title: Mike Ditka

text: In the midst of a successful 1988 season, he suffered a heart attack, but bounced back quickly. In November 2012, he suffered a minor stroke at a suburban country club in Chicago. Later in the day, Ditka reported he was feeling "good right now and it's not a big deal."


title: Mike Ditka

text: On November 23, 2018, Ditka was hospitalized in Naples, Florida, after suffering a heart attack while playing golf.


title: Mike Ditka

text: Ditka is known for his vocal conservative views. In July 2004, Ditka, a self-described "ultra-ultra-ultra conservative", was reportedly considering running against the Democratic candidate, state senator Barack Obama, for an open seat in the U.S. Senate for Illinois in the 2004 Senate election. The seat was being vacated by Peter Fitzgerald, a Republican, and Republican nominee Jack Ryan withdrew from the race amid controversy at the end of June, leaving the Republicans in a bind. Local and national political leaders, from Illinois Republican Party Chair Judy Baar Topinka to National Republican Senatorial Committee Chair Sen. George Allen, whose father by the same name was an assistant coach with the Bears in the 1960s when Ditka played, met with Ditka in an effort to persuade him to fill the spot on the ticket. On July 14, however, Ditka announced he would not seek the nomination, citing personal and business considerations. His wife was against the run and he operates a chain of restaurants. Obama went on to defeat the eventual Republican candidate, former U.S. ambassador Alan Keyes, in a landslide in the November 2004 election. Ditka has since regretted not running. Ditka believes that Obama never would have been elected president if Ditka had run against Obama for Senate in 2004, and claims that Obama is the worst president in United States history.


title: Mike Ditka

text: In stark contrast to the above-stated positions, Ditka appeared in an ad during the 2010 Illinois gubernatorial election for incumbent Democratic governor Pat Quinn. In the ad, Ditka stated that, "[D]oing the right thing for the people who put you in office is more important than what you can do for yourself in office ... and I think he'll do that. I think he understands that ... and I think he's good people." Quinn, at the time, was locked into a tight race against State Senator Bill Brady, a conservative Republican from Bloomington. Quinn would go on to narrowly defeat Brady. Four years later, in 2014, Ditka appeared in a televised campaign ad for Quinn's Republican challenger, Bruce Rauner, who defeated Quinn in the general election.


title: Mike Ditka

text: In October 2011, Ditka and the 1985 team went to the White House after they did not attend in 1986 due to the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. He presented President Obama with a Chicago Bears jersey with the number 85 on it with "Obama" on the back of it.


title: Mike Ditka

text: Ditka was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump's election campaign, saying "I support Trump all the way. I really do."


title: Mike Ditka

text: Some of Ditka's comments, most notably regarding former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick's national anthem protests, have garnered controversy due to Ditka's position with ESPN. Under the network's new social media policy (implemented in late 2017 in the wake of Curt Schilling's firing and Jemele Hill's suspension), Ditka is to refrain from making controversial statements, but made a series of remarks in late 2017 that drew widespread criticism. In a September interview with a Dallas-based radio station, Ditka was critical of Kaepernick's protests, saying "I think it's a problem. Anybody who disrespects this country and the flag. If they don't like the country they don't like our flag, get the hell out." In the same interview, Ditka was dismissive of social issues in America, saying "I don't see all the atrocities going on in this country that people say are going on, I see opportunities if people want to look for opportunity – now if they don't want to look for them – then you can find problems with anything, but this is the land of opportunity because you can be anything you want to be if you work. If you don't work, that's a different problem."


title: Mike Ditka

text: One of Ditka's more controversial remarks came in October 2018 during a Bears/Vikings pregame show, when he said he did not believe that there was any oppression in America for the last 100 years: "There has been no oppression in the last 100 years that I know of. Now maybe I'm not watching it as carefully as other people." Ditka immediately came under criticism for his comments from many sources, including former New York Jets star and fellow Beaver County, Pennsylvania native Joe Namath, who said that Ditka needed to "look up the meaning of oppression. Look up the definition of oppression, and you understand that it's obviously taken place," as well as from columnists at the Chicago Sun-Times who said Ditka was "not a Chicagoan" and "a white man who is blind to the plight of people of color in this country." The NFL distanced itself from Ditka's comments, saying, "Everyone's entitled to an opinion. The league would not express that opinion, by any stretch of the imagination." Ditka quickly clarified his remarks in a release, apologizing to anyone who may have been offended by his comments: "The characterization of the statement that I made does not reflect the context of the question that I was answering and certainly does not reflect my views throughout my lifetime. I have absolutely seen oppression in society in the last 100 years and I am completely intolerant of any discrimination."


title: Michael Carrick

text: Michael Carrick (born 28 July 1981) is an English professional football manager and former player who is currently head coach of Middlesbrough. He is one of the most decorated English footballers of all time and is best known for his 12-year playing career with Manchester United, whom he also captained. Carrick was a central midfielder, but he was used as an emergency centre-back under Alex Ferguson, David Moyes, Louis van Gaal and José Mourinho. His playing style was grounded in his passing ability.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick began his career at West Ham United, joining the youth team in 1997 and winning the FA Youth Cup two years later. He was sent on loan twice during his debut season, to Swindon Town and Birmingham City, before securing a place in the first team by the 2000–01 season. He experienced relegation in the 2002–03 season and was voted into the PFA First Division Team of the Year in the following campaign. He made more than 150 appearances for "the Hammers", and in 2004, he moved to rival London club Tottenham Hotspur for a fee believed to be £3.5 million. He played an influential role at the club for two seasons before moving to Manchester United in 2006 for £14 million.


title: Michael Carrick

text: From his debut onwards, Carrick was a regular in the Manchester United first team, making more than 50 appearances in his first season with them. He established himself as a key member of the team that won the Premier League in 2006–07, their first title success in four years. The following season he was part of the side that won the 2008 Champions League final, playing the full 120 minutes as they enjoyed a 6–5 penalty shootout win, with Carrick converting his spot kick, to help achieve the European Double. As of 2021, he is the only English player alongside former teammate Wayne Rooney to win the Premier League title, FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, League Cup, FA Community Shield, UEFA Europa League and FIFA Club World Cup. In winning the 2016 FA Cup, Carrick completed his collection of every domestic honour in the English game.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick has represented England at under-18, under-21, B and senior levels. He made his England debut in 2001 and went on to gain 34 caps without scoring a goal. Carrick was often overlooked during his England career, with many of his contemporaries being preferred in his position. This was the case until the 2012–13 season, when Carrick established himself as a regular. He was a member of the England squad for two major tournaments, the 2006 and 2010 World Cups.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick was born to Vince and Lynn Carrick in Wallsend, Tyne and Wear, and first became involved in football at age four. A boyhood fan of Newcastle United, he played five-a-side football with Wallsend Boys Club on Saturday nights, courtesy of his father's volunteer work at the club. Aged nine, he had a trials with Middlesbrough, Stoke City, Arsenal, Crystal Palace and Chelsea. Football became more serious for him at the age of 12 when he was selected for Burnside High School and later on North Tyneside Schools. While playing for Wallsend Boys' Club under-16s, he was capped for the England Boys' club side. At age 13, Carrick was profiled by the BBC children's programme "Live & Kicking" episode 49, which aired on 4 February 1995. During his school years, and the years up until his move to West Ham United, Carrick actually played as a centre-forward; it was only at West Ham that he started to play more often as a midfielder. He studied at Wallsend's Western Middle School and Burnside Community High School, completing his GCSE exams in 1997.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick was part of the West Ham United youth squad that won the FA Youth Cup in the 1998–99 season. He scored twice in their two-legged 9–0 record final victory over Coventry City.


title: Michael Carrick

text: According to his manager at the time, Harry Redknapp, Carrick's difficulty at the start of his career was mainly physical and he lost almost two seasons to injuries because of his rapid growth. He made his debut for West Ham in a 1–1 away draw with Jokerit in the UEFA Intertoto Cup on 24 July 1999. His league debut came five weeks later on 28 August, when he replaced Rio Ferdinand in a 3–0 victory over Bradford City at Valley Parade. In November 1999, Carrick was sent on a one-month loan to Swindon Town and made his first appearance for them in a 0–0 draw at home with Norwich City. He scored his first ever professional career goal in a 2–1 defeat at home to Charlton Athletic on 23 November. He scored once more during his loan spell, netting in a 1–1 draw at home to Walsall on 4 December. Although he impressed during his spell he could not help the team find a much-needed win during his 6 outings, playing his final game for them in a 3–0 defeat at Manchester City on 18 December. In February 2000, he was sent on loan again, this time to Birmingham City, making just two appearances for the Blues. Carrick returned to Upton Park and scored his first goal for West Ham United, scoring the first in a 5–0 home win over Coventry City on 22 April. During his first season he was voted as West Ham United's Young Player of the Year.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick made his West Ham breakthrough in the 2000–01 season, playing 41 games in all competitions, which included 33 games in the league. His only goal of the season came in a 1–1 home draw against Aston Villa on 9 December 2000. Carrick was awarded a new, improved contract for his progress that would keep him at Upton Park until 2005. On 20 April 2001, he was nominated for the PFA Young Player of the Year alongside teammate Joe Cole. The award was eventually won by Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard on 29 April. For the second successive season Carrick was voted as West Ham's Young Player of the Year. The 2001–02 season saw Carrick make 32 appearances for the Hammers. Carrick scored twice during this season, his first was West Ham's only goal in a 7–1 loss at Blackburn Rovers on 14 October. He scored the first goal in a 2–1 victory over rivals Chelsea ten days later. Towards the end of the season, Carrick suffered a recurrence of a groin injury that ruled him out of the 2002 FIFA World Cup for the England squad.


title: Michael Carrick

text: The 2002–03 season was one to forget for Carrick, as West Ham were relegated from the Premier League at the end of the campaign, with Carrick playing his last game of the season in a 2–0 victory over Sunderland on 22 March 2003. Rather than leave the club like teammates Joe Cole, Frédéric Kanouté and Jermain Defoe, Carrick stayed with West Ham during their first season back in First Division. During the 2003–04 season, West Ham finished fourth on the final day to ensure a place in the play-offs. However, they lost 1–0 in the final to Crystal Palace and were denied a return to the top flight. Carrick was included in the PFA Team of the Year for the First Division.


