maduro government.


title: GRU

text: On 17 April 2021, the Czech Republic announced its intelligence agencies had concluded that GRU officers, namely members of Russian military intelligence GRU's unit 29155, were involved in two massive ammunition depot explosions in Vrbetice (part of Vlachovice), near the Czech-Slovak border, in October 2014. The explosions killed two persons and "inflicted immense material damage, seriously endangered and disrupted the lives of many local residents", according to the Czech prime minister.


title: GRU

text: A Russian citizen named Artem Zinchenko was convicted of spying on Estonia for GRU in May 2017. In 2007 Deniss Metsavas, a Lasnamäe-born member of the Estonian Land Forces, was targeted with a honey trapping operation while visiting Smolensk. He was subsequently blackmailed into providing information to GRU handlers. His father, Pjotr Volin, was also recruited by GRU agents as leverage against Deniss, and would serve as a courier for classified information. On 5 September 2018, Major Deniss Metsavas and Pjotr Volin were charged with giving classified information to the GRU The two were convicted in February 2019.


title: GRU

text: In September 2018, Finnish police ran a large scale operation against numerous sites owned by Airiston Helmi Oy company that over years accumulated land plots and buildings close to nationally significant key straits, ports, oil refineries and other strategic locations as well as two Finnish Navy vessels. The security operation was run in parallel in multiple locations, involving Finnish National Bureau of Investigation, local police, Tax Administration, Border Guard, and Finnish Defence Forces. During the operation, a no-fly zone was declared over Turku Archipelago where key objects were located. While official cause given for the raid was multi-million euro money laundering and tax fraud, media speculated that the company had been a cover for GRU preparing infrastructure for a surprise attack on Finnish locations in case of a conflict situation.


title: GRU

text: Viktor Ilyushin, a GRU operative working as an Air Force deputy attaché, was expelled from France in 2014 for attempted espionage of the staff of François Hollande.


title: GRU

text: In August 2015, a GRU unit posing as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant supporters called CyberCaliphate took TV5Monde offline for approximately 18 hours.


title: GRU

text: GRU's APT – Fancy Bear used fake Facebook accounts to pose as associates of Emmanuel Macron's campaign staff, with the goal of interfering with the 2017 French presidential election. Georgy Petrovich Roshka, a member of the GRU's Unit 26165 was involved in the theft of Macron's emails, and subsequent distribution via WikiLeaks.


title: GRU

text: In December 2019, "Le Monde" reported that the joint effort by British, Swiss, French and U.S. intelligence agencies had discovered an apparent "rear base" of GRU in southeastern France, which was presumably used by GRU for the clandestine operations carried out throughout Europe. Investigators had identified 15 agents – all of them members of GRU's Unit 29155 – who visited Haute-Savoie in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, region of France from 2014 to 2018, including Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov, who are believed to be behind the poisoning of the former GRU colonel and British double agent Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2018.


title: GRU

text: During the 2006 Georgian–Russian espionage controversy, four officers working for the GRU Alexander Savva, Dmitry Kazantsev, Aleksey Zavgorodny and Alexander Baranov were arrested by the Counter-Intelligence Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Georgia and were accused of espionage and sabotage. This spy network was managed from Armenia by GRU Colonel Anatoly Sinitsin. A few days later the arrested officers were handed over to Russia through the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).


title: GRU

text: The 2015 Bundestag hack was attributed by German intelligence to the GRU. In 2020, Germany issued an arrest warrant for Dmitry Badin, a GRU officer and Unit 26165/Fancy Bear member also accused of involvement in the 2015–2016 DNC hacks in the United States, alleging he played a leading role in the Bundestag hack.


title: GRU

text: In 2018, German officials reported a key data network used by the Chancellery, ministries, and Parliament had been breached. German media attributed the attack to a Russian Government-sponsored hacking group, either Snake/Ouroborus or Fancy Bear.


title: GRU

text: In February 2021, Germany charged German citizen Jens F., a worker whose company maintained Bundestag electrical equipment, with espionage, accusing him of providing the building's floor plans to GRU operatives in the Russian embassy in 2017. The suspect was a former army officer allegedly linked to the Stasi in the 1980s.


title: GRU

text: In September 2021, the German foreign ministry warned Russia against the continuation of a pre-election cyberattack campaign targeting German legislators, claiming it had "reliable information" linking the Ghostwriter group behind the attacks to the GRU. The prosecutor general later opened an investigation into the affair.


