title: Vicente del Bosque

text: In Spain's first game of the 2010 FIFA World Cup on 16 June, they lost 1–0 to Switzerland. Spain bounced back and won group H by winning the next two games. They faced Portugal in the Round of 16, winning 1–0, and defeated Paraguay in their quarter-final match, again by 1–0. Spain then defeated Germany in the semi-final on 7 July 2010, winning 1–0, allowing them to reach their first World Cup final. In the final against the Netherlands, he led his team to victory after a goal scored in extra time by Andrés Iniesta. Upon this triumph, he became the oldest coach to win the World Cup.


title: Vicente del Bosque

text: On 1 July 2012, del Bosque led Spain to victory at Euro 2012, hosted by Poland and Ukraine. Spain defeated Italy 4–0 in the final in Kyiv to win a second consecutive European championship.


title: Vicente del Bosque

text: In the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup held in Brazil, Spain advanced to the final, played against Brazil; but suffered a heavy 3–0 defeat. A goal from Neymar and a brace from Fred saw a heavy burden landing on del Bosque and his type of football tactics he used, tiki-taka.


title: Vicente del Bosque

text: In the 2014 FIFA World Cup, del Bosque and his team posted their worst finish in the finals since the World Cup in France in 1998 through being eliminated during the group stage following a 5–1 defeat to the Netherlands and a 2–0 defeat to Chile, despite a 3–0 win over Australia. The heavy opening defeat to the Netherlands marked the first time Spain had conceded 5 or more goals in an international game since a 6–2 defeat to Scotland in 1963, and only the second time they had conceded 5 or more goals in a World Cup game, having done so before in their 6–1 defeat to Brazil in 1950, which incidentally was also held in Brazil. The result was also the biggest margin of defeat by a defending champion at a World Cup. Furthermore, despite a 3–0 win rounding of their campaign following the 2–0 defeat to Chile, Spain's final standing of 23rd out of the 32 entered teams was their worst-ever finish at a World Cup. After this, he announced that he would resign as Spain's manager, but there was no reaction from the RSFF.


title: Vicente del Bosque

text: Del Bosque announced his intentions to resign as the Spain national team coach following UEFA Euro 2016. On 14 June 2015, he reached 100 matches as Spain coach in a UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying win over Belarus in Barysaw.


title: Vicente del Bosque

text: At the age of 65 and having achieved every available top-tier title, del Bosque announced his retirement from the sport on 30 June 2016.


title: Vicente del Bosque

text: Del Bosque married María de la Santísima Trinidad "Trini" López, and has three children – two sons and one daughter.


title: Urartu

text: Urartu (; Assyrian: ', Babylonian: "Urashtu", "Ararat") is a geographical region and Iron Age kingdom also known as the Kingdom of Van, centered around Lake Van in the historic Armenian Highlands. The kingdom rose to power in the mid-9th century BC, but went into gradual decline and was eventually conquered by the Iranian Medes in the early 6th century BC.


title: Urartu

text: Since its re-discovery in the 19th century, Urartu, which is commonly believed to have been at least partially Armenian-speaking, has played a significant role in Armenian nationalism.


title: Urartu

text: Assyrian inscriptions of Shalmaneser I (c. 1274 BC) first mention "Uruartri" as one of the states of Nairi, a loose confederation of small kingdoms and tribal states in the Armenian Highlands in the thirteenth to eleventh centuries BC which he conquered. Uruartri itself was in the region around Lake Van. The Nairi states were repeatedly subjected to further attacks and invasions by the Middle and Neo-Assyrian Empires, which lay to the south in Upper Mesopotamia ("the Jazirah") and northern Syria, especially under Tukulti-Ninurta I (c. 1240 BC), Tiglath-Pileser I (c. 1100 BC), Ashur-bel-kala (c. 1070 BC), Adad-nirari II (c. 900 BC), Tukulti-Ninurta II (c. 890 BC), and Ashurnasirpal II (883–859 BC).


title: Urartu

text: Urartu reemerged in Assyrian language inscriptions in the ninth century BC as a powerful northern rival to the Neo-Assyrian Empire. The Nairi states and tribes became unified kingdom under King Arame of Urartu (c. 860–843 BC), whose capitals, first at Sugunia and then at Arzashkun, were captured by the Assyrians under the Neo-Assyrian emperor Shalmaneser III.


title: Urartu

text: Urartologist Paul Zimansky speculated that the Urartians, or at least their ruling family after Arame, may have emigrated northwest into the Lake Van region from their religious capital of Musasir. According to Zimansky, the Urartian ruling class were few in number and governed over an ethnically, culturally, and linguistically diverse population. Zimansky went so far as to suggest that the kings of Urartu might have come from various ethnic backgrounds themselves.


title: Urartu

text: Assyria fell into a period of temporary stagnation for decades during the first half of the 8th century BC, which had aided Urartu's growth. Within a short time it became one of the largest and most powerful states in the Near East


title: Urartu

text: Sarduri I (c. 832–820 BC), the son of Lutipri, established a new dynasty and successfully resisted Assyrian attacks from the south led by Shalmaneser III, consolidated the military power of the state, and moved the capital to Tushpa (modern Van, Turkey, on the shore of Lake Van). His son, Ispuini (c. 820–800 BC) annexed the neighbouring state of Musasir, which became an important religious centre of the Urartian Kingdom, and introduced the cult of Ḫaldi.


title: Urartu

text: Ispuini was also the first Urartian king to write in the Urartian language (previous kings left records written in Akkadian). He made his son Sarduri II viceroy. After conquering Musasir, Ispuini was in turn attacked by Shamshi-Adad V. His co-regent and subsequent successor, Menua (c. 800–785 BC) also enlarged the kingdom greatly and left inscriptions over a wide area. During Ispuini's and Menua's joint rule, they shifted from referring to their territory as Nairi, instead opting for "Bianili".


title: Urartu

text: Urartu reached the highest point of its military might under Menua's son Argishti I (c. 785–760 BC), becoming one of the most powerful kingdoms of ancient Near East. Argishti I added more territories along the Aras and Lake Sevan, and frustrated Shalmaneser IV's campaigns against him. Argishti also founded several new cities, most notably Erebuni Fortress in 782 BC. 6600 prisoners of war from Hatti and Supani were settled in the new city.


title: Urartu

text: At its height, the Urartu kingdom stretched north beyond the Aras and Lake Sevan, encompassing present-day Armenia and even the southern part of present-day Georgia almost to the shores of the Black Sea; west to the sources of the Euphrates; east to present-day Tabriz, Lake Urmia, and beyond; and south to the sources of the Tigris.


title: Urartu

text: Tiglath-Pileser III of Assyria conquered Urartu in the first year of his reign (745 BC). There the Assyrians found horsemen and horses, tamed as colts for riding, that were unequalled in the south, where they were harnessed to Assyrian war-chariots.


title: Urartu

text: In 714 BC, the Urartian kingdom suffered heavily from Cimmerian raids and the campaigns of Sargon II. The main temple at Musasir was sacked, and the Urartian king Rusa I was crushingly defeated by Sargon II at Lake Urmia. He subsequently committed suicide in shame.


title: Urartu

text: Rusa's son Argishti II (714–685 BC) restored Urartu's position against the Cimmerians, however it was no longer a threat to Assyria and peace was made with the new king of Assyria Sennacherib in 705 BC. This, in turn, helped Urartu enter a long period of development and prosperity, which continued through the reign of Argishti's son Rusa II (685–645 BC).


title: Urartu

text: After Rusa II, however, Urartu grew weaker under constant attacks from Cimmerian and Scythian invaders. As a result, it became dependent on Assyria, as evidenced by Rusa II's son Sarduri III (645–635 BC) referring to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal as his "father".


title: Urartu

text: According to Urartian epigraphy, Sarduri III was followed by two kings—Rusa III (also known as Rusa Erimenahi) (620–609 BC) and his son, Rusa IV (609–590 or 585 BC). There is speculation that Rusa III's father, Erimena, may have been a king as well, possibly ruling from 635–620 BC, but little is known about him. It is possible that Rusa III established a new dynasty and that his father, Erimena, had not been king.


title: Urartu

text: Late during the 7th century BC (during or after Sarduri III's reign), Urartu was invaded by Scythians and their allies—the Medes. In 612 BC, the Median king Cyaxares the Great together with Nabopolassar of Babylon and the Scythians conquered Assyria after it had been irreversibly weakened by civil war. The Medes then took over the Urartian capital of Van in 590 BC, effectively ending the sovereignty of Urartu. However, some historians believe that Urartu survived until the middle of the 6th century BC and was eventually destroyed by Cyrus the Great. Many Urartian ruins of the period show evidence of destruction by fire.


title: Urartu

text: The Kingdom of Van was destroyed in 590 BC and by the late 6th century, the Satrapy of Armenia had replaced it. Little is known of what happened to the region between the fall of the Kingdom of Van and the appearance of the Satrapy of Armenia. According to historian Touraj Daryaee, during the Armenian rebellion against the Persian king Darius I in 521 BC, some of the personal and topographic names attested in connection with Armenia or Armenians were of Urartian origin, suggesting that Urartian elements persisted within Armenia after its fall. In the Behistun Inscription (c. 522 BC) refer to "Armenia" and "Armenians" as synonyms of "Urartu" and "Urartians". The toponym "Urartu" did not disappear, however, as the name of the province of "Ayrarat" in the center of the Kingdom of Armenia is believed to be its continuum.As the Armenian identity developed in the region, the memory of Urartu faded and disappeared. Parts of its history passed down as popular stories and were preserved in Armenia, as written by Movses Khorenatsi in the form of garbled legends in his 5th century book "History of Armenia", where he speaks of a first Armenian Kingdom in Van which fought wars against the Assyrians. Khorenatsi's stories of these wars with Assyria would help in the rediscovery of Urartu.