title: Michael Carrick

text: After one season outside the Premier League, Carrick felt compelled to leave the First Division, saying: "the truth is I didn't feel I could play First Division football much longer." He was linked with moves to a number of teams including Portsmouth, Arsenal, Everton, West Bromwich Albion and Crystal Palace before Tottenham Hotspur emerged as front-runners to sign him. On 20 August, a deal was agreed between West Ham and Tottenham for the transfer of Carrick subject to a medical. Four days later, the transfer was official as Carrick joined the club for around £3.5 million after the passing of a medical. He made a goalscoring appearance for the Tottenham reserves, but his first team debut for the club was delayed after suffering an injury setback on 13 September. Carrick was assigned the number 23 shirt and made his Tottenham debut on 18 October as a substitute in a 1–0 defeat at Portsmouth.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Despite being fit he was often overlooked by then-manager Jacques Santini. It was unclear as to whether Santini really wanted him at all as there was much media speculation that Carrick was bought by Tottenham's Director of Football Frank Arnesen rather than Santini. However, following the departure of Santini and the appointment of new manager Martin Jol he soon emerged as a regular starter in midfield. His first full start for Tottenham was also Jol's first game in charge of the club away to Burnley in the League Cup on 9 November. During the game he assisted a goal for Robbie Keane as they went on to win 3–0. On 18 December, he produced a display that was influential in helping Tottenham to a 5–1 win at home over Southampton. Carrick subsequently ended the 2004–05 season with 29 league appearances but failed to score as they finished the table in 9th and missed out on a UEFA Cup spot.


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 3 December 2005, Carrick scored his first Tottenham goal as he netted the winner in a 3–2 home win over Sunderland. He scored his second goal for the club on 8 April 2006 in a 2–1 win at home over Manchester City. On 22 April, Carrick was lauded for his performance, which helped Tottenham to a 1–1 away draw in the North London derby against Arsenal. On 7 May, Carrick was one of 10 Tottenham players who fell ill at a hotel just before their final game of the season away to West Ham as the players suffered from apparent food poisoning. He managed to play in the game but lasted just 63 minutes in the 2–1 defeat to his former club. As a result of the loss rivals Arsenal beat them to fourth place in the league and the spot for the Champions League. He made more crosses and more passes than any other Tottenham player during the 2005–06 season, and along with Mido was joint top in assists.


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 10 June, Tottenham revealed they had rejected a bid from Manchester United for Carrick, who was seen by their manager Sir Alex Ferguson as a replacement for the departed Roy Keane, the former club captain. The following day, Tottenham manager Martin Jol insisted Carrick would be staying with the club, stating "I don't want to lose a player like Michael, who was probably our best midfielder last season". On 28 July, Tottenham announced that the clubs agreed a deal for the transfer of Carrick to Manchester United. Three days later, the transfer was official as personal terms were agreed with Carrick. Despite agreeing a deal for the player the previous week – the fee was not made public until Spurs issued a statement to the stock exchange. Manchester United's chief executive David Gill confirmed the transfer fee as £14 million, potentially rising to £18.6 million, which would make Carrick the sixth most expensive player acquired by Manchester United at the time. He was given the number 16 shirt, previously worn by Keane.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick made his debut for the club on 4 August 2006 in a 3–1 pre-season friendly win over Porto in the Amsterdam Tournament. The following day, Carrick was forced to miss the start of the 2006–07 season as a result of injuring his foot during the final tournament match against Ajax. Following his recovery from this injury he made his competitive debut on 23 August in a 3–0 away league win over Charlton Athletic. Three days later, he made his first start for the club in a 2–1 win away over Watford. Towards the end of December he missed two games as he suffered a minor injury. He returned in time to feature in United's final game of 2006, a 3–2 home win over Reading on 30 December. On 13 January 2007, Carrick scored his first Manchester United goal in a 3–1 win at home over Aston Villa. One month later, he scored his first ever FA Cup goal in a 1–1 draw at home to Reading on 17 February. He followed this up by contributing one of United's goals in a 4–1 home win over Blackburn Rovers on 31 March. Carrick scored his first-ever Champions League goals on 10 April, scoring twice in a 7–1 home win over Roma in their quarter-final second leg tie. They would go on to lose their semi-final tie 5–3 on aggregate to eventual champions A.C. Milan ending their hopes of an all English final with Liverpool. He scored his final goal of the season in a 2–0 win at home over Sheffield United on 17 April. His first season with Manchester United ended in success, as they won the Premier League title as a result of Chelsea's 1–1 draw with Arsenal on 6 May.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick suffered an injury setback in October 2007 after breaking his elbow in a 1–0 home win over Roma in the Champions League group stage. As a result of the injury he would be out of action for up to six weeks. His return to action came on 3 November as a substitute for Anderson in a 2–2 draw at Arsenal. Carrick scored his first goal of the season on 10 February 2008 in the Manchester derby, his goal came in injury time and was mere consolation in a 2–1 home loss to rivals Manchester City. His second and final goal of the season came against his former club West Ham United in a 4–1 win at home on 3 May. Although he scored just two league goals that season it still led to another league title as United beat Wigan Athletic on the final day of the season to prevent Chelsea from reaching the top spot. On 18 April, one week on from their title success Carrick was offered a new five-year contract along with defenders Rio Ferdinand and Wes Brown. A four-year contract was then signed on 17 May 2008, which tied Carrick to United until at least June 2012. He participated in his first-ever Champions League final on 21 May in Moscow, playing the full 120 minutes in a 6–5 penalty shootout win over Chelsea in the 2008 final. The scoreline ended 1–1 after extra time, he took United's second penalty of the subsequent shootout, which he converted to help give him the first European honour of his career.


title: Michael Carrick

text: During United's first league game of the 2008–09 season at home to Newcastle United, Carrick was substituted after just 25 minutes as a result of an injured ankle in the 1–1 draw. The following day, it was confirmed he would be out for up to three weeks, which ruled him out of the UEFA Super Cup match against Zenit St. Petersburg on 29 August. His return to action came on 13 September in a 2–1 away loss to Liverpool, he was taken off at half-time during after sustaining another injury. Three days later, it was revealed he would be out for up to six weeks after breaking a bone in his foot during a challenge with Yossi Benayoun. On 1 November, Carrick scored his first goal of the season in a 4–3 home win over Hull City. His second goal followed two weeks later in a 5–0 home win over Stoke City. His first goal of 2009 came on 22 April as he scored late on in a 2–0 home win over Portsmouth. On 13 May, he assisted Carlos Tevez and then scored a late winner in a 2–1 win away to Wigan. The goal was Carrick's first for United away from home and meant that they only needed one point from their final two games to gain a third successive Premier League title. Carrick ensured a third title in three years with United as they drew with Arsenal 0–0 at home on 18 May to claim an 18th overall English title. On 27 May, Carrick played the full match in the 2009 Champions League Final in a 2–0 defeat by Barcelona. This defeat was described by Carrick as worst night of his career as he said "the game just seemed to pass us by and we were unable to do anything about it. I suppose when you look at the big picture, it was still another Champions League final".


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 30 September, Carrick scored his first goal of the 2009–10 season with the decisive goal against German champions Wolfsburg in a 2–1 Champions League win at home. Two months later, he scored his first league goal of the season, scoring the second of a 3–0 home win over Everton. Due to a defensive crisis during December, Carrick had to fill in at centre-back since Gary Neville, himself being played out of position, picked up an injury against West Ham United in a 4–0 away win. Carrick had never previously played in defence during his career but manager Sir Alex Ferguson was very pleased with his contribution. On 8 December, he played in defence again by playing in a three-man defence alongside central-midfielder Darren Fletcher and regular left-back Patrice Evra in a 3–1 away win against Wolfsburg in the Champions League. His third goal of the season came on 30 December in a 5–0 home league win over Wigan Athletic in what was United's last game of the decade.


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 25 January 2010, Carrick scored the first-ever League Cup goal of his career in a 4–3 aggregate win over rivals Manchester City in the second leg of their semi-final tie. On 6 February, Carrick scored in a 5–0 home win over Portsmouth but it was credited as a Richard Hughes own goal following the game. However, the Dubious Goals Panel officially awarded Carrick the goal on 25 May following a review. On 16 February 2010, he was sent off for the first time in his career after seeing two yellow cards in United's 3–2 win over A.C. Milan at the San Siro. The midfielder was shown a second yellow card in injury-time after flicking the ball away following Patrice Evra's foul on Alexandre Pato. Carrick played the entire game of the 2010 League Cup Final against Aston Villa, which United won 2–1 resulting in his first League Cup medal. This was the first season of his United career that would end without winning the league title as Chelsea claimed the crown by a single point on the final day of the season.


