title: Assassin's Creed III

text: "Assassin's Creed III" was nominated for six awards in the 2012 Spike Video Game Awards: Game of the Year, Best Xbox 360 Game, Best PS3 Game, Best Action Adventure Game, Best Graphics, and Character of the Year (Connor). GameTrailers awarded Assassin's Creed 3 Best Action-Adventure Game of the Year 2012 while Game Revolution named "Assassin's Creed III" its Game of the Year 2012. For the 2013 D.I.C.E. Interactive Achievement Awards, the game won the award for "Outstanding Achievement in Animation" and was nominated for "Adventure Game of the Year", and "Outstanding Achievement in Sound Design". "Assassin's Creed III" also received four Game Developers Choice Awards nominations for Best Audio, Best Narrative, Best Technology, and Game of the Year.


title: Assassin's Creed III

text: On March 30, 2012, Ubisoft stated that in the three weeks since the game's pre-order campaign began, numbers had already surpassed the total U.S. pre-order numbers of "" and exceeded 10 times more than the pre-orders "" attracted in a comparable time frame. On October 25, 2012, Ubisoft announced that the game is the most pre-ordered game in the company's history, more than doubling pre-orders for "Revelations", the previous record holder.


title: Assassin's Creed III

text: "Assassin's Creed III" was the bestselling game in the United Kingdom in the week of its release, with the best sales of the series to date. It was the biggest launch in publisher Ubisoft's history and the third biggest launch of any game in the UK in 2012 (behind "" and "FIFA 13"). It doubled the launch week sales of "Assassin's Creed II", and beat 2011's "Revelations" by over 117,000 copies. According to Ubisoft, "Assassin's Creed III" sold over 3.5 million units in its first week, which represents a 100 percent year-over-year increase from "Revelations". On December 12, 2012, Ubisoft announced that the game had sold 7 million copies worldwide. In the United Kingdom, "Assassin's Creed III" was the 3rd bestselling title of 2012, after being on sale for 2 months. According to the NPD Group, the game was the 4th bestselling game of 2012 in North America. On February 7, 2013, Ubisoft announced that the game had sold 12 million copies worldwide, representing an almost 70 percent increase over "Revelations" at the same point of its lifecycle, and making it the best-selling game in the franchise.


title: Assassin's Creed III

text: In June 2012, Ubisoft and in particular its French-Canadian subsidiary Ubisoft Montreal had to fend off increasing accusations of anti-British prejudice after trailers and box art depicting the killing of British Redcoats started to appear. One site described the 'July 4' live-action trailer as "American nationalism". Lead script writer Corey May defended the developers and publisher Ubisoft from allegations of bigotry and discrimination. This controversy, however, continued because marketing materials continued to depict only the British as the enemy, with a number of gaming news outlets noting US trailers cutting scenes that did seem to depict the protagonist killing Patriots. The publisher eventually decided that the Limited Edition of the game would not be sold in the UK or Europe.


title: Assassin's Creed III

text: Upon the game's release, critics said their depiction was balanced and fair. "Official Xbox Magazine UK" felt that "the strongest aspect of ACIII is the more mature moral tone – there's none of the anticipated 'yay, America'." In another review by Kotaku, the reviewer notes "publishers from big video game companies are not known for subtlety or complexity of theme", going on to say "the marketing always suggested that Assassin's Creed III's igniting of the Revolution would be a game of interactive jingoism; its developers always said it was not. The developers were the ones being accurate."


title: Assassin's Creed III

text: In September 2012, franchise main writer Corey May stated that the "Assassin's Creed III" plot leaves possible sequels "plenty of room to play". "Assassin's Creed III" associate producer Julien Laferrière said that further "Assassin's Creed" games featuring new hero Connor depend on reaction to character, stating "We made three games with Ezio because people loved Ezio." In November 2012, The Gaming Liberty spotted a supposed Ubisoft survey that suggested another annual installment could be set for release next year. The survey asked participants how they would feel about a return of Desmond, Connor and the American Revolution setting, and if they would purchase such a title if it were to be released next year, suggesting that Ubisoft had its eye on repeating the "Brotherhood" and "Revelations" route of the Ezio trilogy. The survey was also said to ask how participants would feel about the introduction of a co-op mode, and how they feel about Naughty Dog's "Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception", possibly suggesting a move to more scripted gameplay.


title: Assassin's Creed III

text: On February 28, 2013, Ubisoft posted their first promotional picture and cover for their next "Assassin's Creed" game, following leaked marketing material days before. Titled "Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag", it serves as a sequel to "Assassin's Creed III"s modern story and a prequel to its ancestral storyline. The game is set in the Caribbean islands during the Golden Age of Piracy, and centers around Edward Kenway; the father of Haytham Kenway, and grandfather of Connor, the two playable characters of "Assassin's Creed III".


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: The Gift is a 2015 psychological thriller film written, co-produced, and directed by Joel Edgerton in his feature directorial debut, and co-produced by Jason Blum and Rebecca Yeldham. The film stars Jason Bateman and Rebecca Hall as Simon and Robyn Callem, a couple intimidated by a figure from Simon's past played by Edgerton.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: It was released in the United States on August 7, 2015, as the first film released by STX Entertainment. The film grossed $60 million worldwide on a budget of $5 million and received positive reviews from critics, who praised Edgerton's direction and screenplay, as well as Bateman and Hall's performances.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: A married couple, Simon and Robyn Callem, relocate from Chicago to a Los Angeles suburb after Simon takes a new job. They run into Gordon "Gordo" Moseley, Simon's old high school classmate. Gordo begins repeatedly dropping in unannounced and delivering gifts, such as bottles of wine and koi for their pond. His presence makes Simon uncomfortable, but Robyn sees no problem.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Gordo invites them and another couple to his large home, but, when the Callems arrive, he tells them the other couple cancelled. He exits abruptly to deal with a work problem, leaving them alone and making Simon suspicious. When Gordo returns, Simon tells Gordo to stay away from them.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: The next day, Robyn finds the koi dead and their dog missing. When Simon drives to Gordo's house to confront him, he discovers the home actually belongs to another couple. In the days following, Robyn begins to suspect that she is not alone in the house, finding faucets on and hearing footsteps. Unable to sleep, she steals prescription pills.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: That night, the dog suddenly returns, and Robyn finds a letter of apology from Gordo in the mail. The message ends with a note to Simon that says Gordo was "willing to let bygones be bygones" with regard to an event from years prior, but not anymore. Simon claims he does not know what it refers to.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Simon asks his boss about a promotion and is told that his only competition is his coworker Danny McDonald. Robyn's increasing paranoia while home alone causes her to faint. She wakes up in bed the next morning and finds Simon with her stolen pills, revealing that this was a problem for her in Chicago.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Time passes, things improve, and Robyn becomes pregnant. One day however, she sees Gordo watching her while shopping. Simon's sister tells her that, in high school, Simon and his friend Greg reported that Gordo had been molested by an older boy, which led to Gordo getting bullied and transferring schools. Robyn discovers that Simon has run background checks on Danny McDonald and Gordo, who has spent his life in and out of prison. She seeks out Greg, who reveals the molestation story was fabricated by Simon, calling him a bully. As a result of the false report, Gordo's father thought Gordo was gay and tried to burn him alive, leading to his arrest for attempted murder and Gordo being sent to military school. When Robyn asks why Simon would have done such a thing, Greg replies, "because he could." He goes on to explain that Simon was a bully with a "real mean streak."


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Robyn confronts Simon but he denies responsibility. At her behest, he tracks down Gordo and delivers a non-apology. Gordo knows Simon is insincere and warns Simon that the past is not done with him yet. Furious, Simon attacks Gordo. He later lies to Robyn, saying Gordo accepted his apology.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Simon is promoted, but at his celebration party, Danny McDonald hurls rocks at his house and accuses Simon of fabricating information and ruining his career in order to get the promotion. Robyn goes into labor and gives birth to a boy. Simon is fired for lying about McDonald, and Robyn tells him that she wants to separate.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Simon returns home to find another gift box, consisting of a key to their house, an audio recording of Simon and Robyn making fun of Gordo, and footage shot from inside their home that shows Gordo standing over Robyn when she had fainted, seemingly about to sexually assault her. Gordo wears the mask of a monkey (a lifelong fear for Simon) as he touches an unconscious Robyn on the bed before the camera cuts.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: At the same time, Gordo visits Robyn at the hospital with a bandaged eye and his arm in a sling. He tells her that Simon caused his injuries. Simon rushes to the hospital but misses Gordo, who smirks at him as the elevator doors close. Gordo calls Simon to taunt him, refusing to confirm whether or not he raped Robyn and fathered the baby, just as Simon refused to come clean about the molestation story years before. With his marriage over and his career destroyed, Simon breaks down as Gordo watches. Satisfied with his revenge, Gordo walks away, tossing away the sling from his arm.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Joel Edgerton's brother, Nash Edgerton, plays the part of Frank Dale, in addition to his duties as the film's stunt coordinator.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: The project was announced in August 2012, with Joel Edgerton writing the screenplay and Edgerton set to make his directing debut. His inspirations for the screenplay included Alfred Hitchcock, "Fatal Attraction" and Michael Haneke's 2005 French film "Caché", as well as Park Chan-wook's "Vengeance Trilogy".


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Principal photography began on January 19, 2015, and ended on February 20, 2015. A majority of filming took place at a home in the Hollywood Hills neighborhood, where STX Entertainment also held promotional interviews for the film. The film was shot on an Arri Alexa with Canon K35 lenses, and was filmed in 25 days, according to its cinematographer, Eduard Grau. Grau was recommended by Nash Edgerton, who served as the film's stunt coordinator, after the two were part of the production for the 2013 short film "Streetcar". In an interview with Collider, Edgerton revealed that he did not start filming his acting role until two weeks into shooting (devoting that time, instead, solely to directing). As soon as he did, his older brother Nash assisted on set behind the camera. Edgerton completed shooting his role as Gordo in seven days.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Post-production took eleven weeks from March to June 2015. Luke Doolan also edited Sundance winner "Animal Kingdom" (also starring Edgerton). On January 20, 2015, STX Entertainment bought the United States distribution rights to the film. STX retitled the film "The Gift".