title: GRU

text: In September 2000, Japan expelled Captain Viktor Bogatenkov, a military attaché at the Russian Embassy in Tokyo, on allegations of espionage. Bogatenkov was a GRU agent who received classified information from Shigehiro Hagisaki (萩嵜 繁博), a researcher at the National Institute for Defense Studies.


title: GRU

text: In early 2018, an investigation by Russian opposition site Mbk.media alleged then-first secretary of the Russian Embassy in Latvia Roman Tatarka was a GRU operative and former classmate of Anatoly Chepiga.


title: GRU

text: In October 2018, Latvia's Constitution Protection Bureau accused Russia of conducting a years-long phishing campaign targeting "state institutions, including the foreign and defense sectors."


title: GRU

text: In 2012, GRU officer Sergey Moiseyenko recruited Lithuanian Air Force officer Sergej Pusin to conduct espionage on Lithuanian and NATO military operations. Pusin additionally passed personal files on various military officers. Moiseyenko was arrested in 2014 and sentenced to 10.5 years in prison, but was pardoned and returned to Russia by President Nausėda as part of a trilateral prisoner exchange with Norway and Russia in 2019.


title: GRU

text: In March 2022, General Glen VanHerck of United States Northern Command testified that "the largest portion of the GRU members is in Mexico right now" seeking "opportunities to...influence [and access the] U.S." Mexican President López Obrador downplayed the allegation, emphasizing Mexican sovereignty and stating his country "[did not] get involved in [espionage]."


title: GRU

text: In June 2017, Moldova expelled five Russian GRU operatives with diplomatic cover from the Russian Embassy in Chisinau, as they were believed to be attempting to recruit fighters from Gagauzia to fight in the ongoing conflict with Ukraine. Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Grigory Karasin rejected the allegations.


title: GRU

text: The two Russian nationals indicted by Montenegrin prosecution as the organisers of the attempted coup d'état in Montenegro in October 2016 are believed to be GRU officers. One of them, Eduard Vadimovich Shishmakov ("Shirokov") had been officially identified as GRU in October 2014, when Shishmakov, who then held the position of a deputy military attaché at the Russian embassy in Poland, was declared persona non grata by the Polish government.


title: GRU

text: In mid-September 2018 the Swiss press reported that two men allegedly working for the GRU had been arrested in The Hague, the Netherlands in the spring that year, after the Salisbury poisoning incident, for planning to hack the computer systems of the Spiez Laboratory, a Swiss institute analyzing chemical weapon attacks for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). In early October 2018, the government of the Netherlands announced they had arrested four GRU operatives on 13 April: Aleksei Morenets, Evgenii Serebriakov, Oleg Sotnikov, and Aleksey Minin. The Russians allegedly attempted to launch a major "close access" cyberattack against the headquarters of the OPCW in the Hague and also intended to travel onwards to the Spiez laboratory in Switzerland, which was testing Novichok samples from Salisbury at the time. Investigation conducted by open-source intelligence outlets in the aftermath of the Dutch government's revelations that used Russian road police databases led to identification of further 305 GRU officers whose private cars were registered at GRU headquarters in Moscow. GRU officer Denis Vyacheslavovich Sergeev has also been documented as operating in Geneva and Lausanne.


title: GRU

text: In June 2022, the Dutch AIVD stated that GRU intelligence officer Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, under the alias of Viktor Muller Ferreira, was denied entry to the Netherlands after arriving for an internship with the International Criminal Court. The AIVD described Cherkasov as a deep-cover illegal, publishing a document he is alleged to have written in 2010 reminding himself of his cover identity. As Ferreira, Cherkasov is alleged to have attended university in the United States and Republic of Ireland, building a cover identity for years as a Brazilian national with an interest in international affairs. AIVD head described the attempted infiltration as a "long-term, multi-year GRU operation that cost a lot of time, energy and money," calling it a "high-level threat."


title: GRU

text: In December 2020, the Norwegian Police Security Service stated that hackers linked to Fancy Bear and the GRU's 85th Special Services Center (GTsSS) were likely responsible for a breach of the Storting's email system earlier in the year. The Russian Embassy in Norway denied the claims.


title: GRU

text: In June 2014, Poland expelled Russian deputy military attaché Eduard Shishmakov (alias Eduard Shirokov) and three other Russian citizens accused of spying over a 2014 wiretap scandal involving the publication of wiretapped conversations between senior Polish officials. Shishmakov, an accused GRU operative, later became a key suspect in the 2016 Montenegrin coup allegations.