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 6 August 2010, it was announced that Carrick would miss the start of the 2010–11 season as a result of an ankle injury sustained in United's final pre-season game against a League of Ireland XI. However, two days later, he played 79 minutes of United's 3–1 victory over Chelsea in the 2010 Community Shield. Manager Sir Alex Ferguson claimed, "He came in yesterday, says he was fit, wanted to train, trained, and wanted to play." On 3 March 2011, he signed a new three-year deal keeping him at the club until the end of the 2013–14 season. Carrick's first significant display of the season came in a 1–0 away win over Chelsea in the Champions League on 6 April. He played a vital pass in the move that led to Wayne Rooney's goal and was praised for his performance. However a few days later in the FA Cup semi-final against Manchester City Carrick gave the ball away which led to the only goal of the game scored by Yaya Touré.


title: Michael Carrick

text: At the start of the 2011–12 season, Carrick for the second season in a row was a shock starter at Wembley for the 2011 FA Community Shield. After initially being ruled out through injury by Alex Ferguson in the pre-match build-up, Carrick was named in the starting 11 for the game on 7 August 2011. In the first half, United fell behind to a Joleon Lescott header and a long range Edin Džeko strike to trail 2–0 at half time. Carrick was then substituted at the interval and replaced by youngster Tom Cleverley. However United went on to turn the game around and prevail 3–2 winners. The day after the Shield match, Carrick pulled out of England's friendly match against the Netherlands to rest a niggling injury. He was replaced in the squad by Tom Cleverley. On 18 December, Carrick scored his first goal for United for 70 games when he advanced from his own half of the pitch after cutting out Joey Barton's square ball, past a couple of defenders and firing low past the keeper. He eventually won the Man of the Match award. On 4 January 2012, Carrick played his 250th match for Manchester United in all competitions in a 3–0 away defeat to Newcastle United. He celebrated his Jubilee in a 3–2 away victory against Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium in the FA Cup third round. On 14 January 2012, Carrick scored for United in a 3–0 home win against Bolton. In the 83rd minute, Carrick notched his first goal at Old Trafford since January 2010. He curled a left-footed effort past Ádám Bogdán into the bottom corner. On 16 February 2012, in a Europa League 2–0 away win against Ajax at the Amsterdam Arena, Carrick played his 500th match in all competitions. Carrick also showed his class when he thundered a shot from 30 yards against the post in a 2–0 win against QPR on 8 April.


title: Michael Carrick

text: As a result of a defensive injury crisis at the club, Carrick started the 2012–13 season as a makeshift centre-back. His inexperience in the role was exploited by Everton in the season opener, as Marouane Fellaini beat him to a corner kick to score the only goal of the game. He continued in the role for the next match against Fulham. He scored his first goal of the season in a 1–0 Champions League victory against Galatasaray, after series of ball movement leading to Michael Carrick rounding the goalkeeper to score with his left foot. On 24 November 2012, Carrick was left out the squad that defeated QPR 3–1, ending his run of 33 consecutive league starts. April 2013 saw Carrick nominated for the PFA Player of the Year Award for his performances during the season with Manchester United. Arsenal manager Arsène Wenger said Carrick would be his personal choice for the award, "He is a quality passer. He could play for Barcelona, he would be perfectly suited to their game. He has a good vision and is an intelligent player." Tottenham winger Gareth Bale was ultimately voted as the winner; Carrick was, however, included in the PFA Team of the Year for the 2012–13 season. Carrick went on to be announced as Manchester United's Players' Player of the Year for the 2012–13 season.


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 22 November 2013, Manchester United announced that Carrick had signed a contract extension until 2015, with the option to extend for a further year. In the 2013–14 season, Carrick struggled to retain his previous season's form, as Manchester United struggled generally under new manager David Moyes. His season was not helped by a persistent achilles problem that kept him out from November until December, whilst new signings in midfield such as Marouane Fellaini had failed to perform.


title: Michael Carrick

text: In February 2014, Carrick was criticized by former club captain Roy Keane for what Keane thought was a poor interview. Although he made a total of 42 appearances in all competitions that season, there was speculation over whether Carrick had a future at Manchester United. In July, Carrick suffered an injury during a pre-season training session that was expected to keep him out for 12 weeks. Carrick's first game back from injury came at the 1–0 defeat against Manchester City on 2 November 2014, where he came on as a replacement centre-back following Chris Smalling's dismissal. After Marcos Rojo suffered a dislocated shoulder in the same match, Carrick stated that he would be happy to play as a makeshift centre-back. After Carrick returned to the starting line-up on a regular basis, "Match of the Day 2" pundit Dietmar Hamann attributed some of Manchester United's improved form to Carrick's return in December, after the club had won all of the six games that he had started.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Alex Ferguson stated that he thought Carrick was the best English player in an interview with BT Sport in December 2014, shortly after Carrick had been named as Manchester United's new vice-captain by Louis van Gaal. On 15 March 2015, he provided an assist for Marouane Fellaini's goal, and scored his first goal in more than a year during a 3–0 victory against his former club Tottenham Hotspur. Five days later, Carrick signed a new one-year extension to his contract, lengthening his Manchester United career to 10 seasons. Carrick made his 400th Manchester United appearance on 2 January 2016 in the 2–1 home win over Swansea City, coming on as a stoppage-time substitute. On 21 May, he played the full 120 minutes in United's FA Cup win as United beat Crystal Palace 2–1 after extra time. This victory completed his collection of every domestic honour in the English game. He signed a new one-year contract extension on 9 June 2016.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick scored his first goal of the 2016–17 season on 21 September with United's first in a 3–1 away victory over Northampton Town in the third round of the EFL Cup. Carrick became a key member of José Mourinho's team and his performances were highly recognised for his ability to control play, instil calmness and pass accurately. Mourinho also claimed that he wished Carrick was 10 years younger. In May 2017, Carrick extended his contract until June 2018. Eleven years of service to the club resulted in Carrick being granted a testimonial at the end of the 2016–17 season. Played at Old Trafford on 4 June 2017, the match was contested by a team representing Manchester United's 2008 Champions League-winning side and a team of all-stars selected by Carrick himself, managed by Sir Alex Ferguson and Harry Redknapp respectively. The match ended in a 2–2 draw with Carrick scoring from a 25-yard strike. The money raised from the game was distributed to Carrick's chosen charities. Following the departure of club captain Wayne Rooney from Manchester United in July 2017, Carrick was appointed as Rooney's replacement.


title: Michael Carrick

text: In November 2017, Carrick announced that he had undergone a procedure for an irregular heart rhythm after suffering dizziness during a match and in training. The medical treatment was successful and he returned to United's first-team squad as club captain. In January 2018, Carrick accepted an offer to join the club's first-team coaching staff after his retirement at the end of the 2017–18 season. He made his 464th and final appearance as a player for Manchester United in the last match of the league season against Watford at Old Trafford on 13 May, in which he helped create Marcus Rashford's game-winning goal as his side won 1–0. Carrick was substituted towards the end of the match to allow the fans to give him a standing ovation.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick was capped by the England national under-18 and under-21 teams before receiving his first call-up to the senior team in Sven-Göran Eriksson's first game in charge of England in February 2001. Despite being named in the 31-man squad to face Spain, he was an unused substitute in England's 3–0 victory on 28 February. Three months later he made his England debut, replacing David Beckham as a second-half substitute in a 4–0 friendly win over Mexico. His full debut came during their 2–1 victory over the United States on 28 May 2005. Three days later Carrick started again in a 3–2 victory over Colombia in the final game of their tour of the US. On 8 May 2006, Eriksson named Carrick in a 23-man provisional squad for the 2006 FIFA World Cup, eventually being named in the final 23-man squad for the tournament in Germany. He was an unused substitute for all three of England's Group B games as they advanced to the knockout stage. Carrick played just one game in the tournament, a 1–0 victory in the second round match against Ecuador on 25 June. The next game he was dropped to the bench for the quarter-final tie against Portugal, with Owen Hargreaves replacing him. The game ended goalless after extra time, Portugal won 3–1 in the subsequent penalty shootout and knocked England out of the World Cup.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick had been regularly overlooked by various England managers when it came to the central roles, with Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard generally being preferred. He started nine games under Sven-Göran Eriksson and his successor Steve McClaren. His last appearance under McClaren was in a 2–1 defeat at home to Germany in August 2007. Newly appointed manager Fabio Capello left Carrick out of his first England squad on 2 February 2008. During Capello's first year in charge of England Carrick was largely overlooked. However, he was named in Capello's squad for the game against the Czech Republic, but was forced to withdraw after sustaining an injury during Manchester United's game with Newcastle United. In November 2008, he returned to the squad for a friendly against Germany in Berlin. Starting alongside Gareth Barry in central midfield in England's 2–1 victory, he was named as Man of the Match by the BBC.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Despite playing just one game during England's 2010 World Cup qualification campaign, he was named in Capello's 30-man preliminary squad for the 2010 World Cup on 11 May 2010. He played 61 minutes of their 3–1 warm-up friendly win over Mexico before being replaced by Tom Huddlestone. On 2 June, Carrick was then named in the final 23-man squad to fly to South Africa for the tournament, before being given the squad number 22. During the World Cup Carrick failed to make it onto the pitch, remaining an unused member of the squad. England were eventually knocked out of the tournament as they lost 4–1 to Germany in their second round tie on 27 June. On 6 August, Alex Ferguson claimed Carrick would be out for two weeks with an ankle injury and would miss England's friendly against Hungary the following Wednesday. Capello left Carrick out of the subsequent England squad only to arrive at Wembley and see him play 79 minutes of the Community Shield match. Capello made a 'call me' sign as Carrick walked past his seat to collect the winner's medal.


title: Michael Carrick

text: In May 2012, England manager Roy Hodgson said he left Carrick out of the 23-man squad and the standby list for UEFA Euro 2012 because he had previously told The Football Association that he did not want to be a bit-part player, although he could help the team "in extremis". On 10 August, Carrick was recalled to the England squad by Hodgson for a friendly match against Italy on 15 August. He played the full 90 minutes in the 2–1 victory over the "Azzurri" in Switzerland and also took over the captain's armband from Frank Lampard for the final 20 minutes. On 7 September 2012, Carrick came on a half-time substitute in England's 5–0 2014 FIFA World Cup qualifier against Moldova. He then started against San Marino in another 5–0 win the following month. On 17 October 2012, Carrick partnered Steven Gerrard in central midfield in the away qualifier against Poland. On 26 March 2013, the partnership was renewed in England's qualifier against Montenegro in Podgorica. On 15 October 2013, Carrick started in England's final qualifier, a 2–0 home win against Poland, as the team qualified for the 2014 World Cup. In May 2014, Carrick was named on England's standby list for the 2014 FIFA World Cup after being omitted from the main 23-man squad travelling to Brazil.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Having not appeared since 2013, Carrick was named in the squad for the November 2014 matches with Slovenia and Scotland. However, on 12 November, he pulled out of the squad after sustaining a groin injury. On 27 March 2015, Carrick made his first appearance for England in 17 months, starting the 4–0 UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying defeat of Lithuania at Wembley Stadium. On 31 March 2015, Carrick made his 33rd appearance for the national team as a substitute for Manchester United teammate and defender Chris Smalling, performing impressively to help England earn a draw against Italy in an international friendly match. On 14 November 2015, Carrick suffered an ankle injury during a match against Spain and left the pitch on a stretcher. England went on to lose the game 2–0.


title: Michael Carrick

text: After retiring, Carrick became a coach at Manchester United and was given a position as part of the coaching staff with Kieran McKenna under Jose Mourinho's management, after the departure of Rui Faria. He worked with Mourinho until the latter's departure on the 18 December 2018 then working with Ole Gunnar Solskjær for the remainder of the 2018–19 season, the entirety of the 2019–20 and 2020–21 seasons, and for a segment of the 2021–22 season until Solskjær's departure at the club. On 21 November 2021, after Ole Gunnar Solskjær left his role as manager, Carrick was named caretaker manager. Carrick's first match in charge was an UEFA Champions League tie away at Villareal which United won thanks to late goals from Cristiano Ronaldo and a first United goal for Jadon Sancho, sealing United's place in the last-16 of the competition. Following a 3–2 victory against Arsenal, on 2 December, Carrick stepped down as first team coach and left Manchester United with immediate effect. During his three match reign as caretaker manager, he recorded two wins and one draw, with United also having drawn with Chelsea in his first league game as United manager.


