title: Gerhard Schröder

text: Schröder is known to be an avid art collector. He chose his friend Jörg Immendorff to paint his official portrait for the German Chancellery. The portrait, which was completed by Immendorff's assistants, was revealed to the public in January 2007; the massive work has ironic character, showing the former chancellor in stern heroic pose, in the colors of the German flag, painted in the style of an icon, surrounded by little monkeys. These "painter monkeys" were a recurring theme in Immendorff's work, serving as an ironic commentary on the artist's practice. On 14 June 2007, Schröder gave a eulogy at a memorial service for Immendorf at the Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: From Russia with Love is a 1963 spy film and the second in the "James Bond" series produced by Eon Productions, as well as Sean Connery's second role as MI6 agent 007 James Bond. The picture was directed by Terence Young, produced by Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman, and written by Richard Maibaum and Johanna Harwood, based on Ian Fleming's 1957 novel "From Russia, with Love". In the film, Bond is sent to assist in the defection of Soviet consulate clerk Tatiana Romanova in Turkey, where SPECTRE plans to avenge Bond's killing of Dr. No. The film followed "Dr. No" (1962) and was followed by "Goldfinger" (1964).


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Following the success of "Dr. No", United Artists greenlit a sequel and doubled the budget available for the producers. In addition to filming on location in Turkey, the action scenes were shot at Pinewood Studios, Buckinghamshire, and in Scotland. Production ran over budget and schedule, and was rushed to finish by its scheduled October 1963 release date.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: "From Russia with Love" was a critical and commercial success. It took in more than $78 million in worldwide box-office receipts, far more than its $2 million budget and more than its predecessor "Dr. No", thereby becoming a blockbuster in 1960s cinema. The film is considered one of the best entries in the series, both by critics and general audience. In 2004, "Total Film" magazine named it the ninth-greatest British film of all time; it was the only Bond film to appear on the list. It was also the first film in the series to win a BAFTA Award for Best Cinematography.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Seeking revenge against MI6 agent James Bond for the death of their agent Dr. No in Jamaica, international criminal organisation SPECTRE begins training agents to kill him, before assigning the task to Irish assassin Donald "Red" Grant. To lure Bond into a trap, SPECTRE's chief planner, Czechoslovak chess grandmaster Kronsteen devises a plan to have Bond attempt to procure a Lektor cryptography device from the Soviet Union's consulate in Istanbul. SPECTRE operative Rosa Klebb, a former SMERSH (Soviet counter-intelligence) colonel, is assigned to oversee the mission and to ensure Grant can carry out Bond's assassination at the right moment. To set the trap, Klebb recruits a cipher clerk at the consulate, Tatiana Romanova, to unwittingly assist in the plan, tricking Romanova into believing Klebb is still working for SMERSH.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: In London, Bond is called to a meeting with M and informed that Romanova has requested Bond's help to defect to the West, in exchange for providing British intelligence with a Lektor. Exactly as Kronsteen predicted, M suspects a trap but decides to honour Romanova's request. Before departing, Bond is given a special attaché case by Q, containing several defensive gadgets and an ArmaLite AR-7 sniper rifle, to help on his assignment. Upon arriving in Istanbul, Bond works alongside the head of MI6's branch in the city, Ali Kerim Bey, while he awaits word from Romanova. During this time, Kerim is attacked by Soviet agent Krilencu, who causes problems for the men, unaware that Grant is shadowing Bond to protect him until he steals the Lektor. After an attack on the men while they hide out at a gypsy settlement, Kerim assassinates Krilencu with Bond's help before he can flee the city.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Eventually, Romanova meets Bond at his hotel suite, where she agrees to provide plans to the consulate to help him steal the Lektor. The pair spend the night together, unaware that SPECTRE is filming them as part of Kronsteen's plan. Upon receiving the consulate's floor plans from Romanova, Bond and Kerim make a plan to steal the Lektor, before all three make haste to escape the city aboard the "Orient Express". Once aboard, Kerim discovers that a Soviet security officer tailed them, forcing Bond to help him subdue the officer. While Kerim remains with the officer to prevent him escaping, Bond returns to Romanova to wait for their rendezvous with one of Kerim's men. However, Grant kills Kerim and the officer, forcing Bond to remain on the train and question Romanova's motives.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: When the train arrives in Belgrade, Bond passes on news of Kerim's death to one of his sons who is waiting for them, and receives instructions to travel to Zagreb and rendezvous with a British agent named Nash. However, the man he meets is actually Grant, who has already killed Nash and assumed his identity. After drugging Romanova at dinner, Grant overpowers Bond. He quickly reveals that Romanova was a pawn in SPECTRE's plan; he intends to kill both her and Bond, staging it as a murder-suicide and leaving behind faked blackmail evidence which will scandalise the British intelligence community. Bond tricks Grant into setting off a booby trap in his attaché case before killing him. Taking the Lektor and the film of their night together, Bond and Romanova leave the train in Istria, Yugoslavia and use Grant's escape plan. They evade helicopter and boat attacks by SPECTRE agents before reaching safety.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Learning of Grant's death and Bond's survival, SPECTRE's enigmatic chairman (Number 1) has Kronsteen executed for his plan's disastrous failure. As the organisation promised to sell back the Lektor to the Russians, Klebb is ordered to recover it and kill Bond. Klebb reaches the pair, while they are resting in a hotel in Venice, and comes to their room disguised as a maid. Klebb orders Romanova to leave the room while holding Bond at gunpoint. Romanova then re-enters, tackling Klebb and knocking the pistol to the ground. Klebb and Bond struggle, and Romanova picks up the pistol and kills Klebb. With their mission accomplished, Bond and Romanova spend some time on a romantic boat ride and Bond throws the film into the canal.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Credited as "?" in the film, Anthony Dawson portrayed Ernst Stavro Blofeld (SPECTRE No. 1), the head and mastermind of SPECTRE and Bond's nemesis. He had previously played Professor Dent in "Dr. No". Dawson's dialogue was dubbed by an uncredited Eric Pohlmann. Fred Haggerty played Krilencu, a Bulgarian assassin who works as a killer for the Soviets in the Balkans. Desmond Llewelyn portrays Boothroyd, head of MI6 Q Branch and the equipment officer. Additional cast members include Neville Jason as Kerim Bey's chauffeur, Peter Bayliss as Russian agent Commissar Benz, Nusret Ataer as Mehmet, Kerim Bey's son, and Peter Madden as Canadian chessmaster McAdams. Uncredited performances include Michael Culver and Elizabeth Counsell as a couple in a punt, and William Hill as Captain Nash, a British agent killed and impersonated by Grant.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Following the financial success of "Dr. No", United Artists greenlit a second James Bond film. The studio doubled the budget offered to Eon Productions with $2 million, and also approved a bonus for Sean Connery, who would receive $100,000 along with his $54,000 salary. As President John F. Kennedy had named Fleming's novel "From Russia, with Love" among his ten favourite books of all time in "Life" magazine, producers Broccoli and Saltzman chose this as the follow-up to Bond's cinematic debut in "Dr. No". The comma in the title of Fleming's novel was dropped for the film title. "From Russia with Love" was the last film President Kennedy saw at the White House on 20 November 1963 before going to Dallas. Most of the crew from the first film returned, with major exceptions being production designer Ken Adam, who went to work on "Dr. Strangelove" and was replaced by "Dr. No"s uncredited art director Syd Cain. Title designer Maurice Binder was replaced by Robert Brownjohn. Stunt coordinator Bob Simmons was unavailable and was replaced by Peter Perkins though Simmons performed stunts in the film. John Barry replaced Monty Norman as composer of the soundtrack.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: The film introduced several conventions which would become essential elements of the series: a pre-title sequence, the Blofeld character (referred to in the film only as "Number 1", though Blofeld is mentioned in the end credits, with the actor labeled as "?"), a secret-weapon gadget for Bond, a helicopter sequence (repeated in every subsequent Bond film except "The Man with the Golden Gun"), a postscript action scene after the main climax, a theme song with lyrics, and the line "James Bond will return/be back" in the credits.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Ian Fleming's novel was a Cold War thriller but the producers replaced the Soviet undercover agency SMERSH with the crime syndicate SPECTRE so as to avoid controversial political overtones. The SPECTRE training grounds were inspired by the film "Spartacus". The original screenwriter was Len Deighton, who accompanied Harry Saltzman, Syd Cain, and Terence Young to Istanbul, but he was replaced because of a lack of progress. Thus, two of "Dr. No"s writers, Johanna Harwood and Richard Maibaum, returned for the second film in the series. Some sources state Harwood was credited for the "adaptation" mostly for her suggestions, which were carried over into Maibaum's script. Harwood stated in an interview for "Cinema Retro" that she had been a screenwriter of several of Harry Saltzman's projects, and her screenplay for "From Russia with Love" had followed Fleming's novel closely, but she left the series due to what she called Terence Young's constant rewriting of her screenplay with ideas that were not in the original Fleming work.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Maibaum kept on making rewrites as filming progressed. Red Grant was added to the Istanbul scenes just prior to the film crew's trip to Turkey; this brought more focus to the SPECTRE plot, as Grant started saving Bond's life there (a late change during shooting involved Grant killing the bespectacled spy at Hagia Sophia instead of Bond, who ends up just finding the man dead). For the last quarter of the movie, Maibaum added two chase scenes, with a helicopter and speedboats, and changed the location of Bond and Klebb's battle from Paris to Venice. Uncredited rewrites were contributed by Berkely Mather.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Although uncredited, the actor who played Number 1 was Anthony Dawson, who had played Professor Dent in the previous Bond film, "Dr. No", and appeared in several of Terence Young's films. In the end credits, Blofeld is credited with a question mark. Blofeld's lines were redubbed by Viennese actor Eric Pohlmann in the final cut. Peter Burton was unavailable to return as Major Boothroyd, so Desmond Llewelyn, a Welsh actor who was a fan of the Bond comic strip published in the "Daily Express", accepted the part. However, screen credit for Llewelyn was omitted at the opening of the film and is reserved for the exit credits, where he is credited simply as "Boothroyd". Llewelyn's character is not referred to by this name in dialogue, but M does introduce him as being from Q Branch. Llewelyn remained as the character, better known as Q, in all but one of the series' films until his death in 1999.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Several actresses were considered for the role of Tatiana, including Italians Sylva Koscina and Virna Lisi, Danish actress Annette Vadim, Polish actress Magda Konopka, Swedish actress Pia Lindström, and English-born Tania Mallet. Elga Gimba Andersson was nearly cast in the role but was fired after refusing to have sex with a United Artists executive. 1960 Miss Universe runner-up Daniela Bianchi was ultimately cast, supposedly Sean Connery's choice. Bianchi started taking English classes for the role, but the producers ultimately chose to have her lines redubbed by British stage actress Barbara Jefford in the final cut. The scene in which Bond finds Tatiana in his hotel bed was used for Bianchi's screen test, with Dawson standing in, this time, as Bond. The scene later became the traditional screen test scene for prospective James Bond actors and Bond Girls. In her initial scene with Klebb, Tatiana refers to training for the ballet, referencing the actress's real life background.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Greek actress Katina Paxinou was originally considered for the role of Rosa Klebb, but was unavailable. Terence Young cast Austrian singer Lotte Lenya after hearing one of her musical recordings. Young wanted Kronsteen's portrayer to be "an actor with a remarkable face", so the minor character would be well remembered by audiences. This led to the casting of Vladek Sheybal, whom Young also considered convincing as an intellectual. Sheybal was initially hesitant to take the role but was convinced by Connery's girlfriend Diane Cilento. Several women were tested for the roles of Vida and Zora, the two fighting Gypsy girls, and after Aliza Gur and Martine Beswick were cast, they spent six weeks practising their fight choreography with stunt work arranger Peter Perkins. Beswick was mis-credited as 'Martin Beswick' in the film's opening titles, but this error was fixed for the 2001 DVD release.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Mexican actor Pedro Armendáriz was recommended to Young by director John Ford to play Kerim Bey. After experiencing increasing discomfort on location in Istanbul, Armendáriz was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Filming in Istanbul was terminated, the production moved to Britain, and Armendáriz's scenes were brought forward so that he could complete his scenes without delay. Though visibly in pain, he continued working as long as possible. When he could no longer work, he returned home and took his own life. Remaining shots after Armendáriz left London had a stunt double and Terence Young himself as stand-ins.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Englishman Joe Robinson was a strong contender for the role of Red Grant but it was given to Robert Shaw.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Filming began on April 1, 1963, at Pinewood Studios. Armendariz's scenes were shot first after he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, with Terence Young serving as a stand-in for Kerim Bey for the last two months of the production. Most of the film was set in Istanbul, Turkey. Locations included the Basilica Cistern, Hagia Sophia and the Sirkeci railway station, which also was used for the Belgrade and Zagreb railway stations. The MI6 office in London, SPECTRE Island, the Venice hotel and the interior scenes of the Orient Express were filmed at Pinewood Studios with some footage of the train. In the film, the train journey was set in Eastern Europe. The journey and the truck ride were shot in Argyll, Scotland and Switzerland. The end scenes for the film were shot in Venice. However, to qualify for the British film funding of the time, at least 70 percent of the film had to have been filmed in Great Britain or the Commonwealth. The Gypsy camp was also to be filmed in an actual camp in Topkapi, but was actually shot in a replica of it in Pinewood. The scene with rats (after the theft of the Lektor) was shot in Spain, as Britain did not allow filming with wild rats, and an attempt to film white rats painted in cocoa in Turkey did not work. Principal photography wrapped on 23 August. Ian Fleming spent a week in the Istanbul shoot, supervising production and touring the city with the producers.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Director Terence Young's eye for realism was evident throughout production. For the opening chess match, Kronsteen wins the game with a reenactment of Boris Spassky's victory over David Bronstein in 1960. Production Designer Syd Cain built up the "chess pawn" motif in his $150,000 set for the brief sequence. Cain also later added a promotion to another movie Eon was producing, making Krilencu's death happen inside a billboard for "Call Me Bwana". A noteworthy gadget featured was the attaché case (briefcase) issued by Q Branch. It had a tear gas bomb that detonated if the case was improperly opened, a folding AR-7 sniper rifle with twenty rounds of ammunition, a throwing knife, and 50 gold sovereigns. A boxer at Cambridge, Young choreographed the fight between Grant and Bond along with stunt coordinator Peter Perkins. The scene took three weeks to film and was violent enough to worry some on the production. Robert Shaw and Connery did most of the stunts themselves.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: After the unexpected loss of Armendáriz, production proceeded, experiencing complications from uncredited rewrites by Berkely Mather during filming. Editor Peter Hunt set about editing the film while key elements were still to be filmed, helping to restructure the opening scenes. Hunt and Young came up with the idea of moving the Red Grant training sequence to the beginning of the film (prior to the main title), a signature feature that has been an enduring hallmark of every Bond film since. The briefing with Blofeld was rewritten, and back projection was used to refilm Lotte Lenya's lines.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Behind schedule and over budget, the production crew struggled to complete production in time for the already-announced premiere date that October. On 6 July 1963, while scouting locations in Argyll, Scotland, for that day's filming of the climactic boat chase, Terence Young's helicopter crashed into the water with art director Michael White and a cameraman aboard. The craft sank into 40–50 feet (12–15 m) of water, but all escaped with minor injuries. Despite the calamity, Young was behind the camera for the full day's work. A few days later, Bianchi's driver fell asleep during the commute to a 6 am shoot and crashed the car. The actress's face was bruised and Bianchi's scenes had to be delayed for two weeks while the facial contusions healed.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: The helicopter and boat chase scenes were not in the original novel but were added to create an action climax. The former was inspired by the crop-dusting scene in Alfred Hitchcock's "North by Northwest" and the latter by a previous Young/Broccoli/Maibaum collaboration, "The Red Beret". These two scenes would initially be shot in Istanbul but were moved to Scotland. The speedboats could not go fast enough due to the many waves in the sea, and a rented boat filled with cameras ended up sinking in the Bosphorus. A helicopter was also hard to obtain, and the special effects crew were nearly arrested trying to get one at a local airbase. The helicopter chase was filmed with a radio controlled miniature helicopter. The sounds of the boat chase were replaced in post-production since the boats were not loud enough, and the explosion, shot in Pinewood, got out of control, burning Walter Gotell's eyelids and seriously injuring three stuntmen.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Photographer David Hurn was commissioned by the producers of the James Bond films to shoot a series of stills with Sean Connery and the actresses of the film. When the theatrical property Walther PPK pistol did not arrive, Hurn volunteered the use of his own Walther LP-53 air pistol. Though the photographs of the "James Bond is Back" posters of the US release airbrushed out the long barrel of the pistol, film poster artist Renato Fratini used the long-barrelled pistol for his drawings of Connery on the British posters.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: For the opening credits, Maurice Binder had disagreements with the producers and did not want to return. Designer Robert Brownjohn stepped into his place, and projected the credits on female dancers, inspired by constructivist artist László Moholy-Nagy projecting light onto clouds in the 1920s. Brownjohn's work started the tradition of scantily clad women in the Bond films' title sequences.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: "From Russia with Love" is the first Bond film in the series with John Barry as the primary soundtrack composer. The theme song was composed by Lionel Bart of "Oliver!" fame and sung by Matt Monro, although the title credit music is a lively instrumental version of the tune beginning with Barry's brief "James Bond Is Back" then segueing into Monty Norman's "James Bond Theme". Monro's vocal version is later played during the film (as source music on a radio) and properly over the film's end titles. Barry travelled with the crew to Turkey to try getting influences of the local music, but ended up using almost nothing, just local instruments such as finger cymbals to give an exotic feeling, since he thought the Turkish music had a comedic tone that did not fit in the "dramatic feeling" of the James Bond movies.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Recalling his visit to Istanbul, John Barry said, "It was like no place I'd ever been in my life. [The Trip] was supposedly to seep up the music, so Noel Rogers and I used to go 'round to these nightclubs and listen to all this stuff. We had the strangest week, and really came away with nothing, except a lot of ridiculous stories. We went back, talked to Lionel, and then he wrote 'From Russia with Love.<nowiki></nowiki>