title: Urartu

text: According to Herodotus, the "Alarodians" ("Alarodioi") were part of the 18th Satrapy of the Achaemenid Empire and formed a special contingent in the grand army of Xerxes I. Some scholars have tried to link the Alarodians to Urartians, suggesting that "Alarodian" was a variation of the name "Urartian"/"Araratian". According to this theory, the Urartians of the 18th Satrapy were subsequently absorbed into the Armenian nation. Modern historians, however, have cast doubt on the Alarodian connection to the Urartians.


title: Urartu

text: In a study published in 2017, the complete mitochondrial genomes of 4 ancient skeletons from Urartu were analyzed alongside other ancient populations found in modern-day Armenia and Artsakh spanning 7,800 years. The study shows that modern-day Armenians are the people who have the least genetic distance from those ancient skeletons. As well, some scholars asserted that the Urartians are the most easily identifiable ancestors of the Armenians.


title: Urartu

text: Urartu comprised an area of approximately , extending from the Euphrates in the West to Lake Urmia in the East and from the Caucasus Mountains south towards the Zagros Mountains in northern Iraq. It was centred around Lake Van, which is located in present-day eastern Anatolia.


title: Urartu

text: At its apogee, Urartu stretched from the borders of northern Mesopotamia to the southern Caucasus, including present-day Turkey, Nakhchivan, Armenia and southern Georgia (up to the river Kura). Archaeological sites within its boundaries include Altintepe, Toprakkale, Patnos and Haykaberd. Urartu fortresses included Erebuni Fortress (present-day Yerevan), Van Fortress, Argishtihinili, Anzaf, Haykaberd, and Başkale, as well as Teishebaini (Karmir Blur, Red Mound) and others.


title: Urartu

text: Inspired by the writings of the medieval Armenian historian Movses Khorenatsi (who had described Urartian works in Van and attributed them to the legendary Ara the Beautiful and Queen Semiramis), the French scholar Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin suggested that his government send Friedrich Eduard Schulz, a German professor, to the Van area in 1827 on behalf of the French Oriental Society. Schulz discovered and copied numerous cuneiform inscriptions, partly in Assyrian and partly in a hitherto unknown language. Schulz also discovered the "Kelishin stele", bearing an Assyrian-Urartian bilingual inscription, located on the Kelishin pass on the current Iraqi-Iranian border. A summary account of his initial discoveries was published in 1828. Schulz and four of his servants were murdered by Kurds in 1829 near Başkale. His notes were later recovered and published in Paris in 1840. In 1828, the British Assyriologist Henry Creswicke Rawlinson had attempted to copy the inscription on the Kelishin stele, but failed because of the ice on the stele's front side. The German scholar R. Rosch made a similar attempt a few years later, but he and his party were attacked and killed.


title: Urartu

text: In the late 1840s Sir Austen Henry Layard examined and described the Urartian rock-cut tombs of Van Castle, including the Argishti chamber. From the 1870s, local residents began to plunder the Toprakkale ruins, selling its artefacts to European collections. In the 1880s this site underwent a poorly executed excavation organised by Hormuzd Rassam on behalf of the British Museum. Almost nothing was properly documented.


title: Urartu

text: The first systematic collection of Urartian inscriptions, and thus the beginning of Urartology as a specialized field dates to the 1870s, with the campaign of Sir Archibald Henry Sayce. The German engineer Karl Sester, discoverer of Mount Nemrut, collected more inscriptions in 1890/1.


title: Urartu

text: Waldemar Belck visited the area in 1891, discovering the Rusa stele. A further expedition planned for 1893 was prevented by Turkish-Armenian hostilities. Belck together with Lehmann-Haupt visited the area again in 1898/9, excavating Toprakkale. On this expedition, Belck reached the Kelishin stele, but he was attacked by Kurds and barely escaped with his life. Belck and Lehmann-Haupt reached the stele again in a second attempt, but were again prevented from copying the inscription by weather conditions. After another assault on Belck provoked the diplomatic intervention of Wilhelm II, Sultan Abdul Hamid II agreed to pay Belck a sum of 80,000 gold marks in reparation. During World War I, the Lake Van region briefly fell under Russian control. In 1916, the Russian scholars Nikolay Yakovlevich Marr and Iosif Abgarovich Orbeli, excavating at the Van fortress, uncovered a four-faced stele carrying the annals of Sarduri II. In 1939 Boris Borisovich Piotrovsky excavated Karmir-Blur, discovering Teišebai, the city of the god of war, Teišeba. Excavations by the American scholars Kirsopp and Silva Lake during 1938-40 were cut short by World War II, and most of their finds and field records were lost when a German submarine torpedoed their ship, the . Their surviving documents were published by Manfred Korfmann in 1977.


title: Urartu

text: A new phase of excavations began after the war. Excavations were at first restricted to Soviet Armenia. The fortress of Karmir Blur, dating from the reign of Rusa II, was excavated by a team headed by Boris Piotrovsky, and for the first time the excavators of a Urartian site published their findings systematically. Beginning in 1956 Charles A. Burney identified and sketch-surveyed many Urartian sites in the Lake Van area and, from 1959, a Turkish expedition under Tahsin Özgüç excavated Altintepe and Arif Erzen.


title: Urartu

text: In the late 1960s, Urartian sites in northwest Iran were excavated. In 1976, an Italian team led by Mirjo Salvini finally reached the Kelishin stele, accompanied by a heavy military escort. The Gulf War then closed these sites to archaeological research. Oktay Belli resumed excavation of Urartian sites on Turkish territory: in 1989 Ayanis, a 7th-century BC fortress built by Rusas II of Urartu, was discovered 35 km north of Van. In spite of excavations, only a third to a half of the 300 known Urartian sites in Turkey, Iran, Iraq, and Armenia have been examined by archaeologists (Wartke 1993). Without protection, many sites have been plundered by local residents searching for treasure and other saleable antiquities.


title: Urartu

text: On 12 November 2017, it was announced that archaeologists in Turkey had discovered the ruins of a Urartian castle during underwater excavations around Lake Van. The castle dated to the 8th or 7th centuries BC.


title: Urartu

text: The economic structure of Urartu was similar to other states of the ancient world, especially Assyria. The state was heavily dependent on agriculture, which required centralized irrigation. These works were managed by kings, but implemented by free inhabitants and possibly slave labour provided by prisoners. Royal governors, influential people and, perhaps, free peoples had their own allotments. Individual territories within the state had to pay taxes the central government: grain, horses, bulls, etc. In peacetime, Urartu probably led an active trade with Assyria, providing cattle, horses, iron and wine.


title: Urartu

text: According to archaeological data, farming on the territory of Urartu developed from the Neolithic, even in the 3rd millennium BC. In the Urartian age, agriculture was well developed and closely related to Assyrian methods on the selection of cultures and methods of processing. From cuneiform sources, it is known that in Urartu grew wheat, barley, sesame, millet, and emmer, and cultivated gardens and vineyards. Many regions of the Urartu state required artificial irrigation, which has successfully been organized by the rulers of Urartu in the heyday of the state. In several regions remain ancient irrigation canals, constructed by Urartu, mainly during the Argishti I and Menua period, some of which are still used for irrigation.


title: Urartu

text: There is a number of remains of sturdy stone architecture, as well as some mud brick, especially when it has been burnt, which helps survival. Stone remains are mainly fortresses and walls, with temples and mausolea, and many rock-cut tombs. The style, which developed regional variations, shows a distinct character, partly because of the greater use of stone compared to neighbouring cultures. The typical temple was square, with stone walls as thick as the open internal area but using mud brick for the higher part. These were placed at the highest point of a citadel and from surviving depictions were high, perhaps with gabled roofs; their emphasis on verticality has been claimed as an influence of later Christian Armenian architecture.


title: Urartu

text: The art of Urartu is especially notable for fine lost-wax bronze objects: weapons, figurines, vessels including grand cauldrons that were used for sacrifices, fittings for furniture, and helmets. There are also remains of ivory and bone carvings, frescos, cylinder seals and of course pottery. In general their style is a somewhat less sophisticated blend of influences from neighbouring cultures. Archaeology has produced relatively few examples of the jewellery in precious metals that the Assyrians boasted of carrying off in great quantities from Musasir in 714 BC.


title: Urartu

text: The Urartian pantheon seems to have comprised a diverse mix of Hurrian, Akkadian, Armenian, and Hittite deities.


title: Urartu

text: Starting with the reign of Ishpuini, the Urartian pantheon was headed by a triad made up of Ḫaldi (the supreme god), Theispas (Teisheba, god of thunder and storms, as well as sometimes war), and Shivini (a solar god). Their king was also the chief-priest or envoy of Ḫaldi. Some temples to Ḫaldi were part of the royal palace complex, while others were independent structures.


title: Urartu

text: With the expansion of Urartian territory, many of the gods worshipped by conquered peoples were incorporated into the Urartian pantheon as a means of confirming the annexation of territories and promoting political stability.


title: Urartu

text: Ḫaldi was not a native Urartian god but apparently an obscure Akkadian deity (which explains the location of the main temple of worship for Ḫaldi in Musasir, believed to be near modern Rawandiz, Iraq). Ḫaldi was not initially worshiped by the Urartians as their chief god. His cult does not appear to have been introduced until the reign of Ishpuini.


title: Urartu

text: According to Diakonoff and Vyacheslav Ivanov, Shivini (likely pronounced "Shiwini" or "Siwini") was likely borrowed from the Hittites.


title: Urartu

text: On the Gate of Mehr (Mehri-Dur), overlooking modern Van, an inscription lists a total of 79 deities, and what type of sacrificial offerings should be made to each; goats, sheep, cattle, and other animals served as the sacrificial offerings. Urartians did not practice human sacrifice.