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 24 October 2022, Carrick was appointed head coach of EFL Championship club Middlesbrough. Despite taking the lead, Middlesbrough lost Carrick’s first game in charge 2–1 away to Preston North End on 29 October.


title: Michael Carrick

text: On 7 December 2022, Carrick was nominated for the EFL Championship Manager of the Month award for November after his first calendar month in charge.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Despite playing as a deep-lying midfielder, Carrick did not rely on pace, stamina, physical attributes, box-to-box play and tackling like a typical ball-winning midfielder; instead, his intelligence and composure on reading of the game helped him to anticipate any attacking threats from the opposition team, most of the time by covering space and making interceptions. His distribution of the ball, vision, creativity, playmaking skills, crossing ability, and range of passing, among the best in comparison to other midfielders in Europe, was allied to an ability to dictate the tempo of the game, as well as initiate team attacks.


title: Michael Carrick

text: After his arrival at Manchester United in 2006, Carrick formed an effective partnership with Paul Scholes, with Carrick playing in a holding role and Scholes alongside him as a deep-seated playmaker. This midfield partnership contributed to a change towards a continental playing style embraced by manager Alex Ferguson and assistant Carlos Queiroz, which relied on passing and keeping possession in contrast to the more traditionally direct and all-action style of English football. His unassuming style, however, also led to a lack of attention from successive England national team managers in favour of all-action midfielders such as Frank Lampard and Steven Gerrard, a fact noted by Carrick's former club and national team captain Wayne Rooney.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick's intelligence and awareness were highlighted by former Manchester United manager Louis van Gaal, who labelled him his "trainer coach during the game". Furthermore, his importance to the team performance was constantly praised by former teammates Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, as well as European peers Xavi and Xabi Alonso. In 2015, "The Telegraph" included him at number one in their list of "The top 20 most under-rated footballers of all time," describing him as an "unassuming but highly intelligent and technically gifted deep-lying midfielder," who "has consistently performed well."


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick married Lisa Roughead, a Pilates instructor with a business degree, in Wymondham, Leicestershire on 16 June 2007. The couple started dating when they were both at school, and have a daughter, Louise, and a son, Jacey.


title: Michael Carrick

text: In October 2018, Carrick announced that he had suffered from depression for two years following the defeat in the 2009 UEFA Champions League Final.


title: Michael Carrick

text: Carrick has one brother, Graeme, who is four years younger. He was also at West Ham United but suffered several injuries, and has completed an MSc in Sport Coaching is currently an FA Regional Coach Mentor (North East & Yorkshire) after 7 years as an FA Skills Coach and a spell Coaching at Team Northumbria, after previously working at the Newcastle United Academy coaching the under-10s and under-16s.


title: Toshiba

text: , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, elevators and escalators, electronic components, semiconductors, hard disk drives (HDD), printers, batteries, lighting, as well as IT solutions such as quantum cryptography which has been in development at Cambridge Research Laboratory, Toshiba Europe, located in the United Kingdom, now being commercialised. It was one of the biggest manufacturers of personal computers, consumer electronics, home appliances, and medical equipment. As a semiconductor company and the inventor of flash memory, Toshiba had been one of the top 10 in the chip industry until its flash memory unit was spun off as Toshiba Memory, later Kioxia, in the late 2010s.


title: Toshiba

text: The Toshiba name is derived from its former name, Tokyo Shibaura Denki K.K. (Tokyo Shibaura Electric Co., Ltd) which in turn was a 1939 merger between Shibaura Seisaku-sho (founded in 1875) and Tokyo Denki (founded in 1890). The company name was officially changed to Toshiba Corporation in 1978. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, where it was a constituent of the Nikkei 225 and TOPIX 100 indices (leaving both in August 2018, but returned to the latter in 2021), and the Nagoya Stock Exchange.


title: Toshiba

text: A technology company with a long history and sprawling businesses, Toshiba is a household name in Japan and has long been viewed as a symbol of the country's technological prowess. Its reputation has since been affected following an accounting scandal in 2015 and the bankruptcy of subsidiary energy company Westinghouse in 2017, after which it was forced to shed a number of underperforming businesses, essentially eliminating the company's century-long presence in consumer markets.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba announced on 12 November 2021 that it would split into three separate companies, respectively focusing on infrastructure, electronic devices, and all other remaining assets; the latter would retain the Toshiba name. It expected to complete the plan by March 2024. But the plan was challenged by stockholders, and at an extraordinary general meeting on 24 March 2022, they rejected the plan. They also rejected an alternative plan put forward by a large institutional investor that would have had the company search for buyers among private equity firms.


title: Toshiba

text: was the first company established by Tanaka Hisashige (1799–1881), one of the most original and productive inventor-engineers during the Tokugawa / Edo period. Established on July 11, 1875, it was the first Japanese company to manufacture telegraph equipment. It also manufactured switches, and miscellaneous electrical and communications equipment.


title: Toshiba

text: The company was inherited by Tanaka's adopted son, and later became half of the present Toshiba company. Several people who worked at Tanaka Seisakusho or who received Tanaka's guidance at a Kubusho (Ministry of Industries) factory later became pioneers themselves. These included Miyoshi Shōichi who helped Fujioka make the first power generator in Japan and to establish a company, Hakunetsusha to make bulbs; Oki Kibatarō, the founder of the present Oki Denki (Oki Electric Industry); and Ishiguro Keizaburō, a co-founder of the present Anritsu.


title: Toshiba

text: After the demise of the founder in 1881 Tanaka Seisakusho became partly owned by General Electric and expanded into the production of torpedoes and mines at the request of the Imperial Japanese Navy, to become one of the largest manufacturing companies of the time. However, as the Navy started to use competitive bids and then build its own works, the demand decreased substantially and the company started to lose money. The main creditor to the company, Mitsui Bank, took over the insolvent company in 1893 and renamed it Shibaura Seisakusho (Shibaura Engineering Works).


title: Toshiba

text: was the new name given to Tanaka Seisakusho after it was declared insolvent in 1893 and taken over by Mitsui Bank.


title: Toshiba

text: In 1910, it formed a tie-up with General Electric (GE), which, in exchange for technology, acquired about a quarter of the shares of Shibaura. The relation with GE continued until the beginning of World War II and resumed in 1953 with GE's 24 percent shareholding in the successor company, Tokyo Shibaura Denki. This percentage decreased substantially since then.


title: Toshiba

text: was a company established by Shōichi Miyoshi and Fujioka Ichisuke, two of Japan's industrial pioneers during the Tokugawa / Edo period. It specialized in the manufacture of light bulbs.


title: Toshiba

text: The company was established in 1890 and started out by selling bulbs using bamboo filaments. However, following the opening up of trade with the West through the Unequal treaty, Hakunetsusha met with fierce competition from imports. Its bulb cost about 60 percent more than the imports and the quality was poorer. The company managed to survive with the booms after the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05, but afterward its financial position was precarious.


title: Toshiba

text: In 1905 the company was renamed Tokyo Denki (Tokyo Electric) and entered into a financial and technological collaboration with General Electric of the US. General Electric acquired 51 percent share of ownership, sent a vice president, and provided the technology for bulb-making. Production equipment was bought from GE and Tokyo Denki soon started selling its products with GE's trademark.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba was founded in 1939 by the merger of Shibaura Seisakusho and Tokyo Denki. The merger of Shibaura and Tokyo Denki created a new company called Tokyo Shibaura Denki (Tokyo Shibaura Electric) (). It was soon nicknamed Toshiba, but it was not until 1978 that the company was officially renamed Toshiba Corporation.


title: Toshiba

text: The group expanded rapidly, driven by a combination of organic growth and by acquisitions, buying heavy engineering, and primary industry firms in the 1940s and 1950s. Groups created include Toshiba Music Industries/Toshiba EMI (1960), Toshiba International Corporation (the 1970s) Toshiba Electrical Equipment (1974), Toshiba Chemical (1974), Toshiba Lighting and Technology (1989), Toshiba America Information Systems (1989) and Toshiba Carrier Corporation (1999).