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: In this film, Barry introduced the percussive theme "007"—action music that came to be considered the "secondary James Bond theme". He composed it to have a lighter, enthusiastic and more adventurous theme to relax the audience. The arrangement appears twice on the soundtrack album; the second version, titled "007 Takes the Lektor", is the one used during the gunfight at the Gypsy camp and also during Bond's theft of the Lektor decoding machine. The completed film features a holdover from the Monty Norman-supervised "Dr. No" music; the post-rocket-launch music from "Dr. No" is played in "From Russia with Love" during the helicopter and speedboat attacks.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: "From Russia with Love" premiered on 10 October 1963 at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. Ian Fleming, Sean Connery and Walter Gotell attended the premiere. The following year, it was released in 16 countries worldwide, with the United States premiere on 8 April 1964, at New York's Astor Theatre. Upon its first release, "From Russia with Love" doubled "Dr. No"s gross by earning $12.5 million ($ million in dollars) at the worldwide box office. After reissue it grossed $78 million, of which $24 million was from North America. It was the most popular movie at the British box office in 1963.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: The film's cinematographer Ted Moore won the BAFTA award and the British Society of Cinematographers award for Best Cinematography. At the 1965 Laurel Awards, Lotte Lenya stood third for Best Female Supporting Performance, and the film secured second place in the Action-Drama category. The film was also nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for "From Russia with Love".