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: STX initially set "The Gift" for domestic release on July 31, 2015, and later moved it to August 7, 2015. The first trailer was released on April 1, 2015. It premiered on Twitter's live video streaming app Periscope, making STX Entertainment the first advertiser to work with Twitter on a campaign incorporating Periscope.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: "The Gift" grossed $43.8 million in North America and $15.2 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $59 million, against a budget of $5 million.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: In its opening weekend, the film grossed $11.9 million, finishing third at the box office behind "" ($28.5 million) and fellow newcomer "Fantastic Four" ($25.7 million).


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 91%, based on 194 reviews, with an average rating of 7.50/10. The site's critical consensus reads, ""The Gift" is wickedly smart and playfully subversive, challenging the audience's expectations while leaving them leaning on the edges of their seats." Metacritic gives the film a score of 77 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". On CinemaScore, audiences gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: "Time Out"s Daisy Bowie-Sell praised "The Gift" as "darkly unnerving", commending its ending and comparing it positively to a similar film, "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle". In a review for IndieWire, Katie Walsh lamented the film's use of common thriller cliches and restraint towards the climax, but lauded Joel Edgerton's direction, concluding: "His deft, controlled maneuvering of plot, character, style, and tone is damn near perfect for his feature debut—even if it is in service of a very standard genre piece."


title: The Gift (2015 American film)

text: Critics also praised Bateman, known for portraying the “straight man” in comedies, for playing against type as the mean-spirited Simon. RogerEbert.com’s Sheila O’Malley wrote that Bateman gives a “beautiful and focused performance” as someone who is “kindly and condescending, sometimes in the same moment”. "Collider"s Matt Goldberg commented that, while the film “almost goes too far in making [Simon] a sociopath”, Bateman's charisma worked for the character: “What makes Bateman inherently likable gives Simon a lot of his power, and it’s a memorable performance as we despise the character but also wonder if he deserves vicious comeuppance for what he did to Gordo.” "Slate"s Keith Phipps wrote that “Bateman plays Simon with the easy charm and everyman approachability of past roles,” but “pushes the charm into smarm and the approachability into sleaze.”


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano (English: "Super Toucan"), also named ALX or A-29, is a Brazilian turboprop light attack aircraft designed and built by Embraer as a development of the Embraer EMB 312 Tucano. The A-29 Super Tucano carries a wide variety of weapons, including precision-guided munitions, and was designed to be a low-cost system operated in low-threat environments.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In addition to its manufacture in Brazil, Embraer has set up a production line in the United States in conjunction with Sierra Nevada Corporation for the manufacture of A-29s to export customers.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: During the mid-1980s, Embraer was working on the Short Tucano alongside a new version designated the EMB-312G1, carrying the same Garrett engine. The EMB-312G1 prototype flew for the first time in July 1986. However, the project was dropped because the Brazilian Air Force was not interested in it. Nonetheless, the lessons from recent combat use of the aircraft in Peru and Venezuela led Embraer to keep up the studies. Besides a trainer, it researched a helicopter attack version designated "helicopter killer" or EMB-312H. The study was stimulated by the unsuccessful bid for the US military Joint Primary Aircraft Training System program. A proof-of-concept prototype flew for the first time in September 1991. The aircraft features a fuselage extension with the addition of sections before and after of the cockpit to restore its center of gravity and stability, a strengthened airframe, cockpit pressurization, and stretched nose to house the more powerful PT6A-67R () engine. Two new prototypes with the PT6A-68A () engine were built in 1993. The second prototype flew for the first time in May 1993 and the third prototype flew in October 1993.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The request for a light attack aircraft was part of the Brazilian government's Amazon Surveillance System project. This aircraft would fly with the R-99A and R-99B aircraft then in service and be used to intercept illegal aircraft flights and patrol Brazil's borders. The ALX project was then created by the Brazilian Air Force, which was also in need of a military trainer to replace the Embraer EMB 326GB Xavante. The new aircraft was to be suited to the Amazon region (high temperature, moisture, and precipitation; low military threat). The ALX was then specified as a turboprop engine plane with a long range and autonomy, able to operate night and day, in any meteorological conditions, and able to land on short airfields lacking infrastructure.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 1995, the Brazilian Ministry of Aeronautics awarded Embraer a $50 million contract for ALX development. Two EMB-312Hs were updated to serve as ALX prototypes. These made their initial flights in their new configuration in 1996 and 1997, respectively. The initial flight of a production-configured ALX, further modified from one of the prototypes, occurred on 2 June 1999. The second prototype was brought up to two-seater configuration and performed its first flight on 22 October 1999. The changes had been so considerable that the type was given a new designation, the EMB-314 Super Tucano. The total cost of the aircraft development was quoted to be between US$200 million and US$300 million.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The aircraft differs from the baseline EMB-312 Tucano trainer aircraft in several respects. It is powered by a more powerful Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6A-68C engine (compared to the EMB-312's powerplant); has a strengthened airframe to sustain higher g loads and increase fatigue life to 8,000–12,000 hours in operational environments; a reinforced landing gear to handle greater takeoff weights and heavier stores load, up to ; Kevlar armour protection; two internal, wing-mounted .50 cal. machine guns (with 200 rounds of ammunition each); capacity to carry various ordnance on five weapon hardpoints including Giat NC621 20 mm cannon pods, Mk 81/82 bombs, MAA-1 Piranha air-to-air missiles (AAMs), BLG-252 cluster bombs, and SBAT-70/19 or LAU-68A/G rocket pods on its underwing stations; and has a night-vision goggle-compatible "glass cockpit" with hands-on-throttle-and-stick (HOTAS) controls; provision for a datalink; a video camera and recorder; an embedded mission-planning capability; forward-looking infrared; chaff/flare dispensers; missile approach warning receiver systems and radar warning receivers; and zero-zero ejection seats. The structure is corrosion-protected and the side-hinged canopy has a windshield able to withstand bird strike impacts up to .