title: Urartu

text: A number of the gods mentioned in the Gate of Mehr may be of Armenian origins, including Ara (or Arwaa), and possibly the goddess Selardi (although there is confusion about this deity's gender and name, some believe it is to be read Melardi).


title: Urartu

text: It has been suggested that the Urartian pantheon could correspond to mountain peaks located within the Armenian Highlands.


title: Urartu

text: The modern name of the written language used by the kingdom's political elite is "Urartian"; the language is attested in numerous cuneiform inscriptions throughout Armenia and eastern Turkey. It is unknown what other languages were spoken by the peoples of Urartu under the Kingdom of Van, but there is evidence of linguistic contact between the proto-Armenian language and the Urartian language at an early date (sometime between the 3rd—2nd millennium BC), before the formation of the kingdom.


title: Urartu

text: Urartians used Assyrian language, script, and form in building inscriptions. This language and script was used until the late ninth century BC when the Urartian language was used.


title: Urartu

text: "Urartian language" is the modern name of the extinct language used in the cuneiform inscriptions of the Kingdom of Urartu. Other names used to refer to the language are "Khaldian" ("Ḫaldian"), or "neo-Hurrian". The latter term is considered problematic, however, as it is now thought that Urartian and Hurrian share a common ancestor; formerly, it was thought that Urartian was descended from, or a dialect of, Hurrian. In fact, according to Paul Zimansky:


title: Urartu

text: The Urartian language is an ergative-agglutinative language, which belongs to neither the Semitic nor the Indo-European language families, but to the Hurro-Urartian language family, which is not known to be related to any other language or language family, despite repeated attempts to find genetic links.


title: Urartu

text: Examples of the Urartian language have survived in many inscriptions, written in the Assyrian cuneiform script, found throughout the area of the Kingdom of Urartu. Although, the bulk of the cuneiform inscriptions within Urartu were written in the Urartian language, a minority of them were also written in Akkadian (the official language of Assyria).


title: Urartu

text: There are also claims of autochthonous Urartian hieroglyphs, but this remains uncertain. Unlike the cuneiform inscriptions, Urartian hieroglyphs have not been successfully deciphered. As a result, scholars disagree as to what language is used, or whether they even constitute writing at all. The Urartians originally would have used these locally developed hieroglyphs, but later adapted the Assyrian cuneiform script for most purposes. After the 8th century BC, the hieroglyphic script would have been restricted to religious and accounting purposes.


title: Urartu

text: The Kingdom of Urartu, during its dominance, had united disparate tribes, each of which had its own culture and traditions. Thus, when the political structure was destroyed, little remained that could be identified as one unified Urartian culture. According to Zimansky:


title: Urartu

text: Ultimately, little is known of what was truly spoken in the geopolitical region until the creation of the Armenian alphabet in the 4th century AD. Some scholars believe that the ethnonym "Armina" itself and all other names attested with reference to the rebellions against Darius in the Satrapy of Armenia (the proper names "Araxa", "Haldita", and "Dādṛšiš", the toponyms "Zūzahya", "Tigra", and "Uyamā", and the district name "Autiyāra") are not connected with Armenian linguistic and onomastic material attested later in native Armenian sources, nor are they Iranian, but seem related to Urartian. However, others suggest that some of these names have Armenian or Iranian etymologies.


title: Urartu

text: The presence of a population who spoke Proto-Armenian in Urartu prior to its demise is subject to speculation, but the existence of Urartian words in the Armenian language and Armenian loanwords into Urartian suggests early contact between the two languages and long periods of bilingualism. The presence of toponyms, tribal names, and deities of probable Proto-Armenian etymologies which are attested in records left by Urartian kings, such as Uelikuni, Uduri-Etiuni, Abiliani, and Arzashkun, the personal names Arame and Diaṣuni, and the deities Arṣibedini and Aniqu, further supports the presence of an Armenian speaking population in at least the northern regions of Urartu.


title: Urartu

text: Until recently, it was generally assumed that Proto-Armenian speakers entered Anatolia around 1200 BC, during the Bronze Age Collapse, which was three to four centuries before the emergence of the Kingdom of Van. However, recent genetic research suggests that the Armenian ethnogenesis was completed by 1200 BC, making the arrival of an Armenian-speaking population as late as the Bronze Age Collapse unlikely. Regardless, the Urartian confederation united the disparate peoples of the highlands, which began a process of intermingling of the peoples and cultures (probably including Armenian tribes) and languages (probably including Proto-Armenian) within the highlands. This intermixing would ultimately culminate in the emergence of the Armenian language as the dominant language within the region.


title: Urartu

text: A theory, supported by the official historiography of Armenia and experts in Assyrian and Urartian studies such as Igor M. Diakonoff, Giorgi Melikishvili, Mikhail Nikolsky, and Ivan Mestchaninov, suggests that Urartian was solely the formal written language of the state, while its inhabitants, including the royal family, spoke Proto-Armenian. This theory primarily hinges on the fact that the Urartian language used in the cuneiform inscriptions were very repetitive and scant in vocabulary (having as little as 350–400 roots). Furthermore, over 250 years of usage, it shows no development, which is taken to indicate that the language had ceased to be spoken before the time of the inscriptions or was used only for official purposes.