title: GRU

text: In October 2014, Poland arrested two alleged GRU spies. Polish Lt. Col. Zbigniew J. worked for the GRU for "several years" feeding information on unit morale and troop movements while lawyer-lobbyist Stanisław Szypowski influenced governmental circles and sought a job in the Economy Ministry while providing information on the energy sector. Both met with GRU operatives under official cover in Warsaw and were monitored by Polish counterintelligence.


title: GRU

text: In July 2019, a Warsaw court sentenced former Economy Ministry employee Marek W. to three years in prison for passing classified information on the energy sector to the GRU from 2015 to 2016.


title: GRU

text: In May 2020, Polish journalists, supported by former intelligence officials, accused the GRU of conducting a 700-email bomb threat campaign against Polish schools as part of a hybrid warfare strategy. Polish and Russian intelligence services did not comment on the accusations.


title: GRU

text: In March 2022, the Polish Internal Security Agency (ABW) arrested reporter Pablo Gonzalez, whom they identified as "an agent of the [GRU]," as he planned to cross the Polish-Ukrainian border. Gonzalez, a Spanish citizen of Russian origin, was found with two passports of different names and detained on suspicion of espionage. The ABW accused Gonzalez of "[carrying] out activities for Russia using his journalistic status" and traveling to worldwide zones of conflict and political instability.


title: GRU

text: On 13 February 2004, in Doha, two Russian men assassinated Zelimkhan Yandarbiyev, an exiled leader of Chechen rebels and former President of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, in a car-bombing. Yandarbiyev's son was also killed. Anatoly V. Belashkov and Vasily A. Bogachyov, thought to be GRU members, were found guilty of the murder by a Qatari criminal court, which said the men had acted under direct orders from the Russian leadership. A third suspected GRU agent, posted as first secretary of the Russian Embassy in Qatar, was arrested but released to his diplomatic immunity. Those sentenced were sent to Russia to serve their sentences but disappeared shortly after.


title: GRU

text: Dmitry Kozak and Vladislav Surkov, members of the Vladimir Putin administration, reportedly served in the GRU. Two Chechens, Said-Magomed Kakiev and former warlord Sulim Yamadayev were commanders of Special Battalions Vostok and Zapad ("East" and "West") that were controlled by the GRU. The battalions each included close to a thousand fighters until their disbandment in 2008.


title: GRU

text: Approximately 300 commandos, intelligence officers and other GRU personnel died during the fighting in Chechnya.


title: GRU

text: GRU detachments from Chechnya were transferred to Lebanon independently of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon after the 2006 Lebanon War.


title: GRU

text: In early 2022, Slovakia arrested four Slovak nationals described as a "Russian spying network [seeking] information about NATO and Ukraine." Two were charged with spying and bribery, with Slovak authorities alleging undercover GRU officers at the Russian Embassy paid tens of thousands of euros for the "highly sensitive" information about Slovakia, the Slovak military, and NATO. The men charged were a Slovak military academy rector and disinformation blogger; the other two were released without charge.


title: GRU

text: According to reporting by Bellingcat, "El País" and the Civica Media Foundation, the Audiencia Nacional is investigating a GRU group known as Unit 29155 and its operations in Spain. GRU members Denis Sergeev, Alexey Kalinin and Mikhail Opryshko are reported to have been operating in Barcelona around the time of the 2017 Catalan independence referendum.


title: GRU

text: The Sixth Directorate was responsible for maintaining the Center S covert listening post in Syria prior to its loss to the Free Syrian Army in 2014. The Sixth Directorate also operates a signals intelligence listening post at Hmeimim Air Base near Latakia.


title: GRU

text: In 2015 GRU special forces soldiers have reportedly appeared in Aleppo and Homs. GRU officials have also visited Qamishli, near the border with Turkey.


title: GRU

text: In 2018 the Turkish government published CCTV videos from assassination of a Chechen commander Abdulvahid Edelgiriev, who was killed in 2015 in Istanbul, claiming the perpetrator was the same person as Anatoliy Chepiga ("Ruslan Boshirov") from Skripal assassination in UK.


title: GRU

text: The Spetsnaz GRU were involved in the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation and in the War in Donbas. During the November 2018, Kerch Strait incident, the GRU's Unit 54777 sent text messages to Ukrainian men in the border region calling on them to report for military service.


title: GRU

text: News media and private cybersecurity firms allege that the GRU hacked the computer networks of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, a key player in the 2020 Biden–Ukraine conspiracy theory.


title: GRU

text: Spetsnaz GRU are involved in the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. Their first reported casualty was Captain Alexey Gluschak, killed in action in Mariupol on 8 March.