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In 1996, Embraer selected the Israeli firm Elbit Systems to supply the mission avionics for the ALX. For this contract, Elbit was chosen over GEC-Marconi and Sextant Avionique. The Israeli company supplies such equipment as the mission computer, head-up displays, and navigation and stores management systems.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 13 October 2010, the Super Tucano A-29B had passed the mark of 48,000 hours since 21 July 2005 on full-scale wing-fuselage structural fatigue tests, conducted by the Aeronautical Systems Division, part of the Aeronautics and Space Institute at the Structural Testing Laboratory. The tests involve a complex system of hydraulics and tabs that apply pressure to the aircraft structure, simulating air pressure from flying at varying altitudes. The simulation continued for another year to complete the engine-fatigue life test and crack-propagation studies for a damage-tolerance analysis program of conducted by Embraer and the Aeronautics and Space Institute.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: Embraer developed an advanced training and support system suite called Training Operational Support System (TOSS) an integrated computational tool composed of four systems: computer-based training enabling the student to rehearse the next sortie on a computer simulation; an aviation mission planning station, which uses the three-dimensional (3D) visuals to practice planned missions and to check intervisibility between aircraft and from aircraft and other entities; a mission debriefing station employing real aircraft data to play back missions for review and analysis; and a flight simulator. MPS and MDS was enhanced with MAK's 3D visualization solution to support airforces pre-existing data, including GIS, Web-based servers and a plug-in for custom terrain formats.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In 2012, Boeing Defense, Space & Security was selected to integrate the Joint Direct Attack Munition and Small Diameter Bomb to the Super Tucano. In 2013, Embraer Defense and Security disclosed that its subsidiary, OrbiSat, was developing a new radar for the Super Tucano. A Colombian general disclosed that the side-looking airborne radar will be able to locate ground targets smaller than a car with digital precision.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In 2011, the Super Tucano was declared the winner of the US Light Air Support contract competition over the Hawker Beechcraft AT-6B Texan II. The contract was cancelled in 2012 citing Hawker Beechcraft's appeal when its proposal was disqualified during the procurement process, but rewon in 2013. Twenty of these light attack aircraft were purchased for the Afghan Air Force. The first four aircraft arrived in Afghanistan in January 2016, with a further four due before the end of 2016. Combat-ready Afghan A-29 pilots graduated from training at Moody Air Force Base, Georgia, and returned to Afghanistan to represent the first of 30 pilots trained by the 81st Fighter Squadron at Moody AFB. A fleet of 20 A-29s will be in place by 2018, according to a senior U.S. defense official. The Pentagon purchased the Super Tucanos in a $427 million contract with Sierra Nevada Corp. and Embraer, with the aircraft produced at Embraer's facility on the grounds of Jacksonville International Airport in Jacksonville, Florida.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The first four aircraft arrived at Hamid Karzai International Airport on 15 January 2016. In 2017, the Afghan Air Force conducted roughly 2,000 airstrike sorties, about 40 a week. The AAF had a record high in October with more than 80 missions in a single week. By March 2018, the AAF had 12 A-29s in service. On 22 March 2018, the Afghan Air Force deployed a GBU-58 Paveway II 250 lb (113.4 kg) bomb from an A-29 Super Tucano in combat, marking the first time the Afghan military has dropped a laser-guided weapon against the Taliban.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2021, during the 2021 Taliban offensive and the Fall of Kabul, some Afghan pilots fled the country, bringing an unknown number of aircraft, including A-29s, with them.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: An Afghan Air Force A-29 crashed in Uzbekistan's Surxondaryo Region. Two pilots ejected and landed with parachutes. Initially it was reported shot down by Uzbekistan air defenses, then the Prosecutor General's office in Uzbekistan issued a statement saying that an Afghan military plane had collided mid-air with an Uzbekistan Air Force MiG-29, finally it also retracted the statement about the mid-air collision. At least one Super Tucano was captured by the Taliban in the Mazar-i-Sharif International Airport.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2001, the Brazilian Air Force awarded Embraer a contract for 76 Super Tucano / ALX aircraft with options for a further 23. A total of 99 aircraft were acquired from a contract estimated to be worth U$214.1 million; 66 of these aircraft are two-seater versions, designated A-29B. The remaining 33 aircraft are the single-seat A-29 ALX version. The first aircraft was delivered in December 2003. By September 2007, 50 aircraft had entered service. The 99th, and last, aircraft was delivered in June 2012.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: One of the main missions of the aircraft is border patrol under the Sivam programme. On 3 June 2009, two Brazilian Air Force Super Tucanos, guided by an Embraer E-99, intercepted a Cessna U206G engaged in drug trafficking activities. Inbound from Bolivia, the Cessna was intercepted in the region of Alta Floresta d'Oeste, and after exhausting all procedures, one of the Super Tucanos fired a warning shot from its 12.7 mm machine guns, after which the aircraft followed the Super Tucanos to Cacoal airport. This incident was the first use of powers granted under the Shoot-Down Act, which was enacted in October 2004 to legislate for the downing of illegal flights. A total of 176 kg of pure cocaine base paste, enough to produce almost a ton of cocaine, was discovered on board the Cessna; the aircraft's two occupants attempted a ground escape before being arrested by federal police in Pimenta Bueno.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 5 August 2011, Brazil started Operation Ágata, part of a major "Frontiers Strategic Plan" launched in June, with almost 30 continuous days of rigorous military activity in the region of Brazil's border with Colombia; it mobilized 35 aircraft and more than 3,000 military personnel of the Brazilian Army, Brazilian Navy, and Brazilian Air Force surveillance against drug trafficking, illegal mining and logging, and trafficking of wild animals. A-29s of 1 / 3º Aviation Group (GAV), Squadron Scorpion, launched a strike upon an illicit airstrip, deploying eight 230 kg (500 lb) computer-guided Mk 82 bombs to render the airstrip unusable.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: Multiple RQ-450 UAVs were assigned for night operations, locating remote jungle airstrips used by drug smuggling gangs along the border. The UAVs were typically guarded by several E-99 aircraft. The RQ-450 surveillance aircraft located targets for the A-29 Super Tucanos, allowing them to bomb the airstrips with an extremely high level of accuracy, making use of night vision systems and computer systems calculating the impact points of munitions.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 15 September 2011, Brazil launched the Operation Ágata 2 on the borders with Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. Part of this border is the infamous Triple Frontier. A-29s from Maringá, Dourados, and Campo Grande, and Brazilian upgraded Northrop F-5 Tiger II/F-5EMs from Canoas, intercepted a total of 33 aircraft during Operation Ágata 2 in this area. Brazilian forces seized 62 tons of narcotics, made 3,000 arrests, and destroyed three illicit airstrips, while over 650 tons of weapons and explosives have been seized.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 22 November 2011, Brazil launched the Operation Ágata 3 on the borders with Bolivia, Peru, and Paraguay. It involved 6,500 personnel, backed by 10 ships and 200 land patrol vehicles, in addition to 70 aircraft, including fighter, transport, and reconnaissance aircraft. This was the largest Brazilian coordinated action involving the Army, Navy, and Air Force against illegal trafficking and organized crime, along a border strip of almost 7,000 km. A-1 (AMX), Northrop F-5 Tiger II/ F-5EM and A-29 Super Tucanos from Tabatinga, Campo Grande, Cuiabá, Vilhena, and Porto Velho were employed in defending air space, supported by airborne early warning and control E-99, equipped with a 450-km-range radar capable of detecting low-flying aircraft, and R-99, remote sensing and surveillance.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 7 December 2011, Brazilian Ministry of Defence informed that drug seizures were up by 1,319% over the last six months, compared to prior six months.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2008, the Chilean Air Force signed a contract valued at $120 million for 12 A-29Bs. The contract includes a broad integrated logistic support package and an advanced training and operation support system (TOSS), covering not only the aircraft, but also an integrated suite for ground support stations. The FACH's TOSS consists of three systems: a mission planning station in which instructor and student program all phases of flight, setting the various parameters of each phase along with navigation, communications, goals, and simulations; a mission debriefing station empowering students with the ability to review all and each flight aspects and phases, enabling to look at the errors and correct them for their next mission; and a flight simulator.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The first four aircraft arrived in December 2009, with the remaining deliveries taking place in March, April, and May of the following year. The aircraft are based at Los Cóndores Air Base (45 km from Iquique) and are used for tactical instruction at the 1st Air Brigade for the Aviation Group #1, the fully digital cockpit allows students to do a smooth transition between the T-35 Pillán (basic trainer) and the F-16.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: A total of 25 Super Tucanos (variant AT-29B) were purchased by the Colombian Air Force in a US$234 million deal, purchased directly from the Brazilian company Embraer. The first three aircraft arrived 14 December 2006 to the military airfield of CATAM in Bogotá. Two more aircraft were delivered the week of 16 December 2006, 10 more in the first half of 2007, and the rest in June 2008.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 18 January 2007, a squadron of Colombian Air Force Super Tucanos launched the first-ever combat mission of its type, attacking FARC positions in the jungle with Mark 82 bombs. This attack made use of the Super Tucano's constantly computed impact point capability; the aircraft's performance in action was a reported success.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 11 July 2012, the first aircraft was lost near the Jambalo town, when the aircraft was flying in one operation against FARC; rebels claim they shot down the aircraft with a .50 caliber (12.7 mm) machine gun, but the Colombian Air Force challenged the rebel group's claims after inspecting the aircraft wreckage.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In 2008, the Colombian Air Force used a Super Tucano armed with Griffin laser-guided bombs inside Ecuadorian airspace during "Operation Phoenix", to destroy a guerrilla cell in Ecuador and kill the second-in-command chief of FARC, Raúl Reyes. This event led to a diplomatic break between the two countries.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 21 September 2010, Operation Sodoma in the Meta department began, 120 miles south of the capital Bogotá. FARC commander Mono Jojoy was killed in a massive military operation in the early hours of 22 September, after a squadron of 25 EMB-314s launched seven tonnes of explosives on the camp, while some 600 special forces troops descended by rope from helicopters, opposed by 700 guerrillas; 20 guerrillas died in the attack.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 2 October 2010, Super Tucanos using infrared cameras spotted and bombarded the FARC 57th front in the Chocó Department during Operation Darién. The bombardment, just a kilometer away from the Panama border, killed five rebels, including several commanders.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 15 October 2011, Operation Odiseo started with a total of 969 members of the Colombian armed forces. A total of 18 aircraft participated in Operation Odiseo. On 4 November 2011, five Super Tucanos dropped 1000 lb (450 kg) and 250 lb (135 kg) bombs, plus high-precision smart bombs. This operation ended with the death of the leader of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC), Alfonso Cano. It was biggest blow in the history of the guerrilla organization.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: At dawn of 22 February 2012, EMB-314s identified the camp of FARC's 57th Front, north of Bojayá near the border with Panama. In Operation Frontera, Super Tucanos dropped two high-precision bombs, destroying the camp and killing six FARC rebels, including Pedro Alfonso Alvarado (alias "Mapanao"), who was responsible for the Bojayá massacre in 2002, in which 119 civilians were killed.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The Espada de Honor War Plan was an aggressive Colombian counterinsurgency strategy that aimed to dismantle FARC's structure, both militarily and financially. It targeted FARC leadership focusing on eliminating the 15 most powerful economic and military fronts.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: During Operacion Faraón, at the dawn of 21 March 2012, five Super Tucanos bombarded the FARC's 10th Front guerrilla camp in Arauca, near the Venezuelan border, killing 33 rebels. Five days later, in Operation Armagedón, nine Super Tucanos from Apiay Air Base attacked the FARC's 27th front camp in Vista Hermosa, Meta, using coordinates received from a guerrilla informant recruited by the police intelligence, launching 40 guided 500-lb bombs within three minutes, destroying the camp and killing 36 rebels. In late May, Super Tucanos bombarded a National Liberation Army camp located in rural Santa Rosa at Bolívar Department. On 31 May 2012, a bombardment over the Western Front of the ELN at an inhospitable area of the Chocó Department killed seven rebels. On 6 June 2012, during a minute and half bombardment over FARC's 37th front located in northern Antioquia Department, five Super Tucanos dropped 250-kg bombs, killing eight rebels.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In September, Super Tucanos provided reconnaissance and close air support during an "Omega" operation, during which seven terrorists were gunned down and four were captured, including "Fredy Cooper", the 7th front's leader of the Public Order Company. On 5 September 2012, "Danilo Garcia", leader of the FARC's 33rd Front, was killed in a bombing raid; Danilo was considered "the right hand of supreme FARC leader alias Timochenko". Intelligence indicated that the bodies of 15 guerrillas may have been buried in the bombing. Eight A-29s carried out an air strike on 27 September during Operación Saturno at the FARC's 37th front camp in the northwest of Antioquia Department, resulting in the death of Efrain Gonzales Ruiz, "Pateñame", leader of the 35th and 37th fronts, and 13 others. In April 2013, two Super Tucanos bombarded the FARC's 59th front fort in Serranía del Perijá municipality Barrancas, La Guajira.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2001, Embraer announced the signing of a contract with the Dominican Republic for 10 Super Tucano aircraft, to use for pilot training, internal security, border patrol and counter-narcotics trafficking missions. The order was reduced to eight aircraft in January 2009, for a total amount of US$93 million. The first two Super Tucano aircraft were delivered to the Dominican Republic on 18 December 2009, three were delivered in June 2010, and the remaining three in October 2010.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In February 2011, Dominican Republic Air Force Chief of Operations Col. Hilton Cabral stated: "since the introduction of the Super Tucano aircraft and ground-based radars, illicit air tracks into the Dominican Republic had dropped by over 80 percent." In August 2011, the Dominican Air Force said that since taking delivery of the Super Tucanos in 2009, it has driven away drug flights to the point that they no longer enter the country's airspace. In May 2012, the Dominican president Leonel Fernández gave a cooperative order for the armed forces to support a fleet of Super Tucanos for the antidrug fight on Haiti.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The Ecuadorian Air Force operates 18 Super Tucanos; they are established at Manta Air Base in two squadrons: 2313 "Halcones" (used for border surveillance and flight training) and 2311 "Dragones" (used for counterinsurgency). Ecuadorian Super Tucanos use the PT-6A-68A (1,300 shp) engine.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 23 March 2009, Embraer announced that negotiations over a nine-month-old agreement with the Ecuadorian air force have finally been completed. The deal covers the supply of 24 turboprop-powered Super Tucanos, with these to replace Ecuador's aging fleet of Vietnam-era Cessna A-37 Dragonfly strike aircraft, and help reassert control over the country's airspace.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In May 2010, after receiving its sixth Super Tucano from a contract worth $270 million, Ecuador announced a reduction in its order for the Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano from 24 to 18 aircraft to release funds to buy some used South African Air Force Denel Cheetah C fighters. By cutting its order for the EMB-314 type, the Defence Ministry says the accrued savings would allow it to purchase the second-hand Cheetahs, and bolster the air force's flagging air defence component.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 3 September 2011, the head of the Honduran Air Force (Fuerza Aérea Hondureña, or FAH), said that Honduras was to procure four Super Tucanos. On 7 February 2012, ministers of the Honduran government informed the Brazilian Trade Ministry of the interest in acquiring a large number of Super Tucanos. However, due to the economic situation, the government was forced to repair their aging aircraft inventory, instead of proceeding with purchasing eight EMB-314 aircraft.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 17 October 2014, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation announced the go-ahead for acquiring two new Embraer A-29 Super Tucanos by the FAH following approval from the country's National Council for Security and Defence. Honduras had been looking to buy new Super Tucanos for several years, but until then had been unable to finance a purchase. As part of the deal, six of the FAH's surviving Embraer EMB-312A Tucanos, acquired in 1984, will be refurbished and upgraded by the manufacturer. Originally operated only by the Academia Militar de Aviación at Palmerola for training, they have recently been armed for counter-narcotics missions. Just three were airworthy as the Brazilian deal was signed for the aircraft to be upgraded and the other three be made airworthy again. Together with the two newly acquired Super Tucanos, this will boost efforts to maintain security within the country.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In late January 2010, Indonesian Air Force commander Air Marshal Imam Sufaat made it clear that Indonesia had split the competition, designating the Embraer EMB-314 Super Tucano turboprop from Brazil as the preferred replacement for their OV-10s. Indonesia signed a memorandum of understanding with Embraer at the Indo Defense 2010 exhibition in Jakarta. Indonesia ordered eight EMB-314 Super Tucanos at first, with an option for another eight on the same terms. The first Super Tucanos were scheduled to arrive in 2012, and the order also included ground-support stations and a logistics package. Defense Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro added that state aircraft maker PT Dirgantara Indonesia would be used for maintenance work, and they also hoped Dirgantara would wind up manufacturing some parts and components. Subsequent contracts have ordered a total of 16 of these Super Tucano planes for the Indonesian Air Force.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: While Indonesia could have made a unified choice to replace its OV-10 Bronco FAC light attack and BAE Hawk Mk.53 trainer fleets with a multirole jet, the demands of forward air control and counterinsurgency wars give slower and more stable platforms an advantage.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 10 July 2012, Indonesia ordered a second set of eight Super Tucano aircraft, along with a full flight simulator. This brought their order total to 16.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2012, Indonesia received the first four airplanes from the initial batch ordered in November 2010. Embraer Defense delivered Indonesia's first four Super Tucanos at a ceremony held in its facility in Gavião Peixoto, São Paulo, Brazil. Deliveries of the second batch of Super Tucanos were delayed from their original schedule for more than seven months. Ultimately in September 2014, the second batch left the factory in Brazil on their ferry flight to Malang Abdul Rachman Saleh Air Base in East Java. They will be based at the Malang air base on Indonesia's Java island. They are operated by Skadron Udara 21 as part of the 2nd Wing. The first four aircraft from the second batch passed through Gran Canaria on 2 November 2015, on their delivery flight. The final four A29B Super Tucanos left Brazil on 15 February 2016, passing through Malta-Luqa International Airport on 21 February and ultimately arriving at Indonesia's Malang Abdul Rachman Saleh Air Force Base on 29 February 2016. One of 16 aircraft was lost in a crash on 10 February 2016.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The Pentagon first proposed to provide to Lebanon a contract for 10 EMB-314s in 2010. Six Tucanos with 2,000 advanced precision-kill weapon systems went to Lebanon via the US LAS program, but financed by Saudi Arabia at million. The first two were delivered in October 2017, with four more in June 2018