title: Urartu

text: A complementary theory, suggested by Tamaz V. Gamkrelidze and Ivanov in 1984, places the Proto-Indo-European homeland (the location where Indo-European would have emerged from) in the Armenian Highlands, which would entail the presence of proto-Armenians in the area during the entire lifetime of the Urartian state. Although this theory has less support than the more popular Kurgan hypothesis, the Armenian hypothesis would support the theory that the Urartian language was not spoken, but simply written, and postulates that the Armenian language was an "in situ" development of a 3rd millennium BC Proto-Indo-European language.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Roberto Martínez Montoliu (born 13 July 1973) is a Spanish football coach and former professional player who most recently managed the Belgium national team.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martínez played as a defensive midfielder and began his career at Real Zaragoza, with whom he won the Copa del Rey. He spent a year at lower league side CF Balaguer, before signing for English Third Division side Wigan Athletic. Becoming part of a small Spanish contingent at the club known as "the three amigos" alongside Jesús Seba and Isidro Díaz, he was a regular first team player for six years, the longest period of time he spent at one club. During his time there, he won the Football League Third Division and the Football League Trophy. He moved to Scottish side Motherwell, then to Walsall, before joining Swansea City in 2003. He became club captain and helped the team to win promotion to League One in 2005. He moved to Chester City in 2006, and was again chosen to be captain.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: In 2007, he retired from playing to become manager of Swansea City, leading them to promotion from League One as champions. He then joined Wigan Athletic in 2009, helping the club avoid relegation for three consecutive seasons. In his fourth season Wigan were relegated, but won the FA Cup in 2013 for the first time in the club's history. At the end of that season he became manager of Everton. In May 2016, he was sacked as their manager, and became Belgium's head coach on 3 August 2016. Martinez guided them to third place in 2018 FIFA World Cup, their best-ever position in the competition, as well as holding first place for Belgium in the FIFA World Rankings from 2018 to 2022.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Born in Balaguer, Lleida, Catalonia, Martínez began his career at his home-town club CF Balaguer in the Tercera División, playing his first competitive game for the club's youth team when he was nine years old. He played at every level of youth football for the club before moving to Real Zaragoza at the age of 16.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martínez made his first appearance for the Real Zaragoza B team in 1991, but spent most of his first three seasons at the club playing for the youth teams. On 20 June 1993, he made his debut for the first team in La Liga on the final day of the 1992–93 season in a 2–2 draw with Atlético Madrid, coming onto the pitch as a substitute for Luis Cuartero in the 55th minute. During the following season, Martínez featured more regularly for the B team, helping the team regain promotion to the Segunda División B after being relegated in the previous season. In 1994, he returned to Balaguer to play for the first team, and also ran a football school for the club as an alternative to military service.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martínez was offered the chance to move to England by Dave Whelan, Chairman of Wigan Athletic, and he signed on a free transfer on 25 July 1995, joining fellow Spaniards Jesús Seba and Isidro Díaz, who were collectively referred to as the ""Three Amigos"". He made his debut on 12 August 1995 against Gillingham, scoring for Wigan in a 2–1 defeat. He finished the 1995–96 season as the club's top goalscorer with 13 goals in all competitions, and his impressive performances were recognised when he was named in the Division Three PFA Team of the Year, and was also voted by the supporters as the club's Player of the Year.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martínez won his first honours at the end of the following season, in 1996–97, when Wigan finished as Division Three Champions. He was once again named in the Division Three PFA Team of the Year, and was rewarded with a new four-year contract. Martínez was also at Wigan when the team won the Football League Trophy in 1999, for which he received a winners' medal despite being injured when the final was played.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Released by Wigan on a free transfer at the end of the 2000–01 season, Martínez signed a three-year deal with Scottish club Motherwell in July 2001. He made only eight appearances, plus eight more as a substitute, before having his contract terminated at the end of the season after the club had entered administration a week earlier.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: He moved back to England to join First Division club Walsall on a free transfer in August 2002. Again, he did not feature regularly, starting just one game for Walsall (a home match against Reading, in which he also got sent off) and making a further five appearances as a substitute. In January 2003, Martínez joined Swansea City on a short-term contract until the end of the season, becoming the captain and helping to preserve the club's Football League status on the last day of the season. In June 2003, despite reported interest from First Division clubs, Martínez signed a new contract with Swansea. At the start of the 2004–05 season, Martínez was dropped from the squad by manager Kenny Jackett, but fought his way back into the first team, making 37 league appearances as the club won promotion to League One.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: In May 2006, Martínez was released by Swansea on a free transfer. Martínez joined Chester City on a free transfer, signing a two-year contract. On 24 February 2007, he returned to Swansea City as manager on a two-year contract, replacing Kenny Jackett, who had let him go at the end of the previous season. This appointment was mostly met positively from the fans, despite him not having any managerial experience. Because his move to Swansea occurred outside the transfer window, Martínez could not register himself to play for the club for the remainder of the season. Although Martínez initially wanted to continue playing football for as long as possible, he soon felt that he would be unable to fully commit to a player-manager role, bringing his playing career to an end at the age of 33.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: With Martínez in charge, Swansea lost just once in 11 games, giving them a chance of clinching a play-off place on the final day of the 2006–07 season, but missed out following a 6–3 defeat at home against Blackpool. Martínez won his first League One Manager of the Month Award for October 2007 by leading his team to four straight wins in four in the league, including a 5–0 win and a 4–1 win over Leyton Orient and AFC Bournemouth, respectively, away from home. He went on to win the Award consecutively, in December after a thrilling 3–2 win over Leeds United at the Swans' Liberty Stadium, and in January after a second 4–0 win away from home against Doncaster Rovers. He was also nominated for the February prize but lost out to John Ward, manager of Carlisle United. In April 2008, Martínez signed a new contract with Swansea as the club became League One Champions, securing promotion to the Championship, and in May 2008, he was awarded the League One Manager of the Year Award for leading Swansea to the title.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: The 2008–09 season saw Martínez preside over Swansea's first game in England's second-tier division in 24 years, which began poorly with a 2–0 defeat away at Charlton Athletic. Subsequently, Swansea's form improved and they lost only four games out of the next 30, including a number of key league victories against opponents such as Reading and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Martínez also guided his team to a 2–0 FA Cup win against Premier League side Portsmouth, who were the defending cup holders.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Throughout his time at Swansea, Martínez was often linked with other managerial jobs, but he often stated that he would only leave Swansea as manager if he was "forced out." As his success grew, he publicly criticised players that left the club for money or for larger clubs. In June 2009, both Celtic and Wigan Athletic asked Swansea for permission to speak with Martínez regarding their managerial vacancies, with Wigan being granted the opportunity to hold talks with Martínez. After several days of negotiations, Martínez was confirmed as the new manager of Wigan on 15 June 2009, taking four backroom staff with him. Martínez signed a three-year contract worth £1.5 million and was assured by Wigan chairman Dave Whelan that his job would be safe for the next three years, even if the club suffered relegation.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martínez's move to Wigan was not without controversy. Many Swansea fans were upset that he had chosen to leave the club despite his previous comments that he would have to be "forced out" to leave the club, and he was subsequently nicknamed "El Judas" by some fans. Martínez explained that his decision had been a difficult one to make, but felt the opportunity to manage in the Premier League at the club where he began his English footballing career was too good to turn down. His first league game as Wigan manager was an away fixture against Aston Villa on 15 August 2009. Wigan won the match 2–0, and was the first season they had won an opening game in the Premier League.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: In his first home game at the DW Stadium, however, the team slumped to a 1–0 defeat to newly promoted Wolverhampton Wanderers, and this was followed by a 5–0 defeat against Manchester United, despite being 0–0 at half time. This inconsistency set the tone for Martínez's first season in charge, with home wins against Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal, but also a series of heavy defeats. This included a 9–1 defeat away to Tottenham Hotspur on 22 November 2009, a club record defeat for Wigan, and the first time that a Premier League side had scored nine goals in a single match since Manchester United beat Ipswich Town 9–0 in 1995.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 26 October 2010, Martínez faced his former club Swansea in the League Cup. Martínez received a hostile reception from Swansea fans as Wigan won the match 2–0. On 10 June 2011, it was announced that Martínez had turned down an approach from Aston Villa regarding their vacant managerial position.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: After a good start to the 2011–12 campaign, Wigan suffered eight straight defeats to leave them at the bottom of the league. Between August and February, Wigan won a mere four games, leading to predictions that relegation to the Championship would be inevitable for Wigan. As the end of the season approached, however, Wigan's form improved dramatically as they recorded wins against Liverpool, Arsenal, Manchester United, and Newcastle United, among others. This remarkable late rally, which involved seven wins in nine games, led to Wigan finishing 15th in the league – seven points clear of relegation – and also saw Martínez awarded his first Premier League Manager of the Month Award for April 2012.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 17 May 2012, Wigan chairman Dave Whelan confirmed that Liverpool had been given permission to discuss their managerial vacancy with Martínez. However the job eventually went to Swansea manager Brendan Rodgers. Martínez said that he wished to remain at Wigan in order to create "a legacy" at the club.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 26 September 2012, Martínez was charged by the FA for comments made after Wigan's 4–0 loss to Manchester United on 15 September 2012. He accused match officials of favouring United at Old Trafford and said that Danny Welbeck should have been sent off.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: During the 2012–13 season, Martínez led Wigan through their most successful ever FA Cup campaign as they won it for the first time in the club's history. Wigan's previous best result in the competition had been to reach the quarter-finals; Martínez led Wigan to their first Wembley semi-final after a 3–0 away win against Everton in the quarter-final. Wigan faced Millwall in the semi-final on 13 April 2013, and went on to reach their first ever FA Cup Final with a 2–0 win. They played Manchester City on 11 May, and won 1–0 with a goal in the 91st minute from substitute Ben Watson to become the 43rd different club to win the FA Cup.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Just three days after lifting the FA Cup at Wembley though, on 14 May 2013, Martínez's Wigan side were relegated from the Premier League after a 4–1 defeat against Arsenal, having been in the Premier League since promotion in 2005.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 28 May 2013, Wigan chairman Dave Whelan announced that Martínez received permission to speak to Everton about their vacant managerial position. Whelan said that "He (Martínez) feels he's not the man to lead us back into the Premier League". Whelan said Everton chairman Bill Kenwright contacted him a week earlier for permission to speak to Martínez if talks broke down. Whelan said he gave permission "immediately", adding that he expected Everton to pay compensation of around £2 million.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 5 June 2013, Everton confirmed the appointment of Martínez as the club's 14th manager after agreeing to a four-year contract. Everton also agreed to send a compensation package of around £1.5 million to Wigan. Kenwright had interviewed three candidates within his club, and Martínez was the only candidate who was approached while contracted to another club. Martínez brought four members of his Wigan Athletic backroom staff to Everton, following the departures of various members of David Moyes' previous backroom staff who followed him to Manchester United the same week. Graeme Jones was appointed assistant manager, Iñaki Bergara became goalkeeping coach, Richard Evans was appointed as 'Head of Performance' and former England international footballer Kevin Reeves was appointed head scout. Martínez promised to qualify Everton to the UEFA Champions League.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: His first Premier League game in charge of Everton was a 2–2 draw away to Norwich City on 17 August. Martínez's first league win as Everton manager came against Chelsea on 14 September. When Everton beat West Ham United 3–2 in their next game it meant that Martínez became the first ever manager of the club to avoid defeat in his first six games. However, the run did not last as in the next fixture Fulham won 2–1 in the third round of the League Cup.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 12 April 2014, Martínez led Everton to a 1–0 win away at Sunderland to move Everton up to fourth place in the Premier League and register a club record seventh straight Premier League win which also gave them a club record Premier League points tally with five games remaining. Eight days later, Everton won 2–0 at Goodison Park to make Martínez the first Everton manager since Harry Catterick in the 1969–70 season to record a league double over Manchester United. Martínez signed a new five-year contract after the season ended.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Despite finishing 5th the previous season, Everton's 2014–15 campaign was less successful. By March 2015, they had won just one of their last ten matches. A 2–0 defeat to Arsenal resulted in the Blues dropping to 14th, six points above the relegation zone. In the Europa League, Everton advanced to the round of 16, winning 7–2 on aggregate against Young Boys. Martínez's side were however knocked out after a 5–2 loss to Ukrainian side Dynamo Kiev.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 12 May 2016, Martínez was sacked by the club, who were 12th with one game remaining. He had guided them to the semi-finals of both domestic cups that season, but fans had protested against his management and demanded his removal.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: On 3 August 2016, Martínez signed as coach of the Belgium national team, succeeding Marc Wilmots. In his first match in charge on 1 September 2016, Belgium were defeated 2–0 by his birth country Spain in Brussels.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martinez's Belgians were the first European side to advance from qualifying into the 2018 FIFA World Cup after their 2–1 win over Greece. During the group stage, his team won all group games and in the round of 16, came from two goals down to beat Japan 3–2. In the quarter-finals, Belgium defeated Brazil 2–1 to set up a semi-final against neighbours France, which they subsequently lost 1–0. Belgium defeated England 2–0 in the third-place play-off to secure their best World Cup finish of all time.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Under Martínez, Belgium rose to first in the FIFA World Rankings in September 2018 and remained there in February 2021, without winning a single title in many years. After winning the group at Euro 2020, he became the only manager to do so at the 2018 World Cup and at that tournament. In addition, he set the record for most Belgium wins in one spell as manager (46 from 49, compared to 45 in 114 for Guy Thys; Thys won four more in a second spell). However, he was unable to guide Belgium into the title, as the team suffered a blowing 1–2 defeat to Italy in the quarter-finals and was eliminated. Despite this performance in the tournament, he remained the coach of Belgium until the end of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. He became the coach with the most victories in the history of the Belgian national team after beating Belarus in the qualifying phase for the 2022 World Cup. On 20 September 2021, he again achieved a new feat: Belgium celebrated three years in a row as leader of the FIFA ranking.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: After failing to qualify for the knockout stages of the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, Martinez resigned from his position as head coach of Belgium.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martínez is often credited with establishing Swansea City's possession-based style of play during their title-winning League One campaign and subsequent rise to the Premier League. Following his departure to Wigan, succeeding Swansea managers were chosen to suit the style of football Martínez had developed, such as Brendan Rodgers, Michael Laudrup, and Graham Potter. Martínez also implemented a similar possession-based style of play at Wigan and Everton to varying degrees of success. Martínez cites the philosophy of Johan Cruyff as an influence upon his managerial approach.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: Martínez served as a studio analyst for ESPN's coverage of the FIFA World Cup (2010 and 2014 editions), the UEFA European Championship (2012 and 2016 editions), and the 2013 FIFA Confederations Cup. He has also been a regular guest on Sky Sports' Spanish football programme "Revista de la Liga". In addition, he has made several appearances on the BBC's "Match of the Day". In July 2020, Martinez was unveiled as one of the pundits for CBS Sports Network's UEFA Champions League coverage.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: In June 2009, Martínez married his Scottish girlfriend Beth Thompson at St Joseph's Cathedral in Swansea. The couple met in Scotland in 2002, while he was playing for Motherwell. They have two daughters together named Luella and Safiana.