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: In comparing the film to its predecessor, "Dr. No", Richard Roud, writing in "The Guardian", said that "From Russia with Love" "didn't seem quite so lively, quite so fresh, or quite so rhythmically fast-moving." He went on to say that "... the film is highly immoral in every imaginable way; it is neither uplifting, instructive nor life-enhancing. Neither is it great film-making. But it sure is fun." Writing in "The Observer", Penelope Gilliatt noted that "The way the credits are done has the same self-mocking flamboyance as everything else in the picture." Gilliatt went on to say that the film manages "to keep up its own cracking pace, nearly all the way. The set-pieces are a stunning box of tricks". The critic for "The Times" wrote of Bond that he is "the secret ideal of the congenital square, conventional in every particular ... except in morality, where he has the courage—and the physical equipment—to do without thinking what most of us feel we might be doing ..." The critic thought that overall, "the nonsense is all very amiable and tongue-in-cheek and will no doubt make a fortune for its devisers".


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" wrote: "Don't miss it! This is to say, don't miss it if you can still get the least bit of fun out of lurid adventure fiction and pseudo-realistic fantasy. For this mad melodramatization of a desperate adventure of Bond with sinister characters in Istanbul and on the Orient Express is fictional exaggeration on a grand scale and in a dashing style, thoroughly illogical and improbable, but with tongue blithely wedged in cheek." "Time" magazine called the film "fast, smart, shrewdly directed and capably performed." "Variety" described the film as "a preposterous, skillful slab of hardhitting, sexy hokum. After a slowish start, it is directed by Terence Young at zingy pace. The cast perform with an amusing combo of tongue-in-cheek and seriousness and the Istanbul location is an added bonus."


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: "From Russia with Love" received critical praise from critics decades following the film's original release and is considered one of the finest Bond films. Rotten Tomatoes sampled reviewers and judged of the reviews to be positive with an average rating of . Its summary states: "The second James Bond film, "From Russia with Love", is a razor-sharp, briskly-paced Cold War thriller that features several electrifying action scenes." Many online sites commonly cite "From Russia with Love" as the best Bond film of all time.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: In his 1986 book, Danny Peary described "From Russia with Love" as "an excellent, surprisingly tough and gritty James Bond film" which is "refreshingly free of the gimmickry that would characterise the later Bond films, and Connery and Bianchi play "real" people. We worry about them and hope their relationship will work out ... Shaw and Lotte Lenya are splendid villains. Both have exciting, well-choreographed fights with Connery. Actors play it straight, with excellent results."


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: Film critic James Berardinelli cited this as his favourite Bond film, writing "Only "From Russia with Love" avoids slipping into the comic book realm of "Goldfinger" and its successors while giving us a sampling of the familiar Bond formula (action, gadgets, women, cars, etc.). "From Russia with Love" is effectively paced and plotted, features a gallery of detestable rogues (including the ultimate Bond villain, Blofeld), and offers countless thrills".


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: In June 2001 Neil Smith of "BBC Films" called it "a film that only gets better with age". In 2004, "Total Film" magazine named it the ninth-greatest British film of all time, making it the only James Bond film to appear on the list. In 2006, Jay Antani of Filmcritic praised the film's "impressive staging of action scenes", while IGN listed it as second-best Bond film ever, behind only "Goldfinger". That same year, "Entertainment Weekly" put the film at ninth among Bond films, criticising the slow pace. When the "James Bond Ultimate Collector's Set" was released in November 2007 by MGM, Norman Wilner of MSN chose "From Russia with Love" as the best Bond film. Conversely, in his book about the Bond phenomenon, "The Man With the Golden Touch," British author Sinclair McKay states "I know it is heresy to say so, and that some enthusiasts regard "From Russia With Love" as the Holy Grail of Bond, but let's be searingly honest – some of it is crashingly dull."


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: In 2014 "Time Out" polled several film critics, directors, actors and stunt actors to list their top action films; "From Russia With Love" was listed at 69.


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: The British Film Institute's screenonline guide called the film "one of the series' high points" and said it "had advantages not enjoyed by many later Bond films, notably an intelligent script that retained the substance of Ian Fleming's novel while toning down the overt Cold War politics (the Cuban Missile Crisis had only occurred the previous year)." In 2008, Michael G. Wilson, the current co-producer of the series, stated "We always start out trying to make another "From Russia with Love" and end up with another "Thunderball"." Sean Connery, Michael G. Wilson, Barbara Broccoli, Timothy Dalton and Daniel Craig also consider this their favourite Bond film. Albert Broccoli listed it with "Goldfinger" and "The Spy Who Loved Me" as one of his top three favourites, explaining that he felt "it was with this film that the Bond style and formula were perfected".


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: In 2005, the "From Russia with Love" video game was developed by Electronic Arts and released on 1 November 2005 in North America. It follows the storyline of the book and film, albeit adding in new scenes, making it more action-oriented. One of the most significant changes to the story is the replacement of the organisation SPECTRE to OCTOPUS because the name SPECTRE constituted a long-running legal dispute over the film rights to "Thunderball" between United Artists/MGM and writer Kevin McClory. Most of the cast from the film returned in likeness. Connery not only allowed his 1960s likeness as Bond to be used, but the actor, in his 70s, also recorded the character's dialogue, marking a return to the role 22 years after he last played Bond in "Never Say Never Again". Featuring a third-person multiplayer deathmatch mode, the game depicts several elements of later Bond films, such as the Aston Martin DB5 from "Goldfinger" (1964) and the rocket belt from "Thunderball" (1965).


title: From Russia with Love (film)

text: The game was written by Bruce Feirstein, who had previously worked on the film scripts for "GoldenEye", "Tomorrow Never Dies", "The World Is Not Enough", and the 2004 video game, "". Its soundtrack was composed by Christopher Lennertz and Vic Flick.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: "The White Man's Burden" (1899), by Rudyard Kipling, is a poem about the Philippine–American War (1899–1902) that exhorts the United States to assume colonial control of the Filipino people and their country. Originally written to celebrate the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria (22 June 1897), the jingoistic poem was replaced with the sombre "Recessional" (1897), also a Kipling poem about empire.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: In "The White Man's Burden", Kipling encouraged the American annexation and colonisation of the Philippine Islands, a Pacific Ocean archipelago conquered in the three-month Spanish–American War (1898). As an imperialist poet, Kipling exhorts the American reader and listener to take up the enterprise of empire yet warns about the personal costs faced, endured, and paid in building an empire; nonetheless, American imperialists understood the phrase "the white man's burden" to justify imperial conquest as a civilising mission that is ideologically related to the continental expansion philosophy of manifest destiny of the early 19th century.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: "The White Man's Burden" was first published in "The Times" (London) on 4 February 1899, and in "The New York Sun" on 5 February 1899. On 7 February 1899, during senatorial debate to decide if the US should retain control of the Philippine Islands and the ten million Filipinos conquered from the Spanish Empire, Senator Benjamin Tillman read aloud the first, the fourth, and the fifth stanzas of Kipling's seven-stanza poem as arguments against ratification of the Treaty of Paris, and that the US should formally renounce claim of authority over the Philippine Islands. To that effect, Senator Tillman addressed the matter to President William McKinley:


title: The White Man's Burden

text: Senator Tillman was unpersuasive, and the US Congress ratified the Treaty of Paris on 11 February 1899, formally ending the Spanish–American War. After paying a post-war indemnification of twenty million dollars to the Kingdom of Spain, on 11 April 1899, the US established geopolitical hegemony upon islands and peoples in two oceans and in two hemispheres: the Philippine Islands and Guam in the Pacific Ocean, and Cuba and Puerto Rico in the Atlantic Ocean.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: The imperialist interpretation of "The White Man's Burden" (1899) proposes that the white race is morally obliged to civilise the non-white peoples of planet Earth, and to encourage their progress (economic, social, and cultural) through colonialism:


title: The White Man's Burden

text: Kipling positively represents imperialism as the moral burden of the white race, who are divinely destined to "civilise" the brutish, non-white Other who inhabits the barbarous parts of the world; to wit, the seventh and eighth lines of the first stanza represent the Filipinos as "new-caught, sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child." Despite the chauvinistic nationalism that supported Western imperialism in the 19th century, public moral opposition to Kipling's racialist misrepresentation of the colonial exploitation of labour in "The White Man's Burden" produced the satirical essay "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901), by Mark Twain, which catalogues the Western military atrocities of revenge committed against the Chinese people for their anti-colonial Boxer Rebellion (1899–1901) against abusive Western businessmen and Christian missionaries.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: Kipling politically proffered the poem to New York governor Theodore Roosevelt (r. 1899–1900) to help him persuade anti-imperialist Americans to accept the territorial annexation of the Philippine Islands to the United States. In September 1898, Kipling's literary reputation in the U.S. allowed his promotion of American empire to Governor Roosevelt:


title: The White Man's Burden

text: As Victorian imperial poetry, "The White Man's Burden" thematically corresponded to Kipling's belief that the British Empire was the Englishman's "Divine Burden to reign God's Empire on Earth"; and celebrates British colonialism as a mission of civilisation that eventually would benefit the colonised natives. Roosevelt sent the poem to U.S. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge for his opinion and they agreed that it made "good sense from the expansion standpoint" for the American empire. Since the late nineteenth century, "The White Man's Burden" has served the arguments and counter-arguments of supporters and the opponents of imperialism and white supremacy.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: In the early 20th century, in addition to "To the Person Sitting in Darkness" (1901), Mark Twain's factual satire of the civilising mission that is proposed, justified, and defended in "The White Man's Burden" (1899), contemporary opposition to Kipling's jingoism provoked poetic parodies that expressed anti-imperialist moral outrage, by critically addressing the particulars of white supremacist racism in colonial empires. "The Brown Man's Burden" (February 1899), by the British politician Henry Labouchère; "The Black Man's Burden: A Response to Kipling" (April 1899), by the clergyman H. T. Johnson; and the poem "Take Up the Black Man's Burden", by the educator J. Dallas Bowser.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: In the U.S., a Black Man's Burden Association demonstrated to Americans how the colonial mistreatment of Filipino brown people in their Philippine homeland was a cultural extension of the institutional racism of the Jim Crow laws for the legal mistreatment of black Americans in their U.S. homeland. The popular response against Kipling's jingoism for an American Empire to annex the Philippine Islands as a colony impelled the establishment (15 June 1899) of the American Anti-Imperialist League in their political opposition to making colonial subjects of the Filipinos.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: In "The Poor Man’s Burden" (1899), Dr. Howard S. Taylor addressed the negative psycho-social effects of the imperialist ethos upon the working-class people in an empire. In the social perspective of "The Real White Man's Burden" (1902), the reformer Ernest Crosby addresses the moral degradation (coarsening of affect) consequent to the practice of imperialism; and in "The Black Man's Burden" (1903), the British journalist E. D. Morel reported the Belgian imperial atrocities in the Congo Free State (1885–1908), which was an African personal property of King Leopold II of Belgium.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: In "" (1920), E. D. Morel identifies, describes, and explains that the metropole-colony power relations are established through cultural hegemony, which determines the weight of the black man's burden and the weight of the white man's burden in building a colonial empire. "The Black Man's Burden [A Reply to Rudyard Kipling]" (1920), by the social critic Hubert Harrison, described the moral degradation inflicted upon the colonised Black people and the colonist white people.