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: Negotiations for the acquisitions of Super Tucanos started in December 2011. On 28 March 2012 at Chile's FIDAE defense and air show, Embraer announced sales of undisclosed numbers of aircraft to Mauritania. On 19 October 2012, Embraer delivered the first EMB-314, fitted with a FLIR Safire III infrared turret for border surveillance operations.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In November 2013, Nigeria showed interest in acquiring twelve brand new Super Tucanos. Three aircraft were bought from the Brazilian Air Force inventory in 2017. In April 2017, the United States indicated that it would be moving forward with a deal to sell up to 12 of the aircraft for up to million, ending delays that had been caused by human-rights concerns. In August 2017, the US Department of State approved of the sale of 12 aircraft and associated supplies and weapons.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In November 2018, Nigeria purchased 12 Super Tucanos from Sierra Nevada for $329 million, all of which can be fitted with forward-looking infrared systems. The aircraft were delivered to Nigeria in October 2021.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: The Philippine Air Force (PAF) considered the acquisition of six Super Tucano aircraft to replace the aging OV-10 Bronco. In late 2017, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana signed the contract for the acquisition of 6 Embraer Super Tucano to fulfill the Close Air Support Aircraft acquisition project as included in the AFP Modernization Program's Horizon 1 phase.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On 13 October 2020, six A-29B Super Tucanos were turned over to the PAF. They were inducted with the 16th Attack Squadron, 15th Strike Wing. Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana eyes acquisition of six more A-29B Super Tucano close-air support aircraft to boost the number on PAF inventory. By 2024 the airforce intends to operate 24 aircraft, which can equip two squadrons. 12 aircraft are to be delivered by 2022, and six by 2024. This will allow the airforce to use them in the close air support, intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, and light attack missions.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: One Super Tucano was purchased by a subsidiary of Blackwater Worldwide, an American private military contractor. The aircraft lacked the machine guns normally mounted in the wings. In 2012, that aircraft was subsequently purchased by Tactical Air Support, Inc., of Reno, Nevada.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In 2008, the U.S. Navy began testing the Super Tucano at the behest of the U.S. Special Operations Command for its potential use to support special warfare operations, giving it the official U.S. designation A-29B.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In 2009, the Super Tucano was offered in a U.S. Air Force competition for 100 counterinsurgency aircraft. On 12 April 2010, Brazil signed an agreement that opened negotiations for the acquisition of 200 Super Tucanos by the U.S. On 16 November 2011, the AT-6 was excluded from the LAS program, effectively selecting the Super Tucano. According to GAO: "the Air Force concluded that HBDC had not adequately corrected deficiencies in its proposal… that multiple deficiencies and significant weaknesses found in HBDC's proposal make it technically unacceptable and results in unacceptable mission capability risk". Hawker Beechcraft's protest against its exclusion was dismissed. However, the contract award was disputed and a stop-work was issued in January 2012.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: For this procurement, the avionics were supplied by Elbit Systems of America. Sierra Nevada, the US-based prime contractor built the Super Tucano in Jacksonville, Florida. The 81st Fighter Squadron, based at Moody Air Force Base, was reactivated on 15 January 2015 and received the A-29 aircraft and provided training to pilots and maintainers from the Afghan Air Force. Purchased for the Afghan Air Force, all 20 aircraft were planned for turn over to the Afghans in batches by December 2018. Until all the A-29s were turned over to the Afghan Air Force, Afghan forces lacked a fixed-wing close air support aircraft, however they had attack helicopters.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2017, the Air Force conducted the "Light Attack Experiment" to evaluate potential light attack aircraft. Following this, it decided to continue experimenting with two non-developmental aircraft, the Textron Aviation AT-6B Wolverine derivative of the T-6 Texan II and the Sierra Nevada/Embraer A-29 Super Tucano. Tests were scheduled to be conducted at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Arizona between May and July 2018. The tests are intended "to experiment with maintenance, data networking and sensors… [to] gather the data needed for a rapid procurement", according to Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson. Experimentation will examine logistics requirements, weapons and sensor issues, and future interoperability with partner forces. The Air Force expects to have the information it needs to potentially buy light attack aircraft in a future competition, without conducting a combat demonstration, based on data collected during the first round of the experiment and future data anticipated to be collected in the next phase of experimentation. The A-29 Super Tucano had a fatal crash while over the Red Rio Bombing Range, White Sands Missile Range.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2011, the Guatemalan Air Force requested credit approval of $166 million to buy six EMB-314s, control centers, radar, and equipment, in the context of a programme named "C4I". In September 2012, the president of Guatemala stated that Super Tucanos would arrive within a year and half. In the following month, the Guatemalan Congress approved a loan for the C4I programme, including the purchase of six Embraer A-29 Super Tucanos, to be granted by Brazilian and Spanish banks (BNDES and BBVA). The deal was finalized in April 2013. The first two aircraft were expected to arrive in April 2014, followed by two units in 2015 and two more in 2016. However, the president of Guatemala cancelled the order in November 2013. In January 2015, the Guatemalan defence minister disclosed that his country was looking at purchasing two aircraft from Embraer.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: Brazil planned to donate three EMB-312s for Mozambique Air Force, which may also acquire three Super Tucanos. In 2016, the donation deal was canceled by the Brazilian government.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In October 2009, the President of Paraguay was leaning toward buying Super Tucanos. According to Paraguayan newspaper "La Nación", the commander of the Paraguayan Air Forces has started to procure six EMB-314 aircraft. In May 2012, the Paraguayan Air Force selected the Super Tucano to reinforce the air force capabilities. However, after the impeachment of Fernando Lugo, all negotiations were temporarily suspended.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In March 2011, a Brazilian federal representative discoursed about the Unasur treaty, stating that it could promote the surveillance integration in the Amazon Basin and facilitate the sale of 12 Super Tucanos and upgrade kits for 20 Peruvian EMB-312s. The defence minister of Peru has announced they have suspended the acquisition of Super Tucano in favor of the Korean KT-1. On 14 February 2012, Brazilian Ministry of Defence said Peru is considering buying ten Super Tucano. However, in November 2012, a government-to-government contract was signed for 20 KT-1s. The governments of Peru and Brazil reactivated negotiations for the acquisition of 12 A-29 Super Tucanos to replace A-37 Dragonfly aircraft that are due to withdraw in 2017.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: Portugal has shown interest in acquiring at least 10 aircraft. In 2022 it was reported that the Portuguese Air Force was proposed to purchase 12 second-hand A-29 Super Tucanos aircraft from the reserves of the Brazilian Air Force. In August 2022 the Chief of Staff of the Air Force admitted the air force's interest in acquiring propeller aircraft for combat missions.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In September 2010, it was announced that Brazil and the United Arab Emirates were working a deal that includes sales of Super Tucanos. It was reported in early 2015 that the UAE is negotiating with Embraer the purchase of 24 Super Tucanos, the deal would include six aircraft from Brazilian Air Force inventory for immediately delivery.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In August 2019, a Ukrainian military delegation visited Embraer's military division in São Paulo, led by colonel general Sergey Drozdov. They flew the Super Tucano, showing interest in purchasing the plane, via the U.S. government FMS. In October 2019, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a meeting with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, informed that his country will buy the Super Tucano, the deal could be announced during Zelensky's visit to Brazil in the first half of 2020.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: On December 4, 2022, the Brazilian media reported a Ukrainian interest in the Super Tucano, to equip the Air Force in the Russo-Ukrainian War efforts. The sale was blocked by the Bolsonaro administration. Also was reported a diplomatic effort by the United States to dissuade the president-elect of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, to unblock the deal.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: After the U.S. ban on Czech aircraft Aero L-159 Alca export on 7 August 2009, the Bolivian Defense Minister said they were considering six aircraft from Brazil or China with comparable role as the Aero L-159. On 9 October 2009, it was announced that China would manufacture six K-8 for Bolivia, and to be used for antidrug operations at the price of $9.7 million per aircraft.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In November 2010, the President of the Legislative Defense Committee of El Salvador stated they would purchase an estimated 10 EMB-314s. It was postponed in February 2011 by lack of funds. In 2013, the El Salvador Air Force acquired 10 Cessna A-37 retired from Chilean Air Force.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In September 2012, it was informed that Senegal was in a procurement process for acquisition with Embraer. In April 2013, the Brazilian minister of Defence disclosed that Senegal was the 4th African nation to order the Super Tucano, in the following day Embraer confirmed the order, which included a training system for pilots and mechanics (TOSS) in Senegal, bringing autonomy to that country's Air Force in preparing qualified personnel. However the deal was not finalized and Senegal opted for four KT-1 from Korea.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: Sweden proposed replacing its Saab 105 trainer aircraft with Super Tucanos, if Brazil chose to buy the Gripen NG.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In May 2021 the Swedish Armed Forces announced that it chose Grob G 120TP as the new trainer and it will enter service in 2023