title: GRU

text: In September 2018 the Crown Prosecution Service formally named two Russian nationals, Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov (the names used by the men when entering the UK), as suspected perpetrators of the assassination attempt of the former GRU officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter in March 2018. As part of the charge announcement Scotland Yard released a detailed track of the individuals' 48 hours in the UK. This covered their arrival in the UK at Gatwick Airport, trip to Salisbury the day before the attack, trip to Salisbury on the day of the attack and return to Moscow via Heathrow Airport. The two men stayed both nights in the City Stay Hotel on Bow Road, East London and Novichok agent was found in their room after police sealed it off on 4 May 2018. British Prime Minister Theresa May told the Commons the same day that the suspects were part of the G.U. intelligence service (formerly known as GRU) and the assassination attempt was not a rogue operation and was "almost certainly" approved at a senior level of the Russian state.


title: GRU

text: As a side effect of the Skripal poisoning investigation, Russian and Western media reported conclusions made by open-source intelligence outlets that claimed that GRU operatives were issued Russian foreign travel passports with certain characteristics that would allow their tentative identification. Through further research, in the autumn of 2018, "Boshirov" was publicly exposed as Anatoliy Chepiga, a decorated GRU officer, and "Petrov" as Alexander Mishkin.


title: GRU

text: GRU officer Stanislav Lunev, who defected to the U.S. in 1992 while he was posted in Washington under the cover of a TASS news agency correspondent, in the 1990s publicized his claims that small nuclear weapons that could be fit into a knapsack or a briefcase or suitcase had been secretly pre-positioned in the U.S. and other countries around the world to be used for sabotage by Russia's agents in the event of war. U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon pursued these claims publicly while admitting that they had been found largely spurious by the FBI. Searches of the areas identified by Lunev – who admitted he had never planted any weapons in the US – have been conducted, "but law-enforcement officials have never found such weapons caches, with or without portable nuclear weapons".


title: GRU

text: On 29 December 2016 the White House sanctioned the nine entities and individuals, including the GRU as well as the FSB, for their alleged activities to disrupt and spread disinformation during the 2016 US presidential election. In addition, the United States State Department also declared 35 Russian diplomats and officials "persona non grata" and denied Russian government officials access to two Russian-owned installations in Maryland and New York. On 13 July 2018, an indictment to several GRU Staffers was issued. GRU Unit 26165 and Unit 74455 are alleged to be behind the DCLeaks website, and were indicted for obtaining access and distributing information from data about 500,000 voters from a state election board website as well as the email accounts of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton, and volunteers and employees of the United States Presidential Campaign of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC). According to information leaked by Reality Winner, the GRU attempted to hack the voting machine manufacturer VR Systems, as well as local election officials.


title: GRU

text: In July 2018 Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein released an indictment returned by a grand jury charging twelve GRU officers with conspiring to interfere in the 2016 elections.


title: GRU

text: According to Microsoft VP Tom Burt, a GRU-run group dubbed Strontium (alternatively known as APT28, Sofacy, and Pawn Strorm, and Fancy Bear) has been engaged in spear phishing attacks against at least three campaigns in the 2018 midterm elections.


title: GRU

text: On 19 November 2021, the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots in the United States (CCORC) or (KCOPC) closed and on 9 March 2022 Elena Branson was accused of working as a foreign agent by the FBI.


title: GRU

text: The Head of the Russian Military Intelligence is a military officer. He is the primary military intelligence adviser to the Russian Minister of Defense and to the Russian Chief of the General Staff and to a certain extent also answers to the President of Russia if ordered so.


title: Foreskin

text: In male human anatomy, the foreskin, also known as the prepuce, is the double-layered fold of skin, mucosal and muscular tissue at the distal end of the human penis that covers the glans and urinary meatus. The foreskin is attached to the glans by an elastic band of tissue, known as the frenulum. The outer skin of the foreskin meets with inner preputial mucosa at the area of the mucocutaneous junction. The foreskin is mobile, fairly stretchable and sustains the glans in a moist environment. Except for humans, a similar structure, known as the penile sheath, appears in the male sexual organs of all primates and the vast majority of mammals.


title: Foreskin

text: In humans, foreskin length varies widely and coverage of the glans in a flaccid and erect state can also vary. The foreskin is fused to the glans at birth and is generally not retractable in infancy and early childhood. Inability to retract the foreskin in childhood should not be considered a problem unless there are other symptoms. Retraction of the foreskin is not recommended until it loosens from the glans before or during puberty. In adults, it is typically retractable over the glans, given normal development. The male prepuce is anatomically homologous to the clitoral hood in females. The foreskin may become subject to a number of pathological conditions, although most of these are rare and easily treatable.