title: Roberto Martínez

text: While playing for Real Zaragoza, Martínez obtained a bachelor's degree in physiotherapy. He also has a postgraduate diploma in business management, which he obtained from Manchester Metropolitan University.


title: Butterscotch

text: Butterscotch is a type of confectionery whose primary ingredients are brown sugar and butter, but other ingredients are part of some recipes, such as corn syrup, cream, vanilla, and salt. The earliest known recipes, in mid-19th century Yorkshire, used treacle (molasses) in place of, or in addition to, sugar.


title: Butterscotch

text: Butterscotch is similar to toffee, but for butterscotch, the sugar is boiled to the soft crack stage, not hard crack as with toffee. Often credited with their invention, Parkinson's of Doncaster made butterscotch boiled sweets and sold them in tins, which became one of the town's best known exports. They became famous in 1851 when Queen Victoria was presented with a tin when she visited the town. Butterscotch sauce, made of butterscotch and cream, is used as a topping for ice cream (particularly sundaes).


title: Butterscotch

text: The term "butterscotch" is also often used more specifically of the flavour of brown sugar and butter together even if the actual confection butterscotch is not involved, such as in butterscotch pudding (a type of custard).


title: Butterscotch

text: Food historians have several theories regarding the name and origin of this confectionery, but none are conclusive. One explanation is the meaning "to cut or score" for the word "scotch", as the confection must be cut into pieces, or "scotched", before hardening. Another idea is that it came from the adjective Scotch, indicating association with Scotland. It is also possible that the "scotch" part of its name was derived from the word "scorch". In 1855, F. K. Robinson's "Glossary of Yorkshire Words" explained Butterscotch as "a treacle ball with an amalgamation of butter in it".


title: Butterscotch

text: Early mentions of butterscotch associate the confection with Doncaster in Yorkshire. An 1848 issue of the "Liverpool Mercury" gave a recipe for "Doncaster butterscotch" as "one pound of butter, one pound of sugar and a quarter of a pound of treacle, boiled together" ( each of butter and sugar and treacle).


title: Butterscotch

text: By 1851, Doncaster butterscotch was sold commercially by rival confectioners S. Parkinson & Sons (still trading as Parkinson's), Henry Hall, and Booth's, all of Doncaster, via agents elsewhere in Yorkshire. Parkinson's started to use and advertise the Doncaster Church as their trademark. It was advertised as "Royal Doncaster Butterscotch", or "The Queen's Sweetmeat", and said to be "the best emollient for the chest in the winter season". Parkinson's Butterscotch was by appointment to the royal household and was presented to the Princess Elizabeth, then the Duchess of Edinburgh, in 1948 and to Anne, Princess Royal in 2007. In the late 19th and early 20th century the British sweet became popular in the U.S.


title: Butterscotch

text: Butterscotch is often used as a flavour for items such as dessert sauce, pudding, and cookies (biscuits). To that end, it can be bought in "butterscotch chips", made with hydrogenated (solid) fats so as to be similar for baking use to chocolate chips.


title: Butterscotch

text: There are also individually wrapped, translucent yellow hard candies (butterscotch disks) with an artificial butterscotch flavour, which is dissimilar to actual butterscotch. In addition, butterscotch flavoured liqueur is in production.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Margarita Simonovna Simonyan (; born 6 April 1980) is a Russian journalist. She is the editor-in-chief of the Russian state-controlled propaganda media organisations RT (formerly Russia Today) and "Rossiya Segodnya". In 2022, Simonyan was sanctioned by the European Union as "a central figure of the Russian Government propaganda" responsible for "actions and policies which undermine the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of Ukraine".


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Simonyan was born in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, into an Armenian family. Both her parents are descendants of Armenian refugees from the Ottoman Empire. Her father's family, originally from Trabzon, settled in Crimea during the Armenian genocide of 1915.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: During World War II, they were deported by Stalin's NKVD to the Urals along with thousands of other Hamshen Armenians. Her father was born in Yekaterinburg (Sverdlovsk). Her mother was born in Sochi to an Armenian family that had fled the massacres of the Armenians by the Turks in the late 19th century. Her two grandfathers were World War II veterans.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Her family owns a restaurant in the town of Moldovka in Adlersky City District, Sochi. Simonyan has stated that she is from a working-class family and decided at an early age that she wanted to become a journalist, first working for the local newspaper, and then for a local television station while studying journalism at Kuban State University.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Simonyan, as a correspondent, covered the Second Chechen War, and also serious flooding of the Krasnodar region, for her local television station, receiving an award for "professional courage". In 2002, she became a regional correspondent for Russia's national Rossiya television channel and covered the 2004 Beslan school hostage crisis.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Simonyan, one of the first correspondents to arrive at the scene, witnessed the killing of 334 people, 186 of them children. She told an interviewer "It was the worst thing that ever happened to me," and that she 'cried frequently' while trying to write about it. She then moved to Moscow where she joined the Russian pool of Kremlin reporters.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: She was the first vice-president of the Russian National Association of TV and Radio Broadcasters and a member of the Civic Chamber of the Russian Federation. In 2010, her first book, "Heading to Moscow!" was published.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: In 2018, Simonyan wrote the script for "The Crimean Bridge. Made with Love!", a film directed by her husband, Keosayan. The film attracted scathing reviews, and was even the lowest-rated film on several film review aggregators, with Simonyan's script widely panned. Russian opposition politician Alexey Navalny released a video in March 2020, alleging serious corruption during the production of the film, with state funds intened for film production being siphoned off to Simonyan's relatives.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Simonyan was only 25 when appointed editor-in-chief of RT (then known as Russia Today) in 2005, but had been working in journalism since she was 18. She stated in a 2008 interview that "her age often leads people to make assumptions about how she got her job." Andrei Richter, the director of the Moscow Media Law and Policy Institute and a journalism professor at Moscow State University, suggests that she was "appointed because she is well-connected." She is a Kremlin loyalist who is close to President Vladimir Putin.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: RT began broadcasting on 10 December 2005 with a staff of 300 journalists, including approximately 70 from outside Russia. Simonyan frequently addresses media questions about RT's journalistic and political stance. At its launch, Simonyan stated that RT's intent was to have a "professional format" like the BBC, CNN and Euronews that would "reflect Russia's opinion of the world" and present a "more balanced picture" of Russia. She told a reporter that the government would not dictate content and that "Censorship by government in this country is prohibited by the constitution."


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: She later told "The Moscow Times" that RT started to grow once it became provocative and that controversy was vital to the station. She said that RT's task was not to polish Moscow's reputation. The station has however been criticised repeatedly in the West for perceived bias. Simonyan has been quoted as saying: "There is no objectivity – only approximations of the truth by as many different voices as possible".


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: She discussed her views with "The Washington Times" of RT's coverage of the 2008 South Ossetia war, where Russia backed South Ossetia against the country of Georgia. She stated that among English speaking channels, only RT was giving the South Ossetian side of the story. She rejected the allegation of Will Dunbar, an RT correspondent who left after alleging RT was downplaying Russian bombing raids, and denied his claims of censorship. She stated that compared to some other stations, "We are not making a secret out of the fact that we are a Russian station, and, of course, we see the world from a Russian point of view. We are being much more honest in that sense."


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: On 31 December 2013, she was cross-appointed as the editor-in-chief of the new government owned news agency Rossiya Segodnya and serves as editor-in-chief of both organizations concurrently. In May 2016, after she was included in the sanctions list of Ukraine by President Petro Poroshenko, she was denied entry to Ukraine.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: In April 2022, Simonyan proposed removing the article on the prohibition of censorship from the 1993 Russian Constitution. According to her, freedom of speech will lead to "the collapse" of Russia. She called for emulating the People's Republic of China, which is a "non-free but prosperous country".


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: On 30 November 2020, Simonyan, as editor in chief of RT, defended a TV segment that was roundly criticized as racist, which contained Simonyan's partner, Tigran Keosayan, and an actress in blackface posing as former United States President Barack Obama. In the segment, Keosayan, referring to Obama's book "A Promised Land", asks: "Do you consider this book your achievement?", to which the actress in blackface replies: "Of course."


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Keosayan then asks: "Because none of your relatives have written books?", after which the actress answers: "Because none of my relatives that came before me could write." Keosayan then states "you should have been a rap musician, not the president". Keosayan and Simonyan are co-writers for the show "International Sawmill", in which the segment aired. Simonyan defended the segment by referring to Keosayan's ethnic Armenian background.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: In December 2021, Simonyan stated in a TV debate that the war in Donbas "is ongoing and if a small war can stop this butchery that's gone on for seven years perhaps it's a way out." In the early weeks of 2022, Simonyan rejected speculation that Russia was preparing for a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. However, in mid-February 2022, she stated that "Russia cannot but stop this war. What are we waiting for?"