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: Elbit Systems and Embraer offered the EMB-314 for the United Kingdom's basic trainer contest. However, the Beechcraft T-6C Texan II formed part of the preferred bid for the requirement in October 2014.


title: Embraer EMB 314 Super Tucano

text: In February 2006, a 36-unit sale for Venezuela fell through because it was thought the U.S. would block the transfer of U.S.-built components. Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez claimed the U.S. was responsible for pressuring Brazil not to sign the contract.


title: Loretta Young

text: Loretta Young (born Gretchen Young; January 6, 1913 – August 12, 2000) was an American actress. Starting as a child, she had a long and varied career in film from 1917 to 1953. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film "The Farmer's Daughter" (1947), and received her second Academy Award nomination for her role in "Come to the Stable" (1949). Young moved to the relatively new medium of television, where she had a dramatic anthology series, "The Loretta Young Show", from 1953 to 1961. It earned three Emmy Awards, and was re-run successfully on daytime TV and later in syndication. In the 1980s, Young returned to the small screen and won a Golden Globe for her role in "Christmas Eve" in 1986.


title: Loretta Young

text: She was born Gretchen Young in Salt Lake City, Utah, the daughter of Gladys (née Royal) and John Earle Young.


title: Loretta Young

text: She was of Luxembourgish descent. When she was two years old, her parents separated, and when she was three, her mother moved the family to Hollywood. A priest helped her to establish a boarding house as income. Her sister's husband helped the little girls get small parts in silent films for income. She met Ida Botiller Lindley and very wealthy widow by 1925, and Ida had no children, and wanted to carry on her dead husband's name, thus proposed to Gladys to adopt young John Royal Young, and educate him as a lawyer, as was her dead husband. Thus, John became John R. Lindley, and became a lawyer. Gretchen and her sisters, Polly Ann and Elizabeth Jane (better known as Sally Blane), all worked as child actresses, but of the three, Gretchen was the most successful. Polly, Sally and John Royal all died in 1997, in their 80s.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young's first role was at the age of two or three in the silent film "Sweet Kitty Bellairs". During her high-school years she was educated at Ramona Convent Secondary School. She was signed to a contract by John McCormick, husband and manager of actress Colleen Moore, who saw the young girl's potential. Moore gave her the name Loretta, explaining that it was the name of her favorite doll.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young was billed as Gretchen Young in the silent film "Sirens of the Sea" (1917). She was first billed as Loretta Young in 1928, in "The Whip Woman". That same year, she co-starred with Lon Chaney in the MGM film "Laugh, Clown, Laugh". The next year, she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars.


title: Loretta Young

text: In 1930, when she was 17, she eloped with 26-year-old actor Grant Withers; they were married in Yuma, Arizona. The marriage was annulled the next year, just as their second movie together (ironically entitled "Too Young to Marry") was released.


title: Loretta Young

text: In 1934 she co-starred with Cary Grant in "Born to be Bad", and in 1935 was billed with Clark Gable and Jack Oakie in the film version of Jack London's "The Call of the Wild", directed by William Wellman.


title: Loretta Young

text: During World War II, Young made "Ladies Courageous" (1944; re-issued as "Fury in the Sky"), the fictionalized story of the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron. It depicted a unit of female pilots who flew bomber planes from the factories to their final destinations. Young made as many as eight movies a year, and her films in the 1940s were among the most prestigious and well-remembered of her career.


title: Loretta Young

text: In 1946, Young made "The Stranger", in which she plays a small-town American woman who unknowingly marries a Nazi fugitive (Orson Welles). Welles later recalled that the film's producer ordered a close-up of Young during a pivotal scene, a choice that director Welles considered "fatal" to the scene's impact. Young took the director's side, even getting her agent on the phone to take Welles' side. "Imagine getting a star's agent in to ensure that she wouldn't get a closeup!" Welles later said. "She was wonderful." Critic Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post noted, "The languorous Miss Young has the toughest assignment, being called on to shift from the starry-eyed bride of the early reels to the woman who must know in her heart that her husband is one of the most hated of men."


title: Loretta Young

text: In 1947, Young won an Oscar for her performance in "The Farmer's Daughter," a political comedy that required her to learn a Swedish accent. Ruth Roberts, who had coached Ingrid Bergman on how to lose her Swedish accent, taught Young how to gain one. That same year, she co-starred with Cary Grant and David Niven in "The Bishop's Wife", a perennial favorite, which was remade in 1996 as "The Preacher's Wife" starring Denzel Washington, Whitney Houston & Courtney B. Vance. In 1949, she received another Academy Award nomination for "Come to the Stable". In 1953, she appeared in her last theatrical film, "It Happens Every Thursday", a Universal comedy about a New York couple who move to California to take over a struggling weekly newspaper; her co-star was John Forsythe.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young hosted and starred in the well-received half-hour anthology television series "Letter to Loretta" (soon retitled "The Loretta Young Show"), which was originally broadcast from 1953 to 1961. She earned three Emmy awards for the program. Her trademark was a dramatic entrance through a living room door in various high-fashion evening gowns. She returned at the program's conclusion to offer a brief passage from the Bible or a famous quote that reflected upon the evening's story. (Young's introductions and concluding remarks were not re-run on television because she legally stipulated that they not be, as she did not want the dresses she wore in those segments to make the program seem dated.) The program ran in prime time on NBC for eight years, the longest-running primetime network program hosted by a woman up to that time.


title: Loretta Young

text: The program was based on the premise that each drama was an answer to a question asked in her fan mail. The title was changed to "The Loretta Young Show" during the first season (as of the episode of February 14, 1954), and the "letter" concept was dropped at the end of the second season. Towards the end of the second season, Young was hospitalized as a result of overwork, which required a number of guest hosts and guest stars; her first appearance in the 1955–1956 season was for the Christmas show. From then on, Young appeared in only about half of each season's shows as an actress, and served as the program's host for the remainder.


title: Loretta Young

text: Minus Young's introductions and conclusions, the series was re-run as the "Loretta Young Theatre" in daytime by NBC from 1960 to 1964. It also appeared in syndication into the early 1970s before being withdrawn.