title: Foreskin

text: The outside of the foreskin is a continuation of the skin that surrounds the shaft of the penis and is covered by a keratinized stratified squamous epithelium. The inner foreskin is a continuation of the epithelium that covers the glans and is made up of glabrous squamous mucous membrane, like the inside of the eyelid or the mouth. The mucosal aspect of the prepuce has a great capacity for self-repair. The area of the outer foreskin measures 7–100 cm, and the inner foreskin measures 18–68 cm. The mucocutaneous zone occurs where the outer and inner foreskin meet. The foreskin is free to move after it separates from the glans, which usually occurs before or during puberty. The inner foreskin is attached to the glans by the frenulum, a highly vascularized tissue of the penis. The World Health Organization states that "the frenulum forms the interface between the outer and inner foreskin layers, and when the penis is not erect, it tightens to narrow the foreskin opening.


title: Foreskin

text: The human foreskin is a laminar structure made up of outer skin, mucosal epithelium, lamina propia, dartos fascia and dermis. The superficial dartos fascia, formerly called the "peripenic muscle", is one of the two sheaths of smooth muscle tissue found below the penile skin, along with the underlying Buck's fascia or "deep" "fascia of the penis". The dartos fascia extents within the skin of the prepuce and contains an abuncance of elastic fibers. These fibers form a whorl at the tip of the foreskin, known as the preputial orifice, which is narrow during infancy and childhood. The dartos fascia is sensitive to temperature and reacts to temperature changes by expanding and contracting. The fascia is only loosely connected with the underlying tissue, so that it provides the mobility and elasticity of the penile skin. Langerhans cells are immature dendritic cells that are found in all areas of the penile epithelium, but are most superficial in the inner surface of the foreskin.


title: Foreskin

text: As a continuation of the human penile skin, the prepuce receives somatosensory innervation from the bilateral dorsal nerve of the penis and branches of the perineal nerve, and autonomic innervation from the pelvic plexus. The somatosensory receptors that are found in the prepuce are both nociceptors and mechanoreceptors, with a predominace of Meissner's corpuscles. Blood supply of the prepuce is provided by the preputial artery, a division of the axial and dorsal artery of the penis. The axial and dorsal arteries that run within the penile skin unite through perforating branches and give off the preputial arteries before they reach the corona of the glans. The preputial vein, an extension of the superficial dorsal vein, receives blood from the prepuce and connects to the larger dorsal veins of the penis that drain the rest of the penile shaft.


title: Foreskin

text: In 1996, following a study of 22 cadavers, retired pathologist John Taylor published a paper in which he proposed that the pleated skin of the distal foreskin, which he called ridged band, was a distinct anatomical structure that played an important role in sexual function. A 2015 review by Cox and colleagues said that the feature was particular to some men and that his illustrations had been inconsistent.


title: Foreskin

text: The penis develops from a primordial phallic structure that forms in the embryo during the early weeks of pregnancy, known as the genital tubercle. Initially undifferentiated, the tubercle develops into a penis depending on the exposure to male hormones secreted by the testes. The differentiation of the external sexual organs will be evident between twelve and sixteen weeks of gestation. Preputial development is initiated at around eleven weeks or earlier and continues up to eighteen weeks.


title: Foreskin

text: Historically, the theories regarding the stages of preputial development during gestation fall into two main ideas. The earliest report by Schweigger-Seidel (1866) and later Hunter (1935) suggested the formation of the prepuce out of dorsal skin and its progressive distal extension to completelly cover and eventually fuse with the epithelium of the glans. Glenister (1956) expanded the theory suggesting that the preputial fold results as an ingrowth of the cellular lamina, which rolls outwards over the glans, but with the resultant preputial lamina also expanding backwards to form an ingrowing fold at the coronal sulcus. The same idea was also described by Cold & Taylor (1999), Johnson (1920) and others.


title: Foreskin

text: By eleven and twelve weeks of gestation, the process of preputial formation is evident as a thickening of the epidermis that separates from the penis creating a raised fold, known as the "preputial fold". This novel structure expands dorsolaterally over the base of the developing glans. At thirteen weeks, the prepuce has not yet extended to the distal tip of the glans covering only a part of its surface. By sixteen weeks, the bilateral preputial folds cover most of the glans and the ventral sides of the prepuce fuse in the midline. The penile raphe, the continuation of the perineal raphe in human males, occurs on the ventral side of the penis as a manifestation of the fusion of the urethral and preputial folds. The dorsal nerve of the penis, which is present as early as nine weeks of gestation, completely expands through branches to the distal end of the glans and prepuce by sixteen weeks. At nineteen weeks, foreskin development is complete. Towards the end of the second trimester, the glans and the prepuce have completely fused together by a common membrane, known as the "balanopreputial lamina". This membrane keeps the organs inseparable in infancy and early childhood. The phenomenon of non-retractile foreskin in children is known as physiologic phimosis and it naturally starts to resolve before or during puberty. By the end of puberty, most boys have a fully retractable foreskin.