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: On 23 February 2022, Simonyan was included in the European Union sanctions list for promoting "a positive attitude to the annexation of Crimea and the actions of separatists in Donbas." She is barred from entering EU countries and any assets she owns in them are frozen.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: After the Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022, Simonyan expressed support for the invasion, including posting a Tweet saying that "This is a standard parade rehearsal, It's just that this year we decided to hold the parade in Kyiv," and mocking speculation that she would be targeted with further sanctions. She opposed the 2022 anti-war protests in Russia, stating that "If you are ashamed of being Russian now, don't worry, you are not Russian." She claimed that "Nobody is fighting against Ukrainians! We're liberating Ukraine! No one is bombing peaceful Ukrainian cities!"


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: On "Your Own Truth", presented by Roman Babayan on NTV on 26 March, Simonyan made multiple unsupported assertions, including a claim that Ukrainian doctors have called for Russian prisoners to be castrated and Ukrainian "Nazis" are "prepared to pluck children's eyes out based on their ethnicity." She also claimed that Ukrainian forces were attacking children in Mariupol with banned cluster munition. On 26 March, she said that to her "horror," a "considerable portion of the Ukrainian people have turned out to be engulfed in the madness of nazism."


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: She said that Russia was at war with NATO. On 26 April, while discussing the possibility of World War III and nuclear war with Vladimir Solovyov on "The Evening with Vladimir Solovyov", Simonyan said, "Personally, I think that the most realistic way is the way of World War III, based on knowing us and our leader Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin, knowing how everything works around here, it's impossible—there is no chance—that we will give up ... We're all going to die someday." Igor Albin, former Vice Governor of Saint Petersburg, wrote on his Telegram channel: "Crazy 'propagandists' will burn in hell. You don't scold your own in times of war, but you shouldn't be proud of them either. There will be no winners in a nuclear war!"


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: She asked Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev about Kazakhstan's position on the"special military operation" in Ukraine. He replied that "we recognize neither Taiwan, nor Kosovo, nor South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In all likelihood, this principle will be applied to quasi-state entities, which, in our opinion, are Luhansk and Donetsk." Simonyan believes that the 2022 food crisis, partly caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, will force the West to lift sanctions.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Pointing to chaotic partial mobilization and reports of old, disabled or otherwise unfit men being drafted into the army, Simonyan complained why the "millions of security officers and guards" who are being used in Russia are not sent to the front. She also complained that some recruits were receiving inadequate equipment.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: During the 2020 Armenian–Azerbaijani war, Simonyan accused the Armenian authorities of provoking Russia by arresting former-president Robert Kocharyan and refusing to recognize the annexation of Crimea. She suggested that the CSTO's response was appropriate given Armenia's "anti-Russian sentiment." The CSTO later stated: "The opinion of [Simonyan] is completely contrary to the official position of the CSTO Secretariat." Her words were widely criticized in Armenian society.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: She said, "Any Armenian who dares to criticize Russia should go and cut out his dirty tongue. They brought the national traitor Nikol Pashinyan to power, who created the prerequisite for war." Political commentator Sergey Parkhomenko also criticized her, saying that Simonyan is posing as "a powerful representative of the Armenian people, while not being such at all from any point of view."


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: In October 2022, Simonyan stated that she was banned by Armenian authorities from entering the country.


title: Margarita Simonyan

text: Simonyan was formerly married to the journalist and producer Andrey Blagodyrenko, giving birth to the couple's daughter, Mariana, in August 2013. She is now married to Russian-Armenian film director, Tigran Keosayan, with whom she regularly collaborates. They have three children together. Simonyan is fluent in Russian and English. She stated in a 2012 interview that she regrets not knowing Armenian, but explained that it is because her family never spoke Armenian at home due to dialectal differences.


title: Golden spiral

text: In geometry, a golden spiral is a logarithmic spiral whose growth factor is , the golden ratio. That is, a golden spiral gets wider (or further from its origin) by a factor of for every quarter turn it makes.


title: Golden spiral

text: For example, a golden spiral can be approximated by first starting with a rectangle for which the ratio between its length and width is the golden ratio. This rectangle can then be partitioned into a square and a similar rectangle and this rectangle can then be split in the same way. After continuing this process for an arbitrary number of steps, the result will be an almost complete partitioning of the rectangle into squares. The corners of these squares can be connected by quarter-circles. The result, though not a true logarithmic spiral, closely approximates a golden spiral.


title: Golden spiral

text: Another approximation is a Fibonacci spiral, which is constructed slightly differently. A Fibonacci spiral starts with a rectangle partitioned into 2 squares. In each step, a square the length of the rectangle's longest side is added to the rectangle. Since the ratio between consecutive Fibonacci numbers approaches the golden ratio as the Fibonacci numbers approach infinity, so too does this spiral get more similar to the previous approximation the more squares are added, as illustrated by the image.


title: Golden spiral

text: Approximate logarithmic spirals can occur in nature, for example the arms of spiral galaxies – golden spirals are one special case of these logarithmic spirals, although there is no evidence that there is any general tendency towards this case appearing. Phyllotaxis is connected with the golden ratio because it involves successive leaves or petals being separated by the golden angle; it also results in the emergence of spirals, although again none of them are (necessarily) golden spirals. It is sometimes stated that spiral galaxies and nautilus shells get wider in the pattern of a golden spiral, and hence are related to both and the Fibonacci series.


title: Golden spiral

text: In truth, many mollusk shells including nautilus shells exhibit logarithmic spiral growth, but at a variety of angles usually distinctly different from that of the golden spiral. This pattern allows the organism to grow without changing shape. Although spiral galaxies have often been modeled as logarithmic spirals, Archimedean spirals, or hyperbolic spirals, their pitch angles vary with distance from the galactic center, unlike logarithmic spirals (for which this angle does not vary), and also at variance with the other mathematical spirals used to model them.


title: Golden spiral

text: A golden spiral with initial radius 1 is the locus of points of polar coordinates formula_1 satisfying


title: Golden spiral

text: The polar equation for a golden spiral is the same as for other logarithmic spirals, but with a special value of the growth factor :


title: Golden spiral

text: with being the base of natural logarithms, being the initial radius of the spiral, and such that when is a right angle (a quarter turn in either direction):


title: Golden spiral

text: The numerical value of depends on whether the right angle is measured as 90 degrees or as formula_8 radians; and since the angle can be in either direction, it is easiest to write the formula for the absolute value of (that is, can also be the negative of this value):


title: Golden spiral

text: the point "C" is the projective harmonic conjugate of "B" with respect to "A", "D", i.e. the cross ratio ("A","D";"B","C") has the singular value −1.


title: Golden spiral

text: In a golden spiral, being formula_18 constant and equal to formula_19 (for in radians, as defined above), the slope angle formula_16 is


title: Tautology (logic)

text: In mathematical logic, a tautology (from ) is a formula or assertion that is true in every possible interpretation. An example is "x=y or x≠y". Similarly, "either the ball is green, or the ball is not green" is always true, regardless of the colour of the ball.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies of propositional logic in 1921, borrowing from rhetoric, where a tautology is a repetitive statement. In logic, a formula is satisfiable if it is true under at least one interpretation, and thus a tautology is a formula whose negation is unsatisfiable. In other words, it cannot be false. It cannot be untrue.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: Unsatisfiable statements, both through negation and affirmation, are known formally as contradictions. A formula that is neither a tautology nor a contradiction is said to be logically contingent.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: Such a formula can be made either true or false based on the values assigned to its propositional variables. The double turnstile notation formula_1 is used to indicate that "S" is a tautology. Tautology is sometimes symbolized by "V"pq"", and contradiction by "O"pq"". The tee symbol formula_2 is sometimes used to denote an arbitrary tautology, with the dual symbol formula_3 (falsum) representing an arbitrary contradiction; in any symbolism, a tautology may be substituted for the truth value "true", as symbolized, for instance, by "1".


title: Tautology (logic)

text: Tautologies are a key concept in propositional logic, where a tautology is defined as a propositional formula that is true under any possible Boolean valuation of its propositional variables. A key property of tautologies in propositional logic is that an effective method exists for testing whether a given formula is always satisfied (equiv., whether its negation is unsatisfiable).


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The definition of tautology can be extended to sentences in predicate logic, which may contain quantifiers—a feature absent from sentences of propositional logic.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: Indeed, in propositional logic, there is no distinction between a tautology and a logically valid formula. In the context of predicate logic, many authors define a tautology to be a sentence that can be obtained by taking a tautology of propositional logic, and uniformly replacing each propositional variable by a first-order formula (one formula per propositional variable). The set of such formulas is a proper subset of the set of logically valid sentences of predicate logic (i.e., sentences that are true in every model).