title: Loretta Young

text: In the 1962–1963 television season, Young appeared as Christine Massey, a freelance magazine writer and the mother of seven children, in "The New Loretta Young Show", on CBS. It fared poorly in the ratings on Monday evenings against ABC's "Ben Casey". It was dropped after one season of 26 episodes.


title: Loretta Young

text: In the 1990s, selected episodes from Young's personal collection, with the opening and closing segments (and original title) intact, were released on home video and frequently shown on cable television.


title: Loretta Young

text: In 1988, Young received the Women in Film Crystal Award for outstanding women who through their endurance and the excellence of their work helped expand the role of women in the entertainment industry.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one for her work in television, at 6135 Hollywood Boulevard, and the other for her work in motion pictures, at 6100 Hollywood Boulevard. In 2011, a Golden Palm Star on the Walk of Stars, in Palm Springs, California, was dedicated to her.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young was married three times and had three children. Her first marriage was to actor Grant Withers in 1930. The marriage was annulled the following year. From September 1933 to June 1934, she had a well publicized affair with actor Spencer Tracy (who was married to Louise Tracy), her co-star in "Man's Castle". In 1940, Young married producer Tom Lewis. They had two sons: Peter Lewis (of the San Francisco rock band Moby Grape); and Christopher Lewis, a film director. Young and Lewis divorced in 1969.


title: Loretta Young

text: In 1993, Young married for the third and final time, to the fashion designer Jean Louis. Their marriage lasted until his death in April 1997. Young was godmother to Marlo Thomas (daughter of TV star Danny Thomas).


title: Loretta Young

text: A smoker since the age of eight, a then underweight Young quit the habit in the mid-1980s and regained 10 pounds.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young and Clark Gable were the romantic leads of the 1935 Twentieth Century Pictures film "The Call of the Wild". Young was then 22 years old; Gable was 34 and married to Maria “Ria” Langham. During filming, Young became pregnant by Gable.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young did not want to damage her career or Gable's. She knew that if Twentieth Century Pictures found out about the pregnancy, they would pressure her to have an abortion; Young, a devout Catholic, considered abortion a mortal sin. Young, her sisters, and her mother came up with a plan to hide the pregnancy and then pass off the child as adopted. When Young's pregnancy began to advance, she went on a "vacation" to England. After returning to California, she gave an interview from her bed, covered in blankets; at that time, she stated that her long movie absence was due to a condition she had had since childhood. Young gave birth to a daughter, Judith, on November 6, 1935, in Venice, California. Young named Judith after St. Jude because he was the patron saint of (among other things) difficult situations. Weeks after her birth, Judith was placed in an orphanage. Judith spent the next 19 months in various "hideaways and orphanages" before being re-united with her mother; Young then claimed that she had adopted Judith. After Young married Tom Lewis, Judith took Lewis's last name.


title: Loretta Young

text: Few in Hollywood were fooled by the ruse. Judith (Judy) Lewis bore a strong resemblance to Gable, and her true parentage was widely rumored in entertainment circles. When Lewis was 31 years old, she confronted Young about her parentage; Young privately admitted that she was Lewis's birth mother, stating that Lewis was "a walking mortal sin". Young refused to confirm or comment publicly on the rumors until 1999, when Joan Wester Anderson wrote Young's authorized biography. In interviews with Anderson for the book, Young stated that Lewis was her biological child and the product of a brief affair with Gable. Young would not allow the book to be published until after her death.


title: Loretta Young

text: In 2015, Linda Lewis, the wife of Young's son, Christopher, stated publicly that in 1998, a then-85-year-old Young had told Lewis that Gable had raped her. According to Linda Lewis, Young added that no consensual intimate contact had occurred between Gable and herself. Young had never disclosed the rape to anyone. Lewis stated that Young shared this information only after learning of the concept of date rape from watching "Larry King Live"; she had previously believed it was a woman's job to fend off men's amorous advances and had perceived her inability to thwart Gable's attack as a moral failing on her part. Linda Lewis said that the family remained silent about Young's rape claim until after both Young and Judy Lewis had died.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young was a life-long Republican. In 1952, she appeared in radio, print, and magazine ads in support of Dwight D. Eisenhower in his campaign for US president. She attended his inauguration in 1953, along with Anita Louise, Louella Parsons, Jane Russell, Dick Powell, June Allyson, and Lou Costello, among others. She was a vocal supporter of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan in their presidential campaigns in 1968 and 1980, respectively. Young was also an active member of the Hollywood Republican Committee, with her close friends Irene Dunne, Ginger Rogers, William Holden, George Murphy, Fred Astaire, and John Wayne.


title: Loretta Young

text: From the time of Young's retirement in the 1960s until not long before her death, she devoted herself to volunteer work for charities and churches, together with her friends of many years: Jane Wyman, Irene Dunne, and Rosalind Russell. She was a member of the Church of the Good Shepherd in Beverly Hills, and the Catholic Motion Picture Guild in Beverly Hills, California. Young, a devout Catholic, also worked with various Catholic charities after her acting career. Young briefly came out of retirement to star in two television films: "Christmas Eve" (1986), and "Lady in a Corner" (1989). She won a Golden Globe Award for the former, and was nominated for the latter.


title: Loretta Young

text: In 1972, a jury in Los Angeles awarded Young $550,000 in a lawsuit against NBC for breach of contract. Filed in 1966, the suit contended that NBC had allowed foreign television outlets to re-run old episodes of "The Loretta Young Show", without excluding, as agreed by the parties, the opening segment in which Young made her entrance. Young testified that her image had been damaged by portraying her in "outdated gowns". She had sought damages of $1.9 million.


title: Loretta Young

text: Young died of ovarian cancer on August 12, 2000, at the home of her maternal half-sister, Georgiana Young (the wife of actor Ricardo Montalban) in Santa Monica, California. She was interred in the family plot in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California. Her ashes were buried in the grave of her mother, Gladys Belzer.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Alexander Valterovich "Sasha" Litvinenko (30 August 1962 or 4 December 1962 – 23 November 2006) was a British-naturalised Russian defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) who specialised in tackling organized crime. A prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he advised British intelligence and coined the term "mafia state".