title: Foreskin

text: In children, the foreskin usually covers the glans completely but in adults it may not. During erection, the degree of automatic foreskin retraction varies considerably; in some adults, when the foreskin is longer than the erect penis, it will not spontaneously retract upon erection. In this case, the foreskin remains covering all or some of the glans until retracted manually or by sexual activity. The foreskin can be classified as long, when the preputial orifice extents beyond the glans, medium, when the preputial orifice is located around the meatus, and short, when most of the glans is exposed. The variation of long foreskin was regarded by Chengzu (2011) as 'prepuce redundant'. Frequent retraction and washing under the foreskin is suggested for all adults, particularly for those with a long or 'redundant' foreskin. Some males, according to Xianze (2012), may be reluctant for their glans to be exposed because of discomfort when it chafes against clothing, although the discomfort on the glans was reported to diminish within one week of continuous exposure. Guochang (2010) states that for those whose foreskins are too tight to retract or have some adhesions, forcible retraction should be avoided since it may cause injury.


title: Foreskin

text: The World Health Organization (WHO) stated in 2007 that there was "debate about the role of the foreskin, with possible functions including keeping the glans moist, protecting the developing penis in utero, or enhancing sexual pleasure due to the presence of nerve receptors". The foreskin helps to provide sufficient skin during an erection. The foreskin protects the glans. In infants, it protects the glans from ammonia and feces in diapers, which reduces the incidence of meatal stenosis. And the foreskin helps prevent the glans from getting abrasions and trauma throughout life. The fold of the prepuce produces sub-preputial wetness, helping to maintain the naturally moisturized state of the glans penis. The foreskin contains Meissner's corpuscles, which are nerve endings involved in fine-touch sensitivity. A study of skin samples found that, compared to other hairless skin areas on the body, the Meissner's index was highest in the finger tip (0.96) and lowest in the foreskin (0.28) suggested that the foreskin has the least sensitive hairless tissue of the body.


title: Foreskin

text: The foreskin is present in the vast majority of mammals, including non-human primates, such as the chimpanzee. In primates, the foreskin is present in the genitalia of both sexes and likely has been present for millions of years of evolution. The evolution of complex penile morphologies like the foreskin may have been influenced by females.


title: Foreskin

text: In modern times, there is controversy regarding whether the foreskin is a vital or vestigial structure. In 1949, British physician Douglas Gairdner noted that the foreskin plays an important protective role in newborns. He wrote, "It is often stated that the prepuce is a vestigial structure devoid of function... However, it seems to be no accident that during the years when the child is incontinent the glans is completely clothed by the prepuce, for, deprived of this protection, the glans becomes susceptible to injury from contact with sodden clothes or napkin." During the physical act of sex, the foreskin reduces friction, which can reduce the need for additional sources of lubrication. The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia has written that the foreskin is "composed of an outer skin and an inner mucosa that is rich in specialized sensory nerve endings and erogenous tissue." "Some medical researchers... claim circumcised men enjoy sex just fine and that, in view of recent research on HIV transmission, the foreskin causes more trouble than it's worth." In the March 2017 publication of the "Global Health Journal: Science and Practice", Morris and Krieger wrote, "The variability in foreskin size is consistent with the foreskin being a vestigial structure."


title: Foreskin

text: The foreskin can be involved in balanitis, phimosis, sexually transmitted infection and penile cancer. The American Academy of Pediatricians' 2012 technical report on circumcision found that the foreskin tends to harbor micro-organisms that can lead to urinary tract infections in infants and tend to contribute to the transmission of sexually transmitted infections in adults.


title: Foreskin

text: Frenulum breve is a frenulum that is insufficiently long to allow the foreskin to fully retract, which may lead to discomfort during intercourse.


title: Foreskin

text: Phimosis is a condition where the foreskin of an adult cannot be retracted properly. Phimosis can be treated by using topical steroid ointments and using lubricants during sex; for severe cases circumcision may be necessary. Posthitis is an inflammation of the foreskin.