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba is responsible for a number of Japanese firsts, including radar (1912), the TAC digital computer (1954), transistor television, color CRTs and microwave oven (1959), color video phone (1971), Japanese word processor (1978), MRI system (1982), laptop personal computer (1986), NAND EEPROM (1991), DVD (1995), the Libretto sub-notebook personal computer (1996) and HD DVD (2005).


title: Toshiba

text: In 1977, Toshiba acquired the Brazilian company Semp (Sociedade Eletromercantil Paulista), subsequently forming Semp Toshiba through the combination of the two companies' South American operations.


title: Toshiba

text: In 1987, Tocibai Machine, a subsidiary of Toshiba, was accused of illegally selling CNC milling machines used to produce very quiet submarine propellers to the Soviet Union in violation of the CoCom agreement, an international embargo on certain countries to COMECON countries. The Toshiba-Kongsberg scandal involved a subsidiary of Toshiba and the Norwegian company Kongsberg Vaapenfabrikk. The incident strained relations between the United States and Japan, and resulted in the arrest and prosecution of two senior executives, as well as the imposition of sanctions on the company by both countries. Senator John Heinz of Pennsylvania said "What Toshiba and Kongsberg did was ransom the security of the United States for $517 million."


title: Toshiba

text: In 2001, Toshiba signed a contract with Orion Electric, one of the world's largest OEM consumer video electronic makers and suppliers, to manufacture and supply finished consumer TV and video products for Toshiba to meet the increasing demand for the North American market. The contract ended in 2008, ending seven years of OEM production with Orion.


title: Toshiba

text: In December 2004, Toshiba quietly announced it would discontinue manufacturing traditional in-house cathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions. In 2005, Matsushita Toshiba Picture Display Co. Ltd. (a joint venture between Panasonic and Toshiba created in 2002) stopped production of CRTs at its factory in Horseheads, New York. A year later, in 2006, it stopped production at its Malaysian factory, following heavy losses. In 2006, Toshiba terminated sales of CRT TVs in Japan and production of in-house plasma TVs. To ensure its future competitiveness in the flat-panel digital television and display market, Toshiba has made a considerable investment in a new kind of display technology called SED. This technology, however, was never sold to the public, as it was not price-competitive with LCDs. Toshiba sold its share in SED Inc. to Canon after Nano-Proprietary, which owns several patents related to SED technology, claimed SED Inc. was not a subsidiary of Canon. Before World War II, Toshiba was a member of the Mitsui Group zaibatsu (family-controlled vertical monopoly). Today Toshiba is a member of the Mitsui keiretsu (a set of companies with interlocking business relationships and shareholdings), and still has preferential arrangements with Mitsui Bank and the other members of the keiretsu. Membership in a keiretsu has traditionally meant loyalty, both corporate and private, to other members of the keiretsu or allied keiretsu. This loyalty can extend as far as the beer the employees consume, which in Toshiba's case is Asahi.


title: Toshiba

text: In July 2005, BNFL confirmed it planned to sell Westinghouse Electric Company, then estimated to be worth $1.8 billion (£1 billion). The bid attracted interest from several companies including Toshiba, General Electric and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and when the "Financial Times" reported on 23 January 2006 that Toshiba had won the bid, it valued the company's offer at $5 billion (£2.8 billion). The sale of Westinghouse by the Government of the United Kingdom surprised many industry experts, who questioned the wisdom of selling one of the world's largest producers of nuclear reactors shortly before the market for nuclear power was expected to grow substantially; China, the United States and the United Kingdom were all expected to invest heavily in nuclear power. The acquisition of Westinghouse for $5.4 billion was completed on 17 October 2006, with Toshiba obtaining a 77 percent share, and partners The Shaw Group a 20 percent share and Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries Co. Ltd. a 3 percent share.


title: Toshiba

text: In late 2007, Toshiba took over from Discover Card as the sponsor of the top-most screen of One Times Square in New York City. It displays the iconic 60-second New Year's countdown on its screen, as well as messages, greetings, and advertisements for the company. The sponsor of the New Year's countdown was taken over by Capital One on 31 December 2018.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba announced on 16 May 2011, that it had agreed to acquire all of the shares of the Swiss-based advanced-power-meter maker Landis+Gyr for $2.3 billion. In 2010 the company released a series of television models including the WL768, YL863, VL963 designed in collaboration with Danish designer Timothy Jacob Jensen.


title: Toshiba

text: In April 2012, Toshiba agreed to acquire IBM's point-of-sale business for $850 million, making it the world's largest vendor of point-of-sale systems.


title: Toshiba

text: In July 2012, Toshiba was accused of fixing the prices of LCD panels in the United States at a high level. While such claims were denied by Toshiba, they agreed to settle alongside several other manufacturers for a total of $571 million.


title: Toshiba

text: In December 2013, Toshiba completed its acquisition of Vijai Electricals Limited plant at Hyderabad and set up its own base for manufacturing of transmission and distribution products (transformers and switchgears) under the Social Infrastructure Group in India as Toshiba Transmission & Distribution Systems (India) Private Limited.


title: Toshiba

text: In January 2014, Toshiba completed its acquisition of OCZ Storage Solutions. OCZ Technology stock was halted on 27 November 2013. OCZ then stated they expected to file a petition for bankruptcy and that Toshiba Corporation had expressed interest in purchasing its assets in a bankruptcy proceeding. On 2 December 2013, OCZ announced Toshiba had agreed to purchase nearly all of OCZ's assets for $35 million. The deal was completed on 21 January 2014 when the assets of OCZ Technology Group became a new independently operated subsidiary of Toshiba named OCZ Storage Solutions. OCZ Technology Group then changed its name to ZCO Liquidating Corporation; on 18 August 2014, ZCO Liquidating Corporation and its subsidiaries were liquidated. OCZ Storage Solutions was dissolved on 1 April 2016 and absorbed into Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc., with OCZ becoming a brand of Toshiba.


title: Toshiba

text: In March 2014, Toshiba sued SK Hynix, accusing the company of stealing technology of its NAND flash memory. In the late same year, the two companies settled with a deal in which SK Hynix pays US$278 million to Toshiba. Toshiba had sued Hynix in the early 2000s for patent infringement.


title: Toshiba

text: In October 2014, Toshiba and United Technologies agreed a deal to expand their joint venture outside Japan.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba first announced in May 2015 that it was investigating an accounting scandal and it might have to revise its profits for the previous three years. On 21 July 2015, CEO Hisao Tanaka announced his resignation amid an accounting scandal that he called "the most damaging event for our brand in the company's 140-year history". Profits had been inflated by $1.2 billion over the previous seven years. Eight other senior officials also resigned, including the two previous CEOs. Chairman Masashi Muromachi was appointed acting CEO. Following the scandal, Toshiba Corp. was removed from a stock index showcasing Japan's best companies. That was the second reshuffle of the index, which picks companies with the best operating income, return on equity and market value.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba announced in early 2015 that they would stop making televisions in its own factories. From 2015 onward, Toshiba televisions will be made by Compal for the U.S., or by Vestel and other manufacturers for the European market.


title: Toshiba

text: In September 2015, Toshiba shares fell to their lowest point in two and a half years. The firm said in a statement that its net losses for the quarterly period were 12.3 billion yen ($102m; £66m). The company noted poor performances in its televisions, home appliances and personal computer businesses.


title: Toshiba

text: In December 2015, Muromachi said the episode had wiped about $8 billion off Toshiba's market value. He forecast a record 550 billion yen (about US$4.6 billion) annual loss and warned the company would have to overhaul its TV and computer businesses. Toshiba would not be raising funds for two years, he said. The next week, a company spokesperson announced Toshiba would seek 300 billion yen ($2.5 billion) in 2016, taking the company's indebtedness to more than 1 trillion yen (about $8.3 billion).


title: Toshiba

text: In January 2016, Toshiba's security division unveiled a new bundle of services for schools that use its surveillance equipment. The program, which is intended for both K-12 and higher education, includes education discounts, alerts, and post-warranty support, among other features, on its IP-based security gear.


title: Toshiba

text: In March 2016, Toshiba was preparing to start construction on a cutting-edge new semiconductor plant in Japan that would mass-produce chips based on the ultra-dense flash variant. Toshiba expected to spend approximately 360 billion yen, or $3.2 billion, on the project through May 2019.


title: Toshiba

text: In April 2016, Toshiba recalled 100,000 faulty laptop lithium-ion batteries, which were made by Panasonic, that can overheat, posing burn and fire hazards to consumers, according to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission. Toshiba first announced the recall in January and said it was recalling the batteries in certain Toshiba Notebook computers sold since June 2011.


title: Toshiba

text: In May 2016, it was announced that Satoshi Tsunakawa, the former head of Toshiba's medical equipment division, was named CEO. This appointment came after the accounting scandal that occurred.


title: Toshiba

text: In September 2016, Toshiba announced the first wireless power receiver IC using the Qi 1.2.2 specification, developed in association with the Wireless Power Consortium.


title: Toshiba

text: A Chinese electrical appliance corporation Midea Group bought a controlling 80.1% stake in the Toshiba Home Appliances Group.


title: Toshiba

text: In late December 2016, the management of Toshiba requested an "urgent press briefing" to announce that the newly-found losses in the Westinghouse subsidiary from Vogtle Electric Generating Plant nuclear plant construction would lead to a write-down of several billion dollars, bankrupting Westinghouse and threatening to bankrupt Toshiba. The exact amount of the liabilities was unavailable.


title: Toshiba

text: In January 2017, a person with direct knowledge of the matter reported that the company plans on making its memory chip division a separate business, to save Toshiba from bankruptcy.


title: Toshiba

text: In February 2017, Toshiba revealed unaudited details of a 390 billion yen ($3.4 billion) corporate wide loss, mainly arising from its majority owned US based Westinghouse nuclear construction subsidiary which was written down by 712 billion yen ($6.3 billion). On 14 February 2017, Toshiba delayed filing financial results, and chairman Shigenori Shiga, formerly chairman of Westinghouse, resigned.


title: Toshiba

text: Construction delays, regulatory changes and cost overruns at Westinghouse-built nuclear facilities Vogtle units 3 and 4 in Waynesboro, Georgia and VC Summer units 2 and 3 in South Carolina, were cited as the main causes of the dramatic fall in Toshiba's financial performance and collapse in the share price. Fixed priced construction contracts negotiated by Westinghouse with Georgia Power left Toshiba with uncharted liabilities that resulted in the sale of key Toshiba operating subsidiaries to secure the company's future.


title: Toshiba

text: Westinghouse filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on 29 March 2017. Toshiba was estimated to have 9 billion dollar annual net loss.