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In November 1998, Litvinenko and several other FSB officers publicly accused their superiors of ordering the assassination of the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky. Litvinenko was arrested the following March on charges of exceeding the authority of his position. He was acquitted in November 1999 but re-arrested before the charges were again dismissed in 2000. He fled with his family to London and was granted asylum in the United Kingdom, where he worked as a journalist, writer and consultant for the British intelligence services. During his time in Boston, Lincolnshire, Litvinenko wrote two books, "" and "Lubyanka Criminal Group", wherein he accused the Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings in 1999 and other acts of terrorism in an effort to bring Vladimir Putin to power. He also accused Putin of ordering the assassination of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya in 2006.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill and was hospitalised after poisoning by polonium-210; he died from the poisoning on 23 November. The events leading up to this are a matter of controversy, spawning numerous theories relating to his poisoning and death. A British murder investigation pointed to Andrey Lugovoy, a former member of Russia's Federal Protective Service (FSO), as the main suspect. Dmitry Kovtun was later named as a second suspect. The United Kingdom demanded that Lugovoy be extradited, however Russia denied the extradition as the Russian constitution prohibits the extradition of Russian citizens, leading to a straining of relations between Russia and the United Kingdom.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: After Litvinenko's death, his wife Marina, aided by biologist Alexander Goldfarb, pursued a vigorous campaign through the Litvinenko Justice Foundation. In October 2011, she won the right for an inquest into her husband's death to be conducted by a coroner in London; the inquest was repeatedly set back by issues relating to examinable evidence. A public inquiry began on 27 January 2015, and concluded in January 2016 that Litvinenko's murder was carried out by the two suspects and that they were "probably" acting under the direction of the FSB and with the approval of president Vladimir Putin and then FSB director Nikolai Patrushev. In the 2021 case "Carter v Russia", the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia was responsible for his death and ordered the country to pay 100,000 euros in damages.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Alexander Litvinenko was born in the Russian city of Voronezh in 1962. After he graduated from a Nalchik secondary school in 1980, he was drafted into the Internal Troops of the Ministry of Internal Affairs as a Private. After a year of service, he matriculated in the Kirov Higher Command School in Vladikavkaz. In 1981, Litvinenko married Nataliya, an accountant, with whom he had a son, Alexander, and a daughter, Sonia. This marriage ended in divorce in 1994 and in the same year Litvinenko married Marina, a ballroom dancer and fitness instructor, with whom he had a son, Anatoly. After graduation in 1985, Litvinenko became a platoon commander in the Dzerzhinsky Division of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs. He was assigned to the 4th Company of 4th Regiment, where among his duties was the protection of valuable cargo while in transit. In 1986, he became an informant when he was recruited by the MVD's KGB counterintelligence section and in 1988, he was officially transferred to the Third Chief Directorate of the KGB, Military Counter Intelligence. Later that year, after studying for a year at the Novosibirsk Military Counter Intelligence School, he became an operational officer and served in KGB military counterintelligence until 1991.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In 1991, Litvinenko was promoted to the Central Staff of the Federal Counterintelligence Service, specialising in counter-terrorist activities and infiltration of organised crime. He was awarded the title of "MUR veteran" for operations conducted with the Moscow criminal investigation department, the MUR. Litvinenko also saw active military service in many of the so-called "hot spots" of the former USSR and Russia. During the First Chechen War, Litvinenko planted several FSB agents in Chechnya. Although he was often called a "Russian spy" by western press, throughout his career he was not an 'intelligence agent' and did not deal with secrets beyond information on operations against organised criminal groups.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko met Boris Berezovsky in 1994 when he took part in investigations into an assassination attempt on the oligarch. He later was responsible for the oligarch's security. Litvinenko's employment under Berezovsky and other security services created a conflict of interest, but such practice is usually tolerated by the Russian state.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In 1997, Litvinenko was promoted to the FSB Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups, with the title of senior operational officer and deputy head of the Seventh Section.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: During his work in the FSB, Litvinenko discovered numerous connections between top leadership of Russian law enforcement agencies and Russian mafia groups, such as the Solntsevo gang. He wrote a memorandum about this issue for Boris Yeltsin. Berezovsky arranged a meeting for him with FSB director Mikhail Barsukov and deputy director of Internal affairs Ovchinnikov to discuss the corruption problems; however, this had no effect. Litvinenko gradually realized that the entire system was corrupted from the top to the bottom. He explained: "If your partner bilked you, or a creditor did not pay, or a supplier did not deliver - where did you turn to complain? ...When force became a commodity, there was always demand for it. "Roofs" ("krysha") appeared, people who sheltered and protected your business. First it was provided by the mob, then by police, and soon even our own guys realized what was what, and then the rivalry began among gangsters, cops, and the Agency for market share. As the police and the FSB became more competitive, they squeezed the gangs out of the market. However, in many cases competition gave way to cooperation, and the services became gangsters themselves."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On 25 July 1998, Berezovsky introduced Litvinenko to Vladimir Putin. He said: "Go see Putin. Make yourself known. See what a great guy we have installed, with your help." On the same day, Putin replaced Nikolay Kovalyov as the Director of the Federal Security Service, with help from Berezovsky. Litvinenko reported to Putin on corruption in the FSB, but Putin was unimpressed. Litvinenko said to his wife after the meeting: "I could see in his eyes that he hated me." Litvinenko said that he was doing an investigation of Uzbek drug barons who received protection from the FSB, and Putin tried to stall the investigation to save his reputation.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On 13 November 1998, Berezovsky wrote an open letter to Putin in "Kommersant". He accused four senior officers of the Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups of ordering his assassination: Major-General Yevgeny Khokholkov, N. Stepanov, A. Kamyshnikov, and N. Yenin.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Four days later, on 17 November, Litvinenko and four other officers appeared together in a press conference at the Russian news agency Interfax. All officers worked for both FSB in the Directorate of Analysis and Suppression of Criminal Groups. They repeated the allegation made by Berezovsky. The officers also said they were ordered to kill Mikhail Trepashkin who was also present at the press conference, and to kidnap a brother of the businessman Umar Dzhabrailov. In 2007, Sergey Dorenko provided the Associated Press and "The Wall Street Journal" with a complete copy of an interview he conducted in April 1998 for ORT, a television station, with Litvinenko and his fellow employees. The interview, of which only excerpts were broadcast in 1998, shows the FSB officers, who were disguised in masks or dark glasses, claim that their bosses had ordered them to kill, kidnap or frame prominent Russian politicians and business people.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: After holding the press conference, Litvinenko was dismissed from the FSB. Later, in an interview with Yelena Tregubova, Putin said that he personally ordered the dismissal of Litvinenko, stating, "I fired Litvinenko and disbanded his unit ...because FSB officers should not stage press conferences. This is not their job. And they should not make internal scandals public." Litvinenko also believed that Putin was behind his arrest. He said, "Putin had the power to decide whether to pass my file to the prosecutors or not. He always hated me. And there was a bonus for him: by throwing me to the wolves he distanced himself from Boris [Berezovsky] in the eyes of FSB's generals."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In October 2000, in violation of an order not to leave Moscow, Litvinenko and his family travelled to Turkey, possibly via Ukraine. While in Turkey, Litvinenko applied for asylum at the United States Embassy in Ankara, but his application was denied. With the help of Alexander Goldfarb, Litvinenko bought air tickets for the Istanbul–London–Moscow flight, and asked for political asylum at Heathrow Airport during the transit stop on 1 November 2000. Political asylum was granted on 14 May 2001, not because of his knowledge on intelligence matters, according to Litvinenko, but rather on humanitarian grounds. While in London he became a journalist for Chechenpress and an author. He also joined Berezovsky in campaigning against Putin's government. In October 2006, he became a naturalised British citizen with residence in Whitehaven.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In 2002, Litvinenko was convicted "in absentia" in Russia and given a three-and-a-half-year jail sentence for charges of corruption. According to Litvinenko's widow, Marina Litvinenko, her husband cooperated with the British security services, working as a consultant and helping the agencies to combat Russian organised crime in Europe. During the public inquiry started in January 2015, it was confirmed that Litvinenko was recruited by MI6 to provide "useful information about senior Kremlin figures and their links with Russian organised crime", primarily related to Russian mafia activities in Spain.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Shortly before his death, Litvinenko tipped off Spanish authorities on several organised crime bosses with links to Spain. During a meeting in May 2006 he allegedly provided security officials with information on the locations, roles, and activities of several "Russian" mafia figures with ties to Spain, including Zahkar Kalashov, Vitaly Izguilov and Tariel Oniani.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko allegedly converted to Islam in Britain and was rumoured to have told his father he had converted to Islam on his death bed. Litvinenko said his father commented about it: "It doesn't matter. At least you're not a communist."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: This account has been strongly denied by close family and friends. Visitors to Litvinenko's death bed included Boris Berezovsky and Litvinenko's father, Walter, who flew in from Moscow.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Mikhail Trepashkin said that in 2002 he had warned Litvinenko that an FSB unit was assigned to assassinate him. In spite of this, Litvinenko often travelled overseas with no security arrangements, and freely mingled with the Russian community in the United Kingdom, and often received journalists at his home.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko published a number of allegations about the Russian government, most of which are related to conducting or sponsoring domestic and foreign terrorism.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko stated that "all the bloodiest terrorists of the world" were connected to FSB-KGB, including Carlos "The Jackal" Ramírez, Yasser Arafat, Saddam Hussein, Abdullah Öcalan, Wadie Haddad of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, George Hawi who led the Communist Party of Lebanon, Ezekias Papaioannou from Cyprus, Sean Garland from Ireland, and many others. He said that all of them were trained, funded, and provided with weapons, explosives and counterfeit documents to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide and that each act of terrorism made by these people was carried out according to the task and under the rigid control of the KGB of the USSR. Litvinenko said that "the center of global terrorism is not in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan or the Chechen Republic. The terrorism infection creeps away worldwide from the cabinets of the Lubyanka Square and the Kremlin".


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: When asked in an interview who he thought the originator of the 2005 bombings in London was, Litvinenko responded saying, "You know, I have spoken about it earlier and I shall say now, that I know only one organization, which has made terrorism the main tool of solving of political problems. It is the Russian special services."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko also commented on a new law that "Russia has the right to carry out preemptive strikes on militant bases abroad" and explained that these "preemptive strikes may involve anything except nuclear weapons." Litvinenko said, "You know who they mean when they say 'terrorist bases abroad'? They mean us, Zakayev and Boris and me." He also said that "It was considered in our service that poison is an easier weapon than a pistol." He referred to a secret laboratory in Moscow that still continues development of deadly poisons, according to him.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko accused the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General-Staff of the Russian armed forces of having organised the 1999 Armenian parliament shooting that killed the Prime Minister of Armenia, Vazgen Sargsyan, and seven members of parliament, ostensibly to derail the peace process which would have resolved the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, but he offered no evidence to support the accusation. The Russian embassy in Armenia denied any such involvement, and described Litvinenko's accusation as an attempt to harm relations between Armenia and Russia by people against the democratic reforms in Russia.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko wrote two books, "Lubyanka Criminal Group" and "" (in co-authorship with historian Yuri Felshtinsky), where he accused the Russian secret services of staging the Russian apartment bombings and other terrorism acts in an effort to bring Vladimir Putin to power.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In a 2003 interview with the Australian SBS TV network, and aired on "Dateline", Litvinenko claimed that two of the Chechen terrorists involved in the 2002 Moscow theatre siegewhom he named "Abdul the Bloody" and "Abu Bakar"were working for the FSB, and that the agency manipulated the rebels into staging the attack. Litvinenko said, "[W]hen they tried to find [Abdul the Bloody and Abu Bakar] among the dead terrorists, they weren't there. The FSB got its agents out. So the FSB agents among Chechens organized the whole thing on FSB orders, and those agents were released." This echoed similar claims made by Mikhail Trepashkin. The leading role of an FSB agent, "Khanpasha Terkibaev" ("Abu Bakar"), was also described by Anna Politkovskaya, Ivan Rybkin and Alexander Khinshtein. In the beginning of April 2003, Litvinenko gave "the Terkibaev file" to Sergei Yushenkov when he visited London, who in turn passed it to Anna Politkovskaya. A few days later Yushenkov was assassinated. Terkibaev was later killed in Chechnya. According to Ivan Rybkin, a speaker of the Russian State Duma, "The authorities failed to keep [the FSB agent] Terkibaev out of public view, and that is why he was killed. I know how angry people were, because they knew Terkibaev had authorization from presidential administration."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In September 2004, Alexander Litvinenko suggested that the Russian secret services must have been aware of the plot beforehand and probably had organised the attack themselves in order to toughen laws on terrorism and expand the powers of law enforcement agencies. His conclusion was based on the fact that several Beslan hostage takers had been released from FSB custody just before the attack in Beslan. He said that they would have been freed only if they were of use to the FSB, and that even in the case that they were freed without being turned into FSB assets, they would be under strict surveillance that would not have allowed them to carry out the Beslan attack unnoticed.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Ella Kesayeva, co-chair of the group Voice of Beslan, supported Litvinenko's argument in a November 2008 article in "Novaya Gazeta", noting the large number of hostage takers who were in government custody not long before attacking the school, and coming to the same conclusion.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In a July 2005 interview with the Polish newspaper "Rzeczpospolita", Litvinenko alleged that Ayman al-Zawahiri, a prominent leader of al-Qaeda, was trained for half a year by the FSB in Dagestan in 1997. Litvinenko said that after this training, al-Zawahiri "was transferred to Afghanistan, where he had never been before and where, following the recommendation of his Lubyanka chiefs, he at once ... penetrated the milieu of Osama bin Laden and soon became his assistant in Al Qaeda." Konstantin Preobrazhenskiy, a former KGB officer and writer, supported this claim and said that Litvinenko "was responsible for securing the secrecy of Al-Zawahiri's arrival in Russia; he was trained by FSB instructors in Dagestan, Northern Caucasus, in 1996–1997." He said: "At that time, Litvinenko was the Head of the Subdivision for Internationally Wanted Terrorists of the First Department of the Operative-Inquiry Directorate of the FSB Anti-Terrorist Department. He was ordered to undertake the delicate mission of securing Al-Zawahiri from unintentional disclosure by the Russian police. Though Al-Zawahiri had been brought to Russia by the FSB using a false passport, it was still possible for the police to learn about his arrival and report to Moscow for verification. Such a process could disclose Al-Zawahiri as an FSB collaborator. In order to prevent this, Litvinenko visited a group of highly placed police officers to notify them in advance." According to Sergei Ignatchenko, an FSB spokesman, al-Zawahiri was arrested by Russian authorities in Dagestan in December 1996 and released in May 1997.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Two weeks before his poisoning, Alexander Litvinenko accused Vladimir Putin of ordering the assassination of the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya and stated that a former presidential candidate, Irina Hakamada, warned Politkovskaya about threats to her life coming from the Russian president. Litvinenko advised Politkovskaya to escape from Russia immediately. Hakamada denied her involvement in passing any specific threats, and said that she warned Politkovskaya only in general terms more than a year earlier. It remains unclear if Litvinenko referred to an earlier statement made by Boris Berezovsky, who claimed that Boris Nemtsov, a former Deputy Prime Minister of Russia, received word from Hakamada that Putin threatened her and like-minded colleagues in person. According to Berezovsky, Putin stated that Hakamada and her colleagues "will take in the head immediately, literally, not figuratively" if they "open the mouth" about the Russian apartment bombings.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: According to Litvinenko, the FSB deputy chief General Anatoly Trofimov said to him, "Don't go to Italy, there are many KGB agents among the politicians. Romano Prodi is our man there," meaning Romano Prodi, the Italian centre-left leader, former Prime Minister of Italy and former President of the European Commission. The conversation with Trofimov took place in 2000, after the Prodi-KGB scandal broke out in October 1999 due to information about Prodi provided by Vasili Mitrokhin.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In April 2006, a British Member of the European Parliament for London, Gerard Batten of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), demanded an inquiry into the allegations. On 26 April 2006, Batten repeated his call for a parliamentary inquiry, revealing that "former senior members of the KGB are willing to testify in such an investigation, under the right conditions." He added, "It is not acceptable that this situation is unresolved, given the importance of Russia's relations with the European Union." On 22 January 2007, the BBC and ITV News released documents and video footage from February 2006, in which Litvinenko repeated his statements about Prodi.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko also said, "Trofimov did not exactly say that Prodi was a KGB agent, because the KGB avoids using that word."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In his book "Gang from Lubyanka", Litvinenko alleged that Vladimir Putin during his time at the FSB was personally involved in protecting the drug trafficking from Afghanistan organised by Abdul Rashid Dostum. In December 2003, Russian authorities confiscated over 4,000 copies of the book. Shortly before his death, Alexander Litvinenko alleged that Vladimir Putin had cultivated a "good relationship" with Semion Mogilevich (head of the Russia mafia) since 1993 or 1994.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In a July 2006 article published on Zakayev's Chechenpress website, Litvinenko claimed that Putin is a paedophile and that the KGB knew about it since Putin's graduation from the Red Banner Institute. Litvinenko asserted that the FSB had possessed video footage which documented sex between Putin and minor boys and that Putin destroyed it while FSB director. Litvinenko also claimed that Anatoly Trofimov and Artyom Borovik knew of the alleged paedophilia. An article in the "New York Times" described the allegation as "without evidence".