title: The White Man's Burden

text: In the decolonisation of the developing world, the phrase "the white man's burden" is synonymous with colonial domination, to illustrate the falsity of the good intentions of Western neo-colonialism towards the non-white peoples of the world. In 1974, President Idi Amin of Uganda sat atop a throne while forcing four white British businessmen to carry him through the streets of Kampala; as the businessmen groaned under the weight of Amin, he joked that this was "the new white man's burden".


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Twitter, Inc. is an American social media company based in San Francisco, California. The company operates the microblogging and social networking service Twitter. It previously operated the Vine short video app and Periscope livestreaming service.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Twitter was created by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in March 2006 and was launched that July. , more than 100 million users posted 340 million tweets a day, and the service handled an average of 1.6 billion search queries per day. The company went public in November 2013. , Twitter had more than 330 million monthly active users.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On April 25, 2022, Twitter agreed to a $44 billion buyout by Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, one of the biggest deals to turn a company private. On July 8, Musk terminated the deal. Twitter's shares fell, leading company officials to sue Musk in the Chancery Court of Delaware on July 12. On October 4, Musk announced his intention to purchase the company as he had agreed, for $44 billion, or $54.20 a share; the agreement closed on October 27.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Following Musk's takeover, Twitter has been criticized for an increase in perceived hate speech, followed by advertiser moratoriums, mass dismissals and mass resignations. After his acquisition of the company, Musk immediately dismissed numerous top executives. On November 3, Twitter laid off approximately 3,700 employees, or about half of their staff. In the following week, the company's security, compliance, and privacy executives resigned. On November 16, Musk sent an email to remaining employees outlining a shift in the work culture of the company and requesting employees opt-in or leave by November 17, leading to hundreds of additional resignations.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Twitter origins lie in a "daylong brainstorming session" held by board members of the podcasting company Odeo. Jack Dorsey, then an undergraduate student at New York University, introduced the idea of an individual using an SMS service to communicate with a small group. Work on the project started on March 21, 2006, when Dorsey published the first Twitter message at 12:50 p.m. PST (): "just setting up my twttr". The first Twitter prototype, developed by Dorsey and contractor Florian Weber, was used as an internal service for Odeo employees. The full version was introduced publicly on July 15, 2006. In October 2006, Biz Stone, Evan Williams, Dorsey, and other members of Odeo formed Obvious Corporation and acquired Odeo, together with its assets—including Odeo.com and Twitter.com—from the investors and shareholders. Williams fired Glass, who was silent about his part in Twitter's startup until 2011. Twitter spun off into its own company in April 2007.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: The tipping point for Twitter's popularity was the 2007 South by Southwest Interactive (SXSWi) conference. During the event, Twitter usage increased from 20,000 tweets per day to 60,000. "The Twitter people cleverly placed two 60-inch plasma screens in the conference hallways, exclusively streaming Twitter messages," remarked "Newsweek"s Steven Levy. "Hundreds of conference-goers kept tabs on each other via constant twitters. Panelists and speakers mentioned the service, and the bloggers in attendance touted it." Reaction at the conference was highly positive. Blogger Scott Beale said that Twitter was "absolutely ruling" SXSWi. Social software researcher danah boyd said Twitter was "owning" the conference.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In April 2012, Twitter announced that it was opening an office in Detroit, with the aim of working with automotive brands and advertising agencies. Twitter also expanded its office in Dublin. On December 18, 2012, Twitter announced it had surpassed 200 million monthly active users. Twitter hit 100 million monthly active users in September 2011.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In September 2016, Twitter shares rose 20% after a report that it had received takeover approaches. Potential buyers were Alphabet (the parent company of Google), Microsoft, Salesforce.com, Verizon, and The Walt Disney Company. Twitter's board of directors were open to a deal, which could have come by the end of 2016. However, no deal was made, with reports in October stating that all the potential buyers dropped out partly due to concerns over abuse and harassment on the service. In June 2017, Twitter revamped its dashboard to improve the new user experience.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In January 2022, Twitter finalized the sale of MoPub to AppLovin. The deal was first announced in October 2021, and the selling price was reported at $1.05 billion.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Business magnate Elon Musk revealed that he had bought 9.1% of Twitter for $2.64 billion on April 4, 2022. In response, Twitter's stock rose by as much as 27% and Twitter shares experienced the largest intraday surge since Twitter's IPO in 2013. Musk was appointed to Twitter's board on April 9, under a deal that prohibited him from acquiring more than 14.9% of the company.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Musk made an unsolicited offer on April 14 to acquire Twitter for $43 billion and take the company private. Publicly, Musk expressed that his offer was motivated by concerns with how the company was managed, emphasizing his concern that policies he described as censorship were leading to a lack of free speech on the platform. Twitter's board introduced a "poison pill" strategy on April 15, which would allow shareholders to buy additional stock should a hostile takeover occur as a means to block Musk's takeover. On April 20, Musk secured $46.5 billion in funding as a tender offer, which the board accepted on April 25.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On July 8, Musk announced he was unilaterally terminating the proposed acquisition, claiming in a regulatory filing that Twitter was in "material breach" of several parts of the agreement by refusing to comply with Musk's requests for spambot account data and dismissing high-ranking employees. In response, Twitter board chair Bret Taylor pledged to pursue legal action against Musk at the Delaware Court of Chancery with the goal of completing the acquisition. On July 12, Twitter opened a lawsuit against Musk to force the sale to proceed. On September 13, 2022, Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk's takeover of the company.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On October 4, 2022, it was reported that Musk offered to proceed with the deal at the original offer price of $54.20 per share. The deal closed on October 27, 2022, with the merger between Twitter, Inc. and X Holdings II, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of X Holdings I, Inc., wholly owned by Musk, and Musk took control of the company, paying $54.20 per share, or about $44 billion.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On October 28, immediately following Musk's acquisition, he fired CEO Parag Agrawal and CFO Ned Segal. Twitter's stock was suspended from trading prior to the New York Stock Exchange opening the next day and was delisted on November 8. On October 31, Musk announced in a security filing that he had dissolved the board of directors and would serve as the CEO of the company.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On November 4, Twitter laid off about half of its 7,500 employees, leaving several internal departments, including communication and core engineering teams understaffed. Some of the employees were later asked to return, with Twitter stating that they were "laid off by mistake". Several current and former Twitter employees sued the company for violations of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 due to failures to provide a 60-day notice prior to mass firings.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Top security, compliance, content moderation, and sales executives resigned due to Musk stating that employees must either work longer hours or resign from the company. On November 16, Musk issued an "ultimatum" to all remaining Twitter employees warning that workers could expect "long, intense hours of work" if they decided to stay, a decision that was ordered to be made by the following day, with news sources reporting numerous employees leaving on the same day. "The Verge" reported that multiple critical engineering teams "completely or near-total[ly] resigned", increasing internal fears of a collapse of Twitter.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Following Musk's acquisition and subsequent internal instability of the firm, including layoffs of Twitter's trust and safety teams, large advertisers including General Mills, Pfizer, Volkswagen, and General Motors announced an advertising pause. Advertising agencies, including IPG and Omnicom Media Group, advised clients to pause ad spending on Twitter temporarily until the platform can sufficiently assure brand safety concerns. According to a report from Media Matters for America, Twitter had lost half of its top 100 advertisers, which spent $750 million on ads in 2022.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Within two months of Musk's acquisition of the company, his family office privately sought to sell new shares valued at Musk's acquisition price of $54.20, amid turmoil among users and advertisers, and debt payments approaching. Musk’s money manager wrote to investors that in recent weeks the family office had received "numerous inbound requests to invest in Twitter."


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Twitter is a microblogging and social networking service on which users post and interact with messages known as "tweets".