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The word tautology was used by the ancient Greeks to describe a statement that was asserted to be true merely by virtue of saying the same thing twice, a pejorative meaning that is still used for rhetorical tautologies. Between 1800 and 1940, the word gained new meaning in logic, and is currently used in mathematical logic to denote a certain type of propositional formula, without the pejorative connotations it originally possessed.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: Here, "analytic proposition" refers to an analytic truth, a statement in natural language that is true solely because of the terms involved.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: In 1884, Gottlob Frege proposed in his "Grundlagen" that a truth is analytic exactly if it can be derived using logic. However, he maintained a distinction between analytic truths (i.e., truths based only on the meanings of their terms) and tautologies (i.e., statements devoid of content).


title: Tautology (logic)

text: In his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" in 1921, Ludwig Wittgenstein proposed that statements that can be deduced by logical deduction are tautological (empty of meaning), as well as being analytic truths. Henri Poincaré had made similar remarks in "Science and Hypothesis" in 1905. Although Bertrand Russell at first argued against these remarks by Wittgenstein and Poincaré, claiming that mathematical truths were not only non-tautologous but were synthetic, he later spoke in favor of them in 1918:


title: Tautology (logic)

text: During the 1930s, the formalization of the semantics of propositional logic in terms of truth assignments was developed. The term "tautology" began to be applied to those propositional formulas that are true regardless of the truth or falsity of their propositional variables. Some early books on logic (such as "Symbolic Logic" by C. I. Lewis and Langford, 1932) used the term for any proposition (in any formal logic) that is universally valid. It is common in presentations after this (such as Stephen Kleene 1967 and Herbert Enderton 2002) to use tautology to refer to a logically valid propositional formula, but to maintain a distinction between "tautology" and "logically valid" in the context of first-order logic .


title: Tautology (logic)

text: Propositional logic begins with propositional variables, atomic units that represent concrete propositions. A formula consists of propositional variables connected by logical connectives, built up in such a way that the truth of the overall formula can be deduced from the truth or falsity of each variable. A valuation is a function that assigns each propositional variable to either T (for truth) or F (for falsity). So by using the propositional variables "A" and "B", the binary connectives formula_4 and formula_5 representing disjunction and conjunction respectively, and the unary connective formula_6 representing negation, the following formula can be obtained:formula_7.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: A valuation here must assign to each of "A" and "B" either T or F. But no matter how this assignment is made, the overall formula will come out true. For if the first conjunction formula_8 is not satisfied by a particular valuation, then one of "A" and "B" is assigned F, which will make one of the following disjunct to be assigned T.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: A formula of propositional logic is a "tautology" if the formula itself is always true, regardless of which valuation is used for the propositional variables. There are infinitely many tautologies. Examples include:


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The problem of determining whether a formula is a tautology is fundamental in propositional logic. If there are "n" variables occurring in a formula then there are 2 distinct valuations for the formula. Therefore, the task of determining whether or not the formula is a tautology is a finite and mechanical one: one needs only to evaluate the truth value of the formula under each of its possible valuations. One algorithmic method for verifying that every valuation makes the formula to be true is to make a truth table that includes every possible valuation.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: There are 8 possible valuations for the propositional variables "A", "B", "C", represented by the first three columns of the following table. The remaining columns show the truth of subformulas of the formula above, culminating in a column showing the truth value of the original formula under each valuation.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: Because each row of the final column shows "T", the sentence in question is verified to be a tautology.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: It is also possible to define a deductive system (i.e., proof system) for propositional logic, as a simpler variant of the deductive systems employed for first-order logic (see Kleene 1967, Sec 1.9 for one such system). A proof of a tautology in an appropriate deduction system may be much shorter than a complete truth table (a formula with "n" propositional variables requires a truth table with 2 lines, which quickly becomes infeasible as "n" increases). Proof systems are also required for the study of intuitionistic propositional logic, in which the method of truth tables cannot be employed because the law of the excluded middle is not assumed.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: A formula "R" is said to tautologically imply a formula "S" if every valuation that causes "R" to be true also causes "S" to be true. This situation is denoted formula_19. It is equivalent to the formula formula_20 being a tautology (Kleene 1967 p. 27).


title: Tautology (logic)

text: For example, let "formula_21" be formula_22. Then "formula_21" is not a tautology, because any valuation that makes "formula_24" false will make "formula_21" false. But any valuation that makes "formula_24" true will make "formula_21" true, because formula_28 is a tautology. Let "formula_29" be the formula formula_30. Then formula_19, because any valuation satisfying "formula_29" will make "formula_24" true—and thus makes "formula_21" true.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: It follows from the definition that if a formula "formula_29" is a contradiction, then "formula_29" tautologically implies every formula, because there is no truth valuation that causes "formula_29" to be true, and so the definition of tautological implication is trivially satisfied. Similarly, if "formula_21" is a tautology, then "formula_21" is tautologically implied by every formula.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: There is a general procedure, the substitution rule, that allows additional tautologies to be constructed from a given tautology (Kleene 1967 sec. 3). Suppose that is a tautology and for each propositional variable in a fixed sentence is chosen. Then the sentence obtained by replacing each variable in with the corresponding sentence is also a tautology.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: An axiomatic system is complete if every tautology is a theorem (derivable from axioms). An axiomatic system is sound if every theorem is a tautology.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The problem of constructing practical algorithms to determine whether sentences with large numbers of propositional variables are tautologies is an area of contemporary research in the area of automated theorem proving.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The method of truth tables illustrated above is provably correct – the truth table for a tautology will end in a column with only "T", while the truth table for a sentence that is not a tautology will contain a row whose final column is "F", and the valuation corresponding to that row is a valuation that does not satisfy the sentence being tested. This method for verifying tautologies is an effective procedure, which means that given unlimited computational resources it can always be used to mechanistically determine whether a sentence is a tautology. This means, in particular, the set of tautologies over a fixed finite or countable alphabet is a decidable set.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: As an efficient procedure, however, truth tables are constrained by the fact that the number of valuations that must be checked increases as 2, where "k" is the number of variables in the formula. This exponential growth in the computation length renders the truth table method useless for formulas with thousands of propositional variables, as contemporary computing hardware cannot execute the algorithm in a feasible time period.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The problem of determining whether there is any valuation that makes a formula true is the Boolean satisfiability problem; the problem of checking tautologies is equivalent to this problem, because verifying that a sentence "S" is a tautology is equivalent to verifying that there is no valuation satisfying formula_44. It is known that the Boolean satisfiability problem is NP complete, and widely believed that there is no polynomial-time algorithm that can perform it. Consequently, tautology is co-NP-complete. Current research focuses on finding algorithms that perform well on special classes of formulas, or terminate quickly on average even though some inputs may cause them to take much longer.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: The fundamental definition of a tautology is in the context of propositional logic. The definition can be extended, however, to sentences in first-order logic. These sentences may contain quantifiers, unlike sentences of propositional logic. In the context of first-order logic, a distinction is maintained between "logical validities", sentences that are true in every model, and "tautologies" (or, "tautological validities"), which are a proper subset of the first-order logical validities. In the context of propositional logic, these two terms coincide.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: A tautology in first-order logic is a sentence that can be obtained by taking a tautology of propositional logic and uniformly replacing each propositional variable by a first-order formula (one formula per propositional variable). For example, because formula_45 is a tautology of propositional logic, formula_46 is a tautology in first order logic. Similarly, in a first-order language with a unary relation symbols "R","S","T", the following sentence is a tautology:


title: Tautology (logic)

text: It is obtained by replacing formula_24 with formula_49, formula_50 with formula_51, and formula_52 with formula_53 in the propositional tautology formula_54.


title: Tautology (logic)

text: is true in any first-order interpretation, but it corresponds to the propositional sentence formula_56 which is not a tautology of propositional logic.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Nintendo Switch Online (NSO) is an online subscription service for the Nintendo Switch video game console. Nintendo Switch Online features include online multiplayer, cloud saving, voice chat via a smartphone app, access to a library of Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) games, as well as other promotions and offers.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Following an interim period where Nintendo offered online multiplayer free of charge, the subscription service officially launched on September 18, 2018. An expanded tier of the service, "Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack", was released on October 25, 2021, and adds Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games to the library, as well as included access to paid DLC for "", "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe", and "Splatoon 2".


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: The service is Nintendo's third generation online service after Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection and Nintendo Network.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: The Nintendo Switch was announced in October 2016 and released on March 3, 2017. Nintendo stated in its pre-release announcements that the system would eventually require the purchase of a paid "online service" but that they would be available to all users at no charge until the service launched. Features announced included a companion smartphone app, as well as access to a free Nintendo Entertainment System game per-month. The service was initially planned for late 2017. By June 2017, Nintendo pushed back the service's release until 2018, but did establish the pricing plans for the service, with an average annual price of , depending on region.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Then-Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aimé explained that the delays were to ensure that the service was "world-class", and had enough of its announced functionality available on-launch to justify its cost. Nintendo aimed for a lower price point in comparison to PlayStation Plus and Xbox Live Gold, as the service does not include the same range of features as these subscription services provide. Then-Nintendo president Tatsumi Kimishima stated that the price point was a subject of importance in designing the Switch's online services, and that regardless of what competitors were doing, "it's a matter of getting our content to the consumer at a price point that would make them happy, and then we're willing to look at what else we can do going forward." The Nintendo Switch Online service was launched on September 18, 2018. A Nintendo Direct five days before the release detailed the full set of features that would be part of the Online service, including a larger and persistent library of NES games with 20 available on launch, and more to be added on an ongoing basis, as well as cloud save support. The initial launch covered 43 markets, with more markets expected to follow later.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: In September 2018, Nintendo Switch consoles imported to China started experiencing connectivity issues there, due to the Nintendo Switch Online service using Google's servers, which are blocked in China. The service officially launched in South Korea and Hong Kong, on April 23, 2019.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: On September 5, 2019, Super NES games were added to the service under a separate app. On December 1, 2020, the 11.0.0 software update for the Nintendo Switch system software was released, which added a Nintendo Switch Online app to the console's home screen.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Nintendo introduced a new subscription tier known as "Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack" on October 26, 2021; this tier primarily adds Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis titles to the classic games service. It also adds "": "Happy Home Paradise" for the duration of the subscription. This tier was priced at per year on average or for the family subscription option (including the base price of $20 from the original service). Nintendo 64 games on the service are based on their NTSC versions running at 60 Hz with English language options, and select games have the option to play the original PAL version with alternate language options.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: By December 31, 2018, approximately three months after its launch, the service had gained more than eight million subscribers. Nintendo reported in late-April 2019 that the service had 9.8 million subscribers. The service reached over 10 million subscribers by July 2019, and over 15 million by January 2020. The service had reached over 26 million members by September 2020. By September 2021, the service had reached 32 million subscribers.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: In May 2022, Nintendo President Shuntaro Furukawa claimed in an interview that subscribers of the paid service had "gradually" increased. Adding that a large percentage of the new members were in the United States.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Nintendo Switch Online is required to access online multiplayer on the majority of titles. Some free-to-play multiplayer games, such as "Fortnite Battle Royale" and "Warframe", and games published in China (due to the Chinese version of Nintendo Switch lacking Nintendo Switch Online service), are exempt from this requirement, and can be played online freely without a subscription.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Cloud storage allows save data for supported games to be synchronized online, so it can be recovered if the user must move their Nintendo Account to a different Switch console or if they use multiple consoles. The feature is not supported for some games including those with certain forms of online functionality such as item trading and competitive rankings, citing concerns surrounding the possibility of abuse that could "unfairly affect" gameplay.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Users will lose access to their cloud saves should they allow their subscription to lapse, though there is a grace period of six months to renew the subscription and recover them before they are purged.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: According to the list below, there are currently games which do not support cloud save functionality.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: The Nintendo Switch Online Smartphone App is a console companion application developed and published by Nintendo for use alongside the Nintendo Switch Online service. Released on July 21, 2017 for use on iOS and Android devices. The app features voice chat and "game-specific services" for games such as "Splatoon 2", "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe", "Arms", "Mario Tennis Aces", Nintendo Entertainment System for Nintendo Switch Online, "Super Smash Bros. Ultimate", and "".