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko made the allegation after Putin kissed a boy on his stomach while stopping to chat with some tourists during a walk in the Kremlin grounds on 28 June 2006. The incident was recalled in a webcast organised by the BBC and Yandex, in which over 11,000 people asked Putin to explain the act, to which he responded, "He seemed very independent and serious... I wanted to cuddle him like a kitten and it came out in this gesture. He seemed so nice. ... There is nothing behind it."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Vladimir Bukovsky, a close friend of Litvinenko, said he was angry when he published the article, as he had strongly urged him against it. Bukovsky noted that despite his ferocious hostility toward the Kremlin, Litvinenko still had the mind-set of a security officer and "could not understand the difference between truth and operational information."


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: According to Litvinenko, the 2005 controversy over the publication in the Danish newspaper "Jyllands-Posten" of editorial cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad was orchestrated by the FSB to punish Denmark for its refusal to extradite Chechen separatists.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On 1 November 2006, Litvinenko suddenly fell ill. On 3 November, he was admitted to Barnet General Hospital in London. He was then moved to University College Hospital for intensive care. His illness was later attributed to poisoning with radionuclide polonium-210 after the Health Protection Agency found significant amounts of the rare and highly toxic element in his body.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Litvinenko met with two former agents early on the day he fell ill – Dmitry Kovtun and Andrey Lugovoy, in the Millennium Hotel's Pine Bar where high polonium contamination was found. Though both denied any wrongdoing, a leaked U.S. diplomatic cable revealed that Kovtun had left polonium traces in the house and car he had used in Hamburg. Before his meeting with Kovtun and Lugovoy, Litvinenko had lunch at Itsu, a sushi restaurant in Piccadilly in London, with an Italian acquaintance Mario Scaramella, who had claimed to have information on the assassination of Anna Politkovskaya, forty-eight, a journalist killed at her Moscow apartment building in October 2006.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On his deathbed, Litvinenko claimed that Putin had directly ordered his assassination. After his death, Marina Litvinenko, his widow, accused Moscow of orchestrating the murder. Though she believes the order did not come from Putin himself, she does believe it was done at the behest of the authorities, and announced that she would refuse to provide evidence to any Russian investigation out of fear that it would be misused or misrepresented. In a court hearing in London in 2015, a Scotland Yard lawyer concluded that "the evidence suggests that the only credible explanation is in one way or another the Russian state is involved in Litvinenko's murder".


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Before his death, Litvinenko said: "You may succeed in silencing one man but the howl of protest from around the world, Mr. Putin, will reverberate in your ears for the rest of your life." On 22 November 2006, Litvinenko's medical team at University College Hospital reported Litvinenko had suffered a "major setback" due to either heart failure or an overnight heart attack. He died on 23 November. The following day, Putin publicly stated: "Mr Litvinenko is, unfortunately, not Lazarus".


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Scotland Yard stated that inquiries into the circumstances of how Litvinenko became ill would continue.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On 24 November 2006, a statement was released posthumously, in which Litvinenko named Putin as the man behind his poisoning. Litvinenko's friend Alex Goldfarb, who was also the chairman of Boris Berezovsky's Civil Liberties Fund, claimed Litvinenko had dictated it to him three days earlier. Andrei Nekrasov said his friend Litvinenko and Litvinenko's lawyer had composed the statement in Russian on 21 November's and translated it to English.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: Putin disputed the authenticity of this note while attending a Russia–EU summit in Helsinki and claimed it was being used for political purposes. Goldfarb later stated that Litvinenko, on his deathbed, had instructed him to write a note "in good English" in which Putin was to be accused of his poisoning. Goldfarb also stated that he read the note to Litvinenko in English and Russian and Litvinenko agreed "with every word of it" and signed it.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: His autopsy took place on 1 December at the Royal London Hospital's institute of pathology. It was attended by three physicians, including one chosen by the family and one from the Foreign Office. Litvinenko was buried at Highgate Cemetery (West side) in north London on 7 December. The police treated his death as a murder, although the London coroner's inquest was yet to be completed.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: In an interview with the BBC broadcast on 16 December 2006, Yuri Shvets said that Litvinenko had created a 'due diligence' report investigating the activities of an unnamed senior Kremlin official on behalf of a British company looking to invest "dozens of millions of dollars" in a project in Russia, and that the dossier contained damaging information about the senior Kremlin official. He said he was interviewed about his allegations by Scotland Yard detectives investigating Litvinenko's murder. British media reported that the poisoning and consequent death of Litvinenko was not widely covered in the Russian news media.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On 7 December 2006, Litvinenko was buried within a lead-lined casket at Highgate Cemetery with Christian, Jewish and Muslim rites, including a Christian and Muslim prayer being said by an imam and Orthodox priest in line with Litvinenko's wishes of a non-denominational service at the grave. The funeral ceremony was followed by a private memorial at which the ensemble Tonus Peregrinus sang sacred music by Russian composers Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Rachmaninov, Victor Kalinnikov, and three works by British composer Antony Pitts.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On 20 January 2007, British police announced that they had "identified the man they believe poisoned Alexander Litvinenko. The suspected killer was captured on cameras at Heathrow as he flew into Britain to carry out the murder." The man in question was introduced to Litvinenko as "Vladislav".


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: As of 26 January 2007, British officials said police had solved the murder of Litvinenko. They discovered "a 'hot' teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing." In addition, a senior official said investigators had concluded the murder of Litvinenko was "a 'state-sponsored' assassination orchestrated by Russian security services." The police want to charge former Russian spy Andrei Lugovoy, who met Litvinenko on 1 November 2006, the day officials believe the lethal dose of polonium-210 was administered.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: On the same day, "The Guardian" reported that the British government was preparing an extradition request asking that Andrei Lugovoy be returned to the UK to stand trial for Litvinenko's murder. On 22 May 2007, the Crown Prosecution Service called for the extradition of Russian citizen Andrei Lugovoy to the UK on charges of murder. Lugovoy dismissed the claims against him as "politically motivated" and said he did not kill Litvinenko.


title: Alexander Litvinenko

text: A British police investigation resulted in several suspects for the murder, but in May 2007, the British Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, announced that his government would seek to extradite Andrei Lugovoy, the chief suspect in the case, from Russia. On 28 May 2007, the British Foreign Office officially submitted a request to the Government of Russia for the extradition of Lugovoy to face criminal charges in the UK.