title: Toshiba

text: On 11 April 2017, Toshiba filed unaudited quarterly results. Auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers had not signed of the accounts because of uncertainties at Westinghouse. Toshiba stated that "substantial doubt about the company's ability to continue as a going concern exists". On 25 April 2017, Toshiba announced its decision to replace its auditor after less than a year. Earlier in April, the company filed twice-delayed business results without an endorsement from auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).


title: Toshiba

text: On 20 September 2017, Toshiba's board approved a deal to sell its memory chip business to a group led by Bain Capital for US$18 billion, with financial backing by companies such as Apple, Dell Technologies, Hoya Corporation, Kingston Technology, Seagate Technology, and SK Hynix. The newly independent company was named Toshiba Memory Corporation, and then renamed Kioxia.


title: Toshiba

text: On 15 November 2017, Hisense reached a deal to acquire 95% of Toshiba Visual Solutions (televisions) for US$113.6 million.


title: Toshiba

text: Later that month, the company announced that it would pull out of its long-standing sponsorships of the Japanese television programs "Sazae-san", "Nichiyō Gekijo", and the video screens topping out One Times Square in New York City. The company cited that the value of these placements were reduced by its exit from consumer-oriented lines of business.


title: Toshiba

text: On 6 April 2018, Toshiba announced the completion of the sale of Westinghouse's holding company to Brookfield Business Partners and some partners for $4.6 billion.


title: Toshiba

text: In June 2018, Toshiba sold 80.1% of its Client Solutions (personal computers) business unit to Sharp for $36m, with an option allowing Sharp to buy the remaining 19.9% share. Sharp renamed the business to Dynabook, a brand name Toshiba had used in Japan, and started releasing products under that name. On June 30, 2020, Sharp exercised its option to acquire the remaining 19.9% percent of Dynabook shares from Toshiba.


title: Toshiba

text: In May 2019, Toshiba announced that it would put non-Japanese investors on its board for the first time in nearly 80 years. In November, the company transferred its logistics service business to SBS Group.


title: Toshiba

text: In January 2020, Toshiba unveiled its plan to launch quantum cryptography services by September the same year. It also announced a number of other technologies waiting for commercialization, including an affordable solid-state Lidar based on silicon photomultiplier, high-capacity hydrogen fuel cells, and a proprietary computer algorithm named "Simulated Bifurcation Algorithm" that mimics quantum computing, of which it plans to sell access to other parties such as financial institutions, social networking services, etc. The company claims the algorithm running on a desktop PC at room temperature environment is capable of surpassing the performance of similar algorithms running on existing supercomputers, even that of laser-based quantum computer when a specialized setting is given. It has been added to quantum computing services offered by major cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure.


title: Toshiba

text: In October 2020, Toshiba made a decision to pull out of the system LSI business citing mounted losses while reportedly mulling on the sale of its semiconductor fabs as well. In April 2021, CVC Capital Partners made a takeover offer.


title: Toshiba

text: On November 12, 2021, Toshiba announced that it would split into three separate companies. Two of the companies will respectively focus on infrastructure and electronic devices; the third, which will retain the Toshiba name, would manage the 40.6% stake in Kioxia and all other remaining assets. The company expects to complete the plan by March 2024. Toshiba announced in February 2022 that it plans to split into two companies instead after the original proposal proved unpopular with shareholders.


title: Toshiba

text: As of 2012, Toshiba had 39 R&D facilities worldwide, which employed around 4,180 people, and was organized into four main business groupings: the Digital Products Group, the Electronic Devices Group, the Home Appliances Group and the Social Infrastructure Group. In the year ended 31 March 2012, Toshiba had total revenues of , of which 25.2 percent was generated by the Digital Products Group, 24.5 percent by the Electronic Devices Group, 8.7 percent by the Home Appliances Group, 36.6 percent by the Social Infrastructure Group and 5 percent by other activities. In the same year, 45 percent of Toshiba's sales were generated in Japan and 55 percent in the rest of the world.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba invested a total of in R&D in the year ended 31 March 2012, equivalent to 5.2 percent of sales. Toshiba registered a total of 2,483 patents in the United States in 2011, the fifth-largest number of any company (after IBM, Samsung Electronics, Canon and Panasonic).


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba has had a range of products and services, including air conditioners, consumer electronics (including televisions and DVD and Blu-ray players), control systems (including air-traffic control systems, railway systems, security systems and traffic control systems), electronic point of sale equipment, elevators and escalators, home appliances (including refrigerators and washing machines), IT services, lighting, materials and electronic components, medical equipment (including CT and MRI scanners, ultrasound equipment and X-ray equipment), office equipment, business telecommunication equipment personal computers, semiconductors, power systems (including electricity turbines, fuel cells and nuclear reactors) power transmission and distribution systems, and TFT displays.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba had played a critical role in the development and proliferation of DVD. On 19 February 2008, Toshiba announced that it would be discontinuing its HD DVD storage format, the successor of DVD, following defeat in a format war against Blu-ray. The HD DVD format had failed after most of the major US film studios backed the Blu-ray format, which was developed by Sony, Panasonic, Philips and Pioneer Corporation. Conceding the abandonment of HD DVD, Toshiba's president, Atsutoshi Nishida said "We concluded that a swift decision would be best [and] if we had continued, that would have created problems for consumers, and we simply had no chance to win".


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba continued to supply retailers with machines until the end of March 2008, and continued to provide technical support to the estimated one million people worldwide who owned HD DVD players and recorders. Toshiba announced a new line of stand-alone Blu-ray players as well as drives for PCs and laptops, and subsequently joined the BDA, the industry body which oversees the development of the Blu-ray format.


title: Toshiba

text: REGZA (Real Expression Guaranteed by Amazing Architecture) is a unified television brand owned and manufactured by Toshiba. In 2010 REGZA name disappeared from the North American market, and from March 2015 new TVs carrying the Toshiba name are designed and produced by Compal Electronics, a Taiwanese company, to which Toshiba has licensed its name. REGZA is also used in Android-based smartphones that were developed by Fujitsu Toshiba Mobile Communications.


title: Toshiba

text: In October 2010, Toshiba unveiled the Toshiba Regza GL1 21" LED-backlit LCD TV glasses-free 3D prototype at CEATEC 2010. This system supports 3D capability without glasses (utilizing an integral imaging system of 9 parallax images with a vertical lenticular sheet). The retail product was released in December 2010.


title: Toshiba

text: 4K Ultra HD (3840×2160p) televisions provides four times the resolution of 1080p Full HD televisions. Toshiba's 4K HD LED televisions are powered by a CEVO 4K Quad + dual-core processor.


title: Toshiba

text: In October 2014, Toshiba released the Chromebook 2, a new version with a thinner profile and a much-improved display. The Chromebook runs exclusively on ChromeOS and gives users free Google Drive storage and access to a collection of apps and extensions at the Chrome Web Store. Toshiba initialized process of divestment of the personal computer and laptop business, Toshiba Client Solutions, in 2018 with sale of 80.1% of shares to Sharp Corporation. Eventually Toshiba fully exited from the personal computing market in June 2020, transferring the remaining 19.9% shares in Toshiba Client Solutions (since being renamed to Dynabook Inc.) to Sharp. Divested personal computing business of Toshiba has adopted Dynabook name after one of its product lines and a concept of a computer for children.


title: Toshiba

text: In the 1980s, a Toshiba team led by Fujio Masuoka invented flash memory, both NOR and NAND types. In March 2015, Toshiba announced the development of the first 48-layer, three-dimensional flash memory. The new flash memory is based on a vertical stacking technology that Toshiba calls BiCS (Bit Cost Scaling), stores two bits of data per transistor, and can store 128Gbits (16GB) per chip. This allowed flash memory to keep scaling up the capacity as Moore's Law was considered to be obsolete. Toshiba's memory division was spun off as Toshiba Memory Corporation, now Kioxia.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba has been judged as making "low" efforts to lessen its impact on the environment. In November 2012, they came second from the bottom in Greenpeace's 18th edition of the Guide to Greener Electronics that ranks electronics companies according to their policies on products, energy, and sustainable operations. Toshiba received 2.3 of a possible 10 points, with the top company (WIPRO) receiving 7.1 points. "Zero" scores were received in the categories "Clean energy policy advocacy", "Use of recycled plastics in products" and "Policy and practice on sustainable sourcing of fibres for paper".


title: Toshiba

text: In 2010, Toshiba reported that all of its new LCD TVs comply with the Energy Star standards and 34 models exceed the requirements by 30% or more.


title: Toshiba

text: Toshiba also partnered with China's Tsinghua University in 2008 in order to form a research facility to focus on energy conservation and the environment. The new Toshiba Energy and Environment Research Center is located in Beijing where forty students from the university will work to research electric power equipment and new technologies that will help stop the global warming process. Through this partnership, Toshiba hopes to develop products that will better protect the environment and save China. This contract between Tsinghua University and Toshiba originally began in October 2007 when they signed an agreement on joint energy and environment research. The projects that they conduct work to reduce car pollution and to create power systems that don't negatively affect the environment.


title: Toshiba

text: On 28 December 1970 Toshiba began the construction of unit 3 of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant which was damaged in the Fukushima I nuclear accidents on 14 March 2011. In April 2011, CEO Norio Sasaki declared nuclear energy would "remain as a strong option" even after the Fukushima I nuclear accidents.