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Revue is a service which lets writers create email newsletters and offer free or paid subscriptions to them. Revue was founded in the Netherlands in 2015 and acquired by Twitter on January 26, 2021. On December 14, 2022, Twitter announced the service would be discontinued on January 18, 2023, at which point all user data would be deleted.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On October 5, 2012, Twitter acquired a video clip company called Vine that launched in January 2013. Twitter released Vine as a standalone app that allows users to create and share six-second looping video clips on January 24, 2013. Vine videos shared on Twitter are visible directly in users' Twitter feeds. On October 27, 2016, Twitter announced that it would disable all uploads, but that viewing and download would continue to work. On January 20, 2017, Twitter launched an Internet archive of all Vine videos that had ever been published. The archive was officially discontinued in April 2019.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On March 13, 2015, Twitter announced its acquisition of Periscope, an app that allowed live streaming of video. Periscope was launched on March 26, 2015. Due to declining usage, product realignment, and high maintenance costs the service was discontinued on March 31, 2021. However, past Periscope videos can still be watched via Twitter and most of its core features are now incorporated into the app.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Twitter acquired Crashlytics, a crash reporting tool for developers, on January 28, 2013, for over US$100 million, its largest acquisition at the time. Twitter committed to continue supporting and expanding the service.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In October 2014, Twitter announced Fabric, a suite of mobile developer tools built around Crashlytics. Fabric brought together Crashlytics, Answers (mobile app analytics), Beta (mobile app distribution), Digits (mobile app identity and authentication services), MoPub, and TwitterKit (login with Twitter and Tweet display functionality) into a single, modular SDK, allowing developers to pick and choose which features they needed while guaranteeing ease of installation and compatibility. By building Fabric on top of Crashlytics, Twitter was able to take advantage of Crashlytics' large adoption and device footprint to rapidly scale usage of MoPub and TwitterKit. Fabric reached active distribution across 1 billion mobile devices just 8 months after its launch.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In early 2016, Twitter announced that Fabric was installed on more than 2 billion active devices and used by more than 225,000 developers. Fabric is recognized as the #1 most popular crash reporting and also the #1 mobile analytics solution among the top 200 iOS apps, beating out Google Analytics, Flurry, and MixPanel. In January 2017, Google acquired Fabric from Twitter and later integrated it into their Firebase platform.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On April 11, 2010, Twitter acquired Atebits, developers of the Twitter client Tweetie for the Mac and iPhone.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On January 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Crashlytics in order to build out its mobile developer products. On August 28, 2013, Twitter acquired Trendrr, followed by the acquisition of MoPub on September 9, 2013.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On June 4, 2014, Twitter announced that it would acquire Namo Media, a technology firm specializing in "native advertising" for mobile devices. On June 19, 2014, Twitter announced that it had reached an undisclosed deal to buy SnappyTV, a service that helps edit and share video from television broadcasts. The company was helping broadcasters and rights holders to share video content both organically across social and via Twitter's Amplify program. In July 2014, Twitter announced that it intended to buy a young company called CardSpring for an undisclosed sum. CardSpring enabled retailers to offer online shoppers coupons that they could automatically sync to their credit cards in order to receive discounts when they shopped in physical stores. On July 31, 2014, Twitter announced that it had acquired a small password-security startup called Mitro. On October 29, 2014, Twitter announced a new partnership with IBM. The partnership was intended to help businesses use Twitter data to understand their customers, businesses and other trends.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On February 11, 2015, Twitter announced that it had acquired Niche, an advertising network for social media stars, founded by Rob Fishman and Darren Lachtman. The acquisition price was reportedly $50 million. Twitter announced that it had acquired TellApart, a commerce ads tech firm, with $532 million stock. In June 2016, Twitter acquired an artificial intelligence startup called Magic Pony for $150 million.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On January 26, 2021, Twitter acquired Revue, an email newsletter service to compete with platforms like Substack.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In November and December 2021, Twitter acquired and immediately shut down two competitors: threader.app, a service to transform Twitter threads into accessible web pages, and Quill, a messaging service. Threader.app users were directed to instead purchase the Twitter Blue service, which at the time was available only in some countries.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of capital funding by the venture capitalists who backed the company. On October 16, 2008, Williams took over the role of CEO, and Dorsey became chairman of the board. On October 4, 2010, Williams announced that he was stepping down as CEO. Dick Costolo, formerly Twitter's chief operating officer, became CEO. On October 4, 2010, Williams made an announcement saying that he will stay with the company and "be completely focused on product strategy".


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: According to "The New York Times", "Mr. Dorsey and Mr. Costolo forged a close relationship" when Williams was away. According to "PC Magazine", Williams was "no longer involved in the day-to-day goings on at the company". He was focused on developing a new startup, and became a member of Twitter's board of directors, and promised to "help in any way [he could]." Dorsey rejoined Twitter in March 2011, as executive chairman focusing on product development. At that time, he split his schedule with Square (where he is CEO), whose offices are within walking distance of Twitter's in San Francisco.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In September 2011, board members and investors Fred Wilson and Bijan Sabet resigned from Twitter's board of directors. In October 2012, Twitter announced it had hired former Google executive Matt Derella to become their new director of business agency development. Twitter named former Goldman Sachs executive Anthony Noto as the company's CFO in July 2014, with an "annual salary of $250,000 and one-time restricted stock options of 1.5 million shares ... valued at $61.5 million". On June 10, 2015, Twitter announced its CEO Dick Costolo would resign on July 1, 2015. Noto was said to be considered a potential replacement for outgoing CEO Costolo. On October 14, 2015, former Google chief business officer Omid Kordestani became executive chairman, replacing Dorsey who remains CEO. On January 26, 2016, Leslie Berland, former executive vice president of global advertising, marketing, and digital partnerships at American Express, was named chief marketing officer. In November 2016, COO Adam Bain announced his resignation and CFO Anthony Noto took over Bain's role. A month later, on December 20, 2016, CTO Adam Messinger announced that he too was leaving.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In February 2020, it was reported that Elliott Management Corporation had acquired a stake in Twitter, with activist shareholder and Republican Party supporter Paul Singer expected to seek the removal of Dorsey as CEO. Twitter agreed to appoint a new independent director and two new board members, and to perform $2 billion in share buybacks.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On November 29, 2021, Jack Dorsey stepped down as CEO. He was replaced by CTO Parag Agrawal. On October 27, 2022, Elon Musk closed a deal to purchase the company and fired Agrawal, CFO Ned Segal, chief legal officer Vijaya Gadde, and general counsel Sean Edgett. Musk replaced the prior board as the sole director of Twitter and appointed himself as the CEO.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: Twitter raised over US$57 million from venture capitalist growth funding, although exact figures are not publicly disclosed. Twitter's first A round of funding was for an undisclosed amount that is rumored to have been between US$1 million and US$5 million. Its second B round of funding in 2008 was for US$22 million and its third C round of funding in 2009 was for US$35 million from Institutional Venture Partners and Benchmark Capital along with an undisclosed amount from other investors including Union Square Ventures, Spark Capital, and Insight Venture Partners. Twitter is backed by Union Square Ventures, Digital Garage, Spark Capital, and Bezos Expeditions.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: The company raised US$200 million in new venture capital in December 2010, at a valuation of approximately US$3.7 billion. In August 2010 Twitter announced a "significant" investment led by Digital Sky Technologies that, at US$800 million, was reported to be the largest venture round in history. In December 2011, the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal invested US$300 million in Twitter. The company was valued at US$8.4 billion at the time.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On September 12, 2013, Twitter announced that it had filed papers with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) ahead of a planned stock market listing. It revealed its prospectus in an 800-page filing. Twitter planned to raise US$1 billion as the basis for its stock market debut. The initial public offering (IPO) filing states that "200,000,000+ monthly active users" access Twitter and "500,000,000+ tweets per day" are posted. In an October 15, 2013, amendment to their SEC S-1 filing, Twitter declared that they would list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), quashing speculation that their stock would trade on the NASDAQ exchange. This decision was widely viewed to be a reaction to the botched initial public offering of Facebook. On November 6, 2013, 70 million shares were priced at US$26 and issued by lead underwriter Goldman Sachs.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: On November 7, 2013, the first day of trading on the NYSE, Twitter shares opened at $26.00 and closed at US$44.90, giving the company a valuation of around US$31 billion. Consequently, executives and early investors marginally increased their capital, including co-founders Williams and Dorsey who received a sum of US$2.56 billion and US$1.05 billion respectively, while Costolo's payment was US$345 million. On February 5, 2014, Twitter published its first results as a public company, showing a net loss of $511 million in the fourth quarter of 2013.


title: Twitter, Inc.

text: In November 2017, the Paradise Papers, a set of confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investment, revealed that Twitter is among the corporations that avoided paying taxes by using offshore companies. Later "The New York Times" reported that Russian-American billionaire Yuri Milner had strong Kremlin backing for his investments in Facebook and Twitter.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Standard Chartered plc is a multinational bank with operations in consumer, corporate and institutional banking, and treasury services. Despite being headquartered in the United Kingdom, it does not conduct retail banking in the UK, and around 90% of its profits come from Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Standard Chartered has a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It has secondary listings on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India, and OTC Markets Group Pink. Its largest shareholder is the Government of Singapore-owned Temasek Holdings. The Financial Stability Board considers it a systemically important bank.


title: Standard Chartered

text: José Viñals is the Group Chairman of Standard Chartered. Bill Winters is the current Group Chief Executive.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The name Standard Chartered comes from the names of the two banks that merged in 1969 to create it: The Chartered Bank of India, Australia and China, and Standard Bank of British South Africa.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The Chartered Bank began when Queen Victoria granted a Royal Charter to Scotsman James Wilson in 1853. Chartered opened its first branches in Bombay, Calcutta, and Shanghai in 1858; branches in Hong Kong and Singapore followed in 1859. The Bank started issuing banknotes denominated in Hong Kong dollars in 1862.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The Standard Bank was a British bank founded in the Cape Province of South Africa in 1862 by Scot, John Paterson. Having established a considerable number of branches Standard was prominent in financing the development of the diamond fields of Kimberley from 1867 and later extended its network further north to the new town of Johannesburg when gold was discovered there in 1885. Half the output of the second largest gold field in the world passed through The Standard Bank on its way to London. Standard expanded widely in Africa over the years, but from 1883 to 1962 was formally known as the Standard Bank of South Africa. In 1962 the bank changed its name to Standard Bank Limited, and the South African operations became a separate subsidiary that took the parent bank's previous name, Standard Bank of South Africa Ltd.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Both banks acquired other smaller banks along the way and spread their networks further. In 1969, the banks decided to merge and to counterbalance their network by expanding in Europe and the United States, while continuing expansion in their traditional markets in Asia and Africa.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 1986, Lloyds made a hostile takeover bid for the Group. The bid was defeated; however, it spurred Standard Chartered into a period of change, including a series of divestments notably in the US and South Africa. It sold Union Bank to Bank of Tokyo and United Bank of Arizona to Citicorp.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 1986, a business consortium purchased a 35% stake to fend off Lloyds. A member of this consortium was Singaporean property tycoon Khoo Teck Puat, who purchased 5% of the bank's shares, which he later increased to 13.4%.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 1987, Standard Chartered sold its remaining interests in the South African bank; since then the Standard Bank Group has been a separate entity.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 1992, scandal broke when banking regulators charged several employees of Standard Chartered in Mumbai with illegally diverting depositors' funds to speculate in the stock market. Fines by Indian regulators and provisions for losses cost the bank almost £350 million, at that time fully a third of its capital.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 1994, London's "Sunday Times" reported that an executive in the bank's metals division had bribed officials in Malaysia and the Philippines to win business. The bank, in a statement on 18 July 1994, acknowledged that there were "discrepancies in expense claims [that] ... included gifts to individuals in certain countries to facilitate business, a practice contrary to bank rules".