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Users can voice chat through the Nintendo Switch Online mobile app on smartphones. Voice chat functionality is not available natively through the Switch console; Fils-Aimé justified the decision by explaining that "Nintendo's approach is to do things differently. We have a much different suite of experiences than our competitors offer, and we do that in a different way. This creates a sort of yin and yang for our consumers. They're excited about cloud saves and legacy content but wish we might deliver voice chat a different way, for example."


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Since the Wii era, Nintendo typically offered games from their older consoles through the Virtual Console service, using first-party emulators to run the games on their newer consoles; however, they would not use the Virtual Console brand for the Nintendo Switch family. Instead, Switch Online subscribers can access apps to play games for antecedent video game systems, with the emulation software being developed by NERD. Games with multiplayer modes support both local and online play. During its first year, the Online service distributed Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) games, and later added Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) titles in September 2019. Nintendo has expanded both libraries over time. Starting in October 2021, subscribers can purchase an expansion to play Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games. In certain cases, some of these games have been reworked to support multiplayer gameplay for up to four players locally and online.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Switch Online subscribers are also granted access to special offers and promotions from Nintendo; on launch, those who purchased a 12-month subscription or family plan received special in-game items for "Splatoon 2", and Nintendo opened exclusive pre-orders for special wireless controllers based on the NES controller, specifically intended for use with the aforementioned NES app. Similarly, a special wireless SNES-based controller designed to work with the Switch was made available to purchase exclusively to Online subscribers shortly after the service added support for SNES titles. Ahead of the October 2021 expansion pack to support Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games, Nintendo announced the availability of two Switch controllers available to Online subscribers based on the Nintendo 64 and the three-button Genesis controller form factors, while a controller based on the six-button Mega Drive controller will be available to Japan subscribers. Controllers based on the Famicom and Super Famicom were also released for their respective companion apps in Japan.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Coinciding with the anticipated release of "Super Mario Maker 2", a price-reduction promotion was announced during the game's Nintendo Direct that was available exclusively to Nintendo Switch Online members. The promotion introduced "Nintendo Switch Game Vouchers", which allows purchasers to download two qualifying Nintendo Switch games for a set price of $99.99 MSRP, compared to a $120 sum of buying both games separately.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Nintendo has also offered free original games for those with an Online subscription. "Tetris 99" was released as a free to play title for subscribers in February 2019, though has subsequently offered paid downloadable content and retail versions of the game for non-subscribers. "Super Mario Bros. 35" was released on October 1, 2020, and was only available through March 31, 2021. "Pac-Man 99" was released as a free to play title for subscribers in April 2021 with paid downloadable content available. Upon the release of the Expansion Pack tier, the "" DLC "Happy Home Paradise" was also made available via the service. The Expansion Pack tier also includes "Mario Kart 8 Deluxe"'s Booster Course Pass, and "Splatoon 2"'s .


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Missions and rewards were launched in March 2022. These missions, to be offered on a rotating basis, give the user opportunities to earn Nintendo platinum points by completing certain activities with the Switch software or in various games. The points can then be redeemed to purchase digital items to be used within the Nintendo Switch app, as well as towards physical items at the Nintendo store.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Game Trials are a feature that allow members to try out a game for 1 week. The game would be the same as if a person were to buy the game regularly. Games that are on Game Trials usually also go on sale on the eShop. If subscribers bought the game, any progress made on the trial will transfer to the game.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: Reviews for the service have been mostly mixed. Its affordable price compared to other online services has been generally praised, but its smartphone app, NES and SNES content library, the initially small selection of cloud save-supported games, and lack of dedicated servers have been criticized.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: During the Nintendo Direct on September 23, 2021, the addition of Nintendo 64 and Sega Genesis games for Nintendo Switch Online, exclusive to an Expansion Pack, was revealed. During the Animal Crossing New Horizons Direct on October 15, 2021, the price of the Expansion Pack was revealed, drawing widespread criticism. The same day, Nintendo uploaded a trailer to YouTube detailing the Expansion Pack, which was received negatively, with about 120,000 dislikes as of November 1, 2021, becoming the most disliked video on the channel. The Nintendo 64 games emulated via the Expansion Pack were found to have several performance issues, including input lag and frame rate issues. The fixed remapping of controls designed for the six-button Nintendo 64 controller to the four-button Switch Joy-Con also affected games like "Sin & Punishment". Multiplayer games like "Mario Kart 64" also appeared to use netcode that Nintendo had previously used in prior Virtual Console releases which forced the game to pause for other players until all players were synchronized. The games also did not support a virtual equivalent of the Controller Pak memory expansion, preventing players from utilizing ghost data in "Mario Kart 64" or the native method of saving in "WinBack". Informal tests found that the Nintendo Switch Online version of selected Nintendo 64 games performed worse than compared to the same games available on the Wii U's Virtual Console.


title: Nintendo Switch Online

text: In its quarterly report to investors given in November 2021, Nintendo stated that they plan "to improve and expand both Nintendo Switch Online and Nintendo Switch Online + Expansion Pack striving to provide services that satisfy consumers."


title: Nicolò Barella

text: Nicolò Barella (born 7 February 1997) is an Italian professional footballer who plays as a midfielder for club Inter Milan and the Italy national team. He is often recognised as one of the world's best


title: Nicolò Barella

text: Born in Cagliari, Barella is a youth exponent from Cagliari Calcio. He made his Serie A debut on 4 May 2015 against Parma, replacing Diego Farias after 68 minutes in a 4–0 home win.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: In January 2016, he was sent on loan to Como in Serie B, where he played as a first choice for the second part of the season.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: On 17 September 2017, he scored his first professional and Serie A goal against SPAL in a 2–0 home win.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: On 12 July 2019, Barella joined Inter Milan on a year-long loan deal with an obligation to buy with four-year contract to take effect after the loan period. He made his club debut on 26 August against Lecce; he came off the bench in the second half for Matías Vecino, and later helped set-up Antonio Candreva's goal in an eventual 4–0 home win in Inter's opening match of the 2019–20 Serie A season. He made his Champions League debut on 17 September against Slavia Prague; after coming off the bench for Marcelo Brozović in the second half, he scored an injury-time equalising goal to help Inter to a 1–1 home draw, which was his first goal both in the competition and for Inter. On 9 November, he scored his first league goal for the club as Inter came from behind to achieve a 2–1 home win over Verona. He scored his first goal in the Coppa Italia on 29 January 2020, in 2–1 home win over Fiorentina, in the quarter-finals of the tournament.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: On 17 January 2021, Barella assisted for the first goal for Arturo Vidal and scored a vital second in a 2–0 home win against rivals and defending champions Juventus in Serie A. At the end of the 2020–21 Serie A season, he won the "Scudetto" and was elected Best Midfielder by Lega Serie A as well as included (for the third edition in a row) in the 2020–21 Serie A Team of the Year.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: On 5 November 2021, Barella signed a contract extension with Inter, keeping him at the club until 2026. At the end of the 2021–22 season, after having won the Coppa Italia and the Supercoppa Italiana, Barella (and his teammate Hakan Çalhanoğlu) totalled 12 assists, which is the highest number for an Inter player since Opta Sports started collecting such data in 2004–05. At the end of the season, he was included in the 2021–22 Serie A Team of the Year for the fourth year in a row.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: With the Italy U19 team, Barella took part at the 2016 UEFA European Under-19 Championship, finishing in second place.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: Barella made his debut with the Italy U21 team on 1 September 2017, in a 3–0 friendly defeat against Spain.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: Barella was called up to the senior Italy squad by manager Gian Piero Ventura for the team's 2018 World Cup qualifiers against Macedonia and Albania in October 2017.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: Barella made his debut for the Italy senior side on 10 October 2018, under manager Roberto Mancini, in a 1–1 friendly draw against Ukraine in Genoa. On 23 March 2019, Barella scored his first goal for Italy in a 2–0 home win over Finland in a UEFA Euro 2020 qualifying match.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: In June 2021, he was included in Italy's squad for UEFA Euro 2020. In Italy's second group match on 16 June, he set up Manuel Locatelli second goal in an eventual 3–0 win over Switzerland, which allowed Italy to advance to the round of 16. On 2 July, he scored Italy's opening goal of the match, and later assisted Lorenzo Insigne's goal, in a 2–1 win over Belgium in the quarter-finals of the competition. On 11 July, Barella won the European Championship with Italy following a 3–2 penalty shoot-out victory over England at Wembley Stadium in the final, after a 1–1 draw in extra-time; Barella started the match, but was substituted by Bryan Cristante in the second half of regulation time.


title: Nicolò Barella

text: On 10 October, Barella scored the opening goal in a 2–1 home win over Belgium in the bronze medal match of the 2020–21 UEFA Nations League.