title: Foreskin

text: A condition called paraphimosis may occur if a tight foreskin becomes trapped behind the glans and swells as a restrictive ring. This can cut off the blood supply, resulting in ischemia of the glans penis.


title: Foreskin

text: Lichen sclerosus is a chronic, inflammatory skin condition that most commonly occurs in adult women, although it may also be seen in men and children. Topical clobetasol propionate and mometasone furoate were proven effective in treating genital lichen sclerosus.


title: Foreskin

text: Some birth defects of the foreskin can occur; all of them are rare. In aposthia there is no foreskin at birth, in micropathia the foreskin does not cover the glans, and in macroposthia, also called and congenital megaprepuce, the foreskin extends well past the end of the glans.


title: Foreskin

text: It has been found that larger foreskins place uncircumcised men at an increased risk for HIV infection most likely due to the larger surface area of inner foreskin and the high concentration of Langerhans cells.


title: Foreskin

text: Circumcision is the removal of the foreskin, either partially or completely. It is most commonly performed as an elective procedure for prophylactic, cultural, or religious reasons. Circumcision may also be performed on children or adults to treat phimosis, balanitis, and other pathologies. The ethics of circumcision in children is a source of controversy.


title: Foreskin

text: As of 2012, no successful technique to reconstruct a circumcised foreskin had been published. Some men have used weights to stretch the skin of the penis to regrow a foreskin; the resulting tissue does cover the glans but does not replicate the features of a foreskin.


title: Foreskin

text: Other cultural or aesethetic practices include genital piercings involving the foreskin and slitting the foreskin.


title: Foreskin

text: Preputioplasty is the most common foreskin reconstruction technique, most often done when a boy is born with a foreskin that is too small; a similar procedure is performed to relieve a tight foreskin without resorting to circumcision.


title: Foreskin

text: Foreskin restoration is the process of expanding the skin on the penis to reconstruct an organ similar to the foreskin, which has been removed by circumcision or injury. Foreskin restoration is of ancient origin, when surgical means were taken to lengthen the foreskin of individuals born with either a short foreskin that did not cover the glans completely or a completely exposed glans as a result of circumcision. Foreskin restoration has been reported as having beneficial emotional results in some men, and has been proposed as a treatment for feelings of sexual violation or mutilation in adult men for circumcisions that were performed on them without consent.


title: Foreskin

text: Foreskin restoration is primarily accomplished by stretching the residual skin of the penis, but surgical methods also exist. Some forms of restoration involve only partial regeneration in instances of a high-cut wherein the circumcisee feels that the circumciser removed too much skin and that there is not enough skin for erections to be comfortable. Restoration creates a facsimile of the foreskin, but specialized tissues removed during circumcision such as the ridged band and frenulum cannot be reclaimed. Actual regeneration of the foreskin is experimental at this time.


title: Foreskin

text: Foreskins obtained from circumcision procedures are frequently used by biochemical and micro-anatomical researchers to study the structure and proteins of human skin. In particular, foreskins obtained from newborns have been found to be useful in the manufacturing of more human skin.


title: Foreskin

text: The foreskin plays a role in the sexual practice of docking. Docking is a gay sexual practice, which involves mutual masturbation, by inserting the glans penis into the foreskin of another penis.


title: Foreskin

text: Foreskin was considered a sign of beauty, civility, and masculinity throughout the Greco-Roman world. In ancient Greece, foreskins were valued, especially those that were longer in length. The earliest known illustrative depiction of the foreskin dates back to Egyptian kingdoms.


title: Watership Down

text: Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in Berkshire in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home (the hill of Watership Down), encountering perils and temptations along the way.


title: Watership Down

text: "Watership Down" was Richard Adams' debut novel. It was rejected by several publishers before Collings accepted the manuscript; the published book then won the annual Carnegie Medal (UK), annual Guardian Prize (UK), and other book awards. The novel was adapted into an animated feature film in 1978 and, from 1999 to 2001, an animated children's television series. In 2018, a drama of the story was made, which both aired in the UK and was made available on Netflix.


title: Watership Down

text: Adams completed a sequel almost 25 years later, in 1996, "Tales from Watership Down", constructed as a collection of 19 short stories about El-ahrairah and the rabbits of the Watership Down warren.


title: Watership Down

text: The story began as tales that Richard Adams told his young daughters Juliet and Rosamund during long car journeys. He recounted in 2007 that he "began telling the story of the rabbits... improvised off the top of [his] head, as [they] were driving along". The daughters insisted he write it down—"they were very, very persistent". After some delay he began writing in the evenings and completed it 18 months later. The book is dedicated to the two girls.