title: Toshiba

text: In late 2013, Toshiba (Japan) entered the solar power business in Germany, installing PV systems on apartment buildings.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: Satyameva Jayate 2 is a 2021 Indian Hindi-language vigilante action crime film written and directed by Milap Zaveri with production by T-Series and Emmay Entertainment. Based on the fight against injustice and misuse of power, it is an official spiritual sequel of the 2018 film "Satyameva Jayate" and stars John Abraham in a triple role alongside Divya Khosla Kumar, Rajeev Pillai and Anup Soni in important characters. The release date was postponed due to rise in COVID-19 cases. The film released on 25 November 2021. Unlike the original, it was a major commercial failure.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: Satya Balram Azad is the home minister in a coalition government in Uttar Pradesh. He tries to pass an anti-corruption bill in the assembly but his own alliance partners oppose. Interestingly, one of the MLA who votes against the bill is Satya's wife, Vidya Azad. She is the daughter of Chandra Prakash, the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh. Meanwhile, the doctors in a government hospital in the state go on strike. A mother pleads them to treat her daughter who has met with an accident. The doctor leading the strike refuses. The victim dies in front of the protesting doctors and media. The same night, a vigilante, kills the doctor leading the strike in an act of revenge. His death leads to the strike being withdrawn. The vigilante becomes an overnight hero. Chandra Prakash is not impressed and he tells DCP Upadhyaya to find the culprit. The DCP hands over the case to Jay Balram Azad, twin brother of Satya Balram Azaad. On the other hand, another scandal rocks the state as many children fall ill after consuming a meal in a Madrasa. In the government hospital where they are admitted, there's shortage of oxygen cylinders. Hence, 40 of those kids die. Satya finds out that the spoilt foodgrains were supplied by a relative of Tripathi. And the one responsible to supply oxygen in the government hospital is a close aide of Shankar Prasad. Both Tripathi and Shankar are from the alliance party and they threaten to withdraw support when Satya confronts them. It now comes to light that the vigilante is none other than Satya. He now kills both Tripathi and Shankar. A few days later, a third incident occurs as a flyover in the state collapses. The contractor of the flyover, Madan Lal Joshi refuses to take responsibility. Jay and others conclude that he's going to get killed by the vigilante. What happens next forms the rest of the film.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: Principal photography for "Satyameva Jayate 2" commenced on 20 October 2020 in Lucknow, before moving to Mumbai and Raebareli. Filming wrapped up in the last week of January 2021 in Mumbai.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: The film's music was composed by Arko, Rochak Kohli, Tanishk Bagchi, Payal Dev and Jass Manak while lyrics written by Manoj Muntashir, Rashmi Virag, Tanishk Bagchi and Jass Manak.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: The first song ""Meri Zindagi Hai Tu"" is remake from Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's song with same name. Lyrics by Nasir Kazmi.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: As of April 2021, the release date of film has been postponed due to rise in COVID-19 cases. Finally, film was released on 25 November 2021.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: "Satyameva Jayate 2" earned 3.22 crore at the box office on its opening day. On the second day, the film collected 1.92 crore. On the third day, the film collected 2.12 crore. On the fourth day, the film collected 2.50 crore, with the total domestic opening weekend collection becoming 9.76 crore.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: The film received negative reviews from critics. "Bollywood Hungama" gave the film a rating of 4/5 and wrote, ‘‘"Satyameva Jayate 2" is a power packed mass entertainer with entertaining moments and bravura performance by John Abraham’’. Hiren Kotwani of "The Times of India" gave the film a rating of 3/5 and wrote, ‘‘If you enjoy the massy masala fare of the bygone era and are willing to take on thrice as much of John Abraham in one frame, you can go indulge in this one’’. Murtuza Nullwala of "Eastern Eye" gave the film a rating of 2/5 and wrote, ‘‘"Satyameva Jayate 2" is an outdated film and doesn’t entertain much’’. Anupama Chopra of "Film Companion" wrote, ‘‘"Satyameva Jayate 2" starts with a visual of the Tricolor and then over the next 138 minutes, the film batters us with ear-splitting background music, grotesque visuals, feeble dialogues that are desperate to land punches and superbly hammy acting’’. Sonil Dedhia of "News 18" criticized the film by calling its script ‘‘Tacky’’ and wrote, ‘‘My biggest question is why did the producers decide to put their hard-earned money into this project when Zaveri is known to make the tackiest of films’’. Tatsam Mukherjee of "Firstpost" gave the film a rating of 0/5 and wrote, ‘‘"Satyamev Jayate 2" is an ugly exhibition of appeasement filmmaking, where a director is trying to tick off as many boxes of the audience he can appease, using the most tired tropes in the history of Hindi cinema’’.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: Shubhra Gupta from "The Indian Express" gave the film a rating of 0.5/5 and wrote, ‘‘Abraham strides through this thing with his standard mix of fixed-frown-and-swinging-fists. Only once or twice does he do the bare-bodied superhero who can take on all comers with a teeny dimpled nudge-wink. The rest is a string of tired stereotypes and bad story-telling, refreshing the dangerous idea of justice being doled out by men arrogating to themselves the power to judge, jury, executioner’’. Saibal Chatterjee from "NDTV" gave the film a rating of 1/5 and criticized the soundtrack, dialogues and the characters of the film by writing, ‘‘The soundtrack is shoddy and ear-splitting. The dialogues are clearly the handiwork of a third-rate rhymester. The characters do not speak, they howl’’. He further stated, ‘‘The shoddy cinematic qualities are only one aspect of "Satyameva Jayate 2"; The film also peddles dangerous ideas about instant justice and patriotism. No Hindi film in living memory has misused the tricolour as brazenly as "Satyameva Jayate 2" does; The film invokes the national flag for the purpose of justifying extra-judicial means of punishing the corrupt. In the bargain, all that it does is sully the fair reputation of the world's largest democracy’’. Monika Rawal Kukreja of "Hindustan Times" called "Satyameva Jayate 2" a ‘‘loud, screeching, bloated mess’’ and a ‘‘film no one should have to tolerate’’. She wrote, ‘‘There's not even a single person that's talking in this film. Everyone is shouting, screaming and yelling at the top of their lungs, leaving your eardrums craving for some calm. "Satyameva Jayate 2" is a shoddy and sloppy depiction of jingoism and vigilantism at its most shameless’’.


title: Satyameva Jayate 2

text: Stutee Ghosh from "The Quint" gave the film a rating of 1/5 and wrote, ‘‘"Satyameva Jayate 2" is all noise and no substance’’. She further stated, ‘‘"Satyameva Jayate 2" is mind-bogglingly, excruciatingly loud, on-the-nose, screechy and melodramatic’’. Syed Firdaus Ashraf of "Rediff" gave the film a rating of 1.5/5 and criticized its script by stating, ‘‘"Satyamev Jayate 2" has a dated circa 1990s script which won't find acceptance with today's generations’’. He further wrote, ‘‘The only saving grace in the film is a passable item song Kusu Kusu performed by Nora Fatehi’’. Anuj Kumar from "The Hindu" wrote, ‘‘Despite being soaked in blood and tears, the cases of injustice have been so mechanically handled that they fail to evoke any empathy for the characters; So much so that even references to the secular fabric of society and women’s safety sound gratuitous’’. Nandini Ramnath from "Scroll" wrote, ‘‘The director Zaveri throws everything in his powers at his barren canvas. The dialogue is screamed rather than spoken and competes with the blaring background music. By shooting the same scene from ten angles and deploying rapid zooms and editing gimmicks, Zaveri hopes that the rampant tackiness will not be apparent’’.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), derisively nicknamed the ""Star Wars" program", was a proposed missile defense system intended to protect the United States from attack by ballistic strategic nuclear weapons (intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles). The concept was announced on March 23, 1983, by President Ronald Reagan, a vocal critic of the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), which he described as a "suicide pact". Reagan called upon American scientists and engineers to develop a system that would render nuclear weapons obsolete.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was set up in 1984 within the US Department of Defense to oversee development. A wide array of advanced weapon concepts, including lasers, particle beam weapons and ground- and space-based missile systems were studied, along with various sensor, command and control, and high-performance computer systems that would be needed to control a system consisting of hundreds of combat centers and satellites spanning the entire globe and involved in a very short battle. The United States holds a significant advantage in the field of comprehensive advanced missile defense systems through decades of extensive research and testing; a number of these concepts and obtained technologies and insights were transferred to subsequent programs.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Under the SDIO's Innovative Sciences and Technology Office, headed by physicist and engineer Dr. James Ionson, the investment was predominantly made in basic research at national laboratories, universities, and in industry; these programs have continued to be key sources of funding for top research scientists in the fields of high-energy physics, supercomputing/computation, advanced materials, and many other critical science and engineering disciplines and funding which indirectly supports other research work by top scientists.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In 1987, the American Physical Society concluded that the technologies being considered were decades away from being ready for use, and at least another decade of research was required to know whether such a system was even possible. After the publication of the APS report, SDI's budget was repeatedly cut. By the late 1980s, the effort had been re-focused on the "Brilliant Pebbles" concept using small orbiting missiles not unlike a conventional air-to-air missile, which was expected to be much less expensive to develop and deploy.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: SDI was controversial in some sectors, and was criticized for threatening to destabilize the MAD-approach potentially rendering the Soviet nuclear arsenal useless and to possibly re-ignite "an offensive arms race". Through declassified papers of American intelligence agencies the wider implications and effects of the program were examined and revealed that due to the potential neutralization of its arsenal and resulting loss of a balancing power factor, SDI was a cause of grave concern for the Soviet Union and her primary successor state Russia. By the early 1990s, with the Cold War ending and nuclear arsenals being rapidly reduced, political support for SDI collapsed. SDI officially ended in 1993, when the Clinton Administration redirected the efforts towards theatre ballistic missiles and renamed the agency the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO).


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In 2019, space-based interceptor development resumed for the first time in 25 years with President Trump's signing of the National Defense Authorization Act. The program is currently managed by the Space Development Agency (SDA) as part of the new National Defense Space Architecture (NDSA) envisioned by Michael D. Griffin. Early development contracts were awarded to L3Harris and SpaceX. CIA Director Mike Pompeo called for additional funding to achieve a full-fledged “Strategic Defense Initiative for our time, the SDI II".