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 1994, the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission found Standard Chartered's Asian investment bank to have illegally helped to artificially support the price of new shares they had underwritten for six companies from July 1991 to March 1993. The bank admitted the offence, apologized, and reorganized its brokerage units. The Commission banned the bank from underwriting IPOs in Hong Kong for nine months.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 1997, Standard Chartered sold Mocatta Bullion and Base Metals, its metals division, to Toronto-based Scotiabank for US$26 million.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Standard Chartered's Asian investment banking operations never recovered. In 2000, the bank closed them down.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 2000, Standard Chartered acquired Grindlays Bank from ANZ, increasing its presence in private banking and further expanding its operations in India and Pakistan. Standard Chartered retained Grindlays' private banking operations in London and Luxembourg, as well as the subsidiary in Jersey, all of which were integrated into its own private bank. This now serves high-net-worth customers in Hong Kong, Dubai, and Johannesburg under the name Standard Chartered Grindlays Offshore Financial Services.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Leading to the incorporation of Standard Chartered (Hong Kong) on 1 July 2004, the Legislative Council of Hong Kong amended Legal Tender Notes Issue Ordinance. The amendment replaced Standard Chartered Bank with its newly incorporated subsidiary - Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Ltd - as one of the note-issuing banks in Hong Kong. The same year, Standard Chartered Bank and Astra International (an Indonesian conglomerate, a subsidiary of Jardine Matheson) took over PermataBank and in 2006, both shareholders increased their joint ownership to 89.01%. With 276 branches and 549 ATMs in 55 cities throughout Indonesia, PermataBank has the second largest branch network in Standard Chartered organization.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 15 April 2005, the bank acquired Korea First Bank, beating HSBC in the bid. The bank has since rebranded the branches as SC First Bank. Standard Chartered completed the integration of its Bangkok branch and Standard Chartered Nakornthon Bank in October, renaming the new entity Standard Chartered Bank (Thailand). Standard Chartered also formed strategic alliances with Fleming Family & Partners to expand private wealth management in Asia and the Middle East, and acquired stakes in ACB in Vietnam, Travelex, American Express Bank (Bangladesh), and Bohai Bank (China). The largest shareholder, billionaire Khoo Teck Puat, died in 2004; and two years later, on 28 March 2006, the Singapore state-owned private investment firm, Temasek, became the bank's largest shareholder when it bought the 11.55% stake held by Khoo Teck Puat's estate.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 9 August 2006, Standard Chartered announced it had acquired an 81% shareholding in the Union Bank of Pakistan in a deal ultimately worth $511 million. This deal represented the first acquisition by a foreign firm of a Pakistani bank. The merged bank, Standard Chartered Bank (Pakistan), is now Pakistan's sixth largest bank.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 22 October 2006, Standard Chartered announced that it had received tenders for more than 51% of the issued share capital of Hsinchu International Bank ("Hsinchu"), established in 1948 in Hsinchu, Taiwan.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 23 August 2007, Standard Chartered entered into an agreement to buy a 49% share of an Indian brokerage firm (UTI Securities) for $36 million in cash from Securities Trading Corporation of India Ltd., with the option to raise its stake to 75% in 2008, and, "if" both partners were in agreement, to 100% by 2010.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 29 February 2008, Standard Chartered PLC announced it had received all the required approvals leading to the completion of its acquisition of American Express Bank Ltd (AEB) from the American Express Company (AXP). The total cash consideration for the acquisition is US$823 million.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 13 November 2008, Standard Chartered Bank (Hong Kong) Limited, entered into an agreement with JPMorgan Cazenove to acquire 100% of Cazenove Asia Limited, an Asian equity capital markets, corporate finance, and institutional brokerage business.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 27 November 2009, "Dow Jones Financial News" reported that Dubai will restructure its largest corporate entity. Among international banks, Standard Chartered has one of the largest loan portfolios in the Dubai market and the UAE as a whole, estimated to be $7.77 billion in total. This amounts to 4.2% of Standard Chartered's total loans outstanding. Other impacted banks included HSBC, Barclays, and RBS. The bank stated that any impairment arising from this exposure would not be material.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Standard Chartered announced an agreement on 27 April 2010 to buy the African custody business from Barclays PLC. On 13 May 2010, Standard Chartered PLC launched the first-ever Indian Depository Receipt "IDR" offer.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 17 June 2010, Standard Chartered Bank and the Agricultural Bank of China (ABC) entered into a strategic alliance meant to strengthened their strategic partnership and identify joint business opportunities. Joint business and cooperation task forces were set up in October that year to define the direction of the partnership and explore joint ventures. The committee was to be co-chaired by Peter Sands, CEO of Standard Chartered, and Zhang Yun, President of ABC.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In December 2010, Standard Chartered was recognised as the Global Bank of the Year in "The Banker"s Bank of the Year 2010 awards. Standard Chartered also was named The Banker's inaugural winners of the Global and European Transaction Bank of the Year awards in September 2014, largely "on the basis of its work in emerging markets, particularly Asia".


title: Standard Chartered

text: In January 2015, the company announced that it was exiting the money-losing "equity capital markets business completely", "becoming one of the first global banks" to do so. In November that year, the bank announced that it would cut 15,000 jobs, including one thousand senior jobs, "from managing director up to board executives". The cuts followed a change of CEO after profit warnings and money laundering fines in the first half of the year.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 2016, Standard Chartered announced that it would stop providing loans to the midstream segment of the diamonds and jewellery industries. The announcement was the result of a review of the bank's involvement in risky business sectors. In 2017, the bank was reported to have lost $400 million on risky diamond debt on a portfolio of loans that was once worth $3 billion. Owing to defaults of jewellery and diamond companies from 2013 onwards, Standard Chartered is currently estimated to have $1.7 billion of diamond debt still to be repaid.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The company received criticism in April 2017 from the Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS). The investor advisory firm told shareholders it was concerned that targets set for the top bosses in the bank's long-term incentive plan (LTIP) were not demanding enough. Bill Winters, the chief executive, stands to net share awards with a face value of as much as £4.4m from the scheme, while Andy Halford, the chief financial officer, could receive £2.7m.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 6 August 2012, the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS), led by Benjamin Lawsky, accused Standard Chartered of hiding $250 billion in transactions involving Iran, labelling it a "rogue institution". The bank was ordered to appear and defend its actions, or risk losing its license to operate in the state of New York. The DFS said it had documents showing a cover up of transactions allegedly used to fund terrorist groups in the Middle East.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 14 August 2012, Lawsky announced that the DFS and Standard Chartered reached a settlement that allows the bank to keep its licence to operate in New York. According to the terms of the settlement, the bank agreed to pay a $340 million fine.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The bank agreed to install a monitor to oversee the bank's money laundering controls for at least two years, and appoint "permanent officials who will audit the bank's internal procedures to prevent offshore money laundering". The monitor will report directly to the DFS. Lawsky's statement said "the parties have agreed that the conduct at issue involved transactions of at least $250bn." The bank issued a statement confirming that a settlement with the DFS had been reached and that "a formal agreement containing the detailed terms of the settlement is expected to be concluded shortly".


title: Standard Chartered

text: Other US agencies—including the Federal Reserve, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Treasury Department, and the Justice Department—had also begun investigations into the laundering allegations and were reportedly taken off guard by the speed of the settlement.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The Treasury stated that its own investigation of Standard Chartered will continue. Several financial analysts predicted that, due to its strong financial position, the bank would be able to easily cover the $900 million fine without having to raise extra capital.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 6 August 2014, Lawsky was reported to be preparing a new action against Standard Chartered over computer system breakdowns and was "discussing a potential settlement".