title: Watership Down

text: Adams's descriptions of wild rabbit behaviour were based on "The Private Life of the Rabbit" (1964), by British naturalist Ronald Lockley. The two later became friends, embarking on an Antarctic tour that became the subject of a co-authored book, "Voyage Through the Antarctic" (A. Lane, 1982).


title: Watership Down

text: "Watership Down" was rejected seven times before it was accepted by Rex Collings. The one-man London publisher Collings wrote to an associate, "I've just taken on a novel about rabbits, one of them with extra-sensory perception. Do you think I'm mad?" The associate did call it "a mad risk," in her obituary of Collings, to accept "a book as bizarre by an unknown writer which had been turned down by the major London publishers; but," she continued, "it was also dazzlingly brave and intuitive." Collings had little capital and could not pay an advance but "he got a review copy onto every desk in London that mattered." Adams wrote that it was Collings who gave "Watership Down" its title. There was a second edition in 1973.


title: Watership Down

text: Macmillan USA, then a media giant, published the first U.S. edition in 1974 and a Dutch edition was also published that year by Het Spectrum.


title: Watership Down

text: In the Sandleford warren, Fiver, a runty buck rabbit who is a seer, receives a frightening vision of his warren's imminent destruction. He and his brother Hazel fail to convince the Threarah, their Chief Rabbit, of the need to evacuate; they then try to convince the other rabbits, but only succeed in gaining nine followers, all bucks. Captain Holly of the Sandleford Owsla (the warren's military caste) accuses the group of fomenting dissension against the Threarah and tries to stop them leaving, but is driven off.


title: Watership Down

text: Once out in the world, the travelling group of rabbits finds itself following the leadership of Hazel, who had been considered an unimportant member of the warren before. The group travels far through dangerous territory. Bigwig and Silver, both former Owsla and the strongest rabbits among them, keep the others protected, helped by the ingenuity of Blackberry (the cleverest rabbit) and Hazel's good judgment. Along the way, they cross the River Enborne, and evade a badger, a dog, a crow, and a car. Hazel and Bigwig also stop three rabbits from attempting to return to the Sandleford warren.


title: Watership Down

text: They meet a rabbit named Cowslip, who invites them to join his own warren. The majority of Hazel's group are relieved to finally be able to sleep and feed well, and therefore decide to overlook the strange and evasive behaviour of the new rabbits. Fiver, however, senses nothing but death in the new warren. Later, Bigwig is caught in a snare, only surviving the ordeal thanks to Blackberry and Hazel's quick thinking. Fiver deduces the new warren is managed by a farmer, who protects and feeds the rabbits but also harvests a number of them for their meat and skins. He admonishes the others in a crazed lecture for not realizing the residents of Cowslip's warren were simply using Hazel and the others to increase their own odds of survival. The Sandleford rabbits, badly shaken, continue on their journey. They are soon joined by Strawberry, a buck who leaves Cowslip's warren after his doe is killed by one of the snares.


title: Watership Down

text: Fiver's visions instruct the rabbits to seek a home atop the hills. The group eventually finds and settles in a beech hangar on Watership Down. While digging the new warren, they are joined by Captain Holly and his friend Bluebell. Holly is severely wounded, and both rabbits are ill from exhaustion, having escaped both the violent human destruction of the Sandleford Warren and an attack by Cowslip's rabbits along the way. Holly's ordeal has left him a changed rabbit, and after telling the others that Fiver's terrible vision has come true, he offers to join Hazel's band in whatever way they will have him.


title: Watership Down

text: Although Watership Down is a peaceful habitat, Hazel realizes there are no does, making the future of the new warren certain to end with the inevitable deaths of the buck rabbits present. With the help of their useful new friend, a black-headed gull named Kehaar, they locate a nearby warren called Efrafa, which is overcrowded. Hazel sends a small embassy, led by Holly, to Efrafa to present their request for does.


title: Watership Down

text: Meanwhile, Hazel and Pipkin, the smallest member of the group, scout the nearby Nuthanger Farm, where they find a hutch with rabbits inside. Despite their uncertainty about living wild, the hutch rabbits are willing to come to Watership. Two nights later, Hazel leads a raid on the farm, which frees three of the hutch rabbits before the farmer returns. Hazel's leg is wounded by a shotgun blast, and he is rescued by Fiver and Blackberry. When the embassy returns soon after, Hazel and his rabbits learn that Efrafa is a police state led by the despotic General Woundwort, who refuses to allow anyone to leave his range of control. Holly and the other rabbits dispatched have managed to escape with little more than their lives intact.