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: The US Army had considered the issue of ballistic missile defense (BMD) as early as late in World War II. Studies on the topic suggested attacking a V-2 rocket would be difficult because the flight time was so short that it would leave little time to forward information through command and control networks to the missile batteries that would attack them. Bell Labs pointed out that although longer-range missiles flew much faster, their longer flight times would address the timing issue and their very high altitudes would make long-range detection by radar easier.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: This led to a series of projects including Nike Zeus, Nike-X, Sentinel and ultimately the Safeguard Program, all aimed at deploying a nationwide defensive system against attacks by Soviet ICBMs. The reason for so many programs was the rapidly changing strategic threat; the Soviets claimed to be producing missiles "like sausages", and ever-more missiles would be needed to defend against this growing fleet. Low-cost countermeasures like radar decoys required additional interceptors to counter. An early estimate suggested one would have to spend $20 on defense for every $1 the Soviets spent on offense. The addition of MIRV in the late 1960s further upset the balance in favor of offense systems. This cost-exchange ratio was so favorable that it appeared the only thing building a defense would do would be to cause an arms race.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: When initially faced with this problem, Dwight D. Eisenhower asked ARPA to consider alternative concepts. Their Project Defender studied all sorts of systems, before abandoning most of them to concentrate on Project BAMBI. BAMBI used a series of satellites carrying interceptor missiles that would attack the Soviet ICBMs shortly after launch. This "boost phase" intercept rendered MIRV impotent; a successful attack would destroy all of the warheads. Unfortunately, the operational cost of such a system would be enormous, and the US Air Force continually rejected such concepts. Development was cancelled in 1963.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Through this period, the entire topic of BMD became increasingly controversial. Early deployment plans were met with little interest, but by the late 1960s, public meetings on the Sentinel system were met by thousands of angry protesters. After thirty years of effort, only one such system would be built; a single base of the original Safeguard system became operational in April 1975, only to shut down in February 1976.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: A Soviet military A-35 anti-ballistic missile system was deployed around Moscow to intercept enemy ballistic missiles targeting the city or its surrounding areas. The A-35 was the only Soviet ABM system allowed under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In development since the 1960s and in operation from 1971 until the 1990s, it featured the nuclear-tipped A350 exoatmospheric interceptor missile.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: George Shultz, Reagan's secretary of state, suggested that a 1967 lecture by physicist Edward Teller (the so-called "father of the hydrogen bomb") was an important precursor to SDI. In the lecture, Teller talked about the idea of defending against nuclear missiles using nuclear weapons, principally the W65 and W71, with the latter being a contemporary enhanced thermal/X-ray device used actively on the Spartan missile in 1975. Held at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the 1967 lecture was attended by Reagan shortly after he became the governor of California.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Development of laser weapons in the Soviet Union began in 1964–1965. Though classified at the time, a detailed study on a Soviet space-based laser system began no later than 1976 as the "Skif", a 1 MW Carbon dioxide laser along with the anti-satellite "Kaskad", an in-orbit missile platform.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: A revolver cannon (Rikhter R-23) was mounted on the 1974 Soviet Salyut 3 space station, a satellite that successfully test fired its cannon in orbit.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In 1979, Teller contributed to a Hoover Institution publication where he claimed that the US would be facing an emboldened USSR due to their work on civil defense. Two years later at a conference in Italy, he made the same claims about their ambitions, but with a subtle change; now he claimed that the reason for their boldness was their development of new space-based weapons. According to the popular opinion at the time, and one shared by author Frances FitzGerald; there was absolutely no evidence that such research was being carried out. What had really changed was that Teller was now selling his latest nuclear weapon, the X-ray laser. Finding limited success in his efforts to get funding for the project, his speech in Italy was a new attempt to create a missile gap.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In 1979, Reagan visited the NORAD command base, Cheyenne Mountain Complex, where he was first introduced to the extensive tracking and detection systems extending throughout the world and into space; however, he was struck by their comments that while they could track the attack down to the individual targets, there was nothing one could do to stop it. Reagan felt that in the event of an attack this would place the president in a terrible position, having to choose between immediate counterattack or attempting to absorb the attack and then maintain an upper hand in the post-attack era. Shultz suggests that this feeling of helplessness, coupled with the defensive ideas proposed by Teller a decade earlier, combined to form the impetus of the SDI.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In the fall of 1979, at Reagan's request, Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham, the former head of the DIA, briefed Reagan on an updated BAMBI he called High Frontier, a missile shield composed of multi-layered ground- and space-based weapons that could track, intercept, and destroy ballistic missiles, which would theoretically be possible because of emerging technologies. It was designed to replace the MAD doctrine that Reagan and his aides described as a suicide pact. In September 1981, Graham formed a small, Virginia-based think tank called High Frontier to continue research on the missile shield. The Heritage Foundation provided High Frontier with space to conduct research, and Graham published a 1982 report entitled, "High Frontier: A New National Strategy" that examined in greater detail how the system would function.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Graham was not alone in considering the anti-missile problem. Since the late 1970s, a group had been pushing for the development of a high-powered chemical laser that would be placed in orbit and attack ICBMs, the Space Based Laser (SBL). More recently, new developments under Project Excalibur by Teller's "O-Group" at LLNL suggested that a single X-ray laser could shoot down dozens of missiles with a single shot. Graham organized a meeting space at The Heritage Foundation in Washington and the groups began to meet in order to present their plans to the incoming president.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: The group met with Reagan several times during 1981 and 1982, apparently with little effect, while the buildup of new offensive weaponry like the B-1 Lancer and MX missile continued; however, in early 1983, the Joint Chiefs of Staff met with the president and outlined the reasons why they might consider shifting some of the funding from the offensive side to new defensive systems.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: According to a 1983 US Interagency Intelligence Assessment, there was good evidence that in the late 1960s the Soviets were devoting serious thought to both explosive and non-explosive nuclear power sources for lasers.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: On March 23, 1983, Reagan announced SDI in a nationally televised speech, stating "I call upon the scientific community in this country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great talents to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete."


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In 1984, the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO) was established to oversee the program, which was headed by Lt. General James Alan Abrahamson USAF, a past Director of the NASA Space Shuttle program.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In addition to the ideas presented by the original Heritage group, a number of other concepts were also considered. Notable among these were particle-beam weapons, updated versions of nuclear shaped charges, and various plasma weapons. Additionally, the SDIO invested in computer systems, component miniaturization, and sensors.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Initially, the program focused on large scale systems designed to defeat a massive Soviet offensive strike. For this mission, SDIO concentrated almost entirely on the "high tech" solutions like lasers. Graham's proposal was repeatedly rejected by members of the Heritage group as well as within SDIO; when asked about it in 1985, Abrahamson suggested that the concept was underdeveloped and was not being considered.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: By 1986, many of the promising ideas were failing. Teller's X-ray laser, run under Project Excalibur, failed several key tests in 1986 and was soon being suggested solely for the anti-satellite role. The particle beam concept was demonstrated to basically not work, as was the case with several other concepts. Only the Space Based Laser seemed to have any hope of developing in the short term, but it was growing in size due to its fuel consumption.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: The American Physical Society (APS) had been asked by the SDIO to provide a review of the various concepts. They put together an all-star panel including many of the inventors of the laser, one of which was a Nobel laureate. Their initial report was presented in 1986, but due to classification issues it was not released to the public (in redacted form) until early 1987.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: The report considered all of the systems then under development, and concluded none of them were anywhere near ready for deployment. Specifically, they noted that all of the systems had to improve their energy output by at least 100 times, and in some cases as much as a million. In other cases, like Excalibur, they dismissed the concept entirely. Their summary stated simply:


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: We estimate that all existing candidates for directed energy weapons (DEWs) require two or more orders of magnitude, (powers of 10) improvements in power output and beam quality before they may be seriously considered for application in ballistic missile defense systems.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: In a best case scenario, they concluded that none of the systems could be deployed as an anti-missile system until into the next century.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Faced with this report, and the press storm that followed, the SDIO changed direction. Beginning in late 1986, Abrahamson proposed that SDI would be based on the system he had previously dismissed, a version of High Frontier now renamed the "Strategic Defense System, Phase I Architecture". The name implied that the concept would be replaced by more advanced systems in future phases.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Strategic Defense System, or SDS, was largely the Smart Rocks concept with an added layer of ground-based missiles in the US. These missiles were intended to attack the enemy warheads that the Smart Rocks had missed. In order to track them when they were below the radar horizon, SDS also added a number of additional satellites flying at low altitude that would feed tracking information to both the space-based "garages" as well as the ground-based missiles. The ground-based systems operational today trace their roots back to this concept.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: While SDS was being proposed, Lawrence Livermore National had introduced a new concept known as Brilliant Pebbles. This was essentially the combination of the sensors on the garage satellites and the low-orbit tracking stations on the Smart Rocks missile. Advancements in new sensors and microprocessors allowed all of this to be packaged into the volume of a small missile nose cone. Over the next two years, a variety of studies suggested that this approach would be cheaper, easier to launch and more resistant to counterattack, and in 1990 Brilliant Pebbles was selected as the baseline model for the SDS Phase 1.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: While SDIO and SDS was ongoing, the Warsaw Pact was rapidly disintegrating, culminating in the destruction of the Berlin Wall in 1989. One of the many reports on SDS considered these events, and suggested that the massive defense against a Soviet launch would soon be unnecessary, but that short and medium range missile technology would likely proliferate as the former Soviet Union disintegrated and sold off their hardware. One of the core ideas behind the GPALS system was that the Soviet Union would not always be assumed as the aggressor and the United States would not always be assumed as the target.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: Instead of a heavy defense aimed at ICBMs, this report suggested realigning the deployment for the Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS). Against such threats the Brilliant Pebbles would have limited performance, largely because the missiles fired for only a short period and the warheads did not rise high enough for them to be easily tracked by a satellite above them. To the original SDS, GPALS added a new mobile ground-based missile, and added more low-orbit satellites known as Brilliant Eyes to feed information to the Pebbles.


title: Strategic Defense Initiative

text: GPALS was approved by President George H.W. Bush in 1991. The new system would cut the proposed costs of the SDI system from $53 billion to $41 billion over a decade. Also, instead of making plans to protect against thousands of incoming missiles, the GPALS system sought to provide flawless protection from up to two hundred nuclear missiles. The GPALS system also was able to protect the United States from attacks coming from all different parts of the world.