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 19 August 2014, the bank was fined $300 million by the New York Department of Financial Services for breach of money-laundering compliance related to potentially high-risk transactions involving Standard Chartered clients in Hong Kong and the UAE. The bank issued a statement accepting responsibility and regretting the deficiencies, at the same time noting the ruling would not jeopardize its U.S. licenses.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In April 2019, it was reported that Standard Chartered may have to pay approximately $1 billion to settle its ongoing investigations in the US and UK. Earlier in February the company had set aside $900 million towards resolution of violations of U.S. sanctions and forex trading regulations. The company also faces a penalty of roughly $134 million from the United Kingdom's Financial Conduct Authority related to historical financial crime controls which takes the amount to over $1 billion.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Standard Chartered Breeze is a mobile banking application for the iPhone & iPad that can also be used on the computer. It is largely similar to the online banking services offered by other banks, with the exception of its function to issue electronic bank cheques. Launched in the summer of 2010 and aggressively marketed, the reviews have been generally positive. In addition, it has attracted an uncommon amount of attention due to many innovative marketing strategies it used to promote its product, mostly focusing on social media. Standard Chartered Breeze organised a blogger's meet for bloggers to preview Breeze, and its Twitter campaign to give away a free iPad was extremely successful.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Standard Chartered's primary engagement with the fintech community is focused in Hong Kong, working closely with and co-ordinated by 'The eXellerator'. The SuperCharger FinTech Accelerator, along with main partners, Standard Chartered Bank (a founding member) and Fidelity International, has twice conducted programmes enabling international growth-stage companies to expand their operations within Asia. Standard Chartered Bank has initiated proof of concept projects with two companies: Bambu and KYC Chain.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In September 2009, it was announced that Standard Chartered had agreed to become the main sponsor of Liverpool Football Club for the period between July 2010 and the end of the 2013–14 football season. The sponsorship has been extended multiple times. First in 2013 to the end of the 2015–16 season, next in 2015 through the 2018–19 season, then again, in May 2018 that extends through the 2022–23 season and finally, in July 2022 that runs until the end of the 2026-27 season.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The deal is estimated to be worth around £50 million per year by "City A.M.", making it the joint-third most valuable sponsorship deal in the Premier League alongside Arsenal's deal with Emirates and Chelsea's deal with Yokohama.


title: Standard Chartered

text: The Priority Academy program was created in 2006 by the bank, with educational programmes including a study tour of Shanghai, a summer internship programme and a study seminar in the United States. The program donated $250,000 to Chan Yik Hei, a science amateur who won the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair, for his studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In 2015, Standard Chartered was widely criticised for its $12bn funding of the controversial Carmichael Coal Mine, with a campaign led by Greenpeace calling for them to quit the project. The bank subsequentially withdrew from the deal.


title: Standard Chartered

text: Prior to 1973, management integration was still ongoing and the Standard Bank and Chartered Bank each had their own separate executives; Ronald Lane and H. R. Reed from the two banks first joined together as co-managing directors in 1973, with Lane becoming sole managing director in 1975.


title: Standard Chartered

text: As a member of the Global Banking Alliance for Women, Standard Chartered works with a consortium of banks to deliver financial services to women.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In August 2012 Standard Chartered agreed to pay $340 million to the New York State Department of Financial Services over charges that the bank worked with the government of Iran to hide $250 billion in transactions in order to evade sanctions.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In December 2012 Standard Chartered agreed to pay a $327 million fine for having hidden similar transactions with Iran, Myanmar, Libya, and Sudan.


title: Standard Chartered

text: On 9 April 2019, Standard Chartered paid $1.1 billion to the United Kingdom Government and the United States of America's Department of the Treasury over deficiencies in the bank's money laundering control regime and for violating financial sanctions against Myanmar, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Sudan, Syria, and Iran.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In April 2020 Standard Chartered was fined £20.4 million by the UK's Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation for loans to a Turkish bank DenizBank, which fell under E.U. financial sanctions on Russia due to its majority ownership by Russian bank Sberbank of Russia.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In August 2020 Enforcement Directorate fined Standard Chartered $13.6 million for foreign exchange rule violations in its 2007 takeover of Tamilnad Mercantile Bank Limited.


title: Standard Chartered

text: In January 2021 the Reserve Bank of India issued a fine of ₹2 crore of Standard Chartered Bank-India for delays in its mandatory regulatory fraud reporting.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The Focke-Wulf Fw 190 (nicknamed Würger; ) is a German single-seat, single-engine fighter aircraft designed by Kurt Tank at Focke-Wulf in the late 1930s and widely used during World War II. Along with its well-known counterpart, the Messerschmitt Bf 109, the Fw 190 became the backbone of the (Fighter Force) of the . The twin-row BMW 801 radial engine that powered most operational versions enabled the Fw 190 to lift larger loads than the Bf 109, allowing its use as a day fighter, fighter-bomber, ground-attack aircraft and to a lesser degree, night fighter.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The Fw 190A started flying operationally over France in August 1941 and quickly proved superior in all but turn radius to the Spitfire Mk. V, the main front-line fighter of the Royal Air Force (RAF), particularly at low and medium altitudes. The 190 maintained superiority over Allied fighters until the introduction of the improved Spitfire Mk. IX. In November/December 1942, the Fw 190 made its air combat debut on the Eastern Front, finding much success in fighter wings and specialised ground attack units ( – Battle Wings or Strike Wings) from October 1943.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The Fw 190A series' performance decreased at high altitudes (usually 6,000 m (20,000 ft) and above), which reduced its effectiveness as a high-altitude interceptor. From the Fw 190's inception, there had been ongoing efforts to address this with a turbosupercharged BMW 801 in the B model, the much longer-nosed C model with efforts to also turbocharge its chosen Daimler-Benz DB 603 inverted V12 powerplant, and the similarly long-nosed D model with the Junkers Jumo 213. Problems with the turbocharger installations on the -B and -C subtypes meant only the D model entered service in September 1944. These high-altitude developments eventually led to the Focke-Wulf Ta 152, which was capable of extreme speeds at medium to high altitudes ( at ). While these "long nose" 190 variants and the Ta 152 derivative especially gave the Germans parity with Allied opponents, they arrived too late to affect the outcome of the war.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The Fw 190 was well-liked by its pilots. Some of the Luftwaffe's most successful fighter aces claimed many of their kills while flying it, including Otto Kittel, Walter Nowotny and Erich Rudorffer. The Fw 190 had greater firepower than the Bf 109 and, at low to medium altitude, superior manoeuvrability, in the opinion of German pilots who flew both fighters. It was regarded as one of the best fighter planes of World War II.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Between 1934 and 1935 the German Ministry of Aviation (RLM) ran a contest to produce a modern fighter for the rearming Luftwaffe. Kurt Tank entered the parasol-winged Fw 159 into the contest, against the Arado Ar 80, Heinkel He 112 and Messerschmitt Bf 109. The Fw 159 was hopelessly outclassed and was soon eliminated from the competition along with the Ar 80. The He 112 and Bf 109 were generally similar in design but the 109's lightweight construction gave it a performance edge the 112 was never able to match. On March 12, 1936, the 109 was declared the winner.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Even before the Bf 109 had entered squadron service, in autumn 1937 the RLM sent out a new tender asking various designers for a new fighter to fight alongside the Bf 109, as Walter Günther had done with his firm's follow-on to the unsuccessful He 100 and He 112. Although the Bf 109 was an extremely competitive fighter, the Ministry was worried that future foreign designs might outclass it, and wanted to have new aircraft under development to meet these possible challenges. Tank responded with a number of designs, most powered by a liquid-cooled inline engine.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: However, it was not until a design was presented using the air-cooled, 14-cylinder BMW 139 radial engine that the Ministry of Aviation's interest was aroused. As this design used a radial engine, it would not compete with the inline-powered Bf 109 for engines, when there were already too few Daimler-Benz DB 601s to go around. This was not the case for competing designs like the Heinkel He 100 or twin-engined Focke-Wulf Fw 187, where production would compete with the 109 and Messerschmitt Bf 110 for engine supplies. After the war, Tank denied a rumour that he had to "fight a battle" with the Ministry to convince them of the radial engine's merits.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: At the time, the use of radial engines in land-based fighters was relatively rare in Europe, as it was believed that their large frontal area would cause too much drag on something as small as a fighter. Tank was not convinced of this, having witnessed the successful use of radial engines by the U.S. Navy, and felt a properly streamlined installation would eliminate this problem.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The hottest points on any air-cooled engine are the cylinder heads, located around the circumference of a radial engine. In order to provide sufficient air to cool the engine, airflow had to be maximized at this outer edge. This was normally accomplished by leaving the majority of the front face of the engine open to the air, causing considerable drag. During the late 1920s, NACA led the development of a dramatic improvement by placing an airfoil-shaped ring around the outside of the cylinder heads (the NACA cowling). The shaping accelerated the air as it entered the front of the cowl, increasing the total airflow, and allowing the opening in front of the engine to be made smaller.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Tank introduced a further refinement to this basic concept. He suggested placing most of the airflow components on the propeller, in the form of an oversized propeller spinner whose outside diameter was the same as the engine. The cowl around the engine proper was greatly simplified, essentially a basic cylinder. Air entered through a small hole at the centre of the spinner and was directed through ductwork in the spinner so it was blowing rearward along the cylinder heads. To provide enough airflow, an internal cone was placed in the centre of the hole, over the propeller hub, which was intended to compress the airflow and allow a smaller opening to be used. In theory, the tight-fitting cowling also provided some thrust due to the compression and heating of air as it flowed through the cowling.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: As to the rest of the design philosophy, Tank wanted something more than an aircraft built only for speed. He outlined the reasoning:


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: In contrast to the complex, failure-prone fuselage-mounted main gear legs of the earlier Fw 159, one of the main features of the Fw 190 was its wide-tracked, inwards-retracting landing gear. They were designed to withstand a sink rate of , double the strength factor usually required. Hydraulic wheel brakes were used. The wide-track undercarriage produced better ground handling characteristics, and the Fw 190 suffered fewer ground accidents than the Bf 109. (The Bf 109's narrow-track, outwards-retracting landing gear hinged on its wing root structure to help lower weight, but this led to inherent weakness and many failures and ground loops.) The Fw 190's retractable tail gear used a cable, anchored to the "elbow" at the midpoint of the starboard maingear's transverse retraction arms, which ran aftwards within the fuselage to the vertical fin to operate the tailwheel retraction function. The tailwheel's retraction mechanical design possessed a set of pulleys to guide the aforementioned cable to the top of the tailwheel's oleo strut, pulling it upwards along a diagonal track within the fin, into the lower fuselage; this mechanism was accessible through a prominently visible triangular-shaped hinged panel, on the left side in the fin's side sheetmetal covering. On some versions of the Fw 190 an extended tailwheel oleo strut could be fitted for larger-sized loads (such as bombs or even a torpedo) beneath the fuselage.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Most aircraft of the era used cables and pulleys to operate their controls. The cables tended to stretch, resulting in the sensations of "give" and "play" that made the controls less crisp and responsive, and required constant maintenance to correct. For the new design, the team replaced the cables with rigid pushrods and bearings to eliminate this problem. Another innovation was making the controls as light as possible. The maximum resistance of the ailerons was limited to , as the average man's wrist could not exert a greater force. The empennage (tail assembly) featured relatively small and well-balanced horizontal and vertical surfaces.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The design team also attempted to minimize changes in the aircraft's trim at varying speeds, thus reducing the pilot's workload. They were so successful in this regard that they found in-flight-adjustable aileron and rudder trim tabs were not necessary. Small, fixed tabs were fitted to control surfaces and adjusted for proper balance during initial test flights. Only the elevator trim needed to be adjusted in flight (a feature common to all aircraft). This was accomplished by tilting the entire horizontal tailplane with an electric motor, with an angle of incidence ranging from −3° to +5°.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Another aspect of the new design was the extensive use of electrically powered equipment instead of the hydraulic systems used by most aircraft manufacturers of the time. On the first two prototypes, the main landing gear was hydraulic. Starting with the third prototype, the undercarriage was operated by push buttons controlling electric motors in the wings, and was kept in position by electric up and down-locks. The armament was also loaded and fired electrically. Tank believed that service use would prove that electrically powered systems were more reliable and more rugged than hydraulics, electric lines being much less prone to damage from enemy fire.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Like the Bf 109, the Fw 190 featured a fairly small wing planform with relatively high wing loading. This presents a trade-off in performance. An aircraft with a smaller wing suffers less drag under most flight conditions and therefore flies faster and may have better range. However, it also means the aircraft has a higher stalling speed making it less maneuverable, and also reduces performance in the thinner air at higher altitudes. The wings spanned and had an area of . The wing was designed using the NACA 23015.3 airfoil at the root and the NACA 23009 airfoil at the tip.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Earlier aircraft designs generally featured canopies consisting of small plates of perspex (also known as Plexiglas) in a metal "greenhouse" framework, with the top of the canopy even with the rear fuselage; this was true of the IJNAS Mitsubishi A6M Zero, whose otherwise "all-around view" canopy was still heavily framed. This design considerably limited visibility, especially to the rear. The introduction of vacuum forming led to the creation of the "bubble canopy" which was largely self-supporting, and could be mounted over the cockpit, offering greatly improved all-round visibility. Tank's design for the Fw 190 used a canopy with a frame that ran around the perimeter, with only a short, centerline seam along the top, running rearward from the radio antenna fitting where the three-panel windscreen and the forward edge of the canopy met, just in front of the pilot.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The eventual choice of the BMW 801 14-cylinder radial over the more troublesome BMW 139 also brought with it a BMW-designed cowling "system" which integrated the radiator used to cool the motor oil. An annular, ring-shaped oil cooler core was built into the BMW-provided forward cowl, just behind the fan. The outer portion of the oil cooler's core was in contact with the main cowling's sheet metal. Comprising the BMW-designed forward cowl, in front of the oil cooler was a ring of metal with a C-shaped cross-section, with the outer lip lying just outside the rim of the cowl, and the inner side on the inside of the oil cooler core. Together, the metal ring and cowling formed an S-shaped duct with the oil cooler's core contained between them. Airflow past the gap between the cowl and outer lip of the metal ring produced a vacuum effect that pulled air from the front of the engine forward across the oil cooler core to provide cooling for the 801's motor oil. The rate of cooling airflow over the core could be controlled by moving the metal ring to open or close the gap. The reasons for this complex system were threefold. One was to reduce any extra aerodynamic drag of the oil radiator, in this case largely eliminating it by placing it within the same cowling as the engine. The second was to warm the air before it flowed to the radiator to aid in warming the oil during starting. Finally, by placing the radiator behind the fan, cooling was provided even while the aircraft was parked. The disadvantage to this design was that the radiator was in an extremely vulnerable location, and the metal ring was increasingly armoured as the war progressed.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: From mid-1943, Fw 190s were also used as night fighters against the growing RAF Bomber Command offensive. In mid-1943, one of the earliest participants in the single-engine, ground controlled, night-fighting experiments was the "Nachtjagdkommando Fw 190" (Night Fighter Command Fw 190), operated by IV. "Gruppe" (4 Group), "Jagdgeschwader 3", (Fighter Wing 3, or JG 3). The main "Nachtgeschwader" (Night Fighter Wings) were keen to adopt a new fighter type as their twin-engine fighters were too slow for combat against increasing numbers of de Havilland Mosquito night fighters and bombers. Nachtjagdgeschwader 1 (NJG 1) and NJG 3 kept a pair of Fw 190s on standby to supplement the Messerschmitt Bf 110 and Junkers Ju 88. The considerable performance advantage of the Fw 190 over the other two types was more than offset by the difficulties of operating at night. Few, if any, aerial successes can be attributed to these operational tests.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: One of the first purpose built units to use Fw 190s in this role was "Stab/Versuchskommando Herrmann", a unit specifically set up in April 1943 by Major Hajo Herrmann. Herrmann's unit used standard A-4s and A-5s borrowed from day fighter units to intercept bombers over or near the targeted city, using searchlights and other visual aids to help them find their quarry. The first use of "Window" by the RAF during the Battle of Hamburg in July 1943, rendered the standard nightfighter "Himmelbett" procedures useless and brought urgency to the development of Herrmann's "Wilde Sau (Wild Boar)" technique, pending the development of new nightfighting strategies. Instead of restricting the Fw 190s to ground control interception protocols, the Fw 190s were given a free hand to over-fly bombed areas to see if they could locate bombers using the ground fires below. These tactics became an integral part of the nightfighter operations until May 1944.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: St/V Herrmann was expanded to become "Jagdgeschwader" 300 (JG 300, or Fighter Wing 300), JG 301 and JG 302. All three units initially continued borrowing their aircraft from day fighter units. The day fighter units began to protest at the numbers of their aircraft which were being written off because of the hazards of night operations; the numbers soared with the onset of winter, with pilots often being forced to bail-out through being unable to find an airfield at which to land safely. Crash landings were also frequent. Eventually all three "Wilde Sau" units received their own aircraft, which were often modified with exhaust dampers and blind-flying radio equipment. Another unit was "Nachtjagdgruppe 10" ("NJGr 10"), which used Fw 190 A-4/R11s through to A-8/R11s; Fw 190s modified to carry FuG ("Funkgerät") 217 or FuG 218 radar mid-VHF band equipment.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The appearance of United States Army Air Forces heavy bombers caused a problem for the German fighter force. The B-17 Flying Fortress in particular was especially durable, and the armament of the Bf 109 and Fw 190 were not adequate for bomber-destroyer operations. The B-17's eventual deployment in combat box formations provided formidable massed firepower from a hundred or more Browning AN/M2 .50 caliber machine guns. In addition, the "Luftwaffe"s original solution of "Zerstörer" twin-engine Messerschmitt Bf 110G bomber destroyers, while effective against unescorted Allied bomber formations, lacked maneuverability and were eviscerated by the USAAF's fighter escorts in late 1943 and early 1944.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Two of the former "Wilde Sau" single-engined night fighter wings were reconstituted for their use, such as "Jagdgeschwader" 300 (JG 300—300th Fighter Wing) and JG 301. These units consisted of Sturmböcke. However, JG 3 also had a special "gruppe" (group) of Sturmböcke.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The Fw 190, designed as a rugged interceptor capable of withstanding considerable combat damage and delivering a potent 'punch' from its stable gun platform, was considered ideal for anti-bomber operations. Focke-Wulf redesigned parts of the wing structure to accommodate larger armament. The Fw 190 A-6 was the first sub-variant to undergo this change. Its standard armament was increased from four MG 151/20s to two of them with four more in two underwing cannon pods. The aircraft was designated A-6/R1 (Rüstsatz; or field conversion model). The first aircraft were delivered on 20 November 1943. Brief trials saw the twin cannon replaced by the MK 108 30mm autocannon in the outer wing, which then became the A-6/R2. The cannons were blowback-operated, had electric ignition, and were belt fed. The 30mm MK 108 was simple to make and its construction was economical; the majority of its components consisted of just pressed sheet metal stampings. In the A-6/R4, the GM-1 (nitrous oxide) Boost was added for the BMW 801 engine to increase performance at high altitude. For protection, of armoured glass was added to the canopy. The A-6/R6 was fitted with twin heavy calibre "Werfer-Granate 21" (BR 21) unguided, air-to-air rockets, fired from single underwing tubular launchers (one per wing panel). The increased modifications, in particular heavy firepower, made the Fw 190 a potent bomber-killer. The A-7 evolved in November 1943. Two synchronized 13mm (.51 caliber) MG 131 machine guns replaced the twin cowl-mount synchronized 7.92mm (.318 cal) MG 17 machine guns. The A-7/R variants could carry two 30mm MK 108s as well as BR 21 rockets. This increased its potency as a "Pulk-Zerstörer" (Bomber Formation Destroyer). The A-8/R2 was the most numerous Sturmbock aircraft, some 900 were built by Fiesler at Kassel with 30mm MK 108s installed in their outer wing panel mounts.


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: While formidable bomber-killers, the armour and substantial up-gunning with heavier calibre firepower meant the Fw 190 was now cumbersome to maneuver. Vulnerable to Allied fighters, they had to be escorted by Bf 109s. When the "Sturmgruppe" was able to work as intended, the effects were devastating. With their engines and cockpits heavily armored, the Fw 190 As attacked from astern and gun camera films show that these attacks were often pressed to within 100 yds (90 m).


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: Willy Unger of 11.("Sturm")/JG 3 (11 "Staffel" (Squadron) of "Sturmgruppe" (Storm group) JG 3) made the following comments:


title: Focke-Wulf Fw 190

text: The number of heavy bombers destroyed by the Fw 190 is impossible to estimate. However, below is a list of the top scoring "Sturmbock" pilots: